The Church of Obama

It was only a matter of time.

Peace in our time

Mr Barack Hussein Obama is really trying for the umbrella award.

Yup, that's the way to earn that Peace Prize; set up the pins for a new and bloody war by creating a world safe for tyrants.

Obama: Saviour of Iraq

The Barack Hussein Obama administration slips its moorings and floats away to the Land of Faerie. Something tells me that they were growing more than vegetables in the White house garden.

Why am I not surprised?

BBC headline:

China warns Obama not to meet Dalai Lama

So, how did that kowtow work out, Mr Obama? Lots of respect there, right?

The BBC discovers false consciousness

Why are Americans reacting to Obamaism like a Michelin Guide critic faced with a plate of Seven Eleven nachos? Is it because :

1. They spent three generations fighting Marxist regimes and have no desire to join one now.
2. They read the price tag on Mr Barack Hussein Obama's plans and would rather have freedom than lumber their grandchildren with crippling debt and a nascent police state.
3. They remember how Mr Tony Blair ended up with him re-elected time and again under the excuse that he needed more time only to leave behind a shattered union ruled over by a repellent one-eyed Scotsman and they've no desire for an American road tour.
4. They're too stupid to understand how oppressed they are or how Mr Obama will liberate them from the human condition and give them each a pony FOR FREE!

If you chose 4, congratulations. You just got a job with the BBC.

State of Obama

Not so much a State of the Union address as the campaign speech.

I don't agree with their assessment of the Iraq campaign, but at least the Cato Institute, unlike The One recognises that there is a war on and not an "overseas contingency operation" that will go away if Mr Barack Hussein Obama screws his eyes shut and wishes really, really hard.

Update: On the other hand, National Review is very happy about Obama.

Update: Is Mr Obama America's Saruman?

Finding Barry

The Anchoress looks at the unflattering series of photos of The One put out by the White House and in them finds an answer to the question I posed over a year ago: Who is Mr Barack Hussein Obama?

This man has about 40 "czars" busily working under the radar; most of them are unaccountable to congress, or to the people, or to the press. They answer only to Barack Obama, whose presidency may be a voyage of self-discovery joined with immense but unfocused power.

Sounds as close to the truth as anything I can come up with and is as reassuring as running to the bridge of the Titanic and discovering that Daffy Duck is the Captain.

We choose not to go to the Moon

Well, we already knew that he wasn't Kennedy.

I see a pattern

Now The One is bringing his teleprompter to meetings.

Perhaps it's a security blanket thing.

Obama: "The press is against me"

At least they aren't throwing shoes at him. The One has forgotten that, however much they fawned on him, the press are not his servants; they're merely his allies who will turn on him the second they smell blood in the water.

Give Mr Tony Blair a call, Mr Obama. He'll explain it to you.

Update: Of course, you have to give Mr Barack Hussein Obama some leeway. After all, the nation is ungovernable.

NYT: "Who is Barack Obama?"

Now they ask?

Going nowhere, thank God

Think The One is just having trouble on the domestic front? It turns out that he can't get his CND dreams through Congress either.

We can all start breathing again.

Turning the corner

The One pulls out his teleprompter to give a speech to a classroom of sixth graders.

Mr Barack Hussein Obama has now officially become a joke.

In other news, the MSM start noticing things about Mr Obama that they didn't think worth telling us about before he was elected.

Attack from the Left

The One is really in trouble when he invites this sort of blistering (and long winded!) attack from one of his ideological kin. It's a bit like being on the deck of La Formidable at the Battle of Trafalgar and suddenly seeing the Spanish guns swinging your way.

Update: "Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me."

The One's report card

Conrad Black gives a fairly thorough account of Mr Barack Hussein Obama's first year and his chances of politically surviving his second.

And it doesn't look good. At all.

Oh, well done

The One thinks he can shore up his faltering presidency by attacking bankers with all the grace of Norman Bates dealing with a stroppy guest and the world's stock markets instantly go into a tail spin.

Sometimes Barack Hussein Obama makes Gordon Brown look almost competent.

De Nile is not just in Egypt

Taking a little break from reality, The One says that the Republican victory in Massachusetts was due to voter anger–at George Bush.

I see a time decades hence when Mr Obama is blaming his prostate troubles on his predecessor.

