Tag: Robert Gibbs

Drones Don’t Kill People – Presidents Do

There is compelling evidence that last year Nobel Peace Prize winner President Obama murdered an American teenager just two weeks after murdering his father and another American citizen in Yemen.  The same action that resulted in the death of the boy also caused the wanton slaughter of the boy’s Yemeni cousin and an unspecified number of their friends. The boy was just 16 years old when he was killed in Yemen.

He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was alleged to have joined a foreign military and taken up arms against the United States.  I say alleged because it is our tradition in America not to assign guilt to an individual until they have been proven guilty.  Many things were alleged about Anwar al-Awlaki, but no court or jury – the people who are the “finders of fact” in our system affirmed the President’s allegations as facts before the President executed al-Awlaki.

When [Anwar al-Awlaki] was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton’s public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called “targeted killing” reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list – and then to kill him – was “an easy one.”

But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn’t on an American kill list. Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he “an inspiration,” as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone “operational,” as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests.

“It’s not that I’m an uncaring person”

Well it seems that someone has stuck their size 15s in it again for the second time in a week.

Apparently Veterans are now “lesser people” sucking at the public tit.

I’m certainly not the first blogger to notice this story (though I did cover it yesterday- #20), there’s digby and Teddy Partridge and Oliver Willis for example.

My take is a little different.  I’m not in favor of his firing or resignation.  His honest exposure of the endless greed of our ruling class, that they would STEAL the benefits of the troops they so hypocritically and incessantly praise as well as food out of the mouths of babies and the elderly so that the richest one tenth of one percent can get richer by looting our public treasury, says everything you need to know about the morality and values of our “professional political class”.

If I believed in Hell I’d hope you’d rot in it for eternity you heartless, soulless bastards.

It will be interesting to see how Obama, who just last night wasted 18 minutes I’ll never get back, and his mouthpiece Bobby Gibbs handle this.

Gibbs Inserts Foot Deeper into His Mouth

Well, if we on the Left had expected a contrite Robert Gibbs today, I hope everyone wasn’t too disappointed because today MR. Gibbs stood by his criticism of us and said he expects us to get out and vote in the Fall.

Speaking publicly for the first time since he disparaged the “professional left,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he stands by his comments, has no plans to resign and that he fully expects progressive voters to go to the polls in 2010.

“I don’t plan on leaving and there is no truth to the rumor that I’ve added an inflatable exit to my office,” the press secretary said during Wednesday’s briefing, referencing the recent incident in which a Jet Blue flight attendant bolted his plane in frustration.

Taking the podium after a day off to tend to a sore throat, Gibbs said he has not reached out to any Democrats to discuss his remarks, in which he chastised liberals for wanting to “eliminate the Pentagon” and pursue Canadian-style health care reform. Nor, he added, has he talked to the president about the matter.

Does he stand by the comments? “Yes,” he replied.

Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald appeared on the Dylan Ratigan Show to discuss Gibbs’ dissing of the “professional left”

Dear Mr. Gibbs

Do you really think that with this kind of rhetoric and then the non-apology walk back, that you are going to win the hearts and votes of the Left, the Independents and Moderate Republicans?

Come on, Bob. Do you even recognize the man in the Oval Office as being the same man from the campaign trail? Granted many of us knew damned well he wasn’t a progressive or even a so-called centrist for that matter. He was already reneging on his promises when the instead of filibustering the FISA renewal bill, he voted for it.

For someone who was so critical of Bush’s wars and the Presidential powers that Bush had assumed, he certainly has embraced them now and then some. Bush is probably wishing he could have gotten away with what Obama is doing that is being ignored by his proponents. Wow, targeted assassinations of American citizens, suspending habeus corpis on whim and prosecuting minors for war crimes. Cool. Now he wants unfettered access to private e-mail. Why not just repeal the 4th Amendment.

And how about that Cat Food Commission? Oops, sorry Obama’s supporters don’t like that term for the Deficit Commission that is proposing cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Brilliant. Bush never would have gotten away with that.

And wow, not just one woman on the Supreme Court but two. One who has a history of rulings in favor of corporations and the other with no bench experience but a supporter of the unitary executive that was greatly expanded under Bush and explicitly adopted and expanded by Obama.

Yes, Mr. Gibbs, we on the Left are not happy with the corporatist, neoliberal agenda that is coming from your boss. You don’t like the criticism than maybe you’d best listen to what we are saying instead of whining about it. The hallmark of a democratic society is criticism. We are still living in a democratic society so far. Or are we?

Well, thanks for listening to one really pissed off “Leftie”