The folks at Hillbuzz say Chicago politicos think the President won’t run for reelection.
Of course, Hillbuzz would like that because it would create a lot of Hillary buzz.
Here’s their reasoning:
The Obama cultists in the Media keep insisting “there’s no way Obama doesn’t win re-election”, and the Cocktail Party GOP defeatists pick up their usual Eeyore cues from that and essentially seem geared to give up before the 2012 election even begins, but I keep coming back to something a good friend of mine asked me the other day that I honestly didn’t have an answer for.
She posed this question — which I invite you to answer in comments below: ”Have you ever heard anyone who didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 wish they could go back and vote for him now, after seeing him as president?”.
This is a new take on what we hear a lot, that people who voted for Obama, now unhappy with his job performance, wish they could go back in time and not vote for him. This feeling seems to be widespread now that a good deal of the hopeychange Kool-Aid has expired.
But, have you honestly ever heard ANYONE say that “I didn’t vote for him in 2008, but he’s done such a good job I wish I had known better and can’t wait to vote for him in 2012″?
The tea leaves that HillBuzz are reading come from David Axelrod and the First Lady:
It might seem incredible that Obama would just walk away from the presidency, leaving Democrats in the lurch for 2012, but I was told, repeatedly, to watch what David Axelrod and Michelle Antoinette have both been doing in recent weeks…they give no signs whatsoever that they are engaged in a re-election campaign.
Axelrod was recently on a Chicago Sunday political show and kept dodging all talk of the re-election campaign, which is like Oprah Winfrey turning down a large supreme pizza or a sandwich bigger than her head. It’s unheard of.
Axelrod’s favorite topic in the world is how he got Obama elected president, which means Axelrod’s second favorite topic in the world should be how he is going to re-elect Obama in 2012. He left the White House claiming that’s why he was moving back to Chicago, to focus on the re-election bid, and when given the perfect opportunity to wax on about that, and praise himself and his efforts, he completely dodged the topic, wanting nothing to do with it. Why?
Pressed by the reporter, Axelrod apparently said “the president’s re-election is just one of the interesting projects I am working on”. What could be peer, in terms of being interesting, to re-electing a president if you are a political consultant? Chicago political veterans picked up on this and saw it as a sign that those in the Obama ranks either do not believe he will win in 2012, or that he won’t even run, largely because of the former.
Then there was Michelle Antoinette on Good Morning America last Thursday or Friday, wearing something hideous as usual, also downplaying the re-election campaign and dodging questions about her involvement in it. This, too, is strange because Michelle Antoinette has always loved talking about how influential, powerful, and generally wonderful she (thinks she) is.
Like Axelrod, Michelle Antoinette poo-poohed the re-election talk, not taking the opportunity to go on about how much her husband deserved a second term to keep doing whatever it is all day, the end results of which the American people clearly hate.
She had a very “one and done” attitude about living in the White House for Obama’s term, and people here in Chicago who know her said that she was in particularly bad spirits after returning to DC from Hawaii, because she just didn’t want to ever leave and resents having to spend any time at all in DC.
Hat tip to Uncoverage for the Hillbuzz piece.
Posted: February 3rd, 2011 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: 2012 Presidential Politics, Obama | Tags: 2012, Obama | 7 Comments »
By Diane Gooch
“Give ’em the old razzle dazzle” goes the refrain to one of the most entertaining and memorable scenes from the play “Chicago.” It seems President Obama drew inspiration from the production named after the city in which he began his political career.
Unlike many who have derided his performance as “flat,” I found it to be reasonably dynamic. It was passionately delivered and vague enough to be inoffensive. The bipartisan applause lines and sprinkle of humor were injected to create the impression that the president was humble and not asking for anything illogical. Just the good old post-partisan and centrist Obama from the campaign days. As the song “Razzle Dazzle” continues, “when you’re in trouble go into your dance.”
At points, I felt as if the President had become a subscriber to our paper and was reading my editorials. A few “Did he really say that?” moments include his calls to: eliminate the 1099 penalty from the health care law, cut the corporate tax rate, reduce frivolous lawsuits, simplify the tax code, and scale back burdensome and archaic regulations on business. If this was his State of the Union two years ago, it may have been remotely believable.
It didn’t take long to realize that the speech was to serve mostly as a distraction from the reality of the president’s agenda for the past two years, and his designs to do more of the same in the next two: more spending, bigger government and completely ignore entitlement reform.
During a meeting with business executives I attended last year, the consensus in the room was that President Obama was smart to jam and ram through the most unpopular and controversial aspects of his agenda in his first two years in order to focus on getting re-elected over the next two. While most opposed the policies, they recognized the virtues of the tactics. The “ram it through” strategy was made even more appealing considering the overwhelming majorities the president’s political party held in Congress.
