Author Topic: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism  (Read 74211 times)

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BSB

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #60 on: January 02, 2010, 06:33:51 AM »
There has never been a successful presidential candidate with those fatal faux pas, and there won't be this time either. I will, though, sum them all up with one example, and in one word, quitter.

BT

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #61 on: January 02, 2010, 06:39:18 AM »
So did Obama complete his single Senate term? If not, was he a quitter?

BSB

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #62 on: January 02, 2010, 07:24:17 AM »
Obama is Obama, Palin is Palin.

When it comes to Palin I only have personal observations and anecdotal evidence, like most everybody else, BT. From those two I drew my opinions, which I doubt will change. Although, I supported McCain for years, but voted for Obama in the end so, never say never.

 
« Last Edit: January 02, 2010, 07:27:29 AM by BSB »

BT

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #63 on: January 02, 2010, 07:38:33 AM »
Hardly seems fair to damn Palin for doing the same thing Obama did.


Rich

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #64 on: January 02, 2010, 09:25:47 AM »
>>See, Rich? Dick thinks [...]<<

So you're not interested in changing the GOP. Suite yourself.

You've chosen to avoid dealing with the only system that can actually effect change. To bad, we could use a guy like you.

Stray Pooch

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #65 on: January 02, 2010, 09:50:56 AM »
What is the origin of the phrase "Bush Doctrine"?

Wikipedia cites this column by Neil Coates from Sep 30, 2001 as the first reference:  http://texnews.com/1998/2001/opinion/bush0930.html  It looks like a credible claim, given the date, tne logic of the article and the title:


The Bush Doctrine: New policy to ensure our safety must be examined

By Neal Coates

A defining moment in American foreign policy occurred after the morning of Sept. 11. President George W. Bush declared the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., had triggered a new foreign policy focused on fighting terrorism.

This statement is of such significance we will soon call it the “Bush Doctrine.”



It also makes this rather prescient statement:


What if Saddam Hussein helped bin Laden? Would we invade Iraq? As articulated to date, it appears America would.


An interesting read, given our persepctive even a short 8 years later.
 
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Plane

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #66 on: January 02, 2010, 10:17:26 AM »
What is the origin of the phrase "Bush Doctrine"?

Wikipedia cites this column by Neil Coates from Sep 30, 2001 as the first reference:  http://texnews.com/1998/2001/opinion/bush0930.html  It looks like a credible claim, given the date, tne logic of the article and the title:


The Bush Doctrine: New policy to ensure our safety must be examined

By Neal Coates

A defining moment in American foreign policy occurred after the morning of Sept. 11. President George W. Bush declared the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., had triggered a new foreign policy focused on fighting terrorism.

This statement is of such significance we will soon call it the “Bush Doctrine.”



It also makes this rather prescient statement:


What if Saddam Hussein helped bin Laden? Would we invade Iraq? As articulated to date, it appears America would.


An interesting read, given our persepctive even a short 8 years later.
 

So It was not Bush , the Adminisration nor even any Republican who termed the idea " Bush Doctrine"?

Why is Palin supposed to be ready to comment on a "policy" or "doctrine" that Bush himself wouldn't recognise?

 At least not by that label.

I beleive that this incident illistrates the sophistication of Palins attackers.

Religious Dick

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #67 on: January 02, 2010, 10:54:15 AM »

Thank you, Dick, for illustrating a point I made to Rich earlier in the thread.

See, Rich? Dick thinks libertarianism is people "asserting their individuality to the point of making civil society impossible." He even goes to far as to set up this entirely false dichotomy of "people giving up their individual liberties in the interests of maintaining civil society" and people "asserting their individuality to the point of making civil society impossible." Apparently, either one wants to maintain civil society Dick's way, or one wants to make civil society impossible, with no room allowed for any other options.


That's a rather funny comment coming from someone who describes themselves as a "libertarian", a group that has apparently appointed themselves the arbiters of all things that constitute liberty, and dismiss all competing visions as "statist" or "anti-freedom".

Doubly funny because they mostly seem to be in the business of petitioning the state to inflict on their citizens policies the citizens have never, ever chosen for themselves.

You think you don't have open borders or gay marriage because governments are standing in the way? Is that a joke? Governments have imposed those things on their citizens at every chance they've gotten! Any time they've been put to a referendum, they've been soundly defeated. Who's the "statist" there?

It seems to me a large portion of "libertarianism" is the same politically correct crap governments have been trying to shove down the throats of their unwilling citizens for decades, sexed up with a veneer of sex, drugs and rock and roll and a leather jacket to make it appealing to gullible college students. No government ever had a better shill on the payroll than the Cato Institute or Reason magazine.

