You Ever Heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons.

[elfs]

Remember my "campaign speech" entry? Gack this from the most recent Republican debate:

YouTube Questioner: Hammered by competition with imports, our family-owned business struggles each year to find seasonal workers. What are you going to do to keep these guest workers coming to the U.S. to save our business?

COOPER: Congressman Tancredo?

TANCREDO: OK, the gist of the question, as I understand it, is, what I'm going to do stop guest workers from coming in here?

COOPER: No, no, to help. This small business needs guest workers.

TANCREDO: I'm sorry. I could not hear that. I'm sorry. Well, I'll tell you, I'm not going to aid any more immigration into this country, because in fact, immigration does take jobs.

Why, oh why, can't we have a better political class?

I think Duncan Hunter was right: "If one of the "base" interest groups the GOP candidates had to pander to were tribes of meth-addled howler monkeys, could they have looked any more demented than they did during that debate?"

Comments

[kengr]

That sort of nonsense is old.

I was in high school when 18-year-olds got the vote. In Spokane Wa.

One of Washington's Senators came to speak at the school. The seniors got to be in the auditorium, the rest of us watched over the closed circuit TV system.

Unfortunately for the Senator, our AV crew was *good*. During the Q&A we could hear the students in the audience state their question. Which was then paraphrased to the Senator by an aide, slanting it. The Senator then "repeated" the question again, rephrasing (and altering) it even more. And then proceeded to find a way to answer that didn't answer the question but instead let him go off on a tangent he wanted to address.

From talking to other students, I suspect this lost him just about every vote in the school.

I'd *love* to see politicians forced to address the actual questions posed and not allowed to try to steer things off to something else.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

TANCREDO: La, la, la, I can't hear you....

[jenk]

When the dialog is:

Q: I am in favor of orange. What are you going to do to support orange?
A: I understand you're in favor of orange, but I disagree. I will continue to work for purple.

Then I can at least feel that the politician understands the English language and can express himself clearly.

When the dialog is:

Q: I am in favor of orange. What are you going to do to support orange?
A: I agree that purple is very important. I will continue to work for purple.

... then the politician comes off like an idiot.

[tagryn]

Immigration is Tancredo's one-trick pony. His candidacy has nothing to offer other than being a mouthpiece for Dobbsianism/Know-Nothingism. I put him in the category that we see every Presidential election cycle: Senators who run knowing they have no chance, but who hope to increase their personal visibility & power by campaigning. Ah, well. "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

Huh...LJ felt I needed this warning:

The content that you are about to view could contain adult concepts which may not be suitable for minors. To continue, you must confirm that you are at least 14 years of age. Edit your profile to register your age.

and forced me to state I was at least 14 to proceed.

In fact, Elf, ALL of your posts seem to bear this warning now. I guess you trigger whatever filter they have created by mere fact of presence. ;-)

(note : I never filled out this profile -- looks like I can fix this by putting in an age, but I was amused on principle.)