I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange
Comments
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Since retiring, I've gotten out of the political news business (not sure why?), though I did hear Kerry responding to some question about "what if the Russians" or some sort and now Putin is involved with possibly securing the chemical weapons in Syria and now Obama might be pursuing that diplomatic avenue?
As I thought would happen, assuming my above scenerio is correct, I see a post "over there" ridiculing Obama for doing just that or taking credit for that. Before seeing that post, I was reminding myself how George 42 was hell bent on going to war with Iraq and no amount of evidence, reconciliation, waiting, offers of diplomacy, new evidence from the weapons inspectors would satisfy his thirst for blood. It was obvious that crowd was hell bent on going to war and the evidence or offers were only impedements rather than something to consider to keep the peace.
I applaud Obama for taking every turn to keep the peace. This chick does not think less of him for doing it and I'm sure any peace-loving person does not. The alternative is a blood-thirsty meglomaniac. Thank you God he is not one of those.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?_r=0
Above a letter by Putin to the Times. This is how works GOP. You don't shut out all options for the sake of war. Don't necessarily know about his claim that the Rebels were responsible for the chemical weapons, but I totally agree with his sentiments about an International interest in peace. I've never agreed with US exceptionalism. What a turnoff, therefore I agree with Putin and not Obama, though I honestly think Obama thinks that is political hogwash, and brings it up to appease American zealots, privately, ofcourse.
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I think sometimes I don't really know how smart Obama really is. It's like Blue's post about others judging intelligence. I think he's always one move ahead of the maddening crowd.
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The best way to get what you want as a negotiator is to make the other side think they're going to come out looking as though THEY won. Read this (from Forbes Mag.):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcamp/2013/09/11/obamas-magnificent-stealth-negotiation-with-putin/
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Honestly, it was very difficult for me to believe Obama wanted any kind of military strike on Syria. Like I said, he's always atleast one move ahead of the rest of us in these matters. Seen it too many times. His concession to Putin, letting Putin blame it on the rebels, perfect. Ofcourse, the haters will never give him credit (and he knows that), so no need to explain it to them - they're too use to guns ablazing (sort of George Zimmerman or George Bush style). Besides, ruins his next move if people catch on.
Good article c4c. -
A little saber rattling can help a lot.
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President Obama has been fighting an uphill battle to win support for an authorization to strike Syria in retaliation for an Aug. 21 Sarin gas attack, but a CNN/ORC poll taken following Tuesday night’s East Room address shows good news for the President’s Syria policy. In that speech, Obama made the case for the necessity of a limited strike, but also for allowing time to let a burgeoning diplomatic solution play out. CNN’s poll found that 61% of Americans favor “the approach to Syria that Barack Obama described in his speech.”
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Yep.
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Trying to fix the HTML.
ETA: ***SATIRE ALERT*** ETA - There are a number of inaccuracies here. I have corrected some of them in bold below. Click on this link for a much more accurate accounting of all the security failures that resulted in attacks on U.S. Embassies before President Obama took office.
Benghazi: Another in a Long Line of Obama Failures Going Back to 1983
by TeaPartyCat
08-26-13
On September 11, 2012, four American diplomats were killed by terrorists. Did Obama have time to send help to save them? Did he do nothing and just let them die? Was he just watching TV? Did he plot their death? We want to know, but the administration refuses to answer all our questions.
In fact the administration has yet to definitively prove that Obama did not act as global head of Al Qaeda to plan the attack, nor have they proven that he was not there in Libya personally doing the killing.
And this isn’t just a one time failure on Obama’s part either, because then who would Republicans be to try to hang four deaths on him considering he’s responsible for millions of lives every day. And also in this one case it’s also true that Obama’s Secretary of State warned the House GOP that they were putting lives at risk when they cut the State Department’s security budget the year before.
No, this is part of a pattern that’s been going on for a very long time.
Part of a Pattern of Diplomatic Deaths on Obama’s Watch
American diplomats and soldiers have been dying for years because Obama didn’t send military support when they needed, or ignored their request for fortifications before the attacks. These are just facts, so lets review:
September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists kill 16 people, including two Americans. And Obama didn’t nothing to save them.
July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Terrorists kill 6 people. And Obama did nothing to save them.
March 18, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists kill 2 people nearby while firing RPGs at the U.S. Embassy. And Obama did nothing to save them.
September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Terrorists kill 4 people, wound 13 when they attack the U.S.Embassy with a car bomb, a truck bomb, grenades and automatic weapons. And Obama did nothing to save them.
March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan. Terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate and kill 4, including U.S. diplomat David Foy, who was specifically targeted by the attackers. And Obama did nothing to save them.
December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Terrorists kill 9 people when they storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. And Obama did nothing to save them.
July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing 2 people. And Obama did nothing to save them.
