President Obama’s State Of The Union Drinking Game

For most of us we’ve heard about as many President Obama speeches as we can take. Four hundred twelve speeches is a little too much of ANY president to take. Since we already know what he is going to say and we can guess what tone he will take after the loss in Massachusetts last week I am proposing a drinking game to keep us interested – at least until we become too wiped out to care. Which is about the only way I can endure another of his speeches.
This is how it works. Choose your favorite alcohol to take as shots and line up the shot glasses. Then all you have to do is listen for the ‘drinking’ words. I’ll guarantee you will be wasted before the midway point of the speech.
The game has three key words – or shot words – to listen for in the speech. The first word is “clear.” It usually comes grouped with “Let me be CLEAR” or “I want to make myself CLEAR.” In any form it comes out it always means the same thing: “I am about to feed you a line of bull” or “I am about to screw you over.” Either way, it is President Obama’s way of ‘butching up’ for the American people so he sounds tough when he delivers whatever he’s about to dump on us.
The second word is “Inherited.” That’s code for “It’s Bush’s fault.” The blame Bush strategy has about worn out with all of us out here in America, but it’s something we can count on hearing in the speech. I can remember NO president that has blamed the previous administration as incessantly as Obama has, and certainly not a year down the road. He took the keys to the White House and the big jets, he needs to grow a set and get on with doing his job. He’s used “inherited” since he got there and we can count on hearing it again in the State of the Union speech. When the going gets tough – Obama whines and blames President Bush.
The third word to look for is “Unprecedented.” This is my personal ‘fingers on the chalkboard’ word every time I hear Obama utter it. There is nothing that has happened in the last year that has been unprecedented except the unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented.” Everything that has happened in his term has happened before and there are answers to solve those problems already available – it’s simply a question of using them.
By the end of the speech you will be BLITZED, so be sure you either have a cab, a designated driver or drink at home. It’s the only way you’ll make it.
And as a little warning, the morning after you’re likely to have a nasty hangover, but it’s much better to wake up with a hangover that will wear off than to have to make it all the way through that speech and have a hangover headache that will REFUSE to go away.
Enjoy the speech!! Cheers!!

The Obama Disapproval Index

We are a year down the road into the Obama Administration and the failures, disillusionments, disgusts and defeats continue to pile up. In spite of relentless rhetoric, soaring speeches and the media pouring on syrupy praise President Obama and his administration have managed to squander overwhelming poll numbers in his favor and make all the wrong moves in spite of historical precedents showing the way out of our economic disaster – which he and his people have managed to make considerably worse than it was when he took the reins. At the same time the Obama Administration seems to be working overtime to find ways to diminish the prestige of the United States.
In the Carter years we were treated to the “Misery Index” to reflect the pain the country was feeling at the failures the Carter Administration inflicted on us. It is about time to roll out our own version of the Misery Index – the Obama Dissatisfaction Index or ODI – to reflect the pain we are feeling now under the Obama Administration. Instead of simply measuring the economic malaise we are in, we need to have a more sweeping index to include his failures on his multiple levels. Though I have no idea how to quantify this index to make it into a rolling number we can track, I think these are some of the areas we need to include in our ODI.

· Economy: The economy has been on the minds of Americans for over eight years now. When the Democrats decided to make the economy into an issue when it was roaring they chose to tell Americans that what we were seeing – what the economic indicators were telling us was a good economy – was not the true picture. Eventually their negativity fulfilled itself, yet they thought it was an easy fix. During the 2008 campaign Americans were promised that if elected Obama would fix the economy. He and his cohorts knew where the economy stood – though they later tried to make us believe it was worse than they were told – yet they promised they had the answers to fix it if only we would elect them. It turns out all they have are a litany of excuses and a lot of whining about what they inherited. This category includes unemployment, the growing deficit, government spending and eventually runaway inflation. The failures of this administration are going to be devastating to the United States if Obama continues as he is.

· National Security: The total lack of understanding of the threat of terrorists against the American people is chilling. The first year of the Obama Administration has been aimed at convincing the American people there is no terror threat against the United States – until there was an attack against us. The White House went so far as to issue a list of words such as ‘terrorist’ which are no longer to be used. That does not solve the problem of terror attacks against the United States as we were shown on Christmas Day. Nor does closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing the inmates to U.S. soil. Then there is the idiotic decision to bring five terrorists to New York to stand trial just blocks from where they destroyed the World Trade Center. Already some of the evidence has been tossed by one of the judges hearing the trial. Every move of this administration appears to place our security in more and more peril.

· International Relations: We were promised ‘a new era’ of international relations in which the United States would be respected. The opposite has been the result of the Obama ‘Apology Tour’ around the world. Our friends and enemies alike now understand that our leader despises his country and will not stand up to protect our allies. Nothing could be more devastating in the international arena. That is perceived as weakness. In his attempt to gain the friendship of such countries as Iran, Venezuela and Cuba Obama has sold out old allies like Israel and after only a year has shown that he is not formidable at all – and has lost the respect of all those he sought to win over. The United States is no longer respected nor is our leader feared in the dens of terror. Our leader is a joke and we are seen as lacking the resolve to finish the job – even by our closest allies.

· Domestic Respect: This should be simply a factor of looking at the nose-diving Obama poll numbers and saying we need to figure out a simple equation to attach to his poll numbers versus where he should be – say against the average presidential approval rating at this point in their administrations. The Obama Administration is lower at this point than any previous president. To get the true measure of the Obama Administration we also have to add his policies and his ability to throw his support to others to get them elected. When he goes out to campaign for candidates he has not been able to push ANY over the goal line. His policies are polling in the thirties and he is 0 for 3 in campaigning. Even though his personal approval is still in the mid-40’s, the policies he is pushing are doing worse.


