0bama increasingly making middle-schoolers look poised and mature in comparison

It seems that either the campaign is desperate or they have lulled themselves into thinking that the only two demographics that matter are “grievance studies” and “hipster D-bags”. (That’s what echo chambers will do to you.)

In any case, at a campaign appearance in Springfield, OH (not the namesake in IL), 0bama urged voters to “take revenge” on election day. The Romney campaign wasted no time in pouncing on this, asking voters “”Are you voting for Revenge Or Love Of Country?”

 

Seriously, 0bama and his campaign are increasingly making middle-schoolers look poised and mature in comparison.

Or they are plain desperate. Just gleaning from my twitter feed:

• a voter event in Cleveland, OH with a free Stevie Wonder concert, for G-d’s sake, pulled in less than 200 (two hundred) people. (And how many of those just came for Stevie and won’t vote at all or vote for R&R?)
• Not just PENNSYLVANIA, but even freaking MINNESOTA (yes, the only state pulled by Walter Mondale in 1984!) somehow became battleground states #dontgetcocky
• New poll by Tampa Bay Times & Miami Herald: Romney leads 51-45 in Florida http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/03/romney-up-6-in-florida/ … via @hotairblog #Mitt2012#dontgetcocky
• Another example of “confidence”: 4 men arrested in Perrysburg, OH for stealing Romney signs while driving sheet metal union truck http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/156686/ …

As Insty put it memorably: “Don’t forget to change your clocks tonight, and your president on Tuesday”.

Has the preference cascade reached the media? Romney leading in newspaper endorsements

Ann Althouse notes that, most unlike McCain in 2008, Romney is currently leading 0bama in newspaper endorsements by a sizeable margin — and that no less than 28 papers switched from 0bama to Romney this election cycle. Via the comments, here is a detailed list of endorsements., from which we learn that only six papers made the reverse switch.

Does this mean that the “preference cascade” has now spread to a quintessential bulwark of the New Class, the legacy media? (To be sure, the Pravda-on-the-Hudson and the Izvestia-on-the=Potomac are still endorsing the Naked Emperor, the NYT orgasmically so, the WaPo less enthusiastically.)

The winner in the “don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel” category must surely be the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief“. These lines deserve being shouted out to the world:

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy – though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. […]

[Mr. Obama’s] behaviors go far beyond “spin.” They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation’s economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn’t fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is [a] moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it’s time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday.

Indeed.

Change: Narcissism no longer a psychiatric disorder

Via Insty , we learn news that must be a great relief to the current occupant of 1600 Penn and his dwindling band of sycophants:

CHANGE: Narcissism no longer a psychiatric disorder. Well, that’s a relief:

[More here. In fairness, the basic idea apparently is narcissism being reclassified as a symptom of a deeper personality disorder rather than a disorder in itself. The change, being pushed by researchers, is vociferously opposed by practicing clinical psychiatrists — apparently not the first example of a rift between researchers and clinicians in the community.]

C2 commenter “buzzsawmonkey” had some pithy comments in yesterday afternoon’s C2 thread:

“Any discipline in which something can be declared a “disorder” or not by vote is the province of charlatans.”

“Reply to Lucius Septimius in #220:

I was working for the ACLU in the ’70s, on gay-rights issues (if you can believe it), when the American Psychiatric Association decided by vote that homosexual behavior was “no longer a disorder.”  While this was certainly useful to me in my professional capacity, even then I realized that any outfit that could decree what was or was not a “disorder” by vote of its membership was of necessity a fraud from top to bottom.”

But… “the science is settled”, dontcha know!

Jonathan Last: 0bama, American Narcissus

Jonathan Last’s cover story for the Weekly Standard lays out Barack Hussein 0bama’s obsession with his favorite subject: himself.

See also this postscript. (And Bill Kristol: “What about compliments?”) The Naked Emperor doesn’t just have the huge ego that seems to be an occupational disease of politicians (regardless of party): there is something pathological going on. Pity the nation ruled by narcissists.

UPDATE: via Correspondence Committee, the following gag-inducing comment from one of the narcissist’s chief enablers:

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, quotes White House senior adviser and longtime Obama friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Yeah, and I am the Queen of England.

Saudi prince opposes Ground Zero Mosque

Tom Maguire points out that opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque has just been reinforced by the prominent Christofascist Creationist Teabagger Islamophobe, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.

“I am against putting the mosque in that particular place. And I’ll tell you why. For two reasons: first of all, those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York, and not try to agitate the wound by saying ‘we need to put the mosque next to the 9/11 site’,” he was quoted as saying by the ‘Arabian Business’.

“I heard and saw a lot of news about me being associated with it and this is all wrong. We did not finance this thing,” he added.

“The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can’t say ‘let’s just go back to where we were pre-9/11’. I am against putting the mosque there out of respect for those people who have been wounded over there,” he was quoted as saying.

It’s really sad when a Saudi prince sounds more empathic than the presumed President of the USA (and his chorus of “Bong Hitters for Barack” in the legacy and new media).

