Change and Hope
The Olympic Fiasco
I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago. As I wrote on NRO’s corner, I know I was. But Rio had a really convincing hope and change/ multicultural/new guy on the block case. And consider: given the recent bad windy city publicity (You Tube beatings, state and city corruption, Blagoism, Daley ward mobsterism, rumors of pre-Olympic wheeling and dealing on land angles, administration Chicago hard-ball Rahm Emanuel/David Axelrod politics, etc.), Chicago, Illinois ,was seen abroad as less competitive, far less competitive, than the other cities. I think almost any fair-minded neutral judge could grasp how those realities were going to play out. (Do not forget that Euros love to be gratuitously fickle and so in the first round trashed the reset-button, fawning American who wants to wow them through obsequiousness. And the more I watched Barack/Michelle do the “I grew up in the neighborhood” thing, the more I noticed the Euro-audience wincing (not smart bragging about your childhood Chicago “right hook” to an audience that has just watched horrific fighting in the streets of Chicago).
But even without the self-centered story-telling it was a hard sell anyway. How can a post-national, I’m sorry Obama, trapped in a sort of we are the world paradox, be seen in nationalistic and near tribal fashion stumping for his own home town? Again, it did not help that he appeared in campaign mode, tossing out the usual personal, somewhat hokey (and all but narcissistic) stories about himself and his family, that I know don’t resonate, much less make effective arguments, in the less therapeutic world of hardball politics abroad. In short, the community organizer was out organized by the multicultural ascendant Rio.
Almost all of Michelle’s statements were heartfelt and well meant. But they too proved in a global context counterproductive—and almost embarrassing in their now accustomed egocentricity. So the mystery remains, why did Obama think he should risk presidential and national capital in such ambiguous circumstances? Ego? Sloppy prep work? Payback to pals? Hubris?—e.g., I can fly in, do the hope and change cadence, fly out, and leave them hypnotized.
Sarkozy Drew Blood
Sarkozy really hurt Obama internationally, since his sarcastic ‘beam back down Barack’-like statement cut to the bone on the issue of such fluffy talk versus little substance: utopianism sermonizing on non-proliferation is great, but what about the spinning centrifuges? What does the Left do when the French are now to our Right? How can a weaker power sound braver than the stronger? And more principled? Europe is becoming worried, in the “be careful what you wish for” fashion about the Obama era, since the old bad cop/good cop game is up. It is now Europe good cop/US nicer cop. Much irony in this again…
The Challenge Ahead
Here is the problem for our President: the Iranian negotiation is an IED that will blow up in our faces. The theocrats want, need a bomb for a variety of reasons (why would a country that burns natural gas off at the oil well head need “peaceful” nuclear power?). Bombs have been a win/win situation for both Pakistan and North Korea. If Iran wins, we are off to the races—Saudi Arabia next, Egypt? Syria? Venezuela?
I hope the President is up to encouraging madcap drilling in the Alaska, Gulf, California, and the Dakotas to get these new finds into production, since if or when the Israelis strike, all hell is going to let loose in the Gulf. Cannot someone tell Obama that the moral, the peaceful, the only realistic thing now is to get tough with Iran through ostracism, sanctions, boycotts, even, heaven forbid, a blockade if need be, to prevent the far more terrible scenarios that lie ahead?
One action can solve/excuse all your recent problems, Mister President:
Fire. Rahm. Emanuel.
You’re welcome.
VDH:
“We Should Vote for Anyone . . .”
… but the 535 clowns currently in Congress. The problem is not just the policies. It’s the the people, the attitude and the culture inside the Beltway. They all need to go. Two more years of government ineptitude and no one will care if a nuclear powered lunatic regime holds an American city hostage, as long as that city is Washington, D.C.
“I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago.”
Nope, I most certainly was not rooting for Chicago. The odds were overwhelming that the Olympic games would be a huge money loser. There could be no way in hell for a Mitt Romney to save the day. The scoundrels who run the city would have run the operation into the ground. Needless to add, taxpayers throughout the nation would have been asked to make up the difference. I have no interest in doing so.
“Where is Dick Morris?”
Ain’t gonna happen. Barack Obama is incapable of listening to a Dick Morris. He feels comfortable around only those of the far left of center. Obama is existentially committed to the non-violent radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Saul Alinsky. He is too narcissistic and fundamentally lazy to intellectually grow out of his immature point of reference. The man has never done any serious reading in his entire life. It is a little late in the day to expect a 48-year-old man to start doing so—especially while handling the busy role of the presidency. We can only realistically hope that Obama’s power in domestic can be checked and balanced by both houses of Congress.
“But I am don’t want an impotent Commander in Chief abroad for three very dangerous years to come”
Life is cruel and then we die. What else can I say? We are stuck with an impotent Commander in Chief. America may be royally screwed. Barack Obama could make Jimmy Carter seem like Ronald Reagan.
It’ll be hard for Obama to spin the loss of the Olympics. CW was that the fix was in for Chicago and Barry was there to accept the prize. So what happened?
The world’s afraid we’ll be bankrupt by 2016.
The world’s afraid we’ll be a smoldering ruin by 2016.
Oprah was there too. The world couldn’t pass up the chance to bitch-slap three 0′s at once.
The world realized Obama’s Olympics Czar would be a Jew (Rahm).
Or —
We had it in the bag, but the President lost it for us with his lame egocentric speech.
I would add consitutional reform as envisioned by Reagan. See article by Steven Hayward
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY1OTc2NDYyNTg5M2UzNmFmMzVkZjQ4ODUwNTAzNjE=
I think the most flawed character trait of Obama is his vanity. It is not the infantile vanity of a movie star, admired by millions but personally worried by wrinkles, it is much worse. It now has become apparent that Obama is putting his Global persona before National and Global security matters. Look at the incident with Sarkozy, where the ‘soft’ Frenchman was baffled that Obama didn’t want to reveal the Quom info at the UN security council session, which for the first time in history was presided by a US president, but in matter fact forced Sarkozy not to mention the discovery in his speech. It wouldn’t fit with the message that Obama had prepared for the UN. This is not coming from Fox news, but from the French media.
If you self declared enemies, like Iran are buiding up their nuclear military capabilities and even the French think that you are a weak appeaser, well o la la, than the US is really on a down hill slope.
This should be a manifesto for a 2010 candidate.
A great article Doc. It’s almost unfortunate that there’s so much to write about these days.
I loved your reference about the IED. How true! We have no idea when or where it will go off.
I think things are going to get much much worse before they get better. Strange that Obama’s approval ratings are still around the 51% mark. I find that incredible especially after read this article you just wrote.
Bill Frist says he’ll vote for the health care bill. Harry Reid might be in trouble but why isn’t Pelosi crashing in the polls? Why does Michigan continue to vote in Democratic regimes? How many more tea parties do we have to have?
Chrysler and GM sales are way down and are likely to require another bail out in 2010 to stay afloat. We’ve had 47 G.I.’s killed since Gen. McChrystal requested more troops from Obama. The media is no longer reporting casualty figures as they did during the Bush administration.
Now that Obama has been revealed as the weak, self absorbed, slickster that he is, I expect huge international trouble. We’re in for a hell of a ride.
Dr. Hanson, wanted to make your WWII lecture at Hillsdale College, but couldn’t… will try next year.
Regarding the Chicago bid for the summer 2016 Olympic Games, I live in the greater Chicago area, and was pulling like mad for another city to get it. Why? Hosting the Games is a proven financial boondoggle, and Chitown already has some of the highest taxes in the USA. We have much more pressing problems to fix than hosting the games, and no Chicagoan I know wanted all that insane traffic to descend on the city for weeks. And yes, I admit it, I was happy to see Obama get egg on his face… our troops are engaged in two wars, Iran is sabre-rattling, and all the Campaigner-in-Chief can do is jet off to lovely Copenhagen? That’s not appropriate, folks. Just one man’s opinion…
Sound suggestions all. It goes to show that leadership is probably 90% common sense, and 10% nerve; because without the common sense, there won’t be any nerve either, just conceit, that a fool expects to go the whole hundred yards.
“So I am worried that the U.S. will be crippled with a weak, unpopular executive, as happened to Bush (35% approvals) in 2007-8.”
I didn’t like much Bush did yet I admired him for his decisiveness. He was the “decider” and he did not waver, he stuck to his guns regardless of the polls. That, his loyalty to his friends and family are the things I give him great credit for. I don’t really recall him throwing people under the bus so to speak for his own gain. Cheney was mad at him for leaving Scooter Libby “on the battlefield” but there again, Bush stuck to his guns and did what he thought was right.
I don’t think of Bush as weak in the same manner as most of the democrat party is these days. I’m sick and tired of the constant bickering over a “public health insurance policy”. Bush didn’t pay much attention to which way the political winds were blowing on a given day and one wonders why the democrats do. Why don’t they have strong convictions and just do what they believe in? They seem so spineless and THAT isn’t good for the country. There was no question where Bush stood in the eyes of anyone.
I’d add #11, quit bugging Cheney et al. about interogation techniques. We need a forward looking debate about what we want, what is acceptable and how we define torture. Bush and Cheney acted in good faith on our behalf under extreme circumstance, leave them alone.
Hard to argue with anything in this column Doc. It’s difficult not to be a fatalist wondering what is next. What percentage of the population remembers gas lines? Kinda goes along with the Carter theme. Not sure if we could even afford to buy it at $400/barrel of crude. How about 18% interest rates? Not too hard to find a wise old Wall Street sage who sees that coming….
I wish Obama well. You can see his hair turning gray by the day. I wonder if any one man is up the task ahead of us.
Basically, they pooped.
As I have said before, Bush (sr) and the Kennedy’s pushed New England. Reagan had Hollywood and California and Bush Jr. had Big Oil and Texas and Carter had Georgia and Peanuts. There is nothing new about politicians being proud about their home turf or trying to get some attention, in this case, for Chicago and America. I am surprised that so many people are “suddenly” losing their grip in shock over it. OMG !!! OBAMA wants to bring the Olympics to America…who does he think he is???!!!
(lol)
Chicago wasn’t even chosen…calm down. A very small storm. In a very small tea cup. eh?
VDH for POTUS as soon as the sundry impeachment proceedings conclude.
PS: I wish I could join one of your fabulous sounding lecture tours!
An additional point about the Olympic choice: Didn’t the CNN reaction to Chicago’s loss come across a bit arrogant? It was as if the reporters thought Madrid and Tokyo were villages somewhere in redneck country–you know, where people cling to their national history and accomplishments. There was not a bit of graciousness or class in the reactions I saw, and those reporters are the face of America abroad.
Dr. Hanson, your ten points of action are the highlight of this article. It is my belief that the next few election cycles will be focused on issues, not personalities. Accountability and responsiveness to the real-world needs of America should be the rallying cry of anyone who wants to win, be they Republicans or Democrats. The candidate that has the best solutions to the problems you outlined will be the winner, not the one with the brightest smile, the most pleasant voice or the best hairdo.
Dr. Hanson:
Loved the essay. Look forward to the campaign.
Common Sense.
While I agree almost completely with your diagnosis of the ‘character’ and tendencies of the Fearless Leader, I am afraid that I don’t agree on the prescription.
I don’t want this guy ‘saved’ by a self-serving Clintonian ‘return to sanity’. That in itself is bad for the Republic in the end. It leads to the situation where the sheeple believe that there is always a ‘get-out-of-jail’ to be played.
Elections have consequences as they say. I sincerely hope that this guy flames out in the most spectacular fashion possible(short of big bombs going off). No reprieves , no cynical ‘triangulations’, just a complete fall down and can’t get up Presidency. With any luck he will take his media enablers, his elitist supporters, his crypto race-based politics, and the likes of Acorn down with him.
The USA will survive a really bad President but it won’t survive the types of thought that put him there in the first place. They need to be fully discredited and Barack Hussein Obama is just the guy to get the job done.
ps— The answer to your initial query: Hubris. The best line ever — “ The Ego Has Landed” Says it all, does it not ?
Out of fantasy land: In the US Obama lives in the land of a MSM which never finds any faults with him or his party. He believes his own press. What he is finding out is the world reads different newspapers. The Olympics is the tip of the iceberg in terms of reality.
The US won’t collapse under four years of Obama but it is bound to be a worse place when he is done.
“How can a weaker power sound braver than the stronger?”
Courage doesn’t depend on capability. Israel has been doing that to us for about twenty years now.
“Cannot someone tell Obama that the moral, the peaceful, the only realistic thing now is to get tough with Iran through ostracism, sanctions, boycotts, even, heaven forbid, a blockade if need be, to prevent the far more terrible scenarios that lie ahead?”
Has anyone yet succeeded in convincing Obama that he’s wrong about anything? Even something trivial? If not, why expect that anyone could get him to listen to adverse counsel on the most important foreign-policy issue of the hour? Remember the man’s enormous arrogance — and his sensitivity to being gigged for his weaknesses. “Most people would rather admit to murder than to ignorance.” (Alexander Rose, Pay The Two Dollars)
” We Should Vote for Anyone . . .”
Do you have a candidate in mind, Dr. Hanson? Or is this your way of opening your own campaign for the presidency?
Palin / Cheney (either one) 2012!
America dodged a bullet. A summer Olympics in Chicago would have been a disaster. The violence, filth and corruption there would have given America’s prestige a black eye that would last for years. It would have been the Vietnam war of summer Olympics. Count me as one who’s glad Obama failed.
Great piece, Doc. Points 3 and 8 are, I think, only doable if the neo-Coms running the Democrat Party, academia, Big News, and Hollyweird are sidelined; the rest are dependent on the pandemic corruption on the Left that has been revealing itself in so many ways (ACORN, Polanski, etc.) being purged from the Democrats, which goes back to said neo-Coms’ lust for power, regardless of cost to the country, and much of the American Left’s willingness to look the other way “because their intentions are good”.
I’ve been of the mind that this period in our history feels more and more like the 1850′s and that some sort of major break is coming. The RINO establishment is too invested in go along to get along, so there’s no help coming from that direction. That some sort of new movement is percolating up seems clear, but it may or may not serve tea. How this plays out is anyone’s guess, but I don’t believe we can keep going on like this for much longer.
One almost hopes that Barak & Co. (the two female “O’s”) got snookered! “Psst, Barak, come to Copenhagen, its all set.” And then, just as Charlie Brown tries to kick the football, WHAM! Lucy snatches it away. Heh. Even better would be this, from the Brazilian President: “And I’d especially like to thank President Obama, whose presentation for Chicago propelled Rio into first place!”
The REAL story behind the Olympics 2016 bid:
“Beyond showing an apparent indifference to the United States’ star power, the I.O.C. vote was interpreted as a repudiation of the U.S.O.C., which has been in upheaval over the past year and has struggled to gain a favorable standing within the I.O.C.
“It was a defeat for the U.S.O.C., not for Chicago,” said Denis Oswald, an I.O.C. member from Switzerland.
Mr. Oswald said that 10 to 15 fellow I.O.C. members had approached him recently wanting to discuss issues related to the U.S.O.C. He said that changes in U.S.O.C. leadership “has not helped,” either, and that it was clear that the Chicago bid and the U.S.O.C. were not united.
Stephanie Streeter, the acting chief executive of the U.S.O.C., and Larry Probst, the committee’s chairman, have taken their posts in the last year and have run into problems with the I.O.C., most notably over their stalled plan for an Olympic television network and their share of the Games’ network and corporate sponsorship contracts.”
Obama’s effort to win the bid could not override the politics between the USOC and the IOC. The White House took the easy way out and did not play hardball with the financial realities of the IOC demands. But the final blame goes to the USOC.
