holy shit, are we in 2008 again

11/11/2010 1:20:15 PM

Panel established by the stimulus bill to investigate waste and fraud will be meeting at the Ritz Carlton: http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/11/09/2010-28243/agenda-and-notice-of-partially-closed-meeting-of-the-recovery-independent-advisory-panel

The U.S. nobility knows no shame.

11/12/2010 10:10:28 AM

I've seen a few stories following post-election attitudes. Basically, the sentiment from Obama and the Democrats has been that the election was first and foremost a referendum on the economy, and that if it was somehow a rejection of policy, it's a P.R. problem. Here's my take on that.

The Obama wave of 2008 was 100% packaging and mass appeal. Hillary was a superior candidate, but Obama had the image and charisma. He was accused of lacking substance, though. When he entered office with a Democratic majority, it was a legislative free for all. Anything and everything was thrown in. There was never a principled debate on health care, or the economy, or anything like that. Packaging was literally the only thing they had going for them, so for them to now switch the narrative to, "we just didn't communicate effectively," is, to me, an admission that they have nothing of value to offer. The Obama presidency has been a disaster thus far, and I don't see him reversing course now. I'd like to know what kind of strategy Democratic insiders are talking about, because pretending 2010 didn't happen is not going to work.

11/13/2010 1:55:03 PM

The presidency has been fine. The democratic congress has always sucked and only managed to gain power by riding Obama's coattails.

11/13/2010 3:07:13 PM

Quote :

"Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain’s campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate. Not a chance. “I probably won’t even vote for the guy,” Bush told the group, according to two people present.“I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me. "

http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2010/11/bush-i-probably-wont-even-vote-for-mccain/
if true

11/14/2010 11:31:52 AM

I wouldn't think the two would like each other that much, they ran a pretty brutal campaign against one another in the primaries.

11/14/2010 12:08:42 PM

Not much talk of O striking out overseas here.

11/14/2010 2:54:55 PM

NEWS FLASH!!!! Obama a failure!!!!........are you kidding me ABC? It's like you Leftist Loons in the Old dying Media just don't matter anymore. Hey ABC.......GO AWAY! And take NBC and CBS with you. MARXIST=DEMOCRATS=TERRORIST All the same.

Did we expect anything less? We kicked him out of this country, visa via the election hammering, and he ran away like a scared puppy. Now the global community is not having his amateurism either. Good riddance, never come back please. I hear Darfur needs a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER.

I listened to his Q & A from the Press after his 'speech' at the G-20. It is stunning how f-ing stupid, incoherent and out of touch to reality this imposter is. It's truly frightening. We're getting rolled by the rest of the world and this fool just takes it in the ass like a jailhouse punk. Catch it on C-SPAN if you dare. Afterward, you'll start buying Gold and survival kits.

11/14/2010 2:59:58 PM

here you go:

Quote :

