President Obama's Speeches

President Obama's Speeches

Reaction to Obama's speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008:

Senator Obama was expected to give a speech about race relations on March 18 that would patch up this controversy and straighten out any misunderstandings about his pastor. It didn't have much of an effect — in fact, most observers are now less convinced of Obama's qualifications, and the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward Hillary Clinton.

Eloquent Speech, Troubling Worldview. Barack Obama just gave an eloquent speech, but one that does not address the underlying nature of Senator Obama's beliefs. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, like Mr. Obama, believes in a state-centered 21st century form of big-government socialism. This 21st century form of socialism is at the heart of the Liberation Theology Rev. Wright preaches from the pulpit. Today, Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country's economy the most prosperous in all of human history.

Obama Defends Wright's Anger. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama defended the anger of his longtime friend, "spiritual guide" and controversial pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright in a major speech on race and religion Tuesday [3/18/2008]. … In the last week, video clips have surfaced of Wright blaming the U.S. government for AIDS and 9/11 as well as invoking racial slurs while discussing Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton's candidacy in the pulpit. In the clips, Wright repeatedly blames "the culture of rich, white men" for the modern day problems of blacks in America.

Yesterday's Baggage. Obama says that pretty much any inconvenient discussion of race is a distraction from what America really needs: a huge expansion of the welfare state. Obama says our racial problems can be healed with more money. By "investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations." … The old baggage has been replaced with shinier suitcases, but the contents are the same as ever.

The Tragedy of Obama's Speech: The tragedy of Obama's speech and the mindless endorsement of it was the rejection of any constant moral standard — an absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends situational ethics, context, and individual particulars. … When he failed to "disown" Rev. Wright, and then brought in parallels of things purportedly as bad, or offered excuses that Wright had done good things to balance the bad, or that there were certain mitigating circumstances that explain his hatred, then the universal wrong of Wright's racism and lying disappears and with it any ethical standard by which we have moral authority to condemn such vitriol.

Obama: Grandma 'Typical White Person' Fearing Everyone She Doesn't Know. It seems the more Barack Obama tries to explain the peculiar statement he made Tuesday concerning his white grandmother's "fear of black men who passed by her on the street," the more he's assuring attention regarding the matter.

Who decided to call Obama black? Mr. Obama could label himself with obvious legitimacy as white — he was, after all, raised by his white mother and white grandparents after his father abandoned the family when he was 2 years old. Yet he describes himself as black, and news organizations around the world have followed suit.

Obama blew it: What the candidate should have said about race. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America. He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race.

The Roots Of Black Anger. In his speech, Obama rationalized that "the history of racial injustice in this country" gives rise to the kind of anger that fueled Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-white rants. He ticked off slavery, Jim Crow laws, school segregation and job bias, and maintained that discrimination still is holding back African-Americans. While these racist crimes of the past still sting, Obama is wrong to suggest that legalized discrimination still exists today. There is no conspiracy of racism in America.

Obama: From Valiant to Victicrat. Billed as an "important speech about race," presidential candidate Barack Obama condemned some of the remarks of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. But Obama refused to denounce the man himself, considering him family. Commentators gushed over this "groundbreaking," "stirring" speech about the "state of race relations in America." Funny, some people actually thought that Obama might explain why he chose and attends a church led by a hateful, anti-Semitic, racist America-condemning pastor, a man whom Obama refers to as his "spiritual advisor."

A Brief for Whitey: It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves." Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery. Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation.

The masterpiece of a disaster: Their squeals of praise were universally breathtaking: "It was an extraordinary moment of truth-telling." "A masterpiece!" "A profile in courage!" "Brilliant, inspiring, intellectually supple!" "Searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching and loyal." "A speech we have all been waiting for for a generation." The punditocracy, having overdosed on nuance, seared by supple and sore from all those wrenched guts, is fresh out of exclamation points, now on back order in newsrooms everywhere.

Barack Obama shops his grandma but won't save his skin. Barack Obama's mistake was to choose to be black, and on Tuesday he only made that mistake worse by betraying his white grandmother. And as a result, his speech to excuse his links to race-baiting black preacher Jeremiah Wright may have killed his chance of becoming the next president of the United States.

Wright's gift to the right: Early reactions to Sen. Barack Obama's Big Speech in Philadelphia last week about his pastor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., sound like a mixed review: "It was a nice speech about race, but what about that nutty preacher?"

My Whiteness Versus My Wrightness. Watching the "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a horny peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America truly inspired my religious faith. … How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world's problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it's so. I'm not sure what verse actually says that, but I'm now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my biblical ignorance.

Wimping Out: Obama's Squandered Chance at Post-Racialism. His distancing speech was more a justification speech than anything else. … Barack Obama is uniquely positioned to talk about race in America in a new way. It would have served his post-racial aspirations to do so today. He did not take that opportunity.

Obama's Speech: No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them. The cable news journalists who are playing the tapes of those sermons were not there. The tapes were on sale in the church itself. Obama knew that because he had bought one or more of those tapes. … There was no way that he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit. Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.

Three Big Problems With Barack's Speech: [Scroll down] An even worse comparison involved Barack's exploitation of his own grandmother (who is still alive) to make a political point. … This wretched analogy should make all of us cringe: there's no arguable equivalence between his grandmother's very private kitchen-table remarks (no matter how insensitive) and the very public and thunderous sermons of a famous clergyman addressing thousands of his congregants and later selling his hateful remarks on DVD.

Say Goodbye to the Glowbama Mystique. Instead of accountability, we got excuses. Instead of disavowal of demagoguery, we got whacked with the moral equivalence card. Instead of rejecting the Blame America mantra of left-wing black nationalism, we got more Blame Whitey. Same old, same old.

Obama Not Yet Out of the Woods. Obama's forte is not, as many have suggested, waxing eloquent while saying nothing. His real gift is saying one thing while appearing to say the opposite, so mellifluously and disarmingly that audiences shake their heads in affirmation of the very proposition they oppose. Without changing their minds, they believe they have agreed with him. Amazing — and scary.

Obama's Speech Leaves a Few Question Marks. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." … An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks? … Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 — "chickens coming home to roost" — because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?) What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew [in advance] about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?

Obama May Not Have Fully Contained Damage From Ex-Pastor. Sen. Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race relations last month seemed to put the controversial remarks of his former pastor behind him. But three weeks later, there is evidence of lingering damage. "It has not been defused," says David Parker, a North Carolina Democratic Party official and unpledged superdelegate.

Eloquent misstep by Obama. If Sen. Barack Obama loses the presidency, he can very likely trace the beginning of the end of his unprecedented run for the White House to last week's much-discussed speech on race. He never should have gone there. It was a deadly mistake, a political blunder of the first order.

Obama's Clintonesque Speech. Barack Obama came to Philadelphia on March 18 not so much to address his poisonous pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but to talk vaguely of race relations. The news media swooned. … Newspapers and news networks tried to insist that Obama's speech drew praise "across the political spectrum," but this was nonsense. Many outlets utterly excluded conservatives and Republicans from their stories. They were hermetically sealing Obama from criticism.

Barack Obama's Big Mistake — and How He Fixes It. It was a fateful decision — and a significant strategic mistake. Battered by the controversy over the remarks of his mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama delivered a speech designed to switch the national conversation from Wright to race. … But both the decision to speak on race and the speech itself damaged the Barack Obama "brand."

Expedience and Experience: Like senior citizens stampeding into a restaurant for the Early Bird Special, commentators are falling all over each other in trying to declare that the Obama speech on race was the best speech since the Gettysburg Address … Obama's speech, however, was brilliant for a different reason. He gave a speech about race when race was not the issue. It would be like President Bush addressing Congress and making a speech about crabgrass. The issue was Obama's nitwit pastor.

The Blathering Storm: The question with Obama remains exactly what actions he'll take to give real meaning to his fine speeches. ... My problem with Obama and my fear of a potential Obama presidency is that his ostentatious plans for inaction may be more than just a clever political strategy. If you look at his record, Obama seems to lack much fondness for action. His record is littered with evidence that he's a congenital ditherer who doesn't bother to offer actions that support his words.

Wright Stuff vs. the Woods Model. In response to the controversy stirred by the Wright revelations, Obama gave a speech on race relations. Most of the media swooned. But as columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out, its tired themes were moral equivalence and white guilt. Geraldine Ferraro and Obama's white grandmother were made to seem just as wrong as Wright.

Analysis by Charles Krauthammer: In his swoon-inducing Philadelphia speech, Obama instructed the nation from on high that America was greatly in need of a national conversation on race — a need curiously absent before his pastor's words sent his campaign into a tailspin — and that he, Barack Obama, was ready to lead it. Everything was now on the table, except his association with Wright. … After the speech, it became an article of faith that even referencing Wright's comments was somehow illegitimate, the new "Swift boating."

Not Too Swift. In much of the media, as in the Democratic party's talking points, "swift boating" has come to be defined not only as a smear but as any criticism of Barack Obama. But before the phrase slips irretrievably into the general usage, can we take one moment to remember how this all got started?

The Editor says...
The article makes no mention of "Borking", which was the old name for "Swift Boating." Borking was invented by Ted Kennedy.*

Obama's Unofficial Slogan: 'No, You're Wrong'. [Scroll down] One of the [Philadelphia] speech's overall themes was that America had misjudged Jeremiah Wright and was jumping to conclusions on "snippets." He explicitly warned against dismissing Wright as a demagogue and a crank. … Then Wright went to the National Press Club, and his hour-long, bombastic, controversy-embracing performance suggested that those five things were not, in fact, out of the ordinary.

Dreams From My Father, Lame Excuses From My Grandfather. If Obama is sent reeling by the mere words of an elderly white woman, how is he going to negotiate with a guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? … Your grandmother wasn't a racist, Barack. Your grandpa was just a loser. Can we wrap up our national conversation about race now? I think we'd like to move onto questions about your stupid plan to hold talks with Iran.

