Obama's latest campaign ad

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My contribution to the meme

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I'm a little bit late with this, but inspiration comes when it comes. Here's my contribution to the Barack "you didn't build that" Obama mockery meme.
 

Obama's inspiration

As long as we're being ridiculous

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I present -- the Time and Newsweek covers combined, with Sandra Fluke tossed in for good measure.

Helloooooo visitors from  Moonbattery, thanks for dropping by. I hope I haven't traumatized you.

 

Obama needs a better bus

Zzzzzzzzzz...

I see Obama is off on another one of his non-campaign bus trips. This non-campaign bus trip is evidently for him to tout his 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs'  bill, sing the praises of Occupy Wall Streeters and point out what slime-wads Republicans are.

What strikes me is that the Presidential Bus is an ugly, uninteresting looking monstrosity. By God, if we're going to send bags of money to the Canadians to build our Made in (North) America Presidential Bus, the least they could do is provide us with something stylish.

For that reason, as a public service, I went to DieselPunk and found some snappy looking buses which are pictured below and after the jump. Any of them would be an improvement in my opinion.

Concept art for a futuristic bus

Look hard enough and you could probably find one of these babies on a used bus lot

A ray of hope

Victor Davis Hanson's essays usually have a streak of pessimism in them. His most recent, The Great Obama Catharsis, is instead optimistic.

Barack Obama has done the United States a great, though unforeseen, favor. He has brought to light, as no one else could, many of the pernicious assumptions of our culture from the last half-century. He turned theory and “what ifs” into fact for all America to see, experience, and, yes, suffer through.

The Years of Wandering…

Jimmy Carter tried to enact the therapeutic agenda, but he was inept. Liberals for the last thirty years blamed his failure on incompetence rather than his statist message. Until the Obama meltdown, progressives had faulted Bill Clinton as a wily sell-out who had won an improbable second term only by cynically reforming welfare and balancing budgets. Dick Morris engineered his comeback and now he works for Fox News: enough said. So the complaint was that the messenger was slick, but the noble message was diluted.

But Obama was supposed to be Clintonian in his political charisma and Carteresque in his devotion to liberal causes. When he boasted that he was “The One” we had been waiting for, he was more accurate than he thought in assessing liberal sentiment. You see, as a young, post-racial, first African-American president — glib, hip, cool, charismatic, with unapologetic Chicago hard-core leftist roots and Ivy League certification — Barack Obama was right out of liberal central casting. He would do what no other liberal had done in fifty years: prove to America that it really, really was left-of-center by ramming down its throat both a liberal agenda and thousands of left-wing facilitators. Greek columns, the Victory Monument, talk of a cooling planet, and worry whether the country would survive from December 2008 to January 2009 heralded His coming. We forget now that Obama arrived with a super-majority in the Senate, and a large majority in the House: anything was now possible and almost everything was thus tried.

Home at Last

At last we sheep got the messianic prophet to deliver the divine message. When he was declared a “god,” with supernatural powers that sent tingles up journalists’ legs, we were at last to climb the mount into the Promised Land. Electing him was the trick; simply enacting his redistributive agenda would be easy. “Wealthy” people would keep on working as before (they are by nature greedy and love working to buy superfluous things), but now the people’s money could be at last directed to saving the planet, helping mankind, and bringing heaven to earth.

From that point he lists a large number of left-leaning Conventional Wisdoms that he thinks will not survive Obama's fall. Keynesian economics, European style health care, the left's control of what can and can't be debated, and so forth. You should really read the entire essay.

He may being overly optimistic, but the more Obama flounders, with his skill at campaigning of no use when what he really needs is skill at politics, it does seem as if he is bringing down a fair amount of what progressives took for granted. One senses the entire structure wobbling, and the only question that remains is how much of the structure is built of brick and mortar, and how much is just carefully balanced cards.
 

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs = Tax, Tax, Tax

Well, this is the guy that was stymied by an umbrella...

Now that Obama has returned from vacation he's been ranting and raving for several days that Congress needs to pass his bill immediately. 'Course, he hadn't actually submitted a bill yet, but apparently he finally did Monday night.

It turns out the cuts he said that would be needed to pay for it are actually tax increases. The tax increases all being the same dead horses he's been flogging for some time: jacking up the taxes on rich folks making over $250,000 a year, ending tax loop holes for oil companies, and of course one of his his favorites -- holding corporate jet owners upside down and shaking them until buckets of money fall out of their pockets.

This to give more money to unionized teachers, shovel-ready jobs that are mired in red tape, high-speed choo-choo trains and possibly the next incarnation of Solydra. Whatever. We all knows this is just a stump speech, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Republicans in Congress, who had been striking a more conciliatory tone about backing at least parts of the proposal the president unveiled last Thursday, disputed the White House contention that the plan would cause no additional job losses for the struggling economy.

