Oratin’: Select takes on high oratory.

Obama gave another good speech, light-years beyond Bush in both content and tenor.  Good.  He said a lot of good and truthy things, including admitting the Mossadegh regime change thingy back in the day (I thought he wasn’t interested in “looking back,” but oh well, I guess it’s okay if it’s looking far enough back, b-b-but not too recently back,, though).  Now maybe he’ll go to, say, La Paz, or something, and re-heat that part of the speech about regime change and self-determination and non-interference.

If my insect-like compound eyes are channeling the individual optics properly down the optic fiber-like shafts of my individual rhabdomeres without excessive leakage of light, then there appear to be a wide variety of perspectives on that speech.

Booman made a credible argument that Obama’s speech was frankly and thoroughly progressive, and we should strongly support his worldview.

On the other hand, Chris Floyd shrilly howls unrepentantly apostatic, heretical Commie-plotting-turned-al-Qaeda sympathizing lunacies such as this:

During the speech, we heard many nicely-turned phrases and heartfelt pieties from President Obama as he sought to “correct the misunderstandings” that Muslims have about America and its benevolent policies around the world. But what speaks far more loudly to the reality of those policies is a small story already being shunted aside by the tsunami of gushing press devoted to the empty flapping of presidential jaws in Cairo — the suicide of a Yemeni man held captive, without charges, in the Guantanamo concentration camp since 2002.

Fortunately, my bulbous compound eyes wrap fully around my cephalic structure giving me 360+ degrees of vision, and I can see the optics on virtually all disparate points of view, even those coming out of my own ass.

Here’s a few more of my favorites:  

President Obama’s Speeches

By: Bernard Chazelle

Tomorrow, the president of the United States will give a speech in Cairo that the White House has modestly called an “address to the Muslim World.” I saw on their web site a list of Obama’s forthcoming speeches.

June 04, 2009: Address to the Muslim World

August 12, 2009: Address to Humanity

October 07, 2009: Address to All Eukaryotic Life Forms and Wiccans

November 23, 2009: Address to the Universe

December 15, 2009: Address to AIPAC

Feb 6, 2010: Address to All Deities

April 5, 2010: Address to My Puppy

Obama Calls for Something, Anything in Speech in Egypt

CAIRO – Speaking before a large crowd at Cairo University in Egypt’s sprawling capital city, President Barack Obama urged the Muslim world to “look over there,” causing several dozen in the audience to turn their heads to see what he was pointing at in the vague middle distance.

“But seriously,” Mr. Obama continued. “The time of the past is in the past, and the future is that which lies before us.” Pausing for effect, he added, “The present is now,” drawing applause.

The hilarious rest.

Anatomy of a speech

The thing about speeches is that they sound differently when you are in a refugee camp vs. when you are updating your status on Facebag.

I’ve heard a similar distortion can occur when you are unwittingly transformed into many separate pieces on behalf of the person speaking.

While I have the ommatidial sensory capacity to see each unique view in high fidelity, and in very low light I can also reduce the pigmented sheathing on invidual fiber optics to increase both light scattering and blur, my tiny insect brain simply cannot integratively process this information into a coherent whole.

Obama is a fucking complex man in a fucking complex world at a fucking critical time in history.  It’s hard to make blanket statements about the guy.

MASSIVELY CRITICAL UPDATE:

Liz Cheney weighs in on Obama’s moral relativism:

“I think that if we lived in a world where terrorism, and the slaughter of innocents, and Iran’s hegemonic hopes for the Middle East could be met, could be defeated, could be dealt with by sort of hand-holding going forward, then we’d be in a much simpler environment. But these are very, very tough issues. And I was troubled by the extent to which I heard moral relativism.”

Sucked over the event horizon into the wingularity.

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  1. on his Mid East policy (as opposed to his Gitmo policy) so long as he and Hillary are not just blowing smoke about finally getting tough on the Israelis.

    Talk to me in one FU though; by then I may have changed my mind.

  2. is the bottom of the black hole at the center of the wingnut universe.  By the time they reach the wingularity, they have been stretched sideways and up and down, even axially, ripped to shreds, really.  At all levels, cellular, molecular, etc.  And that’s just the beginning.  No one knows what happens at bottom (the wingularity itself), because insufficient info is spewed back forth.

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