Friday, July 31, 2009

Flat Beer Summit Lacks Fizz: THE GREAT OBAMA EMBARASSMENT


The Beer Summit

What’s wrong with this picture?

It all started after Obama Henry Louis Gates Junior, an Obama Harvard crony, went ballistic when the Cambridge Police were summoned by a concerned neighbor who thought she was witnessing a break in at Gates’ residence. Subsequent revelation of the 911 tape revealed no evidence of any racial profiling, just simply a citizen expressing a legitimate concern.

Experienced and highly recognized Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley responded to the call and from the get-go, Gates, a Harvard professor of African American culture, was highly uncooperative and confrontational shouting obscenities and racial slurs at the officer. Only after the confrontation spread outside and Gates continued to refuse to cooperate, Gates was arrested. All evidence including meticulous detail in the police report indicates that Sgt. Crowley went by the book and gave Gates every chance to cooperate. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. Those charges were later dropped viewing that situation was a misunderstanding that ratcheted way out of control due to Gates’ continued defiance but he was on his own property.

It should have ended there, but then came the Obama Press Conference supposedly staged as a media opportunity to pitch his health care plan rapidly losing support, but at the end of the conference, reporter Lynn Sweet, from the Chicago Sun-Times, the President responded:

"I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that he Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home,"

He added, “(Gates) "is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts."

The reaction to Obama’s absurd criticism of how Sgt. James Crowley handled the Professor Gate's outbursts and defiance accusing the police of acting “stupidly” and painting the event as a black/white conflict drew immediate outrage even from sources who’d typically sympathize with such a situation forcing Obama to concede the following day that his remarks needed to be “recalibrated.”

“Recalibrated?” What kind of bull is that? Is that supposed to be some kind of half-assed attempt to apologize or admit his remarks were wrong? How does one recalibrate one’s remarks?

After speaking to the principles involved, the notion of the “beer summit” was born. The two parties in the dispute, Gates and Crowley, would be invited to the White House to talk things over, sing “Kumbaya” and great big multicolored rainbows would arch from sea to shining sea. Barack Obama had such high expectations he hoped that the little get together would even provide a teachable moment.

A teachable moment? Okay, if so what’s the lesson? Gates is a pompous ass who sees the world in racial terms and likes to throw his weight around as a long-tenured professor at the most elitist school in the nation? After all during his tirades cut lose on the embattled officer, he even suggested he didn’t know who he was messing with.

A teachable moment? How about the connection between Barack Obama and the notorious racist radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright is starting to come into clear focus. While Obama’s campaign persona was designed to project a dignified even-keeled post racial posture, it was supposed to be some kind of strange irony that he would have a twenty year association with someone who defines the world in stark black and white terms with white Americans and traditional American institutions being the root of all evil in the world. Yes, Wright was acknowledged by Obama himself as his spiritual advisor, the man who married him and baptized his children. Somehow, we were supposed to believe that perhaps Obama was just too busy to notice Wright’s treachery. The longer we get to know Obama and see his leanings, the more the connection becomes clearer. First, it appears on every turn when the President travels overseas, he constantly apologizes for America’s past as if our conduct has been the root of the world’s troubles when in almost every single instance our foreign intervention has been at the invitation of other nations to cool off international crises. Nothing could be more revealing of Wright’s influence than the uproar over Professor Gates’ arrest.

That the President would invoke racism and take sides on such an issue is disturbing enough but he openly admitted he did not know all the facts and might have a personal bias, regardless, he issued his criticisms anyway. That is absolutely irresponsible and ignorant behavior for a person of such high responsibility. If there was ever a situation where a polite, “no comment” would be appropriate, this was it.

A teachable moment? The President is the nation’s top law enforcement official who should be held out as a role model for all. This distinction holds an implicit responsibility to speak up for respect for obeying the law and respecting the police. Even after the President started his tap dance to create some distance from his original shameful remarks, at no time did he ever stress the importance of cooperating with the police or speak of what a difficult job they have that in some instances they are caught in situations that are easily misunderstood but the rule of law protects society from absolute chaos.

A teachable moment? Haven’t we learned that episodes like the Gates affair when spun by racist opportunists can quickly unravel out of control and lead to riots or other major disruptions? The President was dangerously flirting with igniting such violence in the Boston summer nights.

There is one winner and two losers in this bizarre episode that never should have become a national news story. Sergeant James Crowley came across as the consummate professional, a dedicated officer firmly dealing with a situation spinning out of control. Professor Gates and President Obama show the absolute worst of the racist attitude that pervades the Liberal elite in this country showing their contempt for those who protect their liberties.

Imagine this. Suppose the police did not respond and Professor Gates’ home was being burglarized. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Gates would have responded they stayed away because they probably thought it was just another case of black on black crime.

Meanwhile, the news coverage of this event has been downright comical at times. The press has gone out of its way to avoid the obvious, that Barack Obama clearly screwed up. How’s this for ridiculous, two of the three major cable news networks, the two with clearly liberal leanings made a big production out of the build up to the “Beer Summit.”

Both MSNBC and CNN, one network fanatically in support of the President and the other clearly in Obama’s court had similar techniques to build up to the occasion. MSNBC had a countdown clock with three beer mugs. CNN had two clinking beer mugs with their countdown clock. According to Dana Milbank writing for the Washington Post, CNN have five cameras broadcasting from the White House and used the Google Earth mapping system to attempt to show the exact place of the picnic table in the Rose Garden.

Memo to MSNBC and CNN, Shakespeare said it best, “Much ado about nothing.”

The long lasting meaning of the “Beer Summit” affair is how it portrays President Barack Obama as a bitter racist whose knee jerk reaction criticizing the police response as acting “stupidly” is a particularly dangerous pronouncement given the inflammatory racial politics constantly exploited by racial hucksters, many of whom are Obama supporters, and the difficult task every law enforcement officer faces given that every action the police are called upon to perform does not take place in a vacuum. The smallest events taken out of context can have serious repercussions even when the law is clearly in the right.

We criticize Barack Obama’s conduct in this matter in the strongest terms and condemn him for his flagrant abuse of police authority.
For a little more insight, leave it up to New York's former mayor and one tough prosecutor, Rudy Giuliani to weigh in on the subject. His advice to Barack Obama, "Shut up!"

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