I’m cheerfully prepared to admit that Carson is intelligent and has advanced skill in a particular and highly challenging field, but what good is it if he’s compelled to make very bad decisions? It would be nice to hear his opinions if he could totally step away from the pandering role the pre-primaries force on a candidate these days. If after he leaves the race, if he still says that he believes in creationism or biblical literalism then, sadly and frankly, fuck 'im.
Carson might be very intelligent in medicine, but he’s an absolute idiot on most topics related to politics and non-medical science if he really believes what he says. It’s entirely possible to be brilliant in one subject and a moron in others.
Both of those things, assuming you meant Bill, are pretty sexist.
The vast majority of people in power and running for president are old men. So what?
And it doesn’t matter if Bill cheated on her. The dynamics of a marriage hardly applies to running a country.
In this case, my problem here is that I feel that democrats represent my personal interests slightly better than Republicans. (they are both bad, but the current Republican party is worse as it revels in deliberate ignorance and gives the appearance of being a hired mouthpiece for certain industries)
I don’t personally care that she’s an “old, unattractive woman”. I understand that this is irrelevant to how well she can represent my interests. I care because I know other voters will subconsciously hold this against her, and a younger, better looking Republican candidate will get votes from “on the fence independents” simply because of this. I’m sure Obama collected a chunk of votes simply because he’s a relatively good looking, active, healthy appearing man compared to McCain.
So, if they could find a younger Democrat - another Obama-like as it were - I feel the chances of the Democrats retaining the white house would be better. Alas, it’s far too late for that. The board has been set and all the important pieces on it are there, and it’s something like 90% Hillary 10% Sanders in terms of who might get the nomination.
Yes. And it wouldn’t be a good idea if you got it:
I’ll add “lawyer”. The Constitution is a legal document, and that is just the beginning of the legal language that goes with high office. Knowing one’s way around the law seems, to me, indispensable for the practical running of an administration.
I like it that Obama was a law professor. I liked it that Bill Clinton was a lawyer. Reagan was not a lawyer, but an actor, and IMHO he was a fairly crappy president when you really examine the details.
Hillary is a lawyer, on top of the rest of her resume. Which of her opponents can say the same? Trump certainly can’t buy that kind of insight (though he can of course buy plenty of lawyers…).
I agree that other kinds of experience also count, things like overseeing the invasion of Europe on D-Day. Sure. Secretary of State is great- their peers are literally the world’s leaders. Yes, the Secretary is working for a president among world leaders, but at that point the presidency is pretty much a promotion.
I still think Habeed raises some good points. Hillary doesn’t seem likely to be a remarkable president if she wins, but then again, who knows? Maybe she’d go for the freakin’ jugular on a range of smart ideas.
I also think we ought to spend more time weighing Sanders’ merit.
Hillary is a top-notch lawyer, but I’m afraid Cruz and Rubio are also.
I’m also afraid that in today’s America no President will be “remarkable” in the sense of being an inspiring and unifiying leader. If Hillary acts aggressively against Daesh the Republicans will shriek that she should be more cautious. And vice versa. 40% of Americans will detest a Democratic President no matter who he/she is. The better the President’s legislative ideas, the more the opposition will seek to scuttle them.
I don’t understand how people would say Clinton is “unqualified”.
Without even discussing honesty or policy (which are different to “qualified”) her resume is about as good as you are ever going to get for someone running for President and far far outguns anything being offered from the other side.
It’s pretty widely acknowledged that she was a powerful first lady, that prior to that she was a successful lawyer, active senator, and then secretary of state - which could be compared to “President Understudy” in many ways.
If she doesn’t have the resume to become president then I would really have to wonder what sort of a metric is being used to judge her.
- The converse is that you may well argue that she is too divisive, or not inspirational or whatever other soft skill you may want to come up with - but that’s a totally different argument than the power of her resume
He’s certainly got moxie. But he’s also, without a doubt a stupid liar.
That’s not the case. Trump is childish. A vapid brat. And can you cite where Obama promised to heal the planet?
Except for when he whined to a group of reporters that he was being treated unfairly.
He has the drive and focus to pass O-chem and get really good at something. He’s not smart at all. He’s a delusional fool who is good at exactly one thing in the universe. Cutting on brains.
No. He thinks humans and dinosaurs co-existed. He thinks that evolution, the single unifying fact of every single biological science, is not real.
I wouldn’t let that simpering twat water my plants while I was on vacation. I certainly don’t think his end-of-days-awaiting ass needs access to nuclear launch codes.
He thinks the pyramids were to store rice/grains!
And he just got back from a Syrian refugee camp and announced we’re all making a mountain out of a molehill, the camps are quite nice, and those in them are just biding their time and waiting to return to Syria!
One wonders what colour the sky is in his world!
