Talk about defining deviancy down. If the incessant “rock star” tenor of the presidential campaign was not syrupy enough to trigger your gag reflex, today’s school girl euphoria over shirtless Obama photos may be the thing. I hope someone has revived Chris Matthews.
Yes, this does reflect poorly on Obama’s supporters in the media because it lays bare, so to speak, the depth of their thinking about Obama. While the President elect is being questioned in connection with the potentially criminal behavior of his closest political advisors, so called journalists are swooning over his physique. How do we rate the relative merits of Obama against say Stephen Harper? It’s hard to say. Most people don’t know who Stephen Harper is because his staff hasn’t arranged for him to appear shirtless on a beach. So there really isn’t much to talk about.
This is further evidence of genius in the Obama camp however. When the dialogue about the President centers on his next quote in Men’s Health, there is little room to be disappointed in his handling of trade policy. All the Obama team has to do is toss their lapdogs in the press a little beef stick and their short term memory is reset.
Obama is now backing away from his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts. His campaign promise to pay for $4 trillion in new spending by squeezing the filthy rich (aka those making more than $250k a year) and repealing Bush’s modest tax cuts to the rest of us seemed sound. Astonishingly though, It turns out that raising taxes on anyone in the middle of a recession is not such a hot idea. Reality intrudes and the tax cuts stay.
This actually seems to be part of a larger pattern as Obama transitions into office and, as a conservative, I couldn’t be more pleased. As he fills out his cabinet and makes other appointments, I get the distinct feeling that we could possibly have done worse in some ways if McCain had won. Don’t get me wrong: I fully expect my conservative sensibilities to be deeply offended before long. But it’s interesting that the guy who ran around the world talking about bankrupting the coal industry, raising a civilian army (?), closing Gauntanamo, and causing the oceans to recede appears to be preparing to govern from the center. Funny how things change when you actually have to make the decisions that effect 300 million people’s lives.
Which brings me to President Bush. Liberals love to pronounce him the “Worst President In The History Of Our Country.” And possibly in the history of the universe! Of course history will be the judge of that. And history’s judgment will be based in part on the fact that our country hasn’t been attacked in more than seven years. I was thinking of this as I was reading Mark Steyn’s excellent column on the intricately planned terrorist attack in India this week.
As Steyn points out, there is a reason why this hasn’t happened in America recently. And it’s because when he’s not shredding copies of the constitution and listening in on my phone calls, President Bush is making the hard decisions that are necessary to protect our country. Obama will have to decide if he is going to honor every promise he’s made to those on his far-left flank, or if he’s going to make the same difficult decisions that President Bush has made in order to keep us safe.
It’s probably too much to expect Obama to keep Guantanamo open, but I look forward to the reaction from his multitudes of liberal fans when they discover that his foreign policy is not the ”change” they were hoping for. Faced with out current reality, liberal dreams of “hope” and “change” will likely be dashed. And many of President Bush’s decisions will be validated as Obama decides he has no choice but to continue with the status quo.
Why does the Obama team feel like they need to defend Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s credentials as parents? Why do they have to work so hard to portray the Obamas as a normal American family?
Michelle will say that . . . “We want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them,”
Listen to Bacack Obama and it sounds more like the height of one’s acheivements in America is tied to the list of entitlements for which you may qualify and the volume at which you are willing to lobby for them. Apparently none of us can long survive without universal health care, government sponsored day care, state execution of unwanted children and unionization of any businesses that haven’t left to escape punitive corporate tax rates.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, will be tried in New York City, in a key test of the White House's strategy of trying terrorist suspects in U.S. civilian courts.
Robert Lipson has attended every Kansas State home game since 1972, bucking up fans even though the team has one of the worst records in college football.
Florida attorney Scott Rothstein's fast rise came to a crashing halt last month after investors alleged that he had sold them stakes in phony employment-dispute settlements.
Suicide car bombs ripped through an office of Pakistan's main spy agency in the country's northwest, killing at least 12 people in what appeared to be the Taliban's latest attempts to target the nation's security forces.
Colombia's top electoral body ruled that millions of signatures endorsing a referendum on President Uribe's second re-election bid are invalid, dealing a major setback to the president's bid for a third term.
