Noonan: "He's not a lame duck, he's just lame."

Oh my.

Peggy Noonan is so over Obama:

I think we're all agreed the president is fading—failing to lead, to break through, to show he's not at the mercy of events but, to some degree at least, in command of them. He couldn't get a win on gun control with 90% public support. When he speaks on immigration reform you get the sense he's setting it back. He's floundering on Syria. The looming crisis on implementation of ObamaCare has begun to fill the news. Even his allies are using the term "train wreck." ObamaCare is not only the most slovenly written major law in modern American history, it is full of sneaked-in surprises people are just discovering. The Democrats of Washington took advantage of the country's now-habitual distractedness: The country, now seeing what's coming in terms of taxes and fees, will not be amused. Mr. Obama's brilliant sequester strategy—scare the American public into supporting me—flopped. Congress is about to hold hearings on Boston and how the brothers Tsarnaev slipped through our huge law-enforcement and immigration systems. Benghazi and what appear to be its coverups drags on and will not go away; press secretary Jay Carney was reduced to saying it happened "a long time ago." It happened in September. 

I could say that we warned her, but that would be pointless.  At any rate, she's right.

"There's some political immaturity showing here."

Peggy Noonan writes about Obama's plummeting support within his party:

We have not in our lifetimes seen a president in this position. He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn't much left to lose!

She notes his frustration and hostility in his press conference this week and debates the potential of a primary challenge for Mr. Obama in 2012.

Last night on Greta van Susteren, Lindsey Graham explained Obama's current position as reflective of his inexperience:

What I want the president to do is to be a leader. And here's his problem. Before he came here, he's never had a history of sitting down and solving hard problems. He doesn't have a deep resume. When he was in the Senate, he never did anything big. He's never had hard-headed Republicans and Democrats to deal with before. And quite frankly, there's some political immaturity showing here. He has never done the big, hard things before he got to be president. He came into the job probably the least prepared of anybody in a long time, and it shows.

This plummeting popularity isn't showing in Rasmussen's numbers, however:

So, is Obama really losing his base and his popularity or is this just spin? 

Maybe my liberal readers will chime in and sort this out.  Are you disenchanted?

Friday Sift - Williams, Noonan, and More

It's Friday morning and the end of a wild work week; not to go into too much detail here, but it's homecoming week and, well, things are a little out of order during homecoming week which always presents new challenges.  It seems students do best with structure and things during homecoming week are, well, shall we say a little less structured, so I think we're all actually looking forward to getting back to normal next week even though it's all been a lot of fun taking part in the various homecoming activities.  I've got to get to school a little early today so I'm in a rush this morning.  I'll share a Happy Friday picture with you of Milly's cute dogs for our Friday sift:

Here are some quick Friday links:

Be sure to catch Peggy Noonan's column; this makes two weeks in a row I've pointed to her work.  The woman that waxed rhapsodic over Obama seems to be coming back to the light, but let's not get our hopes up yet.  She does, however, correctly assess the role of the tea party, I think, when she writes:

The first: the tea party is not a "threat" to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

snip

The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration's spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: "We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!" They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.

There's more; read it all.

Charles Krauthammer is in classic form this morning:

Opening a whole new branch of cognitive science — liberal psychology — Obama has discovered a new principle: The fearful brain is hard-wired to act befuddled, i.e., to vote Republican. 

He seldom misses the mark and he is, this morning, discussing Obama's explanation for his falling numbers.

Emilio Karim Dabul has a nice defense of Juan Williams:

Anyone who cares about freedom of speech should protest what has been done to this decent and fair man. And even if that were not the case, even if Mr. Williams' views made him a detestable ogre to most, he still has the right to voice them. For many Americans, NPR's consistent tilt to the left has caused them to reject it as a viable source of news. 

That conversation got some lively play in the comments on this blog yesterday.

In a "got to see it to believe it moment," here is Harry Reid claiming to have saved the world.

Finally, would someone go down to The Keys and poke Bride of Rove?  She's too quiet and I'm getting worried about her. 

Have a Happy Friday; the weather is gorgeous here and I'm going to enjoy some of that this afternoon, then Steve and I are off for Prime Rib at the Barksdale Club tonight ... and then over to Hangar 2 to visit our mugs.

Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le!!!

Peggy Noonan's column this week is why I used to love reading her;  she's writing about the Chilean mine rescue and she nails the heart and emotion of the story.

