This is a read-the-whole-thing sort of deal, an excerpt will not do the story justice. The heart of it is an over-entitled, self-centered, forty-something vegan child-man (“Birdman”) who pitches a fit in a Chicago-area ‘Whole Foods’ because he deems the staff insufficiently accommodating.  You just *know* the guy is an Obama voter; albeit probably one who considers Obama “a little too center-right for my tastes.”

I think about that evening every time I walk into a Whole Foods during rush hour. I look for the tell-tale signs of another Birdman—impatience, over-reaction, constipated rage—and I find it every time. Then I wonder, why are these people all so angry? Is it something about Whole Foods that brings it out of them? Is it just their proximity to other miserable souls just like them? Is it the outward projection of inner self-loathing brought on by the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of social pressure to pay higher prices for organic, GMO-free, gluten-free, paleo, macro, whole foods?

…

I would bet if you asked all these angry, hateful trolls trundling to their hybrids in the parking lot trying to reconcile a $200 grocery bill with three measly paper bags full of groceries, they’d say No. They’d say they have to shop at Whole Foods because of something someone else in their family likes that they can’t find anywhere else. They always have an explanation, but it’s really just an excuse. They try to justify it, but it’s always a rationalization.

I realize I have also been away from blogging for a while, but just saw this and needed to share it with the group:

Pardon me for being judgmental, but if you don’t find this funny, you should probably spend less time with the GLAAD folks.

- Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from The Ranch)

Our commenter Sean is concerned that he might end up up dating a liberal (in the modern sense of a progressive leftist).  Those of us who are bit more seasoned may wish to offer the young pup some advice, before he makes a terrible mistake.

Here are some signs your date may be a liberal. Readers are invited to add more in the comments.

10. Tells you he thinks the minimum wage must be increased to help the working class; treats your waiter/waitress like crap and leaves a miniscule tip.
09. Pays for dinner with an EBT card.
08. Has CO3X1ST bumper sticker on his Prius, uses racial slurs when there’s no minorities around.
07. Cannot explain why he hates Sarah Palin, just knows that he does.
06. Expresses his belief that Christianity should be outlawed because Christians are “intolerant.”
05. Complains that his LGBT Studies degree really didn’t prepare him for his job at Starbucks; blames George W. Bush.
04. Harangues the waitress for not having a sufficient number of Vegan choices on the menu.
03. Can name every Oscar nominee, including costume design, but not a single senator, supreme court justice, or cabinet official.
02. Dinner “conversation” becomes a monologue on the topic of his unresolved daddy issues.
01. Brags that his purse is “the same kind Rachel Maddow carries.”

Nick Adds: (Sorry to hijack, it’s damned-near impossible to improve on #7 above, but I’ll attempt…) 11. After a half-hour soliloquy about “The evils of Right-Wing Christians and the dangers they pose to Western Society and decency in general, and American gays specifically”, a simple inquiry as to the treatment of gays by Muslims (toward whom we should exhibit much more tolerance) is met with long-desired silence and a stunned look.

I am making predictions, and I challenge Jeff and the othe cob loggers to make some as well. I don’t claim to be a psychic, but I feel pretty good about these predictions.

1. The Republicans will totally cave to Obama on the Debt Ceiling, just like they caved on the Budget Deal. The Republican leadership will clap each other on the back over the great deal they got and the MFM will cheer, and spending will continue unabated.
2. Obamacare will continue to cause hardship and suffering; the administration will continue to issue exemptions and extensions to try and contain the political damage.
3. Republicans will pick up 2-4 seats in the Senate but will fall short of a majority. Democrats will run their usual “War on Women” campaign together wih rampant use of social media to spread outrageous lies about GOP candidates, because that stuff works so well with the Democrats’ low information voter base
4. A Democrat congressman, senator, or governor will be found to have engaged in sexual misconduct; the MFM will protect him per Standard Operating Procedure unless defending him becomes politically untenable.
5. House Republicans will sneak through an Amnesty Bill in the lame duck session, perhaps earlier.
6. There will be a new Obama scandal involving corruption and the abuse of power; the MFM will do their level best to bury it and delegitimize it.
7. Media hype over gay athletes at Sochi will eclipse coverage of the actual sporting events.
8. More evidence will emerge debunking the hoax of Anthropogenic Global Warming; it will be ignored by the media and the Government.
9. There will be a shooting in a gun-free zone, which will receive much media coverage, which will wane after the shooter cannot be connected to the Tea Party or the NRA.
10. An atheist group will sue because a town’s innocuous display of religious, specifically Christian, symbols claming it made them all angry and hurt their feelers stuff. Also, Bill Maher will continue to spout things far more offensive than Phil Robertson without consequence.

