This kind of thing is probably why the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012. "In 2012, men need a special machine to fap. It's all over after that."
*rolleyes*
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So, let's talk about the 9/11/12 muslim attacks on Americans in the middle east, shall we?
Limbaugh raised an interesting point on Friday: the natural thing for any administration--particularly one running for re-election--should be to blame the attack on the islamic terrorists who were responsible for other attacks on Americans in the past (both here and abroad). Bad guys doing bad things--you stand up to the bullshit and tell them it's not going to go unpunished and you do something.
Limbaugh's point was that anything of the sort would be an admission that Obama's foreign policy is an abject failure. I can see his point--and Obama's foreign policy is an abject failure--but I don't think that's it.
I think the Obama administration was completely gobsmacked by the attacks last Tuesday.
I don't think they were expecting the events that happened because, for one thing, Dear Leader is a narcissist who thinks he can do anything. Obama himself wasn't expecting any attacks because he's been concentrating on campaigning for re-election and hasn't been paying attention to intelligence briefings or other matters of state that he finds disagreeable; but moreso Obama wasn't expecting anything like this because, "C'mon, this is me here! Those guys in the middle east love me, because--hell!--look at my stance on Israel! When I go meet their leaders in world forums everyone is all smiles and handshakes!"
So in Libya our consulate had no security. The administration didn't want to "insult" Libya by insisting on American forces providing security for our consulate.
And now the administration is saying that their security worked</a> much the same way we were told that our anti-terrorism security systems "worked" when the underwear bomber failed to blow up an airplane. (When he failed because he had a crappy detonator.)
Karl Denninger has a post up detailing the evidence that this was a coordinated attack rather than the "spontaneous protest" that Obama and his lapdog press wants us to believe it is.
These attacks weren't supposed to happen--weren't going to happen--because Obama is President and he's so good at it. That's why they were gobsmacked by the attacks, and that's why their first response was to shift blame and apologize, rather than fight back.
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An excellent distillation of the story and the media's coverage of it.
The media is carrying Obama's water, same as they did in 2008; and to my surprise they haven't turned on him the way I expected them to. I thought there'd be a backlash in 2009 or 2010 at the latest, as the press desperately tried to reclaim the confidence of the readership.
The last thing I expected was for them to double down on it.
So the AoSHQ overnight open thread starts with:
So Distrust In Media Hits New High. Not a surprise. It's not like they are actually practicing their trade craft. They are now essentially Democratic Operatives With A Byline pushing false narratives. In a time where embassies are under siege, Americans killed or in harms way, the economy in the gutter the top stories focus on Romney. His taxes. A video. Anything and everything but anything negative about Obama. It's not like there is a dearth of bad Obama stories. Why you have The Democrats False Narrative On The Auto Industry. How about The President Falsely Claiming Fast And Furious Program 'Began Under Bush'? Or what about Obama's Embassy Cover Story Dissolves? But somehow WaPo Declares Romney 'Had The Worst Week'.That paragraph is full of links I'm not replicating here, but if you look at them you won't be surprised that they're all bad stories for Demcorats (except the Romney one).
Unless you are, yourself, a Democrat. You'll look at those stories as unfair attack pieces bereft of any serious connection to reality if you are. Meanwhile, you will view any story presenting Obama in Messiah-Vision as completely correct.
...the American press reacted with shock and dismay that Obama actually had to answer some "tough" questions when he went on Univision.
The funny thing is, the questions asked SHOULD have been in his comfort zone. They weren't hard hitting questions. His gaffes in his answers let you know why Obama has been avoiding the press and only showing up for Letterman and Jay-Z and The View.The questions asked of him by the Univision folks weren't tough, hard-hitting questions. They were the kind of questions most politicians expect and prepare for, because they're honest and reasonable questions about shifts in policy or forgotten campaign promises. To use an idiom Obama should understand, these kind of questions are par for the course and when you're a sitting President you should be ready and able and prepared to answer questions like that. "Hey, shithead, during your campaign you promised X, and you haven't even talked about X since the elections. What happened?" Durr, uh, well, erm, y'know, duuhhh, Republican obstructionism. "Your party had control of Congress for the first two years of your administration and could not have stopped you." Yeah, but, um, erm, uhh, durr, Republican obstructionism and, urr, duhh, it's unfair.
Included in that AoSHQ post is a line that should have finished that segment: "I bet we wouldn't know who Bob Woodward is today if Nixon had been a Democrat." If Nixon had been a Democrat he would have handed over the reins of power to Ford in 1977, the Reagan Presidency would have been delayed by at least four years, and the economic malaise would have continued a lot longer than it did.
And yeah, Woodward would be a retired nobody.
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"The economic malaise would have continued a lot longer than it did":
I make no bones about the fact that Nixon was a liberal. It's the dirty little secret no one wants anyone to know--not the Democrats, for whom Nixon is still a symbol of the Evil Republican Machine; not the American left, for whom Nixon is the evil bastard who sent Alger Hiss to jail; and not the Republicans.
I should say, "not the country club Republicans."
Take a look at Nixon's policies, though:
Established the EPADo I have to go on?
Established OSHA
Gutted NASA
Presided over the implementation of price controls on energy, leading to energy shortages and rationing
Took the US off the gold standard
Normalized relations with China on the theory that the US could not win the war on communism
Nixon normalized relations with China even as the US was fighting a war with Chinese proxies in Vietnam. Taking us off the gold standard allowed the United States to run up the enormous deficits that is the core feature of the blue model; we can't run the printing presses at emergency maximum if we have to have enough gold on hand to back the currency.
I don't need to amplify the bit about the EPA, do I?
Nixon was a liberal.
...if he'd been a Democrat his policies would not have been terribly different than they were, and Woodward and Bernstein would have ignored "Deep Throat" and not bothered investigating Watergate. All else being equal, then, Ford would have gone on to be President in 1976; and James Earl Carter would probably have been Ford's vice-President for a term or two, and then run in the 1984 election against Reagan.
Because the media has always had a severe liberal bias. It's just more obvious now; they're not even trying to hide it any longer. They tell themselves that they're impartial, but it's obvious to all and sundry that they are not.
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Ormus continues to ravage Azeroth. Last night he ventured into the Firelands, and is now running around there collecting marks. Whee!
Tuesday, MoP goes live, and then I stop doing anything with Ormus while I work on my panda monk.