Unworthy of its audience.

This is a pretty amazing official photo from the White House:

Here is a great explanatory article from the American Thinker. As I commented elsewhere in this here blog, Our President has revealed much about himself in the last week or two.

This pretty much takes the cake.

And makes you wonder if a.) the WH photo editor is a lifer with no political ax, or 2.) there are any photos they won't publish and what in the world could they show?

h/t Instapundit Friday night.

Happy Damn-Near August...last post of the month.

So. If Israel didn't listen to Biden, wouldn't they be not ill-advised? I can think of few words that have fallen to the floor from Plagarism Joe's mouth that have not turned out to be bad advice for the recipient.

US Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be "ill-advised" to attack Iran, but stressed that it was unlikely to do so.

"I don't believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill-advised to do that," Biden said in an interview with CNN, when asked about possible Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

"My level of concern is no different than it was a year ago," he added.

Presenting his new government to Israel's parliament a week ago, Netanyahu alluded to an eventual nuclear-armed Iran as the biggest threat to his Jewish state.

"The biggest danger to humanity and to Israel comes from the possibility of a radical regime armed with nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said, making clear his remarks were aimed at Iran.

President Barack Obama's administration has repeatedly said that all options are on the table for dealing with Iran, but is trying to launch a new dialogue with the Islamic republic after a three-decade freeze in relations.

Hmmmmm.

And we're going to be OK because Fearless Leader will be charming the "radical regimes with nuclear weapons" into seeing things his way and disarming. Charm to disarm. New t-shirt slogan.

What Would George Soros Short?

Someone's making a killing betting against the recovery of our economy. Soros has become a little more vocal lately, working with B. Hussein Obama to talk the economy down. To be more accurate, I guess Fearless Leader has actually been talking it up, but "acting" it down...

More here and here. I believe that this is a theme that Post-meister Walsingham has visited before. But as capitalism and, therefore, the economy, are actively being driven into the ground, it is worth revisiting. Comments?

(h/t Hot Air)
John Yang of NBC News filed the following report on Friday:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu may be a Nobel laureate Ph.D. in physics, but his first forays into energy policy suggest he's a neophyte when it comes to the ways of Washington.

At a forum with reporters on Thursday, the head of the department that has traditionally taken the lead on global oil-market policy, was asked what message the Obama administration had for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at its meeting next month.

"I'm not the administration," the Cabinet secretary replied. "I will be speaking and learning more about this in order to figure out what the U.S. position should be and what the president's position is."

Chu, who is still without a deputy, said he feels "like I've been dumped into the deep end of the pool" on oil policy.

The day before, reporters asked him about OPEC output levels after a speech to a group of utility regulators. He responded that the issue was "not in my domain."

It is hard for me to follow the ins and outs of the budget wrangling; to keep from popping an artery I have to maintain a detachment which is difficult when I know that these people are holding a gun to my head to pay off their constituencies. Political footpads, one and all. But at least a legitimate footpad, the mugger with a gun-ready project, on saying, "Your money or your life," doesn't end the robbery with a seemingly high-minded sneer that for you to mind the robbery is to be mean-spirited. A tinge of Maoist self-confession?

One newscaster, of that increasingly rare breed that doesn't make me wish for a soft brick which, when thrown at the television doesn't wreck it but merely switches it off, asked Senator Jim Talent why His O'liness seemed a bit shocked when a half a forest was dumped on his desk for signature. I know it was half a forest because Representative Jerry Lewis, who is everything that his homonym is not, made a big deal of schlepping it around for all to see its leviathan size.

Senator Talent believes that Mr. Obama was blindsided because he never attended to Senate business for he was running for President from the first day in office. He missed, as you recall, an astonishing number of votes.

Now I see Obama as a man of huge ego who wants at least as much as Mr. Clinton to sit in the White House, and did not much think beyond that: he wanted to open the Christmas present but never thought about learning to use it. Ordering and receiving a copy of Photoshop does not make you a graphic artist.

A Somali Muslim, or ex-Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, wrote Infidel, her own story. She grew up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, and was subjected by her grandmother to female genital mutilation. Married off by her father to a Canadian Somali whom she had no interest in, she was sent to Germany to be called for. She fled to Holland, and became a refugee.

