Here’s a great clip of “some common sense” from your average taxpayer:

Obama had another one of his usual bullcrap-laden speeches last night, which is no surprise given his irresistible attraction to the media.  But, here’s a nice surprise:  the media’s irresistible attraction to Obama may finally have reached its breaking point with the Libyan war.

AP put out not one, but two distinct reports, both extremely critical of his speech (to the point of virtually calling Obama a liar).

One of them is the straight-up “FACT CHECK: How Obama’s Libya claims fit the facts“, which debunks many lies spewed by Obama during the speech, such as these excerpts (click the link for the full text):

OBAMA: “Our most effective alliance, NATO, has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and no-fly zone. … Going forward, the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone and protecting civilians on the ground will transition to our allies and partners, and I am fully confident that our coalition will keep the pressure on Gadhafi’s remaining forces. In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role.”

THE FACTS: As by far the pre-eminent player in NATO, and a nation historically reluctant to put its forces under operational foreign command, the United States will not be taking a back seat in the campaign even as its profile diminishes for public consumption. . . .

___

OBAMA: “Our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives.”

THE FACTS: Even as the U.S. steps back as the nominal leader, reduces some assets and fires a declining number of cruise missiles, the scope of the mission appears to be expanding and the end game remains unclear.

Despite insistences that the operation is only to protect civilians, the airstrikes now are undeniably helping the rebels to advance. U.S. officials acknowledge that the effect of air attacks on Gadhafi’s forces — and on the supply and communications links that support them — is useful if not crucial to the rebels. . . .

___

OBAMA: Seeking to justify military intervention, the president said the U.S. has “an important strategic interest in preventing Gadhafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia.” He added: “I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.”

THE FACTS: Obama did not wait to make that case to Congress, despite his past statements that presidents should get congressional authorization before taking the country to war, absent a threat to the nation that cannot wait.

“The president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” he told The Boston Globe in 2007 in his presidential campaign. “History has shown us time and again … that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the legislative branch.”

Obama’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, said Sunday that the crisis in Libya “was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest.”

___

OBAMA: “And tonight, I can report that we have stopped Gadhafi’s deadly advance.”

THE FACTS: The weeklong international barrage has disabled Libya’s air defenses, communications networks and supply chains. But Gadhafi’s ground forces remain a potent threat to the rebels and civilians, according to U.S. military officials.

Army Gen. Carter Ham, the top American officer overseeing the mission, told The New York Times on Monday that “the regime still overmatches opposition forces militarily. The regime possesses the capability to roll them back very quickly. Coalition air power is the major reason that has not happened.” . . .

___

OBAMA: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

THE FACTS: Mass violence against civilians has also been escalating elsewhere, without any U.S. military intervention anticipated.

More than 1 million people have fled the Ivory Coast, where the U.N. says forces loyal to the incumbent leader, Laurent Gbagbo, have used heavy weapons against the population and more than 460 killings have been confirmed of supporters of the internationally recognized president, Alassane Ouattara.

The Obama administration says Gbagbo and Gadhafi have both lost their legitimacy to rule. But only one is under attack from the U.S.

Presidents typically pick their fights according to the crisis and circumstances at hand, not any consistent doctrine about when to use force in one place and not another. They have been criticized for doing so — by Obama himself.

In his pre-presidential book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said the U.S. will lack international legitimacy if it intervenes militarily “without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands.”

He questioned: “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?”

Now, such questions are coming at him.

The other report, entitled, “Analysis: Obama doesn’t mention Libyan rebels“, contained some lines such as these:

…the war he described Monday doesn’t quite match the fight the United States is in.

It also doesn’t line up with the conflict Obama himself had seemed to presage, when he expressly called for Moammar Gadhafi’s overthrow or resignation. Obama’s stated goals stop well short of that. And although Obama talked of the risks of a long war, he did not say just when or on what terms the United States would leave Libya.

…If the purpose of the U.N.-sanctioned military action is to protect civilians, does that include pro-Gadhafi civilians who are likely to be endangered in places like Sirte that are in the rebels’ crosshairs? If not, it is difficult to see the Western intervention as a neutral humanitarian act not aligned with the rebels.

…the role of Western air power then went beyond that initial humanitarian aim, to in effect provide air cover for the rebels while pounding Gadhafi forces in a bid to break their will or capacity to fight.

