Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:26am

Overreacting, The Left Needs To Wake Up To Reality

GOP overreaction to Obama speechLiberals and Democrats have accused many Americans of overreacting to the speech that President Obama will be delivering to school children today (at 11:00 am Central Daylight Time).

On the surface this would seem a fair evaluation but if you dig a little deeper, those on the Left may well be making another crucial misdiagnosis of the source and cause of this reaction.

First lets examine the prism that those on the Left have viewed this reaction.

President Obama won a convincing election based on the dissatisfaction that Americans were having on a declining economy.  Strangely the Left believes they received a mandate to implement huge social changes that most Americans did not ask for when in fact most Americans, especially moderates and independents, voted for Obama due to the souring economy.

This was acutely apparent when liberal ideologue Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, in relation to the economic crisis said,This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.

Combined with President Obama’s growing cult of personality, the Left acquired the political equivalent of Vincible Ignorance.

Americans wanted the economy to be shepherded towards recovery, not expand government bureaucracy.

With government bailouts hidden as a “stimulus package” which was nothing more than expanding government bureaucracy, Americans were losing their appetite of deficit spending and government takeover of industry.

This concern initially began to surface when President Bush pushed through the first “stimulus package”.  You would think that the Obama Administration would have learned about the public’s discontent with grandiose spending.

Nope.

Fast forward to today and the stalled Health Care package put together by Democrats filled with government subsidies of unions and pork projects and you have a recipe for disaster.  Anger began to overflow and again the Left swept this under the rug.

This anger initially began to surface after the first and second stimulus packages went through in the form of Tea Party Protests.

President Obama and his proxies arrogantly dismissed these as GOP fronts and “mobs”.

That was President Obama’s first mistake, to insult Americans that their opinions mean nothing to the current administration.

Since the Obama administration failed to recognize genuine American concern to deficit spending and the nationalization of the motor industry, Americans needed an outlet to voice their concern.

The mainstream media failed in reporting accurately this concern.  ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times belittled and denigrated genuine grassroots protests.  Thus frustration began seeping in with Americans as they were being ridiculed by the Left and their enablers, the mainstream media.

Fortunately we live in a democracy where there is accountability in the form of elections.

Americans began calling, emailing, faxing, and writing to their congressmen en masse.

Their congressmen responded, as they should, in dramatic fashion, which was in direct proportion to the real anger and growing distrust that Americans were beginning to have with their elected officials.  In the form of Blue Dog Democrats stopping ObamaCare dead-in-its-tracks.

This was only a foretaste of what is to come if the Obama administration continues down this path which will lead ultimately to political suicide for many Democrats in Congress and possibly for the Obama presidency as well.

Then came the town hall meetings where Americans began to voice their displeasure.

Again, President Obama and his proxies dismissed them as “astro-turf”.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derided them as Nazi’s.

Big mistake.  Well actually, I would more precisely call it a miscalculation of biblical proportions.

With the mainstream media not wanting to do harm to their liberal messiah that is President Obama by reporting accurate news of American displeasure with Obama’s policies, the American people began realizing that they were not being heard at all.  Especially with how the Obama adminsitration continuing to downplay this discontent as nothing more than manufactured dissent.

Well the dissent is real which began to boil over in areas that normally would not have occurred.

Hence where we are today with President Obama’s innocuous speech to school children.  When the details of what the supplemental material associated with the speech became exposed as nothing more than an exercise in demagoguery indoctrination, the Obama administration did the right thing and corrected the situation by rewriting said materials.

Then the Obama administration couldn’t help themselves and resorted to insults.

When the anger didn’t dissipate after the changes were done to the supplemental materials for the speech, the Obama administration slurred those protesting.  Another mistake, but one that may well be costly beyond what the Left can imagine.

How to solve this problem?  Stop slurring the American people and listen.

What will President Obama do instead?  Address both sessions of congress and the American people and milk President Obama’s cult of personality, thinking that all that is needed is President Obama’s sheer charisma.  Couple this with the misguided perception that they were voted in to change America, it will be interesting how many times the word “racist” will be dropped to explain American discontent with the administrations policies.

