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Algorithm Names Powell 'Ideal' Vice President Candidate
CWmike writes "Turns out the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama, according to a sophisticated online survey based on technology developed at MIT. Mr. Ideal? Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state. Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities. Affinnova calls this algorithm 'evolutionary optimization.' Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"
.. same as the old boss.
'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'
What? The Demopublicans and the Republicrats are all the same? That unpossible!
Unfortunately I doubt most people vote based on anything so scientific as biography and 1st term priorities. I bet they more likely vote for Mr Powell or not based on their gut feel about whether they like him as a candidate or not.
By the way - I think he would make a great candidate for Veep.
Nullius in verba
The man who at best was complacent in the lies leading up to the War in Iraq and at worst was heavily involved. Sure why not... Even better Rumsfeld should be the Veep
Powell strikes me as a vastly better civil servant than politician. But if Obama wins, he should definitely ask Powell to be Sec Def or Sec State. Hell, same with McCain for that matter. He was a good Sec. of State in an administration that didn't give two shits about him or his opinions, imagine what he could do if the President actually tried to make use of his experience and expertise.
The enemies of Democracy are
Ooooh! Job titles like that have TRUST written all over them!
Three Squirrels
is that their algorithm is severly flawed.
For example, most people - dem or rep - want responsible spending, national security, etc. Where the difference lies is in the road to take to get to that point. Any survey that says one of the primary party leaders would be the same person for either party is obviously in error.
Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos
Cause, you know... we REALLY need the opinions of all those illiterate retard's.
Did they try with photos and biographies of dead and/or imaginary people too?
How many voted for JFK?
Or Elvis Aaron Presley?
Or Santa Claus?
Or Dart Vader?
Or SpongeBob?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If the VP is the same for either guy, then he negates himself off both tickets. It doesn't matter if he is good or bad, because he both helps or hurts both tickets. It makes since that the algorithm should ALWAYS pick the same guy for both sides. That's the best way for both sides to ensure that neither side accidentally picked the WRONG guy. It's classic Prisoner's Dilemma.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Colin Powell was the face of the deception campaign the Bush administration orchestrated. He was the one who went to the United Nations, and made a whole bunch of claims that turned out to be false. He's damaged goods. Why on earth would someone suggest he'd be a good candidate in a year when the electorate is itching to repudiate everything about this war?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Shock and Amaze! A politician who has made almost no memorable positions known on any domestic policy beyond truism of cooperation is liked by everybody!
Of course he's a top pick by everybody--he's like Opera-- nobody knows what his actual beliefs and agenda is, therefore nobody disagrees with him. If Colin Powell were so audacious as to actually make his position known on a politically hot subject he would suddenly see his popularity plummet.
This is America. If you agree with me you're a good guy. If you don't, you're a muslim terrorist. The only way to be liked by everybody is to say nothing of consequence.
Yup, what the US really needs is a VP who has shown that he's willing to help out his boss by publicly giving excruciatingly bad "intelligence" to the United Nations.
Colin is disgusted with politics and Washington. The misinfomration given to him before he presented infront of the U.N., and the debacle on Meet the Press where an Administration aid tried to stop the interview during a question. clip
So unless Powell is calling the shots.. I don't see it likely he will join either ticket. http://youtube.com/watch?v=kMAguqSeRrE
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Yeah, we really need an accomplished fraud who's good at lying to the world to be in charge of the most powerful military in the world or its PR department.
I keep hearing "McCain is too old" and then read other age-relative statements about VP selection and wonder who age really matters to. Yes, at the extreme, I worry about the ages of the candidates but only to the extent that it is extreme and has other impacts (eg, health or lack of experience).
But are there people out there who are like "Gee, he's too old" even when the candidate's age has no bona fide health impact? Do the same people think "Gee, he's too young" about someone younger? Obviously there's no health issue, but experience could matter a lot.
I don't think of age outside of physical health, but I worry from the way the media portrays McCain's age that we're falling a little victim to the cult of youth.
Only in the United States of America would a war criminal be the ideal choice for Vice President for both parties. Yes, I said war criminal. Starting an aggressive war is what Mr. Powell took part in when he knowingly showed the UN the pictures of the "weapons of mass destruction". The is what the Nuremburg trials were all about...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials
"The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations - the leadership of the ... Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the High Command of the German armed forces (OKW).
Full Stop.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
And all the stuff about Bush being a puppet of Cheyney et al, the same things would be said about Obama if he had an elder VP.
Not to mention the possible crap about both of them being black....
But either way, Powell would make a great VP, IMO, and maybe even a good president. Dont know that much about his politics, but besides his loyalty to command from military experience (and thats me justifying his bull shit UN speech before Iraq war) he seems be level headed and not too corrupt.
But again, i dont know the man at all.
Either way, I hope the next 8 are better than the last 8.
Bush/Quayle, Kennedy/Johnson, Eisenhower/Nixon, and Roosevelt/Truman seem to suggest that multi-generational winning tickets are not uncommon. Plus, Kennedy/Johnson even had an older VP, as I am guessing Teddy Roosevelt did.
But yes, Colin Powell is unlikely to be a VP, since he has said many times that he doesn't want to, and he is more believable than most when he makes that claim.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
did it run on linux?
Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"
When I hear someone say something of that nature in response to a program's output, it usually means they forgot to get rid of the test data and put the real stuff in.
"We never imagined that 'foo' would show up for both parties!"
I'd have approached this problem from a different direction - ask questions about how they feel about past VPs, whether they achieved the stated and/or desired objectives, and so forth, to build an understanding of how the person thinks. THEN ask them the political questions, but translate them from what the person says they think they want into what the person actually does think and feel. Then compare that to the potential VPs.
Opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate because people either lie or simply don't understand their own mind. Very very few people are really that in touch with their own mental processes that they understand them, let alone have a vocabulary to describe them. A training algorithm that analyzes the real requirements of a person based on something measurable would seem a better approach, although fewer people would be interested in taking the time to answer the longer questionaire. Requirements analysis does work, when performed correctly. That, however, is the catch. It has to be performed correctly, which is not trivial.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why stop there? Don't forget about is roles in the Iran Contra scandal, and the overly aggressive tactics in the "war" on drugs.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Surveys are SHAMS because they rely on Pearsonian statistics.
Powell named for both parties because both parties are
SHAMS.
Kudos for the war criminal description.
The United States has collapsed. The war criminals in the White House AND Congress have simply decided NOT to announce it publicly for fear the revolution WILL be televised.
Cordially,
K. Trout, M.D.
Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"
Just make a simple test like asking "who would be the best candidate for the next German elections just to check if it would answer Colin Powell as well..."
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
I mean if you are going to do this you might as well go for the top man. Would Obama and McCain take the two first spots? That would be the real test to this approach. I honestly can't guess. Although I am sure that Colin Powell would score very high there as well.
Don't they need to add in more than 1 name as a possible selection?
1) Do you want a VP who came to power by covering up genocide?
