when Bush was in office, liberals didn’t care at all about planting gardens. They weren’t even satisfied digging a ditch. It was pure scorched earth.

When I say digging a ditch instead of planting a garden, I mean sabotaging yourselves as opposed to doing something fruitful.

Sure they can. Obama simply isn’t as smart on the issues as any of them.

It’s time to peel back some of the layers of reality. The Conservative argument is not made through logic or intelligence or being “smart on issues”. The Right wing appeals to fear, plain and simple. The more “inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death” a person is the greater the chance they’ll self identify as Conservative/Republican. People who are scared shitless will do anything for the promise of being kept safe; they’ll sacrifice privacy, autonomy, money, true financial self governance, whatever.
I once heard Micheal Savage say it’s always 1953 in his house. 1953, the Happy Days Era, when white men were the breadwinners and their good, clean decent Janes were housewives who stayed home and kept everything spic and span while Junior went out for the baseball team and Sue pined for the heartthrob captain of the football team. Total and utter bullshit : http://books.google.com/books?.....mp;f=false
but bullshit which triggers a meme.

Then came the 1960′s: Jane’s discovered her Feminine Mystique and won’t take her Valium, Junior’s growing a beard and playing a guitar, Sue’s on birth control whoring, disruptive Negroes are demanding rights, Gooks disbelieve in American supremacy and are over there becoming Commies, the first real recession’s throwing the economy out of wack and white poverty is taking on a new face. Change.

The Empire Struck Back in the 70s but things were never the same. Noone knew their place anymore.

That’s the historical context of the whole Liberal/Conservative argument. The Liberals view the social upheaval of the 60s as progress, while it triggers anxiety and fear in Conservatives of uncertainty and loss of stature. If you are scared of losing power as a man because women won’t play the traditional roles, increased physical competition for resources and people rejecting the traditional barriers to free will like religion and fear of what the neighbors will say, you will be easy prey for the Conservative hook, line and sinker.

This is doubly true for Black people and minorities. Being a Black Conservative is saying: “I did not suffer because of racial politics, I have always somehow been able to rise above them. White people have always seen my inherent goodness and intelligence and morality and have always accepted me and allowed me to compete fairly for opportunity.” or “I am so morally/intellectually/socially superior to other Blacks/Asians/Hispanics that I operate in the white world without barriers and if all others in my race would do the same, they could as well.”

Conservatism is powered by cowardice in white men, mean spirited subterfuge in white women and the burning yearning for stature in Blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

Try this at home, kids. Gather ’round your boot-clacking friends and take any knee-jerk Right Wing position and say something thoughtful about it: “Defense spending should be cut because we don’t even have places store our arsenal, we’ve got so many weapons, according to this article in the Economist.” Then sit back and observe. You will take it back or they will strip you of the social acceptance of the Conservative label.

As opposed to being a Liberal. Gather ’round your pot-head free spirits and tell them: “I know its a woman’s right to choose but what about the women who can really chose to have their babies because of poverty. I’m going to go volunteer at the abortion alternatives place.” And…nothing. The worst you’ll get is “As long as you don’t come back here preaching and bible thumping, hey,do you.” Liberalism is powered by a rejection of authority and challenging the status quo. Like Emerson said: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist”

But back to your point though. Obama not only speaks wells, he make great use of face time and he makes it a point to counter the opposition’s arguments as a foundation in making his points. Did you see his town hall on Obamacare in Colorado yesterday?

You’re not so much falling into a trap as digging a ditch when you should be planting a garden.

So by criticizing Obama, I’m digging a ditch instead of planting a garden? Something you must understand NYC Chic, and I mean this with the utmost respect, such platitudes coming from liberals have ZERO credibility and are just plain disingenuous. Because when Bush was in office, liberals didn’t care at all about planting gardens. They weren’t even satisfied digging a ditch. It was pure scorched earth. Incessant bashing from everywhere. “Not my president!” “Fascist!” “Anyone but Bush!” “Nazi!” Docs like Fahrenheit 9/11. Moral equivalency arguments to the Taliban and Osama. Protest after protest. Movie parodies like Oliver Stone’s W. Bloggers constantly bashing him. Comedians and other media figures savagely ripping him apart. People like Colbert using the Press Corps dinner to launch a venomous diatribe. Liberals cheering any time something embarrassing happened to Bush from misspeaking to having a shoe thrown at him.

But that, that’s “patriotic dissent,” “speaking truth to power” or “social justice” when a liberal does it.

But now that YOUR guy’s in power, suddenly we see liberals everywhere (not just you) claiming dissent is “digging a hole,” saying we need unity, claiming it’s just “sour grapes.” No one can take liberals seriously when they make these claims because their actions were the exact opposite when Bush was in power.

