The Obama Disillusionment

Note:  You might want to start at the Barack Obama Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

President Obama has never managed a business in his life.  Not even so much as a hot dog stand.  He has never competently managed anything.  Before becoming a Chicago politician, he worked as a "community organizer" (big deal!) making perhaps $12,000 a year.

President Obama isn't quite what anyone had expected.  After only a few weeks in office, even some of his strongest supporters began to see (at last!) that he couldn't deliver on any of his grandiose promises.  The people who voted for "hope" and "change" are getting very little of either.

A large section of this page has spun off to a page of its own:

Disillusionment sets in:  the wheels are already coming off.

On this page:

Obama and his team are incompetent.

Obama is helpless without a teleprompter.

This is "hope"?

This is "change"?



Obama and his team are incompetent

Editor's note:
 I tried to warn everyone before the 2008 election that Barack Obama had little or no executive experience — certainly no experience running a business, no military service, no foreign-policy experience, and less than one full term in the U.S. Senate.  Not only that, any other person with such a long history of Communist contacts could never get a top secret security clearance.  "Community Organizer?"  Big Deal!

An overview of the entire Obama administration's incompetence:
 Time For A Change?  Obama's Mistakes Say So.  [Scroll down slowly]  The Obama staff waited three hours to even tell him about the Christmas terrorist incident.  As one pundit pointed out, the staff woke him up immediately to tell him he won the Nobel Prize for Peace.  But a terror threat to the homeland was apparently much less important and urgent than that.

The humbling of Obama? &c.  Did you hear what President Obama said the other day about the Middle East?  In an interview with his fan Joe Klein, he said, "I'll be honest with you.  This is just really hard."  Oh?  That's a stunning observation, Sherlock. ... Maybe the Bushes — all of them — weren't such flakes and boobs and knaves after all.

The president's reality problem:  "This is just really hard," he explained.  "This is as intractable a problem as you get."  As an observation, this is as banal as it gets. ... This speaks either to an astonishing historical ignorance (did he not know?) or a stupendous self-regard (did he not care because he thought he was so special?), or both.

Obama's War of Words.  "Nobody remembers "Tear Down this Wall" because I did an OK job of stringing the words together," says my speechwriter friend, Peter Robinson.  "We remember the speech because Reagan meant it, because it expressed the principles that he acted on, and because history proved him right."

Obama's Lack of Business Sense:  Asked how how and why small business loans would help small business, President Obama replied:  "If [small businesses] can get the bank loans to boost their payroll... they will do so."  He further claimed that in his "travels" he has spoken with small business owners nationwide, and they see optimism and new customers. ... [O]ur President advocates taking loans for the purpose of boosting payroll — in the middle of an economic draught.  It just makes no sense.

Obama Doesn't "Get" the Military He Commands.  Life is full of mysteries, but chief among them in this Marine wife's mind at the moment is, "Just how stupid does this White House think we are?"  If the events of the past few months have shown us anything, it's that Barack Obama has little enthusiasm for — or interest in — one of the most important duties of an American President:  his role as Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces.

Massive TSA Security Breach As Agency Gives Away Its Secrets.  In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

Greenspan:  Census will save Obamonomics.  Alan Greenspan told NBC:  "It [unemployment] is going to be lower.  You see, we are going to get a special bonus, one that no one expects is the fact that the Bureau of Census announced that it is going to employ 792,000 by April.  That is a big, it is not a huge number but it will take several tens of a percent off unemployment rate."  That's it?  That's the big plan?  If so, we could have moved the Census up a year and saved $787 billion.  They do not know what they are doing.

Obama secrecy:  So much for the hope of greater government transparency.  You can't have a closed-door meeting about the need for fewer closed-door meetings and expect anyone to take you seriously.  That's like writing a memo to order fewer memos.  Such folly is business as usual in the Obama White House.

The Obama Energy Fiasco.  Whatever happened to President Obama's urgent campaign appeal to "free America from dependency on foreign oil"?  In eleven short months, the Obama administration has made more mistakes on energy policy than did Jimmy Carter in his entire term, and that's saying something.

That unpopular bank bailout?  Geithner wants to extend it.  A day ahead of testimony in which he's sure to be grilled about the controversial taxpayer-funded bank bailout program, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced Wednesday [12/9/2009] that he wants to extend it into late 2010.

Why Fight With The Press?  The problem begins with the fact that, at bottom line, Mr. Obama was and is an empty suit.  He is able to play the con man, but he is incapable of governing, and has essentially zero leadership ability.  His campaign on how he was going to benefit everyone and make government transparent was for all practical purposes a fraud.  His sole agenda was to turn the government over to the radicals in Congress and his equally radical assistants to run in an essentially authoritarian fashion.

Our clueless C in C.  Twelve soldiers were murdered in cold blood at Fort Hood.  Thirty others were wounded.  Our Commander in Chief calls a press conference and begins it with a long thanks to the Interior Department and Indians who just concluded a conference and then gives a good natured "shout out" to an attendee, all with a studied nonchalance, before he even mentions the outrage on our military base. ... Study it and pass it on because the media is already cutting the tape to make the man look presidential instead of clueless and immature.

Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting.  The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.  But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks.

Obama's delayed empathy.  In times of national tragedy, Americans expect their president to capture the mood and moment with the right blend of emotion, empathy, and urgency.  It's a delicate act of timing and tone.  And President Obama, despite his eloquence and dignity, has yet to master it, as illustrated by his awkward response to the deadly shootings at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas.

Obama Gives Shout Out to 'Congressional Medal of Honor Winner' Who Isn't.  Obama, often described as "cerebral" by the mainstream media, should know the difference between the Medal of Honor and the Medal of Freedom, especially since he personally awarded the latter to Crow.  Don't expect his blunder to receive wide coverage.

KSM collects his first virgin.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed collected the first of his 72 virgins:  Barack Obama. ... President Obama's decision to try KSM as if he were a purse-snatcher bares once and for all shows how shallow our president is.  He is ignorant of history and of legal precedent.

Former CBO Chief Calls Obama Administration Fiscal Policies 'Laughable'.  A former Republican congressional budget chief called the Obama administration's claims to fiscal responsibility "hypocritical" and "laughable," noting in particular the mounting unemployment numbers (9.8 percent nationwide) despite the $787-billion stimulus plan enacted in February that he said was poorly designed.

Theory and Practice.  In theory we should all get along.  In practice we don't.  In theory winter should start on December 21st.  In practice it doesn't. ... Why are we talking like this?  Because we have a president who is so short on practice and so long on theory that he seems to be entertaining theories that can only be classified as world class in their stupidity.

Welcome to the P.T. Barnum Administration.  President Barack Obama is a master at pulling the wool over our eyes — a real professional huckster.  He ran as an anti-war candidate and still pushes two wars.  But he won't commit to either prosecuting the wars or withdrawing.  It's like having the circus high wire act perform without a net.  Sure it might work, but one mistake gets somebody killed.

Is Obama a fool?  Yes, if one gives him the benefit of the doubt.  If Obama believes that the thuggish, autocratic, expansionist Russian regime is more sinned against than sinning in relation to the U.S., then he is anti-American.  If he doesn't believe this but elects to act as if it were the case, then he is a fool.

The UN loves Barack Obama because he is weak.  Barack Obama's Gallup approval rating of 52 percent may well be lower at this stage of his presidency than any US leader in recent times with the exception of Bill Clinton.  But he is still worshipped with messiah-like adoration at the United Nations, and is considerably more popular with many of the 192 members of the UN than he is with the American people.

The Not Ready for Prime Time President.  Obama, while possessing many of the campaigning gifts of these presidents, has shown no ability to govern at all.  This is a very dangerous situation for our nation.  Our leader is a man whose ignorance, in many areas of history and policy, is simply appalling.  He is rather like the "President in the Plastic Bubble."  Obama's entire life has been insulated from any sense of reality of the nation he governs. ... President Obama seemingly has no clue about what he is doing, and, increasingly, it shows.

A Rookie President.  Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been.  It is not just that he has never been president before.  He has never had any position in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.

5 Reasons Obama's Election Is Bad For Race Relations:  [#5]  Obama is no Jackie Robinson:  Because he's the first black President, Barack Obama's presidency is particularly meaningful to black Americans just as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier meant a lot for the same reasons.  However, there is a huge difference between the two men:  Jackie Robinson was genuinely talented.  He ended up being Major League baseball's first Rookie of the Year.  On the other hand, Obama is a bumbling, corrupt, megalomaniacal train wreck who has been a disaster at home and a weakling abroad.

Another Team Obama failure.  Not only do the practical aspects of Team Obama's economic policies bother us, what really bothers us even more is the lack of confidence we have that Team Obama knows what it is doing.  Think about it.  What has he done that has worked?  We can't think of a single instance of real success.

Sorry, America, I'm the bearer of bad news.  [Scroll down]  I'd never expected the Obama project to go pear-shaped quite so soon.  Sure, it was nothing I hadn't predicted in the book:  the cronyism, the corruption, the naivety, the incompetence, the wasting of taxpayers' money on pet, left-liberal causes.  Even so, by the time I left Washington DC, I was feeling almost sorry for the guy.

Ten Ways Obama Can Get a Grip:  The president had a rough week.  He was beset by tax-cheating appointees, hobbled by an incompetent press secretary, frustrated by a messy legislative fight over his stimulus plan, and suddenly deprived of the aura of infallibility which gave him a larger-than-life political presence.  So how does he get his mojo back?

All the President's Tax Cheats.  You never get a second chance to make a first post-inaugural impression.  Less than three weeks into his first 100 days, Barack Obama has left an indelible mark on his nascent presidency:  the mark of incompetence and hubris.  Despite the administration's much-touted wealth of bright minds and high bars, the transition has been a complete disaster.

Who is Pulling Geithner's Strings?  Appearing behind a podium that proclaimed, "Financial Stability and Recovery," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday [2/10/2009] carefully read from a teleprompter and provided what his flack said was a "comprehensive" plan.  It was not comprehensive in any way.  It seemed so amateurish and shallow that the market dropped and commentators and senators were almost incredulous at the lack of detail.

Is the Administration Winging It?  Inexplicably, the president, in a prime-time press conference, raised expectations for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bank rescue plan, which turned out the next day to be no plan at all.  The markets craved details; they got none.  When markets cratered, spokesmen didn't acknowledge the administration's poor planning, but blamed the markets. ... Team Obama has been living off its campaign reputation for planning and execution.  That reputation is now frayed, and all the bumbling and unforced errors will have an impact.

Snake Oil Diplomacy:  Already the European press is picking up on the fact that the liberal Obama Administration style is to pay lip service to every issue under consideration and emphasize a willingness to discuss each and every element.  This is what Washington now considers good foreign policy.  The operational theme is to flood the diplomatic process with talk and pass that off as foreign political accomplishment.  It isn't! ... If George W. Bush came to be considered a "cowboy," Barack H. Obama is in danger of being viewed as a "snake oil salesman."

The Obama Cabinet is a CEO black hole.  There is virtually no one on Obama's team with outsized achievements or a high-profile reputation earned in the world of business.  There are no former CEOs in the Obama Cabinet.  And among the people who make up his daily inner circle, there is only a dollop or two of top-level private sector experience.

Obama's Supine Diplomacy:  The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, predicted in October that "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama."  Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban missile crisis.  Instead, Obama's challenges have come in smaller bites.  Some are deliberate threats to U.S. interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.  Preliminary X-rays are not very encouraging.

Our Keystone Cops Foreign Policy.  It appears that Barack Obama's foreign policy team is going to make us pine for the days of the Bush Administration's competency by comparison very soon.  I'm not sure what exactly this story illustrates except there doesn't seem to be anyone home at the White House yet.  You may recall the hubbub over Senator Kerry being handed a letter that was from Hamas which he promptly turned over to the American consulate at his next stop which happened to be Jerusalem.  Well now Kerry swears he didn't know it was from Hamas (who did he think it was from, Santa Claus?) ...

Not One of Us.  Governor Palin's "inexperience" is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has.  Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.

Beyond Our Wildest Expectations.  In one short month, President Obama has exceeded even the wildest expectations of many of his critics. ... But did Obama really win a mandate to borrow and spend taxpayer money like never before, rescue bad banks and then bailout financially-inept or even fraudulent homeowners?

Biden Asks for Web Site's 'Number'.  Vice President Joe Biden, tasked with overseeing the $787 billion stimulus package, has been having a little trouble with his "numbers." ... "You know, I'm embarrassed.  Do you know the Web site number?" he asked an aide standing out of view.  "I should have it in front of me and I don't.  I'm actually embarrassed."  Biden, who seemed to indicate that he thought the Internet worked like a giant telephone, sounded an unusually Luddite note inside an administration often heralded for its mastery of the Web.

The Editor says...
 Obviouly the press would have had a field day with a comment like that, if it had come from Dan Quayle.

A Month of B.O.  The Great Leader spent more than a third of his first month (11 days) on the road in an attempt to gin up support for his wobbly opening gambits.  Obama emoted by radio address, press conference, town-hall meeting and even a bizarre interview with Al-Arabiya in an attempt to show what he believes is leadership right out of the gate.  Unfortunately, all his locutions just sound like more campaign rhetoric.  What else can Obama do?  Try to remember that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all of your problems begin to look like nails.  What evidence do we have of BHO possessing any other skills relating to his new job?

The Emperor has no clues.  This is getting worse by the day.  First off.  Obama doesn't understand how the market works.  It's a vote of confidence each and every day how things are going to be in the future.  Not how things were yesterday.  Or, even today.  During the campaign, Barak Obama famously displayed his dismaying ignorance of economics and the availability and utilization of capital when he was surprised to learn, during an ABC interview, that lower capital gains rates result in high federal revenues.

Obama's 'fixes' worsen problems.  The Obama administration is threatening "regulatory arm twisting" to lower interest rates.  That is not the way to encourage more loans.  Sure, the government can help those who currently need help by getting someone else to pay for it, but what about the future?  What about the higher interest rates that new borrowers will face because lenders realize that they face greater risks in making loans?

Incompetence, malevolence, or both?  I was having lunch yesterday with a prominent critic of the Spender in Chief, and he raised a possibility that many of us have entertained over the past several weeks:  that Obama is simply out of his depth:  that he hasn't a clue about what makes the economy tick and his talk about the "profit-to-earnings ratio" was not a slip of the tongue but a worrisome confirmation of the suspicion that he is an empty suit floundering around in the dark.

Alice in the White House.  Two of President Barack Obama's latest tax hikes so quickly fail the laugh test as to make one wonder if Alice in Wonderland has taken up residence in the White House as an economic advisor.  The first would limit tax deductions for upper-income earners for their donations to charities.  The second would limit their deductions for mortgage-interest payments.  Such thinking is the opposite of what is needed with today's economy.

He's Just Not that into Governing.  Well, it's becoming obvious [Obama]'s not really much of a manager, decider, legislation-craftsman, or supervisor.  His vetting process is in shambles and key Treasury slots are still vacant.  His Treasury Secretary is a classic under-performer and Obama encourages that tendency by talking about everything other than our immediate recovery needs.  He lets Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do the legislating — and they've come up with an embarrassing stimulus and an omnibus spending-bill even Democrats aren't swallowing.

Is Obama lazy?  All we're getting is whispers from the press, of course, A raised eyebrow here, a sad shake of the head there.  But the picture that is emerging of Barack Obama, the executive, is not very flattering if you look between the lines.

Maybe we should schedule some nap time for our president.  [Scroll down]  The reason for all this is the explosion in the British press over the shabby treatment given Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his visit last week.  No joint presser, no state dinner, no mark of any kind that would have separated Brown's visit from that of the president of a much lesser country that didn't enjoy a century long "special relationship" with the United States.  Coupled with the comically insulting gift of 25 movie cd's (like giving your wife a vacuum cleaner for your anniversary), and you have all the evidence you need to state that Obama doesn't know what he's doing.  Not surprisingly, the American press has been mum about this epic fail.

What's Behind Barack's Brit Snit:  President Obama's first hosting of a foreign leader, the UK's Gordon Brown, was a diplomatic disaster.  Obama failed to hold a joint Rose Garden press conference, the usual protocol when a US president and a British prime minister first meet — a lapse widely noted in Britain and in the diplomatic community.

America Apologizes to Britain for Obama.  Barack Obama is a radical Leftist, a thinly viewed Marxist.  While Hitler was conquering Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and France, the radical Left was organizing strikes in American munitions factories.  It was trying to drive ROTC off college campuses.  It was forming front groups to stand for "peace" (which meant not helping Britain resist Nazi Germany.)  When the British nation was facing, alone, the full wrath of Nazi violence and terror, the radical Left in America was urging America to not help Britain.  Except for the will of Churchill and the courage and sacrifice of the British people, murderous racism on a mind numbing scale might have spread across the globe.  As an American, I apologize to the British people for the arrogance, ignorance, and indifference of our national leader.

Obama is overwhelmed.  It's at moments like this I'm reminded of this assessment of Obama, back in 2007:  "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is.  The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."  That assessment came from ... Vice President Joe Biden.

Ready for that "Smart Diplomacy".  One of the promises Candidate Obama made was to replace the Bush administration's foreign policy with a smarter one — one more respectful of our traditional allies with an emphasis on "smart power."  So, how's that working out?  Well, so far we've been rolled by the Russians while alienating Eastern Europe and Great Britain.

How Do You Say 'Hillary's Gaffe' in Russian?  Did you know that if you translate "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" into Russian, it becomes "the vodka is agreeable but the meat has gone bad"?  Literal translations can be tricky that way.  It seems that no translators were harmed in the manufacturing of Hillary Clinton's "reset" button, which she presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Friday [3/6/2009].  "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," Clinton addressed Lavrov in a deliberately slow voice, as if talking to a special-needs child.  "Do you think we got it?"

The 10 Biggest Amateur Mistakes By the Obama Administration So Far.  [#9]  In a juvenile stunt, reminiscent of something a third grader might come up with, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a button that was supposed to say "reset."  However, incredibly, the word on the button translated to "overcharge," not "reset."  Apparently, despite the enormous deficit the government is going to run up this year, Team Obama forgot to budget enough money to hire someone who speaks Russian for the State Department.  If only America could just press a button and reset the entire Obama presidency so far and start over.

