Obama's Shocking Bow!

An editorial from the Washington Times:
In a shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate, President Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London last week.
Mr. Obama later said in Strasbourg, France, "We have to change our behavior in showing the Muslim world greater respect." Symbolism is important in world affairs. By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the U.S. president belittled the power and independence of the United States.
The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook hands with Saudi King Abdulaziz in February 1945. Granted, Mr. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but former President Dwight D. Eisenhower shook hands when he first met King Saud in January 1957. Mr. Obama's bow to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi King and not to any other royals remains unexplained.
No Americans of any station are required to bow to royalty. It is one of the pillars of American exceptionalism that our country rejected traditional caste divisions. Article I Section 9 of the Constitution forbids titles of nobility and stipulates that no officeholder or government employee may "accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state" without the consent of Congress. Judith Martin wrote in her Miss Manners column in 2001 that bowing "is not an ordinary bit of foreign etiquette one might adopt out of courtesy when traveling. ... Americans do not properly bow to any royalty. We show respect for other countries' leaders the same way we do to our own."
Press outlets have been conspicuously silent on Mr. Obama's bow. Compare this to the New York Times' reaction when former President Bill Clinton inclined a bit too far when meeting Japanese Emperor Akihito in 1994. According to the Gray Lady, "The image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent president, and the Emperor of Japan." Former President George W. Bush received thorough press attention after being photographed holding hands with then-Crown Prince Abdullah in 2005. "It clearly strikes a nerve," CBS News reported, while David Letterman satirized Mr. Bush as "officially the gayest president since Lincoln." These two cases were tame compared to Mr. Obama's full-out genuflection, which makes us wonder why it is not worthy of comment.
Mr. Obama is proving that one can be elected president without knowing how to behave presidentially. His servile gesture was fully fitting with the tone of his humility tour of Europe. In his eagerness to be loved personally, the president has lost sight of the fact that the leader of the free world also must be respected.

Dodd Put Squeeze On AIG

From Jennifer Haberkorn at the Washington Times:

As Democrats prepared to take control of Congress after the 2006 elections, a top boss at the insurance giant American International Group Inc. told colleagues that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd was seeking re-election donations and he implored company executives and their spouses to give.
Getty Images Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has lost some political standing heading into re-election because of his ties to American International Group Inc.
The message in the Nov. 17, 2006, e-mail from Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products chief executive, was unmistakable: Mr. Dodd was "next in line" to be chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which oversees the insurance industry, and he would "have the opportunity to set the committee's agenda on issues critical to the financial services industry.
"Given his seniority in the Senate, he will also play a key role in the Democratic Majority's leadership," Mr. Cassano wrote in the message, obtained by The Washington Times.
Mr. Dodd's campaign quickly hit pay dirt, collecting more than $160,000 from employees and their spouses at the AIG Financial Products division (AIG-FP) in Wilton, Conn., in the days before he took over as the committee chairman in January 2007. Months later, the senator transferred the donations to jump-start his 2008 presidential bid, which later failed.
Now, two years later, Mr. Dodd has emerged as a central figure in the government's decision to let executives at the now-failing AIG collect more than $218 million in bonuses, according to the Connecticut attorney general - even as the company was receiving billions of dollars in assistance from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). He acknowledged that he slipped a provision into legislation in February that authorized the bonuses, but said the Treasury Department asked him to do it.
The decision has generated national outrage and put the Obama administration into the position of trying to collect the bonuses after they were distributed. It also endangers Mr. Dodd's re-election chances in 2010 as his popularity tumbles in his home state.
Despite all the claims that Washington has changed, the tale of Mr. Dodd's lucrative political ties to AIG is a fresh reminder that special interests continue to use donations and fundraising to sow good will with powerful lawmakers like Mr. Dodd.

McC: Obama Not Bipartisan

From Joseph Curl and Stephen Dinan in The Washington Times:
Sen. John McCain says President Obama is breaking campaign promises he made to the American people and has passed up numerous opportunities to reach out to Republicans -- a pledge the Democrat made repeatedly during their battle for the presidency.
"There are things that, statements that then-candidate Obama made during the campaign over and over and over again that obviously he's not staying with," Mr. McCain told The Washington Times in an hour-long interview with reporters and editors.
The Arizona senator said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "put it best" when she described the lack of bipartisanship in the drafting of the $787 billion bailout bill, which garnered just three Republican votes in the Senate.
" 'We won, we wrote the bill.' That applies not just to that bill, but it does to all of the other pieces of legislation, too," he said, clearly exasperated. "We're not in on the takeoff, and anybody who calls the stimulus package ... bipartisan -- you pick off three Republicans? That's not bipartisanship."
Mr. McCain also ticked off a list of campaign promises his presidential opponent has abandoned, including pledges to clamp down on pork-barrel spending, reinvigorate nuclear energy and expand free trade.
Mr. Obama, who vowed to change politics as usual in Washington, made a show of bipartisanship as he took office, even throwing an inaugural ball to celebrate his Republican opponent in the presidential race. But since then, Mr. McCain said he has been consulted just once by the administration, when a White House lawyer visited to discuss the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
"Aside from that, I have not known of an occasion where they sit down across the table. Now, there's been occasions where the president comes and talks to Republicans, the president talks to -- et cetera, but that's not good bipartisanship," he said.

'President Patraeus' Ahead?