I was enthralled with the story, as were millions around the world who watched.  One by one those guys were pulled from what was very nearly their grave and every man had a story.  I talked with some people at work today who were of the same mind as I was;  the water cooler talk was, "Hey!  Did you watch those miners last night?!"  Everyone did.

Noonan gets this one right:

So many nations and leaders have grown gifted at talk. Or at least they talk a lot. News talk, politics talk, spin talk, selling talk: There are nations, and we at our worst are sometimes among them, whose biggest export seems to be chatter. But Chile this week moved the world not by talking but by doing, not by mouthing sympathy for the miners, but by saving them. The whole country—the engineers and technicians, the president, the government, the rescue workers, other miners, medics—set itself to doing something hard, specific, physical, demanding of commitment, precision and expertise. And they did it. Homer Hickman, the coal miner's son turned astronaut who was the subject of the 1999 film "October Sky," said Wednesday on MSNBC that it was "like a NASA mission." Organized, thought through, "staying on the time line, sequential thinking." "This is pretty marvelous," he said. "This is Chile's moon landing," said an NBC News reporter

 Speaking of Homer Hickam, during the course of this story I wondered what his thoughts were.  I wondered why Fox didn't have him doing some commentary.  Apparently, according to Hickam's Facebook page, he wondered the same thing:

I'll be on CNN around noon tomorrow to comment on the Chilean miner rescue. I guess Fox News is still mad at me after the Shep Smith interview on NASA and the President's plan. Shep liked it. I didn't and still don't.

So, Hickam narrated this story from CNN and from MSNBC.  I'm a longtime fan of Homer Hickam and his books.  The Coalwood Trilogy is simply classic.

At any rate, be sure to read Noonan's column this week; it's a keeper.  And it's a reminder to me of how sweet her writing can be!

And if you missed it, here is the rescue of number 33 and the celebration:

Where's the Outrage?

It's Friday!

The usual Friday sift:  Noonan explains how we all have to be accountants now, regardless of our actual profession.  It's the deluge of new forms, rules, and regulations.  Nothing new, she says, just worse.  We know, Peggy, we know.

Krauthammer takes note of our incompetent Congress, citing their failure to pass, or even offer, a budget, the failure to extend the Bush tax cuts leaving all of America in uncertainty as to their tax rates on January 1, and on top of all that, the buffoon who invited Stephen Colbert to speak to Congress.  Fail.

My reading stack (of articles, not books, this time) is pretty full; there's been some great analysis out there lately and I'm going to get caught up on it this weekend.  My blog mojo is coming back after nearly two weeks of Oktoberfesting.

I'm ready to get back to "hand to hand combat" as Obama said yesterday.  Where's the outrage on THAT one?  When Sarah Palin suggested that the Tea Party not retreat, but reload, CNN accused her of "inciting violence."  Where's the outrage?  You can ignore the Joe Biden comment about "strangling" Republicans because, well, it's Joe Biden, and anyone can take a joke, right?  I mean, he was joking, wasn't he?

CNN accused Palin of "inciting violence" with her "don't retreat, reload" comment, but it's okay now to say if Republicans take the majority in November there will be "hand to hand combat" on Captiol Hill?  Okay.  Double standards in the media - alive and well.

I can see November from here!

On Out of Control Government, "Local Issues," the Taliban, Hiroshima, and Noonan

I've got another busy day ahead.  I've got some business to take care of this morning and then Steve and I are taking the afternoon off and getting massages at one of the casino spas.  Neither of us has ever had a "professional massage" so I'm looking forward to this.  I'm sure I'll be addicted.  The literature assures me it will alleviate stress and "release toxins" from my body.  Heh.  Okay.  I'll go for that!

Around the web a couple of things have caught my eye which I don't have time to get into very deeply this morning.  Enjoy this pretty picture (left) that my niece took, and consider...

This column from Charles Krauthammer.  As usual, I agree 100% and it sort of goes to my Farm Dust post earlier in the week.  Governing by fiat.  The money quote:

In the modern welfare state, government has the power to regulate your life. That’s bad enough. But at least there is one restraint on this bloated power: the separation of powers. Such constraints on your life must first be approved by both houses of Congress.  That’s called the consent of the governed. The constitutional order is meant to subject you to the will of the people’s representatives, not to the whim of a chief executive or the imagination of a loophole-seeking bureaucrat.

This post by Pundette, which addresses the goofy comment by Robert Gibbs that Obama doesn't want to weigh in on "local matters."  Pundette:

A local matter. What a cowardly approach to an issue that most Americans care about intensely. Obama's missing something essential: Basic love of country? Common human sympathy?

