TOTUS: A Look At The Screen Behind (or in front of, really) The President

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

While trying to "humanize" their pick for President, MSNBC does a humorous bit on Barry. It's just a cute skit where the reporter ends up interviewing TOTUS, the Teleprompter Of The United States. No harm, no foul, right?

I don't know about you, but when I hear the notion of public speaking and the president, I still can't get the ringing out of my ears over the 8 years of constant drumbeat from the MSM saying, "POOR SPEAKER=DUNCE", and all of the other variations of such hatemongering towards a sitting President.

But to their guy, they gently poke fun of the softer sides of his very, very, trying time in the White House. Doing a "hug piece" on him has started early--be ready for a long ride through Obamaland, filled with well-produced puppets, songs, and video graphics, all for the means of...

...brainwashing you? Yes, but that's not all.

This cutesy soft-hit on the president from MSNBC serves as a distraction from the past week's news: N Korea thumbing its nose at Barry; his recent calling the US one of the largest Muslim nations, after just 2 months ago telling Arabs that "the US is not a Christian nation"; and the announcement of a deepening recession with no solution on the horizon anytime soon.

TOTUS needs the press, and the press needs us to watch the little trick over hear while you avoid looking at the falling empire.

MSM Diary: Obama Is God

The Left is now and has always been suffocatingly smug. Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek--which is one of a handful of long-running weekly political digests that is passed around in high school gov't/civics classrooms--rewrites history concerning Ronald Reagan's presidency to make him look like some inbred, club-weilding, retard waving an American flag in one hand while he bashes foreigners with the other.

This effete little man--Thomas--is typical of the Left's disgusting sense of superiority, bought with the blood, tears, and limbs of common men who don't have the luxury of time to ponder how patriotism is really passe'. He blithely tumbles out the words,

Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s-

See how much better it is to NOT be like Reagan? Why, if you're like Reagan, you're parochial, chauvinistic, and provincial! How about that? To the man who stared down the Kremlin and deployed missiles all over free Europe to help them protect themselves from the U.S.S.R., we can so easily say, "we are above that now".

And just where is he getting his history from? It surely can't be from the archives of his own publication. The likes of Newsweek, Time, The NYT, etc. were ALL performing a constant drumbeat of how DANGEROUS, senile, and cruel the great Ronald Reagan was. It wasn't ok to buy into this notion of Reagan's that America is a "shining city on a hill". That quote was always mocked, ridiculed, and defrocked with statistics about the homeless people crowding the sidewalks of that 'shining city on a hill'. Remember those days? I do:

“As a practical matter, the homeless won’t get very far unless they can persuade a Republican to break with Ronald Reagan’s policies — or elect a Democrat.”
— Newsweek senior editor Tom Mathews in the March 21, 1988 issue. (source)

This is the typical attitude behind most of the media, most certainly the msm.

Barry In Charge: To The Middle East--"I Am Here"

Recent Project: The Weider Olympic Weight Bench

Sears had a great sale recently on this olympic weight bench from Joe Weider, so I decided to splurge a little bit on myself:



Unfortunately, the box (although banded) contained two identical uprights, which come pre-drilled in order to be assembled and aren't supposed to be interchangeable. You can see how these two posts have the holes drilled at exactly the same spots:

This is how they are supposed to look:

Notice the holes on the right one--different setting for them on this correct upright from Sears. Luckily, they serviced my incorrect order swiftly and with no fuss at all. I returned the post later that day after I bought it, they recognized the problem, and simply went into the back stock area, opened another seperate but equal weight bench box, and exchanged the post.

I also found a sale on 300 lbs of olympic weights at Sports Authority, plus a good, sturdy olympic bar:

With preacher curl attachment:

Loaded up and ready to go!

It's a lot like an old glove that still fits after 30 years. I've benched all of my life since I was 12, and it has always been a comfortable ritual. Good for the bones, which contributes greatly to overall health, toning/strength enhancements to the muscle groups involved, and development of balance skills due to the nature of free weights.

To say nothing of the mental therapeutic benefits.

Trip To Tampa: The Florida Aquarium 06/01/09

This past weekend, my girlfriend Pam and I left for a nice 3-day trip up to St Petersburg and Tampa. It was a blast, mainly because of the chance to get away from home a bit for once. We were able to just let a whim carry our direction for three days.

We took some shots with our still cameras, as well:








































And here are some of Pam's shots:

Barry In Charge: "When I Endorse A Racist, It's OK" pt III (when children write the stories on America's "firsts": the Estrada case)

Here's what it sounded like when a sitting Republican president fought for months to get the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court in 2003:




And today, you're seeing amnesia-ridden journalists stumble all over themselves to say that Barry's Sotomayor is the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor, first Hispanic nominated to United States Supreme Court

It's pathetically obvious to those of us who have watched politics for anything over, say, a week at a time. The press is staffed with "marketing majors", or "broadcast journalism degrees", and the owners accept that this brain-dead approach to broadcasting is the best that can be, because how else are you going to attract an audience to sell products during spot breaks if you don't have 22 year-old recent graduates from college?

