We know the health care bill has been shelved for the time being. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today that it is on hold until fall. This means we get a brief reprieve, but must stay vigilant.
It is too early to tell, but universal health care may not be the biggest of Obama's worries. I only tuned in for the last half of his press conference last night and completely missed the question and Obama's answer about the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest. I was in session all day today with my friends at the Hoosier Congressional Policy Leadership Institute (today's theme was Health Care; fortuitous, indeed?), so heard zero news. Tonight, at my weekly book study on The 5,000 Year Leap, the guys in my discussion group asked about it, and that was my introduction to the incident.
In one word, describing the police department's actions as "stupid," the President has poured salt into the gaping gash of racial tension in the United States. Barack Obama, who was supposed to be the great transcendent figure that would help us move beyond race, took sides in a conflict in which he was not in full possession of the facts.
I wrote all of the above before going to the Reuters recounting of the Gates incident. Reuters is far from a conservative news organization, yet here is how their reporter filed the story:
President Barack Obama plunged his presidency into a charged racial debate and set off a firestorm in one of America's most liberal bastions by siding with a black Harvard scholar who accuses police of racism.
Saying he was unaware of "all the facts" but that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "acted stupidly" in their arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Obama whipped up emotions on both sides of an issue that threatens to open old wounds in America.
Need I say more?
President Obama has blundered, big time. Watch his ratings and observe where this story goes over the next week. He is already losing independents. This type of blatantly biased analysis is not what they seek from their commander-in-chief.
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You should Mika and Eugene Robertson fighting about this. Mika is being fair like nobody's business. She said that she can't even begin to imagine what it is like to grow up AA in America, so she can't bring that worldview to the table. She said she's not taking either side of Gospel, she just wants to listen to both sides, and asks a very important question: "Who made it about race first?" Barnacle said that the police officer would have been going against training to go into the house when it was reported as a B&E. When he asked the guy to come out on the porch, that's when the "Why? Because I'm black?" came in. Robertson said that if it would have been Larry Sumner (?), in never would have happened.
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