RIP USA

[Atticus]

You guys need to relax.

 

:popcorn

[Analogman]

Signs like these make me nervous:

 

Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar

 

We came unarmed [this time]

 

People who praise the lord and also carry guns make me nervous.

[u2roolz]

Apparently, there are some people with an Adolph Obama sign at a local post office.

IMPEACH OBAMA it says.

 

I'm thinking of showing up there in a variety of ways: either in a black suit with shades and an earpiece or with my trusty video camera or nothing at all and doing a spell check on the sign.

 

Or make friends with the folks and make and take shady phonecalls to make them nervous.

 

Throwing eggs at them would also be kind of fun.

[Atticus]

yep, the tried and true method of belittling or fucking with those with whom you disagree never fails to change minds

[D-Dogg]

Signs like these make me nervous:

 

Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar

 

We came unarmed [this time]

 

People who praise the lord and also carry guns make me nervous.

 

Of course those signs are ridiculous.

 

 

I have no problem with people who carry guns. I have problems with people that entice fear onto others. Be it with guns or words.

[ih8music]

Sure some of the Tea Party group has some crazies

 

And then something really odd happened -- mostly because we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country.

 

[Applause]

 

People who cannot even spell the word "vote," or say it in English -- [applause] -- put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. Name is Barack Hussein Obama.

[D-Dogg]

ih8music

 

I cringed when I heard that.

 

Tom Tancredo is one of those crazies, and I hope he gets voted out of office. But I do not think T. Tancredo is going any farther than his District in Colorado. If the tea movement and other republicans cannot combine their ideals than Dems have nothing to worry about, and they will not gel their ideals if they keep cheering for rhetoric that is filled with bigotry. For the most part, all they want is lower taxes and less government intervention.

 

To lay blame on immigrant voters for Obama's win is more of a denial than those that believe Obama did not do enough to pass health care and thus S. Brown won.

I do believe that Obama's ideals are more of a socialist nature and tend to be unfavorable towards capitalism.

[LouieB]

Yes, exactly. Just wait. We'll end up with an administration expanding our wars, denying due process to detainees and US citizens, keeping Gitmo open, and ensuring that any healthcare reform doesn't have a public option.

Wait, isn't that what the current administration is doing?? Oh yea, that's what "Democracy Now" says.....

 

LouieB

[bobbob1313]

You can always be counted on for a good rebuttal if someone isn't praising Obama.

 

Consistent as always, Louie.

 

I mean, christ. Are you willing to rebut anything he says there, or are you just going to do this?

 

Just because Palin is worse, doesn't mean Obama hasn't been at least somewhat dissapointing, and MattZ did a good job of pointing out where he has been.

[D-Dogg]

Obama - Praise be upon him.

[bobbob1313]

Thanks for adding that.

[LouieB]

You can always be counted on for a good rebuttal if someone isn't praising Obama.

 

Consistent as always, Louie.

Someone has to do it. Clearly the nuance is missing here as usual. See my response to jc4prez on the other thread.

 

Obama and the Dems aren't moving as fast as those on the left want, but they are moving plenty fast enough for the right, who think he has to be stopped before he destroys this country.

 

I am not now, nor have I ever blanketly supported everything Obama does or doesn't do. But when President Palin is inaugurated, we will look back on the Obama years with nostalgia. We will be having this argument in another two or three years. When the disenchanted Obama base stays home because he didn't fulfill every expectation, then tell me how horrible Obama was. I am not looking at any of this through rose colored glasses, but there have to be realistic expectations on what actually can be accomplished (apparently not much for the Democrats who control both houses of Congress and who are ultimately the real disappointment here) and what will happen when the electorate takes the easy way and convenient way out by allowing the right wing to take control.

 

Feel free to paint me as an apologist for Obama (which actually I am not) but my ongoing fear of the real problem out there, which is a Fox News supported takeover of the entire government may be what makes me try and temper everyone's "disappointment" with Obama. Just a few more years of right wing government and the unbalanced Supreme Court will no longer have any dissent at all, not to mention the other two parts of the government that won't pay any attention to you or me ever again.

 

LouieB

[Guest Speed Racer]

I am not now, nor have I ever blanketly supported everything Obama does or doesn't do. But when President Palin is inaugurated, we will look back on the Obama years with nostalgia.

 

The best way to support a president you love is to actively critique his faults. The best way to help a president you can't stand is to critique his faults.