Ooops. “…Rio into first place.” Subtext: “Because we all know he was constrained by the prominence of the spotlights on this international stage from repeating his true feelings about the United States, which he has so clearly expressed in every other international gathering. So we knew he was just bullshitting us about the wonderfulness of Chicag’O’.”
Dr. Hanson you are making up excuses.
Obama is precisely what the American people said that they want.
A loser.
I disagree with the notion that Obama should not have gone. This was a giveaway point for Republicans to be supportive of the President. The Olympic process since Tony Blair went to Singapore for London is that a head of state go to support the bid. Obama went and sold the United States. He would have/should have done the same thing had Buffalo, NY been the candidate city.
There are massive problems. But the fight for the hearts and minds of America is the middle. Hard core righties (that read PJM) and hard core lefties (that hate PJM) are not the battle ground. The Olympics are a feel good popular thing. Olga Korbut, Nadia Comenici, Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz etc.
I think the Republicans made a tactical error in not letting this one go, or even saying Good Luck.
Dr. Hanson has, as usual, put his finger on the exact point of the problem. Not that it will matter, as I doubt that the President or his advisors read Dr. Hanson’s columns. (They’re too busy reading the President’s autobiographies and Robert Reich’s demands for more government spending over at HuffPo, respectively.)
In many ways, we are now seeing the Obama who was carefully hidden from us while he was campaigning. He is at heart a machine politician, who believes that (as Orwell observed) “the object of power is power”. The problem with this is that there is a huge difference between knowing how to acquire power, and knowing how to exercise it wisely once you have it.
Obama apparently believes that the “proper” use of power is to make other people sorry for being different from the wielder of same. He promised to “engage our enemies” when he was campaigning. Unfortunately, his definition of “engagement” was the senior-prom version, not the version taught at the Point or Annapolis. (I predict he will be very surprised when the corsage he receives from Ahmedinejad has a ten-megaton yield.)
At the same time, he has been busy taking stern measures against those he defines as being “unfriendly”, at least to his worldview. Sorry about that, Czech Republic, Honduras, Israel, and Poland; he’s just not that “into” you. (Especially not you, Israel.)
This is while he is desperately trying to figure out how to surrender in Afghanistan without actually saying he’s surrendering. When a President talks about “nation-building” before the “nation” has been secured (i.e., until the military has defeated the enemy, which requires killing them as opposed to “diplomatically engaging” them), he’s looking for a way to “lose gracefully”- so he can blame it on somebody else, probably the military he is busy giving ineffectual and contradictory orders to. (“Afghanization”, anyone?)
This is, of course, in keeping with his “philosophy” that terrorists (especially the Islamist sort) are just “misunderstood”- and it’s probably all our fault for being so “un-enlightened” anyway. In the “Eastern mystical” sense of the term, that is, not the classical Greek version. (He seems to have a serious problem with the Greek version of enlightenment, for some reason.)
Simultaneously, he is ramping up the activities of federal law enforcement against those he regards as the “real” terror threat; namely, people here in the United States who disagree with his policies. The “pastoral letter” he just got from a group of 45 anti-Second Amendment mayors, led by the perennial “Richard J.
Daley”-wannabee, Michael Bloomberg, demanding more money and manpower for BATFE, is a case in point.
There is little doubt in my mind that BATFE wrote the letter, and the mayors just forwarded it; the agency has, in the past nearly four decades, become a scandal and a joke in law-enforcement circles across the country due to its surreal combination of incompetence and fanaticism in its “holy crusade” against law-abiding citizens who own firearms, combined with its near-total ineffectuality vs. actual armed criminals. Yet the “mayors’ letter” boils down to “Give BATFE more money, and less oversight, and let them off their leash.” The idea that they’ve been on one would amaze most LEO personnel who have had professional contact with the agency. (I speak from experience, here.)
This will most likely end with Obama doing his best to give Bloomberg, BATFE, & Co. everything they demand. Exactly what good it will do in actual terms is open to question, but it will certainly end in lawsuits by law-abiding citizens who will be “criminalized” in one way or another by BATFE, while the agency is busy not bothering to track down actual armed criminals or would-be terrorists. (That’s too much like “work”- and might actually be dangerous, as those types’ usual response to an arrest isn’t a lawsuit.)
But as ineffectual as it is in real terms, it will appeal to President Obama- because it will be a way to further his “vision” of The Way Things Ought To Be, by punishing people who have committed the unforgivable sin of Not Thinking Like Him.
And he will, of course, be cheered on by the MSM, Paul Krugman, Chris Matthews, et al., the same way he is every time he does something to thumb his nose at the “Great Unwashed” in Flyover Country. Which, when you come down to it, is really what his administration is all about- proving that he, the Post-Modern Messiah, is nothing like the average American.
Whom he, and his enablers, don’t like very much, anyway.
clear ether
eon
Er, Victor, I believe we just ran an election encompassng the points enumerated on your wish list. And it was rejected. The hopey-changey guys aren’t interested in exploiting our own fossil fuel reserves; they want to abandon them and ‘save the planet’. The hopey changey guys aren’t interested in expandng nuclear energy sources; they want to eliminate them. The hopey-changey guys aren’t interested in secure borders; their hope is open borders and expanding voter rolls. Tort reform? Curtail entitlements? Lower taxes? Are you serious? An end to government corruption? Who’ll be left to govern. Ok, OK, but before you submit your list to the tooth fairy I suggest that you take a long cold shower. You seem to be rapidiy mellowing. I hope that all is well.
OT I know but this needs to be ut there.
The great global warming scam (ctd)
Friday, 2nd October 2009
Yet another scientific scandal has come to light which knocks another whopping crater in the already shattered theory of anthropogenic global warming. Eight peer-reviewed studies, which for years have played a significant supporting role behind the IPPC’s claims of AGW, have been shown to be fraudulent.
As Andrew Orlowski reports in The Register, the issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy in order to ‘reconstruct’ past temperatures. The papers in question incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia:
This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer and larger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronounced and dramatic uptick in temperatures.
How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret — failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors. Until now, that is.
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open — and Yamal’s mystery is no more. From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.
In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.
A small ‘but closely knit’ number of scientists all used the misleading Yamal data to claim that today’s temperatures were unprecedentedly hot. Orlowski notes:
Controversy has been raging since 1995, when an explosive paper by Keith Briffa at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia asserted that that the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. Both archaeology and the historical accounts, Briffa was declaring, were bunk. Briffa relied on just three cores from Siberia to demonstrate this.
Three years later Nature published a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes based on temperature reconstructions which showed something similar: warmer now, cooler then. With Briffa and Mann as chapter editors of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this distinctive pattern became emblematic – the ‘Logo of Global Warming’.
But as the heroic mathematician Steve McIntyre – who helped demonstrate the fraudulence of the even more seminal AGW claim of the ‘hockey-stick curve’ of historic global temperatures – has finally managed to winkle out, their premise was false and their claim was untrue.
Ross McKitrick, who worked with McIntyre in exposing the ‘hockey-stick’ fraud, here emphasises the way in which the AGW industry concealed the truth about the tree-ring data:
Over the next nine years, at least one paper per year appeared in prominent journals using Briffa’s Yamal composite to support a hockey stick-like result. The IPCC relied on these studies to defend the Hockey Stick view, and since it had appointed Briffa himself to be the IPCC Lead Author for this topic, there was no chance it would question the Yamal data.
Despite the fact that these papers appeared in top journals like Nature and Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors ever required Briffa to release his Yamal data. Steve McIntyre’s repeated requests for them to uphold their own data disclosure rules were ignored…Whatever is going on here, it is not science.
And yet:
When the IPCC was alerted to peer-reviewed research that refuted the idea, it declined to include it. This leads to the more general, and more serious issue: what happens when peer-review fails — as it did here?
Indeed. What price any ‘scientific’ assertions, such as anthropogenic global warming, when the system of peer-review on which it rests its authority is as bent as a corkscrew? The scandal not only shows once again that AGW is a fraud but shoots to pieces the integrity of scientific peer-review. In other words, a huge story. So huge that, as far as I can see, not one mainstream UK media outlet has touched it – and according to blogger Bishop Hill:
The reaction of the Guardian – to delete any mention of the affair from their comment threads – has been extraordinary.
It’s no use. The seas are rising over their heads.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5389461/the-great-global-warming-scam-ctd.thtml
One of the better VDHs. Goood attempt to provide the right solutions to our national problems. Time for all Americans to take their responsibilities seriously!
We are, in fact, stuck with Obama for three more long and hard years. Fact of life. Terrorists will be running around here and abroad, energy costs will go through the roof, inflation will rule and the misery index will set all time highs.
An interesting view of what can happen in three years is
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Lament%20nation/2048787/story.html
VDH — An excellent article that unfortunately will be ignored by the left and right for its sensibleness.
Are we at the point where we can say this guy has taken all our hope and all our change?
I agree Obama would benefit from having an advisor like Dick Morris or Bill Clinton. One thing both Clintons do better than either Obama is to listen and make the focus the other person. I don’t know whether Obama cannot do this, I think he is still convinced he is so marvelous that others will share his level of self-regard if he keeps talking. 2012 cannot come quickly enough.
I couldn’t agree more with every single word of this article. Those of you that voted for Obama, with a major assist by the so-called (and anything but) MSM, have to be shaking your heads in disgust. Especially with the fact that Obama hasn’t lead on a single issue. Not one. Instead he’s farmed-out his so-called “reform agenda” to two of the most despised out-of-touch Liberal politicians in the world …. Pelosi and Reid …. and he’s left trying to sell a set of policies that don’t have his name on them and are extremely unpopular with the majority of Americans. Obama is an incredibly weak and indecisive Chief Executive in the mold of Jimmy Carter.
VDH,
Because Obama is in Jimmy Carter’s second term, you correctly “assume he will go instead the Carter cardigan sweater, pound the table in ‘you are not up to my moral standards’ sanctimonious mode.” And this much remains certain: the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Gang is incapable of fulfilling any of the ten items on your list. November 2010 and November 2012 cannot get here fast enough.
1) Fiscal sanity…
VDH For President!
22. klrtz1:
I agree with with your comments. Chicago is not the best advertisement for America and I bet that the politicos there had all kinds of graft schemes dreamed up for themselves.
The worst news for this country that emerged this last week, in my opinion, was the failure of the buyout of the Saturn plant. It’s amazing to me that a company that had such a good start and such good possibilities was allowed to be sent to the trash bin by both GM and this administration. What can I say, more unemployment. Maybe the Obama administration should have been paying more attention to this than to the proceedings in Copenhagen. But, as Dr. Hanson said, that would require some common sense.
Hanson is a politically correct left center leaning coward. And no Mr. Hanson most of us were not rooting for the Obama’s bid to give political payback to their cronies in Chicago.
“Almost all of Michelle’s statements were heartfelt and well meant”.
Are you for real, pal?
How about this statement by Michelle professor – ““Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad’s lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis, and others for their brilliance and perfection.”
Mrs. Obama was 20 years old when Lewis first competed in the Olympics in 1984.
How about this one – “We dropped everything – dropped everything – to be a part of this team,” she said in thanking Oprah Winfrey for joining her in the Olympic pitch. “As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days,” the team has been working on this for years.
Sacrifice is what American men did in World War II, Vietnam and now the Middle East, when hundreds of thousands of them went to Europe (and Asia and Africa) and never come back – or come back missing limbs.
Somehow, I expect Oprah, Mrs. Obama and her husband will survive this trip and return home in one piece. Some sacrifice. “Heartfelt” professor?
If any sacrifice is being made in the context of this wholly unnecessary excursion it is by U.S. taxpayers who will pick up the enormous tab for their self indulgent vacation to Europe.
That the first lady of the United States would need to hear this from me and others who have pointed it out suggests she has no sense of duty, honor and sacrifice.
And it’s hardly the first time she has revealed herself to be ego-centric, self-absorbed, narcissistic and anything but self-sacrificing.
Mr. Hanson you are a PC coward because you know better.
We all know(at least those who read your writings) what is needed, and yes, you say it eloquently; Obama can also be eloquent. If you were to read Rules for Radicals and explain that everything he is doing, though the opposite of what is good for America, is furthering an objective of collapsing the system, of destroying America with a clear, thought out end in sight, perhaps more of the American people could begin to see and understand what is taking place. You write as though he is misguided, he is not; everything he is doing makes perfect sense, but only if you (we) give up the assumption that he and his administration have America’s best interests at heart. Lawrence Eagleburger said as much last night on Greta Van Susteren on Fox.
Knowing Barack the Speaker and his politics, I think he will take out his revenge on We the People some time soon.
The corrupt wind of change from the windy city itself courtesy of the Daley machine is sweeping across the globe. To dictators and tyrants it smells of hope and opportunity to pursue their miserable ends. To our closest allies it’s a change for the worse, a world fraught with reckless abandon, where the highest bidders get to play, and those who defy it condemnation awaits.
No one individual is larger than the Olympic games and the spirit it embodies. Obama was rightly humiliated by the IOC. His negligence is ever growing and apparent, it may escape the drones who voted him in and his acolytes in media and entertainment, but to far maturer minds such selfish negligence equates to complacency, weakness, and higher risk taking. The Olympic committee no doubt know what happens when you allow egotistical power brokers to hijack the spirit of the games, they learned that lesson long ago.
As Sarkozy lamented Obama is far too egotistical and arrogant to hear the concerns of western allies. As centrifuges spin towards another possible holocaust, Obama’s primary concern is to be seen on prime tv as often as possible, and as his military commander in A’stan awaits for nine long months for a face to face meeting to discuss military challenges of today and ahead. How can our NATO allies have confidence in such an individual to lead the free world? They simply cannot. Eternal campaigning does nothing for national security, nor does bad mouthing his own nation on the world stage.
The fate that awaits us all with this inexperienced naive megalomaniac at the helm cannot be good, history teaches us that much.
President Obama is an immature overgrown spoiled brat with the emotional maturity to match as the man-child; therefore, I do not expect Obama to move to the center in substance. However, he will appear to in his speeches, but his actions must be watched with every power grab attempt in every sector of the private economy. President Obama has no credibility since he is an egotistical narcissist where in ObamaLand, he is the Sun where everything else revolves around him. President Obama has forgotten his not the Sun–let alone a god–but a human being with reckless selfish need for absolute power. Never mind, President Obama has been shown to be incompetent, corrupt, immoral, amoral, & really desires to be Dictator Obama. Hence his need to be friends with other 3rd world dictators such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, the recent lighting of the Empire State Building for Communist China’s anniversary, & Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.
President Obama will more further Left & be more rigid in his need to turn America into a dictatorship as most of his plans turn to dust while his fellow Socialist Democrats are voted out of office in 2010 & 2012. Obama is already radioactive because he has revealed his true face to be that of a Statist, not liberal, but a Socialist bent on destroying America to remake into his twisted narcissistic image.
Anyone even associated with President Obama will go down in flames in most elections. Obama’s own hubris & need to be constantly adored makes him blind since he cannot see his own Statist needs to be a weakness; however, Obama only sees anyone who does not think like him simply does not exist in ObamaLand.
Why? Wht a dumb question! There were billions, literally billions, of dollars of graft, skims, payoffs and kick backs available to Chicago pols, gangsters, community organizers and black racists IF Chicago won the games.
All the folks who worked so hard to get O elected to the Illinois legislature and so hard to lose all his public sector records were all in line for real and phantom jobs as payback. Now, they got bupkus!
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, I wish I could vote for you, and I wish you would go run for something. It would be a nice change to see some names on the ballots in the next election that are not the usual knucklehead variety, and I would like to vote for you. It would be so nice to see names on ballots that are normal people and not part of the big show. The American people have to watch the same big show and we are watching repeats that have lasted for decades. I am so sick of re-runs.