I predict that my predictions will prove much more accurate than those of this Nobel-prize winning leftist:

(more…)

The left pooh-poohs the notion of American Exceptionalism. To quote their philosopher-king, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, “American exceptionalism,” is just garden variety patriotism. There is nothing special about America at all.

Yet, at the same time, leftists fervently believe that our debt and deficits are irrelevant (at least when a Democrat is president) and our economy can achieve their goal of regulatory socialism, without national or economic decline as consequence, because America can avoid the downfall of every Imperial Power that went down this same course. To quote the leftist philosopher-king again, “No matter what the naysayers tell us, no matter how dark the other side tries to make things look, the fact is there is not another country on earth that would not gladly trade places with the United States of America.”

So, which is it, people? Is America just an ordinary country? Or is America so exceptional that reckless spending, economic stagnation, and social decay that have destroyed other great nations are things we don’t have to worry about? Do the laws of mathematics and the lessons of history simply not apply to us?

There is a distinct air of leftist triumphalism in the air at the present time. It all reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) comment made by the builder of a certain twentieth-century ocean liner that “God Himself could not sink her.” That arrogance seems to pervade the social left at the present moment as they seem to rack up victory after victory in reshaping society in line with their secular progressive agenda.

Well, this happened…

An Arizona couple was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after arguing with McDonald’s employees and throwing food at them, KNXV reports.

Michael and Nova Smith ordered a Number 2 and Number 4, but were outraged when they did not receive hash browns with their meal.

And this happened…

And this spokesman for his generation and low-information voters everywhere said this.

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books.” ― Kanye West

And I can’t help thinking these events are related; linked by a common diminishment and rejection of standards of behavior across society. The people at the top of the political elite behave like street trash, and that lowers the bar for everybody else.

My mother passed away early this fall. My family is mostly made up of working/middle class folk who live in “flyover country.” We are the kind of people Obama and the rest of the ruling class look down their noses at, and dismiss as people who “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

But I will tell you this. Even those parts of my family that make ‘Duck Dynasty’ look like ‘Frasier’ had enough decorum and decency not to take selfies at my mother’s Memorial service.

But that level of respect and decency is apparently too much to ask from the Leader of the Free World. So we shouldn’t be surprised when his subjects throw tantrums at McDonald’s and denounce reading books as a waste of time.

I believe it’s been a week, maybe more, since I even checked this blog.  I did not get to the post I wanted to write on JFK, contrasting that smart Democrat’s record with the media coverage of his murder and his legacy.  I had a few notes for posts on Obamacare and honesty and one on Obamacare and prediction. Reading something this morning in the Daily Caller reminded me of a piece I had read yesterday in Commentary, articulating an idea which gets at the meaning of Obama’s reelection last year.

Peter Wehner wrote:

In their fascinating behind-the-scenes book on the 2012 election, Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann write that the campaign’s research showed “that there was a deep well of sympathy for Obama among voters.” In focus groups after the first debate, they write, “people offered excuse after excuse for his horrific presentation. In Florida, one woman said, almost protectively, ‘I just bet you he wasn’t feeling well.’”

That deep well of sympathy–that willingness to give the president the benefit of the doubt and the attachment and connection voters felt for Mr. Obama–has been crucial to his success for his entire political life. He has always been viewed as a likeable and decent man, even when his campaign employed fairly ruthless tactics. But the days of broad public faith and trust in this president appear to be over. And no wonder.

