Former CNN Anchor BLASTS Obama For ‘War On Women’ And ‘Julia’ Campaigns And Says STOP CONDESCENDING TO WOMEN

Way to say it, Campbell – and for that matter (and believe me I never thought I’d say this) my hat is off to the New York Times for publishing this:

Obama: Stop Condescending to Women
By CAMPBELL BROWN
Published: May 19, 2012

WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Barnard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men. It’s all so tired, the kind of fake praise showered upon those one views as easy to impress. As I listen, I am always bracing for the old go-to cliché: “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

Some women are smarter than men and some aren’t. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.

My bigger concern is that in courting women, Mr. Obama’s campaign so far has seemed maddeningly off point. His message to the Barnard graduates was that they should fight for a “seat at the table” — the head seat, he made sure to add. He conceded that it’s a tough economy, but he told the grads, “I am convinced you are tougher” and “things will get better — they always do.”

Hardly reassuring words when you look at the reality. According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, about 53.6 percent of men and women under the age of 25 who hold bachelor’s degrees were jobless or underemployed last year, the most in at least 11 years. According to the Pew Research Center, if we broaden the age group to 18- to 29-year-olds, an estimated 37 percent are unemployed or out of the work force, the highest share in more than three decades.

The human faces shouldn’t get lost amid the statistics. I spent last weekend with a friend who attended excellent private schools and graduated from Tufts University two years ago. She’s intelligent, impressive and still looking for a full-time job.

The women I know who are struggling in this economy couldn’t be further from the fictional character of Julia, presented in Mr. Obama’s Web ad, “The Life of Julia,” a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help.

My cousin in Louisiana started a small company with a little savings, renovating houses. A single mom, she saved enough to buy a home and provide child care for her son. When the economy went belly up, so did her company. She was forced to sell her home and move in with her parents. She has found another job, but doesn’t make enough to move out. Family, not government, has been everything to her at this time of crisis. She, and they, wouldn’t have it any other way.

Another member of my family left her job at an adoption agency just before the economy crashed. Also a single mother, she has been looking for a way back to a full-time job ever since. She has been selling things on eBay to make ends meet. Friends and family, not government, have been there at the dire moments when she has asked them to be. Again, she, and they, wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is not to say that government doesn’t play a role in their lives. It does and it should. But it isn’t a dominant one, and certainly not an overwhelming factor in their daily existence.

It’s obvious why the president is doing a full-court press for the vote of college-educated women in particular. The Republican primaries probably did turn some women away. Rick Santorum did his party no favors when he spoke about women in combat (“I think that can be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved”); when he described the birth of a child from rape as “a gift in a very broken way”; and how, if he was president, he would make the case for the damage caused by contraception.

But Mitt Romney will never be confused with Rick Santorum on these issues, and many women understand that. (I should disclose here that my husband is an adviser to Mr. Romney; I have no involvement with any campaign, and have been an independent journalist throughout my career.) The struggling women in my life all laughed when I asked them if contraception or abortion rights would be a major factor in their decision about this election. For them, and for most other women, the economy overwhelms everything else.

Another recent Pew Research Center survey found that voters, when thinking about whom to vote for in the fall, are most concerned about the economy (86 percent) and jobs (84 percent). Near the bottom of the list were some of the hot-button social issues.

Tiffany Dufu, who heads the White House Project, a nonpartisan group aimed at training young women for careers in politics and business, got a similar response when she informally polled young women in her organization. “The issues that have been defined as all women care about are way off — young women feel it has put them further in a box they don’t necessarily want to be in,” she told me. “Independence is what is so important to these women.”

I have always admired President Obama and I agree with him on some issues, like abortion rights. But the promise of his campaign four years ago has given way to something else — a failure to connect with tens of millions of Americans, many of them women, who feel economic opportunity is gone and are losing hope. In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it. Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills. To borrow a phrase from our president’s favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, they want “an open field and a fair chance.”

In the second decade of the 21st century, that isn’t asking too much.

Campbell Brown is a former news anchor for CNN and NBC.

