How Many Homes Does John Kerry Own?

[BT]

Let's parse your last post.

Admirals now make about 170k a year. McCain didn't make admiral so his military pay was a lot less.

Is McCain a trust fund baby?

You'll have to show how what his ancestors earned affects him.

McCain went to private school high school.

Obama went to private high school.

McCain went to Annapolis. The govt paid the freight.

Obama went to Occidental, then Columbia, then Harvard.

Who paid the freight?

Obama made 4+ million last year. McCain made 400k+ last year.

Michelle alone earns 300k  year from the University of Chicago and from sitting on board directorships.

Obama sat on the board of directors for many organizations.

Obama's work experience comes from the Ivory Towers of academia.

So who is the elitist.

[Michael Tee]

The difference of course is that McCain and Cindy come from big money, and Obama and Michelle came from the working class with no money behind them.  McCain and Cindy come from the elite, Barak and Michelle come from real obscurity.  What they have, they got with their own efforts and ambition.  They weren't born to it and their families couldn't possibly have gotten them into it.

Your twisting and spinning to avoid these simple and obvious facts is funny, as are the dumb, dead-end questions you ask, proving nothing to anyone with an ounce of common sense and a grain of life experience in the real world.  But please, go on trying to paint Barak and Michelle as the "elitists" in comparison to McCain and his wife, the beauteous Cindy.  Why not go all-out to demonstrate that you and Reality are totally divorced and are never going to get back together in this lifetime?

<<You'll have to show how what his ancestors earned affects him. >>

Just one more example of the technique.  That doesn't even deserve an answer.  If life hasn't already taught you the answer to that "problem," I sure as hell couldn't - -  and wouldn't waste the effort either.

[Amianthus]

Why not cut the bullshit and get to the point - - the admirals retire and go on to consultancies or other lucrative sinecures making much more than they ever got paid for prancing around in their snazzy little uniforms.

His grandfather died while still serving (just days after the Japanese surrender).

His father was still serving when McCain came home from Vietnam.

Even if his father made "lucrative" money during the few years he lived after retiring, McCain would not have been raised with that money, having already finished school and gone into the military. However, I can find no indication that his father had any career after leaving the Navy.

Incidentally, both his father and grandfather graduated near the bottom of their classes at Annapolis, and both were frequently in trouble with school authorities, so McCain apparently comes by it honestly.

[Plane]

Why not cut the bullshit and get to the point - - the admirals retire and go on to consultancies or other lucrative sinecures making much more than they ever got paid for prancing around in their snazzy little uniforms.  A guy who is the son and grandson of admirals comes from a lot more money than either Michelle or Barak Obama ever saw in their wildest dreams.  They came from a class in society that represents money and good living and in McCain's case goes back to Southern planters with lots of slaves.  Slaves probably not unlike Michelle's slave ancestors. 

So keep up with the "elitist" bullshit - - a son and grandson of Admirals and a great-grandson of slave-owning planters married to a billionaire beer heiress is fighting an uphill David-and-Goliath struggle against an "elitist" biracial guy born in obscurity, raised in poverty and married to the daughter of a Chicago municipal utilities worker and the descendant of slaves.

When I said you guys live in Bizarro World, I was not in the least kidding.

Every statement you make here is a supposition on your part and several of them are not so.

But even if they were all true , none of them speak to John McCains quality as a leader , which ought to be the issue.

What in his history defines his leadeership and how can it be compared apple to apple with BHO experience?

[Michael Tee]

<<Every statement you make here is a supposition on your part and several of them are not so.

<<But even if they were all true , none of them speak to John McCains quality as a leader , which ought to be the issue.>>

Yes, I got side-tracked on the absurdity that John S. McCain III, son and grandson of admirals, great-grandson of a Mississippi planter with 2000 acres and 52 slaves, and his billionaire heiress wife are just plain folk but Barak and Michelle are "elitists."  It was dumb of me to waste so much time on such fucking bullshit and I'm just gonna let it go.

