Abu Wabu

The most laughable aspect of president Obama's role in the Gates fiasco was its similarity to the famous YouTube clip of a cop shooting himself in the leg while showing a gun to a classroom full of children, after which, with the bullet still burning in his thigh, he tells the kids, "There- that's why you shouldn't play with guns!"

In the theater, that's called a "save". In the school yard, the ploy typically invites derisive hoots of "nice try!" In politics, it's simply a gigantic Charlie Foxtrot.

The cringworthy spectacle of Cajonus Giganticus lecturing the American people about race, after his racial grievance-mongering blew up in his face, demonstrated perfectly the man's monumental arrogance and dishonesty. But Opey was right about one thing: it was a teachable moment, just not the one he would have us believe, as Joe Hicks explains in this PJTV video:

...to announce he will be treated for prostate cancer.

My advice to the senator: Keep an eye on those tonsils, and stay away from the End of Life Counseling program.

Meanwhile, here's the Good Michelle on the man she calls a lying crapweasel. No, I don't mean Obama -- not this time. But he's certainly a big part of the story:

The Beltway swamp is teeming with Democratic corruption scandals (Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha’s earmark factory and tax-subsidized airports and radars to nowhere; New York representative Charlie Rangel’s rent-controlled apartment scams and tax scandals; California representative Maxine Waters’s business ties to a minority-owned bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances, for starters). But Dodd’s career epitomizes the most fetid aspects of Washington’s culture of corruption. It’s a textbook case of nepotism, self-dealing, back-scratching, corporate lobbying, government favors, and entrenched incumbency.

When he launched his presidential bid in February 2007, Barack Obama inspired millions and rallied the world with his pledge to “build a more hopeful America.” He told a cheering crowd in Springfield, Illinois, land of Lincoln, that he recognized “that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. I know that I have not spent a long time learning the ways of Washington, but I have been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington have to change.”
Two years later, Barack Obama declared his support for an entrenched U.S. Senator drowning in the decrepit old politics of pay-for-play.

Two years later, at an “historic and “unprecedented” record pace, Barack Obama presided over a heap of botched nominations, crony appointments, lobbyist paybacks, union and left-wing activist payoffs, and abandoned promises to make government more transparent and accountable to ordinary Americans.

Stupid. Totally stupid. Moronic.

Andrew C. McCarthy looks past the Birthers silliness to get to the nut of the matter in his NRO article Suborned In The U.S.A.

The primary qualification supporters offered for Obama’s candidacy was his compelling life story, as packaged in 850 pages’ worth of the not one but two autobiographies this seemingly unaccomplished candidate had written by the age of 45.

Yet we now know that this life story is chock full of fiction. Typical and disturbing, to take just one example, is the entirely fabricated account in Dreams from My Father of Obama’s first job after college:

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day. . . . The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors — see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand — and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve. . . .

As the website Sweetness & Light details, this is bunk. Obama did not work at “a consulting house to multinational corporations”; it was, a then-colleague of his has related, “a small company that published newsletters on international business.” He wasn’t the only black man in the company, and he didn’t have an office, have a secretary, wear a suit and tie on the job, or conduct “interviews” with “Japanese financiers or German bond traders” — he was a junior copyeditor.

What’s unnerving about this is that it is so gratuitous. It would have made no difference to anyone curious about Obama’s life that he, like most of us, took a ho-hum entry-level job to establish himself. But Obama lies about the small things, the inconsequential things, just as he does about the important ones — depending on what he is trying to accomplish at any given time...

...The fact is that Obama’s account of his background is increasingly revealed as a fabrication, not his life as lived; his utterances reflect the expediencies of the moment, not the truth. What is supposed to save the country from fraudulence of this sort is the media. Here, though, the establishment press is deep in Obama’s tank — so much so that they can’t even accurately report his flub of a ceremonial opening pitch lest he come off as something less than Sandy Koufax. Astonishingly, reporters see their job not as reporting Obama news but as debunking Obama news, or flat-out suppressing it. How many Americans know, for example, that as a sitting U.S. senator in 2006, Obama interfered in a Kenyan election, publicly ripping the incumbent government (a U.S. ally) for corruption while he was its guest and barnstorming with his preferred candidate: a Marxist now known to have made a secret agreement with Islamists to convert Kenya to sharia law, and whose supporters, upon losing the election, committed murder and mayhem, displacing thousands of Kenyans and plunging their country into utter chaos?