Campbell Brown joins a few incredibly courageous liberal women such as Kirsten Powers who were rightly saw the abject hypocritical double-standard (and see also here) that was just getting replayed over and over again.  And we may finally be reaching that watershed moment in which feminist women who actually give a damn about WOMEN rather than political ideology have come to realize that nothing meaningful will EVER be done to advance women when the side claiming the women’s mantle are abject hypocrites with constant double standards.

I applaud this courage from women who almost certainly vote Democrat because the only way to ANY true reform of ANYTHING is to take on your own side’s hypocrisy.  Take two former Republicans who now live in infamy: Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.  Both went down in flames when their OWN REPUBLICAN PARTY turned on them and said, “You’ve gone too far.  We’re done with you.”

In the case of Richard Nixon in particular – six of the Judiciary Committees’ seventeen Republicans sided with the Democrats in voting for impeachment – if Republicans had rigidly stuck by Nixon for the sake of political party or ideology (which is exactly what happened when ZERO Democrats supported impeachment for Bill Clinton who had engaged in such gross behavior and dishonesty that he was disbarred as a lawyer for his absence of ethics) Republicans could have “won” by doing the same thing Democrats would later do.  Instead a half dozen Republicans finally said, “This is simply too much.  He’s gone too far.”

Here we are at a moment in history in which Obama has clearly gone too far.  And Obama has actually done it again and again on issue after issue.

As just one example that ties in with the “war on women” myth, as a result of Obama’s radical “health care” agenda Catholic universities are beginning to drop their health coverage for all students rather than forfeit their religious freedom to practice a theology that they have held for 1,500 years.  Is that helping women???

Ave Maria University, one of the Catholic universities that is dropping health coverage for ALL students as a result of Obama’s rabid policies, also pointed out that because of ObamaCare their policies were going to increase between 65 and as much as 82 percent.  How in the hell is that helping women???

At some point Democrats are simply going to have to say, “STOP!!!  You’ve gone too far!!!”  Because otherwise this nation is doomed.  And women and the children they love will be hurt more than anybody.

And this ties in to a greater threat that we see in the helpless government-dependent-for-life Julia that Obama has fabricated.  I would argue that Catholic universities getting out of providing assistance and the greater issue of all Christian churches and parachurch organizations being driven out of providing services for the poor is exactly what Obama wants in his “fundamental transformation” of America.  He wants them out because he dreams of an America in which government is the ONLY provider of help and the ONLY savior.  Will that help women???

A few courageous liberal feminists are recognizing that the Democrat Party under Barack Obama is a rhetoric machine that relies exclusively on demonization of the “other side” rather than doing anything whatsoever to build any kind of consensus for genuine reform of anything.  And the Democrat Party and liberal mantra from “feminists” has been to support abject liberal misogyny to advance political ideology for the sake of political ideology in some faint hope that the same hypocrites will change things for women.  And they won’t because it’s all built on lies and words rather than substance.

I’ve never met a Republican yet who didn’t have a mother.  I’ve never personally ever met a Republican husband who didn’t have a wife.  A whopping load of Republican families include daughters.  And basically have of all Republicans including half of the staunchest of Republicans are WOMEN.  This whole “war on women” argument is so blatantly dishonest and deceitful it is simply unreal.

I call on Democrat women to vote Obama out in November for their own sakes.  Because he’s gone too damn far.

Kirsten Powers Points Out That LIBERAL Men Are Far Worse Misogynists Than Rush Limbaugh Ever Was

I obviously often disagree with Kirsten Powers’ liberal perceptions, but I take my hat off to this woman for one thing that makes her an incredibly rare jewel: she might be the only consistent liberal on the entire planet – particularly when it comes to feminism.

Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist
Mar 4, 2012 10:00 AM EST
by Kirsten Powers

Rush Limbaugh apologized on Saturday for calling a Georgetown Law student a slut for testifying about contraception and starting a firestorm of outrage. Kirsten Powers says the liberals who led the charge need to start holding their own side accountable.

Did you know there is a war on women?

Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts. There have been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait. Sorry, that never happened.

