The Criminal Moratorium

You may have seen or heard news reports regarding the Rally for Economic Survival event that was held in LaFayette, LA last Wednesday at that city's Cajun Dome basketball arena.  Fully 12,000 mostly ticked-off Louisianans – including Governor Bobby Jindal, Lt. Governor Scott Angele, and other elected officials - were in attendance to protest the ongoing efforts by our fascist President, Barack Obama, and his evil minions at the Department of Interior (DOI) to destroy the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico.

I felt fortunate to be there.  It was a wonderful, compelling and emotional event.  Too bad no one at the White House or at DOI was listening.

The imposition by Dear Leader Obama of a six month moratorium on drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the pretense of allowing DOI to review safety processes in that arena in the wake of the BP disaster seems innocuous enough to the average man on the street who doesn't understand how the oil and gas industry works.  But to anyone who does have an understanding of the industry, and who has been paying attention to the collateral actions the Obama Regime has taken in the context of this moratorium, it is a de facto permanent shutdown of the enormously productive and historically safe deep water region, and a massive scaling back of oil and gas exploration activities in the shallower waters along the Outer Continental Shelf.

Here's why:  the daily rig rate – the rate just to reserve the rig for usage by a given operator – of these deep water drilling rigs and ships can run to $150,000 per day and even more.  Anyone who thinks the owners of these rigs are going to allow them to sit idle for 180 days and longer is living in a fantasy world.  Two such rigs have already been removed, one to Egypt and the other to the Congo.  The operator who is moving its rig to the Congo announced the decision was made to move the rig to a nation that had a more stable political climate than the United States of America.

Think about that for a second:  It is the judgment of the executives of that company, in making a decision that runs into the tens of millions of dollars, that the Congo has a more stable political climate than the USA.  Is that the kind of "hope" and "change" those of you who voted for Mr. Obama had in mind?

Once these rigs leave, they are not coming back for a long, long time, if ever.  They will be locked up into multi-year deals by other operators in other parts of the world – that is the reality.  The President and his minions fully understand this, and they do not care.  They are focused on placating the radical anti-development groups that fund their political campaigns to the exclusion of all other considerations.

A memo written by Interior Secretary Salazar and leaked to the media last week clearly showed that the Administration understands the true impacts of this action, and that, as Salazar stated, issues like loss of jobs and devastation of the Gulf Coast economy do not matter to this bunch of thugs.  They do not matter.  The memo further demonstrates the Administration's intent to prolong this moratorium long past their stated six month time frame, and to slow-play issuing any new permits in the shallow water as well.

To understand the impact of all of this to South Louisiana, all one needs to know is that roughly 80% of all operations in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico are staged out of Port Fourchon at the very southern tip of the State.  A large portion of shallow water operations are also staged out of this port.  The men and women who work at that port and on those rigs are by and large Louisiana citizens, although a high number of Texas and Mississippi jobs are at stake as well.  In all, tens of thousands of direct, well-paying, secure jobs are threatened by the callous indifference of the Obama Regime.

Then you have all the indirect jobs created by all of this economic activity:  the cafes, hotels, motels, clothing stores, filling stations, movie theatres, fitness shops, furniture stores and every other kind of small business you can imagine that depend enormously on the health of two industries impacted by recent events:  the fishing industry that has been decimated by the BP disaster, and the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry that the Obama Regime is attempting to destroy.

We should all be concerned about the tragic effect the BP disaster has had on the Gulf Coast region.  But you won't bring back the Louisiana fishing industry by destroying the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry, and the thousands upon thousands of jobs that are dependent on it.

In a sane society, the people responsible for this moratorium would be brought up on criminal charges.  But in the liberal zoo, they just go on about destroying people's lives with impunity.

The Sham That is Elena Kagan

So I was watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC Tuesday morning.  I've gotten to where I actually like "Morning Joe" in a sadistic sort of way – spending an hour listening to the opinions of the collection of plagiarists, freaks and nitwits that appear daily on that show tells me all I really need to know about why our country is in such a sorry state today.

Anyway, on this particular morning, the show's hosts – Joe ("Morning Joe" – get it?) Scarborough and Minka Breszinski were interviewing Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island.  When asked to describe his view on the judicial philosophy that would be employed by leftist Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. Whitehouse was only able to use the words "pragmatist" and "consensus builder" over and over again:  "I think it would be one of a pragmatist and consensus builder," the Senator said, "She has been a pragmatist and consensus builder her entire career.  She was a pragmatist and consensus builder at Harvard, and was certainly a pragmatist and consensus builder as Solicitor General.  So I think you'll see a philosophy of pragmatism and consensus building when she is on the court."

Ummmm...ok.  Can somebody please let the good Senator know that "pragmatism" and "consensus building" do not a judicial philosophy make?  Not to criticize them, of course – "pragmatism" is a perfectly honorable personal trait, one in fact that we all should aspire to achieve in our own lives.  And "consensus building" is a fine pursuit to employ in life.  Why, if every one of us was a "consensus builder", we'd all end up agreeing about every damn thing, and wouldn't that be wonderful?

But somebody really ought to let Senator Whitehouse and, presumably, Ms. Kagan know that "pragmatism" and "consensus building" are not essential elements of the judicial philosophy of a justice on the United States Supreme Court.  See, the job of being a Court Justice involves a) hearing arguments from both sides in a case before the court, and b) deciding which side wins the case in the context of the text of the United States Constitution.  This is not supposed to be a bargaining process between the justices that involves "pragmatism" and "consensus building".  The Constitution says what it says, and the justices are charged with deciding which side of each given case is constitutional.  Period.

Yet, Sen. Whitehouse wants us to believe that character traits that would be admirable in any member of, say, congress or the Texas legislature, are the essential elements of what makes a fine Supreme Court justice.  This is sheer and utter nonsense.

Of course, in fairness to Sen. Whitehouse, this nonsense regarding Ms. Kagan was put into the public domain by the White House on the day she was nominated.  The President's initial statement used those same words to describe her, and those words were broadly parroted by the propaganda arm of the National Democrat Party, i.e., the establishment news media, for days afterwards.  They were obviously words that had been carefully tested in focus groups in advance of the nomination.

