In the context of Obama’s declaration that the swine flu constitutes a “national emergency”, consider the following two quotations.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste…crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” — Rahm Emanuel

So just what are the Obamanistas up to? What’s next, Rahm, martial law?

Quoting the eminent political philosopher, Lucas J. Boy, “There are many qualities that make for a great leader, but whining like a prepubescent schoolgirl isn’t one of them. Yet, at every turn, our thin-skinned Boy King—almost a year into His reign—continues to cry in protestation, ‘but we INHERITED this mess’. (Every president inherits problems from his predecessor. George Bush was bequeathed a recession from Bill Clinton. He didn’t complain about it; he just cut taxes to end it.) Truman’s ‘the buck stops here’ has been replaced with Obama’s ‘hey, it’s not MY fault’. That’s sentiment befitting an insecure, spoiled teenager, not a great man.”

Chuck Schumer now thinks all CEOs of publically-traded companies should have their executive compensation scrutinized by Obama’s Pay Master, Kenneth Feinberg. The populist mood of the country isn’t too bothered by executives at big Wall Street firms having their compensation packages trimmed by Big Government to the tune of up to ninety percent. That’s understandable considering these institutions made their deal with the devil with all those bailouts. But every CEO in America? Can you say “intrusive”?

Since liberals are so offended by “obscene” wealth, how about letting Mr. Feinberg determine the “worth” of Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Leo DiCaprio? Oh, that’s right—they’re all Obama sycophants. How about slashing the pay of U.S. senators, including Senator Chuck’s, by ninety percent?

President Obama proudly proclaims He will not meddle in the affairs of other nations, even countries like Iran where a revolution against the insane regime is afoot. Oh that Barry would, here at home, pledge to not meddle in our private lives and enterprise.

President Barry has long been jonesin’ for the idea of “volunteerism” although His notion is a little skewed in that His concept of community service comes, at times, dangerously close to being mandatory. An oxymoron befitting a moronic head of state. Obama dreams of a domestic Youth Corps of “conscripted volunteers”—huh? —that would be as powerful and well-funded as the military. WTF?

I’m all for community service when its impetus is your local church or synagogue, a local school or neighborhood association or the Kiwanis. But when there’s a coordinated national push orchestrated by the Community Organizer-In-Chief, I get a little nervous. Obama has already tried to co-opt the NEA, employing that tax-funded organization to urge the art community to rally to His agenda. (There’s even a rumor gaining currency that the meddlesome Obama Administration may get involved in the NFL, advocating for the Players Union during the next round of collective bargaining.)

Now the administration has set its sights on the medium of television. Big Hollywood has unearthed a Google Document published by the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) titled Play Your Part America announcing that, “from October 19-25, more than 60 network TV shows [will] spotlight the power and personal benefits of service,” and that this “unprecedented block of TV programming is the first wave of a multi-year ‘I Participate’ campaign.” Quoting Big Hollywood’s John Nolte, “Next week, tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, will be urged through the (ab)use of public airwaves to log on to the EIF iParticipate site and volunteer.”

The EIF’s memo begins with the preamble, Answering The Call, which declares, “President Obama has called for a new era of responsibility—recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation [read “government”] and world to serve others. It is the price and promise of citizenship.” Where in the Constitution is the clause defining the “price” of citizenship? I thought citizenship in the Republic was a birthright bestowed by God Almighty (the real one, not The One).

The document goes on to outline a number of strategies including this one: “To ‘organically’ create and produce as many stories as possible about service and volunteerism and connect them in the plots of network dramas, comedies and reality shows.”

The memo continues: “By connecting characters and storylines to broad themes of service and/or providing messaging through the cast, a picture will be painted of what service and volunteering can look like today, and inspire viewers.”

So now Rahm and Axelrod are screenwriting for TV shows? I can’t wait for the next episode of Criminal Minds where the FBI profilers nail a serial volunteer!

Another blogger, Stage Right, at Big Hollywood makes this observation: “You know how folks always say, ‘If you don’t like what you see, just change the channel.’  Well, clearly next week that won’t be an option.  It’s going to be a full-court press… nowhere to hide.”

It turns out, during this propaganda blitz, viewers will be encouraged to get off their duffs and visit a number of websites that will happily facilitate any new-born inspiration to “serve”. You can, for example, be directed to Planned Parenthood’s website where you’ll be encouraged to help man—sorry, help “person”—the phone banks to reach out to and enlist those committed to “reproductive freedom”, pleading the cause for a health care plan that includes women’s health. If you visit www.iparticpate.org, you’ll have an opportunity to save the environment by becoming a “Global Warming Ambassador”. You’ll even be urged to visit the government’s official website, www.serve.gov, where you can read the transcript of Charlie Sheen’s twenty minute conversation with The One Himself with the chat centering on the Hollywood Truther’s deep concern about what really happened on 9/11.

