Rich on Afghanistan
I’ve spent the last handful days, in fits and starts, replaying and parsing Obama’s speech further escalating the war in Afghanistan. I haven’t been obsessive about it, merely thorough.
While my immediate reaction was thumbs down on the “new” policy, I kept an open mind as I read through a couple of dozen very diverse break-downs of the policy. I fully understand to what degree Obama has tried to eschew the blind Bush-Cheney approach that got us mired in the first place. No question that Obama is a smart fella and sees all the same possible pitfalls (and way more) contained in your run-of-the-mill protestation from Code Pink or Move On.
He has, nevertheless, made his calculations and we have what we have.
My judgment, after nearly a week, remains unchanged. There was and is no easy way out of this nightmare. But getting in deeper — for the fourth time since 2006– is clearly not the answer. Of all that I have read on this in the past week, the most intelligent take comes from Frank Rich.
I’ll let you read his piece on your own. You don’t need me to summarize it for you.
The one aspect of his column I would like to underline is one of the underlying themes with which he bookends the piece. The American Empire might be precisely that but like all imperial precedents, it has real limits to its power. And the current limits are really coming to bear:
We can’t fight a couple of wars, not raise taxes AND deploy any meaningful domestic programs that will get 15% of the population back to steady work and 25% of our kids off of food stamps. We can’t keep reality show gate-crashers from getting into slashing proximity of the President of the United States. We can’t stop a nutted-out Army shrink from plugging a band of his brothers at Fort Hood.
What on earth makes anyone sane think we have the power to fix Afghanistan?
December 6th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
nada,
December 7th, 2009 at 6:22 am
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/friedman_on_geopolitics
(That is not GEORGE Friedman…it should be noted)
December 7th, 2009 at 6:23 am
shoot…I mean its NOT Thomas Friedman. oops
December 7th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Granted, Rich and Cooper may be right about Afghanistan.
But when Rich asks “If the enemy in Afghanistan, whether Taliban or Qaeda, poses the same existential threat to America today that it did on 9/11, why is the president settling for half-measures?”
Because we live in a democracy and many people are against spending more lives and money on Afghanistan. American soldiers dying aren’t really half measures. The questions are the following: are the Taliban and Al Qaeda a threat? -many say no – and is it worth trying to do something about them in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think it’s an open question, but lean towards doing something. But Obama’s right, Afghanistan isn’t Vietnam. The Vietnamese never attacked us and it didn’t really matter if the Vietnamese won their anti-colonial struggle and the country went Communist.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:46 am
See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/opinion/03kristof.html
December 7th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Frank Rich has too much time on his hands lately. Too much time for over-thinking and over-complicating a problem. Then again, he gets paid for complicating an issue, requiring a lot of words to explain it. President Obama’s logic is over-matched for Afghanistan Frank, and so is apparently yours.
On the anniversary of the only other attack on the US in its history, with similar fatalities but with much more sinister and uncivilized methods, it helps to understand we had to be in Japan much longer than eight years in order to stabilize, and civilize, an equally fundamentalist and radicalized country. This while we were simultaneously doing the same in Germany. We have had a presence in both for 50 years to help them build and then protect peaceful and nonthreatening free democratic governments. But that was then, and this is now.
Iraq in comparison in time, lives, and treasure is a resounding success to date. Afghanistan is on its way to peace and civilization for its tragic people devastated by decades of radicalism and nutjob mini-tribal tyrants.
The problem is not complicated, the new greatest generation’s will, resolve, and the ability to think beyond the next new gadget, the most important one being themselves and their ‘rights’, ‘freedom’ and ‘entitilements’ of course, is the complication we face. They have no sense of history, the value of their own country in it, and the long term value of promoting democracy and freedom in aggressive and radical countries we are forced into dealing with.
President Obama is a product of this newest greatest generation. In this sense, I think he is doing an admirable job, going slowly, but steadily, against his own generations selfish instincts, and the his political base that tried but failed to kick the Iraq grenade down the road for the next generation. They are trying the same with Afghanistan.
