If only he meant it
Posted by Richard on May 21, 2009
President Obama this morning:
… The documents that we hold in this very hall — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — these are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality, and dignity around the world.
… I've studied the Constitution as a student, I've taught it as a teacher, I've been bound by it as a lawyer and a legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.
This load of hokum was uttered by the man who has for all intents and purposes nationalized banks, auto companies, and the mortgage industry, the man who's working hard to effectively nationalize the energy industry and health care, the man who trashed the sanctity of contract and Rule of Law without a second thought, the man who's looking for a Supreme Court justice willing to put empathy for "the little people" and respect for foreign laws and international standards ahead of those (sometimes-sacred, sometimes-not) "words written into aging parchment," …
I could go on and on and on …
Rick Shultz said
If only we could make a difference by calling this bull shit to the attention of John Q. Public.
Unfortunately it’s like the Aesop fable of the Lamb and the Wolf. The Lamb refutes all the excuses the Wolf uses to justify eating him but gets eaten anyway, and the moral is:
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyrany and the innocent can never get justice by
reasoning when the oppressor intends to be unjust.
Hathor said
What would you have the president say? “F you all.”
David Aitken said
Hathor said: ‘What would you have the president say? “F you all.” ‘
Well, it would be more honest, but then he wouldn’t get (m)any votes.
rgcombs said
”What would you have the president say?”
Well, for starters, I’d like him to stop using straw-man arguments.
Anyone who’s read the Bush-era legal opinions (released by Obama’s own administration) regarding interrogation methods and the related material knows that Obama’s characterizations are simply nonsense.
Whether you agree or disagree with the specific methods, to characterize the Bush administration’s attitude as “anything goes” and its policies regarding terror as “hasty” is patently unfair.
Obama’s own implicit acceptance of a lot of the Bush administration decisions is evident in the “accommodations” he’s already made to those policies: military tribunals aren’t so bad after all; some Gitmo detainees will have to be held indefinitely even though we can’t convict them of anything in a civilian court; etc., etc. Stay tuned.
Unless Obama is self-destructive, I suspect there’ll be more actual policy decisions that will drive the far-left netroots crazy (like his “surge” in Afghanistan), regardless of the soaring rhetoric in which Obama couches them.
Hathor said
It seems like some of Obama’s detractors have been sprinkled with a little bit of Faerie dust as his supporters.