Obama’s suffering
[Bumped up.]
The wording of this WaPo headline caught my eye:
“Obama Suffers Most From Year of Turmoil, Poll Finds.”
Accompanying it is this photo:
The article goes on to describe the precipitous decline in Obama’s standing in approval polls this year:
His position is all the more striking when compared with his standing a year ago, as he was preparing for his second inauguration after a solid reelection victory. That high note proved fleeting as the president faced a series of setbacks, culminating in the botched rollout of his Affordable Care Act two months ago.
I offer the above as another demonstration of the care with which these things are written. Some may think reporters and editors are simply clumsy or indifferent writers, and sometimes they are. But much of the time they choose their words (and photos) with exquisite and subtle care. They also realize that most people only look at the headlines and photos of most articles, and that those are therefore the most important, and that even people who do read the article often read only the first few paragraphs.
In this article, the headline and photo have been chosen to suggest that Obama is a suffering victim—in fact, the greatest victim—of a series of unfortunate circumstances that have befallen him. Nearly a martyr. And the copy (the paragraph I’ve quoted here is the second one in the piece) reinforces that idea by this phrase, “faced a series of setbacks.” Passive voice; no actor.
The only mention of culpability I could find occurred in the article’s third paragraph, and it’s a curious one:
…[I]t is the president who has suffered the most damage from his administration’s self-inflicted wounds and a year of partisan conflict that included a partial shutdown of the government.
Again, we have the president as sufferer, and even though here (finally!) the wounds are “self-inflicted.” But it is the administration rather than the president himself that is doing the damage. Note, also, that this observation is followed in the same sentence by a balancing reference to the government shutdown, which didn’t hurt Obama at all and was widely blamed on the Republicans.
All in all, a masterpiece of subtly crafted writing designed to effect a certain perception: that of a beleaguered president who is the suffering victim.
Now to the poll itself. In some ways encouraging—because it indicates, as do other polls, that people are not liking Obamacare and are not as positive about Obama or Democrats in general as they were just a short while ago—certain of the findings are mind-bogglingly discouraging. As an example of the latter, I give you the following:
The president is back in positive territory, however marginally, on two important attributes ”” whether he understands the problems of everyday Americans and whether he is honest and trustworthy. At the worst of the health-care mess, bare majorities said no to both questions. Today bare majorities say yes.
Obama has recovered some credibility? Why? There’s also this, “A 26-point Obama advantage a year ago on who would better protect the middle class has fallen to just six points in the latest survey.”
I’m glad it’s fallen. But why does he still have any advantage at all? I know the answer to that question, or at least I think I know: Republicans are strongly and widely perceived as only caring about the rich. It seems it would take a much more powerful demonstration of real-world negative consequences for the middle class unequivocally and unmistakably linked to Obama’s policies, and of real-world positive consequences for the middle class unequivocally and unmistakably linked to Republicans’ policies, to make a sizable dent in these perceptions.
Ace was right. Everything is just a MacGuffin to the drama of Obama.
Infantile Majesty: May you wear that battered, bruised, semi-stunned, depressive look on your face for 3+more years,’Yo. May you be handed continual REAL Reasons for wearing said look.
May the Evil Repubs win significant gains with a majority in the senate and even more in the house. May you weep like the spoiled 2nd grade louse that you are.
Fact is though that the GOP is the party of the middle classes. The Dems are the party of the very rich (at least the trust fund crowd, Tech and media zillionaires, high end civil servants, and the union brass.), the Government employees and the (Dem created new Lumpen proletariat.
So the reality is, of course, 180 degrees from the truth.
What the GOP cannot grasp is that the Democrats are as a profound and enemy as the Soviets where.
But then, they are more afraid of the media then they are of their constituencies.
We are really in a one party, post constitutional period now. The electorate has not quite figured it out yet.
This from that poll could lead one to despair:
“Five years after Bush left office, half of all Americans say they blame him for the economy’s current problems compared with almost four in 10 [38%] who blame Obama. Those perceptions have changed little in the past year.”
Democrats and the news media are well experienced in blaming a non-person entity whenever Democrats are at fault – it it the administration, it is the government, it is the agency, etc; as if it is never a Democrat in charge of any of those things when something goes wrong. Never!
But, boy does the language change whenever a Republican is in charge; then they are blamed for everything – everything!