President Obama is a re-run President, and echoes the same old tired words of his predecessors. I would like to know if they have to say the words “New World Order” in their speeches if they take the money during the campaigns from the Bankers (Dictators) lurking in the shadows of Washington. I think they have to make a deal, or sign in blood (joking, I think) that they will uphold the regime and speak of the “World Order” to get the big campaign money rolling in.
All we have is a new actor with a new face who uses the same old lines of last year’s shows, and the year before, and the year before, and so on, and on.
You are smarter and more talented than the politicians are, and you have a following of people behind you. I have read your pieces so many times that when I watch a movie about the California wine country the other day I thought of you. When I read you I always learn something and then I feel I need to thank you.
Count me as one who thought that it was absurd that Chicago, a CITY with a $750 million budget shortfall, should be going after a multi billion dollar Olympic bid.
I was thrilled and shocked that they did not win however.
Thrilled as I look at this Olympics for Brazil as the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 – showcasing an emergance as a major world entity. Cool.
Shocked because Presidents never physically associate themselves with failure – for excellent reason. If O and his advisors are capable of making this kind of dumb rookie mistake, we have a big problem.
Someone earlier remarked about his ability to maintain 51% approval. It is shocking but not surprising. Ignorance reigns supreme here lately with those on the left and deliberately so. They do not want to deflate their euphoria about electing a messiah of their own. And, the media, except for Fox and the internet, has been in collusion with this regime. Imagine how quickly he would have tanked if people were forced to see the truth about things. At least I want to believe that, but I have to admit, everytime I have a conversation with an avid supporter of his, they really do get a glazed over look before trash tumbles out of their mouth.
This is much like an abusive relationship where the abused continues to glorify their abuser with all kinds of excuses and self denial. Right up until the death knell.
4. TLM: “We had it in the bag, but the President lost it for us with his lame egocentric speech.”
I don’t think we ever ‘had it in the bag,’ and dum dum went over there and made a huge fool of himself anyway, as he was dispatched by Daley.
8. Pops in Vienna. You are spot on.
25. vivo.
“The REAL story behind the Olympics 2016 bid…”
What’s the frequency vivo?
Rahm and company should/would have checked out what the U.S.O.C. was doing. If they didn’t, that’s incompetence; if they did and ignored the evidence of problems, that’s incompetence.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
Common guys. You are over reaching here. There is nothing unusual about a Famous person helping his home town get the Olympics. For conservatives to blow that horn makes them seem partisan and irrelevant.
The problem in my opinion was that Obamas speech was bad. The content didn’t match the audience. A mostly non-American crowd does not give a hoot about Obamas sentimental feelings toward Chicago. It was speech writing amateur night. Also the delivery felt like, he read it for the first time. And he didn’t project any genuine enthusiasm for the project.
Agree in all but a priority or two, AND I certainly don’t know what you mean by a needed “change in national attitudes about unlawful entry”. ALL entry to my house by state bureau-rats should be unlawful period.
You might add a plank to your platform to ELIMINATE ALL ENTITLEMENTS (including minimum wage) which will put the debt problem away in one year, and put the entire population back to work (including me at 71).
Well, anyway, at least 2/3 of all entitlements…
70% of the country agree with the 10 ideas. Our republican leaders are incapable of articulating these and our liberal leaders lead us in the opposite direction on all counts.
All of us in Middle America are scratching our heads in disbelief.
Re: IOC Fiasco
The choice of city for hosting the Olympic games can be no more important to the US than which city hosts the Super Bowl. The stunning aspect of this episode is Obama’s lack of judgment and sense of liberal elitism. He allowed himself, as President of the United States, to prostrate himself in supplication to the functionaries of the IOC.
Those functionaries read Obama correctly; they could summon him to Copenhagen and humiliate him in front of the world. He was blinded to this outcome by the common liberal conceit that the world rightly dislikes regular Americans, but they are better than us and in fact Obama doesn’t like most Americans either. He did not grasp that to the anti-American left, he may be Left but he is still an American.
The decision was trivial, the humilation to our head of state was not.
It’s perpetual campaign mode, perpetually. What Obama and his followers are genetically incapable of grasping is that Obama’s much-vaunted campaigning worked for only about 50% of the country when it was at its pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain, hopenchangy, all things to half the people best. People who have the real thing on their native soil tend to be unimpressed by styrofoam pseudo-Greek columns and similar trappings. The rest of the world was on board only to the extent that supporting Obama would allow them to stick a pointed stick into America’s eye, just for the anti-American fun of it. Obama is also genetically incapable of understanding that having europeans who are willing to profess fondness for America (an abstraction) is very, very different from europeans willing to act in America’s, and against their, national interests. Of course, Obama does not represent the national interests of the United States, so it’s rather difficult for him to embrace–or care about–that concept.
So when Mr. And Mrs. Compelling, Post-Racial, Hopenchangey Narrative showed up in Copenhagen to deliver their compelling post-racial hopenchangey narratives, they were working a scam that worked once only, and only on a group of Americans who wanted to be conned for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with rational policy or philosophy. Even significant portions of that group no longer buy the con and many others are beginning to understand that they were the marks of all time. Only the terminally Kool-Aid infused are still narrative-enthralled, the rest having rather more practical concerns about such mundane issues as national security, the economy, and avoiding immolation in nuclear fireballs.
Better yet, Michelle Obama is becoming more and more Hillary Clintonesque. Witness her heart-wrenching story about watching on TV, from the lap of her father, Olympic greats like the sprinter Carl Lewis. Unfortunately, she was 20 when Carl Lewis first appeared in the Olympics. Daddy must have had a substantial lap. One can only imagine the lamp throwing, obscenity laced rage filling the White House when the news of Chicago’s fall was announced. Don’t those IOC rubes know who Mr. and Mrs. Compelling, Post Racial Hopenchangey narrative are?!
We’re in for three more years of abject misery as we stew in our own inattention to our own best interests. Oh yes, things can–and will-get worse, and few are going to believe it’s George W. Bush’s fault. We can only hope that the Republicans aren’t stupid enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by continuing to act like slightly more conservative and slightly less fiscally irresponsible Democrats.
Whacky world. Obama gets virtually no flak for turning his back on Israel, Honduras and the Iranian people, embracing the mullahs and Venezuela, angering allies in Europe but is being riddled for a failed PR stunt. So be it.
I disagree with the notion that Obama should not have gone.
The Narcissist-In-Chief had hours for bread and circuses and all of 25 minutes for McChrystal.
Jeff, did you think it was a good idea to concede Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran, as did the The Narcissist-In-Chief.
Surrender in Iraq would have led to chaos in the middle east and the destruction of America’s reputation. Obama’s position on that issue alone should have disqualified him from serious consideration for POTUS. His weakness on Iran and Afghanistan was perfectly predictable.
DougF @19 has nailed Obama.
I don’t think any Congress or President will be brave enough to do what needs to be done to reign in entitlements. No one has ever done anything to reform Medicaid/Medicare except cut doctors payments. Soon there will be millions of new baby boomers in the programs saying why should I have to sacrifice my entitlements to pay for budget deficits — and they will be the most reliable group of voters. They expect government to take care of them. This ship may have to hit the iceberg before people really understand the danger we are in.
I thought that when the spinmeister of hopenchange was elected to office that we would repair all of the supposed damage inflicted by American foreign policy. The lion was supposed to lie with the lamb and every nation would suddenly embrace the United States. We were instructed that we were entering a new era, a post U.S., post colonial, internationalism.
While Obama was busy beating swords into plowshares, the Iranians were busy building nukes and the Taliban launched new offensives. As Obama was scurrying around apologizing for America, dictators were rejoicing with new found energies and excitement.
The world realizes that Obama is a buffoon and the latest rejection in Copenhagen is not so much a repudiation of the spinmeister as it is an indication of the international political pulse. America is the heavy hitter on the team that Obama has relegated into the role of the water boy, so it’s no surprise that the international community regards us as such.
Obama has effectively turned America from the “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere” into a third-rate banana republic.
Dr. Hanson, another excellent article. I hope your readership increases. The more people who are exposed to your work, the closer we come to a cure for stupidity. Thank You!
Two Words explain it all.
Baby Boomers
Sorry about that.
Your ten suggestions very closely resemble Glenn Beck’s five pledges. It’s nice to see common themes of common sense coming out of so many.
Once again, one of my favorite reads of the week. Thanks.
Excellent diagnosis of the catastrophe.
As a radical, pOlpOtbama has already done a lot he can be proud of.
Another little effort and the only force in the world that can defend Freedom will be down.
Or so he “thinks”.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment
PS I am astonished that our Professor didn’t mention the Roman sentence about
PANEM ET CIRCENSES
(as an answer to “what do the people want ?”) while speaking about the Olympic bid…
14. Poor Citizen:
Peter writes: And as usual, PC misses the entire point of the article again.
VDH: “I am worried that the U.S. will be crippled with a weak, unpopular executive, as happened to Bush (35% approvals) in 2007-8.”
You are confusing lack of popularity with weakness and lack of respect. When the credit crunch hit in September ’08, the publicly unpopular Bush snapped his fingers and the world’s leaders flew to Washington to sit at his feet because he was The President Of The United States and that was where the solutions were going to come from. Privately, he was feared and respected. He did things. He made things happen.
I am waiting for the day when Obama calls for a summit and the world’s leaders go, “Sorry, dude. We have to delint our sweaters.” I’m waiting for world leaders to go to Washington via Dallas so they can first talk to someone who actually did something. Obama is truly weak. He is incompetent on more levels than I can count. He is truly executive in title only. Which means that right now, there is no president of the United States.
Do not ever confuse Obama’s coming unpopularity with Bush’s. Bush was unpopular for the things he did that were monumentally difficult. Obama will be equally unpopular for the inability to do even the simplest things.
Rio is in the southern hemisphere… Much more likely not to have the nuclear fallout from the ruined American cities that is inevitable once the worlds champion of state sponsored terrorism acquires nuclear weapons.
The clock is ticking for Chicago, it will be nuclear rubble before 2016.
At least Jimmy’s sweater wasn’t moth eaten.
Excellent suggestions for a way forward – I don’t expect Obama to take any of them. I believe he feels his agenda is working — Alinsky for tactics and George Soros for ideology. Actually things are turning out pretty much as Soros wanted. Change the US so that it no longer had the heft to act unlaterally, that sure is happening. Destroy the banking system so that a few priveleged countries (like the US and Britain) are no longer controlling everything from the center – yeah that’s well on the way.
Still to come – increase the power of international organizations, such as the hapless U.N., and begin a program of increased income redistribution from the rich countries to the poor ones.
“7. John:
This should be a manifesto for a 2010 candidate.”
MANIFESTO!
Great article.
I wish I could feel more optimistic about the bloodbath that is going to come…
1) To start with, the US had no chance whatsoever at getting the Olympic assignement – from the starters it was clearly that Rio will get it, for many and generally right reasons. However, this fact doesn’t make Obama appear other than his usual superficial & arrogant – showing up in Danemark for a few hours (when Lula had been already there for days), then delivering his usual, self-centered crap showed him completely disconnected and contemptuous with that international body.
2) Now the plus side of this is the fact that more and more people, here and oversees, see him in clearer colors, and these colors are not at all flattering: vain, haughty, incompetent, unable to establish priorities, tone-deaf at people’s real concerns, etc. etc.
The 2010/2012 American electoral process cannot but benefit from Obama’s Olympic Games failure and from other resembling achievements yet to come – mister Obama, you’re wondefully helping America to take in right electoral decisions, keep working at that!
19. DougF
“Elections have consequences as they say. I sincerely hope that this guy flames out in the most spectacular fashion possible(short of big bombs going off). No reprieves , no cynical ‘triangulations’, just a complete fall down and can’t get up Presidency. With any luck he will take his media enablers, his elitist supporters, his crypto race-based politics, and the likes of Acorn down with him.’
I agree with you 100%!
From the NY Times, regarding the flight home from Copenhagen:
“A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House.”
Now, that made my morning.
Look, Barry has to discover the world won’t do his bidding every time he flashes a smile and Michelle shows her ripped biceps. It’s something he clearly didn’t learn when he was growing up and surrounded by guilty white libs who oohhed and ahhed over everything he did. “Naive” and “narcissistic” are not traits I want in a CinC.
I’m happy that that the WH feel “stunned bewilderment” over the Olympics. Time to grow up, buttercup. What I fear is that Obambi will feel “stunned bewilderment” when Tel Aviv gets hit with a nuke or another terrorist attack occurs in the US.
Any chance that Dr. Hanson would run for President? I’m serious.
“Didn’t the CNN reaction to Chicago’s loss come across a bit arrogant? It was as if the reporters thought Madrid and Tokyo were villages somewhere in redneck country–you know, where people cling to their national history and accomplishments. There was not a bit of graciousness or class in the reactions I saw, and those reporters are the face of America abroad.”
I don’t watch CNN, ever, but the couple of clips I couldn’t avoid seeing on the internet featured black Americans looking dumbstruck at the news. Increasingly, it seems to me that black America has been counting on Obama to bring home the (illegal but free) bacon, and every time he fails, they look like a bunch of school kids who just had their soccer ball taken away by a big bully.
Do we really think that African American talking heads on a loser-network are the image of America that people over there currently have?
good article VDH
democracy doesn’t work when stupid people vote
…people are not equal. (in rights yes, but that is where it stops) …so when people who add nothing but carbon dioxide and fecal matter (don’t pay taxes and probably never will) get the same standing as people who work and produce and pay taxes. then you have a very unfair system.
the government is supposed to work for the people, while not abusing individual rights. the constitution was written persicely to prevent the non-productive elements to control the system. but by straying from the constitution the non-producers are getting unfair standing in the USA
Re #22 klrtz1, “The violence, filth and corruption there would have given America’s prestige a black eye that would last for years.”
Actually, most violent crimes in Chicago are committed by blacks and Latinos, in black and Latino neighborhoods. Sorry if that sounds racist, but it’s a statistical fact. White ethnic and yuppie/upper-middle class are virtually crime free. Also a statistical fact.
And Chicago is in fact a very clean city–one of the cleanest big cities in the United States.
The corruption, however, is indeed vast–off the charts. Thank you, Democratic Party.
That said, and speaking as a resident of Cook County, I’m glad that Chicago didn’t the Olympics. Because of the corruption and what that would entail.
As a side note: I’m mildly surprised didn’t blame Baby Boomers for the failure of the Olympic bid. He blames them for just about everything else.
Dems know how unpopular tax hikes are to the middle class so expect an avalanche of stealth taxes in the coming years. Everything they are considering is a hidden tax, so they are basing their political future on how stupid and uninformed we are as americans.
Two typos/corrections:
White ethnic and yuppie/upper-middle class NEIGHBORHOODS are virtually crime free.
and
I’m mildly surprised VDH didn’t blame Baby Boomers for the failure of the Olympic bid.
I accept the VDH platform in total with one exception and one addition. My exception is Social Security. If there is one issue that will bring people to the barricades, that is it. I would ensure its funding by law and criminalize any attempt to use it as a slush fund for congresscritters.
I would add one specific spending cut. All goverment entities will instantly be cut by 50 percent with the exception of Defense which will be frozen, war or no war, for two years. The goal would be to start eliminating useless departments such as, Energy, Education, etc. Energy will become a part of Homeland Security with the mandate to reduce operating expenditures by 50%. Education will become the province of the States with no additional Federal funding. I would take the Fed completely out of education oversight. The leftist domination of our campuses will start to dry up almost immediately afterward.
