I’ll take racist dog whistles for $500, Alex.
The anger that seemed President Obama’s central theme in his September 9 speech to Congress was palpable, almost shocking. He demanded action now, and threatened to “call out” those who — he claimed — were spreading falsehoods about his healthcare nationalization plans.
Obama does not seem to realize that the fire and brimstone of the campaign trail have to be left behind when a man enters the Oval Office. Presidents who exude confidence, competence and principle usually succeed. Anger belies the self-confidence that has been Obama’s trademark. It may soon replace it.
Obama is, again, the incredible shrinking president. His anger — in speech after speech about healthcare, before and after the address to the joint session of Congress — is not just unpresidential, but has a constant negative effect, a gradual whittling away of whatever influence he may have abroad that has not already been surrendered in his June speech in Cairo.
…
Barack Obama substitutes anger and naïveté for passion and style
Shorter Jed Babbin: hide the white women, Obama’s on a rampage!
Here’s an excerpt from a speech by the extremely presidential and confident — but not at all angry — George W. Bush from 2005.
While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. (Applause.) Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.
…
The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. (Applause.) These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. (Applause.)
For some reason, I can’t find an article by Jed Babbin or in Human Events that bemoans how shockingly angry and unpresidential Bush’s accusing his critics of lying was.
Related posts:
- Early Morning Swim: Karl Rove, Rudy Guiliani, Racist White Guys — Worst Persons in the World
- Human Events: Democrats Supporting Health Care Reform are “Suicide Bombers”, Should Heed Teabaggers
- Richard Cohen: Is Obama Man Enough to Win in Afghanistan?
- Selling the Obama Surge
- Would Obama Issue First Veto to Protect Anthrax Whitewash?




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Crap like Jeb Babbin’s actually makes me wish the functional illiteracy rate in the U.S. was lower than it is.
Shorter BO: Excuuuse me, while I whip this out !
Babbin- “If the president were as serious about the threat of Islamofascism as he is about his healthcare bill, he’d set aside the latter and deal exclusively with the former now and for as long as it took to resolve.”
Hahahahahahahahaha!
President Obama has shown an inhuman level of patience and civility with all the vitriol that’s been thrown in his direction. If I were him I’d either break down and cry at every private moment or demand that the IRS audit every teabagger that pops up. He should be nominated for Sainthood at this point.
He thinks that the Cairo speech damaged his influence abroad?
Not angry enough. There’s a balance to these things.
Great post, Blue Texan. So glad you called out Jeb Babblin (sic) on his intentional misrepresentation of Obama’s recent speech. I’m getting very sick of the penchant many on the right have of deliberate fear mongering, lying and otherwise misrepresenting the positions of their opponents. Their efforts to stir up ill feelings and rabble rouse must be met by resistance at all levels. Line ‘em up; shoot ‘em down! Ready to go for another round.
“substitutes anger for passion” ? for these guys, any kind of passion from a black man = anger.
That’s the only possible explanation for this.
Otherwise, they didn’t watch the same speech I did.
Even at the interruption – he looked stern for a moment, and said, “that isn’t true,”, but then was back to calm but forceful in a few seconds.
Amazing.
Even Maureen Dowd now admits this is coming from racism.
OK. Jedd Babbin (portrait):
http://greggjackson.com/blog/w…..to_lg1.jpg
old. white. male. Not that there’s anything wrong with old, white men. I just wanted to make it clear where this is coming from.
Just another yapping wingnut I never heard of…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_Babbin
We all probably would be dancing in the street if Obama showed any anger. He’s way too passive for me.
My pastor remarked on Sunday that he thought Obama is one of the few people in Washington modeling adult behavior.
I still hate Obama’s corporacentrist ideology, but I think my pastor’s right about his mature demeanor.
“In the Words of Our Enemies”
I guess he must quote himself a lot.
Strange that they’d hire a lizard person to write an article for a publication called “Human Events”…
Lots of racism on the right. It fuels rage.
Code words a plenty.
