Barack Obama's first 100 days just flu by, didn't they? About the only thing to pass over the heads of Americans faster than the first three months of Obama's first (and hopefully only) term was that Top-Secret, but apparently "routine" photo-op flight, where Air Force One, shadowed by F-16s, flew nearly nap-of-the-Earth and buzzed the tourists and office buildings in lower Manhattan.
The only significance to Barack Obama's first 100 days is that there are only 1,360 left, assuming he only serves one term. But since we have to live with Democrats and since Janet Napolitano and the Obama Administration felt it necessary to profile supporters and defenders of the Constitution, turnabout is fair play. I now present to you, my readers, a political profile of Barack Obama along with just a small sample of the incongruous, oxymoronic statements and positions that define his world view and thus, his administratio
Barack Obama is an incorrigible narcissist
First and foremost, Barack Obama is an incorrigible narcissist who actually believes that he is somehow different than everybody else. He believes that he alone can disarm the world of nuclear weapons or charm the pants off of previously tone-deaf dictatorships.
- When in public, he surrounds himself with gaudy Romanesque columns, gold accompaniments and other ridiculous props.
- He populates the ranks of his photo-ops with Democrats.
- Never one to be upstaged, at Georgetown University, he requested that the symbolic name for Jesus, the monogram IHS, be covered up on the pediment behind where he was to speak.
- An excerpt from Harry Reid's book revealed that in 2004, Obama told Reid "I have a gift, Harry."
TOTUS, the Two-Headed Teleprompter
The only gifts Barack Obama possesses are the keys to the White House, courtesy of John McCain, a Supreme Court vacancy, courtesy of Justice David Souter and the ability to (mostly) keep pace with TOTUS, the Two-Headed Teleprompter. He's practically chained to it, goes almost nowhere without it and stumbles badly when his crutch malfunctions.
Obama says the last thing he wants to do is take control of the auto industry. Yet, he has already aggressively moved to take control of the health care industry, the information technology industry, the financial industry, the firearms and ammunition industries, the census, talk radio and the Internet, to name just a few.
He projects complete control of, and confidence in the Democrats in his administration. Yet Louis Caldera manages to take one of the taxpayers' state-of-the-art airplanes on a joyride and Obama knows nothing. Between Obama and his cast of characters, they've managed to send mixed messages on just about everything:
- On the economy, Obama preached imminent disaster for months and after being scolded, told me to go out and buy stock.
- On prosecutions of Bush Administration officials, Obama underlings said they were off the table, while Congressional Democrats hinted they would investigate. Obama couldn't make up his mind and flip-flopped for a week, like a fish out of water.
- On right-wing extremist threats to the US, Janet Napolitano profiled conservatives, veterans, single issue voters, gun owners and talk radio as threats to the nation. Obama let it stand.
- On the Second Amendment, Obama said he wouldn't restrict lawful gun ownership and then moved to melt down surplus military brass, rather then let people recycle it, thereby limiting the amount of ammunition available. Why mess with people's guns when you can just take their bullets?
- On the Swine Flu, his administration held press conferences, dispensed thousands of courses of medication and declared a national health emergency, but told us not to panic. This was followed by gaffe-prone Joe Biden's televised appearance where he was asked what advice he would give his own family concerning swine flu. Biden told America essentially to stay the hell away from public transportation.
Over 30,000 people die annually from seasonal influenza. As it turns out genetic markers for the H1N1 virus indicate it is not very deadly. One young child has died on US soil. One might say Democrats overreacted.
Obama calls "saving or creating" 150,000 jobs a stimulus success, yet ignores the intellectual chasm that one must leap over to go from saving jobs, an indicator that the economy is still contracting, to creating them, an indicator that the economy is actually growing.
He subscribes to the belief that spending your way out of a recession, which has never worked in the history of mankind, is a better solution than lowering tax and interest rates and other proven methods.
After throwing billions of dollars at Chrysler while many of us said bankruptcy would be the end result, Chrysler now prepares for that bankruptcy, having wasted billions of dollars to get there. Obama believes that what he calls Chrysler's "surgical bankruptcy" will be different than the messy reorganizations endured by other large corporations.
Tortured by guilt, Obama has outlawed enhanced interrogation techniques, claiming that other methods are just as effective at getting information from terrorists. What those other methods are, he won't say. He also says he'll do "whatever it takes" to keep America safe, but his moral certainty means that there is a limit to how far Obama will go to protect us. Apparently the limit is reached with harsh language. He insists his position on interrogations makes us safer, but ignores the reality that terrorists will simply find another excuse to torture us.
He has spent his entire federal political career criticizing President Bush's involvement in Iraq, his invocation of the State Secrets Privilege, his policy of extra-judicial rendition, his handling of enemy interrogations and the military tribunals that resulted from these methods. But the vast majority of US forces are still in Iraq and will be for some time. We've also recently learned that Obama is continuing the process of rendition for certain suspects, that he has continued to invoke the State Secrets privilege when pressed by the ACLU. Now, he has also hinted that he may in fact reverse course and revive the tribunals.
It has only been three months and America is contracting Obama fatigue and whiplash. I'm losing count of his contradictions and irreconcilable positions and quite nauseated by this man's hypocrisy. Many are giving him far too much credit, defending him by saying that he's simply reacting to events as they unfold and adjusting his policies accordingly, but that horribly oversimplifies the problem with Barack Obama. The way I see it, his changing positions on these matters of life and death show that he really has no idea what the hell he's doing and is, as I feared, simply winging it.
