I'm genuinely surprised. Given the previous oratorical heights to which our Vulcan Pericles had soared, I really expected more. Oh well:

Text of Obama's Address has a readability score for an average 8th grader - two grades lower than George W. Bush's Addresses and the historical average for modern presidents... A Smart Politics analysis of nearly 70 oral State of the Union Addresses since the mid-1930s finds the text of Obama's speech on Wednesday evening to have one of the lowest scores on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test ever recorded by a U.S. President. The Flesch-Kincaid test is designed to assess the readability level of written text, with a formula that translates the score to a U.S. grade level...

Obama's Flesch-Kincaid grade level score of 8.8 for his first State of the Union Address was the fourth lowest score since FDR's first Address in 1934... As such, the speech by 'the professor' stands in contrast to his predecessor, 'the cowboy,' George W. Bush... Bush averaged a Flesch-Kincaid score of 10.4 across his seven State of the Union Addresses - or nearly two full grades higher than Obama's speech. Bush's speeches also averaged 2.4 more words per sentence than Obama, at 19.0.

All drafts of all Presidential speeches are timestamped and archived. So some day we'll know whether the phrase "Americans are morons, use smaller words" was an actual margin note or whether it remained implicit. Even the critics who specifically question Obama's literary stylings - critics whose controversial theories are not exactly undermined by the mind-numbing shallowness of the SOTU - don't think that he reads at a junior high level. He just believes we do.

You'll be glad to know that CBS News concluded that "Obama's speech leveraged his strengths," which apparently include "his personal charm and integrity" but not a willingness to speak to Americans like adults. At least Ambinder waited until after the speech to announce that it had been awesome. USA Today knew even beforehand that the simplistic, mawkish crapfest would be rhetorical gold:

It's somewhere over 40 - MS Word is telling me 41, Charlie Foxtrot has it at 45 - but honestly I lost count in that section where he dropped "I" 15 times in less than 3 paragraphs. My eyes just kind of glazed over:

But there was too much "I" in the speech. George H.W. Bush famously took the word "I" out of his speeches... because of a horror of appearing to be calling attention to himself. Mr. Obama is plagued with no such fears. "When I took office... I approved a long-standing request... After consultations with our allies I then.. I set a goal." That's all from one paragraph. Further down he used the word "I" in three paragraphs an impressive 15 times. "I believe I know" "I have signed" "I have read" "I have visited."... About two-thirds of the way through, the speech degenerated into the faux eloquence that makes people listening across our nation want to gouge out their eyes and run screaming from the room. Lots of our children and our children's children, the dark clouds of tyranny, the light of freedom. Our strength comes from "the entrepreneurs and researchers who will pioneer new industries; from the teachers that will educate our children, and the service of those who work in our communities at home..."

You really have to wonder where The One got his reputation for peerless eloquence. It shouldn't have been the race speech, which objectively sucked. It wasn't the Berlin speech, since not even a sycophant could be inspired by the hackneyed infrastructure motif. It's not the Inaugural, which was so filled with treacly pompousness that the left resorted to insisting he spoke poorly on purpose.

And as an empirical matter it wasn't anything afterward. By March even deep blue outlets were admitting that "pundits are questioning Obama's ability to communicate."

This goes beyond the myriad teleprompter issues and the chronic inability to speak casually without resorting to grating cliches. It really is this juxtaposition between limitless self-declared grandiosity and increasingly obvious shallowness. In his Sermon To The Children that jarring contrast was forced - the President of the United States promising to roof schoolhouses and manage textbook inventories.

But by now the ethos of empty blustering has become all but pervasive. After so many Historical Speeches and Responsibility Summits, his ritualistic evocation of sweeping visuals and overwrought metaphors end up sounding - TNR's language, not mine - like so much gasbaggery. And when he's not preaching about his own splendor he's overcompensating for the growing impression that he's a beta male. The effect might merely be a consistent and comical - and comical because it's consistent - throwback to Bush. Except it's also disingenuous and unpersuasive:

I have come to the conclusion that the real reason this gifted communicator has become so bad at communicating is that he doesn't really believe a word that he is saying. He couldn't convey that health-care reform would be somehow cost-free because he knows it won't be. And he can't adequately convey either the imperatives or the military strategy of the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't really believe in it either... Obama all but held his nose as he delivered those words -- "bring this war to a successful conclusion" -- and never once mentioned the word "win"... I felt I was being told some Nordic myth from ancient times: Four score years ago and ten, fiery planes set out for the prosperous, peace-loving climes of the United States of America! And then, there was war. There was much war, and it was covered in a great fog, and it lasted unto eternity.

In fairness, I actually think that worshipful hosannas to Obama's rhetorical majesty have more to do with a widespread inability to distinguish genuine eloquence from turgid crap. But let's not totally abandon "his cultists swoon in ecstacy to his Holy Writ as delivered from On High." We've still got to account for Chris Matthews.

References and related after the jump...

First of all - and I know this is ticky-tacky but the left's ubiquotous pseudo-sophisticated name checking gets obnoxious - Julius Caesar was not a particularly great writer. Even if that wasn't true, Marcus Aurelius was in every way a better scribe and at least equally as powerful. And as a purely historical matter, though it's distasteful to admit, Lenin and Mao also need to be included as writer-leaders who controlled huge swaths of territory. All of them obviously lived after Caesar.