I think this is why the image of Obama responding to Hurricane Sandy was so beneficial to the incumbent.  People do want to like him.  And in the coverage of the storm and his response, that Democrat looked very much like the man they wanted to like.

It remains to be see whether the disaster of the Obamacare roll-out and the realization (despite his many promises) that many Americans who liked their health care plans couldn’t keep them will erase the goodwill many Americas feel for the incumbent.  That said we on the right should not lose sight of the fact that as Halperin and Heilemann put it, many Americans do have a “deep well of sympathy for Obama”.

——

*And the question now becomes whether we should change the tense on this verb from present to past.

NB:   (more…)

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg explains:

Watching President Obama’s press conference Thursday, I almost started humming the old ditty “The Farmer in the Dell” because all I could think was: “The cheese stands alone.”

The president did his level best to explain that he was as in the dark as anybody about the problems with his signature legislation.

He explained that he was not “informed directly” that the Healthcare.gov website was about as ready to run as a three-legged horse at the Preakness Stakes. Apparently, the old saw that the “buck stops” with the president never took into account the possibility that the buck could get lost in interoffice mail.

From Jake Meyer in Bruce’s Twitter stream:

It can’t be a human right if it requires someone else’s labor. That’s theft, not freedom.

And, from Rep. Steve Stockman:

About 110,000 people contract chlamydia each month, more than signed up for Obamacare. Obamacare is less popular than chlamydia.

UPDATE: And America’s Communist era arrives thusly:

JONATHAN GRUBER, M.I.T.: …We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.

The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return.

Gruber’s argument can (and will) be used to re-distribute anything. Literally anything. Because it’s founded on the idea that everything is generated, owned and consumed communally.

Steve Jobs of Apple, for example, was just a “genetic lottery winner” – right? He should have been forced to “pay in return” for his gene-crime of being unusually driven and talented, right? So that others could consume whatever wealth he created?

Health, and all other forms of wealth or success, never have to do with a person’s individual choices or efforts, right?

UPDATE: As long as we’re thinking like Communists, I just noticed something odd about how Obamacare ranges its plans from worst (Bronze) to best (Platinum). Isn’t it…um…kind of racist?

(the color of Bronze)	(the color of Platinum)

Obama Broke Super PAC Pledge During Campaign

Kudos to the Huffington Post for catching on.

Why do ghosts wear clothes?

When die you, forever look you like the outfit you died in.

Each of us is born with certain gifts. What determines our success in life oftentimes is how we develop those gifts to serve the needs of the world in which we live.

Barack Obama has a mellifluous speaking voice. And he can, on occasion, deliver an inspiring speech. His keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention catapulted the charismatic Chicago politician to national fame. Had he not delivered that speech he would not have been in a position to run for — and win — the White House four years later.

And now, as president, he seems think that he can address the nation’s problems through such speeches. During the month of September, as a government shutdown loomed, instead of reaching out to — and meeting with — congressional leaders, he delivered a number of campaign-style speeches.  And now as his health care overhaul faces myriad glitches, he’s doing it again, as Reason’s Peter Suderman reports:

Three weeks after the deeply troubled launch of Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, President Obama gave a speech responding to some of the problems that have plagued the government-run online enrollment system. The most revealing thing about it was what he didn’t say.

Obama was somewhat more blunt than he has been about the system’s failures. “There’s no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have getting stuck during the application process. And I think it’s fair to say that nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am,” he said. “There’s no excuse for the problems.”

No excuse—and no explanation either. Obama acknowledged some problems with the site. But he didn’t say why they happened, when they would be resolved, or what the administration’s specific plan was to get things working.

Read the whole thing.  H/t:  Powerline picks.  So convinced is the president with his rhetorical prowess that he doesn’t need explain, he just needs to talk.

No wonder, Allahpundit sees the speech as a means to buy ”time for website repairs and trying to combat ominous polls like this, which show the public’s perceptions of Healthcare.gov bleeding over into their perceptions of the ObamaCare program generally.”

A speech may buy the president time, but it won’t fix the program’s flaws  – nor will it contain its costs.

