Syria

The Red Ranger: So we have a country that has used chemical weapons on its citizens and the world fails to take quick and decisive action.  I would have thought that a Nobel peace prize winner like Obama would have been able to quickly pull together a bilateral coalition to extract some payback on Assad.  I guess that he does not really have the confidence of the world leaders like everyone thought he would get when he was elected.

In fact, Obama seems to be totally fumbling US foreign relations.  Other than getting Bin Laden which if you believe some accounts Obama wasn’t too interested in following what has he done.  Our relations with Russia are probably at their lowest level since the pre-Reagan years, the Benghazi attackers have gotten away unscathed and even Britian, our former strongest ally, will not fall in line with us.  Let’s not forget his support of the Muslim Brotherhood in the coup that ousted Mubarak in Egypt.  How many Christians have the Brotherhood murdered or how many churches have they destroyed since their ouster in Egypt.

Looking back the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to Obama when they did makes the committee look pretty foolish.  The award shouldn’t have been given based upon hope but on actual results.

 

Nattering Naybob: First, am I to believe that you are still adhering to that Sean Hannity nonsense that Obama “didn’t really want to get Osama bin Laden”? You’re joking, right? From Day 1 in office, Obama informed his National Security team that catching bin Laden would be a priority. Unlike George W. Bush, who replied in a press conference on Marsh 13th, 2012, LESS THAN ONE YEAR AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACKS, and I quote: “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority”.

Every President has foreign policy mis-fires, it’s part of the cost of doing business. Stop reading columns by John Bolton.

The Red Ranger: I did not mean to imply that Obama did not want to get Bin Laden, I was just referencing the fact that there were reports that he wasn’t too interested in watching the actually taking down of Bin Laden.

I would classify a mis-fire as something that happens on a rare occasion.  It seems like other than Bin Laden all of Obama’s foreign policy moves have been mis-fires.

Nattering Naybob: Oh. You are only saying that there are “rumors” (source: unknown) that he did not want to actually watch the video of bin Laden being taken down. Frankly, I don’ think it’s important whether he did or not. All I know is that he was there, watching intently. Or, you may have been seeing those internet reports from the usual Right-Wing nuts, that claim Obama’s image was somehow CGI’d or Photoshopped into the official photographs of the “war room” during the raid.

I find it truly, profoundly, pathetic that so many people waste so much time trying to discredit or criticize every single aspect of this President’s life. Over two years after we successfully captured and killed the perpetrator of the worst carnage ever inflicted on this country’s soil from outside forces, Republicans are still scraping, scratching, clawing, biting, and in some cases, chewing, to find any possible way to criticize Obama’s role in it. Sad.

And still, The Red Ranger always wonders: “What is happening to our country?”

The Red Ranger: Did you find it as profoundly, pathetic that so many people wasted time trying to discredit or criticize every single aspect of Bush’s life?  Or were you just part of the mindless Democratic horde partaking in this sport?

Nattering Naybob: No, I was not, if you want to know the truth. I thought George W. Bush  was an incompetent Chief Executive who listened too much to people who were giving him terrible advice (read: Dick Cheney). However I actually gave him credit for the way he handled the aftermath of 9/11. His “bullhorn moment” at the top of the debris pile at Ground Zero was a stroke of leadership genius, and one of the iconic moments in the history of the American Presidency. I thought he was unfairly criticized for continuing to listen for a few minutes to the reading of the students whose class he was visiting, before he started to take direct action on the news given to him on that morning.

I think Bush did a good job in imploring the nation to not take individual vengeance for 9/11 on Muslims in their neighborhood, or who they came across during their day. I think it was disgusting that someone threw shoes at him during a press conference in Iraq late in his Presidency because I think that could conceivably have been deemed an assassination attempt, and it was horrible that anyone would laugh at that and praise the show-thrower.

