Brain, On Ice

[elfs]

Someone should ask John McCain

John McCain on Vietnam:

It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

The nation currently seems to lack the resolve to "finish the job," whatever that might be, in Iraq. So does a government unwilling to institute the draft needed to keep the army stocked at the required levels or raise the taxes needed to fund the war properly and keep our equipment up to date. Given that, I want some reporter to ask John McCain if he believes it's still true that it's shameful to ask men and women to die for his cause.

Richard Clarke on the Current Administration

I just love Clarke's attitude toward the current people in power:

I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they'll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.

(via Brad Delong: Grasping Reality with Both Hands)

Ross Perot really doesn't like McCain

McCain is the classic opportunist. He's always reaching for attention and glory. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.

VA Supreme Court Unanimous on Miller/Jenkins Case

I've been following this for a long time, and Ed has some new details. Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins had a Vermont civil union, and then Miller had a daughter. They then separated, but had a child custody arrangement with visitation. Miller then moved to Virginia, claimed a conversion to Christianity, and moved in Virginia court to deny Jenkins any visitation rights at all.

But Virginia's courts refused to go along with Miller's intent. You see, there's a federal law, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, that enforces the notion that the custodial arrangement of a state must be honored by other states; the idea is to prevent parents in one state from doing what Miller tried to do: "kidnap" the kid away from the other parent by moving to a state with laws more amenable to their point of view.

Worldnet Daily goes bonkers and proclaims Civil union laws spread across state lines. But then, the Radical Right has always been a little crazed by this case. Some former entries include Lesbian demands control over Christian's daughter (isn't that just the sweetest title?) and Legal Fictions.

Thomas Sowell on Obama

Wow. Just mind-boggling wow. It's amazing how Jewish World Review can give Thomas Sowell any space at all to spew:

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

He gives no examples of this, nor does he claim to any special knowledge. It's the most blatant, irresponsible pandering I've ever read and it doesn't deserve even virtual column-inches.

Obamacons!

Sweet! A label, a label! And one I can get behind!

Libertarians (and other varieties of Obamacons, for that matter) frequently find themselves attracted to Obama on stylistic grounds. That is, they believe that he has surrounded himself with pragmatists, some of whom (significantly) come from the University of Chicago. As the blogger Megan McArdle has written, "His goal is not more government so that we can all be caught up in some giant, expressive exercise of collectively enforcing our collective will on all the other people standing around us in the collective; his goal is improving transparency and minimizing government intrusion while rectifying specific outcomes."

In nearly every quarter of the movement, you can find conservatives irate over the Iraq war--a war they believe transgresses core principles. And it's this frustration with the war--and McCain's pronouncements about victory at any cost--that has led many conservatives into Obama's arms.

There's a great and funny quote at the end that boils down to this: "I'll vote for Obama, but that doesn't mean I'll shop at Whole Foods."

Comments

Warning: glass house

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Did you really just bitch at John McCain because of a one-sided hit piece about his personal life from the Daily Mirror, then bitch at Thomas Sowell for writing a piece about the political beliefs of McCain and, by implication, Barack Obama?

In spite of your comment about "no examples," I had no trouble finding a litany of specific complaints by Sowell about Obama in his previous columns on that site. He's writing a column; he's entitled to incorporate previous content by implication just as you do here.

I don't agree with Sowell's positions here, but at least what he's talking about is directly relevant to the duties of the President, unlike the reasons why McCain left his first wife 28 years ago.

. png

Re: Warning: glass house

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with Sowell's positions here, but at least what he's talking about is directly relevant to the duties of the President, unlike the reasons why McCain left his first wife 28 years ago.

Because we all know that when a man who runs for president on a moral platform in order to obtain the votes, and money, of the moral right, and then is found to have violated that moral platform 25 years ago, we shouldn't care about that past at all...

Should we?

Glass houses indeed.

Re: Warning: glass house

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Well, even the Mail's hatchet-job article admitted that McCain remained married to his first wife for seven years after his return (ten years after her accident), that he went through the usual process of divorce, and that he "agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life."

That all seems adequately moral by the standards of most modern Christian churches. This isn't 1533, for heaven's sake, and these days, even the Pope tolerates divorce (though not remarriage). (So I suppose that it's convenient for McCain that the Republican concept of the "moral right" generally doesn't include Catholics.)

