Posts by Neil Morrison

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  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    ...but I think the novelty value of Senator Clinton's vagina and who her husband is is past its use-by. In the end, if she can't mount a straightforward and consistent defence of her own voting record on Iraq in the primaries, then I don't think Obama's the only one with a credibility deficit on foreign policy.

    Spending 8 years being privy to the inner workings of a presidency that dealt with (or tried) with various amounts of success with Rawanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea etc is not something that can be so easily dismissed. It is experience and given the state of things experience that could be vitally important.

    I can't see what the problem is with Clinton's voting on the war - her explanation is quite straight forward.

    I don't have a problem with Obama though, as long as he has the substance behind the rhetoric. Youngish, good looking, charismatic, gift of the gab, rhetoric flavoured with a touch of the Bible, a sense of Mission - sounds a lot like Tony Blair.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    Hillary is definitely beatable as she has shown herself to be lousy on the campaign trail...

    Down but not out.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    Obama is as naive as he is inexperienced; he would most likely be the next Jimmy Carter. Nice guy, means well but an utter failure as a President.

    I think you are over stating this point but there ibis some truth in this - compared to Hillary Obama he will be a bit of a novice at first when it comes to foreign policy. 8 years watching Bill deal with the world has to count for something.

    But I think that just means a rather steeper learning curve for Obama and if he is what his charisma suggests then that should not be a problem.

    Also, the foreign policy teams of both Hillary and Obama are full of people who worked for Bill Clinton so both candidates will have a very sound base in this area.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    Just under 220,000 Democrats caucused tonight. About 115,000 Republicans did. That is a very big vote in itself.

    The next pres will be a Dem no doubt about that. 335,000 people get to have a direct and personal say in who the next most powerful person in the world will be - not a bad story in itself.

    Looks like Obama has a generation advantage. Younger and with cute young family.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    a report from Prospect illustrates it's a very human process -

    A bit of drama here in precinct 23. The two women with the baby came in about 10 minutes late, and sat quietly in the Hillary camp. A few minutes later, the baby began to cry, and they took the baby out into the hallway. When they come back in to be counted, there's an uprising from a man in the Obama camp. "People are coming in late!" he shouts.

    "They had a baby!" responds a woman on the other side of the auditorium. "It started to cry."

    "I didn't hear no crying."

    After that, Elaine [precinct caucus chair] says the women can't caucus.

    on such things a Presidency may ride.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Daily Embarrassment,

    Steve, your argument seems to be along the lines of "if you're a botonist then you can't be an environmentalist".

    I take it your'e using the Wikipedia definition of Climatolgoy, which in full reads -

    Climatology is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time,[1] and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences.

    What you have taken to be the definition of Climatology is in fact wiki's definition of Climate. And Climatology, according to Wiki, is a branch of atmospheric science - which is what many of those PhDs were in.

    You also overlook the explanation given why many of the PhDs were not given in Climatology as such -

    Some climatology PhD degrees may have been granted in climatology per se, but this was rare until recently. and many of the first PhD's in climatology in Canada received their degrees in related disciplines, primarily meteorology, climatology, physics, mathematics, geology, or geography...

    And picking one of those PhDS at random, Stephen Calvert, who you dismiss as an oceanographer, so therefore not a climatologist, he explains his research as -

    The long-term goal of my research is to understand the factors responsible for the wide compositional variability of marine sediments, the controls on organic matter burial and nutrient utilization in the ocean, and to use this information to interpret past oceanographic and climatic changes from sediment core records.

    That sounds like Climatology to me. I'm not about to defend their views but using a narrow definition of Climatolgy to argue that they are not Climatologists and therefore their opinions on climate change have less merit doen't sound like a strong argument.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Hard News: Random,

    ...reliability and simplicity which are unavoidable hallmarks of useable applied science.

    no, that's a very weak argument against the existance of the paranormal. I might not want to have a psychic design bridges but on that view of science there's no reason why they might not be able to communicate with the dead.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Hard News: Random,

    Don't you have a cat or something?

    Schrödinger had one. I think it was rather grumpy, being half alive and half dead. (That all makes psychics look a bit less weird).

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Hard News: Random,

    ...the Ron Paul candidacy, now those guys really are adding something new (if kind of scary and weird)

    Ron Paul makes Huckabee look, if not sane, then understandable.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

  • Hard News: Random,

    __As I said on another thread, people respond to Obama because they believe he can change the game, while Clinton is the status quo.__


    There's also a school of thought that holds that the more people see of Obama the more they like him -- and the more they see of Hilary, well ...

    apart from image would there be any great difference between Clinton, Obama and Edwards?

    That school of thought might not be terribly in touch with the US electorate. According to Rasmussen Clinton started the year on 22% and is at present on 38%. For Obama that's 21% and 27%.

    Angus Reid publish a range of polls with much the same picture.

    Support for both candidates fluctuates and the early primaries are a bit of a mystery but more Dem voters perfer HRC.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report

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