I had a flash of brilliance over the weekend. I know how to make Obama pay attention to terrorists and dictators threatening America.
Let’s put golf courses in Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq & Venezuela.
He might just be interested in threats against our nation if that were the case!
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Meh. He jumped to accept Granny Clampett’s apology a helluva lot faster than an attempted terror attack. Unless it involves him, he won’t give a damn.
I know how to make Obama pay attention to terrorists and dictators threatening America.
Responding to an attack faster than Bush didn’t make it clear he was paying attention? (Sneak peek: “Bush Waited Six Days To Discuss Shoe Bomber With No GOP Complaints”)
Of course, Talkingpointsprime, since you and your fellows screamed and wet yourself that Bush should have responded instantly, your whining about this merely makes your hypocrisy obvious.
Oh, that’s right, we forgot. You hold Obama responsible only for being a “light-skinned” black person with a “Negro dialect only when he wants it”. The rest of anything, like actual job performance and competence, is irrelevant to you as long as you have the skin color and dialect right.
Of course, back then, we didn’t have all the infrastructure we have now.
But that’s your defense? It’s ok because Bush did it? After how many years of ‘Bush didn’t do enough’ you go this route?
At least you’re saving us time now and directly linking to the talking points rather than cutting and pasting.
And in the latest news; Barack Obama’s handpicked choice to be head of the TSA says the Southern Baptist Convention is more of a threat to the United States than al-Qaeda.
Full of fear over here about a failed underwear bomber? Man up already.
Since this “post” is so pathetically outdated in terms of its’ childish and reflexive “Obama’s doing nothing to save us!” hysteria, not to mention that all it is is a stupid picture and a line of snark, how about an injection of some substance to the debate? Here are two recent posts by Eric Benen:
The first post points out that many conservatives, by waving their arms in hysteria and claiming that Obama “isn’t doing enough!” or “isn’t doing anything” are in fact handing terrorists a victory. They want hysterical attention, you give them hysterical attention. You give them power. You are doing their PR for them.
The second post, from a week or so ago, points out just how much the President actually has accomplished after the event, which is quite serious and substantial, to all but those partisan hacks intent on de-legitimizing the president at any and all costs. It also compares Obama to Bush.
Something to chew on, since the original post here does nothing to advance a meaningful dialogue.
READING FROM THE WRONG SCRIPT…. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman noted earlier, “Cheney, Kristol and a lot of top Republicans in Washington are acting as unpaid PR agents for al Qaida, trying to turn even its failures into successes. The attempted bombing of Flight 253 was a terror attack; a terror attack succeeds only if it terrorizes its target audience.”
Conservatives would, I suspect, find this deeply offensive. Suggesting that prominent right-wing voices are “acting as unpaid PR agents” for terrorists makes it sound as if conservatives hoping to undermine support for America’s leadership are unpatriotic — or worse.
But that’s not the argument. The point isn’t to characterize the Cheneys and other GOP attack dogs as terrorist sympathizers, it’s to note that, in their zeal to weaken Obama’s presidency, they’re inadvertently giving U.S. enemies exactly what they’re looking for. Fareed Zakaria wrote:
The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn’t work. Alas, this one worked very well.
And it worked in part because prominent conservatives, desperate to make the president look bad, did exactly what al Qaeda hoped for: they characterized the failed terrorist attack as a “success.” Indeed, both Brit Hume and Bill Kristol used that very word last week. As Matt Duss explained very well the other day, conservatives are “interested in promoting a specific, and politically advantageous, narrative about the nature” of terrorist threats. It just so happens that this narrative overlaps perfectly with the propaganda goals of al Qaeda — an inconvenient detail Republicans prefer to ignore.
Or, as Adam Serwer put it just three days after the failed Abdulmutallab plot, “It’s hard to imagine that even al-Qaeda thought they would get so much good publicity for a failed attack that resulted in the alleged attacker setting himself on fire and being neutralized by unarmed civilians…. Republicans have used the incident to exaggerate the ongoing threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States in order to score points against the administration, and in doing so, have given al-Qaeda the best reaction they could have hoped to get under the circumstances…. Islamic terrorists are criminals who like to imagine themselves as nigh-unstoppable holy warriors — and the GOP’s knee-jerk panic responses have helped cultivate that image.”
Again, this is not to say that the Cheneys, Pete King, Pete Hoeksta, Michael Steele, Jim DeMint, and a wide variety of media personalities are secretly supporting al Qaeda or are actively trying to undermine U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. They’re not. The point is that the GOP’s reflexive, reactionary response to current events, driven entirely by an obsession to undermine U.S. leadership politically, unintentionally makes terrorists’ p.r. efforts easier and more successful — and Republicans’ partisan blinders make this fact invisible to them.
SIMILAR INCIDENTS, DIFFERENT RESPONSES…. To hear conservatives tell it, the White House’s handling of the failed Christmas terrorist plot has been inadequate. President Obama, the Right has argued, waited too long to speak publicly about the incident, and hasn’t taken the matter seriously enough.
Of course, the obvious response is probably the most effective one: Obama commented on the Abdulmutallab plot a lot faster than Bush responded to an identical attempted attack eight years ago.
But that doesn’t fully capture the important and illustrative differences between the two responses.
The Abdulmutallab attempt was two weeks ago today. Over the course of these two weeks, President Obama has spoken publicly about the incident three times — Dec. 29, Jan. 5, and Jan. 9. He also devoted his weekly address to the subject last weekend. Also, over the span of two weeks, the president’s national security team prepared a relatively thorough security review of what transpired and a new directive on corrective actions.
