The Definition of Hell
...is being condescended to by idiots, according to Ann Coulter. Does anyone else find themselves wanting to puke when the President lectures us on how the executive branch doesn't make law? No s--t, Sherlock.
The President has also taken to going around the country blaming Congress for his problems, as his handlers--who studied media reports from January discussing the success of this strategy in the 1948 presidential election--no doubt told him to. Which is really just an illustration of his biggest problem. He lives media, and he had no reason, until recently, to do otherwise, as the dividend from living such a life has been enormous(book sales, a Senate seat, the Presidency).
The reason why Obama seems inauthentic, especially in comparison with esteemed African-American figures such as Thomas Sowell or Condi Rice, is that everything he writes or says is a reflection of dominant media or literary "narratives" at a particular point in time. Dreams from My Father makes little to no sense, but the more coherent parts use standard tropes about alienation from white society(though Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard don't seem too unwhite) and cliches that are taken directly from Toni Morrison and the Hallmark book of platitudes(popular in the early 1990's when the book was first published). Audacity of Hope and pretty much everything from the 2008 campaign were standard regurgitations of the common media wisdom of Bush's second term: aka a fetish with "bipartisanship" and Republican-induced "polarization." Even his race speech doesn't do anything too bold: black people have grievances, but white people have grievances too, but the way to solve them is to elect me President. He took drugs to "push questions of who (he) was out of his mind." More like "I did drugs cause it was fun when I was young, but now I will fit that into my story about alienation using the most popular trope about drugs substituting for identity."
And now of course, the media obsesses over "polarization" and a "broken Washington." Lo and behold, Obama calls for Congress to "do something" and stop the "posturing." It's like he's parodying himself. When the media tells him that Truman won in 1948 by blaming the Republican Congress, Obama discovers the limitations of the executive branch and attempts to ape that strategy exactly. It's clumsy because it is fundamentally unknowing; he doesn't understand context or the reasons not elaborated in the media about why blaming a do-nothing Congress might not work exactly the same way today. Do I speak for other Ricocheters when I long for January 20, 2013?
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Re: The Definition of Hell
“This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true,” said Obama.
What an odd epiphany for a guy whose administration has more czars than Russia, whose EPA threatens to enact regulations that Congress refuses to pass into law, whose NLRB tells companies which states they may and may not set up shop in, and who enacted amnesty for illegal immigrants by fiat after Congress declined to do so. Very strange statement indeed.
Aug '11
Re: The Definition of Hell
What gets me about the Obama administration is that I can't figure out whether he's just such a progressive that he really believes in all this "investment" (gov't spending) talk or whether he's just being "cynical" and when I say "cynical" I mean "an outright liar." (But being "an outright liar" is such a strong term and too hard to prove.)
After the massive repudiation of Congress when the Tea Party swept the house, and after the fight over the continuing resolution/gov't shut down and the debt limit, how is it that Obama could turn back to "investments?" I don't get that. I thought he'd have some other trick than to change the name of what he's talking about.
Now he's attacking "Congress." But he knows he can write executive orders that will function more or less as laws. I don't know what his strategy is other than to blame everyone else and mislead the people who only get to watch the news while they're in the airport or at dinner (only time I watch the news).