Sunday, January 03, 2010

Sunday Comfort: Obama On The Job

After one week and one day, President Obama has finally seen enough evidence to make a determination that apparently, Al-Qaeda is behind the attempted (but failed) Christmas Day bombing plot.

An al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner, training and arming the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the failed bombing, President Barack Obama said Saturday.

"This is not the first time this group has targeted us," Obama said, reporting on some of the findings of an administration review into how intelligence agencies failed to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253.


I don't know about you all, but I am so glad that President Obama is on the job in Hawaii. He is spending lots of time on the golf course thinking about who could have done such a dastardly thing last week, has now finally put it all together, and is willing to share it with us.

In the second paragraph of the referenced article, you will note his willingness to take the time to teach us about the history of this group of mean people. I am glad that we can now know and understand more about them, that they have tried this kind of thing before.

What a wise and insightful teacher this man is. What a leader.

Alright, enough sarcasm for a minute.

People should be very alarmed at the weakness that is now on display in Washington DC. The other thing to consider is, with that weakness comes a glut of incompetence and condescension as well.

While treating us like idiots, by insinuating that the masses cannot remember Al-Qaeda doing these kinds of things before, they are treating us like children. It's like when you are 40 years old and you have retired parents (with nothing to do but criticize) trying to tell you how to raise your kids and run your life. Between golf games at the country club and lodge meetings at the Elks, they never miss an opportunity to tell you something you already know.

Never mind that you have made a success of yourself, all by yourself. You are still an idiot child, in their eyes.

In other words, this administration isn't much different. The rest of us, including HuffPo had this one figured out on December 28. But they they had a hot tip to get it right, Al-Qaeda (themselves) claimed responsibility and made it easier for them to go out on a limb. (I guess Obama didn't want to rush to judgment and wanted to give them every benefit of the doubt.)

In another world and time, the leadership wasn't in it over their heads. They made mistakes, but they still had a grasp of things and didn't act like the American people were irresponsible children, not fully capable of understanding the bigger picture. They may have stayed quiet, but it wasn't because they failed to grasp the gravity of the situation.

This leadership hasn't got a clue, what to do, or when to do it when they do know.

6 comments:

~Leslie said...

Let's look at this on the side of behavior in children (since that is my line of work) shall we?

A child tests boundaries continuously. A toddler will touch the tv screen and look at the parent waiting for the result of the action. When the parent says "No-no" and draws the child away that parent has established a boundary.

Yet this does not stop the child. The child will then go back to the tv and touch it while looking at the parent, in order to see what happens. Does the parent keep the boundary or does the child get away with the action?

At this point, if the parent ignores the behavior or stops the child again but does not stop the child in future testings, the child has just learned how to move beyond the boundaries of the household.

We are currently in a position where terrorist groups and individuals are testing our boundaries. We see a man get on a plane with an explosive device and attempt a near successful terrorist attack. The group that trained him and sent him on this mission now sees the President of the United States take forever to 'figure' the thing out or even make an attempt to address the issue --if you can call it that. But what action has been taken? Any strength against terrorism seen here? No. We see wishy washy platitudes that mean nothing to us nor the groups out to destroy our country.

So now we wait to see the next boundary test. They will get bolder and bolder as the terrorists realize that we have a touchy-feely lame duck in the white house who hasn't a backbone to stand up and protect our country and its citizens --one of the main jobs this government is supposed to complete-- and who will throw compassionate verbiage at the groups and ask them kindly to please play nice... I sure do feel safe with that, don't you?

So I ask, after taking up Sunsett's comment section: What do we do about it?

~Once again, thank you for the ranting page.

LA Sunset said...

Great analogy Leslie. No apology necessary for rant, all rants are welcome here.

With an Administration that is reluctant to use the tools that were put into place to keep the boundaries in place, it's easy to see how far we have regressed in one year.

Listening in on calls was bad, not to be done now.

Waterboarding suspects was bad, not to be done now.

The War on Terror was not the right term, not to be said now.

Treating attackers as enemy combatants was bad, not to be done now.

But now, we see an attack that failed not because someone caught it before it happened. It failed only because the weapon did not detonate appropriately.

We now know that Al Qaida practices getting these things through security. We know that there have been many instances whereby Muslims have acted in ways to draw attention to themselves, for the purpose of getting negative attention that can be litigated against for discrimination.

Maybe we have reached a point whereby they have worn down the defenses enough to implement something catastrophic and it's only a matter of time until it unfolds before our eyes.

Just goes to show that this is NOT a law enforcement issue after all.

Chuck said...

We are hearing from the administration spokespeople now that Obama is doing more to fight terrorism than Bush did.

I've seen this movie before.

There are people who are convinced that Clinton did more to combat terrorism than Bush did. Which is amazing considering terrorists had to take a number and wait in line to attack us under Clinton.

The reality is that the Democratic party is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

-Screw up

-Say that they did not screw up, they are doing a wonderful job

-Have the media fall in line and parrot their comments

It's an old recipe (for disaster)

LA Sunset said...

//I've seen this movie before.//

It's what we can term a modern day tragedy. The end is fairly predictable though.

A.C. McCloud said...

Take a look at the picture circulating around of Obama talking to Biden and how he's looking down his nose at the man. Yes, it IS Joe Biden and just one pose, but Obama acts that way with others as well and has from the get-go.

My guess is Biden is telling him what he doesn't want to hear--maybe something about all that campaign hype about how Bush had screwed up the WoT being just that--hype. Maybe Obama still actually believes he's the One.

LA Sunset said...

//My guess is Biden is telling him what he doesn't want to hear--maybe something about all that campaign hype about how Bush had screwed up the WoT being just that--hype. Maybe Obama still actually believes he's the One.//

If this is true, then he really is one narcissistic bastard. Because anyone soundly rooted in reality would know that they are in it over their heads, by now.