Lawrence reflects on the Bush administration's change in tone concerning the hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2002, and the lessons we can learn after the Obama administration's successful mission to take the al Qaeda leader out.
The hunt for bin Laden, then and now
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Tue May 3, 2011 10:51 PM EDT
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I completely agree. O'Donnell was very busy pushing his hatred and liberalism off on his audience this evening.
Wonderfully put, Kurt.
Which "Fox" station were you watching? All I've seen from Fox is the misguided belief that this was all thanks to Bush and torture.
You obviously do not watch Fox, which is no surprise, most close minded libs do not. Being a conservative I am open to both sides of the coverage. For Larry to spew the garbage he did last night was reprehensible and he should moved to the 2:00 AM time slot.
This was not a "police" investigation as tried to put John "I marry Money" kerry as being correct during his Mike Dukakis Lite version of a Presidential Campaign.
This is true. I don't know a single liberal who will turn on Fox news simply because they don't spin everything as the left prefers.
World English Dictionary
liberal (ˈlɪbərəl, ˈlɪbrəl)
— adj
1.
relating to or having social and political views that favour progress and reform
2.
relating to or having policies or views advocating individual freedom
3.
giving and generous in temperament or behaviour
4.
tolerant of other people
5.
abundant; lavish: a liberal helping of cream
6.
not strict; free: a liberal translation
7.
of or relating to an education that aims to develop general cultural interests and intellectual ability
Since you don't seem to understand the word. Did you mean to say John "I marry money" McCain?
I completely disagree with the blogger assessment that Lawrence O'donnell is off base in 'not' congratulating and praising President Obama. That is not true, Lawrence O'Donnell is congratulatory toward President Obama. I watched the few minutes of Fox I could stomach with Hannity and a republican senator yesterday -- blasting Obama, as they usually do, in the most disrespectful manner about the body, burial at sea, etc., etc.,
Call a Spade a Spade! Get real out there!
O'Donnell fails to mention that Bush beefed up Homeland Security, $28 billion, since 9/11 and at least 38 plots have been foiled by doing that. I guess waterboarding must work. All LD, Mr. Ed and the other few idiots on MSNBC want to do is bash Bush. Get over it you DH's, penis with ears. Admit what Bush did worked. We have not had any more attacks, bombings on our homeland since. The shoe bomber and the Fort Hood thing were on Nobama's watch. I'm not blaming Nobama for that. I congratulate him for making the call to take out Bin Laden. How can O'Donnell compare our Navy Seals to a police department, what a f#*^%?"ing idiot he is. This guy needs to be removed, he is useless, let him go work with Olbermann on Gore's network. They deserve each other.
kurt, in answer to your comment, "why can't the left get over their hatred for GW..."?
i am disappointed with the democrats who voted to invade iraq. i can only think that their vote must have been an emotional one based on their feelings about 9/11. i also believe that part of it may have been because going to war in iraq is what george bush wanted. while they may not have respected HIM, they did respect the power of the office, indeed the presidency itself, and they may have even believed that going into iraq was the right thing to do.
george bush had the white house, the senate and the house for the first 6 years of his presidency. 1 republican voted against going to war in iraq. i don't know how big the republican majority was, but bush did not need the votes of the democratic party to go to war. i am sure he wanted both parties to agree on the war, because lets face it, bush knew this would become a big political issue and he didn't want the republicans to take all the heat.
OK, now i am going to get into semantics. the vote they took in 2002 was on the bill, "authorization for use of military force against iraq resolution of 2002". this bill just gave the president the authority to go to war. it was not the vote to go to war. this bill was presented as putting more pressure on hussein to allow weapons inspectors in, because the united states would be one step closer to war. there was also lots of language in the bill encouraging via the UN a diplomatic resolution. there is also evidence that misleading intelligence was stovepiped to the congress.
i know that bush says that they got bad intelligence, but the "intelligence" has denied this saying they tried to talk the bush administration out of going into iraq, that there were no WMD. clearly, bush had his heart set on going into iraq, and he did what he could to make sure it happened. all of this does not excuse the democrats for voting for the war, but the republicans, and bush was at the helm, stubbornly pushed their way into the iraq war.
and yes, it is good that saddam hussein will never walk this earth, but it does not justify the lies that bush told to take us into the wrong war, and the many american and iraqi lives lost. if bush would have made bin laden a priority like he did saddam hussein, he would have caught bin laden instead.
