74 thoughts on “President Obama at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner”
Swarthmore, you are extrapolating from the apparent fact that the Dems are giving away the store, or collaborating it that, to the conclusion that progressives, say, are wanting this to continue or even happen. That is, once again, putting the blame exactly where it should not be — on those who want to fight the right wing thugs of whichever party. — as if my one vote of conscience, would have the least effect on the aggregate outcome (remember, it’s the”independents” who determine the outcome).
Further, to extrapolate from the fact that one lone, disgruntled Dem progressive may 1) sit out the election or 2) vote for a non Dem candidate to this being the equivalent idea that “republicans should be in control of everything” is just a non sequitur, silly, or even insulting.
Other than that, you’re right on. I’m sure you didn’t mean it the way it sounds.
BTW, “one party rule” under did in fact work out quite well, for them. Why is it that the Dems could not replicate the same thing. Maybe their hearts just not in a progressive, or even liberal, agenda. They must have read a poll that says we’re a center right country, eh?
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The argument that democrats are hypocrites so that republicans should be in control of everything is wearing rather thin. Not too many women are buying into that according to the polls. Seems like most women are willing to take a chance with Obama rather than go with those that are waging war on women. No one seriously thinks that either Rocky or Jill Stein is going to be elected
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Agree with O. S. The republicans have the House, the Supreme Court, and they are expected to take the Senate. One party rule under Bush did not work so well so why give Romney carte blanche with one party rule again.
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Jill puts many volumes of how the Democratic establishment is manipulating their base into a few good sentences, including: “One should not sign away the lives of others, the rule of law because one is afraid. That is the act of the coward. Either you stand for certain principles or you don’t. It is past time to stand for justice and the rule of law. This is true whether the enemy is foreign or domestic.”
So after the Dems pull a(nother) fast one and Obama gets reelected — and we shouldn’t expect too much, you now, because you’ve got to work within the parameters that those nasty Republicans insist on, and Dems cave over. Then what? Hillary decides she wants the nomination in 2016, and we go from the African-American distraction to the female-American distraction, and another 8 years of free ride for the establishment, while the country is sold out to the right wing even more?
So when will it be OK for a progressive to say the establishment Dems are hypocrites who are selling out the country for some boogeyman because they’re afraid of being called socialists?
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Obama has sycophants all around him! That’s just super!!!
Then we supporters reduced to saying: “OMG, think of the Republicans!” Here’s my response to that. At the end of everything, no matter what atrocity Obama has committed, no matter how deeply he sells out the poor and vulnerable, Obama supporters say: “but I’m scared of the Republicans”. Fine, be scared. But that’s not the same as being an idiot!
After 9/11 people traded out the highest values of our nation for imagined “safety”. Gutting the constitution, torture, warfare, imprisonment of the innocent, all of it greenlighted because people were afraid. That was the “foreign” enemy.
Republicans are the Democrats “domestic” enemy. One should not sign away the lives of others, the rule of law because one is afraid. That is the act of the coward. Either you stand for certain principles or you don’t. It is past time to stand for justice and the rule of law. This is true whether the enemy is foreign or domestic. Fear does not excuse the acceptance and promotion of a candidate who commits war and financial crimes.
This was true under Bush and it is still true under Obama.
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anon nurse 1, April 29, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Laughter is, as you rightly say, a condition of health, but I would contend that inappropriate laughter is a measure of the general health (or lack thereof) of a nation.
…
A famous British actor once observed that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
================================================
Well said.
A lady we all probably know said: “Humor is just truth, only faster” – Gilda Radner
Of course, as you pointed out, context is like Highway 61, which determines where it is headed.
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Charm? Like who cares?
Ain’t that much to laugh about. Unless, of course, your in the 1% who makes a profit in war or peace.
I remember when Barry just got into office and we all rubbed wrung our hands and agonized about, oooh, you know, how hard it must be for this kind, gentle, man of peace to give the order to escalate Afghanistan. Must be he’s just under such pressure from the warmongers and politicos around his gentle soul. He got into the swing of it alright, and more.
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“I see these people, who are seemingly at each other’s throat during the year, come together to do this in a good natured manner.” Dredd
Is it a case of “good natured”, affable and civil folks “coming together” or, is it a case of rank hypocrisy? While I agree about the need for a sense of humor, there are times when certain jokes are simply inappropriate, such as when Bush joked about not being able to find WMDs in Iraq, or when Obama did the same about predator drones in 2010.
