Conservative Rumblings

Barack Obama’s 2010 State of the Union promises to be more of the same: high soaring rhetoric, heavy teleprompter reliance and Nancy Pelosi most likely clapping like a seal. In order to squeeze at least some entertainment out of this campaign-speech-on-steroids, I’ve developed a nice little list of things Barack is likely to say tonight.

Below are my current odds for these catchphrases/statements. Variations count if they are very close, and I’m also giving 5000/1 odds that the teleprompter breaks and he goes off script talking about breathalysers.

In that vein, if you want to turn this into a drinking game, it’s very easy: longer odds, stiffer drink.

I’ll also be live tweeting commentary from http://www.twitter.com/ianessling. It’ll be epic.

2/1 “Pre existing conditions”
2/1 “Spending freeze”
2/1 “Inherited”
3/1 “Last eight years”
3/1 “Let me be clear”
4/1 “People are angry”
5/1 “I’m fighting for you”
5/1 “Excessive profits”
5/1 “It’s not about me” or “This isn’t about me.”
7/1 “Wall Street Bankers”
10/1 “George W. Bush” or “last administration”
10/1 “I’m fired up.”
10/1 “And that is why…”
10/1 “I have asked”
10/1 “Mess we inherited”
12/1 “Spending freeze” more than 10 times
15/1 “Fatcat”
20/1 “Get this economy moving again.”
20/1 “Ted Kennedy” or any variation
25/1 “Rising deficit”
25/1 “I” more than 100 times
30/1 “War in Iraq”
35/1 “Eric Holder”
35/1 “Stimulus package”
50/1 “Closing Guantanamo Bay”
50/1 “2010 election” or “midterm election”
50/1 “George W. Bush” or “last administration” more than 10 times
50/1 “I don’t want to hear”
50/1 “We’re going to pass healthcare reform”
50/1 “Yes we can.”
60/1 “Janet Napolitano”
75/1 “Campaign”
100/1 “Underwear bomber”
150/1 “Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid” (in the same sentence, any order)
175/1 “Czar”
200/1 “Budget reconciliation”
250/1 “Joe Wilson”
350/1 “Hope” and “Change” in the same sentence
500/1 “My record-breaking deficit”
500/1 “I won”
500/1 “It’s bleeping golden!”
500/1 “I have a dream.”
1000/1 “I hereby resign the presidency”

Finally he makes a statement…and not surprisingly, it’s nearly as bloodless as his mind-boggling Fort Hood speech.

Here’s what we know so far: On Christmas Day, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit. As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.

Thanks to the quick and heroic actions of passengers and crew, the suspect was immediately subdued, the fire was put out, and the plane landed safely. The suspect is now in custody and has been charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.
[…]
This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

Emphasis added. Is this guy for real? I mean, does he even listen to the words coming out of his mouth? To call this attempted terrorist attack an “isolated extremist” is grossly incompetent and naive. Al Qaeda has already claimed credit for the attack and promises that there are others in Yemen waiting for their chance.

And what does the Great Obama, the all-knowing sage of Hope and Change have to say? It’s an “isolated extremist” and he’s “ordering a review.”

How about we review your qualifications to be commander in chief, sir. I think they are lacking.

While he’s over in Copenhagen trying to apologize to the world for America polluting Africa or something, people back here are getting seriously annoyed with the green agenda. So annoyed, actually, that Obama’s support on global warming issues have dropped a net 32 points this year.

As [Obama] arrives in Copenhagen hoping to seal an elusive deal on climate change, his approval rating on dealing with global warming has crumbled at home and there is broad opposition to spending taxpayer money to encourage developing nations to curtail their energy use, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Of course, the recent climate-gate scandal may have something to do with this. These numbers also match somewhat with Rasmussen’s latest surveys, which show that only 34% of Americans believe global warming is caused by human activity and not planetary trends.

Public skepticism about the officially promoted cause of global warming has reached an all-time high among Americans.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.

Just 34% say climate change is due primarily to human activity, even as President Obama and other world leaders gather at a UN summit to limit the human activity they blame for global warming. Six percent (6%) say there is some other reason for global warming, and 10% are not sure.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly over the past year. In April 2008, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

Now that the White House’s War on Fox News and War on Edmunds have tapered off, Bobby Gibbs has declared war on yet another company…the Gallup polling company. Why? Because their numbers (which still paint a rosier picture than Rasmussen, mind you), show that Obama has the lowest approval rating of any president at this point in his term.

