Beware the cult of Obama

By Gene Healy
Examiner Columnist  3/31/09
SF Examiner

You’ve met them. They may be friends of yours, or family members. You may even be one of them (in which case you’ll hate this column). I’m referring to those who’ve heard the Call of Obama.
Tucker Carlson compares it to a dog whistle: Inaudible to most, but irresistible to those who can hear it.
Obama "walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere," George Clooney gushed to Charlie Rose.

"I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make [Obama’s] pathway clear,” Halle Berry recently told the Philadelphia Daily News, “I’ll do whatever he says.” (Does Michelle know about this?)

Hollywood stars aren’t known for their political wisdom. More disturbing is how starstruck the mainstream media has become. Hardball host Chris Matthews isn’t the only one who gets a “thrill” up his leg at the very thought of our new president.

Last summer, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote that "Many spiritually advanced people I know … identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who … can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet."

The Politico recently ran a 900-word article entitled "The Power of Obama's Hand," reverentially describing how the president "uses touch to control and console simultaneously," laying hands on supporters and opponents alike.

And in February, author Judith Warner used her New York Times blog to confess that “The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs.”

Instead of keeping that information to herself, Warner “launched an email inquiry,” which revealed that “many women—not too surprisingly—were dreaming about sex with the president.” Those of us who like to point out that the Emperor has no clothes now have to worry that when we do, we may give rise to a new round of lurid cougar fantasies.

Conservatives like to think they're above this sort of thing. Their attitude is summed up by the subtitle of Jerome Corsi's recent bestseller: Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.

But any conservative who thinks cultishness is exclusively a leftist phenomenon ought to take a good long look in the mirror. Because many of those who decry the "cult of Obama" are the same people who made a flight-suited action figure hero out of such common clay as George W. Bush.

Peggy Noonan called Bush's post-9/11 address to Congress "a God-touched moment and a God-touched speech." Fred Barnes wrote that "the stage was set for Bush to be God's agent of wrath." National Review Online ran ads for the Bush "Top Gun" action figure, and an article about how wonderful it was to have a presidential superhero to complement your GI Joe collection.

On Hardball, after the "Mission Accomplished" speech, G. Gordon Liddy got graphic enough to embarrass Judith Warner: "Here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness.... and it makes the best of his manly characteristic…. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America!"

Presidential cultishness can be found all across the political spectrum. It’s a pathology that needs to be rooted out, because when we swoon over the man who holds the office, we risk making the presidency far more powerful than it was ever intended to be.

William Hazlitt, the 19th-century English essayist, argued that man was by nature "a worshipper of idols and a lover of kings." As savages, Hazlitt wrote, we fashioned “gods of wood and stone and brass,” but now, thinking ourselves above superstition, “we make kings of common men, and are proud of our own handiwork.”

But America’s very existence repudiates the idea that we’re hard-wired for leader-worship. We became a nation by throwing off a king, and our Founders gave us a Constitution that’s based on the notion that all men are flawed and none should be trusted with too much power.

Americans, of all people, should recognize how bizarre and dangerous it is to fawn over professional politicians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-BRqqh4G_k


Examiner columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.

Riffy ran him off.

More brilliance on the part of Obama!!



By: Dave Eberhart  

Officials are mulling whether the U.S. will reverse course and allow Iran to carry out uranium enrichment to produce nuclear fuel only, not weapons-grade material, according to a report in London’s Financial Times.


Such a concession, being considered as part of a policy review by President Barack Obama, would be a sea change from the Bush administration’s hard-line policy of forbidding uranium enrichment per se.


The development comes superimposed on a backdrop of familiar rhetorical saber-rattling by both countries – with Iran on Monday lambasting Obama’s continued characterization of Iran as a “threat,” according to a report in Reuters.


Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi reacted to a speech by Obama in Prague declaring that the U.S. would go ahead with plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe as long as Iran posed a threat with its nuclear activities.


