Glenn Reynolds @ Instapundit:
WHY BARACK OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN. Just for the record, this is what it looked like for a man who made a film that made the Obama Administration uncomfortable:
Here’s the key bit: “Just after midnight Saturday morning, authorities descended on the Cerritos home of the man believed to be the filmmaker behind the anti-Muslim movie that has sparked protests and rioting in the Muslim world.”
When taking office, the President does not swear to create jobs. He does not swear to “grow the economy.” He does not swear to institute “fairness.” The only oath the President takes is this one:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.
He won’t resign, of course. First, the President has the appreciation of free speech that one would expect from a Chicago Machine politician, which is to say, none. Second, he’s not getting any pressure. Indeed, the very press that went crazy over Ari Fleischer’s misrepresented remarks seems far less interested in the actions of an administration that I repeat, literallysent brown-shirted enforcers to launch a midnight knock on a filmmaker’s door.
But Obama’s behavior — and that of his enablers in the press — has laid down a marker for those who are paying attention. By these actions he is, I repeat, unfit to hold office. I hope and expect that the voters will agree in November.
Related thoughts from Ann Althouse:
@Greg:
Oh, you mean this part:
Not sure what you see there that is objectionable.
@Greg:
The KKK still holds parades and rallies. Luckily, everyone shows up to make fun of them. There was a Neo Nazi rally in Wisconsin on September 3rd.
“Freedom isn’t easy, and democracy isn’t perfect.” JFK
@Greg:
Examples?
@Greg:
Gee, Greg.
Even the Supreme Court knows what pornography is and calls certain portions of that illegal.
The Republican Party is filled with P0rnStars, some even have run for office under its banner.
Queen of Porn� Jenna Jameson.
According to CBS San Francisco, Jenna Jameson made her endorsement of Romney while attending an event marking the 8th anniversary of a local strip club.
She’s listed among Romney’s many celebrity endorsements:
http://aboutmittromney.com/celebrities.htm
Speaking of REAL p0rn, Larry Flynt (D-Skuzball) offers $1 million for dirt on Romney’s finances.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-09-10/news/33742748_1_larry-flynt-hustler-magazine-mitt-romney
He’s tried this before.
All crimes-against-people that are deliberate involve ”hate.”
There is no reason to add-on with such a tag.
I wish “hate crime” was dropped from all criminal codings.
@Nan G:
You said:
“A parallel exists to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s publication of their original Danish illustrators’ cartoons of Mohammad.
THREE MONTHS wentr by during which time those same cartoons were reprinted TWICE in EGYPT!!
They were also reprinted all over the place!
Nothing happened.”
You should have said “Nothing happened for months” to avoid having your comment nit-picked by those who are only looking for a “gotcha.”
You’re right; only it was longer than three months: the cartoons were published on September 30, 2005. According to the WayBack Machine, the first hint I could find at protests over the cartoons started in the first week of February, 2006. That is FOUR months.
So it took the Muslim street four months to ramp up enough rage to actually start with the Islamic practices of protesting, burning flags, throwing stones and fire bombs at embassies and consulates, setting cars on fire, demanding punishment of those who disrepected their pedophile prophet, yada, yada, yada. You see, the Religion of Perpetual Outrage has to get organized. An Imam in Egypt has to start preaching “Death to the Danes (or name the country),” convincing the unemployed youth that creating a riot is much more fun that just sitting at home watching re-runs on an antiqidated TV set, then that Imam has to contact Imams in other radical nations and so on and so on.
But you see, the outrage is needed by the Imams who live in relative wealthy conditions while the people of their nations are without jobs, without adequate housing, water, sewers, electricity, etc. They have to be able to rile the masses so that the masses don’t come to the realization that the Imams live quite well while they live in abstract poverty and start to blame the Imams. The tactic is as old as dictatorship itself; divert the attention from why the conditions of the people are so dire to another focal point, i.e. the United States, or the Danish government. The same tactic that has been used in the Religion of Perpetual Outrage since the 7th century.
Interesting how the leftwing media in this country has played down the death of an US ambassador. According to sources closes to the idiot..”he was gay, so what”. Kitchen talk in the wipe house..but you know how the staff talks. But, they are just help….
@retire05:
Thanks, I thought the immediacy of the reaction was implied by the context.
Being nit picked by Mata is OK by me.
Sometimes her memory is for accurate than my old brain can pull anymore.
@MOS 8541:
He was gay?
I didn’t realize that.
A couple days ago I mentioned that suffocation is a common execution technique by Muslims and cited Iran where they use it on homosexuals.
The fact that the ambassador died slowly of suffocation was probably a coincidence.
I am certain he knew better than to let that secret out to the Libyan population!
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Ah yes, the “Amen” chorus for the criminal element in our society speaks up. You, because you’re a criminal apologist, use the term “Branded”, while I prefer CONVICTED.
