Barack Obama was the architect and producer of this health care summit/theater/reality show. This was definitive Barack Obama theater, but arrogance exposed two major flaws in the production, which in turn exposed Obama’s noxious deficiencies as he took center stage without teleprompters and with script.

Revelations about Obama from the health care theater:

After producing a substantial record of accomplishing nothing of substance or rectitude in his first year, Obama demonstrated his penchant for public discussion of issues rather than actually making a genuine effort to fix them. His entire professional track record has revolved around discussing rather than doing; he continues unabated. Obama was elected as president of these United States, a leader, not as the meretricious philosopher laureate of America.

Obama grossly overestimated his performance at the Republican retreat in Baltimore in January when he challenged Republicans to an open debate. To his credit, he did have a solid performance. The cameras were focused on him the majority of the time, which was unfair to the Republicans, but should not take away from his performance. But when a grandiose ego trumps diminutive commonsense, as was proven at this health care theater, Obama is not a master, but rather a slave, to unrehearsed debate about policy or topics of substance. Conventional wisdom dictates that Obama should never be more than a few feet from his teleprompters, unscripted, and should never bandy rhetoric with an opponent that is prepared, able, and argues from the vantage of reality.

Obama’s character flaws manifest when he is challenged intellectually and on substantive issues, sans script and teleprompters. He is not mesmerizing or dominant, but will display the temperament of frustrated l’enfant, with an arrogant and combative demeanor. When confronted on the facts while moderating the show, Obama addressed his challengers with condescension and insolence, all the while allowing the Democrats more than double the minutes of the Republicans by not counting his own pretentious monopolizing of the minutes. For a man who has ascended to president of these United States, it is astounding that he has never developed tolerance for differing opinions.

Obama demonstrates an overwhelming fetish for displaying his exhaustive constitutional illiteracy. There are three separate branches of our government. Obama, having a law degree from Harvard, has probably never been exposed to the influences of the Founding Fathers of this country, as case law trumps constitutional law within those hallowed confines. To thoroughly understand the Constitution, knowing what influenced the Founding Fathers is compulsory. The spirit of our Constitution lies in the separation of powers, which can be directly attributed to French philosopher Montesquieu and his book The Spirit of the Laws. Trias politica, the separation of powers, is the foundation of keeping the federal government’s powers in check. It is impossible to reconcile Obama having a health care legislation writing party in the White House with various union representatives, presenting his own health care legislation, then conducting this circus with legislators, without being in direct violation of the Constitution.

Obama’s penchant for prevarication is becoming legendary. The spectacle lasted 7 1/2 hours. Obama stated regarding the meeting, “We’ll go section by section. America can’t solve our economic problems unless we tackle some of these structural problems.” The math: 2700 pages, at least one hour of complete and honest argument per labyrinthine page equals 112 days of debate. For a bill that equals 1/3 of the entire United States economy, an average of 10 seconds per page was invested. At 2700 pages, this bill is not about health care, Obama knows it, the Democrats know it, the Republicans know it, and the majority of the American people know it.

This meeting was never about bipartisanship. The summit was held on Thursday, but on the preceding Monday, Obama posted on the White House website his own version of health care legislation. The summit was pure political theater. Harry Reid, before the meeting, was already planning on reconciliation the following week. Obama has made it clear that reconciliation will be used if the bill cannot reach cloture. Which, oddly enough, is another lie. His fabrications: On 11/02/2004: “My understanding of the Senate is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen. Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward and not a democratic or republican agenda forward?” On 29/25/2007: “We are going to have to ask a 60% majority in the Senate to actually get a health care bill to my desk.” This week regarding the bill: “…deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.” Up-or-down equals reconciliation.

Rep. Paul Ryan spent six minutes debunking the chicanery of subsidizing 30 million Americans with government run health care, while miraculously lowering the deficit by increasing spending with money the government does not have. Obama’s health care bill is a mathematical achievement that would have Isaac Newton scratching his head and rethinking his life’s work. Ryan dazzled attendees with sophisticated mathematics: If you have $100 and you spend $150, how much do you have left? This was actually his methodology. Obama and the Democrats’ reaction to Ryan was the unintelligible retort of one who had not read nor comprehended the bill, and would be hard pressed to pass a primary school math quiz.

In their usual liberal fashion, the Democrats lamented about various anecdotal stories of the inhumane suffering of people who died or were horribly mistreated because the government was not providing them with health care. The morbid ruse about these stories is that, in the past, most of the heart wrenching tales the Democrats have paraded about have been either fabricated or immensely aggrandized to the point of emaciation. The Left will continue to subject one and all to their anecdotathon–a phrase coined by Missourah.

Not one to be surpassed with pointless rhetoric, Obama resorted to his own personal anecdote about insurance:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months, I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

First, anyone who owns a car has the option of either purchasing full coverage insurance including collision, or the state mandated liability minimum insurance. Obama was covered by the latter. Second, according to Obama’s analogy, to “treat a sick kid or breast cancer,” either dental insurance or the insurance on a boat should suffice. Third, Obama, in his attempt to annex one-third of the U.S. economy through the insurance sector, knows less about insurance than a bourgeois automobile owner. This anecdote proves that Obama did not understand how insurance worked as a college graduate, and does not understand how insurance works as president.

Should the Republicans have even attended the summit? It was a disappointment that they did not challenge Obama’s authority to be directly involved in legislation, or challenge the myriad unconstitutional provisions within the health care bill. The Republicans should have insisted on preconditions before attending. They should have insisted that the bill be legal before debate. But in retrospect, they did expose the deceitful math, the unpreparedness, and the ignorance of the Democrats and Obama regarding the substance of the bill. The bill presented by Obama, much like Obama himself, was all style and no substance as the Congressional Budget Office was not able analyze Obama’s bill because it was sufficiently lacking in details.

The summations of reality:

Barack Obama: During the presidential campaign, and immediately after winning the election, Barack Obama was declared urbane… super cool… IQ off the charts… probably the smartest guy ever to become president… the cerebral president… too intelligent for the job, and boundless tantamount protestations of the like.

