http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/09/president-obama-gesture-to-marines-dubbed-latte-salute/

This has been making the rounds on Facebook.

Doesn't seem like a big deal to me... i'm not sure what the rules of civilian salutes really are, but we just officially started a proxy war with Syria, i'm thinking the president has bigger things on his mind

9/23/2014 8:11:07 PM

I was wondering which moron would post this first.

9/23/2014 8:12:51 PM

I'm skeptic about this khorasan thing. Never heard of them before today and very convenient the same day we violate international law to strike isis in syria we also just happen to find out this group has an imminent attack on the us.

at this point i don't believe anything about how these groups are all about to attack us in the us if we don't bomb them. how can dropping a bomb in syria keep a terrorist off a plane in the us? just seems like the best way to keep the public on board with perpetual widespread military action.

9/23/2014 10:46:08 PM

Every terrorist threat we stop is really an FBI operation

9/24/2014 7:35:03 AM

obama saved us all again !

9/24/2014 10:10:54 AM

Looks like if Bush does it, it makes it okay...

9/25/2014 1:10:31 AM

that's some pretty petty crap right there, lol.

9/25/2014 11:47:57 AM

LOL at another case of false outrage. Seriously, who gives a shit?



[Edited on September 25, 2014 at 11:50 AM. Reason : .]

9/25/2014 11:49:21 AM

but see bush was saluting for him and the dog

9/25/2014 11:51:31 AM

holy shit, facebook is aflutter with serious outrage over this huge sign of O's disrespect for the entire U.S. military.

also, were there nicknames for Bush? I see Obummer, Obozo, Odorkus, etc. all the time, but I don't recall nearly as much name-calling during the Bush years. Maybe I've just forgotten.

9/25/2014 12:00:54 PM

oh c'mon dude, we called Bush plenty of bad names

9/25/2014 12:02:24 PM

What are some examples?

9/25/2014 12:03:38 PM

a ton of chimp related names, general insults (moron, idiot, imbecile etc...), Flubya, Busholini, George Wrong Bush, George Putsch, King George (also King George II), Texas tard, etc...

liberals were pretty creative

9/25/2014 12:24:05 PM

Of course I remeber hearing the general insults (moron, idiot, etc.), but i don't recall hearing the specific ones... maybe King George. Not saying they weren't out there, but I don't remember them. Of course, that was before I had facebook, and Golo was full of Bush-supporters.

[Edited on September 25, 2014 at 12:30 PM. Reason : ]

9/25/2014 12:29:55 PM

hard to really paint the "commander in chief" as just a civilian... if anything he's the top military officer in the country. this doesn't mean the president (any president) has made their bones in the military through service. getting upset that a president salutes is just silly unless it's somehow blatantly obvious that it's meant to be mocking/disrepectful.

9/26/2014 12:36:23 AM

While I think this is much ado about nothing...
Saying it doesn't matter if he's not trying to mock them isn't entirely accurate either.

9/26/2014 12:55:30 AM

okay, then: it doesn't matter to me... at all

9/26/2014 10:18:04 AM

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/cellsalute.asp

The snopes article has some interesting background on Presidental saluting:

Quote :

"Barack Obama went to a gym at a military base in Hawaii nd did something positively Reaganesque — he returned a Marine's salute. In so doing, he wandered directly into the middle of a thorny debate: Should U.S. presidents return military salutes or not? Longstanding tradition requires members of the military to salute the president. The practice of presidents returning that salute is more recent — Ronald Reagan started it in 1981. Reagan's decision raised eyebrows at the time. John Kline, then Reagan’s military aide and now a Minnesota congressman, advised him that it went against military protocol for presidents to return salutes. Kline said in a 2004 op-ed piece in The Hill that Reagan ultimately took up the issue with Gen. Robert Barrow, then commandant of the Marine Corps. Barrow told Reagan that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he was entitled to offer a salute — or any sign of respect he wished — to anyone he wished, Kline wrote, adding he was glad for the change. Every president since Reagan has followed that practice, even those with no military experience. The debate over saluting has persisted, with some arguing against it for protocol reasons, others saying it represents an increasing militarization of the civilian presidency. "The gesture is of course quite wrong: Such a salute has always required the wearing of a uniform," author and historian John Lukacs wrote in The New York Times in 2003. "It represents an exaggeration of the president's military role.""

