Barack Hussein Obama foreign policy disaster megathread

[rogue06]

Yes, we know all about what comedians, the fringe elements, and the propagandists that fire those elements up say and do, but Ted Nugent, and his ilk spout their racist mouths off at the request of, and to the delight of, the Republican/Tea Party politicians. Hey, Nugent even threatened to assasinate the President should he get re-elected and nary a soul in the Republican Party had the decency to put him in his place. Thats the problem, they not only rarely condemn this kind of hate speech, they actually encourage it.

And with the exception of Nuggent such wild statements were almost only seen being made at the edges of Tea Party events whereas the attacks made against Bush were made from the speaker's platforms of liberal events such as the Occupy protests -- often with Democrat politicians nodding in approval as they were made.

I agree that political attacks from both sides have gotten increasingly harsh and coarse over the past several decades but again this is not something unheard of in American politics. During the 19th century the public was treated to a steady stream of vicious attacks delivered against political opponents. Many of the words used then (things like scalawag, reprobate, charlatan...) are looked at today as being somewhat quaint and tame but were fighting words back then which led to duels. A perfect example of this is the Burr-Hamilton duel in 1804 which was brought to a head when Hamilton called Burr a "profligate, a voluptuary in the extreme” as well as being a corrupt liar in both letters and publicly to his face at a dinner party.

Shortly before during the 1800 presidential race Jefferson called John Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Adams campaign in turn claimed that Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” Adams' supporters also publicly declared that if Jefferson were to become the president, "we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution" and he would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced."

The animosity that was built up between the two essentially led to the passage of the 12th Amendment which ended the idea of having the person who got the second most votes in the election for president becoming the vice president.

During the 1828 presidential campaign John Q. Adam's supporters targeted Jackson's family with particular nasty zeal saying that his mother was a prostitute and calling his wife a "convicted adulteress," "dirty black wench" and said she was prone to "open and notorious lewdness." As for Jackson himself he was accused of being a cannibal saying that after massacring over 500 Indians one evening, "the blood thirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities, by ordering his Bowman to dress a dozen of these Indian bodies for his breakfast, which he devoured without leaving even a fragment."

Apparently Adams was horrified at how nasty the attacks had become while Jackson personally organized the attacks on Adams and his character helping to spread a rumor that Adam's success as a diplomat hinged on his ability to procure prostitutes for foreign leaders and referred to him as a pimp.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 have often been held up as classic examples of a proper civil debate (probably because of how much they were sanitized in later years), but were in fact vicious affairs full of crude language with personal insults and racial slurs being hurled.

In the 1860 presidential race Douglas described Lincoln as being a "horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman" and said he was a drunk who would "ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together.”

And the newspapers of the time were no different. "Harper's Weekly" described Lincoln using terms like "Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robher [sic], Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate." The Chicago Times said the following about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "We did not conceive it possible that even Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself."

During the 1876 Democrats accused Rutherford B. Hayes of two particularly heinous crimes -- namely shooting his own mother and stealing the pay soldiers killed in action when he was a Union general

And who could possibly forget how Grover Cleveland was repeatedly accused by Republican opponents of fathering an illegitimate child during the 1884 campaign led by chants of "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?" used to taunt Cleveland at rallies and while he delivered speeches. In fact children were brought to these events to lead these chants. Following Cleveland's narrow victory, the chant gained a classic rejoinder: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

So the idea that the vicious campaigns rhetoric employed by both sides in the past couple of decades is somehow unique is completely wrong and nothing but a myth.

[rogue06]

BTW the Dixie chics Quote was: "we don't want this war, this violence, and we are ashamed that the president of the U.S. is from our state of Texas. Hardly the kind of thing we're talking about. And posting a bunch of unreferenced pictures isn't saying much either. But again, you didn't see politicians on the Democratic side of the isle promoting and encouraging that kind of stuff.

You left out the part where Natalie Maine referred to Bush as a dumb f-word among several other things.

