The Democrat Thread

[NorthSideSox72]

Oh come on...there are people that actually take the guy seriously?

 

He's reached Harry Caray type status for me...you just watch to be entertained more so than to actually take anything he says seriously...

I'd happily be entertained by it, except I think he's serious. He actually believes this s***. It comes off sometimes like parody, but its not.

 

[bmags]

nazi sympathizers are only funny for so long. About negative time actually.

[lostfan]

Barack Obama's latest Facebook news feed http://www.slate.com/id/2236149/

[Soxy]

Barack Obama's latest Facebook news feed http://www.slate.com/id/2236149/

At first I was disappointed by the lack of Biden--but then the ending saved it.

[lostfan]

At first I was disappointed by the lack of Biden--but then the ending saved it.

Joe wants you in his office, he says your mammogram is due?

[Soxy]

Joe wants you in his office, he says your mammogram is due?

Again? That's the third one this month. Thank goodness for public healthcare.

[BigSqwert]

Comment #2 just made me LOL

[lostfan]

for some reason my work computer doesn't like that site at all.

[BigSqwert]

for some reason my work computer doesn't like that site at all.

Here's the comment I was referring to:

This is why I never took the teabagger movement seriously. Ordinary Americans screaming about the budget deficit? Like they'd be totally cool with being unemployed and uninsured, provided the US had a balanced budget?

 

"Hey, I've got cancer and I'm starving, but just knowing federal spending is under control makes it all okay." Uh, no.

 

[Balta1701]

Totally appropriate representation.

Ari Fleischer Communications, a sports public relations firm headed by the former press secretary for President George W. Bush, has been hired by BCS officials to help remodel the tattered image of college football's postseason system.

 

BCS executive director Bill Hancock, promoted to the newly recreated position early this week, announced the hiring of Fleischer's company Saturday.

 

Hancock said in a statement the goal of the hiring was to help highlight the positive aspects of the BCS, which he called the best way to match college football's top two teams, while preserving the bowl system.

 

Fleischer, whose company also works with NFL teams, Major League Baseball and the USOC, says he is honored to be able to help the BCS.

[BigSqwert]

TPM reporting that Obama will be sending 34K more troops to Afghanistan. I am extremely disappointed.

[bmags]

Jesus Christ. WAR WAR WAR! HOW PATRIOTIC! This, of course, was the centrist, sensible thing to do. War is always more sensible. Anything else other than constant war is weakness, of course.

[NorthSideSox72]

TPM reporting that Obama will be sending 34K more troops to Afghanistan. I am extremely disappointed.

 

Jesus Christ. WAR WAR WAR! HOW PATRIOTIC! This, of course, was the centrist, sensible thing to do. War is always more sensible. Anything else other than constant war is weakness, of course.

 

This is ridiculous. Seriously, do you think Obama would do this because he is a warmonger? Do you think he likes the idea of spending that much money, ending that many lives, and stretching our already overstretched military even further? Or jeopardizing Obama's desires to fix health care and the environment by sending the capital elsewhere?

 

We're in Afghanistan. We had to go, and we did. That country, unlike Iraq, is still a haven for the terrorist network that was not only responsible for 9/11, but also for other acts, and will be in the future as well. The central government is terribly weak. The border areas with Paki are lawless. If the US just up and leaves right now, the consequence is not just what happens to Afghanistan. Its that you hand the country over to being, essentially, a free-reign base for all manner of jihadists who would like nothing more than to train and send out attackers to all corners of the earth.

 

So believe it or not, this really is self-defense for the western world.

 

I think Obama is doing exactly the right thing here. He is conferring with military people who understand the situation better than anyone else, to find a well-thought-out solution that will actually have some chance of stabilizing Afghanistan. And with everything we have invested already, that is the right thing to do.

 

This is not about posturing, this is no longer the world of nation-state conventional war, and no one on earth doubts the US military is the best there is. So the idea that this is about being "centrist" is a bunch of baloney. It makes no sense on its face.

 

He is trying to push this thing off the fence, and I agree with him.

 

 

[BigSqwert]

It comes off as purely political to me. If he pulls out he loses in 2012 because he "surrendered".

[BigSqwert]

That country, unlike Iraq, is still a haven for the terrorist network that was not only responsible for 9/11, but also for other acts, and will be in the future as well. The central government is terribly weak. The border areas with Paki are lawless. If the US just up and leaves right now, the consequence is not just what happens to Afghanistan. Its that you hand the country over to being, essentially, a free-reign base for all manner of jihadists who would like nothing more than to train and send out attackers to all corners of the earth.

