Ilhan Omar can fuck right off

The BBQ Pit
61

Gladly. I’ll try and sum it up as briefly as I can. And I’ll note that I’m just a regular dude Democrat, and I welcome nuanced and thoughtful disagreement.

The party should push concurrently for numerous concerns, the most important of which should be, in no particular order: ending the “endless war” foreign policy status quo; providing health care and the basics of a chance at a decent life for all Americans; and ending systemic, institutional, and societal discrimination (including providing some measure of justice for those Americans who have been harmed by these phenomena). All of these will be pushing against very powerful entrenched interests – such as the military industrial complex; Islamophobia; the conventional wisdom and hammer/nail philosophy of much of the intelligence community; moneyed interests in the financial, insurance, and health care industries; childish punditry/conventional wisdom that insists on defining everything as capitalism = good and socialism = bad with absolutely no nuance; the general resistance of the wealthy and powerful to change that doesn’t clearly benefit them; the many forms of bigotry still powerful and influential in society; the general apathy of white Americans and ignorance of the facts of the history of how so many non-white Americans were treated; and obviously much, much more.

None of this will be easy, and there’s no single Democratic politician who I believe has the answers to all of these concerns. I like Omar and AOC and also disagree with much of what they’ve said and done. I like Obama and disagreed withmuch of what he said and did. The same goes for most of the candidates for the Democratic nomination, and most of the Democratic leadership in Congress.

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And I will oppose you and those like you in trying to move the party in that direction.

What I want is leaders almost exactly like Obama, with some tweaks. What tweaks, you ask? Clearly not the ones you’d prefer.

(1) He should have stuck to his “red line” guns on Syria.

(2) He should not have coddled Saudi Arabia.

(3) He should not have allowed the “family glitch” to be part of Obamacare.

(4) He should have taken a harder line against Trump and his ties with Putin.

But that’s really pretty much it. On foreign and domestic policy otherwise, not to mention statesmanship, Obama was aces.

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Fair enough (though you didn’t make it terribly clear which parts of my post you disagree with). I have no issue with this sort of criticism/praise/analysis of Obama and his policies, even as I disagree with 1 and possibly 3 (and 2 and 4 are a bit more complicated, even though I think Obama made plenty of mistakes on those fronts). If only you’d try and put this minimum level of nuance and thought into your analysis and criticism of Omar, rather than the ridiculous knee-jerk tantrum of the OP.

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Wait, what? Why would you disagree with #3, of all of them? :confused: You’re a fan of the family glitch? WTF

65

Jesus fucking christ, this is condescending, “You can be torn, and I respect that, because I assume in the long run you’ll see the wisdom of my ways”. No, “torn” means that there’s good arguments on both sides. If you can truly respect why someone would be torn, you can respect why someone would come down on the opposite side.

The difference between being a in a dictatorship where you have a demagogue/Fearless Leader and a functional democracy is that in a functional democracy, you can speak truth–even harsh truth–to power. When we’ve lost that, we’ve lost everything.

Right now, it’s the Republicans who can’t say “I support Trump’s policies, but I think his adultry is appalling” because criticism is disloyalty, and disloyalty leads to shunning. Do you really want to go down that path?

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I’m not sure if he had control over it (i.e. that a better version would have passed), but I’m not going to go to the mat on such a minor disagreement.

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And of course the Dems got expertly baited into an internecine battle. I suppose that provides the satisfaction of being morally superior to the Republicans who close ranks no matter how loathsome the individual players and the collateral propositions bundled in with theit pet single issues. But sure, let’s enjoy the Hard Left annoyed that the Revolution keeps getting postponed and the Establishment telling them to just you wait until you have a job, mortgage and kids.

I was however already for some time expecting this scenario, that when Omar finally got around to objecting and calling out something about past actual policies (right or wrong), it would be cast as just more hater gotta hate.

