Nightly Ramble: SILENCE THE ENEMY!!!!

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

• LACK OF ACCOMPLISHMENT: They’re starting to recognize, over on the left that the continual campaign mode of Mr Obama is not indicative of any actual accomplishments.  Jules Crittenden takes it all in and opines:
  

  It’s dawn over Provincetown. Pick your issue. Lots of talk, not so much walk. Good thing, considering most of his positions. As for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, he’s got a pretty good excuse, which is that middle of a hot war is not the best time to start social engineering the military. He’s too busy trying to figure out how to screw up the actual war stuff. Not to dictate to the LGBT crowd, but given his political displays to date, is this the guy you want advancing your cause?

  The answer, looking around the ‘sphere today appears to be “no”.  Nobody’s hearing anything new.  Lots of empty promises. Given the stated agenda, it seems to me that Obama’s lack of accomplishment here isn’t a bad thing at all. But it is of a piece with the discussion we had over the weekend about the Nobel Prize being awarded in spite of a lack of accomplishment.  The president got itself elected based on what he said, not what he actually accomplished.  Similarly he managed to get the Nobel prize award, not based on any actual accomplishment, but on what he said.  The left-o-sphere’s reax to his Saturday speech tells me that they are starting to get the message that what we have in Obama is a lot of empty promises, and nothing else.which means they’re finally coming to the realization that everybody else had months ago.  About half of us, before the election.

• WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE: And the response from 1600 to all this?  Typically knee-kerk. Even Firedog Lake is miffed:
  

  Those anonymous White House aides are talking tough again, this time about what the New York Times calls “the largest demonstration for gay rights here in nearly a decade”:

  LESTER HOLT: John what we saw in that protest today, was it simply frustration or does it represent a serious problem the President is having with an important part of his base?

  JOHN HARWOOD: As a practical matter Lester I don’t think it’s a serious problem. we’ve seen and certainly Bill Clinton learned that they Democratic President can get punished by the mainstream of the electorate for being too aggressive on social issues so for now I think the administration feels that if they take care of the big issues — health care, energy, the economy — he’s going to be just fine with this group.

  HOLT: But in general when yo look at the left as a whole, have there been conversations about some things they thought would have been done but haven’t?

  HARWOOD: Sure but If you look at the polling, Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the “internet left fringe” Lester. And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

  That is just classic.  After pandering to LGBT leaders last night the truth comes out. Dear gays: grow up and let us get about the serious business of governance. Signed, some dude who’s too afraid to give his real name.

  Uh… Jane? Face it...You’ve been had.  And look… It’s not like nobody told you Obama is a fraud. Oh… and consider this…What you guys are getting here, is exactly what anyone who dares to question the actions of the Chosen One gets. Ask anyone on the right. Indeed I said at the outset … November of last year…that reality was going to overcome socialist these wet dreams that were all supposed to magically come true under Obama.  Face this also… you guys on the left are being taken for granted.  Moe Lane puts it well:
  

  I mean, really: what are you going to do about it?  Vote Republican?

  I do find it amusing though that they chose this to show up with the phrase ‘closely divided’ after so many weeks of being told how Obama had this huge mandate from the people, don’t you? it also strikes me as interesting that as usual the response to any challenge is to try and silence the challenger.   (Not unlike this situation, here. Something of a pattern developing among the liberal loonies. )

• ET TU, ROSS? Doouthat at the New York Times this morning exhibits a substandard gruntlement level with The Chosen One, as well:
  

  

  Ross Douthat

  Obama gains nothing from the prize. No domestic constituency will become more favorably disposed to him because five Norwegians think he’s already changed the world — and the Republicans were just handed the punch line for an easy recession-era attack ad. (To quote the Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, anticipating the 30-second spots to come: “He got a Nobel Prize. What did you get? A pink slip.”)

  Overseas, there was nobody, from Paris to Peshawar, who woke up Friday more disposed to work with the United States because of the Nobel committee’s decision — and plenty of more seasoned statesman who woke up laughing. (Vladimir Putin probably hasn’t snickered this much since John McCain tried to persuade Americans that “we are all Georgians” during last year’s weeklong war.)

  Meanwhile, the prize makes every foreign-policy problem Obama faces seem ever so slightly more burdensome. Now he’s the Nobel laureate who has to choose between escalating a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan or ceding ground to a theocratic mafia. He’s the Nobel laureate who’ll either have to authorize military strikes against Iran or construct an effective, cold-war-style deterrence system for the Middle East. He’s the Nobel laureate who’ll probably fail, like every U.S. president before him, to prod Israelis and Palestinians toward a comprehensive settlement.

  We’ve all seen people get raises and promotions in our daily lives, that they didn’t deserve.  Once in those new positions, they find themselves totally inadequate to the task at hand. The titles, the accolades, the additional pay, will mean nothing whatever to the goal.   All the accolades in all the additional pay and the corner office and so on are simply a set up to a larger failure.  Obama, I think, has been exposed as one of these. And I repeat a link to Boortz on the matter.

• I’M A TERRORIST: No, seriously. Brad Woodhouse, DNC Communications director says so. Ben Smith:
  

  A top Democratic National Committee official reacted furiously to a statement from Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele mocking — and describing as “unfortunate” — President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

  “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. “Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize – an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride – unless of course you are the Republican Party.

  “The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim,” Woodhouse said.

  Stupid comment? Certainly. But think now… it’s of a piece with the rest of what we’ve discussed as coming from the White House of late, isn’t it? Silence the challenger. Silence, as a knee-jerk reaction, anyone who dares question The Chosen One.

• FOX NEWS, TOO: Bruce McQuain  correctly points out one more aspect of this “Silence the Enemy” tactic on the part of the Obama White House… the recent spate of attacks on Fox News:
  

  In terms of any sort of media strategy, I really don’t get this – the White House has chosen to take on Fox News as some sort of enemy of the administration?  Why?

  Anita Dunn, communications director at White House had this to say on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”:

  “If we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and a something called ACORN.”

  

  Bruce McQuain

  Now I have to admit not remembering it that way at all. What I do remember is that Fox was about the only news channel who mentioned Ayers or covered the ACORN shenanigans.

  However, the “biggest stories” she complains about were mostly covered by opinion shows like Hannity, not the news arm of Fox. And I don’t think that Hannity has ever claimed to be anything but a conservative commentator. Finally, it seems that other news organizations should have been following ACORN a little more closely, given recent events.

  Exactly so, Bruce. And this attack on Fox is just one more aspect of the attemnpt to silence all who dare question the Chosen One.  Oh… and Bruce? You’re quite right. Stupid move. But the consistency of the type of response across this and all the other little points I’ve mentioned today is at least suggestive that it’s one that was planned… and that they, lacking a ‘fairness doctrine’ at the moment,  HAVE no better response.

• GOP HAD BEST WATCH OUT TOO: This story surprises me not at all.
  

  The “Taxpayer March on Washington” proved that conservatives can turn out in impressive numbers to protest the direction of the Democratic-led federal government, but it also presented Republicans with a tricky task in figuring out how to marshal the energy on display on the Mall Saturday.

  Wrong. Dead wrong.  The GOP had best figure out something The Politico has not, nor have the Democrats for that matter… their task is not to marshal that energy, but to get behind it.  We’ve discussed several times over the years how Bill Clinton was repeatedly a bowl to lie his way into the position leadership… turning, essentially, a Lynch mob into a parade that he was leading. The tea party types, for their part, are far sharper than to let the GOP try to pull the same thing. The only way out of this for the GOP is to start fighting for the values of those tea party types. After all, the polling numbers are suggesting the Tea partiers have more support than the GOP does just now.