Voters' Obama Folly Coming Home to Roost.  With an economy in shambles, slinking toward all-out depression a little further each day, the President doesn't know the difference between a popularity-based political tracking poll and the confidence meter of the stock market, which represents the actual savings and pension funds of millions and millions of ordinary Americans.  Heck, the golden boy of campaign one-liners doesn't even know that P/E ratio stands for price/earnings, not profit/earnings.  If only he had once had a paper route instead of all those pick-up games with the hoops.

Obama's fear-mongering:  Imagine a child falls down a well.  Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house.  Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste?  Or would you think I'm a jerk?  I ask because I'm trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration.  "Rule 1:  Never allow a crisis to go to waste," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election.

The O is for Overrated.  In his campaign for the Presidency, candidate Barack Obama and his minions relied on several key messages ... Experience, and in particular executive experience, was not much discussed, since Obama had less of both than any candidate for President in history. ... We have now seen the President and his team in action, and the lack of executive experience seems to be a real drawback.

Does Obama Know What He Is Doing?  Conservatives are so aghast at the huge spending going on in Washington and the $1.75 trillion deficit (13 percent of our gross domestic product) it is causing them to overlook an even more basic question about the president:  Is he competent?  Does he know what he is doing?  To be specific:  Does he know how to do anything other than spend money?

Obama opens new era of recklessness.  The miraculous marketing machine that carried a junior senator into the White House is now at work trying to convince Americans that writing fat checks from an empty Treasury represents a giant step toward fiscal responsibility.

Obama's failure to lead:  President Obama was called upon to lead and has utterly failed, and in less than two months.  From the stimulus package that won't stimulate even Chris Matthews' leg, to the continuing series of ethically questionable political appointments, through an outrageous Congressional spending binge that included unfettered earmarks, he has passed on all the easy leadership opportunities.  What will he do on the tougher issues?

More than a bad day:  Worries grow that Barack Obama & Co. have a competence problem.  Not long ago, after a string of especially bad days for the Obama administration, a veteran Democratic pol approached me with a pained look on his face and asked, "Do you think they know what they're doing?"  The question caught me off guard because the man is a well-known Obama supporter.  As we talked, I quickly realized his asking suggested his own considerable doubts.

Electing a Child to be President.  [Obama] had, on taking office, already written two autobiographical memoirs, but people are slowly becoming aware of the fact that there is virtually no paper trail by which to measure him.  His birth certificate and legal standing to be President are in dispute.  Records from his college days are hidden from view.  His record as a one-term Illinois legislator is replete with "present" votes that revealed little about his political positions.  He did not even wait to complete a full term as a U.S. Senator before almost immediately beginning to run for the highest office in the land.  In terms of political leadership, he is a child among grownups and a petulant one at that.

Obama must show competence to move agenda.  Obama's approach to his presidential agenda had been to define the nature of the economic crisis, sharpen public concerns about the crisis, propose a solution and then prepare to take credit for eventual success.  But concerns about competence may prevent him from implementing his solution, and all that defining and sharpening could make even basic governance difficult.

Obama Continues To Set Records For Incompetence.  There are growing indications that the Obama administration is melting down, unraveling and falling apart. ... Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the early days of the Obama administration will be remembered for his picking NCAA basketball tournament winners, appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and making fun of special needs children — while the American economy is burning.

The dumbest thing done by a president in living memory.  You may recall that President Obama committed a diplomatic faux pas by giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a box set of 25 American movie DVD's after Brown's gracious gifts that included a wood carving from a ship that helped end the slave trade.  But that is not the end of the Obama administration's stupidity — not by a long shot.

Squaring Off With Obama:  It's not just the big things the man does, things such as the kazillion dollar bail-outs, the trichinosisinfested budget and the threat of the Fairness Doctrine being enacted, that make my blood run cold.  It's not even the allegedly eloquent orator requiring a TelePrompter in order to say, "Hello."  What I'm referring to is the Commander in Chief earmarking $900 million for Hamas and, worse yet, make veterans financially responsible for their own service-related medical treatments.  (That comes under the heading of adding insult to injury.)  And let us not forget Obama's sending the bust of Winston Churchill back to the English embassy...

Mis-micromanagement.  It is never a good day when the White House announces that the president "still" has confidence in ... fill in the blank.  In this case, it's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, only two months into the administration.  But that gnawing feeling in the pit of the stomach is not just about Geithner.  It's primarily about our new president and his meager management skills.

Obama's inexperience shows.  Inappropriate laughter is not the only mistake the president made during the "60 Minutes" interview.  He also hyperbolized, yet again, about the recession.  He said he believes the United States could undergo a further implosion of the financial system if Citigroup or AIG have more problems, which in turn could launch, "an even more destructive recession and potentially depression."  Such talk from the leader of the free world is immature if not downright inexcusable.  Hasn't he learned by now that his words have more impact since he took over the White House?

O's Foreign Failures:  America's enemies smell blood and it's type "O."  All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing.  But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence.

President Gaffe's Bigger Problems.  Just because Britain's largest daily newspaper has a top ten gaffe reel assembled, and online before your presidency is barely 60 days old, you might believe that you're the laughingstock of serious members of the world community of leaders.

The Dems' AIG Bonus Scam.  [Scroll down]  It's a farce — a sham.  What's going on here is that the news media finally got around to mentioning that this $165 million for bonuses is part of the more than $170 billion of taxpayer money that Congress and President Obama insisted must be awarded in haste to the failed insurance giant American International Group, Inc (AIG).  The public, understandably, is really angry.  So the Democrats are terrified that the public might actually start figuring out what an incredibly incompetent job President Obama and the Congressional Democrats are doing.

Once Again, Tim Geithner Gets It Exactly Wrong.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 6 percent on Monday after the announcement of Treasury secretary Tim Geithner's latest bank relief plan. ... Indeed, stocks rallied for weeks in 1971 after President Nixon announced the dollar's de-link from gold, combined with price controls, but eventually markets caught up to the major economic negatives that would result from Nixon's flawed attempts to revitalize the U.S. economy.  It seems the same applies here.

The Subprime Presidency.  This week's G-20 summit may be one of America's most embarrassing moments since President Barack Obama gave 25 DVDs and a bag of Jiffy Pop to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.  Granted, that was only a few weeks ago, but when Obama presented the department store gift set as a symbol of our national friendship, Americans cringed.  At the time, we believed it to be thoughtless.  Now we realize it was all we could afford.  That point is not lost on other world leaders.

Barry and the Pirates.  It is the stuff of movies, a high seas drama, where for the first time in 200 years, pirates attack an American vessel, the Maersk Alabama.  In the best traditions of America's merchant seamen, its brave crew fights back and regains control of the ship. ... It is a moment for leadership and resolve, where America asserts her might and dignity, where she takes the lead against lawless marauders, and our President stands up full of pride and righteous anger and says.... Well, what he said was, exactly, nothing.

Welcome to Utopia.  Members of the O-Team — recovering from late-night teleprompter edits, grand parties and jet lag — now deny that the apparently obsequious gesture to the Saudi king was really a "bow."  Perhaps it would be better described as a "curtsy."  Whatever it was — the Arab press applauded the moment as servile — it was keeping with the administration's "apologize for America first" message.  Given what else happened this week, the incident may turn out to be as trivial as giving the queen of England a Chinese-made iPod as a gift from the American people.

Welcome to Utopia.  Genocidal despots, such as those ruling in Pyongyang and Tehran, never have cowered in fear of a nonbinding U.N. Security Council resolution, because they know that the U.N. has raised irrelevance to a new level.  They do, however, pay attention to reality — such as what we're buying to defend ourselves.  Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama mentioned the North Korean "provocation" and Iran's "dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons," his defense budget revealed how seriously he takes those and other threats.  The O-Team intends to reduce our ability to project power overseas and to protect the American people from nuclear attack.

Innocents abroad.  Hillary Clinton has apparently spent the last week in a state of deep concern.  She was "deeply concerned" about North Korea's missile launch, in defiance of all agreements the psycho-dictatorship had made.  She expressed "deep concern" about maritime conditions off Somalia, after the first American-flagged ship in about 200 years was boarded by pirates. ... Those who have noticed that the U.S. hold on superpower status is loosening before our eyes should know that Clinton feels our pain.

The Obama Doctrine:  Europe 1, America 0.  U.S. President Barack Obama's debut in European summitry has been good for Europe but bad for America.  While a highly deferential Obama gave in to all of the negotiating demands established by the Europeans, the Europeans in turn exploited Obama's naïvité and refused to concede to any of his.

Bow-ow-ow:  Obama's painful missteps.  Obama's staffing problems are blatant — from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be.  There has been one needless gaffe after another — from the president's tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady's over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia.  Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives?  The silence of the major media was a disgrace.

Obama's Non-Stop Naivete:  President Obama added a line at the last minute that wasn't in the prepared text of his nuclear-disarmament speech in Prague:  "I'm not naive."  He needed the disclaimer because, nearly simultaneous with his speech embracing the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Il launched a three-stage rocket over Japan.  Coincidence?

O's Amateur Hour:  Obama means well.  Just as Jimmy Carter, his policy godfather, meant well.  But the road to embassy takeovers and strategic humiliation is paved with good intentions -- coupled with distressing naivete.  On every stage, Obama draped Lady Liberty in sackcloth and ashes, drawing plentiful applause but no serious economic or security cooperation in return.  Then, in Turkey, he surrendered our national pride, undercut our interests and interfered in matters that aren't his business.

President Pantywaist — new surrender monkey on the block.  President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.  You name it, he blew it.

DHS, 'Rightwing Extremism' and Information Warfare.  The Homeland Security Assessment targeting mainstream conservatism was amateurish, poorly written and its logic absurdly shallow.  It's a shot across the bow in the unfolding information warfare. ... If this DHS Assessment is an example of the kind of analysis our decision makers receive from our intelligence agencies, we are in far worse straits than I had imagined.

Who gets credit for the rescue of Captain Phillips?  President Barack Obama (D), as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, is taking credit for the successful rescue of ship captain Richard Phillips, basking in the glow of an absolutely outstanding performance and raw courage of the ship's captain Richard Phillips, the ship's crew and the U.S. Navy under his skilled direction.  However military correspondent Jeff Emanuel at Pajama Media claims the reality is quite different; the inexperienced Obama and his equally inexperienced staff and advisers, committed to a peaceful resolution, needlessly dragged out an incident that, thanks to Phillips' bravery, could have been successfully resolved in a few hours with minimal loss of life.

Maybe 'brilliant' isn't exactly the right word for Obama.  [Scroll down]  Not 100 days into the Obama presidency and we literally can't go one day without someone on network or cable television telling us of the "brilliance" of our new president.  Leaving the media bias aside, what makes a president "brilliant?"  Does bowing before the Saudi king make one brilliant?  Does praising Turkey's AKP party and pushing — against the strong opposition of Europe — for the admission of Turkey into the EU make one brilliant?  Does proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that will create a deficit this year of $1.8 trillion make one brilliant?

World 3, Obama 0.  President Obama's two overseas trips —Europe and Latin America —make him appear more like a diplomatic tourist than the leader of the free world.  He met heads of state, made speeches, attended summits, conducted town hall meetings, but accomplished nothing that furthers U.S. interests abroad.

The insults were only for America.  The president's critics ought to lighten up.  We should give him credit for not knowing any better.  (He was "finished" and "polished" at Harvard, after all.)  Barack Obama is an accident of history, a street hustler from the South Side of Chicago with the gift of gab who landed on the world stage like a whale beached at the whim of a storm, the wrong man at the right time.

Napolitano makes Bush administration look well informed.  Ms. Napolitano's brief interview with the CBC this week was confirmation we're dealing with an irrational senior U.S. official who can't differentiate between a secure border linking the world's largest trading partners and one that's a giant sucking sound for jobs going south and what's been described as an "invasion" of desperate Mexicans illegally sneaking north.

Ideology versus Competence:  Janet Napolitano.  [Scroll down]  You see, Janet is an ideologue.  She is the kind of person who will pursue ideological goals without regard for truth, a person who can be expected to reinvent reality to fit the ideological vision of the administration, which she does with abandon.  She is the perfect Obama Administration appointee.

Of Course Obama Voters Are Not In Denial.  Every federal attempt to manage energy markets has proved a bust — and driven up costs.  As far as education goes, Obama has deployed as education secretary, sort of a national schools superintendent, a former superintendent of Chicago's public schools that are so bad Obama would not put his own children in them — just as he doesn't enroll them in Washington's public schools now.

The border for dummies.  Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?  She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

Obama's old/new socialism.  Those sympathetic to the charismatic Barack Obama ... often suggest that we have to "give him a chance" before judging his policies.  Although one may acknowledge the mountain of toxic woe he has inherited, this seems similar to suggesting that a five-year-old boy who thinks he can fly should be "given a chance" to climb up on the roof.  After all, it is not as if the President is suggesting policies that have never been tried before, or that do not have consequences as predictable as the law of gravity.

Second World War history is not Barack Obama's strong suit.  [Scroll down]  Last May ... Mr Obama said that his uncle "was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz".  Republicans pointed out that it was the Soviets who liberated Auschwitz.  "Unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way Obama's statement can be true," a Republican spokesman said.  The Democratic candidate issued a correction, but critical historians have found earlier examples of Mr Obama's elastic approach to the facts.

Obama's Competence Gap.  Guantanamo is the most vivid example.  As a candidate, Obama pushed the notion that George W. Bush was a constitutional Neanderthal and destroyer of American values.  Now he's discovered that it is really hard to figure out what to do with these really bad people.  And he's even discovered the virtue of the Bush-created military tribunals.  Republicans have kept up the drumbeat, forcing Democrats to include limits on funding and demands to "show them the plans" before funding a Guantanamo shut-down.  And it may be that there is no plan, no viable one to allow Guantanamo to be closed.

Obama Says He's Spock Then Misuses English Language.  Remember how the left always asserted that George W. Bush was stupid?  Remember how they were so thrilled to have the Obamessiah that spoke so well, a president that was perpetually the smartest man in the room?  Well, after the many stammering TelePrompter free stump debacles during the campaign, many began to doubt this claim of his superior intelligence.  Here is another small dent in that perception.

Obama's Cabinet served in legal wars, not real wars.  Members of President Obama's Cabinet are three times more likely to have attended law school than boot camp.  How things have changed since 2004, when Democrats were outraged that, in time of war, the GOP White House could be run by men with no combat experience.

Obama:  'We're out of money'.  I wish he would have realized that about $11 trillion ago.  In a Memorial Day weekend interview with C-SPAN's Steve Scully, the President of the United States told the people of America that their government was flat broke. ... This is a man who hasn't a clue.  Yes, we are in a recession and a financial crisis.  So your scare tactics that ratcheted up fear in order to get your stim bill, omnibus spending, and FY 2009 budget passed — a total of more than $5 trillion with interest added — are backfiring and you think you can work your way out of it by spending a trillion more on a health insurance boondoggle?

Obama Emulating Jimmy Carter in Portraying U.S. As Soft, Analyst Says.  President Obama is on track to accomplish in his first year of office what President Carter took three years to achieve — portray the United States as a "confused and soft power," an Asian security expert charged after North Korea reported a nuclear weapons test Monday [5/25/2009].

The Indispensable Geithner.  The Treasury Secretary aimed to cure the ills of the financial system by extracting toxic assets from bank balance sheets, replenishing the banks' capital resources, and bolstering the housing market to prevent further foreclosures so normal lending could resume.  Let us take a look at what he has "accomplished" thus far.

Burke and Obama.  When [Edmund] Burke wrote of his apprehension about "new power in new persons," I could not help think of the new powers that have been created by which a new President of the United States — a man with zero experience in business — can fire the head of General Motors and tell banks how to run their businesses.  Not only is Barack Obama new to the presidency, he is new to running any organization.  One of Burke's fears was that "we may place our confidence in the virtue of those who have never been tried."

The Unpersuasive Orator.  Obama is effective at marketing himself.  His 64 percent job approval (Gallup poll) is a reflection of this.  But in building public support for his policies, Obama has been largely unsuccessful.  You'd never guess this from the laudatory press coverage of Obama. ... Obama's reputation as a convincing speaker is overrated.  He may sound like an effective salesman, but the only product Americans are buying is Obama himself.

Testing O's Limits (He Has None).  Obama's so far out of his depth that the only role-model he can turn to for Afghanistan is LBJ.  Don't have a clue what to do?  Send more troops.  In Vietnam, we at least had secure supply lines and sensible rules of engagement.  But, then, why feel sorry for our soldiers?  Obama's supporters know that those in uniform are all expendable losers.  Since the change in administrations, we haven't heard many chants of "Support our troops, bring them home!"  The hypocrisy's inexhaustible.

The Blind Spot on Iran.  It's nice to see that the scales have fallen from the Obama administration's eyes when it comes to North Korea. ... [But] What makes the administration think Iran is any more open to giving up its nuclear weapons program than North Korea is?

The Iranian election: Barack Obama's cowardly silence.  The Obama administration's response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent election victory is cowardly, lily-livered and wrong.  As blood flows on the streets of Tehran, the United States government remains as silent as a Trappist Monk.  It is highly embarrassing when even the German government is showing more backbone than the White House.

Running the country with T-ball economics.  I get to feeling the people in Washington want to treat all of us as if we were playing T-ball.  Everyone is the same and only the powers that be know the real score.  Since everyone gets to run around the bases even if they struck out, all should be well.  But then, life isn't T-ball.  Life has winners and losers.

The little president who wasn't there.  Barack Obama loves to preen and parade his "higher" morality.  But when it comes to Iranians struggling against ugly tyranny or the people of North Korean just trying to fill their bellies with food, our little president just isn't there.  Nowhere to be found. ... Would Obama have gone to jail and risked Bull Connor's dogs and axe handles to assert basic human rghts in the segregated South in the 1950s?  Or would he be nowhere to be found?

Reality Bites — Doesn't It, Mr. President?  Obama is welcomed to the real world where eloquence and ice cream do nothing to counter a deep recession and thuggish dictators.

Obama's Cloudy Crystal Ball:  If his economic team was 2.5 million jobs off — and counting — in projecting unemployment just a few months into the future, how on earth can we trust their claims about all the money preventive care, information technology, and other such measures will save us on health care 10 or 20 years from now?