…Obama still faces questions about why Libya and not Yemen, or not Syria. One of his closest national security advisers, Denis McDonough, told reporters Monday that the administration doesn’t “get very hung up on this question of precedent.”

 

 

 

I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army…

Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting:  yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, picked up on it… but, yet, somehow still found a most bizarre way to “link” one of the perpetrators to none other than Sarah Palin, the liberals’ favorite scapegoat for everything.

The caption for one of their photos of Cpl. Jeremy Morlock reads, “Morlock was the kind of bad-news kid who the Army might have passed on. He grew up not far from Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska; his sister hung out with Bristol, and Morlock played hockey against Track.”

What makes this entirely shameful and inexcusable is the sheer transparency of the stunt; any intelligent person reading this can clearly see that this insane soldier has absolutely nothing to do with Palin other than his geographic proximity to her, and ends up wondering what in the world the editors at Rolling Stone could be thinking? Are they deliberately trying to smear the reputation of their own publication?

This is so bizarre for so many reasons. First of all, is Rolling Stone implying that Sarah Palin has anything to do with this sadist simply because they come from the same town?  Is Rolling Stone therefore implying that Wasilla is a town of sadistic, crazy people?

Next is the fact that Wasilla is a very small town with a population of about 7,000 people.  So, the fact that they grew up “not far” from each other pretty much goes without saying in a town that small. So, too, is the high probability that they might have relatives who are friends with each other, or who might have played hockey against each other. I’m surprised that Rolling Stone had nothing to say about the church they might have attended growing up…

So, ultimately, not only is there no link to Obama in the same way the media was so quick to pin Abu Ghraib on Bush… but, they actually go so blatantly and outrageously far out of their way to somehow find some cockamamie way to connect someone involved to anyone on the right!

That this “news” is already popular on some foaming-at-the-mouth, lunatic left blogs is not too surprising. But, for Rolling Stone to join their rabid ranks is just a disgrace.

A disgrace not just for Rolling Stone, but—if left unaddressed and un-reproached—for journalism itself.

The Weekly Standard’s “The Scrapbook”, always a great source for a cynical laugh or two, had this to say about Obama’s Sinophilia:

Buried at the end of an otherwise milquetoast New York Times article (“Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East,” which THE SCRAPBOOK supposes is a generous interpretation of the fact that there’s no outward sign the White House has any clue whatsoever) was this jarring nugget of reporting:

Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”

Indeed. When you’re president of China and you’re concerned that people in the hinterlands are bitterly clinging to their guns ’n’ religion, you can simply take those things away. When you’re president of China, all radio is National Public Radio. When you’re president of China, you don’t have to worry about annoying off-year elections. When you’re president of China . . . We could go on.

No doubt some readers are stunned that a democratically elected president would empathize with the leader of the deadliest regime in human history. (In the wake of new archival evidence unearthed last year, one prominent University of Hong Kong professor now places the death toll of Mao’s Great Leap Forward at 45 million.)

However, THE SCRAPBOOK can’t say it was astonished at Obama’s lament. Wistful affection for China’s authoritarian government has been à la mode among the punditocracy for so long now, that it was only a matter of time before this sentiment reached the top. The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman has made a cottage industry out of China-envy, churning out column after column on the topic. “Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today,” he famously wrote in Walter Duranty’s newspaper.

In particular, China’s high speed rail fetish and pronouncements about global warming have captivated American liberals — the reality of China’s horrific environmental and traffic problems notwithstanding. The Nation’s Washington editor Christopher Hayes, for instance, has observed, “Uncomfortable thought: If China were to become democratic, its climate policy would get much worse.” Unlike Friedman, Hayes at least acknowledges he’s conflicted.

But the Walter Duranty Prize for Useful Idiocy must be bestowed on Washington Post wunderkind Ezra Klein, who took a junket to China last year. After a guided tour of a government-planned condo development—an almost literal Potemkin village—Klein breathlessly reported: “A conversation with some residents revealed that they didn’t just get one free apartment in the new building. They got four free apartments, three of which they were now renting out. And medical coverage. And money for furnishings. And a food stipend. And—I’m not kidding, by the way—birthday cakes on their birthdays. Sweet deal.”

Who among us, let alone the Leader of the Free World, is immune to the allure of free birthday cake?

