Please feel free to continue the Obot vs Firebagger donnybrook here, since the previous thread’s length is getting unwieldy for some mobile device users. I even mashed up a graphic for the occasion:
Or discuss whatever. I’m going to be taking my brand-spanking-new, energy efficient A/C unit for a test spin any minute now, so I leave you to it.
scav
Cooler heads Betty. That’ll never do. Enjoy.
NobodySpecial
I still want to know who these hardcore lefties are who are supposedly complaining about Benghazi in chorus with Greenwald, because everyone to the left of Pat Brady has been pretty MEH about this non-scandal that I’ve been reading.
piratedan
since it’s an open thread. this kind of sums up my feeling about where GG is coming from…..whenever it comes to this administration and where his focus actually is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaEC-lWSlmI
pokeyblow
Obama made a huge mistake, morally and politically, when he let Bush and his minions off the hook for Iraq War crimes.
I believe he did it in the belief that republicans would recognize the gesture… that perhaps the GOP end up liking (a bit) him for it, but certainly that the GOP would bear this action in mind when it came time to hassle him over foreign-policy fubars.
I think it was very foolish for Obama to believe that, and the foolishness exhibited here is indicative of a major, persisting flaw in Obama the failed negotiator, Obama the Wall-Street enabler, and so on.
Ongoing Benghazi nonsense is bad for America, there is no question about that. But Obama shouldn’t be surprised a bit by this. And I believe he is.
Spaghetti Lee
Love the graphic. It’s like late-90’s Toonami on an acid trip.
srv
@NobodySpecial: Well, duh, PUMAs and Firebaggers who want to hurt Hitlery’s chances in 2016…
The Juice-o-sphere is starting to make teahadi’s look like rocket scientists.
Amir Khalid
@pokeyblow:
Or maybe Obama decided he’d have enough on his plate without an ongoing fight vs the Republican party on yet another front. Subsequent events — i.e. the past four and a half years — would certainly have borne out such a judgement.
jrg
We need to be hard on presidents who lie to us. That’s the only way to make the next president honest. That’s why the Clinton impeachment ultimately worked out so well for America.
pokeyblow
@Amir Khalid: Name one way in which the republicans could have hassled Obama over the last four-and-a-half years, but didn’t.
There’s this thing called fighting back.
Bringing a gun to a knife fight? Obama brought a salt spoon.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: I believe he did it because, stay with me, the economy was falling right the fuck to pieces and there were more important things to do than settle scores. And when Democrats in both houses of Congress couldn’t even line up behind a much less contentious idea like closing down Guantanamo, I have a wee hunch that prosecuting wrongdoing in the previous administration would have been a less than completely popular project both in and outside officialdom.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If you think that going after Bush for war crimes was a possibility, ever, you really don’t have a fucking clue about what country you live in. The decision to “look forward not back” was made by the political establishment, and to a large extent the country, long before Obama took office. Nancy Pelosi was stupid to say impeachment of Bush was “off the table”, but there’s no question of the political reality she was expressing. There might have been chance for hearing, a ‘truth commission’ for lack of a better term, when the Dems took the Senate (or House) in ’07, and there should have been, but Evan Bayh and Max Baucus and Dianne Feinstein were no more eager to admit their support of the war was (at best) a mistake than was Hillary Clinton. Or for that matter Joe Biden.
Yatsuno
@Amir Khalid: Never mind this move was already set in motion in 2006 when Pelosi declared impeachment off the table. But why let facts get in the way of a good ni-CLANG! bashing?
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: What about Democrats who ALSO don’t want to do these things? There are a lot of them, you realize.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
No, I think he did it in recognition of the fact that there was no fucking way in hell he could get enough support in Washington for a successful prosecution. A massive amount of Democrats were up to their eyeballs in crimes like the Iraq War, and not just the Lieberman type Republicans by another name.
jamick6000
anything that can knock hillary down a couple pegs is good for america
pokeyblow
@Yatsuno: Nancy Pelosi’s action was absolutely undefendable. Politically and morally stupid, just like Obama’s later shielding of Bush et al.