She learned the notoriously difficult Dutch language, studied, reveling in Western thought, and the idea of thinking for herself, and was finally elected to the Dutch parliament. She made the film Submission with Theo van Gogh which oddly enough in Arabic means "Islam," and for his troubles he was murdered. The murderer used two knives: one to off him and the other to stick his manifesto in the body. Ah, those manifestos. The monsters wouldn't exist without explaining their madness, would they? Makes you miss the ordinary footpad.

Ms. Ali is now in asylum in America, a fellow with the American Heritage Foundation, for the Dutch government tired of protecting her from the rage of Muslims.

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament. In 2008 he released a movie called Fitna, which is an Arabic term used to describe "test of faith in times of trial." I have also heard it described as "obligation."

The Dutch--once traders, artists, brave people--peed their pants in terror. The police cordoned off the Parliament building for a few blocks to make it more difficult for Muslims to exercise their fitna for the islam of people who don't want it. And the shopkeepers in that area sent Wilders a bill for lost earnings. Just who is now the nation of shopkeepers?

The Dutch government then sent emissaries to various Middle Eastern countries muttering, slyly, that because they had this thing called freedom of speech they couldn't control Mr. Wilders but not to worry. He's a nut, they sniggered, and don't you worry: we'll be glad to expose our soft bellies to you anytime, anyplace. Just don't say mean things about us and we'll hand you the knife you use to gut us.

At the rate they're peeing their pants I'd advise buying stock in Fruit of the Loom.

I've been thinking about what all those liberals with BDS are going to do...and it struck me. They are about to start playing defense by attacking commentators and blogs that dare critize President Obama.

I think they have already started on this blog. For the most part all we've critized is those who supported Obama, I wonder how large the malestrom will be when we focus on the President himself?

Have the Ocean Levels begun to fall? The O-ssiah is speaking light into a dark world as I type.

From Politico, via NRO:

Obama's critique of executive power, and discussions about it in the Bush years, have focused largely on foreign policy, but the new president takes office amid the largest-scale government intervention in the American economy since the middle of the last century. The presidents of that era - Roosevelt and Truman - found themselves restrained by the courts in their attempts to meddle in the economy, and some scholars suggested that Obama may be seeking to expand his powers more at home than abroad.

"On the one hand, he's dialing back some of the national security powers that have been controversial over the last eight years," said Cato's Healy. "On the other hand, he seems very comfortable redesigning the economy by executive fiat."

"Controversial" but successful. Our weakening economy, a direct result of the election of Obama, combined with the probable gutting of a number of key national security tactics and no overall strategy except lay down arms and talk, means our opponents are looking at us at our weakest and making their plans. God, help us.

Go watch Theo's video below, sourced from our man in Detroit Des Moines, Iowahawk, and then come back here.

(I'm not trying to upstage your post, Theo. The cut and paste thing did not work in the comment box and isn't working too well here, either. Maybe I should resign myself to being less wordy.)

This video shows a number of vehicles, most of which are clearly designed as toys. But four of the cars shown are actual, real, for-sale vehicles at least in the recent past. Three of the four had a lot of government input in the designs.

I cannot abide a direct link to the New York Times, no matter how their business performance cheers me. So here is a link to the NYT, via Instapundit. Thanks, Glenn!

The Physicians' Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports physicians' work with patients, last month published the results of a survey on current medical practice conditions in the United States. Some 12,000 doctors responded, the vast majority of whom were primary care physicians.

Nearly half of them said they planned in the next three years to reduce the number of patients they see or to stop practicing altogether. While these doctors rated patient relationships as the most satisfying aspect of practice, over three-quarters felt they were at "full capacity" or "overextended and overworked."

Read the whole thing. With mandatory health care coming, and doctors leaving their practices and virtually no one in med school interested in primary care...well, if you haven't had the incentive to get in shape and take care of your health, now you do.

Energy, economy and now health care: when the government steps in to help you out, you are really on your own.

Remember how the left descended into the snarling rage of Bush Derangement Syndrome; it was ugly but ultimately funny. I think that it is important for the right not to sink to Obama Derangement Syndrome. First, because it will be convenient for the opportunistic left to denounce any criticism of Obama as being racist and therefore snarling about Obama will be used as a powerful tool to crush any sort of political or policy dissent. Also it's silly. It doesn't work. By all means point up Obama's unsavory connections--ACORN, Wright, Ayers, Rezko--or questionable dealings--voter fraud and credit-card fraud--but he is not and will not be responsible for everything that goes bad in the world and it would be foolish indeed to paint him as being responsible.

