This is rich. We know about Obama’s many, many czars. Mark Steyn believes Obama has another one, someone of whom you have heard, but who isn’t on the usual list,

Obama Makes Bush His Blame Czar. You know, he has a point – we’ve been hearing for months now “He did it!” from Obama on all sorts of issues.

Steyn begins his piece writing about “Barack’s Rock,” Valerie Jarrett:

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power.”

Who’s Valerie Jarrett? She’s “Senior Adviser” to the president of the United States – i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Adviser, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Adviser has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death.”

Ah, right. People “putting up signs.” Can’t have that, can we? The most powerful woman in the inner circle of the most powerful man on Earth has decided to speak truth to powerful people standing in the street with handwritten placards saying “THIS GRAN’MA ISN’T SHOVEL READY.” Was it only a week ago that I wrote about this administration’s peculiar need for domestic enemies?

The Senior Adviser seems to have forgotten that she is the power. Admittedly, this is a recurring lapse on the part of the administration. There was Barack Obama only the other day, blaming everything on the president – no, no, silly, not him, the other fellow, the Designated Fall Guy who stepped down as head of state in January to accept the new constitutional position of Blame Czar. Musing on problems in Afghanistan, Obama blamed the “long years of drift” under his predecessor. The new president – OK, newish president – has been Drifter-in-Chief for almost a year but he’s too busy speaking truth to the former power to get on top of the situation. It could be a while yet. In his more self-regarding moments, such as his speech to the United Nations, he gives the strong impression that the “long years of drift” began in 1776.

Indeed, Ms. Jarrett thinks throwing around phrases pulled from those who are actually in the trenches will give her some street cred. You don’t think anyone fell for that hooey, do you? Just in case you know anyone who did, you can tell them that she is a lawyer, married to a doctor, and was on the Chicago Stock Exchange. So, yeah, not exactly a career in the Peace Corps., or hell, even AmeriCorps. Just more posturing on the part of the Obama Administration.

Just like Obama’s blame shifting. Just more posturing to protect his carefully crafted image:

Rocco Landesman, head honcho at the National Endowment for the Arts, seems closer to the reality of the situation. In his keynote address to the 2009 “Grantmakers in the Arts” conference, Landesman hailed Obama as “the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar”. He didn’t mean a “powerful writer” as in a compelling voice, gripping narrative, vivid characterization, command of language, etc. He meant a “powerful writer” as in Caesar was king of the world, and now Obama is. He came, he saw, he stimulated: “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.”

I suppose so. He could invade somewhere and force the natives to accept degrading roles in NEA-funded performance art. He could take out the Iranian nuclear program by carpet-bombing it with unreadable literary novels. That is, if you “accept the premise” that the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Rocco Landesman may, but it’s not clear, from his actions (or inactions) in Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that the president does. But, even so, it seems an odd pitch to “American artists.” Rocco Landesman, Speaking Goof to Power, isn’t the first Obama groupie to enjoy the kinky frisson of groveling obsequiousness, but he’s set an impressive new standard in public revelation thereof. Rocco’s aunt, Fran Landesman, is the great lyricist of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” as well as “The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men.” But surely there are few sadder middle-age men than her nephew, prostrating himself before his master as the most literate global colossus in two millennia.

Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that, but I take his point. Still, there are a whole bunch of sad “middle-age men” who would fit that bill. Chris Matthews springs immediately to mind.

Speaking of the NEA:

Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Christians are said to be “angry” at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren’t “angry” in the sense that two U.S. residents arrested last week are. The pair – one an American citizen, the other Canadian – were so “angry” about the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr. David’s splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It’s easy to be provocative with people who can’t be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he’d find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.

But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Muhammad, et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn’t it have been “braver” to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That’s to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama’s image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C’mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you’re not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn’t be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.

“Religious icon du jour” – priceless. I mean, c’mon, obviously he is – just check out that Chia commercial. And I wouldn’t hold my breath on the end of sucking-up, but that’s just me:

At some point the Caesar cult has to manifest itself in an achievement – I mean a real achievement, not merely some dud prize handed out by Norwegian Lefties. Afghanistan is his now: Notwithstanding “years of drift,” whether it winds up as victory or defeat is his call. It’s Obama’s war. It’s Obama’s economy. The stimulus bill is his stimulus, and for $787 billion it created 30,000 new jobs (according to the government) or (according to the Associated Press) 25,000. Either way, you do the math. It’s Obama’s unemployment rate, Obama’s dollar, Obama’s debt. Pace Valerie Jarrett, the truth is you are the power. And those on the receiving end of it are going to be speaking a lot louder in the months ahead.

Yep, it surely is all Obama’s now. And not for nothing, but it isn’t like the Democrats didn’t control both houses for two years before Obama got into the White House. There is a lot for which Bush is responsible, but at some point, Obama needs to stop making him the Blame Czar, and start doing his job.

I am sure you will be SHOCKED to learn that Obama is acting in much the same way. I know, I know – what a surprise. Ahem. Well, it seems some one has been doing a little investigative journalism, something in VERY short supply of late. But get this – I tell you, you better be sitting down – in this case, it was – WAIT FOR IT –
MSNBC. YES, the very network to which we routinely refer as “MSNBO”! Once I recovered from the shock of it all, I couldn’t wait to see just how transparent President Obama was compared to Bush. (I wonder if there is a way for us to do a pool on these kinds of things, like for NCAA basketball or something?)

This is what MSNBC uncovered in this report:

Obama Names 110 White House Visitors

The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.

No previous administration has released such a list, though the information out so far is incomplete. Only about 110 names —and 481 visits —out of the hundreds of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public. Like the Bush administration before it, Obama is arguing that any release is voluntary, not required by law, despite two federal court rulings to the contrary.

The emphasis there is mine. This is a bit of a schizophrenic opening. On the one hand, they want to champion that Obama released 110 names – Woohoo!! On the other hand, they have to acknowledge that, once again, President Obama is using the SAME arguments as Bush. Moreover, this “Constitutional Scholar” is doing so in clear violation of not one, but TWO federal court rulings! Maybe the KoolAide was made improperly that day, I don’t know, but the report continues:

Under the Obama White House’s policy, most names of visitors from Inauguration Day in January through the end of September will never be released. The White House says it plans to release most of the names of visitors from October on, and that release is due near the end of the year. There are limitations there as well, including potential Supreme Court nominees, personal guests of the First Family, and certain security officials.

The names released Friday include business leaders and lobbyists with a lot to gain or lose from Obama policies. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (whose foundation is pushing for changes in teacher pay), former AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JP Morgan’s James Dimon, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, John Stumpf of Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, State Street bank’s Ron Logue, BNY Mellon’s Robert Kelly, labor leader Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (22 visits)*, American Bankers Association CEO Ed Yingling, community bankers president Camden Fine, and lobbyists Heather and Anthony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta led Obama’s transition team.

Besides Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt are also on the list. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. One of NBC’s parents is GE.)

Advocates and nonprofit leaders include National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is interested in health policy.

So, this is how Obama is paying these people and organizations back, by having them in the White House? I bet Kim Gandy was just all aflutter after she threw ALL women under the bus to endorse Obama over a life-long women’s advocate. There is more on her below.

I know many readers will be interested in this White House guest:

Democratic donor and businessman George Soros visited with White House aides twice.

Yes, indeedy, a major funder of Moveon.org has been to check up on his biggest investment – ahem – twice.

We’re just getting started:

Political figures include former Sen. Thomas Daschle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. Al Franken, former Vice President Al Gore, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, and Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf.

Celebrities at the White House include Oprah Winfrey, actors Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Denzel Washington, and tennis star Serena Williams. Journalists include Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Conservative religious leader Gary Bauer visited, as did liberal civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Okay, the last two, along with Oprah, are NOT a surprise. Gary Bauer? Just a tad surprising.

For anyone who wants to see more:

Msnbc.com has put the full list in a handy PDF file, and also in an Excel file for those who like to sort.

