VIDEO: Palin vs Obama on Experience

Knowing Newt, he probably looked at his watch and hovered around the MSNBC guy hoping to get on the air during Olby’s Variety Show.

Alaskan IndependENTS Party
not
Alaskan IndepdENCE Party

Too funny. Do you spell Panic with a K too?

Yawn, so a Gov welcomed a convention.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a Democrat Mayor welcome the RNC? Ooooooo! Surely there are examples of Gov Obama welcoming conventions. No?

LIBERAL used to mean open-minded. Clearly it means a minds-closed-by-fear now.

If she’s no threat…kick back, relax, read a Biden speech (or one from whoever wrote his).

No threat here. Nope. Nothing to get worked up about. Obama’s got it locked up.

Curious, I wonder what she meant by competition? Could it be that they’re political competitors? Nah…that’s crazy tawk

The modern soul of today’s faux liberal, regressive “progressive”, Democratic Party is shining for all the undecideds to see more clearly than ever thought possible.

Mike, perhaps Mr Palin is going to be a community organizer (ie the pathway to Democratic Party Diety and Presidency)?

Every minute that MSNBC and opponents of John McCain spend ranting about Bristol or The First Dude, is one less minute of free advertising and spin that Obama and the Biden Battalion (or is it Brigade) get.

Oh how I love it when they post to Thinkprogress! Makes me laugh every time. Maybe someone should post a countertalking point from Free Republic? Nah.

Look, Script, Obama is not Lincoln despite your effort to associate the two. Lincoln was a good President (a Republican too), but it’s undeniable that his election started the Civil War, and his lack of experience led to years of prolonging the war by a series of Union failures. Even Bush didn’t have anything like a Bull Run, a second Bull Run, a Fredricksburg (that would have led to impeachment today), a Chancellorsville, and so forth.

Also not found at the Thinkprogress link is the fact that Obams’s foreign policy is the same as Bush’s.
-Bush has combat brigade out of Iraq in 20 months but Obama 16months (not a big difference)
-Obama admitted in an interview that his Pakistan policy is the same as Bush’s
-Obama admitted to Charlie Gibson in the NH debate that he does see a case for pre-emptive war, specifically in Pakistan where Bush is doing that already
-Obama demanded more troops for Afghanistan a year after Bush already ordered it
-Obama’s Iran policy relies on his charisma and ego because the rest of it is all stuff Bush already tried
-Obama’s Russia policy is the same as Bush’s which followed McCain’s lead

Curious (and OT)….Obama opposed the war in Iraq for years now, but if elected…will you support it? How’s that workd as a leader: Oppose the war all the time, unless I’m elected, but if I’m not oppose it….and oh yeah, the opposition isn’t political, it’s on principle. Yeah, right.

WOW! Almost every single Bush conspiracy theory out there in a single post! Man, I haven’t seen that in a long time. WELCOME.

“Pres. Bush didn’t give us a Bull Run but he did give us:”
-”Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram,”
…..Lincoln’s prisoner of war camps were literally a hundred thousand times worse

-”a prolonged war in Iraq,”
…..The same could be said about Pres Bush Sr and Clinton as when viewed as a chronology, fighting and acts of war from the 1991 war with Iraq never ended

-”an unfinished war in Afghanistan,”
…..No one-not even Alexander the Great-has ever finished a war in Afghanistan

-”warrant-less wiretapping,”
…..Seems to me that was authorized in the authorization to use force (modern declaration of war) against Al Queda, and further approved by Congressional Democrats like Pelosi, Daschle, and Reid among others (particularly the Sen and House intel committees w people like Edwards and Kerry)

-”black prisons and extraordinary rendition,”
…..this has been a practice of the US govt since the Revolution

-”billions spent in no bid contracts with little or no accountability,”
…..Lincoln’s Stanton didn’t exactly use a bidding process either

-”firing of US attorneys and politicization of the department, ”
…..All Presidents do this-Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, even Clinton

-”Valerie Plame scandal, ”
…..Yeah, you’re right. There were no scandals in the Lincoln years, right? But I do wish Dep Sec Armitage were held accountable for leaking her name.

-”blown opportunity at Tora Bora,”
…..Read up. UBL escaped Tora Bora in Nov/Dec 01 before the CIA could even get people in there. At the time he was gone, the JAWBREAKER unit had only 3 leads on where he was. When those leads came in, they sent a team to each area. The one got to the Tora Bora region as soon as possible, but it’s likely he was on the other side of the mts in Pakistan by then. Those heroes climbed up 15,000ft on a path where a single panicked mule stopped them for hours because they couldn’t get past. Don’t defame their efforts by rewriting history to feed your political disdain. Having said that, let’s not forget that Lincoln (by your standard) let Lee escape at Antietam, Gettysburg, and other Union victories.

