Obama: I should have “calibrated those words differently”

Calibrated those words differently? Who the heck uses language like that when they are trying to clear up an issue? Oh, President Obama does.

Is he kidding? If I was Sgt. James Crowley, – the white policeman who arrested Gates – I may have been tempted to hang up on the president.

The president said he had telephoned the white policeman who arrested Gates, and he said the conversation confirmed his belief that the officer was a good man and an outstanding officer.

Gee, thanks.

“This has been ratcheting up, and I [Obama] obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up,” he said. “I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department and Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

More: Atlas Shrugs, Hot Air and Gateway Pundit. He refuses to apologize.

OK, that’s it. This is a perfect description of a distraction, and my guess is the Obama administration is quietly willing to let this news story simmer right through the Sunday morning talk shows while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rams the health care legislation through the House of Representatives, and bypassing a House Committee with Democrats on the panel who are not bending over, grabbing ankles and taking it from the administration health care cronies as ordered from on-high.

Waxman stunt: Here and here.

Contact your elected officials right now. Keep them and their staffers from leaving the office early on a Friday afternoon and ask them to ensure this is not rushed through. Then politely remind them of the 10th Amendment and let them know if the states want universal health care coverage, we’ll do it on our own thank you very much.

Posted in

Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

4 Comments

  1. LOIS on July 24, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    IF OBAMA DOESN'T GET THE FACTS BEFORE HE OPENS MOUTH & INSERTS FOOT, HOW THE HECK CAN HE SPEAK BEFORE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND EXPLAIN HIS OBAMAHEALTH PLAN WITH INTELLIGENCE? OOOHHHHH THAT'S WHY HE HAS A TELEPROMTER!!! HE SHOULD GET AN EMMY FOR DOUBLE TALKING.

    AND…MR GATES NEEDS TO ENROLL IN AN ANGER MANAGEMENT CLASS….



  2. donh on July 24, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    I agree . Let Mr Obama know the damage he has done and hang up the phone…but no this nice guy Cop wants to have a beer with an elitist who thinks he's inferior. Watching this good cop get played by race baiters desparate for an exit strategy to a mess of their own making is very disappointing. It seems white people must always assume a defensive fetal position when slapped in the face by insulting race accusations. Officer Crowley acted 100% correctly. Gates created an incident and the officer needed to take control of it. The arrest was needed because a police report had to be written up to protect the officer and the department from malicious trouble such as frivolous law suits the officer could see coming if he simply walked away.



  3. Jeff S on July 26, 2009 at 4:48 am

    He should just apologized for making ill conceived statements regarding the Cambridge Police Dept. Heck he certainly has been practicing apologizing since coming to office.



  4. Dimsdale on July 26, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    "And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

    Maybe he should stop calibrating his shoe size with his mouth.

    Hard to believe this allegedly highly educated HLR "scholar" would say this without knowing what he was doing. Lawyers are supposed to be wordsmiths, not "uncalibrated" racists.



The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.