The problem we have is not President’s lack of logic for Afghanistan, it is whether he can resist his and his generations instinct to kick this potentially nuclear can down the road for the next, and likely even weaker willed, generation.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Of course the greedy selfish capitalistic bastards that busted our budget by failing to pay for the Iraq war when they could have, then raping the Treasury of what was left to save their own fat asses and grotesque bonuses, is another factor that constrains constrains any new President’s options.
Under the circumstances, President Obama is on his way to becoming a great President. If he can stabilize Afghanistan while improving the economy during his term(s), he will be a hero.
In this light Mr. President, you cannot improve the economy by creating or even saving government jobs, and the scary-to-business expanding national debt required to do it. You must limit government size, while encouraging private risk with business friendly tax/depreciation incentives, no health insurance overhead/mandates, and no energy costs increase unknowns, at least till the economy turns.
And above all, because I know you read Marc’s blog and especially my comments, DO NOT use money paid back to TARP by bailed-out corporations as a new SLUSH fund for Washington’s out-of-control drunken sailors. Make them CUT their bloated operating budgets by 10% instead, like the rest of Americans are having to do.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Jim – you really are living in an alternate universe. The comparisons to Japan and Germany are completely idiotic, Iraq is NOT a resounding success unless you consider the installation of a government that will, over the long term, remain closer to Iran than to the US worth billions of US dollars, thousands of American lives “success” and ignore the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and, literally, millions displaced by the ferocious violence we unleashed. But “the problem is not complicated” line pretty much removes you from the realm of rational thinkers. The “weak-willed” Bush Administration let bin Laden escape and caved to neo-con opportunists who wanted to use 9/11 to fulfill their wet dreams. There has been no administration in recent history that has done as much damage to US national security – from ignoring the 9/11 threat, to outsourcing the effort to capture bin Laden to delusional thinking on Iraq and Iran. I’m giving Obama my support in his strategy, which I see as trying to clean up the BushCo mess. But with “friends” like you, we don’t need enemies. You’re broadcasting from outer space. Totally embarrassing horseshit.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Also, Obama’s deficits are like Roosevelts – trying to save us from an even worse economic disaster. Health care reform will actually save us money over the long term – all of the stats show this. Your notion of cutting spending when we’re still in deep recession is a recipe for disaster. Look at any chart showing growth of the deficit as a % of GDP over the last 50 years and it’s obvious that the problem began with Reagan’s tax cuts and got worse during the Bushses’ terms. Reagan is the least “fiscally conservative” President in recent American history. Bush Jr. is the worst “national security” President in my lifetime. Both of them weakend this country immeasurabley. If you’re looking for delusional “drunken sailors”, their heirs in GOP are a good place to start. Incidentally, if increasing debt is “scary to business” why did so many greed…uh…businessmen support Reagan who started the deficit-to-GDP ratio moving radically in the wrong direction ? Seems like we’re getting an awful lot of loud, hysterical deficit hawks all of the sudden with a black…uh…I mean with a President in office who is being forced to use government to prime the economic pump to keep us out of a depression. This is total bullshit…partisan hypocrites coming home to roost. Y’all deserve Palin….
December 7th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Mark – I generally find Frank Rich engaging and read his stuff, but my wife monopolized the Times yesterday and I missed this column. I have to say, that however much wisdom he may impart in the rest of the column, he lost me at the last line of the first paragraph. It was an absurd columnist’s conceit – worse than most of Maureen Dowd’s and, IMHO, so insulting to reason that I stopped reading.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Reg,
Your choice of course, but Rich made this:
most relevant by the last paragraph.
December 7th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I pretty much saw that coming and I think it’s a dumb, tortured analogy. First off, the White House party-crashers’ 15 minutes was up last week IMHO. Anyone still talking about it deserves disdain. There are plenty of things to worry about in Afghanistan, but this is a lazy columnist’s trick IMHO.