This is why we have separate sandboxes for academics. People who study things like history - where precision is still at least gestured toward - play in one sandbox. Then we put theater and music experts like Landesman in a different sandbox, where there are no sharp facts for them to swallow or cut themselves with. There they can spin metaphorical tapestries of fancy and pass them off as profundity, and we pat their heads and assure them that they're bright and shiny.

The pursuit of the arts, of course, is irreplaceable in and indispensable to a well-cultivated society. But its practitioners should avoid political activism, lest they end up sounding like moronic protofascist bootlickers. And just to be clear, it's the "moronic" part that's particularly grating:

Three days after Landesman was confirmed as the head of the NEA, his communications director, Yosi Sergant, told NEA grantees in a conference call: "I would encourage you to pick something, whether it's health care, education, the environment -- you know, there's four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service." Two days later, a host of arts organizations endorsed Obama's health-care plan... of the 21 groups signing the statement, 16 had recently received grants from the NEA or were affiliated with organizations that had...

Landesman debased himself with incandescently vulgar obsequiousness to his supreme leader. "There is a new president and a new NEA," he proclaimed. "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists."

Not for nothing, but the last time I got an email about the Cashill hypothesis it was from a far left academic. He found it highly unlikely that Obama metamorphosed from his crappy pre-Dreams self into the transcendent political author of our time. I'm not totally sold on that theory yet, though I agree that bad writers don't become a good writers without years of practice that Obama never had. But as a simple matter of public argument, invoking the President's literary brilliance might be two-sided.

The weird thing about the NEA dustup is how unnecessary it was. Was the White House worried that artists weren't consistently producing agitprop for the Messiah In Chief? Because they were and are:

What is unofficial Obama art? That's what I wondered when I heard there will be a display of such art in Chicago at the Chicago Tourism Center. Basically, it's art by any artist who was inspired by Obama's run for president to create a video, a painting, a poster or whatever to commemorate the occasion. This is not just any art, but good art. People whose work is represented in the exhibit sent it in for consideration. The result is more than 100 artworks. Some of the pieces may seem familiar like the Go Tell Mama series of posters or Sol Sender's Obama '08 logo--the one that ended up on yard signs and bumper stickers.

Website and exhibit:

Per the blurb on the official group page, each week the members of the Watchers' Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Not so per that blurb, I am perennially, hopelessly behind on posting Council submissions. Here's last week's full roundup, and I'll post the winners tomorrow. That should allow me to beat this week's submissions by at least a few hours. As always you should go to the full nomination page to get the non-council submissions, some of which are strikingly good.

Joshuapundit has a breakdown of just how stupid you'd have to be to believe that the Geneva talks with Iran are anything but a foot dragging exercise for Iran. Following the Colossus Of Rhodey, though, the answer apparently is exactly as stupid as a journalist. It seems that some of our sophisticated betters have taken to unblinkingly asking "if Israel can have nukes why can't Iran?"

The Colossus Of Rhodey has a pushback of course, but I kind of think it's a pearls before willfully myopic treif kind of situation. When people are making arguments that Israelis should prefer being credibly demonized to being wildly demonized - see my post on Goldstone's daughter - I don't think what they're doing is arguing as much as emoting. The Glittering Eye's staged back and forth on global warming is also to the point here, although Soccer Dad's unpacking of Israel coverage implies that there's a lot more than just stupidity underneath the media's errors.

Some day when people talk when The One's celebrity jumped the shark, the Nobel announcement should figure prominently. But before that happened there was that risible CNN fact check of the SNL skit that caused so many eyerolls. Turns out that spectacle wasn't limited to CNN. Bookworm Room caught it as a media-wide phenomenon. The Liberal Moment distilled to its pathetic Great Leader essence: silly debates and revelatory overreactions about whether Hope and Change is merely great or the greatest. That and, per The Provocateur, corruption big and small.

When we finally get through this Moment, by the by, Rhymes With Right has a reminder that we'll have to deal with the left's disenfranchisment of our troops. See Right Truth on what they and our intelligence services have been doing on counter terrorism.

Finally, freedom of speech in an age of Muslim sensitivity: The Razor's take on Kurt Westergaard's appearance at Yale is not a particularly flattering account of our hallowed academic halls. Westergaard isn't the only old school small-l liberal who's recently come in for ugly harassment on the Yale campus, incidentally. If someone lives in New Haven and wants to collect a couple fliers for me, please hit me up by email. There's a black and white faucet logo I'd like to talk to you about.

References and previously after the jump...

Over at the NYT Politics blog it's very important that you know "Obama to Name Openly Gay Ambassador." This is presumably because The President needs to "make progress" on gay rights and now he is making progress so that's pretty wonderful isn't it? The foot dragging probably has a lot of reasons, not least among them the "civil war" threats coming from anti-gay marriage African American Dems whose minority status places them awkwardly in unimpeachable Absolute Moral Authority territory.

The strange thing is I don't remember this kind of MSM framing when Bush appointed Michael Guest Ambassador to Romania, making Guest the first openly gay Ambassador ever confirmed by the Senate. And it's particularly weird because in contrast to Obama's appointment - which may objectively set back gay rights by relieving leftist pressure on him to do something bigger - Bush's appointment of Guest demonstrably advanced the cause of civil liberties. It did so internationally by helping shame Romania into repealing anti-gay laws. And it did so domestically by starting a heated debate on the right, which is where that debate will have to happen if gay rights are ever going to go mainstream:

During his speech at Guest's swearing-in ceremony in the State Department Diplomatic Reception Room, Powell explicitly noted the presence of and positively recognized Guest's life partner, Alex Nevarez. LGBT rights groups viewed Guest's appointment, and Powell's remarks, as historic and indicative of greater recognition of gay State Department employees and same-sex partners. Socially conservative groups expressed opposition to Guest's appointment and to Powell's gesture.

