I Do(nate)

Let's say that you have a birthday or a wedding or even an anniversary coming up in the near future.  And let's say that you want to make sure to really irritate all of your potential guests and possibly sever relationships with them for quite some time.  Well have I got the solution for YOU!  Now, for what I'm going to presume is a limited time, you can sign up for the Obama Event Registry and instruct your would-be guests to donate to his campaign in lieu of getting you a gift!  Doesn't that sound great?!  And by 'great', I mean 'really freaking weird'. 

I seriously thought that this was just some sort of an Internet rumor when I first read about it.  But no, it's right over yonder at Barackobama.com  It simply (while ignoring the weirdness of it all) says: "Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up? Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl. Setting up and sharing your registry page is easy—so get started today"  I'm not so sure that donating to his campaign is going to get you more than you'd get out of a gravy...bowl?  Isn't it a gravy boat?  What the what is a gravy bowl?  Never mind.  I digress.  (But I'm pretty sure it's boat, not bowl.) 

I'm going to go right ahead and say that this is pretty tacky.  How the Obama campaign can even think to ask to be a gift recipient for someone's special occasion is beyond me.  I realize that people sometimes choose a charity or an organization that they'd prefer that people donate to instead of giving a gift.  These people I collectively think of as saps (provided it isn't for a funeral).  But to just come right out and ask that people consider collecting money, cleverly disguised as a gift, for your campaign is just flat out weird.  It kind of has the slight stench of desperation as well. 

Here's the main reason why I think it's just a bizarre thought:  It seems to presume that every single one of your friends that  you would even consider inviting to such an important life event has the same political affiliation that you do.  What a great way to create a huge divide between yourself and your friends with different political views than yourself!  Is the Obama campaign so narrow minded that they think that everyone only has a group of friends and acquaintances that think the exact same way that they do?  Good Lord, could you imagine bringing up something like this at Thanksgiving dinner?  I'm sure that your older and more conservative relatives will just relish in joy of your requesting to make a donation to the opposite of their beliefs.  Because who doesn't like good old fashioned political talk at a wedding?! 

Why stop at just birthdays and weddings and anniversaries?  Why not include graduations in that mix as well?  Oh, and in lieu of having flowers sent to a funeral, how about you just instruct them to donate to his campaign instead?  And for God's sake, don't just stop at your own birthday.  Make sure that's what your children's friends do as well.  Besides, having all of those gifts around just clutters up the party space, right?  Riiiiight. Don't forget the Tooth Fairy!  Might as well include Santa and the Easter Bunny in all of that too, wouldn't you think? 

I would love to have statistics on how many soft heads out there actually participate in this particular campaign of giving or whatever you want to call it.  (I want to call it one of the weirdest and tackiest things ever, but that's just me.)  I've said it several times before, he's not a Muslim; he's a socialist.  Keep your eye on the ball, people.  He's coming after your gifts!  Run!  RUN!

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Patience, Young Grasshopper

The peculiarity of where this country decides to focus its attention on occasion completely baffles me.  In case you've been under some sort of glorious rock lately, I will tell you that President Barry, during an interview with Robin Roberts, came out in favor of gay marriage.  I think.  And from the reactions I'm reading, you'd think that something wonderful just happened instead of just one guy changing his mind.  Or not. 

Look, President Barry is a pretty progressive guy.  I have a hard time believing that he, deep down in his heart, was ever really against gay marriage.  I'm more inclined to believe that he was against it for purely political reasons.  Whatever the reason is, here is his latest statement on where he stands in regard to gayrriage:  "I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married." 

While that's a lovely sentiment, I don't know that it's going to make a difference in anything.  And that's for a variety of reasons.  First of all, I just want to point out that he did include the word "personally".  That's what he now suddenly believes on a personal level.  Is that going to translate to a political level?  I have a hard time believing that it would.  That'd be great if he wanted to go and campaign in states that are putting gay marriage bans on their ballots, but I just don't see that happening.  And the reason I don't see that happening is because he also said that "..states should have the right to decide what marriage is".  Of course.  This way, he can be for gay marriage and appease those folks who have really made it their number one social cause, while at the same time allow himself to stay out of the issue because he sees it as not being a federal issue.  Tricky. 

