No comments on “They can’t be skydivers …”
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Two decades ago, George Will wrote that Bill Clinton may or may not be known as the worst president, but he was certainly the worst person ever to be president.
That was due to Slick Willie’s amorality, one of the few things he shares with Hillary. Now, though, Barack Obama is making Bubba look like a paragon of comity in comparison.
First, Peter Wehner:
We all know people of towering arrogance and we all know people of staggering incompetence, but Barack Obama is quite possibly the perfect package. No one on the scene today combines these two qualities in quite the same way as Mr. Obama.
On the incompetence side, and sticking just with the president’s policies and record in the greater Middle East, there is Mr. Obama’s mishandling of the rise of the Islamic State, which just last year he referred to as the “jayvee team” and just last week declared was “contained.” Recall his threat to Syrian President Assad that if Assad used chemical weapons on his own people it would constitute crossing a “red line” (Assad did and Obama did nothing), and his stop-start-stop support for opposition forces in Syria.
Then there is the president’s decision to pull out all American troops from Iraq, which had disastrous consequences; his failures in Afghanistan (including announcing a withdrawal date even as he was announcing a surge in troops); his bungled relations with Egypt; his failure to support the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 and his nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, which Charles Krauthammer called “the worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history.” Add to that Mr. Obama declaring his policies in Libya, Yemen and Somalia to be models of success before things collapses in all three countries, his alienation and mistreatment of Israel, and his botched handling of relations with our Arab allies – not to mention policies that have allowed Russia a presence in the Middle East unlike any it’s had since Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviet Union from Egypt in the early 1970s – and you have a catastrophic foreign policy record. It was only in the summer of last year that the Wall Street Journal reported, “The breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s” – and things are more disordered, chaotic and violent now then it was then. Things are so bad that the president has even lost CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Now most of us, with this almost unblemished record of ineptness, might feel some embarrassment. We might show a touch of self-reflection. And we would at least resist the temptation to lecture others. But not Mr. Obama. In his press conference in Turkey earlier this week, the president was prickly, petulant, condescending and small-minded. Consider just these two paragraphs:
But what we do not do, what I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough, or make me look tough. And maybe part of the reason is because every few months I go to Walter Reed, and I see a 25-year-old kid who’s paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle. And so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may.
We’ll do what’s required to keep the American people safe. And I think it’s entirely appropriate in a democracy to have a serious debate about these issues. If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisors are better than the Chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning, or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people, and to protect people in the region who are getting killed, and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.
If only the president could summon up this much passion and anger against oh, say, the Islamic State. Or the malevolent regimes of Iran and Syria. But no; it’s the Republicans for whom Mr. Obama has special antipathy. What a lovely touch, too, using soldiers who are paralyzed and without limbs to try to shut his critics down. And since we’re dealing with Obama, there is the requisite “my critics are playing political games while my motives are as pure as the new-driven snow.”
By now it’s all quite predictable and quite tiresome. Even the president’s own peculiar psychological habits – his tendency to project, his narcissism and seething resentment in reaction to criticisms, his inability to see reality when reality conflicts with his rigid and dogmatic views – are tedious because they are so commonly on display.
Watching Mr. Obama deal with his manifold and multiplying failures is to watch a man grow more bitter and graceless by the day. It’s a long, long way from hope and change.
Michael Barone identifies who Obama thinks is his biggest enemy, and it’s not anyone across the seas:
Three days after the Islamic State’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Americans were primed to hear their president express heartfelt anger, which he did in his press conference in Antalya, Turkey, at the end of the G-20 summit. And they did hear him describe ISIS as “this barbaric terrorist organization” and acknowledge that the “terrible events in Paris were a terrible and sickening setback.”
But what really got him angry, as the transcript and video make clear, were reporters’ repeated questions about the minimal success of his strategy against ISIS; Republicans’ proposals for more active engagement in Syria and Iraq; and critics of his decision to allow 10,000 Syrians into the United States.
The reporters did not seem this time to be absorbing his patient instruction. ISIS “controls less territory than it did before,” he stated — but not much less, and it is still holding Iraq’s second-largest city and a huge swath of Iraqi and Syrian desert.
