So that's your representation of yourself on the right?
O.o?
Then how come that's not who we're seeing in Hard Onions?
This one looks a far cry from the glasses-wearing(?) near-nerd (no offense intended) Or is the Hard Onions version a representation of yourself at a younger age?
I can't speak publicly worth jack squat. In casual conversation, I trip over my own tongue almost every other word. It's a problem I've had since I was 6, and I still haven't been able to overcome it.
And yet, I got the highest marks possible on the Advanced Placement tests for English Literature and Language. I graduated high school with a 3.7 GPA. I got a 32 on the ACTs. Give me five minutes with any strategy game and you'll be hard pressed to beat me. Give me an hour to do a project that other people would spend days on and I'll still do it better.
Oh, wait, I sound like a retard. I guess my parents must be ashamed of me. :(
President Bush is not stupid. What he is, is inarticulate. In this, he is in good company; there are a lot of very smart people who, for one reason or another, simply have trouble putting their thoughts into words, especially when it comes to public speaking.
As Bill Miller pointed out in his recent "Eject!Eject!Eject" column, Lincoln was considered a simpleton by the self-styled intelligentsia of his day, too, because he didn't give the kind of lengthy, polished, erudite speeches full of flowery rhetoric that they thought a "proper" public speech ought to be. The Gettysburg Address was short, plain-spoken (at least by the standards of the day)... and considered to be proof of what a country bumpkin Lincoln was. Why, only an idiot would deliver a speech like that!
In my case, it's because my brain runs at such a high speed my mouth can't keep up, so you get disjointed fragments as the mouth lag cuts in and out.
Another problem is "thrashing rate"; my brain is so hyperactive that it can take a long time for the proper words (especially an answer to a question or debate) to fight its way past all the thrashing and come to the surface in an articulate form.
I have had a lot of REALLY bad experiences with the guy who LJs as niall_shapero; I understand he was on the debating team at UC Berkeley in the Seventies, and his style is to Hammer! Hammer! Hammer! until you can't keep up. Truth doesn't matter, only hammer until he wins -- and crows in triumph of his Superior Intellect.
For years I would find the right answer and words to say DAYS LATER, after it was far too late.
Speaking as a state finalist in improvisational speeches, it doesn't take much to deal with unexpected materiel. It just takes time and practice, and a little effort in knowing how to deal with questions off the record.
There's no accounting for sounding like a retard on the off-chance when you're caught off guard, but how many times does it take before you take a different strategy? Even if it's "I honestly can't answer you reliably in something I have no experience in", it's sometimes better than trying to bullshit.
I realize you have your speech pathology and so does President Bush, but his is only so detrimental to his effectiveness. It is always better to say truthfully that the question is coming out of left (or right) field than to journey into material that you're simply unprepared for.
To me at least, to do so very consistently instead of dealing directly with the fact they're unawares is what makes a speaker look like a dumbass, not how effectively they avoid stuttering.
He is not stupid. he is inarticulate. Or rather, he has had one or two moments of verbal gaffe that have been mocked incessantly by his more childish enemies.
Little is said or noted by them of things he has said-- or done--- that have shown his mental or moral clarity of action.
The problem is, it's the President's JOB to be articulate. It's his job to forcefully advocate the best interests of this country and to rally the public to the cause. That isn't easy for him to do when every two words he speaks seem to be separated by "ummmmmm, uhhhhhhhhhh, ummnnnnnnh, ehhhhhhhh, ahhhhh". Tags and fillers. It's very distracting and is a real handicap to effective communication. Reagan was a great president not because he was supremely intelligent (mind you he certainly wasn't dumb) but because what he believed in resonated with the majority of Americans who aren't chain-smoking schizo burned out drug addled 1960's rejects, and he was able to clearly present and sell those ideas to the nation. Listening to Reagan's old speeches is inspiring. Listening to Bush is _painful_.
I certainly don't think President Bush is retarded. He seems to be about average if anything. Fortunately, he's street smart enough to have picked a good staff, starting with Mr. Cheney. I voted for Bush twice and am not sorry for having done so, if only because the alternatives absolutely WERE stupid, and frankly, absolutely frightening. That being said, Bush has been an big disappointment lately. A couple of things really turned me off. First was a couple weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh had the President on his show and he was talking about the trade deficit with Communist China. I have no doubt Reagan would have called for freedom for the Chinese people as the ultimate solution. Freedom and prosperity go hand-in-hand. Bush, on the other hand, blathered on about how we needed to China into a "consumer society" where the people spend all their money on stuff instead of saving. As a conservative, I just slapped my forehead in disbelief. The other thing that really did it for me was right after the Republicans lost the House and Senate. Mr. Bush and Tony Snow were practically jumping up in down in glee that they would be able to get an amnesty bill passed for criminal invaders. Ugh. If the Republicans don't get over this RINO, get-along-to-go-along crap real fast, they are going to end up in the minority for another forty years, and America as we know it is _over_.