Biden:  We 'Misread the Economy'.  Big admission from Vice President Joe Biden today.  "The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," Biden told me during our exclusive "This Week" interview in Iraq.  Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package.

White House spells Obama's name wrong.  In a release touting an agreement between Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev over how to craft a follow-up to the START arms reduction treaty, the White House claimed the document had been signed by one "Barak Obama."

The High School Valedictorian Presidency.  Listening to President Obama speak Tuesday [7/7/2009] at the New Economic School in Moscow, it became completely clear that his intellect is greatly overrated.  As Obama proudly proclaimed his commitment to shared international progress and explained his support for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, it was painfully clear how foolish it is to believe he can be trusted to do the right thing on the international stage.  Most Russians already knew that.

Barack Obama is dumb.  Admittedly, George Bush was not the most eloquent President we've ever had, but of course, neither is Barack Obama once he gets off his teleprompter.  The biggest difference between the two men is not their speaking ability; it's that the mainstream media decided from day one that George Bush was dumb just because he was a Republican from Texas. ... Was it George Bush who claimed that there were more than 57 states?  Did Bush say he saw our "fallen heroes" in the audience during a speech?  Was it George Bush who made a racist comment about "typical white people?"  Did W. spend 20 years without complaint at a church where the pastor spouted off ignorant, anti-Semitic ideas and conspiracy theories?  Was George Bush so much of an airhead that he actually ended up "thanking himself in a speech" because that's what his teleprompter said to do?

Is Obamacare dead in the water?  Even the president has acknowledged that his deadline of getting it done before the August recess may be impossible.  I might add that there is precious little from the White House except speechmaking.  This president doesn't know how to govern.  He has handed responsibility for getting this bill passed to Pelosi and Reid while he stands on the sidelines kibbitzing.  Bottom line:  No one is in charge.

Obama Is Delaying the Economic Recovery.  When President Obama was hawking his stimulus package costing the American people close to $1 trillion with interest, he told us that it would prevent the unemployment rate from rising above 8%.  If we didn't pass it, he said, unemployment would go to 9%. ... Obviously, President Obama and his economic gurus didn't know what they were talking about.  Not only is unemployment today at 9.5%, but even the Obama Administration is now saying it will go over 10%.  President Obama is now changing his story, saying the stimulus was never supposed to work this fast, and it is really a two-year program.

Know-Nothing-in-Chief.  Is President Obama an economic illiterate?  Harsh as that sounds, there's growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. ... The president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be.  Three weeks after taking office, he said only government "has the resources to jolt our economy back into life."  He hasn't retreated, in words or policies, from that view.

Just how smart is Obama?  Comparing books attributed to Obama with known undisputed samples of his writings, [Jack] Cashill has shown that, in fact, Obama is a crappy writer, who, despite a Harvard-educated father, a mother with a PhD, attendance at the best private prep school in Hawaii and degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, never mastered such elemental matters of grammar as the necessary agreement of verbs and nouns in a sentence. ... But the "literary genius" foundational myth is not the only one in need of serious examination.  The very notion that he merited admission let alone degrees from these rigorous and competitive institutions is called into question every time Obama makes an extemporaneous remark.  He knows little or nothing about history, economics, law, geography and the grammar rules of his native tongue.

Barack Obama faces revolt over health care overhaul.  On the eve of Mr Obama's 200th day as president, his ratings slumped to 50 per cent, while a series of public meetings called by Democrats to promote the reforms have degenerated into mob scenes ... With progress of a health bill — which the White House had hoped for in July — stalled on Capitol Hill and rising concern over Mr Obama's handling of the economy, his national approval rating fell by seven per cent from last month.  The new low is a far cry from the stratospheric ratings of his heady first days in office.

Disaster in the Making?  Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the prospects of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.  Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

Obama Failed to Master Alinsky's Rule #12.  Obama himself, Organizer in Chief, had no plan.  He proposed no plan to Congress.  He has let committee after committee of witless tax-and-spend, haggard old liberals write the convoluted mess they're calling healthcare reform, and has virtually done nothing for own his part but bash the insurance companies, the doctors and even the patients, who ask for individual control over their own life-and-death choices.  This, dear readers, is the fundamental difference between an empty-suited celebrity and a nuts-and-bolts executive:  flim-flam artistry vs. substance and real results.

Obama's White House is Falling Down.  While his officials carry out their dirty economic deeds, Obama responds to any and every crisis as if it were a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, with a cry of, "Let's put on a show."  Thus far Obama has put on "shows" across America, Europe and the Middle East.  And what the adoring media coverage neglects to cover, is that Obama's shows have solved absolutely nothing.  They have served only as high profile entertainment.

White House in disarray over public option.  So is it [the "public option"] still in or not?  Not even the White House knows at this point.  This was made evident by the Obama administration walking to the edge of eliminating the public option and then scurrying back.  This kind of thing, by all rights, should have spurred a host of stories and opinion pieces on the total, laughable incompetence of the president and his people.

Panetta Revealed.  [Scroll down]  It should also go without saying that [Leon] Panetta's lack of experience in the intelligence sector was deeply worrisome.  The sad irony is that the Obama administration needs strong intelligence agencies.  Obama has cut defense spending and generally seems wary of the armed services.  This leaves a wide gap, so to speak, for heavy reliance on wide-reaching, covert intelligence agencies.  Obama's ill-chosen reliance on Leon Panetta speaks volumes about the slipshod way in which vital national-security issues are handled in this administration.

Questions of competence begin to dog Obama.  Two decisions on health care have rattled Democrats.  First, the president chose to not sell his own plan but instead tried to get Congress to rush something through before lawmakers — and the public — fully understood what was in the bill.  Second, the administration attempted an ungainly flip-flop on the issue of government-run insurance. ... Democrats can't be blamed for wondering if these guys know what they're doing.

No, Mr. Conyers, we expect you to read the bills.  If it weren't for the Great Health Care Debate of 2009, would we all know what a sorry excuse for a congressman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan really is? ... The man's been in Congress more than 40 years and, apparently, doesn't bother to read bills.  Well, at least not the long ones.  And he revealed this:  He not only doesn't bother to read the long bills, but he would also need lawyers to interpret them once he did read them.  How does a man with a mind like this get elected to the House of Representatives, and get elected repeatedly?

The Alinskyite's Big, Fat Governance Failure.  What happens when a president ... has never actually run anything successfully, not even his own paper route or a PTA meeting or a small town's city council?  What happens when power-grab tactics, taught by a rabble-rousing revolutionary, suddenly catapult a charismatic demagogue into the highest power-perch in the world?  Well, then, Barack Obama's big, fat governance failure happens.

Obama's Doomed Utopia.  Barack Obama was a great, if empty, orator when running for office.  He projected an elusive utopian vision of hope and change that won over the hearts of those who postponed thinking about how the brutal fact of scarce resources can stymie even his grandiose plans for social reform.  Unfortunately, his campaign skills have not easily transferred to the humdrum business of governance.

Obama's Well Organized Community Is Falling Apart.  Obama has foolishly allowed himself to be pushed into a no-win position, in his unlikely quest to "make history" by becoming the first "black" mystery messiah allowed to sit at the big desk with his finger on the red button.  In short, he's in way over his head, just as many worried would be the case with a freshman politician complete with blank résumé.

Hello ObamaCare, Goodbye Grandma.  Oh, look!  See Ezekiel.  See Ezekiel Emanuel.  Zeke is in charge of health care policy for the Obama administration. ... See Zeke think.  Zeke has not run a hospital.  He has not run an insurance company.  He has not run a medical practice.  He has not worked in the pharmaceutical industry.  Zeke has spent more than twenty years in education and government... thinking.

Health care debate confirms this is not the Barack Obama we elected.  Where is the sunny-side-up young man who promised to inspire and unite an unhappy nation?  Gone into the partisan sinkhole of Washington, that's where.  Like some novice swimmer too confident of his own ability, Obama is suddenly finding himself in water over his head.

Obama's Karmic Freight Train.  American citizens were asked during the 2008 presidential campaign to trust a candidate who refused to release his academic records, college transcripts, and a detailed original birth record. ... My guess is that Barack Obama's college transcripts show a "D-" in Economics and a "Withdrawal" in Western Civilization.

Insulter-In-Chief.  By now [President Obama has] insulted just about everything and everyone.

Morale at CIA Plummets as Panetta Makes a Bad Situation Worse.  The inexperienced CIA director is indeed the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.

Obama's Carousel of Incompetence.  According to sources with whom I confer, the Obama White House is the most tightly controlled White House in years, with the president, [Rahm] Emanuel and David Axelrod micromanaging practically everything.  They constitute what is called "the Politburo," and the news story waiting to be written is that their control is as stultifying as was Jimmy Carter's control of his White House.  Stupendous failure is in the cards.

Obama Offends — And Doesn't Seem To Know It.  It's one thing to be offensive.  It's yet another thing to be offensive, and to be clueless about it.

Obama the Weak.  There are three President Obamas.  There's the Obama who defers, the one who dithers, and the one who's out of touch.  The Obama presidencies have one thing in common.  They're all weak.

Van Jones and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  It was always striking that Obama, who had written two autobiographies at such an early age, had paid no real attention in either book to his only real executive experience before seeking the Presidency.  The media went along.

What Van Jones Tells Us About President Obama.  We were told during the 2008 campaign that President Obama was the most technologically able candidate in our history.  The Obama campaign ran commercials targeting John McCain's ignorance of the Internet.  Obama was so connected that he wanted to keep using his BlackBerry from the Oval Office.  And yet he couldn't get a single member of his administration to do a simple Google search on Van Jones.  Every tidbit of information on Van Jones was publicly available.

Obama vs. The People.  In his increasingly pathetic attempts to try and blame Bush for his own deficit spending, Obama showed that he did not know how to function without someone like Bush up top to blame the whole thing on.  But now Obama is Bush, stuck with the big chair that he doesn't actually know how to use, and clueless about what it takes to pass legislation, because between photo op appearances and running for office, he had never really passed any.  The State Senate assigned him credit for other people's legislation.  In the United States Senate, he ran for higher office after only 100 days in the chamber.  Like a precocious third grader who suddenly finds himself in college, Obama had no idea how to work with congress to get legislation passed.

Inexperience and Obama's latest Foibles:  The inexperience of Obama and his advisors becomes more evident day after day as they blunder their way through both domestic and foreign policy.  While most youngsters are taught from an early age that their actions have consequences, the world is watching these neophytes learn on the job — and the grown-ups are taking advantage of the children running the show here in America.

Obama blows chance to lead.  After nine months, Americans have begun to make up their minds about this president, and the growing conclusion is this:  On the menu of competency, this leader of the free world is one taco short of a full combination plate.  He's undisciplined, snooty and less gifted than initially thought, making him ill-prepared to grasp greatness, even when history offers it.

Democrats Jumping the Race-Card Shark.  Welcome to the post-racial presidency of Barack Obama, in which it has suddenly become a racial issue when American citizens dare to criticize the president.  Now, this is so silly, so asinine that it boggles the mind of any rational person. ... How easy did these people think it was going to be when they decided to elect a man whose resume fits nicely on a postage stamp to the highest office in the land?  Racism?  No.  Incompetence with a capital "I."  Yes, we can object.

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

Barack Obama, College Administrator.  Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics.  It shows.

Worst foreign policy ever.  Tomorrow [9/24/2009], President Obama will chair a special nuclear-disarmament meeting by the United Nations Security Council.  The White House bills this as a historic first, but it is typical of Mr. Obama's emphasis on style over substance.  He will appear before the body with the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory.  An around-the-world tour of international hot spots shows that for all the president's lofty rhetoric, he can point to precious few accomplishments.

Obama's plan?  What plan?  Throughout last year's presidential campaign, Barack Obama lambasted the Bush administration for fighting "the wrong war" in Iraq and ignoring the right one in Afghanistan.  Iraq was a "war of choice," Obama claimed, while Afghanistan was a "war of necessity."  Repeatedly, he claimed that, if elected president, he'd unveil a new "stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy."

Who is doing the governing?  In effect, the president is back to his old Illinois State Senate habit of voting "present" when it comes to issue after issue.  He has dithered on Afghanistan and avoided a hard decision.  On health care, he has outsourced political leadership to Senate and House pols.  There is still no written health care plan from the White House.  Sometimes it looks like nobody is in charge. ... Obama seems to spend most of his time giving speeches for the purpose of making people want to like him.

At the president's pleasure.  A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man."  At the very least, statutory rape occurred.  Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse.  That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar."

Bidding for the Olympics, Chicago-style.  Social Security is about to run out of money to cover the monthly checks that millions of senior and disabled Americans depend on to make ends meet.  Unemployment is nearing 10 percent nationwide and has reached its highest mark since World War II among younger Americans, 52 percent.  As many as 80,000 people in California's Central Valley are out of work in part because of federal environmental policies that make fish more important than people.  These are only a few of the most important crises facing the nation today.  And where is our president?  He is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to deliver a sales pitch for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics.

Unmasking Obama.  It is now abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and exaggerated.  He has worn a series of masks — eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and literary sensation.  All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice.

An Olympics We Can Believe In.  Obama, during the campaign, called a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable."  The President now demands that Iran come clean, or else.  Or else ... what?  Face "stiff sanctions."  Never mind that our country's sanctions against Iran have been in place for 30 years.  Ratcheting them up to include, say, energy embargoes requires the approval of U.N. Security Council members China and Russia.  Who do you think assists Iran in the construction of its nuclear program?  China and Russia.

Obama, the Olympics and other international games.  It's ever more widely and correctly perceived that President Barack Obama has bitten off more than he can chew. ... The Obama administration's failure to get serious about a world that is getting increasingly serious all around us is not just irresponsible.  It is a frightening indication that Obama is overwhelmed.

Why Obama's Boyish Utopia Endangers Us:  President Barack Obama is still just a lost boy at his age, and he searches for a world he wished existed.  His insistence upon living in his world, though attractive to the uneducated, neglected, and naive, is dangerously heaping hot coals of consequence on the heads of those who know better.

No Master Plan at All.  Could it be that there is less to Obama and his team of geniuses than we were led to believe? ... Could it be that Obama is not, in fact, a sophisticated analyst and astute policy wonk but merely has led a charmed political life, benefiting from a series of inept opponents (think Alan Keyes, the snarling infighters in Hillaryland, and the McCain gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight), a sycophantic media, and an electorate willing to give him every benefit of the doubt?

The Obamas Violated First Three Rules of Selling.  Of course Barack and Michelle Obama failed in Copenhagen.  Their strategy could not possibly succeed.  In their academic arrogance, they thought they could sell a product they clearly do not believe in (the United States) and moreover, they could do so by stressing the benefits to the seller (Chicago) and not the buyer (the IOC).  And to top it off, they committed the faux pas of talking too much about the sales force (themselves) and not about the product or the buyer.

First Brat:  It's All About Him.  I cannot work up any sympathy for Obama and cannot even take any pleasure in being found right in my judgment of him as I wrote my impressions during the campaign and the first six months of his term.  I said he was a moron and I am sticking with it.  Even the public picked up on it as it became evident he couldn't go to the bathroom without a set of TelePrompters and instructions.

President Obama plays the fool on world stage.  President Obama has been stumbling all over the world stage this past week.  The spectacle has been aggravating and painful.  The former world's biggest celebrity is proving himself to be the world's biggest joke to our allies and enemies alike.  Sadly, the joke is on us, the nation that elected him despite plenty of alarm signals.

Paper Bag 1, Obama 0.  Can Barack Obama argue his way out of a paper bag?  That's the question eminences of his party will be mulling after his defeat Friday [10/2/2009] at the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen.  Obama put his worldwide popularity and the full weight of the office of the presidency of the United States behind Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics.  He surprised the world by losing on the first round of balloting.

President is AWOL as our commander.  If you still doubt President Obama is trying to do too many things and is giving short shrift to the most important ones, consider this pathetic scene at the Copenhagen airport.  It was Friday [10/2/2009], and the president went to Denmark to make his pitch for the Chicago Olympics.

Did We Elect a Beta Male As President?  While we've all been seeking a political rationale for the president's actions, his behavior goes beyond the political to something deeper and more personal:  like all beta males, Barack Obama simply does not have the temperament to confront tyrannical alpha males around the globe. ... To cooperate with our allies would require Obama to display alpha male behaviors, including demonstrating courage, something he's simply not capable of doing.

Obama dithers and dithers.  Barack Obama, like the "progressives" he represents, is proud of a mind so open that his brains are forever at risk of falling out.  He first said the war in Afghanistan was a war the West could not afford to lose.  But that was way back when, and he changed his mind.  Then he changed it again, and now nobody, maybe not even the president himself, knows what he thinks.

Compare and Contrast.  Obama's permanent publicity blitz has rendered his pronouncements banal and is helping to create an impression that he is all talk, no results. Who can recall with any precision what the president says from one day to the next? Why bother trying when another speech is moments away?

Exit Strategy from the Great Recession.  In the 1930s, Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt had no exit strategy from the Great Depression, so he blamed it on his Republican predecessor.  Roosevelt's policies prolonged the depression until, finally, the start of World War II in Europe caused the increased exports and business investment that pulled us out.  It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama doesn't have an exit strategy either.

PC Prize for PC Prez.  Last week Saturday Night Life [sic] finally found the courage to laugh at the obvious fact that Obama has achieved nothing.  He was elected with that understanding.  Every liberal pundit knew it.  Every American who bothered to search the web could find out the extent of Obama's inexperience, his huge Leftist blind spots, and his general incompetence.  Obama was elected because he is the earthly incarnation of PC, and that's why the Nobel Committee did what it did.

Mission Abandoned.  We can almost hear Gen. McChrystal quoting the words of U.S. Grant:  "In war, anything is better than indecision.  We must decide.  If I am wrong, we shall soon find it out and can do the other thing.  But not to decide... may ruin everything."

A president of leisure.  Obama has already played golf as many times in nine months as Bush did in almost three years, but golf isn't his only game of choice.  Various media sources have recently covered the president's basketball games at the White House.  We already knew that Obama was a sports fan, but the Baller-in-Chief seems to be more concerned with victory on the greens and hardwood than on the battlefield.

