Someone is starting to become unpopular…

Only nine months ago, when he addressed an estimated 200,000 people in Germany, Barack Obama was heralded as “president of the world.”

But now that he’s president of the United States, the world doesn’t appear to be following up on its endorsement.

From France to Poland, from the Czech Republic to China, many nations are rebuffing the president and offering little wiggle room for him to negotiate economic and security policies.

Obama faces his first major international test next week when the world’s largest economies meet at the G20 summit in London.

“I think as the president heads to Europe, he faces a huge public relations disaster,” said Nile Gardiner, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

“Europe is increasingly turning against his massive spending plans, which most European leaders see as a destructive way to move forward for the global economy and will only add to a massive American debt burden,” Gardiner told FOXNews.com.

“At the same time, there is a growing impression across Europe that the Obama administration is inept and inefficient and increasingly poorly managed.”

A top European Union politician on Wednesday slammed Obama’s plans for the U.S. to spend its way out of recession as “a way to hell.”

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who lost a confidence vote in his own parliament this week and whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament that Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout “will undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

That followed concerns by Poland that the U.S., as a way to appease Russia, plans to bail out of a missile defense shield the Bush administration negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Russian generals, and even the Russian president, still continues to threaten us with the deployment of medium-range missiles in our immediate vicinity,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., in Brussels on Sunday. “So we signed with the previous administration. We patiently wait for the decision of the new administration and we hope we don’t regret our trust in the United States.”

Most European leaders favor tighter financial regulation, while the U.S. has been pushing for larger economic stimulus plans.

“We consider that in Europe we have already invested a lot for the recovery, and that the problem is not about spending more, but putting in place a system of regulation so that the economic and financial catastrophe that the world is seeing does not reproduce itself,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a news conference in Berlin last week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rebuffing U.S. calls to spend more.

“I think it’s fair to say on these economic issues, there seems to be a critical divide between the U.S. and some of our friends in Europe that is going to make it more difficult for the G20 to be successful,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution.
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But Europe isn’t the only international ally that could turn on Obama. Australia’s leadership, whose longtime enthusiastic support for America had buttressed the Bush administration, is reluctant to send more troops to Afghanistan.
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China, meanwhile, is expressing serious reservations about owning U.S. debt. And in the latest sign of Beijing’s growing assertiveness on the international stage, China’s central bank has called for the creation of a new global currency as an alternative to the dollar, .

China has more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and other government securities. As the U.S. government ramps up spending to stimulate the economy and assist the battered financial sector, Chinese officials have said they are worried that inflation will result, which would erode the value of their dollar holdings.

Hire competence, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance you just might get it.

Hire popularity instead of competence…most of the time, after awhile, you don’t even get what you were buying. Whoever & whatever is popular this year, wasn’t popular last year, and won’t be popular next year.

This isn’t a Republican/democrat thing. It’s a fashion thing. Investing in fashion is like investing in this year’s computer hard drive.

So next presidential election…let’s all just try to do a better job talking about issues. M’kay?

Perhaps the next four years are going to be just a little less painful, if we come up with a new calendar to mark them off. There would be a practical purpose to this, I think, if the months or seasons of this new calendar were named after the word-of-the-moment. And by “word-of-the-moment” I mean the word that, once somehow jettisoned from your vocabulary, would render it impossible to say anything positive about Him.

Like you walk up to an Obamafan and challenge him, “tell me why He’s so wonderful, but without using the word ____” and…he just might be there, mentally squirming, all day. Intellectually, this movement has always been about as deep as a rain puddle. There has always been some word. One at a time.

Throughout the campaign last year, and as it ran into the home stretch, it was “Charismatic.”

In January it was “Hope.”

Now and for the immediate foreseeable future…it’s “Inherited.”

On St. Patrick’s Day — gosh, this stuff is just coming at us at hurricane speeds, isn’t it? — I wrote:

I don’t think Obama can have an approval rating of 49%. I think His approval numbers will slide down to 50%, and after that He’ll keep it there for a time, just long enough for His followers to figure what’s going on. And then once the reality sinks in He’ll be down in the twenties, or teens, or low teens. He’ll be just like any last-year’s fashion statement. The point is, there will be a sudden, unrecoverable, drop.

The typical Obama fan doesn’t have what it takes to say “oh sure, only 45% of us are on His side now, but I know a good idea when I see it so I’m sticking to my guns.” This takes courage that they don’t have. Obama’s in fashion, or else Obama’s out of fashion; so once that 50% hash-mark comes & goes, it’s fall-away time.

It’s about to be put to the test.

The honeymoon is over, a national poll will signal today as President Obama’s job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy.

The sobering numbers come as the president backpedals from two prime-time gaffes – one comparing his bowling score to a Special Olympian and another awkwardly laughing about the economy, which prompted Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” to ask “are you punch-drunk?”

Pollster John Zogby said his poll out today will show Americans split on the president’s performance. He said the score factors out to “about 50-50.”