0bama the post-racial President? Yeah, right

James Taranto: “The Politics of ‘Anything Goes’”:

• “Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us–the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America–there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America–there’s the United States of America.”–state senator Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004
• “In the video message to his supporters, [President] Obama said his administration’s success depends on the outcome of this fall’s elections and warned that if Republicans regain control of Congress, they could ‘undo all that we have accomplished.’ ‘This year, the stakes are higher than ever,’ he said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Democratic officials. ‘It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. . . .’ “–Washington Post, April 26, 2010

Res ipsa loquitur.

The “what is Barack Obama” debate?

Michael Ledeen discusses the debate that broke out between David Goldman (a.k.a. “Spengler”) and John Podhoretz on exactly what is Barack 0bama. Ledeen himself takes a middle position, but feels Podhoretz should have done better fact-checking. We link, you decide — it’s a good read.

I am speechless/אין לי מילים

iPad vs. oPad

Heh. (h/t: Killian Bundy)

The emperor has no clothes

A new expose is making the rounds of the blogosphere: see, e.g.: The Examiner: “numerous bogus claims on Obama resume” and also Chicago Law School faculty hated 0bama

Without getting too far into “who hated whom” at U of C law school (academia can at times make cliquish Junior High School girls look mature), one of the basic facts has been known to me since mid-2008: that 0bama’s claim of having been a “professor” at U. of C. law school is resume-padding. He was a part-time outside lecturer, who was never even given adjunct faculty status, let alone regular faculty status. For those unfamiliar with academia’s pecking order: this is like the difference between having played as a hired session musician on a couple of BigRockBand tracks vs. being a semi-permanent member of the tour band vs. being a member of BigRockBand itself.

From elsewhere within academia, Bill Jacobson (h/t: Pi Guy) has this: “You Were Right About Obama”

I knew it would happen, and today it did.

I received a call from a former client and friend, a guy in his late 70s, who was a huge Obama supporter and a fairly mainstream liberal and Democrat.

In the past my friend very much enjoyed getting me agitated by frequently mentioning the latest Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd column about the evil of Sarah Palin. At his age, getting me aggravated was pretty much his main form of entertainment.

In the months after the election the relationship was somewhat strained. There were certain things we just didn’t talk about, although he would poke me in the political eye from time to time.

I haven’t spoken to my friend in many months, probably since the fall or summer. So I was pleased when his name showed up as an incoming call on my cell phone, although I wondered how we would dance around the subject of Him.

The first sentence out of his mouth was, “Let’s get it out of the way, you were right about Obama.”

Not being satisfied with mere contrition, I asked him whether he was bs-ing me, and he said no, he meant it.

My friend spends half the year in Florida along with his similarly ancient friends. He’s predicting a “Republican sweep” in November, although his dissatisfaction with Obama is not the result of a conversion to conservatism. He feels that Obama broke so many promises, and “he’s just another politician.”

If Obama has lost my friend, the Frank Rich-loving, Sarah Palin-hating greedy Democratic geezer that he is, the Democrats are in deep electoral trouble.

Looks like his friend, like many, was having a Hans Christian Andersen moment. Just like the girl at the bottom of the picture (h/t: Pi Guy):

Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: “Look at the Emperor’s new clothes. They’re beautiful!”

“What a marvellous train!” “And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!”

They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.

A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

“The Emperor is naked,” he said.

“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed his child and took him away.

But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried: “The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It’s true!”

The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that.

He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent.

And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

More “hope and change”

The “hope and change” keeps coming in:

• half of all commercial real estate mortgages underwater by end of 2010?! Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance – http://shar.es/m2bCv
• 3wood at Correspondence Committee – Churches struggling financially http://shar.es/m2bck
• Unemployment stays flat at 9.7%, partly due to mass hiring of temporary government workers, particularly census workers http://bit.ly/9SDx4T
• Underemployment, however, rises to 20.3% in March http://shar.es/m23EW

Meanwhile, a U. of Chicago law professor is quoted http://shar.es/mrUdO as saying 0bama was never on the regular or adjunct faculty because he was “unqualified, lazy, and never attended faculty meetings”. Despite the continued water-carrying of the media (here http://shar.es/m2by2 a journalist is quoted as saying the “White House wants [crude slang term for oral ministrations] in the media sense in exchange for access” [UPDATE: more here. “Access of evil”, heh), Gallup has the approval of BHOzo at an all-time low: http://bit.ly/cNku0d . As another politician from Illinois is often quoted as saying: “You can fool some of the people all the time; all of the people some of the time; but not all of the people all of the time.” Even Ed Koch, who went all-out in campaigning for Chairman Zero, turned his back on him: http://shar.es/m238K.

UPDATE: Don Surber: “The federal government now pays more to borrow money (3.93%) than I do on my mortgage (3.375%). I have better credit.” Res ipsa loquitur.

Obamandias

Zombie (with presumed apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley):

I met a traveller from a once free land
Who said: A vast and fathomless ego hath
Scorched the earth. Nearby, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose contempt
And tilted chin, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.
Few survived that parliamentary Armageddon
The rest were run out of town on a rail, or fled.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Obamandias, king of kings:
Look on my legislation, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the ruins
Of that colossal Self, burnt and bare
The lone and lifeless prairie stretches far away.