I'd like to point something out: even being extremely articulate, gaining that skill from making your living in the movies, didn't immunize Ronald Reagan (called the Great Communicator) from being called retarded. It's the fave insult of the self-styled smart set.
I agree with your other points. But as Limbaugh has also pointed out, Bush was elected as a Republican; Reagan was elected as a leader of a movement. The reason I voted for Bush is that the alternative was unacceptable, not because the man has exceptional merit in his own right.
Agreed. I voted for Bush in his first term because I didn't like Clinton.
I voted against Bush in his second term, because what he was doing to the constitution was (and STILL IS) unacceptable to me.
As for my comment of him sounding retarded, I stand by it. There are times when he opens his mouth that makes me want to burry my head. Unfortunately, he represents the United States of America and when he goes and says something rediculous, it makes all of us look bad.
"The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done." --George W. Bush, Greeley, Colo., Nov. 4, 2006
"I think -- tide turning -- see, as I remember -- I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of -- it's easy to see a tide turn -- did I say those words?" --George W. Bush, asked if the tide was turning in Iraq, Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006
"The relations with, uhh -- Europe are important relations, and they've, uhh -- because, we do share values. And, they're universal values, they're not American values or, you know -- European values, they're universal values. And those values -- uhh -- being universal, ought to be applied everywhere." --George W. Bush, at a press conference with European Union dignitaries, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2005
Those don't make you wince? Yes, they're just a few comments, but seriously! This is the guy who says it's not torture as long as they don't die and no perminant damage is done. So water boarding, beatings, sleep deprevation, etc. aren't torture when WE do it, but anyone else does it, it's torture. Forget the Geneva Convention and all that....
Not quite. Your examples are amusing but your point is completely inane. People like to recycle Bush stumblings endlessly to prove that he's stupid but every intelligent person knows perfectly well that vebal missteps are common to every person on the planet on a daily basis. To show that foot-in-mouth is common enough among public figures, I submit these quotes.
"I think George Bush's weakest moment--when--when he turned on Bush's character." - CBS' Bob Schieffer
"This is still the greatest country in the world, if we just will steel our wills and lose our minds." - Bill Clinton
"They've managed to keep their unemployment low although their overall unemployment is high." - Bill Clinton
"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, 'Thank God I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died, their lives will nevre be the same again." - Barbara Boxer, U.S. Senator
"I always wait until a jury has spoken before I anticipate what they will do." - Former Attourney General Janet Reno
"A zebra cannot change its spots." - Al Gore
Now, are you going to go through those (and there's tons more where they come from) and designated everyone I quoted as a retard because they said something stupid or nonsensical? If so, then at least yer consistant if not totally unrealistic. If not... well, that's a clever little double standard.
If you want to get into what constitutes torture, go for it. But the ones you listed (except for beatings) are interrogation techniques, not neccessarily torture.
"...the relationship between the 'High Contracting Parties' and a non-signatory, the party will remain bound until the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention. '...Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.'"
In otherwords;
If they refuse to follow it, we're not bound to.
When any conflict starts, we shall follow the guidelines of the convention.
The moment that either side breaks the rules, there are no longer any rules.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention doesn't even APPLY to insurgents in the first place. Kind of a slap in the face for the people who were trying to get suicide bombers miranda rights.
You have caught a terrorist in the battlefield. Say in the middle of beheading a prisoner.
Somewhere in Iraq is a little girl. She and fifty of her classmates are going to step in front of an IED in a playground and be turned into chunky salsa by your terrorist's fellow butt-buddies unless you get HIM to talk.
Apparently this reality-based fact needs to be driven into your skull with a tire iron:
A terrorist POW is not going to talk unless he is in absolute mortal fear of his life.
Choice time, buckethead: do you :
a)give the terrorist big puppy eyes, get on your knees and say "pwetty pwease?"
b)Fire a gun in the ceiling and tell the sack of shit that he's hanging by a thread?
