Obama iconography

Gave a "Trademarks 101" CLE at BYU Education Week this afternoon.

In that frame of mind, interesting takes on Obama's iconography:

Line by line takes candidate Obama's statement and shows dripping, drooping red ink lines resulting from President Obama's ballooning deficit. "Change we can believe in" indeed.

Bill Whittle at PJTV examines the phenomenon of the candidate's "O" logo superseding the presidential seal. Unprecedented. It still seems to be all about marketing. No surprise, since the Obama campaign paid over $300M for advertising by David Axelrod's firm (now presidential advisor David Axelrod).

Hmm. Not a good sign when your central symbol is made an object of contempt. Such high hopes. Such radical change.

A changing tide perhaps? Perhaps.

Global warming: senator can feel it when she's flying

The country's in the very best of hands. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D - MI) says she can "feel" global warming when she's flying.

I am the mob

Life is full of irony.

A member of the Tucson mob investigates: who really are these people protesting against the administration?
Much has been made that many in this administration were born and bred by the Chicago political machine (aka hometown of "the mob"). Hmm. So who's the mob?

Hope and Change: America talks back

Life is full of irony.

I now have hope there will be positive change in this country.

Not brought about by the Obama administration, but by regular American's who are already fed up and have the audacity to go to town hall meetings across the country to talk about it -- yes, even shout about it.

The "audacity of hope" -- indeed!

In an oped, "Remember when protest was patriotic?", Glenn Reynolds writes:

"Protest is patriotic!" "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!" These battle-cries were heard often, in a simpler America of long ago -- that is, before last November.

What's all the shouting about?

People have been turning out, in the tens of thousands at times, because they feel that Obama pulled a bait-and-switch and is moving the country much farther to the left than he promised during the campaign.

Ah, the campaign. That was just a means to an end.

"They" won, so "we" should shut up.

Instead, we have what "they" are now fond of calling a "mob" uprising.

Now that we're seeing genuine expressions of populist discontent, not put together by establishment packagers on behalf of an Officially Sanctioned Aggrieved Group, we're suddenly hearing complaints of "mob rule" and demands for civility.

Civility is fine, but those who demand it should show it. The Obama administration -- and its corps of willing supporters in the press and the punditry -- has set the tone, and they are now in a poor position to complain.

Whether they like it or not -- and the evidence increasingly tends toward "not" -- President Obama and his handlers need to accept that this is a free country, one where expressions of popular discontent take place outside the electoral process, and always have. (Remember Martin Luther King?)

What historians like Gordon Wood and Pauline Maier call "out-of-doors political activity" is an old American tradition, and in the past things have been far more "boisterous" than they are today.

Reynolds precisely nails it:

Rather than demonizing today's protesters, perhaps they might want to reflect on how flimflams and thuggishness have managed to squander Obama's political capital in a few short months, and ponder what they might do to regain the trust of the millions of Americans who are no longer inclined to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt.

Indeed. Count me as one of those. And if this sounds "fishy," the White House would like an email about it. Send to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Organizing the "wrong" community

Life is full of irony.

The New York Post notices:

Get this: The party of "community organizers" is now whining that President Obama's critics are organizing communities -- against his health-care scheme.

The nerve of 'em, huh?

Faced with mushrooming opposition to ObamaCare, Democrats have launched a multi-media campaign that attacks foes as "extremists" who've "called out the mob" to "destroy President Obama" and "intimidate and silence regular people." They cite "the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives."

Actually, that sounds more like the tactics of the Chicago street, where Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel cut their political teeth. Indeed, you can almost hear Richard Nixon grousing about angry anti-war protestors and pleading for "the great silent majority of Americans" to rise up.

Some Dems, like New York's Rep. Anthony Weiner, are even trying to hold town-hall meetings on the sly, with little advance notice, to keep critics from attending.

And the White House has called on its supporters to "report" any "fishy" information about ObamaCare that they may hear, even in casual conversation.

Talk about intimidation.

Yet poll after poll has shown that criticism is actually coming from -- yup -- "regular people," Republicans and Democrats alike, who just don't trust the plan.

That resentment won't be undone by the Obama team's brass-knuckle brand of political smears.

Uh-oh, smears get physical. They've called out the unions to throw out the protestors.

Something's fishy: yes -- it's called "change we don't believe in"

The White House asks:

"If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

So let's compile an enemy's list...

This is how out of touch this administration is. Normal garden-variety Americans are turning out in droves to exercise their First Amendment right to assemble and express their opinions. And our politicians are shocked: "These can't be real people. These must be extremists who are bankrolled by enemies of the president."

Wow!

Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff

No -- what's shocking is that our politicians can't conceive that real people are justifiably angry about the lurch to the left in the first 200 days of this presidency and are turning out to protest. Maybe members of Congress need to get out more.

No wait -- after criticizing auto company execs for using private jets to wing to hearings in Washington, Congress has now appropriated $200 million to buy three new luxury jets for Congressional junkets. In the middle of what they say is the "worst recession."

The irony is breathtaking.

UPDATE: Make that $500 million for eight new jets. And, according to the WSJ, Congressional travel has skyrocketed in the past 14 years:


We seem to have a privileged political class that believes it's not accountable to its constituents.

David Harsanyi:

In today's world, the "radicals" are the ones who protest the takeover of a huge swath of the economy by government bureaucrats who have proven they can't even run a program that gives free money away to car buyers properly. It is radicals who want to preserve the pillars of a system that over 80 percent of Americans still believe works — though certainly not perfectly.

In this new world, radicals are the ones who protest adding trillions to our debt and who have the temerity to ask if legislators have read the bills they sign. You've seen them. Those radicals who are ranting and raving about silly things like the Constitution.

Peggy Noonan pegs it:

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t. ...

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack.

Read the whole thing.

Gandhi is quoted as saying, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win."

Here's to winning. And taking our country back.

Gee whiz! Higher taxes possible, says Treasury Secretary

Blog headline: "Drunken sailor says lower deficit key to sustaining recovery"

Gee, dya think?

Here's the quote from the AP story: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the U.S. must cut the annual federal budget deficit, now more than $1 trillion, for the economy to have a sustained recovery and he's not ruling out new taxes."

Hmm. Couldn't think of throttling back on the unprecedented spending the administration has signed into law the past six months. So let's raise taxes!

The country's in the very best of hands.

Reminder from posts past:

Deficits under Bush v. Obama:


And a blast from the past - "read my lips...":
Hmm. Former President Bush (I) lost re-election after breaking such a pledge.