posted
You're assuming Eru Iluvatar would allow you to nuke anything. Or for that matter Earendil, who is up there right now sailing the heavens in a ship, ready to pick your nuke off at a moment's notice.
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posted
Considering all the world-wrecking and remaking Eru's kiddies did back in the day, would a nuke or MOAB be so objectionable to off a Balrog? Especially when you consider even nuclear winters end, whereas Balrogs do not. Possibly not even when killed.
Buncha Balrog apologists up in here!
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posted
Barring that Aule coulda cooked up some really strong bug spray, if his wife woulda let him. Would've saved quite a lot of trouble!
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Colbert is gonna run for President in South Coralina I think, or maybe in the primary? This could be awesome.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I forget who here said it, but it's really true: It's extremely handy to know when someone is for the gold standard, because it's a very potent and direct way to know that they can be safely disregarded in economic matters.
Wasn't it you?
My first version of this was 'it's great when someone likes ann coulter, they are basically wearing a giant neon sign that says "DISREGARD ENTIRELY" which is really helpful because it saves time'
statement moves along with time, gets to include new neon disregard me signs like michelle malkin, glenn beck, sarah palin, michelle bachmann, tom tancredo (lol), donald trump, g. gordon liddy, ...
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posted
This must be why Republicans like Santorum think government can't do anything right. Because they already know that while they were in government, they were horribly mismanaging money.
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posted
Apologise if this is a repost. I did look back but I'm not sure exactly what date this is from.
So how do people feel about French speakers?. You realise this campaign is doing no favours to the global image of the Dis-United States of America.
quote:Quelle horreur! Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has been skewered in a new political attack ad - for speaking French.
...
Some commentators have highlighted a possible irony in that Mr Gingrich, a former House Speaker, has a doctorate in European history. His 1971 dissertation, Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960, contains a number of sources in French in its bibliography.
Never ending source of comedy, this campaign.
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posted
Also, this week the Daily Show dug up a clip of Gingrich reading a statement of apology in rather wobbly Spanish (apology because he had apparently called Spanish 'The language of the ghetto'), so perhaps Romney could do something with that in his next video.
Gingrich seems to have issues with other people speaking languages that he also speaks.
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posted
The idea that being able to speak a foreign language is an unamerican character flaw to the extent it can be directly assailed is pretty strikingly par for the course for the mentality of american conservatives these days. See: oh my god, huntsman can SPEAK CHINESE *approval plummets*
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: The idea that being able to speak a foreign language is an unamerican character flaw to the extent it can be directly assailed is pretty strikingly par for the course for the mentality of american conservatives these days. See: oh my god, huntsman can SPEAK CHINESE *approval plummets*
I don't know any conservatives who consider speaking a foreign language an unamericana character flaw. I'd be interested in knowing what, besides the comments of Gingrich, cause you to believe this is common among the mentality of current conservatism.
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quote:I don't know any conservatives who consider speaking a foreign language an unamericana character flaw.
*snort* Yeah, you do. What you don't know are any conservatives who would say if asked, "I think speaking more than one language-English-is a strike against someone as a political candidate." Well of course they're not going to say that.
But tell me, just tell me, capax, that you don't for example know conservatives who would disapprove of, say, speaking Spanish to another Spanish speaking person in front of a monolingual American. Tell me you don't know any conservatives who disapprove of the emphasis Spanish language has in many American schools. Tell me you don't know any conservatives who would be even a little bit put off if a conservative political candidate were to give a campaign speech in French.
Of course you do. We all do. And before you get all outraged at that paragraph, please bear in mind it's not unlike how all of us know a liberal or two who would be maybe uncomfortable if they went into a restaurant that was decorated in explicitly patriotic memorabilia, or tend to be a little unsettled when religious rhetoric finds its way into a conversation, so on and so forth.
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quote: I'd be interested in knowing what, besides the comments of Gingrich, cause you to believe this is common among the mentality of current conservatism.
Candidates and conservative organizations in the republican primary have strategically pegged the speaking of a foreign language as a targetable weakness of both Romney and Huntsman.
None of which apparently you know about, of course.
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posted
The thing is, it's not 'He's bilingual!' that is, among conservatives-I'll be more specific and say primary-voting evangelical and/or social conservatives-a strike against a candidate.
The thing that's a strike is going to be what being multi-lingual conjures up. Less likely to be isolationist, more likely to be well educates, more likely to be associated with diplomacy, less likely to support English as the national language, less likely to be antagonistic towards candidates with higher education, etc etc etc.
It was never as plain as 'He speaks furrin'!' It was always, 'He's the kinda guy who speaks furrin'!'
