Fred is back! Well, kind of, sort of. It no secret that the last presidential candidate we liked was Fred Thompson. Alas Fred was just not into that campaign thing. Well now the closest incarnation of Fred has announced. Thad McCotter is in, from Thomas Lifson, American Thinker [1]:
Not too many people are excited about the news that Thaddeus McCotter revealed this morning on radio station WJR in Detroit he will be filing papers for his candidacy for President. But I am. Seriously. At least a little.
The GOP needs him on the national stage, making points about the incumbent president and his administration. He will add wit and intelligence to the field. He is articulate, pointed, and knows how to use humor, delivered deadpan.
If you like your candidates, dry, sarcastic and conservative, this Thad is for you.
How dumb is Dumbo, Robert Tracinski explores the abyss of ignorance that is Barack Obama’s knowledge, or lack thereof, of basic economics, from Real Clear Politics [2]:
Yet on the other hand, President Obama seems genuinely, privately ignorant on these issues. The political gossip going around right now is that the Obama administration is panicking because they sincerely expected a robust economic recovery by now, and they wanted to campaign next year by borrowing Ronald Reagan’s “it’s morning again in America” theme–without actually having to borrow any of Reagan’s policies. We have to presume that if Obama knew how to revive the economy, he would, and he seems genuinely stumped as to why his stimulus is not working.
So what explains the deep-seated ignorance of economics on display in his public comments? Why does he demonstrate such a lack of practical appreciation of how business works?
The answer is that he lacks it because it is forbidden knowledge.
Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama may, or may not, be God given dumb. However is surely the most uneducated president in our history.
About as dumb as Algore, Walter Russell Mead displays what is verboten here at Bitsblog, sympathy for Algore. Here Algore is used for sport. In case back to Mead, from American Interest [3]:
[4]The trouble and even the tragedy of Al Gore is that he comes at the tail end of this tradition; he is a living example of what you get when a worldview outlives its time. He presses the old buttons and turns the old cranks, but the machine isn’t running any more. The priests dance around the altar, the priestess chews the sacred herbs, but the god no longer speaks. Like President Obama watching a universal healthcare program that he thought would secure his place in history turn into an electoral albatross and a policy meltdown, Al Gore thought that in the climate issue he had picked a winning horse. Judging from his Rolling Stone essay he has no idea why the climate movement failed, and no clue at all about how he could re-think the issue.
Even Algore, as dumb as he may be, is not so stupid as actually believe the theory he purports to support, anthropogenic global warming. If Algore actually believed in AGW, he would not be an energy slut.