Obama's Best Lines From Last Night

 STATE OF THE UNION by President Barack Obama

"A great education isn’t all we need in this new economy. We also need benefits and protections that provide a basic measure of security. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place, with a health and retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber. That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever. We shouldn’t weaken them; we should strengthen them."

"Say a hardworking American loses his job -- we shouldn’t just make sure that he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everybody."

"After years now of record corporate profits, working families won’t get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else’s expense. Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered."

"Food Stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did."

"Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns."

"It’s sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts."

"In this new economy, workers and start-ups and small businesses need more of a voice, not less. The rules should work for them. I plan to lift up the many businesses who’ve figured out that doing right by their workers or their customers or their communities ends up being good for their shareholders"

"Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight. And 12 years later, we were walking on the moon."

"All the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. And when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead -- they call us."

"In today’s world, we’re threatened less by evil empires and more by failing states."

"Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages -- pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, and we sure don't need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are -- killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed."

"If this Congress is serious about winning this war, and wants to send a message to our troops and the world, authorize the use of military force against ISIL. Take a vote."

"If you doubt America’s commitment -- or mine -- to see that justice is done, just ask Osama bin Laden."

"We can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis, even if it's done with the best of intentions. That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately will weaken us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam; it's the lesson of Iraq -- and we should have learned it by now."

"The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity, and our openness, and the way we respect every faith." 

"When politicians insult Muslims, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country"

"Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise, or when even basic facts are contested, or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest."

"We've got to make it easier to vote, not harder."

"The America I know and love (is) Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Undaunted by challenge. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

The Prez Finally Seizes The Moment

Op-Ed Contributor 

 

Barack Obama: Guns Are Our Shared Responsibility

By BARACK OBAMA 

JAN. 7, 2016
 

THE epidemic of gun violence in our country is a crisis. Gun deaths and injuries constitute one of the greatest threats to public health and to the safety of the American people. Every year, more than 30,000 Americans have their lives cut short by guns. Suicides. Domestic violence. Gang shootouts. Accidents. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost brothers and sisters, or buried their own children. We’re the only advanced nation on earth that sees this kind of mass violence with this frequency.

A national crisis like this demands a national response. Reducing gun violence will be hard. It’s clear that common-sense gun reform won’t happen during this Congress. It won’t happen during my presidency. Still, there are steps we can take now to save lives. And all of us — at every level of government, in the private sector and as citizens — have to do our part.

We all have a responsibility.

On Tuesday, I announced new steps I am taking within my legal authority to protect the American people and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. They include making sure that anybody engaged in the business of selling firearms conducts background checks, expanding access to mental health treatment and improving gun safety technology. These actions won’t prevent every act of violence, or save every life — but if even one life is spared, they will be well worth the effort.

Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen. I will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform. And if the 90 percent of Americans who do support common-sense gun reforms join me, we will elect the leadership we deserve.

All of us have a role to play — including gun owners. We need the vast majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us after every mass shooting, who support common-sense gun safety and who feel that their views are not being properly represented, to stand with us and demand that leaders heed the voices of the people they are supposed to represent.

The gun industry also needs to do its part. And that starts with manufacturers.

As Americans, we hold consumer goods to high standards to keep our families and communities safe. Cars have to meet safety and emissions requirements. Food has to be clean and safe. We will not end the cycle of gun violence until we demand that the gun industry take simple actions to make its products safer as well. If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin, we should also make sure she can’t pull the trigger of a gun.

Yet today, the gun industry is almost entirely unaccountable. Thanks to the gun lobby’s decades of efforts, Congress has blocked our consumer products safety experts from being able to require that firearms have even the most basic safety measures. They’ve made it harder for the government’s public health experts to conduct research on gun violence. They’ve guaranteed that manufacturers enjoy virtual immunity from lawsuits, which means that they can sell lethal products and rarely face consequences. As parents, we wouldn’t put up with this if we were talking about faulty car seats. Why should we tolerate it for products — guns — that kill so many children each year?

At a time when manufacturers are enjoying soaring profits, they should invest in research to make guns smarter and safer, like developing microstamping for ammunition, which can help trace bullets found at crime scenes to specific guns. And like all industries, gun manufacturers owe it to their customers to be better corporate citizens by selling weapons only to responsible actors.

Ultimately, this is about all of us. We are not asked to perform the heroism of 15-year-old Zaevion Dobson from Tennessee, who was killed before Christmas while shielding his friends from gunfire. We are not asked to display the grace of the countless victims’ families who have dedicated themselves to ending this senseless violence. But we must find the courage and the will to mobilize, organize and do what a strong, sensible country does in response to a crisis like this one.

