Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Obama the First Brat
Posted in: Alan Caruba
Ten minutes into the answer to the first question asked at President Obama’s latest press conference, I had a kind of epiphany. This guy should be called the First Brat.
He has all the attributes of a brat. He wants all the attention he can get. He doesn’t take criticism well. He is full of bravado and false promises.
He keeps reminding everyone that he is the President as if the idea surprises even himself. Or as a reminder that he does, indeed, hold a great deal of power, ceded to him by the American people.
There’s no real sense of humility about him. Nothing has been more astonishing or annoying has been his World Apology Tour. America may not be perfect, but we are better, more just, more generous than most other nations.
Whatever humility Obama expresses is feigned to further endear him. His wife and children are stage props. Anyone seen or heard of them lately? I love the way he says, “This isn’t about me” when it is ALL about him.
He’s a brat. It’s all Obama all the time.
In a lot of ways, Bill Clinton was too. Clinton, however, was no fool. He understood reality as opposed to wild-eyed dreams of a Democrat-induced utopia where everyone is treated “fairly” and there is no “intolerance”, blah, blah, blah. Even someone like myself who loathed him while he was in office has to admit I secretly felt sorry for him because of his choice in wives.
I cannot work up any sympathy for Obama and cannot even take any pleasure in being found right in my judgment of him as I wrote my impressions during the campaign and the first six months of his term. I said he was a moron and I am sticking with it.
Even the public picked up on it as it became evident he couldn’t go to the bathroom without a set of TelePrompters and instructions.
The nation has had young presidents in the past. Kennedy comes to mind. He was charismatic, an emblem of, as he himself expressed it, a new generation, formed in the crucible of World War II and ready to take on the enemies of America and of freedom.
Kennedy had been tested in many ways.
Barack Obama has not been tested. He has been privileged at almost every stage of his road to power. It shows in the way he smarts over every perceived grievance and it showed in that amateurish, off the cuff remark about the “stupidity” of the Cambridge police who arrested his friend.
Obama is acutely conscious of race, ignoring the obvious fact that a majority of white people voted for him. In this regard, he will be the eternal victim, another aspect of being a brat. Worse yet, he speaks disdainfully of the “rich” and of “profit”, the keystone of a free marketplace.
The need for immediate satisfaction of every whim and, in his case, every policy, is another reason he’s a brat. As one political sage put it, “It took Obama six months to pick a dog, but he wants a Healthcare Bill by next week?”
I am not one for predicting because they tend to come back to bite you, but I will predict that Obama’s is already a failed presidency. He’s already a lame duck. As one of the Blue Dog Democrats in Congress put it, “We’re trying to save the party.”
The Republicans have played their slim hand of cards quite well. They can smell the blood in the water and all they need now are some appealing candidates; some older guys with good resumes. Youth, it turns out, is over-rated.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Obama Figured Out
The American Spectator
Excerpt:
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his ...
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth...
These are perilous times...
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.
Read the entire article: We've Figured Him Out
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Obama, the Great Dissembler and His Convenient Untruths
Barack Obama makes Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton look honest
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Obama is the one who 'acted stupidly'
AmericanThinker.com
July 24, 2009
Speaking of behavior, President Obama showed his own lack of class and judgment when he said the Cambridge PD "acted stupidly." To make such a sweeping statement of condemnation after admitting that he didn't "know all the facts," is beneath the dignity of his high office.
For a black man who has achieved the level of Chief Executive in a country where the overwhelmingly majority of voters are white to use that tired old canard about everything being racist, is stunningly contemptible. If this is the type of judgment Obama uses to make decisions, God help us if he's able to pass any more legislation.
Read the entire post:
Obama is the one who 'acted stupidly'
Related articles:
Obama's 'Recalibrated' Insult
Obama: Gates affair the media's fault
Obama throws 'Skip' Gates under the bus
Obama's Empathy Backfires
Is Obama Ignorant of History or Just Ignorant of the Extent of his Ignorance Or Purposely Twisting the Truth?
By Neo-neocon
American Thinker.com
July 25, 2009
Excerpt. Highlight added:
Has a US Commander in Chief ever spoken this way in the middle of a war?
President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but "victory" in the war-torn country isn't necessarily the United States' goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview...
...Obama added a historically ignorant and otherwise troublesome statement when he went on to say:
- I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.
Love that "you know" -- because anyone who does know history knows that's not what actually happened.
Hirohito did give a radio speech to the people of Japan announcing the country's surrender. But he never "came down" from anywhere (is Obama somehow confusing Hirohito with Moses and Sinai?) to sign a surrender to MacArthur. I'm not a huge expert on history myself, but nevertheless I suspected as soon as I read that particular sentence that it was probably incorrect, even before I checked it out:
- The formal surrender occurred on September 2, 1945 when representatives from the Empire of Japan signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri. Shigemitsu signed for the civil government, while Gen. Umezu signed for the military.
Is Obama's specific error about Hirohito important? Not really; it's quite minor. But it's another indication of Obama's view of history: a lot of dramatic images (or, as he said, "notions") and very little detail or understanding of what's going on, or the need to do so. And I suspect Obama is ignorant in the worst way: he's ignorant of the extent of his ignorance. Or perhaps he's not ignorant at all, but purposely twisting the truth. Or maybe each, at different times.