I have been pushing the VDH platform for years. Excellent, Doc!
78. bluekygirl:
He would be the ultimate outsider!
#71 Dannyfrommiddletown
You wrote:
I agree, the plan of the internationalist subversives is working.
The moderate pundits’ idea that Obama is “making mistakes” is due to a basic lack of knowledge about how the subversives think and act.
Every move of the subversives is INTENDED to make America weaker and we will see the end of this tunnel only when a leader will emerge who will be able to denounce SUCH INTENTIONS and will call the American People to defend Freedom.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
A great article. And I agree with all 10 points needed in our next leader. What a great list. It’s going to be difficult to find someone like that, but it would be great because that would be a Reagan like individual. Our country needs someone like that to straighter out the mess that’s made of this, especially in the last 10 months.
But the thing we really need that won’t happen is to clear out the real culprits in this Christopher Dodd, and Barney Frank. Without them the banking crisis would not have happened. In case you’ve been under a rock for the last 5 years or so they’re the one’s that got through legislation pushing lenders into giving loans to people who didn’t stand a chance of being able to pay them back. And if you doubt that, do a little research before you just defend these yahoo’s. It guys like this that never should have in office in the first place.
1) Fiscal sanity that leads to federal spending freezes and a balanced budget that in turn soon allows a paying down of the debt.
Sorry, VDH. Not going to happen. In fact, it is MUCH more likely that we will be given more and more and more “cram down” legislation, while we have a one party putsch dominating our cultural landscape.
The far left has the reins, they own our information stream, they have the ability to spin through radical ideas that would otherwise never get close to our doorstep.
This is not to be heard to complain that a Democrat or a Republican is in a particular seat, it is saying that the furthest reaches of the far left political spectrum currently have the reins.
ACORN thuggery and ward heeler backroom fixes are the order of the day. Our proposed fiscal legislation won’t even be read, we are simply under the thumb of leftist “bosses” who have “clout”.
They are in bed with the unions, because unions give the appearance of lower middle class muscle and toughness to the otherwise soft, squishy, Prissy Proletariat of academia, entrenched media and Hollywood.
The Prissy Proletariat runs interference for the thuggery and graft, for the fraud and hypocrisy, for the money grab that is leftist politics in this land of ours.
We are under its thumb and we can shed a tiny light on it in our underground communications system from time to time, but we don’t have a single, solitary, charismatic leader around whom we can galvanize. We are splintered, beaten down and soon to be overwhelmed with tax debt that will keep us down.
We can’t fight leftism, because we don’t have the discipline to first stop fighting each other. We don’t a Reagan to charm us back to fidelity of purpose. We lack leadership and force of personality…and we are in for the fight of our lives. The Prissy Proletariat will NEVER give an opponent a fair shake…and we can’t carve one out for ourselves with the truth…with honor, with dignity and with grace, because…those things aren’t important any longer.
After this inexplicable Olympics screw up, President Obama needs good publicity so bad that the next time he successfully ties his own shoes it will be front page news at the New York Times and the lead story on the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening news programs: “Obama Wins Again”. If he ties his own tie too the story will be pushed for a full week.
Seriously, I bet there are a more than a few “journalists” thinking hard about what they can present as an Obama success to help cover up this fiasco.
78: I second the motion, Can we get a committee together? MAYBE do some fund raising in Bergen County NJ. Not likely. The problem with the political process is – it’s rigged. McCain is now building a coalition of what he calls Centrists who can loose the next election like he did. He is looking for Republicans who can compromise with the far left and work with people like Pilosi and Reid. He is old, senile, far to the left of center and looks pretty much like any of the other 99 dinosaurs masquerading as public servants in the Senate. The system is fixed, set up to screen out people like Mr Hanson.
The Republican party is like the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. They are paid to lose. The KGB built an infrastructure in this country that is entrenched.
“I maybe crazy but I am just the lunatic you are looking for. Turn out the lights.” You know the rest of the song.
My Royal Oil of Enlightenment
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 9/30/09
I am your crypto-tribal king,
Prostrate! And kiss my ring!
I am loyal and deferent to my own,
Give! All you’ve got to my throne!
As your king, I give whom I deign worthy perks,
Agree, agree, agree! How now a republic works!
And I eat my enemy’s flesh,
All who don’t with me mesh!
I am smarter than you by virtue of my lordly gilded chair,
Obey, obey, obey! Because I prodigalize with much care!
I care to teach you: To my persona be loyal,
And you might earn a drop of my royal oil!
My royal oil fixes quagmires in your brain,
Like rights unalienable you thought remain!
Au contraire, the noblest modern achievement for mankind,
Is to allege your soul to mystic tyranny and tribalism divine!
I AM your mesmerizing tribal chief, mystic tyranny entwined,
No better god on earth will you in life be ever blessed to find!
Abandon hope, all ye who enter this New Old Age,
Better yet reason, and you’ll be the king’s own sage!
Or jester, as king I claim: It really matters not which,
When history’s greats for pissants have been switched!
What Obama was or wasn’t was obvious way before the election to anybody that wasn’t stoned out of his mind. The guy is a lightweight, shallow, empty suit, with a giant ego, and flawed judgement; untested, inexperienced, insulated, and alien. It takes a bit more then soaring rhetoric to lead. It takes a bit more then narcissistic hubris to unite a country as diverse as this. And Obama never demonstrated the willingness, nor the talent to do that. That is entirely the fault of the mainstream media who defaulted on their responsibilities. It would take a person much stronger than Obama not to believe the fawning bilge that spewed forth from the media stroking an ego that doubled and redoubled in size like an uncontrolled malignant growth during the campaign and ever since.
Obama is adolescent in his inabiity to accept criticism. He is childlike in his habit of always blaming others for his own shortcomings. Most of all, he is unprepared to be President of the United States. His talents might be suitable for Chicago-land with its legacy of corruption and its expanding cast of dubous characters (Wright, Farrakhan, Ayers, Acorn, etc, etc, etc), but as President he is rapdidly becoming an embarassment, and a failure. Woe is us. Woe is us.
Republicans are too stupid to strategically take advantage of this, but the Obama Presidency can (and should) taint the reputation of the following 3 groups for decades to come :
1) Left-wing Democrats
2) Blacks and their blind tendency to vote 90% Democrat
3) The Media/Hollywood
kirtz1 is absolutely right. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to this come to pass just as he predicts.
To true carla. Most of those who voted against him did know he was tragically under qualified for the job; there just weren’t enough of us.
They were able to spread fud (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to get what
they wanted. And what they wanted was a guy with the connections to
be his own man; to the almighty OZ. Just don’t look behind the curtain.
Forget the Rose Garden strategy, President Obama should resort to the Oval Office one, sit at his desk and let the World come to him. It will. Be a 21st Century LBJ: call, E-mail, text, Twitter, write, fax. Take care of business. Forget the almost daily 10,000 word speeches (he delivers, but what ghosts are cranking these out?). As Eleanor Roosevelt said about JFK, “More Courage, less Profile.”
“I don’t know how much American news the Olympic selection committee receives, but if they saw any of the gun-toting mobs of tea baggers holding signs of the President’s face Photoshopped with a Hitler mustache, it probably wouldn’t do much to help them forget that the last time the United States hosted the Summer Olympics, a right-wing domestic terrorist (Eric Rudolph) planted a bomb in the middle of the Centennial Olympic Park.”
http://thismodernworld.com/4937
What do you all think about that?
I think the OSC was worried about Left-wing terrorists inspired by the Munich Olympics.
Prof. Hanson:
I will not gainsay your list of ten: it is very good. I would add two additional items that need doing — but that I don’t expect our politicians to go for:
1. general re-districting without all the gerrymandered districts, or at least working in that direction, and
2. a real handle on campaign financing and lobbying.
Fred LaSor
Minden, NV
Gee, jharp, I’m thinking the IOC might have been influenced by a more current event and one that actually took place in Chicago. I’m talking about the video which shows members of the community Obama has organized beating a kid to death with railroad ties.
They might have found that rather pertinent.
And again, I ask jharp why he is opposed to poor Brazilians getting jobs and money?
I believe jharp must be a racist.
Perhaps giving all involved a T-shirt may cheer everyone up:
http://www.zazzle.com/chicago_olympics_i_went_to_copenhagen_tshirt-235800536868561804
Ah, yes, you do have to feel for the left *snicker*.
They were all geared up to have multiple Obama-induced orgasms for a week. If Obama had triumphed, does anybody think they would be presenting it as a triumph for America as a whole? No way! It would have been an opportunity for them to tell us again and again that the entire world has the same teenybopper crush on Bambi as they do.
Except the world doesn’t. So now, instead of gloating and strutting, they’re reduced to:
1. it’s Bush’s fault!
2. it’s the wingnuts fault!
3. racist, racist, racist!
Because nothing is, or ever can be, Obama’s fault.
Donna V.:
“Gee, jharp, I’m thinking the IOC might have been influenced by a more current event and one that actually took place in Chicago. I’m talking about the video which shows members of the community Obama has organized beating a kid to death with railroad ties.
They might have found that rather pertinent.
And again, I ask jharp why he is opposed to poor Brazilians getting jobs and money?
I believe jharp must be a racist.
Yeah right. Even the dimmest of bulbs see the absurdity of your reasoning. And what that has to do with Obama only God knows.
I’m happy for the Brazilians. I’d rather we got it though. We need it more than them. They didn’t just suffer the wreckage of George Bush for 8 years.”
And it has nothing to do with race. And you know it.
So the mystery remains, why did Obama think he should risk presidential and national capital in such ambiguous circumstances? Ego? Sloppy prep work? Payback to pals? Hubris?
Because his only real intent is to denigrate and destroy all American traditions. The demeaning of the office of the US Presidency, along with the outright slap at American tradition (that would NEVER have a US President do this), was the actual purpose of this trip – not getting the Olympics for Chicago. The Precedent went to Copenhagen BECAUSE it was the un-American move and BECAUSE it helped to cut the White House down again. This attempt to destroy our traditions and tear apart our unique structure is all that The Precedent ever focuses on. He is out for revenge against the US and the West and that is all that lies behind his actions.
Many people think that The Precedent is sad because he failed in Copenhagen, but the fact is that he is very happy about how things turned out. He doesn’t care about personal humiliation (as we can all see, since he constantly humiliates himself with his mind-bending stupidity {“profit and earnings ration”} but that never stops him from jumping on TV and acting as if he actually has a brain). The Precedent is perfectly happy to humiliate himself in the process of bringing humiliation to the White House and America.
Look back over everything The Precedent has done and you will find this common thread running through. The Precedent is a political suicide bomber who has one goal – to exact revenge on the US for the sahme and humiliation he feels we have brought on his people (the third world) through our productivity, wealth and overachievement. He will gladly sacrifice himself, so long as the US is injured in the process of his political explosion. Once people realize that this is his motivation, all of his seemingly moronic moves begin to make sense.
“I am not a fan of the Obama agenda. But I am don’t want an impotent Commander in Chief abroad for three very dangerous years to come.”
That ship sailed on November 4, 2008…Obama’s weakness is not externally thrust upon him…it comes from within him. His world view simply doesn’t work and he is too arrogant and self-absorbed to realize it or care. We will pay for it…elections have consequences and we are stuck with him for 3 more years.
The problem, jharp, with your description, is that it is entirely untrue. What you have done is taken several descriptive adjectives and linked them all together.
First, the adjectives are false. And second, you can’t link them together, as you’ve done..in your attempt to suggest that ALL people who dissent and disagree with Obama’s economic policies are ‘guntoting mobs’. Try again, and this time, use valid descriptions and links.
There were no ‘gun-toting mobs’. Indeed, the Tea Parties were not at any time, a mob. Nor did this group carry guns. There were three cases of individuals carrying guns, but these were 2nd Amendment statements, not to use ..against?
The references to Hitler? Do you mean Pelosi and others reference to people who criticize as nazis, as unAmerican, as astroturf, as mobs? Do you refer to the many times Bush was imagized as Hitler? Dissent is a right, and if someone – not all – but someone – wants to compare Obama to Hitler, a fascist, that’s their opinion.
I myself consider Obama a pathological narcissist – quite a dangerous psychological state. And I consider his agenda of destroying the middle class freedoms and inserting a govt run socialist infrastructure a diabolical act.
Try again, and this time, use valid adjectives to describe legitimate dissent.
<>
This statement amazes me. Obama told us and showed us exactly who and what he is and what he stands for all throughout his campaign. What also amazed me is how, the day after the election, all the talking heads talked as if nothing had changed when EVERYTHING had changed. We got change, all right, but nobody who was paying attention should have been surprised. It was all there to see, hiding in plain sight.
“In many ways, we are now seeing the Obama who was carefully hidden from us while he was campaigning.”
This statement amazes me. Obama told us and showed us exactly who and what he is and what he stands for all throughout his campaign. What also amazed me is how, the day after the election, all the talking heads talked as if nothing had changed when EVERYTHING had changed. We got change, all right, but nobody who was paying attention should have been surprised. It was all there to see, hiding in plain sight.
Gun toting mob? jharp you are delusional. Take the WHOLE PILL from now on,
Usually love VDH but professor, just what are you smoking? What makes you think Obama cares about any of the things you mention? Anti-corruption? Incompetence? He would have to fire himself first and then that leaves us with Biden or some other doof that is even WORSE. No, the cavalry is not coming except in the constant opposition and ultimate defeat of this absurdist poseur and his dwindling but still numerous minions.
100. Donna V.:
Those violent kids were actually Republican plants. Ann Coulter said so. Duh!
Smart move by R.W.Burke (#91) to copyright his poem. I’m sure lots and lots of people are going to want to quote from it, or even take credit for it.
Its funny how our political system forbids the politico’s
the thing they seek most: ego gratification. Left or Right,
they covet the new names they want forever attached
to their double barrelled names:
(lucky) Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great society,
FDR’s New deal, Clinton’s Welfare Reform (!?) etc.
Does it improve anyone’s like or make life better? No-
It makes it all worse: Let them eat cake.
It only lures them and their respective machine’s
into further and deeper corruption; they fret and worry about
all the things left that they don’t or can’t control
#54 JL, it was real important to Valerie Jarrett:
she owns a lot of slum lord property in Chicago,
and she and others like her were hoping to get premium
prices for the[ir] land, kick the tenents off and get various
stadiums named after them. They needed this to run as a
continuing story of corruption, that could never be laid at Obama’s feet,
and run as the story of ‘mean spirited republicans who don’t want
young atheletes to succeed’ etc, and serve as cover for all the other
felonies this administration is running. Al that was required was the go-ahead from the IOC. Schade.
#41, Mike2, 0bama has an irrational fear of the planet Saturn; it has been
dominating the night sky since the summer when the bloom came off his rose,
not like it was when the more Royal and Imperial Jupiter that was so much more
generous to his fantasy image last year. Think I’m making it up? 0bama said “We need to pass this Health Care Bill NOW, The stars have aligned!”, but in fact Jupiter had already disappeared from the sky and he was trying to get a line of credit in on it early for when it returns. These are the crowd we are dealing with.
#68, J in StL, #53 Mr Lucky, ditto
Chicago, welfare central, was not a good place for an international event. I don’t think the “teabaggers” had anything to do with the decision. chicago is just nasty.
Rio is perfect!! It will be grand!!
No reference throughout this commentary of the real reason Obama HAD to go to Copenhagen.
David Axelrod, with his long close ties to the Daley Machine and his record of brilliant campaign strategies, has been the key man in the advance planning for the Chicago Games. Firms in which he has financial connections have been working on the project for years.
