Obama
Teach them well and let them lead the way…
A brief comment on yesterday’s presidential back-to-school speech, and yet another “controversy” ginned up by right-wing activists and eagerly blown out of proportion by the media. Yes, it was absurd for the wingnuts to oppose a speech about doing well in school, but I’d go most liberal commentators one better and say this: It is Obama’s prerogative to articulate his
Health care in a nutshell, again
David Goldhill takes American hospitals to task, wondering: How can a facility featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment use less-sophisticated information technology than my local sushi bar? And I’d add: How can the man working to change that situation be compared to Hitler?
Guns and health care
There’s nothing about the current healthcare reform “debate” I could say that hasn’t already been said, and said brilliantly, by Rachel Maddow and other liberal commentators. But I will say this about reform opponents showing up to Obama town halls with guns, including assault rifles, in recent days: Right-wing ideologues, including members of Congress, can mouth all the platitudes they
The handshake
President Obama is taking heat from Newt Gingrich and others for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez and “making nice” with Cuba, etc. Since I’m a dogged liberal opponent of those two particular regimes, let me say I support Obama’s moves and think the Republicans are full of it. It was Chavez who approached Obama at the Trinidad summit, not the
Dissent and the right
A right-wing commenter objects to my remark (here) on Melanie Phillips’s piece describing President Obama as a “fifth columnist.” I’ll make this quick. Gee, I thought dissent was patriotic? I guess that doesn’t extend to commentators you disagree with. Melanie Phillips has an absolute and unlimited right to print whatever she wants in her columns. I and others have an
Rabid right watch
I would argue that this, aside from being pure drivel from beginning to end, comes close to advocating violence against the President of the United States.
Helen Thomas, albatross
[Cross-posted at Z Word.] I take no pleasure from the fact that right-wing pundits are lashing Helen Thomas over her two-part question to President Obama last night. And yet Thomas deserves to be upbraided. The fact that she’s held up by liberals as a paragon of courage is an embarrassment. Drifting further toward the fringe every day, she certainly doesn’t
Clean break
President Obama’s Executive Order on detention and interrogation “prohibits reliance on any Department of Justice or other legal advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001 and January 20, 2009.” Yes, this is really happening.