Although he plays one on TV, Obama is no statesman

I’ve argued before that Tony Blair and Barack Obama have an awful lot in common. Both are lawyers; both are snake-oil-salesman; both claim to be post-partisan, and Third Way and consensual; both play the acceptable, moderate-seeming public face of a regime chock full of Communists, class warriors, single issue rabble rousers, malcontents, communitarians and eco-loons hell bent on destroying every last vestige of what once made their country great. And both do (or did) the things dodgy political leaders always do when the going gets tough at home and their domestic audience finally wises up to how totally useless they are: they hop on the plane and pose as international statesman instead. James Delingpole/UKTelegraph (emphasis mine.)

Isn’t that an interesting observation (from a Brit, no less) considering the geo-political education Obama got last week from Benjamin Netanyahu?

Have you seen the movie Soapdish? The scene: Soap opera star and “America’s Sweetheart” Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) has been dumped by her boyfriend and is being maneuvered by political ner’do-wells at work. She’s depressed and emotionally falling apart when her friend and writer at the Sun Also Sets, (Whoopi Goldberg) takes her to the mall and pretends to be a fan. This incites all the shoppers to gather ’round Celeste and beg for autographs and go all gah-gah over her. Just the “worship fix” Celeste needed.

When I saw Obama in Ireland today, in front of thousands of cheering, adoring fans, I thought immediately of that scene in Soapdish. In his own version of television soap opera, Obama’s not getting the kind of reception in America that the Irish have lavished on him, and in fact he’s been getting a lot of criticism, so I’m sure he’s in need of a little messiah worship infusion. He’ll get it from those European socialists who want nothing more than to slobber all over the first Black American president.

Delingpole’s blog is a definite must read. You’ll enjoy it and be sure and read his link to a previous story about Michelle.

On another topic: Doesn’t Hillary look good since she got that LifeStyle lift?

A picture that’s worth 5 words

TOTALLY ALONE IN THE WORLD.

Benjamin Netanyahu/Drudge Report

Will we ever know who this guy is?

I admit that I’m dumbfounded by this president. And I’m asking the same question I asked over a year ago, Who is this man?

On one hand, I think that Obama has to be the most naive person to ever sit in the oval office. Just look at his record with rogue nations like North Korea and Iran. I think that Obama really thought that if he could just talk to these evil men, he could charm them into seeing things his way. Just this morning, North Korean put it’s soldiers on war alert. If the North invades the South, how will we react? Or will we?

How out of touch with the American people do you need to be to set up a flag.gov site for neighbors to spy on each other and report to big brother? Did he really believe that this would fly (pardon the flag flying pun) with what we, as Americans, believe is fair and just?

On the other hand, he seems to be completely overwhelmed by the office he holds. A look at his response to the catastrophic oil spill is a good example. It has him paralyzed into inaction. His regime seems to be confused and befuddled into inactivity and forcing the governors of those states impacted, to take action alone.  But to be fair, what was his first act when he finally did do something? He sent lawyers to the gulf.

Louisiana marshlands impacted by underwater BP oil gusher

He totally ignored Nashville and it’s horrific flooding. Those citizens must feel real warm and fuzzy about him now.

And on the third hand (if I had one), he shows so much callousness and lack of class that it’s almost unbelievable. Where will he be on Memorial day? Not at Arlington. He’ll be throwing a party for Paul McCartney.  Has anyone forgotten how he treated Benjamin Netanyahu? Or the Dalai Lama? Compare that to how he treated the Mexican president last week with a state dinner.

(from frugalcafeblogzone.wordpress.com) Dalai Lama leaving through the WH back door.

His regime members okayed a fly over of Manhattan that terrified New Yorkers last year. While unemployment hovered near 10%, he took his wife out for dinner and a Broadway show, spending millions of dollars and disrupting the city. He spent more bundles on his family’s summer vacation at Martha’s Vineyard and a Christmas trip to Hawaii. (Let’s not forget that was at the same time as the Christmas panty bomber event, too.)  He can’t be bothered to take his children to church (because after all, he’s not a Christian) but he makes a show of his golf game every Sunday.