Agenda? What agenda? It’s all benign, liberal do-goodism promising us the reward of liberal feel-goodism. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Imagine if George Bush had pressured 60 networks and cable outlets to devote a week of programming to promote the theme War Isn’t Necessarily Bad. Chris Matthews would have been foaming at the mouth. No, wait—bad example. He was already rabid.

Barack Hussein Obama has won the Nobel Appease—sorry, Nobel Peace Prize—narrowly edging out the runner up, America’s warbling troubadour, Bob Dylan. Barry’s extended, un-clutched hand reaching out to dictators, thugs, whackos and malcontents everywhere, in the end, trumped the legacy of Chimes of Freedom ringing and blowin’ in the wind while the times they were a changin’.

(I wonder if Barry now regrets His decision to diss the Dali Lama, a fellow Nobel Peace recipient.)

We must laud those prescient Norwegians for picking Barack Who, at the time the selection process concluded, had been president of the world a mere ten days. Somehow they just knew the fledgling Leader of The Free World would be great for world peace.

Well, now that that’s that, Barry can finally pull out of Afghanistan with a clear conscience. That conflict now seems trivial and superfluous. Who needs war when you can have peace through the sheer force of Mr. Obama’s personality? (Still, the current war in the southern provinces of Chicagoland remains troublesome; but we must just be patient and let Barry do His thing.) In a similar fashion, Jimmy Carter, another Nobel winner, brought lasting peace to the Middle East by his goofy smile along with his charity of good will and good intentions, the hallmark of any liberal’s diplomacy. Both these great men embody and exhibit perfectly the ideals of the esteemed moral philosopher, Rodney King, an intellectual giant of the last century.

So now the young Barack Obama joins Jimmy and Algore in the ethereal mists of Nobel’s Olympus, thus completing the Holy Triumvirate of Lefty Peaceniks for our age. And a glorious Age it is.

The Rastafarians didn’t quite get it right. They imagined Haile Selassie to be The Lion of Judah, I and I, God incarnate. It turns out they failed to anticipate the coming of the god of this age, another “Son of Africa”—Muammar Gaddifi’s term—the divine Barack Hussein Obama. If anybody deserves the title of “I and I”, it’s Barry O, the Narcissist-In-Chief. And the Queen of Heaven isn’t much better. As George Will notes:

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns “I” or “me” 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago’s case compelling.

The Royal Couple came sweeping into Copenhagen at the last minute as jet-set potentates supremely confident in the obeisance of the faithful.

But it turned out the self-referential and self-revering Obama speeches were cloying and nettling to the attentive IOC voting bloc. Barry’s blathering the same old tired platitudes—“represents what’s best about our humanity”—didn’t exactly help either. Even the Europeans were seeing through the Obamas in their pretentious insipid vanity. No wonder they blew it.

Poor little Barry Obama. Nothing seems to be going His way these days. He got His keister handed to Him in the health care debates (in spite of being aided and abetted by the slavering State-run media). His poll numbers continue to nose-dive. Even the French, for Pete’s sake, have mocked Him for His stellar naïveté and Titanic ego—a dangerous combination—in the realm of geopolitics. And, now, the Chi Town triumvirate of Barack, Michelle and Oprah has blown it big time in Copenhagen. They didn’t even make it past the first round of balloting. The dynamic trio failed to even bring home the Bronze. Even Michelle’s sob story about her dad’s multiple sclerosis —it’s always about the Obamas—failed to move the officials. If Barry can’t seal the deal with the We Are The World crowd, just how the hell is He going to convince the Ayatollahs and their simian stooge to play nice?

And it’s pretty pathetic when a corrupt politician, schooled in the Daily tradition, can’t even win the nod from another bunch of crooks, those corrupt IOC members.

It’s really a shame. Half the members of the Obama Administration are slumlords who stood to make a lotta money selling off their South Side tenement holdings to the city to make room for the Olympic venues.

I wonder if these loser ambassadors from Chicago—all three solidly “ethnic”—will cry racism this time around. That might prove to be difficult, even for these practiced race-baiters. Well, there’s always the old tried-and-tested boogey man, George Bush. There must still be so much residual bad feeling toward America left over from the Bush era, lingering like some foul, toxic cloud, that even Barack’s mojo wasn’t potent enough to dispel it. Can it possibly be that all that America-bashing has failed to pay off? Even the meager dividend of winning the Olympics for Chicago has been lost. Yet Barry still thinks He can charm Kim Jong Ill or Mahmoud?

