Obama gives world class speeches. No doubt about that. Too bad most of them ring hollow or they're filled with outright lies or misinformation.
People here love it when Obama lectures us about our shortcomings, Father Obama scolding us about how we all can do better. Just insufferably condescending. Zero evidence Zimmerman had any racial animus. Quite the opposite. It's pretty basic. If you start a fight with someone and get on top of them, smash their head into the pavement, punch their face. They might fear for their life and shoot you. And a jury will decide if the force was justified. It means nothing more than that and has zero to do with Race In America. But nah, lets all applaud Obama for telling us how racist the country still is. It feeds into people's self loathing, white guilt, victimhood, all of it. So exploitative and unhealthy for society.
Obama "lectures us about our shortcomings"? I understand this is a common conservative meme, but did you read the speech? He's not insulting anyone, but he's kind of reaching out to people like you. Have you ever thought about exactly it would feel like if people locked their car doors when you walked by on the sidewalk? I for one hadn't thought about it like that. I've done the door locking before though. And I for one think it would suck donkey balls to hear the clicking noises and know it was in response to me. If trying to get Americans to understand one another is condescending, then what do you really want a leader to do? Just shut up, sign bills, and then rally us for our next war? I get that you think there was zero racial element to the case and trial. I honor that belief. I don't claim to know what was in Zimmerman's heart when he decided that the kid "looked suspicious." That means zero racial element to you. To me, only Zimmerman knows. But a lot of others disagree with you, and with me, including a million people who've signed a petition with the NAACP. I am not one of those people, but I don't think a good president just ignores the fact that a huge segment of the population sees racial preference in this case and feels like justice wasn't served. Even if he agreed with you that they're just stupid (I guess that's what you think of all the protestors?), he shouldn't just say that. (And yes, I know he's said equivalently bad things, and those were his worst moments.) I don't know why I'm posting this. I guess his tiny speech today (and it was tiny), a speech that really did reach out as much as possible to everyone, is a microcosm of his presidency in some real sense. Some people are just going to hate his guts and hated his guts in 2008. Lord has he made mistakes, but we hardly ever rationally discuss the meat of the mistakes because of the visceral level of emotion he brings out in some of us. More dialogue, less cable news. More Rockets, less cable news. More reading, less cable news. More sex, less cable news. Pretty much I'm saying cable news is the worst thing a person can do to themselves, their community, and their society. I'm honestly starting to believe that. Cheers all. I'm out.
fixed Obama's whole "I'm disappointed in you America, look to me for moral guidance" posture is tiresome, but it no doubt perpetuates his cult of personality.
I think cable news is the symptom of a much bigger problem and that's greed/money overriding integrity. Opinions like Kennedy's in Citizen's United have simply doused the flame. The entire apparatus is rotting from the inside with no end in sight.
I think it has something to do with providing leadership, which I think is in his job description. What faults he finds in the US are things we all know are wrong and he's trying to constructively address it as a leader. It's not like when Fidel Castro criticizes the US as an outsider looking down on us. Obama is one of us and shares in our problems and has to part of the solution like everyone else. But, I really find your animus perplexing. You seem to have interpreted this speech in a wholly different way than I did. I don't see condescension or finger-wagging. And I certainly don't see Obama saying that Zimmerman was racist, nor the country either. In fact, he goes on about how much progress in race relations the country has made.
Cruz says Obama going after guns with ‘stand your ground’ remark http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...ing-after-guns-with-stand-your-ground-remark/ “I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations,” Obama said. Equals “It is not surprising that the president uses, it seems, every opportunity that he can to go after our Second Amendment right to bear arms,” the Texas Republican said. “This president and this administration has a consistent disregard for the Bill of Rights.” Too funny.
Then you are not trying to understand the message in the picture or you don't want to. Everyone on the jury was a mixed race female, in a female judges court. Just shows how creepy society is. Martin got sick of being watched for nothing. Kid was walking home. Earlier he bought snacks and he was being watched heavily at the gas station. He snapped. Race had everything to do with this.
So true. If they truly cared about crimes against black people then they wouldn't get hung up on things like the tragic Trayvon case. They would worry about ALL crimes against blacks, but then that would not fit the racist agenda. Seriously??? You really do not understand that. So much energy put into the tragic Trayvon case when there were no racial motives when so many young black people die from black on black homicide go unnoticed.
You know, if the DoJ has an investigation open on this matter, is it really appropriate for POTUS to be commenting on it? (rhetorical - no, it absolutely is not)
Sure - it happens all the time. DOJ has an investigation on Edward Snowden and all sorts of people, POTUS included, talk about him. Same with terrorists over the last decade. There's nothing particularly wrong with it unless you are somehow influencing or impeding the investigation. All he said about the case was that the judge and jury were professional. Everything else was about reactions within the country, something that is absolutely part of the role of the President. Immediately after 9/11, when the DOJ was investigating, should Bush have just stayed silent?
9/11 was not simply a criminal matter, it was an act of war. It was entirely appropriate for POTUS to comment upon it. It is entirely inappropriate for a sitting POTUS to comment on a currently open investigation beyond the canned "I trust my legal team to get to the truth, we will wait and see what the investigation comes up with, I don't want to comment on the case while it's under investigation, blah blah blah" fare. A POTUS is very much in a case to bias any potential prosecution that may arise (even though there will be no prosecution in this case, and he knows it). Yes, absolutely inappropriate. But I've come to expect this sort of behavior from this POTUS. He's still a community organizer at heart and agitating, playing the races against each other - it's what he does. It's his bread and butter. So while inappropriate, it's not surprising at all.
I don't think you have even a basic understanding of the role of POTUS or the idea of bias. From his speech, this is his only comment on the current investigation - saying that it exists: I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code. And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels. If you think this is problematic, I don't really know what to say.