Obama May Not Have Fully Contained Damage From Ex-Pastor. Sen. Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race relations last month seemed to put the controversial remarks of his former pastor behind him. But three weeks later, there is evidence of lingering damage. "It has not been defused," says David Parker, a North Carolina Democratic Party official and unpledged superdelegate.

Obama 'transcends' mere investigation. Obama-the-uniter holds membership at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, a black separatist church where anti-American rants replace the gospel of Christ's atonement and racism is excused as cultural expression. Never once in 20 years did Obama, whose campaign slogan is "The Judgment to Lead," object to its hateful invective. Moreover, he was mentored by pastor and race-merchant Jeremiah Wright — crown prince of divisiveness. The damage from "Pastorgate" is anybody's guess, but the Philadelphia "race speech" was pure postmodern politics — with a dash of double standard.

The 'Race' Speech Revisited: Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews. Apparently there's been a curriculum change.

To Obama, 'we' means 'me'. [Scroll down] It was never a great speech. It was a simulacrum of a great speech written to flatter gullible pundits into hailing it as the real deal. It should be "required reading in classrooms," said Bob Herbert in the New York Times; it was "extraordinary" and "rhetorical magic," said Joe Klein in Time — which gets closer to the truth: As with most "magic," it was merely a trick of redirection. Obama appeared to have made Jeremiah Wright vanish into thin air, but it turned out he was just under the heavily draped table waiting to pop up again.

"The charm may have worked once. It still works on some. It won't work forever in the age of the Internet. The fog of ambiguity and dissimulation is dissipated by the harsh, unforgiving and scrutiny of the blogosphere and its unlimited access to historical facts and time-stamped testimony."
– Reuven Koret.

Reaction to Obama's speech in San Francisco on April 6, 2008:

Sounding Bitter: Barack Obama seems to have stepped in it. This time the offending words are not his former pastor's, but his own. … What Obama said about the small-towners, as you've probably heard by now, was: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Not good. A pretty significant blunder. Plays into the worst stereotype of him as an elitist who can't connect with the working classes.

The Mask Slips. [Obama is] disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He's usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it's not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize. And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? … What has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

The Other Obama: The Democratic Party fight is helping us learn that there's more to Barack Obama than the eloquent, post-partisan, disciplined purveyor of "hope" that he typically projects. There's also the Barack Obama who attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, the one who emerged from the Chicago Democratic machine with friends like Tony Rezko, the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, and now we learn the one with a Harvard-eye view of American angst. At an April 6 fund-raiser in San Francisco, this Obama explained to his non-blue-collar donors….

Sen. Obama, meet Dr. Freud. There is a word for what Obama is doing: it's called projection.

SnOb-ama on Small Town Voters: Bitter, Xenophobic, Religious, Anti-Immigration. Only an elitist who attributes religious faith and gun ownership to bitterness would think that tax cuts for the rich include families who make $75,000 per year. Only an elitist would say that people vote their values only out of frustration. Barack Obama thinks he knows your hopes and fears better than you do. You can't be more out of touch than that.

Snob-ama slight a big-time error. When they accused Obama of being out of touch for saying small-towners "cling to guns or religion" out of frustration, Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were too kind. Snob-ama is not just out of touch. He's from another planet.

The McGovernization of Obama: I still believe that by August, Obama, the half-term rookie Senator, will have become the second George McGovern. … Obama goes to the Bay Area to an affluent liberal enclave to give a condescending take on the supposed poor fools that he is currently trying to court. This is not just hypocritical, but abjectly stupid. All of Pennsylvania surely is asking today what is so hip and sophisticated about the Trinity Church and Rev. Wright?

Big Snob or Little Snob? It's a triple whammy. Obama claims to speak for people, something folks don't like, whether they live in small towns or large ones. He touches on some of the most explosive issues in politics — religion, guns, race, and immigration — where voters tend to have deep-seated views. He then says something really tone-deaf, ascribing suspect reasoning to choices people have made about core parts of their daily lives.

Off-the-Record Obama. Senator Obama's words are significant because they were said off-the-record, meaning they provided a more authentic glimpse into the attitudes of Obama than a carefully scripted event. Nonetheless, his words were not merely careless; his comments were based on a carefully constructed, if deeply condescending, explanation.

Obama's Flaws Multiply. Barack Obama's San Francisco-Democrat comment last week — about how alienated working-class voters "cling to guns or religion" — is already famous. But the fact that his aides tell reporters he is privately bewildered that anybody took offense is even more remarkable.

Better Than the Bitter. Obama's political approach is wearing poorly. Obamaism seems to consist of the belief that the candidate transcends the understandable but confused anger of black and white Americans. And so Obamaism requires an unfavorable comparison of the American people to Obama himself. This message is inherently prideful: I understand your bitterness and confusion, but I don't reflect it. You know me. I'm better than that. The problem is: We really don't know Obama very well.

Barack Obama to Rural Voters: I Can't Believe in You. To many liberals, views as detestable as conservative ones cannot be explained by anything other than mental illness and ill will, false motives and false consciousness. … Obama's comments about small-town America, delivered to a group of rich liberal donors in San Francisco, were the utterly unsurprising culmination of a electoral plan built on disrespecting the very voters needed for election.

Candidate on a High Horse: Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working-class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns, religion and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" because of "frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice.

Loose Lips and Democratic Ships: Barack Obama violated two elementary rules of political campaigning. A candidate should never play the role of a political scientist or sociologist analyzing a key electoral swing group from afar and should never dissect the motivations of less privileged people when talking to a group of privileged people.

Snob-ama Is Not Alone. Obama is reportedly flummoxed that his remarks have been interpreted as arrogant. After all, he was a "community organizer" who came from a single-parent home! He is The Everyman. The Uniter. The Soul-Fixer. The Vessel of All Hopes and Dreams. How could he possibly be perceived as out of touch?

Obama is 'Bitterly' Out of Touch. Obama apparently believes one embraces religion out of bitterness, not due to spirituality, values, belief in or the acceptance of and submission to a higher power. Perhaps this explains why Obama clung to the Trinity Church of Christ for 20 years, with its anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-American, conspiracy-believing pastor, Jeremiah Wright. If Obama attended the church out of "bitterness," surely, his reasoning goes, others do so as well.

Obama's Projections of Bitterness: With such distorted perceptions about his fellow citizens, it's no wonder Obama appears bitter and angry at this nation. Given his experience with hostility emanating from his own pastor's pulpit, it's not surprising that he sees Middle America through that jaundiced prism and jumps to the perverse conclusion that small-town Americans turn to God out of bitterness. Obama has some nerve presuming to lecture the rest of us about prejudice and being out of touch with what people think.

A 'Bitter' Misstep. Mr. Obama's political brilliance to date has been to use his message of hope to deflect questions about himself or his record. He'd actually created the perception that to challenge him was to challenge "hope" itself. … But the San Fran comments proved one scandal too many; man and message have now been delinked.

Obama's speech in Berlin, Germany, July 24, 2008:

Obama's Berlin Speech: Mixed metaphors and soggy logic. It was a great moment — so long as you viewed it with the sound off. But if you listened to the speech, you heard an ominous and disturbing statement, one that raises the same unsettling question Hillary Clinton raised: Is this man really capable of meeting the responsibilities of commander-in-chief? Many commentators have observed that the speech was an unusually poorly written one, filled with weak language and mangled metaphors.

Let's fact check Obama. Beginning with getting wrong the bio of his father, Barack Obama Sr.

Senator Obama's Excellent Adventure. The Obama Machine's, "Hope & Change World Tour" has left more than a few people perplexed. Some … are American voters who wonder why the presumptive Democrat nominee is campaigning in foreign countries for President of the U.S. Others seem baffled by the places and people chosen for meetings and photo-ops with the candidate.

Kumbaya falls flat in Berlin. As Senator Obama went global with "Yes, we can" and "Change we can believe in" he left at least some of the horde in Berlin scratching their heads. Perhaps these Germans, out to hear what all the excitement was about, were looking for leadership and substance rather than kumbaya.

Sweet Nothings. You really need to be on your toes if you're going to get anything out of a newspaper's election coverage. You've got to tune your ear to euphemism and translate as you go. So last Friday, having missed the television broadcasts of Obama's speech in Berlin the day before, I read the Washington Post with a cocked ear, and when I saw that the speech was described as "broadly thematic" and "sober and serious" I knew exactly what it meant: a boring speech full of blah blah blah. And so it was.

Missing from that Berlin speech: Not once in his Berlin speech did Obama acknowledge [President] Truman's fortitude, or even mention his name. Nor did he mention the US Air Force, or the 31 American pilots who died during the airlift. Indeed, Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America's military might. Save for a solitary reference to "the first American plane," he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all.

Obama's Naive Berlin Speech: Obama: "People of the world — look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." The wall came down because America stood strong, not because the world stood as one. What he said here is John Lennon-like fantasy, the opposite of reality, and as such, coming from the man who may well be the next president of the United States, a bit frightening.

World Citizen Obama. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's single most illuminating statement in the course of a just-completed overseas tour was his self-description during the stop in Berlin as a "citizen of the world." Widely interpreted as nothing more than an innocuous expression of solidarity with his adoring, post-nationalist hosts, this declaration is actually just the latest indication that Senator Obama embraces a vision of his own country and its role in the world that should be exceedingly worrisome to America's citizenry.

Obama's Berlin 'Smoke And Mirrors' Speech: This is not the first time Mr. Obama has used a marquis name singer to draw a crowd and make it seem that the crowd was there for him. During Mr. Obama's May speech in Portland, he was preceded by a free concert given by The Decemberists. This group has drawn rave reviews by Rolling Stone magazine. … We need an adult in the White House — not a rockstar.

