John Edwards, at least getting the first letter correct for the travel destination the American people wish he would choose, has gone to Haiti.
He said he had come with a group of 25 to 30 people, including doctors, and had brought supplies and medicine in an effort to “help in whatever way we can.”
Yes, John, I’m sure that philandering ex-senator lawyers are an enormous help. After this catastrophe, I have no doubt that many Haitians are undersexed and undersued.
Apollo posted this at 10:10 PM EST on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 as Buffoon Watch
John McCormack points out that Obama, naturally, had a different standard for Trent Lott than he has for Harry Reid. Whatever, I guess.
What’s most striking to me about that quote is that super genius constitutional scholar Barack Obama thought that Trent Lott was “president of the U.S. Senate.” Those with a memory will recall that Lott wasn’t even majority leader at the time, much less Vice President.
Is there any way to construe that other than naked racism? Did anyone here listen to the full context of the quote? Maybe HuffPo is taking it out of context? (Which would not be shocking in the least.)
Jamie posted this at 11:27 AM EST on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, Race
This. Ten months ago, two out of every three words out of Obama’s mouth were “shovel” and “ready.” Now: “The term ’shovel-ready’ — let’s be honest, it doesn’t always live up to its billing.”
Let’s be honest! In a sentence where he admits that the catch phrase he used to sell the most expensive legislation in America’s history “doesn’t always live up to its billing,” he says, “let’s be honest.” LET’S BE HONEST!
Also of note in the story is this:
Obama also scoffed at the notion that the Chinese are trouncing the United States [at building infrastructure] with their own, more rapid and more extensive infrastructure work. He had seen the fruits of that work on his trip to China, he said, but China was a different place.
“The Chinese don’t have this thing called democracy we have to deal with — they’re shoveling out a whole lot of money, they’re tearing down what’s there, conscripting people to do the work,” he said.
Let’s jump in the wayback machine and visit a time in the distant past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and presidential candidates gave stump speeches calling for change. Direct from the paleontology department here at my university, I’ve acquired this fossilized youtube clip:
In case you can’t understand the Olde Englishe spoken by our distant ancestors, here’s a transcription:
Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly the superior to us now, which means if you’re a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.” Why aren’t we doing the same thing?
Let’s be honest, he’s just making things up as he goes along.
Can you think of a dumber parody of a hyper defensive response to Climategate? On the one hand, we have an organization that stonewalled freedom of information requests and has perpetrated something bordering on fraud in order to create the appearance of a scientific consensus that trillions of dollars should be reallocated. On the other hand, we have some unknown hacker who outed these fraudsters. Barbera Boxer can tell who the real bad guy is here.
I’d like to thank the people of California for giving the rest of us a senator with such a keen sense of justice.
Despite his years with AEI and best-selling books that have provided empirical evidence for conservative policy, it turns out that Charles Murray is not a Real Conservative™:
[Glenn] Beck is spectacularly right (translation: I agree with him) on about 95 percent of the substantive issues he talks about. He is a full-throated libertarian in a world of wishy-washy Republicans. The man is a gifted communicator. His style doesn’t happen to be one I like, but many times I’ve sat there on my sofa wishing I could make the same point as effectively. But Beck uses tactics that include tiny snippets of film as proof of a person’s worldview, guilt by association, insinuation, and occasionally outright goofs like the fake quote. To put it another way, I as a viewer have no way to judge whether Beck is right. I have to trust that the snippets are not taken out of context, that the dubious association between A and B actually has evidence to support it, and that his numbers are accurate. It is impossible to have that trust.
So here’s the unbearable paradox. Beck really has had important effects on the way the Obama administration and its legislation is perceived. It is conceivable that if healthcare goes down to a razor-thin defeat, Beck will have made the difference. If that turns out to be the case, he will have made a far greater contribution to the survival of the American project than ink-stained wretches like me can dream of having. And I want to shut him up?
I don’t really want to shut him up. I want him to change. Take those enormous talents and make all the arguments that he can legitimately make. Keep the cutesy gimmicks (I understand that we’re talking entertainment here), but have an iceberg of evidence beneath the surface. Fox is making so much money from the show that it can afford the staff to do the homework.