2) Do you want a VP responsible for the slaughter of over a million innocent people?
He was just a Bush/Rove puppet, he didn't stand up to them when his gut told him to. I don't see that as VP material. Also the aftertaste of Bush is still in Powell's mouth so I don't think he's even interested in politics any more.
I'm a Democrat planning on voting for Obama. If Obama were to pick Colin Powell as a running mate, I would vote for who ever is running for the Green Party. I sure remember Colin Powell. He is the one who went in front of the UN with the Powerpoint presentation full of lies to make the case for the Iraq war. No thanks.
Colin Powell would have made a great vice-president for GWB in 2000 (or even a good presidential candidate), but now his reputation has been permanently tarnished by his association with the Iraq War and the Bush Administration in general. Since we are still in Iraq, I do not think his reputation will recover any time soon. Anyway, I do not think he would make a good Presidential candidate for Barack Obama. Let's face he (Powell) is black and so is Obama. It would be best to have a white guy to 'balance' the ticket.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Names Al Gore as the ideal V.P...
This is a good example of why even the best algorithms are poor predictors of human behavior. Powell probably IS one of the best, if not THE best, choices for McCain's VP. If only the world could fit neatly into the parameters considered by the algorithm. It's just not going to happen. Powell is on record saying that his wife has vetoed him being on a Presidential ticket. Period. She has personal issues around it and it's simply not in the cards. End of story. And end-of-line for El Algorithmo.
I guess everybody else thought he was the lynchpin of deciet. Shows what i know.
I was kind of surprised to see the difference in priorities for members of each party:
Given that none of them are the same in those lists, how can Powell be a good choice for both at the same time? Is it simply because he's a yes man like other posters are saying?
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Not only am I playing the Race Card. I'm dealing it from the bottom of the deck :).
At the end of Gulf Wars episode one, a lot of Americans were suggesting Colin Powell for president. Then I went online and checked around. Turns out that most of them did not even know he was black.
I don't know what is going the rounds in America but where I live (a Caribbean country where over 90% of the population is at least part black). The popular fear is that if Elected Obama won't survive to inaugeration.
Giving him a black VP would mean bumping him off would still leave America with a Black President.
That calculation of course would just ruin the plans of whichever secret organization conspiracy nuts like this week.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
One of its running mates is both the same!
(What's the difference between a duck.. ;)
...an Englishman in London.
Divination through dancing retired politicians is no way to run a society!
Watery tarts throwing swords is clearly a superior methodology.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Well the fact is that he told his bosses the truth, and they didn't want to hear it. They told him to go speak a pack of lies, and he did. You can feel free to hold that against him, following orders is no excuse and all that. That doesn't change the fact that in the employ of an administration that wanted to listen to his honest opinions, he would be a tremendous asset.
The enemies of Democracy are
Your derogatory racial references are unnecessary and quite illustrative of your mentality. So you speak for the "liberals in this country"? Then I guess you speak for me. But the only thing is that you don't. Your rhetoric conjures up racial divisions that are dated and should be long gone. Unfortunately, it's people like you who crouch behind a veneer of tolerance and color-blindness.
I can see it now:
public String getIdealVP(){
return "Colin Powell";
}
Johnson was older than Kennedy.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Gen. Powell was the only reason I considered giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. If Gen. Powell wants to go back into the military then I'd say that would be great and I think we'd benefit from that as a country, but politics is apparently not his thing.
What if we have an actual crisis and he's expected to explain to the country why we need to take some drastic action? I for one would have trouble buying his story after this Iraq debacle.
"Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again!" -George W. Bush, 2002
as fools vie for office.
Watch our election night coverage as we sort it out for you...
Sig this!
People will say they want the person with the best tax policy, yet vote for the guy with the nicest shoes or looks like a hero. The Governator is only there because he dealt to the bad guys in the movies, not because of anything he's done in Real Life.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Only in the United States and 98% of the other countries in the world.
Have you ever read anything but your Montreal local news or had any grasp on history outside of some babbling idiot on the street saying "Then Canada was made, and war ended forever!"?
90% of all leaders in history made their way to the governing house leaving bloody footprints. The rest were either born in, married in, or (in the last 200 years) elected in and then were in for less than 10 years -- and 90% of those left a trail of blood on the way out. World leadership is very messy business. Sorry if this shatters your dangerously naive perceptions.
Well... JFK managed NOT to start World War III.
AND he did the sexiest movie icon ever...
And SpongeBob would probably do far better job than most.
Have you seen his work? That guy apparently can't do wrong.
Even when he fucks up it turns out great in the end.
Oh shit! I thought Bush was Spongebob! Sorry folks!
'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'
Then your algorithm is wrong.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
from the same crowd. some private interests are SO self centered that, they do not even care whether they portray themselves as stupid, while trying to make sure that they get their guy in, regardless of how it happens.
colin powell is another guy from the bush & co establishment, came with the backing of that administration's backers.
so what these 'sources' are saying is that, you should put a bush guy back in the white house, because they need one there to make sure their asses do not get burnt, when they are no longer in power.
Read radical news here
It would be very odd indeed for McCain to choose Powell as veep, since Powell is expected to publicly endorse Obama.
And I hate to ruin the surprise, but McCain's veep is going to be Crist, and Obama's is going to be Clark. You heard it here first. (Unless I'm wrong, in which case I disavow my prediction.)
I could swear I was going to RTFA and see an elaborate Al Gore joke.
To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
It just shows how far computers have to go to make predictions like these. And some of it may have come from the feelings of the programmers rather than science. Actually, it sounds like it was coming up with date for McCain or a friendship match. Seriously. Both are older, war veterans that lean moderate to liberal. They have a lot in common. But you don't want a clone of the candidate for a VP, you want someone who will compliment him/her and who will succeed in the areas or appeal to groups where you're weakest.
McCain doesn't need a clone. Putting it through the penguin_dance algorithm of common sense ;-) he'd do better with someone who is: younger, conservative and possibly Hispanic.
McCain is moderate enough to pick up quite a few independents and democrats who think Obama is too liberal. But he has to keep the Republican conservative base--he will lose if they stay at home. And it would do well for him to appeal to other minorities, such as Hispanics, because Obama pretty much has the African-American block sewn up. That and the fact that he has had a good relationship with Hispanics in his state of Arizona, it would look less like a "token" gesture.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
"...Usually a Pres. and Vice-Pres. are in the same general age range..."
Not entirely true. Look at Bush/Cheney: Dick Cheney, a known Vampyre, is dated to be at least 450 years old, making him nearly 20 generations older than Bush.
If you think
..."house nigger"...
...another black for VP would be too much...
TWO black candidates for Prez and VP?