The truth about the importance of waterboarding in obtaining cooperation from religious fanatics:
Breaking news: Leon Panetta, current CIA director admitted that info leading to Osama's death was a result of enhance interrogation or in other words, waterboarding. OK, so now it's fair to say that half of the credit goes to Obama and the other half to Bush and we'll call it even. Therefore the 2012 election should now be about the economy, jobs, deficits, oil, trade and who's the person that could bring us back to prosperity. I could only think of one person, the business genius and our next president, DONALD JOHN TRUMP.
Trump is a chump, Obama got Osama.
If you think a person who makes unjust and unwise, kneejerk, reactionary decisions and when proven wrong refuses to apologize or correct his mistake should be your leader then I guess Trump is your man.
The truth about the importance of waterboarding religious fanatics:
The truth about the importance of waterboarding religious fanatics:
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I don't like when an American say to other Americans that they should live somewhere else if you don't like what they wrote here. It is BS.
About water boarding GW admits to water boarding one person and is now wanted for war crimes. So that one person was the informant? Why is that you think torture is ok?
Iraq was an illegal war. George Bush just wanted to impress daddy. He was worst president we ever had.
I watched, I listened, and in spite of O'Donnell's take on the message I thought" what has bin laden been credited with in the last nine years?" and the answer is NOTHING. Bush was right, it did not matter where he was he was marginalized. It's great that we caught him and that he's dead...he deserved it. But John Kerry was right?? this was about controlling things with law enforcement. WOW, what a stretch.
Agreed!
Perhaps you've missed it, but Osama has been credited in communities outside the U.S. for the economic destruction of our country, perhaps prematurely, perhaps not.
Bush let OBL get away in Tora Bora, because he was more concerned with invading Iraq. What was the whole reason we invaded Afghanistan again? Was it a lie that we were there to get OBL, just like the lie of WMD's? I will say Bush was right about something, You can fool some of the people all the time and those were the people he concentrated on.
That we finally did keep our word and bring OBL to justice, not with a huge military venture but with a precision strike based on strong intelligence, proves Kerry was right. The law enforcement "part" of the Kerry quote was more about stopping further attacks here at home, and appears to be working thus far as well.
Bin Ladin was right. This is an economic war. He used the minimum amount of assets to cause the maximum amount of damage. He predicted and then bragged that we would throw everything including the kitchen sink at this issue. We need to look at the biggest picture, which I believe, to be the economic stability of this country. If there is anything that will bring us to our knees and out for the count, it will be this.
I am willing to admit that I have a very rudimentary and extremely modest knowledge of economics so I ask: why have the rich gotten richer, why have the middle class been undermined? Why have we deregulated industries that have proven to be irresponsible? Why is it Republican policy to deregulate and privitize public assets? How does that benefit anyone but the corporations and their political lackeys?
Finally, dare I say, why have we bought the hogwash that free market capitalism wrapped up is the flag is our smbol of democracy? Democracy is a political system representing one citizen one vote. Corporatists have propaganized free market capitalism to eqate democracy and patriotism. It serves their interests not the democratic majority in this country. The guys with all of the money like things just the way they are, they're doing great. Last thing they want is for the majority to get the drift and start practicing democracy, one citizen one vote. I say let's make the will of the majority, the people as powerful as all of their money and scare the crap out of them.
For one thing I hate when someones tells me "If I don't like something in this country I should move somewhere else that is BS and very immature.
About water boarding: it is torture. GW admits to water boarding one person. So how many really were tortured? I would like to know why you think it is ok to torture people? It is very sad to see this happen in this country. George Bush is now wanted for war crimes. I have very hard time giving him credit for anything. Iraq was an illegal war. He was the worse president we ever had.
Lawrence, you missed the point. GWB probably did not want bin Laden found. If he were found, that element of GWB's "fear program" would be diminished.
Now that sounds right! The Bush admin. played key-stone cops in the mid-east for 7 years and it hurt our efforts to get this guy until now. It was not GWB but his underlings who were the real fools.
Absolutely, if Bin Ladin was found early on then the Bush Administration would not be able to justify the invasion of Iraq to open up another "free market", paid for by the people, for his cronies in corporate America.