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On one hand, yes, the liability for Huntsman isn't purely that he can speak Chinese. It's also the idea that he may have "gone native", that he may have developed contacts that may overly influence him, etc.
On the other hand, if you look at the likely ways that someone could go about attaining the ability to speak Chinese, you quickly see that pretty much all of them would be strikes among a Republican demographic. Lived overseas for a lengthy period of time? Strike. Learned it in college? Strike. Has Chinese ancestry? Double-strike.
So practically, I don't think that there's a huge difference.
(Of course it could be fairly noted that speaking Chinese/being Chinese is probably the worst-case short of speaking Arabic/being an Arab)
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On one hand, yes, the liability for Huntsman isn't purely that he can speak Chinese. It's also the idea that he may have "gone native", that he may have developed contacts that may overly influence him, etc.
On the other hand, if you look at the likely ways that someone could go about attaining the ability to speak Chinese, you quickly see that pretty much all of them would be strikes among a Republican demographic. Lived overseas for a lengthy period of time? Strike. Learned it in college? Strike. Has Chinese ancestry? Double-strike.
So practically, I don't think that there's a huge difference.
(Of course it could be fairly noted that speaking Chinese/being Chinese is probably the worst-case short of speaking Arabic/being an Arab)
You forgot the fourth option.
4: He's a certified genius, and picked up Chinese on his own time. Elitist! Strike!
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: On one hand, yes, the liability for Huntsman isn't purely that he can speak Chinese. It's also the idea that he may have "gone native", that he may have developed contacts that may overly influence him, etc.
I don't agree that it's that... rational.
I think you struck on the crux of the issue later on in your own post:
quote: (Of course it could be fairly noted that speaking Chinese/being Chinese is probably the worst-case short of speaking Arabic/being an Arab)
Racism.
You speak like them, you *are* like them. You are not like *us*.
In the way that Spanish is a "dirty" language, of dirty people, and French is an elitist language, of socialists. and Russian is a communist/gangster language of communists and gangsters, Chinese is the language of godless hordes of human swine. That's the attitude. The other stuff is rationalization of the attitude that makes it look like ignorance, rather than more sinister prejudices.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Hm. Maybe he could say that Jesus taught him to speak foreign.
Jesus spoke English. It's all right there in the Bible. Who do you think wrote the bible? Google? Hah.
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posted
I really wouldn't go so far as that, Orincoro. I think the kinds of things you're describing form a part-a big part-of the historical (sometimes quite recent) roots of discomfort with 'elitist' bilinguals, with discomfort towards affinity for foreign cultures and languages, but I just don't think it's a thought many people, even in the far right, have anymore.
It's just been too unacceptable publicly to think that way for too long. That kind of thinking has had to change. Now it's 'She's got foreign affairs experience because I could see Russia, but he's too friendly with China' sort of thing. It's that 'Chinese' as a language isn't badnecessarily...but shouldn't he have been learning about Jesus, apple pie, and cutting taxes instead?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I really wouldn't go so far as that, Orincoro. I think the kinds of things you're describing form a part-a big part-of the historical (sometimes quite recent) roots of discomfort with 'elitist' bilinguals, with discomfort towards affinity for foreign cultures and languages, but I just don't think it's a thought many people, even in the far right, have anymore.
It's just been too unacceptable publicly to think that way for too long. That kind of thinking has had to change. Now it's 'She's got foreign affairs experience because I could see Russia, but he's too friendly with China' sort of thing. It's that 'Chinese' as a language isn't badnecessarily...but shouldn't he have been learning about Jesus, apple pie, and cutting taxes instead?
You're not wrong on the elitism angle, but I think you are downplaying the role of xenophobia, and more importantly fear of non racial-normative behavior. That is, the majority group finds showing interest in or seeking knowledge about foreign cultures to be distasteful, primarily because such knowledge is beneath a majority member. I could only share anecdotal evidence of this kind of thing- I wouldn't know how to prove it, it's just a private theory.
But one that fits with a lot of the available facts. I think the issue of racism in general is deeply tied up with the conservative idea of "elitism," or "intellectualism." Insofar as intellectuals value knowledge less discriminately than, say, religious conservatives -whose religious ideas involve concepts of forbidden or dangerous knowledge corrupting innocence- some conservatives view them as race and or cultural traitors or double-dealers. Knowledge of a foreign language indicates sympathy with foreign cultures, and that sympathy is inextricably entangled with race.
