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Sorry it took me so long to post, but this is yet another great interview from The Notes proprietor D.R. Tucker.

Shrewd observers of the political scene will find nothing surprising in the following statement: Barack Obama (and liberals by extension), is not qualified to execute the duties required of a United States president. Specifically, he is weak and naive and  steeped in anti-American agitprop (as is the base of the Democrat party). He has never been held accountable for the decisions he has made or failed to make as the case may be. He has escaped accountability for failing to produce a  stamped, long form birth certificate, his affiliation with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, his involvement with the financial meltdown (Freddie,Fannie), William Ayers, Rhashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright, et al. This propensity to avoid accountability and even worse, to blame his mistakes on others has not escaped the notice of the blogosphere. In fact, the word Obama has now been rendered a verb. Courtesy of the folks at Visual Thesaurus, and quoting from the blog Japan from the Inside Out:

obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think “Yes we can, Yes we can,” and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).

To drive the point home, here are two real life examples of “obamu” or the tendency to dither. First, from John Bolton:

Obama is no Harry Truman. At best, he is reprising Jimmy Carter. At worst, the real precedent may be Ethelred the Unready, the turn-of the-first-millennium Anglo-Saxon king whose reputation for indecisiveness and his unsuccessful paying of Danegeld — literally, “Danish tax” — to buy off Viking raiders made him history’s paradigmatic weak leader.

Beyond the disquiet (or outrage for some) prompted by the president’s propensity to apologize for his country’s pre-Obama history, Americans increasingly sense that his administration is drifting from one foreign policy mistake to another. Worse, the current is growing swifter, and the threats more pronounced, even as the administration tries to turn its face away from the world and toward its domestic priorities. Foreign observers, friend and foe alike, sense the same aimlessness and drift. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had to remind Obama at a Sept. 24 U.N. Security Council meeting that “we live in the real world, not a virtual one.”

Next up: James Taranto of Wall Street Journal fame: (the Taranto podcast is here.)

During the presidential campaign, Obama’s opponents mocked him for frequently voting “present” on difficult questions that came before the Illinois Senate. This is even worse. The commander in chief is absent without leave.

And lastly, Daniel Henninnger on Obama’s Nobel Decadence

Mr. Obama is at a crossroads in his presidency. As George W. Bush departed the White House, he said his successor would one day arrive at the need to make a decision that made clear the reality of being the American president. That moment has arrived. It is the pending troop-deployment for Afghanistan, a very hard decision.

After that, Mr. Obama will go to Oslo Dec. 10 to receive the Prize itself. That will occur in the middle of the Dec. 7-18 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, whose goal is among the explicit reasons why Mr. Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Between Afghanistan and Oslo, we’re going to get some clarity about the Obama presidency.

Perhaps the most intriguing onlooker to this education is European Nicolas Sarkozy. On his good days, France’s president seems aware of the political and economic decay he has inherited. So it was striking at the United Nations last month when Mr. Sarkozy said that Mr. Obama “dreams of a world without nuclear arms.” Then, describing Iran’s nuclear threat, he said, “At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions.”

By “us” he means that the U.S. must lead. In the West, only the U.S. president can still make decisions based on hard facts rather than recede into soft moralism. The day that is no longer true, the U.S. will finally deserve a decadent Nobel.

The ramifications of a weak and naive U.S. commander chief are too chilling to ponder. May God give him the resolve necessary to do the job properly.

After reading another scathing piece on Democrat/Obama incompetence, why is Paglia still supportive of Obama or Democrats in general. She respects town halls, talk radio, and the sovereignty of the individual. Moreover, she is distrustful of “the state” and critical of the media, intellectuals, academics and upper middle class hypocrisy:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

Again I ask you, why is Camille Paglia a Democrat? Why does she still support Obama?

The occasion of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s passing is notable on several levels. He was a dysfunctional man born into a dysfunctional family. His personal and professional conduct were not infrequently boorish and uncivilized, the stuff of ancient Roman legend. Perpetually and repeatedly lauded by “women’s groups” as woman’s best friend, the reality is that he often treated the “fairer sex” as little more than an object – something to be scraped off the bottom of one’s shoe. His political ideology, similarly dysfunctional, has served to further emasculate the American body politic and its ethos of personal responsibility and self-reliance. Nothwistanding these and other unsavory facts, it would be inappropriate to ignore the Senator’s virtues. By virtually all accounts, he was a devoted surrogate father to the children of both of his slain brothers, a daunting task under the best of circumstances. Additionally, it is generally acknowledged that he was attentive and compassionate in his support of the families of America’s war dead. There is however, one area of his public career that he executed flawlessly and that involves the matter of constituent service, for which the Senator was without peer. Consider the remarks of Kennedy’s fellow Bay State Senator:

