Obama Panders to Gay Leftists, Herman Cain Speaks Up on Booing of Gay Soldier at Republican Debate

At a recent US presidential debate, a gay soldier asking a question of Rick Santorum was booed by an audience member.  The booer was subsequently rebuked by the surrounding audience and later by Santorum.  In a recent speech President Obama made to gay leftist organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC), he used the booing at the debate as a way to portray Republicans as anti-gay.

Barack Obama last night hit out at his Republican rivals for staying silent when a GOP debate crowd booed a homosexual soldier who asked a question.

During a highly combative speech to an audience of 3,000 gay rights activists, the president said: 'You want to be commander in chief? 

'You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient,' 

Recalling the boos soldiers Steven Hill received on September 22 during his videotaped question, which was filmed in Iraq, Mr Obama said: 'We don't believe in standing silent when that happens.'

To loud cheers and a standing ovation at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization, he went on to say: 'We don't believe in a small America. 

'We believe in a big America - a tolerant America, a just America, an equal America - that values the service of every patriot.

I am glad that homosexual soldiers can now serve openly in the US.  Personally, I don't see the utility in the ban.  If someone wants to defend their country, their sexual orientation should not be taken into account.  Honourably serving gay soldiers are every bit as heroic as any other honourably serving soldier, in my opinion.  And the military (any military) requires discipline and adherence to the strict rules, and any soldier, including gay ones, should receive the proper punishment for breaking the rules if they do.  Other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel, allow for openly homosexual soldiers to serve, without much problem.  I am not one to champion most "gay rights" issues, but I do believe there was an inequality in DADT.  Leftist gay rights zealots certainly didn't help in the repeal effort, as usual, with their ludicrously radical activism.

DADT may have been an unjust policy, but that does not mean that DADT proponents are anti-gay or homophobic.  In fact, I sympathize with them to an extent given the outrageous behaviour of some gay people and activists.  The military is certainly no place for that (but, hopefully the discipline required of military members would have prevented that behaviour, and I would assume most gay soldiers would be above that behaviour anyway).

My favourite US presidential candidate, Herman Cain, has spoken out on the issue of the booing at the debate.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain says that he should not have stayed silent after the audience [sic] at a recent GOP debate booed a gay soldier.
The Georgia businessman told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that it would have been "appropriate" for him to have defended the soldier. None of the candidates at the Sept. 22 forum responded to the booing. 

But Cain also suggested that the audience may not have actually been booing the soldier. "Maybe they were booing the whole 'don't ask, don't tell' repeal more so than booing that soldier," told ABC's "This Week." "But we didn't know that. So that was not the time to try and decipher."

After watching Herman Cain on Fox News this morning, I was impressed, yet again.  This is a man who directly answers questions asked of him.  And I applaud his speaking up about the booing incident.

Herman Cain is simply way out of Obama's league.  Obama's campaign strategy appears to consist of nothing other than attacking Republicans.  Cain's strategy appears to consist of proposing ideas of how to fix the USA's problems.

The Omniscent Obama Passively Impugns Those Destructive Republicans

What follows are some excerpts from this article detailing President Obama's first day on the campaign trial his bus tour to "flyover country" (h/t GayPatriot).

"If your voices are heard, then sooner or later these guys have to start paying attention," Obama said in Iowa on Monday. "And if they don't start paying attention, then they're not going to be in office and we will have a new Congress in there that will start paying attention to what is going on all across America."

...

While the White House insisted in the lead up to the tour that the trip was about official business because Obama was talking to Americans, the president was clearly talking to voters. With his sleeves rolled up, tie missing and campaign cadence on full display, Obama appeared to be in total campaign mode.

... 

"And if they don’t get it done, then we’ll be running against a Congress that’s not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear," Obama warned.
The president also sought to make peace with his liberal supporters, explaining and defending some of the compromises he has made on healthcare and tax cuts and blasting Republicans in the process.
"Look, the bottom line is we’re moving in the right direction," Obama told one questioner. "But I know it’s frustrating, because the other side is unreasonable.  And you don’t want to reward unreasonableness.  Look, I get that.  But sometimes you’ve got to make choices in order to do what’s best for the country at that particular moment, and that’s what I’ve tried to do."