In other news, Mark Steyn is surprised.

Buyer's remorse

Bargain basement Machiavellis

The BBC's Paul Reynolds looks at the fading career of Mrs Hillary "Rodham" Clinton as US Secretary of State and like a blind man in a brothel completely fails to find the most interesting part of the story.

A year on, people forget that Mrs Clinton and Mr Barack Hussein Obama turned the Democrat Party nomination into another edition of Thunderdome. By the time the convention rolled around, neither of them had secured enough standard delegates to secure the nomination because the Left couldn't figure out how to have another joint coronation unless Hillary divorced Bill for Barry. With The One relying on superdelegates and Mrs Clinton holding victories in two primaries that she won uncontested, Mrs Clinton, who had literally nothing to lose, could have turned the convention into a St Valentine's Day Massacre bloodbath. That would have left Mr Obama tainted as just another dirty-fighting politician and the party hopelessly divided and in danger of enjoying nothing more than a slim election victory that could scarcely be called a "mandate for change"–unless the entire electorate could be kept chloroformed for four years. That proving to be impractical, another idea was needed. Unfortunately, it was the candidates who had it.

So how did Mr Obama end up as President and Mrs Clinton as Secretary of State? That's where politics turns into farce because this is what happens when two not very intelligent people try to be clever. Mr Obama thought he could buy off his hated rival (Or Mrs Clinton thought she could blackmail her rival; it works either way). Since he couldn't guarantee Mrs Clinton a Supreme Court judgeship, he made her the offer (or she him) of running the State Department that he (or she) no doubt framed as some sort of latter day triumvirate with Mrs Clinton getting the Eastern Empire while Gaius Julius Soetoro Caesar got the West. Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton figured that as Secretary she could maintain her power base for a possible shot at the 2012 election if (or when) Mr Obama imploded like a certain peanut farmer.

The only problem was, both of them ended up screwing themselves instead of each other. Far from becoming the next Henry Kissinger with an American birth certificate, Mrs Clinton merely demonstrated how she knew as much about foreign policy as a nun does about throwing cocaine-fuelled orgies. Add the fact that her boss is equally as inept as he is narcissistic, and it's no wonder that the former First Lady is caught in another dysfunctional partnership. But then, Mr Obama isn't sleeping too well either as he discovers that his cunning plan has resulted in his handing his worst enemy a large hunting knife and asking her to stand close behind him.

Granted, there's a lot of entertainment value in this, but how hard you laugh depends on where you're sitting. This would be about as funny as watching a bunch clowns trying to put out a fire, but only if your seats are in Tehran or Beijing. Our problem in the civilised world is that we're smack in the front row ringside and the fire isn't fan-blown streamers; it's real. And the bucket of water they're getting ready to throw at us isn't filled with confetti; it's petrol.

You don't even want to know about what's in the seltzer bottle that Nancy Pelosi is carrying.

But we're still going to kill you

Mark Steyn on The One's "I wish it would go away" reaction to the underpants bomber:

The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate.

As the kids say, read the whole thing.

Update: Even Barack Hussein Obama's supporters are starting to notice.

Update: That includes Maureen Dowd, which is a bit like discovering that the Moon has left its orbit to nip down to the shops.

Messiah watch

From an editorial in Denmark's Politiken.DK regarding Barack Hussein Obama's place in history:

Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus – if we have to play that absurd Christmas game.

How can anyone argue with that? Jesus is merely the only begotten son of God who brought the Gospel to the world, died on the cross to atone for the sins of all mankind, descended into Hell, was resurrected, and now sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty where he will judge the quick and the dead. The One, on the other hand, is much greater because he... Well... He... Yeah.

Another honour

Having won the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Barack Hussein Obama has been voted US President Most Likely to Have His Lunch Money Stolen by Other World Leaders.

Jame Retief, call your service

As I've said before, Barack Hussein Obama's kowtow to the Chinese premier was nothing but an invitation for the Chicoms to humiliate him, but I do give The One five out of ten for pushing his way through when Wen Jiabao tried to make him cool his heels at the door. Where The Light Worker feel down was in losing his temper and shouting “Mr Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?”