May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Terrorists kill 9 Americans and 25 other people when they storm the U.S. Embassy compound and detonate a suicide truck bomb. And Obama did nothing to save them.
February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Terrorists fire on the U.S. Embassy, killing 2 people. And Obama did nothing to save them.
June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber kills 12 people and wound 51 in an attack on the U.S. Consulate. And Obama did nothing to save them.
January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Terrorists kill 5 people in an attack on the U.S. Consulate. And Obama did nothing to save them.
October 23, 1983. Beruit, Lebanon. Terrorists kill 241 Americans killed, 60 injured. And Obama did nothing to save them.
So you see, Obama has been letting our diplomats die for years, and it’s only right that Republicans hold him to account. Call your Congressman and tell him Obama has been neglecting the protection of Americans overseas for 30 years and it has to stop.
ETA - I also removed the meme because it contained incorrect information. We don't need to lie to make the point.
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I watched a West Wing re-run last evening -- the episode that was made especially after 9/11/01. It involved a terror threat to the White House, which was locked down during a tour of high school students. One of the kids asked about the Muslim religion and terrorism. Josh Lyman got out the whiteboard and wrote "Muslim extremists are to Islam as _________ are to Christianity". And the answer? The KKK.
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This is what we are dealing with. Terrifying -- and we actually KNOW people who will nod in agreement. If you nod in agreement, you are not a decent person.
From the Maddow Blog:
Nearly 11 years ago, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R) noted that his home state of Mississippi supported Strom Thurmond's presidential candidacy in 1948. "If the rest of the country had followed our lead," Lott said, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."
Given that Thurmond was running on a segregationist platform in 1948, Lott's remarks were not well received. Indeed, the Bush/Cheney White House quickly abandoned him and Lott was forced to give up his post.
The incident came to mind yesterday after listening to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The Texas Republican spoke yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, appearing at an event named after the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), where Cruz was quite effusive in his praise.
"I'll tell you something ... the very first political contribution I ever made in my life was to Jesse Helms. When I was a kid, I sent $10 to Jesse Helms, 'cause they were beating up on him, they were coming after him hard and I thought it wasn't right, and at the time my allowance was 50 cents a week," the Texas Republican said. "I am willing to venture a guess that I may have been Jesse Helms' single largest donor as a percentage of annual income."
Cruz also recalled a story about when a young Helms received a campaign donation check from John Wayne. He explained that, according to the story, Helms figured out how to get in touch with Wayne and called to thank him for the support.
"Apparently Wayne said, 'Oh yeah, you're that guy saying all those crazy things. We need 100 more like you,'" Cruz said. "The willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic in this town, and you know what? It's every bit as true now as it was then. We need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate."
Is that so.
Let's put aside the oddity of Cruz's arithmetic, and the fact that if the Senate featured 100 Helms clones, there wouldn't be a seat for Cruz (unless, that is, Cruz considers himself a senator in the Helms mold).
Instead, let's remember the man Cruz is so proud to have supported, politically and financially.
The late David Broder wrote a remarkable piece in 2001, a week after Helms announced his retirement from the Senate. Broder, known for moderation and caution, said what many in the Beltway media were reluctant to acknowledge.
What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country -- a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. [...]
What is unique about Helms -- and from my viewpoint, unforgivable -- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.
The man Cruz celebrated yesterday was arguably the last proud, unrepentant racist to serve in Congress. When Cruz said America needs "a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate," what he's endorsing is a chamber run by white supremacists.
What's more, the depths of Helms' bigotry ran deeper. As Tim Murphy reported yesterday, "Helms believed gays were 'weak, morally sick wretches' and argued that 'there is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy' -- motivating factors behind his push to block funding for research into HIV at a time when the epidemic was killing tens of thousands of people in the United States alone. He described AIDS education as 'so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up.'"
Ted Cruz wants to embrace the Helms legacy? He wants a Senate dominated by members in the Helms mold? Great. This seems like a discussion well worth having.
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Unfreakingbelievable. Go to the article if you want to see the actual clip -- and can do it without vomiting on your keyboard. The Ann Coulter of the Senate.
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Krugman's column from Monday. I just got to it today. My comment: yep.
The New York Times
The Wonk Gap
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 8, 2013
On Saturday, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming delivered the weekly Republican address. He ignored Syria, presumably because his party is deeply conflicted on the issue. (For the record, so am I.) Instead, he demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act. “The health care law,” he declared, “has proven to be unpopular, unworkable and unaffordable,” and he predicted “sticker shock” in the months ahead.
So, another week, another denunciation of Obamacare. Who cares? But Mr. Barrasso’s remarks were actually interesting, although not in the way he intended. You see, all the recent news on health costs has been good. So Mr. Barrasso is predicting sticker shock precisely when serious fears of such a shock are fading fast. Why would he do that?Well, one likely answer is that he hasn’t heard any of the good news. Think about it: Who would tell him?
