Letters to the Editor
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Kitt ,re baseball
I get ya' . Don't know why the argument . There might be some with a thicker resume , or more politically talented ( or not ) but Obama is the one who decided to run and is the one (apparently ) who can make it work . The right one for the moment .
Oomoex, apparently you missed something. http://www.blackbaseball.com/ (Induct Buck!, btw)
Here is Richard Reeve's recent column , on what Obama gets (~Reagan), and gets right , that Hillary , and other Obama critics don't get .http://www.richardreeves.com/latest_column.html
His suggestion is that general, big-picture speeches , that get people to follow where he leads , is the job of a president . More to it, but that's the basic premise .
JC Miller , what you say about Obama's response may be technically true , but in seeing/hearining it, rather than just reading it , it seems just right . He pulls it off . If the patriotism question was a rare thing , or more substantiative, his response might be seen as you suggest . But the ones making the charges do it to almost everybody that question them, on almost every issue , almost all the time . It wears , and is good to see anything that's not fearful, and accepting of their assumptions . Obama's response comes across (to me ) as "You talk a lot , but don't back it up, when it counts. " I was quite skeptical in the beginning, because of his non-confrontational reputation, but the more I see of him , the more I think he's up to the job .
Ondolette - I traveled the same candidate road , except for Dodd ('til FISA), for ~ same reasons. The one foreign policy point in Obama's favor is that he'll get more of the benefit of doubt , from the rest of the world . That could allow him to rebuild burnt bridges more easily , and do some things that others couldn't . Amazing how much hope people elsewhere have invested in him and us .
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I think I broke it
:) http://www.nrcc.org/
probably not, but fun to imagine
Forgot to mention on last post, that the Congressional Republicans blog is (was) working again , and open for comments . After total silence , there's two entries on FISA/PAA in last 3 days(except they're genarally saying "FISA" to mean both) . Just in case you want to leave 'em an "attaboy" , .....or something
It's ~ the same bs as the video (saw it on CNN tonight) I left the first comment . Just went back to get the exact blog address , and the whole site is down.
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*generally*
^ ( "Edit " button , please?)
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Don't forget Halliburton
I am all for Democrats answering the charge on being unpatriotic with accusations of their own against Republicans: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, no body armor, incompetence after the war, messing things up in Afghanistan, torture, no-bid contracts, etc. etc. etc.
But Obama must be careful. MSM loves him ... for now. The MSM's anti-Hillary bias leads them to want Obama more but if he wins the nomination they will turn on him in favor of "straight talking" John McCain. I hope Obama and his staff are ready for counter the love affair the MSM has with McCain. Obama can't forget that the MSM are whores who suck up to the hot guy and then dump him in the road when some bad stuff starts to happen.
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@ondelette
I don't think you need to apologize for anything. You're one of the more careful writers around here. I think omooex (am i getting that name right yet?) actually created problems for him/her self when s/he brought up a bunch of new ways to try to support the original, fairly basic point, and due to the already somewhat confrontational tone just created a bunch of new ways to for others to disagree rather than clarifying the point, which I asssume was the intent.
I'm starting to notice some common patterns where people start talking past each other online. One thing that typically happens is that someone brings up a new supporting argument for a position they've stated, and depending on the nature of the conversation up to that point, it can often create a whole new argument where all someone suddenly sees is a bunch of new ways to poke holes in the new argument, often times sending the discussion into completely new and unproductive ways, rather than sharpening the original point or clarifying things. Which was what seemed to happen today. It's pretty common. When that happens the best thing to do is cut way back and just make a very limited basic point, which omooex probably could have done more successfully than trying to find a bunch of new ways to make the same point.
Of course when one person calls the other some form of dumbass, forget about it. The conversation is over and it's just a shouting match. I'm actually finding it kind of interesting to see how online conversations work. It's still fairly new and people are still working out kinks in the form. And in the process maybe revealing some things to us about ourselves. I know early on at Glenn's old UT site, I wasted a lot of time and energy on conversations that ended up going nowhere after I started arguing with someone, and over time found it to be not worth the effort. So I've been trying to get better at keeping things on track. Except when I just want to knock some dittoheads books out of his hands, which can be a guilty pleasure. But even then I feel bad afterwards, but good god some times they just amaze you with how bizarre they can be.
One of the first things I learned about online conversations was that most of the really obnoxious extremists have no interest whatsoever in finding any common ground. Eventually you realize and the only reason to engage them is if you're in a bad mood and feel like pushing someone who deserves it around a little.
I think it's something about the nature of anonymous and purely written communication, where we don't have the kinds of cues we get when we actually sit down to talk with people, or feel the same responsibility for the other person's feelings we get when we treat with somebody in person. Also we've gotten away from writing as a primary form of communication, at least until the internet started to bring it back as a more regular form, and it's often just a lack of practice and focus that gets folks off on tangents that are doomed to go nowhere or just end up in an argument. Plus the fairly obvious fact, as has been often pointed out, that certain personalities are just more prone than others to have trouble with online discussions, whether because they get mad fairly quickly or some other reasons too complex for me to figure out. They usually start demanding capitualation on the force of their awesome and wonderful personalities alone, rather than changing someone else's mind the hard way, by arguing for a point, which is always much more work, and for some personality types less desirable than just shouting down someone they don't like.