Colleague at work: “He’s trying his best.”
Me: “His best? I’d hate to see his worst.”

This stuff never changes. The charlatan comes to town and says, “Forget about policies, forget about positions, forget about philosophies and principles, forget about history. Just listen to the soothing sound of my dulcet voice. Look how I command a crowd. You might as well follow me, it’s the thing to do.”

In politics, in business, in life. Each and every time, everyone ends up pretending to build things or fix things without really building or fixing anything.

David Warren, writing in Real Clear Politics:

All his life, from childhood through university through “community organizing” and Chicago wardheel politics, through Sunday mornings listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the left side of Democrat caucuses in Springfield and Washington, he has been surrounded almost exclusively by extremely liberal people, and moreover, by people who are quick and clever but intellectually narrow.

He is a free soul, but he is also the product of environments in which even moderately conservative ideas are never considered; but where people on the further reaches of the left are automatically welcomed as “avant-garde.” His whole idea of where the middle might be, is well to the left of where the average American might think it is. To a man like Obama, as he has let slip on too many occasions when away from his teleprompter, “Middle America” is not something to be compromised with, but rather, something that must be manipulated, because it is stupid. And the proof that it can be manipulated, is that he is the president today.

Hat tip: Karol.

…over Barack Obama’s failure.

You never vetted, never examined him in any depth at all, even though the candidate had hardly any experience other than running for office. (Oh, yes, he was a “community organizer.” So was I, in a sense. You want to elect me?)

So now we are going to hear that Timothy Geithner or Press Secretary Gibbs or whoever should be thrown under the bus. No, sorry, it is the MSM that should be going under that now overused vehicle, committing hari-kari before the public does what it should – disenfranchise them completely. The election of Barack Obama was orchestrated by our mainstream media. They anointed him. They should suffer the consequences.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Everyone, it seems, wants to know what everyone else thinks. The question may come my way sometime soon, or not, or ever. But just for the record, I think He has a pass coming on this one.

I understand the temptation to make something of it. President Bush didn’t say anything like this; and President Bush wouldn’t have. I think those two men see the world around them differently, I think they see the office of the President differently, and when George W. Bush occupied it I think he saw himself as representing all Americans and not just some Americans. He was also liberated from the burden of staying hip and cool, so the benefits of telling such a joke wouldn’t have impressed him much.

These are meaningful differences. It might seem desirable, even noble, to make something of ’em. But in the end, it is political correctness run amok. And, granted, something else — it’s beneath the office of the President to ridicule an entire class within his constituency, just as it’s beneath the office of the President to notice Jessica Simpson has been putting on a little weight. But these are things about Barack Obama we already knew. This latest slip reveals about as much about Him, as yet-another-word-mangling would have revealed about His predecessor: Not very much.

Besides of which, as a blogger in his underwear sitting on a couch at five in the morning, I want to keep making fun of people. And, while the President of the United States might be held to standards I am not (or at least, was, back in the old days), if I wanted to join in on the calls for virtual tarring-and-feathering, I’d have to stop making fun of people myself. Then I’d have to join up with, and start sympathizing with, the compulsive, routine knuckle-rappers…starting with the ones that want to close down every Hooters restaurant in existence because they “objectify” women.

And I don’t wanna do that. I don’t want to live in a world where the societal taboos are so thick, that you have to pretend, all the time, even in the privacy of your own home, that everyone is exactly the same…to such an extent that the threat of social ostracism persuades even the capable minds to avoid reality like a thief avoiding a constable. I went to public school in the 1970’s — I know where that trail leads.

Instead, let’s notice things about Obama’s true constituency, the way He notices things about some special-olympiads. He doesn’t represent all of us, and obviously He doesn’t think He does. He represents the purple-tie-Manhattan-creampuff crowd, the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live audience, the land of snark. That special place in which every piece of humor — each and every single one — revolves around a caricature. That realm of humor in which someone is always made to look bad, or dopey, or buffoonish, or is diminished in some way.

It’s a lack, not so much of class, as of character. An old man indulging in an ethnic or sexist one-liner might have what they are missing, if, at the next opportunity he has the depth and the worldview to add in some variety. Things he learned about life from his wife before she died; an interesting story behind something he saw in Europe twenty years ago; a self-deprecating story about going into the kitchen the other day and forgetting what he was supposed to be doing in there.

There’s the pity. Obama was trying to be self-deprecating Himself, He was trying to make fun of His own bowling game. But He’s part of that young-hip-urban crowd that just doesn’t know how to get it done. They don’t have variety. Every joke has to have a clearly defined target, and in their universe the group identification has become critically important because there are some things that are supposed to be targets and other things that are not. According to that set of social codes, if Obama can be a target, than so can we all. And that’s just too frightening to them. Sounds a little bit too much like the way we knuckle-dragging conservatives live…with that horrible, awful thing called individuality. An end to that carefully constructed don’t-make-fun-of-X hierarchy. True egalitarianism, which they shunned eons ago.

