Psychology

Custom Search

  

  

Uh huh!
 

    
 


help fight the ObamaMedia
   


    

 

 

 
 
The items in this category have been collected from a variety of sources.  They are placed here because the thrust of the article is related to psychology.  This stuff is here because it's interesting, not because it's a professional assessment.
Dr. Ablow Psychoanalyzes Obama


  
Democrats' Worst Nightmare
Alex Ritz says Barack Obama is seriously damaging the Democrat party.  His agenda, while popular among his staunchest supporters, is not resonating with the American people.  The numbers tell the story.  According to Rasmussen Reports:
    

•  68% say the country is heading in the wrong direction.
•  58% say Congress is doing a poor job.
•  52% disapprove of Obama's performance.
•  52% oppose the massive health care plan.

    
Yet, none of these numbers seem to matter to the man in the Oval Office.  The outlook becomes even more bleak when considering the Democrats up for reelection in November 2010.  Many Democrats have already jumped ship rather than be slaughtered in the mid-terms.  The destruction being inflicted on the Democrat party is clear for all to see, yet Obama pushes forward with his agenda undeterred.  Its as if he doesn’t realize that the damage being inflicted on his party will have serious implications for his agenda and his presidency.

Why is he doing this?  I have three theories.

Theory 1:  Obama is an insatiable narcissist who so badly wants his presidency to be remembered as historic that he is willing to lead his party to defeat to achieve it.  Obama wants his name in the record books as the man who pushed for and achieved "Health Care reform" at any cost.

Theory 2:  Obama considers himself more than just the President of the United States.  He views himself as operating on a grander scale.  President of the world perhaps.  In this position, Obama believes that he can correct the wrongs in the world and make things more equitable for all mankind.  By relinquishing the sovereignty of the United States and using it as a piggy bank to fund humanitarian efforts around the globe he can offer reparations for all the wrongs committed by the USA.

Theory 3:  Obama was both a student and teacher in the ways of Saul Alinsky.  Alinsky is all about creating chaos to bring about revolutionary change.  Obama said over and over on the campaign trail: "we are close to beginning the task of fundamentally changing the United States of America."  At the time, people glossed over it as normal campaign rhetoric.  In order to bring about this revolutionary change, a major event would be needed.  Perhaps the collapse of the capitalist system that is currently in place.  If Obama can get it to collapse, he can then make the case that it imploded due to its own corruption and immorality.  A new system would be required to move forward.  Obama would then attempt to rebuild the United States in a socialist image.

Perhaps there are portions of all of these theories floating around in Obama’s head.

On the other side of the equation, in no way do I understand why the Democrat party is blindly following this man.  He is destroying their party.  He has shown no regard for the future of his party in Congress and seems more than willing to cast anyone overboard if it means getting one step closer to achieving his objectives.

Why do they continue to follow him?

I understand the tremendous desire for health care reform.  It’s something the Democrat party has wanted for 5 decades.  But these Democrats must see the writing on the wall.  This bill, even if it does pass will be subject to endless lawsuits and the opposition party will work endlessly to repeal it on the basis that it is unconstitutional.

Senators Dodd and Dorgan worked for decades in US Senate to achieve their power.  Now, within one year of Obama taking office, they have been destroyed.  The Washington Times reported that Senator Dorgan told reporters that his decision to drop out "is not a reflection of any dissatisfaction with my work in the Senate."  It doesn’t add up.

At the end of the day, I’m not complaining.  I enjoy nothing more than watching Conservatism be embraced all over the country, but the fact that we are watching the Democrat party commit hari kari while Obama stands by providing additional swords is bizarre to me.
America’s Crash Course In Narcissism
Joy Tiz says the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR) is the diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals.  A diagnosis of narcissism requires five out of nine characteristics.  Note these traits must endure overtime and must not be reactions to a particular situation or environmental stressor:
  

1.  Grandiose sense of self-importance.
2.  Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty, or ideal love.
3.  Sense of specialness, belief he can only be understood by or should associate only with other special or high-status individuals or institutions.
4.  Need for excessive admiration.
5.  Heightened sense of entitlement, leading to unreasonable expectations that others should treat him especially favorably or comply automatically with his expectations.
6.  Tendency to be interpersonally exploitive. A person with NPD does not hesitate in taking advantage of others to meet his own ends.
7.  Lack of empathy, an inability or unwillingness to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others.
8.  An envy of other people, or conversely, a belief that other people envy him.
9.  A tendency toward arrogant behavior or attitude.

     
In his essay on Obama’s narcissism, Sam Vaknin references Obama’s haughty body language and condescending attitude.  Vaknin also points out Obama’s "emotion free language."  Commentators frequently describe Obama as cool and aloof.

Some narcissists learn to mimic normal human emotions.  Clinton is the master of this; he claimed to feel our pain, and plenty of Americans believed him.  Clinton learned how to win people over with his pseudo empathy.  Obama has yet to demonstrate anything we could call true empathy; irrespective of the words he uses, there is no real emotional content.

When children experience overwhelming trauma, they protect themselves as best they can with a variety of defense mechanisms.  There is no question that life for little Barry was traumatic, full of chaos and abandonment, as well as genuine fear.  The adults in his life betrayed him and taught him hate and mistrust.  Otto Kernberg, in his research on narcissism, states that it evolves as a defense against a cold and unsympathetic parent.  The child withdraws part of himself from the unavailable parent and turns it back toward himself, creating a grandiose sense of self.  Healthy emotional development was just not possible in young Barry’s environment.
 
If five out of nine indicates narcissism, what does nine out of nine indicate?
The Difference Is Me
Paul Mirengoff says Rep. Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat, has decided not to seek re-election.  Berry told ABC News that he fears a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections.  According to Berry, the White House does not share this concern:
  

"They just don't seem to give it any credibility at all," Berry said.  "They just kept telling us how good it was going to be.  The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.'"

   
But so did Creigh Deeds -- Virginia; Jon Corzine -- New Jersey; and Martha Coakley -- Massachusetts.  Obama campaigned for them all -- and they all lost.

Berry's anecdote reminded Mirengoff of something a friend told him about Obama.  This friend met Obama when they were both summer associates at the same law firm.  Years later, as Obama's campaign for president was picking up momentum, he gave him his impressions from that summer.

At this point (2007), Obama struck me as pretty likeable.  In addition, prominent conservative lawyers who had worked with Obama on the Harvard Law Review were saying nice things about his willingness to cooperate with them and to treat them with respect.

Since my friend is not inclined to say harsh things about others, I expected him to give a favorable account of Obama too.  Instead, he described Obama as "the most arrogant person I've ever met."

I must admit that I discounted this report to some extent.  My thinking was that anyone who had reached the heights Obama had already hit by 2007 would likely come off as extremely arrogant to people meeting them in a work setting 20 years or so earlier.  (The Harvard Law Review is a different matter -- there, the bar is considerably higher.  Moreover, as I understand it, Obama formed some sort of coalition with conservatives on the Review, and thus they would have reason to think well of him).

After a year as president, however, it seems clear that Obama's arrogance far exceeds even the large quantity one would expect from someone confident enough to seek the presidency with very little serious experience and at a relatively young age.
He Thinks He's A Gift From God
 

Ben Stein says there's something going on in this man's head that is quite unusual  (04:42)
    
Obama Refers To Himself 114 Times
Examiner.com says that any speech from Obama is guaranteed to include numerous references to himself, blaming George Bush, and creating straw men.  Wednesday night's State of the Union was no different.

Here is the numbers breakdown of Obama's first State of the Union:

114 -- The staggering number of times Obama referred to himself. He said "I" 96 times, and used "my" or "me" 18 times.  For example: "When I ran for president, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular, I would do what was necessary."  Barack Obama's favorite person is still Barack Obama.

86 -- The number of times Obama was interrupted by applause, almost always by his fellow Democrats.

70 -- The number of minutes the speech took.

13 -- Stories of people that may or may not exist, in an attempt to personalize his speech. -- Examples: "The window manufacturer in Philadelphia", "the struggling small business owner who wrote to me", and "the eight year old boy in Louisiana."

10 -- Times Obama blamed his own failures on George W. Bush.  Instead of owning up to his own failures, Obama must constantly try to remind people that the problems were there before he got into office.  Example: "That's what we did for eight years."

4 -- Attacks on Wall Street or bankers, the nouveau-bourgeoisie.  There is always a bogeyman that the Obamunists must blame for the country's woes.  Along with George Bush, the current evil entity is Wall Street.

4 -- Arguments with straw men.  Obama loves to debate with people who do not have a forum.  He is able to get his point across and we are not allowed to hear from the other side.  Examples: "Those that disagree" and "some on the right."

1 -- Moderation from his ultra-liberal agenda.  He actually showed a willingness toward more opening America's vast, untapped oil resources.  "It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development."  Unfortunately, this was the only example of Obama "moving to the center."  Despite the Brown-out in Massachusetts, Obama has not learned the lesson that America rejects his leftist policies.

0 -- New ideas.  It was the same old agenda from Obama.  He wants health care reform, another stimulus, cap and trade.  He remains tone deaf to the U.S. electorate.

0 -- Changes in ObamaCare.  He repeatedly praised the plan and said it must be passed.  The main fault he found in it was that he "didn't explain it more clearly."  Obama said he would listen to new ideas, but the ideas of tort reform and allowing insurance purchases across state lines are not new.  He refused to listen to them before.

0 -- Lessons learned from the failure of Porkulus.  Yesterday, we found out the $787 billion dollar plan actually cost $862 billion.  It failed miserably on its promise to keep unemployment below 8 percent.  Now, Obama wants a new "jobs plan".

0 -- Focus on national security.  There was no discussion of Guantanamo Bay, terrorist detainees being tried on U.S. soil, or the Flight 253 terror attempt.
Has Obama Become Bored?
Byron York asks, isn't this is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job?

He's in his second year as president, and he's discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can't do everything he wants to do, like remake America.  Doing stuff is hard.  In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it's prompted him to think about moving on.

Begin with his first serious job, as a community organizer in Chicago.  Obama got a little done, but quickly became frustrated with small achievements.  "He didn't see organizing making any significant changes in things," Jerry Kellman, the organizer who hired him, told me in 2008.

What Obama wanted was political power, and that is what sent him to Harvard Law School.  "He was constantly thinking about his path to significance and power," another organizer, Mike Kruglik, told me.  "He said, 'I need to go there [Harvard] to find out more about power.  How do powerful people think?  What kind of networks do they have?  How do they connect to each other?'"

Out of law school, Obama did some civil rights work in Chicago before running successfully for the Illinois Senate in 1996.  Almost immediately, Obama began "chafing ... at the limitations of legislating in Springfield," in the words of a Washington Post profile.  Easily bored, and with a growing sense of dissatisfaction, he set his eyes on the House of Representatives, unsuccessfully challenging Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000.  In 2002 he began his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

He won in 2004, but the Senate proved unsatisfying, too.  By mid-2006, Majority Leader Harry Reid "sensed his frustration and impatience, had heard rumblings that Obama was already angling to head back home and take a shot at the Illinois governorship," write Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in the new book Game Change.  Reid knew "Obama simply wasn't cut out to be a Senate lifer."

According to the book, the majority leader invited Obama to his office for a talk.  "You're not going to go anyplace here," Reid told Obama.  "I know that you don't like it, doing what you're doing."  Reid suggested Obama run for president.  Obama had been a senator for all of 18 months at the time.  Soon after, he was off and running.

What drove Obama was not just ambition, although he is certainly ambitious.  As he became frustrated in each job, Obama concluded that the problem was not having the power to do the things he wanted to do.  So he sought a more powerful position.

Today he is sitting in the most powerful chair in the world.  Yet he has spent a year struggling, and failing, to enact far-reaching makeovers of the American economy.  So now, even in the Oval Office, there are signs that the old dissatisfaction is creeping back in.

At a Jan. 17 Martin Luther King Day event at Washington's Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, Obama brought up the fact that many people see him as almost preternaturally calm.  "I have a confession to make," Obama said.  "There are times I'm not so calm ... when progress seems too slow ... when it feels like all these efforts are for naught, and change is so painfully slow in coming, and I have to confront my own doubts."

Obama said it to be inspirational, but the fact is, in the past, that's when he looked for a new job.

A few days later, ABC's Diane Sawyer asked whether Obama would sometimes "sit and confront your own doubts."

"Yes," Obama said.

"Ever in the middle of all that's coming did you think maybe one term is enough?"  Sawyer asked.

Obama answered haltingly.  "You know, I -- I would say that when I -- the one thing I'm clear about is that I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

Many observers have remarked that, even when dealing with the most momentous issues facing the country, Obama has seemed oddly removed from the hands-on work of making policy.  Maybe they're noticing the same thing Harry Reid did.  Obama's dissatisfaction is shining through; perhaps he's not really cut out for -- or up to -- the job.

In the State of the Union address, Obama declared, "I don't quit."  And of course, there's no danger he would just up and quit the Oval Office.  But throughout his life, his reaction to frustration has been to look for a bigger job.  What does he do now?
President Weirdo
I don't know about the rest of you, but I found Anne Kornblut's report in the Washington Post -- "Obama's 17-minute, 2,500-word response to woman's claim of being 'over-taxed'" -- to be deeply disturbing.  Although I disagree with most of Barack Obama's policies, I took no pleasure in seeing a political opponent wound himself by talking on and on to the point of agitating his audience.  The situation is much too grave for that.  This is our country -- all of us, Republican, Democrat and Independent.  And I am now convinced of what I have long suspected -- the United States has a leader with a serious personality disorder.

Now I admit I am not a professional psychiatrist or psychologist, nor do I see myself even remotely as a paragon of mental health, but I have made a decent living for over thirty years as a fiction writer whose stock in trade is perforce studying people and this is one strange dude.  He makes Richard Nixon seem almost normal.

I first began worrying about this during the Reverend Wright affair.  Obama insisted, as we all recall, that he did not know the reverend's views even though the then candidate had spent twenty years in his church, been married by him, had his children baptized by him and taken the inspiration for his book from Wright.  Now most educated people would have a pretty good idea about Wright after five minutes, let alone twenty years.  The reverend is not a subtle man.  Yet Obama told us he didn't know.

Was the candidate lying or was he just so dissociated from reality that he didn't see what was in front of his eyes?  Or perhaps a little of both?  Whatever the conclusion, it is not a happy one.  The same man is before us now -- only we're not in the midst of a campaign.  We have no way out.  He is leading our nation during a time of economic crisis with a world changing so rapidly that our heads spin.

