Joe from the Como Park area writes:

Those videos of kids signing songs of praise and worship to Our Dear Leader have left a bunch of conservatives with their undies in a bundle.  Chill out, people.  Surely you remember the morning praises when you were a school child?

Right after the Pledge of Allegiance, we always sang “He Has A Secret Plan To Win The War” in honor of our President.  I especially loved the part where we shouted his name three times at the end:

Richard Milhous Nixon!
Richard Milhous Nixon!
Richard Milhous Nixon!  For the Future!  He’s the ONE!  YEAAAAAHHY!

Ah, good times.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Because I’d probably be pretty dangerous in the White House…to our most conspicuous enemies.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s continued overt threats to wipe Israel (or any other country for that matter) off the planet coupled with recent intelligence revealing a new nuclear facility would be met with a different tact than our Hippy-Wimp-in-Chief has chosen.

President Barack Obama is offering Iran “a serious, meaningful dialogue” over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

“Iran’s leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is like a young unmedicated schoolchild.

Continued rhetoric without consequences, without punishment, has emboldened him. Just like a young child, repeatedly told “No” but without limits and punishment will turn into a spoiled maladjusted kid, Iran has given the rest of the world the bird.

The fact that the same party that let Osama Bin Laden slip through their fingers occupies Congress and the White House no doubt further stokes the fires of insanity; an opportunity to bully the other school kids while the Principal is on sabbatical.

Jimmy II recently informed Ahmadinejad he’s “breaking the rules” and later this week ratcheted up his teleprompter which in turn threatened Iran’s President with the dark storm clouds of “serious dialogue.”

Chilling.

Does that mean Michelle’s husband will have his publicist produce words with more syllables? That he’ll enlist multiple teleprompters? Employ a laser pointer or a PowerPoint presentation?

Iran’s current leadership has been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of our young men and women in Iraq, extending already excruciatingly long tours of duty for our brave young soldiers. Ahmadinejad represents a faction that resents Western freedoms and prosperity and will stop at nothing to destroy us to level the playing field and will not be bargained with or swayed by chit chat.

They have threatened peaceful nations and have shown time and again that they are not to be trusted and at the same time hold their ostensibly peaceful citizens hostage while exposing them to future military retaliation. Every week that goes by they grow in their ability to wreak havoc across much of Europe – and that’s based on what we know.

If I were President, that nuclear facility would be gone today. By lunch. On a Saturday. I’d make a call on the Batline and warn the weekend Janitor. The smoke would be clear by Monday morning.

It’s called a cruise missile, Mr. President, and his ass, up put, should be one.

So it’s a good thing, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that I’m not President, and am armed only with a laptop whose battery has 19% charge left.

Did someone say the President is just a tad overexposed?

He’s turning the presidency into an infomercial,” warned former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer. “It’s not just damaging to the White House. It will also ultimately hurt President Obama’s image as a fresh, non-Washington leader.”

The media blitz has won Obama unprecedented wall-to-wall coverage in the mainstream media.

The factoid?  Obama has had three times the TV appearances of Bush and Clinton combined.

Fawning?  They got it!

In the New York Times alone, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, 405 stories on the Obama administration have appeared on the front page through mid-August of this year totaling 119,678 column inches. That’s 9,973 column feet of Obama coverage on the Times front page alone.

Endless This Campaign!

“…they are workin’ the umps all the time, I think it works with the [other media outlets], it doesn’t work with me.”

Edward Lucas Obama has big plans…:

But none of them are working.

Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and carry on as before. The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.

He left out “micromanager”!

Even good moves are ruined by bad presentation. Changing Mr Bush’s costly and untried missile-defence scheme for something workable was sensible. But offensively casual treatment of east European allies such as Poland made it easy for his critics to portray it as naïve appeasement of the regime in Moscow.

Many lefties don’t see the real problem; it’s not the missile system itself.  Lefties treat missile defense the same way they treat economic recoveries (when Republicans are in control, anyway); just as every recovery is a “jobless” one until employment skyrockets to unignorably record levels, missile defense will be a “boondoggle” until it becomes airtight (which it’s not yet – but then, no engineering achievement ever succeeds until it does).