But that strategy has consequences when the agenda does not represent the “will of the governed,” and primary among the casualties is the president’s desire to be viewed as either a centrist or post-partisan. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, his speech was undermined by the lack of his own credibility on the most critical issues he mentioned; job creation, deficit reduction and tax reform. That tension showed up in the speech itself. Even liberal columnist Paul Krugman commented in the New York Times on the speech: “We’re going to invest in the future — but we’re also going to freeze domestic spending. …I have no idea what the vision here was.”
Anticipating Republican charges that “investments” he promoted in his address were merely code for new federal spending we can’t afford, the president fashioned a pithy defense: “To borrow an analogy, cutting the deficit by cutting investments in areas like education, areas like innovation — that’s like trying to reduce the weight of an overloaded aircraft by removing its engine,” Mr. Obama said in a December speech at a community college in North Carolina. “It’s not a good idea.”
But in this defense lays the principle difference between Republicans and Democrats. The president and his Party believe the “engine” is the government and its bureaucracy, while Republicans believe the driving force comes from private enterprise and the American entrepreneur.
The unemployment problem facing our nation has made a sustainable and meaningful economic recovery very difficult. However, identifying the greatest impediment to resolving it is far clearer; it’s the uncertainty created by new government policies and burdensome regulations. In a two year period, private industry has endured the prospect of new health care mandates, attempts to regulate energy usage through a carbon tax, counter-intuitive financial regulations and the probability of the largest tax increase in American history in two short years.
Is it a wonder that corporate America is sitting on nearly $2 trillion in earnings, rather than investing in their own expansion? Without knowing what to expect over the next two years, the risk takers and job creators have had to assume a more defensive posture, relegating them unable to do what our economic system and workforce needs them to do, which is to grow and create jobs.
Rhetoric cannot replace a record of real achievement. After two years of “razzle dazzle,” the American people must demand more from this president.
Posted: January 28th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Diane Gooch, Obama | Tags: Barack Obama, Diane Gooch | 2 Comments »
By Art Gallagher
Governor Chris Christie is on the receiving end of some Chicago style political payback from the Obama administration machine.
With his rising national star power, and his “put up or shut up” message to the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Christie has become the strong spine of the Republican Party. Obama needs to tarnish Christie’s image and weaken his spine if he is to co-opt the House Republicans into compromise.
Christie is clearly in the Obama machine’s opposition radar. We saw that in August when they quickly released a video of NJ’s education delegation’s testimony defending the flawed “Race to the top” application as a rebuke to Christie placing the blame on the failed application on the U.S. Education Department. That was Obama injecting himself into local politics and creating turmoil for the Governor. Christie came out of the controversy stronger by launching his Reform tour throughout the State, with the facebook/Oprah splash and by hitting the campaign trail for Republicans nationally and locally with a back breaking schedule.
Yesterday we saw the news of a Justice Department audit that criticised Christie for overspending on travel, by $2,176 over 14 trips, while U.S. Attorney. Today we see the news that the U.S Transporation Department sent cash strapped New Jersey a bill for $271 million, plus penalities and interest and an audit to follow looking for more, for federal money spent on the ARC project that Christie terminated last month.
Also today, we see a new Quinnipiac poll showing Christie’s approval ratings in NJ holding steady at 51%, while Obama’s disapproval ratings hit 50% for the first time.
The Quinnipiac poll also said that 61% of respondents said that Christie would not make a good President,that 60% say he will not run for President in 2012 and 67% think the Christie for President talk is political gossip. With polls like these it is all in how word the question. I interpret this poll to mean that over 60% of New Jersey voters are taking Christie at his word that he is not running in 2012 and his own assessment that he is not ready to be President. I take the responses to mean that New Jersey wants Christie to finish the job he started here before moving on.
I would love to see the results of a poll that asked “Who is more qualified to be President? A 2008 Barack Obama or a 2010 Chris Christie?
Christie will likely get stronger as a result of the latest Obama machine strike. Keep an eye out for more anti-Christie news coming out of Washington, especially in the days following Christie appearances on national TV.
Posted: November 9th, 2010 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: Chris Christie, Obama | Tags: Barack Obama, Chris Christie | 1 Comment »
By Theodore Price, Phd
01.I’m an elderly Combat Infantryman of World War II, who served under Patton in 1945 in the Ruhr and Czechoslovakia. My division helped liberate one of the Holocaust death camps.
02.I’m a retired New Jersey college English professor. My area of specialized expertise is recurrent themes in literature, drama, and film: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Fellini, and Hitchcock. I have a flair for spotting key elements that pluck the heart out of a mystery that investigators often miss.
03.Some of my studies relate to politics and revolution. For example, on the classic film The Battle of Algiers, that is all about the current subject of suicide bombers and recruitment of Islamist guerrillas against the West, as in Afghanistan.
