I”m not sure what’s got me more jazzed; that Obamacare is such a shambles, even the far left is bailing on the President…:

In a stunning reversal of fortune for President Barack Obama top progressives are attacking the health-reform plan moving through the Senate as “hollow,” “unsupportable” and a sellout to corporate interests.

Republicans, after plotting for months to sink the signature legislation of Obama’s first year, suddenly think that Democrats might wind up doing it for them.

Most dangerously for White House chances of assembling 60 Senate votes, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean launched a third day of attacks on the emerging bill, arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that it meets none of his benchmarks for “real reform.”

“[A]s it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America,” Dean wrote, then took to the airwaves to amplify his case.

…or that Fast Eddie Schultz, a man who actually is as stupid and hateful as the left alleges conservative talk radio to be (see Berg’s Seventh Law), is now considered a “top progressive”:

Ed Schultz, an influential liberal radio host [he’s “influence” a few million listeners to switch back to Limbaugh – Ed.], declared on his “Ed Show” on MSNBC: “The base is restless. They are wandering in the wilderness, Mr. President. … They want to know, where are you? … Right now, Mr. President, your base thinks you’re nothing but a sellout — a corporate sellout, out that. … The only people who like this current bill right now, Mr. President, is the insurance industry — they get a bunch of new customers.”

Don’t you love it when the left takes a break from demanding that conservative leaders run to the center, to demand that liberal leaders move to the left?

Remember before the ’08 election, when the left and media (pardon the redundancy) stood, like Captain Renault, and bellowed “I’m shocked, shocked, that you would enforce an ideological purity test” (against the “Override Six”,  six GOP legislators that stabbed Governor Pawlenty in the back and voted to overrride his veto of a huge spending bill, thereby handing control of the state’s finances over to a bunch of irresponsible, wanton DFLers)?

Either does the DFL.  They are in the process of trying to expunge bad-think from the Mother Party (emphasis added):

Minnesota’s leading state-worker union is endorsing [Debbie] White, a Winona City Councilwoman, for the House District 31A seat Pelowski now holds, said a spokesman for AFSCME Council 5. But a top Winona DFLer, Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, said she’s backing Pelowski.

The dueling endorsements fuel an emerging intra-party battle among DFLers in District 31A, which covers the cities of Winona and Houston and southern Winona County.

AFSCME officials and Pelowski traded jabs Wednesday, each accusing the other of lying about the union’s endorsement screening process. AFSCME leaders also took aim at Pelowski for opposing a tax increase to balance the state budget in 2009.

DFL to its minions:  “YOU VILL CLOSE RANKS”.

(Via Gary Gross at LFR)

Keep up the good work (emphases added):

Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The findings underscored how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the Obama administration’s first year. In January, despite the recession and financial crisis, voters expressed optimism about the future, the new president enjoyed soaring approval ratings, and congressional leaders promised to swiftly pass his ambitious agenda.

I remember that.

Fortunately, so do a lot of people:

In December’s survey, for the first time, less than half of Americans approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing, marking a steeper first-year fall for this president than his recent predecessors.

I’ve been cautious about the polls – partly because it’s almost three years ’til the next election, but mostly because the bellwether for bad first-year polling is still Reagan in ’81. I was waiting to see if Obama would undercut even that dubious record.

It seems he has.

I’m feeling much better, thanks.

Desperation, thy name is Obama. Earlier this week the President pleaded if we don’t pass health care reform now, no President will ever try it again.

Today, with virtually every federal agency in financial disarray or on a trajectory of financial collapse, the President implies this time it will be different.

President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”

Mr. President, sir, we have no doubt that you will see to that whether we reform health care or not. The truth of the matter is, the federal government, by any measure applied to any non-public entity is insolvent already.

When private entities reach the end of the fiscal road, they don’t have the benefit of raising debt ceilings and taxes. They die a quick death – that is unless the government decides a bail-out is in order – then they die a slow, painful death. Either way, the competition eats their lunch and steals their talent. Of course, the federal government has no competition, no one to keep it accountable (any more).