I wonder if anyone else is made as speechless as I after reading that.  This is the president?  He sounds like a liberal troll commenting on a conservative website.  First, Obama accuses Republican congresspeople of "not paying attention."  Then, he accuses Republican congresspeople of "not doing anything for the American people."  Then, he accuses "the other side" of being "unreasonable."  Do I sense projection going on here?  I mean, replace "Congress" with "President" in the following quote*, 

"And if they don't start paying attention, then they're not going to be in office and we will have a new Congress in there that will start paying attention to what is going on all across America."

and I concur (with it).  I really, really hope Obama will receive a sober awakening on November 6, not only for the schadenfreude I will experience, but also so the economies of the US and the rest of the world will be able to get back to normal.  Obama sure is lucky he has the media to obfuscate his incompetence.  Here is a stunning misrepresentation of reality courtesy of Maureen Dowd (h/t GayPatriot):

Three years ago, Barack Obama’s unlikely presidential dream was given wings by rapturous Iowans — young, old and in-between — who saw in the fresh-faced, silky-voiced black senator a chance to leap past the bellicose, rancorous Bush years [courtesy of liberals] into a modern, competitive future where we once more had luster in the world. 

“We are choosing hope over fear,” Senator Obama told a delirious crowd of 3,000 here the night he won the Iowa caucuses. 

But fear has garroted hope, as America reels from the latest humiliating blows on the economy and in Afghanistan. The politician who came across as a redeemer in 2008 is now in need of redemption himself.

...

“We just wish he’d be more of a fighter,” said one influential Democrat with a grimace. Another agreed: “You can’t blame him for everything. I just wish he would come across more forceful at times, but that is not the dude’s style. Detached hurts you when things are sour. You need some of Clinton’s ‘I feel your pain’ compassion.”

The president has been so spectacularly unable to fill the leadership void in Washington that the high-spirited Michele Bachmann feels free to purloin Obama’s old mantra. 

“The power behind our campaign is hope and a future,” she chirped to a sparse crowd Monday in Atlantic, Iowa [what do you expect in a town of 7,112 people?]. “That’s all I believe in.” That and making America safe for old-fashioned light bulbs and not those weird curly ones.

...

Obama has spent a lifetime creating his persona — superior, wise, above all parties and interests, all-seeing, calm, unflappable. 

But as Drew Westen, a liberal psychology professor at Emory University wrote in The Times on Sunday, puzzling about what has happened to his former hero’s passion, the president never identifies the villains who cause our epic problems [does he mean Obama himself?]. It’s unclear, Westen wrote, whether that reflects his aversion to conflict or a fear of offending donors, or both. 

Obama’s assumption that you can rise above ascribing villainous motives has caused him to waste huge chunks of his first term seeking bipartisanship from Republicans who were playing him for a dupe. And it has led to Americans regarding the nation’s capital as a place of all villains and no heroes.

(Emphasis added)

Granted, there are a lot of criticisms (of Obama) in that article.  In fact, I was surprised to find this apt summary (of Obama):

His withholding and reactive nature has made him seem strangely irrelevant in Washington, trapped by his own temperament. He doesn’t lead, and he doesn’t understand why we don’t feel led.

There appears to be a disconnect between what Obama says and what these liberal columnists think he says.
My hypothesis is that (some) liberals have constructed this idealized image of Obama (as a brilliant, cerebral, eloquent, post-partisan, pragmatic professor whose only imperfection is being too smart and virtuous), and that is how they see him, regardless of reality.  Similarly, they have constructed an idealized image of Republicans (as idiotic, uneducated, backwards, evil, racist, homophobic, warmongering villains who wish to eat kittens, kill elderly people, and destroy the environment and who wish to enforce their evil Christian morals on everyone and to destroy the economy (i.e. the public sector) so black people in the inner-city are unfairly forced to contribute something to society) and that is how they see them, again, regardless of reality.  That is their perception of reality, and they won't be persuaded otherwise.  And those in the media will obfuscate the facts so as to report reality so it is in accord with their perception of it.  I will say that, if my hypothesis is correct, there surely must be liberals that don't adhere to this lack of reason.  Keep in mind that that is simply a hypothesis.

In summary, methinks Maureen Dowd (and some other people) should pay attention to what the "detached, passive, unflappable" Obama says.  Because he certainly doesn't come off that way.  

