9/11/11-A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words (Bonaparte)

A Study In Contrasts

Doesn’t this picture say it all? Two men, two different philosophies, the one more humble, the other a bit arrogant…which one is which is so apparent. This is not meant to cast aspersions upon the other, but merely to point out that one shows humility and the other shows pride, (perhaps a bit too much). With a simple movement of the head one can see that one of these men understands how small he is in the face of all that has happened and that there are things greater than he is for whom he shows respect and bows his head, the other shows that although there may be something higher up, some things greater, he does not bow before it; it seems always to be more about him, rather than the issue or the moment.

This morning, on TV, I watched Joe Scarborough and Jon Meacham refute Tavis Smiley’s comments about former President Bush, when he called him a liar. Both insisted Bush did not lie but was misled by the intelligence community around the world, that he did not deliberately mislead the world. Smiley would not walk back from his most egregious accusation that he lied, but he tried to soften his tone a bit with foolish nuances. He was definitely biased and Meacham’s remarks about it perhaps being a better idea to keep the tone less confrontational was perfect and apt, especially since it is his party that keeps calling for civility as it escalates the rhetoric. as in Carson’s comments saying the GOP wanted to hang some people, basically who looked like him, (forgetting about his own former party member, a member of the KKK, Byrd), Waters sending some people straight to Hell,  Hoffa’s crude remarks about taking the tea party out and Biden’s false accusation against them, calling them terrorists.

More important was the elephant in the room. No one mentioned that if simply presenting information and acting on information one receives from one’s advisors, which later turns out to be inaccurate, makes you a liar,  than Obama is also a liar because his advisors gave him the information on the economy for which his plans have failed dismally and also gave him the information on which to base his healthcare bill which will not reduce costs as promised and certainly will not improve our healthcare, certainly not in the near future, and his advisors told him if he did certain things our unemployment rate would stay at or below 8%!  Since those things never happened but they were certainly promised by our President and not achieved, shall we call him a liar as Joe Wilson did? Was Joe Wilson correct, in retrospect? If you tell a country to pass a bill no one has read, to pass a bill not yet written, is that not misleading or lying as Tavis Smiley put it? What name would he give it if he were speaking about Obama…, I know, he would call it TRYING! Yes, give him credit for trying is pretty much the mantra one hears when Obamas failures are discussed; he is LEARNING, is another. I suggest that the White House is not the place to get job experience. I can give this process, that all Presidents go through, listening to advisors and making decisions based on their input, other names, for instance: arrogance, narcissism, belief in one’s omnipotence, or you could call it what the Democrats call it when it is the other party…lying to the American people!

The picture above is truly iconic, but I don’t know how many will remember it. It starkly shows the difference between two men. Dana Perino said that after 9/11, many put up signs on the doors of their offices which represented a quote from Bush when he went to the site of 9/11. The sign read: “WE WILL NOT TIRE, WE WILL NOT FALTER AND WE WILL NOT FAIL.”
Then she said something about the fact that he used the pronoun we because it wasn’t about him. The huge contrast here is that Obama often uses the pronoun I when he addresses the public. It is most often about him. The picture above is worth 1000 words.