Three weeks after Guest took up residence, the NYT ran a story headlined "Bucharest Journal: It's Still No Breeze for Gays, Even Diplomatic Ones." So don't even think about giving Bush any credit. I wonder if the NYT will be running similar stories about Obama's appointee? I'm thinking almost certainly, because they're so assiduous.

In unrelated news, the Obama White House is launching a major effort to stymie the anti-White House leanings of the press. Because that's obviously what's holding him back.

References and previously after the jump...

Fresh off the wires, courtesy of the Associated Press. For our younger readers who may be unfamiliar with the AP, it used to be a news organization:

Barack Obama has more than one way of bringing people together: Just ask Cass and Samantha. Or Anita and Bob. Or Tommy and Katie. It turns out there are power couples all over the White House, united both in marriage and by policy. The aide charged with managing all government regulations and a top national security official just had their first child together. The White House's top communications official is married to the Obamas' personal attorney. And the president's recent trip to France provided the perfect backdrop for a marriage proposal in the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France.

Tommy Vietor, a 28-year-old assistant White House press secretary, surprised Michelle Obama's chief spokeswoman inside the ornate mansion while the Obamas were visiting Europe to mark the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Vietor wasn't part of the official trip, but flew overnight to make the unannounced visit. "I was shaking -- he completely surprised me," 30-year-old Katie McCormick Lelyveld said. "I couldn't have picked a more perfect way for this to happen." When told of the proposal, Obama said Vietor had pulled off a "smooth move."

Hahaha. A "smooth move." Oh that Obama, he's such a cutup.

"Barack Obama has more than one way of bringing people together." For fuck's sake. Who writes that? (Answer: presumably the people who describe Obama's $24,000 NYC dates as "fascinating and inspiring"). And to think, some people suspect the media is infatuated with The One.

References:
* CAPITAL CULTURE: Obamas not only White House pair [AP]
* Hard-hitting LA Times piece: Obama date night a "fascination and inspiration" [Hot Air]
* The Obama Infatuation [WaPo]

Previously:
* Politico: Obama "Takes Tough Stance On Iran" By Urging Engagement
* WaPo: Obama Staffers The Bestest And Diligentest Staffers Ever. Especially That Gibbs Guy. He's Super.
* New Pew Study: No, Of Course There Was No Cairo Speech "Obama Effect" In Lebanon Or Iran

At a time when print media is in crisis and young reporters are either J-School pedants or Obama worshipers or both, it's nice to see someone still adhering to gritty, in the trenches journalistic conventions. Last week, in the pages of the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley mocked source greasing thusly:

As a literary form, the source greaser is bound by strict conventions. The subject always puts in heroically long hours. He or she is uniquely influential and close to the president... On most days, the source-greasing chief rises before sunset, works out for three hours, reads 12 newspapers in five languages while riding his bike to work, and is at his desk by 4 a.m. A typical workday lasts until 9 or 10 in the evening, which means that he often doesn't get to sleep until several hours after he wakes up the next day. He wears three watches, set to different time zones. "You never know when you're going to be ordered off to Beijing," he said, adding sadly, "It hasn't happened yet. But when it does, I'm ready." Colleagues interpret the lack of travel as a sign of his importance. "The Man needs him nearby," said one, who asked not to be identified because "I'm just making this stuff up."

This morning, in the pages of the Washington Post, Michael Shear described the schedule of WH press secretary Robert Gibbs thusly:

"I think the mess hates all of us," said a frequent customer who is a senior adviser to President Obama. In a city where work can border on obsession, the Obama staffers stand out. They are not quite the walking dead, but their eyes are frequently ringed with the bags that accompany exhaustion. "This is a place, because of the stress, the schedule and the sheer hours, that just chews people up and spits them out," said press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose alarm clock is set to 4:30 a.m., though he ignores the early ring more often these days... Even the most hardy of Obama's staff members are beginning to recognize the toll that the pace is taking. "I felt like a heavyweight boxer lying on the mat," Gibbs said last week, describing his mood before leaving with the president for an eight-day trip across 10 time zones. Air Force One landed early yesterday at Andrews Air Force Base, carrying a presidential team that caught just a few hours of sleep each night in Russia, Italy and Ghana. All plan to return to work before sunrise today.

Sorry bloggers, but there are some things you can't learn except by doing your time in a newsroom. And just to be clear, this isn't any more unethical than anything journalists have done during previous administrations. It definitely has a hint of extra Obama-inspired puppy-love, but it's not spin a whole column out of Obama's fly move obnoxious.

References:
* The Indispensable Greaser [Kinsley / WaPo]
* In West Wing: Grueling Schedules, Bleary Eyes [Shear / WaPo]
* Obama's Fly Move [Dowd / NYT]

Previously:
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin)
* Figures: Obama's List Of Pre-Screened Questioners Emerges One Day After Media Celebrations Of How Obama Doesn't Pre-Screen Questioners (Plus: It's Possible That The MSM Is Making Up Excuses For Their Obama Worship)
* Video: CNN's Aww Shucks "Top 10 Obama Faux Pas" Roundup Misses A Few Things

What the hell?