One year later, the evidence and aftermath have painted a different picture of a man whose intelligence and general competence were prejudicially manufactured by the media and the demagogues of the Left. The only existing evidence supporting Obama’s formidable intelligence and heightened IQ were, and are still, sequestered from public perusal, as his actual accomplishments present a garden variety philistine intellect. His academic record, for all practical purposes, does not exist. Not one of the myopic windbags who championed his intelligence has ever been afforded the luxury of admiring his Punahou School records, his SAT scores, his Occidental College records, his Columbia College records, his Harvard College records, and his nonexistent Harvard Law Review articles as the editor.

Obama’s record of a man possessing such an impressive IQ and academic foundation seems to run counter to his manufactured super-human perspicacity. Obama has demonstrated this past year an astonishing ignorance of constitutional law, American history, world history, basic fundamental economics, and a primary school grasp of the structure of the federal government, including each branch’s role.

Obama’s brief tenure has been plagued by a battle between his alleged super-intelligence and his doubtless super-arrogance, with the latter generally prevailing at the end of each round.

This past year, we have learned that Obama’s penchant for lying is not wielded for political expediency, as are plenty of political prevarications, but rather appears founded in a pathological affliction. Only 65% of Americans did not believe the substance of Obama’s State of the Union Address, which is low considering that almost the entirety of the speech, when weighed against substantiated facts, was one misrepresentation of the truth after another. Only 6% of Americans believe his $800 billion debacle of a stimulus package has created any jobs. To put this number in bleak perspective, 8% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive, and 83% believe Tupac Shakur is still alive.

Obama told a group of Republicans that he was not an ideologue. But this past year, the evidence has convicted Obama as the embodiment of Leftist ideology. A cursory perusal of his appointments and cabinet members’ pasts and recent affiliations with Leftist organizations, Communist organizations, and Fascist organizations, would substantiate his ideology beyond any reasonable doubt, regardless of his disputes.

Currently, only 22% of voters strongly approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president, while 41% strongly disapprove. This gives Obama a presidential approval index of -19.

So what have we learned this past year about Barack Obama? When Barack Obama ran for president, he possessed no leadership experience. When a man in his late 40’s is void of leadership roles, he is not a leader. A natural leader leads. Whatever the situation or circumstances, a leader always emerges as a leader. And to lead, you need followers, and Obama has divided this nation asunder. Continuing to divide and lead a minority of Left-Wing ideologues down a path of destruction does not a leader make. Obama was not qualified when he was a candidate, and has proven that he is not qualified one year later.

If Obama could be summarized in one act, it would be his speech earlier at the National Prayer Breakfast. He stood erect, jaw jutted out in arrogance, shrouded by teleprompters, reading words someone else wrote, and pronouncing the word “corpsman” by accentuating the “p.” This speech was embarrassing, pathetic, pregnant with fabrications, ignorant, and disrespectful, and summed up the first year of Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin: I like Sarah Palin. She, out of Obama, McCain, and Biden, was the most qualified to be president. Yet, she is not qualified to be president at this juncture, and being a celebrity is not advancing her qualifications for the job, but it is advancing conservatism. Palin does possess one trait that eludes the other three, and this trait is essential as a leader: common sense. She has values, and those values resonate with the majority of Americans. She possesses and projects a morality that eludes the majority of politicians in this country, and frustrates the Left into spasms of exasperation. Palin seems to possess the fundamental knowledge of the principles upon which this country was founded, which would make her a far better leader than our current president. I believe Sarah Palin is a very smart woman, but when pressed for specifics about the Constitution, she uses talking points that rarely penetrate into a deeper understanding. Her lack of previous intellectual curiosity regarding U.S. history and the Constitution has cost her a foundational knowledge. That can be corrected. A reading of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, studying legitimate American history from 1766-1790, reading the Federalist Papers, and reading the debates and personal writings of the Founders regarding the Constitution, would give Sarah Palin a much better understanding of the Constitution than most Ivy League Constitution Law graduates. But, with that said, she still has a better understanding of the meaning and intentions of the Constitution in the aggregate than the majority of the congress, Barack Obama, and four unnamed Supreme Court Justices whose initials start with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor, John Paul Stevens, and Stephen Breyer.

What have we learned this year about Sarah Palin? Sarah Palin is currently in her most suitable and accommodating role to advance the values of true conservatism. She continues to cause the loathsome and reprehensible essence of contemporary liberals to expose itself through their reactions to her. As Palin has gained her footing on the national stage, increased her knowledge base of national issues, and mastered a compelling authority to communicate her message, with each incremental step she has advanced, the Left has incrementally increased their thrashing about in the throes of their confounded agony. It would be a great loss to the conservative movement if Palin were to run for office in the near future, and abandon the power she wields in her current endeavor. Sarah Palin has settled into a position of much greater power and influence than if she held public office. Sarah Palin is good for conservatives, and good for this country.

Joe Biden: What can be said about Joe Biden one year later? Joe Biden possesses the same picayune spirit and values that were responsible for his getting caught plagiarizing a paper in law school, and graduating at the bottom of his class. His intellectual and moral evolution since becoming a senator and subsequently vice-president has been somewhat of a disappointment, as he is still the same little dimwit he was in law school.

What have we learned this year about Joe Biden? The same thing Joe has learned: nothing.

John McCain: John McCain, politics aside, is a true American hero, a man who possesses a type of courage that only a handful of Americans can claim, and as much as a lifetime of politics will corrode and decay a person’s honor and integrity, McCain has been able to keep most of his intact. John McCain, on his best day, is a run of the mill progressive, which conflicts with some of his conservative values. Most of what ails this country today can be directly tied to policies that John McCain supports. McCain, throughout his political career, and especially in the past ten years or so, has been an erratically moving contradiction, which does not characterize a maverick as much as it characterizes an indefinable entity, and what this country does not need as president is an indefinable entity.

