Snicker! Thanks for that.

I had the exact same response to the ad that you did. How making the point that he is an enabler of the very things he claims to be running against can be a political winner is really quite beyond me.

Not the effective ad (for me) that everyone seems to be claiming. It just further irritated me.

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that thinks that! It is a real hoot for me to see how she ran away from her war votes in the Senate during the Presidential campaign only to show what a hawk she is (again) at state.

In a sane world, even moderate Republicans would not feel empowered to assassinate people without due process and then jail the whistleblowers. This guy is as extreme a conservative in practice as anything we have ever seen.

Maybe I didn’t see the same ad as you did, but the first thing that occurred to me was how it emphasized how much Clinton and Obama had enabled vulture capitalists. I just really did not see how this was an effective commercial; Our Romneys would not have been possible were it not for the trade deals (for example) that Obama makes his specialty.

So, her bringing this up did not seem off topic at all to me, I had the exact same response to it that she did.

I don’t think that there is a need for shying away from attributing single episodes to global warming anymore, though. The totality of the mess we have been seeing this Spring in particular would mitigate against that, IMHO. Other events not mentioned in this article were cattle dying in Texas from drought stricken forage off-gassing cyanide and huge floods in England. Last month it was sailors reporting square miles of methane bubbling to the surface in the Arctic ocean north of Siberia and Michigan reporting that it has lost ninety percent of its’ apple crop. This is what all of the scientists have been predicting for years, and it would appear that it has arrived on schedule.

And how would Romney do that? Ex post facto laws? FISA aside, those are still viewed as unconstitutional; I think that the “strict constructionists” upon whom Romney relies would look askance at such an action.

Did you mean causality and anthropogenic? If the terminology is beyond you, I guess that it should probably come as no surprise that the science is as well.

It is wild to me how O can spend years slapping every single constituency of the Democratic Party onto the sidelines of his big money parade until just before his second term election, throw out a few crumbs to the sectors with some money and/or votes and then voila! He is suddenly trusted on social issues. Nothing he has done cannot be instantly reversed after the election and, much like most of his promises the last time, I expect that they will be. When was the last time we heard anything about EFCA, for example? Wisconsin would have made for a good platform for that one, but apparently unions are not as important this go round as they used to be.

We have seen this play before; apparently there are more people who can be fooled all of the time than I ever expected.

That is not really fair, is it? Thurber correctly points out that he had three years, two of which he had majorities in both houses, in which to attack the fundamental problems causing our economic downturn and has spent them doing the bidding of the very Republicans who caused it.

He didn’t have to take on Geithner, Bernanke or any of the rest of his Chicago School advisors, yet he did. He didn’t have to take on Paulson’s bailout strategy, but he did. He didn’t need to run cover for the likes of Jamie Dimon, yet he did; he even plays golf with him and gives him Presidential cufflinks. He didn’t need to come up with catfood commissions underwritten by Pete Peterson, but he did.

One could go on and on in this vein; the point is that he did not do what needed to be done to fix this economy. The budget surplus could have been resurrected by ending the wars and the Bush tax cuts. Had that been a criterion, it could have been achieved by now, and I think you know it.

You will get no argument from me about that. The man has been a disaster from my perspective; at least with Palin and McCain, there would have been something to point and laugh at as our futures went swirling down the drain.

Reading your comment, I find myself wondering what would have been different had conservatives gotten what they wanted from McCain. The only thing that I can think of is that, at least, “fuzzy headed liberals” wanted some reassurances.

So you got what you wanted. Congratulations.

So the “campaign for change” (not to mention the elections that gave us a fleeting Democratic majority in Congress), that we saw in ’08 was not the reaction that he foresaw? Seems like we saw some pretty liberal rhetoric on the stump that year.

Was giving him credit for forseeing the wave elections consequent to the 2000 debacle really what you had in mind?

Unfortunately, the very first project entrusted to him as VP during the Clinton Administration concerned exemptions/deregulation of coal burning power plants in Ohio. Oh, and those closest to him, Hillary and Lieberman, have not turned out to be doves, have they?

It was clear while he was VP that he was heavily influenced by the DLC, and there was no reason to believe that that would have changed one iota had he become President. He practically admitted as much after the electoral debacle and said that “he could do more good in the private sector than in the public.”

So, no, I don’t think that those are necessarily differences that one could have counted on in reality. There were reasons why he was Primarird from the left that you do not seem to be taking into account.

Yes, of course they were. This has become such a commonplace thing to hear.

Winning hearts and minds apparently is just not our forte.

I think you are right. The sudden volte face on his actions as President over the killer Tuesday meetings from being all about his being a “strong leader” to “someone betrayed him” look suspicious. I think he was caught by surprise; it didn’t work out this way before.

There just couldn’t be a bigger difference in official reactions after this episode and the Bin Laden killing. I guess that may be because this is an election year?

I need to look for that. I am still passing around Imperial Hubris to the conservatives of my acquaintance. I had kind of hoped not to have to point out that little has changed since to Democrats, no less. :(

Kind of off topic, but it is really nice not to feel surrounded. Thanks for the recommendation!

I presume you thought that made sense when you wrote it. You might want to reread your magnum opus in light of reality and reassess its’ merits.