Quote of the Day: Aimless Obama

“I never thought I’d hear myself say it,” one Democrat told me. “But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something.”

via Bloodless President Barack Obama makes Americans wistful for George W Bush.

HOPEY®, CHANGEY® Headlines

AP sources: House health bill totals $1.2 trillion

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill’s net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.

I’m getting conflicting messages here. They are expecting me to trust Nancy Pelosi?

Top Dems: No Health Care Bill in 2009

Yeah, that’s a good idea. It’s not like there’s a rush.

Turn your head and cough.

White House: Tuesday’s GOP wins not about Obama

The White House says that Republican wins in two governors’ races were not referendums on the president.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to work through “very local issues that didn’t involve the president.” The presidential spokesman said voters were concerned about the economy.

“I don’t think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs later added,

"These are not the droids you are looking for..."

Defense officials say weapons were bound for Syria, Hizbullah

Hundreds of tons of weaponry, ten times the size of the Karine A shipment of 2002, were seized in an overnight raid Tuesday by the Israeli navy, some 100 nautical miles west of Israel, officials said. The ship seized was sailing under an Antiguan flag.

Made in Iran?

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says…

ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama

Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.

Maybe “epidemic” is a better word.

Obama a tough guy, at least with Fox News

The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie – like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.

The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.

Mark Steyn

Teh funny: Iranian nutcase leader Ahmadinejad found to have Jewish past?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: “This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background explains a lot about him.

“Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

“By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.”

The Austrian, Adolf Hitler, had an inferiority complex too being surrounded by Germans. Napoleon was a Corsican among “mainland” French.

Outsiders tend to feel the need to overcompensate. You see it in politicians everywhere.

Wonder what this will do to Ahmadinejad? piss him off? embarrass? humiliate?

And how would his lowness react? hmm.

Time for Obama to Act Like a President

Richard Cohen:

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation — “Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . ” — and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama’s the president. Time he understood that.

Way to go, Bibi!!!

It’s nice to see who should be considered the new leader of the Free World.

Our guy doesn’t have the moral clarity nor the stones you do to tell it like it is.

Quote of the Day

It is not hard to see why a standing ovation awaits the president at Turtle Bay. Obama’s popularity at the UN boils down essentially to his willingness to downplay American global power. He is the first American president who has made an art form out of apologizing for the United States, which he has done on numerous occasions on foreign soil, from Strasbourg to Cairo. The Obama mantra appears to be – ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do to atone for your country. This is a message that goes down very well in a world that is still seething with anti-Americanism.

via The UN loves Barack Obama because he is weak

Obama the Rookie

Obama’s message to Abbas, Bibi: ‘I’m losing patience’

President Obama’s central message to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York today was simple, a U.S. official said: He’s running out of patience.

“The President of the United States is impatient,” said the senior U.S. official. “That’s what he told them.”

“There’s a limited window of opportunity here, and he’s determined, but he’s also impatient and we need to get going,” the official said.

Yeah, I’m sure the president expected to just walk in, allow Abbas and Bibi to genuflect in front of him and then embrace each other promising unconditional peace that no one else has been able to provide for decades now.

It is to laugh.

zeitgeist by drudge, snark by jcrue

He does a better job than most – DRUDGE REPORT

click the image

One-timers…

I’m headed to Tahoe for the weekend, so I’m gonna leave you with these tidbits.

First, in the true Obama tradition of pissing on the military every chance he gets is this story I missed in May.

SWORDLESS SAILORS

Graduating midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis are being told in writing to leave at home or in their vehicles all “ceremonial swords” and anything else “that might be considered a weapon or a threat by screeners” for Friday’s outdoor commencement ceremonies featuring an address by President Barack Obama.

Inside the Beltway has obtained the academy’s list of prohibited items for this year’s graduation exercises, which, besides ceremonial swords, includes umbrellas.

Yes, cell phones and texting are still allowed.

via Inside the Beltway – Washington Times.

I don't understand you and therefore, I fear you...

