The Obama Administration Screwed Up
That's right. I wrote those words.
I've been criticized by some readers (mostly anonymous trolls whose opinion means as much to me as my ex-wife's, but also some of my cherished, regular, contrarians) for my seemingly blind, unwavering support of the Obama administration. Which is mostly true and I don't apologize for it a bit.
But they fucking screwed the pooch with his move.
"NEW YORK (CNN) -- A White House official apologized Monday after a low-flying Boeing 747 spotted above the Manhattan skyline frightened workers and residents into evacuating buildings.
Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty.
"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption."
Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River. It was accompanied by two F-16s."
Are you fucking kidding me right meow?
No one thought that this might be a bad fucking idea?
Seriously?"The president was furious about it," one of the officials said. The incident outraged many New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"First thing is, I'm annoyed -- furious is a better word -- that I wasn't told," he said, calling the aviation administration's decision to withhold details about the flight "ridiculous" and "poor judgment."
"Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center defies the imagination," he said. "Had we known, I would have asked them not to."
I take the president at his word. I can't imagine he knew about this. But he should have. As my Independence neighbor, Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here". The president is the captain of the ship and this never should have been allowed to happen.
It didn't require a public policy expert, a renowned historian, or a public relations consultant to prevent this from happening.
All it required was someone older than 8 years old with more than 32 brain cells to say "Nah, that's all kinds of fucked up stupid. Don't do it. It will scare people."
If I were the conspiratorial sort, I would be tempted to suggest that some ill-wishing insiders set this up on purpose to embarrass Obama. Yes, I think the enemies of this aministration are just that devious and self serving.
In reality I think this was just a MASSIVE FUBAR. But this type of shit cannot continue.
Posts
16 comments:
someone needs to send them a copy of the photoshop.
I haven't seen Obama take the blame responsibility on himself, yet, for anything but he sure is good at blaming others. I really like the lines he uses when he compares what happened to his age at the time...3 or 8 or whatever.
I'm with you XO. I blame former president Bush for this. It's all his fault.
jools - "I haven't seen Obama take the blame responsibility on himself, yet..."
I have to correct you.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/18/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4874210.shtml
"Asked today whether Treasury Secretary Geithner or other members of his administration are at fault for allowing the AIG bonuses or not knowing enough about them, President Obama had a simple answer: "The buck stops with me."
"Ultimately I'm responsible, I'm the president of the United States," he said. "We've got a big mess that we're having to clean up. Nobody here drafted those contracts. Nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in. We are responsible, though. The buck stops with me. And my goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again."
Is tha clear enough?
"The Buck Stopped There" because "Obama Aides, Lawmakers Knew Of AIG Bonus Plan" and didn't do anything about it for months(source NPR, hardly Obama-haters); other people knew that they knew so they did all the fake outrage to distance themselves from the scandals:"I at that point realized that we were going to have a backlash with regard to these bonuses," Kanjorski said in an AP interview. In a meeting with Liddy later that month, he said he told the AIG chief that "all hell would break loose if we didn't find a way to inform the public ... and that we should take every step to put that information out there so we wouldn't have the shock."
Around the same time, Congress and Obama's team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments."
Be that as it may, Obama did, in fact, take full responsibility.
Did he not?
The Obama administration is young. We voted for change. We voted to get the white haired Rumsfeld and Cheney types out. We did the same thing when we elected JFK.
It takes more than three months for ANYBODY to learn a new job and the way our Constitution and custom is written, it's also virtually a new company.
All learned lessons about it. The NY people will get over it and hopefully a false scare will all they'll have. But NY being what it is, there'll be more jet crashes...for jets have been crashing in that city since I was a kid.
Obama's people are learning just how the media handles things...and that teaches caution. Americans are used to whining. They'll wail if you give them something to whine about.
People who go too far with this don't understand the nature of large organizations, of the widespread nature of Murphy's Law, or the extent to which bucks stop at the top.
Are parents responsible when their drunken adult children slam their cars into someone? or the head of the post office if a worker goes, uh, 'postal'?
Or Jimmy Carter when the mission to rescue the Hostages went all wrong? Was Hitler responsible when the Hindenburg blew up in NJ? What about the crashes of the space shuttles?
And on and on. I think the right is being very wishful that they can blame Obama for something big, given what Bush the Younger did to us all. But Iraq is a tough act to follow.
These are fast moving times...Obama will have his own whoppers and events that will test him. And talk radio will be quick to tell us all that he didn't pass. That's a part of the job.
Remember. Shit happens. Even to rock stars.
he did it with the qualifier "Nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG", when the article I quoted says that they had a chance to have the bonuses stopped and didn't do it;but if you ask if he took responsibility-the answer is yes.
Isn't there a difference between taking responsibility for something and just saying you're taking responsibility for it?
XO - I see what you're saying but in one breath he says nobody here was responsible and then in the next breath says we are responsible. I realize he is being specific in the first instance and generalizing in the second. However, as with this statement and other statements (such as those about the U.S. he made on his trips), he cannot seem to take responsibility without reaching back and blaming previous people or administrations, even pointing out he was a child at the time for some of the issues.
In thinking about this from a business sense, in my experiences I rarely remember our CEO's saying "John Doe" caused this but I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again, etc. etc. Rather, they would say something to the effect that the company has changed its policies or the company is committed to improvement without pointing the finger backwards. That, to me, is the responsible and respectable way to show strength and leadership.
Yeah, he should be impeached through a long, expensive, take-center-stage-above-every-other-problem hearing, quartered and drawn. His name should be removed all history books, and anyone that mentions his name should be executed on the spot.
I mean, Bush only bombed an entire country for no reason, you know, a terrorist act in and of itself, but Obama needs to go down for this.
Get him out now!
How about that waterboarding? Maybe Obama should be waterboarded, getting what info, I have no clue, but if waterboarding is good enough for Republicans, it's good enough for Obama?
Aye?
Send Obama to the middle of Mexico and let him babysit the pigs.
Or let him go hunting with Dick Cheney.
Or let him be bored to death and lied to by Bush at the ranch.
Or let him go babysit the shores of Alaska with "you can see Russia" Palin.
Yes, Obama needs to go down for this.
I'm sure he planned this, articulated this for months and this is likely the only reason he ran for president.
Ummm...dangerousdaisy? You are freaking me OUT.
The plane thing was pathetic. Obama saying he was as upset about it as he was seems ok. What else is he going to do? Go back in time and make it not happen?
My posts were sarcasm, which apparently was lost in translation.
Obama said he was sorry, but that rarely is good enough, because as you can tell from earlier posts, they're saying he didn't say it right. Or some bullshit.
I fail to see anyone asking for an apology for serious grievances from Bush, Cheney and the like.
Obama has said he's sorry. The end.
Obama is never going to do anything to make Republicans happy.
Who gives a crap about Republicans anyway? They hate each other, hate the government, and if they were each given a million dollars they'd all whine themselves to death anyway.
They aren't even a real party anymore.
Post a Comment