what are barack obama's flaws?

obv there's plenty to disagree w/ there - commentary is not exactly ilx-spectrum politics. but i think there's a strong case there too, or at least a fun enough one to read that it deserves inclusion on this illustrious thread.

hasn't morphed into Dysentery yet?

Not that Egypt's 2 successors to Mubarak have been anything to write home about, but I don't agree with the Commentary writer that Obama should have tried to have done the below

Was there anything he could realistically have done to prevent Hosni Mubarak’s ouster

i don't really feel qualified to play monday night quarterback with regard to obama's middle east policy. bret stephens believes that bush had the answer, which is that the US must project power abroad to maintain global order. we've only ever done this surreptitiously though; the myth of the sovereignty of our client states was never something we abandoned. reagan wasn't open about his involvement in nicaragua. cold war conflicts were justified in national security terms -- communism was framed as an existential threat. what stephens is calling for seems out of line, not with the practice of foreign policy in past administrations but with the theory. it's disingenuous for him to frame obama's relatively hands off policy -- as he understands it -- as a diversion from the mainstream of what presidents have done. i think the real situation here is that there was no clear series of moves that would have prevented the rise of the islamic state that didn't involve US troops staying in iraq.

would be v. happy to never read anyone praise truman or the odious acheson as 'great statesmen' who saved us all from postwar chaos et al ever again.

you might want to avoid the recent 'the unknown known' film about rumsfeld

ha -- i'm a fan of morris but couldn't bring myself to spend two hours with rumsfeld.

Does stupid stuff.

p. zero bama doesn't think it's important to put advocates of monetary stimulus on the Fed board?

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/18/6392635/obama-monetary-policy

7-4

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/25/ryan-lizza/lizza-says-obama-has-bombed-more-nations-bush/

richard cohen regurgitating a narrative i've seen in many places

For a while Obama seemed to be sleepwalking through this unraveling, as if resigned to America’s more limited role. “The world has always been messy,” he said in August, sounding almost like a bystander. His attempt to calibrate every action, as if a perfect result were attainable, resulted in inaction. Vladimir Putin saw this. ISIS saw this. Now he has awoken to the need for American leadership and firmness. It is a belated awakening, but important. Syria has demonstrated how inaction can be more dangerous than the focused use of force, and a vacuum the best incubator of terrorism.

questions here. what would cohen have had obama do to provent putin's aggression. invade? start a war with russia? and in iraq, short of keeping ground troops there, what could obama have done to prevent the rise of ISIS. put "more pressure" on maliki to integrate sunnis into his government? but how? give "more support" to the syrian rebels? the support we did give them is the source of ISIS' current arsenal. follow through with his plans to bomb assad last year? that probably would have helped ISIS if anything.

when people say the president is "sleepwalking" or "inactive" or whatever, are they just saying that he has been too slow to go to war even though he has been controversially and illegally bombing several sovereign countries at a time since the day he got into office? and now that he has "woken up" to the importance of american unilateral power, does that mean that we will see more defense spending and more invasions and more violence perpetrated by america from now on? is the obnoxious smugness of cohen et al a winking acknowledgment that obama's original, stated goal as a candidate of focusing on domestic policy has been discredited? they say it in such a coded way.

that's a masterful recitation of received wisdom, Rich.

It is a belated awakening, but important. Syria has demonstrated how inaction can be more dangerous than the focused use of force, and a vacuum the best incubator of terrorism.

srsly these sentences are deadwood. This is Heritage Foundation twaddle.

yeah, it's grotesque. "the king's come home at last." it sounds like every rogue group or leader in the world is just a disobedient child and all obama has to do is come in from the den and yell "enough!" to get them to sort themselves out. completely ignores the fact that literally no one who lives in these countries regards the united states as the legitimate authority there.

“The world has always been messy,” he said in August, sounding almost like a bystander. His attempt to calibrate every action, as if a perfect result were attainable, resulted in inaction. Vladimir Putin saw this.

this shit is so stupid. does he seriously not remember that russia invaded georgia when bush was president?

when people say the president is "sleepwalking" or "inactive" or whatever, are they just saying that he has been too slow to go to war even though he has been controversially and illegally bombing several sovereign countries at a time since the day he got into office?

unfortunately, yes that is exactly what they mean. obama's bombed more countries than bush did, and that's still not enough. these guys are out of their minds.

this shit is so stupid. does he seriously not remember that russia invaded georgia when bush was president?

salient point

it's almost as if various leaders are driven more by internal pressures than they are by empty American sabre-rattling

George W. Bush is the man who saw into Vladimir Putin's soul and liked what he saw.

aimless, who is the worst american president of your lifetime in foreign policy terms?

stiff competition

George W. Bush is the man who saw into Vladimir Putin's soul and liked what he saw.

Well, that's what he said... then. You must've missed these misgivings in a Maureen Dowd column.

The Russian leader told him the breakup of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that had ever happened. Tell it to Ukraine, W. dryly noted. He also said of Putin: "You always have to watch out when someone steeples their fingers."

does dowd just make things up or did bush have a crackling wit he carefully concealed from the american people during his time in office?

http://i.imgur.com/VvrpsDg.png?1

so he should know!

Dubya is not an idiot. He's a shit, but not an idiot.

come on he's also kind of an idiot

who is the worst american president of your lifetime in foreign policy terms?

I started another thread to discuss this.

ACLU:

"By my count, the Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.... The bulk of that time is the 35 years in Fort Leavenworth handed down to Chelsea Manning."

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/leak-prosecutions-obama-takes-it-11-or-should-we-say-526

you think he realises on any level that the cousin pookie thing is condescending and demeaning?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/our-passe-president/381664/

not even cool now

that's who the Dems are interested in -- Cousin Pookie

Cousin Pookie is back! And yes, he is still sitting on the couch.
Washington Post‎ - 2 days ago

I had no idea this was a type was invoked by name through New Jack City's Chris Rock crackhead

gawd cmon already if i come to your thing i come

http://gawker.com/the-state-of-the-union-is-dumb-hacks-writing-garbage-sp-1680681848

yet another reason to hate Woodrow Wilson

command+f "terror" 9 matches

"middle-class economics" smh

This is so dull. Where are the flying cars and micro chips imbedded in our brains?

who needs prose when Boehner's wearing a thistle-colored tie?

Boehner's got a great glower. I love how he looks disgusted over every little bit of good news or silver lining. He just won't be happy until the economy is back in the shitter.

had this thread open when Barack Obama said "my flaws, of which there are many"

who needs prose when Boehner's wearing a thistle-colored tie?

Wtf is this bread bag speech?

Oh I get it, nowadays we can't afford a bread bag

I'll have to listen to this tomorrow, am I missing anything

POTUS proposes, Boehner dozes.

did anybody yell "you lie!" yet

The POTUS is laughing, goodbye, goodbye

I've listened/watched all or nearly all his SOTU speeches and his delivery in each was identical. When you realize that no modern president will risk venturing into the higher flights of rhetoric for a SOTU, you learn to swallow your disappointment and listen for any scrap of matter that is a) specific, b) interesting in a non-horrific way, and c) achievable. There's at most one or two of these extremely dim highlights you can glean, at best. I can recall none from tonight's speech.