McCarthy's problem with Obama is not that he believes Obama is not an American citizen; it is the man's utter dishonesty, which permeates every aspect of his public presentation; he simply refuses to tell the unvarnished truth. As soon as he believes even the slightest fabrication will better serve him, out it comes (Ergo, I suppose, the all-pervasive TOTUS), no matter how large or small. Conversely, if a little or a lot of obfuscation, all the way up to lying by omission, will serve Obama, then that's okay too. Further, if that obstacle happens to be a person rather than a fact or circumstance, Obama throws him "under the bus", a phrase made famous by Barack Obama having thrown so many people "under the bus" in service to the fabricated narrative that is Barack Obama. Whatever works, you see.

McCarthy points to Obama's "Islamic ties are good" period to further demonstrate:

[T]he records of the Catholic school and the public school Obama attended during his last year in Indonesia identify him as a Muslim. As Obama relates in Dreams from My Father, he took Koran classes. As Obama doesn’t relate in Dreams from My Father, children in Indonesia attended religious instruction in accordance with their family’s chosen faith. Moreover, acquaintances recall that young Barry occasionally attended Friday prayers at the local mosque, and Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister (born after Lolo and Ann moved the family to Jakarta), told the New York Times in a 2008 interview, “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” In fact, back in March 2007 — i.e., during the early “Islamic ties are good” phase of Obama’s campaign — the candidate wistfully shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof his memories of the muezzin’s Arabic call to prayer: “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Kristof marveled at the “first-rate accent” with which Obama was able to repeat its opening lines.

The point here is not to join another crackpot conspiracy, the “Obama as Muslim Manchurian Candidate” canard. Obama was only ten years old when he left Indonesia; there is no known evidence of his having made an adult choice to practice Islam, and he is a professed Christian. The point is that he lies elaborately about himself and plainly doesn’t believe it’s important to be straight with the American people — to whom he is constantly making bold promises. And it makes a difference whether he was ever a Muslim. He knows that — it’s exactly why, as a candidate, he originally suggested his name and heritage would be a selling point. Obama’s religious background matters in terms of how he is perceived by Muslims (Islam rejects the notion of renouncing the faith; some Muslims, like Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, make no bones about regarding Obama as a Muslim; and — as the mainstream media took pains not to report during the campaign — it is suspected that significant illegal donations poured into the Obama campaign from Islamic countries and territories). Obama’s religious background also matters in terms of how he views American policies bearing on the Muslim world.

McCarthy observes that without the Birthers, we wouldn't know about Obama's multiple citizenships, because the press was certainly not interested in reporting that and many other things about Obama. His Kenyan citizenship, for example, is certainly relevant,

especially when Obama’s shocking 2006 conduct in Kenya is considered. But we don’t know about his Kenyan citizenship because the media thought it was newsworthy. We know it only because of the birth-certificate controversy: Pressed to debunk the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, his embarrassed supporters felt compelled to clarify his Kenyan citizenship.

By contrast, the question whether Obama ever was an Indonesian citizen is still unresolved, as are such related matters as whether the foreign citizenship (if he had it) ever lapsed, and whether he ever held or used an Indonesian passport — for example, during a mysterious trip to Pakistan he took in 1981, after Zia’s coup, when advisories warned Americans against traveling there. By the way, many details about that journey, too, remain unknown. Obama strangely neglected to mention it in his 850 pages of autobiography, even though the 20-year-old’s adventure included a stay at the home of prominent Pakistani politicians.

There may be perfectly benign answers to all of this. But the real question is: Why don’t the media — the watchdog legions who trekked to Sarah Palin’s Alaska hometown to scour for every kernel of gossip, and who were so desperate for Bush dirt that they ran with palpably forged military records — want to dig into Obama’s background? ...

The answer is clear to those of us who pegged Obama as a lying charlatan from the beginning. The media do not want the truth about Obama to be known because he is very much their construct: by lying about him, ignoring relevant questions and shouting down, even defaming, his critics, they have packaged him into everything they wanted in a successor to Bush, shaped his story just as carefully as he has, in accord with their recipe for an anti-Bush. The media have too much invested in Obama right now; he is, to borrow a popular expression, too big to fail, at least for now.

But wait until the cracks forming even now widen to the point at which they can't be covered up. Then you will see the media begin to turn on Obama to save their own hides, just as they did with Jimmy Carter despite their almost universal hatred of Reagan. Then we'll see who throws who under the bus.

Meanwhile, the issue remains:

What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history?

Power Line: Obama A Racist?

They think not.

I disagree.

