I’m not quite sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like this, and my gut instinct is that Cheney and the GOP have once again overplayed their hand. They’ve been running around screaming about amateurs and “not taking this seriously,” and then you get sober, competent, and very confidence-inspiring performances from Obama, Napolitano, and Brennan. It reminds me of the GOP screaming “radical” the whole election and then the American public tunes into the debates and sees this boring, normal, smart black guy who is not the least bit threatening.
And what is most shocking to me, at least, is that the reporters seem to be asking really solid questions. I loved cranky old Helen trying to get to the nut of it all- “What motivates them?” She was, of course, ignored.
Mark S.
“What motivates them?”
Freedom hating.
Dreggas
But never once did obama name the enemy as the islamofascist freedom haters! He obviously does not have his eyes on the ball and can’t name the enemy!
calipygian
I’m tired of talking about this.
Guy blew his dick off. Nothing happened. Shit’s always gonna happen. Move the fuck on.
Jeez.
Kobie
I gotta agree with Calipygian. The Republicans seem to have this notion that somehow, by bombing the living shit out of brown people and screaming about terrorism at the top of their lungs, they are somehow going to stop people from trying to fuck around on airplanes. Really?
Leelee for Obama
Posted about this in the last thread, so all I’ll add is Damn, it’s great to have a grown-up in the White House. I sleep like a baby, honest to FSM.
ETA_ did anyone else love Chris Matthews just a little bit for the cuckoo clock analogy? I will forgive his next stupid, unreservedly.
Richard
I am Dick Cheney!
I shoot you in Face!
numbskull
What was the part that the American public is supposed to be a little shocked about?
bago
Was the “terrorism” count sufficient for eponymous sons?
Stooleo
Terrorball
Elisabeth
OT, John, but I figured you’d be happy: Obama renominated Dawn Johnsen.
Ash
I don’t understand why some people love Helen Thomas. I’m sure most of it just comes from the fact that she gives off the aura of being a sweet little old lady, but really.
General Winfield Stuck
I missed it, but caught a Yahoo news headline that said something like Obama says the buck stops with him on security. How uppity is that? Didn’t even blame idiot wingnuts like Demint et al holding up key nominations for national security appointments, or GWB. Something like a POTUS Commander-in-Chief taking personal responsibility.
The wingnuts are going to have to crush that notion from taking hold if they want Sarah Serendipity holding the fort.
El Cid
Are you kidding? Obama totally said we were going to be rational and not live like a nation under siege! That’s obviously Obama-speak for surrender to Al Qa’ida’s #3! Gawd.
Ash
Obama:
Someone get Sully a fainting couch stat.
John Cole
@Ash: I like her because he is cranky as hell.
HumboldtBlue
How the fuck is Obama supposed to know what motivates a young man to give his life for some religious poppycock? Watch Syriana Helen, you may learn something. Then again, just watch some war porn and it’ll dawn on you that killing someone’s family is a good way to turn him into an intractable enemy.
Frank Chow
See he didn’t say Jihad and didn’t mention how much we need to hate immigrants. Why he hates America so much I will never know…but I do blame him for making me piss my pants every day in fear of the brown people.
Gosh I miss Darth…I mean Dick Cheney.
Demo Woman
@Elisabeth: Thank you for the info.
I saw President Obama’s speech but did not see the security briefing after ward. Any updates would be appreciated.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: They lost big today, and they have to know it. What people saw was a real President-not some faux-news facsimile thereof. And don’t you just love the appointment of John Brennan right about now? Someone who has been there from the beginning of time who is balls-to-the-wall for this President? And Ms. Napolitano is doing just fine, thank you very much! The guy Bush appointed in 2007 for the Clearing Center, not so much.
Makes this old lady’s heart all warm and fuzzy!
El Cid
@Frank Chow: Thankfully the C-Span callers were frequently cranking off about how this proves we got too many immigrants.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
I will have to catch it on rerun somewhere. And stop it. You ain’t an “old lady”, yet.
wvng
John, but you know they won’t stop the screaming. And their target audience won’t ever hear what Obama et al said today, at least not without it being clipped by Faux and friends so it sounds like they love them terrists.
ajr22
@Ash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ZuQndRLTU Anyone who says that to Bush’s face gets a gold star in my grade book.
gf120581
What I find most pathetic is that this hysteria is the GOP’s response to a FAILED attack. I repeat, a FAILED attack by some moron who ended up destroying nothing more than his Jockey shorts. Imagine the GOP’s response if we actually had an attack that succeeded. Words fail me.