-”The Military Commissions Act (torture, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus),”
…..Lincoln suspended habeas corpus

-”the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and FEMA’s “Heck of a job”, ”
…..Actually, Bush saved New Orleans by forcing the Mayor and Gov (both Dems) to get on his plane and work it out. Then he took over (since neither of them would), and he sent in a general who immediately cleaned things up.

-”lost White House emails (no accident but policy), ”
…..Not sure Lincoln could have lost emails, but I know Hillary Clinton lost her documents on why she fired the travel staff and replaced them w her friends, then the docs magically showed up in the residence. Pretty sure it was just last year, btw, when they found a lost Lincoln doc in the national archives. Want me to look it up?

-”2000 Presidential election (voter suppression and cooked felons list), ”
…..as opposed to Vice President Gore’s effort to make the military votes not count? Besides, the media was allowed to do recounts afterwards and all found Bush won. Go to factcheck instead of Michael Moore.com…. btw, How was Lincoln elected again?

-”2004 Presidential election (Ohio voter irregularities that consistently favored Bush), ”
…..I live in Ohio, and had dinner on election night w an election official who was at a party w me for a friend of mine who ran for Congress back then. He told me flat out that both parties have always done dirty tricks-not just Republicans, and anyone who believes that Democrats don’t…is naive.

-”Loss of US reputation internationally after massive post-911 world support, ”
…..that stems from the Democrats’ and the left’s disinformation about the war in Iraq, but read Wesley Clark’s books or Madeline Albright’s; both talk about the Balkans crisis’ of the 90’s and the reluctance of EU and the world to help the US. Same was true in Somalia. For more perspective, I submit that Britain wasn’t exactly a friend to Lincoln, and neither were France and/or Germany at the time.

-”rampant cronyism, ”
…..LOL, this is a new thing or exclusive to GWB?! C’mon. You can’t possibly be that ignorant. EVERY administration puts its own people in. If anything, it was extremely unusual (to a fault) for GWB to have kept people over from the Clinton Admin (like Tenet, Clarke, Freeh, and many more). Lincoln’s admin was packed with his friends too.

-”decimation of the Labor Department, ”
…..this was a bad thing?

-”insertion into the Patriot Act extension of language allowing US attorneys to be named without Senate approval,”
….Oxymoron alert. The Democratic controlled Senate wrote (co-wrote as both Pat1 and Pat2 were co-written by Dems and Reps) both versions and approved of both versions; ie approved of it.

-”massive and illegal abuse by FBI of National Security Letters,”
….Pinkertons had no checks and balance

-”attempted use of GSA to promote Republican candidates,”
…..again, all Presidents do this

-”attempts to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act on its renewal, and so much more.”
…..Democratic Congress does that-not GWB

The more I look at it, the more I think I was right:
Bush did do a better job than President Lincoln

Mata, it only took a few minutes. Really, what got me was the thought of viewing Lincoln in the same light as GWB is put under, and GWB w the free pass given to Lincoln on so many things. It’s an interesting discussion, and I thought about starting a seperate thread. Really,

Bush gets blamed for Tora Bora, but Lincoln gets a pass after Antietam, Gettysburg, and more?
Bush gets blamed for Abu Ghraib etc., but Lincoln gets a pass for Camp Douglas
Bush gets blamed for cronyism as if Presidents are supposed to keep the same people that the last guy had even if he’s from a totally different and failed party?
Bush gets blamed for habeas corpus, but Lincoln gets a free pass
Bush gets blamed for sitting for a few minutes during 911 attacks, but Lincoln gets a free pass for not supplying Ft Sumter during the seige before the attack?
Bush gets blamed for Katrina, but we’re supposed to ignore that there were devastating natural disasters without ANY support from Lincoln during his two terms?
Bush gets blamed for a loss of international respect (which wasn’t there to begin with), but Lincoln gets a free pass for Britain’s almost declaring war on the US (while actively supplying the enemy), France virtually ending trade w the US, and Germany…oh gawd!

No matter what GWB has done, Lincoln did it worse. The only thing Lincoln did better was he freed the slaves (ignoring the fact that Congress really did that), and he was a fantastic speaker (where as GWB is painful to watch let alone listen to imo).