I assume you’re calling me a racist?
Funkula
Hey! That’s not a G4 pony! Graphic: RUINED.
khead
Congrats on the AC. Love the pic.
FlipYrWhig
@Yatsuno: and never mind that the obvious shenanigans of Scott Walker in Wisconsin resulted in… Nothing, because voters thought it wasn’t fair.
Yatsuno
@Funkula: I’m thinking Betty’s going for the contrarian feel here. After all, using a G4 pony would be the expected thing to do. At least she used Pinkie, for the perfect amount of insane edge.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig @Chris, @Amir Khalid:
Yes, I understand there are a lot of democrats, in office and in commentary, who supported the murderous invasion. Investigation/prosecution would have been a mess.
Just like investigating/prosecuting Watergate thoroughly would have been a mess. Or Iran/Contra. Or the Wall Street Debacle(s).
You seem to approve of, or have little problem with living in, a country where the biggest crimes of all never get punished because it’s all so inconvenient.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: so your position is that Obama should have tried to do something that had no support even in his own party, and would not have succeeded in its own terms, and would have monopolized all politics for months if not years, because despite all that it would have suited your own personal sense of ethics and morality?
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: if your goal is total fairness and righteousness in all things always, I guess you live in a state of chronic disappointment.
kideni
@NobodySpecial: John Nichols has been saying that the Republicans are right to go after this. He frames things in terms of whistleblower protection (even though the guy’s coworkers dispute that he was let go for reasons other than incompetence) and the public’s right to know. He’s been making this case more in Madison’s Capitol Times and on appearances with a local lefty radio guy, but it looks like others in The Nation have been covering the Benghazi beat.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: Sounds about right. Add the eyelash flutters and appeals to trolls for advice on local norms of decorous behaviors.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: “…no support…” ???
You think no one who voted for Obama in 2008 wanted investigations? No one?
Please say “yes, I think that” or be careful with absolutes.
Besides, I would have vastly preferred months and years of war-crimes investigations to, say, birth-certificate kerning discussions.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: I mean, there should have been more done to combat climate change by now too, and the consequences will be terrible, but, you know, it’s not like it’s hard to explain why that happened, is it? Sometimes ethics and political morality and justice can’t be wrung out of the system we have.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: Chronic disappointment for sure. Much more acute now that we have a president who is willing to wink away a few hundred thousand murdered, a few trillion stolen, and not be smart enough to know he’d be pissed on for doing so by the very people whose hides he was saving.
jamick6000
i find the lolling about benghazi (ie the daily show) to be gross. people died.
BillinGlendaleCA
Betty@top
First thing we noticed when we put in a new energy efficient AC was how much cold air it put out(much more than the old one did when new) and how damn quiet it was.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: no support among elected politicians. Very little support except in the abstract among voters, even Obama voters. IMHO the best that could have been hoped would have been a 9/11 commission equivalent with no prosecutions.
The Raven on the Hill
Oh! I get to rerun my “Obama didn’t…” list:
I have a friend who is squeaking along on a just-above-minimum-wage job. Thanks to the PPACA, next winter she will be required to join her employer’s health care plan, which, at the current prices, takes $45 out of her paycheck, every two weeks.
Then there’s this:
Bonus: here’s Glenn Greenwald, answering his critics.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: Obama isn’t afraid to propose cutting social security without much democratic support.
He’s not afraid to do a lot of things… if he thinks he’ll get a nod of approval from John Boehner, Lloyd Blankfein, or Thomas “suck on it” Friedman.
The Raven on the Hill
But, hey, that’s all right. We may not have Obama to kick around too much longer. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Asylum) recently said that the Benghazi cover-up might be a reason to impeach him.