As for a bankrupt federal government, the tipping point was probably reached some time ago. We will never pay off our national debt and inevitably it’s weight will come crashing down on our economy making 2009 look like the good ol’ days for millions of Americans.

Indeed, Mr. President, I have to agree with you. The federal government will go bankrupt if we don’t pass health care reform legislation.

But if we do, it will come a lot faster.

Some leftybloggers famously dubbed themselves the “reality-based community” – a clumsy, junior-high shot at neo-conservative “faith based” ideal.

Apparently the lefties got the idea at a seance from Egyptian political philosopher and lobbyist Ram-Gar:

“Conservatives and Republicans report fewer experiences than liberals or Democrats communicating with the dead, seeing ghosts and consulting fortunetellers or psychics,” the Pew study says. For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so. Eleven percent of Republicans say they have seen a ghost, while 21 percent of Democrats say so.

And remembering how the nation’s lesser party roasted Nancy Reagan, I thought this next bit was a hoot:

And nine percent of Republicans say they have consulted a fortuneteller, while 22 percent of Democrats have.

It’s explain a lot about Represenative McCollum.

But I think there’s some omission bias at play here:

Fifteen percent of Republicans say they view yoga as a spiritual practice, while 31 percent of Democrats do.

No question about whether a day at the range is a spiritual experience?

…to indulge in schadenfreud is not a good one.  I resist it the best I can.

Of course, some times it’s  harder than others:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18.

But polls change – which is why they keep taking ’em.

Is Barack Obama from another planet?

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway (while Obama was in Norway?)

The mystery began when a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain in the north of the country. It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky.

The light bears some resemblence to Obama’s logo!

Are his people trying to beam him back home?

Is there a way we could assist them?

Extraterrestrial citizenship would certainly play into the Birthers argument.

Bad wins.

50% of voters now say they prefer having [BHO] as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited.

I’m not a huge Bush fan being a far-right fiscal conservative so count me out, but Change is coming. Soon.

Neither have I.

…and I’m married to one, and blog with one.

I’m feeling the love from Norwegians here at home but as my Lefse-loving colleague posted mere minutes ago, Obama is not feeling the love from Norwegians abroad.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

Okay, so you’re nonplussed. Let’s apply a modicum of analysis to the situation.

You gave the Peace Prize to a President via a nomination and selection process that began in late 2008 and was closed to candidate submissions in February 2009. The President at that time hadn’t even exhausted a roll of toilet paper in the Presidential Potty. At least that would have been an accomplishment.

As it were, at that point in time, and arguably at the current one as well, the President had not advanced the cause of peace, or frankly any cause for which he campaigned so vigorously.

Even the President himself said he didn’t deserve it. In this case I don’t think he was employing his signature brand of transparently false humility. I think he really meant it.

It would appear the Nobel committee has so depreciated the value of their vaunted prize that even the winners think it a joke.

The White House has canceled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

You might have considered the consequences of awarding your “prize” to an opportunistic fraud like Al Gore and America’s (heretofore) worst President, Jimmy Carter. Word has it  Kanye West is on the short list for 2010.

The visit will test Obama’s rhetorical skills as he seeks to reconcile acceptance of the Nobel peace prize with sending an extra 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan.

Of course, because troops have never brought peace to anyone anywhere, right? God only knows what form of “peace” Norway would have today without the Russian troop invasion of 1944, liberating Norway from the (then fleeing) Germans. Maybe Hitler would still be hiding out at the foot of the Galdhøpiggen.

White House officials said that Obama, who was planning to work on the final draft of his speech on his flight from Washington to Oslo, would directly address the issue of the irony of being awarded the peace prize while escalating the war.

Just his speed as he just finished one featuring the irony of spending our way out of the federal deficit. Wait’ll he tries to plug his teleprompter’s 120 volt American plug into those goofy European outlets.

Choke.

The Norsks will have the last laugh then.

Remember when Obama was going to make the rest of the world love and respect us?

Either does the rest of the world.  Obama, who saw fit to give King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia a full-tongue butt-smooch and bruised his forehead scraping before Emperor Akihito, blew off King Harald of Norway – a nation that’s always been a friend of the US, is the anscestral home of millions of Americans (myself included) and has walked the same rhetorical tightrope the President himself is attempting; giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the President, while contributing troops to the war effort in Afghanistan since the very beginning.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

Bad move, Mr. President:

According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

“Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king,” said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. “This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy,” she told VG.

