by Art Lindsey III

On her Christmas in Washington special on ABC last night, Oprah Winfrey asked President Obama to grade himself.

“Good, solid B-plus,” the president said.

Explaining, he said, “we have inherited the biggest set of challenges of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt
.
“We stabilized the economy, and prevented possibilities of a Great Depression or a significant financial meltdown. The economy is growing again.”

“We are on our way out of Iraq. I think we’ve got the best possible plan for Afghanistan.

“We have reset our image around the world.”
-

Well, who here feels better now? I know I certainly do
.
President Obama’s fondness for referring to himself is well documented, but this is one of his most stunning displays of arrogance yet. The proper answer to this question is, “That is not for me to decide. That is up to the American people.

This is why we don’t grade ourselves in school. (At Least not yet, but who knows. It may not be far down the road. First, teachers aren’t allowed to use red pens, so it seems logical that “self-assessment” may soon follow.) According to a New Rasmussen poll, Obama’s approval rating has dipped to 44 percent, and it should be noted that this is one of the fastest drops in US presidential history.

Now, I don’t know about any of you, but when I went to school, if I saw a “44” on my paper, that meant I got a big, fat “F”. In fact, I had to get a “90” to even get a “B”.

How can a man who approved a $787 billion spending bill (which for all intents and purposes has failed) sit idly by as congress is about to approve nearly another $2 trillion in spending? Seeing that the only “successes” that his administration can seem to tout is that “we didn’t lose as many jobs this month as last month”, shows that he lacks basic math skills. Such a claim is not an indication off success in a sane world. Logic would dictate that at some point, the job loss numbers would have to decrease simply because we are running out of jobs to lose. Somebody has to work. If nobody worked, society would collapse.

So, if by “stabilizing the economy” he means holding the unemployment numbers at a nice bouncy, round number like 10 percent, then yes, he is doing an outstanding job. If by “resetting our image” he means bowing and scraping to every would leader he can get a photo-op with, he’s earned a spot on the Dean’s List.

President Obama is so disengaged from reality that he either doesn’t hear what comes out of his own mouth or worse yet, the multiple failures he has presided over or instigated are perceived as achievements in eyes, regardless of what the data may suggest.
He has turned America into a poorly controlled science fair project, and the media that he has a “teacher’s pet” relationship with is giving him a passing grade.

One could argue that this is akin to cheating, and in the end, cheaters always get caught, don’t they?

Two uninvited guests inexplicably “crashed” President Barack Obama’s first state dinner on Wednesday night, and the incident has left many scratching their heads as to how this could have happened.

The couple, Michaela and Tareq Salahi, who are reportedly auditioning for a Washington D.C. based reality show were able to gain access to the party when protocol was not maintained at the Secret service checkpoint.

-

At this point, it is easy to imagine the sheer volume of comedy this will produce for late night television hosts, and conservative pundits such as this one. The “we were a second away from Joe Biden being the leader of the free world” jokes are too numerous to even fathom. And yes, the First family’s penchant for partying is well documented. We can go on and on about the stream of protocol blunders ranging from DVD’s and iPods, to bowing indiscriminately and buzzing New York City in Air Force One. While those incidents are certainly perceived as bad by a good portion of the public, in most cases the most damage that is done is that the president and his country gets a bit of a red face, and somebody gets fired because of said incident’s possible impact on future electoral maps.

This, however, is much more serious than any of that.

No matter which side of the political ideological spectrum we fall on, the President of the United States is in fact the most powerful man in the world. Whomever holds that office, whether you had a stake in electing the person or not, and political policies notwithstanding, the president should be protected at all costs.

It goes without saying that the Salahi’s should be brought up on federal charges, and the Secret Service agents responsible for this “mishap” should be immediately investigated and fired.

These are serious times we live in. We are engaged in two wars which we must win, while we are also trying to somehow prevent a madman from wiping a tiny nation known as Israel from the face of the earth. These things are no laughing matter. Western civilization itself could hang in the balance.

Every day, there is at least one story in the news that will make any engaged American question their safety, yet our government and its supposedly unlimited resources fell flat on its face when it came to ensuring the safety of the one man who I many ways holds the keys to ours.

