Obama is addressing the nation right now about what’s going on in Libya. About time. Might as well live blog it below the cut line.
PAD
7:32: Red tie. Good. Red is a strong color. It shows you want to win.
7:32: I love how he says, “TAH-li-BAHN.”
7:35: Other countries have had people rising up against dictators and we’ve done nothing. Is the reason Libya requires our help is because of where the country is situated? Reasons for mlitary intervention are apparently like real estate: Location, location, location.
7:37: “At my direction.” Because if he’d gone to Congress, they’d still be discussing it and/or blocking it.
7:38: He consulted with Congress. That’s probably kind of like when movie producers consult with the author of a novel. Doesn’t matter what the author says, the producer is gonna do what they want (unless it’s JK Rowling.)
7:40: I like the way he lays out the case so methodically.
7:41: The difference between 1990 and now? The pervasiveness of the Internet and word getting out of everything that’s going on. That’s my guess as to why it took a year last time and a month now.
7:45: Ah, he addressing what I said above.
7:46: I’m flashing back to “West Wing” when Bartlet brought us into a war based on humanitarian concerns and a K’Daffy-like dictator actively wiping out large numbers of his people.
7:47: The UN’s future credibility? They have credibility?
7:48: “Broadening our mission to encourage regime change would be a mistake.” I agree. But my concern is that K’Daffy is going to ride this out. I still think the best solution would be to send in Batman.
7:49: Well, regime change in Iraq didn’t take eight years. The regime changed far more quickly than that. It’s taken that long to try and put the country back together. That’s the big problem.
7:50: Wouldn’t it be funny if it DID happen overnight? If tomorrow morning there are headlines that K’Daffy’s dead?
7:51: He’s starting to wrap up. He needs to be really stirring now. He really needs to get people enthused.
7:52: People are dying, dammit! Show some passion.
7:52: We need Kirk now, not Spock. We need a “risk is our business” moment.
7:55: Well, he talked about risk. That was when to say it.
7:56: “Wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States.” That’s the phrase that’ll be repeated. Just wish he’d said it with more passion.
7:57: Caroline says, “Daddy, the people who long to be free should just move to America!” I haven’t tried to explain Arizona to her.
7:58: Well, he laid out his case and made it clear that this is something we need to be interested in and involved with. I just wish he had sounded more interested and involved rather than like a history teacher explaining stuff that the US is doing.
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Obama did exactly the right thing. What we were just to allow a massacre to happen? His problem, like you stated, is just doesn’t show any passion. More balls, like school-teacher intellect when communicating. Oh, and about Arizona, just explain to Caroline, that if we don’t do something now, the whole country is gonna be one big East LA.
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Not the best laid out case, but better than I thought it might be. Doesn’t matter though. In the last two weeks his critics have shown that they’ll attack him over this no matter what he does (even if it means attacking the position they themselves held hours or days earlier.)
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“We need Kirk now, not Spock. We need a “risk is our business” moment.”
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Yeah, that’s Obama’s biggest single problem right there. He tries to be too intellectual and detached all of the dámņëd time. He needs to learn that there’s a time and a place for stirring leadership, red meat and barn burners when it comes to presidential speeches and that calm, detached intellectualism can be a major turnoff when used at the wrong time in the wrong speech for the wrong cause.
I imagine it’s in no small part intentional — making a clear distinction between his own clear soberness and the embarrassingly unfettered enthusiasm of his predecessor.
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The rest of the world will be watching him as well and it’s important for Obama to not project America as being on another crusade.
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Sasha, you can be a moderate drinker and no one will confuse you for the town drunk. You can be someone who occasionally drives four or five miles over the speed limit and not be confused for the idiot who regularly does 75 mph through the school zone. You can have a “day off” and decide you’re not doing any chores (dishes, yard work, house cleaning, etc.) and not be confused with the slob down the street who lives like that 24/7 365 days out of the year.
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Obama can, Obama should, engage emotionally at times when and where needed. Doing so occasionally will not cause anyone to confuse his actions or motivations with W Bush’s “logic.”
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Dropped a bit there.
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Obama can, Obama should, engage emotionally at times when and where needed. Doing so occasionally will not cause anyone to confuse his actions or motivations with W Bush’s “logic” or his crusades.
In the US, its very clear that the new boss is not the same as the old boss; in other countries, I don’t think that’s necessarily so.
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I believe that Obama’s speech, ostensibly to explain the president’s position to American citizens, was very much directed to foreign media who wanted to hear America’s position explained to the world.
