Wednesday, August 24, 2011

OBAMA: absolutely NOTHING HAPPENED......

This is long but EXCELLENT;
What Happened to Obama? 
Absolutely Nothing.
He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.

By NORMAN PODHORETZ   

WSJ August 13, 2011

It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.

Here, for example, from the Washington Post, is Richard Cohen: "He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." More amazingly yet Mr. Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, who not long ago was almost universally hailed as the greatest orator since Pericles, that he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians." And to compound the amazement, Mr. Cohen tells us that he cannot even "recall a soaring passage from a speech."



Overseas it is the same refrain. Everywhere in the world, we read in Germany's Der Spiegel, not only are the hopes ignited by Mr. Obama being dashed, but his "weakness is a problem for the entire global economy."
In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause "the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal," all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the "god" Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.
Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— "What Happened to Obama?" Attacking from the left, Mr. Westin charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.
Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as "a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election." On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama's goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the '60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.
But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.
Despite Mr. McGovern's defeat by Richard Nixon in a landslide, the leftists remained a powerful force within the Democratic Party, but for the next three decades the electoral exigencies within which they had chosen to operate prevented them from getting their own man nominated. Thus, not one of the six Democratic presidential candidates who followed Mr. McGovern came out of the party's left wing, and when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (the only two of the six who won) tried each in his own way to govern in its spirit, their policies were rejected by the American immune system. It was only with the advent of Barack Obama that the leftists at long last succeeded in nominating one of their own.

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?



And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the '60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.
I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to "the best interests of the United States" (Thomas Sowell) and is "purposely" out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country. 

But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.


Do you agree? Z
Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of Commentary from 1960 to 1995. His most recent book is "Why Are Jews Liberals?" (Doubleday, 2009).

33 comments:

Always On Watch said...

Obama has indeed not changed.

What HAS changed is his followers' perceptions of him. So many viewed him as "the magic(al) Negro" and/or "The One."

Silverfiddle said...

This man marinated in America-hating leftism his entire youth, so what he has become is a logical outcome.

christian soldier said...

bho is NOT a born in the US citizen and should not be President -period-
I'm going to re-post on Lt Col Lakin!
Carol-CS

sue said...
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Thersites said...

If the voodoo works...

elmers brother said...

Reminder : the birther movement was started by Clinton's lawyer and supported by the likes of that far right commentator Chris Matthews.

Z said...

Hi, everybody;

it's tough to read the truth, isn't it...this guy nails it. How can you have an American president who doesn't understand Americans or America's greatness?
What do we do with administrations who'll pay for mosques to be rebuilt in Islamic countries thinking that "then, they'll LIKE US"
Or a president who says Venezuela can't be a threat "because it's too small a country".
Um...this isn't just misguided it's just plain DUMB; Almost as the Democrat who said we can't put more detainees at Gitmo because the island might sink. MY GOD.

We have to hope and pray people wake up and realize what he's about; I wish they'd connect the dots of his past, too. Cass Sunstein, the Geithner connection with Obama's folks, the Ayers lies, the Soros/Brazil set-up...We could all go on and ON and on.

yet...

Sue, she has to work 3 jobs and I wonder what she expects; for Obama to pay her for salary for one so she can rest, or?? He doesn't have the background or the ethos.

Thersites...sadly, yes.

Z said...

Elbro: Facts, facts.....:-)
Look, how many times can legitimate info be brought before court after court and they turn the evidence down?
I'm through believing it's incorrect; I'm believing things now I'd have never believed about America before this.


Elbro, if you're around today, I'll be gone some hours at work; please delete profanity and smugness.
Just had to delete 3 Duckies. thanks!

Opus #6 said...

This brings me back to the dark days of blogging in 2008. I talked about Obama's socialism and subversive ties and nobody cared. He got a "free pass". Yes, this writer nailed it.

I hope this debacle will have one small positive effect. Like the horrible presidency of Jimmy Carter, another generation of Americans has now been educated about the danger of trusting government to the left. Hopefully it won't happen again for a long, long time.

sue said...
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sue said...
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Joe said...
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Joe said...

I have said from the beginning that he is nothing if not Sophomoric.

Freshmen know nothing but fear.

Sophomores sincerely believe that they know it all.

Juniors are beginning to realize there is much to learn (something president BO will never realize).

Seniors know that there is more to learn than they'll ever know.

Presiden BO will never rise above the level of Sophomore.

Mark said...

I agree, but I was struck by this statement:

"Despite Mr. McGovern's defeat by Richard Nixon in a landslide, the leftists remained a powerful force within the Democratic Party, but for the next three decades the electoral exigencies within which they had chosen to operate prevented them from getting their own man nominated.",

And think, Is this not the very hurdle we Conservatives are facing currently? Must we also wait 3 decades to finally choose a true Conservative candidate for president?

When I see the popularity of a pseudo-Conservative like Romney, I can't help but wonder if our next Republican Presidential candidate will be another RINO in the mold of John McCain.

