Friday, September 12, 2008
Bush Doctrine
So, Charlie Gibson interviewed Sarah Palin. The woman who, in theory, would be called when the red phone rings at 3 a.m. because they couldn't wake up the old man who slept through the ringer.
Gibson asked her about the Bush Doctrine. Look at her face. She had no clue what he was talking about. He fed her enough so she could vamp, and she did, but she still didn't know.
Now, you might be forgiven for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is, but the woman who -- God forbid -- might be a heartbeat away from running the country sure ought to have some idea of what the Current Occupant of the White House's foreign policy is.
She doesn't. Not any idea.
You want to give me shit about picking on Sarah Palin, go right ahead, but this kind of stuff is scary -- she isn't qualified to be the spare, nor preside over the Senate and cast tie-breaking votes.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
You're right; no clue.
ReplyDeleteI think I mentioned before that I can't stand to listen to her voice. It's grating to me. So this time I steeled myself against it to extract what she was saying. And I was saddened. I bet Linda Lingle's teeth grind every time she sees something like this.
I read the transcript, then saw the video.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion - she didn't understand his question at first. Then she got what he was talking about.
The first snips posted last night only showed her in profile.
You know what I took away from the video, now that I've seen the angles that show her face? She's being interviewed by a guy she doesn't respect. And visa-versa.
The press are in for an interesting time with this lady.
I love it.
ReplyDeleteEverybody and his kid sister wanted to interview Palin. I think the R's picked Charlie Gibson because of the inane drivel he asked during the Democratic nominee debates -- flag pins and would-you-pick-each-other as running mates? moron-level stuff.
I think they thought he'd toss that kind of fat softball at Palin and she'd be able to knock them out of the park.
I b'lieve ole Charlie felt a need to redeem himself after the mess he made of things during the D's debate, so he came up with a couple hardball questions and from what I saw, caught Palin flatfooted and fanned the strikes right past her.
Woman might have her finger on the button and has no more idea of foreign policy than a pitbull, lipstick or not. And the more that comes out about her record up there in Seward's Icebox, the worse it looks. Seems she's ... well, not on the straight-talk express.
Palin had a chance for a honey moon with the press, but she's made it clear that she thinks they are idiots and that it's gonna be adversarial, and fuck-them-very-much from here on out.
Fine, I hope she does that '-- 'cause if the press thinks you are giving them the finger? Look what happened to Gary Hart. To Bob Packwood.
Something I learned a long time ago -- in a public forum, it's not a good idea to argue with the guy who has the microphone.
Nor the man who buys ink by the barrel.
The news media catches a lot of crap, some of it deserved, some not, and if the R's want to make the campaign about the media, they are outgunned. Bad, bad idea. I hope they pursue it.
Walk into the pub and call the boys at the bar a bunch of worthless assholes, you can bet some of them are going to look upon such a pronouncement askance. And speak to you about it. And, as the THX System tells us, The Audience is Listening ...
I think it's pretty obvious that people who hate her aren't going to be persuaded by anything. Every single thing she does or doesn't do is going to be turned against her.
ReplyDeleteTake this clip, for example. I didn't watch the whole interview at first so when I saw this clip, I thought "hmmm, she did seem to get caught." But when I watched more of the whole interview, it became clear that Gibson was trying to trap her on stuff like this. Take the Pakistan question, for example. He was riding her and she had to stick to her answer despite his attempts to trip her up.
Seen in that light, I don't blame her now for trying to get him to narrow down such an open-ended question.
But hey, ripped out of context, it's makes great grist for the mill.
Okay, Steve, let's play the game - in fifty words - okay a hundred - what is the Bush Doctrine?
ReplyDeleteEither you know or you don't.
ReplyDeleteIf you do, then you're baiting me.
If you don't, given the discussion and your ability to Google the question, then you don't really want to know, you're just woofing.
See, I'm not running for office, so I don't really have to have the same handle on such questions as people who I am supposed to trust to run things.
But I'll boil it down for you anyway: It says that if the U.S. doesn't like somebody, we can knock down their door and kick their ass.
That if we think it might somebody become a threat, that we can strangle a baby in its crib before it gets mobile enough to run away.
