Bloodthirsty Liberal

What a Bow Wow:

President Obama welcomed Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the White House with words that have inspired snickers in New Delhi:

“Yours is the first official state visit of my presidency, its fitting that you and India be so recognised,” 48-year-old Obama told the 77-year-old Indian leader.

The general reaction in India has been: Who the heck does this guy think he is? Note to the Great Diplomat: When you do a head of state an honor, you don’t remind him, in public, of the fact that you have done him an honor, particularly in self-aggrandizing terms of this sort.

Come on, shorty, one little bow. You know you want to. I practically pitched forward ass over teakettle to the little Asian dude, and you won’t show a brother some love? What’s up with that?

Obama reminds me of King Lear asking his three daughters to out-flatter each other in their professions of love for him. Katie Couric is definitely Goneril; Chris Matthews is deliciously right for Regan (get it?); and we stand apart as Cordelia, saying “nothing.”

Oh man, how lucky am I?

I forgot to post this earlier, and still got to it before Aunt Agatha. Sorry, Aggie, but you snooze, you lose:

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends’’ that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.’’ He referred to “tyranny,’’ but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words “Soviet Union’’ or “communism,’’ for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Few would have foreseen,’’ declared the president, “that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.’’

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for “Ich bin ein Berliner,’’ still less another “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’’ But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn’t be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made “destiny’’ of his own rise to power.

I don’t know if it’s valid, but I have a theory about left-wing, whack-job parts of the country producing a few (very few) of the best conservative columnists and broadcasters. This was the Boston Glob’s Jeff Jacoby, the lone conservative voice at the paper—but such a voice. We have a couple of local radio hosts—Michael Graham and Howie Carr come to mind—who are also this good. Maybe it’s because they have no other political outlet (public office?—hah!). Maybe it’s because they have nothing to lose.

But if you think calling Barack Hussein Obama narcissistic and egotistical in the people’s republic of Massachusetts is going to endear him to the pony-tailed, four-eyed, Birkenstocked, bearded, Prius-drivers in Cambridge (and that’s just the women), you got another think coming.

Remember when Al Franken was funny? No? Well, neither do I, but he used to try. Way, way back when on SNL he declared the “me decade” of the 1970s had passed, and it was time to observe the “Al Franken decade” of the 1980s. It was sort of amusing, once. Less so every time he did it again and again.

Anyway, I think that’s what Obama is doing: using Al Franken’s material. The first time it was farce; this time it’s tragedy.

It wasn’t just Keith Olbermann who couldn’t bring himslef to watch the Tuesday Night Massacre on the news stations:

MSNBC boasted that on election night they would present a “special live edition of Countdown” at 10:00 pm. But with bad news for the Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a funny thing happened on the way to the bonus Hour of Spin. Keith wasn’t there!

…

Keith had obviously left the building. But why? Where in the world was Keith Olbermann?

Not too hard to figure out. He was watching something else:

During the 10AM ET hour of America’s Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: “Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.”

On Tuesday night the White House had worked to downplay the Democratic gubernatorial defeats by claiming the President did not watch the election returns. Apparently Gibbs thought it would look better if the commander in chief was watching a self-indulgent fawning documentary about himself.

But wait, it gets better:

Interestingly, Obama apparently previewed the HBO special a few days earlier, as Gibbs himself explained to the blog Talking Points Memo: “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama has already seen ‘By the People’…Gibbs told TPMDC Obama’s review: ‘Thumbs up!’”

He preferred to watch a repeat of a documentary about himself rather than watch democracy in action.

Who is this guy, Kim Jong Il?

Does it even occur to him that his swollen narcissism is a blemish on his political visage? Can’t he even fake sincerity?

I have to laugh, because it’s so funny, but it’s a nervous laughter. He’s just so weird.

CORRECTION

Not exactly, BTL. It didn’t happen quite that way. See corrected version of events here, and BTL apology here.

The president can drop everything and fly to Copenhagen to shill for Chicago to host the Olympics (and get royally pwned in the process). He can go to Germany to give a speech during the campaign (styrofoam columns stuffed into the overhead bin). He can close down Greenwich Village to go on date night with Michelle.