There’s nothing ugly that can be said against President Obama here, other than that people have negligible value to Him if He can’t see a way they can help Him become more powerful. If they can’t Help Him in this way, with or without their direct knowledge. Anyone who can’t do this, doesn’t really matter to Him. And we knew that already. That, and His ability to speak-off-the-cuff, to create an inclusive society, to appeal to the hearts and minds of strangers in a positive way — these talents of His have been vastly exaggerated. We knew that already too. Let it go.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I’m not worried. It’s just like 1993 all over again. More and more liberal nonsense, completely unrestrained, until the voters finally get sick and tired of it and lower the smackdown.

Meanwhile, get a good look because it’s history in the making. As I said before: If you got a solar eclipse right over your head every sixteen years, you’d still make the effort to look at it or get a picture of it, right? It’s a rare opportunity to focus on some of our more hidden human weaknesses…and those of our so-called “leaders”:

Sometimes political movements, as they grow old, become arrogant, insular, and dismissive of criticism. Critics said that the conservative ascendancy of the last few decades succumbed to that disease, and there is more truth in it than conservatives would like to admit. What we are seeing in Washington, D.C., right now is different: President Obama and his supporters are showing early symptoms of this syndrome in the first flush of victory. The liberal ascendancy is already becoming a liberal complacency.

In part this tendency reflects the character of the new president, a preternaturally self-confident man. His ambition to remake American policy and politics is staggering. His agenda for just his first year in office includes a fiscal stimulus unprecedented in size, a push for a new energy economy, and the revamping of American health care. That ambition may wreck his presidency, or it may make him the world-historical figure he aspires to be. But what is more troubling is the unwarranted intellectual self-confidence that liberalism in the age of Obama increasingly exhibits.

The debate over the economic-stimulus plan illustrated the point. When that plan was criticized, President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority whip Dick Durbin all resorted nearly immediately to the “argument” that they had won the election. It is of course true that a lot of Democrats won their elections and that they will consequently get their way in most policy disputes. Yet they — and liberals generally — seem oddly exercised by the continued resistance to their policies by the small and relatively powerless minority that elected Republicans now constitute.

I would argue that “I won, now back down” is a far more legitimate argument coming from a conservative than coming from a liberal. At least, in cases like this, when the election that just took place is one revolutionary in nature.

A revolutionary instant of support for liberalism, is a mandate to make something go. Making something go invites all kinds of debate that would be, if allowed, quite legitimate: How do we make it go? In this case we could discuss, waitaminnit, we’re out of money and we’ll fix the problem by spending lots of it? How does that work? Or: Waitaminnit, the economy is on a deathbed and we’re going to shock in back into robust health by taxing the ever-luvin’ snot out of it? Or, what has become my favorite lately: How come it is that if I’m offered a retention bonus, I’ll be able to keep it, even though you’re saying when an AIG executive is offered one, it’ll be revoked or taxed away on Congress’ whim? How is it you’re attacking their right to own property, and leaving mine intact?

This kind of liberal snobbery shuns important and necessary exchanges of ideas, like these, and many more.

The same is not true of a conservative who earns a mandate to make something stop. In that scenario, you have a situation like what we had in the 1994 elections: The voters are sick to death of something and want it ended.

You know, as far as that goes, according to President Obama’s own campaign rhetoric He fits into that paradigm as a conservative — in the sense He was put there to put a stop to something, not necessarily to make something go. “Change” from those “failed policies” that belonged to President Bush, and all that. Being a Messianic Enlightened Being who’s super-duper-smart, so I’m told, He should understand that when He puts a plan together, the time’s come to put it up for some kind of discussion — even though He won. The process of construction is just a bit more complicated than the process of destruction.

It’s yet another thing we’ve said around these parts quite a bit: You need to attend some kind of training to operate the crane that swings a wrecking ball to get rid of a building (and most of that has to do with how not injure people when you’re gettin’ it done, not so much the actual wrecking); to be the architect of the new building that goes up in its place, you need quite a bit more training. Things have to fit together. Materials have to be chosen and customized, measurements have to meet code, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Wrecking is easy. Stopping things is relatively simple.

The voters deserve to have some way of saying “we’re sick of this, enough!” They also deserve to have some way of saying “er, y’know, this really might not quite be what we had in mind.”

So David Broder is announcing the honeymoon is over (hat tip: Melissa), and His Anointedness’ approval ratings — yes, He has to worry about these too, just like any other President — have sunk beneath sixty percent. Maybe that’s as low as they’ll ever go. Maybe not.

If not, it opens up a question about the nature of His incredible popularity: If it continues to decline, will it decline the same way as with His predecessors?

