† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: New York Times columnist David Brooks likens President Barack Hussein Obama’s “leadership style” to that of President Dwight Eisenhower, whose farewell address “was a calm warning against hubris [and] celebrated prudence”: 

 

Ike warned, the country should never believe that “some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” He reminded the country that government is about finding the right balance - between public and private, civic duties and individual freedom, small communities and big industrial complexes. …

 

The campaign of 2008 was marked by [Kennedy’s] soaring calls for transformation. Now the administration spends much of its time reacting to events and counseling restraint. …

 

On Friday, President Obama gave a press conference that perfectly captured his current phase. He acknowledged rising gas prices but had no new energy policy to announce. On Libya, he emphasized the need to deliberate carefully our steps ahead but had no road map to propose. On the federal budget fight, he spoke passionately about the need to reach a compromise. But when given the chance to talk about what it might look like, he rose above the fray and vaguely counseled balance and moderation. [Emphasis, throughout, The Stiletto.]

 

It’s hard to tell whether Brooks is being sincere, or oh-so-subtly skewering Obama. The Stiletto is leaning towards the latter, because Brooks goes on to observe:

 

Eisenhower was president at a time when American self-confidence was at its zenith; Americans were content with a president who took small steps. Today, most Americans seem to think their country is seriously off course. They may have less tolerance for a president who leads cautiously from the back.

 

Prudence can sometimes look like weakness. Obama said his cautious reactions to the Libyan revolution amounted to “tightening the noose” around Qaddafi. Yet there is no evidence that Qaddafi is feeling asphyxiated or even discomforted. As he slaughters his opposition, Western caution looks like fecklessness.

 

For this reason, it’s not Ike to whom Obama should look for inspiration, but his veep, Richard Nixon, advises John Podhoretz:

 

The multifarious crises the president now faces are eerily similar to the kinds of calamities that greeted Richard Nixon in his first term from 1969-1972. Then, as now, the world was on fire. Wars erupted between China and the Soviet Union, India and Pakistan, even El Salvador and Honduras. …

 

There was more, much more - including a war he inherited in Vietnam, just as Obama has the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You get the point.

 

Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.

 

Nixon achieved it, in large measure, because he appeared to be a serious man grappling in deadly earnest with the serious problems presented to him by a world careening out of control.

 

He demonstrated high competency when it came to matters on the world stage. He and his team (primarily Henry Kissinger) developed coherent policies and strategies for coping with the world. There was no question, to friend or foe, that he was fully engaged, paying attention, deeply involved. …

 

How Nixon conducted himself in office in times of crises made possible his triumphant re-election. Right now, how Obama is conducting himself in a time of crisis is having the opposite effect.

 

He began his presidency as a potential colossus - but if he doesn't change, he will finish it as a pipsqueak. Pipsqueaks don't win second terms.

 

Taking all of this together, prudent pipsqueaks don’t win re-election.

 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: If your supermarket provides antibacterial wipes to clean off the handle of your shopping cart before you grab it and head inside, it’s a good idea to take the time to use them. University of Arizona researchers swabbed the handles of 85 carts in four states and found 72 percent of them were contaminated with fecal matter, and 50 percent with E. coli. Professor Charles Gerba, the lead researcher, said that shopping cart handles were dirtier than public toilets since bathrooms are disinfected more often than the carts

 

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (tenth item, Philly Abortionist Charged With Murder Of Seven Newborns): For reasons that are unclear, the PA Department of Health stopped inspecting the state’s abortion clinics in the 1990s, which allowed several abortion mills to operate without any regard for patient safety or the rule of law. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

Pennsylvania's failure to oversee abortion clinics, which allowed a West Philadelphia facility to operate for decades with grave deficiencies, also enabled two other Philadelphia-area clinics to endanger patients and ignore rules.

 

The clinics, one in Bensalem and one in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, were run by Soleiman M. Soli, an obstetrician-gynecologist whose malpractice history includes a case settled for $35 million.

 

Problems at Soli's clinics were found last fall, when the Pennsylvania resumed routine inspections of free-standing abortion clinics. …

 

The resumption was ordered last year by then-Gov. Ed Rendell after police and federal drug agents raided the West Philadelphia clinic of Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell is now charged with murder and other felonies in the deaths of a patient and seven newborns.

 

Inspections of Soli's clinics last fall found medications that expired more than 30 years ago, no recovery room, no transfer agreement with a hospital, and improper handling of fetal remains, among other violations.

 

Soli, whose age was listed as 83 in public records, closed the clinics and retired Nov. 19 rather than take corrective action. …

 

The state Board of Medicine has never disciplined Soli. He has been sued for malpractice at least six times since 1981.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Homelessness In The Time Of Obama): Hawaii redevelopment officials are rousing a “fetid” colony of homeless from their downtown Honolulu tent city, “forcing about 100 people who have called the area home to find somewhere else,” reports The New York Times:

 

State officials said they were simply trying to enforce the law and clean up the waterfront district to encourage development in a desirable corner of the island where the tents, piles of garbage and wandering homeless offer quite a contrast to the rest of Oahu.

 

But this forced exodus is only the latest chapter in Hawaii’s difficult relationship with its homeless as it wrestles with two forces: a warm climate that facilitates outdoor living and the threat to the image of the state that is central to tourism.

 

Advocates for the homeless said this latest sweep would have the same effect as the last few: the homeless will simply take their tents elsewhere.