Here’s a little comic relief: President Obama ended up getting locked out of the White House when he returned unexpectedly from a trip.

(Now if only we could make it a permanent thing…)

The video on Youtube generated some great comments:

the ghost of lincoln was tired of obama’s crap.

Classic! Come 2013, the American people will change the locks so he will never get back in.

Lock him out for good!

The latest news out of Afghanistan is going to be really interesting to follow, if only to see how the media handles it.

According to the Guardian and other (so far relatively few) sources, pictures have now made their way out of Afghanistan (courtesy of Germany’s Der Spiegel) showing brutal and psychopathic activities by U.S. armed forces over the last year or so, including premeditated murder (after torture) of defenseless Afghan civilians, posing with dead Afghans, and taking “trophies” from the bodies of dead Afghans (fingers, teeth, etc.).

In fact, speculation is that the backlash over these pictures “could be more damaging than after the Abu Ghraib scandal”.

For that reason, in comparing it to Abu Ghraib, it’s interesting to note that so far this is not in any of the U.S. media’s top headlines, as they were in the days of Bush’s presidency; that so far there haven’t been any fingers pointing at Obama as the commander in chief, as they were in the days of Bush’s tenure; that so far there hasn’t been any accusations of this being “Obama’s unnecessary war” despite his “promises” to get us out of the region, as there were in the days of “Bush’s ‘unnecessary’ war”, etc.

So, will the mainstream media treat Obama the same way?  Or will they employ their usual double-standard? The suspense is just killing me…

Maybe the mainstream media will surprise me… who knows. After all, stranger things are happening (like some Democrats calling for Obama’s impeachment)!

A report from Fox News today, citing the Times of London, has revealed that “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah reportedly told President Obama not to humiliate Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the U.S. withdrew its aid program, worth $1.5 billion annually.”

Besides the obvious question of what the hell are we doing sending one and a half billion of our tax dollars a year to a dictatorship in the Middle East, one cannot help but wonder why Obama did not call Abdullah’s bluff on the “threat”?

In fact, Obama’s response should have been: “You call that a threat?! Sure! Go ahead and bankroll Egypt. In fact, why haven’t you been doing it all along, you cheap, pompous big talker?”

On a separate note: seriously, if Abdullah has that kind of money to spare (which he clearly does), why isn’t he helping his impoverished Arab brethren in his region? Why is he simply content to sit his fat inconsiderate ass back and let the Americans pour money there instead?

James Taranto of the WSJ’s Best of the Web Today is reporting on three new partisan commentators taking up the cause for the release of Obama’s archival birth certificate.

He writes:

Three partisan commentators are calling on the state of Hawaii to release President Obama’s archival birth certificate, Mediaite reports. What makes this worthy of note is that all three are liberal Democrats: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page and Mother Jones’s David Corn.

On “Hardball” yesterday, host Matthews noted the report that new governor Neil Abercrombie was looking to “end this nonsense” (we also noted it). Matthews asked his two guests: “I don’t understand why the governor doesn’t just say, ‘Snap it up, who’s ever over there in the department of records, send me a copy right now’? And why doesn’t the president just say, ‘Send me a copy right now?’ Why doesn’t [press secretary Robert] Gibbs and [White Obama aide David] Axelrod say, ‘Let’s just get this crappy story dead’?”

They resisted at first, but eventually Matthews brought them around:

Matthews: I’m just asking the obvious question. Why not–will there be any harm done by releasing the original document?

Page: No.

Corn: I will take the brave position of saying that if they can find it, they should put it out there, and then we can make even more fun of the birthers.

Page: I’ll take the brave position of saying, yes, put it out there, and the birthers are still not going to believe it. They’re going to say, “Well, that governor is part of the conspiracy, too, because he’s a Democrat.”

So we now have three or four liberal Democrats–the “Hardball” trio and possibly the Aloha governor–taking what had been a birtherian position in favor of releasing the archival certificate.

Our view has long been that the birthers are playing a sucker’s game–that they are aiding Obama by making it easier for his supporters to depict his critics as wackos and divert attention from real questions about his political character. This change in liberal attitudes may be a sign that the game is no longer working to Obama’s advantage. It could be that his baneful policies have led more Americans to harbor doubts about his very legitimacy.

