WOW Mr. President take it easy !

David ET
by David ET
08-Apr-2009
 

Video of the President of the United States of America bending ALL THE WAY to the King of Islam. History will remember this turning moment.

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David ET

Haha

by David ET on

Read the comments. He either screwed up or did it on purpose. Both were wrong.

Bush is gone. Obama is here. Both sides should move on--->.....

read the comments 


I Have a Crush on Alex Trebek

David, you are serious? This is your blog?

by I Have a Crush on Alex Trebek on

You blog one day about a new constitution. Another about How Iran Can Free ITSELF. Now this obsession with Obama's bow? So what? It's American of him too if you think about it. He isn't up the Saudi anus like the Bush family is AND he is new in office probably not having been coached about this phoney boloney. He's not an establishment guy. 

I can't believe this blog. 


David ET

Wasting more money that we don't have

by David ET on

Obama wants 83.4 Billion for Iraq/Afghan Wars :

//www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/09/obama-war-funding-wants-8_n_185266.html

So where did all those anti-war prostesters who wanted troops to come home during Bush presidency gone? Under Obama war is OK for 2 more years?! 

 


David ET

Its too late Fish

by David ET on

  If it was not intentional and was just a screw up,  Obama cant now just come and say it because it will backlash with saudi's and some Muslims at this point, so its best on his part to let it go or let lower staff handle it.


rosie is roxy is roshan

del

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

del

In case anyone read it, ex'd it immediately Already got it off my chest by writing it. Had nothing to do with anyone here.


anonymous fish

isn't that the truth...lol

by anonymous fish on

i wish he would just 'fess up and say,

I SCREWED UP.  SHUT UP ALREADY.


David ET

White house response:

by David ET on

  HufingtonPost: The White House briefing room grew a bit chilly on Thursday after CNN reporter Dan Lothian asked press secretary Robert Gibbs to explain the current cause célèbre of the conservative movement: whether President Obama bowed down to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.


LOTHIAN: When the President met with King Abdullah, there was something that took place which I believe the White House explained was just the president being taller than the king. We took a look at the video, and it does appear that the president actually bowed to King Abdullah. Did he bow or didn't he?

GIBBS: No, I think he bent over with both, to shake -- with both hands to shake his hand, so I don't--

LOTHIAN: -- one hand --

GIBBS: Well I... [laughter]

LOTHIAN: Did he bow or didn't he?

GIBBS: No. But I think this meeting was like a week ago, right?

LOTHIAN: That's right but this is something a lot of people are talking about today.

GIBBS: I can only imagine it is of great cause and concern for many people struggling with the economy.

At that point, the conversation ended, the other reporters offered their subtle "ohhhs," and the Lothian was left shaking his head.

 

COUPLE OF READER COMMENTS:

"Is this that big a deal? Actually no. Here is the truth and if everyone could put the spin aside we would agree on this. Obama messed up. 
Obama was under a lot of pressure, it was his first time around those guys, He may have been tired, jet-lagged, he was doing everything he could to make a good impression, he wanted to a be cosmopolitan kinda guy... and he made a rookie mistake. "

"I don't see what the problem is... All Americans bow to the Saudi's...everytime we go to the gas pump. The GOP can try and run this in the ground, but fact is...we're all under the command of Saudi oil. " 


Souri

Mr Hosseini, LOL

by Souri on

I loved that one!! Very funny. Thanks.


default

Bending Reasons?

by hossein.hosseini on

David,
As to why he bowed I can think of 4 possibilities:
1. He is taller than the king!
2. After the Queen situation, he tried to get it right.
3. A way to thank  the King for keeping oil prices
   low, injecting money into U.S. Banking system.
4. The possibily of getting to this corrupt guy's ego and having him
   continue keeping oil prices low, injecting money to U.S. Banks  and buying more F-16's and other arms.

