fred thompson got me scurred
deej
5,125 Posts
how do we swift boat him
deej
5,125 Posts
Comments
Arnold = republican
bruce willis = republican
chuck norris = republican
I am unsure but would strongly suspect that stallone, van damme and segal are also all republicans.
trap 3
Dolo's on a roll-o.
His avatar should be a set trap.
You ponce, it's not about Danny Glover.
Talk to me about Carl Weathers.
Everyone with half a ballsac knows that Carl Weathers is the toughest motherfucker breathing.
If he gets behind Fred Thompson, we're in for it.
YES!!! This clip rules...
A Carl Weathers "Baby, I got a stew goin'" graemlin would be excellent.
Sorry.
TRB From Washington
Character Flaw
by Jonathan Chait
Of all the low points during the Bush administration, perhaps the most surreal was the week in December 2004 when Bernie Kerik was poised to become secretary of Homeland Security. By the traditional measures used to judge qualifications for this sort of job, Kerik was not an ideal candidate. The main points in Kerik's favor were his loyal service to Rudy Giuliani, first as driver for his mayoral campaign, then corrections commissioner, then police commissioner--the last of which was commemorated by the casting of 30 Kerik busts. On the negative side of the ledger were his multiple alleged felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping (currently being investigated by federal prosecutors), and his (also alleged) ties to the DeCavalcante and Gambino crime families.
If a "Sopranos" writer proposed a plotline in which a Kerik-like figure rose through the ranks to become head of the department charged with preventing the next terrorist attack, he would be laughed off the show. So how did it almost happen in real life? The Washington Post recently reconstructed the Kerik nomination: The decisive factor seemed to be that Bush was "lulled by Kerik's swaggering Sept. 11 reputation."
That last sentence is, in many ways, the perfect epigraph for the Bush presidency. The Kerik episode displayed many of the pathologies of modern Republican governance: incompetence, corruption, an obsession with loyalty over traditional qualifications. But it shows with particular clarity Bush's most distinct contribution: the mistaking of macho bluster for strategic acumen.
The error Bush made in judging Kerik is, of course, the same error the country as a whole made in judging Bush. We (or most Americans, anyway) were lulled by the president's swaggering September 11 reputation, by the image of him finding his voice in the rubble of Ground Zero. Of course, it turns out that understanding how to lead the war against terrorism requires more than standing on a pile of rubble and talking tough. A certain level of intellectual depth and curiosity is needed. You not only need to want to kill the bad guys, you need to know which bad guys to kill, and you need to have some kind of plan for what happens after you're left occupying their large, strategically vital, anti-American, ethnically riven failed state.
Alas, Republicans seem to be making the same exact mistake again. Exhibit A is the leading GOP candidate, Giuliani. Republicans love Giuliani, of course, for the same reason they loved Bush: He's a 9/11 tough guy. Recently, GOP consultant Roger Stone explained the basis of Giuliani's appeal to Texas Republicans. "Stylistically, Texans like the Giuliani swagger," Stone told The Wall Street Journal. "He's a tough guy, and Texans like tough guys."
The war on terrorism, boasts Giuliani, "is something I understand better than anyone else running for president." This would be very scary if it were true. In recent weeks, Giuliani mistakenly said that it was unclear whether North Korea was further along toward a nuclear bomb than Iran, casually lumped together Shia Iran and Sunni Al Qaeda, and confessed he didn't know enough about the Bush administration's approach to terrorism detainees to take a position. In fact, Giuliani wasn't even a particularly good terrorism fighter as mayor. A mere six years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he decided to locate the city's emergency headquarters in the World Trade Center itself--the one spot in all New York City he knew had been targeted for attack. He also failed to ensure that police and firefighters could communicate with one another, with disastrous results.