Leftists have to use such touchy-feely nonsense to describe their judicial nominees, because they know they cannot dare discuss the truth about their true judicial philosophy.  Poll after poll shows conclusively that an overwhelming majority of Americans utterly reject the leftwing philosophy of ignoring what the Constitution actually says in order to legislate social policies from the federal bench that Democrats could never hope to achieve through the legitimate legislative process set up by the Constitution.

Leftwingers must obfuscate and outright lie about their nominees, because the truth about Ms. Kagan is that she is a radical leftist who likely has never read the Constitution of the United States and has no intention of ever doing so.  She is a radical who hates the military and wants to destroy American society as we know it.  I mean, who else would Barack Obama nominate to the Supreme Court?  It's not like this is rocket science here.  So, neither she nor her supporters can ever honestly and directly discuss her actual judicial philosophy, because the truth about her judicial philosophy is that the Constitution is wholly irrelevant to any decisions she will issue from the Court.

Thus, to a person, they all fall back on nonsensical irrelevancies like "pragmatism" and "consensus building" when asked to describe Ms. Kagan's philosophy.

In this, as with everything else they do, the radical leftists who run the National Democrat Party believe we  are all too stupid and ignorant to figure out the truth before they get their damage done.  In 2008, they turned out to be right.

But the nation will survive the rule of Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, because the great pendulum of 

American politics is swinging back towards traditional values and conservatism, as it always does when confronted by the ugly face of leftism.  This too shall pass, because nonsensical talking points only fool the public for so long before reality slaps us all back to our senses.

Michael Steele Was Right! And Wrong.

So we have this dustup going now over the remark made last week by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele that Afghanistan is now "Obama's war", and that the President should have known "you can't win a land war in Afghanistan".  Leftists in the national news media, desperate for a story, any story, that might help stem  the growing anti-Obama tide coming this November, immediately pounced on Steele's comment and have treated it as if it were the smoking gun in the Kennedy Assassination.  Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and other conservative hawks have called on Steele to resign, and some senate Republicans – most notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham – have been extremely critical of the RNC Chairman.

There are several observations to make about this episode in the ongoing American political soap opera.

First, Steele should not have made such comments in a public setting – his critics are right that it is inappropriate for national leaders of either party to make such discouraging comments about a war while congress continues to fund a war that puts thousands of brave American soldiers in harm's way.  Steele's remarks are on a par with statements from the likes of Democrats Harry Reid and then-Senator Barack Obama that the Iraq war was "unwinnable" and "already lost", which were made just a few months before the beginning of the Surge strategy that won the war.  Steele should know better than to cast doubt on the ability of the U.S. armed forces to accomplish any goal they set out to accomplish.

Second, the rank hypocrisy of leftists in the Democrat Party and the national news media on this matter is so thick you could cut it with a knife.  If not "Obama's War", Afghanistan is without any valid argument the

Democrat Party's war.  How many thousands of times did we hear from Democrat politicians and liberal pundits in 2002 through 2008 that President George W. Bush had "fought the wrong war" by choosing to go into Iraq?

According to the national vast leftwing media/political complex, Afghanistan was the noble war, the place where the U.S. should be focusing its efforts to kill Al Qaeda, even as Al Qaeda massed its forces in Iraq and was demolished by the American military.  Not content with making grossly irresponsible statements on a daily basis about whether or not the Iraq War was "winnable", the Democrat leadership in the congress went to great lengths to actively undermine the effort for crass political purposes.  This is an inarguable truth of American history that we must never forget.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden based much of their campaign strategy in 2008 on the promise to massively escalate the Afghan War, a promise that they have kept in a big way since assuming office.  Not only have they escalated in Afghanistan – much as Lyndon Johnson escalated in Vietnam in the wake of the Kennedy Assassination – they have also ramped up U.S. incursions into Pakistan in a very big way.

For the leftwing media/political complex to now suddenly recoil at the idea that Afghanistan is "Obama's War" is absurd on its face, and a revelation of the truth about their deceitful motives for promoting its escalation since 2002:  They were doing that purely for political reasons, to damage Bush and undermine the effort in Iraq, and are even today not serious about actually "winning" the conflict there. 

Third, Vice President Biden, in his trip to Baghdad over the weekend, noted that the U.S. phased withdrawal from Iraq would begin on schedule in August, and claimed that his and Obama's strategy there has been a great success.  Huh?  Beg Pardon?  Say What?

The most hilarious aspect of this current Administration for my purposes of ridiculing the cocky, snotty leftwingers responsible for putting this collection of incompetent thugs into office is that the Obama Administration has not changed a single thing about the Bush strategy in Iraq.  A phased withdrawal once a viable Iraqi government had been established was always the Bush strategy.  The Guantanamo Bay holding facility for terrorists remains open and undisturbed despite the Obama campaign promise to close it.  

Warrantless surveillance policies enacted during the Bush years remain intact and functional.  Terrorists continue to be tried in military tribunals to this day.  Hell, Obama has even adopted the Bush "Surge" strategy for the Afghanistan War, and hired Bush's favorite general to conduct it.

The greatest irony for the dishonest lefties who put this bunch into office in 2008 is that Obama has continued the Bush policies because they were the right policies, and is now applying the Bush strategies to Afghanistan because they were the right strategies.  There is simply no other honest interpretation of the actions Obama has taken since assuming office.

But back to Michael Steele:  Should he resign?  Yes.  He was right in saying Afghanistan is "Obama's War", but wrong to doubt it is winnable.  It is winnable, thanks to Obama's decision to stick with Bush's policies, employ Bush's strategies, and hire Bush's favorite general.

Our Disgraceful National Fourth Estate

In the wake of last week's firing of General Stanley McChrystal and hiring of President George W. Bush's favorite general – David Petraeus – to run the War in Afghanistan, the snotty leftwingers who run MoveOn.org quietly removed their famous "General Betray-us" ad from their goofball website.  That characterization of General Petraeus was fine when he was working for the hated Bush and preparing to testify before a Democrat congress skeptical about his "surge" strategy in Iraq, but not so good for snotty leftwingers now that he's working for their hope 'n change savior, President Barack Obama.