All of us need to demand leaders brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby’s lies. All of us need to stand up and protect our fellow citizens. All of us need to demand that governors, mayors and our representatives in Congress do their part.

Change will be hard. It won’t happen overnight. But securing a woman’s right to vote didn’t happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn’t happen overnight. Advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has taken decades’ worth of work.

Those moments represent American democracy, and the American people, at our best. Meeting this crisis of gun violence will require the same relentless focus, over many years, at every level. If we can meet this moment with that same audacity, we will achieve the change we seek. And we will leave a stronger, safer country to our children.

Barack Obama is president of the United States.

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Between The World And Me

THE KID AND THE COP

Take a look at the first minute or so of the above video. It shows an incident involving a kid and a cop, which took place a year ago—on November 22, 2014 at 3:30pm to be exact.

The result of this tragic encounter—which lasted less than 5 seconds—is that the kid is dead, and the cop killed him. Oh, there is one more thing. Nobody has yet been charged with a crime.

The kid’s journey to that fateful moment was just the short walk from his house to the park across the street. He was twelve years old and spending some stupid time before supper playing with a toy gun. So stupid in fact that somebody sitting on a nearby park bench called the police and said that the boy “keeps pulling it in and out…it’s probably fake but you know what, he’s scaring the shit out of people.”

So the Cleveland Police Department sent a squad car to the park. Just before the cop arrived on the scene, the kid was sitting at a picnic table under a gazebo. In the video, the kid gets up and starts walking toward the police car as it pulls up on the grass. Before the car comes to a complete stop--before anybody has time to say anything--the cop shoots the kid dead.

The whole thing takes less than three seconds.

About a minute later, the kid’s fourteen-year old sister arrives on the scene. She sees her baby brother dying on the ground and instinctively rushes to help him. But the cop wrestles her to the ground and cuffs her while she helplessly watches her brother draw his last breaths on earth—alone and unattended.

The cop’s road to the park that day began two years earlier in a little town called Independence, Ohio—population 7,136. He had only been working as a patrolman for a few months when things started to go sour. In an internal memo recommending the cop’s dismissal, the Deputy Police Chief—a guy named Jim Polak—said, “He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts…and his handgun performance was dismal. Due to his dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage personal stress, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence.”

And then the Deputy Chief added this, “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

In November of 2012, before getting fired, the cop quit.

For the next year he tried unsuccessfully to get a job with another police department—first in Akron, then in Euclid, and finally in Parma Heights. In September of 2013, he flunked a written test to become a Deputy in the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department. Passing grade was 70. He scored a 46.

Six months later, after four times being found unqualified for a law enforcement career, the Cleveland Police Department gave this guy a uniform, a badge, and worst of all a gun. Then—exactly two years after the Independence PD cited him for “dangerous loss of composure during live range training” and “inability to manage personal stress”--the Cleveland PD put that cop in a cruiser to answer a call that turned out to be a kid with a toy gun. Not surprisingly, the cop ended up shooting first and asking questions later. The kid ended up dead.

 

For the record, the kid’s name is Tamir Rice (left). When I saw his picture in the paper last year, his face looked hauntingly familiar. Then I remembered why. Fourteen-year old Emmett Till (below right), was murdered sixty summers ago while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. Emmett’s story is a bit more gruesome. He made the mistake of speaking to a white grocery store clerk whose husband and uncle visited the boy a few nights later. They dragged him off to a barn and beat him mercilessly before gouging out one eye, shooting him in the head, lashing him by the neck with barbed wire to a 70 pound cotton gin fan, and then throwing him into the Tallahatchie River where his bloated, mutilated body was discovered three days later.

Emmett Till’s mother insisted on an open coffin because she wanted to force white America to look at what they did to her son. Within a month, Emmett Till’s murderers were accused, tried, but ultimately acquitted. I say “murderers” because after being found not guilty, they copped to the crime in Look Magazine. By that time, double jeopardy protection put them beyond the reach of American law. But at least they were charged.

Tamir Rice’s mother, on the other hand, has been waiting for one whole year to get justice for her son’s murder—which was captured on video for all to see.

Emmett Till did not die in vain. There is a direct line from his murder in 1955 through the Voting Rights Act of 1966 to the election of Barack Obama in 2008. So far, however, Tamir Rice’s legacy has been an endless stream of disinformation coming from misguided politicians more interested in banning toy guns than in punishing bad cops.   

--Nick Paleologos