I love these kinds of debates

I’m back in town. Now it’s my turn. My apologies to Scott’s fan club but it is time to take away what you think is his victory. Let’s start with the obvious and make our way down the list.
1)“Read up. UBL escaped Tora Bora in Nov/Dec 01 before the CIA could even get people in there.”

~Gary Brentsen, disagrees with you. According to Gary Berntsen, the key CIA field commander on the ground near Tora Bora at the time, he in vain requested 800 American army rangers to prevent bin Laden’s escape. Gen. Tommy Franks, who argued U.S. troops were not necessary because an Afghan militia had been hired to fight in their place, denied the request.

-Actually, I think if you’ll look in Bernsten’s book, JAWBREAKER, on pages 239-240 you’ll see that on Nov11 the CIA got the first reports of UBL escaping via Tora Bora into Pakistan. Additionally, in the book, Al Queda’s Great Escape, on pg117 you’ll see that UBL made his way out into Pakistan around Nov13. The request for Rangers and more troops didn’t come until weeks later. Moreover, even Bernsten admits in his book that such additional forces can’t guarantee to have gotten UBL or even to have stopped more AQ from escaping. This is logical since just a few months later the US sent thousands of troops to try and do exactly what Bernsten requested doing with just 800 (this was called Operation Anaconda). Most importantly, focusing on UBL and in any way describing Tora Bora operations as a failure is simply wrong. American forces decimated Al Queda there as they did in Operation Anaconda later, but neither operation-due completely to the terrain, was able to prevent AQ from escaping into Pakistan. I have at least 4 other books I could reference, but the fact is UBL escaped long before the US could get to Tora Bora and stop him. It remains, if one is to blame GWB for “letting” UBL escape, then it’s like blaming FDR for letting Von Rundstadt escape Falaise, or Lincoln for letting Lee escape numerous times, or so many other examples. You yourself make this point by showing that it was Gen Franks-not Pres Bush-who rejected addl forces (which likely wouldn’t have made a big difference since UBL was already gone).

2)“Lincoln’s prisoner of war camps were literally a hundred thousand times worse”

~Of course they were, it was the 1800’s!!! We have progressed both technologically and sociologically. Looking shallow into the past, we can find profound barbarism.

-I disagree because even by 1800’s standards (if that’s the standard by which you choose to measure) Lincoln’s POW camps were atrocious. Camp Douglass was among the worst. Gitmo (for example) has higher standards than most prisons in the U.S.

3)“The same could be said about Pres Bush Sr. and Clinton as when viewed as a chronology, fighting and acts of war from the 1991 war with Iraq never ended”

~ Really…so are you comparing the mini-war and the microwave fight during the Bush Sr. and Clinton presidencies to the current war in Iraq? There are thousands of US dead and many more wounded I don’t think that’s the same.

I’m saying the war never ended if you look at a timeline (got a date for when the fighting stopped and when Iraq complied with the UN?), and citing casualties I’d point to the decline in Iraqi casualties caused by the US because of the invasion. Prior to it, the UNICEF claimed that millions of Iraqis died by the US bombings and blockade. Since the invasion actual Iraqi deaths have been about 100k over 5years, and most of those were AQ suicide bombers targeting Iraqis to set off sectarian violence.

4)“No one-not even Alexander the Great-has ever finished a war in Afghanistan”

~This does not merit a response. So we move-on.

cool

5) “All Presidents do this-Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, even Clinton”

~I’m familiar with this argument, but there is a reason why it became a controversy. One reason is that they put grossly inadequate (putting it mildly) people in the positions. Another reason may be the scale, but the biggest reason was that they said it was performance-based firings. A professional’s most valuable asset is his/her reputation.

Please show some evidence that GWB’s admin has done this more than any other.

6) ”this has been a practice of the US govt since the Revolution”

~I think the issue is scale. We have ramped-up those activities in comparison to recent years (Clinton/Bush Sr. years).

-Me, I’d say the Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam were bigger in scale.

7) “Actually, Bush saved New Orleans by forcing the Mayor and Gov (both Dems) to get on his plane and work it out.”

~LOL! That is very funny. President Bush saved New Orleans with a photo op. No, my friend first responders, state government, local government, and plain citizens acted heroically while the response was slow on the federal level. “Brownee” himself said that the response was unacceptable. The news was inundated with Katrina related FEMA blunders. I’m not going to beat this dead horse (your from Ohio not Louisiana).

I’m not denying that the admin did poorly, but the locals and the state govt failed, and continued to fail, and only at President Bush’s leadership did he take over, send in a general and pickup the slack were the locals and state govts continued to fail. As evidence of this I ask, what would have happened if Pres Bush had not stepped in, and made corrections? If Bush continued to fail as the State and local govts did, then the situation would have been worse, but it was Bush and the Fed who corrected it.

