Dear God in Heaven.
The latest man to score an interview with President Obama, Shane Smith, has conducted some hard-hitting interviews, including one with a Japanese sex doll.
Yes. Yes, there are links at the link. I have not clicked them, because I have small children about the house right now. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
This is, like, the lifelong dream of the New Left, you know: “President Barack Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the United States would “reassess” aspects of its relationship with Israel after Netanyahu’s provocative statements leading up to Tuesday’s Israeli election.” …’Provocative.’ Ostensibly, this is all about Netanyahu’s supposed rejection of a two-state solution*, but let’s be honest. This real problem is pretty straightforward: Barack Obama got humiliated in public by an Israeli Jew. Continue reading Barack Obama to ‘reassess’ relationship with the Zionist Enti… right, too soon: ‘Israel.’
The New York Sun is pretty blunt about this: “It may be too soon to say who won the election in Israel but it’s not too soon to say who lost — President Obama.” …and, let’s be honest, here. It was a remarkably silly thing for the President to try to get involved in. No, seriously, think about it for a moment. What was the upside for any attempt by Barack Obama to influence the Israeli election? What was his victory condition?
Because I’m pretty sure that President Obama’s victory condition didn’t involve a possible federal probe: Continue reading Barack Obama spins gold into straw in Israel elections. Again.
Let us address the central paradox of the Hillary Clinton campaign. To do that, though, we must first refresh our memories. Specifically, this ad:
Remember it? It is, of course, an edited version of the iconic Apple 1984 ad which was altered to convert it from revolutionary agitprop praising a multinational corporation to revolutionary agitprop praising an undistinguished machine politician from Chicago. And, to be fair, it was successful agitprop. We will be arguing for decades about just how Hillary Clinton managed to lose that primary fight, but she did – and videos like this probably didn’t hurt. Continue reading Hillary Clinton STARTED OFF as the villain. How does she plan to become the hero?
Look, when you’re the President, you shouldn’t be getting numbers like these in a poll asking voters whether they think that you love America:
The answer: a surprising number. Democrats are convinced he does love his country (85 percent of those surveyed answered yes in the poll), while Republicans (69 percent no) are skeptical. Independents break in the president’s favor by only 42 percent to 38 percent. Nationally, only 47 percent of people think the nation’s leader loves America while 35 percent do not.
This is, in fact, representative of a communications failure on the President’s part. Even if you assume that the GOP is being horrible and inaccurate in their assessment of Barack Obama, a 42/38 split among independents is essentially a tie. Perhaps the Democratic party should be spending less time whining about how the Republicans are being mean to the President, and more time trying to prove – in a positive manner – that we’re being unfair, too.
Barack Obama was literally too afraid to show his face after vetoing Keystone.
As expected: the President has decided to side with environmentalists over blue-collar unions (and the rest of the country, mind you) by vetoing the bipartisan Keystone Pipeline bill. But did Barack Obama at least do so publicly, to great fanfare? Since this is so important, after all? Of course he didn’t. That would imply moral courage. Nah, Barack Obama did so with his head down and as timidly as he dared – and these days, Barack Obama can dare to be pretty darn timid.
“The presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously,” Obama said in a brief notice delivered to the Senate. “But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people.”
Obama vetoed the bill in private with no fanfare, in contrast to the televised ceremony Republican leaders staged earlier this month when they signed the bill and sent it to the president. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans were “not even close” to giving up the fight and derided the veto as a “national embarrassment.”
Continue reading Barack Obama’s exquisitely timid Keystone Pipeline veto.
There’s a reason why the Right has been laughing over the hysterical (in both senses) reaction by the Left over what were actually some commonplace remarks by Rudy Giuliani. To wit, we all went Yes, ‘Barack Obama doesn’t love this country the way that you or I do’ sounds about right.
The perception that Obama dislikes America is nothing new in conservative circles. Radio talk hosts have asked me numerous times – often, in creative ways – if I agree that the president “hates” America. Since none of us has the ability to bore into the souls of fellow humans and unlock all their hidden motivations, the question is distracting and irrelevant. And as political rhetoric goes it’s needlessly hyperbolic.
But really, is it that outrageous or surprising that so many Americans doubt whether the president “loves” the traditional role the United States has played on the world stage, or whether he “loves” the capitalism that’s defined us for the past 50 or 60 years, or whether he “loves” the Constitutional protections we have for religious freedoms, guns, or free speech?
President Obama, facing angry reprisals from parents and from lawmakers of both parties, will drop his proposal to effectively end popular college savings accounts known as 529s, but will keep an expanded tuition tax credit at the center of his college access plan, the White House said Tuesday.
…Although I don’t know why he bothered to keep the tax credit: the aforementioned college access plan isn’t going anywhere anyway. Oh, I’m sure that something will get signed, eventually. But precisely what that is will be determined by the adults that the American people put back in control of Congress last November, not the petulant man-child who is still occupying the White House… for less than two more years. Continue reading Like a puppy smacked across the nose: Barack Obama to hastily drop proposed 529 tax.
Megan McArdle put her finger on precisely why Barack Obama floated the oh-heck-no proposal to tax people’s 529 college funds: “About the only people I saw defending this particular idea were blue-state singles who haven’t yet confronted the monstrous expense of shepherding their progeny into the new mandarin class to which they belong.” …And that’s who Barack Obama was trying to back-channel pander to, of course. In 2012 single voters broke strongly for Obama – single women more so then men – and since a tax hike on college fund earnings wouldn’t affect them too much (especially the ones without kids), Obama probably figures that it’s a ‘safe’ tax hike to have*. Continue reading Barack Obama calculated that calling for 529 tax hikes was safe enough.
When it comes to foreign policy. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more…
Gee. I wonder what Barack Obama could possibly be hinting at: “At a closed-door meeting on Thursday, President Barack Obama suggested that some Democratic senators base their foreign policy positions on the preferences of their campaign donors.” The subject in question is Iranian sanctions; and after Barack Obama made his comments Sen. Robert Menendez, of all people, did not take it kindly:
Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took “personal offense.”
Mr. Menendez told the president that he had worked for more than 20 years to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and had always been focused on the long-term implications. Mr. Menendez also warned the president that sanctions could not be imposed quickly if Congress waited to act and the talks failed, according to two people who were present.
I hope that the President understands that those are dangerous waters to go fishing in. That wasn’t a progressive donor’s dining room or a private seminar hosted by a Big Left activist group. Comments that would be chuckled at there as being saucy euphemisms get a good deal less amusing, and a good deal inflammatory, out in the real world. And even a hack like Menendez can feel legitimate umbrage at being told that he’s operating at the beck and call of shadowy donors*.
Moe Lane
*Ironically, Menendez probably is – but not on foreign policy. I mean, I consider the man a corrupt suckweasel, but I would hesitate to insinuate that he puts his donors’ wishes before America’s. Heck of a thing when I have more respect for a Democratic Senator’s tattered integrity than does the Democratic President of the United States…