Obama takes tough stance on Iran at G-8 summit President Barack Obama arrived here Wednesday to see if he can leverage some of his global popularity to convince other world leaders attending the G-8 summit to take a tough stand against Iran's nuclear program, and to side with U.S. prescriptions to help dig the international economy out of its downturn. "It's very important for the world community to speak to countries like Iran and North Korea and encourage them to take a path that does not result in a nuclear arms race in places like the Middle East," Obama said after a meeting in Rome with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. "There are other means by which countries can ensure their sovereignty and gain respect around the world."

Back in this reality, Obama took the opposite of a tough stance by reversing a whispered European consensus on imposing new sanctions. He did that because it's liberal dogma that new sanctions will undermine engagement - which, given Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for debate, also lacks something in the way of toughness.

The One also went out of his way to slap down any suggestion that the US would endorse Israeli self-defense in the context of Iranian nuclearization. Even more toughness!

Almost difficult to believe that the American public has a poor sense for Central Asian geopolitical dynamics.

References:
* Obama takes tough stance on Iran at G-8 summit [Politico]
* Great News: Obama And House Dems Blocking National, International Sanctions On Iran [MR]
* Iran's Ahmadinejad renews call for live debate with Obama [Xinhua]
* Obama: No green light for Israel to attack Iran [CNN]

Previously:
* Israeli Military Intel: Iran "Halfway" Toward Nuclear Weapon (Plus: Syria, Hezbollah, And Hamas All The Way Toward Every Other Kind Of Weapon)
* George Galloway: Iranian Vote Count Is Totally Legit
* Israeli Military Intel: Iran "Halfway" Toward Nuclear Weapon (Plus: Syria, Hezbollah, And Hamas All The Way Toward Every Other Kind Of Weapon)

This is good. Because previously trying to block Obama's l'etat c'est moi approach to policy making was merely implicit treason to the country. Now opposition to historically unprecedented leftist wealth confiscation is explicit treason to the entire planet:

Writing in the New York Times, Paul Krugman has a Vyshinsky moment: "So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason - treason against the planet.

You'll recall Paul Krugman as the genius who railed against Greenspan for not creating a housing bubble in 2002. Nice to see him supplementing his economic acuity with a little proto-fascist "enemy of the people" histrionics.

In case you haven't been keeping track: it's now official that opposing the left is treason to the country and treason to the planet. It's unclear whether the converse is true. It's definitely the case that siding with Obama is the height of patriotism, on account of how he's the "first true American" to lead our country. But whether supporting The One puts you on the side of Gaia as such - still an open question.

References and previously after the jump...

From Bloomberg, a less vitriolic but equally stupid version of Sullivan's increasingly deranged insistence that "neocons" are the only ones pressuring "Obama to say what the regime now falsely accuses him of saying." Which begs the question that I asked on Twitter: which of the 256 House Democrats do you think he means?

Republicans are demanding that Obama condemn more forcefully the Iranian government's crackdown on opposition protesters even as the administration and independent analysts warn that doing so risks making the U.S. a foil for Iran's rulers. "If we appear to be cheerleading for some sort of opposition movement on the streets, it intensifies the opposition of the hardliners," said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday for a resolution condemning violence directed at supporters of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi.

While it's true that the House vote was "overwhelming," a more pointed and accurate description would have been that it was "nearly unanimous, with every Democrat voting in favor and only neo-isolationist crank voting no." Although that would've gotten in the way of the article's "Republicans are bullheaded warmongers" frame, so I can see why the less descriptive but still true "overwhelming" was chosen.

For what it's worth, this is a complicated debate and it is difficult for the White House to strike a balance. On one hand the protesters are desperately seeking outside affirmation for their cause. On the other hand there's still a good deal of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment in Iran - so much so that a post-Khamenei regime might be functionally identical to the current one.

But hey, they found a foreign policy specialist who's spent the last half-decade saying we should engage Iranian hardliners. And now she insists that under no circumstances should we "engage" the protesters. So that's that.

References:
* Iran's Turmoil Creates Dilemma for Obama at Home and Overseas [Bloomberg]
* NeoCon Derangement Syndrome On Steroids [Hot Air]
* CNN producer: Iranian students say they're doomed if Obama accepts the election [Hot Air]
* Ya'alon: Iran heading for a revolution [JPost]

Previously:
* George Galloway: Iranian Vote Count Is Totally Legit
* Iran Kicks Around Britain For A While
* United Nations: Iran's Murder Of Peaceful Protesters Raises "Troubling Questions"

Two questions about the AP's laughingly pathetic "Bin Ladin's Criticism of Obama a Sign He Is Worried" headline:

(1) Is the headline more or less obnoxious than their previous "Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisiveness" headline?

(2) Is the headline more or less embarrassing by virtue of how it's apparently a shameless transcription of months-old State Department boilerplate:

"We have heard it. I think that is just another propaganda effort", said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack on Wednesday... McCormack said Wednesday that Bin Laden's criticism of Muslim clerics, Israel, the United States, and president-elect Barrack Obama in his latest message reflects his "isolation" caused by the U.S.-led efforts to capture him.

Since this was a day before president-elect Obama became President Obama, maybe "Bin Laden is panicking" has always been State's official position. But that begs the question of why CNN's 2004 subheading "Bin Laden criticizes Bush" was followed by three paragraphs about My Pet Goat and a fourth paragraph on Bin Laden's "gold robe with a white headdress and white cloak."