Buckle up America, because when Congress restarts, President Obama and the Left haven’t seen nothing yet as the unfolding drama of liberal political arrogance collides with American resolve to end government encroachment.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
33 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
restrainedradical
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 4:34am

You, and so many others, are conflating legitimate opposition to policy with lunacy. Just because you’re on the same side of the aisle doesn’t mean you have to defend all of them. The Birthers and now the Uneducators cannot be reasoned with and trying will only be politically counterproductive. Obama and the Democrats gain by keeping alive this perception that Republicans are crazy.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 6:20am

Well I am opposed to Obama’s nationwide speech to school kids and I am not an “Uneducator”. I have a teacher’s BA in social studies which I obtained before I ran off to Law School. My wife has an MA in Library Science and an MA in Spanish, and has taught Spanish in a public high school, and she opposes this use of the students of America as a political prop for this floundering administration. All three of our kids attend our local public high school. The superintendant of our school system has decided to burn the speech onto some DVDs and make them available to kids who want to watch it, but not to turn over instruction time to this Presidential nationwide photo-op.

Ellen
Ellen
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 6:35am

I don’t oppose the president’s speech at all, but I do think the teacher’s lesson plan put out by the White House smacked of the cult of personality.

Blackadder
Blackadder
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 8:55am

The text of the speech is here. On a quick perusal, it appears to be an “eat your vegetables” speech, no different from those given by prior presidents. Not sure what the fuss is about.

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:21am

Blackadder-
Given that it doesn’t match up with the topics listed even in the re-done study guide, it would be reasonable to assume the speech was significantly re-written. This guess is bolstered by the fact that they didn’t release the speech days ago, instead of the morning prior to the scheduled talk.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:26am

Lesson plans asking students to write about “Is he challenging you to do anything?” Easily can be lead down the partisan route by a partisan teacher (and plenty of those in public schools.) Doesn’t help that is was written in part by the White House with the Dept. of Education. The faux pas was clear even to the White House and DOE resulting in changes to the lesson plans. Should have also released the content of the speech prior to today. Who’s to say the opposition didn’t change the wording of the speech.

Some potential problems with the lesson plans:

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/09/03/politicizing-the-department-of-education/

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:26am

Foxfier anticipated part of what I am saying.

Blackadder
Blackadder
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:33am

Foxfire,

I’m not sure what study materials you are referring to. The study materials I’ve seen (and that would include the materials referenced in the article Phillip cites to) seems to match up pretty well with what’s actually in the speech.

My understanding is that the study materials for the Obama speech track pretty closely the materials for Bush’s speech to school children back in the early 1990s. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever Dept of Ed underlying was assigned to prepare the materials just ripped off the prior version.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:37am

Actually no. The Dept. of Ed admits the lesson plans were written in collaboration with the White House – and not the Bush White House.

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:41am

The topics mentioned were “citizenship, personal responsibility, and civic duty”– only two of those three can sort of be found in the speech.

Do you have a link to said materials? I’ve heard that statement morphing from “maybe Bush the Elder did it” to “these are exactly what Bush the Elder had” over the course of the weekend.

Also, we do know who wrote the lesson plans– they were in large part provided by the White House.

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 10:42am

And again we cross post….

S.B.
S.B.
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 11:24am

Folks like MM love to make the hypocrisy point, claiming that everyone was fine when Reagan and Bush made similar speeches. Not so fast: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/When-Bush-spoke-to-students-Democrats-investigated-held-hearings-57694347.html

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 11:30am

I’m sure this point will be brought up on NPR this afternoon. Waiting…Waiting…Waiting.

Rick Lugari
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 11:37am

SB, you simply don’t understand. The problem is the difference between devils (R) and gods (D).

Either way though, it’s just one more reason to homeschool.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 11:44am

Here’s the lesson plans. Also the Dept of Ed site notes that the plans were written in collaboration with the White House:

http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html

Blackadder
Blackadder
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 12:07pm

Folks like MM love to make the hypocrisy point, claiming that everyone was fine when Reagan and Bush made similar speeches.

Okay, so liberals are hypocrites for objecting then and not now, and conservatives are hypocrites for objecting now but not then. The question is whether there’s anything objectionable about what the President said. If there is, I’m not seeing it.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 12:10pm

Is there anything objectionable about the lesson plans as originally formulated – Yes. Is there anything objectionable about what he was going to say before the fuss began – maybe. The protest may have done its job in more ways then one.

Blackadder
Blackadder
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 12:57pm

What was objectionable about the lesson plans as originally written?

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 1:42pm

What *isn’t* creepy about telling kids to write letters on how they can help the president, to be collected and passed out later to see how they’re living up to the goal?

What if you’re not inspired by Obama, for that matter?

