Always wrong.
I wrote about Obama scrambling to get to the podium before midnight, to give a hasty speech about a minor government function but forgot to post it. Now is a fitting time to repost it because he's being played like a fiddle yet again by holding a press conference to immortalize the birther insanity. He may as well have unveiled a towering statue dedicated to his enemies titled "Kick Me."
His skill at turning myth into reality is staggering. Rather than dispelling the war on terror, rather than ending the lie of unlimited Presidential power, nor abolishing torture as a legitimate tactic, he solidifies a cloud of poison lies into bedrock policy. He now takes what was the hot air generated by Internet counter-information and solidifies it into a legitimate topic of discussion. Because Obama has elevated the very pike his enemies want to skewer him with, Donald Trump's comments on his birth certificate are no longer the raving of a lunatic but a policy platform statement by a candidate.
By continuing so many of Bush's criminal policies and so masterfully enabling his political enemies, Obama is both his own worst enemy and possibly ours.
On the government shutdown, April 9th:
President Obama spoke briefly last night about the passing of the annual budget, and the TV coverage missed not just one thing, more like an entire herd of elephants in the room:
1) The President of the United States scrambled to put together a speech about a completely mundane function of government.
2) There is a sense that the fight is over, that the crisis is averted, when in fact this act of sabotage has recently been used before and will be used repeatedly as the new filibuster.
3) He and other Democrats meekly thanked the Republicans for averting the crisis they threatened to cause. This feels like the bank bailouts, when they asked to get paid for manufacturing a financial meltdown.
4) Every time a Democrat doesn't march in lock step with the fanatical neoconservative agenda, the GOP will throw a temper tantrum and threaten to shut down the government. They should be held in contempt for this stunt.