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You know what, Sasha? I don’t think that the foreign media or the people in other countries are really all that dumb. Even they could see Obama show some passion and not start thinking that it’s Bush’s 3rd term.
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A little passion mixed in with the intellect would inspire a lot more confidence and support than just doing the best Vulcan impersonation that he can muster and it’s not going to put off the foreign media or the people in other countries one bit. Seeing what looks like an emotionally detached leader robotically giving speeches like he’s been doing on the other hand…
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He almost comes off as what we call in my profession, “retired on the job.” That’s when a guy gets off the streets, makes it to high rank and, despite all the promise and talk in times past, sleepwalks his way through the job and just goes through the motions. Even if that’s not what Obama is doing, he puts across that vibe and that vibe does not inspire confidence or support.
Please understand that I’m not being snarky or sarcastic here, but whom do you feel Obama needs to emote for, about this particular topic? It sounds, from the posts on this thread, that most of us here already agree with him, and the course of action he laid out. Do you feel he needs to sell it to the Red State “America, Hëll Yeah!” crowd? Those among his opposition with intelligence and ethics and NOT given over to an isolationist bent likely already agree with him, while the rest are either beyond convincing because it furthers their own ends to oppose Obama if he so much as says he likes pie, or are convinced he’s the Nigerian-born anti-christ out to kill their grandmothers. Just because he’s not drawing steel and shaking his sword at the heavens doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel strongly about the issue; are you asking that he emote for you? Whom would it serve?
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Gray, for one thing I don’t agree with his course of action. I was also talking about this problem of Obama’s in the context of just about every issue he deals with and not just this one.
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But who should he “emote” for? Himself unless he wants to continue seeing his support erode. There’s a reason that truly effective leaders inspire confidence and know how to rally the troops when the need to do so is there. There’s also a reason that detached leaders who give the impression of not caring or not being engaged are not generally considered good leaders in any endeavor in life.
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Obama has an increasingly smaller and smaller base of diehard supporters. His diehard, kneejerk detractors on the other hand seem to be growing in numbers. But in between those two camps is the vast majority of the American public who are not generally engaged and are up for grabs. They will be swayed less by facts, figures and detached intellect than they will be by someone that can throw some passion into that mix. Hëll, just looking at the popularity of some aspects of the Tea Party and some of folks that just got elected, they’ll be swayed by 99.9% passion with just a smidgen of facts, figures and any kind of intellect at all barely thrown in.
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Obama can’t continue to do anything for long if he continues to lose supporters, lose more and more popular support and fails to engage the masses. He certainly can’t do anything if the other side shows that they know this fact and capitalizes on it. So far in his administration, that’s what has been happening. He’s losing most of the PR battles, he’s losing popular support and he’s losing ground with the masses. He can do that for only so long before it loses him the Presidency as well. That simple fact won’t change no matter how much his most loyal supporters stick their heads in the ground and refuse to acknowledge it.
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If that happens because he lets it happen… What the hëll good is he?
If you do try to explain Arizona, yes by all means tell her about the turkeys running – or is that ruining? – the place. But be sure to also explain the important difference between the millions of legal immigrants and refugees who came knocking on the front door, and the many illegals who snuck in through the rear window.
The only reason anybody sneaks in through the rear window is because it’s impossible for most people to come here legally.
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Do a search for Reason Immigration Flow Chart.
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If you make it illegal for people to do something they’re really intent on doing, they’ll naturally go ahead and do it illegally. (This is a problem behind a great deal of laws nowadays.)
Immigration laws in this country are so complicated and arbitrary, I’m surprised anyone even tries to come here legally.
A fact of which, having fiancee working her way through the immigration process for many months now, I am all too aware of. Still no excuse. Either you respect the laws of the country you wish to go to, or you don’t go. Someone really, REALLY wants to come in and they’re ready to break the law to do so? Fine, let them in and tell them it’s OK. So … someone really REALLY wants to give their kid a better life and send them to a good university. No money? No problem, just steal it. After all, if laws get in the way of doing subjectively good, just ignore them, right?
Which do you feel is difficult, becoming a citizen or obtaining a green card? Both are hardly easy, but obviously obtaining citizenship is much harder. I’d wager that the vast majority of folks who come to the US illegally would be happy with just a green card, and actually have little desire to become an American citizen. It can also be expensive; some attorneys make their whole living (and a good one, at that) just filling out immigration forms for more well-to-do immigrants. Still, as difficult as it is to become a citizen here, it’s a lot more difficult to become a citizen in a lot of other countries. And it SHOULD be difficult, a person seeking citizenship should be invested in the country he or she wants citizenship in; it should mean something. It already means precious little to entirely too many people as it is.
