Obamalove: is it the beginning of the end, or just the end of the beginning?
If even the previously Obama-besotted Tina Brown has begun to tire of the president, that’s news.
Was it a mere two months ago, right after the inauguration, that Brown wrote this love note to Obama? Brown is not a deep thinker, nor is she an especially influential one. But I take her sudden disaffection with Obama to be an important sign that things cannot be going well for the man.
It’s one thing when Republican supporters of Obama such as Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley wake up from their trances. It’s quite another when the liberal Brown does:
Obama is the only person walking around with a big smile on his face. That onset of wild laughter on 60 Minutes about how humorous it is that no one in America, I mean no one, wants a bailout for the auto companies was one of the more surreal presidential performances lately. Why has Obama suddenly turned into the Paris Hilton of teachable moments? We realize he’s just trying to shore up his poll ratings so he can distance himself from Pelosi’s pitchfork mob, but a 60 Minutes sitdown right after the Leno armchair session on the preceding Thursday seemed””for him””strangely tone-deaf to the risk of overexposure.
Note Brown’s words: “surreal;” “strangely tone-deaf.” Her tone is one of shock at the mystery of it all: how can the formerly savvy and sharp Obama be morphing into this doofus? Brown doesn’t realize that the evidence for these traits was there all the time and that it was she who wasn’t paying attention, so blinded was she by infatuation.
Brown doesn’t stop there. She adds:
In this current crisis, I’m not in the mood for an exclusive peek at Sasha and Malia’s new swingset on the grounds of the White House. And it’s time the president dropped his gosh-this-is-fun-and-weird riff about the perks of being the most powerful man in the world…
This is not just a tone of mild disapproval. It borders on contempt (note the comparison to Paris Hilton), and has an accusatory edge of betrayal: how could you, Barack? And just behind those emotions is another one, too threatening to be voiced but only hinted at: guilty remorse. When Brown goes on to say that Obama “is starting to give his supporters little flutters of panic,” the unasked question is “could I have made an error in voting for this man?”
O! fled limerance!
Speaking of Peggy Noonan, what the hell is the matter with her? I can understand Althouse voting for Obama, and regretting it, even if she won’t admit it. But what has Noonan been smoking?
Journalists are overrated first rate, second rate minds. It’s the simplest and best explanation I have for the essential understanding of those people.
since you are ticking off the stages, this is where things start to go sour.
the game will be played till no more momentum is left. durig this time, the politicians are seeing that if they play the game, they will do better in the near future than if they are in a old free economy where they are glorified clerks not feudal lords.
once this part is over, then things are cemented, there is no going back at all, if there ever was.
from this point, the ones that supported him and never realized that their goals were mutually exclusive will start to protest.
the revolution becomes the counter revolution and they are mislabled, and new methods to control crowds will be put in place. members in the crowds will be there to make them riot…. (mask wearers).
this is how a classic coupe is constructud… and for a elected ruler to usurp full control, you still need a coupe… a conversionary event that unfreezes and allows a move to a new level where its frozen again…
remember that on the night of the long knives hitler sent his SS army people after the too radical SA…
soon the time for radicals has passed… they cant be reeducated, remotivated, and they will fight for the counter revolution harder than they did the revolution… so they have to be removed first.
add to this a possible bum rush of aliens from mexico / riots over food prices (which should double by end of next year since your money is worth less than half of what it was since the presses are still going) / possible hyper inflation
of course no one is paying much attention to things like the canadians getting on russias case for moving nuclear weapons closer to canada for obamas visit..
and obama doesnt care that a nuclear bomber strip is being remade, and nuclear ships are being docked close enough to neutralize much of our defenes and responses.
rebuilding and upgrading of yamentau mountain, and hte sudden military adventurs of china.
of course disney is still pushing madagascar, as if what just happened there didnt.
They got what they paid for. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay for it, having researched the product, but I still got it.
What kind of president thrives on chaos?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/what_kind_of_president_thrives.html
and when your done with that, mention the aside with hopkins and such… and read this.
What Your Textbooks Won’t Tell You About the Cold War
http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/november_2000_4.html
. . .To put an end to all the rumors and speculations that abound in the West about this, I would like to point out once again that we are conducting our reforms in accordance with the socialist choice. We are looking within socialism, rather than outside it, for the answers to all the questions that arise. We assess our successes and errors alike by socialist standards. Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika–and the program as a whole, for that matter–is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy.