"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people," Beck said. "He has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Beck is at minimum calling Obama out on the race-baiting that he, Obama, employed in accusing Cambridge cops, specifically Sgt. James Crowley, of acting stupidly. It was flat out dishonest; as Obama so often does, he slandered a demonstrably honorable and dedicated professional and colleagues, consciously subornng the power of the president's office to target a public servant for political harm. Look at what he said about doctors, that they were literally going for our throats, in service to discrediting the American medical system he is doing his best to destroy.

Were I Sgt. Crowley I wouldn't have anything to do with either Obama, or his grudging punk homey masquerading as an academic, under any circumstances let alone for the purpose of providing them cover for yes, their racism. Which in this case manifested itself in their pandering to -- and inflaming -- racial resentment.

UPDATE
Another man's take:

Those who were shocked at President Obama's cheap shot at the Cambridge police for being "stupid" in arresting Henry Louis Gates must have been among those who let their wishes prevail over the obvious implications of Obama's 20 years of association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.

With race-- as with campaign finance, transparency and the rest-- Barack Obama knows what the public wants to hear and that is what he has said. But his policies as president have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.

As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pushed the "racial profiling" issue, so it is hardly surprising that he jumped to the conclusion that a policeman was racial profiling when in fact the cop was investigating a report received from a neighbor that someone seemed to be breaking into the house that Professor Gates was renting in Cambridge.

...The racial profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black studies departments, as Professor Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.

For "community organizers" as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama's background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

Not only Barack Obama's past, but his present, tell the same story. His appointment of an attorney general who called America "a nation of cowards" for not dialoguing about race was a foretaste of what to expect from Eric Holder.

The way Attorney General Holder has refused to prosecute young black thugs who gathered at a voting site with menacing clubs, in blatant violation of federal laws against intimidating voters, speaks louder than any words from him or his president.

President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.

An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.

Read the rest here.

I recognized this side of him the first time I heard Obama speak, but enough didn't that now there is a racially resentful community agitator in the White House.

Naked Emporor News, via NewsBusters:
Obama 2004: Bush Rushed Legislation Through Congress Without Allowing Time to Read Or Debate



As usual, Obama's massive hypocrisy is showing: what was baaaad for the country under Bush is just what the country needs under the Messiah. NewsBusters refers to a "heretofore unknown interview" (from Air America, which explains the "heretofore unknown" part) in which Barack Obama complained that "the Bush administration was rushing legislation through congress without giving the legislators time to read the bills or allowing for much debate." There being no possible excuse for such a heinous thing, I suppose. Unless you are the Anointed One, in which case you have your chief of staff do the very same thing, multiplied.

The purpose surely being something other than to pressure lawmakers and deceive the public; must be all the letters he's getting from middle-aged couples facing bankruptcy unless Obamacare passes tomorrow.

It's not just Obama who is hypocritical, of course; it's all the idiots who freaked about Bush for eight years saying nothing as their glorious leader publicly rubs their faces in their own gullibility every day.

Michelle Obama instituted the Orwellian "Urban Health Initiative", a patient-dumping scheme at the University of Chicago Medical Center by which poor people seeking medical relief were redirected to community hospitals to keep resources open for moneyed patients. The goal: maximize UCMC's profits.

Not good. And as it happens, not legal.

In fact, it's considered very bad.

Here's a preliminary reference list:
The American Thinker: Michelle Obama's Patient-Dumping Scheme

...no amount of journalistic lipstick can hide the reality that Mrs. Obama's initiative is a patient-dumping scheme. Such "cherry-picking," as Dr. Jouriles accurately describes it, was, at one time, fairly common. Prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago Medical Center routinely "dumped" Medicaid, uninsured and other unprofitable patients on less mercenary community hospitals. Many patients suffered needlessly, and more than a few actually died, as the result of this practice. So, in 1986, President Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA) into law. EMTALA made such "redirection" illegal, but many high profile hospitals still chafed at being forced to treat poor patients. Enter Michelle Obama, UCMC's "Vice President for Community and External Affairs."

Mrs. Obama first hatched the UCMC program as the "South Side Health Collaborative," which featured a gang of "counselors" whose job it was to "advise" low-income patients that they would be better off at other hospitals and clinics. The program was so successful in getting rid of unwanted patients that she expanded it, gave it a new name, and hired none other than David Axelrod to sell the program to the public. According to the Sun-Times, "Obama's wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center's board, backed the Axelrod firm's hiring." Axelrod helped the future First Lady formulate a public relations campaign in which the "Urban Health Initiative" was represented as a boon to the community actuated by the purest of altruistic motives.

