We must pertect are freedums!

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13255

I’m not as versed in this sort of stuff as some of you are, but I still cannot understand how anyone could be fooled by the McCain camp’s facade of foreign policy aptitude. He just talks in circles for a couple of minutes and then says “It’s about conditions on the ground,” a couple of times and not even the journalist interviewing him says, “Hey, John, nothing you just said had anything to do with what I just asked you, much less made any sense.”

I don’t think I was whining about Republicans standing in anyone’s way. They decided they wanted to cast their lot as a serious opposition party, and the structural characteristics of Congressional rules allow them to exercise that role very effectively. That’s not whining, its a fact. The expansion of the SCHIP program had over 70 percent public approval. It was supported by a majority of Republicans! But the bill’s supporters couldn’t override the veto. I’m not making any argument about the substantive merit of the bill, just that it was immensely popular. The American people get to voice their opinions every other November. They made a clear choice in 2006. They’ll get another chance in a few months. Republicans (including you) can continue to act as though the Democratic congress has somehow failed to accomplish all of their 2006 campaign promises (in an either/or sense, they obviously have failed), but refusing to acknowledge the role played by the opposition shows either hilarious intellectual dishonesty or a profound misunderstanding of the way our government actually works.

I’ll take whatever bet you want on the outcome of the congressional elections. There is precisely zero chance that the GOP takes back either chamber. The White House may be another matter (though I doubt it).

When the Dems can come up with ideas of their own instead of simple opposition to Republican ideas, I might feel differently. But please, don’t cop out like that and whine that Republicans are standing in your way. If the American people are as behind Dems as you seem to think, there would be no problem getting things done. Guess they’ll have to speak with their ballots in Nov. and I think you’ll be suprised at the outcome.

My so-called inflamatory statements are all in good fun. I actually like you guys and what you are doing here. But I know as well as you that I am the the odd man out 9 times out of 10 in this setting, so I figure…why not have some fun???? It’s nothing personal, trust me.

As to the timetable issue, my point was that Obama said he would not , in hindsight, have supported the surge because “we can’t know what would’ve happened there if we had gone with the plan I laid out”. I am just sick of the counterfactual reasoning that Democrats want to engage in rather than looking at the facts and say that the troop surge is playing a part in decreased violence. That decrease is not the sole result of troop surges, but it is sustained by those surges. Now we have the chance to see a government begin to develop and function.

The early part of this war was mismanaged and near disasterous (mainly due to Don Rumsfeld’s minimalist mentality), but now that we are succeeding to some degree it would be nice if Obama could look at reality and admit it has worked, instead of political posturing to establish a difference between himself and Bush or McCain.

Is it too much to want to hear a Democrat say we are winning and sound excited??? Or are they still so mad about being there in the first place that they want us to be beaten? We can’t know what would’ve happened in Iraq, that’s true….but we know what has happened and it is clear we are winning.S so I ask you, how is that bad?