Truth be known, I don’t think there’s a single person writing a column for the NYTs who makes it their business to consistently write from a well-informed perspective other than Krugman. I guess some of Kristof’s poverty travelogues have some value, but most of this stuff from Dowd, Rich and the rest is so off-hand and written from such an isolated, lazy perspective that you are as apt to learn something gossiping at the coffee shop with a fellow news junkie. (And don’t get me started on the clowns who write columns for the WaPo. They’re even worse. David Broder appears to be sending copy from beyond the grave.)
December 7th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Maybe the fact that Dowd did one of her cheesy columns that took off from CrasherGate the same day makes me particularly irritable when I see Rich spinning it in a more grave context.
December 7th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
reg, agree. thats why i search out weird sites like Strat For. I can’t stomach the political junkie point of view. I want to know what something means in real terms and, if possible, find out what are the real forces driving decisions. Political talking heads keep whipping up a froth of nonsense as if everything is put in motion based on who might get elected. Bullshit. There are forces at work that are ENTRENCHED and are playing on the big geopolitical chessboard. They are pretty much the ones that influence elections. Not the other way around.
Blecchh.
Its the investigative journalists and analysts that do the real work. I have never understood this constant quoting of a bunch of armchair wonks who all end up richocheting off each other. Lapdogs. I want a wolf.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
You know what’s interesting is that there are lots of bloggers – I’d put Andrew Sullivan as a good example because he’s so prolific and he’s got several subjects that he’s dug his teeth into (even though his Palin obsession has become tired in my book) – who aggregate more information from disparate sources and do more rigorous “thumbnail analysis” than any of these top-tier columnists. I don’t know what Sullivan is paid by Atlantic compared to Dowd – probably something comparable – and I think he produces on the order of a thousand times the value if its broken down by the word, and undoubtedly more than a thousand times if one compares the amount of substantive information conveyed in a week on Sullivan’s blog compared to Dowd’s columns. There’s a work ethic and, frankly, a commitment to journalistic integrity on the part of many industrious bloggers that these “pros” could learn from. Bill Bradley, who comments here periodically, gives his readers far better value than Dowd, et. al. and dares to commit journalism on a daily basis. Maybe these top-tier columnists are simply obsolete. The New York Times is certainly a great platform for Paul Krugman’s analysis and POVs, but my guess is that he’d do pretty much the same thing for free on a website, like Brad DeLong and a number of other econo-bloggers, if the Times quit paying him, because he actually cares about policy and has some compelling views he wants to share given his knowledge base.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
This just beggers belief…
The Guardian word assiduously to get papers across the world to simultaneously do a climate change headline and this is what CNN does…the subliminal drip drip of acid for those that siphon all their thinking from news bites. Its outrageous this stink of conspiracy and venality”
U.S. belief in global warming dips as Republicans shift
A rise in skepticism among Americans over global warming is mostly due to changes among Republicans, according to CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey. FULL STORY
* EPA: Greenhouse gases a health threat
* Cafferty: Copenhagen summit useless?
* Your thoughts on climate change?
December 7th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
reg: Obama’s deficits are like Roosevelts – trying to save us from an even worse economic disaster.
So, is Obama like Roosevelt who required a war to get us out of the depression? If so, he’s right on course.
December 7th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Woody, that’s so lame it doesn’t even qualify as ‘wrong.’
December 7th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Rob, I got that information straight from my grandfather and verified it independently. It wasn’t a coincidence that full employment and the end of the depression occurred after December 7, 1941, which is a day, by the way, that everyone here has ignored.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
[...] Marc Cooper We can’t fight a couple of wars, not raise taxes AND deploy any meaningful domestic programs that will get 15% of the population back to steady work and 25% of our kids off of food stamps. We can’t keep reality show gate-crashers from getting into slashing proximity of the President of the United States. We can’t stop a nutted-out Army shrink from plugging a band of his brothers at Fort Hood. [...]
December 7th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Woody, go jerk yourself off in private.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:52 am
Why, reg, I thought you liked to help people do that, especially little boys.