Bush was and is a devoted and faithful husband, father, and son, and I think his wife was an excellent and dignified First Lady. I think that any suggestion that he would have taken part in a “plot” to help facilitate 9/11 is outrageous and utterly contemptible because for all his management deficiencies, I think he is at heart a patriot and loves his country.

These are all positive comments that Republicans and the Right-Wing lunatic fringe, would never in a million years consider bestowing on Obama.

The Big Three

The Red Ranger: So which of these three recent issues could be the most damaging to Obama:

1) Benghazi cover-up
2) IRS scrutiny on conservative organizations
3) AP search

Looks like these three issues are flaring up against Obama’s administration.  My thoughts on them.

1) Benghazi – Once again it seems like this is one of those instances where the coverup is worse than the crime.  Given the timing of this event right before the election I can see how the administration would want to avoid the dirty details of what happened in Benghazi.  If they would have admitted up from that it was a terroist attack that we were unprepared for I think people would have been disappointed in that this happened but would probably have understood that you cannot prevent these attacks from happening everywhere all the time.  Denying the facts is indefensible.

2) IRS scrutiny on conservative organizations.  If true, and it appears to be, this is just plain wrong.  Everyone hates the IRS and this is just another reason to hate them.  The administration should not be using the IRS to thwart their oppostion.  That being said if these groups were purely political then they should not be tax-exempt.  The IRS needs to remain neutral as to all applications for tax-exempt status.  Everyone should go through the same process regardless of what their name is.

I also read that one of Obama’s sleazy half-brothers got expedited approval for his tax-exempt Barack H. Obama Foundation.  If none of the other things that the IRS is being accused of had happened then I would be willing to let this expedited approval slide as there should be some benefits to being president.

3) DOJ search of AP records.  I really don’t know all of the details behind this but it seems like this should concern all citizens as it is in directly violation of our first ammendment rights and leads us down a slippery slope.

Given the number of scandals it is fun to watch Jay Carney squirm.  I don’t know how these people can do these jobs when they clearly lie pretty much on a daily basis.  It also seems that the MSM is covering these stories at least a little bit.  Where there is smoke there is fire.

Nattering Naybob: I will try to shed some light first on the third topic regarding the AP. Like you I do not know all the details but basically the Obama administration is claiming that a reporter from the AP leaked some sensitive information that was supposed to be off the record, and this leak had national security implications. So now they are reviewing the call records of the entire AP organization to see who may have leaked the information. The supposed danger of this is that they have access to other phone log data for the AP reporters who were not involved in the leak or were privvy to the sensitive information.

That the Obama administration is doing this– and has pushed the envelope on similar issues in the name of National Security– again underlines the foolishness of any Presidential candidate vowing “not to violate the civil rights or privacy of anyone in the name of a criminal or terrorism investigation”. Once you become President, the safety of the nation is in your hands. You have a lot more responsibility once you become President than when you are a candidate (or a member of Congress). Also, a President has access to top-secret information that very few other people have, and if that President knew the same information he or she knew while a candidate, they may not have been so fast to make that promise to protect civil liberties at all costs. I thjink this whole matter is more a question for the Courts rather than a full-blown scandal.

As for the other two issues:
1. The uproar over Benghazi is mainly a product of politics, pure and simple. There is no doubt that things went wrong during the attack, and it suggests the need for a change in security protocols among other things. Whether or not there was a cover-up still remains to be seen, so I do not think this can be classified as a scandal either.

2. The IRS was wrong to do what they did, period, end of story. Everyone knows that. There has been no evidence whatsoever that Obama or anyone in his administration ordered that this be done. However, as titular head of the government, Obama does bear overall responsibility for this, and I am sure he will fulfill that responsibility by firing whoever was involved. Again, no scandal there.

So there you have it, I have de-bunked all three issues and have provided ample proof that none of them can be categorized as a scandal. I have done my good deed for the day from an Obama supporter perspective.

The Red Ranger: The IRS scandals deepens if this story turns out to be true.