It’s going to be an interesting trip:

The visit will test Obama’s rhetorical skills as he seeks to reconcile acceptance of the Nobel peace prize with sending an extra 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan.

White House officials said that Obama, who was planning to work on the final draft of his speech on his flight from Washington to Oslo, would directly address the issue of the irony of being awarded the peace prize while escalating the war.

The Nobel peace committee has been criticised for awarding Obama the prize before he has any major accomplishments in international relations.

I think it’s gonna go a little something like…

“Dear…um…Nobel Committee.  I…um…am not George Dubbya Bush!”

Obama’s approval ratings are the lowest of any president at this point in their first term, since they started keeping records:

President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.

Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama’s immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush’s support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s best not to get too excited; Ronald Reagan’s numbers were only two points better at this point in 1982, and Bill Clinton was only five points better – and we know how both of those turned out. 

Yes, we do.  Reagan had a solid plan for solidifying our tanking economy and fixing the foreign-policy nightmare of the seventies.  And Clinton was well on the road to getting chastened for his overreach on healthcare, after which he triangulated so far to the right that he actually ran a more fiscally-responsible adminsitration (with the aid of GOP majorities in both houses) than his successor.

Obama?  So far, we haven’t gotten to that point yet:

President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession” until more Americans are back at work.Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient.

Great news if you’re a highway worker!  Or a window installer!  Not so much elsewhere, of course.

I’ll await details on how Obama next plans to spend his way out of deficit.

 This just in from an alternate universe in which Barack Obama was President of the United States on June 6, 1944; this is his proclamation announcing the invasion continued surveillance and aggressive patrolling actions in Normandy.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airpeople of the Allied Relief Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Shout-Out At Hitler, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world – even those very, very many parts of the world whom we have aggrieved in the past –  are upon you. The hopes and prayers of security-loving people everywhere march, walk, and roll in their wheelchairs alongside you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-and-sisters-in-arms on
other Fronts, you will bring about the prevention of the German human-caused-disaster machine from conquering any more territory until further communityorganization can take full effect, as well as, the bringing to justice in a court of law of the Nazi tyrants, who were the responsibility of the previous administration anyway, over the oppressed and, it needs to be said, at times oppressive peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a world with adequate social spending.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your opponents are is well trained,
well equipped and man-made-disaster hardened. He will fight savagely.
They are, indeed, haters.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great setbacks in negotiations to preclude further man-made disasters. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity  to wage war on the ground, while erroneous collateral damage is being paid for out of an international trust fund. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in money and political will, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained lawyers and organizers, as well as all of you alternate-resolution specialists. The tide has turned! The free men and women of the world are marching together to send a message to Mister Hitler; stop advancing!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in dealing with this epic man-made disaster. We will accept nothing less than sending a very serious message!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Me upon this great
and noble undertaking.

                          SIGNED: Barack H. Obama
                          President
                          United Communities of America

Chris Matthews:

West Point is “the enemy camp?

Wow.  Paranoid much, Mr. Tingly?

After promising the most open, accessible Administration ever, Obama is strictly cutting his media face time:

The president, whose job-approval ratings have been on a steady slide, hasn’t held a formal news conference in 19 weeks, since July 22. That one ended badly, when Mr. Obama waded into a racial controversy by saying a white police officer “acted stupidly” when he arrested a black Harvard professor.

“It can’t be a total coincidence that the last time he faced the press corps, we ended with beers in the Rose Garden with Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley, when the focus was supposed to be health care,” said Julie Mason, a White House reporter for the Washington Examiner who also covered the Bush administration for the Houston Chronicle.

“It does seem like they are responding to the overexposure argument and trying to exert more control over his appearances,” she said.

I could see that backfiring; there is nobody in the world more petulant than a reporter who has, and then is denied, access to something.

