In terms of responsibility, as I’ve said before, this is my administration; I always take responsibility for whatever happens, and this is an area that I have a particular concern with. This predates my presidency.
"What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt."Sold! How much will it cost to purge this terrible stain upon this country? (You know, aside from the blood of 360,000 Union soliders killed in the Civil War.) Because if reparations are the answer to "repair" our race problems, then let's do it once and for all. Let's cut those checks for Oprah and LeBron.
The launch of the Affordable Care Act and the worsening of conditions at the Veterans Affairs Department are emblematic of Obama's inattention to the hard work of governing. He is slow to fire poor-serving Cabinet members and quick to dismiss controversies as "phony scandals." To the Obama administration, transparency is a mere talking point. The great irony of his progressive presidency: Democrats privately admit that Obama has done as much to undermine the public's faith in government as his GOP predecessor. The Green Lantern Theory is an excuse for failure.The VA has been a near-intractable problem for a series of Presidents and I'm not saying that Obama is responsible, although he sure made it an "urgent priority" when he could score points as a candidate. What I object to is that this guy only finds his sense of urgency when his political capital is at risk and, even then, he acts like he cannot believe he has to explain himself:
Over the weekend, the president’s chief of staff assured the public that Obama was “madder than hell” about what happened at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but in person Obama didn’t seem very angry. Like VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Obama wasn’t entirely convinced something bad had happened.How could anything bad happen in this Administration? Must be some kind of crazy Republican meme they're repeating on this news-transferring thing called television.
The White House response to everything from the VA and IRS scandals to the seizure of AP phone records by the Department of Justice is that it learned about them from press reports. More and more Mr. Obama speaks as if he’s a passive actor, a bystander in his own administration, an MSNBC commentator speaking about events he has no real control over. We saw that earlier today, when the president, in trying to address the public’s growing outrage at what’s happening at the VA, insisted he “will not stand for it” and “will not tolerate” what he has stood for and tolerated for almost six years. His anger at what’s happening to our veterans seems to have coincided with the political damage it is now causing him.That's the only tragedy Obama understands.
3:25 pm || Tours the National Baseball Hall of Fame; Cooperstown, New YorkPlus fundraisers.
If Barack Obama wants to play Chauncey Gardiner and basically act as if he has no frickin' idea of what's going around in his White House, that's fine by me.That Chauncey Gardiner reference is from the film "Being There" where a simpleton is regarded as a genius because he occasionally says things that sound profound. The main character almost literally stumbles into the Presidency.
But will his erstwhile defenders at least admit that either he is a know-it-all who is full of B.S. when he pleads ignorance or that he just has no clue about what's taking place in this City on a Hill already? It's not flattering to him whichever way you want to go. But at least it'll be consistent.
2:10 pm || Honors the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks; East RoomOr not. Custom-made football jerseys may be exchanged.
VA scandal: DIDN'T KNOWHere's an ode to Obama's only means of gathering information:
Benghazi security: DIDN'T KNOW
Fast and Furious: DIDN'T KNOW
Lose your doctor: DIDN'T KNOW
Bin Laden hit: MASTERMIND
Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect.A pushy and "brusque" woman, unequal pay for equal work, and an ignominious firing from the Old Gray Lady. My C-cup runneth over with hypocrisy.
Modern liberalism, at its core, is an ideology of talking, not doingThis reminds me of this unintentionally hilarious article in the NY Times about eco-socialites: they're all for saving the planet until the slightest bit of sacrifice is involved:
She plans to practice conservation, to a point. Energy-saving light bulbs are fine — for the utility closet, perhaps. In other rooms, “they don’t give a very pretty light,” she said.How gauche!
On just about every level, this claim is ridiculous.Here's today's runner-up:
President Obama is such a glib liar that it is hard to keep up with his act.I think that Obama has gotten so used to the media kissing his ass, he believes he can lie without consequence. And why wouldn't he?
The administration’s apologists claim that President Obama immediately called Benghazi a terror attack in a statement in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, the day after the assault. He did indeed refer to “acts of terror,” although vaguely. In an interview the same day with CBS, he was asked: Was Benghazi the result of a “mob action,” or was it something more serious? “I don’t want to jump the gun on this,” the president said.Candy Crowley just called to say: "Mm-hmm, that's how I remember it."
He obviously wouldn’t have said he didn’t want to jump the gun if he had already jumped it. Besides, if the president of the United States was willing to say it was a terrorist attack from the very beginning, why was one of his national security officials stuffing his ambassador to the United Nations with pablum in an email just a few days later?
Blaming the video allowed the administration to put the most anodyne possible interpretation on Benghazi, while staying in its ideological comfort zone.
Mr. Udall's amendment is careful to specify that nothing "should be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press." In case you don't follow campaign finance, that is supposed to protect newspapers and TV networks, most of which embrace Democratic causes and candidates.How nice of them to let the NY Times keep their freedoms.
The real target will be the corporations Democrats have railed against since Citizens United. But why should Warren Buffett's company enjoy free speech rights because he owns a handful of newspapers along with insurance companies, while Jeffrey Immelt's is muzzled because GE makes jet turbines? For that matter, what's to stop political groups from incorporating themselves as newspapers?I fail to see the distinction between limiting spending on speech via political contributions, clearly designed to advance a certain viewpoint, and spending on the press which is also advancing political speech. Can the government limit the amount of money that the NY Times spends on paper? And if there is a difference, what's to prevent the Koch brothers from purchasing every major newspaper in America?
Once you've opened the First Amendment for revision by politicians, and reinterpretation by judges, anything can happen. We know liberal editors tend to lose their bearings when they write about money in politics, but is the problem so great that it's worth letting, say, Senator Ted Cruz determine whether the New York Times Co. qualifies for protection under the First Amendment?