No – even thoughtful Obama partisans seem to be unable to get it, but it’s the betrayal.  Just as Chamberlain and Daladier casually decided the fate of Czechoslovakia in a summit with Hitler without bothering to invite the Czechs, and as the UK and France abrogated their treaty obligation to rescue Poland without telling the Poles about it, Obama went behind Donald Tusk’s back, directly to Putin.

Mr Obama’s public image rests increasingly heavily on his extraordinary speechifying abilities. His call in Cairo for a new start in relations with the Muslim world was pitch-perfect. So was his speech in Ghana, decrying Africa’s culture of bad government. His appeal to both houses of Congress to support health care was masterly – though the oratory was far more impressive than the mish-mash plan behind it…

But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty – calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values – but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did “Change you can believe in” – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?

Silly Mr. Lucas.  It means “the people can believe in the Change and the Hope”.  Or something like that.

The President’s domestic critics who accuse him of being the sinister wielder of a socialist master-plan are wide of the mark. The man who has run nothing more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out of his depth in the world’s top job. His credibility is seeping away, and it will require concrete achievements rather than more soaring oratory to recover it.

And Obama’s problem is that his Administration is basically a factory that builds rhetoric.  Like any factory, changing the product – from rhetoric to achievement – is a costly re-tooling operation.

Earlier this week, on the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, President Obama announced that the United States is reneging on a promise to build a missile defense shield against future, likely Iranian nuclear missiles. This program was started under Bush, enacted in Poland and the Czech Republican at the cost of immense political capital to the Polish and Czech governments.

The date, of course, was Vladimir Putin’s way of telling the recalcitrant, west-leaning, NATO-joining Poles that he’s watching them.

But the reverse on the missile program?  That was all Obama.   The President seems to think, as Jimmy Carter did, that if he just gives a few more concessions to Putin, to the Mullahs, to the world’s thugs and gangsters, that eventually even they’ll start believing in all the Hope and Change.

Of course, as we saw earlier this summer, earnest promises of Hope and Change didn’t stop the mullahs from gunning down protesters in the streets of Teheran.
What a contrast with thirty years ago, as Jeffrey Lord noted earlier this summer in American Spectator:

One need look no further than President Obama’s cautiously timid response to the demands of freedom from Iranians. Contrast this with Reagan’s response to similar demands from Poles in the 1980s and the miserable inadequacy of the Obama foreign policy is thrust into a stark and shameful relief.

Finding historical parallels is a slippery slope that leads to madness.  But sometimes they’re illustrative:

When Reagan took office in January of 1981, Poland had been a Soviet satellite for almost four decades. The American foreign policy establishment had long since settled into an acceptance of moral equivalency between the United States and the Communists. The policy was acted out in a thousand different ways ranging from so-called “détente” (a relaxing of tensions) to a vast, arcane arms control process which over time had substituted the process itself instead of the unconditional victory of freedom as America’s chief foreign policy goal.

Sound familiar?

As opposed to the example from the last time we had a thug-ocracy beating freedom-loving demonstrators in the streets, I mean?…:

Reagan had campaigned on a completely different idea, a very old principle when dealing with an adversary. He phrased it this way to his first national security advisor, Richard Allen: “We win, they lose.” It was this goal that Reagan sought, and thus caused him to speak bluntly about America’s adversary in the Cold War. An “Evil Empire” is how he early-on famously described the Soviet Union, completely horrifying the Obama-like striped-pants set in the State Department and Establishment foreign policy circles…

Joe Biden said during the campaign that Obama would face a foreign policy “test”.  Well, Ronald Reagan certainly did:

One of the very first items that arose on Reagan’s watch was the rising demand for freedom from the Polish people. On January 21, his first full day in the Oval Office, word reached the White House that a young shipyard worker and union leader named Lech Walesa had informed the Communist government of Poland he had called a series of strikes in four Polish cities, beginning the next day. Within 24 hours hundreds of thousands of Poles in ten cities — not four — were publicly defying the Polish Communist dictator, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.

A fight for freedom was on — and Ronald Reagan had zero intention of standing on the sidelines…Liberals all over Washington paled. This, they insisted, was no way to conduct diplomacy. One just does not say these things in public. But Reagan had only just begun.

And we all know how that ended – in this case, with a free Poland; a nation that reveres the Reagan legacy; a place that is probably the best place in Europe to be an American; a place that has repaid Reagan’s efforts many-fold, by becoming not just a leading voice for freedom, but a leading supplier of muscle to defend it; Polish troops were among the largest allied contingents in Iraq.