The “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has just hit a brand new all-time record high. Does this look like an “economic recovery” to you?…
looks like feminism…
i am so glad the modern woman will do all the work, pay the taxes and bail out all the children…
you go gurl…
With More Women Bringing Home the Bacon, Who’s Going to Fry It Up?
maybe Obama is the narcisist in chief cause no one (not even here) can pay much attention to other than him (in some way)…
Obama’s suffering does not compare to the millions who have lost their health insurance because of his efforts at income redistribution. It does not compare to the suffering of the unemployed in his economy.
The only mention of culpability I could find occurred in the article’s third paragraph, and it’s a curious one:
…[I]t is the president who has suffered the most damage from his administration’s self-inflicted wounds and a year of partisan conflict that included a partial shutdown of the government.
actually its not..
its classic shifting of the victim from the victim
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sc7908.doc.htm
WOMEN SUFFER DISPROPORTIONATELY DURING AND AFTER WAR, SECURITY COUNCIL TOLD DURING DAY-LONG DEBATE ON WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY
see? the men killed, mutilated, tortured, dismembered, eviscerated, and more… dont suffer at all…
“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” Hillary Clinton
its an OLD socialismo concept..
that the one that suffers is the oppressed
never the oppressors
its that simple cause the general population (Especially the smart ones) are that stupid.
its sociopathic
its a way to gather up the guilt that another gets so that you can get something out of it, and prevent the actual victim0 from getting something.
the whole left machine is build on that structure
who got a few billion dollars for green projects and was a communist? van jones. now where did the oppressed get the cash he got to help them?
the whole point is to create a victim class, then make you the greater suffer as the keeper of the victim0s, which is why, that person should get it all..
ie. its obama version of “i feel your pain”
he feels victi0hood, and needs restitution…
its collective feeling, and he is the keeper of the collective reparations…
dont you feel it when maduro claims he is being victimized by capitalists sabotoging all that he does so well for everyone?
hang out with enough selfish sociopaths, and if you survive you will understand this
Poor, poor Obama!
Oh, how he’s suffered this past year!
If only those millions who have lost their health plan, or the additional millions who may go broke just hanging on to their plans, understood such pain as Obama’s.
It’s amazing how the MSM always makes it about how it affects Obama, as if his poor decisions and inept governance had no other consequences.
*Probably should end every “poor Obama” story with a James Taranto/Best of the Web paraphrase:
Ambassador Stevens could not be reached for comment.
artfldgr:
Why do you think what you wrote in your comment and what I said in the article are at variance?
That is the thrust of my entire article: that the WaPo piece is talking about Obama as the sufferer and the victim, instead of Obama as perpetrator on the true vicims.
All this worrying turmoil! The clenched lips, closed eyes, the greying hair, and all these furrows on the Great Obama’s brow!
But, then, times of division, turmoil, chaos, and violence have always been the ideal environment in which the opportunities for the revolutionary are maximized.
Yes, as my momma would say, “Bless his little heart”.
Well I ‘spose we could put a cross to represent his divine suffering-ness through his big O logo.
But then it implies he might be the Zodiac killer.
Poor, suffering Obama …
Can I see him suffer some more? Pretty Please? Pretty Please with sugar on it?
Oh, yeah – if schadenfreude were calories, I’d be too fat to get up off the sofa at this point.
Sgt. Mom,
Perfect!
Pull the other one.
Boobus Americanus needs free condoms, free oral contraceptives, and a multi-year power blackout.
In the meantime, Baraq is off to 14 glorious vacation days in the pigmented land of his boyhood. He can do this because he can, and because he just appointed a *Microsoft* (*=trumpets) exec to head up healthcare.gov and we know he will fix it, and facilitate the ruin of 17% of the economy, and your health; our confidence is enhanced by learning said exec’s wife is a Dem Congresscritter. They both (shazzam !) have tech beackgrounds. What a comfort.
Mah pore heyart buhleeeeeeeeeeds fer ‘im.
That is to say, propaganda, courtesy of the collaborationist press.
But then, what else is new …
Actually, “collaborationist press” now seems a woefully weak and tepid term; whereas just a couple years back it seemed a shaming insult. I guess it’s no real insult to call a giddy and self-proclaimed collectivist worshiper, a worshipful collectivist.
When obamacare negatively impacts employer-sponsored healthcare plans next year perhaps those real-world negative consequences for the middle class will finally become clear.
…But why does he still have any advantage at all? I know the answer to that question, or at least I think I know: Republicans are strongly and widely perceived as only caring about the rich.
