Temp soma….

Vaspro ephedrine. Ephedrine. Vasopro ephedrine….

I wonder……are you ready to be Alyosha yet?

That is simply the wrong thing to say to meh. In mathematics, “weak” methods can be wonderfully successful.

strangelet on May 25, 2009 at 10:36 AM

As if we’re to believe you’re any better at math than you are at English.

Otherwise, I expect to provide many future opportunities for you to air out your Palin obsession, and, if you’d like to volunteer as research assistant/Obamaist gadfly, I can supply you with an e-mail address – no need to hijack this thread.

You missed the whole discussion on tortue and machiavellian pragmatism…

You missed where I give a crap.

Ph.D. IN PALIN … Roberta Graham, former ad exec and current member of Dan Sullivan’s transition team, is presenting a paper at a big convention in Chicago — something called the International Communications Association. Thousands of people from all over the world, according to their Web site. Lots of scholarly presentations on how people talk to each other, or something like that.

Imagine Robbie’s surprise when she checked in and discovered that no fewer than 14 research papers and a whole workshop were devoted to the study of our Sarah.

Some of the titles almost moved Ear to buy a plane ticket to the Windy City:

• “Pit Bulls, Politics and Gender Performance. A Feminist Analysis of Sarah Palin on Major News Web Sites.”

• “Your Mama Wears Combat Boots. Palin and Cultural/Ethnic Contradictions in the Framing of Motherhood.”

• “Dudes for Sarah: Sportin’ and Courtin’ Election Affections.”

• “When a Hockey Mom Met the RNC Platinum Card.”

The workshop is “Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Palin Factor.”

The Omniscient Orifice is longing to read them all, but you need a password and goear doesn’t work.

Here’s my entry– “Demonic Possesion in the 21st Century: How Sarah Palin Became a Virtual Host for Kylon of Croton
Perhaps Bobby Jindal would co-author?

BO has been bottom-lined as “let’s try weak.”

That is simply the wrong thing to say to meh. In mathematics, “weak” methods can be wonderfully successful.

The part where it’s something to be tolerated, let alone praised, you dimwitted Obama drone.

Jim Treacher on May 25, 2009 at 8:34 AM

lol @ Treach
You missed the whole discussion on tortue and machiavellian pragmatism…praps the MacLeod can give you a remedial link.

I can be as pragmatic as a virus and still fail.

Trudat, Highlander, but your probability of success is vastly increased. Hmmm….that is wunnerful analogy, relly. Obamanism as a viral meme– most of us intelligensia are infected….and that would mean….Palinism is the anti-viral!
Probably Palinsm works by blocking or destroying sufficient neurocortical receptors to confuse the victim….kind of like an electoral Alzheimers.

What part of machiavellian pragmatist do you not unnerstand?
O is going to be exploitive and opportunistic and……subversive.
hehe
He’s goin to do w/e he has to and GW is goin in the history books as the Torture President that was manipulated by bible quotes.

I can be as pragmatic as a virus and still fail. I can be as pragmatic as a virus and deserve to be feared and if possible eradicated.

Depending on how things go, BO could be condemned as the president who, instead of condemning water sports and his own intelligence service and shipping terrorist combatants off to get flayed by Saudis, should have been flaying them himself and keeping the information at home.

Likewise, the actions of some future president, or perhaps this president, might someday make W’s water sports look rather trivial – or like a great idea that we better get busy with again. My own guess is that that’s a near certainty, sooner or later.

BO has been bottom-lined as “let’s try weak.” He’s quietly reserved the right to try coat-hanger wire in the terrorist tender parts if an imminent attack threatens his polling numbers, but that’s not the same at all as “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY protect us.” No Prez fully controls events. In economics and security, BO has reinforced the eventual arguments against him.

