Obama’s vaunted first 100 days

I had a vision in my mind of this post being a lot more than it is.  I even talked it up a time or two.  It was to be rigorously cited and ambitious in its scope.

However, my motivation to write/assemble such a post is lower than I expected.  For one thing, thanks to charisma, ceaselessly favorable mainstream media, poor Republican stewardship (both real and perceived), and (let’s face it) wanton ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, there is not yet any significant movement in Obama’s approval rating.  For another, this has been an exceptionally exhausting day (more on that tomorrow).

So a bit of semi-organized bitching will have to do.

First, Obama’s unfathomably massive spending and nationalization of the economy are complete disasters.  Folks, degree matters.  As distasteful as losing your hand in a combine would certainly be, it beats the hell out of losing your head.  I didn’t like the Bush administration spending either, but did it ever guarantee car warranties?  Does anyone doubt that GM’s “managed bankruptcy” is code for “don’t hurt the union constituency”?  Y’all nearly ’bout set for the Chevy Pelosi?

Ah, don’t worry, though.  $3,500,000,000,000 isn’t really all that much money.

Second, Obama’s foreign policy—the “restoration of the standing of the United States in the world”—is, so far, thoroughly tasteless and potentially dangerous.  In 100 days, the Obama administration has repeatedly insulted our closest ally; bowed at the waist to the Saudi despot; “reached out” to “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” as if that never occurred to anyone; shared a handshake and a chortle with Hugo Chavez (as well as accepting the gift of a viciously anti-American history of Central America); and so forth.

Feel safer?  Well, I suppose you can hang your hat on Obama keeping the PATRIOT Act, the wiretapping, and all of those other things that were to be the undoing of western civilization at the hands of Satan Bush the Younger during the campaign, but that clearly seem like pretty nifty ideas from the Oval Office.

(Incidentally, let me know when there is any discord whatsoever among his fawning sycophants for these breathtaking betrayals.)

When President Obama was elected, we seemed to have a person who has never run anything before in his life, and who hasn’t the slightest idea where a dollar comes from (or, perhaps even more troublingly, what a dollar really is).  Nothing in his first 100 days has dispelled these notions.

He has no genuine appreciation of U.S. and world history.  (His memory for good American behavior is nonexistent; for bad or ambiguous behavior, meticulous.)

His political instincts seem shockingly poor.  Shall we look at his selective release of CIA memos as an example of his much-ballyhooed “bipartisanship”?  Or perhaps we’ll just hold up that smug “I won” as evidence of same?  The decision to refuse one-issue pro-life voters even a single semantic bone is a serious error, and one I’m surprised isn’t getting more press.

However, he is a handsome fellow, and he is a skilled orator.

In other words, a talented college student is the leader of the free world.

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