Signed,
Zombie Strom Thurmond
Don't be so hot on Powell, get some balance, he doesn't walk on water. Go read what others who served with him in the Gulf War and elsewhere have said. He has flaws. If we had left it to Powell we'd still be waiting for sanctions on Saddam to work and Kuwait would be Iraqs' 13th province. We also know very little of his politics, he's not been really outspoken with his views. It is odd that while he served in a Republican administration he would have been a top choice of Al Gore if Gore has won. I makes me wonder is he puts aside his real views in order to support which ever party offered him the best deal? I need to know more about a man "a heartbeat from the Presidency" than what I know about Colin Powell. If Colin Powell is an ideal candidate why isn't Condelezza Rice? She is just as bright, is a minority (and female), and we don't know a lot of her personal views either. If we like war heroes why not Gen. Swartxkopf? T
No. He's the ideal presidential candidate for either party.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Sorry but I think the algorithm is broken, or there is a bug in it, or its being used wrong, where it has a 90% preference to one person due to the dataset, or the input it gets, or the output it generates. How many billions of people live in this country, yet we just vote for a handful of people, or their family members. It makes me sick this is what they call a democracy. Democracy always seems to have this illusion of people "choosing" who they vote for, and choosing the better person out of all of them.
Unfortunately it is a massive FAIL and a stupid theory just like this so called algorithm.
I for one welcome our democratically elected family member overlords
Cheers
Dj fuQ [url="http://djfuq.org"]djfuq urges you to listen to the beats[/url] [url="http://djfuq.org"]http://djfuq.org[
as the VP. Democrat or Republican. He lied, to get America into the illegal, disastrous, murderous occupation of Iraq. No one forgets his appalling display in front of TV cameras, in front of America and in front of the entire world as he lied about Iraqis nuclear program. I don't know how he sleeps at night. The British Medical Professions Journal Lancet says that more than a million Iraqi are dead, tens of thousands of Americans are maimed and more than four thousand are dead. He lied.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/japan/mfortune-teller.htm
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why was this modded Flamebait?
While Powell has a pretty good reputation in the US, in the rest of the world he seems largely discredited after the WMD fiasco.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
The man went and lied to the UN about Iraq as part of the propaganda effort to start the war with Iraq. He also had a role in the My Lai coverup.
Osama is that you? We've been looking for you, we have a packge we have been trying to deliver. Amazing that they have Internet in the caves these days. How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense. You young liberals don't seem to remember that he invaded Kuwait, gassed his own people, was stealing the "Oil for Food" program money, was hiding military assets in schools, was building a supergun, etc. Talk to some of the troops who were THERE and quit listening to they left wing (or right wing) media hype.
This machine will tell us the precise identity of the optimal Vice Presidential candidate.
[punches stuff in] [ticket comes out]
It says, "I won't tell, that would be... cheating."
I am now telling the computer that if it will tell me the answer, I will gladly share with it the grand prize.
[punches stuff in] [ticket comes out]
He says, "Why would a computer care about being able to say, 'I called it?'"
I am not telling the computer EXACTLY what he can do with the ability to say, "I called it!"
F*** Colin Powell. That guy lied to us to get the nation to back the war with Iraq. He knew the information was incorrect and did not so much as bawk at spewing it to the public. Shame on that bastard.
The honorable thing to do in that situation would have been to resign immediately. Either he did what he was told by his boss, against his conscience, or he lied consciously, or he was duped. Neither looks good on his resume.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I think you're missing the point, which is that Powell in some sense falls into both parties and this is WHAT makes him (at least according to this) such a good candidate.
And I think you hit the nail on the head there, but there might ba a deeper insight there.
Powell has always struck me as an excellent choice for a presidential candidate: He has spent time 'on the inside' in the whitehouse, so he understands the job. He does not aspire to power (or he covers it far better than most), he is intelligent, and he does not seem tied too closely to the idiology of either party. In short, a competent guy who isn't a professional politician.
Now, if a VP candidate has qualities like this that are desireable to the public at large without a strong tie to the political left or right, they will of course be desireable to both parties. The interesting thing is that qualities that make Powell an good candidate (intelligent, honest, outsider) are the same qualities that Obama seems to posess.
McCain is a war hero, and a passable senator but I think hes going to get stomped in November. An interesting election would have been if the Republican had put up Powell.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
And her black leather boots are more form-fitting.
(Did I cross that invisible line of good taste just now?)
"Piter, too, is dead."
Hold on a minute. He either knew it was a lie or didn't. A pack of lies with a bunch of other people to do something illegal (breaking the peace) is called a criminal conspiracy. Mr. Powell knew what he was doing and looked damned confident doing it. Its not like he called into work sick when he really was on the golf course.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
There is only one problem: Colin Powell has publicly stated on numerous prior occasions that he will not stand as a candidate for executive office.
The reason I like powell more than rice is that even though he didn't resign, he left the administration when it was reelected. Condoleezza, on the other hand, did not.
Powell lied to the UN to help start the Iraq conflict. Remember the vial of anthrax? Hows that war going? How much WMD did the US find? He's unfit to be county dogcatcher let alone VP. He's going down in history as Bush's lapdog.
I love how bad these prediction systems are. Its hilarious. Even more hilarious when people agree.
How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense.
Your straw man, he is on fire.
Obama and Hillary have clashed too much for her to be a good VP choice. Who can unite the Democratic party?
McCain needs someone who can help him portray fiscal responsibility. Who is the only recent President with a budget surplus?
Both parties should nominate Bill Clinton as VP. He can't run for President because of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Wikipedia says it's unclear whether the 12th Amendment would prevent him from becoming VP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Vote for Bill!
Please do not mod this as funny!
It doesn't matter if Saddam was a douchebag, which he was. What matters is the criminal conspiracy to start an illegal war. The war in Iraq has been a complete failure anyway you put it. More people hate Americans in that part of the world than ever before. More 14 year old boys are willing to take up an AK and kill anyone associated with the west more than ever before. The oil supplies are less available than they were before Gulf War I.
Oh, and Saddam was such a fucking threat that US just rolled over the country in a couple of weeks. Ewww a super gun! How scary. He tried to do that ever other year and it just gets bombed out of existence. Superguns are damn hard to move and hide.
Hmmm.. ok, lets listen to what some of the troops who were there and what they are saying is that the War is bullshit. You want to throw away their precious lives, even if they come back physically complete, they won't be mentally. Nothing like a little shake and baked crispy criters made of kids and mothers.. Oh those happy memories.
Jackass. I can't wait until this unravels into Vietnam Part II. The directors cut and you can eat your hate when your buddies come back from the front and start offing themselves in the bathroom because of the shit you sent them to do.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
How can you say Powell is ideal candidate? Put him with McCain and the whole Bush's 3rd term will gains even more coverage. Put him with Obama and he will look like a total flip-flopper on the Iraq war. We all know that Powell was instrumental in selling the Iraq war. How can Obama, who total opposes the war, take someone like that for VP?
Some Developers Leaving Google For Microsoft
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Aside from all the opinions on Powell's character, he's a Republican. And supposing Powell would take the job, why would a Democrat want to make a Republican the president of the U.S. Senate? Powell would tie-break for the Republicans every time.