LibertyAtStake said...

Agreed ... and I'll raise the stakes. Since BHO's playbook is very much arguably Saul Alinksy's "Rules For Radicals" - I'm with Limbaugh as far as postulating the wreckage is purposeful - making the entire enterprise effectively treasonous. And the biased MSM that willingly foisted the Alinksy candidate on the republic, for its own ideological reasons, is complicit.

d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

When setting out to tackle the "Obama: Stupid or Evil?" question, I think it is important to make the distinction Norman Podhoretz has touched upon, but I don't believe his criticism has gone deep enough.

You see, the Democratic Party itself is a coalition of and between stupid and evil people that you must trace to the Democratic Party's founding principles of destroying the US Constitution with the highest American body count possible.

Podhoretz stops short of elaborating upon the two wings of the Democratic Party in describing one of those wings as "left-wing" when essentially they are both left-wing. The break is not "left-wing" vs. "moderate-wing" (as there has been no "conservative" wing in the Democratic Party since the mid-19th Century) but rather a difference between the radical left wing faction and the traditional left wing faction.

The traditional left-wing faction, the "Old Left," or what I like to call the KKK wing of the Democratic Party, has its roots in the Anti-Federalist opposition to the ratification of the US Constitution, a document characterized by its inherent laws and mechanisms to make human slavery both economically and politically unviable. By imposing an exhorbitant tax ($10 / one-half ounce of gold) upon every financial transaction involving a slave crossing either the national borders or a state's line, and disallowing the enumeration of representatives to Congress based on the full number of slaves within a state (thus negating a slave state's ability to influence tax legislation), the US Constitution stands in direct opposition to every thing the Democratic Party believes in.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

[cont'd]

America got its first taste of the traditional "Old Left" wing of the Democratic PArty with it's first President, Andrew Jackson, who forever imbalanced the powers of the separate branches of the Federal government by defying a US Supreme Court order upholding the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation and ethnic cleansing most of the native American tribes of the Southeast to the desolate Oklahoma Territory. This set in motion a pattern of broken treaties and a series of wars of aggression and conquest against the indigenous peoples of the American continent, while at the same time entrenching unelected and appointed partisan loyalists in lifetime law enforcement and regulatory administrative positions - Andrew Jackson's "spoils system." It is important to recall the "spoils system" in explaining why the Republican Party's first Civil Rights Act after the Civil War failed, the so-called "Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871" aimed at shutting down the Democratic Party's militant terrorist wing. The progressive leftist President Woodrow Wilson was able to "ressurect" the KKK with federal tax dollars in part because it never truly died - you couldn't call the cops on a Klansmen rally because they were already there, participating under the sheets and burning crosses - and thus the "spoils system" kept the KKK alive on life support during that 50 year long period between the Civil War and the election of President Wilson which triumphantly brought back the KKK under a more friendly and allied nationalist administration.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

[cont'd]

This absolutely racist character of the "Old Left" KKK wing of the Democratic Party is important to recall when examining what came next. These Democrats had failed in the Civil War to split America into two countries and form their own racist enclave, and so they set about to transform the entirety of the United States into a racist enclave. The South was already being punished with having to pay off high interest 100-year post-Civil War Reconstruction bonds that would keep their local economies overtaxed and in the toilet until the mid-1970s. Something needed to be done to keep Northern-based industries from "carpetbagging" away the remainder of the South's wealth tax free while the "spoils system" local law enforcement agencies and their reliable KKK violence kept the recently enfranchised blacks from voting Republican to do away with the "Jim Crow" establishment. They needed a "new deal," and got one under Comrade Franklin Demento Roosevelt, who introduced the idea of burdening unborn generations with debt to dole out free money to the American people. Roosevelt, a wealthy heroin and opium shipping heir, understood the power of addiction could be applied to national economics, and in no time had the American people hooked on free money. They didn't even notice they fought a war to help the Soviet Union conquer and secure Eastern Europe for itself unless one of those annoying anti-communist Republicans mentioned it.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...
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(((Thought Criminal))) said...

[cont'd]

But, this "new deal" and its international efforts would soon upset the traditional racist Democrat apple cart. Hitler was stopped before he could kill enough Jews. Truman was integrating the armed forces. The unionized crime syndicates that had bombed so many pre-WW2 industrialists and robbed so many banks were now backing some young whiskey bootlegger for President, and his message "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" seemingly ran counter to Roosevelt's pro-international communism approach and even challenged the notion that black people were inferior. This son of a Nazi sympathizer was all over the map in what he claimed to believe. Too dangerous. Too instable. Obviously whacked out on painkiller and amphetamine cocktails. He had to be shot. Maybe his cornpone racist VP Johnson would fix things. Adopting the gun control laws and fledgling rocket science of the defeated Nazi regime was not enough. They wanted a new new deal. Something that would bring about the Great Society of regulatory agencies with law enforcement powers and prisons full of black people. This uprising of black people seeking civil rights behind a conservative Christian Republican minister must be stopped!