So, how much tax-payers’ money did these pompous narcissists and celebretants blow on their failed mission? Even more important, what kind of a carbon footprint did these Green hypocrites leave in the wake of their three 747s and the caravan of limousines they were transporting?

The world has flipped off their naked Emperor. The myth of Barack Hussein Obama is beginning to tumble like a house of cards. What a loser.

There was a time, not that long ago, when the president of the United States would, on occasion, lead the nation in a public prayer to—God forbid—well, God Almighty. Am I referring to Ronald Reagan? George Herbert Walker Bush? The evangelical W? No, I’m referring to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I know it sounds surreal, a progressive Democrat humbly beseeching the Lord’s favor and blessing. And not just on his knees in his private prayer closet. No, the New Deal president offered up his prayers over the nation’s radio airwaves. These were not merely obligatory unctuous, pietistic interludes embedded in a presidential address; these heart-felt supplications were full-fledged prayers that were the address.

Since then, we the people, inspired by the ACLU, have become more squeamish about such overt piety manifested by our presidents. FDR’s successors have been lucky if they can get away with a perfunctory, “God bless America”, at the end of a major speech.

But then came Barack. And everything has shifted again. Now, instead of public embarrassment over the president saying a prayer to the Lord of Hosts on the nation’s behalf, we actually are witnessing citizens praying to our president. Not for our president or with our president but to The One currently occupying the Oval Office. Yes, another video has surfaced, this one showing a group of devotees praying to Barack Hussein Obama with refrains in unison such as “Hear our cry Obama” and “Deliver us Obama”. Surely, such creepy blatant idolatry might be dismissed as silly exuberance on the part of a few nut jobs, right? But such religious devotion to Barry of Hyde Park was presaged by testimony to the Democrats’ Godhead when one intellectual, Newsweek’s editor, Evan Thomas, literally referred to our sitting president as “God”. Even the esteemed Chris Matthews, normally reserved—I wish—admitted to experiencing Pentecostal ecstasy—at least in one of his legs—when in the thrall of The One. And then there were all those school children across the fruited plains bravely singing hymns to our blessed Messiah.

Conservatives admire their presidents, especially those who adhere to conservative principles. They tend to reserve their worship for the more transcendent. (We might revisit the issue if it can be demonstrated that Barry can literally walk on water.) But, now, spiritually-vacuous secular liberals, too, are finally “getting religion”. Hallelujah! The irony is almost toxic. The words of G.K. Chesterton come to mind: “When Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes [in] anything.” Or anyone—even a skinny community organizer from Chicago’s South Side, a neophyte politician with an anemic portfolio who fraternized with unsavory characters, a Senator who voted “present” when he ever bothered to show up for work, a smooth-talking pretender with zip executive experience and a laughable naïveté toward foreign affairs.

From Jesus to Barack. We’ve come a long way.

The Left’s principia mathematica can be summed up thusly: reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. For these radicals, there’s simply no other way to achieve their utopian vision of universal equality. It’s much easier to hold people back, to drag people down, than to set the bar higher and compel everyone to reach that elevated level. Too much energy would need to be expended to overcome the gravity of reality. Of course, the unstated truth is even the leftists don’t really believe in a society where everyone is perfectly equal and everything is “fair”. There must always be the vanguard, the elites who engineer this ambitious project and who exempt themselves from their social reductionism. The proletarians were consigned to Stalin-era tenements and long bread lines but the Politburo members enjoyed their caviar while vacationing in their dachas.

This was always to be a protracted enterprise. But the leftists have made a good start. They work obsessively and relentlessly to “dumb down” America’s culture, from “values-based” education to revisionist history to multi-culturalism and its fatuous cousin, moral equivalency, to the coarsening—and neutering—of language to “sound bite” news coverage to the State-sponsored and funded “arts” to the trivialization and debasement of entertainment. Even the idea of sports competition, once valued as something good, has been reduced in our schools to the farcical notion that neither team should win because, after all, that wouldn’t be “fair” to the losing—oops, poor choice of words—the other side. And the Juvenile currently occupying the Oval Office has adopted this same puerile thinking—hence, His aversion to using, in the context of foreign policy, the term “victory”. It might damage the bad guys’ self-esteem. Pursuing victory is too close to gloating, I guess.