Therapists often speak of "inappropriate affect" -- laughing at sad news, etc. -- as an indicator of psychological disturbance.  That is not far from what Obama displayed at the question-and-answer session in Charlotte described by Kornblut when he endlessly replied to a woman's query about taxation.  His response was inappropriate, to say the least.  It also was a demonstration that at heart he does not believe his own ideas.  Otherwise, why take so long?  Methinks he doth protest too much, as the Bard said.  And protest he does, like a comedian who knows he is bombing but keeps telling jokes.

Unfortunately, the joke is on us.  Obama's proposals have become a manifestation of ego, and not of thought-through deliberated policy.  No attempt at bi-partisanship is ever really made because our leader is too fragile to compromise and too wounded to admit when he is wrong.  For someone who arrived as an "intellectual," ideas are the least of it.  He only wants to be right.

I know some conservatives think Obama is a socialist or a closet Alinskyite or whatever, but I think the problem is yet more complicated.  No matter his ideology, this man is not fit to rule psychologically.  Or, more properly, govern -- but you know what I mean.  He doesn't have the temperament.  He was elected with people knowing almost nothing about him.  Despite that the facts are still masked, his history still obscure, we may now know too much, have seen too much.  These things just leak out around the edges.  They do for all of us, like it or not.  And yet, he will be with us until 2012 at least.

Roger L Simon says, good luck to us.
Obama's Elitism Will Be His Apocalypse
Ralph Benko says that Obama, politically and psychically, is vulnerable not as a progressive but as, demonstrably, an overbearing elitist.  America was founded on the self-evident truth that all are created equal.

Elitism is abhorrent to Americans.  Elitist politicians flinch when called out.  Obama is proudly progressive.  He appears ashamed of his elitism, which he carefully and continually veils.  Exposing him as elitist will be Obama’s apocalypse ( "apocalypse" meaning "to lift the veil").  This will trigger a series of immediate reactions.

First, it will rally, and focus, the voters.  Obama’s elitism is an insult.  "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge," begins Edgar Allen Poe’s "The Cask of Amontillado."

Americans are bearing up under the thousand injuries of Obama.  It erodes his popularity but doesn’t trigger a focused reaction.  (And as the business cycle begins to restore jobs, as it is, the sense of injury will fade.) But when people realize that he has ventured upon insult, they, politically, will immure him.

This will alienate Obama’s key allies from him.  Democratic congressmen may swallow hard and vote with him in piling trillions in debt upon our children.  That can be rationalized in the name of a crisis or of jobs.

But elitism can’t be rationalized.  There is no way to rationalize insulting your voters.  Obama is shielded by the massive apparatus of the White House and by guaranteed post-presidency fame and fortune.  Members of Congress are not so shielded and sooner or later will distance themselves from insultingly naked elitism.

This will call out to Obama’s own conscience.  Baring his elitism may force Obama into some overdue soul-searching.  Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, in "The Battle for America 2008," report that in preparing Obama to run, advisor David Axelrod wrote to him:
    

"It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism.  At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch.  You care far too much what is written and said about you."

    
Obama presents himself as fundamentally decent, albeit infuriatingly smug and not nearly as smart as he thinks (nor as smart as what The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki calls "the wisdom of crowds").

Baring Obama's elitism will put him on the defensive.  Obama is likely to begin to second-guess himself and even may begin to check his own worst excesses and begin a return toward embracing the common sense wisdom of the people.

Attacking Obama as a Leftist attacks him on his own turf.  Attacking him as elitist attacks him on ours.  Alinsky teaches us (Rule 3, Rules for Radicals), "Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.  Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat."

The simple truth?  Obama is an elitist.  The winning strategy?  Rip away the veil and reveal the hidden truth.  Naked elitism is Obama’s apocalypse.
What Is Barack Obama?

Roger L. Simon thinks Obama’s deranged, and Roger’s the son of a good psychiatrist, so he knows what he’s talking about.  I don’t doubt that Obama has his issues -- just look at his nutty mother, consider the impact of being abandoned by dad -- but I don’t think that just putting Obama on the couch is the best way to understand him.

 

Put him in the classroom instead.  Because he’s the stereotypical American undergrad at a stereotypical Ivy League college in the age of political correctness.

 

He doesn’t much like America or Americans, or the "former colonial powers" like Britain.  Like so many would-be intellectuals, he admires lefty writers and screenwriters and actors and actresses.  He likes the downtrodden, like the Palestinians, but he’s overcome with awe for the occasional cool (non-Western) monarch or emperor (whether Arab or Chinese).  He probably has a Che tee shirt tucked away in a drawer, don’t you think?

 

He doesn’t know much history (he thinks Muslims invented printing), geography (his America has 57 states), or economics (he believes you can reduce health care costs by adding millions to the public rolls).

 

The most important thing to Obama is how you feel and what you say, not all those annoying facts (50 states, the Chinese invented printing, and you increase deficits when you spend more).  And, like most students, when the debate goes badly for him, Obama makes fun of his critics -- when he actually lets them talk a little bit.  Remember when he hosted a few Republicans in the White House so he could listen to what they might say about health care…and then talked twice as much as they did?

 

As a typical undergrad, Obama loves to talk, and loves to talk about peace and justice.  You know, the really important things.  His new nuclear policy is right out of a college bull session:  "Why don’t we just promise not to use them?"  Nukes are bad, ugly things.  Doesn’t everyone agree that the world would be better off without them?

 

Well,  grownups don’t necessarily agree.  It all depends how you get there, and what the others do along the way.  We do have real enemies, but undergrad Obama understands their ire and shares their pain.  It’s up to us to make things right.  And so he apologizes, worrying more about our nukes (about which he has done something) than Iran’s (we haven’t done a thing).

 

Finally, he doesn’t seem to realize what a mess he’s making.  And when he gets his grades, he blames the professors (we the people, in this case) for being unfair.

 

That’s the sort we’ve been graduating for a generation or more, isn’t it?  Did you really think we’d never get one in the White House?
Obama Going Off The Deep End
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown say that a recent analysis by Roger Simon of PJTV Media maintains that Obama is showing signs of mental illness.  A wide variety of commentators have observed that Obama displays severe narcissism.  Obama is conceited, and he is demonstrating a serious disassociation from reality.

A recent case in point was Obama's bizarre and meandering 17-minute, 2,500-word answer to the simple question about how he could justify raising taxes for ObamaCare during a recession when citizens are already overtaxed.  Obama's wildly inappropriate answer left the audience stunned and led commentator Charles Krauthammer to mockingly say, "I don't know why you are so surprised.  It’s only nine times the length of the Gettysburg address, and after all Lincoln was answering an easier question, the higher purpose of the union and the soldiers who fell in battle."

This lapse of delusion occurred in front of a friendly audience.  Overall, Barack Obama seems to be slipping into a slightly more delusional state these days.

On Monday, following his embarrassing answer on Saturday, Obama stopped by the Washington Nationals home opener to loft an effeminate toss toward home plate constituting the ceremonial first pitch.  After this display, Obama was mucking it up in the press booth talking about his love of the Chicago White Sox.  The announcers asked Obama which players he supported growing up a White Sox fan.  After hemming and hawing for about 30 seconds, Obama responded that he grew up in Hawaii and was actually an A's fan.  Again, he avoided mentioning any players by name.  Obama seems to believe that he can say whatever he wants, and not reap the consequences or be forced to defend his empty assertions.  Obama behaves in a manner so disconnected from reality that he is shocked when someone has the audacity to question him.  Obama acts like his word is infallible.

In March of last year Obama was on "60 Minutes" with Steve Kroft.  Throughout the interview, as Kroft questioned about the economic downturn and people losing their life savings, Obama just kept laughing.  At one point, CBS’s Kroft stopped him and asked, "Are you punch drunk?"  How will the American people react to seeing this man laugh off their predicament?  Obama’s inappropriate laughter clearly demonstrated he has lost touch with the pain that people are feeling.

Obama portrays himself as the larger-than-life figure towering above the political fray.  At the summit when Obama was pushing his health care package through Congress, he attempted to act as if he were the chief arbiter of truth.  With petty insults, he slapped down what the Republicans proposed and audaciously claimed his was a "bipartisan bill."  Obama distorts the truth with such frequency that one must start to question if Obama even realizes he is lying, or is so disassociated from the truth that he believes what he says.

A further example of Obama’s delusions of grandeur occurred when he gave himself a "good solid B plus."  Believing that his presidency was an above average success when America is hurting is absurd.  Obama went so far as to claim that he would give himself an "A" once health care was passed.  Obama is not living in the same reality as the rest of us.

As Charles Krauthammer wrote, "Not that Obama considers himself divine.  (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.)  But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see."

Obama sees himself as the greatest man to be president in all time.  He truly believes it when he said "we are the ones we have been waiting for," and "this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal."  He believes that he can do anything he pleases and the people will love him for it.  Obama plans to radically transform this country and go down in history as, in his mind, the greatest ever.  Obama is clearly disconnected from reality.

Obama is, according to Newt Gingrich, "potentially the most dangerous (president), because he so completely misunderstands reality."  Gingrich was referring to Obama’s inept and weak stance on missile defense amongst other things.  Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Obama is an amateur; so much for wowing the world.  Obama lives in an alternate universe where he treats our friends poorly and expects our enemies to change and become our friends.  Here’s hoping that the voters help to connect Obama back to reality in November.
He Might Be Insane
The European Union Times claims a new report circulating in the Kremlin today authored by France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) and recently "obtained" by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) shockingly quotes French President Nicolas Sarkozy as stating that Barack Obama is "a dangerous[ly] aliéné", which translates into his, Obama, being a "mad lunatic", or in the American vernacular, "insane".

According to this report, Sarkozy was "appalled" at Obama’s "vision" of what the World should be under his "guidance" and "amazed" at Obama's unwillingness to listen to either "reason" or "logic."  Sarkozy’s meeting where these impressions of Obama were formed took place nearly a fortnight ago at the White House in Washington D.C., and upon his leaving he "scolded" Obama and the US for not listening closely enough to what the rest of the World has to say.

Apparently, as this report details, the animosity between Sarkozy and Obama arose out of how best the West can deal with the growing threat posed by rising Islamic fundamentalism.  Both Sarkozy and his European neighbors had previously been supported in their efforts by the United States in forming an alliance to strengthen the integration of Muslim peoples into their societies, and has including France and Belgium moving to ban the wearing of burqa’s.

European fears over their growing Muslim populations appear to be valid as the growing immigration and birth rates of these Islamic peoples are warned is causing the "Islamization" of the Continent and within a few generations will see them become the majority of nearly all of the EU Nations.

The greatest threat to these Western Nations posed by the Muslim peoples becoming the majority of their populations lies in their likelihood of destroying the Global Banking System which according to their faith is firmly rooted in "satanic" evil and "must" be replaced by an Islamic one.

[Note: Islamic banking refers to a system of banking or banking activity that is consistent with the principles of Islamic law (Sharia) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics.  Sharia prohibits the payment or acceptance of interest fees for the lending and accepting of money respectively, (Riba, usury) for specific terms, as well as investing in businesses that provide goods or services considered contrary to its principles (Haraam, forbidden).

Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t share the views of his European allies and has, instead, embarked upon a course of embracing the Muslim peoples of the World, and to the shock of all has overturned the Bush era ban on the radical Swiss born Muslim Cleric Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States, last year ordered the US government bailed out General Electric Capital Corporation to became the first Western multinational to issue an Islamic bond, and this past week commanded that all of his governments security documents eliminate the words "Islamic extremism" and "jihad".

Sarkozy in these reports further warns that by Obama’s "unrestrained" and "destabilizing" actions an already tense Global situation is growing ever more catastrophic as America’s once stalwart allies are being cast aside in favor of a New World Order where instead of the United States securing its vital energy future through conquest and war it will now do so by appeasement to some of the most violent and radical regimes on Earth.

Examples here (cursor down) . . .
Why Is This Man Bowing -- Again?

Scott at Powerline blog says, we criticized Barack Obama when he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.  Americans do not bow to royalty.  When the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded.  Obama's bowing to the King was deeply offensive.

 

When the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet, Ben Smith ran an item on Politico with the White House denying the bow.  "It wasn't a bow.  He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  Bill O'Reilly ran a bemused segment on it once the White House denied what Obama had done.

 

A reporter asked Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs about the bow.  Under his own name and on the record, Gibbs denied what any fool could see.  Indeed, one astute observer commented on CNN that "Ray Charles could see that he bowed."

 

Obama did it again when he met up with the Emperor of Japan.  Andrew Malcolm asked (and reported): "How low will he go?  Obama gives Japan's Emperor Akihito a wow bow."

 

Yesterday Obama did it yet again, this time bowing to the Communist Chinese President Hu Jintao during the official arrivals for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.

 

Insofar as I am aware, Obama has not been asked directly to explain his behavior and he has not done so.  ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper sought comment on Obama's bow to the Japanese Emperor, not from Obama or one of his spokesmen, but rather from "[a]n old friend -- an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire[.]"  State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters that the bow was "a sign of respect to the emperor."

 

Whence the source of Obama's "respect" for the King of Saudi Arabia and the president of China as opposed to other heads of state?  We are left to speculate on the meaning of Obama's bowing and scraping for ourselves.

 

Obama means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs and tyrants.  He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege, royal bloodlines and one-party rule.

 

Obama gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world.  He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize.

 

When it comes to the United States, he has a serious case of what Peter Wehner dubs denigration reflex.

 

Despite his obsequiousness to tyrants, Obama is not a humble man.  On the contrary, Obama is a man of extraordinary arrogance.  He seeks fundamentally to transform the United States.  With him, a new age begins.
On Humility
In an interview with ABC's Kerry O'Brien, Obama said he and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia share several personality traits -- one of which is humility.

"He was quite expansive and quite genuine on what he saw as the commonality and connections between [he and Mr Rudd].  One of which was humility," O'Brien said.

O'Brien said Obama was at times philosophical during the "tightly controlled interview."

I find O'Brien's snippet, about how tightly Obama's handler's control the ObamaMedia, unusually candid.

Obama's humble description of his humble humility is good for a chuckle.
Strikingly Unpresidential
David Limbaugh says Barack Obama doesn't deserve the reputation he's had for his style and temperament and for being gracious, civil, bipartisan and post-racial.  He is often ungracious, uncivil, hyper-partisan, race-oriented and vindictive.  He mocks and ridicules almost for sport.  More than any president in my memory, he often does not comport himself presidentially.

Why does this matter? Well -- if I even have to answer that -- he is the face of America.  The left constantly talked about George W. Bush's swagger and his cowboy diplomacy and how that damaged our "image" in the world and our relations with other nations.

