Brushing asides comparisons between himself and the monstrous, all-consuming and crazy-making bureaucracy that would be engendered by Obamacare and devour at least one-sixth of the U.S. economy, Cthulhu says he favors the public option but ultimately positions himself as an independent on Obamacare at Interesting News Items.
Oprah picked Obama to be president and is surprised to be under the bus now that he doesn't need her any more
The National Enquirer reports today that Obama has thrown Oprah under the bus and set his wife, Michelle, up to take the blame. Oprah still does not understand what her idol really is so she has fallen for his ruse, which means she’s hurt and angry with Michelle but still all gooey and starry-eyed about Obama and filled with dreams of power as her reward for choosing him as The One and making him president:
Distraught Oprah Winfrey is telling pals her “thank you” for helping Barack Obama win the presidency has been a knife in the back.
A jealous first lady has frozen the talk queen out of the White House inner circle, say insiders. “Oprah is devastated,” revealed a friend.
“She had no idea that Michelle was so jealous about the influence she had on Barack. She hated the way her husband would huddle with Oprah over strategy and jump when she called.
“The jealousy and anger was eating up Michelle. During the campaign, she vowed Oprah would not be a part of the new administration.
“Oprah had visions of being a close adviser to the president and a regular visitor to the White House. She was actually planning to redecorate the famous Lincoln bedroom, which is reserved for special guests of the first family.
“But in the first 10 months of the Obama administration, Oprah has visited the White House only twice, and one visit was for a business meeting to do an interview with Michelle for O magazine.
“And that was a disaster. Oprah arrived with her friend Gayle King, but was shocked to find Michelle cold and distant. Worse, she all but ignored Oprah and directed her attention to Gayle. It was as though Oprah wasn’t even there.”
The meeting got off to a bad start when Oprah, 55, greeted Michelle. The TV host leaned to kiss her cheek, but the first lady stepped back and extended her hand instead.
Then Michelle, 45, seemed to ignore a question Oprah asked about the Obama children, instead taking a question from an aide and then returning only to chat with Gayle again — ignoring or forgetting Oprah’s question.
By the end of the day, Oprah felt roundly snubbed.
“Since then, Oprah has tried again and again to mend the rift,” said the friend. “But she’s had no luck. Michelle has made it clear she is no longer interested in being friends with Oprah and is going to block her from access to the President.”
Why, yes, I AM quoting the National Enquirer — this kind of story is their bread-and-butter and not the kind of thing they would make up, since Oprah is super-rich and litigious when it comes to libel.
Anyway, it never gets old to see the look of surprise and shock on the faces of the people — Obama’s white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham; Obama’s pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Obama’s first literary agent, Jane Dystel; Honduran president Manuel Zelaya — and the groups — gays, women, Jews, supporters of Israel, independents who fell for the “no new taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000” line, and everyone who believes that prosperity comes from the government instead of incentivizing ambition and creativity by letting people keep at least half of the money they make — that Obama has thrown under the bus the instant he didn’t need them any more.
You would think that Oprah has lived and thrived in Chicago long enough to understand that Obama and his cronies are quintessential Chicago Democrats. In case there’s anyone left in the world who does not understand that now, David Kahane explained it in his July 7, 2009, column for the National Review Online on why and how Obama and the Democrats went all out to destroy Sarah Palin. Along the way, Kahane described what Obama’s Democratic Party has become and what it plans to do (boldfacing mine):
I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but maybe now you’re beginning to understand the high-stakes game we’re playing here. This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it.
In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.
If you had any sense, you would start using our tactics against us. After all, you have a few lawyers on your side. Sue us. File frivolous ethics complaints against all our elected officials until, like Sarah, they go broke from defending themselves. (David Paterson would be a good place to start.) Challenge the constitutionality of BO2’s legion of fill-in-the-blank czars — none of whom have to be confirmed, or even pass a security check. (Come to think of it, neither did Barry.) Let slip your own journalistic dogs of war, assuming you have any, to find Barry’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, whether he applied to Occidental as a foreign student, and on which passport he traveled in 1981 to Pakistan with his friend Wahid Hamid, for starters.
You might also want to think about interviewing New York literary agent Jane Dystel, who a) contacted the totally unknown Obama in the wake of an adulatory New York Times piece in 1990 and b) got him a $125,000 advance for a memoir that c) he couldn’t write, even after a long sojourn in Bali, which d) got the contract canceled, whereupon e) Dystel got him $40,000 from another publisher, following which f) the book finally came out to glowing reviews and g) Obama fired her. Wouldn’t she have an interesting story to tell?