 

Palin gets a lot of support, but I have a very hard time believing she will get the kind of traction she needs from the GOP to have a successful run.

[bobbob1313]

Someone has to do it. Clearly the nuance is missing here as usual. See my response to jc4prez on the other thread.

 

Obama and the Dems aren't moving as fast as those on the left want, but they are moving plenty fast enough for the right, who think he has to be stopped before he destroys this country.

 

I am not now, nor have I ever blanketly supported everything Obama does or doesn't do. But when President Palin is inaugurated, we will look back on the Obama years with nostalgia. We will be having this argument in another two or three years. When the disenchanted Obama base stays home because he didn't fulfill every expectation, then tell me how horrible Obama was. I am not looking at any of this through rose colored glasses, but there have to be realistic expectations on what actually can be accomplished (apparently not much for the Democrats who control both houses of Congress and who are ultimately the real disappointment here) and what will happen when the electorate takes the easy way and convenient way out by allowing the right wing to take control.

 

Feel free to paint me as an apologist for Obama (which actually I am not) but my ongoing fear of the real problem out there, which is a Fox News supported takeover of the entire government may be what makes me try and temper everyone's "disappointment" with Obama. Just a few more years of right wing government and the unbalanced Supreme Court will no longer have any dissent at all, not to mention the other two parts of the government that won't pay any attention to you or me ever again.

 

LouieB

 

There's a difference between tempering expectations and doing what MattZ did. If you can't see the real ways in which people might be disappointed with Obama, you're being ridiculous.

 

Yes, we have to realize that he can't do everything he said. But you are writing off Matt's critique by essentially calling him an extremist. There are reasons to be disappointed, and Sarah Palin has nothing to do with them. You can dislike Palin and still be disappointed with his first 13 months in office. That also doesn't mean you think he's an abject failure, but you seem unwilling or incapable of making this distinction. Any criticism of him is painted by you as viewing him as an abject failure and ushering in the Sarah Palin era. That's dumb.

[bjorn_skurj]

The best way to support a president you love is to actively critique his faults. The best way to help a president you can't stand is to critique his faults.

 

Palin gets a lot of support, but I have a very hard time believing she will get the kind of traction she needs from the GOP to have a successful run.

I don't. I think the GOP will look at her as the same kind of stooge Bush II was for them. Bet ya a nickel Cheney will be her running mate.

[bobbob1313]

She has her followers, loyal that they are, but she is very disliked amongst the GOP as well.

[JohnO]

Hopefully the GOP will run someone who can get elected. The last time they were in this situation in '96 they put up Bobdole just because it was his turn.

[Central Scrutinizer]

There's a difference between tempering expectations and doing what MattZ did. If you can't see the real ways in which people might be disappointed with Obama, you're being ridiculous.

 

Yes, we have to realize that he can't do everything he said. But you are writing off Matt's critique by essentially calling him an extremist. There are reasons to be disappointed, and Sarah Palin has nothing to do with them. You can dislike Palin and still be disappointed with his first 13 months in office. That also doesn't mean you think he's an abject failure, but you seem unwilling or incapable of making this distinction. Any criticism of him is painted by you as viewing him as an abject failure and ushering in the Sarah Palin era. That's dumb.

The problem is, Obama is not being judged by a consistent presidential litmus test. I think he's in a no-win situation, so I think supporters tend to be knee-jerk. Compare the circumstances he came into and what he has accomplished in that time, and instead he's painted with attacks of raising the deficit (more than the previous president? cant), not creating jobs (had the bank situation not been dealt with, jobs would have been pointless unless they pay in eggs.

 

The fear of the tea-baggers and Palin is, facts don't matter. It's a group acting out of fear and ignorance with no real agenda; or at least those who show an agenda, show a flawed one that involves tossing the baby with the bath water. I know I am oversimplifying, but in dealing with the tea party supporters, you can't be simple enough.

[D-Dogg]

I don't think Obama has done well, I don't stand with him on most of his issues.

 

However I am not at ALL a fan of Palin, if anything I think she will weaken the GOP.

 

Bobbob and JohnO bring up good points. It seems that many presidents win because the other candidates are dopes.

[bobbob1313]

I actually like a lot of what he's done, to be honest. But to say that we can't criticize anything about his presidency because "Palin would be worse" is retarded. By that measure, Bush is uncriticizable because Palin would likely be worse.