Please don't tell me Lawrence O'Donnell just compared the Navy SEALs to the LAPD. Nothing against our brothers in law enforcement, but I think there is a reason why this mission was accomplished, not just by the military, but by the most elite personnel the military produces. A law enforcement operation?! REALLY??!!
I must have missed the part of the video where he said that, what exactly was said?
Lawrence, you talked about incompetence on your show, well how incompetent are you to claim we have lost 49000 soldiers in this war on NATIONAL TV tonight. I guess your too busy hating previous administrations and talking about Senator Kerry who if you recall never became President. By the way, if Kerry had become President, you wouldn't have Obama in the office, so which would you prefer? Hey, by the way genius, here is a newsflash, the troops and intelligence community fight terrorism and succeeded in killing Bin Laden, no politicians have involvement doing that. They may give the order, but order givers are not the brave ones and are not the men and women who deserve the credit you idiot. By the way Lawrence, you just admitted on the same show that it is very possible that waterboarding led to the divulgence of some information, which was confirmed by a man appointed by Pres Obama, Mr. Panetta, and then yet two seconds later you turn around and say there was no way waterboarding had any impact on the information obtained? Do you have any idea what your doing or do you just blatantly let crap spill out of your mouth?
Any wrong doing by the left is not criticized by O'Donnell...but any chance he gets to whine about the right is jumped on. Get over it, O'Donnell.
Newsflash for you: order givers, in this and any other case like it, take the consequences when things go sideways. They're the ones that have to go before the nation and explain what went wrong ... and take the heat for it. The troops [i]serve[/i] and that one guy has their lives in his hands.
In case you hadn't noticed Heather, O'Donnell is representing the view of the left,even so I have seen him take aim at policies of the Obama administration so your complaint rings hollow. Do you ever complain that Fox commentators like Hannity/O'Reily/Beck/etc... drone on and on day after day about mistakes by the left even trying to connect dots that blame the left for the mistakes by the GOP? I've yet to see Fox criticize any conservative unless that person was pointing out the hypocrisy of their own party. Then again I don't watch Fox much, perhaps you could enlighten me...
So funny that you assume automatically that because I do not care to hear about the 'perfection' of the left, that I watch every show that is 'right'. I don't care for Glenn Beck, he is too extreme. So please, do not make assumptions because I want the truth, and not the opinion of the left. And wow, O'Donnell did compare the SEALs to the police dept, which was terribly bad taste. I am not at all surprised that you don't watch Fox. It's too balanced.
I replied, but it was posted as a seperate comment on page 2.
By the way, all I see is more ranting in your response, where can I find all this praise Fox has heaped on Obama?
They have congratulated him more than once, and said a job well done. They don't have to spend all their time kissing up to him. And you don't even watch Fox, as you previously admitted...
Heather, I said I don't watch Fox much... It's something I torture myself with occasionally to get a heads up on the arguments you'll be presenting on the liberal blogs.
If you are going to lie about something, at least make it something that can't be disproven by scrolling up 3-4 posts...
I have been following this as closely as anyone and the first thing that any of us has to understand, ordinary citizens, or media personel, is that we know about 10-20% of the truth and what actually happened. I'm not here to cast any stones! O'Donnell is a well educated and intelligent man and if he were not, he'd not be in the position he is in. That having been said, it doesn't make him right. He basically played a video of some Bush comments and then proceeded to take them out of context just as he proclaimed that John Kerry's comments were taken out of context. Look, I did not vote for Obama but I give him HUGE kudos and credit for taking this action. We got the S.O.B. and that's definitely the most important thing. However, to say that Obama deserves 100% credit for this and that policies put into place by the Bush administration had nothing to do with the success of this operation is quite frankly......RIDICULOUS! Granted, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but to cast everyone who states that Bush deserves some credit for this as some sort of deranged lunatic fanatic is to say that at least half the damn country is wrong and that.....is irresponsible and wrong! By the way, I'm married to a Democrat and I love her......we just agree to disagree! We got UBL and now we need to focus on getting the rest of these Bastards before they can inflict more harm on our country. Let's Go......USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
Who said that the Obama administration deserves 100% of the credit. No one. I have seen many here claim that they deserve none I've seen many thjat say they deserves little. The point is that Obama did sign the order and put his political carreer on the line by authorizing an attack in a country with which we are not at war. The attack was small scale much like that of a wat team taking on a gang. It was a precise attack designed to acheive its objective with the minimum of casualties and without blowing up a whole neighborhood. It was acting on inteligence aquired over many months. Inteligene that required a good quantity of legwork and surveillance. While ultimately it was the military which carried out the mission, the procedure was remenicent of good old fasion police work
Great point Shmichel. Obama doesn't get and hasn't been given 100% of the credit, but if this had gone wrong in any form he would have gotten 100% of the blame.
