I’ve been plotting out this post in my head for a week or so, working on the graphics, and accumulating links. By coincidence, I have found myself galloping to keep up with the realities that have bolstered my own ideas – life imitating art, truth being stranger than fiction, all that kind of stuff. However, I will lay things out in the order as conceived, in hopes to “infotain.”


IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

The first time I ever saw the Che-style Obama face was on the now-famous wall of the Houston Obama campaign headquarters, which lies between my sister's house and the church. There was the tri-colour paint-by-number graphic which has now become the icon of hopey-changitude, supersized on a large mustard wall. At the time I first saw it, Obama was to me an amusing, sophomoric poseur whose jet-puffed platitudes one could hardly imagine fooling anybody. Heh.

As time passed and the unthinkable became the electable, that stretch of matte
mustard wall and its painted poster art just screamed for some kind of comment. It's taken awhile, but this past week some poor sod just couldn't take it anymore and went a little jiggy with a spray can. It was just a matter of time. With that in mind, I've done a little embroidering of my own on the Icon of The One, with appropriate links and meditations.

ITEM: OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OVERTURNS ELECTION RESULTS
in smalltown North Carolina --

THE MESSAGE: black citizens of Kinston are too STUPID to vote for candidates instead of parties

Local voters of Kinston, N.C. decided, by a ballot initiative vote of TWO to ONE, that candidates in certain local elections would not be identified by party affiliation. Nobody complained, nobody rallied the "nay" voters to fight the outcome of vote. But the nannying busybodies of the Obama administration "reached out" from inside the Beltway to tell the voters of Kinston, N.C. that they were not capable of making decisions for themselves.

Though black voters outnumber white ones in Kinston by a ratio of two to one, so the measure for non-partisan candidates could not have passed without the black population's approval, Attorney General Holder and Co. have conjured up some bogus "civil rights" complaint as justification for unilaterally overturning the local referendum result.

Obviously, in the opinion of the DOJ operatives, black voters in Kinston MUST necessarily see their interests served ONLY by Democrats, and will be unable to identify which candidate will serve their interests unless he or she is identified during the campaign and on the ballot as a Democrat. Without a party affiliation spelled out in black and white (ahem), black voters will be prevented from exercising their right [their DUTY?]to vote [Democrat].


ITEM: in case you've been living in an abandoned hermitage hut on Skellig Michael and missed it,

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION KEEPS UP ALL-OUT OFFENSIVE AGAINST FOX NEWS,

with the usual asides for Rush Limbaugh and all conservative talk-radio gabbers

Nobody could have missed the story, as recounted here, or here, or here. All during the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama couldn't contain his obsessing about Sean Hannity, and avoided any direct contact with FOX until the nights of the Republican convention, when he sat down with Bill O'Reilly, and got the ONLY hardball-ish questions he has ever endured. Once he was elected, it was presumed that The One would accept his acceptance, and rise above the opposition criticism which is served up to every elected official.

Bu-u-u-u-t no-o-o-o-o-o -- he's still a little, um, jumpy.

So when the few voices of opposition, or mere probitive curiosity, among the media try to do their job and face off with these powerful agents of mass hopey-changitude who have swept into office, suddenly it has become as important to the new administration to target and stifle its opposition as it is to find and carry out solutions to the grave problems confronting us.

What needs to be said is being said, here, there, and everywhere, by Republicans and Democrats alike who see it for the childish sandbox feud that it is. But it is worth pointing out, in the most graphic way, that Mr. Obama is drifting perilously close to his "nattering nabobs of negativism" moment. With his dithering, his puffery, his petulance, and his Janus-faced politicking, Mr. Obama does not need to take on the cartoon persona of Nixon's disgraced (for chump change compared to Charlie Rangel.....) Veep Spiro Agnew.

Mr. Obama, this warning is probably too late, but YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE.


ITEM: LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

That's the title of a tiresome book by tiresome Resident Senate Comedian Al Franken, he of Minnesota. But Google any variation of the word "LYING" and the word "OBAMA" and you'll get literally millions of choices, and only a few of the top ones are Birthers and other Moonbats. Some are even disillusioned liberals.

The subjects of the lying are almost too numerous to count: --

-- TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT - legislation posted online
-- GITMO, DETENTION, RENDITION POLICIES - change!!!
-- AFGHANISTAN - war of necessity, pursuit of the Taliban, Bin Laden, Al Qaida
-- HEALTH CARE - single-payer, illegals, abortion, rationing, duty to die
-- CAP AND TRADE - tax hikes, soaring electricity cost
-- GAY RIGHTS - marriage, military
-- EMPLOYMENT (and maximum unemployment)
-- STIMULUS SPENDING
-- ACORN
-- HE'S NOT THE [insert name of radical associate] I KNEW

And the beat goes on.

Over the past two years various people have made the observation that at least some portion of support for Obama as both candidate and president comes from people who support him in spite of his attempts to sound centrist, because the unwhispered secret is that they know he's lying -- it's just something he has to do to get elected and appease certain groups. (Even Jeremiah Wright said so.)

Just to refresh the memory, John Hinderaker at Powerline probably said it best.

But if there is one drum that the President has beaten incessantly, starting with Inauguration Day, and at every opportunity at home and abroad ever since, in the most degrading and unseemly fashion, it is the fake and fraudulent oil drum of GEORGE BUSH BASH-AND-TRASH.

Unable to stop playing this tune to excuse his every shortcoming, Obama, and his henchmen, pulled out every stop this past week with the most heinous and flagrant falsehood yet: that over seven years at war, the Bush administration "never asked key questions" about a strategy for Afghanistan. This is a breathtaking and COLOSSAL LIE.

