Obama Recovering After Closed Captioning ‘Mishap’

April fools?  I don’t think so.  As with all comedy, its foundations begin in truth.  If you have seen the compilation of Obama’s teleprompter speech gaffs, especially when combined with his total lack of social grace (giving the Queen of England an iPod loaded with Obama speeches and BOWING to the King of Saudi Arabia as if he were a subject, which he may be) you will agree that Obama is nothing more than an empty suit, totally devoid of CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.

by Mac Johnson (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET
Updated 04/02/2009 ET

Bethesda, Md. — Doctors were said to be treating President Barack Obama at Bethesda Naval Hospital today for exhaustion and possible vocal cord injuries after a freak television accident occurred at the White House Tuesday evening.

Closed Captioning Counseling

According to a statement read by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, President Obama, noted for his near total dependence on the teleprompter when speaking, was leaving a practice session for an upcoming press conference when he happened upon a muted television set near the White House Briefing Room on which someone had activated the “closed captioning” function.

“Apparently, Mr. Obama mistook the captioning for his new flat screen teleprompter and began reading the text aloud,” Gibbs said. Gibbs stated that “what followed was a tragic marathon speaking session that lasted for nearly 14 hours before staff discovered Obama and disconnected the device.”

The President’s accidental filibuster was said to have included a 2-hour episode of “The Biggest Loser,” a much anticipated “Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit,” the local evening news, and a late night paid infomercial for “natural male enhancement.” The press later described Obama’s reading of the captioning as “eloquent” (New York Times), “historic” (CNN), and “emotionally moving” (Newsweek).

This event comes on the heels of several embarrassing teleprompter gaffes by Obama, including one in which he thanked himself for being invited to the United States when he accidentally read the teleprompter text intended for the visiting Prime Minister of Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, his repeated mispronunciation of the written word “Orion” at an event for Orion Energy in Milwaukee (staff had apparently neglected to spell it phonetically on his teleprompter), a little reported campaign event in which Obama’s thoughts disappeared with his flickering teleprompter image, and a news conference in which Obama responded to complaints about his addiction to the teleprompter blocking the view of photographers by having a giant flat screen TV installed on the back wall and reading his thoughts from that.

When asked for an explanation of how such an event could occur to the President of the United States, Gibbs responded, “That’s a good question. We’re investigating now. How anyone could leave the closed captioning on like that is just inexplicable. The White House staff should know better by now.”

A source at Bethesda Naval Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the President was doing fine, but was “quite hoarse” and getting some much needed rest ever since doctors turned the screen on his heart monitor around so that he couldn’t read it anymore. “Before that he just kept saying ‘Heart rate 98, Heart rate 97, Heart rate 98…’” the source said, adding, “It was kind of weird, but since we removed that he’s been OK. Although I’d hate to see what would happen to this guy if someone accidentally left him alone in the room with the crawler on the Fox News Channel.”

Another source at the hospital commented that Obama’s dependence on the teleprompter was predictable given his earlier self-admitted addiction to his Blackberry, or “Crackberry,” as it is popularly known. “Those Blackberrys are like a gateway drug,” the source said. He added, “First you’re getting your jokes and ideas from that apparently harmless little toy, and the next thing you know, you can’t even speak like an adult unless someone feeds you your thoughts word for word on a giant television monitor hung right in front of your face. It’s sad — just sad.”

“Oh, and Happy April Fools’ Day.”

Cartoon by Brett Noel.

Mr. Johnson, a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, Mass., is a regular contributor to HUMAN EVENTS. His column generally appears on Tuesdays. Archives and additional material can be found at www.macjohnson.com.

‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

Hillary only stuck with Bill because it kept her close to the seat of power, and by not throwing Bill to the wolves she held power over him.  She is a power hungry enabler just like her new boss.  She’ll throw him under the bus if given the opportunity.  In the meantime, she just runs around the world making America look like fools.  That may actually be true if you look at who we have elected as our representatives and to the highest office in the land.  The liberal plan for public education has finally come to fruition.

‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

by A.W.R. Hawkins (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET

Hillary Clinton is best remembered for blaming the accusations against her husband on a “vast right wing conspiracy” (until he was forced to admit that he was giving a different dog a bone) and blaming her 2008 Democrat primary losses on the anti-female sentiment in certain parts of our country. (No, not anti-female.  Just anti-beyotch.) But who is she going to blame for her disastrous debut as secretary of state?

Can we blame the president? No; his foreign policy experience is even less than hers. And, yes: her entire foreign policy experience was kissing the late Yasser Arafat’s wife on the lips and embarrassing her hubby on a China trip by making a plea for women’s rights to a group assembled by the Chicoms to listen politely to her. But I digress.