Comment of the day

Commenter “methinks” at Althouse on 0bama’s speech to the Democratic caucus (many of the other comments are worth reading too):

The crowd was dull because people who know they are going to their own slaughter usually do have that stunned, dull demeanor as they turn their glazed eyes toward their executioner.

That part in his speech about how they’re Democrats because being a Republican means that you would never help your fellow man in need is particularly endearing. Voluntary help by reaching into your own pocket to help a fellow man in need doesn’t count – only theft of your neighbour’s property in pursuit of your vision of justice is moral.

That’s what the Soviets did. They perverted morality so that everyone lived in opposite land.

3/20/10 7:12 PM

“Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil.” (Isaiah 5:20)

Grim milestone

RASMUSSEN (via Instapundit:): 44% “Strongly Disapprove” of Obama; only 43% approve of Obama at all.

23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends). . . . Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That also matches the lowest level yet recorded for this President. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove. [12% “somewhat”, 44% “strongly”]

[Insty snarks:] “Will the press start talking about “the increasingly unpopular President Obama” any time soon?”

NEJM survey: Physicians on 0bamacare

The New England Journal of Medicine has a survey of physicians’ opinions on 0bamacare. Some highlights (emphases mine):

Physician Support of Health Reform in General
•	62.7% of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be implemented in a more targeted, gradual way, as opposed to the sweeping overhaul that is in legislation.
•	28.7% of physicians are in favor of a public option.
•	3.6% of physicians prefer the “status quo” and feel that the U.S. health care system is best “as is.
Health Reform and Primary Care Physicians
•	46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.
Health Reform, Public Option, and Practice Revenue/Physician Income
•	41% of physicians feel that income and practice revenue will “decline or worsen dramatically” with a public option.
•	30% feel income will “decline or worsen somewhat” with a public option. [That adds up to 71% (!) who feel it will decline.]
•	9% feel income will “improve somewhat” with a public option, and 0.8% feel income will “improve dramatically” with a public option.
Health Reform, Public Option, and Physician Supply
•	72% of physicians feel that a public option would have a negative impact on physician supply, with 45% feeling it will “decline or worsen dramatically” and 27% predicting it will “decline or worsen somewhat.
•	24% of physicians think they will try to retire early if a public option is implemented.
•	21% of physicians would try to leave medicine if a public option is implemented, even if not near retirement age at the time. [Can you spell: “g-o-i-n-g    G-a-l-t”?]
Health Reform and Recommending Medicine to Others as a Career
•	36% of physicians would not recommend medicine as a career, regardless of health reform.
•	27% would recommend medicine as a career but not if health reform passes.
•	25% of physicians would recommend medicine as a career regardless of health reform.
•	12% would not recommend medicine as a career now but feel that they would recommend it as a career if health reform passes

Conquest’s Third Law states that “the behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” It is pretty much the only way the 0bama-Peelousy flogging of a dead horse can be rationalized, as its passing will be disastrous not just for the United States but for their own party. Pretty much the best way to guarantee a landslide GOP victory in November is to ram this monstrosity down Middle America’s throats “so they can read what’s in it”.

Then again, “Vision of the anointed” hubris may itself be an adequate explanation.

UPDATE: “Turn” on C2 points me to an “AP flying pig moment”: AP fact-checks the claim that 0bamacare will reduce insurance premiums and finds it wanting.

Mardi Gras floats mocking 0bama

I guess the infatuation of Germans with Narcissus Rex is officially over now, as this report from a Mardi Gras parade in Düsseldorf (in German) shows:

The shirt says “0bama the Redeemer”. The link to the picture was found in the comments at this post on the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, which had this float:

Mardi Gras has become a celebration of vice before forty days of, well, supposed virtue. It’s one of those fun curiosities about the culturally Christian world: People eat and drink gluttonously as a sort of religious observance.

One of the ways vice is simultaneously vilified and celebrated is on the floats that parade through New Orleans, filled with masked people who throw beads and toys to the passersby. In one parade this year, spectators enjoy a hilarious twenty-float lineup of what one might call winners of the Greatest Vices of the Year: Senator Edwards, Senator Vitter, and Governor Sanford are spotlighted on a lust-themed float as “Politicians Gone Wild!”; New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Na[g]in is painted “asleep at the wheel,” accused of negligence and bad time management on a sloth-themed float; and Bernard Madoff appears on a pyramid as “Pharaoh Made-off” on a greed-themed float that describes him as “the modern-day Judas who was traitor to his own tribe for only 20 million pieces of silver.”

Among these scandalous float figures is President Barack Obama.

On a pride-themed float called “Experiment of His Own Power,” Obama is compared to “The Proud One” of Dante’s Inferno, posing with his Nobel Peace Prize medal, next to several other representations of him—along with Oscar and Heisman Trophy awards, he appears as a five-star general, president of General Motors, and as the “healthcare-expert” Surgeon General—all engulfed by the flames of hell.

[…] In related news… […] a majority of Americans believe that Barack Obama does not deserve a second term.