We Must Obey The Obamessiah, Rather Than Human Beings

The President of the US will give His latest State of the Union address this evening, and the BBC has published the press release with key talking points.

Obama State of the Union speech to act on income inequality

Sound promising, no? Just by His words, He can move mountains. What they mean is that the President will announce one of His latest executive orders to help the poorest and most vulnerable and strike a blow against what Katty Kay has described as a social injustice which causes economic problems. There can’t be any doubt that she’s writing her from her personal beliefs. But is that really what He will be doing?

The White House said Mr Obama would unveil an executive order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 (£6.10) an hour for new federal contract workers.

Oh. So He’s just spending more money that we don’t have, increasing our debt, as an ideological gesture. Not really doing anything to help the working poor in my neighborhood, then. The BBC wants to make sure you get the desired impression, though, so they add key details about who those public sector workers will be:

To sidestep lawmakers, Mr Obama will issue an executive order raising the hourly rate of federal workers with new contracts, such as janitors and construction workers. However, that measure is only expected to benefit a few hundred thousand employees.

Yeah, it’s only going to add a few hundred million dollars to the debt, but at least you know it’s going to noble blue-collar jobs. Now, what’s this about sidestepping lawmakers, you ask? After almost five years of this, we should all know the BBC’s Narrative by heart:

Just over a year after his re-election, Mr Obama must contend with determined opposition from the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives and has the numbers in the Senate to block his agenda.

Time is running short before Washington DC turns its attention to the 2016 race to elect his successor, threatening to render him irrelevant even with three years remaining in office.

In the face of a divided Congress, Mr Obama has pledged to use executive action to bypass Congress, and the White House says he will flesh out some of his plans in the State of the Union speech.

As always, the problem is an intransigent Congress, blocking His every move. Screw the separation of powers. Never mind that during the two years where He had super-majorities in both houses of Congress we got the disaster of ObamaCare and a failed Stimulus. It’s His Plans For Us that must be passed, regardless. As the BBC’s friends in the US Left-wing media and the Administration have been saying, the President has been acting too much like a Prime Minister and not seizing power like He should.

“The problem for us is that the test of our success became what we passed in Congress, and even in the best case — if the fever had broken and the clouds had parted — we still would have only gotten maybe 40 percent of what we wanted,” one senior White House official told the Post.

“The political discussion, the press, the politicians want to pull the president into the role of prime minister,” added the official, whom the Post did not name. “So you have to swerve really hard to the executive powers at a time like this.”

According to the report, an internal review of Obama’s failures last year — from Obamacare to sequestration to Iran to the 16-day government shutdown that cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion — led the White House to conclude that the president “too often governed more like a prime minister than a president.

“In a parliamentary system, a prime minister is elected by lawmakers and thus beholden to them in ways a president is not,” the report noted.

Obama will kick off his new agenda in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Funny how the BBC decided not to include that bit of information. And they certainly won’t be reminding you that the Junior Senator from Illinois criticized President Bush for doing this.

No. The thing is, the BBC is all for it because they support the President’s policies and report as if His Plans are correct and all opposition is wrong. What the BBC is doing here is more than reporting and analysis: they’re presenting this as if the President’s way is correct and Congress is wrong for not cooperating.

The worst part is Katty Kay’s inset “Analysis”:

Washington can be a cold, cruel city, as anyone who is living here this freezing January is well aware. And as he heads into his sixth State of the Union address, no-one is feeling the chill more than Barack Obama.

In last year’s address to the nation, Obama promised action on three important issues: immigration, guns and the environment. As of today, there has been no legislation on any of those. A gridlocked Congress has thwarted his every attempt to pass laws that would make it possible for undocumented immigrants to stay here legally or increase background checks on gun sales or expand environmental controls.

The president has three years left in the White House, but already everyone here is focused on who replaces him in 2016 and who will win the midterm elections in 2014. With time moving on, chances are slim that he can get anything major done in what remains of his presidency.

No questioning whether or not what He’s doing is entirely legal, no wondering about whether or not the policies He wants are correct, no asking if maybe Congress didn’t pass the legislation He wanted because maybe the majority of the public they’re elected to represent didn’t want it. No, to Katty Kay and the BBC, His Plans are correct, and inaction on them is wrong.