This tendency of Obama's has been in evidence in many of his speeches: his summary of the Cold War, which he got entirely wrong. His Cairo address to the Muslim world on their history and that of the West, in which "almost every one of his references was either misleading or incomplete." On the campaign trail, when he showed astounding historical ignorance (or prevarication; take your choice) in his mischaracterization of the Berlin airlift.
Obama's errors are not random; they fit a certain pattern:
- glorification of other cultures and countries at the expense of the US
- exaggeration of the negatives about the US and downplaying of our strengths
- negative point of view about military endeavors
- exaggeration and/or imagining the role cooperation and negotiation plays, particularly with tyrants and enemies
- assuming the carrot of negotiation and dialogue is enough to change tyrants and enemies without the stick
...Obama's reluctance to pursue victory in Afghanistan is not just about that country and the peculiar challenges of combat there...because of the negative associations it conjures up in his mind: Hirohito coming down to sign a surrender to MacArthur...
So, what might Obama find so terrible about all of that? If I had to guess, knowing what I now know about our President, I'd say that it's related to what he sees as the humiliation ("coming down") of a non-white (in this case, an Asian) at the hands of a white American military man who was nothing if not overbearing (in this case, MacArthur), in order to not only surrender but to unconditionally surrender, and then to have his country occupied by the morally despicable US.
That is what American victory means to Obama. And he's determined to avoid it
Friday, July 24, 2009
Rush Limbaugh: Media Have Become Nothing More Than Stenographers For Rahm Emanuel (Video)
Gateway Pundit
Rush Limbaugh tore into the state-run media during an interview with Greta Van Susteren on FOX News.
The press has met their Waterloo and it's Obama. They have sacrificed whatever integrity, character, professionalism, ethics that they've had. It's all gone. Their total reason, most of them, for existence is propping this guy up. They're not reporting the details of his plans. They're not reporting his policies. They're looking at it as a horse race. Obama win... Obama lose... They're running countdown clocks on some of the networks for the press conference last night. Countdown clock: 8 hours 25 minutes 13 seconds to Obama press conference. These people sitting around with their tingles up their legs all day. They marvel at how Obama is so smooth and elegant. They are not informing anybody about the details of his policies. And yet, 53%, over 50% in most polls now oppose this health care plan. So who's telling the people? Who's telling the people what's in it? Alternative media. Your network, talk radio, the conservative blogger network. The mainstream media has cashed in its chips. They have become nothing more than stenographers for Rahm Emanuel. And it is breathtaking to see; willingly sacrifice every characteristic that makes quality journalism.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Ohbumma!
by Nathaniel Givens
America's Right
There have been plenty of Obama reversals since Inauguration Day. Sometimes I wonder if Candidate Obama and Barack Obama would recognize each other. Then I remember that Obama has always been entirely consistent on one thing: political expediency. So yeah, I guess some things never change.
I Was Wrong About Barack Obama
By Doug PattonMonday,
MichNews.com
July 20, 2009 - 2:30:38 PM ET
I have a confession to make. I was wrong about our president. He has been telling us that he is a uniter, not a divider, and I doubted him. I thought he would divide this country like no one who has ever held the office. Well, I was wrong, and I want to publicly apologize...
So, thank you, Mr. President, for bringing us together. I never believed you could do it, and certainly not this soon. In less than a year and a half, you can unite us in a mid-term repudiation of your policies, and in three years and five months you can unite us all behind whomever your successor will be.
Obama and the CPUSA
Randall Hoven
American Thinker
...The really striking thing about all this, though, is that the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) can openly align itself with the President of the US, right under our noses, and it will have zero effect on public sentiment because the lapdog media studious averts its gaze.
Obama budget predictions face reality nightmare
Watchdog Politics Examiner
A wide gap has appeared between Obama's once up-beat predictions about the economy are hitting reality and going splat. The summer... Full Story
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Coup That Wasn't
Sunday, July 19, 2009
America'sRight. com
Excerpt:
Some of you may remember that after then Honduran President Zelaya was removed from office I wrote a piece about Obama's motivations for joining with Chavez and others in calling for Zelaya to be returned to power...
As many of you proved in your well-researched comments: I was wrong.
Slashdot.org, an extremely popular technology news aggregation site, has often published stories about alleged voter fraud in American elections using computer-based voting machines. They have a story up today about these types of machines in Honduras.
It turns out that Honduran authorities have seized 45 of them. Although there was no election on June 28th because the military kicked Zelaya out of the country and cancelled it, these machines each contain "certified" voting records. And - not surprisingly - every single one indicates that Zelaya won the referendum overwhelmingly.
Turns out that the Honduran military wasn't jumping the gun after all. They were just in time.
Given this most recent news, there can be no excuse for President Obama or any American official to continue to support Zelaya's attempts to retake control of the country. It's not even enough for us to remain silent. America's responsibility in this affair is to either directly support the Honduran people or - at a minimum - call for silence from Chavez, Castro, and others while the Hondurans perform their national duty of protecting the Constitution...
