Top 10 Obama Scolds

Top 10 Obama Scolds
by Human Events 10/15/2011

Barack Obama​ is increasingly becoming the nation’s scolder-in-chief—lashing out at friends and foes alike—and placing blame for things gone wrong on everybody but himself and his policies. Here are the Top 10 Obama Scolds:

1. America going soft: President Obama placed the blame for the nation’s woes squarely on the American people when he said this last month: “This is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.” With an election year looming, was insulting the voters a major mishap?

2. Take slippers off: The President even scolded his most loyal supporters, telling a gathering of the Congressional Black Caucus, “I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.” That was too much even for Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.), of South Central Los Angeles, who said Obama “just got a little bit off the teleprompter.”

3. Bitter clingers: Obama’s most famous put-down of his fellow Americans came during the 2008 presidential election, when he said at a San Francisco fund-raiser: “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

4. Eat your peas: During the summer’s debt-ceiling debate, Obama sternly reproached congressional Republicans while rejecting a short-term increase in the borrowing limit. At a press conference, the President lectured: “That is not an acceptable approach. So we might as well do it now. Pull off the Band-Aid. Eat our peas.”

5. Do-nothing Congress: Obama is taking the Truman route, blaming a “do-nothing” Congress for holding up his jobs bill. In doing so, the President seems to have forgotten that the Senate is still run by Democrats, some of whom aren’t enamored of Stimulus II. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is said to be none too pleased with the President’s strategy and, according to The Hill, their relationship is “terse.”

6. Cairo apology: Soon after taking office, Obama felt it necessary to undertake an overseas “apology tour,” painting America’s past actions in a bad light. In Cairo, he criticized Bush’s war on terror, while continuing most of his anti-terror policies. Sept. 11, 2001, he said, "was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals." What does the antiwar crowd think about drones killing U.S. citizens?

7. Pay a little more: The community organizer-in-chief loves the class-warfare game, and never did he play it more audaciously than during the debt-ceiling debate. Mocking tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires, oil companies and corporate jet owners,” the President lectured: “If you are a wealthy CEO or hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. … You can still ride on your corporate jet. You’re just going to have to pay a little more.”

8. Republicans small: Obama scolded the entire Republican presidential field, charging them with being silent when a gay soldier was booed during a debate, never mind it was clear the boos were aimed at a specific policy. “We don’t believe in the kind of smallness that says it’s okay for a stage full of political leaders—one of whom could end up being the President of the United States​—being silent when an American soldier is booed,” he told a Human Rights Campaign dinner crowd, where his gay and lesbian supporters cheered robustly.

9. Tea Party darkness: Obama fuels the left-wing smear campaign against the Tea Party movement when he makes statements like these, in an interview with Rolling Stone: “There are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the President.”

10. Attack watch: Now Obama wants to turn his supporters into an army of scolds, with his campaign asking them to snitch to the Attack Watch website whenever they hear a smear against the President. Luckily, the mocking of the site has gone viral, as submissions such as, “There's a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nut-job,” becoming the norm.
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To read another Top Ten List by Human Events, click here.