I go by people’s actions, not their words.

The smart thing to do is to stop that whole line of attack because it invites comparison. To Rush, to Michael “You Be The Man!” Steele, to Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, GWB, Newt Gingrich, Chuck Norris, Dick Cheney, Bill O, your whole roster. You don’t have anyone on your whole team that could withstand toe to toe comparison to Obama right now.

Sure they can. Obama simply isn’t as smart on the issues as any of them. In a land with a fair, objective media coverage any of them can stand toe to toe with him and pretty much destroy him easily. He simply appeals to emotions, class warfare, doublespeak and empty platitudes. I want to invite as much comparison to the right as possible on the issues, as for Obama that is the worst thing that can happen to him. The media, his attack dogs, know this, which is why they do their best to help him out by either ignore opposing viewpoints or mischaracterize them when reporting on them.

He’s a community activist so you know he cares about you and making your life better and he’s brand new to this

I agree on half that statement. He is brand new to this.

NYC_CHIC !!WOOOOOOOOAH BOY !!! THANX BRUH , /blockquote>

I’d have to be Real and Chance gay to be a dude with the screen name NYC_Chic. I’m a female from NYC who’s very stylish – why didn’t you get that? Gosh.

I find it strange that liberals keep saying this. You aren’t the first liberal I heard this from. That conservatives are falling into Obama’s “trap” by constantly criticizing him

-You’re not falling into his trap. I don’t think at any point he sat there and thought it would be cool to have a bunch of people hate on him nonstop and misrepresent everything he says and does as a point of strategy. You’re not so much falling into a trap as digging a ditch when you should be planting a garden.

and that the smart thing to do would be to totally roll over and support him.

That’s the 180 degree opposite of what I’m saying. Your criticisms are contrived and purely motivated by sour grapes. He goes into a restaurant and orders a hot dog or whatever with mustard or without mustard, whatever. The next four days Sean Hannity just talks about that shit and talks about it and talks about it and shows the clips and shows the clip again to every guest commentator while he makes lame jokes until its like damn, just stop already, who gives a fuck? It’s his hotdog, let him put whatever the fuck he wants on it. Or he goes to Berlin and 200,000 greet him like a rockstar. He comes back and the Right wing commentators twist it into everything from treason to proof he wasn’t really born in the US. He says if you get bailout money, you can’t take half of it and split it in the form of “bonuses” between you and five friends. The Right wing somehow gets from that he is trying to tell ALL business owners how to pay their people, the Socialist bastard.

The smart thing to do is to stop that whole line of attack because it invites comparison. To Rush, to Michael “You Be The Man!” Steele, to Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, GWB, Newt Gingrich, Chuck Norris, Dick Cheney, Bill O, your whole roster. You don’t have anyone on your whole team that could withstand toe to toe comparison to Obama right now.

So strategically, it would be smarter to not fight that fight. Neutralize his strength in being so “different” from y’all by pretending he’s just like you. Play up how conservative, warmongering, pro big business, anti privacy and colonialist he is. Some Right wing commentators already do this with the “He’s continuing Bush policies” meme but a second later they are positively frothing because he put soooo much garlic on his pizza or gave some country’s leader an iPod which immediately counters any gains they might have made.

But when Bush was in office, I don’t know a single liberal who did what they’re now advising conservatives to do. All they did was criticize him nonstop from every mountaintop!

Not that any of that criticism mattered at all.Or that the criticism was about shit like “Free Speech Zones”, Bush’s just general lack of intelligence, the signing statements he was including in legislation that usurped the power of the Constitution or just downright criminal shit and blatantly lying.

Also, the Democrats stood nothing to gain by pretending to embrace Bush. The Democrats in the House and Senate were all already acting like Karl Rove had naked pictures of them. The media knew better because they didn’t want to get Dixie Chicked.Everything he did was cloaked in the fear of terrorism so no politician wanted to be painted as a liberal (soft on terror) regardless of their actual Constituency, thus the common everyday people could talk themselves to death because they had no voice.

Capitalizing on that frustration was another swift move strategically by Obama. He’s a community activist so you know he cares about you and making your life better and he’s brand new to this, just like you’d be if you became president.
So…electing him President is like the next best thing to you yourself being President!

My guess is that people will pick on the second post(because it is easy to attack) rather than engage the well documented robust first post.

So much for intellectual honesty. This is why political discussions are near pointless: the weak, cheap, self-serving cherry picking of arguments and the heavy dose of intellectual dishonesty of participants involve.

Can we get back to game now?

One very odd thing about Obama body language is that he never, never appear flustered by any question. Compare his body language to President Clinton, and President Bush when asked “tough” or “uncomfortable” question. The degree of tensile mental control is high.

Observe the use of framing, humour, assertions in this recent press conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....r_embedded