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Obama says people are impatient but "now's not the time to quit...it took time to free the slaves...ultimately we'll make progress." White House Correspondent, Radio

Yet, as president, Obama has demonstrated an almost pathological incapacity to connect with American’s fear and despair over the future Whether it was the Gulf oil spill or a woman's heartbreaking pleading at a recent town hall meeting, Obama’s much ballyhooed coolness seems more icy than reassuring.

Few Americans outside the beltway and Alaska knew much, if anything, about Lisa Murkowski , but we all do now.  In her decision to mount a write-in campaign for her apparently lost Senate seat, she  has become the poster girl for that great politician’s personality disorder — pathological narcissism. In plain English, back in the pre-psychiatric age, she is what we used to call a jerk.Glenn Reynolds puts it in a more uptown manner: “The Murkowski story embodies what’s wrong with the traditional GOP: Self-centered, dynastic, and looking to lobbyists as primary allies.”In other words, a jerk.Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey...

A longtime Washington D.C. insider, and former advisor to the Obama election campaign and transition team, speaks out on an administration in crisis, and a president increasingly withdrawn from the job of President. 2008 gave America an incredibly charismatic candidate for President of the United States. Speech after speech showed a candidate with increasing momentum as primary race after primary race concluded. And then came the nomination, more speeches, culminating in an election night victory. According to the person sitting across from me, those were incredibly exciting times, even for one who had been a participant with three previous presidential...

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express have roared right through the latest round of Republican Party primaries this week, rattling the party establishment and terrifying the Democrats. For those of you who are trained in the fastidious ways of the British ‘liberalism’ and are therefore shocked and can’t think why the American Right is gaining such strength, here’s the reason: Barack Obama. Americans are waking up to the fact that they have elected a man as president who is every inch an exotic creature. Which was rather fun at first. The problem is, America is discovering that Mr Obama...

I would be miffed too if I were ObamaObama in just twenty months has developed a reputation for being petulant, unusually sensitive to the normal run-of-the-mill criticism. His latest pushback was his strangest so far: “And they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, it’s just — but it’s true.” Given that Obama has previously called out talk radio critics by name — Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh — attacked everything from limb-lopping surgeons to vacationing at Las Vegas, and in condescending fashion tsk-tsked those who attend Glen Beck rallies, rural...

"Seen from the inside, the administration is an astonishing success," says E.J. Dionne of the beleaguered regime of his president. "Inside of what?" one is tempted to ask, but by some lights, it's true. President Obama has pushed through a whole lot of bills, and people hate all of them, a historic result accomplished by no other president. Of course, no other has tried. "It's a losing-by-winning dynamic," says Michael Goodwin, as most presidents suffer when their agenda is stifled. He is the first to be in really deep trouble because his agenda has passed. Inside the bubble (the bunker?...

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<p>While President Obama vacationed in Martha's Vineyard, the Oval Office got a makeover, but one quote on the new carpet is wrongly attributed.</p>

President Barack Obama dismissed a recent poll showing that a third of Americans don’t know he’s a Christian – and blamed an online campaign of misinformation by his conservative enemies for perpetuating the myth that he’s a Muslim. “I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead,” Obama told NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, sitting under a tent in a rain-soaked New Orleans, where he commemorated the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. “The facts are the facts. We went through some of this during the campaign — there is a mechanism, a network...

Obama says he ignored Beck rally He seemed intent on casting himself as above the political fray, saying he had more important work to do than to engage in the back and forth of the political “silly season.” For example, Obama said he did not watch any of Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally Saturday on the National Mall. “It’s not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history,” he said. But “I’m making decisions that are not necessarily good for...

