President Barack Obama, asked to respond at a news conference with Malaysia’s prime minister during his visit to the country Sunday, called the reported remarks “incredibly offensive racist statements.”
“I don’t think I have to interpret those statements for you, they kind of speak for themselves,” Obama said. “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything. You just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.”
Can you imagine what the last 6 years would have been like with President McCain. Horrifying.
Violet
And Vice President Palin. Shudder.
Zam
@Violet: I’m not sure she’d be willing to hold onto that job this long.
hildebrand
@Violet: Hey, she said something about baptizing terrorists by waterboarding them – she clearly is the: Best Representative Ever of Christianity.
Sigh. Can’t we nuke Wasilla from orbit, just to be sure?
Sorry, I am not as cool as our President. There are days when a little blood on the tracks would be just fine.
Tommy
@Violet: The NBA better do something about Donald Sterling and really fast. That tape couldn’t have come out at a worse time for the NBA. Finally the Clippers are a pretty good team. Maybe one of the most popular players (Blake Griffin). First round of the playoffs. Oh and the target audience of the league (not to mention most of the players) are African American.
I love the sign that Deadspin has from the Clippers game last night. A white guy with a sign that says “I brought a black guy with me.” The African American next to him with a sign that said something like “I am the black guy.” Just priceless.
Baud
McCain would never have been asked about Sterling.
MikeBoyScout
Please proceed governor
Baud
@Zam:
Yeah, she would have quit after the second failed assassination attempt.
max
Can you imagine what the last 6 years would have been like with President McCain?
Yes. A time period with an incredibly high background radiation count.
max
[‘Literally.’]
scav
“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything. You just let them talk.”
And some people are just so gosh-durned chatty.
gbear
@Baud: She’d be begging Putin for advice.
Tommy
This is kind of scary:
Digby goes on to say that our police officers look more like Delta forces then a “beat cop.” This is something I notice in my town, which is kind of cool and progressive. Our police look like something out of a futuristic war movie. Which is strange cause I read our yearly crime report and outside of the fact there is way, way too much domestic violence our crimes are mostly DUIs or kids spray painting something.
Cacti
@scav:
Or as it’s otherwise known, giving them enough rope to hang themselves.
Persia
@Baud: Yep. I mean, overall we’re better off, full stop, but McCain would never have been asked about it.
Trentrunner
“Please proceed, Mr. Sterling.”
BGinCHI
History is going to treat Obama very, very kindly for all that he has taken with the grace he has taken it.
We are having a slow and messy cultural revolution and the reactionaries are losing one funeral at a time.
Fluke bucket
@MikeBoyScout: my first thought exactly. Obama is a master at letting people hang themselves.
Trentrunner
@Persia: I tend to agree, but Obama is known to be a HUGE basketball fan (and player), so this makes some sense, at least more sense than asking Obama about everything else black because he’s black and black and black…
Tommy
@BGinCHI: I agree 110%. There are more then a few policy things I am not really happy about, but alas the grace with which he has handled attack after attack is pretty amazing. He is a much better man then myself.
Suzanne
Can I just ruminate for a moment on how much I love having a president who is calm, cool, and collected? I just love how he is unflappable and chill, all the time. No hot-headed anger, no rash promises, no shooting his mouth off. It makes a really big difference.
The Dangerman
Meet The Press would change its name to Meet The President?
BGinCHI
@Tommy: It’s an amazing combination to have the ego to want a job like POTUS while also possessing the poise to hold your cool when everyone else is making dumbasses of themselves.
Look at what a bullying prick Christie is and he’s only the governor of Sopranistan.
WereBear
@Suzanne: It’s highly admirable, because the urge to be sarcastic must be overwhelming.
At least, it would be for me. But I’m not Presidential timber!
Tommy
@BGinCHI: That is exactly it. You do have to have something of an ego to want to be POTUS. You also have to have pretty thick skin to run for the Senate and the POTUS. But the attacks on him have been so over-the-top I would NEVER have been able to keep my cool.
srv
The problem is, there’s a whole swath of America that revel in their ignorance. It’s a feature for them.
IDK why the right isn’t more offended that Sterling’s private speech is vilified, he’s being victimized like that Mozilla guy… 1st Ammendment! Instead they’re trying to turn him into a democrat.
If it were somewhere other than California or Massachusetts, I think that’s what they’d be doing.
Cacti
@srv:
Desperate to divert attention from how many GOPer pols embraced Cliven Bundy.
dmsilev
@Violet:
Even being reminded that that was once a vaguely plausible possibility is enough to make me start drinking.
srv
Sterling’s wife throws him under the bus
dmsilev
@Suzanne: I kind of hope that on Obama’s last full day of office in January 2017, he calls a press conference and just lets loose everything that he’s kept bottled up so well over the last several years.
Or, more likely to happen, writes a tell-most book (sadly, a tell-all is probably too much for us to ask for).
Tommy
@dmsilev: How about it. My mom still has my favorite quote about Palin. She had never in her 67 years not voted for a Republican for POTUS. She said, and she cusses like once a decade:
I thought that summed up things pretty well. Oh she voted for Obama.
srv
You know, SNL or somebody should do a series of alternate reality episodes where “What if John McCain was President?”