As to your other argument, I would say rather the problem with many laws is that they make something illegal that many people find reasonable. This then makes breaking the “unreasonable” law acceptable in many peoples minds, which in turn weakens the whole concept of the law. Thus, its a fairly good idea to only prohibit those things that really, REALLY need to be illegal.
I agree mostly with your second paragraph, Gray. Unless people overwhelmingly agree that something absolutely should be illegal, then passing laws against it will not work very well.
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But as to your point that citizenship should be difficult to obtain– I hear this from a lot of people, but with very few exceptions, they’re perfectly happy with the current system of most people gaining citizenship by birth. Even those who want to abolish birthright citizenship for some people want to keep it for themselves and their families and friends.
This idea has always seemed completely indefensable to me. If the citizenship rules don’t apply equally to everybody, it’s simply cruel and unjust.
I have to admit, though, I’ve never understood the purpose of citizenship in the first place. Shouldn’t everyone in the country have the same rights? I don’t see the point in dividing everyone up into ‘Real Americans’ and ‘Others’.
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“The only reason anybody sneaks in through the rear window is because it’s impossible for most people to come here legally.”
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Mary, I have a ton of friends who came here legally and became citizens legally. It can be done and a lot of the people who went through the process because they thought it was the right thing to do don’t like the people crawling under the back door and giving the system the finger.
Understand, all, that when I was making the joke about Arizona, I wasn’t endorsing the notion of illegal aliens. It was a sideways comment about a state so seized with anti-alien paranoia that it’s not only willing to embrace racial profiling but give it a lap dance. Those same people who did dutifully go through the process, not to mention those who are actually born here, should never have been subjected to the prospect of being stopped and questioned (“Where are your papers, comrade?”) just because of the color of their skin.
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Then again, what do you want from a place when the gun lobby is so strong that they’re able to emulate Utah and push through the concept of an official state gun.
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PAD
PBS is showing his entire speech on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUXEiwJiKj4
They have a transcript of the entire thing on the PBS site. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june11/obamaspeech_03-28.html
I was glad that he addressed the unfortunate reality that we can’t intervene in every massacre or against every dictator. We can’t casually violate the sovereignty of foreign nations, we can’t decide who stays and who goes, and given the economy, we can’t afford countless wars. (How much is this war, er, military action costing us every week?) It may sound cold, but we’re likely to intervene in countries with a lot of oil and/or long-established enemies, both of which made Libya a prime candidate.
At least Obama has the wisdom to make this an international operation and get the Arab League involved, as opposed to Bush deciding it was time for Saddam to go and just charging in.
We’d be better off with Solid Snake than Batman. He’s got the prior experience.
Why is it that involvement in Libya, started by Obama, is cool with the liberal set but involvement in Iraq, started by Bush, isn’t? I see differing nuances, but aren’t the two situations fundamentally the same in that the US is sticking its nose into another sovereign nation’s affairs?
Not looking to be incendiary– I really am interested in an explanation of liberal opinions.
To be fair, there are a lot of liberals who are very upset that Obama has launched this action. To the best of my understanding, they are upset with him for the same or similar reasons they were upset with Bush.
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I don’t agree with them, but kudos to them for their consistency.
See, the consistency is what I haven’t seen. Anyone anti-Iraq should logically be anti-Libya if they’re being intellectually honest. Likewise, I see many conservatives being vehemently anti-Lybia while they remain pro-Iraq.
Honestly, it just seems everyone is supporting whichever team they’ve decided they’re on, and that depresses me to no end.
No, not anyone anti-Iraq should be anti-Libya. It all depends on the reasons why that person is anti-Iraq.
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J North: “Anyone anti-Iraq should logically be anti-Libya if they’re being intellectually honest.”
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Uhm… No. Rather than rewrite something I basically already covered, I’ll just post a link and copy & paste.
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http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2011/03/20/so-how-does-this-end/comment-page-1/#comment-326311
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Jerry Chandler
March 23, 2011 at 3:54 pm
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“If going to the UN and getting resolutions authorizing action makes it not unilateral then how was Bush’s action not also legit?”