About six years ago The Dallas Morning News was so far sunk into Bush Derangement Syndrome that Dallasites were putting mock bumper stickers on their cars: "I had xxx and it's Bush's fault." The paper took the hint and backed off. There will be grousing enough on the right, particularly from the usual suspects who would rather grumble in ideological purity out of power than manage to effect some of their ideas.

That doesn't mean it is unfair to point out the bad things. When I heard that Rahm Emanuel would be White House Chief of Staff I felt like the kid watching the Frankenstein movie through his fingers. Did I dare follow any more news?

There is a story about Emanuel: supposedly, at a dinner, Emanuel was calling out the names of opponents, and with every name, he would shout, "Dead!" and stab the table with a knife. Makes you wish for James Carville, doesn't it?

As the world knows, nearly two hundred people were killed in Bombay, which is what Indians still call it instead of Mumbai, a fiat name. And the press wonders why? Why did it happen? Overpaid navel-gazers want to know, but not really.

It's very simple. Islamists hate the west. They hate America, Britain, and they hate Jews. They hate the growing financial sophistication of India and its links to the West. And they want us dead.

Which was apparent to me when the second plane hit the WTC on 9/11.

Why doesn't our media get it? Cannot they believe that they are hated too? Do they think it can be sorted out with a meet-and-greet? My biggest fear about the Chosen One is that he thinks that these things can be sorted out over a cup of strong tea but then he's callow in everything except voter and credit-card fraud, and stiffing workers.

The first WTC bombing told us what to expect but no one, including me, listened. For years we've had Muslims stating baldly that they wanted to die to kill Americans and Americans said, "No, they can't mean what they said," although some of them just died to prove it.

And now we have mass murder in India. I suppose that it will take some sort of mass murder in America to make these precious people get it.

Oh. That happened. September 11, 2001. And still they don't get it. Perhaps there's a reason that The New York Times, the flagship of polite, received opinion, is junk stock, just like their junk opinions, and will have to sell assets to meet debt repayment obligations which is still causing me a deep-seated glow of satisfaction. There is a reason that CBS, lowered even further by the big feet and ego but small worth of Katie Couric is thinking about buying news from CNN and blogging off it. Well, if you had that Couric woman eating 75% of your budget for nothing, what would you do? CNN has fallen behind Fox. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has not only saved that virtually unwatched network by appealing to a small cadre of glinty-eyed leftists but such success that it has had has infiltrated NBC too, which says more about the parlous state of NBC than of the success of MSNBC. And ABC has decreed that its journalists cannot wear American flag pins. Reuters refuses to use the word terrorists on the theory that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I suppose that the murders don't count if you say they're for, er, freedom.

The news rooms of America have very much a fin de siècle feeling to them as the talking heads explain why what is happening cannot be happening as they take time out from the (bankrupt) Sharper Image stores or leg-waxing parlors to condescend to a public that increasingly doesn't care because the public knows there is nothing of value left in the MSM. All that remains is its own narcissistic and solipsistic view of the world.

I suspect that it is axiomatic that the useful idiots are the last to know that they are.

Indianapolis - The Obama campaign says most of the payment issues that brought hundreds of upset campaign workers to the Indianapolis office Wednesday have been resolved.

Campaign spokesman Jonathan Swain says a few people showed up Thursday and made arrangements for payment by mail.

A few hundred people stood in line for several hours Wednesday waiting to get paid for working in the final days of the campaign. Many of those people said they were underpaid for the number of hours they worked.

There's more here.

Let's see. The attorney general of Ohio said sure, don't bother to check the IDs of people bussed in from shelters to register to vote and then to vote. And the Secretary of State of Nevada seized ACORN's records. It seems that they'd registered the Dallas Cowboys to vote.

In the county that I live in, the county Democratic chairman murdered a man in 1974 while DWI, was penalized $1500 and three years' probation, which was reduced to $500 paid and one year's probation served and by this we may know the value of a man's life. Then he was penalized by the State for running an gambling book out of a trust account. His latest? He altered official documents, colluding with the then-official to disqualify electoral competition. He is still the county Democratic chairman and very proud of it too. Except when he's dodging phone calls from people wanting to know when they will get paid for working elections.

I have no love for the Republican party, for I'm a conservative and they have thrown me under the bus, reveling in the orgiastic thrill of spending other peoples' money. And I have many other points of contention. But still, they don't come close to the breath-taking fraud and deception of the Democratic party. It seems that mouthing populist platitudes enwreathes them in a sanctity which excuses the basest of behavior.