Just having the head of the IRS resign, something which he was going to do anyway, is not enough.  Saying that Obama did not know about this is insufficient.  Every time something happens he has no knowledge of it.  What is he doing as President if he never has any knowledge about what is going on.  I thought he was so brilliant that he knew how to do everyone’s job he appointed better than they did.  Now he appears to know nothing.

Nattering Naybob: I do not recall seeing any article or speech in which President Obama claimed he could do a better job at anything than the people he appointed to that job. That is a typical Red Rangerian interpretation.

The problem now is that every time a group that is in opposition to the incumbent Presidential party, has their tax-exempt application denied, or is audited, then everyone is going to say that it is a political hatchet job. The fact is that I agree that the IRS needs a thorough and fundamental overhaul, along with the tax code itself. Maybe this will be the impetus. Maybe as the new head of the IRS, Obama can score some political points and appoint John Boehner’s new son-in-law.

The Red Ranger: I know that you are getting older and that your memory ain’t what it used to be but there were numerous articles written in 2008 and 2009 that fawned over Obama’s supposed brilliance and how he could do any one of the jobs of his appointees better than they could.  I will try to find some.

Do you think Boehner’s daughter is marrying him to spite her father? Hey, if it is OK for the President to smoke pot or use other illegal drugs why not everyone else.

Nattering Naybob: Even if you find those articles, I don’t think Obama can be blamed for other people saying he is intelligent. I carry that burden with me every day of my life, so I know how tough that is.

I don’t think she is spiting Boehner. I actually think he is a decent guy and would accept him into the family without reservations about whether he has smoked pot or wears funny hats, but he would probably also kid around about with the guys at the club (Republicans always belong to some kind of “club”, have you noticed).

 

Spelling Bee

The Red Ranger: Ryan made it to the finals of his Middle School spelling bee which were held today.  This is quite an impressive feat considering he got a “C” in English this term.  He made it a few rounds but was tripped up on the word “audacious”.  I would have expected him to nail this word since he hears it so many times on FOX News to describe Obama’s policy.

I give him a lot of credit for going up in front of the school.  I know that I would never have done that at his age.  I think the teachers today are much more proactive in getting students to feel comfortable speaking in front of a large crowd.

I was very surprised when he told me he made it to the finals since I know that he never studied any words.  It was funny to see the 6th, 7th and 8th graders on the stage and thinking back to our time in those grades.

Nattering Naybob: Good for Ryan. If the word was “Socialist” or “Muslim” or “arrogant”, Ryan also would have been expected to get that correctly because those are also words that are used on FOX News a lot to describe President Obama.

I do not have any daily contact with today’s teachers, either personally or observationally, so I cannot in good conscience agree or disagree about your statement that today’s teachers focus more on encouraging students to get out in front of people. But I suspect it is true. I remember when we attended Horace Mann School in New Jersey (I think this was the 6th grade), I actually misspelled a word on purpose in my class’s “qualifying round”, so there would be no chance of my having to appear in the actual spelling bee, because I feared I would be too nervous to appear in the final round in the auditorium, which was so big and imposing that I got pretty nervous just attending weekly music class there, especially when Mr. Menzer had one of his frequent fits of rage at our not grasping the finer points of St. Saens or Prokofiev. I’m sure you remember Mr. Menzer’s signature piece he would play on the piano every month or so, when he was in a good mood, “Hong Kong Rush Hour“. One of my most vivid memories of grammar school was hearing that song being played by him on the piano, echoing throughout the entire three floors of the school, each of which overlooked the 3-story tall auditorium by virtue of arched double doors that opened onto a railing you could lean over and look at the goings-on down on the auditorium floor. I attach this YouTube clip of a performance of the aforementioned “Hong Kong Rush Hour”, for your listening pleasure.

The Red Ranger: I also think he could have gotten the words, sequester, deficit, unemployment, Benghazi and golf.