When both parties are corrupt lying crooks, you might as well vote for the one that promises you more stuff.
“It seems it would take a much more powerful demonstration of real-world negative consequences for the middle class unequivocally and unmistakably linked to Obama’s policies,….”
There’s the problem. Few of the LIVs understand how government policies affect them. All they know is what they are fed by the MSM. Thus, until the MSM starts broadcasting the truth about how redistributionism works to rob the middle class not just the 1%, they just won’t get it. In the mean time, the MSM and administration can blame the obstructionist Repubs, the TEA Party, and “bad luck” for Obama’s screw ups. And get away with it.
Chuck Todd today just ruled out the former MT governor’s bid for Dem nomination.
First term Senator from Illinois was just as big a long shot other than the fact the he was racially historic.
The MT governor would be the first president from the Rockies historic.
This crowning and fawning over HRC is pathetic.
John Lee Hooker on topic
Off topic – Happy 70th Keith Richards!
Neo: “Republicans are strongly and widely perceived as only caring about the rich.”
Not just that. They’ve carved up the American people into identity groups and worked on convincing each one that the GOP is out to hurt them.
I observed on my blog last September:
This, too:
And don’t forget the halo effect of the photo.
There’s a montage somewhere of the media pinkos’ blatant framing of this jackass with halos in a multitude of photos.
As for why Hussein is still seen as credible by some of our idiotic fellow “citizens,” it’s pretty simple: he’s being judged like they would judge an American Idol contestant. Or as Rush Limbaugh has said lately, the media pinkos’ Narrative is Government as Soap Opera. Hussein is merely the Sympathetic Hero whose trials and tribulations excite pity and sympathy in the hearts of the useful idiots. So, he’s up again.
Don’t forget about things like this as well. Prophecies do come true and aren’t always self fulfilling.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-government-doesnt-need-a-police-state-when-it-has-facebook/
I had to make some of the details inaccurate otherwise I would have been put on a watch list if I knew too much about this issue and had put it out there.
…. Okay, that one was a joke. Well, mostly a joke. I didn’t use inside info on the NSA or on Snow’s soon to be upcoming release, I just used intuition. Martial arts intuition. Yin Yang energy processes.
One commenter at insta got it right on why spying matters.
If they got the black mail files on who in congress rapes boys and girls, who likes girls only, who are bisexual, who likes it with male on male action only, it won’t matter if they are Republican or Democrat. They will Obey whomever has the blackmail goodies.
Then the Left can say afterwards, vote for Democrats, Republicans are just as corrupt. But we’re only that way because we are out for the little guy.
I’ll just say it out here, plain and clearly.
Obama is a cockroach. He’s a fruit fly.
Roaches feel pain? No.
Humans feel pain.
As to why the MSM still turns into pretzels trying to protect Obama, I think what was posted on Drudge this morning pretty much sums it up:
BARBARA WALTERS: ‘We thought he was going to be the next Messiah’…
What a bunch of maroons….
I cannot imagine a mind who gazes on the headline and photo, then believes it has understood the news. Are the intelligensia so easily duped?
i didnt think we were at variance, i thought that most didnt know the script is a script one applies, not anything other than that. they follow scripts and moves, nothing from the hearts they dont have…
on another note…
The U.S. Army is sending roughly 19,000 active-duty captains and majors to a screening board for early separation this spring, the Army Times reported. Up to 20 percent of those screened – approximately 3,800 officers – could be scheduled to leave the service by the Officer Separation Board and Enhanced Selective Early Retirement Board.
The money for obama’s spa vacation with that blond PM has to come from somewhere via laundering.
Poor guy. Perhaps that 17 day taxpayer funded vacation over Christmas will help his lagging spirits.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Post were one-half as concerned with the suffering that Obama is inflicting on this country and countrymen?
Sweet reversal of at least part of the “narrative” with the lesson being Obama can’t blame Bush anymore:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-george-w-bush-evolved-from.html
The narrative (as interpreted by Neo):
Obama has recovered some credibility? Why? There’s also this, “A 26-point Obama advantage a year ago on who would better protect the middle class has fallen to just six points in the latest survey.”
I’m glad it’s fallen. But why does he still have any advantage at all? I know the answer to that question, or at least I think I know: Republicans are strongly and widely perceived as only caring about the rich. It seems it would take a much more powerful demonstration of real-world negative consequences for the middle class unequivocally and unmistakably linked to Obama’s policies, and of real-world positive consequences for the middle class unequivocally and unmistakably linked to Republicans’ policies, to make a sizable dent in these perceptions.