Obama's "Compromise Solution".  The McChrystal review was done by August 1st.  It is now the end of October.  According to today's Washington Post ("Obama seeking options on forces; President looks to send fewer additional troops"), we'll get a decision by the end of November.  That's four months.  And it's evident that the review at this point is being driven entirely by White House political concerns.  148 American soldiers have died while the president holds seminars.

Are They Stupid or Evil or Both?  [Scroll down]  What other stupid things has [Obama] done since assuming office in January?  Where does one start?  He bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia when no President, nor the U.S. flag, is ever permitted to bow or dip to any other head of state.  He doubled the national debt.  He announced the termination of the space defense system the day after the North Korea launched an ICBM.  He told the Mexicans that the violence in their nation was our fault.  He has begun to nationalize the nation's auto industry and healthcare system.  He has demonized insurance companies, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the coal and oil industries on whom we depend for electricity and for transportation.  It's a very long list.

Whiner in chief.  President Obama is degrading the Oval Office.  In recent months, his administration has engaged in puerile, partisan attacks on his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.  Nearly every problem in America — the economy, health care, financial regulatory reform, Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo — is being blamed on Mr. Bush.

Obama can't be community organizer for the world.  A lot of observers are having trouble figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama's foreign policy.  How does the president see America's place in the world?  How will he use American power?  How much does he care about such things?  There are no good answers at the moment, but there is a new theory going around:  Obama approaches foreign affairs as he would neighborhood issues.

Did Obama Just Convict the Suspected Fort Hood Shooter?  President Obama began his weekly Internet and radio address on Saturday [11/7/2009] with these words:  "This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers."  Did the president, speaking directly about the man suspected in the killings, prejudice any jury that might be called to hear the case?

Memo to ABC:  There's a Reason He's Not Called Smith.  Equally predictable is our President -- who is also not named Smith by the way.  Barack Hussein Obama was giving "shout-outs" to folks at a speech related to native Americans at the Department of the Interior shortly after the news of the Fort Hood tragedy broke. ... This was a President who had time to delay, cancel or at least, reprogram a very non-crucial photo op in light of the news.  The only thing missing was Jeremiah Wright hootin and hollerin about "America's chickens" and high fiving and so on.  I mean, God bleep America, we deserved it, didn't we?  At the very least, Obama's reaction can charitably be characterized as cold.

Why Obama is Blind to Terror... & Freedom.  In the hours following the shooting at Ft. Hood, President Obama demonstrated resolute apathy to the greatest issue of our time.  His callous and apathetic beliefs caused some rather unbecoming behavior for a United States President. ... The President spent several minutes at the beginning of his time giving introductory remarks.  He gave "shout-outs" to his "homies" in the crowd.  He also apparently attributed a Congressional Medal of Honor to someone in the room.  The only problem being that the man in question had not in fact ever received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Fort Hood Could Be Obama's Katrina.  As Hurricane Katrina zeroed in on New Orleans in 2005, government at all levels was lethargic, seemed unprepared, and to some, even uncaring.  In the wake of last week's massacre at Fort Hood, we are learning that the United States Army knew quite a bit about Major Nadal Malik Hasan — but did not act on the information.  Fort Hood could become Barack Obama's Katrina.

Obama Stumbles Again.  Barack Obama:  you can dress him up, but you can't take him out.  Every time he goes abroad, he embarrasses himself and sells out his country. ... If Barack Obama can't stick up for the country he represents when he goes overseas, he should stay home.

Why Isn't He Better at Being President?  Jennifer [Rubin] asks a good question that is more and more on the minds of citizens and the punditocracy alike.  Obama is so smart and so eloquent, and yet he has not, at least yet, succeeded as president domestically or in foreign affairs.  One answer, perhaps, is that being a successful president requires skills and attributes that Obama simply does not possess.

Who's handling protocol for the White House?  Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had frontpager, "Obama's China Summit Ends On Awkward Diplomatic Note."  Accompanying the story was a photo of the President touring the Fobidden City with a few dozen Chinese diplomats and politicians.  All of the Chinese leaders in the photo are wearing dark suits and ties — the President is wearing an open collared shirt and a leather jacket.

Why Is No One Laughing?  What would the mainstream media's response be if former governor Sarah Palin described China's economic growth to an audience of students in Shanghai as "an accomplishment unparalleled in human history"?  That is what the most inexperienced president in modern American history said in Shanghai this week.  I wonder if any of the assembled journalists choked.  President Barack Obama makes such unhinged pronouncements with the kind of frequency that if he were anyone else he would be set down by the media as a boobie.

President Superbower — "Speak Loudly, Carry a Small Twig".  My radio pal Hugh Hewitt said to me on the air the other day that Barack Obama "doesn't know how to be president".  It was a low but effective crack and I didn't pay it much heed.  But, after musing on it over the last week or so, it seems to me frighteningly literally true.

Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required.  A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report.  It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy.

Obama:  King of All Statists.  Almost 40% of William Howard Taft's cabinet officials were from the private sector.  Ike had nearly 60% of his appointees sporting private sector experience.  Reagan had about 55% and George W. Bush about 53%.  Even FDR and Truman saw half their cabinet officials coming to government with private sector experience.  And Obama?  Less than 10%.

The Five Obama Fails.  The Obama administration burst onto the presidency with a historic wealth of good will, hope, and change.  It is now marked by one failure after another.  Unfortunately, these failures are not without costs.  The burden is borne by consumers, taxpayers, and generations yet to come.

Five More Amateur Mistakes By the Obama Administration.  Since he has been elected, Barack Obama has been like a four year old wearing water wings and desperately trying to reach the edge of the pool.  In other words, he has been completely out of his depth.  Who could have known that giving soaring speeches about "hope" and "change" while voting "present" on the tough issues wouldn't be enough preparation for the most important job on Planet Earth -- oh wait, millions of Americans knew that and pointed it out at every opportunity.

The Unmasking of Barack Obama.  The overseas reviews for President Obama's foreign policy are starting to pour in -- and they're not favorable. ... On almost every front, progress is nonexistent.  In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better.  The enormous goodwill that Obama's election was met with hasn't been leveraged into anything useful and tangible.

Looks like a cover-up to me.
 White House Blocks Testimony on Party Crashers.  The White House on Wednesday [12/2/2009] invoked the separation of powers to keep Desiree Rogers, President Obama's social secretary, from testifying on Capitol Hill about how a couple of aspiring reality television show celebrities crashed a state dinner for the prime minister of India last week.

Gatecrashgate.  Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton Administration's famed servitor, saw it all coming.  He predicted the Obama Administration's Carousel of Incompetence, as I like to call it.

O aide's crasher 'confession'.  President Obama's social secretary quipped that she regularly let event crashers into White House gatherings — months before two reality-TV wannabes waltzed into last week's state dinner.  Desiree Rogers claimed in an interview with the trade magazine BizBash at the Creative Coalition's annual meeting in June that she had added extra tables and benches at every event to accommodate uninvited guests.

Obama social secretary let 1st priority slip.  The heat's on Desiree Rogers.  Now, a lot of people in Chicago are wondering will they or won't they fire the nation's celebrity party planner.  For those who don't know, Rogers has been under intense scrutiny since a Washington couple crashed the president's first state dinner.

White House Aide Once Quipped About Enabling Party Crashers.  Desiree Rogers is under scrutiny for her office's role in the infamous security breakdown at the state dinner.  A woman with a reputation as a consummate perfectionist is being criticized for dropping the ball — and, by some, for putting her own aggrandizement over her job.

Community Organizer in Chief.  When Barack Obama humbled Hillary Clinton, the campaign orchestrated for him by Democratic fixers was widely misread as a thing of genius.  Because Hillary has fans who delude themselves into thinking of her as the smartest woman in America, an influential few figured that anyone who beat her had to be even smarter.  But smooth is not the same as smart, and neither smooth nor smart should be confused with effective.  In fact, there is more evidence for saying that Obama is vindictive than for saying he is smart, and that matters when smarts are supposed to compensate for inexperience.

Government Giveth and Taketh Away.  [President Barack Obama] now is promising to "spend our way out of this recession." ... It is estimated that the president's eruption of generosity will cost an additional $170 billion, perhaps more.  He has made this promise despite the fact that fear is spreading throughout the country that our government deficits are unsustainable.  The so-called Independents have forsaken him owing to their fear that he is bankrupting the country.

Can the Obama Administration Afford Any More Missteps?  As problems continue to mount and the president's approval ratings continue to sink — the latest Rasmussen poll has Obama's approval rating down to 44 percent, a new low — there are a lot of different, and damaging, story lines developing around the Obama administration.  You can add a lack of basic competence to the list.

High season for fraud and farce.  President Obama finally makes it back to familiar and frozen Copenhagen, scene of his earlier success in winning the Olympics for Chicago, trying to figure out a way to make zero plus zero amount to something big. His prospects are not good.

Obama does it again.  President Obama reportedly was re luctant to attend the final day of the UN's Copenhagen climate-change summit unless it was front-end wired to be a major political success.  But he went anyway, was twice humiliated in public by the Chinese premier and then finally settled for what the White House hailed as a "meaningful agreement."  Really?

Obama the party crasher.  Barack Obama is not used to being the guy not invited to a party.  At the Copenhagen global warming conference, however, he found that not everyone wanted to hang with him. Our president can't take a hint.

Homeland chief an airhead.  An al Qaeda bomber stashing explosives in his underwear cakewalked onto a US-bound airliner after averting scans on two continents — but the federal Homeland Security chief incredibly claimed yesterday [12/27/2009] that "everything happened that should have."

The System Worked, Except That Part When It Failed.  The system is supposed to work, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, something like this:  a man recently reported to U.S. authorities by his own father, who was on a terror watch list, who pays three grand in cash for a ticket to Detroit (enough to buy a city block in the Motor City), and who was denied a student visa to the United Kingdom, attempts to explode a bomb on a packed plane and is tackled by a Dutch filmmaker.

Yes, Janet, There Is A 'War On Terror'.  Al-Qaida's botched Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 raises a series of concerns about U.S. vulnerability.  Chief among them:  a Homeland Security chief in denial that we are at war.  The nearly 300 trans-Atlantic passengers targeted for death by alleged would-be suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab were saved not by any policy of the Homeland Security Department, but by the good luck of a detonator malfunctioning.

The System?  It's You!  Janet Napolitano's appearance on CNN this morning [12/27/2009], in which she tried to put a happy face on the fact that a known terrorist sympathizer got onto a flight bound for America and nearly brought it down, has been widely and justly derided.

Official bungling led to plane attack.  [Scroll down]  First, President Obama should demand the resignation of Secretary Janet Napolitano and fire her if she refuses to resign.  It is clear from her comment that "the system worked" that Napolitano lacks the first clue about what is required to ensure safe commercial airline travel in an era defined by the war on terrorism.  The system failed because an individual with known terrorist links successfully smuggled explosives on board a loaded commercial jet bound for the U.S.

The System Needs Fixing.  Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's initial assessment of the Christmas Day airliner attack — that "the system worked" — doesn't quite match the absurdity of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."  But only because she quickly took it back.

Absurd flight from reality.  [Scroll down]  In the aftermath yesterday, Big Sis — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — informs us that the system worked.  It worked?  If by working, Napolitano means she has extended the government's policy of porous borders to the skies, she is certainly correct.

A Day Off.  One of my rules for writing is to present criticism in such a way that it avoids becoming the kind of outright rants that separate thoughtful columnists from angry bloggers.  [However...] Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is as dumb as a dipstick.  The airline security system "worked," one day later it "failed" and the first comment was "taken out of context?"

President Obama's initial reaction to recent terrorist act lacked urgency, decisive leadership.  The attempt to blow Northwest Flight 253 out of the air was planned as an attack on the United States and very nearly succeeded in accomplishing that horrific goal.  The moment demanded inspiring, decisive presidential leadership.  America waited four days for a glimmer.

The Bizarro President.  Obama often looks presidential and even speaks the language, but his actions haven't been of an individual you'd want leading your country.  He has outsourced his decision and policy making duties to his trusted advisors and the legislative branch and he's been a complete failure in the process.

Why is Obama still in Hawaii?  President Obama wants us all to know he's taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety.  But his words would be a lot more convincing if not delivered during time snatched between rounds of golf, swimming and sunbathing.

Napolitano Builds Up Undie Bomber:  Terrorists Went To 'Great Lengths'.  Like a football coach trying to explain away the trouncing his team just took by building up the opponent, Janet Napolitano is seeking to diminish the Obama administration's NWA 253 failure by exaggerating the cunning of the Christmas Day plot.  The hapless Homeland Security head has a 679-word piece in today's USA Today basically promising to do better.

When Obama Apologists Attack.  What's made matters even worse for Obama are the remarks of his bungling DHS secretary.  Some Obama apologists have claimed that Napolitano's "the system worked" remark has been taken out of context.  She was only talking about the system working after the attack occurred, you see.  Well, it turns out that the system didn't work after the attack occurred, according to the Allied Pilots Association.

Napolitano Must Go — Now.  The DHS secretary, appointed as a political favor, is endangering lives with her after-the-fact policing approach.

Handling problems the Obama way.  There is a sense of déjà vu in the Obama administration's response to the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day.  A by-now familiar pattern has been established for dealing with unexpected problems.  First, White House aides downplay the notion that something may have gone wrong on their part.

Not So Isolated, And More Than Extremist.  "Isolated extremist" was the label President Barack Obama initially slapped on the Nigerian Muslim who flew into Detroit on Christmas Day, burning himself in a botched attempt to take down the plane with explosives sewn into his underwear.  If anyone seems isolated here, it is the U.S. president himself.  For three days after the terrorist attack, Obama carried on with his Hawaii holiday, "monitoring" the situation while leaving his staff to deal with the public.

Transportation Security Administration on trial.  The editorial pages of practically every major newspaper in the country have warned that the Transportation Security Administration is failing.  Left, right, center, it doesn't matter.  The incompetence is obvious to anyone who looks.  Just last week this page dubbed TSA the "Terrorism Service Administration" for broadcasting detailed security information that could be used to slip through our defenses.

Hillary Clinton has gone AWOL on the Iranian front.  One would have thought that with a potential revolution on the streets of Tehran, and with scenes of horrific and savage brutality against protesters by the Iranian regime, that Washington's official voice on international affairs might at least have expressed an opinion.

Where Oh Where Is Hillary?  Nile Gardiner at the Daily Telegraph writes:  "The White House should send a search party to track down Hillary Clinton.  America's foreign policy chief has been missing from the world stage for several days, and has become as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel at the height of the French Revolution."  Come to think of it, we haven't seen or heard from her since the Flight 253 bombing attack.

Systemic Failure.  A couple of weeks ago on Oprah Winfrey's "White House Christmas Special," our first postmodern president, Barack Obama, gave himself a "good, solid B-plus" for his performance over the past 11 months. ... Right now, however, he is under fire for his inert response to that Nigerian terrorist's attempt to blow up nearly 300 passengers on a commercial jet as it landed in Detroit.  He issued his arctic response after a round of golf and en route to his next presidential event, a tennis game.

Barack Obama and the Exhausted Presidency.  [Scroll down]  He has never really been tested — until now.  And, of course, now he finds himself in over his head.  Obama's difficulties are of his own making, and they arise from his failure thus far to recognize what it means to be President of the United States.  American presidents put aside personal pique and pay close attention to protocol.  They do not bow to queens, kings, and emperors; they do not warmly embrace dictators and thugs; and they do not direct gratuitous insults at America's allies.

Democrats Join Calls for Napolitano to Step Down Following Failed Attack.  Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago.

Clueless.  It's the word that best describes the Obama administration's first year in office.  They've proven themselves clueless about creating jobs; clueless about handling growing nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea; and now, most devastatingly, clueless about protecting Americans from terrorist attacks on our own soil.  And with nearly one year under the belts, they can't keep blaming the Bush administration for everything that goes awry.  It is hard to imagine a more incompetent handling of the thwarted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. jetliner.

DeMint:  TSA nominee isn't qualified, shouldn't be confirmed.  Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who has been the target of much Democratic criticism for his efforts to slow down Senate confirmation of Erroll Southers, the Obama White House's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, now says Southers should not be confirmed.  DeMint has been critical of Southers for refusing to answer questions about whether Southers would work toward unionizing the TSA.

Obama's latest homeland security fiasco.  For a while, it seemed the nomination and confirmation of Erroll Southers to head the Transportation Security Administration would be a routine affair. ... Wrong.  As the new year begins, the Southers nomination has become the latest Obama confirmation mess, raising questions not only about the nominee but the White House's selection process.

Boo hoo.
 CBS Frets Obama Must Work.  The failures that allowed the unsuccessful Christmas Day terrorist attack have marred President Barack Obama's relaxation schedule in Hawaii, CBS's Jeff Glor and Chip Reid regretted Thursday night as Reid fretted Obama had "hoped to spend this vacation recharging his batteries, but now he appears to be spending most of it working"...

Failure to Lead.  Take President Obama's poor timing in response to a failed terrorist attack on a U.S. jetliner, add the politicization of that event by his surrogates and a ridiculous message by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and what do you get?  A complete failure when it comes to a commander-in-chief's most important job:  Protecting Americans from harm.

Brennan:  System worked 'every other day' in '09.  White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan is maintaining the system to protect the U.S. against attack worked successfully this year apart from the Christmas Day bombing attempt — a claim that seems to downplay the notion that deadly attacks at Fort Hood in Texas and a military recruiting center in Arkansas represented a failure of intelligence gathering.

The dove that dare not speak its name.  In the middle of the interview [Chris] Wallace asked [John] Brennan why the administration was treating Nigerian terrorist bomber Umar Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant rather than an enemy combatant.  Wallace referred to the fact that Abdulmuttalab had reportedly been cooperating with authorities until he obtained a lawyer.  Brennan declined to challenge the premise of the question, but he talked a bit around the question.

B. Hussein Obama Grade for First Year in Office:  F minus; Abject Failure.  The number and description of his broken promises are so voluminous as to be physically impossible to totally repeat in a column of this size, so I will try to cover some of the principal promises that have not been kept. ... Of all the major bills so far during the course of this legislative year does anyone recall when the public got FIVE days to examine a bill before a vote took place?  This was a promise Obama made that needed cooperation from the Congress but has never been achieved.

