More Politics 101: Obama is SMARTER Than Us!

[Capn Sunshine]

FromThe PCTC Blog:
I’m not angry often. I don’t believe anger is an emotion that makes things better for anyone but yourself, and even that is rare. This is generally a political blog, and in politics, anger is poisonous. I can’t say this enough; the average voter in this country (NOT voters on either extreme side of the political spectrum, but those who actually decide elections) is NOT motivated by anger, cannot be motivated by anger (usually), and actually reacts to expressed anger with disgust, for the most part. They don’t want to elect angry people, they want to elect competent people. They don’t care what WE think the issues are; they want to elect someone who knows and understands the issues and will do something about it.

Put simply, the general public already thinks all politicians suck, so you reiterating that politicians suck does nothing to advance the political process.

But I’m becoming angry with the far left these days, not just because they’re being unfair to the president and the Democrats, but because they pose as political “experts,” despite the fact that they seem to know nothing about how politics actually works.

snip

That is why all of you Monday morning quarterbacks out there – those of you who are constantly going on about how big a screw-up Obama is, and how he “should have” done something that YOU think would have “worked better” -- just look pathetic. Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse, and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles. Pardon my French, but FUCK the Blue Dogs. THEY are NOT the problem. The problem is the extreme right, who are hell-bent on dismantling this country, one brick at a time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Um, HELL YEAH! :headbang:

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

:thumbsup:

[elleng]

2. YEAH!

:headbang:

[Kalidurga]

6. Well someone had to say it. N/T

[elleng]

13. Damn right. Some of us do.

Welcome.

:hi:

[readmoreoften]

73. Yes. Some of you repeatedly say nothing over and over again.

That's why you're called "cheerleaders". Because you say nothing of substance.

[elleng]

76. ...

:thumbsdown:

[TheWraith]

3. "THEY are NOT the problem. The problem is the extreme right" YES. That. Exactly.

People bitch about the Blue Dogs as if there were no such things as Republicans, or as if it were realistic to elect the same people in Colorado and Nebraska as in LA and New York City.

The war is against the Republicans. That's who needs to be beaten.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Skittles]

19. see, that is where you are dead wrong

the problem is THEM *AND* our crappy "leadership"

[TheWraith]

61. If you'd rather take potshots at Dems for not doing the impossible, go ahead.

But there are certain facts of reality that you're not going to get away from. You cannot elect purity-tested super-liberals in red or purple districts. You cannot realistically create a majority without Blue Dogs. And you cannot honestly say that Blue Dogs don't vote with the Dems the vast majority of the time.

But please, do not take my word for it. Go out, and spend six months working for a far-left candidate in a Republican district. Do everything you possibly can to elect them. When you end up getting 28% of the vote, maybe you'll come back and recognize that it's not as easy as "just fight for it." Believe me: I speak from personal experience.

[Ruby the Liberal]

4. Actually, no. Blue Dogs voting with Rs ARE a problem

But thanks for playing.

[dennis4868]

5. Great read!

The IOHs will attack you! :-(

[still_one]

7. As the Asian stock market fall, guess where they are putting their money? U.S. treasuries...

[MannyGoldstein]

9. Why did Lincoln fire his losing generals?

After all, it was the Confederacy that was the problem.

We need to start winning, is how I see it.

[babylonsister]

10. K&R! "The problem is the extreme right" - yes, yes it is! nt

[Armstead]

30. And maybe so-called centrist Democrats should stop empowering them

Instead of giving away the store and calling for "bi-partisan compromise" with the GOP that has no interest in that, perhaps it might be time for Obama (and other "centrists") to actually stand up and fight the bastards and offer an alternative to America.

[sabo_tabby]

11. Well duh! Of course he is!

He's President and we're not.

Case closed.

[BlueCheese]

27. Surely you don't think George W. Bush is smarter than you?

[Armstead]

29. Zing.

[sabo_tabby]

31. I don't think Chimpy is smarter than my cat...

More cunning, more evil, yes. Smarter, no.

But I challenge you to make the claim that YOU'RE smarter than BHO.