Axelrod, Daley, Emanuel, Ayers all had vested interest in a Chicago choice, and were salivating over the payola they would be pouring into their off-sore accounts. The Montreal Olympics mess would be penny-ante compared their 2016 wet dreams.
Even if Obama had the common sense to realize that his presence would do no more than add to the IOC’s delight in humiliating the arrogant Americans. there was no way he could fail to do what his puppetmasters demanded. “How high, David?”
Now, with his Chicago Rip-off plans blown, Axelrod can devote his full attention to destroying America’s free enterprise system and turning us into the People’s Soviet Republic.
As has been observed, the Office of President ages its occupant in varying, but definite, ways seen in changes.
What can now be seen are accelerating physical changes in this President, differences in facial composure, a drastic “tightening” of what is called “body language,” responsiveness, etc.
Whether or not these changes delineate deterioration remains to be observed, but it certainly seems to have begun early.
Are others observing this?
R. Richard Schweitzer
Once again, Dr Hanson, thank you for your perceptive comments. They are on point and succinct. I fear for the future. I fear that the agenda of the President and those around him, chosen by him, are of a different mind, reckless and utterly without regard to anything but creating a dependent voting majority, one which will, they think, insure that control of the levers of government will remain in their hands. In this regard they are gravely mistaken. By destroying incentive, they will never be able to satisfy the appetite of the monster they will have created. It will turn on them as all such experiments have in the past.
The outcry from the TV etc is degrading. People all over the world see this reaction. It’s as if we think we privileged over everyone else and cannot believe the IOC did not fall for Obama’s “charms”,puke. His speech alone would have had me voting against the US. The whole affair is comical, and degrading.
Wonder if Oprah is eating her way through Denmark, so she can come back and tell us how to lose weight again…
#25, That piece of information all the more reason to believe that O is an ego maniac and an amateur. Shouldn’t the White House have had the background on the political environment that they were trying to influence? Of course, his charisma can overcome any liability. More than the current violence in Chicago, I think the poll of citizens evenly divided on wanting the Olympics might have been a factor.
Why would IOC award to a city who is lukewarm?
Professor Hanson,
Powerful article. One more thing I would like to post is to create “term limits” on our Federal Judiciary as our Constitution did not expect our Judiciary to become so powerful as to legislate from the bench, completely ignoring the will of the people and consent of the governed. This would at least ensure that radicalism from the bench be held in check.
I believe that after we are finished with our experiment in Obama and his radical politics and corrupt machine, that the lid will be put on and shut tight for a few generations on far left leadership in our Country.
“I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago. As I wrote on NRO’s corner, I know I was.”
Why? Did you want the citizens of Chicago to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in extra taxes? Did you want neighborhoods and businesses bulldozed for one-time-use buildings that would themselves be razed soon after the Olympics? Did you want to see the drama of Chicago’s politicians and politically-connected businessmen working with Obama to suck more money from the federal treasury to make up their Olympics hosting losses?
The “prestige” of hosting the summer Olympics is vastly outweighed by the costs. If I were a big city mayor, the Olympics committee would have to offer at least a billion dollars up front before I’d consider hosting.
Mr. Hanson, having danced with the truth, is back to thinking that our boy king is simply incompetant and can be saved by better advisors.
But the actions we are witessing make no sense in any context even remotely similarly to the way this country has conducted its affairs since 1938/1939.
We aren’t talking about retail changes, we are witnessing a wholesale dismantling of every single principle that has made the United States a world power.
It isn’t too late to stop it, but it won’t happen unless wise men like Mr. Hanson stop keeping their fingers crossed that the little manchurian is really just another Jimmy Carter.
It’s much much worse than that, and every bit of evidence demonstrates it.
jharp: “What do you all think about that?”
The same thing we think about all the ignorant crap you write: Irrelevant, meaningless, racist B.S. from a seditious subversive socialist parasite. You’re such a goober.
Looks like most people here (PM) have understood what happened in Denmark (IOC vs USOC) and went off on a tangent to relieve the stress . . .
For Chicago, a sharp rise in violent student deaths during the past three school years – most from shootings off school property – have been a tragedy and an embarrassment.
Before 2006, an average of 10-15 students were fatally shot each year. That climbed to 24 fatal shootings in the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year and 34 deaths and 290 shootings last school year.
First jharp throws this dimwitted quote at us:
“I don’t know how much American news the Olympic selection committee receives, but if they saw any of the gun-toting mobs of tea baggers holding signs of the President’s face Photoshopped with a Hitler mustache, it probably wouldn’t do much to help them forget that the last time the United States hosted the Summer Olympics, a right-wing domestic terrorist (Eric Rudolph) planted a bomb in the middle of the Centennial Olympic Park.”
And then he goes hissy boo hoo when I suggest that if the IOC was influenced by any scene of American violence, it probably would have been the one of Chicago gangs beating each other to death. You know, “the Republican plants.” LOL!
Even the dimmest of bulbs see the absurdity of your reasoning wails jharp. Oh, yeah.
That’s why when I’m down in Chicago, I’m extra careful of which neighborhoods I go into. ‘Cause, damn, God forbid I run into one of those crowds of gun-totin’ tea party people. They’ve hurt and trampled and killed and shot – well, how many people, jharp? Name ‘em. How many acts of violence have they actually committed? Besides biting off a fin- oh, no wait, wrong side. And smashing in Pittsburg storefronts and – oops, that was the Left again.
Absurdity of my position? Jharp, do you just lean forward and puke directly on the keyboard?
And it has nothing to do with race. And you know it.
And 95% of the criticisms of Obama have nothing to do with race. And you know it.
So drop the race card, buttercup, or become used to seeing your own favorite weapon used against you.
Vivo, you’re missing the point as usual. President Obama plus with the ever Marxist companions of Michelle Obama & Oprah Winfrey went to Copehagen personally to persuade the Olympic officials that Chicago is the perfect place for the 2016 Olympics; Obama arrogantly believed his own press that his words could convince anyone of anything on his so-called charisma alone. However, Chicago was kicked out after the first round.
All of this illustrates Obama will lose on more substantial issues as normal American are rejecting ObamaCare, Cap & Trade is dead, Card Check is dead, & the upcoming Amnesty 2.0 faces the same opposition. President Obama is all about campaigning, but empty when it comes to governing. He actively campaigned agaigst WE AMERICANS this Summer with ObamaCare & sent out his SEIU Purple Shirt thugs.
President Obama has no credibility as his lies are starting to pile up behind him. He is an empty suit self-absorbed narcissist dictator wannabe thug, but he is not POTUS material.
Obama’s House of Cards are falling down, yet the man himself sees nothing. Rainbows & unicorns…
To not celebrate choice of Rio is racist. Congratulations, Rio!
I am a little upset the natural disaster that is Samoa took a back seat to the man-caused disaster in Copenhagen. instead of dealing with Samoa (an American Territory), Obama flees to Denmark. I submit that Samoa is the new Katrina.
Obama obviously doesn’t like Pacific islanders.
http://templeofmut.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/teaching-tea-party-online-activism-samoa-is-the-new-katrina/
126. Donna V.:
“And 95% of the criticisms of Obama have nothing to do with race. And you know it.”
But I’m confused . . . Glen said Obama has a deep-sated hatred for white people . . .said he was a racist . . . Rush plays Barack the Magic Negro song . . . calls him a Halfrican . . . everyone says he’s from Kenya . . . everyone here calls him a boy . . . so . . . the Olympics not about race, that requires no jump whatsoever . . . it’s logical and obvious on its face . . . nothing more than third-grade nya nya nya nya nya . . . but this other stuff . . . No, no, I’m afraid we’re not going to drop it . . . . We’re going to keep pummeling you with your racism just as long as you keep doing it . . . relentlessly pound away at conservatives as racist for two reasons, first, because so many of you are, and second, because it’s working. You go with socialist. We’ll go with racist. Good luck.
Top Ten Reasons Chicago Didn’t Get the Olympics
10. Dead people can’t vote at IOC meetings
9. Obama distracted by 25 min meeting with Gen. McChrystal
8. Who cares if Obama couldn’t talk the IOC into Chicago? He’ll be able to talk Iran out of nukes.
7. The impediment is Israel still building settlements.
6. Obviously no president would have been able to accomplish it.
5. We’ve been quite clear and said all along that we didn’t want the Olympics.
4. This isn’t about the number of Olympics “lost”, it’s about the number of Olympics “saved” or “created”.
3. Clearly not enough wise Latina judges on the committee
2. Because the IOC is racist.
1. It’s George Bush’s fault.
Look in to my eyes look right in to the eyes dont look around the eyes look in to the eyes
‘Obama was NOT in Copenhagen , he was never in Copenhagen and neither was Michelle or Oprah so the failure was nothing to do with them and he is still the most wonderful eloquent persuasive man in the world’
three, two , one and your back in the room.
The IOC executed a well deserved “Jesse Owens” on Obama’s massive ego.
The passionate yet humble and legendary Pele or a naive, arrogant ideologue Obama? The choice was easy – there was no contest.
Party on Rio!
“Almost all of Michelle’s statements were heartfelt and well meant”
No they weren’t. She batted her false eyelashes and played the sympathy victim card in her designer gowns. How an intelligent man who I have admired for years, who is so perceptive, could say this, is a huge disappointment.
#125 was mine.
It would be kinda nice if you didn’t have to retype your name and email every single time you post a comment on PJM.
Just sayin’.
OBAMBI ‘But but but erm! ah! erm! ah! The MSM says I am the most erudite sophisticated persuasive man in the world. erm! ah! ah! I am aren’t I darling.’
Michelle no belle “STFU loser’
Obama is not incompetent, as some are hoping. Rather, he is a racist thug with a strong inclination towards Marxism.
A period of steep American decline internationally coupled with economic disaster at home is actually a best case scenario right now.
I **want** to see a weakened BO presidency. I fear a strong BO presidency.
Thanks, VDH, for your writings. This one, like all the others, hits the mark.
I also fear a one-term Obama presidency. I mean, we’ll be forced to suffer decades of a scorned narcissist, no?
So here’s a thought for another article, given the decades of misery we’ll have to endure after BO is resoundingly trounced in 2012: assemble a series of mock newspaper articles highlighting BO’s anti-American rants during this time. Think Carter’s escapades, time 5.
Just a thought.
vivo:
Looks like most people here (PM) have understood what happened in Denmark (IOC vs USOC) and went off on a tangent to relieve the stress . . .
Yeah, like Axelrod said, it was all politics, politics our clueless President and his Administration didn’t bother to understand before he went off tilting at windmills.
It is not tangential to worry about such feckless behavior from your CinC. The Olympics is small potatoes compared to what else is on his plate. Obama acted the same way with the Saudis over much larger issues.
The One is rapidly becoming the embodiment of First and Third world anti-American snark. The new Ugly American, same as the old one: vapid, ignorant and arrogant.
And America is not viewed in the same light as previously. We’re no longer the hard working/can do/do it yourself spirited Yankees of lore. We waltz in at the last minute expecting a trophy for nothin’, for just being there. That’s Obama and Co in Copenhagen — a gaggle of dilettantes waitin’ on a handout, while the whole world laughs at us.
There seems to be a growing news coverage of the blaming game upon USOC for the failed Chicago bid, as the IOC suggested the reason, as if to shift the blame away from Obama’s ego-centric appearance in Copenhagen. Nothing can be further from the truth is that potential cronyism, bribery and violence in Chicago under Daley were very much in the IOC’s minds.
The USOC blame game is just a distraction now being promoted by the liberal mainstreamed media.
Well, 35 or so years ago, MLK stood at the Lincoln Monument and said that he had a dream. Now, we have a man of black heritage in the White House. The 10 points that Dr. Hanson so wisely recommends stands as my dream, since they seem so far-fetched and improbable in our current milieu, just like MLK’s dream was in the 60s. Hopefully, it won’t take 35 years for us to see the realization of these very common sense ideas.
“Our borrowing is out of control.”
The root cause of that is SPENDING is out of control!!!
Dear Victor Davis Hanson:
In your 1859 v 1968 dichotomy I trust us, on the right side of aisle, get to play the role of Lincoln… or, is there something unspoken in your allusion?
None of the other teams, except Germany, which gave Merkel a win with 34% of the vote; and has allowed her to combine her next reign with conservatives, is perhaps in a good position to help Obama? Why not?
Obama’s not responsible for the mess in DC. He put the onus of coming up with earmarked bills on his more experienced democrapic politicians in congress. They’re in disarry, now.
And, instead of think it’s gotta be Dubya, who never allowed anyone brighter than he to keep a White House appointment. And, he really messed things up. Why assume Obama’s hand looks the same?
Sure. He’s hit missteps. But at the next election, the people who win contests to get elected will have to do something about the rules in congress. Whose to say they can’t change the rules? What if ‘being seated the longest’ stops counting for movement ahead? What if ‘young turks’ begin manning the battle lines?
Obama can still be handed a script. What you don’t need is Reid and/or Pelosi writing it. And, the 2010 election cycle should take care of some of these problems.
Congratulations to the Olympics for its wisdom!
Bottoms up!
Obama spent his first months in office convincing the world that America sucks and apologizing for all the evil America has brought to the world. So why would the IOC want the olympics in such a bad, racist, imperialistic country like America?
Where Do Birthers Come From?
Well, it probably started with “Dreams . . .”
In the introduction, Obama acknowledged his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue and events out of chronological order. “He was trying to be careful of people’s feelings,” said Deborah Baker, the editor on the first paperback edition of the book. “The fact is, it all had a sort of larger truth going on that you couldn’t make up.” — basically, Obama’s story as told by Obama, and a few others, has more than a few holes in it — and his relationships are extraordinary.
Well, folks put that information away. Everybody puffs up their resume — no harm — no foul.
Then along came that Muslim thing.
Obama’s sister Maya was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “My whole family was Muslim.”
Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth,” in an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, reciting the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent.”
The whole question of whether Obama was or wasn’t a Muslim began in the Obama camp — then there was a whole series of contradictory reports — no! he isn’t — well, maybe he is — well, maybe he used to be — no! absolutely not! — he’s a committed Christian.
Yeah, but what kind of Christian — he wasn’t quite what I was used to — for 20 years, Obama was a member of a huge black nationalist church, the Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) — its pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, a former Muslim and black nationalist, unabashedly preached a “black” gospel” and “liberation theory.”
And people said — hey! — wait a minute! –WTF!
Then the dozens of different eligibility issues — Obama’s birthplace is not certain — the birth certificate is demonstrably counterfeit — he admits he was a British subject at birth.
And then The Obama File published this list:
Original, vault copy birth certificate — Not released (lawyers’ fees = $2,000,000 ~ birth certificate = $15)
Certification of Live Birth — Released — Counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license — Not released (if one exists)
Obama/Dunham divorce — Released (by independent investigators)
Kindergarten records — Records lost (this is a big one — read two frames)
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School School application — Released (by independent investigators)
Punahou School records — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham divorce — Released (by independent investigators)
Selective Service Registration — Released — Counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released
Passport — Not released and records scrubbed clean by Obama’s terrorism and intelligence adviser.
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament” — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None
Illinois Bar Records — Not released.
Baptism certificate — None
Medical records — Not released
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
The Illinois State Archives told Judicial Watch that they never received any request from Senator Obama to archive any records in his possession.
In 2007, Obama told Tim Russert that his records were “not kept.”
And there’s less on the web every day. In time, the entire Obama body of knowledge will consist of 3 documents — “Dreams From My Father” — “The Audacity of Hope” — and the latest — “Change We Can Believe In” — all written by Barack Hussein Obama or his “ghost-writers.”
