Or they really think that Carter is the one counterexample to the idea that being Christian means hugging your stand mixer while bombing places back to the stone age.

I couldn't find a transcript anywhere, but I swear that in a story on NPR yesterday, in the clip they played about some recent Bush speech, he was talking about how "the best way to defeat the enemies of fear is" something or other.

I know nobody notices or cares what this guy says anymore, but I thought at least TPM would have picked up on that. The only thing we have to fear are the enemies of fear!

It might also have been "the enemies of terror".

They really do think that peace is losing.

I think it's more the case that they really believe that international relations are a zero-sum game, and therefore "losing" = allowing our adversaries to get anything they want, even if it would end up being to our advantage for them to get it. We can only win when our enemies lose.

Somewhat related, this post by Yglesias made some good points.

It's a shame that Obama has to be something of a pioneer in developing a pro-Israel, anti-war narrative. The Democrats should have been pounding this for years.

Ditto for a pro-U.S., anti-war narrative.

There was also this, recently.

Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention this:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,"

It's not like we didn't already know Bush is stupid and anti-intellectual, but jeez.

We discussed the link in six in the *swimsuit* thread? Ick.

It's amazing that the standard narrative does not pick up on the amount of Realpolitik that is involved with this continued Republican trope. It is clear that they want some war, somewhere, against somebody. But they understand that most of their publicly identified "enemies" are merely competitors (cf. Gaddafi's repuation, resurrection of). Hey Saddam, nothin personal, it's just business.

...and you know all the national political guys know it as well, do they not point it out because they agree? I mean Friedman cannot actually believe the bullshit about Cold War with Iran. In the end its all just a show for the negative information voters in the exurbs.

Three cheers for Joe Biden!

11: Yes, Biden is great at times (I think "a noun, a verb and 9/11" will go into the all-time campaign lore hall-of-fame). And I for one applaud the "coarsening" of the public political dialogue to include "bullshit".

11/s/b 10 ( I do that all the fucking time.)

12: all s/b some of
It's just one exageration after another with you, isn't it?

13: Yes, I am the biggest exaggerator ever.

Would somebody please drop a safe on Joe Lieberman? Is this really what you wanted, Connecticut?

please drop a safe on Joe Lieberman

Sexist.

2: The one I heard yesterday had something about how freedom defeats "terror and tyranny," pronounced "turra an turrana."

The right is going to compare Obama to Carter every chance they get. You remember Carter? History's Greatest Monster?

I'm sitting in the St. Louis airport and CNN is on. Someone defending Obama was just quoted as calling Bush's statement an example of "head in the sand" cowboy diplomacy.

They then quoted a list of anti-Obama smears from some Republican statement without any comment as to whether or not the smears are true. Did you know Hamas has endorsed Obama? I keep hearing it, so it must be true.

Someone defending Obama was just quoted as calling Bush's statement an example of "head in the sand" cowboy diplomacy.

With all due respect to Sausagely, that ain't sand.

And now my battery is going to die. People are hogging the outlets with their cellphones/blackberries/whatever and their laptops.

I finally got to an outlet. Apparently Obama has indicated his willingness to talk to leaders of terror groups. Ah, CNN.

This video is basically nutpicking, though I'm sure the nut who I've never heard of has a very large audience, and it's also an example of stupid conflict of the day TV journalism, but holy crap. You have to get to the part where he pretty much just repeats the words "appeaser," "energized" and "legitimized" because he not only doesn't know what Chamberlain's policies were, it seems that he can't guess because he doesn't know what appeasement actually means.

The most perplexing part of that video is not the man's blithe ignorance, but the fact that he is shouting from the beginning of the interview. It is pretty surreal to hear Chris Matthews ask: "Why are you screaming?"

15: The Republicans all voted for him. The Republican I know here who grew up in CT said that he'd have voted for Lieberman, because "while he didn't always agree with him, you always knew where he stood." Plus there's seniority.