Via the White House Flickr feed.

From David Harsanyi at Reason–

With midterm elections approaching, President Barack Obama has gone on the charm offensive, claiming Republicans are demonstrating a “lack of faith in the American people.”

“Faith” often is defined as “having confidence or trust in a person or thing.” In this case, though, faith means adding another $35 billion in unemployment benefits to the infinite intergenerational tab—sometimes referred to as the budget—and mailing out as many checks as possible before Election Day.

Yet the jab is revealing in other ways. To begin with, what mysterious brand of public policy has Obama employed that exemplifies this sacred trust between public officials and the common citizen?

Via the White House Flickr feed.

The Magic Eight Ball displays a practical understanding of the world such as it exists.

WASHINGTON, DC – A new poll conducted by Missourah.com suggests President Barack Obama is far from a shoe-in for reelection in 2012, with the incumbent narrowly defeating the popular Magic Eight Ball device manufactured by toy company Mattel.

Mattel spokesman Skip Willoughby called Magic Eight Ball a “clear and decisive leader” and pointed out that it is mechanically incapable of excessive deliberation.

Magic Eight Ball edged out a fortune cookie, a twelve-sided die and Mike Huckabee for second place.

Via the White House Flickr feed.

Barack Obama is a skilled speaker of prepared remarks and nobody would argue that he is an intelligent man.

But increasingly his statements betray a worldview that is so simplistic, so obvious and shallow, so unperturbed by self-examination or depth of thought that it makes one worry for the fate of the nation he leads. The following are just a few of the tenets of the puerile Obama worldview:

Kindergarten-Weltanschaaung.

#1 Everybody’s a fucking retarded racist

• Regarding the perceived anxiety of some Israelis toward Obama, the president declared this week that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.” (Because God knows Israelis can afford to traffic in caricature and lazy generalizations.)
• While campaigning in early 2008, Obama described how Midwestern and small-town Americans’ affinity for guns and religion is inextricably tied to racism, xenophobia and general bitterness. I suppose that if you never spent any time with any such people, a pat conclusion like that would have its appeal.
• Around the same time, Obama characterized his grandmother, a “typical white person,” thusly:

If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.

This man speaks with such authority, such knowingness, that you’d be forgiven for thinking he has any idea what the hell he’s talking about. He does not.

#2 Barack Obama’s captivating personal narrative is without equal in this world

• You may have thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was about the failure of communism or the triumph of individualism and freedom. You’d be wrong. It was about the inspiring and historic election of Barack Hussein Obama.
• Barack Obama calls himself the “first Pacific president.” A modicum of historical curiosity would quickly reveal how problematic that claim really is.

#3 Businesspeople are evil (unless they run money-losing social networking sites– in which case, Barack Obama is eager to hear what awesome advice they can give him)

• When asked why he hadn’t spoken to BP CEO Tony Hayward regarding the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Obama replied: “Because my experience is when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”
• Nonetheless, Barack Obama seeks economic advice from terminally pre-revenue Twitter and thinks the CEO of Yelp can help streamline the federal government.

#4 Goodwill and a nod to multiculturalism will melt away the problems of the world

• The head of NASA recently revealed that the space agency’s new raison d’être is building self-esteem– and principally the self-esteem of Muslims. The “space” we’re “exploring” is evidently the absurd outer limits of political correctness– a space beyond even satire.
• In an address to the U.N. General Assembly last September, Barack Obama made the specious pronouncement that,

No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.

Barack Obama makes statements of such boundless naivete that a third-grader would snicker.

Let us all hope our nation faces few great challenges before January 2013.

Nope. NASA’s about building confidence in the Muslim world. (Although, as Mark Steyn has written at length, they’re not the ones with the deficiency of confidence.)

In a recent interview with al-Jazeera, NASA head Charles Bolden had this to say about the priorities set by Obama:

“When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”

I guess the administration’s important ”feel good” work has kept NASA too busy to update its own website– which continues to offer the following outmoded (and surely imperialistic) mission statement:

NASA’s mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

SEE ALSO: Not satire, evidently: Obama turning NASA into tool for “Muslim outreach”

UPDATE: Jim Treacher writes,

Thanks for inventing algebra, you guys. Great job!

There, I was able to do that without needing a huge federal bureaucracy that was created for an entirely different purpose.

And an incredulous Krauthammer reacts to this “new height in fatuousness”: