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Boehner: Obama disrespectful to me By: Jake Sherman December 12, 2010 05:30 PM EST John Boehner thinks President Barack Obama is engaging, smart and brilliant but also remains smarted by the president accusing him of taking taxpayers hostage to secure a tax break for the rich. In an interview with Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” for broadcast Sunday night on CBS, Boehner said Obama showed him “disrespect” by calling him a hostage-taker. “Excuse me, Mr. President I thought the election was over,” Boehner said, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “You know, you get a lot of that heated...

<p>The surreal week in Washington was brought to a fitting climax on Friday when Barack Obama handed the presidency over to Bill Clinton for 20 minutes. “I’m going to take off,” he said.</p> <p>“You’re in good hands,” the president informed the press corps, patting his predecessor on the back. And take off the president did.</p>

There was an extraordinary scene at the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo Friday morning. The prize went to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was barred by the Chinese government from attending the ceremony. It was the first time since 1935 -- when the prize went to a winner imprisoned in one of Adolf Hitler's concentration camps -- that the Peace Prize winner did not appear personally to accept the award. So on this notable occasion, the White House released a statement from President Obama on the awarding of the prize to Liu in absentia. And this...

Credit card companies have computer programs that reject charges which seem unusual because of amount, type of purchase, or location. The companies want to save themselves the trouble and expense of fraudulent charges, but in so doing they also save us, their customers, trouble and expense. If private companies take the trouble to save themselves and us money, why canÂ’t the U.S. government take the trouble to save our nation from embarrassment and damage to our foreign relations? Why canÂ’t it take the trouble to save our friends overseas, who stuck their necks out to help us, from the very...

Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness. As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder. It is a puzzle why the manual’s committee on personality disorders has decided...

...Barack Obama: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said. Would an Obama Administration really mean an end to “eating as much as we want?” Apparently so: "In 'Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside Obama’s White House,' MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe, a writer sympathetic to the president, reports the prosaic backroom details of the White House struggles from early this year, but occasionally stumbles upon an off-the-cuff revelation that’s much more...

This thread is only for freepers who want Sarah Palin to be President in 2012. Please all (TROLLS)other stay out.

If United States Senator Al Franken -- it hurts to say that -- ever had a redeeming moment, it was in the role of Stuart Smalley, a character he created for "Saturday Night Live." In the most memorable of Smalley's "Daily Affirmations," the lisping, wildly insecure psycho-babbler hosts Michael Jordan. After explaining to his audience that Jordan is "a basketball player for a professional basketball team," Smalley says to him, "You should be very proud of yourself." "Well, thank you, Stuart," says Jordan, "I am." Stunned by Jordan's self-assurance, Smalley blunders on: "I can imagine that the night before a...

A reader sends in a classic Obama moment that I completely missed. Here's Ryan Lizza in a 2004 profile of Obama for the Atlantic: "I couldn't help noticing, when we sat down to talk in the dilapidated storefront that houses his Springfield campaign headquarters, that the blue-pen drawing he'd doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself." You may have your own favorite scenes from the American Narcissus. Feel free to send them along to jlast[at]weeklystandard.com. Submissions will be accepted without judgment. This is a safe place, a nest of trust in a tree of understanding.

Why has Barack Obama failed so spectacularly? Is he too dogmatically liberal or too pragmatic? Is he a socialist, or an anticolonialist, or a philosopher-president? Or is it possible that Obama’s failures stem from something simpler: vanity. Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency. It’s revealed in lots of little stories.

Joy Tiz ©2010 To be a member of the lap dog media is akin to being a badly hungover woman in a Vegas hotel room. OMG, Who is this guy?! They should have known better. A less qualified presidential candidate would have been hard to find. Yet Obama was not only a serious candidate and ultimate victor, but during his campaign, he pranced around, acting as if he already was president and the election was merely a ceremony to formalize his taking of the crown. Now they’re surprised that Obama’s behavior is a bit strange. Dr. Sam Vaknin describes the...

