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November 13, 2015 11:09 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 27 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”

–Winston Churchill

Comments

27 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread

  1. How is the JV doing?

    I understand everything is under control.

    Barack "Don't worry, be happy" Obama was very reassuring on Friday morning.

    "Stephanopoulos asked Obama if ISIS was gaining in strength, to which Obama denied they were.

    “I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” Obama responded. “What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them."

    Oops.

    Maybe another 50 special forces will do the trick?

     

    1. Since you never include full context, here it is. Obama was discussing containment of ISIS within Syria and Iraq. He never claimed to be able to miraculously prevent terrorist attack by foreign fighters within the borders of other European sovereign states. Although now G8 leaders are finally talking about some kind of unified sharing of at least intelligence. I thought that started long ago.

      Just the fact that you, AC, are using this vicious attack to make puerile points shows how petty and essentially cold-hearted you are. One has to infer that you yourself would send many more than 50 advisers to Syria – to do what? They only want us to give them weapons and train their people.  And there's no guarantee that these weapons and trained fighters won't be turned against us.

      Perhaps we need to acknowledge that the situation is complex, that overwhelming military force was tried by your guys, on a credit card, leading to over half a million dead and a 3 trillion debt, and not only did not contain ISIS, but recruited fighters and motivated them against us.

      1. Facts, schmacts. Context , who needs it? This is fact free, evidence free, data free, link free (except occasionally to an equally fact free site or article) context free AC you're talking to. 

    2. Funny.  Last time I checked, it's your folks who hold majorities in both houses of Congress, the sole institution empowered to declare war on ISIS under our Constitution. Where has that been, lo these several years?

      Oh, I forget, your conviction ends at the point where you'd actually have to stand accountable for sacrificing the lives of American and allied forces, and untold thousands of innocents, on the altar of your failed ideology.

    3. The "JV" probably isn't doing too well. In fact, the attack yesterday in Paris may very well be a sign of ISIS weakness. They haven't been expanding their territorial gains in Iraq and Syria and have been loosing ground to the Kurds and the Syrians. France is still a sovereign independent nation even after two attacks this year. ISIS has not been able to overthrow any of their enemies or take any territory from any of the allied nations. One has to look beyond the attack itself and look at what ISIS accomplished. The answer is nothing. ISIS hasn't stopped any of allies from attacking them or slowed down others who may join the coalition. Attacks like these sew fear but they have never stopped us from fighting these people. They should know that by now. Their attacks have only made us more determined.

      1. They  believe their zealotry will always overcome our will. They cannot believe their god can be defeated..

        They should know that by now.

        they will never know that…until the last one is dead.

    4. ISIS does not matter. It is NOT a strategic threat to the USA.
      Yes, they can kill some people, but we are a $17T economy.

      China is a strategic threat to the USA and Obama is spending money dealing with them.

  2. Thanks for sharing, Pissant.

    Courtesy of  your turd drop this morning, I just got to read two brief but brilliant rebuttals..

    Proof of your limited intellectual capacity, dumbass, lies in your inability to understand that you, almost without fail, do your cause more harm than good….keep 'em coming. 

    you advocate sending our friends and neighbors to go die in the desert, as long as you can blame it on the president. You only care about the last part….

  3. You knew it was coming……

    The NY Times is reporting  that in Beaumont, Texas, today the Donald blamed European gun control for the Paris attacks last night. (My only real surprise:  I expected Cruz to come out with it first.) 

  4. Huh. The Democratic debate* is at a university (Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa), and they let students in and encouraged them to participate in the democratic process! Furthermore, all the attention seems to be a great  publicity deal for the university.

    Whoda thunk it? The RCNC swore that rowdy students could not be trusted not to ruin the Republican debates. And apparently, no protesters outside. Could it be that Democrats are just better at the whole Democracy thing?

    Money quote: Bernie Sanders said that Dwight D Eisenhower was twice the "socialist" that he is.

      1. Michael Steele, the former RNC Chairman, not a radical socialist like Bernie or sumpin', about NeoCon War Freaks vs. The Rest of Us:

        "It really exposed the fissure between the Neocons, who want to expand defense spending and engage militarily, and the Pure Economic Rational Thought about "Where do you get the money from?"

        We know we can't tax the Koch Brothers to pay for a war that protects their economic interests and even their line of business. Even most Dems have agreed, or acceeded, to this policy the last decade or so. (Dems agreeing with Doug Bruce on anything should raise flags.)

        "How do you pay for it?"

        Well, even though we have the largest military in the world x 10, and we still need to expand it and invade more, but can't raise taxes to pay for the wars we are encouraged to join, then we pay for it with cuts to everything else……….which is slowly happening as Republicans continue tothrottle the economy and government with countless tactics. Bingo!