One guest is mighty interesting:

Not that Bill Ayers

The White House warns that many names that may appear familiar — and controversial — do not in fact refer to the most famous people to carry those names. Jeremiah Wright is on the list, but it’s not the president’s former pastor. This Michael Jordan is not the basketball player. This Michael Moore is not a filmmaker. The William Ayers who took a group tour of the White House isn’t the former radical from Chicago who figured so prominently in the 2008 campaign. And the Angela Davis on the list has a different middle initial than the activist and former fugitive.

The White House could have avoided some of that sort of confusion by providing more information on the visitors, such as an employer name and the city they hail from. For example, is the Shawn Carter who attended a poetry reading the same one who goes by Jay-Z and had campaigned for Obama?

“This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information,” a White House special counsel, Norm Eisen, wrote on the White House blog.

If you spot a name on the list that bears investigating, please drop us a note.

Of COURSE we will just trust Obama and his spokes-minions when they assure us that this Bill Ayers could not POSSIBLY be domestic terrorist – Capitol Building and Pentagon bomber – long time friend and mentor Bill Ayers! He is just some guy who wanted to visit the White House Gift Shop and pick up a couple of Marine One helicopter models for his boys. I am sure of it. Sheesh. Really? They expect us to believe this crap? Evidently – they got plenty of other people to believe that kind of crap and more, so why stop now?

Okay – if you are consuming any liquids right this minute, I suggest you put it down when you read this:

Limited release

Despite the accompanying White House claim of “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” the Obama White House continues to take the same legal position as the Bush White House, arguing that the records are not public records subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Only limited “voluntary releases” are being made to settle a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group, though a federal judge has twice ruled that all the visitor logs are public. (Again, emphasis is mine.)

Yet there are severe limitations to the transparency:

Most of the visitors from Inauguration Day to September will never be released by the White House under this voluntary disclosure — unless the public can guess their names. The White House policy doesn’t allow members of the public or press to ask for “everyone who visited health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle,” or everyone who visited on May 4, or everyone from the American Medical Association. Only individual names can be checked.

I know, right? Didn’t this sound just a little pissy?? From someone at MSNBC?? The bigger picture is that the Obama Administration is BREAKING THE LAW. Hell to the YES, that information falls under FOIA – this is OUR White House, not the Obamas. We most definitely DO get to know every single John Smith and Jane Doe who cross the threshold of the White House. You better believe we do.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a start:

The list released at 4:30 p.m. Friday includes just about 110 names with 481 visits. Those names were among those requested by members of the public so far, for visits during the period from Inauguration Day through July. (That’s why we know of visits by the wrong Bill Ayers, the wrong Angela Davis, etc., but we don’t know of visits by countless unnamed lobbyists.) Members of the public who used the White House online form to check names did not receive a personal reply indicating whether or not the request was received, or whether the name appeared on the list, so the system provides no feedback. Does the absence of Bill Clinton’s name on the list mean that he has not been to the White House, or that the request wasn’t received by the White House online system?

A request for the complete records of all visitors from the first months of the administration, filed by msnbc.com, was rejected by the White House, and an appeal is pending. The news organization requested the names of all visitors to the Obama White House beginning with Inauguration Day. Msnbc.com has filed an administrative appeal with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

Say whaa?? The White House rejected a request from their lapdog “news” source?? Huh. There’s a shocker. Welcome to the “Under The Bus” club, MSNBC!

The Wall Street Journal focused on the most frequent visitor to the White House. He was mentioned in the list above, but without the acknowledgment of the frequency:

SEIU’s Stern Tops White House Visitor List

Promising “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” The White House released its visitor log this evening under a new voluntary disclosure policy.

The log chronicles 481 visits to the White House from individuals ranging from Jay-Z to Bill Gates from January through July.

The list includes William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore, Robert Kelly (R. Kelly), Malik Shabazz, and Michael Jordan.

But the White House said those aren’t the guys you’re thinking of. Nor is the log complete.

Ahahahahahahaha!!! I just cannot get enough of this one – sure, they aren’t the same people. Yeah, okay, we believe you. NOT. And because it is just so much fun to see them squirm, I am keeping in the part that is repetitive of the article above, especially the quotes from Eisen. Oh, what a funny guy:

“A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few ‘false positives’ – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else,” Norm Eisen, a special counsel to the president, writes on the White House blog. “The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.”

Adds Eisen: “This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information.”

Uh, ya know, I think we are all smart enough to not get all confused by this incredible level of “transparency.” Beginning with, we actually know the definition of “transparency,” something Eisen and Obama apparently do not.

And then there is this:

One thing is clear: *Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern holds sway at the White House, where he’s listed for 22 visits—the top number on the logs. Visitors in the top 10 also include former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan.

So THAT’S what Gandy and Keenan got for stabbing Hillary Clinton and, well, WOMEN, int he back – visits to the White House. I guess there is something gained by selling your soul, though, personally, I don’t think it is worth it. But that’s just me.

Anywho – yes, the President of the SEIU, again, the union co-founded by the founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, is the TOP visitor at the White House. The SEIU has been in the news quite a bit, especially for holding California hostage – threatening that their good buddy, Obama, would not give the state any federal stimulus funds if it had the audacity to expect the union to cut wages like everyone else so the state wouldn’t go bankrupt. NOW we know how the union was able to do that. All those visits to the White House apparently paid off – for the union, not California, the state with one of the largest budgets around (as in 5th in the world). What makes this more egregious is that California pays a lot into the federal tax system and receives little comparatively speaking. And this union is allowed – by the White House – to hold it over a barrel. Yep, all those meetings seemed to do the trick!

Aren’t you just so heartened by all of this “transparency”? And by seeing who Obama is welcoming into our White House? Yeah, me, too. As long as the Obama Administration continues to thumb its nose at Federal Law, I reckon we should be “thankful” for this (no, not really – it’s BS that they are still sitting on so much information).

Oh, but if you can just GUESS who might else have been there and submit that form asking them, maybe you can confirm some other folks who have been there, too. Lemme know what you find out, okay? I am sure we would all just love to know…

Turns out I am not the only one who wonders why Obama continues to get a free pass for actions that, had Bush done them, would be front page news (and again, I have NO love lost for Bush – absolutely zero, but fair is fair). Josh Gerstein of Politico had these same questions, about which he wrote in this article, What If Bush Had Done That?. Indeed:

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

The media’s “echo chamber”? That is a kind reference for what they are really doing, or rather aren’t doing: their jobs. Conservatives aren’t the only ones questioning why this is happening. Anyone who truly cares about the our democracy and the state of journalism in this country are asking, too. But they do ask a good question:

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. … There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”

There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”

I agree that Bush seemed to be treated with kit gloves, way, way too much for my liking. The media does seem to enjoy determining who our next president will be. But even Bush’s treatment pales in comparison to the lovefest the MSM has had for Obama.

So yes, they are now asking why Obama excludes women (though he has now tried to rectify that by asking ONE woman, Melody Barnes, to play golf with him) in his games? We have known for ages that often, it is on the golf course or basketball court that favors are curried or power is amassed, hence the desire for women to achieve membership in numerous country clubs across the country. Oh, and Obama’s response to the NY Time’s articles highlighting that women were excluded? “Bunk, ” he said. Uh, yeah, no. It isn’t, President Obama.

There are too many examples of just how Obama has been allowed to skate free:

But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:

New Orleans

As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.

But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.

“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.

For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.

Forget “Bush Officials.” How about us plain ol’ Americans? We’re pretty pissed off about it, too. Just saying. A biggie is this:

Managing The Press

When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.

Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”

“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known … the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”

One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”

No freakin’ kidding. People would be screaming their fool heads off about free speech. But the Obamam crowd? They just jump on the Fox bashing bandwagon. Nice.

And this is a big one, too:

Politicizing the White House

Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.

So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.

“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.

Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president … doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.

Uh, yeah, sure, okay, Mr. Mealy Mouth Man. We all buy that one, right? Uh, yeah, no.

Then there is this one:

Dealing With Business, In Secret

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.

Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.