The great irony of the McChrystal firing (an entirely justifiable act by President Obama) and hiring of Petraeus was the glowing praise Petraeus received from media blowhards and congressional Democrats who took great pleasure in ridiculing and slandering him while he was employed by President Bush.  This group of Democrats includes President Obama himself, who, as a Senator, strongly opposed Petraeus' surge, which of course became the hugely successful winning strategy in Iraq, and which Mr. Obama ultimately adopted in Afghanistan.  Of course, a consistency of thought and honesty of reportage long ago became lost concepts to the leftist news media in America, which is why they find themselves in a long, irreversible death spiral.

It was kind of a bad week for the leftwing media in general.  In addition to the utterly hypocritical reaction to the hiring of Gen. Petraeus, it was revealed about midweek that the Portland Oregonian and other admirers of Al Gore in the leftist news media had sat for four years on allegations in a police report that he groped a masseuse in a Portland hotel room in 2006.  So what media entity finally made this complaint public?  Why, the National Enquirer, of course – the same media entity that issued the original reporting on liberal hero John Edwards' affair and fathering of an illegitimate child with a former campaign staffer.

One would think that, sooner or later, the snotty leftists who run the New York Times would tire of being scooped by the Enquirer, but one would be wrong in that thought, at least when it comes to reporting on the foibles of leftwing folk heroes.

Then, of course, there is the announcement by CNN that it is pinning its prime time ratings hopes on a new talk show featuring disgraced former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer, who was forced to resign the office a few years back when it was revealed that he had been hiring high-priced call girls on the state's dime.  Can there be any doubt that CNN is out trying to bring in Gore as the show's weatherman, Bill Clinton as a political correspondent, and Tiger Woods as its sports anchor?  Now, that would be a lineup lefties could be proud of.

You really can't make stuff like this up.

The final failure of the lapdog leftist media I want to discuss here is its abject refusal to do any real reporting on the criminal negligence of the Obama Administration when it comes to the BP oil spill.  Were this a Republican Administration, the media would be making every effort to hound the president from office, as it did to President Bush following Hurricane Katrina.  We all know that is true – even the most hopeless snotty leftwinger knows that is true.

Take the refusal by President Obama to suspend the Jones Act for this national emergency.  For those unfamiliar with it, the Jones Act protects labor unions by requiring all vessels performing oil and gas-related operations in U.S. waters to be U.S. flagged, and operated by U.S. citizens, i.e., members of U.S. labor unions.  Were the President to suspend this disgusting law, there would shortly be dozens if not hundreds more vessels in the Gulf, skimming up this oil.  But he refuses to do so strictly due to the fact that labor unions in this country are tools of the Democrat Party.  And the news media sit idly by and allow him to get away with this kind of criminal negligence with impunity.  It's disgusting and disgraceful.

Seriously, after a week like the last one, you have to wonder if anyone at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS or any of the other reliably leftwing mainstream media outlets around the country ever stops, takes a step back, and ponders the reality that the only news organs actually performing any investigative journalism in America are a scandal rag and a magazine staffed by stoners.  Of course, this would assume that those who run these leftist media outlets were remotely capable of the slightest bit of introspection, which they obviously aren't.

That is your fourth estate these days – nothing more than a lapdog propaganda organ for the national Democrat Party and this feckless, incompetent, criminally negligent Administration.

Last Monday Morning in the Oval Office...

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:  'mornin', Mr. President.

President Barack Obama:  Hello, Bob, what can I do for you?

Gibbs:  Well, uh, I kind of need to talk to you about whole BP situation and the, uh, golf game you had this weekend.

Obama:  Yeah, it was great, man!  Shot a 78!  Can you believe that?  Of course, that was with 7 mulligans, and those great secret service guys kept kicking my ball out of the rough when they thought I wasn't looking, but still, best round of golf I've had since the whole BP thing started.  I'm finally getting that slice with my driver worked out, and…why are you looking at me like that, Bob?

Gibbs:  Well, you know, Mr. President, we're starting to take a little heat from all these golfing trips you've been having here recently.  I mean, you know that was the seventh round you've gotten in since this well blew out and…

Obama:  Yeah, this job's great!  I mean, if I'd known a President of the United States could just go out and have an entire golf course to himself and his foursome any old time he wanted to, I'd have run sooner.

Gibbs:  But sir, the impression all of this golfing and vacationing creates with the public is that you're more worried about your handicap than you are about all the people getting put out of jobs down there in hick country, er, Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama.

Obama:  Well, what could give anyone that idea?  I mean, I've already flown down there and given three speeches, walked around on those crummy beaches and met with all those losers who voted for McCain in '08 – I mean, c'mon, Bob, there's a real limit to how much compassion I can show to anyone south of the Mason Dixon line.

Gibbs:  Sir, don't forget, you won Florida…

Obama:  Oh, sure, Florida, throw that one in my face.  Besides, the beaches getting hit by the tar balls are up there in the Panhandle part of the state, and that's just South Alabama as far as I'm concerned.

Gibbs:  Ok, I'll give you that one, but still, sir, we have to think about appearances.

Obama:  'Appearances'???  Hell, BP's not worried about appearances – that Hayward guy spent Saturday at a yacht race!

Gibbs:  Well, yessir, I'll give you that one, too, but still…

Obama:  Still what?  There is no 'still' here – look, Bob, he's at a yacht race, I'm playing golf.  Every slob in flyover country plays golf, or at least that's what I'm told, but how many of 'em do you think get to go out and ride on a yacht?  I mean, if you put it in the right context, I'm the really common man here, doing what the common man does.

Gibbs:  Wow, you are good.

Obama:  You bet your butt I am, that's why I'm President and McCain's out there in Arizona having to fight with everything he's got to beat an ex-radio DJ who's been in more tanning booths than George Hamilton just to get his own party's nomination.  Meanwhile, I am somehow surviving with a walking gaffe machine as a vice president and have my main rival rendered completely irrelevant as my own secretary of state.  I am really, really good.

Gibbs:  Ok, well, having conceded you're really, really good, sir, I am going to ask you one more time to really, really consider lightening up on your golf game while this well is still out of control.

Obama:  Look, Bob, I already cut my vacation short by a full day to go make a speech down there – how much more sacrifice must I make here?  I mean, if I can't play golf, what can I do?

Gibbs:  Well, there's a bowling alley down in the basement…

Obama:  That was Nixon's deal – not for me.  Besides, you saw me bowl during the campaign – that probably cost me 40,000 votes in Akron, Ohio alone.

