What are they gonna call those protesters? Unpatriotic veterans?

Leaving the family out of it is the decent thing to do. That's why it's so infuriating to see this come up now, after the GOP went after Michelle Obama so hard in the past, trying to paint her as unpatriotic. It shouldn't have come up then, and negativity towards Palin has no place here now, but I'll bet anything that the GOP stance will be quite different now that the shoe is on the other foot. I really hate politics sometimes.

Hey, why doesn't Michelle Obama wear a USMC NAVY pin?!? That traitorous, unpatriotic anti-American BITCH!!

Just another reason I'm not voting for McCain. But I have to wonder why he voted against those amendments. Would additional funding have made it worse somehow? I wish McCain would explain why, but he'd just say he couldn't recall that senate hearing and make up some bullshit answer. His whole campaign is run so shady and sloppy. He'd probably be no different in the Oval Office.

To make things even, I'd like to see Obama's campaign mistakes and questionable votes, but the best they've come up with so far is calling him a Muslim and unpatriotic troop-hater, one ad hominem after another.

^ Given that there's a whole political party out there who wants to call Obama an unpatriotic surrendermonkey Defeatocrat, it's probably fair to ask him to clearly reiterate that he doesn't view losing as an option either.

But yeah, a fairly kissy-poo interview, though based on what she's done with her reporting up to this point, you really think she wants to try to give a hostile interview to Obama?

McCain's right to call this an extended photo-op, just like every trip McCain himself has ever taken overseas, since becoming a Senator.

This wasn't the time to sit down for an interview with a tough inquisitor, this was time to sit down with the pretty lady who's interested in seeing him succeed in winning the election.

Expect most coverage to be positive, unless he calls himself a jelly donut in Berlin.

^ That quaint thing? Please. Only librul tree-hugging marxists care about rights for criminals like librarians (they're hiding something).

edit? there was no edit, I always said marxist, and you're unpatriotic for impugning my service to the sift by saying otherwise.

>> ^NetRunner:
I read on the internet that he's a secret muslim, whose Pastor is a reverse racist who wants to enslave white people, ally with Iran, ban the pledge of allegience, unpatriotically eschew wearing the required flag lapel-pin, and raise my taxes.
I heard from his fellow Democratic senator Hillary Clinton that he's an elitist, who doesn't understand the concerns of working Americans, hard working Americans, white Americans, that he's a misogynist who's heckled Geraldine Ferraro for telling it like it is (that he's only winning because he's black!) He disenfranchised the people of Michigan and Florida by not agreeing to let Hillary have all the delegates from both states.
Some Abe Simpson impersonator told me that somehow, people are being fooled by this proponent of failed policies of the past, when a 71 year-old white guy is clearly embracing policies of the future, like winning in Iraq, and giving everyone a well-deserved capital gains tax cut, while dismantling silly government programs like the EPA, FDA, and the quaint Bill of Rights.
You can keep your Tiger Woods, I want Ron Paul! Down with the CFR!
smack
Actually, I think he's going to usher in a sweeping change in public opinion, the way Ronald Reagan did. The country will realize that from the conservative point of view, Bush was the most successful conservative yet at implementing conservative ideology, and the crushing failures of the country are a direct result of those policies (and the ones Clinton acquiesced to in the 90's, like NAFTA, telecomm deregulation, and a huge capital gains tax cut).
Obama can draw in vast new segments of people disillusioned with the Bush years, and speak to them about liberal values and policies in a persuasive way I've never seen someone do before.
I think he'll be able to build a coalition of support to actually start addressing the problems our country faces with the economy, foreign policy, health care, infrastructure, and the environment.
Most of his past work has been in the realm of ethics reform, and governmental transparency. He's talked about forcing the health care companies to negotiate with him while in front of C-SPAN TV cameras -- something like that would be truly remarkable.
He won't be afraid to be painted as a "liberal" (as if that's a bad thing), or to fight for what he believes in because he knows that he's on the right side of the issues, and can explain why...
I think it'll be an amazing thing to see.



I had so many sarcastic responses lined up for this tripe, my brain overloaded, and I had visions of Hillary as Vice President.

I read on the internet that he's a secret muslim, whose Pastor is a reverse racist who wants to enslave white people, ally with Iran, ban the pledge of allegience, unpatriotically eschew wearing the required flag lapel-pin, and raise my taxes.

