Even when playing “devil”s advocate” something comes through that the person has good intentions. None of that was with this guy. He just came to annoy and see how much he could get away with. What he could not hide was his underlying disdain and many years of liberal indoctrination.

I asked JLD about guidelines, but he indicated (rightly so) we don’t want to divulge all our secrets for figuring them out. So we can team up as needed and get the job done: )

We should all send Kathleen pictures of our cameras. Think she would get the message?

A note to Kathleen: We will, too. Non-violently, with cameras.

It is verifiable that members of the Communist Party preferred a “peaceful”, “inevitable” spread of Communism, but “both sides” didn’t want peace.

Likewise, the Democratic Party under Obama has used strong-arm tactics to an extent that hasn’t been witnessed since at least JFK (though I think it is without precedent, myself). From asking citizens to report neighbors who have the “wrong” thoughts on HC, to smearing the opposition as evil in the PR effort for every major bill so far, to threatening corporations, there is no comparison to Bush Administration’s mealy-mouthed iterations of the obvious fact that, if you are actively defunding our military and voting against acts that would increase military readiness, you are aiding the enemy, regardless of the benefits*.

Aggregation, as a rule, invites generalized statements in conversation, and most people are aware of that. Reciting the “both sides” crap played out by the MSM wrongly grants moral equivalence between two aggregated groups who, on the whole, have been very different in their application of the right of protest and their respect of the American people.

Personally, I don’t think that you’re a moby/troll (not that it matters what I think), and I’m not exactly the guy who stuck “Bush ’04″ stickers on his car, but if you give this “both sides” nonsense any credence, you are missing the forest for the trees in a major way.

*BTW, the benefits oftentimes outweigh this cost. For instance, if Republicans were to hypothetically establish a law that violated the 4th Amendment, I would say that the cost of losing our freedoms would outweigh the benefits of a more secure country. OK, threadjack over

Bye.

As I say above, I can’t blame anyone for involving SEIU in this. There’s a video of up to three SEIU members causing controversy on your front page. SEIU has over 2 million members though, so to say that those members, a very democratic constituency, shouldn’t be involved, is absurd. It’s absurd to think that the administration handed down some orders for SEIU members to stir up violence (and if they did, how ineffective, right? 3 people out of 2 million???).

My issue with your post came from trying to say that detractors were treated as dangerous, but only by Obama. Again, I don’t see this town hall putting health-care opponents in “Free speech” zones. In fact, it is clear from the various videos that some healthcare opponents were allowed in and were certainly voicing their opinions. I also don’t see Obama or Joe Biden insinuating that detractors from their administration are aiding our foreign enemies in their opinions.

Whereas the commotion at recent town halls I am most certainly alarmed by. But again, to blame that entirely on Democrats or say that this is all due to Democrats sending out “thugs” is not quite in touch with reality.

That doesn’t mean that Conservatives should take all the heat. Neither side is innocent.

I blame Democrats for hyping up a town hall event in the face of what would be a large conservative turnout but not taking care to get everyone in seats. I don’t blame them for having SEIU members involved, as I believe they sponsored one of the events (could be wrong on that) and let’s face it: Unions are a democratic constituency. They have as much right to be part of the process as a group like the NRA or any other conservative leaning group does.

I blame Republicans for shamelessly misleading the public on some concerns (I’m looking squarely at you, Sarah Palin). Of course people are going to be incredibly angry if they think the government is going to start euthanizing the elderly or the infirm, as she has suggested. But to believe that’s the case is patently absurd, however, some people trust a lot of what they hear and believe it anyway (case in point, I believe there was a top rated diary about that on here for a while about that very topic). There is a difference between talking about end of life care and killing people, but some people don’t know that and it’s been exploited.

In the end the blame has to go to everyone though because we’re not going to get anywhere yelling over each other. We’ve got to move forward in good faith, plain and simple, but that’s hard to do when so many varying interests are obviously obfuscating issues.

I’ve unsurprisingly seen a lot of call for my banishment already, I don’t think I’ve said anything particularly controversial, but do what you must.

My case for Bush’s failure? As a fiscal conservative he had an abysmal record. He presided over the largest deficit the world had ever seen at the time, he passed unfunded medicare pharmaceutical entitlements, and let us please not forget that he had his own hands involved in his own incredibly large stimulus.

As a figurehead of the party, again, he was a failure. Please see the 2006 and 2008 elections where Republicans were trounced by Democrats, mostly because the association with the name “Bush” was so toxic. You could see this in the primary where candidates ranging from Romney to Huckabee worked to distance themselves from portions of his policy.

As a social conservative, I’m not really sure. I really don’t care about that type of stuff, to be honest. I guess if keeping gays from marrying is your thing, he didn’t do much to hurt that cause… But I don’t recall (and admit I could be wrong on this) him doing much to do away with abortion (other than the typical lip service), which is typically a pretty big deal with social conservatives.

To me, personally, he was a failure due to his complete ineptitude in the area of science, and to his near crippling inability to avoid nepotism in his appointments (Harriet Meyers, Michael Brown).

I think you and many of the people on this site need to move past this whole, “My side of the political spectrum is PURE, whereas the other side is completely corrupt!” It’s juvenile and incredibly naive. The past 8 years shows that Republicans never push anyone around? Again, I’m sure that I could point out incidences (freedom of speech zones, “Brooks Brothers Riots”, or the threats of violence that have happened around some of these town halls already) but you’d either have a reason to dismiss them or you interpret them differently (just as I don’t find anything brought up in this post to be alarming in the least). C’est la vie, I suppose. That is where we will most likely find an impasse.

Main point, though, is let us at least try to acknowledge history. If you are one of the people that wishes that Bush were still around, bully for you, but it’s not going to do a damn bit of good for conservatism as a whole. And if you’re trying to say that the Bush administration, and conservatives in general, didn’t try to cast war-detractors as dangerous, you simply weren’t paying attention.

I’m not a moderator, but Moe is.

s.p.e.c.i.f.i.c.s.

And, since you won’t have any, let me be the first to say…

G’bye.

Not like you’ll be missed or anything.

But since you didn’t listen to Moe and didn’t give those links in your post of 3:13 today I daresay the countdown clock is ticking

Just some urgent advice – if you want to stay.

My only point is that to say that the Bush administration didn’t cast their political detractors as dangerous for the country or anti-American is unadulterated fantasy.

It would be different if the post were only about Obama’s current “shenanigans”. But it isn’t. The post says that there’s a change brought by Obama because he is casting his enemies as dangerous where Bush never did. Again, this is completely false. That’s the only point I’m really making.

I added, in my second post, that glossing over the reality of the Bush presidency does nothing to help conservatives. I don’t particularly find this to be that controversial of a statement either.

There’s no revisionist history in my post. Just in your comment.

The past eight years did not show our side to have thugs out there pushing other citizens around. In fact it is only the leftist Dems and their cohorts that have a significant history of doing that. Whether it is Code Pink, Black Panthers or Union thugs.

So who are you, and why are you here?