In other words, “Obama is right because he is always right. And Bush was wrong because he was always wrong.”
Reminds me of a lot of fundamental Christians I know. “The Bible is the ultimate truth because the The Bible says so!”
IOKIADDI.
And indefinite detention isn’t even the best example.
We have a recession because Bush spent too much and racked up the deficit. So Obama is the bee’s knees because he spends hugely more and racks up the deficit.
At least with Bush’s bailout, they are paying some of it back already.
Regards,
Shodan
Call it unwanted advice if you like, but threads like this usually don’t work because they’re more about calling other people hypocrites than debating any particular point.
I think there’s no question he’s getting the benefit of the doubt. In the case of the Abu Ghraib photos, that’s unfortunate. I understand his argument but I think these things need to be made public.
My view is that, right now, Obama is cleaning up a lot of Bush’s disasters and has to choose between many bad options. To use the interrogation pictures as an example, releasing them may create more bad feelings about the USA and put our troops at risk, and not releasing them hides the problem and the accountability that goes with it. The root problem, in my mind, is that the US engaged in torture at all. Obama shouldn’t have to struggle with whether to release interrogation pictures because the US should never have engaged in torture to begin with.
Given a host of bad options, he’s choosing what he considers to be least bad. I disagree with his determination, but I don’t think it’s all that relevant to this thread.
So, are Obama supporters giving him a pass for having to choose the least bad option among a host of bad options as he tries to clean up the last administration’s mess? Maybe. Maybe that’s justified. At least he seems thoughtful, and he’s not saying things like “Well, I’ve decided not to release the photos and if you disagree with me, you’re supporting the terrorists, and I’m not going to justify my actions, and I’ll never revisit my decision.”
Now, when he starts creating situations and making decisions for problems of his own making, I do not expect to give him a pass for bad decisions or behavior.
I think the OP may have a point that Obama supporters are not running out and starting Pit threads for every White House decision that they might not agree with. I think Bush supporters did not run out and start Pit threads early in the Bush presidency when he proposed new spending on, say, the Medicare drug benefit. Were many Republicans chagrined by that major new entitlement? Yes! Is there something unusual in them not starting new threads or taking to the streets? Eh.
The other side of this coin is that conservatives seem to be complaining about liberals not complaining about decisions that conservatives pretty much agree with. For example, Obama announced a withdrawal plan for Iraq that wasn’t exactly what he promised in the campaign. The plan was greeted with Republican support. But if I am reading the OP right, conservatives are so anxious to criticize Obama for decisions that they agree with, they feel compelled to try to outsource their non-existent complaint to liberals.
That’s weirder than Obama supporters cutting Obama some slack because humans have the tendency not to get outraged at people they generally like.
That’s pretty much the republican mantra, isn’t it?
Vouchers don’t work. They help a few and leave the rest to self destruct. Fixing public schools is the answer, not helping a few who can afford to change districts.
Their deficits were smaller because they didin’t count the war and they didn’t have the economic meltdown to deal with. If you don’t agree that a stimulus package was necessary, fine. But you’re far in the minority.
Most serious folk?
If you’re referring to the omnibus spending bill that was created under the previous administration and would have ground congress to a stop and bogged down healthcare reform.
The incredible shift is the direct result of fixing the problems that morons who thought we didn’t need government regulation caused. Greenspan himself admitted that he assumed that people would police themselves. :rolleyes:
Well, I’m not committing either way specifically regarding Obama, but what you’ve just described is a reasonable point of view: if someone has a history of doing things badly and someone else has a history of doing things well, it does reasonably set expectations.
If I have to chose between company X and company Y to trim my yard, and company X has always done half a job, scratched my car and set my dog on fire, and company Y always does a professional, competent job, would you say that I remind you of a fundamental Christian if I have glowing praise for company Y?
Of course, I suspect that you’d disagree that there is historic evidence that Bush is less competent than Obama. But if you didn’t disagree with that, and it is clear that this is the point of view from what you quoted, why is it unreasonable to have higher expectations of Obama?
I’ll just say that Obama’s justifications have more credibility in that he has nothing he’s trying to conceal about his OWN actions. Bush was trying to cover his own ass. Obama has no personal culpability in any of these prisoner abuses, Bush does. So, while I might be disappointed by Obama’s decision, it does not have the self-preserving stench that the Bush White House always had, and it’s really not ultimately very important anymore. The criminals are already out of power.