From Andrew Breitbart in the Washington Times:

The silent generation, which learned valuable lessons from the Depression and World War II, is not here to guide us through these difficult times. The narcissistic baby boomers, who probably think this song is about them, are now firmly in charge. And that's the rub.
What is scaring us - even though many of us won't admit it - is that we elected a president who wants more than anything to be liked. What else explains his headlong rush to persuade foreign governments - even enemy regimes - to embrace us? And what else justifies his infatuation with Hollywood?
And even that he doesn't quite get right. I still can't believe that the president of the United States traveled across the country - without his teleprompter crutch - and made fun of the Special Olympics on national television.

When the going gets tough, the weak go on Leno.
I can't get out of my head that the leader of the free world gave the British prime minister 25 films on DVD that don't even work in U.K. machines.
I can't wrap my head around the fact that the commander in chief tried (for a minute anyway) to require injured warriors to pay to have private insurers take care of their treatment.
I can't believe the president would allow the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dictate the terms of his budget - and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, the symbols of government kowtowing to Wall Street - to be spokesmen for his financial bailout.
And did President Obama really produce a YouTube video to appease President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran?
Yes, he did.
These aren't beginner's mistakes. These are his core incompetencies.
The media that got him elected knows it is responsible for the gathering debacle, and so Jon Stewart, a so-called comedian and exemplar of the groupthink of the governing elite, is desperately hunting for scapegoats. Now that their secular savior is in charge, the "Dissent is Patriotic" bumper-sticker crowd is figuring out ways to stamp out criticism.
I admit, I am now officially freaking out.
The last time I felt this hopeless was when the Democratic Party and its cohorts in the media sold us on the false premise that we lost the war in Iraq. In the process, they also sought to demonize the very man that led us out of our peril.
His name is Gen. David H. Petraeus.
Less than two months into the Obama presidency, which appears to be lost somewhere in the Mojave Desert, I have decided to try to soothe my anxieties by placing my hope in a political surge.
In the election of 2010, Republicans should run heroic veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom who exhibited the will and fortitude to defeat the enemy and to rebuild a torn nation, even while too many of their fellow countrymen wrote them off.
And in 2012, the man President Obama's staunchest allies called "General Betray Us" should come in with guns blazing and defeat the man whose only weapon to lead us to victory is a teleprompter.

'O' Half-Mill Book Deal

From Jim McElhatton and Christina Bellantoni at the Washington Times:
As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children's book project, a disclosure report shows.
The terms of the book deal were disclosed in a Senate financial disclosure report filed Tuesday.
Analysts say there don't appear to be any rules that would bar such transactions after a president takes office, but it's unclear whether an incoming or sitting president has ever signed a book deal upon entering the White House.
"I don't recall any sitting president entering into a book deal," said campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran, former general counsel to the Republican National Committee. "They all have historically done that after they leave office.
"I recall the only ones who did sign book deals while living there were first ladies, and my recollection is they gave it to charity."
Mr. Obama approved the $500,000 advance on Jan. 15. The advance is against royalties under a deal with Crown Publishing, a division of Random House. The project calls for an abridged version of his book "Dreams From My Father" for middle-school-aged children, according to the disclosure.
A White House aide said that the deal had been in the works for weeks and that the publisher will abridge the book. The aide, speaking on a condition of anonymity, said the publisher will get half of the money while Mr. Obama will sign off on the final version.
In addition, the financial disclosure showed Mr. Obama brokered an amendment to an existing book deal with Crown Publishing to put off writing a nonfiction book until after he leaves office.
The book deal came on top of nearly $2.5 million in book royalties paid to Mr. Obama last year for "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," according to the Senate report, which was filed by Robert F. Bauer, who served general counsel to Mr. Obama's presidential campaign.

GOP Goin Hip-Hop?

From Ralph Z. Hallow at the Washington Times:
Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”
The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.
Having been elected to the job that the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove, once denied him, Mr. Steele is running the show his way. To those who claimed he can't make the trains run on time, he has this message: “Stuff it.”
He stiff-armed an attempt to get him to elaborate on his public relations effort, saying he would be an idiot to give his opponents too much information, but indicated the Republican Party needs to break out of being considered a regional party.
”There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he said, citing defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”
See related story: GOP surpasses Dems on Twitter

Is It Getting 'Dicey?'

From Jennifer Harper at The Washington Times:
Relations between President Obama and the habitually combative press have gotten dicey as the news narrative "turns bearish" on the president, says a Project for Excellence in Journalism report released Tuesday.
Intense coverage of the economic crisis plus close scrutiny of Mr. Obama's Cabinet choices have combined into a double whammy of sorts.
"Two different stories combined to create one major media narrative last week - a new president off to a shaky start," said Mark Jurkowitz , associate director of the research group.
The economy took up 44 percent of total press coverage last week - with another 17 percent focused on the new administration.
Super Bowl, Iraq and Afghanistan stories weighed in at less than 5 percent each.
"If the storyline seemed to pivot dramatically from a heady inauguration to a rocky transition, that sense was significantly magnified by the two platforms offering instant updates of the Beltway scoreboard, and both of them now firmly ideological," Mr. Jurkowitz said.
"On cable news, a dominant theme among talking heads was Obama stumbling at the starting gate. On talk radio, conservative hosts grew even more aggressive in staking out their opposition to the new president."