“Gaius Gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw that the state treasury would be exhausted.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Politicians get up and promise you all sorts of free stuff. They say, I’ll give you more and more stuff, and you won’t have to pay for it…My own view is that we have to tell people the truth, and we’re going to have to demand sacrifice of the American people. The idea of borrowing a trillion dollars more than we take in [each year] is not just bad economics, it’s immoral. I’m not going to do it, and I’m not going to promise what can’t be delivered.” – Mitt Romney

“We had a chance, in 2012, to elect as president a man who built his entire career and fortune on turning around financially troubled enterprises. But the voters rejected him because Obama claimed he was going to give women cancer and outlaw tampons. That is when I knew our country was f—ed.”
- V the K

Just caught CNN at the gym and noticed that in the crawl at the bottom of the screen, the “news network” reported that Wendy Davis announced she was running for Texas Governor.  In the crawl, they reminded us that Miss Davis had filibustered the state’s “controversial” abortion bill.

Do wonder if when another Texas politician filibustered recently to express his opposition to Obamacare if the network dubbed that unpopular program as “controversial.”

And I would dare say a greater percentage of Americans oppose Obamacare than Texans who oppose the bill to which Miss Davis objected.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  rtm answers the title question in the affirmative.

Yes, CNN has called Obamacare controversial:

“With so many politicians fighting over this controversial legislation, the details about how to sign up may have gotten a little lost.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/health/obamacare-open-enrollment/index.html

But do wonder if the network  ever did so in the crawl?

We’ve often heard it said the the Rasmussen poll skews Republican, but their latest shows the Democratic president with a higher level of approval than any other recent survey:

Not since May has any survey showed him with over 50% approval.

. . . why does he prefer to harangue Republicans than to meet with them?

In his petulant press statement today, he said was willing to have conversation with the GOP, but, well, when was the last time he sat down to do just that?

He showed considerable cheek in insisting that a budget be passed on time, given how tardy he was in releasing his.

UP-UP-UPDATE (added on 09.28.13 @ 2:24 GP Blog time):  This time even CNN seems to be catching on, CNN: Obama’s Been on Phone More With Iran than Speaker of the House

RELATED: Obama avoids shutdown talk as deadline looms (Article posted before Obama’s statement today, references some of his, well, intemperate language.)

UPDATE:  How Drudge covers the president’s statement:

UP-UPDATE: From Jonathan Strong at the Corner:

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, responded to President Obama’s remarks just now, saying

The House will take action that reflects the fundamental fact that Americans don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want the train wreck that is Obamacare. Grandstanding from the president, who refuses to even be a part of the process, won’t bring Congress any closer to a resolution.

A GOP aide noted Obama has not called the Speaker all week.

Emphasis added.

No, I don’t like Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s plan to filibuster the House resolution to keep the government open. I would like to see the Senate vote of the legislation, forcing Democratic Senators to choose between their party’s priorities (an increasingly unpopular law) and their constituents’ concerns (the growing cost of healthcare and their diminishing options caused by said legislation).

I wish that the government could defund Obamacare, but, as Thomas Sowell and Tom Coburn have pointed out, it’s not going to happen.

Still, for all the Texas Senator’s posturing, he has done something the legacy media fail to do–bring the unpopular health care law into the news. It does seem our broadcast media are downplaying (or outright ignoring) the problems with the president’s signature achievement.

Like John Hinderaker,

I am not crazy about Cruz’s plan to block cloture on the House resolution, but I applaud his speech. Obamacare is unpopular, and Republicans should pound away at it non-stop. Within the last few hours, reports have surfaced that House Republicans may attach a one-year delay in Obamacare’s individual mandate to the Senate’s “clean” continuing resolution. Obamacare may also feature in upcoming debates over raising the debt ceiling.

Via Instapundit.  If the compromise continuing resolution forces the Democrats to sign on to anything scaling back Obamacare, that may be due in part to Cruz’s grandstanding.

RELATED:  Glenn notes the different coverage the media accords to filibusters by Texas politicians:

UPDATE: Well, maybe our friends in the legacy media will continue to ignore the issue. As Jim Geraghty reports, they are making Cruz the issue and not Obamacare’s implementation: (more…)

Last night, recalling that New York City voters were going to the polls yesterday to pick their parties’ nominees for various local offices, I went to Drudge to learn the results. He linked this piece, providing the actual tallies.

