House of Eratosthenes

William Jacobson, among others, is having a chuckle over this. Looks like someone at the Los Angeles Times had the wrong link copied into the clipboard whilst engaging in an attempt to direct readers to Obama’s re-election website, and pasted in the Times’ site address instead.

I just got done trying to find my way around President Obama’s website. I was trying to drop a brief reply, asking the President specifically what He plans to do in His second term that He can’t quite seem to get accomplished in His first. It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Whatever it is, it seems to be important enough to drive this historical, billion dollar campaign fund-raising effort.

Even knowing we’re talking about Barack Obama here, the “excitement,” contrasted against the absolutely complete lack of substance about goals & processes for reaching the goals…is nothing short of stunning. It’s worse than 2008. Without the ritual bellyaching about George W. Bush, there isn’t enough structure to get the excitement generated — not enough to even get started on that.

Just a lot of “okay, it’s time, let’s get started.” Like an elementary school teacher leading kids off a bus onto a field trip…but not to the petting zoo or fire hall or something cool & fun…more like, to some museum everyone’s already seen.

I was trying to ask pal Barry what’s up, and what I thought might get me to an e-mail reply page, got me this instead.

I don’t know about you, but I found “Ed” to be particularly pathetic. Toxic, even. The video would have been better if he’d been entirely removed. In the middle of a video that’s supposed to get me all excited and jazzed, but is completely lacking in “President Obama is for [blank] and to get that done He intends to do [blank],” here’s Ed to counsel and preach to me that he doesn’t agree with Obama on everything, but he respects Him. Hmmmmm…yes, that is very inspiring. Gas prices have doubled, unemployment seems to have found a natural new home at around nine percent, and the top dog is doing things we disagree with. But He’s respectable, “we” respect Him.

Maybe there’s a way for the bar to be lower than that. Having trouble thinking of one at the moment…

Still, there’s a real chance this might actually work. It’s going to be an interesting race. Sort of like a literal race, from one end of a barnyard to the other, among two animals, chickens or goats maybe, neither one of them feeling too much oomph about it or offering much clarity of thought about space, geography, where the finish line is…maybe a couple of feral creatures inebriated on liquor. To build up such an analogy any further is to drift into the realm of award-winning bad metaphors and I’m probably there already.

Point is, I expect each side to be excited and motivated solely by the weaknesses hobbling the other. Not entirely sure about the Republican challenger, since I don’t know who that is yet. But President Obama certainly does have that problem — His billion dollar fundraising campaign shows none of the excitement He seems to think He can bring to it. And if it does ever come to find this excitement, it will be agitated into effect only by the weakness on the other side.

So I’m not altogether sure why He has seen fit to deliver this to us now. Maybe someone, somewhere, has done a calculation and figured out it’ll cost a billion dollars to get His sorry ass re-elected.

Good for Him that the LA Times is helping Him out where it can.

But He’s respectable, “we” respect Him.

And “we” have to say that. Otherwise, we’ll be accused of being

RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we wouldn’t want that. Mmm-mmmm. No we wouldn’t.

More importantly, we couldn’t then accuse anyone who doesn’t agree to be… well, you know…. do we have to spell it out for you?

It starts with an “R”.
- philmon | 04/04/2011 @ 15:46
Ed is absolutely critical to this advertisement. He is the template that the average viewer will use as a model. “Well, I don’t agree with EVERYTHING Obama does and there’s Ed and he feels the same way. Ed is supporting Obama and Ed seems like a decent guy so maybe it’s okay for me to stay on the Obama train, too.”

Mark my words, this will be the entirety of the Barry ’12 campaign. “He’s really made a mess of things but his heart is in the right place,” with the unspoken “…unlike those eeeeeevil Republicans” right there at the periphery.

Obama can’t point to a single accomplishment that unifies the electorate. Obamacare? Supreme Court appointments? Economy? Well, yeah, unemployment is down now that we’ve given everybody government jobs.

Actually, he can, and if I was his campaign manager, I’d be running absolutely every news report from the SEAL rescue of the Maersk Alabama non-stop until November 2012.
- Jason | 04/04/2011 @ 16:39
if I was his campaign manager, I’d be running absolutely every news report from the SEAL rescue of the Maersk Alabama non-stop until November 2012.

This is exactly the reason he went into Libya. It was a calculated move for the 2012 campagin. He figured it would make him look strong, it would cost little, and would get a quick, easy result. See, this is how you conduct a war. I am strong. I am benevolent. I am the best™

His clever “exit strategy” is to “hand it over” to NATO. Only NATO is us.

The Dems will try to convince us it’s not. I don’t think it’ll work. The glitter of the golden tongue has worn off. If Khadaffi stays, Obama looks bad. If he goes and the regime is Islamist or lawless and/or there’s mass slaughter by the victors… Obama looks bad.

If it’s replaced by anything even sort of like a Western Democracy, Obama might save face if it doesn’t take too long. Anybody taking bets?

Mine is that this was a bad calculation that will do him in in the end.
- philmon | 04/04/2011 @ 19:06

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Obama’s Re-election Campaign Being Run at LA TimesMonday, April 4th, 2011

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