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Obama is following the guidelines of the U.N. resolution. He is committing our forces to create and enforce a no fly zone while stressing that we will be turning the bulk of this duty over to the countries that most pushed for this resolution. He is not declaring that we have the authority to do whatever we please, mount a full scale invasion or topple a government and rebuild one we like in its place.
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Bush and crew (and the chorus of pro-invasion parrots on Fox News and conservative talk radio) declared that we were authorized to make a full scale invasion of Iraq and topple its government based on U.N. resolution 1441. When it was pointed out that neither 1441 or any other resolution after that authorized full military invasion and the removal. replacement and rebuilding of the Iraqi government they shifted their stance to declare Saddam was working with etc., etc., etc., etc…
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Right now, Obama is doing something that I don’t think we need to be doing. But he is doing it with the U.N. and he is not declaring that we can do whatever we want to do in Libya, U.N and the world be dámņëd. He is also not sending his people to the U.N. with cherry-picked intel, computer generated drawings and props representing the evidence of what we “know” Muammar Gaddafi to justify invasion. Obama is not getting on TV and declaring as “facts” things that the live news feeds from that day show are actually anything but “facts.” Obama is not firing Generals and advisors one after the other until he finally gets the one who is willing to play yes man and tell him that this is a good idea. Obama is not… Well, we could go on for another 50 or 60 of these.
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There are parts of the Professional Left that hates any war of any kind for any reason and will protest every war. There are parts of the Professional Left that will protest anything that a Republican POTUS does (just as it seems that a majority the new mainstream Right will protest anything that Obama does; even when that means doing a 180 in a week because Obama is doing what the Right said he should do so that is now the new wrong thing that Obama is doing.) But a large chunk of the middle ground on both sides don’t knee-jerk one size fits all reactions.
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Libya isn’t Iraq. We haven’t had weeks and months of buildup where an administration trotted out transparently bogus evidence and facts. We haven’t seen a President and his closest advisors doing everything they can to promote a full scale invasion based on bûllšhìŧ grounds. We haven’t been subjected to the administration officials and the useful idiots treating us like they think we’re as stupid as they want us to be and telling us how they doubt a full scale invasion will last longer than months and that it’ll all be paid for anyhow when we just turn those pumps in the oil fields back on and the price of oil drops like a rock and the new, oil rich Iraqi government gratefully pays us back the money we spent “liberating” them.
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Of course the anger and the protests aren’t there. The starting point for the two incidents are nothing alike. And, going back to your statement, all of those differences means that the sense of illegitimacy isn’t there.
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This could all still change if Obama’s handling of this lives down to the standards he has set on other things, but we’re not even going to begin to see that until about week six.
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It’s just not the same situation in any way, shape or form right now and comparing the different reactions to the two of them at this point is meaningless.
J North, you’re exactly right. The fact of the matter is that Bush got the support of Congress, followed UN Resolutions, got the unanimous support of the UN Security Council, and built a multi-national coalition. Anyone who denies that is just trying to re-write history. The only difference so far that I’ve been able to see in the two situations so far is that Bush went to the UN and essentially said, “Hussein is thumbing his nose at you and not allowing the inspectors in. We need to do something about that.” The UN agreed. Now, the UN came to Obama and said, “Libya is thumbing his nose at us. You need to do something about it.” And Obama agreed. Personally, I’d rather have our president calling the shots than having his being led by the UN, but others may disagree.
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As I’ve said, quite a few liberals are incensed at Obama for this action against Libya. They seem to have no problem understanding the similarities between the two situations and knowing that condemning Bush and not Obama is an act of hypocrisy. I don’t agree with their reasoning (I hold the opposite view – Supporting Bush but condemning Obama is petty politics and hypocrisy), but I admire the consistency of their convictions.
They seem to have no problem understanding the similarities between the two situations and knowing that condemning Bush and not Obama is an act of hypocrisy.
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The similarities?
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On the one hand we’ve got the UN saying, “We need all hands on deck to deal with this problem that is not remotely in dispute,” and we commit to helping them but draw the line at sending in ground forces.
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On the other hand we have an entire presidential administration deciding to implement a long-standing, pre-9/11 desire for regime change in Iraq going before the United Nations, feeding them lies and misinformation, and then overriding the U.N. inspectors who weren’t finding any WMDs and committing over a hundred thousand ground troups.
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So the basic similarities are: there’s a president, there’s the U.N., and there’s a dictator. Other than that…
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PAD
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“Anyone who denies that is just trying to re-write history.”
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No, anyone seriously trying to compare this to Iraq and compare the reactions to the two at this point and time is desperately trying to pretend that black is white, green is red, yellow is blue and up is down.
