Obama’s Most Courageous Act: Pardoning a Turkey

2009 November 27

by Joseph Klein

President Obama pardoned a turkey for Thanksgiving named Courage. That turns out to be the gutsiest decision that Obama has made since taking office.

Courage is not the only recipient of Obama’s generosity who has reason to be thankful. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his boss Osama bin Laden are grateful for the opportunity provided by the Obama administration to put on a propaganda display during the circus trial that the whole world will be watching. KSM will be the perfect ringmaster, following up on his ringleader performance on 9/11. And I couldn’t think of a better clown than Attorney General Eric Holder.

But there are many more folks who should be writing thank you notes to Obama this season. In no particular order, here are just a few:

Vladimir Putin – Obama handed him a gift of abandoning our anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland without obtaining a single concession from Russia.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – Obama left the dissidents hanging (some literally) while he decided to engage unconditionally the thugs who stole the Iranian presidency – which, by the way, has bought them more time to develop their nuclear arms program.
United Nations – Obama has raised the profile of this dysfunctional organization, telling the General Assembly in September that the UN is “an indispensable factor in advancing the interests of the people we serve.” He intends to make the UN the moral arbiter of our foreign policy.
China and climate change - Obama’s decision to move ahead and offer specific carbon emission reduction targets in Copenhagen while China gets a free pass will give China just the boost it needs to surge past us and become the world’s #1 economy.
ACLU - They have the best friend they have ever had in the White House. The Obama administration must have exceeded the ACLU’s most optimistic expectations by publicly releasing previously classified memos on enhanced interrogation, re-opening criminal investigations of CIA interrogators and giving al Qaeda leaders the full protections of the Constitution that Americans are entitled to in a criminal trial.
ACORN - The Justice Department is slow-rolling any investigation, much less prosecution, of ACORN for its alleged criinal wrong-doing while the Obama administration is giving ACORN the opportunity to compete for billions of dollars of new grant money, courtesy of the stimulus windfalls.
Arizona’s 15th congressional district - According to an Obama administration website, 30 jobs have been saved or created in this district with just $761,420 in stimulus money. Unfortunately, members of this district will have a hard time writing a thank you note because no such district actually exists.
The New York Times and MSNBC - They are the Obama administration’s favorite ‘news’ outlets.
Fox News - The Obama administration’s bashing has boosted their ratings beyond anything that traditional advertising could have accomplished.

Finally, the conservative movement should thank Obama. His failed economic policies, experiments in wealth redistribution, and weakness abroad have unified conservatives more than anything else could possibly have done.

Friday, November 27, 2009