And she quotes Rush, who said,

Isn't this fascinating? Not gonna get involved in local decision making. Wouldn't you love to be hearing that in Arizona? Let me ask you a question, was it just New York that was attacked on 9/11, or was it the country? It was the country, was it not? United States of America was attacked on 9/11. They're getting involved in our local health care decisions. They're getting involved in the kind of cars that we buy. They are getting involved in virtually every aspect of our lives they can insert themselves.

No kidding.

This column at Fox in which the son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. laments the decision to send our Japanese ambassador to the Hiroshima commemoration.  He sees it as a sort of apology and says his father would not have approved:

"It's an unsaid apology," Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. "Why wouldn't it be?  Why would [Roos] go? It doesn't make any sense.  "I know it's the anniversary, but I don't know what the hell they're trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over."

I heard Oliver North speaking to Sean Hannity about this earlier in the week and he was equally outraged. The ambassador did not give a speech at the event, but some quoted in this piece believe the U.S. should apologize for dropping the bomb.  I have no doubt that Obama will get around to that.


And finally, consider this post from Andy McCarthy in which he notes the fact that our government still has not designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization.  WTF?!

Yesterday, after three months of delay, the State Department finally issued its congressionally mandated annual terrorism report. It shows that the United States has not even designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization — not in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan.

I'd like to know the reasoning behind that one.  Read McCarthy's piece to see why this is such a big deal.

And if all that isn't enough to keep you going, here is Peggy Noonan lamenting the fact that America is at a boiling point and that for the first time, we don't expect our children to have things better than we did.  'Scuse me, Peggy, but weren't you over there singing glorious about the potential of The Great Obama, before the election?  Yeah.  Hush, now, okay?  Just, hush.

FLASH for Peggy Noonan: Obama Is Not "Snakebit"; He's Incompetent!

I lost patience with Peggy Noonan long ago.  So long ago that even now, when she says things that I might agree with, it irritates me.  She was so rhapsodic about Obama and his glowing, glorious potential...this rising moment in post-racial American history to elect such potential, such rhetoric!  Such possibility!  Bah.

So now, here is Mrs. Noonan with a column on our poor "snakebit" president. "It isn't Mr. Obama's fault that an oil rig blew in the Gulf and a gusher resulted," she says.  Well, except for the fact that his administration, via the MMS, gave BP authorization to proceed with the Deepwater Horizon rig even though all the paperwork and studies weren't in place:

Federal documents show that the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) gave BP a "categorical exclusion" on April 6, 2009 to commence drilling with Deepwater Horizon even though it had not produced the impact study required by a law known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The report would have included probable ecological consequences in the event of a spill.

So, while technically it's not his fault, there is still that pesky issue of "the buck stops here" and all that.

Not only is Team Obama "unlucky," you can add unprepared to the mix considering the fact that, as Mrs. Noonan says, they "hadn't anticipated a spill this big."  Well, why not?  After the Exxon Valdez did nobody have a clue this could happen again?  After the 1993 Persian Gulf spill, we still didn't consider a proper cleanup plan?  Or environmental study?  Team Obama picked up no lessons at all from the spectacular clean up of that disastrous spill?

No, Mrs. Noonan; I don't call that "snakebit"; I call it stupid.  I call it arrogant and unprepared.  I associate that with lack of experience and vision.

Even immediately after the spill, while Bobby Jindal was screaming for boom and the administration was assembling academics, Noonan says:

The first weekend in May, when water was rough, contractors hired by BP to lay boom "mostly stayed ashore," according to a local official. "Shrimpers took matters into their own hands, laying 18,000 feet of boom," compared to about 4,000 feet by BP's contractors.

The "little people" were doing the heavy lifting while the beleaguered "snakebit" president assembled a team of consultants. He delegated cleanup to BP even though they were clearly overwhelmed with capping the spill.

Noonan says this lack of proper response "dinged" the administration's "reputation for competence."  I'm sorry, but when did they EVER have a reputation for competence?  When they took weeks and months to fill critical cabinet positions?  When they failed to vet people like Van Jones, Bill Richardson,  and Tim "Tax Cheat" Geithner, among others?  When they let the Salahis crash a state dinner?  When they sent the Queen an iPod loaded with Obama's speeches?  Competence?  Nah.  Not so much.