“Besides, the media was allowed to do recounts afterwards and all found Bush won. Go to factcheck”

~I went to factcheck my cherry-picking friend. It seems that the media consensus was that Gore would have won if all counties (not just the one’s in dispute) were recounted. Also, you missed the point (cooked felons list & etc.).

No. The cherry-picking is on your part since your point relies on possibility/minority opinion, not the majority of opinion:
“Nobody can say for sure who might have won. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted.
According to a massive months-long study commissioned by eight news organizations in 2001, George W. Bush probably still would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a limited statewide recount to go forward as ordered by Florida’s highest court.

Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the limited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked for, the study found.”
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/when_the_votes_were_recounted_in_florida.html

9) “that stems from the Democrats’ and the left’s disinformation about the war in Iraq…”

~Please read my statements. We had massive world support post-911 and we lost it.

-Nope. Not true. Pakistan had to be threatened to support the U.S. In Egypt and Syria Arab mobs attacked US embassies and tried to burn them. In Palestine there was dancing in the streets with joy as the US was being attacked. In the UK the govt almost fell. In Pakistan, once they agreed to cooperate with the US, the govt almost collapsed and hundreds of thousands protested and were then jailed. In France, the famous article “We are all Americans” actually described how the US had it coming, and it was about time the US was attacked. In NYC tens of thousands marched in protest to the US attack on Afghanistan. In DC, Ted Kennedy led a growing caucus of Democrats who cried out demanding the Taliban be negotiated with and given more time to hand over UBL rather than attack. There was a great deal of skin deep support to be certain, but the myth of worldwide unity against terrorism was not there. Had it been, the comment from Pres Bush that you are either with the nations that fight terror or you are against them…that line wouldn’t have been problematic at all.

10) “LOL, this [rampant cronyism] is a new thing or exclusive to GWB?! C’mon. You can’t possibly be that ignorant.”

~Once again the issue is scale. I am glad that you brought up Clinton and Lincoln though. Clinton suffered character assassination for appointing people in a bi-partisan way. Heck he was investigated by some of the people he appointed. Lincoln picked a Vice President that disagreed with his views (a lot of what he worked for was hindered). Oh, by the way I’m not ignorant.

Argumentative. Unless you can provide a comparable list of Bush Admin cronies vs Clinton, Lincoln, etc then you’re just making claims. The fact is that political appointees are almost always friends, supporters, etc., and the Bush Admin isn’t the peak of this phenomenon, but rather on par with it.

11)”this [the decimation of the Labor Department] was a bad thing?

~Yes, it was.

Why?

12) I will try catching some of the things I didn’t respond to in broad statements below.

Lincoln’s challenges in the 1800’s are not comparable to Bush’s blunders in the 21st century. Read my earlier statement (Bush inherited the greatest nation built on the contributions of Lincoln and other great Americans). Of course it was more repressive, it was 1800’s and it was a Civil War (just image the enemy within that terrorism is multiplied by a million). Unlike Bush, Lincoln didn’t even want to go to war (that was the root cause of some of his early missteps). Also, Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest military minds of his time.

-“ just image the enemy within that terrorism is multiplied by a million” My point exactly. Btw, Bush didn’t WANT to go to war. He avoided it for years. If he wanted to go to war he could have said the USS Cole was attacked by UBL and Iraq working together. Instead he waited years, tried everything reasonably possible, and couldn’t remove the threat posed by Saddam without direct invasion.

The things that I listed are not conspiracy theories. The idea of the “liberal media” is a conspiracy theory. The media is a massive entity consisting of progressives, conservatives, and independents (including fake independents).

I agree re the myth of a liberal media (for the most part), but the effect of opposing the war on the Taliban (from 2000 onwards) as well as the opposition to success in the Iraq War before it had even taken place directly brought about the very situation such opposition supposedly sought to prevent. By opposing the invasion millions of people convinced Saddam that the US didn’t have the support for war, and that GWB was just bluffing. Saddam and all of his advisors admitted that he didn’t take the threat seriously until it was too late. Why didn’t he take it seriously?

Now back to the original thread (I’m not going to reply to anything else for now). Regardless of rumors about Obama in State Legislature (there are plenty of rumors about McCain), his official record in the US Senate remains as I listed above. (Actually, there might be things that I need to add to the list) So the core argument, Obama did nothing, is invalid. This debate should now be over.

If Obama did anything noteworthy, ya wouldn’t have to look it up.