Making a terrorist tired, uncomfortable, scared and miserable is not "torture." Soldiers in the battlefield go through less. scaring the shit out of them is not torture either.... which is precisely what waterboarding does. Oh, God Forbid that we should sully our hands by squeezing evil people for lifesaving information!
SCARING A TERRORIST SHITLESS IS NOT TORTURE.
You people talk of "supporting the troops" and hoping for the best for the Iraqi people, but when it comes down to brass tacks you're more concerned that you, sitting in your comfortable suburban homes a thousand miles away from any immediate danger, can continue to feel morally superior about yourselves, than you are about the life and death peril of american soldiers and Iraqi men, women and children.
It does make a difference, yes... in point of fact, laws for libel/defamatory speech are much more relaxed as regards public figures, precisely because they're expected to draw flak of all sorts.
Although if Bush wants to make cartoons countering Simpson, he's perfectly welcome too...
Forget Simpson, he's small potatoes. There're far great disseminators of lies here (http://www.dailysixer.com/washington.shtml). Fucker spreads vicious bullshit about the very core of our democracy.
So that's your representation of yourself on the right?
O.o?
Then how come that's not who we're seeing in Hard Onions?
This one looks a far cry from the glasses-wearing(?) near-nerd (no offense intended) Or is the Hard Onions version a representation of yourself at a younger age?
Dude! He does sound like a retard.
First president that ever made me sorry to be a Republican.
And yet, I got the highest marks possible on the Advanced Placement tests for English Literature and Language. I graduated high school with a 3.7 GPA. I got a 32 on the ACTs. Give me five minutes with any strategy game and you'll be hard pressed to beat me. Give me an hour to do a project that other people would spend days on and I'll still do it better.
Oh, wait, I sound like a retard. I guess my parents must be ashamed of me. :(
President Bush is not stupid. What he is, is inarticulate. In this, he is in good company; there are a lot of very smart people who, for one reason or another, simply have trouble putting their thoughts into words, especially when it comes to public speaking.
As Bill Miller pointed out in his recent "Eject!Eject!Eject" column, Lincoln was considered a simpleton by the self-styled intelligentsia of his day, too, because he didn't give the kind of lengthy, polished, erudite speeches full of flowery rhetoric that they thought a "proper" public speech ought to be. The Gettysburg Address was short, plain-spoken (at least by the standards of the day)... and considered to be proof of what a country bumpkin Lincoln was. Why, only an idiot would deliver a speech like that!
there are a lot of very smart people who ... simply have trouble putting their thoughts into words
Another problem is "thrashing rate"; my brain is so hyperactive that it can take a long time for the proper words (especially an answer to a question or debate) to fight its way past all the thrashing and come to the surface in an articulate form.
I have had a lot of REALLY bad experiences with the guy who LJs as niall_shapero; I understand he was on the debating team at UC Berkeley in the Seventies, and his style is to Hammer! Hammer! Hammer! until you can't keep up. Truth doesn't matter, only hammer until he wins -- and crows in triumph of his Superior Intellect.
For years I would find the right answer and words to say DAYS LATER, after it was far too late.
There's no accounting for sounding like a retard on the off-chance when you're caught off guard, but how many times does it take before you take a different strategy? Even if it's "I honestly can't answer you reliably in something I have no experience in", it's sometimes better than trying to bullshit.
I realize you have your speech pathology and so does President Bush, but his is only so detrimental to his effectiveness. It is always better to say truthfully that the question is coming out of left (or right) field than to journey into material that you're simply unprepared for.
To me at least, to do so very consistently instead of dealing directly with the fact they're unawares is what makes a speaker look like a dumbass, not how effectively they avoid stuttering.
Little is said or noted by them of things he has said-- or done--- that have shown his mental or moral clarity of action.
I certainly don't think President Bush is retarded. He seems to be about average if anything. Fortunately, he's street smart enough to have picked a good staff, starting with Mr. Cheney. I voted for Bush twice and am not sorry for having done so, if only because the alternatives absolutely WERE stupid, and frankly, absolutely frightening. That being said, Bush has been an big disappointment lately. A couple of things really turned me off. First was a couple weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh had the President on his show and he was talking about the trade deficit with Communist China. I have no doubt Reagan would have called for freedom for the Chinese people as the ultimate solution. Freedom and prosperity go hand-in-hand. Bush, on the other hand, blathered on about how we needed to China into a "consumer society" where the people spend all their money on stuff instead of saving. As a conservative, I just slapped my forehead in disbelief. The other thing that really did it for me was right after the Republicans lost the House and Senate. Mr. Bush and Tony Snow were practically jumping up in down in glee that they would be able to get an amnesty bill passed for criminal invaders. Ugh. If the Republicans don't get over this RINO, get-along-to-go-along crap real fast, they are going to end up in the minority for another forty years, and America as we know it is _over_.
