I enjoyed Joe’s liveblogging of the debate and I thought Obama hit a change-changing home run that reset the campaign and possibly sealed the deal.
But I find most coverage of these debates so nauseating that I can’t watch it. Maybe it’s because I’ve read too much Bob Somerby, but I firmly believe that all the Village blather about Gore’s signs sighs cost Gore the election. Think about the consequences of that: the Iraq War, trillions of dollars extra in debt, possibly the financial collapse of 2008.
The debates are fairly dull affairs (though not last night’s) and a lot of people want to be told what they should think about who won or lost them. The fact that Cokie Roberts and Mark Halperin are in the “elite” group that decides who won or lost literally sickens me.
This is why I despise my totebagging colleagues. You’re really going to listen to what David Brooks thinks about health care reform? I want to be euthanized if I ever start to sound like that.
I’m sure that we have our own groupthink at this blog, but I thank Tebow that I can come here and escape the worst of the media propaganda.
Not Sure
Well, at least you watched the NPR coverage instead of, say, CNN. Imagine how many IQ points you would have lost.
Dream On
off-topic: George McGovern is on life-support, clearly dying.
Jay C
You and me both, DougJ: it doesn’t seem enough for our “MSM” to simply cover political events like Presidential debates, they just have to add their “commentary” to it: commentary which (at least as far as the Major Network gibberers are concerned) is so utterly Republican-normative as to render their opinions near universally worthless.
beltane
One of my great joys at discovering the blogosphere was the realization that I was not the only person in the world who thought that Cokie Roberts was a shallow hack or that Thomas Friedman was, well, kind of ridiculous man who should not be taken seriously by anyone.
Tim I
Doug, its not all that bad. Twas ever thus, but now we see through the bullshit. Be strong, carry on.
And I have a jar full of change if you want to do some change-changing.
Crusty Dem
Ding!
I waded over to outside the beltway to get the “independent conservative” take after the debate. Hilarious. Joyner went full Colbert “I believe Obama may have won because twitter said so”. Jesus.
I mean, Dick Morris or Bill Kristol might be eternally wrong, but at least they’ll say what they think (or are paid to believe) without cowardly waiting to hear what everybody else thinks..
Soonergrunt
We do have our own groupthink here, and it is routinely challenged not just by the firebaggers and the few trolls that stick around for any length of time, but by ourselves. We do, in fact, have people here who disagree with others.
ETA–how many times have your or I or even John been called out by a member of the commenters here?
Frankensteinbeck
In the spirit of Blogospheric Navel-Gazing…
Are you STILL worshiping Tebow? Come on, Doug. GET WITH THE SUN PONY. We now have a trinity of goddess ponies, complete with Sulky Misunderstood Goth Sister and The Useless One. You’re a liberal. I know you want your magic winged unicorn pony. Well, Celestia’s waiting to Love and Tolerate you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tim I:
don’t tell him to grow up, or out of it
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The quotation: “…millions of people, so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest” seems apropos here.
handy
Speaking of change-changing,
What signs would these be?
...now I try to be amused
I like Mark Shields, but I switched from PBS to Al Jazeera so I wouldn’t have to hear David Brooks.
Bruce S
“I want to be euthanized if I ever start to sound like that.”
Which is why Obama’s Death Panel’s are critical to real health care reform.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@handy:
Probably it was the moment when he offered to Bush that they could settle the fate of the Social Security trust fund by playing Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock.
Playing Spock seemed like such a sure winner at the time but then everybody else just looked at him like “duuuude, you’re really weird“.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Frankensteinbeck: The Useless One goes by many names, including “Derpy.”
Yutsano
@Frankensteinbeck: May the blessings of Her Hoofiness be upon thee forever.
Bruce S
@Crusty Dem:
“Dick Morris or Bill Kristol might be eternally wrong, but at least they’ll say what they want you to think (or are paid to believe) without cowardly waiting to hear what everybody else thinks..” Fixed that.
handy
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Actually I think he meant “sighs” because you know, Algore was such a sneering lying elitist. Man, Election 2000. Fun times.
gocart mozart
The Washington Free Bacon checks the counter-tops of the young woman who asked the question about equel pay. Fucking asshole douchebags.
http://freebeacon.com/party-girl-debate-questioner-loves-joose-hates-cops-and-women-who-watch-sports/
Frankensteinbeck
@Matthew Reid Krell:
I meant Cadence. I see Derpy as more of a Heavenly Messenger. Ditzi-el, if you will!
