Will Obama remain a cynic?

Free Frank Warner is hopeful that President Obama’s days as one are numbered:

As the cynic, Obama could argue that Saddam Hussein was just another ruler, and that it was better to leave him alone. As president, he’ll find that the democracies are infinitely more cooperative and less dangerous than dictatorships, and that nine-tenths of the world’s deaths from war, famine and genocide are due to the abuses of despotic regimes. Continue reading Will Obama remain a cynic?

President Obama to be helped with answers at future press conferences.

I am running out of ways to say that irony is dead.

At least, if you believe the American Spectator, which admirably deadpans this hysterically funny revelation:

“It looked scripted beyond the scripted part, the speech,” says one former communications adviser, who has been feeding notes and suggestions to the White House team and worked with them on the inauguration. “Every president has gone into one of these things knowing that there were some pre-arranged questions or journalists to be called on, but this one was pretty ham-handed.”

To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.

Dan Riehl, once he finished laughing at everybody who screeched about Bush and earpieces in 2004, went on… no, wait, Dan never actually stopped laughing at those poor, deluded folks. Hard to blame him for that, really.

Moe Lane

Crossposted at RedState.

Jobs ‘saved’ by ‘stimulus’ reduced to 2.5 million.

This week.

Contra Wizbang and Roger Kimball, this is actually the latest estimate of Mark Zandi, not the Obama administration itself. What the Obama administration is merely doing is trying to lower the expectations of their debt bill:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- President Barack Obama’s aides warned Americans on Sunday not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually.

[I’m snipping the nonsense about how this was Obama’s first major legislative victory. The sentence should more properly read: “It was the legislature’s first major victory over his young presidency.” – ML]

“There will be signs of activity very quickly,” David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it’s going to take time for that to show up in the statistics. The president has said it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”

Continue reading Jobs ‘saved’ by ‘stimulus’ reduced to 2.5 million.

A helpful suggestion and a question for the President

Since he’s apparently having quite the problem with filling the position, what with the pay-for-play and the lack of vetting and the clumsy attempts at looked-good-on-paper political stratagems. Anyway, here’s the suggestion: Why don’t you just abolish the Commerce Department? After all, your last pick thought that it was a good idea, and you thought his judgment was sound, right? I mean, I’d hate to think that you were too intellectually incurious to actually know that about Senator Gregg.

As for the question: given that you’re probably going to go with having a Democrat back in the position – although I hear that the Libertarians would quite like a go – I was wondering whether you were going to trust him or her with the Census gig?

Moe Lane

PS: Your guy Gibb is just a touch too ungracious for his job. Keep him.

Crossposted at RedState.

Baby steps: Jon Stewart remembers that he needs to eat.

Which means that you have to make fun of the President that you have, not the one that you want:

(Via Andrew Malcolm) Don’t expect miracles, here: Stewart’s a liberal. Stewart also understands that his audience will increasingly be part of the demographic who gets bored listening to people who can’t stop yelling about that Bush guy, who isn’t even President anymore, and back on his ranch in Texas cutting brush or something: and that this is no time to be out of work. So… baby steps.

Unless Obama screws up some more. The Media is always hungry.

Crossposted to RedState.

You know, I could have cared less about the Obama jacket thing…

…but apparently this infuriated the Left, to the point where they came up with a slideshow (the link’s to memeorandum: I don’t feel like giving a pro-torture site like HuffPo the traffic).

Anyway, 779 comments and counting about the fact that Bush apparently got his picture taken when his suit jacket was off, too.  Angry, bitter, clingy comments, at that. Wow.  Don’t these people have lives?

Crossposted at RedState.

CBC preparing to oppose Obama over Gregg?

Probably not, but maybe some day the progressives will find their spines again.

Glenn Thrush has a statement from CBC Chair Rep. Barbara Lee that certainly sounds like they’re reserving the option:

“In this light, Sen. Gregg’s record of previously voting to abolish the Commerce Department and his attempts to block President Bill Clinton’s efforts to secure adequate funding for the 2000 census raise troubling concerns regarding his commitment to the department’s core missions.

We may know more when they get around to putting the press release on their own site. Continue reading CBC preparing to oppose Obama over Gregg?

And in the great Guilty Pleasure Watch…

…we have The Deceiver, which is apparently dedicated to the notion that you can make fun of everybody who says one thing, yet does another. They had a field day with the Blago thing, for example – and, hey, I caught ’em linking to right-sphere sites without sneering, so let’s get a bloglink up. I’m sure that they’ll annoy me soon enough.

Give you a taste: “Obama Been Backpedallin’.” which discusses the PEOTUS’ sudden decision to rewrite that pesky I’m-going-to-get-Osama rhetoric. What makes it especially choice is that one of the category’s got the entry under is “Religious” – which, really, perfectly describes the people most likely to feel betrayed over this flip-flop.