And then, the split happened. A new kind of left-wing Democrat emerged. One just as racist and violent as the traditional KKK wing, but rededicated to the international socialism of Wilson and Roosevelt seen as the best method of fulfilling the founding mission of the Democratic Party to destroy the US Constitution with as many American deaths as possible. The weather had changed, and the Weather Underground wing of the Democratic Party was born.

Though united in the goal and most of the methodologies employed in destroying the Constitution and the country with the highest body count possible, these two wings of the Democratic Party would always find themselves in conflict over race. One side, the KKK wing, would not and could not accept black people as having God-given rights (in their believe that rights come from the Constitution and thus the Constitution must be destroyed) and the other side, the Weather Underground wing accepted that black people were Americans and thus needed to be killed right alongside other Americans.

To the KKK wing of the Democratic Party, the Weather Underground wing violated their national socialist sentiments, To the Weather Underground wing of the Democratic Party, the KKK wing is a obstacle, trying to have "socialism in one country" rather than the whole world. The fight between left-wing ideological siblings Hitler and Stalin had come to American politics.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

[cont'd]

And so it remains. The KKK wing is content with subverting the Constitution and laws to apply only to certain people, the Weather Underground mocks the KKK wing's half-hearted efforts at destroying the Constitution in both intent and existence by indebting the nation at a rate of $2 Trillion a year.

Had Obama and his Weather Underground wing not emerged victorious in the Democratic Party primaries, we'd still be stuck with Hillary Clinton's KKK wing and increased police powers from federal agencies that never before had an armed enforcement component. The KKK wing wants a police state, the Weather Underground wants a police planet.

And without Obama, there would be no "Tea Party," an organization legitimately labeled both racist and socialist due to the participation of Democrats within it. It remains to be seen how far the KKK wing of the Democratic Party, now calling itself the "Tea Party Movement" will go to regain power. Frighteningly enough, these national socialists are using populism to make inroads into infiltrating the conservative Republican Party, an effort that must be resisted at all turns if conservatism is to survive.

Is Obama stupid, or evil? Neither. He's just a leader with an endless supply of useful idiots.

cube said...

Obama telegraphed loud & clear what he was and the transformation he planned for America. Anyone who didn't see it, didn't want to see it.

Anonymous said...

An enlightening, inspiring and opposing view...totally the opposite of what this fraud, poseur Comrade O is. Someone who knows the real American spirit... unlike this spit shine boy.


http://tinyurl.com/3q9dl8j

Bob said...

We have a brain-dead Prez
And a dumb-ass Veep
They don't even have a clue
This mighty duo has a mission to keep
Us down and broke and blue

When they get together and talk their stuff
You know what they're going to find
They'll do a few joints with some crack to boot
While planning to steal us blind

So get your tin hats and bubble wrap suits
To ward off Barack Baby's stuff
He and his Veep done screwed the pooch
They don't know when we've had enough

The day is coming when they all be gone
That day is getting real near
Our brain-dead Prez and dumb-ass Veep
Will be nothing more to fear

sue said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Z said...

cube said...

Obama telegraphed loud & clear what he was and the transformation he planned for America. Anyone who didn't see it, didn't want to see it.

CUBE: absolutely true...ABSOLUTELY.
To say nothing of an inexperience that most Americans should have paid attention to. That, and (to name only one) when he lied that he barely knew Ayers and the connection never seems to end; including their wives had already worked together, he'd served on Boards with Ayers and worked with him, he'd had his first fundraiser in the Ayers home; 'I barely knew him'..Americans knew the truth and voted for him. They actually believed this president who supposedly went to church every SUnday he could, NEVER HEARD his very good friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright say "G** D*** America" and WORSE, either.
Well......that's our electorate; We're not perfect either on the Right but who'd have EVER EVER nominated a liar like THIS? It's one thing to say stupid things and misrepresent themselves to get ahead, but this guy NEVER QUITS.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Bd,

The Mob Rules and you are simply not the Mob anymore.

When 100% of Republicans don't like Obama because he's an incompetent boob and 85% of Democrats don't like Obama because he's a "sorry nigger," I think you need to reassess the size of your "mob."

About the only thing Republicans and Democrats agree on is the need to get rid of Obama.

Ticker said...

Narcissist never change.

MathewK said...

It's about time liberals started turning on this fool of an empty-suit. Too bad they're doing it for the wrong reasons and it's too late.

The stupid left have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they are not fit to give America or the world a responsible leader.

Major said...
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Anonymous said...

Right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand.....mouth, arms head, I'm just looking for the strings.

Great post as always.

Mark said...

If Obama would leave DC and return to Chicago, he would raise the aggregate I.Q. of both locations.

Z said...

Mark, that's brilliant! :-)