I admit, this did actually get a rise from a few folks, like Greg Palast. But that moment seems to have passed now. Now, people rarely mention it. Big surprise…

And another issue near and dear to many of us:

Toning Down Human Rights

During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.

And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.

Obama snubbed the DALAI LAMA. C’mon already – THAT’S not going to get an outcry? He’s the DALAI LAMA, for pete’s sake! No? *Crickets*

Just for, um, fun:

Traveling And Recreating

In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”

During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.

But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.

How quickly people change. If Bush had done ANY of these things, the HuffPo and Daily Kos crowds would have been going ballistic about it. But now that it’s THEIR guy, it’s peachy keen. Where is the sense of fair play? Where is the concept of right is right? No, all of that gets completely thrown out of the window if it is someone they actually LIKE.

That is just sad. While ethics can be situational, the similarities between Bush and Obama are glaring, as many of us said they were all along. To completely disregard any sense of decency because it’s their guy weakens their arguments about choosing him in the first place. It makes it crystal clear that this is about winning at all costs, and choosing someone with little more than a teleprompter to do so.

It weakens their arguments against Bush, too, though they will most likely never admit that. But it’s true. In this case, what’s god for the gander, is, well, good for the gander.

Maybe if the media actually starts to do its job (for instance, where are all of the photos of Obama playing golf all of the time? Or basketball? They never failed to show Bush playing or riding his bike.), maybe they will start to open their eyes. One can hope, anyway. In the meantime, it continues to be our job to hold Obama’s feet to the fire for decisions he makes, and doesn’t make. It is our job to hold up the glaring similarities between Bush and Obama. And do so we will…

This should be a great game, too – two former Cleveland Indians pitchers will face off on the mound: CC Sabathia for the Yankees (19-8 regular season record; 3-0 postseason with a 1.19 ERA). At 6′7″, Sabathia is an imposing presence on the mound. Cliff Lee will be pitching for the Phillies (14-13 regular season; 2-0 postseason with a .074 ERA).

The Yankees will seek their revenge against Cliff Lee, who won against the Yankees in their season opener at the brand new stadium. Each team will have its work cut out for it to win against either one of these stellar pitchers. And each team has very good players coming up to the plate against them.

All in all, it should be an exciting series. Let’s hope so, anyway, with good officiating (THAT would be a change), great plays, and no injuries,

Below is a good review of the upcoming game, the pitchers, and the players:

<a href=”http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=ac3b28fb-a563-4171-a786-73a9970759f6&from=IV2_en-us_foxsports_articles” target=”_new” title=”Rosenthal: World Series preview”>Video: Rosenthal: World Series preview</a>

More on Pedro Martinez on Thursday. That will be fun. (The guys above already touched on it – “Who’s Your Daddy” chant by the Yankee fans will be explained.)

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden will also be on hand for this game as it will serve to honor returning veterans and their families. Oh, yay – I cannot even get away from the Obamas when watching my diversion from politics! Sheesh. Oh, well – hopefully we won’t miss home runs, or strikeouts, or stolen bases because they are focusing on those two. Just saying.

Believe it or not, this IS an Open Thread, and not just for baseball! What’s on your mind? Rep. Grayson calling Linda Robertson, Bernanke’s adviser, a “whore”? Obama playing as much golf in the first 9 months as Bush did in 34 months? The bombing in Pakistan? Let’s have it!

And if you ARE a baseball fan, hope to see you here later on!

General McChrystal’s proposal for Afghanistan has been on Obama’s desk for almost two months now. And what is Obama doing about it? Well, he appears to be deciding on how to decide what his decision will be, but he’s not there yet. Nope, instead, he is throwing up some smokescreen about the need for a do-over in Afghanistan’s election (wait – how come WE can’t get one of those??) before he will commit. And smokescreen it is. Even Secretary of Defense Gates has told him he can’t wait that long.

Obama needs to stop tip-toeing around Afghanistan, and own it, as a part of his presidency. For that matter, he needs to own his presidency, as Peggy Noonan points out in this commentary, It’s His Rubble Now: And the American people want him to fix it.. Uh, yeah. Pretty much. She writes:

At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn’t hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I’m owning it.

Mr. Bush surely knew from the moment he put the bullhorn down that he would be judged on everything that followed. And he has been. Early on, the American people rallied to his support, but Americans are practical people. They will support a leader when there is trouble, but there’s an unspoken demand, or rather bargain: We’re behind you, now fix this, it’s yours.

President Obama, in office a month longer than Bush was when 9/11 hit, now owns his presidency. Does he know it? He too stands on rubble, figuratively speaking—a collapsed economy, high and growing unemployment, two wars. Everyone knows what he’s standing on. You can almost see the smoke rising around him. He’s got a bullhorn in his hand every day.

It’s his now. He gets the credit and the blame. How do we know this? The American people are telling him. You can see it in the polls. That’s what his falling poll numbers are about. “It’s been almost a year, you own this. Fix it.”

Pretty much. Though he seems to be using his bullhorn for all the wrong things, IMHO. Noonan continues:

The president doesn’t seem to like this moment. Who would? He and his men and women have returned to referring to what they “inherited.” And what they inherited was, truly, terrible: again, a severe economic crisis and two wars. But their recent return to this theme is unbecoming. Worse, it is politically unpersuasive. It sounds defensive, like a dodge.

The president said last week, at a San Francisco fund-raiser, that he’s busy with a “mop,” “cleaning up somebody else’s mess,” and he doesn’t enjoy “somebody sitting back and saying, ‘You’re not holding the mop the right way.’” Later, in New Orleans, he groused that reporters are always asking “Why haven’t you solved world hunger yet?” His surrogates and aides, in appearances and talk shows, have taken to remembering, sometimes at great length, the dire straits we were in when the presidency began.

This is not a sign of confidence. Nor were the president’s comments to a New York fund-raiser this week. Democrats, he said to the Democratic audience, are “an opinionated bunch.” They always have a lot of thoughts and views. Republicans, on the other hand—”the other side”—aren’t really big on independent thinking. “They just kinda sometimes do what they’re told. Democrats, ya’ll thinkin’ for yourselves.” It is never a good sign when the president gets folksy, dropping his g’s, because he is by nature not a folksy g-dropper but a coolly calibrating intellectual who is always trying to guess, as most politicians do, what normal people think. When Mr. Obama gets folksy he isn’t narrowing his distance from his audience but underlining it. He shouldn’t do this.

But the statement that Republicans just do what they’re told was like his famous explanation of unhappy voters are people who “cling to guns or religion.” (What comes over him at fund-raisers?) Both statements speaks of a political misjudgment of his opponents and his situation.They show a misdiagnosis of the opposition that is politically tin-eared. Politicians looking to win don’t patronize those they’re trying to win over.

No kidding – insulting people you want to win over is thoroughly unhelpful, though it’s a strategy we have seen way too much of of late (and for a great post on that little soundbite of Obama’s, I recommend fellow No Quarter writer, Ani’s, post, “President Obama Is Insulting Americans Again”). I, for one, do not respond well to it, but that’s just me.

Back to Noonan:

But the point on the We Inherited a Terrible Situation and It’s Not Our Fault argument is, again, that it is worse than unbecoming. It is unpersuasive.

How do we know this? Through the polls. In all of the major surveys, the president’s popularity has gone down the past few months. A Gallup Daily Tracking Poll out this week reported Mr. Obama’s job approval dropped nine points during the third quarter of this year, that is between July 1 and Sept. 30, when it fell from 62% to 53%. It was the biggest such drop Gallup has ever measured for an elected president during the same period of his term. A Fox News poll out Thursday showed support for the president’s policies falling below 50% for the first time. Ominously for him, independents are peeling off. In 2006 and 2008 independents looked like Democrats. They were angry and frustrated by the wars, they sought to rebuke the Bush White House. Now those independents look like Republicans. They worry about joblessness, debts and deficits.

The White House sees the falling support. Thus the reminder: We faced an insuperable challenge, we’re mopping up somebody else’s mess.