Boycotts are reserved for people on the right like Rush Limbaugh, who finally apologized Saturday for calling a 30-year-old Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” after she testified before congress about contraception. Limbaugh’s apology was likely extracted to stop the departure of any more advertisers, who were rightly under pressure from liberal groups outraged by the comments.

Let it be shouted from the rooftops that Rush Limbaugh should not have called Ms. Fluke a slut or, as he added later, a “prostitute” who should post her sex tapes. It’s unlikely that his apology will assuage the people on a warpath for his scalp, and after all, why should it? He spent days attacking a woman as a slut and prostitute and refused to relent. Now because he doesn’t want to lose advertisers, he apologizes. What’s in order is something more like groveling—and of course a phone call to Ms. Fluke—if you ask me.

But if Limbaugh’s actions demand a boycott—and they do—then what about the army of swine on the left?

During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” (He later apologized.) He once even took to his blog to call yours truly a “bimbo” for the offense of quoting him accurately in a New York Post column.

Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, apparently because he finds her having opinions offensive. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show. His solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton, who he thought should drop out of the presidential race, was to find “somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” Olbermann now works for über-leftist and former Democratic vice president Al Gore at Current TV.

The grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher.

Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.” When feminist writer Erica Jong criticized him for it, he responded by referring to Jong as an “800-year old sex novelist.” (Jong is almost 70, which apparently makes her an irrelevant human being.) In Taibbi’s profile of Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann he labeled her “batshit crazy.” (Oh, those “crazy” women with their hormones and all.)

There was another time when I cheered Kirsten Powers when this feminist liberal woman decried the meanness and hypocrisy of N.O.W.:

This notion as to how the left – particularly liberal women – just viciously tears down Sarah Palin like rabid dogs in spite of the fact that what she is at her core is just a strong, successful woman made me think of this exchange:

Kirsten Powers is an analyst for Fox News. She is a proven liberal. But it turns out she is no friend of the N.O.W.

During the 5 September 2008 broadcast of the Fox News program “Hannity and Colmes,” Kirsten Powers said this:

“It’s not the National Organization for Women, right? But it’s not. It’s really the National Organization for Liberal Women. It’s not the National Organization for Women, because she’s [Sarah Palin is] a woman. And they put out a statement saying, “Not all women speak for women. Sarah Palin doesn’t speak for women.” Well, look; this woman, when I look at her – even if I don’t support her, you know, a lot of her policies, she is the embodiment of what feminism was all about. She’s a mother, she’s successful, her husband helps with the children. You know, we should be exited about this, even if you don’t support her.”

Alan Colmes then said:

“If you support someone just because they’re a woman, and the National Organization for Women supports anybody whose a woman,then you’re saying we’re just supporting them because they’re a woman, and you’re not being discerning at all. So you can’t have it both ways.”

And Kirsten Powers responded:

“I would agree with that if they had any kind of actual moral authority, but they don’t, because they don’t ever support any women who don’t support their very narrow agenda. So they should just rename themselves and say what they’re really for, and stop pretending like they really care about the advancement for women.”

I believe it’s becoming clear that the convoluted “feminism” of the N.O.W. is in trouble. If it dies tough, successful, intelligent and independent women like Sarah Palin and Kirsten Powers will have been the ones that killed it.

I especially liked the part of this video where you have the speaker describing liberals accusing Sarah Palin of being “a retard” and then pointing out that if they really believed that, it should clearly engender a reaction of sympathy rather than hate piled on top of hate.

Kirsten Powers had a discussion with Megyn Kelly in which she pointed out that none other than the perpetually outraged feminist Gloria Alread actually went on Bill Maher’s program and failed to denounce him for his vicious attacks on women such as Sarah Palin (e.g., calling her a “cunt” on air).  And Powers stated that it had nothing to do with any actual moral outrage, but was merely naked and hypocritical political opportunism on the part of the left every single time they play this game.

And Kirsten Powers is a truly consistent liberal feminist who is sick of the liberal game.  And I applaud her courage and her virtue.

As an example of a liberal shill shrilly denouncing the other side for its “war on women,” DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz came out to take advantage of the poop Rush Limbaugh stepped in to demonize Mitt Romney.  What the hell did Romney have to do with any of this?  Nothing.  But Schultz doesn’t give a damn.

