[Still] The President of these here United States of America

[Frances]

Paul Ryan is Gabe from The Office


Second worst character on the show
1st being the replacement receptionist
3rd, the old man
4th - creepy Jim Carrey

[philipchevron]

Obama campaign tweet following Mr Clint Eastwood's address to an empty chair at the Republican Convention Thursday evening: a photo of the back of the President's chair, with the top of his head just visible. Message? "This seat's taken".

[Low D]

OMG (as the kids say), did anybody else see all that "We Built It" crap 2 nights ago at the Publican's convention? Esp the "We Built It" country song sung by Lane Turner? Worst steaming chunk of new country pro-Am propaganda since "Some Gave All" by Billy Ray Cyrus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEs79KQwOls

[Sportin' Life]

OMG (as the kids say), did anybody else see all that "We Built It" crap 2 nights ago at the Publican's convention? Esp the "We Built It" country song sung by Lane Turner? Worst steaming chunk of new country pro-Am propaganda since "Some Gave All" by Billy Ray Cyrus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEs79KQwOls

No. And I think I won't find out whats on the other end of your link either.

[Frances]

Wow. Why in the hell would you want to carry President Obama around like that?

[philipchevron]

Wow. Why in the hell would you want to carry President Obama around like that?

Makes perfect sense if you are a registered Republican who voted for the President last time and intends to this time too, so the President may continue to do the work you sent him to DC to do.

Which he is.

[Frances]

Having a Price is Right showcase showdown freak-out on the President is one way to go.

We stumbled upon the Presidential motorcade while walking to the Lincoln Memorial at 11 P.M. one night. SUV's, machine guns and Secret Service officers running at a guy who stepped off the curb. My niece said "I don't think I want to be here" and started to back away. LoL. I suppose that's a more typical experience.

I will just look at my favorite Obama picture and forget all about Pizza Guy.

[Frances]

Mitt Romney is a fucking idiot; “Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet.”

[LittleCupcakes]

Extrajudicial killings, drones raining pain and destruction on Pakistanis (living in constant fear of death from above), failed economic policies, crony capitalism, "bumps in the road", FISA, NDAA, wiretapping, Gitmo, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, GM, nanny state, Somalia, Yemen, secrecy, lack of transparency, Wall Street blowjobs, unconstitutional law changes by executive fiat, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, all these things would happen..and they were right.

[philipchevron]

Extrajudicial killings, drones raining pain and destruction on Pakistanis (living in constant fear of death from above), failed economic policies, crony capitalism, "bumps in the road", FISA, NDAA, wiretapping, Gitmo, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, GM, nanny state, Somalia, Yemen, secrecy, lack of transparency, Wall Street blowjobs, unconstitutional law changes by executive fiat, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, all these things would happen..and they were right.

So here's a question: why is McCain's successor not taking the incumbent to task on the foreign policy/military issues you mention?

[LittleCupcakes]

Extrajudicial killings, drones raining pain and destruction on Pakistanis (living in constant fear of death from above), failed economic policies, crony capitalism, "bumps in the road", FISA, NDAA, wiretapping, Gitmo, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, GM, nanny state, Somalia, Yemen, secrecy, lack of transparency, Wall Street blowjobs, unconstitutional law changes by executive fiat, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, all these things would happen..and they were right.

So here's a question: why is McCain's successor not taking the incumbent to task on the foreign policy/military issues you mention?

Sadly, the impulse to the authoritarian is now I think an immutable feature of both parties. Even though I disagreed with O on the whole, his civil libertarian expressions did give me some hope. I am no longer disillusioned, and McCain's successor is providing an equally empty measure of hope in these areas, and I trust him little as well. There is only one anti-war, pro-freedom (lefties: read "abortion" "gay marraige"), anti-authoritarian candidate out there, and if he gets 6%, then it's 4 more years of one of the greatest presidential disappointments. If Johnson does not get his 6%, then we have a man (BTW, many of my in-laws/relatives are/were Mormon, Romney is as representative as any of them, utterly sincere, utterly resolved, utterly earnest, and utterly boring) who promises, in broad strokes, the same approach to civil liberties as The One We'd All Been Waiting For.

Very depressing, actually.

[LittleCupcakes]

ADD; and deadly:(

[philipchevron]

Extrajudicial killings, drones raining pain and destruction on Pakistanis (living in constant fear of death from above), failed economic policies, crony capitalism, "bumps in the road", FISA, NDAA, wiretapping, Gitmo, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, GM, nanny state, Somalia, Yemen, secrecy, lack of transparency, Wall Street blowjobs, unconstitutional law changes by executive fiat, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, all these things would happen..and they were right.

So here's a question: why is McCain's successor not taking the incumbent to task on the foreign policy/military issues you mention?

