Oh, well, there you go. A couple of anonymous stories about Clinton aides. THAT justified eight years of partisan bickering and obstructionism.
I was just saying Bush wasn't super gracious moving in, that's all. No matter what there'll be hyper-partisans like yourself who are going to be unfairly critical of anyone from the other party.
How was Bush not super gracious? Also he was too nice considering that they tried to steal the Presidency away from him.
[quote=Matter-eater Man]...How was Bush not super gracious? Also he was too nice considering that they tried to steal the Presidency away from him.
Yeah if they only could have gotten Bush's brother to come into the conspiracy we could have cheated you out of all the wonderful things Bush has achieved.
Seriously while PJP is probably the better man & could find something diplomatic to say about somebody that wouldn't be insincere or patronizing, there's really little good I can say about Bush. In the past I have said that I didn't think W was an idiot. There are plenty of people who have the right last name that couldn't accomplish getting to the White House. That's really about it though other than I think he meant well & wasn't the devil.
In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.
This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system -- a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.
This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.
After all, if even Goldman Sachs was getting government protection, why not you? And offering the comfort and safety of government is the Democratic Party's vocation. With a Republican White House having partially nationalized the banks and just about everything else, McCain's final anti-Obama maneuver -- Joe the Plumber spread-the-wealth charges of socialism -- became almost comical.
We don't yet appreciate how unprecedented were the events of September and October. We have never had a full-fledged financial panic in the middle of a presidential campaign. Consider. If the S&P 500 were to close at the end of the year where it did on Election Day, it will have suffered this year its steepest drop since 1937. That is 71 years.
At the same time, the economy had suffered nine consecutive months of job losses. Considering the carnage to both capital and labor (which covers just about everybody), even a Ronald Reagan could not have survived. The fact that John McCain got 46 percent of the electorate when 75 percent said the country was going in the wrong direction is quite remarkable.
However crushing the external events, McCain did make two significant unforced errors. His suspension of the campaign during the economic meltdown was a long shot that not only failed, it created the McCain-the-erratic meme that deeply undermined his huge advantage over Obama in perception of leadership.
The choice of Sarah Palin was also a mistake. I'm talking here about its political effects, not the sideshow psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing that had little to do with politics and everything to do with cultural prejudices, resentments and affectations.
Palin was a mistake (" near suicidal," I wrote on the day of her selection) because she completely undercut McCain's principal case against Obama: his inexperience and unreadiness to lead. And her nomination not only intellectually undermined the readiness argument. It also changed the election dynamic by shifting attention, for days on end, to Palin's preparedness, fitness and experience -- and away from Obama's.
McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning. It defied logic for the incumbent-party candidate to try to take "change" away from the opposition. Election Day exit polls bore that out with a vengeance. Voters seeking the "change candidate" went 89 to 9 for Obama.
Which is not to say that Obama did not run a brilliant general election campaign. He did. In its tactically perfect minimalism, it was as well conceived and well executed as the electrifying, highflying, magic carpet ride of his primary victory. By the time of his Denver convention, Obama understood that he had to dispense with the magic and make himself kitchen-table real, accessible and, above all, reassuring. He did that. And when the economic tsunami hit, he understood that all he had to do was get out of the way. He did that too.
With him we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.
But before our old soldier fades away, it is worth acknowledging that McCain ran a valiant race against impossible odds. He will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize.
I didn't think the Palin choice was a mistake. If the economy hadn't tanked it would have probably helped win. McCain recieved quite a hefty bounce after the convention & had succesfully taken the "change" mantra from Obama IMHO. That wouldn't have happened with a usual pick for VP. It was the week where stocks crashed that doomed McCain. He really did look eratic & the suspending the campaign honestly struck me as being a stunt.
While I voted for Obama, there is no joy in McCain's defeat for me.
The only mistake with choosing Palin was changing horses in mod race. McCain was running as the experience candidate and then tired to be the change candidate. He should have ran as an alternative to Bush and Obama instead of just the Change guy, because Obama had been selling that for awhile(which he now has said will take 8 years).
Palin surely energized the base so he may have very well lost by a wider margin without her. The questions of what kind of change Obama was going to bring should have been played by McCains campaign from the beginning.
