President Barack Obama

Note To Matt Drudge: He’s The President. Show Some Damn Respect

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This will be short.

This week a fly was buzzing around the President’s head at a White House event this week, and  photographers got multiple shots of the insect as it lighted briefly on various parts of the President’s face. One comic use of such a photo is, I suppose, to be expected; we all know a fly on President Bush would have been all over the media. But Drudge has used the photos for two days now. (No, I’m not showing it, and I’m not sending Drudge links for being a sophomoric jerk.) It’s not funny. It’s unfair, mean-spirited, rude and disrespectful, and would be for any President.

Cut it out.

Accountabilty Check: President Obama’s Bizarre Defense of Susan Rice

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“Don’t pick on my poor. defenseless, untrustworthy ambassador!”

Add to the list of the Top Ten Outrageous Remarks of President Obama this stunner, the low-light of his first full press conference since March.

“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody they should go after me. For them to go after the UN ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi…to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”

“Accountability” continues to be an alien ethical concept to the President, and this proves it. U.N. Ambassador Rice went on the Sunday morning TV shows four days after the deadly Benghazi attack and after U.S. intelligence had determined that the attack that killed the American ambassador in Libya was not a spontaneous demonstration sparked by an anti-Islam video, but a planned, organized, terrorist enterprise. She did this while asserting in no uncertain terms that the attack was not what U.S. intelligence had told the State Department and the White House that it was. Rice, in making this mistaken or dishonest case on behalf of the administration, put her name, her status, her credibility and her position behind it. From the moment she became the Administration’s spokesperson on Benghazi, she had something to do with Benghazi. Continue reading →

Empty Chair Vindication: Don’t Wait For An Apology, Clint, But You Deserve One

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The media abuse heaped on movie icon Clint Eastwood for his unexpected performance at the Republican National Convention was one more link in the chain of blatant and unprofessional anti-Republican bias that will surely continue right up to election day.  Eastwood, you recall, memorably held a one-way dialogue with the President as the invisible occupant of an empty chair. The pundits and columnists didn’t like Eastwood taking on their hero, so they trashed his method of doing it; they were personally offended by his message (which competent, objective journalists, now as rare as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, would be able to put aside to give fair commentary), so they insulted Clint: they called him old (naturally; if he were fat, they would call him that, too); they called him out his depth, they called him befuddled and inept. The fact was, however, that it was they who were out of their depth, and they, not Eastwood, who embarrassed themselves. Continue reading →

AM Cable News Horror: Fox Eliminates All Doubt

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Unfair, imbalanced, and proud of it!

Thoroughly traumatized and disillusioned by the blatant partisan cheerleading on CNN’s “American Morning”–courtesy of Carol Costello and Soledad O’Brien—-I made the quite idiotic mistake of having today’s morning coffee to “Fox and Friends,” the Fox News counterpart. Despite the fact that I already knew that jumping from CNN to Fox News as a respite from biased reporting was like leaving the Titanic for a quiet voyage on the Hindenburg, I was still shocked at what I saw.

Head morning stooge Steve Doocy introduced “a look back” at President Obama’s 2008 campaign. What followed was a long, slick attack ad, contrasting film footage of various Obama “Hope and Change”- themed speeches and campaign pledges, such as his infamous promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, intercut with contrasting images, statistics and graphs making a mockery of his words. “Ah!”, thought I. “They are showing the latest Republican National Committee ad. I certainly hope the Republicans paid the going rate for this, because it would be unethical for Fox to show a complete, three-minute GOP anti-Obama ad gratis on the pretense of analyzing it.” I have seen this trick on CNN and NBC, and it is abysmal broadcast journalism.

I am relieved to report, however, that this is not what Fox News did this morning, because the video was not made by the RNC, and it wasn’t produced by an independent pro-Republican PAC, either.

It was produced by Fox News. Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck Update: The Wreckage So Far, and The Wreckers

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

The "George Zimmerman Is a Racist" segment in Clinton Mitchell's high school ethics class.

Gallup released a poll yesterday, showing:

  • African-Americans are nearly five times more likely to be convinced that gunman George Zimmerman is “definitely guilty” of a crime than non-blacks.
  • 75% of African-Americans believe that racial bias led to Martin’s shooting, whereas less than half of non-blacks do, though a majority of the public believe that race was a factor in the tragedy.
  • 73% of blacks, about twice the percentage of the rest of the population,  believe that Zimmerman would have been arrested if the person he shot was white.

What we now have, clearly, is  significant, dangerous, and festering racial distrust, not created solely by the Trayvon Martin incident but exacerbated by it. This can only harm race relations, law enforcement, and the nation generally, and yet it is beyond argument that this divide has been encouraged and nurtured. Obviously the potential already existed, and one would think that responsible figures in public life, the civil rights establishment, elected office and the media would take the responsible course and attempt to minimize the shooting’s potential for increasing racial divisiveness in America.

They did not. Once again, they ripped the scab right off racial healing, and did so recklessly, cruelly, ineptly, and in some cases, maliciously. They are still doing it, or passively allowing it to be done by others. This is wrong, and shockingly so. Rational and fair analysts and observers all along the ideological spectrum should be saying so, but they are not. Fairness and honesty should not partisan issues. Playing the politics of hate and divisiveness is a threat to the fabric of the United States of America and in this case, risks unraveling decades of progress in race relations and understanding. There can be no excuse for it, and yet the primary culprits reside among the most influential and prominent institutions in the country. Journalists. Congress. Civil rights organizations. Pundits. Educators. And the President of the United States. Continue reading →

A Question For President Obama and His Campaign: Why Lie?