Laughter is, as you rightly say, a condition of health, but I would contend that inappropriate laughter is a measure of the general health (or lack thereof) of a nation.
President Obama’s Joke About Predator Drones Draws Fire
A famous British actor once observed that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
A corollary might be that comedy can be especially hard when it comes from commanders-in-chief joking about the deaths they’re responsible for at times of war.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, President Obama noted that in the audience were the Jonas brothers.
“Sasha and Malia are huge fans,” he said, “but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.”
The audience laughed approvingly but in the following days the joke has been met with a rising chorus of criticism — mainly from the Left.
After all, unmanned predator drone strikes have killed innocent civilians in Pakistan.
How many civilians? Unclear. Since the CIA’s predator drone program is top secret, little is known about it.
But writing in Foreign Policy, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann have estimated that their data shows that from 2008 until December 2009, drone strikes have killed between 384 and 578 individuals, with most of them militants but between 35 and 40 percent of them innocent civilians. Senior administration officials contend that the number of civilian casualties is far fewer than that.
As the New Yorker reported last year, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”
So given all that, should President Obama have made a joke about this program?
“Let’s be honest, fellow progressives,” the Philadelphia Daily News’ Will Bunch tweeted, “we’d be all over Bush if he made the same ‘predator drone’ joke Obama told last night.”
President George W. Bush did, of course, make a joke about war at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. In 2004, infamously, he joked about his inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, showing slides of himself searching for WMD under Oval Office furniture.
“It’s inappropriate to the thousands of people obviously who have been wounded over there,” Terry McAuliffe, then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Good Morning America. “This is a very serious issue. We’ve lost hundreds of troops, as you know, over there. Let’s not be laughing about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction. … We certainly should not be making light of the situation.” Then-RNC chair Ed Gillespie responded that “the people in the room obviously saw the humor in it at that moment. And to play it back now in a different context is unfair, frankly, I have to say.”
So far the criticism against President Obama seems to have been confined to the internet.
Wrote Salon’s Alex Pareene: “It’s funny because predator drone strikes in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of completely innocent civilians, and now the president is evincing a casual disregard for those lives he is responsible for ending by making a lighthearted joke about killing famous young celebrities for the crime of attempting to sleep with his young daughters.”
The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, noted that the “Obama administration has spent a great deal of time on outreach to Muslims worldwide, and on dialing down the volume and rhetoric of the prior administration in order to defuse al-Qaeda’s narrative of a clash of civilizations between Muslims and non-Muslims. So you have to wonder why in the world the president’s speech writers would think it was a good idea to throw a joke about predator drones into the president’s speech during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, given that an estimated one-third of drone casualties, or between 289 and 378, have been civilians. It evinces a callous disregard for human life that is really inappropriate for a world leader, especially a president who is waging war against an enemy that deliberately targets civilians. It also helps undermine that outreach by making it look insincere.”
Serwer assessed that the relative lack of outrage, compared to the response to Bush’s joke, might have “to do with whose lives were the butt of the joke — we recognize the names and faces of the American service members who died because of Bush’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction as friends, relatives, and family members. The people who die in drone strikes are anonymous — they have no faces or names — except for the suspected terrorist targets the administration celebrates as being neutralized.”
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Each year I watch the WH Corresponent’s Dinner I am reminded of the importance of good humor as a condition of health.
I see these people, who are seemingly at each other’s throat during the year, come together to do this in a good natured manner.
I was impressed at the lack of malice in the president as he poked fun at himself and others.
To me, it is a sign of a struggle for wellness in a world with a lot of sickness in it.
I laughed a lot.
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“Beyond terrifying–I am not sure there is an adjective in English that conveys how I feel about such a prospect.”
OS,
Couldn’t agree with you more. Romney’s election at this point in time means that the patient known as the democratic experiment has died in the US, since it is currently only on life support.
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The GOP guy Romney wants 100,000 more troops, more planes, more submarines, more air craft carriers, more destroyers, more drones.
President Obamas joke about Raining Men refers to all the men returning from overseas. Most people did not get the joke.