I love this. I give kudos to both presidents. Yes, Obama gave the okay, so he played a role. As did former president Bush. It is not right to take away all of his credits just because you don't agree with his other policies.
Heather, the facts are that Bush called off the search for OBL when they had him trapped in Tora Bora, hence all the "I'm not concerned about Osama" quotes you see by bush. Obama renewed the search when he was sworn in and made it the top priority for the CIA to capture or kill OBL, then yes as you state he gave the okay when the time came. Credit whoever you want, but realize that history tells a different story than what you claim.
And you tell a different story as well. There you go again...giving ALL credit to Obama, none to Bush. It does not matter what your version of history tells...all that needs to be known is the facts.
i've had to delete several comments tonight. please everyone, let's keep the tone civil.
To give credit to President Bush for the demise of Bin Laden due to water boarding is ludicrous. Up to seven years have passed since this happened, any tidbit received from this criminal enhanced interrogation had nothing to do with President Obama's success in this mission. Bush went into Afghanistan and wasn't succeeding, was impatient and dropped the ball, so used faulty or fabricated "intelligence" to start a war in Iraq, lying to Americans and killing tens of thousands of innocents. President Obama promised to get Osama Bin Laden, promised to protect out troops, and kept his promise by being diligent, not bragging about what was happening and used accurate intelligence, making a decision to use our brave special forces, the elite Seals, to take down Bin Laden. He could have taken the safe way, as used in the past by bombing everything in site (Iraq) but chose to avoid another military confrontation, went in, got the target (Bin Laden) without American losses, protecting the innocents, acquired valuable information and had definite proof that Osama Bin Laden was in fact, DEAD. This is President Obama's victory; the victory of the Navy Seals and our intelligence forces and the victory of America and the world. Maybe this heroic mission will dispel some of the embarrassment of our partisan politics and foolishness throughout the world. Maybe it will allow people to come together and encourage our politicians to give respect to our incredible President, to work with him and move on to do what is right for our country. Every time Bush is given credit for this mission, the news clip on him stating "he doesn't really pay any attention to Bin Laden anymore", should be played, and played and played, with no other comment.
additionally, the figure Lawrence cited was "over 49,000 dead AND wounded soldiers" - it's a combined number obtained from the dept. of defense
Thanks for the work you do, Nick... I'm still learning the ropes here and I'm not all that interested in getting troll blood all over the place although I'm reasonably skilled in the black arts...
Could you check the blog down aways, "Rewrite: Who's Soft on Defense."
It got particularly ugly there...
will do, tnx
I, for one got ugly. I am sorry.
To give credit to President Bush for the demise of Bin Laden due to water boarding is ludicrous. Up to seven years have passed since this happened, any tidbit received from this criminal enhanced interrogation had nothing to do with President Obama's success in this mission. Bush went into Afghanistan and wasn't succeeding, was impatient and dropped the ball, so used faulty or fabricated "intelligence" to start a war in Iraq, lying to Americans and killing tens of thousands of innocents. President Obama promised to get Osama Bin Laden, promised to protect out troops, and kept his promise by being diligent, not bragging about what was happening and used accurate intelligence, making a decision to use our brave special forces, the elite Seals, to take down Bin Laden. He could have taken the safe way, as used in the past by bombing everything in site (Iraq) but chose to avoid another military confrontation, went in, got the target (Bin Laden) without American losses, protecting the innocents, acquired valuable information and had definite proof that Osama Bin Laden was in fact, DEAD. This is President Obama's victory; the victory of the Navy Seals and our intelligence forces and the victory of America and the world. Maybe this heroic mission will dispel some of the embarrassment of our partisan politics and foolishness throughout the world. Maybe it will allow people to come together and encourage our politicians to give respect to our incredible President, to work with him and move on to do what is right for our country. Every time Bush is given credit for this mission, the news clip on him stating "he doesn't really pay any attention to Bin Laden anymore", should be played, and played and played, with no other comment on water-boarding. Keep up the good work, Lawrence!