In the Democratic primary, the latest totals show Bill de Blasio with a huge lead over all of his rivals, likely with a high enough percentage of the vote (40%) to avoid a runoff. He won more than eight times as many votes as former Congressman Anthony Weiner who appeared to have received (at least in national reports) the greatest amount of news coverage.

Instead of heralding de Blasio’s solid showing, AOL highlighted Mr. Weiner:

The “news” media today.

Quite frequently it seems that if there is any principle guiding President Obama’s foreign policy, it is the desire not to do what  his predecessor did.  He and his national security advisors and officials, in public at least, have acted as if Mr. Bush’s foreign policy were an absolute disaster, needing, in their view, a “reset” in relations with Russia and requiring them to distinguish their policies from his.

They would exercise “smart power,” a term which implies that Bush’s team acted without consideration for the consequences of its actions.  Yet, much as Democrats  faulted that team for a supposed “go-it-alone” foreign policy, George W. Bush and his top national security advisors did take time to cultivate relationships with a great variety of world leaders.  And when they failed, the problem wasn’t entirely (and sometimes not even remotely) related to their efforts, but due instead the posturing of other nations.

In short, Obama and his team critiqued Bush’s foreign policy not as it was, but as it was depicted in the editorial pages of left-leaning newspapers and in their own party’s talking points.  Despite France and Germany’s refusal to join the coalition to liberate Iraq, Bush and his team did succeed in building a coalition of forty nations to enforce United Nations resolutions and to hold that then-rogue nation to account for violating the terms of the 1991 cease-fire ending the Gulf War.

Obama and his team may have “reset” relations with Russian and operated under the assumption that they were using “smart power,” but they have failed to build the kind of coalition in response to events in Syria than Bush’s team built in response to Iraq’s violation of international agreements.  And President Obama is now blaming the international community for his failure to muster a coalition to act against the Syrian regime:

Obama said Wednesday that “my credibility is not on the line — the international community’s credibility is on the line.” (more…)

When I first heard that President Obama was asking Congress to vote on a resolution authorizing him to act against Syria, I thought he was doing the right thing, but then the more I considered the issue, the weaker I realized the move was. And the more political.

My gut sense is that Obama really doesn’t want to take action against the Syrian regime.

And perhaps he is hoping that this move will further divide Republicans. And a Republican Party at war with itself can’t do a good job taking the fight during in the 2014 election cycle.

And should a coalition of libertarian Republicans, partisans who put bucking Obama ahead of the national interest and dovish Democrats opposed to any flexing of American muscle manage to defeat the (unnecessary) legislative authorization, Obama will blame not his fellow Democratic, but the opposition Republicans for denying him the ability to act.

My advice to Speaker Boehner would be to ask all House Republicans to make statements similar to this one: “I don’t think the president needs our approval to act. (President Bill Clinton didn’t ask for congressional authorization before initiating airstrikes against Yugoslavia on behalf of Kosovo.) But, the president has asked for our permission. We are voting for the resolution to show we recognize his responsibility in the matter; we hope he will act in the best interest of the country.”

This at least would make it more challenging for Obama to blame Republicans. And the explanation would help prevent this from becoming a precedent, potentially hamstringing future presidents.

Obama could have delivered a speech similar to that Secretary Kerry gave.  And with that, authorized our armed forces to attack Syrian airbases.  Or he could have explained why it was not in our national interest to act.  Instead, he has advertised his indecision on the matter.  Never a good strategy for a leader.

ADDENDUM:  A test of Obama’s sincerity on the matter will be how aggressively he lobbies Congress on behalf of this resolution.  If he doesn’t actively lobby legislators to pass the bill, then he shouldn’t blame them for its failure.  (Bear in mind my word choice; “shouldn’t” doesn’t mean “won’t.”)

RELATED:  Shortly after posting this piece, I caught a related editorial in the Washington Times: (more…)