(For that matter, the idea of a speech being interesting and challenging for pre-schoolers through seniors is kinda bloody weird, too, especially for someone that has kids.)

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 1:56pm

If I want my kids to listen to a politician I’ll take them to see said politician, without the assistance of the school or the White House, thank you very much. (In regard to my kids, however, if Obama wanted to address a classroom in person I would love for the class to contain my three kids. Two of them would ask follow-up questions that would leave a mark! My autistic son would probably be wondering how one of Dad’s boring political shows followed him to school!)
A factor overlooked in all of this of course is that the National Education Association, the teacher’s union, has been a dominant power in the Democrat party for decades. The idea that a fair share of their membership will not be attempting to make partisan hay out of this is risible.

The link below is to their story on the Obama address at the NEA website. As the first comment notes the NEA protested Bush addressing four classrooms in 1991.

http://www.nea.org/home/35721.htm

restrainedradical
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 1:57pm

One of the suggested activities in the original was to write about “how to help the president.” It was changed to “how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.” IMO the criticism was fair and it was rectified. Still doesn’t explain why so many are opposed to children even hearing the speech.

Tito Edwards
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:01pm

Restrained Radical,

I noted your points in my posting. And I explained why there was an overreaction.

The reaction is to President Obama’s policies itself that manifested since the mainstream media refused to air any of the legitimate news concerning this growing grassroots movement. Add to this that President Obama and his proxies continue to slur and belittle any news that percolates to the surface and you have what happened with President Obama’s video to kids.

It’s all in my posting.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:03pm

Another problem is that the lesson plans ask older students to look at past Obama speeches on education and post quotes around the classroom. Of course past education speeches of Obama are riddled with errors. This from teh Washington Post:

“Studies show that children in early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job and more likely to earn more in that job. For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health-care costs and less crime. That’s why [the stimulus law] invests $5 billion in growing Early Head Start and Head Start.”

Early education is a contentious issue, with many types of programs serving various goals.

There is research to show lasting benefits for some kids who later move into good schools. There is research to show that such benefits fade if they do not move into strong schools. There is research to show that some programs help kids from low-income families become academically prepared for school. And there is research to show some programs don’t do more than babysit.

Head Start, the country’s largest publicly funded preschool program, is praised by supporters for providing comprehensive education, health care and other support to low-income families. Critics say some programs are uneven and have little or no impact on academic performance. Finally, there are many estimates about how much money preschool saves in the long run. Obama’s is not the final word.

DROPOUTS

“Our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past 30 years.”

For this statistic, the Education Department says that the president drew on a report from the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy at Boston College that was cited by the College Board in December. It said: “The rate at which students disappear from schools between grades 9 and 12 has tripled in the last 30 years.”

How such rates are calculated is highly controversial. Dropouts are hard to track in part because kids move around. Graduation rates are often cited, but analysts say they have been fudged in some places. According to University of Chicago professor Melissa Roderick, it all depends on how and whom you count. One way is to calculate the people who wind up getting some kind of high school diploma or equivalency degree by their mid-20s. About 87 percent of people ages 25 to 29 are getting such degrees.

If you look at kids who are getting diplomas on time, after four years of high school, that overall rate is about 75 percent, she said, although it is much lower for black and Hispanic students. States, pushed by the federal government, are moving to standardize the use of this on-time graduation rate.

Blackadder
Blackadder
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:11pm

What *isn’t* creepy about telling kids to write letters on how they can help the president, to be collected and passed out later to see how they’re living up to the goal?

One of my co-workers told me the other day that he remembers watching Ronald Reagan speak when he was a kid in school and was assigned to write about how he could help the President (the co-worker is a conservative Republican, btw, and no fan of Obama).

It’s only creepy if you want it to be.

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:12pm

On graduation rates– don’t forget private or homeschooling might “look” like a kid dropped out, or those folks who join the military early and get their GED in bootcamp.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:19pm

True. My point is that included in the lesson plans was quoting past Obama speeches on education. Even one’s that are quite flawed in their data. So a student might decide to write his legislator about increasing funding for Headstart. Even though there’s no evidence that that works. Except from a partisan perspective. And there’s the problem.

Foxfier
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:36pm

Blackadder-
Was that from the nation-wide, White House provided lesson plan, or did his teacher do it on his own?
Was this after he directly contacted principals to get them to show his speech?
Come to think of it, how old was your co-worker? How well does he remember this? (I’ve seen false memories show up for stuff that’s less than a year old, let alonenearly twenty-one years old.)

