Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Founded by Mark Kleiman (1951-2019)
The old razzle-dazzle
Calling Romney a liar nicely.
In the next two debates, Obama needs to call out Romney on his lying and shape-shifting in a way that’s not personally insulting to his opponent or demeaning to himself. Biden’s “malarkey” to Ryan was just right - language for challenging a drunken braggart in a bar without starting a fight - but it’s an Irishism.
Suggestions for Obama in this clip from, appropriately, Chicago.
Author: James Wimberley
James Wimberley (b. 1946, an Englishman raised in the Channel Islands. three adult children) is a former career international bureaucrat with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. His main achievements there were the Lisbon Convention on recognition of qualifications and the Kosovo law on school education. He retired in 2006 to a little white house in Andalucia, His first wife Patricia Morris died in 2009 after a long illness. He remarried in 2011. to the former Brazilian TV actress Lu Mendonça. The cat overlords are now three.
I suppose I've been invited to join real scholars on the list because my skills, acquired in a decade of technical assistance work in eastern Europe, include being able to ask faux-naïf questions like the exotic Persians and Chinese of eighteenth-century philosophical fiction. So I'm quite comfortable in the role of country-cousin blogger with a European perspective. The other specialised skill I learnt was making toasts with a moral in the course of drunken Caucasian banquets. I'm open to expenses-paid offers to retell Noah the great Armenian and Columbus, the orange, and university reform in Georgia.
James Wimberley's occasional publications on the web
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10 thoughts on “The old razzle-dazzle”
Can you imagine the anger and fear if Obama called it jive?
I think the reaction would be positive, myself.
I like it too. But perhaps “Mittster, ‘mericans ain’t buyin’ that jive you be puttin’ down” would be a bit too much.
He could refer to them as Romney’s “latest revelations” although that could be shaving uncomfortably close to the Mormon thing.
I would like to suggest (again) my favorite “younger generation” way of calling out a fabrication:
“I call bullshit on that!”
Use that line once, and it’s the only thing 100,000,000 voters will remember from the whole debate.
The question is — Do we want a society in which a very few ruling families own almost everything, including government, and hand it all down to their heirs, or do we not want such a society?
Is Romney the guy who would save us from the age-old, winner-take-all society, or is Obama the guy who wants to save us from that?
At least the downward slide in Obama’s chances seems to have halted. He picked up on Nate Silver’s probability, back to 63% from 61% on Friday.
Good time to counter-attack. I hope the last two weeks scared the bejasus out of the President, enough for him to be on his mettle this time.
Time to let the American people know that if they vote in Romney, they will be voting back in a bunch of the same bloodthirsty neocons George W. Bush brought to Washington.
Only stupider.
“Time to let the American people know that if they vote in Romney, they will be voting back in a bunch of the same bloodthirsty neocons George W. Bush brought to Washington.”
This is a hugely great idea, I think. Trumpet this return of the SAME neocons warning.
George Burns said that the secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
The same is true of pandering to the Republican Party base.
Can you imagine the anger and fear if Obama called it jive?
I think the reaction would be positive, myself.
I like it too. But perhaps “Mittster, ‘mericans ain’t buyin’ that jive you be puttin’ down” would be a bit too much.
He could refer to them as Romney’s “latest revelations” although that could be shaving uncomfortably close to the Mormon thing.
I would like to suggest (again) my favorite “younger generation” way of calling out a fabrication:
“I call bullshit on that!”
Use that line once, and it’s the only thing 100,000,000 voters will remember from the whole debate.
The question is — Do we want a society in which a very few ruling families own almost everything, including government, and hand it all down to their heirs, or do we not want such a society?
Is Romney the guy who would save us from the age-old, winner-take-all society, or is Obama the guy who wants to save us from that?
At least the downward slide in Obama’s chances seems to have halted. He picked up on Nate Silver’s probability, back to 63% from 61% on Friday.
Good time to counter-attack. I hope the last two weeks scared the bejasus out of the President, enough for him to be on his mettle this time.
Time to let the American people know that if they vote in Romney, they will be voting back in a bunch of the same bloodthirsty neocons George W. Bush brought to Washington.
Only stupider.
“Time to let the American people know that if they vote in Romney, they will be voting back in a bunch of the same bloodthirsty neocons George W. Bush brought to Washington.”
This is a hugely great idea, I think. Trumpet this return of the SAME neocons warning.
George Burns said that the secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
The same is true of pandering to the Republican Party base.