So while yes, I think the public face of this can be shaped into: "he should have been learning about Jesus," the private reality, often, is based in xenophobia. If you associate with prostitutes, jews, or the chinese, there is clearly something low in your character. That's an old attitude, and not one that I think has really gone away. It's based on the kind of fallacious reasoning that continually crops up among ignorant people. That is to say, as I have said many times, racism is not peculiar to our own history; it is fundamentally a part of the human experience, and it doesn't go away.
quote: It's just been too unacceptable publicly to think that way for too long.
Where did the flap over Herman Cain's "Uzbek....istani... stani stan stan" comment originate? Because, granted I was overseas and maybe I didn't have a good idea of the public opinion at that moment, but I think it rested mainly with liberals. Tell me, why did his supporters not *instantly* drop him over that? Why did it take a sex scandal to end his bid?
And while yes, I realize he did eventually drop out, I would submit that his candidacy largely stalled when conservatives realized that he was not electable (meaning he couldn't draw support from independents), not because they disagreed with him.
quote:So while yes, I think the public face of this can be shaped into: "he should have been learning about Jesus," the private reality, often, is based in xenophobia. If you associate with prostitutes, jews, or the chinese, there is clearly something low in your character. That's an old attitude, and not one that I think has really gone away. It's based on the kind of fallacious reasoning that continually crops up among ignorant people. That is to say, as I have said many times, racism is not peculiar to our own history; it is fundamentally a part of the human experience, and it doesn't go away.
I wouldn't say it's gone away, either, but it has changed. Not so long ago you really could say, openly, "Race traitor." You could say it and not only not be harmed-it would actually help.
quote:Where did the flap over Herman Cain's "Uzbek....istani... stani stan stan" comment originate? Because, granted I was overseas and maybe I didn't have a good idea of the public opinion at that moment, but I think it rested mainly with liberals. Tell me, why did his supporters not *instantly* drop him over that? Why did it take a sex scandal to end his bid?
And while yes, I realize he did eventually drop out, I would submit that his candidacy largely stalled when conservatives realized that he was not electable (meaning he couldn't draw support from independents), not because they disagreed with him.
Bear in mind a few things. One, the only people actually involved in the race at all, the ones who were actually invested in it, were Republican primary voters. An admittedly small subsection not just of America but of American Republicans period. A very powerful subsection, politically, but we're talking about how commonplace and acceptable given attitudes are. Of that group, a smaller portion still openly supported Cain to win the Republican nomination.
Even taking all of these factors into account, he was widely regarded-for all of his intense but narrow support-as a hype machine with little staying power. Even before the sex scandals really started washing away his sand castle. It was his economics that gained him what support he had, much more than, well, anything else about him, really. Bear in mind also that for someone like Cain, the support he would've started out with to begin with would be much less flexible than usual. Not unlike people who still thing Palin or Bachmann are just rad-takes an earthquake to move some people. But they were never going to be enough on their own.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Watching Daily Show and Colbert pisses me off since I have to wait a day to see it, resulting in the hilarious circumstance where the SuperPAC newsletter I subscribed to tells me of Colbert's progress in his presidency bid before I'm informed via the actual show...
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quote:You're not wrong on the elitism angle, but I think you are downplaying the role of xenophobia, and more importantly fear of non racial-normative behavior. That is, the majority group finds showing interest in or seeking knowledge about foreign cultures to be distasteful, primarily because such knowledge is beneath a majority member. I could only share anecdotal evidence of this kind of thing- I wouldn't know how to prove it, it's just a private theory.
crosspostin'
quote:When the realtime response measurement system is in place and doing second-by-second measurement of conservatives response to huntsman's speeches and participation in debates, approval shoots through the floor (and disapproval in reverse) when he speaks in chinese or talks about his familiarity with china or the time he spent in china, you get to watch a mathematically quantifiable measurement of sinophobia, and it's great
posted
Guess capax don't know any of those conservatives, eh? And strangely I suspect we won't be hearing more from him on this subject.
Anyway, as for me I don't dispute that the disapproval is strong, I just think we as q society kid ourselves about why whereas once we didn't. Once you were a commie lover, or someone who made too nice with the yellow peril, and if you had the nerve to be white and work civil rights alongside blacks, you might just get lynched and then get a sham-jury of other whites.
Now there are codewords that tell people what sort of well they need to draw from. One of them is 'elitist'. Used to be we would skip straight to 'Jew' or 'liberal', though of course the latter is still widely accepted insult currency among many Republicans.
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posted
So Perry is out now as of earlier today, which means my doomsday scenario is still possible!
