Souveniers

There's no such thing as seemlessly returning from a week's vacation overseas and transitioning seemlessly back into your old routine.  It's kind of like a miniature version of moving - you have stuff to remove from your baggage, and that stuff AND the baggage to put away.  And usually you're tired, have jet lag, and just want to collapse on the couch and veg, and the unpacking gets put off.

Speaking as one for whom collapsing on the couch and vegging is a national pasttime, and does not travel, period, I thought I would make a magnanimous bipartisan gesture and help Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Nirvana) unpack his vast quantity of baggage, and particularly go through the soveniers he brought home.

***Here's a nice history revision:

QUESTIONER: "A year ago in South Carolina you said you would meet, in your first year as president, with President Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Is there anything you have heard today here in discussions with Israeli leaders that has made you rethink that pledge or are you still standing by that?"

OBAMA: "Dan, I think you have to take a look at what the question was in South Carolina and how I responded. The question is would I meet with leaders without preconditions in pursuit ... But I think what I said in response was that I would, at my time and choosing, be willing to meet with any leader if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America. , And that continues to be my position, that if I think that I can get a deal that is going to advance our cause, then I would consider that opportunity. But what I also said was that there is a difference between meeting without preconditions and meeting without preparation." (Barack Obama, Press Conference, Sderot, Israel, 7/23/08)

Here's the transcript of BO's answer in that South Carolina primary debate a year ago, and my take on it at the time as a gratuity.  Nowhere within it will you find any qualifiers from Ebony JFK.  Indeed, he was so enthusiastic in his glib appeasenikism that he misportrayed Original JFK (who faced down Nikita Khruschev over Cuba) and Ronald Reagan (who clinched victory in the Cold War at Reykavik, Iceland in 1985 when he walked out of his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev rather than cave on SDI) as rowing in the same bottom-bound boat.  It's not an exaggration to say that he called anything less than a perpetuitous determination to pump the air full of meaningless words to the immense amusement of our enemies - without pre-conditions - as "ridiculous".

This isn't his first crack at this totalitarianistic re-write.  The thing that his debate answer then and hand-waving attempts to "disappear" it now have in common is his impenetrable belief that he can talk anybody into anything.  The same sociopathologic narcissism that characterized the Clintons in their day, and obviously a character defect on which they do not, after all, have the liberal market cornered.

The Golden Child's Bushesque remark about "A nuclear Iran [being] a game-changing situation" and "all options being on the table" is a new one, though.  And the public utterance it is intended to erase from existence isn't even two months old:

When in St. Barry's mind did Iran go from "tiny, non-threatening country" to mortal bane of the Republic?  And why is the Bush Administration moving towards his (original?) position at the exact same time that Bright & Morning Star is (pretending to) move towards Bush's and McCain's on Iraq?  Might the latter be because victory in the latter is so incontrivertible that even the Enemy Media is running up the white flag on running up the white flag?

***Speaking of which, is the bloom falling off the rose of the literal love affair between False Messiah and the Tingle Brigades?

Of course not.  At least not in the practical sense of their doing everything within their power to ensure that their god ascends Hillary's throne.  The marriage will remain in place for at least "eight to ten years".

But the giddy, butterflies-in-the-stomach, sweaty-palmed, dry-mouthed romantic phase of it may indeed be at an end:

Ensign Ed eventually gets to the money point:

[T]he larger point [Andrea] Mitchell makes is that Obama is being “handled” to a high degree, and that the campaign is keeping him as far away from the press as possible.  They’re only allowing for controlled events and images to appear, which goes against the entire idea of “New Politics” and transparency — and it also strongly suggests that the campaign can’t trust Obama to handle himself.

Beats me what they're afraid of.  In the old days, if a Democrat was a lush (LBJ) or a gigolo (JFK), the press would protect their privacy.  Perhaps their motivation for doing so wasn't quite as partisan as it would be today, but that was definitely a major factor.  I find it moderately astonishing that Obamanation poobahs don't realize just how deep runs the "journalistic" devotion to their supreme being - and that if there is a way to squander that tsunami of good will, it is by paranoiacally stiffing reporters whose only lust is to bow down and worship him.

Rubber, meet road:

Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama’s flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. “They’re more disciplined than the Bush people,” a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. “There was this idea of being transparent, but they’re not. They’re total tightwads with information.”

In June, there was something of a revolt after Obama ditched the press corps on his campaign plane for a secret meeting with Clinton at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s house in Washington, leaving the reporters trapped on the flight to Chicago. The D.C. bureau chiefs of half a dozen news organizations, including the late Tim Russert, sent an angry letter to Obama aides Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe and threatened not to reimburse the campaign for the cost of the flight. “The decision to mislead reporters is a troubling one,” they wrote. “We hope this does not presage a relationship with the Obama campaign that is not based on a mutual respect for the truth.” After the incident, the press corps decided that one pool reporter would keep Obama in sight at all times. “It’s a body watch,” one reporter jokes.

