The singularity solipsistic Obama and his uncouth wife once gave the Queen of England an iPod filled with images and audio of his Highness’s inaugural and DNC addresses.
From the grandeur of her White House Crib, the FLOTUS is famous for giving Prime Minister Brown a box of 25 DVDs including “ET,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Star Wars,” “a cheap gift which spoke to the giver’s impoverishment. The DVDs were also region-encoded for North America and could not be played in Britain. Brown gave Obama ‘a pen holder carved from the timber of an anti-slave ship.'”
“Sarah Brown lavished books and ball gowns on the Obama girls. Mrs. Obama reciprocated by giving the Brown boys two lousy, plastic, ‘matching models of the helicopter which ferries her husband around.”
“Before the DVD and gift-shop gaffes, there was the weightier matter of the bust of Winston Churchill. ‘The valuable bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein had been loaned by the British government to George W. Bush,’ wrote syndicated columnist Diana West. ‘One of President Obama’s first acts as president was to consign that symbol to a box and send it packing.'”
As Daniel Hannan noted, Obama “used the Louisiana oil spill to attack an imaginary company called ‘British Petroleum’ (it has been BP for the past decade, ever since the merger with Amoco gave it as many American as British shareholders). … He managed, on his visit to West Africa, to refer to the struggle for independence, but not to the Royal Navy’s campaign against slavery.”
The return of the Churchill bronze confirmed the suspicion that Obama was anti-Occident. The habit of giving inappropriate, thoughtless presents—as he and his family are deluged with wild effusions of love and lavish gifts—this shows Obama to be, well, a bit of a pig.
Maybe Prince William and Kate Middleton think that inviting the rude American duo to their wedding is infra dig. Or, perhaps it’s as the press has reported, and “President Obama and his wife Michelle will not be invited to Prince William’s wedding next year’ because the ‘royal couple is eager to ask ordinary citizens to attend rather than VIPs.'”
Because Prince William is not yet heir to the throne, his wedding to Kate Middleton is not classed as a ‘state occasion’ – and the couple feel under no pressure to fill the 2,000-strong guest list with heads of state, the Mail understands.
It’s an analogy that occurs on page 108: “Parrot-brained politicians.”
As you know, the author of the much-reviled columns, “In Defense of Michael Vick,” Parts One and Two, loves parrots and has two (T. Cup and Oscar-Wood). Parrots are enchanting, highly intelligent creatures.
Besides, can any politician problem-solve as this magic macaw does? Tan’s Japanese admirers are enthralled. As well they should be. Watch:
Jokes aside, Derb has a list of “deep technical skills” required to power a modern economy (p. 112). Other than the “structural engineer,” whom you would hope has a considerable facility with theory/math too (if those bridges are to stand), I don’t see how trades such as “TV studio lighting,” or “orthodontistry” (as opposed dentistry), horticulture, aircraft maintenance, crane operating, or bond trading quite qualify as “deep technical skills.”
(Where do electrical engineers and computer scientists fall? These are the people who supply the dumb, difficult and dispensable young—the twittering twits—with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.)
That’s our First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama. “Almost immediately after arriving at the university [of Mumbai’s] library, she kicked off her flats and joined in a game of vocabulary-building hopscotch with the 8- to 13-year-old orphans and runaways who receive English-language instruction from Make a Difference volunteers,” reports CBC.
“I love dancing. Oh that was fun!’ Mrs. Obama said after they danced to the theme song from the Bollywood movie ‘Rang de Basanti.'”
A grass skirt and a pail of water on her head would have completed Mrs. Obama’s regal regalia. (What horrid “music” she’s bumping and grinding to.)
It’s interesting that these kids are receiving English-language instruction. Hardly something Michelle would be fighting for back at home. She’d be the “English as a Second Language ‘Program” advocate.
Meanwhile, Michelle’s less earthy husband is talking a good game against outsourcing, and doing what he does best: central planning, promising tax breaks to companies that create jobs in America.
Strange: the president visits India, which is outsourcing central, only to tell his put-upon hosts that he wants to discourage their bread-and-butter industry.
Obama would do better to ponder the following: In the U.S., companies endure endless, punishing, government-imposed regulations, which make doing business and staying competitive increasingly difficult. Foreign investors in China and India are not subject to more than 180 federal labor laws; to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an IRS and an EPA; or to a work force where merit is marred by affirmative action. To the cost of the assorted alphabet soup of regulatory agencies a corporation must pay off in the U.S., add exorbitant corporate taxes and expenses like workers compensation insurance … as well as the cost of a government rape known as Social Security.
Factored into the wage price the corporation pays are, thus, large government-imposed costs. The company’s before-tax wage package must offset the cost of the income-tax burden as well as the cost of Social Security. Without the onerous government taxes, this American employee would cost the firm 30 to 40 percent less.