Last quarter’s “numbers” confirm that the stimulus didn’t stimulate, clunkers was one, the unemployed are still growing in ranks and the consumer is still cowering at home. Democrats are looking for someone to take the fall when in fact they are all making exactly the wrong moves economically, and soon time will show, politically.

One big difference between Washington and private markets is that politicians think everything they do is free-standing. Markets, however, combine all the potential costs of Washington’s policies and then decide whether to invest, or not. Consider what private decision-makers [read job-creators; employers-JR] see in their future:

A 2,074-page, trillion-dollar health-care bill to redesign 17% of the U.S. economy. A carbon tax—cap and trade—that remains an Obama priority ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit next month. A falling dollar and gyrating commodity prices, with no idea where those prices will go next.

Democratic liberals are talking about an income tax surcharge to pay for any commitment in Afghanistan. Card check, to expand unionization of the private economy, remains a priority. Domestic discretionary spending in fiscal 2010 is set to rise at 12.1%, with inflation near zero.

Nurturing a fragile economic recovery into a durable expansion requires policies that restore public confidence and reassure investors, risk-takers and employers. The Democratic agenda is doing precisely the opposite, which is how you get subpar growth and fewer new jobs. [emph. mine-JR]

High unemployment will progressively weigh more heavily on a Congress and Administration that has shown how ill-equipped and out of touch they have become they have been all along. They remain without a clue as it regards restoring our economy in a way that is meaningful for their constituents: jobs growth.

At the same time, they have failed to capitalize politically on the crisis (they themselves created), revealing how utterly failed and irrelevant their policies and leadership have become. How effectively they have shown once again that they are the wrong party at the wrong time, or at any time.

A Democrat congressman from Missouri, tired of all that dissent, wants Congress to just shut up and quit its beefing.  Emanuel Deaver is asking his fellow congresscritters to join him in sponsoritng a Concurrent Resolution to bar “complaining” :

From time to time, we all experience anxiety, frustration, stress, and regret.

One certainly imagines that Deaver, looking at the Dems’ polls and the turnout at the Tea Parties, is experiencing all of the above.

But I digress:

And often, we respond to these feelings with a criticism or a complaint. Regrettably, complaining keeps people stuck on current problems, inhibiting them from thinking constructively to find solutions.

Like, and I’m going to go out on a limb here, “hope and change”?

Research has also shown that complaining can be harmful to one’s emotional and physical health; relationships; and can limit professional career success.

From the poster – Breitbart’s “Capitol Observer”:

We are torn on the larger question of whether Congress should even be wasting any time on such silliness as “official” days for this or that. On the one hand, it is surely a waste of taxpayer money and a decidedly unserious response to our challenges. On the other, though, every moment spent on things like this is a moment that isn’t spent re-regulating huge swaths of the economy.

We do know one thing, though: The Age of Pericles this ain’t.

Nope.  It’s the age of Mom.

“Liberalism:  Where everything that isn’t mandatory is banned”
   — Unknown

One of liberalism’s most noxious traits is its tendency – indeed, its almost inevitable need – to support and enforce “liberal” (big and small “L”) policies with authoritarian means. 

This tendency is expressed through means both moderately civil and benign (the European mania for larding every step of the production and distribution process with Value Added Taxes, or VATs, which make enterpreneurship so very horribly difficult and so terribly inpinge the profit motive where they’re applied) to big and ugly (Nancy Pelosi’s plan to build concentration camps for people who don’t buy healthcare, Obama’s fistful of czars and his executive pay boards and the enforcement arm behind the “Stimulus”).

There is history for this, of course; it was during America’s most unfettteredly-“liberal” era, from the thirties through the early seventies, that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and the CIA, carried out abuses against American civilians that would have made Bush-era liberals lose bladder control, if their masters told them to think about it they thought about it all that hard.  Under Roosevelt, Truman, the relatively liberal Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnsion, domestic surveillance was common; the FBI and CIA kept dossiers on American citizens. 

“War on communism?”  Sure. 

But even after the so-called “McCarthy” era – and remember, while the left to this day jumps up and down and invokes “Joe McCarthy” with the same thoughtful consideration of monkeys flinging poo (as if a Senator from Wisconsin controlled all the levers of the federal government), there was plenty of bipartisan, transpartisan and non-partisan support for the so-called “witchhunts” in the post-New-Deal executive branches of the day.