*and pronouns and verbs (so they are in agreement with the pronouns)

I Think Obama is Skipping

Every time President Obama makes a speech, he seems to say the same thing.

We need Democrats and Republicans to work together to help grow this economy.  We’ve got to put politics aside to get some things done.  That’s what the American people expect of us.

Blah, blah, blah.  How many times have I heard this before?  What will telling the public this accomplish?  What Obama is saying seems pretty obvious.  Furthermore, surely Obama has some sort of influence in Washington.  Maybe, instead of making speeches, and telling Americans something they already know, he should being doing something himself.  Why is he just complaining?  Why doesn't he introduce a concrete plan that entails the steps he mentioned in his address, instead of lecturing Congress?

My conclusion is that Obama is campaigning, and that is all he is doing.  I hope the average American isn't dumb enough to buy Obama's rhetoric.  That is all he offers.  He offers no plan, only rhetoric.

Rhetoric, Fear and REAL Hope and Change

I can't get past Obama's rhetoric.  Many, many other people have pointed out what a hypocrite Obama is.  He promised post-partisanship, but it seems like every speech he makes contains some sort of vilification of Republicans (not to mention "millionaires and billionaires," and my personal favorite, "corporate jet owners").  Obama might have his rhetoric and the obsequious media to rely upon, but the reality of reality should hopefully be enough to evict Obama from the White House.  Obama's and the media's rhetoric cannot be enough to obfuscate the facts (low unemployment, high inflation, et cetera) when so many people are well aware of them, and since they are having such a profound effect on peoples' lives.

Any prosperity loving citizen of a Western nation should support the Tea Party Movement, given how inextricably linked the US's economy is to that of the rest of the world.  I really hope Americans nominate the right Republican to challenge Obama.  I do not believe a RINO like Mitt Romney would be able to effectively curtail government spending, and everyone in the Western world should be paying close attention.  It is too early to determine who the right candidate is, in my opinion, however.  At this point, I would probably support Herman Cain.  I think someone with leadership experience in the private sector may be the perfect person to deal with what the next president will inherit from Obama.  Yes, it would be a risk to elect an outsider, but, at this point, it would be a risk that is well worth taking.  Having said that, I would not support Herman Cain completely at this point.  It is too early.  And, if either Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio enters the running, well, they are just too damn good not to support.  But that doesn't look like it will happen.

I am a concerned Canadian.  I am also a university student with a very tight budget.  I don't need a stagnant economy to make things more difficult than they will already be.  I don't have nearly as much at stake as most Americans, but the prospect of another Obama presidency, which will almost inevitably lead to an economic crisis the likes of which Americans haven't seen possibly since the Great Depression (if my amateur reasoning can be relied upon), and hence one the likes of which Westerners haven't seen possibly since the Great Depression, frightens me.

UPDATE: After re-reading this, I realized the last sentence didn't make any sense, so I fixed it.

This Isn't Bush's Fault

Whatever the results of the debt talks in  the United States are, and whatever happens to the US economy as a result of its debt, it is important to remember that it was President Obama and his stimulus that are what got the US in this situation.  Sure, this economic crisis started while George W. Bush was president, but it was Obama's stimulus that caused the US's current debt problem.  He failed to deal with the economic situation, and, if the US does default, and even if it does so because Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit, Obama is ultimately responsible.

Furthermore, since it is Obama's fault that the US is in this situation, I will say that is it Obama who has the responsibility to compromise.

I hope people can see through Obama's rhetoric and fear mongering:

 Let's "set politics aside" and "do some tough stuff," Obama told reporters at a White House news conference. But "if Washington operates as usual and can't get anything done, let's at least avert [uh] Armageddon."

If Obama is so hell bent on averting "Armageddon," then why doesn't he listen to Republicans?  Surely he recognizes the roll he played in the US's debt problem, so, if he's reasonable, he will do what is necessary to prevent "Armageddon."  In addition, he could have raised the debt ceiling when Democrats controlled congress.  Like I said, it Obama's responsibility to compromise here.  He caused the problem, he failed to act when he could have, and he is the one claiming how terrible things will be when the US defaults.

I hope the Republicans don't compromise and demonstrate that they actually have metaphorical spines.