Their sad memory is left in control of the images, context, and angle for which we must be subjected.

How's That Reset Button Working For Ya', Hill? (the Netanyahou Nyet)

Netanyahu: Call for settlement freeze unreasonable

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dismissing U.S. calls for a West Bank settlement freeze as unreasonable.

Officials say Netanyahu delivered his assessment to a closed parliamentary committee Monday.

The U.S. has demanded that Israel halt all construction in the settlements. Netanyahu says some building must continue to accommodate what he calls "natural growth."

A meeting participant says Netanyahu testified that Israel cannot "freeze life" in existing settlements. He said "there are reasonable requests and unreasonable requests."

Another participant says Netanyahu said his job is to protect Israel, even if his decisions are not popular.

The participants spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Mobs of Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank Monday, attacking Palestinian laborers and setting fire to agricultural land to protest against an Israeli government crackdown on unauthorized outposts in the territory.

Six Palestinian laborers riding on a minivan were injured when stone-throwing settlers attacked them, the workers said.

The violence comes as the Obama administration is pressuring Israel to honor long-standing pledges to tear down wildcat settlement outposts in the West Bank and to freeze expansion in existing, government-sanctioned settlements.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has balked at the U.S. demand to halt construction in existing settlements and faces stiff resistance within his hard-line government against taking down about two dozen of the outposts. The disagreement has caused a rift between the allies.

It has also put Jewish settlers and their backers in the Israeli government on the defensive.

Monday's violence was all deep inside the West Bank, where most of the hard-line settlements are located.

It started overnight near the radical settlement of Yizhar, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. About 100 settlers blocked a road to protest against Israel's recent removal of a handful of tiny, uninhabited outposts. Six settlers were later arrested there.

Before dawn near another radical settlement, Kedumim, stone-throwing settlers ambushed a minivan carrying Palestinian laborers to Israel, the workers said. Six of the 15 Palestinians on board were hurt, including Yahye Sadah, who was hit in the head.

"I was hit in the head by a rock from a distance of 3 meters (10 feet). I ran away. I thought I'd die," said Sadah, 44, who spoke from a nearby hospital after getting six stitches.

Police said settlers threw rocks and burned tires in the area but that only one man was slightly wounded. The attackers fled and no arrests were made, they said.

A few hours later, settlers torched a wooded hilltop near Nablus and set trees and Palestinian agricultural land on fire near the village of Hawara, local council chief Ali Eid said.

Romel Sweiti, a Hawara resident, said the fires torched nearly 1 acre (0.40 hectares) of land. He said about 50 teenage Israeli settler girls gathered on a main road and blocked traffic as Israeli paramilitary police stood in the background.

Settler activist Daniella Weiss, who lives in the area, said she was unaware of the violence. But she vowed that Jewish residents would resist any attempts to move them, "no matter how harsh the policy of the Israeli government will be against us."

"The policy of dismantling outposts is an opening phase for withdrawal," she said. "This will not ensure the future security of the state of Israel."

Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in the settlements among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Another 180,000 live in Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas — captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — as parts of a future independent state.

The U.S. considers the settlements an obstacle to peace, but traditionally has done little on the issue, a policy that appears to be changing under President Barack Obama.

The rampage underscored the difficulties Netanyahu faces.

On one hand, he is wary of picking a fight with the U.S., his most important ally. But settlers have a vocal leadership with many allies inside Netanyahu's government, constraining his ability to take action.

"Anyone with a basic understanding of this issue could have predicted that as talks of evacuations of illegal constructions begin, Jewish terror cells will rear their heads and set the West Bank on fire," warned Yesh Din, an anti-settlement watchdog group in Israel.

Netanyahu has dispatched his defense minister, Ehud Barak, to Washington this week in hopes of winning approval to allow at least limited construction to continue in the settlements. But the Obama administration has so far signaled it is not willing to budge.(source)

From Pravda: "American capitalism gone with a whimper"

From Russia's Pravda:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina. (source)

Barry In Charge: How To Handle The Press

Kicking & Screaming: Journo Dragged From Near AF1

A reporter for a small newspaper was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One shortly before President Barack Obama arrived at Los Angeles International Airport to depart California early Thursday.

Airport security officers carried the woman away by the feet and arms as she protested her removal.

She later identified herself as Brenda Lee, a writer for the Georgia Informer in Macon and said she has White House press credentials. The newspaper's Web site says it is a monthly publication, and a Brenda Lee column is posted on it.

Calls to the newspaper and the White House press office were not immediately returned.

Lee said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she wanted to hand Obama a letter urging him "to take a stand for traditional marriage."