I’m thinking not. I have a theory about this. I think, given the characteristics of the people who slavishly follow Him, this is going to be tracking downward along a different trend. These are people who have found it to be an incredible, intoxicating opportunity to be a part of a “change”; a change that had such an overwhelming inertia built up behind it, that without any one of them, it would’ve succeeded just fine anyway. These are, therefore, people who find it to be a spiritually uplifting experience to contribute to revolutions that don’t really need their help.

From that, and from interacting with them personally, I conclude most of them lack the character fortitude to participate in a real revolution. They don’t have experience being on the thin side of a crowd. After all, these are people who found the mere illusion of making a difference to be so affirming. Can it really be said they’d be this enthralled if they had any experience standing against the majority? I find that doubtful. I think these are people who crave, well before that feeling of making a difference and fomenting “change,” the safety of facing the same direction as the majority, ahead of it or behind it. This is necessary for the affirmation.

I don’t think Obama can have an approval rating of 49%. I think His approval numbers will slide down to 50%, and after that He’ll keep it there for a time, just long enough for His followers to figure what’s going on. And then once the reality sinks in He’ll be down in the twenties, or teens, or low teens. He’ll be just like any last-year’s fashion statement.

The point is, there will be a sudden, unrecoverable, drop. The challenge that will arise in 2012 will be to recapture some of that old excitement from 2007 and 2008. That will be the big question, upon which the elections will turn. Perhaps it will be like 1996 all over again — voters will figure, hey, we handed Him enough of a butt-paddling in the 2010 midterms voting all those Republicans into Congress, He’s gotten the message by now. Maybe He can give a few really awesome excellent speeches.

But it will, ultimately, be a campaign asking people to repeat a mistake. A mistake they will, by then, bitterly regret…not only with sorrow, but with some measure of rancor. The President asking them to forgive and forget will be polling at…oh…about 22%, tops.

Once the Obamafan perceives himself to be in the minority, it’ll all be over for good. They don’t have the intrepidity to tolerate a situation like that. They aren’t that strong. Their moral resilience is just not there.

That’s why they are so driven to provide the illusion that it is; and, why they’re never, ever quite finished proving it. It’s a desire to have something others have, that they’ve never had.

They’ll desert Him like rats on a sinking ship.

The fifty-sixth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes out this morning to James Taranto (who, if memory serves, might already have received one or two…although I’m too lazy to go digging in the archives at the moment).

Highlighted in bold —

Obama’s new “optimistic” tone seems to reflect an adjustment in political tactics. Early in his term–until about a week ago, that is–administration officials were acting in accord with Rahm Emanuel’s dictum “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The theory seemed to be that if people felt the situation was dire, they would be more amenable to Obama’s vision of transforming America into a European-style social democracy.

Now, it seems, Obama has concluded that the sense of crisis is an impediment to his goals. Therefore, he is counseling optimism and patience in the hope that that will win support for the things he wants to do.

But everyone knows the crisis is real, even if it falls short of a catastrophe. And hardly anyone is gullible enough to think that socializing the health-insurance business, imposing massive taxes on energy, and increasing the power of unions are going to resolve a crisis that has its origins in the credit markets.

Obama seems to care about the economic crisis only to the extent that it is an impediment to or an instrument for winning support for policies in unrelated areas. It is as if President Bush had responded to 9/11 by launching an all-out campaign for private Social Security accounts.

He seems to care about crisis only to the extent that it helps or hurts his agenda in unrelated areas. That’s how I would re-word it so it fits on a large refrigerator magnet…I’m still miles off from fitting it on a bumper sticker or coffee mug.

But you’re lookin’, right there, at why I’ve bet a hundred dollars plus a steak dinner on this guy being a one-termer. Nobody has an enduring craving for the salesman who is obviously just telling you what it takes to get things sold. He might be fun to have around for five minutes, or ten, but after an hour you want to toss him out on his ear. And if you ever want to see him again, it’s only because you’ve been enjoying a generous break from him.

The dude, like others like him, is like beef jerky. Just not that appealing when you get too much. That’s for starters. And now, as our duly Anointed Messiah, He can’t even keep it straight whether we’re in the middle of something that is a paralyzing crisis, or no-biggie. That kind of inconsistency will wear out His welcome even quicker still.

Baldwin Park democrat, speaking for probably several others:

President Obama did not come down from on high. He is not a miracle worker. He can not wave a magic wand and make things miraculously happen. He is a mortal. A human being. Nothing more and nothing less.

President Obama and his Administration hit the ground running on day one and have kept up a whirlwind pace ever since. Few Presidents have accomplished so much in such a short span of time. But not all of his campaign promises can be enacted in his first hundred days. The unprecedented number of high priority and competing issues facing the new President means that some changes will simply have to bide their time.

The changes will come, not as quickly as some would like, but they will come. Everyone needs to be realistic in judging President Obama’s performance so early in his Administration.

My goodness, democrats can get bossy when telling strangers what opinions they should have of things. Well, Don Surber seems to be abiding by the “needs to be realistic” part, in passing judgment on this “whirlwind pace” (hat tip: Gerard).

