Obama: But that’s not the superhero I promised to be!

Oh, the handwringing! From the LA Times:  

If Ronald Reagan was [sic] the classic Teflon president, Barack Obama is made of Velcro.

Through two terms, Reagan eluded much of the responsibility for recession and foreign policy scandal. In less than two years, Obama has become ensnared in blame.

Cosmic irony, no?  That the President who blames his predecessor for absolutely everything has become the superhero he didn’t sign up to be: Velcro-Man.

The mission among the press and the lackeys (is there a difference?), how to de-velcro the POTUS:

Hoping to better insulate Obama, White House aides have sought to give other Cabinet officials a higher profile and additional public exposure. They are also crafting new ways to explain the president’s policies to a skeptical public.

But Obama remains the colossus of his administration — to a point where trouble anywhere in the world is often his to solve.

Obama lately has tried to rip off the Velcro veneer. In a revealing moment during the oil spill crisis, he reminded Americans that his powers aren’t “limitless.” He told residents in Grand Isle, La., that he is a flesh-and-blood president, not a comic-book superhero able to dive to the bottom of the sea and plug the hole.

“I can’t suck it up with a straw,” he said.

Ah, liberal acknowledgment of the problem’s history:

But as a candidate in 2008, he set sky-high expectations about what he could achieve and what government could accomplish.

Clinching the Democratic nomination two years ago, Obama described the moment as an epic breakthrough when “we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless” and “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Whoops!

More of the problem: 

But the Obama administration is about one man. Obama is the White House’s chief spokesman, policy pitchman, fundraiser and negotiator. No Cabinet secretary has emerged as an adequate surrogate. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is seen as a tepid public speaker; Energy Secretary Steven Chu is prone to long, wonky digressions and has rarely gone before the cameras during an oil spill crisis that he is working to end.

(Didn’t he pick his cabinet?)

So, more falls to Obama, reinforcing the Velcro effect: Everything sticks to him. He has opined on virtually everything in the hundreds of public statements he has made: nuclear arms treaties, basketball star LeBron James’ career plans; Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.

(He is incapable of keeping his mouth shut.  Case in point: the cops “acted stupidly.”)

Few audiences are off-limits. On Wednesday, he taped a spot on ABC’s “The View,” drawing a rebuke from Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, who deemed the appearance unworthy of the presidency during tough times.

(And this proves they still don’t get it.  You can’t have a president traipsing around to every talk show and NOT be Velcro-man.)

“Stylistically he creates some of those problems,” Eddie Mahe, a Republican political strategist, said in an interview. “His favorite pronoun is ‘I.‘ When you position yourself as being all things to all people, the ultimate controller and decision maker with the capacity to fix anything, you set yourself up to be blamed when it doesn’t get fixed or things happen.”

 A new White House strategy is to forgo talk of big policy changes that are easy to ridicule. Instead, aides want to market policies as more digestible pieces. So, rather than tout the healthcare package as a whole, advisors will talk about smaller parts that may be more appealing and understandable — such as barring insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.

Morph that message, anyway you can.  But you’re stuck with Velcro-Man.

(NB: When your favorite pronoun is “I,” you’re not the best campaigner for others.  Some have figured that out.)

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Ever so refreshing: What liberals really think of military service, as reflected by their actions

Know your enemy, right? Well, this administration makes it ever so easy, by telegraphing exactly what they think of those who serve.

How so?

By working to protect the voting rights of convicted felons before defending the right of military men and women overseas.

From the Washington Times, H/T: Pundette

Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang [how true] led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus.

Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the election. Yet, as former Justice Department lawyer Eric Eversole first reported in The Washington Times last week, the department seems to be encouraging states to apply for waivers so they won’t have to follow that law. More than 17,000 Americans serving overseas were denied the vote in 2008 – but, presumably because military personnel are thought to lean conservative, the liberal Obama administration is in no hurry to correct the situation.

The Justice Department is so unenthusiastic about military voting that its website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days. On the other hand, the Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section – 2,314 words – to advising felons how to regain voting privileges. 

My first thought is unpublishable as my husband has voted by absentee ballot due to deployment. 

My second: thank goodness these socialist goons are so transparent in their stupidity to broadcast their motives blatently.  Conservatives, gird your loins.  We have to fight back to preserve our rights. Senator Cornyn: thank you.

Quin Hillyer:

The time and effort required to compile all the information, and the obvious priority the Obamites made it, really show the highly politicized cast of mind of this administration. The section includes a state-by-state list of where felons can call or write in order to try to get their voting privileges back. Yet, I repeat, this should be NO business of the Justice Department. It has no statutory or constitutional role to play in helping felons regain voting privileges. But it DOES have a statutory requirement to help DoD ensure voting rights for the military, yet it can’t even be bothered, with an entire year to do it, to post even a simple link to the new law requiring that ballots be mailed to military personnel 45 days before an election.