Now let’s compare the previous administration’s response to a nearly identical terrorist plot — Richard Reid’s failed shoe-bomb attack (the same chemical, the same target, the same intended consequence, in same month of the year, with the same twisted ideology). Consider these two weeks, from eight years ago:
Dec. 22: Reid’s attempt fails.
Dec. 28: Bush hosts a press conference from his Texas ranch. In his opening statement, the president makes no reference to the terrorist attempt. Reporters ask Bush 15 questions, zero about the Reid incident. The president references the failed attack anyway, saying a total of 89 words on the subject.
Dec. 29: The president reads his weekly radio address. He makes no reference to the attempted terrorism.
Dec. 31: Bush again chats with reporters at a media availability in Crawford. Reporters ask Bush 10 questions, zero about the Reid incident. Again, Bush referenced the matter briefly, saying 53 words on the subject.
Jan. 4: Karen Hughes hosts a briefing for reporters. There were no questions about the Reid incident, and the subject wasn’t addressed.
Jan. 5: The president reads another weekly radio address, and makes no reference to the attempted terrorism. Later that day, Bush appears at two public events, one in California, the other in Oregon. The shoe-bombing incident doesn’t come up at all at either event.
Do you notice a difference between the two weeks after the Abdulmutallab plot and the two weeks after the Reid plot? Tell me — which of these two presidents seemed to respond to the attempted attacks more forcefully, more seriously, and with more depth? Which of the two seems more engaged when it comes to counter-terrorism?
Keep in mind, Bush faced literally no criticism for hardly responding at all to an attempt to blow up an airplane over the United States. There was no media pushback, no complaints from Congress, nothing. And this was just four months after 9/11, when presumably the terrorist threat was foremost on the nation’s mind.
Rudy Giuliani said on CNN this week, “I think [Obama] has to make a major correction in the way he is dealing with terrorism because I think he has mishandled the situation. First of all, it was 10 days too late. This is something you react to immediately, not 10 days later after your vacation. The president of the United States, when there is a potential massive attack on this country, which is what this guy was going to do, should have been on top of this immediately, not 10 days later, 11 days later, 12 days later.”
Bush pretty much ignored, at least publicly, the nearly identical “potential massive attack on this country,” and no one seemed to care.
If I didn’t know better, I might think there was a double-standard here, and a “controversy” has been manufactured by petty partisans hoping to undermine the Obama White House without cause.
It’s amusing, yet sad when liberals pretend to give a rat’s ass about national security.
It’s amusing, yet sad when liberals try to project their treason and undermining of national security onto others.
Pa-f*ing-thetic.
You can circle the wagons around your beloved Chairman Obama, William, but that won’t keep the country safe.
It’s not their business until they are blowing up in the air… how convenient!
Great new video from Steven Crowder on, let’s all say it kids, *Islamic Terrorism*:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/11/crowder-on-identifying-the-enemy-and-its-consequences/
You are correct – unless it is about him, it matters not
I have to say I think this post is a bit beneath the authors here. I was no fan of George W., but I didn’t begrudge him his “time off” (not that the President ever really gets any) at his ranch.
And there’s the rub (HAHAHA!!! Rub). The liberals made it a point to begrudge him his “time off”. They insisted that he was never doing anything besides recreation, so it’s entirely fair to assert that Chairman Obama’s not doing much better, as it were. Particularly since he seems keen to play golf and shoot basketball rather than run the country.
Attempted terror attacks totally screw up his tee time.
Oh yeah. Attempted terror attack, America’s left to fend for themselves. Obama family friend gets injured on holiday and he splits faster than a Bill Ayers pipe bomb.
And an even faster counter attack on the administration’s biggest enemy, facts.
william makes outstanding points about how the press asked NO questions about Richard Reid in opportunity after opportunity.
Why do you suppose that is?
Could it be that news was flooding out about Richard Reid and that just three months after 9/11 America still had a heightened sense of terrorist jitters and were expecting more terrorist attacks?
Could it be that the press was sensitive to the fact that the defenses against such attacks were new and building?
There was no evidence, whatsoever, that Bush was not engaged in protecting America from terrorism.
Obama, on the other hand, walked away from the November 5 Ft. Hood massacre with a warning that we should not jump to conclusions. Hasan’s radical Islam was news that poured out of the press within hours after the massacre.
After 9/11, there were no more successful terrorists attacks on US soil until Ft. Hood. Seven weeks later, the pantie-bomber messed up what would have be another terrorist massacre.
Obama’s silence was palpable. He had traveled the world apologizing for the Bush years and promising a new approach. He has assiduously avoided speaking of either terrorism or radical Islam. He blew off Ft. Hood and he laid low on the flight 253 bomber.
We had and have a right to ask if Obama is serious about terrorism. In fact, we have a right to ask if he has allowed the homeland security to mellow and go on auto pilot.
The times have changed. Obama is at the helm on this one. He and the democrats spent years tearing at the war on terrorism and homeland security. Now it time that Obama come out with the “Obama Doctrine” and tell us if he is in this to win or to vote “present” or just bored with the distraction of it all.
Eh, this criticsm seems mostly overblown to me. However, I eagerly await seeing all the footage of President Obama on the golf course in Michael Moore’s next movie!
(yeah like THAT will happen!)
I’m sorry, I’ve seemed to have forgotten. Is Hawaii the 55th or 56th state? Obama must know the answer by now –he’s been prez for more than a year. He may not know we’re at War with Terrorists, but surely Shirley he knows there are only 50 states? Did he get that right, yet?