[BlueCheese]

35. Your argument appeared to be that...

Obama is the president, so he's smarter than us. I was saying that that argument also works for George W. Bush. You'll need a different argument other than the simple fact of Obama being president.

I'm not claiming to be smarter than Obama personally, whatever that means. But just because I can't throw a football doesn't mean I don't know it's a bad idea to punt on second down.

[sabo_tabby]

42. Other way 'round, friend...

Obama is smarter than us, which is why he became President.

Chimpy is more cunning and evil and connected with the Pig Power Structure Elites, which is why he had to steal the presidency.

No Puke was ever elected to office - look throughout history and you'll see every one of the bastards stole it. It's the only way they can wheedle their way into office and they'll do it anyway they can.

Same with every Puke seat in congress. They're all bought.

You watch in 2012 how many seats they steal and buy. Until we realize as a nation that there's no such thing as a legitemately-elected Puke, it'll be more of the same.

[jaysunb]

12. Good post ! K & R

:hi:

[Firebrand Gary]

14. A - Fucking Men...

I could not have said as well as you did. Smack on!

[Number23]

15. Aye aye, Cap'n!

I'm sure this will be at 0 in no time. :spray:

Edit: I was rec number five! Saving for posterity. :)

[gateley]

16. K&R == We've got probs in our own party, but we have to remember

who the REAL enemy is!

[Armstead]

28. We do -- And some of us think that....

...empowering them by wishy-washy inaction, mushy messages, and hearing the president affirm GOP bullshit is not the way to defeat them.

[jaxx]

17. Big K & R

[EFerrari]

18. LOL

[Bonobo]

20. It's not your FRENCH that bothers me, it's your run on sentences and lack of clarity.

Take a look at this:

"Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse, and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles."


Is there some way you could state what you really mean to say without your totally meaningless use of commas?

Although some call this a good OP, it seems to me that you're simply saying that "It is a good thing that Obama doesn't show anger because most voters respond best to a calm demeanor, not anger."

Then you go on, poorly I might add, to try and say that people complaining about Obama's actions should just shut up because they are stupid and are negatively impacting Obama's perception.

Is that about it?

Unrec for a poor OP.

[tblue37]

37. Although the sentence you quote is perhaps a bit long and *slightly* awkward, and many

people today are not comfortable with such a long sentence, it is not a run-on sentence.

There are different types of run-on sentences, but the most common are comma splices and fused sentences. The sentence you mock is neither.

Another type of run-on sentence is caused by stringing together too many coordinate clauses, usually attached by "and," though other coordinating conjunctions might be used. That is the sort of sentence excited three-year-olds sometimes utter:

We went to the zoo and we saw a lion and we saw a tiger, and we had ice cream with lunch, and I fell, and I hurt my knee but it didn't bleed, and then we came home, but I was too excited to sleep, so Mama let me stay up past my bedtime and now I am really tired!

The sentence you mock uses only TWO commas that I would recommend omitting, even though both of them are correctly placed according to the following usage rule, which applies about 95% of the time: Normally a comma is used to separate independent clauses in a compound sentence, but under certain conditions that comma may be omitted. (Using the compound sentence comma is never actually "wrong," even when it could be omitted, but it is stylistically awkward to overuse commas that are permissible but not required.)

The commas that I would like to omit are larger and in red:

Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse, and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles.

Current American usage tends toward minimal punctuation, so commas that are permissible are generally not included if they are not actually required. Nevertheless, a writer might have stylistic reasons for including permissible but not required commas. On the other hand, since comams are like speed bumps, I always recommend that people use them sparingly when they are not actually required. Once those commas are removed, the sentence reads much better:

Seriously, you look sillier than shit and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles.

It is still slightly "run on" in the sense that it strings together more cluses than most people are comfortable with these days, but as far as grammar goes, those clauses are properly embedded, and there are not so many of them that the sentence strays into excited three-year-old territory.

In other words, just TWO commas in that sentence are unnecessary, but both are properly used according to a specific rule of comma usage. They are not "wrong"--just stylistically questionable.

The sentence itself is otherwise grammatically correct and also correctly punctuated.

