Yeah, logic doesn't "EVER" sway the GOP... I am a registered Republican, so that must mean I am "NEVER" swayed by logic right?
I agree that Rush can be an idiot and is down right rude in the way he talks to people. Throw in arrogant too. That said, while I don't listen to him much I think he, and those like him would not be liked no matter what.
Well, until otherwise proven, the Republican leadership in Congress does not ever dismiss the vitriol, they are too busy celebrating the USA's loss in the bid for the 2016 Olympics.
I imagine, ummm, Brazil is thankful and celebrating.
Is the news cycle really this slow? We are now attacking Repubs over an Olympic snub? Is this Bush and the Repubs fault now?
We have Iran with Nukes, unemployment at almost 10%, and the polar bears are dying in the Artic Circle... Do we really care about a trip to Europe to get a Olympics gig in Chicago? Really?
"Chicago’s loss is Obama’s loss is America’s loss Posted by DALITSO NJOLINJO
Wow, I can’t believe that Chicago isn’t part of the United States anymore. How did that happen?
The bizarre coverage of “Obama’s embarrassment” or as I like to call it Rio’s and South America’s triumph only goes to show the state of politics in America. Polarizing.
I have always been told that America and Great Britain are very similar- two peas in a pod if you will. We share the same language, share an unfair hatred of the French and Germans and we have that thing they call “the special relationship”.
But with all our similarities I don’t believe that anyone here in Britain of any political stripe would have reacted with joyous refrain had London not won the 2012 Olympics. I truly don’t believe it. This reaction from the GOP truly puzzles me. Are they not American? (UPDATE: Go here to see some conservatives cheer Chicago not getting the Olympics.)
I understand the politics of such a strategy. Taking away Obama’s shine on the International stage, a stage in which he has performed to the highest of standards will make him weaker and bring down his poll numbers – but it will also make America (the country which Chicago was once situated) weaker.
Let me try and put it another way.
Britain is bidding for the 2018 Football World Cup (soccer to Americans, a change of phrase which I have never understood- if anyone can be so kind as to explain to me why you call football “soccer” and a game which people hardly use their foot “football,” I would be very thankful) – a bid which is likely to be unsuccessful for the fact that London (a City located in Britain…I think) already has the 2012 Olympics. Now it is expected that the Prime Minister of Britain, who ever that may be at the time, takes the time out of his schedule to support the country’s bid. It makes sense right? Shouldn’t the leader of the country make the pitch for a major International event and explain why it should be held in his back yard?
If Obama did not go and support Chicago, a city in the state he served for so many years, and the city still lost, what would have been made of Obama then?
Obama is the US International Spokesperson, it was only right that he was there– that’s what leaders do. I do not believe that this is a liberal or conservative position, I believe this is just common sense – a moderate position if you will. "
I guess my point is I really don't care either way. I don't begrudge the President for making the pitch. Nor do I understand the hoopla surrounding the trip. I really don't care... I am not rooting for the U.S. to lose, I am just apethetic to the whole thing. I find it funny that our two parties will fight over ANYTHING.
The thing is, ACTUAL criticism of Obama is valid. Most of that gets lost in the crazy tirades, as the Republicans refuse to put country over partisanship. Wishing for our countries demise to spite Obama goes too far. We are all on this ship, after all.
"When it comes to Barack Obama, there are two kinds of people. One still believes he walks on water, the other knows he's just a talented politician. The five-man Nobel peace panel obviously belongs to the faith-based camp. Count them as slow learners. Yet there's no sense cursing them, for they inadvertently have provided a valuable service: Their award signifies the high-water mark of Obama-mania. The prize is so preposterous, it can only hasten the awakening of others to his inflated stature. Like an investor who buys into a bubble just before it bursts, the panel's declaration that Obama has done more for peace than anyone on the planet does not stand even half-serious scrutiny. The instant result is a simultaneous diminishing of both the prize and the man. Arriving when half of America disapproves of Obama's performance as president and others are having buyer's remorse, the prize smacks of a desperate bid to prop him up. Because it comes from lefty foreigners who look with contempt on values most Americans cherish, the award serves to further distance Obama from his nation's political heartland. The very things the Nobel folks applaud him for -- "a new climate of international politics" -- go to the heart of suspicions Obama is ashamed of his country and aims to unilaterally lower its guard. Indeed, the committee cited Obama's push for nuclear disarmament. That's certainly a noble goal, but foolish and dangerous if only the good guys buy in. Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy scolded Obama for being starry-eyed on the subject, telling him, "We live in a real world, not a virtual world, and the real world expects us to make decisions." Sarkozy's barb came as Obama hesitates to confront Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, but it could also have applied to his second-guessing the Afghanistan strategy. Only months after declaring it a "war of necessity" and vowing to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, Obama finds the fight difficult and is reportedly redefining the mission to target only Al Qaeda. Dreams of peace built on appeasement litter history's battlefields. As Ronald Reagan put it, "The search for peace must go on, but we have a better chance of finding it if we maintain our strength while we're searching." Reagan said that at West Point shortly after taking office in 1981. He went on to win the Cold War and helped liberate hundreds of millions of people from the clutches of tyranny. Now there's a man worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize."
