I haven’t had a chance to read the entirity of President Obama’s comments in Wakarusa, Indiana, yesterday, but I did come upon this chilling note:

We will pass reform by the end of this year because the American people need it.

(emphasis added)

No, not because we want it, but because The One believes we need it, and we’re going to get it, whether we like it or not, if He has His way.

The arrogance of this man is incredible.

Now, I understand, that if a guy’s elected saying he’s going to do something, he kind of has an obligation to try to get it done, and I can’t really fault him for trying. But Obama knows as well as we do that he put forth an image of himself as being a moderate and centrist who would never take over and Stalinze the entire health care industry (not to mention the auto industry and banking industry, and I could go on…) Not to mention that at this point, 52% of voters think his idea is a turkey.

The pomposity displayed by this man who famously said to the faces of (also-elected, mind you) Republican Congressmen, “I won, [so] I will trump you.” Is as staggering as the media’s aversion to point it out.

This is only punctuated more by what he said yesterday to MSNBC after his talk in Indiana:

I think at some point, some time in September, we are just going to have to make an assessment.

The “assessment” to which he’s referring is whether or not to even bother working with Republicans in ramming through his take-over.

Fun, sometimes, to go back in time (only 10 months ago, almost to the date) when the LA Times pilloried W as being “Bush the arrogant” for, among other things, having

“embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government’s role in the private economy since the Depression.”

Really?

I’ve searched, but cannot find any instance where the Times‘ editorial board offered such an assessment of BHO. If anybody knows of such, please pass it along in the comments.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Dan, this insane virago you have representing you in the Senate is beyond the pale. I happened to be in the gym lockerroom yesterday at the precise moment this disrespectful and shameless shrew categoriezed and insulted basically anybody who dares speak his mind in a public forum before a supporter of Stalinized health care on MSNBC (yes, natch, at my gym, they have MSNBC on the TV in the lockerroom). I wanted to blog it yesterday, but just saw the link someone put up today:

One might ask this termagant: “Ma’am [Senator], do the people you categorize as ‘well-dressed’ people who are only trying to ‘hurt our president’ have any legitimacy in their complaints about your plan whatsoever? Should their argument be given any weight or credence? Or should we just ignore them?”

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

As I may flesh this notion out in a further post, I’m including it in the “Random Thoughts” category.

After reading the news and blogs last night and this morning in my Kettleman City hotel (due a late start last night from San Francisco (allowing me to spend more time with my Mom & nephew) and bad traffic in and around San Jose, I decided to overnight in the Central Valley) and listening to the President’s speech earlier today in the Hoosier State, I had this sense yet again that Obama has long since lost the chance to unite the nation.

His speech sounded more like campaign boilerplate than a presidential address.

It seems he constantly sees his job as defeating his political foes (often the “straw men” in his speeches of whom you have heard tell)-which is not a very presidential attitude to have, since those supposed foes are your constituents.

From the outset of his Administration, Obama has not surrounded himself with political partisans, accustomed to an “us v. them” universe as opposed to think tank types, accustomed to design policies designed to serve society at large–and to building a broad consensus for said policies.   As Michael Barone obseved, “Most of Obama’s top White House staffers are politics operatives, not policy wonks. ”

Just three days after he took office as President of the United States, in a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders, Obama responded to Republican concerns about the cost of his “so-called stimulus” and his so-called “tax credit” for people who don’t pay income taxes, by saying, “I won. So I think on that one, I trump you.“*

Yeah, but all those people in that room all won their resspective elections.  And Obama won, in large part, by promising a “net spending cut” and reassuring voters in the middle that the change he was proposing was not all that drastic.

In any case, it was that very confrontational– and very unpresidential–attitude which has come to define the succeeding six months of his Administration–and has prevented him from becoming the unifying figure his supporters assured us he would be.

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Just called the offices of my Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer and my Congressman Henry Waxman, to see if they were holding public meetings on the various Obama initiatives which Democrats are attempting to push through Congress.

While Waxman has one meeting scheduled on climate change on Friday, August 21, when I tried to register online, I found that the event was already full, with a waiting list of 86.   Ma’am’s LA office said there were no event planned in LA and was not aware of any public meetings elsewhere in the state.

If you live in California, I suggest you call up Ma’am’s office and ask why she doesn’t want to meet the people she was elected to represent in Washington.   Her contact information is here.

Vanity Fair - July 29, 2008:

Los Angeles poster & Internet sensation – Spring/Summer 2009:

If you are in the mainstream media or their liberal/progressive lickspittles, then:  One of these is art, the other is horrible.  One is satire, one is racism.  One is free speech, the other is disrespectful.  One is high-larious, the other is dangerous.

I’ll let my intelligent readers make up their own minds…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Listening to his speech while going through e-mail and thought I heard just that.

Freudian slip?  Malfunctioning teleprompter?

Can you imagine how the editorialists at the New York Times and the left-leaning pundits on the Sunday TV new talk shows would lecture any Republican, elected or editorializing himself, who, during the Bush years, had said that those publicly protesting the Iraq War were just astroturf demonstrators, 1960s retreads who did not represent any grassroots movement.

Disagree with them we did, but we didn’t deny the sincerity of their concerns.

And yet, that’s how all too many Obama supporters, even some in the White House, and in their MSNBC echo chamber, have reacted to those protesting the President’s health care plans.  Now, to be sure, some of those protestors have gone a little too far in expressing their opinion.  It’s one thing to chant slogans and wave placards outside an elected official’s town hall meeting.*  It’s quite another to do so during the forum, drowning out the voices of others.

We should not do to them what we believe they’re doing to the country–pushing their ideas on us without a fair hearing.

Why is it, first citizens attending tea parties to protest excessive government spending, now with citizens attending additional tea parties and gatherings at elected officials’ townhalls to take issue with Democratic health care plans, that Democrats (and their defenders) must needs call them astroturfing, saying they are not grassroots protesters. Instead, those on the left contend this anti-big government movement has been ginned up by “evil” insurance companies?

As if left-wingers had a monopoly on legitimate grassroots’ protest.

Perhaps, their attempts to discredit us is a sign of intellectual laziness–that they don’t want to consider criticism of their proposals.  Or maybe it’s a sign they’re losing the debate.

Oh, and, one more thing–if they don’t think the protests against the President’s health care plan are legitimate, what do they make of the raft of opinion polls indicating growing opposition to a his proposed health care overhaul and to most of the components of the various Democratic plans?

**FROM THE COMMENTS:  Reader Sue offers a correction, saying it’s not just conservatives whose concerns they are dismissing and maligning:

Wrong Gp, it is not conservatives concerns. There are just as many Democrat voters protesting as well. We too read the bill and have not fallen for the crap they have been spewing. The people that attend Tea party’s are of ALL political persuasions.

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