Here is a lsit of all the commas and the justification for including them:

Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse, and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles."

1."Seriously" = a sentence adverb. Usually--though not always--sentence adverbs are followed by commas.

2. I would prefer this comma to be omitted, but it is perfectly correct to use a comma there, because it is about a 95% rule that one should use a comma to separate independent clauses in a compound sentence. The justifications for omitting that comma can be found in my article on that subject at

http://grammartips.homestead.com/compoundsentences.html

As it happens, those two independent clauses are short enough that it would be acceptable to omit the comma between them.

3. This "because" clause is set off by a comma for emphasis. Furthermore, since I would recommend omitting the comma between the first two (short) independent clauses, this comma prevents the excessively long unit that would be created by stringing together three separate clauses with no punctuation at all.

3. Another perfectly acceptable comma between independent clauses in a compound sentence. Again, the comma could be omitted between such short clauses, and I do think that the sentence reads more smoothly without it.

4. Appropriate (required!) comma to set off a nonrestrictive relative clause. Now, I might squawk a little because the pronoun "which" does not have a specific antecedent, but the sentence is clear enough for us to understand that "which" refers to beating the right wing, so I am not too disturbed by the fact that its reference is global rather than specific there.

If you have a problem with the OP's argument, then by all means make your argument by refuting his/hers. But the fact that you mock a DU poster for what you consider to be grammatically incorrect sentences and a "totally meaningless use of commas" bothers me, especially since you are wrong on both counts.

I don't like to see people mocked by the self-appointed grammar police. As it happens, I actually am the grammar police, but I don't make a habit of beating people up for errors on message boards.

[coalition_unwilling]

43. Well, you may be the 'grammar police' but I'm the Grammar Supreme Court and there is an unclear

pronoun reference already within the first two clauses:

"Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off . . ."

To wit, exactly what does that 'it' refer to? There is no clear antecedent so the careful reader is left wondering exactly what is pissing most liberals off. Could it be 'shit'? Nope. Could it be 'sillier than shit'? Who knows? Could it be that the act of looking sillier than shit is what is pissing most liberals off? Who could possibly hazard a guess at this point? Death to all unclear pronoun references says I.

On an even more pedantic note, please do note the grammatical misuse of the adverb 'seriously' (unless the blog writer was going for some 11-dimensional irony by juxtaposing the 'seriously' against the 'sillier'). Again, who knows?

[tblue37]

52. That is common colloquial use of "seriously" as a sentence adverb.

No one would be confused by it.

The orphan "it" in the first clause is also common colloquial usage.

Again, I disapprove of global pronoun reference, because more often than not the antecedent is not clear. I require my own students to follow the "one-finger rule": Every pronoun has to have an identifiable antecedent that can actually be touched with a finger. Global reference to an idea that is floating somewhere around the sentence is unacceptable in a paper written for me. In a student paper I would not allow that "which" in the sentence we've been discussing, but I am comfortable with it in a message board post.

I am perfectly aware that in real life people often use global pronoun reference, and much of the time the point is clear enough. It's just that most students use such vague reference constantly, and most of the time their point really is not all that clear, so I am very strict about pronoun reference in their papers because I want them to break that habit.

But I think the writer's point in that clause is clear enough. When I read message board posts, I don't expect the writers to be as careful as they would be if they were submitting a paper for class or an article for publication. Most message board posts are made on the fly.

I happen to think the OP is overwrought and unfair to many of those who feel frustrated with Obama's policies and his messaging style. I don't like to hear anyone telling sincere and concerned people to just STFU, which is what the OP seems to be doing.

My complaint is that your comment is an unnecessary, irrelevant slam accusing him/her of writing a run-on sentence in which his/her comma usage makes no sense at all. In fact, the sentence you quoted is not a run-on sentence (though it is not as tightly and effectively structured as it could be), and its commas do follow the rules, though two of those commas, while acceptable, are stylistically inadvisable.