But he can’t commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall?

US President Barack Obama has shelved his plans to attend festivities marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will reportedly take his place at the Nov. 9 celebrations.

…

Berlin is going all out for the anniversary, with such luminaries as Kofi Annan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa expected to be in attendance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing hard to complete ongoing coalition negotiations soon so that her government is fully formed in time for the festivities.

Strictly B-list talent: has-beens, wannabes, and no-hopers. I wouldn’t show either.

Honestly, it’s disgraceful. Obama was all hot to use the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop, but now he can’t be bothered to pay his respects to that extraordinary moment of freedom twenty years ago. I suspect it’s because the Wall is associated with another president—it was his prize conquest—and this one doesn’t like to share the spotlight. Or am I being uncharitable?

I’ve never won a Nobel Prize in any field (though I did get Honorable Mention in the 5th grade science fair for a barometer made out of a mayonnaise jar, a balloon, and a straw). But I’m just wondering where all this peace is for which President Obama is supposedly responsible.

He’s devoted his limited interest in foreign affairs to only a few parts of the world, and it would be illuminating to see how he’s doing.

Afghanistan?

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution extending the mandate of NATO-led military forces in Afghanistan for a year, hours after a deadly bombing near the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

The suicide car bomb attack on Thursday left at least 17 people dead, most of them civilians, and 63 wounded.

We’ll give him a (Khyber) pass on A-stan. It’s a pit, and he says he’s thinking it over.

What about Pakistan? He said he wanted to take the war to them. How’d that empty threat work out?

A suicide car bomb in a bustling market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killed at least 49 people Friday, a government official said.

The explosion injured 135 people, said Syed Zahir Shah, health minister for Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

A moving car carrying 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives detonated about noon, according to a bomb disposal squad.

It was the deadliest suicide attack ever in Peshawar, said Anis Khan, a government official.

S**t.

How about that extended hand toward Iran?

The first death sentence for participation in Iran’s post election protests was handed down on Monday, an Iranian reformist website has reported.

Mowcamp, one of the many Farsi-language sites relied on by opposition supporters to spread news, reported that the accused, Mohammed Reza Ali-Zamani, had been informed of the verdict on Monday after the conclusion of his trial. The website gave no source for its report, which could not be independently verified.

The website reported that Mr Ali-Zamani “was transferred on Monday from Evin prison ward 209 to Revolutionary Court number 15, presided over by Justice Salabati and the execution verdict was communicated to him.” Evin is the name of Tehran’s most infamous prison, where regime opponents have been imprisoned since the reign of the Shah.

Oh. Well, it can’t be all that bad:

“They took us and they put a noose around my neck in a way that I was forced to stand on my tiptoes, unable to breathe,” Sharifi said. “Somebody was constantly telling us … ‘You have received the oral sentence to be hanged, we are just waiting for the written order.’”

“There was the stink of piss and blood. It smelled terrible,” Sharifi recalled. “I was beaten so much I didn’t have any energy left to cry.”

On the fourth day of his detention, during one of these mock executions, Sharifi said he finally snapped.

“I said, if you want to kill us, go ahead. Why do you play such games with us? And the response was a kick in my stomach that made me fall.”

Sharifi said his captors kicked him repeatedly in the stomach until he started vomiting blood. He showed a pink scar on his belly from a previous car accident that he said was torn open by the blows.

“Then the guy told someone else, ‘Take him and get him pregnant,’” Sharifi said, his voice cracking with emotion. “They tied my hands to the wall and tied my legs, and then did that thing to me. While doing it, he was telling me, “You, who cannot even defend your you-know-what, you wanted to conduct a revolution?”

Sharifi said he blacked out during the rape and woke up later, handcuffed to a hospital bed. A day later, he said, his captors dumped him, blindfolded, on the side of a highway.

Okay, let’s get serious. Resolving the Israeli/Arab conflict has been his signature initiative, and things couldn’t be going better there, right?