But Giuliani isn't really saying he has the most expertise fighting terrorism. (After all, he has never held office beyond the municipal level.) Rather, he's trying to conjure the glow that Bush himself had in the days after September 11. Bush, his adoring fans used to say, "got it." To "get it" meant you had some metaphysical understanding of the war that transcended--indeed, was largely incompatible with--any actual knowledge. To the extent that "it" meant anything specific, it was the understanding that the war on terrorism was a war, not a police action, requiring land invasions of countries like Iraq. Most conservatives have quietly backed away from this particular vision, but the larger notion that the president must be a swaggering tough guy remains.
So, while Giuliani's boast may be absurd by my standards--he thinks he understands the war on terrorism better than, say, Joe Biden?--by Republican standards, it's simply obvious. Giuliani may not have any expertise as a war leader, but he excels at acting like one.
Now, it's perfectly natural to want a charismatic presidential candidate. The trouble is that Republicans seem to have completely lost sight of the difference between the apparent and the real. The reductio ad absurdum of this trend is the burgeoning candidacy of TV star Fred Thompson, who plays the part of a tough prosecutor and alpha male on "Law & Order."
Robert Novak recently noted, approvingly, that "[s]ophisticated social conservative activists" are flocking to Thompson. "Their appreciation of him," wrote Novak, "stems not from his eight years as a U.S. senator from Tennessee but his actor's role as district attorney of Manhattan on Law & Order.'" If this is how sophisticated social conservative activists make their political judgments, I'd hate to see the unsophisticated ones.
Representative Zach Wamp, a Thompson backer, recently said that Thompson is smart to delay his campaign and rely instead on the free publicity of "Law & Order" reruns. "You are able to frame the message and you are not caught up in all the controversy," he said.
The "message" is Thompson's fictional tough-guy persona. The "controversy" is, well, real life. Thompson's most prominent actual legal experience was, in fact, a disaster. As chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in 1997, he dramatically claimed to have found evidence that the Chinese government had bribed the Clinton administration. But, over the course of the hearings, Thompson was able to prove nothing of the sort, and the affair proved a total humiliation.
If Thompson's TV character were a bumbler who brought unfounded charges against innocent people, nobody would be touting him for president. But screwing things up is not an impediment to winning the GOP nomination, as long as it only happens in real life.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.
he is a big tall mofo, much much older & scarier in person !!
^^^^^^ Oh man, reading Chait's article again I realize how perfectly it, like the above quote, sums up this clown Dolo's worldview.
so true. I can see dolo solo in his room imagining Thompson's "swagger."
yeah it may not be surprising to us, but I think it's helpful from time to time to point out to people lke dolo that a presidential candidate should ideally be selected on the basis of competence, not on the extent to which he fulfills some sort of homo erotic cowboy swagger fantasy.
as for whether we can stop the Republicans' creepy obsession with rich white men in cowboy costumes, yeah I don't have high hopes either.
Dolo, please to make this your location.
The repub debates are a great place to see this in action:
"I think we should double the size of Guantanomo," and so on and so on....
Even Hilary's gettin her little swagger on...
I thought Republicans thought that Hollywood types should stay out of politics. I guess I was wrong.
These three are something to brag about. They have done more to glamorize violence and guns than all the rappers combined. In fact, rappers base their tough guys on these pampered stars persona.
Chuck Norris would make a good R presidential candidate. Like the rest he likes to think he is a family guy, but he dumped his wife and the mother of his children to marry some model.
Bruce Willis, like a good R is no stranger to divorce. His hatred of religion makes him at odds with the R's public image. He can't sing.
Arnold. Funny you should mention him, as he has managed to piss off most Rs in California and DC. Talk about a politician who follows polls! He sticks to his beliefs until a poll shows him they are no longer popular. His dad, and by many accounts Arnold himself, were Nazi supporters (both during and after the war) in the country that sent my mothers family to the gas chambers. Of course he is still a citizen of Austria, but that is not what makes him a bad R. What makes him a bad R is that he was only married once.
Anyway, you can have your Hollywood hacks. You can have my Hollywood hacks too.
Damn, I caught him digging in one of my spots too. It would be great to have a major digger like him in the White House.
I, too, harbor this suspicion, dolo.