Now Hillary, long considered “America’s smartest woman” by people like Elton John and James Carville, is taking her blame game and her conditional loyalty to the world as our Secretary of State.

Her debut was a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, to whom she presented what was supposed to be a “reset” button, making light of Obama’s desire to make nice with the bad guys. The button, though, wasn’t labeled “reset.” Instead, due to the fine work by her staff, it had the Russian word for “overload” (like an electronic circuit) painted on it. So while it’s obvious that Hillary ain’t the Great Communicator, it gets worse.

Her recent trips to China and Mexico prove this point.

En route to China for her February 20-22 visit with Chinese leaders, Hillary wasted no time in criticizing others for problems the U.S. is facing with North Korea. She polished up the old refrain “it’s Bush’s fault” by intimating that North Korea has nukes because of the failed policies of former president George W. Bush.

Hillary believes Bush failed to keep North Korea within the parameters of an agreement they signed while Hillary’s husband was president. But gatewaypundit.com has duly noted that the “North Korean regime [has] violated the agreed framework almost from the time it was signed during the Clinton years.”

And what retribution did they face for this violation during the Clinton years? None.

Once Hillary landed in China, she went from blaming Bush to turning her back on core Democrat constituencies like Amnesty International and pro-Tibetan support groups, both of which are outraged over China’s violations of human rights. Instead of calling Chinese leaders out on their mistreatment of whole classes of humanity, Hillary said, “[E]fforts to press China on issues like Taiwan, Tibet and human rights ‘can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.’”

Hillary tried to clarify her reasoning by adding that there’s no use talking human rights with the Chinese because, “We pretty much know what they’re going to say.”

Since when is knowing what someone is “going to say” a valid reason for not doing what ought to be done?

In the German publication Spiegel, Günter Nooke, of the Christian Democratic Union Party, described the methods of America’s smartest woman as “very questionable.” He explained that the reason she really didn’t want to do anything to offend Chinese leaders was because her trip was part of a larger effort to seek “out fresh Chinese loans for the deeply-indebted American government.”

To put it succinctly, Hillary’s visit with Chinese leaders was conducted from a position of weakness. And such a mindset barred our inept secretary of state from standing up for Tibetans, the Taiwanese, or any other people group that China regularly assaults and threatens, for fear of financial loss.

Slate’s Annie Applebaum, a left leaning journalist, put it this way: “I…care quite a lot about what the new administration is going to do about human rights on the ground, and, to date, both Clinton and Obama have been utterly silent on that score.”

When Hillary traveled to Mexico last week, she further epitomized the sad state of our current administration by demonstrating that their refusal to call China on the carpet for obvious wrongs China had committed would not keep them from blaming America for wrongs that America had not committed.

Our smartest-woman-turned secretary of state told Mexico’s President Calderon that America had “a co-responsibility” for the violence currently overtaking Mexico: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians.” (It doesn’t matter that we KNOW  that the weapons that the liberals are speaking about were given to the MEXICAN GOVERNMENT by our government and then stolen from the Mexican government by drug cartels, or given to the drug cartels by sympathizers/moles within the military.  This is just a way to build uninformed sympathy for an illegitimate gun ban in this country.)

Isn’t anyone responsible for their own actions anymore? And wouldn’t it be more accurate to point out that Mexico’s violence is the result of the fact that they’re an anti-capitalist third world country with a population largely comprised of laborers whose own government robs them of the chance to better themselves?

Yet it just keeps getting worse. From Monterrey, Mexico, America’s smartest woman told Calderon: “[The] partnership that you have created…between the public and the private sector is a model that we and others will look towards.” I guess this means we, in America, would be better off by living like citizens of the third world instead of citizens of an industrialized one?

I fear that America’s smartest woman has yet to understand that she’s not just a first lady anymore: her words mean something now that she’s become secretary of state. And not only is she setting us up to pay financial reparations by taking “co-responsibility” for the crimes of another nation, she’s actually making America look internationally impotent by lacking the backbone to demand that the Chinese uphold human rights or the clarity of thought needed to see that Mexico’s political structure eliminates any possibility for paupers to go from rags to riches.

Hillary’s trips to China and Mexico, and the words she used while in each country, confirm that we’ve no longer an administration that’s proud of this country, its values, or its accomplishments. Gone for now are the days when America deals from a position of strength.

HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins has been published on topics including the U.S. Navy, Civil War battles, Vietnam War ideology, the Reagan Presidency, and the Rebirth of Conservatism, 1968-1988. More of his articles can be found at www.awrhawkins.com.