The Democratic Party too sees the falling support, and is misunderstanding it. The great question they debated last week was whether the president is tough enough: Does he come across as too weak? It is true, as the cliché has it, that it’s helpful for a president to be both revered and feared. But this president is not weak, that’s not his problem. He willed himself into the presidency with an adroit reading of the lay of the land, brought together and dominated all the constituent pieces of victory, showed and shows impressive self-discipline, seems in general to stick to a course once he’s chosen it, though arguably especially when he’s wrong. His decision to let Congress write a health-care bill may yield at least the appearance of victory. And if Mr. Obama isn’t twisting arms like LBJ, and then giving just an extra little jerk to snap the rotator cuff just for fun, the case can be made that day by day he’s moving the Democrats of Congress in the historic direction he desires. All his adult life he’s played the long game, which takes patience and skill.

She forgot the lying, cheating, stealing, and downright theft, that helped propel Obama into the presidency, but whatever. What I don’t get is why people continue to forget that the Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress for TWO YEARS before Obama became president. All of the stuff that happened in the two preceding years, like the stimulus bill, the economy, all of that, is on their hands. This, “Oh, poor me – look at how much I have to clean up! Being president is HARD WORK, just like Bush said!” has long passed its usefulness, if it ever had any.

It’s more than that:

The problem isn’t his personality, it’s his policies. His problem isn’t what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality. (Republicans would best heed this as they gear up for 2010: Don’t hit him, hit his policies. That’s where the break with the people is occurring.)

The result of all this is flagging public support, a drop in the polls, and independents peeling off.

In this atmosphere, with these dynamics, Mr. Obama’s excuse-begging and defensiveness won’t work.

Everyone knows he was handed horror. They want him to fix it.

At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it’s your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it’s yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That’s the American people telling him.

Not for nothing, but he kept telling US he could handle this job. Many of us knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t, but at some point, it’s sink or swim, and we are already beyond that point. No more whining and crying about the crap sandwich you got handed when you fought so dirty to get there in the first place. I guarantee you, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be complaining left and right. She’d push up her shirt sleeves and get to work. That is what we expect of Obama, too.

Oh, one last thing. About those fundraisers Obama is flitting around doing while we have all of these major issues detailed above? In the first nine months of his presidency, Obama has gone to TWENTY-THREE fundraisers. In the first twenty, he has raised $20 million for the DNC coffers. That’s just jake.

Want to guess how many Bush did in the same amount of time? Six. I said, SIX. And Bush raised $48 million from his six, and he did none after the attacks on September 11th.

I can’t leave Bill Clinton out. He did five fundraisers in nine months. That’s it.

Sure shows you what is important to Obama, and it is not running this country. Time for him to own the presidency he fought so dirty to get, and roll up HIS shirt sleeves like Secretary Clinton has done. Way, way past time, in fact. Get to it already.

The American Idol president is running his own reality show and we are picking up the tab. Mr. Obama seems to think that he and his wife are the most fascinating part of the American narrative. Last Friday, the IOC clarified the butter for the Obamas. In the past months, we have published many articles reporting on Kool Aid drinkers who have lifted their heads from the pink trough, dazed and confused, wondering where the “Change” is. The list is long: Peggy Noonan, Frank Rich, Susan Estrich, Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, Robert Reich. Feel free to add your own. Today I add three more to that growing list.

First WaPo’s Richard Cohen complains Obama Doesn’t Seem Ready to Lead:

Barack Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome. But as it turned out (an airy dismissal would not be an unfair description), it poses some questions about his presidency that are way more important than the proper venue for synchronized swimming. The first, and to my mind most important, is whether Obama knows who he is.

This business of self-knowledge is no minor issue. It bears greatly on the single most crucial issue facing this young and untested president: Afghanistan. Already, we have his choice for Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, taking the measure of his commander in chief and publicly telling him what to do. This MacArthuresque star turn called for a Trumanesque response, but Obama offered nothing of the kind. Instead, he used McChrystal as a prop, adding a bit of four-star gravitas to that silly trip to Copenhagen by having the general meet with him there.

Mr. Cohen is blaming Gen. McChrystal for someone else leaking his report to the President. The more important point is, as Gen. Wes Clark or anyone else who’s actually been in this position will tell you (and as he did say in an interview this weekend), you’d better listen to your commanders on the ground. Cohen is right that the 25 minute meeting with McChrystal on Friday was merely a photo op. He’s still deliberating. How many more months of ‘deliberating” are required while our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan?

This is the president we now have: He inspires lots of affection but not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in international affairs, where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests await Obama. If he remains consistent to his own rhetoric of just last August, he will send more troops to Afghanistan and more of them will die. “This is not a war of choice,” he said. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

President Obama has the disastrous example of Iraq where Bush’s Generals told him from the outset that an overwhelming force was needed. They did not get it. You saw the result. Obama himself admitted that the belated 2007 surge was wildly successful. How much more evidence does he need? Define the mission, and either send the forces in to get the job done or pull all our men and women out of there. Choose. Lead. That’s the job description. Date night I don’t care about. Dog walking I don’t care about.

Cohen concludes:

But the ultimate in realism is for the president to gauge himself and who he is: Does he have the stomach and commitment for what is likely to be an unpopular war? Will he send additional troops, but hedge by not sending enough — so that the dying will be in vain? What does he believe, and will he ask Americans to die for it? Only he knows the answers to these questions. But based on his zigzagging so far and the suggestion from the Copenhagen trip that the somber seriousness of the presidency has yet to sink in, we have reason to wonder.

Has the seriousness of the presidency sunk in? Now there’s a question.

You may be surprised to note that NY Times columnist Bob Herbert is wondering the same thing. A huge cheerleader for Obama, Herbert cried racism and even saw phallic symbols in the leaning tower of Pisa in a misguided attempt to defend his chosen hero last year. Now he wonders Does Obama Get It? Well, Mr. Herbert, don’t feel bad. This question has been keeping me up nights, too. He states:

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

Clearly Mr. Herbert, if you have to ask, then Obama does not understand the gravity of the situation. Where is his good judgment? How can one not understand 9.8 unemployment – in reality it is a much higher number when one includes Americans out of work for so long they have fallen off the rolls.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. …

Nearly one in four American families has suffered a job loss over the past year, according to a survey released by the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans is officially unemployed, and the real-world jobless rate is worse.

It is a nightmare. No one is blasé when they are worried how they are going to feed their families. What about the porkulus package? Is this administration waiting to release most of the funds in 2010 to help them at the polls? If that is the case, shame on them.

Why should Obama understand when he isn’t spending his own money? Half million dollar pizza parties, an obscene amount spent on the inauguration and several million on this reckless Copenhagen junket show a frightening disconnect between Obama’s priorities and his fiduciary responsibility to the American people. Herbert continues:

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

If that does not change, these staggering levels of joblessness have the potential to cripple not just the well-being of millions of American families, but any real prospects for sustained economic recovery and the political prospects of the president as well. An unemployed electorate is an unhappy electorate.

Mr. Herbert, they are already crippled, but instead of addressing the urgency of the economy and Afghanistan head on, we get what George Will calls The Obamas’ Narcissism on Display. Speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s speeches before the IOC last week,

…Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance.

Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about … themselves. Although the working of the committee’s mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds — unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

George Will suggested that since the Obamas used so many “I” and “me” references in their speeches, Obama’s genius speechwriters (Favreau et al) should have substituted the words I and me with “sauerkraut” to underscore the ‘antic nature of their excessive appearances.’ Someone needs to tell the Obamas that what is compelling about America is all Americans – all colors of the rainbow, all states, all social strata – together. All of us. Not just the two of them. And all of us are hurting out here. Our soldiers are hurting, too.

Will also points to Obama’s excessive use of cliché:

“At this defining moment,” a moment “when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations” in “this ever-shrinking world,” he aspires to “forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.”
…
Does our Cicero even glance at his speeches before reading them in public?

All this is indicative of a man not connected to his words or not caring enough about either his audience or the subject at hand to come up with anything better than patented brand phrases that some focus group told him “resonate” with the public.

