Tag Archives: Evan Thomas

This isn’t Camelot or the court of the Sun King

Reading The American Spectator today, Norman Podhoertz in the Wall Street Journal and Nile Gardiner of the UK Telegraph, reminded me of Evan Thomas (grandson of that loser but perennial socialist presidential candidate, Norman Thomas) declaring to Chris “tingly leg” Matthews in 2009 that “Obama is sorta god.”

(As an aside, Chris really should have this tingly leg thing checked out. It could be neuropathy caused by undiagnosed diabetes or something and maybe shove himself away from those jelly doughnuts, just in case it is. A weekly workout in the MSNBC gym wouldn’t hurt him, either. His god-dess Michelle will be the first to tell him, and the rest of us, that obesity is the number 1 cause of diabetes.)

But I digress and that’s a whole other blog.

Those were the days, weren’t they? Obama on the cover of every “news” magazine in the grocery store checkout line with the celestial halo around him, head upturned and nose in the air; the frown of determination and decisiveness across his face.

Under the spell of the messiah on Rolling Stone

Yes, Evan, he really was above us – on a ledge of your making. And every journalist in the nation, nay world, was all too quick and willing to acquiesce to their new found god Obama. His was the soaring rhetoric that was going to heal the world:

In the American Spectator, George Neumayr relates that “Obama loomed even larger than Lincoln. He was a “Lightworker,” as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford​ put it in 2008, “that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.” [A bizarre earthly experiment? Does anyone really talk like this? Maybe if you were in a 70’s consciousness raising group, or something…]

Now that the Lightworker has fallen to earth and the glorious new way of being on the planet turns out to be a lowered credit rating, some of his prominent supporters have fallen silent or resentful. Heady Lincoln comparisons have given way to Carter comparisons, sotto voce: “We are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes,” an anonymous Democratic Senator said to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd​.

Yep, well it’s a long, hard fall when you’re up “above the world” looking down.  It’s an even harder fall when you start to believe all the mythology about yourself.

The new Emperial president.

There is a disturbing let them eat cake mentality projected by the Obama White House … No US presidency in modern times has been more elitist or out of touch than the present one, which exudes the kind of condescending left-wing snobbery that is normally the preserve of an ivory tower common room. President Obama looks increasingly aloof and out of sync with the American people, three quarters of whom now believe the country is heading down the wrong track – including a staggering 58 percent of Democrats, according to Rasmussen. Nile Gardiner/UK Telegraph

Norman Podhoretz says that his “own answer to the question, “What Happened to Obama?” is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.”


The most racially divisive president ever

I’ve had a week from some unpleasant place and it’s not over yet but I’m finally in a position (with time) to blog again. If you pray, please say one for my mother. If you don’t, just keep a kind thought for her because she is a good person and very sick right now.

 

Is it any wonder why Rasmussen polls say the white/black relations have NOT improved? Polls show a drop from 62% in 2009 to 36% now in those who believe that relations between races have improved. These are interesting statistics from Rasmussen:

Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

African-Americans are much more pessimistic than whites. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of whites think black-white race relations are getting better, but just 13% of blacks agree.

Confidence in the nation’s course among African-Americans soared after Barack Obama’s election. But then several prominent Democrats, perhaps most notably former President Jimmy Carter, suggested that opposition to the president’s health care plan was motivated in part by racism. Only 12% of all voters agreed in September of last year, but among blacks, 27% felt that way and 48% were undecided.

These numbers should come as no surprise to anyone when you remember this presidents remarks about [white] “cops who acted stupidly” and other politicians who continue to claim that anyone who disagrees with this president is a racist (Jimmy Carter, for instance.) The NAACP is “monitoring” the TEA Party for any signs of racism. And the liberal media is hammering home the race issue at every turn. It’s no wonder people believe that race relations have deteriorated since this presidents election.

Remember theObama’s words? He was going to bring us all together: he was going to be the president of ALL Americans. He was the post racial president. He was, according to Evan Thomas, “above it all. Almost like God.” And yet, the perception is that we are worse off than before, in regard to race. It’s as though the last 50 or 60 years of civil rights laws and affirmative action have had no positive results.

Some one needs to send that memo to Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell and countless other successful and respected Americans of Black ancestry.


