Obama Mockfest goes from Iran to North Korea to Gitmo

Mocking our feckless President is an amazingly easy thing to do these days. Despot leaders in North Korea and Iran do it almost daily with nukes or missiles or both. Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of the Washington Times, joins in the daily mockfest this morning on that topic.

Two of the peace-loving republics formerly known as the Axis of Evil threw a frightful scare into anyone paying attention Monday, with North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima and Iran telling Barack Obama to get lost (and take his teleprompter with him).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wouldn't accept an invitation to freeze work on his own nuclear weapon and he's not interested in talking to Mr. Obama or anyone else about it. But not to worry. The United Nations Security Council postponed its afternoon tea to hold an "emergency session" to consider options for dealing with developments in Korea. The world is considerably less worried about Iran, since Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to be mostly interested in only killing Jews...

The temptation to deride the reaction from Western capitals, couched as it is in the prissy language of the diplomacy so beloved by Mr. Obama, is irresistible, not only for its pretentious prissiness, but because the evildoers have heard it all so many time before. The presidents and prime ministers of the West need at minimum new speechwriters to project their pretense of toughness, their affectation of strength. They invite mockery at home because they strike neither fear nor caution in the hearts of enemies they insist on regarding as just friends they haven't made yet.

The latest test is a reminder that North Korea "is going it alone as a nuclear power," the executive director of the Center for Korean-America Peace, a Pyongyang front, told the daily Guardian of London. "North Korea doesn't need any talks with America. America is tricky and undesirable. We are not going to worry about sanctions ... we don't care about America and what they say."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered his own mockery of naive intentions, and showed no signs of the unclenched fist that the dear leader in Washington sees in his future.

"The nuclear issue is a finished issue for us," Mr. Ahmadinejad told reporters Monday in Tehran. But he made an offer that Mr. Obama will find difficult to refuse, proposing to debate the president and his teleprompter at the U.N. "regarding the roots of world problems." But no talks about the Iranian bomb. "Our talks [with the major powers] will be only in the framework of cooperation for managing global issues, and nothing else."

And David Brooks at the Noo Yawk Times has remembered what it means to be an op-ed writer, taking an opposing editorial view to the kneejerk leftwingnuts on the editorial and news staff with his own bit of mockery that's so far over the top it's clear over into seeing the actual truth.

There is nothing so inspiring as public service, so I’ve been incredibly moved over the past few weeks to watch squads of corporate executives come to the White House so President Obama could announce that he was giving away their money...

These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II. The press conferences and events marking this new spirit of cooperation have been the emotional highlights of the administration so far.

These events usually begin when the executives gather in the Oval Office, where they experience certain Enhanced Negotiating Techniques. I’m not exactly sure what the president does to inspire the business leaders’ cooperation and sense of public service, though those who remember the disembowelment scene in “Braveheart” will have a general idea.

Then the president leads the executives out onto the White House lawn for the announcement ceremony. Often, the president will still be carrying the riding crop and the pliers used in the private negotiation. He moves to the microphone while the executives take their pre-assigned places behind him, the jingle of their leg shackles blending with the dulcet tones of spring. I thought one hospital executive was so moved by the occasion that he had slipped into catatonic shock, except that he was blinking “Save Me! Save Me!” in Morse code to his shareholders.

Finally, Cal Thomas offers a sobering rebuttal to Obama's plan to close Gitmo's terrorist prison.

President Obama wants to put at least some of the Guantanamo detainees in maximum-security prisons in the U.S. Assuming an ACLU lawyer doesn't win their release, these suspects might convert others in prison to their cause in order to recruit them for jihad should they be let out. Some of those New York terror suspects were converted to Islam and radicalized while in prison.

A more mature and sobering vision was offered by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has emerged as the Republican Party's missing backbone.

In a well-crafted and powerful rebuke to President Obama's call for treating terrorists as criminals rather than enemy combatants, Cheney said, "Throughout the '90s, America had responded to these (terrorist) attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis ... with everything handled after the fact -- crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed. ... 9/11 made necessary a shift of policy, aimed at a clear strategic threat -- what the Congress called 'an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.' From that moment forward, instead of merely preparing to round up the suspects and count up the victims after the next attack, we were determined to prevent attacks in the first place."