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Obama’s Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit [VIDEO]
(“Contrary to Bergen’s generous belief that progressives are deluding themselves about Obama’s militarism, many are fully aware of it and, because it’s a Democrat doing it, have become aggressively supportive of it. That, without a doubt, will be one of Obama’s most enduring legacies: transforming these policies of excessive militarism, rampant secrecy and civil liberties assaults from right-wing radicalism into robust bipartisan consensus (try though they might, not even progressives will be able to turn around and credibly pretend to object to such things the next time there is a GOP President). -Glenn Greenwald, Sunday, April 29th)
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While I am thoroughly disapproving of many of Obama’s policies and actions, I find the idea of a President Romney terrifying. Beyond terrifying–I am not sure there is an adjective in English that conveys how I feel about such a prospect. I have two daughters, and the Republican War on Women is just getting started. I am frightened for them. At least we have a President capable of putting the brakes on that madness.
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Good speech. Thanks for posting (no TV here) but doesn’t make up for being the greatest expander of the empire and curtailer of civil and human rights.
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Charming to the core:
Sunday, Apr 29, 2012
Celebrating our “Warrior President”
The Democratic case for Obama’s foreign policy greatness is most significant for what it blissfully ignores
Peter Bergen, the Director of National Security Studies at the Democratic-Party-supportive New America Foundation, has a long Op-Ed in The New York Times today glorifying President Obama as a valiant and steadfast “warrior President”; it begins this way:
THE president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.
Just ponder that: not only the Democratic Party, but also its progressive faction, is wildly enamored of “one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.” That’s quite revealing on multiple levels. Bergen does note that irony: he recalls that Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to defend the justifications for war and points out: “if those on the left were listening, they didn’t seem to care.” He adds that “the left, which had loudly condemned George W. Bush for waterboarding and due process violations at Guantánamo, was relatively quiet when the Obama administration, acting as judge and executioner, ordered more than 250 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009, during which at least 1,400 lives were lost.”
…
It’s certainly not surprising that some think tank “terrorism expert” like Bergen finds civilian deaths at the hands of American militarism to be too insignificant to note, let alone to interfere with his giddy veneration. But the fact that so much of the Democratic Party, including its progressive faction, now follows suit is telling indeed.
One last point: for the full eight years of the Bush administration, Bush, Cheney and scores of other political and media supporters of their militarism who had not served in the military were routinely derided by Democrats and progressives as “chickenhawks” (an accusation, which, with some caveats and modifications, I supported). What happened to that? Now we have a President whom Bergen hails as “one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades” despite having not served a day in the military, and hordes of non-military-serving Democrats who cheer him as he does so. Similarly, George Bush was mercilessly mocked for declaring himself a “war President,” yet here is Bergen — writing under the headline “Warrior in Chief” — twice christening the non-serving Obama as our “Warrior President.” Did the concept of chickenhawkism, like so many other ostensible political beliefs, cease to exist on January 20, 2009? (end of excerpts)
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Ditto Mike and TD…..
I loved the Olive Garden State comment…..
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“All kidding aside, that President is the most gracious and yet charming person to inhabit the White House since Harry Truman”
TalkinDog,
No matter what one thinks about his performance in office politically, your statement above is absolutely true.
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TD:
“. But the ads and banter across the bottom of the screen was too much”
I see I was not alone on that.
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The entire dog pack agreed to switch off the Animal Planet and watch the President on Fox. But the ads and banter across the bottom of the screen was too much and so we switched to C-Span and the verions was undiluted. We liked the dog jokes except for the song at the end that made Benji cry. Jimmie Kimmel was not all that funny but the President was. Except for the dog eating jokes. THAT is what made Benji cry. The movie showing Romney witht he dog cage on the roof of his limo plane was not funny and nor was blue jean boy with cheeks of tan. That sumbitch aint gettin our vote and believe me that us dogs vote and we vote early and often. All kidding aside, that President is the most gracious and yet charming person to inhabit the White House since Harry Truman and he dont walk for exercise, he runs. Now that he is running for office again I hope he unloads on all those bigots who call themselves Birthers not Birchers. The John Birch Society is alive and well in Romneyland. They are not looking for commies under the carpet anymore, its illegals and upscale wannabes who did not have silverspoons in their mouths when born in Michigan or who might have been born in Hawaii–which was by the way a State when our current President was born there.
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If there was IMHO one word to describe what I saw it would be “interesting” no more no less.
