MERGED: The Politics Thread

[SamV]

I happen yesterday to catch part of that little debate on Meet the Press and when host David Gregory called NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions' answer "gauzy" to his question about what the Republicans would do if they get back in to power in November, what came to my mind as I watched Sessions continue to stumble for an answer that would satisfy Mr. Gregory was that W.C. Fields had said it best, "If ya can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull."

And Sessions was really slinging the bull, cause the great fear of the NRC is that if they do take back the Congress this year, then the people who put them there will be expecting them to actually produce something to fix the mess the country is in. And unfortunately they have a dearth of workable ideas that won't violate their long-time mantras of smaller government, balancing the budget, lower taxes, etc, etc.

As one old time pol was known to quip, "Any jackass can solve a problem when there is a budget surplus, the trick is doing it when ya ain't got the money."

And then there was Sessions harping on 'living with-in our means" and balancing the budget. Well, I nearly fell out of my chair on that one. I mean if he was somehow alluding to the fact that the Repubs will finally be able to do something that thus far has alluded the Dems too, then he must have come down with that selective memory affliction that had been recently plaguing the Repubs and other conservative groups. I mean all he has to do is take a look at his own party's recent track record.

Since the Reagan revolution one only has to look at all the years the Repub's were in power under White House administrations of both parties and they *failed* to produce a balance budget. The only time this country even had a budgetary surplus was during the last couple years of the Clinton administration. Other than that it was deficits all the way for all those years. Of course I suppose you can always go back to cooking the books like the Bush administration was doing when they kept the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars out of the budget because the Bush administration didn't want the true costs of the wars known, not to mention how it would increase the deficits in the budget and thus make them reflect how bad they really were.

I could go on, but why bother. Along with the rest of his party, Chairman Sessions obviously hasn't a clue on how to fix the country's problems other than serving up to the Repub faithful "warm and fuzzy" platitudes while hosting fund raisers at family oriented Las Vegas strip clubs.  

[BillN]

That's what so tragic right now.  The conservative voters look at the GOP and say "Well?", only to get back "I got nothin', sorry".   

[pedonbio]

That's what so tragic right now.  The conservative voters look at the GOP and say "Well?", only to get back "I got nothin', sorry".   

Bill, I know what you mean. From somebody on the left, I have to say that I had hoped that Obama would at least crank up some of the least controversial of the New Deal programs, particularly the CCC and the WPA, both of which created jobs, mostly to build or rebuild infrastructure. I hope that eventually he will get around to that. In my book anyone who has an adequate source of income other than a job is "rich" and can never understand what unemployment means.

BUT that being said, at least during the Great Depression there was discussion and argument in the Republican Party about proposals that might have worked better, or cheaper, or whatever. But now there is absolutely nothing. It's like they have talking points, but it was bizarre to watch Meet The Press--That jerk said, and I listened carefully, that the way to balance the budget was to balance the budget. It's like they've got nothing to offer except cutting taxes for rich people. That has worked so-o-o-o very well.

[Lula La Rose]

Republicans?  Democrats?  Gimme a break, what's the difference any more?

Both those groups want to manage my life, tell me what to do, tell me what I can't do, protect me from myself, lie to me about their intentions then do whatever they want in office, draft laws that are so inordinately long and cumbersome that it is literally impossible for anyone to read or understand them before signing them into law, spend money we don't have, wage wars we can't afford, and generally offer up as the most compelling argument that the "other guy" is a piece of crap.

Gimme a break.  We've become a senseless mob of a country with the majority of people wasting all of their energy picking a side then bashing the other, with neither really offering up any solutions that work.

I truly believe we've suffered a trend towards some profound political retardation, incapable of reasoning out sound solutions, ignoring the realities of the mistakes that have been made, and compounding those mistakes by doing the same old things over and over again expecting a different result.  Definition of insanity?

At some point the good ol' USA's thirst for endless credit and no fiscal accountability will implode upon itself.  The idiocy seems to be the unstoppable force, and financial meltdown is the impending immovable object.

Oh, and I have massive boobs.

