It’d be great if Ryan ran for president on his platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits. I don’t think most voters realize how crazy the GOP is, and Ryan is more willing than most GOP politicians to be upfront about his plans.
It’d be great if Ryan Obama ran for president on a platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits, because that’s what he’s delivering.
FIFY.
It’d be great if Ryan ran for president on his platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits.
Good thing we have Democrats then: We get drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits and then they lie about it.
I don’t think most casual readers here realize how crazy Jim is, and he is more transparent than most trolls about his socialistic tendencies.
Ryan seems like an unusually honest politician, but I don’t know how many Republican votes he’d actually get for his plan in Congress
I’d be more open to the idea of Paul Ryan running for president if his Reagan hairstyle didn’t look so obvious. I hear all kinds of good things about the guy, but that hairstyle just looks a bit too cute.
Besides, nothing has changed in the past 14 months to convince me that someone with little or no executive experience is quite ready for the big chair. Maybe a governor ship or senior Cabinet post to round out his resume first?
Executive experience is great, but even better is holding a Constitutionally correct view of the LIMITED role of federal government. That is where Ryan excels.
Obama could have had years of governorship experience, years in the US Senate and/or any other sort of experience you can think of and that still would not have changed his obviously deeply held personal view of unlimited federal power and reach. Experience teaches the “mechanics” of the position, not the proper philosophy by which one should approach it.
Rand, you need to be more specific. Remember trolls generally don’t follow links. I was half expecting Grinning Jim to go off about the atrocities Jack Ryan committed while working for the CIA.
Edward, Jack Ryan accomplished many impressive things – he made millions at Goldman Sachs and then instead of just sitting back and living the good life, he worked as an inner-city high school teacher. Along the way he married the actress who played Star Trek’s Seven-of-Nine, and when he ran for office, he ran on a platform that many readers of this blog would have liked. Maybe he could have become President Ryan someday. Instead, his foibles set the Illinois Republican party into complete disarray and he made it easy for state senator Obama to become a US senator. But the CIA? I doubt it!
🙂
Different Jack Ryan, Bob. 🙂
Executive experience is great, but even better is holding a Constitutionally correct view of the LIMITED role of federal government.
If he can’t bring it off in policy, the correctness of his views is no help — and if executive incompetence tarnishes the brand, the political legacy of failure would be disastrous.
…if executive incompetence tarnishes the brand, the political legacy of failure would be disastrous.
Sadly, you just gave the most concise description of the Bush administration that I’ve seen. Sometimes, I really wonder why Bush wanted to be President.
Heh. Our neighbor’s son wants to get an MBA, and I mentioned Bush had one from Harvard. It was all I could do not to add, “And I’ll never vote for another MBA for public office as long as I live.”
tom clancy’s jack ryan, I don’t know who ryan is.
Mr. Thompson: So he could protect his oil company family and buddies, of course. Evidence? Well, he didn’t go after the perps of 9/11 – he went after another country that had nothing to do with it, instead.
Well, he didn’t go after the perps of 9/11
He didn’t? Was I just dreaming about that invasion of Afghanistan and overthrowing of the Taliban in 2001?
No, you weren’t. I was referring to the Wahabist nutcases that financed the whole operation. How many of the hijackers were Saudi again? And to whose royal family does their leader belong?
And in any case, you haven’t overthrown them yet. Except in Kabul, perhaps.
A (conventional) Tomahawk strike on the palace of the King of Mordor would not have been an over-reaction. It would have killed less people than the 9/11 strikes did, for a start. But he was Bush’s buddy. And Bush Jr. wanted to finish the job that his father started and should have finished the first time.
I am not in favour of the President of the United States bowing to the leader of a band of mediaeval savages. I am even less in favour, however, of another President having a foreign policy to suit another leader of that same band.
Sorry, one more thing. To answer the original post; yes, America and the world need Jack Ryan in the hot seat. Unfortunately, being a fictional character, he isn’t available; so we’ll probably have to manage with one of the current crop of empty suits, crooks and/or zealots who are available. (Those descriptions are not mutually exclusive.)
So, Fletcher did not follow the link and thinks you were talking about Jack Ryan — can I call them or what? 🙂
I followed the link. Someone else before me mentioned Jack Ryan and I thought I’d go with it.
“Thompson: So he could protect his oil company family and buddies, of course.”