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“Bush went to the UN and essentially said, “Hussein is thumbing his nose at you and not allowing the inspectors in.”
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Translation: He lied his ášš off yet again.
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“As I’ve said, quite a few liberals are incensed at Obama for this action against Libya. They seem to have no problem understanding the similarities between the two situations and knowing that condemning Bush and not Obama is an act of hypocrisy.“
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Not even. Certainly not at this point. Now, if Obama escalates this stupidity, decides to topple a government by military invasion, bogs us down for years in Libya with no real endgame in mind and no explanation of that endgame beyond circular word games, racks up a book’s worth of documented lies about the how, why, when, etc, etc, etc…
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Maybe the Obama supporter still supporting this then would be guilty of hypocrisy, but not just yet.
When Bush started operations in Iraq, I was a lot more supportive than I’d become later. Same with many other liberals. Bush tried to sell it that Saddam was an imminent threat, that the Iraqs would welcome American liberators with open arms, that the action would help bring stability to the region.
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All of those were simply disproved later.
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I don’t see Obama having some of those problems. Kaddafy was in the process of crushing a rebellion, so he was both an imminent threat to his own people and not really popular with them. That deals with 2 of the main objections I had with Iraq.
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As for the third, who knows. The region is a mess right now, I don’t think the Lybia operation can make it worse.
And thirdly, Obama didn’t start this mess. The French did, and the U.S. joined the coalition, instead of the U.S. bribing countries to join the coalition.
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TAC
The differences between the two military operations were debated at length in the previous thread “So How Does This End?”
“Why is it that involvement in Libya, started by Obama, is cool with the liberal set but involvement in Iraq, started by Bush, isn’t?”
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Because this is part of an overall course of action that is front and center on the agenda of the United Nations and we’re not acting like a rogue nation manufacturing excuses to fulfill a long-standing desire on the president’s part going back a decade.
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PAD
Is your contention that the US should only follow the lead of the UN?
How do you see the reasoning for involvement in Libya being more compelling than the reasoning for going to Iraq?
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Well, for one thing we haven’t been told painfully transparent lies for months on end about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how easy it will be, how little time it would take, how it won’t cost us anything since we’ll be paid back for it, how we’re “authorized” to launch an invasion and overthrow a government by a U.N. resolution that said no such thing, how this was vital and directly related to the war on terror, etc, etc, etc…
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Right now we’re working with the U.N. on a U.N. venture and following the guidelines laid out by the U.N. resolution and not basically telling the U.N. that we’re doing whatever the hëll we want with or without them and that they had better be there afterwards to help clean up our mess.
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Right now we’re working to turn the majority of this matter and the burdens and costs therein over to the other U.N. and N.A.T.O. countries that most wanted to see this done rather than looking at years of heavy involvement providing the majority of the forces and plotting out where we can build massive bases.
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Also, I don’t think you’ll find any Obama Administration officials who were on record four years before Obama was elected as advocating military action against Libya to overthrow the government and “safeguard” the valuable oil fields and to use any major incident in the Middle East as an excuse to invade Iraq since they knew that the American public wouldn’t support an all out invasion to achieve those goals. The Bush Administration was full of men who were on record as advocating just that with regards to Iraq; two of them being Cheney and Rumsfeld.
I wasn’t offering a “contention” so much as simply stating a fact. Any inferences you draw are entirely your own.
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PAD
‘Wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States’.
Unless they’re Bahraini.
Mr. David
What has the President ever done or said to indicate that he would ever be “positively” passionate about our involvement in military action?
Jed Bartlet was both an intellectual and had passion. He could have given the “Risk is our business” speech and made it work. So could have Howard Dean, also an intellectual with passion, but a real person, not an actor’s persona.
“Wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States.”
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Actually, I thought the Daily Show recently showed that lie for what it is, in a very entertaining way.
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Bahrain is the Gulf country worst-hit by the wave of political protest sweeping the Arab world. But everyone is ignoring that. Move along.
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When the people in Darfur want to be free, they get limited access to Bono, Sean Penn and George Clooney.
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When the Egyptian people were longing to be free, the Americans (specifically Hilary Clinton) made it a point of saying they didn’t care if Mubarrak stayed or went. That they had no preferred outcome.
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But Libya has oil and so they get the deluxe package.
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If\when the Saudi Royal family (friends of the Americans) start massacring their people who want to be free, will they find a friend in America? Somehow, I doubt it.