"It would be fair to say this tax increase on job creators is the kind of proposal both parties have opposed in the past,'' said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). "We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit.''

Mr. Obama made a new pitch for his plan at the White House Monday and has said he intends to campaign against Congress and Republicans in 2012 if they don't pass the bill.

"We've got to decide what our priorities are," he said. "Do we keep tax loopholes for oil companies, or do we put teachers back to work? Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or should we invest in education and technology and infrastructure?"

Despite Mr. Obama's demand that Congress act on the legislation quickly, neither the jobs nor tax proposals are likely to be approved or take affect any time soon. Senate Democratic leaders are expected to bring the bill to a vote in the coming weeks, but it is not expected to pass.

By the way, there's a link to the bill at the Wall Street Journal article.

 

America's jilted bride

A sad bride who's groom ran off to attend a Tea Party

Obama does not understand the negotiating process. That was first hinted at in the campaign when he made the bizarre offer to meet with Iran without preconditions. 

Heads of State understand that there is no benefit in holding summits that yield no results, and so they lay a lot of groundwork so they don't walk into public relations disasters.  

He must have thought that the force of his personality and arguments could carry the day.

Considering his background one can see where such arrogance could come from. When he ran the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, his most significant pre-governmental job, people were forced to approach him as  supplicants. They weren't negotiating with him, they were merely currying favor.

He became a State Senator, and later a Federal Senator, through the machinations of the the Chicago machine which eliminated any credible opponents. Once in those seats he simply voted "present" to duck difficult votes. I imagine the size of his desk was of more interest to him than the tedium of give and take in a committee room. 

Once President he foolishly poisoned the well with his "I won" and "elections have consequences" talk. Such overbearing hubris is consistent with somebody who can't imagine they'll have to horse trade with another side. You can say that to somebody looking for grant money from the Annenberg Challenge, to say it to people with power centers of their own is a miscalculation of the first order.

In the ObamaCare debate, had Obama had any negotiating skills he would have given concessions around the edges to gain Republican votes and cover. He didn't, and it cost him dearly at the midterm elections, and may mean ObamaCare is a far more transient achievement than he imagines.

When he entered into the deficit talks he must have thought he was the cavalry riding to the rescue. He would use the prestige of the Office of the President to browbeat his opponents into settling on his terms. The problem is, the other side knew how to negotiate and had a plan, while he just had little but an inflated opinion of his skills.

So they gave him their red lines and walked away, and he responded with petulant press conferences and demands that they return to the table. Rinse, wash and repeat several times over the course of a couple of weeks. Each time Obama doesn't realize how he diminishes himself. 

My favorite line at the last press conference was when he complained, "I’ve been left at the altar.” Does he not know that jilted brides are not images of power? With that line he both insulted himself far more succinctly than his opponents have ever managed, and revealed his increasing irrelevance to the process.
 

If I may ask a follow-up question...

"What do you mean there's no such thing as a free lunch?

From the the Wall Street Journal's transcript of today's I notice the following comment Obama made. In response to a question from Jack Tapper about what his concrete proposals were Obama, in the midst of over six minutes of aimless babbling, said the following:

"But it turns out that making some modest modifications in those entitlements can save you trillions of dollars."

The follow-up question to that sunshine writes itself:

"What are these modest changes that can save us trillions of dollars? Also, why haven't you already proposed such wondrous, money-saving legislation and for that matter passed it last year when Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate?" 

 

Eat your peas (gourmet pea recipe included in post)

Obama's press conference was about what was expected. The only real mystery going in was would we get the Obama the Dick, or Obama the Great Conciliator. He tried the conciliator route. He also made a risible attempt to portray himself as Washington's greatest budget deficit hawk. Alas, if only those nefarious Republicans -- who are under the thumb of the corporate jet-setter crowd -- would only agree to his compromise of raising taxes and promising spending cuts somewhere down the road then all would be well.  

"So we might as well do it now. Pull off the band-aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?" 

That was my favorite line, and likely the line he'll be saddled with from the speech while the rest of the malarkey he spouted is quickly forgotten. It is a marvelous example of his unfailing ability to be tone deaf. It infantilizes the American public, we become children who need to be told to suck it up and rip that bandage off and to quit winning and eat our veggies. I'm surprised he didn't end that we should be sure to clean our plate because there's starving children in China, or don't parents use that expression any more?

Even more ridiculous, the sentence minimizes the problems we face. Does he really think the sting of a band-aid being torn off, or a spoonful of peas, really captures the cost Americans are going to have to pay for this crisis?  Again, Obama and his indifference. There are people suffering now, and most Americans understand that there is not a Scrooge McDuck sitting on a pile of gold that can solve our deficit problem, rather there will be a serious pain to citizens in digging out of this problem no matter which way we turn. 