As others have said, this algorithm is deeply flawed, if for just this reason.
LOL ME 2!!!!11
It does not shatter my perceptions. The Lords of the first world love to lie to us, and we eat it up. I refuse to spout the party line and participate in murderous activities that reduce human life to a bar fight between two junkies. If I hear a lie like Weapons of Mass Destruction I call bullshit.
You know the rule of law has to mean something or it means nothing.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
The honorable thing to do in that situation would have been to resign immediately. Either he did what he was told by his boss, against his conscience, or he lied consciously, or he was duped. Neither looks good on his resume.
If I had to speculate on his motives, I think he was still trying to have a positive impact from within the administration. He could resign for the sake of honor, but then he'd be powerless. On the other hand, once it became completely clear that he was powerless in the Bush administration, he did resign, and then called his unfortunate speech to the U.N. what it was: A sham, and a permanent blot on his own personal record.
That blot is why I don't think he is suitable for an elected office, however I still think he could be a valuable public servant, in particular in an administration that values him beyond his ability to say "yes sir", and with the lessons learned from the U.N. speech debacle.
The enemies of Democracy are
When he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he questioned the lawful orders of his superior, President Bill Clinton, the Commander in Chief of the USA and dragged his feet when Clinton ordered him to implement integration of gays into the military.
Due to the willful insubordination Powell displayed as a member of the military, he is deserving of a court martial under the UCMJ Punitive Articles for violations including "ATTEMPTS" (article 80),"CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS" (article 88), " FAILURE TO OBEY ORDER OR REGULATION" (article 92), "MUTINY OR SEDITION" (article 94), "CONDUCT UNBECOMING AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN" (article 133), and "GENERAL ARTICLE" (article 134).
The fact that he didn't get caught makes his actions that much more despicable.
I too wrote a similar program and was equally surprised to find that the ideal VP for both candidates was myself. Who would have thought...
If we had left it to Powell we'd still be waiting for sanctions on Saddam to work and Kuwait would be Iraqs' 13th province.
I'd much rather be in that position than in the position of having financed a very expensive war with deficit spending, while out-sourcing much of the dirty work to private firms like Blackwater and Halliburton.
This war should have had higher taxes and some degree of sacrifice associated with it. Instead we just sold more debt to foreign powers, cut taxes for the rich, and made shopping a patriotic act.
To me, Colin Powell spent whatever credibility he had by trying to sell the administrations case for war at the UN, even though he apparently wasn't any too convinced of the facts.
Powell claims that he didn't know at the time all the caveats and questions and known faults surrounding the intelligence. In other words, that he was as much a recipient of white-washed intel as the U.N. council who received his speech. And of all the officials who were involved, his story is the most plausible by far. Already the Bush Cabal had started blocking him out of their decisions due to his tendency to disagree with them. As Rice later found out, the State Dept. had been fire walled away from Defense and the intelligence agencies. Any caveats that survived to reach the admin would have reached Powell only on the inner circles' say so. And the result is perfectly typical of the administration: Send the one guy who isn't "loyal" enough to agree with everything out to make the phony case and ultimately be the fall-guy for it.
I don't know for sure. It is possible that Colin Powell was a knowing and willing conspirator in the effort to push a war he had been against from the first ('the first' being when Rumsfeld suggested invading Iraq on 9/12/2001, if you believe Richard Clarke). If that's the case, may he burn in hell. On the balance of evidence, though, I simply find it implausible. I think he was a dupe and a patsy, and ultimately this is why he resigned, and called the U.N. speech a 'permanent blot on his record'.
The enemies of Democracy are
Oh man, I guess you're right.
Too bad it's an illegal warcrime (according to your shortbus interpretation) to actually enforce any sort international law against warcrimes, isn't it?
Quite the paradox.
But what is the greater crime? France, Russia, and Germany turning a blind eye to the Kurdish genocide because Iraq was giving them cheap oil for doing so, or invading the country to take out a despot, and then spend years entrenched in said country while fighting against men whose sole purpose is to kill as many civilians as possible to send a bloody message to those who refuse to think like they do?
Answers are never simple when dealing with 6 billion+ imperfect, competitive people.
Agreed. I would consider voting for either Obama or McCain, though I favor Obama. However, if Obama picked Colin Powell as his VP, I would vote for McCain faster than a U.S. Senator can take a bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contribution.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
But that's exactly what we've been complaining about -- that the people we've been electing are almost entirely POLITICIANS, rather than REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE. Maybe a quality civil servant is exactly what's needed, and one that's as visible as the V.P. might benefit the entire system.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They should consider using an ithm instead.
I'll be here all year.
At least Powell shows a willingness to change his mind when new data comes to light, regardless of where the fault lies for his being previously misinformed. Better this than someone who can't adjust his policies to changing realities.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The man can not be trusted to act in the interest of the USA.
Why are they letting a guitar-jamming Al Gore choose the VP candidate?
When the mainstream media inputs enough garbage into the American mind, garbage comes out?
I can't be the only person in the U.S. who was directed to foreign web sites like the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent during the drumbeat to war. Only a few days after Powell was waving his pencil around about the killer bioweapons at the UN, the Guardian had photos of the poultry plant the White House was calling the bioweapons factory. Same with the roving bioweapons labs aka weather balloons. A rational person, who I guess would have great difficulty relating to the American people, might think Colin "I vus only followin' mein orderz" Powell's honor and integrity would be hovering around Benedict Arnold territory.
gee a war criminal .. a liar .. and a traitor ..
the best VICE presidential candidate for both parties in a corporate american presidential election.. who would have guessed ..
Let's add in some geriatric criminals that conspired with Nixon while we are at it if we really want to mess things up.
Ouch. Even better because it actually happened. T_T
Powell was right at the centre of some dubious actions that have given us a new generation of war profiteers getting public money without oversight, and furthurmore embarrassed the USA in front of the UN by presenting what was even then obvious lies as truth.
Well, on the scale of Americans in general, he was at the center, but on the scale of White House politics, I think it's pretty clear that he was at the periphery. Some of the worst decisions of the Bush administration are ones that Powell had been largely shut out of because of his opposition to those decisions.
The enemies of Democracy are
Who defines a legal war? The war in Iraq is understandably unpopular, but there is no authority that defines whether a war is legal or not.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
This is a perfect example of a solid analytical study that is completely divorced from reality. Perhaps these scientists need to get out of their labs, because even a 4th grader knows that southerners, Evangelical Christians, white supremacists, and modern-confederates/KKK would NEVER vote for a black man as vice president.
I realize this is MIT, but if you get the same output for two different inputs, that would typically indicate a problem in the transforming of the information (not always - but it should be hand checked for possible 'group think').
"First, I wouldn't limit the invasion of Iraq to NeoCons. I supported it for entirely different reasons then what was presented."
Please elaborate on the reasons you supported initiating a war against Iraq.
"Next, we did use overwhelming force. "
Blatantly, obviously wrong.