“As for God, his way is perfect:
The Lord’s word is flawless;
he shields all who take refuge in him.

For who is God besides the Lord?
And who is the Rock except our God?”

2 Samuel 22:30-32

Katty’s full editorial piece is more or less a pity party for Her beloved Obamessiah. Read the whole thing if you must, but have a sick back ready. While she points out that there have been some relationship problems for the President, none of it is apparently His fault. He has “an aversion to schmoozing”, but all that means is that He’s above the ugliness of political logrolling. It’s not meant as a criticism at all. Aside from an admission that He mishandled the discussion of attacking Syria, even the ObamaCare website disaster is presented as something that affected His political capital, and no mention of the damage the law itself has done and is doing.

Now is the time where a BBC journalist bashes and mischaracterizes Republicans and their policies:

His saving grace is that Republicans are in an even weaker position than he is. The party’s approval ratings are lower than the president’s. They are failing to reach out to women, young people, Hispanics and African Americans – all important voting groups. And on the signature issue of income inequality – something Obama intends to spend a lot of time on this year – Republicans are struggling to come up with any ideas that don’t smack of “let’s just cut taxes.”

This is an editorial remark, Katty’s opinion of her political opponents. Notice that cutting taxes is treated as an anathema. Also notice Katty’s ignorance on young people. They are in fact turning away from Him because of His policy failures. But Katty lives in the bubble, so isn’t aware of it. Now turn back to your hymnal:

This buys the president a little bit of time. He can still use that to get things done over the next six months, which is really all he has before mid-term fever makes legislative action totally impossible.

The smart money in Washington thinks two things could get done this year. First, we could see some form of immigration reform: not a big comprehensive bill, but something smaller. And, Mr Obama may be able to use his Presidential powers to bypass Congress and get something done to raise the minimum wage. That could help narrow the gap between rich and poor.

It is a far cry from the lofty, change-the-world approach of the first term. But six years have beaten the idealism out of Barack Obama. The man who goes to address Congress on Tuesday is more pragmatic. Forget changing the way government works here.

Here’s another way of saying it:

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Luke 4:24-30

Everyone else is the problem, not Him, not His policies. The policies, as we learn from the personal friend of the White House spokesman, are good and just. So everything He does now will be correct in the eyes of the BBC. Can’t wait to hear the rejoicing in His word from the BBC tonight, and the scorn heaped upon Republican rebuttals.

PS: Post title is from Acts 5:29 with one alteration.

 UPDATE 1/29: The BBC has completely replaced the preliminary article I linked to and discussed at the top of this post with what seems mostly to be Katty Kay’s pronouncements on the speech. Not even News Sniffer has the original, so it’s down the memory hole.

“I’m Not Very Impartial When It Comes To US Politics! x” said the BBC journalist.

(UPDATED, see below the fold) On Wednesday’s open thread, DB posted a tweet from BBC journalist, Jude Machin, expressing her hope to wake up in the middle of the night to watch her beloved Obamessiah debate His enemy for the first time. The point DB was making is best expressed visually, so I’ll reproduce it here:

UPDATE: As you can see above, someone has forced a little impartiality on Jude after all. Awww. I’m currently having difficulty uploading the screenshot I took at the time, but fortunately DB took one and posted it in the comments below.

(UPDATE to above UPDATE: The above update was written after Machin changed the pic to one of herself holding what appeared to be an Olympic torch, but before the entire Twitter account was killed. I was referring here to the new profile avatar.)

Jude has gone all out in her devotion, it seems. So much for not doing anything stupid, eh, Ms. Boaden? Naturally, a fellow worshiper chimed in with an “Amen, sister!”


…prompting a response from the erstwhile “Obamamama”:


The sister worshiper is Leah Gooding, BBC Newsround presenter.

They’re all at it, and they don’t care about showing it in public. Ms. Gooding doesn’t have the requisite “views my own” get-out-of-bias free card that most of them do, but neither does she have the BBC logo. So she’s probably beyond the reach of the BBC guidelines.

Are these tweets proof of biased reporting/presenting on their own? No. But added all up, they create a profile of the very kind of echo chamber fellow Left-leaning BBC journalist, Kate Dailey, was warning against only yesterday. It has to affect BBC reporting on some level. If they all share the same approved thoughts anyway, it will happen naturally, without conspiracy or awareness.

