Posted on 07/09/2014 3:27:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Yes, Rick Perry is awful for not shaking his hand, but the president needs a Pope Francis-like moment with the border kids to signal America is more than blowhards and racists.
Lets get Rick Perrys jackass-ery out of the way quickly: Refusing to shake hands in public with the president of the United States is just an idiot thing to do. Perry is trying to claim the faux moral high ground here by arguing that he held out for a more substantive meeting and got it, but come on. Its not as if that meeting wouldnt have happened if the governor had shown up on the runway. What exactly does Obama get out of a public handshake with a hard-right, not that bright, confusingly optometrized Texas Republican?
This might be a paragraph you can wave in my face on January 21, 2017, and God knows Ive written a number of them, but: Rick Perry aint never gonna be president. Weve been watching him on the national stage for a while now. Forget the third thing he forgot. The problem is that his instincts are wrong, his timing is bad, his hand is heavy. Accusing the White House of orchestrating a coordinated effort to help the movement of tens of thousands of children? Thats just Tea Party nonsense. Hes a guitarist who never knows what notes not to play. Now, guitarists like that have fans, sometimes millions of them. But they dont ascend the plinth of greatness. He just has governor but nothing more written on his face.
Now lets turn to the guy who did ascend the plinth, at least in terms of becoming president. What is he doing on this issue of the immigrant children? They were asking on Hardball Tuesday night whether this might be Obamas Katrina. Weve had a string of little crises that were all supposed to be Obamas Katrina, and theyve mostly been jokes. Slates Dave Weigel counted up nine of em. Its been silly. But somehow, this one didnt ring so false to me when Matthews et al were discussing it Tuesday night.
For one thing, there is the specific parallel of the flyover: Obama was going to Texas for a fundraiser but wasnt planning on going to the border? I usually try to ask myself what Id be saying if a Republican did X, and if a Republican did that, Id be teeing off. Its not defensible.
Second, Obama is at a really vulnerable point in his presidency, I think, not dissimilar to the point George W. Bush was at in August 2005, when Katrina hit. Then, Bushs approval rating was generally in the mid-40s, as Obamas is now. Hanging on, but vulnerable to one straw that could break the camels back. Obama is in that place now. And this is pretty far afield, but keep an eye on Aleppo in Syria. Aleppo has been a stronghold of the more legitimate opposition to Bashar al-Assad. It might be about to fall to Assads forces. This, two weeks after Obama announced a big aid package for the moderate rebels. Syria is Obamas biggest foreign policy failurehe should have delivered that $500 million to those forces long ago, but he delayed. When Assads recapture of Aleppo is consummated, Obama is going to look played again.
That delaying is a pattern. I dont understand it. I covered New York mayors. When a crisis hits, you go. If its 3 in the {expletive} morning and way out in some part of Staten Island youve never even heard of, you go. Obama should have been in Texas or California or Arizona last week.
But saying what? Thats the problem. If we lived in a better country, wed take these kids in. Its obscene that we dont. Used by jackals, no life to go back to at all. Yes, I guess we cant encourage 200,000 or 300,000 to come. But we could at least be housing them in circumstances better than 20 of them sharing one toilet. Its disgusting and makes me ashamed, and it should you.
But Obama is the last person in America who can say that. Hed be pilloried. Maybe impeached (reason, what, five, to the right?). And that tells us whats really tragic about this crisis. We have a political system that not only cant solve this particular crisis, it is virtually guaranteed never to solve it. Thats almost all the Republicans fault. Anything that embarrasses Obama theyre going to play up, of course, but its also the raging xenophobia of their base.
Still, this is the kind of situation where the people who voted for Obama want him to do...something. They understand the political constraints. They know he cant do a lot. But a Pope Francis-esque gesture of some kind: As the pope washed the feet of women, would it be too much for Obama to go to one of these horrid shelters and read these children a story? Kick a soccer ball with them? Would that really kill him in the polls? Most liberals arent unrealistic, contrary to what you normally read. But they want to see little manifestations of courage from the man they voted for. This is a prime moment for exactly that.
I think the White House in these circumstances underestimates the American people. The American people, thank God, arent right-wing bigots and blowhards. Theyre actually pretty decent. You just have to find that yin of decency and locate the gestures and words that smother the yang of fear. It can be done. The media poke fun at hope, but what hope meant was that many Americans just wanted Obama to be able to do thatto say to the world, We are this generous people, not that fearful people. It didnt, and still doesnt, seem too much to ask.
Keep posting pics like this on every lefty site.
Let the pictures of the disease sink in, then ask, would you want your child, who attends a public school, to be exposed to this?
I'm sure he could start with "what's a little case of lice between neighbors?" or maybe "who hasn't had antibiotic resistant TB? No worries!" or how about "scabies, the new yuppy disease, it's what all the cool kids get." I know I'd feel a lot better. /s
I just spat iced tea all over my desk. Thanks a lot lol.
How do these supposed “dim bulb” Republicans become state governors? Rick Perry, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Calvin Coolidge, etc.?
Refusing to shake the hand of this Marxist, Mooslim, Kenyan, Steaming Pant Load posing as the pResident makes me PROUD to be a Texan.
Is this satire or did this guy just graduate from journalism school?
No, he’s my age (54) and very well-respected amongst the left-wingers.
brilliant hate spew from the ultra-tolerant, noted..laughing at the superior intellect..
But here’s the deal.
WAKE UP GOPe, see the headline????
Give in, bow down, bend over, open up and say ahhh,and your STILL a bigoted bunch of hateful, intolerant, racists.
See....the headlines??
Think it’s gonna stop?
Think the libs and progs want us all to be one happy family??
Give em everything they want Boner,you’ll find the reaction no different than if you would have stood your ground at every turn, against these tyrants
The Daily Beast should know how to spell Comrade Trotsky’s name properly. I’m surprised they messed it up so badly this time.
Looks like they're pretty pissed off at Obama, the few posters who are cognizant, anyway.
The reader comments at the sites of these news stories tell you as much, if not more about what's going on than the main story. A lot more, in some cases.
That's why I'm so confident that liberals are the minority in America, along with the fact that it only stands to reason that they're the minority because they have to cheat. Otherwise they'd lose because the majority would blow them off at the ballot box.
anti-invasion is now considered bigotry?
the left is lousy with raving nut bags
I say we drop off a busload of illegals at Mikey’s house.
“Rick Perry is awful for not shaking his hand”
So would that make all the Colorado Democrats, including Hickenlooper and Mark Udall, even more awful since they ducked Obama’s visit to Denver yesterday because they didn’t want to have any joint pictures taken with him, much less shake his hand, because Obama is so unpopular in Colorado?
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