Barack Obama has announced yet another grand initiative to try and prop up an administration crippled and hobbled by its own ineptitude. Remember the stimulus that was supposed to create all those shovel-ready jobs? That didn’t work, so he tried a "green jobs initiative" – another bust. More recently “economic equality” and a minimum-wage increase was shelved by Harry Reid, who could barely get half of his party to sign on to it. And my favorite, the Affordable Care Act, or what I like to call the “if you like your doctor you can keep him” bill that we all now see has lived down to expectations. Now we have a new distraction… I mean, “initiative” with the nice flowery name of ‘My Brother’s Keeper’. The president claims that this program will put minority boys on a path toward success, but we’ve seen this president’s follow through, and it is safe to say that this new deal is probably as vapid as every other empty promise offered from the king of promises.

What’s so ironic about this latest scam is it’s from a man who is not even a keeper of his own biological half-brother, who lives in a hut in Kenya. When George Obama needed some help, he didn’t call his brother, the most powerful man in the world. Instead he called Dinesh D’Souza, the man who interviewed him for the movie 2012: Obama’s America; and became his friend. Obama says his Brother’s Keeper program “Goes to the very heart of why I ran for president,” whatever that means -- the media, being what it is, didn’t bother to ask. The specifics of any Obama plan doesn’t really matter to them; what does is the appearance that he cares and is doing something honorable. During his press conference, in order to show that he knows what young fatherless minority youths go through, Obama gave a personal account of his life as a young black man, how he made bad choices and lived a life without his own father. Poor thing just forgot to mention that he was a pampered ne’er do well who lived with his wealthy grandparents in the picturesque state of Hawaii – I can just feel the tears coming on.

Speaking of tears, someone please give CNN’s Don Lemon a hankie -- he was an emotional basket case after Obama’s announcement.  You would have thought Obama had given a speech equivalent to that of MLK’s "I Have a Dream." Lemon was breathless with excitement that Obama finally said something that he’d been waiting years to hear. Lemon also mentioned that Obama “Has a responsibility as a black man, to help that from whence he came.” Pardon me while I roll my eyes and try to prevent my breakfast from returning from whence it came. But the most egregious thing uttered by Lemon was this statement; “You weigh how much you should criticize the president because he is black.” There wasn’t much doubt before that the media treaded lightly when it came to criticizing our first black president, but Lemon ripped the barely concealed veil off of so-called journalistic objectivity.

Look, I’ve got nothing against helping out young boys, but why limit it to black and Hispanic kids? Oh, don’t yell at your monitors, the question is rhetorical. I know as well as you that this president is a deeply partisan and racially divisive man, who continually pits us, one against the other, with incendiary racially charged claims. And Obama needs a win, and maybe with this announcement, he thinks his poll numbers will rise like the tides; maybe the country will forget that ObamaCare has caused their insurers to cancel health plans that they liked; and maybe, just maybe America will disremember that Barack Obama knowingly lied to them for years. But this initiative is the sign of a desperate president, tantamount to a drowning man flailing unseen in the ocean when help is on shore miles away.

No longer can Obama charm a nation with empty words, he has shown that he is simply unable to put politics aside. With his signature legislation crashing and burning like the Hindenburg, and his poll numbers crumbling faster than the Chicago Cubs in June, he is once again diverting our attention by bombarding the news cycle with empty programs and longwinded speeches. Deploying the same smoke and mirror tactics that he’s been using since he began his career agitating communities long ago. This weak and feckless president has decided to try and sell us on this Brother’s Keeper program while he ignores more pressing items on his agenda. With a willing media, Obama will look the other way while the Ukraine is in turmoil, and a revolt is overtaking Venezuela, while Iran gives us the finger and the world in general is losing confidence in the U.S. Obama is once again trying to deflect responsibility when things go wrong, while at the same time taking all the credit for any small thing he sees as a success.

Alice Nelson writes movie reviews at DVD Verdict