It's Obama Fatigue Weekend !

What a week for the O man ! ObamaCare is crashing and burning, Obama holds presser for disinterested public, and Obama sticks his nose where it doesn't belong re: the Henry Louis Gates arrest in Cambridge, yelling fire in a burning theater. Time for a vacation O -- Martha's vineyard of course, where all community organizers go.

Still, its all Obama, all the time for the media ... boy does this guy crave being on TV.

Best line: Obama's magic is fading because it can't survive contact with daylight.
[mark steyn]


Here we go:


What's Next? [Victor Davis Hanson]

Somehow the president in the last few hours, in his now characteristic stereotyping, has managed to insult the nation's police with his "stupidly" comment, the nation's surgeons with his reference to greedy tonsil-cutting, and the nation's elderly with his aspirin quip — all reminiscent of the "typical white person" castoff, Pennsylvania clingers speech, and the Special Olympics one-liner. Given his propensity to apologize abroad for the purported sins of other earlier Americans, can we expect some "I'm sorry"s for his own clumsy generalizations? No wonder Robert Gibbs and Joe Biden have little worries that their own logorrhea will have any consequences.

Promoting Racial Paranoia - Heather MacDonald

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU4MGE4MDkwYzhiYjY4OTk2OWRlZjcyMWY0MjFkNmE=



The All-Obama, All-the-Time Fatigue [Veronique de Rugy]

Peter Baker at the New York Times talks about the Obamamania and the news cycle. He explains that the president is probably overusing the media and his image by giving speeches and interviews all of the time.

In the past four days, Mr. Obama gave “exclusive” interviews to Jim Lehrer of PBS, Katie Couric of CBS and Meredith Vieira of NBC. He gave two interviews to The Washington Post on one day, one to the editorial page editor and one to news reporters. He held a conference call with bloggers. His hourlong session in the East Room on Wednesday night was his second news conference of the day. And on Thursday, he invited Terry Moran of ABC to spend the day with him for a “Nightline” special.

Keep reading this post . . .


Charles Krauthammer:
On President Obama’s comments on Gates’ arrest:

Well, it sounds as if Obama was saying, "I can no more renounce Henry Louis Gates than I could renounce my own grandmother."

He should have said, "I am a friend of Gates, and therefore I'm inclined to believe his story. But since there's no way I can know what actually happened, I'll decline a comment." That would have been the right response.

Instead, the president waded into something when there is no possible way in which he could know what actually occurred, and he then implied—and he does this always cleverly and without leaving a fingerprint—that it was on account of racism, again, without any evidence.

It's not what a president ought to do. I think, as journalists, we always add the word "alleged, alleged, alleged" in talking about any ongoing story about alleged criminal activity…and that's because we (a) have to demonstrate and acknowledge ignorance, and, secondly, as a way of showing impartiality. That's what a president has to do. His influence in the country is a lot more than any journalist, and I think it was incumbent upon him to stay away.

Instead, he developed the Gates' narrative of racism, and I think in a situation in which it was at least, as of now, entirely unwarranted.

On the growing resistance to Obama’s health-care plan:

I think the reason the president has been so much in a hurry to push this before August is precisely because he's afraid the more people learn about this, the less they are going to like it.

If you watch that poll you cited, 80 percent of Americans think it [health-care reform] is going to raise their taxes, 18 percent aren't sure. I love that 1 percent who think there is going to be a decrease in taxes. I want to meet that guy...

I understand why the president is arguing [to the Blue Dogs]: You don't want to weaken a president who was strong in '08, who swept a lot of you into office. You don't want to weaken him, because if he loses on health care, he is very much a weakened president. It could hurt them in 2010.

However, these guys who already are in conservative districts have swallowed hemlock on behalf of the president on cap-and-trade. They have been really wounded on that, extremely unpopular, and it didn't even pass in the Senate. So it was a wasted negative vote...

I'm not sure they want a second swig of that hemlock on health care.



'Talks Break Down, Intra-Party Tension Heats Up For House Democrats' [NRO Staff]
From CNN.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Health care negotiations among Democratic leaders and conservative so-called Blue Dog Democrats have reached an impasse, according to members of Congress on both sides of the talks.

As a result, Democratic leaders are moving towards bypassing conservatives in their own party and holding a House health care vote over their objections.


Stars don't shine in sunlight [Mark Steyn]


Charles Krauthammer makes a good point:
The president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue-neutral. But that’s classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health-care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable.

The question is whether Obama is so cool he can get away with ever more self-contradictory nonsense. Even fantasy has to conform to a basic internal reality . The 49% poll number, and the steep ratings decline for his ever less compelling press conferences suggest the Obama unreality show will have trouble keeping up the cool.

From The New York Times:
In the past four days, Mr. Obama gave “exclusive” interviews to Jim Lehrer of PBS, Katie Couric of CBS and Meredith Vieira of NBC. He gave two interviews to The Washington Post on one day, one to the editorial page editor and one to news reporters. He held a conference call with bloggers. His hourlong session in the East Room on Wednesday night was his second news conference of the day. And on Thursday, he invited Terry Moran of ABC to spend the day with him for a “Nightline” special.

The all-Obama, all-the-time carpet bombing of the news media represents a strategy by a White House seeking to deploy its most effective asset in service of its goals, none more critical now than health care legislation. But longtime Washington hands warn that saturation coverage can diminish the power of his voice and lose public attention.

No real star goes in for over-exposure, because you're devaluing your own currency. (And that's before you add in off-prompter missteps like the Prof Gates answer.) Bagehot's famous line on the British monarchy is that you mustn't let daylight in upon magic. Obama's magic is fading because it can't survive contact with daylight.


What O Don't Know ! :

Know-Nothing-in-Chief There's no evidence Obama has even a sketchy grasp of economics. by Fred Barnes 08/03/2009

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/765kishz.asp


CBO Strikes Again [Yuval Levin]


As it has become clear that the Democrats’ health care proposals are outrageously expensive and that their various proposals for savings (like computerizing medical records and improving preventive care) wouldn’t come close to covering the cost, President Obama and his allies in Congress have turned to a new magic formula for cost savings: a panel of experts that will figure out how to make Medicare much more efficient, and then will make recommendations on which the Congress would vote up or down, but could not change. My colleague James Capretta and I discuss this idea, among other turns in the debate, in the new Weekly Standard here. As the president described it in his news conference on Wednesday, this would be an “independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare on an annual basis — a proposal that could save even more money and ensure long-term financial health for Medicare.”


Today, the Congressional Budget Office released a document that examines the potential of this idea, and (as has happened every time their claims in the health care debate have been examined in detail) the news is not good for the Democrats. Will the council of experts save enough money to help offset the trillion dollar program now being contemplated? Here’s CBO:
CBO estimates that enacting the proposal, as drafted, would yield savings of $2 billion over the 2010–2019 period (with all of the savings realized in fiscal years 2016 through 2019) if the proposal was added to H.R. 3200, the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, as introduced in the House of Representatives. This estimate represents the expected value of the 10-year savings from the proposal: In CBO’s judgment, the probability is high that no savings would be realized, for reasons discussed below, but there is also a chance that substantial savings might be realized.

Their best assessment, in other words, is that the idea could save $2 billion over ten years, or in the neighborhood of two-tenths of one percent of the amount the Democrats want to spend on their health care program in that period. But the probability is high that it wouldn’t even save that much.

It’s no wonder this was released on a Saturday morning.


oh boy; so much material .... to be continued