Neoneocon has some thoughts:

Barnett noticed—as many had, even at the time—the enormous difference in articulateness between Teleprompter-Obama and Obama unplugged (the latter is the title of Barnett’s article). That was the easy part. The more discriminating observation Barnett made was between the message of Teleprompter Obama and the message of ad-lib Obama. The two were not just different in degree—they were profoundly opposite in tone and essence. Ad-lib Obama was far more angry and more radical—indeed, although Barnett doesn’t mention it, this Obama resembled the angrier and more radical Michelle Obama, in her earlier campaign remarks that drew so much controversy.

Obama is addicted to his Teleprompter not only because he knows he sounds better—smoother and smarter—with it than without. The deeper reason for his reliance on it may just be that he differs so profoundly from the persona he wishes to convey that he quite literally cannot trust himself to speak without it. Shorn of the Teleprompter, he not only runs the risk of revealing a disfluency that could rival (or even exceed?) that of his reviled predecessor George Bush—he may reveal who he truly is, an angry man with a profoundly radical agenda for America.

No surprise to those of us who paid attention all last year.

The media should resign over President Obama’s failure.

Actually, they won’t have to resign. Given the continuing financial failure of newspapers, they seem to be getting fired. What will happen to Frank Rich when the New York Times finally goes under?

[Late morning update]

Whoops, there goes another one. After a hundred seventy four years, the Ann Arbor News is closing its doors this summer.

I pointed out a few posts ago that the current style in Washington is the Chicago Way. Now John Kass, who has been covering Chicago politics for a long time, agrees:

“Stunned, stunned is the word,” said Obama.

Stunned?

It turns out that his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—who didn’t pay all of his federal taxes but was still deemed worthy by Obama of collecting yours—knew all about the AIG bonuses weeks ago.

That was long before Washington Democrats began shrieking in pretend outrage over the bonuses, as if they didn’t vote for them, sort of like Chicago aldermen shrieking about corruption from the 5th Floor.

It’s like Mayor Richard Daley saying, “Gee, I dunno” when news breaks that his nephews are in another multimillion-dollar government deal. Or that time that Daley gave $100 million in affirmative action contracts to men he knows well, yet was stunned to learn later that they were white guys, not black females.

These days, the Washington Way is looking just like the Chicago Way. Those of us from Illinois can see it, what with City Hall guys pulling White House strings.

And no, that’s not a good thing.

And anyone who is surprised is a fool.

Some thoughts:

Liberals are determined to mock and ridicule the notion that Obama’s moving America in a European direction. But of course he is. Liberals have been — unapologetically — pushing America in that direction for generations.

Anyway, what I didn’t get into in the column is how this contrasts with the theocracy-panic of five minutes ago. Back then, the liberal consensus was that we need to be very, very, very scared that the bible thumpers were going to take over everything and turn us into a Handmaid’s Tale (itself a classic example of paranoid fiction). But back then, if I had suggested that America’s rich history of religious tolerance and pluralism could stand up to the Orwellian onslaught of Bush’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives, I would have been laughed off as ludicrously naive.

But when Obama is literally spending trillions of dollars to move us in a European direction, conservatives like Mark Steyn, Charles Murray, and others are supposedly daft for thinking this is anything worth worrying about.

It’s just the substitution of one religion for another — worship of the state.

…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…

[Late morning update]

More thoughts from Mickey, who is despairing of ever getting an invitation.