One world? Obama is on another planet. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

Obama's 'Audacity' Is For Dopes. Barack Obama at least has one thing right: the author of "The Audacity of Hope" is certainly audacious. ... And so the political savior went to Berlin to stand on the shoulders of giants, and didn't even have the courtesy to tip his hat to the president of the United States — Ronald Reagan — whose monumentally historic rhetoric he adapted ad nauseam, showing an audacious disregard for creativity and originality.

Crowds for Obama, or for rock bands? I've gotten some emails complaining that the mainstream media didn't mention something about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: He was preceded on stage by a couple of popular rock bands, which could account for the size of the crowd. That's a fact worth knowing, and one the major U.S. newspapers didn't report. If a presidential candidate is hanging onto the coattails of a music act, voters watching from the other side of the planet ought to be aware of it.

Gullible Travels. It has been suggested that Barack Obama went overseas in order to morph into "presidential" material; that his mere presence on foreign shores would somehow be transformative. That would be like me jetting off to Never-Never-Land in order to become Peter Pan; an excursion that too many Obama backers already seem to have taken.

Obama Uses Deceit To Draw Crowds During European Tour. Mainstream media reports have indicated that an estimated 200,000 Berliners attended Sen. Barack Obama's speech last week. This figure is currently in dispute even though it is being widely reported around the world. The mainstream media also failed to report that just prior to Obama's speech, Berliners were treated to a rock concert with the German reggae band Patrice and the pop band Reamonn. Free bratwurst, beer, and pizza were provided during the three-hour concert.

Obama Plays Reagan in Berlin. The depth of the deception that is now underway can be understood by analyzing the significance of Obama's "I love America" foreign policy speech in Berlin, Germany, in view of the fact that the candidate and his media acolytes continue to conceal the central role that a Stalinist Communist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis played in his upbringing.

Did someone mention Frank Marshall Davis?

Obama's Naive Berlin Speech. To better understand Sen. Barack Obama, his speech before 200,000 Germans in Berlin is one good place to start. As we shall see, however, it does not leave one secure as to the senator's understanding of history, of America's role in the world, and what to do about evil, among other important issues.

Barack Obama's Naive Berlin Speech [Part Two]. Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world.

President of What World? In Berlin, Obama credited the "people of the world" for bringing down the Berlin Wall. That will be surprising news to the people of Mexico, Switzerland and dozens of other nations who not only sat out World War II as "neutrals" but never gave one penny to support the 1949 Berlin Airlift or NATO. Contrary to Obama's rosy Code Pink revisionism, the "people of the world" were bit players in the 40 year struggle against Soviet occupation of East Berlin and Eastern Europe.

Obama's Task: The beginning of Obama's decline in the polls was the Berlin speech. It took a while for the absurdity of that event to sink in, and for the McCain campaign to take perfect advantage of it in parody. Not only did Berlin (as a stand-in for a host of grand Obama gestures) prove a liability in and of itself. But, additionally, it accentuated the basic thinness of Obama's history and experience.

Obama Berlin speech cost $700K. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama paid a German company nearly $700,000 for staging, sound and lighting services at the time he delivered a speech this past summer in Berlin and declared himself a "citizen" of both the U.S. and the world.

Barack Obama's problem: I remember the day last July when candidate Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin. I was living abroad, getting my news from SKY and so able, unlike most Americans, to watch the speech live and in full. After it was over I picked up the phone and called a friend back home. "It's worse than we thought," I told him. "The guy's actually crazy."

Obama and the Spirit of Antichrist -- Part Two. Evidently [making a speech at the Siegessäule] was not problematic for Obama, who stood in front of it and saluted the German audience in a way eerily similar to what Adolf Hitler used to do, followed by thousands returning the salute, which is against German law. When Obama ended his speech in front of the war goddess, he said, "With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again." This is exactly what Hitler had promised to do and exactly where he had planned to memorialize it.

Reaction to Obama's acceptance speech, August 28, 2008:

A speech full yet empty. This address was not nearly as good as his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. His lines this time ran from serviceable to pretty awful. A supposed hard truth that he told to Democrats was "We can not meet twenty first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy." It sounded like something Al Gore would have said, circa 1995.

How Obama lost the election: The speech itself dragged on for three-quarters of an hour. … On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats.

Barack Obama Isn't Santa Claus. In his speech, Obama speaks of America being "a better country than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment that he's worked on for 20 years and watch as it's shipped off to China." Yet he left out that he recently told the Las Cruces Sun-News about his plan to give citizenship to all the undocumented illegal immigrants already here taking Americans' jobs and undercutting wages. I wonder how all the union employees who applauded this week as some 600 illegals were hauled out of their plant during an INS raid in small town Mississippi would feel about Urkel Obama's plans to turn around and give all such cheaters citizenship?

Puff, the Magic Obama! Despite the fact that Obama's camp suggested that these Athenian columns were merely representative of the history of democracy, the entire visual felt more like a temple than a tenured politician's presidential platform. Even his podium looked more like a lectern or pulpit, rising and falling at will and out of sight beneath the stage. Is this the simple, substance-oriented, budget-cutting Obama we can expect if he's president?

Obama's Panic: In his Denver speech, it seemed that every American home was on the auction block, every car stalled for lack of gasoline, every credit card bill past due, every worker treated like a Russian serf. ... In obedience to the best Democratic advice, Obama managed to be conventional, bitter and graceless.

Reaction to Obama's address to Congress, February 24, 2009.

Obama's Cap on Carbon Pollution Is A Huge Tax Increase, Republican Lawmaker Says. In his speech to Congress Tuesday night, President Barack Obama "committed himself to the largest annual tax increase in the history of America," warns a Republican congressman. The implementation of a cap-and-trade system, something Obama favors, would raise $300- to $330-billion a year, said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

The Cal Ripken President. Obama spent more than twice as much time in his historic speech genuflecting to the teachers' unions than talking about terrorism, Iraq or Afghanistan. So it was historic only in the sense that Obama is the first African-American president, but was the same old Democratic claptrap in every other respect.

The Era of Big Government Is Only Getting Warmed Up. The president's address tonight comes at an interesting juncture. The stimulus has passed, but the administration is backpedaling on just how much good it is going to do and how quickly we will feel its effects. The mortgage bailout plan has induced a populist backlash. And the financial sector is paralyzed with fear. Despite promises of fiscal responsibility, there is nothing but government spending and rising deficits in the near term.

Those Foreclosure "Victims" Deserve No Sympathy. As I reported last week, ACORN launched a lawless "civil disobedience" campaign across the country to demand their housing entitlement rights. With this well-oiled propaganda campaign buoying his efforts, President Obama used his State of the Nation address last night to advance his push for a massive government home foreclosure plan that will help "responsible homeowners avoid foreclosure." But a closer look at ACORN's sob stories shows that the prototypical foreclosure "victims" don't deserve an ounce of sympathy — or a cent of our money.

More historical obfuscation from Obama's address to Congress. President Obama opined, "History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry." The expansion of the railroads was accomplished by, primarily, British railroad speculators and a land bribe, giving a section (one square mile) of land along each mile of railroad bed right-of-way. ... To suggest that the great railroad expansion was a Federal program is patently silly.

Obama's shaky claims before Congress. Last night, President Obama made two very dubious claims. Yes, Henry Ford made the automobile affordable for the masses, but the actual grunt work of inventing the automobile was done mostly in Germany. Sorry. Any machinery as complex as the automobile has many people contributing to the "invention" of the product.

Try again, Mr. President — America didn't invent the auto. While the right-leaning blogs blaze with the inaccuracies, over-reaches and empty promises of last night's Presidential Address to the Joint Session, I have been contemplating the backlash had it been Dubya who claimed this country invented the automobile. President Obama, while trying to convince the taxpayers that we need to save the ineptitude that is Detroit, stated that he believes "The country that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

Obama Gaffe: America Didn't Invent Automobile. President Obama's speech to Congress last night might have emphasized urgency over historical accuracy when he stated, "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it." Many inventors contributed to the rise of the car in modern-day life. But the U.S. Library of Congress credits German inventor Karl Benz with creating the first true automobile that ran on an internal combustion engine.

Fact check: Obama glosses over some realities. President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that his mortgage-relief plan will only benefit deserving homeowners appears to be a stretch. Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who should have known better than to buy that huge house.

Obama's automotive history rewrite. This had to be music to the ears of Detroit: "I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it," President Barack Obama said in his address to a joint session of Congress last night. ... The only problem is, this nation did not invent the automobile.

About Last Night: What was perhaps most striking in the speech is what it ignored: national security. It is kind of extraordinary, really: last week President Obama ordered an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, yet there was no effort in last night's speech to put this decision in any larger context. The same is true of Iraq; almost nothing was said about it. It was almost as if America was not at war and militant Islam has evaporated as a threat. It hasn't, of course.

Obama's Deficit Charade. President Obama posed as a fiscal conservative Monday when he hosted a "fiscal responsibility summit." Close inspection reveals that what he is actually proposing, however, is a massive increase in government debt — thus raising the already unsustainable burden of government that is certain to fall on our children unless the welfare state is somehow curtailed.

Obama's words on home aid ring hollow. President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that the government could rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means. But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow. Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment.

Obama Unbridled: Anyone who thought the recession and financial market turmoil would moderate President Obama's policy ambitions discovered the opposite last night. Far from suggesting limits on Congress or federal spending, the new President made clear in his first State of the Union address that he believes in government power as the answer to our current difficulties, and he intends to use it.

'Wrong Way' Obama. Last night, with his faux State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama lifted off on a flight of dramatic rhetoric that will attempt to take America in exactly the wrong direction.

Where's the Beef?. The swooning media were enraptured by President Obama's soaring rhetoric in last night's address to Congress despite the speech's total lack of substance. They never bothered to ask "Where's the beef?" in all those oratorical flourishes.