[D-Dogg]

 

The fear of the tea-baggers and Palin is, facts don't matter. It's a group acting out of fear and ignorance with no real agenda; or at least those who show an agenda, show a flawed one that involves tossing the baby with the bath water. I know I am oversimplifying, but in dealing with the tea party supporters, you can't be simple enough.

 

 

The arrogance and disrespect alone may lose it for your side.

[Guest Speed Racer]

The problem is, Obama is not being judged by a consistent presidential litmus test.

 

Which president has been?

[bobbob1313]

The arrogance and disrespect alone may lose it for your side.

 

Sean Hannity?

[NightOfJoy]

From yesterdays Chicago Tribune....

 

By Steven Chapman

 

The tea party movement started as a welcome protest against the alarming growth of federal spending and federal control. It had a strong anti-statist flavor, or seemed to. But judging from the applause for Sarah Palin at its convention, the movement's suspicion of government power is exceeded only by its worship of government power.

 

Her keynote address at last week's gathering in Nashville, Tenn., may have been the curtain raiser on a 2012 presidential campaign. "I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she told Fox News when asked about that option.

 

I'm glad it was she and not I who first used the word "absurd" in relation to a possible Palin bid for the White House. Because if her speech made anything clear, it's that the shallow, ill-informed, truth-twisting demagogue seen in the 2008 presidential campaign is all she is and all she wants to be.

 

When it comes to economic affairs, the tea partyers agree that — as Palin put it — "the government that governs least, governs best." When it comes to war and national security, however, her audience apparently thinks there is no such thing as too much government.

 

The conventioneers applauded when Palin denounced President Barack Obama for his approach to the war on terrorists. Why? Because he lets himself be too confined by the annoying limits imposed by the Constitution. "To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law," she declares.

 

Is her point that Obama is allergic to the use of military power or can't bear to fulfill his responsibility as head of the armed forces? That would come as a surprise to Iraqis, who have seen Obama stick to President George W. Bush's timetable for withdrawal.

 

It would come as a surprise to Afghans, who have seen him embark on a massive buildup of U.S. troops in their country. It would come as a surprise to Pakistanis, who have seen an increase in U.S. drone missile attacks on their soil.

 

Palin accuses Obama of "reaching out to hostile regimes" and "apologizing for America," with pitiful results: nuclear tests in North Korea, repression in Iran. What she doesn't mention — though, to be entirely fair, she may not know it — is that the first North Korean nuclear test came in 2006, and that before Obama arrived, the mullahs in Tehran did not rule with a gentle, loving hand.

 

Her chief gripe, though, is that federal agents read the alleged Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights shortly after his arrest, at which point, she claims, he "lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent."

 

Not for long, he didn't. The FBI says Abdulmutallab provided a wealth of useful information under questioning after he got a lawyer. For that matter, as FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said last week, he is still being interrogated.

 

But facts have never been Palin's strong suit. Nor do they matter because what infuriates her is the mere idea that constitutional protections would apply to "a terrorist who hates our Constitution and tries to destroy our Constitution."

 

This is not some bizarre paradox. Lots of people who despise our Constitution — Nazis, communists, Klansmen, Alaska secessionists — enjoy its protections. Does she think the Bill of Rights should apply only to people who share her views? That would not leave much of the document she and the tea partyers claim to revere.

 

Besides, Obama didn't invent the heretical notion of accepting limits on the government's latitude with jihadists. The Bush administration turned hundreds of terrorism cases over to the federal courts, without audible complaint from the right. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution extends even to accused foreign terrorists held at Guantanamo.

 

The advantage of having a former law professor in the Oval Office is that he doesn't have to be tutored in such elementary realities. But Palin evinces a bitter resentment of any information that contradicts her blind faith in a benevolent, all-powerful security regime. She's more than willing to trade liberty for safety.

 

That went over conspicuously well in Nashville, where tea partyers cheered a leader who places excessive trust in government, disdains constitutional freedoms and promotes a cult of personality. So remind me: What is it they don't like about Barack Obama?

 

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman.

 

schapman@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

[Central Scrutinizer]

The arrogance and disrespect alone may lose it for your side.

Whatever my side is, likely brings far more respect and consideration than the tea party. I know some people who support it personally and they are a venomous, uncooperative, disrespectful lot. Don't argue with them, don't bring facts to a fight. Don't ask them questions or to clarify, because that's a sign of disrespect.