Read the entire post: The Coup That Wasn't
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Bringing the War on Terror Home
by Timothy Birdnow
American Daily Review.com
We have met the enemy and he is us!
Does anybody remember Alcee Hastings? The honorable Mr. Hastings was a Federal judge from Florida who was impeached (The Impeachment of Alcee Hastings ) and removed from office for conspiracy to take bribes. He now sits in the House of Representatives, a Democrat, of course.
Well, Mr. Hastings has been mighty busy of late, working diligently on legislation designed to empower the government at the expense of Americans in general and conservatives in particular...
Full article:
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Enough Is Enough
Enough Is Enough
By John Griffing
American Thinker.com
Reprinted in full. Highlight added:
Tyranny has sprung up from amongst us. President Obama has waged a blitzkrieg on American liberty, and, in only a short time, undercut the Constitution of the United States with a brazen arrogance that should shock Americans into action.
President Obama's unconstitutional salvo exceeds even the most intolerable indulgences of the Bush Administration. President Bush was often brash and improper in his use of certain mechanisms, but President Obama has moved quickly far beyond the realm of comparatively benign Presidential Signing Statements. When our new President can appoint "Czars" to rule entire sections of American life without electoral accountability or even Congressional confirmation, we have entered the unholy realm of Dictatorship.
Presidents have made special "czar" appointments in the past, to aid in addressing key social or policy issues. But President Obama has turned this capability into direct seizures of power, brazen and unchecked. Obama's czars have usurped the roles of elected officials, with power over an ever-increasing scope of society. Pay is decided by a Czar. What can or can't be said on the internet is decided by a Czar. And the power of regulating all aspects of American private life has been transferred from multiple congressionally audited regulatory agencies to the new Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein. The environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy will all fall under the control of this Regulatory Czar, a man who has stated,
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.
There's even a "faith-based" Czar to handle church issues. Separation of church and state appears to be somewhat more flexible as long as Obama is in power.
But for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":
There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.
If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.
Holdren defends his radical proposals with archaic scientific arguments revolving around the idea that too many people equal global poverty and hunger. But do not be fooled by the alleged "science" in support of "compulsory abortion." The issue is not whether the world population is exploding (an argument that has been completely discredited due to the fact that most western populations are shrinking.) The issue is whether or not government can force American women to kill their children.
Even pro-choice advocates should be outraged at the idea of bureaucrats ordering American women to turn their babies over to state butchers. And, despite Holdren's own personal belief that this wholesale slaughter can be justified "under the existing Constitution," the words, "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process" make such a hollow justification meaningless.
All totalitarian regimes in history have one thing in common: population control. By controlling who conceives, government can mitigate the growth of ideas dangerous to their seizures of power. Families that teach American ideals can be gradually subdued until all Americans bow before the collective "we." How strange that liberty should end by the hands of a doctor with a vacuum and a scalpel. If this is not enough to wake the sleeping giant and arouse the fires of freedom, then we will surely perish as a nation.
Power is what Holdren and his pseudo-science is really all about. Holdren has long been a vocal supporter of a "planetary regime" to govern the affairs of the world. In his book, Ecoscience, Holdren wrote the words:
Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable...The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world....[i]
Holdren has elsewhere stated his goal of "de-developing" America. Obama's appointment of this Marxist militant says much about his true agenda.
Obama has done more to hasten America's demise than our enemies could have dreamed of doing. He must wake up every day with the words, "I can't believe I'm getting away with this" on his lips. His "change" is nothing less than the destruction of America as a free country. And there is nowhere to escape. America is the last stop in western civilization. Europe is in a state of economic decay, and has retreated into gated communities as an influx of Muslim colonials overspreads the European continent. France has 750 semi-sovereign Islamic kingdoms within its jurisdiction. If we lose freedom here, there will be nowhere left for the "tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" to lay their heads.
Wake up America. Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back for our racial sensitivity. We have proven that we are not a racist country, several times over. Now is the time to rise up against tyranny, before it consumes what is still left of the America we all know and love. Conservative, Liberal, black, and white must join hands against the despot that holds the freedom of generations in such contempt.
Every last man, woman, and child must take to the streets, or the last best hope of mankind will vanish for all time
[i] Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment, (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977), 943.
20 Comments on "Enough Is Enough"
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Obama the Trickster Snubbed
Obama the Trickster
July 13, 2009
By James Lewis
American Thinker
Excerpt:
Remember when Obama slyly gave Hillary the single digit salute in a campaign speech, and his fans in the audience laughed their heads off?
I've been thinking about that inspiring moment in American politics. I can't imagine any other president doing it, ever. Lincoln wouldn't have done it to Douglas; Jefferson wouldn't have dreamt of doing it to Madison. Even Bill Clinton wouldn't have done it, at least in public. Dick Morris wrote a book describing Bill Clinton clowning it up in the Oval after lying to the public about taxes. But even Clinton got his malignant yucks in private.
Obama is an even bigger trickster; it's part of his show-off narcissism. He's Playing the Dozens with us, except that the voters don't get it. He needs to be seen giving Hillary the big insult. That's the real meaning of that long bony finger to his honorable Democratic primary opponent. It might not be your dream or mine, but some kinds of people go "What a kick!" when they diss people in public.