"Conservatives are still wandering stunned through the wreckage of the Bush presidency and have absented themselves from the policy debate. GOP politicians are hunkered down waiting for an anti-Obama backlash that may or may not materialize. Instead, as Rick Hertzberg wrote recently, the media personalities are running the show. And what a show:
The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful -- they all routinely liken the President and the "Democrat Party" to murderous totalitarians -- but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism -- the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.
As a group, politicians have incentives to be cautious -- you know, politic -- in their public statements. (There are, of course, exceptions.) But for media personalities, all the incentives point in the opposite direction. The more outrageous Limbaugh is, the more buttons he pushes, the higher the ratings and the more money he makes. In a Today show interview, Limbaugh forswore any leadership role with the GOP while boasting of his ability to monopolize media coverage for days on end. During which, it should be noted, the media isn't going to be paying much attention to John Boehner.
And when loudmouthed demagogues dominate the political discussion, it drives politicians further away from substantive debate, as they may be forced to pander to the most impassioned, red meat-devouring segments of the electorate...."
"... All of this is to say, on the right there's an inordinate focus on emotion and personalities that makes a real political debate impossible. One symptom of this is the right's peculiar fixation on Obama's personality and motivations -- or rather, their imaginary versions of those things. To the conservosphere, Obama is a smug, preening narcissist, a character in a right-wing morality play, full of hubris and headed for a fall -- any fall will do. When that happens the whole moral universe momentarily aligns itself with what is right and good.
Hence conservatives' bizarre jubilation when Chicago lost its Olympic bid after Obama flew to Copenhagen and personally lobbied for it, and the view that Obama's self-regard had finally done him in. George Will claimed -- incorrectly, it turns out -- that Obama's Olympic speech contained an inordinate number of first-person pronouns and snarked about narcissism as "an Olympic sport."
Then last week, the Nobel Peace Prize spawned a thousand "narcissist" blog posts. conservative pundit Lisa Schiffren wrote: "Aides owe the president a dose of reality. Otherwise, the prize may exacerbate his vanity and narcissism, which are his most visible flaws, and inflate his cult of personality, which won't create jobs or end wars." At the Corner, Yuval Levin called it a Nobel Prize for Narcissism.
The problem with the Obama-the-narcissist idea is that Obama is not a narcissist. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy." But there's very little evidence for this, at least in the public face Obama presents.
All presidents have big egos -- and they're entitled, right? But that's not the same as narcissism. I'm not a psychologist, but Obama seems like a pretty mature individual -- certainly more psychologically "together" than many of his immediate predecessors. And his policies are ambitious, certainly, but not grandiose. Many presidents have attempted health care reform, for example, and Obama's approach -- to build on and alter the current system rather than setting up a new one -- may not be ambitious enough. Levin and other conservatives say it's grandiose to try to leverage Obama's global popularity with speeches such as his Cairo address. But the White House would be crazy not to try this. It doesn't mean they think those words will change the world all by themselves.
Nor is there an Obama "cult of personality." Obama has done a lot to anger those on his left flank. They're disillusioned at his "isms" -- his centrism, pragmatism, incrementalism, and institutionalism. And those in the political center, who should most identify with his program, aren't too pleased with him either. Nobody's worshipping Obama anymore, if they ever did. Rather, polls show a majority of Americans personally like Obama. Last month, the WSJ-NBC poll put that figure at 71%, regardless of whether respondents approved or disapproved of his policies.
But conservatives personally dislike him. So they have ginned up an ex-post facto reason for that -- if we don't like him, he must be psychologically flawed. This is oddly reminiscent of Maureen Dowd's trivializing approach to politics -- pretend to know a politician intimately, take a few personality tics and spin them into a unified theory of psycho-political dysfunction that has at best a tenuous correspondence to reality. This is silly. If conservatives want to win back power, they should focus on issues. They could start by kicking Obama off the analyst's couch and taking a spin on it themselves."
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/is-obama-a-narcissist_b_318524.html
'The very things the Nobel folks applaud him for -- "a new climate of international politics" -- go to the heart of suspicions Obama is ashamed of his country and aims to unilaterally lower its guard.'