Sadly, the impulse to the authoritarian is now I think an immutable feature of both parties. Even though I disagreed with O on the whole, his civil libertarian expressions did give me some hope. I am no longer disillusioned, and McCain's successor is providing an equally empty measure of hope in these areas, and I trust him little as well. There is only one anti-war, pro-freedom (lefties: read "abortion" "gay marraige"), anti-authoritarian candidate out there, and if he gets 6%, then it's 4 more years of one of the greatest presidential disappointments. If Johnson does not get his 6%, then we have a man (BTW, many of my in-laws/relatives are/were Mormon, Romney is as representative as any of them, utterly sincere, utterly resolved, utterly earnest, and utterly boring) who promises, in broad strokes, the same approach to civil liberties as The One We'd All Been Waiting For.

Very depressing, actually.

So if you believe all that, and I certainly agree with much of it, why make it a partisan issue at all?

And hi, by the way, good to see you again. Stick around.

[LittleCupcakes]

Extrajudicial killings, drones raining pain and destruction on Pakistanis (living in constant fear of death from above), failed economic policies, crony capitalism, "bumps in the road", FISA, NDAA, wiretapping, Gitmo, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, GM, nanny state, Somalia, Yemen, secrecy, lack of transparency, Wall Street blowjobs, unconstitutional law changes by executive fiat, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising, golf, fundraising.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, all these things would happen..and they were right.

So here's a question: why is McCain's successor not taking the incumbent to task on the foreign policy/military issues you mention?

Sadly, the impulse to the authoritarian is now I think an immutable feature of both parties. Even though I disagreed with O on the whole, his civil libertarian expressions did give me some hope. I am no longer disillusioned, and McCain's successor is providing an equally empty measure of hope in these areas, and I trust him little as well. There is only one anti-war, pro-freedom (lefties: read "abortion" "gay marraige"), anti-authoritarian candidate out there, and if he gets 6%, then it's 4 more years of one of the greatest presidential disappointments. If Johnson does not get his 6%, then we have a man (BTW, many of my in-laws/relatives are/were Mormon, Romney is as representative as any of them, utterly sincere, utterly resolved, utterly earnest, and utterly boring) who promises, in broad strokes, the same approach to civil liberties as The One We'd All Been Waiting For.

Very depressing, actually.

So if you believe all that, and I certainly agree with much of it, why make it a partisan issue at all?

And hi, by the way, good to see you again. Stick around.

We all miss EricV, Mr. Chevron:)

Partisanship isn't an issue here, more like a reaction to the differences in popular emphasis, shall we say, on the issues of the day. The press (nominally independent, and such as it is) seems to mostly ignore the Bush-tastic violations of the Obama administration while in the past cri-du-couer-ing those same Commander-in-Chimpian failures from a few years ago (apologies, just went with it). Where is the coverage of Cindy Sheehan and the "Anti-War" movement, especially now that there's other wars to loathe? Where are the horrific pictures of young Pakistanis who've just lost their families to drones? Where is the outrage (there should be much) about the unconstitutional murder of an American citizen? Obama told me that something different was in store, perhaps an America I'd be proud(er?) of. Instead, we have more of the same.

And I'm pissed off, because while I expected that some of what O promised would be "wrong", there was some I expected to be "right", and instead I got more Bush. And that sucks, 'cause he sucked.

"Hope and change my ass", is my point I guess.

[philipchevron]

Yes, but you made it a partisan issue when you said you voted for McCain. I know there was a degree of flippancy in that but the question of why Romney/Ryan are more interested in telling lies about the President than in confronting him on his military adventures is the most troubling question of this election, because they could really draw blood there if they wanted to. And they don't want to because their main problem seems to be that the President is not hawkish enough and that's not gonna play in Peoria. Incredibly, the Romney campaign is now explicitly featuring specially-shot Benjamin Netanyahu endorsements in some States, an almost certainly doomed attempt by mutual friend Sheldon Edelson to shore up the "Jewish vote."

If you're an innocent Pakistani citizen whose only crime is being Brown, I don't suppose it much matters whether the hand of Barack Obama or George Bush is on the trigger when your family is wiped out in a drone attack. John F Kennedy managed to protect America, and the world, from a nuclear stand-off because he held his nerve against the Pentagon, indisputably the correct choice. We can take or leave, as we wish, Obama's implied suggestion that his is a more thoughtful war on terrorism, and it will certainly be interesting to see how the President responds - between now and 2014 - to the survey indicating that his Afghanistan Surge has led to a greater loss of American lives, not fewer, as anticipated.

Finally, though it grieves me to say so, because I dislike relatavism, we cannot entirely discount MLK's remarks about the Content of one's Character. The content of JFK's character, questionable in so many ways, was unimpeachable when it counted in 1961/62. Similarly, a thoughtful man trying to find a way out of a war he didn't start has to be marked above an opponent who considers acceptable the adaptation of a Beach Boys song into a "Bomb Iran" jingle and a successor who seems perfectly happy to attach himself to Netanyanhu's right-wing ravings if he thinks it'll get him the first job he's ever had.

You're 100% corrrect in one respect - after 10 years and 2, perhaps 3 wars, America has lost the taste for discussing its foreign policy and that is the greatest tragedy of all.