Yes, Mr. Menzer’s playing of this was certainly a highlight.  I actually forgot some of the architectural details you mentioned about the auditorium.  The auditorium was certainly the highlight of the school.  I vividly remember my fourth grade performance as Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.  I wish I somehow had a recording of that.  If I actually saw it I would probably immediately destroy it though.

Nattering Naybob: I actually remember your appearance in “A Christmas Carol”. If I recall, you had trouble unlocking the chains around your wrists. Today those chains might be a metaphor for the shackles of Republicanism that is constraining you from enjoying the kind of re-birth that was enjoyed by the other protagonist in “A Christmas Carol”. I’m not saying you’re Scrooge-like… necessarily.

The Red Ranger: Actually, I believe the chains were around my waist.  Now I view those chains as a metaphor for the 47%’s (as I noted previously I believe this number is actually too high as those who have worked and contributed to Social Security should be excluded)  who are living off of my hard earned tax dollars.)

Nattering Naybob: Oh, is that what it was. I am having trouble understanding the purpose of chains around someone’s waist, and then the purpose of unlocking those chains, but what do you expect from a grammar school production ca. 1971? As much as I hated going to school in my youth, I would love to be able to sit in that auditorium (the way it was when we were of school age) just one more time. I remember our weekly visits to the (so-called) school “library”, which was jerry-rigged into the auditorium’s balcony (the librarian’s name was Mrs. Vergsuon, does that ring a bell?) I spent many of those library sessions musing about whether I could ever survive a leap from the balcony to the main floor of the auditorium, a la John Wilkes Booth (but a benevolent John Wilkes Booth, who in an earlier parallel life may have discovered a ticking bomb planted by a domestic terrorist, and determined that the only option to mitigate its explosive impact, was to bring it up to the upper reaches of the balcony, then leap to safety from the balcony just seconds prior to its detonation, while shouting some more humanitarian version of “Sic Semper Tyrannis”. These are the things I thought about in the 4th grade.)

Regarding your complaint about your own hard work being used for the benefit of others, I wonder if you think the reverse is true. I am referring to people who, for example, work in restaurants making minimum wage (if they are lucky) schlepping around trays of plates and other heavy objects all day. Are they too entitled to believe that another class of people may be unfairly gaining advantage from their back-breaking work, especially since they themselves work 40-hour weeks doing very hard work that does not, in most cases, offer them an annual wage that is above the poverty line? I have a feeling that this conversation will probably spin off into a larger debate about the minimum wage, which we surprisingly have not had yet on our little blog. I am eager to have that debate by the way.

The Red Ranger: While I do appreciate the fact that waiter/waitresses that is serving me my 24 oz. filet mignon is making below minimum wage, I do also realize that there is not someone holding a gun to their heads making them work in that job (unless of course it is some Mafia-run establishment).  Hopefully, they are all taking steps to improve their education and skills and will someday be eating that 24 oz filet mignon themselves.  At least that is the Republican way.

I know that the Democratic view is that this person really shouldn’t have to work harder to improve themselves all that needs to be done is to take more of the money from the person eating the 24 oz steak and give it to the waiter/waitress in the form of food stamps, free cell phones or whatever other government program they can avail themselves of.

Nattering Naybob: It depends on what you mean by “working hard”. Someone who is not blessed with perhaps the intellectual talents to go to Harvard University, so instead gets employment as a sanitation worker say in New York City, I would bet works “harder” than 99% of the people who in fact graduated from Harvard. I think you and a lot of other people are missing the boat when you constantly claim that the reason people do not have high-wage, high-vacation jobs, is they don’t “work hard” enough. I say the proper way of looking at it would be in many cases because the low-wage worker is not as “resourceful” as the Harvard grad, meaning that they do not have the time, ability, or mental energy to sit down and plot a life path which would enable them to be able to quit their job as a sanitation worker, go to Harvard, and get a white-collar “knowledge” job. And do you also think that someone who might live in the South Bronx or East New York or in rural Alabama, who has to work at a menial but back-breaking job for less than minimum wage, then has to come home and maybe care for a sick parent or sick spouse because there is no money for a nursing home… is that person in their predicament because they don’t “work hard”?