Merge the 'Terror' Lists to Prevent the Next Attack.  It would be satisfying — and manifestly just — for President Obama to fire Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.  She abjures the "politics of fear," and prefers the term "man-caused disasters" to the word "terrorism."  And it was her risible reaction to the failed Christmas Day attack ("the system worked") that redundantly proved her unfit for her job.  And it would be satisfying — and equally justified — for Obama to remove Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair from his bureaucratic aerie.

O's aide terror-fying.  First it was delusion.  Now it is denial.  Let's just hope the Obama administration works through this vexing 12-step program they're in before al Qaeda decides to launch another attack.  Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assured us that the "system worked" when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly blew up an American jetliner on Christmas Day with a bomb smuggled in his loin.  And just when you thought "Big Sis" had easily retired the award for Biggest Turkey in the Global War on Terror, up steps John Brennan.

Are you scared yet?  Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan's appearance on Fox News Sunday yesterday — as well as the other Sunday talk shows — to discuss the handling of would-be Northwest Airlines terrorist Abdulmutallab may have been intended to reassure the country, but had the opposite effect.  He demonstrated an unwillingness to answer important questions, instead evading and ignoring them in favor of memorized talking points.

The Perils of Executive Inexperience.  For months we saw a new dog-and-pony show every week, each on a different topic.  Obama's spinners incessantly told us the problem wasn't that he was trying to do too many things at once.  But now it seems that it was and that his key advisers don't understand the administration's top priority.

Did Obama Politicize the Terror Database?  In his usual heroic fashion, Obama tossed that hot Christmas Bomber potato to Janet Napolitano, and when she dropped the potato, it got cannoned over to the CIA with a quick fake to Dick Cheney, who didn't even bother to answer.  Obama kept his head buried deep in the sand at Oahu for almost four days while all this was going on.

The War on Christmas.  We suppose Napolitano is a glass-is-half-full kind of gal.  And it's true that, apart from allowing a known extremist to board a plane while carrying a bomb, the system worked.

Chickens Come Home, Roost.  The Obama administration has gone out of its way to poison relationships with traditional allies with Great Britain, and it seems that the favor is now being returned, as the Prime Minister's office has disclosed publicly that British intelligence, MI5, warned the US about Umar Abdulmutallab.

War on Terror?  What War?  President Barack Obama is obviously a man who won't permit any facts to penetrate his airtight ideological force field, from deficit spending to health care to global warming to his non-prosecution of the war on terror — I mean "overseas contingency operations."

Embarrassed Obama Finally Admits Detroit Terrorist was Not Isolated.  It took him more than a week after the terror-attempt incident, but Barack Obama has finally admitted what conservatives and intellectually honest Americans have already known or at least suspected since Christmas Day, when Abdulmutallab tried unsuccessfully to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane.  Namely, that al-Qaida indeed had its Islamofascist fingerprints all over the attempted attack and that there is an al-Qaida link to said failed terror attempt.  I guess it's better late than never for someone as slow on the uptake as Obama.

Intel chief must go.  It is reported in today's Daily News that the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center was skiing on Christmas and stayed on the slopes for several days after the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253.  It must soon be reported, certainly by tomorrow's editions, that President Obama has given Michael Leiter all the free time he likes to schuss and slalom the slopes to his heart's delight.

Amateur hour is over.  Enough is enough.  There was a time when the amateur hour that has characterized the behavior of the staff in the Obama White Hour over the past year could be chalked up to innocent inexperience.  Now that behavior is nothing short of dangerous and President Barack Obama is being ill served by those by those closest around him.

Obama Misses the Big Picture.  John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that President Obama's remarks on recent American intelligence and security failures this afternoon "miss the big picture" and "ignore the problems we face in dealing with al-Qaeda."  "I didn't hear any hint of the president planning to deal with al-Qaeda's growing capabilities," says Bolton.

There's no penalty for sleeping on the job.  Smooth talk is easy for Mr. Obama, and he often confuses words with deeds.  He's taking responsibility for what happened aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on final approach over Detroit, but it's not clear what that means.  He's not likely to fire himself (perhaps to spare us Joe Biden).  So nobody pays a price for some serious sleeping on the job.

Terror in the Skies Requires Real Action on the Ground.  Shortly after the incident on Northwest Flight 253, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano first insisted that "the system worked" regarding the Christmas Day attempt.  This particularly blatant act of defensive self-protection was such an obvious falsehood that Counterterrorism Czar John Brennan has had to go from news show to news show offering a retraction.

The president wakes up.  The Obama administration's bad spin and sleepiness — as represented by Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and President Obama respectively in the first days after Christmas — is over.  But results may be another story.

Who Commands Obama?  Lots of people today have little or no confidence in the leadership abilities of Barack Obama.  Everyone has been asking, who's running the show?  while Obama is out running around the country, still in campaign mode and making speeches.  Who is giving orders to Obama while he is out playing front man?

Shake-up needed at Homeland Security.  Janet Napolitano has to go.  President Barack Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, who had no experience for the job when she was appointed by the president last year, is in way over her head as director of the vast agency that controls everything from natural-disaster response, counterterrorism, immigration and customs to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Secret Service.

Failing to Connect the Plots.  President Obama meekly conceded to the fact that "our government failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plan for America."  Ya think?  Isn't this the same squadron of government officials whom a zealous President Obama wants to place in charge of connecting America's respiratory tubing?

Obama and Reality:  Shortly after a somewhat disjointed, impromptu spiel ... the president was all too eager to resume his snorkeling sessions — evidently the next vacation activity scheduled after the few rounds of golf that preceded the rather inopportune press conference.  He was on vacation, after all.  The president made an even less valiant effort to veil his appalling indifference on the heels of a tragedy [in Fort Hood, Texas.]

America's mainstream media will be Obama's downfall.  Right after the [Christmas Day attempted] bombing, the Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, stated on a national news programme that in the case of the Detroit bomber, "the system worked". ... If this had been the Bush administration, this idiotic attempt to spin the facts would have — rightly — been castigated by the papers and television shows for weeks.  If this had been on Bush's watch, the media attacks would have been relentless.

Too bad to be true?  [Dennis] Blair's testimony seemed too bad to be true, and that turned out to be the case.  But not because the HIG did, in fact, interrogate Abdulmutallab; rather, because the HIG does not actually exist as an operational entity.  Blair made this clear in what must rank as the among the most embarrassing "clarificatons" of congressional testimony ever.

How hope, change turned into bum year for President Obama.  Hey, Mr. President — the first thing you have to do is figure out where somebody hid all your ties.  That Ahmadinejad look didn't go over big here in Boston a week ago, and it certainly didn't cut it in Elyria, Ohio, on what you must have figured was "casual Friday."  You wanted to be The Man?  Well, The Man wears a tie, OK.

Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge.  The president has three principal problems.  He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008 ... He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation.  And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.

Health Care Reform Vaporizes Obama Presidency.  Some Americans feared from the beginning that Obama was an empty suit.  But the majority were willing to take a chance on charisma, myth, and sizzle.  Now the line between public celebrity and public nuisance appears to have been crossed.  Arrogance is never an asset, but it is especially unbecoming when it is not accompanied by competence.

From Disgusting to Odd.  A question about Barack Obama is starting to take shape in the American mind:  where does this stop?  The "this" is the collective hodgepodge of delinquent policy, administrative incompetence, a bottomless capacity for self-delusion, hubris, and the vetoing of American opinion.

Obama says he 'would rather be really good one-term president'.  President Barack Obama said that he "would rather be a really good one-term president" than have two mediocre terms.

Obama, the god that failed.  President Obama said Monday [1/25/2010] that he would "rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."  He will be lucky if he's not an abject failure.  There's usually a reason for a presidency lasting a single term, as Mr. Obama's slow-motion train wreck is demonstrating.

Why Is Obama Acting So Weird?  [Scroll down]  Maybe he'd just rather hang it up in three years.  In a bizarre interview, that's what it sounded like:  "President Barack Obama said that he 'would rather be a really good one-term president' than have two mediocre terms."  Well, the danger here is his being a really bad one-term president.  But after only a year in office, it is, to put it mildly, an odd comment.

The Editor says...
 Obama is evidently living in a world of delusion.  It apparently hasn't occurred to him that no president serves two terms if the first term is mediocre.  He seems to believe that if he serves only one term, it must be because he was such a great president.  Clearly, he does not recognize his own incompetence.

The Fed's Anti-Inflation Exit Strategy Will Fail.  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has explained his exit strategy to prevent future inflation.  The Fed recently began to pay interest to banks on the reserves they hold in their vaults.  Using this new tool, it claims the ability to get banks to keep the money instead of lending it out, thus containing the money supply and inflation.  I don't believe this will work, and no one else should.

Barack Obama finds out who really holds power.  The great mistake that Mr Obama is now believed to have made in his first year of office was to have ignored the concerns of the American middle-income population.  This misjudgment has counted against him in a quite spectacular way, because no mature political leader of any party should have made it.

The Constitution, Nazis, and the Corpse Man:  In his State of the Union address, Obama stated that "We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution:  the notion that we are all created equal..."  Darn near made me want to stand up and salute, (something our POTUS could use some lessons in, by the way).  There's a problem here, however.  It turns out that "the notion that we are all created equal" is not "enshrined in our Constitution" — it's from the Declaration of Independence.

The Editor says...
 The writer goes on to remind us that Mr. Obama is a Harvard-trained Constitutional lawyer.  You would think that he must have rehearsed this speech numerous times before delivering it, and yet he never caught this error.

Barack Obama and Corpse Man:  Like Sacha Pavlata on a high wire, Obama, master of "ostentatiously exotic" Pock-i-stahn pronunciation, peppered multiple mispronunciations of "corpsmen" with Creole words like "Etazini."  President Obama was so busy showboating French based Haitian Creole he called Navy Corpsman Brossard, both Christian and Christopher in the same sentence.

But He Was the Harvard Law Review Editor!  [Scroll down]  His floundering is not surprising, considering that Obama never ran a state, a city, or a business, and during his brief time in the U.S. Senate, he was never front-and-center in any significant legislative undertaking.  Yes, he's touted as an author, and he won the presidency (beating two flawed candidates who ran awful campaigns).  But it turns out that all this was insufficient preparation to be chief executive and commander in chief.

Obama needs a staff shakeup.  The need is becoming more obvious by the day:  He must overhaul his own team, replacing the admittedly brilliant advisers who helped elect him with others more capable of helping him govern.  Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different jobs.

I Was a Teenage President.  Fraternity Boy General Eric Holder insists, with teen-worthy logic, that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. federal court will demonstrate to the world how wonderfully the impartial American justice system works — this after Holder himself arguably contaminated the pool of potential jurors by declaring that after the trial, the "suspect" would be executed.  This claim — that KSM is virtually guaranteed to be convicted in an American court of law, and even if he isn't we'll detain him indefinitely anyway — was repeated by the Teenager-in-Chief himself and his Smokesperson, Robert Gates.

You Have to Perform.  After the election you have to govern.  That is an opportunity for some and the undoing of others. ... All that anticipation and so little ability.  So much hype was followed by virtually no interest in doing the job to which he was elected.

Obama's Dreadful Sudan Policy:  During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama was baffled by Rick Warren's question about when, in the candidate's view, a baby gets human rights.  Obama's stammering response ended with his instantly-famous line that the question was "above my pay grade."  Obama seems to have embraced a similar approach to human rights abroad.

How Does One Spell Government Bankruptcy?  O-B-A-M-A.  If any chief executive officer in the United States of America presented his board with a budget that was one-third unfunded, he would be fired and tossed out of the boardroom immediately.  President Obama recently revealed a $3.8 trillion budget for FY2011 that has a $1.3 trillion deficit.  This budget short fall represents $4,000 for every man, woman and child in America.  It is equivalent to a business CEO presenting his board of directors with a financial plan to have a 34 percent loss.

President Incompetent.  Whether or not you support President Obama's policies, one thing is becoming increasingly obvious:  he simply lacks competence.  The best indicator of this is his in effectiveness in accomplishing any of his own objectives.  His first year in office resembles a quarterback who never completes a pass.  His list of failures is all too familiar-health care reform, closing Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, and so on.  He has failed to accomplish any of his self-identified top priorities.  Other than getting himself elected, he appears to have a very limited range of abilities.

Obama's Clown:  This administration is as inept as you would expect an administration to be when presided over by the most inexperienced and most far-left president in modern American history.  Mr. Obama is out of his depth.  Moreover, he and his aides are oblivious to political realities.

Cargo Cult President:  If not already painfully obvious to anyone paying attention, all the Obama administration can do is campaign.  That makes total sense, since Obama had never held an executive or even managerial position in his entire life prior to being sworn into office.  But he had tons of experience campaigning and giving speeches.  In short, that's how he thinks the world works:  give a speech and publish a public relations brochure on your web site, and the world responds.

Obama, Fire Your Staff!  Like too many unsuccessful presidents, he has surrounded himself in the Oval Office with a select coterie of campaign loyalists from Chicago politics and his former Senate office.  As Politico editor John Harris reported Jan. 22, this inner circle consists of "romantics" who are enveloped by pettiness, grandiosity, and hero worship left over from the 2008 primaries and general election.

Obama Is Doing His Best Jimmy Carter:  Are Dems Worried Yet?  The Obama White House — having been battered for months by falling poll numbers, rising public opposition to its signature domestic initiative, massive defections by Independent voters, and election defeats in New Jersey, Virginia, and (especially) Massachusetts — is beginning to fray.  The smooth-running Obama team we witnessed during the 2008 election is stumbling around in the dark, making mistakes in judgment that are compounding the problems.

He's No FDR.  There's a reason you probably don't know who Henry Rainey and Joe Robinson were.  They were rubber stamps, Rainey as House speaker, Robinson as Senate majority leader.  But in Obama's Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are powerhouses.  The job of actually writing bills — the economic stimulus, health care, cap and trade, the omnibus appropriation — was turned over to them and their colleagues.  To put it more bluntly, Obama has abdicated where FDR ruled like a king (at least in his first year in the White House).

Funeral Dirge for the Main Stream Media?  The reality of incompetency displayed by our current president can no longer be glazed over by the fairy tale press.  The heartbeats of American news pump loud and clear in places the MSM cannot influence.  Just look at the number of Americans who have stopped relying on NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN for their information.

Obama's Dereliction of Duty.  [Scroll down]  While Obama continues to fiddle his atonal health care tune, the flames of war and recession and fiscal collapse rage all around him.  Does he care?  Does he even understand the precipice upon which we stand?

The Miss America President.  While Congress creates rules to shove this unpopular bill through, and pundits predict that the democrat party will be left in tatters as a result, the president wings off to high schools and factories to pose on TV with adoring crowds telling anyone who will listen that he truly knows what is best for us.  Like Miss America, President Obama wears his crown well.  And like Miss America the culimination of his presidency may have taken place in November 2008.  The rest is just marketing.

The Democrats Must Be Stopped.  I don't think Barack Obama will get a second term, but at the pace the Democrats are going, four years may do more damage than our country can recover from.  Incompetence, for better or worse, is not a ground for impeachment.  So it is urgently necessary that the Democrats lose control over the House, and if at all possible the Senate, in November.

The Administration's Manufactured, Trumped Up Fight With Israel.  For those who say Obama has achieved nothing, I think the appropriate response is that he's destroyed the political career of Hillary Clinton, succeeded in driving more Jews from his party to which they'd so long been loyal and managed to offend all our allies.  You think that's easy?  It takes a special kind of stupid.

The phrases President Obama can't do without.  For all his flourish, President Barack Obama sure falls back on a few familiar phrases.

The Editor says...
 This is the same Barack Obama who was supposed to be such a great orator.  At least that's what we were told during his campaign.  Why does he have such a limited vocabulary?  Is it because he knows only what the teleprompter tells him?

Speaking of teleprompters...



Obama is helpless without a teleprompter

If Mr. Obama is so smart, and has even a loose grasp on all the important issues of the day, why does he need to rely on a teleprompter for every word he speaks?  Can you imagine the mocking derision we would hear from the press if the person glued to the teleprompter was President John McCain, or President Dan Quayle, or President Ron Paul?

The next time you see Mr. Obama give a speech on television, notice that he constantly alternates his gaze between the teleprompter on the left and the teleprompter on the right.  Back and forth, left and right, about three seconds on each side.  More than likely there are notations in his script about when to pause, when to inhale, and which words to emphasize.  It's all a façade.  Without the teleprompter and a staff of speech writers, he would be just another community organizer (i.e., troublemaker) from Chicago.

See also "Community Organizer" — Big Deal!

Obama is lost without a teleprompter.  [Scroll down]  The White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House.  "It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it," says [a former communications] adviser.  The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.  Using a screen is nothing new for Obama; almost nothing he said in supposedly unscripted townhall events during the presidential campaign was unscripted, down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions.  Teleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions.

Aren't Late Night Comics Looking For Obama Material?  Could you imagine if Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush had used a teleprompter to answer questions during a press conference?  The late night joke writers wouldn't have let it go until the President gave in to the merciless ridicule as he was painted as an idiot who couldn't tie his shoes without being fed instructions on how to do it.

President Sticks to the Script, With a Little Help.  As he introduced his new choice for secretary of health and human services in the East Room this week, President Obama turned his head from right to left, but he was not looking at the audience.  He was reading from two teleprompters strategically set up outside the tight television camera shot.

TelePrompter Story Shows Another Way Old Media Covers for Obama.  Carol E. Lee of Politico had a short March 5 piece about President Obama's singular inability to give a speech, even short ones, without the crutch of a TelePrompter in front of him to prod him about what to say next. ... The Old Media puts in a herculean effort to make sure The One still looks like he is speaking extemporaneously by working overtime to make sure those speech prompters are NOT in the picture.

Obama's TelePrompTer addiction:  It's all President Obama haters can do to keep from slapping their heads whenever they hear or see references to his being a master of public speaking.  He's helpless without a TelePrompTer, the critics say, and they point to the very deliberate way he often speaks, including his use of the universal filler "umm" when he speaks extemporaneously.