Gibbs:  Sir, all I'm asking you here is to focus more on governing and less on recreating while this thing is going on.  Maybe, you know, have some cabinet meetings about Afghanistan and Iran and stuff like that.

Obama:   Dude, you are one serious buzz kill, you know that?  Have you spent any time with my Cabinet?

Gibbs:  Well, not all that much, no…

Obama:  Well, you go spend two hours in a room with Janet Napolitano and tell me how you feel.   Gimme another idea here.

Gibbs:  Ok, how about I get you a pool table installed in the East Wing?

Obama:  All right, that's a start.  Pretty sure I can take Biden at billiards.  And if I can't, I can always get Rahm to break one of his thumbs.  Hey, this actually sounds like fun!

Gibbs:  So do we have a deal?

Obama:  Done!  But call that nitwit BP CEO and tell him he needs to hurry up and get that damn well plugged, because I really need work on my long irons.

Gibbs:  Consider it done.

Barack Obama: President of ... What?

The biggest problem with President Obama is that he so often seems not to have a grasp on just exactly what it is that he is president of.  There appears to be no recognition in this White House that, once the election campaign is over, the winner becomes the president of all 50 United States, along with every person who resides within them.

We have never had a president who so openly demonizes huge swaths of American society on such a regular basis as we have seen this President repeatedly do with Tea Partiers (even resorting to the obscene "tea bagger" reference), opponents of socialized healthcare, anyone making more than $100,000 per year, and the entire state of Arizona, to name just a few of his chosen rhetorical targets.  Then there are those segments of our society to whom this President and his gang of Chicago thugs offer nothing more than benign neglect:  The people of Nashville, who just weeks ago suffered through flooding comparable to what Katrina did to New Orleans with barely a mention from this President, millions of Americans living along the border with Mexico who suffer with the drug trafficking and violence that are a facet of daily life in the region while this Administration steadfastly refuses to do anything about enforcing the laws on the federal books, and the people of the Gulf Coast, who had to wait 37 days before this President summoned the interest to deign to hold a press conference about the ongoing tragedy of the BP oil spill.

To that growing daily list, we can add the families of America's fallen veterans, insulted on Monday by this President's choice to vacation in Chicago rather than take part in the traditional Memorial Day presidential ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.  The breaking of this tradition is just the latest in a long line of insults to the military offered by Mr. Obama and his Administration over the last year and a half.

Given these and many more divisive acts taken by this President, it is increasingly obvious that Mr. Obama considers himself the "president" only of those who voted for him and support his radical leftist political agenda.  Can there be any real question, for instance, that had it been a very blue-state Boston that suffered through massive spring flooding rather than deep-in-the-heart-of-a-red-state Nashville, this Administration would have staged a massive federal response to the disaster?

If the BP oil spill threatened the coastlines of blue-state California, Oregon and Washington rather than red-state Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, does anyone really believe that this President and his minions would have sat benignly by for a full month doing little other than deflecting blame before finally and begrudgingly beginning the process of treating the event as a disaster of national proportions?  If you do believe that, well, you'd be much better off reading Alice in Wonderland than this column.

Whatever else one thinks about George W. Bush, as President – and as Texas Governor before that – he was studiously careful not to use derogatory rhetoric about any segment of our society.  Where Obama derides Tea Party activists at seemingly every given opportunity, Bush never lowered himself or the office he occupied to criticize those who participated in the thousands of obscene and often violent anti-war protests that became a staple of American life after the invasion of Iraq.

Bill Clinton was also very careful to avoid the use of divisive rhetoric against any segment of the American public, and clearly understood the necessity of any president staying above the fray.  In reality, until the elevation of Mr. Obama to the office, one would be at great pains to find an example of any sitting president since Woodrow Wilson who openly and frequently demonized large segments of the U.S. population for political gain.

Clearly, President Obama feels no similar need for restraint, and in fact obviously believes that dividing the nation is in his own self-interest.  As long as that political calculation holds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can anticipate two and a half more years of a nation becoming increasingly and more bitterly divided.

And there is no reason to believe the political calculation will change.  This strategy is in keeping with the Obama Administration's adherence to the demonize-and-conquer strategies taught by late Chicago radical Saul Alinsky, whose teachings have guided this President throughout his adult lifetime.  This is who Mr. Obama is, and who he will remain.

This reality will bring joy to the hate-filled cretins who inhabit leftwing websites, but it won't do much for the rest of a population yearning for a President who actually gives a damn when a tragedy such as the BP oil spill devastates an entire region of the country, regardless of how that region voted in the 2008 presidential election.  For that, they will have to wait until January 20, 2013.

Welcome to yet another thrilling edition of the only newspaper column in America that hasn't lied about serving in Vietnam, Hobnobbing With Dave!

Item:  So this is why libertarians never win elections…

Well, Sarah Palin can celebrate now:  the leftwing news media has discovered a new boogeyman to hound, and his name is Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky.  Though nominally a Republican, Mr. Paul is in fact a libertarian, as is his father, Texas Congressman Ron Paul.  While libertarian views tend to be technically correct about what the Constitution actually says, those GOP voters in Kentucky who nominated Mr. Paul for this senate seat are about to find out exactly why it is that the Libertarian Party seldom fields candidates who can actually win elections.

Libertarianism is all about telling people what the government cannot do for them.  Like it or not, the truth about America is that most voters want to know what the government can do for them, and base their voting decisions accordingly.  In a poll released just after last Tuesday's primary vote, Mr. Paul led his Democrat opponent by more than 20%.  You can bet that the leftist news media will make sure that gap closes quickly – helped along by the foot-in-mouth disease that Mr. Paul inherited from his father – and that what ought to be an easy Republican win in November will instead become a nail-biter at best, and possibly even a Democrat win.

Item:  Blumenthal is the left's latest gold medalist.

So a Democrat politician is revealed to be a bald-faced liar, and liberals rally around him in support.  What else is new?  From Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Al Gore to John Kerry to Barack Obama, American liberals have made it obvious for a long, long time that bald-faced liars have real political potential as far as they're concerned.

The latest winner of the liberal gold medal for creative prevarication is Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has now been starkly revealed to have repeatedly lied throughout his political career about having served in Vietnam.  Were he a Republican, Mr. Blumenthal would not only be removed as the Party's nominee for higher office, he would be hounded from the AG's job by the leftwing news media.