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We’ll never see an American President stand in front of the people and tell them the truth: That they don’t really give a crap about people who want to be free. They are, as always, merely protecting their own business interests. That’s why they can afford to fire 130 tomahawks but can’t afford to pay teachers a better salary.
Support of the invasion of Iraq used to point out that Saddam Hussain killed many of his citizens.
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Opponents of the war would reply that Hussain’s massacres occurred a significant time before the invasion, and that during the invasion there was oppression but no massive killings by Saddam.
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Obama can claim that in this case massive massacres were expected to occur, and that therefore he had a moral imperative to act in Libya.
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Opponents of the attack in Libya point out that the US is not acting in other places.
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Obama can reply that while Baharain, Syria, Yemen and Iran are violently repressing protesters, the overall death toll is significantly less (so far) than the one already occurring and expected in Libya, and that therefore he has reason to refrain from acting in these areas at the moment, but has more imperative to act in Libya.
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Obama can also claim that in the case of Libya the US had enough international support and was not required to take any major military risks in comparison to the war in Iraq or the price of a possible intervention in the other four countries.
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Obama can also claim that he did not rush to act but quite the contrary, waited pretty long until he stepped up. And that in the cases of Egypt and Tunis he restricted himself to diplomatic pressure on the dictators in question.
7:56: “Wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States.” That’s the phrase that’ll be repeated.
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That’s for sure:
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“We believe that people across the Middle East and across the world are weary of poverty, weary of oppression, and yearn to be free. And all who know that hope, all who will work and sacrifice for freedom, have a friend in the United States of America.” – George W. Bush in 2006
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“We welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way. Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States.” – Obama yesterday.
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The next guy or gal will probably say much the same.
I found the speech pathetic.
Since everyone else is going on this, I’ll add my bit as well.
Libya is insanely cheaper than Iraq was. We aren’t sending in ground troops or endangering any of our people in any possible way. We are spending a small fraction of the military budget firing missiles long range at targets, to allow others the chance to change an oppressive dictatorship into a democracy.
Libya has done terrorists attacks against America and others. Their Wikipedia article list examples, and includes reference to their own state television broadcasting that they would be attacking American and European targets. Them murdering Americans, such as the Pan Am 103 bombing, does give us a reason to go and eliminate the monster responsible. This was all done by the will of their dictator, who is still in power. He shouldn’t be able to bribe, bully, or bûllšhìŧ his way out of punishment.
Dude, I can totally accept criticism that Obama lacks charisma or that the Lybian operation is doomed to failure for some reason or another.
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But trying equate it to Iraq is really reaching. Did I expect better of Conservatives than to fly completely on the face of logic? I dunno, maybe.
And in unrelated news, Wisconsin Republicans are being áršëhølëš again:
Judge Blocks Wisconsin Anti-Union Law (Again)
At this point, the Republicans there just don’t care how they do it, as long as they get their way. And if that means ignoring the citizens, Democrats, and even the judges of the state of Wisconsin, so be it.
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But at least we knew from the start that they were áršëhølëš. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, is flat out wanting to crank up the crazy-ášš-ness of the GOP ‘contenders’ for next year.
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In this state they’ve shown that their latest pet governor of the moment will get cheered on by the national Republicans and their supporters for ordering the State Police to violate constitutional law, that he’ll get cheered on by the national Republicans and their supporters for violating the state constitution himself, that he’ll get cheered on by the national Republicans and their supporters for violating procedural laws and now that he’ll get cheered on by the national Republicans and their supporters for deciding that the courts and the legislative branch don’t apply to him and what he wants.
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Yup. Gotta love them law & order, constitution loving Republicans
Well, some within the GOP in Wisconsin have decided to go Charlie Sheen after all:
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http://www.wxow.com/Global/story.asp?S=14348776
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What really disgusts me about this is that these fruit loops can say whatever they want, but the judge will rightly say nothing in response. It’s the same as what happened in Iowa with the recall elections of the State Supreme Court Justices last year. The opposition says whatever they want, while the judges simply do their job and refuse to get caught up in politics.
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Okay… Two posts that didn’t post.
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Testing…
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“Well, some within the GOP in Wisconsin have decided to go Charlie Sheen after all:”
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http://www.wxow.com/Global/story.asp?S=14348776
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Squawk… Liberal activist judges… Squawk… Liberal activist judges… Squawk… Polly want a cracker… Squawk… Liberal activist judges…
Judge Sumi is an activist judge and her ruling was not based upon the rule of law, but rather a “concern” on the part of a bureaucratic clerk. She deserves whatever criticism she gets from her critics on that.
