td11 wrote:Werthless it was a joke. I don't think you guys actually blow each other

not that there's anything wrong with that

Werthless, thx for the kind words, which I reciprocate. (Was actually thinking earlier today that all these threads are pretty much pointless since you and I solved the entitlements problem a month or so back...)

I can only speak for myself, but I'll share two thoughts about the Libya situation.

1) It looks awful for the administration. They're spinning and avoiding responsibility... as every administration does, and as Bush/Cheney certainly did when the torture scandal broke, it was revealed that billions in cash were left on flatbed trucks, and that US/allied weapons had fallen into the hands of insurgents. Oh, and when Bush ignored the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside U.S." memo. This is what administrations do. All of them.

2) With this in mind, I have trouble taking seriously the outrage of Republicans in response to all this. I think it's similar to the all but overt rooting for bad news in economic data. And on balance I don't believe it's a particularly close comparison between the foreign policy/national security record of the last administration--the guys who failed to stop 9/11 and launched a tragically pointless war--and the current one, which ended said dumb war and killed the mastermind of 9/11. This doesn't at all excuse the screw-up in Libya, but part of what makes it surprising is that Obama's team generally has been strong in this area.

The sad thing is that you don't have to go back very far to find a time when we really were more united around foreign policy. I read recently that in April 1980, when the Desert One mission failed, Reagan and Bush41 both made statements of support for President Carter. Maybe that was the Cold War, a different time. But I find that a lot more admirable than the reflexive oppositional dynamic we have now.

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The War in Iraq:

A war ginned up on false evidence of WMD (a failure which Bush DID blame on the Intelligence community);
A war later justified on ever-changing rationales, including "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and more than two dozen other rationales (according to a University of Illinois study);
A war which cost more than 4,000 American lives and cost a Trillion Dollars, most, if not all, of which was put on our Chinese credit card;
A war which the administration claimed would be paid for from Iraq oil and for which we'd be "greeted as liberators;"
A war which dangerously destabilized the Middle East by removing Iran's natural counterbalance, allowing Iran both to spread its dangerous, fundamentalist Shiite influence both in Iraq and elsewhere and attempt to accelerate the pace of its nuclear arms program.

It is inconceivable to me that ANYTHING the Bush Administration said about the War in Iraq could be held up as an example of how an Administration should respond to any crisis, foreign or domestic.

And the takeaway is that you demand truth from your political leaders, yes?

It would be unbelievably naive to demand truth all the time from political leaders. I don't know whether the Obama Administration has been lying about Libya, nor what their rationale for doing so might be if they are. I will say this, however: to equate any dissembling by the Obama administration over the Libyan incident with the Alice Through the Looking Glass fairy tale world created by the Bush Administration to attempt to justify the horrible horrible costs of the Iraq War in blood and treasure strikes me as akin to moral equivalency arguments attempting to justify terrorist attacks.

Your outrage at any lying by the Obama Administration may be entirely justified. But your choice of a comparison was very poor indeed. Your argument would have been much better served by, for example, JFK's response to the Bay of Pigs or Jimmy Carter's response to the botched Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

dajafi wrote:I don't believe it's a particularly close comparison between the foreign policy/national security record of the last administration--the guys who failed to stop 9/11 and launched a tragically pointless war--and the current one, which ended said dumb war and killed the mastermind of 9/11.

in much the same fashion, I don't believe our sun is particularly close to alpha centauri

I'm glad I mostly stay out of this.

JFLNYC wrote:

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The War in Iraq:

A war ginned up on false evidence of WMD (a failure which Bush DID blame on the Intelligence community);
A war later justified on ever-changing rationales, including "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and more than two dozen other rationales (according to a University of Illinois study);
A war which cost more than 4,000 American lives and cost a Trillion Dollars, most, if not all, of which was put on our Chinese credit card;
A war which the administration claimed would be paid for from Iraq oil and for which we'd be "greeted as liberators;"
A war which dangerously destabilized the Middle East by removing Iran's natural counterbalance, allowing Iran both to spread its dangerous, fundamentalist Shiite influence both in Iraq and elsewhere and attempt to accelerate the pace of its nuclear arms program.

