Originally Posted by
Captain_Hilts With all due respect, Obama has not sided "against police." That is such a gross generalization and mischaracterization of what he's actually said and done. You are making the claim that Obama is against the police as a whole, but you could not be more wrong. Let's not forget that in cases where police clearly have acted with extreme force in shooting unarmed young black men and even children (those "questionable issues with police," as you put it), have you noticed that each and every time he condemns the few crooked police officers, he also praises the police service as a whole as a noble profession with young men and women who risk their lives to keep us safe? If you say he's against police while ignoring his very public statements in support of police, then you are either misinformed at best or disingenuous at worst.
And come on, "fan the flames in justifying racial anger"? Are you applying for a job at Fox News? Sorry, just a little joke. ;-) First, Trayvon Martin was not murdered by police; he was murdered by a wannabe cop, a thug who has since been arrested numerous times for weapons charges and domestic abuse. When Obama said afterward that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon, he was speaking factually. Obama is a black man, after all, and he knows, as all decent people know, that Trayvon didn't have to die, especially at the hands of a vigilante who targeted Trayvon because of what he looked like and what he was wearing. Second, regarding Ferguson and Baltimore, regardless of the events that took place in those cities (Freddie Gray's case in particular is exceptionally horrific), both cities have a history of entrenched and systemic racism that influences how the police departments there have enforced the law - as DOJ and other independent investigations have shown. So, to blame Obama for inciting violence in those cities is, to put it plainly, foolishly ignoring history. I suggest you educate yourself with regards to this discussion about urbanization / suburbanization, gentrification, and the redistribution of wealth away from the working and middle classes towards the top 1% in the Reagan-era shift to finance capitalism because, again, all you seem to be doing is parroting talking points and disproven claims from right wing media.
Finally, as to this paragraph of yours, Obama not calling out "a small percentage of radical Muslim terrorists" is not just nitpicking, it's dangerous. It shows that you are motivated by fear, because Obama HAS singled out those few who have distorted Islamic teachings - just not in the language that you would prefer, which I'm guessing is "radical Muslim terrorists." About this, let me ask you two things: 1) do you support the use of the designation "radical Christian terrorists" to describe people like Scott Roeder (who murdered Dr. George Tiller in his church) and Robert Dear (who shot up a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado) and 2) the individuals most in favor of the term "radical Muslim terrorists" are ISIS members because they want a holy war, so why would you even want to use that term? You say below that we have never been so divided as a nation (I am safe in assuming, then, that you either were alive during the Civil War and just forgot about it or just never studied it. Sorry, another little joke. Don't get all mad.), well then why would you want him to use a term that is specifically designed to create an "us versus them" mentality, whose purpose is to create a division between Islam and evangelical Christianity?
Discouraging border patrol? Completely false. Obama's EO (which, AGAIN, would have been a congressional action like Reagan's if republicans did not conspire to never work with him on anything; I swear, you DO know this happened, right?) did not tell border patrol agents (for whom he has proposed increased funding while republicans have of course blocked his proposals) to ignore the law; it only applied to those already here and who meet certain conditions.
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