A better course of action would have been to have his security detail be as rough as they please with the Chinese and then for Mr Obama to politely tell Mr Wen that he has apparently been working the aide who tried to block him too hard and that the young man needs a vacation before telling Mr Wen that he can give him fifteen minutes of the president's valuable time–all of this sweetly delivered in the voice of a man confident that he can turn Bejing into a glass lake in ten minutes.

Not much hope there, though.

President Tin Ear

Barack Hussein Obama is in Copenhagen addressing the Climate Change conference where he is scolding away as if he can save the whole farce from disaster by shooting out Obama rays.

Two days ago I thought that there was no way The One was going to go to Copenhagen in the wake of Climategate and now that the outcome is certain to be little more than a bland statement of intent, but apparently he'd determined that his stumping for the Chicago Olympics won't be a one-off.

The man has all the foresight of Julius Caesar at the Ides of March. I particularly like the way the press is talking up Mr Obama's "talking tough" and "rebuking China". Talking tough? After the way Mr Obama literally kowtowed before the Chinese Premier it's a wonder that the Celestials didn't respond to his "rebuke" by laughing in his face.

Update: The One descends from Olympus and graces mere mortals with a "meaningful agreement" that "list national actions and commitments"... and makes the Civilised World cough up $100 billion a year to backwards nations, kleptocrats, and dictators.

And here I thought the caviar and Champagne conference would end with bureaucratic doublespeak for doing nothing while gouging the Civilised World for yet another fortune to pour down a rat hole.

History schmistory

So long as it gets the job done, what do the facts matter?

Brillance personified

Presenting Clare Lockhart; an overlooked gem of a political satirist who has a gift for capturing perfectly the opaque, jargon-ridden, intellectually-vapid prose of the terminally-insipid quango inmate. How she is able to write a 14 paragraph essay that skewers the amoral, clueless nature of such pompous, self-serving prigs without succumbing to the temptation to throw off the mask and deliver a punchline shows a mastery of subtle parody exceeded only by the late, great Peter Simple.

Brava, Miss Lockhart and keep up the good work. By the time you're done the real members of the Institute for State Effectiveness won't be able to face their own families, much less the general public.

No surprises

I saw Mr Barack Hussein Obama's West Point speech last night and I wasn't in the least surprised when it turned out to be like biting into a sausage roll and discovering that they'd forgotten to include the filling. Or that the cadets showed so little enthusiasm for their lecturing commander in chief that they had to be reminded to applaud. It is, after all, an "enemy camp".

The only piece of meat in the whole thing: After months of dithering deliberation, Mr Obama has decided to send an extra 30,000 men to Afghanistan. Why 30,000 instead of the 40,000 his generals asked for remains a mystery; as does the 30 month time deployment schedule that makes this less a surge than a gentle slope.

What isn't a mystery is Mr Obama's promise to pull American forces out by July 2011. The war must end on that date by decree because he can't afford to be distracted by a triviality like war when the far more important job of his getting re-elected is at hand. What matters if it tells the Jihadists how long they need to lie low?

For all the head scratching surrounding the Obama presidency (how much is deliberate planning versus the result of incompetence) the one place where Mr Obama is as transparent as a see-through blouse is when it comes to waging war. He has absolutely no interest in it and he wants nothing to do with it. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, Mr Obama seemed to have found the perfect way of disposing of both Afghanistan and Iraq with one blow: Declare the unwinnable war in Iraq the "bad" war and pull America out of that horrible quagmire and declare the already won war in Afghanistan the "good" war and pull America out while taking credit for the victory. The only problem was that he ended up with America winning the "bad" war and in danger of losing the "good" war as the Jihadists swarmed back from Iraq to Afghanistan to reinforce their Eastern Front. Worse, The One was stuck between the Scylla of a crumbling economy and the Charybdis of pretending that the way to fix it was to implement the tax and spend policies that he was going to do anyway. When Mr Obama discovered that being president with full control of Congress, academia, the news media, and most of the judiciary still didn't mean he could just go on making soaring speeches while Congress and his czars did the grunt work, Afghanistan became a real albatross for him. Not the thing for the Lightworker who thought it was his job, in his own words last night, to rebuild America.