It worked. History will show this approach protected our "values" against those who would destroy them. If there is another attack, President Obama won't be able to blame it on the shortsightedness of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Wouldn't it be doubly ironic if one of the soon-to-be-released Gitmo terrorists committed a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, just as several of the already released terrorists have returned to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan? Obama wouldn't be able to blame that on Bush-Cheney.

I'm not saying I look forward to another terrorist attack. But I am saying the half-baked, kneejerk leftwing plans of this administration are not making America safer. Far from it.

Mocking the messiah?

Byron York at National Review says it has finally become OK to Go Ahead, Laugh at Obama

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed nobody could make a joke about Barack Obama. The New York Times published a front-page story declaring that “there has been little humor” about Obama because “there is no comedic ‘take’ on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh.” Television comedy writers fretted that audiences didn’t want to hear anything even slightly negative about the Democratic nominee. The political press corps went nuts over a satirical New Yorker cover that wasn’t even directed at Obama.

And this was about a man who made up his own pretend presidential seal and motto, Vero Possumus; a man who, upon securing the Democratic nomination, said, “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”; a man who has on a number of occasions seemed to forget that he is not, or at least not yet, the President of the United States, who has misstated the number of states in his own country, who has forgotten on which committees he serves in the U.S. Senate. Professional comedians — and their audiences — couldn’t find anything funny about any of that?

Now, after Obama’s world tour, there are already cracks in the Times-imposed conventional wisdom. Confronted with something of an official ban on Obama humor, there is emerging a new strain of Obama humor — zings at the candidate’s hauteur, his presumptuousness, and, especially, his most zealous admirers in the press.

Last week, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show got an enthusiastic reception from his audience with a routine about Obama’s media entourage. Stewart tossed to the team of reporters who were said to be traveling with the Obama campaign, some of whom had abandoned John McCain to cover the more exciting Democrat. They were positively giddy about Obama.

“The commander-in-chief,” said one.

“Did you see when the president hit that three-pointer?” asked another.

“Nothing but net,” said a third.

Stewart interrupted. “He’s not the president.” Pause. “Barack Obama’s not the president.”

A confused silence. “Are you sure?” the reporters asked.

Larry Thornberry at American Spectator tosses in a good zinger on Obama’s “Let’s Play President” world tour in Ich Bin Ein Pretender

The fact that 200,000 people turned out in Berlin to hear Obama sing a couple of choruses of "We Are the World" only demonstrates that Europeans, who have long since lost the taste both for liberty and for hard work, have a lot of time on their hands and are not very discriminating in the entertainment they choose. For a long time it has been no secret that Obama and his brand of socialist, pacifist politics have been very popular in Old Europe. Perhaps it's time we traded Obama to the EU for two croissants and a used Volvo. (It would be one of those trades that benefit both teams. Europe would get a guy they adore, and we would get something of value.)

Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of The Washington Times, also had a good zinger on Obama’s Berlin speech in When snake oil was in season

By inviting comparison to Ronald Reagan and JFK, he invited close inspection. Kennedy's use of "Berliner," local slang for a jelly doughnut, risked ridicule, but he made it work. Barack Obama was wise not to make his speech in Hamburg, where he might have been ridiculed as a nothingburger. Worse, in Frankfurt, he would have revealed himself as an ambitious hot dog.

Cal Thomas strikes a more serious note, comparing Obama’s Great Expectations to the promises of the second coming of the real Messiah.

There is a reason the psalmist warned, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help." (Psalm 146:3)

…It is a truism in politics that you are supposed to lower expectations in order to boost your political stock should you exceed them. Sen. Obama has done precisely the opposite. He has raised expectations so high there is only one way he can exceed them following his nomination in Denver. That is to climb to the top of a mountain peak, there to be transfigured and ascend into Heaven. No wonder Jon Stewart lampooned his messianic personae on "The Daily Show," saying that while in Israel, Obama made a short visit to the manger in Bethlehem where he was born.

In his Berlin speech, Obama promised to tear down more walls than Joshua did at Jericho. He's going to destroy walls separating black from white; walls between Jews, Muslims and Christians; walls dividing rich from poor, and East from West. Prior to the advent of Obama, such powers were reserved for the Messiah, who, we are promised, will beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, make the lion lie down with the lamb and we will study war no more.

No politician can live up to such great expectations.

One last Obama mockery. Columnist Frank Rich is the Chris “Thrill up my leg” Matthews of The New York Times and offers a laughable for apparently serious defense of Obama’s presidential pretentions in How Obama Became Acting President

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment.

Read the rest if your stomach can take it.