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.
This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
75% of people clapping liked the show!
Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!
Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.
You cannot shame the shameless.
Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.
Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
When we show up, we win.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.
Not loving this new fraud based economy.
These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.
We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.
Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.
“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.
One way or another, he’s a liar.
Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.
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.