04.I presently have come across a startling study by an eminent (very eminent) Holocaust and Jihadist scholar that relates absolutely to the current controversies about the Mosque at Ground Zero, Koran desecration, whether Muslimism is a religion of peace or war, and the jihadist call for the destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.
05.Since the work and conclusions of this scholar (whose book was published early in 2010) seem to have been missed in current media discussions, I’d like to bring this to your attention here so that this discovery might be transmitted to New Jersey and America’s Jews, who’ve been supporting Barack Obama almost 80%, second only to his Black voter support of more than 90%.
06.Some of the other names I’ll be dropping in support of my and this scholar’s conclusions are former Mayor Ed Koch, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and First Amendment enthusiast Nat Hentoff. Like myself and the scholar, they are all octogenarians. So a case might be made: Don’t Trust Anyone Under 80.
07.And, also like myself, they are all Jews. For as the famous feminist Phyllis Chesler points out (and as even Larry Summers must agree): ANTI-ZIONISM (especially among the Left in general and among the Left faculty in higher education in particular) IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM. (Louis Farrakhan is an Obama supporter. David Duke is a stalwart anti-Zionist.)
07a.Let me repeat: ANTI-ZIONISM IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM.
08.The eminent scholar is Richard Rubenstein (Harvard Ph.D., Yale fellow, and named by Florida State University the Distinguished Professor of the Year). His book is Jihad and Genocide.
09.His message, in distinct, concise form (about 6 minutes) is in this video: Play it and replay it. Copy it and send it to your friends, especially to your Jewish friends, most especially to your Jewish friends who’ll be voting in the midterm election this November.
10.The title of the video is IS OBAMA TRYING TO DESTROY ISRAEL?
11.In this video Dr.Rubenstein (a) refers to Obama as a “menace”; (b) points out that advisors to President Truman in 1948 (State Department heads Gen.Marshall and Dean Acheson) strongly advised Truman not to vote in the U.N. for Israel as a state, and that “it is Obama’s intention to correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel”; (c) that Obama due to his family heritage is extremely pro-Muslim to the point of “wanting to see the destruction of Israel”; (d) that Obama’s family has a distinct Muslim orientation: both his father and stepfather were Muslims, his sister and brother are Muslims, and Obama was born a Muslim; (e) that Obama is anti-Western Europe, especially England, who on moving into the White House immediately sent back to England the bust of Winston Churchill that had been given us; (e) that he symbolically bowed to the Saudi Arab leader on greeting him; (f) and that he is for a nuclear freeze, thereby depriving tiny Israel of its effective weapon against Arab and Iranian military.
12.Rubenstein (like myself) is a specialist in psycho-analysis, having written a psycho-analytic study of St.Paul. (My study of Alfred Hitchcock is a psycho-analytic interpretation of Hitchcock’s films.) So, at least to me, the most telling about Obama’s Muslim heritage, was his notorious slip of the tongue when during an interview and asked what his religion was, he pre-consciously answered: Muslim.
13.We should note that the only time most American Jews voted for the Republican presidential ticket was in 1980 against Jimmy Carter because of Carter’s anti-Israel stand, as is Carter’s position today.
14. Scandalous, say I: In 2008 Jews voted 78% for Obama. Only Blacks voted more strongly for Obama.
15.Even fellow octogenarian Mayor Ed Koch voted for Obama (indeed campaigned for him.) Even Jewish ultra-pro-Israelite Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz voted for him! (Dershowitz said that he knew Obama as a law student of his and liked him.)
16.But, like indeed many 2008 voters for Obama — Democrats, Independents, Jewish and non-Jewish alike — have started to change their minds. Recent polls show that among Jewish voters backing Obama 78% have gone down to 42%.
17.When Ed Koch saw earlier this year Obama’s treatment of Netanyahu, he called it “outrageous” and felt that Obama is “willing to throw Israel under the bus to please the Muslim nations. I believe that honestly.” (See Koch video below.)
18.I hardly think that Dershowitz too would vote for Obama again. (Recently, Dershowitz threw his support for a Republican because of that Republican’s strong pro-Israel stand against his Democratic rival’s weak stand. Dershowitz recently: “Israel is here to stay. Obama may not be here to stay.”
20.Here’s that anti-Obama Ed Koch video: It’s only about 8 minutes. You’d do well to see and hear it in Koch’s own on-camera voice:
21.Earlier this month, from the Daily News: The threat of radical, extremist Islam will last at least a generation, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Sunday.“If these people could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 [on 9/11], they would have.” Blair compared Islamic fundamentalism with revolutionary communism.“It’s the religious or cultural equivalent of it, and its roots are deep, its tentacles are long and its narrative about Islam stretches far further than we think,” he said. Blair’s comments, less than a week before the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, echoed some of the fears voiced by opponents of building a mosque two blocks north of the Trade Center site.
