[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

You're not really going to hold that up as a criticism are you? He actually is a very good orator.

I agree. Except that Obama's speaking talents hit a wall when he doesn't have a teleprompter around. When he has to speak extraneously he turns into 'Uh-bama' and constantly says 'uh...' as he tries to compose his thoughts. As a former forensics (debate) team member I spotted this early on with the guy and realized that he was not as sharp as he was being promoted in the media.

Maybe he's contemplative. But where he is quite adamant about keeping his college years a near-mystery I'd say his college grades would reveal him to be on par with John Kerry: an ambitious but mediocre intellect.

andyt andyt:

I wouldn't be surprised if Jefferson made the odd mistake as well.

Jefferson was not at all an orator but contemporaries of his, such as John Adams, held him in reverance for his sometimes astounding abilities to distill vastly complicated ideas into a single sentence. And if Jefferson made any mistakes I've never heard of them.

andyt andyt:

Barry was a professor at a prestigious university - most people would deem that being an intellectual.

Obviously, one of his colleagues who actually worked with the man thinks otherwise.

andyt andyt:

If some colleague wants to snipe at him, I don't think that makes Barry Homer Simpson, or even George Bush.

To be blunt, I suspect that Obama's grades in college are far worse than Bush's grades and that's a huge reason why they're being kept secret.

andyt andyt:

He deserves criticism for his gaffe - this stuff is important. But I think you're way overstretching here.

I am not stretching the fact that these gaffes only occur when they offend our allies. In that regard I am not thinking these comments are gaffes, but more a pattern of deliberate antagonism towards our allies.

Unless you think his veto of the Keystone pipeline was also a gaffe?

[Thanos]

President Obama's mistakes never got anyone killed. One of GW Bush's doozies got about 5000 American/Allied and 100,000 Iraqi lives wasted.

[SprCForr]

I think Obama's CoS needs to kick the speechwriters in the ass for their incompetence.

[BartSimpson]

SprCForr SprCForr:

I think Obama's CoS needs to kick the speechwriters in the ass for their incompetence.

The problem is that Obama lacks a solid protocol consultant/officer. Typically a President has some State Department wonk on staff to cover this kind of thing but I'm guessing Obama is probably following the path blazed by Bill Clinton to dispose with the post as 'not needed'.

Clinton didn't do too bad just because the SOB was pretty likable so when he did screw up people just wrote it off to his 'down home' kind of personna.

Obama has more of a lofty attitude and he frequently comes off as 'teaching' the people he speaks to and that can appear a tad arrogant, especially when he botches things.

I know from past experience that in the military once you get to two or three stars you're well advised to have someone in charge of protocol for you so you don't do things like waving at the Arabs with your left hand or giving the 'OK' sign in places where it most definitely does not mean 'OK'.

Of course, Obama isn't so keen on the military.

[2Cdo]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

2Cdo 2Cdo:

I see two already jumping on the "it's okay if Barry slips up" train.

I wasn't commenting on Obama's comments at all actually. Just that the response of the left tends to be to ridicule and the response of the right tends to be to rage. Your post supports the general argument.

You seen rage in my post?

[ShepherdsDog]

read a few books on the matter. Even in Schindler's List(the book) the Germans remarked how brutal the Slavs were towards the Jews. Keep in mind that Germany had a huge Jewish population before the war because many of those Jews had left eastern Europe because of centuries of pogroms. the germans were just more efficient when it came to eliminating European Jews. They were helped in their endeavours by enthusiastic local populations.

[martin14]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

so you don't do things like waving at the Arabs with your left hand

That got me thinking, what do Arab motorcyclists do, because the 'wave'
is done with the left hand. So, they nod, use the right hand ( not a good idea, btw) ?

Or does the average Arab redneck not care about such things ?

[Thanos]

Gaffe or laziness, it's still not as bad as when Ronnie went to Bitburg. At least President Obama's people apologized for a fairly significant historical mistake. President Reagan and his guys just doubled-down even harder as the criticism of the Bitburg debacle grew. This is kind of the era when American conservatives began the tactic of never apologizing for anything, no matter how disasterous, embarassing, or outright catastrophic an action, statement, or policy eventually turned out to be. Ever since then they've been totally possessed with this attitude no matter how foolish it makes them look. Never admit any mistake. Never acknowledge any wrongness. And, above all, never apologize for anything, ever. Bill O'Reilly on his Malmedy massacre fuck-up, Bush on no WMD's of any significance found in Iraq, practically any statement at all by the clown-car likes of Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann when they say invariably something that comes across as nothing less than full-blown retarded. It's kind of identical to that scene in his Big Adventure movie when Pee-Wee Hermann wiped out on his bike in front of a group of mouthy kids, stubbornly wiped the dirt off, and sneered at them "I MEANT to do that".

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

Gaffe or laziness, it's still not as bad as when Ronnie went to Bitburg. At least President Obama's people apologized for a fairly significant historical mistake. President Reagan and his guys just doubled-down even harder as the criticism of the Bitburg debacle grew.

The whole point being is Barry's people should have learned from stuff like that.

Obviously, they have decided to be just as stupid as everyone else.

So much for Mr. International BHO love me cuz I know everything.

[Prof_Chomsky]

I can’t even believe this is a topic of conversation.
WTF is wrong with the right on this one and every one posting on behalf of it? The guy doesn’t need a history lesson. He wasn’t trying to insult anyone. He made an innocent comment about “Polish Death Camps” expecting that the common person realizes Nazis ran death camps IN Poland that actually KILLED the Polish population among others... anyone insinuating for a second that Obama thought the Poles ran their own death camps to kill their own people must also have a hard time deciding whether a fork goes in the mouth or in their right eye.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Gaffe or laziness, it's still not as bad as when Ronnie went to Bitburg.

