Arianna Huffington calls Obama's bin Laden ad "despicable."

She said:

"I don't think there should be an ad about that... It's the same thing Hillary Clinton did with the 3 a.m. call. 'You're not ready to be commander-in-chief.' It's also what makes politicians and political leaders act irrationally when it comes to matters of war because they're so afraid to be called wimps, that they make decisions, which are incredible destructive for the country. I'm sure the president would not have escalated in Afghanistan if he was not as concerned, as Democrats are, that Republicans are going to use not escalating against him in a campaign."

"Michelle Obama is the real politician in the family in the sense she is more effusive, better at connecting instantly with people."

"A good source of mine once said to me, 'Here’s what you have to remember: She is Bill Clinton, and he is Hillary.'"

"You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done..."

"... would have been, in the long run of the country, much better."

Matt Damon, purporting to speak for "a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level."

"If the Democrats think that they didn't have a mandate — people are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they're pissed off... Just imagine if they had a leader."

Despite unemployment, there is a shortage of applicants for skilled jobs.

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the problem of unfilled job openings:

Union Pacific struggles to find enough electricians who have worked with diesel engines. Manufacturers in many places can't find enough machinists. Oil companies must fight for a limited supply of drilling-rig workers.

"There's a tremendous shortage of skilled workers," said Craig Giffi, a vice chairman of the consulting firm Deloitte. A recent survey it did found that 83% of manufacturers reported a moderate or severe shortage of skilled production workers to hire.

The extent and significance of the skills gap is hotly debated in economics circles, in part because of its policy implications. If companies aren't hiring primarily because of limited demand for their products or services, the standard policy prescription offered is some form of stimulus, such as lower interest rates or taxes, or more spending. But to the extent that the problem is companies' inability to find the workers they need, the remedy might instead be training or other efforts to help workers get the skills.

Most research suggests the sluggish economy is the biggest reason for the weak labor market. Data show the skills gap doesn't exist in whole industries but in specific jobs, including certain heavy-duty blue-collar ones.

This reminds me of the revelation — in Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" — that, back in 2007, Obama and his advisers talked about emphasizing jobs that would reinforce masculine pride. (That led them to the rebuilding infrastructure proposal.)

According to the Wall Street Journal article, large numbers of skilled laborers are retiring these days and it's difficult to replace them in part because of the lack of high-school level vocational training. Consider all the money dumped into college tuition; young people could be getting free training in high school for "secure, well-paying jobs with good benefits... don't require a college degree."

"The Obama Stimulus Should Have Been More Manly."

The Atlantic paraphrases something I said on Bloggingheads:

In the new book Confidence Men, Ron Suskind reports that President Obama initially wanted the stimulus plan to focus on generating infrastructure jobs so that it would address the economic and psychological needs of males in particular. Now blogger and law professor Ann Althouse argues that Obama was diverted by his female constituency into creating a jobs plan that failed because it wasn't male centered and infrastructure heavy. Here, in a Bloggingheads.tv debate with Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine, Althouse makes her case that the stimulus wasn't manly enough...

The embedded video at the link cuts off the set up, in which I tell you what's in the Suskind book that supports my hypothesis. So I recommend watching the video segment clipped here. And note that I'm suggesting a theory to be contemplated and studied in further depth. I'm not simply making an assertion that Obama was diverted by his female constituency and that the stimulus plan failed because it wasn't male centered. Obviously, I don't know that, and I don't purport to know things I don't know. It's a theory.

Obama, the boys' club man who, on graduating from Harvard Law School, felt drawn into "personal journaling."

In a diavlog about Obama's problem with women, I'm trying to figure out what makes a man a man's man, especially when the man isn't all that manly:

Obama's Infrastructure Stimulus — designed to build masculine pride.

Here's a fascinating passage from Ron Suskind's new book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" (pp. 18-19)(boldface added). Obama and his advisers are plotting campaign strategy in August 2007 and the subject turned to the problem of jobs for 10 million low- to moderately skilled male workers. What "sunrise" could the government subsize and stimulate. The advisers hit on health care:

That was where the jobs would be: nurse’s aides, companions to infirm seniors, hospital orderlies. The group bandied about ideas for how to channel job-seeking men into this growth industry. A need in one area filling a need in another. Interlocking problems, interlocking solutions. The Holy Grail of systemic change.