Our soldiers and our economy need a coherent plan. Now. He has had ample time to figure this out, as has Congress. Too much energy is focused on infighting for a health care plan that is such an incoherent monstrosity that they should trash it and start over. This is not even supposed to take effect until 2013, after the next election. Hmmm I wonder why. All things considered, that leaves health care the least urgent issue of the three.

On Afghanistan and the economy, pressing matters where lives, jobs and homes are on the line – where is the president? Will concludes:

Unhappy will be a president whose defining adjective is “vain.”

In keeping with the vanity of this man’s administration, we also see that nothing President Obama does is his own fault. This is the job he wanted. And a majority of the electorate voted him in to do it. What is he waiting for? There is no one else to blame if he hems and haws so long that Afghanistan is lost. There is no one else to blame if he insists on focusing on parts of an agenda that are not helping put the American people back to work. This is his presidency now. So I’ll ask again.

Mr. President, why did you want this job?

If this isn’t indoctrination, I don’t know what is:

Here are the words, in case you can’t understand them:

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

Second Song:

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say “hooray!”
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

HOLY SHIT. Can you believe this? Just insert “George Walker Bush” in there instead of “Barack Hussein Obama” to get a full sense of how disturbing this is. Hell, insert any president’s name, it doesn’t matter. I imagine most parents would object to their children, their SMALL children especially, being taught to sing the praises of “Dear Leader” – WOW. That’s not how Americans roll.

Or wasn’t, until now.

Someone NOT singing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama is Michelle Paterson, wife of embattled New York Governor, David Paterson. She is mighty upset that Obama wants to push out the first African American governor in NY. So is her husband:

Paterson added, “I never heard of a president asking a governor not to run … so I thought it was very unusual that this would be asked of David and I don’t think it’s right.”

Obama aides have asked the embattled Democratic governor, who has done poorly in recent polls, not to run for governor in 2010.

Paterson said her husband was shocked at the request.

“I think he was stunned. Like I said this is very unusual,” she said.

And Ms. Paterson revealed what Obama whispered into Gov. Paterson’s ear when they met the other day. Are you ready? According to First Lady:

Ms. Paterson also said that Obama told the governor during a trip to upstate New York on Monday that he was “a little chagrined about how the White House handled the message.”

He was not chagrined at the MESSAGE to the governor, mind you, not at the backstabbing of Gov. Paterson, but the way it was HANDLED. Oh, I am sure The One made it ALL better with that admission.

I wonder if THAT is going to make it into the elementary school song of praise to Obama? I’m guessing not…

No need to take my word for it. Watch this short video (from a traffic camera) to get an idea of just how many people were there (and again, thanks to Logistics Monster, who was THERE, for this video link):

The thing that bugged me about the MSM reporting is that they consistently copied each other – oh, no wait – it just LOOKED that way (check out their opening lines in the articles above and you’ll see what I mean). No, it is that they consistently claimed the marchers were all Conservatives. Apparently, this was their way to dismiss the real anger and frustration people have toward this Congress, whose approval rating is LOW, something else these writers could have looked up easily, and this President, whose ratings continue to decline. They just write them off as some right-wing whackos (1.5 million or so of them), and pay no attention to their actual concerns.

And they have plenty of them. You know, concerns like the fact that the US Government now owning 61% of GM (hey, anyone want to buy a Cadillac?); or that the Obama Administration is adding $3 MILLION to the National Debt EVERY MINUTE; or maybe it’s the 32 czars – oops, make that 31 czars (see ya, Van) Obama is appointing left and right; or the Health Care Bill; or I could go on and on and on. These aren’t just Conservative concerns – these are AMERICAN concerns. But they won’t report it that way, because it doesn’t suit the meme they have created. Had they bothered to talk to some more people on the ground, they would have found out they were Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, all coming together to protest the out of control spending of this Congress and this Administration. To put it in perspective, we are $1 TRILLION more in debt since Obama took office. $ONE TRILLION. Once again, that’s not just an issue for Conservatives. That is an issue for ALL Americans.

Here are some photos of signs at the march – they came via Barbara Espinosa who sent them to Pajamas Media at THIS site. You can see more there:

This video from – of all places – MSNBC – is a fairly good synopsis (though they still couldn’t refrain from painting this as a wholly conservative movement – until the very, very end, when the reporter actually spoke the truth). I saw it at Michelle Malkin’s site while looking for an awesome photo I saw last night, which I have not been able to find again. The sign said, “We Are Not Wee Weed Up: We are PISSED!” If I find it, I’ll add it. Here’s the video:

This is but a snapshot of the day. There is so, so much more to the events of the day, the numbers of people, the calls for accountability in our government.

For those people who aren’t upset about the added $Trillion to our deficit, the takeover of GM, the unvetted czars, the $Trillion Health Care Plan, etc., etc., those people who are downplaying the size of this march, who blow it off as just some group of conservatives going off half cocked, my question is, Why the hell are you NOT upset at what our government is doing??? Bill Clinton downsized our government tremendously, Bush increased it, and now Obama is bankrupting it. Why AREN’T they upset??

In his August 20, 2009, meeting with supporters at the Democratic National Committee and its “Organizing for America” (OFA) arm – formerly the “Obama for America” campaign – President Obama blamed the media for the fact that many untrue claims made by opponents of his health care reform push had been accepted by many Americans as fact.

Stating that end of life care was “previously considered a bipartisan concept,” the president said, “this used to be just a sensible thing that everybody could agree to.”

But it “suddenly became ‘Death Panels,’ and scared Grandma,” he said, “and it’s just irresponsible.”

“Scared Grandma?” Can our President say anything that doesn’t sound condescending and insulting?

The president added, “I have to say, part of the reason it spreads is the way reporting is done today. If somebody puts out misinformation, ‘Obama’s Creating Death Panels,’ then the way the news report comes across is: ‘Today such-and-such accused President Obama of putting forward death panels. The White House responded that that wasn’t true.’ And then they go on to the next story. And what they don’t say is, ‘In fact it isn’t true.’”

Even more preposterous than the President demonizing “grandma” and anyone else angered by the arrogant, flatfooted handling of health care reform legislation, he is now demonizing the press, his strongest allies.

No “death panels” eh? Glad to hear it. But I wonder why a Senate subcommittee then promptly removed a suspicious sounding provision from their bill after Sarah Palin made a stink about it on her Facebook page. Even Obama cheerleader Eugene Robinson admitted she had a point. His monstrous health care bill (I think there are 5) has not even been formulated yet, but the Obama Administration is going full steam ahead selling it to the American people, criticizing anyone questioning their audacity in ramming through a bill no one understands. The latest we hear is that Obama has backed off the public option. This magical health care legislation morphs into something new daily.

As Tapper points out:

Today OFA sent out an email to supporters continuing this line of criticism. (You can see the email HERE.)

“Over the past few months, two things have become clear about the fight for health insurance reform,” writes OFA director Mitch Stewart. “1. Our opponents will create and spread outrageous lies to try to stop President Obama from creating real change. 2. We just can’t count on the media to debunk them.”

Obama cannot count on the media? Not two months ago, he made fun of the media’s fawning when he joked about rolling over in bed to find Brian Williams lying beside him. The President is also being disingenuous. When the “death panels” comment hit the net, the press was all over itself debunking it, and insulting Palin once again. The American people saw through the many conflicting statements on health care and decided they weren’t buying. That is the real issue. But the President can’t come out and tell the American people off for not being seduced by more smoke and mirrors.

This comment is the pièce de resistance…

Stewart then quoted President Obama from August 20, and said supporters need to “double our own efforts to get the truth out. That means more organizers running door-to-door canvases and phone banks to educate our neighbors, more events to spread the word to Congress, and more ads on the air countering the smears. And we’ll need the money to pay for it all. Can you chip in to help make it happen?”

“Stepping in when the media fails is a daunting challenge,” Stewart writes.

Yes, let’s go door to door for more bullying. Let’s raise lots more money people don’t have to push a plan when we’re still not sure what’s in it.