But George W. Bush was nothing if not circumspect, discreet and respectful in his dealings with foreign leaders and his dealings with his political opponents.  He was exceedingly presidential, demonstrating an extremely high respect for the office he held and what it represented.

How the president presents himself does matter for all the obvious reasons, but I believe Obama's behavior and the public's perception of it are relevant for other equally important reasons.  He came into office with a reputation for being sophisticated, gentlemanly, above the political fray and open-minded.  But it was a facade, facilitated by good looks, a seemingly pleasant demeanor and an extraordinarily fawning -- and forgiving -- media.  He has been getting a pass on his unseemly conduct for way too long, which partially explains the disconnect between his personal likability and the unpopularity of his socialist agenda.

I believe that if the public were fully attuned to how unpresidentially he has consistently behaved, it wouldn't be as approving of him personally, and in turn, politicians wouldn't be so afraid to call him out on his Machiavellian and brutish behavior, the exposure of which would have an electoral impact.  If more people understood what I believe to be this man's actual character, they wouldn't -- in the face of his consistently highhanded tactics in pushing each and every one of his destructive agenda items -- reflexively assume he's such a nice guy who means well.  Then, they might be more vigilant, and heaven knows we need megadoses of vigilance these days.

I have theories about why Obama is consistently getting a pass, beyond the media's corrupt liberalism and the allies he's created through his racial and class warfare, but that's another column.  The point for now is that he is getting a pass, and his behavior is increasingly indefensible.

We talk about Obama as a graduate of Saul Alinsky's school of thuggish street agitation, but it is more than just a casual charge.  He is Alinsky personified with a disarming smile.  It's not just a matter of his having embraced a political strategy that involves hitting below the belt and abusing power to help his friends and hurt his enemies.  His behavior is not just a tactic; it's part of who he is.  It is apparent that he has been coddled so long that he simply has zero tolerance for any opposition.

Indeed, he is exactly the opposite of who he billed himself to be: "I will bring a new type of politics to Washington."  As a committed liberal ideologue, he is neither a uniter nor one willing to consider both sides of an issue.  But it's not just his extremist views that are divisive.  He is also often personally divisive, petty and mean-spirited.

From the time he cavalierly dismissed Hillary Clinton during a presidential debate with "You're likable enough, Hillary," I knew some cold blood ran through his veins.  As president, he has been gratuitously nasty with people who have dared oppose him, and he has affirmatively targeted and demonized entire industries to advance his agenda.

Consider: his command that "the folks who created the mess" not "do a lot of talking"; his endless scapegoating of George Bush; his rude treatment of foreign leaders, from Britain's Gordon Brown to France's Nicolas Sarkozy; his abominable treatment of Israel and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his character assassination of inspector general Gerald Walpin for blowing the whistle on his friends; his demonization of surgeons and primary care physicians as dishonest mercenaries, Republicans as "liars," secured creditors as "speculators," tea partiers as "domestic terrorists," Arizonans as "irresponsible," rural Americans as bitter clingers and America itself as being "dismissive," "arrogant" and "derisive" and as having "a responsibility to act" because it is the only nation to have ever "used a nuclear weapon"; his vilification of Wall Street "fat cat" bankers, big pharma, big oil, insurance companies, big corporations, corporate executives, Cambridge policemen, conservative talk show hosts and Fox News; his snubbing even of the liberal press pool; his egomaniacal behavior at the health care summit; and his administration's flirtation with criminalizing Bush-era officials for their legal opinions.
Obama's Burden Of Brightness
John Dietrich says Obama is frequently described as highly intelligent.  His advisor Valerie Jarrett has described this as a "burden."  She announced at the John F. Kennedy School of Government that "[p]art of the burden of being so bright is that he sees his error immediately."  Advisor David Axelrod claimed, "He does have an incisive mind.  This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity."  Obama obviously shares this opinion, having told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid early in his Senate career, "Harry, I have a gift."

The "progressive" media can be counted on to regurgitate this mantra.  They have, in fact, surpassed it, and they have often entered the realm of idolatry or even adolescent infatuation.  Chris Matthews is perhaps the leading example of this.  Following one Obama's press conferences, Matthews claimed that "[t]he president showed his analytical mind.  He was at his best intellectually.  I thought it was a great example of how his mind works.  What a mind he has, and I love his ability to do it on television.  I love to think with him."  Matthews is famous for the frequent "thrill" that goes up his leg.  He apparently also suffers from gender confusion.  Watching Obama board a helicopter, Matthews gushed, "We agree, we girls agree.  I don't mind saying that.  I'm excited.  I'm thrilled."  Following Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, reports on him became so fawning that even Bill Maher, no right-winger, commented that "the coverage ... that I was watching from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him."

The commentators at MSNBC were not alone.  Judith Warner, who writes for the New York Times, claimed that many women are dreaming of having sex with Obama. How did she know?  Well, from personal experience.  She shared her fantasy of finding Obama in her shower.  Was this news "fit to print"?

Another New York Times columnist, David Brooks, shared the experience of his first encounter with Obama: "I remember distinctly an image of -- we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," Brooks reported, "and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."  Evan Thomas, Newsweek editor, provided this analysis: "I mean, in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world...he's sort of God."  Historian Michael Beschloss, who might be considered an expert on American presidents, claimed that the current president's IQ is "off the charts."  When pressed to reveal what he thought Obama's IQ was, Beschloss could only say, "he's probably the smartest guy ever to become president."  Even many of Obama's critics have bought into the intelligence hype.  FOX news contributor Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard claimed that "for all his brainpower," he is a "slow learner."

This adulation may cause a serious problem for supporters of Obama. Joe Scarborough pointed this out on his MSNBC program: "I tell you my biggest fear for Barack Obama, he has been sainted.  He is Saint Barack.  The same mainstream media that tried so desperately to get him elected has engaged in hyperbole, engaged in exaggeration.  They have deified this man. ...  They have set up such unrealistic expectations that no politician could meet those expectations."  Scarborough might blame the media for this hyperbole, but they are only willing accomplices.  The president himself has set the bar rather high.  On June 3, 2008, he announced that future generations would look back on his primary victory as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

It would be unfair to elaborate on all of Obama's gaffes in order to bolster the argument that he is not as intelligent as his supporters claim.  It was unfair of the progressive media to pillory Vice President Dan Quayle for misspelling "potatoe."  It was unfair to highlight every instance of Ronald Reagan and George Bush misspeaking.  But is it professional for the media to edit a president's remarks in order to correct them?  Obama, speaking of the Somali pirates, stated, "And I want to be very clear that we are resolved to halt the rise of privacy in that region."  This was obviously a mistake.  However, the major media reported that he vowed to "halt the rise of piracy" off the coast of Africa.

Can an individual who is obviously infatuated with a public figure provide an objective analysis of that figure's policies?  It seems unlikely.
Obama's Psychosis
Jeffrey T. Kuhner says Obama clings to the delusion that there is no war on Islamic extremism.  Obama is at war with reality.  This is his central problem.

The arrest of suspected Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad is being celebrated in the liberal establishment media as a triumph for the Obama administration.  A terrorist atrocity was averted; Mr. Shahzad was captured before his plane could take off for Dubai.

Yet the media's narrative overlooks one seminal fact: We got lucky.  The only reason Mr. Shahzad's car bomb did not blow up in the heart of midtown Manhattan during a bustling Saturday evening was incompetence.  His detonator failed to work properly.  Otherwise, everything was in place -- the Pathfinder parked in a strategic location, gas cans, propane tanks and fertilizer -- for a deadly jihadist attack aimed at inflicting maximum casualties.

This is unacceptable.  The attempted bombing reveals once again Obama's inability to protect America from Islamist terrorism.  Under his watch, terrorist attacks and attempted attacks on U.S. soil have increased.

Muslim extremists have targeted synagogues in New York and federal buildings in Dallas.  In September, a plot to bomb New York City's subway was disrupted.  In November, the Fort Hood massacre resulted in the murder of 13 service members.  On Christmas Eve, the so-called underwear bomber came within a whisker of blowing up a United Airlines flight approaching Detroit.  Every single one of these acts -- aborted or not -- is a damning repudiation of Obama's policy of appeasement.  Rather than ushering in a new era of peace and coexistence, multicultural detente is emboldening the forces of global jihad.  The Shahzads of the world rightly sense American weakness.

The heart of the Obama doctrine is the illusion that there is no war on terror.  According to Obama and the liberal elite, Islamic fascism is a figment of George W. Bush's fevered imagination -- a wild scheme concocted by militaristic neoconservatives to justify invading Iraq and imposing an American empire in the Middle East.

Hence, Obama has sought to repeal much of Mr. Bush's legacy.  U.S. troops are to begin pulling out of Afghanistan next summer.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai is being abandoned.  Israel is undermined.  Democracy and human rights are no longer promoted in the Arab world.  Washington seeks a rapprochement with Iran and Syria.  Guantanamo is to be closed.  Terrorists are to be tried in civilian court.  Obama apologizes for U.S. "injustices" in the Middle East.  Terms such as "Muslim," "Islam" or "Islamic extremism" are censored from national security documents.

In short, Obama is conveying that America no longer views radical Islam as the enemy.  Obama desperately wants everyone to get along.  The Islamists, however, don't.  They remain impervious to his calls for hope and change.

In fact, they are expressing increasing contempt for him -- and America.  Like all postmodern leftists, Obama refuses to accept the fundamental truth of human nature: the enduring existence of evil.  Not everybody wants to get along; some peoples, cultures and ideologies are irredeemably wicked, bent on imperial expansion and genocide.  Their lust for power and domination cannot be quenched.  History is full of them -- the Huns, the Aztecs, the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, communist China.  Eventually, the only solution is to crush them.  Appeasement only invites aggression.

The Times Square bomber demonstrates the parochial narcissism of contemporary liberalism.  Shahzad should have been a classic convert to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's utopian dream of a world based on consumerism and globalization.  He was a Pakistani immigrant who became a U.S. citizen.  The country he betrayed and loathed gave him immigration visas, a university education, a job at a prestigious marketing firm, a home in suburban Connecticut -- the American dream.

Instead of being grateful, he became part of the global jihad in his native Pakistan.  He preferred the Taliban training camps in Peshawar to McDonald's and Blockbuster.  The sword and the crescent were too alluring for him.

Since the seventh century, radical Islam has been at war with the West.  It purged the Arabian Peninsula of most Christians and Jews.  During the Middle Ages, it conquered large swaths of Europe -- from Spain and parts of France to Sicily and the Balkans.  Today's Islamists seek to restore a medieval global caliphate.  Their aims are not rational or limited, but totalitarian and universal.

There is something strangely perverse about a worldview that believes a greater threat comes from old ladies at Tea Party rallies holding anti-Obama signs than jihadist mass murderers.  Obama refuses to denounce Mr. Shahzad -- or anyone -- as an Islamic terrorist.  The most he could muster was that the Pakistani-American's capture was "another sobering reminder of the times in which we live."  His statements were not exactly Churchillian.

But when it comes to excoriating the Tea Party movement, Obama is more than willing to pound the pulpit and sound the clarion calls to battle.  He has called them "tea baggers" -- a vicious slur.  He hints that they are closet racists, who may repeat the violence of Timothy McVeigh.  His Democratic media allies smear them as white supremacists and "domestic extremists."  New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg even said before Shahzad's arrest that maybe the culprit was an opponent of ObamaCare.  This is from the mayor of a city that lost 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

The desire to equate Tea Partiers -- peaceful, law-abiding activists who have never committed any heinous crimes, never mind bombings or beheadings -- with murderous fanatics is not simply delusional.  It reflects an ideological psychosis, a death instinct that refuses to face up to the gathering threat of Islamic fascism.

Next time, we may not be so lucky.  And Mr. Obama's dogmatic denial of a war on terror will mean nothing when American blood is spilled on our streets.
He's Pretty Thin-Skinned
Peter Wehner says Obama is among the most thin-skinned politicians we have ever had, and we see evidence of it in every possible venue imaginable, from one-on-one interviews to press conferences, from extemporaneous remarks to set speeches.

Obama is constantly complaining about what others are saying about him.  He is upset at Fox News, and conservative talk radio, and Republicans, and people carrying unflattering posters of him.  He gets upset when his avalanche of faulty facts are challenged, like on health care.  He gets upset when he is called on his hypocrisy, on everything from breaking his promise not to hire lobbyists in the White House to broadcasting health care meetings on C-SPAN to not curtailing earmarks to failing in his promises of transparency and bipartisanship.

In Obama's eyes, he is always the aggrieved, always the violated, always the victim of some injustice.  He is America's virtuous and valorous hero, a man of unusually pure motives and uncommon wisdom, under assault by the forces of darkness.

It is all so darn unfair.

Not surprisingly, Obama's thin skin leads to self pity.  As Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard pointed out, in a fundraising event for Sen. Barbara Boxer, Obama said,
    

"Let's face it: this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s."

    
Really, now?  Worse than the period surrounding December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001?  Worse than what Gerald Ford faced after the resignation of Richard Nixon and Watergate, which constituted the worse constitutional scandal in our history and tore the country apart?  Worse than what Ronald Reagan faced after Jimmy Carter (when interest rates were 22 percent, inflation was more than 13 percent, and Reagan faced something entirely new under the sun, "stagflation")?  Worse than 1968, when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated and there was rioting in our streets?  Worse than what LBJ faced during Vietnam -- a war which eventually claimed more than 58,000 lives?  Worse than what John Kennedy faced in the Bay of Pigs and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we and the Soviet Union edged up to the brink of nuclear war?  Worse than what Franklin Roosevelt faced on the eve of the Normandy invasion?  Worse than what Bush faced in Iraq in 2006, when that nation was on the edge of civil war, or when the financial system collapsed in the last months of his presidency?  Worse than what Truman faced in defeating imperial Japan, in reconstructing post-war Europe, and in responding to North Korea's invasion of South Korea?

In his autobiography "Present at the Creation," Dean Acheson wrote about the immensity of the task the Truman administration faced after war ended in 1945, which "only slowly revealed itself.  As it did so, it began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis.  That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process."

For Obama to complain that the problems he faces are so much worse than any other president in the last 80 years is stunningly self-indulgent, to say nothing of ahistorical.

With Obama there is also the compulsive need to admonish others, to point fingers, to say that the problems he faces are not of his doing.  Oh, sure; on occasions there are the grudging concessions, like in Thursday's press conference devoted to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where Obama says, "In case you're wondering who's responsible, I take responsibility" to ensure that "everything is done to shut this down."  But those words are always pro forma, done reluctantly and for tactical political reasons, a rhetorical trick that is meant to get him off the hook.  As recently as last week, Obama, in the Rose Garden, was implicitly blaming the previous occupant of the White House for the explosion of the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon.