The ego factor: Can Obama change? By: John F. Harris and Glenn Thrush November 5, 2010 04:40 AM EDT In the anthology of Barack Obama quotations, one of the classics came just hours before the event that made him the hottest property in American politics. As Obama walked toward the arena at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where he gave an electrifying keynote address, a Chicago Tribune reporter noted that he seemed to be making a good impression. “I’m LeBron, baby,” Obama told author David Mendell. “I can play on this level. I got some game.” Those words...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he will support a ballot measure to restore the law banning elected officials from serving more than two consecutive four-year terms. The limit was removed in 2008 in order to allow Bloomberg to run for a third consecutive term in 2009. Bloomberg said removing the limit was necessary then because “the City had need of the one person with the extraordinary talent to cope with an emerging crisis. Since that extraordinary person will not be running again under any circumstances it’s safe to restore the previous term limitation. When only average people are...

Sunday New York Times, A1, feature story on our 44th president: "Back on the Stump, a Chastened Obama Takes a Sharper Tone." One wonders if the headline writer bothered to read the article. To start, "Back on the Stump" is puzzling: when was Mr. Obama not on the stump? Talk about the endless campaign. And "chastened"? I read the piece in toto: not a scrap, a scintilla, an iota of evidence that the Organizer-in-Chief feels chastened. He did exhibit more self-pity, if that is possible, and a sharper tone - against the two women he was campaigning for. If the...

Chen Wei-yih has posed for a set of photos in a flowing white dress, enlisted a wedding planner and rented a banquet hall for a marriage celebration with 30 friends. But there is no groom. Chen will marry herself. Uninspired by the men she's met but facing social pressure to get married, the 30-year-old Taipei office worker will hold the reception next month in honor of just one person. "Age thirty is a prime period for me. My work and experience are in good shape, but I haven't found a partner, so what can I do?" Chen said. "It's not...

Obama says he's a 'pretty good president' 50 mins ago SEATTLE, Washington (AFP) – Barack Obama's approval ratings might have slipped, but he gave himself an appreciative job appraisal Thursday, saying on the campaign trail that he was a "pretty good president." Obama gave the upbeat assessment of his own performance during a stem-winding speech to an overflow crowd at a rally for Washington state senator Patty Murray, part of a four-day mid-term election campaign swing. "I've been inspired by you. Wherever I go, traveling across this country, especially when I meet young people, I'm reminded of your energy, and...

Reality Is A Stern Task Master President Obama in an unbelievable display of arrogance and hyperbole has stated in the New York Times, Magazine, that the new Republican Congress will now be forced to learn to work with him. Obama explains that he will have the Republicans in a position where they will have no choice but to work with him (as if he will train them like dogs): "either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn't work...

Obama: Republicans Will Have to Learn to Get Along With Me Published October 13, 2010 | FoxNews.com President Obama reveals in a magazine article that he is weighing what to do if Republicans win the House majority next month, and has come up with a novel approach: Make the GOP work with him. In a seeming twist on the post-1994 midterm calculation made by President Bill Clinton -- when Republicans pummeled Democrats in the congressional election -- Obama said he thinks Republicans will have to move in his direction no matter the outcome of the Nov. 2 vote. "It may...

Is there anybody out there with muscle-man Republican-populist appeal who is bigger, meaner, tougher than the indestructible Sarah Palin? Anyone who could take her on – and take her down in a run for the presidency? It seems a job for only one person – a creature of titanic strength, a man who, once he sets his sights on something, does not unlock like some kind of weird cyborg, maybe. And that one man could only be the Governator, the Terminator: Arnold himself. A new book due out next week reveals that Schwarzenegger hasn’t given up his hopes of parking...

Have you seen the interview with President Obama in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine? In it, President Obama proves why he’s one of the most polarizing figures in politics today, and how deep his disconnect is with voters.  For example, rather than trying to woo members of the Tea Party movement heading into the midterms, he says that “their anger is misdirected” and claims they are funded by “some very traditional, very powerful, special interest lobbies,” implying that they are confused and manipulated--rather than taxpayers with valid concerns about spending. Asked about Fox News, he points out that...