Granted, many people are skeptical of the skeptics—and sometimes even embarrassed by their incessant demand for the birth certificate. But, even a broken clock like Chris Matthews is right twice a day, and let’s face it: all this stubbornness by Obama, his administration, and the Hawaiian authorities starts to look… well, a little guilty… after a while. After all, when it’s that easy to end the debate and leave the birthers with egg on their faces, why wouldn’t they do it?? Unless they… can’t?

The Director of Hawaii’s Department of Health at the time this all started, Chiyome Fukino, issued a statement saying she had “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii state Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record.” Okay, if it’s that accessible that she has seen it with her naked eyes, then how much harder is it to take it and bring it to the same press conference at which she issued that statement?

Not that I’m ready to start beating the drum myself on a full-time basis, but like many Americans at this point, I can’t help but wonder why all the suspicious diversions and “he saw, she saw” when there’s an easy way to end the speculation?

Come on, Obama, prove us all wrong and make us all look foolish. Show us your birth certificate!

London’s Daily Mail is reporting that Prince William excluded the Obamas from his wedding invitation list.

Can you blame him?

He was probably just weary of the gift that Obama would likely be bringing. Probably a signed Obama campaign poster, or copies of his latest books, or another iPod full of his speeches.

(Interestingly enough, you would think that with Obama’s super-sized ego, he would consider his presence alone to be enough of a gift! He must have overlooked that option in the past…)

As if Obama’s response to this year’s election blowout wasn’t enough proof that he’s completely out of touch with reality, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol serves up the icing on the cake, with Obama at a press conference following his global spanking in South Korea:

At his November 12 press conference in Seoul, President Obama was asked the following question by CBS’s Chip Reid: “What was the number-one complaint, concern, or piece of advice that you got from foreign leaders about the U.S. economy and your stewardship of the economy?”

Whereupon the president began his response with a complaint: “What about compliments?” he asked. “You didn’t put that in the list.”

Well, soorrrrrry, Mr. President.

Poor President Obama. He’s (allegedly) getting all these compliments from his fellow world leaders—and the press just isn’t interested in having him tell us about them. True, President Obama became accustomed, as a candidate, to having a compliant press corps. But even so. After a contentious economic summit where the president was forced to defend the Fed’s ill-advised monetary policies, a summit that followed on the heels of the biggest midterm electoral defeat ever suffered by an elected first-term president, a defeat partly due to his ill-advised fiscal policies, did Obama really expect a reporter to stand up at the end of last week and ask, “Mr. President, what compliments did you receive from foreign leaders?”

That is, apparently, exactly what the president expected.

And that has us worried. We’ve assumed the president would learn from the voters’ repudiation of his party on November 2. We’ve assumed he would learn from reality’s refutation of his policies over the last two years. But the vanity that Jonathan V. Last elaborates on elsewhere in this issue seems to be standing in the way of such learning. President Obama has been mugged both by the voters and by reality—but he thinks that he’s still looking good, that he deserves plaudits, and that the only problem is people don’t know about all the compliments he’s been getting.

It may be true, as Mark Twain observed, that “an occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one’s self-respect.” So let’s hope the compliments the president claims he was getting from his fellow leaders have done the job of bolstering his self-respect. Perhaps now he can get on with doing what’s right for the country.

It’s not that hard. The president can compromise with Republicans in Congress to extend current tax rates for the next few years, which would give the economy a boost. He can—with the support of most economists—urge the Fed to stop the quantitative easing before we really destroy the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. He can engage in a healthy competition with the Republican House in cutting unnecessary domestic discretionary spending. He can stand up to the false and dangerous allure of cutting defense when our military is stretched thin, and when our defense R&D and procurement are underfunded. As commander in chief, he can—with Republican support—lead us to success in Afghanistan.

All the president has to do is abandon some foolish ideological presuppositions, get down to work, and stop fishing for compliments. If he did so, he’d end up getting genuine compliments—from us and, we dare say, from the American people. And then his self-respect would have a firmer ground than vanity.

It seems that Obama’s idea of “bridging” our country’s gap with the Muslim countries is to mix in some Israel-bashing into his speeches there. After all, what better way is there to chum up to Muslim countries than to appeal to their hatred of Jews?

Obama, who warned the Israeli government that “this kind of activity [housing construction in Jerusalem] is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations”, should take a look in the mirror. This kind of activity from the U.S. president—unnecessarily ostracizing one party in an unfair and unbalanced manner—is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations either.

