US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

If anyone made a drinking game out O'Malley talking about Maryland, RIP in peace.  I think he shoehorned it in at almost every question.

[Phoenix Dark]

Honestly Sanders is a pretty shitty debater. Once you force him away from his game of repeating 3-4 slogans/tics over and over he...tries to still repeat them. At least Ron Paul would name names and call people out with specifics. It's not like he was just focused entirely on the gold standard for instance, like Sanders was on Glass-Stiegel last night.

I don't dislike the guy, I'll vote for him in the Michigan primary. But it's clear that he isn't ready for prime time and cannot win a general election. And frankly I'm tired of Sanders stans comparing him to Obama. Go back and watch some of the 2008 debates. Obama started out pretty weak in the first debate, but after that he was on fire. And he didn't stop hitting Clinton, somewhat like O'Malley did last night. You can't give her lifelines. Does anyone think 2008 Obama would have said "no one cares about her emails" lol? Nah, dude would have said people are tired of the politics and politicians of the past relitigating the same tired fights that have nothing to do with Americans' every day lives, and now is the time to move forward/change/etc.

[Barry Egan]

yea there really is no comparison on that front.  Obama will likely go down as the best campaigner in our lifetimes.  Obama and Bernie may be in a similar place in national polling, but if you look at it state by state Obama was already getting within the MoE of Clinton in most states.  Meanwhile any state that isn't mostly white has Bernie down 30 to 50 points.  Obama also had considerably more institutional support. 

I'll vote for Bernie in the primary if he's even in the race by the time he gets to my state, but there's gonna be a lot of tears flowing for those who have the expectation that he's still got a chance.

[Trent Dole]

Yup, I am going to end up voting for Hillary in November 2016 but I am not going to be particularly thrilled about it. Bernie's campaign has helped nudge Hill to the left a bit so it wasn't an entirely futile thing.

[Oblivion]

Is Jeb better at anything than Romney? 

Losing?

[Shadow Mod]

Yup, I am going to end up voting for Hillary in November 2016 but I am not going to be particularly thrilled about it. Bernie's campaign has helped nudge Hill to the left a bit so it wasn't an entirely futile thing.

This is why other viable parties/candidates are so important imo.

[benjipwns]

twitter almost justified its existence with that real time ether over the debate stage.

(Image removed from quote.)

wtf? what did she say?

[Madrun Badrun]

Honestly she could have just been less emotional and phrased that better and it wouldn't be as bad as it was.  Say 'I developed a lot relationships with NY businesses due to my work in rebuilding after 9/11.  Among those businesses were many on wall street.  I think those businesses that have donated to me respect me for my work'

[Joe Molotov]

Is Jeb better at anything than Romney? 

Losing?

Woah, let's not get carried away.

[benjipwns]

http://nypost.com/2015/11/14/its-time-for-obama-to-make-a-choice-lead-us-or-resign/

In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.

That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said. Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America’s commander in chief gets it.

President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.

He refuses to say “Islamic terrorism,” as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word “war,” even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.

He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is “leading from behind.” He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and called the Islamic State the “jayvee team” even as it was beginning to create a caliphate.

Having long ago identified American power as a problem, he continues to slash the military as the enemy expands its reach. In a globalized era, the Obama doctrine smacks of cowardly retreat and fanciful isolation.

In an accident of timing that captures his cluelessness, the president actually declared on Friday morning that Islamic State had been “contained,” practically boasting in a TV interview that, “They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria.”

What gall. What folly.

Paris is the final straw. Obama’s exemption from reality has expired. He must either commit to leading the free world to victory, or step aside so someone else can.

There is no more time to avoid the truth of war. America must organize the combined forces of the civilized world before Islamic State makes good on its vow to “taste” more American blood.

As a top intelligence adviser told me yesterday, “What they did in Paris means they are coming here.”

In fact, they already are here. Law-enforcement officials say the FBI has as many as 1,000 investigations open into Islamic State sympathizers inside the US.

Is America ready to stop multiple assault teams of suicide bombers? Is New York ready? Or Chicago, Los Angeles or Washington, DC?

Because Paris was a grand success to the terrorists, the propaganda value acts as an incentive for attacks on other western cities. While sparing no effort to stop them here, we must simultaneously destroy them in their foreign bases.