I received these comments via email:

No Weapons for Anyone

From today’s you couldn’t make it up if you tried file…….Obama’s protectors have ordered graduating Midshipmen….and I suppose Commissioned Officers through Flag rank…to leave their swords at home. Full Dress White includes “wear sword”. More to the point…those badges of office have been earned in a manner Obongo and his minions just wouldn’t begin to understand. Important traditions that inspire are kind of lost on the red banner crowd, apparently.

Further, ceremonial swords never seemed to bother the Secret Service for any previous President. And before World War II, the swords were not particularly “ceremonial”, I’ve seen some of those blades, boarding actions did occur on the China Station pre-war against river pirates, warlords, etc. Those swords were worn not just to graduation, but to Inaugurations, in the receiving line at the White House afterward, to the Inaugural Ball. Somehow nobody gave it a second thought. Somehow even Presidents in the past didn’t presume to specify items of uniform.

But of course, what worked for Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, F.D.R., the Bushes, T.R., any other rational non-cult leader…..doesn’t work for this former state senator anointed by the Chicago machine.

Does he secretly consider our Naval and Military leaders “the enemy”? Perhaps the message this sends escaped his handlers. Sad. And …..follow me on this Obama and minions…..insulting. Actually it’s contemptible.

You can’t make this stuff up. Even the Clintons didn’t show this much disdain for our military and their traditions. He should have spent less time with Ayers, Wright, and the rest of his little circle of friends and more time with the likes of Colin Powell, Petraeus, and the men and women who really serve this nation.

Here’s the second shot: Hope And Change — But Not For Iran

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued “dialogue” with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with — which inevitably confers legitimacy upon — leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.”

Where to begin? “Supreme Leader”?

I gotta a delivery to make to my fellow Americans and our allies alike

Well, these brave Iranians can’t vote for Obama, so what does he really care. He has 230+ years of progress to destroy.

Ralph Peters comments:

We just turned our backs on freedom.

Again.

Of all our foreign-policy failures in my lifetime, our current shunning of those demanding free elections and expanded civil rights in Iran reminds me most of Hungary in 1956.

For years, we encouraged the Hungarians to rise up against oppression. When they did, we watched from the sidelines as Russian tanks drove over them.

For decades, Washington policymakers from both parties have prodded Iranians to throw off their shackles. Last Friday, millions of Iranians stood up. And we’re standing down.

That isn’t diplomacy. It’s treachery.

And finally, comes this from the only Middle Eastern ally who would fight with us if necessary: ‘6% see US administration as pro-Israel’

That’s down from 31%, way to go Mr. President! Now I understand these posters much better.

It’s 3:00 AM, Mr. President

Via Gateway Pundit: Please quit hitting the snooze button, sir.

Obama: Still don’t know much about history

Obama the post turtle

Or is it he’s willfully lying?

Judge for yourself: Narrative Dissonance

“I mean, in a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above–above the world, he’s sort of God.” These drug-addicted words come from Evan Thomas, a longtime editor at Newsweek. He uttered them on Chris Matthews’s MSNBC show. Such words would wreak havoc on any person’s ego, even Barack Obama’s. It also would enrage his enemies.

After all, the president has told us that he is a mere student of history, and that he is.

But history these days is no longer a discipline inclined to defend the truthfulness of its claims or the reasonableness of its arguments or the plausibility of its conclusions. More and more, history has become a competition between and among narratives, self-consciously disdainful of what we used to think of as fact. In this intellectual competition, the losers almost always win or, at least, they win the “moral argument.” Not in real history, mind you, but in many a Western professor’s classroom. And, sometimes, in an American president’s mind.

It’s scary how ignorant the president is about the Middle East or how he uses selective history to suck up to Israel’s neighbors.

This is not the first time the president’s lack of historical education has been seen.

Enough with the personal anecdotes, Mr. President!!! (updated)

They are MEANINGLESS to the serious issues you are supposed to be discussing. Just read this clip from your terrorism speech today:

…I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights –are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world.

I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered…

via Los Angeles Times

Are you frickin’ kidding me? You want to bring up your dad?

Your biological father didn’t come to America for those things our founding documents promise, he came for an education.