[Darth Executor]

Yes, we know all about what comedians, the fringe elements, and the propagandists that fire those elements up say and do, but Ted Nugent, and his ilk spout their racist mouths off at the request of, and to the delight of, the Republican/Tea Party politicians. Hey, Nugent even threatened to assasinate the President should he get re-elected and nary a soul in the Republican Party had the decency to put him in his place. Thats the problem, they not only rarely condemn this kind of hate speech, they actually encourage it.
BTW the Dixie chics Quote was: "we don't want this war, this violence, and we are ashamed that the president of the U.S. is from our state of Texas. Hardly the kind of thing we're talking about. And posting a bunch of unreferenced pictures isn't saying much either. But again, you didn't see politicians on the Democratic side of the isle promoting and encouraging that kind of stuff.

In a country where people get their news from the Daily Show comedians are not fringe.

[JimL]

And with the exception of Nuggent such wild statements were almost only seen being made at the edges of Tea Party events whereas the attacks made against Bush were made from the speaker's platforms of liberal events such as the Occupy protests -- often with Democrat politicians nodding in approval as they were made.

I agree that political attacks from both sides have gotten increasingly harsh and coarse over the past several decades but again this is not something unheard of in American politics. During the 19th century the public was treated to a steady stream of vicious attacks delivered against political opponents. Many of the words used then (things like scalawag, reprobate, charlatan...) are looked at today as being somewhat quaint and tame but were fighting words back then which led to duels. A perfect example of this is the Burr-Hamilton duel in 1804 which was brought to a head when Hamilton called Burr a "profligate, a voluptuary in the extreme” as well as being a corrupt liar in both letters and publicly to his face at a dinner party.

Shortly before during the 1800 presidential race Jefferson called John Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Adams campaign in turn claimed that Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” Adams' supporters also publicly declared that if Jefferson were to become the president, "we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution" and he would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced."

The animosity that was built up between the two essentially led to the passage of the 12th Amendment which ended the idea of having the person who got the second most votes in the election for president becoming the vice president.

During the 1828 presidential campaign John Q. Adam's supporters targeted Jackson's family with particular nasty zeal saying that his mother was a prostitute and calling his wife a "convicted adulteress," "dirty black wench" and said she was prone to "open and notorious lewdness." As for Jackson himself he was accused of being a cannibal saying that after massacring over 500 Indians one evening, "the blood thirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities, by ordering his Bowman to dress a dozen of these Indian bodies for his breakfast, which he devoured without leaving even a fragment."

Apparently Adams was horrified at how nasty the attacks had become while Jackson personally organized the attacks on Adams and his character helping to spread a rumor that Adam's success as a diplomat hinged on his ability to procure prostitutes for foreign leaders and referred to him as a pimp.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 have often been held up as classic examples of a proper civil debate (probably because of how much they were sanitized in later years), but were in fact vicious affairs full of crude language with personal insults and racial slurs being hurled.

In the 1860 presidential race Douglas described Lincoln as being a "horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman" and said he was a drunk who would "ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together.”

And the newspapers of the time were no different. "Harper's Weekly" described Lincoln using terms like "Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robher [sic], Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate." The Chicago Times said the following about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "We did not conceive it possible that even Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself."

During the 1876 Democrats accused Rutherford B. Hayes of two particularly heinous crimes -- namely shooting his own mother and stealing the pay soldiers killed in action when he was a Union general

And who could possibly forget how Grover Cleveland was repeatedly accused by Republican opponents of fathering an illegitimate child during the 1884 campaign led by chants of "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?" used to taunt Cleveland at rallies and while he delivered speeches. In fact children were brought to these events to lead these chants. Following Cleveland's narrow victory, the chant gained a classic rejoinder: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

So the idea that the vicious campaigns rhetoric employed by both sides in the past couple of decades is somehow unique is completely wrong and nothing but a myth.

Thats all fine Rogue, we all know that personal attacks are not knew. Anyone can look up the history and find personal attacks on a Presidents character. But if your argument is that what is taking place now on right wing radio, tv opinion shows, and among the republican politicians themselves with regard to Obama is no different than it has always been, then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've been around a long time myself and have never seen anything comprable.