Fact: Hours after the U.S. Army passed through the first Iraqi town north of the border, they moved on and left the town unocuppied without any force to provide security for either the civilian population or anyone else.
Fact: There were no troops left behind to direct followup supply troops, leading to the infamous convoy which took the wrong turn into a bypassed Iraqi city.
Fact: Iraqi munitions depots were left unguarded to be looted by future insurgents, historical sites were left unguarded to be looted, hospitals were left unguarded to be looted of their equipment, etc. Of course Rumsfeld would just say "Freedom is messy" and go on to say that this redistribution of looted materials was probably just the way capitalism works to maximize productivity!
Overwhelming force? That's the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Defeating a demoralized Iraqi army is one thing, occupying and controlling a country is another matter. You're understanding of this seems comparable to that of all the chicken hawks in the administration.
I'm really interested in hearing your reasons for wanting to invade Iraq.
I have had it far up past where I can stand for so long! WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKING IMBECILES?
I feel so robotic parroting George Santayana, but his truth is being utterly ignored: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So we've got John "bomb Iran" McInsane, Barak "bomb Pakistan" Obama, and the prime instrument in the cover-up of the My Lai Massacre?
We have NO HOPE.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Yeah, and we also used to think who gets elected President mattered...
... eat your hate when your buddies come back from the front and start offing themselves in the bathroom because of the shit you sent them to do.
Except they'll take a few of YOU with them.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
If I had to speculate on his motives, I think he was still trying to have a positive impact from within the administration. He could resign for the sake of honor, but then he'd be powerless. On the other hand, once it became completely clear that he was powerless in the Bush administration, he did resign, and then called his unfortunate speech to the U.N. what it was: A sham, and a permanent blot on his own personal record.
I can't imagine being able to give that speech without also realizing that it was specifically intended to support a case for an unjust war. Powell is, in my opinion, just as guilty of the atrocities of the Iraq war as Bush and Cheney are.
I have to agree that it did appear that the White House lost it's adult supervision once Powell was gone. Condi never appears to be allowed to be anything other than a mouthpiece and is tainted by being previously nominally in charge of "extreme rendition" and torture even if she was just a figurehead. The others I think may be judged by history to be running a criminal conspiracy out of the White house to line their own pockets.
Just about everything in the current executive branch looks like a monarchy without Magna Carta to me - I really don't know how we got a King George out of the Republicans.
since the day that corporations gained limited legal liability and the same rights as human beings ..
"the rule of LAW" became absolutely corrupted and less than meaningless .. it has become the enemy of all the people who look to it to defend and protect them ..
it first started out with .. peace officers .. then it became LAW enforcement officers .. now they are nothing but corporate soldiers ..
the common persons belief in the "the rule of LAW" is greatest tool that the Ruling Class .. and the forces of EVIL have ever had at their disposal .. it the coup de grace ..
and i don't mean the american ruling class .. they don't belong to countries or have any allegiance to nation states .. they are the owners of the major corporations of the world and as far as they are concerned this is their planet ..
and for all intent and purpose they are correct ..
The US Public values independence, and a common publicity ploy for politicians is to claim to be independent outsiders as opposed to corrupt insiders - it often works. McCain's popularity in 2000 (when he was competing with Bush for the Republican presidential nomination) was partly from his military record, and largely from his reputation as an honest straight-talking fearless independent. And Bush is hated by such a large fraction of the US population right now that distancing yourself from him is typically a good thing to do, and while his values are radically different from the traditional values of the Republican party, he's dragged a bunch of them to follow whatever he and his cronies say as if they were.
But that's not what McCain has been doing in the last four years, because he's been trying to get the support of Bush's electoral base, the loose coalition of pro-military right-wing religious-fundamentalist anti-foreigner pro-empire pro-patriotism afraid-of-terrorism types (who IMHO have been hoodwinked into thinking Bush shares their values, and who've had their hot buttons pushed so many times the paint's wearing off), and also the support of his big-money military-industrial-complex backers. To do this, he's been toadying up to Bush and Cheney and their policies, and refraining from attacking Bush too loudly on anything significant, as well as strongly supporting a war that he knows Bush brought us into dishonestly. Sure, he's starting to say occasional things about Global Warming being bad, because it's a way to create some distance and some image of being forward-thinking without being a real threat to core Bush interests.
As other people have commented, the US system is radically different from a parliamentary-style party system - parties here are loose coalitions with vastly disparate interests, there is no central leadership in charge, candidates have much less dependence on party approval than in, say, Britain, and the Administration is generally very separate from the leadership of its party in Congress and the Senate. Bush is a bit of an exception - he and the neo-conservative political machine who helped get him into power have been exerting far more party discipline than any administration in decades since at least the 1860s, or possibly ever. (There have been _local_ political machines in areas such as New York or Chicago that had that much discipline, but not nationally, and they've usually been corrupt organizations that kept power by giving out lots of public money and jobs to their friends.) Bush's view of the President's power as the "Unitary Executive" is also pretty rare - much of the Executive Branch has typically been influenced as much by Congress and the civil service as by the political-level executives.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, I'm not just talking about how Colin Powell kicked off his military/political career whitewashing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. I'm talking about him waving around those fake vials in the UN, lying us into the Iraq War.
How can anyone possibly consider giving that bloody old liar the keys to the Cheney Bunker?
--
make install -not war
I can see Powell as a McCain VP. And I can see Obama supporters preferring Powell to Condoleeza Rice, and I can see people having some remaining personal respect for him.
But for most of the Obama supporters I know, I can't see them wanting him as VP - rather than being the change we want to see in the world, he was somebody who as Secretary of State let Bush and the military neocons get away with starting a war without any semblance of diplomacy first and helped Bush sell his dishonest WMD case to the UN, Congress, and the US public, because he was loyal to his boss and that's what his boss wanted done.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Who defines a legal war? The war in Iraq is understandably unpopular, but there is no authority that defines whether a war is legal or not.
Actually, there is an Internationally agreed standard of what constitutes a legal war. That is a war in which you are immanent danger of attack, or you have been attacked. These are International standards that have been largely upheld by the vast majority of states since the late 1800s. The fact that killing is immoral, and a crime in itself, so is war. But defending yourself can be seen as a legitimate. So, to have a legitimate war, you need to be in a position of self-defense, and this could include defense of alliance partners, i.e. NATO etc.
This definition is largely ignored by Colonist/Imperial governments who will argue that they need to defend their "interests", i.e. Vietnam, Iraq, India, and almost all the wars against indigenous populations. Obviously, the price of defending Empire is murder, corruption, and lies to justify unbridled greed.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
Nah, I don't live in the U.S.A. I just get to watch it on Tee Vee!