Hawkish, I'd take M.I.A's opinion over his. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/mia-on-obama-peace-prize_n_316846.html
Still, he's concerned about a suspicion that he is raising? That strike me as dishonest.
Conservatives and Off-Base Lefties: Can You Top This?
Well over half the people who walk the face of this earth come from among the three Abrahamic traditions or faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is no secret that there has been no love lost and little understanding between Islam, the fastest-growing of the three, and the other two.
Now, along came a newly installed civic leader, a President of the United States, generally recognized as the "leader of the free world." Since what is known as "the free world" is predominantly Christian, the new president can also claim to be the most significant leader on the world stage of that Abrahamic faith, Christianity. Among his earliest actions, the new United States President stunned the world by reaching out to Islam -- not from Washington, not by way of TV or the Internet -- no, he traveled to Egypt, put his body and his presidency on the line, and spoke to Islam as he would speak to us. "I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge a new beginning," he said, emphasizing that, "It is easier to start wars than to end them."
And then, speaking from the epicenter of the Muslim world, to all the world, and to the essence of our humanity, he spoke this truth: "It is easier to blame others than to look inward, to see what is different about someone, than to find the things we share."
And who, for the love of God in three faiths, topped that this year?
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-lear/conservatives-and-off-bas_b_316948.html
Quite the pissing contest. Brooks wins in logic, but logic doesn't ever sway the GOP.
ReplyDeleteI think Rush needs counseling.
Sensitivity training too.
ReplyDeleteYeah, logic doesn't "EVER" sway the GOP... I am a registered Republican, so that must mean I am "NEVER" swayed by logic right?
ReplyDeleteI agree that Rush can be an idiot and is down right rude in the way he talks to people. Throw in arrogant too. That said, while I don't listen to him much I think he, and those like him would not be liked no matter what.
Just my .02
Well, until otherwise proven, the Republican leadership in Congress does not ever dismiss the vitriol, they are too busy celebrating the USA's loss in the bid for the 2016 Olympics.
ReplyDeleteI imagine, ummm, Brazil is thankful and celebrating.
ReplyDeleteIs the news cycle really this slow? We are now attacking Repubs over an Olympic snub? Is this Bush and the Repubs fault now?
We have Iran with Nukes, unemployment at almost 10%, and the polar bears are dying in the Artic Circle... Do we really care about a trip to Europe to get a Olympics gig in Chicago? Really?
Yes, we care about things that bolster are image and help our economy. Really.
ReplyDeleteWhy would US citizens cheer the USA losing? Who's team are they on? Why do they ROOT AGAINST the USA.
http://www.towleroad.com/2009/10/conservatives-applaud-the-defeat-of-americas-2016-olympics-bid.html
"Chicago’s loss is Obama’s loss is America’s loss
ReplyDeletePosted by DALITSO NJOLINJO
Wow, I can’t believe that Chicago isn’t part of the United States anymore. How did that happen?
The bizarre coverage of “Obama’s embarrassment” or as I like to call it Rio’s and South America’s triumph only goes to show the state of politics in America. Polarizing.
I have always been told that America and Great Britain are very similar- two peas in a pod if you will. We share the same language, share an unfair hatred of the French and Germans and we have that thing they call “the special relationship”.
But with all our similarities I don’t believe that anyone here in Britain of any political stripe would have reacted with joyous refrain had London not won the 2012 Olympics. I truly don’t believe it. This reaction from the GOP truly puzzles me. Are they not American? (UPDATE: Go here to see some conservatives cheer Chicago not getting the Olympics.)
I understand the politics of such a strategy. Taking away Obama’s shine on the International stage, a stage in which he has performed to the highest of standards will make him weaker and bring down his poll numbers – but it will also make America (the country which Chicago was once situated) weaker.
Let me try and put it another way.
Britain is bidding for the 2018 Football World Cup (soccer to Americans, a change of phrase which I have never understood- if anyone can be so kind as to explain to me why you call football “soccer” and a game which people hardly use their foot “football,” I would be very thankful) – a bid which is likely to be unsuccessful for the fact that London (a City located in Britain…I think) already has the 2012 Olympics. Now it is expected that the Prime Minister of Britain, who ever that may be at the time, takes the time out of his schedule to support the country’s bid. It makes sense right? Shouldn’t the leader of the country make the pitch for a major International event and explain why it should be held in his back yard?
If Obama did not go and support Chicago, a city in the state he served for so many years, and the city still lost, what would have been made of Obama then?
