Of Hashtags, Selfies And Balls

On Friday May 9th, the man whose wit and wisdom I adore wrote this:

“It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture at right is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week's Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right:  Michelle showed she cared—on social media—and that's all that matters, isn't it?” 

“Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.”

@MarkSteynOnline #BringBackOurBalls Here’s my pictorial contempt. Hope you like it. pic.twitter.com/7e6CSggOiM
— PoliticalClownParade (@Carry_That_Load) May 11, 2014

Then there’s Michael Goodwin’s take:

As Barack Obama enters the twilight of his tenure, the debate over his legacy is ­beginning, but one conclusion already seems certain. It can best be described as “Honey, I shrunk the presidency.” 

Not since Jimmy Carter was held hostage by Iran has the Oval Office seemed so inconsequential against the forces of international darkness. The mismatch is particularly striking because smallness has been Obama’s choice. 

Although he is guilty of executive overreach at home, that bully behavior only sharpens the contrast with a foreign policy that is feeble when it is not comatose. The president’s estrangement from the demands of global leadership is giving a green light to tyrants and malevolent opportunists everywhere 

His preference for navel gazing over action was on full display last week. As Russia and China menaced their neighbors and Islamist terrorists set off bombs in a half-dozen countries, Obama accepted an award from Hollywood pal Steven Spielberg for fighting genocide. Passing up a chance to give a full-throated defense of freedom and Western civilization, the president lapsed into what The New York Times called a “meditation” on the limits of his power. 

That’s far too kind. It was a white flag of surrender and more proof that Obama lacks the capacity to shoulder the responsibilities that have belonged to the Oval Office for 100 years. 

The speech sounded like that of a man who is shocked to find that evil still roams the Earth, and doesn’t have a clue what to do about it. A long paragraph of his meandering remarks, released by the White House, captures his sense of helplessness. 

“I have this remarkable title right now—president of the United States—and yet every day when I wake up, and I think about young girls in Nigeria or children caught up in the conflict in Syria—when there are times in which I want to reach out and save those kids—and having to think through what levers, what power do we have at any given moment, I think, ‘drop by drop by drop,’ that we can erode and wear down these forces that are so destructive, that we can tell a different story,” Obama said. 

If there was a course of action buried in that litany of woe, it ­escapes me. The sequence amounts to a counsel of defeat. 

Earlier, he had talked about rising anti-Semitism and the spread of sectarian and tribal conflicts. 

“We cannot eliminate evil from every heart, or hatred from every mind,” he said. “But what we can do, and what we must do, is make sure our children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. We can teach our children the hazards of tribalism. We can teach our children to speak out against the casual slur. We can teach them there is no ‘them,’ there’s only ‘us.’” 

There you have it. We can teach our children warm and fuzzy things—assuming they and we are not killed by madmen first. In which case, there’s nothing we can do. 

The speech reflects how little Obama has grown in office. He initially viewed American power as a problem that needed to be checked if the world was to find lasting peace and harmony. 

By and large, he followed that bad prescription by deliberately shrinking America’s global footprint, and the result is the astonishing chaos we see around us. The vacuum is being filled not with democratic movements but by al Qaeda, China, Russia and other authoritarian regimes eager to take advantage of our retreat. 

Obama’s view of the world was wrong, and his policies are making it more dangerous and less stable. Yet he is still sounding the call to retreat, proposing new cuts to the military that would shrink it to pre-World War II levels. 

Having failed to listen or learn, Obama surveys the incomprehensible brutality and sinks into an intellectualized self-pity. Indeed, there is special poignancy to the fact that First Lady Michelle Obama joined the Twitter nation over the Nigerian schoolgirl abductions. 

The photo of her holding a sign saying “Bring Back Our Girls” is riveting, but also odd. 

Did she think to push her husband to do something? 

And you wonder whom she expects to save the girls. The United Nations? The terrorists themselves? Nigeria’s government? 

Maybe all of the above, which is to say no one, because, without the leadership of the United States, there is no one who can maintain peace and security. 

This is the result of the choice Barack Obama made. This is what the world looks like when a president laments evil ­instead of confronting it. 

UPDATE:  Welcome Fire Andrea Mitchell! readers.