To return to our topic, Colin Powell could conceivably be celebrated as a revolutionary prophet of the new Holy Unitary Democratic Republican Order, the endorsement of October ’08 seen as death knell of meaningful domestic opposition to Emperor Teleprompter Jesus. That precise same act could be viewed in 2020 as a great and holy thing, and in 2050 as a great betrayal, and in 2075 be remembered by scholars of North American history only.

We don’t know. We retain the freedom to view it as good or bad – worse to the precise extent it “succeeds,” regardless of what proportions of luck and “Machiavellian” connivance are involved. All we know for now is that, as Machiavelli would say, fortune moves by unknown roads. As Bob Dylan would say, the first one now will later be last.

Obama stopped the tortureboarding.

So he says.

Obama is closing Gitmo as fast as he can.

That’s what he claims.

What Obama is doing is graceful degradation of service. We can’t just toss the prisoners out of our retention centers and Gitmo and lock the doors.

That is indeed what he wants us to believe.

You just described him as “Machiavellian,” and yet you want us to take him at his word?

What part of machiavellian pragmatist do you not unnerstand?

strangelet on May 25, 2009 at 1:00 AM

The part where it’s something to be tolerated, let alone praised, you dimwitted Obama drone.

Obama is going to do stuff like stand in front of the national archives and call loudly and charmingly upon our better angels.
That is what he does.
And Bush is going to look like Unrefined Satan.
lol

strangelet on May 25, 2009 at 1:04 AM

So, in other words, your boy is style over substance, who values the way things look more than solutions.

You’ve fallen for it, and that’s the way (uh huh, uh huh) you like it. I hope you’re just young and naive, and not a fully-grown adult just happy to be delusional.

Lets face it – nobody could reliably claim to know what Barack believed or what his intentions were prior to taking office.
apollyonbob on May 24, 2009 at 6:15 PM

Nonsense. The information was there for ANYONE actually paying attention.

Just look back in the archives here at Hot Air:
Many of us predicted precisely what 0bama was and what he would try to do.

/smiles

Obama must think the policies and practices he has retained are legal, and even appropriate and sensible, or he wouldn’t have retained them.

Where is that coming from? Levin is delusional.
Obama stopped the tortureboarding.
No more.
Obama is closing Gitmo as fast as he can.
Kinda hard when the refuglicans are getting the dems constituents all nimbyfied.
What Obama is doing is graceful degradation of service. We can’t just toss the prisoners out of our retention centers and Gitmo and lock the doors.

My opinon of Levin is unchanged. A bioluddite AND a mad shaman.
Buncha partisan bullsytt.

the virtual red smoke belched forth from the Face the Nation chimney, and the cry rose up: Habemus Republicanum!

I absolutely loved that. The Crowning of the Pope of Republicandom.

but don’t tell me to piss off if I’m not all in 100%.

emerson7 on May 24, 2009 at 8:53 PM

If you insult people, you can expect to be told to piss off. Exactly what do you whateveryoucallyourselfwant?

Fiscal conservatism? Got it.

Pro-choice? Not going to happen. Live with it. The bottomline, Roe v. Wade is never going to be reversed no matter how many people predict it. It is a non-issue.

Legalize drugs? No. Learn some self control. And any state can pass laws that for the most effect decriminalize MJ if they choose to. It is not a federal issue.

Healthcare? Well, I’m not sure it needs to be reformed and if it does, definitely not by nationalizing it which is lousy care at a higher cost to the individual. It’s great if you are a dead beat but not so great if you work and pay taxes.

National Security? The gop will always outshine the donks.

Anything else?

As for polarization, that’s part of having a two-party system or having any dialogue at all.

We’ve been repeating ourselves endlessly on this topic ever since the so-called moderates threw in explicitly (Powell) or effectively (Frum, Brooks) with Obama, and attempted to justify themselves in large part by attacking conservatives – echoing, validating, and extending the calumnies against the Republican candidates and against us that we have had well more than enough of from the Democrats and the mass media.

Speaking for myself, I don’t expect or need them to love me and everyone to my right, but we’re not going away, and they’re not getting anywhere without us in the Republican Party. If they’re on the other side firing at us, what do you expect us to do? Who is sewing division here?

