As Reality as it Gets

I didn't see it live but Fox News was covering a car chase in Arizona and decided to go to a 5-second delay in case something bad happened. Well...something bad happened. The dude getting chased, exited the car, stumbled around and then put a bullet in his temple. It was all shown live while Shep Smith supposedly was trying to get them to cut away but the delay didn't seem to have been long enough.

Ace wrote about this and gives a good summation of how I feel but I want to extend it a bit.

American is a nation that loves exciting things in a big way. People watch Jersey Shore not because we like Snooki but because they want to see a drunken Snooki mix it up with some other fat chick who invades our shore towns from NYC or Long Island and possibly slighted her by being an even drunker, fatter more obnoxious piece of shit.

We all pay to see movies where people get killed because it entertains us. Death on the screen is a drug to us summed up quite nicely on the Tool song Vicarious.

Don't look at me like I am a monster, Frown out your one face, But with the other, Stare like a junkie, Into the TV, Stare like a zombie, While the mother, Holds her child, Watches him die, Hands to the sky crying, Why, oh why? 'cause I need to watch things die, From a distance

We thrive on violence and will pay to see it. Other news channels will tsk tsk and say what horrible people Fox News employs. They'll get all high and mighty and preachy but they will also know that while they are decrying it, they will be ruing the fact they didn't cover it. "If it bleeds it leads" has always been the mantra and always will be.

 Here's the video and note that you don't see blood but you know exactly what happened. A life was snuffed out by the person who lived it. Why? We don't know and may never. I feel sorry for the guy that he felt his only recourse was to put a slug in his brain and I feel for anyone he left behind but this is news and this is a current events blog.

Now removed by You Tube.

Here's the video for Vicarious and Maynard expresses exactly what we are all like but won;t ever admit among nice company.

Today's the Day I Break With Imus

I've been an Imus fan for two decades. From when he was on a local San Diego station when I was in the Navy through his years on 1210 in Philly (moved to 680) and 660 the Fan up until now on WABC. I drive 81 miles each way and my morning routine has always been to listen to Imus.

Has the show gotten stale over the last few years? Possibly, but it's still better than the rest of the drivel out there. Every other station has (insert first name) and (insert first name) In The Morning. Or some other lame morning zoo-type show. There was always Howard Stern and I do have satellite but he got old quickly.

I've always thought that Imus is the single best interviewer out there. He doesn't ask the lame questions that most interviewers do and always managed to get even the most-prepared off their game. This moment was one of the greatest radio moments I've ever heard where Beschloss was stymied.

Anyway, his show may be stale and predictable but it's comfortable. I know on Monday Bo Dietl will be on and Rob will be David Boehner or Larry King or the Godfather. Tony will be Jesse Jackson or Rangel or the short-lived Gangster Mickey. The only new thing on the show in ten years is Dagan McDowell who is a ray of sunshine and is funny naturally and Connell McShane. But unfunny or stale is tolerable, hypocritical is something I can't abide.

When Imus got himself in trouble, I was the first to defend him. I defended him deeply during the "nappy-headed ho's" debacle in which his supposed friends baled on him and his weak-kneed employer left him out to dry (unfortunately the post was on a long-dead AOL blog I wrote back when I got paid to share my pearls of wisdom. Here's a post I did write here defending him.) He should not have been fired but only apologized and went on. Instead, 660 refused to stand up to the PC crowd and fired him. Was the statement wrong? Yes, the women he made the comment about were not necessarily in the spotlight and didn't deserve it but I defended it because we all have a right to express our opinion.

Today, I turned Imus off for good when I heard this comment:

Sorry Don, Rush was trying to make a joke as well. Limbaugh is an entertainer, just as Imus is. Sandra Fluke made herself fair game when she went in front of congressional Democrats and told her sob story and exposed large parts of her life we should never hear about. She's a hack and was used for no other reason than to continue this ridiculous game the media is playing keeping the contraceptive issue alive so they don't have to report on high unemployment, record food stamp rolls and gas prices that are affecting everyone. So what if Limbaugh went on for three days, it was still his form of entertainment, no different than Maher calling Sarah Palin a "cunt" or myriad others calling her a "slut".