[Real]

i feel you lula, thing is that in politics more than anything else the lesser of two evils matters.

corporate status quo party > throw money at the rich or youre a commie party.

open bigotry against mexicans, muslims and gays, 500 billion worth of tax cuts for the rich while you fight two wars, the amalgamation of church and state (christian only of course) , lying to start decade long wars, moving science backward in the name of plagiarized sumarian fairy tales. and on and on...

as dissapointing as both parties are, there are huge differences between the two that make tangible differences in people's lives.

one thing i think we can all agree on though;  your boobs are great

[Lula La Rose]

i feel you lula, thing is that in politics more than anything else the lesser of two evils matters.

corporate status quo party > throw money at the rich or youre a commie party.

open bigotry against mexicans, muslims and gays, 500 billion worth of tax cuts for the rich while you fight two wars, the amalgamation of church and state (christian only of course) , lying to start decade long wars, moving science backward in the name of plagiarized sumarian fairy tales. and on and on...

as dissapointing as both parties are, there are huge differences between the two that make tangible differences in people's lives.

one thing i think we can all agree on though;  your boobs are great

Thanks on the boobs comment!  I haven't always felt that way, but I've come to embrace them!

To me, I look at the 2 parties and I see these same things that I believe will inevitably collapse our financial system, which will cause more hurt, famine and destruction than any policy either touts:

1. Both have given up any semblance of fiscal responsibility.  The deficit increases to monstrous record proportions every year, republican or democrat.
2. Both have started far reaching new programs that cost huge sums of money, with no way of paying for it, again, skyrocketing the deficit.
3. Neither studies history.  Every country, and I mean every country in the past that has had massive social statist programs and funded wars with fiat currencies has destroyed itself financially.
4. Neither even pretends to give credence to the Constitution and the intentions of the founders of our country.  The principals this country was founded on was the primary reason for it's early supremacy and economic stability.

One party gave us a health care debacle that blatantly favors one group of citizens (unions) over others, hasn't any way of being funded, forces people into buying a product from a private company and fines them if they don't, and puts the cost (and debt) on to us all.

The other pays only lip service to financial reform, having been a major thrust behind our current Iraq quagmire, and tacitly approving the numerous other military engagements we're mired in, again, thrusting us deeper into indebtedness, shacking generations to come with impossible debt burdens (assuming our currency even exists into those generations)

When one speaks of tangible differences to people's lives as reasons for favor of one of the major parties over the other, they must realize they are talking about temporary advantages for one class of people or another, and that these advantages, as well as the financial and political stability of the country as a whole, will come crumbling down under the weight of these entitlements sooner than one might think.  Which will render those tangible differences moot.

Ugh.

And I came here to talk boobies!

[Real]

well i dont know if giving gays the same rights as everyone else for example is putting one group over another.  im sure social "conservatives" who want to mind other people's business (oxymoron) its simply not allowing religious supremacists to infringe on others in a free country.

i still think when xenophobia is the main sentiment you try to trump up to energize your base, youve gone way off track.  that doesnt make the other party perfect, but imo it means you have no business in power.

also clinton did balance the budget, breifly.  theres no quick fix for anything.  but in my view one party is at least, if only for the sake of their own skin, trying.  the other is frothing and raging just like they did the first half of last decade, and we know how that turned out..

[3deroticer]

We got problems for sure.

We have the GOP saying that gov't is the problem at the same time they work for the corporation that fund them with lobbyist to the point that the people no longer have a voice anymore. Gov't is the corporation. Its a popular creed for any campaign to say that gov't is corrupt, but its a slight of hand in keeping the corruption in order to have a platform to fight it. Cut education spending and declare it pork, as the recent GOP have called it while beef up military spending and cut tax for the Rich, the mass will not know any better and succumb to the "Idiocracy" future state into believing that the "Rich" people are our security and future.

Then after 8 years of getting where we are, the writing were on the walls that GOP had a dim future of getting elected, Corporation throw money at the Democrats, and we end up so disgusted at GOP that we blindly elect the lesser of 2 evil, ending up with blue-dog Democrats and unable to get public option health-care and instead get one that favors the insurance company with mandatory insurance plan. There is hope for coming election to clean out more corporate sponsor candidate. A surprising campaign of a little known out of work army veteran candidate that won with a landslide over the heavily funded GOP that ran against him. They cried foul play, not coming to term that people are getting fed up with corporate funded election. We need more of that getting to know your grassroot and getting more involve with election.

