Stephanie
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The community agitator in Cheif, fitting and ugly to watch
SNIP:
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 08/20/2010 07:02 PM ET
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The president of the United States has it hard enough without needlessly wading into, and fanning, local controversies. The economy is battered by sluggish growth, high unemployment, record annual deficits and near unsustainable national debt. Over 50% of the people now disapprove of Barack Obama's handling of these problems.
So why weigh in on hot-button issues that can only polarize people without solving anything?
Last summer, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a scholar of African-American literature and history, got into a silly dispute with a local policeman. For some reason, President Obama, the leader of the Free World, rushed to judgment and gratuitously announced that police Sgt. James Crowley and the local Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly." For relish, he added that police wrongly stereotype in general. Obama supporters wrote off the entire psychodrama as a "teachable moment."
Arizona recently passed a bill designed to enforce existing immigration law and stop the enormous influx of illegal aliens into the state. Various groups, including the federal government, quickly made plans to sue the state. Yet various polls indicated that 70% of Americans agreed with the Arizona law, and dozens of states were planning similar legislation.
Nonetheless, the president also jumped into that acrimony well before the law went into effect. Obama and his attorney general alleged that Arizonans were promoting stereotyping, even though police were forbidden to question the immigration status of those who had not come into prior contact with law enforcement.
Arizona Bigots
Most recently, Obama pontificated about the proposed mosque next to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, in what his supporters might call a "teachable moment." The issue is not a legal one. Both sides recognize the legal right of Muslims to build mosques anywhere that local zoning ordinances permit them. Instead, the controversy pertains to common decency, and the nature of the funding and proponents of the project.
No matter: The president instead lectured his mostly Muslim audience that America respects the rights of all religions again, not the issue in question. A day later, in embarrassment, he backtracked a bit.
Where to start with all these teachable moments?
read it all here.
President Still Thinking Like Local Agitator - IBD - Investors.com
SNIP:
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 08/20/2010 07:02 PM ET
View Enlarged Image
The president of the United States has it hard enough without needlessly wading into, and fanning, local controversies. The economy is battered by sluggish growth, high unemployment, record annual deficits and near unsustainable national debt. Over 50% of the people now disapprove of Barack Obama's handling of these problems.
So why weigh in on hot-button issues that can only polarize people without solving anything?
Last summer, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a scholar of African-American literature and history, got into a silly dispute with a local policeman. For some reason, President Obama, the leader of the Free World, rushed to judgment and gratuitously announced that police Sgt. James Crowley and the local Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly." For relish, he added that police wrongly stereotype in general. Obama supporters wrote off the entire psychodrama as a "teachable moment."
Arizona recently passed a bill designed to enforce existing immigration law and stop the enormous influx of illegal aliens into the state. Various groups, including the federal government, quickly made plans to sue the state. Yet various polls indicated that 70% of Americans agreed with the Arizona law, and dozens of states were planning similar legislation.
Nonetheless, the president also jumped into that acrimony well before the law went into effect. Obama and his attorney general alleged that Arizonans were promoting stereotyping, even though police were forbidden to question the immigration status of those who had not come into prior contact with law enforcement.
Arizona Bigots
Most recently, Obama pontificated about the proposed mosque next to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, in what his supporters might call a "teachable moment." The issue is not a legal one. Both sides recognize the legal right of Muslims to build mosques anywhere that local zoning ordinances permit them. Instead, the controversy pertains to common decency, and the nature of the funding and proponents of the project.
No matter: The president instead lectured his mostly Muslim audience that America respects the rights of all religions again, not the issue in question. A day later, in embarrassment, he backtracked a bit.
Where to start with all these teachable moments?
read it all here.
President Still Thinking Like Local Agitator - IBD - Investors.com