Time for some more social media training courses, I think. Somebody should ask Helen Boaden if this is the kind of thing she was talking about when she asked staff to engage the brain before “rushing to communicate.

UPDATE AGAIN: Below are the screenshots. I’ve left the above embeds as is, in order to show that Machin’s Twitter account has been sent down the memory hole. That’s why there’s no more profile pic. It’s possible she killed it once I told them I had screenshots. Another round of training is in order, I should think. At your expense.

Jude Machin Twitter Screenshot Obama avatar

Leah Gooding approves of Jude Machin's Obama Avatar

Mark Mardell Defends The President On Bin Laden Ad

The media has been freaking out for about 24 hours about the President’s new ad featuring Bill Clinton suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have made the call to kill Osama bin Laden, and Mark Mardell rushes to His defense. I’m not even going to bother linking to criticisms in the mainstream media, because you know Mardell wouldn’t be roused to action if it wasn’t a major problem.

Should Obama politicise Bin Laden’s death?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It’s not His fault if someone else thinks this boastful ad politicizes the killing. And He’s The Man, you know.

President Barack Obama is being accused by opponents of making political capital out of the killing of Osama Bin Laden a year ago.

That’s not surprising – he is indeed making a big deal out of it.

The question is whether doing so is distasteful and whether his campaign is politicising something that should be above politics.

Mardell knows this is a problem. He knows this is “unseemly”.  He knows that using a targeted assassination of someone in cold blood, without due process of law, as a campaign slogan is not the kind of Hope & Change we were sold in 2008. Even Arianna Huffington is calling Him out on it. So what does the US President do? He blames His opponents for it being a problem, and makes sure to remind you of His prowess.

It is just as inevitable that opponents will portray that as unseemly immodesty.

The crudeness of the presidential pitch may put some off, but any row that is created only serves to highlight that Bin Laden was indeed killed on Mr Obama’s watch, on his orders.

Even when it comes to acting like the very kind of warmongering cowboy Mardell loathes with all his being, he still must defend Him to the bitter end. Nothing is His fault, you see.

But please, the BBC asks you to continue to look to him for your understanding of US issues.

 

Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord

We all know what happened yesterday in the United States Congress, and that the President signed a debt relief bill that nobody really likes. We all know how the BBC spun it, and they continue to spin it that way today. Mark Mardell, BBC North America editor and faithful White House nunzio to Britain, was beside himself with anger that his beloved Obamessiah was made to look bad in all this. Anyone who caught his appearances on the News Channel would have seen him spluttering with rage.

“He’s been forced off His agenda. Remember, He came to office promising hope and change, and talking about spending to stimulate the economy, and to change the way America was.

Instead, He’s been forced down a path of spending cuts. He didn’t want any of this. He’s won some minor victories along the way, stopped it from being worse for Him than it could otherwise have been.

But I think the Tea Party are the big winners, that they…they don’t necessarily feel that, but they have forced this onto the agenda and got a lot of what they wanted.”

– Mark Mardell, speaking on the BBC News Channel on August 2, 2011, at 6:04pm GMT

No, Mark. Reality forced this on the agenda. All the ratings agencies said we needed to cut spending. The Tea Party just forced Him to deal with it, rather than continue the fantasy that is bankrupting our country.

Fortunately for the faithful, once it was all over, the President gave a nice class war speech, expressing His determination to raise taxes on the rich, and to focus on jobs. His faith rekindled, Mardell came out swinging with a new blog post about it.

Is it about the next step for the country, where Congress must go now, or what the next phase of the debate will be? Is it about the reaction of the US public, the mood in the country on which Mardell is tasked to report and inform you? No, of course not. As always, everything in the US is seen through the prism of The Obamessiah. How does this affect Him? How will He respond? Who cares about anything other than how the President is doing now? Is that really proper reporting? Is that responsible journalism?

In case there’s any doubt about Mardell’s focus and agenda, it’s all there even in the headline:

US debt limit: Barack Obama comes out fighting

Deal done. Crisis averted, a feisty president has come out fighting.

He’s been humiliated and blown off course by the Republican victory, compelling him and his party to swallow deep spending cuts.

But he used his short Rose Garden speech to insist that tax rises had to be part of the eventual solution.