Obama's instincts are by now obvious to all: deflect blame, point fingers, and lash out at others, most especially his predecessor.  We know from press reports that the strategy for the Democrats in 2010, two years after Obama was elected, is to -- you guessed it -- blame George W. Bush.

What explains all this is hard to know.  But it's clear he has adopted an image of himself as something rare and remarkable, a historic figure of almost super-human abilities.  "I am absolutely certain that generations from now," Obama said during the summer of his presidential run, "we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth."

Obama's more unattractive personal qualities probably won't wear well with the electorate.  Americans tend to tire of those who are look back rather than ahead and are always blaming others for the problems they face.

Barack Obama -- a man who was as unprepared to be president as any man in our lifetime -- has over the last 16 months shown that he is overmatched by events.  His poll numbers continue to drop, his health care proposal is becoming less rather than more popular, the oil spill in the Gulf is badly eroding his image for leadership and competence, and his party has been battered in election after election since November.  We have now reached the point where Democrats are running against Obama and his agenda in order to survive.

Extracted from Mark Levin' blog.  The entire article is here . . .
Is Barack Obama Suffering From Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
David Z says that months ago, my friend Brad noticed that whenever Obama gives an address he speaks in a condescending manner.  His body language is that of someone who is looking down on the audience, and his verbal language accommodates this.  Brad noted that he makes frequent use of the command, "Look:" which just isn’t how mature adults converse with, or address one another.  Sure, it’s a weird personality trait to behave like that, but I’ve grown to expect a certain level of disdain from the political class toward the rest of us.

Then, a few days ago I read an op-ed which suggests Obama is beginning to display signs of narcissistic personality disorder.  I wrote it off as partisan ass-hattery because a few cherry-picked examples, spun in the worst possible light in the context of an op-ed that cites "Newt Gingrich" as an authoritative source probably isn’t the best way to evaluate someone’s mental health.

But the more I think about it, the more merit it seems to have.  For example, it lists a number of specific cases and explains how the bizarre behavior might be signs of a personality disorder:

In March of last year Obama was on "60 Minutes" with Steve Kroft.  Throughout the interview as Kroft questioned about the economic downturn and people losing their life savings, Obama just kept laughing.  At one point CBS’s Kroft stopped him and asked, "Are you punch drunk?"  How will the American people react to seeing Obama laugh off their predicament?  His inappropriate laughter clearly demonstrated he has lost touch with the pain that people are feeling.

An author on the subject, Sam Vaknin also suggests that a narcissist always prefers show-off to substance.  One of the most effective methods of exposing a narcissist is by trying to delve deeper.  The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean.

This is interesting, because Obama doesn’t fare well under close scrutiny.  Some of the most grandiose claims on his resume may be false: Obama was never a "Professor of Law" at University of Chicago -- he was an 'instructor' or adjunct, below the level of an Associate Professor.  He also has the dubious honor to have been the only "Editor" of the Harvard Law Review to never have been published while in school, which kind of suggests the position was an "honorary" one, without any merit whatsoever.

Now, don’t get all butthurt over this.  I’m not a doctor, and even with all of the powers of Google at my command, I’m not qualified to evaluate anyone’s mental health.  But according to the Wikipedia list of characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Obama exhibits all of them:
    

•  Is inter-personally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
•  Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
•  Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
•  Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

    
Check, check, check and check.  Sooner or later all this stuff starts to add up, and the probability of it all being a series of extraordinary coincidences drops to zero.

Then again, these traits are strong in anyone who is successful in politics.  I mean, the first two especially, basically define how politics works, and what politicians do.  Kip Esquire used to say that "all politicians, by definition, are moral defectives."  Perhaps severe narcissistic personality disorder is that defect.

It’s one explanation.
Obama Falls Headfirst Into The Hypocrisy Trap
Chris Stirewalt says Obama is caught in the wickedest of political binds: the hypocrisy trap.

Obama says he's sick and tired of the Washington blame game, but still can't resist doling out piles of blame himself.

His compulsive, reflexive finger-pointing at Republicans, George W. Bush and vague villains on the right is not only unbecoming, it also reinforces the gathering public verdict that Obama is a weakling.

Victims do not make good leaders.

Even if Republicans were responsible for every evil attributed to them by Democrats, why bang on about it after 17 months in office?  The only answer is self-preservation, which is an unattractive trait in someone who's supposed to be leader.

But because he is stuck in a defensive crouch on the BP spill, the economy, Afghanistan, Israel, the bungling political maneuvers of his operatives, and more, Obama's has no alternative but to play the blame game.

In one day in Kalamazoo, Mich., he managed to preach responsibility and try to avoid it.

In a speech to high schoolers he said: "Don't make excuses.  Take responsibility not just for your successes.  Take responsibility where you fall short as well."

While still in Kalamazoo, Obama sat down with NBC's Matt Lauer for the journalistic equivalent of heavy petting and blamed everybody but himself.

The interview is already famous for Obama's line about relying on experts to tell him whose "ass to kick."  The line is funny because what was supposed to be proof of his red-blooded American anger came off as clueless.  What kind of leader needs advice on ass kicking?

Continue reading here . . .
A Shrink Asks:  What's Wrong with Obama?
So what is the matter with Obama?  Conservatives have been asking this question for some time.  I've written a number of articles trying to solve the mystery.

Even some liberals are starting to wonder.  James Carville railed about Obama's blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill.  The New York Times' Maureen Dowd revamped Obama's "Yes We Can" motto into "Will We Ever?"

The liberal women of the TV show "The View" have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama's living with a man so out of touch.  Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him disconnected.

Obama's odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me.  He also presents a serious diagnostic challenge.

For one, Obama's teleprompter and the men behind the Blackberry keep him well-scripted.  We know so little about the facts of his life.

But it's more than just a lack of information.  Obama himself is a strange bird.  He doesn't fit easily into any diagnostic category.

Many people attribute Obama's oddness to his narcissism.  True, Obama has a gargantuan ego, and he is notoriously thin-skinned.

Yet a personality disorder like narcissism does not explain Obama's strangeness: his giggling while being asked about the economy; his continuing a shout-out rather than announcing the Ft. Hood shootings; or his vacations, golfing, partying and fundraising during the calamitous oil spill.

Take also Obama's declaring on the "Today Show" that he wants to know whose ass to kick.  Consummate narcissists would never stoop to this vulgar display of adolescent machismo.

Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is required.  What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his behavior is inappropriate.

So if it's not just simple narcissism, what is wrong with Obama?  Since I've never evaluated him, I can't say for sure.  But I can hazard some educated guesses.

Interesting stuff.  Continue reading Robin of Berkeley here . . .
Obama Blames Folks For Things He Imagines They Would Say
Vladimir says first, there was this:
    

Obama, in an interview with NBC’s "Today" show, broadcast Tuesday, said he hadn’t spoken directly to BP CEO Tony Hayward because his experience tells him someone like that would say "all the right things" and that he’s more interested in action than in words.

    
Now, we have this:
    

I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.

    
Hmmmm.  Notice a pattern?

Seems like our faux-Commander-in-Chief feels that it’s not necessary to engage another being in conversation, because with his superior intellect, he’s able to discern what they’re going to say, without their having said it!

And then he blames them for what he thinks they would have said!
He Knows, He Just Doesn’t Care
Daniel Greenfield says the most damning thing about Obama’s response to the Gulf Crisis (the other Gulf Crisis) is not what it reveals about his lack of competence, but what it reveals about his lack of interest.  And it has forced many liberals to recognize, what so many conservatives knew all along.  That Obama just doesn’t care.

Politicians who don’t care what happens to the little people are nothing new.  But Bill Clinton was a master at pretending to care.  His performance in that infamous funeral clip testifies to a man who could turn on the facade of emotions in the blink of an eye.  Obama isn’t very good at that.  Where Clinton was a natural actor, Obama is an unnatural one.  Unlike most politicians, he lacks that instinct, because he lacks any degree of empathy.  And so Obama needs extensive prep time to get his show on the road.  Without prep time and a teleprompter, the mask begins to slip and the man underneath is cold and distant delivering a mechanical performance.

Look at Obama and you see the mirror of liberal expectations.  No sooner does Bill Maher deliver his black man line then Obama begins talking about kicking ass.  As always Obama tries to manipulate people by becoming what they want him to be.  But underneath it, the fate of Americans means nothing to him.

A selfish regard for his own self-image means that Obama avoids negative crises.  Particularly ones that seem to have no quick solution.  If he tackles a crisis, then it’s only to promote his own agenda, which usually has nothing to do with the crisis.  The stimulus plan is a case in point.

Liberals expected that Obama would feel their anger toward BP.  But there’s no reason for him to feel angry.  Obama is not animated by anti-corporate outrage.  He wants to control corporations, but unlike so many of his hypocritical followers with hefty stock portfolios, he doesn’t actually hate them.  To Obama, BP and the people suffering from the consequences of it are equally of value only as tools.

Con artists don’t get angry at the people they rip off.  They only get angry when someone else gets in the way of their scam.  Which is why Obama gets angry at Republicans.  They’re interfering with his con.

The left expected that Obama would fight for them.  But he only fights for himself.  And his emotion is reserved for what matters to him.  Himself.

This created the disconnect between Obama and his key demographic.  They wanted action.  Obama wanted to play golf while avoiding any association with an insolvable problem.  They expected him to care.  But there was no reason for him to care.  And so Obama created his own My Pet Goat narrative stretching on and on.
Leadership In The Abstract
Mark Steyn says Obama is slipping on the oil while bestriding the globe.

So, a man swept into office on an unprecedented tide of delirious fawning is watching his presidency sink in an unstoppable gush.  That's almost too apt.  Unfortunately, in the real world, a disastrous presidency has consequences.  So let me begin by citing the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Canada.  Whoa, whoa, don't stampede for the exits.  The Canadian thing's just a starting point, I promise.  If I'm still droning on about inside-Ottawa stuff five paragraphs down, feel free to turn the page to our exclusive 12-page pictorial preview of "Sex and the City 3," starring Estelle Getty as Kim Cattrall.

Anyway, a couple of years back, Michael Ignatieff, a professor at Harvard University and previously a BBC late-night intellectual telly host, returned to his native land of Canada in order to become prime minister, and to that end, got himself elected as leader of the Liberal Party.  As is the fashion nowadays, he cranked out a quickie tome laying out his political "vision."  Having spent his entire adult life abroad, he was aware that some of the natives were uncertain about his commitment to the land of his birth.  So he was careful to issue a sort of pledge of a kind of allegiance, explaining that writing a book about Canada had "deepened my attachment to the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home."

Gee, that's awfully big of you.  As John Robson commented in the Ottawa Citizen: "I'm worried that a man so postmodern he doesn't need a home wants to lead my country.  Why?  Is it quaint?  An interesting sociological experiment?"

Indeed. But there's a lot of it about.  Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that for Barack Obama, governing America is "an interesting sociological experiment," too.  He doubtless would agree that the United States is "the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home."  But he doesn't, not really.

It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to do so.  That's not to say he's un-American or anti-American, but merely that he's beyond all that.  Way beyond.  He's the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he's condescending to the job -- that it's really too small for him and he's just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.

And so the Gulf spill was an irritation, but he dutifully went through the motions of flying in to be photographed looking presidentially concerned.  As he wearily explained to Matt Lauer, "I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain, talking."  Good grief, what more do you people want?  Alas, he's not a good enough actor to fake it.  So the more desperately he butchers up the rhetoric -- "Plug the damn hole ... I know whose ass to kick" -- the more pathetically unconvincing it all sounds.

No doubt my observations about Obama's remoteness from the rhythms of American life will be seen by his dwindling band of beleaguered cheerleaders as just another racist, right-wing attempt to whip up the backwoods, knuckle-dragging swamp dwellers of America by playing on their fears of "the other" -- the sophisticated, worldly cosmopolitan for whom France is more than a reliable punch line.  But in fact, my complaint is exactly the opposite: Mr. Obama's postmodern detachment is feeble and parochial.  It's true that he hadn't seen much of America until he ran for president, but he hadn't seen much of anywhere else, either.  Like most multiculturalists, he has passed his entire adulthood in a very narrow unicultural environment where your ideological worldview doesn't depend on anything so tedious as actually viewing the world.

Continue reading here . . .
Does Obama Have A Drinking Problem?
The first video on this page, funny [scary] as it is, looks "movieshopped," but the two videos after the photos are on the level, and The Freedom Fighters Journal is asking a reasonable question.

Does Obama Have A Drinking Problem?

It's not just the social drinking.  After Obama's February physical, his physician recommended that Obama moderate his alcohol intake."  Wouldn't a physician need a reason to make such a recommendation?

Obama continues to smoke.
Barack Obama, Adult Child Of An Alcoholic
M. Catharine Evans suggests Shirley Sherrod's hair trigger firing is merely the latest in a long line of dysfunctional responses by Obama that may indicate that he's out of control.  How many incidents does it take to make a pattern?  How many times does he have to show his propensity for paranoia, projection, and blaming others before his team arranges for an intervention?

In 12-step recovery programs, Obama would be called an ACoA, an adult child of an alcoholic.  His father, Barack Obama, Sr. was the typical garden-variety chronic alcoholic.  But according to a 2008 article in the Boston Globe, as Barack Sr.'s disease progressed, he became a very dangerous man.

He began to drink more heavily and had a series of alcohol-related accidents, one of which resulted in the death of another driver.  Shortly before his death a colleague from the Harvard Institute for International Development working at the ministry in Nairobi saw Obama, Sr. "staggering'" through the hallways.  He asked another employee:
    

"I asked someone next to me, 'What is the matter with that guy?' " said Gray..."He said, 'He is always very intoxicated and unable to do his job.' It was very sad."

    
According to former U.S Rep. Neil Abercrombie who knew Obama, Sr., he was "self-involved and egotistical" with "big unrealistic dreams."

Obama met his father only one time after he was an infant.  When Obama was ten years old, and his father visited for a month, little Barry "'began to count the days until my father would leave and things would return to normal."  Barack Obama's father died at the age of forty-two while driving under the influence.

Obama's exposure to the destructive effects of alcoholism continued when he accompanied his grandfather on visits to the home of the hard-drinking communist, Frank Davis.  Later, in high school and beyond, Obama himself had trouble with drinking and drugs.  These days though, Obama's behavior during the campaign-that-never-ends offers textbook proof of his being an ACoA.