Barack Obama is too busy posing for magazine covers to actually do the job to which he was elected.

There is a price to be paid when a president throws a party every other night, weekends in Chicago or Camp David and poses for magazine cover after magazine cover.

After 51 days in office, Barack Obama has appointed only 73 people to 1,200 jobs that require Senate confirmation.

If they require Senate approval, they are important jobs.

But Obama is too busy to properly vet the people and appoint them to fill the jobs to get the work done.

That is his job.

And he shirks it.

And now we pay the price.

The London Independent reported: “Last week, it was all smiles and handshakes as Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama put on a show of unity in Washington.

“But yesterday, Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant, exposed transatlantic tension when he protested that Downing Street was finding it ‘unbelievably difficult’ to plan for next month’s G20 summit in London because of problems tracking down senior figures in the US administration. ‘There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,’ the Cabinet Secretary told a civil service conference in Gateshead.”

The Times of London and other newspapers had similar accounts.

If our allies cannot reach us because Barack Obama has failed to appoint someone to answer the phone, how are we to have any friends in the world?

And yet this naïf little twit who barely qualifies to be a back bencher in the Illinois legislature had the nerve to tell reporters last week: “President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history.”

He really said that.

He really thinks that.

He really thinks that because he could get legislation passed through a Congress that is overwhelmingly Democratic that he is God’s gift to the nation.

I think where the Barackapologists are going a little bit off-base here, is with this perception of theirs that they have been sold a whole sumptuous buffet of presidential/personal assets in exchange for their votes, when really what they got was only a single, solitary positive attribute: This ability that PBO has, to make a good impression on people. That was the only goody in the package.

And it just got recalled; there’s nothing left.

If I could travel back in a time machine to early November and tell people “Barack Obama is going to be defended by only a slim minority among his most ardent followers, for his underperformance in His first 50 days in office,” it would be perceived back there as extreme, fringe, kooky, agitprop right-wing propaganda.

And yet. Here we are.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Megan McArdle:

Our sister publication asks analysts whether the administration’s economic forecasts are too optimistic. They would have gotten a more interesting discussion if their query had been “Is the Pope Catholic?” Of course they’re too optimistic. In fact, the word optimistic is too optimistic. A better choice might have been “insane”. Like Greg Mankiw, I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration’s predictions.

Having defended Obama’s candidacy largely on his economic team, I’m having serious buyer’s remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I’m not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that’s, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election. Back then, people like me handed him kudoes for using numbers that were really much less mendacious than the general run of candidate program promises. Now, he’s building a budget on the promise that this recession will be milder than average, with growth merely dipping to 1.2% this year and returning to trend in 2010. Isn’t there anyone at BLS who could have filled him in on the unemployment figures, or at Treasury who could have explained what a disproportionate impact finance salaries have on tax revenue? These numbers…well, I can’t really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced passed Bush in the Delusional Budget Math olympics.

This is an important voice — far more important than mine. This is an Obama voter. It’s not an Obama voter who was fainting at the rallies, getting tingles up her leg, screaming “There’s Just Something About Him!!” or any of that rot. This is a Main Street USA type, one who was sick to death of bloated, irresponsible spending, and voted for Obama to get something better.

That, I daresay, was the majority of The Holy One’s voting base.

I’ve bet some money that His Anointedness was going to be a one-termer, and then I said later on I’d like to double my stakes on that one if I had any takers. That was a stupid thing to say, and I’d like to retract it. What I meant to say was that I’d like to quadruple those stakes.

In 2012, He will not be getting any votes from the “There’s Just Something About Him!” folks. They’ll know there isn’t. Also, He will not be getting any votes from the “I Just Want To Be Part Of This Thing!” folks; we will have already had a black President, and there won’t be any thing to be a part of.

Oh, people will want change in ’12…far more than they wanted it in ’08. Far, far more. They’ll be hungry for change, and hungry for hope. They just won’t see Him as the Savior who can deliver it anymore.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Blogfather John Hawkins’ list of 10 Biggest Amateur Mistakes Made by the Obama Administration So Far, has been green-lit on FARK. And if you’re familiar with FARK, it will not be news to you that the regulars are pretty damned unhappy about it. The three biggest slices out of the opinion pie appear to be 1) It’s a bunch of nitpicky crap, 2) Republicans are retards and 3) George W. Bush is much, much worse.

Planet Obamafan is a fascinating place. I notice when the subject under discussion is Rush Limbaugh wanting Obama to fail, the conversation is all of a sudden, what’s right for the country, nevermind whether you belong to the same party as our new President — He’s Your President Too! And then when PresBO starts screwing up left and right, all of a sudden, in unison, we’re supposed to veer in lockstep off from this “what’s best for the country” stuff and think long & hard about that other guy.

Perhaps the ego of a liberal can be harnessed to solve our energy crisis. If you harbor some skepticism about that, what’s going on at the “Talk” Page behind the Wikipedia entry for Barack Obama, might have a purging effect on that. Consider…

Barack Obama is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community.