About the only thing I actually agree with Noonan about with regard to the speech was the ridiculous hand gesticulations he made.  It was terribly distracting and looked over-coached:

Throughout the speech the president gestured showily, distractingly, with his hands. Politicians do this now because they're told by media specialists that it helps them look natural. They don't look natural, they look like Ann Bancroft gesticulating to Patty Duke in "The Miracle Worker."

But, in the end, even this goes to his lack of competence and inability to foresee danger.  Rather than have a hard copy of the speech in front of him, an aide was off camera with one in case the teleprompter broke.  Even Noonan points out how odd it would have looked had Obama suddenly stammered, lost his way and reached for the hand just off camera with a hard copy of the speech. 

Noonan is still, however she may try not to be, sympathetic to Obama.  She feels sorry for him:

And seems so snakebit, so at the mercy of forces. When you're snakebit you get some sympathy, and some will come. 

It will never come from me.  Never.  Not as long as I have blood pumping through my veins and a breath left in my body I will NEVER feel sorry for this man for what he is doing to my country.  Never.  Ever.

He's not "snakebit."  He's not "unlucky."  He's supposed to be competent!  He's supposed to be a leader qualified to hold the office of President of the Untied States.  You don't get the luxury of passing your ineffectiveness off on being "unlucky."  The guy on the golf course who gets struck by lightning might be unlucky.  But not a president who fails to act properly during the worst economic crisis our country has ever known.

Not an option.  Not acceptable.  And Peggy Noonan's excuses are not acceptable any longer, either.

Now Taking Bets on Obama's Resignation

Peter Ferrara at American Spectator is no longer predicting Obama's absence on the ballot in 2012; now he's going a step further and predicting an Obama resignation.

Ferrara cites Democrat's increasing abandonment of Obama as the path to utter uselessness that will drive Obama to resign.  It's true that Obama has been losing many of his most vocal supporters in past weeks; James Carville comes to mind.  I wasn't shocked by Peggy Noonan's reversal on Obama; it had been building for a while and this is a woman that once wrote for Reagan, so I felt there might be a "smatch of honor" in there somewhere.

Besides Carville's change of heart, Ferrera also cites Kirsten Powers and her new found lack of faith in Fearless Leader:

If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead, we've gotten the Keystone Cops. 

It's true that the world is rapidly piling things on Obama's plate.  I don't think the Sestak affair is going to disappear, and in fact, Ferrara makes the case that there could be an impeachable offense in this if the issue is probed deeply enough.

Meanwhile, the BP disaster gets worse - Ferrara addresses this as well, pointing out that the well is in federal waters and therefore under the jurisdiction of the federal government, not Louisiana.  It was therefore incumbent upon Team Obama to enact the plans that were in place for just such an event.  He did not.

Additionally, tensions mount in Arizona, Korea, Iran, the war continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gitmo is still open, questions arise with Pakistan and Yemen, and what about Israel?  What about the blockade?  Heath care?  That's certainly not going to win Obama any supporters as people begin to realize what's coming their way and as the confirmation hearings of the Medicare Czar, Dr. Donald Berwick, begin, the public will be reminded how we will soon be a single payer nation with rationing and long waits.  The economy?  That's not going to help Obama, either, and Ferrara lays out the case quite succinctly on that front.

Being President is a tough job.  One that requires experience and the backup of a good, strong, diversified team behind you.  Obama has none of that.  He brought no significant experience to the job and his "team" is myopic.

Ferrara may be right in suggesting that Obama will resign, but I don't think so.  He is too narcissistic to do such a thing.  He would never admit, much less conceive of, the fact that he has failed.  He will ride this pony as far as he can because his election is "historic!"  Anyone who believes he can lower the level of the oceans and cause the world to love us just by his mere election to office would never willingly abandon said office.

In addition, such a resignation would by necessity be motivated by concern for the good of the country and Obama doesn't have that.  He looks at America and sees what needs to be changed and reshaped.  The deep love for the country and the Founders, for the foundation upon which this country was built, is not in him.

No, he will stay until the bitter end, unless some impeachable offense arises.  The question will be if Obama will be on the 2012 ballot or not.

Besides, if he resigned, we'd have Biden.

Friday Quick Links

It's Friday so it's Krauthammer day. I look forward to Charles Krauthammer's columns and today he scores once again. This one is subtitled "From Mr. Wonderful to The Grinch in Twelve Months."