Despite what the class warriors tell you, it’s simply impossible to raise taxes enough to make a dent in the debt. Even letting the Bush tax cuts for the evil rich expire would be a milliliter in the ocean. But never mind all that reality. Mardell has an agenda.

That is exactly why the Tea Party are grumpy about what looks like a clear win for them.

Not quite. The real anger is because the deal is, as we’ve discussed before, a wash, even in the best-case scenario. The amount of spending cuts might not even match the amount we’re now allowing the debt ceiling to rise again. That’s why Michelle Bachmann voted against it, and why a lot of non-Leftoids are not pleased with the deal, even as the Leftoid media is rending their garments in despair.

You see, they all take it as a defeat for the Keynesian, Socialist agenda, and for the President, because they weren’t allowed to spend even more. This deal doesn’t stop any of the ObamaCare expenses that are about to crush small businesses. It doesn’t stop any of the President’s Stimulus cash to Government General Motors’ unions, it doesn’t stop the subsidies to green energy boondoggles. In case Mardell has forgotten – or simply doesn’t understand – the debt ceiling was raised by a lot. Not because we need that money to pay the bills already due, but because the President and the Democrats already have these massive spending plans in motion for the next two years which will not be stopped. Is this a viewpoint you haven’t heard on the BBC? Do tell.

Maybe – maybe – the committee set up by the requirements of this bill will have something to say about that before 2012. But who knows? Yes, that does mean that Mardell is partially correct when he says this:

They fear tricks further down the line, and that after the special committee reports in November they will have to choose between tax rises swingeing cuts to defence spending.

This is dishonest, though. Mardell spins this as the Tea Party’s “fear”. He chose the word “tricks” because it makes the President’s opponents look paranoid and resentful. This isn’t honest reporting: it’s propaganda. Here’s what Mardell doesn’t want you to know:

It’s not the irrational fear of paranoid, angry extremists. The Democrats were saying that’s what they were going to do even before the President signed the bill.

“We live to fight another day in trying to get some additional revenues into this equation,” said Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat.

President Barack Obama has recommended taxing the profit share — or carried interest — earned by private equity managers, venture capitalists and others at ordinary income tax rates and not the lower capital gains rate. He also has called for ending tax benefits for oil and gas companies and for capping the itemized deductions of upper-income Americans.

If that’s not enough for you, White House mouthpiece Jay Carney said it straight out:

“The suggestion that it is impossible for the joint committee to raise tax revenue simply is not accurate, it’s false,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Yet Mardell plays games and tries to make you think it’s only the paranoid suspicions of Tea Party types. He then says this:

Mr Obama said that money couldn’t be cut too abruptly and that spending on education and science had to continue. He argued for a “fair” and “balanced” approach: getting rid of tax breaks for the rich and gas and oil companies.

This sounds like something Ed Balls would say, doesn’t it? No wonder the Beeboids are so sympathetic.

This was a red rag to make the Republican bull rage… and it was intended as such. The more the Tea Party boil and steam, the more Obama’s own party will feel that it is not such a defeat after all.

Wrong. I’ve already explained above why the Tea Party people think this wasn’t such a smashing success. Oh, yes: neither did Moody’s who downgraded the US to a “negative outlook” anyway. How much of a fantastic deal is this, then? It ain’t. Unless the BBC wants to tell us now that Moody’s and S&P are Tea Party extremist ideologues too.

We’re upset because of reality, not because the President’s latest bit of rhetoric has blinded us with anger. What a joke. Mardell understands so little. All praise goes to Him.

The president then promised to put job creation first, saying cutting spending was not the only thing that mattered, and called on Congress to reach agreement after the summer on extending middle-class tax cuts, something Congress wouldn’t put in this agreement.

Mardell swallows the President’s promise on jobs whole. Ah, the power of faith. Does this promise sound familiar? It should, as the President said that job creation was going to be His No. 1 focus in His State of the Union speech in 2010.

But I realize that, for every success story, there are other stories, of men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from, who send out resumes week after week and hear nothing in response.

That is why jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010, and that’s why I’m calling for a new jobs bill tonight.

How’d that work out, BBC?

*sound of crickets chirping*

The rest of it is Mardell telling you all not to worry, the President “bounced back”, and will come back fighting and strong. Again, not news, not information. Just propaganda on behalf of the leader of a foreign country.