I heard from his fellow Democratic senator Hillary Clinton that he's an elitist, who doesn't understand the concerns of working Americans, hard working Americans, white Americans, that he's a misogynist who's heckled Geraldine Ferraro for telling it like it is (that he's only winning because he's black!) He disenfranchised the people of Michigan and Florida by not agreeing to let Hillary have all the delegates from both states.

Some Abe Simpson impersonator told me that somehow, people are being fooled by this proponent of failed policies of the past, when a 71 year-old white guy is clearly embracing policies of the future, like winning in Iraq, and giving everyone a well-deserved capital gains tax cut, while dismantling silly government programs like the EPA, FDA, and the quaint Bill of Rights.

You can keep your Tiger Woods, I want Ron Paul! Down with the CFR!

*smack*

Actually, I think he's going to usher in a sweeping change in public opinion, the way Ronald Reagan did. The country will realize that from the conservative point of view, Bush was the most successful conservative yet at implementing conservative ideology, and the crushing failures of the country are a direct result of those policies (and the ones Clinton acquiesced to in the 90's, like NAFTA, telecomm deregulation, and a huge capital gains tax cut).

Obama can draw in vast new segments of people disillusioned with the Bush years, and speak to them about liberal values and policies in a persuasive way I've never seen someone do before.

I think he'll be able to build a coalition of support to actually start addressing the problems our country faces with the economy, foreign policy, health care, infrastructure, and the environment.

Most of his past work has been in the realm of ethics reform, and governmental transparency. He's talked about forcing the health care companies to negotiate with him while in front of C-SPAN TV cameras -- something like that would be truly remarkable.

He won't be afraid to be painted as a "liberal" (as if that's a bad thing), or to fight for what he believes in because he knows that he's on the right side of the issues, and can explain why...

I think it'll be an amazing thing to see.

This is one of the finest videos I've ever seen here.

The action! The dialogue! The music! The defensive techniques, like the "frisbee toss" and the "rope-knife entangler", simply amazing.

Whoever doesn't upvote this is unpatriotic, and should be violently instabanned and made to surf Youtube lip-synching videos for a duration of not less than 24 hours. Court adjourned!

>> ^bcglorf:
But you are still just reinforcing the point that the above video is completely misrepresenting McCain's position to make it easier to bad mouth him. It is exactly what Fox is doing to Obama, and just because McCain is a Republican doesn't suddenly change it from unfair to helpful.


Fox says Obama's a secret Muslim, a black separatist, an elitist, and unpatriotic. Now that is more than misrepresentation, it's slander.

Democrats are fighting fire with squirt guns, and you think they're crossing the line?

>> ^FISHLEGBOOTS:
I'm confused, who am I supposed to be upset with in this video clip? I'm leaning towards that unpatriotic, communist, coffee machine who refuses to wear an American flag lapel pin.


Speaking for myself, I'm upset with the coffee dispenser people. They should make an interface that does not require assistants (or assistance) to use.

I'm confused, who am I supposed to be upset with in this video clip? I'm leaning towards that unpatriotic, communist, coffee machine who refuses to wear an American flag lapel pin.

Some excerpts from his appearance today:

_ "I stand before you to open up this two-day symposium with the hope that this most recent attack on the black church is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church. ... The most recent attack on the black church, it is our hope that this just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible."

_ On Obama's denunciation of some of his past remarks:

"Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5 and January 21. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do. I am not running for office. I am hoping to be vice president. ...

"He didn't distance himself. He had to distance himself because he's a politician. From what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn't offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it. I offered words of hope. I offered reconciliation, I offered restoration in that sermon, but nobody heard the sermon. They just heard this little sound bite of a sermon."

_ On whether he should apologize for shouting in a sermon "God damn America" for its treatment of minorities:

"God doesn't bless everything. God condemns some things. And dem, D-E-M, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices and there's no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic."

_ On anyone who says he's unpatriotic:

"I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me. They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites and that which is looped over and over on certain channels. I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?"

Saddam was not a terrorist, to say he is a terrorist is a logically fallacy, that would make Bush a terrorist as well for invading two sovergien nations. Also does that make the US a terrorist nation to be the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons offensively? Imagine that! Any day those guys could nuke someone! The horror! We must invade now!

