Yet more on Obama

When the votes were tallied, and Mr. Barrack H. Obama was more or less declared the winner of our latest presidential election, the American media burst out singing his praises in the loudest possible terms. The European media was beside themselves with joy, proclaiming to all and sundry that those ignorant gun slinging American cowboys had finally elected a President who would properly respect the wishes of “civilized” Europeans, follow their “wiser” lead, and refrain from “dangerous excursions” in international relations. Worldwide, the socialists declared a day of rejoicing while the conservatives were looking at this latest American development with a wary eye. Back at the ranch, Mr. Obama’s approval rating was at a high 69%, the Democrats were gloating, and the Republicans were finding out how it felt to be run over by a steamroller. Sen. McCain hobbled home to lick his wounds, chubby Michael Moore was reportedly doing handsprings in the streets, and the RNC seemed to be blaming the entire fiasco on Sarah Paulin. All-in-all, Mr. Obama certainly started out with a bang!

Now however, looking back at the last few months of Mr. Obama’s administration, things seem to have changed somewhat. Barrack’s popularity rating is now hovering around the 51% level here at home, and I have no doubt it will fall even more. (That’s normal for almost every administration I understand.) It is rather strange that the average approval rating for all presidents since FDR at the 9 month point of their first term is 64%, somewhat higher than Mr. Obama’s current 51%. Democrats consistently rate him very high, Independents consider him somewhat mediocre, and I won’t mention his standing with the Republicans. Still, his ratings remain generally high in Europe, although wavering somewhat. Not surprisingly his popularity in both Russia and Iran has increased significantly… after the announcement that he was abandoning the “Missile Shield” that is. Asia remains somewhat neutral at the moment, well aware that US policies can change with only a moments notice, and usually to the detriment of our Far Eastern Allies. Still, US Presidents aren’t elected by Europeans, Asians, or any other foreign national (unless we start letting illegal immigrants vote), and the liberal’s New Messiah seems to be a lot lower in the public standings than I might expect.

I’ve nearly worn out the old saying that “If we can’t learn from history we’re cursed to relive it”, and often compared what happened to the Roman Republic with what is happening to the United States today. Our nation’s founders were students of Roman history and could readily understand what had happened to the Romans. Despite that, they had boundless faith in the common sense of the American people, and presented us with a republic anyhow. Both of course were ruled by the people rather than the local nobility, and it follows that that rule was intended to be in the best interest of the people and not necessarily that of the nobility. Both had the foundation of their law “set in stone”, literally so in the “Twelve Tablets” of Rome, and figuratively in the Constitution of the United States. The Romans started out with term limits applied to the holders of political office, and placed a lot of severe restrictions on just who could hold office and how long they had to wait before they could stand for another election. Our founders passed on term limits unfortunately, but set things up so that “any boy could grow up to be President”. Both governmental systems had any numbers of checks and balances that severely limited government authority. Both nations became the premier world power of their era, both ran up a tremendous national debt, and both entered any number of ill advised foreign excursions. Then, over time, both slowly slipped away from their plebian base, ignored their constitution, and became (or in our case are rapidly becoming) imperial states, feared by others but certainly not respected. In the case of Rome it took over 450 years for the Republic to die. In the United States, our Republic has nearly vanished, and we haven’t even been around for 250 years!

Many Americans see this shift away from those things that made America great, and loudly bemoan the fact. Nor is this destruction of America un-noticed elsewhere. The British Media calls Mr. Obama “President Pantywaist”, and asks why does he hate America so badly, with one editorial saying “If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.” The editorial continues; “Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens.”

It appears he has never abandoned the campaign trail, and that’s why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to make a quick trip Langley, to try to reassure a demoralized CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.
"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. So, the next senior al-Qaeda hood that’s captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers. Mr. Obama’s recent world tour wherein he was all buddy-buddy with the bad guys, and apologizing to all and sundry for just about everything in our history indicates that his only enemies are Americans. And that brings up the question, why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

Who would have believed that an American President would distance himself from America's Christian heritage and speak of the "Holy Quran" in a nation that will not allow Christian conversions to take place? Who would have believed that an American President would speak about "common ground" with a theocratic political system that wants to rule the world and eliminate all other religions? Who would have believed that the government of the United States, at the direction of the President, would own major private businesses with no opposition from the media or Congress? Who would have believed that a few members of the media would refer to a sitting president as "some sort of god"?

All these recent events remind me of happenings in the fictional “Twilight Zone”!