I agree with your other points. But as Limbaugh has also pointed out, Bush was elected as a Republican; Reagan was elected as a leader of a movement. The reason I voted for Bush is that the alternative was unacceptable, not because the man has exceptional merit in his own right.
I voted against Bush in his second term, because what he was doing to the constitution was (and STILL IS) unacceptable to me.
As for my comment of him sounding retarded, I stand by it. There are times when he opens his mouth that makes me want to burry my head. Unfortunately, he represents the United States of America and when he goes and says something rediculous, it makes all of us look bad.
"The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done." --George W. Bush, Greeley, Colo., Nov. 4, 2006
"I think -- tide turning -- see, as I remember -- I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of -- it's easy to see a tide turn -- did I say those words?" --George W. Bush, asked if the tide was turning in Iraq, Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006
"The relations with, uhh -- Europe are important relations, and they've, uhh -- because, we do share values. And, they're universal values, they're not American values or, you know -- European values, they're universal values. And those values -- uhh -- being universal, ought to be applied everywhere." --George W. Bush, at a press conference with European Union dignitaries, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2005
Those don't make you wince? Yes, they're just a few comments, but seriously! This is the guy who says it's not torture as long as they don't die and no perminant damage is done. So water boarding, beatings, sleep deprevation, etc. aren't torture when WE do it, but anyone else does it, it's torture. Forget the Geneva Convention and all that....
Nuff said.
"I think George Bush's weakest moment--when--when he turned on Bush's character."
- CBS' Bob Schieffer
"This is still the greatest country in the world, if we just will steel our wills and lose our minds."
- Bill Clinton
"They've managed to keep their unemployment low although their overall unemployment is high."
- Bill Clinton
"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, 'Thank God I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died, their lives will nevre be the same again."
- Barbara Boxer, U.S. Senator
"I always wait until a jury has spoken before I anticipate what they will do."
- Former Attourney General Janet Reno
"A zebra cannot change its spots."
- Al Gore
Now, are you going to go through those (and there's tons more where they come from) and designated everyone I quoted as a retard because they said something stupid or nonsensical? If so, then at least yer consistant if not totally unrealistic. If not... well, that's a clever little double standard.
If you want to get into what constitutes torture, go for it. But the ones you listed (except for beatings) are interrogation techniques, not neccessarily torture.
"...the relationship between the 'High Contracting Parties' and a non-signatory, the party will remain bound until the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention. '...Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.'"
In otherwords;
If they refuse to follow it, we're not bound to.
When any conflict starts, we shall follow the guidelines of the convention.
The moment that either side breaks the rules, there are no longer any rules.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention doesn't even APPLY to insurgents in the first place. Kind of a slap in the face for the people who were trying to get suicide bombers miranda rights.
You have caught a terrorist in the battlefield. Say in the middle of beheading a prisoner.
Somewhere in Iraq is a little girl. She and fifty of her classmates are going to step in front of an IED in a playground and be turned into chunky salsa by your terrorist's fellow butt-buddies unless you get HIM to talk.
Apparently this reality-based fact needs to be driven into your skull with a tire iron:
A terrorist POW is not going to talk unless he is in absolute mortal fear of his life.
Choice time, buckethead: do you :
a)give the terrorist big puppy eyes, get on your knees and say "pwetty pwease?"
b)Fire a gun in the ceiling and tell the sack of shit that he's hanging by a thread?
Making a terrorist tired, uncomfortable, scared and miserable is not "torture." Soldiers in the battlefield go through less. scaring the shit out of them is not torture either.... which is precisely what waterboarding does.
Oh, God Forbid that we should sully our hands by squeezing evil people for lifesaving information!
SCARING A TERRORIST SHITLESS IS NOT TORTURE.
You people talk of "supporting the troops" and hoping for the best for the Iraqi people, but when it comes down to brass tacks you're more concerned that you, sitting in your comfortable suburban homes a thousand miles away from any immediate danger, can continue to feel morally superior about yourselves, than you are about the life and death peril of american soldiers and Iraqi men, women and children.
Although if Bush wants to make cartoons countering Simpson, he's perfectly welcome too...
Excellent cartoon!
THAT WAS BLOODY HILARIOUS!
THAT WAS FUNNY!