In fact, Afghanistan had to be the oddest dead albatross ever to grace a neck because as time went on it got bigger and bigger. As The One went from messiah to the new president to the president to President Carter II, his stimulus package turned out to be a non-stimulus, his apology tours were exposed as, well, apology tours, his "cool" proved to be indifference if not outright disdain and, worst of all, instead of his breathing tax and nationalised healthcare bills breezing to his desk last spring they both stand a very good chance come January of not being passed at all. Mr Obama knew at his inauguration that if he fought or retreated in Afghanistan he'd still infuriate a large swatch of the voting public, so he was faced with the choice between being the man who lost the Afghanistan War or the 21st century Lyndon Johnson who saw his Great Society II crack on the rock of Vietnam II. Until he "rebuilt" America neither was an option. No surprise, Mr Obama "deliberated" and "studied" and "pondered", though to be fair, he was not "dithering". That implies that he intended to do something. He was rather hoping that if he did nothing long enough his precious Socialist programmes would become law and then he could let Afghanistan fall apart in a manner that he could blame on his predecessor. Now, however, he's faced with the nightmare scenario: A war that's an even greater political liability than ever, his agenda stillborn, and no more chances to kick the can down the road.

The disturbing thing about this slow-motion treacle surge is that it doesn't include the word that wasn't included in Mr Obama's speech. That word is "victory". This is not about defeating the enemy. This is about making a war that Mr Obama couldn't give tuppence for go away. His gamble is not between winning or losing in Afghanistan. It's whether or not he can make it quiet down until after his agenda is in place and he's re-elected. Then the Afghans, the Pakistanis, and anyone within missile range can learn to live under Jihadi nukes while The One goes for a Burton.

A while back I compared Mr Obama's ambition to that of a would-be Caesar. I still believe that. The question after last night is whether he's Julius Caesar or Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who aspires to no higher military triumphs than to make war on the sea or perhaps Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus who cares more about his public performances and his Golden Palace.

Thing is, the enemy might turn out to be Atilla the Hun.

Update: Der Spiegel searches in vain for the Obama magic.

A Navy's lot is not a happy one

The fight against Jihadist pirates and Jihadists in general has become an absolute joke. Not only are Somali pirates caught red handed and released as a matter of course thanks to insane rules of engagement, but a British couple is kidnapped from their yacht by Jihadist pirates under the very eyes of the Royal Navy, who do absolutely nothing except watch. The head of the Navy, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, then, with amazing brass, claims that the ship involved, RFA Wave Rider, could do nothing in the situation.

Perhaps the Admiral should get to sea more often, because Wave Knight not only has a Merlin helicopter, but two 30 mm cannons and four 7.62 mm machine guns as well as 26 Royal Navy seamen to man them. How does this equate as "couldn't" rather than "weren't allowed"? True, it was a hostage situation, but how would that have prevented the captain from getting on the loud hailer and telling the pirates that if the hostages were harmed the pirates would die one second later while putting a shot across their bow to avoid any misunderstandings about trying to leave.

As for letting pirates go, I am actually all in favour of that. let them go by all means. Without their boat and twelve miles off shore. Chumming the water first I leave to the discretion of the captain.

Still, for all it's faults, at least the RN isn't lumbered like the Anericans with a commander in chief who takes credit for a rescue mission while apparently taking petty revenge on the real heroes for upstaging him before he could apologise to the pirates.

I suppose running convoys through the area while the US and Royal Navies sweep the pirates off the seas (Not in a convoy? Prepare to be boarded.) and burn their shore bases to the ground (Women and children to the evacuation units, please. As for the men; healthier if you move inland, son. Now.) is out of the question. Pity.

White House menu

Huston, we have arugula.

The Prime Minister of India is coming to dinner, so naturally they've laid on a curry. I bow to no one in my admiration for the fiery Vindaloo and perhaps Mr Manmohan Singh is partial himself, but I can't help thinking that this isn't a bit like a Terry Pratchett novel I read recently where a famous opera singer from the Discworld equivalent of Italy was sick to the back teeth because no matter where he went people served him pasta.

I say offer the Prime Minister a seat at a New England clam bake and watch his eyes light up.

Update: Shame about the typos.

Look before you leap

The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.

This sentence from Sarah Palin's book is appalling. It's so bad it would come first in a Bulwer Lytton writing contest. It's... What? It's brilliant. It's the greatest writing since Julius Caesar.

