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President Barack Obama is like a novice flier thrust into the cockpit of a 747. He’s pushing buttons, flipping switches and radioing air traffic control, but nothing’s happening. The plane is just slowly descending on its own, and while it may or may not crash, it at least doesn’t appear to be headed to any particularly useful destination. Obama’s ineffectiveness, always a hallmark of his presidency, has reached a new cruising altitude this year. Not even a year into his second term, he looks like a lame duck and quacks like a lame duck. You guessed it — he’s a...

The Syrian crisis over the past few weeks has thrust President Obama into a role in which at times he has seemed uneasy: that of commander in chief. The prospect of an attack to punish Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons exposed the Nobel Peace laureate’s strained and somewhat tentative relationship with the military. His dramatic oscillation from detachment on Syria to the brink of military action, with him ultimately settling for a potential diplomatic solution, has unsettled many people in uniform.

his administration had bungled the response to the Syrian crisis.

Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference. Putin sure doesn’t care that Obama’s taking credit for the proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer. “The only reason why we are seeing this proposal,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.” Right, Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If Obama wants to sell it like a Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue that’s fine with Putin, because Putin won....

President Obama today took time out from what the White House is billing as an intensive Syria resolution lobbying campaign to play golf. He’s playing with a few of his usual group of junior staffers - Mike Brush, Marvin Nicholson, and Joe Paulsen. But just minutes after the press pool reported Obama is on the golf course, the White House made sure to issue the pooler the following bulletin: This afternoon, the President received an update from his Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, on the administration’s latest consultations with members of Congress. The President will make additional calls to members...

President Obama in Asbury Park, NJ on Tuesday: "So, Jersey, you’ve still got a long road ahead, but when you look out on this beach -- this beautiful beach here, even in the rain, it looks good. You look out over the horizon, you can count on the fact that you won’t be alone. Your fellow citizens will be there for you -- just like we’ll be there for folks in Breezy Point and Staten Island -- (applause) -- and obviously, we’re going to be there for the folks in Monroe [sic], Oklahoma, after the devastation of last week. (Applause.)...

The most glaring fact about our president is that he is an empty suit. The people around him are also empty suits. They believe in nothing, really, but unearned luxury, unmerited adulation, and unaccountable power. Those whom we have come to call "leftists" are in fact nothing but nihilists, and we flatter them when we presume that they value anything beyond their vanities, their avarice, and their selfishness. When tragedy strikes, like in the Boston bombing, these empty suits can look and act appropriately somber and serious, but it is all for show, and the intended audience are Americans who...

Never let it be said that President Obama has failed to spend time with Republican leaders in seeking an alternative to automatic budget cuts that are due to hit most federal departments Friday. On Wednesday, for example, the president gave GOP lawmakers as much as seven minutes, a rare face-to-face encounter that the White House described as a “meeting.” The White House’s characterization of this momentary huddle at the Capitol as a meeting illuminates Mr. Obama’s strategy in dealing with Republicans on the budget cuts and other fiscal deadlines. With speeches and other staged events, the president has tried to...

WASHINGTON — With the clock ticking on the sequester, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania has crafted an alternative plan that would give President Barack Obama discretion over where to cut $85 billion in annual federal spending. As of now, the across-the-board cuts set to take effect Friday would slice many domestic and defense programs indiscriminately. Toomey, a Republican, contends that the spending cuts should go forward, but there should be some license over where the cuts are made. For Democrats, the plan is a non-starter. And some Senate Republicans are reportedly pushing back against Toomey's proposal as well, uncomfortable with...

Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi Daniel Halper February 7, 2013 12:05 PM Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012: Panetta said that Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under siege, "up to us." In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Panetta said...

The right-wing Fox News host lost half his audience in the weeks after Obama's win In a fitting coda to 2012, we’ve learned that the ratings for rock-ribbed conservative Sean Hannity cratered after Barack Obama won his second term, with viewers tuning out the Fox News Channel talk-show host in droves. According to Nielsen numbers, Hannity lost around half of his audience in the weeks after the election, while his Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly — who steadfastly refuses to identify himself politically as a conservative — retained around 70% of his audience. So what happened to Hannity? The going...

Drudge has had that picture up since yesterday. There is a point he is trying to make. Is it about the earpiece???? Other pictures of Obama with an earpiece

I went to sign into facebook and the opening page has this movie with an empty chair hanging in the air.I doubt they meant it as an obama slam, but I thought it was funny.

The New Yorker goes Eastwood:   Back to you, Dirty Harry:  Full Clint Eastwood speech 2012 Republican National Convention RNC Mitt RomneyAs I mentioned last night, some liberals are pretty angry that Obama wasn't allowed to drag TOTUS onto the debate stage on Wednesday:   This is what Republicans are up against. UPDATE - Rasmussen's Saturday tracker shows a four-point bounce for Romney, who now leads 49-47 among likely voters nationwide.  The better news?  Only 2/3 of that rolling poll was taken after the debate, so he has room to expand his advantage.

The presidential debate hyped as an exercise in meticulously planned zingers had little zing. And President Obama was doubly zinger-less Wednesday night in Denver. He was flat. He meandered more than Republican Mitt Romney. Obama used lots of numbers. But it sounded like a calculus lesson. It wasn’t the 2+2=4 math that proves a point during a debate. And there was a more important figure he missed: 47. That’s the percentage of non income-taxpaying citizens whom Romney seemed to denigrate in a recently released hidden-video, which played right into the Democrats’ narrative about making Romney the out-of-touch rich man. But...

In Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 3 a.m. television ad in the 2008 primary campaign, we heard the sound of a ringing phone and saw sleeping children. In ominous tones, a narrator warned that “something is happening in the world” and asked, “Who do you want answering the phone?” Well, it’s 2012, and — the phone is still ringing. Please, somebody answer the damn thing! The story of the terror attack in Benghazi is that neither Clinton nor the president who made her secretary of state responded to the real emergency when it came. The biggest foreign-policy crisis of the last four...

At least two recent incidents in which empty chairs were hung from trees by rope have critics decrying what they say are racially offensive displays meant to symbolize the “lynching” of President Barack Obama. In Austin, Texas, a homeowner hung an empty folding chair from a tree branch in front of his house and later attached an American flag to it. He reportedly told a Democratic political blogger who inquired about it: “You can take [your concerns] and go straight to hell and take Obama with you.” In Centreville, Va., an empty chair with a sign reading “Nobama” was strung...

<p>According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.</p>

One of the ways of understanding the strange nonchalant response of the administration to prior warnings of trouble in the Arab Spring countries, and its contextualization of the violence on the anniversary of 9/11, is its belief that it is somehow separated from the object of the violence. Raging crowds and Islamic wrath could not possibly be connected to the enlightened Obama administration given the three years of laborious Muslim outreach and the long-ago departure of George Bush. So we are to think away all those burning flags, stormed consulates, and dead Americans, and instead remember that the violence “is...