Oath Mulligan Citizenship Motivated?

By now, everybody knows, that for some reason, President Press Conference decided getting the Oath of Office right was important enough to drag Chief Justice Fumblemouth to his office to re-administer it, even though everybody who’s anybody agrees it was unnecessary ceremonial window-dressing for him to even take the thing in the first place.

White House Counsel Greg Craig issued this statement:

“We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the President was sworn in appropriately yesterday. But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.”

However, the L.A. Times report about the brouhaha has this little nugget in it:

Yet it was clear the administration, having been dogged by false Internet rumors about Obama’s citizenship during the presidential campaign, wanted to take no chances about the legitimacy of his presidency.

WTF?  Who said anything about citizenship lately?  And, if there’s no basis for concern, why the “abundance of caution?”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, said the do-over “was just a matter of caution.”

“But I don’t think it mattered. No one would have standing to sue. Obama would still be president. But this would stop people from asking whether or he was legitimately president.”

Since all the birth certificate legitimacy lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of standing, it’s a safe bet Chemerinsky’s right.  And, as a “Constitutional law professor,” (how many times have we heard that one?) why would a guy who knows better be so insistent about something that doesn’t matter?  And, why no Bible this time?  It seems to me, and Lord knows I’m no “Constitutional law professor,” if there’s a legal issue The Transparent TelePrompTer Reader wanted addressed, shouldn’t we know exactly what it is?

This guy says Condoleeza Rice was president from 12:00 to 12:01, and Joe Biden was president from 12:01 to 12:03 when Obama was sworn in, but, if Obie’s oath didn’t take, who was president all day Tuesday?  Biden?  If that’s true, how come nobody’s talking about that?  MSNBObama says Baby Pres was legal since noon inauguration day.  At any rate, legal technicality trivia aside, what do “false Internet rumors about Obama’s citizenship” have to do with anything?  We all know the truth about the Pineapple President’s  birth certificate issues by now, don’t we?

Caroline Drops Out *Update

Caroline Kennedy, the entitled heiress nobody, besides herself and Al Sharpton, wanted to assume Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s now vacant Senate seat, has finally gotten the message and taken her name out of consideration.  So says CBS News affilliate, KRGB, Albany:

Caroline Kennedy has bowed out of the race to replace Hillary Clinton in her New York Senate seat, CBS 6 News political analyst Fred Dicker is reporting.

Kennedy cited personal reasons, sources told the Post. According to the New York Times, it was Kennedy’s concerns about the deteriorating health of her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy — who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last spring and suffered an apparent seizure during an inauguration luncheon yesterday — that prompted her decision to withdraw from Governor Paterson’s consideration for Clinton’s replacement in the Senate.

“Coping with the health issues of her uncle, with whom she enjoys an extraordinarily close bond, was her most important priority; a situation not conducive to starting a high profile public job,” the Times reports, citing sources.

I think it’s laudable that Princess Caroline wants to nurse her ill uncle.  Hope she doesn’t break a nail.

Updates to come.

UPDATE: Okay, after a bunch of back and forth, Caroline made it official.  Sounds to me like in-fighting.  I’m not sure the Dems are all riding the same pony.  I’m guessing Patterson’s a Hillbot, (no matter what he said about Fl. and Mi.) leaning toward a Clinton-friendly choice from the get go; that’s why the Omedia push for a Kennedy Obacrat.  But, Princess doesn’t seem to have the stomach for down and dirty so, she bailed.  People forget HRC is from Chicago, too.

Hillary Confirmed 94-2

CNN, among others, is reporting that Hillary Rodham Clinton has been confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 94-2.  Congratulations, Madame President Secretary.

The Speech Sucked

Let’s be honest, The TelePrompTer-Reader-In-Chief is a lousy speaker, who gives crappy speeches written by a hack of an adolescent cardboard groping speechwriter wannabe.  He doesn’t say anything pretty well, or, he says nothing pretty good, but that’s a dubious skill shared by many forgettable people.  He never connects with his audience, if he takes his eyes off the TelePrompTer screen for even a second, he loses his place and stats stuttering and sputtering like a teapot on a low boil.  Why do so many people see what they want to see in him, and more incomprehensibly, why do so many want a man so lacking to succeed?

The hype and hoopla generated by his Astroturfing dream factory cannot obscure the fact that this is the same inexperienced, barely qualified guy he was when he threw his hat in the ring, which is pretty sad, since the only qualifications for being president are age and citizenship.  And, now that he’s president, they’re really laying on the “he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” “he’s gonna Barack the world,” “Lord, ain’t we lucky we got him?’ horseshit in the media 24/7 to infinity and beyond.  But all the pomp and circumstance in the galaxy can’t remove the truth from the record books, he barely squeaked by the primary process, even after gaming the system and pouring googobs of funny money around.   So, why do people pretend he’s the the Second Coming of what the First Coming should have been?  And more confoundingly, why do they get so mad when sighted people point and laugh?

The inaugural speech sucked; I couldn’t bring myself to watch it yesterday, so I watched it on You Tube this morning.  In the interest of full disclosure, I watched most of it, far more than I would have forced myself to if I wasn’t blogging for other people.  The “uh-oh, my ears are gonna start to bleed” moment came at exactly 19:07 of the 21:50 minute clip, and I just had to cut it off.  Man, it was sad.  And all those people standing out in the cold, pretending it was great, just waiting for something to cheer, was the saddest thing of all.  You just kept waiting for somebody, anybody, to go screaming through the crowd, “It sucks!  Okay?  It’s the crappiest piece of shit to come out of anybody’s mouth since his last speech!  Let’s get the hell out of here and get pizza!”

But, no, they stood there, listening to shitty word after shitty word, suffering politely through not only the Posturing Pretend President’s bilge, but the equally crappy “fauxetry” of Elizabeth Alexander, when they should have rushed the podium en masse demanding that she shush herself immediately.  “Shut the hell up!  What the fuck does anything you’re saying have to do with anything?  Did you even read that crap, first?” would have been more than appropriate “call and response”s from the audience, all things considered, and, a lot more entertaining.  Instead, according to the L.A. Times, the audience went the other way, and just turned around and left.

News source after news source after news source twisted themselves into contortions requiring chiropractic therapy trying to find synonyms for the words, “boring,” “crappy,” and “insipid,” and came up with “restraint,” “quiet,” and, my favorite, “less than thrilling in itself, perhaps by design.”   This whole “you can’t criticize him, he’s black, you know” mentality has got to stop.  It’s patronizing and offensive, and it demeans two whole races; white people for their condescension, and black people for their head-bowing acquiescence.

The guy’s black, he sucks, get over it.

You bought him, now we’re all stuck with him.

We don’t have to like it, though.