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Interview with Charles Krauthammer: 'Obama is Average'

niftydrifty said:
"Well thought out." That's a curious way to put it.

Double standards for different presidents. A blatantly false statement about accomplishments. An appeal to popularity. A myopic point of view that makes conclusions about big picture or history for a president he doesn't like, 9 months in, but says "wait and see" for a president he does like after 1, 2, 3, even 8 years. Confusing fringe with mainstream opinions. Criticizing a politician for being ... political.

Nothing about Charles Krauthammer is "well thought out."
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I dunno, I think this is pretty well thought out. :lol:


It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.
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Dutch said:
Don't like all the mean things krauthammer said about obama......trash what he said about bush.....strawman argument. :roll:
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A strawman argument is when you bring something up irrelevant or unrelated and then harp on that. Look it up. Everything I've posted in this thread either addresses what Krauthammer said in the interview in the OP, or supports my POV that Krauthammer is just plain awful as a pundit.

An actual strawman argument in a Charles Krauthammer thread would in fact sound something like this:

You people were sold an image. I'd say a number of you simply ignored the fact he had no experience, no track record, and no defining character traits. He was an empty vessel you could simply pour your hopes into. So you probably shouldn't bring up the idea of a wacko fringe as it was democrats that kept passing out at his rallies.
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Coming from a neotard like the big K, this can only be another plus in his cap. Especially in Europe.
 
Bulls-eye by CK.

I notice the leftists first went straight for the messenger... and ignored the message. You know you've got them by the short ones when they can't come back with an argument about what the author had written.

Obama is absurd.

tjinta ibis said:
Coming from a neotard like the big K, this can only be another plus in his cap. Especially in Europe.
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Oh yes, the masses of Europeans would have difficulty with statements like Big K dropped. The continental Euro masses are comically predictable, amazingly ignorant and just as gullible as our leftists.

Why? Because they just don't hear that type of talk. It's rare. It's not socially acceptable, and should someone drop a litany as Big K did, speaking at a party... they'd be looked at oddly. I know it all too well, the great thing is the average Euro's ignorance runs so deep, everything one would state to back up ones claims comes across as "new" to most Euros. So often the reply is "I'd never heard that before".

I don't know why we would put any stock into what the Euros think and even less in their beloved UN. When it comes to international conflicts, the Euros (and our Leftists... two peas in a pod) have been wrong about most everything in modern times.

.
 
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niftydrifty said:
A strawman argument is when you bring something up irrelevant or unrelated and then harp on that. Look it up. Everything I've posted in this thread either addresses what Krauthammer said in the interview in the OP, or supports my POV that Krauthammer is just plain awful as a pundit.

An actual strawman argument in a Charles Krauthammer thread would in fact sound something like this:
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I don't think so. My post related directly to the fact Obama meant a lot of different things to a lot of democrats. He could never have satisfied all of the expectations held for him by so many divergent peoples. This is pretty much what krauthammer is saying in this interview. Obama isn't a messiah, he's just a man. He's only average.
 
niftydrifty said:
"Well thought out." That's a curious way to put it.

Double standards for different presidents. A blatantly false statement about accomplishments. An appeal to popularity. A myopic point of view that makes conclusions about big picture or history for a president he doesn't like, 9 months in, but says "wait and see" for a president he does like after 1, 2, 3, even 8 years. Confusing fringe with mainstream opinions. Criticizing a politician for being ... political.

Nothing about Charles Krauthammer is "well thought out."
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Hey, why are you attacking the author and not what he has written? It's like you are trying to discredit what he said by discrediting him and his motives. That doesn't change the fact that what he said was dead on.

Take this exchange, by way of example:
SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Obama deliberately wants to weaken the US?

Krauthammer: The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the UN.

SPIEGEL: A nightmare?

Krauthammer: Worse than that: an absurdity. I can't even imagine serious people would believe it, but I think Obama does. There is a way America will decline -- if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful.
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It's an absurdity.
 
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reefedjib said:
Hey, why are you attacking the author and not what he has written? It's like you are trying to discredit what he said by discrediting him and his motives. That doesn't change the fact that what he said was dead on.
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So that's what it is. An issue with reading comprehension. look again, I have only "attacked" what Krauthammer has said or written. (The interview contains things he said, not wrote.) I've commented on things said by Krauthammer in your OP (lol, and it sounds like you and zimmer haven't noticed.) and I've also commented on things Krauthammer has written before. I've made conclusions about Krauthammer's usefulness as a pundit, and the things that I have typed here support those conclusions.

"attacking the author and not what he has written" would sound like this: "He's a cripple!" Uh, I haven't done that.