Lay off the stupid pill, lady. If you’re on parole (or is it probation), you haven’t paid IN FULL for your crimes. He got out of jail EARLY, he didn’t PAY THE FULL PRICE AS PRESCRIBED BY THE LAW FOR HIS FELONIOUS CONDUCT.
I love it. You are actually implying he might be wrongly convicted.
Boo-phvcking-hoo. Some perp, some loser who has ruined lives, the nation, stolen money, etc., has your sympathy.
Typical faux-conservative.
@Nan G, the Danish cartoons were stretched out over some time, and piled on before the Muslim world decided to erupt.
When they were first published, there were some Muslim leaders itching for the standard apology, but for the most part, the Muslim world remained calm. In fact a bunch of Ambassadors wanted to meet with the Danish PM to ask them to at least denounce the content, and he told them to go pound sand since he wasn’t going to abridge any form of free speech.
…. uh, can we expect a huge exodus to Denmark by conservative now? LOL As I said, not only Obama today with the film, but Bush also condemned the anti-Muslim ‘toons, tho he also reiterated our defense of free speech. Bush did it more quickly and in one sitting, while Obama was a slow two-parter. But then, Obama is slow on the get go for everything. But back to the Danish cartoons.
The Egyptians printed only a few of them, and denounced it. Yet the Muslim world still stayed relatively calm. But then, in a raised fist revolution of free speech publishing, expressing solidarity with Denmark, and in defiance of the Muslims being so thin skinned demanding apologies, everyone started printing them… publication after publication, country after country, over the following months. It was only after the repeated jab at Muslim hypersensitivity that they erupted into the ensuing protests and the diplomatic breakdowns started occurring.
In retrospect, if you want to look at it, the Muslims did nothing in the beginning but publicly ask for the apologies. What they got instead of apologies is more of it in their face and the predictable happened. How anyone wants to interpret that as to everyone’s rights to continue poking the hornets nest, and the inevitable behavior of the hornets after that happens, is their own choice.
My conclusion is that the whole affair would have died down a lot faster, and without all the brouhaha, without the additional prodding. That is not to suggest anyone didn’t have the right to continue prodding. But it’s somewhat naive to think that if you poke at a hornets nest long enough, they won’t be coming out, ready to sting.
It’s my guess you just forgot about how this all came about, and why. But it appears that, even since the ‘toons, their patience levels for prodding have gone down considerably.
@MataHarley:
Thanks for the info, Mata. As I admitted, I don’t begin to understand how the various religions interact with one another.
Mata, you left out the fact that one imam added three outrageous additions to the actual Danish newspaper’s cartoons.
Even I would be upset if the founder of my religion were depicted as a sexually aroused man pulling a girl-child (with her dolly) to bed.
Or, if he were depicted as having doggy-style sex with another male.
Or, if he were depicted with a pig’s face and feet.
The eruptions inside Islam only began after the additions of those false cartoons.
Muslims made two of those themselves and found a photo on line of a Frenchman dressed up for a pig-calling contest and dressed it up AS a cartoon.
THEY are the instigators.
And they had to sex up the cartoons to achieve their goal of a roused rabble.
The imam behind that act hasn’t got the morals of an alley cat.
It was not just any added cartoons, Nan. There was a point everyone wanted to make by repeating the cartoons (with and without any additions) just because the Muslims wanted them to be retired from view. It was done at most of the major conservative blogs, including here. Like I said, a solidarity with Denmark, and in defiance to their hypersensitivity.
I have no doubt whatsoever that terrorists are capable of, and do, manufacture their own propaganda and put it on someone else, Nan G. Which is what I suspect Bacile/Nakoula has done. He came from no where, the bank fraud (and perhaps the meth manufacturing attempts in 1998) were a shared money venture with another. And we don’t know that guy’s alliances either. They could be Coptics, or not. But they made sure to get ahold of both Jones and Sadek for distribution in Arabic after it fell flat in the US.
Assuming Bacile genuinely is a Coptic Christian of Egyptian descent, there’s only three reasons I can think of where he’d risk endangering fellow Egyptian Coptics by feeding it to the Egyptian media:
1: They thought Israel would take the blame
2: They knew, in advance, that the hardliners would not come back on the Coptic Christians there since it was valuable to use against US interests, or
3: Bacile is cooperating with the hardliners, arranged an agreement with Sadek and Muslin clerics on Coptic safety, and voila… they got it there just in time for Sept 11th.
BTW, Nan G… speaking of poking at hornet’s nests… a French rag, called Satirical Weekly(?), has already announced they’ll be piling on by releasing an edition tomorrow with a new wave of Mohammed ‘toons. Guess he wants to make sure that protests come to France ASAP…. as well as get some more PR for his own rag. France is home to about 4 million Muslims. I suspect he’ll get exactly what he wants.
But then, they aren’t new to their poking, and have their past. A petrol bomb in 2011 following their Arab Spring issue in Feb. In March last year, their host, Bluevision, had cyberattacks, and then refused to put the website back up for a time because of death threats after that.