"An American with experience in Southeast Asia writes about the president's handling of the Indonesian language and an Indonesian crowd, as mentioned previously here. Worth reading as a complement to the recent narrative of the trip as another disappointment. The positive receptions for Obama in India or Indonesia do not change the significance of the failure to reach an expected trade agreement with Korea. But they're worth keeping in the balance as part of the record of the trip -- and judging whether, as described in many stories, Obama has completely dimmed as an international figure. The reader says: >>What a performance this was. I can't remember a President making a personal connection with a foreign audience so naturally and with so much grace. The substance of the speech was remarkably on point and subtly conscious of the Indonesian political context (see, for example, the section beginning around minute 16). The personal touches could have come from no other American politician; they were all Obama. I was much more impressed by this speech than I have been by many Obama has made to domestic audiences that received high praise when they were made. Obama had an ally in the Indonesian language, which rewards short periods of intense study. I well remember starting from scratch with Bahasa Indonesia in Bali during my backpacking period years ago, and emerging six weeks later in Medan able to handle myself in common situations in restaurants, bus stations and the like. As in most countries, of course, the effort made drew appreciative notice, but after leaving Indonesia for Bangkok I made the same effort with Thai and got absolutely nowhere. I was thinking while listening to the Jakarta speech about the FSOs [Foreign Service Officers] we have working for us in Indonesia, for whom a Presidential visit must be a source of some apprehension. In their position, one would hope a visiting President would at least not make their jobs any harder, and might through words and gestures generate the kind of goodwill that opens the odd door here and there. Those folks must be just flying today.<< The part starting at around minute 16 was a subtle but firm comment on Indonesia's great historic problem -- corruption and cronyism, at its height in the Suharto era -- but also on the current apparent success of the Chinese developmental model, which makes a controlled society seem economically efficient. The latter point will be argued and tested for many years, but Obama did make the "democracy is ultimately more powerful" case. Update: another note just in on the same topic, making an interesting language point. A reader with experience outside the US writes: >>If I can just make one brief point about Obama's pronunciation skills. This is something that I've found extraordinarily impressive about the man. I'm fairly certain that he's the only American-born politician who insists on pronouncing Pakistan and Taliban properly (Taleeb-awn) and he manages to do it in a way that doesn't sound affected. He also pronounces Sonia Sotomayor's name properly, but in the same way as he did "Indonesia" in the speech. He says it properly the first time, and then, knowing that English doesn't flow properly with some foreign languages, he reverts back to the anglicized version for the remainder of the speech. It's almost a microcosm of him (respectful, thoughtful and then quickly pragmatic).<< You can hear the "local" pronunciation of Indonesia, with an obviously different "e" sound and a subtly different "s" sound, ten seconds into Obama's Jakarta speech, and then the anglicized versions thereafter. "

from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/11/more-on-obama-in-indonesia/66482/

^ummm. what?

[Edited on November 14, 2010 at 3:02 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2010 3:00:50 PM

i copied three random comments from "ABCNEWS: Obama strikes out in Asia..." that i found through drudge and made one super-post with them

[Edited on November 14, 2010 at 3:12 PM. Reason : ~]

11/14/2010 3:10:44 PM

^I like the way so many of Them are using Capitalization for all the Important Words.

11/14/2010 3:12:41 PM

i was confused because your first couple statements seemed to be taking issue with someone from the msm saying that obama was a failure. and then the rest pretty much said the opposite.

11/14/2010 3:12:46 PM

i think the first statement was more "it took the msm this long to figure out obama is a failure?"

11/14/2010 3:17:10 PM

regardless of what it said or where it came from, it would definitely get my vote for post of the year

11/14/2010 3:55:55 PM

d357r0y3r is gonna be one sad puppy when Obama is reelected in 2012 because to GOP has nobody except the same people that ran in 2008 to put up against him. Have you got your Sarah Palin 2012 bumper sticker yet? That was the problem with the dems when W was reelected (even though W sucked and will go down as one of the worse presidents ever), the GOP is going to have the same problem.

W accomplished getting us into two wars, one of we will not win (hello Soviet Union, they failed also)....Iraq, probably will slowly go back to a Hussein type leader.....and of course he was the one that destroyed the economy....oh yeah, before the planes hit the World Trade Center, terrorism was not even on his radar as something to be concerned about (Osama who????).



[Edited on November 14, 2010 at 8:38 PM. Reason : w]

11/14/2010 8:32:38 PM

My bumper stickers are on order, they should be here any day now.

11/14/2010 11:25:36 PM

^^I too think Obama will get reelected, now that he can actually blame someone else. Blaming a party with no power just looked petty. If you give W credit for getting us into a no win war, do you not give any blame to O for keeping us there/sending more troops?

11/15/2010 9:49:17 AM

O has drastically reduced the number of troops in Iraq, which was the war that had the least support and the most number of soliders deployed.

11/15/2010 10:29:30 AM

I bet Ron Paul would have reduced troop numbers a lot more.

11/15/2010 12:06:51 PM

^^he was talking about Afghanistan. hence the Russia hint.

11/15/2010 12:35:42 PM

Quote :

"I bet Ron Paul would have reduced troop numbers a lot more."

And Santa Claus probably would have reduced all the troops and made it Christmas year round, but niether has a chance at being president.