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Manda Jo, Obama is nothing like Trump. That is precisely why I am so irked by Omar’s comments.

Andy, what made me so upset at Obama about the family glitch (which kept me from leaving the ranks of the uninsured) is that there was reporting that this was an interpretation of the law his HHS made administratively, that was not required by the law. After I complained about this on Daily Kos, some people said that legally speaking, that reporting was in error. I don’t know that it was ever really settled, but it sure looked like he could have at least tried to have them interpret it differently, and let the courts curb him if it was really not a legally tenable interpretation.

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It’s not whether Obama is like Trump. It’s that if Democrats can’t publically criticize their leaders, then eventually we will have a Democratic Trump.

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I just criticized Obama in four ways. That’s not what this is about. I keep talking about Chomsky and Zinn, but as I noted in the other thread, Glenn Greenwald is a better, more up-to-date example. (Glenn Greenwald defends 'Obama could rape a nun' statement) That kind of hyperbolic savaging is something that we should only have to grimace and tolerate from people outside the party. From inside, from its elected representatives? Nuh uh. Do. Not. Want.

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My 2¢: First, I think Omar gets extra attention because it plays well in conservative circles to have a Muslim to freak out about.

Her comments? I’m happy to be set straight, but what they evoke in me is, under Bush we had Guantanamo, the Afghan war, absurd deficits, excessive tilting if everything to favor the wealthy, and immigrants being treated poorly ie lured here to work for cheap and then treated like villains. Under Obama, well he didn’t exactly fix those things, did he, because they continued and now we have all those things under Trump, only dumber, blunter and with more prejudice.

Maybe the system has a lot of inertia and the letter D by itself won’t change that? Obama is pretty much the gold standard of politicians, he was POTUS for 8 years, full control of Congress for 2, and yet we still have major problems. So if I am taking Omar correctly, we will have to do better than “yay our guys won!!” to make any progress on some of these intractable problems.

Israel? I thought she was talking about how lobbying money distorts policy away from the public interest. Like, why is it illegal in so many states to boycott Israel? What if that is the best thing to do? What if we put half the effort into improving schools and roads here at home that we put into propping up Israel? I don’t have strong feelings about or really care much about Israel, I don’t understand the excessive amount of resources and attention they get that could be spent on our own problems.

I could be wrong. When that story blew up, my first reaction was that it was political hay making and a nothing burger and so I quit following it, so much going on yada yada. Israel isn’t worth being a third rail to even Criticize IMHO. If Omar produces an ongoing stream of anti-Jewish comments she will start to seem like the Democratic Steve King to me, but I thought she just didn’t choose her words carefully enough for a national figure.

So far I think she is brave. Contrast with my impressions of watching Gillum in CNN. He seems to go with the “pretty face” model, very mechanical and as uncontroversial as you can get. So yeah, not offensive but not bold either. He lost. I think a lot of people like bold these days.

Now if you think I am putting Obama and Gillum in the same pretty face bucket, that could piss you off. Obama was great, but he also went out if his way to not rock the boat sometimes, meh the Flaming Meteor politician can be merely an optical gimmick as well.

Omar seems like she wants to be the real deal Flaming Meteor politician. Some of the shit she says is easy for the opposition to glom onto and distort. I think her framing of her point about the system and Obama’s effect in it could have been more deft, but I don’t think it is what Slacker says.

In closing, I’ll add that I believe it if someone says they are a Democrat, I sure am tired of other people telling me what I am. All of this said as the smartest guy in the room by virtue of living alone :slight_smile:

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I’m not saying she should hide who she is, but she needs to understand political reality and perceptions. She’s not just representing her highly diverse district in Minneapolis-St. Paul; she’s now part of a national progressive coalition that is even more diverse than the one she represents, one which includes Jews, whites, and varying degrees and definitions of “progressives.” As I put it in another thread, Omar can and absolutely should talk about the issues that are important to her and her constituencies, but she has a responsibility to the larger progressive coalition to not get in the way. And doing that means understanding political reality and some of the ground rules.