The WSJ had a nice, succinct piece on this today:

In recent weeks, Indonesia has endured a tsunami and volcanic eruption. On the positive side, it has a booming economy, a vibrant democracy and a welcoming investment climate. And because this Muslim-majority country has a long tradition of religious moderation and secularism, it serves as a model, or rebuke, to much of the rest of the Islamic world.

So what did President Obama talk about upon arriving in Jakarta yesterday? Israeli construction projects.

Why Mr. Obama chose to pick this fight from the distance of Southeast Asia is anyone’s guess. Israel’s decision to proceed with the building of some 1,000 housing units in the Har Homa neighborhood of municipal Jerusalem—a “settlement” only in the most jaundiced sense of the term—was made in October. Israeli governments of both the right and left have encouraged similar building projects since Jerusalem was reunified in 1967. And construction of the new housing will not begin for months if not years.

None of that deterred Mr. Obama, who warned the Israeli government that “this kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations.” The State Department also chimed in, saying it was “deeply disappointed,” while Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat added that the new construction proves “that Israel chooses settlements, not peace.” This is the same Mr. Erekat who recently wrote an admiring letter to Ahmed Sa’adat, the mastermind of the 2001 assassination of an Israeli cabinet member.

All Israel has done is insist that Jews have a right to live anywhere in their capital city, something that might be controversial in Ramallah but ought not to be in Washington. Mr. Obama’s public endorsement of the Palestinian view of what constitutes a settlement only puts the negotiated peace he seeks further out of reach.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian government forbids Israeli citizens from visiting their country. If Mr. Obama wants to bridge the distance between Jakarta and Jerusalem, maybe he can start with that one.

With the apparent free pass that they got from Obama’s Justice Department to intimidate white voters, the New Black Panther Party was at it again yesterday.  This is absolutely incredible. Kudos to Obama and his henchmen for encouraging more lawless behavior.

What a wonderful day it is today.  Wins by Tea Party-backed candidates Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Dan Coats, Ron Johnson, and others have boosted the conservative presence in the Senate while picking up a whopping 60 seats in the House!

True, Sharon Angle’s loss to Harry Reid was a notable disappointment amid the celebration, as that would have been a particularly satisfying win. But, at least we have the satisfaction of claiming Obama’s old Senate seat!

And, yes, Christine O’Donnell lost, as many expected she would, but across the continent Carly Fiorina pulled off a great achievement even despite her own loss, being able to come as close as she did with an incumbent Democrat in one of the most liberal states of the country!

All in all, this referendum on Obama’s policies and direction resulted in a clear and resounding “NO,  YOU CAN’T”. The question remains: will Obama recognize this for what it is, or will he stubbornly persist in forcing his unwanted ideologies on the rest of the country? With neither humility and compromise being any of Obama’s stronger assets, we can pretty much guess how the next two years are going to play out…

By now, we’ve all heard Obama’s car analogy ad nauseam. It’s getting so elaborately bad that I seriously think that Obama and his advisers and speechwriters must be either brain dead… or just that they don’t watch any TV or read any newspapers to know that the whole country is sick of this stupid-to-begin-with analogy. Clueless. And do you really want such a clueless buffoon shuttling you around in a motor vehicle?!?  (Sorry, I just had to borrow the analogy haha.)

The mockery of it (which, again, Obama clearly doesn’t hear about), just gets funnier and funnier in the process. Check out this analysis by the great James Taranto of the WSJ in his Best of the Web Today column:

By defeating Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama was supposed to have supplanted the Clintons. Instead he seems to have been assimilated by them. Lately Bill Clinton has been everywhere campaigning for Democrats. And, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports, Obama turns out to be borrowing heavily from Clinton’s 1994 midterm campaign:

“It’s up to you to remember that this election is a choice,” Obama said in a recent speech. “It’s a choice between the past and the future; a choice between hope and fear; a choice between falling backwards and moving forwards. And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward. I don’t want to go backward.”

Compare that to this common Clinton passage from ’94: “Ladies and gentlemen, this election, all over America, represents a choice, a choice between hope and fear . . . between whether we’re going forward or we’re going to go back. I think I know the answer to that. You want to keep going forward.”