So I'm done with Imus. Sadly too. I enjoy the show but I can't bring myself to listen to a hypocrite. Imus could have defended Limbaugh's right to say what he said if not the content. There were a great many people who felt Imus' apology was lame regardless of what he says. I'll force myself to listen to Mike and Mike on ESPN or just listen to music. Hey, no big deal to Imus, I'm just one listener out of millions. But I sure hope he gets that there is a serious double standard when liberals say something and when Republicans say something. Imus saw that when he was ousted quickly while Maher, Olbermann and Ed Schultz remained. We'll see how Imus feels when those idiots have something to say about Imus' wife who leans to the right.

Kim Jung-il Sentences US reporters to 12-Years Hard Labor

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton said that Barack Obama has answered that 3:00 AM call and has been successful. Too bad that call was his wife phoning from Paris saying she'd remain in Europe for another day to shop. It looks like the real troubling call was made later and Obama is tanking on the response:

For two families praying for the release of U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the news that they were sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp comes as a bombshell as the U.S. government works feverishly for their freedom.

The two women, who were arrested in March while reporting for Al Gore's Current TV along the Chinese-North Korean border, were found guilty today of "hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry."

"She's really scared," "Nightline" contributor Lisa Ling said of her sister in a recent ABC News interview. "I mean, she's terrified. My sister is a wife, with a medical condition. And Euna Lee is the mother of a 4-year-old girl, who has been without her mother for almost three months."

Perhaps if President Obama had had the guts to shoot down the first North Korean missile launched a few months ago or if he had come out more forcefully two weeks ago when Kim detonated a nuke then shot missiles off out of spite we'd be in a better bargaining position. Instead, he wrung his hands and effectively said nothing of consequence.

Instead, he has been traipsing around Europe seeking adulation while the thugs and bad guys of the world chuckle and continue on with their vile plans. We've no leg to stand on and no way to apply pressure short of parking the USS Reagan and USS Carl Vinson off the coast and readying of troops at the 38th parallel for battle.

Funny Kim never tried this while Bush was in office and waited for The One to show his disdain for America.

Maureen Dowd Plagiarizes Blogger

The end of the NY Times op/ed page is upon us. I say this with great glee and in full enjoyment of the schadenfreude. See here where it clearly shows Dowd straight up stole the words of TPM's Josh Marshall. TPM lays it out in all its glory:

Now, I'm all for cutting & pasting. As a blogger I do it all the time, but I always give credit.

So, if this isn't outright plagiarism by a top NY Times Editorialist, than I'm a happily married, straight man with 4 kids, 2 dogs, a lovely 2nd wife of 15 years with a girl half my age on the side.

Which I assure you all, I am not.

Dowd, of course, gives a weak response to the charge:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in an email to Huffington Post, admits that a paragraph in her Sunday column was lifted from Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall's blog last Thursday.

Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers. In a follow-up email, she forwarded her desire to apologize to Marshall, writing that had she known, she would have gladly credited Marshall.

Dowd notes that the Times is fixing her column online to give proper credit to Marshall and that a correction will run tomorrow...

She heard the line and remembered it nearly verbatim and used it in a column? Uh, okay MoDo.

Note in the TPM link she was all over Biden for stealing the words of Neil Kinnock so the hypocrisy level is somewhere close to an eleven.

I've always been a huge believer that Dowd has mailed it in. Now I'm sure. Much better writers have been fired for less than this.

Old media gets done in by new media again.

Update: What he said.

Shep Smith's Lost His F-ing Mind

What up with Shep?



Don't worry, CNN or MSNBC will hire you dude.

Saberi Gets Eight Years on Trumped Up Iranian Charges

An American who went to her ancestral country to try to help and encourage change for the country has been convicted on murky charges of spying:

The US has expressed dismay after a court in Iran jailed an Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, for eight years on spying charges.

Ms Saberi, 31, was sentenced after a secret one-day trial in Tehran.

