"Leaders....are gonna lead"

Indeed they do.

Obama: Yeah, I'm Still A Pretty Big Deal

It's good to see that President Obama hasn't let last week's midterm "shellacking" affect his already eggshell-like ego, as evidenced by this exchange with Spice Jet founder and CEO Bhupendra Kansagra last Saturday:

KANSAGRA: Thank you. Welcome Mr. President, to India. As a fellow Kenyan, I'm very proud to see that you have made --

OBAMA: Made something of myself. (Laughter.)

KANSAGRA: -- India as the focus of your drive for exports out of the US.

Fellow Kenyan? Dun, dun duuuuunnnnnn!!!!!

Vanity, Thy Name Is Barry

Speaking with Israeli media following his meeting earlier in the week with PM Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama attempted to explain the anxiety felt by some Israelis toward his administration:

"Some of it may be just the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and it creates suspicion."

For one who was supposed to transcend race and religion, he sure is quick-on-the-draw with the race and religion cards.

Putting aside President Obama's 'it's all about me' complex for a moment, maybe the anxiety felt by some Israelis has to do with Obama's reversal of his position on Israel's claim to Jerusalem, or his Kennedyesque Muslim outreach speech in Cairo (Ich bin ein Muslim!) where he sought to parallel the 'suffering' of the Palestinians with the Holocaust of the Jews, or the administration's very public rebuke of Netanyahu earlier in the year for Israel's decision to build settlements in East Jerusalem. Or perhaps some of it can be traced to NASA's recent mission change to prop up the Muslim world's eggshell-fragile self esteem.

Ugh, just what we need - giving Hezbollah and Hamas access to bigger and better rockets.

'It's Going To Be Like Christmas'

Complete with the massive post-holiday debt. How to pay for it all? Charles Krauthammer believes he knows the answer:

"I think ultimately Obama understands that he has just added an unbelievably large entitlement onto a country drowning in debt. He is not stupid. I think he has anticipated this, and I think that he, from the beginning, had a plan. And the plan is going to be the deficit reduction commission, which will report only after November - and I'm absolutely sure it will recommend something new in American history, a national sales tax which is called a VAT in Europe."

We're all European now...

Paul Ryan on The President's Healthcare Plan

You got 6 minutes and 11 seconds? Watch this.

Bush, Barack, And Bi-Partisanship

The President makes a lot of noise about bi-partisanship and reaching out to the GOP, but does he mean it? And by that, I mean, is he meaningfully attempting to work with the GOP, or is he just talk about it.

The incomparable Keith Hennessey looks at bi-partisanship in the Bush (you remember him--failure, my way or the highway, most divisive figure in American politics) White House and contrasts it with what we've seen so far from the Obama team. The comparison does not reflect well upon The One.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--historians will (in future years) look back on the Bush Presidency in a more positive light than journalists did. What's the word for how Bush got things done? "Strategery!"

US Support For Israel Rises...

even as the Obama Administration continues to tilt away them. So let's see--Obama supports healthcare reform, America disagrees with him (or at least his version). Obama supports Cap and Trade, America disagrees with him. Starting to see a trend? (Instapundit)

More Execrable Bunk From Justice

Firstly, good news here of the upcoming guilty plea of Najibullah Zazi on all counts of terrorism with which he was charged.

Yet the ongoing attempt by the Holder Justice Department to point to cases in which terrorists are successfully prosecuted/handled by the civilian court system simply defies logic. The underwear bomber was not a citizen or resident of the US. He had not passed through customs. Mirandizing him and offering the protections of our system was a dumb move and continuing to shroud it in legitimacy through the rear-view mirror of cases like the Zazi case is ridiculous.

Zazi was a legal resident of the US and had been since 1999. He was living and working in the US when his trail was picked up. That he was treated with in the civilian justice system makes a heck of a lot more sense than doing so with the Underwear Bomber, and continuing to compare these situations simply amplifies the charge of the Obama Administration's softness on terrorism and their inability to treat it as a national security threat.