Sorry for the duplication. Didn't think the first post went through.
I thought it was so good you wanted to put it up twice.
With regard to waterboarding.... First of all we do not know what if anyof the intel that led to this mission really came from waterboarding. What Panetta said that some of the people who provided the info had beeen waterboarded. No one has ever said that "enhanced tachniques" never produce good intel, but generally, most intelligence professionals will tell you that "enhanced techniques will provide intel that usually is not reliable. For those that are interested there is a book titled "London Calling North Pole" which tlaks about how unreliable torture usually is. The author got better informaition by treating his prisoners as human beings and as freinds. These well trained and harden agents were usually thrown off guard by this treatment and divulged information (usually accidentally) much mopre easily under these conditions. It might also interest you to know that the author of this book was a master of counter intelligence for the Nazis in WWII
Well look out SEALs, step aside Delta Force, take a vacation Army Rangers - all your hard work and training have just been marginalized. It seems all we need to do now is attend our local police academy, have the CIA and DIA apprentice under the detectives of the LAPD and this war will be won in no time.
Seriously, while I love the work our law enforcement officials do, and I appreciate the sacrifices they make protecting me and my family, to compare this operation to "good old fashion police work" doesn't do justice to what really happened.
What pulls away from the SEALs is the insane idea that waterboarding or other torture technices work. I am not lucky enough to know one, but I do know these brave men/women deserve the credit, not some chicken hawk with water & a board.
Wow...lot's of anger on this site...Law enforcement is made up of personnel that have prior millitary experience and some from the "special forces arena". We also have active military members that are from numerous law enforcement departments from around this country and take there job skills with them while deployed. make no mistake about it those Navy Seals did one heck of a job and deserve all the credit for that mission. Those in the military and law enforcement will do things and see things that most of you would consider a nightmare. It's the thin blue line that keeps us on the right side of chaos.....God bless our troops and law enforcement......Thanks for keeping us safe and free my brothers and sisters.
What Lawrence Odonnell refused to acknowlege is that "W" got the ball rolling in the proper direction. True, "W" was not eloquent in delivery nor execution, but thru his leadership, progress in the middle east was historically changed and today, those realities are apparent. If not for those "W" years, as haphazard as they may have appeared, where would the middle east and the the world be today? Quite potentially, "W" was not as inadequate as his administration appeared to be. In actuality, they may have been administratively competent, although arrogant, in some regards. Potentially on the proper path, but a path filled with misinformation. Or at the very least, hiding the truth. Either way, it seemed ill advised and was poorly administered in the general publics view. The general public, however does not totally understand all of the subtle ramifications involved. Far from it. The media has their own spin for their own gain. The general public nor the media never truly comprehends the ultimate plan nor the ultimate reasoning. Try as they might. "W" may have been a C student, but "W" is not stupid. He was raised in American Royalty. Sort of like Charles, who seemingly @!$%#ed up but finally got it together. "W" got it together. The historians will attest. Obama finalized the deed to some degree. The rest will be a true test of the future balls this country has to offer. -BIG WAVE DAVE
If you consider pulling focus from the righteous goal of retaliation for 9/11 to avenge his father in Iraq the "proper direction".
I don't blame Bush for everything that went wrong in his administration, the President has less control of things than most citizens realize. But the war in Iraq was a stated goal by Bush before the events of 9/11 so that one is all him.
Good Points Big Wave.
"obama finalized the deed to SOME DEGREE"? he was responsible for the deed as he made getting bin laden a top priority immediately after he was sworn in as president. he made the gutsy decision to send in the navy seals. i really question if information gotten 7 years ago led to this specific action.
will someone explain why bush and his administration outed a CIA agent, valarie plame, when her husband joe wilson refused to back up their lies about WMD in iraq? if they wanted to take the "proper path", they wouldn't have been so hell bent on going after saddam hussein instead of bin laden. explain that.
YES WE CAN! -- -- AND YES WE DID!
President Obama is an historic president, who does historic things and we should all be proud! Each and every American, of every race, gender and political affiliation! We should all be equally proud of our fine, dynamic President!
