Where's Abe Vigoda?

Not here.

Obama can't speak "Austrian"

For those of you who are still convinced this guy is brilliant...yet more proof that our Affirmative Action Prez is none too quick.

Obama:

"It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics."

This reminds me of the supposed quote of Dan Quayle being surprised that people in Latin America didn't speak Latin-except that Quayle never said that. Obama, I imagine, doesn't know that Hitler justified "unifying" Germany and Austria because both countries spoke German.

Obama's ignorance seems boundless.


Link via Baseball Crank.

A divider, not a uniter

Obama's more polarizing than any modern President ...even GW Bush:

"For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama's job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president -- 88% job approval among Democrats -- and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%)."

I guess Obama partisans (the hopey-hopey-changey-changey crowd) will blame this gap on those Republicans who refuse to worship the Chosen One. Obama was sold-or should I say marketed-as the post-partisan candidate whose glowing countenance and Daniel Webster-like oratorical skills would unite us, despite ourselves. But a well-prepared teleprompter and a nice haircut can only do so much.

Well, at least he's uniting the GOP in opposition to him. And I can't imagine that the average libertarian likes the man much, considering his martial law approach to corporate America.

Your 2009 Philadelphia Phillies

The champions will contend once again, but I don't see them repeating. A quick look at the roster above shows why-a thin bench, combined with an aging roster (the third oldest in the majors, at 29.2 YO), has me nervous. I do predict 89 wins and a division title, but they'll go no farther than the NLDS.


Positives-The team core of Utley/Rollins/Howard/Hamels rivals anybody's. The bullpen, if unlikely to repeat last year's historic record, will still be strong. Overall this is a strong defensive team, especially up the middle, with Utley and Rollins at second and short, and Victorino in center. The rotation, assuming Hamels really is healthy (you can never trust the Phillies' PR stance on player injuries) will be respectable, and there are plenty of innings eaters there, like Blanton and Myers, to reduce the strain on the bullpen.

Negatives-The Phils increased their payroll by about a third this off season without actually getting better-no mean feat. Most of that increase went to tie up key players like Ryan Howard to long-term deals. But the club also signed Raul Ibanez to play left field, while letting Pat Burrell go-an odd set of moves, given that Raul's deal means he will make more per year, in a three year deal, than uber-slugger free agent Adam Dunn got from the Nationals for two years-and Dunn, like Burrell, is far younger than Ibanez. I've already mentioned how thin the bench is. The only real power threat off the pine may well be 41 year old "professional hitter" Matt Stairs. Oh well, let's hope no one gets hurt.


Overall-If Ryan Howard gets off to a reasonably good start, Hamels is and remains healthy, and both Utley and Rolllins remain injury-free (unlike last year), it's not hard to imagine the club reaching the 94 wins Beerleaguer expects. I see 89 as more realistic, but that should be enough to either win the division, or grab the wild card.

Enough politics! More Angie Harmon pics!

The people have spoken.

Obama's skills have now been reduced to looking good on TV

At the G20 summit, Pres. Obama is overwhelmed by a question on who is to blame for the world financial crisis and launches two and a half minutes of sheer incoherence-while never answering the question, or for that matter even being sure where he is. You'd think he would've spent enough time with this issue by now that he could speak intelligently about it.

This is yet more evidence that Pres. Obama can't even do the one thing that supposedly separated him from Bush-the ability to speak in the "complete sentences" that his sycophants were so in love with.

After all, Obama was elected because he seemed to have mastered the medium of television. What other qualifications did he have? He sure as hell didn't get the job knowing squat about global capital markets.

Bizarre attempt by Sarah Palin to resuscitate Ted Stevens

Former Alaska Senator for Life Ted Stevens, as everybody must know by now, has had his corruption convictions dismissed due to a technicality-prosecutorial miscounduct. The old boy certainly cannot now be labeled innocent, and he still bears the stench of the kind of pork/influence laden politics that the GOP should run as far and as fast as it can from, if it wants to return to power in our lifetimes.

Yet Gov. Sarah Palin is foolishly calling for a special election for Stevens' old seat:

"Gov. Sarah Palin and the head of the Alaska Republican Party said Thursday that Sen. Mark Begich should give his Senate seat up to a special election now that prosecutors have abandoned their case against Ted Stevens."

Sarah's really showing poor political judgment here. This isn't a close call. Endorsing the revival of Stevens' brand of politics knocks a leg off her political resume, in that she's supposed to be a reformer who's willing to take on her own party, as the cliche' goes.

AK's other Senator, Lisa Murkowski, wisely seems dubious about the idea.

"Hopey-Hopey-Changey-Changey"

No comment necessary.

(Then why say, "No comment?"-ed.)

This blog is just too big to fail

That's what I keep saying about this blog, yet no one will send me money.

I'm hoping to catch a tired Tim Geithner pulling an all-nighter at the essentially unstaffed Treasury, and have him electronically transfer me a few million.