Polling has been interesting for the last few days even without Perry's withdrawal. He's been polling around 5% for the last two or so weeks, and most of that support will be broken up around Newt and Santorum, probably. Newt has been surging in SC in the last few days however. Polls had him down almost 20% from some pollsters, and Newt hadn't polled ahead of Romney since his early December surge.
Now, polls in the last two days have him anywhere from down 10 points to up six points (NBC News for the former, Public Policy Polling for the later). I've seen several polls just from yesterday that have Newt up by a razor thin margin, and all these polls have Santorum and Paul in 3rd and 4th in different orders. All of these polls also have Perry in them. So, another debate tonight with Gingrich coming off a great performance on Monday, he's surging in the polls, his competition for the not-Mitt vote is down to only two, and he has another chance to lay into Romney, who has played a spirited game of defense for months.
I think there's still a chance that Gingrich makes some magic happen here. I think whoever comes in 4th (Santorum?) probably drops out here, even though he'll pretend that winning Iowa in hindsight actually means something. The thing of it is, Santorum I think can be convinced he doesn't have a shot, but if Gingrich even comes close, despite what he said before about not going on if he loses South Carolina, he HATES Romney, hates him with a passion. I think if it looks like there is any life at all, he'll stay in it to kill Romney.
A lot of people were saying it would be wrapped up after South Carolina, but unless Romney blows them out of the water, I think this thing keeps going, and if one or two more drop out, the race keeps going for months with back and forth wins.
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posted
After Cain surviving weeks of that before it finally built up, and Newt surging twice now despite the fact that the business with his wives is really old news, and with him spinning it, perhaps successfully, using his usual anti-liberal media mantra, I'm really not convinced that that will stop him.
It's been a story since Tuesday, and his support is still rising. It was the first question out of the gate at the debate, and he parried it with gusto to a roaring crowd. Republicans can be remarkably successful at avoiding flak for the very things they complain about the most (regarding social issues...Democrats get away with a lot of their own bugaboos as well).
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posted
I'm not familiar with your doomsday scenario, Llyrhawn. I'm interested to see if SC loses their Kingmaker thing, though.
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posted
Is anybody else kinda tired of Newt Gingrich attacking the moderator, the media, or saying it's a "gotcha question" whenever he is asked about the sordid details of his past? Part of me wishes one of those news anchors would stand up and blow out his insincere bluster with some righteous indignation.
His infidelity to not one, but two women is absolutely something the nation should be aware of. And he should answer for his behavior, not lambast the media for caring. He's running as a family values candidate, he gives speeches on the subject. He's a hypocrite.
If a candidate was railing about the poor not paying their fair share of taxes, and it was revealed they were purposely cheating on their taxes, that is relevant to the discussion. It's not a gotcha, or a liberal media going on a Republican witch hunt no matter how biased a source is.
posted
Honestly, I don't think it was a worthwhile question for King to ask him, for a couple of reasons. 1. Gingrich has been doing, as you note, this for weeks. Whenever he gets a question he doesn't like he sidesteps it and rails against the media, and his target audience eats it up every time! So you had to know he was going to do it again here, especially with a question this explosive. 2. I don't think it was appropriate for a debate setting. I think it's a worthy campaign issue in a party that talks that much about family values, but not in a debate. Obviously the other candidates didn't want to touch it with a ten foot pole.
I find his media assaults both annoying and very amusing, because by and large the media backs down every time he puffs up with bluster.
pooka -
Not really a doomsday scenario I guess, but the general idea that Romney isn't a foregone conclusion, and that if the other candidates drop out fast enough, support will coalesce around one of them and he'll be either in for a long fight, or he'll simply lose. Almost everyone in the media has been talking for weeks as if two things were assured 1. Romney will be the nominee, and 2. It will all be over by South Carolina, thereby making 47 out of 50 states totally irrelevant to the nominating process.
I don't think that will happen, and I really, really hope it doesn't as well. If this thing actually gets down to a two man race, then the Republican party might FINALLY have it out once and for all. They're dancing around the issue, but the Party really is in the midst of an ideological civil war.
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posted
Every party always is. It's the nature of trying to stake out as much ground as possible without losing the people on the opposite end.
But I think that over the next several states, people are going to have to face the question of whether they'd rather be pandered to or have someone who has some chance of beating Obama in November.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: After Cain surviving weeks of that before it finally built up, and Newt surging twice now despite the fact that the business with his wives is really old news, and with him spinning it, perhaps successfully, using his usual anti-liberal media mantra, I'm really not convinced that that will stop him.
