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“Do-Over King” Barack Obama Profits

from Media-Induced Mental Fog among Voters

            Of all the endearing movies featuring and flaunting quirky leading man Bill Murray, two are especially memorable. In the one produced first, he eschewed straight comedy for serious dramatics and,  thanks to some excellent script writing, Murray and Catherine Hicks, James Keach and Theresa Russell easily outdid the sensational 1946 quartet of Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne and Anne Baxter from the beloved silver screen classic version of The Razor’s Edge. Along the way, the theme from author W. Somerset Maugham’s novel becomes even more phenomenally stark and yet somehow eternally light-hearted and much, much clearer (even though the character “Maugham” himself was written completely out of Murray’s 1984 version). As strong as Murray is in The Razor’s Edge,however, the unforgettable dramatic/comedy vehicle for which Murray will be eternally toasted is 1993’s Groundhog Day . . . .

            This more than bizarre (surreal?) fantasy in which a misanthropic, self-important weatherman Phil Connors relives the same day, February 2^nd (the single day of the year he most despises; in the place he most despises Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania; during the event he most despises: Groundhog Day Festivities), over and over and over again without hope for reprieve . . . has been embraced by the Buddhist fate and has even entered American slang lexicon as a shorthand term for any miserable, seemingly inescapable recurring fact of life.

"A thousand people freezing their butts off, waiting to worship a rat," Weatherman Connors gripes.

            The American Buddhist movement finds the movie a strong allegory for life in general and for their religion more specifically. In real life as it’s lived by we, the non-believers in Buddhist Nirvana, however, Groundhog Day has come to the Oval Office courtesy of the ceaseless Obama-adulation by the mainsteam media (MSM).  Let us adopt Sara Palin’s more accurate “lame-stream media” here for they have made the President appear not, as a cat with nine lives, but rather as a jaguar with 9,000. So far as it is within their power they have created a politician who really can’t fall short on anything. If the president bashes business and the financial industry ceaselessly for two consecutive years he has but to name a Chicago crony who happens to carry some business experience as an advisor and he suddenly becomes magnanimous in his “outreach to the business world.” No matter how great or repetitive his mistakes, let the Great Barack make even the slightest symbolic gesture of reasonableness while posturing for the media and . . . suddenly all his long-standing substantial errors and sins are forgiven, for the Anointed One has given the appearance of statesmanship. 

To say this was “all smoke and mirrors” would be demeaning magicians everywhere. This is rather, all freely-given PR puffery designed to glorify Obama. Consider these nine key areas as impartially as possible:

Jobs

Spending

Foreign Policy

Leadership

Fairness, Openness, Bi-Partisanship

The Gulf Oil Spill

GIBs and GSBs (Obamacare in particular)

Relationship with Business

Keeping Promises

            The unbiased observer must give the President nine F’s for nine substantial failures. In fact, however, the man’s “Messiah” status is ever-reinforced ever more desperately with each pathetic showing he makes. Consider more closely:

JOBS: 17.6% of America’s people are unemployed in real measurement. 9.5% are still looking for jobs and thus still on the labor rolls, the rest have given up; many are substantially UNDERemployed. Obama promised once his $787 BIllion stimulus package was passed in February, 2009, that unemployment would not exceed 8%. In the upcoming State of the Union address he will pretend that the country was on the brink of a Great Depression and only the quick thinking of he and his Democrats was able to save us . . . at no small expense . . . and the MSM will sell that unenlightened viewpoint as Gospel. By the way, if the official “unemployment” statistic is ridiculous, then the Obama “jobs saved” stat is absolute horse pucky.

SPENDING: Obama’s sycophant-girl, Nancy Pelosi, has echoed the party line that deficit reduction and reduction of the National Debt has long been a top concern among Democrats and “Deficit Reduction has been our mantra.” Pelosi and the House Democrats last year refused to pass a budget because it would have been the country’s first $5 TRillion budget and required $1.6 TRillion in deficits.  Then there’s the little matter of the $14.1 TRillion National Debt which has increased $5 TRillion under Democratic house leadership which is 56% in four years.  Besides the bailouts and Obama stimulus, Obamacare will increase deficits by $300 Billion yearly while claiming it reduces deficits. The MSM abets Pelosi, Reid and Obama at every turn for their humane and far-thinking new approach.

FOREIGN POLICY: Despite Obama’s “Apology Tour”; repeatedly breaking promises to allies while embracing those who have no love for the United States and orally wish us ill; kowtowing to Eastern potentates and premiers; and doing everything possible to make the nation appear and be weak, weak, weak . . . the MSM has refused to analyze, investigate or seemingly even care about the utterly negative Obama legacy in foreign policy. Did they report in depth on his shabby treatment of Israel? On the weakness toward Iran and Russia implicit in not building the promised missile defense for our eastern European allies?   No, naturally no. But they couldn’t wait to fall all over themselves in slobbering joy proclaiming the START treaty with Russia was not a shameful sell-out but somehow a wonderful coup.