But because he's a Democrat, the reaction from the news media has been a round of perfunctory reporting on the matter that will soon die away, and a statement from the Obama Administration that its support for Blumenthal has not changed.  Knowing this would be the case, Blumenthal last week responded to the revelation of his serial lying with a statement that he would not allow his record to be attacked.

His "record" is that of a bald-faced liar, which makes him the perfect liberal candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

Item:  The Great Climate Fraud Morphs into the Great Species Fraud.

If you thought that the death of Global Warming as a viable driver of government policy means you can relax a little bit, think again.  As is always the case with the world socialist movement – the driver behind Al Gore's Great Climate Fraud - the death of one political fraud only gives birth to the next.  As of Friday, May 21, we know what that next fraud will be.

On Friday, the United Nations leaked excerpts from its soon-to-be-published fake study on endangered species, and in the process made it obvious that this will be the next great cause of world socialism.  For those who closely followed the political drivers of the Great Climate Fraud, it will come as no surprise that this Great Species Fraud will advocate that the UN report will advocate:

• "...a whole sale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives." And
• "…massive changes to the way the global economy is run."

In other words, like the Great Climate Fraud, the Great Species Fraud will be little more than a concerted attack on the free market industrial economies of Western Europe, and more importantly, the United States of America.  The devolution of market-based economies to the socialist model – with ever-increasing influence of the UN and other world government organizations – has been the singular focus of socialists around the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.

The collapse of the Great Climate Fraud changes nothing in that regard, and the frightening fact of the matter is that this kind of thinking completely dominates the Democrat Party at the national level, and pervades the senior leadership of the Obama Administration.

So while we should all celebrate the death of fake climate "science" as a driver of government policy, we mustn't kid ourselves that the world socialist movement has died along with it.   These people are like zombies – they just keep coming back from the grave to try to strangle us.

The President Gets the Bad News

Recently in the Oval Office…

President Obama:  Rahm, I gotta talk to you about this memo we just got from our pollsters.

Rahm Emmanuel:  um, yeah, go ahead, but I'm in a hurry here – got some heads to bash on the whole Wall Street reform deal, and then I gotta go dig up some dirt on a couple of Blue Dogs who aren't toeing the party line on climate change.

Obama:  Says here that our pollsters are advising Democratic congressional candidates to avoid mentioning things like healthcare reform, immigration reform, and jobs in their re-election campaigns.

Rahm:  Yeah, so?

Obama:  Says that the very mention of these issues – issues, by the way, that have been the very centerpieces of my administration thus far – can ensure defeat for members of our party in November.

Rahm:  (glancing at watch) uh-huh, uh-huh, can we get to the point here?

Obama:  Well, uh, Rahm, reading this memo, you'd think our policies are unpopular with the people or something.

Rahm:  (nodding head rapidly while fidgeting in chair)  Ok, so what are you wondering about?

Obama:  …

Rahm:  Look, you're acting as if you're surprised here – haven't you been paying attention?

Obama:  Well, I've been kind of busy…

Rahm:  Mr. President, the people hate our policies.

Obama:  What?  But I'm fabulously popular!

Rahm:  Sir, don't you read those polling memos we place on your desk each morning?

Obama:  Not really.  I'm not good with paper. I'm more of a high-tech guy.  It'd be better if you'd give them to Betty over there and have her scroll them on the TelePrompter, like she does with the newspaper every day.  That as you know is my learning tool of choice.

Rahm:  (Sigh)  Sir, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you are not fabulously popular anymore.

Obama:  I'm not?

Rahm:  No, sir.  Now, you're not in Bush territory or anything like that, but your job approval rating has been down in the 40s for quite some time now.

Obama:  (gasp!)  But how can that be?  I mean, I'm The One and all…

Rahm:  um, well, sir, it turns out that country really didn't move to the left politically in 2008 like we initially thought.  Turns out the voters just had Bush fatigue, and voted for you just because you were less like Bush than McCain was.

Obama:  Wow.  You know, that's damn near impossible for me to believe.  I mean, my entire world view is now in jeopardy because of what you just said there, Rahm.  Are you certain about this?

Rahm:  Yessir, I can get you the polling data if you like.

Obama:  Ok, just get it to Betty over there so she can scroll it up on the TelePrompter.

Rahm:  And, uh, sir?  It really is worse than that.

Obama:  What do you mean?

Rahm:  Well, see, you are actually more personally popular than your policies are.

Obama:  (smiling broadly)  Well, that's good news, right?

Rahm:  Depends on your outlook, really.  I mean, I guess it's good news to you…

Obama:  Yes!  I knew it!

Rahm:  …but it's really not good news to Democrats running for re-election who voted for your healthcare nationalization bill, and who support your policies on other issues.

Obama:  But, but I've always thought that good news for Barack was good news for everybody.  I mean, that's how I've lived my entire life!

Rahm:  Yessir, I know that – it's pretty self-evident to everyone.  But the reality of the situation is that your healthcare bill makes about 60% of the population sick to its collective stomach, and public approval for your immigration policies is even lower than that.

Obama:  hmmm…that does present a bit of a problem, then.  But what about jobs?  I mean, wasn't the public listening last November when I announced from my TelePrompter that my administration would henceforth have a "laser-like focus" on job creation?

Rahm:  uh, well, yes they were, but you know, they were also watching as we moved on to healthcare nationalization immediately after you read that speech.  And then they watched as you moved to Wall Street reform immediately after that.  And they have watched over the last couple of weeks as you have spent your time bashing the State of Arizona over the immigration law they recently passed.  And they've also watched as the rate of unemployment has continued to hover at around 10% ever since you read that speech last November…

Obama:  Ok, ok, enough! Geez!  So tell me this:  If our candidates can't run on healthcare, immigration, or jobs, and Wall Street reform isn't doing us any good either, how in the world are they supposed to run?

Rahm:  Well, I'm suggesting they run away from you, sir.  Heh-heh.

Obama:  Ok, that was uncalled for.

Rahm:  I know, but I couldn't resist.  Now excuse me while I go bash some heads and blackmail some Blue Dogs.  After all, that's the way we really get things done around here.

The Consequence of Incompetence

The continuing utter ineptitude of the current presidential administration has never been more starkly displayed than over the last week, in relation to the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the attempted Islamo-fascist bombing in Times Square.