Democrat Front Media Matters Goes Old-Style Soviet Thug In It’s War Against Fox News

One of the interesting things about the mainstream media’s wars on Fox is just how hypocritical the Fox News haters are.

As an example, Geraldine Ferraro passed away.  Fox News spent the day honoring the first woman to truly break the ceiling in the modern political era.  And although a famous liberal, Ferraro was a Fox News contributor.  Because Fox News actually is fair and balanced.  Roger Ailes personally honored Geraldine Ferraro as a woman who “made deep contributions on a number of significant issues.”  Which is to say that Fox News shows a degree of class that is entirely lacking in the media dominated by the unbalanced and hysterical left.

When the mainstream media outlets hires Sarah Palin as a highly-respected contributor, come back and see me.

If you watch leftwing liberal hatchet organizations such as Media Matters, and then watch the mainstream news coverage, it is remarkable how often talking points that started with the KoolAid-drinking Media Matters end up on the “respected” mainstream media coverage.

It’s amazing how you hear a leftwing narrative, and then the rest of the mainstream media start screeching that same narrative like parrots.

And then, unlike Fox News – which frequently features liberals such as Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckell, Geraldine Ferarro, Geraldo Rivera, Wesley Clark, Judith Miller, Mara Liasson,  Harold Ford, Jr. Juan Williams, Al Sharpton, Ed Rendell, and many others – there are no conservative voices to rebut the Media Matters-mainstream media talking points that invariably and regularly appear on the other channels.

Media Matters says it.  The mainstream media outlets pick it up and report it much the way they pick up and report other ideological leftist sources such as the New York Times, and it is spat out as “fact.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats made fellow KoolAid organization the Daily Kos a host of one of their presidential debates, the founder of that organization went to another mainstream media organization (Newsweek), and Arianna Huffington’s ideological liberalism went even MORE mainstream with her going into AOL News.  And then there’s George Soros, the far-leftist money man for Media Matters, also giving $1.8 million to “objective” NPR to hire reporters so they can cover the news more “fairly.”

Hopefully, this will make that hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt pseudo-journalist propaganda a little bit tougher.  But I doubt it.

Media Matters’ war against Fox
By: Ben Smith
March 26, 2011 07:23 AM EDT

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)

Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox’s parent company, News Corp., an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company’s interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.

The group will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests — whether that be here or looking at what’s going on in London right now,” Brock said, referring to News Corp.’s — apparently successful — move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

A spokeswoman for Fox News, Irena Briganti, declined to comment on Media Matters’ efforts, but the group draws regular barbs from Fox hosts Beck and Bill O’Reilly.

“Tonight is not an episode you casually watch and take out of context like Media Matters does,” Beck remarked last month.

A more extended attack came in February on the freewheeling late night show Red Eye, which conducted a mock interview with a purported Media Matters employee.

“It’s horrible. All we do is sit and watch Fox News and make up stuff about Fox News. It is the saddest place I have ever seen in my life. I think about it, and I want to throw up,” the mock employee said. “I get to work and I take off my clothes, and they strap me into a chair in front of a TV with [Fox News Channel] on. They keep my eyelids propped open like in “Clockwork Orange,” and I sit and type all day.

“If there was no Beck, George Soros would come down and demand we make it up,” the “interviewee” continued. “I would watch the “Flintstones” and transcribe Fred Flintstone’s words and attribute them to Beck. It was the only way to get Soros to stop hitting me.”

(A Soros associate said the financier, who gave Media Matters $1 million last year, did not earmark it for the Fox campaign. Soros suggested in a recent CNN interview that the Fox depictions of him as a sinister media manipulator would better be applied to Murdoch.)

In some views, the war between Media Matters and Fox is not, necessarily, bad for either side. Media Matters has transformed itself into a pillar of the progressive movement with its aggressive new brand of media campaigning. And the attacks cement Fox’s status on the right.

“Fox is happy about it — and it makes their position more vivid among their supporters,” said Paul Levinson, a media studies professor at Fordham University. “One way of keeping your core supporters happy is to be attacked by people your core supporters don’t like.”

