Remember when President Obama gave a shout-out and pandered to a political conference before he spoke about the Fort Hood massacre?
Remember when President Obama went to relax at Camp David while former President George W. Bush visited the wounded soldiers at Fort Hood? No? Well, check this out:
Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura secretly visited Fort Hood last night and spent "considerable time" consoling those who were wounded in Thursday's shooting spree, Fox News has learned.
The Bushes entered and departed the sprawling military facility in secret, having told the base commander they did not want press coverage of their visit, a source told Fox News.
Yowza. Between the shout-out, Obama's absence at Fort Hood and his amateurishly transparent photo-op in Dover, Obama's feelings towards the US military are becoming clear. Or maybe he's just a creepy bureaucrat:
A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.
He has spent more than two months considering a troop increase but do we know how he really feels about the Afghan war?
In a sign that the Obama honeymoon truly is over, I began to hear this week the first stirrings of a wistfulness about Mr Bush. "I never thought I'd hear myself say it," one Democrat told me. "But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something."
And while former President Bush acted with class and concern for the dead and wounded soldiers, what was President Obama up to? Why, he was campaigning for Obamacare and relaxing at Camp David. Busy day!
11:25AM THE PRESIDENT addresses the House Democratic Caucus - Cannon House Office Building
2:30PM THE PRESIDENT makes a statement to the press on Health Care - Rose Garden
2:45PM THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart The White House en route Camp David - South Lawn
Sometimes, this blog practically writes itself Photo source: AP
Today, President Obama went to Capitol Hill to intimidate and cajole on behalf of his healthcare reform bill - a bill that the Wall Street Journal called the "Worst Bill Ever." It is a dramatic change of pace from a guy who can't be bothered to make a decision on strategy in Afghanistan.
This is the same guy who waited days to denounce the Iranian crackdown on free speech following this summer's elections.
However, a dramatic visit to Capitol Hill is reminiscent of Obama's attempt to close the deal on Chicago's Olympic bid by flying to Copenhagen to deliver a speech to the IOC. Of course, Obama failed miserably. It is interesting to see him try the same tactic with Congress. Apparently, he hasn't learned.
While we await the result of today's speech, let's see what else is going on in the Fail-O-Sphere:
The New York Times is recognizing the fallout of Tuesday's gubernatorial elections:
Job creation has dropped from top priority to one of many, and President Obama has been remanded to pandering for patience and offering excuses. On the one hand, he argues the tortured rationale that there is good news in the awful numbers: Things are still getting worse but at a slower pace. On the other, he incessantly reminds us that he inherited the crisis. The implication: Don’t blame me, blame Bush.
But this president can’t keep deflecting to the last one. Pain is presently felt. The crisis that took form on Bush’s watch is being experienced on Obama’s. Fair or not, finger-pointing is not effective policy.
This is now Obama’s crisis, and it carries political consequences. During Tuesday’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, nearly 9 in 10 voters said that they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next year. And the majority of those who held that view voted for the Republican candidates. This could portend a flashback to 1994.
The Associated Press is also displaying a surprisingly negative tone on Obama's failed economic policies:
Already, consumer confidence for October came in well below what analysts were expecting. Shoppers' sentiments about the state of the economy are the gloomiest in nearly three decades.
Stores, always with an eye on holiday sales, are especially worried this year.
"This is a situation where the recovery balloon is getting off the ground but might not have enough power to keep rising," said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight.
Sitting at a St. Louis unemployment center, Paul Branyon, who was laid off in July from a Williams-Sonoma factory in Tennessee and now lives with relatives, shook his head and laughed at the notion that the recession is over.
"It's getting actually harder right now," the 26-year-old said. "It seems like everywhere you go, people are losing jobs. People are cutting back. So it's going to get harder before it gets easier."
Source: AP ("What Recovery? Unemployment Shoots Past 10%") via HotAir
"Some say I shouldn't be running for govenor," Paterson says, before touting his record on the budget.
Though Paterson doesn't mention it in the ad, one of the people calling for him not to run for a full term was President Obama, whose political clout wasn't sufficient to push Democrats across the finish line in Virginia and New Jersey.
President Obama's shout out during his Fort Hood speech is coming under scrutiny as the world contemplates just how detached and insensitive the leader of the free world really is:
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the President's thoughts on the attack at Fort Hood. . .
Except, Barack Obama did not seem to realise the news networks were relaying his remarks live to the nation. Before moving on to the shooting, he offered his thanks to the people organising the event and offered a "shout out" to someone in the audience.
