On Monday at the Washington Examiner, Charlie Spiering provided a clip from then-Senator Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination not quite four years ago:

In 2008, he derided the very strategy he would adopt four years later. proclaiming that

. . . if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone that people should run from. You make a big election about small things. And you know what it’s worked before — because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty.

Democrats declaring a Republican “war on women” because they disagree with the GOP’s opposition to federal health care mandates sounds like an attempt to paint the opposition as individuals people should run from. That kind of distortion feeds into the cynicism we all have about government.

Now the president is busy scaring voters about the Ryan budget without presenting a one capable of securing a single Democratic vote in the House (indeed without insisting the Democratic Senate pass a budget).  He may be scaring voters about Republican reforms, but still has not put forward a plan to address our growing federal debt or the coming insolvency of Medicare and Social Security.

“As president,” Peter Wehner writes, “Obama has not only discarded” the commitment he made in 2008 to “rediscover our bonds to each other and get out of this constant, petty bickering that’s come to characterize our politics”,

. . . he has turned it on its head. Republicans aren’t simply people with whom he has philosophical disagreements; they are members of the “Flat Earth Society” and have embraced a budget that demonstrates their “Social Darwinism.” (more…)

Saw this last night on Yahoo! — where the news tends to skew left:

Smoke and mirrors?

Perhaps:

President Obama today raised the ante on his efforts to limit the rise in oil prices. The president, joined by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder, called on Congress to adopt tougher rules on speculators in the oil market.

. . . .

The Daily Ticker’s Henry Blodget says the proposal is “embarrassing” because speculators have little to do with the rising price of oil and gasoline. Prices are moving higher, Henry says, because “three billion new capitalists” in India and China are consuming oil and gasoline. It’s the balance between supply and demand that determines whether oil prices rise or fall, not speculators, Henry argues.

And then, of course, there are the Obama administration’s own policies which, by limiting exploration, have made it difficult to increase supply to match increasing demand.  If the president were serious about reducing oil prices, he would eliminate federal regulations preventing exploration and expedite the approval process for drilling on federal lands.

Seems that for this president, the solution to every problem is tougher federal oversight when, in many case, it’s federal meddling which created (or exacerbated) the problem in the first place.

And this time for a change, some in the media are catching on.

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Hiding Behind Names
• The Political Commentator – North Korea Camp 14: Why rogue nations cannot be negotiated with!
• Joshuapundit-John Derbyshire And A Talk About Race
• Simply Jews – This is our dog, Peter Beinart!
• VA Right! - Tax Loopholes? Let’s End the Biggest Loophole of All – the “Earned” Income Tax Credit
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Pakistani Spring
• The Right Planet – The Obama-MSM Suicide Pact
• The Colossus of Rhodey – Obama makes an “uncharacteristic” gaffe — not like G.W. Bush
• Bookworm Room – The real threat that the Ann Romneys of the world represent to the statist Left
• Rhymes With Right – Who Is More in Touch With Average Woman – Ann Or Michelle?
  
• The Razor – Prescription Abuse and the Legalization of Illicit Drugs
• The Mellow Jihadi – An Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Korea, and Vietnam Vet
• The Glittering Eye -What’s Fair?
• Gay Patriot – Governments should leave us free to pursue happiness, not make its achievement a public policy goal
• The Independent Sentinel – Al-Qaeda Attorney Becomes Number Three Man in the DOJ

Honorable Mentions (more…)