Gun control advocates had been clamoring for the subject of gun control to come up in last night’s debate, and sure enough they got their wish. Others had hoped that Fast and Furious would see the spotlight and Governor Romney gave it the old college try. The President certainly heard the criticism leveled at his No. 2, Tailgunner Joe Biden, for the smirking, rictus-like grin he affected any time Paul Ryan opened his mouth during their set-to. So when Romney started in on the ATF’s gun running black bag job known as Fast and Furious . . .
POTUS did his damnedest to maintain an appropriately sober look about him while Mitt raised the subject of the .gov running guns to the Mexican cartels. And he almost made it. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head…steady, look serious and engaged, she’ll interrupt him in a minute….
Maybe Barack’s relatively brief grinning was less grating than Joe’s because he doesn’t have the veep’s unnaturally white dentures. But it must be hard to contain the self-satisfaction at having successfully stalled and stonewalled for so long. Not to mention keeping an Attorney General who’s been cited for contempt of Congress.
Or maybe the Prez’s fleeting smirk was self congratulatory, figuring a murdered border patrol agent (Brian Terry) and 50,000 or so dead Mexicans was a small cost of doing business. [h/t Drew C.]
What is this article adding to the conversation? There’s barley even a pretext, just Obama bashing.
+1. This site should stick to the issues and not just post articles mostly void of actual information but heavy on vitriol and snide remarks, in my opinion. But in the end I guess it’s down to what kind of readership TTAG desires. I for one am being alienated by these kind of posts.
So the president laughs like a 3yrd getting away with something, and you don’t think he’s rightfully due for condemnation?
The meaning of a smile at a given time itself is rather ambiguous for an onlooker. I’m not sure putting such importance on the interpretation of a smile over his actual words on the subject is the best approach.
I do think that the actual condemnation in the above post can be condensed into a single short sentence while the bulk of the post is partisan propaganda which adds nothing useful to the discussion while only appealing to emotion.
Unfortunately there’s not a reply button below your comment, so this will have to do.
But yes, lets look at his actual words on the subject shall we?
“Candy!”
Yes, he sicced his attack dog on the topic and then went on to completely ignore it.
Writing about that in the post and discussing it would have been a valid and constructive approach.
So you’re saying that nearly two years of the lying to the media, lying to congress, stonewalling, retaliating against whistleblowers, then misusing executive privilege over an operation that has killed countless people and will kill many more, which when capstoned by laughing at all of that isn’t an appropriate time for righteous indignation?
If that’s not, what is?
when it’s more than a smile and calling on the moderator for unclear reasons. The post still only adds noise and no actual information. I characterized how I perceive that noise in my above comments. I mean, your comment holds more information than the post!
Look, if you are cool with the tone of voice and content of this post that’s fine. I’m not. I expected better from this site. But as I wrote in my initial comment, it’s the decision of the staff here which way they want to take TTAG.
I come here for well reasoned informational posts pertaining to guns and policy that show little bias, not partisan hackery like above. There is usually more than enough of that in the comment section already.
While I wish there was more meat to it, I can accept that not every article on TTAG can be Bruce Kraft with his well researched statistics smashing the opposition, but I saw nothing partisan about this particular post.
Romney brought up Fast&Furious in an adequate fashion and got commended for it, while Obama laughed at Fast&Furious and got condemned for it. It stuck to guns and the facts, how is that partisan?
if you come up with an unsubstantiated interpretation of a smile only to make up some wild unqualified accusation of “self congratulatory, figuring a murdered border patrol agent (Brian Terry) and 50,000 or so dead Mexicans was a small cost of doing business.” you got partisan hackery. I know the author is just a blogger and neither can nor should be held to jounalistic principles bu I still have come to expect better from this site.
Is it the truth that is bothering you Curzen? Dig deep before you answer.
The truth in the post being what, F&F was mentioned and the President smiled. What else?
+1. The W. Bush administration was leading the country when Fast & Furious Got started.
GWB was in office from 2009 – 2011?
No, you’re wrong. Other gunwalking operations (equally wrong but not as incompetently handled) went on during Bush’s disastrous terms but you can’t see past partisanship for one second, apparently, to condemn the wrongs waged by the Obama administration.
Who appointed the the ATF agents to their positions of authority when F&F was initiated? GWB possibly Sir?
+1 to Chris and Curzen. It’s a freaking smile in a high pressure situation. There’s enough hand, factual information about F&F worthy of discussion (and condemnation, IMHO) without trying to interpret a fleeting facial expression on a politician with a huge spotlight and a ton of cameras focused on him.
Possible meanings of a smile:
– Pleasure
– Nervousness
– Happiness
– Contempt
– Submissiveness
– Aggression
– etc. etc.
. . . . or maybe he was thinking of Michelle and got a b0ner. Who knows.
It’s to balance out the pro-Obama articles.
Well, he is a communist and as such, he doesn’t like all those deadly weapons floating around out there in non-communist hands.
Besides, there is so much that they have to lose if the public ever gets wind of what they have been up to…. Fortunately, they had the foresight to control that end of things early on but then the Internet happened and they all started comparing note and talking about things….
Could make things difficult for good little lying ass communists.
It really did look like he was fighting to keep from smiling, and that should scare everyone. I have read darn near everything there is available to date about F&F, and I didn’t find a single thing funny about any of it.
