They don't make Messiahs like they used to.

Democrat consultants Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell in The Washington Post calls for Obama to be a one-term President.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

The Return of Jimmy Carter

Ah, the late 70's. A time of appeasing our enemies and throwing our allies under the bus.

Good times, good times.

Obama is poised to kill European missile defense.

Terrific. All we got out of Carter was Iran for the next 30 years.

Great Moments in Diplomacy, a Continuing Series - Who painted Our Lady of Gaudelupe?

Yet, another gaffe by Secretary of State Clinton that would have been front page news and late night television fodder if it had involved the Bush administration.

Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion points out this story about Hillary Clinton's trip to Mexico:

I thought I’d wait to write this post until I saw mainstream media coverage of one particular aspect of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. And then, thousands of stories about the visit to Mexico later, I realized that the press wasn’t going to be covering it.

Which, assuming this story is true, says a lot about the media. Here’s how Catholic News Agency reported the most recent diplomatic gaffe:

During her recent visit to Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people,” after asking who painted the famous image.

You can read more about Guadalupe here, but Roman Catholics believe that the beautiful image was miraculously imprinted on the cloak of a 16th-century peasant.
It is Mexico’s most popular and important religious image and the basilica that houses it is the second-most popular Catholic shrine in the world.

Here are the details of the exchange:

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

Now, it’s one thing to not know what the Catholic Church teaches about Guadalupe. But it’s another for the State Department not to have briefed Clinton prior to her visit. Of course, those are political considerations.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Why was this story not deemed newsworthy? I’m sure some people would say that it’s just bias — that if, say, a Bush Administration official had said it, we’d be hearing all about it. I’m not sure. I suspect that it’s more likely we’re seeing the media’s ignorance of Mexico’s religious heritage and her most important religious picture.

The reader who sent this story in thought the faux pas was certainly worthy of at least a line or two in coverage of the visit. I agree.

This being Catholic News Agency, it’s also worth noting how the story ended:

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

You can read more mainstream media coverage of that award here. It doesn’t look like Sanger’s controversial views were deemed worthy of mention.

The Gaffe that wasn't

According to this Telegraph opinion column, Obama was joking rather than gaffing when he thanked himself.

No word on whether he was being "insensitive" when he told the St. Patrick's day guests not to get blindingly drunk.

Also, apparently the White House has taken to moving the teleprompter back as camouflage.

"Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter."

Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff compares Obama to Jimmy Carter... with respect to his ability to communicate (and hectoring narcissism):

You can see the fundamental mistake he’s making. Having been so successfully elected, he’s acting like people actually want to hear what he thinks. He’s the great earnest bore at the dinner party. Instead of singing for his supper, he’s just talking—and going on at length. The real job of making people part of the story you’re telling, of having them hang on your every word, of getting the tone and detail right, the hard job of holding a conversation, he ain’t doing.

And:

Well, shit, of course. The true secret of the power of language is in quickness. Barack Obama can’t keep up. He evidently needs too much preparation. And then there’s the organization. He’s undoubtedly got too many people debating what he should say. That’s the other secret of language: You’ve got to just go for it. Can’t think too much about it. It’s like hitting the ball. And then there’s knowing who you want to be—which is different than knowing who you are. You’re on the stage. You’re acting. You’ve got to make yourself believable, cleverly make yourself up as you go along.

This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble.

In other newsthe New York Time op-ed page goes after Obama en masse.

Everybody's getting in on the action.

The Telegraph lists - and provides videotape on - Obama and Biden's Top 10 Gaffes.

Peggy Noonan

From the WSJ:

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

Obama's Problems with Communications

From Politico.