President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.

Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama’s immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush’s support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “put a lot of stock” in the survey by Gallup, which has conducted presidential approval polls since 1938, longer than any other organization.

“If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I’d visit my doctor,” Gibbs said in response to questions from Fox. “I’m sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that. I don’t put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is daily Gallup trend. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it.”

Emphasis added. Bear in mind, however, that Gibbs isn’t attacking Gallup for being inaccurate. He’s attacking them for the same reason the administration attacked Fox and Edmunds: dissent. It’s not currently allowed in our country to disagree with The One or The One’s Minions. Disagreement with Obama is a crime tantamount to treason and is being treated as such. It’s a strategy straight out of Saul Alkinsky’s playbook.

Regarding the actual data from Gallup, however, check this out:

When Gallup began taking presidential approval polls 71 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt had been president for more than five years. During his remaining time in office, his job approval rating never fell below 48 percent.

The next 11 presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, all had higher job approval ratings than Obama at this stage of their tenure. Their ratings were:

– George W. Bush, 86 percent
– Bill Clinton, 52 percent
– George H.W. Bush, 71 percent
– Ronald Reagan, 49 percent
– Jimmy Carter, 57 percent
– Gerald Ford, 52 percent
– Richard Nixon, 59 percent
– Lyndon Johnson, 74 percent
– John Kennedy, 77 percent
– Dwight Eisenhower, 69 percent
– Harry Truman, 49 percent

Obama is at 47%. Change We Can Believe In?

Love it. The Left is gearing up to eat its own.

Obama is days away from announcing a new Afghan strategy, but his immediate battle could come from liberals who are vowing to “spank” the president for committing tens of thousands of more troops to the eight-year conflict.

In a prime-time speech Tuesday from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Obama is expected to announce that he is sending up to 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan beginning next year.

The figure is short of the 40,000 troops his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, requested — but enough to anger many congressional Democrats who oppose any potential troop surge, arguing that the mission is too expensive and lacks a clear objective.

“I think there will be some disillusionment within his base,” said Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, a grassroots organization, who added that thousands of activists are planning to protest following the president’s announcement.

“We’re going to spank him for sending more troops,” he told FoxNews.com, adding that they may also “thank him” if he announces a quick exit strategy.

This is amazing on two counts. First, it’s obvious the Far Left wants us to lose this war. Why, you ask? Simple: they’ll blame it on Bush. The deaths of American solders mean NOTHING to the radical left. They think nothing of using our brave soldiers as political capital. They want to see us lose, pure and simple.

Now, in their effort to ensure we lose the war, they want to make sure a troop surge (like the one that completely turned around the Iraq War in 2007) does not happen. If it goes through, there’s a very good chance we will NOT lose. In that regard, they are turning on Obama, which I find hilarious. He counted on the Far Left to deliver his win in 2008, and now that he’s alienated independents with his support for a public option in healthcare and obviously has no support on the right, if he loses the Far Left, well, there’s not many people left on the planet who are going to support this guy.

Keep in mind, I support Obama’s decision if he DOES send 35,000 more troops. Without these troops, it’s very likely the situation would degenerate beyond how bad it is now and we’d be in serious danger of losing control of the country.

Don’t get me wrong and think I’ve gone soft on the Ditherer In Chief. This decision is 3 months too late and cost American lives while he was whining and prognosticating, of course. It’s ridiculous to spend this long to make a decision that your generals recommended; that’s why the generals are THERE, because they are smarter than you when it comes to military decisions (when it comes to Obama this could not be more true). Our Commander In Chief’s entire military experience comes from directing militant union thugs while he was a community organizer.

It’s embarrassing.

Once again, foreign policy amateur hour is in full session. Barack Obama, in His Infinite Wisdom, has convinced South Korean president Lee Myung-bak that instead of being “mean” to North Korea and isolating them from the world, we should capitulate and offer them a ransom to give up their nuclear weapons program.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president says he and President Barack Obama have agreed to offer North Korea a “grand bargain” aimed at ending the North’s nuclear program.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Obama, President Lee Myung-bak said the deal would be similar to his proposal for a package of political and economic incentives in exchange for the one-step, irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Lee’s grand bargain proposal stems from concerns that North Korea would continue to backtrack on promises after winning concessions in negotiations.

