Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Barack Obama, November 21, 2007:
“Well, I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, not only does the country look at itself differently but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian but I also understand their point of view… My sister is half Indonesian, I traveled there all the way through my college years and so I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and the perspectives these folks have. And those are powerful tools for us to be able to reach out to the world and when you combine that with my work on the Senate Forum Relations Committee on everything from nuclear proliferation to issues of genocide then I think that the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world. That will ultimately make us safer, and that’s something that [the Bush] administration has failed to understand.”
Barack Obama, July 25, 2008:
"But Afghanistan is a war that we have to win. We do not have an option. We can't have a situation in which al Qaeda and the Taliban have created safe havens, that are potentially disruptive not only in the region but end up being the focal points around which terrorist attacks are planned, that could affect Paris or New York.
So we don't have a choice. We've got to finish the job. And that involves not just the military, it also involves economic development."
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, October 23, 2008:
We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. This change in perceptions would help rebuild American political capital in the way that the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy’s presidency did in the early 1960s.
Barack Obama, 2006:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Barack Obama, 2009:
"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
Of course, insufferable Andrew Sullivan, 2007:
What does he [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.
Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm [dumb ass wanted to say that the soft power went up exponentially. A logarithm is the inverse function of exponent, so Kristoff literally said that Obama would have very little effect. Of course, math is not for journalists]. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can....
Obama, by virtue of generation and accident, bridges this deepening divide. He was brought up in a nonreligious home and converted to Christianity as an adult. But—critically—he is not born-again. His faith—at once real and measured, hot and cool—lives at the center of the American religious experience.
Evan Thomas, Newsweek, 2009:
"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."
Last but not least - and probably the best yet: "Is Obama an enlightened being?" from the San Francisco Chronicle:
No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more.
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, 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. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
Obama, one of the most arrogant man of his time, willing and eager to use the full power of the state for his expansive purposes was elected president of the United States. As Obama himself said during his inauguration:
...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth..
And as the old saying goes - the mountain gave birth to a mouse. Now, to be fair, the sick still get healthcare, but good jobs are gone, the oceans are uncharged, and the war against Islamism is getting hotter and hotter.
Matthew 7:16 You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
After 4 years of bowing to dictators and apologizing for American sins, Obama was not able to improve American image abroad. In fact, the moslems are even less impressed by Obama than they were by Bush.
AP reports the obvious:
"WASHINGTON - Images of angry mobs in Arab cities burning American flags and attacking U.S. diplomatic posts suggest the Muslim world is no less enraged at the United States than when President George W. Bush had to duck shoes hurled at him in Baghdad."
People love Obama in Afghanistan
A Taliban attack on a coalition base in Afghanistan killed two U.S. soldiers and destroyed six Harrier jets, according to reports Sunday.
Insider Attacks Rise; U.S. Halts Training
In recent years, there has been a rise in attacks by Afghan forces against their coalition counterparts. The attacks, which the military calls “green-on-blue” or “insider” assaults, have heightened worries about how the coalition troops, who are training members of the Afghan Army and the police, can protect themselves while working at close quarters with Afghan forces.
In one of a series of recent steps, the military decreed that American and NATO service members should always carry a loaded magazine in their weapons, to save precious moments if attacked by Afghan forces. Another initiative, now a priority, is a program named “Guardian Angel” that calls for one or two soldiers to monitor the Afghans during every mission or meeting, officials say.
The “angels,” whose identities are not disclosed to the Afghans, must be prepared to fire on anyone who tries to kill a coalition service member.
Obama loses Egypt to Islamists:
President Barack Obama says the U.S. would not consider Egypt an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.” Obama said in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo that Egypt is a “new government that is trying to find its way.” And he warned that if the Egyptian government takes actions showing “they’re not taking responsibility,” then it would “be a real big problem.”
Pakistan, exponentially warming up to president Obama:
The imprisoned Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden's compound, Dr. Shakil Afridi, managed to make a phone call to Fox News' Dominic Di-Natale and describe the brutal torture he says he's been subject to since being arrested for treason last year.
He described how during his own interrogation, in which he was tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks, ISI officers attacked him for assisting the U.S...
He was blindfolded for eight months and handcuffed with his hands behind his back for 12 months, he says. His treatment has left a debilitating effect on his eyesight and limbs...
“I tried to argue that America was Pakistan’s biggest supporter – billions and billions of dollars in aid, social and military assistance -- but all they said was, ‘These are our worst enemies. You helped our enemies.’” ... Afridi told Fox News he helped the CIA out of love for the U.S., and swore that he would help America again despite suffering crippling torture and psychological abuse during the 12 months he was held by Pakistan’s spy agency.I am not going to talk about the state of the US economy, everyone knows about high unemployment, slow GDP growth, exponential growth of the federal debt - and anticipated return of recession in 2013, which is at this point is pretty much unavoidable. But here is a story to make you smile.
Russian-American joke
A clerk from the Enviromental Protection Agency comes to a farm and tells the old farmer:
”I need to inspect your farm and make sure that you are not violating the laws protecting the wetland." "Okay," says the farmer, "but don't go in that field over there".
The man from the EPA says, “Sir, I have the full authority of the Federal Government. See this card? This card means I am allowed to go WHEREVER I WISH on any agricultural land in the country. No questions asked. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand?”
The farmer nods politely and goes about his chores. Soon after, he hears loud screams and sees the man from the EPA running for his life in the field, followed by an angry bull.
The EPA man sees the farmer and screams for help. The farmer throws down his tools, runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs, ”Your card! Show him your f@cking card!”
I am still waiting for the moment when Obama will show his "f@cking card" to the Islamists, the economy, the European Union, the Chinese, the Russians and the oceans - and make them all behave well.
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