And after the “Red Scare?”  When Jimmy Carter’s version of “hope and change” was stymied by the “lynch and terrorize” counterpolicy of Ayatollah Khomeini, he not only launched a rescue mission that’d make Jack Bauer blanche at the unreality of it all; he also founded the “Joint Special Operations Command” (JSOC), the organization that controls the Army’s “Delta” and the Navy’s SEAL “DevGru”, which reports directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President as opposed to the regular military command, which undertakes all the serious “black bag” dirty work with only the highest level of oversight.  The left and media, naturally, only paid attention to it during the Bush Administration – and seems not to have any actual evidence of actual abuses during that time – but it was a creature of the Carter years.

And it should go without saying that after eight years of lefty whinging about nonexistent or overblown excesses in the Bush administration, it’s the Obama Administration and its allies that are actually seriously discussing censoring  and gutting freedom of speech.  Because Hope and Change must be unanimous!

At any rate, the main point is this:  behind the “carrot” of hopey-changey big-L Liberalism – the programs, the entitlements, the goodies under the government tree every morning – there is a big, ugly, authoritarian stick.  They go together like horse and carriage.

So after putting up with eight years of lefty whinging about the Bush Administration’s alleged, largely nonexistent abuses of the Constitution, and a year of watching the Obama administration undergird its “hope and change” with enemies lists, with official paranoia aimed at American citizens, I’ll make this prediction: 

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is sprung from his public show trial by fair means (unlikely) or foul (also unlikely, but then so is every jailbreak that has ever happened), it’ll be the Obama Administration that authorizes covert hit teams to prowl the globe killing people beyond the pale of any law, oversight or accountability.

On whether he finds it offensive that a terrorist is afforded all the legal rights of an American citizen…

Obama: I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

The Government has a good case! He will be convicted and executed.

Fer sher.

Trust me.

OJ Simpson was not available for comment.

As Allahpundit notes, the Administration is using “Kiddie Human Shields” in its latest PR project – a propaganda video contest.

Which is bad enough.  But here’s the part that caught me.

Doesn’t the beginning look like the beginning of a WPA or NRO newsreel from the thirties?

and…in a surprisingly early concession…

“You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry during an interview in China.

You may not run for a second term?

[insert dramatic orchestral exclamation here]

…because a resounding Jimmuh-like expulsion from office might leave your self esteem a wee bit bruised you mean?

It’s all about you, isn’t it, Sir?

Instead of apologizing for it’s past.

The Chinese, though members of a famously old civilization, seem to possess some of the vigor that once defined the U.S. The Chinese are now an astonishingly optimistic people. Eighty-six percent of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with 37 percent of Americans.

Take a bow, indeed Mr. President.

Last week, in my post “Our McClellan” – in which I compared Obama’s dithering in Afghanistan to that of George P. McClellan,  some of the feedback said “look, the President is thinking things over and not being rash, unlike the previous resident”.

That might be true – although Obama doesn’t have the eighteen months Bush had to spend on his deliberations before invading Iraq – but only if he comes out of it with the right decision, as opposed to more concerned inaction.

But when even the LAtimes gets it, you know the Administration is in trouble:

Obama was right to insist on a full review of whether U.S. interests are better served by expanding the American military footprint in Afghanistan or shrinking it.

But now, two months into his second “comprehensive policy review,” after eight Cabinet-level meetings and several slipped target dates, the president still hasn’t made up his mind.

At some point, “deliberation”, especially in the face of an ugly-and-deteriorating situation like Afghanistan, becomes “paralysis”.

In George W. Bush, we had a president who shot first and asked questions later. In Barack Obama, we have a president who asks the right questions but hesitates to pull the trigger.

And there the LATimes is conjecturing based on facts not in evidence.  We have no idea what questions he’s asking.  But we have no idea if he’s “hesitating to pull the trigger”, or if he can’t figure out how to get the pointy things into the gun.

Is he even qualified to make the decision?  Does he have beginner’s flop-sweats?

