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   Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gnter Grass still thinks reunification was a bad idea.
 Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
 With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
 The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
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June 4, 2009
DEMOCRACY AND DETAILS.... I'd assumed that President Obama's discussion of democracy during his speech in Cairo would have been the part of the speech conservatives liked best. Instead, in at least one case, that portion of the speech went overlooked altogether. Jon Chait flagged this item from the National Review's Michael Rubin, who wrote an hour after the speech was over that the president had "abandoned" democracy. "Obama studiously avoids the word democracy," Rubin wrote. "Instead, he declared, 'That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people.' Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worrt [sic] about those pesky votes." In our reality, Obama didn't avoid the word at all.
It was pretty hard to miss this. Which speech was Michael Rubin was watching? —Steve Benen 2:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)Comments
He was too busy writing his post to watch the speech. Posted by: LosGatosCA on June 4, 2009 at 2:34 PM | PERMALINKExactly. He knew what he wanted Obama to say -- or not say -- and wrote his post accordingly. And for his audience, he's probably right. It's all about how strongly you believe, not about silly facts or reality or anything. Posted by: bleh on June 4, 2009 at 2:37 PM | PERMALINKIt makes no difference what Obama actually says. They will simply attribute to him the points they intend to rebut or attack. Posted by: Roddy McCorley on June 4, 2009 at 2:38 PM | PERMALINKThis last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they're out of power Maybe this is the part that confused Rubin. Or maybe he was just trying to prove the point. Posted by: Danp on June 4, 2009 at 2:39 PM | PERMALINKAnd given the location of his speech, where Christians are a minority, I thought it quite moving when President Obama said "you must respect the rights of minorities." I wonder if the Religious Right will give him credit for this? Probably not. Posted by: JWK on June 4, 2009 at 2:44 PM | PERMALINKyou are assuming rubin is debating within the context of reality, steven. r-e-a-l-i-t-y . . . whatisyourproblemsteven???!11! dudes and dudettes such as rubin make thar own reality... thar makin' it thar ownselves... Obama only used 'democracy' four times in that 384 word excerpt. That's 99% democracy-free! Posted by: Scott H on June 4, 2009 at 2:51 PM | PERMALINK"Obama studiously avoids the word democracy," Rubin wrote. By my count, Obama used the word "democracy" four times just in the passage you cited. Conservatives just need to say things that aren't true, don't they? He probably wrote it days ago. I swear, the talking points are getting so predictable that politics is getting downright boring. Fire the script writers! Posted by: idlemind on June 4, 2009 at 2:53 PM | PERMALINKScottH beat me to it by one lousy minute. Drat you, ScottH! [shakes fist] Which speech was Michael Rubin was watching? Obviously the one that Fox News is presenting by one of their very own pundits, or maybe the one by Limbaugh. He couldn't have been watching Obama's speech. Posted by: Texas Aggie on June 4, 2009 at 2:58 PM | PERMALINKIf you're like me, sometimes you wonder if your point of view might be wrong. Maybe "our" side looks just as wrong-headed from "their" perspective as theirs does from ours, and it's all just a matter of which biases you have. Then I see something like this, and I realize, nope, they're just lying and making stuff up. There's no equivalency. I'd bet my next paycheck that you'll hear this talking point from more than one C-SPAN caller on tomorrow's Washington Journal. Mr. Rubin need not worry, the Obama haters don't fact check, they only repeat. Posted by: Capt Kirk on June 4, 2009 at 3:06 PM | PERMALINKWhich speech was Michael Rubin was watching? Liz Cheney's. Posted by: Lifelong Dem on June 4, 2009 at 3:08 PM | PERMALINKIf you want to savor some real incoherent babbling, check out this post by Danielle Pletka at the AEI blog (no, I won't link to it -- bad enought they got one hit from me). You can practically taste the crazy! Indeed, the president made clear that he is not a believer in “democracy,” explaining that “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” Apparently, governments must only now “reflect the will of the people”—through mob rule, Mr. Obama? Through elections that deliver 98 percent of the vote to one man (or 88 percent in Mubarak’s case)? Are we now so cowed that we are ashamed to proselytize for the system of liberty that has delivered the greatest freedom and prosperity? Or are we only against “imposition”—the language used by dictators everywhere to protect their own power? Which speech was Michael Rubin was watching? The one on Fox News with Obama, in remote Northwest Pakistan and dressed as a mujahideen warrior, speaking fluent Arabic and threatening to someday, God willing, force Megyn Kelly to wear a burga. Posted by: Shine on June 4, 2009 at 3:10 PM | PERMALINKI mean burqa. Man, if I watched Fox News, I'd totally know that Posted by: shine on June 4, 2009 at 3:12 PM | PERMALINKLincoln "studiously avoid[ed] the word democracy" in the Gettysburg Address. I can only conclude that he must have been the first President to abandon democracy. Who knew? Posted by: bucky on June 4, 2009 at 3:27 PM | PERMALINKWhich speech was Michael Rubin was watching? "Let's see... Go to file 'transcript.txt'. Now how do I find something again? Stupid software... Oh, yeah, 'Find'. Let's see now... 'd'... 'e'... 'm'... 'a'... 'c'... 'r'... 'c'...'y'. No occurrences found?! That commie socialist Obama!" Posted by: RSA on June 4, 2009 at 3:31 PM | PERMALINKI think the moron want the word Democracy thrown around 50-100 times with a few pats on the back and because it wasn't it was therefore not mentioned. Posted by: ET on June 4, 2009 at 4:20 PM | PERMALINK"Which speech was Michael Rubin was watching?" The one that the voice in his head was making? That seems to be what most RePugs listen to. But I need some pointers to the objections the right must be making on the fact that he ended his speech "May peace be upon you." Isn't that the Islamic blessing? PROVES he's a Muslim, doesn't it? Posted by: Sarah Barracuda on June 4, 2009 at 4:21 PM | PERMALINKToday Obama said, "you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party." Reminds me that Yale's David Bromwich had a recent piece on HuffPo in which he quoted William James talking about "the habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings. It was by breaking away from this habit that the Slave States nearly wrecked our Nation. The other is that of fierce and merciless resentment toward every man or set of men who break the public peace. By holding to this habit the free States saved her life." Yet, here we are, with one party boasting that it has the Audacity of Nope, refusing to allow the new administration to name its own cabinet officers, agency heads, attorneys and judges even though their qualifications are not an issue. And just today we had Lindsay Graham proclaiming his opposition to Sotomayor was not good for the country, but that he was going to do it anyway because party was more important. Worse, disgruntled losers are openly talking seccession and domestic terrorists are even assassinating law-abiding citizens in church while organized groups defy RICO to egg them on. By the standards stated in Cairo-- "elections alone do not make true democracy"-- the destruction of the republic launched under BushCo and daily defended by the Cheney family of monsters, continues. And if this IS no longer a democracy, who will find a name for it that history can accept? Posted by: Tomm on June 4, 2009 at 7:05 PM | PERMALINK"This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they're out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others." I'm sure the Republicans didn't like being called out by the President this way in this international setting, right? Posted by: TCinLA on June 5, 2009 at 1:04 AM | PERMALINK
November 2009
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