Well, we do know that the 30,000 soldiers whom Obama is sending to Afghanistan will take away from unemployment here, and that not all 30,000 will be coming back looking for work. Great plan. Maybe Obama will cut the military body armor budget and change the numbers coming back.
Yeah, it’s true. FDR’s waste and make-work programs didnt’ get us out of the depression, but Obama isn’t a good enough historian to know that, and he certainly knows nothing about economics, or he doesnt’ care given his spending. But, he is escalating a war…even though he refuses to admit that we have a war on terror. There are just “man caused disasters.”
I’ve said it before and it comes clearer every day. Obama represents the worst of FDR, LBJ, Nixon, and Carter.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Great Woody post – sort of contians everything despicable, twisted and ignorant about this rancid little turd in one comment.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Don’t expect an insult by you to be returned with a compliment by me.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:13 am
“Health care reform will actually save us money over the long term – all of the stats show this.”
On the surface it should reg, and I am all for cutting back Medicare ‘extras’ provided by the Advantage private insurance program, paid by us. They certainly have the profits to suck it and keep providing these at ‘their’ cost, not ours. At the same time, it is exactly these private competitive insurance programs that offer choices in cost, quality, and service, very much like the choices one has at their employment; low cost HMO Plan where you accept THEIR doctors and THEIR supervision by their Doctors as to what treatment is reasonable- or – high cost PPO Plan where YOU choose your Doctor and there is NO supervision of what your Doctor may prescribe for treatment.
Can you see the problems with totally government controlled single insurer healthcare reform? There are no choices. You don’t get it your way in order to make reasonable choices of what you want and can accept, you get it one way and the government becomes the one-and-only HMO, trying to control what is a ‘lawful’ price and medical ‘procedure’. You have no choice. If you don’t like the quality, price is no longer an issue (it becomes an incentive for doctors to do many procedures for profit -as they do now in the non-Advantage gov’t Medicare single payer program.
Competitive private enterprise is always BEST at providing ANY service because it is managed, supervised, and made efficient in order to be COMPETITIVE with other competitors. Part of this is the ability to react quickly to customers problem, complaints, and dissatisfaction. Offering several HMO or PPO Plans, ie CHOICES, is part the magic of competition and overall customer satisfaction. Central gov’t control, management, and cost control is simple unable to do this. They are not EXPERTS at anything exception political decision for their own interest. Sorry but true.
I can support the current Healt Care Reform bill if it promotes REAL competition and provides no EXTRA Advantages to Medicare at our cost. The Medicare funding reduction does this, as I understand it. However, the real problem I have with it is I see a dangerous and costly incentive in it for company’s to dump their private health care choices for a gov’t tax/penalty instead, dumping millions of people onto the gov’t subsidized roles.
It is the unintended consequences of sweeping laws/control from on high, and the inability to react to them by central gov’t, that has cause the out-of-control explosion of Medicare costs.
Private enterprise will always find a way to use politicians, their laws, and their loop-holes to their Advantage. We must pass health care reform that promotes TRUE competition, not false gov’t competition(which will ALWAYS get subsidized in the end -Fanny Mae and Freddi Mac anyone??). I want several private enterprises competing for my business and providing me with choices, not inefficient centrally controlled political and EXPENSIVE lack of ‘freedom’ to choose.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Woody seems to miss the point:
” FDR’s waste and make-work programs didnt’ get us out of the depression, but Obama isn’t a good enough historian to know that”
————————-
I have seen Woody parrot this right wingery on several occasions and I feel compelled to correct the record and rebuke his insults of FDR.
The WPA and other employment served to provide employment… and thus support for millions of people.
The problem with malthusian windbags is that they cannot fathom the human misery created when unemployment soars.
There is nothing wrong with government spending and intervention to provide for the basic needs of citizens in times of crisis.
Thus the FDR programs were not designed to solve the crisis of depression.
Obama has done much to cover the rich butts of those whose greed precipitated the present crisis. Members of his party should remind him at every opportunity that millions today may be helped with a new WPA.