One couldn’t even classify this as unacceptable. This is downright frightening. It’s one thing to have to endure lapses in judgment that occasionally make the Obama administration look like its perpetually getting “pantsed” on the playground, but what if a future lapse in judgment, (by whichever department commits it) ends in something much more tragic and leaves a lasting scar on the American psyche?

Apparently, nobody’s thinking about that. Somebody should.

My friend sent me this video. Absolutely hilarious! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Profanity warning.

This is hilarious, and somewhat touching. I know this (totally hot) guy in London who got it into his head on Friday to stage a “Mass moonwalk” in front of London’s Liverpool Station. Rented speakers, blocked off the street, and thousands of people showed up to pay tribute to Michael Jackson and to dance in the street.

Lunatic. But at least he’s a resourceful lunatic, because I sure as heck couldn’t have pulled something like that off on short notice. We should bring him over to America to help us organize the Tea Parties next weekend! Well done, Milo.

But I think I’m the only one. What a day! Farrah Fawcett succumbed to the cancer she’s been battling for years. She was 62, and her friends and family were at her side.

But poor Farrah barely got half a day’s news coverage before the madman that is/was Michael Jackson was rushed to hospital in a coma. He was later pronounced dead. He was 50 years old.

And then… rumors started flying around the Internet that Jeff Goldblum was dead. He’s not. And Harrison Ford dead. He’s not. What the high holy hell is going on? Relax people, before you break the Intertoobz.

I would like to address petty pieties, which I will get into further on Monday’s Brass Balls Radio (which is going to sound a helluva lot like the annual Oscar death list roundup). I didn’t like Michael Jackson. I wasn’t even a big fan at the appropriate time in 1984. As I grew older he disgusted me. He paid off parents to let him fondle their children - both he and the parents involved should rot in hell. And on top off all that, he was a joke. He was butt of eleventy-billion jokes for more than 15 years. So those of you who are all pious today about his passing are full of shit if you were part of that two-decade ridicule. Jackson leaves behind 2 or 3 kids (I don’t care enough to look it up), and I have a feeling their lives are about to get really, really normal. Good for them. I am not going to mourn his passing any more than I mourned wife-beater James Brown’s or will mourn murderer Ted Kennedy when he finally kicks it.

That said, Jackson was insanely talented (insane being the operative word), especially in his youth. And talent should be respected and remembered. So if you’re going to take a moment to mourn the death of Michael Jackson, at least remember him at his best and blackest.

And if you need a laugh after all the deaths, this is from Twitter:

“Heeeeeeeeeere’s Farrahhhhhh!”
“Heeeeeeeeeere’s Michaelllll!”
God: “Dammit Ed. Cut it out.”

Hotel billionaire Barron Hilton is stiffing his high-living, hard-partying granddaughters, Paris and Nicky, yesterday announcing plans to give 97 percent of his vast fortune to charity.

His plan includes a $1.2 billion pledge to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, named after his father - a donation that includes the windfall from the recent sale of Hilton Hotels Corp. and the pending sale of the world’s biggest casino company, Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

Barron Hilton, 80, chair man of the foundation, intends “to contribute 97 percent of his entire net worth, estimated today at $2.3 billion, including the created trusts, at whatever value it is at the time of his passing,” the foundation declared.

There was no immediate comment from Paris.

But family expert Jerry Oppenheimer, author of “House of Hilton,” has told The Post that Paris has been an “embarrassment” for the bluebloods, sullying the family name with her vacuous antics.

Poetic, ain’t it? Like Leona Helmsley leaving her money to her dog, only better.

To television bosses, it may have seemed a moment of onscreen madness.

But to viewers fed up with the whole Paris Hilton saga, it was a long-awaited outbreak of sanity.

American newsreader Mika Brzezinski, co-presenter of MSNBC’s Morning Joe programme, refused to read out the story of the celebrity socialite’s release from jail ahead of items on Iraq and developments at the White House.

Miss Brzezinski then screwed up, shredded and attempted to set fire to the script on air. She told viewers: “I hate it and I don’t think it should be our lead. I just don’t believe in covering that story, at least not as the lead story on the newscast, when we have a day like today.”