Three weeks ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of “dithering.” At the time, the charge sounded premature and partisan — but now some of Obama’s own supporters have begun to wonder whether Cheney was right.

Heh.

Last week, the president’s indecision became even more apparent after White House aides let it be known that he was asking the military for more “exit strategies” — what one official called “off-ramps” — in case things go badly.

Read one way, it sounds like he’s more interested in covering his butt than anything.

And that all of us who said he wasn’t ready for prime time were right.

SCENE:  One day in 2010.  President Obama speaking to a crowd at the Ground Zero memorial at Hiroshima:

(OBAMA steps to the podium)

OBAMA: Uh, welcome, ladies and gentleman.  Before I get started, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to my good friend and world-wide hero Al Gore for the efforts he’s making to, uh, save the world.  He’s sparing no effort to convince people, including some of the efforts that, uh, your people, uh, Emperor Akihito, perfected during your father’s time. (Akihito shifts nervously on his feet).  I think the world owes him more than just the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’d suggest perhaps they make him pope.  (Robert Gibbs starts clapping; stops after a few awkward seconds).  He’s also reaching across the aisle to call, uh, Sarah Palin “gung ho“. Anyway. Just a big shout out. 

Crowd claps nervously.

OBAMA: OK.  Now, Hiroshima.  I’d like to start by thanking my lord and liege, Emperor Akihito, for inviting me here. 

OBAMA turns, bows deeply.  Stays bowed long enough to tie shoes with tongue.

AKIHITO Nods.

OBAMA (remains bowed)

AKIHITO. (clears throat)

OBAMA (remains bowed)

AKIHITO: Er, mister president?  Carry on.

OBAMA: Thank you, sir.  At any rate, I’d like to express my offical sorrow and apology for the mistakes on the part of my predecessors that led to the inhuman attack on this city, and for the deaths of all the women and chidren who were  for the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who were…

TECHNICIAN: (kicks teleprompter)

OBAMA: …hope and change. Thank you.

(Japanese string band plays “Hail To The Chief”)

It’s The Unemployment, stupid.

The announcement a week ago of 10.2% unemployment is a significant political event for President Barack Obama. It could well usher in a particularly serious crisis for his political standing, influence and ability to advance his agenda.

Double-digit unemployment drove Ronald Reagan’s disapproval ratings in October 1982 up to a record high 54%. It was only when unemployment dropped to 7.3%, roughly two years later, that he was able to win a landslide victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election.

Alas, Barack Obama will not have the same opportunity that Reagan did – he doesn’t have the tools (the ideology)…or the people.

Barack Obama is all-in already with his “Stimulus Plan” in the sense that

1) He wants us to think that it’s working, and it is not.

2) As such, he doesn’t want us to think that his Stimulus Plan made things worse, which it did.

Had Barack Obama given America the message that they should have had, that they deserve, it would have been something like this:

Dear fellow Americans: You’ve lived beyond your means and so has your government, and now we must all pay the painful price as our economy returns to a more normalized state. We in the federal government will do what we can by extending unemployment benefits and such, but beyond that, as much as you will hear otherwise from those on the far left, stimulus programs and other gargantuan government spending programs will only worsen and extend the inevitable pain we must all go through to right the ship.

Instead, he doubled down on the failed fiscal policies of George Bush and simply dug the hole deeper.

Now the hole is filling with water and Barack Obama can’t get out.

Obama’s only option politically is to lobby for more stimulus spending and sell the American people on the efficacy of the last one. The former will fall on deaf ears as the deficit becomes an issue with the American people; the latter as the din of high unemployment washes over Obama’s Teleprompterings^™.

His dithering on Afghanistan and misappropriated focus on health care “reform” will be transferred to his economic impotence, and so on and and so on.

A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama’s ratings are likely to drop even further.

A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president’s efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That’s one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.

The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn’t a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.

The only way the President gets out of this alive is to willfully and publicly abandon the failed liberal approaches to virtually every issue that has presented itself in his short Presidency.

What are the chances?

Mr. President, Mr. Rock.

“Hello, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. President.”

Mr. President, Mr. Hard Place.

