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[Brentai]

Holy shit, does he know hat he's doing?  Disillusioned Democrats will come out IN DROVES to support what the party's doing if it means him retiring in the most shameful manner possible.

[Thad]

Except that it's about as likely as Limbaugh moving to Costa Rica.

[Brentai]

I'm fairly sure that if he can be made into a common enemy for liberals to unite against, he'll end up retiring one way or another.

I really think you can run an entire campaign on this in 2012 and sweep the houses.  It's about the only thing people still care about one way or another.

[Pacobird]

History has shown that whenever an incumbent is seriously challenged by his own party, that party loses the general election.

Not really.

Not to say that the 1964 election is anything we want to emulate -- or could --, but it's one counterexample off the top of my head.

I don't really think a primary challenge would do much of any good either, but I'm not seeing much worst-case scenario to it either.  Bachman's not going to be President; Perry's probably not either.  And Mitt as President?  Honest to Christ I'm having trouble seeing how things would have been different with him in charge for the past three years.  Except that if the exact same healthcare bill had had HIS name on it, it would have gotten more than zero Republican votes.  And he would have spent less time criticizing liberals.

Course, I'll acknowledge that I was pretty damn wrong about Gore and Bush being equivalent.  But I think that, short of a national trauma giving the President carte blanche to do whatever the fuck he wanted, I would have been right.

...hey, I just made a great segue back to where I started.

A repeat of 1964 would require people actually being freaked the fuck out by shit Barry Goldwater said.

THINGS YOU WOULD NOT HAVE SEEN UNDER A ROMNEY PRESIDENCY, FOR WHATEVER THEY ARE WORTH:

-Student loan reform
-DADT repeal
-Withdrawal of US forces from Iraq
-Redeployment of Iraq forces to Afghanistan, resulting in assassination of Osama bin Laden
-2009 stimulus package
-Auto industry bailout, which has been an unqualified success resulting in 100% of the money paid back, with interest, and Detroit seriously looking better than it has at any point since I moved to Michigan in the late 90s (Detroit will still look really shitty to outsiders, however)
-Major, however tepid, financial services industry reform
-Probably a lot of other things!

[Mongrel]

Except that it's about as likely as Limbaugh moving to Costa Rica.

Basically, yeah.

We left reality behind about a trillion* years ago.


*_{No, really! Literally a trillion! See, we left reality behind so nobody needs to verify my statements! This is how this works, right guys? Guys?}

[Thad]

I'm fairly sure that if he can be made into a common enemy for liberals to unite against, he'll end up retiring one way or another.

I really think you can run an entire campaign on this in 2012 and sweep the houses.  It's about the only thing people still care about one way or another.

Eh.  Fox News as an entity is ALREADY a common enemy for liberals to unite against.  I'd say none of them give a shit if the liberals unite against them, but that's not really true, because they PREFER it that way.

We've already seen where the line is at Fox News: Glenn Beck veering off into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.  Short of that, liberal rage is like catnip for them.

Remember when Obama was inaugurated and Fox News's popularity was on the wane?  They've bounced back from a lot more than "Bill O'Reilly indulges in stupid rhetoric."

...weekly.

A repeat of 1964 would require people actually being freaked the fuck out by shit Barry Goldwater said.

Well, yes.

On the one hand, the "Let him die!" crowd is a pretty good example of Goldwater conservatism (except much, much cozier with the religious right).

On the other, they're still pretty fringe.  Yeah, they made some major victories last year, but as I've said before, a whole lot of the votes for Tea Party candidates were more like votes AGAINST establishment candidates, and seeing these guys actually try to govern is a whole different story.

It bears noting that Paul actually said "No" when asked the "Let him die" question.  And he's Ron frickin' Paul.

[Pacobird]

Course, I'll acknowledge that I was pretty damn wrong about Gore and Bush being equivalent.  But I think that, short of a national trauma giving the President carte blanche to do whatever the fuck he wanted, I would have been right.

Also I'm sorry but this is a bunch of hooey.  Leaving aside the fact that you are comparing the most environmentally-progressive Senator of the 1980s who made his entire career based on that with a Texas oilman, the U.S. has a long history of not needing (or inventing) national tragedies to invade nations that AREN'T ruled by iron-fisted dictators responsible for assassination attempts on U.S. presidents.  Bush's people wanted to invade Iraq; does anyone really think they wouldn't have been able to find an excuse if 9/11 hadn't happened?

Bush openly presented high-ranking appointees with long hawkish/pro-military resumes like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz as selling points for his administration during the campaign.  Certainly 9/11 gave these assholes an undeserved green light but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have just run a red and claimed color-blindness.