Iran today and Poland in 1980 aren’t perfect analogues – but the similarities are strong enough to help us gauge the character of our nation’s leadership.

Which is bad news for Obama:

As Walesa and his fellow Poles demanded the most basic of human liberties, Moscow responded by sending troops on maneuvers along the Polish border, then installing a military government with instructions to stop Walesa in his tracks.

Distinctly unlike Obama’s reaction to the demonstrators filling the streets of Iran, Reagan looked at similar crowds in Poland and said the sight was “thrilling.” Said Reagan: “I wanted to be sure we did nothing to impede this process and everything we could to spur it along.”

And so he did. In a stiff note to Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev, Reagan said that if the Russians kept up their thuggish response to Poland they “could forget any new nuclear arms agreement.” Gone too would be better trade relations, and in their place would be the “harshest possible economic sanctions” if they even thought of invading Poland as they had done with Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Hungary in 1956.

Of couse, Reagan did much more; he formed an unlikely alliance (according to Dinesh D’Souza) with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and AFL-CIO president Layne Kirkland to send financial as well as moral aid to Solidarity.

Hope and change didn’t come for free in 1980, either; as tensions ratcheted up, Reagan took the occasion of the normally-pacific Christmas speech to stump for the Poles…:

… “We can’t let this revolution against Communism fail without offering a hand,” he wrote that day in his diary. “We may never have an opportunity like this in our lifetime.”

Christmas or not, Reagan proceeded to write Brezhnev about the “recent events in Poland.” Warned the President: “Attempts to suppress the Polish people-either by the Polish army or police acting under Soviet pressure, or through even more direct use of the Soviet military force — certainly will not bring about long term stability in Poland and could unleash a process neither you nor we could fully control.” Reagan said the Soviets were encouraging “political terror, mass arrests and bloodshed” and they must either halt this behavior or “we will travel a different path.”

On Christmas morning, Reagan had a heated, angry reply from Brezhnev. Furious, he accused the President of “defaming our social and state system, our internal order.” It was a charge, Reagan said, “to which I pleaded guilty.”

Words were followed by actions – sanctions against Poland and the USSR – and then by years of committed agitation to bring down, not Poland, but the USSR itself.  These efforts paid off almost twenty years ago, as first the Poles, and then the rest Eastern Europe, and finally the Russians themselves cast off the Communists.  History’s bloodthirstiest regime fell without a shot in less than ten years, because of a show of backbone and resolve.
And some people know it:

Lech Walesa went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and later become the freely elected President of a democratic Poland. In 2007, Walesa’s successor as President of Poland traveled to the Reagan Library to present Nancy Reagan, who accepted on behalf of her late husband, The Order of the White Eagle, the oldest and highest honor within the gift of the Polish people. Today one can visit Ronald Reagan Square in Krakow, a Reagan statue is planned for Warsaw and Reagan streets and parks dot the country. He is considered, in the words of the Polish president, the “architect of democracy.”

Compare and contrast:

This is a lesson that one realizes the Obama White House simply doesn’t have the courage to embrace. As over a million Iranians fill[ed] the streets of Tehran, the message from this President of the United States is that he is afraid to be seen as “meddling” — precisely the charge Reagan faced down from Brezhnev. Instead Obama backs away from standing up for freedom, saying (as if Iran were a free country): “It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.” He does say he is “deeply troubled.”

As those Iranians who seek freedom are literally shot dead in the streets, Obama observes cautiously that “the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected.” Instead of dealing with the mullahs of Iran in the fashion Reagan dealt with Brezhnev and the Polish Communist puppets, Obama refers deferentially to Ayatollah ali Khamenei, as the “Supreme Leader.”

And so inside a generation, American leadership has gone from embracing and pressing for freedom, to equivocating and waffling – and, worse, betraying it, allowing Vladimir Putin not only to use the symbol of Poland’s subjugation before the Soviets to deliver his message, but carrying Putin’s water for him.  Obama’s selling-out of Poland in the face of Putin’s pressure was the sort of thing that might make pragmatic sense to those diplomats more allied to “process” than to the goal of liberty…

…and it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t have gotten on Ronald Reagan’s short list.

Um, No. He’ll fit right in.

Obama’s first dance at the U.N.

Gosh, my Democrat friends.  I apologize.

