On 10/30/2011 5:56 PM, David R. Birch wrote:
On 10/28/2011 1:45 PM, Hawke wrote:

Just because you are not able to distinguish that there is a wide
margin between the abilities of Obama and Palin doesn't mean the rest
of us have any problem seeing it.

"the rest of us"? Is this a little bipolar multiple personality thing
going on?

What is means is that the rest of us is everybody except those on the
right wing. You see, that's the only group that sees Palin as being
worth a darn. Everybody else sees her as an unqualified quitter and an
opportunist only out to get rich. That's how most people see Palin.



After all Obama was elected president by a wide margin. Palin could
never get that job. So lots of us see who is good and who is not.

Nixon & Clinton were both elected POTUS twice, tskes more than that to
make them good in my eyes.

There is not connection between Nixon & Clinton and Obama & Palin. So
there is nothing to be gained by comparing them. Nixon and Clinton were
both successful politicians who were twice elected president. Obama is
also a successful president. What is Palin? A once elected and less than
a term as governor of a state of under 300K people. Those are not
comparable. Most people see Palin for what she is and most people know
what Obama is too. They don't see them as equals. The point being most
people see Obama is way beyond Palin in capability.



I don't dislike him, he seems to be a nice enough and well
meaning guy. Not qualified to be POTUS, though, any more than
Palin, who seems quite a bitch and just as unqualified to be
POTUS.

That is pretty much how I see her as well. So at least you can see
some thing for what it is.

At least you are able to see that Palin is unqualified and
incapable of a lot of things. I would also suggest that having
been president for nearly three years Obama is now qualified for
the job.

How does experience at doing something badly lead to being now
qualified?

That wouldn't lead to being qualified. But then bad is not how Obama
has done as president despite what you may think.

Not so much an opinion as an observation, but I suspect none of those
looking for the nomination in '08 would have done well.

Given the circumstances that were in effect in January 2009, it is hard
to see how anyone could have done well in the White House. Too many
things were just stacked against any president who followed Bush. But I
see Obama as doing as good a job as anyone could have.


You may not like what he does but he knows the job now far
better than anyone who has never had the job.

And far worse than most who've had it. At least he isn't as bad as
Nixon or Clinton.\\

The fact you would put Nixon and Clinton in the same group tells me a
lot about your judgment. Nixon was a criminal and was booted out of
office. Most experts think Clinton was one of our better presidents.

Yeah, that whole impeachment thing was just so silly. The acquittal was
a monument to partisan politics.

We've only had two impeachments in our history. Both were monuments to
partisanship. So it's no surprise that Clinton's turned out as it did.
The surprise was that the republican house was so crazy that they would
actually impeach a president over virtually nothing and that they should
have known it would not lead to his removal. So why do it? It made no
sense. So it was pure partisan politics.


You place them both as being bad. Clearly you are not seeing things
all that well if you judge one of the worst and one of the best as
being equals.]

So all it takes to have bad judgement is to disagree with you? But I
must have good judgement because I also don't like Palin?

Disagree with me? No, because if you don't know that Nixon is held in
the worst regard of any president then you know nothing. So it's not me
who says Nixon sucked. It's just about everyone. Clinton has a high
rating as a president. Those ratings have nothing to do with me other
than I know what they are. I also know how Palin is regarded by most
Americans. So it's not disagreeing with me that shows your judgment is
bad it's the fact you disagree with the consensus view on those things.

Here's an example. The New England Patriots are regarded as a very good
football team by the experts and most people who know anything about
football. If you were to say they were no good I would say your judgment
isn't any good. Your views on Clinton, Nixon, and Palin look the same to me.


Yet.



You're the man out of step with the rest of the world. Keep
that in mind next time you go bashing him. You've got the odd
ball view. You show that when you try to portray him as
nothing but a "communtiy organizer" when in fact he was a law
professor and an author too.

Somehow that doesn't increase my respect for him. Teaching law
when he hasn't actually practiced? An author? My sister has had
books published, too, they work well when I have trouble
falling asleep, a page or two and it's snooze city.

So you hold authors in low regard as well as law professors?

Once again, you demonstrate your poor reading comprehension. I
don't automatically hold authors or law professors in high or low
regard, I judge them by their merits.

So how much merit do you give to a person who has graduated from Harvard
Law School and taught constitutional law, and who has written best
selling books too? You think that is about on par with your sister's
achievements? Actually if you don't hold someone in high regard that has
achievements like Obama's it shows something is wrong with you. Why
wouldn't his achievements merit your regard? If his don't do it, what in
God's name does it take? Becoming president! Oh, yeah, he did that too,
didn't he? Is that minor too?

Okay, it's just you have a strange way in what you see as merits.
Simply writing a best selling book or being an Ivy League graduate
invited to teach law at the school you graduated from doesn't imply
merit in your book. I'd say that makes your view very odd.

Daniele Steele writes best selling books.

Anything else?

When Obama said "I was a constitutional law professor, which means
unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution," was
he being ironic? Whimsical? He certainly respects the parts he likes.

I've always found it odd that the right seems to respect only the 2nd of
the BOR, while the left respects all but the 2nd.