And Jerry had you beat by 3 minutes, Darin.
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“Judge Sumi is an activist judge and her ruling was not based upon the rule of law, but rather a “concern” on the part of a bureaucratic clerk. She deserves whatever criticism she gets from her critics on that.”
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Squawk… Liberal activist judges… Polly want a cracker… Squawk… Liberal activist judges… Squawk… Liberal activist judges… Squawk…
“And Jerry had you beat by 3 minutes, Darin.”
It’s best not to dwell on such minutia.
It’s best not to dwell on such minutia.
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I know, because facts and truth are unimportant when you’ve simply got an agenda to push.
I know, because facts and truth are unimportant when you’ve simply got an agenda to push.
This isn’t a race. The fact that someone managed to post something three minutes ahead of me is the minutia to which I was referring. Sure, it’s a fact and it’s a truth… but it’s unimportant in-and-of-itself.
To paraphrase you from the other thread: he predicted your reply accurately.
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“I know, because facts and truth are unimportant when you’ve simply got an agenda to push.”
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Yup. And the facts are that this has become the most tired, clichéd, garbage piece of rhetoric the Republicans and “conservatives” have been regurgitating the last 30 years for every single court ruling that they don’t like. Hëll, in the last few years we’ve seen justices that were appointed by Reagan who also got strong conservative support at the time of their appointments get savaged by the Right as “liberal activists” because they made a ruling that the Right didn’t like.
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And here you are now defending them doing everything they can to declare that a judges ruling and order to cease implementation and continuation of an action doesn’t apply to them because she’s a squawk… LIBERAL ACTIVIST JUDGE!!!! squawk… LIBERAL ACTIVIST JUDGE!!!!!!! squawk… Polly want a cracker! squawk… LIBERAL ACTIVIST JUDGE!!!!
And… it doesn’t matter if the Left is bored with it. It doesn’t matter if the Left finds it predictable. When it comes to judges, if they aren’t operating by the rule of law and are not strict constitutionalists, they are by definition activist judges. In short, judges are supposed to be conservative.
In short, judges are supposed to be conservative.
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BAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!
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“In short, judges are supposed to be conservative.”
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[Translated Text in Effect] – – – In short, judges are supposed to make rulings I and other Republicans/Conservatives agree with or we’re gonna smear ’em for all we’re worth! – – – [End of Translated Text]
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So you agree that the members of the Supreme Court who decided Bush v. Gore (who imposed their will onto a state matter, circumventing the rule of law) and wrote the majority opinion for Citizens United (equating corporations with citizens despite absolutely nothing in the Constitution suggesting such) are activist judges — right?
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(They are, BTW, but not because of the narrow definition you’ve created.)
The situation here in Wisconsin does serve to illustrate a critical difference between the two parties. Democrats resist the results of elections when they lose far more intensely and often than their counterparts on the other side. You’ll notice that the major recall efforts in the state are all aimed at Republicans and not the Democrats who fled the state and their responsibilities last month.
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“You’ll notice that the major recall efforts in the state are all aimed at Republicans…”
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You mean the Republicans who ordered the State Police to violate constitutional law, violating the state constitution, violated procedural laws and now decided that the courts and the legislative branch don’t apply to them and what they want? Shocking!
If any of that was true, that’s all you’d be hearing about, Jerry.
Golly, one might construe then that the people of the state, you know, regret voting them in.
this just in: dissent is unpatriotic. Dissent has always been unpatriotic.
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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2011/03/30/schultzs-stunning-dissent-unpatriotic-spiel
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This will remain in effect until the next change of parties. Any further instructions from the caucus will be provided by Senator Schumer.
Dissent has always been unpatriotic.
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And also apparently undemocratic, as comments about the situation in Wisconsin have ‘reminded’ us.
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While this bit of hypocrisy is popping up now on the left with Libya fully under way, this is a poor example of it. Even with the (very badly done) edit job on that video, you can see that the guy is being sarcastic with his remarks. I heard a part of this segment driving home last night and he was pointing out the hypocrisy of several prominent Republicans and the various Republican supporters in the media who did complete 180s on their rhetoric about supporting “the Commander in Chief” and not criticizing a President “during a time of war” when Obama became President. Palin is getting looped in because (A) she’s an easy and popular target and (B) she jus had a Dixie Chicks moment were she criticized Obama, Obama’s actions with Libya and the situation as a whole while in another country and (surprise, surprise) her words and actions are being supported by the same blowhards who attacked the Dixie Chicks and claimed, when backed into a corner about free speech, that it wouldn’t have been so bad if it was done here, but doing it on foreign soil was just plain unpatriotic.