Swarthmore, you are extrapolating from the apparent fact that the Dems are giving away the store, or collaborating it that, to the conclusion that progressives, say, are wanting this to continue or even happen. That is, once again, putting the blame exactly where it should not be — on those who want to fight the right wing thugs of whichever party. — as if my one vote of conscience, would have the least effect on the aggregate outcome (remember, it’s the”independents” who determine the outcome).
Further, to extrapolate from the fact that one lone, disgruntled Dem progressive may 1) sit out the election or 2) vote for a non Dem candidate to this being the equivalent idea that “republicans should be in control of everything” is just a non sequitur, silly, or even insulting.
Other than that, you’re right on. I’m sure you didn’t mean it the way it sounds.
BTW, “one party rule” under did in fact work out quite well, for them. Why is it that the Dems could not replicate the same thing. Maybe their hearts just not in a progressive, or even liberal, agenda. They must have read a poll that says we’re a center right country, eh?
The argument that democrats are hypocrites so that republicans should be in control of everything is wearing rather thin. Not too many women are buying into that according to the polls. Seems like most women are willing to take a chance with Obama rather than go with those that are waging war on women. No one seriously thinks that either Rocky or Jill Stein is going to be elected
Agree with O. S. The republicans have the House, the Supreme Court, and they are expected to take the Senate. One party rule under Bush did not work so well so why give Romney carte blanche with one party rule again.
Jill puts many volumes of how the Democratic establishment is manipulating their base into a few good sentences, including: “One should not sign away the lives of others, the rule of law because one is afraid. That is the act of the coward. Either you stand for certain principles or you don’t. It is past time to stand for justice and the rule of law. This is true whether the enemy is foreign or domestic.”
So after the Dems pull a(nother) fast one and Obama gets reelected — and we shouldn’t expect too much, you now, because you’ve got to work within the parameters that those nasty Republicans insist on, and Dems cave over. Then what? Hillary decides she wants the nomination in 2016, and we go from the African-American distraction to the female-American distraction, and another 8 years of free ride for the establishment, while the country is sold out to the right wing even more?
So when will it be OK for a progressive to say the establishment Dems are hypocrites who are selling out the country for some boogeyman because they’re afraid of being called socialists?
Obama has sycophants all around him! That’s just super!!!
Then we supporters reduced to saying: “OMG, think of the Republicans!” Here’s my response to that. At the end of everything, no matter what atrocity Obama has committed, no matter how deeply he sells out the poor and vulnerable, Obama supporters say: “but I’m scared of the Republicans”. Fine, be scared. But that’s not the same as being an idiot!
After 9/11 people traded out the highest values of our nation for imagined “safety”. Gutting the constitution, torture, warfare, imprisonment of the innocent, all of it greenlighted because people were afraid. That was the “foreign” enemy.
Republicans are the Democrats “domestic” enemy. One should not sign away the lives of others, the rule of law because one is afraid. That is the act of the coward. Either you stand for certain principles or you don’t. It is past time to stand for justice and the rule of law. This is true whether the enemy is foreign or domestic. Fear does not excuse the acceptance and promotion of a candidate who commits war and financial crimes.
This was true under Bush and it is still true under Obama.
anon nurse 1, April 29, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Laughter is, as you rightly say, a condition of health, but I would contend that inappropriate laughter is a measure of the general health (or lack thereof) of a nation.
…
A famous British actor once observed that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
================================================
Well said.
A lady we all probably know said: “Humor is just truth, only faster” – Gilda Radner
Of course, as you pointed out, context is like Highway 61, which determines where it is headed.
Charm? Like who cares?
Ain’t that much to laugh about. Unless, of course, your in the 1% who makes a profit in war or peace.
I remember when Barry just got into office and we all rubbed wrung our hands and agonized about, oooh, you know, how hard it must be for this kind, gentle, man of peace to give the order to escalate Afghanistan. Must be he’s just under such pressure from the warmongers and politicos around his gentle soul. He got into the swing of it alright, and more.
“I see these people, who are seemingly at each other’s throat during the year, come together to do this in a good natured manner.” Dredd
Is it a case of “good natured”, affable and civil folks “coming together” or, is it a case of rank hypocrisy? While I agree about the need for a sense of humor, there are times when certain jokes are simply inappropriate, such as when Bush joked about not being able to find WMDs in Iraq, or when Obama did the same about predator drones in 2010.
Laughter is, as you rightly say, a condition of health, but I would contend that inappropriate laughter is a measure of the general health (or lack thereof) of a nation.
