Yikes, President Obama.

The first appearance by a sitting president on “The Tonight Show” may well end up being the last.

President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled.

Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he’s gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.

It’s “like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.

When asked about the remark, the White House said the president did not intend to offend.

I don’t get offended easily, and this didn’t offend me either, but…seriously, that seems like a pretty big faux pas. When National Review pundit Yuval Levin says, “He’s very lucky he’s not a Republican,” he’s right. There would’ve been a feeding frenzy. Stick to making fun of people clinging to guns and religion, Mr. President…that seems to go over better for you.

EDIT: Great follow-up by Mark Hemingway of NRO: “Sounds like Joe Biden’s been writing Obama’s material!” Spot-on; now that Hemingway mentions it, this is definitely reminiscent of a Biden gaffe.

By the way, I really do think that this is a non-issue…in this era of 24/7 news coverage, dumb words are going to be spoken at some point by every prominent politician. As opposed to things like the “clinging to guns and religion” snipe during the election year, which I think really did point to Obama’s caustic inner thoughts toward certain members of the American population, this Special Olympics reference was just an attempt at self-deprecating humor that went awry for him. No matter how stupid of a line it was, there wasn’t anything actually malicious about it even underneath the surface, at least as far as I can see.

Good words from President Bush.

Former President George W. Bush said on Tuesday that he won’t criticize Obama because the new U.S. president “deserves my silence,” and said he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office.

Bush declined to critique the Obama administration in his first speech since leaving office in January. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Obama’s decisions threatened America’s safety.

“I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena,” Bush said. “He deserves my silence.”

Bush said he wants Obama to succeed and said it’s important that he has that support. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has said he hoped Obama would fail.

“I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said. “I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

1. Are you listening, President Carter? This is how former Presidents are supposed to behave. I’m glad Bush is taking the high road and not acting like Carter, and to a lesser extent President Clinton, have during the past eight years. For what it’s worth, I don’t have any use for the way Cheney spoke recently about President Obama either.

2. The swipe at Rush Limbaugh is intellectually dishonest. Rush said that he hoped that Obama would fail at pushing through his liberal economic policies, not fail at being President. Why the heck would a conservative want a liberal President to succeed in pushing through an agenda that runs contrary to everything those of us on the right believe in on a philosophical level? I’m not the biggest Limbaugh fan in the world, his personality is often tacky and inflammatory, but nonsense like this makes me angry…it’s in a freaking Associated Press report, and will be taken as fact when it’s little more than cheap liberal spin.

Couple of tidbits on President Obama…

Asked in a television interview why he hasn’t used the oft-repeated “war on terror” phrase coined by the Bush administration, Obama said he believes the U.S. can win over moderate Muslims if he chooses his words carefully.

“Words matter in this situation because one of the ways we’re going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

That’s naive as hell. We are not going to win the hearts and minds of Muslim fundamentalists by deliberately failing to acknowledge that terrorism has been and continues to be a huge problem.

“You’re going to charge me with a crime?”

The headline is courtesy of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Anyway…

South Carolina authorities in the county where Michael Phelps was spotted smoking from a marijuana pipe say they are considering a criminal charge against the Olympic superstar.

Look, Phelps obviously broke the law here, and I disapprove of pot use as a nasty habit that’s hard to respect (I’ve never tried it even once, and never will), but…give me a break. His apology was a good one, the path he took in entering the public eye as an athlete automatically thrusts him into a position as a role model for lots of kids, and he shouldn’t be championing weed use, but that’s where all of this should end. He was a man about it, he didn’t challenge the authenticity of the photo, he said, “Yep, that’s me, that was real…sorry for my poor judgment.” Good enough for me; even if the contrition was phony, the fact that he owned up and didn’t try to evade the question makes him better than many who get put in that position.

Alright, so President Obama is in office now.

Allow me to say that I will support President Obama as much as he allows me to. I’m an American before anything else politically, and unlike many liberals of the last eight years, I’m not going to wish bad things for our country just out of spite and vindictiveness toward the man in the Oval Office and my political disagreements with him.

Ron Paul brings some good, important ideas to the table.

I didn’t support Ron Paul in his quest for the 2008 Republican nomination. His foreign policy was simply too radical to me, to withdraw our troops from the Middle East immediately and acting like we wouldn’t be causing ourselves an even worse situation by doing so seemed naive and was a dealbreaker for me. You can make a valid argument that we shouldn’t have entered Iraq (you can also make a valid argument that it was the right decision, I can’t commit 100% to either side on this), but whether or not the decision to invade was correct has little bearing on the decision of how to handle the war now.

Congressman Paul, who I ordinarily saw as quite intelligent if not always correct, made a statement in a GOP debate that made me dismiss his views on this situation entirely…he said, “If it was wrong to go in, then it’s wrong to stay.” For a guy who argues logically so well, that statement was just insane to me. We’re not playing a video game where we can press a reset button, the fact is that our military overthrew a regime in Iraq, left the region in disarray, and now we have a situation to deal with that’s different than what existed before we invaded to begin with. To withdraw immediately without further action just seemed like dangerous idealism to me, and I couldn’t vote for someone who would try to enact that policy.