Our military could dislodge them, he admitted, but explained that then we’d have to occupy and administer the places we capture. In other words, we’d be facing the kind of messy situations we faced in Iraq.
But in his self-described goal, “to degrade and ultimately destroy,” the word “ultimately” looms uncomfortably large. Most Americans want people who behead Americans destroyed considerably sooner than that. They wonder why the world’s greatest military can’t do that.
Such action, Obama suggested, might be bad public relations. ISIS has “a twisted ideology” and we play into its “narrative” by treating it as a state and using “routine military tactics.” ISIS “does not represent Islam” and treating it as a “Muslim problem” will lead to “greater recruitment into terrorist organizations over time.” It’s not clear why the significant minority of Muslims with positive feelings to ISIS will accept an American president’s definition of their faith.
“A political solution is the only way to end the war in Syria,” he said, looking forward to negotiations between Syrian factions, encouraged that “countries on all sides of the Syrian conflict agree on a process that is needed to end this war.” But he felt obliged to acknowledge continuing disagreements over “the fate of Bashar Assad” — no small item.
He described Americans who counsel a different course as “folks (who) want to pop off” and who think their advisers are better than the Joint Chiefs or soldiers on the ground. This ignores the fact that Obama has repeatedly rejected the advice of career military leaders and his own appointed civilian leaders who recommended more active policies. …
This is not a president who has prioritized human rights in Middle East policy, as evidenced by the cold shoulder given to Iran’s Green Revolution protesters in June 2009 and the long inaction in addressing the problems of Syrian refugees, now flowing into Europe.
All of which makes more grating Obama’s denunciation of Americans who are critical of his call to admit 10,000 refugees here. In Antalya he accused them of closing their hearts to victims of violence and of being “not American” in suggesting prioritization of the Christian refugees who have been singled out for torture and murder.
He could have acknowledged people’s qualms as legitimate and argued at greater length, as former ambassador to Iraq and Syria Ryan Crocker did in the Wall Street Journal, that we have processes in place that would effectively screen out terrorists. Or have proposed, like Speaker Paul Ryan, a pause before accepting any.But that would have meant not taking cheap shots against the political opposition at home — the people who really make him angry.
What kind of person views the other political side as not just the opposition, but the enemy? Certainly no Republican president since Richard Nixon. Not even Bill Clinton, who because of his self-centeredness made political deals with whoever was in charge, Democrat (the first two years) or Republican (the last six years).
Ed Lasky adds:
A comment made by one of President Obama’s closest aides explains his blasé attitude toward the lives of Americans. In late 2012, Neera Tanden, who had been one of President Obama’s closest aides, observed:
Clinton, being Clinton, had plenty of advice in mind and was desperate to impart it. But for the first two years of Obama’s term, the phone calls Clinton kept expecting rarely came. “People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call Clinton is because he doesn’t like him,” observes Tanden. “The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people.
Barack Obama had been warned that leaving Iraq without a residual American force could lead to genocide. When questioned about this risk, he complacently answered that preventing genocide was not a good enough reason to have troops in Iraq .
Barack Obama’s coldness towards Americans — and others, for that matter — was obvious before 2012.
Barack Obama has long had an Empathy Deficit, as I wrote in 2010. He easily and coldly boasted he would destroy the coal industry and kill thousands of jobs with the aplomb of Chairman Mao and Josef Stalin reengineering their societies. The jobs that were promised after passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus plan never materialized because as Barack Obama jocularly put it two years later “shovel-ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.” When Texas was hit with devastating forest fires, Obama was cracking jokes at a California fundraiser, “You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change.” He has articulated his contempt for so called everyday Americans many times (see my 2012 column, What Obama Thinks of Americans and my 2014 column, Obama Thinks You Are Stupid, That’s Why)
Barack Obama seems particularly complacent when it comes to Americans endangered and murdered by Islamic extremists.
