The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

How Will You Spend Your Summer Vacation?

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That is, if you even get to take one this year.

Apparently things in these “tough times” aren’t so bad when it’s other people’s money you’re spending.  Even if they are giving it to you in the form of a salary and you don’t have to pay for one of those financially “devastating” health insurance policies.

The Vineyard Gazette Online is reporting that the First Family is renting a 28.5 acre “farm” on Martha’s Vineyard at the end of next month. 

The 28.5-acre property some five hundred yards down Cobb’s Hill Road, spans the Chilmark and West Tisbury town line and overlooks Town Cove, the westernmost finger of the Tisbury Great Pond.

There are four dwellings on Blue Heron Farm property, including a white Victorian farm house, a reconstructed Pennsylvania hay barn and a Vermont shed, the latter two of which date back to the 1800s and were transported and reconstructed by West Tisbury builder Rick Anderson in the early 1990s.

Named by its previous owners, the late New York real estate developer M. Anthony Fisher and his wife Anne, the farm has undergone several renovations in the last decade. Situated overlooking a remote finger of the Great Pond, it is quiet and private, with an apple orchard, flower and vegetable gardens, stone walls, a swimming pool, golf practice tee and small basketball court for the basketball-loving president.

It is understood that Mr. Obama and his family will also be offered access to the private portion of Squibnocket Beach if they so choose.

While the mechanics of renting the property were still ongoing at press time, the Gazette has learned that a rental agreement for the farm will comprise three leases, one to be held by the Obamas, another by the Secret Service and a third by a White House entourage.

The amount of the rental has not been disclosed, but up-Island properties similar to Blue Heron Farm rent for between $35,000 to $50,000 per week.

In Plain English: Obama Is Incompetent

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Just over half the Americans eligible to vote and who chose to do so (well, at least it was presumed that all votes cast were by those who were both living and eligible – some even 77 times eligible – since there were numerous charges and indictments against Obama-campaign-funded ACORN) went to Barack Hussein Obama and in a flash we ushered in what continues to be called a new era of “hope and change”.

The problem is that the hope is now that this man resigns or otherwise disappears and that the change we’ve seen has been nothing but negative.

But I fear that Obama’s audacity (read:  ego) and the fact that too many in this country, including the First Lady, are still willing to covertly or overtly play the race card is going to keep us sliding down the thinly-veiled razor blade he proffered, too many accepted, and for which he continues to campaign.  And that is a sadness even more tragic than the economic meltdown that has the real middle class of this country wondering just how they’re going to manage to survive.

Let us consider for a moment the definition of the word “incompetent”.  There are those claim only worm-eaters make any criticisms of President Obama, but do they really understand what it means?  Merriam-Webster defines it thusly:

Main Entry:   incompetent 
Function:   adjective
Etymology:   Middle French incompétent, from in- + compétent competent
Date:   1595
1: not legally qualified
2: inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose
3 a: lacking the qualities needed for effective action b: unable to function properly
 
Arguments continue to be made that Barack Obama is not legally qualified to hold the office of President of the United States, based on questions about the circumstances surrounding his birth.  While the courts continue to refuse to hear cases on this, that the President continues to allow the question to be asked is at direct odds with all his calls for honesty and transparency.  Like the old saying goes, “He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing.”  Surely it would be a simple matter to allow the release of records and thereby properly refute claims by his family of a Kenyan birth to a mother not old enough to confer U.S. citizenship upon him.  His college records remain protected as well, which again gives, at best, yet another appearance of impropriety.  Like the best of cases made up purely of circumstantial evidence, something both his Harvard law degree and his $800,000 worth of lawyers fighting to keep all his records sealed surely must know, many people have a hard time believing the answer would be something as simple as he doesn’t want anyone to know his grades in school were even worse than those of our much-ridiculed former President George W. Bush.
 
That President Obama is inadequate in his role as President has become a matter of daily course.  While both Hugo Chavez and the Ayatollah Khomeini aren’t exactly leading anyone’s list of reputable advisors, that they have both come out in the last week to blatantly blast Obama with both barrels in derision of his policies and his lack of concrete “change” speaks to the low level of regard with which the United States is now held.  And that is a dangerous place for us to be, yet President Obama continues to attempt to soothe the savage beasts with lullabies of cooperation and dialogue while treating our allies with casual disregard and in some instances outright disrespect.  As if it never occurs to him that no matter what America says or what America does, there are some people in this world who wish for nothing less than America to disappear off the face of the Earth.  
  
Further inadequacy is demonstrated in his insistance – despite rumblings from Europe that the dollar should no longer be taken seriously – that taking trillions and trillions from zero will somehow magically transform the raging rivers of federal red ink into a viable and stable national budget.  
  
The qualities required for a President to be effective are not consistent with the actions of Barack Obama.  He shows more concern about winning a game of oneupmanship with people like Rush Limbaugh and doing late-night comedy with Jay Leno (a trip paid for by the taxpayers) than properly addressing, say, the economy.   Effective leaders care enough to know the facts at hand and are able to speak intelligently most of the time without the aid of a teleprompter.  Functioning properly in the role of President is not resorting to “gallows humor” when asked legitimate questions; indeed, these never-ending media appearances only serve to show that President Obama lacks the maturity required to lead the United States.  He shows the world that he is more enamored with the color of authority and privilege he perceives his role confers upon him than he is with the grave responsibilities it brings.  This immature perspective is reinforced by alleging to have been “blindsided” by the AIG bonuses.  I don’t know very many people who find out what it was they did at work by watching the evening news, do you?  Oh, but I forgot.  When he was to have been serving as a Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was out campaigning instead of working to represent those who had elected him so apparently couldn’t be bothered to know just what he was voting for or what his colleagues were doing.  Along the same lines he couldn’t be bothered to read the stimulus bill.  The applause of the crowds apparently meant more to him – and still does – than actually doing real work.
  
President G.W. Bush may not have been the brightest bulb in the drawer and though his business ventures were all failures, at least he had legitimate experience from which to draw when he was elected.  Including military experience, such as it was.  Barack Obama cannot make the same claim.  Since coming of legal age he has done nothing of real value, he has never gotten his hands dirty doing what anyone might recognize as a regular job.  He is the stuff of debates and models and multi-layered theories, of myths and fantasies that have never known the hard knocks from application in the real world.  Yet he feels entitled to sit in the Oval Office and to make a mockery of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and with the stroke of several pens – because of course it’s all about creating historic souvenirs – destroy the free market.
  
It is no longer a case where the silly Emperor has no clothes on.  It is that the Emperor is, whether naked or clothed, dangerously incompetent.