McCain being badgered on what every whitey does, people calling him Panamanian, starting a war or three…
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
I think that the New York Times is not going to look so good in the history books based on how they’ve treated him. When they talk about his foreign policy, they keep using words like “stumble” and “blunder.” When they talk about Putin, it’s “deft” and “adroit.” They make me sick. I’d like them to spend a couple of days — even a couple of minutes — as a journalist in Putin’s Russia.
WereBear
That’s brilliant!
Tommy
@gogol’s wife: My father’s PhD is in military history. He was a military planner for the DoD for decades. Taught at the Army War College. He literally wrote the text book on the modern use of air power during a war. He is not a liberal.
I often talk to him about military strategy, cause well he knows a lot more then I do. But with that said he thought Iraq was a stupid idea. He thought going into Afghanistan with a large number of forces for anytime was also dumb, cause you know you don’t start land wars in central Asia.
Asked him about Ukraine and he thinks Obama has done all that can be done.
He doesn’t suffer fools lightly and when he was over for Easter he couldn’t believe all the idiots on TV saying Obama should be stronger on Ukraine. Obama should do this or that (which of course they never really say). I think he said these idiots would start a war if they could, a war they wouldn’t fight. Are they crazy?
I was like yes dad, I think they are crazy.
WaterGirl
@srv: Translation: I don’t really give a shit about my husband, but please don’t take the team away from us.
Suzanne
@dmsilev: His ability to hold his tongue is simply mind-blowing. I just really appreciate that the person who is in control of the country is in such great control of himself.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Baud:
Are you talking about someone trying to kill her, or her trying to kill McCain?
Tommy
@WaterGirl: I mean honestly what else is she supposed to say? Lets face it owning a major sports team in the second largest media market in the country is a license to print money. Clearly she wants to protect this “right.”
Baud
@The Republic of Stupidity:
The latter.
shelly
But was he talking about Bundy or Sterling? So many to choose from!
Gravenstone
@srv:
Sorry madam, but I believe you’ll find that deep down, his money is the most important thing to Mr. Sterling. And that means that you too will be expendable, should a less problematic or more appealing trophy prospect appear.
Roger Moore
I don’t think we would have had the last 6 years with President McCain. If he had been elected and survived for 4 years, he would have been defeated in a landslide in 2012. More likely he would have died of stress well before then and it would have been Palin who was defeated in 2012. Less likely, we wouldn’t have a country left.
Schlemizel
Does anyone think a President Rmoney would have been asked that question? It bugs the heck out of me that this is something that needs a comment simply because he is black.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
This. Unless there’s a specific issue (e.g., Eisenhower/Little Rock, LBJ/ Various Civil/Voting Rights legislation), President BHO is the only POTUS to be regularly questioned about anything that has to do in any way with race. Would GWB have been asked for his take on the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates? Or the murder of Trayvon Martin? I think not.
Tommy
OK I realize I am preaching to the choir here, but can we just all agree that the Republicans have jumped the shark. That idiots are running the party. And that our nation ought to have at least two sane, functioning political parties. I keep thinking they can’t surprise me. Then Bundy happens. Or something else that I am sure will happen tonight. Here is Rick Santorum on Face the Nation today:
I love the quote that millilons of lives are saved cause of guns each year. Wonder why the heck that stat came from.
John Weiss
@BGinCHI: “We are having a slow and messy cultural revolution and the reactionaries are losing one funeral at a time.”
Messy, I agree. They always are. Slow? I thought so during my yout’ in the sixties, but not I think, relatively speaking, that it’s slow at all. What, ongoing since the thirties, you think? Eighty years or so is pretty quick for such things, unless they’re really bloody; I’m thinking of the “cultural revolution” in China. And in Europe, the transition from old style feudalism. And the American South.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
I’ve said it before: I cannot wait to read his Presidential memoirs. If he is as candid as I hope he’ll be, I think we’re going to learn of a few behind-the-scenes moments where he indulged in some EPIC rants.
Or maybe I should rather be looking forward to Michelle’s memoirs.
(Both, actually. I will spend money on both, and enjoy the reads.)
dmsilev
@Tommy:
I think you will find that that quote is covered in Santorum.
Mike in NC
Teabaggers are still convinced of a few immutable things:
(1) Everything bad that happened under Bush 2 was directly attributable to that devil Clinton.
(2) Besides that, Bush 2 wasn’t even a True Conservative!
(3) Obummer is the ultimate Affirmative Action politician who had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter.
I know this from reading the daily Letters to the Editor in local papers from geezers who spend 8 to 12 hours a day plugged into the Wingnut Wurlitzer.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: I am sure behind closed doors he must have lost it a few times. Several instances I think it happened was with raising the debt limit, offering nine dollars in budget cuts for a buck in tax increases, or even going so far to put things like changes to SS on the table. Places where he tried to come to the Republicans. Knew folks like myself, his base, would yell and scream at him non-stop.
