President Obama’s comments on police – he is catching flack today for concluding that the police in Cambridge were wrong/guilty/racist for how they treated his friend, including the curious inflammatory (non-teleprompter fed) line that if President Obama was breaking into the White House, he would probably would be shot by police. If I was working for the Secret Service putting my life on the line to protect his, I would be a bit insulted by that.
While I disagree with his statement on several levels, this is exactly the issue where I fell off the “George Bush 41 bandwagon” and decided not to vote for his reelection. At the time, I was at home and watched most of the Rodney King trial on TV (not just the nightly recaps on the news), and when the Simi Valley jury declared that the police had acted within their department policy on use of force and not broken the law, President Bush immediately got on the TV and declared that the jury was wrong, and he was going to instruct the Department of Justice to hold a second trial based on a Federal Civil Rights charge. Not only did that send a message to the people on the jury, it also indicated that President Bush didn’t care about the facts, and was going to use the power of the Executive Branch to roll over the state court system.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the doors on the White House don’t even have locks.
The clinical evaluations of Obama, as a narcissist, lead to the expectation that as his popularity wanes his intention to keep his inner thoughts hidden will be overridden, and we’ll gradually come to see the inner Obama.
Obama looks fatigued in many of the pictures of him posted recently. The discipline needed to maintain his masking, discussed by Shelby Steele in “A Bound Man”, is weakening, and the world is beginning to get glimpses of the inner Obama.
I just read the Cambridge arrest transcript of Gates/Crowley. I predict that Obama’s “stupid” comment will have far-reaching consequences, because he was, in essence, telling the public to ignore the police. The police were acting appropriately by responding to a “break in progress” call and therefore, Gates was obligated to identify himself, which he refused to do. The conflict went downhill from there.
Maybe my brain is getting fuzzy, but since 9/11, haven’t we been told constantly that if we see something suspicious, call 911 and don’t worry if it turns out to be nothing? There are people on the liberal blogs and shows probing to see if they can pin something on the woman who called 911….
Mr Gates says he had to force the fronnt door due to a prior breakin? Is there any police record of that? Why didn’t he have the door fixed? I’m wondering if the phone call Mr Gates made was to his “phone tree” and the crowd outside were people arriving to try to create an incident. If I was at the news conference last night, “President Obama, have you talked to Mr Gates about this issue? Have you talked to him in the past two weeks?”… My suspicion is this entire thing could have been contrived to distract the media and people from what is going on in Congress.
President Obama has backed down, and now stipulates that his friend acted inappropriately. I’ve never been involved in law enforcement, but think I know a few techniques.
When the officer went to the door and asked Mr Gates “Is there anyone else in there?”, he already knew the answer – the 911 caller said 2 men appeared to be breaking into the house. This question had at least 3 purposes that come to my mind:
– Mr Gates may have been in trouble and in need of help – the other person could have been a robber or otherwise making Mr Gates do something against his will….
– since the officer was still by himself, he needed to know where the other person was for his own safety (and for the safety of the other person)
– if the man in foyer had said “No, I’m here by myself”, the officer would know he is lying and concealing something and created probable cause that something illegal might be going on
What ever happened to the Minority Studies professor in New York who put a noose on her own door last year?
Am I mistaken or did I hear Obama make a racist remark, a black man talking about the police doing racial profiling
As with the health care plan and, before it, the 10 trillion dollar porkylus bill, Obama addressed this issue without having read it. Does he know what the Professor (a friend) said to the police? Calling the police stupid reflects more on the immaturity of our President than it does on the police. Even if the police were DEAD wrong (and we don’t know the entire story), calling police stupid is sending a wrong message to our youth.
I believe that when a “person of interest” says to a police officer, “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with,” the officer might just take that as a threat! For all of his alleged intellect, Henry Gates was the one who was actin’ stupid, not the officer. I wonder how quickly the police in Cambridge will respond to a 911 call in that neighborhood after this?
Obama is coming undone …. his act is wearing thin and I believe ASW is correct in her assessment.
“her” ??? The evidence I’m aware of tends not to support this idea.
Maybe Mauob thought your randomly chosen icon looks female – haha…. If people participated more, I might spend some time improving this blog interface… maybe that’s a chicken and egg issue :)