[Cow Poke]

What about those events Bill? Apparently you think you are making an argument against the President simply by echoing the Republican talking points,

How many times are you going to echo the phrase "echo the Republican talking points', "echo the Republican talking points', "echo the Republican talking points', "echo the Republican talking points'?

Do you have anything ORIGINAL to say?

[Cow Poke]

Thats all fine Rogue, we all know that personal attacks are not knew. Anyone can look up the history and find personal attacks on a Presidents character. But if your argument is that what is taking place now on right wing radio, tv opinion shows, and among the republican politicians themselves with regard to Obama is no different than it has always been, then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've been around a long time myself and have never seen anything comprable.

That's because you are so blindly committed to Obama that all you can't see how bad he's messing up. Heck, even some of the liberals are having a tough time defending him, and many of the "up for reelection" democrats don't want him anywhere around.

His ratings are sinking like a rock, Jim, and for good reason. Period!

[lilpixieofterror]

Thats all fine Rogue, we all know that personal attacks are not knew. Anyone can look up the history and find personal attacks on a Presidents character. But if your argument is that what is taking place now on right wing radio, tv opinion shows, and among the republican politicians themselves with regard to Obama is no different than it has always been, then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've been around a long time myself and have never seen anything comprable.

Wow, so how does that Kool-Aid taste?

[Just Some Dude]

Got to love it that you need to find something a musician said about Obama while erstwhile journalists were calling Bush things like a "despotic ... murderous fascist" (Keith Olberman at MSNBC). And what musicians were saying about Bush, like Natalie Maine of Dixie Chicks, I can't even post in a veiled manner in that it would be a violation of Tweb's rules about obscenities. Other entertainers like Bill Maher speak with pride of the various things they called Bush from "a catastrophe that walks like a man" and "Drinky McDumbass" to, again, things I can't even say in veiled form.

Movies were made that were fantasies about assassinating the president (Bush) and even several years later "Game of Thrones" was sticking his decapitated head on a spike^[1]. Books were written about people fantasizing about killing Bush (another book "Assassination Vacation" is a "humorous" travelogue of sites where American presidents -- all and only Republican -- were assassinated). Art exhibits at the reputable Columbia College in Chicago featured images of Bush with a gun pointed to his head. Video games (“The Night of Bush Capturing; A Virtual Jihadi”) were made with the goal of killing Bush and again displayed in an art gallery as part of their "Free Speech Exhibition."^[2]

Randi Rhodes, a talk show host on the now defunct liberal radio channel Air America, compared the Bush family to the fictitious Corleone family in the “Godfather” movies, and suggested that Bush should be assassinated. “Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him [President Bush] fishing and phuw.” Rhodes then imitated the sound of a gunshot and said, “Works for me.” In “Godfather 2,” Fredo Corleone is murdered at the end of the film on orders from his brother Michael. Rhodes had also said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “ought to be tortured.” Imagine if Rush Limbaugh had ever “joked” about Obama being assassinated. Then, less than a year later Rhodes did it again. In a Social Security reform bit on her program, an imaginary retiree from the fictional “American Association of Armed Retired People” says, “A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn't safe any more, so he’s going to fix it for us. Well, here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp” – and then four gunshots ring out.

The left had quite a fascination with assassinating Bush ranging from the examples seen above to plastering NYC with anti-Bush assassination target practice posters (and many, many other similar expressions like these seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here... ad nauseum)^[3].


Before he became a U.S. Senator Al Franken went around telling jokes on such venues as the “Late Show with David Letterman” and“Today” about Bush Administration official Karl Rove being executed for treason (which got Matt Lauer and his crew laughing).







1. Compare the difference in reactions to a rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask (something done to other presidents). Nobody at HBO was fired or sent to re-education... er, sensitivity training classes.

2. There is the far more tame Bush Shoot Out where Bush is attacked inside the White House and you can play him as hiding behind his desk shooting it out with terrorists and trying to escape (imagine the outrage if Obama was the target and forced to defend himself - his supporters/the media likened a cover of New Yorker magazine that mocked him to "a lynching" and claim that virtually every synonym used to describe him from skinny to professor is a racist code word).