It’s been 10 months – TEN – since his last press conference. What does that say about him? Not only does he not respect the press that is so enamored with him but he’s afraid to speak off the cuff, sans a teleprompter for fear he might say something idiotic again, (rememeber “the cops “acted stupidly?”) Oh, he campaigns all the time, he’s speechifying constantly but never without a script, never without his teleprompter. Is it any surprise that his last press conference was the one that prompted a beer summit in the Rose Garden?

Rose Garden beer summit

I just don’t know who this president is. I don’t think there was ever a question, whether you like George Bush or not, who he was and what he stood for. But with Obama, we were sold a bill of goods during the campaign that he was the smartest man to ever run and then win the White House. If hes’ so smart, how can he keep doing such stupid and naive things? What does that say about the intelligence of his handlers?

For me, 2012 will not come soon enough. The one thing I know for sure about this man is that has got to go. He has to be sent back to his bastion of corruption in Chicago so that we can repair the damage he’s done.

Burt Prelutsky – good column

Obama and the Jews

By Burt Prelutsky (Archive) · Monday, April 12, 2010

During the presidential campaign, a lot of people insisted that Obama was really a Muslim pretending to be a Christian. I wasn’t one of them. I did figure, though, that if my name was Barack Hussein Obama and I was going to run for president a mere seven years after 9/11, I wouldn’t admit I was a Muslim, either. On the other hand, I, personally, would have sooner trusted a Muslim who’d been attending a mosque in Dearborn for 20 years than a Christian who’d been attending a racist, anti-American church in Chicago for all that time.

Anybody, after all, can claim to be a Christian. The proof, in the words of that fabulous effing wordsmith, Joe Biden, is in the pudding, and when I learned that among Obama’s friends and mentors were such notorious anti-Semites as Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi and Father Pfleger, it certainly kick-started my suspicions about his religious convictions. Still, as I saw it, when in Chicago, you do as Chicagoans do. And, that being the case, I figured that in such swampland, even if a saint were to wade into Chicago politics, he would eventually be knee-deep in snakes and alligators named Tony Rezko, Richard Daley and Bill Ayers.

Tensions with Netanyahu and TheOne

Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu share the view that Tehran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, a scenario both maintain would destabilise the wider Middle East and embolden Israel’s most committed foes. But there is a fundamental, and increasingly visible, rift on how best to respond. Crudely put, the Americans view Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the key ingredient in building an Arab coalition to curb Iran. Israel, by contrast, argues that a lasting Middle East peace is only attainable once the world has dealt with the threat from Tehran.

In his own speech to Aipac, the Israeli prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] brushed aside any suggestion that the broader conflict between the Muslim world and the west was linked to Israel: “Militant Islam does not hate the west because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the west – because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East.”

…

Many people maintain that Israel and the US will ultimately be able to patch up their differences and resume their traditional close relations. Powerful forces in Washington feel uncomfortable with the current tensions. Many conservatives view Israel as an ally unlike any other, a fellow democracy in a sea of authoritarian states. The administration’s stance has found opposition or only muted support on Capitol Hill, where Aipac remains a formidable force despite increasing divisions among Jewish-Americans themselves. Leading Republicans have voiced sharp criticism of the tougher line on Israel.

That kind of support leads some Israelis to believe Mr Netanyahu can, and should, defy US pressure. As Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs and a former Netanyahu adviser, says: “The relationship between the US and Israel is not restricted to their governments . . . The people of the US are with us and Congress is certainly with us.”

The American Jewish community may not be on the side of Israel, but the Israeli’s seem to get it and they know that America (and not it’s president) is on their side. I wish Netanyahu was our president.

Full story here at the Financial Times