Cleveland Sports Forum

Hey, it worked. Let's try that again ...

Obamacare is a nasty thing. It cannot possibly accomplish what was claimed for it. That would violate several laws of physics.

Clint is one of my faves, and I think it's because most of the characters he plays are very highly principled. You may disagree with those principles, but he (the characters) is brave enough to stick by them.

Haven't seen or heard much of his performance but the one bit they did play on NPR was funny!

Clint's "shut up" part of the routine delivering the words of the Obama empty chair was a nod to the fact that President Obama has told people and audiences to "shut up" more than once in his career.

Craig Ferguson had a good line tonight with regard to the Democrat Party convention in Charlotte.

"They have a nice NASCAR track in Charlotte, so I heard the Democrats picked it because at any turn you can only go left."

This is from today's Cleveland Plain Dealer. Pretty harsh on the day of his convention speech.


http://www.cleveland.com/obrien/index.s ... untry.html


Free Obama -- and the country: Kevin O'Brien


Published: Thursday, September 06, 2012, 6:09 AM


Kevin OBrien, The Plain Dealer


The Democrats are having their national convention. Three days of speakers, videos and a lot of shouting.

Tonight is President Barack Obama's chance to explain the last 3½ years. He won't take it.

The sorry state in which the country finds itself will be someone else's fault: The "obstructionist" Republicans -- who were so far out of power in his first two years that they couldn't even stop a government health care takeover bill that almost no one read and that most Americans don't like, now that we've found out what's in it. George W. Bush -- a fading, vaguely unhappy memory in the minds of the 311 million Americans who don't work in the Obama White House. Maybe even Americans themselves -- who Obama has told us more than once have "gotten a little soft," "have been a little lazy" and have lost their "competitive edge."

So, we have all fallen short of the glory of Obama.

And so has Obama.

Tonight offers the best chance Obama will ever have to explain how hope and change has become mope and blame.

Don't expect candor, though. It just isn't in him.

He can only hope to beguile Americans with a charm that has worn thin and an eloquence that repeatedly has proven empty.

He'll try, but we know him now. He isn't who he said he was. He can't back it up.

In "Macbeth" -- written a good 400 years before the American media were able to detect dog-whistle racism -- Shakespeare describes life as "a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage."

If the Bard had set out to sketch this president, he couldn't have done it better.

He still struts, because he can't help it. That's the persona that has gotten him this far and he can't change it now -- for the very same reason he didn't change running mates despite Joe Biden's unending string of embarrassments.

To change implies an error, and Barack Obama does not make those. Humble people don't strut, and he knows no other gait.

He frets, too. Visibly.

The mask slips more often than it used to and his annoyance with us shows.

The greatest kindness American voters can do is to release him from his burden.

Whatever the effect on the country, losing the presidency this year would be a very healthy thing for Barack Obama, who has always been in way over his head.

At the outset, he lacked the experience in politics to sell his program, so he chose to force it through until the Democrats lost the House of Representatives. His impatience is, in fact, why the Democrats lost the House.

Now, after the experience of more than three years in office without improvement, it seems likely that he also lacks the inborn political talent that executive leadership requires.

He lacks the trust in capitalism and the basic understanding of the American system that are necessary to play what should be a limited role in helping the engine of free enterprise to run smoothly. He seems to lack an appreciation for just how limited a president's role in "managing the economy" truly is -- though with ill-advised federal takeovers of huge sectors of the economy, he has enlarged that role, much to the nation's detriment.

Now, as he struggles to hold together a loose collection of radical and ethnic interest groups that don't in any way reflect the aspirations of the majority, he is rapidly destroying his connection with mainstream Americans who once hoped his deeds would match his soaring rhetoric.

What's left of his credibility is eroding as he steadfastly refuses to take responsibility for the effects of his decisions.

The first time he ran, the blank slate of his personal history, the paucity of his political accomplishments and the aid of an uncurious media establishment allowed him to be all things to all people.

That works only once. Now he has a record full of decline and failure.

He has to know that more of the same would follow, should he win a second term. Any achievement he might claim would come only via bureaucratic sleight of hand.

The sense is inescapable that he wants a second term only for the sake of avoiding rejection.

Barack Obama, once the architect of fabulous castles in the air, now occupies a cramped and joyless place.

He built that.

In November we should free him from it -- because if we leave him in place, we greatly increase the chances that eventually we all will join him there.


O’Brien is The Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page editor.

“I am here to attest and affirm that our faith and belief in God is central to the American story and informs the values we’ve expressed in our party’s platform,” Strickland, who chaired the party’s platform committee, read. “In addition, President Obama recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and our party’s platform should as well.” [CNN]


Here is the unedited CSPAN video of the awkward voice vote on the acceptance of the above amendment offered by former Ohio Governor Strickland at yesterday's Democratic National Convention. I know some edited versions are out there elsewhere today.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/3872849


It's less than two and one half minutes.

The Magazine

The Video Didn’t Do It
Sep 24, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 02 • By LEE SMITH



It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims. But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Ben­ghazi and elsewhere were a “response not to United States policy, and not obviously the administration or the American people,” but were “in response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.” Carney repeated the point for emphasis: “This is not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.”
Carney’s comments lie outside the range of plausible spin, even by Obama administration standards, and if his bosses believe them—as we fear they do—are simply delusional. But they are not without consequence. Nor are Gates’s and Dempsey’s phone calls. They all send the message to America’s enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to the our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to denounce .  .  . Americans. Our leaders apparently believe that the way to protect Americans from extremists and terrorists abroad is to tell other Americans to shut up.