So far, this administration has not earned enough points with the American people to convince us we should take legislation this important on faith. Stewart has a lot of nerve to talk about what should be done when the media fails to do its job. I think there are still a good number of Hillary’s 18,000,000 voters who might like to get a piece of that action.

No one, not even President George Bush ever had such loving, sycophantic treatment by the press. More than owing contributors to his huge war chest, President Obama owes the mainstream media for their blind praise and abject refusal to vet him throughout 2008. That was reason numero uno why this man was elected. Now he is criticizing the press for actually daring to let a little real news see the light of day. In reality, he is criticizing the fact that press efforts to minimize the gravity of grass roots opposition has backfired.

Of course we need reform, but before we do something drastic to 1/6th of the economy in such perilous times, let’s make sure we are doing something to help, not hurt. The Obama Administration has once again chosen bullying and hubris over returning to the drawing board to fix the problem.

The media still defends the President at every turn. It is an indicator of negative public sentiment when the President feels he must resort to criticism of an organism that has largely functioned as his own personal PR firm for 20 months. It will be interesting to see if any of our so called journalists finally declare enough is enough and remember the way they USED to do their jobs.

We’re waiting…

Transparency, said President Barack Obama in a memo not long after he took the oath of office, was going to be a “touchstone” of his administration. His advisors then gathered around, breaking into a paroxysm of giggles interlaced with assurances to each other that dumbbell Americans would actually buy this stuff.

What fun to have power, they laughed. What fun!

OK, true enough, I cannot vouch for any post-promise merriment, but I can vouch that it did not take all that long for the administration to emulate former Vice President Dick Cheney’s thoroughly castigated private meetings with top energy executives working with him on policy issues. The public did not learn what was said or who attended. Especially among liberals, suspicion of dastardliness was high.

Well, speaking for myself, I concur – I was pretty upset about Cheney’s secret meeting with energy executives to craft our energy policy. Amazingly, there is a correlation:

The Obama version was to meet secretly with coal executives while devising the content of a cap-and-trade global-warming tax, explaining that presidential communications are privileged and did not fall under the Freedom of Information Act. Judges had differed with that idea, and so did Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which filed suit and, then, not too much later had reason to try again to get the names of people visiting the White House for sessions on the nation’s future.

This time it was health-care executives on hand to lend their ideas and expertise about health-care legislation. The administration at first resisted divulging the names, but finally did — which is hardly the same as saying we can now figure on the steadfast openness which once upon a time was guaranteed by Obama himself.

Oh, wait – did I write “correlation”? I meant, “correlationS.” Obama hasn’t stopped with just energy, obviously. Yep – health care people, too – and we are seeing how well that is going over right now.

Naturally, there is more:

Take a glance, for instance, at the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Alan Carlin, a senior analyst with EPA’s National Center for Economics, had the temerity along with a colleague to produce a paper casting doubt on global-warming theory and especially on the reliability of computer models predicting catastrophe down the pike. His boss made it clear that the thesis was contrary to policy and the paper would not be allowed out the door.

I missed the liberal outcry on this, as opposed, say, to what we heard when NASA’s global-warming alarmist James Hansen whined that his press releases might be reviewed before being released during the Bush administration. No such reviews ever took place, which hardly stopped one outraged commentator from complaining that we were now in an era reminiscent of Josef Stalin’s viciously controlling discourse in the Soviet Union. Hansen, the Journal piece reminds us, had given hundreds of speeches on the terror of warming, many of them during the Bush years.

Look next at what’s been happening in Congress: Votes on nation-altering legislation roughly as transparent as a stone wall is transparent, last-minute concoctions of 1,000 pages and more that not a single member of Congress could conceivably have had time to read. For that matter, few if any members could have had a grasp of any number of important elements in these bills even through the secondhand summaries, which is to say, the democratic process was rendered meaningless. Then-Sen. Obama had pointedly complained when Republicans did this sort of thing in the Bush years. Now, as president, he was cheering on rush-job legislating as crucial to the common good.

Obama is more nearly Mr. Obfuscation than he is Mr. Transparency, as he showed during the campaign when he failed to tell us anything much about his passport or medical records, his clients as a lawyer or his college records. Even if you hold hands with him on some of his secrecy then and now, a point to consider is that this is a politician like so many who talk one way and behave another, not someone refreshingly candid and different, just someone who is very good at an old game.

True enough. I like it: Mr. Obfuscation. I think that is a perfect moniker for Obama. The Obfuscator In Chief. Sure, works for me!

Actually, it doesn’t. What he is doing is working for a select, very select, group of people, not for US. And that is the problem with the lack of transparency, with the reneging on promises made, for all of us. Obama, and Congress, are serving the interests of a very few, the same complaint we had about Bush and Cheney.

Here we go again…

Well, here is another one: Signing Statements. Yes, the bane of our existence, or at least one of them, during the Bush Years. Yep, apparently, Obama has changed his mind. Just like he did on FISA. DADT. DOMA. And I could go on. So could you, I am sure (and feel free to do so). In this NY Times article, “Obama’s Embrace of a Bush Tactic Riles Congress,” we have yet another example of how much like Bush Obama really is:

President Obama has issued signing statements claiming the authority to bypass dozens of provisions of bills enacted into law since he took office, provoking mounting criticism by lawmakers from both parties.

President George W. Bush, citing expansive theories about his constitutional powers, set off a national debate in 2006 over the propriety of signing statements — instructions to executive officials about how to interpret and put in place new laws — after he used them to assert that he could authorize officials to bypass laws like a torture ban and oversight provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

In the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements an “abuse,” and said he would issue them with greater restraint. The Obama administration says the signing statements the president has signed so far, challenging portions of five bills, have been based on mainstream interpretations of the Constitution and echo reservations routinely expressed by presidents of both parties.

Still, since taking office, Mr. Obama has relaxed his criteria for what kinds of signing statements are appropriate. And last month several leading Democrats — including Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and David R. Obey of Wisconsin — sent a letter to Mr. Obama complaining about one of his signing statements.

Wow! How shocking that Obama would do this!!!! That is so unlike him! Which, by the upside-down rules that now seem to govern journalism, and well, governance, I mean, “Of course Obama was going to do this!! Did anyone really believe otherwise?” Apparently, some people did:

“During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of Congressional statutes he was required to enforce,” they wrote. “We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude.”

They were reacting to a statement Mr. Obama issued after signing a bill that expanded assistance to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while requiring the administration to pressure the organizations to adopt certain policies. Mr. Obama said he could disregard the negotiation instructions under his power to conduct foreign relations.

The administration protested that it planned to carry out the provisions anyway and that its statement merely expressed a general principle. But Congress was not mollified. On July 9, in a bipartisan rebuke, the House of Representatives voted 429 to 2 to ban officials from using federal money to disobey the restrictions. And in their July 21 letter, Mr. Frank and Mr. Obey — the chairmen of the Financial Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee — asked Mr. Obama to stop issuing such signing statements, warning that Congress might not approve more money for the banking organizations unless he agreed.

Oh, nice. And it gets worse:

In March, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent Mr. Obama a letter criticizing a signing statement that challenged a statute protecting government whistle-blowers who tell lawmakers privileged or “otherwise confidential” information. He accused Mr. Obama of chilling potential whistle-blowers, undermining the intent of Congress in a way that violated his campaign promises. The White House said it intended only to reaffirm similar reservations made by previous presidents. (Emphasis mine)

Yes, I am sure that was Obama’s intent – not to threaten government whistle blowers. No, of COURSE not – who would think such a thing???
That’s not all:

Other laws Mr. Obama has said he need not obey as written include format requirements for budget requests, limits on whom he may appoint to a commission, and a restriction on putting troops under United Nations command.

After Mr. Bush transformed signing statements from an obscure tool into a commonplace term, Mr. Obama’s willingness to use them has disappointed some who had hoped he would roll back the practice, not entrench it.

“We didn’t think it was an appropriate practice when President Bush was doing it, and our policy is such that we don’t think it is an appropriate practice when President Obama is doing it,” said H. Thomas Wells, who just stepped down as president of the American Bar Association.