It also doesn't answer why the Boston Globe choose to surround their "bin Laden criticizes Bush" section with statements like "reading calmly into the camera, looking older but relatively healthy, Bin Laden..." Or why the CBS had this extensive anti-Bush propaganda a few paragraphs above a description of how Kerry is committed to actually getting the terrorists:

The tape, released just a few days before the U.S. presidential election, showed bin Laden comparing the Bush administration to "corrupt" Arab governments... "We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden added. Bin Laden criticized Bush sharply, saying that the president is "still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened" on Sept. 11, 2001.

Incidentally, Google's new news timeline makes it easy to search for very specific phrases within very specific media. It's one thing to merely remember that the MSM spent half a decade trying kneecaping Bush. It's quite another to find them using the exact same phrases they were using in 2004, except now as homages to The One.

References and previously after the jump...

A perennial debate for conservative media critics: does the left enforce its increasingly tenuous hold over the airwaves by framing stories in a worshipful pro-Obama way or by using their gate-keeping privileges to ignore inconvenient stories? There's plenty of evidence for both theories. And every time you think it's leaning one way - say, the media's embarrassing slobbering over Obama's 100 days...

Obama worship, complete with halo images, has been noted before here on NewsBusters but it was nothing compared to current expressions in awe of The One as we approach his hundreth day in office on Wednesday. Matching the theme of "The Truth" painting is Joe Klein singing 100 day mark praises (while excoriating the "satanic" George W. Bush) of his beloved Barack... Chris Matthews, should audition to sing I Don't Know Why Why I Love Him to the tune of I Don't Know How To Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar to serenade "The Truth" painting when it is unveiled at Union Square on Wednesday.

... something like this comes out and tilts the debate the other way. Here's what CNN thinks were Obama's "Top Ten Faux Pas" during the first 100 days. The list is, on the whole, aggressively stupid:

Nothing about the tragicomic Gordon Brown DVD fiasco or on getting the Queen an iPod, both of which kept getting better and better as the DVDs turned out to be the wrong format and the iPod gift was megalomanical even by this President's standards.

Nothing about insisting to Austrians that they speak a language that exists only in Obama's mind. Nothing about visibly demonstrating to Iraqi troops that he has no idea what the different units in Iraq are. They might even have included the Freeman nomination and the Durban II trainwreck, though I can see how those were less "amateur hour gaffes" and more "shots across the neoconservative bow."

The press conference began with an appearance by The One, who unironically expressed confidence in "the team that we've got assembled" despite not actually having a working economic team or more than one confirmed Treasury official. Then there was this chummy moment:

Q: Do you think a person outside this room, outside the Beltway, looking at that would feel like that's a -- you know, you've gotten a good deal by getting someone to kick in $6 for a loan that is valued at a $100, that's being purchased for $84.

SECRETARY GEITHNER: I'm very confident you and your colleagues will do a good job of framing this thing -- (laughter) -- but let me just come back to the basic point. Okay? The point is, relative to what? What our job is, is to try to fix this problem in our financial system at least cost to the taxpayer and ways to get the incentives right so we can have private capital come in and not have the government do all of it.

Yeah, I'm not sure he meant that. Geithner coverage has been so brutal lately that Obama had to compare AIG execs to suicide bombers just move the topic away from his incompetence. Which was still an upgrade from the end of January, when it was Joe Biden covering for Geithner. How embarrassing must that have been?

But isn't it nice we've reached this point? The press is now openly choosing between reverting to their early "greatest transition team ever" hagiography or whipping up more pitchfork outrage. If only someone could have predicted that Obama's campaign of personality-centered utopianism would create impossible expectations, leaving his media disciples locked between unblinking worship or populist scapegoating. That would have been so helpful.

That CNN story about staffing, by the way, has this encouraging tidbit:

We've gone from "Obama's the most rhetorically brilliant President since Lincoln" to "his speeches are actually kind of mediocre but that just proves how brilliant he is" to this unblinking self-caricature of Obama hagiography:

You'd think with all the practice they get speaking in public that politicians would know better than to say what they're thinking when they're thinking it. And when they do, and comments about the Special Olympics come out, it can make you shake your head and think, "Really?" But in a way, it's heartening to hear our politicians stumble over words, mangle syntax and make inappropriate jokes. It shows politicians are human, too. Sometimes.

You know the stereotype about religious worshipers? How they'll take anything that happens - good or ill - and find a way to spin it as God's will? This is kind of like that. Except instead of being a believer enmeshed within thousand year old institutions that are navigating intractable metaphysical tensions, these morons just really obnoxious.

While we're on the subject of the President's oratory: can someone please tear his advisers away from their West Wing reruns and their Hillary Clinton cutouts and tell them that the US didn't invent the automobile or the solar panel? Please thank you.

References:
* Figures: Obama's List Of Pre-Screened Questioners Emerges One Day After Media Celebrations Of How Obama Doesn't Pre-Screen Questioners (Plus: It's Possible That The MSM Is Making Up Excuses For Their Obama Worship) [MR]
* A gaffe a minute [Lili Ladaga]
* Facebook: Obama Speechwriter Parties With Clinton Cutout [Huff Po]
* Fact-checking Obama [FP Passport]
* America invented everything [Ambinder]

Previously:
* Liberals Slowly Realizing That Obama Was Serious About His Disastrous Economic Proposals
* Confirmed: Obama More Eager To Take On The GOP Than Iran
* Black Press Of America: Obama "Lifts America's Spirit In Speech Of Hope," Economy Is Bush's Fault [MR]

Not a parody:

Obama Lifts America's Spirit In Speech Of Hope As He Releases Budget Details. In his first speech before Congress, filled with the soaring inspiration reminiscent of his campaign, President Barack Obama last week promised the nation, "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before." Surrounded by cheering and applauding Democrats and less optimistic Republicans, he said, "The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation... Millions were glued to their television sets for the Feb. 24 speech, looking for a word of hope as Obama prepared to unveil his first budget... The President was realistic... Part of the exuberance among Democratic members of the House and Senate, was no doubt their recollection that it was the eight-year Republican Administration of President George Bush that has led to the crisis.