Get to know your President better

5 Myths about President Obama:

I’ve concluded that much of the conventional wisdom about Obama is wrong. Here are five of the biggest misconceptions:

1. Obama is bold. Actually, he is overly cautious. It’s no coincidence the first bills he signed into law were the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, two populist favorites. Signing these bills was not an act of courage any more than attacking lobbyists or selecting Joe Biden as a running mate. In fact, Obama’s entire agenda is cautious (sometimes to a fault, in the case of his housing and banking bailouts). Are the numbers in his proposed budget eye-popping? Yes. But eye-popping budgets are well within the Democratic mainstream now.

2. Obama is a great communicator. Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing. He is not plain-spoken: He parses his language so much that a casual listener will miss important caveats. That’s in part why he uses teleprompters for routine policy statements: He chooses his words carefully, relying heavily on ill-defined terms like “deficit reduction” (which means tax increases, rather than actual “savings”) and “combat troops” (as opposed to “all troops in harm’s way”).

3. Obamaland is a team of rivals. Obama earned the label “No-Drama Obama” for a reason. His closest advisers — those who actually shape his thinking, strategy and policies — are loyal and, by all accounts, like-minded. Obviously, they regularly disagree with each other, as any group of smart individuals does. But reading the (many) profiles of Obama aides written since the election, it’s striking that there are no anecdotes of serious disputes inside Obamaland. Obama does try to bring political foes into the fold when it’s convenient, but his team is primarily made up of political friends.

4. Obama is smooth. Despite being deliberate, Obama is surprisingly gaffe-prone. Reporters on my e-mail lists last year know he consistently mispronounced, misnamed or altogether forgot where he was. (In one typical gaffe in Sioux Falls, S.D., he started his speech with an enthusiastic “Thank you, Sioux City!”) His geographic gaffes are not just at routine rallies but at major events, including the Democratic National Convention and his first address to Congress. Any politician occasionally misspeaks, but the frequency of Obama’s flubs is notable.

5. Obama has a good relationship with the media. Working with the hundreds of reporters who covered the Obama campaign last year, I was struck by how many of them would quietly complain about Obama’s borderline disdain for the press. Sometimes it is readily visible — like when he scolded a reporter for asking a question during a presidential visit to the White House briefing room. Other times it’s more passive, like long gaps between press conferences, or it’s reflected in his staff’s attitude.

The "Hopeychange" Presidency

According to Mark Steyn:

I have to say the first six weeks of the Age of the Hopeychange have surprised me. I expected it to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be so incompetent. Not because I had any expectations of President Obama's executive skills: As I said back in the fall re the comparisons with Governor Palin, Barack ain't run nuthin' but his mouth. This is the first real job he's had where you're supposed to show up at nine in the morning and make decisions.

According to VDH:

Obama's awkward corrective call to the NY Times that "Bush is the socialist, not me!" comes after claiming that the Brit protocol disaster was due to his weariness and the frenzy of the job. That claim comes after the White House orchestrated attack on Rush. Yet the problem for Obamians is not in the stars, but in themselves, mostly a result of that classically unfortunate combination of hubris and inexperience. The Obamians need to get a life and govern the country, rather than blaming their gaffes on Bush, Rush, life, etc. . . .

Here's the NYT article with the Obama phone interviews that blame Bush for being a socialist that started the thread.

Experience Matters

According to Steve Sailer:

Four months past the election, Obama’s basic problem with staffing is that he doesn’t know many people — not in the sense of having worked closely with them on a successful project so that he can tell who is effective and who is an empty suit. He’s not exactly Dwight Eisenhower, who came to office with a list in his head of the strengths and weaknesses as managers of hundreds of potential appointees. How many successful projects has Obama been part of other than his own self-advancement? The Chicago Annenberg Challenge? That didn’t do anything for test scores. Getting (some) asbestos out of a public housing project? Woo-hoo!

So, Obama has mostly been appointing four kinds of people: Chicagoans he knows, ex-Clintonites he read about in the newspapers during the 1990s, campaign aides, and random people who sound cool. He doesn’t know anything about economics or business, so his weaknesses at staffing Treasury are particularly glaring.