December 8th, 2009 at 10:29 am
“I have seen Woody parrot this right wingery on several occasions and I feel compelled to correct the record and rebuke his insults of FDR.”
Ahh, you haven’t been here long, I can tell. You’re about to find out how apt the word “parrot” is. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
December 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Oh, it’s great to change the mission of a government spending program after the fact and after one sees that it failed in its initial mission. Say, that reminds me of Obama. Didn’t he change the mission in Afghanistan from victory to transition?
December 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am
reg, sorry about my comment of you and boys. I won’t do it again.
December 8th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Woody Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Oh, it’s great to change the mission of a government spending program after the fact and after one sees that it failed in its initial mission. Say, that reminds me of Obama. Didn’t he change the mission in Afghanistan from victory to transition
—————————
Do I detect an air of synchophancy here?
December 8th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Don’t use big words with Woody.
On second thought, it doesn’t matter.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Pablo, don’t engage with Woody. He IS a parrot. I think he gets paid to inject every ludicrous fringe talking point on this and other blogs.
He is like a virus. Also refuses to engage with you if you ask him a direct question or challenge what he says with a FACT. THen he gets out the garlic and starts uh metaphorically burning crosses across his computer screen. You can hear the crackle and hiss…
December 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
PS, Pablo. Woody is Gooper Pollit in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
December 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
What halfway intelligent Americans are up against in
dealing with the willful retardation of the right is nicely summed
up in Jim R’s “New greatest generation,” a laugh-only-
to-not-cry bit of hokum that actually gets repeated on
T.V. now and then. The advertising hacks of heaven
must stand in awe. When you’re this GREAT, you can
be even greater that the Greatest, or at least AS GREAT.
And don’t make then prove their greatest, you hippie,
they get the GREATEST trophy for just showing up.
That’s cause there the New and Improved greatest,
and ever expanding greatest that just naturally
occurs when an American puts on a uniform.
Did I mention they are great?
Well, again, since men like Rich and Cooper
can’t change the past (both printed outright
falsehoods useful in electing George Bush
President in 2000) at least they rather politely
confront the present.
As for the great crashers, try and be
positive. Hopefully they showed the Secret
Service some holes they can plug up.
After all, the Secret Service costs the
taxpayers a lot of money. Aren’t they
at least pretty greatest?
December 8th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
“…What on earth makes anyone sane think we have the power to fix Afghanistan”
***************************************************************
I like this book, and I especially like the title, which pretty well sums up the foul nature of life in the U.S.A. in these first few bloody years of the post-American century. Only a fool or a whore would call it anything else.
It would be easy to say that we owe it to the Bush family from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys fro the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled this country for at least the last 20 years, and arguably for the past 200. They take orders well, and they don’t ask too many questions.
The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.
Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.
Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.
–Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear, 2002
*******************************************************************
December 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
The difference between a columnist and a poet:
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive “figurehead” — or even dead, for all we know — but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.
Nothing — even George Bush’s $350 billion “Star Wars” missile defense system — could have prevented Tuesday’s attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.
We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.
Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job — armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.
*********************************************************************
Hunter Thompson, September 11th, 2001
December 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Third Chamer writes:
“Well, again, since men like Rich and Cooper
can’t change the past (both printed outright
falsehoods useful in electing George Bush
President in 2000) at least they rather politely
confront the present. ”
———————————–
You can’t just throw this out there without some explanation for those outside the loop.
How so?
It seems that Gore had the votes and Nader had the issues while Bush had the courts.
I think Cooper was doing Radio Nation back then (I could have mis-remembered), and while interesting did not have that reach sufficent to swing elections.
So a few examples of the ‘outright falsehoods’ are in order.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Paplo,
As far as Rich goes, google his name at
“The Daily Howler.” It’s all there, quotes
provided. “Love Canel” and “Love Story”
are good places to start. This stuff was
parroted throughout the chattering class
including the progressive left.
