the body scanners and ridiculously invasive and demeaning pat-downs which have come in under bho are directly affecting the average american more than anything bush did. republicans love the police state so i wouldnt expect them to mind this stuff, but i guarantee you democrats would have made a much bigger stink about body scanners if bush was president.
What could possibly be a more important priority than upholding the ideals that define america? Healthcare is great and all, but he swears to uphold the mother****ing constitution, not an agenda. And he half-assed the agenda anyway. Typical Major justification... In case you didn't notice, his decision to not prosecute basically undid the entire concept that "no one is above the law". Apparently, Obama the constitutional law professor thinks that this is true only until you join the upper reaches of the federal government. Why the **** should any administration, Obama's certainly included, fear repercussions for brazen excursions from the law given this precedent? Heck, much of the article focuses intentionally on this failing. Let me think....40 million people getting health care or 275 million people and the world at large who can still can trust in their rights to habeus corpus and a torture free trial in the USA... And let's be clear - REPUBLICANS STILL ALL VOTED AGAINST HEALTHCARE. He campaigned on both - and only one is a fundamental component of the president't responsibilities. Twist it all you want for his "accomplishments", he failed to uphold his duties. Yes. And more importantly, he has endorsed the idea that the president and his lackeys are immune from the law. Sishir and Major say he sacrificed this out of the kindness of his heart for healthcare. They're suckers. Total suckers. It's totally fair. That's what Judoka said. Twist it all you want but he's trading torture and habeus corpus for some nebulous idea of healthcare and political maneuvering or whatever.
apparently you didn't read the article, the "problem" isn't Obama is torturing, he's not prosecuting the previous admin which i've never personally had a problem with.
Homer: Are you sure you don't want to come to our Civil War reenactment? We need plenty of Indians to shoot. Apu: I do not know which part of that statement to correct first.
I missed this from whenever this thread was.. Funny. You said: But I, like the president, choose cowardice instead of conviction. After all, this may have hurt his chances at reelection and made the republicans upset. When pointed out to you that the choice he made instead ALSO made the GOP upset and hurt his chances at re-election, you say I'm the one the making justifications? This is typical rhad, making a ridiculous claim, being unable to back it up, and then just changing the goal posts. Really? Because there is a long history of government officials not being prosecuted for potential crimes in the past. If you believe this is the first time it's happened and it destroyed some historical concept, you don't really know history. Well, for starters, just because one admin doesn't prosecute someone doesn't mean no future admin will. So your risk-reward analysis blows up right there. I'm going to go ahead and say that most of those 275 million people still trust in their rights. Nice try at hyperbole though. And yet the Senate barely passed health care. A month of delay would have killed it by pushing it past the Scott Brown election. And Congressional hearings from torture stuff could easily have delayed the process. Not to mention the GOP could have also obstructed everything else on the agenda like the stimulus and financial reform. Funny. When you bold a different part of his quote, you can see he telegraphed exactly what he would do long before he entered office. He basically said "I'll let the Justice Dept decide what to do, but I'm going to focus on solving other problems."
you're right, instead of trying to run the country he should try to derail any chance of getting anything done
I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Yes, it is a justification of Obama's backtracking to say that he did it because he needed to further his agenda or whatever. The executive is specifically there to uphold the laws, and he is shirking that duty in this instance. To give rationale that supports him doing the opposite is a justification. Calling him a coward was probably unfair though. In the long history of lame excuses, this is one of the lamest. "People have committed crimes in the past and gotten away with them, so we should not worry about it this time." Revolting. I am guessing you don't understand the term "precedent". You also seem bizarrely naive in how self-serving power structures can be. Is this the same Major who wrote not but an hour ago: "I actually follow what happened instead of making blanket statements that are not based in fact."? More to the point, the sentence above relies on the ignorance and apathy of the electorate to justify your dismissal of the policy's implications. Crazy. I have no qualms with that at all. I'd rather know my government cannot torture with impunity than get sort-of health care reform. Priorities, you know. This is clever on Obama's part but it basically amounts to duplicity. He encourages and supports inquiries and states that crimes should be investigated, but then excuses himself from any actual action based on the results. More to the point, his administration then blocked inquiries in the first place, making the latter part of the equation moot.
I don't see it. I have been consistent throughout this thread and I have made no ridiculous claims. If by "ridiculous claim" you mean "insistence that the president do his job" I guess you have a point...
your insistence that the president prosecute the previous admin in an unprecedented move while trying to put forth an aggressive agenda is background noise. you complain in one thread that he's not putting enough effort into healthcare, the most comprehensive legislation of the last fifty years with a completely no coorperative opposing party yet you want him to make that opposition even more non cooerperative by prosecuting the former admin. you don't want stuff to get done, you just want to be cool and say I don't support any of them
You're so predictable. I never argued he had to do both. I specifically stated that I would rather he did the former than the latter. If you're going to shirk one in favor of the other, at least do it right. The healthcare legislation he passed is lackluster. Don't get me wrong - it's still a good move in the right direction, but he dropped the ball on it in many ways too. Regardless of that, I of course never, ever demanded he somehow accomplish both or argued that prosecution would not have made the path more difficult. That's just your typical methodology of overreacting and making a fool of yourself. You know, like posting this. Yeah, nothing says "cool" like b****ing about politics on the internet.
Obama dun goofed! We should backtrace his backtracking! Spoiler <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dYrlj9VE2fg?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dYrlj9VE2fg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
Rhad you are beginning to sound like inspector Javier. Did you think that GW Bush should've continued investigating Clinton Admin officials over things like foreign campaign contributions? Do you think that Ford should've continued to prosecute Nixon? Truman investigate and prosecute FDR over internment of Japanese and other Americans? Johnson investigate and prosecute the Lincoln Admin. over the suspension of Habeus Corpus? In each of those cases an Admin. had a situation where they could've investigated and or prosecute the previous Admin over shadow dealings, in fact every new Admin. probably has an opportunity to investigate the last one. The problem is is that the Presidency is more than just an investigative office. Perhaps such investigations might satisfy your sense of justice but I doubt that the Presidency will get much else accomplished.
I'm not necessarily arguing with you, but his campaign seemed to be all about fighting on principle. That's why it hurts.