The case for WMDs in Iraq was built because of the Bush Administration desire to go to war in Iraq riding off the 9/11 attacks, since it was not possible to rationally argue for it in anyway the WMD case was built relying mostly on the information of a single informant code named 'Curveball':

Curveball was the pseudonym given by the Central Intelligence Agency to Rafid Ahmed Alwan an Iraqi citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004. Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service regarding the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity. Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

This all lead up to Colin Powell's presentation at the UN, utterly destroying any shred of credibility of both Powell and the CIA. The case for war was cherry picked. After the war various study groups were formed to solidify the case for WMDs, the admission that no WMDs were found or any found were from depleted 1990 Gulf War stocks was much to damaging for the Administration which argued that Iraq had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, so various counter study groups were formed since there was political motivation to build a legitimated case for war in Iraq:

On January 23, 2004, the head of the ISG, David Kay, resigned his position, stating that he believed WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," commented Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties."

In a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kay criticized the pre-war WMD intelligence and the agencies that produced it, saying "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Survey_Group

This of course all makes sense, the administration couldn't come from the invasion say it was catastrophically mistaken in gathering intelligence pre-invasion, so various counter arguments were created everything ranging from Iraq had to be invaded because it had skilled labor in the WMD industry, to that knowledge could seep into Syria and Iran (which it of course did due to the Iraqi dispora).

However all this was damage control, and the administration skillfully changed the narrative now to freedom and democracy in Iraq as well as "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here".

The worsening of the war also diverted public attention, but it is telling that most of the media avoided exploring this topic like it was the black plague, the usual patriotic attacks along the line of "Our troops are dying and questioning their sacrifice even if no WMDs are found, is unpatriotic." Never mind that they wouldn't need to die considering international pressure during UN discussions around January 2003 would lead to eventual opening up of Iraq to serious inspections, but war was on the agenda months before, when US was preparing to go to war with Afghanistan, it was already preparing for war in Iraq.

I can attest to this personally since I was in Kuwait at the time, the build up of man power and arms was well underway even before December/January. The administration decided to act unilaterally, the UN and coalition thing were just smoke and mirrors to create some sort of legitimacy to what was basically an unprovoked invasion.

But the facts are clear The Iraq Survey group under Charles Duelfer said Iraq's nuclear capability had decayed and not grown since the 1991 war. This was reported in October 2004, "Report concludes no WMD in Iraq", of course as I said the narrative was being actively changed by then the Administration said that the report showed "intent" so it was good we attacked then when we did. Which is about as logically as saying the US has intent to nuke someone else because it happens to possess nuclear weapons and has done it before thus we should invade and disarm it.

>> ^raddishs: Comment on the tags: when is it not too soon? Aren't we, according to that logic, pissing on the sacrifices made by our soldiers when we play video games based on WW2?


precisely.

i remember that when this game came out there was an uproar along the lines of "Look what those Limey Bastards are doing to disgrace the memory of our fallen leader!"... i disagreed then, as i do now, to knee-jerking, and as far as this game is concerned i respect the developer's idea. to Traffic Games it's an immersion into a historical event, and i'm sure they understood the repercussions involved in releasing it.

i think this game touches a raw nerve with some older folks, as well as various mouth-foamers, because it reminds them of the event itself and the subsequent Warren Commission that appears to have only opened more questions than given answers. for people of the gaming age (and persuasion) it's a unique chance to apply What We Know about the ordeal in a controllable environment. it's the only time in american history that this has happened to a president *and* was captured on several films, as opposed to Lincoln's assassination, so it feels like those grainy 8mm frames should be telling us everything, and as time goes by and more detail about the incident becomes known we go back and try to put those pieces together. i personally believe we will never know the whole story.

growing up in Texas i was never able to get any information about it from anyone i knew other than "it was awful" or "we went home that day." the people who were witness to it are dying off and unwilling to talk about it, that i can understand, but not talking about it won't make the curiosity go away and this game is a good way to try to get a grip on the event as much as we can. although i'm pretty sure there will also be people playing the game to live out their own fantasies, i don't believe that the majority of people drawn to it are the unpatriotic psycho president-snipers that the Media made them out to be back then.

that being said, it's nerve-wracking to hear people around me talk about how Obama makes them feel like they did when JFK was running. it's always a good idea to keep the past in perspective, but in this election period...with Obama as a candidate (and soon very possibly president)... it's especially important to keep this incident in mind by whatever means necessary.

sometimes the herd knows things unconsciously, just sayin'.