[…]

Felons tend to vote for Democrats, like Barack Obama. The military tends to vote for Republicans. And Eric Holder’s Justice Department isn’t interested in justice, but in serving as a political arm of the White House and the Democratic Party. Hence the greater interest in helping felons vote than in ensuring that soldiers and sailors risking their lives for our country get a chance to exercise their rights of citizenship.

Obamacare map: “It’s actually worse than this”

K-Lo asks: Do you trust your government to run this?

In a word: no.

And how could that be? 

Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady says in a release that committee analysts actually couldn’t fit everything in: “This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the final bill.

S’wonderful.

(How many days until 2 November?)

PDF here in case you want to decipher the circles, squares, and crosses.   Looks like cancer spreading.

Various and Sundry

Hope:

The wave is about to hit the Democrats. The latest poll from Reuters-Ipsos: “Only 34 percent approved of Obama’s handling of the economy and jobs compared to 46 percent who deemed it unsatisfactory. This is a sharp decline from early 2009 shortly after he took office when over a half of those surveyed approved of Obama’s handling of the worst financial crisis in decades. … Republicans hold a 46-44 percent lead over Democrats when participants were asked which party they planned to support in November. And 72 percent of Republicans said they are certain to vote on November 2, compared to 49 percent of Democrats.”

Change:

Forget the economy, health care, even which party controls Congress. The most far-reaching effect of the 2010 midterm elections could be felt at the state level. By casting their ballots in dozens of gubernatorial and hundreds of legislative races, voters will decide whether Democrats or Republicans dominate the redrawing of state and federal political borders for the new decade — a process known as redistricting. And the results could be even more far-reaching for Democrats than the outcome of the midterm elections.

Transparency:

When Barack Obama signed the new financial-regulation reform bill into law, its supporters claimed it as a victory for transparency and accountability.  That may be true for Wall Street, although debatable, but it’s not true for government and the regulatory regime it enhanced.  The SEC now claims that the bill has given them an exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests, the very device by which citizens and media force transparency in the halls of power

Smart:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is continuing his push to privatize the state’s state-run liquor stores, a move his administration estimates could generate between $300 million and $500 million of up-front money for the state’s transportation needs.

“I don’t think selling alcohol is a core function of government,” he said on WTOP’s “Ask the Governor” program. “One of the reasons we don’t have enough money for construction is … we’re robbing the transportation trust fund, which is the construction money, and putting it into maintenance.”

Swoon:

[Chris] Christie has insisted on a pay freeze for school teachers and a requirement that they contribute to money to their health care plan. Just last week, he angered Democrats by vetoing a homebuyer tax credit bill and a women’s health and family planning measure [read: abortion] and  that would have cost the state $132 billion.

 

 

 

Why waste time on an organization that honors and promotes duty and honor?

Especially when you have none. 

From CNS via Memeorandum:

President Barack Obama, the honorary chairman of the Boy Scouts of America, will not speak in-person before the group on Wednesday at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, as part of the organization’s 100th anniversary celebration. However, the president is sending a videotaped message to the scouts for Wednesday, the same day he will be in Manhattan to tape an appearance for ABC TV’s talk show “The View.”

Bob Dries, chairman of national news and media at the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree – a gathering that happens every four years and attracts thousands of scouts from around the world – told CNSNews.com that the organization was told on Monday that the president had scheduling conflicts and would not be speaking in-person at the week-long event.

[…]

Obama’s three predecessors spoke at the event – George H. W. Bush in 1989 and Bill Clinton in 1998 in-person, and George W. Bush who spoke via video in 2001 when bad weather prevented him from traveling. George W. Bush did speak in-person at the 2005 Jamboree.
 
First Lady Nancy Reagan addressed the Jamboree in 1985, the first year someone from the White House had spoken there since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Michelle will be too busy frolicking in a 2900$ hotel room or checking out the breakfast buffet.

Jim Hoft:

Maybe they’ll call him “sexy” again?

Heh. 

Heck, who can blame Obama: the BSA crowd, unlike the uber-liberal Girl Scouts, isn’t exactly composed of Obami flag-wavers. Why do something if it won’t add to your shameless self-promotion?

Ah, life must be rough to settle for a 2900$ hotel room. Thirty of ’em.

The President’s that is.  He claims he’s not so far removed from the troubles of “average” Americans.  Via Gateway Pundit (via FoxNation)

President Obama says he can relate to the plight of Americans striving in the struggling economy to pay bills while saving for their kids’ education.

He says he and first lady Michelle Obama took a hit like everybody else when the economy nearly collapsed, telling ABC that a college fund for daughters Malia and Sasha has gone “up and down” with the stock market.