Any part you need explained in more detail?
Want to know about the Wolfowitz Doctrine? Or maybe a definition of "Imperialism?"
I live to educate.
"I live to educate."
ReplyDeleteGot THAT in one. Be careful what you wish for anonymous, I can attest from MANY firsthand experiences that it can be a painful edumacation indeed.
You don't have to know the term to know the definition, in this case. Unless you have been living under a rock the past 7 years, the Bush doctrine has been in your face every day since 9-11. It's basically an "Other Country" tax...We get to invade any "Other Country" that isn't the U.S.
...That is, as long as they don't have an air force, oil reserves, international backing or a large tactical nuke aimed directly at Washington (that would be North Korea, for all of you unable to access a map...I'm looking at YOU, South Carolina)
"The Bush Doctrine" is close to the Grand Theft Auto Approach to diplomacy than it is to any real foreign policy. You can say "Look, there are terrorists everywhere!" or perhaps "Hey, Obama is just too pacifist for me". Hell, you can even go with "Look, Gibson tried to trip her up with pointed, direct questions, but she held her own! What a tough broad! They really eat their Wheaties in Alaska!"
At the end of the day, you get the same goddam thing: Another term of the Bush Doctrine. Because McCain endorses it 100%. Do you understand? It's HIS policy as well.
"people who hate her aren't going to be persuaded by anything."
You're wrong. I'm persuaded by anyone who stands by what their WORD. If she had a history of keeping her word, or some scruples on a microscopically detectable level, I might be inclined to change my views, at least marginally, of the Republicans.
However, the world, by and large, sees this for what it is: A sleight-of-hand quick change to grab some lead votes. Sarah Palin is NOT...By a fucking long shot...Someone I would vote into office. If McCain croaks (not unlikely) she becomes leader of the free world.
And McCain...Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you: McCain is one of the DUMBEST sons of bitches ever to run for office. I'd put him neck and neck with the Monkey King as the nominee for "Largest Sock Puppet Idiot Ever Produced by the G.O.P." award. Does America REALLY want to be led by the basket case party?
“Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight. We're Americans. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will.”
We're AMERICANS!! Yay us! No surrender! Let's all die in some nameless desert fighting a war with people we have no business even being in the same country with! Hooray! Thousands dead, with more on the way! Who needed a family anyway? Or a career? Yay us!
Hey, waiterminute, "Stand up with our President"? What the fuck...Does that mean he's actually going to go to Iran and start whopping some ass personally?!? He's going to see firsthand what a terrible price his ego and arrogance has cost this nation, which he hates so much??
...Oh, I think he was speaking metaphorically.
Never mind.
Do you know what’s really scary? Look up who constitutes the National Command Authority (also what it’s for), and let me know if it doesn’t cause you to drop a load where you stand.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe the Bush Doctrine has ever been fully articulated; it's certainly never been written down. But most people would say it's the notion that if someone is going to attack the US, then the US has the right to preempt this attack by action, military or otherwise, against the potential attacker. I can imagine a situation in which this would make sense, and I can also imagine situations in which it's absolutely insane. Being able to evaluate individual cases and make rational decisions is the key, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteShould a state governor, not to mention a vice president, know this? Yes, I think so. But I also know that being a member of the professional (and increasingly hereditary) political class is no indicator of knowledge, wisdom or even ordinary common sense. In this, Ms. Palin would seem to be an exemplar of the breed.
It appears that there was some skillful editing.
ReplyDeletehttp://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/09/13/abc-news-edited-out-key-parts-sarah-palin-interview
Perhaps things are a little different than you might think?
There's always the possibility that things are different than I think, I surely do have to consider that. But, you know, I pay attention. I get my news from the left, the right, and the center. I am married to a woman who has worked in government for decades, and who knows all about lobbying because she did that for a living for years.
ReplyDeleteI've been to the captiol. I've talked to the Governor, the legistlators, I have a basic grasp of civics.
Whatever Palin says in a TV interview, she won't look any better to me. She's not telling the same stories she used to tell. A is not non-A.