John McCain and Joe Biden do share one thing in common: they both were sponsors of bills that had portions ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Biden’s Violence Against Women Act and McCain’s McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act.

What have we learned this year about John McCain? Nothing. McCain is what he was ten years ago: an inconsistent and indefinable entity.

In conclusion, one year later, the only person of the four to advance to a level of genuine and functional relevance is Sarah Palin. McCain and Biden are still McCain and Biden. Barack Obama has proven that when a president is elected whose only demonstrable skill is reading from a teleprompter, then after one year, his only discernible skill is still only reading from a teleprompter.

Obama’s nomination, just 12 days into his presidency, was an act of illegitimacy accompanied by the consummate impossibility of justification. What legitimate justification can be argued for Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize? What exploit of consequence and unique accomplishment that quantitatively benefited mankind did Obama realize? The indignant and ludicrous maneuver of bestowing the Nobel Peace Prize on Barack Obama for attempting nothing and accomplishing less, while the other 205 nominees, including these leading candidates presented by The Weekley Standard: Sima Samar, Ingrid Betancourt, Dr. Denis Mukwege, Hu Jia, Wei Jingsheng, and Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition, who were deservedly sitting at the front of the line, has delivered the Nobel Peace Prize into the abyss of obsolescence.

Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize supplements the continuing validation by liberal progressives of the intellectual and moral debasement of another once, long ago, staid institution.

The Nobel Institute and the horde of Norwegian professors who bestowed this once legitimate award on Obama are a league of liberal progressive socialist politicians masquerading as a society of erudite benevolents. This Nobel Institute, this milquetoast nest of socialists, has a recent history of bestowing awards upon celebrities in possession of a political platform that aligns with their philosophy of Socialism — sans accomplishments, of course. Anyone possessing attributes antithetical to American canonical values, coupled with the above qualifications, should enjoy a serious expectation of winning; add to the mix of previous ingredients an American, especially a sitting president with a jejune and timorous disposition, and a more likely candidate without peers does not exist. To ensure an unassailable victory, the candidate should have a history of indicting Bush and American exceptionalism for the infirmaries of the world– a skill Obama has mastered without peer. The Nobel Institute was surely salivating at the Trotskyite manna that fell into their collective laps, with another opportunity to award another Bush antagonist.

What the Nobel Institute actually accomplished was accentuating the manifestation of the nothingness of Barack Obama, which quite comically, has reached caricature proportions.

Obama obviously, let’s hope, did not nominate himself, but he is culpable in the iniquitous transaction nonetheless. Example: if one is actually bested in a tournament of intellectual competition, yet called forth as champion to accept his award, knowing with absolute certainty he is undeserved of the award obviously granted through an administrative error, with a wink and a nod to the incredulous and deserving defeated, thanking all involved, dismounts the podium clutching his misbegotten prize and ego, at that point, he is guilty of cheating. Barack Obama, a person of non-existent accomplishments benefiting anyone outside his reprobate vortex of political accomplices, is clutching his misbegotten prize and ego while wantonly cheating the candidates who have risked their lives over the course of years for the betterment of mankind.

The abstruse reason for awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples and his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.” This is quite an astonishing laundry list of things on the to-do list. Unfortunately, the committee seems to share the same undisciplined criteria for vetting as Obama, which could be the result of a severe case of Fascist Myopia. Reach out to the Muslim world, indeed. If Obama really desires to impress with his “great uniter” skills, perhaps he could convince the Muslim world to reach out to the non-Muslim world, and if the stars align, maybe, just maybe, he could convince the Muslim world that when something is published or spoken unflatteringly about Islam, they could react without rioting, killing, and causing general mayhem. But again, this would actually require action and a result.

Let us examine Obama’s trend analysis in his areas of qualifications. He has attempted nothing, and accomplished nothing. Other than that, his administration, at nine months, possesses the worst foreign policy initiatives since Carter. Let us examine Obama’s foreign policy potential. Assuming the committee meant “international cooperation between peoples,” what does Obama’s trend in this area predict? Obama was not able to bridge the gap between his scurrilous church and its racist preacher, Jeremiah Wright, with genteel society. Since taking office, Obama has engineered the biggest division in this country’s history since the Civil War. There is an ideological chasm rending this country apart, perpetrated by the most divisive president this country has had the privilege of enduring. And the Nobel Institute actually believes these failures will produce results in the world arena, and are the blueprint for world peace? Historical note: wholesale appeasement from the position of a nebish, armed with an unsophisticated intellect, does not diplomacy make.

Obama’s notion that should the U.S. initiate disarming itself of nuclear weapons, the evilness of the world will follow suite and dissipate, is preposterous– this vacuous rhetoric is spoken while cowering in the corner, barking acerbic rhetoric at Iran and North Korea as they laugh and fast-track their nuclear weapons programs. This approach could be supposed by progressives as technically curbing nuclear proliferation and reaching out to the Muslim world simultaneously. If the United States loses their nuclear weapons, and North Korea and Iran acquire theirs to fill the void, and perhaps Venezuela could be aided in acquiring its own program, it becomes a zero sum game in proliferation.

The effete sheep-like disposition of the pacifist Left leads them to believe that they can bleat in cacophonous harmony, and either keep the war-mongering wolves of the world at bay, or through their incessant bleating, cause them to drop their weapons, join hands, break out the ukulele, and sing kumbaya. This myth can be dispelled with just a cursory glance at history. Using the totality of recorded history as a guide, there exists, in this world, one way, and one way only, to achieve peace, and Reagan summed it up in one sentence: Peace through Power.

No country is a bystander during a world war. It will either eat or be eaten, own or be owned. Norway thought they could enjoy neutrality from the peanut gallery during both World Wars, but lost their merchant fleet in World War One because they could not defend it, and were occupied by Germany in World War Two because they could not defend themselves. This ideology is what they are promoting by awarding the Peace Prize to Carter and Obama. This is the path Obama wants to lead America down: he wants America to join the choir and sing in three-part harmony with the sheep of the world.