Obama is the US International Spokesperson, it was only right that he was there– that’s what leaders do. I do not believe that this is a liberal or conservative position, I believe this is just common sense – a moderate position if you will. "
http://themoderatevoice.com/48361/chicagos-loss-is-obamas-loss-is-americas-loss/
I guess my point is I really don't care either way. I don't begrudge the President for making the pitch. Nor do I understand the hoopla surrounding the trip. I really don't care... I am not rooting for the U.S. to lose, I am just apethetic to the whole thing. I find it funny that our two parties will fight over ANYTHING.
ReplyDeleteIt's important to note who instigates the fight.
ReplyDeleteA divided nation is a weaker one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMJuEOaF84o&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T24xGiplKQ
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, ACTUAL criticism of Obama is valid. Most of that gets lost in the crazy tirades, as the Republicans refuse to put country over partisanship. Wishing for our countries demise to spite Obama goes too far. We are all on this ship, after all.
ReplyDeletehttp://michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/get-obamas-back-second-thoughts-michael-moore
ReplyDelete"When it comes to Barack Obama, there are two kinds of people. One still believes he walks on water, the other knows he's just a talented politician.
ReplyDeleteThe five-man Nobel peace panel obviously belongs to the faith-based camp. Count them as slow learners.
Yet there's no sense cursing them, for they inadvertently have provided a valuable service: Their award signifies the high-water mark of Obama-mania. The prize is so preposterous, it can only hasten the awakening of others to his inflated stature.
Like an investor who buys into a bubble just before it bursts, the panel's declaration that Obama has done more for peace than anyone on the planet does not stand even half-serious scrutiny. The instant result is a simultaneous diminishing of both the prize and the man.
Arriving when half of America disapproves of Obama's performance as president and others are having buyer's remorse, the prize smacks of a desperate bid to prop him up. Because it comes from lefty foreigners who look with contempt on values most Americans cherish, the award serves to further distance Obama from his nation's political heartland.
The very things the Nobel folks applaud him for -- "a new climate of international politics" -- go to the heart of suspicions Obama is ashamed of his country and aims to unilaterally lower its guard.
Indeed, the committee cited Obama's push for nuclear disarmament. That's certainly a noble goal, but foolish and dangerous if only the good guys buy in.
Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy scolded Obama for being starry-eyed on the subject, telling him, "We live in a real world, not a virtual world, and the real world expects us to make decisions."
Sarkozy's barb came as Obama hesitates to confront Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, but it could also have applied to his second-guessing the Afghanistan strategy. Only months after declaring it a "war of necessity" and vowing to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, Obama finds the fight difficult and is reportedly redefining the mission to target only Al Qaeda.
Dreams of peace built on appeasement litter history's battlefields. As Ronald Reagan put it, "The search for peace must go on, but we have a better chance of finding it if we maintain our strength while we're searching."
Reagan said that at West Point shortly after taking office in 1981. He went on to win the Cold War and helped liberate hundreds of millions of people from the clutches of tyranny.
Now there's a man worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize."
Michael Goodwin is a New York Post columnist
When it comes to Barack Obama, there are two kinds of people.'
ReplyDeleteOversimplified.
'Arriving when half of America disapproves of Obama's performance as president and others are having buyer's remorse'
Obama Job Approval at 56%
http://www.gallup.com/poll/123629/Obama-Job-Approval-56-After-Nobel-Win.aspx
"Now there's a man worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize."
You can get prizes for selling weapons to Iran?
"Conservatives are still wandering stunned through the wreckage of the Bush presidency and have absented themselves from the policy debate. GOP politicians are hunkered down waiting for an anti-Obama backlash that may or may not materialize. Instead, as Rick Hertzberg wrote recently, the media personalities are running the show. And what a show:
ReplyDeleteThe protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful -- they all routinely liken the President and the "Democrat Party" to murderous totalitarians -- but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism -- the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.
As a group, politicians have incentives to be cautious -- you know, politic -- in their public statements. (There are, of course, exceptions.) But for media personalities, all the incentives point in the opposite direction. The more outrageous Limbaugh is, the more buttons he pushes, the higher the ratings and the more money he makes. In a Today show interview, Limbaugh forswore any leadership role with the GOP while boasting of his ability to monopolize media coverage for days on end. During which, it should be noted, the media isn't going to be paying much attention to John Boehner.
And when loudmouthed demagogues dominate the political discussion, it drives politicians further away from substantive debate, as they may be forced to pander to the most impassioned, red meat-devouring segments of the electorate...."
"...