I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it. I ought to have been commended by you, for I am not in the least inferior to the “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing. I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles.

Oops, that bit isn’t from Mardell, although it ought to be. Remember back before the mid-term election, when he was traveling the country with his Hope poster, looking for signs of the faithful? Actually, the quote is Paul expressing his concern for the faith of the Corinthians (2 Corinthians XII: 11-12).

BBC: A Woman’s Greatest Achievement Is Marrying A Powerful Man

I am disgusted by the way the BBC is hyping Michelle Obama’s supposed “message” that one can achieve great things if one is “ambitious and works hard”. Huw Edwards is holding a love-fest over her visit to some non-white school in London (BBC race-obsessed as always) and some speech she just did about preventing AIDS and inspiring women in Soweto. But it’s not the message in the abstract that’s the problem: it’s the way the BBC celebrates having a powerful husband as some kind of achievement to which women should aspire.

Edwards asks what the girls learned, and they gushed that they’ll take “her message” about achievement with them for the rest of their lives. Did they do this much for Laura Bush? Of course not, as she didn’t marry the right man.

It disgusts me that marrying a powerful man is considered a substantial achievement. This is sexism of the highest order. It actually belittles the real achievements of women. Yet cos she (and He) is black, the BBC can’t stick their collective tongues far enough up her backside.

“She’s married to America’s first black President, so that’s a very powerful statement as well,” says Huw.

Quite.

Laud her work for this charity or that cause, fine. But don’t tell me marrying someone and going along on his ride to power is a massive achievement that should inspire a generation of young girls. I guess the advancement of women means something different to the otherwise progressive BBC. All their usual values go out the window when it comes to Obamessiah worship.

Mark Mardell’s Crisis of Faith, Part III

BBC North America editor Mark Mardell has posted his summary and analysis of the President’s visitation to Ireland and England (not the UK, but England, as we’ll see in a moment). Poor Mardell has been questioning his faith in The Obamessiah for a few weeks now, ever since He decided to listen to reason become a reluctant warrior and finally get on board lead the attack on Libya from behind. Mardell was pretty open about his opinion of military action in previous posts, and is equally revealing here. But his ultimate disappointment is betrayed by the headline:

Obama’s historic speech fails to soar

Aw, poor dear. This isn’t objective analysis, but the expression of a disappointed fan when the latest project by his hero fails to live up to expectations. Mardell shows just how twisted his world view is, and his personal biases are as clear as ever. He certainly didn’t mention the bumbling errors the President made, like writing 2008 in the guest book or screwing up the toast to the Queen or acting like His Irish ancestor meant that He shared the British heritage. Or that He kept saying “England”, when it’s supposed to be Britain or the UK. Imagine if Bush had kept saying England like that, or done any of these things. The Beeboids would have led every programme with a laugh, across the spectrum of broadcasting.

Before getting into what disappointed him, though, Mardell spoke sympathetically about a colleague’s desire to share in this historic event:

I was talking to a colleague beforehand about the eternal tension for broadcast journalists, whether to watch such a speech from an edit suite – which can make practical sense when time is short – or live, which we would all prefer.

He complained: “I’m not going to tell my grandchildren I watched Obama from a cutting room!”

Surely this colleague is a Beeboid, or Mardell would have said he wasn’t, as this is so blatantly impartial. Sadly for the North America editor, the speech didn’t live up to his expectations, but I thought the “historic” bit was that it was The Obamessiah, and the first time a US President spoke at Westminster and not about the content of the speech. But Mardell shares in this worship, and sees nothing biased about his colleague’s attitude or in telling you about it.

So what did Mardell find wrong? Essentially, he felt that the President was too American for his tastes. Sure, he tried to make it sound as if the speech was incoherent, the logic poorly constructed. Have we ever heard Mardell say such a thing about His oration? Only when it’s a message he doesn’t like, like bombing Libya. Mardell does just what defenders of the indefensible accuse us of doing on this blog: complaining when the BBC reports something we don’t like, instead of making an objective case for what they did wrong. Read this bit, and then consider whether or not Mardell says anything further to support the statement:

But it didn’t quite work. It was flat and lacked soaring passion. That is part of the Obama conundrum. Sometimes this tremendous orator doesn’t pull it off. It is often when the argument is over-constructed and the raw emotion can’t burst through the stretched logic.