[Thad]

Sooo what you're saying is, Congress would have totally gone along with Gore on the environment, but would also have still totally lain down for Bush on Iraq.

[Pacobird]

I am saying that Gore, as the head of the executive branch, would have likely appointed significantly more progressive/less tied-to-industry regulators in various agencies, and it barely matters who was in Congress wrt to Iraq because if the president wants to start a war, he'll start a war, and the U.S. military was and still is powerful enough to completely unmake a nation-state or two before the War Powers Act kicks in, if that even matters at all.

As a librarian who wrote his Master's Thesis on the Digital Divide, though, I admit I'm probably biased by a man-crush on Al Gore for being the only politician out there to actually talk about the consequences of not having universal public broadband/wifi in the then-year 2007.

[Thad]

I am saying that Gore, as the head of the executive branch, would have likely appointed significantly more progressive/less tied-to-industry regulators in various agencies

And I'm saying that he would have appointed a bunch of business-friendly center-righters in a desperate and misguided attempt to curry favor with poorly-defined "moderates and independents".  As evidence for this belief, I cite his choice of running-mate, his entire campaign, and every single thing the Democratic Party has done since I've been old enough to pay attention.

He still would have been better than Bush.  But I really don't think it's actually possible to set the bar any lower than "better than Bush."

and it barely matters who was in Congress wrt to Iraq because if the president wants to start a war, he'll start a war, and the U.S. military was and still is powerful enough to completely unmake a nation-state or two before the War Powers Act kicks in, if that even matters at all.

Fair enough, but it's not just a question of Congress -- it likely would have been more difficult to find allies in the press or support from the public in the absence of 9/11.  Granted, Bush never showed too much concern about what the public thought of him, but absent 9/11 it wouldn't have taken 5 years for the war to become unpopular.

As a librarian who wrote his Master's Thesis on the Digital Divide, though, I admit I'm probably biased by a man-crush on Al Gore for being the only politician out there to actually talk about the consequences of not having universal public broadband/wifi in the then-year 2007.

I, too, am a fan of post-2000 Al Gore.  I'd even consider voting for him, except that I think most of the positive things he's done in the past decade have been a direct result of not being worried about whether they'd win him an election.

...Jesus Christ, you sure do like finding off-the-cuff hypothetical one-liners in my old posts to debate at length.

[Classic]

I gave him a karma for it.

[Mongrel]

I'm not sure if this was meant as an insult or a compliment, but either way,

[McDohl]

BUT JESUS IS WHITE LIKE ALL GOD'S PEOPLE :hurrr:

[Brentai]

Yeah I get the feeling that fundies honestly believe the dude was whiter than Felicia Day despite the absolute lack of any sense whatsoever that it makes.

Can't blame racism entirely though; austerity has a tendency to literally whitewash things.  Oh for the days when I didn't know how absolutely buffoonish traditional Greco-Roman dress looked.

[Royal☭]

You're talking about a guy who was born from a pregnant virgin. In light of that, it makes perfect sense that the dude was white as a ghost.

[Büge]

Now I'm picturing Jesus as some hairless albino freak. Not like the guy from Powder, more like...

You're Part Of Everything

Okay, yeah, the guy from Powder.

[Thad]

You know, if Holder DID know about Fast and Furious and allow it to proceed, I'm totally down with making him resign over it.

OTOH, this is obviously a partisan witch hunt.

Everybody, be they Democrat, Republican, or Lieberman, who had something to do with this should be run out of town and possibly brought up on charges.

(Incidentally, I am just going to naturally assume that Oliver North is on the radio right now screaming about how the Obama Administration would dare to covertly sell guns to terrorists.  Because the thought amuses me.)

[Mongrel]

Fast and Furious? Buhwha?

(As you can imagine, google does not immediately produce news stories when those search terms are entered.)

[TA]

It was a pretty basic sting that's getting a lot of controversy.

[Thad]

It does in the States.

"Fast and Furious" was a covert operation intended to track Mexican drug cartels by selling automatic weapons to them.  It worked out about as well as you would expect, which is to say they lost track of the vast majority of the guns but found a couple at a scene where a Border Patrol agent was murdered.

Currently the Republicans in Congress, led by Darrell Issa, are investigating AG Eric Holder, on the suspicion that he lied about the extent of his knowledge of the op.

Which brings me back to where I came in: it's entirely possible that Holder DID know about this and lied about it, in which case I am totally in favor of throwing the book at him.  But that doesn't mean I think Issa's really interested in determining the truth and punishing the guilty so much as making the Obama Administration look bad.