You were right.  Joe Wilson was wrong when he called the President a “liar” during his health-care pep rally two weeks ago.

Obama wasn’t lying.  He was pelting us with weasel words:

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, “If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

In other words; he won’t be giving healthcare to “illegals”, because anyone who can get across the Rio Grande or the St. Lawrence will be legal.

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

“It is ironic that the president told the American people that illegal immigrants should not be covered by the health care bill, but now just days later he’s talking about letting them in the back door,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

So on behalf of all Republicans, I apologize.

The President isn’t a “liar”.  He’s a word-game-playing weasel.

• Do you need tax-avoidance assistance?
• Do you have cash to “process” back into the system?
• Did you “forget” to vote the last few cycles and would like to “catch up” and vote twice or more in the next election?
• Are the monthly payments on your mortgage, flat screen television, leather sofa, and 24″ chrome wheels too much to handle right now?
• Is your community disorganized?
• Do you have immigrant employees that need “Social Security” numbers or “Citizenship”?
• Do you run an “entertainment or recreational enterprise” and need help determining what legitimate NAICS code to assign to it?
  
• Would you like a ride on Marine One?⁺

Call Huggy Barry, PIC^® at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

866-67-ACORN or www.acorn.org

“Huggy Barry, PIC^® – He’ll get The Man off your back.”

⁺Minium donation to ongoing Obama camapaign required

PIC^® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Pimps-In-Chief

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg, perplexed peasant

Re: Huh?

Dear President Obama:

About that whole “cancelling missile defense” and “selling out our political allies in Eastern Europe” thing?

Well played, sir.  Seriously.

“This regime (Israel) will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it … This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end,” [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.

No, no sarcasm here.

That is all.

Obama administration bails on missile defense for Poland and the Czechs:

A U.S. delegation held high-level meetings Thursday in both Poland and the Czech Republic to discuss the missile defense system. While the outcome of the meetings wasn’t clear, officials in both countries confirmed the system would be scrapped.

Czech Prime minister Jan Fischer said in a statement that U.S. President Barack Obama told him in a Wednesday phone call that the United States was shelving its plans. Fischer did not say what reason Obama gave him for reconsidering.

A spokeswoman at the Polish Ministry of Defense also said the program had been suspended.

“This is catastrophic for Poland,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named in line with ministry policy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. James E. Cartwright, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to hold a news conference Thursday morning. The Defense Department has not announced what will be discussed, but Cartwright is the point man for the missile defense shield program. See how the system would work »

Poland and the Czech Republic had based much of their future security policy on getting the missile defenses from the United States. The countries share deep concerns of a future military threat from the east — namely, Russia — and may now look for other defense assurances from their NATO allies.

“At the NATO summit in April, we adopted a resolution focusing on building a defense system against real, existing threats, i.e. short-range and medium-range missiles,” Fischer said. “We expect that the United States will continue cooperating with the Czech Republic on concluding the relevant agreements on our mutual (research and development) and military collaboration, including the financing of specific projects.”

What this means is that hostile nations like the Russians have more clout with the Administration than the small,  Eastern European states – Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, the Czech Republic – that have sacrificed so much to join the Western World.

Putin is pulling Obama’s foreign-policy strings:

This is bad news for all who care about the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance and the defence of Europe as well as the United States. It represents the appalling appeasement of Russian aggression and a willingness to sacrifice American allies on the altar of political expediency. A deal with the Russians to cancel missile defence installations sends a clear message that even Washington can be intimidated by the Russian bear.

What signal does this send to Ukraine, Georgia and a host of other former Soviet satellites who look to America and NATO for protection from their powerful neighbour? The impending cancellation of Third Site is a shameful abandonment of America’s friends in eastern and central Europe, and a slap in the face for those who actually believed a key agreement with Washington was worth the paper it was written on.

If by “improve our image abroad” Obama meant “yell “off what” when Vladimir Putin says “jump”” during the campaign…well, mission accomplished.

It’s Jimmy Carter all over again.

“The good news: it appears to be well run.”

At last, we can all see exactly what a “neighborhood organizer” does before becoming a “public servant.”

Interestingly, if you rearrange* the letters in “ACORN” you get….OBAMA!

*and swap a couple out for others and use the “A” twice

The latest chapter of the left’s carefully reasoned and mature dialogue on public policy comes from the UK Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland:

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But think again.