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity. Chicago's inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC's patient dumping program would "dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents" and that the medical center was generously willing to provide "a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers." Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well. Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: "The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines." The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

The American Spectator: Michelle's Dumping Designs

It wasn't just Obama's wife who was involved in creating the program. Senior White House adviser and political strategist, David Axelrod, and his PR firm in Chicago were retained to develop a media campaign to encourage area residents not to use University of Chicago as a medical facility. Senior White House official, and Obama friend, Valerie Jarrett served on the board of directors of the hospital and approved the plan for the Urban Health Initiative, and the hiring of Axelrod. And on the recommendation of then Senator Obama, Dr. Eric Whitaker, was named director of the Initiative in late 2007, after serving as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, a job he got after Obama recommended him to then Gov. Rod Blagojevich via another Obama crony, Tony Rezko, a fund-raiser for Obama and now a convicted felon on federal corruption charges.

Michelle Malkin: Michelle Vs. Michelle

Word from the American Spectator is that Republicans on the Hill are taking a renewed interest in the role Mrs. O and her Chicago crony friends (Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Susan Sher) played in the University of Chicago Medical Center dumping scheme — which I reported on here, David Catron exposed here, and Sean Hannity’s TV show hammered here.

The truth is getting out there.

Sean Hannity reported this:



Hey now.

I'm sure the New York Times will review Culture of Corruption right after they cover Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, the NYT #1 poli best-seller for four months.

Our Country Deserves Better PAC is raising funds to go directly after Obama and drive resistance to his destructive ambitions. The more donations, the more they can afford to run advertising in key target markets. Here's a sample ad:



Visit Our Country Deserves Better PAC here to learn more and contribute.

Ann Coulter:

If politicians and employers had guaranteed us "free" food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the "food crisis" in America, and you'd be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

From the Columnist to the World:

The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of the free world had the guts to stand up and speak truth to municipal police Sgt. James Crowley.

Pushback:

CBO deals new blow to health plan
For the second time this month, congressional budget analysts have dealt a blow to the Democrat's health reform efforts, this time by saying a plan touted by the White House as crucial to paying for the bill would actually save almost no money over 10 years.

A key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs. White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan "probably the most important piece that can be added" to the House's health care reform legislation.

But on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check would only save about $2 billion over 10 years- a drop in the bucket compared to the bill's $1 trillion price tag.

"In CBO's judgment, the probability is high that no savings would be realized ... but there is also a chance that substantial savings might be realized. Looking beyond the 10-year budget window, CBO expects that this proposal would generate larger but still modest savings on the same probabilistic basis," CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Saturday.

The proposal's meager savings are a blow to Democrats working furiously to bring down costs in order to win support from their party's fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, who have threatened to vote against the bill without significant changes.

Whatever Happened To Not Wanting To Meddle?

Obama purposely set fire to the race issue by eagerly answering a planted question at the end of his Wednesday night Obamacare infomercial, raising the issue of racial profiling by racially profiling a white Cambridge police officer as, surprise, surprise, a racist. Even while admitting that he didn't know the facts about the arrest of his distinguished homey, Professor Henry Louis "Yo Mama" Gates, Obama opined that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly".

Then he doubled down, claiming he didn't know what all the fuss was about- all he did was accuse a white cop of racism without a shred of supporting evidence. "Think nothing of it- I do it all the time."

This episode again reveals the chip on Obama's shoulder that became evident when he called his grammy a "typical white woman" and showed up again Wednesday in painting the arresting officer as a stupid racist, a characterization that he now cannot afford to back down from, because, as we all know, Messiahs don't apologize. Can't afford to. But it's pretty obvious who really "acted stupidly" here, and that's president McJugears.

So even as Obama phones Jim the Cop to blow smoke up his cracker ass, he still does not apologize for, well, you know, calling him a stupid racist and all. Without knowing any of the facts, and after again demonstrating that he is never more than a heartbeat away from using the race card. And why not? It's worked for him for years- "community organizer", remember?

Prejudging without the facts, based on racial bias, based on racial stereotypes: I thought that was exclusive to NASCAR fans, ain't that so, lefties?

A post-racial president?

Yo mama.

Ace: Breaking: Obama Phones Officer Crowley; Calls Him Good Police Officer and Good Man; Allows He "G[ave] Impression" That He Was Maligning Cambridge Cops

Yeah, pretty sure Jim the Cop knows full well who he is without Obama telling him.

Just One Minute: "With two wars and a faltering health care reform effort, maybe President Stupidly should not be bloviating about local police matters, especially when he does not have the facts."