I know that even without the voter fraud, the Chosen One would have been chosen by the electorate; the numbers proclaim it. But really. Stiffing bottom-rung vote canvassers? I'll bet the Chosen One didn't get stiffed when he was doing his community organizing. It seems that "community organizing" means fraud from both ends perpetrated against the law-abiding.

The television, when it is on in a room in a house I am visiting, vomits forth the gurgling pleasures of Europeans pleased that we have Chosen the Chosen One and are thereby welcome into the club of European sophistication. That's real comforting. A lot of them are Brits, because their accents are pleasing, except for the likes of Jamie Oliver. But no one has had on a Russian. I aim to rectify that.

The Secretary of the Volkhov District Committee of the Communist Party Katerina Petrova has expressed the Party's position in her statement regarding the victory in the presidential election of the candidate of the liberal wing of the Democrat Party Barack Obama:

The days of the bloodthirsty and thieving Bush administration are ending. The American people have rejected the rabid Russophobia and anti-Sovietism of McCain. We, the Communists, believe that McCain must respond to his own defeat like an honorable officer and shoot himself in the head. [Emphasis mine.] Or there will be no respect left for him.

Even though Obama was supported by many left-wing forces in the U.S., including - at our request - The Communist Party of America, Barack is clearly being controlled by the Pentagon and Wall Street. Comrade Zyuganov has correctly observed with dismay that Obama is surrounded by slithering certified Russophobes - Brzezinski and the maniacal Albright. Therefore, Russia cannot lower its guard - we must be prepared for the continuation of the Cold War. But there still is a chance that Barack Obama chooses a realistic policy and brings new people into his team. The Communists and the Socialist Party USA, as well as Negro organizations, must demand that Obama appoint their representatives to key management positions! Let's also hope that Obama is intelligent enough to reach out to Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Korea, Zimbabwe, and Palestine. 



We would like to alert the progressive forces of America: if Obama chooses the policies of reason and renounces Bush's policies of aggression and intervention, the CIA will try to assassinate the new president. To this end, the American Left must hide Obama in some sort of Uncle Tom's cabin. But in the event Obama succumbs to the pressure from the bankers and the military reactionaries, all the workers who have contributed money to his campaign must withdraw their dollars back.

We have noticed the hope and enthusiasm with which the people's America is celebrating the Negro boy's victory; how it is being cheered in the streets of American towns and villages by common toilers who are tired of the war in Iraq, of the absolute power of monopolies, of the hawks in the White House; it is impossible not to get excited at the sight of the dark-skinned Americans - so thirsty for change... You better not mislead them, Barack Obama! Do not leave them exposed to the forces of blind fate! Do not betray the legacy of glorious Americans - Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King! Or you won't be worth a red cent!

Obama asks in his acceptance speech:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Here is one of his "answers":

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Bending toward Hope of a Better Day? That's not what he meant by "Bending the Arc of History" in February of 2007. From Obama's own website, in the community pages, Ed Kundson writes:

February 11th in Ames, Iowa. He talks about the arc of history bending toward justice, a phrase used by Martin Luther King

and what kind of justice is that arc bending to?

There is no concern for economic justice, for social justice, for racial justice, no concern even for basic civil rights. This administration is captured by neoconservatives advocating militarism, by market fundamentalists who think business can do no wrong, and by religious fundamentalists who want to destroy the public schools and use the power of the state to force everyone to submit to their particular view of the bible. So, I think that word "justice" is vitally important.

Prepare to be Bent.

The former member of the Weather Underground beamed at the attention paid by the audience of about 60 people, many of whom were decked out in Obama gear.

The crowd gave Ayers a warm welcome, guffawed at jokes about "redistributing the wealth" and nodded at his complaints about the "Republican revolution."

There's more here. Interesting to be basking in the adoration of core Obamaniacs, eh?

At least one that won't roll over.

Barbara West, anchor for WFTV in Florida, asked Joe Biden a question. Here's the clip:

At last. Someone interviewing a Democrat without a softball question. And calling Obama's "share the wealth" Marxist. How vulgar to bring up the truth. And of course Biden, insulated, had no answer.

The Obama/Biden campaign instantly reacted with outrage, so much more useful than truth, and cancelled any more interviews with that station. Biden's wife Jill had an interview coming up, and that too was cancelled. Spake Laura McGinnis, the central Florida communications director for the Anointed One's campaign:

This [Jill Biden's] cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."

A sniff, a snarl, and a slap on the hand.