Your entire characterization of “The Republican Way” and “The Democratic View” is so cliched and structurally unsound that I think you may be beyond redemption on this topic.

The Red Ranger: I do not believe I ever said that these people weren’t working hard just that maybe they need to worker harder to get ahead.

While I fully appreciate the fact that there are people who are in unfortunate circumstances that put significant roadblocks in the way of their attempts to better themselves there are also countless stories of people who have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to become successfully.  Do you really want to say to the person that worked two jobs and went to night school to get their degree when they are interviewing for a job, “We would really love to hire you but we have this person over here who didn’t have the time, ability or mental energy to do the things you did but we are going to hire him because we feel sorry for him?

Do you think the person who does not have the time, ability or mental energy should be hired for the same jobs as the Harvard grad you refer to?

Nattering Naybob: I checked the transcripts and you are correct, you did not actually invoke the term “hard work” or “hard working”, it was actually “hard earned”. The full sentence is below, when you were referring to the chains you haltingly removed from your waist in the 4th grade production (in more ways than one) of A Christmas Carol, as…

a metaphor for the 47%’s …. who are living off of my hard earned tax dollars.

Only through the most tenuous of technicalities did you wriggle off the hook, because the intent of your message is in my mind still the same, i.e. you claim that others are “living off of” your “hard earned tax dollars”… which basically implies that you work hard and the people to whom your tax dollars are supposedly supporting, are not. From that interpretation, I will not back down.

Of course I do not believe that everyone and anyone should not be admitted to Harvard or get the types of high-wage jobs that graduates of that august institution traditionally obtain. However, I believe I am safe in assuming that you are partly referring to a) people who get unemployment benefits and b) people who receive SNAP or other supplemental income because they find themselves under the poverty line even after working 40 hours a week. And I think that you are using too broad of a brush in saying that all these people are “living off” you, if “living off” implies lounging around the house doing nothing but eating box after box of Bon-Bons and watching Jerry Springer of The Steve Show.

Let me know if your Republican-centric mind cannot absorb the above nuance and complexity and I will try to help you out.

Obama wins Round 2

Nattering Naybob: I think even you, Red Ranger, have to admit that President Obama won the debate last night, by most objective benchmarks by which we evaluate modern Presidential debates. Whether it changed many minds either way at this late stage, who knows. Romney acquitted himself fairly well, but his demeanor was a little more surly and skittish than the first debate, and he came out with some head-scratching comments and verbiage. Two key moments from my perspective:

When Romney was describing how he sought to include more women in the interview process for his Cabinet in Massachusetts, he characterized the collection of resumes from qualified female candidates as having compiled “whole binders full of women”. This surely had to be one of the most unusual bits of imagery ever put forth in a Presidential debate. Romney also described one of the chief ways that he tried to be more inclusive of women in his administration by allowing them to leave early so they could get home and prepare dinner for the family. A noble gesture to be sure, but not exactly one that will help undecided women determine who better understands women’s struggles to be taken as seriously as men, in the workplace. An article in today’s online edition of The New Yorker summarizes Romney’s entire struggle with the original question posed to him of equal pay for equal work.

The second key moment was near the end of the debate when Romney foolishly insisted that President Obama never specifically called the Benghazi attack, and act of terrorism. Obama coolly let Romney tie a knot sufficient to hang himself and then allowed moderator Candy Crowley to point out, if somewhat sheepishly, that President did explicitly condemn the attacks in the opening remarks in his Rose Garden speech the day after the incident. I am not sure why Romney focused so much on this relatively semantical point when he might have benefited more by bringing the conversation more to overall question of how this was allowed to happen.