So here's the question. If Obama the Trickster just loves to stick it to middle class America -- why do you think he nominated Sonia Sotomayor? That's a serious question. This administration is just filled with racial anger. So why would Sotomayor be its first Supreme Court nominee?
The Trickster's at it again...
Read more: Obama the Trickster
From America's Right: VIDEO: Sen. Jeff Sessions' Brilliant Questioning o...(Sotomayor)
At points during this entire confirmation process, I've wondered more than a few times why we should even be questioning this woman. It's not as though she's just going to stand up and say: "You got me. I let matters of race and personal bias get in the way of my interpretations of the law."
She's saying what she has been coached to say. She's saying what she needs to say to get confirmed. As Americans in the Age of Obama, we should be used to this by now -- after all, our president is the master of directly controverting previous statements and saying what he needs to say in order to advance a certain agenda.
Why should we be surprised that his nominee would do the same thing, making statements diametrically opposed to her own prior statements without offering any explanation for the sea change?
Why even bother asking her questions at all? We already know that this woman, this judge, will not tell us the truth. It's not as if we're going to learn anything new.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
If you read anything today, read this
Reprinted. Highlight added:
I'm finally coming to my breaking point with regard to Barack Obama's justice-driven foreign policy. With each passing day, it seems that our own president finds another way to undermine our national security and endanger American lives, whether it be through the closure of Guantanamo Bay, the erosion of morale within the intelligence community, or the outright negotiation with terrorists and release of individuals such as these, undoubtedly accountable for the deaths of American servicemen and servicewomen.
It's time we speak up, America. Circulate this piece by Andrew McCarthy to your friends, to your co-workers, to anybody out there with half a brain that doesn't smell like patchouli, tofu and tree bark. This article is absolutely, positively mind-blowing, and should be required reading for every single living, breathing American man and woman who know the difference between good and evil and comprehend what it means to be free.
My goodness. I don't know how our president sleeps at night.
Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
By Andrew C. McCarthy
July 11, 2009 7:00 AM
The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy.
There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.
First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.
Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.
Third, Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:
Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.
Fourth, President Obama’s release of the Quds terrorists is a natural continuation of his administration’s stunningly irresponsible policy of bartering terrorist prisoners for hostages. As I detailed here on June 24, Obama has already released a leader of the Iran-backed Asaib al-Haq terror network in Iraq, a jihadist who is among those responsible for the 2007 murders of five American troops in Karbala. While the release was ludicrously portrayed as an effort to further “Iraqi reconciliation” (as if that would be a valid reason to spring a terrorist who had killed Americans), it was in actuality a naïve attempt to secure the reciprocal release of five British hostages — and a predictably disastrous one: The terror network released only the corpses of two of the hostages, threatening to kill the remaining three (and who knows whether they still are alive?) unless other terror leaders were released.
Michael Ledeen has reported that the release of the Irbil Five is part of the price Iran has demanded for its release in May of the freelance journalist Roxana Saberi. Again, that’s only part of the price: Iran also has demanded the release of hundreds of its other terror facilitators in our custody. Expect to see Obama accommodate this demand, too, in the weeks ahead.
Finally, when it comes to Iran, it has become increasingly apparent that President Obama wants the mullahs to win. What you need to know is that Barack Obama is a wolf in “pragmatist” clothing: Beneath the easy smile and above-it-all manner — the “neutral” doing his best to weigh competing claims — is a radical leftist wedded to a Manichean vision that depicts American imperialism as the primary evil in the world.
You may not have wanted to addle your brain over his tutelage in Hawaii by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, nor his tracing of Davis’s career steps to Chicago, where he seamlessly eased into the orbit of Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Maoist “educator” Michael Klonsky — all while imbibing 20 years’ worth of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist “black liberation theology.” But this neo-Communist well from which Obama drew holds that the world order is a maze of injustice, racism, and repression. Its unified theory for navigating the maze is: “United States = culprit.” Its default position is that tyrants are preferable as long as they are anti-American, and that while terrorist methods may be regrettable, their root cause is always American provocation — that is, the terrorists have a point.
In Iran, it is no longer enough for a rickety regime, whose anti-American vitriol is its only vital sign, to rig the “democratic” process. This time, blatant electoral fraud was also required to mulct victory for the mullahs’ candidate. The chicanery ignited a popular revolt. But the brutal regime guessed right: The new American president would be supportive. So sympathetic is Obama to the mullahs’ grievances — so hostile to what he, like the regime, sees as America’s arrogant militarism — that he could be depended on to go as far as politics allowed to help the regime ride out the storm.
And so he has. Right now, politics will allow quite a lot: With unemployment creeping toward 10 percent, the auto industry nationalized, the stimulus revealed as history’s biggest redistribution racket (so far), and Democrats bent on heaping ruinous carbon taxes and socialized medicine atop an economy already crushed by tens of trillions in unfunded welfare-state liabilities, Iran is barely on anyone’s radar screen.
So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere “diplomats.” Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening.
Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing.
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Who Wrote Audacity of Hope?
American Thinker
12 July 2009
Excerpt. Highlight added:
...Dreams (From My Father)...according to esteemed British author Jonathan Raban and others, captures Obama's "authentic voice."... Raban called Obama "the best writer to occupy the White House since Lincoln."