But here's one of the things that I find just fascinating about this whole dynamic.  Until now, President Barry had been, essentially, against gay marriage.  But no one gave him any crap about it.  Everyone was just fine with it and continued to sing his praises as if he were the second coming of Christ himself.  No one called him a bigot.  No one called him a hater.  No one pressed the issue.  There weren't rainbow flag protests outside of the White House.  None of that.  People just let his ideas evolve on their own until he came to a different conclusion that they were happy with.  Why aren't other people who are against gay marriage (or who aren't sure about it) not given that same sort of time and/or leeway for their opinions to change?  Why are people automatically so angry at those folks?  I don't have an answer for this, by the way.  It's merely an observation that I've made. 

Here's another angle of this that I find interesting.  So far, every single state that has put gay marriage to a vote has voted against it.  Every.  Single.  One.  The states that allow gay marriage have only been able to do so through legislation.  But every time that it's given to the people for a vote, they have voted 100% against it.  Every. Time.  What's that all about?  And with the recent passage of the definition of marriage being between a man and a woman in North Carolina, that brings the grand total up to 30 states with similar laws on the books.  Thirty!  Yet the topic is still covered in the media as if it is a minority of people who feel this way.  Clearly, that's not the case. 

All I'm trying to say here is that it's a tricky issue for a lot of people.  And the whole gay acceptance thing has come such a long way over the years.  Things just take time.  And really, just because someone is against gay marriage doesn't mean that they hate gays.  Sometimes it does.  But sometimes it doesn't.  In fact, most of the people that I've met or that I know who are not exactly for gay marriage are absolutely NOT people who hate gays.  I just think that we just need to be patient with people in the same manner that everyone seems to have been patient with President Barry. Do you have any idea how long it took civil rights legislation to go through?  Longer than you would guess and definitely longer than I would have liked.  (In case you were wondering, Lyndon B. Johnson passed a minor piece of civil rights legislation in 1957.  That was the first legislation passed since the Civil War had ended.  See?  Takes a long time.)  People just need to be patient and see it for what it is.  An evolution of thought.  And evolution is not a speedy process. 

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Obama Money!

So yesterday I showed you a video made by Alexandra Pelosi (and despite her mother, Nancy Pelosi, probably being related to the devil, Alexandra seems like a charming woman) where she went to the heart of Mississippi and gathered some opinions about Obama. As you might be able to imagine, the responses were not exactly favorable (or tooth filled, in at least one instance). And as promised yesterday, here is the flip side of that. Here is Alexandra Pelosi interviewing welfare recipients in New York and getting their opinions about Obama. As you might be able to imagine, the responses were certainly more favorable than those from the south. That doesn't mean that it's going to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over inside. No, it will probably do quite the opposite. Regardless, here's the video. (As always, if it doesn't show up or play, click here. Enjoy!

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Point and Fire, Please

There still seems to be a lot of talk about the whole Christmas Day attempted bombing debacle that went on that Northwest flight over Detroit. The thing is that with all of the talk that is going on, the one thing that I don't hear being talked about is who is going to be fired and when. Clearly, this is an incident that has firing potential, isn't it? Shouldn't someone have been fired by now? (Or at the very least, had their head placed on a pike of some sort? Oh, wait. That wouldn't really be the "least", but probably rather the "most", wouldn't it?)

Since no one has been fired yet, I was at least hoping for things to evolve to the point where someone would be fired. After all, how many people lost their jobs after the September 11 attacks? Heads had to have rolled then, right? So how many was it? 50? 100? 10? Oh, that's right. None. ::: sigh ::: Am I supposed to expect that this is going to be any different? I think I'm supposed to expect that, but tell you what...I don't think that I'm going to expect that. Just for kicks. Just this once. Just this once I'm not going to expect anything and then I'll see how that works for me. I'm guessing it's going to work pretty well.