This gem is from the National Newspaper Publishers Association, aka the Black Press of America, "a 67-year-old federation of more than 200 Black community newspapers from across the United States." At least there's no sign that vapid identity politics has transformed America's once vaunted ethnic press into a parody of college pamphleteering.

I was kind of disappointed that this ode had no mention of how Obama's giving away houses. Or of how Michelle has nice guns and is the coolest First Lady ever. Or of how The One is more heroic than Jesus. Which sucks because how am I supposed to properly worship Him on account of mere "soaring inspiration?"

References and previously after the jump...

Via Freedom's Lighthouse this is a genuinely deep and subtle point. After all - they've both got "large numbers of people gathering at a preordained time in a specific city to express a common set of beliefs and to celebrate a period of renewal." Since Inauguration Day and the Hajj are the only two things on the planet that can be described that way, the analogy and subsequent Teaching Moment is inescapable:

Although viewed a little differently, they're not wrong are they:

Tools (h/t: MR reader Doris)

References:
* CNN Report Actually Compares Upcoming Inauguration to Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca - Video 1/16/09 [Freedoms Lighthouse]
* Video: Obama cultists pay tribute to creepy Shepard Fairey hagiography [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Onion Tries, Fails To Capture Full Absurdity Of Post-Election Obama Cultists (Plus: They're "Sitting At Phone" Asking "What Do You Want Me To Do Next"?)
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin)
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent

Here's an article about an Indian politician who says that there's "a sinister ploy to link terrorism with Islam." And here's a post from Gateway Pundit demonstrating that 100% of the world's top international terrorists are Muslim.

Now you might be thinking "well then I guess what that Indian politician said was the height of stupidity." And you'd be wrong. Because these two academic tools just published this in the NYT:

This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong. Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative. Instead, Mr. Obama, the first "post-racial" president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a "post-civilizational" president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.

If we ignore how Osama Bin Laden thinks he's motivated by centuries of Islamic theology on jihad then it'll be just like that's not true. If we ignore how Australian terrorists believe that terrorism is holy then it'll be just like that's not true. If we ignore how Iranian clerics tell Hajj pilgrims to launch global Islamic holy wars then... and so on.

Between the two of them Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse teach hundreds of undergrads and publish dozens of articles every year. Not sayin', just sayin'.

References and previously after the jump...

Of course:

His worshipers are actually trying to make his inauguration day a national holiday. That's not exactly how we do things for Presidents in this country, but you have to make some allowances for these tools since they're only now discovering their "newfound patriotism." Oh well - better this than the alterantive.

References:
* Obameidolia [Bad Astronomy]
* Planning under way for Obama holiday [CJ Online]
* Aww... Liberals Rediscovering Their Patriotism [MR]
* Onion Tries, Fails To Capture Full Absurdity Of Post-Election Obama Cultists (Plus: They're "Sitting At Phone" Asking "What Do You Want Me To Do Next"?) [MR]

Previously:
* Smith College Student: Obama Is My "Personal Jesus" (Plus: Children Now Singing Choral Hymns To Obama)
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin)
* Liberals Unsure Whether Obama Is Jesus Or Just A Very, Very Holy Saint

Lest you get the impression that the US is becoming like Communist Russia with textbooks celebrating Obama's "life of service" to the people, keep in mind that we're also a lot like Saudi Arabia:

A couple of weeks ago, a book came out that detailed many cases of bias in US textbooks, which included such problematic passages as "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus?" (The World, Scott Foresman/Pearson)."A number of other troubling claims are made, although the brief description of the book doesn't give specific examples. I just noticed that the report included a mind-blowing table that compares how Judaism, Christianity and Islam are described. In the examples below, the origins of Judaism and Christianity are consistently described as "claims" and "stories" but the claims of Islam are described factually.

Just to be clear:

American elementary and high school textbooks contain many "gross misrepresentations" of Judaism, Christianity and Israel, according to a book-length study released this week by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research.... Among the "outrageous misrepresentations" the study found was "a denial of the Jewish roots of Jesus," as when the textbook The World relates that "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus." "Textbooks include negative stereotypes of Jews, Judaism and Israel," the authors write. "For example, textbooks tend to discredit the ties between Jews and the land of Israel." According to Tobin, "you're much more likely to learn about Jewish terrorism before the founding of Israel [in the textbooks] than about terrorism against Israel since that time."

Remember that time when the US's first Hebrew charter school had to suspend classes on suspicion of "advocating the Jewish faith?" Doesn't that almost seem like a double standard now? Ah well. At least our students will feel comfortable if they ever have to do a semester abroad in Europe.

References:
* Textbooks About Obama's "Life Of Service" To The People Already Being Used To Indoctrinate Youth [MR]
* US textbooks treat Islam as the true religion [Elder]
* 'US textbooks misrepresent Jews, Israel' [JPost]
* US Hebrew School Lessons Shut Down For Being Too Damn Jewish [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinian Civil Society Watch - Now They're Bombing Gaza Schools Because Of Little League
* US Public Diplomacy, Tact Don't Extend To Israel
* High Court Of Israeli Apartheid State Forces Government To Increase Funding To Arab Schools

Don't be worried because Spike Lee says that Obama's rise was "pre-deortained" (sic)" or because Michelle Obama says that her husband is magical:

"He thinks he can really do anything — he does. With his own power and will, he can fix it," she said, praising Obama for creating "one of the most powerful political organizations" in history, and for the other virtues of his campaign.