But Obama shook his head.

“Look, these are guys,” he said. “A lot of them see health care, being nurse’s aides, as women’s work. They need to do something that fits with how they define themselves as men.” ...

As the room chewed over the non-PC phrase “women’s work,” trying to square the senator’s point with their analytical models, [Alan] Krueger—who was chief economist at the Department of Labor in the mid-1990s at the tender age of thirty-four—sat there silently, thinking that in all his years of studying men and muscle, he had never used that term. But Obama was right. Krueger wondered how his latest research on happiness and well-being might take into account what Obama had put his finger on: that work is identity, that men like to build, to have something to show for their sweat and toil.

“Infrastructure,” he blurted out. “Rebuilding infrastructure.”

Obama nodded and smiled, seeing it instantly. “Now we’re talking. . . . Okay, let’s think about how that would work as a real centerpiece.... Don’t even get me started about potholed highways and collapsing bridges,” Obama said....

Isn't it strange that collapsing bridges are exactly what Obama is back to talking about in September 2011?

And just like that, a policy to repair the nation’s infrastructure was born. The federal government, in partnership with the private sector, would call upon the underemployed men of America to rebuild the country, and in doing so restore their pride. 

Obama wanted to rebuild masculine pride!

But what happened? Why didn't the original stimulus, in early 2009, rebuild America and America's men? I seem to remember some pushback. There was this NYT op-ed in December 2008, by Linda Hirshman:

Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery....

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force....

Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants)....

And then what happened? Did Obama ever openly express his enthusiasm for masculine jobs? The terminology became "shovel-ready jobs." He couldn't say "manly jobs" or "men's work." Not only did Obama's abandon his dream of lifting up men, we didn't even get the construction work done.

And now here he is, last week, posing by a bridge that's — what? — falling down and getting accused of using the bridge as a "prop."

Oh! The masculinity!

The Obama White House "actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."

Said former White House communications director Anita Dunn, as quoted a new book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" — written by a man, Ron Suskind — the Washington Post reports.

Dunn now rejects the term "hostile workplace,” and adds the typical PR bullshit evidence: “The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women... He values having strong women around him.”

In my experience, women who are vigilant about workplaces that are hostile to women hate that argument: A man has a strong wife at home, so he must not be opposed to the success of women in the workplace.

And, by the way, specifically, I'd say that Barack Obama has kept his wife in a distinctly subordinate role. Michelle Obama went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, and now she works on encouraging children to eat vegetables and get some exercise.

But... whatever... Anita Dunn... I always thought she was a bit of an idiot. She shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place. If she was initially overpromoted, it was a good thing that she got excluded. She shouldn't have been included.

But Suskind talked to other disincluded women. According to the Washington Post account of the book:

[W]omen occupied many of the West Wing’s senior positions, but felt outgunned and outmaneuvered by male colleagues such as former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Summers.

Obama, according to the book... failed to call on Romer after asking her male colleagues for their opinions. The snub prompted Romer to pass a note to Summers where she threatened to walk out of the dinner, according to the book....

The Obama White House has long been dogged by similar claims of exclusivity — his golf outings have been typically all-male affairs...

So... is there something sexist about the Obama administration? Seems like Suskind came up with a great angle for his book, but I'm skeptical. I think Obama may have been overenthusiastic about giving a lot of  positions to women, and perhaps those women really weren't as good as the men he surrounded himself with and really does need to rely on. In that case, he deserves credit for good judgment. But it is funny that he's not more concerned about the optics. Perhaps he assumes that he is especially appealing to women constituents and he doesn't need to do much to maintain that favor. It's the men he's in danger of losing. Time for another round of all-male, manly golf.

Drudge is giving Obama a hard time this morning.

There's this at the top:



Drudge dogged him back in the spring of '08 for looking dorky on a bicycle. You'd think his people would at least get him a non-unisex bike that's the right size for him. Anyway, here's Drudge juxtaposing him to Putin holding a giant weapon. But it's not as though you can't look cool with a bike. Be like this:



(Miss him yet?)

Right under the Obama-on-a-bike/Putin-with-a-gun juxtaposition today, Drudge has this picture:



(Saving the image, I called this "dumbrella." Imagine if Bush had made an error of that kind?)