President Barack Obama "is deeply disappointed at this news," his spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Correspondents say the case will have serious implications for US-Iranian relations at a time when Mr Obama has reached out to the Tehran.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier expressed her disappointment at the sentence.

I for one am glad that both Obama and Clinton are "disappointed". Their disappointment should go far in making Ahmadinejad see the error of his ways and make the mad mullahs tremble in their turbans.

An American has been sentenced to 8-years in an Iranian prison on trumped up charges and was tried in a kangaroo court and all we hear is that it's disappointing from the President and SecState. My Lord, we have fallen farther and faster than even I dared to fear.

Update: Wait, he's now "gravely concerned". That's escalation, baby. But don't worry, we have Ahmadinejads assurance that her appeal will fair so that makes me feel better...or not.

More Buyers Remorse in Obamanation

This time it's not some New York Times writers her were reduced to teenagers at the mere sight of Thne One. Oh no, this time it's the sober Economist who had backed Obama and is wondering where all that Hope and Change (TM) has gone:

HILLARY CLINTON’S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. It went to the heart of the nagging worry about the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois: that he lacked even the slightest executive experience, and that in his brief career he had never really stood up to powerful interests, whether in his home city of Chicago or in the wider world. Might Mrs Clinton have been right about her foe?

...But at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

That's a stunning indictment of President Obama and one of the more overt pieces I've read about the complete lack of trust the left now has in Obama. Yes, he will still have his die-hard supporters who will never admit they were wrong in backing such an amateurish candidate, yet every day we are seeing another major backer question whether or not Obama is up to the job.

By throwing in a Hillary quote they throw a little salt in the wound as well by showing that not only us on the right were correct in our assessment but that they had a perfectly viable candidate and unceremoniously dumped her for the flavor of the month who turned out to be an amateur on nearly every issue.

It's too late to say this but while the left-wing echo chamber was feeling thrills up and down their collective legs, we on the other side were pointing out the inconvenient fact that he's a lightweight and not nearly ready to ascend to the Oval Office.

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin has more.

Update: More also at Hot Air.

Another Obama Embarrassment

Jeez, we knew he wasn't ready but none of us predicted just how un-ready The One was. between all the other things I've chronicled here about Obama and his less-than-stellar beginning, one would think that he would be smart enough to not pick on mentally challenged kids on national TV:

Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he's gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

"That's very good, Mr. President," Leno said sarcastically.

It's "like the Special Olympics or something," the president said.

Ha, I get it...or not. What, no jokes about autistic kids or kids with spina bifida? I mean dude, come on; a sitting president busts on kids who have the heart and guts to try to compete and win in spite of their mental impediments. What an absolute embarrassment this guy is on a daily basis. His goal was to change the way the world sees us and he's surely accomplished that goal. we went from being supposed world pariah's to not only pariah's but complete laughingstocks as well. Good job, Mr. President, you should be so proud.

Now don't get me wrong, I bust on most things on a daily basis, I'm in the construction business and generally nothing is off limits with the exception of jokes about people with disabilities. The humor of those jokes stopped when I was somewhere around fifteen or so.

But of course, as is so often the case with Obama, he gets even his insults wrong as records show that his score wouldn't win him anything in the Special Olympics. Watch, he'll blame the comment on Geithner's staff or something.

Treacher has some fun at The One's expense--and comedians say that Obama doesn't offer up mush to bust on. He makes Bush seem downright cultured.

I guess I don't even have to say how much media coverage and shouts of outrage there would be if Bush had uttered the same words.

Liberal Verbally Whoops Another Liberal; Liberals Excited

The buzz of the leftosphere today is the supposed ass-kicking suffered by CNBC's Jim Cramer at the hands of John Stewart. I guess their thinking is that it was the voice of capitalism getting beaten by, what, the voice of socialism? Something along those lines I imagine.

Anyway, what people fail to realize is that Cramer is an Obama supporter and supports large portions of his policies from socialized medicine to withdrawal from Iraq. Many liberals are Wall Streeter's--like half of BHO's administration and left-winger's like Jon Corzine, the governor of New Jersey. Most people at places like Goldman-Sachs and other huge brokerages are classic New York libs and always have been. They're not these deeply conservative "greed is good" types that many libs suppose them to be.