Quote :

"he was talking about Afghanistan. hence the Russia hint."

Credit where credit is due.

11/15/2010 12:50:47 PM

but no "credit" for taking more troops into the "a war we will not win"?

11/15/2010 1:38:55 PM

It's amazing to me how quickly the left stopped giving a shit about the wars. Have some god damn courage and criticize any adminstration that perpetuates this war machine, regardless of party. It's impossible to take progressives seriously when their "principles" seem so closely linked to Democratic party electoral concerns.

11/15/2010 2:30:46 PM

^Applying that same concept to all parties and ideologies:

It is impossible to take American politics seriously.

11/15/2010 2:35:32 PM

Party politics, maybe. Ron Paul has been saying the same thing his entire career though. He was anti-war when literally the entire party establishment was against him, and he was happy to work with Democrats on that. Principles should always come before party loyalty, and really, party loyalty shouldn't exist at all.

11/15/2010 2:45:10 PM

Quote :

"It's amazing to me how quickly the left stopped giving a shit about the wars. Have some god damn courage and criticize any adminstration that perpetuates this war machine, regardless of party. It's impossible to take progressives seriously when their "principles" seem so closely linked to Democratic party electoral concerns."

I, as well as most on the left, strongly supported the war in afganistan. I didn't care that much about nation building, but I wanted them to kill OBL, hell I still do.

Quote :

"Ron Paul has been saying the same thing his entire career though."

Not when it comes to racist newsletter articles. He's changed his tone when it comes "whitey shooting animals".

11/15/2010 6:39:05 PM

You've never heard Ron Paul say anything remotely racist, because he isn't racist. The ghostwriter incident was not an example of something where he backpedaled. He said it was an oversight, that he was sorry, and that was it. If that's all you've got, then okay.

Is what we're doing in Afghanistan? Killing OBL? We've spent a decade, billions of dollars, and many lives rebuilding the country and overthrowing the regime that was there? Somehow, I don't think he's just going to come out of hiding now. Like I said in another thread, we completely tipped our hand in the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. He knew we were after him pretty much immediately. Just because most on the left supported the initial police action doesn't mean they should support the war as it exists now.

11/15/2010 9:47:48 PM

Quote :

"You've never heard Ron Paul say anything remotely racist, because he isn't racist."

Yeah, someone unnamed person randomly wrote a bunch of crazy racist shit under Ron Paul's name in Ron Paul's newsletter to hurt him politically should he run several years later and somehow Ron Paul didn't notice. Come on, what kind of mental gymnastics are you willing to do to believe that Ron Paul is god's child?

Quote :

"If that's all you've got, then okay."

I will say it's not that bad, it's pretty clear he doesn't let it affect his actions in office. It does however prove that, just like any other politician, he is willing to compromise his principles for political reasons. He's not jesus.

Quote :

"Is what we're doing in Afghanistan? Killing OBL?"

I didn't say that. I said that's what I want them to do. But it is something that could ultimately result in that.

Quote :

"Just because most on the left supported the initial police action doesn't mean they should support the war as it exists now."

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean the rest of us don't.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1496

11/15/2010 11:04:25 PM

I don't care what a poll says. That has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the war.

11/15/2010 11:17:42 PM

I thought we were talking about the support for the war, not the morality of it. I would have never gotten into a discussion about the morality of the war in Afg., I don't care about that. You seemed to have attempted to change the subject.

11/15/2010 11:27:33 PM

So you would support an immoral war?

11/16/2010 12:07:08 AM

I don't care to discuss immorality, it's not relevant to the discussion we were having.

11/16/2010 12:15:11 AM

Sure it is. The left's support has changed for the war, despite the immorality staying the same.

11/16/2010 1:39:09 AM

current democratic leadership is hardly the left

11/16/2010 1:52:00 AM

Quote :

"Sure it is. The left's support has changed for the war, despite the immorality staying the same."