Key questions were asked, and answered, and turned over to BOTH candidates for president in 2008, and then followed up on with the winning team during the transition, at which time the Obama team REQUESTED SILENCE about the findings -- why? so they could claim credit for the strategy, and lie about its source later on? do they plan the lies that far in advance? We'll leave that to speculation.

Weekly Standard Official Hottie Stephen Hayes is too polite when he calls the Obamanoids "ingrates". Suffice it to say that, on the most important issues facing the nation and the world, they are prepared to LIE, for the most self-sodden reasons. Puke-making.

Obama's reflexive Bush-bashing even spilled over to the First Lady (and I use the term loosely), who wasted no time in projecting her own obliviousness to the plight of military families onto former First Lady Laura Bush -- a move that was not only low-class, low-rent, and profoundly unladylike, it was also a COLOSSAL LIE. [thank you, hollering Cassandra]


ITEM: in a similar vein, artery, or what you will,

OBAMA FIDDLES WHILE AFGHANISTAN BURNS

I won't speak to this, because others more qualified should have their say. Over at Blackfive, OEF Afghanistan veteran Deebow writes an OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. Pithy quote:

Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.

I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight -- who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose-- demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.

ITEM: THE WHOLE LIFE AND ART THING

JULIUS CAESAR

The spousal unit and I took a rare outing to farm country and dropped in at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, as it is once again calling itself, despite the fact that non-'Speare plays in performance still outnumber 'Speareworks considerably. We'd heard good things about this year's Julius Caesar, so that was our play of choice.

[sidebar: Let me take the opportunity say how very much I liked the production, though it was not flawless. I thought Brutus was poorly played, on the whole, though he got better as time passed. As Caesar Geraint Wynn Davies built his character in a particular way, not the only way it could be done, but it worked for me. Cassius, Tom Rooney, looked lean, but not especially hungry, kind of dweeby in fact -- but he was fantastic -- excellent, intelligent reading of the role. Ditto Mark Antony (the "fantastic", not the dweeby), sizzling in the hands of Jonathan Goad -- great stuff.

Costumes and sets were unusual, and have met with negative criticism. I'd have changed a few things, but on the whole I get what the designer was doing and I approve. Amusing sidelight: Caesar's wife, Calphurnia, was played, not memorably, by a lovely black actress, Yanna McIntosh, dressed in mustard yellow and looking for all the world like Michelle Obama. Maybe it meant something -- maybe it was just fun. Couldn't tell ya. But in general, Kudos to everybody.]

I was especially interested in seeing this play because, although JC has never been one of my favourite Shakespeares, I taught it and directed an abridged version with a class of grade 7 & 8 students this past spring, and so went to the theatre with a more developed idea of how I thought it should go than I would otherwise have had.

As I taught the play last spring, quite unintentionally it kept hitting me on the head with various passages about the dangerously growing hubris of the new conqueror, especially as expressed by the "lean and hungry" Cassius. The parallels to both candidate and now President Obama were eerily obvious. Naturally I was prepared to take my place in the audience at Stratford and have these sentences resonate for me, in a way that I expect few in the audience, and NONE on the stage, were likely to share.

Well, I don't know what the director's intentions or politics may be -- I have to doubt that he is as critical of the Annointed One as I am -- but he did seem to be having some fun with the possible modern parallels of the whole mob/cult effect generated by an arrogant, larger-than-life, too-good-to-be-true, amn't-I-almost-godlike victor assuming the throne of empire.

...And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body...
...Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone...
Why, man, he doth bestride the world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
...Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!...
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Ah, savour it, fellow right-wing crazies! Is't not Obamarama writ large?

Large indeed -- for what did we see when the curtain rose, but a colonnade upstage, with three large banners hung between its sets of columns: red, navy, light blue, and at the bottom in dark blue letters [good Roman capitals, they were] the name emblazoned, "CAESAR". Now what does that remind us of??!! I couldn't believe it. It could NOT have been accidental. As they say on the blogs, "HEH."

Foolishly I left the theatre without making sure that the graphic on the banner was to be found in my programme, and alas the only version I've been able to find is this one, where the colours are not so obvious and the imperious head is hidden behind the (rather too doughy) face of Brutus as played (rather too stiffly) by Ben Carlson. I shall look further afield to see if I can find it unadorned, but you get the idea. Heh, indeed.

That was to be the triumphant coda to today's post -- but lo! What madness through yonder internet porthole lies? Could it be another Obama flunkie, Rocco Landesman, appointed to "remake" the National Endowment for the Humanities, telling us that the President is "the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar"? Is this dude for real? Does he not know what a (a) stupid, (b) uncomfortable, (c) factually incorrect, and (d) did I mention stupid? remark that is? But there it was, on Drudge, for all the world to see.

Naturally it did not take long for persons of actual intelligence to swoop down and humiliate this fellow, with facts, for starters, and better grammar and more logical thought process for the main course. Landesman at least has enough of a grasp of the basic humanities to know that what he said -- "powerful writer" -- is not really what he meant, but rather that Obama is the most powerful man who is also a writer since Julius Caesar, if ya know what I'm sayin', blah, blah..... Forget it, dude. You are just wrong in every conceivable way, and the boys at Powerline and The Corner are more than happy to show you how.

And that needlessly specific claim that Mr. Obama is "the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt"? Pass the salt friend, good chance you are gonna eat this one. Just check it out, or ask Bill Ayers [via Bluegrass Bulletin].

There was a Caesar -- here comes such another?

And for the love of God and the all the gods, this does NOT constitute a death-wish, a threat, an incitement for Harry Reid and Chris Dodd and Barbara Boxer to stab Barack on the floor of the Senate. Or even at the Theatre of Pompey.

NO.

NOT.

NUNH-UH.