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
This war _has_ had a major amount of financial sacrifice associated with it, in addition to all of the lives of Americans and Iraqis - but Bush doesn't officially believe that actions have consequences, or at least consequences that should be pinned on him. By funding it with deficit spending, Bush was able to put off the visibility of the cost, since taxes are more obviously related to the war they're paying for than a deficit, which looks like it'll be Somebody Else's Problem (especially a deficit that's not revealed in the up-front budget, but shows up as a bunch of emergency supplemental spending bills because the war unexpectedly kept costing money after then initial Shock&Awe phase.)
So this credit crunch that we're in, and much of the stock market decline, and part of the housing market decline, all of which are tied into the trillion or so dollars Bush has spent on his wars, and the loss of US productivity that have come from having young men sent off to Iraq instead of working, and the loss of quality of life that comes from having the US industrial base used to build weapons and military infrastructure that get shipped overseas and blown up instead of making things like refrigerators and houses that are useful for civilians at home, and the trade deficit that comes from US consumers buying products from China because we're no longer manufacturing them in the US - all of those things aren't part of the financial sacrifice the US has made for this war, because nobody could have possibly foreseen them and they're not Bush's fault.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If the algorithm can pick the best VP, then just use it to pick the best president and be done with it!
What he said, definitely!
It would have taken a lot of work and courage for the Democrats to follow up their 2006 win with telling the country what's really gone on during the Bush administration and to stop the war (or even start stopping the war), but they haven't done much of it out of fear that the Bush League would successfully smear them as anti-patriotic soft-on-terrorist troops-hating UnAmericans, and they'd lose the little bit of progress they'd made. They absolutely wimped out and wasted the opportunity they had, and while they haven't been the kind of appallingly aggressive activist opponents of core American (and Republican) values that the post-2000 Republican Congresscritters have been, they didn't slow down the Bush League that much compared to the ongoing war and the Administration's abject failure to provide strong leadership in the Hurricane Katrina fiasco..
Now, having said that, it's not like their hands were necessarily clean enough to have gotten away with doing that, or that they would have necessarily succeeded - we may be better off with a bunch of wimpy do-nearly-nothing Democrats leading us into 1-20-09 and then starting to clean up the mess than if they'd tried to do the job for the last year and a half and gotten shot down in flames leading to a Republican and neocon victory this fall.
As a Libertarian, I'd be in a better position to criticize the Democrats' failures, Republicans' failures, and Bush League's activist evil if my own party hadn't been taken over by lizard-like aliens trying to steal our water.... Even so, Bob Barr, who'd been one of Newt's culture-war supporters as a Republican congresscritter, before leaving the GOP in disgust, joining the LP without particularly sharing our values, and getting our nomination, is one of the few politicians who's talking seriously about the damage Bush has done to America's civil liberties and privacy through their aggressive surveillance and intrusiveness and the need to not only stop doing more of it but actually dismantle the structures Bush built to do that. .
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Because then the Democrats can push into the forefront the fact that Foul knowingly lied to the UN in his weapons of mass deception speech.
Of every treacherous member of the Bush administration, Colon Foul was the one in the position to know best that what he was doing was lying. He'd made a speech in February of 2001 stating that Saddam Hussein "... has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Then in February of 2003 he told the UN that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in its possession less than a year after the first speech. The obvious question: How can we be expected to believe that a heavily sanctioned, cash strapped, impoverished Iraq either developed or purchased those weapons in less than a year? And ON WHOSE WATCH did they do so, if they did?
Please, powers that be, please please please put Colon Foul on the McCain ticket!
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
Based on his record, I find it entirely plausible. Perhaps you are unaware that Colin Powell wrote the report that whitewashed the My Lai Massacre.
I was really disappointed when I saw Powell loyally say what his master wanted said; before that I'd had some respect for the man. And as Secretary of State, he should have been seriously using diplomacy to build negotiations and prevent a war, instead of using his position as Bush's representative to prevent diplomacy from breaking out.
I was less bothered by Condi Rice doing much the same - she was always Bush's protege, and while she was clearly very bright and opinionated on her own, it was also pretty clear that she was using Bush to get power just as much as he was using her to exercise power.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, it definitely deserves a Flamebait moderation too, but I'd call it a +1 Flamebait rather than -1 Flamebait - he hits the nail right on the head.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Oh come on, didn't you know that Lon\\\Dick Cheney is really Darth Vader without the mask?
One of my friends has one positive thing to say about Cheney, which was that back in the 80s when Cheney was either SecDef or a promotion or two before that and my friend worked on computer technology planning for DoD, Cheney saw a report that my friend had written on using Internet-style email technology for DoD use instead of some of the alternatives that were around, clearly got the concept (unlike my friends' managers) and pushed some organizational buttons. On the other hand, that was back when he was still Anakin Cheney.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Powell had to make that speech out of loyalty to Bush, who was his boss. And IMHO Bush had to have Powell do it, because otherwise there'd be a guy running around the administration who had a reputation for ethics and competence and didn't always agree with Bush, and that simply couldn't be tolerated. (Also, of course, the public would believe it, because Powell had a lot of reputation capital left from the Gulf War I, as well as a voice like James Earl Jones.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Using your definition the majority of states have engaged in illegal warfare. The US, Canada, European Powers, Russia, China, Japan, Middle Eastern countries, African nations, etc. have engaged in aggressive military actions against neighbors, even the UN is guilty of invasion under the guise of "peacekeeping."
A definition where nearly every nation is criminal is worthless.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I would like agents of Haliburton removed from government...
Bullshit. Dems deserve blame because they have squandered congressional majorities, and went along with the bullshit (PATRIOT Act for one) the Reps brought to the table. Crying 'Poor us!' then passing totalitarian legislation anyway isn't an excuse from blame, its just being a group of pussies.
There are some who think Barack picking someone older & more experienced might tend to give the platform more balance in some voters' minds who are concerned about his youth or inexperience. Hey...maybe Barack and McCain could run against uh...never mind.
But having both candidates 'identical' is not good strategy -- he should pick someone who is different from himself, H. Clinton might have been a good choice if there wasn't so much drama about her. An older, say 48-53-ish, white, female, maybe another Hollywood or pop-culture refugee. Hey, Madonna fits the description, hitting the half-century mark this coming August 16th, but I don't think she'd want to slum in D.C. Oooh...Daryl Hanna! -- don't know about her qualifications, but trying to live off the grid, she'd be a good environmental choice.
Need someone to shore-up the numbers from the the Non-College-Educated (NCE), (W)hite-(M)ale group, where Barack seems to be weakest.
It's interesting how NCE, W-W are less threatened of Barack than their male counterparts. Maybe they don't look at Barack as "competition"? Whereas the men in that group somehow feel Barack, especially as someone who's part black, maybe feel more threatened by the concept of someone with any black-heritage moving beyond the working-class into the professional world? I.e. if blacks are seen to be "culturally and economically" less well-off, and less-advantaged than whites, conceivably, then black men would be less likely to be competing for "C.E." or (W)hite - C)ollar / professional jobs -- and more so for NCE, "B)lue-C." jobs. With traditional roles of male as bread winner paired with competition for the same job positions, that could set the stage for a 40-ish, half-black candidate, "jumping ahead" to a C.E.(Harvard no less!)/W-Collar/Prof. job (especially a potential president) generating 'fear and resentment'. He's not even the presidential Morgan Freeman type....hmmm....