Although Audacity (Of Hope) has received respectful reviews, it has not gotten the raves Dreams has. The New York Times describes Audacity "as much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech."
Still, despite the book's "flabby platitudes," the Times assures its readers that "enough of the narrative voice in this volume is recognizably similar to the one in Dreams From My Father."
Without intending to, the Times likely captured the thinking behind the creation of Audacity.
If portions of Audacity sound like outtakes from stump speeches, it is because they are outtakes from stump speeches. This can be proved.What cannot be proved, but what seems likely, is that Obama included just "enough of the narrative voice" from Dreams to maintain continuity between the two books.
The question remains -- who provided that narrative voice?
In the criticism of my last two American Thinker articles, only the Washington Post addressed the central issue, and it did so facetiously: "The book [Dreams] is beautifully written and yet, in Cashill's opinion, Obama is - and always was - a crappy ... writer."
...The three existing samples of Obama's prose before Dreams -- the 1983 article "Breaking the War Mentality," the 1988 article "Why Organize," and his unsigned 1990 Harvard Law Review case note -- are proof enough that Barack Obama is, in fact, a crappy writer.
...Based on any of his pre-Dreams samples, Obama would not have made the first cut. I never would have hired him. No one would have. He is simply a crappy writer.
I have also taught writing at enough levels and under enough different circumstances to know that even the best teacher cannot transform a crappy writer into a great writer...
...In October 2006, Audacity debuted to kind reviews and huge sales. Despite Obama's "unforgiving Senate schedule and periodic bouts of writer's block," he had been able to write a 216-page book without any acknowledged writing help in what was likely an 18-month window. This was the same writer who blew a $125,000 advance because he was unable to produce a book during "several" much less hectic years, the same writer who between his 1995 masterpiece and Audacity had written nothing deeper than a column for a community newsletter.
...Obama's answer to Durham's question. "What inspires you", shows up word-for-word (70 words) in the promotional blurb for Audacity. The explanation was legitimate enough, however, for Time Magazine.
"His best writing time comes late at night when he's all alone, scribbling on yellow legal pads," wrote Jay Newton-Small two months before the November 2008 election. "This is how he wrote both of his two best selling books -- Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope -- staying up after Michelle and his two young daughters had long gone to bed, reveling in the late night quiet."
Little of this rings true. Obama's oldest daughter was born in 1998, three years after Dreams was published...
One of my more diligent correspondents, whom I call Mr. West, has been doing some intriguing analysis of Audacity...Mr. West also compared Audacity to various stump speeches made by Obama during the time Audacity was being written...
...Mr. West has since compared Dreams and Audacity...His conclusion, "Ayers was absolutely not involved in Audacity."
By 2006, Obama appears to have been reading speeches that have been lifted in full from the text of Audacity...
Of course, all that this proves is that whoever wrote Obama's speeches wrote large sections of Audacity, perhaps all of it, and this is only an issue if someone other than Obama wrote his speeches.
As we are seeing, though, falsehoods have a way of compounding themselves. When Rachel Klayman of Crown pulled Dreams from the vaults and put it back in circulation, she unknowingly set in motion a series of fabrications, beginning with the foundational myth that Obama is a literary genius. To sustain that myth, Obama's enablers have to make us believe that he also wrote Audacity by himself as well as most of his speeches, staying up unto 1 A.M. each night to do so.
The emergence of Jon Favreau, whom Time Magazine calls a "wunderkind wordsmith," complicates this scenario. After a February 2009 speech to Congress, the Washington Post ran a photo of Obama holding the speech, on the first page of which was clearly printed, "Draft 2/24/09 12pm...Favreau/Rhodes." It even included Favreau's phone number.
According to Wikipedia, "Favreau was hired as Obama's speechwriter shortly after Obama's election to the United States Senate. Obama and Favreau grew close, and Obama has referred to him as his ‘mind reader.'" Obama thought highly enough of Favreau to make him his chief speechwriter for the presidential campaign. The London Guardian reports that Favreau carries Dreams wherever he goes and can "conjure up his master's voice as if an accomplished impersonator."
Read entire post: Who Wrote Audacity of Hope?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Obama: Elected Moron
By Alan Caruba
Thu, July 9, 2009 at 12:32 AM
American Daily Review
Reprinted in full. Highlight added:
It’s not that long ago that former President George W. Bush was being characterized as a dimwit. In truth, because he was not a smooth talker, he often came across as less than a deep thinker. I am not sure the job requires a deep thinker because those who fit that description often turned out to be a disaster. The job’s best description is “leader.”
It is important to remember that the decade in which Bush served was one of consumer confidence, a healthy economy, marred initially by 9/11 and later by the decision to invade Iraq and depose a vicious despot who had warred with Iran and invaded Kuwait. Many Americans grew tired of the war and the subsequent occupation.
Only at the very end of Bush’s term, September 2008, did the nation suddenly encounter the financial turmoil that the mortgage “bubble” generated. It was long in coming and fearful in its immediate consequences. Congress voted a $700 billion bailout program for banks and insurance companies.
Candidate Obama had almost nothing to say about the crisis, but all during the campaign the mainstream media kept telling us that he had a giant IQ. He had already written two books, after all, even if both were about himself.