“Teddy took this very seriously, even though he had so much fun and made people feel that he didn’t always take it that seriously,” Kerry says. “He set a real example for phone calls and contacts and follow-ups and that’s what you need to do.” John F. Kerry

Widely acknowledged for his fanatical devotion to the unglamorous work of returning phone calls from those needing a hand, the awkward question now arises: Who will Bay Staters turn to now? It is an open secret that John F. Kerry is Kennedy’s polar opposite in matters relating to nitty gritty outreach. Consider the following observations of former Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara:

If Charlie Murphy needs help in Washington, the state representative from Burlington calls congressman John Tierney. Lexington Representative Jay Kaufman calls congressman Edward J. Markey. Cambridge City Councilor Ken Reeves takes his troubles straight to the office of Massachusetts’ senior senator, Edward M. Kennedy.

The man none of them call on Capitol Hill is Senator John F. Kerry, the state’s Democratic presidential hopeful. “Why bother? You’d be lucky to have anyone on his staff call you back,” says Murphy, who traveled with a group of Massachusetts elected officials to New Hampshire yesterday to campaign for Howard Dean. Eileen McNamara – Kerry’s style a turn off.

The dirty little secret (now out in the open in the wake of Kennedy’s passing): Massachusetts has had only one functioning, engaged Senator for the past 25 years and it has not been John Kerry. Where Kennedy was a workhorse, Kerry has been little more than a show horse, a man whose reach routinely exceeds his grasp, whose idea of outreach is flinging himself in front of the nearest television camera. Perhaps he will change; stranger things have happened. But he has a long way to go to change the slacker’s reputation he has so painstakingly earned. Unless and until this transformation occurs, Massachusetts no longer has a senior senator, despite assertions to the contrary.

Here’s another shot across the bow of freedom into the waiting arms of tyranny. First an excerpt, then a link to the story courtesy of Declan McCullah of CNET News. Remember: much mischief is made in the throes of “crisis”. The Founders realized this and provided for a Constitution, a Bill of Rights and divided, co-equal branches of government to limit the concentration of power and its inevitable abuse of minority (individual) rights and liberties.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Full text of story is here.

The Wall St. Journal is MUST reading for those who want the rest of the story (i.e. those who suspect the so-called main stream media are less than faithful to the journalistic credo of fair, balanced coverage.) The main topic is of course health care. However the real issue is the opinions, attitudes, assumptions and life experiences of the President and his minions (main stream press/Linda Douglass, Mark Halperin included).

William McGurn leads off the discussion, excerpts of which follow.

When Mr. Obama first proposed his overhaul, he justified it on the grounds that it would bring costs down. Now the Congressional Budget Office says costs are likely to go up. So what does the president do? He calls the CBO director onto the Oval Office carpet—a virtually unprecedented White House intrusion into a nonpartisan congressional institution.

“President Obama says that both sides agree we need to lower costs, promote choice and provide coverage for every American,” says Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a free-market health-care think tank. “But he never confronts the simple fact that the measures he’s supporting achieve none of those goals. Instead of debating, the White House attacks anyone who raises a question.”

Not to be outdone: Dorothy Rabinowitz. 

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

The modern-day Democrat party has been hijacked by fanatics: anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-free speech. Thankfully, the debate over “health care” has further exposed this reality to increasing numbers of Americans. Let the exposure continue.

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Leahy accuses GOP of playing race card vis-a-vis Sonia Sotomayor.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy accused Republicans Sunday of playing the race card on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

“I hope we don’t go back to the day when we used to have African-Americans up for confirmation and say yes, but you belong to the NAACP so we’re really suspicious of you,” said Leahy. “Come on, stop the racial politics. …”

Indeed Senator Leahy. Today’s Democrats have highly selective memories when it comes to accusing others of racism. Apparently the disrespectful treatment they accorded Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown and other Republican judicial nominees doesn’t count as racism. Consider the treatment accorded Janice Rogers Brown during her Senate confirmation hearings, as recounted by National Review’s Byron York:

Normally, a judicial confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee — even one that promises to be contentious — starts out with a few niceties. A senator from the nominee’s home state says good things about him or her, the chairman asks the nominee’s family to stand and be recognized, a few compliments are spread around — that sort of thing. Then the bloodletting gets under way.