 

Haven? Don't you mean Pakistan? Terrorists don't need a centralized location to plan their attacks. They don't need to be in Afghanistan and most likely aren't really there anymore anyway. Occupying a region that is unoccupiable is a waste of lives, time, and money. We will never win there and we're just churning out more anti-American sentiment and creating more terrorists.

[Y2HH]

It comes off as purely political to me. If he pulls out he loses in 2012 because he "surrendered".

 

Wow, we agree on something.

[NorthSideSox72]

It comes off as purely political to me. If he pulls out he loses in 2012 because he "surrendered".

No, if he pulls out and all hell breaks lose, he loses politically. If he pulls out and the country can not implode, and we don't see AQ and the Taliban celebrating in the streets of Kabul on CNN 3 months later, then he wins politically. I think you are way off on the political calculus at work.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Haven? Don't you mean Pakistan? Terrorists don't need a centralized location to plan their attacks. They don't need to be in Afghanistan and most likely aren't really there anymore anyway. Occupying a region that is unoccupiable is a waste of lives, time, and money. We will never win there and we're just churning out more anti-American sentiment and creating more terrorists.

Terrorists need a place to exist, if anything organized is to occur. Lone gunmen are of course another matter.

 

We aren't churning out any more anti-American sentiment, we already did that, and its lessening now globally, from what I can see. Staying in Afghanistan to get the job done isn't going to worsen anything.

 

And your statement about not winning is simply reiterating what I was getting at before. This is not typical nation-state warfare that we were so used to for so long. There is no "winning" any war like this, in the sense we are used to. There is only getting certain objectives accomplished, and we haven't done that yet.

 

[Y2HH]

And your statement about not winning is simply reiterating what I was getting at before. This is not typical nation-state warfare that we were so used to for so long. There is no "winning" any war like this, in the sense we are used to. There is only getting certain objectives accomplished, and we haven't done that yet.

 

I'm quoting this because I don't think many people understand that. When you speak of war, people often think win/lose. This war will be a win if we accomplish a few main objectives.

[BigSqwert]

I'm quoting this because I don't think many people understand that. When you speak of war, people often think win/lose. This war will be a win if we accomplish a few main objectives.

And I highly doubt we accomplish those objectives. You can't just make an entire nation want a democracy. This is a land of tribes and sects that have lived that way for millennia. Brute force won't change that.

[bmags]

I mean, if we are comfortable with how we are controlling northern pakistan, then I see no difference between it and Afghanistan. If anything we should invade pakistan. And then the African countries they'll migrate too. There's no benefit to Afghanistan except for human rights, and even those are questionable when you have as many civilian casualties as we've had. Let's see, America in neverending wars to protect corrupt governments. Sounds like a plan. And besides that the Northern Alliance is far from pro women's rights. This is a joke. I didn't think he'd say he was pulling out, but I also didn't think he'd re-commit damn near 40k troops after pulling the options off the table. 8 f***ing years of this place. And we're back where we started.

[BigSqwert]

And it's not like we could use the billions of dollars to rebuild our infrastructure.

[Y2HH]

And it's not like we could use the billions of dollars to rebuild our infrastructure.

 

That's just the thing -- everyone assumes that if we weren't using this money to fund wars that we'd use it for other things like rebuilding infrastructure, etc. -- but the reality is probably much different. We often hear the government speak of "waste over here could be used to fix this over here", but when they stop the waste, the other problem is suddenly forgotten about...and remains unfixed.

 

Meanwhile, however, they never forget to give themselves raises.

[NorthSideSox72]

And it's not like we could use the billions of dollars to rebuild our infrastructure.

Sort of true, but again, what is the best use of those dollars? On Iraq, I agree with you, because we had no good reason to go there. That's a trillion dollars, thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives, all gone, for basically nothing. $1T, even if cut in half, could have gotten us a good part of the way to energy independence, or kept us out of the immense deficit hole we are in, or lowered taxes, or bettered our rail system, or paid for TARP, or some combination of all those things.

 

But with Afghanistan, there were, and still are, valid reasons to be there. Reasons why it was worth it.

 

[Y2HH]

Sort of true, but again, what is the best use of those dollars? On Iraq, I agree with you, because we had no good reason to go there. That's a trillion dollars, thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives, all gone, for basically nothing. $1T, even if cut in half, could have gotten us a good part of the way to energy independence, or kept us out of the immense deficit hole we are in, or lowered taxes, or bettered our rail system, or paid for TARP, or some combination of all those things.

 

But with Afghanistan, there were, and still are, valid reasons to be there. Reasons why it was worth it.

 

Yes, but like I said, just because we didn't spend that money on a war doesn't mean we would have spent it here...and odds are we wouldn't have.