World War III began when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, though we did not grasp the significance until 9/11. The collapse of the Twin Towers, a smoking hole in the Pentagon and a downed jetliner in Pennsylvania revealed the price of our inaction.

The single greatest attack ever against America galvanized the nation and defined a new generation of policy makers and warriors.

Yet Obama always remained curiously cool about the whole endeavor, denouncing the invasion of Iraq as dumb while holding up Afghanistan as a necessary war. Once he got to the White House, though, he showed no conviction about Afghanistan either, surging troops only to demand that they return home quickly.

The pattern has never changed, and his relationship with a rotating cast of military leaders remains rocky. Robert Gates, secretary of defense under both President Bush and Obama, said in his memoir that Obama’s distrust of the military was destructive of the very mission he had given the troops.

After a heated 2011 meeting on Afghanistan, Gates concluded that Obama “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Another former military leader, Gen. Jack Keane, notes that Obama never once agreed to the full request of his commanders. If they ask for 10,000 troops, Obama agrees to 5,000, 3,000 or none.

The raid that got bin Laden marked the high point of Obama’s commitment. He turned that achievement into political gold in 2012 and declared the “tide of war is receding” to justify his decision to withdraw from the field of battle.

It was a convenient figment of self-interest, as if his wish would make it true. Instead, the strategic dominos fell quickly as war metastasized. The hard-won gains in Iraq were reversed, Syria descended into hell and Islamic State was born in the vacuum.

Its ruthlessness and success in capturing territory enabled it to supplant al Qaeda as the most dangerous terrorist network. It has become the proverbial “strong horse,” with each terrifying attack bringing more recruits and more financing.

In the last two weeks, it shot down a commercial Russian airliner over Egypt and carried out bombings in Beirut. And then came Paris.

Its ability to inflict unprecedented casualties in such far-flung locations mark a growing strength and sophistication. The terrorists smell weakness and have increased the pace of their aggressive expansion. Their aim of global conquest must be taken seriously.

French President Francois Hollande understands the meaning of Friday’s slaughter. He called it an “act of war” and vowed that “France will not show any pity” against those who carried out the barbaric acts. World leaders quickly expressed their condolences and condemnation.

Yet it remains doubtful if our side is truly committed to winning. The determination and unity the free world showed after 9/11 faded as casualties, mistakes and politics eroded the mission.

So we are back to square one again, facing a stronger and more emboldened enemy. The time has run out for half measures and kicking the can down the road. The enemy must be destroyed on the battlefield before there can be any hope of peace.

If Obama cannot rise to the challenge of leadership in this historic crisis, then, for the good of humanity, he should resign. Those are the only options and it is his duty to decide.

[Joe Molotov]

It's President Biden's time to shine.

[Madrun Badrun]

What gall. What folly.

[Samson Manhug]

Why did you post that whole piece. Did you read the whole thing? If so, why?

[benjipwns]

To lead rather than resign.

[ToxicAdam]

>So we are back to square one again, facing a stronger and more emboldened enemy. The time has run out for half measures and kicking the can down the road. The enemy must be destroyed on the battlefield before there can be any hope of peace.

:rolleyes:

It's kind of sad how quickly people can froth themselves up into a lather.

[benjipwns]

Politico reports this could be Lindsey Graham's big chance:

Bush, Kasich, Rubio and Sen. Lindsey Graham were among those who spoke fluently on foreign affairs on the Sunday shows.

"I have a plan. Please, for God's sake, wake up to the threats we face," Graham, whose poor polling caused him to be excluded from the last GOP debate, said on CNN. "Hit them before they hit us. Fight them in their backyard, not our backyard." Among the most hawkish candidates in the field, Graham has called for sending 10,000 American troops to Iraq and Syria.

Bush spoke confidently about foreign affairs on both CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But when NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Bush if he thought Carson or Trump were ready to be commander in chief, he replied, "I don't know. The words that I hear them speaking give me some concern."

I like how the story doesn't mention what Jeb spoke CONFIDENTLY about outside of a declaration of war on ISIS.

And the only Rubio example:

Throughout the weekend, Republicans trained their fire on Clinton for her refusal, along with President Obama, to label the attackers radical Islamists.

“I don’t understand it,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week." “That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves.”