Then you scroll down a bit, and see…

Controversy

Where is the controversy page… My dad had to rub in my face today that, “Your precious wikipedia is getting a lot of negative publicity for reporting nothing negative about Obama in fairness.” —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.181.241 (talk) 16:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

No, wait, we’re just getting to the good stuff…

No Mention of Wright

This is shameful even for wikipedia standards, not even talking about the fact that he sat and listened 20 years to borderline racist statements and the only thing wikipedia users show fit to say is that he left the church, Reverend Wright is Obama’s personal friend, what would it take to put more about their relationship on his page? Oh wait I know, it would be perfect if it were a white Reverend and he was George W. Bush’s friend, this is cowardly bullshit and blatant favoritism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Husk3rfan9287 (talk • contribs) 03:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

While the policy in A5 (not mentioning “fairly minor issues [that had] no significant legal or mainstream political impact) would seem to keep any mention of Obama’s citizenship controversy out of his article, I don’t think the same can be said for his association with Reverend Wright and the church where he preached. Those had both significant and mainstream impact. Does someone disagree? Lawyer2b (talk) 09:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It’s probably worth somewhere between two words and a sentence, as a matter of proportionality. It currently has a sentence, but in a footnote. If moved back into the main section it should be posed in a way that focuses on the relationship to Obama, and his decision to leave the church in light of the controversy, as opposed to focusing on Wright himself or the relatively modest campaign issue. However, it may be difficult to achieve any kind of consensus for a little while here given the editing issues.Wikidemon (talk) 10:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggest waiting a couple days for the wnd and drudge trolling to die down and then posting a proposed edit here for consensus discussion. cheers, –guyzero | talk 10:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
With the amount of press that this had, including Obama having to address this publicly, there must be some mention in the text itself, perhaps a sentence or two, with a wikilink or a {{main}}/{{see also}} to the proper article. While it should not, and cannot be allowed to take an undue role here, its only mention coming in a footnote smacks of POV hagiography which expressly violated WP:NPOV. — Avi (talk) 12:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I would respectfully recommend three mentions of Wright. First, as Obama’s mentor. Obama himself said so, and Wright’s role in Obama’s person life, as marriage officiator, baptiser and spiritual advisor. Seocnd, “The Audacity of Hope” title comes from a speech from Wright. This should be mentioned. Third, the leaving of Wright’s church because of a swell of controversy. These three points should be understood by the reader. It tells the full arc of Obama and Wright’s relationship. By putting each point in the article in places where it relates, we can avoid POV as none of these ponts directly relate to the views and controversial aspects of Wright and therefore we can avoid making the page about Wright directly. Bytebear (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well if you feel those should be in the article, then you are going to need to find a couple sources to back each of those parts up. The ref’s cannot be World News Daily, Free Republic, Blogs, etc. The ref must pass WP:RS and WP:V and if you are not sure, post it up on the RS/N for a check. Also, the ref’s must exactly say each of those points, nothing can be implied. There cannot be any synthesis or original research. If you can find ref’s that passes all then, post them here and we can discuss the changes. Brothejr (talk) 16:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The tragedy here, is people who are biased toward the left side and don’t know it. As the maligned and slandered World Net Daily points out, members of the “Wikipedia community” have been repeatedly banned for up to three days at a time for their attempts to upload factual information not favorable to His Holiness.

The concern, ostensibly, is to keep what is intended to be a workable encyclopedic resource from becoming a mirror for tabloid trash. Quite the laudable goal. And so, standards are in effect for sourcing. Thou shalt not scribble in what thou hast read from contraband sources until thou art corroborate it from something respectable.

All fine and good. But the letter of the rule has been implemented above its spirit, if the facts being reported aren’t even in dispute. And much of what’s involved in the “eligibility” controversy is beyond dispute. Barack Obama has a Hawaii birth certificate; an electronic reproduction has been provided; the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed it is genuine; so far as I know (not that I care), an original has not been provided, and you can draw your own conclusions about whether that would be worth mentioning if Obama was a Republican. Or something a few steps less evolved than a radiant media demigod.

My point is, this particular Wikipedia policy invites human bias like a computer power supply invites dustbunnies, while going through the motions of clearing it out. Wikipedia won’t allow any “facts” to creep in if they’re reported from the wrong place. Which facts are those? Mentioning that Obama’s birth certificate is a reproduction and not an original, as reported by World Net Daily, is a completely different thing from mentioning, let’s say, that Obama was actually born in Kenya as reported by World Net Daily.

It’s like reading that someone died in the National Enquirer. All fine and good if you don’t respect the name of the Enquirer; but the dude’s dead, or else he isn’t. It’s not reasonable to take the position “as far as I’m concerned, he’s just as alive as you or me until I see his obituary somewhere else.”