So Cramer gets verbally bitch-slapped by Stewart and the lefties rejoice as if he actually beat a formidable foe. Anyone with half a brain knows that liberals are notoriously horrible debaters and Cramer is just another in a long line. I suggest Stewart move up to the big leagues and try the same thing against Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove and he'll see that it's a bit different debating those heavy hitters then beating up an intellectual minor-leaguer like Jim Cramer. If Stewart wants to go at it with a real free marketeer capitalist who has the facts to smoke him, let him try his luck against Neil Cavuto or better yet, Ann Coulter.

So enjoy this moment libs and Mr. Stewart, you've beat up on the intellectual equivalent of a 90-pound sixth-grade girl. You should be proud.

Monday Afternoon News and Notes

Spring has sprung in South Jersey.

Here's what's new in the world:

-Warren Buffett, the man who single-handedly assured the world that Obama was not in fact a crazed liberal who would send our economy into decline and destroy the market economy has now realized that Obama is in fact a crazed liberal who would send our economy into decline and destroy the market economy. More buyer's remorse from former BHO supporters.

-6,547, down 1.2%. Yeah, the markets are really happy with the Obama plan to save our nation.

-Are the Northern Ireland "troubles" are heating up again?

-Shocka! The government is gaining jobs while every other sector is hemorrhaging them.

-Finally some one said it. Van Morrison said the Beatles were "overstated" and "peripheral". I agree. i think the Stones, Kinks, Morrison himself and The Who along with Zeppelin were better musicians, more talented musically and had more impact on music than did the Beatles.

-No wax on, no wax off please: Will Smith remaking The Karate Kid. Some movies should just be allowed to die. Still, I wonder who will play Mr. Miyagi? There can be no replacing the late Pat Morita or as I prefer to call him: Arnold.

-Rush says he hopes Obama will fail because he doesn't want to see a socialist America and the left, the media (but I'm redundant) and Obama go nuts. Liberals said they wanted America to fail because they just plain hate America and no one said anything about them.

Update: Another example of Dems pissing on their constituents. A Chicago Alderman physically removes a citizen while screaming "get the fuck out of my office!". This is the people Obama coddled and worked with:



Michelle Malkin has some contact info should you wish to contact Alderman Munoz and explain the eror of his ways or maybe tell him to "get the fuck out of the people's office!".

The Continuing Jihad Against Rush Limbaugh

The nightmare first month and a half of the Obama administration is over and we've seen an omen of things yet to come. Reckless spending on a scale never seen before? Check. Alienating our valued allies Poland the Czechs and Britain? Check. Breaking lies on troops withdrawal from Iraq, closing Gitmo and rendition? Check. Attacking a radio talk show host who is a private citizen with the full force of the US government? Check.

Now I expected BHO to spend incessantly, make one foreign policy faux pas after another and back away from any inane pledges he made with regard to Iraq and the greater war on terror but I never thought I'd see the day that a sitting president neck-deep in scandal and by his own admission "overwhelmed" go on such as un-presidential attack against a man who is just exercising his 1st Amendment right to free speech. yes, Clinton did attack Rush after the Oklahoma City bombing but not to the extent we're seeing now with coordinated broadsides hitting the USS Rushbo daily. All to distract the populace from the horrid start Nobama is experiencing.

Even the Dems are not able to control their criticism.

More on this at Red State.

Coulter Eviscerates Keith Olbermann

Er, Ann, please don't hold back next time:

The sort of insecurity that would force you to always say "trebled" instead of "tripled" could only come from a communications major with massive status anxiety, like Keith. Without even looking it up, I am confident that Harvard, Yale and Princeton do not offer degrees in "communications." I know there is no "communications" major at the Ivy League Cornell.

"Communications" is a major, along with "recreation science," most commonly associated with linemen at USC. But at least the linemen can throw a football, which Keith cannot because his mother decided he was not physically robust enough to play outdoors as a child.

It may seem cruel to reveal the true college of someone who already wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worried that he's a fraud. But I believe that by pointing out that Olbermann actually is a fraud, I am liberating him.