Plain and simple. (Well, there were a few “other” things…wink wink nudge nudge, know what I mean?)

Your father could have received the same education anywhere in the world and did not benefit from anything uniquely American. He didn’t have to come to America to get what he did. He came (no pun intended) and went in what, four or five years, and then he spent the rest of his life in Africa, right?.

Not exactly the example I would use of how one benefits from what our Founding Fathers created. His story sounds more like how one benefits from a few drinks, some smooth talk and a nice smile at a party. So please, stop spinning yarns and blowing smoke.

Respectfully, Mr. President, please explain to me again how your father coming to America for a degree or two along with a few pieces of tail has to do with the ugly, difficult, painful, and deadly work of protecting this country and its citizens. You know, that important work you have only been doing the last few months and for the first time in your life?

Because after reading your speech I have the feeling you still don’t get it. You don’t understand the big picture. You still sound like a pie-in-the-sky Liberal who lives in an imaginary world world of relativism and intangibles and not an American leader.

Hopefully, in the next few years you will learn you can’t miracle peace, love, and cooperation with our enemies with “just words”, speech-i-fi-cation and personal anecdotes. It takes a great deal more than what you have displayed to preserve those things our founding documents intend for us. But until then you leave the White House, please save the family stories for the hags on The View and your sycophants in the Dominant Media in the future.

UPDATE: This is also a great description of the speech I think hits the nail on the head:

Obama’s is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor–platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. This sentence was revealing: “On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004.” “Opposed the release”? Doesn’t he mean “decided not to permit the release”? He’s president. He’s not just a guy participating in a debate. But he’s more comfortable as a debater, not as someone who takes responsibility for decisions.

UC Irvine Advertises Hate On Campus

Via Gateway Pundit:

The Muslim Student Union’s “Israel: The Politics of Genocide” event began May 5 and runs through May 21.
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful…

The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine presents
ISRAEL: THE POLITICS OF GENOCIDE
May 5th – May 21st, 2009

Guest speakers include noted anti-Semites Cynthia McKinney and George Galloway.

The poster made me think of this quote:

There are people here in the U.S. who would justify suicide bombings because Palestinians don’t have tanks and planes while insisting that the Palestinians want peace. Well, if they are only using suicide bombers because they don’t have tanks and planes, logic suggests that if they had tanks and planes they would use them. In other words, they’re at war with Israel, they’re just poorly equipped. If a career armed robber doesn’t have a gun and uses a crowbar instead, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a robber. If he told the judge “I don’t have guns and squad cars like the police, I have to use a crowbar,” we wouldn’t nod with appreciation at the impeccable logic. But if you make this point about Palestinians, eyes roll at your simplistic view of such a complicated situation. — Jonah Goldberg

All of the above

Via Glenn McCoy’s Political Cartoons at Townhall.com.

100 Days: Obama being held accountable?

Not if you depend on the dominant media.

Via Hot Air: Video: NRSC less than enthused about Obama’s 100 days.

If you have to go back to Bush to deflect away from the contents of this video, you have already lost.

And if you are capable of looking past Iraq and Afghanistan to other important foreign policy concerns facing Team Obama, you might find this track record of ineptness and failure very depressing as well.

Pelosi playing defense on torture

It is funny to see the Dems try to play off any accusations of foreknowledge and complicity.

It’s just so hard to tell why. Is it because of amnesia, or apathy?

I vote the later, because it is historically consistent with that’s parties’ approach to foreign affairs and politics in general.

Just like Mark Steyn and Jeane Kirkpatrick remind us:

In Congress, Democrats have decided to chip away at the war with various symbolic postures but not to oppose it outright: That way, if things go well, they can muscle in on the credit, but if things go badly, they’ll be able to say they told you so without getting stuck with the blame. – Mark Steyn

When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought… they [behave] less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich—convinced it would shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand… When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States. But then, they always blame America first. When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then, they always blame America first. The American people know better. – former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick

Honestly, Ms. Ambassador, they used to know better. The American people as a whole, the unum of the E plurabis unum, gets weaker, more spoiled, and more ignorant every year.

