Shut up, he explained

So where’s Ring Lardner when you need him, like now?

“Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.”

Thus Ring in The Young Immigrunts (1920).

Can’t someone get Obama to shut up? A few weeks ago, when the stock market was once again in Armageddon mode after S&P downgraded the US credit rating for the first time in history, Matt Drudge ran a piece under the headline, “It tanked while he talked.”

Last night, Obama took to the airwaves to explain his “jobs program.” Price tag: another $400 billion — for starters. I stopped listening to the Big-O some time ago — my blood pressure can’t take it — but I read what he said and, boy-oh-boy: what an obtuse, disingenuous speech. The markets must have thought so, too, for the Dow shed another 303 points today. How many billions (or is it trillions?) does that represent? Why can’t he just shut up? Can’t we pay him to go back on vacation? Leave Air Force One behind, Barack: just take your golf clubs and stroll around the links with the swells on Martha’s Vineyard. Please, please, keep your mouth shut. You and Michelle should just go away and spend a few more millions of the taxpayers dough: the only condition is that you stay out of Washington and you never, ever say saying anything publicly about matters of policy. Concentrate on that sand trap in the back nine. Leave world affairs, especially, leave the U.S. economy, to someone who understands where money comes from.

As many commentators have noted, there is an aroma of fear hovering about the White House these days: the stale, acrid scent of panic. Some of us have known all along that Obama, the community organizer miraculously elevated to the U.S. Senate for a few months before he erected some Greek columns and talked his way into the U.S. Presidency, some of us, I say, have known all along that he hadn’t a clue. Now it seems that even he is getting uncomfortable inklings. In the beginning Obama emitted an aura of that some identified as an aura of confidence; really, it was an aura of entitlement — along with what the President himself a while back identified as “bluff.” Are you the sort of person who likes empirical reminders? A friend sent me this handy score card today:

Sobering isn’t it? It’s an unmitigated litany of failure, evidence of economic illiteracy, political incompetence, and ideological extremism. What a legacy. No wonder that nearly everywhere one turns these days you hear echoing the same acronym: OMG: Obama must go.