“It seems that the repetition of the past U.S. administration’s accusations (against Iran) would be in contrast with the slogan of change (by Obama),” Qashqavi said.


But such old-style bickering may mask a starting breakthrough in the persisting U.S.-Iran nuclear impasse.


“There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favored, simply is unfeasible,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, according to the Times. “The U.S. may still have zero as its opening position, while recognizing it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement.”


Although Obama’s Prague declarations were disturbing to Qashqavi, key verbiage hinted at the very change that he found lacking. Obama’s overall message to Iran was, “Don’t develop a nuclear weapon.” Former President George W. Bush was always dead-on specific in calling Iran to halt all enrichment activity, according to the Times.


Meanwhile, a long series of U.N. Security Council resolutions has not minced words – forbidding Iran from all enriching uranium. The European Union, Russia and China have all in the past backed U.S. demands for Iran to halt the process.


A perennially defiant Tehran has stepped up its enrichment activities, installing more than 5,500 centrifuges to enrich uranium. Furthermore, it has systematically collected a stockpile of more than 1,000 kg of low-enriched uranium – a quantity that if further enriched could produce fissile material for one bomb.


Any U.S. backtracking on the enrichment touchstone, however, would ideally be countered by allowing increased access for U.N. inspectors to acquire more information about Iran’s enrichment plant in Natanz and other nuclear-related hotspots across the country.


The greater transparency, according to the Times report would allow for warning of any move to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels at such sites.


But even with the current limited inspections at Natanz, there may be enough warning of a move toward a nuclear bomb, some Israeli and U.S. officials privately advise, according to the Times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txbaJ6vho8Y&feature=related

Ten Thousand Motels wrote on Apr 6^th, 2009 at 12:20pm:



Wow, interesting video. Excellent post.

"Yeah, I agree with your point here, but these are extreme times."

Yeah so bring on socialism!

YAY SOCIALISM!!!!

You can't uninvent technology; deal with it.

"You can't uninvent technology; deal with it."

I didn't say anything about uninventing technology, moron.

Try to get with the program.

----------

Whenever Jizzy posts, all I hear is...

And the UN does....NOTHING...yet again.

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council Sunday adjourned three hours of closed-door talks on North Korea's long-range rocket launch with no agreement on how to respond to what Western members called a clear violation of UN resolutions.

"Members of the Security Council agreed to continue consultations on an appropriate action by the council in accordance with its responsibilities given the urgency of the matter," Mexico Ambassador Claude Heller, the council chairman this month, told reporters after the meeting.

The United States and Japan, which called for the meeting in response to what they view as Pyongyang's "provocative act," said that the launch of a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile, with an estimated range of 4,100 miles violated Security Council resolution 1718.

"North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles," President Barack Obama said in Prague. "It creates instability in their region, around the world. This provocation underscores the need for action, not just this afternoon in the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons."

That resolution, adopted in 2006 after the North's missile launches on July 5 and nuclear test on Oct. 9 that year, demanded that Pyongyang refrain from any further nuclear test or another ballistic missile launch.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice told reporters that additional consultations would continue both here and in capitals around the world later Sunday and in the coming days, to try to agree "a clear and strong response from the council."

Diplomats said there was general agreement on expressing concern over the launch and calling on Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks and to respect U.N. resolutions.

"The fact of the launch was in itself a clear violation of (1718). The use of ballistic missile technology is a clear violation of the resolution which prohibits missile-related activities," Rice noted.

And again, try and stick with the program.

Have said nothing about Bush at all.

Only pointing out the failures of the present President.

But keep trying dimwit.

Somebody probably thinks you are clever.

nanky

when bush went into iraq, you conservatives used saddam's defying of UN resolutions to bolster your case. now i hear the right repeating again and again that the UN is a useless body and a waste of space. double standard of the highest magnitudinism!!

Obama will be fine, just getting into a groove now. Best Obama bar none.