In any event, if it works, it is all for the good of U.S. citizens,
as they say 'Joojeh ra akhar-e Paiiz Meesh Marand'! I don't take this incidence seriously,
Cheers,


anonymous fish

David

by anonymous fish on

thank you!  that was very enlightening.  isn't it a shame that we get so caught up in labels and ism's that we lose sight of the issue at hand!!!   i've been called a right-winger for pete's sake.  i think my beliefs take a little bit here and there.  i do look foward to that "long discussion another place and time".

souri mo chara.  yes, you're right of course but my point was simply that the queen herself had no problem with it, why do the masses?  besides... we're just gauche americans... what do you expect?  :-)


rosie is roxy is roshan

You're right Daivd.

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

quite right. Irt reeally doesn't mean a damn thing does it Not like it used to when it was smaller when the blogging first started.It was a tighter group. It's very big now and that's good for the site. But whatever you do here's a drop in the bucket.

Anyway that doesn't change the fact that I worked for a month on that article and found out about a purge that no one was talking about and for two days you and I sat on that thread of mine that almost no one gave a damn about and you kept sayiing the same thing, no one give a damn, and you  were very encouraging and after all that work I left a comment, let me know if you're still here and you couldn't even answer thanks, sorry, later. knowing all that. and complaining about everyone else. and making feel that what i did mattered.

i didn't do it for this site. i did it for the people who were being purged and for the workers who don't get paid for months in iran and no one says a damn thing. i published that on this site because it's the biggest forum i have and i thought it would be stupid not to use it. i hoped it would be a way to keep me encouraged to work on that, since i'd have some results here. i didn't get any really, except from you (and the other two but they're not activists, you know, the "rightwingers") And I didn't want to just work with old Left and union people on labor. I thougt it's important to get it out to the middle class.

And you told a woman who was railing at you who I was trying very hard to calm down becuase she's the ony person on this site who seemed to really have done anything for the workers at all (of course not on this site), and you told her there are two kinds of people, human and not human. From a human rights activist. And then Q comes here and makes a joke and...

you're right. It's not even that the site is not that important, the site is unimportant for me. because i'm unimportant to the site. what i want to do doesn't matter, and no matter how hard you try to slough off the fact that you left me dangling when you knew how hard i'd worked on something no one else was talking about, and you left me all alone there, and yet posted this blog, so you weren't in traction, and you have time to spew at q...

saying what you just said doesn't really cut the mustard.

please don't answer me. this is a vey destructive place for me. let me just go. don't say or do anything to try to pull me back in.


David ET

Dear Fish

by David ET on

I prefered Ron Paul and I campaigned for Obama and have so many times given my reasons which are also in my blogs and I would have done it again today. I have never been against Obama.

I do not idolize people. I critic where I see fit and support where applicable also. ( also note when we campaign for a politicianversus others is very different than when the same person in in office.....which is a long discussion for another place... ).

I did say I support Obama's attempt to have a more equal grounding with the rest of the world and Muslims. I do not support bowing. I do not support staying in Iraq till 2011 or unilaterally sending more American soldiers  to Afghanistan outside UN umbrella. I do not support the bail outs but I support funding the infrastructure and universal health care. I also agree with Obama that dividing Jeruselum solves nothing.

So as you see I am not a all or nothing , icon type of person. That I leave for those who only understand "long live" or "death to" and nothing in between. I do not belive in electing someone and then going home the nest day. The day people go home and do not excercise  questioning their leaders is the day democracy walks out the other door.

Bush is gone. Obama is here.

Shah and Monrachy is gone. Khamenei and Islamic Republic has been here for  T  H  I  R  T  Y  years

I deal with present and learn from past but don't get stuck there 


Souri

AF: Just a reminder

by Souri on

The feedback of the news here, is not the same thing that the American media made of it. Personally, I don't care about neither of them!

But, don't forget we live in Canada, a country where the First Person (not only the First Lady) is the Queen. The Canadian press, did not get that gesture as friendly as the US media tries to show.