Then not only did they stab him in the back, they mocked him in press conferences and attacked him 24/7. I don’t know how any sane person, and Obama is totally sane, could not lose it over stuff like I listed above.
Ian
What not threads on this?
I see that # 3 and others beat me to it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy:
Three guesses, first two don’t count.
La derrière de la Mooselini.
On edit: I see dmsilev beat me to it.
Patrick
@Tommy:
So I wonder if Santorum would be OK with a black (or Muslim) dude walking around legally with a gun in the park where his kids or grandkids (I don’t know whether he has any and I truly could care less, but for the sake of argument) play. We all know the answer…
The Republic of Stupidity
@Baud: Just wanted to clarify that…
Your original comment was al title ambiguous… and clarity is everything in life…
Villago Delenda Est
@John Weiss: One can make the argument that the first sexual revolution was in the 20’s, and paved the way for the one in the 60’s.
max
OK I realize I am preaching to the choir here, but can we just all agree that the Republicans have jumped the shark. That idiots are running the party.
Idiots have been running that party since 2001. They’ve just gotten more obvious.
max
[‘Desperation will do that.’]
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
Some of them might, but more of them are just looking for one more thing to criticize Obama about. If he doesn’t jump straight to bombing, he’s weak. If he bombs somebody the moment they put a foot out of line, he’s lawless. If he waits to get his ducks in a row before bombing people, he’s weak and lawless. The most important point is that whatever he does is wrong. I hope Obama has memorized the quote by Teddy Roosevelt:
Jacks mom
Being an atheist I can’t believe how often God has saved us from these very tiresome Christians.
Thanks
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
Given his preference for bimbos, there’s a good chance she’s only stayed married because of his money and the team.
TS
He would never have been reelected.
Patrick
@TS:
George W Bush was…
trollhattan
There’s a billionaire up in Seattle who really, really, really wants an NBA team.
Just sayin’.
Geoduck
@BGinCHI: My standard thought on the Ongoing Revolution is now this Alternet article by Sara Robinson.
Forked Tongue
@efgoldman: Good Lord, the comments on that really make a guy wanna just cut ties to the human race.
But then I reflect that they really just represent the views of white people who are heavily into sports, and I never vested much hope in that type anyway.
LAC
@Schlemizel: we’ll consider the source of the question : chuck fucking Todd. Probably just drumming up something he can pontificate about on morning blow. The president handled it well.
nellcote
@Suzanne:
Well there is Luther, his anger translator.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: IANAL, but it’s Cali. Isn’t that team half hers anyway?
drkrick
@BGinCHI:
Just needed to see it again before I so steal it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Yes, it is nothing short of amazing that he’s managed to keep his Inner Angry Black Man at bay. I hope he doesn’t take it out in ulcers, hypertension, and nightmares.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Ask Jamie McCourt how well that works.
Citizen_X
Ladies and gentlemen, The Memoirs of President Barack Hussein Obama: The Shorter.
Lyrebird
@Tommy: Thanks, that deadspin photo was cute! (Decent-Guys-Standing-Up-Squee is at least as good as kitty squee for me!)
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Well, the Sterlings have been married longer than the franchise has existed, so I’d think she’s in a stronger position.
JDM
@The Republic of Stupidity:
That caribou hunting episode showed she can’t shoot worth shit.
lamh36
@srv: oh, the wife is as bad as the husband!
Just threw up in mouth. “@kevinarnovitz
Shelly Sterling, citizen leader pic.twitter.com/43h9nTbFfj”
Check out these courts docs under “Sham Inspections” for complete read…
http://court.cacd.uscourts.gov/cacd/recentpubop.nsf/0/b96b9cdf96d0bf2e88256d75007846d0/$FILE/03CV00859AHM.pdf
Joey Maloney
@Tommy: I love the quote that millilons of lives are saved cause of guns each year. Wonder why the heck that stat came from.
It came out of santorum.
Wally Ballou
@Baud: Shit, for all we know Sterling might never have made the comments in the first place if McCain (or any other non-near) were in the White House.
bago
@nellcote: 67 posts to unleash the Anger Translator!?! You juicers are proably cooking in the kitchen or buried under a mound of pets. Get your ass to youtube and get educated!
Wally Ballou
@Forked Tongue:
Fuck you.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
I generally view it as the post-WWII era destroying 50 years of cultural progress and creating a set of fake, ahistorical norms that everyone pretended were traditions. We’ve had to start over from this new, very unhealthy base.
TS
@Patrick:
1. The war with Russia was too late for McCain to ride it to victory
2. GWB did not have Palin as his No2
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This.
See also “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Republic of Stupidity
@JDM: Yeah but she’s murder w/ a club in her hands…
boatboy_srq
@Zam: If all she has to do is wait for the inevitable aneurism, then she’s probably good to draw the salary and show up at all sorts of places playing the Xtian martyr. Imagine the fanfare she’d have received had she visited the Vatican and Xtiansplained to Pope Ratzinger how it’s really practiced…
THIS. It explains so much of how the Teahad has been able to trip all over itself. And it’s delicious.