McCain as a leader?  Who was the guy who led the 400 into the Valley of Death in the Crimean War?  Who were  the guys who led Germany and Japan into total devastation in WWII?  Were they leaders?  Did people follow them?

What good is leadership if they don't know where to lead?  When Bush was rounding up support for the Iraq invasion, based on non-existent dangers and non-existent  WMD, it was McCain who agreed to invade and Obama who opposed the idea.  What is leadership without vision?  McCain wants to lead the nation into 100 more years of occupation if necessary, into drilling for oil in some of America's most environmentally sensitive regions and Obama wants to lead America into a more socially conscious state with better health care for the people.  McCain's first impulses on the situation in Georgia were war, Obama was much more cautious about it.  Who do you want to be led by?

[Plane]

McCain as a leader?  Who was the guy who led the 400 into the Valley of Death in the Crimean War?  Who were  the guys who led Germany and Japan into total devastation in WWII?  Were they leaders?  Did people follow them?

Well .....I would indeed like to compare BHO to Lord Cardigan ,Tojo and Hitler .

Three very diffrent guys , who found three very diffrent ways to go very wrong.

Hitler won as a canadate of change  , then it turns out that his idea of change was changing yours into mine with ultimate levels of violence.

Tojo was a caricture of Jingoism and Imperialism , he never doubted himself for a minute , he never let a disagreement stand , he was a steamroller.

Lord Cardigan did not take his job seriously enough to do his homework .

Does BHO avoid all the potential pitfalls of power?

He will , if he becomes president , become the worlds most powerfull leader , with little testing in his life to prepare him for it.

[Michael Tee]

<<He will , if he becomes president , become the worlds most powerfull leader , with little testing in his life to prepare him for it.>>

Well, in this campaign already, I've seen that Obama gives cautious, thoughtful and nuanced answers whereas McCain is over-simplified, short and quick.  Georgia being just one example.

On the One Big Issue (the Iraq war) McCain was dead wrong and Obama was right.  McCain, the "maverick," followed the herd and Obama stood out against it and said "No."  That combined courage and foresight.

I don't think there's a real contest in leadership.  Obama as a law professor is careful and analytical.  He can't be rushed into anything.  So far none of the decisions taken by Bush required instant action, so the question of who's best to make snap decisions when there's no time for deliberation or analysis doesn't have any real application, and since McCain is a lot older than Obama and nowhere near as familiar as he is with analysis of complex problems, I'd trust Obama to make a better snap decision, should the occasion ever arise, than McCain.  But for the 99.9999 % of all executive decisions that don't have to be made in an hour or less, I'd be much happier with Obama since he's clearly a much more intelligent man than McCain, and much more familiar with complex arguments and complex considerations of complex cases.

We  live in a complicated world.  You can't make a snap decision and expect it will work out.  Complex situations and complex problems demand careful analysis and rational thought, a balancing of long-term and short-term considerations.  Who's better qualified to make decisions, McCain or Obama?  It's really a no-brainer.  I really don't see how anyone, thinking now impartially and without bias, could think even for a second, that McCain would even come close to being Obama's match.   Go with the smart guy, not the dummy.

[BT]

Obama sounds like Carter. Is he a micromanager also?

[Michael Tee]

<<Obama sounds like Carter. >>

In the sense that neither one of them shoots from the hip? 

<<Is he a micromanager also?>>

I didn't even know that Carter was a micromanager.  Professors usually aren't the micromanager type.  They need someone to remind them to tie their own shoelaces, they aren't interested in making sure the other guy's shoelaces are done up.  And they're used to the concept of using student researchers to cover all the angles and just co-ordinating and summarizing the results, rather than researching each aspect of the problem themselves.  Of course if one of the student researchers came up with the conclusions that Saddam Hussein and his tiny nation had highly sophisticated deadly weapons and were a threat to the very existence of the U.S.A., I'd expect he'd go over that "research" with a fine-tooth comb before he bought into it.  Analyze it right into the ground.

A good Professor can get a lot of students motivated to do a lot of good research work, review the results, critique them and send them out again to make the first drafts better.  If he micromanaged every student researcher, nothing would ever get done on the larger scale.