2 things scare me, letting a corporation that made the mess in the gulf in charge of cleanup with extreme secrecy of the ocean floor, and knowing that the formerly known as "Blackwater" soldier are more armed and in numbers than our own federal military, that are made up of soldier from all over the world with no allegiance to our nation, that are doing the bidding of the wealthiest among us. Remember we now live in a world where the top 5% earn more cash than the rest of the 95% put together. One of the reason we had 90% tax on the wealthiest is to keep a strong middle class that can afford college and make better decision on gov't.

It is my dream to see corporation strip of their citizenship and end corporate corruption and realize that for any business to survive, they will have no morals in order to stay on top.

[SamV]

<snip> also clinton did balance the budget, breifly.

I think it wasn't so much that the Clinton administration policies were able to produce a balanced budget in the last few years of his 2nd term but more due to the fact we we're in the midst of another earlier investment bubble - the tech bubble.

As I seem to recall the budgetary surplus amounted to a few $100 billion in those years, and I also seem to recall the nation's long term debt as reflected on the NYC debt clock still increased in those years, but at a marginally slower rate.

So you had what seemed like every investor out there making money hand over fist by putting their money in any cock-eyed scheme that had anything at all to do with the Internet or technology in general. And in those late 1990 years when all these people made such killings and had to declare them in their Federal income taxes the resulting additional income flooded in to the coffers of the US Treasury resulting in monetary surpluses.

But as the Clinton administration was winding down in 2000 by then the bubble had burst, and like the recent real estate bubble, any guys on the trailing edge of it were left holding the bag and were the ones who ended up taking the loss. As a result any surplus the government had by the time George Bush took office in Jan 01 had long since evaporated, and would only grow worst as the country headed in to another recession because of all the business and investment failures in the tech sector. Of course in typical Repub style Bush proposed cutting taxes as a stimulus to try and keep the US economic engine going.

And who knows it might have worked, or at the very least mitigated some of the pain from the resulting recession, if not for the fact that the 9/11 attacks happened, which only exacerbated the problem. You may recall that a lot of businesses, even those outside the NY financial sector, were shaken to their very cores for weeks and even months afterwards when the World Trade Center complex was destroyed.

So here we are a decade later suffering though a much larger and more wide-spread recession brought on again by people's stupid greediness, and dealing with all the social and economic turmoil that was created and left in the wake of people treating land, homes, and business buildings like they were ATMs. Yep, thanks to a bunch of over-eager, if not downright criminal, real-estate agents, lenders, bankers, and financial "whiz-kids", who created investment vehicles so complex, even the CEO's of their own companies didn't understand them. Those guys got away with it even as they lined their own pockets. And to such an extent that they almost collapsed not only the US economy, but the global one too.  In comparison to what these guys did Charles Ponzi and his little international postage stamp scheme was positively penny-ante. Hell any one of these investment "thugs" make even Bernie Madoff look like a piker.

Yet here come the Repubs pushing their usual hands-off type government, free-markets, balance the budget type of approach to solve this crisis and to get the economic wheels turning again. The only problem is the last time this was tried after a huge speculative bubble burst resulting in an equally major economic downturn was by the Hoover administration the day after Oct 29, 1929. The result was to only deepen the effects of the economic downturn as it slid in in to something that would be known as the Great Depression.  

[pedonbio]

I have to disagree with you Sam, in that one of the few things Clinton did very well was to keep unemployment very low. Credit should be given to Robert Reich, Clinton's Secretary of Labor, who had written extensively about the connection between unemployment and budget deficits and who worked throughout the Clinton Administration to keep real unemployment low.

This has been a very long-term struggle; real unemployment is figured on a bottom-up methodology, and is now about 17%, down from the 22% it hit at the end of the Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, presidents of both parties have jiggered unemployment numbers to make themselves look better until now about half the unemployed workers don't count.

Whenever the real unemployment rate gets below 4%, the federal budget gets balanced. Reich is a guy who deals with reality, so he is unpopular with most politicians.

[JJ]

OBAMA - MORE RACIST than healing?


================================

Jewish World Review July 20, 2010 / 9 Menachem-Av 5770

Race Card Fraud

By Thomas Sowell


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Credit card fraud is a serious problem. But race card fraud is an even bigger problem.

Playing the race card takes many forms. Judge Charles Pickering, a federal judge in Mississippi who defended the civil rights of blacks for years and defied the Ku Klux Klan back when that was dangerous, was depicted as a racist when he was nominated for a federal appellate judgeship.

No one even mistakenly thought he was a racist. The point was simply to discredit him for political reasons -- and it worked.

