The Obama snub

When I heard the news Thursday that former South African president Nelson Mandela had died and then yesterday that Barack Obama was going to South Africa for this leader’s funeral with wife Michelle in tow, I was thinking that there was another former world leader’s funeral that he had recently missed. Breitbart reminded me of the details:

Interestingly, the Obamas did not got to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s funeral back in April of this year. In fact, no high ranking official from the administration was sent to the Iron Lady’s funeral.

For the Iron Lady, the official United States delegation included former Secretaries of State George Schulz and James Baker III; a month earlier a sitting and former member of Congress comprised part of the delegation sent to Venezuela for the funeral of strongman Hugo Chavez. So the actual visit of the Obamas for Mandela’s service is sort of a “big f—ing deal” and will require a much larger entourage.

So why is it suddenly so important that Obama go to South Africa? The cynical will make the case that Barack is America’s luckiest president – every time something he’s botched threatens his election or his approval rating, the world comes along and gives him something to grasp. For example, the Chris Christie embrace of Obama after Superstorm Sandy blunted whatever momentum Mitt Romney had just before the 2012 election.

Now the utter failure and unpopularity of Obamacare will be broomed from the headlines for a few days, with the timing of the Obamas’ trip to South Africa coinciding nicely with the start of his annual Hawaiian Christmas holiday. This will give him almost an extra week either out of Washington or preparing for one trip or the other.  All this will give his brain trust a chance to figure out new ways to blame Republicans, which will be handy because a budget battle awaits Obama’s return from Hawaii.

Among the rest of us, the reaction to Mandela’s death has run the gamut, although those in the political realm have tended to be apologists or politicized the death. Personally, it didn’t affect me one way or the other, as Mandela was a leader of another time and his country isn’t really a leader on the world stage. Nor was it completely unexpected as he had been ill for several months.

But I just found the priority Barack Obama made in attending his funeral and flying our flags at half-staff in Mandela’s honor a little puzzling, considering some of the other deaths the world has seen lately.

Moreover, we may yet see the passings of former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush – both of whom will turn 80 next year – and it will be interesting to see how they are honored by Barack Obama if this should happen during the remainder of Obama’s term.

The panderer

If I drank coffee and were doing so at the same time I were reading this note from Michelle Obama, I would have spit it out all over my keyboard. The subject line was “Michael, you’re amazing.”

Michael, thank you for an amazing week.

Barack and I felt your energy up there.

But we can’t let that energy fade — because in just 60 days, voters will decide who gets to serve in the White House for the next four years. So every single one of us has got to pull together to finish strong.

I know you feel the urgency: Already this week, supporters like you have made more than 500,000 grassroots donations to build this campaign. So if you’re fired up, let’s keep it going — let’s see how many people we can get to show their support by the end of the day.

It goes on to ask me to “chip in $5 or more.” Well, like the 368,000 people who gave up looking for work last month because nothing was out there, I’m sort of tapped out. Something tells me those “500,000 grassroots donations” are a number sort of like the 96,000 jobs added last month – a figure to be revised downward in subsequent months.

My energy is spent on another mission: trying to convince readers that the current regime is going in the wrong direction and install a new administration which has a chance – albeit slim, given all the inertia stacked against it – to take the first steps in setting things right. (I’ll have more on my personal efforts tomorrow.)

Perhaps this is something which maybe I just don’t get, but logic would dictate to me that if someone has failed at every effort in building the economy back up from a slump, they would be booted out. Yet the numbers remain fairly stagnant for our President as he always seems to run in a 44% to 46% range in the Rasmussen Poll, as does Mitt Romney. Okay, Romney wasn’t my first choice, either, but to think that four more years of creating the world’s largest ineptocracy is going to create a better world for our children? I just don’t understand it. What is it about the benefits of limited government that people don’t get? I do, and many others I know feel the same way.

So if Barack was really feeling my energy up there he would have ditched the speech rolling across his teleprompter and said, “Okay, I understand that I have created a complete clusterfuck the last three and a half years and I’m no longer worthy of your support. I hereby decline your nomination for President.” Of course, he didn’t, insisting he needed another four years to set things right. He wouldn’t, because he has no intention of setting things right; it makes much more sense to believe he would like to eliminate the “negative rights” of a constitutional republic and rule by fiat. Obama takes “Stroke of a pen. Law of the land. Kind of cool” to a new level, and he’ll probably be late for the Romney swearing-in signing Executive Orders as a lame duck.

And lame is a good word, because it describes our economy perfectly. That’s the best reason for regime change I can think of.