I don't know where to begin with the whacko excerpt you pasted. the international community is a fiction? in Krauthammer's isolationist "USA-USA!" brain, nations cannot cooperate with one another. but they do, they have, they will, and they need to. I don't know how to even respond to CK's made-up, inflated, and hyperbolic rhetoric. 90%/10%? according to what? pulling numbers out of your butt and saying stuff will happen (when it arguably won't), and refusing to acknowledge the harm that will (and has) come to the US as a direct result of the go-it-alone-blow-em-away approach endorsed by CK.... nutjob is not too strong a word.
 
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niftydrifty said:
So that's what it is. An issue with reading comprehension. look again, I have only "attacked" what Krauthammer has said or written. (The interview contains things he said, not wrote.) I've commented on things said by Krauthammer in your OP, and I've also commented on things Krauthammer has written before. I've made conclusions about Krauthammer's usefulness as a pundit, and the things that I have typed here support those conclusions.
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Naw, you tried to cast him as inadequate because he said explained campaign promises for Bush but blamed Obama for inaction on his. You were questioning his motives. It's character assassination. Let's see what else you "accused" him of:

A blatantly false statement about accomplishments.
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Where's the false statement?
An appeal to popularity.
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Observing popularity is inappropriate in politics?
A myopic point of view that makes conclusions about big picture or history for a president he doesn't like, 9 months in, but says "wait and see" for a president he does like after 1, 2, 3, even 8 years.
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Because he agrees with the world-view represented by Bush but not Obama? Entirely appropriate.
Confusing fringe with mainstream opinions.
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WHaat "fringe" opinion and what is the problem with that if true?
Criticizing a politician for being ... political.
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For acting out of political motivations rather than principle. Entirely appropriate.


I don't know where to begin with the whacko excerpt you pasted. the international community is a fiction? in Krauthammer's isolationist "USA-USA!" brain, nations cannot cooperate with one another. but they do, they have, they will, and they need to. I don't know how to even respond to CK's made-up, inflated, and hyperbolic rhetoric. 90%/10%? according to what? pulling numbers out of your butt and saying stuff will happen (when it arguably won't), and refusing to acknowledge the harm that will (and has) come to the US as a direct result of the go-it-alone-blow-em-away approach endorsed by CK.... nutjob is not too strong a word.
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Whacko, huh? Please list the wonderful accomplishments on the world stage of said international organizations. I'll await to be amazed.
 
Dutch said:
So how is telling europeans something they don't want to hear amount to feathering one's cap?
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Becasue all we've been telling the Europeans since Obama was campaiging for world citizen is what they want to hear. Apologies from Americans.
 
Did somebody say Krauthammer?

turtle.jpg
 
j-mac said:
Yeah, that's predictable....Attack the mans physical appearance....I guess when you have no argument this is what the libs find acceptable.


j-mac
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It DOES kinda look like him, though. ;)
 
reefedjib said:
It DOES kinda look like him, though. ;)
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I suspect that some of the characteristics that you see as deformity in appearance could be a side effect of whatever has the man wheelchair bound for life.

Do you only take as valid the opinion of "beautiful people"?


j-mac
 
j-mac said:
I suspect that some of the characteristics that you see as deformity in appearance could be a side effect of whatever has the man wheelchair bound for life.

Do you only take as valid the opinion of "beautiful people"?


j-mac
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Sorry, I was winking and meant it to be joking. Honestly, he does have very defined features. I had no idea he was in a wheelchair!! What's that from? I'm personally diabetic (type 2), so I don't look forward to that outcome. He's wicked smart.
 
reefedjib said:
Sorry, I was winking and meant it to be joking. Honestly, he does have very defined features. I had no idea he was in a wheelchair!! What's that from? I'm personally diabetic (type 2), so I don't look forward to that outcome. He's wicked smart.
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Sorry, sometimes I miss the nuances....Anyway....I found this on CK.

During his first year of medical School, Dr. Krauthammer dove into a swimming pool, and hit his head on the bottom. He has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. Most people don't even know he is in a wheelchair. He does not allow his disability to define him.

WikiAnswers - Why is Charles Krauthammer in a wheelchair
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j-mac
 
j-mac said:
Sorry, sometimes I miss the nuances....Anyway....I found this on CK.

During his first year of medical School, Dr. Krauthammer dove into a swimming pool, and hit his head on the bottom. He has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. Most people don't even know he is in a wheelchair. He does not allow his disability to define him.

WikiAnswers - Why is Charles Krauthammer in a wheelchair
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j-mac
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Holy ****!! I did that exact thing when I was 5 years old! Evidently, 1 more millimeter higher on my head and that would have been my condition. He does a remarkable job of not letting it define him. My respect for him has just doubled.
 
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