Sully Turns on Bush
I thought that I should reply to Jon over at BSD, but Haloscan won't let me post the second half of my comments. As one of BSD's most verbose commenters, I'm still not pleased.
Jon,
I wouldn't for a moment defend the FMA. It can't be anything other than an intrusive and blundering attempt to impose morality from government. Neither is there any shred of wisdom in taking the Irish approach and having a blackboard constitution updated as and when politicians feel a need to distract from their underperfomance.
I would agree that Bush has shown himself a mean-spirited moron and the FMA proposal was the final straw for me. I was disgusted when Bush went to speak at Bob Jones University - best known here as the alma mater of Ian Paisley after he sat out WW2 in a Cardiff bible college. I donated to McCain after seeing him speak in NY in 2000 and I still think he would have made a better President than Bush.
However, as Sullivan himself recognises (see his postings "Kerry's Case" and "Kerry's Failure" after the debate , the decision as to who gets to be President is inevitably binary in character. In rejecting Bush to abstain, vote Libertarian or punch a chad for Nader, you are tipping the scales towards Kerry.
Is Kerry any better? The foreign policy professionals in both parties are near identical in outlook, so the cabinet secretaries won't be very different in their approach.
My gut judgment is that in Kerry, the Democrats have gone for the Hu Jintao option by selecting the blandest and most inoffensive of the candidate. Now the country faces the prospect of having this piece of human wallpaper in the Oval Office; think Jimmy Carter without the attention to detail.
There's every reason to choose priorities or otherwise politics becomes an exercise in futile narcissism. The fact is that Dixie has held the balance of electoral power in the race for the White House since the start of the New Deal, if not back to the time of Calhoun, so it has to be pandered to. Or you can choose the Democrats, and support Jesse Jackson's shakedowns, the teachers' unions blissfully unconcerned about leavig poor children illiterate or the trial lawyers wrecking America's economy and health care system.
The war leadership must be an issue of much greater weight than some speeches about gay marriage. Making a voting decision based more on war than some culture war rhetoric would be irresponsible.
Gra,
Peter
Jon,
I wouldn't for a moment defend the FMA. It can't be anything other than an intrusive and blundering attempt to impose morality from government. Neither is there any shred of wisdom in taking the Irish approach and having a blackboard constitution updated as and when politicians feel a need to distract from their underperfomance.
I would agree that Bush has shown himself a mean-spirited moron and the FMA proposal was the final straw for me. I was disgusted when Bush went to speak at Bob Jones University - best known here as the alma mater of Ian Paisley after he sat out WW2 in a Cardiff bible college. I donated to McCain after seeing him speak in NY in 2000 and I still think he would have made a better President than Bush.
However, as Sullivan himself recognises (see his postings "Kerry's Case" and "Kerry's Failure" after the debate , the decision as to who gets to be President is inevitably binary in character. In rejecting Bush to abstain, vote Libertarian or punch a chad for Nader, you are tipping the scales towards Kerry.
Is Kerry any better? The foreign policy professionals in both parties are near identical in outlook, so the cabinet secretaries won't be very different in their approach.
My gut judgment is that in Kerry, the Democrats have gone for the Hu Jintao option by selecting the blandest and most inoffensive of the candidate. Now the country faces the prospect of having this piece of human wallpaper in the Oval Office; think Jimmy Carter without the attention to detail.
There's every reason to choose priorities or otherwise politics becomes an exercise in futile narcissism. The fact is that Dixie has held the balance of electoral power in the race for the White House since the start of the New Deal, if not back to the time of Calhoun, so it has to be pandered to. Or you can choose the Democrats, and support Jesse Jackson's shakedowns, the teachers' unions blissfully unconcerned about leavig poor children illiterate or the trial lawyers wrecking America's economy and health care system.
The war leadership must be an issue of much greater weight than some speeches about gay marriage. Making a voting decision based more on war than some culture war rhetoric would be irresponsible.
Gra,
Peter
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