So you're saying you're ignorant of the fact that there are plenty of
people on the left who support and defend the second amendment?



So what does it take, being a pro football player, or a rich man
to earn your respect?

I don't follow sports much since they stopped feeding Christians
to lions. If the pursuit of wealth produces such as Soros and
Trump, no idols there.


Your values seem rather low brow to me.

Other than that I am neither liberal nor conservative, you know
nothing of my values. OTOH, yours are all too transparent since you
seem unable to question anything from the DNC.

Sorry bro, it don't work like that. You don't get to tell me my
values are transparent but I know nothing of yours. I know as much of
yours as you do of mine, probably more. Everything coming from you is
right wing/libertarian. That's view is as easy to understand as pie.

Which is it, right wing or libertarian? Are you so ignorant that you
don't know that libertarian is a different axis from left/ right? Wasn't
your degree in poli sci? Were you asleep at the lecture where the
authoritarian/libertarian divide was discussed?



I know all about politics. The question is don't you know that
Libertarianism has always been considered just an offshoot of far right
political ideology, and that only recently has it been considered
different from simple conservatism? As far as I'm concerned there still
is no difference between a libertarian and a far right conservative.
Maybe you can find some kind of distinction. I can't.


I see myself as libertarian left and see little difference between the
Dems and Reps in their tight little oligarchy. Maybe you better look
that up, too, while you're researching libertarian left.

Well, I actually did that in college. I didn't just look up those
definitions on Wiki so I don't need to research things I know far better
than any layman does. As for Libertarian left that's a joke. What are
there like 20 people in the country that fit that category?


You have to leave out a lot of his achievements to try to
make Palin look in his league. She's not, you know it, I know
it, everybody knows it. But you're clearly into living in a
fantasy.

The only fantasy I ever had about poor Sarah was when she had
a chance of becoming VPILF and her general incompetence made
that wilt.

I agree that her incompetence is not in the same league as
Obama's, though, now that we've seen how little he's done.

If you knew what you were talking about you would know that in
comparison to other presidents at this point Obama has accomplished a
lot. Don't take my word though. See what the experts say. If you do
they will say Obama has a good record of accomplishments already.

Got any that don't have (D) behind their name?

They do have "D"s behind their names. As in Ph.D.s, these are people who
are experts in evaluating presidents. But if you don't believe them how
about listening to the right wingers. I hear them saying all the time
that Obama is ruining the country. He couldn't do that if he wasn't
getting things done they don't want to see done. So by all accounts from
people who know, Obama is getting a lot done. He could do a lot more but
his republican opposition has more or less shut down the government from
doing anything.

Given that it's the job of republicans to prevent any
legislation from passing, what exactly do you think any non
republican president could have gotten done that Obama hasn't? I
guarantee you Obama would have done far more had it not been for
the house tea party and the senate filibuster. It's not that
Obama is not competent to get things done. It's that his
opposition is in such a strong position that they can stop him
from doing anything. That's not exactly what the word
incompetence means.

Yes, in politics, incompetence is being unable to recognize that
you sometimes have to give to get. This is something both sides of
the aisle seem to have forgotten and a lot of people are sick and
tired of this paralysis. This fuels both the tea parties and the
OWS crowd.

There are also times when you have people to deal with that are
intractable. Would you blame the Israelis because they can't make a
deal with the Palestinians? When you have to bargain with people who
won't compromise then deals are not made. It's like buying a house
from someone who wants more than it's worth and won't take any less.
You don't do the deal.


In case you haven't been paying attention, the Dems are just as partisan
as the Reps, which is why not much has been getting done in DC for the
last few administrations.

The Dems are as partisan as the republicans but they are far more
willing to compromise than they are, and you find Dems voting with
republicans frequently. It's rare for a republican to vote for anything
the Dems are for. Obama also has done many things where he compromised
with the republicans and they haven't compromised on anything. Like the
tax increases. Obama has done spending cuts but they won't allow even a
penny in tax increases, even on the top 1%. So they are different.



Obama has the most ideological congress maybe ever. They don't
compromise. This has happened many times in the past. When it does it
means things stall until a new congress comes in. There's nothing a
president can do in this case but wait it out. Or he can do what
Obama is doing, which is trying to accomplish as much as he can
without dealing with the congress.

Yeah, that Fast & Furious attempt to show how the drug cartels are
getting evil guns from the US is working out so well. Oh wait, Holder
didn't actually know about it, so he couldn't have mentioned it to POTUS.

Wanna buy a bridge?

Funny how your side always brings up every mistake made and never lets
go of it and forgets everything the republicans do wrong instantly. Do
you think that this is the first time the Mexican cartels have gotten
guns from the U.S.? News flash, there has been a flow of guns from the
U.S. to Mexico for decades now. The Bush administration tried to do
something about it unsuccessfully. Now the ATF tried again and it was
not successful. It ain't that big a deal. It doesn't mean Obama is
corrupt or crooked and neither does a solar company given loan
guarantees either. Things the government tries go wrong all the time. An
error is not the same as being crooked. But when your goal is to smear
someone you don't care about anything except being successful. Too bad
that the public doesn't care about the Fast and Furious. Now what are
you going to do?



Hawke