“We say clearly and honestly and declare that the entire Palestinian territory is a possession of the Palestinian people. It belongs to them and to the entire Ummah. The Zionists own nothing and have no rights in this land.

…

“The Holy Koran talks a lot about the people of ‘Israel’ and the prophets of these people - not only the Koran talks about them but so do the other holy books, especially the Torah. Based on the Koran and Islam, we accept that Allah, may He be praised and extolled, promised to Abraham that the Holy Land would be populated with his descendents. We do not deny this: it appears in our Koranic texts…

“However, Abraham’s seed are not Jews nor Zionists - either as a political or religious stream, or as a tribe or a race. […] As for the criminal and murderous limb of Abraham’s progeny, who killed the prophets, spread corruption in the land, and committed atrocities and sins… these were not given any promises to start with.

…

“[W]e declare our consistent unalterable principles:

“First: Historic Palestine, from the sea to the river belongs to the people of Palestine and to the whole nation.

…

“Third: the ‘Israeli’ entity currently existing on the land of Palestine is a usurper and occupation entity, aggressive, cancerous, illegitimate, and illegal presence.

…

“[We] will never recognize ‘Israel.’ We will not work with ‘Israel.’ We will not normalize ties with ‘Israel.’ We will not surrender to ‘Israel.’ We will not accept ‘Israel’ even if the whole world recognizes it. Our faith, belief, and declaration will remain unchanged, that ‘Israel’ is an illegal presence [and] a cancerous gland, and must be wiped out of existence.”

Strike four.

What exactly did they see in the guy? Shall we ask them?

The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

…

His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

What values and attitudes? Should we ask the Darfurians about values, the Burmese junta about attitudes? China hasn’t met an ethnic minority it didn’t treat like dog crap (which is albeit a delicacy among some of them). China and Russia together have scuttled every attempt to bring Sudan and Iran to heel. The “values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population” are better expressed by what happened to the Iranian dissident who couldn’t even defend his “you-know-what” than by anything Obama stands for. It’s Hugo Chavez’s world, we just live here.

And the comment about nuclear weapons can’t be serious. That’s a joke, right? The whole thing’s a joke. Come on. They got to be s**tting us. I deserve a MacArthur before he deserves a Nobel.

[See here for MacArthur nominating process. ]

It occurs to me that the obsessive drive for health care reform by President Obama (and the Democrats) is just another manifestation of his (and their) displaced Messiah complex

A new Wall Street Journal poll found 41 percent of respondents opposed to President Obama’s proposals and 39 percent in favor (the rest were undecided). The underlying driver is politicians’ psychological quest for glory.

“My colleagues, this is our opportunity to make history,” implored Chairman Max Baucus as the Senate Finance Committee last week opened consideration of his bill. Politicians, in their most self-important moments, see themselves as instruments of national destiny. They yearn to be remembered as the architects and agents of great social and economic transformations. They want to be at the signing ceremony; they want a pen.

Ordinary Americans are rightly suspicious of this exercise in collective ego gratification, which has gripped Obama and many of his congressional allies. Even when the goals are worthy — as they are here — the temptation to exaggerate, simplify and sugarcoat often proves irresistible. Baucus’ promotion of his handiwork is a case in point.

“They want a pen”: that puts it perfectly.

And if you haven’t read Sally Pipes on this fiasco, you don’t know what you’re talking about, much less thinking.

These guys look at the New Deal and the Great Society as times when Titans walked the earth—when the only thing titanic about them was the expansion of government. Obama, Baucus, et al have put on Daddy’s shoes and hat and are walking around thinking they’re grown up.

How did we ever even breathe before Barack Obama?

That’s what these people want to know:

*Moderator*
Ramesh_Ponnuru

“So for those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months.” That’s from President Obama’s speech to the U.N. yesterday. Has he ever uttered a more revealing sentence? Could his speechwriters turn down the administration’s self-love just a notch?

kcrosson
Ramesh, I’m afraid this one goes up to eleven.