 

“I understand that they are caught between a rock and a hard place,” Doran J. Porter, executive director of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance in Hawaii, said of state officials. “This isn’t an appropriate place for lean-tos and tents.”

 

And Mr. Porter said he knew full well that state officials were under pressure from the business community. “My concern is that they need to have solutions of where these folks are going to go,” he said. “We can’t keep kicking them out of one place where they go to another. That’s why they are there in the first place: they were kicked out of Waikiki and the beaches. This has been going on for years.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (tenth item, There’s No Such Thing As Free Healthcare): President Barack Hussein Obama is expanding his tactic of damning potential Republican presidential candidates with his feint praise, reports The New York Times:

 

Rather than emphasize his differences with potential Oval Office rivals or Republican adversaries on Capitol Hill, the president is taking every opportunity he can to embrace members of the other party as co-conspirators in his efforts to confront the country’s challenges.

 

According to Mr. Obama, the two parties have cooperated - or are showing signs of being willing to work together - on education reform, tax cuts, energy security, economic growth and potential changes to an entitlement system that has become a drain on the nation’s budget. …

 

He’s also heaped special praise - tinged with just a bit of sarcasm - on Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts (for his health care plan) and Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, for serving as Mr. Obama’s ambassador to China. Both men are considering a bid for president in 2012.

 

The Times attributes the gambit to “the belief that voters - and especially independents - are looking for evidence that politicians in Washington are working together on problems rather than content to live with an unending stalemate.” The Stiletto has another explanation: Obama is aiming to convince independents that none of his likely Republican opponents represent change from his administration’s unpopular policies they can believe in. If a large enough percentage of independents become so disgusted and dispirited that they stay home on Election Day while community organizers and union members go door-to-door to get Obama’s supporters to the polls, his road to re-election becomes smoother.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Another Day, Another Dem Ethics Scandal): Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL) who replaced Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) as chairman of the House Ethics Committee is accusing his Democratic predecessor of violating House rules by forcing two staff lawyers to take paid leave, derailing a probe of alleged misconduct by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), reports The Washington Post:

 

[Bonner] made that claim about former chairwoman in a letter he sent early this month to the two lawyers, who played lead roles in the Waters probe. They were idled just as Waters was to be tried by the committee over her actions involving a bank in which her husband had a financial interest.

 

In the letter, which Bonner said he wrote after consulting other members, he said that Lofgren’s decision was unilateral and taken “without cause, in my view,” and that the two staffers - counsels Morgan Kim and Stacey Sovereign - had “acted appropriately and consistent with the highest ethical standards.” …

 

Lofgren’s spokesman did not return a call and e-mail seeking comment. Lofgren had claimed previously that Kim and Sovereign misled her about evidence against Waters; they have claimed that Lofgren and a top aide obstructed their probe.

 

Bonner, who last year blocked Lofgren’s effort to fire the lawyers, alleged at the time that she violated House rules by unilaterally postponing Waters’ trial until after the election, a claim Lofgren denied.

 

Bonner has yet to decide whether the Ethics Committee will resume its probe of Waters.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Restorative Capital Punishment): GA was among the states looking to foreign sources of thiopental sodium so that a shortage of the sedative in this country would not delay lethal injection executions. Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration has seized a supply of the drug the state had obtained from England, reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

DEA will retain control of the drug while it conducts an investigation, which could last up to six months. There are no scheduled executions in the state.

 

Peggy Chapman, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections, said the department notified the DEA after a February letter was sent to Attorney General Eric Holder alleging that Georgia had violated a federal law in acquiring thiopental by failing to register as an importer of the controlled substance.

 

"We have been working with [the DEA] to ensure we are in compliance in the way we handle controlled substances," Ms. Chapman said.

 

The February letter was sent by John Bentivoglio, a partner at the Washington D.C. office of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, who represents Georgia death row inmate Andrew Grant DeYoung.

 

The attorney contended in the letter that "illegally imported thiopental may be adulterated, counterfeit or otherwise ineffective in providing adequate sedation" to condemned inmates.

 

Bentivoglio’s concerns were not realized in two executions using the imported thiopental that have been carried out in GA since September 2010.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on 58-year-old Ray Polk, a homeless man who “carved out a one-man social agency” that helps the homeless. Los Angeles Times reports:

 

A church group picks up donations from Trader Joe's and brings them to him every week. Polk displays bread and produce in a repurposed Otis Spunkmeyer case on top of the counter.

 

Along the dead-end road he calls home he has staked Bible verses on poster board - a picket fence of misspelled Scripture. He has a locked shack full of clothes in case someone needs something to keep them warm. There's a chapel fashioned of blue tarp.

 

At his counseling station - a desk and two mismatched chairs - a nondescript painting of flowers hangs on plywood that might generously be considered a wall.

 

It's here, Polk said, that he does his most important work.

 

"I give them my ear to hear what they have to say. Sometimes that's what people need most: somebody hearing what they're saying."

 

The name of the place, Homeless Ministries, is spelled out marquee style, but instead of in neon it's with white cups placed in the holes of a chain link fence.

 

If Polk is mentally ill, there aren't obvious symptoms. His eyes are clear, his speech focused, his manner good-humored. He says he hasn't touched drugs or alcohol in years.

 

Polk has also created a memorial to the homeless who have died because “They're invisible in life, and then when they die it's like they never existed. There's nowhere for a person to go and say, ‘I knew them. They were my friend.’”