21a. Blair has warned that radical Islam is the greatest threat that the world is facing today. According to him, radical Islamists believe that whatever is done in the name of their cause, including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, is justified.
22.The following video by Alan Dershowitz is long, over an hour. But Dershowitz is a great speaker, dedicated to fairness to Israel; and he covers just about the whole political picture, especially likening Obama’s current view to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler in the 30s.
23.Dr.Rubenstein has a long article on why he wrote his Jihad and Genocide book. When the first plane struck the first tower on 9/11, most people thought this was probably an accident. It wasn’t until the second plane hit the second tower that it was realized that this 9/11 strike was no accident. I used to show my students a brilliant CBS documentary showing George Bush’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispering into Bush’s ear, at the strike of the second plane, that we were being attacked. (The documentary is generally not shown because, as I suspect, it shows Pres. Bush (a) in danger at the time, commander in chief, and (b) fully in command and not Dick Cheney at all. (Cheney at the time was in Washington, Bush in Florida, Cheney being picked up bodily by the Secret Service and carried to a shelter.)
24.Rubenstein says that when the first plane hit the first tower, he “immediately” knew we were being attacked, by Islamists, because of his background in Jihadist Islamic studies.
25.For the record, here are some excerpts from the long article since the book and article are hard to come by
26.”As is evident from much of the material in this book, there is more than a little affinity between National Socialism and Islamic extremism. As partners in World War II, both sought the utter destruction of the Jewish people, a project Islamists have never abandoned.”
27.”Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group ‘hijacking’ a religion whose ‘teachings are good and peaceful.’ On the contrary, “the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries.”
28.”Unfortunately, neither I nor the overwhelming majority of Harvard students of the period had the slightest inkling of the writings of such Islamist thinkers as Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and Syed Abul A’ala Maududi (1903-1979). Uncompromising enemies of Western civilization, their quest for universal Muslim domination shaped the worldview of the perpetrators of 9/11 and may affect the lives and destiny of every man, woman, and child in the twenty-first century.”
29.”Ten days after 9/11, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of the United States Congress in which he sought to make a distinction between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the peace-loving Islamic mainstream. The president declared: ‘I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful. And those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying in effect to hijack Islam itself.'”
30.”In retrospect one can ask whether his statements or the somewhat similar sentiments expressed by President Barack Obama in Cairo on June 4, 2009 were accurate. In reality, Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group ‘hijacking’ a religion whose ‘teachings are good and peaceful.’ On the contrary, the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries of Islamic tradition.”
31.Rubenstein goes on, “The fatal flaw of those who seek a two-state solution while downplaying the Roadmap lies in the fact that a critical mass of Muslims define the struggle against Israel as a defensive jihad against the infidels who raid the abode of Islam. Put differently, such Muslims believe they are under an unconditional religious obligation to expel the Jews who, they believe, have forcibly taken possession of a portion of the abode of Islam. Moreover, there have always been influential opinion makers and government leaders in the United States and Europe for whom the establishment of the State of Israel was an historic mistake and who would welcome Israel’s demise as the real solution to the problems of peace and stability in the Middle East.”
32.”
Diplomats and political leaders usually express their views with a measure of finesse, but not always. For example, speaking to an audience in Alexandria, Egypt in May 2004, Michel Rocard, France’s Socialist Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991, called the establishment of Israel ‘an historic mistake’
Similarly, shortly after 9/11, the late Daniel Barnard, Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, declared at a private London gathering, that the current troubles in the world were all because of ‘that shitty little country Israel.'”
33.”We see this in the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym HAMAS, a document all too often ignored by political leaders The Covenant clearly and unambiguously states that Hamas’s long-term objective, the destruction of the State of Israel and the extermination of its people, is grounded in an unconditional religious imperative regarded as binding on all Muslims.”
34.”If the Holocaust has any meaning for Jews it is that they must believe those who promise to destroy them especially when they actively seek, as does Iran, the weapons with which to do so. They at least are telling the truth and intend to keep their promise if they can.”
35.Rubenstein concludes, “Having spent most of my career writing and teaching about the Holocaust, I now find myself once again confronted by sworn enemies of the United States and Israel who have promised to exterminate my people. With knowledge gained over many decades, I feel I have no option but to take these people at their word.”
36.”That is why I have written this book.”
Dr.Ted Price. email address: drteddywow At aol.com
Posted: October 10th, 2010 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: Israel, Jihad, Obama, Theodore Price | Tags: Islamist Jihad, Israel, Obama, Theodore Price | Comments Off on THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA, ISLAMIST JIHAD, AND ISRAEL
Last week we learned that the Obama Administrations IRS has been targeting Conservative groups with the words ‘Tea Party’ and ‘Patriot’ in their names.