The recently departed George Carlin had a theory: As you walk through your day, you encounter people who will frustrate you, based on their inability to think clearly, and thus, relate to the rest of the human race with any real usefulness. He classified these people into one of three groups: Stupid, Full of Shit, and Fucking Nuts. He also speculated that it would only take you about eight seconds to spot these people, and I quote:
"Then...then there are some people, they're not stupid...they're full of shit. Huh? That doesn't take very long to spot either, does it? Takes you about the same amount of time. You'll be listening to some guy..and saying, "well, he seems fairly intelligent...ahht, he's full of shit!"
I had this realization while listening to John McCain speak today, when he said "In trying to sound tough, he [Obama] has made it harder for the people whose support we most need to provide it. I will not bluster, and I will not make idle threats. But understand this: when I am commander in chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide."
John? Take your medicine, John. Somebody have John lie down for bit before he directly contradicts himself in front of the nation again. Okay, let's just break this statement down, leaving aside for the moment the idiotic accusations of (shudder) flip-flopping. I will boil this down to questions for our panel of experts:
1. How is it exactly that, by "trying to sound tough," Obama makes it harder for anyone to support anything they choose? I am a simple man, and these political and rhetorical subtleties often go right over my crowded and noisy head.
2. Isn't making a threat upon which you currently cannot and possibly never will be able to deliver pretty much by definition, "idle?" Sort of talking just to hear yourself talk? I mean, I'm aware of the whole "We're number one, never say die" thing that's extant in political races, but this sounds suspiciously like John's begun to believe his own presskit.
3. Also, isn't making threats a form of bluster? Blowing hot air around? Once again, kind of a textbook definition of the thing, not one sentence ago, he said he wouldn't do.
4. Is this a promise to engage in unilateral search and destroy missions until everyone who could be characterized by anyone else as one of "the terrorists" is dead, or at least, not hidden? Does this mean we're going into Pakistan under the cover of ebon night to bring back Osama's bearded head? Or is this more of the same old bullshit, a Republican "trying to talk tough" and failing, instead bellying up to the bar of same old same old, ordering the usual, belting it down and trying to behave as though it was cool and refreshing, a new flavor.
Yep - he's full of shit. The larger point, of whether or not Obama's altered his position on the surge, is a heap of bullshit too, but you have to have been paying attention for almost a year to divine that, and thanks to TiVo, XBox, commercial TV, Clear Channel and a blipvert sound bite culture, almost no one even finishes these entries much less pays attention to national discourse for that length of time.