1. Our president is touring the country, railing against the opposition party in Congress for not passing a bill he has proposed in the Senate.
2. The president insists that this bill has elements that are supported by both Republicans and Democrats, but zero Republicans support the bill and quite a few Democrats oppose the bill.
3. The Republicans have attempted to force the Senate – which is controlled by the president’s party – to vote on the president’s bill. When they did this, the leader of the Senate’s Democrats called the proposed vote a “charade.” He later changed a very old rule in the Senate so as to prevent a vote on the bill that the president wants passed.

People mistakenly believe that Adolph Hitler proposed “the big lie” – a lie so large and preposterous that those who heard it would presume that no one would would say it if it were not true – as a propaganda tool for the Nazis to use. That’s not true. Rather, he accused his opponents of using a big lie – namely that Erich Ludendorf was responsible for the German loss in World War I – and decried them for doing so. Like any vaguely rational individual attempting to win public support, he did not write a book advocating dishonesty. So if someone accuses another of using a “big lie,” the accuser is not putting the accussee in the position of the Nazis, but vice versa.

With that being said, what can we make of our president’s current speaking tour? He is touring states and districts represented by Republicans, railing against Republican obstructionism, but the house of Congress controlled by his own party will not support his bill. If  the president’s agenda was being blocked by his own party, but he toured the country telling everyone that it was the opposition party that was blocking his agenda, wouldn’t a casual listener believe that the president was telling the truth because no one would have the audacity to say such a thing if it wasn’t true?

But others, including Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, say public anger over the debt ceiling debate has weakened Republicans and created an opening for bigger ideas like tax incentives for businesses that hire more workers, according to Congressional Democrats who share that view. Democrats are also pushing the White House to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

“Bigger ideas,” like futzing with the tax code to provide some temporary incentives? That’s their big idea? Also, they want to launch the umpteenth effort to keep people living in houses they can’t afford. Fantastic.

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House director of communications, said that there was no internal debate. “The president’s first priority is to work with Republicans and Democrats to grow the economy, create jobs and reduce the deficit, but if the Republican House continues its ‘my way or the highway’ approach, he will make sure the public knows who is standing in the way and why.”

So they’ll engage in some snivelling and complaining that the other party has principles. Sounds like a winner!

Administration officials, frustrated by the intransigence of House Republicans, have increasingly concluded that the best thing Mr. Obama can do for the economy may be winning a second term, with a mandate to advance his ideas on deficit reduction, entitlement changes, housing policy and other issues.

Yes, if I were them I would also conclude that the best thing that could be done for the economy would be to give me my way on everything. Though if I were them, then they would just question my patriotism for having such a thought.

Mr. Obama plans to spend time this weekend considering his options, advisers said. The White House expects to unveil new job-creation proposals in early September.

A mere 33 months after taking office, and not even at the end of our second Recovery Summer, and they’re already going to propose a plan! Why the rush?

Republicans contend that the Obama administration has mismanaged the nation’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Mr. Obama’s political advisers are struggling to define a response, aware that their prospects may rest on persuading voters that the results of the first term matter less than the contrast between their vision for the next four years and the alternative economic ideas offered by Republicans.

Obama-Biden 2012: If You Think We’re Bad, Imagine How Awful Things Would Be Under President Satan!™

“If you’re talking about a stunt, I don’t think a stunt is what the American people are looking for,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, told reporters on Wednesday.

The story then proceeds to discuss such non-stunts as (I’m not making this up) creating a “Department of Jobs” or “Department of Competitiveness” and giving tax breaks to companies that hire disabled veterans.

I’ll spare you the rest, because it’s just meaningless blather that seems disconnected from reality (evidently the White House believes “paying down the debt” will be popular; what substances would the government need to legalize in order to get people high enough to believe that talking about reducing the annual deficit from 13 to 12 digits was “paying down the debt”?). Their plan boils down to the president trying to convince people of things, and we all know how well that’s worked out for them in the past. The unstated message of the story: Curtain-makers should start previewing fabrics to the Republican candidates.

Today comes this little bit from Obama:

President Obama told a crowd at a battery plant in Holland, Michigan, this afternoon that Republicans must “find a way to put country ahead of party.” Obama went on to say, “There are some in congress right now who would rather see their opponents lose than see America win.”

Ugh. We spent years being lectured about how divisive George Bush was, and how he was always questioning everyone’s patriotism. And we were told that Obama would be better. Well here we are.

The story I linked to referred to this as Obama aping McCain’s ‘08 slogan, “Country First.” But if you look at it, it’s the converse of McCain’s slogan. “Country First” was a description, meant to refer to McCain - how he himself had put country first during his military service, how he had put country first in bucking his own party to do what he thought was right, how he would continue to do that as a president beholden to none of the interest groups of his own party. “Country First” was a candidate pointing out his own virtues and history of service.

Obama’s message, “Put country before party,” on the other hand, is a command to Republicans – who, were it not for Obama’s urging, would surely place the interests of their party above the interests of their country; who would ruin our economy in order to achieve partisan gain.

So while McCain focused on hyping his own devotion to country – I guess you could have taken it as an implied swipe at the patriotism of others, but that’s being unfair; if people can’t point to their own virtues without it being taken as a swipe at others, we’ve entered a very unpleasant world – Obama is using the theme to question the patriotism of others in blunt terms: “There are some in Congress right now who would rather see their opponents lose than see America win.” Because Republicans love power/hate Democrats more than they love America.

Markets will rise and fall. But this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.

The fact that we elected a president who would make this statement is proof that this statement is false.

