Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
February 17, 2012
Last March a few young Syrian boys— all under 17 — wrote on a wall in the farm town of Dara’a in southern Syria, a slogan that had appeared first in Tunisia, then quickly in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya: ”The people want the regime to fall.”
The local governor threw the boys in jail, and so the Syrian revolution started.
Thirty years ago Syria’s brutal president, Hafez al-Assad, put down an anti-government demonstration in the city of Hama by killing 20,000-40,000 residents. His son and successor, Bashar al-Assad, appears to be made of the same stuff. His forces have killed 5,000-7,000* in towns all over Syria, and his killing machine seems to be gaining momentum.
The Arab League and the UN General Assembly have called for an end to the killing and for Assad to leave power. Assad’s answer has been to double down.
It’s anguishing to watch the newscasts or read about the slaughter of innocents and feel helpless to stop it. Until the past few weeks outside help was impossible: unlike Libya, where the rebels controlled large chunks of territory and could be supplied and aided easily, in Syria the opposition was scattered and controlled no territory.
Now that’s changing. CNN’s Ivan Watson is reporting that militants in northern Syria hold substantial territory (more…)
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Tags:Arab League, Assil Anwar Jabr, Bashar al-Assad, CNN, conservative foreign policy establishment, Dael, Dara'a, ethics, Hafez al-Assad, Hama, Homs, Ivan Watson, Libya, NATO, Obama, Syria, Turkey, UN General Assembly
Posted in Ethics-general, International, military, Turkey | 2 Comments »
January 19, 2012
Luis Luna, 20, was an illegal immigrant, smuggled here from Mexico at 3. The LA Times tells his story. Luis did well in school, graduated, got engaged to his high school sweetheart, got a job, then got pulled over while on the way to work for a broken headlight. He had no driver’s license, Immigration was called in, and Luis was deported to Mexico.
He tried to get back by riding the undercarriage of a boxcar, scant inches above the train roadbed, until the train stopped at a U.S. border checkpoint, where a German Shepherd sniffed him out, sank his teeth into Luis’s ribcage, and dragged him out. Luis is now homeless in Nogales, hoping to find a way legally to return to his girlfriend-now-wife, his family, friends, and the only life he’s ever known.
Luis’s tragedy could have been precluded under the Dream Act, which would provide temporary residency and a possible path to citizenship to Luis and hundreds of thousands like him who were brought here as small children and have played by the rules ever since.
President Obama supports the Dream Act, which passed the House last year but failed to get the 60 votes needed to avert a filibuster in the Senate. Mitt Romney says he would veto it, Newt Gingrich says he supports it—a principled position that is costing him dearly with Republican primary voters.
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Tags:border checkpoint, broken headlight, Dream Act, ethics, filibuster, Gingrich, illegal immigrants, LA Times, Luis Luna, Obama, path to citizenship, Republican primary voters., Romney Luis Luna
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Immigration, Politics, Tolerance | 4 Comments »
September 30, 2011
If you’re unhappy with the liberal bias of the mainstream media, welcome to Fox News and to one of their sources, CNSNews.com, a conservative news service formed to provide more balance than spin: in its words, “an alternative news source that would cover stories that are subject to the bias of omission and report on other news subject to bias by commission.”
You would have read about President Obama’s Wednesday back-to-school speech, in which the President spoke about the importance an eighth grade ethics course had in his life, about how the questions raised in that ethics course “are still with me today. Every day, I’m thinking about those same issues as I try to lead this nation.
But that’s not what Fox and CNSNews reported. No, the headline was
Obama: ‘I Don’t Think Ethics’ Was My Favorite Subject
Here’s the lead paragraph, in toto:
President Barack Obama told an audience of high school students in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that he was “not always the very best student” and that ethics “would not have made it on the list” of his favorite subjects.
Not a word in the entire article about how important the course—or ethics—was in his life. Just that he didn’t like it.
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Tags:back-to-school speech, CNSNews.com, eighth grade ethics course, ethics, Fair and balanced, Fox News, half-truths, liberal bias, mainstream media, Obama
Posted in Ethics-general, Media | 1 Comment »
September 29, 2011
President Obama focused on ethics in his annual back-to-school speech today at Benjamin Banneker High School in Washington. It’s worth thinking about what he had to say about ethics:
Now, if you promise not to tell anybody, I will let you in on a little secret: I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school. I did not love every class I took. I wasn’t always paying attention the way I should have. I remember when I was in 8th grade I had to take a class called ethics. Now, ethics is about right and wrong, but if you’d ask me what my favorite subject was back in 8th grade, it was basketball. I don’t think ethics would have made it on the list.
