TWO BIG FAILS IN PRESIDENT OBAMA'S POST- SAN BERNADINO TERRORISM SPEECH

If platitudes were pennies, President Obama would be a rich man after his non-noteworthy speech. Aside from that, there were two big problem with what he said. 

Obama San Bernadino speech fail #1 - It's a given that most sane people see tackling the gun issue as equal or greater problem than domestic terrorism but using the No Fly List to manage this is nonsensical. The post-09/11 No Fly List is a disaster full of arbitrarily selected names done in secret. The news is full of horror stories of innocent people who somehow ended up on this list and there have been many lawsuits most noticeably by the ACLU against the government on this.. People stopped from boarding flights in the past due to being on the list include Senator Ted Kennedy, Congressman John Lewis, and the guy who ran Ralph Nader's 2004 presidential campaign. The whole thing is silly - Based on the idea that terrorists would book flights under their own names LOL. I say scrap the No Fly List and start over with a list based on hard intelligence not arbitrary random criteria, secondhand gossip, and where people have traveled (unless there is a clear pattern).

Obama San Bernadino speech fail #2 - It was disheartening to see a tired, worn out Obama repeat that right wing trope about Muslims having to do a better job of condemning terrorism and policing themselves. Nobody asks that of any other group. When some white gunowner goes crazy and shoots up a public space, the opposite happens - People blame other things - mental health, absence of religion etc. It's also disheartening because it continues to perpetuate the false notion that all Muslims in the world are exactly the same, a sort of hivemind like the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I live in Malaysia, have visited Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, and an area of the old Yugoslavia where there were a lot of Muslims. In addition, I've taught Arabs, Africans, even Chinese and Russian Muslims and I can say that they share common religious rituals as Muslims but each one has retained their unique culture. My response to Bill Maher and other discredited idiots' point that surveys show Muslims around the world support stoning of women , sharia law etc. is that surveys in the USA show large numbers of Americans believe the president was born in Africa or that the moon landing was fake. People will tell surveys anything. What counts is how people behave.