Got it. If President Obama doesn’t get “his way” on health care we’re all gonna die!!! This is exactly the kind of cool, dispassionate reason we’ve come to depend on from the left, and why we take their warnings about overheated rhetoric coming from the right so seriously.

Anyway, I sure hope the president gets around to deciding what “his way” on health care is supposed to be, and letting the Democratic leadership in Congress know. Is he going to get working on that right after this next round of speeches or something? Now that we know the planet is doomed without his stamp of approval on some kind of actual health reform thingy, can he maybe shift his schedule around to get cracking on this?

Because I, for one, can’t wait to see the kind of super-human focus and bipartisan coalition he brings to bear on < superhero-theme-music > saving the planet < /superhero-theme-music > after his dazzling performance on health care… insurance… whatever… reform.

…and is not often found paired in a sentence with “Barack Obama.”

But don’t call Obammy a “liar”, “hypocrite”, “cowardly”, or “intellectually dishonest” as the First Amendment has no place in the House.

The Economist, not bound by such childish attempts at squelching free speech, has no problem calling Jimmy II a liar. They just use bigger, prettier words.

…on his speech on America’s financial collapse:

…much of what Mr Obama said was disingenuous.

Which is to say…

“You lie!”

In all fairness however, one must attempt to discern if Obama (and his accomplice TOTUS) are:

1. employing deliberate disingenuousness or if
2. President Bush is correct in saying Obama is without a clue, i.e. Obama’s just stoopid with numbers and math and money.

I might suggest 3. (1+2=3)

NarcIssIst-In-Chief, Barack Obama

“I‘m not the fIrst presIdent to take up thIs cause…but I‘m determIned to be the last.”

It’s all about the “O” – er the I – that is.

Behold a man who spends a quarter mIllIon taxpayer dollars to take hIs wIfe on a date In Chicago yet can’t get on a plane to New York to observe a moment of sIlence (a dIffIcult feat indeed for SIr Talkalot) for the over three thousand vIctIms of the 9/11 attacks.

Three days later he’s on a plane to New York to “celebrate” the fIrst annIversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers and to take credIt for the economIc non-recovery engIneered by he and hIs tax-evading, crack economIc team.

In every one of the Emperor Hussein’s speeches, not only does the song remain the same, so do the words. I want you to do this. I am going to force you to do that. I will not allow you to do whatever. Not since Thomas Friedman got his column at the New York Times has anyone so abused the first-person singular. Indeed, Barry’s patented speeches are an orgy of solipsistic onanism, his animus apparent, his feelings deeply sensitive. Even though he’d like to discuss these crucial reforms civilly, the time for talking is over. Cross him and he will call you out. And whatever you do, don’t get him all wee-wee’d up.

It’s all about hIm, our Super-Ream Leader™.

When former President Bush gave his state of the union a few years ago, a clutch of Democrat legislators, hidden by their numbers, booed.  They profaned their office and attacked the dignity of the President’s address – and not a one of them had the cojones to identify themselves, much less either apologize or elaborate.  It was sophomoric at best, cowardly and solopsistic at worst.

Rep. Joe Wilson broke protocol, and rudely so, by standing up and called the President a liar during his Health Care pep rally campaign speech address earlier this week.  Unlike his Democrat forebears, he apologized later.

But let the record show, as an emailer pointed out this morning, that Wilson was right:

President says his proposed health insurance law will not give taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage to illegal aliens.  Proposed law says specifically that illegal aliens are not covered.

BUT . . . proposed law also says the government is forbidden to ASK if the person is an illegal alien, or to demand proof of citizenship/legal residence.

In my mind, that’s like Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.  Official military policy is that gays are not allowed to serve in the military.  But the military is forbidden to ask if you’re gay.  So the end result is that gays DO serve in the military as long as nobody talks about it. 

I wish the President would explain why that won’t be the same result with the insurance plan.  Illegal aliens will show up to apply for taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage, the government won’t be allowed to ask if they’re illegal, so the illegal aliens will get coverage as long as nobody talks about it, right?  If not right, why not?

The President who says the law will not give insurance to illegal aliens but the Congressman who says the President is lying about what the law will do.  I’m on the Congressman’s side in this one.

There’s a time and a place to attack the President.  I’m not entirely sure that a glorified campaign stump speech isn’t one of them – but nonetheless, at the very least we are to respect the office if not that man, his (misguided) policies and his (misleading) rhetoric.