That's a hard one to address for those that have internalized fixed hierarchies and take it as a competition thing. Sad too, since I'm sure Barack will be much better for those workers and their jobs than another devotee of Reagan-Voodoo Economics (cut taxes to the rich, while upping government spending to give impression of trickle-down benefits to the lower 90%; oh, and ignore that growing red number over behind the curtain...)
I think Colin Powell would be a bad choice -- especially for Barack. Do we need another 'warrior' as VP? From either party? I wonder if Condie could be reprogrammed? Sigh....John Edwards? Any Kennedy's left?
I hope he has some character and interest...but everything is on such a tightrope right now. I don't buy that Obama is that far ahead in the polls -- not for a moment. The polling the last several elections seems to often magnify differences (one way or the other) with final vote tallies being closer and easily subject to reversals.
-l
I am absolutely sick and tired of this "white America is overtly racist".
Well, white America is overtly racist. I know you talk about social chastisement for being a racists white but I've never met a white guy that wasn't popular for making a black joke every now and then. You really just need to quit pretending that there is any other case. It's just a fact of life. People that think that a few speeches by Martin Luther King and a couple of segregated schools can change the attitudes of a nation in a generation are utterly stupid. Being racist, in many people's eyes, is that they aren't allowed to call black people n---rs any more, and so, because they don't do that, they don't see themselves as racist...
except that...
More white people, if they see a black guy in a Lexus getting pulled over by the cops, will assume that the guy was doing drugs or is some kind of a gangster than a guy with a business or an advanced degree. If alone, they'll cross the street when they see more than one black guy.. if with a bunch of people, they'll sing Sweet Home Alabama and make that black guy go to another block. How is it in America that we have major corporations investing billions of dollars in building up data centers in places from the phillipines to india and you don't as much as even a server placed in an inner city?
There's plenty of white people too, that say that would prefer a white quarterback to their favorite NFL team. There's more to white America than a few suburban towns. All you have to do is take a drive through the civil war museums and you'll find that Confederate flags and merchandise sells on par with that of the Union. If you go into prisons, you immediately find that whites all band up into neo-nazi gangs, and, if there is a criticism of the right wing these days about religion, it is that christianity, with its message of peace, has been used to pollute the white race.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that we'd see confederate flags -everywhere-, should Obama get elected. Like he's seriously going to get a lot of votes in the South.. Come on... where's all the black NASCAR drivers? I see confederate flags more now, than I ever have before. I live in a mixed neighborhood and you have the white side of the street with guys flying the Stars and Bars and on the black side of the street you have a bunch of black guy dressed up like gangstas. People do not talk to each other -at all-, and its no different than it was when blacks and whites were throwing bricks at each other during the race riots of the early 1980s.
If there's any institution out there that is -not- racist, it is the membership of pro sports teams, and the US military. There's plenty of white soldiers that don't like blacks and plenty of whites that don't like black, but, when a black man saves a white man's life, and vice versa, things like race just don't matter, and, in this present war, there's an aweful lot of that going on.
This isn't to say that whites are all devils (Farrakhan joke deliberate), or that blacks are angels. It is to say that racism is far from dead in the USA and quite honestly I do not think it will ever be. There will never be a day where we do not have to have some sort of affirmative action in university or even in some workplaces. There will never be a day where we do not have to constantly police ourselves to ensure that people are not being judged on anything different than their ability. Racism isn't like a disease that you cure, its a chronic condition that requires persistent and determined management by the nation, the government, companies and finally the people.
This is my sig.
Because political dispositions are not evenly distributed along the spectrum, and not everyone has to vote. Rerun your mental scenario with large clusters of people at both ends, and a maximum walking distance, and you will notice a very different outcome emerge...
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Excuse me? Better civil servant than politician?
What, exactly, do you think the role of a politician is? In this republic - the United States of America - it is intended to be that of a civil servant. That may not be the case in practice, but it is the philosophy to which we should strive.
And no, this does not mean I think Powell would make a good VP, for either party. Though he'd make a better one for Obama than for McCain.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"Because having one congressman out of >600 kick the bucket isn't that big of a deal. Loosing a president is."
It is? I was under the impression that's what the Vice-President was for. He certainly doesn't have much responsibility otherwise than "waiting for the President to die or leave office".
Plus, there's a very clear line of succession. It's not like the country would fall into chaos or be leaderless. It's not like a King dying with no heirs. Briefly traumatic yes, but face it, age is a silly reason to vote against someone in our system. It's one thing for a vigorous 70 year old to run (and McCain is indeed fairly vigorous for that age, as was Reagan). It's not like a 96 year old Strom Thurmond, who needed help just getting around, is running for the office.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The man was either too blind to see the truth about the intelligence or valued loyalty more than the truth. In the end, for either reason, he lied to the American people. He is in no way an ideal Presidential candidate, unless you're hoping for a coup d'etat from Pentagon generals who he would again loyally support. He's a putz.
That is all.
"I'm not immensely knowledgeable about politics, but a lot of people feel that the US government has pretty much become a 2-party competition, and elected officials generally follow party lines. So, depending on the context of the comment, it could either be a compliment or an insult. "
People make like that's a bad thing necessarily, but in politics, two is a magic number. It's the minimum number necessary to have a choice while avoiding both totalitarianism and extreme gridlock by many multiples of parties. People in America complain about it sometimes, but they need to look at a place like Italy where literally dozens of parties are all running, and nothing ever gets done because even building coalitions involves a hodgepodge of parties that agree on nothing. You think Republicans and Democrats don't like each other? Try looking at huge multiparty states, and see how their systems work. Someone once called the US Supreme Court "Nine Scorpions in a Bottle". SCOTUS or the US Congress is perfect harmony compared to countries where you have 30 parties in power.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Drive behind a 72 year old for awhile and see if you think you want them at the wheel of the country. "
You're assuming all 72 year olds are like that. I know a 71 year old with a Ferrari, and he certainly drives faster than I do. Wealthy, smart, and quick on the uptake, too. I wouldn't judge someone on just age. I work with a woman that won't drive over 55, no matter the speed limit... if you're behind her in traffic, you're just screwed. And She's just 51.
Judge people individually.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It is important to remember three things: Colin Powell is a lying cocksucker who covered up a war crime in Vietnam. Seymour Hersh is a brilliant journalist who broke the story of that war crime.
Third thing: For almost a year, Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker about Dick Cheney's preparations for a war, possibly even a nuclear first strike, against Iran.
Fear.
Kuwait as Iraq's 13 province? Who cares? Is the protection of Kuwait really such a big deal? In any case as Schwarzkopf states in his biography the first Iraq war was much more about protecting Saudi Arabia than liberating Kuwait.