Nowhere does Mardell explain how the speech didn’t hold together, where the ideas expressed failed to connect into the wonderful whole he was looking for. Instead he complains about certain things the President said, and then reveals his own world view.

For example, the whole middle section of Mardell’s piece is simply laying out various central ideas of the speech. He points out how the President spoke of the historical foundations of the Magna Carta through to how the US and UK still stand for freedom of the individual without state oppression. The rights of liberty espoused by the US and the UK are, the President said, universal rights. This sounds suspiciously like the Bush Doctrine, and so it’s here where Mardell gets upset.

“The future of our children and grandchildren will be better if other people’s children and grandchildren are more prosperous and more free – from the beaches of Normandy to the Balkans to Benghazi. That is our interests and our ideals. And if we fail to meet that responsibility, who would take our place, and what kind of world would we pass on?”

Think about this statement for a moment. This is the kind of American exceptionalism that the BBC hates, the kind that the anti-Bush Leftoids in the US hate, but what most people in the US wanted to hear at last from the first post-American President. It also sounds pretty reasonable. But not to Mark Mardell.

That to me is the key sentence: “Who would take our place?”

He doesn’t spell it out, but it is a reminder many of the rising powers don’t value democracy and human rights. Those that do may not have the desire to promote them in the muscular way that Britain and America can and do – at the point of a gun.

There are two unbelievably biased and wrong-headed things in that last sentence. First of all, I’d like to ask Mardell which “rising powers” are going to promote democracy and human rights at all? I don’t mean which countries are trying to get it right at home, but which ones are, as the term “promote” implies, trying to spread it around and encourage it elsewhere in the world? It’s a fantasy, yet Mardell is ideologically wedded to pacifist isolationism, otherwise known as sticking your head in the sand and keeping it there while someone kicks you in the ass.

Second, and the most biased bit, is Mardell’s lazy sneer: “at the point of a gun”. He’s said it before, and used similar pejorative phrases, about military actions of which he doesn’t approve, and it’s a personal political view. He’s entitled to his opinion, but he is not, as the BBC North America editor, entitled to tell you what foreign policy is correct or not. Yet he does it over and over again.

Where’s the logic failure of the speech, then? How do the President’s points not cohere? Mardell is being dishonest here, either with himself or with his readers. It’s just that he doesn’t like it when his beloved Obamessiah displays attitudes which he finds distasteful: basic US attitudes.

Looking back on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, some won’t think that such a bad thing.

Some won’t, no. But he does anyway. And then we see Mardell’s heart close to breaking.

But here Mr Obama is nearer to a neo-con than the anti-war movement.

Shed a tear. My God, how can this be? I guess Mardell has been in denial for the past two years as the President ramped up two wars, expanded one of them into Pakistan while killing more people via drones than Bush ever dreamed of, and joined in a third war.

Mr Obama, who went on to talk about the strength of the UK and USA’s “patchwork heritage”, two nations based on values not ethnicity, can get away with this. From an old white man it would have sounded like colonial arrogance.

You know, perhaps it’s just me, but when I look at the President, I don’t see a black man first and foremost. I see a man. The color of His skin is about as relevant as His height or the fact that He’s left-handed. Meaning it’s not relevant at all here. It’s irrelevant to the content of His character or, in this case, His speech. Yet Mardell sees a black man first, and hears the words through that filter. Who’s the real racist here, Mark? Rev. Martin Luther King would be very disappointed.

Aside from that, why on earth would it sound like colonial arrogance to say that our shared values and strength are color-blind and universal? Well, here Mardell is extrapolating from that to the idea of bringing democracy to Libya “at the point of a gun”. When whites do it, I suppose, it’s colonialism. When a black man does it, it’s still wrong, according to Mardell, but not quite as wrong. Again, this is just Mardell’s personal bias against the military action against Libya. He’s entitled his personal opinion, but is not entitled to tell you how to think.

Mardell closes by repeating his earlier assertion that the speech didn’t work.

He got near to the heart of the argument about the way the USA and its allies behave in the world, but he didn’t quite make it all the way.

Which argument, Mark? The one the President was actually trying to make, or the one you wanted Him to? It sounded to me like the President was pretty clear about it all. It’s only unclear if one wanted to hear a totally different attitude.

