Lee on Dec 14 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
After the John Brennan experience, Obama is having trouble finding qualified intelligence experts who are ideologically acceptable to liberal bloggers. Pleased to see we have our security priorities in the right place.
Sphere: Related ContentPeg on Aug 18 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Media, Peg's Page
Every day, Professor Keith Burgess-Jackson reprints a Letter to the Editor from the New York Times. This offering left me gape-jawed.
The Professor’s first point is well-taken.
Where is the evidence that Barack Obama is more intelligent than John McCain? Have they taken intelligence tests?
One might argue that because Obama performed better in college than McCain, he is the more intelligent of the two. Yet, we all know many people where one individual had a superior college record to another, but the first is not more intelligent than the second. Perhaps Obama is smarter than McCain. But, I do not know of any overwhelming evidence that this is so.
In any case – let us grant the writer this point. So what? While a certain level of intelligence is assuredly required for someone to be a good President – it is but a necessary condition, and not a sufficient one. A wide variety of other factors matter: character, experience, leadership, voting record, viewpoints on issues and more. Essentially, this is Keith’s second point:
Americans want an intelligent president, but not at the cost of good character and good judgment.
If people believe that Obama is a superior candidate to McCain – that is their decision. Yet, their choice should be based upon this entire set of qualities – not simply which man is smarter than the other.
Finally, the writer’s point about race is not framed properly. Of course racism has not been eliminated; I am not aware of any reasonably sized society on the planet where all hate and racism has been excised. Unfortunately, I believe that a certain amount of hate, racism, sexism, anti-semitism and the like is endemic to the human condition. It will never disappear entirely within my lifetime – or that of future lifetimes.
The question we need to ask is this: is racism diminished enough and have racists been re-educated and shamed enough that racism is low enough to allow a non-white to win a Presidential election? I believe that it is. Of course, if Obama does not win this fall, I am sure that many will pin the blame on racism. In part – they may be correct. Nevertheless, it just may be that enough people do think that McCain’s set of characteristics: his intelligence, leadership, qualifications, moral fiber, experience and voting record is more of what they want than Obama has to offer.
We shall see.
Lee on Aug 15 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
It seems Russia is increasingly leaning toward dismembering the Republic of Georgia, something previously denied, now legitimized. The predominant characteristic of Russian policy in Georgia up to this point actually.
In the same vein, Russia is finally admitting to being in Poti and low an behold, it turns out the presence was legitimate all along, even when it wasn’t happening:
Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia’s general staff, told a news conference it was legitimate for Russian peacekeepers to be in the Georgian port town of Poti for intelligence operations.
The General Staff had previously denied Russian troops were in Poti.
(Reuters)
How analysts continue to look at Russian behavior in Georgia and see cunning plans within plans is something of a mystery to me. This is a schizophrenic, factionally riven leadership that has overextended itself, and can’t decide what it wants to do in Georgia from one day to the next.
I said as much to a friend of mine yesterday (who is inclined to believe in this notion that all events involving Russia are the result of clever preplanned strategy by the Kremlin). Amusingly he said that was just what they wanted us to think and I was falling into their trap. It was all a plan you see, to look uncertain, incompetently lying, inconsistent and confused and thereby keep Georgia unstable. Sigh.
Sphere: Related ContentLee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Glenn Greenwald's Carnival of Fisking, Lee's Page, Uncategorized
(photo: companyink)
After writing about the Ronpaulist fear mongering of Jordan Page, and then reading Lance’s splendid post on the latest contheorist pandering of Glenn Greenwald, a common insight has reoccurred to me: the absurd amount of cognitive dissonance conditional to political paranoia.
This is something Christopher Hitchens explored quite adeptly last year at the “Four Horsemen” chat with his three fellow atheist luminaries, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris (video, skip to 8:17). In a response to a point by Dennett, Hitchens argues that the stress of cognitive dissonance is the inevitable state deriving from belief in political unreality, and furthermore, that this condition exists and persists on purely survival grounds (seems true in miniature too).
I’d add that it’s the compartmentalism that political paranoia necessitates in an open society that is the most conspicuous betrayal of its essential cynicism. Something especially apparent when you run into it face to face.
(more…)
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