It is inconceivable to me that ANYTHING the Bush Administration said about the War in Iraq could be held up as an example of how an Administration should respond to any crisis, foreign or domestic.

And the takeaway is that you demand truth from your political leaders, yes?

It would be unbelievably naive to demand truth all the time from political leaders. I don't know whether the Obama Administration has been lying about Libya, nor what their rationale for doing so might be if they are. I will say this, however: to equate any dissembling by the Obama administration over the Libyan incident with the Alice Through the Looking Glass fairy tale world created by the Bush Administration to attempt to justify the horrible horrible costs of the Iraq War in blood and treasure strikes me as akin to moral equivalency arguments attempting to justify terrorist attacks.

Your outrage at any lying by the Obama Administration may be entirely justified. But your choice of a comparison was very poor indeed. Your argument would have been much better served by, for example, JFK's response to the Bay of Pigs or Jimmy Carter's response to the botched Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

I never asserted equivalency, either moral or in magnitude. The reason I brought up Iraq is to remind you how you felt around 2004 elections, when confronted with Bush and the difficulty it was to acquire the truth. Now that the tables are turned and the incumbent is your guy, many liberals are acting exactly like the Bush-supporters were in 2004.

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The War in Iraq:

A war ginned up on false evidence of WMD (a failure which Bush DID blame on the Intelligence community);
A war later justified on ever-changing rationales, including "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and more than two dozen other rationales (according to a University of Illinois study);
A war which cost more than 4,000 American lives and cost a Trillion Dollars, most, if not all, of which was put on our Chinese credit card;
A war which the administration claimed would be paid for from Iraq oil and for which we'd be "greeted as liberators;"
A war which dangerously destabilized the Middle East by removing Iran's natural counterbalance, allowing Iran both to spread its dangerous, fundamentalist Shiite influence both in Iraq and elsewhere and attempt to accelerate the pace of its nuclear arms program.

It is inconceivable to me that ANYTHING the Bush Administration said about the War in Iraq could be held up as an example of how an Administration should respond to any crisis, foreign or domestic.

And the takeaway is that you demand truth from your political leaders, yes?

It would be unbelievably naive to demand truth all the time from political leaders. I don't know whether the Obama Administration has been lying about Libya, nor what their rationale for doing so might be if they are. I will say this, however: to equate any dissembling by the Obama administration over the Libyan incident with the Alice Through the Looking Glass fairy tale world created by the Bush Administration to attempt to justify the horrible horrible costs of the Iraq War in blood and treasure strikes me as akin to moral equivalency arguments attempting to justify terrorist attacks.

Your outrage at any lying by the Obama Administration may be entirely justified. But your choice of a comparison was very poor indeed. Your argument would have been much better served by, for example, JFK's response to the Bay of Pigs or Jimmy Carter's response to the botched Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

I never asserted equivalency, either moral or in magnitude. The reason I brought up Iraq is to remind you how you felt around 2004 elections, when confronted with Bush and the difficulty it was to acquire the truth. Now that the tables are turned and the incumbent is your guy, many liberals are acting exactly like the Bush-supporters were in 2004.

With all due respect, that seems exactly like an equivalency argument to me. How one felt then and feels now toward Presidential dissembling seems inextricably linked to the comparative magnitude of the dissembling. And, frankly, your unwillingness to accept how misplaced it is to use Bush in 2004 as a comparison for Obama in 2012 seems to me to be awfully ironic when the point of the exercise is to criticize another for not coming clean over a mistake.

JFLNYC wrote:With all due respect, that seems exactly like an equivalency argument to me. How one felt then and feels now toward Presidential dissembling seems inextricably linked to the comparative magnitude of the dissembling. And, frankly, your unwillingness to accept how misplaced it is to use Bush in 2004 as a comparison for Obama in 2012 seems to me to be awfully ironic when the point of the exercise is to criticize another for not coming clean over a mistake.

What? I said there's not equaivalent at all, and you say it sounds like equivalency? I'm comparing supporters, and their willingness to look the other way when their dear leader lies/covers up mistakes. I'm not surprised, though, since I did use the Bush Dog Whistle (trademark pending).