But here’s the interesting thing. I still remember that ethics class, all these years later. I remember the way it made me think. I remember being asked questions like: What matters in life? Or, what does it mean to treat other people with dignity and respect? What does it mean to live in a diverse nation, where not everybody looks like you do, or thinks like you do, or (more…)
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Tags:back-to-school speech, Banneker High School, ethics, high school, Obama
Posted in Education, Ethics-general, Government, Sports | Leave a Comment »
September 29, 2011
The Israeli government is inexorably annexing conquered Palestine territory, in contravention of international law and against continual requests by the United States. That’s earning them the anguish of much of the Israeli population and the condemnation of most of the world.
Israel shows exquisite timing in its defiance of the rules of civilization. As the United States shows support for Israel, Israel takes odious actions that outrage the entire Muslim world and wreck America’s credibility with that world.
In March 2010 Vice President Biden traveled to Israel to demonstrate “a total U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.” Israel picked that occasion to announce a plan to build 16oo new homes in East Jerusalem. Biden denounced the Israeli plan, but to no effect,
Last week at the United Nations President Obama cravenly surrendered to the Israeli government’s demand that we oppose the Palestinian request for admission to the UN, and called instead for resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Two days later Israel torpedoed negotiations by announcing yet another 1100 homes would be built on occupied land in East Jerusalem. Secretary of State Clinton condemned the announcement, as if that would have any effect on Israel’s reckless plans.
United States support for Israel has become a blank check for relentless expansionism that threatens to plunge the Middle East into another war, one that Israel will do everything to draw the United States into.
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Tags:admission to the UN, Biden, East Jerusalem. United Nations, ethics, expansionism, Fool me once, international law, Israel, Middle East war, Muslim world, Obama, Palestine territory, Palestinian Authority, Secretary Clinton
Posted in Ethics-general, International, military | Leave a Comment »
September 23, 2011
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, told a cheering UN General Assembly today, “I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for full admission to the United Nations.”
Who can disagree? The government of Israel, for one. And if the GOI objects, the American right will come right along. And so, sadly, will President Obama. Conscience takes a back seat when votes are about to be counted.
Obama’s speech to the UN was a craven surrender to the Israeli government’s demand that we oppose the Palestinian request. This is an ethical disaster, as well as a realpolitik one. It will wipe out the good will Obama earned with his earlier calls for honorable treatment of the Palestinians and his once-brave insistence on a halt to Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Forgotten, too, will be his siding with the Arab Spring, outweighed as it is among most Muslims and young people everywhere (including in Israel) by his opposition to Palestinian rights.
Obama did have support for his position. To Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama’s speech was a “badge of honor.” This is the same Netanyahu that President Clinton blamed, as recently as yesterday, for preventing a peace deal.
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman liked the speech even more, telling a news conference, “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.” Lieberman is widely despised in Israel as a racist for his proposal to rid Israel of its Arab citizens by “redrawing its map to ‘exchange’ part of the Arab population and create a more ‘homogenous Jewish state,’ as a solution to Israel’s Arab minority ‘problem.’ ”
Having sabotaged Israel’s own relations with Turkey over Israeli refusal to apologize for killing nine Turkish activists running the Gaza blockade, Israel is now sabotaging American relations with the entire Muslim world, which will have a hard time accepting that America preaches freedom for all, but not for occupied Palestine.
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Tags:Arab Spring, Avigdor Lieberman, badge of honor, Binyamin Netanyahu, ethics, Gaza blockade, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, President Clinton, realpolitik, Turkey, UN General Assembly, West Bank
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics | 4 Comments »
August 4, 2011
The only people happy about the battle over the debt ceiling are the pundits, because it gives them an audience and an opportunity to display their insights. Oh, and people close to the President, because they know he won.
Months ago, when John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were assuring everybody that whatever happened they wouldn’t allow the nation to default, President Obama stated his position: he wanted a clean extension that would carry the country past the 2012 election. He didn’t ask for a tax increase on zillionaires, or a deficit reduction—these should be tackled aside from the debt ceiling increase, which after all is only needed to allow the United States to pay its obligations, every dollar of which had been authorized by the Congress.