One might love him for the enemies he has made.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: I don’t know why you think it was to save the hides of the guilty, rather than to spare the total political paralysis that would have immediately resulted, and the pissed-off diatribes he’d get daily from both Democrats and Republicans as the economy continued to deteriorate while politicians frittered away their time on this. It would have led to a total political backlash _from all sides_, to cater to a small group of die-hards who would probably end up saying that he totally fucked it up and did it all wrong. Yes, we had nearly the same political paralysis anyway, but this would have been worse because it would cut more deeply into Democratic support for a Democratic president, which is limp on a good day anyway.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: so do you want him to propose things, or to do them? Because it seems to me the lesson of Social Security/Chained CPI is that if your own party doesn’t go along with doing stuff, that stuff doesn’t happen. Applying this to prosecuting the previous administration for Iraq War malfeasance is an exercise I’ll leave to you to complete.
Mike in NC
Worse than firebaggers: kudzu bugs! A couple of days ago I’d never heard of them. Apparently arrived in Georgia from Japan in 2009 and have been spreading like wildfire. Thousands of them were swarming on the side of the house and shrubs yesterday. They look like square, brown ladybugs and some people claim they bite. As an invasive species they have no natural predators.
I blame Obama.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
Not “a mess.” “Impossible unless Obama were granted dictatorial powers.”
Yes, I would like Obama to be able to prosecute them. I would also like him to be able to revoke the laws of gravity so I could fly around like a bird. The one is about as probable as the other, for reasons that have very little to do with Obama.
Suffern ACE
As for me, I’d totally wish the senate had the votes to convict, but alas we don’t. What better way for the empire to fall. A huge army, but a governance system so weak that the workings of a bunch of militias with mortars could bring the whole thing down in a six hour skirmish.
pokeyblow
@Chris, @FlipYrWhig:
Notice that the republicans have no problem persecuting Obama to the gates of Hell regarding Benghazi. They would do so regarding his birth certificate, if that would take. Or Joe Biden’s hair.
They are fighting him, because they have a (completely fucked-up) vision of America in which they believe.
Obama, on the other hand, shouldn’t take a step unless it’s certain to succeed, certain to make everyone happy.
He can’t eliminate gravity, so it’s just as well that he doesn’t play political (and moral) hardball with mass murderers.
That’s just awesome.
Yatsuno
@Suffern ACE: At this point that’s fine with me. The Left Coast can go its own way an establish little things like single-payer and a high minimum wage and stuff. There’s a huge number of us out this way too but plenty of room for folks. Of course Washington could become the twelfth province of Canada too. Either is good with me.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
Yes, because Republicans have no problem bringing the entire machinery of government to a halt for months or years. That’s rather the point, in fact.
I very much doubt if that impeachment will have any more success bringing Obama “to justice” than the Clinton one, even if they do get the ball rolling, so I’m not sure what Obama would accomplish if he tried something of that kind.
Gravenstone
@pokeyblow:
No, I think pig ignorant ratfucker is quite sufficient to describe you. When you started commenting here, you lamented that you were poorly received. Yet every time you post something this willfully obtuse and feckless, it simply reinforces the first impression you gave most people here – that you’re too fucking stupid to breath without mechanical assistance (and I pray to FSM you haven’t reproduced to taint the gene pool even further).
And for the record, I think Bush and Cheney should be permanent fixtures at the White House – well, their disembodied heads at any rate. Mount them flanking the main entrance, as an eternal reminder to all future occupants of the price of imperial hubris and overreach. Unfortunately, I also recognize there is no way those cretins are ever brought to justice domestically, or in the world at large unless Obama were to hand deliver them to the Hague as his final official act in office.
lojasmo
@pokeyblow:
If he’s not, I will. Also mindbendingly naive. Or willfully stupid.
gelfling545
@pokeyblow: I don’t know that he expected appreciation from the GOP. I think he hoped to avoid bogging down the whole political process. To be sure, certain people from the previous administration should get their just desserts but there is no denying it would most likely have been the sole focus of attention for years if inquiries had been initiated and certainly if trials had take place. What I think he was not aware of, and I don’t really see how he could have expected it, was that Congress would be quite willing to bog itself down for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all.
