Dr. K. points out the obvious – that Barack Obama has little belief in American exceptionalism and is hardly the visionary that his acolytes claim that he is. He is woefully unprepared for the lofty position that he holds and has a real ignorance of American and world history. Obama has zero pride in America and his official apology tour (the only other leader that I can recall ever doing something like that was West German Chancellor Adenauer shortly after World War II – but then Germany had a Nazi past to live down) has set the tone for the rest of what passes for an Obamian foreign policy. I get the impression at times that Obama wanted the presidency only in order to “cleanse” this nation of its sinful past. He really is the first “post-American President”.
by Charles Krauthammer
Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Obama’s vision of NASA’s mission, as explained by administrator Charles Bolden:
“One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering.”
Apart from the psychobabble — farcically turning a space-faring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer — what’s the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far — but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.
Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence — lauding, for example, Russia’s contribution to the space station. Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the United States to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.
For good measure, Bolden added that the United States cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President John Kennedy’s 1961 pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.
There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy’s. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in France, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Which of course means: If we’re all exceptional, no one is.
Take human rights. After Obama’s April meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we, too, are working on perfecting our own democracy.
Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona’s immigration law — “early and often.” As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.
Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama’s modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America’s alleged failing — from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11
Read the rest: The selective modesty of Barack Obama
by Stuart Schwartz
Barack Obama is the dumbest president…EVER.That is a reasonable conclusion once you’ve assessed the first nineteen months of his presidency and compared it to the definition of intelligence put together by researchers in the field. Although the mainstream media have spent the last two years proclaiming Obama “super-smart” or, as Newsweek put it, “sort of God” in stature and brilliance, the 44th president of the United States is poised to surpass our 15th president, James Buchanan. Jr., as the White House occupant who has made the dumbest moves while in office. With two years left, he is on the fast track to last.
That takes some doing, for the leadership of the hapless Buchanan prior to the Civil War “has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents.” This is the president who vetoed a college funding bill because “there were already too many educated people” in the young nation. Buchanan’s judgment was so wretched that he thought anti-slavery forces could be convinced to give up their opposition by his personal assurances that slaves were “treated with kindness and humanity” and that poverty could be ended by simply printing more money. Sound familiar?
Barack Obama is dumb. How dumb? Alfred E. Newman dumb, says columnist David Limbaugh, who labeled him “President Alfred E. Obama” because of his blithe disregard of the basics of fiscal responsibility. Alfred E. Newman is the Mad magazine mascot, whose answer to every problem is his signature statement: “What, me worry?”
How dumb? How-many-Obamas-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb dumb. And in the answer lies the answer, the key to his pole position in the race to last: It takes 242. One to hold the light bulb, four to turn the ladder, eighteen to assess conformity to OSHA workplace requirements, four to assess the environmental impact of the burnt-out bulb disposal, twelve to participate in a task force to evaluate green energy solutions for a replacement bulb, eight to script his actions, four to script instructions and work the teleprompter, 23 to work with the justice department to sue the light bulb manufacturer…you get the picture. And, à la Buchanan, Obama never does get that light bulb changed.
That James Buchanan “fiddled while Rome burned” seems to be the consensus of historians. His approach to the raging controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War was based on ignoring evidence and acting upon events as he wished them to be, not as they were. Fast-forward to the present: Obama responds to the Gulf crisis by trying to move us toward the collapsed centralized green economy of Spain, ignoring the fact that even Spain acknowledges that “every ‘green job’ created with government money…came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job.”
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Tags: Charles Krauthammer