What I think is that John McCain is a cranky, ill-tempered old man who deserves respect for his suffering in Vietnam as a prisoner of war. That isn't enough to overcome his longtime senatorial support of George W. Bush's policies -- not in my mind. Arguing with your party 5% of the time does not a maverick make.
The Republican Administration has taken us into the pasture and we have cow pie all over our shoes and are heading for the swamp in the lower forty.
Huge debt, stupid war, teetering on the brink of a major recession, if not a depression. Tax breaks for oil companies who are making record profits in the billions.
Civil rights in the toilet, constitution ignored, big brother is watching us, torturing prisoners is okay, as is sticking them into a cell for life without any recourse. What prestige we had in the word is wounded almost to death. It doesn't feel like a Democracy, it feels like an Empire. The Emperor and Darth Vader are running things.
What part of this do you like? Explain it to me, for I truly don't understand. You feel safer than you did before 9/11? I don't.
McCain wants to stay the course. He has a Donald Duck temper -- fact -- has been known to curse loudly in public at colleagues, underlings, and his wife, and is mired in the past. Just the guy I want with his finger on the Doomsday button.
What he did forty years ago in Vietnam has nothing to do with running the USA today. Looking over your shoulder all the time, you smack into walls in front of you.
Stay the course? The course sucks. Get off it. Look for a better road than the one to ruin we are on.
I think that Sarah Palin is an intellectual lightweight and to the right of Atilla the Hun. She is against abortion for victims of rape or incest; she is for teaching Creationism next to Evolution as science. Doesn't like "graphic" sex ed -- by which I guess she means pictures of ta-tas and hoo-hoos. She by now knows that abstinence doesn't work unless you abstain. What she did to her daughter is vile.
She thinks that God is on our side against Iraq, and she has demonstrated absolutely no skills or abilities that qualify her as somebody a heartbeat away from the Presidency. None. Zip. Zero. From what I have heard, she is small-minded, vindictive, and absolutely unversed in foreign policy to the extent that she doesn't know the driving force behind her party's current President.
Yeah, I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
Is Obama the be-all, end-all? No. But with McCain/Palin, you get the Devil *and* the deep blue sea. We already know how that goes -- look around.
Look around. Happy with you see? I'm not. I'd vote for a yellow dog before I cast my ballot for McCain/Palin, and know that the dog wouldn't screw up the country any worse than it is now.
That's where I am. Any discussion we have about this starts here.
sorry . The entire link didn't come thru. I'll try to find it later and repost but now I'm in a rush.
ReplyDeleteWhat it linked to was an article that purported to say that the vidoetape of the interview was doctored for broadcast.
Amazing what they can do with videoediting now days. Make a person say something that they didn't actually say.
Fake but accurate maybe?
Or perhaps to serve a "higher truth" than mere facts.
"He was riding her and she had to stick to her answer despite his attempts to trip her up."
ReplyDeleteI have to allow as how somebody who is a contender for CiC of the U.S. military, and who can push a button that effectively kills the planet, if you buy nuclear winter, should certainly be able to stand up to a *television anchor.*
Oh, big, bad, Charlie was picking on poor little Sarah?
Bullshit. If she couldn't handle that with one hand tied behind her, she isn't up to the job she wants.
I didn't see any steel there. If she'd had her ducks in a row, she could have thumped him soundly. She was a journalism major, wasn't she? She knows the game.
Of course he was trying to catch her out. So what?
If she can't deal with that kind of ho-hum heat, what kind of leader is she going to be inside the blast furnace of world politics?
And he did catch her out.
If you have real moves when push comes to shove, you make them. If not, you shuck and jive and hope you don't look too bad.
No, I don't like her, for a whole list of reasons. She doesn't have the moves. Talks the talk. Haven't seen any evidence she walks the walk.
"I think it's pretty obvious that people who hate her aren't going to be persuaded by anything. Every single thing she does or doesn't do is going to be turned against her."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that she's not qualified at all.
The problem is that she brought big city cronyism and pork politics to a backwater hinterland.
The problem is that she thinks war with russia might be a good thing.
What's your IQ, Formosa?
The Bush Doctrine?
ReplyDeleteUnprovoked war of aggression.