November 14th of 88, Reagan did a Q&A for school kids that was carried on C-SPAN. He was nearing the end of his term, had no big irons in the fire, wasn’t hugely controversial, didn’t try to subvert usual channels, hadn’t just chosen a ton of highly controversial advisors and wasn’t accusing the opposition of manufacturing (violent) protests while doing so himself.
With just one or two of these, the Obama thing might not be a big deal. With all of these things, it’s a big deal.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, September 8, AD 2009 2:43pm

Yes. It would be good to see the lesson plans developed by the DOE and the White House for both the Reagan and Bush speechs. I just can find them on Google.

trackback
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2009 1:38am

[…] President Obama and his liberal supporters seem to live in a bubble that is immune to what is happening to the average […]

MacGregor
MacGregor
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2009 4:27am

So after all of this fuss and fuming and hyperbole, and after the speech has been described as good, topical and non-partisan by a great number of independent and moderate Republican leaders nation-wide, the anti-Obama posters here still think there was a great conspiracy to indoctrinate kids – wow, what a shock. I guess it is better to accuse the president of an unproven, unlikely theoretical malfeasance based upon one’s political orientation than to judge what actually happened.

That

First, yes the Dept. of Education wrote a series of suggested activities and topics – that is what the Dept. of Education does.

Second, yes White House staff – not a giant uber-being called the White House, but some White House staffers helped. Why? Because they being in the White House, actually might have known some of the topics of the speech. If the WH had sent no staff to the Dept. of Ed., that would have been really stupid and the Dept. of Ed. would have not known what to activities to suggest. Is this logic difficult to follow?

Third, all speeches go through a series of revisions (as do ALL lesson plans) up until they are published. Now, maybe Obama originally had the words, “Look into my eyes and join the Democratic party,” or “Hey kids lets all chant, ‘public option, public option, yea public option,” or maybe even “When I was your age, I enjoyed reading such books as Mein Kampf and histories of the Bolshevik revolutionaries,” until right-wingers complained and then he removed them … or maybe he actually wanted kids to stay in school and be responsible for their own education … and then maybe someone said, “Make sure you add something about being careful about coming down with the flu,” and so things like that were added? As Tito demonstrated in the article, it is easy to overlook the simple answer when you are passionately looking for a more sinister one.

Phillip: So you say that statistics can be difficult to interpret and the methodology of creating them differs from organization to organization and state to state. Yeah, I think we probably already know that. That may be one of the bad effects of local control. When you want to compare things across the nation, it is often useful to use national standards … oops, that darn federal government getting in our business again! There is actually a valid way, though of looking at data that comes from different sources and that is to study it longitudinally. That is, as long as the different statistics consistently use the same techniques from year to year (this is the reason we have state statisticians) then you can look for trends. If these trend show increases and there are what are called “internal or external threats to validity,” then those statistics can give you some insight. It is limited and it is conditional, but I’m sure you as a teacher and a lawyer, you must use some statistics in your work.

Foxfier, they already know which students are homeschooled and even private schools have to give their data for these studies. The most difficult thing that I came across when I worked for a few years in an urban school, was with the students who changed schools mid-year if their family moved. This is a surprisingly large number of kids (5-10%) and a real problem with their education.

Foxfier, I think you are a bit disingenuous when you say that Reagan’s talk to students (carried on a network that was broadcast to many schools) was somehow so innocent and apolitical and as if you was just a kindly old man talking to some kids. Well, yes democrats largely kept it apolitical because liberals realized that it was a great thing for the most powerful man in the world to take time out of his day to talk to kids and I guess that was a time of greater respect for the office. However, Reagan was NOT uncontroversial – he had the Iran-Contra scandal that still is reverberating, he had the most advisors of any president ever (until Bush 2) under indictment, he had . He WAS accusing his opposition of a great many things, it was just that his opponents were mostly protesting issues, like moving nuclear waste and clear-cutting redwoods, they weren’t attacking him or arriving to his speeches holding semi-automatic weapons.

Aside: After the attempted assassination on Reagan, how restrained do you think Reagan’s secret service would have been compared to the way restraint that Obama’s secret service detail has been even as people have waved signs describing how blood should be spilled and that he is the moral equivalent to Hitler? Given that the last few years have shown that it is mostly radical white conservatives how have killed the most people for cultural and political reasons, the authorities have shown remarkable skill and restraint.