You may not realize it now, Keith, but you will look back on this day and say, "That was the best thing that ever happened to me!"

Keith's response is here and I would bet the house on Ann being the Worst Person in the World.

Note to self: Don't ever piss off Ann Coulter.

Rush Derangement Syndrome

The political left in this country is well-organized and is better than conservatives at staying on point as a generally cohesive unit. While conservatives have an annoying tendency to sell out core beliefs in the spirit of compromise, liberals home in on an adversarial person or position and focus all their energy in denigrating or demeaning that person or position. The latest target is Rush Limbaugh and this may indeed be a battle they thought they wanted but soon find out they really didn't.

When you have the president's Chief of Staff mentioning him, you know this is a concerted effort to drive a stake through his heart once and for all. They are demonizing him like we've not seen anyone demonized since...well, Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber. That's the play book move for enemies of the left: marginalize them and hammer them repeatedly until they scream for submission or are forced out. It takes a strong man or one who doesn't give a damn anymore, like Blago, to survive the onslaught. Fortunately for us on the right, Rush is that man. Unfortunately for us on the right, we have a party full of politcal hacks who seek nothing more than to get an invite to the White House and a nice pat on the back from The First Black President (TM). We saw it with Specter and we saw it with new RNC head Michael Steele and Rep. Cantor. Instead of ripping him, they should be defending him for having the balls to say it like it is.

Limbaugh has been a thorn in their collective sides for decades and they seem to sense that this is their time to be gine with him. They're ramping up the Fairness Doctrine, issuing veiled threats to radio stations and pummeling him on a nightly basis on the networks, CNN and MSNBC. But in doing so, they may see a major backfire because what Rush says is not what they portray him as saying. He speaks to the average American unlike any conservative since Reagan and is unflinching in his ideals. He was among the first to call out President Bush when he offered up Harriet Miers, went astray on amnesty and joined with Ted Kennedy in signing the largest entitlement we've seen in a generation. That is why people listen in huge numbers.

Liberals have never listened to Rush save edited snippets here and there. He'll never win them over anyway. Yet, there will be people who here what Rush has to say on one of the many attack pieces on CNN and give him a shot. Once people listen, they generally stick with the show because the guy is the best political commentator this nation has. He doesn't take himself seriously and speaks like a regular guy you'd meet anywhere but with greater conviction. That, in a nutshell, explains why he's so well liked and why liberal talk radio has never prospered because libs in general have no principles and zero conviction.

Is Rupert Murdoch Making a Move on NY Times?

He had a down year overall but Rupert Murdoch is flush with money from other sources and may be ogling the NY Times again:

NEW YORK -- Rupert Murdoch's counterintuitive quest to invest in print media helped drive away longtime lieutenant Peter Chernin.

And now that Chernin can't intercede, does Murdoch want to follow News Corp.'s $5 billion buyout of Dow Jones by gobbling up the struggling New York Times Co.?

The answer appears to be yes, as impossible as present economic conditions make it for most deals of any kind to get done.

What's more, incredulous News Corp. insiders say Murdoch's love of print media is so fervent that he's also been talking about a play for the Los Angeles Times, which could make easier prey for several reasons.

The NY Times and LA Times? Sweet. Perhaps each of them will once again be the papers they were--excellent examples of what a daily can be.

Chances are slim as outlined in the story as the Sulzberger's have ultimate control but the times has been bleeding money over the last several years and it doesn't appear as though they can stop it save applying a tourniquet and allowing other portions of the corporation to develop gangrene and die.

Murdoch's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal has made that paper better and he could do wonders with the Times resources. He could assign an editor who would bring some balance to the opinion pages and remake the International Herald Tribune into the leading paper of the world.

It may be a dream but it sure would be nice to see Murdoch make a move after sorting through the legal hurdles--hurdles that will be utilized by Democrats at every turn.

Do Liberals Have Any Sense of Humor?

Short answer: no, unless it's when something bad happens to conservatives.