Krauthammer looks at Obama's falling popularity and puts a sharp assessment on what happened:

It’s not about style; it’s about substance—about which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society—health care, education, and energy.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Today's Peggy Noonan column is also critical of Obama. I have long since lost patience with Peggy Noonan and now when she criticizes Obama or finds fault with his "cool" I just want to scream. She was pretty smitten with his "cool" during the campaign and spent many a column waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful it could be. Now, not so much. Now she discovers that he is disconnected from the American people:

The real story is that his rhetorical and iconic detachment are harped on because they reflect a deeper disconnect, the truly problematic one, and that is over policy. It doesn't really matter how he sounds. It matters, in a time of crisis, what he does. That's where the lack of connection comes in.

Seriously? She's just now discovering this?

Read the whole thing. Maddening.

While you're doing all that, I'm off to work. Today my 10th graders are wring in-class essays and then we're off for a three-day weekend. I'm watching for the UPS truck this weekend; sick to death of my Vista laptop with a slow processor, I've ordered a shiny new super fast kick-ass laptop which will hopefully make me very happy. It's due to arrive any day now. Not sure what I'm going to do with the other laptop - I'd like to put it in the road and run over it.

Happy Friday!

Friday's Quick Reads

In a rush this morning, but here are a couple of things that caught my eye today:

First the Krauthammer article this morning regarding the White House war with Fox News. And have you noticed the shift on Fox this week, ever since Axelrod and Rahm came out last weekend saying Fox isn't a news channel? I've seen a new ad running that shows Fox reporters in war zones, hurricanes, natural disasters, protests, and at political conventions reporting hard hitting news stories. The language in the ad is all about Fox NEWS, with the emphasis on NEWS. When Shepard Smith would break for commercial last night and do his lead out, he'd say "...on Fox NEWS channel" or "....coming up on Fox, the place for NEWS." Shepard Smith is the master of manipulation of tone, and the intent was clear - "we're a news channel!"

The Fox war sort of ties in with what Peggy Noonan is writing about today as well. Her main point is that it's time for Obama to own this presidency and quit blaming Bush for everything. It's undignified and it's not presidential. In the same vein, this war with Fox is also not presidential. Trying to shut Fox out of the pool access to the pay czar yesterday - not presidential. Noonan attributes Obama's tanking poll numbers to his failure to own this presidency: "At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it's your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it's yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That's the American people telling him."

I think that's part of it, but most of it is a difference in policy; Americans aren't getting what they thought they voted for.

And speaking of presidential, I don't want to hear anybody criticize the way George W. Bush speaks EVER again when now what I have to listen to is this:

Democrats, he said to the Democratic audience, are "an opinionated bunch." They always have a lot of thoughts and views. Republicans, on the other hand—"the other side"—aren't really big on independent thinking. "They just kinda sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, ya'll thinkin' for yourselves."

As Noonan says, I hate it when he tries to get all folksy, and down home. It's embarrassing.

One other item to note today is the Palin endorsement of Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 race. That news broke all over the blogosphere last night and now makes the race a national news story; now everyone is paying attention to it. Did you see that Hoffman's campaign war chest doubled in just a week?! Spectacular! And many are calling for Scozzafava to pull out of the race after her brouhaha with the police and John McCormack of the Weekly Standard earlier in the week.

All this, and just think - the Friday News Dump is still to come.

Quote of the Day

The problem isn't his personality, it's his policies. His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgement, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality.

Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal, Octboer 23, 2009
"It's His Rubble Now"

In Which Noonan Calls Obama Boring

For the second week in a row I am taking some relish in saying to Peggy Noonan, "We tried to tell you!"

Her WSJ column this week must be a real heartbreaker for Obama. Noonan calls him "boring." Not just boring, but, and I love this, "Faux Eloquent Boring." She goes on to say that "the president likely doesn't know this, and his people won't have told him because they don't know it either, but Mr. Obama always has the same sound, approach, logic, tone, modulation. He always has the same stance. There's no humor or humility in it."

Get used to that. He will never show humor or humility. It's not in him. Not a bit.

She does make a sound point, however. On Obama's rapid pace to remake America in his own image, she says, "He moved too quickly, before he'd earned the right to change a big chunk of American life. You earn that right by establishing trust. Absent crisis, leaders have to show, over a certain amount of time and through a series of actions, that they're sober, sound, farsighted, looking out for the middle."

He won the election with 52% of the vote, largely on the support of Independents. Since the election his support among Independents had dropped like a rock. In other words, Obama is not on firm enough ground to pull off the radical changes he would like to accomplish. He was hoping to capitalize on the swell of popularity following him right after the election but even he couldn't move fast enough to do that.