This felt like an attempt to mix too many elements. Flattering Britain, promoting the essential relationship, American exceptionalism, Britain’s role in creating it, universal values.

So Mardell’s bias is pretty obvious. He just doesn’t like any of these things.

They were all there, but like oil and water stayed stubbornly apart.

Really, how so? What didn’t work? How? Mardell doesn’t ever bother to say. He just claims up front it didn’t work, and then repeats the claim at the end, with no substance offered in between to back it up.

It is perhaps the most important argument in the world today. I want to hear more.

No, Mark. You wanted to hear something else entirely.

One other thing wrong with all of Mardell’s reporting on the President’s visit – as well as that of the entire BBC staff, both on air and online – is that nobody dared express a concern about how inappropriate this campaign trip to an adoring audience of non-voters (for that’s what this was, if we’re honest) was while the Midwest has been battered by floods and tornadoes, with entire towns wiped off the face of the earth, with hundreds dead and hundreds more missing. Never mind the economic troubles He’s running from. Not a single Beeboid raised an eyebrow at this all week long. All out of blind worship of The Obamessiah come among them.

Mark Mardell’s Crisis of Faith Continues

BBC North America editor Mark Mardell is in a dark place these days. After his beloved Obamessiah turned out to be a cold-blooded assassin, he doesn’t know which way to turn. He’s tried blaming ugly United Statesians for forcing the President to kill because it plays well at home, refusing to call out the President Himself. Mardell never made much of a fuss about the fact that the current President has sent unmanned drones to kill far more people in Pakistan than the previous White House occupant did, so it’s not surprising that this particular targeted assassination has shaken his faith so badly. To their credit, the BBC has reported this elsewhere, but it’s remarkable that Mardell doesn’t seem to make the connection.

In his latest post, Mardell misrepresents reality to sing His praises for one last time.

From the very start of his presidency, Mr Obama’s administration has made it clear there is no such thing as an Afghan strategy. First it was an Af-Pak strategy. Then it became Pak-Af. Whatever you call it, there is an acknowledgement that Pakistan may be the more important country in the fight against al-Qaeda. Everyone in the know believes some members of the government and particularly the intelligence service are hand-in-glove with the jihadists and must have known what Bin Laden was up to.

This implies that Bush’s focus on Afghanistan was wrong and that he somehow neglected Pakistan. In fact, the only reason Al Qaeda had such a presence in Pakistan was because they had been largely forced out of Afghanistan by Coalition forces during the last several years of fighting. Even the BBC has admitted that in the past. Yet Mardell wants you to think that only The Obamessiah understood that Pakistan was a problem. Why would Bush have been sending drone attacks into the tribal areas if he didn’t also have an Af-Pak strategy of some kind?

In any case, Mardell’s crisis of faith continues. In fact, it’s getting so bad now that I think I’m nearly ready to stop with this “Obamessiah” business because I think Mardell and his colleagues are nearly done with their blind worship of Him. Mardell himself reveals why.

After talking about the problem of squaring the huge amount of cash and support we give to Pakistan with the fact that there’s clearly a major faction (at least) there who are in league with the enemy, he says this:

While this debate will go on, the Mr Obama doesn’t have to worry about some of the concerns expressed in the rest of the world about the legality or morality of killing Bin Laden. It has hardly been raised by anyone here in the US, and the president has said that anyone who questions taking the al-Qaeda leader out “needs their heads examined”.

Mardell questioned it and denegrated the US public over it in his last post, so this means that the President is actually saying that he, too, needs his head examined. The BBC North America editor must be questioning his faith now. What to do? We’ll see how he handles it.

THE HEALER IN CHIEF

Anyone catch Mark Mardell and Justin Webb on “Today” just after 7am? They were discussing Obama’s speech in Tucson, Arizona and boy was it PURE undisguished Obama worship. For starters the BBC neutral headline was “Obama saves his Presidency”….that set the tone. Mardell warbled about the “healer in chief” and explained how deep his words were. When the words “Sarah Palin” were used, there was a visceral sneer (Naturally no coverage of her speech, so I think I will post it below).; This is not political commentary from Webb and Mardell, it is a juvenile fan club that still desperately wants Obama to be President and it is so unbecoming for an organisation that pretends it is impartial. Here’s the speeech the BBC doesn’t want to talk about, why should it when the healer in chief is about?