Obama said his envoy on North Korea, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, will travel to the country early next month for the first bilateral talks with the communist regime since he took office.

North Korea has been pushing for bilateral talks with Washington to discuss the standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The U.S. has agreed to the talks but has stressed they must lead to the resumption of six-nation disarmament negotiations.

North Korea conducted a nuclear test and test-fired a series of missiles earlier this year.

I hope people realize that this is exactly what North Korea wanted. They held out until someone offered to give them what they were demanding. This is essentially negotiating with terrorists. Naive and dangerous, which is pretty much the hallmark of his apocalypticly stupid administration.

It’s a bad enough idea to close Gitmo. It’s a far worse idea to bring the terrorists currently imprisoned there to our shores. And it’s a monumental display of stupidity to bring them into Illinois and dump them off 150 miles from Chicago and hope for the best.

Of course, if the decision is between national security and appeasing terrorists, we know which direction the Obama administration is headed.

A prison complex 150 miles from Chicago has emerged as the leading contender to house detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, senior administration officials tell ABC News.

Officials from the Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Prisons will soon visit lllinois’ Thomson Correctional Center to inspect the maximum security prison, which was opened in 2001 but has never been fully utilized because of state budget issues.

The idiocy of this dumbfounds me. Bringing terrorists to our shores will encourage terrorist attacks and create a hotbed of terrorism. It’s not safe. It’s not smart. It’s not good for national security. Gitmo is the ideal place for this prisoners of war, because that’s what they are.

These are not criminals that have been locked up for robbing a bank or stealing a car or killing someone. These are enemies in our ongoing struggle against radical global Jihad and should be treated as such. Prisoners of war are not placed in civilian areas. Prisoners of war are guarded by soldiers, away from the citizens of the country. There are reasons for this; terrorists are dangerous, and their compatriots are dangerous too.

If you put terrorists in a civilian prison, you risk the lives of the civilians near them. It’s the natural duty of any prisoner of war to try to escape. As well, it’s the natural reaction by the comrades of said imprisoned warrior to try and break them out.

Let’s say a terrorist breaks out or is broken out of Gitmo (not possible, but I’m speaking hypothetically). Where do they go? First, they have to fight their way through a U.S. military force. Then, they’re on an island called “Cuba” that is still not the United States mainland.

Now, since Obama is dead-set on closing Guantanamo Bay and moving the terrorists to our shores, if there is an attack or a breakout, guess what? We now have terrorists running amok in our country.

In the interests of full disclosure, I live in the Northern Illinois area and work in Chicago. I don’t want to see this area become infested with terrorists. Yes, I have a vested interest and I’m biased. If you bring these guys up here, this area will become ground zero for terrorist cells, with Chicago and the tallest building in the country (Sears Tower) just a quick jaunt down I-88 away.

This is another of Obama’s naive gestures designed to appease terrorists at the expense of our national security. It’s just another mark in the column of reasons why anointing a “community organizer” as the head of the nation was a tragically bad idea.

Great article in the Telegraph about Obama’s reptilian-like detachment to the American people. The reason it exists, of course, is something that the writer hints at but doesn’t really say: Obama doesn’t see himself on the same level as the rest of us. He’s floating above us, and looking down on us, as the ’savior of the world.’ Obama really sees himself as THAT much better than all of us, because he ‘knows what’s best for us’ and is here to lead us into a new, “fundamentally transformed” America. Sort of like a god, right Newsweek?

Good reading at the Telegraph though (full article here).

During the election campaign, Barack Obama’s cool detachment was a winning quality, the “No Drama Obama” a welcome contrast with the “Mr Angry” John McCain, never mind the hot-headed “I’m the decider” President George W Bush.

A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone’s guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.

He has spent more than two months considering a troop increase but do we know how he really feels about the Afghan war?

In a sign that the Obama honeymoon truly is over, I began to hear this week the first stirrings of a wistfulness about Mr Bush. “I never thought I’d hear myself say it,” one Democrat told me. “But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something.”

Cue cussing and spitting from the Far Left at this.