Bubblegum Tate
Holy shit, really? That is pretty damn shocking.
tom p
wvng: but but but but… then they would have to admit that he actually used the “T” word.
mr. whipple
Damn, a fucking adult in the WH. Who’d a thunk it?
MikeJ
How long until the wingnuts start yelling about “the buck stops with me” and demanding he resign?
demkat620
@numbskull: That was the part where an elected official actually took responsibility for his job.
That was very much missing over the last eight years.
The Dangerman
@gf120581:
Orgasm. They are rooting for another hit.
O’reilly was on TV last night saying one more event and Obama’s administration is over; he’s already called 3 strikes (the plane, Fort Hood, and some event in Arkansas that I never heard anything about).
16shellsfromathirtyaughtsix
Bomb Iran!
Carol
January 7th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
The Republicans are trying to panic us, and are failing very miserably. People know they got a guy who keeps his cool-so far I’ve heard way more concern about the weather than about the Fruit of the Loom bomber, even online.
I bet after this, the whole thing fades out of public consciousness altogether to be replaced by the Arctic refrigerator we are currently having. After all, with this guy running things, getting our toes frozen off is a bigger threat
Frank Chow
@El Cid They must have gotten their cue from Malkin. *headslamondesk
BR
@ajr22:
THANK YOU for that. Honestly, sometimes I forget how terrifically ridiculous of a president Bush was.
Kobie
@The Dangerman: Fort Hood? Really?
These dumbfucks have basically made it so anytime a Muslim does something bad, it’s “terrorism.”
The Populist
The right needs to learn the lesson of overexposure. Sure their sheep will keep chanting this nonsense but average Americans are going to start questioning their “sky is falling” b.s. soon enough.
Interestingly, I find it refreshing that Obama is willing to DISCUSS the intelligence miscues relating to the undie bomber. I saw a tweet between two College age GOP fans (one had a page with Palin in 2012 to show you how lame these people are) and they were pushing candidates like Petraeus and Palin solely because they don’t think O is tough enough. Ack. Makes me sick that people cannot step outside their little partisan bubble and use the critical side of their brain to realize how RIGHT Obama is on these matters.
IF Bush were in charge, they’d try to blame the Dems for the undie bomber and then bomb Yemen to make a point. I am so glad that even with his flaws, Obama is handling this the way I thought he would…calm, cool and collected.
Ash
@Kobie: Which is weird considering Republicans never lump in the DC sniper with all the other terrorists.
The Populist
@The Dangerman:
THe event in Arkansas was the prick who shot up the Army recruiting center, right?
Dreggas
Well since he admitted the buck stops with him I expect to see impeachment proceedings started next week.
Kobie
@Ash: Huh. I wonder why that is.
The Populist
@Ash:
Exactly! And all this hand wringing over Obama arresting these guys so they are tried in civilian courts. Richard Reid, Jose Padilla and the blind Sheik had their days in court and funny, no attacks to free them!
Mnemosyne
@Kobie:
The shooter at the Los Angeles Airport a few years ago? His wife had just left him and gone back to Egypt with the kids and it was his birthday. But because he was a Middle Eastern guy who chose to shoot up the El Al counter and not a disgruntled white worker, he was a scary Mooslim terrorist and THEY’RE COMING TO KILL US ALL!
Instead of being what it actually was, a suicide by cop (or, in this case, security guard). You don’t decide to attack the El Al counter and expect to survive.
Leelee for Obama
@Ash: Hell, they don’t even count the anthrax attacks under terrorism. Prolly cause they think it was an American whodunit!
The Populist
@Dreggas:
You mean like Bush the decider until he had to backtrack on all the dumb things he did.
Buck stops at Obama without question. He owned up to it and is fixing it. I trust that kind of thing immensely. The GOP are so fond of talking about CEOs making excellent Presidents, yet Obama’s leadership style is straight out of a Jack Welch how to book. Calm, cool and collected.
Ash
@Kobie: It really is a huuuuuuuge mystery, isn’t it?
Also, I said upthread
And right on cue…
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/big-government-as-usual.html#more
Nylund
Is Osama Bin Laden paying the GOP to be his cheerleaders? All I see is them running around screaming about how everything is a victory for Al Qaeda.
eemom
@MikeJ:
right now at the Heritage Foundation, teh Google is at full throttle as the wingnut “thinkers” feverishly comb through every recorded utterance of the phrase “the buck stops here” in the hope that, say, Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx might have said it.
metricpenny
“I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from mistakes.”
