and know very well the truth of what you say.

What's hilarious is watching someone from an Islamic country join the affray, full of hostility to all things and all people American, and watch him change his mind quickly once he realizes we want nothing more than to rid ourselves of every ignorant blowhard who has seized power and used it to try to create a totalitarian state.

Systems aren't evil in and of themselves. Totalitarianism in their name is always evil.

It's the "Saddam is not a reason to commit aggression against Iraq" thread.

It's the "Enough of the false dichotomies" thread.

It's the "If a criticism is warranted, it should be acknowledged" thread.

If there are so many arguments made by so many credible sources, why diminish it by including the words of someone who is dead wrong and even despicable on so much else?

Heck, I bet I could go to Stormfront and find something posted some where there that actually agrees with some very specific liberal position. It wouldn't make it advisable for me to post the piece from Stormfront here, though, would it?

well said.

"That's like saying the KKK has some good ideas on buying local."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/100296072

Buy local.

"Wait, don't many DUers say the same?

Buy local."

...are you equating DUers to the KKK? Or are you saying that if one were to make the argument to "buy local," they would quote DUers and not the KKK?

"Buy local" is a value shared by many DUers. Isn't it?

Ron Paul would be essentially my last choice to represent me or anyone left as a critic of Obama, but the discussion continues not because people are cheering Ron Paul, but because people are ashamed to have to admit anything critical he could say of our leaders might be true. No one wants to be criticized by an asshole and have the criticism be accurate.

Obama is perfect and nothing any Republican ever says or does or wants is anything short of heinous.

It's a tiresome world sometimes, isn't it? People fight, twist and dodge endlessly to confirm that the world really really is absolutely sensible. I attribute it to one of the precursors of religion: abject fear of uncertainty and an aching hunger to never have to think again, just ally oneself with a set of beliefs and all is well.

Witness the debates here over the Libyan adventure.

To label someone is to also endorse or refute their beliefs, and people use this to hound dissenting voices from the public square.

Some of what Republicans say or want cannot be heinous, because it ends up with our leaders' support.

To give one example, the ACA does many good things, but that does not change the fact that its birth was Republican, mothered by the Heritage Foundation, fathered by Newt, and midwifed by Romney into policy. It also sidesteps the material fact that our private health care system costs more than expected and does worse than expected by every conceivable measure. Without addressing those costs seriously, all we are doing is making the hole we've been pushed into a little more comfortable.

We frequently agree with assholes, or pretend they are worth agreeing with, insofar as they have power - no matter how utterly wrong they are. We have contempt and disregard for assholes, however right they are in some particular case, insofar as they are weak. This goes for the GOP and everyone else.

Sorry about that. My first sentence was snottiness that everything Obama graces with his efforts is sheer perfection--which it clearly is not, as well shown by his corporatism and craven enabling of the right--and that anything from a Republican was obviously bad, which isn't true for one obvious reality: no mindset or belief system can continue to exist if it doesn't get at least SOMETHING right.

The idiotic need to dispute everything the reactionaries do is well illustrated in a bit from the ott-four election: Bush had proposed something sensible, the closing of bases in Germany and relocating bases in a post-Soviet era. It was a good idea, but Kerry had to decry it because it came from the other side. There was no other reason than that: "ug, them bad, them wrong."

Assholes come from both sides, and to congratulate ourselves that we're immune from this behavior helps nobody. THEY have many more assholes--in my opinion--but they don't have a lock by any means.

Regardless of the person from whom opinions come, an idea should be judged on its merits. Fuck partisanship, the hell with clannish self-congratulation: the idea and its merits are what should be addressed, and those who can't or won't are either defective or deceptive.

Those who automatically dismiss an opinion from someone who's tainted--or even downright evil--are idiots, and generally engage in idiot behavior: shouting down contrary opinions and vilifying those who differ with them in an attempt at self-aggrandizement and group tyranny.

Hitler was a vegetarian; does this make vegetarianism evil?

Frankly, I find that a noble idea espoused by an ignoble person (say Ron Paul) actually shows the true transcendent decency of the idea; if even a mean and selfish little hornswoggler like Paul is against foreign military intervention, then it shows even more how right the idea is: if even a twisted and nasty asshole sees the evil of forcing ourselves on others, it calls into question the true decency of those "good" leaders we are harassed into worshiping by our political allies.

Sure, Paul dislikes war due to its cost and need for governmental support rather than because it's "bad", but he arrives at the correct position nonetheless.

Asshole and fool that he undeniably is, though, there is a bit of decency in not imposing one's will on others.

Worse than anything is the need to make everything binary: all ideas espoused by bad people are bad. All ideas from our heroes are good. Obama won the Peace Prize. How the fucking hell did that ever happen? He ran on increasing the commitment in Afghanistan, and was very clear about it.