Our Bat-Eared, Abysmal, Perfumed Potentate

Everyone knows how comedically droll Mark Steyn is.  He’s one of my favorite writers on the Intertoobs.

In his piece entitled, “Achieve Ye This Goal”, Steyn eviscerates the current occupant of the Oval Office.

It started off as a response to Peter Kirsanow’s two-paragraph post at National Review in which Kirsanow wrote:

“As if to dispel recent assertions that his ego has grown even larger since the November election, during yesterday’s Google fireside chat the president answered a question about his administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants as follows: ‘This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.’” 

“Jay Carney denies that at the time the president made that statement someone was standing just behind his left shoulder, holding a crown and whispering, ‘All glory is fleeting…’”

Is it just me or was that a Grade A Prime Zinger?  Yes. It. Was.

Of course, when I heard that our bat-eared, abysmal, perfumed potentate had made that ridiculous statement I laughed my ass off and got to work creating a banner for this blog that was in keeping with the Black Narcissus’ impression of himself.

This guy just doesn’t grasp the roles and responsibilities of the office of the presidency.

During the War for Independence, George Washington was granted unlimited authority to prosecute the war against the British.  After the war ended, many advocated his becoming America’s first king.  He declined the notion believing it would be inappropriate and dishonorable.

One of his greatest legacies lies in his resisting the allure of political power in favor of a Republic.  Obama would jump at the chance.

Steyn writes:

“But the president’s sonorous, gaseous banalities did serve notice that the Republicans don’t want to get too far behind on his “goals.” He’s right that Washington “moves forward” like a pantomime horse lurching awkwardly across the stage and with the Republicans always playing the rear end. A “bipartisan” agreement means that the Democrats get what they want now and Republicans at some distant far-off date. Try it: New taxes and government programs now, alleged deficit reduction of $2.5 trillion a decade hence. Illegal-immigrant amnesty now, alleged rigorous border enforcement the day after tomorrow. Washington has settled into a comfortable pattern: instant gratification for spending binges that do nothing for any of the problems they purport to be solving assuaged by meaningless commitments to start the twelve-step program next year, or next decade, or next century. No other big spender among the advanced democracies lies to itself about the gulf between its appetites and its self-discipline.” 

“’Tonight, let’s declare,’ declared the president, ‘that in the wealthiest nation on earth…‘ Whoa, hold it right there. The ‘wealthiest nation on earth’ is actually the Brokest Nation in History. But don’t worry: ‘Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.’” 

“’Should’? Consciously or not, the president is telling us his State of the Union show is a crock, and he knows it. Under Magical Fairyland budgeting, Obama-sized government ‘shouldn’t’ increase our debt. Yet mysteriously it does. Every time. Because, in a political culture institutionally incapable of course correction, that’s just the way it is.”

The money quote from Steyn’s piece:

“So, in public, the modern ruler issues goals, orders dreams, commands unicorns. People seem to like this sort of thing.” 

Exploding Cigars

If you need a good laugh, and who doesn’t these days, do yourself a favor and read Mark Steyn’s latest piece.  Here’s the money quote:

“The exploding cigars are revealing not merely of Democrat hypocrisy but of a key difference in worldview between liberals and conservatives.”

And That’s Why He Won’t Be On Mount Rushmore

Mark Steyn was interested in the rest of the “yukfest of history’s biggest idiots” by the current occupant of The Oval Office.

He notes that many of the zingers sounded as though they had been swiped from one of those “Top Twenty Useful Quotes for Forward-Looking Inspirational Speakers” and from Wikiquotes.

President Pantload said, “There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore—because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.”

Nan Card, Curator of Manuscripts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, quickly put the kibosh on TPM by informing them that President Hayes had the first telephone in the White House, and the first typewriter, and Edison visited him to demonstrate the phonograph.

So the errand boy sent by grocery clerks may have gotten a room full of chuckles from the blissfully ignorant audience, but the citation about President Hayes was bullshit a lie.

Steyn writes, "A great nation needs successful self-made businessmen and purveyors of scholarly excellence. It’s not clear why it needs a smug over-credentialed President Solyndra to recycle Crowd-Pleasing for Dummies as a keynote address."

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, they all laughed at Edison and Steyn believes that history will laugh at us for ever taking this president seriously.

Amen, brother Steyn, amen.