The Bombing

For those of you who haven't been keeping count, Friday night's attempted bombing in Times Square constitutes the fourth significant terrorist attack by Islamo-fascists on U.S. soil since President Obama took office.  That compares to zero significant terrorist attacks by Islamo-fascists on U.S. soil during the Bush Administration post-9/11.  So do the math:  that's 4 in 16 months compared to zero in 87 months.

If you think this is somehow mere coincidence, think again.  This is a matter of focus, or lack thereof by this current President and his Chicago thug minions on the real threat this nation faces.  President George W. Bush, for all of his touchy-feely political correctness when it came to airport security and constantly referring to Islam as a "religion of peace", also consistently and clearly identified and targeted the real terrorist threat to America in modern times, which invariably comes from male followers of radical Islamic factions between the ages of 18 and 35.  That is the demographic the Bush Justice Department and intelligence agencies focused on, and that focus kept this nation safe from terrorist attack for the final 87 months of the Bush presidency.

By contrast, the Obama Administration can't even bring itself to use the word 'terrorist' until absolutely forced to do so when reality slaps it in its collective face, as happened on Tuesday morning, and it is incapable of using any iteration of 'Islam' in describing individual terrorists or the terrorist threat in any event whatsoever.  

To make matters worse, the Justice Department under feckless Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that its focus will be on domestic, 'right-wing' paramilitary groups, the likes of which have not staged any sort of attack in this country in the 15 years since Tim McVeigh attacked the FBI building in Oklahoma City.

It should surprise no one that this refusal by U.S. law enforcement officials to focus on the real threat at hand has emboldened Islamo-fascists around the world and led inevitably to frequent deadly attacks on American soil.  Islamo-fascists are like vicious dogs – if you don't take the threat they present seriously, they will bite you in the butt until you do.  Until the Obama Administration begins to take the vicious dog in the neighborhood seriously, the dog will continue to bite.

The BP Spill

First, let's be crystal clear here:  This disaster is the fault of BP and its contractors, and they will and should pay dearly for it.  That said, the response to this terrible event by the Obama Administration has been shamefully inept, and the parallels to the Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina are too obvious to let pass.

President Bush was pilloried by the national leftist news media for being two days late in responding to Katrina – which was undeniably true.  They were late, they were inept when they finally did respond, and the President's advisors gave the appearance of being uncaring.  No question about any of that.  But they were also dealing with an utterly incompetent Mayor of New Orleans, and an utterly incompetent Governor of Louisiana who waited two days to cede her own jurisdiction over disaster response to the federal government.  This lack of clarity of jurisdiction was at least partially responsible for the mass confusion that existed after the hurricane's devastation of New Orleans.

By contrast, there is no lack of clarity whatsoever in who has jurisdiction in response to major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.  That jurisdiction goes to the U.S. Department of the Interior.  Period.  It is an undeniable fact that the Obama Administration waited nine full days following the initial massive explosion before mounting any sort of meaningful response to this event.

You will note that there is no similar outcry in the nation's Obama lapdog news media regarding this Administration's failure to respond in a timely and effective manner.  Oh, the New York Times published a half-hearted editorial on Sunday that mildly criticized the Administration, and Bill Maher belched out a typically obscene comment on his HBO show on Friday night, but those and few other isolated criticisms are pretty much the extent of the non-outrage displayed by the supposed protectors of the public interest towards this Administration's incompetent response to what could become the worst ecological disaster in the nation's history.

But don't worry:  the President finally, at long last made it to Louisiana on Monday, 13 days following the explosion, to announce that his Administration would not rest until the disaster has been contained.  He was so serious about this commitment that he even made his announcement without the aid of his ever-present TelePrompter.

I know the people of Louisiana feel much better now that The One has spoken.

Lindsey Graham, Pitiful RINO

Pity poor Lindsey Graham.  Ok, well, don't pity him – rather, snicker at him for his stupidity in becoming the latest Republican senator to get caught up the crossfire of Democrat mid-term electoral calculations.

Mr. Graham, of course, is the Senator from South Carolina who styles himself as the second coming of the now former "maverick", Arizona Senator John McCain.  (McCain, we recently discovered, is now an ex-Maverick, having recently disavowed having ever been anything but a loyal conservative Republican in the face of a strong GOP primary challenge from former congressman J.D. Hayworth.) 

Senator Graham has spent the last six months engaged in a negotiation with Democrat Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and "independent" (but really Democrat) Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on "climate", i.e., cap and trade legislation.  Keeping with the hubris of their massive egos, these three senators have proceeded on the belief that they, and only they, can devise the ideal solution to the non-existent "problem" of man-caused global warming, with Sen. Graham taking on McCain's former role as the poster child for Republican-in-name-only (RINO) stupidity.

The Kerry/Graham/Lieberman bill – we'll call it KGL for short – was set for a grand unveiling this past Monday, but a funny thing happened on the way to Lindsey's coronation:  Democrat election year politics intervened.  On Saturday, poor Lindsey issued a plaintive message announcing he was pulling out of his negotiations on the KGL bill – meaning, one supposes, that we will have to henceforth refer to it as simply the KL bill – due to the fact that the White House has now convinced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to take up immigration reform rather than "climate" legislation next on the senate's agenda.  Graham's note went on to express his disappointment that the Democrats have chosen to yet again delay dealing with such a critical issue, after they had promised him that KGL would be next on this year's agenda.

Oh me, oh my, what is a poor RINO to do?

The only surprising thing about this shift in Democrat strategy is that it comes as a surprise to anyone, much less Sen. RINO.  The Democrat agenda is never about dealing with issues that are somehow important to the American people.  If it was, healthcare would have been far down the list of priorities, and "climate" wouldn't even be on the list.  After all, large majorities of the public adamantly opposed the healthcare atrocity, and that majority has continued to grow since the bill's passage, and "climate" legislation consistently places dead last in polls that ask respondents to the issues that are most important to them.  In most polls, it wouldn't even register as an issue at all unless the questioner specifically asks about it.

Immigration, on the other hand, does register in the collective public mind, and so, as the Democrat leadership in Washington looked at this year's remaining congressional schedule, and realized they were quickly running out of days on which issues could be brought to the well of the Senate for consideration, they had a choice to make.  Not surprisingly, they made the choice that they perceive will give them the greatest political advantage in November.  Despite Sen. RINO's complaints, it was an entirely rational choice.