Just an accident? I don’t think so.
Obama has lived for almost 50 years without leaving any footprints — none! There is no Obama documentation — no bona fides — no paper trail — nothing.
Being a “Birther” is not about the birth certificate. The birth certificate isn’t the answer. It’s a symbol for all the other stuff that’s just not there.
You wouldn’t hire with a guy with this CV to mow your lawn.
Obama’s complete disregard for the reasonable expectations of the American people to know who and what their leaders are created Birthers — and Obama can make them go away — in a heartbeat.
Obama — release your bona fides. The American People have a right to know who you are, and who sent you.
RUN Victor, Run!!!
VDH in ’12
and second, because it’s working
No, vivo, it isn’t. Are Americans supporting Obamacare more now than in July because liberal commentators have called Obama’s opponents racist? That’s not what the polls show. The word “racist” is devalued because your side has overused it.
A lib calling me, or anybody else, racist, is now as meaningless and stupid an insult as being called a coffee cup or a guitar. Congrats – you’ve taken a formerly powerful word and debased it to the point that the sting is almost entirely gone from it.
140. Bob: What the blame USOC really says is: O is useless, his going to Copenhagen was to appropriate other people’s (USOC) success and glory.
Anybody has half a brain would know it’s Brazil’s turn, Brazil’s coming out party a la China’s 2008 Game.
Anyway, it was absolutely stupid for the POTUS to go to Copenhagen. His wife and Oprah should go as his “special envoy” to lobby for his hometown. If they were successful, he could share their glory; if not, no biggie. But the POTUS himself…?
Looking back, I’ve been part of more than 5,000 presentations to bosses, their bosses, clients and clients’ bosses.
Companies as small as a Yamaha, Brunswick and Ponderosa. As big as GM, Ford, Pepsi, Northwestern Mutual, Bud, Virginia Slims, The Pork Producers, Kelloggs and Pennzoil (Not just oil. Pennzoil). Yep. I wrote it.
While I’ve made my mistakes along the way, I do know a thing or two about presenting.
Generally, for example, when presenting, you can skip your qualifications and your accomplishments. Most of the time it’s a big “who cares”. Which I failed to do here because I thought they might be relevant.
Whether they are or aren’t, though, this is.
I’m talking about The Obama Delegations’ colossal strategic presentation blunder when presenting to the IOC.
They thought they’d sell Chicago by talking about themselves.
They never drilled down into any persuasive, compelling reasons why Chicago was the better choice. Never built a case for Chicago, vis-a-vie the other leading cities.
“We’re all from Chicago” seemed to be their rallying cry.
But, hey, everybody’s from someplace. This strategy had the impact of a limp noodle thrown at the bone crushing blitz of a great middle linebacker.
If I were a member of the IOC, I’d need your absolutely best reasons why I should choose Chicago. Wouldn’t you?
Being able to visit Harpo Studios isn’t one of them. Michell’s $500 haircuts don’t sway me. Obama coming from the most politically corrupt city in the free world doesn’t thrill me.
It was like the Chicago gang thought so much of themselves they expected the IOC members to fall down at their feet, squealing to Oprah, Michelle and Barack,”We are unworthy. Whatever we have is yours.”
The IOC members aren’t stupid.
Actually, it’s much the way Obama views the American people. Because he’s the all knowing, we should swallow every crackpot notion that comes out of his taxpayer money-wasting noggin. What’s dumb isn’t the American people. What’s dumb is the Stimulus. What dumb (and corrupt) is Barack’s attached-at-the hip relationship with Acorn. What’s dumb is the nomination of a ethnocentric bubble headed supreme court judge. What’s dumb is ObamaCare. Dumb is Palosi calling the people who raised concerns about ObamaCare (along with their voices)at town meetings, “Nazis”.
Not to get off topic, but how anyone with an ounce of self respect and critical thinking could fall for BO’s snake oil pile of BS, to me, is unfathomable.
Michelle, of course, I don’t hold accountable for this idiotic presentation because she’s never done it before. The lady with the best no show job in town couldn’t present herself out of a paper bag.
The rest of them, though, need a course in Marketing 101 before they ever waste a couple of million dollars on a boondoggle like this again.
Saul Alinski may have been of the wrong political ilk compared to the average American. Yet, the man was extremely savvy, knowledgeable and well spoken. No ghostwriters touched his manuscripts. Saul wrote the book. For anybody who wants to go down the Marxist road, Mr. Alinsky won’t steer you wrong.
Goodness sakes, it ain’t my cup of tea. But Saul was the real McCoy.
Mr. Obama, our resident President, though, is a horse of a different color.
What we’re dealing with in the Obama administration is people who crave money and power and ally themselves with thugs and dimwitted followers whose life goal is some air-headed idea that the ends justify the means; nothing wrong with stealing elections.
On a level playing field though, they’re rank amateurs.
Maybe what the International Olympic Committee vote showed us, for the first time is this:
When Acorn isn’t around to steal votes, Obama doesn’t emerge as the champ saying quietly to himself. “I am the greatest.”
Instead he’s the chump flying back on the backs of taxpayers like you and me. Sipping a glass of chardonnay as the gentle whine of the jet engines takes him deep into a drop or two of honest reverie.
Mister Obama, by some cruel twist of fate, you were in the right place at the right time and were elected President of the United States. The great speech-maker from Chicago caught political lightning in a bottle.
As Air Force One circles Washington for the final approach, a vision flashes before Obama’s eyes. He sees the last of the wine at the bottom of the glass. And realizes during a few seconds of new synapses racing through his mind that ethically, after all the lying and speeches are done, he doesn’t belong here. Not in this seat on Air Force One. Not in this seat of government.
Tony Rezko. Bill Ayers. Tim Guenther, Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel. Neither do they.
Like bad grapes that winemakers throw out, they’re all not just bottom of the barrel politicians, but bottom of the barrel human beings.
Or, as they say in Chicago, just a coupla more bums from the neighborhood.
This was a savage and very public smackdown of the O’s and was done in a way where there can be no retaliation of major effect. The big loser here was Obama (not America) and I believe just the beginning of many Waterloo moments to come for him.
There remains some question about whether Obama is grossly incompetent in his handling of American affairs, or if he’s deliberately destructive of American institutions. I think the Olympic episode shows that he’s incompetent. I can’t see how he could gain anything by sabotaging Chicago’s chance at such a font of graft. Occam’s razor suggests that incompetence is all there is to Obama.
But that was clear enough during the election; for Candidate Obama, there quite obviously was no “there” there. Yet he was elected. That is the real crisis – not one ridiculous president, whether a one-termer or two, but an electorate which has no problem putting absurd incompetents into the White House. They’ll do it again, and again, until the US is reduced to third-world status. Maybe then they’ll stop.
I think the funniest thing about left-wingers is that, like all psychotics, their reactions are usually predictable. The minute the IOC dropped Chicago a bunch of pundits were saying that Obama fans would blame it on Bush and/or racism. That they’d further blame it on mythical ‘right-wing violence’ wasn’t a big stretch.
“Glen said Obama has a deep-sated hatred for white people”
I do love this one. So calling someone a racist makes you a racist? In that case, aren’t you a racist?
Obama does have a problem with white people. He went to a racist church for 20 years and has used racist language.
“Rush plays Barack the Magic Negro song”
… a song written by a left-winger. Funny how the ‘raaaacist!’ line drops when you find out the item originated with a lefty (the Magic Negro song, the Obama Joker poster, even that widely-reported story about the private swim club).
Incidentally, minorities find the ‘magic Negro’ (or magic Hispanic or magic Native American, etc) very offensive. It’s a product of left-wing guilt: they write a minority character that embodies all that is good and pure, while simultaneously expressing themselves via every ethnic stereotype the writer knows. This is, of course, because it’s leftists who are racist. Conservatives (most Americans) see people as people. Left-wingers always want us to separate people out by their skin color and place of birth. Divide and conquer.
“calls him a Halfrican”
I fail to see how this is racist. It actually raises a good point – why is a person who is half-black considered black? He’s as much white as he is black, which is yet another indictment of that idiotic ‘racism’ claim.
“everyone says he’s from Kenya”
Yeah. Everyone. Including Obama himself.
“everyone here calls him a boy”
Suuuure. Somebody’s been reading too much Maureen Dowd.
The ‘racism’ canard has just become laughable. So please, keep using it! We all know it’s only because you’re embarrassed for having been fooled by this guy, and you’re too immature to use that life lesson in a productive manner.
Mr. Hanson:
Honestly, I do not understand your more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone here.
If President Obama has terrible, Carteresque instincts, which would be used to weaken America’s position abroad in favor of a transnational elite and to weaken our financial condition at home to strengthen the Left’s electoral chances, the Right should be pleased when reality bites him in the butt and forces an about-face. Mooning about the tragedy of a weak president, when a strong Obama would be a disaster (as you well know), seems a rather disingenuous pose.
Thorney @ 44 is right. Obama knows what he’s doing, and he’s up to no good.
Has anyone considered that losing the bid for the Olympics in 2016 had nothing to do with Obama, tea baggers, Bush, Michelle or Oprah? The culprit might actually be Chicago itself. A city with a governing body modeled after the mafia, race relations from South Africa, a police force more likely to commit a crime than stop one, and a long list of dead tourists who wandered into the wrong neighborhood. Maybe the IOC just thought Rio was a safer place for the Olympics.
Arrogance, Thy name is Obama. His performance did not help but that was not the reason Chicago lost the bid.
Three things can be relied upon:
1. David Thomson thinks clearly.
2. All substantive change occurs at a grassroots level. By the time it rises above the radar, it has accumulated enough momentum to divert current trends and change the course of history.
3. No political party is going to fall on its collective sword for any one president.
127. Sebastian Shaw:
139. TLM:
See #25
The Big O is the perfect reflection of our “image is everything” culture. No stuff, all fluff. We reap what we sow.
“I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago.”
Bull. Only 47% of Chicago wanted the games, but somehow “most” Americans wanted them in Chicago? Please. And whose opinion counts more?
Most Americans are sick of watching crooked Chicago/Illinois politics attempt to permeate the national fabric…in this particular case, I guess, the world fabric.
I TOTALLY understand the pride black Americans have for Obama having been elected President, but that does not make him a great or even a good President. So far he hasn’t earned his keep. He’s a socialist and that ideology has FAILED everywhere it’s been tried.
He, and a willing Congress, are bankrupting our Republic. Fixing the complete mess in Washington and keeping our tax dollars in the private sector are far more important than political favors for Obama’s former stomping grounds.
From the beginning, it was a BAD, BAD gamble – that’s what those of us now suffering under his empty “rock star” Follywood styrofoam image knew from the start – betting on those sad odds was dumb, but voting for it was loopy looney ignorant.
How absurd is Democratic pollster Mellman’s comment … “I think Americans want a president who is going to fight for their country,” when, in fact, Obozo has done NOTHING but diss the United States from the start!! Obama has NO clue what America is all about and what Americans believe or want – Obama is a Soros lap-dog.
The family dog knew that Nope and Dope on a Rope nonsense was specious from the beginning – just like Obobo’s fake Greek columns. Obama and Michelle are certainly NOT ambassadors for America – never were – they ARE ambassadors for THEMSELVES – Copenhagen was ALL about Chicago Union Economic power (which is EXACTLY what Obama Care is) political payoff and lust for personal power, absolute narcissistic self-centered laughable “The One’ crazed hype for Barack Hussein Obama, ummm, ummm, ummm – not an ounce was for America or Americans.
The Darth Vader mask if off Obama and his Chicago thugs such as David Axelrod, who said on CNN – where else except GE Immelt’s Obama diaper-wiper MSNBC – “The president made a very strong appeal, and it didn’t work out…” — Axelrod, Sherlock Holmes in disguise – REALLY, Axelrod?? – believe me the American people KNOW IT DIDN’T WORK OUT – AND IT WON’T WORK OUT because Obama is WAY ABOVE HIS PAY GRADE in his Follywood role as POTUS. Americans despise Obama’s Fascist socialist ideology and his I HEART CHAVEZ/ACORN leftist idiocy and his Honduras Constitutional betrayal and his refusal to make trade agreements because of Union/SEIU/ACORN payoffs and his cowardly Afghanistan non-policy and his idiotic GITMO crap – all of that and MORE is undermining our Constitution, our capitalist economic system, and our individual freedoms. TOTUS and FLOTUS are pathetic in their drippy progressive self-obsessed liberal misplaced sentimental grade D- “speeches,” which is EXACTLY what the Olympic Committee saw and heard: The Obama TELEPROMPTER trademark – styrofoam image, no substance – exactly the same sham liberal “educational” philosophy that has destroyed our educational system and put our children LAST in line in the world.
No Payoff From Gamble is a perfect title for the Obama Movie – Americans are mad as hell with this rip-off and will empty D.C. of a government that thinks it is the Reichstag!
Obama is simply PLAYING the ROLE as president – BUT AMERICANS WANT A PRESIDENT TO BE PRESIDENT – IT’S NOT A ROLE, STUPID – IT IS THE ESSENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF THE ELECTED PERSON and Obama fails that at every angle of the camera, every TOTUS nugatory whimper, every hollow dissembling whopper zerO utters. Obama lost Chicago’s bid NOT BECAUSE OF POLITICS, BUT BECAUSE NOTHING IS BEHIND THE TELEPROMPTER…The Obama Show played on Broadway long enough for the people to be conned, but it no longer plays in Peoria or Copenhagen.
Styrofoam is one hell of a mess to clean up, but Americans are resourceful, powerful, determined, strong, smart people – ESPECIALLY when you mess with out freedom. Obama is a fool to mess with
Americans because there is NOTHING “typical” about us, Obama.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Well the waiting is over. We now know what we bought. The end of this is not going to be pretty but it is going to happen.
We need a non-politician to lead an effort to clean house in Washington. Hanson’s solutions would be adopted if we could throw all, and I do mean all, of the bums in Washington out. But we need a leader. This nation is commiting suicide. It is our country, and our future. If we do not initiate a second American revolution, legally, at the ballot box, this country, and our future, will die. We need a leader to organize us, to speak clearly and concisely, to prescribe the painful remedies and to lead the effort to enact them. We can do this, but we need a leader. Dr. Hanson, step up. Start organizing. Start running now. You will have the support of millions and we can force the bums and crooks in Washington out, or into some real action to deal with our problems.
As others have pointed out above in various ways, what I have alwys found truely frightening in Obama’s character is his off the charts egomania.
Let’s be honest, all politicians have a requisite amount of BS in their characeters, as well as a huge ego; it comes with the territory, but what scares me is that, due to his self-agrandized world view, he actually belives his own press.
Based on his actions, I fully believe that Obama thinks he is the best ever and he is the annointed savior of this country, no make that redeemer of the world.
As I watched his foreign policy talks during the campaign, all the way through his administration’s discgraceful actions in failing to support the brave people in the streets of Iran this summer, I kept drawing the same conclusion.
“Oh my God, he ACTUALLY thinks that he can TALK to Iran! He really belives his own press, that all he has to do is sit down and talk with flaming nut jobs like the leader of Iran and they will, naturally, be won over by his charm and superior intellect. Just sit down with Obama and they will see the error of their ways and stop trying to destroy Israel…..etc.”
This kind of megalomania frightens me. He believes it is “all about him” and one wonders what happens when a tanking economy, a nucleur armed Iran, a major terrorist attack (or attacks, which I believe are certain to happen on his watech), more and more protesters in the streets against him cause that fragile glass house to come crashing down around him.
I would fear for his sanity and our safety!