I see conservatives sick and tired of being attacked, but my sense is that they’d much rather be fighting Obama than worrying about Powell, and that if Powell came out tomorrow talking more like the ’96 Powell than the ’08 Powell, most of us would be glad for the help, if wary of the helper based on sad, recent experience.

In the meantime, Laddy and others (like Cheney) are right, I think. The Obama endorsement was fundamental, and will remain so for Powell whatever team jersey he likes to wear.

I read what Powell said and I agree mostly. So I guess we disagree yet again.

I still consider you a Republican however. I think I’m becoming more of a “moderate” myself. My path has been Independent, conservative, moderate.

I just can’t stand how polarized everyone is. And a small party can’t win anything any way so why bother having a party at all.

I’d like to see more energy directed at Obama than Powell or anyone in my own party.

I do feel some need to apologize to CK for issues past.

So I’ll leave you all to your orgy. You just sound like you are having so dang much fun declaring yourselves the only true republicans and all. If it rains you’ll drown.

petunia on May 24, 2009 at 7:53 PM

Can’t say I find that the most convincing or winning apology I’ve ever received.

Look, petunia, if you have an argument for Powell, or perhaps if you can explain to any of us, or at least to me, what he stands for and what significant political purpose he serves for any conservative that outweighs the harm he’s done and seems intent on continuing to do, then I stand ready to give it serious consideration.

Every time I hear from him and the other “moderates,” his main message is an attack on conservatives or a defense of BO.

Brooks has a good synopsis of the evolution of American thought on Gitmo.

strangelet on May 24, 2009 at 6:12 PM

At The Corner Yuval Levin scratches the surface of what’s wrong with this latest David Brooks apology for hypocrisy. Like Powell and Obama, Brooks has refined the art of idealistic-sounding cynicism. Essentially, Brooks argues that lying to my face and pretending to me that what you’re doing is completely different from what it is, while reminding me that it makes you better than me, is treating me as an “adult.” I think it’s treating me as a fellow mental patient or perhaps a peon. I am informed that, when the crisis comes, you will have no basis for action other than immediate self-interest, or maybe a coin flip, and the only thing that I can trust is that you will come up with a maximally self-serving explanation for your decision and the outcome.

That kind of thing works relatively well with the people but less so as time goes by: It’s called a “credibility gap,” and George W Bush was hardly the first president whose governance suffered as a result of it. One symptom is when even people inclined to support you start laughing as soon as you make some assertion of heartfelt belief. Even before the electorate gets wise, hypocrisy and self-dealing works poorly with those paying close attention – who include the people you’ve left to fend for themselves, and upon whom, sooner or later, you may find yourself depending for your very political life, not to mention the real lives of the people you’re sworn to protect.

petunia on May 24, 2009 at 7:53 PM

Piss off.

The man stands for nothing, and worse, lectures the rest of us that we need to do so as well.

Hawkins1701 on May 24, 2009 at 6:57 PM

And what exactly is that? What republicans stand for? Cause I’m not seeing much except rabid criticism of our own.

I do feel some need to apologize to CK for issues past.

So I’ll leave you all to your orgy. You just sound like you are having so dang much fun declaring yourselves the only true republicans and all. If it rains you’ll drown.

“First we will cut it off……And then we will kill it.”

Politically speaking, that is.

“What policies are President Obama and the Congress pursuing that the Republican Party you envision should be opposing?”

If he gives an answer that isn’t gibberish

“Is it the case, then, that President Obama is pursuing policies at odds with what he ran on when you endorsed him for President?”

Powell endorsed Obama and Obama won.

If Obama’s just pursuing the policies Powell believed he ran on, then there’s really no reason why he’d care what condition the Republican Party is in – what’s the point? Why would he want an opposition party that’s “wrong on the issues” to get stronger?

The man stands for nothing, and worse, lectures the rest of us that we need to do so as well.