Power Line: The President As Hack Ideologue: "It is sad, though not suprising, to see our president fall into the familiar trap of ideologues, namely basing their view of what happened in a highly individualized event not on the facts of that event but rather on their prejudices...THE PRESIDENT CONTINUES TO ACT STUPIDLY: Today, Obama said that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance." This is idiotic. Whether a person was justly arrested in connection based on a given incident has nothing to do with what's happening with health care or in foreign wars. Is Obama trying to say that the arrest would have been okay if everyone had health insurance, the economy was prosperous, and we were out of Iraq and Afghanistan?"

Or something.

...for the time being. After more press conferences, townhall meetings and network infomercials than the last eighteen presidents combined, Nazi Pelosi and Dingy Harry have left Cajonus Giganticus twisting in the wind, poor boy.

Now just think about that for a moment: the One, the Messiah, the most awesomely awesome president in the entire history of America evah, has just been absolutely hung out to dry by Democrat congressional leaders commanding filibuster-proof majorities in both houses.

Will this guy even make it to the end of his first term?

Awesome. Just. Awesome.

Let's recap:

1. You'll all be taking the blue pill, because we can't afford the red pill;
2. I don't know what else will actually be in the legislation, but in my world...
3. Profits bad, geriatricide good;
4. Keep those cards and letters coming;
5. Predatory doctors are stealing your childrens' tonsils- that's not Hope; that's not Change;
6. Have I mentioned that I'm creating jobs at the speed of light?
7. From each according to his ability, to each according to me;
8. If you like your health care then you can keep it until I wipe out the medical profession and private insurance companies;
9. I don't know the facts but white cops are stupid, racial profiling, plight of the black man, yada yada yada;
10. Have I mentioned that I'm the president?

True Dat

At The Corner:

Khalid Sheik Mohammed is going to die in American custody whether it's in Guantanamo or on American soil, it doesn't matter. And that's going to be under the Obama administration and its successor. And that was the main issue on which Democrats had attacked the Republicans, and now it's going to be a huge concession.

And as Mara indicated, the beauty of this is that we are going to end up with a national consensus. Democrats are going to agree tacitly—by action and not in word—that the Bush administration had it right, and they will end up with a version of the Bush policy.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told The New York Times Obama intends to use the news conference as a "six-month report card," to talk about "how we rescued the economy from the worst recession" and the legislative agenda moving forward, including health care and energy legislation.

With Any Luck Dept.

Barack Obama, July 20, 2009: "This isn't about me".

Barack Obama, July 22, 2009: "This is all about me".

I've long asserted that the truth behind any prepared statement by president McJugears lies in its exact opposite. Some examples:

"Hope";
"Change";
"This is not the _______ I knew";
"I don't want to punish your success";
"I have never been a proponent of single payer health care";
"I have always said __________";
"I have never said __________";
"I welcome a vigorous and open debate";
"I have always been for _________";
"I have always been against _________";
"Office of the President-Elect";
"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear";
"My plan will rescue the economy and keep unemployment below 8 percent";
"This stimulus bill has no pork and not a single earmark";
"I am not doing this for reasons of politics";
"I really don't want to run __________";
"Make no mistake: this is not about _________";
"I will never hide the truth";
"My administration will be the most open and transparent ever";
"The check's in the mail, and I love you".

And my personal fave: "Words mean something; you can't just make stuff up".

So I laughed until I stopped when Opey declared, "This is not about me".

Au contraire:

A telling episode recounted by Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley reveals the Obama administration might be more worried than they are letting on that a Republican senator's comparison of the healthcare overhaul to Waterloo might be dangerously close to the truth.

Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama's bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

"Let's just lay everything on the table," Grassley said. "A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.' "

Senator Grassley, sir, please do it. Now. For America. For All Nancy Pelosi's Children.

HT: Jammiewearingfool via Ace

With Obama demanding that Americans just shaddap and swallow his lies about Obamacare and, well, everything else he wants to do on the way to destroying America as presently constituted, American Thinker's Randall Hoven (rhymes with cloven, as in hoofed, so you just know he's eeeevil) has a timely message For the Children, particularly the Children of Obama. It's so good that not only should children read the whole thing, they should read everything to be found at every link in the article.

Lesson Number One: Politics Is Actually Kind Of Important.

Whether the worst problem you face is being overweight or hacked to death with machetes depends much on your country's politics.

For those of you on the left, the basic message is this: your heart and emotions will use you on a regular basis if you let them, but only you can use your brain.

So read it all. And start using your brain.