PS: Have you ever seen the movie "wag the dog"? It is a great one :-)


Examiner

Dear Ashamed,

by Examiner on


The man is a prodigious politician. He is as malleable as you can find them. He goes out his way to befriend anyone and everyone. Have you read his books?

You wrote, “As an American I was ashamed of my president doing that.” I felt the same when I saw this clip. I also felt that way when he – as a presidential candidate - made that infamous pledge at the AIPAC meeting declaring Jerusalem indivisible. Did you?

At the end of the day, what matters most will be his accomplishments. We know too well about his immediate predecessor’s. Don’t we?


anonymous fish

MPD

by anonymous fish on

despite your best efforts to lighten the mood, it just ain't gonna happen.

Q.  i know it was a joke.  it WAS funny.  maybe a little insenstive but funny nonetheless.

david.  surely you know it was a joke.  why does this have to be a teeth-gritting, eye-brow touching discussion?

he shouldn't have bowed.  simple as that.  it's not insulting to anyone.  i'm an american, i'm not insulted.  a little puzzled for sure. but let's not overreact to a friggin' bow for gods sake.

souri.  the gueen touching is over done as well.  not one word... not ONE from the queen indicating offense.  if she's not offended, why are you?  SHE put HER arm around Mrs. Obama FIRST.  it would be utterly ridiculous to think that she (obama) isn't going to automatically do the same thing.    please don't muddy the water...:-)  however i totally agree that perhaps their social or ceremony whatever should prepare them a little better.

i think rosie was buzzing around the main issue here.  obama is so different from bush, we simply can't adjust, or accept, or understand.

david.  i'm trying to get a feel for you.  i once thought you were totally anti-obama.  then you seemed to be FOR obama.  now you seem to be critical of everything he does.  now, i'm one of the rare people on iranian.com (jk) who understands that just being critical of something or someone doesn't mean you're demonizing them. as our president, we DO hold him to standards.  i just wish the tone was a little more... diplomatic.  certain words create an atmosphere of antagonism and animosity.

other than all the talk about what he shouldn't have done.... tell me what he should have done.  what IS proper?


David ET

Rosie

by David ET on

  As for Obama the answer is simple: Diplomacy should be based on equal grounds and not one nation bowing to another! Obama can not travel this road too far without having American public behind every move. Bowing to anyone is not one of them.

As for you and iranian.com, don't take this site too seriously, most here don't. Give priority to other things in life . Look up at the stars, visit a friend or family, go to a show, take a trip. turn off the computer often.... Here it doesnt have to be all or none... 


David ET

I am glad that Michelle

by David ET on

  touched the untouchable Queen. That is American of her. She did not bow to her waist to her though.


rosie is roxy is roshan

My view on the bowing

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

He is bowing to Islam and he is bowing to Capital. Since the geopolitics of the world these days in large part follow ideological line along Islam vs. West (Capital))--a totally spurious travesty of a distinction as O is well aware, he is bowing to everyone. And as such he is bowing to no one. And that is what he promised. Diplomacy. And whether one likes or dislikes the gesture chosen, one has to concede that he is delivering on what he promied--diplomacy.

Many IRI people will have mixed feelings about this. He is bowing to the Sunni leader, he is bowing to an American 'pupppet" so-called,  to an oil competitor, to someone who wants to take away the name of their Gulf--fine, so what should they do? Should they decry it? Thus their hands, i.e. tongues (I assume) must be tied, which serves to highlight  the hypocrisy of the spurious distinction.


I do not believe the gesture was hypocritcal. I believe it was diplomatic, and that is different.I hope Obama will examine our (US's) nd his own hypocrisy carefully every step of the way. And then we all may all get out of the woods yet.

Ultimately I concur wholeheartedly with MPD: He wasn't bowing. He was sneezing..