I just don't think it advances the discussion to make that sort of attack against the other person's grammar and usage. A lot of people are shy about joining written discussions because they fear just such attacks--and many of those people are on our side, people whose energy and commitment we want to encourage, not discourage. If they see other people being attacked like that, it just reinforces their belief that trying to join the discussion will leave them open to public humiliation over something that is not relevant to their point.

[coalition_unwilling]

54. Did you bother to count the number of clauses in this sentence that

you claim does not run on? By my count, there are 3 independent clauses and 2 dependent clauses. By the time one reaches the end of the sentence, one hardly remembers where one began, almost as if this blogger is channeling Sarah Palin on one of her good days. (Palin's count of dependent and independent clauses most often goes off the chart for any of her various utterances :)

In addition to the blogger's tortured syntax, there is the question of blatant over-generalization in phrases like 'far left', the net effect of which is to make the blogger's supposed stricture against anger read as little more than a rant, i.e., anger.

Again, though, maybe there's some 11-dimensional rhetoric going on here, between the apposition of 'seriously' with 'sillier' and the angry ranting . . . about anger. Or maybe the OP is some modern-day Jonathan Swift, using his persona to demolish the very attitudes the persona exemplifies. I seriously (npi) doubt it, though.

N.B. The OP posts an excerpt from a blog written by person or persons unknown, so attacking the OP for the grammar and usage in an excerpt of the blogger's writing does not strike me as fair. However, what chafes me about the OP is this business -- certainly not exclusive to this OP by any means -- of posting lengthy excerpts absent any larger context and with very little interpretation by the person doing the posting. I mean, really, what is the OP demonstrating by such behavior? That he or she knows how to post excerpts? If so, the mere posting of excerpts hardly seems to advance any worthwhile discussion on a so-called discussion board.

[Bonobo]

50. I addressed both the shitty form and the shitty content of the OP.

I am also a professional in the field of writing, so I can show my badge as well.

I know a run-on sentence when I see one.

[Union Scribe]

21. I don't respond well to high-handed lectures

and I don't think many voters do. I hope to God this ranting jackass is kept away from any kind of campaigning.

[NoodleyAppendage]

22. Good luck with that. Most have kept their eyes open. n/t

J

[mmonk]

23. The Blue Dogs are a problem. Who do you think helped bush wiretap, get off the hook for torture,

etc. Who do you think helped our new Republican legislature override my Democratic Governor's vetos? Blue Dogs.

[dgibby]

24. Guess the liberals can just sit this one out, then.

Looks like Obama won't be needing us since the center's got the ball,so to speak (pun intended). Just don't blame us if he loses. Either you need us or you don't.

[tularetom]

25. I sure as hell hope he's smarter than me

Because I'm so fucking dumb I never would have told my opponents beforehand that I had no intention of unilaterally raising the debt limit based on the Constitution.

[Armstead]

26. "Monday Morning Quarterbacks" What a load lof crap.

People have been making clear what they would prefer Obama and the Democrats do all the way along.

It is NOT a matter of "Gee you should have done this instead of what you did."

More like "here's what I (we) believe you should do and why we think so."

As for "they pose as political “experts,” ".....Well the so-called experts running the ship have not seen many of the iceburgs on the horizon and crashed into them.

If people who speak out piss off so-called "liberals" like the jerkoff who wrote that little tirade -- Good.

[kentuck]

65. A bunch of weak-kneed do-nothings...

that couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag that they voluntarily crawled into.

I agree. What a load of crap!

[JVS]

32. If the extreme right is the problem, why do "moderate" dems attack the left and emulate the right?

[FredStembottom]

33. Personalities are a mix of attributes....

One commonly seen type combines intelligence with timidity.

[shanti]

34. smart has nothing to do with it

nothing.

[Angry Dragon]

36. ...........

:thumbsdown:

[coalition_unwilling]

38. The author whose blog you post snips of uses the phrase 'far left'

with no idea what it means. The far left indicts Obama and his cohort because they fail to represent the working class.

Answer just one fucking question, if you please: why did Obama keep Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense if his administration was going to give us 'change we can believe in'? See, some of us on the far left were and are paying attention.

FWIW, the real war should be and will be against the 'ruling class' and not against 'conservatives.'