. png

Re: Warning: glass house

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the double post, but I did some more checking. Various Google results suggest that McCain is either a Baptist or an Episcopalian, so either way, he acted appropriately within the rules of HIS church.

So none of this really seems to have anything to do with how McCain would act in office, nor with the propriety of his political or personal beliefs or the way he conducts fundraising efforts.

And I also wanted to add that I agree with one of Sowell's other comments-- we're facing a choice between two "painfully inadequate" candidates.

Obama and McCain both fall far short of meeting MY standards for the Presidency, but not for any reasons related to their religious beliefs, practices, or associations.

. png

Re: Warning: glass house

[omahas.livejournal.com]

So, you read the article through, and thought that it was appropriate that McCain had girlfriends (which he himself has acknowledged) while he was married, and that his own ex-wife (who "adores him") acknowledges that he left her because he "...didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25", so married a younger woman?

The RNC is all about "healthy families" which they define over and over in their platform as "having in the home a mother and a father who are married". They further state that "fathers play a critical role in providing stability for their children".

How can McCain be an example of the RNC's platform on "strong family values" if he himself has violated it (leaving your wife for a younger woman is not a "family value") according to this piece and several others I've read? In fact, I'm still reading that he has girlfriends.

We can applaud him that he paid her medical bills, child support, and alimony (he certainly could afford to after marrying the wealthier, younger woman), but doing what he did still doesn't fall under the RNC family values platform.

BTW, in your original post you said, "did you really just bitch at John McCain...". No, he didn't. Ross Perot did...that was a quote from Perot, who paid for the woman's medical bills while McCain was in Vietnam, and is apparently a very close friend.

As far as Obama and McCain falling short of your standards, I couldn't comment, since you didn't illustrate what those standards are, or how either one falls short.

Re: Warning: glass house

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Omaha, I think it's pretty clear that McCain's family history is not particularly unusual for Baptists _or_ secular humanists, so why are you trying to make such a big deal out of it?

The guy certainly has raised a bunch of kids, which is pretty much the ultimate family value. They seemed to have turned out okay.

http://www.johnmccain.com/about/mccainchildren.htm

When he divorced his first wife, his three kids with her were 14, 18, and 20. I haven't seen anyone-- not even the Daily Mail-- claim their lives were ruined by the loss of a paternal role model. They'd gotten along without him for many years anyway, while he was on duty in Vietnam and in prison in North Vietnam. This certainly wasn't a case of a man abandoning his family as you're trying to paint it.

Anyway, the fallacy in your position is called Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. McCain's as human as the rest of us. He may hold and pursue values he can't personally achieve, but that doesn't make him wrong or hypocritical.

And I generally find it distasteful when people criticize others for failing to adhere to beliefs the critics don't even hold. Liberals complaining that conservatives aren't religious enough? C'mon. This usually leads to the argument that the target of the criticism doesn't deserve the support of his or her political base, but that's both ridiculous and pointless; they aren't listening.

You may believe you have proved with geometric logic that McCain is a hypocrite and that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox did exist, but really, you're wrong and you're wasting your time.

. png

Re: Warning: glass house

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sorry, but this isn't about me demanding that he adhere to any standard that I hold, you hold, or that the Daily Mail holds. This about me demanding that he adhere to the standard that the RNC holds, and that he states that he follows. He doesn't, at all. And yet he tries to claim that he does by virtue of being the RNC's representative of their platform.

The Daily Mail doesn't claim that his children's lives were ruined by the loss of his paternal role in their lives. But the RNC platform, which he represents, claims that they were. I suggest that you go read that platform before claiming that it doesn't.

Re: Warning: glass house

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Well, I've explained that he does seem to be fairly virtuous by the standards of his supporters. I've also explained that it's fallacious to criticize a man for failing to live up to his own standards because none of us are perfect. What matters is whether he strives to support his beliefs.

I know you're aware that Barack Obama is imperfect, yet you don't withhold your support from him for that reason. Obama was caught for years in a conflict with his own church, one that he should have resolved years ago, but I can't hold that against him because I know that such conflicts are part of being human. I've never doubted Obama's dedication to the principle of racial equality.

McCain's supporters are equally aware of his conflicts and equally willing to accept his dedication to the institution of marriage.

But anyway, that's between him and them. It's undignified and ineffective for you to dance around pointing a finger at McCain and taunting his supporters because their man also has feet of clay. So do I, so do the men you support, and so do you.

. png