The special relationship: RIP

It was nice while it lasted.

Let's hope the Reign of The One turns out to be more of an interregnum.

Umbrella man

The Chinese are apparently impressed by Mr Barack Hussein Obama carrying an umbrella.

No doubt for the same reasons as the Germans were impressed by another prominent umbrella carrier.

The limbo president

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Ian Fleming

Mr Barack Hussein Obama violates both international and White House protocol by bowing to the Emperor Akihito of Japan.

This would not be that big a deal in and of itself. After all, every president makes mistakes from time to time, but The One has a long history of refusing to acknowledge his own country's flag while saluting other nation's and for showing obsequiousness towards tyrants while delivering calculated insults to America's closest ally, so this scarcely counts as a one-off.

What I find most interesting about this is that Mr Obama has an entire State Department brimming with sponge-trousered types who understand protocol and certainly briefed him in detail on how to greet another head of state. Since Mr Obama not only bowed to the Emperor, but did so while a) shaking hands (a tourist mistake) and b) going so low that he looked like a Japanese peasant trying to explain to the local daimyo that the rice crop failed because he poured a truckload of paraffin into the paddies, the only conclusion I can come to is that The Light Worker ignored State's advice and ad libbed to show off his brilliant multicultural chops as America's first "Pacific president" on the start of his next "I apologise for the United States and don't you think I'm fabulous?" tour.

To put it another way, Mr Obama isn't so much bowing to Emperor Akihito as he is mooning the United States.

Next up: Mr Obama gives Kim Jong Il a foot massage.

Update: Scroll down to the comments by richao for a detailed examination of this incident and showing who are the "yokels" here.

Risk

Far from trying to win the Great Game, Mr Barack Hussein Obama is oblivious that there even is a game.

Wilful blindness

I am gobsmacked by the BBC's coverage to the Fort Hood shooting. The official Party line politically correct narrative of the motives of Major Hasan for killing 13 people and wounding 30 others has already emerged: He's insane and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Never mind that PTSD is very likely a political construct all on its own with no real medical value. There's also the fact that Major Hasan is a medical officer who has never seen combat, so (and I'm not making this up) some claim he's suffering from pre-traumatic, prospective-traumatic, or even proxy-traumatic stress disorder.

The BBC, however, have gone one step further. They've not only consigned Mr Barack Hussein Obama's infamous "shout out" moment to the memory hole and overlooked his "let's not jump to conclusions" moment (he did, after all, spend a private moment paying respects to the fallen dead with the White House press corp in tow), but they dismissed entirely any idea that Major Hasan's motive might have something to do with the "M" word. Markl Mardell in his blog is utterly mystified by the event and calls Hasan's running about in traditional Muslim garb while murdering his fellow soldiers "a red herring". Good Lord, what does the man want for proof? Hasan shouting "Allah akbar" as he blazed away at his victims? Oh, wait. He did that!

I am eternally grateful that this was the work of one man and not three as originally reported. If that had been the case, we'd have faced the fact that we were up against Jihadist cells inside the US military itself, but this is not much better. The more I learn about Major Hasan, the less I believe that he's mad. He is perfectly sane. He may not be a card-carrying Al Qaeda member (as far as we know), but he's bought into their sick dream and he's definitely a murderer and a traitor. If he lives to stand trial and he isn't put in the dock on a treason charge, then I have real doubts about our ability to win this war.

As far as Mr Obama is concerned. First, learn the difference between the "Congressional Medal of Honour" and the "President's Medal of Freedom". Second, no one "wins" the former. Third, when the medal in question is one you bestowed yourself, it is bad form to gush over the recipient, and fourth, if you regard sucking up to a pressure group to be more important than your primary job as commander in chief, I suggest you try another line of work.

And for Muslim "leaders" who are quick to condemn Major Hasan's methods, but not explicitly his goals, you aren't fooling anyone.

Update: Major Hasan's connection to the 9/11 terrorists. The "lone nutcase" theory is starting to look a bit thin.

Update: Mark Steyn on fears of a hypothetical atrocity. I love this parody headline:

British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing

What's so bad about a cult of personality?

Reed Richards, call your service

Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett says that Mr Barack Hussein Obama "speaks truth to power".