9/26/2014 10:30:27 AM

Quote :

"hard to really paint the "commander in chief" as just a civilian... if anything he's the top military officer in the country."

It was the specific intention by the writers of the constitution that the commander in chief is a civilian role. I get what you're saying (the leader of the military doesn't seem civilian-y), but the CiC is supposed to be thinking about military force from a civilian perspective, not a military one (which is what leads to things like preemptive wars...).

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45870

9/26/2014 11:01:11 AM

OMG SaluteGate.


People need to worry about important things.

9/26/2014 11:46:59 AM

Can you imagine what "politics" will be like in 10 to 20 years as social media, public stupidity and partisan "news" networks continue to grow? I know it's cliche, but I'm thinking more and more that Mike Judge is a prophet.

9/26/2014 12:04:14 PM

Jon Stewart says fuck you all and your false patriotism:
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/09/jon-stewart-rips-foxs-latte-salute

9/27/2014 8:39:47 AM

Seriously, there are bigger things to worry about.

9/27/2014 11:47:11 AM

Look it was careless and disrespectful, Michelle should have slapped him in the head and taken the cup out of his hand before he left the aircraft. It's also not a big a fucking deal that deserves any kind of attention. He'll probably mentioned in his memoirs in things future Presidents shouldn't do.

9/27/2014 3:41:57 PM

what a big baby

9/29/2014 7:55:17 PM

Last quarter GDP growth was at 4.6%, jobs are averaging around 200,000/month, unemployment is at 6.1%, and the ACA has had an impressive rollout despite the website problems. What is this thread about again?

9/30/2014 9:32:58 AM

we are well into our second decade at war as we approach the end of the second term of a president who campaigned on bringing our troops home, a president who runs one of the most secretive administrations in modern history while running on a campaign of more transparency, during a time when civil liberties are continuing to erode the militarization of our police continuing to grow. sorry, i got distracted, what was this thread about?

9/30/2014 10:05:47 AM

You put a republican president in the chair and literally everything that you just bitched about would be exacerbated.

[Edited on September 30, 2014 at 10:08 AM. Reason : a]

9/30/2014 10:07:31 AM

maybe the first thing, maybe. not the rest, obama is as bad as they come in regards to transparency

[Edited on September 30, 2014 at 10:08 AM. Reason : and i don't see how that makes it something he shouldn't be criticized for]

9/30/2014 10:08:28 AM

I don't know. Some Republicans are definitely war hawks, but many are aware of the tiredness that people in this country feel regarding war. I'm obviously biased, but I don't see how Romney could have been any worse these past couple years.

9/30/2014 12:38:31 PM

I don't think Romney would have been worse either, at least not Romney himself specifically. At the very least Romney is better at politics and optics.

However, the hangers-on who Romney would empower would be a whole lot worse than the hangers-on whom Obama empowers.

9/30/2014 12:41:36 PM

dtownral is right for once

also thank god Shrike is finally all alone

9/30/2014 2:37:23 PM

Yeah, sorry, but the administration that has prosecuted more people under the 1917 espionage act than all other administrations combined is a horrific administration with regards to transparency and civil rights.

If you don't rate this guy as one of the worst president's in the last 100 years you haven't been paying attention. Outside of Nixon (who has actually run a less secretive administration), Woodrow Wilson, and possibly G.W. Bush it's hard to think of anyone he's better than since radio became common.

9/30/2014 4:46:44 PM

Wilson? Did you mean Harding? Or maybe Taft?

Otherwise... yeah

9/30/2014 5:04:55 PM

I think Obama legitimately hates the press, and does treat them like shit. Then again, he was still answering questions about his birth certificate 4 years into his Presidency, so who can blame him. The consequences of that is a very mixed record on transparency. There is more raw data available to the public about government spending and the inner workings of federal agencies than ever before, mostly via websites launched during Obama's administration.