Here are some examples (with more undoubtedly to come as President Obama oversees a massive influx of Muslims into America, hence fulfilling his promise to “fundamentally transform America”). Obama’s Syrian asylum policy continues apace, despite the role of at least one Syrian “refugee” in the massacres in Paris. Obama wants to welcome at least 10,000 more Syrians into America (Hillary wants 65,000). What could go wrong? Ben Rhodes, Obama’s chief liar now that Susan Rice has outlived her usefulness in that role, appeared on numerous broadcasts to assure us these “asylum seekers” will be thoroughly vetted to eliminate security risks — contradicting the widely respected FBI chief, James Comey, who testified before Congress that vetting Syrian “refugees” will be challenging. Can’t we trust the competency of an administration who can handle the IRS, the VA, the stimulus program, green energy projects, and security of government employee records so well?
When Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic terrorists the best that Barack Obama could offer was that his “loss” had “captured the imagination of the world.” Captured the imagination? Mark Steynhad some choice words for Obama’s lazy tribute to Daniel Pearl. There was no indignation or rage.
First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none. (snip)
Well, says the president, it was “one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently it never captured Obama’s imagination because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: “one of those moments” – you know, like Princess Di’s wedding, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, whatever – “that captured the world’s imagination.”
After Barack Obama announced that American journalist James Foley had been beheaded by Islamic extremists he raced off to the links to yuck it up with NBA star Alonzo Mourning and others.
George Bush gave up golf as president because he felt it unseemly for a commander-in-chief to be playing golf while Americans were serving overseas in the military. Clearly Obama has different seemliness standards (see his interview with the YouTube comedian GloZell who bathes in milk and cereal in a bathtub).
When Americans were killed in Benghazi the White House refused to give an honest accounting of who murdered them (it was an offshoot of Al Qaeda). Their deaths were, in Obama’s cold phrasing, were not “optimal.” Well, they certainly weren’t optimal for him and his re-election campaign, so he and his Praetorian guard lied about their murders. Who got the blame? An obscure Coptic Christianwho had directed an equally obscure video that may have riled some Muslims — had they seen it (which, basically, no one had). The spin was that Muslims had been (“legitimately”?) enraged by the video that mocked Mohammed. Survivors were lied to and are still awaiting a call from the President to honestly explain why their loved ones had been murdered. They will be waiting a long time.
At times, he seems intent on justifying Islamic terrorism,or at least relativizing such violence by putting it in “historical context.” Last year, at the National Prayer breakfast (of all places) he invoked the Crusades while talking about Islam and terrorism:
At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Obama noted there was a time when people mass-murdered in the name of Christianity, too:
And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
As many were quick to point out, the Catholic Church’s Crusades began more than 900 years ago, and the Inquisition began in the 13th century.
The comparison was absurd but part of a pattern of Obama being an apologist for Islamic terrorism. The violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorist never has anything to do with Islam in the rose-colored view of Barack Obama and his officials and they have all but covered up the role played by Islam in the murder of Americans.
John Kennedy wrote of Winston Churchill “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Barack Obama has thumbed through the thesaurus and mobilized the English language in ways that George Orwell had foreseen — as a way for regimes to hide the truth from people. In this case, camouflaging an enemy.
The Muslim Brotherhood becomes a “mostly secular” group-this gem from Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. Islamic terrorist attacks become “man-caused disasters.” The 2009 Fort Hood massacre is described as a case of “workplace violence” despite the murderer, Nidal Hassan, having business cards describing him as a “soldier of Allah.” When a Chattanooga Navy recruitment center was attacked by Mohammad Abdulazeez, a Muslim who justified his attack because he was displeased by America’s war on terror (and therefore committed terror), the White House all but ignored the murder of our Navy personnel. Those murders merited almost zero notice. The White House has focused a lot of attention on violence on college campuses but was silent in the wake of the recent stabbing spree by Faisal Mohammed at a California university campus.
One wonders at what point, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, did American lives ever matter to Barack Obama? After all, his moral compass, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., celebrated 9/11 as America’s chickens having come to roost and routinely spouted anti-American diatribes as Barack Obama and his family stayed in the pews (Oprah Winfrey and others quit the church). Israel’s Ambassador to America, Michael Oren, read both of Obama’s books and what struck him the most was that Barack Obama never had one good thing to say about America. Not one. Is that what they teach at private prep and Ivy League schools or was that an ideology inherited from his parents?
