Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

I went to college with his grandson.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-marines-urinating-video-identified-charges/story?id=15353762#.TxBT_PlkinA

on a completely different note: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-propose-combining-agencies-to-shrink-federal-government/2012/01/13/gIQAHsLqvP_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop

Instead of beefing up and straightening out the SEC and increasing the staffing for Justice's white-collar unit (to go after Wall Street), Obama proposes a tiny little merger that he naively thinks will appease Republicans and make him look like a bipartisan pragmatist who wants to make life easier for businesses

Obama will propose combining the functions and staff of six trade- and commerce-related agencies and offices: the Small Business Administration; the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; the Export-Import Bank; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and the Trade and Development Agency. The move would ease the regulatory burden on businesses and save money by eliminating duplicative functions such as human resources, the White House official said

I really think / hope that Obama's done with the 'appease Republicans', at least until after we see the Tea Party reaping the results of their yammering in 2014.

One would wish that, but his actions do not yet fully demonstrate that.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/01/cnns-loesch-champions-urinating-marines-110743.html

Is Loesch still a CNN reporter?

moral relativism leads to barbarism, you know

I had a dream last night that I feel belongs in this thread:

I saw people from a corporation dumping toxic sludge into a river, so I needed to "lobby the EPA" about the issue. The EPA office was a door on a long corridor of doors. But when I opened the door, it was just a closet with a young man woman standing in it, statue-like, as though they were playing hide-and-seek.

I said "Uh, I'm here to lobby the EPA." And they were like "you can't do that," and I was like "what do you mean?" and they say "You can't lobby the EPA. The EPA is not an organization you're allowed to lobby."

And I got all incensed and started talking about my rights, when I looked at the wall and saw a small banner that read "Ron Paul Campaign Headquarters," and suddenly they started laughing, and I started laughing, and they said something to the effect of "you got punked!"

The EPA office was a door on a long corridor of doors. But when I opened the door, it was just a closet with a young man woman standing in it, statue-like, as though they were playing hide-and-seek.

if only you knew how eerily accurate this was, in an abstract way

loesch thing is just beyond words

It's typical of the kind of tone deaf, emotionally retarded ppl who prefer justifyingmach posturing to winning wars. It's is essentially puerile lack of discipline.

Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?"

That's kind of how I feel about this, only not in the way Loesch means it. Killing people = fine. Peeing on the people we kill = OUTRAGE

She not only does not get the ugliness of the actions, she does not get that this also potentially puts our remaining soldiers there in increased danger

new drinking game: Try to argue with a pseudoliberal that Obama is not the Last Best Hope of humanity. Within 2 minutes, you lose if you hear the word PERFECTION.

what happens if someone says 'don't let perfect be the enemy of the good"?

pour a bottle of Ripple down their throat

blast some burnt by the sun and mosh

who really thinks he's perfection?

think morbs meant the standard retort would be "what do you expect, perfection?"

ah right. well that's a fair point though.

yes truly thought-provoking

yes, for these folx, it's the only standard they can imagine him not meeting

I think such folx are few enough they should be dismissed as irrelevan, rather than made the crux of some kind of argument about political reality.

there must be at least a few of them left; greenwald spends half his twitter arguing with them.

haha otm

isn't Steve Benen stil an Obamastan?

Yes.

Washington Monthly's blog under Benen is fixated solely on Republican bad deeds.

http://dccc.org/pages/GOPonvacation

Benen linked to this--- nice photoshopped pics of Boehner and Cantor on vacation

think morbs meant the standard retort would be "what do you expect, perfection?"

I think such folx are few enough they should be dismissed as irrelevant, rather than made the crux of some kind of argument about political reality.

Come to a Park Slope bar, and I will introduce you to a slew of em.

Because of all the nasty hateful Tea Party-rooted and racist criticism Obama has received, I have read several African-American writers say that it is difficult for them to criticize Obama for legitimate reasons, because he engenders much sympathy because of the out-of-bounds attacks.

dunno where to put this

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/the-great-gatsby-curve/

doesn't surprise me a bit, and I think we need to start reading "constitutional purism" as code for "only white male landowners get to vote"

Probably warrants a separate thread:

http://dellioandwoods.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/newsweek-obama-cover.jpg

I hope none of you have especially high blood pressure.

Let me guess. His right wing critics are dumb because they insist that he's a socialist Kenyan Muslim who eats babies and pisses on the US Constitution. OK. I'd grant him that much. His liberal critics are dumb because no one could have done a better job than Obama has done, cuz, you know, be realistic. Yeah. Right.

The article itself is here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

oh boy, the "long game" - this will be great

lolng game

As I read Sullivan, he basically says the critics on the right are mostly peddling nonsenscial crap. True enough. And like shooting fish in a barrel, once you look at the facts.

Then he goes on to Obama's critics on the left, agrees with a fair number of their criticisms on civil liberties issues, emphasizes the repeal of DADT at length (which his left wing critics are NOT criticizing, either), and ignores liberal criticisms of Obama's more conservative policies that he most likes, such as keeping all the Bush tax cuts in place. As a criticism of these critics, it is pretty thin stuff. But then, most op-ed is small beer.

And what have we seen? A recurring pattern. To use the terms Obama first employed in his inaugural address: the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider. This kind of strategy takes time. And it means there are long stretches when Obama seems incapable of defending himself, or willing to let others to define him, or simply weak. I remember those stretches during the campaign against Hillary Clinton. I also remember whose strategy won out in the end.

This is OTM. My issue I have is that I want him to be to the left of some of the positions he champions. I agree with him enough to vote for him again without any regret.

Not surprisingly--something you should almost take as a given--Sullivan says on his site that the cover headline was not his.

sullivan's willingness to relegate civil liberties to a couple of sentences is baffling to me. under bush, the executive branch's power-tripping threatened the future of the country. under obama, pushing (for the most part) the exact same policies, it's a fringe issue that only a few 'unrealistic,' 'deluded' leftists care about.

it's almost like he trusts the motives of one over the other

right, it's the thought that counts.

When your only safeguard is the good will of the current president, you have no safeguards at all.

i'm just glad niall ferguson ended class warfare, that was going on for too long

fuckin hate that guy

what sort of warfare did he substitute in its place? a first person shooter, I hope

I wonder what schtick the GOP will pull to block this