How about a Nobel Peace Prize for the past three Republican presidents? Reagan ended the Cold War without firing a shot and brought down the Berlin Wall, bestowing freedom to millions; George Bush, Sr. freed Kuwait from Iraq; and George W. Bush brought freedom to millions of Iraqis. How about a prize for them? Their methods may not have been perfect, and caused unwanted lateral ramifications, but they actually did something and peoples of the world benefited. But, quite frankly, these three men do not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, and America does not deserve a president who qualifies for the Nobel Peace Prize. Acquiring freedom, as witnessed by the Revolutionary War, is an ugly business, and keeping it is even uglier. I will take freedom over the Nobel Peace Prize. And if the cost of America’s freedom is unpopularity, so be it. Leave the business of pursuing world peace to the altruist, and leave the business of keeping their paths open to the powerful, which if necessary, will use their powers to ensure the altruists’ pursuit of peace is unencumbered.

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for attempting nothing. The lesson gathered from this is as follows: accomplish nothing in your private professional life, get elected to the state Senate; accomplish nothing in the state Senate, get elected to the U.S. Senate; accomplish nothing in the U.S. Senate, get elected president; and accomplish nothing as president, win the Nobel Peace Prize. This certainly is a teachable moment: Just do nothing and wait to be whisked off to fortune and fame.

“Stupidly” is the term Obama used to refer to the Cambridge police department after they arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for disorderly conduct. Obama’s exact statement was, “the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” The information available to Obama as he made his statement was that the arresting officer was white, and Gates, an Obama friend, was black. Obama uttered a stupidly prejudiced and racist statement, a statement alarmingly consistent with the anti-white writings in his books, his associations, and his wife’s senior thesis at Princeton. There is an obvious pattern of stupidity on display: Obama has proven during his first six months that he is a stupidly economic illiterate, a stupidly constitutional illiterate, and continues to be a stupidly historical illiterate.

During the past two months, Obama has demonstrated that, even after professing to be a student of history, he is as equally illiterate in history as he is in economics and constitutional law, the three primary elements comprising the foundation of a successful leader of a Republican form of government. He has made three separate statements regarding history that are as fantastical as the Wizard of Oz. His statements are consistent with contemporary Leftists’ revision of history to read as they wish it had been, rather than what it was, to substantiate their ideology. In Obama’s three statements, he jejunely declared, at least to the mildly educated, that he is stupidly illiterate in the history of Islam, the history of the United States, and the history of the world regarding conquerors and conquered, and apparently refuses to accept authentic history, fabricating a revised version of history that illuminates his fantasy of the past.

Obama’s statement about the history of Islam during his Cairo speech:

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

Let’s, for argument’s sake, overlook the facts that algebra was invented by the Babylonians over 4000 years ago, the compass by the Chinese, printing by the Chinese, astronomy by Copernicus, the mastery of pens by medieval monks, and the “majestic arches and soaring spires” of the Roman empires, which pre-date the birth of Islam by a thousand years.

What cannot be overlooked is the fact that it was the Arab medieval Muslims who were an integral part of ushering Europe from the Dark Ages into the Age of Reason and thus the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. Authentic history dictates that it was not the Islam with which Obama harbors an unnatural infatuation that should be credited with these achievements. The Muslim world, after intimate contact with Greece and its culture, adopted their practices of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. They served Islam as devout Muslims while serving erudition as did the Greeks; this marriage led to a rapidly advancing and evolving Muslim culture. These Muslims were the disciples of Aristotle’s ideas, they were Arabs qua Aristotelians. Obama was correct to credit Islam for some of the achievements in his speech, but the Islam he praised is antithetical to the Islam that possessed an advanced civilization a thousand years ago.

As rapidly as Islamic culture advanced, so too it declined. The Islamic orthodoxy repudiated Aristotelian thought and the advancements it beget in the sciences, mathematics, and architecture, and were able, through persecution of the learned, to eradicate reason and intelligence from Islamic culture. After the intentional and systematic elimination of math and science from their culture, the Muslim world hastily retreated into a primitive state and advancement ceased. Decline ensued. It was the Arabs qua Islamists who were responsible for the devolution of the Arab world, the very culture upon which Obama continues to bestow unfettered adulation. This intelligent student of history, Barack Obama, believes that the Arabs qua Islamists, the responsible party for eradicating advanced thought, science, math, astronomy, physics, etc, from their culture, is owed a debt by this world’s advanced, cultured, and sophisticated civilizations. Indeed.

Obama’s statement about how the cold war ended:

“The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”

The Cold War ended as it did because of Ronald Reagan. Period! The USSR would probably have come to an end at some point regardless of Ronald Reagan, but in what fashion it dissipated, and what the current state of Russia would be, can only be left to conjecture and theory, at best.

Reagan did not single-handedly end the Cold War; as with all great achievements, there are ancillary components involved. Pressure from other countries, especially British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was integral, and Gorbachev’s willingness to conform under Reagan’s pressure was imperative. But eliminate Reagan from the equation and replace him with someone of the caliber of our last three Democrat presidents, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, and the USSR’s inclination to subdue would have been greatly comprised; the Cold War would not have ended when and how it did.

It was Reagan’s incessant military and economic pressure on the USSR, with which the USSR could not compete, that was instrumental in subduing a country submerged in stagnation and hovering at the cusp of exhaustion. It was the unprecedented military buildup of the USA, our medium-range missiles strategically placed throughout Europe, dogged pressure from Thatcher, Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense system– which the Russians held in awe–that pushed the USSR to the breaking point. This was the prototypical and time-honored battle between good and evil, and good won.

Obama’s statement about the history of conquerors and conquered:

“The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.”

Obama could not have made a more adolescent and naive statement had he the assistance of a 5 year old.

The future always has, and always will, belong to the nation that can either defend itself or have such military might that an attack upon it would be preposterous. The future will always belong to the country “who can gather armies on a field of battle and bury missiles in the ground.” As far back in recorded history as one can examine, there have been winners and losers in the quest for dominance and sovereignty, insomuch as nations go. This will not change. A powerful military, as has been the case as long as recorded history, will always be essential for conserving a nation’s sovereignty and protecting its resources.

