All Posts Tagged With: "talking points"

An aunt in the country illegally and a half-brother arrested on drug charges in Kenya: how are these Barack Obama’s problem?

If your aunt or brother did something illegal, should your reputation be besmirched if you had no involvement in their illicit activities? Does blood relation now automatically qualify you as a conspirator to any of your relatives’ bad choices?

Responding to “a twisted op-ed” by the former president’s chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen in yesterday’s Washington Post, Steve Brenen sums up the neo-con view of George W. Bush’s legacy…

Most of the arguments are tiresome and familiar: except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush’s record on counter-terrorism was top notch. As Thiessen sees it, Bush handed Obama a terrific national-security dynamic, which shouldn’t be tinkered with at all.

It reads like a laundry list of discredited talking points: torture works, warrantless-wiretaps are necessary, we can’t withdraw from Iraq or al Qaeda wins, etc. It’s the kind of inane demagoguery that a sensible person would be embarrassed to be associated with.