Debeo Summa Credo: But you guys are as delusional as any limbaugh listening dittohead or fox news viewer if you think your guy is getting shiat on any more excessively than Bush was by your side.

For almost the entirity of Bush's first term, he was given an absolute free ride by the media. Nothing he did could be meaningfully questioned by anyone. MSNBC fired Phil Donahue for being too critical of Bush. It wasn't until hurricane Katrina most of a year into Bush's 2nd term that the media started actually asking questions. And yes, because Bush's was such an objectively terrible presidency, the tone of those questions were sometimes mildly aggressive.

But even then, the national Democratic Party remained civil. Congressional Democrats never shouted down Bush during a speech before Congress. Progressive Supreme Court Justices never threw tantrums at State of the Union addresses, nor sat them out in protest because their delicate feelings got hurt. Even when much of the grassroots left got hostile, the progressive institutional apparatus remained civil. Now, by contrast, the conservative institutional apparatus stop just short of outright calling for violence against the administration.

There is no comparison between "my side's" treatment of the objectively awful Bush presidency, and "your side's" treatment of the objectively competent Obama presidency.

Mugato: cameroncrazy1984: Abject failure? Please define.

They never do.

Added to that, we're out of Iraq. his biggest failures involve not being able to un-fark everything Bush spent 8 years farking up and not to make excuses but if you can't see a little of the blame going to an uncompromisingly obstructionist congress you're being willfully ignorant.


All due respect, I have to ask... why do people do this?

It's clear to anyone with a functioning brain and who doesn't have his head crammed up the Fox News/WND/freerepublic/Limbaugh mediaverse's dirty bunghole that virtually all of the blame for hampering the recovery absolutely falls on the obstructionist congress who made it very clear right from the start that in order to protect their party's future, they were going to grab hold of this president's legs and do everything thing in their power to weight him down and hold him (and subsequently this country) at the 5 yard line because they didn't want him getting any credit for turning around the economic disaster that they and their pretend-Cowboy President created.

Yet people get cowed into "being reasonable" and talking in THEIR terms as if there was mutual farkery afoot.

I mean seriously... "not to make excuses?" "a little of the blame?"

You're never going to bridge some gap with them. You're never going to find common cause with them no matter how much ground you give up. You're simply going to strengthen their position. And, they won't even thank you for it. They'll just angle to see how much MORE ground they can seize now that they know you're an appeaser.

But the worst part is the mostly disinterested moderate who don't pay a whole lot of attention to what's going on, because they listen to that, and what they hear is "sounds like that guy is trying to make excuses and shift the blame, I guess Obama really IS the awful President my conservative friends are constantly saying he is"

This is why the left can't gain ground. Every time we have a winning position or a strong case to make or a strong hand of any kind, we practically break our fingers in our rush to fold it so we can show right-wingers what good compromisers we are... and they don't give a shiat. We're gonna ride the high-horse right into the history books.

There's nothing in the world wrong with being aggressively and unapologetically correct.

Il Douchey: No, that stuff is all small ball. I'm talking about the unprecedented, sickening multi-trillion increase in our national debt.

So you think the government should be pro-cyclical by spending more in good times and less in bad? Why the fark does that make any sense whatsoever?

I'm talking about 135% increase in food stamps.

You're in favor of people starving to death on the streets?

I'm talking about $4/gallon gas while our own resources are throttled.

Our resources aren't throttled. We're producing more oil per day today than at any time in the last decade. We've laid enough new pipelines in America to circle the planet. We're using less oil in this country than at any time since Bill Clinton was president. In short, supply is high, demand is low, and prices are still skyrocketing. That's because the oil market is a worldwide market. Are you really in favor of banning us from exporting oil.

I'm talking about the loss of our country's AAA credit rating.

S&P said the biggest reason why they downgraded America's debt is because of political gridlock and even specifically called out Republicans because of their complete refusal to consider any measures that would raise revenues.

I'm talking about union goons being bailed out, coddled and put ahead of bondholders by an obedient president.

Translation: government should support the stinking rich because fark the poor.

I'm talking about fast and furious.

You won't hear me say anything good about that operation, but pretending it's as bad as, say, engaging in preemptive war under fabricated pretenses or laundering money through slush funds to help re-elect the president is ludicrous.

I'm talking about 26 year old Americans who aren't ashamed to be treated as children.

They should all just get jobs that offer health insurance, right?

I'm talking about an ill conceived, unpopular, unconstitutional Obamacare that will soon die anyway.

Every individual component of ObamaCares is supported by a majority of Americans. The only two things holding its popularity down are the universal responsibility requirement and the fact that Republicans have wantonly lied about what ObamaCares will do.

inner ted: Mugato: cameroncrazy1984: Abject failure? Please define.

They never do.

Added to that, we're out of Iraq. his biggest failures involve not being able to un-fark everything Bush spent 8 years farking up and not to make excuses but if you can't see a little of the blame going to an uncompromisingly obstructionist congress you're being willfully ignorant.

the "willful ignorance" is not just limited to his detractors. there is a large portion of his supporters (many here on fark) that have their head just as far up their ass as folks who say he's done nothing.

even your own post. giving O credit for getting out of Iraq is just silly. we were locked into leaving there at the end of 2011 several years ago. (if you need this cited cause you cant google yourself, let me know.)

and no mention of the ass raping our civil liberties are taking while he's at the helm??? ndaa ?? assassinating u.s. citizens via drone strikes abroad?? guantanamo (spelling is a biatch) still open?? making a lot of promises about leaving states with loose marijuana laws alone... then kicking down doors and locking those same people up?

i still think he's the best option... but i have a real hard time voting for him in light of those points mentioned above. it's just that the alternative is even worse.

but it's painful clear that lots of folks on either side put their blinders on and their heads firmly in their ass.

