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Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn post on BO’s thoughts about the most “dangerous legacy of the cold war.” Steyn;
… It’s not just embarrassing to hear the so-called “leader of the free world” talking like a 14-year old who’s been up in his room listening to “Imagine” for too long. I fear this presidency has the makings of global tragedy.
Jonah Goldberg says the kid president is good with words.
President Obama had a grand time in Europe. He wowed the press, met the queen, gave some wonderful news conferences and got virtually none of the major policy concessions he wanted. But he did do a lot of talking, for what that’s worth.
And for Obama, that’s worth a lot. During the campaign, then-Sen. Obama made it clear that he thought words meant a great deal. “Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Obama proclaimed. ” ‘I have a dream’ — just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words? Just speeches?”
Give the man points for consistency. He has put rhetorical innovation on an equal footing with policy innovation. Exhibit A: “Overseas contingency operations.” That’s the Obama administration’s term of choice to replace “the long war” or “the global war on terror.” No doubt they were inspired by the famous Leo Tolstoy novel, Overseas Contingency Operations and Cessation of Overseas Contingency Operations, later dumbed-down by the publisher to War and Peace.
Janet Napolitano, head of Obama’s Department of Homeland Security — primarily created to deal with terrorist attacks in the wake of 9/11 — has decided “terrorist attack” is too hard-edged. It’s “man-caused disasters” now. “That is perhaps only a nuance,” Napolitano explained to a German newsmagazine, “but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.” …
Speaking of words, Bret Stephens writes on the unreality tour and the kid’s reaction to those who don’t worship words.
… “Rules must be binding,” the president told his audience in Prague on Sunday. “Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.” But how are words supposed to mean anything if all the administration proposes to do is offer up yet another resolution — which is to say, more words?
To nobody’s surprise (except, perhaps, Mr. Obama’s) the Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution. But that’s the U.N. for you, as opposed to a serious organization like NATO, at whose 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg . . . nothing much was accomplished, either.
Well, not nothing. A new NATO secretary-general was named. And France returned to NATO as a member of the military command, just a few decades too late for it to matter one way or the other. …
Anne Applebaum says the prez has a weird obsession with nuclear disarmament.
… the centerpiece of the visit, Obama’s keynote foreign-policy speech in Prague—leaked in advance, billed as a major statement—was, to put it bluntly, peculiar. He used it to call for “a world without nuclear weapons” and a new series of arms-control negotiations with Russia. This was not wrong, necessarily, and not evil. But it was strange.
Clearly, the “no nukes” policy is one close to the president’s heart. The Prague speech even carried echoes of that most famous of all Obama speeches, the one he made after losing the New Hampshire primary. “There are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it is worth setting a goal that seems impossible,” he told his Czech audience. (Remember “We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics”?) “When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens,” he continued. (“We are not as divided as our politics suggests.”) He didn’t say “Yes, we can” at the end, but he did say “human destiny will be what we make of it,” which amounts to the same thing. …
Victor Davis Hanson has some ideas for the apologizer in chief.
…A modest suggestion: from now on, every president who wishes to go abroad and review all his lesser citizens’ collective past and present sins, with accompanying apologies — to applause from foreigners — must first, in the spirit of New Testament atonement, review his own regrettable transgressions. It would go something like this: …
Writing in Pajamas Media, Jennifer Rubin says BO has, in fact, lost the budget battle.
President Obama may have gotten his budget (once the House and Senate iron out their differences), but along the way he may have sacrificed his chances for slaying the Republican Party and establishing that permanent governing majority which both political parties crave.
An over-reaching budget, which drowns us in red ink and devotes more of the GDP to the government than at any time since WWII, may turn out to be a setback for the administration. As Obama forfeits his claims of fiscal responsibility, he has emboldened the opposition and made moderates in his own party, rightfully so, very nervous.
Liberals are generally pleased, but liberal giddiness is not a barometer of long-term success. As [1] Michael Goodwin observed, “That pattern is tired already. Starting with the stimulus, Obama’s initiatives have depended almost entirely on liberal Democrats.” His budget received not a single Republican vote. Mainstream [2] op-eds and former Clinton officials have panned it as a jump into the fiscal abyss. …
The Masters starts tomorrow. Right in time for that Forbes has an article on Boo Weekley, the man they claim can save the PGA Tour. (Didn’t know it needed saving) However, it is a good profile of a man who represents something new on the tour.
It’s impossible to tell the story of professional golfer Thomas Brent (Boo) Weekley without bringing up the orangutan. When Weekley was 15 he and some friends went to a county fair near Milton, Weekley’s hometown on the Florida Panhandle. A man at the fair had an orangutan in a cage and was offering $50 to anyone who could lay a hand on the ape. Weekley jumped in the cage. “The next thing I remember I was in the back of my buddy’s pickup truck, bleeding,” he says.
This type of thing never happened during the childhood of Tiger Woods, who was groomed from birth to become the greatest golfer in the world. Weekley wasn’t supposed to be a PGA Tour golfer (even though his Milton high school has miraculously produced three of them). He’ll tell anyone within earshot that he’d rather be bass fishing than taking a stroll down the fairways of Augusta National. He likes beer in cans and eats at Hooters. He flunked out of college after one year. He cleaned chemical tanks during 12-hour shifts at a Monsanto factory until he got laid off. When he finally gained entrance to the PGA Tour in 2002 he flunked out of that, too, and nearly gave up on the game. “I took golf for granted for a long time,” he says.
Weekley is not the best player on the tour (he’s ranked number 57), nor does he make the most endorsement money (about $2 million annually); both of those honors still belong to Woods (number one in the world, with an estimated $90 million in annual endorsements). At 35, Weekley is not a fresh-faced prodigy like the confident 23-year-old American Anthony Kim or the floppy-haired 19-year-old Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland. He does not create the escape-artist drama of Phil Mickelson.
Yet Weekley is exactly the type of golfer the tour needs to endure the recession. He has the colorful history. Two years into his second chance on the PGA Tour, he has become one of its most popular players, serenaded with “Boooo” by fans at every tournament. Few, if any, golfers work harder for sponsors. And he can play: Golf purists consider him the best pure ball-striker in the game, and he was a hero of the United States’ Ryder Cup win in 2008. “He’s a little different,” says PGA Tour Commissioner Timothy Finchem. “But he’s been terrific for us.” …
The Corner says we’re beginning to pay the costs for BO’s sellout to the Teamsters.
News Biscuit says a teenager in England completed a sentence.
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