Of course, you won’t. You’re too nice, too enamored of history and tradition to realize that the rules have changed. Remember, I live and work in a town where, “Hello, he lied,” isn’t a joke; we men of the Left are perfectly comfortable lying, cheating, and stealing — hello, Senator Franken! — in order to attain and keep political power. Not for nothing is one of our mottos, “By Any Means Necessary.” You see, we’re the good guys, and for us the ends always justify the means. We are, literally, shameless, which is why Bill Clinton is now a multi-millionaire and Eliot Spitzer is already on the comeback trail.
In Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, “the fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” This is the book that “Reset” Rodham (what ever happened to her?) and BHO II grew up reading and continue to live by. If you don’t understand that that’s the way we see you — as the enemy — then you’re too dumb to survive. Remember that for us politics is not just an avocation, or even just a job, but our life. We literally stay awake nights thinking up ways to screw you. And one of the ways we do that is by religiously observing Alinsky’s Rule No. 4.
Oprah! Because Obama is a sociopath, he sees people just as objects to be used! He tells people whatever they want to hear in exchange for their power and money with NO intention of keeping the promises he made to get them. The only emotion he really can feel is malicious glee at being able to make people jump, or kowtow. Obama used you and now he has discarded you. I believe you are a decent person, so now it’s time to return the favor to Obama and start supporting the people who are working to clean up the mess you made.
Gentle readers, just in case that doesn’t happen — or if, go figure, you are a conservative and in the habit of taking your fate into your own hands instead of waiting for the government, or anyone else, to do something for you — HillBuzz proposes another solution:
… Republicans need to give Independent and Moderate voters an excuse that lets them admit voting for Dr. Utopia was the dumbest thing they have done in a while.
We suggested this the other day, when we suggested a grassroots campaign should be started to “Blame Oprah” for all of this. We’ve found, anecdotally, here in Chicago that people are more likely to admit what a disaster Dr. Utopia is if they don’t also have to admit how stupid they are for having fallen for all of Utopia’s lies.
BUT, when we’ve suggested to these people that Oprah tricked them, and that they never would have backed Utopia if Oprah hadn’t told them to, then suddenly they speak freely about what a promise-breaking, lying, socialist embarrassment the current president is.
You might think this is ridiculous, but we swear it works. Even here in Boystown, where people were so drunk on Kool-Aid and deranged for Utopia that they once believed he really was the Second Coming. Then, they went through a period where they were quiet and disillusioned. Now, the majority of them unemployed (and never receiving any of the unicorns or stimulus money they believe they were promised), they’re starting to get angry.
What’s KEEPING them from speaking out, from taking to the streets, from having a Network “not going to take it anymore” moment, is the simple fact that they’d have to admit they were wrong first.
Republicans and conservatives would do very well to heed HillBuzz’s advice.
P.S.
I doubt that Oprah sees how much this aspect of her announcement that she is ending her talk show on Sept. 9, 2011, will change her world and how she is treated, but today is the day that writers stopped being afraid of her. The dam will burst on Sept. 10, 2011. I am extremely skeptical that her announced new venture of a cable channel will succeed unless the government is her customer because she just will not have adapted to doing business under socialism yet. And for that she will have only herself to blame.
Update, 11/20/09, Fri.: Dear Smitty at The Other McCain asks if Oprah is clearing her schedule to run for national office.
I'll hold you while angels sing you to sleep
“Lullabye” by Cris Williamson from her 1978 album, Live Dream.
I love singing lullabyes and this is one of my favorites. In my first year with my late life partner, Margaret Ardussi, circa 1984-85, I thought it would make her feel loved and comforted if I sang her lullabyes before we went to sleep. But she would be so moved it would make her sob, so I had to stop.
I just wanted a comforting song tonight. Losing friends to Islam is on my mind. And Nov. 26 will be the anniversary of the murder in the Mumbai massacre of my friend, Alan Scherr, and his daughter, Naomi, by Islamic terrorists. I see from Google that HBO had a special about it tonight — we don’t subscribe, but even if we did, I could not bear to watch it. It was bad enough last year, sitting next to my father’s hospital bed, seeing Alan’s photo on CNN, and praying, “Be someone else’s Alan — not my Alan, not my Alan, not my Alan.”