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

I have an iron-clad rule for all Presidents, regardless of party, ideology and political philosophy: Don’t use deception as a tool of governance. I have a related rule for Presidents who get elected by pledging honesty and transparency in government: Especially you!

The President’s health care law, a.k.a. “Obamacare,” whatever its merits, was probably the most dishonestly sold, packaged and passed major law in U.S. history (if someone has another candidate, please submit it.) Not all of the dishonesty was due to President Obama’s personal efforts–he didn’t tell its House and Senate not to bother to read the various versions of the bill, for example, or submit to the CBO patently manipulated assumptions to ensure its projection of a net budget surplus from the law immediately prior to its passage, assumptions that were substantially revised later. He is the one who pledged over and over again that if you liked your current coverage, nothing the law did would stop you from keeping it, a promise that seemed dubious at the time and that has in fact proven to be either mistaken or deliberately misleading.

Still…the law was passed. Utilitarian justifications and rationalizations for various tactics and maneuvers to get it passed are unnecessary now. So why does the President and his campaign team feel that they have to skirt the truth in their public relations and re-election efforts?

The Tom Hanks-narrated Obama campaign film “The Road We’ve Traveled” has already been charged with truth fouls by objective analysts on many points, including Obamacare. In the assessment of FactCheck.org, the best and most objective of the various political fact-checking websites, the film dissembles regarding, among other things... Continue reading →

Obama, Trayvon Martin, Biases and Kansas City Burning

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

In Kansas City, Missouri, a 13-year-old East High School student was walking home after the end of his daily classes when he was grabbed by two older teens just as he reached his front porch. They pinned his arms behind his back,  poured gasoline on him, and set him on fire. The victim of the attack was rushed to an emergency room, where he was treated and released. Doctors fear possible damage to his lungs and eyes, but outside of losing his eyebrows and some hair, he only suffered first degree burns.

The boy is white; his attackers were black. They allegedly said, as they were lighting him aflame, “You get what you deserve, white boy.”

This frightening incident occurred on March 2. I only recently learned of it, because the news media didn’t treat it as a national story. Though the boy’s attackers have not been found, no activists are demanding that the police chief resign. There have been no marches or protests, and students aren’t walking out of Kansas City schools. Nobody, as far as I can determine, has claimed that this is just the tip of a lurking race iceberg, and that it shows the racial hate of blacks toward whites that is hidden by the media and the culture. Most of all, the President of the United States did not say , just to give a wild, hypothetical example… Continue reading →

The Principle President Obama Cannot—or Will Not— Grasp

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

President Obama's learning curve.

As I observed the uproar building over the neighborhood watch murder of Trayvon Martin, the Sanford, Florida teenager fatally shot by a 911 caller who found him “suspicious,” I found myself hoping against hope that President Obama could muster the restraint—restraint that he has too often failed to exercise in the past—to stay out of a local law enforcement matter that is far from resolved. Presidents are not talk-show hosts, and their comments carry excessive power and influence. Picking and choosing among the myriad Americans who suffer misfortune, tragedy and injustice to render support and sympathy is a fool’s game, and an irresponsible act by a national leader. President Obama is no fool, but in this area his flat learning curve has been shocking. He injected himself into the Cambridge police’s altercation with a cranky law professor before he knew all the facts; he rendered a verdict on a coal mine cave-in before fault had been established; he injected himself into a local controversy over the location of a mosque, and he even entered the dispute over Rush Limbaugh’s insults to a law student. Every one of these abuses of his office and influence attracted appropriate criticism (though not nearly enough of it) and caused other problems as well. I thought that maybe…maybe…the President finally might have figured out what virtually every other President understood by the time he had been inaugurated.

Nope! Continue reading →

When Telling The Truth Is An Outrage

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

"Imagine, Jay...the Republicans want to defeat me!"

President Obama visited the Tonight Show last night, and Jay Leno, as is traditional and proper on such occasions, sucked up to him with gusto. In one exchange, the President and Jay tut-tutted about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s infamous statement that the Republican Party’s objective would be to make Obama a one-term president. “How is that a goal?” Jay asked.

Is he serious? Well, okay, I know he’s a comedian and all, so maybe he’s not serious, but all the pundits and journalists and Democrats who have been squealing to the skies for two years about how McConnell’s remark proves that his party is unpatriotic, evil or racist are presumably serious, and it is disingenuous. Continue reading →

The Korean President’s Dinner: President Obama, I Owe You This One

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Funny...you don't LOOK Japanese!

Having joined reflexive Obama-bashers by assuming the worst based on an unjustified reading of a leaked diplomatic cable and subsequently criticizing the White House for something it did not do, allow me to continue my contrition and repentance by flagging another example of the same phenomenon, also involving Asian diplomacy and equally unfair, being trumpeted by some of the same sources that led me astray.

The headlines: “ANOTHER WHITE HOUSE STAFF SCREWUP”  (Instapundit) …“Obama Honors South Korean President With Japanese Food” (The National Review)

Where did this come from? USA Today reported the fare for the upcoming  White House dinner honoring South Korean President Lee Myung Bak: Continue reading →