This year's target is the Tea Party. When leading Democrats, led by a smirking Nancy Pelosi, made their triumphant walk on Capitol Hill, celebrating their passage of a bill in defiance of public opinion, Tea Party members on the scene protested.

All this was captured on camera and the scene was played on television. What was not captured on any of the cameras and other recording devices on the scene was anybody using racist language, as has been charged by those playing the race card.

When you realize how many media people were there, and how many ordinary citizens carry around recording devices of one sort or another, it is remarkable -- indeed, unbelievable -- that racist remarks were made and yet were not captured by anybody.

The latest attack on the Tea Party movement, by Ben Jealous of the NAACP, has once again played the race card. Like the proverbial lawyer who knows his case is weak, he shouts louder.

This is not the first time that an organization with an honorable and historic mission has eventually degenerated into a tawdry racket. But that an organization like the NAACP, after years of fighting against genuine racism, should now be playing the game of race card fraud is especially painful to see.


Some critics of the Tea Party have seized upon banners carried at one of its rallies that compared Obama with Hitler and Stalin. Extreme? Yes. But there was nothing racist about it, since extreme comparisons have been made about politicians of every race, color, creed, nationality, ideology and sexual preference.

Some Obama supporters have long regarded any criticism of him as racism. But that they should have to resort to such a banner to bolster their case shows how desperate they are for any evidence.

Among people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, those who are likely to be most disappointed are those who thought that they were voting for a new post-racial era. There was absolutely nothing in Obama's past to lead to any such expectation, and much to suggest the exact opposite. But the man's rhetoric and demeanor during the election campaign enabled this and many other illusions to flourish.

Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with.

On race, as on other issues, different people have radically different views of Barack Obama, depending on whether they judge him by what he says or by what he does.

As Obama's own books point out, he has for years cultivated a talent for saying things that people will find congenial.

You want bipartisanship and an end to bickering in Washington? He will say that he wants bipartisanship and an end to bickering in Washington. Then he will shut Republicans out of the decision-making process and respond to their suggestions by reminding them that he won the election. A famous writer -- Ring Lardner, I believe -- once wrote: "'Shut up,' he explained."

You want a government that is open instead of secretive? He will say that. He will promise to post proposed legislation on the Internet long enough for everyone to read it and know what is in it before there is a vote. In practice, however, he has rushed massive bills through Congress too fast for anybody -- even the members of Congress -- to know what was in those bills.

Racial issues are more of the same. You want a government where all citizens are treated alike, regardless of race or ethnicity? Obama will say that. Then he will advocate appointing judges with "empathy" for particular segments of the population, such as racial minorities. "Empathy" is just a pretty word for the ugly reality of bias.

Obama's first nomination of a Supreme Court justice was a classic example of someone with "empathy" for some racial groups, but not others. As a Circuit Court judge, Sonia Sotomayor voted to dismiss a case involving white firefighters who had been denied the promotions for which they qualified, because not enough blacks or Hispanics passed the same test that they did.

A fellow Hispanic judge protested the way the white firefighters' case was dismissed, rather than adjudicated. Moreover, the Supreme Court not only took the case, it ruled in favor of the firefighters.

Obama's injecting himself into a local police matter in Massachusetts, despite admitting that he didn't know the facts, to say that a white policeman was in the wrong in arresting a black professor who was a friend of Obama, was more of the same. So is Obama's Justice Department overlooking blatant voter intimidation by thugs who happen to be black.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.

Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race card fraud.

[Real]

this guy calls race card fraud?  

because the organization that just had  to boot one of their biggest organizers for being racist has been accused of...having racist elements?

nah, maybe ill call that on jj right now for this being the very first time he's every just randomly decided to post the picture of one of his copy-pastes lmao.  coincidence im sure.

i actually do feel sorry for real fiscal conservatives (maybe half of the folks who identify themselves as tea-partiers), but when you hitch your train to religious crazies, laissez faire corporatists and....racists, you should already know by ideological definition that youre being played.

then this guy goes ahead and plays the race card on elena kagan's supreme court nomination?  definitely strained himself reaching for that one.  and voided the entire point he was trying to make.  exposing himself, whatever his race, as just another tit for tat partisan.

you really need to start reading some of this stuff before you post it jj, just abysmal lol...