Assuming he ever really stood a chance at the presidency, the answer is that it pretty much would have. It's got the right kind of moral stickiness.
posted
I'll just come right out and say it: while I've never agreed with much of any of the politics of the active Republican right, and have often deplored their methods, I have usually been able to regard the voters themselves as honest people, though with quite bad and sometimes dangerous ideas.
But to see Gingrich, the guy who worked hard to make his bones bagging an adulterer (admittedly, Clinton did purjor himself, and that is worse) while his party crowed about morality and family values-for this adulterer 'not a lobbyist' politician to claim his campaign is about redemption, and then be asked questions about his multiple marital infidelities that go straight to the heart of his own integrity...for this politician to not just be applauded, but greeter with thunderous applause because of evil old media...
I won't be forgetting that sometime soon. It's very hard for me to imagine right wing Republican voters as honest people right now. On a related topic, I'd just love to hear more of capax's thoughts about not knowing any conservatives who-blather.
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posted
I wouldn't vote for Gingrich if my hair was on fire and he had the only bucket of water for a hundred yards. He is so dishonest and scummy to me that I don't see how anyone who didn't already practice 'lesser of two evil' voting wouldn't for him.
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quote: He is so dishonest and scummy to me that I don't see how anyone who didn't already practice 'lesser of two evil' voting wouldn't for him.
I guess you could use this as an example of how that would sort of work
quote: I think Gingrich is the kind of practical politician who can get good things done.
It wasn't Clinton who balanced the budget back in the 1990s. It was Newt Gingrich, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Until Gingrich engineered the impossible by winning Republican control of the Congress for the first time since the 1952 election, Clinton did nothing to balance the budget. Gingrich made a budget-balancer out of him.
Maybe, as president, Gingrich could do it again. The world is heading for a financial disaster so terrible that we can hardly imagine it. Governments made the disaster; but America also created the peace that allowed the world system of free trade to flourish, raising living standards everywhere.
There can be no new revelations about Gingrich. We already know every appalling thing about him, because the Left borked and palined him in the 1990s, and there's nothing left to uncover.
So if you Republicans actually want to get rid of Obama, stop looking at "true conservatives" -- they won't get the votes of independents and swing Democrats like me.
And don't nominate Romney, either -- he's too fragile and, being a Mormon, too easy to tear down and destroy. The Left will be so glad to do it.
I think Gingrich is your best choice, because despite his negatives, there is nobody smarter or more capable or with a better record of good government seeking the office of President right now.
He'll blow Mr. Teleprompter out of the water. And he'll know how to work with Congress after he's elected.
As a Mormon, I'll defend Romney's Mormonness. Mormons are perfectly normal, good people, and we deserve our chance to run for any office and make our normal share of stupid mistakes, just like anybody else.
But, partly because being Mormon makes him so vulnerable, Romney's not the best candidate in 2012. If Gingrich chooses him as his vice presidential nominee, I wouldn't oppose it; but Gingrich should be President.
That's my opinion -- as a Mormon, as a Democrat, and as an American who believes our country has a unique responsibility to choose strong, wise leaders for the free world.
you know, just because I still haven't finished being bowled over by this
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posted
Ron Paul has appeal with independents and some Democrats too. He's a man with ideas that could address our financial problems. He's the one that wants to audit the Fed and end unnecessary foreign wars.
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quote:Ron Paul has appeal with independents and some Democrats too.
How much appeal have you been coached to think he really has with independents and democrats? What, honestly, do you think Ron Paul's general prospects in the presidential election are? Do you think he would beat Obama if he won the Republican primary?
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posted
in other news before i wander out to the cold:
Oh hey, you know how everyone is saying Romney won both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first GOP candidate to win both pretty much ever?
Yeah, that didn't happen. They recounted and Santorum won. But the state didn't even count all their votes, several precincts missed their reporting deadline, and it's not like the caucus results actually determine what delegates Iowa sends.
So basically Iowa is horrible, and doesn't deserve to be the first primary.
posted
Maybe this will shine a spotlight on just how ridiculous Iowa as a first in the nation primary really is. I doubt it. Every four years, especially lately, there's been a major schedule reform pushed by one faction or another, and it never goes anywhere. Maybe if the media picked it up and ran with it, but the media will do now what it always does: ignore Iowa for three and a half more years.
I look forward to the media narrative tonight if Gingrich wins. These people really have no idea what the hell they are doing, yet wield enormous power.
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posted
Well, case in point, it's been a long time since I thought OSC was honest about politics. He is quite simply, on many issues, a lying apparently hate-filled demagogue. And before someone complains about that, if I get to be a stupid, America-hating liberal, he gets to be those things.
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