Which, of course, you know about because the Secret Orbital Mind Control Lasers whispered it in your ear.
Congratulations on wasting any shred of credibility you thought you had.
Congratulations on wasting any shred of credibility you thought you had.
Dave, are you actually discussing credibility with someone who claims he’s Fletcher Christian?
Edward, aside form the thin possibility that he might indeed have the words, “Christian, Fletcher”, on his parole forms (“Christian” is a fairly common surname and, statistically speaking, the existance of at least one “Christian” mother with a bad sense of humor and a hatred of their progeny must approach unity) I will point out that this IS the Intertubes and no-one is actually required to use their own name. In fact, for employment purposes, it may be wiser to not do so: the lesson of Kim du Toit may be taken here.
And to whose royal family does their leader belong?
Osama bin Laden doesn’t belong (especially now that he’s been disowned) to a royal family. The bin Ladens are impressively connected, but they aren’t royalty.
He’s been disowned? How convenient. I doubt very much that the flow of money from the Saudi royals to various extremist madrassas has stopped, however.
One of the great tragedies of history is the geological accident of vast amounts of a resource everybody wants underneath ground owned by a few hundred thousand Dark Ages barbarians. Were it not for that, the House of Saud would be at most what it started out as; a group of petty bandits preying on people that nobody in the West cared about, in a region of no importance to anyone not living in it.
Connected with this is the real reason why we need a source of alternative energy that is actually useful. Drilling for oil in US territory will not do; it still leaves oil being valuable. A new source of energy does NOT have to be portable; given an energy source liquid fuels of some sort can be made.
Polywell or focus aneutronic fusion might just be the thing. Think of “Mr. Fusion.” And then think of the neck-choppers and stoners having to find out whether they can eat oil. For the few years that they can continue to pump it that is, with no Western engineers to maintain the machinery.
I don’t give a damn how much the barbarians kill, mutilate and enslave each other. I just don’t want them to do it to me, or anyone about whom I care.
I will point out that this IS the Intertubes and no-one is actually required to use their own name.
Which doesn’t mean you can’t draw inferences from the names people choose. If someone claims to be Fletcher Christian or Napoleon Bonaparte, well —
It’d be great if Ryan ran for president on his platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits. I don’t think most voters realize how crazy the GOP is, and Ryan is more willing than most GOP politicians to be upfront about his plans.
It’d be great if Ryan Obama ran for president on a platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits, because that’s what he’s delivering.
FIFY.
It’d be great if Ryan ran for president on his platform of drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits.
Good thing we have Democrats then: We get drastic cuts to Medicare and bigger budget deficits and then they lie about it.
I don’t think most casual readers here realize how crazy Jim is, and he is more transparent than most trolls about his socialistic tendencies.
Ryan seems like an unusually honest politician, but I don’t know how many Republican votes he’d actually get for his plan in Congress
I’d be more open to the idea of Paul Ryan running for president if his Reagan hairstyle didn’t look so obvious. I hear all kinds of good things about the guy, but that hairstyle just looks a bit too cute.
Besides, nothing has changed in the past 14 months to convince me that someone with little or no executive experience is quite ready for the big chair. Maybe a governor ship or senior Cabinet post to round out his resume first?
Executive experience is great, but even better is holding a Constitutionally correct view of the LIMITED role of federal government. That is where Ryan excels.
Obama could have had years of governorship experience, years in the US Senate and/or any other sort of experience you can think of and that still would not have changed his obviously deeply held personal view of unlimited federal power and reach. Experience teaches the “mechanics” of the position, not the proper philosophy by which one should approach it.
Rand, you need to be more specific. Remember trolls generally don’t follow links. I was half expecting Grinning Jim to go off about the atrocities Jack Ryan committed while working for the CIA.
Edward, Jack Ryan accomplished many impressive things – he made millions at Goldman Sachs and then instead of just sitting back and living the good life, he worked as an inner-city high school teacher. Along the way he married the actress who played Star Trek’s Seven-of-Nine, and when he ran for office, he ran on a platform that many readers of this blog would have liked. Maybe he could have become President Ryan someday. Instead, his foibles set the Illinois Republican party into complete disarray and he made it easy for state senator Obama to become a US senator. But the CIA? I doubt it!
