There is a lot of global travel and world boundaries are getting…

Computer programming is the craft of writing useful, maintainable, and extensible instructions which can be interpreted by a computing…

1) Investing $15 billion in the fight against HIV in Africa
2) Being a very noble man when it comes to immigration, by showing understanding and compassion that’s otherwise rare on his political side

If Bush was that, minus the war, the neglect of Katrina, and a few other human demise related misteps, I’d defend him more consistently.

But as far as bashing Kerry over words–when it’s clear that Kerry is a good man is about what Andrew Montin said. Kerry helped stop the war in Vietnam by a sheer care for human beings getting burned and slaughtered for no good reason other than a blatant indifference toward dead peasants and children. The pressure he stood up against, at that young age, is heroic, and shows an integrity that very few have, or have the courage to uphold against public pressures, let alone a war pushing government/army. Therefore Andew is right on the head: this is about the nasty level of politics, not Kerry’s “bad” character.

“If Bush can get away with nonsense like “I know how hard it is to put food on your family” on an almost daily basis, then why are politicians like Kerry or Dean crucified for their faux-pas?

When it comes to formulating a coherent argument Bush and Kerry aren’t even in the same ballpark. The fact that Bush is nevertheless the more successful politician says something about the nature of political discourse in the United States. ”

Is what this boils down to. Lecture Kerry over a few, perhaps ambiguous words, but give Bush honor and credibility for what?

Also, a SAT test score is not indicative of intelligence that’s relevant to understanding right from wrong, which is more important than understanding SAT questions. Granted, there are mass killers who would score well on a SAT test. Moreover, if we’re going to go back to the past, and highlight Bush’s past achievements, why not highlight the fact that John Kerry went to Vietnam and helped put an end to a de facto peasant massacre there? Would you rather have someone who scored well on a SAT test, but was indifferent about innocents burning from Napalm? Including children?
Then, I’m sure Kim Jong Ill would love to hire you. Clearly, academic efficacy is of higher priority than human compassion, in a dictatorial government.

Euston, we’ve got a problem!

France does not have open borders and never has. Jim R is still suffering from the ignorance that infuses most of his posts. Most of the rioters are French citizens of parents who were either born in France too or immigrated to France because they are from the former North African colonies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia and had the right to come legally. As for France being socialist, I wish that were true. France is a capitalist country. We just have universal health care, something most Americans would love to have too. I could go on but the ignorant get that way willingly in many cases including Jim R’s.

Huh? Then you’re either morally obtuse or you have serious reading comprehension problems. To wit:

“We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in the place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted - rather than picking through the trubble of the arguments over intervention”

Your “proper concern” hasn’t been very proper with every criticism you’ve made of the preemptive Iraqi invasion, “since the day it occurred”. Or maybe you voted for the war before you voted against it? In any case, I find it laughably insulting (and intellectually vapid) to be told how to “properly” align my concern by focusing only on… (wait for it)… democracy building! No, thank you very much, I think I’m able to chew gum and walk at the same time: support Iraqis, while also continue to angrily berate the clowns who put us in this mess. If we don’t shine light on the tragic lies and mistakes that were made, well, you know the rest: we’re doomed to repeat them.

So, to put it elegantly, your “Manifesto” could at least “properly” serve as toilet paper, but that would require wasting the paper and ink to print it up. I think the wasteland of solipsistic bloggerdom is probably the more fitting burial ground for it.

On the other hand, he has very good taste in music.

Berman seems to me to be speeding along with Hitchens on the David Horowitz Highway, especially as exemplified by his recent dishonest review of a book about I. F. Stone.

Excellent post but not sure it can sustain that many waistcoat references.

The U.S. version of Euston was so unobjectionable that apparently even Michael Ledeen felt comfortable signing on to it. Just because I don’t have anything in common with the Answer coalition, despite their attempts to hijack anti-war sentiment, I’m sure as hell not going to attach myself to the waistcoat of Marty Peretz or Ronald Radosh (see “American supporters of the Euston Manifesto” at the Telos site). I can’t get to the manifesto site now for some technical reason, but if I’m not mistaken the Brit original featured Oliver Kamm, who’s a prominent member of the Henry Jackson Society - which is exactly what it sounds like: rabid neoconservatism for
English twits.