And it doesn’t help further the conversation when the moderator has no clue what she’s talking about.
That Romney would bring it up at all is kind of a surprise, and a good one. I’m not sure if it’s possible to mention F&F at all without it sounding like Obama bashing, not after he used executive privilege to stop the investigation.
While this particular clip might not add a huge amount to the conversation, it does help keep the issue fresh in our minds and give some hope that if the election goes a certain way, the truth may yet come out. Honestly, I don’t have a huge amount of hope for full disclosure, but even if it becomes common enough knowledge to prevent anything like this from happening again in the near future, that’s enough for me.
It shows that barry believed himself to be above reproach and that he thinks he’s got the second term in the bag. Which he may well have judging by the remarks made by some of the supposed gun and freedom lovers commenting on TTAG.
When the media runs to the defense of a sitting president by calling the issue a politically manufactured non-issue that “has already been resolved,” then we know there is a problem. Gov. Romney hit it right on the head with his mention of executive privilege, and the president just ignored it. I do not care which side of the fence you stand, when an entire administration makes up the truth as it goes along, there comes a need for accountability.
This administration has pulled out all credibility in that sense. Not just once, but over and over again. Vote accordingly.
The question concerned the Democrats’ desire to renew the ineffective, anti-freedom “assault weapon” ban. Romney pointed out the fact that the Obama administration, with the knowledge of at least the Attorney General, aided and abetted in the smuggling of firearms into Mexico to the drug cartels. These firearms have been used in the murders of thousands of Mexican citizens, and the murders of two American law enforcement agents. The government employees involved in this operation, up to and probably including Obama, should be arrested and tried as accessories to murders.
The point is the hypocrisy of Obama and his minions, calling for an “assault weapon” ban while knowingly supporting the transfer of the same kinds of weapons into the hands of criminal drug cartels. And then lying about their involvement, stonewalling the Congressional testimony, lying in their testimony to Congress, and refusing to release 95% of the pertinent documents subpoenaed by Congress. They are willing to blame honest American gun owners for the drug violence in this country and Mexico, but they have directly aided and abetted that violence.
Do we really want those kinds of scum running the US government for another four years? That is the point of this commentary.
So what you are saying is that guns don’t kill people, except the guns used for “fast and furious”.
No. What I am saying is that the Obama administration members who are calling for “gun control” are a bunch of hypocritical liars.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people with guns or whatever else that’s convenient. We shouldn’t hand them out to drug cartels, though.
Which is why you’ll never find me advocating the government break its own laws to allow murderous thugs to purchase guns here.
Agree with the first comment. Attacking Obama’s position on gun control is fine and (in light of his pining invocation of the AWB) understandable. Attacking his administration’s handling of F&F is understandable too (as is attacking the prior admin’s foolish implementation of Wide Receiver). But to suggest that Obama (or any other pol) considers any number of human lives as some sort of acceptable policy cost is reckless and immature. It was wrong for the left to do it to Bush, and it is wrong for you to do it here.
Statements like that do nothing to advance the RKBA cause.
Are you crazy? The past several have considered “any number of human lives as some sort of acceptable policy cost.” They send people to war for god’s sakes and blow the **** out of other countries with little regard for human life aside from mealy-mouthed crap about collateral damage.
Oh, heavens. If me saying “acceptable policy cost” gives you a case of the Semantics Sads 🙁 , then please feel free to strike it and replace with “bargain,” “sweet-ass deal” or any other phrase that conveys what I’m willing to bet you knew was the point.
I get the point. You think it’s reckless to suggest that Obama doesn’t care about the human cost of his administration’s policies. It’s not.
Google “drone double taps”
Yes, it is reckless. (I feel a pattern coming on.) You are relying on hearsay published by likely biased “legal experts” (which, as a lawyer, I’ve yet to be convinced exist) to draw the conclusion that Obama is a sociopath -someone who doesn’t “care” about human suffering. That’s the same kind of either/or, good/evil bull$#!+ dualism practiced by the more rabidly theocratic parts of the GOP, only turned on its head. It accomplishes nothing. You and I do not work in the Oval Office. We don’t know what kinds of info the Pres reviews to make or allow these decisions. Would I order drone strikes? I’d like to think not. But I have no damn idea. No one does. For you to armchair QB the process based on someone else’s “research” and then conclude “WAR CRIMES!” without any kind of independent, factual development is infantile.
Look I know it’s election season, but can we keep TTAG more cerebral than politicians looking smug? That’s all I’m saying.
+1
The concerning thing is that the biased moderator didn’t have Obama respond to Romney’s remarks on F&F. I’d like to see how he reacts when forced to answer questions about it. Really he should’ve just thrown holder under the bus a long time ago. I guess he’s trying to wait until after the election to do that, in hopes suppressing it is the best route for reelection.
I couldn’t watch the election and had to listen to it on the radio while traveling home from looking to take out Bambi. So I appreciate posts like these. Yeah, not everyone may agree with the opinions on here from the writers at times but just go to any news website and you get opinion mixed in with fact. In this time, you need to be able to separate the fact from opinion yourself or find a website that meshes with your idealogy.
Maybe he was smiling because Romney’s “college try” on Fast and Furious was “Fast and Furious! What’s the deal with that? I dunno lol”