Noonan closes with an interesting analogy in an attempt to explain why Obama will eventually not fit in with his own party. In explaining a difference between Democrats and Republicans, she observed each at the Kennedy funeral. The Democrats were sharing memories, jokes, fond remembrances, laughing and sharing tears. The Republicans were cool, reserved, stoic.

Then Obama came in, "moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold. He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool. One wonders if this will play well with the American people. Long-term it is hard to get people to trust your policies if they think you're coolly operating on some intellectual or ideological abstractions. "

And I slap my head, bang it against the wall and shreik, "I told you this! We ALL told you this!"

Noonan, speechwriter for Reagan, for Bush 41, eloquent and lovely in her tone, went batty for Obama, Mr. Cool, the potential of it all; she was rhapsodic. And now, he's cool, cold, even.

And Faux Eloquent Boring.

Pull the Plug

Peggy Noonan again. *Sigh*. Once all rhapsodic about Obama's "cool" and swagger, she continues to see the light, although sometimes still through a filter.

Her topic this week is ... ObamaCare. She thinks he should pull the plug. What a novel idea.

I'm mocking her sudden-come-to-clarity, but she does make a couple of nice points in this week's piece. She suggests that Obama knew it would be a messy boondoggle from the beginning, what with all the bills in committee and markup...that it would be picked apart by the public and debate would be hot. Then ObamaMan would swoop in, clean up the mess (as he has been known to say) and pull it all together thus saving the day for ObamaCare.

But it got ugly..."It all got hotter, quicker than the White House expected. The many plans of Congress congealed in the public mind into one plan, and the one plan became a poison pool. The president is now immersed in it," she says. Yes, I'd say he is drowning in it.

She makes a good point when she says it is all already lost: "Here's another thing that didn't work. (I write as if health-care reform or insurance reform or whatever it's called this week is already a loss, a historic botch, because it is. Even if the White House wins, they lose, because the cost in terms of public trust and faith was too high.)"

This is absolutely true. He's lost public faith and trust. Oh, the die-hards are still there. But he's leaked independent voters like a sieve.

Noonan suggests he could regain part of his popularity by pulling the plug and admitting he screwed up. Show some humility. This will NEVER happen. Humility is one trait this president does NOT have. He's never shown one iota of it. On top of that, this is all personal to him; it's not about the American people or what's best for America. He sees the ire and anger of town-hall-Americans as being against HIM rather than ObamaCare. He won't let them win.

Noonan concludes with this though, with which I couldn't agree more: "It's not especially pleasurable to see history held hostage to ideological vanity, but it's not the first time. And if they keep it up, they'll help solve the president's problem. He'll have a Republican congress soon enough."

Read the whole article here.

Obama's Losing Noonan

Peggy Noonan has decided that Obama is losing the health care debate.

In her WSJ column this week, Noonan, for the second week in a row, seems a little soured on the smooth polished candidate she purred over right after the election. Now she's calling the health care debate "a disaster."

We tried to warn you, Peggy.

She says that Obama's town hall this week was "a bit of a disaster" and "It looked utterly stacked, with softball after softball thrown by awed and supportive citizens." I'd go her one further and suggested that it WAS stacked - it didn't just looked stacked. We know the child reading the question to Obama, the one who mentioned the "mean signs" is the daughter of a huge Obama supporter and worker.

Noonan suggests that Porkulus was the turning point in this administration:

"Looking back, a key domestic moment in this presidency occurred only eight days after his inauguration, when Mr. Obama won House passage of his stimulus bill. It was a bad bill—off point, porky and philosophically incoherent. He won 244-188, a rousing victory for a new president. But he won without a single Republican vote. That was the moment the new division took hold. The Democrats of the House pushed it through, and not one Republican, even those from swing districts, even those eager to work with the administration, could support it."

She could be right on that score...I suppose it's safe to say that some slumbering Republicans began to awaken over Porkulus. That's when the Tea Parties erupted.

She also suggests that Obama has done the impossible - he has united the Republican party. I hope that's true, but we still don't have a clear leader, I don't think. Things may be coming into soft focus, but I don't see The One for us out there just yet. Nobody that really excits me like I think Marco Rubio is going to do in time.

But if Obama is losing Noonan (and she purred at his victory and his charisma as much as any of them), he's clearly in a slide. She's been wishy-washy on him from the beginning, but maybe she's seeing what we all saw, now.

Now if we can just find that one Republican to lead us out of this hell hole...

The Confusion of Peggy Noonan

Patrick O'Hannigan has an interesting exploration of Peggy Noonan in American Spectator this morning. He has put into words exactly what has been bugging me about Noonan.

