I’ll try one more time. In his initial statement to the press, Gregg mentioned two issues that impacted his decision to withdraw his nomination - the stimulus package and the Census. That is not “speculation” on my part; it is a fact. The fact that Gregg was downplaying the Census issue a few hours later during the press conference is, frankly, meaningless. You may speculate all day on why he chose to do this, but it will remain just that: speculation. So I’ll ask you one more time: if the Census issue was not a factor in Gregg’s decision, why did he mention it in the first place? OK? Understand now?
Oh, and I was mistaken if I “speculated” that the Census issue “could’ve been” a deciding factor. It quite obviously was!
But wasn’t that his chosen nickname? Seriously, correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that “W” was what he (and his supporters) used to differentiate himself from his dad.
Our current President has a funny first name and a funny last name, both of which are certainly mockable by those so inclined. The mocking of his middle name seems to me to be only relevant to comparing him to you-know-who.
Given that George Bush’s own family had referred to him as Dubya for years, well before he was elected president, it seems to be a very different case.
“Dubya” was borrowed from George W. Bush’s friends. It was the moniker they used to separate him from George H. W. Bush when rendered in a purported Texan accent. It was, if you recall, plastered across numerous bumper stickers employed by his own campaign organization. The current occupant of the White House has been known by several nicknames, but never by his middle name except as used by a couple of racist radio personalites.
Can someone explain to me, in small words, why one of these is refreshing candor from an honest public servant, and the other is “arrogant, self-serving, blindly partisan, obstructionist, selfish” and comes from a “pussy weasel-assed chicken shit gutless two-faced coward?”
I’m also still waiting for the transcripts of the discussions between Gregg and the Obama team. Can someone please post those?
Well, he (is it a he? could be a she, I suppose. Stephe, short for Stephanie. Or it could be short for Stephane, as in Stephane Grapelli, the jazz violinist who made some truly ground-breaking music with the legendary Django Reinhardt, the three-fingered Gypsy guitarist) could be doing it as a “tit-for-tat” response to the fact that we spend eight years referring to Bush43 as “W” (or various parodies thereof). At least there’s some plausible deniability there.
Plus the fact that referring to him by the same name as the late “Butcher of Baghdad” is a bonus zinger, at least according to his (or her. see above) point of view.
So, Stephe96, is it a peenie or a va-jay-jay for you? Do you shake hands standing up, or sitting down?
And even if it was made up by Democrats, at its worst it would be trying to link Bush to rednecks. At its worst, calling Obama Hussein tries to link him to Saddam. It may just be me, but the latter seems more mean-spirited and insidious. But I guess that’s Republican humor for you.
There is, though. Here’s an article about a group that argues that the stimulus package is unneccesary:
And there’s debate about what programs are stimulative. One of the major Republican complaints about the stimulus package is that some of the programs that it starts won’t start working until the end of 2010, too late for those projects to reverse the economic downturn. There are also Republican fears that some of programs will continue after we’ve gotten out of the economic downturn…that they lead to permanently increased government spending and a larger government in the long term.
In other words, the Republicans are afraid that the Democrats are using the economic downturn to push a liberal agenda. Remember back in the Bush years, when Bush used the terrorist attacks as an excuse to pass all that partisan legislation? Nobody would disagree that preventing terrorist attacks was a good thing, but the Democrats argued that a lot of the laws passed in response to that really didn’t reduce the risk of terrorism, but just accoplished the Republicans’ partisan goals. The Republicans are worrying now about the Democrats doing the same thing.
I’m not really sure that Gregg really did anything wrong, but I’d like to point out that the Democrats have been reaching out in bipartisanship a lot recently, and the Republicans have been rejecting it. After adding a bunch of tax cuts, and removing the contraceptive money from the stimulus bill, no house Republicans voted for it. Obama nominates a Republican, and he rejects the offer, after asking for the job. Republicans are still attacking Obama for a supposed lack of bipartisanship. Makes me think giving concessions to the Republicans isn’t working, and Obama should stop doing it.
Yes, it was his chosen name. But i doubt he would have been happy with the mocking tone and context in which it was employed by his opponents and detractors. Also, as far as i know, he was, as you suggest, referred to as “W”. I was under the impression that the actual spelling out of the name as “Dubya” came solely from other people, and was specifically intended as mocking. If my understanding is wrong, i’m happy to be corrected.
I have absolutely no doubt of Stephe96’s intent in using the name Hussein when referring to Obama. He’s clearly trolling, and is also adding to the stupidity of his more general “arguments” in this thread. If people would just stop responding to him while he continues to use that term, as tomndebb suggested, he might stop.
Hell, i’m pretty sure he’s the only person in the thread who thinks it’s of any relevance. I don’t think even Starving Artist is quite that stupid.
Huh. Conservatives, for the last eight years, have been informing me that I’m a moron, and a traitor, and I hate America, and so on and so forth.
I do find this sudden concern on the part of the opposition for civility and reasonable arguement to be quite touching–right about here, in the ticklish part.
In his statements to the press, Gregg downplayed an issue that impacted his decision to withdraw his nomination - the Census. That is not “speculation” on my part; it is a fact. The fact that Gregg hyped the Census issue a few hours earlier before the press conference is, frankly, meaningless. You may speculate all day on why he chose to do this, but it will remain just that: speculation. So I’ll ask you one more time: if the Census issue was such a factor in Gregg’s decision, why did he downplay it at the conference? OK? Understand now?