Euston was, IMHO, a not too clever attempt to re-legitimatize an apparently liberal (or “Labor”) version of the neo-con, neo-imperialist world view that was in tatters in the wake of people like Geras and Hitchens having positioned themselves in Paul Wolfowitz’ waistcoat and played cheerleader to Bush’s bamboozling and bungling and bloodletting in Iraq.

One can put a benign read on the Manifesto out of context - and I’m not trying to smear you by association - but certainly in retrospect, given the way it’s been played and by who, I’m not only not impressed, I’m creeped out. I know it’s “make fun of John Kerry week”, but I respect him more than I respect Geras because it didn’t take him nearly as long to begin to oppose the war. Too long and typically inept in his path - and damned before he does anything in any direction because he’s a pol and a Dem - but not as long, or even as tortured, as Geras was in recognizing reality.

Euston may have been a parlor game or tavern discourse by ineffectual intellectuals that could be read as all things to all people, but it was a tavern document heard round the world in certain intellectual circles and the folks who saw it as useful were mostly a singualrly nasty element who want to insure that a neo-imperialist interventionism doesn’t exist as a last resort but is kept on the front-burner of U.S. “best practices” when we survey the world.

Geras and Peter Beinart and the whole lot of the “liberal” Iraq cheerleaders are candidates in my book for pretty much shutting the fuck up for some decent interval if all they have to contribute is more mindgames. (George Packer proved himself an honest journalist, not a hack pundit, by following up with in-depth reporting on the consequences of what he had supported. Honorable man.) But most of these folks will continue to demand attention to their boring, disconnected discourse by any means necessary because they are emblematic of a liberal elite that believes fervently in their moral and intellectual superiority, even though they’ve amply demonstrated that any such pretense is a bad joke.

One minor difference, alas… The Esutorner are blogger who signed letter posted on some websites.

Kerry and Clintion handed a sub-par President legal autority to initiatate an optional war. Not exactly the same league.

On a less point.. you know Reg, your politics merge perfectly with those of Euston. If u were a brut, most of them would be ur political allies. They are practical social democratic left. I dont imagime you in the waistcoast of Mr Galloway and the SWP=led stop the war coalition.

Anycase, I read everyline of Euston before signing it. Didnt find anything to object to.

Obviously I’m losing my touch….

Who do you have to pistol-whip to get any respect around here ?

I sure hope Marc’s right that Bush has failed. It’s important that the Dems win (and choose someone with halfway-decent political instincts as their next Prez candidate). Kerry is not a deft stump speaker or campaigner, to say the least. Pretty good debater though. He seems more comfortable in that formal environment, more like himself.

As Wolcott observed not long ago, part of the Dems problem is they keep asking, at long last, have you know sense of decency? That would be a no, no, not on your life.

I recall a Mo Dowd piece about Clinton and the Arlington Cemetary Scandel. You probably faintly remember, Limbaugh and a host of Congressmen were on about how Clinton and Gore had auction off 10 or 12 plots in Arlington Cemetary to the highest bidder. Big play for about a week. Problem was, the story was Bullshit.

But Mo, who had pimped the nonsense herself, had a real epiphany, see, She, she felt if She could believe Clinton was CAPABLE of doing it, it was in fact a legitimate black mark against him. Also, Clinton had not effectively SET THE RECORD stright about the false charges against him. So it was as much his fault as anyones.

You’ll be hearing a lot of that kind of tortured, if all too typical logic in the next week, why our emphisis should be on the imaginary insult of a non candidate, why these non gaffes “resonate.” King Soloman’s like Marc Cooper will cut the baby in
“half” handing the republicans the disabled child while the
Dems get the the knees to the toes.

Will it all work again? Only a fool would bet against it.

And you rely on the fact we will come, while you stick your dick in our eye. Blink bastards.