Barack Obama
January 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
One would like to think that liberal self-mockery informs the cover of the new online edition of Newsweek, tied to Evan Thomas’s cover story. Or perhaps an allusion to Yeats’s great poem, asking “what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” Or perhaps the liberals at Newsweek/Daily Beast recognize that, like Communism, liberalism has become a secular religion. Or perhaps, as Brent Baker suggests,
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January 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
My 2012 book of the year is Charles Kesler’s I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism (along with Jean Yarbrough’s Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition). Kesler is professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books, the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute. Kathryn Lopez has an excellent interview with Professor Kesler posted at NRO. I recommend the whole
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January 8, 2013 — Scott Johnson
My 2012 book of the year is Charles Kesler’s I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism (along with Jean Yarbrough’s Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition). Kesler is professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books, the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute. I wish the 2012 election had rendered Charles’s book obsolete and moved it toward the remainder
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January 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
It’s not the Dynamo and the Virgin, it’s the ho-ho-ho and the head spin: What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: “At one point several weeks ago,” Mr. Boehner says, “the president said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.’” Hey, maybe he gets his news from Meet the Press. It’s actually worse than
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December 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Watching David Gregory interview Barack Obama on Meet the Press this morning, I wondered if Obama might have offered to wash Gregory’s feet after the show. Gregory appears to be a disciple of his Lord the President. Gregory seeks to disseminate the Obama gospel. “Is this your Lincoln moment?” Gregory actually asked him. And that may not have been the worst of it. Gregory should have prefaced the broadcast of
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December 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
If there is one thing we know for sure about the federal government, it is that it spends way too much money–around $3.54 trillion in FY 2012, with a $1.1 trillion deficit. You would think that the man who presides over this mess, Barack Obama, would have the decency to be embarrassed. He has, after all, run up more than $4 trillion in debt in a mere four years. But
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December 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
If one is ever going to embellish significantly on the truth, a eulogy is probably the place to do it. But the embellishment should pertain solely to the deceased, not the eulogizer. In his eulogy for Sen. Daniel Inouye, President Obama spoke in some detail about his favorite subject — himself. In doing so Obama claimed that “Danny Inouye was perhaps my earliest political inspiration.” He explained that he learned
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December 23, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Like Steve, I was struck by President Obama’s threat during “cliff” negotiations to use his inaugural address to blame Republicans for any breakdown in the talks. How Lincolnesque would that be? A speech for the ages. On reflection, though, we shouldn’t be shocked if Obama attacks the Republicans in his inaugural address and/or his State of the Union speech (which he also threatened to use for this purpose), regardless of
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December 17, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
David Maraniss, author of a biography of Barack Obama, compared Obama’s speech in Newtown to the Gettysburg Address. Maraniss claimed that “People will long remember what Barack Obama said in Newtown, his Gettysburg address.” Maraniss found multiple levels of excellence in Obama’s speech: “philosophical, sorrowful, determined, universal, simple, beautiful.” Noted historian Spike Lee agreed. He considers the speech “one of the greastest [sic] presidential speeches in the history of the
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December 8, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
It looks like President Obama will attend the “Christmas in Washington” concert where South Korean rapper “Psy” will perform. Obama was not moved to skip the event even after it became publicized that Mr. Psy had the following to say in 2004, following the beheading of a South Korean by Islamic extremists in Iraq: Kill those f****** Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives; Kill those f****** Yankees who ordered
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December 7, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
A South Korean rapper called PSY (his name is Park Jae-sang) is scheduled to perform for President Obama and his family at the “Christmas in Washington” concert this month. In 2004, PSY rapped the following lyrics: Kill those f****** Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives; Kill those f****** Yankees who ordered them to torture; Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers; Kill them all slowly and painfully. PSY has
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November 25, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
With the reelection of President Obama secured, Washington Post economics reporter Zachary Goldfarb finally identifies “the bedrock belief that has driven the president for decade” (or Obama’s “driving force,” per the web edition). That bedrock belief is that the power of the federal government must be used reduce income inequality in America. According to Goldfarb, Obama formed this belief as a child and young adult living abroad, where he observed,
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November 21, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The folks at Investor’s Business Daily opine on Obama’s “rubelike gaffes” in the course of the presidential tour of Burma, Thailand and Cambodia. Analyze this. IBD catches Obama receiving the kind of contempt that he himself usually specializes in dishing out to his presumed inferiors: On his trip to Cambodia, a country he claimed didn’t deserve a visit due to its strongman government, first lady Bun Rany greeted Obama with
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November 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Courtesy of some Facebook friends, a translation of an editorial from the Czech newspaper Prager Zeitungon: The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such
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November 18, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama has encouraged Israel not to send troops into Gaza if it can halt the bombardment of southern Israel without the use of ground troops. Obama pointed out that not sending in troops is “preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they’re much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.” What would the world do without Barack Obama to provide such insights?
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November 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Writing of Obama’s post-election press conference this week, Paul Mirengoff noted that Obama became testy when asked about threats by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to oppose United States Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice if she is nominated to be Secretary of State. Obama advised Senate Republicans that if they want to “go after somebody, they should go after me.” He added, with disgust, that Rice is merely
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November 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
At his press conference today, President Obama became testy when asked about threats by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to oppose Susan Rice if she is nominated to be Secretary of State. Obama advised Senate Republicans that if they want to “go after somebody, they should go after me.” He added, with disgust, that Rice is merely the U.N. ambassador and, as such, had nothing to do with Benghazi.
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