“Lullabye” by Cris Williamson:
Like a ship in the harbor, like a mother and child, like a light in the darkness, I’ll hold you awhile. We’ll rock on the water. I’ll cradle you deep and hold you while angels sing you to sleep.When Cris sings the lines first so her audience can then sing the line, line by line, she is using a technique my father tells me is called “lining out,” which poor churches used to use because they only had one hymnal for the entire congregation. I wish more singers did that at their concerts — the call and response interaction is so stirring and beautiful.
Re connecting the dots before the Ft. Hood massacre — Army says, 'There were dots?'
Interview with Kyra Knightley
see more Lol Celebs
'Drink the Kool-Aid' got its tragic meaning 31 years ago today
Today is the anniversary of the first time a sociopathic charismatic leader charmed and coerced his followers into mass suicide by getting them to drink poisoned Kool-Aid, even as they watched those who drank before them dying and saw their friends’ and fellows’ dead bodies piled higher and higher. Jim Jones, leader of the Christian cult, the Peoples’ Temple, led the Jonestown Massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, on Nov. 18, 1978, after Temple members murdered Congressman Leo Ryan.
“909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at a nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The victims included Congressman Leo Ryan, the first and only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States. Four other Temple members died in Georgetown at Jones’ command.”
I do think the analogy between Obama and Jim Jones is a fair one. Obama also has charmed and coerced his followers into giving him cult-like adoration and total obedience and electing him president. Those of us who did not drink the Kool-Aid have a lot of work to do to keep Nov. 4, 2008, from being the anniversary of America’s suicide as a capitalist democratic republic and the land of opportunity.
Today also is the first day that Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 50 percent in Quinnipiac University’s polling of registered voters — it fell to 48 percent who approve, while 42 percent disapprove. It appears that the Kool-Aid is wearing off for the independent voters who gave Obama his margin of victory last year. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the analysis.
P.S.
Real Kool-Aid is wonderful stuff. When my father was a Boy Scout leader, and then an Explorer Post leader, in the 1960’s, he took my late younger brother, Eric, and the rest of Troop 937 on ambitious hikes through the Smokey Mountains, on the Appalachian Trail and over 100 miles through Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. The symptoms of dehydration are insidious because you just start to lose it without realizing what is happening to you. To get the boys to drink enough water to stay properly hydrated, he gave them packets of Kool-Aid to put in the water in their canteens. It worked like a charm.
I bought Dad a walker yesterday
The walker is a nice one — it folds so I can easily put it in the car, and it has wheels on the front. Dad’s physical therapist said that the walkers with wheels help people with mobility impairments both with their walking and their breathing because it keeps the chest muscles in a better position. Dad hurt his back at the beginning of the month — he doesn’t remember how — and has been walking hunched over and leaning on his quad cane with both hands ever since.
By the way, I was wrong in my recent post that I should have fought the prednisone taper program — and I have apologized to the nurse practitioner, although I was just firm and not rude with her not just because it is wrong to be rude but because it is especially wrong and counter-productive to be rude to anyone who is trying to help you. The problem has nothing to do with arthritis and prednisone — it is lower back pain. I suspect he hurt his back doing something simple that he used to do with ease, like getting out of a chair, or bed, or that he thought it was simpler to get into his stair lift chair by climbing up a couple of steps and twisting onto the seat, instead of running it down to the first floor all the way.
Problems with walking can be deadly because they increase the likelihood of falling and breaking a bone. My mother died in April 2006 a few months after falling and breaking her left arm near the shoulder. After the shoulder replacement surgery, she stopped eating and drinking almost completely — her body was shutting down and she fought being given food and fluids, and vomited them up when she was pressed to take more than she wanted.
The treatment for Dad’s back pain is pain medication, which also has a couple of side effects that could lead to his death — I know he’s 93, so you are probably thinking that he has “93” and that would do the job: shut up! Pain medication can depress your breathing, which is an issue with people with obstructive sleep apnea. It also makes you constipated, which is an issue with someone with congestive heart failure, since straining to go increases your heart rate.
If you are wondering why I’m bringing this up, it’s after 4 pm and Dad isn’t up yet. OK, wait, thank God, he’s up — I hear him coming out of his bedroom. I’ve got to go make him … well, breakfast, since it’s his first meal today.
Please help Phyllis Chesler keep you safe by sending her money now
Let’s rush to Dr. Chesler’s aid with baskets — and an e-mail Inbox — filled with money to help her out. (In the film clip above, Uncle Billy arrives with the basket of money at 3:36.)