So Obama is really no more controversial than Reagan was, they both inherited problems, though Obama inherited worse ones according to Bush, and they both took principled stands that have made them targets for dissent, but there is a difference. Just like Tito and Foxfier some conservatives are already so convinced of a pattern of behavior, so prejudiced to a perception about Obama that ANYTHING he does is colored. And of course to my mind, the problem is that this perception is false.

Obama has not belittled his opponents, has never dismissed the tea partiers as unAmerican (find the video!!) or even lashed out at those who whine about his citizenship. He is actually almost to “no drama Obama” about almost everything, except when he jumped the gun on the Gates arrest. If you can’t see that he is the most restrained president in a long, long time than you are mightily biased and you’ve forgotten when Reagan said this:

I realize that for some, as long as an older, moderately conservative white president tells someone to shut up, that it is a “manly, American” moment, yet if a younger, moderately liberal black president would say the same thing, it would be the act of an arrogant elitist cult figure. I’m not accusing anyone here of this, but I can’t help think of what the “birthers” would say. It is prejudice, it is about culture war politics and it is a symptom of people who have lost or never had a way to be self-reflective and intellectually honest.

The liberal hecklers who shouted at President Reagan and the two Presidents Bush, were generally young and though vocal were not a large segment of the population – those who actually formed the loyal, liberal opposition were usually respectful. Those who over-reacted to Obama’s speech and attended some of the town halls and tea parties are parents and people who should either know better or be better role models. Not to stop voicing their opinions or to stop articulating their opposition – for that is the messy reality of democracy – but they should at least act like adults.

To me the thesis of this entire thread seems to be false as I read it.

1. President Obama was not elected because people were merely protesting a bad economy. That is flat out unsupportable. Both McCain and Obama were BOTH running against the Bush economy and the people actually had a choice of philosophies and a choice of candidates and Obama fit what the people wanted.

2. The voters did not vote for a greatly expanded bureaucracy, yes, but they did vote for a candidate who was refreshing in several ways, first he actually didn’t blame the federal government for everything. He talked about government in an adult manner, not trying to call it evil while at the same time trying to get the job to run it, and not pretending to cut the expanse of government while actually increasing it. Case in point, the federal government expanded under every president and the single biggest increase in federal jobs occurred under George W. Bush with Homeland Security.

3. The voters voted for someone who would stop lying to them about Iraq, not break international treatise, end torture of prisoners (which he has done mostly), end intrusion into people’s live by wiretaps and other means as implemented by the “small government” of GW Bush (which he really hasn’t done), improve the diplomatic corps that was decimated by Bush, opened dialogue with our allies without bribing them into helping us … etc., too many things. I hope you get it. He was voted in on a broad agenda of changes that now have been conveniently forgotten about.

4. The original post is also wrong in stating that he failed “to recognize genuine American concern to deficit spending…” Actually he didn’t. He unlike Bush put the Iraq War back into the budget so people could actually see and congress could be more responsible for its affects on the budget, which Bush liked to hide. He also staunchly would veto any health care reform that would create deficit spending and is the first president in a while to advocate for “pay as you go.” Some here may not know what that means, but it means “don’t add to the deficit.” So that means cut programs or raise taxes. You may agree with his tax plans, but you can not call him unconcerned for deficit spending – two different things.

5. The article says that Obama failed to recognize how much Americans don’t want “the nationalization of the motor industry.” No one wants the nationalization of the motor industry, Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to run GM or have the government nationalize any corporation. You may not agree with the tactics but bailing out GM just means having a 60% non-voting investment in it. It is one company, not an industry. It is temporary and GM is already planning to pay it back because they don’t want the government strings that are attached. And why are they attached, because the government (the Fed Reserve and Treasury) by law CAN NOT just give money away without protecting the taxpayer. It is too much to get into hear, but even the financial news pundits who hate government intrusion have come to realize that GM still went out under bankruptcy, but that it did so in a far quicker time frame and it saved all of the thousands of smaller companies and many dealerships (which of course IS the majority of the motor industry) from having to go bankrupt and thus not become nationalized. This was not perfect and I think the unions got a better deal than they deserved and some of it was political (wow, McCain would never have been political!?), but to call that nationalization of the motor industry is so far from reality that it is laughable. Ford is doing just fine and if Chrysler fails or GM has any more problems, it will be gone. The bailout was only deemed necessary because it happened to coincide with the failure of Wall Street and even though I believe in the principle of moral hazard in capitalism, I also feel that once a century the rules of the game need to be bent to prevent needless pain as long as it is temporary – and that is from Thomas Jefferson’s (a great small government guy) views.