I just wish it were true. We could use some anger for a change.
its a conservative rethug rag.. about 60 years old. The human events refers to “When in the course of human events…” in the Declaration of Independence. You have to be a Lizard Person to write for it and an orc to want to read it.
was just reading an Op Ed on this – likening the Republicans to 4th graders w/ spitballs aready when the teacher’s out of the room – from an Arkansas paper
I agree. I actually think it is about time for him to say “cut this shit out” or at least mock them more obviously.
BT – have you heard Debra Medina’s announcement that she’s running for governor against “entrensched Republicans.?”
Her platform seems to be – literally – “nullification of federal law in Texas” (when did we become S Carolina?), especially (she was asked directly) Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention “education mandates.”
The nuts are running the asylum, no question.
No, but good luck to her trying to out crazy Perry.
Nullify Medicare? Yeah, she’s gonna be really popular…
Well, what do you expect? Republicans love it when a president fulminates from the bully pulpit so long as he’s a Republican. What surprises them about Obama is that they probably think the bully pulpit was taken out of the White House at 11:59 a.m. on January 20th. That’s probably their explanation of how Dick Cheney sprained his back: he personally removed the pulpit so he could mount it from political exile.
Their bigger belief is that the only legitimate presidents are Republican presidents. It’s in step with every other pattern in their thinking. When one of their own has the White House they ignore deficits, give the the executive absolute power, and spay the other two federal branches. But all these “principles” melt away as soon as a Democrat takes the White House.
It’s important to point out their inconsistency, but if that’s all that’s done it’s left at the level of winning water cooler wars. The larger point is that by degrees the Republican Party has been making itself over. It’s now an antidemocratic party behind which stands a profoundly antidemocratic movement. We could see this already in 2000, where this thinking went all the way up to the Supreme Court. But we’ve had eight more years for the lesson to sink in. They have set out to kill as many elements in the democratic process as they can. They hate it with every bone in their body because they know that if it wins, they lose. That’s why they elevate fears, invent wars that will never end, spread lies, stir up mobs, throw out terms with no recognizable bearing on reality, and demonize all the clear-headed and courageous people who call them out.
It’s a lot easier to be flabbergasted by these inconsistencies if you don’t see this. Of course you can say “What else is new?” in a cynical way. But that’s not my recommendation. I think it’s time we began to say that they are perfectly consistent and an outright threat to everything this country has stood for and might yet.
“nullification of federal law in Texas”
Um.. is “nullification” the same as “secession”?
I thought secession was treason. Although I personally have no objection to Texas leaving.
Heh. I marvel at how calm and collected O is during the daily teabagger kerfuffling.
Poor Austin, Texas. It’d be like the Berlin Blockade. We’d have to airlift stuff there.
What doesn’t kill us makes us weirder! ;)
I actually love Texas, except for its rightwing political tendencies. Other than the west coast, it is one of the few places in the USA that I could live.
I fear Austin may be lost. ;-P It’s over 400 miles to friendly American territory, assuming that Colorado, Kansas or New Mexico are friendly, and 200 miles to Mexico. I gather that the Tejas Air National Guard are reasonably good shots.. ‘course shrub was one of their flyboys, so maybe… /s
We could do that. Yes, we can.
According to her (in the report I heard early this a.m.), no she does not “want to secede,” just get rid of all the fed laws she doesn’t like, and return to Constitutional recognition (?) of the sovereignty (!!) of states.
yeah, I expect she’ll lgo far. I’d say Perry or Hutchison just need to play the tape of her saying Medicare shuld be nullified…although, by election time, Perry may be saying thes same.
great.. so they could conceivably say no to the income tax among other things.
…and, Martian, the rest of us foreigners are under the impression that Austin, is, in fact the state (and presumably the future national) capital ;-)
If the Rs keep going backward in time, they will soon be living in caves. We sapiens will have to defeat them all over again.
sapients -> neanderthals -> orcs? :-)
God,I miss LBJ…..Think if we give Obama a pair of Tony Llama’s and a Stetson he MIGHT grow some cujones?
back to slime.
they reject evolution. They don’t believe they came from slime.
They can reject it all they like but I saw a chimp the other day that looked exactly like Mitch McConnell.
For the non-central -Texans: A longtime favorite Austin bumper sticker/motto is “Keep Austin Weird!”
I’m in total agreement, BUT, I don’t see what we get by saying “that they are perfectly consistent and an outright threat to everything this country has stood for and might yet.”