Here's what President Barry had to say in his little press conference dealio about the whole Undiebomber ordeal:

"I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect. But it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That's not acceptable and I will not tolerate it. The information was there. Agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it. And our professionals were trained to look for it and to bring it all together. The US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and to potentially disrupt the Christmas day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots. We have to do better, and we will do better, and we have to do it quickly. American lives are on the line."

First of all, are there "dots", plural? It seems to me like there might just be "dot" singular. I mean, what more do you need to act on than the guy's Dad going to a US embassy and saying that his son is a radical nutjob who wants to attack the United States? That seems like a dot. I don't know that you need another dot to connect it to, really. It's not even a very small dot. Seems like a pretty big dot to me.

Second, the part about having to do better and having to do better quickly. Um, since September 11, 2001, haven't we been spending so much money on this that it would make your head spin and never stop spinning? (Nancy Pelosi is excluded from answering that question, as I'm pretty sure that her head spins around on a fairly regular basis.) We've been spending money on this and trying to get good at this for over eight years! What exactly does he mean by "quickly" in the sense that he used it in? I would have thought that they'd have it down by now, but apparently, not so much.

Some other highlights of President Barry's response to this matter include: "While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it." Huh. See, I for one, I would like to see a little finger pointing. I could tolerate that. Because in reality, someone screwed up. And if you ask one person who screwed up and they point to someone else and say that they are the screw up, then you check that out. Maybe the person screwed up and maybe they didn't, but you have to follow the direction that the finger is pointing in to get some sort of an idea as to who was the incompetent moron who let this guy on a plane with a load of explosive strapped to his grundle, don't you? I think you do!

Fine, you don't want to point fingers? How about some head nodding? Just nod your head in the guy's general direction and we'll know what you mean.

Robert Gibbs, the usually snarky and sarcastic (he's snarkastic) press secretary said something along those same lines when he said Tuesday that "The president will not find acceptable a response where everybody gets in a circle and points at someone else. The American people won’t accept that.” Uh, Gibbsey? Yeah, as one of those American people that you mention there, I should tell you that I will accept finger pointing, but I will not accept men with TNT-laden genitals on board my aircraft. That's what I won't accept. Point all the fingers you want, but just keep guys with explosive laden genitalia off of the planes. OK. Thanks.

Oh! I almost forgot the other highlight of President Barry's talk (which had the "I'm deeply disappointed in you" tone that you received from your parents when you screwed up as a teenager). He said "In the days ahead, I will announce further steps to disrupt attacks, including better integration of information and enhanced passenger screening for air travel." Enhanced passenger screening for air travel? Good Lord, man. Now what?! Seriously. We already have it to a point where we practically have to disrobe completely in order to make it through airport security. We can't carry anything that resembles a gel or a liquid or a concentrate. At any given point in the process we're made to stand shoeless, beltless, scarfless, and hatless. And for the purpose of what? Because let me just remind folks of something. All of this passenger screening that we're doing right now has never caught and thwarted an attack. Surprise!

Think about it. Has there been anything that has come out of having us do all of that? No, there hasn't. No one has been stopped at security because they were made to take off their hat and there was a ticking time bomb underneath it. (And to think that in that scenario, they would have made it through if it weren't for those meddling security screeners!) That's never happened. No one has ever had their evil plan thwarted at the security checkpoints. I don't know what that means, but it means something. Feel free to let me know what that is if you happen to know.

President Barry can say whatever he wants to about making sure that we do better and that we're going to do better, but I don't think that I am going to feel better unless someone (and I'm thinking more than one someone) gets fired. The guy's dad told us that his son was a lunatic who wanted to attack the US. THAT isn't enough to get the guy on a no-fly list or at least on some sort of watch list? (I have NO idea what the watch list does, by the way. What are we watching them for, exactly? Sudden movements? Loins full of gunpowder? I don't get it.) Whoever it was that took that message, I want that person fired. Whoever it was that didn't do anything about it, I want that person fired. I kind of want Janet Napolitano fired for saying "The system worked" after all of this had first gone down. (The system didn't "work". The system didn't do anything, you pinhead.) Once I see some finger pointing, some head nodding and some people getting fired, then we can talk about how safe we are. Because until the same people (who were responsible for allowing all of the puzzle pieces to fall into place in order to almost doom nearly 300 people to a bomb-y death over God-forsaken Detroit) are fired and are not allowed to continue to do their job in the most crappy manner possible, no one is safe. Besides, why wouldn't you want to fire them?