But Media Matters says its digging has begun to pay off. The group has trickled out a series of emails from Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon, leaks from inside the network, which show him, for instance, circulating a memo on “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.”

The leaks are part of a broader project to take advantage of internal dissent, Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt said.

“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” he said. “Clearly, somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”

Media Matters, he said, is also conducting “opposition research” on a dozen or so “mid- and senior-level execs and producers,” a campaign style move that he and Brock said would simply involve recording their public appearances and digging into public records associated with them.

And Brock’s 2010 planning memo offers a glimpse at Media Matters’ shift from media critic to a new species of political animal.

“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” its memo says. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

The tactics that Media Matters are using – “sabotage” even on their own acknowledgment – ought to show any decent person that the mainstream media has truly been infiltrated by fascist, Soviet-style thugs.

I mean, think about it: “guerrilla warfare and sabotage”?  This is done by people and organizations who have “Little Red Books” or “Mein Kampfs” to accompany their tactics.  Fox News isn’t out there using “guerrilla warfare and sabotage”; it’s the people who say Fox News is evil who then use the most profoundly un-American tactics.  That should be very informative to non-moral idiots.

Sadly, while conservatives rose up in 2010, it seems that the long-term trend is that there are fewer and fewer decent people who are willing to do less and less.  And all the while the hateful left are busy working like ants stripping the dying carcass of America.

Bad people not only lie; they believe lies.  That’s why we’re seeing more and more lies today.  And it’s why the left can justify openly using “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” that would have been condemned by better people.

Jesus talked about the last days.  He said a lot of terrifying things would happen.  There would be worldwide economic collapses, wars and rumors of wars, many earthquakes and great signs in the oceans in many diverse places, and famines; all anticipating a coming antichrist (“the beast”) who would promise a Utopia but who would ultimately deliver hell on earth.

And it’s all coming while we watch NBC smuggle in Media Matters’ talking points in the guise of “news.”

Obama and his White House has tried to ban Fox News – one of the big four of the media – from being able to cover the news.   Obama’s White House has repeatedly launched flat-out propaganda campaigns against Fox news.  The news media – realizing how outrageous it would be if a conservative president did this same thing to one of them – erupted in outrage against Obama for his blatant attempt to control the media like a fascist dictator.  When Obama tried to freeze out Fox News even though Fox News had been a member of the pool consisting of ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox News since 1997, the ALL refused to send reporters until Obama backed down.  But Obama is STILL doing it as recently as yesterday.  At his heart, he is a fascist.  He demands that he be able to control the media and control the message.

The other day the Obama White House demonstrated this instinct toward fascistic control again: they literally shut a reporter in a cramped closet and kept demanding that he stay in there.

You can bet that the antichrist, the beast, will have control over the media and the message.

And sadddest of all, what Jesus said would precede all of this horror and misery as the leftwing socialist big government beast was the final apathetic and self-absorbed era of the Laodicean church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – who gave his own life in his stand against Adolf Hitler – said a few things that truly apply to us as we sit idly by watching our boob tubes while bad people with a bad agenda take the world away from us:

“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.” 

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” 

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Stop letting these people “frame the news” while you watch like a slack-jawed drooling imbecile. If you’re going to sit there, at least muster the moral outrage to change the channel.

Obama Total Failure As Leader: Even Uber Liberals Throwing Obama Overboard In Gulf Disaster

If you see Obama covered in oil, it’s because a gang of liberals shoved him overboard into the sticky muck.

It appears that things are really getting desperate for the left.  Leftwing journalists, who have always been such reliable propagandists for Democrats, might finally be at that point where they realize if they don’t report the truth, their viewers will go to those that will.

From the gang of liberals at MSNBC:

MSNBC Trashes Obama’s Address: Compared To Carter, “I Don’t Sense Executive Command” Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Howard Fineman react to President Obama’s Oval Office Address on the oil spill. Here are the highlights of what the trio said:

Olbermann: “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days.”

Matthews compared Obama to Carter.

Olbermann: “Nothing specific at all was said.”

Matthews: “No direction.”

Howard Fineman: “He wasn’t specific enough.”