Continue reading here . . .
The Yuppie Factor
Victor Davis Hanson recalls an October 1987, Newsweek cover story on would-be presidential candidate George H. W. Bush with the blaring headline "Fighting the Wimp Factor."

That Bush was a World War II combat pilot, well over six feet, athletic, and a genuinely nice guy mattered little.  Apparently, the fact that he had been Reagan’s subordinate for eight years, sounded nasal at times, and lapsed into occasional stuffy metaphors created an impression -- fueled by everyone from the Newsweek editors to Jimmy Carter -- that Bush was a wimp.  He dispelled that for a time in 1988 (opponent Michael Dukakis, awkwardly perched in an Abrams tank, helped), but down-home good ol’ boy Bill Clinton exploited the preppy charge again in 1992, to some effect.  Stereotypes, in other words, die hard.

For Obama, the stereotype is one of a distant, cool, rather narcissistic yuppie.

Yuppism, remember, is not definable entirely by income or class.  Rather, it is a late-twentieth-century cultural phenomenon of self-absorbed young professionals, earning good pay, enjoying the cultural attractions of sophisticated urban life and thought, and generally out of touch with, indeed antithetical to, most of the challenges and concerns of a far less well-off and more parochial Middle America.

For the yuppie male, a well-paying job in law, finance, academia, or consulting in a cultural hub, hip fashion, cool appearance, studied poise, elite education, proper recreation and fitness, and general proximity to liberal-thinking elites, especially of the more rarefied sort in the arts, are the mark of a real man.

For Obama, all the self-referencing about his black heritage and his tough community organizing, the publicly shared confessions about his absent father, the Chicago "bring a gun to a knife fight" tough talk, and the "cool" manner of shooting hoops cannot quite erase the image of an aloof, whiny urban professional of the sort who likes having nice things and kicking back, has not a clue about the lives of the middle and working classes, and heretofore has worried mostly about his own upward mobility.

In that context, for the Obamas, if there were not a Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol, such places would probably have to be invented.

Continue reading here . . .
AKA Obama Fans: All together now -- Say OMG!!
1. Oh what a tangled web we weave...

It isn't hard to imagine the gnawing anxiety that AKA OBAMA lives with, day in and day out.  Much has been written about AKA OBAMA's behavior that reminds mental health experts and others of NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder).  A frequent manifestation of such a disorder is The Narcissist, as Liar and Con-man.

This disorder is frequently misunderstood as "self-love."  A more accurate understanding is love of a reflection of one's self.  Abused, abandoned and neglected children will compensate for damaged egos by creating an ideal reflection of themselves that they then embellish and vigorously defend.  A person with NPD is quite capable of a mind twisting position like, "I have nothing to hide, but I am hiding things anyway."  AKA OBAMA certainly fits the model of having such a childhood.  While I am not in the position to deliver an official In Absentia diagnosis of a full strength NPD case, many of the indicators are present.

If AKA OBAMA were not in a position of public trust, most of us would probably overlook such deception and secrecy.  For those of us who care about our Constitution and the rule of law, the issue becomes clear in this article that appeared in on-line Pravda by international columnist Mark S. McGrew, The Mysterious Shadow: Code Name Obama.  Most Americans do not want their president to be secretive about his past.  However, if one is living a lie to preserve the ego compensating, idealized reflection of self, one will go to great lengths to hide things that most would routinely reveal.

For the person who has NPD tendencies, the lies used to create the reflection become so numerous that eventually the man in the mirror cracks, and so does the real human being hiding behind the reflection.

A useful tool in evaluating things that are not known with certainty is Occam's razor.  When multiple competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.  It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.  I condense this to the simple question: what is most likely? In our discussion of the documents which AKA has hidden, most of this article is an examination of which explanation is most likely.

For example, which is most likely;
    

(a)  AKA OBAMA is hiding documents that are innocuous?
 
(b)  AKA OBAMA is hiding documents that are damaging?

    
What we know with certainty is that AKA OBAMA is not practicing the virtue of full disclosure.  "The biggest question, and the biggest reason for asking more questions, is the fact Obama has enlisted law firms across the nation to battle every attempt to access, among other documents, his birth, schooling, immigration or passport records."  New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo

There are so many potential sources that can end AKA OBAMA's Presidency that it is impossible to keep them all quiet.  It's just a matter of time.  As columnist Davvy Kidd says, IMPOSTOR PRESIDENT OBAMA: VICTORY WILL BE SHORT LIVED.  First, let's think of all the lawyers and support staff involved in keeping the birth certificate issue quiet.  Isn't it likely that some of them know what they are hiding?  Isn't it likely that several people at the Hawaiian Department of Public Health know what is, or is not, on the original birth certificate that AKA OBAMA refuses to release?  Did you know that there is a one million dollar reward offered for AKA OBAMA's Hawaiian birth certificate?

Good stuff from Pravda -- continue reading here . . .
Michele Bachmann Accuses Obama Of Infantilism
Stephanie Condon is reporting that the Tea Party movement is "the largest political movement we have seen in modern times," Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann said today.

Speaking at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, Bachmann spoke for the conservative grassroots movement, which she has officially ushered into Congress with the formation of the House Tea Party Caucus.

The movement is not about "red" or "blue" politics, she said -- "It's really about red, white and blue."

"People are reclaiming our inalienable rights given to us by almighty God, and they're deciding to alter their government," she said.  "Liberty will be refreshed in our country."

Speaking about Obama's interpretation of constitutional rights and understanding of governance, Bachmann accused the president of "infantilism" -- a childish mindset.

"Unlimited credit cards... has become an entitlement," she said.  "Like President Obama flying personal chefs into the White House."

The government, Bachmann said, is "living off of our money," and the Tea Party is made up of individuals who understand "the government doesn't create wealth -- we do."
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by a long-standing pattern of grandiosity (either in fantasy or actual behavior), an overwhelming need for admiration, and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others.  People with this disorder often believe they are of primary importance in everybody's life or to anyone they meet.  While this pattern of behavior may be appropriate for a king in 16th Century England, it is generally considered inappropriate for most ordinary people today.

People with narcissistic personality disorder often display snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitudes.  For example, an individual with this disorder may complain about a clumsy waiter's "rudeness" or "stupidity" or conclude a medical evaluation with a condescending evaluation of the physician.

In laypeople terms, someone with this disorder may be described simply as a "narcissist" or as someone with "narcissism."  Both of these terms generally refer to someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

In order for a person to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) they must meet five or more of the following symptoms:
    

•  Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

•  Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

•  Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

•  Requires excessive admiration

•  Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

•  Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

•  Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

•  Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

•  Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

    
Narcissistic personality disorder is more prevalent in males than females, and is thought to occur in less than 1 percent in the general population.

Like most personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder typically will decrease in intensity with age, with many people experiencing few of the most extreme symptoms by the time they are in the 40s or 50s.

Learn more about the symptoms and characteristics of someone with narcissistic personality disorder at Psych Central.

Related:  Obama Says "I" 16,000 Times Since Taking Office

Remind you of anyone?
White House Attacks -- Publisher Counters
Buffeted by a series of attacks by White House spokesmen and left-leaning media, conservative publisher Regnery has decided to come out swinging.  Long slated for an October release, Regnery moved up the release date for bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza’s controversial new book, "The Roots of Obama’s Rage," to this coming Monday, September 27.  The new date will be just in time to respond to the front-page hit piece rumored to be coming in the New York Times this weekend.
         
Human Events says that the White House has been "generous" with its attention -- vilifying not only D’Souza, but also Forbes (which ran a preview of the book as the cover story in their September 27 issue) and former speaker Newt Gingrich (who praised the Forbes article), all for having the temerity to suggest that Obama’s motivation might not be what he claims.  After lambasting both the magazine and the Speaker on national TV, White House spokesman Robert Gibbels then called Forbes' Washington bureau chief Brian Wingfield into the White House to read him the riot act.

"The reason the White House is so upset about my argument," says D’Souza, "is because it finally offers an explanation of what President Obama is doing that makes sense of both his foreign and his domestic policy.  Unlike those who describe Obama’s worldview as pro-socialist or racially-motivated, much less those who claim Obama is a secret Muslim or born outside the U.S., my thesis is far more straightforward and much more frightening."

"Anyone who says this thesis is not backed up by research simply hasn’t bothered to read my book," continues D’Souza.  "My thesis is completely substantiated, often drawing from Obama’s own words and writings, and those of his virulently anti-colonialist father."
    

    
Adds Regnery Publisher Marji Ross, "Frankly, virtually no one has had a chance to read Dinesh’s book yet, since it’s literally days off the press, so why attack something you haven’t even read?  I have to wonder what they are so afraid of."

After the desperate attacks in the past two weeks, we expect the ObamaMedia and the White House to be foaming at the mouth when "The Roots of Obama’s Rage" hits the stores and D’Souza takes to the airwaves Monday to actually defend the book.  Stay tuned...
Obama Battling Severe Depression
Ulsterman has a report originating from inside the White House regarding Obama having become increasingly depressed and uncertain over how to proceed following the impending midterm elections in November -- elections that appear poised to sweep Democrats from power in Congress.

So you state that Obama is depressed? How did you come by this information? -- From a direct source still working within the White House on a daily basis.  As I had stated previously, tensions at the White House have reached a critical stage.  The infighting among staff is off the charts.  More recently, the president has increasingly withdrawn emotionally from the day to day demands of his job -- he has become what was described to me as "empty."

Empty?  That is correct -- empty.

Do you mean to say Obama is not doing his job? -- Not exactly.  He is there, he is getting briefed throughout the day, but President Obama appears to have emotionally shut down, not entirely mind you, but a great deal.  It has worsened since I was last there.  His natural detachment has become almost chronic to the point of being disconcerting to staff around him.  It appears President Obama is suffering from severe depression.

You’re not a doctor, how are you qualified to make such a charge? -- No, I’m not a doctor, but from all the reports coming back to me, and from what I did see with my own eyes prior to leaving the White House myself, I think it is a very reasonable assumption to make.  President Obama is emotionally shutting down.  He is a terribly depressed man.

And why do you think this is happening? -- Well for one, he was completely unprepared for the job of being President of the United States.  The demands on one’s time, the emotional and physical toll, are considerable.  Second, the failure of the administration to effectively communicate to the American people.  You have to understand that Obama believed that his ability to orate would be enough -- that is proving to have been a considerable mistake on Obama’s part, and he is not dealing particularly well with that reality.

So why then should your opinion on the condition of President Obama be viewed as legitimate? -- I certainly understand a healthy dose of skepticism.  I still wish to remain anonymous, and for those still supporting the president, I would understand how they would wish to dismiss any reports that diminish President Obama in any way.  The fact remains though, I know what I know.  And I know what I have been told by very reliable sources still at the White House.  There are staff increasingly dissatisfied with this president.  When that happens, word starts to get out.

Continue reading here . . .    
Obama: Embattled, Embittered, And Lashing Out
Peter Wehner says Barack Obama’s recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine paints a portrait of a man under siege and lashing out.

For example, the Tea Party is, according to Obama, the tool of "very powerful, special-interest lobbies" -- except for those in the Tea Party whose motivations are "a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president."

Fox News, Obama informs us, "is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world."

Then there are the Republicans, who don’t oppose Obama on philosophical grounds but decided they were "better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve problems."  Now there are exceptions -- those two or three GOPers who Obama has been able to "pick off" and, by virtue of supporting Obama, "wanted to do the right thing" -- meaning that the rest of the GOP wants to do the wrong thing.

Even progressives were on the receiving end of an Obama tongue-lashing.  "The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible. … if people now want to take their ball and go home that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place."

Set aside the discordance of these words coming from a man who said, on the night of his election, "I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."  There is a hazardous dynamic developing.

To understand why, let’s start with this: Obama is a man of unusual vanity and self-regard.  He considers himself to be a world-historical figure who deserves treatment bordering on reverence.  That is why over the years he has surrounded himself with individuals who have a romanticized view of Obama.  "The blind faith in, and passion for, Obama was like nothing [Anita] Dunn had ever seen before," we read in Game Change.  Not surprisingly, Obama is unusually thin-skinned and prickly when it comes to criticism of any kind, from any quarter.  It seems not only to bother him but also consume him.  Hence his obsession with Fox News.

When a powerful man like this is successful, it can make him impossible to live with.  When a powerful man like this is failing, he can become dangerous.

Such a person can easily become embittered and embattled.  Used to adoration, he cannot process rejection.  People who were once thought of as allies are viewed with suspicion and lacking in loyalty.  There is a growing sense of isolation and ingratitude; no one really understands all the good that has been achieved against impossible odds ("Guys, wake up," Obama tells Rolling Stone.  "We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable.")  In order to excuse his mounting failures and rebukes, he must find malevolent forces to blame.  And malevolent forces need to be identified and isolated, depersonalized and defeated.  Political battles are increasingly framed in apocalyptic terms, as the Children of Light vs. the Children of Darkness.

Now there is a long way to travel to get to this point -- but others, including other presidents, have traveled this path before.  We have no way of knowing where Obama is on this particular journey.  But the warning signs are there.  Obama is showing mental and political habits that are disquieting.  People who have standing in his life need to intercede with him -- soon, now, before his worst tendencies end up getting him, and us, into a genuine crisis.

On May 25, 1971, Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- a Democrat but also a top aide to Richard Nixon at the time -- wrote a letter to Vice President Agnew.  "Moynihan privately deplored the inflammatory speeches denouncing anti-Nixon protesters by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew," we read in the new book edited by Steven R. Weisman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.  In his letter to Agnew, Moynihan wrote this:
    

You cannot win the argument you are engaged in.  Frankly, the longer you pursue it, I expect the more you will lose.  … If you were to ask my advice it would be this.  Cease attacking.  … A great deal of charity and forgiveness is going to be required on all our parts to come through this experience whole.  You really can help in this, and I know you would want to do so.

    
Barack Obama needs to find his Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- and unlike Agnew, he needs to listen to him.  Otherwise, this is going to have a very unhappy ending for Obama, and for all of us.
Obama’s Past As The Key To His Plans For Our Future
Roger Kimball says that the distinguished journalist Stanley Kurtz has been endeavoring, for several years now, to answer a simple question: Who is Barack Obama?  It is not an easy question to answer.

