Posts by Simon Grigg
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Are we allowed to comment on the children?
No we are not but the RNC is allowed to parade them all onstage with Levi, bless his good ol' all Alaskan heart, hand in hand with his new love.
There are two sets of leave the children out of this standards in McCain's America it seems.
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wooden.. and I definitely caught a few yawns here and there in the heroically cheering audience. But maybe that was a bad patch.
yep, it was dull and wooden but the faithful lapped it up. A comment on CNN likened it to Borat at the rodeo, and there was that about it.
They must be very worried about her without the teleprompter in coming weeks...
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though I wonder whether your musical interests were elsewhere in '81.
ha, yes..see above
And I misstated the date of the Mig 25 defection..it was 1976
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My god. Simon, are you telling me that he *did* start the fire?
If anyone deserved to get tossed into the hellfires of Siberia and left there it was Billy Joel, if only for "It's Still Rock'n'Roll to Me" and that appalling Beatles cover in Moscow, but the cultural aspects to the fall of the Soviet Union:.....I'm trying to remember who it was, but somebody once opined that television and levis bought down the Berlin Wall
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A lecturer of mine, the late Lew Fretz, assured us that Reagan consistently led and Gorby followed;
I think it's pretty well accepted that Gorby was driving at Reykjavík, at least in the histories I've read. That Reagan played ball, at least some of the way, was to his credit.
There are a bunch of assumptions that are taken as givens in the Reagan as saviour meme, not least of which was the level of military expenditure attributed by the West to the Soviets which we now know was vastly overstated by the US. More important than that was cost of supporting client states and the technology gap with the west. When the Mig25 defected to Japan in the mid 1980s there was shock at the fact it's avionics were largely valve driven.
Afghanistan was however a huge draw on a weakened economy and played a massive part in the end, but the internal reforms of the XXVIIth Party Congress and the 1987 central committee changes were internal matters and were driven by Gorbachev, not Reagan, although clearly a reflection of the new reality.
And then we have the onslaught of western popular culture. You may laugh, but Billy Joel's tour caused a minor cultural earthquake in 1987.
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Selling McCain and Palin as outside the beltway figures who are willing to work on the basis of ideas not party.
I think it was the detail in the CBS poll yesterday which said that 60% think of McCain as a continuation of Bush, so they're having trouble selling that one.
The difference between the two conventions to date is astounding, whereas the DNC was celebratory and very up, the RNC has spent the whole time on the defensive.
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simon - "I have trouble making a lot of sense" - I guess we both have problems hey. Do you find it difficult being a patronising twat?
It was you that said you were slow my friend, and lets face it my blog doesn't lead with the word Helengrad, the use of which, to my mind, regardless of one's politics, brings to mind the word twat, patronising or not.
I'm guessing you didn't read the Brooks piece then before you linked to it?
And if evidence was needed of a lack of sense, this one is a real doozy:
Get the competent administrators as cabinet members under a competent chief of staff. And train Palin in the ways of National management and international affairs. that way you have competent administration and the right management.
On job training, eh? You reasoning is starting to sound desperate my friend. This is a woman whose Foreign Policy is to follow 'god's will' (her words).
And then we have the much repeated myth:
Reagan managed to tip the Soviet Union over the edge by having a few clear principles.
As any student of Soviet History could tell you, it was a tad more complicated than that, although I grant you, it's a widely touted theory within the right and Reagan played his part but no more than Gorby.
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I have to be honest Sage, I have trouble making a lot of sense out of some of your posts..you pick and misconstrue and wilfully ignore anything that doesn't suit.
I'm having to agree, since so much of this has been fairly articulately dealt with over and over here and elsewhere, that, yes, you must be slow. Must be tough, eh?
And, ah, Brooks is saying, in his own way that she's not a good choice.
On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.
He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.
Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.
And as much as I may argue Brooks evaluation of McCain, it's hard to argue that point.
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It kind of rebuts the whole last minute no vetting meme dont you think?
Uh no...the list of people who should have, in any reasonable vetting process, have been spoken to, including senior municipal executives, neigbours and many more, is both long and easy to find with a quick google.
And if we are quoting that WaPo story:
Palin, along with other finalists, completed a lengthy questionnaire that probed many personal issues. Campaign officials declined Tuesday to respond to questions about whether she had returned the questionnaire to the vetting team before she arrived in Arizona, saying they would not provide details of the timing of the process.
McCain officials said that questionnaire and the personal interview revealed three new facts previously unknown to the team: Palin's daughter's pregnancy, the arrest of her husband two decades ago for driving while intoxicated, and a fine Palin paid for fishing without proper identification.
At least two of those things would be expected to be known to any team reasonably vetting anyone for a VPOTUS job before they took her to Phoenix, and if she'd not provided such information, despite a questionnaire having been provided, once again speaks to her shitty judgement.
On any comparison she has a fuck load more executive experience than Obama.
executive experience is a bloody silly term to use isn't it..well I mean it's fine if you are looking for someone to run the city council traffic department, but for the sort of job she's applying for, its a big, rather irrelevant, so what. What's her position on the hell in Dafour? Oh that's right, no-one is allowed to ask her....
That McCain did not go with a traditional pick when the electorate is clearly in the mood for change?
I guessing that a lot of us are having trouble seeing how a ticket with an aging, stuck in the cold-war warrior who votes mostly with the current administration and has an evangelical twist to his ticket is any kind of change. It's just more of the same.
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It is about character.
uhhh, we're looking at a VPOTUS not a candidate for the PTA...oh wait on...
Far from winding you lot up I've woken up to find a series of pretty calmly and reasonably argued posts that deal to your points pretty well. It's the PA style....
Remind me...which candidate is on film singing 'bomb, bomb, bomb Iran'?
I'm confused as to how an aging warrior stuck in a time past cold war mentality, who has largely voted with the neo-con current POTUS, with an evangelical twist to his ticket is something new? Or is change? It's an odd equation to make.
His impulsive hot headed pronouncements on Georgia were anything but considered and caused some disquiet not only in Republican circles but within allied ranks.