@Yutsano:
She raises the sun in the mornings, and taught me that Friendship is Magic!
SFAW
@handy:
Two ravens in an old oak tree?
Rivers flowing backwards?
Cats and dogs living together?
Steve
@Dream On: May his journey be peaceful. This seems like a good occasion for me to repost this incredible George McGovern story from WWII.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Yutsano:
Her Hoofiness blessed my back yard last night! I found a sign of her favor when I awoke, and immediately rubbed it all over my body for good luck.
Why yes, I did shower this morning. Why do you ask?
Steve
@gocart mozart: One of my (Republican) work colleagues knows the young lady in question. Says she’s a nice girl who works as a teacher’s aide at his kid’s school. Really sucks that you can’t even ask a politician a legitimate question without attracting this kind of panty-sniffing creepiness.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Is this Kristen Stewart, Taylor Swift and Taylor Momsen? I misplaced the memo.
I’m probably part totebagger in that I contribute to public radio (not NPR), but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what David Brook’s thinks about anything. Not even rat’s asses.
Cokie and Mark get to bloviate about who won or lost in part because we demand instant absolute judgements. If it weren’t these goons, it would be some other bunch of morans.
Think about it for a minute. The very idea that anyone gets steamed over “who won or lost” as opposed to who is the better freaking candidate suggests that, to some degree, you are already caught up in the BS.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Frankensteinbeck:
I am biting the insides of my cheeks right now. “Ditzi-el,” indeed.
James Gary
@DougJ:
“….we are much too young and clever…” Doo-dit-doo-doodoot-doo.
var
I cant believe that the Village thought that Al Gore was a liar and now they’ve basically turned their head to Romney’s Lying Machine. Wait did I say can’t believe? I totally meant “completely expected”. Dems have to run against Republicans, the Kochs AND the media. It’s a wonder Dems ever win at all.
Felanius Kootea
I’m sure many of you have seen Romney’s Tax Plan but I just had this sent to me and it’s quite good.
SFAW
@Steve:
Thanks for the McGovern story link. Always liked him, thought he was a good man, knew a little about his WWII history. Glad (for him) that he was able to find out the truth about the bombing of the farm, it was a heavy load to carry for 40 years.
Felanius Kootea
I’m sure many of you have seen Romney’s Tax Plan but I just had this sent to me and it’s quite good.
taylormattd
A-men.
Honestly, Bob Somersby is a gem. I think he’s been a touch off based on a couple of issues the last couple of years, but who fucking cares, that’s nothing. The guy was 100%, spot-on correct about Al Gore and the media, and he was a voice in the wilderness, shouting at people who didn’t care.
And that includes so-called lefties.
To this day, a substantial portion of them go on and on about how it really was Al Gore’s fault he lost. It shouldn’t have been that close. He was too boring. Too rigid. Too much sighing. Too weasly (yes, many of them believe he was a serial exaggerator).
And these are people that are supposed to know the media is not only *not* left wing, it has been either explicitly associated with the republican party, or completely in the bag for the republican party.
Felanius Kootea
I’m sure many of you have seen Romney’s Tax Plan but I just had this sent to me and it’s quite good.
Spaghetti Lee
I don’t care what the establishment media has to say, so I don’t pay attention to them. I’ve achieved Nirvana!
lamh35
TPM reporting slightly less people watched the 2nd debate than the first, but still a lot of people watched the debate which is nothing but good news for Obama.
“65.6 Million Watched Second Debate, Slightly Less Than First”
http://t.co/AowXmyZI
trollhattan
Stumbling around this morning I began to listen to the two guest viewpoints Morning Edition had to tell me who be winnin’ the debate and I blew my coffee to the next tounty when one proved to be Jonah Goldberg. Who in hell does their booking? Wouldn’t publishing a book entitled “Liberal Fascism” basically constitute a lifetime self-ban anywhere not owned by a Murdoch?
Hal
So a conservative friend of mine just posted on Facebook that both candidates are liars, so there. Exactly what did Obama lie about? I find it so odd that some conservatives arguments now are that both are liars. Really? So why are you voting for Romney? It’s fucking stupid.
Felanius Kootea
I’m sure many of you have seen Romney’s Tax Plan but I just had this sent to me and it’s quite good.