With that said, his Iraq policy was really the only sticking point I had with him. I liked his principled libertarian ideals, and I thought he brought an important voice to the argument. As it was obvious from day one that he couldn’t win this election, I saw his campaign as largely symbolic, trying to add a libertarian voice to the fray that doesn’t get heard often enough in the mainstream media. Barry Goldwater’s run for president was a huge failure in terms of immediate result, he lost in a landslide…but eventually the seeds he planted led to the brilliantly conservative Reagan presidency, one of the best administrations in U.S. history. Goldwater was ideologically great, but was more principled than political; he spoke his mind, which unfortunately is political suicide (and would be even moreso today), and lost in a landslide. Ron Paul also lacked the political tact and superficial appeal in the same way that Goldwater did, so I can’t help but compare the two. I see Paul’s 2008 campaign as potentially important in the same regard as Goldwater’s, and wanted to assess his platform further. I picked up his book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, and was duly impressed.

Congressmen looking to abolish BCS…

Apparently under the impression that the federal government isn’t wasting enough time and tax money on doing nothing, and also isn’t meddling enough in the affairs of private citizens and privately owned businesses, certain members of Congress want to fix college football’s system of determining a champion…

Link

I love sports more than the average person does, and I fully agree that the BCS is flawed, but it’s pure silliness for the federal government to be meddling in something like this. And seriously, even if this should be under their jurisdiction…since when does the federal government successfully fix anything?

Funniest headline of the week.

How Obama Can Win Over the Media

Seriously. No, this isn’t from The Onion, it’s from CBS. They’re either insanely shameless or bring lack of self-awareness to new levels.

A good bit of perspective.

Yes, America royally screwed up this election. But, even though we’re facing the prospect of imminent irreparable damage, we would probably all do well to keep thoughts like this from author Andrew Klavan in mind…

Listen, guys, we just peacefully elected the first black president – that’s a beautiful thing, truly.  And God be with him – he’ll need it.  I know it’s unsophisticated to say it and so on, but every now and again, we have to remember…  we could’ve been born Saudis or Kenyans or Chinese…  but we got unbelievably lucky, unbelievably blessed.  When you’re born American, every day should be Thanksgiving.  So on we go.

I’m usually not much for arguments that can be simplified down to “it could be worse”…but he’s not wrong here.

It’s going to be a long, hard struggle to deal with the damage the impending Obama administration is likely to do, but we’re lucky to be Americans today, and I imagine that in spite of tonight’s result, we’ll still be able to say that we’re lucky to be Americans four years from now. Politics naturally takes us through cycles…we’re about to enter a rough one, but conservatism and capitalism are ideals that are far too popular and strong to be permanently suppressed, and we’ll eventually get things back on the right track. If the succession of LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter didn’t kill us over the course of nearly two decades, a mere four (and hopefully only four) years of Obama probably won’t either.

Of course, I’d rather be seeing a result I could enjoy, rather than one I’m merely attempting to cope with, but…

Classy concession speech by Senator McCain…

I haven’t been the guy’s biggest fan overall, but I give him my undying thanks for his service to our country, and I think that overall, he ran an admirable campaign. I would’ve picked a different candidate to run as the Republican nominee, but I’m proud to have stood behind him in this election.

Those of you who voted for Obama…

I ask you to please listen to Jack Nicholson’s final words in A Few Good Men, to me the best courtroom movie ever made. He’s talking directly to you, starting at the 2:35 mark. You can listen to Tom Cruise’s cheesy response to him too, if you like…

Looks dire now…

Obama has won Ohio. We’re probably hours away from a President-elect Obama.

I will say this: Bill Kristol just made a point on Fox News that comforts me as much as I can be comforted about this. 74% of people in a recent poll identified as either moderate or conservative (the majority of those being moderate)…Obama is politically savvy enough to not commit political suicide by being overly liberal when in charge of things.

Odds for McCain are really long. At this point most of my night will be spent hoping for the election of Dino Rossi as the next Governor of Washington, and for Republicans to get at least 41 seats in the Senate to avoid the disastrous super-majority possibility.

Election Day

A last-minute plea for anyone who hasn’t voted…if you want John McCain to win tonight, get to the poll and cast your vote. This thing isn’t over yet, no matter how much MSNBC and the majority of the media have decided to turn this into an Obama coronation already.

The Senator from Arizona is the underdog, no doubt about that, but if everyone who wanted to win actually put out the effort to vote for him, he can still pull it off.

The Dems controlling the entire federal government is the last thing we need at such a crucial time in our country’s existence. They’re undoubtedly going to keep the House and Senate, and might gain filibuster-proof majorities…to give Obama carte blanche would be an absolute disaster.

Please, everyone…vote McCain. No matter the result tonight, you will have fought the good fight and done your part to help keep this country strong.