Andrew McCarthy:

[E]ven as the Iranian people are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the regime (and are being brutalized for doing so) and even as the regime continues trying to kill Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, Obama is giving the mullahs the three things they most need: confidence in their security, international legitimacy, and time.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is on to the game:

I propose that the government impose a single-payer system on the legal profession. Instead of charging private fees, all attorneys would have to send their bills to LegalCare, a new agency in the federal government. Because the government can bargain collectively, they can impose rational fees for legal services instead of the exorbitant billing fees attorneys now charge. Three hundred dollars an hour? Thing of the past. Everyone knows that the government can control costs through price-setting; now we can see this process applied to the legal system, where the government has a large interest in seeing cost savings.

How will we pay for LegalCare? I take a page from the House surtax method here, which will disproportionately hit doctors in a wide variety of disciplines. In this case, I propose a 5.4% surtax on lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and political officeholders at the state and federal level. They’re the ones who have enriched themselves through this inequity in the legal system. After all, why should we all have to pay for the single-payer legal system when we can penalize lawyers instead?

Normally I'd suggest to Ed that he be careful what he asks for, but lawyers butter Obama's bread, so no worries.

After 9/11. It was perfect.


There's my man.

Obama tonight?

I'll put it this way: now I understand.

...that Judge Sotomayer is a baldfaced liar. Like all leftwingers when challenged, she doesn't even have enough strength in her "convictions" to defend them; instead, she's hiding behind one blatant falsehood after another. I haven't heard anything this shamefacedly dishonest since the last time I heard Obama.

I'm gonna say that was about an hour ago.

Power Line:

Sotomayor employs a rhetorical dodge by focusing on how she interpreted Justice O'Connor's famous statement that "a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases." She says that O'Connor couldn't have meant that the the wise man and the wise woman will reach the same decision in every case, since judges often disagree. Rather, she interpreted O'Connor's statement to mean that men and women have an equal capacity to reach wise judgments.

Of course that's correct: O'Connor was saying that men and women shouldn't reach different decisions because of their genders. But here is where Sotomayor hides the ball. Having created a diversion by talking about what O'Connor meant, she slipped in this key statement: "the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was attempting to convey."

That statement is a falsehood. Sotomayor's whole point in quoting Justice O'Connor was to disagree with, or at least express reservations about, O'Connor's view that the judge's gender shouldn't affect the outcome of a case. Here is the passage from

Sotomayor's speech:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Thus, Sotomayor's characterization of the context of her "wise Latina" remark is the opposite of the truth. She wasn't "agreeing with the sentiment that Justice O'Connor was attempting to convey," as she told Senator Leahy. Rather, she staked out a position in opposition to O'Connor's. In her speech she expressly disagreed with O'Connor's view, as Sotomayor put it, "that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges."

I've been on the fence as to whether Senators should vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, but this rather breathtaking dishonesty provides strong grounds to vote against her confirmation.

Drew M.:

We can prove that Sonia Sotomayor is lying: She said the same thing at least six times and a simple familiarity with the English language and semantic logic tells us what she meant.

She is now telling us that everything she said previously was said in a made-up childhood language called "Opposite Talk," where everything she says means the precise opposite.

This is a lie.

If I were to be sued for libeling Sonia Sotomayor, I could attempt a defense that each time I called her a liar, I was not in fact calling her a liar and had no intention to do such a thing; indeed, when I called her a liar, I meant a "wise truth-teller."

I could attempt this defense, but I would lose, as it is absurd. Everyone knows what my words mean and therefore my intent in using them.

Ed Whalen:

Judge Sotomayor’s exchange with Senator Schumer on foreign and international law (available towards the end of this transcript) is either incomprehensible or disingenuous.

As I have documented, Sotomayor has defended freewheeling resort to foreign and international law while positing an unintelligible distinction between “use” of foreign or international law and “consider[ing] the ideas that are suggested” by international and foreign law. Among other things, she said that Justices Scalia and Thomas, in “extensively criticizing the use of foreign and international law in Supreme Court decisions,” misunderstand that imaginary distinction. She stated that she “share[s] more the ideas of Justice Ginsburg in thinking or in believing that unless American courts are more open to discussing the ideas raised by foreign cases and by international cases that we are going to lose influence in the world.” And she spoke approvingly of recent instances—Roper v. Simmons and Lawrence v. Texas, specifically—in which the Court “looked … to foreign law to help us decide our issues.”
But today Sotomayor seemed to say virtually the opposite.

Jim Geraghty:

We're only about halfway through Sessions's questioning, but it seems he's already backed Sotomayor into an interesting corner. Each time he reads back a past statement that appears to suggest that Sotomayor has issues with objectivity, or that she believes that certain genders and ethnicities come to better judgments than others, the nominee has to insist that the statement was completely misunderstood or was a "rhetorical flourish that fell flat."