Ira-NY
I knew the Right was not ready to accept an African-American President.
The Bagger-Left surprised me. They despise Obama because he does not meet their racially inspired notion of what the first African-American President should be. As it turns out, like the Right, they were not ready for an African-Amercan to be President.
lojasmo
@Ira-NY:
You weren’t alerted by the HillTard brigade in the primary? You thought they would just go away?
Not sure if pokeyblow is one of them, but the scent is there.
different-church-lady
BATLIGHT JR.!
Todd
@Ira-NY:
They expected Mumia and got Eisenhower. Ironically, the right expected Mumia as well, and can’t seem to shake that expectation.
lojasmo
A conversation with Minnesota House Speaker Paul Theissen about the recently passed Marriage equality bill.
TG Chicago
@FlipYrWhig:
But surely more in his party supported prosecuting the war criminals than supported reducing SS benefits. So why did Obama choose to put his weight behind the latter?
Easy: unlike most of his base, he prefers the latter.
liberal
@pokeyblow:
I’m as critical of Obama as most anyone here, but it wasn’t Obama’s responsibility. It was Democrats in Congress.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@liberal: and I’m as supportive of Obama as most anyone here, but I’ll add that he was in Congress when the Dems could and should have done some kind of ‘truth and reconciliation’ investigation, but even that would be mostly for the sake of history. The broad public would be more interested in the Kardashians. Only %53 percent of the country think Iraq was a mistake, and I wouldn’t want to know what percentage think it was an avoidable mistake for which individuals could and should be held responsible. Condi Rice has over 60% approval, fercrissake. I’m not even convinced the Bush name is, in itself, electoral poison.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Got any data for that?
Because that brilliant electorate that some seem to think is/was longing to see Bush in the dock put John Boehner in charge of the House, and doesn’t give a fuck if Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsey Graham hogtie the Senate.
David Koch
Glenn is right, since Hillary is stonewalling her direction of the cover-up, congress will have to subpena her. As Glenn says, she’ll end having to take the 5th amendment. Glenn is pretty sharp and you can’t help agreeing with him that Hillary will have to do jail time, just like Haldeman and Ehrlichman. When Glenn is right, he’s right.
joe gamba
@pokeyblow: Thank you, thank you, thank you! These have been my thoughts since Mr. Obama was elected. BIG mistake to let Bush and cronies off the hook and we’ve paid for it every single day since. It has effectively destroyed his credibility.
I am certainly grateful for many of his accomplishments, believe me. I am NOT an Obama-basher. He is light-years better than we’ve had in 13 years. However, I think it would have been better had he honored the oath he took to defend the Constitution, instead of letting people who have have later been adjudicated as War Criminals, and punished as such.
eemom
I guess I’m getting old. Don’t have the energy to waste on Glennclown anymore. And these threads are beginning to seem almost Sullivan-like in their tedious predictability.
Suffern ACE
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: complete denial there is about how much those midterms cost the dems. Asses kicked. Wiped out. I guess people liked their insurance after all and were just so mad bush wasn’t behind bars. And that was with the dems actually trying to help the ecomomy the best they knew how.
Ass. Kicked.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Yep. My senator, Dianne Feinstein, was up to her eyeballs in it, and I firmly believe that she knew torture was going on and signed off on it. There are a whole lot of “security Democrats” who were just as deeply involved in the decisions made during the Iraq debacle as the Republicans. So, yeah, prosecutions for the Iraq War are a classic Mexican standoff.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
See above comments about powerful Democrats who were just as deeply involved in those war crimes. Dianne Feinstein and Jane Harman are the ones who leap to my mind since I’m in California, but there were many, many more.
So you would have been completely happy to have Obama gut the Democratic senators and representatives in Congress because, what, then the Republicans would magically break down and admit their own guilt rather than jumping on the opportunity to replace them with “more honest” Republicans?
