Pronouncements

Here we are dutifully logging the failings of Chief Silver Tongue, He of the Great Boratory, Señor Cinco de Cuatro, and Citizen Oreon.

Mark Krikorian was confused by the bilingual introduction of Sonia Sotomayor by President Teleprompter (or, in Spanish, Tay-lay-pron-TOR).

So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer? The president pronounced it both ways, first in Spanish, then after several uses, lapsing into English. Though in the best "Pockiston" tradition, he also rolled his r's in Puerto Rico.

Time to lay off the Ricky Ricardo reruns, clearly. Maybe there's a middle ground here, you know, the common ground of pronunciation that BO is always searching for [damn you, teleprompter!] We could go full frontal British (Nicker-AG-you-uh, e.g.): SAHN-ya SAH-toe-may-uhr. As Churchill would say, "He's the kind of president who gives Sotomayor a bad name."

Merci beaucoup!

Executive Bonuses: Shameful

There is something extra- ooey- gooey rich about Barack Obama going all populist about Wall Street bonuses. Unlike Rush, I am more sympathetic to BO's basic point because it seems obvious that bonuses are supposed to be perfomance-based, and catastrophic failures of investment banks and other financial institutions would tend to argue that performance hasn't been all that good. I think I don't need to scrounge for evidence here. It's doubly bad when those bonuses were paid with money that came from the Feds, that is, OUR money.

Maggie Gallagher has an interesting take on the umbrage that BO is taking to all this and its relationship to the demonizing of Rush Limbaugh by him (so small, so unpresidential) and MoveOn.org. She catches BO on this point: even as he and Timmy "The Artful Dodger" Geithner are shoving stimulus right-now-or-we're-all-gonna-die down our throats, it is deeply unpopular. To duck that bit of mess, he gins up a nice photo op to talk about the villainous execs on Wall Street.

But Barack Obama's attitudes about compensation, executive and otherwise, are complex. The very first piece of legislation that BO signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Act that addressed rules regarding discriminatory pay (all details here). So we've established a theme for the week: just compensation. In a fawning puff piece about Michelle Obama, the WaPo says that this bit of legislation has MO's m.o. all over it. OK, she wasn't at the signing, and no one can figure out the connection, but still...she's a first lady who is deeply deeply deeply interested in domestic policy, equal rights, discrimination, yada yada.

Well, let's talk executive compensation here. Back in 2002, Michelle O. was hired by the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a "community outreach coordinator" [note: not "organizer."]. She supposedly ran programs for community relations, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting. You have permission at this point to think that this hodgepodge is a bunch of b.s. In 2005, the hospital miraculously raised her salary by 163 percent, from $120K per year to $316K. It was a good year for the Obamas: BO had just become the junior senator from Illinois. And, surprisingly, the U of C Hospitals were the beneficiaries of a $1 million earmark sponsored by you-know-who.

At least at one point you could justify executive bonuses on Wall Street as a way to attract talent, and not just the well-connected. But I imagine most people would have difficulty discerning the difference in principle between using taxpayer money to get your wife a boost in pay (and what a boost!), or using it pay your the folks who are actually running your firm, however badly.

So, rhetorical populism aside, President Obama and his wife are as much a part of the fundamental problem as any of the Wall Street Executives that he cares to villify. The problem is, of course, that taxpayer money is viewed as one giant slush fund for the well-connected elites: once it is confiscated from you and me, it is theirs to play with, to skim, to grease the skids, whatever. Barack and Michelle don't even have a passing acquaintance with the act of creating wealth: they have never made anything, run businesses, or done anything but live off the largesse of either foundations or the taxpayers. And they truly believe that that is the way one enriches oneself. It's the Chicago Way, it's the Washington Way.

P.S. The University of Chicago Hospitals will not be filling the position that Michelle O. quit when she became first lady, by the way. The folks at National Review wonder if Mrs. Roland Burris turned it down.

Closing Gitmo

CQ Transcriptswire

SPEAKER: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

[*] OBAMA: This first executive order that we are signing, by the authority vested in me as president of the -- president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to affect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo, and promptly to close the detention facility at Guantanamo, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, I hereby order.

And we then provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now. We will be -- is there a separate executive order, Greg, with respect to how we’re going to dispose of the detainees? Is that...

CRAIG: (OFF-MIKE) set up a process.

OBAMA: We will be setting up a process whereby this is going to be taking place.

The individuals who are standing behind me represent flag officers who came to both Joe and myself and all the candidates and made a passionate plea that we restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great, even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.

They’ve made an extraordinary impression on me. They are outstanding Americans who have fought and defended this country. And for them to fight on behalf of our constitutional ideals and values, I think is exceptional, so I wanted to make sure that they were here to witness the signing of this executive order.

There we go.

Did I hear it right: that Greg Craig Gregory Craigory is actually running the country? The New "Process Czar"? This is beginning to look like a typical episode of "Yes, Minister."

