Obama Plays Scott Walker-Rahm Emanuel Card in Waukesha, Wisconsin

Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son -
Obama challenges Wisconsin to not
think and ask so many questions

President Obama Pens Personal Apology to an Art Historian.

Obama to Wisconsin: Forget about college; that's for me not for thee

The disheartening aspect about seeing President Obama yucking it up with Scott Walker at the Wisconsin Air National Guard 128th Air Refueling Wing, next to Billy Mitchell International Airport (Paulsen. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) is the growing realization of the lack of irony in the image.

Nothing wrong with Walker and Obama talking of course, they have many times.

What's alarming is that Scott Walker's disdain for public education seems to have worn into Obama's rhetoric, just as he postures concern about the vast wealth inequality inducing two generations of Americans backwards.

From a transcript by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel of Obama's talk given at General Electric’s gas engine facility in Waukesha comes this nugget of wisdom from the president:

But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree -- I love art history. (Laughter.) So I don't want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. (Laughter.) I'm just saying you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need. (Applause.)

Putting aside Obama's former chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel waging war on public teachers, while Obama amps up his appeasement with anti-public Republicans, Obama's remarks are ludicrous in ways we hope he doesn't imagine.

Innovation, critical thinking and inspiration are not honed at trade schools. And I'm quite sure Obama received a well-rounded education at Harvard Law School, Columbia University and Occidental College.

I know many art history students with graduate degrees, and they share more than intellectual brilliance, a keen sense of social history, professional success, and an understanding of why mass suffering and institutional misery are directly relevant to the platitudes of a 21st century president preaching unquestioning allegiance to wage slavery—a tunnel that Obama forgets he avoided with the help of reformist elements of a society intent on seeing him aim higher.

Art History is the study of beauty and creation through a realm of social and psychological insight so powerful that Hitler felt compelled to ban art in NAZI Germany.

So while Obama ponders the relevancy of Ben Shahn and Eugene Higgins on some dark night after a few fundraisers, he may consider the words of Noam Chomsky as well:

"There's, furthermore, no way to measure the human and social costs of converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, abandoning the traditional ideal of the universities: fostering creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting external constraints. That's an ideal that's no doubt been flawed in practice, but to the extent that it's realized is a good measure of the level of civilization achieved."
- Noam Chomsky. University of Toronto, Scarborough, April 6, 2011

On Rahmbo

Rahm Emanuel - aka Rahmbo

With all due respect to the rousing Michelle Obama address warming the hearts of 10s of millions of voters, the biggest news out of Charlotte yesterday is that "Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ... has dropped his honorary chairmanship of the Obama campaign to help raise big-dollar contributions, [to work] with the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA." (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten)

Rahmbo is a strategist who engineered the Democratic take-over of the House when he worked as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 mid-term elections.

Now, Rahmbo, seemingly by force of will, will not allow the GOP-Tea Party lies nor its built-in money advantage take the day, like it did in Wisconsin in Scott Walker's recall campaign in which Walker forces outspent recall forces seven-to-one, in a race than featured some $80.9 million spent in a relatively small state.

Rahmbo is no fluffy, cake-eating Democratic bureaucrat.

He is a profane, no-games, get-this-done man of action.

Rahmbo's move is truly the right thing to do, the right time to do it, with the right man at the right place, to borrow from LBJ.

Chicago Four Are Not the Problem

Edward Luce's piece on the Chicago Four in the Obama administration is getting a lot of buzz, but it reveals more about what is wrong about political journalism than "Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief." [Financial Times, America: A fearsome foursome (go ahead and register for free)]

Luce's thrust is that anonymous Obama allies and friends in Washington think the "Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing ... ."

Not mentioning the sociopathic GOP opposition who would gladly burn down America than see it succeed under Pres. Obama, Luce's internally inconsistent piece is in essence a dubious complaint that Rahm Emanuel yells at people and self-entitled people in Washington should have their asses kissed, just like Sally Quinn says. That's it. That's why the buzz about this 1,900-word piece.

The problem in the Obama administration is recognition and subsequent objectives and commitment. For example, the Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) is a damn disaster and here's how we'll fix it.

Students and working-middle-class families are in crisis and here's how we'll fix this.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are unmitiagated disasters, and we'll get the hell out now.

Personally, I still believe that Obama will commit himself to helping people over money. Maybe it is blind faith like Sarah Silverman laughs at herself for.

Luce's piece concludes:

The White House declined to answer questions on whether Mr Obama needed to broaden his circle of advisers. But some supporters say he should find a new chief of staff. Mr Emanuel has hinted that he might not stay in the job very long and is thought to have an eye on running for mayor of Chicago. Others say Mr Obama should bring in fresh blood. They point to Mr Clinton’s decision to recruit David Gergen, a veteran of previous White Houses, when the last Democratic president ran into trouble in 1993. That is credited with helping to steady the Clinton ship, after he too began with an inner circle largely carried over from his campaign.

But Mr Gergen himself disagrees. Now teaching at Harvard and commenting for CNN, Mr Gergen says members of the inner circle meet two key tests. First, they are all talented. Second, Mr Obama trusts them. 'These are important attributes,' Mr Gergen says. His biggest doubt is whether Mr Obama sees any problem with the existing set-up.

'There is an old joke,' says Mr Gergen. 'How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.'

Take it for what it's worth.

Change Is Coming

Rahm Emanuel: First Jewish Speaker of the House and Barack Obama, first Muslim U.S. President?

Goodness Gracious! Somebody, please do something, fast.

Aren't their any real Americans left? Well, I'm sure that we will see these sentiments addressed in the coming months during the campaign.

As noted here during the primary, there will be evolving attacks to define and brand Barack Obama involving what advertising and marketing professionals call impressions—the projection of one image (in this case Barack Obama) onto one human brain (a voter).

Designing and managing Obama’s brand by generating impressions for the benefit of his opponent, it is necessary to merge negative (ostensibly plausible) aspects of Obama onto the consciousness of key voting demographics susceptible to certain appeals based on fear and xenophobia.

The more frequent and emotionally potent the impression, the greater is the political impact. The political impressions coming fast and strong: Muslim, Black, stranger, unsteady, creepy, inexperience, radical, unAmerican, different, elitist and so on.