Source: Times Online ("An Obama 'shout out' too far?)
Er, there is no way Obama and his handlers were caught off guard. If they didn't think his remarks were going out live across the nation, why did he bother to bring up the Fort Hood shootings at all? See NBC-Chicago's take at the bottom of this post - it debunks the "Obama didn't know it was nationally televised" nonsense.
How a president responds to a crisis defines him. President Obama has shown how upset he was after the murder of abortion Dr. George Tiller and after the attack on the Holocaust Museum. But when it came to the Ft. Hood shootings, the president twice gave the incident a limited response – devoting little more than 4 minutes over two separate appearances to the 13 dead and 30 wounded.
In the Tiller case, the president was “shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning.” In the case of the museum attack, Obama was “shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.”
But when it came to the horrendous Ft. Hood shootings, the term “shocked” was nowhere to be found. Instead, the initial response was shoehorned into comments he made opening the White House Tribal Nations Conference. First there were a couple applause lines to Native Americans and Obama’s “shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner,” who appears not to have won the medal. (Joe Medicine Crow won the Medal of Freedom -- the nation's highest civilian honor.)
Source: FoxNews (Obama on Ft. Hood - Not Even 'Shocked')
Nice sleuthing by FoxNews on the medal issue. Score that as a mini-fail for President Obama. Typical...
The quotation says it all: our commander-in-chief feels there is no event so serious that it cannot be prefaced by a moment of glib hipness, no solemn loss so sacred he will deny himself a moment of wry self-indulgence. Soldiers were killed? Let’s say hi to Joe first. An entire theater of war needs a plan to defeat the terrorists who struck America on 9/11? No reason I can’t go golfing, shoot some hoops, and hit the town with Michelle.
President Bush used to break into tears when addressing soldiers and was reviled as a stone-hearted warmonger; Donald Rumsfeld was demonized for using a machine to sign notification letters to fallen soldiers’s next-of-kin. President Obama gives out rounds of virtual fist-bumps to his buds before even mentioning a slaughter of American soldiers, perpetrated by Americans, in mid-America.
We desperately need an adult in the White House. Sadly, today’s press conference proves we do not have one.
Source: NewsRealBlog (Huge Military Slaughter - But First a "Shout Out" to Obama's Bud
Well said...
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned.
Source: NBC Chicago (Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting)
We learned a lot about President Obama's priorites yesterday, when he prefaced his remarks on the Fort Hood killings with a shout out to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow. He then went on to almost equally divide his speech between Fort Hood and the Native American conference he was speaking to.
Today brings us more of what we've come to expect from this administration - failed economic policies and thuggish intimidation tactics, straight from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."
The nation's unemployment rate rose above 10% for the first time since 1983 in October, a much worse jump than expected as employers continued to trim jobs from payrolls.
The reading, reported by the government Friday, is a sign of the continued weakness in the labor market even though the economy grew in the third quarter following the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.
The government reported that the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2%, up from 9.8% in September. It is the highest that this rate has been since April 1983. Economists had forecast an increase to 9.9%.
It should be noted that the economy's third quarter growth is partially attributable to Cash for Clunkers - a federal program that is expected to ravage the auto industry's fourth quarter sales. If that's the case, things are about to get even worse.
But fear not! The Obama administration is focused on what matters most - the war against FoxNews:
At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.
Political consultants are a staple of cable television talk shows, analyzing current events based on their own experiences working on campaigns or in government.
One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, "We better not see you on again,'' said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue.''
In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan.
For those of you unfamiliar with Saul Alinsky - the man who's thuggish tactics dominate the Obama Administration's way of dealing with just about everything - take a look at this:
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Remember how the left reacted to George Bush's reaction in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? Refresh yourself:
Keep in mind that Bush was notified of the 9-11 attacks within a few minutes. Obama, on the other hand, had much more time. If memory serves, Obama had close to an hour (possibly longer) before making his remarks, yet he STILL chose to speak about his Native American conference. Here's the breakdown:
Length of speech - 5:00
Length of Remarks preceeding Fort Hood comments - 1:55
Comments on Fort Hood - 2:40
Closing remarks to conference - 0:25
TIME SPENT ON NATIVE AMERICAN CONFERENCE - 2:20
TIME SPENT ON FORT HOOD TRAGEDY - 2:40
So there you have it. Obama gave 20 fewer seconds to the Native American conference during his official response to the Fort Hood shooting. I'm sure Dr. Joe Medicine Crow and his fellow conference goers will understand the President's snub.