Meanwhile, there have been widespread complaints over the shortage of spots to accompany Obama on his tour of the Middle East and Europe. A few days before the tour departed, Time magazine was told it couldn’t send a photographer along, and, on July 22, NBC foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell complained on-air that the only images the press had received of Obama meeting with the troops was released by the U.S. military. (To be fair, congressional delegations to Iraq are kept secret for security purposes). And there’s been widespread grumbling that the campaign revoked New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza’s spot on the trip as retribution for the magazine’s recent satirical cover. These may or may not be legitimate complaints – the evidence is mixed – but the press is hardly inclined to give the campaign the benefit of the doubt.

You can take it to the bank that Lucifer is "arrogant" and beset by a "sense of entitlement" when his own media base is starting to publicly declare it.

Of course, that was once John Sith McCain's base.  But as daunting a task as he has trying to dupe conservatives into backing him, 'tis doubtful that Lord Queeg will be able to spare the woo-time.  Though it's obvious his jealousy is raging just beneath the surface.

***AP produces two clips of two different Obama alibis for why he skipped visiting the U.S. military hospitals at Rammstein and Landstuhl, Germany.  Watch them both and then tell me if you're not at least as confused trying to reconcile the two as Ba-ROCK comes across delivering them:

The best Allah can do is this:

[W]ith Fox he’s stressing that he didn’t want to distract from the troops and in the presser he’s stressing that he didn’t want it to be perceived as political.

The distinction without a difference is that both are big, steaming piles of chicken [salad].  Nothing with Barack Hussein Obama is ever about anything but him.  He doesn't give a rat's ass about the troops apart from those he can use or bamboozle.  The military wouldn't let him use the wounded soldiers in Germany, so he had no reason to go see them.  Even the latter explanation, which is supposed to be a high-minded and sympathetic, is still centered on how HE would be perceived.  If his priority had truly been the troops, he'd have gone with as small an entourage as possible and simply spent private time with them, listening and giving an encouraging word, free of ideological pontificating or partisan calculation.  I imagine they'd have appreciated that, and he might even have picked up some new supporters for his selfless effort.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya phrased it this way:

The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform. Barack Obama had scheduled a visit with wounded American troops who have served with honor and distinction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next. Several explanations were offered, none was convincing and each was at odds with the statements of American military leaders in Germany and Washington. For a young man so apt at playing president, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn’t be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes

The lesson the Not-President has yet to learn?  If you're explaining, you're (1) off-message, (2) on the defensive, and (3) losing.  If you're explaining badly, increase all three factors logarithmically.

Largely because it makes your opponent's PR job of ripping you from rectum to belly button that much easier:

I don't buy much of what Maverick says as a general rule - Once a RINO, always a RINO - but when he says that if confronted with one of Obama's "Why I didn't visit the troops" alibis, there'd have been a "seismic event," I believe him.  Just as I think most people not zonked on Barry's Kool-Aid don't believe that he wanted to play tourist more than practice a role that ALL presidents have to fulfill at one time or another.

***And, whaddaya know, this conclusion appears to be reflected in a couple of polls that have emerged since Ego Trip 2008 came to a merciful close.

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey indicates that four-fifths of the public perceived Obama's "fact-finding junket" as either entirely or partially a week-long political stunt, and two-thirds believe that the cable and broadcast networks and major news services are extensions of Obamanation in everything but name.

And look where USA Today/Gallup found BO's "bounce":

A surprising poll released Monday confirms Senator Barack Obama's worst nightmare: he actually lost ground to Senator John McCain after a global trip meant to buck up his sagging credentials in foreign and military policy.

The USA Today/Gallup poll has McCain leading Obama by four points, 49% to Obama's 45%, among likely voters.

Just last month, the same poll had McCain trailing by six points to the neophyte U.S. senator....

The polls suggest that Obama's efforts to act like a president abroad - even though he has yet to be elected -- may have backfired among American voters.

In Berlin, Obama spoke to 200,000 cheering Germans. The Democratic candidate used the foreign platform to express the view that he was a "fellow citizen of the world" and apologized for America's imperfections.

In other words, Europe's redeemer has become John Kerry with a tan to the folks - the voters - back home.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  Because of his stupendous conceit and solipsism, his breaking the Rammstein/Landstuhl date is the only lasting public memory of his "coming out" world globetrot.  Now maybe this poll swoon is an aberration and he'll rebound back to the underwhelming lead he enjoyed before it.  But - maybe he won't.

If Barack Hussein Obama wants to win this election, he is going to have to first admit to himself that yes, it is possible for him to lose it.  Then he has to figure out how to fake humility in the next three months.  Because it is day-glo clear that he possesses none of that virtue for real.