This perverse moral malaise, however, does not stop at America’s borders. No, it must be exported. The unique, the exceptional, in any form, will always be offensive to leftists because such categories contradict their radical egalitarianism. And so this is why our president is always taking to the world stage to, at every opportunity, denigrate the country He was elected to represent, reminding the rest of the world that the United States is just another nation with no particular moral standing. So, no, it just won’t do to have an America that stands alone as that “shining city on a hill”. We must forget that America has, since the end of World War II, remained the sole Western nation solidly committed to market economics with its attendant freedoms—and unprecedented prosperity—while the Europeans gravitated to social democracies characterized by varying degrees of statism, social and economic stagnation, moral vacuity and the erosion of personal freedoms. Yet, according to Obama, it’s time we drop our airs of superiority along with our yearning for freedom and join our friends on the Continent (even though many of those countries are now beginning to realize the bankruptcy of their own regimented social systems). After all, it’s only “fair”.

Despite claims to the contrary, our health care system is the best in the world. It is exceptional. There certainly are problems that need to be addressed but the system is “hopelessly broken” only because Rahm Emanuel, salivating for another “crisis” to energize his dialectic, deems it so. It turns out the radical Democrats not only want to redistribute the wealth. With ObamaCare, they also plan to redistribute the misery—just to be “fair”. And those EU healthcare systems the liberals love so much? These social democracies are only able to afford their universal health care systems—and then, just barely—because they don’t have to commit large appropriations to their own defense. They’ve let the United States with its exceptional military might take care of that for them for the past six decades. Thank you very much.

But, unfortunately for them—and us—there can no longer be a lone Super Power in Obama’s World—and, yes, it’s His world now. Such lofty status is anathema to Barry’s New World Order. To the relief and joy of the rest of the world, The Messiah has finally come. He’s not, however, the Great Unifier, as advertised. No, He’s the Great Leveler. He’s The Messiah, but an impotent One, Who hasn’t a clue how to lift the masses out of abject poverty; so He’s left with only one option, to emasculate the vitality of prospering nations. (How will the poor be helped when everybody ends up poor?) He’s the Zany Zen Master who speaks in riddles, dispensing nuggets of wisdom like, “If you can’t bring the impoverished, disenfranchised Third World to the “mountain” of Western Civilization, then you must bring that mountain down, leveling it, to the flatlands of a shared mediocrity and misery”. Whatever.

Perhaps there comes a point in every Messiah’s life when He must enter that “dark night of the soul”, when that inner burden of crisis reaches critical mass. Could it be that our blessed Messiah, Barack Obama, is even now upon that gloomy threshold? Surely He must be feeling the weight of the world on His sinewy shoulders as He contemplates the war in Afghanistan, a conflict that is not going well by every indication.

The New Testament reveals that Jesus, contemplating the crucifixion that was his destiny, removed by night to the Garden of Gethsemane to wrestle with his human doubts and inner misgivings. In the frailness of the flesh, the human Jesus could hardly bear the thought of that horrible fate which awaited him. Yet, in the end, he renounced self, setting aside his all-too-human instinct for self-preservation, to do what was demanded of him. He glimpsed the bigger picture and courageously chose to do the right thing. And the rest, as they say, is cosmic history.

I’m trying to picture in my mind young Barry stealing off at midnight, slipping past the Secret Service detail, to fall on His knees in the midst of Michelle’s vegetable garden, praying to Himself, between drags on His Marlboro, with such earnest intensity that He literally sweats droplets of blood—all the while his closest apostles, Rahm and David, along the redeemed harlot, Valerie Jarrett, having fallen sound asleep, abandoning their Master in His hour of need.

But try as I will, that just doesn’t play in my brain pan’s home theater.

Frankly, I simply don’t believe Barry truly cares enough about America and her defense from foreign aggression to get that worked up about it. True, Obama deemed this war to be one of necessity, vital to the national security interests of America. During the campaign He made the successful prosecution of the war in Afghanistan one of the main pillars of His proposed foreign policy. He owns that war now.

On the other hand, by authorizing the sending of more troops Obama escalates the conflict and risks alienating His fringe-kook political base. And He needs those zany zealots if He’s going to sign into law ObamaCare, the hallmark and crowning achievement of His domestic agenda.

Well, when you put it that way, it’s really a no-brainer. So, yes, our feckless Capitulator-In-Chief will sell out our brave men and women who wear the uniform and who’ve sacrificed so much already, putting His agenda, His ego and His imagined vaunted place in history before the defense of the nation He pretends to lead. After all, He’s a celebrity, not a Churchill. In the final analysis, Barry is a Democrat, just another weakly-constituted wimp without the stomach for any fight that involves guns or staying power.