Stupid Iranian government propaganda machine displays great stupidity

Is Iran’s new drone really an Israeli aircraft?

Let’s go to the film…

ROFLMAO!!!

Hezbollah’s Mushroom Cloud – will the dominant media ever cover it?

The answer is definitely ‘no’ why would they expose their allies against Israel?

Christopher Hitchens recently went to a rally in the suburbs south of Beirut and found Hezbollah ratcheting up its belligerence. “A huge poster of a nuclear mushroom cloud surmounts the scene,” he wrote in the May issue of Vanity Fair, “with the inscription OH ZIONISTS, IF YOU WANT THIS TYPE OF WAR THEN SO BE IT!” Last week James Kirchick reported seeing the same thing at the same rally in City Journal. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Hezbollah has threatened nuclear war.

Hezbollah isn’t broadcasting this to the world. If Hitchens and Kirchick hadn’t written about it, few would know the mushroom-cloud banner even exists. It’s not so much a threat as it is a revelation of Hezbollah’s dark psyche. But perhaps Hezbollah’s not shouting “nuclear war” for all to hear means its threats are more dangerous than public taunts from the Iranian government. Empty threats and hyperbole are rife in the Middle East. Death threats are rarely carried out anywhere. Most assassins don’t announce their intentions. They kill their victims without warning. Whatever Hezbollah’s mushroom-cloud banner means, we know this much: intimations of nuclear war with Israel are now coming from Lebanon as well as Iran. The worst case scenario — a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv — might be slightly more likely than some of us thought.

via Michael J. Totten: Hezbollah’s Mushroom Cloud.

Just set us on fire, Mr. President

A golden television moment.

Bwah, hah, hah!!!! Hamas + Stingers = Hilarity

"Pull the trigger and away he goes after the Infidel war planes," said Achmed during a break between classes at the UN school.

Via The Jawa Report: Apparently Hamas Unaware that Stingers Don’t Fire on Friendly Aircraft

If the Palestinians would spend half the time, effort and money into improving their own living situation as they do fighting the evil JOOS and other infidels out there, they would not be the Ass-End-Of-The-Fourth-World laughing stock they are.

What a bunch of MORONS. Didn’t they know the only way to bring down infidel aircraft was with a surface-to-air-goose like the one used on the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson recently?

Quote of the Day

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.” – Robert Heinlein

Obama Fail: Iran

Obama’s naivete and ignorance of anything beyond community organizing is making our new administration look like the bunch of amateurs they are around the world.

In this video, it is clear the gaffs of the Obama administration are a poor sign of things to come. The list of mis-steps continues to grow.

Anyone who believes being the editor of a prestigious law review prepares you for anything in the real world is stupid. Anyone who believes organizing corrupt and partisan community groups like ACORN is preparation for dealing with the real world is really stupid. Additionally, anyone who thinks the very short and unimpressive stint in Chicago politics and no accomplishments in the US Senate who still has NO resume prepares a man to deal with the real world is also an huge idiot. Obama makes Bush look like Lincoln.

There are good suggestions out there for dealing with Iran and protecting its neighbors from the vocal and very real threats from the nut-job in Tehran. But I doubt Obama will even consider it. It would require him to grow a pair and stand up for this country against those who want us dead – something I doubt will ever happen in his lifetime.

ISM’er hurt while being ignorant, poor baby…

An American national was seriously injured Friday during a rally against the separation fence being built in the West Bank village of Naalin, apparently after being hit by a tear gas canister.

The International Solidarity Movement ISM identified the man injured as Tristan Anderson, 37, of California. He was rushed to the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer for medical treatment.

[...]

The army also said that some 400 left wing Israeli, Palestinian and foreign activists had arrived at the area while violating a closed military area order, and that some of them, who were veiled, had hurled stones at the security forces, who responded with crowd dispersal means.

via US national badly hurt in anti-fence protest

Watch out for those bulldozers too, kids. Oh and one more thing, you would not be treated the way you are if you did not treat others in similar fashion.