Not making eye contact with the American people.  Perhaps another sign that the media is restless with the President they helped create is this story from Politico about how Obama is never without his teleprompter.  He uses it at almost all his appearances, even when making brief announcements or when repeating themes he has spoken on many times before.

He's My President, But I Don't Have to Like It.  Judging by the early days of his administration, I have had to reevaluate [Obama].  He's even worse than I feared.  It's been one disaster after another.  His appointments have been a series of embarrassments.  His hard sell of the Pelosi-Reid trillion dollar earmark makes him look like the worst sort of fear-monger.  And, considering the fact that he was sold to us as eloquent and a fellow who could think on his feet, his use of a teleprompter at his press conference reminded me of the Wizard of Oz, the con man behind the curtain.

Obama's safety net:  the TelePrompter.  President Barack Obama doesnÕt go anywhere without his TelePrompter.  The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the presidentÕs prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.  Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White HouseÕs stately parlors.  They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan.  They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.

Obama's Crutch — Why Is He So Afraid of Speaking Without a Teleprompter?  Could you imagine if Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush had used a teleprompter to answer questions during a press conference?  The late night joke writers wouldn't have let it go until the President gave in to the merciless ridicule as he was painted as an idiot who couldn't tie his shoes without being fed instructions on how to do it.

Obama's reliance on teleprompters.  Is President Obama able to conduct a news conference without a teleprompter?  Is he is an automaton in answering questions?  With all the jokes about Karl Rove as George Bush's brain or cracks during the 1980s about Ronald Reagan supposedly being an amiable dunce, could you imagine the reaction if either president had used a teleprompter to answer questions?  The late night joke writers wouldn't have let it go until the president gave in to the merciless ridicule as he was painted as an idiot who couldn't tie his shoes without being fed instructions on how to do it.

The O is for Overrated.  In one area, Obama as the great communicator, a little bit of the glow is gone.  For it turns out that while there is only one O in teleprompter, without this trusted device, we might not have the Big O in the White House (apologies to Oscar Robertson).  It is now coming out (though not in the New York Times or Washington Post) two years too late, that underlying of the gifted public speaker iconography is a machine.  Our President has a dependency, and it is not on tobacco products.  The real "jones" is for a teleprompter.

Does Barack Obama Think For Himself?  Speculation is that David Axelrod is the man behind the prompter, whether it be speeches or press conference crib notes, and if that's the case it should make us all wonder what's really happening upstairs in the president's head.  Is he really this deep thinker or is he just a bubblehead, doing what he's told to do and say?

Obama Thanks Himself, Irish PM Repeats Speech in Teleprompter Meltdown.  Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen reads word for word a speech that Obama had just read from a teleprompter, while the president apparently thanked himself for the invitation.

Teleprompter Gaffe:  President Obama Thanks Himself — Where's the Video?.  I've been searching for the video of Obama accidentally reading Irish PM Brian Cowen's speech yesterday.  He even thanks himself at the end!  Apparently his teleprompter went loopy.  If this were GWB, the video would be everywhere, yet I can't find a clip on the Internet of a public press conference that took place yesterday.

The 5 biggest myths about Obama.  [#2] Obama is a great communicator.  Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing.  He is not plain-spoken:  He parses his language so much that a casual listener will miss important caveats.  That's in part why he uses teleprompters for routine policy statements:  He chooses his words carefully, relying heavily on ill-defined terms like "deficit reduction" (which means tax increases, rather than actual "savings") and "combat troops" (as opposed to "all troops in harm's way").

Republicans Can't Afford to Default to Obama.  The pro-Obama media have been trying to conceal from TV audiences the fact that Obama is reading all his speeches, even short ones given before small groups, but there are two difficulties.  A teleprompter requires Obama to turn from side to side and never make eye contact with his audience, and it's almost impossible to get a good photograph of Obama without revealing at least a part of the teleprompter screen.  President Obama doesn't go anywhere without his teleprompter.  He depends on it for every speech, even his six-minute tribute to Abe Lincoln, simple introductions of his own Cabinet officials and informal small gatherings.  He is the first president to be so completely dependent on the teleprompter.

President TelePrompTer® compares Model T to SUV.  At a visit to at the Edison electric car factory in California, President TelePrompTer told the employees that "A Model T got better gas mileage than today's SUV".  Not wanting to take a man of his stout reputation at his word alone, let's look at the specs for each.

Why Obama's Teleprompter Gaffe Tape Matters.  When George W. Bush was President, the Democrats and certain press outlets hammered every little mistake he made as evidence of him being "the dumbest President ever." ... As of this writing, the video of the event with President Obama and Brian Cowen has not been released.  By some reports, the video shows that Obama oftentimes has no idea what is on that teleprompter before he reads it and therefore, as he did on St. Patrick's Day, ends up doing things like thanking himself for inviting everyone to the White House.

This is what happens when the teleprompter crutch is not available:
 Obama Makes Fun of Special Olympics on Jay Leno's Show.  Here's why presidents of the United States should be wary of going on late-night comedy shows:  Toward the end of his appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show" on Thursday [3/19/2009], President Barack Obama told host Jay Leno he's been practicing at the White House bowling alley but wasn't happy with his score.  "I bowled a 129," Obama said to laughs.  "It was like Special Olympics or something."

'It's Like the Special Olympics'.  The first appearance by a sitting president on "The Tonight Show" may well end up being the last.  President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled.

Believe it or not, he has done worse.  In an interview last year, candidate Obama (without the benefit of a teleprompter) accidentally used the phrase, "my Muslim faith," leading to speculation (on the internet, not on television) that he is a closet Muslim. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Obama Continues To Set Records For Incompetence.  [Scroll down slowly]  Everyone can make a stupid mistake, but this one is especially instructive:  Now you know why he has to be on teleprompter whenever possible.  That's because, with all due respect to his supporters who think he is the smartest man on the planet, when he is off the teleprompter he is as gaffe-prone as Vice President Joe Biden.  That led to a cartoonist putting Mr. Obama in bed with his wife and his teleprompter, with the caption of Mrs. Obama saying the president should put his teleprompter away and go to bed.  Incidentally, if he is really so brilliant why can't he talk without a teleprompter?

Obama's Teleprompter.  Unfortunately, something went awry despite the teleprompter's best efforts:  "All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company's name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on."

The curse of the teleprompter leaves President looking leaden.  The teleprompter in the East Room on Tuesday night [3/24/2009] — not the usual pair of glass screens reflecting text at each side of the podium but a huge scrolling TV screen facing Mr Obama at the back of the room — had the effect of deadening the proceedings.  Galloping through the statement, Mr Obama was at his most tediously professorial and least engaging.

The Editor says...
 Just as I thought.  When I saw footage of Mr. Obama staring straight ahead, I suspected that the teleprompter had been moved to the center of the room somehow.

Giant Teleprompter Telegraphs Obama Caution.  What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?  A careful one.  President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience. ... It was a carefully modulated statement, and Obama — relying on a familiar crutch — read it off a flat-screen monitor perched at the back of the East Room.

Video clip:
 Teleprompters Swapped for Giant TV Monitor for News Conference.  "He read that opening statement from one massive TV monitor from the back and middle of the East Room.  White House officials removed the normal glass teleprompters that usually are positioned on both sides of the podium.  That change likely a reaction to the focus on the President's heavy use of teleprompters."

Obama stumbles without his notes.  Transcripts of prompterless Obama speeches (on the campaign trail in 2008) show that Obama is incapable of making a coherent speech without a script.

The Teleprompter President.  It is amazing how swiftly a presidential tendency turns from observation to joke to meme.  Barack Obama — called "the most eloquent political speaker of our time" — has become known as the teleprompter president.

Does President Obama Need "Cue Cards?"  The White House has a problem.  A technical malfunction at a St. Patrick's Day event, in no way the resident's [sic] fault, has nonetheless focused attention on what some news organizations have called Obama's "overreliance" on the TelePrompTer.  This, in and of itself, might not be such a bad thing except that it conflicts with his reputation for being a compelling speaker possessed of a broad command of the issues.

Obama's War on English.  When more than one word has to be produced, Barry defers to his teleprompter to ensure rigid semantic integrity and to minimize his brain's default proclivity of generating "uhhhhhs" and "ummmms."  In a recent speech before a requisitely awed group of business leaders, the teleprompter displayed the following gem, which The Father of the $1.2 trillion stimulus package voiced with contemplative gravitas:  "I don't like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government's role." ... In Barry's bizzaro world, reality in and of itself doesn't matter.

Careful choreography as Obama meets the press.  A presidential press conference is as stage-managed and tightly choreographed as a Broadway show. ... Supremely confident as ever, the President read his opening remarks from a large teleprompter. ... When the teleprompter faded to black it was time for questions.  But there was to be nothing random about who got the nod.

Tales of Totus, the President's Teleprompter.  Notice anything missing from Tuesday night's presidential news conference?  Those teleprompters that generated so much attention at President Obama's first prime-time session with reporters were gone.  Or actually, just out of sight.  The White House replaced the tall, thin teleprompters that were standing to Mr. Obama's right and left in the East Room a month ago and instead set up a large screen behind the reporters — and out of the camera shot.

The Teleprompter Debate.  President Obama has been criticized for relying too much on the use of a teleprompter — you know, those slightly tilted boat-paddle-looking devices that flank each side of the presidential podium.  They're essentially projection screens to his right and left from which he can read his speech, rather than speaking extemporaneously or with printed notes.

TelePrompTer 101: What if I told you that the president actually isn't a very adept or versatile public speaker.  Would you believe me?  Well, let me explain.  There are basically four kinds of public speaking:  manuscript, memory, extemporaneous and impromptu.  Speaking from a manuscript means reading a speech.  The speaker rehearses from the manuscript, which he has in front of him during the actual delivery.  Obama is primarily a manuscript speaker.

All TOTUS No POTUS.  Goodness knows we all want to get it right ... Those in the public eye, especially, wish to handcraft every syllable to put our best foot forward, not in our mouth.  That, and new technology to enable it, may explain how we came to get the teleprompter president. ... Anyway, it's not so surprising that he makes use of technology.  It's the extent of his use.  Extent, after all, is the difference between the connoisseur and a wino, and we may have elected a man who's gone from the enabling drug of a crackberry, to the hard stuff.

The Teleprompter President.  During the presidential campaign we were repeatedly told that Obama had superior intellect.  The public has never been privy to Obama's academic transcripts or read anything he wrote as editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Also, there has been considerable debate if Obama really wrote his two books or if they ghostwritten for him.  Obama has done little to dispel these questions.  His dependence on a teleprompter and his poor performance when speaking without one makes you wonder if he is just reading a script like an academy award winning actor.  So the question remains, is he as advertised or is he just reading a script?  And if he is just reading the script, who is behind the curtain directing the performance?

The question that flummoxed the great orator.  An example of Obama's performance level in the absence of a teleprompter.

Obama's 12-Teleprompter Entourage Is Not Newsworthy, or Humor-worthy.  On Monday, the UK's Evening Standard, at its "This Is London" site, matter-of-factly noted the following in the final sentence of its report about President Obama's upcoming European trip:  "Accompanying the party will be a total of 500 officials including kitchen staff, 35 vehicles in all, four speech writers and 12 teleprompters."

Obama's teleprompter commits mutiny during major science speech.  Maybe President Obama's teleprompter wanted more coverage.  After all, last month it was getting a ton of media attention.  Especially when the teleprompter was retired temporarily in favor of a giant IMAX-type screen at the president's last press conference.  Today, the teleprompter broke the moratorium and got back in the news cycle.

Obama gets ahead of prompter.  President Obama's speech at the National Academy of Sciences Monday morning hit a brief snag when Obama got ahead of his script.  Laying his plan for a President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Obama began to name the members of PCAST listed in his prepared remarks — before realizing he'd already introduced them, earlier in his speech.

The Editor says...
 Here's a helpful hint I learned as a teenage disk jockey:  Read the script before you go on the air.

Obama Reaches the Limits of His Oratorical Prowess.  The fact that there's even a debate underway as to who won the match-off indicates that the public's perceptions of Barack Obama's oratorical skills have crossed the Rubicon and are diminishing.  How come?  From over exposure?  Too little variety of style?  Or, is it that side-to-side teleprompter swing where he talks to the scrolling mirrors?  We figure Cheney wrote his own speech.  Who wrote Obama's?

From the Vast Business Mind of President Obama.  TOTUS, (Teleprompter of the United States) gave a stirring and charismatic speech today, much like it gave yesterday and the day before.  In fact, I do believe TOTUS has given speeches every day of its reign.  But as the President today read from the teleprompter, he sounded so knowledgeable as he faulted GM for not coming up with a viable restructuring plan to avoid bankruptcy.  As Mr. Obama expertly read his statements, alternating between prompters, going back and forth so as to give the impression that he's addressing the audience in a truly inclusive manner...

If a Teleprompter Falls in the White House Does It Make a Sound?  Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon [7/13/2009], one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. ... For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.  Shards of glass remained near the president's feet for the duration of his speech.

A dandy speech — if truth doesn't matter.  This was the speech of an ideologue posing as a pragmatist.  Of course, it was an able and spirited performance.  Obama with a TelePrompTer is like Yo-Yo Ma with a cello.

The Gaffe Czar.  The fact that Obama can't survive two minutes without a teleprompter doesn't matter.  It only matters that he dazzles — and that he's liberal.  That, in truth, is the key.  Ronald Reagan, after all, could dazzle.  But he was a conservative.  Because he used his rhetorical abilities to advocate smaller government and greater individual responsibility, the media viewed that talent as a weapon, not an asset.

Satire:
 What If Obama's Teleprompter Failed at Valley Forge?  The scene:  President Obama is about to give a speech at historic Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Do not deny what happened at Fort Hood.  [Scroll down]  President Barack Obama's display on Thursday made my point more clearly than it usually can be made, for he turned on a dime.  He assumed the "presidential grieving tone" over the Fort Hood massacre, the moment after he'd just done an equally scripted segment of light joking banter for the benefit of the Tribal Nations Conference he was addressing.  Millions in the television audience must have watched this incredibly cynical "quick flip."  I wonder how many noticed it?  We should not allow ourselves to be moved by the cold hearts of professional tear-jerkers because when we reward that kind of thing we help perpetuate an emotional order that is dangerously false.  We should instead be annoyed by attempts to manipulate us.

Satire / mocking derision:
 Obama's teleprompter malfunctions during family dinner.

Why Is No One Laughing?  Both of these men [Obama and Biden], when untethered from their Teleprompters, are prone to gibberish.  Actually I suspect that the President's Shanghai preposterosity appeared in the text rolling down his Teleprompter.  His speechwriters are as prone to the absurd as their boss.  Nonetheless, President Obama is reputed in the media to be an orator of great gifts and anyway he is very charismatic.  So apparently the journalists are insensate as the gaffes, the howlers, the jaw-dropping exaggerations roll forth.

This is how the great orator performs in the absence of a teleprompter:
 Passion out of fashion for O.  Responding to the attempted terror attack on an American plane in US skies, Obama took a break from the sandy beaches and golf links of Hawaii to make his first remarks about the simple thwarting of what were supposed to be the highest security procedures.  It was three days late and Obama mailed it in.  Unaided by his trusty TelePrompTers, the president read through his statement like a schoolkid dutifully treading through his book report.

Teleprompter Shot of the Day

Teleprompter Shot of the Day:  Here's Obama dropping in for a chat with his middle-class task force.  And people made fun of Reagan because of his notecards!

Obama Uses Teleprompter To Address Sixth Graders, Media Mum.  Last Tuesday, President Obama spoke to a group of sixth graders and apparently brought his trusty teleprompter along to make sure he didn't make any mistakes. ... [Update:] The White House confirmed to TWS that the teleprompters were used for his remarks to the press, not with students.

The Editor says...
 So what?  Why does the president need a teleprompter to answer questions from reporters?

Barack's Blue Blanket.  [Scroll down slowly]  Yet while verbally exuding confidence, both Obama and Linus [van Pelt] are a paradox.  Both flaunt self-perceived intellect while diametrically exhibiting a predilection to insecurity.  Linus rarely appears without a blanket tossed over one shoulder, and Barack refuses to leave Pennsylvania Avenue without the teleprompter ... Thus far, Barry seems unaware that a United States president setting up a teleprompter in a sixth-grade classroom is as pathetic as appearing at a lectern while sucking a plastic nipple.

'Corpse-man':  Obama also needs a pronounce-o-prompter.  Over at RealClearPolitics, they show the video of President Obama mispronouncing the word "corpsman" this morning.  It's embarrassing all on its own, but it also makes one wonder about the story he's telling.

Video:
Obama Mispronounces "Corpsman" At Prayer Breakfast.

Unsustainable's the new normal.  At the National Prayer Breakfast, Barack Obama singled out for praise Navy Corpsman Christian Bouchard.  Or, as the president called him, "Corpseman Bouchard."  Twice.  Hey, not a big deal.  Throughout his life, the commander in chief has had little contact with the military, and less interest.

TelePrompter lets Commander-in-Chief Down as He Mispronounces 'Corpsman,' Mangles French.  Surely, the White House has someone on the staff who can teach the President how to pronounce the word "corpsman."  It would also be great if someone in media knew what a corpsman is...

This proves that Obama will read whatever comes up on the teleprompter.
 Obama:  You will see 'premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent' under Obamacare.  Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, President Obama said that ObamaCare will reduce health insurance premiums by "3,000 percent." ... Just think, America:  These are the people telling us that they know best how to run 1/6 of our economy.

More proof that Obama is utterly helpless without a teleprompter:
 Bret Baier: 1; President Obama: 0.  With all due respect to Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer, who didn't acknowledge on air that their colleague bested the president, Baier clearly had Obama fumbling around and stuttering and totally flustered.  Like other young and studious-looking white guys Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, Baier used annoying and inconvenient facts to unveil the childish and petulant Obama that a fawning Jurassic media has never bothered to investigate.



This is "hope"?

America under Obama will see one crisis after another.  We interrupt this financial crisis to bring you a gargantuan federal power grab masquerading as an economic stimulus.  Tell me, does the following sound at all familiar?  We've GOT to act.  NOW!  There's NO TIME for debate.  We're on the PRECIPICE.  We're staring into the ABYSS.  The government has to spend BIG and it has to spend FAST, before it's TOO LATE!