Drudge uses that picture to link to an AP story about Obama's commitment to Katrina victims: "Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath, President Barack Obama sought to reassure disaster-weary Gulf Coast residents Sunday that he would not abandon their cause." The AP story has Obama "[s]tanding in front of a large American flag with students arrayed behind him," so why does Drudge show Obama and his elegantly dressed wife entering (or leaving) a fancily gated establishment and mishandling an umbrella? That picture says so much: Obama is distracted by the trivial problems of taking his wife out somewhere expensive while the poor people of the Gulf are waiting and waiting for help. The disapproving glance of his wife gets more attention than the appeals of the hurricane victims. He's fortunate enough to have the kind of weather problem that can be solved by a simple umbrella, which wouldn't be any help at all in a hurricane. And yet his handling of an umbrella in a drizzle is incompetent, so how could he deal with a hurricane? The picture says: How can Obama understand/care/do anything about Katrina?

ADDED: There's also this way for a (future) President to look good with a bike.

Obama's White House boy's club.

Here's an article that is getting a lot of attention for pointing out that in 9 months in office, Obama has played golf more times than George W. Bush did in his first 2 years. But there's something even more interesting: Obama didn't include any women in these golf rounds until last weekend, at which time he golfed with a woman once.

Now, here's a NYT article the observation that the White House has a boy's club atmosphere:

Does the White House feel like a frat house?

The suspicion flared in recent weeks — and not for the first time — after President Obama was criticized by women’s advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting a high-level basketball game with no female players.

The president, after all, is an unabashed First Guy’s Guy....

He presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors....

Mr. Obama, in an interview with NBC on Wednesday, called the beef over basketball “bunk”... “I don’t think it sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever,” said the president, who often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home (where he is the only non-canine male).

Wow. Incredible.  If there is any serious feminism left in this country — by which I mean the kind of feminism we had back before the Clinton presidency — it would ream a man who sought credit for inclusiveness toward women by referring to the fact that he had a wife and daughters in his household.

[Senior adviser Valerie] Jarrett similarly rejected the notion that the West Wing had been overrun by Y chromosomes, saying such complaints were “a Washington perception that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.”

The evidence?

She cites the prominent women Mr. Obama has appointed to top positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Where has she been?

... and six other cabinet-level officials; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor...

She's over there in chambers, and nowhere near the Prez.

... the health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle...

Why don't we say "czarina"? We've got these new positions and the title you get is male-specific. It's as if were were calling the Secretary of State "Mr. Secretary."

... and the domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes. According to figures provided by the administration, there is a 50-50 gender split among White House employees.

Which makes it all the more striking that the atmosphere reads as so male:

[S]ome high-profile sectors of the White House — economics and national security, for instance — are filled with men and exude an unmistakable male vibe. Mr. Obama’s inner circle includes Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Emanuel and his senior adviser, David Axelrod (“The Boys,” as they are known to some female staff members).

Women in important White House jobs tend to be less visible than their colleagues, even as the administration is trying to elevate their profiles. (In the same week as the basketball game, Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, hosted a group of women reporters for an off-the-record meeting with Ms. Jarrett over chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.)

Did they share the recipes?

There is so much reason to try to create the impression that women are important that the truth of the exclusion of women must be even worse than it appears.

One Democratic media strategist says that while Mr. Obama does place women in important roles, his comfort level with staff members is not always perceived as equal.

“There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn’t have with the women,” said Tracy Sefl, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign who speaks regularly to some female aides in the administration.

This is exactly the problem feminists used to focus on.

Good for Sefl, going public like that and getting named. I would love to eavesdrop on conversations between Sefl and Hillary.

In interviews, five women who work in the White House or advised officials there described the culture with more of a collective eye-roll than any real sense of grievance or discomfort.

Well, what the hell happened to real sense? When did feminism lose its critical edge? (Answer: During the Clinton administration.)

One junior aide, who like the other women spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about appearing publicly critical, said that the “sports-fan thing at the White House” could become “annoying” and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating.

Annoying... mildly alienating....  The spirit of feminism is so diminished these days that women think of their own observations as insignificant and scarcely worth making any fuss about. Compare this to the times of vivid, vital feminism that followed a methodology of elevating and intensifying the importance of these seemingly small observations. Once there was conscience raising. The new methodology of dying feminism deserves to be called consciousness lowering.