With regard to some of the old jokes:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/05/president-obamas-joke-about-predator-drones-draws-fire/
May 3, 2010 8:45pm
President Obama’s Joke About Predator Drones Draws Fire
A famous British actor once observed that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
A corollary might be that comedy can be especially hard when it comes from commanders-in-chief joking about the deaths they’re responsible for at times of war.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, President Obama noted that in the audience were the Jonas brothers.
“Sasha and Malia are huge fans,” he said, “but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.”
The audience laughed approvingly but in the following days the joke has been met with a rising chorus of criticism — mainly from the Left.
After all, unmanned predator drone strikes have killed innocent civilians in Pakistan.
How many civilians? Unclear. Since the CIA’s predator drone program is top secret, little is known about it.
But writing in Foreign Policy, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann have estimated that their data shows that from 2008 until December 2009, drone strikes have killed between 384 and 578 individuals, with most of them militants but between 35 and 40 percent of them innocent civilians. Senior administration officials contend that the number of civilian casualties is far fewer than that.
As the New Yorker reported last year, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”
So given all that, should President Obama have made a joke about this program?
“Let’s be honest, fellow progressives,” the Philadelphia Daily News’ Will Bunch tweeted, “we’d be all over Bush if he made the same ‘predator drone’ joke Obama told last night.”
President George W. Bush did, of course, make a joke about war at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. In 2004, infamously, he joked about his inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, showing slides of himself searching for WMD under Oval Office furniture.
“It’s inappropriate to the thousands of people obviously who have been wounded over there,” Terry McAuliffe, then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Good Morning America. “This is a very serious issue. We’ve lost hundreds of troops, as you know, over there. Let’s not be laughing about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction. … We certainly should not be making light of the situation.” Then-RNC chair Ed Gillespie responded that “the people in the room obviously saw the humor in it at that moment. And to play it back now in a different context is unfair, frankly, I have to say.”
So far the criticism against President Obama seems to have been confined to the internet.
Wrote Salon’s Alex Pareene: “It’s funny because predator drone strikes in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of completely innocent civilians, and now the president is evincing a casual disregard for those lives he is responsible for ending by making a lighthearted joke about killing famous young celebrities for the crime of attempting to sleep with his young daughters.”
The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, noted that the “Obama administration has spent a great deal of time on outreach to Muslims worldwide, and on dialing down the volume and rhetoric of the prior administration in order to defuse al-Qaeda’s narrative of a clash of civilizations between Muslims and non-Muslims. So you have to wonder why in the world the president’s speech writers would think it was a good idea to throw a joke about predator drones into the president’s speech during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, given that an estimated one-third of drone casualties, or between 289 and 378, have been civilians. It evinces a callous disregard for human life that is really inappropriate for a world leader, especially a president who is waging war against an enemy that deliberately targets civilians. It also helps undermine that outreach by making it look insincere.”
Serwer assessed that the relative lack of outrage, compared to the response to Bush’s joke, might have “to do with whose lives were the butt of the joke — we recognize the names and faces of the American service members who died because of Bush’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction as friends, relatives, and family members. The people who die in drone strikes are anonymous — they have no faces or names — except for the suspected terrorist targets the administration celebrates as being neutralized.”
Each year I watch the WH Corresponent’s Dinner I am reminded of the importance of good humor as a condition of health.
I see these people, who are seemingly at each other’s throat during the year, come together to do this in a good natured manner.
I was impressed at the lack of malice in the president as he poked fun at himself and others.
To me, it is a sign of a struggle for wellness in a world with a lot of sickness in it.
I laughed a lot.
“Beyond terrifying–I am not sure there is an adjective in English that conveys how I feel about such a prospect.”
OS,
Couldn’t agree with you more. Romney’s election at this point in time means that the patient known as the democratic experiment has died in the US, since it is currently only on life support.
The GOP guy Romney wants 100,000 more troops, more planes, more submarines, more air craft carriers, more destroyers, more drones.
President Obamas joke about Raining Men refers to all the men returning from overseas. Most people did not get the joke.