Are you not reading my posts? I just said that the left's support for the war in afganistan has not changed, I then posted a link showing public support for the war. We supported it then, we support it now. You people are confusing the war in Iraq, which we didn't support then and do not now, which is having drastic reductions in troops deployed, with the Afgan war, which we always have supported, that did not get to have adequate focus or troop deployment due to the irrelevant war we were forced into by a republican administration.

11/16/2010 10:18:05 AM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40225924/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

Quote :

"President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia by the end of the year appeared to come undone on Tuesday as the chief Senate Republican negotiator moved to block a vote on the pact, one of the White House’s top foreign policy goals, in the lame-duck session of Congress. The announcement by the senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican point man on the issue, blindsided and angered the White House, which vowed to keep pressing for approval of the so-called New Start treaty. But the White House strategy had hinged entirely on winning over Mr. Kyl, and Democrats, who began scrambling for a backup plan, said they considered the chances of success slim. Winning approval of the treaty will only become harder for the White House next year, when Democrats will have six fewer seats in the Senate, forcing the administration to rely on additional Republican votes to reach the 67 needed for ratification. The treaty, which would force both countries to pare back nuclear arsenals and resume mutual inspections that lapsed last year for the first time since the cold war, is the centerpiece of two of Mr. Obama’s signature goals: restoring friendly relations with Russia and putting the world on a path toward eventually eliminating nuclear arms. A failure to ratify the treaty could freeze both efforts and, some analysts said, undermine Mr. Obama’s credibility on the world stage. “Failure to pass the New Start treaty this year would endanger our national security,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has led negotiations with Mr. Kyl, said in a statement. It would mean “no verification regime to track Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal,” Mr. Biden said, and would sour a relationship that has helped open a new supply route to troops in Afghanistan and increase pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program."

11/17/2010 12:13:21 AM

^this is so weak.

According to this they gave Kyl everything he asked for so he would sign on

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/atomic_weapons/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

Quote :

"The pact won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 2010 with the support of three Republicans. But it hit a roadblock in November when the Republican essentially deputized by his party to negotiate on the subject, Jon Kyl of Arizona, came out against holding a vote during the lame-duck session of Congress that had just begun. Mr. Kyl had been seeking to secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty. Over many months of negotiations, the administration committed to spending $80 billion to do that over the next 10 years, and then offered to chip in $4.1 billion more over the next five years. As a gesture of commitment, the White House had made sure extra money for modernization was included in the stopgap spending resolution now keeping the government operating, even though almost no other program received an increase in money. Mr. Kyl said there was not enough time in the lame-duck session to deal with the issue "

They gave him 84 billion dollars for what he wanted (*cough* fiscal conservative *cough*) and now he just turns his nose up, releases a press statement and refuses to be interviewed
http://kyl.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=328567

Quote :

"WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl made the following statement today regarding the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START): “When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization. I appreciate the recent effort by the Administration to address some of the issues that we have raised and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kerry, DOD, and DOE officials.” "

why do these people keep clinging to their nuclear weapons??????????

11/17/2010 9:35:51 AM

Maybe its not clinging, maybe they just want this to be his international Waterloo?


More credibility concerns:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/bryan_fischer_weve_feminized_the_medal_of_honor_by.php

Quote :

"Bryan Fischer: We've 'Feminized' Medal Of Honor By Not Giving It To Soldiers Who Kill More People Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, was unhappy yesterday that President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier for saving lives. This, Fischer wrote on his blog, shows that the Medal of Honor has been "feminized" because "we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them." Here's how the AP described Medal of Honor winner Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta heroics: Giunta, the first living Medal of Honor winner of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, braved heavy gunfire to pull a fellow soldier to cover and rescued another who was being dragged away by insurgents. Fischer's take? "So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?" "We have feminized the Medal of Honor," Fischer wrote."

[Edited on November 17, 2010 at 11:18 PM. Reason : .]

11/17/2010 11:07:18 PM

I agree, those medal of honor recipients are probably huge sissy faggots.

[Edited on November 17, 2010 at 11:41 PM. Reason : also, christian group? WWJD?]