This is not a trifling complaint on my part, I don’t think. Even with all the noise from last year, there are still some people who don’t know that much about Barack Obama; no, they aren’t from Mars, and they haven’t been living in caves, they simply have other things to think about on a daily basis. It seems if they hear the names “Barack Obama” and “Jeremiah Wright” in juxtaposition with each other in the same sentence, and wonder what’s going on with that, they ought to be able to bring it up on Wikipedia and make their own decisions based on the facts. The facts…once they have ’em. That is, as I understand it, in keeping with the online encyclopedia’s primary mission.

The Wiki editors should realize this, and act on it, on their own…or at least after some of the complaints, above. The very most benign explanation available to me, as far as why they don’t, would be: They’re worried about appearances. Suppose they publish the pertinent and verifiable facts about the birth certificate controversy. Someone reading, decides there’s something to this, and launches a new wave of legal challenge. History then records President Obama had to battle a second outcry, a second hubbub, about the birth-in-Hawaii thing thanks to a lawsuit started by Hoozeewhatzit Whatzisface, who had read about the issue in Wikipedia. Unacceptable. And so Wikipedia opts to present no information at all, as opposed to presenting information that could cause…problems.

That’s a case of confusing the mission of being a valuable and impartial online resource, with looking like one. Aw, but it’s a little worse than that — it must be a case of being proud to make that kind of Faustian exchange, because this is a featured article…remember?

But I don’t put too much stock in my “benign motive” theory. I think what we’re seeing on Wiki, is exactly what we encountered over on FARK. The human ego getting in the way of admitting that maybe, just maybe, a mistake might have been made — even though the majority made it, the majority was enthused about making it, and the majority was loud when it made it. Humility gets the message pondered, but pride leaps in to stop it from being soaked up.

Not too troubling to see it going on in an online frat house like FARK. Over there, it’s expected. It’s a little bit disconcerting to see it happening in the online library, across the campus, that is Wikipedia.

I have been thinking — along with, I suspect, everyone who lives in this society, has a working brain, and tends to think about things — about this word Dr. Dawkins invented, “meme” (n.). I pretty much have to. This is The Year of the Meme.

The word meme originated in Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene. To emphasize commonality with genes, Dawkins coined the term “meme” by shortening “mimeme”, which derives from the Greek word mimema (something imitated). Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

And the Meme of the Year, what could rightfully be called The Meme That Changed History, is, of course…

Barack Obama is so awesome, There Is Just Something About Him.

We decided an election that way. It’s turning out to be such a dreadful mistake that I’d like to take these bets I made on Obama being a one-termer, and double the stakes. Of course I’ll win; those of us who needed to learn the lesson about Deciding By Meme, will learn it, and then a dozen years afterward they’ll forget it again.

That “Obama is awesome” is a meme at all, is a direct testament to its inherent dishonesty. A meme works like a rapid chain-reaction. That’s why the word wasn’t invented in the olden days, when footsore weary travelers would gather in ale pubs and share bits of news with the townsfolk about what was going on. The phenomenon needed rapid-working mass-communication. It needed convenient, spontaneous, instantaneous information-sharing among people who didn’t know each other and were meeting under such casual circumstances that they knew nothing about each other and had no inclination to learn.

In the days in which horses were used as a primary means of transportation, and the telegraph was used as a primary means of long-distance communication, candidates showed off how incredibly awesome they were by something called the “whistle stop.” If word got around about that at all, it got around not so much by chain reaction, but by…tendril. There was an impenetrable, insurmountable and opaque barrier between those who’d personally seen the guy speak, and those who were speaking as a second-person.

At least that’s what I’d like to think, anyhow. My grandparents and great-grandparents would have dropped that into the dinner-table conversation about how awesome the candidate was — “I was in Kansas City and he spoke from his boxcar,” or, “I heard from my cousin in Poughkeepsie, who saw him, but I wasn’t there personally.” They’d take the initiative to establish this critical distinction. Maybe they did that. I know that isn’t how it’s done now.

No, now we have radios, television, bulletin boards, blogs, Myspace/Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, et al. We’ve lost that crucial dividing line between people we’ve met, and people met by other people we’ve met. We “know” everybody. And it cuts both ways; people who’ve never met Sarah Palin “know” she’s a dumbass and get testy when you point out maybe they don’t really know that. They get even testier when you point out, hey, maybe they don’t know for sure there’s something wonderful in the ether that surrounds Saint Barry.

An important part of the reason this wonderfulness of Obama was spread by chain-reaction, rather than by the more honest snaking-tendril, was because of need.

So desperate were the democrats for someone who could “communicate the message,” after John Kerry’s defeat four years ago, that as they got the word out about Obama’s wonderfulness, it really didn’t matter worth a tinker’s damn whether they’d observed this wonderfulness first-hand or not. This was not reflective of, or causative of, the age in which we live. It was metaphorical of it. Ideas that may or may not make sense, but sound neato, echo and reverberate; ideas that make sense but aren’t that much fun, die on the vine. Obama, the man with all the ideas, seeking ideas on economics from a company that doesn’t make any money in the United States but is mega-awesome just like Him. Gee, way out here on the planet of “Does It Make Sense?” I was under the impression Obama’s strong suit was that He had the ideas we needed. This is a major turning point, a major upset, a major cause for re-thinking, if His idea is to go out and look for ideas.