…

Melly1
What else was he supposed to reach for here? The abolition of slavery through force? The liberation of Europe? The notion that all men are created equal? The nation’s eternal struggle to match our conduct with that precious ideal?

These are just a few that I thought of while munching on a sandwich at my desk. Clearly none are the equal of “the concrete actions” taken by the Obama administration in “just nine months.”

I just worry that as our own Narcissus is so entranced by his own reflection in the pond of the media that he is going to take us all down with him.

…

indyarland
Let’s see. In the last 9 months we have abandoned Israel, abandoned our allies in eastern Europe, ignored Iranians dying in the streets, interfered in the internal politics of the Honduras, decapitated our antiterrorism efforts, insulted our (formerly)strongest ally…. I could go on.

…

tobing
It’s going to take a strong grownup to clean up after this Gen-X, self-absorbed clown.

…

DavidJJD
Please do not insult my generation by lumping Mr. Obama in with it. He’s a trailing edge Boomer and exhibits all the worst traits from THAT generation.

Fair enough, he’s ours. And don’t we know a lot more like him? Maybe he does represent America. He certainly represents a lot of my friends and family.

But talk about believing your press clippings! If he had a daddy, his daddy would shrink that big head of his.

You just don’t understand. He means us well. He wants everybody to be equal, he wants to spread the wealth around. He brings us together. Can’t you see that?

Maybe I didn’t before, but now I do. It’s so clear. After that blue pill that someone gave me (or was it a red one?), it’s now so simple.

Besides, I’ll do anything Demi Moore tells me to if she tosses her hair the right way.

Here’s how I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama:

* Reduce my carbon footprint on line by using shorter words to describe Him—four letters, no more, no less.

* Send the maximum amount I can afford to every Republican candidate here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I’ll stimulate the economy and put people to work. The president can take credit for the jobs created in the coming Republican landslide.

* Tell everyone I can about the character of the people he’s hired to run the country. If the Times, Post, NBC, etc. ad nausem won’t report on Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Ezekiel Emanuel, et al ad nausem, President Obama can count on me to shout the truth from the highest server.

* Sell Israel down the river. If living eight to a room was good enough for the Jews of Warsaw, it should be good enough for the Jews of Jerusalem. Next, they’ll want a pool. Enough.

* Go into debt until my eyeballs bleed. Whither he goest, I will follow. Besides, if I owe you five times my annual income, which one of us is up s**t creek?

I’m prepared to do this and more for my President.

As long as Demi asks me in her special way that lets me know she’s talking to me alone.

A reader sent us a link to this interview on Israeli radio with an expert on narcissistic personality disorder.

He thinks President Obama is a walking, talking (oy, such talking!) exemplar of the affliction, and he overcame my skepticism.

You’ll need a little time (fast forward through the intro if you can), and you may arch an eyebrow when the “expert” claims to be one by virtue of having been diagnosed with the disorder himself—but when he started talking about Obama’s body language, speech patterns, and inflated sense of self (after moderate accomplishments), he started to talk me around. He even tied Obama’s tumultuous childhood and adolescence into the package.

Not required listening, but interesting nevertheless.

We can’t all be as smart as Andrea Mitchell:

Andrea Mitchell has suggested that the problem Pres. Obama is facing in selling his health care plan to Americans who already have coverage is that people “may not know what’s good for them.”

Mitchell made her condescending comment on today’s Morning Joe.

You’ve got 47% of the people in our NBC/Wall Street Journal opinion poll who have health insurance who don’t like what the president is doing. The problem he’s got — 47% of the people who’ve got coverage don’t want change. They don’t like what they’re hearing. Now, they may not know what’s good for them, but the problem is that he always knew he was going to have to persuade people with insurance, that’s the largest number, not the people without insurance, for expanded coverage. So they’ve got a real problem.

Condescension seems to be in the MSNBC air. Yesterday, we noted Chris Matthews, surprised that Sgt. James Crowley could handle a press conference, calling him “our Susan Boyle.”

Well, you can’t expect President Obama to bother with the small details. He’s got other people for that.