Back in August of ’08 when ObamaMania swept the country, Mr. Kurtz was patiently looking into the murky abyss that is the history and background of Barack Obama. The chap who during the campaign presented himself as a "post-partisan," "post-racial" uniter of America was, when you scratched the surface, pretty much what Winston Churchill said of Russia in the 1930s: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  What, after all, did we really know about this freshman senator from Illinois?  His upbringing was -- was what?  We don’t know much about the who, what, where, or when, do we?  A Kenyan father and American mother.  Some years in Indonesia.  And what about his education?  We have the place names: Occidental, Columbia, Harvard: but what did he study, how did he do?  We don’t really know, do we?  Later on?  We know that he began his political career in the living room of that "just a guy in the neighborhood" domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.  We know that he was a faithful congregant and financial supporter of Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright.  But somehow that wasn’t relevant to the mass hysteria that catapulted this greenest (in two senses of that much-abused word) of politicians into the Oval Office.

One thing we do know about this international man of mystery is that he stood before his acolytes at the end of October 2008 and told them they were on the verge of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  As I’ve previously had occasion to observe in this space, this was no hustings hyperbole: it was, depending on your point of view, an earnest promise or an earnest threat.  The last 19 months, in any event, have demonstrated that fundamentally transforming the United States of America has been an ambition that Obama has struggled mightily to fulfill.

It is still -- just barely, but still -- too early to say with certainty how successful Obama has been at dismantling the old America and replacing it with the new, greener, less assertive, much poorer, and much more regulated and conformist America of his dreams.  The full damage report may be sharply revised come November.  But for anyone seeking to understand what manner of beast we are conjuring with in Obama, Stanley Kurtz’s new book Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism is essential reading.  The book, which will be officially published October 19, is a meticulous work of political archeology, an excavation of Obama’s radical roots and socialist affiliations, from ACORN to the United Neighborhood Organization in Chicago.

Does it matter?  Isn’t Barack Obama’s past as a radical "community organizer" just a dead datum in the historical dossier?  Shouldn’t we be rather concerned with the present -- and with the future?  No quite.  As Thomas Mann famously put it, the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.  "It could be argued," Kurtz writes, "that Obama’s past no longer matters."  But he argues, on the contrary, that "when it comes to Obama, the past, in a sense, matters more than the present.  Only Obama’s socialist past reveals the full meaning of his plans for the future.  Obama himself won’t honestly tell you his ultimate intentions."  What are those intentions?  Kurtz shows in sobering detail that Obama’s intentions now are exactly what they were when he cut his teeth as a "community organizer" in Chicago.  The agenda is socialism, but just as modern militaries employ stealth technology to camouflage their armament, so socialists in a capitalist country dissemble about their real goals.  Occasionally, the mask falls, as when Obama admitted to Joe the plumber that he wanted to "spread the wealth around."  Generally, though, the socialist ambitions are semi-concealed.  It’s a strategy of what Kurtz calls "stealth socialism."  The goal, Kurtz writes, is "to push the country into socialism well before the public can figure out what’s happened.  Stealth-socialism community organizers habitually disguise their long-term goals.  That is why we must turn to Obama’s past to discover the hidden ideological underpinnings of his policies."

Radical-in-Chief is an important work of historical investigative reporting.  But like its subject, its relevance is not so much what happened then, but what is happening now.  Obama is not yet two years into what might be an eight-year tenure.  Already he has altered the course of this country away from the principles that informed its founding -- principles that revolved around the ideals of limited government and personal liberty.  He might have more than six additional years to complete the fundamental transformation he boasted about on the campaign trail.  Stanley Kurtz’s book helps us understand the lineaments of that ambition and, I fervently hope, will help to supply the friends of liberty with the backbone to push back.
Obama's Outsized Ego
Jonah Goldberg says Obama's arrogance problem isn't a matter of psychology but of strategy.

"That's all right, all of you know who I am," Obama joked last week when the presidential seal fell off his podium during a speech in Pittsburgh.  Even though the incident made headlines for no discernible journalistic reason, it was noteworthy as a succinct example of Obama's arrogance problem.  Rather than make a self-deprecating joke, he opted instead to make a self-inflating one, as if to say that the title mattered less than the man.

The good news is that it's apparently not racist to call Obama arrogant anymore.  Not long ago, Keith Olbermann and other gargoyles on the parapets of establishment liberalism insisted that if you were to call attention to the fact that Obama ostentatiously holds himself in very high regard, you were really calling him "uppity," if you know what I mean.  Now what was once taboo has become undeniable.  Even the New Yorker's David Remnick, author of a loving biography of Obama, tells Der Spiegel, "Obama has a considerable ego."

And here's Time's Mark Halperin: "With the exception of core Obama administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusion: The White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters."

Halperin's diagnosis was inevitable, given Obama's conviction that he represented a movement that was larger than politics or even the presidency.  After all, this was the man who, as a candidate, descended on Berlin as the leader of a worldwide cause that transcended national borders.  And when asked in a debate what his greatest weakness was, he plumbed his soul and answered that he was disorganized.  "My desk and my office doesn't look good," he said.

Of course, all presidents have healthy egos.  You cannot become president, or even think you're qualified to run, if you don't think highly of yourself.  Obama's arrogance problem isn't a matter of psychology but of strategy.

When Arkansas Democratic Rep. Marion Berry complained that healthcare reform felt like a replay of the HillaryCare debacle, Obama explained that the big difference between then and now was "me."  In other words, the White House's plan for making everything work out was an unyielding confidence in the power of Obama's own cult of personality.  That's why that cult's high priest, David Axelrod, pursued a strategy of greeting every problem as if it were an excuse for Obama to give another big speech.  Now that the strategy has proved catastrophic, the self-pity is pouring out.  Joe Biden, in a rare interregnum of lucidity, assailed his own base as whiners.  Rahm Emanuel, as he was fleeing for the healthier and more civic-minded political environment of Chicago's backrooms, said, "I want to thank you for being the toughest leader any country could ask for in the toughest times any president has ever faced."

Really?  The times have been rough, we can all agree, but if memory serves, the Civil War was no cakewalk.  And that Pearl Harbor thing -- not to mention 9/11 -- might compete with the miserable economy Obama inherited and then ignored as he pursued his own vanity projects.

There's an irony to occupying the Oval Office.  When presidents think they're bigger than the job they hold, they shrink in office.  When they think they're smaller than the honor they've been temporarily bestowed, they grow into it.  Obama has done nothing but shrink.

Last week, Obama attacked Karl Rove by name -- twice! -- in a speech.  He recently begged a crowd of black supporters not to "make me look bad" by staying home from the polls.  In an interview with Rolling Stone, he scolded young voters that if they don't vote, it will be proof they "weren't serious in the first place."  It never dawns on him that were it not for the unseriousness of those voters, he might still be a one-term junior senator from Illinois.

"You know, I actually believe my own [bull]," Obama told the author of "Renegade," Richard Wolffe.

Exactly.  And that why he's gotten into this mess.
Obama Underappreciation Syndrome
Charles Krauthammer says that in an increasingly desperate attempt to develop a narrative for the coming Democratic collapse, the Democrats have indulged themselves in what for half a century they've habitually attributed to the American right -- the paranoid style in American politics.  The talk is of dark conspiracies -- secret money, foreign influence, big corporations, with Karl Rove and, yes, Ed Gillespie lurking ominously behind the scenes.  The only thing missing is the Halliburton-Cheney angle.

But after trotting out some of these with a noticeable lack of success, Obama has come up with something new, something less common, something more befitting his stature and intellect.  He's now offering a scientific, indeed neurological, explanation for his current political troubles.  The electorate apparently is deranged by its anxieties and fears to the point where it can't think straight.  Part of the reason "facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time," he explained to a Massachusetts audience, "is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared.  And the country is scared."

Opening a whole new branch of cognitive science -- liberal psychology -- Obama has discovered a new principle: The fearful brain is hard-wired to act befuddled, i.e., vote Republican.

But of course.  Here Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the "New Foundation" of a more regulated, socially engineered and therefore more humane society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition.  Here he gave them ObamaCare, the stimulus, financial regulation and a shot at cap-and-trade -- and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful.

Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding ObamaCare and the other blessings Obama has bestowed upon them from on high.

I have a better explanation.  Better because it adheres to the ultimate scientific principle, Occam's Razor, by which the preferred explanation for any phenomenon is the one with the most economy and simplicity.  And there is nothing simpler than the Gallup findings on the ideological inclinations of the American people.  Conservative: 42 percent.  Moderate: 35 percent.  Liberal: 20 percent.  No fanciful new syndromes or other elaborate fictions are required to understand that if you try to impose a liberal agenda on such a demonstrably center-right country -- a country that is 80 percent non-liberal -- you get a massive backlash.

Moreover, apart from ideology is empirical reality.  Even as we speak, the social democratic model Obama is openly and boldly trying to move America toward is unraveling in Europe.  It's not just the real prospect of financial collapse in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, with even the relatively more stable major countries in severe distress.  It is the visible moral collapse of a system that, after two generations of increasing cradle-to-grave infantilization, turns millions of citizens into the streets of France in furious and often violent protest over what?  Over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62!

Having seen this display of what can only be called decadence, Obama's perfectly wired electorate says no, not us, not here.  The peasants have seen the future -- Greece and France -- and concluded that it does not work.  Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda.  Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely at a time when the world's foremost exemplar of that model -- Europe -- is in chaotic meltdown.

And it isn't as if this political message is new.  It had already been sent in the last year with clarion clarity in the elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts where independents -- the swing voters without ideological attachment one way or the other -- split 2-to-1, 2-to-1 and 3-to-1, respectively, against the Democrats.

The story of the last two years is as simple as it is dramatic.  It is the epic story of an administration with a highly ideological agenda encountering a rising resistance from the American people over the major question in dispute: the size and reach and power of government and, even more fundamentally, the nature of the American social contract.

An adjudication of the question will be rendered on Nov. 2.  For the day, the American peasantry will be presiding.
What Is Wrong With Obama?
Alan Caruba asks, "Why are they all so afraid to say it: There’s something seriously wrong with Barack Obama.  And until the day he’s no longer in the White House, there will be something seriously wrong with America.

Like a broken record, Obama is still talking about Washington’s lobbyists and "special interests."

Obama looks and sounds "normal", but whose behavior all points to a variety of pathologies, beginning with narcissism and proceeding through an obsessive attachment to a Marxist ideology, the centralizing of all power, that has been tried and has failed everywhere.

There is, too, the complete inability to accept responsibility for his saying instead that, "It’s George Bush’s fault" to "I inherited a mess" to "the Republicans must compromise."

Clearly, the midterm election results reflect a rejection of Obama’s legislative agenda that included ObamaCare, Cap-and-Trade, massive bailouts, a wasteful stimulus bill, an anti-energy agenda, a refusal to recognize the threat of Islamofascism, rejection of traditional U.S. allies such as Great Britain and Israel, and too much more to enumerate.

What was initially described as a cool, detached, and intellectual approach to the office is now beginning to look like a pathological lack of concern for Americans and the nation’s future.  What emerged during his post-election press conference was, on careful analysis, little more than the same canned responses and rhetoric that has been his hallmark before and since taking office.

There was his tendency to give lengthy, lecturing answers to questions, wrapping them in rhetorical gauze to disguise anything specific.  What emerged from the tide of words were the same failed policies that have stripped Democrat control of the House and yielded only a slim margin in the Senate.

At what point can we expect him to stop lying about "energy independence" when no nation on earth is energy independent?  When he launched a war on coal?  When his administration has stymied virtually all exploration and drilling for oil?  When the need for more nuclear power is clothed in talk of "reducing greenhouse gas emissions" that pose no threat to the environment?

At what point will he stop talking about "electric cars" when they are too expensive and cannot provide the mileage Americans expect and need?  When his administration keeps ratcheting up mileage requirements the render cars more dangerous to drive?  Or ethanol standards that increase damage to auto and other types of engines?

At what point will he stop talking about "greenhouse gas emissions," the alleged "cause" of "global warming" when there is no global warming and about carbon dioxide that plays no role in climate change?

At what point will he equate ObamaCare and other policies with his acknowledgement that Americans feel government is becoming too intrusive in their lives?

At what point will he ever understand or acknowledge that it was his administration’s policies that increased the national debt?

His great regret, he said, was not communicating more effectively with Americans, but Obama was on television all the time from "The View" to "The Jon Stewart Show", or giving endless speeches.

Of the many Democrat office holders who were rejected by voters, he called them "terrific public servants" who "showed courage" as they threw away common sense, sound economics, and ignored the wishes of their constituents to support policies they clearly knew were widely and strongly opposed; members of Congress who repeatedly voted for legislation they had not read!

How many times were Americans expected to personally show up in Washington, D.C. to protest?

Obama compared himself to Reagan and Clinton who both encountered midterm losses in their party ranks, but Obama seemed oblivious to the fact that this particular election was historic in the proportion of the rejection involved.  Not just Congress, but numerous Democratic governorships were lost as well by his party.

One would think that he might signal a move to the center, but Obama is so driven by his personal pathologies and Marxist ideology that he is incapable of doing this, even though he did give ground on the likelihood of extending the Bush tax cuts, a vote the formerly Democrat dominated Congress failed to take before leaving to campaign for reelection.

Obama is left now with the option to use executive orders to "transform" a nation that has rejected his agenda.

He is left now with the veto power to thwart legislative action to address the nation’s ailing economy.

He continues to be surrounded by a shadowy and largely unknown coterie of White House "czars" to carry out his policies.

Nothing Obama said during his press conference offers any comfort.  Rather, a close examination suggests that there is "something seriously wrong" with Barack Obama.
He Won’t Be Ignored
Joy Tiz says to be a member of the lap dog media is akin to being a badly hung-over woman in a Vegas hotel room.  OMG, who is this guy? -- they should have known better.

A less qualified presidential candidate would have been hard to find.  Yet Obama was not only a serious candidate and ultimate victor, but during his campaign, he pranced around, acting as if he already was president and the election was merely a ceremony to formalize his taking of the crown, and now the ObamaMedia are surprised that Obama’s behavior is a bit strange.

Dr. Sam Vaknin describes the "malignant narcissist" as having pathological narcissism.  The pathological narcissist will misrepresent facts as needed.  The malignant narcissist carries a messianic vision of himself and is prone to magical thinking; that is, he ignores data that conflicts with his fantasy.

Narcissists are high maintenance creatures with little hope of changing.  The personality disorder is baked into them.  Barack Obama shows the thin skinned nature of the narcissist in his responses to criticism.

Narcissists also have no intestinal fortitude for ridicule.  Not only does Barack Obama lash out at critics, he is entirely devoid of the kind of self deprecating humor that can be so endearing in people in power.

Like all narcissists, Obama takes himself quite seriously.  He is also misinformed about his special gifts.  He finds the office of President of the United States beneath him.  Yet, for all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply.