The president says Congressional Republicans are being irresponsible; I think his speechwriters are being irresponsible to allow him back within a country mile of driving-related metaphors.

President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

Ay caramba! This struck a cord in my memory regarding how much Obama talked during the campaign about his willingness to launch raids into Pakistan. At the time, I didn’t take him seriously. Whether Pakistan is a friend or enemy, it is not terribly stable, has a large and powerful Islamist population that is sympathetic to our enemies, and, um, has nuclear weapons. It struck me that there could not possibly be a terrorist target in Pakistan important enough to risk upsetting or destabilizing such a country, and that no right-thinking person would take a risk with such enormous potential downsides.

How common was disbelief of Obama’s campaign rhetoric? It’s hard to say, but I found this in our archives. In one of the debates, McCain said that  Obama’s threats of launching ”military strikes” in Pakistan were unwise. The Washington Post factcheckers called McCain’s characterization “misleading” and said that Obama had insisted he would only go into Pakistan with the approval of the Pakistani government. Here’s a Jake Tapper discussion from 2007 regarding what Obama actually promised, which features Obama plainly trying to walk back any from any hint that he would “invade” Pakistan.

Am I glad Osama’s dead? Hell yes. But I’m still concerned about the long-term effects of our actions on Pakistan. The Pakistanis appear to be starting to sort out some of this, regarding who knew what, when. There are forces in Pakistan beyond our control, and if this shakes out in such a way that the baddies in Pakistan gain power, history will not view his death as happily as we now do.

It’s going to be fear-mongering, name-calling, strawman attacking 24-7 pretty much from hear to next November. Hopefully the Republican primary will drown him out and hide from us, if only for a month or two, the sad fact that our president is a boor. But we should keep in mind that the president’s campaign speeches have already been written and their content will not change one whit regardless of who our nominee is.

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

What car gets 8 miles per gallon? The story doesn’t mention what sort of car the guy had, whether he actually got 8 mpg (even if you’re driving a Prius, wouldn’t rising gas costs bother you?), or whether Obama just made that number up. Given the joking tone, I’m going to think he made it up.

But honestly, could you buy an 8 mpg car today if you tried? From the 2010 model year: a 530 horsepower, V12 Ferrari 612 with an automatic (!?) gets 9 mpg city and 16 highway; a Maybach 57 S weighs over 6000 pounds and is powered by a V12 that produces 603 horsepower, but it still gets 10 mpg city and 16 mpg highway; the fastest sedan in the world, a Porsche Panamera Turbo, with 542 horsepower, gets 4 passengers from 0-60 in 3.3 seconds, and still gets an, um, miserly 15 mpg city and 23 mpg highway; but if you don’t want to look like a jerk in your Panamera, you could settle for a 500 horsepower BMW M5, which will get you to 60 in a grandma-like 4.7 seconds while getting 11 mpg city and 17 mpg highway.

But enough about high-end imports, what about the dread SUVs. Surely they get 8 mpg, right? A Ford Expedition comes in around 3 tons, and in its most fuel inefficient form gets 12 city and 17 highway (9/13 if you use ethanol fuel, which is less efficient than regular gasoline and still isn’t as inefficient as the president’s out-of-his-ass number). It may be weighed down with three tons of bling, but a Cadillac Escalade, gets 13 city and 20 highway. A 4 wheel drive Hummer would still get no worse than 9 mpg city, and that’s using inefficient ethanol (it gets 13 city on regular gas).

Looking over the entire 2010 model year, I can find exactly two cars that get 8 mpg, and for both of them that’s the city number. What are they? What gas-guzzlers was the president addressing today? What group of Americans are driving up the cost of gas by using 8 mpg (city) cars? My countrymen, our president today saw fit, evidently, to mock the owner of either a Lamborghini Murcielago (641 horsepower V12, 0-60 in 3.3 seconds, and it still gets 9 mpg city if you’re a boob and opt for the automatic transmission) or the fastest car in the world, the 987-horsepower, 0-60-in 2.46-seconds, almost-as-fast-as-a-supersonic-fighter jet Bugatti Veyron, which gets 8 mpg city and 14 mpg highway. Yes, it seems like our president took time out of his busy schedule to scold Simon Cowell for being a cheapskate.

Anyone who knows the slightest about cars knows that getting 8 mpg is simply preposterous in today’s world. I once spent a day at a race track in a 300 horsepower BMW 335, during which I always had either the break or the accelerator in contact with the carpet, and I still got 7 mpg. But I guess I agree with the president on this one point: if you’ve got a million dollar car and are complaining about gas prices, you should probably trade it in.

In his pre-presidential book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said the U.S. will lack international legitimacy if it intervenes militarily “without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands.”

He questioned: “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?”

So let’s go back to his famed 2002 anti-Iraq War speech.  What conclusions do you think 2002 Obama would draw about 2011 Obama?

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Why wasn’t the president’s speech last night effective? Aside from any problems of substance (it’s hard to give an effective speech when what you’re selling is nonsense), it simply wasn’t believable that Barrack Obama believed the things he was saying. We didn’t know much about this man when we elected him in 2008, but we knew he opposed the Iraq War because he didn’t think Saddam was a threat to us. Last night’s speech throws into doubt whether he was sincere then, whether he’s sincere now, whether he’s capable of sincerity, or whether he just did a piss-poor job of explaining what’s different this time.

At any rate, I think it’s impossible to reconcile what little we knew about pre-presidential Obama with the Obama who was on tv last night. A speaker cannot be effective when he undermines his own credibility.