We see this again today with Rush Limbaugh of all people. Rush read that his rating are lower with women and decided to have a "summit" featuring only woman callers. He was clearly mocking the farce that Obama called a summit on Monday.

Rush was doing the entire thing tongue-in-cheek but inane libs took him seriously once again.

These people who don't ever listen to Limbaugh have no idea that he's always light and humorous and expects his audiencew to be intelligent enough to get it. Most do.

TP had issue with this particular utterance from yesterday:

One thing about the Female Summit: sorry, no transsexuals. We’re not going to have anybody who’s had an addadictomy, and we’re not going to have anybody who’s had a chopadickoffamy. We’re going to have women from birth.

"Fairness" Doctrine Update

I've been getting back to normal after a week on the left coast and that would explain the light posting.

That said, I'm ready to go at it again after digesting the events of last week where we saw a bill passed that will put us on the glorious par of Iceland, France and Great Britain. One thing about Obama, he reaches for the stars, doesn't he?

On to today's first topic. You know that the return of the "Fairness Doctrine" has been a liberal wish since Reagan rightly bounced it over twenty years. It's represents everything that America doesn't and that would explain why libs love it so much.

Well, now the libs have their man in place and they don't even need the three traitors--Specter, Snowe and Collins-- to jump ship to get it back in all it's infamy. Once Obama establishes Julius Genachowski--his nominee--we'll see it come fast and furious and the GOP will be helpless (second item) to do anything but watch and whimper.

This time however, it's not just TV they want, they want to go after talk radio and will bring the best Stalinist policies to do so. They will go to for profit companies and tell them what they must put on the air. Don't like what Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin say? Put on six hours of mindless liberal droning by the likes of Ed Schultz to counter them. No one will listen but it will be "fair". It really doesn't matter what the ownership of the networks say because the government wants this and they dole out the licenses. Last I heard, Premiere Radio and other entities didn't ask for or receive any bailout money, because, of course, they're making money...at least until this new Orwellian measure is implemented.

But wait, they won't stop at talk radio; no they'll soon go after the Internet and blogs will be a nice easy target. Don't like what I write? Just complain and they'll force me to allow posting one of these scrubs to counter it.

I find it amusing that liberals screamed that George W. Bush was going to do the following things:

*Bush would cancel the election in 2008; and
*Our rights would be severely curtailed.

Interesting that it's a liberal president that has diminished our rights more in the first month than eight years of "W".

With all that in mind; note how Megyn Kelly goes all pitbull on the most irritating liberal of all:

Flying Pig Moment: John Stewart Busts on Obama

Have my eyes deceived me?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=218356&title=clusterf#@k-to-the-poor-house

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Shocka! Stewart actually busted on Obama's poor speaking style, the reporter who asked the inane A-Rod question, the Huffington Post and just about every other brutal aspect of that press conference.

It's a start I guess and one doubts it will spread to the volume we saw with Bush but late night talkers would be wrong to miss this gold mine of comedy. So far, in less than a month, Obama has broken every campaign promise, hired tax cheats, irritated our allies, ridiculed his VP and essentially made a mess of his first task--ramming through the porkulus package.

Interestingly, we see a GOP that was in the gutter a month ago resurgent and ready to fight because of Obama's lack of leadership and downright incompetence thus far.

His press conference the other night was a moment to shine and give Americans confidence ala FDR, JFK and Reagan. Instead he came off as a poor copy of Jimmy Carter delivering his "Malaise" speech.

Stewart now should turn his attention to Robert Gibbs, that dudes daily press briefing would give him material for the foreseeable future.

Reaction To The Obama Press Conference

If Obama's intent was to rally the nation, he failed miserably. He looked unsure and stammered through most answers in a way some candidates do when trying to extend their time to the full two minutes in a debate or like a kid trying to make the full five minutes required for an oral book report. He looked, in a word: uncomfortable.