[BT]

So then Obama assigns his responses to the appropriate advisor and waits on their response?

Are they just slow responders?

[Christians4LessGvt]

[Michael Tee]

<<So then Obama assigns his responses to the appropriate advisor and waits on their response?>>

Why would a prof tolerate slowness in his research assistants any more than he would tolerate dullness and stupidity in his students?  First of all, he wouldn't pick a dummy like McCain to work on his problems, second, if he unwittingly picked a lemon, he could kick him off the team if everyone else is coming in with completed assignments on time and one guy is slowing them all down.

<<Are they just slow responders?>>

I don't get it.  Are WHO just slow responders?  Surely you're not implying that the nuanced answers that Obama gave at the Saddleback debate were the result of a team effort?  The guy doesn't need a team to do EVERYTHING for him.  His lectures are his own.  In the give-and-take that usually follows a lecture, his responses to his students would be his own as well.

This whole "team" explanation followed a question as to what kind of leadership experience Obama had.  I was giving an example of how as a professor, he would have had to organize research, class or group projects, etc.  I did not mean that Obama couldn't or didn't function on his own without a team when it was appropriate to do so.

I happen to think that you're making a huge mistake in underestimating Obama's capabilities - - I really don't think you understand what kind of brain-power it takes to achieve the milestones he achieved, all on his own, without family support or influence, coming straight up from the bottom - - as a Columbia grad, as  editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, as Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.  These are highly competitive positions, they're not available to any schmuck who walks in the door and asks for them.  A guy like McCain couldn't even get his foot in the door, couldn't gain admission to any of those schools even as an undergrad.  As his tenth-rate academic career clearly shows.

I wouldn't worry about Obama's "leadership abilities" - - I'd worry about McCain's.  What kinda "leadership" did this guy show?  Gets shot down and captured in Nam, spills the beans, broadcasts for the enemy; comes home and can't even keep his marriage vows, falls in with a fucking criminal like Charles Keating; takes in hook, line and sinker the fucking bullshit that Bush and his neocon advisers are putting out and votes for war with the rest of the herd, while Obama courageously and far-sightedly stands up and opposes the whole criminal venture as the crock of shit that it all too obviously is.    THAT'S leadership? ?  ? ? ?  Are you shitting me?

[BT]

I am heartened to see that you assign full responsibility for Obama's responses to Obama, and not some over eager staffer who didn't check with the boss before speaking.

But now that we have settled the responsibility question how do you explain Obama's 2 different statements concerning Georgia in two days.


1:"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

http://www.barackobama.com/2008/08/08/statement_from_barack_obama_on.php

2:"I condemn Russia's aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire... Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia."

http://www.reuters.com/article/europeCrisis/idUSN09504234

Is it that his core beliefs haven't solidified? Is he still a work in progress? Is the presidency really above his pay grade?

[Plane]

Nuance too strong  , can't follow .

[Michael Tee]

<<But now that we have settled the responsibility question how do you explain Obama's 2 different statements concerning Georgia in two days.>>

There's hardly any real difference between 'em.  A little more neutral in the first, a little more anti-Russian in the second. 

The usual sanctimonious blather I'd expect from any U.S. politician when they're not the ones doing the invading.  Pandering to their moronic voters with a wholly unjustified sense of moral superiority and in the process giving democracy a bad name.

But you still haven't answered MY question - - how do YOU feel about the "leadership" of John Insane as described in my last post?

<<What kinda "leadership" did this guy show?  Gets shot down and captured in Nam, spills the beans, broadcasts for the enemy; comes home and can't even keep his marriage vows, falls in with a fucking criminal like Charles Keating; takes in hook, line and sinker the fucking bullshit that Bush and his neocon advisers are putting out and votes for war with the rest of the herd, while Obama courageously and far-sightedly stands up and opposes the whole criminal venture as the crock of shit that it all too obviously is.    THAT'S leadership? ?  ? ? ?  Are you shitting me?>>

You're not in the least worried about McCain's "leadership" abilities?  I didn't even mention the flip-flops on abortion, the religious right, torture, etc.