Get a bigger brick".

Bigger than the one between your ears?

One of these days I'd love to have an intern crunch through the archive of comments just to do a simple content analysis and correlation to the political identity of the commenter. I'm sure there's some incredible papers waiting to be written about the results of even a simple analysis. Correlating them to the time line of the progress of the Iraqi war and other events would also prove entertaining.

Ah, time....

You were wrong about Kerry as you will be wrong about Obama

Ummm.....

I was working for Howard Dean when he was still Governor of Vermont. I never cared for Kerry, to me he was a clothespin vote.

Can't you guys get anything right? Or have you just been making crap up for so long you don't know the difference?

Relative terms, though, Bit. The Democrats and Republicans would easily fit into the definiton of "right" in any of the major Western European "conservative" parties.

Oh, no question, and it was not my intent to suggest otherwise. Still, as I've pointed out in other threads today, the direction of travel is noteworthy.

Their problem was not Mr. Bush, but Mr. Big–America as Behemoth Among the Nations

You're thinking of al Qaeda. The Europeans mostly just hate Bush.

And I'm frankly not feeling so superpower anymore when I press my face to the window of a restaurant in London wishing it wouldn't cost me a day's wages just to go inside and have an appetizer. The massive military thing is so last-century for determining the real superpower status of actual people.

Interesting though that you said a good debate is not possible when I am involved yet you keep soliciting my opinion.

Perhaps they're just curious how big a brick they have to use to get you to blink.

Anjin, do you disagree?

Not really too interested in what you boys are ranting about...

Interesting though that you said a good debate is not possible when I am involved yet you keep soliciting my opinion.

Jack Kennedy, the president Barack Obama so self-consciously mimics, down to the tilt of his head and the inflection of his voice.

I've come to the view that folks have the wrong Kennedy here. Barack reminds me more of Bobby every day.

However, if that big kid uses his massive power for good and uses it in a humble manner, in a manner that truly seeks equitable solutions for all, then you can see a different dynamic.

Of course, Dubya overturned the Taliban and Saddam Hussein to promote evil. Those were good, humble, enlightened regimes that truly sought equitable solutions for all. (Unless you were a non-Muslim. Or a Shi'ite Muslim, for that matter. Or a woman. Or a westerner. Or a fan of democracy, liberty, and the rule of law. Or you smoked cigarettes. Or you looked at them cross-wise in just the particular manner that justified them in cutting your head off.)

As for Obama: His call on NATO allies to "do more in Afghanistan" is empty rhetoric, bereft of either carrots or sticks. It's less impressive than Michelle promising that Barack Obama won't let us Americans sink back into our easy lives, will demand more of us, etc. He'll use it domestically to back up a claim that he can be an effective world leader -- even though he's ignorant on such basics of 20th Century history as the success or failure, from an American point of view, of Kennedy's 1961 Vienna summit with Khrushchev, which actually led the world closer to nuclear annihilation than any other act of any American president. One could make a judgment of Barack Obama's fitness to be president solely by comparing his efforts to tour Europe as a rock star to his efforts to run the senatorial subcommittee on Europe that he chairs (but has never yet convened).