[Capn Sunshine]

41. oh no, he knows exactly what "far left" means.

What did you expect when Obama inherited two Wars? Why not Gates? How else to maintain the continuity to get out of those wars? If you recall the economy was on fire, a five alarm fire, and he didn't want the added distractions of a confirmation circus. He's bringing our troops out of Iraq. He's killed Bin Laden. He passed the HealthCare Bill, something no President , even FDR, could accomplish. He ended DADT and has instructed the Justice Department, rife with Bush Appointees, to cease defending DOMA.

That's some pretty hefty change.

[coalition_unwilling]

44. Um, in January 2009 there were 38,000 combat troops in the AfPak

tbeater. There are now well in excess of 100,000. Sounds more like "Chains we can believe in."

[Capn Sunshine]

60. you did not pay attention to the military prescription for "winning" in AfPak

The main problem at the time was the troops were spread too thin. Bush ignored that theater because they wanted a more controllable environment for their cronies to profiteer. Obama ran on this principle, that we fought the "wrong war" and ignored the other one. I guess this eluded you, but most in America supported this move. You do have the right to disagree. I understand why.

[yurbud]

39. I hope this talking point isn't coming from the White House. It does Obama more harm than good.

You aren't going to get us to the polls just by telling us the other guys are scary and we are too fucking stupid to understand the brilliance of Obama throwing away the gains of the Great Society and New Deal.

If Obama wants to get re-elected, he needs to DO THE FUCKING JOB WE ELECTED HIM TO DO, not do the GOP's job for them.

[BzaDem]

45. I really doubt it does Obama much harm. Fear is usually quite effective. After all, we evolved to

respond to fear for a reason. In fact, fear is often a good thing, so long as the thing to fear actually exists and isn't made-up. And in this case, the object of the fear clearly exists and just as clearly isn't made up.

Obama doesn't need to tell anyone that the other guys are scary. Seeing the other guys on the campaign trail for the next year will do the job for him. Most of the people threatening to not vote for Obama now will be voting (if not campaigning) for Obama in a year. People who think there is little difference between Obama and a Republican are in for quite a rude awakening.

[yurbud]

46. he is peddling two very contradictory ideas: a) the GOP is scary and b) we need to adopt many

of their policies, like putting the deficit ahead of jobs, and cutting it by cutting programs for the working and middle class instead of raising taxes on the rich, and setting up health insurance reform that does as much or more for health insurance companies as it does for the Americans the program is supposed to help, and lastly, putting the same corrupt economic team in that helped create the conditions for the crash under Clinton (who also liked to implement GOP ideas) instead of putting them in prison.

If the GOP is so scary, he needs to put some more daylight between himself and them, and not just in words, but in actions and going to the mat for Democratic priorities.

[BzaDem]

49. Putting aside the truth or falsity of your statement, those two things are not contradictory at all

For example, let's hypothesize that one candidate agrees to cut Medicare payments to providers by 2%. The other candidate wants to abolish Medicare.

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that both are "GOP policies." Everything I previously said still stands. Someone who doesn't like GOP ideas is going to dislike the abolition of Medicare far more than a cut to providers to 2%, even if we assume for the sake of argument that both are nominally GOP policies. They will ultimately vote to keep 98% of Medicare, rather than 0% of Medicare.

[yurbud]

71. there was an article on psychological differences between fear in cons and lefties

Everyone has the same lizard brain, amygdala response to things that scare us like crazies, violence, different cultures, etc, but lefties have a second response of trying to see through their fear whereas righties stay at that first level, which leads to lynch mobs and defaulting to violence and retribution to solve problems even when it is counter-productive.

[chill_wind]

40. No sale.

It's not his intelligence that's in question. It's the direction of his decisions and policies as they affect us and our families that we'll keep speaking up about. We did it with the last President and we'll do it with the next one. It's a political party, not a cult.

[lib_wit_it]

47. Lamea$$ f#&king bull$h*t. Good grief. The Right wouldn't have any effect if they couldn't get their

way, which they couldn't without the support of the Blue Dogs.