Interesting.

Rules for destroying the economy

Here they are.

I particularly like these:

5. Undermine the ability of those who create jobs by increasing their taxes so there’s less money available for investment.

6. While you’re at it, offer to spread the income around by raising taxes, in the process, making it clear to those who work hard, invest in their educations, take risks, save, and delay gratification that they will see their money go to those who do not do these things.

7. Encourage class warfare. Divide the populace and destroy cooperation, thus encouraging backlash and creating paralyzing polarization.

It's not just an economy that's being destroyed, it's a way of life!

What does it mean when only a liberal Obama supporter can explain that class warfare is bad for America?

It means that gutless Republicans have become whipped by the media and could take a few lessons in "manning up" from Jim Cramer.

Cramer responds to the Obama/media complex:

President Obama's team, unlike Bush's team, demonstrates a thinness of skin that shocks me. When I somewhat obviously and empirically judged that the populist Obama administration is exacerbating the crisis with its budget and policies, as evidenced by the incredible decline in the averages since his inauguration, I was met immediately with condescension and ridicule rather than constructive debate or even just benign dismissal. I said to myself, "What the heck? Are they really that blind to the Great Wealth Destruction they are causing with their decisions to demonize the bankers, raise taxes for the wealthy, advocate draconian cap-and-trade policies and upend the health care system? Do they really believe that only the rich own stocks? What do they think we have our retirement accounts in, CDs? Where did they think that the money saved for college went, our mattresses? Do they think the great middle class banks at the First National Bank of Sealy and only the wealthiest traffic in the Standard & Poor's 500?"

and

When Obama trounces both unemployment and house-price depreciation, he will have the power to enact anything he wants. But all the initiatives he wants to rush, like tax hikes, changes in health care, tinkering with the mortgage deduction -- good grief, right now in the midst of the worst housing downturn ever -- and the tough cap-and-trade rules, will derail any chance we have of turning this economy around. Instead, they put the Second Great Depression smack on the nation's table. The markets thought he could stop it; hence the giant relief rally when he was elected. But in fewer than 50 days of his ascendancy, the markets' hopes were totally dashed and the averages are now forecasting the worst decline since the Great Depression. As someone who listens to what the averages are screaming, I think they are accurately predicting the future.

and

(Oh, and memo to Bill Maher: Stop insulting my faux great-great-uncle Vlad Lenin. I am using him to dramatize the point of a failed nationalization and confiscation of the banks at the hands of the people. It is funny how the right is certainly very civil as my old friends and new allies as of last week, Fred Barnes and Sean Hannity, don't hold my left wing social view against me when they talk about my criticism of the president! I always love anyone from Fox on the team because they are fierce in their defense with much less gratuitous slamming.)

and

But if it stays ad hominem, we will all be betrayed and the train wreck will become inevitable.

Good luck with that last. It's worked for so long that it's become the way that the Left does policy.

Well of course he's tired; this is the longest he's ever had to work at a job.

Villainous Company points out that Obama's lame "we're so overwhelmed and tired" excuse for snubbing Great Britain goes back a long way. The Telegraph reports the wonderful news that Obama didn't intentionally insult our most important ally, he negligently snubbed England because he was tired and overwhelmed:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

Imagine that, Obama didn't understand "the sheer volume of business that crosses the President's desk"; proving that criticizing is easier than doing. But, then, why should we be surprised at the surprise of a guy who has never actually had to work at a job where he had any responsibility for showing up and working.

And this bit from the Telegraph article is really special:

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

Perhaps the official needs a nap before he wrecks the United States' relationship with its most loyal ally.

Remember when all those leftists did a "we're sorry World" video campaign after Bush was elected in 2004? Maybe we need a conservative "we're sorry Britain" campaign.

Back in May of 2007, Jim Geraghty at NRO's The Campaign Spot was writing about our affirmative action president:

Sundry Commentary on The Obama "Tired" Excuse

Two comments from my co-bloggers last night...