Might have been rude to interrupt the speech.  But he was right.  I’d rather my Congressman risked being rude to be right.  Good for him.  Wish we had a few like him from Minnesota.

Well, we do; Michele Bachmann isn’t one to hold back when she’s on a tear – to her occasional chagrin. 

Doesn’t seem like such a bad trait, sometimes, these days.

In the wake (or afterglow, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better example could there be than noted pant-crease fetishist David Brooks…

On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency. The exposition of his health care views was clear and lively. The invocation of Teddy Kennedy was moving and effective. The rumination at the end about the American character and the role of government was the clearest summary of Obama’s political philosophy that he has yet given us.

It’s not often you can summarize an ostensibly conservative columnist’s opening paragraph about a Democratic president’s call to socialize medicine as, “Squeeeee!!!” But this is hardly the first time Brooks has been enraptured by Obama. The telling part begins to show next, but Brooks doesn’t seem to register the significance even as he makes note of it.

(more…)

…could turn around and yell at my sister and brother to quit bickering and shaddap.

President Obama, on the other hand…

Shaking off a summer of setbacks, President Barack Obama summoned Congress to enact sweeping health care legislation Wednesday night, declaring the “time for bickering is over”

…no.  By your leave, your highness, our represenatives will continue to represent the majority of this nation that has serious questions – you might call it “bickering”, but then you’re not my Dad – about your health insurance “plan”.

That is all.

I watched bits and pieces of the latest Great Obama Oration (henceforth, “GOO”) last night, mostly because the alternative television programming between seven and eight on Wednesday evening turns out to be about as entertaining as the extended director’s cut of Gigli. Also because “So You Think You Can Dance” had to cut to an occasional commercial break.

I was struck by the fact that someone I am assured is one of the most electrifying speakers of our time sounds so monotonous, repetitive, and stuck on his old campaign trail script. As God is my witness, at one point he actually said, “I won’t stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.” Didn’t he use that same line in the GOO he delivered at the Ankeny, Iowa Lion’s Club back on the campaign trail in 2007? And the GOO at the Rutland, New Hampshire “Sun Up Cafe”? And the GOO at the Newberry, South Carolina VFW? Etc. etc. etc. I suppose such a fervent adherence to recycling (in this case of speech lines) probably wins extra support from the environmental lobby, but it didn’t seem quite suited to the moment.

I was also struck by how the post GOO analysis remained nearly perfectly split along partisan lines. It’s not so surprising that the Democratic backers confessed themselves smitten over the stunning power and unexpected (?!!) effectiveness of the GOO. That’s the same script they follow every time Obama fails to impale himself on his teleprompter while simultaneously being caught on tape cursing out a troop of cub scouts. No, that much I knew would be coming.

The striking thing was how the media-proclaimed post-partisan president seemingly did little more than rally his own partisans in, once again, campaign-like fashion. Why, I’ll bet if they had to vote for president tomorrow they’d vote for him again!! Take that, naysayers!

The problem is I’m not sure that particular outcome added anything new or significant to the health care insurance mumble… mumble… reform situation. What exactly was this speech supposed to do? Lay out a clear compromise to break the Congressional stalemate? He didn’t offer one. Win over independents or votes across the aisle? Didn’t seem much attempted. Come down one way or the other on a “public option”? He once again played both sides of the fence.

So anyway, near as I can tell, yet another GOO has passed and once again nothing has really changed.

With Mitch already holding the title of the Twin Cities blogosphere’s best feminist, I feel it incumbent upon me to fill the role of the post-modern, liberal, lesbian, iconoclast on this blog. Or at least to emulate the television viewing habits of Camille Paglia…

I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it.

I have a feeling our respective definitions of “old movies” differ quite a bit (for example mine would include the earlier Harry Potter movies which seem to broadcast every other weekend on the ABC Family channel and can be viewed with clear conscience without shooing the kiddies from the room). But otherwise that television watching description is uncannily like mine.

Anyway, Camille has a few other thoughts this week, including a rather extended smackdown of her fellow Democrats over their fumbling of the health care issue. It’s worth checking out.

Labor Day weekend is supposed to be a sleepy time removed from the normal grind of days. It’s to be a time of camaraderie with family and friends and escape from the workaday routine. It denotes the symbolic end of another summer idyll and the return of less frivolous pursuits, foreshadowing the imminent return of less frivolous weather as well. This is what Labor Day weekend is supposed to be.