The most dramatic threat to his supply to date came last Tuesday when the American people emphatically rejected Obama -- his policies and philosophy.  His fellow Democrats had to run as anti-Obamas.

Predictably, the next day Obama showed his now familiar obtuseness about his own role in the slaughter.  A narcissist is at his most menacing when he perceives a threat to his perpetual supply of admiration and affirmation.  No Drama Obama is showing the truculence typical of narcissists when they sense a threat to supply.

Narcissists are like alcoholics in their insatiable quest for their supply.

The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights.  He is hypervigilant.  He perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection -- nothing short of a threat.  Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.

The pundit community is all atwitter.  Will he or won’t he?  Will Obama do a Clintonesque tack to the center following such devastating blows to his ego and agenda?

No.  He won’t.  It’s unrealistic to assume Obama can find the center at all; nothing in his history suggests he is anything other than a radical Marxist.  There is virtually nothing in Obama’s history to suggest he that he knows very much about the country he is supposed to lead.  What we do know is that his closest friends and mentors have almost unanimously been radicals who despise America and see this great nation not as the greatest source of freedom and liberty in the world, but as its most menacing scourge.

The leader of the free world is becoming increasingly ticked off at America.  No one can predict when Obama’s disorder will become too obvious for even the lap dog press to ignore.  But, one thing is for certain -- he’s not going to get better.
American Narcissus
Scott Johnson says one of Obama's most prominent and least attractive qualities is his vanity.  It almost disposes of the speculation that Obama is a Muslim.  The man can't be a Muslim; he worships himself.

In the title of the new Weekly Standard cover story, Jonathan Last calls Obama "The American Narcissus" and, as Last demonstrates, Obama has earned the title.  The evidence compiled by Last is voluminous, if not overwhelming.

Obama's characteristic rhetorical trope is the presentation of history in a messianic mode featuring himself.  Last quotes Obama's June 2008 speech in St. Paul celebrating his securing the Democratic presidential nomination.  In that speech Obama concluded:
    

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.  This was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.

    
"[T]his was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal[.]"  As a false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi has nothing on Obama.  Sabbatai converted to Islam under coercion, but Obama's not for turning.  He steadfastly worships at his own shrine.

Obama was at it again in his speech earlier this week to the Indian Parliament.  The first person singular figures prominently in it: "I am not the first American president to visit India.  Nor will I be the last.  But I am proud to visit India so early in my presidency.  It is no coincidence that India is my first stop on a visit to Asia, or that this has been my longest visit to another country since becoming President."  Obama seems already to have projected a second term for himself.

But that's the least of it.  One senses that the presidency of the United States is beneath him.  Obama gives us history in the form of an arc bending inevitably toward himself:
    

For me and Michelle, this visit has therefore held special meaning.  Throughout my life, including my work as a young man on behalf of the urban poor, I have always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and in his simple and profound lesson to be the change we seek in the world.  And just as he summoned Indians to seek their destiny, he influenced champions of equality in my own country, including a young Martin Luther King.  After making his pilgrimage to India a half century ago, Dr. King called Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance "the only logical and moral approach" in the struggle for justice and progress.

So we were honored to visit the residence where Gandhi and King both stayed -- Mani Bhavan.  We were humbled to pay our respects at Raj Ghat.  And I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world.

   
"We were humbled..." is a particularly nice touch.  In the gospel according to Barack, the man is both herald and messiah.  It may be worth noting that in the classic version of the myth that to which the title of Last's article refers, Nemesis is the key to the story.
Top 10 Signs Obama Is A Narcissist
Jared H. McAndersen, over at the satirical website, The Looking Spoon, comes a little to close to the truth in this humorous look at Obama's narcissism:
    

10.  Michelle never worries about him cheating because the only thing he checks out are mirrors.

9.  He tries to get the FDA to register the sound of his voice as a form of Viagra based on "personal experience."

8.  Bad acoustics forced him to go with the flow on "yes we can" even though it should have been "yes HE can."

7.  He thinks being called "Zero" is a compliment since everything should start with him anyway.

6.  He once proposed in a department of education meeting that schools should replace periods with his logo, since everything should end with him too.

5.  He stopped using note cards when he realized he could see his reflection in teleprompters.

4.  He secretly wears a locket that contains a photo of him on one side and a mirror on the other.

3.  He believes there is a cosmic connection between the invention of the wheel and the shape of his logo.

2.  There is no birth certificate, his mother told him he always was and always will be...

1.  He's not bowing before world leaders, he's looking down on them.

      
Obama, Vacuous And Dangerous
Dr. Gerald Stephens is reporting that Sean Hannity says his sources provide credible inside information that Obama is demonstrating evidence of unhinging, obviously a surprise to those only now grasping his condition.  Fox News Chairman, Roger Ailes stated that Obama, "has a different belief system than most Americans."

Barack Hussein Obama II demonstrates the classic example of a person devoid of a fundamental historical or educational context, "a wild child," raised in circumstances foreign to and demonstrably anti-American.  As revealed through his autobiographical sketches, his high school and college years were consumed by anti-social behavior, and communist undertakings.  The crowning jewels of his mental development include being a disciple of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s psychotic ravings, fellow traveler to the avowed terrorist, William Ayers, and feverishly endorsed by Louis Farrakhan.

He is a remarkable first: first person to be elected to the office totally without a record of any accomplishments or qualifications, and sworn to preventing the nation from determining exactly what he is; the media touted genius or anti-American sociopath.

The generally accepted behavioral traits of a sociopath include but are not limited to:
    

•  Glibness and superficial charm


•  Manipulative and conning: they never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behavior as permissible.  They appear to be charming, yet covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used.  They must dominate and humiliate their victims.


•  Grandiose sense of self; they feel entitled to certain things as their right.


•  Pathological lying; they have no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis.  They can create and get caught up in a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.


•  Lack of remorse, shame or guilt; they have a deep seated rage, split off and repressed, which is at their core.  They do not see others around them as people, but as targets and opportunities.  Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up victims.  The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.


•  Shallow emotions; when they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive.  Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person.


•  Callousness, lack of empathy; they are unable to empathize with the pain of their victim, having only contempt for other's feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.


•  Poor behavioral controls, impulsive nature; this individual believes they are all-powerful, all knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, and no concern for their impact on others.


•  Irresponsibility, Unreliability; they have no concern about wrecking other's lives and dreams.  Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause.  They are incapable of accepting blame themselves, but blame others, even for acts they have obviously committed.


•  Lack of Realistic Life Plan, Parasitic Lifestyle; they tend to move around excessively or make all encompassing promises for the future.  They possess poor work ethic but do not hesitate in exploiting others effectively.


•  Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility; they change their image as needed to avoid prosecution.  This also applies to changing their life story as required.

    
Each of the above is documented within Obama’s known history and contemporary conduct.  Most troubling is the recognizable behavioral pattern of an egomaniacal ideologue.  His is a game wherein no violation of law, misuse of authority, abuse of social and cultural normative is beyond use.

He is the absolute antithesis of any historically recognizable occupant of the oval office.  His actions are divisive, dismissive, combative, and hostile.  He has packed his administration with unabashedly anti-capitalist, quasi or full admirers of communist doctrine including but not limited to that of the revolutionary psychopath, Mao Zedong, avowed pedophiles, overt racists, and operative thugs.

To be president of the United States of America does demand knowledge of our history and allegiance to our constitution.  Sadly, Obama displays neither.  "We are the people we’ve been waiting for."  Dictators, kings and sociopaths commonly employ the designation "We" when referring to themselves.  There is little doubt of its usage when uttered by Obama.
How Perfect Is This?
Tara Parker-Pope reports that all of a sudden, there is no such thing as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  NPD is  characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness.

As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 -- has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition.  The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder.
    

It is a puzzle why the manual’s committee on personality disorders has decided to throw N.P.D. off the bus.  Many experts in the field are not happy about it….  One of the sharpest critics of the D.S.M. committee on personality disorders is a Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Gunderson, an old lion in the field of personality disorders and the person who led the personality disorders committee for the current manual.

Asked what he thought about the elimination of narcissistic personality disorder, he said it showed how "unenlightened" the personality disorders committee is. "They have little appreciation for the damage they could be doing."  He said the diagnosis is important in terms of organizing and planning treatment.

   
Full story here . . .

It's not a puzzle to me.  Obama can't be tagged with a personality disorder.  It wouldn't be politically correct.  So simply remove NPD from the list.  Problem solved.  Long live Caesar!

On this page, the word narcississim/narcissist, is repeatedly used to describe Obama.
Obama's Parting Gift To His Propaganda Chief
    
    
Gibbs looks thrilled.  What?  No Rolex?

Talk about re-gifting!  Obama presents Gibbs with Gibbs' own tie and TWO pictures of himself!  What a cheap bastard (pun intended).

But it's OK folks, Obama can no longer be tagged with a personality disorder (see previous item).
Obama's Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Ben Shapiro says that during the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton suggested that if the emergency phone rang at 3 a.m. in the White House, you wouldn't want Obama picking it up.

She was wrong.  Obama wouldn't pick it up in the first place.  He'd let it go to answering machine.  He'd be too busy chasing the nearest camera.  Obama is the "Girls Gone Wild" president: Stick a lens in front of him and he'll take off his shirt, mince about like a coed, and babble nonsensical nothings to an audience oddly fascinated by his antics.

How else to explain Obama's desperate injection of himself into the Oscars this past Sunday?  Even as the Middle East goes up in flames, even as oil prices spike dramatically, even as the national debt skyrockets toward $19.6 trillion by 2015, Obama took time out to tackle a pressing question: What is his favorite movie song?  Answer: "As Time Goes By," from "Casablanca."  Feeling better about the world situation yet?

Obama had a busy week -- at least in terms of pop culture.  Thursday evening, Obama held yet another party at the White House, this time in honor of Motown music.  Celebrity attendees included Stevie Wonder, Jamie Foxx, Smoky Robinson, John Legend, Seal, Sheryl Crow, Nick Jonas and Jordin Sparks.  Jamie Foxx summed up the Obamas' view of what it means to inhabit the "people's house" in his rendition of Robinson's "Get Ready": "We won the election.  White House, baby, so much fun!"  Meanwhile, Muammar Qadafi shot people at will in the streets of Tripoli, and Americans struggled to pay their rent.

Obama has become the Salahis of entertainment, cropping up in random places when he's least wanted.  We can't escape him.  He delayed the fifth game of the 2008 World Series, so he could broadcast a 30-minute infomercial for his campaign.  He threw out the first pitch at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2009.  He did a 10-minute interview with Katie Couric during the 2010 Super Bowl broadcast.  In both 2009 and 2010, he did interviews with ESPN to tell the world about his NCAA tournament brackets.  In 2010, Obama showed up on "American Idol."  As commander-in-chief, he's hit "The View," "The Tonight Show," "The Late Show" and "Jersey Shore."  OK, he hasn't hit "Jersey Shore" ... yet.

In fact, Obama is worse than the Salahis -- at least the Salahis don't use tax dollars to subsidize their antics.  Obama doesn't just crash other parties -- he spends millions of taxpayer dollars to throw parties of his own.  Not that Obama cares; as he put it, "This is a pretty big house so we get lonely.  It's hard for me to move around out there sometimes, so I got to bring the world to me."

Obama's desperate need for attention is clearly a psychological condition.  He drinks in applause like a washed-up movie star.   It is usual for neglected children to develop narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), typically characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a strong sense of entitlement, preoccupations with utopian fantasies, elitism, manipulative tendencies and pathological need for praise.

Obama was abandoned by his parents during childhood.  Now he exhibits the textbook symptoms of NPD.  He thinks his powers are godlike in import; "I have a gift, Harry," Obama once told Sen. Harry Reid.  He believes he is entitled to positions of power and prestige.  He has never worked a real job in his life, yet deigns to tell the rest of us that he embodies our hopes and dreams.  He is obsessed with nonsensical utopian fantasies of one-world peace and harmony in which nuclear weapons are beaten into plowshares.

Obama is an elitist through and through, disdaining ordinary Americans as "bitter [people who] cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."  He is manipulative in the extreme, seeing every crisis as an opportunity to magnify his personal power.

Most dangerous, he requires a constant stream of paeans to his persona.  Radical Muslims, socialists, anti-Semites -- so long as they clap, they're worthy of his warmth.  Obama strongly resembles a once-abused puppy; he doesn't care who pets him, so long as he receives the petting.

With one exception: Obama has no interest in the attention or praise of Americans who challenge his radical agenda.  To make himself subject to their philosophy would force him to acknowledge a fundamental truth: His parents abandoned him because they were bad parents, not because America is a "downright mean" country.  Obama has told himself for decades that America's selfishness forced his parents to make him a social outcast.  To acknowledge now that the system was largely good and his parents were largely bad would fracture his fragile ego.

So expect to see Obama on the next telecast of the next big event.  He can't stay away from the cameras, and he certainly won't leave behind the enthusiastic hurrahs of his supporters.

Mr. De Mille, Obama's ready for his close-up.

Unfortunately for Mr. Shapiro, on November 29, 2010, the American Psychological Association (APA), cancelled Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  Obama can't be tagged with a personality disorder.  It wouldn't be politically correct.  So the APA simply remove NPD from the list.  Problem solved.  Long live Caesar!
"I Didn’t Emerge Unscathed"
Obama said at a White House bullying-prevention conference Thursday that he was picked on as a child.

Jordan Fabian says Obama told participants that growing up, bullies often keyed in on his big ears and unorthodox name.

"As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard. And I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
    
    
But Obama reminded the audience of parents, teachers, students and community leaders that bullying can have serious consequences.

"I didn’t emerge unscathed.  But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem," he said.  "We’ve said, 'Kids will be kids.'  And so sometimes we overlook the real damage that bullying can do, especially when young people face harassment day after day, week after week."

Continue reading here . . .
Obama's Inner Bracket
Zomblog points to Obama's picks -- his "brackets" -- the teams Obama thought would advance in the NCAA Basketball Championship -- a process known as filling out a bracket.

The term bracket comes from the shape of the round-by-round elimination chart which tracks which team won in each matchup.

That's all very well and good, but one wonders: Don't we all have what is essentially an "inner bracket" which delineates our personal hierarchy of priorities, beliefs, behaviors and traits?  If there was a bracket which revealed the inner workings of Obama's mind, what would it look like?  And what trait would emerge dominant?
    

click image for larger copy
    
Obama Vs. Obama
Victor Davis Hanson says Obama gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were necessary -- in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and has warned about recklessly voting against raising the debt ceiling in a fashion that he himself had once done, in a larger landscape in which he had once damned attacking Middle East countries in optional wars, Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, intercepts, wiretaps, Predators, and leaving troops in Iraq, and then embraced or expanded all that and more (this list is infinite and includes everything from drilling to campaign financing to earmarks).