11/17/2010 11:40:30 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/16/obama-leads-2012-rivals-i_n_784431.html

Palin4President '12

Quote :

"A new poll released Tuesday shows President Obama in a strong early position to win Virginia's electoral votes in 2012. The poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling Nov. 10-13, found Obama leading against frontrunners Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich. Obama held 11-percentage-point leads against Palin and Gingrich and 5-percentage-point leads against Romney and Huckabee in the poll, which has a margin of error of 4.2%. Fifty percent of those polled said they approved of the job Obama is doing as president and 45% said they disapproved. Voters in Virginia have negative opinions of three of the four frontrunners, according to the poll -- more voters said they had unfavorable opinions than favorable opinions about Gingrich, Romney, and Palin. Huckabee garnered the best favorability ratings of any of the Republicans in the poll -- 40% said they had a favorable opinion of the former Arkansas governor and 40% said they had an unfavorable opinion."

[Edited on November 18, 2010 at 12:22 AM. Reason : w]

11/18/2010 12:21:45 AM

the Republican offering in 2012 is weak sauce.

Gingrich is the only one I remotely like.

11/18/2010 9:37:17 AM

I would love to see Christie run.

Newt knows his stuff, but I dislike that he is a party first politician. (not that many arent these days)

11/18/2010 1:33:48 PM

All of those candidates listed blow unbelievably hard. Ron Paul or bust.

11/18/2010 2:25:01 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, someone unnamed person randomly wrote a bunch of crazy racist shit under Ron Paul's name in Ron Paul's newsletter to hurt him politically should he run several years later and somehow Ron Paul didn't notice. Come on, what kind of mental gymnastics are you willing to do to believe that Ron Paul is god's child? "

or, maybe someone latched onto the popularity of RP in some circles and wrote some shit under RP's name to further his own agenda. wow, that's a hard thing to comprehend! this whole "they did it years ago to mess someone up 10 years later!" shit is so stupid. It's up there with the "obama's family did all this stuff so he could be president someday!!!" no, if it had been done, it was done solely to secure citizenship and the benefits therein, not because someone had a wild premonition of presidential aspirations

[Edited on November 18, 2010 at 7:55 PM. Reason : ]

11/18/2010 7:54:53 PM

Quote :

"or, maybe someone latched onto the popularity of RP in some circles and wrote some shit under RP's name to further his own agenda. wow, that's a hard thing to comprehend!"

Well not just wrote under his name, but published this racist shit in Ron Paul's own newsletter. This was a newsletter published by Ron Paul's company. Ron Paul even defended them in 1996, but please keep trying to defend him, it's funny to me.

11/19/2010 12:30:33 AM

why don't you stop the trolling and read up on it, dipshit...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul/Newsletters_sandbox#Ron_Paul_newsletter_controversy

note how Paul said he bears moral responsibility for their publication, but that he did not write them. jeez, what a fucktard. but, in a typical liberal style, if you can't actually attack the substance of someone's arguments, just call em a racist. Yep, good ol' NR. keeping up w/ the hit pieces

[Edited on November 19, 2010 at 10:10 PM. Reason : ]

11/19/2010 10:08:07 PM

You know who else published racist newsletters?.....
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Henry Ford.

11/20/2010 12:46:23 AM

Quote :

"note how Paul said he bears moral responsibility for their publication"

Note how OJ said he wouldn't stop until he found the real killer.

Quote :

"why don't you stop the trolling and read up on it, dipshit..."

Why don't you read up on it, he defended the statements in 1996.

I will readily admit that this stuff is not that bad, but to try and paint the guy as the son of god, who has never made mistake, he's not that guy, he's human, and he's backpedaled from shit just like every other politician.

11/20/2010 2:45:17 AM

So Obama is responsible for something a pastor of a church he used to attend said, but Paul isn't really responsible for something that he put his name on?

That makes sense.

11/20/2010 4:35:03 AM

^no obama is responsible for CONTINUING to go to that church. I dont go to KKK rallys bc I dont like them or their position. Now I could say that over and over, but if I kept going to the rallys you would be right to wonder.

See the difference moron?

11/20/2010 10:30:12 AM