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Perhaps A More Timely Messenger Next Time?

All right, I'm done. I have had enough of this enamorment that the White House seems to have with celebrities. I've also had enough of President Barry acting like a rock star as he climbs higher and higher up atop his homemade pedestal so that all of his loyal subjects may worship him appropriately. Or inappropriately. Whatever it is, I'm freaking sick of it. Oh, and I'm sick of G-D Ashton Kutcher, too.

Look, I'll give Ashton this much: He does seem to have somewhat of a following with those in the 25 and younger crowd. I think. And while being able to reach a specific audience of people is commendable and definitely desirable, is there a reason why President Barry feels that it should be Ashton Kutcher? Because while I like the idea of an individual being able to engage the masses, I'd prefer it if I actually had just the slightest notion that the person in that position actually knew what in the hell they were talking about and could present such viewpoints in a clear fashion.

Actually, in the case of Ashton Kutcher, I'd like it if he could present his viewpoint at all. I have NO idea if he knows his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to some of the country's more pressing issues. But yet he just continues to amass a bunch of sheeplike followers who will, in turn, continue to spread whatever message it is that he wants them to in a similar sanctimonious manner. Sure, that sounds like a great idea. Just blindly follow someone because they're "famous" and you won't go wrong! Good message to send. Yeah, that should help.

Tonight as I was perusing the Internet (that's right, for porn) I saw this headline over there at Politico.com: "New White House Messenger? Ashton Kutcher" Now, because of the question mark after 'Messenger', I initially thought that it was going to be about Ashton lobbying for himself for something, anything to do with President Barry and his staff of obedient minions. Turns out that the question mark should have been after "Kutcher" as that's how you end up saying the whole sentence after you've read that the White House tapped Ashton Kutcher to (wait for it) "...help get the word out about National HIV Testing Day." ::: blink ::: ::: blink ::: What now?

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. They wanted him to help get the word out....by using Twitter.

Wait. Twitter? Twitter?

Oh, my GOD!! We are freaking doomed!! WHAT?!?!!?

Correct. According to those Politico folks, on Sunday, June 28, Ashton tweeted: "I've been asked by the white house to twet this" and then he a link to a White House blog post which had a video mentioning the 14th commemoration of National HIV Testing Day. The Politico guys seemed to have the same thought that I had which was WTF? Seemingly aware of how much Ashton digs his own act, they checked to see if the White House had really stooped to a level that is unprecedented, if my recent memory of how Presidential administrations "get the word out". Turns out, sadly, they did.

Their answer was given by a one Reid Cherlin who is the White House assistant press secretary. He said, "As technology impacts how and where people are communicating online, we are constantly looking for new ways to engage with the public. Our efforts to promote National HIV Testing Day included participation from popular users of Twitter, as well as broad social media engagement by agencies across the government.” It's over. We're putting messages to be delivered via mass communication methods in the hands of Kelso.

Might I make the suggestion that if you're interested in ways to "engage with the public" you might want to try using someone other than a celebretard to do so. You're not so much "engaging" the public as you are trying to render them starstruck.

But wait! There's more! How effective is this strategy going to be? Hard to say. But I'll tell you this much: I think his "message" might have held a little more weight with those who are over 25 (and even with those who think that Ashton is a moron, and there's no age limit for that!) if he hadn't whored himself out as the White House messenger boy. Did he HAVE to mention that our Presidential Administration is so pathetic that they're calling him up and asking him to Twitter? A bunch of Twitiots are running the show. Great!

But you know what else? You know what I would have appreciated even more than that? I would have really, REALLY liked it if he had sent the tweet BEFORE National HIV Testing Day was OVER! Wait. What now?