Olbermann: “I don’t think he aimed low, I don’t think he aimed at all. It’s startling.”

Howard Fineman: Obama should be acting like a “commander-in-chief.”

Matthews: Ludicrous that he keeps saying [Secretary of Energy] Chu has a Nobel prize. “I’ll barf if he does it one more time.”

Matthews: “A lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk.”

Matthews: “I don’t sense executive command.”

VIDEO: Obama: Oil Disaster “Most Painful And Powerful Reminder” That We Need Clean Energy

VIDEO: Krauthammer: Obama Gave It A Shot, But The Story Will Not Be His Speech

VIDEO: Frank Luntz Focus Group On Obama’s Address: “Negative”

Here’s the Youtube video in which the above comments were made:

From the New York Times:

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

They were supposed to be better prepared. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989, skimmers, booms and dispersants were in short supply for the response, which was led by a consortium of oil companies in which BP was the majority stakeholder.

A year later, lawmakers passed the federal Oil Pollution Act to ensure that plans were in place for oil spills, so the response effort would be quick, with clear responsibilities for everyone involved.

No skimmers were available when the Exxon Valdes ran aground.  And – thanks to our fool-in-chief Barry Hussein – when we had a chance to get some much needed assistance to supply much-needed skimmers, Barry apparently thought they said, “We’d like to send you winners” and turned them down fearing they would make him look bad.

U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertiseBy LOREN STEFFY –  Houston Chronicle – 06/08/2010

Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.

It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.

The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.

Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.

So we’ve got this complete, unmitigated, and inexcusable disaster:

Had Obama accepted the offer back then and not allowed BP to use illegal dispersants, the oil would have never made landfall 48 miles away.

Today, (a month and half to late) there are US tankers that are steaming to the site with four pairs of modern skimming booms that were airlifted from the Netherlands and should be sucking up oil at the flow site within days.

Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge.

If those skimmers were in place when they were offered a month ago, each pair could presumably recover 4.4 million barrels of oil. Four pairs of the state of the art skimmers would be able to suck up 17.6 million barrels in a month, although they will not be able to reach the depths of the plumes that are floating away with the illegal dispersants.

Thirteen nations offered to give us help to mitigate this massive disaster.  And Obama basically wrote, “To whom it may concern, please to get the hell out of my business” letters to all of them.

And, of course, this failure is too big for just one inexcusable and stupid and unforgivable abandonment of leadership, judgment, and basic common sense.  In addition to the “Thanks, but up yours” response to other nations’ offers to supply skimmers, Obama also allowed MILES of boom that would have been hugely important in protecting the coasts to sit useless in warehouses:

UNBELIEVABLE! How’s this for HOPE AND CHANGE?

Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola this past weekend. Crude oil has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and has impacted about 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

It didn’t have to be this way.

(Reuters)
There are miles of floating oil containment boom in warehouse right now and the manufacturer Packgen says it can make lots more on short notice.
There’s just one problem… No one will come get it.

It’s unfair to compare Bush’s failure at the 500-year hurricane striking the worst possible location with Obama’s failure in this oil leak disaster – Obama’s failure is incommensurately worse.

And the American people know it.  A new poll–by a left leaning public opinion firm–finds that:

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Since Obama was elected, I’ve been saying that a third of American voters would continue to support Obama even if he led us into the stone-age-like conditions that Kim Il Jong has led his people into.  We could be living in the dark and freezing at night, and scratching our own fecal matter from the ground in order to have something to burn, and this group of people would still adore their Dear Leader.

And what is Obama’s response to this terrible crisis?  Well, his golf game certainly hasn’t suffered in any way.  He’s been very busy doing fundraisers so his fellow liberal buddies can have a chance to stay in office.  He got a nice vacation in.

Oh, and he gave a speech.  A speech in which Obama sought to seize advantage of the disaster in order to impose his monstrous and disastrous cap-and-trade system that would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.”  Obama is no leader who can possibly solve this crisis; he is rather a demagogic community organizer who can only seek to ideologically benefit from the crisis.