Obama Shoots for Mars. [Scroll down] When the applause died down, the President took out a scattergun and attempted to hit everything in sight. He confidently asserted his and our intention to overcome the current economic downturn and march toward an even brighter future. How? Government/taxpayers will spend our way to the summit. He/Congress/we will "invest" in health care and education; "save or create" 3.5 million jobs; "cure cancer within our lifetime"; provide assistance to the states; "save our planet from the ravages of climate change"; save banks and other financial institutions while holding "accountable those responsible" for their problems; increase the size of the military; end torture (presumably he meant of our enemies); and cut the size of the deficit.

The Two Faces of Barack Obama: Obama aims to be the president of all Americans, a position that appears to be sincere. But I wonder whether in the process he might also want to consider appointing himself chief executive of his own head. All night long, with equally sonorous vigor, he served up confident assertions, only to state moments later, with equal conviction, their near opposite.

Is Obamamania Fading Amongst the Media? The day following President Obama's State of the Union speech I opened my daily newspaper to read the headline "What the president said and what the facts say." It was an Associated Press story and it drove a tank through the President's various promises and assertions. The AP reporters weren't the only people who had some doubts.

Obama Removes the Mask. President Obama's speech Tuesday night should put to rest the argument as to who he really is. He revealed plans so sweeping and so expensive that, if they came to pass, we would permanently refashion the role of the federal government in the lives of every American. ... Obama is an unalloyed and extreme liberal. He does not intend merely to slay the recession. He intends to remake the country's education, health care, and energy policies, with a hugely expanded and enormously powerful federal government directing vast swatches of American life and industry.

Dead End. Immediately after the election, Obama chose a number of centrist advisers and even kept Robert Gates at the Pentagon. Some of us wondered whether he was really planning to govern from the center. Left-wing bloggers began to shift uneasily in their chairs. But they can relax now. With his "stimulus" package and his quasi-State of the Union address this week, President Obama has made it abundantly clear that he intends to hustle this country into European nanny state socialism if he can (and just as fast as he can).

Truth Be Told. [Scroll down slowly] Perhaps 27-year-old Jon Favreau, [Obama's] eloquent speechwriter, just doesn't know the facts or recognize "where have I heard those words before?" Here are a few examples of when Obama's words this week just didn't match what's right: ... "So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary." Those unfamiliar with history may not recall that this was exactly what Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler asked their legislatures to do in creating National Socialism.

Obama Gives Failing Schools a Pass. In the course of a generally frank and direct speech, one might expect the president to explain honestly why American education is lagging. It doesn't need "more investments," it needs more efficiency and greater productivity — like our health-care system. It's no accident that our schools aren't producing enough well-educated graduates; that's because the system has been designed to place the needs of adults over the needs of kids. But saying any of that would put him at odds with the education establishment, which he doesn't appear to want to cross.

Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More. Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama's State of the Union speech and his budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy's long-run potential to grow. Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama's left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements.

President finds the third rail — earmarks. The joke was over when Obama followed with, "Now, I'm proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities." There was consensus, the consensus of no applause. At Obama's utterance of "earmarks," grumbles and grunts of dissent wafted through the television as if this was the British Parliament. It was the only such moment of the speech. With one word, Obama found the third rail that could electrocute his lofty plans to trim wasteful spending and fund his promised programs.

Obama lied; the economy died. George W. Bush didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was merely mistaken. Whereas President Obama told a whopper last week when he claimed he was not for bigger government. As he said Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government — I don't." This he asserted though the budget he proposed the next day asks for federal spending as 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), higher by at least 6 percent than any time since World War II.

The Six-Trillion-Dollar Man. [Scroll down] Bailoutman started out as a huge staggering behemoth and has inflated from there. Once upon a time he was as a meek, mild-mannered trillionaire, but a mere five months later he was a meek, mild-mannered multi-trillionaire. If you find it hard to keep track of these all these evolutions, the President in his address to Congress finally spilled the beans and unveiled our new hero in his final form: the Incredible Bulk, Statezilla, Governmentuan, a colossus bestriding the land like a, er, colossus. What superpowers does he have? All of them!

Let's Get Real About Renewable Energy. [Scroll down] Solar and wind sources are providing the equivalent of 76,000 barrels of oil per day. ... It's approximately equal to the raw energy output of one average-sized coal mine. During his address to Congress, Mr. Obama did not mention coal — the fuel that provides nearly a quarter of total primary energy and about half of America's electricity — except to say that the U.S. should develop "clean coal."

Obama is in trouble. Again, the speech to Congress was the pivot point. Before the speech, Obama was protected by a kind of political equivalent of the Star Trek Shield. ... But the magnetism of his historic moment began fading once the economic stimulus, the omnibus and the budget were on the table.

Cap and Trade: Wall Street's Latest Scheme. One sector is immune from the economic downturn: global warming lobbyists. ... It can be assumed that this lobbying bonanza will only increase in scope since President Obama, in his February 24 speech to Congress, asked for "...legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."

Obama, the Mortal. [Scroll down slowly] Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field. In a center-right country, that was problem enough.

Reaction to Obama's speech in Cairo, June 4, 2009.

Obama's speech to the Muslim world. President Obama promised that he wanted his Cairo speech to be the start of an "honest" dialogue with the Muslim world. When it comes to how he handled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he fell short.

Obama Butters Them Up In Cairo. At one point, Obama fretted over the rise of new power that, to the horror of civilized people, exudes an obsessed and twisted view of "sexuality" and "mindless violence." Islamo-fascism? No, the Internet. The guy is confronting one of the most evil and relentless mindsets in the history of man and he finds room in his big address to whine about the Internet — by far a greater tool for freedom than anything else.

The president's Cairo speech: worse than feared. The president said: "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire." The same principle? Shouldn't an American president feel an attachment to his own country above all? Shouldn't misrepresentations aimed against that country energize him more? And yet the tone of this speech suggested that if anything, such misrepresentations energize him rather less.

Sorry Barack, but there were no Muslims on the Mayflower. Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama said that Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions Muslims have made to the history and development of the United States. "I know that Islam has always been a part of America's story," Mr. Obama told the throng of unenlightened Muslims.

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.

The Naiveté of Barack Hussein Obama. [Scroll down] It wasn't just the applause that was significant -- but the deadly silence at other statements that the president made. Obama was cheered loudly when he said, "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It's time for these settlements to stop." But the silence was deafening when the president called on the Palestinians to renounce violence. The references to rockets being fired into Israel and old women being blown up on buses was met with absolutely no reaction from the audience.

Total Tolerance. There is nothing new in a president calling for "a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons," as Obama did in Cairo. Ronald Reagan expressed such hopes. But isn't contending that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons" the opposite of zero nuclear tolerance? How is it a step toward a nuclear-free world when we announce that the West should stop practicing what might be called "nuclear discrimination?" Tehran will interpret Obama's words as carte blanche to pursue its goal of building a nuclear weapons arsenal.

What Obama Taught Me. Salaam aleikum, dudes! I thought I knew a little bit about the Middle East. Boy, was I wrong. Last week, President Obama set me straight. Here's what our president taught me during his Middle-Eastern pilgrimage: There is no more terrorism. Wow, cool! No more security checks at airports, right? It's unclear which side won, but it's all over. Obama didn't mention terrorism a single time in his star-turn speech in Cairo.

Obama blew speech. The content was generally fair, rational, evenhanded and fitting for a moderator, arbitrator or neutral adjudicator. But that's not what Obama is. He is, or should be, the embodiment of his country and its interests. When he appoints himself the go-between who sees all sides and takes no sides -- who chastises all conflicting parties equally and impartially -- he does a disservice to himself, his country and to truth. His speech has generally been applauded. Superficially, at least. But on reflection it was arrogant, condescending. A "father knows best" speech of moral and practical equivalency.

The Not So Golden Mean. The best way to view President Obama's speech in Cairo is to understand the way Obama views himself and the rhetorical devices he employs. In this case, the key to unlocking Obama's speech may be Aristotle's golden mean, the search for a mid-point between extremes. Obama's rhetorical template is an increasingly familiar one: he gives voice to one side of a dispute and then the other.

Barack Obama extends his hand to Islam's despots. What do you do when you have no policy, but want to appear as if you do? In the case of Barack Obama, the answer is simple: you go around the world making speeches about your "personal journey".

Awful. What an awful speech. Among the problems, one was the president's claim that there are "nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today." The true number is probably less than half that ... During the campaign I had actually defended Obama against those who felt he would be a disaster for Israel. This speech makes me think that may have been a mistake. The only chance now is that this speech will be mere rhetoric, like so much in the Middle East, intended only for public consumption. But if Obama really means it, it is bad news for the Jews in Israel and America, not to mention for American national security.

The Speech. What struck me most about Barack Obama's speech today [6/4/2009] in Cairo is what was missing: Iraq. He didn't skip Iraq entirely, but his discussion of it was perfunctory and incomplete. ... Iraq today is a model for many of those things Obama says he hopes to see in the region — women right's, religious freedom, the defeat of "violent extremism," economic development and opportunity, and, yes, democracy. ... In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive. In Iran, they're stoned on suspicion of adultery. In Pakistan, politicians publicly defend "honor killings" of young girls who have the audacity to choose their own husbands. Those women are struggling for equality.

Let Women Wear the Hijab: The Emptiness of Obama's Cairo Speech. With women being stoned, raped, abused, battered, mutilated, and slaughtered on a daily basis across the globe, violence that is so often perpetrated in the name of religion, the most our president can speak about is protecting their right to wear the hijab?

'Inner Muslim' at work in Cairo. Now it's on to Normandy, to apologize to the Germans. It's the least an American president can do after the way the Allied armies left so much of Europe in rubble. There's a lot of groveling to do for what America accomplished in the Pacific, too. This prospect should appeal to Barack Obama, who relishes the role of Apologizer-in-Chief.

