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Obamamania Tag

I didn't watch the Oscars. Why would I want to watch smug people who hate me congratulate themselves on how great they are? I'd rather vomit blood. Maybe that's not a fair analogy. I'd rather crawl on my stomach over hot coals covered with broken glass. Yeah, that's the ticket. I wasn't alone, as viewership hit a 9-year low, just a little more than half the audience in 1998. I was aware, however, that the NY Times planned to run a pretentious ad called "Truth" as a retort to Donald Trumps hits on fake news and, particularly, the NY Times.

Here's my Quick Hit in this morning's Morning Insurrection newsletter:
"THE END - It's strange to see Obama leave office. I started Legal Insurrection three weeks before the 2008 election. Our entire blog life has been about -- in varying degrees -- Obama. I'm glad to see him go, but it will be strange not having Obama to kick around anymore."
Here are some historical facts.

No president in recent memory has been more embraced by America's celebrity class than Obama. Liberal Hollywood has celebrated with Obama at the White House countless times but this weekend they had one last hurrah. The Daily Mail reports:
Inside the Obamas' final star-studded party: White House bash goes on until 4am with Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and SJP on the dance floor and chicken and waffles for breakfast Dozens of celebrities turned out to party until 4am at the White House in a farewell bash that saw the likes of Paul McCartney, Meryl Streep and SJP tear up the dancefloor.

I don't know that this comes close to the various Obama anthems from 2008, but it's a start. There's a new video anthem for Bernie Sanders, produced by the woman who produced the viral Obama Girl video. The anthem title is "Bernie Bae" (Bae is slang for Before Anyone Else). Time Magazine (which apparently still exists) reports:
The woman who brought us the mega-viral hit “Crush On Obama” is back with another political pop song just begging to go viral. This one is about Bernie Sanders. It’s called “Bernie Bae.” The production values in this music video are much higher this time around—and we have to admit, the song is quite catchy.

This year, we have two deserving Nobel Peace Prize winners, each of whom has an inspiring story of fighting against great odds for the humanity of others, and suffering great pain in the process. They are the people we imagine when we think of the Nobel Peace Prize in our mind's eye. Even if that mind's eye doesn't always meet reality. Amy Davidson in The New Yorker has brief backgrounds on this year's winners:
Malala Yousafzai, who is seventeen years old, and Kailash Satyarthi, who is sixty, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday morning—for, in the committee’s words, “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” Satyarthi, who is Indian, is a man who has fought for children for decades; Malala, who is Pakistani, is a child, and a fighter herself. There was some thought, ahead of the announcement, that Malala, as she is known, would be awarded the prize alone. She is more famous than Satyarthi. Two years ago, gunmen from the Taliban got on her school bus and shot her in the head, shattering her skull—an attack she answered by becoming one of the world’s clearest voices for girls’ education. Satyarthi has survived physical attacks, too, and has led raids on factories that hold small children as bonded laborers.... ccording to press reports, he has worked directly with more than eighty thousand children, and has fought to change the conditions and chances of hundreds of thousands more.
And then there's this:

The President would like you to know that your demands for him to lay eyes upon the wasteland of human degradation that is our southern border are nothing more than a blow to the dignity of the Office. This week, President Obama fielded a considerable amount of angst over his neglect of the U.S.-Mexico border. The President failed to go anywhere near the border during his recent fundraising trip to Texas, and when asked by the press why he was avoiding the area, he responded in kind:
Jeh Johnson has now visited, at my direction, the border five times. He’s going for a sixth this week. He then comes back and reports to me extensively on everything that's taking place. So there’s nothing that is taking place down there that I am not intimately aware of and briefed on. This isn’t theater. This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo-ops; I’m interested in solving a problem. And those who say I should visit the border, when you ask them what should we be doing, they're giving us suggestions that are embodied in legislation that I’ve already sent to Congress. So it’s not as if they're making suggestions that we’re not listening to. In fact, the suggestions of those who work at the border, who visited the border, are incorporated in legislation that we’re already prepared to sign the minute it hits my desk.
No one in the history of the meme has ever asked for it with a more aggressive lack of self-awareness. Via Digitas Daily: This, coming from the man who once snapped a selfie at a humanitarian's funeral. No, wait, it's worse. This, coming from the man WHO WAS MOCKED BY THE SUN for taking a selfie at a humanitarian's funeral:

A Quinnipiac University National Poll released today confirms what conservatives across the country have known since 2008: that Barack Obama is a dreadful president. Via Quinnipiac University:
President Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II, 33 percent of American voters say in a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today. Another 28 percent pick President George W. Bush. Ronald Reagan is the best president since WWII, 35 percent of voters say, with 18 percent for Bill Clinton, 15 percent for John F. Kennedy and 8 percent for Obama, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Among Democrats, 34 percent say Clinton is the best president, with 18 percent each for Obama and Kennedy.
Meanwhile, just under half of voters polled believe that America would be better off with Mitt Romney at the helm:
America would be better off if Republican Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election, 45 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say the country would be worse off.
There are two takeaways from this poll, and only one of them has to do with the fact that the majority of Americans are experiencing some serious buyer's remorse over all the "hope and change" happening down on the border/in Benghazi/at our VA hospitals.

From a reader in Miami: Seen in Little Haiti in Miami. Says empty promises. On a significant intersection, looks like something hit it, used to be a full mural. ...

I admit to not having followed the Obama illegal alien uncle saga very carefully. He previously said he knew nothing about his then illegal alien uncle. Now he says he knows something after the uncle gave up the goods at a recent immigration hearing. The Boston Globe reports (video at bottom of post):
President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting. Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation.
Roger Simon at PJ Media (via Instapundit) asks, What if It’s All True? (emphasis mine):

Charles Krauthamer observes the lawlessness of the Obama administration: Remember how for months Democrats denounced Republicans for daring to vote to defund or postpone Obamacare? Saboteurs! Terrorists! How dare you alter “the law of the land.” This was nonsense from the beginning. Every law is subject to...

It's not for nothing that Obama nuked the filibuster rule.  Yes, Obama.  Harry Reid would not have done it except with marching orders. There's plenty of commentary all around about how this is a desperate move by Obama, as he sinks in the polls and his most "historic" achievement -- Obamacare -- eats away at the Democratic Party like a flesh-eating wound. Obama can pack open judicial seats with hard core partisans, and put his desired apparatchiks in positions of administrative power. I expressed my view on the opportunity this presents, Democrats nuked the ratchet. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with some commentators who normally are not on my side of the fence.  This Dana Milbank column makes some important points, although he inaccurately also blames Republicans for allegedly abusing the filibuster, The Democrats’ naked power grab:
“Congress is broken,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789.... Here’s what then-Sen. Joe Biden said in 2005 when a Republican Senate majority threatened to use a similar “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority to carry the day: “The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play . . . tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field. I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”