[Phoenix Dark]

Hasn't the US done more than 2,000 airstrikes in Syria during this "war" on ISIS? Hasn't ISIS lost a quarter of their land in the last few months? Outside of semantics games on terms used, what do these people want? Ground troops...

[benjipwns]

Not sending in waves and waves of ground troops is isolationist thinking. We're literally isolating those troops from the potential battlefield.

[Great Rumbler]

Hasn't the US done more than 2,000 airstrikes in Syria during this "war" on ISIS? Hasn't ISIS lost a quarter of their land in the last few months? Outside of semantics games on terms used, what do these people want? Ground troops...

None of these guys have any kind of reasonable alternative plan other than just dumping American troops on the ground, they're just looking for another way to exploit a tragedy to get in some digs on Obama.

[benjipwns]

Obama gutting the military is one of my favorite recurring GOP talking points. Especially considering the budget "process" over the last, say, decade.

It's dropping as a % of spending more because of Medicare than any actual policy changes including winding down Iraq/Afghanistan.

[brawndolicious]

They just want to say that Obama should have sent troops in a year ago before the Paris attack and the Russian jet crash. I don't think any general in the West is giddy about getting into a conflict against a well-funded insurgency group. Real life isn't like call of duty with your enemies showing up as red dots on a map.

Also it's fair to say no one is going to remember anything that Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz said a month from now.

[benjipwns]

Real life isn't like call of duty with your enemies showing up as red dots on a map.

Duh, you need to get a scorestreak to send up a UAV first.

[Joe Molotov]

Lindsey Graham would 360 noscope all the terrorists if we just let him.

[Shadow Mod]

They just want to say that Obama should have sent troops in a year ago before the Paris attack and the Russian jet crash. I don't think any general in the West is giddy about getting into a conflict against a well-funded insurgency group. Real life isn't like call of duty with your enemies showing up as red dots on a map.

Also it's fair to say no one is going to remember anything that Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz said a month from now.

Generals no, chickenhawks? Uh always.

[benjipwns]

Lindsey Graham did serve in the Air Force, even if it was only as a JAG. (Probably the inspiration for the show.)

[Joe Molotov]

Throughout the weekend, Republicans trained their fire on Clinton for her refusal, along with President Obama, to label the attackers radical Islamists.

“I don’t understand it,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week." “That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves.”

Yeah, I mean if Nazis attacked France, surely we'd declare war on the Nazis over that, right?

[Human Snorenado]

Dare I ask...is this the end of Trump?

Your political instincts continue to be positively Halperinesque, even after all these years

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-reuters-poll-snl-debate

[Phoenix Dark]

Dare I ask...is this the end of Trump?

Your political instincts continue to be positively Halperinesque, even after all these years

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-reuters-poll-snl-debate

I'm just doing my best to help the democrat party. Imagine the power Konex could wield if he understood the true power of his curse. 

[Steve Contra]

Trump going HAM on the Paris attacks, expect another bump in the polls.

[Brehvolution]

“When I hear folks say that well maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who is fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful,” Obama said. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are.”

[Human Snorenado]

David Brooks plz (aka Mandark catnip)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/twitter-reacts-david-brooks-vacation

During his trip, Brooks faced challenges like being forced to accept two complimentary bottles of champagne from hotel staff at the Four Seasons Istanbul and having insufficient time to reflect on a Rembrandt painting he was struck by at St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum. Though he was impressed by the amenities, overall, he seemed to find the experience wanting.

“Sometimes money allows you to see too many things, too quickly,” Brooks writes. “Sometimes if you seize all the opportunities your money affords, you may end up skimming over life and nothing is deep enough to leave a mark.”

[Shadow Mod]

"They treated the crew as friends and equals and not as staff," he writes. "Nobody was trying to prove they were better informed or more sophisticated than anybody else. There were times, in fact, when I almost wished there had been a little more pretense and a little more intellectual and spiritual ambition."

Treat them like the lowly scum they are fellow rich bros and where's the snobbery and pretentiousness I'm used to? Pssh.

[Joe Molotov]

Won't someone please relieve me of the terrible burden of being rich and white?

[Shadow Mod]

Won't someone please relieve me of the terrible burden of being rich and white?

I will David Brooks, gimme your money you tool.

[Mandark]

I'm not sure if that's even worse than the median Brooks column.

