US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

and here's Huckleberry Graham:

“When Mr. Liu came to the Judiciary Committee and said that, basically, Judge Alito’s philosophy judicially takes us back to the Jim Crow Era, that to me showed an ideological superiority or disdain for conservative ideology that made him in my view an ideologue,” Graham told reporters off the Senate floor.

yeah they're going with the "he was mean to alito" line. heaven fucking forfend.

sorry, my post was in reference to Shakey's link, not Liu

your post still works i think!

god damnit

uh have we talked about this somewhere already

the 1967 borders thing is o_0! I don't think there's a chance in hell Israel will ever go for it, but still.

Republicans are outraged that Obama would suggest that Israel go back to the 1967 borders. But they're always mad at Obama anyway.
NY Times says Netanyahu is willing now to give up more of the West Bank than he's ever offered but not go back to '67 borders

Republicans outraged about Obama, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, suggesting Israel return to its '67 borders

In many ways this is the sort of hard negotiation Obama is notorious for avoiding: demand the sun but (maybe?) settle for the moon.

bibi has been giving us the finger since whenever, right back at ya man.

that's meant as U.S. not like "us."

following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton

Ummm I don't think this is true...?

NYT: the first time an American president has explicitly taken that position

The main bone of contention among the potential candidates and Obama's speech seems to be the president's call for the Israeli government and Palestinian leaders to end their strife in deal that would divide the two groups along 1967 borders - a position held, it should be noted, by the previous administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

fact checker!

where is that quote from

Woops, sorry.

If my memory is correct, Bush talked from both sides of his mouth: assuring the Israelis they could keep their settlements while pleading them to consider the '67 borders again. I don't remember the Barak-Clinton-Arafat deal.

so um, not that I disbelieve you or anything, but unless ctl-F on my browser is broken that quote appears nowhere in that linked article...?

(there's a comment referencing an Atlantic blog post that talks about this but that doesn't contain the quote either)

HERE's the link: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/2012-gopers-call-obamas-middle-east-speech-an-attack-on-israel.php?ref=fpb

^_^

FOX News:

While the idea of using the 1967 borders as a starting point to negotiate land swaps for a final peace deal is not new, hearing an American president use those words sent chills through the Netanyahu government, which is loathe to even think the words “'67 borders.”

Every Israeli television channel carried the speech live and commentators did not have to wait for a formal reaction to the speech to comment that Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government would feel both blindsided and abandoned by a U.S. administration that has never been viewed as a friend.

Speaking with Fox News immediately after the speech, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Dore Gold called the speech a “a radical shift in U.S. policy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference in his office in [i]While the current focus is on 1967 borders, Obama did follow that up with “land swaps,” which is diplomatic speak for allowing Israel to hold on to certain settlement blocks that have been built in the West Bank, while trading out other land.

Larison, unimpressed:

This is very much like the outrage over the demand for a settlement freeze in the past two years. Opposition to settlements has been standard U.S. policy for decades, but Obama created some waves by making an issue out of it. The key to his opponents’ success on settlements was pretending that something completely unremarkable and entirely reasonable was an unspeakably monstrous idea, which then lead to Obama quickly backpedaling away from doing anything to advance his unremarkable consensus position. That seems to be the pattern. First, Obama re-states the rather bland U.S. policy consensus. Next, his critics treat this as a dramatic and radical change to current policy when it isn’t anything of the sort, and the Israeli government pretends that the consensus view is some new, horrible imposition that cannot be tolerated. At the same time, Obama’s political foes declare that he has betrayed Israel, which ought to reveal them as buffoons but instead somehow makes them seem more “credible” on foreign policy. After all of this, Obama backs down and stops saying anything about the uncontroversial position that caused the phony controversy.

I don’t really understand why Obama gave this speech, I don’t see what he was hoping to accomplish with it, and there seems to be general agreement that it was fairly underwhelming and lacking significant proposals of what the U.S. is going to do differently.

Arab Spring supporters not happy with the speech either---too little, too late

From here at the heart of the Arab Spring to its current battlefronts in Damascus; Syria; and Benghazi, Libya, many said the speech had failed to dispel the legacy of resentment from America’s support for Arab autocrats, its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its alliance with Israel. Many said Mr. Obama seemed most willing to support democratic revolts after the fact.

“They wait to see who wins and then support them,” said Ahmed Maher, 30, a civil engineer and an architect of the Egyptian uprising as coordinator of the liberal April 6 Youth Movement.

NY Times

time for another photo op w/ Kissinger I guess

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/20/surveillance/index.html

Patriot Act extension and more. None of it good news.

time for another photo op with Kissinger, I guess.

Where is our Team Six freedom dividend?

bulls fan obama has them on security detail down in miami

no, the restoration of civlibs after the Great Villain got capped

you can't turn around the titanic on a dime.

"actually now that he's dead, there's even MORE reason for the Patriot Act..."

http://jasonlaning.net/ffs/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/another-successful-protest.jpg

Any predictions on how this debt thing will work out? Will Obama destroy Medicare or Medicaid as a "compromise" to prevent Republicans from making the country default or whatever

no

I wish I had that kind of optimism.

I'm pretty sure something will happen, whereupon aerosmith, kevin, and I will come here to post mean shit about Obama with the requisite Greenwald or Digby quote. clemenza will then shake his head sadly and mourn the collapse of the American center.

Morbs will bring his Perrin game.

i will just shake my head in silence

unless anybody talks shit abt texas

steers, queers, a nation in arrears

(Shaking head sadly) I miss those halcyon days of Dwight Eisenhower and Ozzie and Harriet so much.

as someone who's pretty uneasy with even sex offender registries, the fact that these are popping up more and more - and the total lack of opposition to them - is concerning

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/us/21registry.html?_r=1&hpw

Lawmakers around the country are pushing for online registries, like those used for sex offenders, to track the whereabouts of people convicted of a wide variety of crimes, from arson and drunken driving to methamphetamine manufacturing and animal abuse.

LOL yeah lets put all the meth makers/dealers in one big registry, and we can call it the list of where to go get meth...

hahaha

can we get a chill dude who sells fat grams for cheap registry? thanks in advance

these days they call those registered dispensaries, unfortunately you need to be "sick" to use them...

What would be the logic behind an arson registry anyway? Do arsonists usually burn down neighborhoods or something? I thought it was mostly insurance fraud and anti-social teens who burn down small businesses and trash-dumpsters respectively. Not seeing the point...

The arson registry would be so you knew who the most badass criminals are.

Can this extend to things that aren't actually crimes, like being adulterous or a furry? Perhaps being a member of a left-wing or otherwise 'radical' organization?

there's a firehouse here with a plaque on the outside wall warning "only you can prevent arson".