Inept in his management of the prestige of the presidency by recklessly making it vulnerable to the vagaries of an unaccountable foreign forum; narcissistic in his faith in the irresistible appeal of his talismanic charisma to divert the IOC’s calculations from their own interests to his personal convenience; and, nepotistic in his using both a wife to represent the nation and the games to enrich his cronies, our historic first Islamic apostate president epitomized in a nine-minute speech the caricature of a third-world despot.
We thought we voted for hope and change! What we got is arrogance and ego! Jimmy Obama has us on the road to hell!
I Dreamt I was Moses
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 10/4/09
I dreamt I was Moses,
While sleeping in my room,
God said, What you need,
Is Pharaoh as buffoon!
A wise one won’t do now,
The foolish would revolt,
You need a real grandiloquent,
To give this world a jolt!
Pray for your fool-king,
Whose head, not heart, I hardened,
Pray for your sad world,
For century has not hearkened…
For over a hundred years,
Satan’s plan has been in full effect,
Controlling school and culture,
Making the mind of thought a wreck.
Behold, now fool as king,
With empowered school-culture desires!
Learn, oh earth, mad it is,
Loving lies’ result: foul, destroying fires!
I dreamt that I was ancient Moses,
I awoke with my shirt soaked in sweat,
God said, Fools shall fix indurate,
By their mistakes, love of hard truths yet!
The Obamas are getting some very poor advice.
The World and much of America rejoiced at the election of the first Black President. THAT is what the Obamas symbolize…not Barack and Michele themselves. How could it be anything else? Obama has accomplished nothing but a proficiency at public speaking. He was a political enigma (purposely) as he ran for office. “Hope and Change” blah, blah.
Obama spends months apologizing for American arrogance and sense of privilege. Then, his wife thinks she can push her chit chat buddy Oprah on the Olympic committee and trump other nations bid with American CELEBRITY. How flatfooted and off message was that?
Add to this please Michele’s quote about her “sacrifice”…when this woman flies over on Air Force One and lives the life of a Queen. “Sacrifice?”…the world is listening…talk about American insensitivity and arrogance!
The Obamas compounded all this by making their Olympic appeal very personal…”Daddy’s lap” and all that. The air was thick with “Give us this because you find us irresistible.”
Their skin hue cannot continue to carry them.
The world listened to what the Obamas said, spit it out and vomited.
Elections have consequences
Victor, another way to look at this is Obama took a shot he needed to take, against overwhelming odds. That he lost the bid is not something to celebrate. And had you done a little homework, you may have made something of an otherwise pointless and wandering article. The selection process has historically involved many heads of states and this year was no exception. Obama was one of several that put his political capital on the line for their country. And given the 16 billion (compared to our 5) that Brazil put on the table, Obama was our only chance and he knew it. You ought to be ashamed. And of course their personal stories resonate. That people can related to them is one of the reasons they’ve been so successful politically. And the French to our right? Sarkozy’s not even to our right. Again, do your homework.
The problem with Obama is that he is totally enamored/hypnotized by academics and scholars, almost all of whom are far left. To the extent he listens to anyone else, he listens to the black power structure, which is left-leaning and in its own way racist. So unfortunately this President is not going to take any of the advice so sagely given in this even-handed column. He is going to keep on dithering or pulling back when there is any chance of a fight in foreign relations areas, and he is going to push a hard-left agenda to the wall (in which he will be seconded by Reid and Pelosi) in domestic affairs. God help us live through these next 3 1/2 years, and God bring us someone who is a clear and competent alternative to this man who will capture enough of the nation’s independents to steer our course back toward the right (or at least the middle)!
Obama is no fool. He knows exactly what he wants. Go to the Democratic Socialists of America website (http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html).
“We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.
“We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.”
Want to know more? Read “WHERE WE STAND: The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America” at http://www.dsausa.org/about/where.html.
Any of this look familiar?
Want to know more? Go to the Socialist International’s website at http://www.socialistinternational.org/.
Victor this article and especially the solutions are right on. This IS a center right country and we need to elect more leaders that act like it.
We need to start local,and build nationwide a strong fiscal conservative cut the crap Govt. it is our only hope to save our country.
Fiasco, it is not a fiasco , it is a catastrophe with epic proportions no matter how the Obama press wants to spin it.
What were they expecting , when you have the President of the United States telling the all world for sometimes now that how bad the USA is it would have an insult to the intelligence of the IOC if they had chosen Chicago.
President Obama your job is to make every American proud of his country ,not to be ashamed of it (even if you are).
This failure has no security consequences, but the next ones may be lethal.
If you had no idea what being the President is ,why the hell did you run for it?
Stop playing and grow up .
We need to put a stop to mendacous propaganda. The Dem agenda is based on lies, and they won. No wonder they feel entitled to do whatever they want.
Free trade for Colombia. And Panama, Korea and anyone else who asks.
Barac’s teleprompter language failed him in copenhagen. The world doesn’t look at barac as a super power anymore. They gave him his chance and this is what he has done:
Acorn alledgedly put presser on the govt and politicians to make loans to irresponsible people via fannie and freedie. Barac gave acorn $900,000 for there get out the vote effort…you know where dead people register and vote. As a result of this the sub prime mortgage world wide debacle. Now economies around the world disrepect barac’s economic theories as socialist. He has hurt american prestige in the world.
Daley has the goods on barak and told him to get the olympics to chicago or he would spill the beans on baraks shady deals.
Barak just yesterday killed 8 of our soldiers by pulling back on airpower strikes and not sending the 40,000 troops that the generals with boots on the ground recommended. barac sacrifice american treasury in order to make the homosexuals in his party happy.
barak goes around the world and talks down the america the greatest country in the world. barac doesn’t want businesses to survive and employee the unemployeed millions of americans. he wants them all dependent on king barac. unfortunately barac will make life hell for freedom/constitution loving americans but we will make it through because GOD is on our side.
Can’t help thinking that it was a win-win set up for the pres., so it served his purposes to go there.
If Chicago got it – well, it’s because of His Egomeister’s magic.
If it’s lost — well, it’s a win too — one more step to diminishing American prestige, which our pres has been working so hard to do.
I won’t name names. But 95% of the comments in response to Victor’s article were the best written, most articulate, most insightful thoughts I’ve been fortunate enough to find on the internet. Not just in PJM, but the whole internet.
I congratulate you all.
Your work product here is extraordinary.
Great article. Especially the enumeration/wish list of “what to do’s”
Keep those handy for the next 9/11 event – could be the refusal of American bonds by Japan / China – which is surely coming.
Then the mandate to lance the boil on America’s behind will become irresistable: drain the Federal Govt, heal the nation.
Will we still function to do the work, as a nation?
Hard to say but a drowning man only becomes aware of death at his last breaths…
It’s clear this president has way too strong of an opinion of himself. He thinks a short little trip, and his smile and presence can persuade almost all others to accept his reality of everything. Sorry Mr. president, the world is not a conglomeration of Obama groupies….http://cooperscopy.blogspot.com/
Very concise and logical post. Even the left of the left will have a hard time disputing the truth here.
http://www.christmasghost.com if you want to know Obama’s Olympic strategy…and guess where Van Jones has been lately!
Hope y’all enjoy!
The problem with wishing for someone to mentor triangulation is in the thesis that Obama wants what is best for America. Obama wants to destroy the essence of America and rebuild it according to a more socialistic model. Therefore the enormous debt, future staggering taxes, large inpouring of illegal aliens who will be given all rights of taxpayers, outrageous intrusive government intervention in all our lives and the weakening of the dollar and U.S. defense is all calculated to bring about the majority of the nation dependent on the Democratic party for it’s dole outs.
I’m not sure Obama could do a 180 even if he wanted to. Here are some possible reasons why:
1. There are lefties within the Democratic Party apparati in Chicago, in Illinois, and in DC who undoubtedly have the goods on Obama. They know things that would very likely bring down his administration. In short, Mr. Hope & Change is a permanent hostage to his own rather dubious past.
2. Obama won’t fundamentally change because he can’t do it without chucking his entire Weltanschauung into the increasingly crowded space beneath his bus. In short, Mr. Hope & Change can’t change…because doing that would effectively confirm what the Right has been saying about him all along.
Excellent agenda. One small issue for thought – “torts” are inherently a state issue, not federal. One overlap though is nationwide “class action” suits that should be consolidated in federal court.
I vote for Huberis.
And stop giving this egomaniacal control freak busy body advice on how to promote his agenda.
Reminds me of Sarah’s Hong Kong speech. A pretty decent platform.
Of course the GOP with sit on their a**es and use none of it.
Jack Hammer you are among the few with any support for what happened in Copenhagen. You miss your own point. The world doesn’t care about the personal “suffering and sacrifice” of our millionaire White House dwellers. That crap only sells to the Kool-aid drinkers in America.
152. Donna V.:
“and second, because it’s working
No, vivo, it isn’t. ”
You got me confused with #130 Now and Then.
Obama needs better advisers. Much better advisers; he was set up for a real splat of a fall. A relayed television speech was the most he should have done, if at all. Flying in to give a “me and I” speech was dumb. It was never going to sway the IOC, as corrupt as they are.
Someone in the WH (or in Chicago for that matter) must have said the Great One’s silver tongue would work miracles and stop the red-hot favorite from getting the games. But any adviser worth his salt would have passed on the key information: South America is overdue for an Olympics, and by all accounts the last games in the States — in Atlanta — was internationally considered average but nothing more.
However I can see why he did it: if he had snatched victory for Chicago right at the finish line in a thrilling photo-finish, he would have proved to himself (and the nation) that his magic is total, his ability to heal all wounds is perfect. Oboy would have been able to demand anything he wanted — and pay back some of his debt to the city that he owes so much to.
But back to the advisers. If nothing else, one of them should have clarified the Chicago chances (and the President’s) with the greatest truth of all: “Women’s Beach Volleyball will be so much better in Rio”
Thorney wrote (and I agree completely and it needs to be repeated):
“We all know(at least those who read your writings) what is needed, and yes, you say it eloquently; Obama can also be eloquent. If you were to read Rules for Radicals and explain that everything he is doing, though the opposite of what is good for America, is furthering an objective of collapsing the system, of destroying America with a clear, thought out end in sight, perhaps more of the American people could begin to see and understand what is taking place. You write as though he is misguided, he is not; everything he is doing makes perfect sense, but only if you (we) give up the assumption that he and his administration have America’s best interests at heart. Lawrence Eagleburger said as much last night on Greta Van Susteren on Fox.”
I would add: If you think an idiot managed to get elected President of the United States, you need to question your assumptions. He is accomplishing exactly what he set out to accomplish and, just as the left always managed to underestimate Reagan, anyone who fails to see that is guilty of underestimating Obama. Nearly every article one reads about Obama “failing” carries the implicit, or explicit, assumption that he meant to succeed. Question that assumption. Is the U.S. stronger or weaker following the “failed” attempt at Copenhagen? Weaker of course; exactly his intent. It’s hard to believe, I know, but viewed in this light, everything he’s done since taking office makes sense. It’s time to shed the rose-colored glasses and see this man for what he is, and that is no friend of America. His wife as much as told us that with her “For the first time in my life, I’m proud of my country” statement (at age 45!!) His treatment of Honduras is all the evidence one should need for verification of his true stance on American ideals.
As for Hanson’s list, though it is excellent, instead replace all ten items with #1: Impose term limits on all elective offices in the United States.
Unfortunately, I think the majority of congressional Democrats and Obama are suicide bombers.
By that I mean that they are willing to sacrifice their political careers if they can lock in a major ideological shift in the structural backbone of America. It will be worth it to them, they believe, to bring about a new paradigm and they don’t care if the people don’t want it. They know better.
Dr. Hanson seems to be hoping that Obama will experience a kind of Damascene conversion and so become Mr. President, serious about the office he has found himself occupying. I understand the motivation. The man was elected, after all; we who loathe his policies do not want him to harm that office.
The hope is laudable, but absent divine intervention of the most dramatic kind, it will never be realized.
TO VIVO and the other OBAMA groupies:The Euroweenies, listened to the customary DROOL FROM THE FOOL,took one look at Oprah’s pachydermic figure,took one brief, horrified,glance at Michelles buttfaced visage,and conflating it with the vision of tanga-clad lovelies cavorting on the sands of what is one of the most beautiful ciites in the world, decided to drop the frigid libtard hellhole for Rio. Is anyone surprised?What arrogance to believe that Chicago could compete with Madrid, let alone Rio! The O’hole’s inherent ludicrousness continues to manifest itself,as he self destructs.It’s absolutely wonderful!
1. Professor, don’t even think about running for president.
2. Take vacations.
3. Straighten out Sarah Palin
4. This is the best blog.
Soooo, the Big O is a loser. Even 2 women with him could not save his phoney lines. Everyone saw right thru his lame speech.
Chicago would have been a disaster…the IOC got it right….anywhere BUT Chicago!
Now…because the trip was a waste of Taxpayer Dollars….will the DEMS fork over the money for a refund to us?
All this crap…and more American lives are lost in a War that has no US Commander in Chief capable of leading.
I can’t think of anybody who packs more historical wisdom, clear thought, and rhetorical wallop in six or seven hundred words than VDH.
At this time of year, as tens of millions go ga-ga over MLB playoffs and early-season NFL performances — all but blotting from their minds real-world awareness — the autograph of VDH is one of the few I would seek, one of the few I would treasure.
The most significant point VDH makes in this generally excellent article is that Obama faces a country as divided as it was in 1859/1968: Obama and his merry band of Marxists are sitting on top of a powder keg that could well ignite beyond their wildest paranoid imaginations or their capacity to deal with it, especially if they manage to use parliamentary legerdemain to pass their health care destroying ‘reform’ bill and cap and trade.
America works because of the voluntary cooperation of the vast majority of the people with the government. Trust in the government under Obama is becoming problematic far beyond the right.
Things could well devolve into massive civil disobedience and armed resistance on a scale that would overwhelm whatever forces would be loyal to an Obama government.
How any of you asinine ninnies have the gall to question any decision of President Obama is, to us, the disciples of Obama, incomprehensible.
His intellect is far superior to any of yours. You all should listen to the thoughts of Vivo; tapes of Obama. His words are like magic.
What you should not do is write or speak against him, which is sinful per se. Because it displeases The Great One.
Incidentally, was McCain the best you had to run against Him? Really? To me, it was like a master teacher running against a D+ student. Laughable.
Furthermore, don’t you realize that in the brief time he’s been President, America has been reborn? Praise Him in all His glory. It certainly is the kind of change we all should believe in. You should all accept this as a woman accepts the will of her male master.
You speak of the Olympics not accepting the great one as if it were some kind of loss.
Disbelievers:
Just days ago, President Obama demonstrated the bravery of any medal of honor recipient, the courage of a suicide bomber; he entered the hostile environment of the IOC, a climate of derision created by George Bush, and, against all odds, give it his best shot. You must agree deep down that he was inspirational.
The fact is, all Americans need to recognize that Barack Obama is possibly the greatest American who ever lived. As you wile away your time writing commental garbage here, don’t you realize that lesson plans are being readied by your children’s teachers to extol the many mighty virtues of Obama. Your children will be taught to know his greatness even if their parents insist on going to tea parties, listening to Glenn Beck and living out their lives in morbid desperation, grieving for a country that once was; that never again will be.
One day all of you anti-Bama unwashed will experience a great enlightenment when the face of the great one is chiseled into Mount Rushmore. And the hero of every African American assumes his rightful place in history.
I dare any of you infidels to say another negative word about the One who led Acorn out of the wilderness to play a pivotal role in his election.
If votes were stolen to help the great one rise to his deserved place of honor, so be it. For, when all is said and done, the ends certainly do justify the means.
