Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’

Updates I and II below and poll added

This has been going on for awhile and doesn’t seem to be going away. A plan to build a community center and mosque a few blocks (600 ft.) from Ground Zero has been dubbed the Ground Zero Mosque. It has, as you can imagine, sparked a ton of controversy. The mosque recently was approved by NYC’s Landmark Preservation Commission.

Of course this isn’t the end of it. President Obama recently discussed the issue, asserting his commitment to religious freedom, which is no small feat considering 70% of Americans oppose it. (Obama did clarify that he believes it is their constitutional right, but that doesn’t mean he supports their decision.)  Mayor Bloomberg supported their right to build the mosque with a stirring speech. One of the stronger parts:

The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked … Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God’s love and mercy.

He received a lot of praise and hate for his speech. In my opinion, he nailed it. We can’t call ourselves “The Land of the Free” if we stop a completely legitimate group from practicing their religion based on where it stands.

People like Newt Gingrich have been throwing (more…)

Wikileaks just released 90,000 pages of classified documents from the Afghanistan War that chronicle six years (for more information on Wikileaks and this specific leak, click here. The documents were sent to The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel, likely for maximum exposure. The documents show that we have been mislead (click this link for loads of information and pieces of the leaks) about the progress being made, which is no surprise. From the New York Times:

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.

The fact that Pakistan is suspected (more…)

As I have said before, Obama has continued several of Bush’s policies regarding the War on Terror. He has continued ignoring human rights in his policies, which is the opposite of what he promised. This has been the area in which I am most disappointed in Obama. Jon is less than amused as well.

Enjoy people calling him soft on terror.

Adam Feser

President Obama joined the man he was honoring with a Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Sir Paul McCartney, along with Jack White, Jerry Seinfeld, Stevie Wonder, Dave Grohl, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, and many others onstage to sing the final parts of “Hey Jude.” I don’t care who you are, this is pretty awesome.

Apparently PBS will air the show on July 28. The show sounds pretty cool. Jack White even performed. Here’s the video of Obama’s speech:

Enjoy the awesomeness.

Adam Feser

For those more interested in facts than falsehoods and fear mongering, you may want to try out The Other 95%. The group has formed as a response to people that protest tax increases when they’ve actually received tax cuts. Here’s a paragraph from their page describing the group:

American politics have been hijacked by the noisy lies of the teaparty fringe. They complain about being taxed too much, but do they even know that 95% of Americans received a tax cut from Obama [1]. And this time the cuts didn’t go to just the super wealthy few [2] like they did under Bush, but to folks like us just trying to get by. We can’t let the tea partiers drown out the truth about Obama’s tax cuts. Instead, let’s make sure that Americans get the facts – not just the hype.

I suggest going to their site and checking it out. If you aren’t one of the 5%, you may enjoy it. Here’s a video of a sign proclaiming the facts in the center of a tea party rally. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of fearful, misinformed people with a sign right in the middle of them telling them why they’re wrong.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Twins fans.

Adam Feser

Norman Ornstein had a solid article in the Washington Post yesterday. In it, he peruses the various claims that Obama is a radical socialist.

GOP politicians and the conservative media have attacked him consistently, often making outrageous claims. Gingrich called Obama “the most radical president in American history.” We’ve all heard cries of socialism. But under any scrutiny, these claims don’t add up.

There is no public option in the health care plan. The mandate is a Republican idea. As Ornstein puts it:

It would be fair to describe the new act as Romneycare crossed with the managed-competition bill proposed in 1994 by Republican Sens. John Chafee, David Durenberger, Charles Grassley and Bob Dole — in other words, as a moderate Republican plan. Among its supporters is Durenberger, no one’s idea of a radical socialist.

On domestic policy:

What about Obama’s other domestic initiatives? The stimulus was anything but radical — indeed, many mainstream observers, me included, thought it was too timid in size and scope given the enormity of the problems. The plan could have been more focused on swift and directed stimulus. It included such diversions as a fix for the alternative minimum tax — at the insistence of Grassley. And it excluded some “shovel-ready” ideas such as school construction — at the insistence of Republican Sen. Susan Collins. It did not include the kind of public works jobs program employed by Franklin Roosevelt. Nonetheless, it has been widely credited with ameliorating the worst effects of the downturn and helping to move us back toward economic growth. The widely criticized Troubled Assets Relief Program — initiated by Obama’s predecessor — is now returning to the Treasury most of the taxpayer money laid out to keep us from depression and deflation.

On foreign policy and claims of secularism:

The nuclear treaty with Russia excoriated by Palin, Savage and others was endorsed by Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the GOP’s resident foreign policy expert, and it was crafted under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was first appointed to that post by George W. Bush. Obama’s approach to terrorism has been similar to Bush’s, while more aggressively targeting leaders of terrorist groups; his larger foreign policy has received the seal of approval from James Baker, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and secretary of state to George H.W. Bush. Obama’s energy policies include more nuclear power and more offshore drilling. Obama’s education policies have received wide acclaim across the political spectrum. The “secular” president has shored up and supported federal faith-based initiatives, to the dismay of many in his base.

The conclusion:

This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics

Why does everyone just believe what these people are saying? There is obviously rage over how horrible this leftist is, though the evidence says otherwise. It’s frustrating.

Enjoy rising above the sensationalist rhetoric.