Thomas F
@DougJ: Let’s not generalize too far. Both the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, passed under the Clinton-Gore Administration, were indisputably seminal moving forces behind the 2008 financial crash.
techno
I detest W. as much as anyone alive, but I cannot agree that Gore winning the election would have changed those things. Remember how many liberals like Al Franken supported the invasion of Iraq. I am not so sure Gore would have opposed it. Or have been willing to raise taxes to pay for it. Or clamp down on the corruption on Wall Street. After all, he was already vice president when they repealed Glass Steagall and he selected a foaming, barking crazy person on these matters as his running mate.
Sighs? The Village writes about sighs because they are too stupid to write about important things.
Birthmarker
Can you bump up the donation thermometer, DougJ?
tkno77
For what it’s worth, I’ve been watching the debates on CSPAN and there isn’t any commentary during the debate, only before and after. Easy to avoid talking-head syndrome that way.
schrodinger's cat
I watch the debates on PBS and shut off the TV as soon as I see Bobo.
eric
What you libtards fail to understand is that in the Real America, we know a true American by the color of his skin, not the content of his character.
Rick Taylor
I remember being ecstatic after that first debate between Bush and Gore because I was convinced Bush couldn’t possibly win afterwards. He was a like a deer in the headlights when they asked him what he’d do in the event of a surprise attack on the United States. I couldn’t believe the Republicans had actually nominated someone so obviously unprepared for the office of the Presidency. The next day, it was all about Gore sighing.
General Stuck
The good news is there is so much bullshit flying through the air, that hardly any of it sticks for more than a day or two. The bad news is David Brooks should live another two, maybe three decades.
As far as getting euthanized, Mitt Romney owns the Pearly Gates, and is building an elevator to hell.
schrodinger's cat
@eric: Which these days glows with an orange glow.
eric
@Hal: Kenya, bitches!
Birthmarker
@Hal: Most of my repub FB friends have about the same attitude. They are discouraged and pissed. All pols are a bunch of liars.
FlipYrWhig
@taylormattd: Somerby is a monomaniacal crazy person, but he’s good at parsing infinitesimal units of semantic meaning. OTOH, he sometimes succumbs to the Greenwald Delusion where everyone else is wrong about everything primarily for the purposes of spiting him personally by continuing to exist.
srv
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he wasn’t David Brooks.
Zifnab25
Little did Romney realize….
He who lives by the campaign reboot, dies by the campaign reboot. Never should have let Obama step behind him and cycle his power supply.
Ding dong
George Mcgoverns done more good than Mitt Romney ever will even if he lives to 120 yrs old. George was the guy who came up with the school lunch program. Mitt came up with company harvesting.
Felanius Kootea
FYWP
geg6
@Dream On:
Damn, it’s probably his time, but I hate to see him go. A great, great man.
schrodinger's cat
@Crusty Dem:
They should be on the blogs we mock list.
@Soonergrunt: Why are they not on the blogs we mock list yet?
Davis X. Machina
@techno:
Gore would not have been in the Senate to oppose it. He would have been in the White House, and he would have had to initiate it, to be indistinguishable on the issue from Bush.
That I find hard to believe.
Matthew Reid Krell
@geg6: Arlen Specter, George McGovern…who’s next?
Not that those two are equally tragic losses for the body politic, but they are relatively equally prominent and of course tragic for their respective families.
My thoughts are with the Specters and the McGoverns.
Tom Q
@techno: Um…you are aware that Al Gore gave a Major Speech pre-war saying the invasion of Iraq was like the drunk searching for his keys on the street, rather than in the alley where he dropped them, because the light was better there? Gore couldn’t have been more unequivocally against the war; he certainly wouldn’t have come up with it on his own, the way BushCo did.
The financial stuff, definitely more debatable…though without the Bush tax cuts, at least we could have financed any needed stimulus with alot smaller deficit.
Elizabelle
@Dream On:
I really regret not writing McGovern a personal note, after he fell a few months ago, and telling him how much I enjoyed his writing and his years upon years of public service.
Made me so sad that he tripped en route to a TV taping that he’d so wanted to participate in. Active and involved.
Bless him.
Steve
@techno: Al Gore did oppose the war, for heaven’s sake. There’s certainly no reason to think he would have started it.
CW in LA
@Birthmarker: Good; sounds like they’re on the verge of just not bothering to vote in this election, which is the noblest thing they can do for our nation.
Tom Q
@FlipYrWhig: Somerby also has descended into “EJ Dionne is history’s greatest monster/MSNBC is the baseline of evil”. He’s so incensed over liberals not standing up and screaming about 2000 that he literally now seems to blame them more than the right wing for the state of the nation.