I think Obama is punting on the detainees, and I can’t honestly blame him. Its a nearly hopeless situation. We know that at least some of them must be guilty, actually are sworn enemies of our people. ('Struth, I don’t know that, but assume it must be so because a) there are so many and b) the prospect that none of them are guilty is too horrendous to contemplate…).
But to try such people brings in questions of evidence and proof. We already know that many of the detainees were slammed up on little or no solid evidence, which is why they were quietly released with a Certificate of Ooopsy-Daisy! So I’m guessing there is an unknown quotient of detainees who are in fact guilty of hating us, but we cannot prove it in any court of law worthy of the name.
And then there’s those who didn’t actually hate our collective guts when they were picked up, but after years of our humane and reasonable treatment, are now our enemies, people who are likely going to be guilty, first chance they get! Naturally, we want to release the innocent, but if we do, we take the risk that those who were innocent are no longer so inclined. So sure as shootin’, one of them is going to do something nasty, and Obama’s political enemies will scream their heads off! (Well, only those with no sense of honor and decency, those who will seize any issue to disgrace their partisan opponents…just those few, actually…)
If Obama takes the guilty to court, and adheres to any respectable standard of law, some guilty will go free, and make mischief. Even if, by some miracle, he could release only the innocent, some of them hate our guts, and will rush to find some means to extract vengeance. Hell, who can blame them? You grab me off the street, whisk me away to some godforsaken hole, mistreat me for six-seven years, damn straight you’ve made an enemy!
There are no good choices. He has made the least loathesome choice of a menu of poisons, a menu handed to him by men who have slipped away from center stage. I am not happy with the choices he must make, but I am at least heartened to know that the man making these dreadful choices is a vastly better person than the ones who thrust us into this turd-infested fever swamp.
Yes, absolutely, 100%. If Obama came to my house and personally killed my cat, I would bear him no ill will, because I am certain he would have had a good reason. Because he’s Obama, ya know.
BTW, you probably should have thought longer and harder before posting this ridiculous thread.
re: detainee treatment.
In another thread I was talking about the DTA and how it denied the writ of habeas corpus to detainees at Guantanamo.
It appears (b/c it’s confusing to navigate Legislative voting) Obama voted “Yea” for that amendment.
Well put. I like Andrew Sullivan’s take no this today:
As to the WSJ report that Obama is considering “indefinite detention,” pending the construction of some sort of appropriate tribunal system I think it needs to be pointed out that this report has not been corroborated by the White House itself, and the WSJ has lost considerable credibility since it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. It’ coverage of the Franken-Coleman fight, for instance, has been so wildly inaccurate and tendentious (and so obviously fed completely by Coleman’s lawyers) that I no longer trust a word it says. Beyond that, even the WSJ does not say that any decision has been reached, only that one possibility is being “considered.” Of course it’s being considered. That’s what a President is supposed to do – consider things.
The problem is that William F. Buckley is dead and even then conservatives were turning on people like him, if not him because of his stature.
I absolutely oppose the indefinite detention and suspension of habeas corpus regardless of who does it. I’m not wholly opposed to the decision not to release the detainee abuse photos given that at least some of them are likely to be used in legal actions.
I wouldn’t suck Obama’s dick or anything, but I’d eat mud that was scraped off his feet.
Well, thanks for sharing that…
If you want to talk about the DC voucher program, a comprehensive study conducted by the Bush Administration found that there was no statistically significant difference between test scores of those who got the vouchers and those who didn’t. In fact, the study found that the most significant impact of the voucher experiment was that the program made parents feeeeeeeeeel better! (It seems that the children didn’t feeeeeel any better, however.)
I thought conservatives frowned on government programs that only produced nice feelings, but no results.
So it’s okay for Obama to do the same stuff that Bush did, because Obama inherited the problems, while Bush caused the problems.
To believe that requires one to believe that Bush engineered the entire 9/11 situation and the global recession. Which likewise requires one to believe that he is both a bumbling dunderhead and an evil mastermind. I’m afraid I just don’t have the mental gymnastic skills to embrace all those contradictions…TRM
It is always wise to cogniscent of one’s limitations.