Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 5:35 pm
Care to explain what you intended by posting this fake photo? Better yet, defend posting it.
Quality books. Great conversations.
https://www.booktalk.org/
Yeah, I bet she got the Affirmative Action appointment to teach at Harvard Law. I mean, anybody could do that, but she just happened to have Native blood.KindaSkolarly wrote: Warren, it is alleged, has advanced herself through life by claiming to be Indian,
This was a major debacle and has hurt Elizabeth Warren's credibility, but to her credit, she has apologized—both for claiming Native American ancestry and for taking a DNA test. I can understand why she came to identify with having Cherokee ancestry, but the DNA results don't really support the factuality of her claims. The political fallout is undeniable. If Warren becomes a contender for the Democrat nomination, and I hope she does, I expect we'll continue to hear Donald Trump's kindergarten level of gloats and taunts of "Pocohontas". So here we have an accomplished politician and policy wonk on one side, a gibbering idiot on the other, but politics is politics. Hopefully the presidential race won't be decided by this disenfranchised and generally ignorant bloc that put Trump into office in the first place. I think our system of democracy depends on a return to honesty and integrity, values which Trump does not even understand, let alone represent.KindaSkolarly wrote:facts.elizabethwarren.com/wp-content/up ... t_2018.pdf
That's Elizabeth Warren's DNA analysis. She claimed she was part Cherokee and she would prove it, by golly.
Let's see... The report says:
"Conclusion. While the vast majority of the individual’s ancestry is European, the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual’s pedigree, likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago."
I have recognized for some time that we all have an inner Trump. Do we recognize that we have an inner Elizabeth Warren as well?geo wrote: So here we have an accomplished politician and policy wonk on one side, a gibbering idiot on the other, but politics is politics. Hopefully the presidential race won't be decided by this disenfranchised and generally ignorant bloc that put Trump into office in the first place. I think our system of democracy depends on a return to honesty and integrity, values which Trump does not even understand, let alone represent.
Probably you and I are looking at different aspects as criteria for leadership. While I agree with most of the criticisms you make [Cambodia bombing seems to have been Nixon, but Johnson has the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the poorly conducted Vietnam War on his record; I don't think Truman went along with McCarthyism in any meaningful sense] my goal was not to list leaders who were flawless or whose decisions I always agreed with, but to exemplify those who could combine public interest policies with their own decision-making in a way that allowed them to actually shape people's sense of what the public interest is, going into the future. In that sense, though you might loathe Margaret Thatcher's policies as I do, you still have to be able to see that she shaped public opinion and the political landscape down to the present day.vizitelly wrote:It is difficult to think of an American President who could be considered worse than Trump, but there are several candidates, apart from the obvious Nixon. Reagan - who voted against the Civil Rights Bill twice and then against the instigating of MLK Day; Truman who defended the use of nuclear weapons against civilians to his dying day, went along with McCarthyism and fought against worker's rights; Johnson, who connived with Kissinger to bomb Cambodia. FDR had four terms as President and that brought on the 22nd Amendment; his wartime Presidency looks good until the carve-up of Yalta. These are matters of open public record, not deep investigation.
Yes, I agree that looking to individuals is not helpful or hopeful, but I do think it is a matter to be factored in when choosing the leadership candidates. I would love to hear more about what you think Johnson will do to the Tory party. A big rush for the exits, with a surge for the Lib Dems? Doesn't sound entirely likely, but then I don't know British politics well. Maybe a Scottish exit vote? With a Catalonia rerun?vizitelly wrote:The picture is no less clean in Europe or anywhere else - in the UK we have a leadership election between a known and proven liar and a known and proven idiot: one of them will also become Prime Minister (albeit for a very short period of time). What everybody hopes is for an honest, decent, balanced and compassionate person to suddenly appear and become the leader they crave - the politics of personality triumphing over the true politics of policy.