Hennessey on Health Care

When I'm too busy to digest 2000 page bills for meaning, I turn to Keith Hennessey. He's done some looking into the President's new healthcare plan.

Obama Claims Stimulus Made Second Depression Less Likely

What a truckload of baloney. The stimulus--two-thirds of which remains unspent--has had little impact on our economy. The TARP credit market intervention (a.k.a "bank bailout") remains the only act of government that has had an appreciably positive impact on our economy. And it was a Bush initiative.

Because They're Not COMMUNICATING Well Enough

Here's a little gem about the White House retooling its communications effort--seemingly in response to the President's political fortunes and lack of any real legislative impact in his first full year in office. Remember everyone--it isn't the POLICIES or the POLITICS--it is that the President's MESSAGE isn't getting out! It's that his MESSAGE is being drowned out by those birthers, truthers, Tea Partiers and the talk radio crowd!

What evidence is there of this? Well--the fact that the legislative agenda hasn't passed, of course. After all, it is self-evident that cap and trade, health care and more stimulus (aka "jobs" bills) are the answer to what ails us--and since the votes haven't been there (for these necessary and oh-so-reasonable programs) and since these policies are dying in the polls (remember--these are the RIGHT policies PEOPLE!), it must be a lack of communication or poor communication. Because if the American people ONLY UNDERSTOOD these policies better, they'd OF COURSE support them. More cowbell.

Obama: Moderate Republican?

According to this Mr. Brenner fellow at HuffPo, he is.

The Underwear Bomber and the Shoe Bomber

I'm getting tired of reading Obama Administration officials state that Mirandizing the Underwear Bomber (I won't type his name because it is too long, but you know who I mean) was no problem, 'cause it's what the Bush Administration did with Richard Reid (The Shoe Bomber). This is ridiculous, and Dana Perino and Bill Burck have a nice rejoinder for it here.

Reid's attempted attack occurred a little more than 90 days after the terrible events of 9-11--the country, the Administration, the courts, the military--everyone was still largely groping their way forward in determining how to prosecute this war against Islamic extremism. In fact, there were NO military commissions empaneled to deal with such a situation--though there soon would be.

Any suggestion that 8 years later--after all we've learned and all we've done--a "Bush" team would have Mirandized the underwear bomber--enabling him to "lawyer up"--is just loony. The team in there now just reflexively looks at these events as law enforcement issues, not acts of war worthy of intelligence exploitation.


More on the arrest of the Shoe Bomber.

David Brooks Can Be So Disappointing

I really, really like David Brooks. A lot. He's a fantastic writer and thinker, his delivery on Friday evenings on The News Hour beside Mark Shields is pitch perfect, and his clubby sort of Brooks Brothers Republicanism has always appealed more to me than some of the red meat populism currently masquerading as ideology and ideas. He's an insightful social trend-spotter and, well, he just seems like a pretty nice guy.

But man, does he have a BLIND SPOT for this administration. He's Chris Matthews psyched about our dreamy President, and today, he's got a column up that raises the Prince of Amtrak (Joe Biden) to levels of legitimacy generally not seen outside the pages of Daily Kos.

I'm all for giving the other side their due, but c'mon David. This one's a bit much.

Richard Cohen And An Obama Beat-Down on Terrorism

Liked most everything I read in this piece by Richard Cohen, who is increasingly becoming the Marueen Dowd to Bill Clinton's Obama--a supporter who turns, and turns ugly.

Though Cohen did manage to slip in the gratuitous slap at Bush/Cheney, so that he might maintain his invite to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Psst...Mr. President, It's Not Necessary To Bow To Every Asian Person

Good God, we've lost Florida!

What Shade Lipstick?

The Obama Administration released its budget proposal yesterday for fiscal year 2011 (which begins on October 1st of this year). Keith Hennessey has a pretty good summary of its impacts on spending, deficits and taxes. And, if you are a regular to this site, chances are that you're not going to like what you read.

Interestingly, for someone who a week ago was calling for greater fiscal restraint, Obama appears to be casting a blind eye toward budget deficits. For 2011 alone, the proposed budget deficit is over two percentage points higher this year than last (8.3% v. 6.0%).


