Via Political Hotsheet:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think the most important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away, and George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of the few people who have international experience brokering peace deals.
And so what I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating - in the past on some of these issues - and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen.
This from the same guy who:
... warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.
Here's the larger point being made.
We should listen to Hamas, a terrorist organization purposed in denying Israel's right to exist, and not listen to Rush Limbaugh, one of a handful of broadcasting voices willing to speak loudly and proudly to the idiocy that's coming out of the mouth of B. Hussein Obama.
There is a lesson there for those willing to see it.
"...that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."
That was also part of the interview statements... and I kind of like that. If we could go all the way back to before Carter deserted our friend, the Shah of Iran, to the radicals we have been fighting ever since...
Posted by: chuck aka xtnyoda | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 01:25 PM
Pres. Obama sounds like some high school kid spewing utopian ideals who sincerely believes that everything can be resolved if we just listen to each other. As if that’s what the real problem is, we just don’t understand each other. Or that Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, etc. actually want peace to begin with. I’m confused on what common ground there is with them, just some of us dead?
One week in and while I’m trying like hell to be optimistic but it’s proving to be awfully difficult especially listening to Pres. Obama pollyanna rhetoric. And if this disturbs people like me, I can only imagine what it sounds like to people who fly planes into buildings. I’m thinking they’re not exactly scared.
Posted by: tim aka The Godless Heathen | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 01:34 PM
What utter hypocrisy!
Republicans and Rush Limbaugh are supposed to SHUT THE HELL UP, but we have to listen to the enemies who want us DEAD.
What an idiot has been foisted upon us.
Posted by: Mommynator | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 01:55 PM
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,"
100% correct. You are really grasping at straws to find fault here.
Even if the 3 time divorced, drug addicted, limp one had anything worthwhile to say, which he doesn't, listening to him doesn't get a dam thing thing done.
Posted by: jharp | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 02:11 PM
uhhh, and what, exactly, are we supposed to "listen" for from these extremist jihad-supporting Islamofacists? has any of their violent rhetoric changed in, oh, the last couple months? years? decades? or centuries? anything new there on the horizon we should be listening for? anything at all like "We will NOT annihilate Israel and it's monkey-people" or "the US is NOT the Great Satan" hmmm? i'm not holding my breath...
more importantly, how long will we need to continue this new "listening" waiting game? until the mushroom clouds appear on the horizon? i guess that would be Hope and Change alrighty...
questions, questions, pesky questions all... but its all good. no sweat. just as long as we don't listen to Rush anymore. The One has spoken. Hope and Change is happening NOW DAMMIT and there will be NO interference nor dissent! ;)
Posted by: clean end of turd | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 05:55 PM
Oh God, just when you think it can't get any worse, any more idiotic, and any more dangerous, it does. And he's only been President for a week.
Posted by: RandomThoughts | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 01:12 AM
To state the completely obvious, if Republicans had actually ever been listening to Rush Limbaugh, Obama would not now be President.
Posted by: Matteo | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Listening to people that live in the damn Middle East and being open to local input on a two-state solution (or any other strategy besides endless war that's going to leave everyone involved broke and/or dead) == NOT the same thing as listening to or entertaining specific ideas/advice from a specific group like Hamas. These problems predate Hamas and the solution will outlive Hamas. Have some perspective, geez.
C'mon, the Rush comment was funny and apt. People on the supposed "right" should really give up their sad-sack pundits, as they're dead weight around the neck of any ambitions to get the GOP back on top -- the same way most of the liberal Michael Moore type pundits are total liabilities for the centre-left folks.
Posted by: PW | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 04:54 PM
TROJAN HORSE OBAMA
HE'S GONNA HURT US
Posted by: ME | Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 12:08 AM
jharp: Rush may be a little on the grating end, but he's got more to say than yourself and other liberals who bow down and pray five times a day in the direction of Obama because you're so brutally retarded that not even Ripley would believe it.
Posted by: LeTigre | Sunday, February 01, 2009 at 07:05 PM