Got a quote for that? I mean, putting your foot in your mouth about Vaccines is one thing. Maybe as a neurosurgeon he saw patients with brain disorders that seemed to develop right after vaccination, or he heard it as a story from his colleagues. Wrong but understandable. And being skeptical about climate change isn’t totally off base since the rate of warming is really slow - they are talking about 3 degrees being a planet wide catastrophe, but also that it won’t actually warm that much until 2100 or so. It’s not something you can stick your head outside and just see for yourself, sometimes we get cold snaps, and a 3 degree temperature rise worldwide doesn’t actually sound that bad on the face of it. (yes, yes, don’t correct me, I know it is predicted to be an utter catastrophe)
But believing the pyramids were for storing grain…umm. Like, does he even understand the concept of needing information before opening his mouth? Isn’t there basically no internal room in those pyramids, it’s almost all solid stone…
I think its pretty fair to say that Hilary would have a successful political career even if she didn’t get lucky / unlucky enough to choose as her husband someone that was elected President. She was involved in politics a long while before she started dating Clinton. If anything being ex-first lady has hurt her political career, the years she was first lady and officially out of politics were otherwise prime years of her political career.
Putting her in the same box as Trump just seems totally bizarre to me.
Sorry, I’m really bad with the link thing. But a simple Google search will give you exactly the quotes you seek.
Oh, and he also thinks the pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph!
Where did this guy get his degree? How embarrassed must they be?
the FCT we have 2 parties for 350 million people is in itself a giant joke.
coke or pepsi?
god (righteousness) or jesus (caring about the welfare of others?
anywho. me and a friend had a 2 hour text session about taxes and the deficit this morning and myself i can only vote for Bernie or Rand Paul. They are the only real candidates. anyone who cant comprehend climate change at this point should just watch the Packers Bears thanksgiving game and notice the rain when its supposed to be snow and really think for a minute and if you still dont get it just assume youre a total retard and nothing less.
anywho im drinking. so me and my mostly conservative friend came to the conclusion that as far as deficit goes Bill was the only president in the last 35 years to even come close to balancing the budget and hillary would have Bill and at her back. Trump is a moron who will end up like Bachmann and Palin. he is getting the under and uneducated voters and as we have seen in years past those people with those voters never last for the long haul.
I cant vote for anyone besides Bernie or Rand but Hillary would be funny because fox and the right have been character assassinating her since 1999 and they need to see their assaults dont work. i remember trying to be a conservative and the one day i try to trust fox news they choose to show hillary yelling at some lady OVER AND OVER AGAIN ALL DAY instead of a plane crash that was one of the BIGGEST STORIES OF THE YEAR!! fox news is a joke. so is limbaugh and hannity and anyone that disagrees should learn to use youtube and fact checking.
I’m afraid that amounts to a qualification for Rubio and Cruz. But fear not! I won’t support those guys, see below.
Sure. But let’s look at what is really going on. Here is a very good article about how Illinois politics have largely been bought. I recommend the whole thing, but my point is from the chart at the bottom, comparing the 1%‘s values to Americans’ at large:
Bought politicians represent the values of the very wealthy, which very much does not represent the values of Americans at large. So we uncover the qualification that every GOP candidate is missing this year: the will and ability to actually represent the American people.
Can Hillary do that? The answer IMHO is “maybe”. For Sanders, I believe it is “yes”. For any GOP candidate you care to name, the answer is a resounding “no”. So of course they will fight tooth and nail if a Democrat wins and tries to advance an agenda that actually benefits the American people- they don’t represent the American people.
Maybe as a neurosurgeon he should understand that this is not how science works, and is therefore in no way understandable.
You’d hope so given it’s one of the highest political offices in the world and one of them isn’t a politician.
I wouldn’t want Trump plumbing my sink or servicing my car either.
He’s basically King Ralph, an uncouth clown commanding as much respect on the world stage as Piers Morgan.
What are you basing that on? Rubio has been in elected office for all but two years since he was admitted to the bar, and neither his official biography nor his Wikipedia page mention what he was doing in those two years. Clinton practiced law at least part time from 1974 until the 1992 presidential campaign, and Cruz was certainly a very accomplished lawyer (though mostly in public service roles).
What was I basing the claim on? Ignorance, I guess. I did see that his J.D. degree was “cum laude” but perhaps that’s faint praise when there’s no “magna” or “summa” prepended. (And is it odd that we don’t know what he was doing those two years?)
I guess I just assumed that since the only clearcut bullets on his resume were that he was a political hack and a blatant liar (e.g. changing the date of his parents’ arrival in U.S. to comply with an anti-Castro fantasy) that he had to have some area of serious competence.
So if he’s not a top-notch lawyer, and has no other qualifications but boyish good looks, political hackery, and compulsive lying, why is he now 2nd-most-likely to be the next President of the Unitest States and Leader of the Free World?
Frightening.
He’s a very good politician. He rose from a city commission job to national office in a decade. But no, graduating from law school cum laude (or even magna or summa) doesn’t really say anything about how good a lawyer you are. It says you’re probably pretty smart, but I know magna graduates who failed the bar exam (not that the bar exam is a very good indicator of a good lawyer either).