Liveblogging Obama's Mission Sorta Accomplished
Oh look who's on teevee for the first time ever: Barack Obama, commander of all wars! Let's liveblog his triumph or whatever it is -- Orwellian something-or-other, according to Sarah Palin.
8: 05 PM -- He talked to George W. Bush on the phone! And yet, he did not praise George W. Bush for starting this most awesome war ever, in Iraq.
8: 06 PM -- Because of the middle class we don't have, and the trillion dollars we borrowed from the Chinese, now we can't have nice things.
8: 08 PM -- Education, manufacturing, all of these things we just don't have now ... just like Iraq, today!
8: 09 PM -- But we must challenge our failures just like the soldiers did, somewhere. Treat your mortgage like an IED, for freedom!
8: 13 PM -- And now there will be a new G.I. bill, etc., and everybody can buy houses! Oh wait.
8: 16 PM -- Here comes the "sincere part," with the story and the war sadness and the "light of peace." Eh, needs more terror knuckles.
8: 18 PM -- Listen how he says "Kandahar." No wonder he's so half-Muslin, just like his grandpa who fought in the World War II.
8: 19 PM -- And ... that's it.
8: 19 PM -- Except for the 50,000 American troops still in Iraq, forever.
8: 20 PM -- According to Anderson Cooper, counter of paragraphs, there were "roughly 30 paragraphs" in the speech.
8: 21 PM -- David Gergen finds this "perplexing." For perhaps the first time, we agree completely with David Gergen's opinion.
8: 21 PM -- Peter Bergen, the "opposite name" of David Gergen, says this is sort of like Obama's West Point speech, which was also one of those "we'll keep slogging along, because that's what we do, but good lord does it suck."
8: 23 PM -- Obama also wanted Democrats to stop questioning the patriotism/smarts of George W. Bush, who loves Truth.
8: 24 PM -- Wolf Blitzer thinks a very "powerful message" was sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. We must've slept through that part.
8: 25 PM -- WHAT??? The CNN correspondent standing by a palm tree in Baghdad in the middle of the night says that for the Iraqis, "tomorrow their lives will be the same." Well they must'vealsoslept through the powerful message part, when Obama granted all Iraqis three wishes.
8: 30 PM -- More than amillion American troopsserved time in Iraq. Some 40,000 were injured, 5,000 were killed. Nobody has any real idea how many Iraqis died, but it was closer to "a million" than "5,000."
8: 33 PM -- And MSNBC's already on to the next subject, Joe Miller in Alaska.
8: 35 PM -- Fox News is sticking to the subject! They are seriously worried, about what Obama is/isn't doing! After all, think about Iran! ALWAYS think about Iran.
8: 36 PM -- Oh crap, it's the Bill O'Reilly show. Who cares. Nobody onFoxeven cares about Bill O'Reilly in 2010. Hey Bill, go dress up like a Mormon Amway salesman and cry in front of a monument, maybethenthe wingtards will lurve you again. (PS: They never did.)
8: 37 PM -- What's his name from theNewsweekhotel-blog is talking about an "awakening" in Iraq. He is always writing bullshit about awakenings or lack thereof. Everything is a world-changing event to this guy.
8: 38 PM -- Anderson Cooper, dumbly, wonders if this quick dull speech will "unify people." David Gergen, hechucklesat this, in a derisive tone! Why didn't Bush get a medal for the SURGE???
8: 40 PM -- Oh lookee there's a live webchat on whitehouse.gov, here:
8: 41 PM -- Sure is weird to have this running live on Wonkette and streaming off the White House site, too. Meaning, ECHO ECHO ECHO.
8: 42 PM -- What we really want is some embeddable video of the actual speech, so you can "see for yourself" or whatever. It zipped by so quickly -- and with so little distinction -- that we would rather watch it again, too, rather than talk about people talking about it.
mara liasson really never got over pantsuit fail, did she?
i hate hating NPR but i hate NPR when she speaks.
And nothing about personal jet packs.