Re your:  "matter" - Are you talking about the guests or the beer?

President Obama was right when he said the police officer acted stupidly. The officer is very lucky he wasn't fired, or at least suspended, he should have been. Republicans tried to make a stink out of it for politics alone. I kind of wish Pres. Obama would tell those who didn't like the comment to take a flying leap, it really was a stupid move by that officer.

Watching the two best news shows the report and daily we now see a new problem - american beer verses non american - of course the regular news shows got it wrong - all the beer is owned by international beer companies.  

Not a beer drinker myself but you reminded me of a Monty Python joke.

How is American beer like making love in a canoe?

They're both f*ck#ng close to water.

The big mistake was Obama's. He was unwise to call the cop stupid. (i'm not saying t he cop wasn't stupid, just that the president should not have said so.) American h istory is full of these trivial incidents that get remembered forever just as if they were important (think of Johnson picking up his dog by the ears.)

This was not an incident the president should have been involved in. It's smooth handling of a crisis that should not have happened in the first place.

Meanwhile, the bomb is ticking on his health plan and that, I'm afraid, is going to be a real bomb. Obama is within inches of being a smooth but irrelevant president.

graeme

oh,I'm afraid that for all the talk about democracy and the power of the people, the reality is that power in the US is in the hands of the very, very rich. A president really has very little room for manoeuvre. At the basest level, every member of congress depends on financial contribution far more than on the president for re election. The very wealthy do not want government intervention in anything (except of course bailing them out and giving them war contracts). A real health care plan would involve setting up a public system for everybody. There is no way the private sector is going to tolerate that, and every congressman who accepts their monty knows that.

Obama cannot introduce a real health plan. He would be humiliated with a rebellion in  his own party. What we are going to see is a band aid which leaves the private system in control, and in a position to go on holding up the whole country for ransom.

graeme

I agree Graeme, the president erred big time in answering the question at the press conference.

He should have deflected it off and stuck to questions on his health care plans.

I don't agree it was a race issue.

The police were called to a potential break in by a neighbour.  They repsonded.

they found a broken door and two men.

They asked for and got ID.

That should have been the end but instead the owner, apparently over tired and worn out, got lippy with the police.  The police , one black and one white, got agressive back.

Everyone knows that you don't get lippy with police or customs people.  The momentary satisfaction is not worth the grief they can cause you.

They shouldn't have arrested the owner, I mean how lippy can you actually be before they arrest you, but the owner knew he was pushing buttons. 

I would have said it was more of a class thing than a race thing.  Police don't like to be talked down to by the wealthy and so they over reacted.

If Obama, usually a media savvy guy, had kept his mouth shut it would have just passed.

"The police were called to a potential break in by a neighbour.  They repsonded.

they found a broken door and two men.

They asked for and got ID."

Yews it was a race issue - a nieghbour phoned about two black men - note the issue is beginning - he handed out his id and then the police reacted more, as did the man in question.  If you have a history of being stopped because you are black then the overreaction is understandable.