Given that The One is the most powerful man on Earth, who the deuce is he talking to? Galactus?

At least Caesar wrote his own books

Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the United States' National Endowment of the Arts has this to say about Barack Hussein Gaius Julius Caesar Obama:

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt (!) and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

That's an interesting opinion. Since Abraham Lincoln didn't write any books and Mr Obama probably farmed out the writing at least one of his to "a guy who lives in (his) neighbourhood", one wonders what sort of "artists" this is supposed to be good for.

Probably not the sort who would commit this sort of sacrilege against The One.

Walter Burns, call your service

While The One is distracted by his war with Fox News, he might want to consider restraining orders on others.

So, how's that Peace Prize working out?

Brezhnev Ahmadinejad lied to me!

Maybe it's just moral leadership at work. Just remember, he may appear to be a dithering, inexperienced ideologue who's in way over his head, but he's really a man of steel coiled to strike.

I enjoy a good laugh, too.

Euro president

Is Tony Blair really going to be the EU's first president?

Sorry, Tony. It looks as though Barack Hussein Obama already has the job.

Why not?

Following the precedent set by the Nobel Prize committee, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have unanimously decided that the 2012 Oscar for Best Picture goes to Green Lantern, which hasn't begun filming.

In other news, Mr Barack Hussein Obama is asking impatiently why his face isn't on Mount Rushmore yet.

War is Peace, Freedom is...

Mr Barack Hussein Obama has won, wait for it, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Let that sink in for a moment like the tea I spilled in my lap. I can only assume this means the Nobel Committee will be giving Peace Prizes away in breakfast cereal packets next.

The astonishing thing is that not only has The One been given the prize despite the inconvenient fact that he's achieved absolutely nothing during his brief term in office, but that by gratuitously insulting and shafting America's allies, gutting Western defences, apologising for his country's existence, embracing dictators, literally bowing to tyrants, treating human rights as a "distraction", green lighting a Third World nuclear arms race, and dithering on the Afghanistan campaign while indulging in a Macarthuresque feud with his own hand-picked military commander, I can only assume that "Peace" is being used in the Orwellian sense.

Of course, I may be unfair in this view. After all, the nomination deadline for the prize was February first, which was a mere eleven days after Mr Obama took office. So maybe the new criteria for the prize is excellent penmanship while signing his W2 form.

Update: Quote of the day from Mataconis:

How can Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day that he’s becoming the first POTUS to bomb the Moon?

Update: Biggest laugh line of the day:

Nobel prize win 'humbles' Obama

You must love Big Brother

They'll be handing out little red books next.

Update: Next semester's production will be less subtle.

Be prepared

The Dirty Bomb Emergency Kit.

With Mr Brown willing to give away one fourth of Britain's nuclear deterrent force and The United States' College Administrator in Chief, abandoning the European leg of the missile defence system for no good reason, delighted over the prospect of crippling "his" nuclear deterrent, and beaming with self admiration because he can't tell the difference between gaining respect and being recognised for a Charlie by that dictator's guild called the United Nations, this might well be the hot (pardon the pun) item under the tree this Christmas.

Update: Tyrant envy.

Update: But... But, I thought they loved the US now!

All hail Dear Leader

If a school had done this for Mr Bush, the Left would have gone ballistic.

Welcome back, Carter

There have been rumours that Mr Barack Hussein Obama's real name is Barry Soetoro or Barry Dunham. Neither is true. His real name is Jimmy "Chamberlain" Carter. By cancelling the European arm of the missile defence system he's finally come out of the closet and sent Champagne corks popping from Moscow to Tehran.

I didn't expect great things of Mr Obama in the field of defence or foreign relations. In fact, I wasn't surprised when the only real cuts he made to the federal budget were in defence or that his foreign policy consisted largely of insulting allies and grovelling to tyrants. I was even pleasantly surprised when he realised that cutting and running in the face of a a victory in Iraq and possible defeat in Afghanistan would have meant political suicide. Nor was I caught out when he shafted the Czechs and the Poles over missile defence. What I am astonished at is the sheer boneheadedness of managing to combine abject appeasement of Mr Putin by giving him Eastern Europe on a plate with guaranteeing that the Mad Mullahs of Tehran will have nuclear-tipped ICBMs pointed at London and Washington in a few years by sticking on a pair of rose-coloured glasses and saying that, in effect, Brezhnev would never lie to him. More to the point: What did he get in return for this insane giveaway? Not a sausage. Hoping that Russia will "cooperate" against Iran? That Iran will go misty eyed at this gesture of good faith? That's on a par with handing over the keys to your Porche to a guy you met in the pub so he can drive to an ATM for the money to buy it and wondering why you never see him or you car again.