More socialism means a more dynamic pace and creative endeavor, more organization, law and order, more scientific methods and initiative in economic management, efficiency in administration, and a better and materially richer life for the people.
More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life, more culture and humanism in production, social and personal relations among people, more dignity and self-respect for the individual.
Gorbachev
The idea of perestroika rests upon our seventy-year history, on the sound foundation of the basically new social edifice erected in the Soviet Union; it combines continuity and innovation, the historical experience of Bolshevism and what socialism is today. It is up to us to continue and carry forward the cause of the pioneers of the Revolution and of socialism. And we are certain to achieve this by our work, by making creative use of the experience of the generations that blazed the October trail before us [October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues. Ottawa: Soviet Embassy, 1987].
and russia is gearing up blatantly…
Russian children to train alongside police
http://www.mosnews.com/military/2009/03/06/157/
These will be attached to 85 Interior Ministry units and comprised of 14- to 16-year-old students, called “sons of regiments.”
read Son of the Regiment, by Valentin Kataev… these were boys/orphans taken to the front and lived their.
they alreayd have their jugend in nashi..
so of course obama has to have his
the second law towards the internal army in america just passed today.
Canada revealed it sent fighter jets to intercept two Russian bombers near Canadian airspace on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada, politicians here unleashed a flurry of strong words for their Arctic neighbour.
“… the more (investment) value the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress destroy – their demagoguery and fiscally insane policies eviscerating the very tax base needed to pay for their exploding liabilities – the more control they get.”
Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online
I can’t take much pleasure in this situation. Not much at all.
But watching the o-lovers slowly waking up is a modest substitute. Especially the early stage where they attempt, with increasing desperation, to insist it’s all good, in order to defend their positions. When they are laughed at for their efforts….
One of the schadenfreudings I particularly like is that the O lovers were so insistently superior to the rest of us, including Sarah Palin who was supposedly dumber than Biden.
“Obama is the only person walking around with a big smile on his face.”
I would suggest that the reason for that is he is the one that knows the punch line.
I know that some say that too much was made of Obama’s punch-drunk moment on 60 Minutes, but I found his big tight smile and laughing eyes to be chilling.
Like Tina Brown, I wonder at Obama’s risking over-exposure. He has been on TV three times in the past five days. Doesn’t he have a job to do?
FDR gave thirty fireside chats, but those were spread out over eleven years.
Artfldgr,
I noticed that some of the names in the Venona list were Rhodes Scholars and spent time at Oxford University. Just like Bill Clinton, himself visiting the Soviet Union and making nice with the Communists.
Since Rhodes Scholarships are a common thread for some of these people, what do you make of it?
neo-neocon: Two phrases come to mind – “Sic transit gloria mundi” and “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Poor Tina. She met this “cute” guy who told her he was the quarterback at the local college and a pre-med student, and now she finds out that his only associaton with football is that he plays the fantasy version in his room in his parents’ basement and hangs around the college campus alot to “check out” the babes. Oh, such betrayal! Poor Peggy Noonan. She met this same “cute” guy while “antiquing” at a yard sale. He told her the same story and made her feel all young and pretty again after telling her how much he liked “older women.” She, too, found out the truth after he hit her up for a couple of “loans.” How could she have been so foolish and giddy at her age?!
On another note – that “giggling” on 60 Minutes really “creeps me out.” Used to hear it alot in college when a friend found a whole package of Oreo’s in the cabinet while we were “trippin'” on “Dark Side of the Moon.” Hard to imagine JFK “giggling” when asked in an interview after the Cuban Missile Crisis how it felt to have been only hours away from possible nuclear war. Very odd.
Everyone is enjoying the melancholy of pretending they are impotent in the face of some sort of impending dictatorship, but let’s sober up soon and stop acting like Whoopie Goldberg asking if a Republican victory would mean the return of slavery (you know, the way it did when the Republican President Abraham Lincoln led the Union to victory in the Civil War, forcing the defeated Southern Democrats to restore their hated institution of slavery).
Obama and the Democrats are going to continue to do a lot of unnecessary damage, but public outcry and fearful incumbents, and, most of all, the fact that this is destroying the Democratic donor base, is ending it–Cap and Trade, Card Check–and will end more soon enough.
The next two years will be pointlessly miserable, and I suppose another major terrorist is coming soon enough, but 2010 will be a disaster for the Democrats who follow O’s policies.