Be deeply disturbed that Obama's cultists actually believe it:

All the Christians in America sing praise "His Name":

He will establish "a world without fear":

This is who they are, and this is what they do. They use legal threats to shut down events and kill political messages that they don't like, up to and including threatening jail time. But even given all that, you'd think they'd be a more decent than to persecute student journalists with threats of vague legal retribution:

The student journalists Tiffany Wilson and Shelby Holliday (not professionals) are AGGRESSIVE in pursuing voter fraud in Ohio and have uncovered ACTUAL voter fraud... As a result of their journalism, votes already cast for President have had to be withdrawn. So what is the students’ reward for exposing crime? An intimidating letter from the Senator Obama campaign lawyer to one of the students...

From: Rosenberg, Thomas
Date: Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 2:32 PM
Subject: At least in today’s blog you spelled my last name right
To: tiffany
In other words, I am going to read what you write and watch what you say. Hopefully you will be fair and impartial as you told me you would be.

And then there is this... a blogger on the Daily Kos I am told... investigating the student journalists?

Joe The Plumber's personal family records were accessed by an Obama donor, Barbara West felt the full brunt of Obama's digital brownshirts, whistleblowers faced the threat of federal investigation, and not a few prominent conservatives have faced out and out blackmail.

And then there are times when legal thuggery and digital swarming don't work. For those times, it's probably better to directly firebomb the houses of McCain supporters and attack the people inside GOP campaign offices. What you lose in shadowy intimidation you more than make up for by reminding people that they can be physically harmed. Some property destruction might also be called for: in a nice little tie-in to one of today's other themes, the most recent aspiring Obamabot vandal appears to be a 9-year old boy. I wonder how he got the idea that destroying property is justified if it's in the name of Hope N' Change.

References and previously after the jump...

There are two kinds of cults: cults that brainwash kids and cults that fail. To be totally precise, there's also a third category: cults that brainwash kids but fail anyway. But since that's not going to happen, guess which one of the first two Obama supporters are creating:

Still more cynical political use of children at the official Barack Obama web site: Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Kids HQ Blog. Includes this classic line: "I am eight years old," says Zoe, "and George Bush has been the president my whole life. I want to finally have a president I can be proud of." I’m sure this 8-year old came up with that all by herself.

So in addition to the textbooks about Obama's "life of service" and the illustrated children's books about the "name the whole world knows," they've now turned over a part of Obama's webspace so parents can emote and post pictures of their adorable little Obamabots. Isn't that just so precious?

A few more of these brainwashed little darlings after the jump. I especially like the repeated emphasis on utopian global peace. I think it's important to start dulling kids early to the complexities of geopolitics. That way they don't have to wait till college to learn idiotic slogans that substitute for genuine thought. And if these parents try really hard, they might even reach this exalted level of indescribable creepiness:

Yeah, I dunno. Ed says it's checking out, his boss says it doesn't feel right, and I'm inclined to take it as a too-good-to-check non-confirmation of exactly what you'd expect from a populist utopian paranoid movement. So yeah, I dunno:

A 20-year-old woman who was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield was also maimed by her attacker, apparently because of her political views, police said. According to WTAE's news exchange partners the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, was using an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street in Bloomfield just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the robber took $60 from Todd, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter "B" into her face, Richard said.

I have a passing familiarity with the Pittsburgh College Republicans and, at least during my years there, they are fairly politically astute people. They'd know well enough that a hoax would get uncovered and backfire. But an extended robbery and assault in Bloomfield before 9pm? Doesn't seem right. But seems so wrong that you'd be insane to stage it that way if you were going to fake it. But if you're going to fake it, you're not in your right mind anyway. So yeah - no idea.

References:
* McCain supporter maimed for her politics by robber; Update: Photo; Update: College Republicans on the record [Hot Air]
* Why that McCain volunteer’s “mutilation” story smells awfully weird [Malkin]
* The Paranoid Style in The Left's Anti-Palin Viciousness [MR]
* Woman Attacked At ATM, Assailant Scratches Letter Into Her Face [WTAETV]

Previously:
* Obama Now Actively Channeling Rabid Anti-Israel Academics, Adopting Their Dumbest Anti-Israel Euphemisms
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin)
* Palin Speech Now Online, Liberal Jewish Groups Reach New Heights Of Pro-Obama Denials, Fabrications, And Smears

Back in the heyday of the Church - or as Europe will soon be calling it, alla yirham ayyam zaman - everything from ethics to history was drummed into children via vignettes about the Lives of the Saints. Change!

Obama fever has overtaken San Francisco. Undeterred by the conspiracy theories, hatred, and vitriol spewed by Obama's 20-year "like an uncle to me" pastor, Jeremiah Wright, local liberals are in thrall to their perceived savior. They seem to think that every problem, no matter how trivial, can be solved by Saint Obama... Even children are getting in on the act. Earlier this week, a friend and I emerged from a movie theater only to run into a man walking down the street holding his toddler and instructing the little tyke to "say Obama, say O-B-A-M-A."

