Shorter Question Everything
A reminder that it’s ABOUT THE POLICIES, NOT THE POLITICIANS. Some people forget that. So if you’re going to comment that you have a problem with one specific policy and want to blow down the whole house, then read this, seriously. Disliking one thing is not a reason to let the other guy get voted in. You know, that other guy that will take that POLICY you don’t like and times it by eleventy.
• Read the whole thing: So ABOUT THE POLICIES, NOT THE POLITICIANS make some noise about the war and the drones and the detentions — but don’t make utter rejection of Obama a precondition of rejection of the policies. And don’t fixate on elections. At this moment there are no electable politicians who’ll change what you want changed. That fact is what you have to work on. Maybe it’s unlikely that you’ll stop the killing of innocent civilians by protesting. But you damn well won’t stop the killing of innocent civilians by helping to elect Mitt Romney.
• Sununu Inexplicably renewing the OBL debate:
…”The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing.” Moments later, Sununu conceded, “I have no idea what happened in that White House,” after just having said he knew what happened in the White House.
…Obama wasn’t “timid on the first two or three opportunities.” On the contrary, it was Donald Rumsfeld who called off missions to get bin Laden he considered too risky.
…Obama wasn’t “following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush,” he did the exact opposite. Whereas the Bush/Cheney administration made a conscious, deliberate decision to deemphasize capturing the al Qaeda leader, Obama chose to shift the emphasis back
…[F]rom a purely strategic perspective, what does Sununu hope to gain from resuming this fight? How does it help Romney to remind everyone that Obama took an enormous risk when he ordered the strike, but he made the tough call and it paid off?
[maddowblog.msnbc.com]
• Richard Miniter Is A Lazy Liar: Yesterday I laid out how Richard Miniter, author of the new anti-Obama book Leading From Behind, mixes up dates to allege that President Obama was slow to act on intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Today we’ll look at how Miniter lies about the president’s legislative successes during the 2010 lame-duck session, claiming that Obama’s agenda for that period (the vast majority of which was approved) failed in Congress.
• If President Obama wins a second term, Iran is signaling it would be ready for improved relations with the United States and the West. One sign of that shift in attitude was the toned-down speech by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad at the UN.
• Georgia votes in hotly-contested parliamentary polls on Monday amid heated rhetoric from the two main political forces and fears of post-election violence in this small South Caucasus country with EU and NATO aspirations. “This is a historic day for Georgia – its destiny is being decided,” said President Mikheil Saakashvili after arriving at a polling station in the center of the capital, Tbilisi, with his wife and youngest son. “The country must go forward, and never go back.”
• The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) didn’t bother to do a background check on a priest who had been defrocked for molesting girls before they gave him a job, which included doing pat downs on children at Philadelphia International Airport.
F.D.Brightly
Friends Don’t Let friends Be Teabaggers. Or Firebaggers.
Shorter Question Everything
A reminder that it’s ABOUT THE POLICIES, NOT THE POLITICIANS. Some people forget that. So if you’re going to comment that you have a problem with one specific policy and want to blow down the whole house, then read this, seriously. Disliking one thing is not a reason to let the other guy get voted in. You know, that other guy that will take that POLICY you don’t like and times it by eleventy.
• Read the whole thing: So ABOUT THE POLICIES, NOT THE POLITICIANS make some noise about the war and the drones and the detentions — but don’t make utter rejection of Obama a precondition of rejection of the policies. And don’t fixate on elections. At this moment there are no electable politicians who’ll change what you want changed. That fact is what you have to work on. Maybe it’s unlikely that you’ll stop the killing of innocent civilians by protesting. But you damn well won’t stop the killing of innocent civilians by helping to elect Mitt Romney.
• Sununu Inexplicably renewing the OBL debate:
• Richard Miniter Is A Lazy Liar: Yesterday I laid out how Richard Miniter, author of the new anti-Obama book Leading From Behind, mixes up dates to allege that President Obama was slow to act on intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Today we’ll look at how Miniter lies about the president’s legislative successes during the 2010 lame-duck session, claiming that Obama’s agenda for that period (the vast majority of which was approved) failed in Congress.
• If President Obama wins a second term, Iran is signaling it would be ready for improved relations with the United States and the West. One sign of that shift in attitude was the toned-down speech by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad at the UN.
• Georgia votes in hotly-contested parliamentary polls on Monday amid heated rhetoric from the two main political forces and fears of post-election violence in this small South Caucasus country with EU and NATO aspirations. “This is a historic day for Georgia – its destiny is being decided,” said President Mikheil Saakashvili after arriving at a polling station in the center of the capital, Tbilisi, with his wife and youngest son. “The country must go forward, and never go back.”
• The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) didn’t bother to do a background check on a priest who had been defrocked for molesting girls before they gave him a job, which included doing pat downs on children at Philadelphia International Airport.