And, you know, Somerby was a personal friend/former roommate of Gore’s, so he had a rather high motivation for pointing out what was done to him.
The Other Bob
I read that over 65 million people watched debate 2. Thank FSM, it is even more than the first debate.
Mandalay
You seem to allow those people to creep into your life far more than you need to. Why not just ignore them? A suitable first step would be to stop posting about them all time.
Instead of getting angry or sickened, just shrug and ignore them… “Doug shrugged”.
p.s. Steven Pinker has a great description of Darwin’s explanation on why we shrug:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPN2717RMLY&feature=player_detailpage
Another Halocene Human
@techno: I detest W. as much as anyone alive, but I cannot agree that Gore winning the election would have changed those things. Remember how many liberals like Al Franken supported the invasion of Iraq. I am not so sure Gore would have opposed it.
Seriously? Were you born stupid? Were you under a rock from 2000-2008?
Yes, I’m sure the Democrats in power would have gone along with a totally bogus Iraq invasion dreamed up by Nixonite chaff, had said chaff’s boss conceded Florida and the election.
Another Halocene Human
Wait, is t*chn* another reiteration of St*v* *n DC?
KoolEarl
If Al Gore was President, 9/11 may never have happened. I will say that the 2008 crash would have occured regardless of who was President
Brachiator
@techno:
Not much point in overthinking a hypothetical. But I certainly wish that we had had a chance to see what would have happened. And don’t forget that Gore was actually elected.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Birthmarker: That’s a good sign. They were already convinced that Democrats lie constantly. Now they’ve added their own Great White Hope to the roster of lying liars.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@schrodinger’s cat:
The blogs we mock list is sort like the Jehovah’s Witnesses version of The Heavenly Kingdom of God. There’s only room for 144,000 and after that fills up, you’re boned.
Another Halocene Human
@Tom Q: the financial grifting would have continued at a slower, more sustainable pace.
It’s also possible that Gore would have felt some pressure to, ya know, do some SEC enforcement following the Worldcom and Enron collapses. Basically the exact opposite of what GWB did do.
Wall Street was pretty bad in the 1990s but the 2000s were ridiculous.
If you look at the suck-ass “reform” and real loss in household wealth since W took office, though, the Green argument or Libertarian argument of “let it all burn, then we will rebuild like a phoenix in the cleansing fire” is revealed for the naive adolescent death porn masturbation that it is.
I used to hang out on fiscal conservative blogs. They were pee-issed at W and his crooked SEC but many of them thought either A) Ron Paul would save them (ponies!) and got pissed when Obama showed up and didn’t and B) thought a good, hard crash would lead to the downfall of their enemies and their personal financial elevation as consequence of their moral rectitude. This, of course, failed to occur.
Elizabelle
@ Doug J:
You are a brave soul to put that immediately following the previous blogpost, “Bubble Boy.”
But I’m glad too.
dr. bloor
@techno:
Wait, what? You can conceive an alternate universe where, even if 9/11 still happened under President Gore, he would have used that as an opportunity to go into Iraq based on an extended campaign of home-cooked disinformation?
You’re a piece of work, you are.
Spaghetti Lee
@Another Halocene Human:
Is it not fucking possible anymore for someone to have a different opinion without being called fatally stupid or a ratfucker troll? Jesus Christ. I love this blog, I really do, but the paranoia here is just nuts. It’s not apostasy to have a different idea about a fucking alternate history scenario. For God’s sake, this particular commenter’s been here for years, as is usually the case whenever some regular gets accused of being a troll for no reason. Enough already.
YellowJournalism
@gocart mozart: Because she has an unpopular opinion about sports, enjoys a drink or ten, and likes to tell corny jokes about sex, that makes her concern for her fellow women in the workforce invalid? I’d say it makes her a Balloon Juice commenter.
Mandalay
@Spaghetti Lee:
Not much any more, sadly.
Hal
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think people are on edge right now. Speaking of Gore vs. Bush, it could be because many may believe we are at another of those turning points where this country could easily go right back down a GWB style path, or keep moving forward with Obama, flaws and all.
Also, a lot of people still think Gore got drilled in the ass unfairly by the media and perhaps abandoned a little to hastily by Dems back in 2000.
Another Halocene Human
@Spaghetti Lee: I’m sorry for my excessive spleen. I thought it was a little over the top when I wrote it, but the cognitive dissonance required to both know what happened even on a superficial level politically and to make the statements that techno did drove me to question the sincerity. I shouldn’t have called techno stupid.
