Can we all just accept that Emperor Barry is a dick?

Let's face it, his go-to move when someone disagrees with him is to either insult their intelligence or question their motives. Because the people who disagree with him usually are conservatives, this has not been a problem for the lamestream media, who always are happy to question the motives and/or intelligence of conservatives.

My, how things have changed. Our naked emperor has taken to using these tactics on his own party, and they are Shocked! Shocked! at his approach:

President Obama’s performance in pushing for approval of fast track legislation of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, in which he’s allied with Republicans and has spent the last week castigating and insulting liberal Democrats, has been one of the most bizarre and ill-advised performances of his presidency.
I spent many years working for senior Democratic Senators such as Lloyd Bentsen and House Democratic leaders beginning with the legendary Speaker Tip O’Neill, and have never seen any president of either party insult so many members of his own party’s base and members of the House and Senate as Mr. Obama has in his weeks of tirades against liberals on trade.
In Mr. Obama’s speech at Nike last week, his comments to Matt Bai of Yahoo over the weekend, and White House press secretary Josh Earnest’s comments to reporters on Monday, Mr. Obama and his White House staff have repeated a string of personal insults directed against prominent liberal Democrats in Congress, liberal Democrats across the nation, organized labor, and leading public interest and environmental groups who share doubts about the TPP trade deal.

That's from the New York Observer, a liberal rag, not the New York Post, which is the only conservative voice north of the Hudson. Barry is actually taking fire from his own people and, as someone who always belittles people who disagree with him, he is perfectly willing to lay waste to his own party. I kind of like it, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a progressives favorite, might be less enamored of Emperor Barry's approach:

President Barack Obama's swing at liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren has stirred a controversy that may complicate the chances of a pan-Pacific trade pact and could make it harder for the White House to get its way in future legislative battles.
Facing stiff opposition to the trade deal from sections of his own Democratic Party, Obama launched a personalized criticism of Warren's efforts to lead the fight against giving the administration "fast-track" negotiating authority.
It was an approach that appeared to elevate the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, already a favorite of the party's left wing for her work on consumer protection and Wall Street reforms, and energize her supporters.
. . .
By stoking a personal battle with Warren, Obama risks making her a more dangerous rival in Congress, giving her more clout to push the president and 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to the left on issues such as income inequality, minimum wage hikes and efforts to rein in Wall Street.

 Now fellow Democrats are critical of the president, not of Sen. Warren:

"The president miscalculated in making this about Elizabeth Warren, that backfired badly. It only served to raise awareness of the issue and drive people away from his position," said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who has worked with labor unions opposed to the pact.
"It never makes sense to make these kinds of issues personal," he said.
In the Yahoo interview, Obama said Warren's arguments "don't stand the test of fact and scrutiny."

Well, if Democrats are shocked that the president is an asshole who believes firmly in the politics of personal destruction by impugning the motives and intelligence of his opponents, they haven't been paying attention. They deserve the Captain Louis Renault Award:

I hope it keeps coming.

It's been a while, but we have a winner for the Capt. Louis Renault Award

Once again, I apologize to Hot Air for stealing their schtick, but something like this totally calls for a Renault Award. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services and thus the person in charge of the department responsible for the healthcare.gov website that is so screwed up that people basically can't sign up for Obamacare more than two months after the site launched, is demanding to know who the hell is responsible for this mess. She wants to know so bad, in fact, that she has ordered the HHS inspector general -- let's keep this in-house, please --to get to the bottom of this.

This all started Wednesday, so I'm a couple days late, but I've been working stupid hours trying to make up for work being closed Tuesday because of snow, so I didn't get this up until now. Still, as Jammie Wearing Fool noted on Wednesday, this move by Sebelius is unlikely to convince people that the federal government is capable of handling, well, anything:

Why, what a novel idea. Let’s spend some money investigating why Obama and Sebelius completely botched the largest government program in history due to their sheer incompetence.

Here's how ABC News reported it:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog post early Wednesday that she is asking the department's inspector general to investigate the contracting process, management, performance and payment issues that may have contributed to the flawed launch of HealthCare.gov....

I believe strongly in the need for accountability, and in the importance of being good stewards of taxpayer dollars," Sebelius said in her announcement. The website has cost taxpayers more than $600 million so far, according to the congressional Government Accountability Office.
In addition to the inspector general review, Sebelius said she has ordered the hiring of a new "chief risk officer" at the Medicare agency, which also oversees the new programs created to expand health insurance coverage under Obama's law. That official will focus on making sure technology programs work as advertised.

Sebelius also said she's ordered a retraining of her department on best practices for outside contracting.

Leaving aside for the moment that she did this in a blog post, the fact that the top manager of the department responsible for the fiasco -- that would be Sebelius -- wants the IG to investigate the "management" of the project kind of indicates that Sebelius basically ordered the IG to investigate why Sebelius is such a fuck-up. This kind of gives the lie to her claim that she believes "strongly in the need for accountability," because if that were true, the IG would have been appointed by her successor following Sebelius' resignation. Accountability, my butt. Wonder what poor underling will get blamed (but not fired) for this fiasco.

So, Sebelius wants her own department to investigate why her own department, run by her, screwed up the biggest government project since World War II, headed by her. Guess the failure of Obamacare caught her by surprise. Do we have an award for Kathleen? Yes, we do: