"The One"

[furt]

Heh. Came across this article today, and thought of this thread. For those who thought the Obama-fellating was confined to 2008, I give you the current Esquire:

Before the fall brings us down, before the election season begins in earnest with all its nastiness and vulgarity … can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement?
…
“I am large, I contain multitudes,” Walt Whitman wrote, and Obama lives that lyrical prophecy.
…
Barack Obama is developing into what Hegel called a “world-historical soul,” an embodiment of the spirit of the times. He is what we hope we can be.
…
Obama’s gift is the same as his curse: He’s somehow managed to be like the rest of us, only infinitely more so.

http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/loving-obama-0811#ixzz1T976xpyH

[Recovering_Republican]

@Gyrate

I missed the edit window but rewatched the Williams interview again. Panetta is quite sneaky. Listen to what he says:

1. Information leading the raid came from a variety of sources
2. Some of those sources were detainees subject to interrogation
3. Some detainees were subject to enhanced interrogation techniques
4. Waterboarding is an enhanced interrogation technique.

What he carefully never says, but is happy to let viewers infer, is that the detainees in point 3 are the same detainees that gave up the useful information. We already know that useful information was garnered from detainees subject to the more standard forms of interrogation.

Why he might want people to think that CIA-sanctioned torture wasn’t in vain is also left as an exercise for the reader.

Oh, really?

No surprise here to me.

Why hasn’t Obama moved all the detainees to New York and put them on trial, like he promised he would?

Why hasn’t he closed down Gitmo?

Why do we still have some troops in Iraq, THREE YEARS into this fool’s presidency?

This guy made his political bones whining and carping about everything Bush and Cheney did to keep us safe, but he hasn’t ended one of their policies.

Because the last thing he wants is for Al Qaeda to blow something up when he’s running for re-election.

Not that he should worry, he’s doing more damage to the country than Al Qaeda ever could dream of.

[Chronos]

Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob – a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can YOU trust a man like Mayor Quimby? (Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.)

[Recovering_Republican]

@Chronos

Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob – a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can YOU trust a man like Mayor Quimby? (Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.)

Hey, you might be on to something there… Bin Laden might have thrown his hat into the ring to run as a Democrat. I mean, you don’t even need to really be a citizen to get their nomination…

Obama was probably bumping off the competition… Probably because the public educated dummies might get confused between an “S” and a “B”.

[Little_Nemo]

@Recovering_Republican

Why hasn’t Obama moved all the detainees to New York and put them on trial, like he promised he would?

Why hasn’t he closed down Gitmo?

Why do we still have some troops in Iraq, THREE YEARS into this fool’s presidency?

This guy made his political bones whining and carping about everything Bush and Cheney did to keep us safe, but he hasn’t ended one of their policies.

Is this going to be the Republican strategy?

Vote Republican - because the Democrats have failed to fix all the things we did wrong the last time you voted for us.

[Recovering_Republican]

@Little_Nemo

Is this going to be the Republican strategy?

Vote Republican - because the Democrats have failed to fix all the things we did wrong the last time you voted for us.

No, vote Republican because the Democrats have made EVERYTHING a lot worse.

[Little_Nemo]

@Recovering_Republican

No, vote Republican because the Democrats have made EVERYTHING a lot worse.

Did the Democrats send the detainees to Guantanamo?

Did the Democrats invade Iraq?

Did the Democrats institute water-boarding and enhanced interrogation?

Did the Democrats deregulate the finance industry?

Did the Democrats enact DOMA?

Did the Democrats reach the highest level of post-war unemployment?

All the Democrats need to do is sit back and promise to do nothing in office for the next four years. That’ll still put them ahead of the party that creates new problems.

[MaxTheVool]

First of all, speaking as a generally pro-Obama liberal, it’s certainly true that, particularly leading up to the election, there was a LOT of extremely fervent pro-Obama rhetoric from a lot of liberals. Adulation would probably be a reasonable word for some of it. I’m not going to try to deny it happened.

That said, this whole “the one” business is extremely irritating. And there’s an important reason why it’s different than most insulting political nicknames.

Look at these two sentences:

1. Man oh man, Shrub sure screwed things up when he did X
2. Man oh man, “The One” sure screwed things up when he did X

Pretty much the same, right? Well, no. The difference, as I see it, is that “Shrub” as an insulting nickname for Bush is saying something about the person using it. It’s saying “I personally dislike and mock Bush”. Whereas “The One” as a nickname for Bush isn’t saying something about the person using it, it’s saying something about the person towards whom its usage is addressed. In other words, you could expand those two statements as:

1. Man oh man, I believe that former president George W Bush sure screwed things up when he did X. Oh, and I really disdain him.
2. Man oh man, I believe that president Obama sure screwed things up when he did X. Oh, and you liberals are blind partisan idiots who worship the ground he walks on.

One of them insults Bush. The other one insults liberals in general. That’s why it’s so jarring when used in contexts like GD. And that’s why, Recovering Republican, if you honestly would like your thoughts and ideas to be respectfully and meaningfully communicated to people who currently disagree with them but might be open to some honest discourse (and if you truly believe that every last liberal on this board is 100% partisan and will never change their mind about anything, then why are you here?), you might want to reconsider your use of that particular “joke”.

[Gyrate]

@Recovering_Republican

Oh, really?

No surprise here to me.

Why hasn’t Obama moved all the detainees to New York and put them on trial, like he promised he would?

Why hasn’t he closed down Gitmo?

Why do we still have some troops in Iraq, THREE YEARS into this fool’s presidency?

This guy made his political bones whining and carping about everything Bush and Cheney did to keep us safe, but he hasn’t ended one of their policies.

Because the last thing he wants is for Al Qaeda to blow something up when he’s running for re-election.

Not that he should worry, he’s doing more damage to the country than Al Qaeda ever could dream of.

Since none of that refutes anything I said or supports anything you said, I can only assume that you now agree with me that waterboarding yielded no useful information.

[Peremensoe]

It turns out that Ron Paul is “the One.”

[poker_in_the_rear]

Shit, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize within 12 days of taking office.

[Chronos]

What do you mean? There’s no nomination process for the Nobel Prize.

[Merijeek]

@poker_in_the_rear

Shit, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize within 12 days of taking office.

Yeah, well the question is whether that is due to unrealistic expectations regarding Obama, or whether Dubya was just THAT fucking bad.

-Joe

[Ravenman]

@Chronos

What do you mean? There’s no nomination process for the Nobel Prize.

Yes, there is.

[Typo_Knig]

@Merijeek

Yeah, well the question is whether that is due to unrealistic expectations regarding Obama, or whether Dubya was just THAT fucking bad.

-Joe

Both, and a careful reading of the interviews the head of that nominating committee gave led me the conclusion they didn’t expect Obama to be alive a year later. The thought that us crazy, racist, gun-totin’ 'Murricans would cack our first negro POTUS is not far enough out of line. At the start of Obama’s term death threats were coming in at twice the rate of any previous president.