My guess, in other words, was that Mr. Barrasso was inadvertently illustrating the widening “wonk gap” — the G.O.P.’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into Election Day expecting victory.
About health reform: Mr. Barrasso was wrong about everything, even the “unpopular” bit, as I’ll explain in a minute. Mainly, however, he was completely missing the story on affordability.
For the truth is that the good news on costs just keeps coming in. There has been a striking slowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit. And we now have a good idea what insurance premiums will be once the law goes fully into effect; a comprehensive survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that on average premiums will be significantly lower than those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office when the law was passed.
But do Republican politicians know any of this? Not if they’re listening to conservative “experts,” who have been offering a steady stream of misinformation. All those claims about sticker shock, for example, come from obviously misleading comparisons. For example, supposed experts compare average insurance rates under the new system, which will cover everyone, with the rates currently paid by a handful of young, healthy people for bare-bones insurance. And they conveniently ignore the subsidies many Americans will receive.
At the same time, in an echo of the Romney camp’s polling fantasies, other conservative “experts” are creating false impressions about public opinion. Just after Kaiser released a poll showing a strong majority — 57 percent — opposed to the idea of defunding health reform, the Heritage Foundation put out a poster claiming that 57 percent of Americans want reform defunded. Did the experts at Heritage simply read the numbers upside down? No, they claimed, they were referring to some other poll. Whatever really happened, the practical effect was to delude the right-wing faithful.
And the point is that episodes like this have become the rule, not the exception, on the right. How many Republicans know, for example, that government employment has declined, not risen, under President Obama? Certainly Senator Rand Paul was incredulous when I pointed this out to him on TV last fall. On the contrary, he insisted, “the size of growth of government is enormous under President Obama” — which was completely untrue but was presumably what his sources had told him, knowing that it was what he wanted to hear.
For that, surely, is what the wonk gap is all about. Political conservatism and serious policy analysis can coexist, and there was a time when they did. Back in the 1980s, after all, health experts at Heritage made a good-faith effort to devise a plan for universal health coverage — and what they came up with was the system now known as Obamacare.
But that was then. Modern conservatism has become a sort of cult, very much given to conspiracy theorizing when confronted with inconvenient facts. Liberal policies were supposed to cause hyperinflation, so low measured inflation must reflect statistical fraud; the threat of climate change implies the need for public action, so global warming must be a gigantic scientific hoax. Oh, and Mitt Romney would have won if only he had been a real conservative.
It’s all kind of funny, in a way. Unfortunately, however, this runaway cult controls the House, which gives it immense destructive power — the power, for example, to wreak havoc on the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And it’s disturbing to realize that this power rests in the hands of men who, thanks to the wonk gap, quite literally have no idea what they’re doing.
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Yep.
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OM freaking G or whatever. You go girl. Keep this up RL and you might rupture an aneurism. But you will go down righteous
. Kay -
Love you too, Kay and delighted to see you here!
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RL -- Here's my take on one of the reasons for false info being given to those congresscritters: In the 24/7 news (or should I say, infotainment) cycle, Reps and Senators need to get on TV as often as they can, to garner support for re-election. They know that the more shocking things they say will do that for them. And so they ask their staff to dig up all those "shocking" things that they then put out as a "statement", so that the media will pick up on it.
The best example I can think of was the President's trip to India. Bachmann's staff unearthed an interview with a native of Mumbai on Indian media that his trip was going to cost 100M/day. Of course, the staff didn't bother to deduce that the cost touted was in Indian rupees, and not American dollars. Next thing you know, Bachmann's staff has gotten media attention and there she is on TV, denouncing this "$100 MILLION per day cost of Obama's Indian trip". And then RWNJ commentators further expanded the lie.
But it certainly got Bachmann the media attention she craved. Of course, what she didn't realize was that when you added up ALL the stupid statements she made (given to her by her staff, such as the "vaccine instantly caused mental retardation in a 12-yr-old girl"), it wasn't long before Bachmann became certifiably batsh*t crazy and has lost any credibility she once had.
I think the same thing is happening with Carnival Cruz, although I'm not sure he's actually relying on his staff.....the more shocking, the more attention he gets.
Sick, isn't it?
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Blue ... thanks for posting that article. What a wonderful Pope. He almost said non-believing good people who follow their conscience can get into heaven ... he came damn close!
Hope you're doing better with the stimulator today.
hugs,
Bren
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Kay....hear you loud and clear. RL....I read a similar article a couple of days ago. So, people wonder why we look on our President with such favor....well many reasons can be found in just that one article. The Rt. has become encased in stone....unable to it seems, understand how mind boggling they look and sound....no empathy, no commom sense, no reality.............but as Blue would say...Benghazi. I hope the whole party has lifeguards atanding by.
Jackie
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O.T. but good.
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