Dadmocracy

First, I need to mention that I am extremely proud to be able to see my country elect its first African-American president. I recognize this as a historic election that many people thought would never be able to happen. You done good, ‘Bama.

It would be much happier for me if he had any policies that I agreed with, though. Wealth redistribution, nationalized health care, withdrawing from Iraq on his own timetable…with Democratic control of Congress, I am extremely apprehensive about what the next four years will bring. Here’s hopin’…

Update: In the spirit of bipartisanship, Obama has selected Rahm “Republicans can go f— themselves” Emanuel as his chief of staff.

I’m feeling more and more like Iowahawk…

Alrighty then, we have a new president! The inauguration speech was a’ight. A phrase or two did stick with me:

“The question we ask today is not whether our Government is too big or too small, but whether it works…”

Um, no, I’m definitely still asking that question, Mr. President. Got anything else?

“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.”

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility…”

Holy crap am I gonna hold you to those…Good luck, President Obama. I will be praying for you.

“After poking fun at George W. Bush for eight years — often drawing him with big ears and a severe overbite, or as a gung-ho Joe College type, or simply as a clueless doofus — political cartoonists are finding Barack Obama a more elusive target.

Bush’s emotive facial expressions, easy-to-caricature physical features and, most of, all his deeply unpopular political decisions were fodder for liberal-leaning cartoonists. But the cool and detached Obama enters the White House at a time of considerable economic anxiety, bolstered by wishes of goodwill even from some political opponents.

‘I had all my villains in place for eight years and they’ve been taken away,’ lamented Pulitzer Prize winner Pat Oliphant, one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever had this experience before, of a president I maybe like. This is an antagonistic art. We’re supposed to concentrate on finding things wrong. There’s no point in drawing a cartoon that’s favorable.’”

What a load of sycophantic BS. I accept your challenge, Mr. Mark. Oh, yes, I accept…

Read entire article…

“When the going gets tough, the tough go campaigning. So, almost as if he were still running for office rather than actually running an office, the president arranges a photo-op or a town-hall meeting, where, for the moment, the hopeychangey shtick still plays. ‘I have an urgent need,’ a freeborn citizen of the republic (I use the term loosely) beseeched the president in Fort Myers this week. ‘We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom.’

As Michelle Malkin commented of the urgent needer: ‘If she had [had] more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too.’ Obama took her name — Henrietta Hughes — and ordered his staff to meet with her. Hopefully, he won’t insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the bigtime tax-avoiding cabinet honchos to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence, with a swing set hanging where the drive-thru ATM used to be…

Someday soon this inaugural Obamateur Hour (as one of my correspondents, John Gross, calls it) will end and the ‘events’ phase will begin. Back last spring, some gloomy reflections of mine on multiculturalism prompted a reader to advise me to lighten up: ‘We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.’ A mere nine months later, the first part of that equation no longer seems quite so obvious…

America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality, or it can buckle its mandatory seatbelt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . .

Let’s not go there.”

Read entire article…

Yup, I found another stupid news article about how cartoonists are drawing on eggshells when it comes to President Obama. I found their quote from Ted Rall (who inspires cartoonists everywhere by showing that even the most simple-minded buffoon who can manage to grip a pen without shoving it up his nose can become an award-winning journalist) interesting:

Rall, who is liberal, said it’s harder to take shots at Obama because he’s smart, charming and handsome, “so when you attack the personality, people suspect there’s only one reason: It’s gotta be his race. My conservative cartoonist friends find it very frustrating.”

I don’t think Rall’s released his obsequious grip from the President’s pant leg long enough to notice that some of us don’t need to stoop to racism to criticize the policies of a President who has managed to break almost all of his campaign promises within his first month in office. I, for one, have swept all the eggshells off my floor and plan to stomp around quite a bit for the next four years, regardless of any corrupt politician’s skin color.