And, yes, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, but few on the faculty have any recall of him. Indeed, his college transcripts, as well as his birth certificate, are all still carefully hidden from public view.
So we have only the last six months by which to judge him by his actions. A delightful blog by Theo Sparks has posted two lists demonstrating that just over half the voters in 2008 elected a moron.
So far on Obama’s watch:
He has doubled the national debt.
Announced the termination of the space defense system the day after the North Koreans launched an ICBM.
Against the advice and urgings for his own CIA director and the prior four directors, he released information on intelligence gathering.
Announced that he would close Guantanamo without having any idea what to do with its detainees, all of whom are hard-core jihadists. Several of those released have since returned to the terrorist trade.
Spent a lot of time in foreign nations apologizing for things about which most Americans take pride.
Told Mexicans that the violence in their country was our fault because some of the guns they use to kill each other had been purchased in the U.S.
Appointed an Attorney General who orchestrated the forced removal and return to Cuba of a nine-year-old whose mother died to give him a life of freedom in America.
Caused panic in New York by authorizing the flight of Air Force One over New York for a photo you can purchase with Photo Shop for less than a dollar. The flight cost $400.000.
Told the Iranian protesters in the streets of Tehran that the U.S. would not “meddle” in the affairs of their nation, but did not hesitate to tell the Prime Minister of Israel that his nation had to stop building new settlements to house its growing population.
Initiated the nationalization of the U.S. auto industry and gave a lot of money to insurance giant AIG without any pre-conditions.
Intends to nationalize the health insurance industry.
Is pushing a Cap-and-Trade bill that would be the largest tax in the history of the nation.
When the Honduran Supreme Court deposed a communist president, he sided, along with Cuba’s Raul Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, with the exiled president.
President Obama, a former community organizer, claimed through a spokesperson that he was unaware of the initial nationwide “tea party” tax protests involving thousands. On July 4, an estimated million Americans participated in still more protests coast to coast.
Among his choice of friends, he was unaware that he started his political career in the living room of a former domestic terrorist, a member of the Weather Underground.
He was unaware that the pastor of the church he attended for twenty years was a racist who hates America.
He was unaware that his own aunt was living in the U.S. illegally, or that his brother lives on pennies a day in a hut in Kenya.
Among his first choices for cabinet positions, he was unaware that he nominated a man to be Secretary of Commerce who was under investigation in a bribery scandal.
He was unaware that his choice for Secretary of Treasury was a tax cheat. Indeed, he was unaware that several of his top choices fit that description.
As President and the representative of the American people, he managed to offend the Queen of England, insult the British people by returning a bust of Winston Churchill, and make a deep bow to the King of Saudi Arabia, something no President in history has ever done before any monarch.
It is evident to all that President Obama is (a) incapable of delivering any kind of speech without the use of a TelePrompter and (b) incapable of answering any question from a member of the press in under ten minutes’ time.
So what do we know about the people who voted for him? According the Rasmussen Consumer Index, among Democrats confidence is up from 53.7 a year ago to 79.5 this year. Among Republicans, it has dropped from 99.4 last year to 68.6 today,
Democrats apparently think the economy has improved despite the loss of more than 2.5 million jobs in the first quarter of 2009. Under Obama, the U.S. unemployment rate has risen from 7.6 to 9.5%, the highest in 26 years.
To put it another way, the U.S. has lost 16,000 jobs each day since Democrats passed a multi-billion dollar “stimulus” bill. The nation’s Gross Domestic Product fell at 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
The stock market is down 3,000 points from a year ago.
This means that Democrats, voters and members of Congress, are either deluded and/or as moronic as the man they elected President.
The only justification for the debacle the President has offered thus far has been to blame everything on George W. Bush.
Meanwhile, his Vice President is candidly telling anyone who will listen that the geniuses Obama selected to advise him are clueless, having failed to grasp the gravity of the situation or offer solutions other than those that will put more people out of work, raise taxes, increase inflation, and further bankrupt a bankrupt nation.
How do I know it’s bankrupt? Because President Obama is on record saying, “We’re out of money.”
When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Unless, of course, you’re a moron.
Additional post:Coming economic collapse is the stepping point into ascending calamities "In case you haven’t noticed folks Barack ... Obama, the Federal Reserve and the corporate criminals that dot the New England landscape have been playing monopoly with the economy; ..."
Obama's Declining Popularity No Surprise
Wed, July 8, 2009 at 10:46 PM
By Dr. Tony Magana
Obama’s meteoric rise to populist fervor by proclaiming all conservatism as sinful may be coming to an end just as it did for another in a famous Sinclair Lewis novel.
On July 7th as President Obama had just completed his sixth month in office his steadily falling popularity finally plummeted below 50% in the important swing state of Ohio according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
The results are due it seems to growing dissatisfaction with how the President is handling the economy. Numerous polls have over the past few months shown that the American public is most concerned about the condition of the economy over health care, the environment, and other issues despite a constant liberal media barrage to brainwash them to the contrary. This week Vice-President Joe Biden and the President had no choice but to admit that on the issue that matters most they got it wrong. Now after having spent or committed to spend almost $3 trillion in the stimulus package mixed in with new government spending and perhaps another $2 trillion more to go for the energy tax implementation and government health care, Americans find their mood has gone from hope to pessimism.