Hint: Liberty is an abstract concept, not a checklist of agenda items. There is no such thing as absolute liberty in civil society, nor could there possibly be. The domain of permissible liberties within civil society is a legitimate object of debate. Whining "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!" whenever your your pet agenda item is rejected is not.

Apparently, Dick thinks free trade in goods and labor creates a loss of economic liberty.

So, presumably, you would object to a government policy prohibiting a private entrepreneur from selling nuclear and biological weapons to third-world dictatorships hostile to the United States? Personally, I would consider getting nuked off the face of the earth a rather significant loss of my economic liberty, to say the least.

Another hint: You will never enjoy absolute liberty within any society. Before you enjoy any liberty at all, you have to facilitate an environment where liberty is possible. Some economic transactions are very much detrimental to facilitating that environment. I consider restricting the 5% of transactions that are damaging to that environment in return for maintaining an environment where the other 95% of transactions can flourish a very reasonable trade-off indeed.

Humans need water to live. However, a drink of water and getting drowned in a swimming pool are two different things.

Supporting more people having relationships that people have been relied on as an alternative to government is really, by Dick's accounting, an attack on those relationships.

Presumably, you are referring to gay marriage, which is hardly the extent of the range of examples I was referring to.

There is a good reason our political dichotomy is divided between conservative and liberal, and libertarian not at all. There are some functions necessary to society that will never be profitable from a economic perspective. Raising children or caring for infirm elders will never be economically profitable enterprises. However, they are necessary for a functioning society. The liberal views those activities as the appropriate domain of government. The conservative considers them more appropriately managed by traditional families, and therefore advocates policies which facilitates or strengthens the traditional structures.  How does the libertarian propose to manage them? Markets don't cater to unprofitable activities.

Nobody is advocating telling anyone what kind of relationship they can form, and what kind of contracts they can make between themselves. But some relationships are valuable enough to society at large that society protects and privileges them. In the case of heterosexual relationships, they provide the means for a society to perpetuate itself. The law privileges them because, in return, they provide a value to society. What value do gay relationships offer society? None. That is why few, if any, societies grant them a privileged status. It's a demand of something for nothing.

And if we follow Dick's logic, the most civil society of all is one where individual liberties do not exist.

So, a society where I can shoot anybody who annoys me, rape my neighbors daughter, and help myself to his property is a civil society? The point here, is that *some* restrictions on personal liberty are required for civil society. Nobody besides maybe the anarchist fringe disputes that. And the domain of what restrictions are required, and what liberties are permissible, is very much a legitimate debate.

I'm sure Dick will deny some of what I said,

No, but I'll certainly clarify your mischaracterization of it.


Rich, his attitude is far more representative of the general Republican response to libertarian ideas than is yours.

There are libertarians, and libertarians. I voted for Ron Paul. But if the Reason crowd started voting for my party, I'd wonder what was wrong with my party!

I see no reason why the Republicans should be bothered cultivating that kind of libertarian. A platform of Acid, Amnesty and Abortion did nothing for the Democrats - ask George McGovern - and I have no reason to believe it will improve the prospects for Republicans, either. Whatever votes they win from the more libertine branch of the libertarians will not compensate for the votes they lose from the sane.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2010, 10:58:49 AM by Religious Dick »
I speak of civil, social man under law, and no other.
-Sir Edmund Burke

Stray Pooch

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #68 on: January 02, 2010, 11:18:53 AM »
So It was not Bush , the Adminisration nor even any Republican who termed the idea " Bush Doctrine"?

Why is Palin supposed to be ready to comment on a "policy" or "doctrine" that Bush himself wouldn't recognise?

 At least not by that label.

I beleive that this incident illistrates the sophistication of Palins attackers.


Oh, come one!  That's a terrible argument, Plane.  You're grasping at straws.  EVERYBODY recognized the term "Bush Doctrine" by 2008 (except, of course, Sarah Palin - and apparently you).  I'm not sure what party (if any) Croates belongs to, but what has that got to do with it?  The term comes from the Monroe Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine and other such foreign policy "doctrines" created by Presidents in the past.  And as the cited article clearly demonstrates, it had been around for at least seven years.  At first I can understand that Palin thought he might have meant Bush's "doctrine" on a particular issue, though "policy" would have been a more likely term to use in that case.  But when he asked her several times after she said "the doctrine about what?" or words to that effect, she was still lost.  Had she said "Oh, you mean the Capital "D" doctrine - the foreign policy."  I would have thought she had just had a momentary misunderstanding.  This doesn't indicate the sophistication of her attackers - it illustrates her lack of sophistication.  