And while this is not uncommon in any workplace, sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss.

Oh, good lord. That this needs to be pointed out again — modestly suggested — shows how far we have sunk. There was once biting criticism of the sexism inherent in workplace sports bonding.

Ben Finkenbinder, a junior press aide and scratch golfer, was recently invited into a foursome with Mr. Obama. (In records kept by Mark Knoller of CBS, the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women, though Mr. Knoller allows that the press office does not always release the names of every player. A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Friday that Mr. Obama planned to play this weekend with Ms. Barnes.)

Ha. This NYT — NYT — article was already in the works when the White House scrambled to produce a female golfer.

[Some] women in the administration say that any discussion of White House culture should account for how politics has long been dominated by men but is now more inclusive. Ms. Dunn... rejects the notion of a boys’ club. She calls the Obama administration “refreshingly un-self-conscious” about matters of equality, maybe to a point where they neglected the “optics” of the all-male basketball game.

Oh?! So maybe it's a little like the post-racial America we were supposed to get — but didn't get — after Obama was elected. It's the post-gender America. No one needs to notice who's male and who's female anymore. So the inner circle is all male? You're not supposed to even see it!

Ms. Dunn said that she recently hosted a baby shower for an administration official and that no men from the office were invited. She is comfortable with that — just as she is fine with never playing basketball with the president.

“That is just part of the culture here that I am excluded from,” she said. “And I don’t care.”

Consciousness lowering — it's so refreshing.

Now, if everyone would please dial down all the criticism and let Obama get on with his un-self-conscious guy's guy agenda, it will all work out just fine.

Don't worry your pretty little head.

Obamamanman.

This T-shirt is being worn unironically by my sons' cousin, James Sasso. It is a T-shirt that, I feel sure, has irony in its future.

2 world leaders demonstrate the 2 ways of conspicuously gawking at a woman's ass.

I see a distinct difference between these 2 stances. Yes, there are similarities. Both are blatant and hilarious. But the Sarkozy ass-gawking stance says: I admire but I must not act. And Obama is caught at the moment of as-yet-unconstrained pursuit.

Sarkozy holds his arms against his chest in a closed — but not tightly closed — position. The head is turned but upright. He is smiling, but the index finger lying against his lip blocks the edge of the smile from the point of view of anyone standing in front of him, though if the woman were to turn around, she would see it easily. His hand is tipped upward at a jaunty — one is tempted to say phallic — angle. The foot closest to the woman is planted firmly on the ground in the don't-go-that-way position, yet the other foot angles toward the object of desire. Still, the angled foot remains flat on the floor, and, at a shoulder's distance from the other foot, it the whole figure of the man a solid immobility.

Now, swivel your eyes over to Obama's feet. The foot closest to the woman, like Sarkozy's, is planted and aimed forward, but the other steps off in the direction of the woman, bending the knee upward into a bit of a crotch-squeeze and forming the base of a dramatic tilt of the entire body into a flexible S-shape that leans toward the woman. Obama's arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That's what I want.

AND: Yes, I have seen the video, and I stand by my analysis of the still photograph.

"Obama's Golf Shorts: Should Grown Men Wear Shorts? (PHOTOS, POLL)."

HuffPo gets in on what has long been a big topic here at Althouse. (Click the "men in shorts" tag below. And read what I said in the comments here about the guy seated next to me on the airplane yesterday.)

Here you see our President dressed for golf the way PGA Tour members are forbidden to dress. (Can you even picture Tiger Woods in shorts? No. And you're not supposed to.)



Come on! You're not a little kid! In fact, you are the President of the United States. Presidents golf in long pants!



IN THE COMMENTS: John Stodder says:

The reason I disagree with Ann on shorts on men is that I don't think it is a man's job to look attractive all the time, especially when engaged in leisure pursuits. Women do need to try harder in this area than men, and that might be unfair, but it won't do to try to apply the same attractiveness-at-all-times standard to both sexes.

The president, however, is never engaged in leisure pursuits, even when he is taking a break, so long as there is a camera anywhere nearby. So he does have a higher standard to reach. Higher yet because he's an avowed metrosexual.

But above all, if you wear shorts, you should not be nervously pulling at the seam to enclose it around the thigh as Obama seems to be doing. If there is any danger of your shorts exposing your beet salad to the world, they're either too short or too loose.