Obama should take a lesson from fellow Democrat Harry Truman regarding his thoughts on appeasement and the prospects of disarming the United States: “No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies.”

Consider the man-made global warming prattle. Even though the mean temperature has been dropping for the past ten years, and there is categorically nil credible evidence to substantiate man’s effect, global warming has become a doomsday scenario, forecasted by Sen. John Kerry:

“We are here today to discuss a grave and growing threat to global stability, human security, and America’s national security. As you will hear from all of today’s witnesses, the threat of catastrophic climate change is not an academic concern for the future…international conflicts over resources, due to migrants, and/or as a means of distraction are not only likely, but likely to exacerbate the underlying climate change problem…climate change is a threat to our national security.”

Envision that scenario coupled with a cataclysmic worldwide shortage of water. Who wins in that situation? The country with sustainable resources? The country with military might and the “most bombs in the ground and armies gathered on a field?” The country with the sustainable resources wins– but only if they can protect them; if not, then the country with the “most bombs in the ground and armies gathered on a field” will annex the resources by force. That is the history of the world in its entirety, past, present, and future, and neither Barack Obama nor his impulsively callow sycophants in Congress will change that.

“The past is prologue,” Joe Biden so eloquently stated during his debate with Sarah Palin, without citing the source of the phrase. The phrase, incidentally, is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge. What could one hope an intelligent non-ideologue learned from nations that suffered from being conquered by a stronger military? What was learned from the elimination of advanced knowledge and understanding? What was learned from the unmatchable military power of the United States? What the genuine intelligentsia has learned from history, authentic history, is the knowledge of how to maintain all aspects of sustainability, and avoiding repeating the mistakes of the past. Tread lightly, Barack Obama, as the past is prologue.

Two of the most ludicrous and perplexing statements regarding the Iranian elections came, poignantly, from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, they occupy the top two positions within the hierarchy of American foreign policy.

Ludicrous and perplexing statement number one from Obama: “We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran.  Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways.”

Ludicrous and perplexing statement number two from Clinton: “It’s a very positive sign that the people of Iran want their voices and their votes to be heard and counted. And like many people inside and outside of Iran we are going to wait and see what the results are.”

Their statements are alarming, considering the naivety of their unsophisticated expectations of the probable outcome of the Iranian elections. A senior State Department official even had the callowed audacity to state that there might be the possibility of a run-off in the Iranian election.  No one, and I emphasize, no one possessing a modicum of knowledge regarding Iran, its history, and this regime, other than our elected and appointed leaders, expected anything different than the result this election produced. The one variable that was not foreseen before these fraudulent election results were announced, was the overwhelming breadth of the protest and public dissent by the opposition to the current regime; but the retaliatory violence by Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, very predictable.

Barack Obama, America’s first celebrity president, is reacting in the same fashion as he did during the majority of his short tenure in the senate, by voting “present” on the situation in Iran. Perhaps Obama is in a state of bewilderment since he has declared that he tried to send a clear message to the Islamic world during his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo that his administration sees a possibility for a change in relations. That message, that dynamic dialogue, should have prevented the Iranian election fraud and ensuing bloody aftermath, and thus, bestowed more glorious adulations onto Obama; but reality interfered with that fantasy, again.

Obama may have wagered on a perverse form of a trifecta: Could he actually believe the hype circulating in the leftist media that his Cairo speech influenced the victory of a pro-Western majority in the Lebanese election? Did he honestly believe there would be a Democratic election in Iran that would run as smoothly as an election in the U.S. under ACORN’s supervision? And finally, did he believe there would be robust and honest dialogue with the winner of the Iranian election about their vexatious nuclear aspirations?

Unfortunately, Obama’s Cairo speech, after digestion, was a vacuous fantasy filled with dishonesty and aspersions of America, with very little reality-based substance. There has been somewhat of a positive transformation in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, with Libya removed from the terror list; the Democratic advancements in Iraq; the pro-Western election winners in Lebanon; and especially, sans electoral thievery, the probable victory of  moderate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Iran over Ahmadinejad.  But this process was started while Obama, when not campaigning for president, was occupying a Senate seat in Illinois, railing against the Iraq war; and these positives can be attributed not to the current administration, but to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East during the Bush administration.

While the streets of Iran are covered by the blood of people hoping for change, Obama’s hope of taking credit for the wonderful outcome of a Democratic election, made possible by robust dialogue, was derailed by the bloody crackdown conducted by a murderous regime he refuses to completely denounce, and with which he will, without pre-conditions, have future dialogue.

It has become unbearable to listen to the sycophantic left of this country, especially the media, after the Cairo speech, who are so fanatical about Obama succeeding at all costs, that they truly believe that this man, this mountebank, can stand in front of a teleprompter in Cairo regurgitating lies, deceit, unintelligible history, and make fantastic claims, that his speech, his words, are going to restructure the 1,500-year precarious relationship between the Middle East and the rest of the world, forever altering the politics of the Middle East.

Obama’s Middle East trespass is threefold: an absurdly adolescent understanding of the world we occupy; believing that Iran has a legitimate right to nuclear energy; and not having the political, nor personal courage to make a definitive stand against the current regime in Iran. Obama is not being asked to charge into Iran with the cavalry, but there is a distinct line between right and wrong, and unfortunately, as a leader, when that choice presents itself, a decision has to be made as to which side one is on, and doing nothing is choosing sides–the wrong side. Obama’s naive and anemic calls for Iran to pursue a “peaceful path” to the election resolution and making clear that it is “not too late” for Iran to do so, is, quite frankly, morally repulsive. The damage is done; it was done immediately after the election results. Bolstered by Iran’s refusal to stop their nuclear proliferation, the blatant support of terrorist organizations, and now this barbarity with the elections, there is no excuse not to banish Iran to the status of Somalia: a government devoid of international recognition. As opposed to Obama, and with clear and decisive moral authority–a character trait Obama has demonstrated time and again he does not possess–Germany’s Merkel has unequivocally and officially sided with the protesters in Iran, along with France’s Sarkozy.