An enjoyable bit of levity before the election.

I never would’ve figured McCain to be hilarious on standup…he wasn’t even funny hosting SNL.

Laughable post-debate comment from Hillary Clinton.

On NBC, Brian Williams asked Senator Clinton how the Democrats would rule if they did indeed find themselves in charge of the Senate, the House, and the White House (a very, very scary thought)…

Hillary responded first by saying (quoting from memory), “Well the last time our party was in charge of both branches of the federal government was back in 1993″…at this point, I expected her to make an excuse as to how badly that went, and say why this team will be better…she proceeds, “and we’ll have to do what we did then, to clean up the mess left for us by the previous administration.”

Hillary, your husband was a deeply unpopular President for his first two years. The Republicans took over seats in both the House and Senate in record numbers in the 1994 midterm election, because voters were so incredibly dissatisfied with how the Dems were running things. Once the GOP took over, they were able to neutralized President Clinton quite a bit, and the damage was greatly contained. That was the only reason he was able to win re-election in 1996; before that time, he looked like he was certainly going to be a one-term President.

I imagine the Dems would indeed run things just as badly in 2009-10 as they did in 1993-94, the difference being that we’ve got a lot bigger issues to deal with right now, both in foreign and domestic policy, and missteps could cause dire consequences. Barack Obama with an obedient Democratic legislative branch is a scarier thought than most are giving it credit for; since the legislative branch will clearly continue to be run by the Dems, we very badly need a McCain administration in the White House.

“Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

Excellent performance from Senator McCain tonight. Just excellent. He called Obama out, he didn’t let him mince words, he hit him on almost all of his weaknesses, he was just sharp as a tack for the full 90 minutes.

Yes, I’m a partisan McCain supporter, and yes partisans will generally think their guy won…but this wasn’t close. I thought the first two debates were draws, I thought the VP debate went to Biden, but McCain flat-out mopped the floor with Obama tonight. I had started to give up on this election, but after this I’m going to hold out hope that the last few weeks of this election swing back in the right direction and give McCain/Palin a chance.

I’m happier than ever to be sending my vote off for Senator McCain after watching this. Fantastic debate.

UPDATE: The talking heads on Fox News don’t think McCain did that great. They also thought Palin was amazing after the VP debate. It’s odd how differently I see things than them.

She didn’t do it.

I was optimistic that Governor Palin might defeat Joe Biden in tonight’s debate, and help reverse the trend that has lately made this election look like one that Senator Obama might run away with. Sadly, I really don’t think she pulled it off. I mean, as a partisan conservative watching this debate, I certainly agreed with her more often, but she didn’t bring the political IQ to the table that Biden did, wasn’t as quick on her feet as he was, and was far from prepared for every issue that came up. She resorted to being vague far too often, more often than Biden did. She opened strong and closed strong, but those are largely scripted words. I just can’t imagine that the undecided voter came away from this more likely to vote for McCain-Palin. That’s just my reaction.

As a very decided voter, I’m not really an important viewer of these debates, since I’m almost watching as a “fan” as if it’s some kind of sporting event. As a supporter of the GOP ticket, I feel like I witnessed a loss tonight. I love Governor Palin, but the Republican party needed a brilliant candidate like Mitt Romney on that stage tonight. This is the first time I’ve felt that way since she was nominated.

We’re running out of time for the tide to turn, and it didn’t happen tonight as far as I could tell.

Fred Thompson…you are fantastic.

From last night’s speech at the Republican convention:

To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history-making nominee for president.

History-making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President.

I wish we were nominating Fred for President this week.

Palin could potentially be huge for the pro-life movement.

One argument you hear pro-choice advocates frequently make is that men simply shouldn’t have a say in the debate over abortion, whether it be its legal or moral ramifications. “It’s not their body,” after all. I think that’s a fairly ridiculous argument, but let’s for a second humor these people and concede that they’re hypothetically right. For the whole country, but especially amongst these people, Sarah Palin has the opportunity to be one of the great flagbearers of the pro-life cause.

Oh, and one more reason to bash Obama tonight.

“I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas,” said the presumptive Democratic nominee. “I don’t think that he…” the crowd interrupted with applause. “I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution. I would not have nominated Justice Scalia though I don’t think there is any doubt about his intellectual brilliance. Because he and I just disagree.

Link

Barack Obama more or less saying that Clarence Thomas was too dumb to be nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. More arrogant disrespect toward one of America’s great legal minds, from a guy who constantly speaks out about wanting to keep the rhetoric at a positive and non-divisive level.

I wouldn’t care if he said he wouldn’t have nominated him because they disagree on a great many things, he’s a crazy liberal and he’s going to want to appoint crazy liberals to the bench if given the chance. I accept that. But for Barack Obama, of all people, to speak out against someone like Thomas for not being qualified enough to serve at the highest branch of his profession? Laughable. Absolutely laughable. Unfortunately, the joke is going to be on America if people don’t wake up soon.