Maybe all the calls for someone to be fired will stop now.
To steal a line from a “House” episode, “He doesn’t confuse making a mistake with being incompetent.”
numbskull
@demkat620: Thanks for the answer. Not to be snarky, but at this point, Obama acting as an adult is not something I would expect one of his top guys to be referring to when he says that the American public might be somewhat shocked about some of the President’s message.
So, it sounds like there was nothing in the presentation to be shocked about. Good.
KCinDC
@Mnemosyne, you’re obviously confused. Even though that guy was Middle Eastern, he wasn’t a terrorist, because Bush was president. Same with the DC-area sniper.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Sullivan is such an asshat. I wish he’d go away.
Dreggas
@The Populist:
I probably should have added /Snark to the end of that.
Ash Can
Good. I’m glad to hear that. And (for once) I don’t mean that in a snotty way. I love to rip on the “stenographers” at least as much as anyone else, but on the occasions when they do their jobs well, they deserve a tip o’ the old chapeau.
Kobie
@Mnemosyne: Yep. And it’s funny how the story changes — then, he was a scary Muslim terrist. Now, there were no terrorist attacks under the Bush administration, and he inherited 9/11 from Clinton.
Gotta give them credit for one thing — it takes some brass ones to sling that kind of bullshit.
El Cid
I remember that when the DC snipers were either still being pursued or just caught that Glenn Blecch did a 3 day drama fest o his radio show on how now everything in America had changed, and we were all going to be shooting at each other all the time ’cause that’s what them damn divisive hippies made the coloreds and ethnics do.
Jon
@Ash: aaaaand I just came here to post that. It amazes me how much I want to punch him sometimes.
El Cid
THERE WERE NO TERRORIST ATTACKS UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH JR. OUTSIDE THE ONES HE INHERITED FROM BILL CLINTON.
repeat.
Lolis
@Ash:
Sully doesn’t seem to get that is impossible to be totally secure. We could have the best people doing their jobs and bad stuff could still happen. That’s why it is commendable of Obama to take responsibility for this. I am proud that he is the president.
The Dangerman
@The Populist:
Affirmative on Army Recruiting Center. I have no idea why that was a terrorist act unless all attacks by someone either Muslim or potentially Muslim (meaning, not white) is a terrorist attack.
demkat620
Seriously, this guy blew his junk off and he is going to prison for the rest of his life where the genpop is going to make his existence hell. How much worse would it be for him to go to Gitmo? Wouldn’t it actually be easier for him?
Elisabeth
@metricpenny:
Or he doesn’t confuse the players for the game (if that makes sense).
It is generally acknowledged by thinking folks that the intelligence gathering after 9/11 became grossly unwieldy with turf wars and egos getting in the way. Streamline and simplify before you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Blue Raven
Obama invoked Harry Truman. I love that.
You Don't Say
@metricpenny: The “House” quote did my heart good, for personal reasons. Thanks.
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
Sadly, the disgruntled wingnuts will look but not see anything other than a reflection of their fears. And the worst pundits will regale us with nonsense about Obama’s body language (obviously soft on war, too cool, not presidential enough).
It’s kinda sad. But that’s where we are.
On the other hand, those who aren’t gnashing their teeth over the failure of Grampa McCain and his empty headed gotcha gal Sarah to seal the deal in November are breathing a sigh of relief that Obama is large and in charge.
Carol
@demkat620,
The underwear bomber is headed for that special prison in Thompson, IL as soon as it’s ready, to spend the next 40 years with the other terrorists we sentence or can’t free.
The Dangerman
@demkat620:
Having just survived Jury Duty, I’m thinking the jury in his trial will have to be all women; pictures showing where parts are missing could be painful to the Y (Why, indeed?) chromosome set.
Demo Woman
@demkat620: That’s a very good point. Gitmo closing just gives the gop more opportunity to spread their lies.
AkaDad
If you watched Obama eyes carefully, he was clearly blinking attack codes to Al Qaeda.
Mike Kay
you’re such an O-Bot!
Not once in the presser did Obama mention the public option, DID HE@!@@
HumboldtBlue
A-yup. And after that they’ll trot out the dynamic duo of Coulter and Pantload to explain just how Truman sold the whole damn country to the Soviets for some Cuban cigars and good vodka.
