Stu Blog

Barack Obama’s version of bi-partisanship is like chicken pancakes. We saw this on display at the health care summit. The two sides want brunch. Barack Obama wants pancakes. The republicans want roasted chicken. They’re at an impasse. No one will budge.

Barack Obama says “Let’s make it a bipartisan lunch. We’ll make my pancakes, but we’ll throw a little tiny bit of chicken in the mix when we make them.” That’s how he sees bipartisanship. “I’ll keep almost everything that I want in the recipe, and I’ll mix in a little tiny bit of what you want. Everyone’s happy!”

But real bipartisanship isn’t making chicken pancakes that no one in their right mind would want to eat. It’s manning up and figuring out that they can both live with pizza. Now, Obama won the election—maybe he gets to pick the toppings—but, if he actually cared about bipartisanship he’d be on the phone with Dominos—not trying to convince Boston Market and IHOP to deliver simultaneously.

It’s snowing again up in the North East, and it’s supposed to be yet another major snowstorm.  The 3rd (4th?) big one of the year.  We’ve joked about how the snow is disproving global warming, when–of course–one season of high levels of snowfall don’t prove or disprove anything. It does, however, annoy Al Gore and make him go into hiding, which is satisfying.

To respond to our jokes, liberal critics just reported them as if they were serious.  Then, they fought back by using the exact same argument they were supposedly criticizing.  ”Glenn Beck thinks one snowy winter disproves global warming!  What an idiot!  The truth is that all this snow proves global warming does exist!”

Well, 3 years ago I bought a snow blower.  We’ve had such little snow in the past few years that I’ve only used it once until this year.  One time in 3 years–in an area that is supposedly the center of where snowfall should be increasing according to the recent ridiculous rants.  It was a joke in our house–how I bought this cool, expensive, piece of alpha-male equipment–and I can never use it.  Before this year, we’ve only had one really big snowstorm since I moved to the area.

Where were these brilliant meteorologists/pundits on cable news back then telling me that man-made global warming would only be proven when it starts snowing a lot?  Maybe they were with all of the people who were telling us that global warming is causing unlimited hurricanes to hit our shores back in 2005?*  We’ve had almost no hurricanes since. We’re sure to hear very soon that the lack of hurricanes is both the fault of global warming and brutally dangerous.

The point is that these snowstorms don’t disprove or prove global warming. Nor did the lack of snow in the previous years. They just confirm that I’m too out of shape to shovel.

* Worth reading on hurricanes: the World Meteorological Organization “. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.”

According to a new Rasmussen reports poll—only 22% of Americans strongly approve of the job President Obama is doing as president. That’s the lowest in his presidency. 41% strongly disapprove—a 19 point gap. Overall his approval is floundering at only 45 percent while 54 percent disapprove.

And all of this with a level of support from the press that a Republican could only dream of. Remember the complaints about George W Bush? He was barely paying attention to what was going on. He was always on vacation playing golf. It was so prominent that Michael Moore made Bush playing golf the trailer of Fahrenheit 9-11.

Yet—in the first 9 months of his first term—Obama had already played as much golf as Bush had in almost 3 years. The media? Largely silent. Maybe they were being quiet so that they wouldn’t disturb the President’s drive on the 5^th hole. Shhhhhhhhh.

But President Obama doesn’t only set records on the links (and of course, in spending.) Let’s go back to the Bush administration again. Throughout his presidency we were told by the media that his administration was far too closed. There was no access to the president. He just wouldn’t face reporters.

Fast forward to Obama.  He has now broken George W Bush’s record —and has gone 216 days without a formal press conference. The last one he had? Remember the disaster of the “police acted stupidly” press conference?  Now, I guess if that were my last press conference, I might go 216 days without another too. But, where is the press on this? I know they don’t care about being fair to conservatives, but shouldn’t they at least be concerned about being treated fairly themselves?