At the same age—21—Obama was smoking in the Choom Gang, while Lt. Inouye was fighting to save democracy in Italy in WW2.
I never agreed with Inouye’s politics—it was hard for me to accept that one who sacrificed so much for America could be so leftist, but there are others of his generation who acted the same way.
But to even spend 20 seconds on his narcissistic rambling art the funeral of a man who actually accomplished something with his life is unbelievable.
It also shows that Obama has NOTHING of value to add to the conversation, because he is just so unaccomplished, that there is no point of common reference with Inouye, other than being from Hawaii, that Obama has to talk about himself.
This is what passes for Presidential leadership at the end of 2012.
May God have mercy on us.
Leftists -- at least during WW2 -- could still act as patriots. It's the main reason Winston Churchill got bounced from his Prime Minister postion at the end. Returning British veterans wanted all kinds of government subsidized goodies and Churchill was viewed as a kind of curmudgeonly spoil-sport.
In the United States, FDR was slow-walking the United States into the war when Pearl Harbor handed him a blank-check. Eventually he'd have siezed on the U-boat campaign -- like Woodrow Wilson did in WW1 - as a pretext. He had the USN actively attacking German U-boats in the Western Atlantic so that the Royal Navy could concentrate on the Western Approaches. Hitler for a time ordered his U-boat skippers not to retaliate (talk about your restrictive ROE's!)
It wasn't until Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in the late summer of '41 that the Leftists in this country abandoned the isolationaist movement and began agitating for the US to get into the War. That left only staunch conservatives in oppositions, and they gave it up after the Japanese attacked later that December.
Someday there will be a popular history written of the Leftist Movement in US politics that will tie it all together.