Yes, Obama, there will be change in Iran; there will be change the day they consummate their quest for nuclear weapons, then there will be change, indeed.

Using the old Chinese proverb, A Picture’s Meaning Can Express Ten Thousand Words, please enjoy the following 80,000 words of the robust dialogue of which Obama spoke of in Iran:

Barack Obama, during his speech in Cairo, never once mentioned the term terrorism–even though he was, geographically speaking, in the epicenter of Islamic terrorism. His oratory resources were spent on the historical misrepresentation of the Muslim world and fawning over Islam, while apologizing for American exceptionalism and misrepresenting the dominance of Christianity in America. Yet, just prior to his trip to the Middle East, he did exercise the term “terrorist”.

Which  is surprising considering that Obama and the Department of Homeland Security has rejected the term terrorist, but rather, in its stead, the term “man-made disaster” will be applied when referring to death and destruction wreaked by Islamic disaster makers. But the term terrorist must, within the confines of the Obama administration, be reserved for the worst of the worst.

In an email exchange between the Treasury Department and Chrysler, Thomas Lauria, attorney for Chrysler’s secured lenders, was called a terrorist for trying to secure the lawful rights of secured bondholders of Chrysler during bankruptcy. The terrorist reference in an email written by Mathew Feldman, a Treasury task force member: “President doesn’t negotiate second rounds…We’ve protected your management and board. And now you’re telling me to bend over to a terrorist like Lauria? That’s BS.”

Neither Barack Obama, nor his administration, have a clear understanding of who America’s enemy is.

Hillary Clinton has, once again, validated the fact that the principles of the left still remain in a state of  fluidity for an as-needed directional change. This past week she strongly alluded that Israel would be on its own if attacked by Iran. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos regarding Israel and Iran, Clinton made clear America’s new position on Israel. Note the Clintonesque and nuanced use of the word “retaliation”:

CLINTON: I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it U.S. policy now?

CLINTON: I think it is U.S. policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations. They may not be formal, as it is with NATO, but I don’t think there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that, were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation.

STEPHANOPOULOS: By the United States?

CLINTON: Well, I think there would be retaliation. And I think part of what is clear is, we want to avoid a — a Middle East arms race which leads to nuclear weapons being in the possession of other countries in the Middle East, and we want to make clear that there are consequences and costs.

U. S. foreign policy, in the event our staunchest ally in the Middle East is attacked by a nuclear Iran, has de-evolved into a wink and a nod contingency plan with unnamed nations.

This statement, especially from Clinton, who had to beg and grovel for the Jewish vote in New York to garner enough support to be elected to the Senate; this after calling for an independent Palestinian state during her husband’s presidency, and the outward adoration and very public embracing of Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha Arafat. To get elected, Clinton conveniently became Israel’s biggest supporter. During her presidential campaign, she became the champion of the state of Israel. She emphatically stated that Iran “will not be permitted to have nuclear weapons.”

After being chosen as Obama’s Secretary of State, Clinton, using the same strategy that helped elect her to the Senate, started performing her canned pro-Israel speeches, declaring that Obama would be a good friend of Israel, and Obama would exhaust all measures to prevent Iran from going nuclear; same speeches she gave in 2000 during her Senate campaign,–she just substituted I for Obama.

Obama has since announced that it would be acceptable for Iran to have  “legitimate aspirations” for nuclear technology, this being an abrupt reversal of previous U.S. policy of absolute unacceptability for Iran to have even remote access to nuclear technology.

Obama’s dereliction and affection for Iran appears to be boundless–as demonstrated during Ahmadinejad’s straightforward election fraud, and its ensuing chaos and mayhem in the streets of Iran–by calling the chaos during the election a “robust debate”, and refusing to denounce Ahmadinejad and his fraudulent election. There does not exist a diplomatic excuse for Obama’s apparent support of this terrorist regime, and for Obama to refer to his lack of denouncement as “meddling”–while “meddling in Israel’s affairs–is unacceptable in the civilized part of the world. But, rest assured, Obama’s response will likely change and will replicate and undulate according to the mood of the polls, and his financial donors.

If the current malignant state of Iran had a face, it would be Jimmy Carter, who is in the Middle East–yet again–being the apologist for state supported terrorism, and calling for, this time, Obama to remove Hamas from the terrorist list. Given Obama’s tender feelings for a Hamas -controlled Palestine, he may just well side with Jimmy Carter on this issue.

So between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, it means a little bit of Hope for terrorists and a whole lot of Change for Israel.

The culprits: Six-Hundred private jets in attendance belonging to global warming alarmists; hundreds-of-thousands of representatives from the “go green” hypocritical faction of the left that were in attendance; hundreds-of-thousands of “save the earth” hypocrites that were in attendance; in fact, it would not be too presumptive to assume everyone in attendance could be considered, in one fashion or another, an antagonist to “big business”, whom they see only as instruments of pollution and destruction, and being void of redeemable attributes.

The picture is also an augury of what is to come to pass from an Obama administration supported by a Pelosi/Reid led Congress. If one needs to put a face on the Democrat Party: this picture is the face; if one needs to put a face on the morality of the Democrat Party: this picture is the face; if one needs to put a face on the prospects of the American economy if Obama’s “stimulus” plan is implemented: this picture is the face; if one needs to put a face on the Democrat-led Congress and the Obama administration’s anticipated destruction of the Constitution: this picture is the face. In fact, if one wants to put a face on any intentions of this Democrat Congress or Barack Obama, this picture is the face.

Look, think, wonder, and pray:

Shortly after Obama’s swearing in at the $170 million gala/party/ball/shindig/obscene display of opulent proportions/slap in the face to all suffering from the recession–Obama took control of www.whitehouse.gov. He immediately made manifest the type of character he has historically displayed, and prophetically displayed the type of character by which the country can expect to be governed hence forth. In Obama’s first foray in the uniting business, he gave one of the most classless and highly offensive inauguration speeches imaginable, then posted this uniting sentiment on the White House website regarding Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina:

Katrina

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.