🙂
Different Jack Ryan, Bob. 🙂
If he can’t bring it off in policy, the correctness of his views is no help — and if executive incompetence tarnishes the brand, the political legacy of failure would be disastrous.
…if executive incompetence tarnishes the brand, the political legacy of failure would be disastrous.
Sadly, you just gave the most concise description of the Bush administration that I’ve seen. Sometimes, I really wonder why Bush wanted to be President.
Heh. Our neighbor’s son wants to get an MBA, and I mentioned Bush had one from Harvard. It was all I could do not to add, “And I’ll never vote for another MBA for public office as long as I live.”
tom clancy’s jack ryan, I don’t know who ryan is.
Mr. Thompson: So he could protect his oil company family and buddies, of course. Evidence? Well, he didn’t go after the perps of 9/11 – he went after another country that had nothing to do with it, instead.
Well, he didn’t go after the perps of 9/11
He didn’t? Was I just dreaming about that invasion of Afghanistan and overthrowing of the Taliban in 2001?
No, you weren’t. I was referring to the Wahabist nutcases that financed the whole operation. How many of the hijackers were Saudi again? And to whose royal family does their leader belong?
And in any case, you haven’t overthrown them yet. Except in Kabul, perhaps.
A (conventional) Tomahawk strike on the palace of the King of Mordor would not have been an over-reaction. It would have killed less people than the 9/11 strikes did, for a start. But he was Bush’s buddy. And Bush Jr. wanted to finish the job that his father started and should have finished the first time.
I am not in favour of the President of the United States bowing to the leader of a band of mediaeval savages. I am even less in favour, however, of another President having a foreign policy to suit another leader of that same band.
Sorry, one more thing. To answer the original post; yes, America and the world need Jack Ryan in the hot seat. Unfortunately, being a fictional character, he isn’t available; so we’ll probably have to manage with one of the current crop of empty suits, crooks and/or zealots who are available. (Those descriptions are not mutually exclusive.)
So, Fletcher did not follow the link and thinks you were talking about Jack Ryan — can I call them or what? 🙂
I followed the link. Someone else before me mentioned Jack Ryan and I thought I’d go with it.
“Thompson: So he could protect his oil company family and buddies, of course.”
Which, of course, you know about because the Secret Orbital Mind Control Lasers whispered it in your ear.
Congratulations on wasting any shred of credibility you thought you had.
Congratulations on wasting any shred of credibility you thought you had.
Dave, are you actually discussing credibility with someone who claims he’s Fletcher Christian?
Edward, aside form the thin possibility that he might indeed have the words, “Christian, Fletcher”, on his parole forms (“Christian” is a fairly common surname and, statistically speaking, the existance of at least one “Christian” mother with a bad sense of humor and a hatred of their progeny must approach unity) I will point out that this IS the Intertubes and no-one is actually required to use their own name. In fact, for employment purposes, it may be wiser to not do so: the lesson of Kim du Toit may be taken here.
And to whose royal family does their leader belong?
Osama bin Laden doesn’t belong (especially now that he’s been disowned) to a royal family. The bin Ladens are impressively connected, but they aren’t royalty.
He’s been disowned? How convenient. I doubt very much that the flow of money from the Saudi royals to various extremist madrassas has stopped, however.
One of the great tragedies of history is the geological accident of vast amounts of a resource everybody wants underneath ground owned by a few hundred thousand Dark Ages barbarians. Were it not for that, the House of Saud would be at most what it started out as; a group of petty bandits preying on people that nobody in the West cared about, in a region of no importance to anyone not living in it.
Connected with this is the real reason why we need a source of alternative energy that is actually useful. Drilling for oil in US territory will not do; it still leaves oil being valuable. A new source of energy does NOT have to be portable; given an energy source liquid fuels of some sort can be made.
Polywell or focus aneutronic fusion might just be the thing. Think of “Mr. Fusion.” And then think of the neck-choppers and stoners having to find out whether they can eat oil. For the few years that they can continue to pump it that is, with no Western engineers to maintain the machinery.
I don’t give a damn how much the barbarians kill, mutilate and enslave each other. I just don’t want them to do it to me, or anyone about whom I care.
I will point out that this IS the Intertubes and no-one is actually required to use their own name.
Which doesn’t mean you can’t draw inferences from the names people choose. If someone claims to be Fletcher Christian or Napoleon Bonaparte, well —