3. Such signs, shirts, and depictions were quite common at anti-Bush protests and were largely ignored by the media (and declared as merely representing the view of a few members of the fringe in the few cases where they were covered) but the same media stalked Tea Party rallies looking for similar displays concerning Obama.

Very well put. Hypocrisy knows no bounds, does it?

[Zymologist]

That's because you are so blindly committed to Obama that all you can't see how bad he's messing up. Heck, even some of the liberals are having a tough time defending him, and many of the "up for reelection" democrats don't want him anywhere around.

His ratings are sinking like a rock, Jim, and for good reason. Period!

"If you like your ratings, you can keep your ratings."

[rogue06]

Thats all fine Rogue, we all know that personal attacks are not knew. Anyone can look up the history and find personal attacks on a Presidents character. But if your argument is that what is taking place now on right wing radio, tv opinion shows, and among the republican politicians themselves with regard to Obama is no different than it has always been, then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've been around a long time myself and have never seen anything comprable.

The thing is that they were if anything worse back then than now. Show many anything comparable to the candidates charging each other with cannibalism, shooting their mother, being a hermaphrodite, a pimp or any of the slew of things that were said in the 19th century. Things are no worse for Obama^[1] than they were for Bush or Clinton except in the minds of those desperate to see any and every disagreement with him no matter how small as being a vile personal slur. On the pre-crash Tweb I posted a long list of words that suddenly became out of bounds as somehow now being racist when they were used to describe Obama -- including ones that Obama had previously used to describe himself!





1. And perhaps even better since for several years critics and even comedians were cowed into silence by the fear of being called a racist. Studies looking at late night talk shows for instance found hardly any jokes being made about Obama during nearly his entire first term in stark contrast to what had been said about the presidents before him when they were in office going back to Reagan.

[Cow Poke]

"If you like your ratings, you can keep your ratings."

Period!

[Cow Poke]

1. And perhaps even better since for several years critics and even comedians were cowed into silence by the fear of being called a racist.

I was gonna add that part.

[rogue06]

I was gonna add that part.

Great minds and all that

[nickcopernicus]

Since this is Obama's foreign disaster thread. Let's bring up how he made America lose a war in Libya. Forget Benghazi, America lost over 300 innocent soldiers. I even heard Obama had their backgrounds checked and sent only Republican soldiers to the front lines.

Then there's Osama Bin Laden. I heard that Obama and Osama were actually bedfellows. Obama only had him killed when Osama threatened to go public with the information.

Gosh, it's so easy to make crap up and criticize the President about alleged foreign policy "failures." The only solution I've seen in this thread was to "act like Regan." So I guess Obama should have tripled the national debt, raised taxes, and passed immigration amnesty. That would have learned Putin.

It's unfortunate that the Republican Party and those who support them on this thread enforce them as being the party of "No." Their answer to everything is No - No solutions, and no progress.

The problem with having Obama Derangement Syndrome, as "Darth," not even an America citizen, is that it invalidates any what would otherwise be valid criticism of President Obama. Was the "Redline" that he [Obama] drew in Syria unwise? Of course it was. He should have known by now that he would not get international support as he did in Libya because Russia and China were butthurt from that air campaign. He also knew that he could not count on Republican support in the HOR.
For once, I agree with Sen. Marco Rubio when he said Obama should bring the matter before the UN security council, so Russia could veto it, thereby showing them to be liars when they say that they're against foreign troops intervening in other countries, except when it's them.

Anyway, my main point is that I wish some of you would get over whining about Obama. There have been better and worse. There will be better and worse in the future. If you all want these future presidents to be Republican, I suggest you all get over being the party of No.

[Cow Poke]

Anyway, my main point is

Downright goofy.

that I wish some of you would get over whining about Obama.

Yeah, we'd rather see you whining about people whining about Obama.

There have been better and worse.

This thread is not about Jimmy Carter.

There will be better and worse in the future.

We can pray for the former, and try to prevent the latter.

If you all want these future presidents to be Republican, I suggest you all get over being the party of No.

No!