[3deroticer]

When you realize how many media people were there, and how many ordinary citizens carry around recording devices of one sort or another, it is remarkable -- indeed, unbelievable -- that racist remarks were made and yet were not captured by anybody.

The latest attack on the Tea Party movement, by Ben Jealous of the NAACP, has once again played the race card. Like the proverbial lawyer who knows his case is weak, he shouts louder.

I like this part the best! We have pictures and comment of racist remarks on file from a Tea Party even, and Chris Matthews just did a special on his segment called "rise of the new rights", and yet he does a 180 where not a single person filed a complaint of the black panther intimidation at the polls.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/16/chris-matthews-documentary-rise-of-the-new-right-a-curveball/

[onion_writer]

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Credit card fraud is a serious problem. But race card fraud is an even bigger problem.

May I point out that this is not only the world's worst news lede, it is racist itself, in that it supports the idiot myth that Jews care most about money?

Come on! Credit cards first? Why even mention them at all. Sheesh. Not at all comparable, and it's like a parody from The Onion.

[JJ]

Memo to Liberals -  YOU RE OUTNUMBERED !

From NBC's Mark Murray
As the liberal blogosphere confab, Netroots Nation, kicks off today in Las Vegas, it will inevitably further the "Why are progressives disappointed in Obama?" storyline.

In the past few months, liberal commentators have bemoaned that the public option wasn’t included in the health care law, that the financial reform legislation -- which President Obama signed into law yesterday -- isn’t strong enough, and that Gitmo still isn't closed. The Nation's Eric Alterman even penned a widely discussed essay explaining these disappointments on a system that's stacked against progressives.

But here is something to consider: It's the country -- not the system -- that's stacked against liberals and progressives.

From 1989 (after Reagan's presidency) to now, the most stable data in the NBC/WSJ poll has been that roughly one-fifth of the country identifies as being liberal, while one-third identifies being conservative. Even in 2008, when Obama decisively won the presidency, the average in the poll was 25% liberal, 36% conservative. And in 1996, when Bill Clinton easily won re-election, it was 22% liberal, 34% conservative.

For Democrats, this means that if they want to win national elections, they need to win about 60% of the self-described moderate vote -- which Obama did in '08 and congressional Dems did in '06, per the exit polls. By comparison, however, John Kerry got 54% of the moderate vote in 2004.

So the bigger question for Democrats and liberals shouldn't be: "Why isn't Obama's presidency more progressive?" Instead, it should be: "Why isn't the country more progressive?"

During the '08 presidential campaign, Obama declared (controversially at the time): "Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

He was correct.

Indeed, progressives -- as well as historians -- might better judge Obama 10 to 15 years from now on whether his administration was able to bend the trajectory of American politics like Reagan did after '88.

============================================

Obama man view of the Presidency ?

[onion_writer]

At 76%, this level of job approval is below any the Fox News poll has ever recorded.

OMG! The lowest approval by Democrats FOX has ever recorded? Since the creation of FOX news late in . . . 1996?

Well, I am certainly not one to argue with a 14 year-old-news organization! Especially since we've only had one other Democrat president during FOX's loooooong history of reporting and polling. The approval of more than 3 in 4 Democrats would seem to be very positive, but FOX says "no," and I believe it!

On the other hand, when FOX -- the mental Lindsay Lohan of news -- is old enough to have sex or drink, then I may have a few objections.

Meanwhile, I look forward to 2012, when FOX can apply for a learner's permit and begin to drive.

In 2014, when it's legal, I'll take FOX out and bang it in the backseat of my car. It acts like it needs a boyfriend. Desperately. It passes notes in class too often.

[BillN]

*onion_writer's got a girlfriend, onion_writer's got a girlfriend*   

[Shara]

nice lil analogy there

[Real]

you mean a country that openly hates gays, effects revenge murder on convicts, regards a republican health plan as "socialist", invents it's way into wars, cuts taxes for the rich during 2 wars, puts religion and partisanship over educational science and fact, elected george w twice and hasnt laughed sara palin into politial oblivion leans to the right?

you dont say JJ.  as you can tell from 95% of my posts in this thread that comes as a complete shock lol....

no actually that was pitiful as usual lol...

[onion_writer]

None of this is really about Obama, or about adult, reasonable discussion.