You are allowed to respond to personal attacks --
ReplyDeleteI usually do, even though probably I shouldn't.
Punch comes, cross the line and hit ...
But you probably ought not to be initiating personal attacks here.
So, I think we can leave off the questions about IQ -- reasonable people can disagree without it meaning that one of them is brilliant and the other an idiot.
(If somebody calls you an idiot, you do get to respond. But going to the ground right off makes for a short and dirty fight ...)
I confess I sometimes wonder what on Earth people can be thinking when they disagree with what I consider reasonable, but there are people who don't see it my way, and that doesn't automatically make them stupid. Some of them are passing bright -- just haven't seen the light yet, and part of my mission to show it to them when I can ...
Have you ever stopped to consider how many people out there are walking around with IQs of around 90 and below? It's easy for educated people to surround themselves with other educated, high-IQ individuals and to forget the horrible reality.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but the education in public schools is not designed to create critical thinkers. It's designed to create drones who respond to appeals to base emotions, fear and rage and racial hatred.
But yes, point taken. I suppose it's rude to ask.
I generally tend conservative, with some libertarian aspects. I'm not thrilled with anyone running for the Presidency this year. I'm beginning to wonder whether we'll have a reasonable candidate without major reform -- to the level of some major Constitutional amendments.
ReplyDeleteBut I also think that the press bias has been blatant. In the particular case of Mrs. Palin's interview, and the Bush Doctrine in particular, I'll call your attention to an article on the topic by Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html) He notes that HE coined the phrase, in 2001, regarding the Kyoto Accords. It's since morphed into 3 new applications; "with us or against us" on terrorism; pre-emptive war -- the one Gibson was referring to, and finally the current "spread American-style freedom" meaning.
So, maybe some confusion was justifiable?
I'm not suggesting that this offsets any questions about Mrs. Palin's qualifications... but I'd like to see discussion in general focus on legitimate qualifications and issues, not the "press attack" approach.
The problem is that Palin's lack of qualification gives the lie to the entire Republican "national security" approach for the last seven years.
ReplyDeleteIf they're willing to put a person this inexperienced a heartbeat away from the presidency, they must be lying about the vast danger we're supposedly in.
Either they have been lying for the last seven years or they don't care.
Or both.
It's always fascinating to me that, when polled on how slanted the media, both the left and right see it through different glasses. A story runs, and is attacked from conservative and liberal sides alike for what is, to them, an obvious bias in the other direction.
ReplyDeleteOh, and by the by, most of the TV & print media in this country are owned by big corporations: GE, Time/Warner, Disney, Newscorp, CBS, Viacom.
Bertelsmanm, Cox, Reid, Pierson, PrimeMedia, Gannet, Advance.
Nearly all of them are conservative-owned. Look it up.
Palin is fair game. Aside from a blip about her pregnant daughter, the press backed off on that. They shouldn't be hounding the child who made a common mistake; however, if that mistake is due to not being taught about the birds and bees because of her parent's values, then that is a legitimate topic.
Palin has, several times in speeches, given the line about how she told Washington, Thanks, but no thanks, we don't want your bridge to nowhere!
When, in fact, she supported it right up until the moment it turned into a political liability.
Her stance on entitlements is a complete flip-flop.
Her firing of the guy who wouldn't sack her brother goes to who she is.
If you say one thing and do another, that's a disconnect that should concern voters.
How she treats employees matters. How she views foreign policy matters. The fact that she ran a village -- which seems to get bigger each time the R's tell it -- and had two years running a state whose entire population is less than the county that is next door to mine, and i live in a sparsely-populated state, that matters. How that qualifies you to be Command in Chief of the U.S. military, and able to appoint judges and sign or veto national legislation isn't something I can see.
Yeah, she's a woman and a parent. So is my mother, and I wouldn't vote for her for Vice-President -- I love her, but she isn't qualified to do the job.
Because you play softball at the company picnic doesn't give you the wherewithal to joing the show in the big leagues.
Focus on the issues, sure. One of the that comes up every time and will continue to do so goes to character. Is this the person I want with his or her finger on the Doomsday button?
In McCain's case, no. In Palin's case, hell no.