Physicsguy: “‘We thought he was going to be the next Messiah’…” – Barbara Walters
They keep insisting that they’re the “reality-based community,” the believers of science over religion, and yet the bought into the Obama cargo cult with every last dime of theirs.
I’m happy that Obama is making fools of them all, but Barbara still can’t bring herself to blame him. It was the too-high expectations, you see
BARBARA WALTERS: Well, you’ve touched on it to a degree. He made so many promises. We thought that he was going to be — I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime, but — the next messiah.
What is this we she speaks of?
Does she realize that its bizare to think that the left which is athiestic and hates religion would get to pick a messiah?
they are the smart ones
these are not the droids your looking for
Do note that in Obama’s mind, the many people who are harmed by him is a statistic, the harm to one (himself) is a trajedy…
(to paraphrase stalin)
What causes Obama to suffer is loss of power. There are four cases, all dealing with the same issue, working their way through the system, which have the potential to end Obamacare.
The issue is whether Congress intended Exchanges set up by the feds after the individual States default to receive subsidies. 36 States have. Certain language strongly infers there is a difference between state and federal Exhanges. You might call this the case of “when the qualifier does not qualifier” if you are an Obamacare fan.
The phrase is: subsidies should be allotted for plans purchased “through an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311”, a reference to the section of the law that establishes state-run exchanges.” I’m quoting here from an article. (See cite below.)
This appears, at first glance, to limit subsidies to state Exchanges. But, no, according to Obamacare defenders, the definition of an Exchange renders state and federal exchanges identical at least with regard to interpretation of the statute. Another quote from the article: “the law defines an “Exchange” as established by the state, then orders the federal government to establish the exact same exchange, denoted as “such Exchange,” if a state fails to act.”
You tell me if that definition works to eliminate any difference between a state and fed exchange?
So it comes down to a question of statutory construction (interpretation). And the Court’s overarching purpose is to determine the intent of the Legislature. But there’s also this: the plain language of the statute and that superfluous language is not deemed to exist in the law. So why is the qualifying phrase “through an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311” included? Why not just the simpler “Exchange?”
http://www.newsweek.com/case-could-topple-obamacare-224747
Please substitute the following sentence in the second paragraph:
The issue is whether Congress intended Exchanges set up by the feds after the individual States default to receive subsidies.
You were just mentioned on Rush Limbaugh’s show in regards to this article!
wow, your post was just commented on by Rush Limbaugh
Jewel and fritz62:
Well, that’s certainly interesting.
Do you remember what he said (or whether he mentioned the blog URL 🙂 )?
“But why does he still have any advantage at all?”
Don’t forget that the chief political strategy of the Dems is vilifying Bush and the GOP. They’re just as happy with voters choosing against a cartoonish GOP strawman as they are with voters choosing for magic-beans Dems fantasy.
As stated by Beverly, the Dems are about The Narrative where the electorate has been reduced to an interactive audience of a fictional play.
People are voting not based on rational, informed choices, but on buzzword-laden children’s stories with good guys and bad guys, where truth is merely a choice.
The GOP needs to tell a better story where the GOP becomes the hero and the Dems are the villains.
Add: Said another way, it’s not enough for Dems supporters to admit Dems pol are wrong. They need to be convinced to admit that the GOP is better, if not right.
Need that slap that woman across the face next time she talks about “messiahs”, given their anti religious bigotry and Islamic Jihad worshipping tongue licks.
Don’t let Leftists talk about messiahs. They’ll put you in a steam vat and call you a Jesus lolly pop before you know it.
Neo: if you go to rushlimbaugh.com later this afternoon, he’ll have a written transcript of today’s show available for you to read.
What is Obama doing lately with poking out his bottom lip? Looks gross. Guess it’s his version of Clinton biting his lip to show he feels our pain.
KLSmith:
Thanks!
I’ve already figured out that it was at Legal Insurrection that Limbaugh saw the post. A couple of times a week I cross-post something there, and he must have read it on that blog because some commenters there said something to that effect.
Here’s the LI post of mine.
When I contemplate poor Obamas suffering, I am surprised he didn’t paraphrase what Jesus said: If the Republicans have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
Rush said, “someone called Neo-Neocon at Legal Insurrection” that was it
gone in a flash
no Rushalanche?