In 2006, the association called the practice unconstitutional and said presidents should veto legislation if it had flaws, giving Congress a chance to override the pronouncements.

No freakin’ duh. And not for nothing, but OBAMA claimed that it was inappropriate, too, when Bush was doing it. But that was then, this is now.

Naturally, Obama has some folks in his corner:

But other legal experts argued that signing statements were lawful and appropriate because it was impractical to veto important bills over small problems. Among them, Walter Dellinger, who helped develop the legal framework for signing statements as a Clinton administration official, said Mr. Obama was using the mechanism appropriately, and the problem with Mr. Bush’s statements was that he cited dubious legal theories.

“The fact that a previous or subsequent president might refuse to comply with laws that are valid is not a reason for this president to decline to assert his authority with regard to laws that are invalid,” Mr. Dellinger said.

Mr. Dellinger signed a 2006 essay defending signing statements with other former Clinton officials, including David Barron and Martin Lederman, who now run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. They work with White House lawyers Daniel Meltzer and Trevor Morrison, along with Office of Management and Budget officials, to produce Mr. Obama’s statements.

Since the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed bills while calling a provision unconstitutional. But the practice was rare until President Ronald Reagan. He and his successors, including Bill Clinton, began issuing signing statements much more frequently and challenging far more provisions.

The practice peaked under Mr. Bush, who challenged nearly 1,200 provisions of bills over eight years — about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio professor.

Remember when Obama invoked the name of Ronald Reagan as a pivotal president, singing his praises? Well, that told SOME of us something Not enough of us were paying attention, though. Anyway, thus far, here are the numbers:

Mr. Obama has attached signing statements to 5 of the 42 bills he has signed, focusing on 19 specific provisions. He also challenged, without listing them, “numerous provisions” in a budget bill requiring officials to obtain permission from a Congressional committee before spending money. It contained dozens of such requirements.

In the presidential campaign, the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, promised never to issue a signing statement. By contrast, Mr. Obama said it was a legitimate way “to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives” when used with greater restraint than Mr. Bush.

“Restraint,” Mr. Obama and his campaign said then, included not issuing “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent” or “nullify or undermine Congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

But in March, when he issued a presidential memorandum on signing statements, Mr. Obama defined restraint as citing only “interpretations of the Constitution that are well founded,” a subtle shift that provides greater leeway.

Still, unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has not mentioned the Unitary Executive Theory, an expansive view of executive power that conflicts with Supreme Court precedent. His only invocation of his commander-in-chief authority was limited, taking aim at a requirement that he get permission from a military subordinate before taking an action.

“He has not pushed the envelope as far as the Bush administration in making the kind of claims that Bush made,” said Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University professor who studies signing statements. “But he is still using it in ways that were controversial before George W. Bush came to office.”

Yet. He has not mentioned the “Unitary Executive Theory” YET. Does anyone honestly think he won’t at some point? That’s what I thought.

This is what else I think: Obama = Bush = Obushma. Really, they should have seen it coming. He gave out some not-so-subtle hints, all along the way, which they chose to ignore. At our peril, of course – because we are the ones who will ultimately bear the brunt of it all. Again.

Clearly Mr. Van Dyk was a huge fan of this President, thought his campaign “superb” and appreciated his promises of “reaching across party and ideological lines to get the public’s business done.” Van Dyk opines:

“You displayed an intellect and sense of cool that made us think you would weigh decisions carefully and view advisers’ proposals with skepticism.”

You know what I get from that phrase? Since the President acted “cool,” some mighty educated people actually believed this to be more than just a pose on his part. Not unlike Madonna’s use of “Voguing” back in the day. Now perhaps they begin to see that a pose has neither to do with governing nor an ability to adapt to the changing realities on the ground.

At that point, Mr. Van Dyk goes off the rails and we see that his blanket approval has come to an end:

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

He then complains of Obama stocking his White House with “Clinton administration retreads who had learned their trade in the never-ending-campaign culture of the Clinton years.” Again, blame Clinton. But who did Mr. Van Dyk think this man was going to hire? He faults Obama for his “reliance on these Clinton holdovers.”

Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an “opportunity” to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed.

The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

Does Van Dyk assume any Democratic president would have been this reckless? Hillary Clinton had different health care proposals, different proposals for helping homeowners in this crisis and a much better understanding of the economy. None of her ideas are being utilized, I’m afraid. She just may have exhibited the good sense Mr. Van Dyk longs for and put the financial floor back under us before attempting a more drastic change. But we’ll never know…

Van Dyk discusses Mr. Obama being unfairly compared to FDR & LBJ. Discussing President Johnson’s “Great Society legislation”…

…at every stage, congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you’re stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

President Obama is in over his head, so of course he “outsourced.” Why is this gentleman surprised? Mr. Van Dyk willfully ignores the fact that the biggest culprit here is not a “Clinton retread,” but the Queen Bee herself, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She crafted the stimulus package behind closed doors and the President willingly allowed her this control. Perhaps that was his devil’s bargain for her help in kicking the ladder out from under Hillary. Republicans were not the only ones to be shut out of the crafting of the Stimulus package. Many Democrats were as well. Van Dyk continues:

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans — not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries — independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

He then offers up a prescription for a fix:

- Cut back both your proposals and expectations. You made promises about jobs that would be “created and saved” by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

It’s time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all — badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

- Talk less and pick your spots.

Applause and adulation are gratifying. But the more you talk, the less weight your words will hold. Let voters see you at your desk, conferring with serious people about serious matters. When you do choose to talk, people will understand that it’s important and they should listen.

“Let voters see you at your desk!” Doing some “work.” Great ideas!

- Conform your 2009 politics to your 2008 statements. During your campaign, you called for bipartisanship and bridge-building. You promised to reduce the influence of single-issue and single-interest groups in the policy process. Yet, in your public statements, you keep using President Bush as a scapegoat.

You have ceded content of your principal proposals to Democratic congressional leaders who in large part have yielded to special-interest constituencies and excluded Republican leaders from policy formulation. This certainly was the case with the stimulus plan. It has been the case with health and energy legislation, with the notable exception of Sen. Max Baucus’s attempt in the Senate Finance Committee to develop genuinely bipartisan legislation.

He concludes by telling Obama

“You have an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Americans of all persuasions. They want you to succeed. Level with them and trim your proposals to what is practical in the current environment.”

But ironically, it is Mr. Van Dyk’s closing statement with which I most take issue:

You had things right in 2008. Take a timeout. Get back to yourself. Make a fresh start.

He did not have things “right” in 2008 because there is no “self” to ‘get back to’. His campaign was always “words, just words.”

While I graduated college with high honors, I am no genius, yet I figured this out from my living room couch back in January of 2008. I watched this man at a debate and his “performance” told me everything I needed to know. I then looked at his voting record and the corporate interests with whom he surrounds himself, his addiction to pretty sound bytes and an over reliance on canned speeches rather than a resume that indicated he had worked even on a smaller level to achieve his stated goals. His current proposals are loaded with top heavy payback for special interests that arguably got him elected in the first place. Wall Street has gotten bailed out. Not Main Street. He lives in support of an oligarchy, like his immediate predecessor. If these are true Democratic principles, its the first I’ve heard of it.

The obscene amount of money spent on his inauguration, expensive “dates” and pizza parties and his hiring not less than 30 “czars” all of whom require staff and total salaries in the millions are more accurate indicators of the man than any of his campaign rhetoric.

Like Obama’s other supporters, perhaps Mr. Van Dyk has yet to understand that speeches will never equal governing ability. He too, blamed the Clintons for being “polarizing” as Bush was, but how true is his claim? Clinton passed true bi-partisan legislation. He had to, as he was working with a Republican Congress for 6 of his 8 years and did very well in that regard. But in his case, he also had deep knowledge of the economy and a willingness to reach across the aisle and conform to the existing reality. He certainly left the country in better shape than he found it.

President Obama, by contrast is the “salesman in chief.” That is what the DNC wanted. How is he supposed to pull us back to “reality” with his proposals when he clearly did not have these reasoned intentions in the first place, or a true understanding of how to get us there?