For the Democrats, "climate" legislation is about one thing and one thing only:  placating the radical leftist "environmental" groups who contribute tens of millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns.  But while the radical greens control gobs of money, they don't control a lot of votes at the end of the day, and they can just as easily be placated through the regulatory processes at EPA and the Department of the Interior as they can through legislation.  So, although they give great lip service to it, for the Democrats, "climate" legislation is really a secondary priority, especially in an election year.

Immigration reform, on the other hand, is where the votes are.  One of the great looming problems the Democrats face in this year's elections is a great deficit in what pollsters call "voter enthusiasm".  The 

Democrat voter base always tends to experience lower turnout in mid-term congressional election years, and that is only exacerbated in years, like this year, when the Democrat voter base – made up largely of ethnic minorities – is less motivated to vote than the GOP voter base.

So, facing this election-year reality, the Democrat leadership in the White House and congress made the very cynical and simple calculation:  What better way to stir up the voter base than with a big fight over immigration reform?  It doesn't matter to the Democrats if they win or lose, it makes no difference whether a bill is ultimately signed into law or not – the fight is what matters in an election year.

So, the Arizona immigration bill that was passed late last week gave the President and Sen. Reid their opening, and they jumped through it, with Sen. RINO becoming the big loser in the whole process.

Gosh, don't you feel terrible for poor Lindsey?

The 16 Year Cycle of Presidential Politics

I have long held the theory that each new generation of Americans has almost a genetic need to experiment with liberalism/leftism/progressivism/socialism or whatever '–ism' is being attached leftist ideology in this country these days.  Thus, every 16 years or so, as a new generation of American voters comes of age and the people begin to get bored with whatever moderate-to-conservative administration happens to be in power at the time, the country elects a leftist to the presidency, and waits to see what happens.

It generally doesn't take too long for the public to collectively recoil in horror at the terrible mistake it has made, and to then begin the process of correcting things at the polls.  It's very easy to go back in history and observe this apparently unavoidable cycle of American politics.

Let's begin in 1960, when a public tired of 12 years of boring prosperity under Truman and then Eisenhower elected the young liberal John F. Kennedy to the presidency.  Kennedy's liberal social policies and feckless, amateurish conduct of foreign affairs had his public approval rating on a downward trajectory by late 1963, and the country was well on its way to a correcting election the following year.  But then JFK was assassinated, and the public turned to Lyndon Johnson in a sympathy vote.  The Democrats were turned out of office in 1968, but not until Johnson had saddled the country with the massive escalation of the Vietnam conflict, and a set of Great Society programs that are still wreaking damage on the population to this day.

Fast forward 16 years to 1976, and a new generation of voters tired of the Watergate scandal turned to a liberal peanut farmer from Georgia.  The most incompetent presidency in the nation's history followed, resulting in the Reagan landslides of 1980 and 1984.  When George H.W. Bush prevailed over leftwinger Mike Dukakis in 1988, it looked as if the public had learned a lasting lesson from the Carter debacle, and might well avoid another disastrous flirtation with leftism.

But it wasn't to be.  In 1992, the magic 16 years after 1976, a public furious at Bush for breaking his "no new taxes" pledge in a shameful deal with congressional Democrats turned leftwards again, elevating Bill and Hillary Clinton to their co-Presidency.  This time the public caught on far more quickly than it had following the mistakes of 1960 and 1976, recoiling in terror as the Clintons attempted to socialize the healthcare system and implement a massive new BTU carbon tax.  Voters were so appalled by these and many other Clintonian initiatives that they awarded the Republicans with a massive congressional sea change election in 1994, turning both houses of congress over to the GOP for the first time in almost half a century.

Many anticipated that a personal repudiation of the Clintons would follow in the 1996 presidential contest, but Bill Clinton was smart enough to shove Hillary and her hard-core leftism aside, choosing instead to adopt the strategy of "triangulation" suggested to him by pollster and then-White House aide Dick Morris.  Thus, throughout 1995 and 1996, Clinton co-opted Republican positions on everything from military policy to welfare reform, and ended up being re-elected and presiding over a successful presidency for the most part.

All of which brings us forward now to 2008, sixteen years after Clinton's 1992 victory.  Another new generation of voters grew tired of 12 years of moderate-to-conservative policy, and also tired of a war in Iraq that had dragged on for 6 years.  Predictably, another lurch to the left occurred, this time elevating a true leftist radical to the presidency.

This time the public learned even faster than it had following the 1992 mistake, beginning the process of turning the Democrats out of office in November of 2009, as it recoiled in horror at the radical leftist, even fascist, policy pursuits of President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in congress.  All indicators today point to the likelihood of another sea change election coming this November.  True, there are still more than six months between now and Election Day, but it's hard to see what could happen between now and then that would turn back this growing tide.

Should such a sea change take place this November, the question will then become whether President Obama will choose to moderate his worst impulses as Bill Clinton did following 1994?  At this point, there is no indication whatsoever that this President has a moderating bone in his body.  Bill Clinton was all about Bill Clinton, and was willing to do whatever it took to secure some sort of positive legacy for himself in history.  Leftist ideology was Hillary's deal, not his.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is all about ideology, and transforming the country as he promised repeatedly to do during his election campaign.  Given that, there appears little chance he will divert himself from the Jimmy Carter-esque path to a one term presidency he currently finds himself treading.  Such a fate could not happen to a more deserving person.

The Mindless and Disgraceful Alinsky Democrats

One of the most amusing pass times I've engaged in recently has been to observe as the Democrat Party and its press agents in the old, tired, dying, Dinosaur national news media demonize those who participate in the loosely-organized Tea Parties around the country.  The Democrats are in fact so frightened by the Tea Partiers that they have resorted the tactics preached by their apparent guiding philosopher, the late radical Saul Alinsky, attempting to brand all Tea Party participants as racist rednecks.

In the runup to their vote on the healthcare nationalization atrocity a few weeks back, several African American Democrats leveled accusations that some of the participants in the Tea Party rally that took place on the day of the vote had shouted racial epithets at them as they filed into the Capitol building.  Barney Frank, the gay pathological liar from Massachusetts, similarly alleged that at least one of the tens of thousands of Tea Partiers there that day hurled a gay slur at him. 