Obama promised the Democratic initiative of massive spending would bring in 1.5 million new jobs but instead the ranks of jobless Americans keep growing every month. Although the steepness of the loss may be less than at the onset they are still staggering numbers. Wall Street has regained about 50% of the value lost but overall the major economic sectors which should be the engine of job creation are only sputtering.
Obama has spent much of the time on out of country junkets trying to build coalitions by giving concessions to foreign nations on American sovereignty, promises of increased foreign aid, and making America more of global follower than leader.
In return we received clear assurance that we can continue to mostly fight the war in Afghanistan alone, unilaterally disarm our outdated nuclear weapons defense systems to numbers even more inferior than the 3000+ superiority held by Russia, and a thank you for having our Congress taking up impossible climate change tax programs but no thank you its not for us from other countries.
Vanity Fair magazine recently ran a story by Michael Wolff about how the Obama White House is controlling the press and the message that gets to the American people. They describe that different Obama friendly media are used for different purposes such as “scoops” for the New York Times, partisan issues to the Huffington Post, and of course the pictures of Michelle and the kids for the celebrity publications.
For all his talk about being a transparent President who will listen to the people, the reality is that this President is the exact opposite. His town halls are staged events with special reporters invited to ask questions and stooged members of the public set up to be famous for five minutes asking a sentimental question. What this has created is the liberal media and Obama being heavily engaged in a closed conversation with each other that has totally ignored what is happening to the average American.
Night after night, MSNBC, CBS, and CNN reports spend literally hours talking about what is wrong with Sarah Palin and absolutely ignore that no one is getting a job.
For members of MSNBC which is owned by General Electric, the company that is not only setting records for lobbying fees to politicians including Obama but also income from government contracts, it could be said that they honestly appear to have no idea about what is bothering the average family. They seem to believe that Americans cannot function until they know every detail of events that happened five or seven years past in a previous administration. Unlike Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann who make millions a year ( some of it derived by GE’s bailout) Americans without work cannot sit around being pundits all day but instead have to try to survive.
One does not have to be a Harvard economist to understand that the most significant effect of the Obama administration to date has been the almost complete destruction of entrepreneurial spirit.
The economy is so skewed now that the only thing that matters is where government will spend money. Obama cannot blame the media he controls or the capitalist system he has squashed. No one in any community is saying things will get better all they are saying is how much worse will it get.
One hopes for our country’s sake that Obama and the childish media will not wait, like the ill fated character in the novel, Elmer Gantry, to repent until the burning of the Tabernacle (America) to put away childish things and speak as men.
Related post: Obama's Dying Approval Rating
The Silent Majority
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Reprinted. Highlight added:
I’m like you. I see the news every day and wonder if the country has finally gone mad. I hear people around me talking and I wonder why they are so blind to the things going on around them. I see the 24 hour coverage on the death of a pedophile and wonder why we’re not covering more of the deaths of our soldiers. I know in my heart the destructive nature of liberalism, but fail to get others to see beyond the pretty words and wonderful promises and understand that everything has consequences.
I know that liberalism has been permeating our culture through Hollywood and the national media. I know that it has also been infecting the hearts and minds of our youth in public schools and Ivy League universities. I know that it seems that the country is populated with those that watch MTV, Comedy Central, and Saturday Night Live for their news.
And like you, many times when I see these things, hear these things, and feel these things, I lose hope.
Like you, I don’t want to lose hope. I want to feel like our country still has those core values that made it so great in the past. I want some kind of proof that we really are good, decent people deep inside that will rise up when needed and stand for what is right.
Well allow me to try to make the case that, yes, we are still a nation of patriots with strong values in the fabric of our souls.
We all remember the overwhelming sense of patriotism after September 11th, 2001. We all remember the flags flying and the common agreement throughout the nation that the United States of America was the greatest country on the planet and nothing could ever change that. That was our true core. That was the silent majority rising up to be heard. Because it was necessary.
After that, the louder voices of the left began to get everyone’s attention again. The media continued their assault on Conservative values. The silent majority was lulled back to sleep.
The silent majority woke again on June 5th, 2004. The death of the greatest Conservative voice of our generation woke the silent majority out of its slumber and an enormous outpouring of affection was a result. People lined the streets to show their respect for Ronald Reagan. Flags flew at half mast throughout the nation. The silent majority knew that a great visionary and leader had passed and would be sorely missed. They wanted to let the world know that they would not allow his vision to die. The silent majority mourned, and once again, went back to sleep.
We have been seeing the silent majority turning fitfully in its siesta, as of late. We see signs that it is once again beginning to awaken. We see the high turnout at the tea parties. We notice the higher ratings of Conservative radio and television in comparison to their liberal counterparts. We see books written by Conservatives being ranked number one in sales by the New York Times. We see the sleeping giant beginning to stir.
Obama and the liberals should fear the awakening, but naturally their conceit won’t allow it. They feel that they control the majority. They feel that the voices rising up are too few. The think the fringe left that follows them so blindly IS the majority of the country. But the TRUE silent majority is being pushed too far and it will awaken. It will not allow the Obamas of the world to destroy the very soul of our country.