President Barack Obama will partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.

This absurd, classless exposition coming from a man who claimed, while on the Obama World Tour in Europe, he would “work to unite Christians, Muslims and Jews in a safer, more united world.” Obama, who could not even unite his divisive church with the civilized world, will accomplish what no world leader, nor Jesus, has been able to do in recorded history.

Barack Obama seems to be a little fuzzy, in a liberal sort of way, about the actual events of recent history in regard to Katrina. He has overlooked a few small, incidental details, such as:

• The governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, was responsible for her state’s welfare, and had the absolute power to prevent the Katrina devastation pertaining to humanity, and facilitate the immediate response for restoration in tandem with the federal government — but did neither.
• The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, or perhaps the Mayor of Chocolate City, as he affectionately refers to New Orleans, was responsible for his city’s welfare, and also had absolute power to prevent the Katrina devastation pertaining to humanity, and facilitate the immediate response for restoration in tandem with the federal government–he also did neither.
• Both Blanco and Nagin presided over monumental textbook failures at every conceivable level. Beginning days prior to and continuing through the aftermath, they were paralyzed by their inadequacies.
• Furthermore, it is not Bush’s, FEMA’s, nor the federal government’s constitutional responsibility to implement state’s preventative measures, or the rescue from the aftermath of a state’s ineptness in the handling of an evacuation from a natural disaster–though, because they have the capability, should do so for myriad reasons– they cannot be blamed for the inadequacies of the duly elected liberal government of Louisiana.

Another note about blaming the Katrina debacle on Bush: The wholesale failure of the preventable devastation from Katrina on the citizens of New Orleans, and its abysmal aftermath, can be blamed exclusively on the liberal pattern of either handing out something, or holding out one’s hand for something. No one in this situation had the wherewithal to take appropriate action for evacuation, self evacuation, or rescue because that is not the modus operandi of liberals. Liberal citizens are conditioned to depend on the government. President Barack Obama is not, and did not, run as a leader, but as a benefactor to all who voted for him.

Well, Mr. President/Uniter/Messiah, you demonstrated today the type of character and class that one could only expect to find in a contemporary liberal. Oh, and by the bye, those throngs of agents of change in attendance, the ones who booed President Bush, held signs calling for his arrest, and chanting the same–really touching. The whole uncivilized lot of you makes for a great alliance. And remember, now, going forward, everything is your fault.

Barack Obama and the media’s obsession with comparing him to Lincoln has breached the boundaries of healthy and wishful comparisons and has evolved into a cultish display of disturbing rhetoric of pathological mania and obsession with an intellectually dishonest rendition of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

Not only has Obama chosen to use the same Bible as Lincoln did for his swearing in, eating the same food at the inauguration, he also intends to arrive in Washington, just as Lincoln did in 1861, via train. Obama plans on stopping along the way to deliver speeches, as Lincoln did.

Lincoln and Obama do have a few authentic similarities that can be legitimately compared. Lincoln was a man; Obama is a man. Lincoln was a politician from Illinois; Obama is a politician from Illinois. Neither was born there. Lincoln became president from Illinois; Obama will become president from Illinois. And that is where the similarities end.

Ensuing is a truncated list of the differences between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln:

Lincoln was white. Obama is black. This is significant as Obama ran a campaign based on race, and his acolytes reinforced the point throughout the campaign.

Obama is an ideologue. Lincoln was not.

Obama was educated at the Punahou School in Hawaii- Hawaii’s elite preparatory school. He then attended Columbia University, and capped off his educational career at Harvard Law School. Lincoln, in contrast, was primarily self-educated, having spent only a few years in a one room school house–he taught himself law. Obama is a product of educational privilege while Lincoln was a product of educational fortitude.

Lincoln was a Republican. The party that freed the slaves. Obama is a Democrat. The party that resisted the freedom of slaves. The party that created the Jim Crowe laws. The party of the KKK. etc! etc! etc!

While Obama and his apologists take great pleasure in comparing Obama’s oratory skills to Lincoln’s, the comparison is vacant hyperbole. Obama is a slickly produced media creation who works to perfection if well prepared with the aid of a teleprompter, preparation, a staff of writers, a controlled environment, and void of antagonists. The scene must be orchestrated to succeed. His speeches are cinematically faultless while being void of substance. Obama resisted town hall type debates during his campaign, as he proved time and again when not working off a script, he was an abject failure when pressed for substance, resulting in a oratory breakdown. Lincoln, on the other hand, was an inferior speaker at best. Lincoln was a controlling force in small informal debates of substance. What set him apart, and propelled his political career, was the substance of his speeches, which he wrote himself. Lincoln succeeded in speeches not for the way he spoke, but what he said. Obama has succeeded by not what he says, but the delivery. Unfortunately, for Obama, the world is not a controlled sound stage.

Lincoln would have rivaled George Bush for being reviled while in office, for the very reasons that formulate the foundation of disdain that Obama and the left have for Bush.

Lincoln was a realist and had a well honed skill for the realities facing the nation. Obama has a history of demonstrated ignorance of the realities facing this nation, as he and the left apparently believe all problems can be solved through fantasy.

Lincoln compared himself to no one. Obama started comparing himself to Lincoln as a Junior State Senator from Illinois.

Lincoln’s America was a nation where “all men are created equal”. Obama’s America is a nation where he will make you an equal with someone else’s money if you choose not to take advantage of being “created equal”.

The most prominent difference between Obama and Lincoln, and most conspicuous, is the ideological difference between the two, in the measures the President of this country should or should not take to protect this nation. Lincoln’s actions mirrored Bush’s, only to a greater extreme. With Congress not in session, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland. He had previously suspended civil law in places he thought it would be detrimental to the North. When the criticism of the suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland grew, he fought back by suspending habeas corpus throughout the entire nation. He had his critics arrested. Lincoln threatened that anyone who used “disloyal practices” would be subjected to martial law. He also closed down all opposition newspapers. When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Chief Taney, ruled against Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for him.

