Lisa Benson for September 03, 2014

Global thermonuclear war is not a strategy, even if Putin does suck, and Bush IS to blame for the messes in Afghanistan and Iraq, among others who don’t thinking bombing nations into the Stone Age is a “strategy”.

I think his administration has given up hope of getting anything productive done with a girdlocked, do-nothing, miserly (’cept for my cronies) congress.

He never said he didn’t have a strategy for Isis, he just said he didn’t have a strategy for Syria yet. Because you need to get other countries on board, and get approval from congress, if you’re going to start a war there. None of the chickenhawks have a strategy either. Not one that they’ll stand behind, at least. Let’s hear it for a president who (as Tom Friedman says) goes Ready, Aim, Fire instead of Fire, Ready, Aim.

Averting genocide with the least amount of US involvement seems like a pretty good strategy.Maybe the fools who enabled this psycho-state will rethink their support. Y’know, folks like Lisa Benson.

While one might see the hands in the water as reaching up for help, because the US IS helping in the region to the limited degree it can, it is much easier to see the hands as the hands of the many Republicans who, rather than stand behind the commander in chief in a time of conflict, tell the world how divided our nation is by trying to drag the President under.He may not be the president we wanted him to be, and for some, not the president they wanted to begin with, but he IS the president and despite those who vehemently hate him, is trying to do good things for the nation in which his daughters will grow to adulthood. He is not the enemy, but too many of our neighbors have decided they would rather look at him as an enemy.One more note, we are not the world’s police force and 13 years of conflict and economic sabotage by people who should have known better has left us less able to assume that role. We should not expect the President to be lifeguard to the world when we can’t even get Congress and the Senate to be lifeguards to Americans.Respectfully,C.

More of the Kool-Aid drinkers defending the Prez. Isn’t it wonderful how when the president is a Democrat we’re all supposed to stand behind him and not carp, but when it’s a Republican it’s a totally different story.

Sunday morning I watched a parade of Republican congressmen bash Obama about not having a strategy, of course, they didn’t propose one either nor did the congress approve an act of war (or do anything else productive either). It’s the usual gridlock and the usual Obama bashing. We need to fire them all.

Right on cue the lefties bring out their only argument: we can not do anything unless we start dropping nuclear bombs. So let’s do nothing.

Gad, I hate all these librul global warming cartoons.

I remember the Presidency of George W. Bush. I remember a lot of Democrats complaining that their patriotism was being questioned for opposing the Iraq war. What I don’t remember are very many instances where prominent Republicans actually attacked the patriotism of Democratic critics. In fact, President Bush was careful not to make such attacks:-http://onlineathens.com/stories/112105/news_20051121016.shtml-The writers below share my memory – while noting that a number of Democrats seem to be very willing to tar their opponents as unpatriotic for the crime of holding opposing views:-http://www.gaypatriot.net/2010/01/31/whos-calling-whom-unpatriotic/-http://www.thenextright.com/jon-henke/democrats-question-republican-patriotism-again-http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2005/11/questioning-ones-patriotism.html-http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2014/07/02/msnbc-place-question-patriotism-republicans-http://www.jamestaranto.com/patriot.htm-Conservative opposition to President Obama is overwhelmingly based on policy and is not disrespectful of the office of the President. Indeed, to treat the President as somehow above criticism would be inconsistent with the constitutional principles of our Republic. Republican criticism has taken place within the rules and customs of our political process, and been conducted according to the law. There is no basis for calling this opposition “destructive” unless one believes that opposition to liberalism is inherently destructive.-The fact is that Obama has been president for more than five years. In the early years he enjoyed enormous popularity and filibuster-proof majorities in Congress – advantages that few Presidents enjoy in putting out their agenda. The President was able to use this political capital to ram through a pork-laden stimulus bill and a poorly-drafted and deceptively-advertised health care law without any participation by Republicans in Congress, responding to their requests for compromise with a flat “I won.” Since that time the President has had the opportunity to make a case for his policies and drum up public pressure for his proposals. He certainly has used his administrative powers up to and beyond their constitutional limits.-In short, the President has had ample opportunity to accomplish his policy goals. To a great extent he has done so, and we are beginning to suffer the unintended consequences of his policies. It requires real desperation to blame the President’s failures on the existence of criticism of his policies, since it has the nasty side effect of portraying the President as completely ineffective and not a little incompetent.-For my part I look forward to discussion of the merits of the President’s actions, as the weight of the facts and of reason favors the conservative position.

“History does go back past the Bush family. Clinton, Carter and yes even Reagan have some of the blame in all of it. Heck I can make a good case for blaming Churchill and Wilson for it all.”This seed of this conflict goes back to the Sunni-Shia schism in the 8th Century.Centuries of occupation, exploitation & violent suppression of dissent have bred numerous extremists. Yet, they are humans. The number of people who sincerely believe in the extreme rhetoric is far smaller than our resident Islamophobes pretend.

“if averting genocide is the goal we have failed. Again. Why is it always under a Democrat President when it happens…hummm”That’s just ignorant. Genocides happen under Republican Presidencies. They don’t seem to see it as important unless our corporate interests are involved.Angola, Argentina, Burundi, Cambodia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uganda… learn to look up facts before you make a fool out of yourself.

“This lie has been disproven so many times it is impossible that a) you haven’t read a rebuke of this lie and b) if you were honest that you couldn’t acknowledge that this is a lie.”-If this were the case you would have refuted its falsity in my comment. -I invite any interested reader to read my “pure partisan missives.” I do favor the Republican party on most issues, but that does not make me (or them) any less right.

If I understand you correctly it seems that your earlier post mistakenly left out the passage that you were calling a lie. If so you have my sympathies as to the vicissitudes of posting. That sort of thing happens to me frequently.-However, you are wrong to call me a liar for noting that the President’s party had fillibuster-proof majorities in Congress during the early years of his Presidency, for that is a true fact. I can understand why President Obama’s defenders wish to avoid this fact, as it explodes their attempts to make someone other than the President responsible for his failures. But as you yourself acknowledge, there was a period of time when Democrats could call upon 60 votes in the Senate, which is enough to end any attempt at a filibuster. Democrats enjoyed this advantage in two periods of time in 2008 and 2009.-This by itself makes what I said true. You try to mitigate this acknowledged fact by offering special circumstances (i.e. that various Democratic Senators were frequently absent from the Senate). But Kennedy and Byrd were capable of appearing for votes at need, and Harry Reid had the power to anticipate and schedule critical votes for their presence. After all, you do not need to have a filibuster-proof majority for the entire lifetime of a bill – only for the period that it is vulnerable to filibuster. And Democrats could anticipate a filibuster-proof majority months in advance of achieving it. There is no question in my mind that Democrats could have moved more legislation through Congress without any Republican participation had they wished to do so.-Of course my broader point was that President Obama should have been able to create public pressure on Republicans to support his bills, as past Republican and Democratic presidents who did not enjoy filibuster-proof majorities have repeatedly done. Of course President Obama’s defenders will claim that every single Republican Senator has been uniquely hostile to President Obama and pathologically unwilling to work with him. When I hear someone complain that everyone is especially hostile toward him I begin to suspect that the fault may lie with the complainer. In fact, the average Senate Republican is more likely to vote with Democrats than the average Senate Democrat is to vote with Republicans:-http://www.opencongress.org/people/votes_with_party/senate/democrat-http://www.opencongress.org/people/votes_with_party/senate/republican