Free Republic

I cannot believe the level of incompetence I have to deal with on a daily basis. If it isn't the cold hand of my operator, it's Big Guy not moving his lips fast enough to keep up with my text. I can say this much: there's no truth to the rumor that swine flu had anything to do with my scroll this morning. Would it be possible to blame President Bush for this too?

WASHINGTON -- It is amazing how swiftly a presidential tendency turns from observation to joke to meme. Barack Obama -- called "the most eloquent political speaker of our time" -- has become known as the teleprompter president. The issue gathered momentum when Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen read 20 seconds of Obama's teleprompter remarks at a White House ceremony before realizing his mistake. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, at her nomination as head of Health and Human Services, was made to wait in awkward silence while Obama's teleprompter was adjusted. Then came Obama's use of the big-screen autocue at Tuesday night's news...

Reflections from the hard drive of the machine that enables the voice of the Leader of the Free World (Sample post) Sorry Isn't the Hardest Word to Say ... With My Help Yes, to those asking, I participated in the call. Michelle was there, too, glaring, like she could see right through me. My screens feel cold. So cold. Posted by Tele Prompter at 6:48 AM 43 comments

OK. I'll start.

Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back. Why the sudden furor, just weeks after Barack Obama's team paid out $30 billion in additional aid to the company? So far, the administration has been unable to match its actions to Obama's tough rhetoric on executive compensation. And Congress has...

Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return — or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor. Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The "deepening economic crisis" that the president described six days...

THE furor over the huge federal spending under President Oba- ma - a $1.75 trillion deficit, 13 percent - obscures an even more basic question: Does he know what he is doing? That is, does he know how to do anything other than spend? His stimulus package, of course, took no special ability: He left the details to Democrats in Congress. But his two other major initiatives - his banking- and mortgage-relief plans - are both flawed and unlikely to solve their respective problems. Indeed, they're so wide of the mark as to prompt questions not of Obama's ideology but...

If President Obama is just reading the script, who is behind the curtain directing the performance? There is no question that President Obama is an accomplished orator. As a candidate for president he inspired millions, thrilled young ladies and even sent chills up the legs of seasoned pundits. He was compared to past great orators like Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. But are his oratory skills overblown? Every year Hollywood gives Oscars to the most accomplished actors. These actors pretend to be someone else. A mild mannered actor may play the part of a vicious killer. The actors...

President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses. He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout. Taxpayers have already put up $173 billion, or more than a thousand times the amount of those bonuses, to fund the government's AIG "rescue." This federal takeover, never approved by AIG shareholders, uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions. After months of government stonewalling, on...