Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Barack Obama's Analogy Between the Gulf Oil Spill and 9/11: Dirty Politics from the Chicago School

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Obama: He knows how to craft a cheap jibe. Photo: The Telegraph

THE TELEGRAPH – BLOGS: Barack Obama is easily clever enough to understand the effect of his comparison between the environmental challenge facing America after the Gulf oil spill and the terrorist challenge it faced after 9/11: a subliminal equation of heartless British oil executives with homicidal Islamists. But he’s also unscrupulous enough not to care.

This is how he put it: “In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.” Nice.

I wondered recently how an expensively educated kid from Hawaii plunged into the filthy pool of Chicago machine politics and emerged smelling so sweet that America elected him president. David Remnick doesn’t address the question in his hagiography, and I’m not sure anyone knows the answer. But if there were any doubt about where Obama served his apprenticeship, then today’s little elision between a terrible accident and meticulously plotted mass murder clears it up. Read on and comment >>> Damian Thompson | Monday, June 14, 2010

Under False Colours

THE SPECTATOR: ‘With time,’ writes David Remnick, ‘political campaigns tend to be viewed through the triumphalist prism of the winner.’ Never more so, perhaps, than in Remnick’s idolatrous new biography of Barack Obama, which presents the First Black President’s ascension to the White House as nothing less than a glorious saga. >>> John R. MacArthur | Wednesday, May 05, 2010