What’s next? Where does it go from here? There are more than 300 million ways in which Americans expressing themselves might give offense to those who make it their business to be offended. Maybe it’s some other film, maybe it’s a book or even just a tossed-off phrase that our enemies might seize on to galvanize support for their causes. Is the White House going to put every American crank on speed-dial so it can tell them to shut up whenever a mob gathers outside a U.S. embassy or consulate?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 52387.html

Anti-Islam Filmmaker Donated Million Dollars To Obama Campaign

by John Nolte 15 Sep 2012, 6:30 AM PDT


Blame the movie.

Blame the movie.

Blame the movie.

Even though "the movie" was on YouTube for months prior to the collective indignation of thousands of Middle Eastern Islamists all coming together on the eleventh anniversary of September 11th (through wild coincidence, no doubt), we are being told by our government and our media overlords that we must blame the movie.

You see, if we blame the movie for the burning of our foreign outposts and the brutal murders of four Americans (including our Libyan ambassador who was reportedly raped), we won't blame the burners and the looters and the murderers and the rapists.

You see, if we blame the movie for the Middle East burning, we won't blames the Islamists who are doing the burning and looting and raping and murdering.

Which means we won't further connect the dots and blame Obama's failed Middle East policy; the Obama Doctrine of backing away from the region and allowing events to unfold as America stands idly by -- as the Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood grab hold of power in Egypt, a country that was once our largest and closest ally.

Blame the filmmaker.

Hunt him.

Out him.

Demonize him.

Burn the straw man!

And all at the direction of a president of the United States who has sworn to uphold the Constitution, you know, the same Constitution that treasures the right of free expression and speech above all else.

But no one asks … What about Bill Maher?

Bill Maher?

Bill Maher made a comedy/documentary called "Religulous" that's most famous for mercilessly mocking Christianity. But what people forget is that the last twenty-minutes or so of the film make a damning case against Islam.

Bill Maher made a film that mocked Islam.

Oh, yes, he did.

Bill Maher also contributed $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC.

And I'm sure that upon being reminded of this, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will tremble with self-righteous indignation and demand Maher take his money back.

After all, if movies create the terrorists who in turn create the terrorism, what about Bill Maher?

And what if the terrorists learn that the president of the United States is benefitting from a million dollar contribution given by a filmmaker who mocked Islam? How will Hillary Clinton claim with any credibility that the United States government has no connection to this outrage? How will White House spokesman Jay Carney say this with any credibility:

“The reason why there is unrest is because of the film,” he said at one point. “This is in response to the film.” At another moment, he said, “The cause of the unrest was a video.” At yet another, “These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.”

And the lapdog media just can't stop humping a leg of lies.

It's weird, though, isn't it?

I mean, how Hollywood has been silent in its defense of the filmmaker Obama is currently scapegoating (and in some cases, Hollywood is grabbing a torch), even as they embrace Bill Maher.

Well, I guess some anti-Islamic filmmakers are more equal than others.

And thank heavens, we have Barack Obama to tell us who the more equal ones are.





Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

Those last two posts are absolute bullshit. How can anyone read, let alone propagate such moronic thinking?

That's all I have to say about that.

MtFan wrote:Those last two posts are absolute bullshit. How can anyone read, let alone propagate such moronic thinking?

That's all I have to say about that.

Really?

I never would have expected you of all people to accept that a stupid low budget movie from a prior nobody would give Muslims in multiple countries motivation and reason to cause harm and death to US personnel.

Or more importantly, that if it did......?

So who the hell are Lee Smith and John Nolte? Sounds to me like those things were written for consumption by the Republican faithful.

VT'er wrote:So who the hell are Lee Smith and John Nolte? Sounds to me like those things were written for consumption by the Republican faithful.

Lee Smith was a very successful relief pitcher for the
Chicago Cubs (1980–1987)
Boston Red Sox (1988–1990)
St. Louis Cardinals (1990–1993)
New York Yankees (1993)
Baltimore Orioles (1994)
California Angels (1995–1996)
Cincinnati Reds (1996)
Montreal Expos (1997)

John Nolte is Nick Nolte's lesser-known brother.

J.R. wrote:

VT'er wrote:So who the hell are Lee Smith and John Nolte? Sounds to me like those things were written for consumption by the Republican faithful.

Lee Smith was a very successful relief pitcher for the
Chicago Cubs (1980–1987)
Boston Red Sox (1988–1990)
St. Louis Cardinals (1990–1993)
New York Yankees (1993)
Baltimore Orioles (1994)
California Angels (1995–1996)
Cincinnati Reds (1996)
Montreal Expos (1997)

John Nolte is Nick Nolte's lesser-known brother.

LOL

VT'er wrote:So who the hell are Lee Smith and John Nolte? Sounds to me like those things were written for consumption by the Republican faithful.

Those things could have been written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm or by Dean Acheson and Zbigniew Brzezinski.


They were not news stories. They were observations and opinions for others to read and agree or disagree with, if so motivated.

Personally I do find it ironic most of this went down on September 11 and I do not personally accept it was a result of a stupid low budget flick that was poorly done and of course in poor taste, and had been around for months before this past week's attacks and murders of US personnel.

Not only that but to place the blame on a gutless, stupid movie, instead of the terrorists who planned and executed this travesty is totally wrong.

We live in America where anybody can say anything or do pretty much anything with impunity. That is a gift that we must defend.

Most of the world understands that.