I welcome conflicting views and debate, but this is about the de facto fascist ideal peddled by FOX News. Anyone for Fr. Coughlin? (Google it.) Because we're reliving the past. We Americans get very small-minded when we're scared, and I freely admit that there's a whole lot to be scared of these days.

Edward R. Murrow called down Sen. McCarthy and his red scare in the '50s. I wish we had a similar journalistic giant to stand up today -- but media has so splintered; there are no giants.

Anyway, it's fascism, and I call it FOXcism, and I hope to see the term spread. Believe in the aryan ideal. Hate the outsider. Fight not only for your nation's boundaries, but for your state's.

[Real]

Basically.  Dont forget: Grovel and throw money at industrialists.  Then at least you can play george w and pretend they arent going to sent all that extra dough overseas for their own benefit.

[ThisIsNotMyName]

Cut and pasted, as if you can't tell:

Groucho| 7.26.10 @ 5:35PM

The problem with this article is that it doesn't go far enough.

See, blacks have been keeping the white man down for too long, and now it's time for the white man to rise up and take what's his, and the libs don't like it.

That's because the libs are fascists. Which means they espouse a fascist ideology in their own lib way.

They're also communists, everyone knows that, which means they're statists. And since they're statists, they're liberals -- or, rather, Nazis.

If you ever study history you'll learn that the founder of the modern racist Nazi movement was Woodrow Wilson, and he was the first to build concentration camps like the ones FEMA has started constructing to kill Republicans.

Then, in the 1960s, they started changing the text books so they didn't say that Indians used to sneak into villages and steal children so they could eat.

Hillary Clinton eats babies. Bill Clinton eats babies too.

Illegal aliens have given AZ the highest crime rate in America. Once, I found the coolest toad living under the stairs of my porch. I sort of got down on my knees and said, Hello Mr. Toad.

And you know what?

That horny little pimply fucker started speaking to me. And he said:

"It's time to take back this country back. You have to learn about your history -- for real this time. Not like you learned in history class from 'historians' or 'experts' or 'people who write books.' No, you have to learn about the Spirit of 1776 from Glenn Beck and on Sarah Palin's **24** page."

What an awesome toad! What a cool little reptile!

And that toad was also worried about the blacks enslaving America and getting even for all those years of racism, which is why Oprah is so popular and Michael Jordan played basketball so well.

No, I'm not gonna give any context. It's not worth the effort, and I don't link to sites I see no worth in having read beyond the amusement of watching idiots demagogue for sport and profit. If you never have to read this trash down to where that awesome toad lives, well, thank the Lord for small favors. Calling the article that spawned the train-wreck of a comments thread where I met Mr. Toad reprehensible is a gross understatement. It's the kind of thing a tea-party follower would fall in love with, for all the wrong reasons. I won't be surprised if it gets refudiated and disappearizated soon. It's that vile.

I dare you to find it, and read that far.

But I do believe I'll make my intent of parodying a certain participant here perfectly clear:

[JJ]

the 'Bama man in office, 2010....................another view

[Real]

dude, retarded is not spelled d-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-t  lol.

here's a couple copy-pastes for you

heres your leadership from another right wing bigot with the nerve to wrap themselves in the constitution only to spit on the first amendment.
"Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." - Sarah Palin

but i have to admit; of the many things you can call this next one "courageous" might be very apt.  but then so would "old age dementia"
"I think she's most qualified of any that has run recently for vice president, tell you the truth." - John McCain

[JJ]

the 2010 reign of the "Bama man.............

[Real]

now that's a knee slapper all racists can enjoy...

[SamV]

As state after state passes proof of citizenship laws the Prez will just have to do the same as the rest of us.

When stopped by the right wing fascist gestapo, flip out your papers for them.   

And they dare to call Obama a fascist.

Sam "wanting to flip something else out for them instead" V

[JJ]

More hilarity, fun, LOL and other humorous things of that nature from that Obama boy and his Summer of Love, 2010 - Adventures in the White House

[onion_writer]

Not to feed the troll, but this is a common fallacy. The media are accused of "covering up" issues ranging from Obama's birth certificate to aliens at Area 51.

But where do people learn of of these alleged cover-ups?

From the media, of course.

[Shara]

de-re-medialisation 

[JJ]

Barry Obama and his presidency - Political rumblings, ruminations and rants............

My Turn -  

It's always fun and instructive to see how some have so little understanding of posts in this thread. (LOL as one unreal poster likes to say) Take posting style for one. As an example there are basically two ways of posting political fodder.