Obama’s High crimes and Misdemeanors

Remember this? America has been arrogant, dismissive and derisive…

Now, who is being arrogant and dismissive? This administration and president refused the assistance of 13 nations in the first 2 weeks of this oil spill. Other nations, including even the UN, stepped forward and offered their equipment and expertize in this catastrophe. They were rebuffed and sent away. Not only did the Netherlands, Canada, France and Norway offer to help us but Croatia, for cryin’ out loud!

And we said “No thanks. We’ll handle things.”

A Belgian group–DEME– contends it can clean up the oil in three to four months with specialty vessel and equipment, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S.  The article noted there are no more than 5 or 6 of those ships in the world and the top specialist players are the two Belgian companies– DEME and De Nul – and their Dutch competitors.

The U.S. does not have the similar technology and vessel to accomplish the cleanup task because those ships would cost twice as much to build in the U.S. than in the Far East. The article further criticizes this “great technological delay” is a direct consequence of the Jones Act.

Our fellow Americans who live and depend on the gulf for their livelihoods are being sacrificed because this president is too arrogant, too all-knowing to accept the help and expertise offered by nations with the technology to fix this problem. Our wetlands, beaches and precious creatures are dying at the expense of this egomaniac in the oval office.
But we all know that no one is as smart as he is. No one is as omnipotent as the Great Obama:
If this is not some kind of malfeasance or misfeasance in office, I don’t know what is. But this behavior qualifies for both, as far as I understand the definitions.  And if what he’s doing doesn’t qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors” against this nation, our land and people, then I’m a Chinese astronaut… a really, really pissed off Chinese astronaut.

The President’s Biographer playing journalist

The honeymoon might be over for a few WH reporters. Everyone can’t be first and everyone can’t be the

Richard Wolffe

favored guy, all the time. But it appears that one guy is favored with the WH more often and more obviously than others.

Richard Wolffe, author of Renegade: The Making of a President and a planned sequel, is getting an unfair amount of access than other reporters and it’s not sitting well with many of the pool reporters. A fact that Wolfe does not dispute and in fact, verifies:

Wolffe said over email: “I’ve been in lots of parts of the White House and talked to lots of White House officials. Most often on my own. Sometimes with very few media present. Sometimes with lots of media present. I’ve never been a pool reporter. I negotiate my own access for the book and pursue my own reporting.” [Emphasis mine]

As background, Wolffe was a reporter for NewsWeek and was on the campaign trail with Obama – strictly Obama, during which he was doing foundational work for Renegade. His NewsWeek editors discovered indirectly that he was working on a book while he was also working on their dime. (NewsWeek reimbursed the Obama campaign $170,000 for travel expenses incurred by Wolffe.)

By the way, it was Obama who suggested that Wolfe write a Theodore White-type book [The Making of the President 1960] about the campaign and expected presidential win.

In his book, Wolfe wasn’t very kind to his bosses at NewsWeek. In one passage, Wolfe takes a direct shot at the Newsweek’s chief scribe, Evan Thomas [great grandson of socialist and several time presidential candidate Norman Thomas], describing him as one of the magazine’s “most senior, and white, writers” whose “racial stereotyping” wasn’t that different from Jeremiah Wright’s inability “to accept that America was in the process of change.”

We all remember Evan Thomas:

But I digress.

On the campaign trail, many of the pool reporters were unhappy and jealous of his almost unlimited access to Obama. He played basketball with the candidate while on the campaign trail and “after a campaign event at a restaurant in Reno…, Wolffe and Obama shared a heaping piece of frosted carrot cake as the Secret Service ushered the rest of the press corps to a waiting bus, according to a pool report.”

Fast forward to last month and the rising tension between the press and the WH.  Julie Mason, pool reporter for the Washington Examiner said: “I was the print pooler, and I told him, ‘You are not in the pool — you shouldn’t be here [at a House Democratic Caucus meeting with the president],'” Mason recalled. “We did have words, and he invited me to take it up with Robert Gibbs. I asked him if he was now officially working for the administration, which rightly [ticked] him off.”

Wolffe is no longer with NewsWeek. Many at the publication felt that he had become too enamored with Obama during the campaign and that his coverage (or lack of it) effected his reporting for the publicaton. After the election, they wanted to take him off the WH beat for other duties but he was not inclined to accommodate their wishes. He’s now working for a public relations firm, writes for the Daily Beast and is a sometime consultant to – where else – MSNBC.

TheDailyCaller.com

Politico.com

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