In other words, the defense is that she's a poor communicator who articulates her views so poorly that people come away from her speeches believing that her view is the exact opposite of what it really is, and that over the span of several years, those communication skills never improved until the moment she appeared before the Judiciary Committee.

The reason Sotomayer is lying is because she knows that her oft- and clearly-stated beliefs disqualify her, and that denying those very well documented beliefs is the only way she can hope to sell herself as qualified. Why? Because she knows Americans wouldn't want her on the Supreme Court if her views were common knowledge.

Which gives me faith in the American people yet.

Nonetheless, Obama will prevail and the United States Supreme Court will take another step toward the abyss of radical leftist politics.

Two editorials illuminating Obama's fealty to Islam and his self-loathing anti-Americanism on the international stage serve to concisely frame his world view. The first I noticed was by Anne Bayefsky at Forbes.com on Obama's double standards for Christian Africans and Muslim Arabs:

Speaking in Ghana on Saturday President Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing. Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words "terrorism" or "genocide." In Egypt, there was nothing "brutal" he could conjure up, no "corruption" and no "repression".

In Ghana, with a 70% Christian population, he mentioned "good governance" seven times and added direct calls upon his audience to "make change from the bottom up." He praised "people taking control of their destiny" and pressed "young people" to "hold your leaders accountable."

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states--despite the fact that not a single Arab country is "free," according to the latest Freedom House global survey.

Red meat that, but then along comes future President of the United States Liz Cheney (R. Evil) to box Opey's jug-ears, the subject being his groveling revision of America's decisive victory in the Cold War, in which he once again wallows in false moral equivalence with the Soviet empire.

Cheney puts Opey some knowledge:

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said.

Mr. Obama's method for pushing reset around the world is becoming clearer with each foreign trip. He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies.

Which is exactly as Obama intends it.

Forced abortions
Mass sterilization
Seizing children from "unsuitable" mothers
A transnational world government
Eradication of national sovereignty
Confiscation and redistribution of wealth

Those are just some of the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, a fucking crazy (there really is no other way to describe the man) environmental extremist who has consistently expressed his desire for totalitarian means to force his agenda on the United States, which he hates with a passion, and the rest of the world, which he appears to merely disdain.

Holdren first came under scrutiny by Front Page magazine in February 2009 in "Obama's Biggest Radical" by Ben Johnson, but Johnson's article was ignored by the MSM. This July 10 Zombietime exposé repeats Johnson's assertions with even more evidence.

Read it all, because this guy is the prototypical indicator of Obama's freakish world view.

Via Drudge:

4:15 AM: OBAMA SAYS FUTURE DOES NOT BELONG TO THOSE WHO GATHER ARMIES OR PLANT MISSILES...

7:45 AM: Suspected US missiles hit militants...

Obama: 'Absolutely' no green light for Israel to attack Iran...

Biden: Israel has right to deal with nuclear Iran...

As usual, the idiot from Idiotland feigns indignation. Not about Iranians getting massacred, the horror of which is embodied in the image of Neda Agha-Soltan he shamelessly and obscenely slanders me of liking as pornography, but about the way I delivered the message. No honest person would reach this idiot's conclusion, but he babbles on about pornography and conspiracy theories because he would defame any and all rather than admit his BFF Obama sat idly by and said nothing while Iranians were systematically slaughtered by the same Islamist tyrants his beloved President Jugears then bizarrely rewarded with a formal invitation to celebrate American freedoms.

If this opportunistic weasel cares so much about Agha-Soltan's dignity, I guess we should be able to read about it somewhere else on his blog, shouldn't we? But we can't, because A) he hasn't mentioned her before because she really has no purpose to him except as a premise to lash out at me and B) he doesn't think much at all about Iranians' fight for freedom because, if he did, he would have come out and "just said" something about it somewhere, wouldn't he?

But he hasn't.

Now, could be that it just slipped his mind, what with Iran being so irrelevant these past few years. But it's no surprise to me that a pointed search of his entire blog archive back to its beginning returns nothing containing any reference to Iran whatsoever. Not one. Except, that is, one post in which he captions a photograph of Republican Senator Rick Santorum looking at a black woman at a public event with this oh-so-sophisticated gem: "What About Man-On-Dog? Ya Got Any Problem With Man-On-Dog Types?" You know: the sort of thing that would give one the creepy feeling that it's just bestiality porn for this guy.

But all other inquiries on his blog for "Iran", "Iranian", and "Persian" turn up only that one single post. In fact every other inquiry returned the same answer: "No posts match your query".