Apparently, Mr. Van Dyk has yet to travel the last mile in his awakening.

Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power.
…
Left behind on major presidential trips, overruled in choosing her own staff—Hillary Clinton is the invisible woman at State. But Obama’s brilliant foreign-policy spouse may not stay silent forever.

It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.

Consider the president’s Moscow trip a week ago. In a cozy scene at Vladimir Putin’s dacha, the boys enjoyed traditional Russian tea and breakfast on a terrace. Sitting on Putin’s right was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Where was Lavrov’s counterpart? She was back home, left there with a broken elbow to receive a visit from the ousted Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya.

Ms. Brown paints this as a deliberate slight by Obama, or a way to put his own ever-present and over exposed visage out front while keeping Hillary’s far more knowledgeable one out of the limelight. That may be so, but Brown leaves no room for the fact that Secretary Clinton may not have been able to travel last week due to her injury. No matter. Let’s try to harp on the fact that Hillary is diminished anyway. Other articles have been cropping up intimating the same and wondering “how long Hillary is going to put up with this.”

The far more important point Brown neglects to mention is that Obama’s solo trip was not considered a success. He made his amateurish pronouncements on the Cold War and received a long lecture by Putin and did not really get what he came for. President Obama’s actions will not be considered too clever in the long run if he reaps repercussions for having left the only adult in the room at home.

Ms. Brown continues…

Same thing last month, when the president stopped off to see King Abdullah en route to his oratorical home run in Cairo: no Hillary. Nor was there any sign of Middle East envoy George Mitchell or anyone else from the State Department on the Saudi leg of the trip, even though its main mission was to recruit Abdullah into a peace-making partnership with Israel. The king told Obama no, by the way, so it’s fair to ask whether the president could have used a bit more Foggy Bottom prep work. Jim Hoagland noted in Sunday’s Washington Post that the White House’s leak of Obama’s decision to send an ambassador to Syria took Clinton’s State Department by surprise and trumped State’s efforts to squeeze another concession or two out of Damascus first.

As. Mr. Hoagland rightly points out in his piece White House Fault Lines, this may be another strike against the Obama Administration, clearly making a mistake by trying to trump their own very loyal team at State – for no apparent reason.

Ms. Brown seems to delight in pointing out President Clinton’s being “curtailed” by Obama as a concession to his wife’s position. Yet I am sure Brown has a point in noting how Obama, together with Emanuel and Axelrod, need to stick their nose in appointments that should be left up to her:

Hillary, with her usual iron discipline about the big picture of power, is behaving like a stalwart team player. Before she took the job, she was assured she could pick her own trusted team. Yet she was overruled in appointing her own choice for deputy secretary, Richard Holbrooke. Instead, she was made to take an Obama guy, James Steinberg, who had originally been slated to become national-security adviser. (Hillary took care of Holbrooke, one of diplomacy’s biggest stars, by giving him the most explosive portfolio—Pakistan and Afghanistan.) She lost the ability to dole out major ambassadorships, too. A lot of these prizes are going to reward Obama fundraisers instead of knowledgeable appointees like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, whom she wanted to send to Japan.

Ms. Brown complains that Hillary was not given credit for getting Obama to put more troops in Afghanistan, inferring VP Biden is given credit for this. Well, this runs contrary to Ben Smith’s article in Politico, Clinton Gains Respect Out Of Spotlight, as quoted by CBS News, that Hillary trumped Biden on Afghanistan so perhaps Ms. Brown is overstating. Smith’s article is quick to point out that SoS Clinton’s popularity now stands at 71%, higher than the President’s. While pundits the likes of George Stephanopoulos intimated her portfolio and role is decreased because of envoys Holbrooke and Mitchell, Hillary always campaigned on hiring just such heavy hitting personnel to concentrate more diplomatic power in the middle east. Some choice quotes in this regard from the Politico article:

The envoys will be the primary metric through which you will judge her legacy…And even skeptical observers said Clinton appears to have won sufficient control over the envoys after a precarious start.

Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican who serves on the House subcommittee that oversees the State Department and describes himself as a Clinton “fan” for her role in pushing for sending more troops to Afghanistan…

“Between her consideration and her final confirmation she had lost some authority and power as all of these envoys were appointed,” he said. “Once she did get confirmed, though, what we have seen is a steady increase in her authority and control as we have seen envoys seeming to now work with her.”

Leaders in the region, he said, view her as “pre-eminent.” …Clinton is also afforded a level of day-to-day deference that underscores her stature. …The deputy secretary of state, Jim Steinberg, described Clinton’s role with the envoys as “the closer.” ….”The envoys tee it up for her,” he said in an interview. “It’s an extremely powerful way to use someone with her stature.”

Hillary Clinton has also been credited on many fronts as having, in short order, put diplomacy back under the charge of the State Department, rather than the military. Smith states her style as SoS echoes her arrival in the Senate in 2001 — putting her head down, figuring out the job and working hard rather than looking for the spotlight. Tina Brown likewise points out how, historically, this suits Clinton’s work ethic even as she seemingly objects to it elsewhere:

The former first lady and New York senator is no stranger to the big game of politics. Obama’s presidency is tightly White House driven and she is not the only player on a tight leash. … But I doubt she cares about losing the spotlight at this time in her life when she’s not running for something. Unlike Bill, she hates glad-handing and does TV only because she has to. Policy is her meat and drink. On her State Department plane, Hillary is always eager to throw off her well-groomed public look and sit up front with no makeup, wearing sweats and her bookworm glasses, as she crunches her way through a big fat file of foreign-policy memos. She is as formidably well-informed in this job as she was at the Rose law firm in Arkansas, doing all the legal backup work for the guys on a big deal. Or when she played the canny sounding board and strategist for Gov. Bill Clinton in his run for president.

That’s the trouble. You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she’ll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.

To call Hillary a Saudi wife? That’s quite a leap. And if Hillary were out front and center, I’m sure Ms. Brown would complain about how “ego driven” and “power hungry” she is. Hillary certainly heard enough of that nonsense last year. Once again, I am sure the maddening tightrope a female politician or diplomat has to walk is far more precarious than that of any man in the same position.

I can’t make up my mind reading this article as to Ms. Brown’s end game. To degrade Hillary? To throw down the gauntlet and encourage her to speak out? To slap at President Obama pointing out how foolish he is not to make better use of Secretary Clinton’s considerable abilities?

It is interesting to note that a month ago, not three days before Hillary broke her arm, Ms. Brown penned another article entitled What Hillary Can Teach Sarah Palin. Brown stated that Hillary was an example of “what real female power looks like,” that she is a “dedicated policy wonk who worked on behalf of oppressed women in unpronounceable places long before it was fashionable.”

She then engages in some revisionist history of her own when she stated that Hillary was “humbled at the polls” by Barack Obama. Oh really? So the fact that she won more votes than any candidate in primary history – male or female – 300,000 more than him – that’s humbling? Being outspent three to one, stabbed in the back by your own party, trashed in the media daily, winning more votes and still not getting the nomination, well I have another word for that – and it has nothing to do with being humbled. Knee-capped, maybe.

Ms. Brown lectures Palin to

Take a leaf out of Hillary’s book. (Or from Condi Rice, for that matter. Clinton’s predecessor in the job likewise knows how to disappear herself for a bit while she recoups and rebrands.) Bide your time, don’t waste it.

Her words of wisdom here are “it’s the substance that sustains, not the exposure.” No kidding. Hillary is all substance, that’s for sure. But in her new article – Brown demands more exposure for Hillary. Tina needs to make up her mind. Is she going to believe that Hillary is “biding her time” and knows what she is doing or not?

While I do not particularly care for Ms. Brown’s tone, I’d love to see Hillary front and center myself. Selfishly I would feel safer knowing for certain she was in charge of the foreign policy portfolio at State rather than the rest of the Administration that keeps swapping seats in the clown car. But as Brown notes, when one is starting a job, it pays to build a firm foundation before making a lot of noise.

Let’s see if we start hearing more noise from Hillary.