Ironically, while Obama and the liberals have been busy comparing him to Lincoln, they have been reduced to hand wringing and teeth gnashing by the actions of Bush after 9/11. Bush’s transgressions: not granting habeas corpus to captured enemies of this country held on foreign soil, the running of water up their noses to get vital information to protect this country, and warrantless wiretaps to try to ferret out any presentable threats to this country. The audacity, indeed!

Had Lincoln, the one whom Obama has a pathological obsession of counterfeiting, been President in the aftermath of 9/11, one could have expected much worse than water run up the noses of terrorists to gather intelligence if it meant preventing another 9/11; You could expect all the left wing media to be shut down; You could expect a gaggle of liberal nut cases arrested and denied their precious habeas corpus; You could expect much more aggressive intelligence gathering than benign warrantless wiretaps. You could expect the state of California to under martial law. What an ironically precarious corner Obama is standing in–if Lincoln had adopted Obama’s policies–you could reasonably expect the capital of this country to currently be sitting in Gettysburg.

To clarify the introductory quote at the beginning, Lincoln stated this concerning the Civil War: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.”

Lincoln, much to the chagrin of the left and half-witted historians and educators who teach a politically correct version of history, went to war to preserve a nation, not to free the slaves. The South went to war to preserve their rights, and keeping their slaves was one of these rights.

Lincoln, believed to be great president, broke laws for the sake of saving this country. Lincoln’s actions to hold this country together run antithetical to Obama’s belief of how far a president should go to protect this nation. Lincoln governed during a dirty, unstable, and defining moment in this country’s history, and governed with equal action and agility–just as did Bush. Lincoln had much more in common with George Bush than Barack Obama, the latter with whom he shares no thread of significant commonality.

To know anything factually about Lincoln, one would know how detestable he would find Barack Obama’s ideology, and with the $150 million spend on inauguration parties encompassing the Lincoln Memorial this weekend, while the country is economically adrift and at war, it would not be too farfetched to expect a tear roll down the check of the Lincoln Memorial.

Walking the same path of a man does not make you that man’s equal in character, nor does it give you the right to compare yourself to that man by merely staring at his footprints and following them–the two men may end up at the same place, but rarely the same destination, or share the same experiences along the path.

Obama has lied incessantly during his political career. Not the type of lying one would expect for political expediency, but with manufactured lies encompassed with a pathological urgency.

There were 126,558,818 votes cast in the presidential election. Obama received 66,744,472 or 52.7%; McCain received 58,272,729 or 46%; other candidates received 1,541,617 or 1.2%. Obama disgorged one substantiated lie after another daily to the American people. 66,744,472 or 52.7% American citizens voluntarily voted for a candidate they knew was lying to them daily. Perhaps it is far fetched to state that all who voted for him knew he was lying and voted for him anyway, but when presented on a daily basis with one contradictory statement after another from Obama, one would either have to choose to overlook the pathological nature of his lies, or be too blinded with any of the ensuing voter bloc breakdowns below to discern the difference–either one is just as bad as the other.

97% of blacks that voted, voted for Obama– he lied, but he was black, so he got their vote. The white vote he received was because he was a liberal, and he was not Bush or McCain, between who these voters could not distinguish the difference–he lied, but he was not Bush or McCain, and got their vote. The Jewish vote was because he is a liberal something or other–he lied, but he was not a conservative, so he got their vote. 66% of Hispanics voted for Obama because, well who the hell knows why, after McCain committed political suicidium with his base by crafting a sword out of the McCain-Kennedy Amnesty Bill, then unceremoniously falling on it. The Hispanics turned out to be McCain’s Judas Iscariot.

Of Obama’s lies, other than the lies he told about infanticide, the lies he told about his relationships with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were the most offensive because one villainous character attacked America with bombs, and the other attacked America with a polluted soul that spewed hate from the pulpit.

William Ayers, the capitalist-hating domestic terrorist, is out, at this very moment, capitalizing on Obama’s win by hawking his new book so he can enjoy the pleasant side effect of capitalism–money. While making the rounds of the morning talk shows, he was asked about his relationship with Obama. His remarks:

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign. But right-wing commentators tried to use those connections to smear Obama,” he writes in the forward of his book.

“Obama’s political rivals and enemies apparently saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest narrative about him, that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist, a sympathizer with extremism,” he said.

Contrast this with Obama’s flippant remarks about their relationship during a debate between him and Clinton, “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” I am not sure what exactly constitutes an endorsement, but conventional wisdom would dictate that if someone held a fundraiser for a political candidate in their home, that would be an official endorsement.

In regard to Wright, compare and contrast the two statements by Obama at different points in time, and the relevance of convenience:

On March 27, 2004, Obama was interviewed by Chicago Sun-Times religion writer, Cathleen Falsani. The interview was not released in full until after the election for obvious reasons. Obama’s comments about Trinity United Church of Christ:

“One of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church.”

Falsani asked, “Do you still attend Trinity?”

“Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service. Ever been there? Good service.
I actually wrote a book called ‘Dreams from My Father,’ it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.”

After the firestorm over Wright’s anti-American, vitriolic sermons hit the national news, Obama started singing a different tune about his church-going schedule and his relationship with Wright. When asked on the campaign trail in 2008 about Wright and the church by Major Garrett of Fox News, after Wright had become persona non grata to genteel folks, Obama said:

Garrett: “As a member in good standing, were you a regular attendee of Sunday services?”

Obama: “You know, I won’t say that I was a perfect attendee. Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at-it just was difficult.”

Barack Obama is cool and suave; his lying is not forced, but very natural–a very practiced professional. He is cool and suave even while under the influence of a willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe that is why he is so popular with 52% of the voting sect–perhaps they believe if we were all better liars, the world would be a better place, or then again, maybe looking at Obama is the same as looking in the mirror and identifying with what they see.