Geez we will now vote Obama.

Post Reply New Topic

Extracted randomly from the internet:

The people whose thought patterns make politics possible for the people whose thought patterns drive them to do politics are pretty strange and can be talked - history shows - into almost anything.

Obama is commander in chief so he gets the credit.

Of course, he also gets the blame for the 900 Americans killed in Afghanistan since he took office.

The odds that Obama magically got a clue how to manage military 6-7 weeks ago is extremely unlikely. Him and his personality cult may think of him as a modern JFK, but he's more like the president in the movies Hot Shots part Deux or Idiocracy. The military has been plugging away at it's intelligence effort just like it has since 2001. He had been suspected that he was somewhere in Pakistan for about 8 years. He avoided electronic communication and electronic communication making reference to him as well as having a lot of people hiding him, so it took a long time to get a lead. It's not surprising that someone can disappear in a region where people live a lot like cavemen and we have great difficulty infiltrating the culture and language to get human intelligence.

Now that he got to bask in the credit for something he did not do nor knows how to do, he can go back to managing the military like a ret*d like normal, lobbying for agendas that there's no money for, obstructing justice in his minion's illegal smuggling activities that exacerbated organized crime in Mexico, and going off on long Hitler-ish tirades at his staff and fundraisers.

It was a high risk mission. He risked his Presidency on it. A high profile failure would have sunk his chances, just like Carter. He took the risk, he should get some credit for it. That's just common sense. He certainly would have taken the blame for failure so...

And he campaigned on refocusing on the hunt for Bin Laden. And he did exactly that. Despite that fact that elements of his base didnt want to hear it. I agree with Obama that Bush's mistake was getting distracted by Iraq. Who can say what might have happened if we had not peeled off intelligence assets and special forces to hunt for Saddam, his sons, and the insurgents of Iraq. Bin Laden might have been long dead by now.

Anyway, he did what he said he would do.

I could've heard wrong, but as I understand it Bush closed down the office in whatever agency that tasked with finding for Bin Laden. Apparently, that was around the time of his famous line, "I don't know where he is... I... I just don't think about him that much."

So, it doesn't sound like Obama took office and let that mission continue on auto-pilot. It sounds like he did make some critical command decisions, if nothing more than telling the CIA, "go find him."


As far as why voters move so predictably? Dunno, they just do, and always have. It's a bit like wondering why the "Southern strategy" worked.

There's that guy... Leo Strauss, sort of a 'godfather' of the neocons, by some people's description. He had a theory that most people are not worthy of democracy. So, the smart people (like him) needed to be the leaders and project ideas like religion and war to the masses to keep them busy, stupid, and unaware of what they were really supporting. Meanwhile, the philosopher-kings would be the ones who were really in control.

I suspect there's a lot of people who feel that way. I think I'd still rather deal with democracy, with it'd flaws, than a "philosopher-king," though. A philosopher-king is what likely Alan Greenspan believed himself to be, and all he has to say now is "oops, I was wrong," for helping crash the economy.

It is fairly clear that GWB did not want OBL caught as then it would be a push to get out of Afghanistan. I can't say Obama really wanted OBL caught, but he did make it clear that he wasn't fond of bringing him in alive (too much complication of capture vs. killed).

Many say OBL was dead about 10 years ago. He was a sick man dependent on regular dialysis treatment (while portable, needs regular supplies and reliable electrical power to perform). OBL reportedly had "doubles," and it is feasible that OBL died a while back and a double took over.

OBL being in the compound was happenstance. Intel suggested he MIGHT be there, but they did not have certainty when they chose to go ahead with the raid. So, is the claim that they got him just a way to get the OBL issue off the table or did they get the real OBL? Don't know. Largely irrelevant unless Obama wants to milk it for political capital, but my thought on the timing of doing it now and not 2-3 months before the 2012 elections makes me think perhaps the got the real OBL (or his double) and effectively got the purported "leader" of Al Queda.

Will Obama benefit from this in 2012? I very much doubt it. Obama is an elitist who has been inept at most everything he's touched since getting into office. In the end, Americans vote their pocketbook, and while I know GWB was re-elected in 2004 on a fear tactic, I would point out that his opponent (Kerry) started out with a double-digit lead over GWB then consistently shot himself in the foot until it was a neck-and-neck race by election day. It was as if Kerry was deliberately trying to ruin his chances of being elected so GWB would get the re-election, and in spite of many reports of election day hi-jinks, Kerry conceded defeat very early on...eliminating any chance of proving vote tampering or voting fraud.

Serial killers have skillfully evaded local police departments and the FBI for far longer periods of time than Bin Laden evaded Military intelligence. It was a roll of the dice, pure and simple. But yes, many will attribute this to Obama's presidency and that's just silly. This could have happened on anyone's watch.

Oh, who knows what the outcome for the next election will. It is a ways off. I think the boost Obama receives from Bin Laden's death is understandable. Americans want to see their leaders win. But at the same time guessing the bump will be short lived. Thought Jonathan S. Tobin had a nice article about the Presidents chances in 2012.

"The Difference Between Bush in 1992 and Obama in 2012"
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/ ... a-in-2012/

snippet:

There hasn't actually been much of a bump interestingly enough. Maybe it's a bit delayed but it doesn't appear to have changed much.