I strongly doubt that Charlie Gibson was laying in wait to spring this question on her.  I think it was a routine question and he was shocked and (perhaps happily) surprised to find she didn't understand the term.  The question was eminently relevent and fair.  If he had said "What do you think of Bush's foreign policy, and specifically the idea that the US has the right to pre-emptively strike countries who pose a threat or harbor terrorists" she would have, I suspect, been prepared to answer.   But he used a perfectly valid and well-known term instead of all the excess verbage - in the same way that he might ask a candidate today "Do you think TARP helped the economy?" instead of "Do you think that the policy of the government buying up portions of the debt of troubled companies blah, blah, blah . . ."   You wouldn't go to  a job interview without being aware of the jargon in your field.  Palin blew that one, and there is no excuse - for her or those who prepared her.

Somebody else coined the term "Al Quaeda."  I'll bet she knows that one.   If someone asks her in 2012 what she thinks of the "teabaggers" will she be justified in not knowing who they are because somebody else coined the term?  Even if this term (Bush Doctrine, I mean) were meant in a derogatory way and invented by detractors (and it was neither) she ought to know that as well.   The fact is, Palin is not stupid, she's just human.  It shocked me that she made the gaffe with the Bush Doctrine but what shocked me most about it was that she should have been well-briefed on it in the first place.  It may well be that everyone just assumed she knew the term, just like nobody is likely to ask a potential 2012 candidate "Say, you do know what "stimulus package" means, don't you?"  

Nominating Palin in 2012 will be a mistake.  In the immortal words of Rowlf the Dog (who was, coincidentally, also talking about the fairer sex) "I hope that somethin' better comes along."
    
Oh, for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention . . .

Plane

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #69 on: January 02, 2010, 11:20:13 AM »
Quote
Raising children or caring for infirm elders will never be economically profitable enterprises. However, they are necessary for a functioning society. The liberal views those activities as the appropriate domain of government. The conservative considers them more appropriately managed by traditional families, and therefore advocates policies which facilitates or strengthens the traditional structures.  How does the libertarian propose to manage them?


I think that is a good question.

And generally do Libertarians want the government to influence social mores at all?
Any exceptions?

BT

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #70 on: January 02, 2010, 11:27:28 AM »
Quote
Nominating Palin in 2012 will be a mistake.

Not if she successfully runs the gauntlet of the primaries.
Then it will be the will of the people.

Plane

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #71 on: January 02, 2010, 11:28:22 AM »
Quote
Oh, come one!  That's a terrible argument, Plane.  You're grasping at straws.  EVERYBODY recognized the term "Bush Doctrine" by 2008 (except, of course, Sarah Palin - and apparently you).  


You define "doctrine" as such an all encompassing term that Palins asking for more specificity makes better sense.

No I do not recognise even yet "Bush Doctrine" as a product of the Bush Administration or as a term that refers to any specific and actual thing.

To me "Doctrine" implys a specific policy chosen to be put forward as important and overrideing to other policys.

I really doubt that a Quote for George Bush in which he declares a doctrine can be found , nor any single definition of what it means that is widely recognised.

Plane

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #72 on: January 02, 2010, 11:30:25 AM »
Neil Coates


 


By the way, I also don't really know Neil Coates.

Why don't we call this the Coates doctrine?

Rich

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #73 on: January 02, 2010, 11:46:44 AM »

>>Oh, come one!  That's a terrible argument, Plane.  You're grasping at straws.  EVERYBODY recognized the term "Bush Doctrine" by 2008 (except, of course, Sarah Palin - and apparently you).<<

I think what you're missing here is, what did Sarah Palin expect going into an interview with Katie Couric and/or Charlie Gibson? Had she gone into those situations thinking they would be fair and aboveboard you'd be right, she's stupid. What happened was Pailn knew they would be hostile and was suspicious of every question they asked. What is the Bush Doctrine? "Well Charlie, I think it's safe to say you and I might have polar opposite definitions of that term. What do you think it means?

Personally I think anyone who really isn't a leftist drone Kool-aide drinker who thinks she's stupid is operating from an East Coast, or West Coast hubris that has more to do with Palin’s accent than anything else. They do the same thing with people from the South. They're stupid because of their accent. She hunts moose ... they watch NASCAR ... it's all the same.

It appears those of us in the Great Fly Over country know a genuine person when we see one. We can also pick out the frauds from a mile and a half away.

Can she be elected President?

Obama was.

Stray Pooch

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Re: Obama, Get Your Ass Back to DC & Deal w/ Terrorism
« Reply #74 on: January 02, 2010, 12:55:57 PM »
Quote
Nominating Palin in 2012 will be a mistake.

Not if she successfully runs the gauntlet of the primaries.
Then it will be the will of the people.


The will of the people is often a mistake.

If she wins the Presidency then it will not be a mistake (provided, of course, that she is a good President).  Winning the nomination is a mistake if it results in losing the presidency.
Oh, for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention . . .