Category Archives: Barack Obama

Everybody Is Talking About Not Talking About You Know Who

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Media, Religion, Republicans

The Stupid Party (Republicans) appears to have outsmarted the Evil Party (Democrats), for once.

Don’t you love how Democrats, especially, are talking non-stop about the imperative of all decent people in the nation not to talk about the unmentionable, ungodly Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

I love it. It’s out of a Kathy Griffin skit. (I once adored that woman, until she went and let her lefty self all hang out. She’s still wickedly un-PC.)

Over their mass-media megaphone, Democrats have ordered The Nation not to mention Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor. In the process, we get to talk non-stop about Obama and his pox of a pastor, a man who is as American as Idi Amin was, no matter how you slice it.

Blending In With The Girls

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Conservatism, Hollywood, Intellectualism, Media, Pop-Culture

BARACK OBAMA IS. So says one of Bill O’Reilly’s resident junk-science experts. For once, Bill’s body language bimbo makes sense. In demeanor (and dentition), Obama is one of the girls. He’s blending in, said Tonya Reiman, down to the way he crosses his legs, lady like.

O’Reilly, who devotes a large part of the program to recounting his many appearances on mindless forums like The View—and is among the conservatives who considers batty Bawbawa Walters worth courting—pointed out that he seldom crosses his (very long) legs when he visits the ladies. And he always leans in aggressively.

No doubt, O’Reilly, who is über-manly, has swagger. Obama, more of a metrosexual, saunters.

Rex Murphy, easily Canada’s finest political writer, has furnished us with the best description of the Bill O’Reilly Show: “the Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest.”

O’Reilly is intellectually incurious, chronically so. For scary, however, nothing beats a president who knows the ins-and-outs of the Kardashians, the most rear-ended reality stars on American TV.

BHO has more than once demonstrated—and made excuses for—how closely he watches a family that is repulsive, freaky, morally rudderless, inappropriately sexual and depraved. In the past, he had also entertained the big-boned sister (please don’t me make Google her name) and her basketball husband at the White House.

UNRELATED UPDATE: To Nick: BAB is a low- or close-to-no-budget operation, written and “programed” by me, with the help of donations from a few generous readers. Unless our fortunes change here—not least that this scribe is no longer the sole “programer”—we’ll have to make do with the BAB format as it stands, I’m afraid.

Don’t Go Changing, ‘Mad Men’

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Education, English, Feminism, Film, History, Hollywood

Why of course “Mad Men” is superb television. It is produced in Canada, by Lionsgate Television, whose studios I’d pass almost daily when I lived in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Canada makes quality, understated films.

“Mad Men” is a “cable period drama” about an advertising agency on Madison Avenue, Manhattan (New York), easily the most magnificent place I’ve ever been to.

The nostalgia the production triggers is a nostalgia for the days when women did not look and sound like Meghan McCain—had soothing, soft voices, spoke in complete sentences, and seemed so much smarter and refined than their modern-day, emancipated shrew sisters. Men were men, unapologetic, bold, unafraid and purposeful.

Don Draper fell in love with just such a lady. Or so its seemed. It was all so dreamy and romantic.

But all is not perfect. The lovely Megan Draper has begun to sound whiny and silly. Like her 2012 sisters, a good deal of sibilance has crept into her once pleasant voice.

Cringe factor rising. The not-to-be-mistaken current usage, “I feel like,” has crept into the dialogue.

HELP!

Bitchy Betty Draper (otherwise played by a very convincing actress) said, “I feel like something or another” in the course of a weight-loss coven. Others on the show have repeated this linguistic barbarity. I’m listening to the tapes of that great First Lady Jacky Kennedy in the car. Believe me, no one said “I feel like” in the 1960s.

Another recent, Mad-Men English abomination which gave me the shudders: “Like [a pregnant pause follows], I know that…”

Oh, and Peggy Olson holds her pen as do members of America’s much younger Idiocracy. And that includes our president, BHO, although footage of this sign of illiteracy has been removed from the Internet (something that happens all too often).

Adults of that era were taught as kids to hold a pencil on the first day of school. You graduated to a pen after perfecting your cursive in pencil.

Don Draper is, of course, still divine.

From Bagram In Bondage

Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, War, Welfare

Windy and insubstantial is the kindest thing an honest newsman might say about the gimmick that is the Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed today by Barack Obama in Afghanistan. The president snuck into that US satrapy in secret. Had his intended “benevolence” toward the poor Pashtuns of Afghanistan been made public—the same people would have tried to blow Air Force One out of the sky.

“Afghanistan has a friend and a partner in the United States,” Obama said before he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement outlining cooperation between their countries once the U.S.-led international force withdraws in 2014. … “There will be difficult days ahead, but as we move forward in our transition, I’m confident that Afghan forces will grow stronger; the Afghan people will take control of their future,” Obama said.

(CNN)

Blah, blah, blah.

Stripped of the baffle-gab, the agreement from Bagram amounts to this: Even when U.S. forces in Afghanistan are reduced considerably, they will still maintain the necessary meaty presence.

Oops, I meant to say the “enduring partnership,” which would, ostensibly, “prevent the Taliban from waiting until the U.S. withdrawal to try to regain power.”

Essentially we’re paying to keep in power the authoritarian protectorate we’ve helped establish, headed by the puppet we appoint, all of whom are hated by the Pashtun majority.

Afghanistan was the war Obama could call his own. He increased America’s presence there from 30,000 troops to 90,000, and thus earned his commander-in-chief credentials. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. Obama needed a war he could call his own. Afghanistan served his purposes.

And he intends on keeping Afghanistan on America’s welfare rolls. Afghanistan’s GDP approximates the foreign aid it receives annually, and you know who supplies the lion’s share of that “GDP”? Counterfeiter-in Chief, Ben Bernanke and the US printing press.

At the expense of the American taxpayer.

It goes without saying that Republicans like Senators John McCain, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, the three blind neoconservative mice, are elated about the signing of the “Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with President Karzai,” as it “will allow the United States military to operate in Afghanistan, though without permanent bases.”

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