“Hello, nice to meet you as well.”

“It’s an honor, Mr. President. Thank you for inviting us into your Presidency. Should we get started?”

2012.

Indeed.

In the early years of the US Civil War, after some initial disasters, Lincoln appointed George McClellan as the commander of the Army of the Potomac (which was to the main front of the Civil War as CENTCOM is to the main front of the War On Man-Made Disaster War On Terror today.

McClellan was a popular general with a long track record of military excellence, first as an engineer, then as a logistician – both of them vital jobs.  He also did something very few other Union Generals managed to do in the early years of the Civil War – won some victories.  His invasion of the Union-leaning parts of Virginia (which created what we call West Virginia today) was one of the very few successes the Union could point to in the early years of the war.

And so Lincoln appointed him commander first of the Army of the Potomac,and then of the entire Union Army.

He then spent his entire time in command “polishing the cannonball” – seeing to training and logistics (which were, to be fair, vitally important to the Union’s eventual success, in a long-term kind of way).  But his actual job – engaging and defeating Robert E. Lee – was another matter altogether. Terrified of the consquences of defeat, he spent months dithering, seemingly avoiding battle, overestimating Lee’s force to the point where it paralyzed him.

It came to a head at the Battle of Antietam, where Union forces stemmed Lee’s first attempt at invading the North.  Indeed, they perched at the verge of defeating him…

…but McClellan dithered again.  The situation called for aggressiveness, for taking the battle to Lee.  McClellan instead hesitated, afraid that Lee’s force was vastly larger than it really was.  And so Lee escaped – turning what could have been a crushing defeat into bloody tactical draw.

Antietam has kept armchair generals busy for over a century, now.   But the lesson was fairly clear; there is a time to think, and a time to act.  Exactly what that time is isn’t always clear to theman on the ground, but it exists.

President Obama’s decision not to decide yet on what to do in Afghanistan is such a situation, and some people know it:

The president’s long decision-making process has led to accusations of “dithering” by his Republican opponents. The White House says the decision is too important to hurry, but the wait is causing growing exasperation in London and other European capitals.

One British source said that the absence of a clear strategy from the US, the largest troop contributor in Afghanistan, is hampering the British Government’s attempts to maintain public support for an increasingly unpopular conflict.

“The truth is that until we have some clarity from Obama, it’s going to be hard for us to explain to people what we’re doing there,” the source said.

Britain is urging Hamid Karzai to send more Afghan forces to Helmand province to support British troops there.

Mr Karzai was returned for second term this week after an election widely agreed to have been flawed and corrupt.

“We need the Americans to have a clear message for Karzai about what he has to do, but that’s just not there at the moment,” said the British source.

The private frustrations of British ministers and commanders were echoed by General Lord Guthrie, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, who said the American deliberations had brought the Afghan mission to a pivotal moment.

“It’s a tipping point because of President Obama’s delayed decision on whether to send more troops,” Lord Guthrie said.

McClellan was terrified of defeat; Obama is terrified of the political ramifications of defeat (on his watch) or pursuing victory (among his base).

I’m no general.  I’ve never even served in the military.  But you don’t have to be George Patton to read George Patton; when your troops are in harm’s way, you either get them out of harm’s way, or you commit to win the war. You either do what it takes to make the sacrifice in blood and treasure worthwhile, or you get out of it.

Bush did the former in Iraq – while the Administration botched the Iraq War from 2004 through 2006, he risked the political capital it took to win the war afterwards (allowing that defining “victory” in a counterinsurgency is a bit of a moving target – something that the American left has always had trouble with).

Obama’s definition of “win” seems to be a different thing altogether.

The left is going to try to spin this…:

It’s easy for me to imagine the right calling Obama a coward over this, or an America-hater, or any one of the sundry attacks reserved for our President. But to me, this is Obama doing exactly what we hired him for — weighing all of the options with a critical eye, and demanding that his advisors give him some outside-the-box solutions.

…as a sign of “intelligence”, as if second-guessing McChrystal for purely political reasons is a sign of military genius, or – as Jeff Rosenberg did above – paint Obama as a victim.

But the real decision is fairly binary; win, or leave.