I'm a longtime fan of Noonan; I read What I Saw at the Revolution in its first printing, and I've never missed a book since. I admire her conversational writing style.

But when it comes to Obama, Noonan has seemed somewhat confused, alternately praising him one week and criticizing him the next. O'Hannigan has gone through her more recent columns and pulled out passages that illustrate this.

O'Hannigan is spot on when he says "When her subject is Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, or grace encountered on the streets of Manhattan or Washington, D.C., Noonan shines," but when she writes about Obama she is confused.

Will her Good Friday column tomorrow be about Obama's European Apology Tour or will she stick to those spiritual topics on which she is so eloquent?

You Can Too! Yes You Can!

Elvis Presley once said, "I don't like people who are in politics for themselves and not for others. You want that, you can go into show business." I couldn't agree more.

It seems that everywhere I look Obama kitsch is alive and well. I started thinking about it this week when Michelle Obama gave Prime Minister Brown's children replica helicopter models of Marine One, as if to say, "Barack Obama travels in this! Barack Obama is president!" It seemed to be a little presumptive and a bit of self-promotion. Michelle Malkin has written about the Obama schlock which was at its peak during the inauguration. On November 27, 2008, The Washington Post reported that there were at least 96,000 different Obama designs for sale. One could purchase Obama bottle openers, posters, lapel pins, tote bags, lighters, mugs even a life-size cardboard cutout of Obama.

Now I have this billboard at the end of my street. My first thought when I saw it was of those images of Saddam Hussein or other dictators looking down on their people from these huge self-promoting images of themselves.

The history of self-promotion and propaganda art is well documented. Hussein, for example, had huge statues erected of himself, murals on buildings and public walls, posters and banners all about displaying his image for all to see. A reminder of his power. It's a pattern with many dictators: Stalin, Mao, Chavez, ... Even Hitler participated through architecture.

I'm not suggesting that Barack Obama is behind this billboard. It clearly states that the North Louisiana Medical Association, Inc. is involved and that the display is sponsored by the African American Physician's Network. The only reference I can find to that online is that local physician Dr. Albert Powell is the president of this group. To date, I've been unable to uncover much else about the promotion or the organization.

What exactly is the message here? Is Barack Obama going to "empower" my community? Or am I supposed to take my inspiration from what he has accomplished and use that to "empower" my community? And what exactly am I to empower my community to do? Run for president? Go to the doctor? It's all rather vague.

One of the things I admired about Ronald Reagan was that the presidency was never about him. It was about the office, about service to country, about the people of the United States. Peggy Noonan said, "He changed history for the better and was modest about it. He didn't bray about his accomplishments but saw them as the work of the American people. He did not see himself as entitled, never demanded respect, preferred talking to hotel doormen rather than State Department functionaries because he thought the doormen brighter and more interesting."

Mr. Obama and his minions could learn a thing or two from Ronnie.

Unsavory Politics

I was trying to sort of drift away from politics a little bit; last night I was too exhausted to post anything of relevance, politics or not. I'd had a couple of comments that my blog was more interesting when it was funny and not about politics but I really just write what is on my mind at the time.

At any rate, the campaign is sort of on my mind a little bit tonight. I'm thinking Peggy Noonan was right about the campaign getting ugly (not that it wasn't already). Case in point: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Democrats have "airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" into Alaska in search of information on Sarah Palin. I suspect it is dirt they are trying to dig up, but I'll withhold judgment on that one for now. It is certainly fair that we are well informed about our candidates.

Another case in point: I watched Part 3 of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Obama (I did not watch the first two parts). I find Bill OReilly bombastic a lot of the time and overbearing. However, he asked Obama tonight about his associations with Wright, Resko and Ayers, making the point that there are a lot of unsavory folks in his circle of friends. Despite Obama's disclaimers, I find it just hard to swallow that he never heard Wright say anything that inflamatory in TWENTY years. With regard to Ayers, Obama is sticking to his talking points that he was 8 when Ayers bombed the Pentagon and therefore it has nothing to do with him. He said that Ayers was working with Mayor Daly at the time Obama met him and doing some good work in the community. In other words, I don't care what he did in his past, he's not doing it now. As if the amount of time between bombing the Pentagon and now makes it a less reprehensable act. It does not. What bothers me most about that is that Obama is, by this explanation, sticking by his association with Ayers, which I still find disturbing.