The leftist news media, as always utterly incurious about why these specific members of congress would choose to enter the capitol building at ground level, rather than use the tunnels they use about 99% of the time, breathlessly reported the accusations from these members of congress as fact (after all, they're all liberals, they wouldn't lie, would they?), and have spent the last three weeks tarring and feathering everyone who has ever participated in a Tea Party rally.

On the day of the vote, I told some friends that I suspected these accusations were fake, and after a few days of the demonization of the Tea Partiers, others began to wonder the same thing.  After all, dozens of members of the media recorded every step those members of congress took that day, and yet none of them managed to catch audio or video of a single racist or homophobic remark coming from the crowd.  Yet no one in the dinosaur media found this to be curious.

Andrew Breitbart, a journalist who runs the very successful website, Breitbart.com, realizing that there had to be hundreds of individuals in the area using either video cameras or cell phone capable of recording audio, decided to offer a $10,000 reward for anyone who could produce any evidence at all that any racist or homophobic remarks had come from the crowd.  After a week of getting no response, he upped the reward to $100,000.  To this day, there has been no response.

Why?  Because the accusations were clearly fake, staged by these Alinsky Democrats as a means of marginalizing a movement they perceive as a threat to their political future.  These fake accusations are based on these rules from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

So, the Tea Party participants now become demonized as a bunch of lower-class, uneducated, racist rednecks.  Nevermind recent polling data that show a) more than 40% of Tea Partiers are political independents or Democrats, b) the average education level of Tea Partiers is virtually identical to that of the population at large, and c) the average income level of Tea Partiers is virtually identical to that of the population at large.  In the Alinsky Democrat view, Tea Partiers cannot be perceived to be a cross-section of the population at large because that lends them legitimacy in the eyes of others.

I think this Alinsky Democrat tactic will fail – and already has failed, in fact – with everyone who is not already a hopelessly smug, leftist ideologue.  Because most Americans are going to understand that an attack on the Tea Partiers is really an attack on middle America, that vast swath of the country that lies outside of the leftist media centers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  The Alinsky Democrats used the same tactics against Sarah Palin, and were largely successful in marginalizing her.  But Sarah Palin is one person – the Tea Partiers are millions of ordinary Americans, whose views are supported by millions more.

The Tea Party movement is the single most important political development of the last 20 years, and the Alinsky Democrats know it.  When 48% of those surveyed in a recent poll say their political views are closer to the Tea Partiers than to the President's, the Alinsky Democrats know they have a very real problem.

Lashing out and demonizing millions of registered voters, at a time when your party is already lagging behind in the polls, does not appear to be a recipe for success, regardless of what Saul Alinsky taught.

A Low Degree of Equanimity

Equanimity.

About 20 years ago, my boss at the time recommended me for a promotion.  A partial basis for his recommendation was that I possessed, in his view, a "high degree of equanimity."

I read that and thought, "Wow, that's great!  Who would have ever thought I would have a 'high degree of equanimity'?"

And then, about 2 seconds after that, I realized I didn't know what the word meant.  So I looked it up.  Turns out this is a fancy word used to describe a person who exhibits 'grace under pressure'.  Cool.  I'll take it.

Since that initial exposure to 'equanimity', it has become one of my favorite words, mainly because it turns out pretty much nobody else knows what it means, either.  I can only conclude that this particular word is not a standard feature in high school vocabulary curricula.  

For a while back in the early '90s, I'd toss the word into columns here and there just for fun.  But then I thought, what's the use in that?  I mean, I'm trying to get a point across in these things – generally speaking, of course – so what kind of sense does it make to use words that people aren't going to know?  It doesn't, so I quit doing it, at least consciously. 

I do still use it in business memos from time to time, with mixed results.  Back in 2004, I used the word in a memo that was distributed to the executive team of the company I worked for at the time.  The next morning, I noticed a reply had come in from the company's CEO. 

Now, for a guy in my position, attracting the attention of your CEO can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the context.  In this case it was hard to tell, because the note read "You are the first person I've ever seen use the word 'equanimity' in a business memo.  I'm impressed.  Don't do it again."  He was just joking.  I think.

I bring this all up because it occurred to me during the last few weeks that our current President, Barack Obama, is not in possession of a 'high degree of equanimity'.  He often appears sorely lacking in this quality, in fact.  This reality becomes especially apparent when the President finds himself without the crutch of his near-omni-present Teleprompter.

We saw a great example of this just on Saturday, in fact.  At a townhall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, the President became flustered when a woman complained about the myriad tax increases contained in his healthcare nationalization law, complaining that "we are already over-taxed".  In response to this question that his trusty thugs, er, aids had clearly failed to screen ahead of time, Mr. Obama launched into a rambling filibuster that went on for 2500 words and lasted more than 17 minutes.  This answer was so extraordinary in its disjointedness and lack of logic that even the liberal Obamatons who run the Washington Post felt compelled to publish an article dedicated to it in the paper's Sunday edition.

Then there was the interview on Fox News with Brett Baier, the first interview ever conducted with this President in a truly journalistic manner, i.e., an interview in which the questions were actually tough, and the person asking them was willing to follow up when the President refused to answer directly, or did not know the answer.  In this interview, one or the other was pretty much always the case.  It became readily apparent that the President did not want to directly answer questions about what was actually in the healthcare legislation, and in fact that he did not even know what was actually in it.  He became ever more testy as the interview when on and he was caught in a seemingly endless series of prevarications and information voids.

No doubt that will be the last interview Mr. Obama ever grants to any media source that has not agreed to serve as a member of his propaganda bureau.  He has since gone back to conducting cozy puff pieces on NBC and CBS in which he is shown playing basketball, and taking questions about how his wife maintains her buffed arms, and how his daughters are adjusting to life in Washington.

Faced with tough polls in the wake of the healthcare nationalization vote showing that upwards of 60% of the population disapproves of the rank atrocity, the President has lost all semblance of grace.  The speeches delivered at a seemingly endless procession of staged townhall events have taken to sounding more like Comedy Central monologues than presidential addresses.

As the November elections grow nearer, with no sign of the polls presaging a massive repudiation of Democrats around the country moderating, one senses a level of near-panic setting in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The President needs to work on his own equanimity, because the pressure will only get worse from here.