In other Sensible Moderate Republican news:

[Phoenix Dark]

Frum's twitter is amazing. One minute he's spitting some real shit and laughing at the clowns we laugh at. Next minute he's calling for indiscriminate warfare.

[Steve Contra]

David Frum is basically saying that people on the right are assholes and can't be trusted to not treat immigrants like shit so they might get mad about it (he just doesn't realize that's what he's saying).

[CatsCatsCats]

I see some governors decided to out themselves as short-sighted cowards

[Tasty]

http://coed.com/2015/11/16/dartmouth-college-black-lives-matter-protest-violence-video-details/

Himu explain

[benjipwns]

Speaking of #BLM, these were all over conservative sites this weekend and some made me laugh like @iLoveLaurynHill:

Honestly, I don't know what to think. This must've been conspiracy 2 detract from #BlackLivesMatter #Mizzou #StopWar pic.twitter.com/qe1FCPZ6fB

— Elena Lau (@iLoveLaurynHill) November 14, 2015

One situation to another. If actions hadn't been taken #Mizzou could have easily turned into a mass slaughtering.

— Rhea (@RheaButter) November 14, 2015

Milo actually screwed up his article and included some level headed tweets.

[benjipwns]

[Joe Molotov]

Racist white people kill me

Well, not yet. 

[Steve Contra]

(Image removed from quote.)

Too bad for him ACORN is going to register his dead white ass a democrat and vote for all the Hillarys

[benjipwns]

BOMBSHELL:

Judicial Watch today released more than 35 pages of emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin revealing that Abedin advised Clinton aide and frequent companion Monica Hanley that it was “very important” to go over phone calls with Clinton because the former Secretary of State was “often confused.”  The emails, from Abedin’s “Huma@clintonemail.com” address, also reveal repeated security breaches, with the Secretary’s schedule and movements being sent and received through Abedin’s non-governmental and unsecured Clinton server account.  The emails document requests for special State Department treatment for a Clinton Foundation associate and Abedin’s mother, a controversial Islamist leader.

The Abedin email material contains a January 26, 2013, email exchange with Clinton aide Monica Hanley regarding Clinton’s schedule in which Abedin says Clinton is “often confused:”

Abedin: Have you been going over her calls with her? So she knows singh is at 8? [India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh]
Hanley: She was in bed for a nap by the time I heard that she had an 8am call. Will go over with her
Abedin: Very imp to do that. She’s often confused.

[benjipwns]

She probably didn't even know what Benghazi was.

[helios]

She probably didn't even know who Benghazi was.

[Phoenix Dark]

I will say that I don't understand the argument against use of the term. During the debate, democrats kept confusing the issue even after being corrected by the moderator. The term is not an indictment of all "Islamists," it's an indictment of radical Islamists. At least that's how I take it.

But who cares about semantics games. Neoconservatives

[benjipwns]

Look, she's often confused.

Dickerson: Secretary Clinton, you mentioned radical jihadists.

Mrs. Clinton: Yes.

Dickerson: Marco Rubio, also running for president, said that this attack showed—in—the attack in Paris showed that we are at war with radical Islam. Do you agree with that characterization, radical Islam?

Mrs. Clinton: I don’t think we’re at war with Islam. I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists who have—

Dickerson: Just to interrupt, he didn’t say all Muslims. He just said radical Islam. Is that a phrase you don’t—

Mrs. Clinton: I think that you can talk about Islamists who—clearly are also jihadists. But I think it’s not particularly helpful to make the case that—Sen. Sanders was just making that I agree with that we’ve got to reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve got to have them be part of our coalition.

If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam—that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a mosque in Washington, “We are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression.” And yes, we are at war with those people that I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush.

[benjipwns]

Huckabee da god tier troll

“[L]isten, all of these feel good liberals who say we ought to be taking in refugees,” Huckabee said on the John Gibson show Saturday, “how come they never end up in the neighborhood where the limousine liberal lives? Behind gated communities and with armed security around.”

Additionally, Huckabee said he wanted Democratic debate moderators to ask presidential candidate Hillary Clinton if refugees should be housed in her neighborhood of Chappaqua, New York.

“Mrs. Clinton, you have suggested we take in 65,00 refugees, how many can we bring to your neighborhood in Chappaqua? Can you please just give us a number. That would be the question that I would like to ask her,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee concluded the interview with one last suggestion: Students at the University of Missouri, which has recently been roiled by student protests over the university’s handling of racism on campus, should house the refugees.

