April 7, 2016

And now some common sense about who's qualified to be president

Jack Mirkinson, Salon - Stop freaking out, Democrats!: Why Bernie & Hillary’s war of words isn’t the outrage we’re making it out to be Yes, hostilities between the two campaigns have escalated — because that's what happens in any primary

Now that the 2016 presidential campaign has reached New York, things are getting, well, New York-ish. Ted Cruz was chased out of the Bronx. Hillary Clinton invaded a subway, for one stop. And Donald Trump spoke to his natural constituency — a huge crowd of angry Long Islanders.

So it’s no accident that some of New York’s aggressive zeal followed Bernie Sanders to Philadelphia, where he declared that Hillary Clinton was not “qualified” to be president because of her Super PAC money, her vote for the Iraq War, her support for free trade and a host of other things he’s been criticizing Clinton for over the past year.

Clinton’s spokespeople and surrogates immediately pronounced themselves horrified that Sanders would say such things. The Washington Post duly fact-checked Sanders’ assertion that Clinton had said he wasn’t qualified before he said she wasn’t qualified. (It turned out that Clinton hadn’t directly said Sanders wasn’t qualified, but had just refused to say he was qualified when repeatedly pressed about the matter in an interview. Yes, this is the level we’re working at, people.) Clinton, presumably satisfied with her campaign’s churning of the waters, gamely laughed off the fracas during a walkabout in the Bronx.

Let’s all take a deep breath, everyone, and have a little perspective. People fight during political campaigns! That’s just how it goes. You get into a candidate, you have arguments about them, things get heated and intense. It happens literally every single time. The difference in 2016 is that Twitter exists, and Twitter makes all politics even more horrible than they already were. It turns people into volunteer opposition researchers endlessly litigating every single sentence of the campaign, and it gives political hacks their biggest, most unimpeded platform in history. If someone could invent a button on Twitter that would shut off all 2016 tweets until December (including mine!), I would donate half my salary to that person.

3 comments:

REDPILLED said...

Catastrophic human-caused climate disaster, like evolution and gravity, is a proven scientific reality.

All candidates who deny human-caused climate change are unqualified to hold ANY elective office, much less the presidency.

It's time to criticize Republicans as being unqualified if they deny human-caused climate change.

Anonymous said...

"...a proven scientific reality"

Oh really? Can you prove that the Sun is not the main cause of climate disruptions? Isn't it a proven scientific reality that the Sun's activity level has been the primary factor in both the Ice Ages and the Warming Periods?

Also, please address the fact that we do not know with any certainty how many undersea volcanoes exist and their combined geothermal effect on heating the oceans - such as the El Nino effect - which is the other contributing factor to the changing climate.

Yet you and your Luddite ilk would install a tyrannical, all-powerful governing force that would essentially determine who would live and how they would live - essentially erasing all form of human liberty or freedom- which is the rule of the one-tenth of one percenters.

I'd say it was you who was unqualified to speak on issues of scientific theories controlling political realities.

Anonymous said...

And what about CO2? It is strangely absent from your denial. What exactly is a greenhouse effect, and why can you ignore it?