Obama, passes HEALTH CARE for all Americans...something that other presidents failed to do for over 90 years!
Obama, ends DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL, a discriminatory policy that shamed and lessened the strength of our military for decades!
Obama, passes a law that makes it ILLEGAL TO PAY WOMEN LESS THAN MEN!
Obama, nominates the first HISPANIC FEMALE to the Supreme Court!
Obama, appoints the first AFRICAN AMERICAN Attorney General of the United States!
Obama, puts an end to THE SENSELESS TORTURE OF PRISONERS OF WAR!
And now...just to make all the haters out there go completely crazy!
OBAMA, orders the military operation that ultimately locates Osama Bin Laden, a man the U.S. military and 2 previous presidents failed to extinguish, then gives the final go ahead to JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) commanders to move in and execute the final stage of the operation which killed the most wanted man on the planet without a single American casualty! That's right! After almost 10 years of absolute failures...President Obama, succeeds. AGAIN!
Democrat or Republican... Independent or other...you've gotta give it to him. President Obama succeeds where others fail! Time and time again.
Good Riddance, Osama!
Congratulations, Mr. President! Congratulations on yet another job well done!
Now, let's finish our celebrations, refocus and get rid of the remaining Al-Qaeda networks.
I watched Fox and didn't see all this praise of Obama. I did see a lot of people give the Bush administration credit and even go back to events over 7 years ago as having lead to the capture.
However, I do believe O'Donnell has not given true credit to Bush. Bush did play into the capture, but in ways that people haven't considered. When Bush gave up, Bin Laden felt free to come out of obscure hiding and to settle. If Bin Laden had remained our primary goal, he may not have felt so comfortable.
In addition, it lead Bin Laden to underestimate our commitment. If a president considered a hawk can't catch him and gives up, why concern himself with a president who is considered a dove and won the noble peace prize. "Americans need instant gratification and have no staying power." I believe he held us in contempt to his detriment. This could not have happened w/o everyone playing their part in this scenario. To the world and extremist, Obama was just another politician who talks a good game. It's fortunate that he also listened to intel and made immediate decisions. Of course his not wanting to cause unnecessary civilian deaths lead to it being a stealth mission instead of a bombing and it worked well. It could have gone incredible bad if he hadn't had the right people (trained Seals) in place and ready to go.
The best contribution Bush made was proving that the current direction of the GOP is exactly what is wrong with our country.
So basically what you are saying Bush 'stumbled his way' into helping
find Bin Laden. If that's the case then I agree with you whole heartedly. LOL
It kind of all makes sense now why the Obama's were not invited to the Royal
Wedding last weekend. He had this navy seal raid on his agenda. Best not
make the wedding an even bigger target by them being there incase of a
violent reaction by the radicals or incase wind of it got out.
What i'm saying is maybe Obama told them ahead of time that he couldn't make
it so therefore don't feel obliged to put him on the invitation list. I didn't say
that he told them what they were planning.
Shmichel.......why don't you go back and watch the video of O'Donnell? Perhaps you will not miss the part this time where he openly exclaims that he can't believe that anyone in their right mind would be giving any credit to the former administration for the take down of Bin Laden. He then puts up a picture of a very intense Obama from the situation room and proclaims that this is the picture of a President who captures a terrorist or some such nonsense as that. It was ridiculous! So, don't try to tell me that the leftist, mainstream media is not giving 100% of the credit for this to Obama because you know damn well they are. Yes, Fox has pointed out that GW deserves some credit for putting policies into place that led to this moment. You sure as Hell are not going to hear that on any other network. I haven't and you are NEVER going to either. The Patriot Act among other things would never have been put into place by Obama and will probably be allowed to die when it expires in May or June of this year. I used to like MSNBC and guys like Chris Mathews but I have to say that what I have watched of him the last couple of days and now Mr. O'Donnell, they are constantly attacking anything right of center and pretty openly viciously I might add. When I hear the kind of things these guys say, it feels more like we are war with each other (Dems vs Rep) than the terrorist!
Anything right of center is what used to be considered the radical right. The center is what used to be considered the right, just left of that is the old center, and the radical left is pretty much gone from the discussion.
Our country has been suckered into the trickled-on global-free-market nonsense for more than 40 years and everyone except for the top 2% has suffered accordingly.