These two moments seemed to represent the demarcation of three distinct “sections” of the debate. From its opening thru the “binders full of women” comment, Romney seemed assured and confident. Between the “binders” remark, and the “did he call it terrorism” remark, Romney’s tone sounded a little more defensive and nervous. After the “terrorism” remark, Romney seemed like he couldn’t wait for the debate to end, which for his sake, did soon after. Your thoughts, Red Ranger?

PS: After the debate, most major news outlets featured at least one interview with an undecided voter who still said they needed more information and to learn more about each candidate, to make up their mind. Incredible.

The Red Ranger: I would rate the debate a draw. Both sides were able to get their points across. I think some fisticuffs when they got in each other’s face would have livened things up significantly. Candy Crowley could have then stepped in and smacked down both of them. The only reason that people are saying Obama won is because he looked so much better than he did in the first debate. I think people are getting confused as they are comparing Obama to himself in the first debate as opposed to Romney.

In regard to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi Obama did not specifically call the Benghazi attacks a terrorist attack immediately. He said something condemning acts of terror in general. Even many days after the attacks he was still blaming them on the video and not terrorist. If he did call them terrorist attacks in the Rose Garden then why did he not continue to do so. I believe that this is just a clever way for Obama’s team to try to wordsmith their way into convincing people that Obama called them terrorist attacks from the beginning. Why wasn’t this argument pointed out immediately when questions arose about what the president had called the attacks. After several weeks his team has had enough time to review all of his comments and then twist them around to make it sound like he said something that he didn’t actually say. I believe that the moderator was out of line here (as was also pointed out by media outlets).

I believe that Romney’s high point was when he laid out the litany of facts (higher prices, slowing GDP, etc.) about the economy during Obama’s term and how his policies are impacting the economy.

What is up with Michelle Obama leading applause during the debate? This is clearly a rules violation. She should be banned from the next debate and hit with a $25,000 fine.

Nattering Naybob: The Red Ranger rating the debate a “draw” is akin to your saying that Romney got creamed.

Why would Obama have opened his remarks on Benghazi with a reference to terrorist attacks, if he did not think it was a terrorist attack? And theoretically speaking, an attack on a consulate or anything else, could be BOTH a reaction to a YouTube video AND an act of terrorism. I really don’t know why everyone is so hung up on the semantics of the issue, but since Romney insisted Obama did not do something he did, then Obama might as well go ahead and reinforce the fact that Romney doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Obama’s uttering the phrase “terrorism” or “terrorist” in the opening remarks of his speech the day after the attack, should have precluded the Romney campaign from even suggesting that Obama did NOT say it was a terrorist attack. Whoever is doing the research for his campaign is asleep at the switch. But then again, Romney himself has said that his campaign is not concerned with fact checkers. His entire campaign has been one big continuous series of lies and flip-flops. Romney lies almost as much as Curtis Granderson strikes out in the playoffs.

And what are you talking about regarding Michelle Obama “leading” applause? There were only two very brief, fragmented bursts of applause that I can remember during the actual debate. What kind of evidence do you have that she was “leading” applause? Please forward it to the Committee for Presidential Debates, I’m sure they will be very eager and fine the First Lady your prescribed amount of $25,000.

The next and final debate on this coming Monday is about foreign policy. Given Mitt the Binder’s utter cluelessness about how diplomacy works, he should be very frightened by that prospect.

The Red Ranger: Here is the official list of debate violations currently under review by the Committee for Presidential Debates and video proof of Michelle’s clapping.

Nattering Naybob: Thank you for the links. Below is a quote from a well-known evening anchor on a cable news network that speaks to the charge that Michelle Obama applauded during the debate:

“Have you seen the articles? The First Lady got caught clapping? Oh my… is that REALLY an issue with some? Whether the First Lady broke a debate rule by spontaneously clapping one time?… If the nation is arguing about whether the First Lady spontaneously clapped, we have now gone off the deep end.”

Rachel Maddow, you guess? No. The above was from Greta van Susteren, of Fox News. However I must say that I am encouraged that you are looking at Slate.com these days.