Barack Obama's 10 mistakes in Cairo. [#1] "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail." With this phrase, Obama dismissed the notion of American exceptionalism, the belief that the United States occupies a special place among nations. Obama clearly doesn't see the United States as a "Shining City upon a Hill" or its history, constitution or way of life giving it special qualities or responsibilities in the world.

Obama's Age of Moral Equivalence. Though he made a number of important points about fighting terror, religious tolerance and women's rights and democracy, the speech was constructed and delivered as a series of moral equivalencies that undermine both the search for peace as well as the equally necessary drive to reform the Islamic world. As a statement of philosophy as well as a proclamation of American values it was as morally unserious a speech as an American president has ever made.

Obama Renews Openness About His Muslim Roots Ahead of Egypt Speech. President Obama has spoken proudly of American Muslims, even referencing his heritage as the son of a Muslim man, ahead of his highly anticipated speech Thursday [6/4/2009] in Cairo aimed at shoring up relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

Obama's Cairo speech signals end of the 9/11 era. If Barack Obama fulfills even some of the promises he made during his important address in Cairo Thursday, June 4, 2009 will be remembered in world history as the last day of the 9/11 era. ... Obama gave Israel the following choices Thursday: Either the conservative Israeli government will adjust itself to the American people's choice in electing a liberal president, or the speech will be the lightning that precedes the thunder.

The End of America's Strategic Alliance with Israel? From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama's speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama's speech was a renunciation of America's strategic alliance with Israel.

15 Hard Questions about the Cairo Speech. [#9] The speech called Iraq's war one of choice but stated that Iraqis are better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Doesn't this statement need more explanation? Is the conclusion that it is better to leave people under tyrannies even if they are subjected to mass killing? As for Afghanistan, the President didn't mention the Taliban once. Who are NATO, the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan facing off with?

Obama quotes verse 5:32, omits 5:33. The supposedly noble sentiments of the first verse, taken from a Jewish source, are entirely undercut by the second verse, which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews. (And as an aside the Muslim sources estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns against them). Far from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Muslim prophet will be killed, or crucified, mutilated, and banished.

President Obama's Cairo speech proves he's experiencing a moral muddle. The outlines of an Obama Doctrine are taking shape. Our President's world view can be summarized as "Everybody is a little bit guilty, especially Israel." His demand in Cairo that Israel make major concessions before Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist was a pander of the rankest sort. What a difference a year and the audience make. Exactly a year before his Cairo speech, on June 4, 2008, candidate Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee he would "never force Israel to the negotiating table" or to make "concessions."

The Grand Apology Tour. As the Grand Apology Tour swept into Saudi Arabia, the al Qaeda terror chieftain [Osama bin Laden] released yet another audiotaped diatribe, condemning "U.S. aggression" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though Mr. Obama's carefully scripted "grand gesture" before a thoroughly screened audience in Cairo was simultaneously translated into a half-dozen tongues and broadcast around the world, it wasn't enough to push the bin Laden commentary off Islamic Web sites. That's because bin Laden "gets it" and Mr. Obama doesn't.

American Legion Critical of Obama for Apologizing to Muslim World. The nation's largest veterans' organization, the American Legion, criticized President Obama for apologizing for to the Muslim world for U.S. behavior in the in aftermath of the 9/11 attacks during his address from Cairo last week. "When the president pronounces, as he did in his conciliatory address in Egypt, that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in his words, 'led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals', he must, in our opinion, demand equally public admission from the Muslim world," David K. Rehbein, national commander of the American Legion said in a news release.

When the Extreme Becomes the Norm. But to the women who are compelled to dress according to the requirements of others, Obama had nothing to say at all, as if the only "right" at stake were the right to obey an instruction that is, in fact — if it matters — not found in the Quran. In Turkey, too, head scarves for women are outlawed in some contexts. Is this, too, Islamophobia? Does the president think that the veil and the burqa are also freely chosen fashion statements?

Presidential Historical Revisionism. Obama's much anticipated speech to the Islamic world is being widely hailed as a major breakthrough in U.S. relations with the Islamic world. Whether it is a breakthrough or not, one thing is clear: the speech was filled with historical revisionism. Let's examine the historical inaccuracies, ommisions and biases of the speech.

America's first Muslim president?. With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday [6/4/2009] to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators: Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims — even pandering ones — generally don't use that Islamic formulation.

Obama Needs to Brush up on Middle East History. For a man of his impressive educational credentials, Barack Obama has sometimes shown a surprising ignorance of history. ... "No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." But that's what the United States did in Germany and Japan, and in Iraq, as well. As one of the Democratic senators who insisted that the Iraqis meet benchmarks, Obama was a micromanager in that process himself. "We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity" into Afghanistan. No, it was by choice; we could have stayed out and depended, as we did after the attacks of the 1990s, on homeland defenses. And as for his claim that "Islam has always been a part of America's story," that's a stretch, and one that requires airbrushing out the war against the Barbary pirates.

The Anti-Reagan. [Scroll down] As for Barack, he behaves on the world stage like some Ivy League kid ashamed of the people he came from, letting one and all on campus know that he is nothing like his benighted family with its sordid history. In Cairo, he confessed that America had a hand in dumping over the regime in Iran in 1953. He did not mention that the United States forced the retreat of Joseph Stalin's army from Iran in 1946.

Atheists keep faith with Barack Obama. Obama has repeatedly invoked religion in his speeches. The latest dose came Thursday in Cairo, in his speech to the Muslim world, during which Obama talked of the "Holy Quran" and invoked this Quranic supplication: "Be conscious of God, and speak always the truth." But while atheist advocates railed against Bush, they seem willing to give Obama a pass on his God talk — at least for now.

Our Historically Challenged President. In the recent Cairo speech, Obama's historical allusions were even more suspect. Almost every one of his references was either misleading or incomplete. ... In reference to Iraq, President Obama promised that "no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." Is he unaware that the United States imposed democracies after World War II? After the defeat of German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism, Americans — by force — insisted that these nations adopt democratic governments, for both their own sakes and the world's. Indeed, it is hard to think of too many democratic governments that did not emerge from violence — including our own.

Egypt's Mubarak says Obama has new approach to Islam. Barack Obama has presented a fresh understanding of Islam not shown by predecessors, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in his first interview since the U.S. president addressed the Muslim world from Cairo. Obama called for a "new beginning" in ties between the United States and Muslims, many of whom felt targeted by the "war against terror" launched by former President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama's Cairo Speech Will Cost Lives. President Obama, in his long-promised address to the Muslims given Thursday in Egypt, embraced Islam, gave a green light to Iran's nuclear program, and said that the "trauma" of 9-11 led America to act contrary to its ideals. In 6000 words, the president managed to prove that everything conservatives worried about — his naivete, lack of expertise and belief in moral equivalency — was correct and even understated.

Time To Use the 'T Word'. President Obama's June 4th speech in Cairo will go down in history as a courageous and sincere effort to repair the damaged relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. However, when addressing the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, President Obama failed to mention a key word that could have made this historic speech a truly transformative speech. That word is the "T" word that the Obama administration simply refuses to acknowledge: Terrorism.

Why Has Obama Got It In for Muslim Women? Obama would protest, of course, that he does not condone forced marriages or honor killings; indeed he says, in his Cairo speech, that women should be free to choose "traditional roles." But how free is that choice, in a family where Islam can be exercised "unimpeded"?

Obama Throws Muslim Women Under the Bus. It is a Catholic woman's right to become a nun and shave or cover her hair; it is an Orthodox or Hasidic Jewish woman's right to shave or cover her hair; and it is a Muslim woman's right to cover her hair and her face — as long as those women who refuse to do so are not browbeaten, beaten, ostracized, stalked, stoned to death or honor-murdered. I have written about just such cases in the West ... cases in which young American- and Canadian-Muslim girls were tormented, then killed because they refused to wear hijab. In Europe, where there are many more Muslims, there is a veritable epidemic of such exceedingly dishonorable and incredibly gruesome "honor" murders.

Prominent Rabbi Blasts Obama. Claiming that "some Jews may be naïve, but we are not stupid" former Navy and Marine Corps officer and Chaplain Rabbi Dr. Morton Pomerantz has blasted Barack Obama for "creating a climate of hate" against Jews. In a breaking Newsmax.com story, Pomerantz delivers a blistering assault on president Obama's troubling and dangerous game of moral equivalency ... Pomerantz goes on to level a series of jaw dropping charges against Barack Obama's understanding of Middle East history, Islam, foreign policy, and most importantly, truth.

Obama's Cairo Speech Through the Lens of Islamists. Only after the despotic governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who are blind and intransigent to political and religious reform, expressed pleasure and approval of our president have our local domestic Islamist groups become jubilant. Are the reformers in Egypt or the oppressed minorities of the "Muslim world" jubilant? No one knows because their voices cannot be heard.

Obama Bows and Sells Out to Saudi Royals. [Obama's] speech in Cairo was like a coming out announcement by a Muslim debutante. He said about himself all the things no one else was allowed to say about him before the election when some Americans may have had reservations about a president so steeped in Islamic culture. Some have said that this was Obama relating to the peoples of the world so he can bring them together and declare an end to all wars. The terrorists who bombed a hotel in Pakistan less than a week following his speech didn't get Obama's memo that they are members of a peaceful religion.

Welcome Back, Carter. Now that our silver-tongued president has gone to Cairo to soothe Muslims' hurt feelings, they love us again! Muslims in Pakistan expressed their appreciation for President Barack Obama's speech by bombing a fancy hotel in Peshawar this week. Operating on the liberal premise that what Arabs really respect is weakness, Obama listed, incorrectly, Muslims' historical contributions to mankind, such as algebra (actually that was the ancient Babylonians), the compass (that was the Chinese), pens (the Chinese again) and medical discoveries (huh?).

