Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I Told You That This President Would Be Treated Differently

The microscope for a Black (biracial) man is almost always bigger. The comments from Republicans regarding Obama not being forceful enough about the incident on Northwest flight 253 have been ridiculous. I knew he wouldn't be able to relax during his family trip.

It's ironic that during his speech yesterday, he mentioned that Americans were united and that the nations resolve was greater than that of the extremists. My immediate response to the idea of Americans being united was.... No they aren't! It's ironic that he would make the comment at the very moment when we have so much Right wing commentary designed to weaken him and challenge his legitimacy as President. They are constantly hoping for his demise. Some of these jackasses would celebrate if something terrible happened to him. I don't recall Reagan or George H. W. Bush dealing with this kind of division and hatred. Clinton had a rough Presidency...and even I hated many of his policies....but even then the level of poison was not as bad as it is today.

And they are all blowing their dog whistles this week. Listening to these news reporters and pundits today gave me an upset stomach. I eventually had to switch to the History Channel. On MSNBC and CNN you had plain old stupidity on display... with idiot reporters asking where suspect Umar Abdulmutallab would be held - confusing this issue with Gitmo (when they are two completely different situations). They didn't seem satisfied when they were told that this terror suspect would be dealt with in the same way that all terrorists are dealt with who commit their crimes in the U.S. or on U.S. aircraft - he will be held on U.S. soil and prosecuted in a Federal District court. They didn't want to accept that answer....and continued to conflate and confuse the two issues of Gitmo and terrorist acts committed in the U.S. They didn't seem to have a clue that the issue of Gitmo involves non-State actors who were picked up overseas...and whose confessions may or may not have been coerced through torture or by some other less than constitutional means....making their cases difficult to adjudicate properly. But when that issue was addressed, they wanted to find something else wrong. I had to turn off CNN's Erica Hill. Great looking woman (Hot!). But she's as dumb as a potted plant. The same seems to be the case for most of the other "news" anchors.

And of course Faux News is doing what it always does.

What do I mean by the dog whistles? I mean blaming Obama.... which I knew they were going to do. Yes his administration allowed lapses. I have written for years about the gaping hole in Homeland non-Security...mainly the visa system.. which Al Qaeda apparently exploited once again. The visa problem was never fixed after 9/11 and it won't be fixed after this incident. There should be greater restrictions on Visa applications coming from certain Countries...and certain regions. Student visas and tourist visas should receive greater scrutiny. Applicants for student visas from certain regions should get tougher background checks...and there should be more limits on tourist visas... and they should be tied to watch lists in the U.S. and in other Countries (if such a program had been in place, this suspect would have never been able to gain access to the plane).

Obama should pay the price for that joke Janet Napolitano. If you recall... I slammed Obama for picking Napolitano for DHS Secretary. Now perhaps some people are able to understand why. The idea of someone with no background or real experience in Security...heading up the largest security conglomeration in the history of the World just rubs me the wrong way. It was purely a political appointment... in a post where such appointments should be avoided. An experienced person should be in that post... and Obama passed up a whole slew of well qualified people. Obama has himself to blame for the mistakes she made over the past week. But that's another story.

You can also hear the dog whistles saying something else.... They are attempting to blame Obama in other ways. They are suggesting a link between Ft. Hood and Abdulmutallab when there is really no such link...at least there is no information that has been made public about such a link. Which begs the question... why in the Hell are these anchors and pundits working so hard to tie these two things together? They want to suggest that Obama is asleep at the switch and is weak on terror. Some even want to suggest that Obama can't be trusted because he too is African (his father being from Kenya and all)....and they want to suggest that this incident only proves that there is actually something to their lunacy. Yes... xenophobia and the Republican media propaganda machine are at work this week. In fact, it never takes a break.

That's what Obama will have to get used to for the rest of his time in office. Just because he wants to take a break...doesn't mean that the noise machine will give him one. The Right wing propaganda machine is always going full blast. It never takes a day off. More troubling... the so-called friendly or fair-er media like MSNBC and CNN often take their talking points from the Right...and will run with all sorts of strange narratives that don't make much sense...and are really aimed at weakening the Presidency. You have legitimate news organizations giving credence to the dog whistle nonsense from Faux and the rest of the Right wing media....by simply mentioning these narratives (when they should know better.... and would know better if they had real investigative journalists).

Another year of this idiocy?

You couldn't pay me enough to be the President of these Divided States....or to be a politician in any setting in this Country. The reason = a stupid clueless, uninformed, gullible, fickle and unengaged citizenry.

1 comment:

Roderick said...

AI, I don't think you are giving Obama enough credit for his current predicament.

Firstly Obama has shown incredible weakness and timidity concerning his domestic agenda.

His first fail was the stimulus package which he allowed a single Senator to alter and as predicted by economists like Krugman the stimulus package was too little, too late and hasn't produced the results that the Obama administration had predicted.

Furthermore Obama spent too much political capital on the health care issue. Again his penchant for being passive when a heavy hand was required allowed the DINO's like Liberman, Ben Nelson and Landrieu to ultimately design the final Senate health care bill have given Democratic moderates like Laundrieu and Evan Byah a sense of importantant as they tell the White House to not even consider pushing cap and trade legislation in 2010.

Instead of having a 'Come to Jesus' meeting with the Blue Dogs in the House and DINOs in the Senate Obama outsourced the centerpiece issue of his presidency (health care reform) to limp-wristed Reid and incompetent Pelosi.

Now you're surprised that Obama is being set upon by the hyenas on the Right?

They have been salivating because Obama actually wasted time practicing his bipartisan rhetoric from the speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

Obama has a choice--open up an extra large can of whoop azz on the Right or resign himself to being a one-term presidetn