Meanwhile, Barack Obama extolls the role of Islam in America and the world,fabricating history to do so. He also fabricates in real time, too: erasing the role as much as he can of Islamic radicalism in violence around the world. Indeed, “Islamic radicalism” and “Islamic terrorists” are banished from the lexicon of Obama and all his officials. If one cannot name an enemy it makes it harder to fight them.
Maybe that is the point. …
President Obama has an agenda that is becoming increasingly visible. Marc Thiessen recently wrote in the Washington Post of “Obama’s stubborn, willful complacency on terror”:
Somehow, to paraphrase President Obama, it has become routine— the president dismisses the terrorist threat, only to see terrorists carry out horrific attacks that give lie to his complacency.
On Sept. 6, 2012, Obama boasted at the Democratic National Convention that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” Five days later, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists attacked two U.S. diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
On Jan. 7, 2014, Obama dismissed the Islamic State as the “JV” team in an interview with the New Yorker, adding that the rise of the Islamic State was not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.” That same month, the Islamic State began its march on Iraq, declaring a caliphate, burning people alive in cages and beheading Americans.
Then on Thursday, Obama did it again, telling ABC News, “I don’t think [the Islamic State is] gaining strength” and promising “we have contained them.” The very next day, the Islamic State launched the worst attack on Paris since World War II, killing at least 132 people and wounding more than 350 others.
How many times is this sad spectacle going to repeat itself?
Well, chronologically, for at least one more year. Barack Obama is not interested in pursuing a war against radical Islam — he doesn’t think there is or should be a “war on terror” (another banished phrase) and seems more intent on burnishing Islam, even if it is at our expense and at the cost of our lives. Neera Tanden was right; he doesn’t like people and couldn’t care less what happens to (most) of us:our lives don’t matter.
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Erick Erickson asks:
Global warming is the cause of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world according to Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and other Democrats.Let’s add in the Prince of Wales. With a straight face they make this claim, ignoring any and all other evidence to the contrary.
But if that is so, if global warming causes terrorism, then I think the Democrats need to answer this question: why does global warming only turn Muslims into terrorists?
There are Jews in the Middle East and Africa. There are Christians in the Middle East and Africa. There are animists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others. But only certain Muslims, often from wealthy families, turn into terrorists. The Jews, Christians, animists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and the rest never seem to be affected by global warming in that way.
Perhaps instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to explore why lesbians are fat, the federal government should spend some cash on why global warming turns only Muslims into terrorists.
Or maybe it doesn’t.
Or maybe it does, but not in the way you think. An observation on another post about Loonie Prince Charlie says:
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Today in 1969, John Lennon returned his Member of the Order of the British Empire medal as, in his accompanying note, “a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria–Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts.”
The number one single today in 1972 should have been part of my blog about the worst music of all time:
Today in 1976, The Band gave its last performance, commemorated in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Waltz”:
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In his memoir, Leon Panetta argued that for all of Barack Obama’s strengths, he is missing an essential ingredient of leadership. He lacks “fire,” wrote Obama’s former CIA director and Pentagon chief. “The president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”
Obama has proved Panetta right again and again during his presidency, but never more dangerously so than with his shoulder-shrug approach to ISIS. Obama called it a “J.V. team” before it started beheading Americans. He said it was “contained” before it attacked Paris. Now he’s calling it “a bunch of killers with good social media.”
That’s how you describe a street gang—a bunch of killers with good social media. The Islamic State is no street gang.
Objective observers from across the political spectrum took exception to Obama’s tone. This from Frank Bruni, a liberal-minded New York Times columnist:
He was at his worst just after the Paris attacks, when he communicated as much irritation with the second-guessing of his stewardship as he did outrage over Paris and determination to destroy the Islamic State, or ISIS.
He owed us something different, something more. He’d just said, the day before Paris, that ISIS was contained and that it was weakening, so there was an onus on him to make abundantly clear that he grasped the magnitude of the threat and was intensely focused on it.
