Yesterday, the President interrupted his taxpayer-funded vacation of Martha’s Vineyard to make a couple of remarks concerning the situation in Iraq and Ferguson, Missouri.
Concerning the situation in Ferguson, he said,
…Of course, it’s important to remember how this started. We lost a young man, Michael Brown, in heartbreaking and tragic circumstances. He was 18 years old. His family will never hold Michael in their arms again. And when something like this happens, the local authorities –- including the police -– have a responsibility to be open and transparent about how they are investigating that death, and how they are protecting the people in their communities.
“There is never an excuse for violence against police, or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting,” the President said. He added, however, that “there’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests, or to throw protestors in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Here, in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the ground. Put simply, we all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority.
“I know that emotions are raw right now in Ferguson,” he said, “and there are certainly passionate differences about what has happened.” He added that even though there will be differences in both the accounts of how this event occurred, as well as what needs to happen going forward, we should still “remember that we’re all part of one American family.”
We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law; a basic respect for public order and the right to peaceful public protest; a reverence for the dignity of every single man, woman and child among us; and the need for accountability when it comes to our government.
“Now is the time for healing,” the President said. “Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done.”
President Obama received a little constructive criticism, according to thehill.com
The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police criticized President Obama Thursday for his remarks about law enforcement in Ferguson, Mo.
“I would contend that discussing police tactics from Martha’s Vineyard is not helpful to ultimately calming the situation,” director Jim Pasco said in an interview with The Hill.
“I think what he has to do as president and as a constitutional lawyer is remember that there is a process in the United States and the process is being followed, for good or for ill, by the police and by the county and by the city and by the prosecutors’ office,” Pasco added.
Pasco harkened back to 2009, when Obama criticized a Massachusetts police officer for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, when he was attempting to break into his own home. Obama said the officer had “acted stupidly.”
“That is one where the president spoke precipitously without all the facts,” Pasco said, adding that the current situation “is a much larger and more tragic incident.”
Pasco said both police and members of the public are entitled to due process but said he is not convinced police have used excessive force in Ferguson.
“I’m not there, and neither is the president,” Pasco said. “That is why we have due process in the United States. And this will all be sorted out over time. But right now, I haven’t seen anything from afar — and maybe the president has — that would lead me to believe the police are doing anything except to restore order.”
Obama on Thursday called for “peace and calm on the streets” of Ferguson after “disturbing” clashes between police and protesters stemming from the police killing of an unarmed black teenager.
“There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting,” Obama said in a statement from where he is vacationing in Massachusetts. “There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”
The officer involved in the Ferguson shooting is a member of the Fraternal Order of Police and is being represented by one of its lawyers. His name has not been released to the public.
Pasco declined to comment on whether Ferguson police should be withholding the officer’s name.
“I would leave any statements on that to his defense,” he said.
Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) views everything in terms of race. He always has, since the days when he lived with his “typical white person” grandmother, next door to Black Communist, Frank Marshall Davis.
So, his choice for a first job was a no-brainer…
From 1985 – 1988, Obama was a Community Organizer in Chicago. What does a Community Organizer do? I’m glad you asked.
Per Byron York in an article found at nationalreview.com:
Community organizing is most identified with the left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909-72), who pretty much defined the profession. In his classic book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote that a successful organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.” Once such hostilities were “whipped up to a fighting pitch,” Alinsky continued, the organizer steered his group toward confrontation, in the form of picketing, demonstrating, and general hell-raising.
Obama was hired by Jerry Kellman, a New Yorker who had gotten into organizing in the 1960s. Kellman was trying to help laid-off factory workers on the far South Side of Chicago, in a nearly 100% black community. He led a group, the Calumet Community Religious Conference, that had been created by several local Catholic churches in the industrial community. Kellman was advised to hire a black organizer for a new spinoff from CCRC. They called it the Developing Communities Project, designed to focus solely on the Chicago part of the area.
One of Obama’s projects while he was there, was to try to build an alliance of white and black churches and enlist them in the cause of social justice. Obama had a problem, though. He didn’t go to church himself. And that, brothers and sisters, is how Obama, drawn to the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and a political opportunity), joined Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street.
If you ask Obama’s fellow Community Organizers what his most significant accomplishments were, they’ll say two things: the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects. Those were his biggest victories.
As President of these United States, Obama is supposed to represent all of us. However, time and time again, he has inserted himself and, subsequently, his Department of Justice, have acted, at his bequest, in shall we say, a ‘political” manner, whenever race was involved.
The death of Michael Brown and the subsequent rioting, by Ferguson’s black residents and out-of-towners, will, no doubt, be handled in the same fashion
As Peter (Herman) Noone sings,
Second Verse…same as the first.
And, that’s not only sad…it’s divisive.
Until He Comes,
KJ