Assessing Obama's Cairo Speech. Barack Obama's mention of "seven million American Muslims" in the course of his rambling and complex six-thousand-word address to the Muslim world from Cairo symbolizes the whole message. Study after study has found that demographic figure about three times too high. But Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims.

Capitulation in Cairo? The real meaning of President Obama's recent address to the Muslim world in Cairo is that he is turning his back on the Jews at a time when they face another possible Holocaust. Mr. Obama called for a "new beginning" in relations between the United States and Islamic civilization. He praised Islam's commitment to "peace," "justice" and "religious tolerance." He listed the Muslim world's supposed contributions to history — algebra, the compass and the printing press, among others. There is only one problem: It is all false. ... What's next: Islam invented the Internet?

The United States Of America And Islam Have Nothing Fundamental In Common. There are few greater scams or sins ever committed by an American president than the one committed by President Barack Obama today. The United States of America is at war. At war, not just on the battlefield, but in the realm of ideas. We are in the ongoing war between reason and faith. An American president has just yielded to the enemy.

Obama's biggest character flaw: They've got his number, all the political con artists around the world. For a little balloon-pumping flattery Obama will sell out American national security interests — not to mention those of our allies. Obama's "historic" Epistle to the Muslims, delivered last month at Cairo's Al Azhar University (an international center for Islamist propaganda) was not really intended to make a billion Muslims fall down at his feet. No, the main goal of all those grand gestures is to make Obama feel better about himself. That's the key to his character.

Hey media, Obama isn't 'God'. So, as it turns out, U.S. President Barack Obama is not "God" when it comes to dealing with the Islamic world, after all. This, contrary to that gushingly inane description of him by Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, following Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo, seeking reconciliation with Muslims.

Obama's Demagoguery. [Obama's] celebrated address to the Moslem world (which was so much advertised in advance and so deeply infused with America's desperate desire to get into good graces of Moslems that it may well have given the ayatollahs an idea that there was nothing to fear from America no matter what) was itself a grand piece of demagoguery, with all its hallmarks in place: inconvenient facts omitted, supporting facts blown out of proportion, friends disparaged, adversaries patted on the back, and the whole package couched in smoothly flowing words delivered in a steady, powerful, confident voice.

New Survey on Islam Calls Into Question Population Figure Used by Obama. A comprehensive new survey of the world's Muslim population finds that nearly one in four people on the planet is an adherent of Islam, but the number of Muslims it gives for the United States is significantly smaller than those routinely cited by Islamic organizations — and used by President Obama in his Cairo speech last June.

Reaction to Obama's socialized medicine speech ("news conference"), July 22, 2009.

Trying to Talk Around the Facts. Rhetoric: Obama said last night [7/22/2009] his plan "will keep government out of health-care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it." Reality: The Lewin Group, a respected economics-consulting firm, estimates in a new study for The Heritage Foundation that more than 80 million people would lose the coverage they have today if the Obama plan is implemented.

Obama health-care claims disputed. Even as President Obama delivered a prime-time sales pitch for his embattled health care reform plan Wednesday, basic facts about coverage, cost and who foots the bills remain in dispute and many of the president's favorite talking points are challenged not only by Republicans but also by independent fact-checkers. For example, Mr. Obama promises that people who are happy with their current health insurance can keep it. That's a claim contradicted by Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Obama Attacks Docs and Cops. The juvenile happy talk reached its peak with this presidential statement: "If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" Now, there's good idea. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that? For this reform, we need to spend $1 trillion?

Warning: May cause drowsiness. While Obama had a chance to turn the entire conversation around Wednesday, he may have missed it. Despite the primetime exposure, he didn't bring much in the way of new rhetoric ... Unable, or unwilling, to get out ahead of negotiations in Congress, Obama stuck to the same broad statements of principle that he's been making for months.

At big moment, President Obama goes small. The president's remarks on his chosen subject, health care, were cautious and choreographed, hemmed in on one side by the calculations of his professional wordsmiths, on the other by the delicacy of negotiations with two houses of Congress. He never detailed his own plan, or named a single victim of America's broken system, and he spoke largely in the abstractions of blue pills, red pills, and legislative processes.

Specifics, Please. From the president we now know that cops are stupid, doctors are greedy, Republicans don't play nice, people are dying and we're all going broke if we don't embrace socialized medicine in a week or so. Everything, in other words, but what Wednesday's press conference was supposed to be about: the health care reforms the president and his party want voted on by the time Congress breaks for another vacation.

Do We Want Obama to Be Our Doctor-In-Chief? I listened to President Obama last night, hoping that he would answer some hard questions during his press conference about his universal health care plan. He did not. The mainstream liberal press gave him a free pass. Bill O'Reilly summed up his own reaction on his show that immediately followed the press conference, when he said that he was more confused than ever about Obamacare.

Obama's Ethics: There was an overwhelmingly fictional quality to President Obama's press conference last night from his opening remarks on. Promoting his notional health care reform plan, whatever it is, he endlessly asserts a set of talking points that would be demonstrably false if we had the text of a plan to check it against, such as the House's thousand-page monstrosity. When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a tell-tale sign. He prefaces it with "let me be clear" or "understand this." Last night he achieved such "clarity" twice in his opening remarks.

What Obama forgot to talk about last night: Obama presented a false choice last night, either the status quo or Obamacare. But what about empowering consumers and letting markets work?

Dr. Obama's Tonsillectomy. Those greedy doctors. "You come in and you've got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats," President Obama explained at Wednesday's press conference. "The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out.'" If that's what he really thinks is wrong with U.S. health care — and with the medical profession — then ObamaCare is going to be even worse than we thought.

Self-Immolation Week at the White House. The president blamed America's health care cost problems on doctors who remove kids' tonsils out of greed. The press conference, which addressed none of the troubling aspects of health care reform, went so poorly that Senate Democrats opted immediately afterward not to vote on a health measure until after the August recess.

President Obama's $6,000 Lie. During last week's prime time press conference, President Obama incorrectly said the United States spends $6,000 more per person than any other country in the world. Perhaps his defenders would chalk it up to an honest mistake he made during a long press conference. But the problem is, he not only repeated, but elaborated on the error this time, making additional factual errors.

Obama's address to Congress, September 9, 2009.

Anticipation:

President Obama to Address Congress. President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress on health care reform in prime time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, a senior official tells POLITICO. ... The last time a president addressed a joint session of Congress that wasn't a State of the Union, or the traditional first address by a new president, was Sept. 20, 2001, when President George W. Bush spoke on the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks.

Myth, Fact & ObamaCare: [Scroll down] The president will give a speech to a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, in an effort to "re-launch" ObamaCare. ... The underlying assumption is the public just hasn't heard enough from Barack Obama on health care. If Obama really believes this is the reason his health-care effort is in critical condition, then he has lost touch with reality. Obama's health-care ambitions are being shattered because what he wants to do would make things worse rather than better, and costlier rather than cheaper.

Obama must face reality. [Barack Obama's] health reform plans are sinking, and so Wednesday evening he will try to rescue them with a big speech, a televised address to a joint session of Congress.

Pledging allegiance to our beloved Obama. Obama's given 111 speeches, interviews and press conferences in which he's talked about health care, and the more he opens his mouth the more the American people recoil from his "reforms." Now he's giving a 112th — to a joint session of Congress — and this one, we're assured, will finally do the trick.

Another Speech. [Scroll down] The Senate can't decide whether to include the public option. The liberals are threatening not to vote for a bill without the public option, but no one believes them. And the solution to this is another prime-time address by Obama? Hmm. I suppose it beats the alternative, which for Obama is to finally govern...

Obama prepares to try to reclaim lost ground in health debate — again. When President Barack Obama tries to salvage his healthcare agenda on Wednesday, it won't be the first time. Obama's heavily anticipated address to a joint session of Congress comes just six weeks after the White House tried to reclaim the healthcare debate in a nationally televised primetime press conference.

Obama's moment of truth. On Wednesday, President Obama will make the most important speech of his presidency. We hear this phrase so much that it has become a cliché. But, in this case, the cliché is accurate.

Obama to Endorse Public Plan in Speech. President Barack Obama, in a high-stakes speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation, will press for a government-run insurance option in a proposed overhaul of the U.S. health-care system that has divided lawmakers and voters for months.

Many of Obama's Claims about Health-Care Reform Have Been Debunked. While President Obama will likely make news tonight by telling a joint session of Congress what he wants and is willing to accept from a health care reform proposal, he may also repeat some points he has made over the past few months that have been refuted by non-partisan sources.

Reaction:

Shut Up, He Explained. It's a sign of how badly things are going for Barack Obama on the make-or-break issue of his tenure that the president delivered yesterday's prime time health care address in a forum traditionally reserved for national crises. But with public disapproval of the president's handling of health care rising to an all-time high of 52 percent, and with even Democrats fleeing from the government insurance "public option" that had been a centerpiece of the president's health care vision, Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress was crisis management in all but name.

The Experts on Obama's Health Care Speech. The President's speech reaffirmed his goal of achieving universal coverage by expanding the role of government in our health care system. It will be expensive, a global budget will have to be set, demand for care will not be met, and in the end, we will all be covered under the public option. The late Senator Ted Kennedy who the President quoted in the end of the speech will have his wish. We will all be covered under "Medicare for All." We will suffer long waiting lists, rationed care, and lack of access to the latest diagnostics and treatments.

Pulling the Trigger? The president's health care speech last night [9/9/2009] consisted of discredited canards bookended by emotional manipulation. Between his distortions, token gestures for opponents, and lengthy bouts of tongue-lashing, Barack Obama signaled he will continue pushing forward toward socialized medicine. However, it seems likely he will move incrementally through a final bill that will nationalize health care a year after the next presidential election.