However, since S____i_DC made comments along such lines routinely, I figured I had been trolled as soon as I hit send.
I’ve said really, really stupid things on forums before and been called a troll. Hard to tell the difference between bad faith and stupid through pixels. I guess I thought it was one, then the other?
And for the record, I did not accuse anyone of being a plumber.
raven
Oooooo, it used to be so civil here.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@FlipYrWhig:
I stopped reading him several years back for precisely this reason.
Spaghetti Lee
@Another Halocene Human:
Well, me too. I’m not trying to have a persecution complex or be overdramatic, but it seems nuts to me the way everyone knows how the GOPers are immune to objective criticism and have a habit of shunning people who don’t say the right things…and then the same thing happens here. Not nearly as often, of course, but it seems to be going on more in the last month or so. I get the idea that winning an election, practically speaking can involve shutting up and getting team-spirity even if that’s not your natural inclination. And I’m willing to do that, honestly. But there’s a line between that and willfully believing stupid shit and/or getting way too paranoid about different opinions that I worry about, too.
Mandalay
@Another Halocene Human:
I agree that it seems unlikely, but consider some of the things that have occurred under Obama, such as going after whistleblowers, keeping Guantanamo open, no digging into the invasion of Iraq, no digging into the crash of 2008, Drone attacks, authorizing the killing of US citizens without trial, etc.
If those had occurred under President McCain I think that we would all be agreeing that they would never have occurred if Obama had won back in 2008.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra.
ericblair
@Mandalay:
Oh, you mean the Guantanamo that Obama tried to order closed, and every Democratic senator except six voted to block the closure? Yay for zombie bullshit stories over the campfire.
taylormattd
@FlipYrWhig: I understand that, and saw some of it.
I think, however, he is one of the only people that truly got it: our problem in this country is how information is presented to the public. We have a media that ranges from literal crackpot wingnuts to literal RNC and republican candidate operatives to mushy centrists that love republican cocktail parties to underpaid and overworked schmucks that get yelled by editors if they dare come close to calling something a “lie.”
This environment favors, and will always favor, those who are the most insane liars. IMO, nothing can ever fundamentally change until this is remedied.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Rick Taylor:
Which was, oddly enough, his actual response.
rmirth
@KoolEarl:
If Al Gore was President, 9/11 may never have happened. I will say that the 2008 crash would have occured regardless of who was President.
Yes! The Clinton-Gore administration were so massively prepared for the millennium threats by all kinds of whackos and had upped security measured for vague threats. That leads me to believe that Pres. Gore would have treated the Bin Laden memo very differently.
Paul
@Mandalay:
Can I stop you right there? President Obama is the ONE who tried to close the damn thing. Just about every Democratic rep and Senator voted against funding the closure.
You are (like so many other people on the left) attacking the wrong guy. Hell, so called progressive senators such as Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders both voted against closing Gitmo.
Why don’t you people who want Gitmo closed attack the real culprits such as Klobuchar and Sanders?
Mandalay
@ericblair:
Closing Guantanamo was an Obama campaign promise in 2008, and Democrats had a majority in both houses after Obama’s election. Most reasonable people expected him to meet his promise, and he did not.
It is a specific example that shows predicting the future is tricky. The actual reason(s) for Guantanamo remaining open are completely irrelevant.
Bob h
Hear, hear. I am so sick of the Villagers, of the Sunday shows, of NPR, and Gwen and Judy that I want to tell them all to take a flying fuck.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Yes, let’s ignore actual facts and history so we can maintain our ire against the guy who was the only one to actually try to do what we wanted!
chopper
@Steve:
that is one hell of a story.
Hal
Things that I think would not have happened under an Al Gore Presidency:
* Afghanistan
* John Roberts
* Sam Alito
* Citizens United
Those four things alone in my mind would have been huge. Also, perhaps Gore’s Admin would have paid closer attention to the goings on leading up to 9/11, so who knows where that would have lead.
Nicole
I love you for the Dexy’s Midnight Runners reference.
Poor old Willard Ray. Sounded sad upon the debate floor. Broke a billion hearts in mansions.
Paul
@Mandalay:
Yes, who had thought that “progressive” senators such as Klobuchar and Sanders would take such a far right-wing view on Gitmo.