Correct. National HIV Testing Day was June 27, 2009. According to Politico, he sent the tweet on Sunday which was the 28th. So.....I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of all of this. You're sending Ashton Kutcher as the messenger, but he's a day late. Is he playing the part of the village idiot as well? Seems to me it was more about show than about any sort of real investment in the promotion. Oooh!! But it was a 'celebrity' who brought the message twenty four hours late, so it's OK! He's famous! He was in the movie "Dude, Where's My Car?" I'm so glad that the White House has his cell number! Otherwise, how else would we the public have known that we totally MISSED National HIV Testing Day?!

If I never see or hear about Ashton Kutcher on my Internets ever again, it will be too soon. And if I ever see or hear about Ashton Kutcher "tweeting for Obama", I'm movin' to Canada, America's Hat.

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You Don't Know Bo. Yet.

The dog! The dog is coming! The dog is coming! For cryin' out loud, how is it that getting a dog when you're the President of the United States becomes such a big freaking deal? I'm not holding my breath this time either. I've been hearing about this damn dog for months now, and what do we have? No dog, that's correct. So now is supposed to be different than the other times we've heard this story? Apparently so.

The Puppy Rumor Mill has it that the First Dog will be making a public appearance on Tuesday, April 14. No word on why Tuesday as opposed to Monday or, I don't know, say...NOW. But according to the AP, it will be on Tuesday. Then again, the AP led the story about the dog with "THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information." The dog is a "breaking news update"? You know, I'm going to disagree. I don't think it is. But I might be the only one with that viewpoint. When President Barry was in France last week and held a town hall style meeting, a French high school student asked asked him this question: "Do you think that the economic crisis is an opportunity to restructure our industries in an ecological and sustainable way? And also was wondering whether the dog was already in the White House or not." Good Lord. (For the record, President Barry responded with: "The -- we -- we are getting a dog. This is a very important question in the United States, what kind of dog we're getting and when we're getting it. It should be there soon." Yep, that's what us dumb Americans are concerned about. Never mind the economy, unemployment, pirates abroad, none of that. We just want to know about the dog. Thanks for that, President Barry.

Want to know more about the First Pup? First Pooch? First Member of Obama's Family to Pee on the Presidential Carpet? (I'm assuming, of course. Who knows? Maybe someone got really excited on inauguration night, but I think we would have heard about that somehow. I envision a blazing headline that proclaims "Obama Cannot Contain Himself After Victory - Wets Self in Oval Office." You know we would have read that.) According to the story, the canine will be a "black-and-white Portuguese Water Dog on Tuesday from the same lineage as Sen. Ted Kennedy's pets." Um, wait. What?

Along the same lineage as Ted Kennedy's pets? How drunk are these dogs? And what about size because I'm picturing them being quite large. That could be a problem. They'll get stuck in the Presidential Doggie Door! But those things aside, why is this important? Aw, crap, does this mean we're gonna have to watch the Zapruder film again? That thing gets trotted out and played at the mere whiff of the Kennedy name.

A Portuguese water dog, eh? I suppose it has paperwork or red tape or something. I guess that would make it a legal immigrant if it's originally from Portugal, correct? In these tough economic times, shouldn't he be giving precedence to American dogs? Oh, wait. Or is being the Presidential Dog one of the jobs that American dogs won't do? That must be it.

The dog is currently 6-months old and goes by the name of Charlie. (As In Brown?) The word is, however, that the dog will be renamed when he arrives at the White House. Renamed? He's six months old! He knows his name already. He's Charlie the Dog! He's not going into the witness protection program, he's going to live with President Barry and the fam! Do they have a better name than Charlie? That's hard to say, but I'm sure it will shock you to learn that there are rumors about what the dog's name will be. Yeah, that's shocking all right.

Michelle Obama had previously stated that the girls, Sasha and Malia, had suggested named like "Frank" and "Moose". Both are excellent choices in the genre of dog names. However, Michelle didn't particularly care for those names (another shocker!) and has been trying to steer the girls away from "Frank" and "Moose" and the likes thereof. But the Washington Post reports that they have settled on the name "Bo", supposedly because Michelle's Dad's nickname was Diddley. (No, the story does not delve into why the man was called Diddley. Yes, unfortunate. I agree.) And while that could be, is it just a coincidence that President Barry's initials are B.O.? Huh? I think not. They named after him. I'm sure of it. You heard it here first.