        "We just went through that. We just spent Trillions of dollars that were unaccounted for that caused a lot of problems and a lot of pain. Are you willing to repeat that?"

        Dems needs to figure out how to defend the Pure Economic Rational Thought and not be afraid of the names, or the arguments, to be used against them. 

        Michael Steele explained the problem. AC might faint if he hears it…..

        https://youtu.be/mL5XXcDN3n0?t=4m32s

  5. My local laundromat gives away copies of Ben Carson's biography, "RX for America" by John Phillip Sousa IV (really).  So I picked one up for some light reading while my clothes tumbled. I did get some funny looks from fellow launderers for hooting with laughter at some passages.

    Sample quote:

    Why is Ben Carson the one candidate who is sure to win the White House in 2016? It is not just that he is likely to win a large share of the African American vote, the Hispanic vote, and the Asian vote. Nor is it just that he is blessed with a Reaganesque ability to communicate with everyday Americans on complex and complicated issues in simple terms that everyone can understand. It is all of these things, but it is more than that.

    So apparently Carson's being out of touch with reality began with his biographers. All of the dubious claims about his youthful rages and his turning down a West Point scholarship are still there, though not embellished as much as in the Gifted Hands bio.  Sousa clearly didn't bother to fact-check – just re-typed what  previous bios stated.

    I'm focusing here just on Carson's claim to be a realistic contender for the Presidency. He is certainly not winning "large shares" of the votes of the groups mentioned. In fact, the source for that claim comes from an October 2014 WSJ article.(1) There is no polling data showing that Hispanics, Asians, or people of color in general favor Ben Carson.  This November 4  Quinnipiac poll showed that Carson had 19% support among African Americans, to  Hillary Clinton's 35%….or even 81% pro-Clinton among black voters if the election were held today. Get that? Clinton wins black voters 81% to Carson's 19% in a recent poll.

    So Carson can't claim a "large share"  of the votes of racial minorities in America. And that was before the revelations that Carson's "inspirational role model" life story was pretty much hogwash.

    In that same Q poll, Carson had high (up to 76%) favorability ratings among Republicans, before  his weird biography inconsistencies became known. But even with the high favorables, 50% said that he didn't have the "right kind of " experience to become President (duh!)

    This November 8 Washington post poll showed that Carson is quite popular with Republicans, although his support with Independents has slipped since his truthfulness about his life story began to be in the news.

    In sum, Ben Carson is very well thought of by committed Republican voters. The rest of the voting population, including people of all colors and political persuasions, not so much.

    —————————————————————-

     

    1. Siobhan Hughes WSJ article, GOP Faces Hurdles in Push to Appeal to Blacks, states that 37% of black voters identify as "conservative".  Mr. Sousa, Carson's biographer, finds great hope in this statistic, but totally ignores the fact cited in the same article, that African-Americans, conservative or liberal, prefer Democratic congresses 77% to 10%. The GOP push to disenfranchise black voters by undermining civil rights laws, and requiring voter ID in minority districts, is not winning friends or influencing people, either.

    1. He should have retired. It would have been better for him and better for the Broncos. I think we all knew this was coming despite the string of wins to start. 

  6. Are liberals living in La La Land? Kos article by Willis , spurred by Iglesias' Vox post, might make progressives put away the popcorn. Iglesias wrote:

    The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.

    We think that demographics and a good GOTV effort will save the elections,  but complacency will kill them.

    As socially liberal as my students are, they are deeply propagandized by the right wing media, and conditioned by reality TV shows to buy the character and the script, rather than the actor. They like Trump because he seems strong. They like Carson because he seems religious. 

    My public speaking students, at least, know what the candidate's actual policies are.  Latino students have a gut-level understanding of how immigration policies affect them; but on foreign policy, many believe that the candidate who talks the most aggressive game will keep them safe. And these are decent, respectful, well-meaning kids.

    I do not look forward to discussing the Paris attacks, and listening to their anti-Islamic reactions.

     

    1. Liberals have always lived in La La Land to some extent.

      I'm old enough to remember the '80s. The Repubicans kept winning elections because voters simply thought that the Dems couldn't keep them safe (Carter's reactions to the Iran hostage taking and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Reagan's standing up to the Commies in the Soviet Union, Michael Dukakis riding in a tank versus Daddy Bush's Clint Eastwood immitation, the First Gulf War).

      It wasn't until a DLC-type moderate Dem Governor of Arkansas came along and told people that his party had changed that voters took a chance on voting Democratic. And even then we were on "probation" – Clinton only won with 43% of the popular vote.

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