ReplyDeleteAll of this is to say, on the right there's an inordinate focus on emotion and personalities that makes a real political debate impossible. One symptom of this is the right's peculiar fixation on Obama's personality and motivations -- or rather, their imaginary versions of those things. To the conservosphere, Obama is a smug, preening narcissist, a character in a right-wing morality play, full of hubris and headed for a fall -- any fall will do. When that happens the whole moral universe momentarily aligns itself with what is right and good.
Hence conservatives' bizarre jubilation when Chicago lost its Olympic bid after Obama flew to Copenhagen and personally lobbied for it, and the view that Obama's self-regard had finally done him in. George Will claimed -- incorrectly, it turns out -- that Obama's Olympic speech contained an inordinate number of first-person pronouns and snarked about narcissism as "an Olympic sport."
Then last week, the Nobel Peace Prize spawned a thousand "narcissist" blog posts. conservative pundit Lisa Schiffren wrote: "Aides owe the president a dose of reality. Otherwise, the prize may exacerbate his vanity and narcissism, which are his most visible flaws, and inflate his cult of personality, which won't create jobs or end wars." At the Corner, Yuval Levin called it a Nobel Prize for Narcissism.
The problem with the Obama-the-narcissist idea is that Obama is not a narcissist. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy." But there's very little evidence for this, at least in the public face Obama presents.
All presidents have big egos -- and they're entitled, right? But that's not the same as narcissism. I'm not a psychologist, but Obama seems like a pretty mature individual -- certainly more psychologically "together" than many of his immediate predecessors. And his policies are ambitious, certainly, but not grandiose. Many presidents have attempted health care reform, for example, and Obama's approach -- to build on and alter the current system rather than setting up a new one -- may not be ambitious enough. Levin and other conservatives say it's grandiose to try to leverage Obama's global popularity with speeches such as his Cairo address. But the White House would be crazy not to try this. It doesn't mean they think those words will change the world all by themselves.
Nor is there an Obama "cult of personality." Obama has done a lot to anger those on his left flank. They're disillusioned at his "isms" -- his centrism, pragmatism, incrementalism, and institutionalism. And those in the political center, who should most identify with his program, aren't too pleased with him either. Nobody's worshipping Obama anymore, if they ever did. Rather, polls show a majority of Americans personally like Obama. Last month, the WSJ-NBC poll put that figure at 71%, regardless of whether respondents approved or disapproved of his policies.
But conservatives personally dislike him. So they have ginned up an ex-post facto reason for that -- if we don't like him, he must be psychologically flawed. This is oddly reminiscent of Maureen Dowd's trivializing approach to politics -- pretend to know a politician intimately, take a few personality tics and spin them into a unified theory of psycho-political dysfunction that has at best a tenuous correspondence to reality. This is silly. If conservatives want to win back power, they should focus on issues. They could start by kicking Obama off the analyst's couch and taking a spin on it themselves."
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/is-obama-a-narcissist_b_318524.html
Yes, I'm actually citing Joy Behar.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-tv/huffpost-editor-roy-sekof_b_318130.html
Also, from what I recall the French weren't too keen on the Bush Administration or the Republican Congress that demonized them.
ReplyDelete'The very things the Nobel folks applaud him for -- "a new climate of international politics" -- go to the heart of suspicions Obama is ashamed of his country and aims to unilaterally lower its guard.'
ReplyDeleteHawkish, I'd take M.I.A's opinion over his.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/mia-on-obama-peace-prize_n_316846.html
Still, he's concerned about a suspicion that he is raising? That strike me as dishonest.
But then...I love me some Norman Lear:
ReplyDeleteConservatives and Off-Base Lefties: Can You Top This?
Well over half the people who walk the face of this earth come from among the three Abrahamic traditions or faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is no secret that there has been no love lost and little understanding between Islam, the fastest-growing of the three, and the other two.
Now, along came a newly installed civic leader, a President of the United States, generally recognized as the "leader of the free world." Since what is known as "the free world" is predominantly Christian, the new president can also claim to be the most significant leader on the world stage of that Abrahamic faith, Christianity. Among his earliest actions, the new United States President stunned the world by reaching out to Islam -- not from Washington, not by way of TV or the Internet -- no, he traveled to Egypt, put his body and his presidency on the line, and spoke to Islam as he would speak to us. "I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge a new beginning," he said, emphasizing that, "It is easier to start wars than to end them."
And then, speaking from the epicenter of the Muslim world, to all the world, and to the essence of our humanity, he spoke this truth: "It is easier to blame others than to look inward, to see what is different about someone, than to find the things we share."
And who, for the love of God in three faiths, topped that this year?
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-lear/conservatives-and-off-bas_b_316948.html