What's the rush?  More than a few pundits have pointed out that the president who ran on a platform of "hope and change" is availing himself of fear and hysteria to have his way.  Mr. Obama's admonition that immediate action on the economic stimulus package is required, lest the current crisis turns into a "catastrophe" betrays the fact that "hope and change" were mere rhetorical devices used to gain election, but when the pedal hits the metal it's fear mongering and business as usual.

The only thing we have to fear is catastrophe itself.  The public discourse style of Barack Obama underwent an abrupt shift when hope and change gave way to threat and forewarning.  Early on during the campaign, audiences at Obama's primary post-election rallies cried and swooned during his speeches, and the media heralded him as a new kind of politician.  Transformational.  Near epiphanic.  An inspirational language event.  Obama the President has morphed into something different.  Obama the Scolder.

'Doom' talk scored as 'not presidential'.  From crisis to catastrophe.  Off a cliff.  Dark, darker, darkest.  Mortal danger of absolute collapse.  Armageddon.  President Obama and top Democrats on Capitol Hill are deploying these and other stark predictions of doom and gloom to push through their economic-stimulus package.  In terms not heard in Washington since the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter's watch, the new president has sought to terrify Americans into supporting the $800 billion-plus bailout bill.

"Yes We Can" becomes "No We Can't" After Election.  "No We Can't" would seem to be a more realistic chant for the ongoing campaign that continues after Barack Obama was elected President.  Chief among his campaign promises and the brightest star in the sky was a pledge to "lower healthcare costs and ensure affordable, high-quality healthcare for all".  Like many things out on the campaign trail, sounds good in theory; all but impossible once safely in office.

From hope to doomsday.  The way things are going, we can expect to wake up one morning to find the president of the United States wandering the streets of Washington in sack cloth with a placard predicting, well, the end.  He's already given us everything but the exact date on which the world will end as he leads a chorus of his supporters demanding that Congress adopt his every nostrum lest our economic crisis transform itself into a "catastrophe," as Mr. Obama put it, or "absolute collapse," as Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) warned, or even "Armageddon," in the words of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.).

Doom and gloom replace hope.  With everything at his disposal, Obama chooses to be callous.  Callous in allowing a health czar under the misnomer of a National Coordinator of Heath Information Technology to oversee an aging population.  It's not as if there was any discussion about it.  The health czar was merely slipped in to the controversial Stimulus Plan.  Obama has also been callous toward any who would disagree with him; callous toward news reporters who happen to ask the wrong question, seemingly callous toward even the very history and ideals that have upheld the country he was elected to serve.

Obama stimulates fear, doom and gloom.  The running narrative that only a trillion-dollar-plus stimulus package can fend off near-term disaster apparently did not inject sufficient fear into the masses.  The president, long used to crowds falling like plums at his feet, thus needed to ramp things up to prod skeptics who have failed to defer to his redistributionist instincts.  Invoking a "crisis" that "we may not be able to reverse," Obama last week sought to alarm the numbed millions whose attention span goes no broader than "economy's bad, government's gotta do something."  This stunningly craven scam continued in his Monday night news conference.

Brakes Needed On A Stimulus Stoked By Fear.  The president, convinced that the only thing America has to fear is an insufficiency of fear, has warned that "disaster" and "catastrophe" are the certain alternatives to swift passage of the stimulus legislation.  One marvels at his certitude more than one envies his custody of this adventure.

Obama's shock doctrine:  "Profound economic emergency," the president says.  Failure to pass his spending plan could "turn a crisis into a catastrophe".  Any delay will mean "paralysis" and "disaster".  It's all out of the "shock doctrine" playbook:  scare people to death and then demand that your agenda be enacted without delay.

Obama's new deal is the same old blunder.  President Barack Obama declared last week that "if we don't act immediately, our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse".  As The Economist commented, with some alarm  "The notion that [America] might never recover was previously entertained only by bearded survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition in remote log cabins."  Obama's dire assessment was on the surface the more surprising — wasn't he supposed to be the great uplifter of the national mood, in the spirit of Franklin D Roosevelt's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?

President Obama and the Politics of Fear.  Obama's use of fear and coercion to implement his plan of loading the country with insurmountable debt is shockingly reckless and blatantly inappropriate, to say the least.  With the exception of the housing and mortgage industries (which were corrupted by government intervention for social "reinvestment") the aggregate economy was not at crisis level in 2008.

Package stimulates socialism, not economy.  Hitler played upon the fears of Germans to achieve power.  Some even claim Bush used fear to further his agenda of fighting terrorism. ... Now the Democrats capitalize on fear to push their socialist ideology.

It's Obama spreading panic.  President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic.  To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later.  Instead of being a firewall, reassuring Main Street even as Wall Street crashed, he has become a conduit of panic, spreading the mood of desperation from the stock exchange floor to kitchen tables across the world.

Is it amateur hour at the Obama White House?  [There has been]  a six-week succession of miscues, oversights, miscalculations and outright errors that suggest things have gone seriously awry in the White House.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells a European Union gathering that American democracy has been around a lot longer than European democracy.  This no doubt particularly surprised the Dutch, whose republic commenced years before the U.S. won its independence. ... The president remains personally popular, but nothing so erodes public confidence as the perception of ineptitude.  Policy differences are one thing, but Americans won't accept incompetence in the Oval Office.

Why is the Prez Snuffing out Hope?  Barack Obama wrote a book about hope and be came president promising it.  So why's he doing everything in his power to snuff it out?  Think about it:  In Obama World, what are we supposed to "hope" for?  Certainly not vast riches.  What would be the point?  His budget swipes massive amounts of wealth from top earners.

Obama Uses 'Politics of Fear' He Once Criticized.  President Obama frequently railed against the Bush-era "politics of fear" on the campaign trail.  In his inaugural address, he said, "We got here because we have chosen hope over fear." ... But he has had no trouble issuing fear-inducing warnings himself.  President Obama has simply exchanged his predecessor's fear-inducing rhetoric on national security for fear-inducing rhetoric on the economy.

Peanut Farmer Allergies.  Many of America's largest cities have been controlled by the Democrats for decades and now lay in ruins.  Look at the condition of cities such as my beloved hometown Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and so many others.  Our cities are sometimes as violent as what many of our soldiers face in war.  Industry and jobs have moved to the suburbs for any number of reasons.  And our fearless leader is using the most devastated cities in America as models for his hope and change.  Phenomenally stupid.

How Many Fights Will Obama Pick With America?  There is little doubt that Obama faced a divided electorate when he first took office and a difficult economic climate.  Rather than start with a limited agenda designed to build consensus, Obama did the opposite.  Obama chased too many rabbits at once and preferred ideological fights over practical solutions.  As a result, the Country is more divided than ever — not less.

Beyond Hope and Change.  According to a recent Rasmussen poll (January 24), only 29% of Americans believe the country is on the right track.  This loss of confidence is driven not only by the dire prospects of the debt time bomb and the economic and security devastation that would bring, but by the fear of government intrusion into every aspect of daily life.

Scaring a president straight isn't easy.  Barack Obama dropped by the White House press room the other day to stick it to the Republicans in the name of comity and fellowship.  He offered to cooperate with the Republicans in the Mafia spirit of making an "offer you can't refuse."


This is "change"?

'Change' We Never Imagined.  [Mr. Obama,] your words ring hollow and your actions speak volumes.  Every policy you promise to implement does exactly what you've denounced.  Both your actions and your words very much pit Red America against Blue America.  For all the talk of "hope," "change," and "coming together," it's becoming abundantly clear that Barack Obama's administration will be the most leftist, divisive and discriminatory in recent memory.

Promises, Promises:  No lobbyists at WH, except ...  Barack Obama promised a "clean break from business as usual" in Washington.  It hasn't quite worked out that way.  From the start, he made exceptions to his no-lobbyist rule.  And now, embarrassing details about Cabinet-nominee Tom Daschle's tax problems and big paychecks from special interest groups are raising new questions about the reach and sweep of the new president's promised reforms.

Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case.  The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday [1/22/2009] when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

Obama Stiffs the Left.  In the run-up to the presidential election, Obama made no secret of his disapproval of the Iraq war, or of his intention to pull American troops out of that venture.  During the campaign, he at first pledged that he would end our involvement in 2009.  Then he backed off a bit and has recently been talking about 16 months as an appropriate deadline.  More recently still, even that date has begun to wobble.

Partisan dirt-digger joins WH office.  Amid the furor over controversies regarding Cabinet-nominee tax problems and the seismic battle over a nearly trillion-dollar economic rescue bill, President Obama made a little-noticed appointment that is now generating intrigue.  Shauna Daly, a 29-year-old Democratic operative, was named last month to the new job of White House counsel research director. ... "Daly does not have the qualifications to be holding a significant position in the White House counsel's office," said Mark Levin, a conservative lawyer and radio-show host who worked in the Reagan White House and as chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese.  "Her only qualification is that she knows how to dig up dirt on other people," he said.

Where Are We Heading?  [Scroll down]  The next pillar to crumble was the promise of "new politics."  We saw it with the announcement of new ethics rules barring lobbyists from working in the Obama Administration on issues that fell under their lobbying bailiwick — followed by waivers for lobbyists working on issues that fell under their lobbying bailiwick.  In defense, press secretary Robert Gibbs defended the standard, as if violating the standard was of secondary importance.

Government overreach isn't stimulating.  It's a scene not unlike the conservative populist revolt in 2007 against the Bush Amnesty Bill — which was a rare victory for grassroots citizens over our arrogant government keepers.  Then, like now, politicians who portend to know better than us uninformed yokels were just a few votes shy of forcing a disastrously ill-considered immigration 'reform' glob down our collective throats.  And with this stimulus package they're seeking to do it again, led by our new president who campaigned based on "hope" and "change you can believe in."  Barack Obama's notion of change has proven to be anything but — a bloated, pork-filled spending orgy that only politicians and lobbyists would love.

Senate confirms ex-lobbyist as Pentagon No. 2.  The U.S. Senate approved William Lynn, a former Raytheon Co lobbyist, to be deputy secretary of defense after he received a special White House waiver from strict new rules meant to close a "revolving door" between government and big business.

Obama administration goes to bat for secrecy.  For the second time this week, the Obama administration has gone to court in San Francisco to argue for secrecy in defending a terrorism policy crafted under George W. Bush — in this case, wiretapping that President Obama denounced as a candidate.  In papers filed Wednesday night, the new Justice Department asked a federal judge to suspend action on a suit challenging the wiretapping program, arguing that proceedings would jeopardize national security.

So far, 'SuperTeflon' coat protects Obama.  [Scroll down]  Two key slogans emblematized [the Obama] campaign:  Hope, and Change.  He was going to bring Hope to the American people, and Change the way things are done in Washington.  The voters clearly thought these were excellent ideas.  Change went by the wayside almost immediately.  Virtually all of his appointees to key posts in the government and on the White House staff were Washington insiders, many of them old-timers, who seem to have little to recommend them in their new posts other than the fact of being insiders — people like Leon Panetta in charge of national security, and Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State.  New blood?  Hardly.

Want "Hope and Change"? Buy a Goat.  Although the mainstream media won't report it as such, Obama's approval numbers are shrinking.  Which means that elsewhere, certain numbers are growing — the unreported-by-the-MSM growing numbers of Americans who are kicking themselves for not having bothered to read the small print underneath the word "change."

Obama team take gloves off for fight with radio host Rush Limbaugh.  A ploy by the Obama White House to depict the inflammatory conservative talkshow host Rush Limbaugh as head of the Republican Party has triggered a furious partisan battle — just the style of bareknuckle politics the new President promised to end.

Not The Change They Voted For.  President Obama is only doing what the voters asked for.  That's how he defends his budget with trillions in new spending and few offsetting cuts in old spending. ... But in many ways, he is neither doing what he advocated nor what voters were seeking.  The American people voted for change.  But there's little or no evidence they were eager for the sweeping, liberal change Obama is now bent on delivering when they elected him last November.

BHO Giving Up?  The Wall Street Journal today reported President Barack Obama has decided to give up fighting for "change" in Washington, instead acquiescing to the demands of the Democrat controlled Congress.  During his campaign, BHO promised to curb earmarks.  He promised to end the use of presidential signing statements — a president's way of rejecting parts of a bill without entirely vetoing it — something President George W Bush did very often.  WSJ reports he even promised to open an investigation of Bush's 1,200 signing statements.  But, today, BHO decided to break both promises when he signed the omnibus spending bill into law.  The bill contains more than 8,500 pork barrel earmarks worth over $7.7 billion in tax dollars.

Obama administration missteps indicate a disturbing and dangerous trend.  It is painfully obvious that Obama is yielding to old-style political demands when the country is expecting real leadership.  First-term presidents never get too far away from their political tool kit, but as a candidate, Sen. Obama was uniquely successful with his pledge to eliminate "business as usual" if elected.  He forged a special bond of trust with a huge number of voters who saw him as a genuine agent of "change we can believe in."  President Obama is now retreating from that pledge, and "business as usual" is seen as a serious weakness because of the voter backlash it will inevitably generate.  That backlash could ultimately render the Obama presidency impotent.

The Republicans can take heart as Barack Obama staggers to the Left.  The question of who Mr Obama really is, and what he truly believes, underlies the growing list of Very Odd Things that seem to be happening under his administration.  Among the most perplexing of these mysteries is why, when he went to such pains to assemble a huge and widely experienced team of White House economic advisers ... he then handed over the actual drafting of his economic policy to the old Democratic fixers in Congress.  The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, are now, for all intents and purposes, running the Obama recovery plan.

We've Got Company.  The Washington Post reports that the new president has undertaken a sharp break from his predecessor's foreign policy.  Oh wait, actually that overstates the case.  The policy is the same, but the semantics are new.

The Obama era brings boom times for lobbyists.  Early numbers suggest that the first quarter of 2009 has seen lobbying in the nation's capital spike by nearly 22 percent over last year, which would be the largest ever increase in lobbying activity — and a strong indication that President Barack Obama has helped usher in a Golden Era for K Street.

National debt hits record $11 trillion.  The eye-popping national debt surpassed $11 trillion Monday [3/16/2009], the largest in U.S. history.  The new Treasury Department figures on the national debt were released as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to project that the annual budget deficit will be higher than previously estimated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.  The debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes, hit $10.9 trillion on Friday.

The Angry Left.  Hey Obama, yes we can.  Troops out of Afghanistan, chanted the crowd.  Barack, Barack, Barack, Afghanistan's the same as Iraq. ... But the frustration of the activists was hardly canned.  "It doesn't look like Obama is changing anything," said Kyle Quigley, an Iraq War veteran who had traveled from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to attend the rally.

Playing President.  The Obama campaign promised "Hope" and "Change," but delivered neither.  Instead, the same, old socialist-democrat agenda put on a new costume and a face.  Eleven of the 12 members of Obama's advisory board came from the Clinton administration, as did 31 of the 47 members of his transition team.  Obama's administration is almost a repeat of the Clinton team.  And there's a good reason. ... The Council on Foreign Relations and, since 1973, the Trilateral Commission, have produced the people who have shaped public policy.  These are the people who tell Obama's teleprompter what to say.

Democracy in action:  The degree to which the Obama administration is responsible for sagging employment might be debatable, but the president and his team definitely deserve credit for the boom in job growth at political action committees.  As the government expands in every direction and stimulus spending is dispensed like candy, an increasing number of lobbyists is being drawn to Washington to try to get a piece of the pie.

The great divider.  President Obama is becoming the most divisively partisan president in history. ... After a little more than two months in office, Mr. Obama has created the widest partisan gap in America since pollsters started measuring this in the 1960s.

Obama, aided by media, falling short on pledge for change.  Candidate Obama promised to end earmarks in legislation which leads to pork barrel spending.  In the middle of March, President Obama signed the spending bill so government could continue to fund its programs and included in this spending bill was all the former earmarks and pork barrel spending intact. ... Candidate Obama campaigned for a quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq. ... Candidate Obama promised action to get the economy going in the positive direction.

Civility and Tolerance in the Age of Obama.  They told us if Barack Obama were elected, the nation would come together.  Souls would be fixed.  Spirits would be healed.  Public discourse would be elevated.  Welcome to civility and tolerance in the Age of Obama.

Political Wind Blowing Against Unions.  When Barack Obama won the election, Big Labor's ambitions soared.  It spent $400 million to elect Democrats and expected an easy ride ahead.  A hundred days into the Obama administration, it's playing defense.

Obama Outsources His Presidency.  The first 100 days can reveal a pattern of behavior that comes to characterize a presidency.  In this respect, there are two emerging habits of Team Obama worth watching.  One is the gap between what Mr. Obama said he would do and what he is doing.  His administration is emphasizing in its official 100 days talking points steps he has taken to "deliver on the change he promised."  During the campaign, Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye can see."  But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years.  What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?

Obama gives the far Left 99 dreamy days.  Obama was elected as a different kind of candidate who could be trusted to deliver genuine change.  But virtually every one of his 99 days in the nation's highest office have revealed him to be just another Washington pol who talks a good case but acts no differently when it comes to keeping promises.

Chump Change.  After hearing the Democratic Party lay into President Bush last year for his "profligacy," "record spending" and "soaring deficits," we can't be blamed for expecting something else from the party now in power.  Instead, we get a 19% rise in domestic spending in 2010 from 2008 (2009 has been wildly inflated by stimulus spending), coupled with $17 billion in bogus "cuts" and record amounts of pork-barrel spending.

US govt hydrogen highway runs out of road.  The Hydrogen Highway has just become a B road.  The Obama administration has announced that the Federal government's $1.2bn (£788m/€880m) plan to develop hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars and infrastructure is to end.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the government preferred to target more immediate energy-saving solutions and so funding was "moving away from vehicular hydrogen fuel-cells to technologies with more immediate promise" — read plug-in electric vehicles of one form or another.

Obama's eight bogus budget arguments.  Assertion No. 1:  "I pledged to cut the deficit in half" by 2013.  Fact:  The president doesn't mention that the deficit has quadrupled this year.  Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush.  This is like eating a 5,000 calorie meal, and then pledging to halve your calories from that level.