Of course, this is blandly generic rhetoric. “This election is a choice” is tautological, and it would be highly unusual for a politician to call for going backward in fear. But it also turns out that Obama’s most vivid metaphor bears a striking resemblance to one Clinton used in 1994.

Clinton: “You know, if you drive your car and there’s a lot of stuff on the windshield, you could think it’s dark outside when the sun shining. . . . That’s what they’ve done. They’ve put a lot of dirt on America’s windshield. We got to clean it off between now and Tuesday. Will you help? Will you do your part? Will you go forward? . . . Think about it like this: Every one of you is in the driver’s seat.”

And, of course, Obama: Having driven the car into the ditch, Republicans were “kicking dirt down into the ditch, kicking dirt in our faces, but we kept on pushing. Finally we got this car up on level ground. And, yes, it’s a little beat up. . . . But it’s pointing in the right direction. And now we’ve got the Republicans tapping us on the shoulder, saying, ‘we want the keys back.’ You can’t have the keys back. You don’t know how to drive. You can ride with us if you want, but you got to sit in the back seat. We’re going to put middle-class America in the front seat. . . . I’m going forwards, with all of you.”

Incidentally, Obama has come in for some criticism for that new flourish, “you got to sit in the back seat.” His critics suggest it is reminiscent of the pre-Rosa Parks era, when blacks had to sit in the back of the bus. But as we all know, the only thing Obama does with buses is throw people under them. In a car, as blogger Tom Maguire notes, the guy who drives while others sit in the back is a chauffeur.

Yesterday at the White House, CNN’s Dan Lothian quizzed press secretary Robert Gibbs about the metaphor:

Lothian: Robert, to follow up on the story about the Republicans driving the car into the ditch, the President has now been behind the wheel of this car for two years. At what point does he stop–

Gibbs: Well, just — I would say pushing the car out of the ditch first, right? Yes.

Lothian: Right, but he has been trying to move the car–

Gibbs: Let’s be faithful to the story.

Lothian: So he has been moving the car–he has been moving this car now for two years. At what point does he stop talking about the people who were last driving that car? I mean, does this continue after the midterm elections?

Gibbs: Well, Dan–

Lothian: It becomes his car and he’s behind the wheel.

Gibbs: No, and–look, there’s an Obama bumper sticker on the car; we get that.

So wait a second–there’s an Obama bumper sticker on the car? Wouldn’t that mean the guy who drove it into a ditch was a Democrat, or at least Colin Powell? Or is Gibbs suggesting that the Republicans were driving a Democrat’s car? And could someone please pass the Slurpee?

Then we get yet another metaphor:

Lothian: You would think you would be talking about the incremental steps of getting that car down the road now, as opposed to how that car got in the ditch. It gets to be somewhat of a broken record, does it not?

Gibbs: No–well, the record of the last eight years was pretty broken, I would give you that.

At least now we know the car in question is a 1956 Chrysler.

Anyway, to return to the main road, Clinton was in Chicago yesterday for a “get out the vote rally” that WLS-AM’s Bill Cameron describes, Bob Dolefully, as “the most unenthusiastic WLS veteran political reporter Bill Cameron has ever witnessed”:

Clinton was an hour late for the Tuesday afternoon rally at the Palmer House and droned on for another hour, sending dozens of the few hundred Democrats in attendance for the exits.

“Well, all we’re really asking for is two more years, that’s a total of four, to get us out of the hole and get us into the future. That’s half as much time as you gave them to dig the hole. Seems fair to us,” Clinton said.

Oh no, another metaphor! And a deep question: If it takes eight years to dig a hole, how long does it take to dig half a hole?

In an interview with ABC News during the Chicago visit, Clinton sang another familiar refrain:

The former president said Democrats are having a hard time getting their message out, in part, because the news media focuses more on politics than on the substantive differences between candidates. He said he can relate to President Obama’s troubles.

“Anybody who has ever been there will tell you how hard it is to get a fact-based message out,” Clinton said.

“It’s what happened to me in ’94. When you get in, you are wanting to do things,” he said. “There’s almost an inverse relationship in how much you accomplish and what people know about it.”