Isn’t that tantamount to incorporating their name calling (e.g., everything from a communist to a fascist) and making it our own?
I like your way of looking at what is happening, I’m just having trouble seeing how we get past the “I’m rubber your glue,” aspects of this thing.
We need to reframe. Obama’s been saying that their fears are valid (even though I’m sure he can’t possibly believe that). He is creating an expectation of an “adult” on the other side of the table. Is there another way of handling these freaks?
That’s very funny. I hope it stays weird – Texas needs it.
Yeah, Austin might just secede from the state/republic and make them choose a new capital.
I’ve been here 25 years, 22 of them married to a native (sometimes he’s pure Texan, sometimes he’s more Mexican), and have always said that part of the trouble with the natives is they haven’t gotten over having ONCE been an independent Republic.
This same publication called Howard Dean angry. They’ve called Hillary Clinton angry. They called leftists angry.
It’s their way.
It might be a dog whistle, but it seems to be blown for anyone who’s to the left of Pat Buchanan. Who, I’m sure, is a very happy and content man.
And another part of the trouble is that some haven’t gotten over remembering when they were Independent Democrats….*G*
What’s wrong with being righteously angry? Hell,if you’re NOT angry, you haven’t damn well been payin’ attention!
The people who are calling us, and Obama angry are those stupid racist fucks bringing guns to events where POTUS is going to be. How much more angry does it get. These asshole need to STFU and go away.
Dubya: “Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.”
Hey, Mr. Former-President…. *DID* you manipulate intelligence and mislead the American people about why you went to war? A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do.
Anyway…. The Right-Wing Way is to accuse. If you feel bad about something, make an accusation. If you’re happy, make an accusation. If someone says you’re a liar, make an accusation. If someone says, “Good job!” then clearly it’s time to make an accusation. If you can’t find anything to make an accusation about, make something up. Anything. Call the guy a liar during his speech, or say he’s just an angry militant from the safety of the first amendment.
Angry black man?
They should be more concerned about ticking off MRS.Obama…then again, maybe SHE is the one who should have run for President,after all.
Of Course, that may be next on the TeaBag/DoucheBag playlist…to bait Michelle,I mean.
Sadly true. But this is one of the narratives of the right – that we who are toward the left of the political spectrum are all just angry, often for no good reason. To me, most of their spokespeople sound angry, even when they shouldn’t be. That’s what I find so hilarious.
I’d one time like to see barack get angry — the way i’d get angry at these thugs, puppets, and monsters.
i keep wanting to see what i have been calling the obama baseball bat… i doubt he’s up for it, but he said he’d call ‘em out.
and last week, perhaps he should have called out ol’ cracker joe right then and there — you know, paused for three minutes and had a little dialogue with that shithead — might could have solved a lot of upcoming problems…
Sounds like Obama is mounting that white baby horse!
Obama is just so ANGRY! It’s so awful having a b–an ANGRY man as president! Why does he have to be so ANGRY! I see his ANGER all over his face and his nappy hair every time I look at him, and it just makes me so sad and afraid for our country that I have to carry guns with me everywhere I go. But at least I’m not ANGRY.
If you’re not angry about what is happening in this country, you must have your head stuck in the sand. I have noticed that nobody has mentioned this, and it seems to me to be an important point – the teabaggers are acting exactly the way the Nazis acted immediately before they took over Germany, and we all know how that ended. This is one reason I don’t understand their frequent remarks about Hitler. They are Hitler and all that he represented. I recall that one of the Nazis stated to the police:”The day will come when I forbid you to speak.” Remind you of any teabaggers we know? My belief is that if it looks like a Nazi and acts like a Nazi, then it must be a Nazi. And that means you teabaggers. Perhaps this is such a personal issue for me, because I left Germany and became an American citizen at a young age, due to the fact that I was always deeply ashamed of having been born into a culture that could do this to other human beings. I always deeply believed that this could never happen in America – land of the brave and the free. Unfortunately it is beginning to look like it can.
Teabaggers bring AR-15’s and strap guns to their legs to town halls protesting healthcare (Medicare for All)…and Obama is the one who’s angry…?
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never…
…how does that go again…?