In October 1987, Newsweek ran a cover story on would-be presidential candidate George H. W. Bush with the blaring headline “Fighting the Wimp Factor.” --snip-- For Obama, the stereotype is one of a distant, cool, rather narcissistic yuppie. Yuppism, remember, is not definable entirely by income or class. Rather, it is a late-twentieth-century cultural phenomenon of self-absorbed young professionals, earning good pay, enjoying the cultural attractions of sophisticated urban life and thought, and generally out of touch with, indeed antithetical to, most of the challenges and concerns of a far less well-off and more parochial Middle America

Hugh Hefner, America's most celebrated and legendary pornographer, has less and less reason to celebrate. His Playboy magazine empire is crumbling -- he may even be bought out by competitors -- and his prototypical leering pose with girls young enough to be his great-granddaughters is now just plain creepy. His 2009 Christmas card featured 83-year-old Hefner standing between two 20-year-old twins who are his newest live-in girlfriends. Each was wearing a pink tank top with "Hef" painted on it in white. Hefner's women are forever the plastic toys under his tree. Into this sad picture comes documentary filmmaker Brigitte Berman...

Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday dear Barry, Happy birthday to me. Today is Barack Obama’s 49th birthday and an ideal time to mark a little more than a year and a half causing havoc in the White House. What could be more appropriate to celebrate his 18 months of self interest and self involvement than a day honoring him? According to the Associated Press, Obama will have dinner with friends and then settle down to a nice evening in his Hyde Park house. With his wife and children away, he’ll be “spending his birthday instead...

The big spenders who shelled out $30,400 a head for dinner with President Obama at the Four Seasons restaurant and at Anna Wintour's house didn't actually break any bread with him. After starting Tuesday night at a dinner for 60 high-rolling Democratic supporters hosted by hedge-fund billionaire Marc Lasry, Obama headed to a private room at the Four Seasons to wolf down steak, potatoes and broccoli with two aides before heading to Wintour's Greenwich Village home. Obama also gave a brief speech, saying he's not worried about his low poll numbers and he plans to tour the nation to drive...

Kerry: Yacht story 'our fault' By: Andy Barr July 30, 2010 07:50 AM EDT Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Thursday that he and his office mishandled the politics surrounding tax questions on his new $7 million yacht. “I don’t think I dealt with it fast enough, effectively enough. There’s nobody to blame but myself for that,” Kerry said Thursday in an interview with the Boston Globe. Throughout the weeklong story, Kerry has insisted that he will pay whatever state taxes are owed – estimated to be $500,000 – on the yacht. Kerry has so far not had to pay Massachusetts’...

Barack Obama seems to have a pattern of using ceremonial or stately events as opportunities to ambush and humiliate people. This behavior is unpresidential and reveals a vindictive streak that makes Richard Nixon look like Mister Rogers. A few examples of Obama's taking pleasure in administering public pain to others: During the State of the Union Address, he chose to direct his ire at the justices of the Supreme Court, located in the front rows. After the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of the First Amendment regarding political speech, Barack Obama famously chose to dress down the black-clad...

If you want to know what makes President Barack Obama tick, take a look at his explanation for why Israelis have turned against him. During an interview with Israel’s Channel Two, Obama was asked why he thinks Israelis mistrust him. “Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein,” he told the interviewer, “and that creates suspicion. Some of it may have to do with the fact that I have actively reached out to the Muslim community, and I think that sometimes — particularly in the Middle East — there’s the feeling of the friend...

President Barack Obama says Senate Republicans are playing politics with bills that would extend benefits to the unemployed and increase lending to small businesses. Striking a deeply partisan tone in his weekly radio and online address, Obama said the GOP leadership has chosen to "filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress" by blocking votes on agenda items the president says would breath life into the economic recovery. "These steps aren't just the right thing to do for those hardest hit by the recession," Obama said. "They're the right thing to do for all of us." The address was recorded at...

WASHINGTON - President Obama suggested Thursday that his Muslim middle name - Hussein - makes a lot of Israelis nervous about his commitment to the Jewish state. When asked by an Israeli interviewer why many Israelis are "anxious about you," and "feel like you don't have a special connection to Israel," Obama said, "Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is 'Hussein,' and that creates suspicion." Obama told Israel's Channel 2 TV that apprehension about his name among Israelis could be eased if they checked the roster of his top aides. "Ironically, I've got a...