Obama's Speech: Did It Help Him? One striking aspect of the speech was that Obama kept talking about the "plan" that he "announced" tonight — but there is no plan; not in writing, anyway. Not unless Obama meant Nancy Pelosi's House bill, but he didn't seem to, since he made a point of saying that details remain to be filled in, referred to work still going on in committee, and said that "his plan" is open to alternatives to the public option. This vagueness gives him a sort of deniability: what he was describing was more his concept of the qualities health care legislation should have, rather than a specific bill. ... This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people.

A dandy speech — if truth doesn't matter. "Now is the season for action," Obama intoned. In other words, please don't bother me with your inconvenient Congressional Budget Office reports, with your tiresome concerns about ballooning government in an era of exploding debt, with your facts — yes, the House bill would end up covering abortion — that I prefer to deny. Now is the time for all good men to vote with me or get out of the way.

Obama's Health Care Pitch: Now with more Ted Kennedy. President Obama's speech to Congress last night can be summed up rather easily. It was 40 minutes of boilerplate followed by a socko, emotional finish exploiting the death of Senator Teddy Kennedy. ... Did he repeat the false claims he's made repeatedly in earlier speeches? Yes indeed. He brought up nearly all of them, including the ones on no abortion coverage, no loss of one's current health insurance, and the "savings" that would come from more preventive care.

All sizzle, no substance. In President Obama's first national address on health care in, oh, 49 days, he gave us lots of showmanship. The rhetoric was as usual carefully crafted and persuasive. He threw a couple of bones to Republicans, such as demonstration projects for tort reform, and mollified liberals by defending the public option. He effectively countered some of the more hyperbolic opposition claims about things like "death panels." He even played the Ted Kennedy card. The speech was interrupted dozens and dozens of times by applause. But, beneath all the sizzle, there remains the same bad bill.

Everyone Gets Insurance... Or Else. President Obama managed to create a new center of gravity among Democrats on health care in his speech to Congress, but he also raised more questions than he answered.

Does Obama think Americans are so gullible? President Obama's address to Congress and the nation Wednesday evening was yet another illustration of his seemingly endless ability to soar to genuinely impressive rhetorical heights without ever landing back on truthful ground. Nothing better illustrates this than Obama's medical malpractice "demonstration project" gambit. Here's the essential fact about federal demonstration projects — they are nothing more than a dodge, a deceitful way for Washington politicians to appear as if they are doing something concrete when in reality they're tucking the idea at hand safely out of sight over in a corner.

The Real Public Option: Start Over. [Scroll down slowly] He said, "I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." This suggests how grandiloquent his self-understanding is. After all, even if he were to prevail with some form of his legislation, others would come along with further and other reforms. Obama really isn't our last, best hope for public policy changes in this area — or in any other. And the American public isn't buying it. ... There is no health care crisis, and doing no harm is far preferable to doing real damage to a good health care system.

Obama's Big Political Gamble. Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

Time to Get Out the Iron. In a much-hyped speech aimed at rejuvenating his health care push, Obama delivered a message that was strikingly similar to the one that has failed to resonate with the American people thus far. ... As he has done before, Obama pledged to veto any bill that added to the deficit. But despite that commitment, the Congressional Budget Office has ruled that the House Democrats' health care legislation would create $230 billion in deficits over ten years.

President Changes Number from 46-47 Million to 'Over 30 Million'. "Up until tonight, it was always 47 million," [Fox News commentator Frank] Luntz said. "But what they realized was that they were defending health care coverage — government money, your taxpayer dollars — going to illegal immigrants that they realized they had to take them out of the pool." The total number of uninsured, 45.7 million according to the U.S. Census, also includes roughly 10 million people who are not citizens. The Census Bureau is scheduled to update that number this month.

Obama's 'Gift' Has Stopped Giving. In last night's speech before a joint session of Congress, the President pulled all the stops on his vocal organ, played his strong suit, and deployed the "gift." But the gift has stopped giving, because people have started listening. ... He accused opponents of using "scare tactics." This came after he'd piled scare tactic upon scare tactic himself to illustrate the problem. The healthcare system is "at the breaking point." It offers "insecurity today." People are dying! Thirty million can't get coverage, he said. Wait, we been told for years that it's 47 million. What happened to the other seventeen?

Obama's missing millions. Only last month In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama declared: "I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage." Tonight Obama declared that "[t]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. The number of our fellow citizens who have no coverage is 30 million."

LIES. [President Obama] says that if we don't act now, the country will fall apart. LIE.
He says that quality of health care won't suffer. LIE.
He says that there won't be rationing and those that say there will be are liars. LIE.
He says that the Republicans have no solutions to offer up. LIE.
He says that this is not socialism. LIE.
... And then ... Like a voice from above, I think I just heard someone shout out, just what I was thinking, "LIE."

Obama Bill For Illegals Healthcare. You would never know if from the protestations in his speech last night and in other venues, but way back in May of 2006 US Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored a bill to federally fund healthcare for illegal aliens.

At the top of the televangelist's game. The faux humility — the appeal to his Republican "friends" — was intended to seduce the independents who have been deserting his game for weeks. The Republicans contributed to the emotionalism of the evening with an outburst of frustration and bad manners — "You lie!" — that was unexpected manna from Democratic heaven. The ferocity of the media exploitation of the incident reveals the desperation of the Democrats to find something, anything, to stop the bleeding.

Medicare for Dummies. The thing about the bully pulpit is that Presidents can make the most fantastic claims and it takes days to sort the reality from the myths. So as a public service, let's try to navigate the, er, remarkable Medicare discussion that President Obama delivered on Wednesday. It isn't easy.

Last Night Didn't Quite Do It. The President really has to watch this constant return to these soaring cadences that deliver banalities. One cannot sound like Lincoln if there really is no message. It is time to move on, ignore criticism, and offer something that most can work with; instead, after 9 months we are getting a 'they are mean to me' whine at about every speech and photo-op, in the manner of biblical prophets who lash out at doubters.

Obama's Speech Prompts Ten Questions from Republicans. President Barack Obama: "We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it." Common Sense Question: Then why do people travel from around the world to receive health care in the United States?

Character and Care. Toward the end of his speech on health care Wednesday night, President Obama said that he had been thinking a lot about the phrase "the character of our country." Too bad the president's speech had all the character of a free lunch. Obama argued for the moral imperative of providing quality health care for all Americans — but it's not such a moral imperative that most people should have to pay for it.

A Masterpiece Of Charlatanry For The Naive. "Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the charlatan-in-chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud. To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world-class chutzpah and an insult to anyone's intelligence.

We Will Call You Out! President Obama's very big, incredibly important, game changing speech-to-end-all-speeches on health care cam across as panicky, too high pitched, and schoolyard bullyish. The president's theme was obvious early on: Nothing that was said against his plan in August had merit and certainly nothing that came up at the townhalls was legitimate. "Misinformation," "bogus claims," "scare tactics," "such a charge would be laughable,' "it is a lie plain and simple" — welcome to the civil discourse of the hope and change era.

Obama Misrepresents Insurance Case. Despite Mr. Obama's claims, Mr. Raddatz's treatment was never delayed. And he did not die because of it. Meanwhile, in this very same speech Mr. Obama accused others of misrepresenting the facts.

Obama Perpetuates Abortion Funding Myth In Joint Session Address. In his address to a joint session of Congress tonight, President Obama said, "One more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions." Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, commented: "Barack Obama needs to learn that the mere repetition of a verbal formula does not change reality."

Obama's Dissolving Credibility. This is what Obama's supposed gift for rhetoric amounts to: the ability to tell a smoothly polished bald-faced lie. And that was the whole essence of Obama's big health-care speech. It was a pack of lies from beginning to end, and if we're going to finally see through this flim-flam artist once and for all — as more and more people are beginning to do — then we had better identify them one at a time.

Tall tales from a president's speech. You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He ... well, you judge. Herewith three examples within a single speech — the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care — of Obama's relationship with truth.

Obama Used Faulty Anecdote in Speech to Congress. President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn't known about. "They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it," the president said in the nationally televised address. In fact, the man, Otto S. Raddatz, didn't die because the insurance company rescinded his coverage once he became ill, an act known as recission.

Obama Claims 30 Million 'Cannot' Get Health Insurance. In his Sept. 9 speech to Congress, President Barack Obama unveiled a new claim that 30 million Americans "cannot" get health insurance, but this statistic is not supported by the government's latest definitive data produced by the Census Bureau on Americans lacking health insurance.

Congressman Joe Wilson's reaction

In the opinion of The Editor, Congressman Wilson should have muttered under his breath to the friendly men on either side. Hollering at the speaker is an affront to decorum and has the potential to turn a joint session of Congress into a shouting match. If that happens, there is no discernable difference between the two parties. Pretty soon they would all be hurling rotten tomatoes at each other. On the other hand, there are evidently many people around the country who are very proud of Congressman Wilson for voicing their sentiments. President Obama won't listen to me, but he sure got an earful of Joe Wilson.

In Praise of Joe Wilson. Wilson has taken much criticism, much of it from his own Republican Party, especially from the prissy, supercilious John McCain. The only thing I criticize Wilson for is the apology that he made to Obama. That was a mistake. He should have stood firm.

Obama accepts Joe Wilson's apology for 'You lie' outburst. President Barack Obama on Thursday [9/10/2009] accepted Rep. Joe Wilson's apology for his outburst during Obama's speech to Congress on health care, sayting "we all make mistakes." "He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I appreciate that," Obama said. "I do think that we have to get to the point that we have a conversation without... assuming the worst in people."

Joe Wilson says outburst to Obama speech 'spontaneous'. The GOP congressman from South Carolina who shouted out during President Obama's health care address to Congress insisted Thursday that his outburst was "spontaneous."

Joe Wilson Becomes the Latest Online Craze. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has sent the Internet into a tizzy since interrupting President Obama's Wednesday night address to Congress, accusing the president of lying. The congressman's Web site crashed due to exceptionally high traffic and asked visitors to "Please come back shortly."