It’s hard for me to tell when Schultz is being an angry partisan hack or just pretending to be one.
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Yeah, he comes of clownish no matter what he’s doing, but this time it was intentional. He was definitely wearing his partisan hack hat here, but he was playing the game of “their standards and words against them” with this bit. But give Ed about three more days and he will have slowly morphed this into a completely serious accusation and will have worked this routine out of the “sarcastic commentary” column and worked it into his “serious commentary” column as a from that point forward as a part of his war defense.
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The guy is a clown and a clod and his ratings will hopefully get him off of the cable news airwaves soon.
I do like how Palin can say something very good and the mainstream media will play the “deliberately obtuse” game, pretending not to understand what she said while simultaneously making fun of what she said in an attempt to convince as many ignorant people as they can that she’s a mental quadriplegic.
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Right… It’s the press’s fault that what she says often sounds stupid and uninformed and not Palin’s fault for actually saying things that are stupid and uninformed.
The mainstream media is afraid of Sarah Palin. That’s what guides them in their portrayal of her.
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Wow. It took you no time at all to get to the new soon to be tired and worn out cliché.
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Squawk! The mainstream media is afraid of Sarah Palin… Squawk! The mainstream media is afraid of Sarah Palin… Squawk! Polly want a Ritz Bits… Squawk! The mainstream media is afraid of Sarah Palin…
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Yeah, that old mainstream media is just quaking in their boots over an intellectual lightweight who puts both of her feet in her mouth when asked simple questions and then runs away from the media, pouts, cries and whines about it for years on end.
The mainstream media is afraid of Sarah Palin.
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Please put the GOP Playbook down and come up with an original thought of your own.
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There is no ‘portrayal’. What we see of Palin is everything she has set herself out to be, up to and including ‘mental quadriplegic’. She has nobody to blame but herself for this.
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But of course, she can’t bring herself to do that. Especially when she has plenty of fellow ‘mental quadriplegics’ like yourself who are more than willing to regurgitate anything she says because it saves you from having to turn your brain on.
It doesn’t matter if the Left thinks it’s worn out and cliché. These facts are not subject to their judgement.
I think you guys need to hear/read more of this, in fact.
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And maybe one day, Darin, when you present a fact about Palin rather than an overinflated opinion of her “greatness” we’ll agree with you. As for now, the comedy gold is just rolling in your posts about her.
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“Darin says:
March 30, 2011 at 2:51 pm
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I think you guys need to hear/read more of this, in fact.”
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Not really. The repetition of a lie or the repeated claim that an opinion is in fact a fact doesn’t do much to sway most people here. You may live by the “3 times and I’m a believer” rule, but I can safely say that most here don’t.
Oh, that cinches it. You guys NEED me here. You need my guidance. How can I turn my back on you now?
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“How can I turn my back on you now?”
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Buying a clue, flagging a cab to Real Street, checking into The Hotel Reality and and going back on your meds maybe?
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🙂
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Curiously, if you replace “mainstream media” with “establishment GOP”, you’re dead on.
Establishment GOP are, in fact, also afraid of Palin, but for slightly different reasons. So I’m still dead on.
Why would mainstream media be afraid of Palin? She’s a ratings godsend.
Darin, Darin. Darin..everyone here knows i like Palin, but your posts could use a little less sarcasm and more sober reasoning.
The most fascinating thing I find about Gaddafi is that he’s still a colonel. He rules the place and his title is still colonel. I wonder how his generals feel about that?
Well, Hitler was just a Corporal. I think guys like that keep their low rank as a way of sticking it to the military brass that they probably think underestimated them. Certainly, Hitler seemed to delight in ignoring the good advice of his generals, for which we should all be thankful.
Hitler having been a corporal is irrelevant to what I was talking about because his title as leader was “chancellor.” He did not keep a military rank as the civilian leader of Nazi Germany. Big differences here. Gaddafi has retained a mid-level military rank as the ruler of Libya. I’m curious as to the psychology behind that decision.
I read something about that not to long ago. Basically, it’s a peacock feather masquerading as false modesty. (Then-Captain Gaddafi raised his rank to Colonel but no further as a show of humility as he assumed absolute power.)