Wasn’t it Harry Reid that once said something about Bush’s smirk? Or was that Pelosi? Whoever it was, I missed the bleating about Obama’s laughing at our problems.
PS Gallows humor is performed for and watched by bystanders. The country is going to the gallows for crying out loud and you’re identifying with the exectutioner!!!
Fred, FWIW, Rhodes scholars are looked down upon at Oxford, where they are considered as back-slapping rah-rah jock intellectual lightweights from the colonies. Oxford dons and students alike are distinctly unimpressed.
From a practical standpoint, those of us on the center/right should welcome with open arms those on the center/left who drank the Obama Kool-aid and now regret their decision and are openly questioning their Beloved Leader.
Better late than never I guess….
However, from a practical standpoint we should not be so accepting of ALL of His disaffected Disciples for a very practical reason.
Welcoming into the fold those who truly were gullible but now seem to know better – and more importantly may begin to question other beliefs they likewise held so dear – is a sign of a more enlightened character on our part and can increase our own ranks at the expense of the left.
Such generosity will only encourage more of the same from those still trying to delicately remove themselves from the hole they’ve now dug.
However, we should not be so accepting of those who are simply trying to salvage their careers and reputations after so blatantly defending this False Prophet during the campaign long after there was plenty of evidence to the contrary that they were in a position to know of.
Chrissy ‘Tinkles’ Matthews comes to mind, for instance.
His outright propaganda and not so subtle defense of The Messiah at every turn (along with his tingling moments) should be tossed out as a reminder to everyone of the incredibly poor judgement he displayed every time he opens his mouth from now on.
There are reputations of the political opposition that are now ripe for destruction I think – and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving crowd.
They hung this Obamanation around our nation’s collective neck, we ought to now hang him around their’s like the lead weight he is becoming and make him a source of supreme embarrassment and ridicule until 4 years from now nobody will voluntarily admit to having voted for this guy!
Take heart, people. The folks I have been running into trying to get a hold of Levin’s book in the bookstores are pretty damned pissed at the way things are shaping up.
Real Americans are still out here. And if the house, senate and current administration think it’s going to be easy, it isn’t. I don’t know what they think they are going to be able to pull off, but half this country isn’t buying it. And I am betting many who did already want their money back. Obama will NOT see a second term. Congress will be cleaned out in 2010.
The hardest thing to do will be to rescind as much of this crap as is possible, after all the bums are thrown out.
Write your senators. Write your congressmen. Write the whitehouse. Let’s get this show on the road!
I tell you, although I walked out of Barnes and Noble without Levin’s book (it’s on order) I DID walk out of Barnes and Noble filled to the brim with warm afterglow. I purposely went to the book store to meet and speak with other people who are thinking similar to me, rather than buy the book on line.
As far as I’m concerned.
Kathleen Parker’s columns aren’t read by these eyes any more.
And with each passing sentence by Meghan McCain (God Bless her father and mother and even her) there is nothing of substance that makes me want more words from her.
She might have some appeal to some Republicans or conservatives – but to a person who understands economics and the constitution and what conservatism is – I have better things to read with my time.
I want each and every person to succeed.
I want this country to succeed.
I do not want Obama to succeed in changing this country in the way he is trying to do.
It’ll hurt this country.
And just like we survived Carter. We will survice Obama.
Think back to Obama’s moment of decision, when he told Michelle and David Axelrod in answer to the question, “Why do you want the job?”: “Wouldn’t it be cool if I were elected President?”
Stphnd, please tell me that’s a joke.
Please.
Stphnd — Specifically that quote is:
In the weeks before he made the decision to run for president, Obama and his advisers had a small meeting.
“What do you think you can achieve that others could not?” Michelle Obama asked him, per [Axelrod].
“Well, there are two things I know for sure,” said then-Sen. Obama. “One is when I take that oath of office, instantly there are millions of kids all over this country who are going to look at themselves and their prospects differently than they did before. And I think the world will look at us differently, because it will be an affirmation of our higher ideals, that we’ll have lived our ideals.”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/01/on-charlie-rose.html
I’d have to agree — that pretty much boils down to Wouldn’t it be cool if I were elected President?”
I don’t mind the inspiration to blacks and minorities an Obama presidency represents — and it does — but the idea that electing me!, Obama!, is by itself an affirmation of American ideals bespeaks a psychological pathology.
In any event, Obama himself sums up much of what horrifies me about his presidency — the notion that the pure symbolism of his election is what’s important as opposed to who he is and what he will do.