She said she asked a Secret Service agent to give the president her letter, but he refused and referred her to a White House staffer. Lee said she refused to give the staffer the letter.

"I said, 'I'll take my chances if (the president) comes by here,'" said Lee, who identified herself as a Roman Catholic priestess who lives in Anaheim, Calif. "He became annoyed that I wouldn't give him the letter."

Lee, who was wearing what she described as a cassock, said she protested when she was asked to leave.

"I said, 'Why are you bothering me?' They escorted me outside the gate," she said.

She said security officers allowed her to return when she promised she would not yell or wave, but then other officers arrived and told her to leave.

"I said, 'I'm not leaving,'" she said. "They tried to drag me out."

Two officers then picked her up and carried her out. An Associated Press photographer photographed the incident.

"I was afraid you could see under my clothes," she said, her voice choking up.

Lee, who said this was the second presidential event she has covered, was later released.

The incident occurred about 10 minutes before Obama arrived at the airport by helicopter to board Air Force One. He had been in Los Angeles to attend a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. (source)

North Korea: We No Longer Recognize The 1953 Armistace

North Korean soldiers, officials and people participate in the Pyongyang People’s Rally to celebrate what the North says is a successful second nuclear test, at the Pyongyang Gym May 26, 2009.

TOKYO, May 27 -- North Korea announced Wednesday that it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War, the latest and most profound diplomatic aftershock from the country's latest nuclear test two days earlier.

North Korea also warned that it would respond "with a powerful military strike" should its ships be stopped by international forces trying to stop the export of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

The twin declarations, delivered by the country's state news agency, followed South Korea's announcement Tuesday that it would join the navies that will stop and inspect suspicious ships at sea. North Korea has repeatedly said that such participation would be a "declaration of war."

They followed other developments in North Korea that have added to the sense of jangled nerves across northeast Asia since Monday's underground nuclear test.

The North fired three more short-range missiles off its east coast on Tuesday, said Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. North Korea had fired two missiles into the same waters on Monday.

And U.S. spy satellites have detected signs that North Korea has restarted its nuclear plant, a South Korean newspaper reported Wednesday. Chosun Ilbo cited an unnamed South Korean government source as saying that steam has been detected from a reprocessing facility at North Korea's Yongbyon plant.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Tuesday to her Russian counterpart as part of an effort to seek a united response with "consequences" for North Korea. But U.S. officials also stressed that they are still eager for North Korea to return to multilateral disarmament talks and are not ready to declare the multi-year effort to end North Korea's nuclear program a failure.

"We feel the door does still remain open, that we're ready to engage," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. He described the Obama administration's effort now as trying to "bring international pressure to bear to get them to reverse their course."

In Tokyo, a former defense minister and ruling party lawmaker said Japan should consider developing the ability to conduct preemptive strikes against North Korea, even though Japan's constitution prohibits it from taking offensive military action.

South Korea had long resisted U.S. pressure to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which was created in 2003 by President George W. Bush and includes more than 90 countries that have agreed to stop and inspect suspicious cargo on sea and land.

Seoul was reluctant to rile North Korea, but North Korea's second nuclear test nudged Seoul Korea to change its policy.

North Korea has long been suspected of shipping or flying missiles to customers in the Middle East and South Asia.

As a member of the security initiative, South Korea is likely to receive intelligence information from the United States, Japan and other countries about ships leaving North Korean ports that may be carrying such goods, a government official said in Tokyo.

Joining the international interdiction effort "is a natural obligation for a mature country," said South Korea's foreign minister, Yu Myung-hwan. Even before Monday's nuclear test, peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula had been sorely tested this spring. The North launched a long-range missile, detained a South Korean citizen, kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors, restarted a plutonium factory and halted the six-nation negotiations on its nuclear program.

"Inter-Korean relations have hit rock bottom," said Yun Duk-min, professor of international politics at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, a government think tank in Seoul. "So it is the right thing to join PSI, even if North Korea reacts with resistance."

"The current U.S. leadership . . . has drawn the puppets [South Korea] into the PSI," North Korea's military complained Wednesday in a statement.

North Korea is thought to possess more than 200 mid-range Nodong missiles that can strike nearly any part of Japan. The Japanese government, which has invested billions of dollars in a U.S.-made antimissile defense system, is concerned that the North is making progress in designing nuclear warheads that could fit atop its missiles.

"We must look at active missile defense such as attacking an enemy's territory and bases," the former defense minister, Gen Nakatani, said at a meeting of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

In China, where condemnation of the North's nuclear test was surprisingly swift and unambiguous, the state media on Tuesday printed strong reprimands of North Korea from other countries. The shower of criticism was far different from the reaction to North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, when the Chinese media blamed the United States for provoking Pyongyang by cutting off aid.

"This may well be a reflection of Beijing's frustrations for not being able to assert control and influence over North Korea," said Wenran Jiang, research chair of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. (source)