Classic pot calling the kettle black. We weren't required to be out of Iraq. There was an option to stay. Obama decided not to give the Iraqis the power to arrest and prosecute our people under their laws. So we left. Do you remember McCain saying he thought it would be ok for us to be there for a hundred years? You can only speculate as to whether or not we would be out of there under him. I personally believe that if McCain was president, he would have found a way to keep a sizable US military presence there as long as he could.

Your civil rights raping points skew what actually has occurred. He ordered an attack on a high-ranking terrorist who had ample opportunity to present himself for arrest. He chose instead to hide out with other known terrorists. He gave up his rights when he decided to become an admitted member of an enemy of this country. I will cry no tears for him.

The NDAA bill he signed that people like you clutch your pearls over was an appropriations bill. It funded our military, and yes, contained language that clarified and defined laws already on the books under the AUMF. It passed the House and Senate with a veto-proof majority, and if Obama had refused to sign it, it would have only been delayed and eventually would have been passed into law anyway. Meanwhile, the Republicans would have been on Fox 24/7 screaming about how Obama cares so little about "our troops" that he won't even sign a bill to fund them even when he knows it's veto proof. It was nothing but a trap, and as usual, Obama sidestepped it.

Gitmo has been ordered closed by Obama. No funding bills for said closing were allowed to pass, and nobody will agree to take the remaining prisoners. Congress (both R and D) hold the blame for this, not Obama. Unless you think he should pay for it out of his own pocket and put them up in the White House.

And although I personally think pot should be completely legal, I just don't care enough to bother discussing it. All I know is that the JD is following existing laws. I suppose they could ignore them, but it seems like that would set a dangerous precedent just so people could get high.

Debeo Summa Credo: liberals who were so opposed to Bush that they criticized any move he made regarding a response to 9/11,

This is personally my favorite right-wing canard:

"Rush Limbaugh, the intellectual father of modern conservatism, called on his listeners to 'hound and harass' Democrats out of office.Republican states have threatened to secede from the union, provoking inevitable civil war if they do. Republican leaders employ inflammatory rhetoric intentionally calculated to hint at political violence.

But both sides are equally bad, because some hippy HATED BUSH NO MATTER WHAT HE DID. SEE, HERE HE IS BURNING BUSH IN EFFIGY AT AN ANTIWAR PROTEST! THEY'RE EXACTLY THE SAME!"

Here's the thing:

It is coming out that major players in Obama's administration advised against the bin Laden raid. They foresaw disastrous political consequences if the raid failed. But Obama put protecting America above his own political fortune, and he made the right call for the country.

Now, who do you trust handling the NEXT 3 AM phone call? President Obama, who has demonstrated the grit, leadership, and moral courage to do what's right for America instead of what's politically expedient?

Or Mitt Romney?

Election over. Welcome to Obama II.

I think, in the mind of the Teabaggers, Obama doesn't have to be 2x better just to be considered average. I think he could reasonably get way with only being 2/5ths better in order to be considered average...

Mrtraveler01: Serious Black: vernonFL: Barack Hussein Obama:

- Is an empty suit who has no idea what he's doing / has hatched his sinister master plan to destroy America, Capitalism and Christianity.

- Is a Muslim who wants to bring Sharia Law to America / is an Athiest Commie

- Has apologized, appeased and and surrendered to our enemies / is a war criminal.

Do you know how stupid you sound when you say Obama is all of these things???

It's not stupid at all. Obama is each of those things on different days of the week. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he is a Muslim empty suit who can't stop apologizing and appeasing everyone. Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend, he's an evil, atheist communist who wants to illegally destroy America and the rest of the world.

I really need to get a calendar to keep track of this stuff.

The third Sunday after the spring equinox is the Fartover, when all of the inhabitants of the land make their way back to their home villages and pay 200% of their capital gains taxes. A holy feast is then held for the hippies of the land, where they do stink most mightily and smoke their reefer cigarettes, and as the job creators are beheaded at dusk, the hippies give the wealth to the welfare queens while the enemies of America dance lewdly on the hilltops.

And no work is done, for it is a solemn day of rest for Fartbongo.

The media wants a horse race, so that is what they will give us.

If Obama had an R next to his name and Mitt was running as the Democrat, all other things the same, the Fox News reports would be that we are well on the way to a recovery, Obamacare would be hailed as the greatest gift Republicans had given the nation in 30 years, the stimulus worked wonders, and Mitt Romney (D) would be considered the greatest threat to the American way of life, and you'd be an un-American traitor to even think about voting for Mittens; but they would still highlight stories about how and why the Democrats could win, just to generate ratings.

Shaggy_C: CPennypacker: War criminal? That's new.

Nah, the Europeans were making quite a fuss about it at the time. The Republicans tried to jump on board but they quickly found that it wasn't going to be a good argument given that their base is a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs. So instead they went the "he's not giving enough credit to Bush!" route.

If we cared what the Europeans cared about war crimes Bush and Cheney would be in jail right now