The nuance brigade is back in action and has a message for you:
“Bush is dumb!”
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.
The willow is too close to the house.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
The words do not have to be perfect.
Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.
T R E 4 5 O N
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated
White supremacy is terrorism.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”
Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
No one could have predicted…
Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.
shark
Bush is dumb, except when he’s executing his evil plans to lie America’s way into war to profit his oil buddies.
Kerry is smart, except when he’s being misled by that eeeeevil Bush into voting for the Iraq war.
Kinda hard for them to stay on point, isn’t it
Niraj
Is Bush dumb? Maybe. But if Bush is dumb, then why can’t a smart guy like Kerry be ahead in the polls?
It is Al Gore all over gain. If Al was smarter than Bush, he would of won in 2000 hands down.
But Kerry is like Gore. He flip-flops on issues. Both are duller than cardboard.
JKC
shark-
I don’t think Bush is dumb, either, but could we put the “Kerry voted for the war” meme to rest.
If I were to say “Mr X should have the authority to discipline his children,” that doesn’t mean that I have given him carte blanche to beat his kid with a stick. Similarly, Kerry’s vote to give Bush the authority to go into Iraq if necessary does not necessarily imply aproval for how the President has conducted the war.
RW
It’s Monday (Matt’s “everyone is stupid” entry day) already? I guess we can look forward to “here’s what happened while I was in high school” Tuesday.
JPS
JKC:
This is going to sound snide, but it really isn’t meant to be: Are you serious, or are you playing Kerry’s advocate?
Kerry voted to give Bush congressional authorization to take the country to war. If you want to make the case that he did so because he didn’t think Bush would use it, then you’re making a harsher case against him than I ever could.
Incidentally, that seems to be the difference between Bush and Clinton on Iraq, doesn’t it? Clinton made all the same claims about WMD, and signed into law a policy of regime change. But no one worried he’d actually follow through, so he gets a pass.
Justin Ogren
This just about empty mountain dew can I’m about to finish, I’d feel more comfortable with that in the oval office than Bush. Really. Seriously.
Elrod
JPS,
Kerry’s vote gave Bush authorization to go to war, indeed. But as his own comments AT THE TIME suggest, he hoped that Bush would follow through on a series of other actions (get UN approval, try in earnest to get support from NATO allies, exhaust the inspection process, have a post-war plan, etc.) before actually doing it. He didn’t think Bush wouldn’t actually go through with war – just that Bush wouldn’t pursue the war in the way that he did. Kerry and most other Democrats who had doubts about the war gave the President the authority to act as Commander in Chief in this particular instance but all hoped he would do so wisely. Kerry hasn’t wavered from that position – when asked if, knowing what he knows now, would he still have voted that way he says, rightly, “yes”. Voting for war presented Bush with a unified front in his negotitations with France, Russia, etc. But it wasn’t a carte blanche for doing any old thing he felt like.
Jay
Bush dumb? Nah. Stuborn, simple, simplistic, inflexible, and anti-intellectual, but certainly not dumb. Some people use the word dumb to encapsulate those qualities, but it is really an incorrect use of the word.
His supporters who repeatedly make fun of Kerry for adopting “nuanced” positions, which is to say complex positions that require the smallest degree of thought and knowledge, are another thing entirely. Those people I wouldn’t bet on being able to spell “cat” if I spotted them the C and the A.
John Cole
Cat.
Actuall, what we are laughing at are his supporters explaining away his multiple and contradictory positions on virtually every issue as “nuance.”
JPS
Elrod,
We tried to get UN approval. We made a good-faith effort, if only because we needed to try for Tony Blair’s sake. As for NATO allies, we had many. The ones who weren’t with us were the reason we didn’t get UN approval. After Chirac said he wouldn’t support the war no matter what, we went ahead.
“it wasn’t a carte blanche for doing any old thing he felt like.” He didn’t do any old thing he felt like; he went to war after correctly judging that we had all the support we were ever going to get.
As for exhausting the inspection process, it never was going to be exhausted. That was the problem. And it wasn’t supposed to be exhausted. We said that if the inspectors didn’t get full, unfettered cooperation that would be cause for war (as it was under the last UN resolution we DID get). They didn’t.