I'm sorry, but I've been through this before. Back in the 1970s, one James Earl Carter took up residency in the White House and spent four years scolding his people, telling them that they'd have to make do with less, that they'd have to adjust to no longer being the world's most powerful nation, and sent an ambassador to the UN who not only went native, but went over to the other side. It had never been unusual to see the United States condemned from the floor of the General Assembly, but it was certainly novel to see it being done by the American's own man. Meanwhile, Mr Carter dutifully and with high moral posturing gutted the American military inventory and resided over a foreign policy that looked like General Effingham's retreat from Kabul. Then, to Mr Carters astonishment ("Brezhnev lied to me!"), Iran fell to a load of nuts whose idea of gay rights was shoving a wall on top of them and the Soviets responded to the dove of peace by overrunning Afghanistan. Considering that the original Battlestar Galactica was airing then, it's amazing that Western Europe wasn't wiped out by the Cylons.

Now here we are thirty years later and a new series of Galactica isn't the only repeat on the schedule. And just like last time, Mr Obama's way of handling real threats from evil, ambitious men is to indulge in wishful thinking that the Iranians aren't really building a bomb and don't really want to destroy us, that Putin isn't acting like an ex-KGB boss who sees himself as a 21st century Peter the Great, that Jihadists can be wished away because they're so inconvenient, and that allies can be taken for granted because they all think "Gosh, isn't The One so dreamy!".

Needless to say, just as Mr Carter got a rude awakening, so will Mr Obama. And God help the rest of us when he does, because I really have no desire to see half of Iran turned into glass after a failed nuclear strike against Tel Aviv nor to watch a United States standing by helplessly with an aging, diminished nuclear arsenal because Mr Obama thinks the Bomb is "icky" while the Middle East plunges into the biggest arms race since iron was discovered.

To quote Bettie Davis, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night"

An old wind

Sorry, we don't "do" human rights.

Marie of Romania

The new "N" word

Do you think that Barack Hussein Obama is a Socialist?

Then you, my friend, are a racist.

Update: and another code word.

Gaius Julius Obama

I've characterised Barrack Hussein Obama's governing style as a man who'd rather be king, but I never felt that it really fit because feudalism implies not only reciprocal obligation, but right of birth–neither of which apply. Instapundit, however has the word that I was grasping for and hoped I'd never see raised in an anglophone democracy:

Caesar.

Thank God he has no legions.

Why so Socialist?

This is insulting, racist, treasonous, hate speech, and utterly beyond the pale.

This is artistic, political satire, protected by the first amendment, and entirely proper.

Yeah. Right.

Update: Unfair to the Joker!

Messiah watch

Another day, another halo.

Read the script

Memo to Miss Mabuse: Please stick to the narrative. Deviating from the accepted trope that everything The One does is historic tends to upset our newsreaders and makes them jump.

Priorities

War in Afghanistan, coup in Honduras, revolution in Iran, missile tests in North Korea,bloody repression in China, and CNN goes with... The Obama girls go sightseeing!

Somewhere Walter Burns is sobbing.

Birds of a feather?

The word "fascist" has started to be mentioned in connection with Mr Barack Hussein Obama–and I don't mean the black helicopter, Freemasons-fearing fringe types. And I hate to admit it, but it's becoming harder to dismiss the idea that the label couldn't possibly fit. It's bad enough when The One sides with the likes of Ortega, Chavez, and the ghost of Castro in demanding that a would-be dictator be reinstated while he soft steps around Iran for fear of "meddling", but when he and his administration comment on the opposition of a Congressman with the words,

Stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country.

Since when have the "wishes" of the president ever counted for anything with Congress? There are some pretty nasty possibilites coming to light about Mr Obama's ideology and I sincerely want to be wrong about what they are.