As for Romney, you've got to be fucking kidding me. The man has openly campaigned for troops on the ground in Syria and military engagements with Russia. Obama never claimed to be a dove. He said he'd end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he also said he'd go after terrorists around the globe with or without the consent of the host country. You can be disappointed but not surprised.

9/30/2014 6:13:51 PM

Quote :

"There is more raw data available to the public about government spending and the inner workings of federal agencies than ever before, mostly via websites launched during Obama's administration. "

This is more of a result of Obama doing a great job bringing the government into the internet age.

THere's still a tons more work that could be done before we're a technocratic dreamland, but it's a good first step in that regards.

9/30/2014 6:18:28 PM

Quote :

" I'm obviously biased, but I don't see how Romney could have been any worse these past couple years."

Are you kidding me? He did nothing but fear monger about nuclear threats and terrorism during his entire campaign. The guy was basically running on a "hint hint wink wink" platform of I am the guy that will invade Iran.

9/30/2014 6:39:02 PM

Quote :

"Wilson? Did you mean Harding? Or maybe Taft? "

Nah, I think Wilson might have been the worst president of the last century. Harding wasn't in office long enough to do any meaningful damage and in retrospect actually was way ahead of his time on civil rights and was fiscally responsible. Teapot Dome, if it happened today, would not be shocking to anyone. There's no doubt he made some bad choices with his cabinet and that he was somewhat ineffectual, but he wasn't actively awful like Wilson.

You can certainly attach positives to Wilson's administration (lowering tariffs and some of his anti-trust legislation for example) as many do, but in my opinion they are outweighed by things like creating the Federal Reserve, enacting income tax, oh and unnecessarily getting us into World War I which set us on our interventionist path, cost us over 300,000 casualties and thanks to his support in assigning blame to Germany via the Treaty of Versailles, led to the horrors of WWII. It's entirely probable that minus US intervention Germany wins WWI and you never have many of the other horrors of the Twentieth Century. Then there's the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, his opposition to women's suffrage (which he eventually caved on), and his tacit approval of racial segregation.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of Wilson despite many historians thinking he was a great president. I think he did a lot of things that actively damaged the Republic and set us on a horrible course for decades to come.

10/1/2014 2:15:37 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-makes-rare-campaign-trail-appearance-people-leave-215726732.html

If I were him I'd stay away from any of the Democratic candidates right now. He seems pretty toxic to their campaign efforts.

10/24/2014 9:50:10 AM

look they were obviously getting up and leaving because they weren't worthy enough to be in his divine presence.

10/24/2014 10:08:43 AM

this isn't the first time that both of you have been surprised to learn that a lot of liberals don't like Obama

10/24/2014 10:42:25 AM

And what is terrifying is that they don't like him because he hasn't been liberal enough. Absolutely terrifying.

10/24/2014 10:44:42 AM

Because on the political scale, he hasn't been very liberal on many issues.

10/24/2014 10:46:06 AM

he's really not very liberal, it's obvious to anyone who doesn't live in Fox News world

10/24/2014 10:51:51 AM

^, ^^

yup.

10/24/2014 11:47:09 AM

kind of like how I didn't vote for Bush because he wasn't conservative enough?

10/24/2014 12:41:45 PM

yeah, Bush was pretty progressive in some areas and he caught a lot of criticism from the right because of it

10/24/2014 1:06:58 PM

White House triggers the television kill switch prematurely.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/false-emergency-tv-warning-sent-some-t-u-verse-subscribers-n233191

U-Verse subscribers were surprised when their televisions automatically and repeatedly changed the channel to NBC.

[Edited on October 24, 2014 at 10:34 PM. Reason : LOL]

10/24/2014 10:29:05 PM

Quote :

"And what is terrifying is that they don't like him because he hasn't been liberal enough. Absolutely terrifying."

10/24/2014 11:02:15 PM

Quote :

"And what is terrifying is that they don't like him because he hasn't been liberal enough. Absolutely terrifying."

care to explain why you find your claim absolutely terrifying?

10/25/2014 1:28:46 AM