Walter Shapiro--no conservative, he--noticed as well:

Through most of his inaugural primetime press conference, Barack Obama seemed like he was channeling a particularly loquacious combination of Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and the ghost of Hubert Humphrey. The president's response to the first question from the Associated Press about the risks of sounding too apocalyptic about the economy ran (or, to be more accurate, crawled) for nearly 1,200 words--and ended with Obama saying "Okay" with an implicit question mark as if he were requesting permission to keep on talking. A national poll from the Pew Research Center released Monday afternoon found that 92 percent of Americans described Obama as a "good communicator." There is a suspicion that those astronomic numbers had dipped by the time that Obama exited from the East Room of the White House at 9 p.m. on the dot.

Mr. Shapiro, I suggest you seek cover and duck for you have broken the liberal law of saying that Obama just isn't that great of a communicator. Libs think of him as their Reagan while the rest of us chuckle every time we hear that.

Obama didn't get his point across--or if he did, it was mixed in with so much mumbo-jumbo as to be indistinguishable to the average viewer. What was needed was brevity and what was delivered was decidedly long-winded, non-committal and flat.

If anything good comes out of this stimulus nonsense, it's the fact that America has seen the Barack Obama that we on the right saw a year ago--a man who was short on executive experience and was not close to what was needed in crucial times.

Tough times call for great men and women, people who can rally an entire nation to the cause through words and ideas instead we got a one-hour campaign press conference and a litany of regurgitated, Rahm Emanuel talking points and some throw-away lines on the A-Rod scandal thanks to a question that was embarrassing in the format.

A Short Honeymoon?

Anyone watching with an open mind would have to admit that Barack Obama's first two weeks have been full of contradictions, misstatements, errant selections for nominees and basically non-professional behavior by the White House. Hell, Obama admitted he "screwed up" on Daschle and that was one of his lesser mistakes.

The compliant media may be taking note to as the circus of the last fortnight even permeated their Obama-adoring brains.

The San Francisco Examiner;

The irritating Maureen Dowd almost goes there;

The ultra-liberal Guardian even has a piece that is not rah rah;

Even his hometown is being critical.

Now this doesn't mean they won't have their heads firmly planted in his ass next week and going forward. They are the media and they are liberal by definition, but it does says something that Obama's "hiccups" have been so glaring that the MSM is reporting them.

He may well have lost a major political ally after these revelations and if he loses House leadership and the MSM, he's going to get a really rude awakening once the public starts to sour on him.

The Military Budget Cuts Update

Update: See this post for an update. This may be false.

OK, we've established a few facts; first the Obama administration is cutting billions from the Pentagon's budget while we have an active war going on and another that is starting to draw down but could flare up at any point. That has never happened before whereby a president cut the budget while our troops were actively engaged in a hot war. Second, the media isn't covering it at all and the Obama administration shamefully and cowardly released the info on a Friday knowing that if the media did cover it at all, no one would be paying attention.

The question now is where to make the cuts. Smadanek has a breakdown of how it would affect the Navy and it ain't pretty. His supposition that it would fall to all the branches equally is a good one.

I mentioned earlier that you can essentially kiss missile defense goodbye just just as we approaching deployment. Obama will push for that as a sop to Putin. That leaves several other huge programs that will be stopped or get seriously whacked including the Joint Strike Fighter--the next generation of aircraft designed to take us well into this century. Ditto the F 22 Raptor.
These are two programs that would ensure military supremacy for the next thirty years--years in which we'll have to deal with a rebuilding Russia and an upstart China.

Still, even reducing or eliminating those programs won't reduce the budget to where Obama wants it so that leaves deficiencies at the deck-plate level--affecting the average airman, sailor, soldier or Marine. Reduced weapons capability means more dead and wounded troops and that's a kick in the balls to the good people who signed on over the last few years and now are being told that the new president doesn't think you need the latest and greatest.

It's up to you and me to make this a major issue; write your congressman and/or senator and tell them that you will abide this. Write your local paper and get the word out that Obama is willing to shortchange our military men and women while throwing money to anti-war groups posing as "neighborhood stabilization" outfits. Tell your friends that Obama thinks giving money to the National Endowment for the Arts is more important than keeping our country safe. Be professional when writing to these people but be be blunt in letting them know that those men and women who took the oath to protect our country entered into a deal with the government and part of that deal was to provide them the best equipment possible.

This vet is mighty pissed by this.

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