It was a joy to read this article from the UK Telegraph this morning.  It illustrates just how low Barack Obama has sunk with the latest in a long string of bumblings and fumblings.  His popularity continues to tank after a brief flirtation with recovery following his successful implementation of healthcare rationing.

In the piece, the Telegraph’s Toby Harnden calls out Obama for his inept behavior at last week’s “press conference”.

Central to Obama’s appeal was his promise to be truly different. His failure to achieve that is now at the core of the deep disappointment Americans feel about him. At the press conference – the first full-scale affair he had deigned to give for 309 days – he appeared uncomfortable and petulant.

His approach to the issue was that of the law student suddenly fascinated by a science project. He displayed none of the visceral indignation Americans feel about pretty much everything these days – two-thirds now say they are “angry” about the way things are going – resorting instead to Spock-like technocratic language and legalese. “I’m not contradicting my prior point,” he stated at one juncture. During those 63 minutes of soporific verbosity, about 800 barrels of oil poured into the Gulf.

“soporific verbosity” and “Spock-like technocratic language and legalese”  Don’t you love the way the English can turn a phrase?

Harnden then points out the 4,233,857th attempt by Obama to evade responsibility by blaming George W. Bush for his problems.

Obama engaged in the obligatory populist bashing of Big Oil and, of course, demonstrated the Obama administration’s version of Tourette’s Syndrome, blaming the previous administration for the situation when, by my reckoning, it’s a full 16 months since Bush left office.

“Obama administration’s version of Tourette’s” – I’m using that.  Repeatedly.

He then proceeds to slam Obama’s photo op on the beach, where the POTUS is seen poking his finger into the sand (as opposed to his head, which is normally located there).

By Friday, he was sticking his finger in the sand at Grand Isle, Louisiana as part of a photo op self-consciously designed to contrast with Bush’s famous looking down on the Katrina devastation from Air Force One. It was Obama’s second visit to Louisiana in the 39 days since disaster struck. According to C’BS’s Mark Knoller, in the same period Bush visited the post-Katrina region seven times.

When I saw that picture (it’s shown in Harnden’s story), I simply wondered what kind of mundane, mindless dreck he was scribbling – perhaps “help me?”

Finally, the article turns serious in pointing to Obama’s utter failure to deliver on a key campaign promise of “a new era of transparency”

But perhaps the most dangerous sign during the press conference for Democrats fearful of an unprecedented electoral disaster in November’s mid-term elections was the evasion and opacity of the man who promised a new era of transparency and a different kind of politics.

When asked about the resignation of the director of the Minerals Management Service – an agency he had excoriated – he professed that “I don’t know the circumstances in which this occurred”. She had, of course, been fired.

Even worse was Obama’s refusal to say anything about the growing furore over White House attempts to persuade Congressman Joe Sestak to pull out of the Democratic Senate primary contest in Pennsylvania. Obama’s advisers had preferred the Republican turncoat Senator Arlen Specter – and Sestak inconveniently let slip that he’d been offered a government job to step aside.

That was potentially illegal and for weeks the White House stonewalled. When, even more inconveniently, Sestak beat Specter, the trust-us-nothing-untoward-happened approach would no longer wash. But still Obama declined to answer the question on Thursday, fobbing the reporter – and America – off with the promise that “there will be an official response shortly on the Sestak issue”.

Yet again, the Obamites have employed evasion, lies and misdirection to attempt to avoid blame for their missteps and misbehavior.  The American media seems to be OK with simply accepting this lack of transparency, but journalists such as Harnden, who are not threatened by the strong-arm tactics of Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the Chicago politithugs, are free to speak the truth.

It’s a shame that Americans do not often see the flavor of analysis that Harnden presents in this piece.  Instead we receive pre-chewed pablum served up by the sycophants of the New York Times and Washington Post.  However, there is light at the end of the tunnel.  When the WaPo publishes a story like the one that streiff covered this week, titled “Obama struggling to show he’s in control of oil spill”, there is hope that the media lapdogs have climbed down from Obama’s lap and are now nipping at his heels.  Let’s hope they start chewing on his leg.

UPDATE: Holy lapdog, Batman:  Maureen Dowd gets on the “Obama Is Spock” bandwagon with an almost-un-sycophantic article that I missed yesterday. She states:

Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.

“Perverse”.  Well, that applies to a lot of things that go on in the WH these days and could be used to describe his entire presidency.  But the end of her piece is really the money shot:

Obama and top aides who believe in his divinity make a mistake to dismiss complaints of his aloofness as Washington white noise. He treats the press as a nuisance rather than examining his own inability to encapsulate Americans’ feelings.

“The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” he told Gulf Coast residents when he visited on Friday. Actually, if it weren’t for the media, the president would probably never have woken up from his torpor and flown down there.

Instead of getting Bill Clinton to offer Joe Sestak a job, Obama should be offering Clinton one. Bill would certainly know how to gush at a gusher gone haywire. Let him resume a cameo role as Feeler in Chief. The post is open.

BWAHAHAHA.  I could learn to like this Good Maureen.  But I doubt it’ll last.