fpb: (Default)
fpb ([personal profile] fpb) wrote2010-03-20 05:17 am

I told you all two years ago

As for President Obama:
1) he has broken his own promise on Don't Ask Don't Tell, something to which few reasonable people would have seen an objection. (That at least one right-wing columnist broke Godwin's Law in trying to find an argument against accepting homosexual soldiers just shows how poor the arguments for this really are.)
2) He has broken his promise on torture and even let into his administration a couple of people whose hands are dirty in the matter, such as Robert Gates.
3) He is wrecking his own proposals for health reform rather than give up a sneaky and unprincipled attempt to break the consensus on abortion (no federal monies for), and he is lying about it.
4) He is guilty of deliberately stirring up trouble against Israel, with the miserable Quartet all too happy to follow his lead.
5) He has ignored both the hideous threat of an Iranian atom bomb and, more disgracefully, the desperate struggle of the Iranian people against a bloodthirsty and disastrous tyranny. He has repeatedly spoken as though the mullah's government were the legitimate leadership of that unhappy country.

Oh, and strictly for Catholics:
6) According to Life Site News International, he has deliberately egged on Catholic Health Association, and possibly the Leadership Conference of Religious Women (although that lot don't need much egging) to revolt against the Bishops. I quote: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs revealed to reporters today that President Barack Obama actively promoted the Catholic Health Association's public break with the American Catholic bishops to support his health care legislation.
Gibbs also suggested that the CHA and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious' (LCWR) break with the U.S. Bishops has provided legitimate political cover for pro-life Democrats to switch their votes from "no" to "yes."
(...)
Gibbs said that the president had been engaged on the issue, and a reporter asked if he had reached out personally to the groups.
"The President met earlier this week with Sr. Keehan of the CHA," said Gibbs, saying the meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room, but that he "did not get a detailed run-down of the pitch that [Obama] made."
"I do know that he was effusive about her support and her as a person for making the courageous statements that she has," he said.

Well, at least he was not shameless enough to tell his own spokesman what he had done with or offered to this rebel nun.
During the Paris negotiations of 1782-3, the reigning Pope offered Franklin and Adams that the USA government could have a veto over the nomination of Catholic bishops (something that many European governments had at the time). In keeping with their principles, the Founders - few of whom had any sympathy for the Catholic Church as such - nonetheless refused this offer and allowed the Church to organize itself in the new nation as it saw fit. Since then, I know of no President who has ever, for any reason whatever, thought to meddle in the Church's internal affairs and organization.

Hope? Change? Change, all right; hope - that he does not get re-elected.

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
I am no lover of "gay rights" continuously extended and reinvented, and I was happy to see the failure of "gay marriage" in every open vote ever held. But there is no reason whatsoever to exclude homosexual men and women from the military, and Obama had a mandate to reform that. Indeed, it really is difficult to see what stops him. It would take little effort and change practically nothing (if anyone was worried about the disruptive effects of sexual attraction between messmates, they should never have allowed women to enlist) and it is simply and purely a concession to macho nonsense. A man who cannot keep his word even to this extent is dangerous as well as dishonourable.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 05:48 am (UTC)(link)
And so you're mad at Obama for calling for the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
I'm mad at Obama for doing the exact opposite. Sheesh, pay attention! Reading this - http://expectare.livejournal.com/349295.html - is exactly what set me off in the first place, although I had to type fast to keep up with all the stuff that was coming to me.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:11 am (UTC)(link)
Well now I'm confused because that says that some protestors were arrested at the White House, not that Obama has flip-flopped on DADT

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
Those protesters were ex-servicemen thrown out because of homosexuality, and they were there because Obama had flip-flopped on DADT.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:19 am (UTC)(link)
they were there because Obama had flip-flopped on DADT.

Nuh-huh!

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
And you don't think so because?

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:24 am (UTC)(link)
That's not what they were protesting, dude. They were saying Obama's moving too slow, not that he's suddenly supporting DADT.

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
And the difference is? He could have killed it stone dead with a one-line bill.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
You think so? I thought it would take an act of Congress to repeal DADT.

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:24 pm (UTC)(link)
And I thought a bill was something that went on to become an act of Congress. With a majority in both houses, and probably some support among the less idiotic Republicans, how much would it take, really? This is not abortion, not a matter of life and death. And if the military have serious problems with it, I have to worry that the military can override a clear electoral mandate. In a democracy, they should not be able to.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
THEY'RE DOING THAT RIGHT NOW.

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
One thing, Rebecca; I think perhaps we had better leave this issue. I don't even think that we disagree that much on the issue itself, and it's not worth an argument. Today has been a rotten day and I would as soon not end it with this.

[identity profile] redcoast.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Aww, I'm sorry you had a rotten day; it's 3:30 here so my day is far from over. I hope you have a good night!

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
You too. When it comes.
ext_1059: (Ronald Reagan 1967)

My favourite Barry

[identity profile] shezan.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 03:22 pm (UTC)(link)
It was Barry Goldwater who said "You don't need to be straight to shoot straight." So it's not even a recent debate.

Also, FAIL CUBED when the military fired gay Farsi and Arabic translators - who probably were the very few whose security clearance should have been obvious, on the grounds that the other side wants them stoned.

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
They did WHAT?????
Well, doesn't that just prove the old saw that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
ext_1059: (Ronald Reagan 1967)

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] shezan.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Tried to make the above argument a couple of years back at a Henry Jackson dinner in DC to like-minded military top brass, among whom it didn't seem to percolate. I love my fellow-reactionaries, by and large, but they are pretty stupid every now and then.

(Of course the Dems, and you are right to single out Obama's partisans, whose masks really were off from the beginning of the campaign, are MUCH WORSE. The Left didn't use to be like that. I grew up in a Socialist family, and dammit, they were DIFFERENT.)

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 04:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I grew up in a Socialist family, and dammit, they were DIFFERENT.
Tell me about it. As you may tell from my other post of this morning, I am a fierce defender of such things as union rights - which this generation has sold down the river in favour of reverse-racist tiers-mondisme, sexual antinomianism, and general victimism for its own sake.

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 03:52 pm (UTC)(link)
One thing I have to wonder is whether Barack himself is not, when in the closet, a bit of a homophobe. Certainly, other things being equal, one would not expect the long-term member of the Reverend Wright's black nationalist church to have too instinctive a liking for homosexuals; black separatists are among the groups where homophobia in the strict sense and queer-bashing are most widespread. And his curious unwillingness to fix an injustice that much of his party feels very keenly, that is not important enough for opponents to make a fuss, and that was an indubitable part of his party's platform, really does suggest that he feels some inner shrinking.
ext_1059: (Ronald Reagan 1967)

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] shezan.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)
One thing I have to wonder is whether Barack himself is not, when in the closet, a bit of a homophobe.

Quite likely, and it would be yet something else he has in common with Ségolène Royal.

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 04:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Ho-ho, I did not hear of that. (Surprised?) Care to tell me about it?
ext_1059: (Default)

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] shezan.livejournal.com 2010-03-20 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
During the 2007 campaign, she said something along the lines of there being a need for medical tests of gay schoolteachers in order to detect & prevent paedophilia....

Re: My favourite Barry

[identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com 2010-03-28 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow. Because of course all those women teachers one hears of every week, "initiating" boys of twelve, have to be gay, right? One wonders whether the ignorance or the hypocrisy are worse. I don't have a lot of time for Sarko (if nothing else, for not being able to tell the difference between a courtesan and a wife - something one would expect a French head of state to understand instinctively), but this sort of nonsense makes it sound as though France might have dodged quite a bullet there.