"The people who are being inconsistent and unprincipled are progressives / liberals / Democrats who pretended to be so outraged by these polices during the Bush years. I remember a lot of Republicans saying that they were only making these complaints and voicing these grievances for partisan opportunism and it turned out they were totally right because these policies under the Obama administration don't bother the vast bulk of the very same progressives who were shrieking about it when there was a Republican president. In fact, many of them have become outright supportive." <iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p8ILk4XbfLk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Many democrats can't stand Obama's policies, but he is the lesser of two weevils. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tvuTsKed-Po" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Ah, rtsy, people have tried to debate you on this a million times. Many agree with these criticisms. Unfortunately, the only way you'll accept this is if people suddenly drop everything they currently believe and blindly accept the same ideology that you've blindly accepted. You make all of your own threads pointless.
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Forget it, he's trolling Spoiler <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ToWcEqQhnIU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If you start just three more threads Obama has promised to stop all of his naughty behaviors. No fakeys.
Itsy can't accept that making fundamentalist market ideology his religion is incompatible with actually being against non-necessary wars as market considerations makes war profitable for many corporations and wealthy individualals. When you have no higher moral vcompass than what the market dictates you don't have much ground to criticize useless aggressive wars. Hence he has to support Romney or even Rand Paul, who is not his father on the war issue, despite their being clearly less against offensive wars in Romney's case and no less against in Rand's case, than Obama since he views them as being more slaves to his market God. Aside from this I will be more impressed by rtsy's alleged or implied devotions to peace and civil liberties when he compensates by starting at least 10 threads in which he clearly states that Romney and the GOP are worse on these issues than Obama, who is clearly pretty poor on these issues and he urges folks to not vote for them.
I'm not even sure what ideology rtsy is advocating anymore. These threads, much like those from Hightop back in the day, are poisoned by the OPs disengenuous motives. Which is not to say the message is inaccurate, however. Myself, I guess I just got tired of debating this over and over again.
Watching the ongoing and accelerating post-election meltdowns of posters here, and the GOP in general, has been most entertaining. rtsy, double plus good
I bet if you asked Greenwald how he felt about people like the OP who supported this during Bush, but have all of the sudden seen the light now that a Democrat is president, he'd find them distasteful as well. But I'm glad Greenwald has stumbled upon this brand new phenomenon of partisans acting all partisan-like!
Is it the same as Obama's? Democrats Retreat on Civil Liberties in 2012 Platform http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/democrats-retreat-civil-liberties-2012-platform What a difference four years makes. In 2008, Democrats were eager to draw a contrast with what they then portrayed as Republican excesses in the fight against Al Qaeda. Since then, the Obama administration has in many cases continued the national security policies of its predecessor—and the Democratic Party's 2012 platform highlights this reversal, abandoning much of the substance and all of the bombast of the 2008 platform. Here are a few places where the differences are most glaring: Indefinite Detention 2008: "To build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court." 2012: Nothing. The Obama administration has maintained the practice of indefinitely detaining certain suspected terrorists. It has also made use of "proxy detention," by which foreign countries detain US citizens under questionable conditions, although the administration did do away with the Bush-era "black sites." Warrantless Surveillance/PATRIOT Act 2008: "We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live. We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war…We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years." 2012: The platform is silent on this issue. This isn't surprising since, at the urging of the Obama administration, congressional Democrats passed up the opportunity to reform the PATRIOT Act when they had a majority in both houses of Congress. Gitmo 2008: "We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects." 2012: "[W]e are substantially reducing the population at Guantánamo Bay without adding to it. And we remain committed to working with all branches of government to close the prison altogether because it is inconsistent with our national security interests and our values." In 2009, most Democrats voted against funding to close Gitmo, and there were substantial internal battles within the administration over doing so. Racial Profiling in Fighting Terrorism 2008: "[W]e will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears." 2012: Nothing. The Obama administration has in fact retained the FBI's Bush-era guidelines allowing race or religion to play some role in investigations. Torture 2008: "We reject torture." 2012: "Advancing our interests may involve new actions and policies to confront threats like terrorism, but the President and the Democratic Party believe these practices must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people's privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well. That is why the President banned torture without exception in his first week in office." Despite Obama's executive order banning torture, Americans who allege they have been detained abroad by foreign governments at the United States' request say they have been abused while in custody. It does not appear as though anyone will face charges over the Bush administration's torture program, including those who went beyond its legal guidelines. The section of the 2012 Democratic platform titled "Staying True to our Values at Home" states, "We must always seek to uphold these values at home, not just when it is easy, but, more importantly, when it is hard." The distance between the 2008 and 2012 platform shows just how hard it has been, and starkly illustrates the extent to which the Democratic Party has given up on its 2008 promises to roll back the national security state that emerged and expanded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
