U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.
Just one of many Fredo messes the next office-holder gets to clean up. Put it in a pile with the Taliban resurgence in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas, escalating food and fuel prices, tanking economy, crumbling infrastructure.
Indeed, I've been wondering for a while if perhaps McCain is being set up by his own party to lose. Why would they want the gig? It would be easier to plan on spending the next four years ankle-biting and obstructing Obama wherever possible (and the Democrats' own utter incompetence will impede Obama as well), not that four years is quite enough to fix everything in the first place, and then swoop in come 2012 with some Romney/Rudy ticket from the netherworld.
2 comments:
I think you're right. Vote for McCain so he'll get the blame when the inevitable happens. We get a generational lockout of "conservatism" when he utterly fails...and we get a better alternative than Republican-lite Obama.
No, that's not what I meant at all. I believe that the system has failed, and I believe that the hardcore Obamatons are setting themselves up to be tragically disappointed, insofar as they are expecting simon-pure principle into the homestretch.
They appear genuinely shocked, shocked that the one-time Lieberman protégé might have to do some center-tacking in the general campaign. But the fact is that the majority of the country is more conservative and less engaged than they are.
I think Obama could be a very good president, and McCain is almost guaranteed to be catastrophic. So yeah, if your goal is to complete the lawn-darting of the country initiated by the Cheney junta, McCain is indeed the guy. It might even take down some of the corrupt institutions and parties along with it.
But that doesn't mean that some 21st-century George Washington rolls up and rebuilds the rubble that the revolutionaries tore down. Maybe you get a Robespierre instead, or a homegrown Hitler. Is it worth the risk? I don't think so. This nation is itching for a charismatic fascist to promise the return of all their perks and toys.
Look, I'm not thrilled with Obama's recent Repug-lite overtures, but consider the specific issues there. Nobody in this country is giving up their fucking guns, nobody gives a shit about what happens to a child molester, and it takes too long to parse the specifics on FISA to placate the average schmoe. That last one sucks, but it's life, and it doesn't automatically discredit Obama, not by a longshot.
There's a big wide swath of rubes out there that takes retard shit like flag pins and gay marriage very seriously, and you can bet that Obama is at least going to make some effort to not needlessly rile them from their stupor.
I do hate to even hint at the notion of more 'n' better (or is it "moronbutter"?) Democrats, seeing as how they've done fuck-all since '06, but unless voters are seriously going to commit en masse to a viable third-party tilt, Obama is a considerably better option than, say, Gore was in 2000. The stakes are much higher, Obama is much less of a tool. He hasn't even picked a running mate yet.
People have been conditioned to regard the act of voting as the event, the alpha and omega of their participation. But engagement is a process, and if that means that millions of people commit some time here and there to pestering their representatives as a continuous iteration of their awareness and engagement, that can't be a bad thing. It does not end in November, nor does it begin. It continues, regardless of who wins.
Post a Comment