You silly, preening, word smithing Americans making fun of the master of all politicians, the leader of millions more than your feeble minds can imagine.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, and for the rest of your life, Barack Obama shall rise far above the lowly position of U.S. President.
Don’t any of you realize it? Obama is world class. His star is destined to shine above every continent on earth.
You can’t cut off money to Acorn. Congress can’t either. Tax money continues to flood into all vestiges of Acorn in Tsunami like denominations. Obama and Acorn add up to ten majestic letters that have already written off the America you knew. The America you knew is now a country named Obama.
Like the cigarette ad used to say, “Marlboro Country”, without realizing it, you people are now living in Obama Country.
Love it or leave it.
I always thought that Rush Limbaugh was wrong in hoping that Barak Obama would fail. Like him or not, he is the President of the United States and failure on the part of the President is going to have bad consequences for the country.
Of course, I also believe that there is no way that President Obama could be successful with the trite platitudes that he read from his teleprompter to get elected or the hard left policies espoused by Obama’s most visible long time associates.
Still, many of President Obama’s screw ups are newbie errors. Perhaps naively, I keep hoping that one of these days the pressure of actually having to deal with the responsibilities of President are going to cause him to realize that all the leftist nostrums he has thoughtlessly accepted are only going to cause Barak Obama to displace Jimmy Carter in the role of “Worst President in Living Memory”. My hope is that he changes his mind, slaps his forehead and exclaims, “What was I thinking?” while he unveils a new set of policies that causes future generations of historians to argue over whether President Obama should be called “The New Thatcher” or “The New Reagan”.
I don’t understand how vitriol and Schadenfreude are constructive; how does that help groups get needs met in the context of one country. It appears that President Carter is right!Those who accuse him of playing certain cards need only look at who suffers disproportionally from this country’s societal ills; who gains substantially less from this country’s successes.The President’s ascension destroys certain assertions. His failures what make all right in the world again.
http://hubpages.com/hub/GOP-Jihad
http://hubpages.com/hub/JJJJIVE-TALKIN
http://hubpages.com/hub/Thats-Entertainment
Obama failing to, bring home the Bacon for Chicago, is one of those simple images that rings through to millions of Americans who don’t follow politics regularly. Even the Dominate Liberal Media (DLM) couldn’t protect Obama from being seen with Olympic-egg all over his face and that’s a picture that will remain in the American Psyche for years to come. Soon after Obama called the Cambridge Police “Stupid” his popularity began to decline. More than all the angst being caused by Obama’s drive to socialize America, his rush to retreat in Afghanistan and Iraq and his appeasement of Iran’s Mullahs, everyday, hard-working and apolitical Americans saw his condescension toward those investigating cops and had a visceral negative reaction. The memory of Obama getting dissed by a bunch of foreigners, after all his apologizing and America-bashing, is the kind of event that could set off another round of decline in his polling.
Victor,
Love the 10-point agenda!
And it sounds, point for point, identical to the agenda of one Sarah Palin.
while the USA insists on pre-registration, fingerprinting and maltreatment of visitors at airports, no one in their right mind wants to visit the USA. How could Americans EVER think they could win an Olympics bid? Anyone who has ever had any dealings with the hapless and sadistic Delta Minus workers at the TSA could tell you the main reason the bid wasn’t going to work, even if Jimmy Carter himself had also been in Copenhagen…
A President should never go to an diplomatic event like the IOC mtg unless the deal is in the bag. So what if other national leaders went — those other countries aren’t global superpowers. He should have sent just Hillary and Michelle.
And getting the Olympics is a major cost burden. Chicago probably isn’t in good shape to bear this burden, and there are better things for the US Government to spend newly printed money on right now.
If a 4 year term could be condensed to a 2 hour movie, we would now be within the 22nd minute of the film. The first 20 minutes of any theatrical production plants the seeds for the following acts. The audience is beginning to squirm in their seats. Are we watching a drama, a comedy, or a tragedy?
The audience expected “Hope and Change” but right now the screenplay seems to be more about “Re-Electing the President”.
At this point it is clear that we have a weak Director (Rahm) and a poor script (Axelrod and Jarrett). The supporting cast is terrible, with a one dimensional VP, and scene stealing ham Speaker, and a slippery Senate Leader. The star of the show is “likable enough” and delivers his teleprompted lines well, but the script gives no clue as to his actual range in ability.
As for the type of story that is unfolding, none of the problems identified so far have been resolved. And we are still unsure if the star will actually solve any of them. The apparent plot line reminds of the disaster film genre which looses all the pending forces at once to a spellbinding effect.
Mark in Texas,
You are as naive as a Catholic school girl who gets in a car full of Black Panthers who “know a shortcut to St. Mary’s”.
Your powers of critical thinking are limp as noodles.
You are hopeless against the socialist forces of Obama. I suggest you join the Marines. It’s your only hope to grow up to be a man capable of defending the constitution.
Visit your local recruiter tomorrow.
Fitsol,
MY man, are you on drugs? You sound confused as Jack Nicholson in “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest (post labotomy).
Jimmy Carter thinks there are Israelis playing “RISK” in his basement. And Nazi stormtroppers in his attic. I wouldn’t cite him as a reliable source if I were you. One of the peanuts his family grows has more brainpower than the grand canyon he’s got between his ears.
I hate to say it, Fitsol, but jibberish is clearer than your attempt at putting words and sentences together. If you’re homeless, head for the nearest YMCA. Son, you need help.
‘How can a post-national, I’m sorry Obama, trapped in a sort of we are the world paradox, be seen in nationalistic and near tribal fashion stumping for his own home town’?
I like what a commenter named Richard said a few days ago regarding the Chicago Olympics bust as well: Did Obama really think the U.S would get the nod since he’s been saying the U.S. sucks for 9 months?
It just hit me…..and I hate to think like this. But I believe Obama is waiting for another “crisis” in order to take more freedoms of ours away. Possibly, Israel bombing Iran and no oil coming to us, could be that “crisis”. Outrageous prices so we can’t afford to drive, rationing, it would cause us to not be able to heat or a/c our homes like we do, possible martial law….the possibilities are endless. hmmmm
Prof. Hansen you have written another well conceived article on what we need in order for America to advance instead of retreat in the world.
Our forefathers never envisioned extremely large corporations or banks like we have today as they had no model to base it on, but, they had kingdoms to based the job of president on. Thus they made it so a president could only serve two terms for a combination of 8 years. Had they known what we have today they would certainly have placed term limits on the representatives in the same manner. This would stop a large amount of the corruption that goes on in Washington by both political parties.
The Democrats realized that if they used federal money to bring back jobs to the local people then they would be voted back into office every election period. The Republicans saw that this worked so they started doing the same. I suggest that we demand the federal government get out of this business and let the states have more of the tax money for job creation thus spreading the wealth around more as Obama likes to say. Then it is on the local level where they know what is needed in the area and they can then find local investors to take over the concept and build up businesses that employ the local people.
The Federal Governments sole job under the Constitution is for the Defense of the Nation and to write the laws under which we are to live. Thus both political parties have been tearing down the Constitution as it is written and intended.
We as a People should start demanding that Washington follow the Constitution and if not then we will stop paying federal income taxes across the board except into our local cities and states. Maybe then if a tax revolution is started against the Federal Government they will wise up and realize that We the People have spoken big time.
I was happy Obama tried to get the Olympics for Chicago and our country, better to try and fail than not try at all. its really not that important, and is a distraction for important topics; I would like to see health care reformed, job growth, and to see the US move away from a petroleum based economy/energy source. until we do this every fix will be a temp patch. the other issue is the size and scope of our global military presence, including the wars, and should a country with such debt and trade imbalances and job loss continue to be the worlds defense projectionist? Obama i would argue is going much in the same direction as the presidents of the previous 30 years in terms of economy, and i wonder if it is enough? I would say no, and that he is too much the same as republicans and democrats of the past, and needs to break from the old ways that are not working and have been going down for the past 30 years. I argue that getting off oil is the most important economic and security issue this country faces, and should have a united politic behind it, but does not,and i see self interest, and private profit contaminating our dialog.
Let us all sing today, and be happy. “My Obama blues are melting away”, and let us sing along with him, because it is fun.
http://www.youtube.co/watch_popup?v=UZkvkLmkYVg
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=UZkvkLmkYVg
These Obama blues are melting away..
Elizabeth from NYC: nicely put.
Why shouldn’t the Obamas feel as if their autobiographies are all they need to offer? They have been told this is so since the day the entered the grown-up world. They were told their presence at their colleges generously provided other students with the critical experience of “diversity.” They studied themselves — they literally studied the significance of themselves being on those campuses. They were given job opportunities based on these terms, and book contracts and disturbingly fat salaries doing meaningless “community outreach” and teaching identity-based legal theories. I’ve also never seen anyplace like the activist Left for paying certain people more than others based solely on identity, a scheme that’s called “redistributive” rather than “prejudice” when they do it. And then there is Obama’s ascent in the DNC, predicated not on accomplishment or dues-paying but on an assertion of the significance of his presence at the podium.
It’s generous to hope he’ll grow out of this fast, and it’s also very much the right thing to hope for. But I keep thinking of another leftist predicate: don’t solve problems, irritate and exploit them. Maybe Obama went to Stockholm because he knew Chicago would lose.
Oops, Copenhagen.
Arthur,
The technical term for you is idiot.
have a nice day,
Regards, Rachel
218. Brenda:
Welcome to the world of liberal angst for the last 8 years. Only we have proof. Now you know.
#220,
Private profit is contaminating our dialog? Governments control the vast majority of oil supplies and are manipulating the prices on a political basis. The largest private oil company in the world produces only a tiny fraction of the supplies ( although they did find and bring online a much larger percentage of those supplies ). What changes in our dependence on foreign oil do you expect to bring by punishing the private sector for making a profit on the tiny share of the market they still have?
How do you expect to create jobs from the level of a bankrupt American government who prints the money they spend because no one will take the risk to loan them any. You would think that if an economy would get well just by printing money and spending it, that this scheme would be tried by Mexico? Oh yeah, it was, that is how we got a Peso worth about a Penny. So, when we can’t pay for health care reform with money we actually have, how do you expect the government to provide jobs at the same time?
Now for the good news, we will move away from a petroleum based economy as soon as it becomes more costly than all these other energy concepts. I just hope you don’t indict the several million Americans, who bring you your energy, and expect them to find an alternative to the good sand services they know how to provide. Smarten up, get off your butt, use all these artificial government incentives, and start your own damned energy company and render the products the oil industry brings you to be obsolete.
Old ways? What the hell is that? Do you have new ways that will work better? If so, get off your ass and show the world something that works better than those Capitalist old ways.
Finally, who do you think our military is trying to protect if it is not us. The real world presents the need for military preparedness and occasionally military action. If you know how to change that fact, and you don’t, then you are as immoral as you are obviously an imbecile.
Every candidate should agree on 1-4 (fiscal sanity, energy independence, consensus on security, reigning in entitlements) & 6 (no more corruption). The others are great and would make for winning campaign for which ever side is smart enough to take them on.
Where’s Newt & his Contract with America when you need them…
I keep watching the parties completely misread “change”. They have to stop assuming it means “push your political agenda” and realize it means “go back to fundamentals and govern from the center”.
bill wrore:
” I wonder if any one man is up the task ahead of us.”
A conservative woman is.
I think a big part of the stimulus has been saved in order to create the appearance of a financial recovery in time to influence the elections in ’10 and ’12 – the calculation being that we are stupid enough to be pacified by that, and forget all the rest.
All other things being equal, I’d prefer a president who can succeed. But things aren’t equal. Given that this administration and congress are who they are, and we have a gigantic bill that will be coming due soon, I DO hope for the most massive fail possible that will leave America more or less intact. I hope it fails so massively that socialism and liberalism are finally and fatally revealed as fatuous and fruitless, and thus relegated to irrelevance. Then, perhaps, we can get some mature Americans to repair the damage and restore America.
Dr. Hanson: The ten points you just listed describe Sarah Palin’s agenda perfectly. I hope you will support her because she’s the one we conservatives have been waiting for. She’s our hope for change in 2012. GO SARAH!!!!!!
This failure on Obamessiah’s part can’t be pooh-poohed by the left.
Obambi has become an international joke, the personification of an inept rube.
He’s beginning to make Jimmy Carter look like Winston Churchill.
131:Pramatist
Hilarious
Well, this was 1/3 “the sky is falling” rant,
1/3 the usual anti-Obama/democrats/liberals rant, and 1/3 good suggestions…so there is hope !!
RSG
Now and Then:
“218. Brenda:
Welcome to the world of liberal angst for the last 8 years.”
N & T, how many years of Obambi hopenchange is it going to take to assuage that liberal angst of yours? Sounds like it’s become a permanent mindset. Keep drinking the Kool-aid. That’ll help.
Tina Trent:
“Maybe Obama went to Stockholm [sic] because he knew Chicago would lose.”
Freudian slip? Obama certainly gets a rise out of portraying his country as hostage to Euro-weenie Leftist angst. But in this case we would have to call it Copenhagen Syndrome: We are not worthy. For our sins, please humiliate us.
Tina Trent:
Not knocking your post, BTW. Very good points.
Capt.Lewis, USMC
If the Marine Corps is taking recruits of my age and decrepitude, it has certainly declined from several decades back when as a young Spec 4 a Marine told me that “If everybody could be a Marine, it wouldn’t be the Marines. It would be the Army.” I try to hope like an optimist and plan like a pessimist. That seemed to work for the years that I served as an EOD specialist and today I am typing this with all my fingers while sitting on my un-blown-up ass.
I had hoped that the Republican party would nominate a candidate who didn’t suck. Did you hope for something different? When that hope didn’t pan out I hoped that the Republican candidate would run a decent campaign. Did you hope for something else? Now that Obama is elected, I hope that he will not be as bad as he seems likely to be since that would be bad for my country. What do you hope for?
Meanwhile, I try to take care of my family. I’m paying off debts, putting aside some cash and stockpiling water, canned goods, medical supplies and ammunition. I hope that I don’t need that stuff.
“Olympic Gold For Narcissism” (George Will)
Perhaps the definitive putdown of Obama’s “defining moment” on the world stage. Not taking away from VDH or any other pundit, but Will focuses the debate on the Olympic fiasco in Copenhagen on Obama’s speech, which is where the crux of the problem was all along, IMO. Obama spoke to the world and came off as the epitome of the vapid, self-referential, arrogant Ugly American. The IOC awarded him the prize he deserved: a humiliating, and hopefully humbling, rejection.
If the Republicans do not come up with an alternative candidate that excites the 10-15% that are on the fence in each election, Obama will get reelected. Yeah we might have a nice turnover in the midterms, but otherwise its 1996 all over again.
Who cares who is in charge of Congress if Obama is reelected because Obama as President will determine the fate of our nation through his foreign policy decisions or lack thereof. That is what scares me.
We are seeing what he is and that is all fine and dandy, but we need an alternative who excites us or a copy of Obamas real birth certificate if we are going to make him a one termer.
the race is on…..uva65
if America had any common sense it would not have elected Obama as President. what exactly were his credentials for being President again? community organizer (whatever that is) and a couple years in state legislature, less than 1 term in the senate. ZERO executive experience. he didn’t have enough experience to run Mcdonalds, but was voted President of United States???. we need someone with credible, executive experience. what we got was a smooth operator. lets face it, the ONLY reason he was elected was because of the color of his skin, and the slickness of his tounge. if anybody else with that resume had run for President,they would have been laughed out of town. face it, America got suckered!!!
Regarding the 10-point list at the end of this article.
I have two words for you, Victor.
Sarah Palin.