Comments on: I heart how he pronounces “Pakistan”.

By: ruben

ruben — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:55:07 +0000

so is he going to start pronouncing California and Colorado in Spanish and rolling his r's ? Saying (te/haas) instead of ( tek-sÉ™s, -siz) they way americans anglicized it , baton rouge in a nasally french way? I mean how far can you take this.....he's got a great voice but as many of know that 90% a gift of God , something we gave little to do with.

By: Dimsum and then some

Dimsum and then some — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:23:17 +0000

Hillary is Bush-lite; Obama is Hillary-lite. I’d like Nader to run again and raise the democrats’ hackles, frankly. will he make a difference? I dont know. Did he in 2000? Where are the good studies? loved An Unreasonable Man. Great to watch Moore and the rest of the silly shrill crowd do an about-face and turn on Nader in 2004 after being all pro-Nader in 2000. Short of that, and leaving aside identity-politics as a marker of progress, I will settle for…Edwards? Obama sounds less and less like he has anything substantive to say about anything. Nuance is one thing, not having clear or distinguishable policies is another.

By: Amit

Amit — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:49:07 +0000

Divya, no apologies necessary. I just meant to clarify my intention with the original comment as it is easy to misinterpret on the internet minus the vocal tone and facial expressions.

By: Divya

Divya — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:00:49 +0000

Divya, I hope you realized that I was joking. It just goes to show the paucity of ideas that the media have that something like this gets so much attention.

Sorry Amit, by “people” I meant the media. I realized you were joking. =) Thanks everyone for the Hillary-Barack Punjab name-calling… I didn’t know that Hillary “started” it.

By: ups

ups — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:59:40 +0000

Josh Marshall’s take at TPM http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016379.php

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:09:08 +0000

Do the criticisms of Obama re: his Pakistan statements take it as implicit that the "problem" with them is violation of Pakistani sovereignty? If so, I'm dubious--it seems to me that the attacks would either be morally justified or not (under, e.g., just war theory). "Sovereignty" seems like an empty formalism (and a statist one at that--like the supposed "international law" rule that you can kill all the drafted soldiers, but can't assassinate the enemy leadership).

On the other hand, the criticisms of Obama might take it as implicit that (net) bad consequences would be expected from such attacks. That might be. But it bothers me that the anti-Obama criticisms seldom seem to get down to brass tacks on this point.

By: SkepMod

SkepMod — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:47:51 +0000

Overall, Obama has been put on the defensive now on his foreign policy statements twice.

Amardeep, good point. And unfortunately, in both cases, he was made to look naive by folks equivocating. Hillary's argument that she wouldn't meet evil dictators without extensive prep was a little shallow. No president would invite Castro before the administrations did a whole bunch of work. And like someone here pointed out, Dodd/Clinton don't disagree with him, they just won't say it out loud; which sounds little condescending to me. Pakistanis already don't trust their president and think he is a US puppet.

By: chachaji

chachaji — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:11:07 +0000

I remember hearing somewhere, someplace that Obama's stature, his physique, the drape of his suits and thin neckties subconsciously hark back to the Kennedy brothers, particularly JFK, who was more polished of the two.

If there's one person from that era that Obama superficially reminds me most of, it's Malcolm X.

By: Manju

Manju — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:02:30 +0000

Sorry, I missed giuliani's shining bald head

giuliani's got a lisp. that would be a first. then there's the drag thing. which explains this.

By: DTK

DTK — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:54:36 +0000

Here's more on this whole Pakistan exchange from one of the best political journalists/bloggers, Josh Marshall. (Marshall founded the TPM blog emprie, which is probably the best investigative political blog out there -- they broke, among other stories, the US attorney/firing scandal.)