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Camille Paglia was caught mid-rant about Obama by Ann Althouse.
I was very excited about him. I thought he was a moderate. I thought that his election would promote racial healing in the country. It would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead: one thing after another. Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it’s going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races.
But beyond that, I am just sick and tired of endless war. I was in favor of bombing the hell out of the Afghanistan mountains after 9/11, but I would have never agreed to this land war in Afghanistan, this endless land war, as well as things like this Libyan incursion that Obama appears to have been pushed into by these women, like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, the chaos in foreign policy, the bowing to foreign leaders.
Also the Obamacare: of course, we need health care reform in this country. What a mess! Everyone agrees about that. But the Obamacare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion — okay? — into American culture.
But beyond that, I am just sick and tired of endless war. I was in favor of bombing the hell out of the Afghanistan mountains after 9/11, but I would have never agreed to this land war in Afghanistan, this endless land war, as well as things like this Libyan incursion that Obama appears to have been pushed into by these women, like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, the chaos in foreign policy, the bowing to foreign leaders.
Also the Obamacare: of course, we need health care reform in this country. What a mess! Everyone agrees about that. But the Obamacare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion — okay? — into American culture.
The creation of this culture of surveillance, from these bureaucracies, which is also carried over into Obama’s endorsement of drones on the military level as well as for police control of the population. I mean, I don’t understand how any… veteran of the 1960s who’s a Democrat could not see the dangers here, that Obama is a statist. It’s exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” okay?
You don’t want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people’s lives like this. The controlling force in Obamacare is the IRS! Okay? This flies in the face of what the Free Speech Movement was about at Berkeley or about any of the values, I feel, of my generation. …
Charles Krauthammer comments on the third debate between President Romney and his predecessor.
… Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. Arguing about Iran’s nuclear program, he actually said to Mitt Romney, “While we were coordinating an international coalition to make sure these sanctions were effective, you were still invested in a Chinese state oil company that was doing business with the Iranian oil sector.” You can’t get smaller than that. You’d expect this in a city council race. But only from the challenger. The sitting councilman would find such an ad hominem beneath him.
Throughout the debate, Obama kept it up, slashing, interjecting, interrupting, desperate to gain the upper hand by insult if necessary. That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: “You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”
Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?
Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces — the principal projector of American power abroad — is itself some kind of anachronism.
“We have these things called aircraft carriers,” continued the schoolmaster, “where planes land on them.”
This is Obama’s case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn’t know that for every one carrier, 10 times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts?
Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310 and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America’s vital interests requires 346 ships (vs. 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires? …
Michael Barone posts on a newspaper endorsement that might matter.
Most newspaper endorsements mostly don’t matter. The Washington Post on Friday endorsed Barack Obama; I confess that as much as I admire the editorial writers of the Washington Post (and I do) I haven’t read it yet. The Post, as I recall, has regularly endorsed Democratic candidates for a long time, although in 1988, when I was on the editorial page staff, it chose not to endorse either Michael Dukakis or George H. W. Bush, a stand that I think was logical in light of the paper’s editorial page stances—generally but not always liberal, often thoughtful in an intellectually interesting way—over the years.
But occasionally there comes an editorial page stance that matters. The Des Moines Register has endorsed Mitt Romney.
Nolan Finley of the Detroit News says desperation is showing in the administration.
… the president’s campaign is now driven by desperation. Obama’s team promised at the beginning of this election cycle to “kill” Romney, and yet the challenger is very much alive, weathering $300 million in attack ads.
Obama can’t pivot from destroying Romney to making the case for his own re-election.
The campaign is stepping up the “war on women” charge, hammering battleground markets with abortion messages.
He’s also hop-scotching college campuses to wake up voters who’ve returned to apathy because of their dismal job prospects. Obama recruited the morally-challenged character from HBO’s “Girls” series to do a spot equating a vote for him to losing your virginity to a really nice guy.
Vulgar is part of the repertoire; Obama called Romney a “bullsh—er” in an interview. Very presidential.
What else will Obama backers pull out in the final days? …
Andrew Ferguson says the new “trust” meme is like déjà vu all over again.
… The news readers from NPR were mum-mum-mumbling in the background the other morning as I was putt-putt-puttering around the house when .. all of a sudden . running counter to every fiber of my being .. pulling against my every natural inclination .. I began to pay attention! President Obama, one of the news readers said, was giving a speech in the Midwest to road-test a new theme for the campaign’s final weeks: “trust.”
“There’s no more serious issue in a presidential campaign than trust,” the president said. “Trust matters!” The Midwesterners cheered.
At these words my attention loosened and my mind, what’s left of it, flew backwards in time, 20 years almost to the day, and I was sitting in a room in the White House, in 1992, huddled with two other speechwriters around a little speaker set on a table in a high-ceilinged room. We were listening to a closed-circuit transmission from a campaign rally in the Midwest. A different president was desperately seeking reelection. This was President Bush—the first President Bush, I mean, the one that Democrats hated but later pretended to like after they decided they hated his son more.
We speechwriters were anxious that afternoon because—well, because presidential speechwriters are always anxious—but we were particularly anxious because at this rally in the Midwest, the president was going to road-test a new campaign theme.
One issue surpassed all others, President Bush said. “It’s called trust. When you get down to it, this election will be like every other. Trust matters!”
The Midwesterners cheered. …
Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.
Leno: Obama’s top debate point was saying how sanctions are crippling Iran’s economy. And if anyone knows about crippling an economy it’s Obama.
Conan: “Paul Ryan Shirtless” is nine times more popular an Internet search term than “Paul Ryan budget.” The awkward part is, most of those searches have been traced back to Joe Biden’s laptop.
Leno: That was the third and final presidential debate. The good news is that was the third and final presidential debate.
Conan: At the third-party presidential debate each candidate favored medical marijuana. It was the first presidential debate to air on the Cartoon Network.