Obama and Turkey’s prime minister held a press conference outside in the rain, but did they bring enough umbrella-toting marines for everyone? No they did not.
SITUATION NORMAL... “I want to note the Prime Minister’s efforts to normalize relations with Israel.”
BECAUSE OBAMA IS ALL ABOUT MAKING PROGRESS ON A TWO-STATE SOLUTION, IN EVERY WAY EXCEPT ACTUALLY MAKING PROGRESS ON A TWO-STATE SOLUTION: “This will benefit both the Turkish and Israeli people and can also help us make progress on a two-state solution, including an independent Palestinian state.”
NEEDY: “We both agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a transitional body.” Christ I hate that formulation: Obama treating his personal preferences as things the rest of the world “needs” to do. The presidential God-complex.
On IRSgate: “I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press. Typically, the IG reports are not supposed to be widely distributed or shared.” So he’s bitching about leaks – and no doubt reading the emails of the entire press corps to find out who’s responsible – while admitting he wouldn’t even know about these abuses of power for which he is ultimately responsible without the leak.
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL OUTRAGE: “it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you should be equally outraged at even the prospect that the IRS might not be acting with the kind of complete neutrality that we expect.” Except for class neutrality: obviously we all expect the IRS to continue to focus its enforcement efforts much more on poor people than rich people.
Asked about the trawl through AP phone records, Obama uses the words National Security as often as he can. Of course this is a “pending case,” so he can’t comment about it specifically, he says, but he can strongly suggest that AP reporters Hate Our Troops: “Leaks related to national security can put people at risk. They can put men and women in uniform that I’ve sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put some of our intelligence officers, who are in various, dangerous situations that are easily compromised, at risk. ... And so I make no apologies, and I don’t think the American people would expect me as Commander-in-Chief not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed.” And so the National Security State speaks, now and forever, world without end.
In the very next sentence he praises the free press and the open flow of information, at least in, you know, theory, and the need to “strike that balance properly,” because Barack Obama is always all about striking balances. So he supports a Media Shield Law that would require judges to allow exactly such fishing expeditions through news agencies’ records if the administration says it’s necessary for “national security.” I’m not sure what the point of having a judge in the process even is, since they wouldn’t be allowed to question such a designation.
Oh, and he has complete confidence in Eric Holder.
He says that Syrian President Assad “lost legitimacy when he started firing on his own people and killing his own people”. He still doesn’t say when Assad acquired legitimacy. By the way, did you know that the Chicago police shot 57 people last year, 50 of whom were black? Just saying.
(I’d have given you a national figure but, huh, the federal government doesn’t seem to compile that data. Funny, that.)
Not to mention that Obama himself kills his own citizens with Hellfire missiles, and says that giving the order to do so was one of the "easiset of his presidency." What does that say about his legitimacy?
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