The Editor says...
Perhaps his web site crashed due to his sudden popularity, or or perhaps it is the result of a "denial of service attack."
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Joe Wilson is Rude But Right. Set aside Joe Wilson's bad manners — what about the substance of his accusation? Mr. Wilson claims that various Democratic proposals wending their way through Congress will use U.S. taxpayer dollars to further subsidize health care for illegal immigrants. Democrats say this is not true, and the back-and-forth continues like this...

Wilson Defends Outburst, Says He Will Not Apologize on House Floor. Rep. Joe Wilson said Sunday [9/13/2009] that he will not apologize on the House floor for his outburst during President Obama's health care address, even though Democratic leaders have threatened to formally discipline him if he does not.

Speaking Of Misinformation. Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats' pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.

Liar-in-chief. Senate Democrats rushed to insert language into the healthcare bill to require verification of citizenship to receive government healthcare. It wasn't in there Wednesday night when President Barack Obama claimed, erroneously, that his bill ensured illegal aliens would not receive the taxpayer-funded healthcare. Republicans in the House tried to insert language for verification, but Democrats defeated those efforts. Obama knew this on Wednesday night when he spoke to Congress and the American people. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) knew this, too, when he called the president out on his lie during the speech.

House admonishes Wilson for his 'You lie' outburst. The House has voted to admonish Rep. Joe Wilson over his "You lie" outburst to President Barack Obama during the president's health care speech to Congress last week.

10 More "You Lie" Moments On Health Care. The aftermath of Joe Wilson shouting out "You lie" at a shameless liar in the midst of a shameless lie about health care has turned out to be one of the most Orwellian moments in recent memory. After Wilson's outburst, liberals, in and out of the mainstream media, rushed to tell us that it was Wilson, not Obama who was wrong. Why, there was simply no way that illegals would be covered! But then, a funny thing happened: the Senate started working to close the loophole that Wilson pointed out. You know, the one that allowed illegal aliens to get coverage.

Deception a dangerous basis for presidency. Wilson's outburst was rude and obnoxious. But it's a good bet a lot of Americans were thinking the same thing, or yelling it at the television in their homes. Wilson distilled into two words what troubles so many people about President Obama. We don't trust anything he says, because it has been demonstrated on issues from war to health care that he does not say what he means, or mean what he says.

ObamaCare's Calculated Deception. In his health overhaul speech last Wednesday [9/9/2009], President Obama accused his critics of spreading "misinformation" and "bogus claims," of "demagoguery and distortion," and of using "scare tactics" instead of honest debate. Ironically, all of that can be found in his own speech.

You Mislead! It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson's lead. If they yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.

Reaction to Obama's address to the United Nations, September 23, 2009.

Full Text of Obama's Speech at the U.N.

Obama's sophomorically utopian oration. Earlier today, I was mildly critical of the suggestion that President Obama is our worst president ever when it comes to foreign policy. I noted, however, that Obama certainly has the potential to earn that distinction. Today, that potential was fully on display before the assembled thugs and hypocrites that make up the U.N. General Assembly. ... I will venture that no American president, and probably no world leader, has ever poured more nonsense into one speech.

Barack at the UN: Was this Obama's most naïve speech ever? It's always a bad sign when a US president gets several rounds of heavy applause at the UN General Assembly, as Barack Obama did this morning in New York. Needless to say, the loudest cheers from the gathering of world leaders came when he condemned the actions of a close US ally, Israel, in continuing to build settlements in the West Bank. You can always rely on attacks on the Israelis to generate the biggest roars of approval at any meeting of the United Nations, and Obama dutifully obliged.

Obama takes the supplication of America to a disgusting new level. Conservative commentary on President Obama's U.N. speech has correctly taken note of the extent to which Obama once again has apologized for America. What struck me as new, though, was extent to which he begged his audience to award the U.S. brownie points for his good acts. The one form of supplication follows from the other.

Prez comes across as a gullible sap. President Obama yesterday [9/23/2009] did his best impression of a high-school soph omore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher. Even Woodrow Wilson might have blanched at the mushy-headed exhortations to world peace and collective action better suited to a college dorm-room bull session or a holiday-season Coca-Cola commercial.

The naif-in-chief. What a truly pathetic performance. Not only because of the president's stunning cluelessness about the world's nature. But also because of his repeated insults to America. And his back-stabbing of Washington's top Mideast ally, Israel.

America's Relativist in Chief. The task of unpacking just one portion of President Obama's recent convoluted speech at the UN is eerily reminiscent of Winston Churchill's famous description of Soviet foreign policy: "a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma." For certifiable proof take a look at the following bizarre series of thoughts that collectively reveal a president without much in the way of an anchor — historical, intellectual, or moral...

'Kick Me' — Again. The U.N. General Assembly was overjoyed to hear a U.S. president tell them on Wednesday that America has "re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council." For, contrary to the fanciful image the U.N. would like the world to believe, it is an elitist establishment of dictators and governmental panhandlers with their hands in the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. It is also corrupt.

Bad Day at Turtle Bay. Obama went first and delivered a speech notable for its numerous and repeated repudiations of the Bush administration. President Obama said that in his nine months in office, the United States has made great strides toward undoing Bush-era policies that had rankled many in the world body. "For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months."

Afterthoughts from the U.N. Address. It was the most Obamaesque address to date. "For those who question the character and cause of my nation," the president pronounced Wednesday, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." America is 233 years old. Some think that there are ample accomplishments speaking to our character and cause that predate Obama's ascension to the presidency.

Obama's Self-Worship. President Obama's speech to the United Nations has been called naive and even "post-American." It was something else, as well: the most extravagant excursion into self-worship we have yet seen in an American leader. Beware of politicians who claim to be "humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me." It's a neon sign flashing the opposite.

Obama's Competing Waterloos. Within the first minute of his talk, he noted approvingly that when he took office, much of the world viewed America "with skepticism and distrust." While he implied some of this perception was unjustified, he said straightaway, "America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism." Oh, man. He proceeded to tell those present, a good chunk of whom hail from thugocracies, that we share common interests. Well, speak for yourself, Mr. President.

What country does this president live in? I have lived long enough, listened to enough presidents and spent enough time in formal education along with extensive reading of various topics to be wary of misinformation and lies. This week our president has again attacked our country before an international audience at the United Nations. If you listened, you would think this particular president was the first in untold years to be concerned about people. He sounded more like a world king rather than the president of the United States.

The Theological Virtue of Obama. What struck me wasn't so much what Obama said as what others said about him. I cannot recall any time, in the entire history of the United Nations, where nearly every single one of the world's worst rogue dictators came out of the woodwork to shower heaping praise on the president of the United States.

Obama's Globalism: We Are the World. Obama should not get off the hook in just one short news cycle for the shots he took at this nation in his shameful first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In his opening salvo, he said, "For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." Then he proceeded to tick off those "concrete actions," such as prohibiting torture — as if to suggest that prior to his ascension, it had been official U.S. policy.

A Clear and Present Danger. Obama made his point clear in his speech to the General Assembly on September 24, (?) saying, "I have outlined a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons." He added that America has already begun its own nuclear disarmament ... In other words, on a global platform, with the whole world watching, Obama focuses not on the threat to world peace from the rogue powers Iran and North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, but on the nuclear disarmament of America and its allies!

Obama the Player. Like all players, Obama cares only for himself. 'It's not about me,' he says. But when speaking before the UN, Obama asked, "those who question the character and cause of my nation" to merely, "look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months." As if the greatness of America is embodied in the Obama Administration? Even if that's true, it still shows that Obama himself is his own proof.

President Stupid. One of Great Britain's most widely read columnists is Melanie Phillips who writes for The Spectator. In a recent column titled "Who does he think he's kidding?" Ms. Phillips noted that "On Wednesday Barack Obama addressed the UN. If this was supposed to be a triumphal projection of the wonders of his foreign policy, his timing was singularly unfortunate. It was as if he had unveiled his shiny new bus after the wheels had come off and the engine had fallen out."

Obama Is Average. [Scroll down] Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that — it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism. Obama talks in platitudes, but offers a vision to the world of America diminished or constrained, and willing to share leadership in a way that no other presidency and no other great power would.

Reaction to Obama's speech in Fort Hood, Texas, November 10, 2009.

Who? Perhaps the president is too cowed by the political-correctness crowd or too personally uncomfortable to name our enemy. Apparently our commander-in-chief can't quite get out the words "Islamic fundamentalists" or "Islamic fascists" or "Islamic" anything. This is a very, very bad sign.

Obama's Cowardly Fort Hood Speech. [Scroll down] At no point during his speech did he mutter any words that describe the enemy we continue to face. He spoke vaguely of "twisted logic" and "extremists", but failed to point the finger directly at Islam. If we didn't know any better, we wouldn't have a clue who or what he was talking about.

Ignoring Infiltration. [Scroll down] Obama has confronted the crisis with yet another serving of Hope and Change rhetoric. We shouldn't "jump to conclusions," says O., giving no notion of what those conclusions might be. He goes on to praise the "diversity" of the armed forces, as if the fact that Hasan the Assassin's victims came from different backgrounds somehow makes things better.

Dobbs Compares President's Post-Cambridge to Post-Fort Hood Remarks. Some of the mainstream media intelligentsia following the Fort Hood, Texas massacre have cautioned people to reserve judgment about the suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan and have bypassed many key details in order to live up to what could be construed as a politically correct standard. CNN's Lou Dobbs isn't one of them.

Twisted and Nuts. Okay, our orator in chief at least admits we are at war, but he can't seem to connect the clues between the shooter and the "war": Obama admitted twice that we are at "war." He implied that religion was a motivating factor of the alleged shooter. He conceded that "the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America." Maybe we need an updated version of Clue. How long does it take to identify the terrorist with the guns in the readiness center?

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