Nothing else ever, in years of "just sayin": no support for Iranians' freedom at all, anywhere, ever. In fact, no support for anyone's freedom, anywhere, ever, with the thoughtful exception of demanding Constitutional protections for captured illegal enemy combatants- call it a start, I guess.

In truth, it never even would have dawned on this sanctimonious blowhard to give a second's thought to Agha-Solton except that he saw the presence of her photo as just another opportunity to fling his meaningless little turds, which is all this jackass ever does.

So spare me, you preening phony.

By the way, asshole, if you're so fucking concerned about the perversion of a Persian, you'll no doubt watch The Stoning of Saroya M. , which portrays a barbaric yet remarkably common practice of woman-control in the Arab world.

But never mind that: let's get all phony-righteous about the monstrous misconduct of the Bush administration.

You dim-witted little prick.

Via Jonah Goldberg at The Corner:

From ABC:
With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive level and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

Yeah, well, what happens when the Senate doesn't want to ratfiy your treaty, Opey?

The Anchoress explains Obama's latest attack on the Constitution.

Whoa…isn’t this the president who gave George W. Bush SUCH a hard time about Presidential Signing Statements, before he fell in love with them? Now, suddenly, it’s – hey, I’m Barack Obama, and I won; I don’t have to follow the constitution! I don’t even need that Senate!

President Clinton once said, “flick of the wrist, law of the land; pretty cool.” But even he understood that, umm…as Glenn says, if you bypass the Senate, it’s not a treaty.

Wishing not to oversnark, Glenn writes:
A President can, of course, abide by a treaty even if it’s not ratified, so long as he’s not asserting any binding effect on parties not under his supervision, which is likely the case here. Still, it’s of a piece with the “it’s a rush, we don’t have time for the formalities” approach that this Administration has favored.

Emphasis mine, because it is so true: everything Obama does is hasty, rushed and performed under a big, flashing red sign that screams, “emergency; no time to discuss, no time to read, no time for bothersome procedure…just do what I want, and trust me, we’ll be fine…three minutes to critical mass…”

I can only imagine the guttural sounds of outrage that would be coming from the press and the left if Dubya had tried this.

As enunciated by Abraham Lincoln:

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty---or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,---with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,---we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves---we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men---descended by blood from our ancestors---among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe---German, Irish, French and Scandinavian---men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't care if slavery is voted up or voted down" [Douglas's "popular sovereignty" position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice---"Hit him again"], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will---whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which
we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices---"me" "no one," & etc.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of "no, no,"] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]

Power Line posts that excerpt every July 4.

Now that she is beholden only to herself and her family, Sarah Palin is answering her tormenters in the only language they seem to understand. The statement by Palin's attorney Thomas Van Flein can be read at Conservatives4Palin, who gleefully reprint all the nonsense coming from the left, nonsense Palin will put before a court, where reality and a jury of one's peers forces idiots to take responsibility for their actions.

Van Flein saves the best for last (emphasis mine):

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.

The game is afoot.

Happy Independence Day, America!

Sarah Palin resigns as Alaska's Governor.

Everyone is asking why, which I suppose they must. Personally, I think she has decided to knock the air out of all the ridiculous ethics charges with which the left is harrassing her so she can carry on building the conservative Republican brand.

More later, but that I believe is the nut of the matter.

No Hope, And Certainly No Change

Obama Said™ back in January that if the Porkulus Bill didn't pass RFN that unemployment would get as high as 9 percent. But as Rush Limbaugh has recently pointed out, the most meaningless phrase in the English language is "Obama Said™".

Via America's Anchorman, this illuminating comparison of job losses and subsequent recovery in every recession since 1948. Five months after the bottom of the worst-case 1974 recession, job losses have almost doubled since Obama took office, and Obama's economy is still sinking like a boatload of Gigantic Cajones.



Calculated Risk is tracking the shiny new Obama economy.

An Insta Pundit PJTV Exclusive

Governor Rick Perry has built on the template set by former Governor George W. Bush to lead Texas. The result? A surplus and a booming state economy. That's right.

Meanwhile, so-called "progressive" Democrat-managed states are tanking across the country.

Andrew McCarthy is pressing for answers, and now so are Senators Sessions and Kyl.

John Hinderaker at Power Line:

The timing of this disclosure, which McCarthy calls "the most shocking story we have had in a steady stream of shock since the start of the Obama presidency," is unfortunate. It coincides with the news that the Taliban has captured an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan. If these terrorists murder their captive and our troops apprehend them, will Obama let this gang go, too? It's time to man up, Barack.