How can one tell when Barack Obama is bluffing? When he assumes his alter ego, Captain Kickass. Even before he gets to the dire warning that he’s not bluffing, though, Obama manages to tell a hilarious whopper in bolstering his threat to take action. Obama wonders aloud why people are surprised when he does what he says he will do:

And one of the interesting things that’s happened over the last 18 months as president is for some reason, people keep on being surprised when I do what I said I was going to do. So I say I’m going to reform our health care system and people think, well, gosh, that’s not smart politics, maybe we should hold off. Or I say, we’re going to move forward on don’t ask, don’t tell, and somehow people say, well, why are you doing that, I’m not sure that’s good politics.

I’m doing it because I said I was going to do it. And I think it’s the right thing to do. And people should learn that lesson about me, because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up, because I’m calling their bluff. And we’ll see how much of that — how much of the political arguments they’re making right now are real, and how much of it was just politics.

Is he kidding? It’s probably too much to pull together a list of every promise Obama has broken since taking office, but just this weekend his White House reversed themselves on closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, which was supposed to define his presidency.  In the past weekend, Obama has also refused to reaffirm the pledge he made for over two years not to raise taxes on middle-class workers.  Obama once promised to pull America out of Iraq in 16 months after taking office; we’ve just passed 17 months, and Obama has not deflected from George Bush’s plan by an iota.  And that’s just those within the past ten days.

But more to the point, the people “hollering about deficits” have done so because of the spending of Barack Obama and his Democrats.  If he wanted to take action, he could have just stopped spending so much money, and no one would be “hollering” about it.  It’s akin to a man who raids a safe and then warns that if people want security, he may have to charge them for an alarm system.  It’s a vain, hypocritical bluff, which is a feature of this President to which his nation has begun to become accustomed.  (via Nino S)

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!