Paranoid President?

There have been rumblings among conservatives that Barack Obama is channeling Richard Nixon. The latest comes from Charles Krauthammer, commenting on NRO about the White House's attack on Fox News, saying it's not "real news" but commentary (and MSNBC isn't? who can forget the tingle up Chris Matthews' leg?). The Obama administration has shown its colors. He will "rule by fist," i.e., intimidation. I was glad to read in Krauthammer's piece that other news organizations refused to participate in an interview with Treasury Department "pay czar" Ken Feinberg unless Fox reporters--who had been excluded by the White House--were permitted to attend. The White House apparently backed down, as well they should.

I keep wondering when, oh when, people who admire and extol Obama, people (young people, twenty-somethings in particular), will realize that they are paying allegiance to a narcissistic, self-serving, imperious man who is both ruthless and cynical, and who plays political hardball for keeps. And now we can add paranoid and Nixonian to the mix. To the "Mandy's" of this world, I ask: Is this the savior you admire so much? Take off the rose-colored glasses, my dear.

Here's Krauthammer's article.
Fox Wars, by Charles Krauthammer

It's a New Dawn in America!

Stuff you won't read in the Los Angeles Times (or anywhere else):

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn (yes, she whose favorite political philosopher is Mao Tse Tung), on how the Obama campaign used video messages to control the media during the election in order to avoid talking to the press:

“It was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. Just put that out there and make them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. …So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it and it did not always make us popular with the press. But we, increasingly by the general election, very rarely did we communicate to the press anything that we didn't absolutely control.”
Senior Advisor to Barack Obama David Axelrod telling George Stephanopoulos on ABC that the White House doesn’t consider Fox News to be a real news organization and that ABC and others “ought not to treat them” as if they are a news organization.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel saying on CNN that Fox is not a news organization [because it] has a perspective. …And more importantly is to not have the CNN’s and the others in the world basically be led and following Fox…” 

(Source: Gary Bauer, End of Day report). 

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, callooh callay....

1.42 Trillion Ho Hum

I looked high and low in this morning's Los Angeles Times for a write up. Not only did the story not make the front page, there wasn't even an article inside the paper. I peeked online at some of the major newspapers around the country to see if they mentioned it. Even the notoriously Obama-friendly New York Times headlined with this front page announcement: "1.42 Trillion Deficit Complicates Stimulus Plans." What's the deal?

Nobel Prize for Irony?

This line from an NRO editorial pretty much sums things up: Whose approval would President Obama rather have: that of the Nobel Committee or that of the Rotary Club in Butte? The irony here is that it will probably be under Obama's watch that a nuclear-empowered Iran holds the world hostage.

Yuval Levin makes some interesting observations in his blog entry. What's most disturbing is that it's becoming apparent that Obama seems to actually believe his own rhetoric. He pretends it's "not about me" (his favorite self-deprecation), but people are starting to notice that most of his speeches contain more personal pronouns (I, me) than any of his predecessors' speeches (the "endless stream of first person pronouns" mentioned in Levin's blog was a reference to an article by George Will).

Obama's entire approach to world affairs is reminiscent of peace for our time Nevile Chamberlain. Watching Obama in action is fascinating, in a morbid sort of way. A train wreck in slow-mo. But we are all on the train.