And MSNBC and the New York Times aren’t the only liberals who realize the disastrous and disgraceful failure that Obama has been.  Longtime liberal Democrat political strategist James Carville realized it.  Liberal journalist and former Clinton administration public affairs hack Kirsten Powers realized it.  I’m sure a lot of other liberal media pukes are realizing that we’re coming to the place where they either throw Obama overboard for his incompetence, or demonstrate that they themselves are clearly incompetent in their analysis.

I like the way the American Thinker concludes on Obama’s performance:

The utter lack of leadership and hands-on management in responding to the Gulf oil crisis is an embarrassment to the President, as well as a hideous disaster for the Gulf and those who live near it. Can Obama’s first-ever Oval Office address make the damage to his standing go away? I seriously doubt it. Obama has failed in his duty to protect the homeland through sheer inexperience, incompetence, and indolence. The man who has planty of time for golf, hoops, parties, and fund-raisers is asleep at the switch when it comes to making the system respond effectively to an emergency. There is no papering over the spectacle with rhetoric.

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Yet Another Liberal Points Out That Obama Is An Abject Failure

You have to appreciate the irony at the start of this article.  Democrats have mocked Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill.”  But is their increasingly loud wail to Obama – “Do something, baby, do something” – somehow supposed to be better?

Where was plan A?
By KIRSTEN POWERS
Last Updated: 9:58 AM, May 27, 2010

Do something, baby, do something: That’s the cry from Obama supporters and opponents alike as the oil keeps gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The political firestorm kept growing yesterday, with supporter James Carville ranting that the administration has been “lackadaisical” and “naive” in its response to the disaster. He urged it to rapidly “move to Plan B.”

But that suggests there was ever a Plan A.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is so frustrated with the lack of response to his plan to stop the slick with sand barriers that yesterday he called on the White House and BP to either “stop the oil spill or get out of the way.”

“Plug the damn hole,” President Obama reportedly barked at staffers in frustration after the explosion. That’s right up there with “Heckuva job, Brownie” in terms of clueless statements uttered by presidents in the midst of nationally televised disasters.

Meanwhile, White House regret over Obama’s politically expedient embrace of the “Drill, baby, drill” trope is growing faster than the vast oil slick.

Back on March 31, Obama announced — to the horror of many of his supporters — that he was expanding offshore drilling along the coastlines of the south and mid-Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico. Worse, he painted a (too) rosy scenario of offshore drilling being eminently safe.

True, it is rare that a full-blown environmental catastrophe results from an offshore oil well. But it can happen — and a Democratic president who’s embracing drilling ought to know the risks, and be prepared for the worst. But rather than planning for a spill, Obama parroted McCain-Palin talking points about how safe offshore drilling is.

Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in 1994 drafted plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response called “In-Situ Burn.”

Ron Gourget, a former federal oil-spill-response coordinator and one author of the draft, told the Times of London: “The whole reason the plan was created was so that we could pull the trigger right away.” The idea was to use barriers called “fire booms” to collect and contain the spill at sea — then burn it off. He believes this could have captured 95 percent of the oil from this spill.

But at the time of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the federal government didn’t have a single fire boom on hand. Nor is there any evidence that the government required BP to have any clear plan to deal with a massive spill. How is this OK?

The administration’s chief response so far was to send out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to do his best impersonation of a totalitarian thug, proclaiming that the government would “have its boot on the throat of BP.”

(Fun fact: While in the Senate, Salazar backed an increase in oil and gas leases in the Gulf Coast region by promoting and voting for the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.)

Since the “blame BP” strategy isn’t working, Obama will today announce tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections for offshore drilling operations. Sounds nice — except the problem isn’t a lack of safety requirements, it’s that the experts at the US Minerals Management Service ignored the existing requirements.

In fact, it was under Salazar’s reign that the MMS approved BP’s drilling without getting the permits required by law for drilling that might harm endangered species. The agency routinely overruled warnings regarding the safety and environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf.

None of this was a secret.

It also shouldn’t be a secret that no matter how many inspections and safety requirements you have, you can’t ever completely prevent disasters like this one. If you’re going to permit offshore drilling, be prepared to respond to a spill.

If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead, we’ve gotten the Keystone Cops.