I'm not even going to touch his quote today: "You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig." I heard his explanation, dismissing it as a reference to McCain's statement about Hillary's health care plan, and I find that explanation paper thin. It's clearly an insulting reference to Palin and a comment which I find to be beneath him.

And finally, in Vanity Fair this week they priced out the outfits of Laura and Cindy from the convention. Give me a break. I cancelled my VF subscription ages ago because of their blatant liberalism and their hatred and disrespect for the President, but certainly they can find something more worthwhile to report than how much Cindy spent on her watch. WHY do they care if she inherited money from her father? How is that her fault and a reason to disparage her? Hasn't she done enough humanitarian work to atone for her sins of inheritance? If you are interested, here's what they spent:

Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Of course, those are just estimates. From a liberal rag. But anyway.

As I said, I think Noonan was right earlier this week in her WSJ column and I really wish folks would just stick to the issues. And before you get all defensive on me, I mean BOTH sides. Just stick to the issues. The American people deserve that.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Quoting Peggy Noonan's column today:

"Campbell Brown of CNN did nothing wrong for instance in pressing a campaign spokesman on Palin's foreign policy credentials. She was unjustly criticized for following an appropriate and necessary line of inquiry. But endless front page stories connected to Mrs. Palin's 17-year-old daughter? Cable news shows that had people insinuating Palin, whom America had not yet even met, was a bad mother, and that used her daughter's circumstances to examine Republican views on abstinence education? That was ugly.

In the end it made Palin the underdog, and gave her the perfect platform for the perfect dive she made Wednesday night.

We have had these old press fights in the past – they were a source of constant tension when I was a child, when Barry Goldwater came forward as a conservative and the press scorned him as a flake, and later when Ronald Reagan came up and the press dismissed him as Bonzo.

But this latest fight commences on a new and wilder battlefield. The old combatants were old school gentlemen, Eric Sevareid and Walter Cronkite; the new combatants are half-crazy cable anchors, the lower lurkers of the Internet, and the anonymous posters on the comment thread on the radical website.

This new war on new turf is not good, and carries the potential of great harm. Everyone really ought to stop, breathe deep, and think.

I am worried they won't. A friend IM'd the day after Palin's speech, and I told him of an inexplicable sense of foreboding. He surprised me by saying he shared it. "Calling all underworlds reporting for duty!," he wrote. "The bed is about to fly around the room, the puke is about to come out." He meant: this campaign is going to engage unseen powers and forces. He meant: this campaign, this beautiful golden thing with two admirable men at the top and two admirable vice presidential candidates, is going to turn dark."

After Noonan's open mic gaffe this week, I figured she would have to tread carefully into Palin territory. Gifter writer that she is, she did. And I like the point of this quote. Stop. Take a breath.

We've been going at it pretty good on this blog on some of the comments and I love that. I love the productive debate. I think it informs us all. I know that when one chooses to enter politics then basically you are volunteering yourself and your family to be flayed, salted, abused, tortured, examined, poked, and prodded. It's part of the game. But stop. And think. We have been respectful and fair on this site, I think, for the most part. But I think that some of the things said about Palin, about McCain, about Obama, about Michelle, in the media have been mean. Hateful mean. When Randi Rhodes said on her program tonight that Palin should "just stay home and raise her retarded baby" that just crosses a line.

I'm in agreement with Ms. Noonan. We need to be real careful here as this campaign continues. Politics is politics, but hate is hate. And I don't do hate.

Revisiting Peggy Noonan

I have recently pulled off the shelf my battered copy of Peggy Noonan's What I Saw At The Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era. I first read this book in 1991 or '92 and have been a fan of Noonan's writing ever since. In this uncertain and divisive political age which has lots of Republicans and Democrats alike wishing for Reagan, I thought I might revisit Ms. Noonan.

Noonan has had a couple of great columns lately in the Wall Street Journal; the one this week addresses the Palin pick. As a writer, I love and appreciate her style. It is literate, conversational, and on point. She is not critical or bombastic. She is fair and honest. Of the Palin pick, Noonan says, "The choice of Sarah Palin IS a Hail Mary pass, the pass the guy who thinks he has a good arm makes to the receiver he hopes is gifted. Most Hail Mary passes don't work.But when they do they're a thing of beauty and a joy forever." I agree with this statement. She goes on to say that the Palin choice, if it works, will be brilliant, but if it doesn't it will be one of history's accidents.

At any rate, regardless of what side of the political fence you sit on, Noonan is a nice writer and I like the sensibleness of what she says. And I'm going to re-read her Reagan book because I miss him!