Over a century ago,William Ernest Henley wrote,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
And, as we know, President Obama has a habit of bowing to foreign heads of state.
Now Bill Clinton’s bowing to Obama,
What’s with this nonsense?
Bill’s Nasty, Brutish, and Long speech “did a lot of heavy lifting to obscure, camouflage, evade, distract, paper over, and otherwise minimize” Obama’s dismal record,
But the facts are obdurate. Median household income has plunged nearly 5% since he took office. In a symbolically fitting occurrence, the national debt clock (which was not displayed on the wall of the DNC as it was in Tampa) clicked over to $16 trillion just as the Democrats were convening. President Obama has contributed more than $5 trillion of that in under four years. He came to office promising to cut the annual deficit in half by the end of this first term: it languishes at about $1.4 trillion. Give me $800 billion, he said, and I’ll have unemployment down to 5.6% by July 2012. The official number is 8.3% and so-called U”U6” unemployment is about 15%. Food prices have soared on his watch. As, of course, have energy prices: remember he came to office attacking the coal industry and promising to make the cost of energy “skyrocket.” It has: gasoline cost an average of $1.85 a gallon when he came to office, it is flirting with $4 a gallon now.
Jennifer Rubin found Bill’s speech to strain credulity, disingenuous, and at times incoherent, but mostly, self-serving,
Clinton certainly drubbed Republicans, and then — this is Clinton, of course — he bragged about his own deficit-balancing record. It was a pointed reminder that Obama simply isn’t Bill Clinton.
Toward the end of the speech, Clinton blew the race card whistle loudly, claiming voter ID laws (which have been blessed by the Supreme Court and in case after case have failed to produce a single minority voter who could not obtain an ID) intend to depress minority voting. This was Clinton the charlatan and the hyper-partisan. Given how popular voter ID laws are with voters at large, you understand how entirely dependent Obama is in this election on non-white voters .
Mostly, it seemed that Bill was paving the way for a potential Hillary presidential run. He talked fondly of her, of course, and gave a passing and remarkably vague defense of Obama’s foreign policy. He did not mention Israel.
As always, Bill Clinton put Bill Clinton first, while Hillary’s not doing so well in China; Xi stood her up. All the same, she managed to watch Bill on TV.
Earlier in the day, DNC Chair Villaraigosa Declares Super-Majority Supports Party Platform Amendment Minutes After Failing To Actually Get Super-Majority
After last night’s line-up, JAWA was wondering How Many Losers Does it Take to Open for Bill Clinton. Fret not, Scarlett Johanson and Natalie Portman are showing up tonight… at the smaller venue.
Which begs the question, if the Dems knew they had enogh people to fill an additional 40,000 seats, wouldn’t they? As it is, Lee Stranahan got to sit in the nosebleed seats last night – obviously not enough people were there.
Kyle Becker has 1001 Reasons to Vote Against Barack Obama, and while you look at numbers, 5 Ways Obama Is No Bill Clinton.
Enough with the bowing. Stand tall, be “the master of your fate”, since, in spite of the DNC’s message, you do not belong to the government,
UPDATE,
Lapdog media alert,
this speech was a living, breathing organism. the crowd, the hall, the speech, one. #DNC2012
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) September 6, 2012
Lapdog poetry: Rick Klein gushes over Bill Clinton with junior high-worthy verse