Barack vs Barack: Stimulus Video

Must laugh to keep from crying. Who you gonna believe: Barack or your own eyes? His were not the stimulus promises you see on video.

At :43, Barack uses his finger to emphasize "under budget", as if we are children who need scolding, as in you will go to bed at 8:30, and you will not question whether government can operate efficiently.



Something I wrote in White House Stages Even a Baseball Pitch fits here:

"Barack, naturally, then pumped his fist in satisfaction: Yes! I did soooo goood! Who you gonna believe? My fist pump or your own eyes? Obi Barack: This was not the weak pitch you think you saw. Supply side did not work for Reagan. Tax cuts did not work for JFK, Reagan, and GWB. Nuclear proliferation did not help bankrupt the USSR and win the Cold War. That was a coup in Honduras."


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Sotomayor vs Sotomayor

Sotomayor is playing the same game as Barack. We have this video:



yet Obi Sonya keeps saying:

I am John Roberts. I am not a "wise Latina". I am not a blowhard Joe Biden. Mine are not the opinions you read in my speeches and see in my video. I am John Roberts. I am not a "wise Latina". I am not a blowhard Joe Biden. Mine are not the actions of Ricci; mine are not the 6 decisions (out of 8) which were overturned by the SCOTUS. I am John Roberts. I am disciplined of thought and speech.

What we have, in Barack, in Sonia, in the left which roots them on, is conviction that lying is okay, that lying doesn't matter, that lying is acceptable. All that matters is victory over the dastardly right. Lying to defeat the right is a virtue.

What we have, also - as demonstrated in Sotomayor's repudiation of her previously avowed judicial principles - is tacit acknowledgment that America cannot stomach leftist judicial theory. Patrick McIlheran, of Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, gets it:

Law professors complained to journalists that empathy "went out the window," that they were "completely disgusted" by Sotomayor giving answers indistinguishable from what John Roberts and Samuel Alito might have said.

The interesting question is why she did this.

[Greg's note: this is the interesting question. My answer: Sotomayor was in slight danger of being thrown under the bus by Democratic Senators, as the Senate is extemely sensitive to public opinion polling. Sotomayor "did this" to prevent public opinion polls from turning against her any worse. She was taking no chances.]

She does not have to please Republicans. She could have answered them by standing and singing "The Internationale," and she'd still end up on the court.

Yet she went out of her way to spurn President Barack Obama's view about empathy: "Judges can't rely on what's in their heart," she said. She's disavowed that moral superiority is granted by being part of a minority. "I do not believe that foreign law should be used to determine the result under constitutional law or American law," she said Thursday, throwing overboard the progressive dream of correcting our bad habits in the court of world opinion. Asked whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document, she replied it is "immutable" but for amendments. "It doesn't live other than to be timeless," she said.

Antonin Scalia must have wept at the beauty of this statement.

Why such a thorough repudiation of all that progressives feel? Why must Sotomayor be portrayed as identical to a George W. Bush appointee before Democrats can vote for her?

Because, apparently, that's what Democrats suspect the public wants. On some level, the president and his congressional allies believe the public would not stand for a justice who thinks the Constitution must breathe modern air, that world opinion must inform our law, that abortion is a constitutional right if not a sacrament and that who you are should matter to how the law treats you.

The Democrats might be right. The Rasmussen poll Wednesday said that while 90% of respondents figured Sotomayor is going to be confirmed, only 37% favored it, while 43% were against. And 83% of them said the legal system "should apply the law equally to all Americans rather than using the law to help those who have less power and influence."

So much for the empathy gambit.

From this, two possible outcomes emerge. One, Sotomayor is confirmed, and it turns out her conversion is real. Wise Latina? Nah, she's an umpire in the Roberts mold. Result: Conservatives win.

Two, she's faking. She's confirmed and becomes a reliable liberal vote to mutate the Constitution into what she's sure the writers would have made it had they been as smart as modern liberals. Result: No change from the man she replaces, David Souter, and Obama loses more credibility with independent voters.

Either way, what's become clear is that the week that was supposed to be the humiliating rout of old white guys in the Senate has turned into the surrender of judicial liberalism. That has become the philosophy no potential justice can admit to, even when her president owns the Senate. Whoever in the administration coached Sotomayor knows this: A conservative Supreme Court is not at odds with America. It is its reflection.