Were there any grownups present to point out that He’d have to be President of all Americans(and not just the descendants of those his antecedents enslaved)?
I know. It was a rhetorical question.
Huxley, I don’t mean to be disagree about the quote you cite, but everyone ought to pay close attention to the sleight of hand. What we have there is David Axlerod, telling Charlie Rose (and us) a story. Not a video tape. I wouldn’t take Axelrod’s representation at face value, I don’t think.
br549: I went to Barnes and Noble for Levin’s book also. It is on order now.
I pre-ordered Levin’s book at amazon.com. Sometimes I get over to Barnes and Noble in our area and I buy books there, but invariably I can get them cheaper at amazon.com. And as a Prime member I get free shipping.
I am still intrigued by Artfldgr’s lengthy post that has a link to an article about the Venona Project. Those names of Soviet spies… so many Americans, including Oppenheimer. One of them was a LTC in the U.S. Army. I wonder how these people were recruited and what motivated them to hate their country so much.
Fredhjr–Journalists are overrated first rate, second rate minds. It’s the simplest and best explanation I have for the essential understanding of those people.
I shared a dorm with them at school. I can assure you: They are the stupidest, least curious and most credulous people one will ever meet.
But the do “want to make a difference”.
br549: It’s not enough to vote the bastards out. Replace them with whom? That was the 2008 problem that allowed Big O in in the first place. Just like the cratering of the Illinois Repubs,which allowed O to make it to the Senate. There’s a horrific deficit of able and worthy Conservative candidates for high offices. We can’t just elect Rush and Levin! We need a Congressional term just to undo all the sh*t of 2009. The Dems won’t go easy into that good night.
Barack’s giggling didn’t bother me much. I suspect it was calculated strategy: Look how relaxed I am; I am the happy warrior. Barack never shows genuine. His life has been about calculated masks. What’s behind the mask? Nothing hefty. Cotton candy: light, sweet, sticky-gunky which evaporates; too much will make you sick.
1. “Replace them with whom?”
Alan West!
2. I think we do Paris Hilton a huge injustice by comparing B.S. (Barry Soetoro) with her. What ever you might say about her, she came by her money honestly, she was lucky enough to inherit it, but that doesn’t make it dishonest. On the other hand Paris has actually made some of her own personal fortune, as an entertainer smart enough to capitalize on American pop culture. Whatever one thinks about her persona, she can’t be accused of much in the way of personal dishonesty, or placing herself in a position of trust, and by her activities and associations, harming anyone in any significant manner. B.S. on the other hand… no doubt his legacy will leave him with a similar reputation in the history books, in five decades, as most of the other hard left demagogues who in the end ruined countless numbers of lives, during the 20th century.
So now we’re listening to the, gasp, Liberal Elites?!
I’m so confused. Are they irrelevant wingbags or astute harbingers of a shifting wind?
http://www.redstate.com/warner_todd_huston/2009/03/25/unions-harass-employees-in-albion-ind/
Sorry off topic.
Huxley, I don’t mean to be disagree about the quote you cite….
Stphnd — What quote did you have in mind? I thought that was pretty damning.
“So now we’re listening to the, gasp, Liberal Elites?!
I’m so confused. Are they irrelevant wingbags or astute harbingers of a shifting wind?”
We go how long without a leftist trying to make things good and this is what we get? I want my money back – or rather the time I happened to have my eyebqalls scan over that.
Yep, that’ll excuse the growing reality that Obama was not, is not, and can not be fit to be president and that the adoring crowds fooled themselves into believing such.
Huxley, what quote?
The quote that Charlie Rose and his eager audience receive without any apprehension, certainly not the quote that you analyze nor the simpler quote that I’d heard from a now forgotten source. As I said, I wasn’t in the business of disagreeing with you: rather, I hoped to point to Axlerod’s underhanded cleansing and polishing routine, that’s all.
OT: SO glad my husband got me a Kindle for my last birthday! Books don’t sell out when they’re e-books. Ordered and downloaded from a stoplight as I was listening to Rush’s interview with Levin yesterday.
I just received my copy of Levin’s book late this afternoon. UPS guy.
They’re shifting windbags who serve as astute harbingers of an irrelevant wind. It’s always good to know what the left half of the bell curve is thinking, if you’ll pardon the exaggeration.
Try to keep up.
Read the prospectus before you invest or send money.