Palin's Achilles as well as McCain's I believe is trying to go by a campaign strategy, they both do exceedingly well shooting from the hip. As seen in Palin;s post election interviews she comes off as smart and confident when she is speaking directly from her beliefs rather than the campaign/party line.
If they would have just been themselves they may have closed the deal. But in the end the economy and Bush's popularity beat them, not Obama.
I like Sarah Palin a lot, and hope she continues to rise. Uschi stated her butchering of the language as a reason she dislikes her, to me it's the opposite. I live in the Appalachian foothills, I know many wise people who don't speak "proper" English. Somehow around here we get past how many "rules" are broken when you speak and just care about the substance of your words. I could give a crap if someone split an infinitive or not. Palin is not only a strong woman, but from her not so articulate words a great American.
I think like Obama's color did scare some people, the fact that there was a strong woman who succeeded not by playing the victim in social issues but by standing by her guns(literally and figuratively), scared the hell out of a lot of liberals who worried that they didn't have the market cornered on what women considered rights.
I totally agree with the conclusion, McCain is likely the greatest American candidate ever denied the Presidency.
I may have mentioned this before, but a Democrat I know who hates Palin was going on about how much she loves the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and wishes we had more politicians like Jimmy Stewart's character.
I pointed out that was completely untrue. That if "Mr. Smith" were a real person in today's Washington (and especially if he were a Republican) liberals and the center-left press would savage him for the way he spoke, which had a lot more in common with Sarah Palin that Barack Obama. They'd call him 'stupid' and play little games to try and trip him up because he didn't graduate from Harvard or Yale.
THE Bastard content User Public Enemy #4 4000+ posts 18 minutes 43 seconds ago Making a new reply Forum: Politics and Current Events Thread: Re: President Barack Obama
"You're all a bunch of racist crackers for not supporting the messiah."
You don't need to post now. I just did it for you.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer Jesse Washington, Ap National Writer Sat Nov 15, 5:18 pm ET Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.
She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.
"I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it," said Millner, who is black. "But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.
Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."
"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission."
If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.
The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.
Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.
The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."
Other incidents include:
_Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
_At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
_Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
_Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
_University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
_Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
_Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
_A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
_In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.
"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."
"We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'"
"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."
___
Associated Press writers Errin Haines, Jerry Harkavy, Jay Reeves, Johnny Taylor and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.
Hmmmm....seems as if there may still be a few white folks that have a problem with the idea of a black president...or maybe just the existence of black people period.
I know that many of you think that all black people exaggerate racism in this country and now that Obama has been elected we should all just shut up because there's obviously no division between the races at all.
I truly believe that there's at least one of you that posts here regulary that would openly and loudly celebrate Obama's assasination. In fact, I think that person would happily and quickly volunteer to pull the trigger himself and be celebrated a hero by his so-called moderate peers.
If anyone here can read the above article and deny or rationalize away the existence of a pathological and irrational hatred among some whites against ALL blacks, then the person that I am talking about is you.
Oderint, dum metuant.
You are a god damned idiot, you know that? You ought to be smacked upside your dumb-fuck head, even after all these years. Shame on you!
THE Bastard content User Public Enemy #4 4000+ posts 18 minutes 43 seconds ago Making a new reply Forum: Politics and Current Events Thread: Re: President Barack Obama
"You're all a bunch of racist crackers for not supporting the messiah."
You don't need to post now. I just did it for you.
Actually, rex, I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You're not racist. You're just stupid.
Oderint, dum metuant.
You are a god damned idiot, you know that? You ought to be smacked upside your dumb-fuck head, even after all these years. Shame on you!
THE Bastard content User Public Enemy #4 4000+ posts 18 minutes 43 seconds ago Making a new reply Forum: Politics and Current Events Thread: Re: President Barack Obama
"You're all a bunch of racist crackers for not supporting the messiah."
You don't need to post now. I just did it for you.
Actually, rex, I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You're not racist. You're just stupid.
You think someone here would actually wish for someone's death? That is pretty sad. Besides Baloonknot nobody had a problem with the color of Obama's skin. It was his inexperience, and horrible ideas.......and most of all his empty rhetoric. But he won and that is all that matters. I can assure you everyone here wishes the best for this country.
