jonks
Lifer
- Feb 7, 2005
- 13,918
- 20
- 81
What? P&N libs don't like an advisor of Obama's? I'm shocked, shocked! If mother theresa were alive and he had appointed her to his foreign relations team people here would complain he was conflating religion and state. Kristol is an idiot, but I don't think anyone here would be happy with anyone McCain picked.
Kristol the Klown...
A digest of William Kristol's analyses and pronouncements would reveal the true breadth of his ignorance. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone get so much wrong about the world we live in. He is, in short, an intellectual buffoon.
Kristol is one of those rare individuals who has a personality that quietly conveys intellectual authority and dominance to which people - and especially the equally ignorant fourth estate - heel; but his intellectual output upon closer examination reveals a shallow grasp of anything beyond what his ringmasters want to hear from him.
He wears his floppy shoes for them, and they pat him on the back and say, "good clown."
A digest of William Kristol's analyses and pronouncements would reveal the true breadth of his ignorance. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone get so much wrong about the world we live in. He is, in short, an intellectual buffoon.
Kristol is one of those rare individuals who has a personality that quietly conveys intellectual authority and dominance to which people - and especially the equally ignorant fourth estate - heel; but his intellectual output upon closer examination reveals a shallow grasp of anything beyond what his ringmasters want to hear from him.
He wears his floppy shoes for them, and they pat him on the back and say, "good clown."
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
- 20,984
- 3
- 0
As we somewhat struggle to deal with McCain taking on a neo con adviser, I note we are also tossing around words like pragmatic, juggling around various slogans like had enough, and trying to compare either Obama or McCain to various past Presidents.
I find it difficult to even dislike or worse hate John McCain. Or to even to viscerally distrust McCain in the same way I did GWB because I think McCain does personally believe in what he is saying. And given the set of candidates that the GOP fielded for POTUS in 08, I think McCain is the best of that lot. In addition, at least McCain can understand some compassion as he has been on the receiving end of torture and vicious political swift boating. I note some posters have called McCain spineless because he took the punishment
without fighting back with the vigor they demand, but as they say, politics makes for strange bed fellows, and the very acts the spineless accusers demanded, would not have landed McCain where he is now, namely at the top of the GOP ticket. Nor do I think McCain will be like a GWB or a Nixon, men similarly frustrated by life experiences in which they did not always prevail, and once they finally clawed their way to the top, they became bullies delighting in humiliating others. And I think there is something in that resolute
single minded ambition of McCain that does have some virtue.
And maybe in an an ordinary Presidential year, McCain would be an acceptable President. But sadly, 2008 is not an ordinary year. because if anything, the past six years have taught us the resoluteness is the wrong virtue and pragmatism is the far better word. And if their is any word that is the direct opposite of pragmatism, its the neocon philosophies of someone like Kristol. The goals set forth in the project for a new American century can be perhaps be shared, but the failure is both in implementation and in the means justifying the ends. And what we experienced in 2002 was a raw lesson on a entire Presidential administration cherry picking intel and then selling an optional war to the American people. But when it came time to competently administer the very policy they worked so hard to sell, those same set of neocon advisers were basically missing in action. And then to add insult to injury, when the policy started to falter and showed the early signs of getting out of control, those same neocons sat idly by and fooled themselves into thinking that mere resoluteness would cure the damage. Even McCain was far too little too late in his criticisms.
Any President can become the victims of brainfarts, but only the better ones move decisively. Kennedy swiftly cut his losses after the bay of pigs and Bill Clinton did the same thing with Somalia. Sorry, I cannot think of McCain as someone with the vision to cut the losses in any decisive manner at the same time that this country faces grave challenges
in our domestic economy and international relations.
I find it difficult to even dislike or worse hate John McCain. Or to even to viscerally distrust McCain in the same way I did GWB because I think McCain does personally believe in what he is saying. And given the set of candidates that the GOP fielded for POTUS in 08, I think McCain is the best of that lot. In addition, at least McCain can understand some compassion as he has been on the receiving end of torture and vicious political swift boating. I note some posters have called McCain spineless because he took the punishment
without fighting back with the vigor they demand, but as they say, politics makes for strange bed fellows, and the very acts the spineless accusers demanded, would not have landed McCain where he is now, namely at the top of the GOP ticket. Nor do I think McCain will be like a GWB or a Nixon, men similarly frustrated by life experiences in which they did not always prevail, and once they finally clawed their way to the top, they became bullies delighting in humiliating others. And I think there is something in that resolute
single minded ambition of McCain that does have some virtue.
And maybe in an an ordinary Presidential year, McCain would be an acceptable President. But sadly, 2008 is not an ordinary year. because if anything, the past six years have taught us the resoluteness is the wrong virtue and pragmatism is the far better word. And if their is any word that is the direct opposite of pragmatism, its the neocon philosophies of someone like Kristol. The goals set forth in the project for a new American century can be perhaps be shared, but the failure is both in implementation and in the means justifying the ends. And what we experienced in 2002 was a raw lesson on a entire Presidential administration cherry picking intel and then selling an optional war to the American people. But when it came time to competently administer the very policy they worked so hard to sell, those same set of neocon advisers were basically missing in action. And then to add insult to injury, when the policy started to falter and showed the early signs of getting out of control, those same neocons sat idly by and fooled themselves into thinking that mere resoluteness would cure the damage. Even McCain was far too little too late in his criticisms.
Any President can become the victims of brainfarts, but only the better ones move decisively. Kennedy swiftly cut his losses after the bay of pigs and Bill Clinton did the same thing with Somalia. Sorry, I cannot think of McCain as someone with the vision to cut the losses in any decisive manner at the same time that this country faces grave challenges
in our domestic economy and international relations.
How can you say that when he has flip flopped on so many major policy issues?
Tax cuts, the religious right, I mean I'm not naive, you gotta do what you gotta do I guess. But to so hawkishly defend the policies of GWB in the face of overwhelming evidence of their failure is the antithesis of being a straight shooter.
Originally posted by: loki8481
I wish you'd stop calling me dumb when I've already admitted I'm only on page 100 out of 1,200 or so.
I was trying to make a positive comparison... it seems like there are worse things to be compared to on the cusp of an election than the guy who won 49/50 states and got us out of a war similar to Iraq in clusterfuckness.
- Noting that as presidential candidates running against the opposite party as incumbent, they said they were for change, is something that fits every election in our history.
- I do compliment you on your familiarity with the 1950 election. *I* like her as a candidate quite a bit, but the voters did not. Nixon did a lot wrong, but as in 1972, he not only did wrong but did wrong unnecessarily. JFK started out well to the right of where he ended up politically. He ended up with a very low opinion of Nixon, mentioning during the Cuban Missile Crisis how dangerous it wou have been if Nixon had won.
- Describing your comparison to Nixon as "it seems like there are worse things to be compared to on the cusp of an election than the guy who won 49/50 states and got us out of a war similar to Iraq in clusterfuckness." appears very disingenuous. He barely won the first election, with the incumbent president practically hekping him over his own VP; he only got the US out several years later after nearly doubling the casualties and expanding the war; and you fail in describing him as a positive president to mention Watergate etc.
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