“Heck, we may take them to the University of Missouri,” Huckabee said. “A lot of the students are so stressed out from feeling unsafe because somebody said a word they didn’t like that they are not using their dorm rooms anymore. Maybe we can put them there.”

Huckabee also questioned whether Syrian refugees could acclimate to the U.S.

“And if you think about it, we would be bringing people in who lived in the desert their entire lives, and they would be completely disrupted, not only in terms of their culture, their language, their religion, my gosh even in terms of their climate,” Huckabee said. “Can you imagine bringing in a bunch of Syrian refugees who’ve lived in the desert their whole lives that are suddenly thrown into an English speaking community? Where it’s maybe in Minnesota where it is 20 degrees below zero? I mean just I don’t understand what we possibly can be thinking.”

[Great Rumbler]

“And if you think about it, we would be bringing people in who lived in the desert their entire lives, and they would be completely disrupted, not only in terms of their culture, their language, their religion, my gosh even in terms of their climate,” Huckabee said. “Can you imagine bringing in a bunch of Syrian refugees who’ve lived in the desert their whole lives that are suddenly thrown into an English speaking community? Where it’s maybe in Minnesota where it is 20 degrees below zero? I mean just I don’t understand what we possibly can be thinking.”

Hey, it's not like we took a bunch of refugees from the jungles of Vietnam and planted them in Oklahoma City or anything! Or wait, we actually did that in the 70's.

Also...uhh...America has deserts, breh.

[Samson Manhug]

There's also the fact that, uh, Syria isn't one big desert:



Here's a picture from a refugee camp in Syria from last year:



For the party that lives in the "real world" unlike cupcake liberals, it's amazing how willfully ignorant GOP leaders can be.

[benjipwns]

Uh, I'm pretty sure all Muslim nations look like this:

[recursivelyenumerable]

She probably didn't even know what Benghazi was.

I still don't know tbh

[Samson Manhug]

This is what happens when you learn geography from The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.

[benjipwns]

This is what happens when you learn geography from The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.

It was Ishtar.

[VomKriege]

I will say that I don't understand the argument against use of the term. During the debate, democrats kept confusing the issue even after being corrected by the moderator. The term is not an indictment of all "Islamists," it's an indictment of radical Islamists. At least that's how I take it.

But who cares about semantics games. Neoconservatives

To be fair it's hard to come up with a precise, differentiating yet encompassing word for this. Radical islamists will get shortened by laziness or malice to just the second word which is problematic (islamist is often used to describe political parties like the one currently governing Turkey.).

[VomKriege]

Also having an umbrella label for "radical islamism" is a problem in itself. It could easily conflate ISIS with Hezbollah, for instance. Whatever your opinion on Hezbollah (Let's not forget that in 1983 they bombed the US embassy plus American and French troops in Lebanon), it is myopic to not see they are distinct organizations with conflicting political agendas and do nothing to help with finding specific solutions. It's actually fairly important that political leaders do take the time to clearly identify each and every time which organization are aimed at by military action.

EDIT :

A decent recap piece.
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/what-paris-taught-us-about-the-islamic-state/?

[benjipwns]

[Samson Manhug]

Re: cupcake liberals and the real world, I've read lots of talk about how Obama has destroyed all foreign respect for our country. I've traveled to multiple countries in Europe and Asia both before and after the Bush administration. After Obama took office, the level of respect I got as an American in every country skyrocketed. It's no comparison. I always laugh when I hear that right wing argument, because I've fucking been there. Liberals don't live in the real world my ass.

Maybe if Israel and Saudi Arabia are the only foreign countries that count. Maybe.

I have experienced that as well, especially in the Middle East, but I think you could be misunderstanding what they mean by respect. I don't think they mean people being friendly and hospitable to tourists as equals, they mean the colonialism type of respect and fear as inferiors. I suspect they want the world to understand their place as second class citizens compared to Americans, where both on an intergrovernmental level and a personal level, an American can demand any sort of humiliating thing they want from a foreigner because the almighty American dollar is king.

[benjipwns]

Create your own GOP primary clusterfuck!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/11/17/the_gop_race_for_delegates_an_interactive_tool.html