The Post has the picture below with a caption that reads: "The Obamas' new pet is a 6-month old Portuguese Water Dog, which Malia and Sasha have named Bo." Huh. Apparently, Bo is part Hawaiian. Behold!

OK, look, I really wanted to mock the crap out of this one, but that dog is just too dang cute. Fine! He's freaking adorable. Nice lei! Here is the lei'ed half Hawaiian Bo meeting the family. Still dang cute. Behold!

Now mind you, all of this is still just at the rumor stage. Tuesday is apparently the day when all will be revealed to the nation and the rest of the world. That's when we can all let out a collective sigh of relief that the Obama's finally have their dog. Or we can just go about our lives as if it doesn't matter to us....which it doesn't. But since things are still in the rumor stage, there's still plenty of time for a little wagering. On the dog's name, of course.

A while back, Gambling911 published a list of potential dog names and the odds that went along with each name. Even money was on Hope. Hope? (My money is on the oddsmakers being morons with an even money pick like Hope.) Sam and Lucky both received 3:1 odds. Max, Molly, Maggie and Sadie all received 4:1 odds. For some reason, Flo Rida was in a 20:1, which is also the same odds given to the First Family naming the dog Oprah or Tina Fey. Go figure. I found it amusing that Spot had the same odds at 100:1 as did the name Ahmadinejad (I'm a Dinner Jacket).

Now, since the dog was sort of set up by Ted Kennedy, don't we have to add other names to the list of prospects. I think we do. And I think that they would probably end up right around the same range of probability as where Ahmedinejad is at 100:1. So let's make sure that we don't forget possibilities such as:

• Chappaquiddick
• Koepechne
• Scotch
• Love Child
• Behemouth

All at 100:1. Book 'em while you can. And pay attention on Tuesday to see if Bo ends up at the White House and whether or not Bo knows diddley or whether Bo goes diddley.

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Gift-gate, Grope-gate and now Bow-gate

All right, that's it! President Barry is not, repeat, not allowed to leave the country anymore! At least not until he's read a book or something on how all of this going overseas stuff and interacting with the leaders of foreign countries (who are supposed to be on our side!) is supposed to go. Maybe "Foreign Relations and Home and Abroad for Dummies" or something like that? Because I was able to overlook Gift-gate when President Barry gave Gordon Brown of the UK a bunch of DVDs (which I still think would have been fine if and only if they had been DVDs of the appropriate Region so that Gordon Brown could actually watch them. But they were the wrong region and he cannot watch them, thus rendering the gift inappropriate and wrong.) and I was totally against Grope-gate when Michelle Obama and her new BFF, the Queen of England, actually touched one another (you'd have thought they were in a tub full of Jell-O in the middle of a bar the way everyone was carrying on about it. Though I would like to see that, simply because it'd be so, so strange.). But now President Barry is teetering on the brink of "buffoonage." (Made that up. Just now!) And it has to stop. Soon. Tell me I'm overreacting. I'm not (for once)! Look, I'll spell it out for you.

For example, according to Gadling, whilst President Barry was over there in Europe and taking questions from reporters, an Austrian reporter asked "...about his impressions of European leaders." A simple enough question, right? Regardless as to your real impressions, you always, always say you liked 'em. That's easy. And President Barry pretty much went with that by saying that "...the interaction between European lawmakers was really not all that different than the way in which the US Senate operates." (He didn't say whether that was supposed to mean how the two parties of the US Senate can't get anything done or how the two parties of the US Senate are spending money like drunken sailors on leave or if it meant something completely different. I can't imagine what, however.)

In explaining that answer, he said, "...there's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics." He doesn't know what the term is in Austrian?! Perhaps that's because there isn't an Austrian language! ::::sigh:::: Video of Language-gate below. ::::sigh again:::::

Even though that's pretty bad, it's almost like I've come to expect these things. You know, what with 8 years of GW out there saying things that don't make sense to anyone (including himself, I have the feeling). So while I wish he had not implied that he thought Austrian was a language (I'm just glad he wasn't up in Canada, America's Hat, and implied that he thought they spoke Canadian!), there are a few other things that I wish hadn't happened on his little jaunt abroad. Like bowing to the King. Of Saudi freaking Arabia. Huh?