Condelezza Rice?? Has it been demonstrated that she is in fact a human being?
Random factoid:
As a boy Gen. Schwarzkopf lived for a time in Iran with his dad.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Powell was just the Bushies "designated lair".
* Carthago Delenda Est *
TECHNICIAN: Gentlemen, I know how anxious you've all been
during these last few days, but now I think I can safely say
that your time and money have been well spent. We're about
to witness the greatest miracle of the machine age. Based
on the revolutionary Computonian Law of Probability, this
machine will tell us the precise location of the three
remaining Golden Tickets. (He punches computer buttons;
reads the card it emits) It says, "I won't tell. That
would be cheating." I am now telling the computer that, if
it will tell me the correct answer, I will gladly share with
it the grand prize. (Pushes buttons; reads card) He says,
"What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of
chocolate?" I am now telling the computer exactly what he
can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate.
You've a short memory, Mr AC.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
inasmuch as "win" means "stuff the ballots using phantom voters."
So then Obama should run with John Kerry, who looks suspicously like Count Chocula!
But... but... John McCain is aware of the internet!
The shirt
The video
It was a big deal as we had a treaty with Kuwait to help, secondly they were one of the worlds top oil producers (don't get on your Haliburton, Cheny, Bush horse) and WORLDWIDE supply could have been affected by Saddam. I don't think anyone wanted to see that..recall it was a COALITION that went to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi..it was not just the USA. Protecting Saudi was part of the plan but it wasn't the ONLY thing. I think if you re-read Schwartzkopf's book you'll see he knew that. And remember this was the guy who wanted to go all the way to deposing Saddam in the First Gulf War. Would things have worked out any different then than they did 10 yrs later?
You don't even need to spell Alzheimer's correctly to Google your way to a reasonable and sympathetic discussion of Ronald Reagan's long decline, which began in the early 80s, and of which he was undoubtedly aware. People who knew people with Alzheimer's began speculating that he was suffering from this disease during his first term as president, and although it wasn't a discussion topic in the mainstream press, many citizens were aware of this possibility by about midway through his second term. As this article mentions, the condition remains difficult to diagnose today. Other articles I've seen indicate that a fully positive diagnosis isn't really possible without a brain biopsy (typically performed after the patient has died). Reagan's downward spiral
Look, anonymous coward, we don't exist to fill the enormous gaps in your knowledge of the world in which you live, nor to compensate for your laziness. It takes about 2 seconds for you to verify this for yourself. If you're going to snidely demand "references" whenever someone makes a statement that you are not directly familiar with, at least have the courtesy to do so using your login ID so the rest of us can filter you out.
Anonytard.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Obama knows not to use bubble sort!
The video
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
He did not lie, he was lied to. Before the invasion the administration would send him on goodwill missions to Africa or some such like that every month or two. While he was gone the rest would meet and discuss how to pitch the war. Powell was only shown half of the facts painted to look as convincing as possible. He was the best kind of support for military force that could have been presented to the UN, since he really did believe in what he was presenting and was credible before the administration destroyed that as well.
LOL ME 2!!!11
Do you remember when it was first rumored that Colin Powell might run for president?
If so, you might remember that there was a lot of discussion as people wondered if he would run as a Democrat or a Republican. He had been so fact-based and non-partisan in all his communications that nobody really knew for sure what party he'd side with.
Or even today, where it's not plausible to predict with any significant degree of certainty what party he would endorse, simply because at least publicly, he isn't a divisive or partisan figure.
Even powell said "this is bullshit" but he read the Anthrax line and portable chemical factories lines with a straight face. He's an unelectable pariah at best and a war criminal at worst. His doubts never stopped him from helping to wage war for false reasons. A higher crime I cannot think of.
So, ourcraft, which liar would you vote for?
And, as you know, if his bosses asked him to go lie for them, he'd do that. It's like he's no different than the boss - he'll do whatever. So, in what way would he be an asset?
I can no longer believe anything he says, after his UN speech on Iraq. He should take his pension and retire, in my opinion.
This whole fancy algorithm seems to say nothing more than that if people voted based on items of personality abstracted from name, Colin Powell would be the most popular choice. Doubtless if they had instead asked who was the best presidential candidate out of everyone in public office, he would have come up first too. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with parties or hierarchies -- just a ranking based on popularity.
Sadly, it's also pretty moot, as people vote based on names, not personalities. Colin Powell the man and Colin Powell the name are different things (and the same is true for every person in the world).
Twitter making an insightful, meaningful comment?
I fully expect freak thunderstorms, snow in the Sahara and two headed calves to be born today
No sig for the moment.
Our country is in such sad shape that a war criminal like colin powel could be considered for the veep slot. He needs to be tried for his role in war crimes namely the illegal war of aggression in the invasion of Iraq resulting in the deaths of 0ne million Iraqi's (more or less), be convicted and sentenced to death. Of course when you give war criminals a pass, as this country has, all too often, they fester in government, like a disease.
The world lost all respect for Colin Powell when he knowingly and blatantly lied to the entire world. A pawn of Bush and Cheney, Powell presented to the UN false "evidence" that Saddam Hussein was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons. If either candidate was foolish enough to pick him as VP, it would indicate that he didn't think that truthfulness mattered.
Why are they surprised that the same person is the right person for both parties? The two parties are so similar, as they are in any two-party system.
The first time around he campaigned as an isolationist and made a lot of noise denouncing "nation building", intervention, and anything else that might involve American troops being put in harms way for ideal aims.
The Democratic and Republican parties are essentially the same; and the US provides a model for the future evolution to "democracy" in China.
Imagine that the Chinese communist party decides to split introducing a two party system. The bureaucrats suggest calling the parties "Communist Party One" and "Communist Party Two". But more creative minds prevail and the parties are named "Democratic" and "Republican".
Now the members have to decide which party they will join. Not too complicated: they look to what the powerful people in their communities choose and go with that. These "powerful people", and those who would like to become powerful, will choose whatever party will provide or expand their power in their respective communities. If you want to succeed in politics or business you go with the local power structure. Ideology is not an issue: both parties have the same core beliefs, myths and prejudices, and represent the power elite. They provide a vehicle for individuals in the elite to obtain power and influence.
Not much different to choosing the church you will attend. If you do business in a small town, or want to get elected, then you will go to the church your customers go to. Theology is not an issue.
The US, a model for democracy.
I did read his book, that's why I made the comment that I did. I found it in a second hand store for 25 cents, and I found it darn interesting. I digress: If you remember the reason why all the troops ended up in a position to liberate Kuwait was because they were deployed to RSA for operation dessert shield.
That coalition like the current coalition was organized and driven by the US.
Schwartzkopf himself stated that they would never have intervened just to protect Kuwait. It was all about the RSA. They only went into Kuwait after the Iraqis massed up along the RSA border, in what looked like an invasion attempt.
As to going all the way, well from a soldier's point of view it makes perfect sense. Not that it was actually a good idea then or 10 years later.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.