But Boehner and McConnell couldn’t control their members, especially the Tea Party members who wanted to use the debt ceiling as a bludgeon to smash government. The ceiling had been raised without controversy dozens of times before under Presidents and Congresses of both parties. The Republican threat was a repudiation of ethics, duty, and the Constitution. Still, the threat came.
In the end, and just in the nick of time, the President got what he had asked for: a clean bill that simply raised the limit enough to carry the country past the 2012 election.
You could be confused by the words about a super-committee to identify trillions in savings, or about triggers to force cuts. Here are the facts: (more…)
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Tags:2012 election, ” financial crisis, clean extension, debt ceiling, default, deficit reduction, ethics, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Obama, out years, pundits, super-committee, tax increase, Tea Party, triggers
Posted in Ethics-general, Finance, Government, Politics | 3 Comments »
July 29, 2011
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) yields to no one in his determination not to saddle future generations with government debt. This is from the Chicago Sun-Times:
Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.
“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.
Walsh starts the video by saying, “President Obama, quit lying. Have you no shame, sir? In three short years, you’ve bankrupted this country.”
Walsh joins the ranks of family values politicians who have no family values.
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Tags:Chicago Sun-Times, child support, debt limit debate, ethics, family values, fiscal responsibility, hypocrisy, Joe Walsh, Obama, Tea Party
Posted in Ethics-general, hypocrisy, Politics | 1 Comment »
June 25, 2011
Distrust of the President, and of the government in general, divides our society, emboldens our enemies, and diminishes the effectiveness of our Armed Forces. We owe our elected leaders more respect than that.
President Obama’s Afghanistan drawdown announcement has drawn fire from the left and from the right. He was pilloried on Fox News, on MSNBC, and on CNN, and even ridiculed on The Daily Show after he announced that the U.S. would withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, another 23,000 by “next summer,” with continuing reductions through 2014.
To the right, the President is recklessly ignoring the advice of his military professionals who know what’s needed. To the left, he’s mindlessly sticking to a hopeless and pointless strategy. To both sides he’s sacrificed principle for politics.
But has he? Is there any chance that his decision was based on what he thought best? If we Americans trusted him we’d give him that much. But we don’t, at least not much: the latest Gallup poll says that just 35% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Presidency; 36% have very little confidence or none at all.
But we do trust the military: 78% of us say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. I’d guess the numbers are even higher on the right. But what happens when the military supports the President? Ah, then it’s a different story. (more…)
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Tags:Afghanistan drawdown, Bob Woodward, CNN, confidence in the military, confidence in the Presidency, Distrust, ethics, Fox News, Gallup poll, Joint Chiefs of Staff, military advice, MSNBC, Mullen, national security, Obama, Obama’s Wars, Petraeus, politics, risk, strategy, The Daily Show
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, military | 2 Comments »
May 20, 2011
Has the President “thrown Israel under the bus,” as Mitt Romney said yesterday? Has he “once again betrayed our friend and ally, Israel,” as Michele Bachmann raged? Made a “mistaken and very dangerous demand,” as Tim Pawlenty accused? Or has he “given the Palestinians a huge break,” per Newt Gingrich?
Here’s what the President said:
“I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.”
Oops. That wasn’t this President, it was President George W. Bush, speaking in Jerusalem on January 11, 2008.
Here’s what President Obama said yesterday:
“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
Get the difference? No? That’s because there isn’t any. The 1949 and 1967 lines are the same. The only difference is that Republican politicians will scream in opposition to anything that President Obama says, even if George W. Bush said the same thing without any complaint.
Politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge any more.
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Thanks to Michael Smerconish and Hardball for the quotes used here.
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Tags:1949 lines, 1967 lines, ethics, George W Bush, Israel borders, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, mutually agreed swaps, Obama, Palestinian state, Palestinians . Newt Gingrich, peace agreement, Republican hypocrisy, secure borders, Tim Pawlenty, water's edge
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Last March a few young Syrian boys— all under 17 — wrote on a wall in the farm town of Dara’a in southern Syria, a slogan that had appeared first in Tunisia, then quickly in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya: ”The people want the regime to fall.” 