Phyllis Chesler, who has fought for equality for women and against totalitarianism and anti-semitism, needs financial help immediately to continue her work. Think of Jimmy Stewart standing on the snowy bridge in It’s a Wonderful Life, driven to his wit’s end by his very goodness and his enemy’s malice, weighing the possibility that he is worth more dead than alive. Now — whether you know it or not — YOU are one of the people she has helped selflessly and now Phyllis Chesler needs your financial help in order to continue her good work that blesses you in more ways than you will ever know.
Dr. Chesler tells her story eloquently at her own Web site and Pajamas Media — here is the point in her career where it looks like the bottom fell out because the liberal mainstream media turned on her for illuminating their creeping embrace of totalitarianisms:
I have been publishing books and articles for more than forty years. They have always been well and widely reviewed. This all changed in 2003, when I published my twelfth book, The New Anti-Semitism. Then, I suddenly became persona non grata in my publishing, media, activist, and social circles. In 2005, when I published my thirteenth book, The Death of Feminism, I condemned feminist leaders for having abandoned a universalist vision of human rights in favor of multi-cultural relativism. This meant that feminists would do anything to avoid being called “racists” or “Islamophobes.” Many feminists focused obsessively on the quintessential evil of Israel and America and, in so doing, sacrificed the cause of women’s rights both here and in the developing, Muslim world.
And thus, in 2003, I began writing for Frontpage magazine, City Journal, the Washington Times, Intellectual Conservative, National Review, and Pajamas Media where I am now happily ensconced.
I was no longer welcome at my old haunts such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I still occasionally published pieces in the Times of London, the London Guardian, and Canada’s Globe and Mail. The usual mainstream media opportunities were no longer mine to claim nor were the old watering holes.
Mind you: I have no regrets about being censored, blackballed, marginalized, or demonized as a “neo-conservative” or as an “Islamophobe.” Anyone who isn’t similarly demonized is part of the problem.
The following is a list of the issues, from 2001 to the present, on which Dr. Chesler was either the first, or among the first, to sound the alarm (most of the wording is hers — I’ve made some long sentences into the bullet list below):
- among the first to write about a possible second Holocaust of Jews in Israel the first to challenge the danger of memorializing a previous Holocaust instead of saving people from current and future Holocausts
- among the first to warn of the Iranian threat
- among the first to begin documenting the systematic bias against Israel, Jews, and America in the mainstream media, in the academy, and among progressives, including feminists
- the first to begin a systematic study of Islamic gender apartheid as it has penetrated the West in the form of honor killings and honor-related violence.
- among the handful who first analyzed the dangerous biases against Israel and America at the United Nations and among human rights groups
- the first to write about the psychoanalytic roots of Islamic suicide terrorism and the psychological dimension of jihad.
Donations to Dr. Chesler are tax-deductible. All donations of any amount are welcome — remember, even the smallest donation is a practical way of saying, “Thanks for safeguarding my freedom,” and “Keep it up!” All donations will be acknowledged. If you donate at least $500, Dr. Chesler will autograph your choice of one of her books and mail it to you.
The easiest way to donate is through PayPal. Dr. Chesler has a PayPal donation button at her Web site. Or, just login to your PayPal account, click the “Send” tab and fill in the amount you are donating and Dr. Chesler’s e-mail address:
pchesler@phyllis-chesler.com
Or you may send a check made out to “The Phyllis Chesler Organization,” which is Dr. Chesler’s 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization. Mail your checks to Dr. Chesler in care of her lawyers at the following address:
Dr. Phyllis Chesler Bender and Rosenthal 451 Park Avenue South NYC 10016Your donations will support Dr. Chesler so that she may continue to inform Americans and Westerners about the following dangers we need to understand to safeguard our freedoms:
- the danger of jihad and terrorism
- the nature of Islamic gender and religious apartheid.
Your donations also will be used to help Dr. Chesler to continue to find, work with, and support Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. Dr. Chesler says she “absolutely cannot continue without your help.”
Be very afraid of what your world will be like if Dr. Chesler does not get the financial support she needs to continue her work. Invest in your freedom and the future of America and give generously to Dr. Chesler now.
Cassandra has come out as a lesbian at last
Well, that’s how the Left will spin the story, on account of her keeping so much Villainous Company, including yours truly, she was carried away by all the guilt-by-association, which only flows to the Right and never to the Left.
I've been craving Pattymelt!
I love those nice young gay men in Chicago at HillBuzz with all my heart and I love, love, LOVE their guest blogger, Patricia Melton, whose nickname is “Pattymelt.” Well! It’s been months and months since her last report from the wilds of Ohio and I have been craving me some Pattymelt something fierce. So, tonight I am overjoyed to see that HillBuzz is serving up Pattymelt!