"The President of the United States is impatient..."

This seems the kind of thing that one might write as a joke, goofing on Obama's apparent narcissism:

President Obama's central message to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York today was simple, a U.S. official said: He's running out of patience.

"The President of the United States is impatient," said the senior U.S. official. "That's what he told them."

"There’s a limited window of opportunity here, and he's determined, but he’s also impatient and we need to get going," the official said.

The Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting for how many thousands of years? There's been active tension since the partition of Israel what, 60 years ago now? And he's "impatient" that they haven't acquiesced to whatever he's demanded in the five minutes he's spent working on this issue over the past 8 months?

I know that "narcissistic gasbag" sounds harsh, but how else would you describe him?

The thing I'm wondering about right now is this - do you suppose that there are any world leaders that deal with this guy who are not laughing at him behind his back?

Thought for the day

Watching those film clips and pictures of the Taliban kidnapping Afghans who were de-mining the countryside, and Iranian thuggish police in black hoods hanging a sort of slop bucket around the necks of free-speech dissidents, and the various semi-official and popular Iranian, Pakistani, and Middle Eastern new threats to Sir Rushdie — while a silent West worries instead that the meals for Guantanamo inmates cost only 2-3 times more than the soldiers who guard them — and wondering on a Saturday morning how a post-civilized West can marshal the will to win a war of ideas against pre-civilized Islamists.

- Victor Davis Hanson