Roger Moore
@Lolis:
No. Sullivan just wants a ritual sacrifice to the gods of accountability. He just misses the point that accountability involves acquitting the innocent as much as punishing the guilty, so offering up somebody who didn’t do anything wrong is actually a sacrifice to the gods of PR.
aimai
I think this is one of those places where the sheer stupidity and childishness of the average american is on greatest display. There are billions of Muslims. BBBBBillions. Thats.A.Whole.Lot.Of.People. When there are a whole lot of people out there who could either love you, or hate you, you should do all you can to make them love you. Because if you really piss them off, en masse, its kind of a big problem. But I don’t think the average Republican viewer has the faintest idea of just how big the world is, or how many people are out there.
The jordanian doctor who just blew himself to bits and took the CIA guys with him was disaffected and angry about the situation of the Palestians vis a vis the Israelis. We are making new enemies faster than we can handle. Much as I love Obama and respect his maturity the fact of the matter is that we can’t draw back from pissing off the muslim world fast enough. We need to pull back, stop making good people crazy and giving crazy people a convenient target. The world will always have crazy, angry, unhappy people in it. But we are making ourselves a target for those nuts. If we weren’t still in muslim countries bombing civilians those people would still be strapping on the fiery underwear, but they’d be blowing up their own relatives in a local dispute over a failed marriage, or the sale of a goat. Not coming thousands of miles to kill strangers. (And, I might add, I daresay the Afghans, the Palestinians, and the Iraqis are making the same observation about us. ie “why can’t they keep their unemployed serial killers/blackwater mercs at home, killing their own wives and children instead of ours?”
aimai
Mike Kay
This attack would have never happened if Hillary or Edwards were president!!
Grayson 2012!
Ailuridae
@HumboldtBlue:
Because he’s secretly one of them, dontchaknow?
Brachiator
@aimai:
One word: Mumbai.
This stuff has nothing to do with people loving or hating us. If you want to call for isolationism, say so. This will not increase by one iota the “love” that other people or countries have for us, though it might make us safer — at least in the short run, as long as we don’t interfere with any other country’s national interests.
aimai
Mumbai wasn’t aimed at us, Brachiator. And it was only tangentially related to islam–it was a straight up struggle between india and pakistan over Kashmir and the blowback of partition. Nothing to do with us. Westerners were just collateral damage.
aimai
aimai
By the way: It should be obvious that I’m not “calling for isolationaism” but for a non weaponized/not threatening form of engagement: diplomacy, charity, education.
aimai
MikeJ
Not plural, but a billion, yes.
Elie
@aimai:
I think much of what you say, aimai is without argument.
There is, I think, however, a group of people in the Islamic world that could spend their energies more effectively taking on their own governments rather than sending underwear bombers to America. While there is no doubt we are stimulating the reaction, the cost benefit for them is much less than if they did, say, what the Iranians are starting to do: clean house.
Lord knows I say that without any sense of superiority about the moral cred of our lovely nation, but I think its fair to say some progress could be made in this area in some of the countries and groups so aggressively exporting their “solution” to the United States. Maybe some expression of that same resentment could help them to establish governments that are more responsive to their needs for freedom and/or whatever it is they think they want that the United States is such an anethema. My fear is that for some, the outrage that we engender is deeply cultural and not really fixable because we did bad things to them. They (this group) really do not like the way we live and find it an affront to their beliefs, and I believe they would act on that whether we were there or not. I certainly can accept being wrong on that but I think that it should at least be honestly considered that just “pulling out” alone may not solve this.
Have you ever considered that? What are your thoughts?
Bender
Yeah, confidence-inspiring!
“No one could’ve predicted that they would use an individual instead of a group!” If Sarah Palin had given that answer instead of Janet Incompitano, you guys would be screaming about what a sub-moron she is for not knowing who Richard Reed was.
The Populist
@Brachiator:
Thus the proof that the “liberal” media meme is a sham.
The next wingnut who cries about liberal media boogyemen will get smacked by me.
Elie
@Bender:
Sara Palin barely knows her name. Answers are rambling free association mumbles that only her followers, like you, behave as though you understand. You don’t of course, because you dont understand much of anything — just like her — you revere stupid and so stupid is what you would follow
fuck off
Sasha
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Obama’s magic is being able to walk in and become the only adult in the room.