BarbCat
@eemom: May we olds form strong, young ties. As I hopped on my rowing machine this morning I ffwd to see if Maher’s guests were going to be smart enough to neutralize his stupidity and I saw Greenwald’s face. In my mind, I apologized to Joy Ann Reid as I turned off the box & whispered, “No fucking way does GG ever have a platform on my screen.”
PS Love the Obastronaut!
jshooper
@NobodySpecial: It isn’t that firebaggers have been out front joining in on the Benghazi smear campaign. The issue is that when their favorite attack dogs like Greenwald decide it’s time to join in on the right wing fun and repeats Fox News talking points to attack Pres.Obama, they rally around Greenwald and try to protect him instead of denouncing his outrageous bullshit agenda.
It exposes what their true motives are.They’re perfectly fine with smear tactics against Pres.Obama as long as they are coming from “their side”. Even if the accusations are nothing but repackaged Gohmert,Bachmann, McCain bullshit.
CitizenScientist
I used to read Greenwald every day and might even have one of his books lying around. His Benghazi spiel on Real Time the other night reminded me why I stopped reading him 2+ years ago. There still is no “there” there guys…
David Koch
if prosecuting Bush for war crimes was such a good idea, then why didn’t any liberal in congress call for it? Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, Kucinich, St. Feingold, Wyden, Merkley, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, Ed Markey, Sherrod Brown, etc., etc., etc. all were silent. Every single one of them bailed on the subject. Even the liberal John Edwards, the only True Progressive™ to run in 2008, didn’t support it. Now why was that? Why did all the liberals cut and run? Even the ones who love to grandstand?
The Raven on the Hill
@Ira-NY: Can one not disagree with Obama’s policies for reasons other than racism?
Pinkamena Panic
*looks at picture in OP*
*notamused.jpg*
mclaren
I don’t even know what the fuck Benghazi is about, or is supposed to be about…and I try to keep up with the wonky stuff.
Cole’s right. The Teahadists’ alternative-reality delusions have gotten so elaborate that outsiders can’t figure out what the hell they’re saying.
mclaren
@David Koch:
Oh, c’mon, you know why. Because the liberals in congress were complicit in those war crimes. All the democrats voted for the goddamn AUMF. If the Demos dipped their hands into the ocean, it would the multitudinous seas incarnadine. That was the genius of the Bush maladministration — to sucker the Democrats into becoming complicit with the Republicans’ crimes. If not as actual partners, then as accessories before and after the fact.
The Democrats didn’t hold war crime tribunals for the same reason the Germans didn’t organize Nuremberg. They were all complicit, all guilty in varying degrees, and they all knew it.
Loviatar
Even the title is a strawman: Worse Than Bush.
When Bush is bacteria at the bottom of the pond, just being pond scum floating at the top of the pond is not good enough. But Obots can’t stand any criticism of dear leader.
——
Republican 2.0 = Obots
Grung_e_Gene
GG, ‘I was for the Iraq War… before I was against it!’ Greenwald is aRatfucker.
Anybody who spends years promoting Ron Paul & Rand Paul is not now or has ever been progressive or a friend to liberals.
GG is a libertarian Republican who loathes Democrats with a white hot passion.
His cult followers recite the talking point that he opposed Bush as his progressive bona fides.
GG is part of a coordinated libertarian agenda to RATFUCK the shit out of the Democrats left flank and tag team with Republicans.
It should come as no surprise Greenwald is now adding his screeching voice to the Benghazi smear campaign.It’s just too good for him to pass up.
jshooper
@Grung_e_Gene: Lmfao. I’m honored that you plagiarized my comment from yesterday
jshooper02
@Grung_e_Gene: Lmfao. I’m honored that you plagiarized my comment from yesterday. I must admit its kind of creepy though
Jshooper
@Grung_e_Gene: LMAO. I’m honored that you plagiarized my comment from yesterday. I must admit its kind of creepy though