Is Barack Obama the right leader for America?

[Haggis@wk]

The truth is Clinton took over the presidency on Friday when Obama just walked away. Leadership is about symbols. Mommy — Michelle Obama — called and Obama had to go home. He let Clinton take over and clean up the mess.

Being president sucks right now. It will get worse. His programs are a failure. His party does not like him. So he sent Biden to talk to the party and Clinton to talk to the press. At this point, it is merely symbolic of a resignation. A bad weekend. But it certainly something I have never seen before in presidential politics

[Shapley]

It was suggested about a year ago that Mr. Obama was already getting bored with the job. I doubt that he cares about winning a second term, since he doesn't seem interested in this one.

[Haggis@wk]

Had this been President Bush's aides the MSM would have hammered him for displaying such out of touch aloofness during times of domestic economic hardship and overseas tensions.




During his vacations Dubya often favored western wear such as jeans and cowboy boots, both because he was comfortable in such attire, and very likely because it cheesed off his uber-PC foes in the media, but it did projected an image of strength overseas.

Look at the photos of Vladimir Putin striking macho poses in the Russian countryside. Those images come across as more than a little over-the-top to western audiences, but I’ll bet they play very well at home.

How do you think an image of the nation’s Commander-in-Chief in flip-flops plays overseas?

[jamiebk]

Yeah....foreigners just love that tough-guy cowboy image

[analog]

Miss Bush? Hell, i miss Joe McCarthy.

[Haggis@wk]

Mr. Obama is showing off his smart diplomacy again.

Barack Obama has declared that France is America’s greatest ally, undermining Britain’s Special Relationship with the U.S.

The President risked offending British troops in Afghanistan by saying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is a ‘stronger friend’ than David Cameron.

The remarks, during a White House appearance with Mr Sarkozy, will reinforce the widely-held view in British diplomatic circles that Mr Obama has less interest in the Special Relationship than any other recent American leader.

Mr Obama said: ‘We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.’

No, I don't like the president but I never really thought he was stupid, now, I'm convinced he's either stupid or naive, or both. I guess I missed the French combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Shapley]

I guess we don't call them 'freedom fries' in the Captial lunchroom anymore, either...

[piqaboo]

France is a lovely country, and the food is great, mostly, but their track record as our ally is ... not even mixed, really.
What is WITH that guy? Does he think that what he says to X stays w X?

[dai bread]

It would serve him right if the British took their troops home early.

Mind you, it's long past time the British stopped clinging to their ex-colony's coat-tails. The "Special Relationship" doesn't exist outside Downing St., and hasn't since WW2 if not earlier. WW1, even.

[Haggis@wk]

At The Corner, Jay Nordlinger writes:

Last week, I had a note in this space about Lang Lang, who has become a kind of court pianist for President Obama and the Chinese leadership -- the Chinese dictatorship, to put it more bluntly.

He played at the Beijing Olympics. He played at Obama's Nobel ceremony. He played at the White House event for Paul McCartney -- the one at which McCartney made a ridiculous anti-Bush crack, which caused Lang Lang and the Obama crowd to laugh like hyenas. And he played at Obama's state dinner last week for Hu Jintao.

What did he play? Most notably and significantly, he played a famous anti-American propaganda song. Famous in China, that is. Wei Jingsheng, the great Chinese democracy leader, exiled in the United States since 1997, wrote a letter to Congress and Secretary of State Clinton. He said, "I listened to that music with a big shock." Wei explained that the song, "My Country," or "My Motherland," comes from "the best-known

Communist propaganda movie about the Korean War," depicting the Chinese army's fight with the Americans. The movie is called The Battle of Triangle Hill. Wei said that the movie is as well-known in China as Gone with the Wind is here.

The song refers to the Americans as "wolves" or "jackals," and says that the Chinese will use weapons to deal with them. Wei commented, "Is that not an insult to the USA to play such . . . music at a state dinner hosted by the US President? No wonder it made Hu Jintao really happy." Yes, no wonder. As Wei pointed out, Hu is not ordinarily given to public emotion, but he emotionally embraced Lang Lang. ...

The Epoch Times quotes a Chinese psychiatrist living in Philadelphia, Yang Jingduan: "In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S. It's like insulting you in your face and you don't know it, it's humiliating." In his letter, Wei said that so-called patriotic Chinese -- supporters of the Communist party and the dictatorship -- were ecstatic over "My Motherland" at the White House. One such "patriotic Chinese" exclaimed, "The right place, right time, right song!" (This is a phrase with roots in CCP propaganda, as the Epoch Times article explains.)

The Obama administration's conduct of foreign policy is often referred to as "dumb diplomacy." But to be insulted without even knowing it, even though a billion others do, is dumb even by Obama standards.

[dai bread]

Reminds me of the story about the Brit admiring a big neon sign in Hong Kong long before the hand-over. "What does it say?" he asked. "Long live Chairman Mao" was the reply.

I suspect the story's apocryphal, but I like it anyway.

[Haggis@wk]

When presidents need to relaunch after losing a big midterm election, they like to offer an attractive slogan for their new agenda, in large part to take voters’ minds off of the old, unpopular agenda that created the political setback. After losing more House seats in a midterm than any President in 72 years, Barack Obama needed a new slogan more than most. CBS reported that the White House christened his State of the Union speech as “winning the future”:

most Presidents check to see if anyone else has used the slogan first — perhaps especially someone who’s at least considering a run against the President in question in the next election:



Also, a President who spends as much time talking about the new Internet age as Obama did in his speech last night might have considered that the acronym for his cool new slogan is … WTF.

“Obama – WTF”


Oddly a slogan both Republicans and Democrats can get behind

[piqaboo]

WTF - that's funny!

However, Altoid solemnly nodded and said "I agree" when Mr Obama talked about the land of opportunity, and Altoid and I were both pleased to see recognition of the guy behind "Plan B" for the Chilean miners rescue.
About which time, we switched to National Geographic on Elephants, at Altoid's request. Some serious footage of rotting elephant carcasses followed.
I only just now caught the potential symbolism in that.

[jamiebk]

Also, a President who spends as much time talking about the new Internet age as Obama did in his speech last night might have considered that the acronym for his cool new slogan is … WTF.

“Obama – WTF”


Oddly a slogan both Republicans and Democrats can get behind

Well, it was Newt Gingrich - WTF first. Now that's funny....

[Haggis@wk]

[BigJon]

For kicks, I tried to purchase the website name obummer.com and some variations. Someone already beat me to them all.

[jamiebk]

LOL...now THIS is funny! http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=56309

[Haggis@wk]

one of Obama's most offensive pronouncements during the SOTU was this:

If we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

Those greedy "wealthiest 2 percent" must be fleecing the rest of us, right? Well, not exactly. Heck, forget the wealthiest two percent--the top one percent are pretty much pulling the wagon, as the Blogprof shows with this chart. The top one percent pay more income taxes than the bottom 95 percent.




We are rapidly reaching the point where a large majority of Americans are free riders. Whether democracy can survive under that condition is a wide-open question.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Whether democracy can survive under that condition is a wide-open question.

Milton Friedman has pointed out that socialist systems have only produced dictators and tyrants, democracy begins in countries with free markets.

[dai bread]

Milton Friedman talks a load of old codswallop. A centrally-controlled economy is a dictatorship, not socialist no matter what its leaders call it. Any more than they're "People's Republics". Also, the tyrant comes first. The system comes afterwards.

You might recall that the NZ Experiment was based on Friedman's teachings. Therefore I regard Friedman as wrong by definition.