Ah, competence.  One day after Obama is gone, we might actually have some of that in the White House.

Obama is bringing his incompetence everywhere he goes, rather like the travelling salesman with the unfortunate body odor that exudes out of every pour brings stink with him everywhere he goes.

What was it about being a community organizer that prepared him to actually lead anything constructive?

It’s not right to say that Obama has been doing everything the federal government could do; no, he ignored the very first thing that the federal government already had as policy to do in the event of a disaster like this – and has done absolutely nothing else in its place.  Oil that could have been contained and burned off is instead murdering all of the pelicans on the coast.  And, instead of helping Louisiana do everything it could to keep that oil off its coasts and marshes, Obama’s federal government has massively screwed up on that side of the coin, too.  Governor Jindal demanded 24 temporary sand berms to act as a barrier between the coast and the oil; first the federal government said it had to dot every i and cross every t with endless environmental studies before it would authorize any such construction; then the government said it would only permit six berms, and would only actually pay for just one berm.  And now the oil is all over the place and its too damn late for much of anything but to scrub oil from the few pelicans that might survive.

Instead, what Zero did was ZERO.  Instead of actually working to resolve he problem, Obama has handled this like a campaign issue.  He handed all the responsibility over to British Petroleum while simultaneously saying he was responsible.  It has all been about words rather than action.

Bobby Jindal has called upon Obama to “either “stop the oil spill or get out of the way.” And of course Obama won’t do either.  His government is worse than useless, because it is getting in the way of actual efforts by Louisiana to DO SOMETHING.

So here’s what we’re facing now under the failed regime of our Turd-in-Chief:

“In Revelations, it says the water will turn to blood. That’s what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding,” said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Plaquemines Parish as he kneeled down to take a picture of an oil-coated feather. “This is going to choke the life out of everything.” […]

Eugene, 54, who has worked for decades in a shipyard, said he was growing tired of the government’s response.

“He ain’t much of a leader,” he said of Obama. “The beach you can clean up. The marsh you can’t. Where’s the leadership. I want to hear what’s being done. We’re going to lose everything.” […]

Newly disclosed internal Coast Guard documents from the day after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig indicated that U.S. officials were warning of a leak of 336,000 gallons per day of crude from the well in the event of a complete blowout.

The volume turned out to be much closer to that figure than the 42,000 gallons per day that BP first estimated. Weeks later it was revised to 210,000 gallons. Now, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons of crude is believed to be leaking daily.

“He ain’t much of a leader.”  You got that right.  I was screaming that from the rooftops two years and change ago.

Do we have good information?  No, everything keeps turning out to be wrong – and always much for the worse.  Is anything getting done?  No.  Just one failed plan after another.  Having never bothered to implement the plan we’ve had since 1994 for a disaster like this.

Now we’re being told that the latest “fix” is capturing about 42,000 gallons of oil a day.  Which might sound impressive until you realize that it’s leaking a MILLION gallons a day.

And we’re looking at the very real possibility that we’re going to continue to see a massive disaster get more massive every single day until Christmas.

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is rather like the Obama administration itself: there’s just no end to this disaster, and all we have instead of solutions is a constant stream of misinformation and excuses.

Why Sarah Palin Debunks “N.O.W. Feminism”

I found the following discussion about the treatment that Gov. Sarah Palin has received since she was announced as John McCain’s Vice President incredibly insightful.  It was broadcast on the September 5, 2008 “Hannity and Colmes” program on Fox News.

The participants are conservatives Sean Hannity, Bay Bucanan, and liberals Alan Colmes and Kirsten Powers.  Kirsten Powers had some amazing things to say:

Kirsten Powers: It’s not the National Organization for Women, right?  But it’s not.  It’s really the National Organization for Liberal Women.  It’s not the National Organization for Women, because she’s a woman.  And they put out a statement saying, “Not all women speak for women.  Sarah Palin doesn’t speak for women.”  Well, look; this woman, when I look at her – even if I don’t support her, you know, a lot of her policies, she is the embodiment of what feminism was all about.  She’s a mother, she’s successful, her husband helps with the children.  You know, we should be exited about this, even if you don’t support her.