"You know, really soon, Obama's excuse that he was tired... is going to get tired."

"Do you get the feeling that if Obama becomes president, we're going to need somebody to handle the night shift? Picture it, somebody awakens him at 2 a.m. with some foreign crisis and by dawn we've accidently invaded Paraguay."

Meanwhile, over on Powerline, Paul Mirengoff and John Hinderaker start asking inconvenient questions for Obama, like, "Hey, even if he was tired, did he really think that a tornado killed ten thousand people? Or that an entire country's cars could get 45 miles per gallon?"

If this guy doesn't toughen up, these are going to be an amusing and destructive four years.

Can you imagine Bush or McCain whining about not getting enough rest?

Two reasons why this is so very bad

According to NRO:

Mark (Steyn), your point below is well-taken, as always. But perhaps today is not the day we give her the benefit of the doubt. Consider this AP story from a mere two hours ago:

US gesture lost in Russian translation

GENEVA (AP) — Call it a goodwill gesture lost in translation.

With smiles all around, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gathered with aides Friday for talks on a range of issues, including the fight against terrorism, Iran's nuclear ambitions, missile defense and other topics.

With a media gaggle looking on, Clinton handed Lavrov a green box tied with a green bow. He opened it to reveal a "reset button," a reminder of Vice President Joe Biden's recent remark that the Obama administration hopes to reset U.S. relations with Moscow.

Trouble was, the Russian-language label the Americans put on the button had the wrong word. Before she realized the mistake, Clinton assured Lavrov, "We worked hard to get it right."

"You got it wrong," Lavrov responded with a smile. He said the word the Americans chose — "peregruzka" — meant "overloaded" or "overcharged" rather than "reset."

While the State Department is obviously to blame here, I just love that even inanimate objects associated with Joe Biden make gaffes.

Obviously, it makes our nation look stupid in the world.

More importantly, it was Kennedy's slamming of the Eisenhower administration to Kruschev, according to Donald Kagan, that allowed Kruschev to assess Kennedy as an empty suit - because he couldn't imagine anyone with any class taking such a shot at a prior leader - which in turn encouraged Kruscheve to test Kennedy in Cuba.

It's not like anything like that could happen now.

More Great Moments Update;

From NRO's Media Blog:

More funnies from her European tour:

Tiredness appeared to show Friday when she answered questions in front of 500 young Europeans at the European Parliament, where she was the highest-ranking U.S. visitor since the late President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

A veteran politician, Clinton compared the complex European political environment to that of the two-party U.S. system, before adding:

"I have never understood multiparty democracy.

"It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy."

The remark provoked much headshaking in the parliament of a bloc that likes to trace back its democratic tradition thousands of years to the days of classical Greece.

One working lunch later with EU leaders, Clinton raised more eyebrows when she referred to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who stood beside her, as "High Representative Solano."

She also dubbed European Commission External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner as "Benito."

Imagine if President Bush had done this? Media madness would have ensued.

Alienate our allies, empower our enemies

U.S. will invite Iran to participate in an international conference on stabilizing Afghanistan.

Because I'm sure that a pro-Western, democratic, tolerant Afghanistan is what Iran is all about.

This "hope and change" thing is working out wonderfully.

The end of the "special relationship" with England

Along with other areas that Obama's "hope and change" are looking fair to screw up, count the death of the historic relationship between Britain and the USA. According to this Telegraph article:

On US radio's Garrison show today, I was asked for my reaction as a true born Englishman to President Obama's double insult - first the sending back of the Winston Churchill bust, then his snub to Gordon Brown. "Tough one. Really tough one," I said, torn - as most of surely are - between delight at seeing Brown roundly humiliated, and dismay at having the special relationship so peremptorily, cruelly and bafflingly ruptured.