Something else I mentioned on the other thread (in Elections, I believe) was that she could consider Barack Obama is a useful example on how to conduct herself. Barack Obama was in essentially the same exact position that Omar was in. He entered office with a desire to buck the mainstream and to push America more to the left on some issues. He also understood that he was ‘the black guy with a funny name’ and he didn’t avoid that reality. He didn’t say ‘Critics be damned, I’ll say what I want.’ He knew he couldn’t govern that way, and being president is way, way, waaaaaaay more complex and challenging than being a member of Congress. Even though it was indisputably an unfair position to be placed in, Barack Obama hardly ever complained about it. He understood his position and worked within that environment. That’s how he got re-elected. That’s how he left with a pretty high favorability rating, despite being the ‘black guy with a funny name’.

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This didn’t happen. Why are you insisting on interpreting a relatively general criticism in the worst possible way, that just so happens to be the way that Trump and the RNC want you to interpret it? Omar certainly doesn’t want you to interpret it this way. Only the bad guys do.

Stop helping Trump and the RNC.

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Leaving this cancer in our party is what helps the GOP. One of my savviest friends said Omar is the Democratic Steve King. I think that’s a bit hyperbolic, but only a bit.

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She’s not Steve King and nowhere near close - get real. Maybe a cross between Cynthia McKinney and Joe Biden.

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Thus confirming that you’re a racist idiot. An energetic and young black Muslim immigrant is allowed to have some views that disagree with yours, without being “a cancer in our party” or “the Democratic Steve King”.

Nothing that she’s said comes close to even the same ballpark as King, Gohmert, Trump, or the other troglodytes of the GOP. That you’re promoting this sort of bullshit just shows how unaware you are of your own ignorance and bigotry.

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Although the official cause of death was hemorrhagic stroke, the coroner’s report also noted a lethal level of concern in the decedent’s bloodstream.

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Trails were great, thanks for asking. Just that lovely stage where they’re dry, but not so dry you really lose grip in the corners.

Now perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my dismissal of your suggestion that I have to find something you said years ago to conclude you’re not a democrat, so let me try again for the hard of thinking. I get to quote the things you say and do, and use them to show just why you’re a disingenuous, evasive sack of shit (for ease of typing, I will now abbreviate that to DESOS.) You know, the whole “I’m democratic but I think colonialism is good”, or “I’m a democrat, but don’t think late term abortion for medical reason should be acceptable”, or “I’m a democrat but racism is great”, or “I’m a democrat, but fuck these elected democrats who want to make things better”, etc, etc ad nauseam. These are the things that make me look at you, and think DESOS.

In response to the above, you have argued that it can’t be true unless I find posts from you in a specific time range and forum that also demonstrate your DESOS status. Now I accept that logic (actually that most any form of thinking) isn’t your strong point, so I can understand why you might be confused. Hell, I imagine that confusion may indeed be a pretty much constant state for you*.

But here’s the deal: If I have already supplied a range of quotes and cites showing that you are a racist, imperialist, shitheel DESOS then my job is done. Much as you’d like to claim that the evidence only works it comes from a particular forum for a particular range of dates, that is what is technically known as utter bullshit.

So, to recap: nah chum, I’m not going anywhere, as long as I get to keep pointing out you remain an absolute fucking melt, and a contemptible piece of shit. Which you are, you DESOS.

Hope that helps, let me know if I need to draw a diagram.

*though, as stated before, I still alternate between thinking you really are as stupid as you make out, and thinking you’re just trolling for shits and giggles, in approximately a 2:3 ratio

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Yes this is what I expected from the Dem party when a few peaceful voices started talking. What she said should be common knowledge and uncontroversial.

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I am utterly shocked to find you echo the sentiments of “honestly I vote democrat” SlackerInc. Shocked