Obama Snubs The Gettysburg Address 150th Anniversary, May Confirm Clint Eastwood’s Thoughts About Him

[H/T Forbes]: It is hard to know whether to be outraged or grateful that President Obama has decided to skip the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s famous speech at Gettysburg this week.  He’s sending his secretary of the Interior (who?), when even Attorney General Eric Holder would be more appropriate. 

It is not Obama’s first act of diffidence or disdain for American icons; think of his casual and intermittent relationship with the American flag pin on his lapel, for example, along with some of his overseas pronouncements tacitly attesting to his ambition to embody some kind of “post-American” ethos to go along with his post-modern philosophical outlook.  This slight ranks on par with Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton skipping the 40^th and 50^th anniversaries of the D-Day landings at Normandy.

But it certainly is a curious decision for a man who has otherwise gone to such lengths to associate himself with the Great Emancipator, and you’d think he’d love the chance to change the subject right now.  Obama announced his presidential campaign on the steps of the state capital in Springfield, Illinois, in 2007, invoking the memory and image of Lincoln, and Obama chose to be sworn in—twice—on Lincoln’s Bible, after re-creating Lincoln’s train journey to the capitol in 2009.  In 2005, before Obama’s presidential ambitions took shape, he spoke at the opening of the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, where he attempted to associate himself with Lincoln, especially what he described as Lincoln’s “repeated acts of self-creation”—a phrase that doesn’t really apply to Lincoln but surely applies to Obama.

Can it be that Obama has sensed a limit to his own megalomania?  While Obama has compared himself to Lincoln and FDR, and wasn’t bashful about assuming the mantle of Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50^th anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech, perhaps he knows that nothing he can say would measure up to Lincoln’s extraordinary 272-word achievement.  For one thing, it is impossible for Obama to be succinct about anything.  His natural tendency to turn every occasion into a meditation about himself would vindicate—this time—the editorial reaction applied to Lincoln’s short panegyric at the time.  (The Gettysburg Patriot and Unionin 1863 said that a “veil of oblivion shall be dropped over” Lincoln’s “silly remarks.”  The paper’s successor, the Patriot News, formally retracted that infamous editorial this week.)

Most everyone knows the story: Edward Everett, the most renowned orator of the age, gave a two-hour speech before Lincoln.  In many respects Everett is the prototype of today’s “public intellectual.”  He had been a professor and president of Harvard, and was one of the first Americans to earn a Ph.D. in Europe.  No one remembers today much of anything Everett ever said.  Obama is fast becoming the Edward Everett of our time, but adorned with the presidential seal, which means we have to listen to him even after he’s become a bore.  Truly the world would little note nor long remember whatever Obama might try to say at Gettysburg.

Maybe Clint Eastwood was ironically right about Obama, not so much with the empty chair shtick at the Republican convention last summer, but with the tag line from his second Dirty Harry movie: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”  Has Obama started to grasp the limits of his self-referential rhetoric?  Why, to add a fresh layer of complication, is Obama passing the opportunity to provoke some mischief among his political enemies?  While Lincoln is a revered figure for most Americans, in fact his legacy remains a matter of controversy among many conservatives and surprising neglect by many Republicans.

One reason may be that Obama has to carefully avoid associating himself fully with Lincoln’s view about the centrality of what Lincoln called, at Gettysburg, “the proposition” that “all men are created equal.”  Obama omitted this famous line from the Declaration of Independence in his famous Philadelphia speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy in 2008.  He did finally quote the Declaration’s “self-evident truth” in his second inaugural address earlier this year, but then added in a revealing line, “while these truths may be self-evident. . .”

May be self-evident?  This is what intellectual poker players would call a revealing “tell.”  If hooked up to a polygraph, Obama would likely have to confess to the modern liberal view that individual rights come not from our natural equality as human beings, but from a positive grant from government.  The redistributive welfare state depends on this principle for its legitimacy, as does today’s “progressive” insistence on dividing people into groups according to skin color or gender or sexual preference, and assigning hierarchies of legal rights accordingly.  Much of modern liberal philosophy depends on turgid obfuscation to disguise the fact that it is at odds with Lincoln’s understanding of equal rights.

On second thought, we should be glad Obama is skipping out on Gettysburg.

Original Article

Obama Shuts Down D.C. For Valerie Jarrett’s Birthday

[H/T Western Journalism]: Barack Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett has been called the real decision-maker of this administration by many critics. By any account, she is a confidante and close friend of the First Family.

Obama himself admitted he screens all of his decisions through Jarrett. His opinion on numerous issues – including his initial reluctance to target Osama bin Laden – has reportedly been shaped extensively by her influence.

Naturally, when Jarrett recently turned 57, the Obamas were among those helping her celebrate. While there is nothing wrong with joining a friend for a birthday party, many in the nation’s capital were inconvenienced for nearly five hours as a significant portion of R Street was shut down for the festivities.

From the time Obama’s motorcade traveled to the destination, an organic hotspot called Restaurant Nora, around 7 p.m., much of the street remained inaccessible until nearly midnight.

While reports show the Obamas and Jarrett were among those celebrating at the trendy eatery, diligent journalists in search of a photo opportunity left unfulfilled. After spending a couple of hours confined to an adjacent restaurant, members of the media were relegated to their vehicles for the latter portion of the event.

Despite waiting in the rain for a chance to capture an image of the partying politicos, the special guests never made a public appearance.

While he was living it up, spending the entire evening among friends in a posh environment, Obama tacitly informed ordinary citizens that their needs are unimportant.