Perhaps this is why the buyers’ remorse has taken hold…and is growing.

I’ve reminded you before of NYTimes’ columnist David Brooks’ boneheaded Ivy League ejaculations about the Obama administration.

Now, the once-enamored Kool-Aid drinker admits his cult leader is not the man he knew:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

What an unbelievable waste of time and real estate is David Brooks. It’s profane.

Which is why Robert Stacy McCain’s expletive-filled smackdown is the only appropriate and satisfying response.

Ah, but Brooks speaks for many. He was fooled into thinking Obama was an acceptable moderate: “…his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.” Bull doots. The election was decided by meme, and every one of these fools was deciding by meme. Anyone who filtered out the happy-happy-joy-joy nonsense, and concentrated only on the ideas presented, saw immediately that Obama was a hardcore liberal. It was obvious.

Washington’s full of liberals. They’re all campaigning to be something bigger tomorrow than they are today. So don’t blame Obama, and don’t blame the meme. Blame people for listening to them. Blame people for deciding things by meme. Nobody needs to be educated that this is the wrong way to go…do they? What if a warehouse retail store has crappy service but wonderful P.R.? What if a brand of charcoal has slick advertising but doesn’t light? Do people keep buying it? No they don’t.

What if a real estate agent dresses all snappy, but says things that don’t make any sense?

Then one day it comes time to decide something not-so-personal…to elect the President who will impact my life too — and oh goodness, all the necessity for engaging these sound decision-making processes, just goes out the window. All of a sudden, a guy who talks like Walter Cronkite but doesn’t look like Cronkite, why, that’s all it takes.

Thanks a heap, folks. Thanks loads.

Time to face up and admit things: Obama is mega-mega-awesome. He can sell the refrigerator to the polar bear. That, I’m afraid, was not what we needed, because we’re the polar bears. In fact, it’s a much worse situation than that. Obama is the guy who can sell a high-powered hairdryer to the snowman, and the country is the snowman.

Nobody reads this blog…and perhaps that is because when we have recurring blog titles, we increment them using roman numerals. Now, I don’t know how this particular one is going to work out over the long term, but over the short term I think it’s going to “recur” leaps-and-bounds over all the other recurring headlines we have around here.

“Rance” means rants. About our current government. Our current government headed by Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. The rance, they are just popping up like daisies.

Most aren’t worth linking or quoting. They just say the same crapola over and over again.

Some are worthy of linkage and quotage because of their currency.

Some are worthy because of their quality.

This one…falls into the third of those three. And it isn’t even a homegrown product. It is imported from Canada, which is America’s Hat. Yup, it’s not all nanny-state nonsense, hockey and crappy beer. Someone up there gets it. In fact, it pains me to say this, but I wish…oh…thirty percent of the yankees had the common sense the Good Lord gave this eloquent canuck.

Prime material. Prime. I wish I could write like this. Every single word seems to have been plucked from the thesaurus after a long, perhaps-tortured, but still-rational and productive discourse, perhaps involving a vast audience of great minds debating all night, Athenian-style. This is less an anti-Obama “Rance!” entry than a study in just-plain-remarkable writing.

A young student friend e-mailed me on Tuesday night.

“Have locked myself in my room because the place is full of little idiots — who cannot spell Barack Obama’s name and could not name one of his foreign or domestic policies — running around screaming obscenities about George Bush, conservatives and how Sarah Palin is a bitch. I love democracy!”

Even so, the people spoke. A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshipers everywhere.

A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.

A victory for Hollywood, the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros and Sarandon.

Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meagre political fashion.

Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement. Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative.

Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition.

WEAK TOWARD ENEMIES

A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers’ unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity.

A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs.

Also a defeat for one of the weakest presidential candidates in living memory.

Why would anyone vote for a man who seemed incapable of outlining his policies and instead repeatedly emphasized a noble but, if we are candid, largely irrelevant war record?

He was joined by a woman who was defended so vehemently by her supporters when it was cuttingly evident that she is years away from being, and perhaps never will be, a serious candidate for senior national office.

Most of all it was a terrible defeat for democracy and the United States. A politician of nothing defeated a nothing politician and a credulous electorate screamed in adoration. I fear we will all suffer very much indeed.

Speaking of ancient-Greek discourses about the use of individual words…fifty-fifty odds on someone commenting on the “racist” characteristics of the word canuck. Don’t bother, folks. I looked it up. It’s only 2009, and we aren’t yet so politically correct that I can’t pay a stinking compliment to a canuck on the pages of a private freakin’ blog. Get a life.