And the funny thing has been that Klobuchar and Sanders has gotten a completely free pass from the left, while (as in Mandalay’s posting) Obama (who is the only one tried to close it) has taken 100% of the blame from the left.
Why? Does it go back to the 2008 primary fight again? Is it racism? Does the left even want it closed? If so, why blame the guy who actually tried to close it?
Mnemosyne
@Paul:
It’s apparently “proof” of … something. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be proof of, but the people who spout it seem to find it extremely significant in some way.
Though I do love how the CIA guy who claimed on national TV that torture was totally effective in getting confessions has been transformed by the left into a martyred whistleblower.
techno
@Another Halocene Human:
Guess what? The actual number of “progressives” who actually stood up to the Iraq invasion was very small. And even those who who did, like Obama, showed they were perfectly capable of caving to the militarists when they got the power to actually change things. And the idea that the same guy who chose a crazy militarist for a running mate would have stood up to the warmongers.
I am from Minnesota—I have a LONG history with “liberals” who supported wars that the rest of the world found criminal. Perhaps you have heard of Hubert Humphrey. But then, judging from your fact-challeged response—maybe not.
SFAW
@techno:
Yes, because Gore was merely a front man for AIPAC, and it was really Holy Joe who would have been issuing the orders to invade Iraq.
Because Gore was JUST LIKE Bush.
RaflW
I’ll rephrase what I said earlier today (’cause I can’t remember where I said it…)
The Villagers are bored with Obama. They’d rather have the excitement of WWIII in the Mid-East than have four more boring years of technocratic effectiveness.
Obama bores them, so they’ll let the middle class rot and do what they can to install the plutocrat.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
You are the one who is maintaining ire, and completely missing the point, which is that is it is impossible to predict what a president will do in the future.
But enjoy your meaningless rant.
Mandalay
@Paul:
You still do not understand. The reason(s) that Guantanamo remained open are irrelevant to my point that predicting what someone will do when they become president is very hard to predict. That’s all.
If you want to turn that into a fight about something else entirely then go adjust your tin foil and talk to the voices in your head.
ruemara
@Mandalay: Oh sweet goddess. Fuck you, the fucking reasons damn well do mean something you braindead hack.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dream On: That saddens me. When his time comes, I hope it is easy and peaceful.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
You presume that there is universal agreement that all these things are unequivocally evil, as you have laid them out.
You are wrong.
Then again, the notion that Gore would have been Bush the Lesser is likely wrong. Then again, there is no way to test it.
Here, we don’t really have opinions. We have Bslloon Juice.
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
No. I said nothing about them being “unequivocally evil” at all. I didn’t even hint that. That is your (false) accusation.
I chose to cite security issues as examples of unexpected behavior from Obama because the earlier discussion centered on what Gore would have done about invading Iraq had he become president in 2001.
They all serve to illustrate how difficult it is to predict what a president will and will not do.
As a completely unrelated example, I was astounded when Obama proclaimed his support for gay marriage. I did not anticipate that would occur back in 2008, and I doubt that many did. Again, my sole point is that it is very difficult to predict what a president will do once in office, but some folks here are just burning to pick a fight regardless.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Funny, you seem to think it’s a dead certainty that Obama is going to kill Social Security and Medicare, not something that’s “impossible to predict.”
But, hey, as long as you completely ignore facts, history, and evidence, you can make the world look exactly the way you want it to.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
This is an extremely weird point to try and defend when you’re talking about something that actually happened.
We’re not talking about some abstract, “Well, maybe Obama would have tried to close Guantanamo.” He actually did try, and failed.
Pretending that it was some kind of prediction about his possible actions that failed to materialize is bizarre.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@James Gary:
Yes!
Stentor
Bob Somerby, does anyone still read that pathetic old fart, & his pseudo-educated, cryptic politico-babblespeak? I gave up years ago trying to understand his bullshit columns, especially when it looked like he was turning on other Democrats who I felt didn’t deserve it. Anyway, his site should go the way of Media Whores Online, bring her back & shutter his site.
Paul in KY
@techno: I don’t think Al Franken supported the invasion of Iraq.
Paul in KY
@Hal: I think Pres. Gore would have gone into Afganistan to get Bin Laden/Mullah Omar.
We would have gotten those bastards & then gotten out.
Paul in KY
@RaflW: The villagers are plutocrats (or at least, mini-plutocrats).
Paul
@Mandalay:
When the arguments fail, they resort to insults.
veryslowwriter
@Dream On: He was in hospice — no life support there. Not what it’s for.