In 2012, all the DNC has to do is run opposing clips of the GOP running around like Chicken Little and Obama being a Commander-in-Chief.
Brachiator
@aimai:
The Mumbai attackers deliberately chose as a target an international hotel known to cater to Westerners as well as upper class Indians, and another facility known to host Jews. This was a deliberate provocation that went well beyond the Kashmir dispute.
And “nothing to do with us?” The US has long and stupidly backed Pakistan militarily, which has only served to keep the Kashmir conflict brewing.
And “nothing to do with us?” Do we stand with democracies, or is there some imaginary line that you draw to separate worthy democracies from inconsequential ones? And the Taliban and other groups are noticeably annoyed at recent improved ties between the US and India.
You suggest that ignorant, backwards Muslim fools would go back to blowing themselves up if we would only leave. But we didn’t have troops on the ground in Afghanistan when the Taliban invited bin Ladin and others to use the territory to plan terrorist attacks.
Perhaps we should have just let the Russians try to kick the crap out the Afghans instead of interfering. Nothing to do with us, and might even have saved American lives.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan the first time, they gave a finger to Western diplomacy, charity, and education. I don’t see anything to suggest that Islamic fundamentalists give a rat’s ass for the carrots offered by either American conservatives (free markets and democracy) or liberals (fantasies of charity and education).
Islamic fundamentalists in Somalia would rather see people starve to death rather than allow neutral groups to supply humanitarian aid.
Nothing to do with us?
Al Qaeda and other groups who don’t represent any recognized government in these regions demand that we leave, and also that we cease offering military and economic aid to countries that they hate (Ethiopia, Israel, India, among others).
I presume from your comments that you are OK with this.
wilfred
Many of them would, but an ongoing debate in what are commonly called ‘jihadi circles’ is the best way of overthrowing despotic regimes in the Muslim world that are kept in place strictly through American support.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, et al. are US puppets. None of these current regimes could stay in power without ongoing US military support. Hence the perceived need to attack American interests. The belief is that if American people really knew and understood how their material support for despotism affects the lives of people in Muslim countries they would re-consider that support.
However, support for any movement that is intent on overthrowing these regimes is immediately labeled ‘militant, extremist, jidadi’ etc. In most, if not all cases, financial support comes under the category of material support for terrorism, even when it sucu support is aimed at overthrowing despots.
Anne Laurie
@aimai:
It’s early, but this gets my vote for Comment of the Year.
nikkos
The key word” “performances.”
El Cid
Absolutely. We completely should have.
Julia Grey
Ah, the joys of hindsight. Always 20-20.
What, we were supposed to say back then, “Let the Russians win in Afghanistan because if we arm the jihadi against them, 20 years from now a bunch of Muslims will try to blow up the World Trade Center and plunge us into such gibbering hysteria that we will invade and occupy two sovereign countries and remain at war with shadows for a decade”?
The calculation at that point was that we should try to make ALLIES out of Muslim Afghanis who provided a buffer state on the USSR border. Were we somehow supposed to boost the fortunes of our Cold War enemy instead? (Squandering treasure against our proxies in Afghanistan played a not inconsiderable role in bankrupting the Communist regime, which led to the fall of the Soviet Union — the myth of Reagan’s magic wand notwithstanding.)
liberal
Julia Grey wrote, Squandering treasure against our proxies in Afghanistan played a not inconsiderable role in bankrupting the Communist regime, which led to the fall of the Soviet Union—the myth of Reagan’s magic wand notwithstanding.
Yes, but the USSR would have fallen anyway, and almost certainly sooner rather than later, because it was decrepit. Do you remember the complete inability to respond to the Armenian earthquake, for example?
The hoopla over US pressure on the USSR is crazy. For example, IIRC, Reagan started a policy of installing Pershing ballistic missiles in Europe as an effort to pressure. Those missiles were first strike weapons, and ostensibly much more accurate than typical ballistic missiles. As such, they dramatically increased the risk of nuclear armageddon, because they would have forced the Soviets to be even that much more hair-trigger. A risk-adjusted analysis of this type of strategy—advancing the collapse of the USSR by at most a decade or two in exchange for increasing the likelihood of an apocalypse—shows it was a terrible idea.
Now, 9/11 wasn’t the apocalypse, by any means, but ISTR that the US has directly spent about $1T on Iraq/Afgh; the indirect costs are surely quite a bit higher.