Republicans: We want to negotiate concerning the upcoming budget.
Obama: OK.
Republicans: We need you to completely shut down the one program that was your biggest accomplishment, that was passed by both Houses of Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, and which we have spent the last three years trying to destroy but have been unable to.
Obama: Uh, no, that’s not going to happen.
Republicans: Obama is refusing to negotiate! It’s all his fault the government has shut down!
You can’t make this stuff up. What used to be the domain of the Onion is now mainstream news.
Comedians and pundits have constantly said that if Obama supported something, the Republicans would oppose it just because it’s Obama. We’ve seen evidence of it plenty of times — the Republican health care plan was great until Obama endorsed it, and now it’s “Obamacare” and terribly evil. Republicans hate Russia and Putin, except Putin is against Obama so Putin’s a great guy now. Raising the debt ceiling was perfectly fine the many times George W. Bush did it, but when Obama wants it? And don’t get me started on who wants to go to war.
“If Obama came out in favor of drinking water, the Republicans would come out against it!” people joked.
Well, guess what.
Michelle Obama told kids it was important to hydrate and drink plenty of water. You know, the same thing doctors have been saying for years. Pretty non-controversial, one would think.
But no. The conservative crazies’ heads exploded. Rush Limbaugh railed against Big Government telling us we should drink water. Conservative newspapers and bloggers said that her suggestion that water was good for you was “faulty science.” And other critics tried their best to spin her view into something evil and corrupt that they could rail against.
Next up: Obama says oxygen is nice. Conservatives, in protest, stop breathing.
Michelle Obama and her big jugs
Obama’s time machine is such a wonderful thing. According to certain people out there, he must have one in order to be able to:
1. Place his birth announcements in two Hawaii newspapers;
2. Design coins that have “In God We Trust” hidden on them years before he became President;
and the latest:
3. Not respond to Katrina fast enough, since that was clearly his fault even though Bush was President at the time.
Maybe we should bring back literacy tests.
Ever notice that all the people who say that racism is over are white?
I wonder how much of the anger over the Obama administration is because of the decline of the male WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)?
Much of the debate against immigration seems to center around the “problem” of America not being the province of WASPs any more. And much of the “war on women” seems to decry the decline of the male in power. Conservative commentators like Pat Buchanan have written books about how terrible this is for our country, claiming that the U.S. “won’t look like the U.S.” in the future.
For those people who think that having a ruling class of the male WASP is what America is all about, the Obama administration must have seemed like Hell when it first came into office. We had:
… not a male WASP among the most powerful people in the United States. And then he goes and appoints two women to the Supreme Court — a Catholic one and a Jewish one.
Then, by his second term, he’s letting women and gays into our military front lines!
So is this why there is such a radical movement by the right to fight immigration and to push back against women and gays? Is it because they fear losing their male WASP hierarchy?
I think in the long run, the Obama administration’s greatest legacy may be the breaking down of so many of these barriers. The acceptance of women and gays in the military is as important as when Truman desegregated the army in the 50s.
And those male WASPs will just have to learn to share.
When it comes to the Patriot Act, there are just too many hypocrites to deal with.
The Patriot Act allows the NSA to listen to phone conversations and emails for certain key words, at which time they can get a subpoena to get all the records (a subpoena which has never been denied by the court — great oversight, huh?). It certainly appears to be a complete violation of the 4th Amendment to me and many Constitutional scholars, but until the Supreme Court says so, it’s the law and allowed.
For some reason, this is now a big issue, even though it’s been going on for about ten years. This has brought out a gaggle of hypocrites.
First, you have the ones on the right, who defended George W. Bush when he did this but call Obama’s use of the same law a gross violation of their rights. (These pundits and politicians, centered mostly at Fox News, are part of the same gang that said criticizing GWB during wartime was “treason” but doing the same to Obama during wartime is their patriotic duty.)
The clip below is a great example, showing Fox’s Sean Hannity’s position flipping 180 degrees based on whether this was done by a President Fox supported or one they oppose.
But this is not limited to the right. There are hypocrites on the left as well (though not as many) who opposed this under Bush but approve it under Obama.
The biggest hypocrite on the left is Obama himself. He’s ignored his campaign promises in this regard.
His view is apparently that he is against the abuse that can come from the Patriot Act — but doesn’t see that he is abusing it. In other words, he thinks “In the hands of a bad President, this would be a huge violation of our rights, but I’m not a bad President, and I have used it for good.” I think he is feeling some guilt over this and has recently began to talk about getting rid of it (again) because he is worried about who might hold that office after him.
So he doesn’t see himself as a hypocrite; he sees his position as changed based on the circumstances. How very convenient for him.
The good news is that there are those on both the right and the left who have been consistent in their views on this issue, and they should be congratulated and acknowledged.
There’s been a lot of debate lately about scandals, with different sides proclaiming or denying said scandals exist.
I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve come to the realization that it all depends on your definition of scandal.
If you think there has to be actual wrongdoing before there is a scandal, then you may be in the minority. The way the word keeps getting used, it seems most people consider anything they don’t like to be a “scandal.”
Take Benghazi. There is no evidence that there was any wrongdoing, even though there may have been mistakes and bad decisions made. I don’t consider that a scandal.
Or the IRS. Apparently the people who made the decision to investigate groups that are against taxes to make sure they really are non-profit were conservative Republican Bush appointees. Has there been any evidence to show that this was done for political reasons? None whatsoever, and the people involved have said as much. Were there any laws broken? Doesn’t seem so. Does it look bad? Oh, absolutely. Does that make it a scandal?
Then there’s the NSA phone and email situation. It appears that this is all allowed under the Patriot Act, has been approved by Congress many times, and has been in existence since the Bush administration. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence any laws were broken. If there is a scandal, it’s that Obama broke his promise to stop doing this.
For that matter, it appears that the seizing of AP phone records was done properly under law, too.
So I’m having difficulty finding “scandal.” I certainly don’t like the situation with the NSA and the AP and am against these kinds of intrusions on privacy and freedom of the press, but the solution is to change the laws so that this is not allowed and to hold Obama responsible for doing these things in the first place.
But that doesn’t make them scandals.
I am open to evidence, however. If you have proof that laws were broken or actual wrongdoing took place, let me know. I am certainly willing to acknowledge it when it happens.
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