These weird about-faces raise interesting questions that transcend the current politics of the deficit:
    

a)  Has Obama in his past careers never been called to account and so reached a point where simply being Obama means that we are not supposed to apply standards of accuracy, memory, and consistency to him in the way we do to all others?

b)  Or does an absent-minded Obama carelessly make up things up ad hoc as he goes along, forgetting what he said earlier, but secure that his hope-and-change delivery of the moment will so mesmerize the audience that no one will remember or care if at times he ends up saying exactly the opposite of what he had said earlier?

c)  Or is he so blatantly partisan a politician that he has no principles at all and knowingly says things that are aimed at appealing to 51 percent of the public at any given moment, and therefore will always change with public opinion?

d)  Or is he so cynical that he understands campaign rhetoric has nothing to do with actual governance, and so he is allowed to say something that he knows in advance that he is not bound to follow?

e)  Or is he so bored with the trying job that he feels no responsibility to offer reliable, consistent governance, and so rashly throws things out and then hastens back to the more enjoyable PR aspects of the office?

      
When Will Obama Crack In Public?
Mychal Massie says that at a time when many Americans can barely afford Burger King and a movie, Obama boasts of spending a billion dollars on his re-election campaign.  Questioned at a recent appearance about the spiraling fuel costs, Obama said, "Get used to it" -- and with an insouciant grin and chortle, he told another person at the event, who complained about the effect high fuel prices were having on his family, to "get a more fuel-efficient car."

The Obamas behave as if they were sharecroppers living in a trailer and hit the Powerball, but instead of getting new tires for their trailer and a new pickup truck, they moved to Washington.  And instead of making possum pie, with goats and chickens in the front yard, they're spending and living large at taxpayer expense -- opulent vacations, gala balls, resplendent dinners and exclusive command performances at the White House, grand date nights, golf, basketball, more golf, exclusive resorts and still more golf.

Expensive, ill-fitting and ill-chosen wigs and fashions hardly befit the first lady of the United States.  The Obamas have behaved in every way but presidential -- which is why it's so offensive when we hear Obama say, in order "to restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice -- but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in."

The American people have been sacrificing; it is he and his family who are behaving as if they've never had two nickels to rub together -- and now, having hit the mother lode, they're going to spend away their feelings of inadequacy at the taxpayers' expense.

Obama continues to exhibit behavior that, at best, can be described as mobocratic and, at worst, reveals a deeply damaged individual.  In a February 2010 column, I asked, "Is Obama unraveling?"  I wrote that it was beginning to appear the growing mistrust of him and contempt for his policies was beginning to have a destabilizing effect on him.

At that time, I wrote that not having things go one's way can be a bitter pill, but reasonable people don't behave as he was behaving.  He had insulted Republicans at their luncheon, where he had been an invited guest.  I had speculated that was, in part, what had led him to falsely accuse Supreme Court justices before Congress, the nation and the world, during the 2010 State of the Union address.

It appeared, at that time, as if he were "fraying around the emotional edges."  That behavior has not abated -- it has become more pronounced.  While addressing the nation, after being forced to explain the validity of his unilateral aggression with Libya, America witnessed a petulant individual scowling and scolding the public for daring to insist he explain his actions.

But during an afternoon speech to address the budget/debt, he took his scornful, unstable despotic behavior to depths that should give the nation cause for concern.  Displaying a dark psychopathy more representative of an episode of "The Tudors" television series, he invited Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to sit in the front row during his speech and then proceeded to berate both Ryan and Ryan's budget-cutting plan.  Even liberal Democrats were put off by the act.  MSNBC's Joe Scarborough questioned the sanity of Obama's actions.

Today, criticism is coming from all sides.  A senior Democrat lawmaker said, "I have been very disappointed in [Obama], to the point where I'm embarrassed that I endorsed him.  It's so bad that some of us are thinking, is there some way we can replace him?  How do you get rid of this guy?"  ("Democrats' Disgust with Obama," The Daily Beast, April 15, 2011)

Steve McCann wrote: Obama's speech "was chock full of lies, deceit and crass fear-mongering.  It must be said that [he] is the most dishonest, deceitful and mendacious person in a position of power I have ever witnessed."  ("The Mendacity of Barack Obama," AmericanThinker.com, April 15, 2011)

McCann continued: "[His] performance was the culmination of four years of outright lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative press and political class who are loath to call [him] what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar and a fraud.  That he relies on his skin color to intimidate, either outright or by insinuation [against] those who oppose his radical agenda only add to his audacity.  It is apparent that he has gotten away with his character flaws his entire life, aided and abetted by sycophants around him. …"

With these being among the kinder rebukes being directed at Obama, and with people becoming less intimidated by his willingness to use race as a bludgeon, with falling poll numbers in every meaningful category and an increasingly aggressive tea-party opposition -- how much longer before he cracks completely?

The coming months of political life are not going to be pleasant for Obama.  Possessed by a self-perceived palatine mindset, that in his mind places him above criticism, how long before he cracks in public?  Can America risk a man with a documented track record of lying and misrepresenting truth as a basic way of life, who is becoming increasingly more contumelious?

Related:  Obama Loses His Cool With Texas TV Reporter (watch video to end)
Obama' Victory Lap
Julie Pace is reporting Barack Obama plans to visit New York City on Thursday to mark the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The White House says Obama will visit Ground Zero, the site of al-Qaida's attack on the World Trade Center, and meet with the families of those killed nearly 10 years ago.

U.S. forces killed bin Laden during a raid on a compound in Pakistan where he had been hiding, then buried him at sea.

Flag-waving crowds have been gathering at the lower Manhattan site of the attack since Obama announced bin Laden's death late Sunday.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced Obama's visit on Twitter.
No Class:  Obama Snubs Bush, Praises Himself
The Washington Times says the Bin Laden assassination wasn’t the result of Barack’s strategic genius.

It can be awkward when a dove tries to pass himself off as a war hero.  From the tone of Obama’s speech Sunday night, it’d be easy to conclude he was the one who came up with the idea that America should hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.  He also made it sound like he was the one who formulated the takedown plan.  We can look forward in coming days to details of the actual operation, emphasizing Obama’s intimate involvement.

"Shortly after taking office," Obama said, "I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the capture or death of Osama bin Laden the highest priority of the war on terror."  Of course, this had been a high priority since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.  "I want justice," President George W. Bush said on September 17.  "And there’s an old poster out West … I recall, that said, ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’ "

Sunday’s only mention of Mr. Bush came when Obama defended himself by quipping that even his predecessor insisted America isn’t at war with Islam.  Left unsaid was how Mr. Bush setting the groundwork for the conduct of the war on terrorism provided Obama with the tools to get this job done.  The national unity, sense of purpose and offensive posture were largely the result of Mr. Bush’s decisive action and strong leadership following national tragedy.  Had Obama been in Mr. Bush’s position on Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden would still be alive today, and probably winning.
The First-Person Presidency
Victor Davis Hanson says Obama takes credit for operations that would have been impossible had Senator Obama’s views prevailed.

Here are a few excerpts from Obama’s speech on Sunday night about the killing of Osama bin Laden.
    

"Tonight, I can report . . . And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta . . . I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . . I’ve made clear . . . Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear . . . Tonight, I called President Zardari . . . and my team has also spoken. . .These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief . . . Finally, let me say to the families . . . I know that it has, at times, frayed. . . ."

    
Most of these first-person pronouns could have been replaced by either the first-person plural (our, we) or proper nouns (the United States, America).  But they reflect a now well-known Obama trait of personalizing the presidency.

The problem of first-personalizing national security is twofold.  One, it is not consistent.  Good news is reported by Obama in terms of "I"; bad news is delivered as "reset," "the previous administration," "in the past": All good things abroad are due to Obama himself; all bad things are still the blowback from George W. Bush.

Two, there is the small matter of hypocrisy.  The protocols for taking out Osama bin Laden were all established by President Bush and all opposed by Senator and then candidate Obama.  Yet Obama never seeks to explain that disconnect; indeed, he emphasizes it by the overuse of the first person.  When Obama reminds us this week of what "over the years I’ve repeatedly made clear," does he include his opposition to what he now has institutionalized?

Guantanamo proves to have been important for gathering intelligence; Barack Obama derided it as "a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda."

Some key intelligence was found by interrogating prisoners abroad; Barack Obama wished to end that practice: "This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of law."  "That will be my position as president.  That includes renditions."  Renditions have not ended under Obama, but expanded.

In some cases we are trying suspects through military tribunals; here again, Barack Obama used to deplore the practice he now has adopted: "a flawed military-commission system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks and that has been embroiled in legal challenges."

Senator Obama complained about airborne attacks on the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands.  Obama has increased Predator assassination attacks fivefold.  He has killed four times as many terrorist suspects by Predators in 27 months than did President Bush in eight years.

Continue reading here . . .
Obama's Birth Certificate And Osama's Death Picture
Vel Nirtist says these two have an interesting common denominator that reveals much about Obama's mindset.

Consider CIA director Leon Panetta's reaction of shrug-of-the-shoulders "sure" when asked whether the photos would be revealed.  After all, the killing of Osama is big news, the public is curious, so why not?  Some won't look, some will look with horror, some with disgust, some with revulsion, some with gloating, some will make a screensaver of it -- a normal and totally understandable gamut of reactions to a highly visible event.

Obama's reaction could not have been more different to Panetta's.  "What will the enemies think of it?" is the first question on his mind.  Will it, to use the Soviet expression justifying suppression of the negative internal news, "pour water on the mill of the enemies?"

And this is not the first expression of that attitude.  Obama's refusal to disclose his birth certificate to the curious public falls into the same pattern and shows the same feature of his mindset -- an innate, instinctive desire to hide information from the public rather than to reveal it.

This desire comes either out of a deeply insecure, suspicions frame of mind, or indicates some highly crafty and calculating mindset, or is simply a symptom of paranoia.  After all, when Donald Trump forced Obama to reveal his birth certificate, weren't we all asking ourselves "so what was there to hide?  Why the whole hush-hush business?"

The same is the case of Osama's pictures.  Sure they've got to be gruesome -- but wouldn't the potential spectator expert that upfront, knowing full well from the movies how that kind of wound looks like?

What this episode tells us more than anything else, is that Obama has more than a touch of the Soviet-style paranoia -- and, given that, it is not surprising that he is so out of touch with American public's feelings and American public's mindset.
A Shrink Asks:  What's Wrong with Obama?
Robin of Berkeley asks, "So what is the matter with Obama?"

Conservatives have been asking this question for some time.  I've written a number of articles trying to solve the mystery.

Even some liberals are starting to wonder.  James Carville railed about Obama's blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill.  The New York Times' Maureen Dowd revamped Obama's "Yes We Can" motto into "Will We Ever?"  The liberal women of the TV show "The View" have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama's living with a man so out of touch.  Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him disconnected.

Obama's odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me.  He also presents a serious diagnostic challenge.

For one, Obama's teleprompter and the men behind the Blackberry keep him well-scripted.  We know so little about the facts of his life.  But it's more than just a lack of information.  Obama himself is a strange bird.  He doesn't fit easily into any diagnostic category.

Many people attribute Obama's oddness to his narcissism.  True, Obama has a gargantuan ego, and he is notoriously thin-skinned.

Yet a personality disorder like narcissism does not explain Obama's strangeness: his giggling while being asked about the economy; his continuing a shout-out rather than announcing the Ft. Hood shootings; or his vacations, golfing, partying and fundraising during the calamitous oil spill.

Take also Obama's declaring on the "Today Show" that he wants to know whose ass to kick.  Consummate narcissists would never stoop to this vulgar display of adolescent machismo.

Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is required.  What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his behavior is inappropriate.

So if it's not just simple narcissism, what is wrong with Obama?  Since I've never evaluated him, I can't say for sure.  But I can hazard some educated guesses.

Continue reading here . . .
Hah!  Look At The Usurper
       
    
I didn't know a black man could turn crimson -- and look at the veins popping out of his head.  If looks could kill, Netanyahu would be dead.

Wouldn't you love to have been in the room when Obama was off the public stage.  He had to unload that rage on someone, and I'll bet a dime to a dollar that some poor staffer was reamed good for Obama's own stupidity.

This is not a nice man.
Obama's Body Language Analysis

    
Obama Pays Tribute To Himself
Nile Gardner says The visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Washington has attracted little attention and judging by the content of today's joint press conference in the White House East Room, which has to rank as among the most dull in recent memory, almost nothing of any real substance come out of the US-German discussions.

Obama declared that he wasn't concerned about the prospect of a "double-dip recession," while noting that "we're experiencing some headwinds," i.e. some catastrophic bad news on the economic front.  He also gave Iran yet another half-hearted warning over its extremely well-advanced nuclear program, threatening "additional steps, including potentially additional sanctions" -- whatever that means.  In the meantime, Germany remains a huge trading partner with Tehran, actually increasing its trade with the Islamist, terrorist-supporting regime in 2010.

By far the most telling part of the day's proceedings came in Obama's welcoming address for his German counterpart on the South Lawn of the White House, where he could not resist a reference to his own rise to the highest office in the land, even comparing it with the momentous changes in eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War.  Here is what he said:
   

And finally, as people around the world imagine a different future, the story of Germany and our alliance in the 20th century shows what's possible in the 21st.  Wars can end.  Adversaries can become allies.  Walls can come down.  At long last, nations can be whole and can be free.

Madam Chancellor, the arc of our lives speaks to this spirit.  It's obvious that neither of us looks exactly like the leaders who preceded us.  (Laughter and applause.)  But the fact that we can stand here today as President of the United States and as Chancellor of a united Germany is a testament to the progress, the freedom, that is possible in our world.

    
In 2009 Barack Obama shamefully declined to attend the celebrations in Berlin commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, sending his Secretary of State in his place, which National Review appropriately described at the time as "the most telling nonevent of his presidency."  In his White House remarks today, Obama had another opportunity to remind America's German friends of the great role played by Ronald Reagan and the United States in defeating Communism, ending the Cold War and liberating hundreds of millions from tyranny, but egotistically chose instead to talk about his own personal achievement in becoming president -- hardly a stirring example of world leadership from a man who all too often prefers "leading from behind."
Comments . . .
***  
 

© Copyright  Beckwith  2010 - 2011
All right reserved