Well, since we've got to eat them according to our Great Father Who Lives in Washington I thought I would dig up a tasty pea recipe. That led me to Yes Peas!, a website dedicated to the little green globes. Once there I found the recipe for Pea And Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms (reproduced below). You can find more recipes at the site and you can even get yourself a free pea recipe book (Obama would approve of that, although he would probably prefer it had a selling price so's he could slap a sales tax on it). I also found the above pea song at the site.


Pea And Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients

8 large flat mushrooms
2 tbsp butter
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
350g frozen peas
350g garlic and herb cream cheese
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
100g pine nuts
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
Rapeseed oil, to drizzle
Sea salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5.

Wipe the mushrooms with a damp clean cloth, remove the mushroom stalks and roughly chop them. Place the mushrooms on a baking tray, season with sea salt and black pepper and drizzle with oil, place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, melt the butter and fry the onion and mushroom stalks for 5 minutes, to soften, but not browned. Then add the peas with 1 tablespoon of cold water, cook for a further minute. Transfer the mixture to a bowl; mix with 225g of garlic and herb cream cheese, basil and the pine nuts and season with sea salt and black pepper.

Spoon the mixture into the mushroom caps and sprinkle over the breadcrumbs. Spread the remaining garlic and herb cream cheese on top of the mushrooms, drizzle with a little oil and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

Serves 4.

The promulgation of gaffes

"He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed."

The story making the internet rounds today is about Palin's rather incoherent answer to a question about Paul Revere (quoted above -- from Sully, hence all the dropped 'g's and what-not). To her credit she doesn't just repeat the mythology of the Wadsworth poem [ED: D'oh, speaking of gaffes, that should be the Longfellow poem], but she certainly makes a hash out of her answer. Whatever her train of thought was, she lost track of it and the answer became a muddle. Let's be honest, if those words had flown out of Obama's mouth we would be happily snarking away about them.

In fact, it reminded me of the time when, while tugging at the heart strings over Little Billy needing his asthma medicine during a stump speech, Obama lost his teleprompter (above video). He tried to string the story out while waiting for it to be fixed, but for some reason the word "inhaler" wasn't on the tip of his tongue and he drifted into incoherence. He actually mimed squirting an inhaler into his mouth as searched for the right word. I remember it because I had great fun mocking him when the video came out.

The difference is that you had to search YouTube for Obama's derailed train of thought, while Palin's will no doubt be played again and again on the networks and the late night comedians will have a field day with it. Further, we all know she is going to be asked, again and again, stupid and condescending questions about Paul Revere. That's just the way it is -- the media is their megaphone and they use it. 

My suggestion is not to try to untangle her muddled paragraph to counter that megaphone. They won't much listen, and to the extent that they do you'll just end up sounding muddled yourself. Instead, the counter should be asking the media, again and again, why they budget so much print space and air time to carrying the Democrats' water. Why is Palin's stumbling answer on the evening news while Obama's gaffe about Little Billy's breathalyzer shunted directly to YouTube?

Slowly but surely chipping away at the media's editorial judgement has worked, and it is reducing the volume of their megaphone in the process. Keep at it.

Finally, speaking of Paul Revere, remember these goofballs?

Whew, I dodged a bullet on that one

Weeee... I'm a Predator drone!

Had I, like I planned on doing this morning, published my  'Is Obama the Love Child of OJ Simpson?' birther expose I would have certainly ended up looking silly with the release of his birth certificate.

All I can say is, "Thank God for procrastination." It's the only reason that my carefully crafted image as a serious and impartial internet journalist is still intact tonight.

Still, one wonders why he dragged that out for so long?

Maybe he is just be goofily secretive by nature, but I tend to suspect -- and it is just pure supposition on my part -- that he has some dirt in his past that he is hiding. I think he calculates that if he stonewalls everything it will conceal where people should be looking for the good stuff.

Regardless, he made what should have been an easy climb down a difficult one. I watched part of his announcement this morning and he was putting on his Exasperated Dad act. I suppose he thinks it will all blow over, and any other questions about his past can be wrapped in the tainted aura of the birth certificate situation and be safetly ignored.

However, a lot of people have to be wondering, especially after seeing how harmless the birth certificate is, why he fought its release so hard and long?  Call me a cynic if you must, but I know I would still like to see his college transcripts and, perhaps of more interest, find out what sort of financial aid and/or scholarships he received.

Who's the better war leader?

Man, talk about a plan not surviving contact with the enemy. Well, now that we've seen a couple of weeks of Obama's war leadership, and with poor Anne Hathaway getting crushed by Barbara Feldon in our first poll, it is time for the Second Flares Poll of International Opinion: 

Who's the better war leader

Barack Obama or Rufus T. Firefly?

If you're a bit hazy on President Firefly's handling of his war, You can go here to watch a video and refresh your memory. As always, vote early and often, and may the best man win!