Werthless wrote:I never asserted equivalency, either moral or in magnitude. The reason I brought up Iraq is to remind you how you felt around 2004 elections, when confronted with Bush and the difficulty it was to acquire the truth. Now that the tables are turned and the incumbent is your guy, many liberals are acting exactly like the Bush-supporters were in 2004.

So the reactions are exactly alike, but the two events to which reaction has taken place are not equivalent at all.

Thanks for clearing that up?

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:With all due respect, that seems exactly like an equivalency argument to me. How one felt then and feels now toward Presidential dissembling seems inextricably linked to the comparative magnitude of the dissembling. And, frankly, your unwillingness to accept how misplaced it is to use Bush in 2004 as a comparison for Obama in 2012 seems to me to be awfully ironic when the point of the exercise is to criticize another for not coming clean over a mistake.

What? I said there's not equaivalent at all, and you say it sounds like equivalency? I'm comparing supporters, and their willingness to look the other way when their dear leader lies/covers up mistakes. I'm not surprised, though, since I did use the Bush Dog Whistle (trademark pending).

If you're now saying you agree that the magnitude of any Obama Administration dissembling is not equivalent to that of the Bush Administration before and during the Iraq War, I'll take you at your word. In that case, however, your "comparing supporters, and their willingness to look the other way when their dear leader lies/covers up mistakes," loses its force since we now agree that any lies and/or cover ups are not equivalent in scope at all. In such a case, comparing respective supporter response to vastly different situations seems a useless exercise.

It's worth noting as a postscript that, considering your original post lamented the personal attacks as "way over the line," you might want to reconsider using your claimed trademark of "the Bush Dog Whistle," since it implies that anyone responding to your invoking George W. Bush is a dog. I'm thick-skinned enough to find it mildly clever, but it could easily be seen as unnecessarily provocative.

I was under the impression that the joint chiefs or some sort of higher ups did hold a meeting where they said it was because if the video. Republicans who were in the meeting even came out saying that is what was said. I don't know where it is in an article but megyn Kelly was talking about it on fox. She is crazy and will help the conservative cause any chance she gets so it made me believe it.

Sweet Jesus, you guys just keep going, don't you?

"Truth" has no value in regards to the Libya argument. The argument is entirely political on both sides.

Prior to the attack, foreign policy qualifications for the Presidency and Vice Presidency were essentially 100/0 in favor of Obama Biden. The confusion and mishandling of the Libya attack by the Obama Administration gave the Republicans exactly the opening they needed to chip away at Obama's foreign policy qualifications and achievements, which was their only tactical alternative since it's impossible to burnish the non-existent foreign affairs qualifications of Romney Ryan.

The Republicans seized their political opportunity and have continued riding it to good effect. The Obama Administration response has seemingly been guided solely by political considerations as they, too, understand the event's political consequences.

Frankly, if Obama had been sufficiently politically motivated, it would have served him much better to have waited until this fall to kill Bin Laden.

23 days, beez. 23 days.

smitty wrote:Washington State has two candidates for Attorney General. One is for Washington families. The other is for criminals. I'm gonna vote for the guy who,is for,criminals because that's a gutsy stance and I admire gutsy politicians.

This is honestly the best political ad I've ever seen.

Wash Post fact checks the VP debate:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fac ... _blog.html

SK790 wrote:

smitty wrote:Washington State has two candidates for Attorney General. One is for Washington families. The other is for criminals. I'm gonna vote for the guy who,is for,criminals because that's a gutsy stance and I admire gutsy politicians.

This is honestly the best political ad I've ever seen.

Seriously, the best political ad I've seen is,that Republican widow who is a state rep or something. Her passionate support of the Gay Marriage bill is awesome.

Also, the Susan Del Bene Of Course ads were really good. I know they were good because I still remember her name and she isn't in my district. Those ads were kind of like the theme song from Shaft. They should have included,the line "That Susan Del Bene is a bad mutha." they would have been kewl.

RIP Arlen Spector

Mitt Romney ‏@MittRomney
Sign up for your chance to score a guitar signed by @KidRock and @PaulRyanVP http://mi.tt/Trg4UK

Amazing how many Republican attack ads say Obama is not a friend of Israel.