That Ann Coulter, she sure was stupid when she described liberalism as a religion with its own catechism and its own saints:

When starting out on a path to "remake the world", it's very important not to forget to indoctrinate the youth. Otherwise all you're doing is getting elected, and what use is that? They don't even build temples for that kind of stuff. Luckily Obama's followers are all over this. From illustrated children's books extolling "the name the whole world knows" to beatific children singing about their Leader Obama to Obama Youth chanting in lockstep - seriously, they're all over this. And - like all good revolutionaries - they're securing their revolutionary ideology by putting it in textbooks and forcing children to learn their version of history:

My 8th grade son is in an advanced English class at a public middle school here in Racine, Wisconsin. I just found out that my son's new (copyright 2008) Wisconsin - McDougal Littell Literature book has 15 pages covering Barack Obama. I was shocked - No John McCain, no Hillary Clinton, no George Bush - Just Barack Obama. I'm wondering how it is that Obama's story gets put into an 8th grade literature book? It would be one thing, if it was just the tidbit about his boyhood days, but 15 pages, and they talk about his "Life of Service"... There is a note in the book that says, For more on Barack Obama, visit the Literature Center at www.ClassZone.com The book is: Wisconsin - 8th grade - McDougal Littell Literature - copyright 2008

The Democrats are always promising Europe-style cradle to grave coverage. I didn't realize they meant Eastern Europe.

References:
* Farrakhan: Obama Is "A Herald Of The Messiah... A Savior" (Plus: Obama's Followers Attacking Conservatives, Fantasizing About Shooting Palin) [MR]
* Obama Children's Book Instructs Youth About The "Name The Whole World Knows" [MR]
* Smith College Student: Obama Is My "Personal Jesus" (Plus: Children Now Singing Choral Hymns To Obama) [MR]
* Video: Obama Youth March In Lockstep, Chant About Inspirational Leader Who Will Guide Them Into Glorious Future [MR]
* Racine schools hand out textbook with 15 page Obama love-fest... [Real Debate Wisconsin]

Previously:
* Guy Who Smeared "Pro-Likud Approach To Israel": "US-Israeli Relationship Transcends Parties"
* Palin Speech Now Online, Liberal Jewish Groups Reach New Heights Of Pro-Obama Denials, Fabrications, And Smears
* New Palin Smear: She Supports Hamas (Plus: Obama's Anti-Israel FP Sensibility, Support From Hamas)

Creepy catch by UNCoRRELATED - presumably published so that children will have something to do in between singing choral hymns and marching to chants about The One. Begging the question: what could possibly be gained by indoctrinating children who will never be old enough to vote for Obama?

Its a children's book, and it tells the inspired story of the "Dear Leader"... Can a giant bronze of Barack on a horse be far behind? I took some picture of a few of the inside panels as well and excerpted some text. "Looking back, its hard to believe how far he has come. The man whose name the whole world knows--BARACK OBAMA. This is a journey that began in many places... "Sometimes it was a lonely journey. WHAT AM I DOING HERE? He often wondered, with the cold Chicago wind in his face slowing him down, pushing him back. But he didn't give up. For somehow his journey had led him to Trinity Church, surrounded by the people from his neighborhood including many he had helped.

That gives you an idea of how long this book has been in the making: Obama's association with Trinity Church had yet to become verboten. Trinity Church, of course, has its books and pamphlets for indoctrinating the flock. Two more pics from inside the book - also shamelessly stolen from UNCoRRELATED - are after the jump.

Real or not - and I sincerely hope that this is some kind of stunt - it's a pitch-perfect illustration of what these beatific darlings will look like in a few years

This is a movement that instinctively reaches for coercive government power to shut down events or kill political messages that they don't like. They're not even in power yet and they're already threatening political opponents with jail time.

For those times when current government power proves insufficient, the Obama campaign boasts about the organized mobs that they activate to "fight the good fight" and prevent critics from speaking out. In the meantime they are quite literally blackmailing political opponents into silence. Across the country, Obama's more enthusiastic partisans have taken to violently intimidating conservatives and destroying their property.

No surprise: Obama's style of dystopian populism always ends like this. Just let me know when this gets creepy.

References and previously behind the jump...

Maybe even creepier: he's going to save America whether we "like it or not." That last bit makes it tough to choose whether this as an example of liberal facsism or of liberalism-as-religion. Although I suppose there's no reason that it can't be both:

In the Smith College student newspaper, a student writes an impassioned op-ed declaring Obama to be her "Personal Jesus."... "Obama had beat out squeaky clean southern boy John Edwards and former first lady and next in the line of political succession Hillary Clinton. I was in shock. And then I came to Jesus/Obama... I've officially been saved, and soon, whether they like it or not, the rest of the country will be too. I will follow him, all the way to the White House, and I'll be standing there in our nation's capital in January 2009, when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America. In the name of Obama, Amen.

Geraghty thinks it might be a parody. I dunno. Obama supporters have already started using his middle name as a saint's name. Which doesn't even register as a blip on the creepyasfuckometer when compared to this:

Check out the creepy coordinated hand motions starting in at around 40 seconds. Wow.

References:
* Liberal Facsism by Jonah Goldberg [Amazon]
* Godless by Ann Coulter [Amazon]
* 'I've officially been saved, and soon, whether they like it or not, the rest of the country will be too.' [NRO Campaign Spot]
* Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own [NYT]
* Sing For Obama [YouTube]

Previously:
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense
* New Coulter Column: "If Obama Wanted A Historically Delusional Vice President, Why Not Lyndon LaRouche?"