Obama’s Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit [VIDEO]
By: Kevin Gosztola Sunday April 29, 2012
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/04/29/obamas-death-panels-jeremy-scahill-at-the-drone-summit-video/
(“Contrary to Bergen’s generous belief that progressives are deluding themselves about Obama’s militarism, many are fully aware of it and, because it’s a Democrat doing it, have become aggressively supportive of it. That, without a doubt, will be one of Obama’s most enduring legacies: transforming these policies of excessive militarism, rampant secrecy and civil liberties assaults from right-wing radicalism into robust bipartisan consensus (try though they might, not even progressives will be able to turn around and credibly pretend to object to such things the next time there is a GOP President). -Glenn Greenwald, Sunday, April 29th)
While I am thoroughly disapproving of many of Obama’s policies and actions, I find the idea of a President Romney terrifying. Beyond terrifying–I am not sure there is an adjective in English that conveys how I feel about such a prospect. I have two daughters, and the Republican War on Women is just getting started. I am frightened for them. At least we have a President capable of putting the brakes on that madness.
Good speech. Thanks for posting (no TV here) but doesn’t make up for being the greatest expander of the empire and curtailer of civil and human rights.
Charming to the core:
Sunday, Apr 29, 2012
Celebrating our “Warrior President”
The Democratic case for Obama’s foreign policy greatness is most significant for what it blissfully ignores
By Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/29/celebrating_our_warrior_president/singleton/
Excerpts:
Peter Bergen, the Director of National Security Studies at the Democratic-Party-supportive New America Foundation, has a long Op-Ed in The New York Times today glorifying President Obama as a valiant and steadfast “warrior President”; it begins this way:
THE president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.
Just ponder that: not only the Democratic Party, but also its progressive faction, is wildly enamored of “one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.” That’s quite revealing on multiple levels. Bergen does note that irony: he recalls that Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to defend the justifications for war and points out: “if those on the left were listening, they didn’t seem to care.” He adds that “the left, which had loudly condemned George W. Bush for waterboarding and due process violations at Guantánamo, was relatively quiet when the Obama administration, acting as judge and executioner, ordered more than 250 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009, during which at least 1,400 lives were lost.”
…
It’s certainly not surprising that some think tank “terrorism expert” like Bergen finds civilian deaths at the hands of American militarism to be too insignificant to note, let alone to interfere with his giddy veneration. But the fact that so much of the Democratic Party, including its progressive faction, now follows suit is telling indeed.
One last point: for the full eight years of the Bush administration, Bush, Cheney and scores of other political and media supporters of their militarism who had not served in the military were routinely derided by Democrats and progressives as “chickenhawks” (an accusation, which, with some caveats and modifications, I supported). What happened to that? Now we have a President whom Bergen hails as “one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades” despite having not served a day in the military, and hordes of non-military-serving Democrats who cheer him as he does so. Similarly, George Bush was mercilessly mocked for declaring himself a “war President,” yet here is Bergen — writing under the headline “Warrior in Chief” — twice christening the non-serving Obama as our “Warrior President.” Did the concept of chickenhawkism, like so many other ostensible political beliefs, cease to exist on January 20, 2009? (end of excerpts)
Ditto Mike and TD…..
I loved the Olive Garden State comment…..
“All kidding aside, that President is the most gracious and yet charming person to inhabit the White House since Harry Truman”
TalkinDog,
No matter what one thinks about his performance in office politically, your statement above is absolutely true.
TD:
“. But the ads and banter across the bottom of the screen was too much”
I see I was not alone on that.
The entire dog pack agreed to switch off the Animal Planet and watch the President on Fox. But the ads and banter across the bottom of the screen was too much and so we switched to C-Span and the verions was undiluted. We liked the dog jokes except for the song at the end that made Benji cry. Jimmie Kimmel was not all that funny but the President was. Except for the dog eating jokes. THAT is what made Benji cry. The movie showing Romney witht he dog cage on the roof of his limo plane was not funny and nor was blue jean boy with cheeks of tan. That sumbitch aint gettin our vote and believe me that us dogs vote and we vote early and often. All kidding aside, that President is the most gracious and yet charming person to inhabit the White House since Harry Truman and he dont walk for exercise, he runs. Now that he is running for office again I hope he unloads on all those bigots who call themselves Birthers not Birchers. The John Birch Society is alive and well in Romneyland. They are not looking for commies under the carpet anymore, its illegals and upscale wannabes who did not have silverspoons in their mouths when born in Michigan or who might have been born in Hawaii–which was by the way a State when our current President was born there.
If there was IMHO one word to describe what I saw it would be “interesting” no more no less.