Buy American, Vote Obama. What? (Updated 5x)

If ever an Obamaganda campaign ploy is destined for blowback, this is the one—in so many ways.

“Citizen of the world” Obama now wants to tell everyone they should “Buy American”—not exactly an original thought, just Google the phrase for yourself.

Oh, by the way, vote for him. That’s like saying “Take Out the Trash, Vote for Obama” or “A Chicken in Every Pot, Vote for Obama”. (Sorry, so many nifty examples come to mind.)

Greg Sargent over at TPM Election Central writes that the new logo—”Buy American, Vote Obama”—will be rolled out today in Pennsylvania in the Obama campaign’s response to (”to poke fun at”) presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain’s “recent claim that he would rather hear the roar of ‘50,000 Harleys’ than the cheering of 200,000 Berliners.”

In RBO’s opinion, the attempt to mock and jab at McCain conveys other not-so-subtle messages.

Buy American? Where have we heard that before?

Well, there is the Buy American Act, which the Wikipedia tells us “was passed in 1933 by the U.S Congress, mandating preferences for the purchase of domestically produced goods in direct procurements by the United States government.”

Likewise, perfectly suited to the Obama way, the president is allowed to make an end run around this. Again, from the Wikipedia, we find:

The President has the authority to waive the Buy American Act within the terms of a reciprocal agreement or otherwise in response to the provision of reciprocal treatment to U.S. producers. Under the 1979 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Government Procurement Code, the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) 1996 Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), the United States provides access to the government procurement of certain U.S. agencies for goods from the other parties to those agreements. However, the Buy American Act was excluded from the GPA’s coverage.

Yup! You got it! The US policy is to “Buy American” unless the president wants to waive it in favor of all those trade agreements. Remember that Obama NAFTA policy “refinement” back during the primaries? Don’t think Obama would not do some “refining” of his “Buy American” campaign when the time comes? Fools!

Can we say pandering, as well? Since the Obama campaign plans to roll “Buy American” out in Pennsylvania, part of Middle America, does no one besides RBO see this as an attempt to pander to American workers? Ever heard of “Made in the U.S.A.”? Fools!

And, by the way, wonder how this Obamaganda campaign is going to play with all those world leaders who thought Sen. Obama really is the “citizen of the world” he purports to be.

To be perfectly honest, if they haven’t figured out by now that Sen. Waffles, well, waffles, they’ve not been paying attention. In true Obamaspeak, he never means what he says and rarely says what he means. Fools!

Bottom line? “Buy American, Vote Obama” will have just about as long a shelf life once Obama got into the Oval Office as arugula. “Buy American” will just disappear into the trash bin along with “hope” and “change”. Fools!

Update #1: First of all, see Uppity Woman’s post Buy Obama and Wear Him Too!. (That woman can’t keep her paws off anything!)

Second, FreedomFairy, reliably ever on the job, going places where the rest of us fear to tread, offers us this Works Progress Administration (WPA) logo “created in April 1935 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential order, and activated with congressional funding in July of that year (the U.S. Congress funded it annually but did not set it up).”

Finally, away from the keyboard for most of the day, RBO just happened to see more than a few reminders on the highways and byways. Does this look familiar? With a bit of one—the WPA logo—and a little more of the other—the Chrysler trademark—some totally inspired Obamagandist came up with another “original” Barky brand.

Update #2: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air first headlined with O look! Another O logo!:

The Barack Obama campaign learned one lesson from its Vero Possumus fiasco, and apparently only one lesson: Latin is elitist. They still haven’t figured out that drawing fancy logos for a candidate reminds people of high-school elections.

Also casting about for the source of Obama’s latest ripoff, Morrissey sees a resemblance to the Flying A service logo.

To quote Tom Maguire at Just One Minute:

Buy American, Mock Obama

The Obama campaign pushes back against their own excellent European Adventure with their latest “Buy American, Vote Obama” campaign. How goofy is this? TigerHawk says “transparently inauthentic”. Dan Riehl says “A very dumb move”.

I’ll just settle for “Huh? John McCain is not American?”.

Update #3: The Obamagandists really were not counting on all the pure mirth and chuckling they would inspire with this latest O-fiasco. Reading through comments on Uppity’s crosspost at No Quarter provides another possible trademark snatch—as well as subliminal messaging—Pepsi!

Update #4: And the suggestions just keep on rolling in. Katiebird at The Confluence asks “Where’s the Beef?” Pretty darn close, we’d say.

Update #5: And then there are elusive visuals that dance around the edges of one’s memory before they come into focus.