Just as in countless communities across today’s American, D.C. residents are trying desperately to provide for their families as this administration relentlessly attacks the American Dream. Shutting down an entire block for a private party only adds insult to injury.

Obama has consistently acted as an imperial president, becoming even more out-of-touch with the increasing unpopularity of his policies. Increasingly, it seems the only outside opinion important to him comes from the woman for whom grinding D.C. traffic to a halt for five hours is deemed completely appropriate.

–B. Christopher Agee

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: Plows Over Woman at City Council Meeting

I’m afraid Rob Ford has gone off the deep end with no return.

[H/T The Daily Beast]: The hits keep coming! Embattled Toronto mayor Rob Ford reached a new level of viral infamy when he crashed into a fellow council member. Watch and cringe.

Ford’s downward spiral continued Monday when he plowed into a woman—nearly knocking her over—at a meeting of city council members working to strip him of his remaining powers. Those in attendance at the meeting were heard shouting “Shame! Shame!” at Ford, who has admitted to smoking crack while in office (he said he was drunk) and recently discussed oral sex in graphic terms on live TV. The vote, which a majority of council members have already supported, will cut Mayor McCrack’s office budget by 60 percent and allow his staff to join the deputy mayor.

Col. Dan Hampton: Obama Continues Communist Style Purge Of U.S. Military, ‘You Don’t Have Anybody Left That’s Going to Stand Up to This Clown-Act in the White House’

CA has been reporting on this issues here, here, and here. Fox News recently interviewed Col. Dan Hampton (Ret) that set the record straight.

As Barack Obama continues the unprecedented dismissal of scores of military officers, a number of high-ranking soldiers are coming forward to expose his motive.
One anonymous source told World Net Daily that Obama is seeking a “compliant officer class” of military personnel unwilling to question his orders. As it stands, he claims there are virtually no officials ranked higher than major “that would say no to anything.”

According to Medal of Honor recipient and retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, another motive is “emasculating the military,” noting that Obama “will fire anyone who disagrees with him” on certain political and social issues.

SHOCKING: A New Demonic Interracial Game Called ‘Knockout’ Targets Random Innocent Victims

[H/T Breitbart]: A new deadly “game” called “knockout“is crossing the nation, especially among black teenagers, in which they try to punch a randomly-selected person walking by on the street so hard with one blow that knocks them unconscious—but the results have sometime proven fatal.

In the New York area in particular, there also seems to be an anti-Semitic motivation to some of the attacks. One black teen, asked why the players savagely attack their victims, simply said, “For the fun of it.” Another added, “They just want to see if you got enough strength to knock somebody out.”

The attacks, also called “Knock Out King” or “happy slapping,” have occurred from Syracuse to New York City to New Jersey to St. Louis. The list of attacks is frightening, and that only includes the ones that have been made public. Examples include:

1. 46-year-old Eric Ralph Santiago of Hoboken, NJ, whose body was found with his neck broken and his head squeezed between iron fence posts. Videotape shows Santiago walking in an alleyway during the day, and one black teenager in a trio punching him hard enough to kill him, causing him to slump into and wedge his neck in a fence.
2. In Crown Heights, New York, A 19-year-old Jewish man was crossing the street when brutallypunched by a black man who was in a group of roughly ten young black males. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters there have been at least seven attacks on Jews in Crown Heights in the recent weeks.
3. Another attack in Crown Heights on November 6 where two black teens reportedly approached a 12-year-old Jewish boy playing baseball in the street and punched him in the head.
4. Syracuse, New York: May 23: A 13-year-old teen tried to knock out Michael Daniels on May 23; when that didn’t work, a 15-year-old teen punched Daniels and injured his brain so severely that Daniels died the next day. One perpetrator pled guilty to assault and the other was convicted of second-degree manslaughter. Both were sentenced to 18 months.
5. Pittsburgh, 2012; James Addlespurger, a teacher, was allegedly punched by one black teen walking with a group. Addlespurger points to surveillance video of the altercation, saying it “pretty much speaks for itself.”
6. Syracuse: 70-year-old Jim Giffords was allegedly punched so hard by Romeo Williams, an eighteen-year-old black male, that he died.
7. St. Louis, 2011: an elderly Vietnamese man was murdered by “knockout” by a black man who was 18 years old at the time of his sentencing in May 2013.
8. St. Louis: 21-year-old Zack Finkelstein was walking to a bus stop to go meet his grandmother when police say a black man in his 20s or 30s brutally punched him in a random attack.
9. St. Louis: A 17-year-old black teenager Edward Townsend allegedly punched a 30-year-old man in the head in an apparent “knockout” attack. Also in St. Louis: a group of teenagers beat a gay man up playing “the knock out game.”

Report: Valerie Jarrett Led Secret Negotiations with Iran for Past Year

[H/T Breitbart]: The Times Of Israel is reporting that a team of negotiators led by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett has been conducting secret talks with Iran about it’s nuclear weapons program for the past year.

The report states the deal submitted in Geneva earlier this month was a direct result of these secret year-long negotiations between teams headed by Jarrett and Iran’s Ali Akbar Salehi.  That deal was ultimately rejected when France and Israel raised strong objections, and talks are expected to resume this Wednesday.

The White House was very quick to issue a categorical denial of the report.  According to White House spokesperson Bernadette Meehan, “Those rumors are absolutely, 100 percent false.”

If this report is found to be accurate despite the administration’s fast denial, the fact that Jarrett is leading the U.S. negotiating team on Iran’s nuclear weapons program is very troubling.  She does not appear to have any foreign policy experience or history of being involved in such high level negotiations of this nature.