There are several other areas that could be tracked which would indicate how far out of step Obama and his administration are with the American people, but I find the less complicated a formula the better. The Obama Administration has lost its magic and with it they have lost the approval of the American people – and the world. Now we need to track how far down Obama is taking us and hopefully turn back the tide before he destroys our country.

President Obama’s Transparency

FINALLY we get something that resembles ‘transparency’ out of the Obama Administration. Over the weekend accounts of the minute-by-minute actions of President Obama and his administration were posted for all to see just as he promised. There it was for all of us to see. It was the handling of the Haitian earthquake by President Obama.
From the beginning when President Obama ran to the microphones to tell us what he was going to do for Haiti I felt like we, the American people, were being played by Obama and his people. This is the same President Obama who took months to decide what to do about Afghanistan and DAYS to respond to the Fort Hood attack and the Christmas Day attempted attack on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam. And those turned out to be initially the wrong responses. That’s why I felt the Haitian response was more than a little contrived. Obama was at the microphones in a matter of hours and the response was right down the line – almost like Bush was back. It was way too good to be coming from this group in Washington.
All President Obama had to do was take out the President Bush template for the tsunami in Southeast Asia – including having two former presidents head up the American end of the relief effort – blow the dust off it, add the Haitian name to the file and call up the military. The American military then swung into action and the rest was on autopilot. After that it was just a matter of Obama running around with his sleeves rolled up looking concerned and giving more speeches. THAT part of the plan was pure Obama – the BS Factor.
To me, it felt like Obama’s people already had the plan sitting on the shelf where they put it after Dick Cheney handed it to them, all they were waiting for was a disaster so they could shamelessly trot it out and call it their own. They knew the media was in their corner, so all they had to do was get the ball rolling. They certainly are willing to blame Bush for everything that has happened in the country, but I doubt they will give President Bush the CREDIT he deserves for having the template already set up for them to follow when a disaster hits.
So now that we know the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Washington actually know the meaning of the word ‘transparency,’ can we expect the same level of openness for the legislation they will try to push through Congress this year? Or any other year? How about going back and giving us the minutes from the backroom meetings held on The Hill to push through the healthcare travesty? Or the bribes that had to be paid out to our senators and representatives to get them to go along with the bill their constituents are overwhelmingly against? For some reason, I doubt it.
There are no other instances of moves made by this administration they are proud enough to share with us. It’s that simple. We are looking at a well-scripted stand-alone instance of the ‘transparency’ the American people were promised – and it is a show. Just more broken promises – oh, and out here in the heartland outside the Washington Beltway, we call those LIES.

The American Media Is Trying Too Hard To Make Obama Successful

As American aid starts piling up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after the earthquake Tuesday afternoon our media has been falling over themselves trying to compare the Haitian earthquake to Hurricane Katrina and to give President Obama ANY sort of a success – even when it makes no sense – while giving President Bush another raking over the coals. The media and the Obama Administration are politicizing the tragedy when Obama’s numbers are falling quickly into the toilet.
Well… their stories are predictable and – surprise, surprise – wrong. We’re talking about ‘apples and oranges’ as the saying goes. If the media wants to make an apt correlation they would have to compare the Haitian disaster to the tsunami in Southeast Asia. The response to both disasters by the United States looks to be about the same. We are doing in Haiti and did in Southeast Asia what the United States always does. We sent whatever was necessary to help those who were in need. We’ll back up our initial response with money, supplies and support to help rebuild what was destroyed. It’s who we are and it’s what we do.
For the media and the Obama people to make this into their own pat-on-the-back is a travesty. In the midst of all this destruction we have to endure the White House rushing to the cameras to make the Haitian earthquake into a “look at what I did” moment. Maybe Obama should take a page from the Bush playbook and just do his job and let history judge him for what he is doing rather than try to bend the news in every cycle.
If you want a stark difference between Obama and Bush you would have to see the difference in the way the two men approached the situation. Bush did what had to be done focusing on the problem and giving the military the approval to do what they had to do. Obama made the same moves to get the military in to help, but he ran to the media with a ‘look what I did’ approach.
In order for the media comparison to be anywhere NEAR close between New Orleans and Haiti, Haiti would have to be in a Republican state in the U.S. Money would have had to have been sent to Haiti for years to shore up the buildings against earthquakes (the charities that have been doing work in Haiti don’t count in this scenario), but the money would have siphoned off for ‘other projects.’ Once disaster struck the Republican leadership would have to call the Republican governor of Haiti and tell them to hold off federal help because they didn’t want Obama to get any kind of victory – as the Democrat leadership did at the time of Katrina when they called the governor of Louisiana and told her to hold off Bush as long as she could – and she did it. There would have to be total confusion at the local and state level and all the media stories out of Haiti would have to be wrong or distorted so badly no one would know what was going on. Then all of us bloggers would have to run out with stories about how Obama and Biden planted charges under Haiti to cause the catastrophe. And that would be just to put it on an even footing for comparison. The incompetence of the media in New Orleans covering the story added to the panic as much as the incompetence of the Democrat leaders on the ground there at the time.
So, in all fairness – and “fairness” is something the American media lost sight of years ago – the Haitian earthquake has to be compared to the Southeast Asian tsunami if you want to compare apples-to-apples and expect the comparison to make sense. The problem for the media is President Bush did all the right things the right way with the tsunami – setting the template for President Obama to follow now – and they would have nothing to talk about now. They certainly would have no “Katrina Drum” to keep beating over and over – even when the message they are sending is mostly a lie.
But, why let truth get in the way of another “we love Obama” moment for the media. I’ll bet their legs are tingling now…