And the president would seem a hell of a lot smarter to me if he realized HE had the power to affect the discourse, as described here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html

[killbotfactory]

48. Daring to claim Obama is smart. Smarter, even, than bloggers? = Auto Unrec.

See, the problem with politics is, at some point, idealism runs into reality. It’s great to say Obama “should have” gone for $2 trillion in stimulus, but what’s the point of doing so, if you have no chance of getting it? Obama was actually told by experts that the most he could hope for was about $400 billion and he got twice that, thanks to a few carefully placed tax cuts for average people. What he got, in a country that was already looking at huge deficits, was actually quite amazing, politically speaking. Here was a president who’d taken the oath less than a month earlier, and he was able to usher through a single bill that cost taxpayers $800 billion over 3 years, and did so with zero Republican votes.

Obama's critics will feel aggrieved by the idea that Obama is more competent than they are, and therefore skip the article altogether, but thanks for posting.

[JVS]

51. This "smartest man in the room" thing is becoming a real stumbling block. Obama recently...

got pwned by some of the dumbest motherfuckers ever to disgrace the halls of congress. Now I know Obama is smarter than them, but unless it brings a win it's useless.

[AlabamaLibrul]

53. Fuck The PCTC Blog.. nt

AL

[Bobbie Jo]

55. Recommended.

The narcissists won't like this, not one bit. :rofl:

[Lyric]

56. Smarter than you, maybe.

:shrug:

[deaniac21]

57. The president is playing some form of pan-dimensional chess

against a pack of checkers-playing Republicans. He may be the smartest and most likable person in the world.

[JVS]

63. Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life

[Starry Messenger]

58. No, he really isn't.

[Scurrilous]

59. ..

:kick:

[upi402]

62. so was Ted Bundy

You'd be angrty with him too if you could see that there's no opposition to corporatism.

Dems are better that lunatic Repukes, but it doesn't mean we're not disenfranchised.

[Bluebear]

64. "chill the fuck out, he's got this motherfucker!"

:crazy:

[kentuck]

66. unfair ?

Surely you jest?

[Ganja Ninja]

67. That's right blame it all on the right.

Ignore the President that signed the bill renewing the Bush tax cuts. The tax cuts that set him up for the debt ceiling debacle. Ignore his continuation of Bush's wars. Ignore his lack of leadership and his inexplicable desire for bipartisanship despite the numerous repeated hostile responses. No he's smarter than us. He's the chess master.
:banghead:

[letmedrinkuin]

68. Obama can't lead.......

That is the real problem!

His IQ means nothing if he is not willing to work and fight for what he believes.

We sent Obama to DC with a fillibuster-proof majority. He could have had anything in his first few months. Instead, he deferred to Pelosi/Reid to write and negotiate the agenda.

Had Obama introduced single-payer on Jan 21, 2009, it could have passed by the end of February.....if he was willing to kick some ass and get his own party members to toe-the-line!

Instead, he threw parties, went golfing and allowed the sausage-making of politics to continue without any involvement.....except a few speeches along the way.

Well, he is nothing but hot air to me!

Nice speeches are not a substitute for real work!

We worked hard to send him to DC with big majorities that could finally get things done without Repug interference and he allowed members of his own party to become the obstacles!

He leads the party! Or, at least, he is supposed to lead the party!

But, that is the real problem, isn't it? Obama is not capable of leading anything.

It has nothing to do with intelligence or political saavy.

[NorthCarolina]

69. More BS spin from the DLC corner. nt

[PVnRT]

70. Error: you can only unrecommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

[Capn Sunshine]

72. lol

awesome post

[lumberjack_jeff]

74. He's not a screwup. His bullets are landing exactly where he's aiming. n/t

[readmoreoften]

75. Worship. The man has a JD. There are millions of people with far more education and smarts

than this phony. But the real issue isn't his intelligence, it's his character and even more so, his right-wing ideology.

[Capn Sunshine]

77. a JD ? What does that have to do with anything?

:shrug:

[joeybee12]

78. I love these sweeping "you don't know how politics works" accusations in dimwit blogs like this...

With nothing to back it up...happy to unrec.