//weeklyworldnews.com/politics/7330/obama-bows-to-saudi-king/

 


rosie is roxy is roshan

David, I don't see it that way. Q

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

I see Q's comment as saying there are people (and there are) who feel anything that has the label Islam on it is NOT okay. And I believe Q's attitude, as well as my own, is that the Bushies got an F in virtually every single thing they did so long ago that nothing Obama could or couldn't do would ever change that.

But it's the hostile tone, David, it's the hostile tone. The purpose of forming coalitions is not to stress the differences but the similiarities and this is he first time there has been a "center-left" coalition of support behind an American administration vis a vis IRI. And it's a delicate coalition. As I understand it, what it has in common are that it is at bottom at least anti-war and to greater or lesser degree, pro=poor (although not anti-Capitalist). And it wants to open up diplomacy and trade with Iran.

And it's delicate. So you need to focus on the commonalities and not the differences. So let's start now..

________________________

David, I'm not happy about what happened on my Striking Iran blog. I'm not happy that I worked for weeks doing research to expose the labor purges in Iran and that not one goddam person from the goddam so-called Left here even stopped to piss on it when I know they opened it because of the title and the weekend was active for bloggers, and the first thing I said was please comment on this, it's important. I'm pissed at disgusted at this sopcalled Left of mine. Whereas you sat on it for two days straignt discussing Labor with me.

At the same time I'm not happy that a borderline paranoid schizophrenic comes here to torment the bahai and that people are so full of their own sickness that some of them actually support him (including one of these high-profile so-called Leftists, I'm not finished with him yet,he better watch his back), and most of the others either just attack or abandon him--I have no problem with those who abandoned him but the fact is Q is one of three people, me him and Ari who stayed up until late into the night seriously  trying to engage this person. And Q came out vehemently against the Bahai-bashing. That part I'm happy about. Human irghts activist. AGAINST the IRI agenda on that one. Big time.

Now what should I do? You know honestly David, I'm not happy either that you knowing how upset I was and Kaveh too btwo didn't answer my anybody still out there and just left that labor discussion dangling..

So what should I do?

Should I leave this place where I get back so little in comparison to what I put in?  Which for some goddam reason I don't seem able to do and I don't know why. And you both are aware of particular stresses I have that make it a lot harder on me. But I do know that when I left last time Q was the only person who consistently and publicly fought for me to stay. Were you aware of any of that at all> There were about five blogs on my situation here last August. Rhetorical question.

Were you aware of my blog called Striking Iran this past weekend Q? Featured while you posted a newsfeed? Rhetroical question.

So what should I do? after all MPd's the one with the correct analysis. He was just sneezing.

I'm not going to get involved in a gun-slinging match here. Not between you and Q. There are some people here right now I'm ITCHING to gun-sling with, aan dI never have been before. But not you and Q. I'm not going to moderate a duel. Q made a joke, you were aggressive, if this aggression spirals I'm outta here. And I can't address those other really interesting points you raise until/unless I'm sure that the aggression won't spiral.

I'm too tired right now. I'm just too tired.


Souri

The President.....

by Souri on

And his wife don't have a good ceremony adviser, that's all!! The President did not bow to the Queen of England, but his wife touched the Queen, which is an absolute offense to the Royal family's protocol.

 

//news.aol.com/article/michelle-obama-touches-queen/410276?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fmichelle-obama-touches-queen%2F410276

 


Yachov

Simple Explanation

by Yachov on

As he approached the King of Saudi Arabia a brief moment of nervousness passed over him.  The nervousness turned to panic as he realized no one had briefed him on the proper protocol for greeting the King.  His mind flashed back to everything he could remember even as a child hoping to find some answer to the question "How does one greet a King."  The only thing he could think of was this object that used to sit on the desk of his 7th grade science teacher, the bird of perpetual motion:

//www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsunder10/981b/

//www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/854.html

 

 


David ET

Rosie

by David ET on

  Q's comment or joke is very much in line with anything that has the label Islam on it is OK 

Secondly there is a underlying attitude now that says if Obama does something right give him A and if he does something wrong give Bush or right wingers an F. This is not right.