Amateur hour in Washington

"Biden credits stimulus for fire station funded under Bush."

Typical fact-free pontificating by this Administration. Too bad that the all too common verbal gaffe isn't the only foul-up they're prone to.

But, no, we still have the issue of nobody being able to pay his or her taxes on time-the latest being HHS nominee Kathleen Sibelius.


We're in the midst of a massive financial meltdown, caused by excessive debt-so we're ramping Federal debt up to historic levels.

And we're in the midst of that massive financial meltdown, so now's just the right time to go for a hugely expensive "fix" of something that doesn't need fixing, namely global warming.

Now's is also just the right time for the Feds to take over health care. Never mind that we're doing nothing about Social Security or Medicare, far more glaring long-run issues.

Is Obama doing anything right? Well, so far he hasn't appeared on national TV in a dirty T-shirt, drinking a Bud and watching NASCAR. That's about it.

Barack Obama-infanticide advocate, Notre Dame honoree

It's important to remember (or learn) that, not just is Obama a fierce and unrelenting advocate of abortion-on demand and funded by taxpayers-but that as an Illinois Senator he bitterly opposed legislation that would protect those babies who survive abortion. Notre Dame, as a still (at least nominally) Catholic University, has no business inviting this man to receive an honorary doctorate.

Herb Denenberg in the Philadelphia Bulletin on Obama's advocacy of infanticide:

"Let’s get one thing straight. President Obama’s record shows he is not only a supporter of abortion and an opponent of any and all restrictions on it, but also is an aggressive supporter of infanticide. This issue exploded again after Notre Dame University, the leading Catholic university in the U.S., invited him to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. This led to a major national protest over what is now called the scandal at Notre Dame...

"But the objections to the Obama invitation may be focusing on the wrong place. They have noted his position on abortion, on [embryonic] stem cell research, on government financing of abortion and a few other matters. But they are missing the most telling reason to reject President Obama’s presence — his enthusiastic support for infanticide.

"His pro-infanticide record is clear, but was by and large buried by the mainstream media...

"Mr. Obama’s record suggests he thinks the key human right — ahead of freedom of speech, religion and the rest from the Bill of Rights — is the right to abortion. He was a reliable vote for abortion in any form including the barbaric partial-birth abortion and infanticide; and he was a reliable vote against any proposed restriction on abortion. He promised Planned Parenthood the first act he would sign would be the Freedom of Choice Act, which would sweep away all restrictions, however reasonable, on abortion, such as parental consent...

"Just to set the record straight, I’ll outline his record on abortion and infanticide. The infanticide history starts when a nurse, Jill Stanek, went public when she discovered that at her hospital babies born alive after a botched abortion were sent to a soiled utility room to be left to die. She so testified before an Illinois Senate committee, which then-state Sen. Barack Obama was a member of. Her testimony set off public outrage in Illinois. As a consequence of the nurse’s testimony, the Attorney General of Illinois found there was then no law in Illinois making such passive executions of such babies criminal. So in February 2001, Sen. Patrick O’Malley introduced “Born Live” bills to protect babies born during these botched abortions. The bill is reprinted in Mr. Freddoso’s book at page 195, and it clearly provides that such infants born after a botched abortion would be treated as a human person and given medical care. The bill made it clear it does not apply to the unborn, and would in no way limit or control abortions, and in no way was in conflict with Roe v. Wade.

"There was only one Illinois senator speaking against the bill — Sen. Barack Obama. He made the phony argument that the 'Born Alive' Bill would make all abortions illegal, which it clearly did not do. He then voted 'present,' meaning it was not a yes or no vote. This strategy was worked out with lobbyists for Planned Parenthood, and joined by 12 other senators. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House.

"The same bill came before Obama’s health committee two years later in 2003. Mr. Freddoso [author of 'The Case Against Barack Obama' ] reports, 'As chairman, he [Obama] bottled it up in committee and killed it...'

"Andrew McCarthy, in a National Review online article (Aug. 22, 2008) titled “Why Obama Really Voted for Infanticide,” traces the entire history of Mr. Obama’s lies and excuses for supporting infanticide. Mr. McCarthy writes, “The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion he opposed it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion it was unnecessary because law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?)

"Mr. McCarthy also dug into the transcript of the Illinois Senate debate on the “Born Alive” Bill. Mr. McCarthy writes, 'When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.' In the transcript it is clear Mr. Obama is more concerned about the legal liability of abortion doctors than making sure born-alive infants got medical care..."

UPDATE: Is Obama deliberating cultivating "pro-choice" Catholics to undermine Catholic teaching and enhance his political position? George Neumayr thinks so:

"The Catholic Church in America has bred her own destroyers, graduating from doctrinally corrupt catechetical programs, schools and colleges two generations of pro-abortion politicians. Barack Obama, in his effortless Alinskyite style, has exploited this phenomenon to the hilt, seeking out Catholics such as Joe Biden and Kathleen Sebelius to serve as his agents of destruction..."

Neumayr link via Irish Elk.