Consider that the annual Social Security burden alone on an American high-tech employee, borne by the employer, is the equivalent of the annual salary of a high-tech worker living well in India—and the logic of outsourcing is self-evident!
Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of the book “Outsourcing America,” knows how corporate America works. Via the WaPo:
“They have successfully built a business model where not only do they offshore large numbers of jobs, but the fraction that remain in the U.S. are filled by lower-paid foreign guest workers … They are often also forced to train their foreign replacements.”
This is indeed the model. You have to be at the top of your game to retain viable employment as an engineer in the US.
“… MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has more street cred than most. The host of ‘Hardball’ spent the first two years of the Obama presidency in a state of delirium bordering on the sexual. Famous for experiencing something akin to a (daytime) nocturnal emission during Obama’s coronation – ‘thrill up the leg’ Matthews called the incident – Chris later begged Barack to be his ‘Enforcer,’ in the matter of sacking Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Understand: When a liberal like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, ‘girlie boys’ like Chris get giddy.”
Given Chris’ well-known carnal affections for Barack Obama, it is unfortunate that the op-ed segment with which he ends the ‘Hardball’ program daily is called ‘Let Me Finish.’
Yesterday, Matthews finished off by surmising that the ‘kick in the pants’ the president has sustained means that it was now up to Obama to make the Republicans an offer they could not refuse – especially with the entire country watching. The challenge for Obama, advised Matthews, is to force Republicans to join him, or look like creeps if they fail to join him. …
Yes, The 2010 midterm elections were a bloodbath for the Democratic Party. Because there are no mollifying messages to be had from such a political massacre, liberal pols, pundits, and other dominant interests, hastened to soften the “shellacking” by framing it in terms more tolerable. …”
UPDATED I (Nov. 5): BUT WHEN HE’S GOOD HE’S VERY GOOD.
Now how good is the following editorial by Chris Matthews?! And how good am I for being capable of seeing a good argument for what it is?! Why can’t Chris be as good at distilling the truth? In any case, this time “Let Me Finish” is a proper climax to the show (read “Beware Of Wolves In Bipartisan Clothing” to get all the sexual connotations):
Behold the transcript of this fabulous editorial. See the quality of intern/ignorant millennial (most probably) these large organizations are forced to hire (they love youth, and shun older, more literate workers). It’s one thing not to know the fine word “solipsistic”; it’s quite another to be bereft of the brains, the initiative, and the work ethic to look it up on an online dictionary before typing/transcribing the sentence.
Instead of “solipsistic,” which is what Matthews said, the moron MSNBC has hired to transcribe the audio (and do related work) wrote “solid cystic.” This is the kind of word salad one is treated to when watching the simultaneous translations offered up on the TV screens at the health club. The transcribing is being done by individuals who’ve almost no facility with the English language. That describes most American school and university graduates. Enjoy:
“Let me finish tonight with george w. bush. you know years ago a member of the british cabinet got caught in an embarrassment and of course denied it, to which his accuser said, well, he would, wouldn’t he? denial is the norm of political life especially of the awful. president bush says the iraq war was justified because it prevented another 9/11. well, 9/11 was a network operation involving cells in germa germany, heavy recruit in the saudi arabia and of course flight training down in florida. the one country not involved in 9/11 was iraq, the attack of 9/11 was conspired among a web of jihadists religion phanatics without loyalty to a particular state. saddam hussein was a baathist. so how would a war in iraq prevent another attack from elements of al qaeda? or is bushauring something that logically cannot be denied for the simple reason it has nothing to do with logic with the discernible cause and effect with anything tangible. is he saying that the war which caused 77,000 lives was justified because he thought it would prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11? in other words, if the connection between 9/11 and iraq, which no one else’s ever been able to substantiate, was in his own mental wiring, he’s guiltless before history. there’s a reason that bush lives in this solid cystic world. cause of effect or of tangible fact even, but of what george w. bush sees out there…”
UPDATE II: More on “compromising” from Diana West (who, I am sure, would have lots to say about the ill-educated non-adults who’re, increasingly, running this country):
If our new Republicans are as gullible as our old ones, instead of cutting taxes across the board, they just might “compromise” with Democrats, and that’s the end of that. Or instead of refusing to raise the national debt ceiling another trillion dollars, they just might “compromise” with Democrats and up it goes. Or instead of repealing Obamacare, they just might “compromise” with Democrats and fine-tune a few colossal programs. When all the votes are cast and backs patted, of course, “compromise” is a poor substitute for principle. But all we can do now is hope for change: that the GOP, backed by the tea party, stands strong this time even in the face of Democratic accusations that it is playing “politics as usual,” or acting like the “Party of No.” Because it’s a sure thing that such accusations are on their way. Indeed, even as voters were still heading to the polls on Tuesday, Michelle Malkin noted the Democratic National Committee had already released talking points that attacked Republican leaders who “are not willing to compromise.
[SNIP]
I would change “gullible to “venal” and “power hungry.”