In the interest of being fair and balanced, there are some people who didn't make an impression on BO who maintain that one of the things that made this country great was our willingness to shove water up the noses of people who wanted to kill us.  I am one of the people who don't impress BO.

Aside: For the uninitiated (and I imagine there are very few of you), "process" is code for "we don't know what we're doing but we hope to wear everyone down with talk, talk, talk until they cave." End aside.

Pete Hoekstra has it right, and thank you Pete, for saying SOMETHING:

"It sets an objective without a plan to get there," Hoekstra said. "Given the fact that we are talking about trained terrorists and people who have committed acts of mass murder, it would seem the proper course would be to have a plan in place before making this decision."

Oh, great another category

I've got a new tag for some of my posts that I think will be popular: man-crush.

What Jimmy Carter did for sweaters, BO will do for man-on-man smitteness.

It was bound to happen. The Left, as a group, has been waiting for YEARS to normalize their bi-tri-omni-sexual "lifestyles." Many lefties lead conventional hetero lives but most, especially the elite types, pride themselves on having experimented and encourage their children to do so. Correction: encourage EVERYONE'S children to do so. For the truly Leftie, the experimenting never really stops. The faux-homo "man-crush" fad that is currently overtaking nearly everyone with respect to BO is just a very overt, and apparently acceptable expression of what is really going on. Really...

The latest (with the camera panning to the losers: Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, that ridiculous "glistening pectorals" reporter for WaPo) is none other than Timmy "The Artful Dodger" Geithner:

On Oct. 17, at a New York hotel, Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner met for an hour and talked about policy and personal matters, according to accounts of the session. Mr. Obama, who spent four childhood years with his mother in Indonesia, asked Mr. Geithner about his own early years in India and then Thailand as his father oversaw Asia development programs for the Ford Foundation.

What neither man knew at the time, but the foundation has confirmed, is that Mr. Geithner’s father, Peter F. Geithner, oversaw a program that Mr. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, had worked on. The two may even have met in Jakarta.

Obama advisers say the candidate “fell in love” with Mr. Geithner, in the words of one, while a Geithner associate said Mr. Geithner reported being “smitten” with Mr. Obama. “They both have that kind of quiet confidence in their demeanor,” the associate said.

Roland, Harry, and Barry

I'm past the schadenfreude of the Burris mess.  OK, not completely, but I'm still scratching my head over two things, prompted by this post from Jennifer Rubin:

1. Why are there no demonstrations, nay, riots, in the streets at the sight of a duly appointed black Senator being turned out into the rain by the Majority leader (the lily white majority, as it happens)?
2. Did I miss the presser with The One in which he calls Harry Reid a "typical white man"?  Where was Obama during all this?  Let me put this in terms The One might understand, he of the Harvard Law Review and scourge of Chi-town pick up b-ball: this was a slam-dunk.  The law was on Burris's side, and more importantly, the photo ops were on Burris's side.  I don't know, but if I were a black rabble-rouser, or even just an ordinary person who voted for a black man because he was black (those number in the millions), I'd be making up some window stickers that look like this:

Obama's First Days of "Rule"

For those Catholics and Evangelicals who would describe themselves as pro-life, but who nevertheless voted for the abortion radical for president: time to wake up. He doesn’t have to legislate to radically change the life-death landscape of public policy. As usual with the left, he’ll start with legitmizing with breathtaking scope the death of the weakest, the least among us.

In 2001, President Bush appointed Dr. Leon Kass chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Dr. Kass formed the council with the idea, fully supported by the President, that it would be a true reflection of the range of thought on bioethics in America. The main distinction between this council and its predecessors was that there was a healthy, not a token, representation of thinkers who were pro-life, including Kass himself. Among many other things, they made recommendations to congress to enact legislation to limit experimentation with human embryos. The council unanimously agreed to the following eight recommendations:

• Proscribe the transfer, for any purpose, of any human embryo into the body of any member of a non-human species;
• Prohibit the production of a hybrid human-animal embryo by fertilization of human egg by animal sperm or of animal egg by human sperm; and
• Prohibit the combination of blastomeres from human and non-human embryos to produce a hybrid human-animal embryo.
• Prohibit the initiation of a human pregnancy (using embryos produced ex vivo) for any purpose other than to attempt to produce a live-born child.
• Prohibit attempts to conceive a child by any means other than the union of egg and sperm obtained directly from no more and no less than two adult human parentsiii; and
• Prohibit attempts to conceive a child by fusing blastomeres from two or more other embryos, or by fertilization using gametes obtained from a human fetus or derived from human embryonic stem cells.
• Prohibit the use, or the preservation, solely for the purpose of conducting research, of any human embryo past the 14th day after first cell division, not counting any time in a frozen state; and
• Prohibit the buying and selling of human embryos, eggs, and sperm.

If you are an ordinary person, pro-life or not, you are aghast at the need to even explicitly state some of these proscriptions. Yet science and technology untethered from respect for human life and dignity is a reality of the modern world.