From Obama we needed fire. Instead we got embers, along with the un-presidential portrayal of Republicans as sniveling wimps whose fears about refugees were akin to their complaints about tough debate questions.
There it is again—“from Obama we needed fire.”
The man who so aptly diagnosed Obama’s tonal weakness, Leon Panetta, appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday to demand more leadership against ISIS. This time, he stuck to substance—and was no less devastating.
“I think the U.S. has to lead in this effort because what we’ve learned a long time ago is that if the United States does not lead, nobody else will,” Panetta said. He blamed Obama for under-serving his promise to disrupt and defeat ISIS. “I think that the resources applied to that mission, frankly, have not been sufficient to confront that.”
Panetta is not alone among Democrats worried about Obama’s approach. Leading Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told Face the Nation that the United States is not doing enough to fight the Islamic State.
“We need to be aggressive,” she said. “Now.” …
Look at this Twitter feed from Ron Klain, a leading Democratic consultant who served as Obama’s Ebola czar. He recalls the irrational, politically charged calls to close U.S. borders to people from nations stricken by the disease—a panic not unlike the one over Syrian refugees today. “Ebola experience offers three lessons for managing fears,” Klain writes.
1. Acknowledge and address the public’s fear. Don’t dismiss it as illegitimate. “That only exacerbates fears and fuels doubts about leaders’ candor.”
2. Explain the dangers of “giving into fears.” Inaction is riskier than action.
3. “Show that government has a plan to manage the risk—not ignoring the risk, but taking active, serious steps to reduce it.”
Klain didn’t say this but I will: On ISIS, Obama breaks every rule. He minimizes the threat and dismisses our fears, which raises doubts about his candor and capability. An overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of ISIS, a new poll shows, and 81 percent think ISIS will strike the United States.
In July 2013, six months into his second term, I wrote a column that questioned whether Obama would fulfill his enormous potential, whether he even cared anymore about his promises to change Washington, whether he could write the modern rules of the presidency and build a new bully pulpit. I asked, “What if Obama can’t lead?”
I now have my answer.
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“I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” read the headline of an essay for the liberal website Vox earlier this year. The author, who was frightened enough to write under a pseudonym, admitted that he “cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad,” including books by Mark Twain.
The American Association of University Professors last year warned: “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.”
The liberals who run U.S. universities can’t be surprised by the epidemic of grievances on their campuses. Their generation used political correctness to exclude conservative thought from the faculty. Now their students reject academic freedom for everyone. Administrators quickly cave in to their demands, abandoning centuries-old principles of open inquiry.
Students have been taught there are no limits, so they expect their most extreme demands to be taken seriously. “Be quiet!” a Yale undergraduate screamed to the master of her residential college: “It is not about creating an intellectual space!” Students insist on “trigger warnings,” protection from “microaggressions,” and “safe spaces” where no one will challenge their prejudices.
Protesters at Amherst demand a ban on posters favoring free speech. Johns Hopkins students want a mandatory class on “cultural competency.” Wesleyan undergraduates tried to get the campus newspaper defunded for an op-ed critical of Black Lives Matter.
After students at Yale demanded that Calhoun College be renamed because its namesake defended slavery in the early 19th century, students at Princeton demanded its Woodrow Wilson School be renamed because Wilson was a segregationist in the early 20th century. Even Rhodes scholars are joining in: A group last year ended the tradition of toasting their Oxford benefactor because Cecil Rhodes was prime minister of segregated South Africa more than a century ago—never mind that he was a liberal in that era.
The University of Michigan canceled a screening of “American Sniper” when Muslim students protested (the school showed “Paddington” instead). Students at Smith refused media access to a sit-in unless journalists first pledged “solidarity” with the protesters. A University of Missouri professor called for “muscle” to remove a student journalist covering protests. Disinvited campus speakers include former Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice, International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islamism. Comedians Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David avoid campuses for fear of offending.
The good news is that some universities are bucking the trend. The University of Chicago formed a committee under law professor Geoffrey Stone “in light of recent events nationwide that have tested institutional commitments to free and open discourse.”