Instead this Labor Day Weekend was all too full of politics as usual. It started, as most things do in the era of Hopenchange, in the White House.

The sordid details follow the jump…

(more…)

…the Democrats didn’t raise a fuss like the GOP is today over Obama’s speech!”

Well, no, not really.

Politico counts the Administration’s casualty list.

The latest one grabbed me; it’s the twerp with absolutely zero experience in the auto industry who became Obama’s car czar:

When the Treasury Department announced on July 13 that Steve Rattner, the private equity executive who headed the president’s Auto Task Force, would return to the private sector, Secretary Tim Geithner said Rattner’s work in Washington was essentially done.

 

“With GM’s restructuring complete, Steven Rattner, whose leadership and vision were invaluable to the Auto Task Force’s efforts, has decided to transition back to private life and his family in New York City,” Geithner said in a statement. “We are extremely grateful to Steve for his efforts in helping to strengthen GM and Chrysler, recapitalize GMAC, and support the American auto industry. I hope that he takes another opportunity to bring his unique skills to government service in the future.”

But that sounds like it’s becoming the Obama Administration equivalent of “Good Job, Brownie”:

 

But Rattner’s departure wasn’t the end of the Auto Task Force. Indeed, even as Geithner announced Rattner’s job as done, he announced that Ron Bloom, a former banker and union official serving as an adviser to Treasury, would take over Rattner’s responsibilities.

 

For months, Rattner’s tenure had been plagued by stories of a New York-based investigation into Rattner’s firm, Quadrangle Group, and allegations that it had illegally obtained a management role in New York’s public pension fund.

Blame all the noise at the town hall meetings…

That’s what we are telling our kids when President Barack Obama addresses the nation’s schoolchildren in his upcoming address. Be there, listen, take notes and we will talk about it when you get home.

At the same time, I respect parents that are pulling their kids that day a hell of a lot more than those that are neutral on the issue, or aren’t even aware of it.

This is a teaching, parenting moment.

Some parents have cried “Leave the parenting to us, not the President!”

But guess what, a lot of you are really crappy parents.

Some are absentee. Others are uninformed, lazy or disinterested. Many are physically present but not active; wealthy but won’t invest time. A lot of our nation’s ills can be traced back to a lack of focus, leadership and discipline on the part of parents, fathers especially, coupled with the increasingly fragmented family unit.

If there is one thing to recognize Barack Obama for, he seems to be a pretty good Dad and I think its fair to say it’s a harder job than being President, and certainly while being President.

If the President is true to his mission for this address, it could be of value. The nation’s first African-American President, addressing millions of children, many of whom are without a father, telling them to stay in school, dream big, and make the American dream your dream is good for all of us.

At the same time I understand the disdain many parents have for the President’s address. This is in part due to its timing, amidst a controversial and highly unpopular push for a government takeover of our health care system, soaring deficits, and the predicted bloating of the federal government.

But I also think it can be tied to a growing awareness that the President really hasn’t been the agent of systemic change that he told us he would be; that the actions he and Congress have taken to stimulate the economy have more likely made things worse; and the growing list of broken campaign promises.

A lot of people don’t trust Obama any more and aren’t exactly looking for his advice, especially to their children.

My kids know that we are conservatives, but they also know why. They know we don’t blindly follow or discount a politician of any particular party – my kids also know I’m not a George Bush fan and why. They also know that I am not a Barack Obama fan, but not because he isn’t like us, rather because I don’t agree with his politics. That is not to say that there aren’t things we agree on, and that will purportedly be the agenda for his address.

…and if the President strays into political or ideological territory, my kids will spot it from a hundred yards.

I don’t want my children to blindly follow in my ideological footsteps. I want them to form their own beliefs and philosophies. I want them to own them so that no one can take them away without a fight.

And that is why I want them to watch the President with respect, and with an open but discerning mind.

Saturday in the NARN, I said that Van Jones – Obama’s “Green Jobs” Czar – would step down on the graveyard shift, Saturday or Sunday, when the people are asleep and the media are playing infomercials. 

Jones, who was a 9/11 truther and casual racist with a knack for reaching across the aisle – bailed out last night. 

President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

He never existed, Winston.