Popularization –the ability to take dry-but-important material and present it in a fun and informative way — is an essential sub-field of any discipline. Carl Sagan was an unexceptional technical astronomer, but Cosmos did more good for his colleagues than a dozen new research papers, and infinitely more for the general public. Much the same could be said for Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins* (Evolutionary Biology), Steven Pinker (Cognitive Science), Jacob Brownoski (History of Science), or Joseph J. Ellis and David McCollough (American History), just to name a few people whose work touches fields I’m interested in.
At its best, Talk Radio is to conservative politics what these academics are to their fields: people who are able to advocate for their causes and educate people who are intelligent, but busy. Most people aren’t going to read The Bell Curve or the Federalist Papers, but people like Beck, Limbaugh, or Mark Levin**, have the ability to communicate their essentials in to a broad audience much better than Charles Murray or James Madison.
Unfortunately, as Murray and our own Conor say, most of the current crop of Conservative popularizers*** have been using their (prodigious) talents for their own self promotion at the expense of their stated goals. When Mark Levin screams at a politely dissenting caller and sarcasticly suggests her husband commit suicide, it earns him slaps on the back from fans as much as it alienates moderates. When Rush Limbaugh hopes the president fails — not expects, as David Frum pointed out, but hopes! — he gets applause from dittoheads, but makes it hard for people in the middle to take him seriously. As for Beck, I’ve nothing to add beyond Murray’s comments.
Talk Radio is an important medium and it’s one that Conservatives should exploit to its fullest advantage. Obviously, there’s a balance to be struck: nobody wins converts with stale arguments, dull prose, and an apologetic tone, and controversy can be a tremendous asset if used properly. If conservatives have the best ideas –which we do! — we should be able to keep the troops in line while convincing swing voters that we’re right. Folks like Beck, Limbaugh, and Levin have the talent to do both, but aren’t showing much interest in the latter. That’s a shame.
* Dawkins is an interesting case, as he’s both a popularizer of Atheism and Evolutionary Biology. Until very recently, Dawkins refused to admit that these causes are — in America, at least — at odds with each other. In the past year or so, he appears to have relented, if only a little.
** You may notice the conspicuous absence of Sean Hannity from this list of the talented-but-flawed. This is intentional; Hannity has no talent.
*** There are exceptions, particularly Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, who — though imperfect — strive to be fair and honest while being entertaining and strong.
Isn’t it awful how liberals treat the Constitution like dirt? As if it’s a living, breathing document that means whatever they want it to mean?
Yes, it is, and it’s even worse when conservatives do it:
I’m not quite certain if Napolitano is entirely correct, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that the decision to not declare war after 9/11 (as well as before the Iraq War) was a tremendous mistake and the progenitor of all the legal/detainee problems we’ve been dealing with so badly these past eight years. Certainly, the circumstances presented a extra few difficulties — one would have to word the declaration carefully — but it would be quite doable.
But to return where this post started, did O’Reily seriously just say “I don’t care about the Constitution”? Yes. Indeed, he did.
(CNN) — President Barack Obama made history again Friday, winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
I think the only appropriate reaction is joyful, laughing-at-you scorn, both for the Nobel Foundation and for President Obama for inspiring such foolishness. Honestly, this is funny.
Tom posted this at 6:15 AM EDT on Friday, October 9th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, CHANGE!
In contrast to the vitriol and bile that’s become the exclusive property of the Right, here is MSNBC host Ed Schultz doing his best to Elevate the National Debate™.
We’ve got a lot of czars in this administration. Did they not understand that “czar” has something to do with the old Soviet Union and Communism? Maybe a little Socialism?
Update: In the original version of this post, I erroneously attributed this quote to Mark Taylor, who guest-hosted for Dennis the day before. My apologies to Taylor for the mistake.
After all the inanely stupid braying from the left about a rising tide of right wing violence after George Tiller’s murder, this must clearly be evidence of a rising tide of left wing violence.