The committee report, released in January, cited former university president Robert Hutchins, who defended a speech on campus by the 1932 Communist Party presidential nominee by saying the “cure” for objectionable ideas “lies through open discussion rather than through prohibition.” Another former president, Hanna Gray, said: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.”
The Chicago statement on free expression echoes these sentiments: “It is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
Instead, “the university’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the university community, not for the university as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.”
(Disclosures: I am a proud Chicago alum, an embarrassed Yale grad and a mortified Rhodes scholar.)
Purdue and the Princeton faculty have voted to adopt the Chicago principles. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is encouraging other universities to sign up. Meanwhile, expect students to find ever more microaggressions, perhaps including degrees in the names of offending founders: Elihu Yale made his fortune as a British East India Company imperialist. Exploited Chinese laborers built Leland Stanford’s transcontinental railway. James Duke peddled tobacco. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Mellon were robber barons.
Liberal academics are reaping what they sowed. They can now adopt the Chicago approach of tolerating “offensive, unwise, immoral” ideas or resign themselves to producing graduates knowledgeable only about their own pieties.
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The number one single today in 1968:
The number one single today in 1973:
The number one British single today in 1976:
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The college football and NFL schedule-makers have arranged things so that the Packers play Minnesota and the Badgers play Minnesota in the same week.
The Packers started the week correctly by ending their three-game losing streak in thumping the Vikings 30–13.
Given how the Vikings and Packers have been playing up until Sunday, how did that happen? The Minneapolis Star Tribune game story says:
Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers aren’t quite ready to give up control of the NFC North. The young Vikings weren’t poised enough to take it from them either.
In a showdown between the top two teams in the division, Rodgers threw for 212 yards and two touchdowns Sunday as the Packers beat the uncharacteristically undisciplined Vikings 30-13 at TCF Bank Stadium. The outcome put the longtime rivals in a first-place tie with identical 7-3 records, but the win gave the Packers the tiebreaker.
Rodgers and the Packers pulled away early in the fourth quarter when Rodgers rolled to his right and whizzed a 27-yard touchdown pass to Packers wide receiver James Jones at the edge of the end zone. Veteran cornerback Terence Newman had tight coverage on the play, but Rodgers completed a pass that few quarterbacks could.
That touchdown put the Packers up 27-13 and they were able to hang on for the win thanks to a fumble by running back Adrian Peterson inside Packers territory and a deep ball that quarterback Teddy Bridgewater threw a half step ahead of wide receiver Mike Wallace, who had sped behind the Packers secondary.
Eventually, with Packers fans loudly chanting “Go Pack Go!”, running back Eddie Lacy, who topped 100 rushing yards for the first time this season, and the Packers ran out the clock. …
It looked as if the Packers would be taking a 9-6 lead into halftime, but Newman was called for a 50-yard defensive pass interference penalty while defending Packers wide receiver Jeff Janis down the right sideline. Rodgers capitalized with a 10-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Randall Cobb with six seconds left in the half.
The Vikings, who were one of the league’s least-penalized teams entering Sunday, were flagged for eight penalties for 110 yards, their highest total of the season.
The Star Tribune’s Chip Scoggins lists bullet points:
— The Vikings have been disciplined in terms of penalties this season, but they completely self-destructed with costly penalties. They racked up 85 penalty yards before halftime, compared to zero for the Packers.
— The Vikings offensive line had a rough game. Teddy Bridgewater faced consistent pressure, was sacked six times and Adrian Peterson had little room to run. Bridgewater also didn’t help matters by holding onto the ball too long on a number of dropbacks.
— Aaron Rodgers showed that he’s perfectly fine. His tight-rope dart to James Jones for 27-yard touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter killed the Vikings’ brief momentum and was a throw very few quarterbacks can make.
— Cordarrelle Patterson’s personal foul penalty for head-butting kicker Mason Crosby after a long kickoff return in the fourth quarter was foolish and completely unnecessary. It was a guy not using his head at a critical moment in the game.
What kind of butthead head-butts a kicker?