The first is to post your own stuff.  Horrors that you would post somebody elses stuff.  Shades of George Carlin and his stuff!  But in posting your own stuff, there is always the danger that one will expose how little one really knows about national politics regarding the thread theme, Barack Husein Obama.  Sadly, that is what happens here all too often.  There is always hope that such posters will, in time, get better at organization of their thoughts.  Let's hope for the best, as the current crop of posts are at times barely passable as readable and coherent.

Then there is the other way of posting here.  For example, what better model to follow than reposting the words of a William F. Buckley, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, all leaders in American political thought and philosophy.  That at least kicks discussion into a higher gear, bypassing the frequent errors - the unprofessional omission of capital letters, the horrible paragraph construction and the general lack of continuity of logic in a post.

Then there's the problem of posters who run out of gas and simply head for the hills, left with nothing to say here or anywhere else.  They sometimes leave a trail behind that says "I give up on this thread", perhaps their way of realizing they are in over their heads.  However we leave this discussion for another day.  

Your additions and subtractions to this post are welcomed.    

[JJ]

The R E A L problem for the inexperienced President - how to run against somebody other than George W. Bush?

Remember him?


The Un-Obama Governors
Jennifer Rubin - 07.29.2010 - 9:02 AM

Gov. Chris Christie continues to earn kudos from conservatives and liberals alike. Gov. Bob McDonnell has a 64 percent approval after less than a year as Virginia’s governor. Both Christie and McDonnell are garnering praise for doing what inside-the-Beltway Democrats refuse to do — cut spending, resist calls to hike taxes, and stand up to public-employee unions. They, and others like Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, and Tim Pawlenty, undermine the Democrats’ patter that Republicans are too wacky or too unrealistic to govern. They provide a vivid contrast to Obamaism and to the notion that only by a massive increase in the size of government and corresponding tax increases can we pull out of our economic tailspin.

Any one of these conservatives would be a formidable rival to Obama in 2012. Obama will no doubt try, as he did in 2008, to run against someone not on the ballot — George W. Bush. By 2012 that will, I suspect, provoke groans if not laughter. The choice, if Republican primary voters are savvy, will not be Obama vs. Bush but Obama vs. a not-Obama reformer.

As Noemie Emery points out, it didn’t have to be this way. She explains that Obama could have lived up to his billing as a transformative leader if, on ObamaCare, for example, he had “built the bill out from the center, in a way that held on to the unhappy left, appealed to the center, and became a wedge issue that split Republicans.” Obama, in contrast to the GOP governors who are drawing applause from those on both ends of the political spectrum, has undermined his own popularity, his party’s electoral prospects, and his own agenda. (”Since Obama became president, everything that he wants has become more unpopular: more intrusive and much bigger government, more taxing and spending, more state control.”)

In sum, Obama has opened the way for any number of reformist, grown-up Republicans to present voters with a choice in 2012 and an alternate vision to the liberal statism against which voters have already rebelled.

Link here.........
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/335061

[gOOber]

"Good evening ... we'll have the highlights of the President's 'State of the Union' address, but we'll begin with this breaking news about actress Lindsay Lohan."

[SamV]

<snip>For example, what better model to follow than reposting the words of a William F. Buckley, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, all leaders in American political thought and philosophy.

HUH? SAY WHAT?

Okay somebody as erudite and symbolistic as Bill Buckley I would agree is certainly a leader in political thought and perhaps philosophy too.

And I'll give old Newt the benefit of the doubt too as he is a professor and has doctorate in history. After all history does tend to overlap with both politics and philosophy and vise versa.

But RUSH LIMBAUGH!??? The man who as "Jeff Christie" that I listened to as spun rock and roll records as an afternoon DJ, before getting fired. Who never made it though a college or any other form of higher education and whose own mother said, "he flunked everything." Who if Bill Buckley ever had a run in with him would probably rip him a new one over how he and the other "conservatainment" jokers on the air have perverted true American conservatism. This is one of the men you hold up as a leader in political thought and philosophy?

I've said many times before that IMO most talking heads, political or otherwise, and on both sides, usually issue most of the punditry from an orifice somewhere much lower on their body; but when it comes to Rush he is one talking heard who always speaks out of his ass.  

[sidewalkpsycho]

*copy-pastes some far-right article followed by a cartoon*


Haha, you're wrong!