I loathe hero-worship, and I fear mindless gainsaying based on personalities. POLICY is what matters. Ethics, decency, predictability and morals are what matter, and precious little of that is to be seen in this administration or the extremists among their stalwarts.

You're absolutely right - policy is what matters. Yet even as Newt, Romney et al shift from promotion to hatred of an individual mandate, we move from a hardline stance of abolition to silent support of the presidency's authorized powers in the war on terror. It's truly sickening.

What's even more frustrating is that we maintain the highest scrutiny of morals for the most inconsequential public figures. No evil this president could do will ever convince some here that his best work is in any way tainted, yet a single immoral or bad act will damn the whole body of a blogger's work forever. The one holds the fate of millions in his hands yet is held to a lower standard than someone whose work will be as soon dismissed as consumed by the vast majority of the few thousands who read it.

To the ultramoderate Obama acolytes, there are NO STANDARDS. He is, prima facie, good, nay GREAT, and whatever he does or doesn't do is by definition good.

Peons like me yapping at the exercise of power are vile curs and must toe the line. It is the worst sense of monarchy: the inviolability of the hero.

Again, I blame fragile and selfish egos of the acolytes: to even hint at criticism is blasphemy.

It is the curse of the United States to worship the individual.

If we fail as a country it will be specifically because of this.

Selfishness was the dark side of our national character until Reagan; then it became a virtue.

When Obama said he would try the terrorists in NY, the assholes{rethugs} shouted terrorist lover. When Obama wants to have Congress stamp of approval for killing a bad guy etc, they will and have shouted tail wags dog.

Those assholes are manipulating us all, and forcing the hand of gov. so that they can call Dems dictator, or at least hypocrites and campaign promise liars. .

That we ignore them when they are right is more understandable.

Show both sides. Dems, and dumbass.

They made him protect and kowtow to Wall Street and fail to investigate criminal allegations against the Bush regime, escalate the Afghanistan war, escalate the drone wars. Before the election they made him vote for retroactive telcom immunity and the bankster bailout. They made him sign the Defense Authorization Act. They made his Justice Department raid medical pot dispensaries. Etc. Etc.

At best your argument is that we should be grateful it's a Democrat doing all the folding under pressure.

Last edited Mon Jan 2, 2012, 11:13 AM - Edit history (1)

This had the effect of cutting us a shitty deal. The right Screamed inept wet behind the ears, thus Obama had to show continuity. Same in defense.

Yes, much of what is touted as Obama's failure to perform campaign promises, is due to the idiots screaming, and the MSM amplifying that, to capitalize on strife, and drama.

AS FAR AS ASSHOLES, you know what they say, opinions are like them. Every partys got one.

Look at the ACA - Heritage, Mitt, Newt approved. Yet all three would deride the same as socialism in its most radical form. This is ridiculous.

Note here that because these assholes at one point supported plans very like the ACA does not mean the ACA is entirely horrible and all who see good in it are horrible. I don't make that argument, and I'm sure you wouldn't either. It does, however, resemble the arguments made regularly here by some who seek to defend the president, and do a lousy job of it - just because an idea was supported by assholes does not mean it is worthless.

The idea that the Patriot Act should be abolished for example has many adherents who are assholes. That doesn't make it a bad idea.

existed. It even felt lame, pining for a DEM tea party. But the function of OCCUPY is critical. It is cover for the rethugs to cater to base. It moves the center of debate. They scream10, when 5 is the goal.

NOW, especially with Occupy, and Obama winning a second term, and having GWB words still in mind, Obama will have capital.

If we shove this down Rethug throats, they will stay home from voting, AND lose the debate.

That was then, and this is now.

AS FAR AS ASSHOLES, you know what they say, opinions are like them. Every partys got one.

And what the asshole may be right about doesn't make what he or she is right about any less right because they are an asshole. But in the world of politics, such facts are over looked especially if a political hero in question opposes the asshole on the one thing he or she might be right on.

Particularly if those assholes are saying one thing but mean something entirely different?

of any stature.

From what fair quarter are these arguments made against the war on drugs, against the assault on our civil liberties, against our wars of aggresion? Particularly one in the national spotlight? Particularly one who doesn't have to wear kidd gloves to not step too far out of bounds?

Let's be real the same voices savage any Democrat who pushes in any of these areas even timidly. It is the issues, not messengers, they provide only an easy alternative target and a distraction.

Further, the line of thought is of little consequence other than how it is also a distraction because all the topics have long been hotly discussed and ignored, punted on, minimized, and generally acted on in ways that support the system we seek to change.