That’s the way it’s done normally. But it was not how it was done Wednesday, at the hearing for Janice Rogers Brown, a nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. First of all, even though Brown lives in California — she is a justice on the state supreme court — neither of her senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, chose to say anything on Brown’s behalf. With no senatorial courtesies to get things started, both sides dispensed with the pleasantries. The fighting began literally in the first few seconds of the hearing.

Senator Patrick Leahy, please be advised of the following: The Democrat Party has a long and disgraceful history regarding race and racism in this country. The Democrat Party is the party of slavery, segregation, the Black Codes, lynching, Jim Crow, water hoses and attack dogs (Bull Connor), Orville Faubus, George Wallace, and Robert Byrd, not to mention inferior schools (government operated by Democrats), and anti-family public policy (welfare). Senator Leahy and his party are on notice: stop using racial language to deflect criticism of its increasingly anti-American policy stances. Racism is an integral and odious component of the Democrat Party’s history. C’mon Senator Leahy, stop the racial politics.

Hat tip to Accuracy in Media, Dr. Frances Rice of the National Black Republican Association, and National Review’s Byron York.

“C” as in Chappaquiddick.  The circumstances of that incident are murky to me. I was 8 at the time. What is not murky to me however is the fact that the Kennedy family (particularly the men) has a long history of getting away with, well murder, at least figuratively speaking. They are VERY hard on their women.

Joe Kennedy III, Bobby’s eldest son, overturned a Jeep, leaving one of his passengers, a young woman, paralyzed for life. (Time Magazine, 1999)

They sauntered into episodes like William Kennedy Smith’s night on the town with his Uncle Ted, which ended with the encounter that left Smith accused (and ultimately acquitted) of rape. (ibid.)

It is not a stretch to suggest that the Kennedy name/money/aura of that time would have been sufficient to quash a thorough investigation. A big question for me: Why was Mary Jo Kopechne buried without an autopsy? There is strong evidence to suggest she suffocated to death (as opposed to drowned as is widely circulated). Furthermore, why did the people of Massachusetts reelect the Senator almost immediately after the incident? Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne are and will forever be linked, despite the passage of time, and the peculiar disinterest of the dinosaur media.

Here is a comprehensive line of questioning from Don Irvine of Accuracy in Media.

Additional thoughts from the blogosphere:

Atlas Shrugs, Examiner.Com, Newsbusters, Jeff Jacoby, Mary Wentworth, Time Magazine May 11,1970.

or…. perhaps we could rephrase the headline as “Barack Obama – Prevaricator in Chief?” It is refreshing to see Karl Rove dissect President Obama’s RECORD and juxtapose it with the man’s RHETORIC.  At no time in his political career has Barack Obama EVER been held to account for his actions or the  lack thereof. For some reason, pundits are mesmerized by his rhetoric, which is in and of itself shallow (surprise).  The Obama phenomenon comes down to 3 words:

Word1 – Dissemble

So what’s a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If you’re Barack Obama, you redefine your goals and act as if America won’t remember what you said originally. That’s a neat trick if you can get away with it, but Mr. Obama won’t. His words are a matter of public record and he will be held to them.

When it came to the stimulus package, the president and his administration promised, in the words of National Economic Director Larry Summers, “You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately.” Now it’s clear that those promised jobs and growth haven’t materialized.

Word 2 – Dissimulate

One problem with Mr. Obama’s stimulus bill that is rarely talked about is that it will force a huge, and likely permanent, increase in discretionary, domestic spending. That portion of federal spending was $393 billion in President George W. Bush’s last budget. Democrats immediately raised it to $408 billion for this fiscal year and now face the question of whether to make the stimulus a one-time expenditure or a permanent spending increase.

Federal education spending is a good example. As part of the stimulus, Mr. Obama nearly doubled education spending to $80 billion from $41 billion. If Congress adds that and other stimulus spending into the baseline for future budgets, discretionary domestic spending could mushroom to $550 billion or $600 billion next year. If that happens, Mr. Obama will have broken his pledge that the stimulus would be temporary spending.

Word 3 – Prevaricate

In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote about words used in a “consciously dishonest way.” “That is,” Orwell wrote, “the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.” Americans are right to wonder if their president is using his own private definitions for the words he uses to sell his policies.

Americans had better prepare to neuter the Prevaricator in chief by electing a majority (overwhelming) Conservative/Libertarian Senate and Congress. Tip of the hat to The Wall Street Journal; it’s editorials/opinions are MUST reading