Bitburg was just the media making something out of nothing. That there were German war dead at the cemetary rates a 'duh' in my book. Reagan going to the cemetary was making a statement that the war was behind us and that it was time to move forward. The media circus centered on the Waffen SS soldiers who were buried at the cemetary.

The Waffen SS was a military organization that was connected to the NSDAP but through the course of its existence served under the command of the Wehrmacht. They had no connection to the death camps and were a purely military outfit although Hitler intended them to become a police force after the war...which did not happen.

I think it was in the 1970's but the Waffen SS veterans in the course of several court actions cleared their collective names and established themselves legally as an honorably serving military unit attached to the Wehrmacht. This included one of my wife's relatives in Mannheim.

That you and the media are unable to distinguish between the SS and the Waffen SS simply means that you'd rather seize on any opportunity to trash someone you don't like (Reagan) as opposed to first checking your facts.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

Gaffe or laziness, it's still not as bad as when Ronnie went to Bitburg.

Bitburg was just the media making something out of nothing. That there were German war dead at the cemetary rates a 'duh' in my book. Reagan going to the cemetary was making a statement that the war was behind us and that it was time to move forward. The media circus centered on the Waffen SS soldiers who were buried at the cemetary.

The Waffen SS was a military organization that was connected to the NSDAP but through the course of its existence served under the command of the Wehrmacht. They had no connection to the death camps and were a purely military outfit although Hitler intended them to become a police force after the war...which did not happen.

I think it was in the 1970's but the Waffen SS veterans in the course of several court actions cleared their collective names and established themselves legally as an honorably serving military unit attached to the Wehrmacht. This included one of my wife's relatives in Mannheim.

That you and the media are unable to distinguish between the SS and the Waffen SS simply means that you'd rather seize on any opportunity to trash someone you don't like (Reagan) as opposed to first checking your facts.

Actually, the Waffen-SS served alongside the Wehrmacht, but was never formally considered part of the Wehrmacht. Hitler insisted that they be kept separate from the Wehrmacht, many of whose generals he didn't trust. As a result, they got the best recruits, the best equipment and everything else before Wehrmacht units.

Were all of the Waffen SS guilty - no, not at all - but at the same time, many were guilty of war crimes. I had a professor in university who noted that there were fairly large numbers of Waffen-SS who were exonerated after WW2 (mostly those conscripted after 1943) of war crimes. However, the list of war crimes that some Waffen-SS committed isn't a short one;

$1:

- Wormhoudt massacre by SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 1940, Belgium
- Le Paradis massacre by SS Division Totenkopf, 1940, France
- Oradour-sur-Glane massacre by SS Division Das Reich, 1944, France
- Ochota massacre by SS Kaminski Brigade, 1944, Poland
- Wola massacre by SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, 1944 Poland
- Huta Pieniacka massacre by SS-Galizien division 1944, Poland
- Tulle massacre by SS Das Reich, 1944, France
- Marzabotto massacre by 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, 1944, Italy
- Malmedy massacre by Kampfgruppe Peiper part of 1st SS Panzer Division, 1944, Belgium
- Ardeatine massacre by two SS Officers, 1944, Italy
- Distomo massacre by 4th SS Polizei Division, 1944, Greece
- Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre by 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, 1944, Italy
- Ardenne Abbey massacre 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, 1944, France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS

[BartSimpson]

I don't dispute that war crimes were committed by all branches of the German military during the war. The fact remains, however, that the Waffen SS was *not* the same thing as the SS and on a collective level the courts have cleared them of guilt for things they had nothing to do with.

Ironically, the Waffen SS was also the most ethnically diverse of the German military services with 60%-70% of them being non-German in 1945.

[Thanos]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

Gaffe or laziness, it's still not as bad as when Ronnie went to Bitburg.

Bitburg was just the media making something out of nothing. That there were German war dead at the cemetary rates a 'duh' in my book. Reagan going to the cemetary was making a statement that the war was behind us and that it was time to move forward. The media circus centered on the Waffen SS soldiers who were buried at the cemetary.

The Waffen SS was a military organization that was connected to the NSDAP but through the course of its existence served under the command of the Wehrmacht. They had no connection to the death camps and were a purely military outfit although Hitler intended them to become a police force after the war...which did not happen.

I think it was in the 1970's but the Waffen SS veterans in the course of several court actions cleared their collective names and established themselves legally as an honorably serving military unit attached to the Wehrmacht. This included one of my wife's relatives in Mannheim.

That you and the media are unable to distinguish between the SS and the Waffen SS simply means that you'd rather seize on any opportunity to trash someone you don't like (Reagan) as opposed to first checking your facts.

Well, you might want to give Hell a phone call and ask someone like Theodor Eicke or Oskar Dirlewanger what they think of your opinion.

Boots list is correct. The Waffen's might have been great soldiers but they were also a pack of war criminals and maniacal murderers too.

PS: I love Reagan. I've just come to the logical conclusion that his legacy has far more negatives in it than positives, including planting the roots of the economic diaster that's destroying your country's middle class. Try not to make this personal and turn it into something more than it actually is please.

[andyt]

Thanos Thanos:

PS: I love Reagan. I've just come to the logical conclusion that his legacy has far more negatives in it than positives, including planting the roots of the economic diaster that's destroying your country's middle class. Try not to make this personal and turn it into something more than it actually is please.

How someone can say this and be such a rabid supporter of Harper is beyond me.