Adam Feser

Joe Conason has a nice little op-ed on Sarah’s latest falsehood to draw thunderous applause. She basically called Obama a wimp for wanting to reduce the amount of nuclear missiles then said Reagan wouldn’t have done that because he was such a tough guy. I already wrote about it, but this is an interesting question. Does she know she’s lying, or is she just woefully ignorant? Either way, it’s making it difficult to see why she would make a good candidate.

Some of the better points from the article:

Listening to Sarah Palin, it is often difficult to determine whether her remarks demonstrate ignorance or dishonesty. She frequently waxes on about Ronald Reagan, for instance, revered ancestor of today’s far right, whose real record bears little resemblance to the fantasies of extremists like her.

Now, Palin usually sounds bereft of even the most basic knowledge of history, let alone diplomacy, but in this case she had already graduated from college by the time Reagan decided to encourage peaceful change in the Soviet Union and rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely. In other words, she might be expected to remember those events, however vaguely, without reading a book.

Reagan’s utopian aspirations were never achieved, of course, but the elimination of nuclear weapons was certainly what he proposed, more than once, in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan’s bold decision to cultivate Gorbachev and promote détente required him to dismiss the reflexive stupidity of his own base.

A boiling zeal to discredit Obama as dupe or traitor has led critics on the right to falsify the content and implications of both the START treaty and the Nuclear Posture Review. Their lying necessarily includes a distorted account of the Reagan presidency — very much in the old Soviet style of making inconvenient history disappear. But facts are stubborn things, as the Gipper once quipped, and the undeniable fact about Palin’s sainted idol is that in his approach to nuclear disarmament, he was closer to Barack Obama than to belligerent kooks like her.

Enjoy the win, Twins fans, it’s the last you’ll get on the Red Sox.

Adam Feser

Salon’s War Room has an article about Palin’s speech at the SRLC. It mostly details her horrible stand-up (“How’s that hopey changey thing working out?” being an example of a joke, I guess?) and how loving the crowd was. It’s pretty much the same things she has always said and the same loving crowd. But there was an interesting exchange that occurred after her speech:

As the delegates filtered out of the hall afterwards, I stopped one woman randomly, figuring her own Palin button meant she was a big fan. True enough, she was. “It was awesome,” she said, identifying herself only as Loretta from east Tennessee. “She’s wonderful. She thinks the way America thinks, she knows what we want, and she’s not afraid to voice it… We need change, but we can’t afford Obama’s change — he’s killing us.” Palin, she told me, would bring the right kind of changes — jobs, prosperity, God back in our country. “This is a Christian country, it’s not a Muslim country,” she said. “We have Muslims here, and they are welcome here. But we as Christians have rights, too.” Obama, she insisted, is a Muslim (which is why she wouldn’t tell me her last name or exactly where she lives). So surely, Loretta would be voting for Palin if she ran in two years? “I don’t think she’s ready,” she said. “I love her. I don’t think we’re ready for her as president yet… I think she still needs to educate herself a little more on foreign policy.”

This woman that believes Obama is a Muslim thinks Palin needs more than two years to educate herself on foreign policy, though she loves her. I never thought I’d agree with a Palin-loving, “Obama’s a Muslim”-saying, SRLC-attending woman, but here we are.

Enjoy folksy platitudes framed as wisdom.

Adam Feser

Barack Obama recently signed a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia. The pact has us both reducing our nuclear arms by a third (so that we have over 1,500, I believe). There is also a pledge that we will not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states or states that are adhering to the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This, of course, means several countries are not a part of the new agreement. Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel would not fit the criteria laid out.

This has led to Republicans pitching a fit about reducing arms and big scary monsters out there that will now overtake us and pillage our cities. One such person was Sarah Palin. She compared it to getting into a playground fight, letting someone punch you in the face, and not retaliating. Because, you know, you should be able to respond with a nuclear bomb to being punched in the face. And those gosh darn wars are just so cute, like those danged childhood fights. I remember this one time Trig (or Trip or Shoot or Flyfish or whatever his name is) got punched in the face. Since schools have reduced arms and students’ rights to carry them, Trig couldn’t even shoot the kid. Instead he just punched back, it was broken up and they went to detention. Can you believe that?

But I digress. When Obama was asked about Palin’s comments, he said, “I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues.” Prodded further about Republicans fears, Obama continued, “What I would say to them is, is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.”

Check and mate. (Now king me.)

But if you want to see just how ridiculous the reaction to Obama’s agreement with Russia is and how predictably awesome Fox’s coverage is, there is no one better than Jon Stewart. Enjoy yet another hilarious Daily Show clip in which he exposes how one-sided Fox’s coverage is and just how ignorant Reagan-worshipers are of his actual stances.

I also want to say/ask this: Why would we need nuclear weapons to respond to a non-nuclear attack? Why? Have we not proven our ability to destroy a country completely without nuclear weapons? We hang out in doors and fly remote-controlled planes that devastate countries. If we get punched in the face, to use Palin’s horrible analogy, we are more than capable of killing the person with any number of weapons. But we need the option to nuke a country? Really? Someone who agrees with these people explain to me how the nuclear option is necessary. Because the notion seems dumb to me.

Enjoy knowing we still have enough nukes to destroy the world.

Adam Feser

Biden pulled a great one today:

While letting the president know how awesome this is, Biden said, “This is a big f*#@ing deal.”

When he’s right, he’s right, which is the same sentiment shared by the White House.

Enjoy success.

Adam Feser