The whole 'to bow or not to bow' thing (and apparently there is a thing) is a tricky one. I was under the impression that all of that Declaration of Independence stuff was to get away from the subservience that accompanies royalty. Besides that, to bow in someone's presence is seen as a sign of respect. Let me just give a brief refresher course on how Saudi Arabia works with King Abdullah in charge:

• Corporal punishment, such as lashes, for 'crimes' such as 'sexual deviance' or 'drunkenness'.
• There's no set number for these punishments. It's up to the judges. It can range from a few dozen to several thousand.
• They're also very behead-y over there.
• If a woman is raped, she will can be punished for 'her part' in the rape.
  

Nice, eh? Those are just a few But my favorite one that shows just how bass-ackwards they are over there is that women are not allowed to drive or ride bicycles. They are, however, allowed to fly aircraft! Granted, they have to be driven to the airport, but still! WTF is that all about? Their human rights record is not all that great (that's putting it mildly) and PARADE Magazine named King Abdullah the Number Five World's Worst Dictator for 2009. So if PARADE Magazine says so, it has to be true.

The thing is, the US protocol on bowing is that we don't. So when footage was shown of President Barry allegedly bowing to King Abdullah, some people got their burkas all in a wad. (Naturally, the whole "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" conspiracy theory reared it's head again with the emergence of this footage. He's not a Muslim!) And really, come on, President Barry! Can we not trust you to leave the White House for just a little while without causing an international stir?! You're the President of the United States! You bowed to King Abdullah as if you were inferior, as if you were subservient. I understand you're new and all, but we don't bow!

It does get worse, by the way. But not before the video. The bowing starts to come in around 0:49 through 0:59 in the video below. It's three minutes long and the commentary is in Spanish (maybe Portuguese, definitely not Austrian), so you might just want to zip ahead to the bow. Video first, then then more bad! Behold!

OK, so what could be worse that the President of the US bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and all of his oil? If you thought George Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia as they went for a leisurely stroll, well, you'd be right, but it wasn't what I had in mind this time. But Behold! anyway.

That's lovely. They're a lovely couple. No, the part that really burns my toast is that the White House is denying that he bowed! How stupid do they think we are? VERY apparently! They're saying he didn't bow. "Didn't bow" as in "did not bow". Right. Why would you lie to us, White House? Why? Why?

Over there at Politico.com, a one Ben Smith apparently asked, "Why the bow?" and an Obama aide who would only speak on the condition of anonymity (because you never want people to know who you are when you're blatantly lying) answered with: "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah." Um, no he didn't. Nor was he looking for a lost contact lens or drop his iPod or comparing shoe size with said King. He was bowing. I have proof. I swear. Behold! Proof!

Here he is starting to go in.

Here he is grasping at the hand which holds all of our fuel in it's oily grasp.

And here he is in the middle of his 'two hand' handshake due to the striking height difference between the two, whatever that means. OH, but what's that?! Why, it's his other hand! It's going to be a bit hard to perform the "two hand handshake" with one of your hands not shaking because you're really bowing!


And there it is again in plainer sight. The uncooperative second hand of Barack Obama. (Is this the part where I get to say "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"? I hope so! I've been dying to say that to someone. Preferably someone I don't know. This works.)


The Washington Times called the bow a "shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate." Wow. I'm glad the Washington Times is getting plenty of use out of their thesaurus! Now I need a dictionary. Fealty?(Intense fidelity.) Potentate? (One who has great power or sway.) They also said that "...it violated centuries of American tradition of not deferring to royalty." And it apparently started a new American tradition of lying to the public about something that is blatantly obvious. They say it's protocol to not bow, but he bowed! They're protocol liars,.that's what they are!


Can someone please inform him of the rules around there? I know that's someone's job. Who's Secretary of State? Oh, that's right. I forgot. It's her. Hillary. :::deep breath::: OK, I never thought I'd say this, but where's Hillary when you need her?

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