I actually support Obama trying to break the image of US and saying that US ways were wrong and that US must treat others with respect and trying to reach out to Islamic countries including Islamic Republic! but I do not believe in kissing ass especially the way he did to King of Arabia! 

As an American I was ashmed of my president doing that. I wonder how so many in US army thought! This was not good for Obama himself and I hope Michelle straightend him up in privacy of their bedroom because she bows to noone!  

Only way I can explain is that the young Obama got a little overwhelmed because if it was on purpose or a policy, that is not a good start. He should always keep the support of American public in mind .


rosie is roxy is roshan

David, you bring up some many important points that I would

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

love to see discussed by two highly intelligent, well-informed peole whom I know well here, but first could we agree to two things?

1) Q is making a JOKE!

2) There really ARE right-wigners who said that no one should vote for Obama because he is dangerous because he is really a Muslim and etc. etc. etc. And that group has nothing whatsoever to do with you.

My god, we all voted for Obama! As I recall, both Q and I were so disturbed by his Afghan platform when he ran that we got very queasy about him-I was always going to vote for him anyway but I wasn't a happy camper at all and at a certain point Q wasn't even sure (of course living in NY and CA we could afford to deliberate on these issues because our individual votes wouldn't've changed a thing,) but that once the Moose Killer came on stage I actually campaigned for him, and it was at around that time, not sure if for the same reason, that Qu made his decision.

It wasn't only the foreign policy issues that made me skeptical, and I would imagine Q too, of Obama. It was the suspicion that he is too tied to big money anyway. Now you were always an avid supporter of O's--to my recollection--and now one of your biggest criticisms is that his financial plan is serving the same old vested interests. Or am I wrong/

So looking at the big picture is it possible to say that we all see Obama as an inestimably huge step forward from Bush or anything McCain would've delievered, and yet we are all very critical of him for reasons which may have many things in common?

That is the way I understand things and if I have said anything egregiously mistaken about either of you would you please explain it to me.


David ET

Q

by David ET on

Are you talking nonsense again? What does any of this have to do with "right wingers" and "green mosque" in white house that you brought up I have no idea!"  .

1- Leader and commander of cheif of NO NATION (US or not) should not bow to knees to the leader of another. That is a disgrace to THE PEOPLE who elected him and he represents.

2- He rightfully not bowed to Queen of England and just showed respect and should have done the same here.

3- This jerk (King of Saudi Arabia and his family) is a corrupt and cruel person who is ruling over a Kingdom of fear which violates human rights of its citizens (including Shias) , where women do not have the most basic rights such as voting or driving. What message is Obama giving ?

4- If he is bowing to this idiot because Obama thinks the guy isthe  leader of Islamic World , Obama is wrong there too. In fact by doing this he is disrespecting so many Muslims who do not consider the corrupt Saudi Royals (the keepers of Mecca) as represetative of true Islamic attitude and faith. He is in fact turning his back to many good muslims who respect human rights and equality or have other faith.

5- If Obama wants to send a positive message to the whole muslim world of different opinions, there are much better ways to achieve this that such cheap, disrespectful to his nation and to the world!, outright unnecessary and embarssing gestures! 

Persian proverb: Na be oon shoori e shoori na be in bi namaki (neither so salty like that. nor this tasteless) 


Q

No, this is proof, he was a secret Muslim all along

by Q on

well meaning right wingers tried to warn us, but we never listened. Now he will enslave all non-muslims and turn the white house into a green mosque. (Don't fall for all that environmental talk).


rosie is roxy is roshan

Oh you're just a...

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

party pooper.

 


Multiple Personality Disorder

No, I don't think so

by Multiple Personality Disorder on

I think he bent because at the very moment he reached out to shake the kings hand he sneezed.  It is not clear in this video, but that's what it was, the sneeze that was heard around the Muslim World.