As mentioned this week, Cooper went to
Al Gore invented Willie Horton” in his relentless
attempt to smear Gore in 2000. Those pieces,
I don’t think, will ever see the light of day again.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
So demoralizing were these bogus charges by Frank Rich and Marc Cooper that a couple of thousand old Jewish folks in Florida decided, “Fuck it! I’m voting for Pat Buchanan!”
December 8th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
If I were Cooper, you wouldn’t see the light of day on this blog again. What an angry personality.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Did I forget rude.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Referring to The Charmer.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Pablo, be suspicious when people say to “not engage” another person in a discussion. What they are really saying is that they, themselves, cannot prevail so they choose to bury their heads in the sand (a polite euphemism.) Facts combined with logic and history frustrate them.
Also, I don’t parrot conservative talking points. People here know that. I make up my own mind on issues and state them without waiting to see what others have to say first. I doubt that liberals here even read The Free Republic or watch Fox and Friends to compare their points with mine.
Marc’s site isn’t a “liberals-only” site despite those on the left trying to turn it into one and their running off conservatives. What drew me to this site in the beginning was Marc’s fair handedness with the right and left. It’s better to have boths sides of issues discussed rather than everyone from just one side agreeing and limiting their perspectives.
In other words, I’m doing my part to help liberals from constantly inbreeding, a practice that results in recessive or deleterious traits common to them. You, I don’t see as that type.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:52 am
“Pablo, be suspicious when people say to “not engage” another person in a discussion. ”
Oh, to the contrary, I absolutely desire that Pablo engage trolls–the potential for entertainment and high comedy is off the charts. Please do not misinterpret my fair warning as a discouragement.
“Also, I don’t parrot conservative talking points.”
Of course not–if you did, your comments would be informative. What you parrot are right wing extremist talking points.
I didn’t read the rest–it’s a bit wordy for you, which is not your strong suit.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:04 am
“I doubt that liberals here even read The Free Republic or watch Fox and Friends to compare their points with mine.”
This is true. Nor do we sleep on beds of nails or ingest the urine of goats.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:06 am
“Nor do we sleep on beds of nails or ingest the urine of goats.”
Hey, speak for yourself! Mmmmm, goat urine (uttered with Homer Simpson intonation).
December 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am
“Nor do we sleep on beds of nails or ingest the urine of goats.”
Bed of nails I can understand reg, but urine of goats?
Are you saying you have tried some and found goat’s foul?
Urine: The Golden Elixir (excepting goats
: http://tinyurl.com/6ro8s2
December 9th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Gandhi only liked his own.
December 9th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Then, reg, you know as much about conservative viewpoints as you do the taste of goat urine.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Here’s how the award for hope is working out.
December 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Third:
I have read the articles that you have pointed out to me. Thx.
While I do not agree with Marc Cooper on some of the assertions he made in those articles I do feel that these were legitimately offered and probably reflect his thinking during that time (the chief assertion being that Gore raised the Willie Horton issue against Dukakis in the primary and that the Right carried this bone into the general election). I can’t attest to its veracity but so what?
That’s what he choses to write.
I also noted from CounterPunch that Cooper has generalized critiques for the Right and particular critiques of the left; a trait which I have noticed on this blog.
I take it that you feel that Cooper is a wolf in sheeps clothing?
While I don’t agree with Cooper doesn’t mean that I can’t respect his honest views, I do; something which hasn’t been reciprocated towards me. This means I can enjoy challenging him here without a shred of responsibility arising from any possibility of changing his mind… as age colors the tabula-rasa to an idee-fixe portraiture, museum quality, sutible for framing; I am pigeon-holed.. the one who disagrees fits in among the disagreeable… (“a revolutionary.”" a Chavista. ” etc. whatever label tossed my way).
Don’t let that happen to you, Third Chamer.
December 9th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Jim R Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Did I forget rude.
Jim R Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Referring to The Charmer.
Hey, I’m rude !!!
December 10th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Some things are obvious reg.
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