Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

Wow -- most of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment condemns Romney.

And Boehner's statement is terser and more politically astute than Romney's.

I haven't looked at the photos (and I'm not going to) but I sort of assume dragged through the street = being rushed to the hospital. these are not mutually exclusive...?

you can't be ignorant of what that phrase means

i guess the question is whether he's dead in the photos. he looks terrible but i have no way of knowing for sure.

uh - have u seen the photos? i'm not sure they don't depict what the "right-wing websites" say they do.

― Mordy, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 6:35 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've seen two photos, and they don't show anything like what the wingnuts say they do.

Yeah, you could interpret it the way you want to interpret it, but it's not some sort of slam-dunk evidence of being dragged through the street.

honestly, what's the difference? it's not like if his dead body was dragged through the street it would make the attack any more barbaric. this is nitpicking at the edges.

honestly, what's the difference? it's not like if his dead body was dragged through the street it would make the attack any more barbaric. this is nitpicking at the edges.

― Mordy, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 6:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it absolutely would make it more barbaric wtf

and you brought it up!

It's a refutation to any right-wing wacko who tries to use the photos of this man's last moments as some sort of evidence that he was quartered by a rabid mob of Mooslems.

i didn't bring it up -- goole did iirc. i went to look at the photos when he mentioned them and it looked like what he was claiming wingnuts said. so i mentioned that. i don't have a stake in it one way or the other.

rabid mob! when we all know this was a peaceful mob that accidentally hugged too tight.

yeah def. seems like you have no stake in it

According to reports, the photos accurately show him being carried away. Not dragged, and it sounds like it was by Libyans trying to rescue him.

well, the stake of not being an idiot i guess

http://urbantitan.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pope.jpg

omg look at the pope being dragged through the streets.

remember when those soldiers were carried through the streets of mogadishu, with their shoes dragging on the street, never 4get

The photos could possibly be called "ambiguous" if you were being pointedly ungenerous.

Yesterday's talk radio comments on mundane campaign issues are now no longer getting attention. Like this:

Leading conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are both arguing that the Republican party will or should be shut down if Mitt Romney loses in November — an idea that, however hard to believe, gives you an indication of the right wing’s dissatisfaction with the Republican party.
“If you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new, with new people. Because this is a gimme election, or at least it should be,” Ingraham said on her radio program yesterday. “Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns, who have run campaigns that have failed, who have messaged campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/rightwing-radio-romney-loses-gop-dies-135205.html

I'm pretty sure they said the same thing four years ago.

btw the embassy didn't issue a "statement" last night -- it was a damn tweet!

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 12, 2012 11:49 AM (29 minutes ago)

Right, even before the incident the statements in question were tweets. Some of them were deleted, but here's a screenshot of exactly what Romney's criticism was leveled at:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/09/us-embassy-in-egypt-deletes-tweets-condemning-anti-muslim-film.html

OK, there was a press release that's linked on that page, too. There's nothing "apologetic" about it:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

Who cares? Mitt and Palin and Reince Priebus are spinning a narrative. Reality makes no difference.

"Reince Priebus" sounds like the birth name of an X-Man whose mutant ability is to turn into an electric car.

How does one pronounce 'Reince'?

R-eye-nce

Mitt and Reince, just ordinary people, representing real Americans!

Missing Michael Steele pretty hard these days. :(

http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/msteele-v2.gif

Like Ryan-ce?? Man, and I thought that guy who ended up on Queer Eye was weird when he introduced himself--"Like Ryan, but with a K."

reyonce

runts

I'm going to keep calling him "Prince Rebus" so it's not like it matters.

Like Ryan-ce??

Yeah.

I'm going to keep calling him "Prince Rebus" so it's not like it matters.

We all should.

reyonce

― TOP FEMALE LAWYER & CARTOONIST FOR 2011: (donna rouge)

Big Baby Priebus

More remarks from the Establishment (anonymous, of course):

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/foreign-policy-hands-voice-disbelief-at-romney-cai

Rance Muhammitz

reyonce

goin with this one

pissed:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/obama-temperament-attack-for-romney.html

:23 of video

Hey, you know what would defuse this whole situation? Gratuitous rape comparisons.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/kyl-compares-cairo-embassy-tweet-blaming-rape-victim/56794/

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/romneys_canny_sympathy_smear/

Just catching up with all the fallout. My own first reaction this morning, and I know this is awful, was "Will this affect the election?"--would it be the one unexpected thing that always seems to happen. Reading through all the commentary here, I take it that Romney really messed up. I tuned in to a few minutes of right-wing radio on the way home, and of course it was "Carter-hostage crisis-Carter-hostage crisis" (the contention being that Obama's even weaker). That was strangely reassuring.

Boy, re: JoeStoek's link, John Kyl knows how to step in some irony, since a judge in his own state recently did exactly what he's describing.

JoeStork, that is

seriously interested to see what obama rolls out in the face of the most scurrilous attack ive seen in presidential politics.

he's going to ignore it

pissed:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/obama-temperament-attack-for-romney.html

:23 of video

― goole, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

CNN just had one of Romney's foreign-policy guys on with Robert Wexler. He barely let Wexler speak, just raising his voice and talking over him, and he kept trying to trip Wexler up over semantics. He behaved very much like somebody trying to will a dumb mistake away.

Anti-terror demonstrations by Libyan Muslims in Benghazi and Tripoli: http://gawker.com/5942767/in-response-to-benghazi-attack-libyans-hold-powerful-anti+terror-demonstrations/gallery/1

In photos posted online by Internet media outlet Libya Alhurra TV (Free Libya TV) and the Libyan Center for Documentation, citizens of Benghazi can be seen holding bilingual signs with anti-terror slogans such as "this does not represent us" and "no place for Qaeda within us."

Snapshots posted on Twitter show a similar solidarity demonstration taking place in Tripoli.

Libya's interim leader Mohammed Magarief said in a statement today that both the National Congress and the transitional government "condemn the criminal aggression," and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.