Obama says the first couple is “not that far removed from what most Americans are going through.” He tells the network “it was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there.”

Contrast that with Michelle’s latest in the endless vacation summer–no staycation for her!   From US News:

The Spanish press says a number of rooms have been reserved for the Obamas, though the Ritz spokeswoman wasn’t available to discuss the stay. From August 4-8, the hotel has just a few rooms left for $2,859 a night, but that includes a breakfast buffet.

She knows how to get a bargain, that Michelle.  Thank goodness for breakfast buffets!

And how many rooms does her highness need?

Michelle Obama has reserved about 30 rooms for herself and her daughter, their friends and bodyguards at a five-star hotel in Benahavis near Marbella, hotel sources said.

A question: hoow much does this cost taxpayers, the Secret Service detail’s flights, room, and board? 

A head’s up to the Obami, but “average Americans” have never stayed in a $2859 room–regardless of the breakfast buffet.

Doug Powers points out Michelle’s endless vacation will land her in Martha’s Vinyard next month.  He writes:

Last year, the president called on all Americans to buckle down, give up some things and share in the misery until we get through this financial mess. Can you imagine the scale of the vacations if the Obamas weren’t chipping in their share of sacrifice like the rest of us?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shoe my polo pony.

In all fairness to Colorado voters

of which I am now one, Tom Tancredo’s announcement today that he’ll run as a third-party candidate isn’t as much of a disaster as everyone says it is. 

If you had to choose between a plagiarist or a jerk-with-his-hand-in-the-money-pot in the GOP primary–neither of whom will withdraw from the race despite both having massive ethical problems–then the idea of ANY option other than Democrat is better than, well, a jerk as the Republican nominee. 

That said, I hope the Tancredo announcement forces the hand of the GOP to somehow dump the eventual candidate.  Don’t ask me how.  Just get rid of him.

Bootie Pop. Seriously. (In the WSJ of all places)

If “Booty Pop” panties are all the rage and the curvy Mad Men ladies are “something to be envied,” then maybe those of us on the not-so-stick-figure side will learn to appreciate our, um, naturally popped booties?

Just a thought.

So maybe there is hope after all

Doug Powers at MM: Young voters slowly abandoning Hope & Change.

He asks:

Could it finally be sinking in who exactly is going to be paying for all this alleged “free” stuff?

From the NY Post:

WASHINGTON — Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can” message are now saying “Maybe not” — and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House.

Obama is losing in a match-up against a generic Republican challenger by 37 percent to 34 percent among voters in the 18-34 age group, according to a stunning Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.

In March, voters in this group approved of Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent.

Ouch.

Powers:

This should give little comfort to conservatives, however. Unless the GOP fields worthy opponents, those disenchanted by the failure of rainbows, gumdrops and unicorns to materialize will have nowhere else to go but right back to the same people who continue to promise to deliver Shangri-La… eventually.

But the current drop in youth support isn’t merely due to younger voters finally figuring out that Obama and the Democrats are using their credit card. There’s also what I call “The Peggy Effect.”

Basically “The Peggy Effect” is this: Everybody who voted for Obama because of all the free stuff they’d be getting, such as the famed “Peggy the Moocher” (who was Obama’s freeloading answer to “Joe the Plumber”), have been running to their mailboxes for a year and a half now, and… pretty much nothing. No free mortgage; no free car; no free gas — hell, no free health care yet for that matter. It’s taking a toll on Obama’s approval ratings.

 And then there’s this via Allahpundit.  As he would say… Dude.

I needed to be in bed an hour ago tab dump

Ross Douthat, The Roots of White Anxiety.  Color me shocked that the NYT printed this. 

Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class.

This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications.

[…]

But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”

Via Diane Suffern in the Green Room, some historical perspective à la Newt on the slap in the face known as the 9/11 mosque:

The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites.  For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term.  It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.

Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to “symbolize interfaith cooperation” when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.  It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way.

I share Suffern’s sentiments regarding Newt, though. She writes:

It’s heartening to see two possible GOP presidential contenders take on this issue, even if the political jockeying does come wearyingly early in the election cycle.  I did find it curious that Gingrich peppered his argument with the term “elites,” as if being a former educator, historian, author, Speaker of the House and Beltway insider somehow excludes him?  Regardless, if the good Professor continues down this route, I just might forgive him for this and this.  Might.

Yikes: the Tax Tsunami headed our way. 

Heh: budget cuts in Newark so steep, no money for toilet paper.  (A tip from the Arab world: don’t shake their hands).

An inconvenient chakra: Al Gore’s march of the Masseuses

On a more serious note, pray for Petraeus.

House Democrats prove their jackassery.  That’s where that’ll get ya.  (Don’t let the door hit you on the way out).