Obama Endorses Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Some.  President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time yesterday [5/21/2009] that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have to be held without trial indefinitely, siding with conservative national security advocates on one of the most contentious issues raised by the closing of the military prison in Cuba.

What's the Hang-Up?  If the Bush administration's transgressions were so obvious, why are the fixes so hard to figure out?  The kind of outrage we saw over Guantanamo Bay surely was backed by a certainty of purpose, right?  After all, holding terrorist suspects there wasn't a mere matter of inexact solutions; it showed an anti-American disregard for human rights and due process.  The answer should be a simple matter of course correction.

Obama in Bush Clothing.  If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush.  Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.

Saint Barack bids adieu — Enter Bush lite.  The saint is no longer quite so saintly.  Barack Obama began his presidency promising a sea change in the way America handles civil liberties.  Now, four months later, and after a masterful — if unconvincing — attempt this week to explain his contradictions, he's shown that he's till an old-time Chicago pol.

Obama Lifts Ban on Lobbyists! Back to Business as Usual.  Roll Call is reporting that during the typical Friday afternoon document dump — a practice used to hide actions that might prove somewhat embarrassing to the White House — the administration quietly announced that some of the former restrictions on lobbying ballyhooed about during the late campaign have been lifted.  And now, we have to wonder:  will the media notice this sudden change?  I mean, a whole day has gone by and so far only Roll Call has mentioned it.

Republicans Desperately Need a Star.  Turns out Republicans were right all along.  Hellbent terrorists around the world really do want to kill Americans, and the best place to keep those we catch is Gitmo.  Just ask Democrats in Congress.  And the best way to try the relentless bastards is through military tribunals.  Just ask President Obama.

Barack Hussein Bush.  Mr. Obama also offered a robust defense of the war in Afghanistan, calling it "a war of necessity" and promising that "America's commitment will not weaken."  That's an important note to sound when Mr. Obama's left flank and some Congressional Democrats are urging an exit strategy from that supposed quagmire.  On Iraq, he acknowledged that "the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein" and pledged the U.S. to the "dual responsibility" of leaving Iraq while helping the country "forge a better future."  The timeline he reiterated for U.S. withdrawal is the one Mr. Bush negotiated last year.

Now He Even Sounds Like Bush.  It's old news that Barack Obama has held onto or reinstituted vast swaths of George W. Bush's national security policy.  From staying the course in Iraq to re-starting military tribunals, so many controversial Bush-era decisions have proved to be simply the best way forward in a legally and militarily treacherous gauntlet. ... But the president's sudden embrace of Bush's foreign policy ideology is something no one could have foreseen.

What's old is new again, Obama remarks mirror Bush's.  Take away the willingness to negotiate with Iran without preconditions and the president's newly rediscovered Muslim roots, and the "new beginning" in U.S.-Islamic relations outlined by Barack Obama in his Cairo speech Thursday has an awfully familiar ring to it.

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House.  The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.  Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present.

Good Government Group Sues for White House Visitors' Logs.  The good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit today [6/16/2009] to force the President Obama to share White House visitors logs with the public.  "We're suing because the Obama Administration has made it clear that they are continuing the policies and practices of the Bush administration and claiming that White House visitors' records are off limits to the public," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW.

Obama Closes Doors on Openness.  As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House.  But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.  One reason:  the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications."  The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure.

Oh yeah, this is a BIG change.
 Obama wants to make America more like Europe.  [Scroll down]  In the end, Americans will live in smaller houses, drive cars more like those to which Europeans are accustomed, and will rely on European-style healthcare. ... Women will be "empowered" to bring more lawsuits if they feel discriminated against, eithernow or in years gone by; more Americans will work in the public sector as it expands relative to the private sector, and as Washington displaces New York as the nation's financial capital.  Love him or loathe him, Obama will leave an America vastly different from the one he inherited.

See also Mr. Obama is surrounding himself with Washington insiders.

Quid Pro Quo.  We noted here that the drug companies intend to spend $150 million -- more than the McCain campaign's entire television advertising budget -- on ads supporting Obamacare.  Today on CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked Linda Douglass whether the ad campaign was part of the deal that the drug companies struck with the Obama administration.

Young voters should take another look at Obama.  Congratulations.  You have truly changed America.  Those of you under 30 voted 66 percent to 32 percent for Barack Obama, an unprecedented margin. ... You want policies that will enable you to choose your future.  Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you.  Is this the hope and change you want?

What Went Wrong:  [Scroll down]  Even skeptics are surprised at the partisan cynicism.  A year ago, Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama praised organizing, dissidents, and protest.  Today they have become near-Nixonian in demonizing popular resistance to their collectivized health-care plans as mob-like, inauthentic, scripted, Nazi-like, and un-American.  There are still ex-lobbyists in the government.  High officials still cheat on their taxes.  Hacks in the Congress still profit from their office.

National Suicide.  Remember when the deficit was so bad that Democrats said we (or more accurately the Republicans) were placing a terrible burden on our grandchildren?  That was several trillion dollars ago.  Democrats now appear perfectly fine with extending the growing deficit and national debt to their great-grandchildren.

Hope and Change Has Become Predictable Liberalism.  If a revolution takes root throughout the country and no one in Washington hears it, does the revolution exist?  In our representative system, the answer is yes — and members of both parties ought to start paying attention if they hope to survive the 2010 midterm elections intact.

Ingrates!  The Angry Left is angry at the president of the United States.  That makes it official.  Nothing changed when Barack Obama became president.

Bush-Era Policy Kept To Search Travelers.  The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.  The policy, disclosed Thursday [8/27/2009] in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives...

Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions.  The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.

Mr. Obama Punts.  Like President George W. Bush, President Obama now asserts that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force gives him the right to hold some terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial.  At Guantanamo, this is expected to affect 50 or so prisoners who, the administration has determined, can be tried neither in federal court nor before a military commission but are too dangerous to release.

The Limits of Reinvention:  [In Europe,] Barack Obama, the man who practically invented reinvention, is himself being reinvented as an ugly American.  Not because he's seen as loud and aggressive, but because he's seen as weak.  The events that have transpired since Obama took office nine months ago have been watched with widening eyes in Europe, and what they're seeing isn't what they had in mind when they too asked for "change."

Obamanoia.  Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50.  The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that.  The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion.  Unemployment may be headed over 10%.  The people who voted for Obama were mad over Bush's bailouts, unemployment, deficits, and supposed divisiveness.  And?  They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics.

The Post-Gracious President.  Nine months after Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, his most adamant critics must concede he's delivered on "change."  And we see it in our first post-gracious presidency.  The most visible manifestations of the new ungraciousness are the repeated digs the president and his senior staffers continue to make against George W. Bush.  Recently, the administration has given us two fresh examples.

For sale:  White House perks.  Clinton set the precedent. Bush continued the practice, And it appears now that Obama is perfecting it.  I'm talking about selling access to the White House in exchange for cash — a lot of cash.

Follow the Money.  We have yet to see a bill from the Democratic Congress or the Obama White House that is not actually a payoff to a key constituency.  The tsunami of dollars unleashed by the Obama Treasury Department in coordination with the Fed has obscured the fact that many of those dollars are ending up in the pockets of Friends of Obama or Friends of Nancy or Friends of Harry.

Exclusive:  Democratic donors rewarded with W.H. perks.  During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

Is the White House for Sale?  Obama supporter Lanny Davis says the president has little choice but to continue business as usual — even though Obama as candidate implied things would be different.  "When it comes to fundraising I never heard Barack Obama say 'I believe in unilateral disarmament.'  So long as Republicans are raising money we have to raise money, and we won the White House, we ought to take advantage of that," Davis said.

Obamaland.  [Obama] promised "change" and to stop the polarized politics of the past.  He asserted America was on the brink of death by division.  We needed to come together.  But now President Obama stands at the edge of the same abyss.  And many believe he has fallen into the same swamp of bitterness and polarization he promised to end.  Recent poll trends support this conclusion.

The Obama White House: Bundlers' Paradise.  Perks for deep-pocketed donors?  Presidential meetings for sale?  The stale Chicago odor of pay-for-play wafting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?  Knock me over with a feather.  Despite the president's claimed distaste for the campaign finance practice known as "bundling" (rounding up aggregate contributions from friends, business associates and employees), the House of Obama has been a campaign finance bundlers' paradise from Day One.

Barack Obama accused of 'selling' access to the White House.  President Barack Obama has been accused of betraying his campaign promise to change the culture of Washington by "selling" access to the White House to prominent donors.  Leaked Democratic National Committee documents showed the party had offered up to four briefings a year from senior presidential advisers in exchange for a personal donation of $30,400 or a commitment to raise $300,000 for the 2010 midterm elections.

A pay-to-play White House.  In the months since Mr. Obama took office, his administration has showered the Democratic Party's key fundraisers with insider briefings from administration staffers, access to the president and top aides and all the social perks that only the White House can bestow.  The president, who ran for office saying he wanted to clean up fundraising, is perfectly happy to wallow in the cash-for-access mud pit.

Obama and 'Special Interests'.  At the same time that the White House has demonized lobbyists, it has allowed itself to be infiltrated by a different army — one made up of campaign contributors.  These individuals can breeze past defenses designed to repel lobbyists.  Campaign contributors, especially those who bundled large contributions from others, have been embraced by this administration.  Because they aren't formally registered or regulated in the way lobbyists are, they enjoy the benefits and privileges of serving in the heart of the administration.

Bush or Obama: The Quiz.  [Question #6]  Obama criticized Bush for Guantanamo, military tribunals, wiretaps, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and "signing statements."  Which one of these Bush practices has Obama ended?

Why it's a mistake to bring Gitmo prisoners here.  Of all the changes Barack Obama is trying to bring about, there is one that would have stunned and dismayed his most ardent supporters, had they foreseen it during the presidential campaign.  After all his talk of American values and loyalty to the Constitution, Obama is positioning himself to become the man who brought indefinite detention to the United States.

Pay to play.
 White House logs point to donor access.  Newly released visitor logs show that more than two dozen of President Obama's top-tier campaign fundraisers visited the White House during his first nine months in office, providing more evidence of the administration's quiet effort to reward donors with VIP access including private briefings with presidential advisers.

Obama delivers a cynical speech to a cynical nation.  President Obama's invocations of Sept. 11 in his West Point speech on Afghanistan landed with a clatter. ... It came as a particularly cruel irony for many of the president's most ardent supporters when he argued for escalating a war most liberals believe should be ended, framing his argument in the same terms that launched the Bush doctrine.

Promises, Promises:  Friday is still WH 'trash day'.  President Barack Obama entered the White House promising a new era of openness in government, but when it comes to bad news, his administration often uses one of the oldest tricks in the public relations playbook:  putting it out when the fewest people are likely to notice.

The Un-Bama.  [Scroll down]  "Change" has been Obama's calling card.  And, as with any hypnotic induction, vagueness can powerfully bind many a subject when left to the mind of the listener to clarify.  Nevertheless, many Obama supporters are beginning to realize that the "change" he or she imagined the president to have suggested is different from the almost complete overhaul of our national fabric that Obama and his minions have been pounding out.

Trial lawyer lobbyist to head traffic safety for Obama.  A former lobbyist for the nation's largest trial lawyer industry group, the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America) is Obama's nominee as administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Anti-war activists losing patience with Obama.  Abby Tomlinson voted for President Barack Obama, hoping that he would help end the war in Iraq quickly.  But the Lubbock woman said she's disappointed in what the "peace" candidate has accomplished along those lines, nearly a year after taking office.  Two wars continue.

Rude awakening for naive Left about big government.  To watch the Left turn against President Obama's health care reform is to watch the shattering of an illusion.  Liberals' high-minded plan for insuring all Americans has devolved into a congressional orgy of pork.  It has produced a bailout for insurers and a generous subsidy for drug makers — and both industries are backing this bill to the hilt.

Danny Glover Sees No Difference Between Obama and Bush.  "I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration.  I don't see anything different," the activist movie actor said of Obama's policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

Powerful Chicagoans on White House Visitor Log.  Among the visitors:  Penny Pritzker, leader of Obama's campaign fundraising efforts.  She visited 15 times between Obama's inauguration and mid-June.

The Great Dictator.  The cry of the left against Obama is directed against his failure to go far enough.  Why haven't US troops already withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan?  Why wasn't Gitmo closed instantly?  Why wasn't the public option passed?  That these things weren't feasible is something they don't want to hear. ... And now the left is disappointed because Obama hasn't been quite the Great Dictator they imagined.

The Once-Appealing Barack Obama.  [Scroll down slowly]  That was what we were promised.  What we got instead is a president who increased the divisions in our nation, the most partisan and polarizing figure in the history of polling, one who is dogmatic and has been as generous to special interests as any we have seen.  The efforts to buy votes in pursuit of the Obama agenda has added sewage to the cesspool.  This would hurt any president under any circumstances; for Barack Obama, whose allure was based almost entirely on his ability to convince the public that he embodied a "new politics," it has been doubly damaging.

Change, yes, but not the change Americans wanted.  Mr. Obama had set his sights on the transformation of American society.  For most Americans, however, change was a matter of how, not what.  Social revolution was the last thing on their minds.  They ascribed the failed policies of the Bush years to the glaring defects of a political process dominated by special interests and partisan bickering.  So what did Mr. Obama do?  He poured kerosene on both.

Whose Business Is It?  During last year's presidential campaign, Democrats blasted "sweetheart deals" for companies like Halliburton and vowed to end no-bid contracts.  Now the Democrats' political donors are reaping them.  Monday [1/25/2010], Fox News found that Checchi & Company Consulting was awarded a $24,673,427 no-bid contract for "rule of law stabilization services" inside Afghanistan.  And by coincidence, its president, Vincent Checchi, donated $8,350 to Obama's campaign, according to opensecrets.org.

State Department Admits No-Bid Contract 'Violates' Obama Campaign Pledges.  The recent awarding of a lucrative federal contract to a company owned by a financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign — without competitive bidding — "violated" President Obama's many campaign pledges to crack down on the practice, a top State Department official told Fox News.

U.S. Cancels No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work Given to Democratic Donor.  The U.S. has canceled a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan awarded to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor who did not face competitive bids.  The cancellation comes after Fox News first reported on the details of the contract last week, prompting lawmakers to make inquiries into the deal.

Obama picks another fight he can't win.  President Obama has adopted a new kind of bipartisanship — daring Republicans to offer their policy views so that he can discredit them.  You might call it punching-bag bipartisanship.  The president and his party believe that by eliciting Republican policy ideas they can remind Americans how much they hate the GOP.

The Administration, Rebutted.  In what must seem a bitter irony to many who voted for Obama, the administration is now at great pains to justify its anti-terrorism policies by claiming that they are the same as those of the once-dreaded Bush administration.

How can I miss you if you won't go away?  [Scroll down]  While the Bush Administration was colluding with telecommunications companies, such as AT&T, to eavesdrop on American citizens without any evidence of wrongdoing and devoid of any judicial check, Senator Obama provided necessary cover, voting in favor of retroactive immunity to those same telecom corporations and to permit such warrantless surveillance.

Privacy.  Remember all the caterwauling by the Democrats and then Senator Obama about the Bush Administration's deliberate attempt to pry into the lives of Americans using the war on terror as an excuse.  The protection of privacy was the battle cry against the dastardly Republicans in the White House.  In a matter of less than 13 months the Obama administration has taken steps that show its true colors and allegiance to the "big brother' philosophy exposed in George Orwell's "1984".

Obama's bundlers occupy dozens of key positions.  [Scroll down]  An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years.  Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president's biggest donors already have federal jobs.

No Nukes!  Unless Obama Wants Nukes...  I don't want to start a new conspiracy theory but a small and dedicated group of Americans has gone missing.  Vanished without a trace!  Where are the American anti-nuclear people?  What has happened to the "No Nukes" crowd?

Senate votes to extend USA Patriot Act for 1 year.  The Senate voted Wednesday [2/24/2010] to extend for a year key provisions of the nation's counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month.

Shhhhh, Don't Tell Anyone — The Patriot Act Was Reauthorized.  After a lot of huffing and puffing, about the need to add more civil-liberties protections to a law already teeming with them, the Democrat-controlled Senate quietly voted to extend the three Patriot Act provisions that would have expired without reauthorization.  Although beating back Patriot and its sensible national-security provisions has been a rallying cry for the Left, Senate Democrats agreed to a clean reauthorization on a voice-vote.

Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act — on a Saturday Night Of Course.  With virtually zero debate — or media attention — President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension for what many considered the most crucial and controversial aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act.  For many on the left, the Patriot Act is the defining pillar and symbol of the previous administration, emblematic of a totalitarian police state they allegedly suffered under George W. Bush.

Scrap ObamaCare Today.  In terms of both policy and process, this health care bill has been fundamentally flawed since the start.  Now, desperate to ram through a health care bill at any cost, President Obama and his allies are preparing to use reconciliation, which would prove once and for all their inability and unwillingness to fix Washington and responsibly manage the people's business.  Going down this road will also make clear that the poetry and promises of 2008's campaign have completely evaporated and given way to the dark side of Washington's politics as usual.

Govt. Transparency Down in '09.  When President Obama took office, he famously aspired to be the leader in administrative transparency, but now he finds himself struggling to enforce it within his own government.  In fiscal year 2009, 17 major governmental agencies refused to release information, claiming legal exemptions, 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50 percent from the previous year, according to a review of requests conducted by The Associated Press.

Breaking the Obama Code:  The Green Money Machine.  [Scroll down]  As a few dozen dot com billionaires gathered in a Palo Alto living room one evening in early 2007, then-Senator Obama rallied potential new donors over the speakerphone.  After the call, the host John Roos, a prominent lawyer, emphasized what most of his guests already knew.  The clean-energy revolution was gaining momentum.  The election in 2008 would be the critical moment.  The ethics-based green revolution could be passed into law and Obama was their guy.  Roos raised much money and opened many doors for Obama that evening.  In May 2009, despite initial criticism from Japan, Roos was given the plum appointment of U.S. Ambassador.

An Obama secret:  Here's a not-so-tiny tidbit of data that's getting lost in the White House-driven public frenzy over healthcare legislation this week:  The White House Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his presidential predecessor George W. Bush as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.


Disillusionment sets in
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