Spokesman Robert Gibbs about objectors to Oh-bama addressing school children:

“It’s a sad state of affairs that many in this country politically would rather start an ‘Animal House’ food fight rather than inspire kids to stay in school, to work hard, to engage parents to stay involved and to ensure that the millions of teachers that are making great sacrifices continue to be the best in the world.”

It’s in The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, where it picked up 420 comments as of 10:30 Monday night, the first of which, by “tropicgirl,” is quite good:

This would never have happened if people did not dislike the president so much. There are many reasons for that, and Glibbs [sic] needs to take responsibility for some of that dislike he has helped create, because of his sour attitude, along with the inexperienced, off-timing and condescending reputation those around the president have helped create. [Italics added]

Yes, these are flip wise guys, from Rahm E. on down.  Remember when gravitas was an issue?

The second commenter qualifies the first nicely, without shooting it down:

It’s not a matter of “liking” it’s a matter of “trusting.” I voted for him, regret it. The bottom line, “We – most of the American People” now, do not trust him.

If not most, then an awful lot.  He’s a jerk.

How we doin’?  Depends whom you ask.  Here’s a graph worth studying:

(Oops, not all of it prints, including note that says maroon dots are actual unemployment data, everything in blue was created by Obama’s economic team.)

It’s from Innocent Bystanders by way of Power Line, which notes that Biden says the stimulus is working better than expected, then adds:

Biden’s dissociation from reality is nearly complete, but one wonders: aren’t there any journalists who are capable of looking up the administration’s predictions and asking Biden fact-based questions? Or is that considered too much work? 

Yes.  Too much.

Biden also plays the morality card:

“I believe this was the right thing to do morally,” Biden said in a speech the White House billed as a major address. “It was also the smart thing to do economically.”

I wouldn’t say it that way.  I’d say it’s the right thing because it’s the smart thing, understood “we’d be derelict in our duty” if we didn’t do it.

But if it’s not working, it’s not smart, and therefore not right.  He’s better off leaving morality out of it.  It’s the last refuge of political scoundrels.

But what if “[t]he unemployment rate went up to 9.7% [in August], reversing the improvement we saw in July,” as Innocent B. says, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting?

And what if jobs are down too, as here?

Sign of government activity that is neither smart nor moral. 

Oh-bama is not welcome in schoolrooms in lots of places.   In the Detroit area,

Districts throughout the suburbs have been hit with complaints from parents who are worried about their children hearing a message from Obama that they won’t have a chance to preview.

I wouldn’t want him talking to my kids or grandchildren.  Don’t trust him.

The districts acknowledge that the message is intended to stress the importance of education and taking responsibility for learning. Some parents say the uproar is much ado about nothing.

Nope.  Nothing he and Axelrod do is about nothing.  Typical Democrats, always campaigning.  Stay away from kids.

Mike Reno, a member of the Rochester [MI] Board of Education, said the idea behind the message is noble, but the timing is bad because of the politically charged climate.

It will always be bad, because always politically charged.  Dems keep it that way. 

[Rory] Cooper [of Heritage Foundation] criticized Obama for pushing his message through both the official White House Web site and Organizing for America’s BarackObama.com. 

“Barack Obama needs to quit the perpetual campaign … he needs to choose which one he’s going to communicate with the American public through,” Cooper said.

But crisis mode suits them.  They dare not waste crises, because those are the golden harvest times for statist schemes.

For instance, health care legislation will (a) save money and (b) provide care for all.  Sure.  Increase services at lower cost.  No.  The cost of snake oil is what should worry us.  It’s going higher and higher, always does when Dems are in charge.

Later: I see Ann Coulter has an idea about that talking to school children, related to one of Oh-bama’s splendid czar choices.

Obama admin putting screws to Honduras:

The most recent example of the Obama-style Good Neighbor Policy was the announcement last week that visa services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135 million in bilateral aid might be cut.

But these are only the public examples of its hardball tactics. Much nastier stuff is going on behind the scenes, practiced by a presidency that once promised the American people greater transparency and a less interventionist foreign policy.

And Hillary’s State Dept. (I think it’s hers) is contributing:

Prominent Hondurans, including leading members of the business community, complain that a State Department official has been pressuring them to push the interim government to accept the return of Mr. Zelaya to power.

When I asked the State Department whether it was employing such dirty tricks a spokeswoman would only say the U.S. has been “encouraging all members of civil society to support the San Jose ‘accord'”—which calls for Mr. Zelaya to be restored to power. Perhaps something was lost in the translation but threats to use U.S. power against a small, poor nation hardly qualify as encouragement,

says Anastasia O’Grady in Wall Street Journal.

It’s sickening.  A U.S. ally, a democracy, is following its constitution — the ousted Zelaya has no case — and in the process erecting a barrier to Chavez of Venezuela.  And we’re giving them grief?

Harry Reid shook hands with the ad director for the Review-Journal of Las Vegas, Bob Brown, before a Chamber of Commerce luncheon last week as part of “a meet-‘n’-greet and a photo.”

[A]s Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

Whoa.  What a time to wish that on anyone.  He’s our head Senate Democrat, isn’t he?  Has risen to the top, you might say.  Yuck.

The irreplaceable David Horowitz on why Nixon White House operative Brian Lamb did not succeed in his mission to liberalize PBS, that is, make it live up to the law that created it, to be “fair, objective and balanced”:

[L]iberals are closet totalitarians who can’t stand to have a conservative in the room.

(Notice “liberal” used twice with seemingly opposite meanings.  Trouble is, the term has been hijacked.)

Horowitz, the red-diaper baby who came in out of the cold world of the left and knows where the mind-set skeletons are, cites media and academe:

There is not a single leftwing channel, network or institution — to call them liberal is an offense to language — whether it is MSNBC, CNN, or PBS, Air America, NPR, or Harvard that is capable of fairness or intellectual diversity or has the slightest interest in promoting it.

Among the “hardly any” leftwing intellectuals who support “the practice of intellectual diversity” he (generously) names three — Alan Dershowitz, Stanley Fish and Gerald Graff.

As for the rest of them:

Contemporary liberals are socialists and their instincts are totalitarian — which is expressed in their causes like single payer health care, and their sabotage of the war against Islamic fascists.

Bring that down to the everyday level and putting it in homely terms, they are fussbudgets who know what is right for you and will make you do it,.

 

 

The Chicago and (separately) Illinois situations have a D.C. counterpart:

Mayor Adrian Fenty on Thursday dodged more questions about the education of his sons, growing visibly angry as reporters pressed on how his twin boys gained entry into one of D.C.’s top-performing public schools.

The Obamas didn’t have to stoop that low, choosing to go private, as we know.