I'D RATHER BE RIGHT.

Obama said this about Republicans who are trying to protect America from pathetic refugees:

"Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America," Obama said of Republicans. "At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three year old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me."

Also:

"I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric coming out of here in the course of this debate," Obama said... 

"When you start seeing individuals in position of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land that feeds the ISIL narrative."

Naturally I am very pleased to see this, not only because Obama is usually much too nice to these assholes, but also and mainly because it's a refreshingly strong defense of common sense in the normally common-sense-free War on Whatever. When was the last time you heard any other top-tier elected official call bullshit like this?

Nice Guy Democrats like Kevin Drum think it's a bad idea, though, because mindless fear is a "political winner"; presumably we should all get on board with terror-hysteria so as to keep the love of the people. Say, Joe Lieberman's still alive, maybe he can run for President.

I realize that, as circumscribed as he's been, Obama has accomplished some good things for the country. The trouble is, they're mostly half-measures. Take Obamacare. We only have this shaky Rube Goldberg system because the insurers and the AMA had to get paid off or national healthcare would never fly -- Senators and Congressmen have to get their contributions from somewhere, y'know! Single payer has been and remains the choice of the American people, but in the name of prudence and moderation we have instead a system nobody's entirely happy with, and because they're not happy Republicans get to exploit it while scheming to bring back their preferred Pay or Die healthcare system.

This is what you get when you've been thinking half-loaves so long you treat whole loaves as some sort of Bridge Too Far. What would the American people do with a whole loaf? Isn't there a danger that they'll choke?

Now Republicans are yearning so bad for another war that they're willing to use France, home of socialized medicine and the Axis of Weasels, as their casus belli. (Never mind that France has decided to go ahead and take more Syrian refugees.) Should I, in an attempt at comity, acknowledge their imaginary concerns, and then the next set of imaginary concerns, until finally I'm saying well, if the U.N. is willing...? Fuck it.  I didn't go for it in 2003 and I'm not going for it now. Besides, look at Some Guy from RedState reacting to Obama --

It takes a particular level of gall to be on foreign soil and criticize your political opponents. It is even worse when one is on foreign soil and openly treats political opponents with a level of contempt and anger that would be better served directed at terrorists. President Obama went there and after calling the terrorist attacks in Paris a “setback” and getting pissy with the press on Monday, has begun to lash out at GOP Governors...

I know, art of the possible and all that, but I'm not making common cause with this douchebag. Like Christy Mahon said, if it's a poor thing to be lonesome it's worse, maybe, to go mixing with the fools of the earth. I'll just keep on as I have been, and if God is kind I'll be around in a few years to hear Megan McArdle explain that I was just lucky. And who knows? By then maybe a few more citizens will have caught on.

UPDATE. Here's an interesting approach, from "Captain" Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Predictably, the President continues to cheap-shot his opposition via straw-men arguments (while overseas) while demanding we believe what has been proven to be a false narrative, rather than come home to deal with the crisis with actual dialogue and some honesty. The person who is serving refugees worst at the moment is Barack Obama.

I can see "Captain" Morrissey dressed as a simple dogface in WWII, leaning down to the orphaned Dondi with a Hershey bar: "Ya gotta understand, kid -- we didn't want to leave you to die, even though we kept saying that we did. But that Obama -- he went to the Philippines, and he was mean to us! When you're starving to death, remember who's really responsible. [Dondi reaches for the candy bar; Morrissey snatches it back] Psych!"

UPDATE 2. SWEET JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY ROD DREHER IS ACTUALLY DIGGING DEVIL LYRICS OUT OF EAGLES OF DEATH SONGS:

Evil is not a game. Evil is not to be messed with. If you call up the devil, sometimes, he will come.

Then he gets into it with his commenters about whether "Sympathy for the Devil" also summons evil. If you guessed "No, 'cause Rod likes the Stones," you guessed right: "And the Stones song was inspired by Bulgakov’s novel 'The Master and Margarita'. It’s not literally expressing sympathy for the devil, but rather disclosing his familiar presence throughout the history’s human atrocities..." It's a still life watercolor, of a now-late afternoon... Really, what's the level after self-parody? Escape velocity?

UPDATE 3. Perhaps he was inspired by Kurt Schlichter's widely-mocked WOT slash-fic, in which Republicans bomb everybody and win the day -- but not before "ISIS sleepers in America had struck at shopping malls" and, while those gunless losers in Los Angeles and Chicago got mass-murdered, "the killers in Phoenix and Dallas had been unable to murder more than a half dozen because of armed citizens..." Whatever the inspiration, Erick Erickson popped a gunboner:

After Paris, I Want to Take My Gun to Star Wars

Ain't even kidding.

...But just to be safe, I plan not to go to opening day. My theater will not let me take my gun with me. There are none in my area that would allow it. So I will wait for a late showing after the crowds have died down. People can scoff and claim this means the terrorists have won. Honestly though, thinking about safe and unsafe situations is something we should all do anyway. If the opening of “Dark Knight Rises” could spark a nut a shoot up a theater, I expect opening day of the biggest film premiere in modern history could do just as much, if not more. Besides, I don’t mind spoilers, so I will wait.

Frankly, I assumed Erickson never went out in public areas where walking was required. Can't he just download a script and act the thing out with his action figures?