House of Eratosthenes

If anything, his television-watching has gone downhill. Now he watches Spongebob Squarepants and Hannah Montana — albeit with his daughters (a fact that calls into question his fathering ability but it is a step above having them hear Jeremiah Wright’s racist and anti-American rants).
:
For example, when Obama’s experts assembled to discuss the scope and intricacies of the stimulus bill, Barack Obama was out of his depth. He was “surprisingly aloof in the conversation” and seemed “disconnected and less in control.” His contributions were rare and consisted of blurting out such gems of wisdom as “There needs to be more inspiration here!” and “What about more smart grids” and — one more that Newt Gingrich would appreciate — “we need more moon shot” (pages 154-5).

[Ron] Suskind writes:

Members of the team were perplexed…for the first time in the transition, people started to wonder just how prepared the man at the helm was.

:
There was a revealing New York Times report during the 2008 campaign that portrayed him as a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School who refused to have intellectual repartee with other teachers. He would just walk right by other academics who were chatting about the law. There seems to be a pattern of someone who wants to avoid having his intellect scrutinized (tellingly, of course, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship). Is he fearful of revealing that he is not the grand intellect that besotted journalists have proclaimed him to be? Is this why he is tethered to the teleprompter? Do his handlers know something we do not?
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Despite his early boast that “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors,” the reality is far different than the claim. That might explain why he just decided to stop receiving daily economic briefings early in his presidency, despite the pain and suffering that millions of Americans have experienced during his reign, and why he would just walk out on Stephen Chu, his energy secretary, after only a few slides had been shown (the rudeness punctuated with “Steve, I’m done”) that explained the complexities of the BP oil spill? After all, when one “knows more about policy” than mere mortals, who needs to waste one’s time with experts — even Nobel Prize-winning scientists?

Why should taxpayers even fund experts when we have an omniscient president making up fact-free policy? Perhaps we should just lay off thousands of people who toil away in the federal government trying to find facts. American taxpayers can just rely on Barack Obama.

Indeed, a good rule of thumb to judge Obama is to take his boast, reverse it, and then apply it to Obama. He seems out of his depth when discussing policy, so he avoids press conferences and becomes irate during the rare times a non-fawning journalist poses a challenging question to him. Or he is just reduced to “gibberish,” as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson described his answer to ABC News’s Jake Tapper over a question regarding his broken promise to reduce debt.
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Did he not do his research or ask experts when he violated, for example, agreements made with Israel regarding settlements? Or seek counsel when he broke agreements with East European allies to station missiles on their land as part of his feckless reset with Russia? Or violated the War Powers Act by waging war in Libya?

Perhaps ignorance is bliss — as blissful as a sunny day on the fairway.

Obama fans who find racism behind every criticism of Obama, are more blind than blind; they do not know what they do not know. They advertise their ignorance with every breath, most effectively when they think they’re showing off how smart they are — and have absolutely no idea that this is what they’re doing. They remind me of the blonde insisting her laptop doesn’t need to be plugged in to recharge because it’s wireless…you idiot!

Obama is confronted by not quite so much hatred, as fatigue; we respond the way we do not because He is alien to us, but because He is familiar. Those among us who can offer any kind of work history have seen this before: The big boss is in some endless quest for a way to set Himself apart, to distinguish Himself, by means of forceful speech, personal charisma, having the right friends, and other such meaningless flim-flammery and flair that has nothing whatsoever to do with accomplishing a task efficiently and well.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: My biggest problems with Obama, I’d still have if I agreed with Him about every little observation, every little decision about what to do; He just plain sucks. He goes on vacations, plays a lot of golf, comes back, He raises funds for His political party, He appears now & then in some forum in which He can be assured the questions are purely softball. If He gets a question that’s the least bit hostile, or even unanticipated, He throws this kind of a hissy fit as if the problem all belongs to the person who asked the question that shouldn’t have been asked. Then He pops up somewhere else, drops some rehearsed speech full of meaningless tidbits like “millionaires and billionaires flying around on their corporate jets,” then hauls His millionaire ass onto, uh, what could be called a corporate jet? — and disappears again to go play some golf.

Why mince words? He was elected to get hold of a lot of public money for His friends and make it look good. If He loses this next election the operation will still have been a success; we’re effectively voting on whether or not to make it a bigger one. It’s no more complicated than that.

Which, in a way, is a saving grace because that would mean His foreign policy decisions are not designed to diminish & ultimately destroy His country. They’re just happening to have that effect. But in truth, He and His friends really don’t give a damn one way or another.

Let Me Be Clear: That is the charitable view of Obama’s stewardship. There are those who would disagree with me about it, and insist I’m being way too kind.

“But…but…HE killed Bin Laden…and…and the Republicans are…poopy heads.”

Rebuttal brought to you by the average Democrat voter.
- tim | 02/22/2012 @ 10:19
I always think of stuff like this whenever people start tossing out terms for what Obama really is. Is he a communist? A socialist? A Muslim? A gangster? A fascist? Is he doing this as part of some ideology, or is he just a tinpot machine politician who’s trying to run the entire country like Chicago circa 1950?

There IS a word for an Obama-style government: Caesarism.

Few dare use it — or even know about it — because of its association with that nasty old racist Oswald Spengler, but… well, here’s Wiki:

“Caesarism is essentially the death of the spirit that originally animated a nation and its institutions. It is marked by a government which is formless irrespective of its de jure constitutional structure. The antique forms are dead, despite the careful maintenance of the institutions; those institutions now have no meaning or weight. The only aspect of governance is the personal power exercised by the Caesar. This is the beginning of the Imperial Age.”

And Spengler goes on to diagnose

“the urge of a nation toward universalism, idealism, and imperialism in the wake of a major geopolitical enemy’s defeat. He cites the example of Rome after the defeat of Hannibal—instead of forgoing the annexation of the East, Scipio’s party moved toward outright imperialism, in an attempt to bring their immediate world into one system, and thus prevent further wars.”

Replace “transnational multi-culti paper pushers” with “Scipio’s party” and you’ve pretty much got the whole EU/UN/Democratic party thing right there.

This is what most analyses of Obama’s style of governance miss — they aren’t love-the-world, multi-culti, regulate-everything bureaucrats because they’re socialists; they’re socialists because socialism gives the most power to love-the-world, mutli-culti, regulate-everything bureaucrats. If Scipio came back from the dead and started running things they’d be “the Party of Scipio” for real; if Gorzo the Cruel came down from Planet Zorkon and took over the earth, they’d be perfectly happy Zorkons.

Our problem is that we have a particularly inept version of Caesar at the helm.
- Severian | 02/22/2012 @ 10:47
Our problem is that we have a particularly inept version of Caesar at the helm.

That’s an insult to Caesar, assuming you mean Julius.
- cylarz | 02/22/2012 @ 12:24
Long before living memory our ancestral way of life produced outstanding men, and those excellent men preserved the old way of life and the institutions of their forefathers. Our generation, however, after inheriting our political organization like a magnificent picture now fading with age, not only neglected to restore its original colors but did not even bother to ensure that it retained its basic form and, as it were, its faintest outlines. What remains of those ancient customs on which he said the state of Rome stood firm? We see them so ruined by neglect that not only do they go unobserved, they are no longer known. And what shall I say of the men? It is the lack of such men that has led to the disappearance of those customs. Of this great tragedy we are not only bound to give a description; we must somehow defend ourselves as if we were arraigned on a capital charge. For it is not by accident–no, it is because of our moral failings–that we are left with the name of the Republic, having since lost its substance–
Cicero
- xlibrl | 02/23/2012 @ 11:10

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