The silent majority will awaken. Because it is necessary.
I pity those that stand in its way.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Obamageddon is Coming!
Food riots, tax protests, strikes and high unemployment all will characterize our economic future according to Gerald Celente.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Obama's Citizenship: What a Tangled Web.
On this our comarde Obama's Day
Lame Cherry/lamecherry.blogspot.com
You became a British subject on 1 January 1983 if, up to that date, you were:
a British subject without citizenship, which means you were a British subject on 31 December 1948 who did not become a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies,
- a citizen of a Commonwealth country, a citizen of Pakistan, or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland;
- a person who had been a citizen of Eire and a British subject on 31 December 1948 and had made a claim to remain a British subject; or
- a woman who had registered as a British subject on the basis of your marriage to a man who was in one of the two categories above.
Be it known, Barack Hussein Obama was born of a British colonial African of Kenya in Barack Hussein Obama Sr.
Be it known, Stanley Ann Dunham, being under legal agent of consent was impregnated and married, making her by matrimony a British subject.
Barack Obama was a British subject by birth, but without even requesting or assenting on January 1, 1983 at the age of 21 became a British citizen by act of the British government as he had never applied for citizenship to any United Kingdom, colony, was a citizen of Pakisan where he visited or the Republic of Ireland.
Barack Obama was never a Irish citizen or a previous subject or a woman married to a British subject.
Be it known, Barack Obama never gained citizenship of any other country after January 1, 1983.
Barack Obama never applied for citizenship of the United States of America as was required under United States law.
- It does not matter one iota that Barack Obama has any Hawaiian birth certificate of live birth.
- It does not matter if there is evidence of his being Barry Soetero, Indonesian dual citizen.
None of the documents matter, because under British Authority Mandate, on January 1, 1983 at the age of 21 years, 4 months, 27 days, Barack Hussein Obama became a legal British subject.
This event which even his website has attempted to explain away as his inaction simply allowed his being a British subject to "expire" has absolutely no legal standing in Great Britain nor the United States. British citizenship does not expire.
It can be renounced or a new citizenship can be taken up negating it, but
- Barack Obama was never naturalized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the United States. He never applied, he never attended classes, nor took the manditory examination nor took the oath to be a Citizen of the United States of America.
In not doing so, Barack Hussein Obama has been a sojourner in the United States of America and has illegally been an Illinois State Senator, United States Senator and is illegally the occupant of the White House executive branch of government as a foreigner disqualified from serving in Illinois and in the District of Columbia as he is British.
Barack Obama is vir artus, the man in limbo, the man without a country, an illegal alien in America and not yet having British official citizenship papers.
There is no denying Barack Obama's birth parents and no denying the British Nationality Act of 1948, 1965 and 1983 which forever fused him by his birth, no matter where he was born as a British subject. Vladamir Putin has as much right to be in the Oval Office of the President of the United States as Barack Hussein Obama.
The people of Honduras in facing the Constinutional crisis of a criminal Marxist, had a Supreme Court uphold their Constitution, a military enforce their Constitution in removing of a criminal, with the Honduran Congress replacing the criminal executive.
The people of the United States have had nothing but enablers in a corrupt Attorney General in Eric Holder circumventing the law, a Supreme and Judicial Court system not uphold Constitutional Law and a Congress which negated to fulfill as did all 50 states in requiring Constitutional proof that Barack Hussein Obama was a Citizen of the United States.
Barack Obama is vir artus, the man in limbo, and until the Constitutional Laws of the United States are upheld, every act he initiates is criminal fraud and not legally binding, which includes Treasury bond issue, currency signed illegally by Timothy Geithner to orders in placing United States troops in Afghanistan.
Those are the legal facts in any attorney in England could gain full citizenship for subject Obama at any time, and, within that time, it appears he then could be Prime Minister of Great Britain replacing Gordon Brown.
The Truth will prevail and the Truth will be victorious Saul II.
agtG 293
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Obama and His Cabal of Terminators
Obama's response to the Honduran military removing a dictator-wannabe from office tells us who he is. More
Birds of a feather do tend to flock together.
Bullies, of all stripes, don't you know, are really just cowards at heart -- yellow down to their measly cores -- which is why they must cling together in gangs and collectives. They haven't the courage or fortitude for independence. Neither do they support individual liberties or constitutions that interfere with their quest for power.
Obama's administration: Coup are you?
Monica Showalter and her colleagues on the editorial board of Investor's Business Daily ...comment on the Obama administration's reaction to the removal of Honduran President Mel Zelaya in "Banana democrats." They write: More
The ugly face of liberalism
Selwyn Duke
Obama has sided with a thug in Honduras, a man who -- for completely self-serving reasons -- sought to subvert his nation's constitution. More
Dancing to a new tune in Latin America
Douglas O'Brien
Standing unified with his amigo Hugo Chavez, President Obama appears ready to engage in a spirited defense of another leftist head of state,
Obama and the Bad Villagers
Isn't there anyone over at the U.N. willing to defend Honduras? More
These articles are from the American Thinker.com and Menorahblog.typepad.com