I think I’ve got to the root of the problem. I just watched an interview Obama gave to the BBC just before that France comment. He said the same thing but in a more careful way in response to a question. The relevant exchange went like this (verbatim):
Obama: This was an opportunity for us to get both sides to listen to each other a little bit more and hopefully learn something about different cultures.
Interviewer: You say both sides so I take from that that muslims listening to this speech - you are hoping will also be changed by it, their attitudes will also change. What needs to change on behalf of those you’re actually speaking to?
Obama: Well, let’s just take one small example, the US muslim population is more numerous than the populations of many majority muslim countries. So we have a huge and thriving muslim American community…
He’s probably using the same spiel for this whole tour so he probably meant to say something like that but maybe got the order of the words mixed up. It’s tricky to say out loud, or at least I found it tricky when I tried. I could imagine you getting the form of words wrong if under pressure and in a hurry.
Not bad. Now when Obama visits a Spanish-speaking country and says “gracias”, you should accuse him of speaking “illegal-alien”. That line kills at the Club for Growth luncheons.
No, the conservative pundits know these charges won’t stick. But they serve a larger purpose. A year from now, most people will have forgotten the details and they’ll just have a vague memory that Obama was accused of lying about something. Just keep repeating the process often enough and eventually Obama will have a reputation for telling lies. If you throw enough smoke bombs, you’ll eventually get some people to believe there must be a fire somewhere.
Well - I for one would like to make a firm, unequivocal stand AGAINST kitten sausage. And should rumors of Mr. Obama making such ever arise, I hope this post will serve as a reminder of my steadfast position against.
No no no, they would be here to say that he wasn’t running them through the sausage grinder, but encouraging them, or inspiring them through it. Running them through implies that he was quickly forcing them through, but you can see from the video that he was offering them a gentle push in the proper direction.
Actually, it would turn out that the Republicans already ate all the kittens or turned them into fetish underwear, so Obama is left sitting forlornly by a kitten grinder with no kittens to grind.
Yes compared to the 100 or so countries with next to no Muslims we have a large Muslim population. If you were to remove the countries with 100,000 Muslims or less we’d be toward the bottom though.
Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows that Republicans eat (human) babies, not kittens. Next you’ll be telling me the video of Cheney roasting a baby at a state dinner in 2004 was a fake.
Oh-oh – the Republican supplement supplier has run into difficulties; the last shipment of raw material was defective! Perhaps that’s why they’ve been so anemic recently.
I still remember the Socrates-Plato level of arguing over the pronunciation of “nuclear”, compared to that Obama’s comment would require a lvel of debate like if he’d throwing chorizos in Mecca while squirting evryone with lard.
Still, too much over nothing, it was an unimportant remark that one would hope somebody advises him not to use.
Since you cannot seem to distinguish between a major language and a world religion, you would be well advised to find other items closer to home for your inconsequential exercises of “concern”.
Shukran is simply Arabic for “thanks”. Obama is not lowering himself at all by speaking a few words in Arabic any more than you would lower yourself by saying “grazie” in Italy or “danke” in Germany.
Saying a few phrases in the local tongue is usually an excellent move to make a good impression and win over a local audience - which, try to remember, is what Obama is there for. If he gets it right he impresses people, if he gets it wrong they may laugh at him but will still think well of him for making the effort. Win-win.
No, I think I might be. I skimmed the whole thread and missed what I suspect is irony in yanceylebeef’s post. Problem is that it sounded so similar to a (serious) claim I encountered minutes earlier on Yahoo that I took it seriously. Sorry!
TubaDiva can enable the automatic yanceylebeef irony detector for you if you ask nicely. It took me a while to get used to the pop up cow with the rolling eyes, but the sound effects are…uh…high tech.
Oh wait. She said no more requests for this option.
Not that this will save Obama from being consigned to hell for his wording, but I’ve mentioned my wonderful multi-cultural neighborhood before.
As I was doing a search for information about Nashville’s Kurdish populations, I found that there are more Kurds in my neighborhood (literally) than there are in all of Canada! My neighborhood had 12,000 Kurds as of 2007 compared to Canada’s 10,000.
Cite Cite
Excerpt: (Try to overlook the seemingly obligatory reference to Naomi and Hee Haw.)
My husband and I made it a point to go to a small restaurant in the block on 9-12-01. Just showing up.
America doesnt have a large number of Muslims percentage wise, but as an absolute number its pretty decent
America has an obesity problem. American Muslims are generally pretty plump. Muslims in other countries? Not so much.
Americans on average are pretty well off financially. So are our Muslims. In other countries, no so much, and in some cases not at all.
America is BIG. Throw in Alaska and the area of our continental shelf along our shores underwater and it gets REALLY big.
So if you multiply all those, I bet America really ranks up there.
Measured in units of muslim pound dollars square feet America looks pretty damn good I imagine. It might even make the number one spot. I leave the actual calculations to the reader.