Iain Martin is quite right here: no matter how utterly rubbish we have become as a nation in the Blair/Brown years, Britain's friendship is something Obama will come to regret having dispensed with so lightly. This was not the act of a global statesman, but of a hormonal teenager dismissing her bestest of best BFs for no other reason than that she felt like it and she can, so there.

Great way of making friends.

There's also this:

What was the guy thinking? In researching my new book Welcome to Obamaland, I discovered that Obama's judgment is pretty dreadful - but this? My favourite theory so far - suggested by presenter Greg Garrison - was that it was a move calculated to please his Lady Macbeth. At the moment in Britain, we're still in the "Doesn't she look fabulous in a designer frock" stage of understanding of Michelle Obama. Gradually, though, we'll begin to realise that she is every bit the terrifying executive's wife that Hillary Clinton was. Or, shudder, Cherie Blair.

We may just LURVE Michelle's fashion sense. But Michelle doesn't reciprocate our affection, one bit. Her broad-brush view of history associates Brits with the wicked white global hegemony responsible for the slave trade. Never mind that a white, Tory Englishman - William Wilberforce - brought the slave trade to an end. Judging by her record, Michelle does not make room for such subtle nuance.

Consider her notorious statement that: "For the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country." Consider her (till-recently suppressed) Princeton thesis, "Princeton Educated Blacks And The Black Community."

In it she writes: "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

Here we see that she has mastered the authentic voice of grievance culture. She also - the thesis was written in 1985 - pre-empts the Macpherson report's ludicrous, catch-all definition of racism: "A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person." No matter how hard young Michelle's white undergraduate contemporaries try to be nice, it's not their behaviour that counts, but how Michelle feels.

Why shouldn't the Obamas not see the world through the carefully constructed filter that they've spent a lifetime living behind?

Cramer responds to White House

Here's the response:

Now some, including Rush Limbaugh, would say I am on another enemies list: that of the White House. Limbaugh says there are only a handful of us on it, and if I am on it for defending all of the shareholders out there, then I am in good company. Limbaugh -- whom I do not know personally, but having been in radio myself, know professionally as a genius of the medium -- says, "They're going to shut Cramer up pretty soon, too, but he'll go down with a fight."

And:

But Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He's done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.

We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.

And:

Which leads me to the true irony of not being political: I don't like talking politics. It is personal, but some things are a matter of public record, including my substantial six figure donations to the Democratic Party before I was no longer allowed to contribute by contractual agreement. I regard two Democratic governors as my friends, and helped back one of them in a major financial way and spoke and campaigned directly for the other.

I also made it clear in a New York magazine article that I favored Obama over McCain because I thought Obama to be a middle-of-the-road Democrat, exactly the kind I have supported all my adult life, although I will admit to being far more left-wing during my teenage years and early 20s.

And:

So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don't want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That's what I see now.

If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists -- tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.

Kind of makes you long for the days when dissent was patriotic.

Being the fruit of the vine which is Obama

Can you imagine Bush/a Republican getting away/doing this?

If you liked "Chairman Mao's Little Red Book", you will love "President Barry's Little Blue Book".



More self-indulgence by the Liberal Fascist left from the History Company's publication of a colection of Obama quotes. The product description - with its tacit assumption that people in the New York publishing industry think everyone thinks this way because everyone they know thinks this way - is over the top:

Printed in a size that easily fits into pocket or purse, this book is an anthology of quotations borrowed from Barack Obama's speeches and writings. POCKET OBAMA serves as a reminder of the amazing power of oratory and the remarkable ability of this man to move people with his words. His superb and captivating oratory style has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and this historic collection presents words that catapulted his remarkable rise to the American Presidency. It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.

*Sheesh*

The highest form of patriotism is no longer dissent; it's now conformity and abiding by the "unofficial requirement of every citizen" to think alike.

40 years of rule by the philosopher kings of the courts have definitely sapped the democratic core of the left.

Parody Update: Steven Sailer sees this as an obvious parody.