Wow! Obama’s arrogance is irritating members of his own party. Rep Marion Berry who announced today that he will not be seeking re-election took a shot at President Obama for his arrogance and lack of leadership.

Glenn Thrush of Politico has the scoop: Rep. Marion Berry’s parting shot, published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette [no link, subscription only] offers a warning to moderate Democrats and border state moderates — warning of a midterm bloodbath comparable to the 54-seat D-to-R swing in 1994.

But the jaw-dropper is Berry’s claim that President Obama personally dismissed any comparison between Democrats now and under Bill Clinton 16 years ago — by saying his personal popularity would bail everybody out.

Writes ADG reporter Jane Fullerton: Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.” [snip]

“I began to preach last January that we had already seen this movie and we didn’t want to see it again because we know how it comes out,” said Arkansas’ 1st District congressman, who worked in the Clinton administration before being elected to the House in 1996… "I just began to have flashbacks to 1993 and ’94. No one that was here in ’94, or at the day after the election felt like. It certainly wasn’t a good feeling.”

By Thomas Sowell, National Review

 Obama wants to pass a healthcare bill just to show he can…

The only thing healthy about Congress’s health-insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it shown by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed.
Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past attempts to pass such legislation — going back for decades — failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government-health-care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political victory.

In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something — anything — to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.

The utter cynicism of this has been apparent from the outset, in the rush to pass a health-care bill in a hurry, in order to meet wholly arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines. First it was supposed to be passed before the August 2009 congressional recess. Then it was supposed to be passed before Labor Day. When that didn’t happen, it was supposed to be rushed to passage before Christmas.

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Newsmax

Even the Cubans realize that Obama is a habitual liar

Cuba’s foreign minister called President Barack Obama an “imperial and arrogant” liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island’s increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

Bruno Rodriguez spent an hour and a half lambasting Obama’s behavior in Copenhagen, telling a news conference, “at this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries.”

He called the summit “a fallacy, a farce” and said Washington used back-room deals and strong-arm tactics to foist on the world a deal that he labeled “undemocratic” and “suicidal” because it urges — but does not require — major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts.

Rodriguez also said Cuba and other poor nations have refused to recognize the agreement because they weren’t permitted to participate in its development.

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Investors Business Daily

Obama claims personal credit for a victory that wasn’t his

Intelligence officials say alleged terrorist plotter Najibullah Zazi was caught not thanks to domestic surveillance but by CIA tracking of al-Qaida. The White House says the president did it.

Imagine you, or perhaps your father, were one of the five Marines who raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Then imagine seeing Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of that iconic image.

But then you read the caption below the photo. It says that according to the White House, what those Marines were doing was the result of "President Roosevelt’s deep involvement in the war effort." The claim is that the Marines only had sketchy information about Iwo Jima, but the president sensed something and held "an intensive three-week White House focus" on the impending attack.

Wouldn’t it sound fishy? Wouldn’t you feel as if the real heroes had been dishonored for the sake of an oversized presidential ego?

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By James Lewis, American Thinker

Obama really loves himself, and wants everyone to love him

The President of these United States recently expressed his love for “the Urdu poets,” a piece of inspired BS that nobody in their right minds believed for a second. But then the P was narrowcasting to Pakistan, he thought, and Americans weren’t supposed to be listening. Yet character is revealed in those little snippets of Obama’s mind — his glorious fantasy life, his everlasting hope that somebody will fall for another piece of schtick, and his essential fraudulence as a human being.

Obama’s biggest audience is himself, and no doubt he preened and pranced in his mind’s eye when he told the nation of Pakistan about his deep love and understanding of Urdu. Love ya, baby! all those sixty million Pakis were shouting, marveling at our polyglot president. Waddaguy! At least in Obi’s fantasy life, that is. Because that Zeppelin-sized ego of his needs to be pumped up a little bit more every single day.

Well, yes. For his next showboating performance our P will parade his beautiful ballooning ego in front of Vladimir Putin, whose own hands are dripping with the blood of Chechen Muslims, not to mention those brave (and now dead) Moscow journalists who dared to criticize the new Czar in the media.

By Howard Arenstein, CBS News

Israeli TV newscasters Tuesday night interpreted a photo taken Monday in the Oval Office of President Obama talking on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “insult” to Israel. 

They saw the incident as somewhat akin to an incident last year, when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush in Baghdad. 

It is considered an insult in the Arab world to show the sole of your shoe to someone. It is not a Jewish custom necessarily, but Israel feels enough a part of the Middle East after 60 years to be insulted too. 

Was there a subliminal message intended from the White House to Netanyahu in Jerusalem, who is publicly resisting attempts by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to force Israel to stop any kind of settlement activity in occupied territories once and forever? 

Jonah Goldberg, LA TIMES

Barack Obama's ego will lead to his demise

The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency. 

There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations. 

“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes … [in] traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.” 

Right. “Family values” and a “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes. 

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THOMAS F. ROESER, Chicago Daily Obrserver

Obama is quite proud of himself

After he sat listening to a 52-minute tirade about America the Fascist Imperialist tyranny, a droll Barack Obama told the media that the rant by Nicaragua’s Daniel C. Ortega “wasn’t about me.” No, it wasn’t. It was about America which evidently didn’t concern the narcissistic U. S. president since it involved John F. Kennedy, not he. And it did not occur to him to defend America since he himself wasn’t named: thus the narcissism. Also the lack of patriotism.

Criticism about Obama back here has centered on his spinelessness and unwillingness to defend his country from attack. Yes, that’s part of it. But a bigger part is the absolute obsession of this young man with himself-in contrast to concern about the country. This could be expected from one who has caused the press…guilty over charges of racism… to evade its own responsibility for checking facts on presidential candidates-notably the one that his late paternal grandmother made declaring she was present when he was born in what is now Kenya…also checking the recording supposedly of the grandmother making the admission which has been publicly available and about which two men have submitted affidavits attesting to its authenticity, which have not been answered by Team Obama.

By STEVEN F. HAYWARD, Wall Street Journal

Arrogant Obama says "I won!"

President Barack Obama’s honeymoon period seems to have ended quickly. That’s because Mr. Obama doesn’t grasp the essentials of presidential leadership. Rather than making a compelling case for his economic policies, he has resorted to curt rebuffs, such as telling House Republican whip Eric Cantor, “I won.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the same thing the same day: “We won the election; we wrote the [stimulus] bill.” This is the trope of a party that has lost its ability to make an argument.

Mr. Obama and his team would be well advised to put aside the imperious FDR model and study Ronald Reagan’s first 200 days in office. The contrast is instructive.

Upon entering office in 1981, Reagan’s team produced a 50-page, detailed blueprint for their first six months in office. The passage of their economic policy was the central objective.

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press

Obama's arrogance is coming through to people

Two weeks into his presidency, Barack Obama proved that even a clearly gifted politician cannot escape the gravitational pull of Washington forces that have humbled many of his predecessors.

The new president, seen by some as arrogant, was anything but on Tuesday.

“I screwed up,” Obama said repeatedly during a series of TV interviews. “I take responsibility for this mistake.”

It was a frank admission from an Oval Office where “mistakes were made” has often been the preferred dodge.