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“Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” Winston Churchill
“Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” Inscription on the Liberty Bell
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Barack Obama
Obama’s approval rating plummets
President Obama’s approval rating is down to 45 percent, according to a CNN/ORC poll of 1,014 adult Americans. 54 percent disapprove of his job performance. A month ago, the same pollsters found that 53 percent approved of the Obama presidency while 45 percent disapproved. Thus, his numbers have, in essence, flipped — a turnaround of 8 points if one focuses on the “approval” side. Although the decline in Obama’s approval »
Yes, they seem to miss him now
More Americans remember George W. Bush approvingly than negatively, according to a new Gallup survey. 49 percent of Americans view Bush favorably while 46 percent view him negatively, says Gallup. Bush’s showing is superior to President Obama’s. The current president’s numbers, according to Gallup, are 47 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval. I wouldn’t attribute too much meaning to these numbers. Frankly, I doubt that Bush could defeat Obama today »
On David Brooks
Over at InstaPundit, Glenn Reynolds makes a shrewd observation about David Brooks that seems to me worth rescuing from the stream of links. Glenn writes: WHEN WOMEN COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHIVALRY, I’m prone to point out that chivalry was a system, one that imposed obligations of behavior on women and girls as well as on men. Likewise, when David Brooks complains that Edward Snowden is an unmediated man, »
The future of an illusion
As ABC and other news outlets had it, the White House billed President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University on the status of our efforts to thwart agitated acolytes of a certain belief system as “The Future of Our Fight Against Terrorism” (for that lapse into Bushspeak regarding “Terrorism,” read “Violent Extremists”). The White House text of the speech is posted here without a title. I thought the speech »
Bill Cosby, Vindicated . . . By the Obamas?
Cast your mind back about ten years or so to a series of speeches that got Bill Cosby in a lot of trouble, especially his 2004 speech to the NAACP Awards dinner. The Cos took aim at dysfunctions in the black community . . . and he was slammed for “blaming the victim” and taking focus away from white racism. Here’s an extended excerpt: Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to »
Analyze this
What did President Obama do on the evening of 9/11/12 when our men were under attack in Benghazi? The invaluable Andrew McCarthy reminds us that Obama and Secretary Clinton had a 10:00 p.m. phone call of which many (including, I think, Chris Wallace) have lost sight. This morning when Wallace asked Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer what Obama was up to that evening, Pfeiffer declared the line of inquiry “offensive.” Translation: »
As IRS scandal deepens, Obama fetes anti-democracy pal
I don’t contend that President Obama was involved in the decision to target conservative groups for harassment by the IRS. So far, there is no evidence that would support that contention. I do contend, however, that Obama has little appreciation for the democratic process, including the right to dissent from his agenda without suffering for it. In my view, he regards democracy and dissent as hindrances to the march of »
The Bulworth identity
Peter Baker reports on President Obama’s frustrations in the New York Times: In private, [Obama] has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees »
Adventures in administrative law
Obama presents himself as detached from the events giving rise to the controversies that now beset his administration. He’s just the president. Obama has found this a useful pose in the face of the exposure of the IRS as the handmaiden of his efforts to help friends and harm enemies. He has touted the IRS as an independent agency. How can he be responsible for the shenanigans of agents that »
High tide of Obamaism
It may be too optimistic to wonder if commencement speech to the graduating students of Ohio State University (White House video here) might not have represented the high tide of Obamaism. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I wonder if it might not be (bumpily, with the implementation of Obamacare before us) downhill from here: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as »
Is Anyone Home in the White House?
One striking feature of the multiple scandals in which the Obama administration is now enmeshed is how little responsibility President Obama takes for any of them. None, actually. Not only that, he professes to be entirely in the dark, to know only what he reads in the newspapers, and to have no control over his own cabinet officers and their departments. This was a major theme of Jay Carney’s press »
Obama celebrates Mother’s Day
The White House has set up a Twitter account through which it is praising our Dear Leader in a style befitting the megalomaniacal leader of a one-party state. You really have to see it to get a fuller understanding of the Age of Obama, though I should warn readers that, as in the case of New York Times editorials, you may lose brain cells scrolling through the thing. In one »
Obama likely to wriggle out of Benghazigate; Clinton less so
Team Obama has come up with its excuse for converting the Benghazi talking points into a false narrative. It was a purely bureaucratic matter, you see. The CIA and the State Department disagreed about what happened, and the White House simply wanted to make sure the talking points represented all viewpoints. The White House has been suggesting this excuse for a few days. Today, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler, »
Tax cuts, Obama style
A thoroughgoing dishonesty permeates the Obama administration. From Obamacare to Benghazi, this is the gang that can’t talk straight. Philip Klein catches the president in the act of being himself, peddling instantly classic doubletalk: As part of a Mothers’ Day weekend defense of his signature legislative accomplishment, President Obama claimed that the law represented the “largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history. “ »
Fools and knaves, part 9
As the massacre of our fellow Americans in Benghazi returns to the news in a big way today, with the hearing scheduled in the House, it is well to remember the promotion of the Muhammad video by President Obama and Secretary Clinton in this context. It shows the politicization of the massacre by the Obama administration from the first moment on. The Obama administration’s attribution of responsibility for the massacre »
Terrorists, Then and Now
Saturday was the anniversary of the Kent State shootings in 1970. The keynote speaker at the annual commemoration service on the Kent State campus was Bill Ayers, Barack Obama’s political mentor. At the time of the Kent State confrontation, Ayers was underground, a terrorist on the run. Terrorists are perhaps less popular today then they were forty years ago, and after Ayers’ speech, a reporter had the temerity to ask »