The St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Bob Sansevere was paying attention when Packers wide receiver James Jones was talking:
James Jones came up huge Sunday for the Green Bay Packers, particularly in the second half when he made a spectacular sideline catch in a drive he punctuated with a touchdown reception and two-point conversion catch. …
In the scoring drive that ended with his 27-yard TD catch as he fell out of the end zone early in the fourth quarter, Jones beat Xavier Rhodes down the left sideline and made an eye-popping 37-yard catch, bobbling the ball and regaining control of it just before hitting the ground. Fox showed numerous replays of the catch from several camera angles.
Jones was a bit cantankerous afterward.
“People wanted to throw us in the garbage after the last three weeks, but everybody knows what we have in the locker room,” he said. “Teams around the league that are 5-5 are getting praise like they’re the best team in the league. We’re 6-3 and we’re (perceived as) the worst team in the league. We’re 6-3. We knew we could play good football. We just had to come out and show we were in a drought. We came out and made some plays.” …
BS: What was different about this game from the past three, all losses?
JJ: We made plays. Like I told you guys all week, the tough plays, the tough catches we were making the first six weeks, we weren’t making. We made them today. Tough catches. Ran the ball very well. Aaron (Rodgers) made some crazy throws, and we made plays. We did what we do.
BS: Did you play with a chip on your shoulder after three straight losses?
JJ: I play with a chip on my shoulder every week. I’ve been cut by two teams. …
BS: Safe to say the Packers sent a message to everyone else that you plan to be a factor come playoff time?
JJ: We’ve got a lot of work to do, man. We can’t jump to that. There’s a lot of football left. Hopefully, we can catch our stride and be playing some good football when playoff time comes. …
BS: Do you think wearing a hoodie under your uniform will start a trend among wide receivers?
JJ: It’ll be a sweet trend. I’ve been practicing in it every day, hot, cold. I’m used to it.
Others were a bit cantankerous too for different reasons. The Pioneer Press’ Chris Tomasson:
When the eyes of America are on the Vikings, they too often haven’t shown up. And cornerback Captain Munnerlyn is getting tired of it.
In the battle for first place Sunday in the NFC North, Minnesota was manhandled 30-13 by Green Bay at TCF Bank Stadium. It ended a five-game Vikings winning streak and left both teams with 7-3 records — and Green Bay with the tiebreaker advantage.
“Every time we seem like it’s a bigtime game, excuse my language, but we (urinate) down our leg every single time,” Munnerlyn said. “We’ve definitely got to fix this if we want to take this team to the next level, to the playoffs, to the Super Bowl.”
Munnerlyn pointed to the Vikings getting walloped at San Francisco 20-3 in the nationally televised season opener on Monday Night Football. In their continued quest for a marquee win, they also lost last month at Denver, but at least that one was close at 23-20.
“You’ve got to be able to win when the whole world is watching,” Munnerlyn said.
Sunday’s game was televised to most of the nation on Fox. Fans saw a Vikings team leading the NFL in fewest penalties get flagged eight times for 110 yards.
Coach Mike Zimmer takes great pride in the Vikings being the more physical team. Against the Packers, they were pushed around in all facets.
Minnesota quarterback Teddy Bridgewater was sacked six times. And with Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers completing just 16 of 34 passes for 212 yards, running back Eddie Lacy pounded his way for 100 yards on 22 carries.
“Offensively, defensively, they were the most physical team,” Vikings running back Adrian Peterson said. “They outplayed us. They wanted it more than us.”
After rushing for 529 yards the past four games, Peterson managed just 45 yards on 13 carries as the Packers keyed on him. When he did have a chance to redeem himself, he fumbled.
With the Vikings trailing 27-13 early in the fourth quarter, Peterson gained 10 yards to the Green Bay 32. He passed the 1,000-yard mark for the season on that run but lost a fumble, and that was the game.
“They caught me slipping on that one, and it really hurt us,” Peterson said.
Plenty, though, hurt the Vikings. The Vikings came up flat in a game that was big enough for Zimmer to have T-shirts made up for the players that said “Beat Green Bay.”