6. The article says, “Then came the town hall meetings where Americans began to voice their displeasure. Again, President Obama and his proxies dismissed them as “astro-turf”. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derided them as Nazi’s.” This is a particularly biased statement in my opinion. First Obama, again, did not dismiss the town hall protesters … ever!!! Some did of course, because some protesters were way over the top, but there is no cabal of Obama proxies soing anything. There are some pundits and some politicians who think that many of the tea parties and town halls had some outside influences – and they did, but no one said that all or even most of the people there genuinely expressing opinions were that way. As a matter of fact the administration has mostly said that it was only the most vocal that got on TV, but that most town halls went well with plenty of genuine and passionate viewpoints.

Also I find it interesting that Pelosi (of whom I am not a fan) says the term “Nazi” once in relation to, not protesters, but to the people who yell to the point that no one can speak, she gets blamed for that hyperbole even as hundreds of right-wingers and dozens of conservative talk show hosts actually call Obama a Nazi on a daily basis. Just think use some perspective hear, the Speaker of the House can use it once about one particular instance and every extreme conservative makes a huge deal out, yet when conservatives say the same thing on a daily basis, they are somehow patriotic Americans. I guess some people just don’t get irony.

There is more that I could write, but this is way too long already. I just think that the premise of the thread is so much ado about nothing. The Obama admin. hasn’t over-reacted or demonized conservatives. It was dealt a bad hand in the way that President Bush 43 was dealt a bad hand with 9/11 and both administrations had political operatives whose job it is to look for ways of dealing with emergencies and even using them as opportunities for change. Bush and Cheney used 9/11 as a reason to invade Iraq and to greatly increase the power of the presidency. It is unclear how Raum E. expects to use the current crises, but Obama has chosen to look at how Reagan era deregulation substantially led to the Wall Street credit problem and the recession is a good time to reform the system. That is actually a responsible position to take. We’ll see if it works. Health care will bankrupt the country if it is left to grow at the existing rate, and in an economic down turn, this may also be the time to reform it as well. Finally, wars and security issues are good drivers for reforming the countries energy policy.

My point is that you can disagree with Obama’s philosophies and argue his policies and even dislike his personality, but to say he is that much different from most other administrations, both Republican and Democrat, is quite the overstatement. And yes, if he does over-react (which he hasn’t yet) or he takes on too many issues to change (which he probably did), then elections will be his report card. Let’s just keep the hyperbole and biases to the pros, like Beck.

BTW, his approval rating has fallen from 70% to 50%. A big drop, but 50% is pretty high for any president during a once in a century economic crisis and in the midst of two wars and as a target of plenty of prejudice even as he has maintained by and large his dignity and not simply fallen into the tactics of most other presidents of wrapping himself in the flag and causing people to be scared.

BTW, the whole point of the cartoon at the top has obviously been missed.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2009 9:15am

You have a lot of time on your hands. Your ignore the bottom line. The lesson plans were changed. The White House itself by its actions admitted they were wrong by doing so. They may very well have changed the speech due to the democratic efforts of Republicans. Can’t deny the truth of this.

Foxfier
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2009 9:43am

Would you like a match for your strawman? Maybe a thresher?

I haven’t seen such a load of hooey since my little sister tried to use “nothing happened” to prove “nothing will ever happen” when she stayed out too late in high school.

DarwinCatholic
Reply to  Phillip
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2009 10:25am

I do think that the fuss about the school address has been excessive — at the same time, however, I think MacGregor’s extensive comment above falls into the basic pattern (all too easy to fall into) of looking at things through a tribal lens and thinking, “Sure there are some crazies on my side, but there aren’t many and they’re harmless. Now the other guys! They’re bad!”

Yes, there have certainly been over-the-top reactions to Clinton and Obama, but there were incredibly extreme amounts of hate directed at Reagan and Bush2, and both of them dealt with it in a calm and statesmanlike fashion. Attempts to portray Obama’s critiques as more deranged or dangerous than the sufferers from Bush Derangement Syndrome over the last eight years suggest a certain lack of perspective.

This is not to say that people are right to behave irresponsibly in response to Obama, but perspective is always necessary.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top