This is where it sucks to not be on the jerk team.  As much as I’d love to see Obama turn to the Republicans and say “I got yer reconciliation right here” while gesturing at his crotch (I mean, come on, the man’s pretty much got a mandate to do just that), in reality he’s just going to spend the next eight years being classy and tactful.  Maybe Anderson Cooper could do it to a pundit?  That would probably be a little more appropriate?

Kyso K

Yeah, however, what’s quite funny is that some conservatives seem bound and determined to convince themselves that by being elected while black, Obama has in essence said, “I got yer reconciliation right here” to them. The more he tries to reach out to the right wing, the more insulted they pretend to be.

Of course, some of them are intelligent enough to see what a bonus this is to them. Some of them, though, seem to be putting themselves though hell over this bullshit. Damn… what a bunch of idiots the latter category are!

Piggybacking off of Amanda’s post below, I’m just trying to think of how vicious and vituperative the commentary would have been if Clinton had left Bush with two wars, a tanked economy and a looming budget deficit in his first year that was bigger than any two combined years of deficits in our nation’s history.

They bitch at him for Rwanda and Somalia and Kosovo and for Desert Fox and for “lying” about balancing the budget by borrowing from the Social Security Fund to do it.  They bitch at him for Enron Recession in ‘01 that Bush stepped into in his first term.  And they regularly blame Clinton for the terrorist attacks in ‘93 and ‘01, claiming that he was too busy getting blowjobs to defend the nation properly.

Compare the Clinton administration to the Carter administration.  Can you honestly say there are any die-hard wingnuts that wouldn’t damn the first less than the second?  The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that die hard Democrats will openly criticize their own guys and the oppositions guys, then run off and vote Green or Lib or something.  Die hard Republicans only know how to rally around the flag and don’t give a shit about actual performance.

If Clinton had done a thousand times worse, Republican criticism might have been more valid, but it wouldn’t have been any louder or more vulgar than it is today.

If you wander around the right-wing side of the blog world, you’ll find a lot of people talking about how nice the Republicans are to Obama now, compared to how mean Democrats were to Bush in 2000—it’s amazing how the memory rewrites history in a way to fit the narrative you desire, isn’t it?

Incertus, with all seriousness, after my initial misgivings about the Supreme Court’s involvement in 2000, I decided to be quiet and let Bush govern. It was only in mid-2002, when I became aware that Bush was positioning the nation to attack Iraq, and especially as I learned more about the lies, evasions and bullshit his administration used to push through this policy, than I began to speak out again.

I don’t expect conservatives to understand this, because they largely seem to lack the maturity. I don’t expect the pundits to talk about it, because they’re just a bunch of vain toadies. I say let ‘em whine and complain.

I would have been nicer to Bush had he defeated Gore with 53% of the popular vote in a 365 EV thumping. But he barely eaked out an extremely questionable win.

Of course what really happened is that Ari Fleischer got up and lied about how the Clintons and Democrats trashed government offices.  Another one of those scandals that just disappeared.

(they wanted to make CHINA the bogeyman )o( )

Which is so fucking stupid in retrospect. Especially since we kinda need China now that the Russians are back on the enemy list again and the world is becoming multi-polar.

Oh, and to finance our debt. Which I actually think has an upside—it makes a confrontation over Taiwain much, much, MUCH less likely. Neither side wants to missile-rattle when they’re economically dependent on each other.

Ben D:

Not to absolve Putin’s human rights abuses, but Bush had a big hand in alienating Russia as well. It may have been inevitable—we might never know—but Bush’s ineptitude pretty much insured whatever chance we had of maintaining friendly relations with Russia went out the window.

Brian X:

Agreed Bush may have played an indirect role in that.