Spending under the proposed budget increases as well, up almost 2% of GDP more in 2011 and about a percentage point a year over time.

The budget is based on the following economic assumptions:

• Real GDP growth of 2.7% in 2010, followed by 3.8%, 4.3% and 4.2% in 2013;
• Unemployment holding at 10% in 2010, declining to 9.2% in 2011, 8.2% in 2012 and 7.3% in 2013.

Eeesh. The President is right about one thing - calling something the same, something different really is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Stop the Presses!!! (forever)

Is it any wonder newspapers are on their way to the "Defunct Industries" exhibit at the Smithsonian? This article from the Boston Globe elevates an obviously life-lacking geneologist's revelation that Senator-elect Brown is a 10th-cousin of President Obama to "breaking news" status and posits that this might be a portent of increased cooperation across the aisle.

Notwithstanding the pabulum that seems to fill more and more of ALL news outlets' media (TV especially), it seems that the days of newspaper reporters doing research, checking their facts and, even using proper grammar and spelling are becoming a distant memory. But what really irks me more than anything about this lazy journalism is that if there really is such a dearth of newsworthy activity that an article like this one makes the cut, do you 1st Amendment-Cloaked Idealists think you might take a peek at, oh, I don't know, maybe ONE OF THE WARS IN WHICH WE ARE ENGAGED? Do you think you might for a minute try to find out something about what the young men and women who haven't seen their families in a year are doing while Hollywood starlets OD on cocaine and diet pills, goofy-looking evening talk show hosts engage in their best impressions of girlfighting and geneologists yearn to discover common ancestry, however distant and irrelevant?

Why is it we have to search so hard to find stories of heroism among our troops? It's not as if heroism isn't occurring. MSM--here's breaking news for you. Bush is gone. It's okay to report good news from the front again. You could even twist it to make our new Commander-in-Chief look as if he's strong on defense. It's really okay now. Go ahead, it won't hurt. I promise.

SOTU--The Next Morning

Fantastic turnout for the Live-blog last night, thanks. We were treated to a tour d'force in political denial. President Obama seems to have ignored virtually every useful lesson from the drubbing his side has taken lately in order to come out more defiant, more convinced of his rectitude, and more convinced that the problem has been that we simply were not well communicated to. His political preening was notable--after having led an incredibly nasty, highly politically charged healthcare campaign, he decries the nastiness and politicization of Washington. Finally, his continuing to blame the previous Administration for all his problems has gone past the point of being useful or informational. It is now simply a throw-away line. I think this man and his party are in deep trouble come November. As you come across interesting reviews of the President's speech, post them in the comment section for others to check out.

Rich Lowry On The Obama Freeze

I know lots of people think Obama's spending freeze is a gimmick, and that it really won't freeze much of the budget. But I gotta tell you--the SIGNIFICANCE of the "gimmick" is real--it is a huge political concession, as Rich Lowry eloquently informs us. So you don't have to go and read it on NRO--I'll repeat the whole paragraph below. Good stuff.

"I'm delighted by Obama's freeze. Not because it will make much difference in the federal budget, as has been ably pointed out by many in this space. But because Obama has given away important intellectual and political ground. It's not true that politicians can really "say anything." Spin has to have some connection to reality and a politician's case has to cohere. What Obama has just done is blow a huge hole in the argument for his own governance over the last year. If the economy is still weak but we can freeze discretionary spending anyway, it's much harder for him to argue that massive government spending is the predicate for economic growth in defense of the stimulus. And if the deficit is such a threat that he needs to swing around to supporting a spending freeze, it's much harder for him to continue to push for a new $1 trillion entitlement. He can try to square all this — stimulus spending was necessary in the dire conditions of 2009, but less so now; the new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is actually a deficit-reduction measure — but it's going to be very difficult. That's why I think the Krugmans and the Kleins are right to be dismayed by this, even if the actual dollar amount is small. It represents an important tilting of the political playing field to the right on these issues."