Obama brought along a food taster.

A man who can break bread with 3-4 needlessly divisive people is stronger for it. The business of this nation has been hard-core public sniping for several decades. Meanwhile the country has deteriorated, physically and psychically, as the media fuels the non-stop punditry. I've got some eyework that needs to be done, a languishing business and I'm just not dressed for all the new wild temperatures. I don't care about artificially pumped-up "sides" anymore, just about rational, emergency action. Go figure.

Or a circle jerk?

Okay, so Barack sits down with the cannibals in Maryland. And the cannibals are on their best behavior, but they invite T. Rex-baugh to the party.

Will, Brooks, and Kristol have been the polite versions of torture-supporters. We always considered them a couple steps above bloody-fanged, addle-pated Limbaugh. But, no! (I gather now.)

I gather that they are just as bad as Limbaugh. They are ditto-heads after all. Barack tries to appear conciliatory and open. This may play well inside the beltway, but the real world sees that it is cuckoo.

Jesus dined with prostitutes and lepers, but he never ate with Pharisees. Barack, you are on dangerous ground.

This means that Obama will have a dinner with say Chomsky, Mike Moore or hell Krugman? For some reason I have my doubts. The last thing that is acceptable to be in America is right. I call it the club Krugman called it recently being wrong in socially acceptable ways others being not preternaturally anti facisit what ever you want to call it it boils down to if you kiss the money/political classes ass you can have any idiotic belief but if you are right but rude about it that is unacceptable.

If the dittoheads who listened to his show had any thinking capacity of thier own they might look at something like this and wonder what "Dear Leader" was doing sitting down with the enemy. One day he's "Barrack the Magic Negro" the next he's having dinner with him. Why it's almost as if (GASP!) Rush might be a complete phony! Saying things on the air about how evil "liberals" and "socialists" are and the next being in the same room with them and not killing them. You might even start to think that he was just some paid shill for special interest groups and didn't really believe some of the things he himself says. Nah, that couldn't possibly be, right guys?

I bet he promised them not to revive the Fairness Doctrine if they'd lay off him.

I think Obama is showing that he is taking action that he will listen to all viewpoints. Hopefully, this will slow down the right rhetoric and begin to bridge the harmful and media-fueled divide between red and blue, right and left, etc.

Let's build a bridge with a respect that we can agree to disagree without casting a villian in every scenario.

Obama wasn't my first choice. Hell, he wasn't 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, but I got behind him until his FISA vote. Sure he got my vote Nov 4th, because a choice between Obama/Biden and Ace/BibleSpice isn't a choice at all for anyone with more than an ounce of reason.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - in a year the "Conservatives" are going to be happier with Obama than the "Liberals". A previous poster had it right, when's he going to break bread with Chomsky, Krugman, Green Peace or Amnesty International?

I'm all for giving Obama a chance in office, but at every fork in the road he's taken a "Right" turn. And the "Conservatives" get to move the Overton window again by labeling him "the most liberal congresscritter evah!"

It's past time the elected representatives of the Democratic Party actually reflected the values of those that voted for them. I understand the frustration of those that vote 3rd party. Well, the USA is my country, The Democratic Party is my party, and I want them both back, dammit! One down, one to go.

Worry not, for I will not prosecute your torture-enabling masters.

"As the applause dies down and the card game is resumed, the animals creep away from the window. However, they hurry back when they hear a furious argument break out. The argument is because Mr. Pilkington and Napoleon have both played an Ace of Spades at the same time. But as the animals look from Napoleon to Pilkington, from man to pig and from pig back to man, they find that they are unable to tell the difference."

didn't want to meet with enemies for fear of 'legitimizing' them, and most people on the left thought that made him seem like a bullheaded, weak-minded fool. We thought it was bullshit.

I'm just saying.

. . . The Count of Monte Cristo has a good point.

He caught a lot of heat for saying he'd meet with America's enemies. Here he is doing just that.

George Will? He's an Establishment-worshipping, MSM fixture in D.C. For him, being cut off from the White House would be a fate worse than death.

Bill Kristol and David Brooks? They're a couple of neocon fleas who are jumping onto a new dog.

I think it's kinda funny that Obama did this. Kinda sly. He took these propagandists and sort of co-opted them by offering them a seat at his table. Let them see the man they're going to slag the next few years, let them sit across the table from him, up close and personal. He gets to see them, study them, and they get undermined in the process because they look like hypocrites. Understanding that Obama's a poker player makes moves like this make sense. He's sizing up some of the opposition.

It'll be even better if he continues to have such experiences further into his administration, and still brings them to the table, and (of course) they won't want to snub him, so they'll show up, which'll continue to undermine them. Sly.

Way to go, Mr President.

Wine and dine, yes but advice? And ding with Limbaugh, yikes!