Where have we heard that before? Lots of places. From Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker: “It is often said that Obama–in 2008, a gifted orator with minimal national experience–has been better, as President, at ‘governing’ than at ‘politics.’ ” From Kevin Sack at the New York Times: “The Democrats’ inability to control the messaging during the legislative debate [over ObamaCare] bled unstaunched into the campaign, as Republicans appealed to base voters with a bumper-sticker pledge to repeal the law or, if unable, to drain its financing.” Even from the Onion: “Democrats: ‘If We’re Gonna Lose, Let’s Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We’ve Made.’ ”

The Democrats’ message, in short, is that the Democrats are really lousy at delivering a convincing message. Since nobody finds this message convincing, it has a certain surface plausibility. But “We’re really lousy at delivering a message” is a lousy message–so the problem actually is one of substance, not delivery.

What gives with all the Clinton nostalgia–specifically, nostalgia for the 1994, election, which was the low point of his presidency? Maybe the Democrats have already written off this year’s election and are really nostalgic for 1995 and 1996, when they staged a comeback. “It will be a great mistake to count us out,” Clinton told ABC News. “Reports of our demise have been exaggerated.” That was true in 1994, after the election, and maybe he and his party are hoping it will be true a week from now too.

It’s also possible that they fear even bigger losses. The Hill reports that its latest poll of 42 toss-up districts “points to a massive Republican wave that, barring an extraordinary turnaround, will deliver crushing nationwide defeats for President Obama’s party. The data suggest a GOP pickup that could easily top 50 seats.” The GOP pickup in 1994 was 52 seats. If the Hill estimates are at all cautious, 1994 could end up looking good for the Dems by comparison.

Rick Richman, blogging on Commentary Magazine’s web site, had this incredible post yesterday:

Having kept a running count of the number of times the Obama administration has refused to answer if it is bound by the 2004 Bush letter (22 times so far), it is a pleasure to report that it took only six attempts yesterday to get the State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, to answer whether the U.S. recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.

Crowley’s first response tried to throw reporters off the track with the tantalizing suggestion that George Mitchell just might go — it would be logical — back to the region at some point. Asked a second time, Crowley responded that we “recognize [Israel’s] aspiration.” On the reporters’ third through fifth tries, Crowley proved hard of hearing. On the sixth attempt, after a 14-word preface, he finally responded: “yes.”

QUESTION: P.J., do you recognize Israel as a Jewish state and will you try to convince the Palestinians to recognize it?

MR. CROWLEY: We will continue our discussions with the parties. I would expect, following up on the Arab League meetings of late last week that George Mitchell will go to the region at some point. I’m not announcing anything, but I — it would be logical for us to follow up directly with the parties, see where they are. [Blah, blah, blah.]

QUESTION: And do you recognize Israel as a Jewish state?

MR. CROWLEY: We recognize the aspiration of the people of Israel. It has — it’s a democracy. In that democracy, there’s a guarantee of freedom and liberties to all of its citizens. But as the Secretary has said, we understand that — the special character of the state of Israel.

QUESTION: Is that a yes or no?

QUESTION: P.J., it’s — do you want to answer his question or –

QUESTION: Did you say yes or no to that question from Michel?

MR. CROWLEY: Hmm?

QUESTION: Michel’s question was a yes or no sort of question. I was wondering whether that was a yes or no.

MR. CROWLEY: We recognize that Israel is a – as it says itself, is a Jewish state, yes.

The original question had a second part to it: “ … and will you try to convince the Palestinians to recognize it?” After a reporter repeated the question, it took Crowley 162 halting words to respond:

QUESTION: … Does the U.S. want the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?

MR. CROWLEY: Look, I will be happy to go back over and offer some — I’m trying — I’m not making any news here. We have recognized the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people. It is a state for other citizens of other faiths as well. But this is the aspiration of the — what Prime Minister Netanyahu said yesterday is, in essence, the — a core demand of the Israeli Government, which we support, is a recognition that Israel is a part of the region, acceptance by the region of the existence of the state of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and that is what they want to see through this negotiation. We understand this aspiration and the prime minister was talking yesterday about the fact that just as they aspire to a state for the Jewish people in the Middle East, they understand the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own.

Why is it so hard to get the Obama administration to reiterate basic commitments the U.S. has made — in writing — to Israel? The Bush letter stated that the U.S. is “strongly committed to … [Israel] as a Jewish state.” This administration has to be prodded six times to answer whether it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state and — after an affirmative response is extracted — cannot give a one-word answer on whether it wants the Palestinians to recognize one as well.