Obama is not considering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the White House said Monday.

“I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in his daily briefing with reporters, two days after eight U.S. troops and two Afghan soldiers were killed during a firefight in a remote region of the country.

The debate over whether to send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan is a major element of a strategy overhaul that senior administration policy advisers will consider this week as they gather for top-level meetings on the direction of the war.

Obama has invited a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to confer about the war. He said the administration would brief leaders from both parties and key committee chairmen and would seek their opinions.

“They’re an important part of this and the president wants to hear from them,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs, describing the president as “deeply saddened” over Saturday’s casualties, said Obama does not envision deploying more troops to outposts like the ones that were attacked over weekend. He said the administration is considering shifting troops to more populated areas instead.

Now, the problem with this is that Obama’s complete and utter lack of foreign policy experience is leading to him making some serious mistakes here. He’s refusing to pull troops out, but also refusing to send more in that are necessary to ensure our victory. On top of that, while he’s hemming and hawing and trying to decide what to do while ignoring and berating Gen. McChrystal, American soldiers are dying! He needs to make a decision one way or the other! If he’s not pulling out, more troops need to go.

Because, what of the troops already there? Obama won’t withdraw and won’t reinforce, are they to fight a Vietnam-esque war of attrition until The Big Zero leaves office and we replace him with someone that has at least half a brain when it comes to foreign policy issues?

This is a terrible situation, and Obama’s inability to make a decision is costing good Americans their lives. Bush saw in 2007 that Iraq was headed to a bad place, and he made the extraordinarily gutsy call for the “troop surge,” and it worked. If he had waited three months before doing it, the results may have been drastically different.

Maybe all those “present” votes by Obama in the Illinois Senate really SHOULD have been taken into account. As Rudy Guiliani said last year at the Republican Convention, “Nearly 130 times, he couldn’t make a decision. He couldn’t figure out whether to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It was too tough. He voted — he voted ‘present.’”

As Rudy said, for President of the United States…it’s not good enough to be ‘present.’ You have to make a decision.

I continually claim that the Obama administration is run by thugs and is looking to create a totalitarian regime where dissent means prison and the State runs all media outlets (ala 1984). Usually, people call me a lunatic for making such “crazy” claims, lambasting me on Twitter saying that I’m “insane,” “a madman” or that I’m “In love with Rush Limbaugh” when I make such statements.

What’s funny is that now the White House is proving me right, thanks to their recent blog post asking for citizens to turn each other in to the White House if they overhear “casual conversation” that is contrary to The State’s vision of socialized deathcare.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

I would use my usual statement of surprise, “Are you KIDDING me?” except that I know they are not. The Obama administration absolutely cannot accept ANYONE opposing their communist ideology, and their opposition is becoming more and more aggressive.

Where are we? Nazi Germany? How dare the White House demand to know who is opposing universal deathcare.

It’s not the government’s business what I say in a casual conversation, and it’s completely unconstitutional for them to try and monitor that information. We are allowed to oppose the government. We are allowed to disagree, and we are allowed to make our voices heard. Barack Hussein Obama might despise the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and every principle this country was founded on, but BY GOD, those documents are STILL IN FORCE. He hasn’t yet destroyed them, and I WILL use my right to oppose what I believe is a policy that will destroy our country.

What’s also amazing is that during the Bush administration, when people protested the war, called Bush Hitler (among other things) and spit on the graves of our soldiers and the 3000 civilians who lost their lives on 9/11, the Far Left screeched that “dissent was the highest form of patriotism.”

Apparently it’s only “patriotism” if you’re questioning a Republican president. Question a Democratic president (especially a black Democratic president), and immediately you are “clinging to the old way of doing things,” “standing in the way of progress” or just an “angry mob.”

So now we have an administration who is trying to track the population to find out who would dare question their policies. Even the most diehard Obama supporter would have to take pause from that. Free speech is a hallmark of American society. Take that away, or make people fear for their lives or livelihood if they speak out against the government, and you no longer have a free country. You have tyranny.

Welcome to “Change We Can Believe In.” Most of America is realizing too late what Obama meant when he said he was five days away from “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Obama’s vision of America is not the America that was founded in 1776. His America will not resemble Our America in any way, and we must continue to protect our country from his destructive ways, before we have nothing left to save.