As Barack Obama gears up for FOCA, watch for these compelling and foundational guidelines to go away.

I wonder if Peggy Noonan is savoring her triumph.

The Case Against Obama

Philo over at The View (from Alexandria) makes note of a stab at the case, the whole case, against Obama by Guy Benson, Mary Katherine Ham and Ed Morrisey over at Hot Air. It's an interesting list, and reasonable. To me, though, voters in the great middle, the folks who don't have opinions about policy and culture that are strong or well-informed, tend to "go with their gut" and don't do the comprehensive analysis. To help them with that, the MSM has done yeoman's work in streamlining this decision-making process, already rudimentary by my standards. As I commented on Philo's post, I opined that part of the case against Obama is what we don't know about him, and I wrote a brief and incomplete list of major gaps.

Barack campaigning for murderous Odinga, 2006

Jennifer Rubin, who is my much more intelligent alter-ego over at Commentary catches Michael Malone lambasting the MSM on ABC.com. She then adds her list of "unknowns," truly comprehensive, but for one omission: what about Barack Obama's connection to Raila Odinga, the hardcore Marxist Prime Minister whose supporters went on a homicidal rampage following the post-Christmas elections in 2007? The violence displaced a half million people, destroyed villages, and on New Year's Day, a Christian church was burned down with its parishioners in it, an attack carried out by Muslim allies of Odinga. The post-election upheaval lasted for several weeks, and things still aren't back to normal, especially for those whose homes have been destroyed. Nevertheless, Raila managed to make time in his busy schedule of mayhem and destruction, to take two phone calls from Barack Obama, his cousin, the day before the New Hampshire Primary on January 8, 2008.

In August, 2006, Barack spent a six-day visit in Kenya, a visit coordinated by one of his advisors that coincided with the Orange Democratic Movement's campaign planning session. Mr Odinga was their candidate for president, and not favored until Barack, then a state senator running for the Senate, promoted him. Today, Obama tee shirts are commonplace in Nairobi, attesting to the influence that endorsement had.

Although Raila Odinga was implicated in a bloody coup attempt in 1982, and spent six years in prison, he confessed to a leadership role in his 2006 biography. Statutes of limitations prevented further prosecutions.

He is prime minister today as a part of a deal to quell the violence after the 2007 election, which he lost. He refused to meet with President Kibaki and other opposition leaders in early January, and held out for the prime minister position, blackmailing the country to get into office. Over 1500 people died in the violence.

So, why no questions about this, even from the excellent folks at Commentary, The Corner, and elsewhere off the journalistic beaten path? I don't know, but this commentary was published in the Washington Times, not a fly-by-night yellow sheet. Some important points:

• Raila Odinga is a Marxist He graduated from East Germany's Magdeburg University in 1970 on a scholarship provided by the East German government. He named his oldest son after Fidel Castro. Is there anyone in politics who has left such a wide trail of Marxist breadcrumbs on their way to political office as Barack Obama? At least three of these associates (Ayers, Dohrn, and Odinga) view violence as an option for those disappointed at the ballot box.
• He has close ties with Barack. Not only will he tell you, so will every person in Kenya. They saw them together, at rallies, at meetings, at press conferences. And Barack and his advisors have met with him several times.
• Raila Odinga signed a shocking Memorandum of Understanding (pdf) with Muslim leadership in Kenya, in which he would allow them autonomous areas, allow them to impose Shaaria law, allow them to oversee the practice of other religions, allow them to shut down grocery stores and businesses that sell haaram products, among many other things. In return, they offered their support, not only at the ballot box but in the streets, with machetes and torches. And we remember that East Africa is an important locus of Islamist activity, so the development of self-governing areas that are already showing a propensity for violence toward America, has a direct impact on our security.

And aren't we all tired of saying, "Gee, if Barack were a Republican, the media would be all over this." No: if Barack were Hillary or any other Democrat, they would be all over this. We would have found out about it LAST YEAR.

P.S. What if all of this had come to the fore during the primaries? On a scale similar to the Rev. Wright story? Would Barack have said, "He's just a guy in my family's neighborhood back in Kenya", à la Ayers? Or just a guy he used to shoot hoops with, like Alexi Giannoulias? Or maybe he isn't the man Barack thought he knew, some guy who committed reprehensible acts 10 MONTHS ago...

Support Your Local Terrorist, 2

After I submitted my signature, my nom de plume, as it were, I read the petition.  Lotsa leftwing boilerplate along the lines of teaching the little darlings to challenge the dominant paradigm but under no circumstances teach multiplication tables.  Then the last passionate paragraph about the slings and the arrows:

...the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

I guess the phrase "attacks on.." has a somewhat different meaning when people in this society are attacking Bill Ayers than when Bill Ayers was mounting his "attacks on" society.  Bill Ayers is still in one piece.  Nothing like a bomb blast to "chill" the spirit of democracy!

And can someone please tell me how you assassinate the character of someone who blew things up just for the hey of it?