The Pioneer Press’ Tom Powers:
The parking ramps filled up early. There was a steady, guttural rumble in the air. And walking toward TCF Bank Stadium we could observe a gaudy mix of green, yellow and purple all simmering in a toxic 80-proof broth. There are people today whose eyeballs are throbbing.
What happened after that? Don’t be silly. The same thing that always happens.
The Vikings lowered their horns in deference to the alpha males of the NFC North. The “new” Vikings? The “crumbling” Packers? Not until the Vikings quit clutching their petticoats at the mere sight of those Green Bay helmets. Packers 30, Vikings 13. The king is not dead.
No matter what happens the rest of the season, it remains clear that the Vikings still will have to get past the Packers on the way to anything important. And it remains just as clear that they are helpless to do so.
“That’s just not Viking football,” guard Brandon Fusco said. “Viking football is playing physical, which we did not do. It’s beating our man in front of us, which we didn’t do. It’s controlling the game.”
Which they didn’t do on either side of the line of scrimmage.
A lot of hard-earned credibility was lost Sunday. The supposedly poised Vikings got all twitchy. Disciplined play, proper execution, fierce determination — in other words, the hallmarks of the 2015 Vikings — were absent against the Packers. Well, old habits die hard. Green Bay now sports a 10-1-1 mark against Minnesota in their past 12 meetings.
And I don’t like the Vikings’ chances in Green Bay in the final game of the season at Lambeau, either, especially if the Packers are playing for something that they consider important.
“I wouldn’t say we took a step backwards,” linebacker Anthony Barr said.
A giant leap, then?
“I think coming off a three-game losing streak they were going to come out and give us their best shot,” Barr said. “And that’s what we got today.”
Yes, and right in the mouth.
How does the least-penalized team in the league get flagged eight times?
“I don’t know,” coach Mike Zimmer said.
What about Teddy Bridgewater getting turned into hamburger by the Packer onslaught?
“I don’t know,” Zimmer said.
Are the Vikings physical equals to the Packers?
“I don’t know,” Zimmer said.
Me either. In all, Zimmer prefaced eight answers during his postgame news conference with “I don’t know” before adding “I’m not trying to be coy.” I’m not sure if he was just trying to keep from overreacting or truly was baffled.
“I think people are looking at this like it’s uncharacteristic and this and that, but (the Packers) played good,” Zimmer said. “We knew we’d get their best shot. There was no doubt we were going to get their best shot today. So they came in and played good.”
That didn’t sound very alpha male-ish. Yet Zimmer did not look panicked. He left that to every other living soul that watched the game. This was not the signature, marquee victory that was supposed to mark the changing of the guard in the division.
In some ways, Sunday’s contest showcased the NFL at its finest. With Roger Goodell on hand dishing out compliments with regards to Adrian Peterson’s character, we witnessed a true spectacle — a frenzied populace that left behind in the wake of head-banging music a trail of empty beer cans, queso drippings and disappointment.
It was temporary life and death. And now, the wilding over, people return to their offices on Monday hoarse and exhausted. Distress will permeate the atmosphere. At least, around here. But Minnesota fans, at some point, will have to ask themselves if it’s all worth it. This series has not been competitive. At the end of Sunday’s game, the cheeseheads still can laugh and ask: “Who’s your daddy?”
Sunday’s game was supposed to mark a turning point. A victory would have put Minnesota in the catbird seat for a division title. And perhaps it would have signified a last gasp from the Aaron Rodgers era Packers. In truth, Rodgers looked like his old magical self on about every other throw. But that’s all he needed against the Vikings.
The Vikings got beat up. All their bad old traits resurfaced against the confident Pack, from failure to pick up the blitz to a crucial Adrian Peterson fumble. It was like old times, like it always is against the Packers, who now are technically in first place.
Maybe the Vikings will go into Atlanta next week and win. Then maybe they’ll come home and beat Seattle. People would enjoy that. But in the back of everyone’s mind, the Packers still lurk. They continue to stand in the way of everything. And the Vikings don’t yet have an answer.
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Today in 1899, the world’s first jukebox was installed at the Palais Royal Hotel in San Francisco.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 