Saturday, July 18, 2009

Is Obama snorting, or is this just a flashback?

When even The Washington Post points out the nearly complete disconnect between President Obama and reality, and urges him

Stop it with the magical realism already.
one must wonder if the President isn't engaged in a major relapse to his earlier life and if he didn't slip a 'room or two in with the coke.

Welch and Gillespie continue

Beyond pushing the "emergency" $787 billion stimulus package (even while acknowledging that the vast majority of funds would be released in 2010 and beyond), Obama signed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill and a $106 billion supplemental spending bill to cover "emergency" expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, improbably, a "cash for clunkers" program). Despite pledges to achieve a "net spending cut" by targeting earmarks and wasteful spending, Obama rubber-stamped more than 9,000 earmarks and asked government agencies to trim a paltry $100 million in spending this year, 0.003 percent of the federal budget.

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled "A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility," even as his own projections showed a decade's worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn't want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors.

Such is the extent of Obama's magical realism that he can promise to post all bills on the Internet five days before signing them, serially break that promise and then, when announcing that he wouldn't even try anymore, have a spokesman present the move as yet another example of "providing the American people more transparency in government."

He's a manic speaker, needful of public approbation seemingly every moment of every day. That others in other lands diss him even in the midst of his bowing and scraping passes beneath his notice. That our enemies threaten him–and us–without hesitation is both humiliating and, more importantly, unsettling.

His selection of staff, even of judicial nominees, reflects poorly on his judgment and the processes he uses to recruit prospects.

He's a polished loser, a Jimmy Carter on a high.

How about a month or two in a Trappist monastery, Mr. President, or Buddhist, or even Schick Shadel. Take a breath, calm down, rinse out.

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