LEADERSHIP: More than anything else, the election of the nation’s first Black president was supposed to usher in a new era of enlightenment in racial matters and tolerance at all levels. Polls on the subject say that relations between the races have gotten worse under our first “post-racial” president. And, up till his recent posturing as a “centrist president” now that the Republicans dominate the House, President Obama led the way by constant race-baiting; and stupid stances like getting involved in the Cambridge arrest in early 2009 that led to his infamous “Beer Summit.” Mr. Obama has also threatened freedom of speech and freedom of the press by his constant attacks upon FoxNews and the TEA Party. Instead of leadership, Obama has constantly whined and called all those who dislike his policies as racists, haters, extremists and stupid. People fifty times as patriotic as the President then were subject to one hundred times the abuse by the MSM and by the most progressive elements of the Democratic Leadership.

FAIRNESS, OPENNESS and BI-PARTISANSHIP: Mr. Obama promised to change the culture of Washington and to give us “hope and change we could believe in. He talked about having TV cameras involved so that people could see every aspect of the health care deliberations and like his favorite YES MAN, Harry Reid in the Senate and YES GIRL, Nancy Pelosi in the House, Obama promised to run the most open, honest and accountable administration in history. Instead he’s overseen the most corrupt, closed, dishonest and unaccountable administration since Woodrow Wilson. Just the matter of those 42 non-vetted Obama Czars speaks volumes . . . of course, it would have been impossible to get all those admitted communists and radicals into the White House any other way. The MSM did nothing to hold Obama’s feet to the fire . . . he was given a free pass on all of this. The Van Jones affair was classic MSM. While FoxNews and others were revealing video clips of Jones talking openly about revolution and his communism and his 9/11 Truther activities for two and a half months, the MSM ran a 30 second clip the day after Van Jones “resigned.”

THE GULF OIL SPILL: It took the Obama administration six weeks to really get involved and their involvement in the first two weeks thereafter was making speeches about how they’d been on the ground dealing with the issue since the first few hours it was known about. Then, like all leftists, Obama made a horrible situation worse . . . first his EPA would not allow the building of sand berms and other defenses against the spill (because they might harm the environment); and then he cost the nation loads of oil and the Gulf loads of jobs with his six month moratorium on drilling which is now nearing nine months and which is projected to last 2.5 years. The MSM hardly covered these important matters but found a patsy in the BP President and made Mr. Obama into a hero, as usual.  Will they love him as much when gasoline is $4.50 per gallon?

GIBs and GSBs (OBAMACARE in particular): Like the oil spill made worse by government involvement, GIBs and GSBs (Government interference and government spending boondoggles) are the utter limits of arrogance with the federal government showing they know best and in the process taking over more of American life and making it worse. In the case of Obamacare the lies involved are incredible, and of course the MSM will not deal with them or expose them to the public. Mr. Obama personally pledged that zero federal dollars would be used to fund abortions under Obamacare but we found out in the first week that the program went into operation that abortions were routinely covered by Obamacare. They added money to other programs in two other bills (Medicare and Medicaid) so they could show the Congressional Budget Office false numbers that would make Obamacare look like it would lower the deficit when in truth the big picture is that 30 million people are added to the program at a far greater expense than the private sector would have caused and the program is another entitlement GSB, GIB that will dramatically ramp up the National Debt and the yearly deficits. In addition we have stimulus funds that only stimulated the pocketbooks for Obama supporters and created no new jobs; the laughable “Cars for Clunkers” which claimed that destroying perfectly good cars would jumpstart the economy (all it did was create a massive shortage of used cars and drive the price of the typical used car upward by $1,800); the AIG and auto bailouts; the takeover not only of health care but of the financial industry, the student loan industry, and now the beginning of the coal industry. And the MSM has been applauding every step of the way.

BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS: Mr. Obama spent the first two years of his administration feathering the cap of the unions and taking every possible opportunity to bash business, business people, finance, financial people, capitalists and conservatives all the while imposing all manner of extra bureaucracy and expense upon the free markets . . . MSM cheering every step of the way. Now as he makes cozy to enhance his 2012 presidential bid, little is made of his hypocrisy.

KEEPING PROMISES: From Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and all the promises mentioned above . . . President Obama has made a splendid career of promising out of one side of his mouth and alibi-ing out of the other. It’s likely that Barack Obama will at the end of the day (as a one-term president) actually only keep two promises, both made in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle on the 2008 campaign trail:

a.      To bankrupt the coal industry

b.     To make the price of electricity skyrocket

Actually, that’s only one promise since 52% of our electricity comes from coal . . .

     Of course, the MSM gives Mr. Obama free rein to do as he pleases and enthusiastically supported him in 2008 and will support him in 2012. Call them “mulligans,” “do-overs” or Groundhog Day . . . the tremendous leeway that Obama has received from the MSM amounts to about 25 times the tolerance given to his predecessor and about 30 times what they’ve allotted to the TEA Party . . . .

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut