Tulsi Beats Warren

Her argument that she is 'the most qualified to be commander-in-chief' is not quite right, but she is the most qualified of the ones who have any kind of chance. They're running a bunch of career politicians, so she's the closest thing: a real military officer, albeit one who served in a medical staff role rather than one who would have "commanded" in the ordinary military sense of the term.

She won the Drudge Poll and the Google Search quasi-poll, and Reason was impressed with her.

I like Tulsi, as I've said before. It's just hard to imagine turning the keys over to her given her courting gas-my-own-population Assad. On the other hand, she has been a strident defender of religious liberty at a time when that liberty is under heavy assault. We could certainly do worse than to have her head the Democratic ticket.

UPDATE: TNR strikes a measured tone:
Over the course of two hours, approximately seven minutes were devoted to the top existential threat facing humanity. And only four of the ten candidates on stage were asked directly about how they intend to rapidly reduce carbon emissions over the next eleven years—something that must be done to preserve a livable planet for future generations.... It was, to put it lightly, a disgrace—and not just because climate change was the number one issue that Democratic voters wanted to see discussed at the debate. The debate itself was held in Miami, Florida, a city that’s literally being swallowed by the rising ocean.
If you are curious, Tulsi's "vision" says some very sweet things about the environment, but has zero specifics on exactly how to attain any of them.

8 comments:

  1. Over the course of two hours, approximately seven minutes were devoted to the top existential threat facing humanity.

    Like the Instant-Man keeps saying, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling that starting acting like it is one.

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  2. I think I get what you're saying but respectfully, the question of 'qualified to be commander-in-chief' is a red herring. I'm not saying that prior military service and the quality of the same, or lack thereof, shouldn't be a part of the overall evaluation of a candidate or nominee. I'm more concerned about the implications that started under W vis Iraq and are becoming more overt under DJT vis Putin/Russia/Iran that the military should actively disobey orders from an 'unqualified' CINC (generally defined as orders Democrats don't want obeyed).

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  3. ...the implications that started under W vis Iraq....

    It actually started sooner than that. Nixon's SecDef, in the endgame of Nixon's administratin, instructed his commanders to ignore all orders coming from Nixon unless they were countersigned by him.

    Eric Hines

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  4. The odd thing is, in both Tulsi's case and Trump's, the President is more of a dove than the military. The only thing keeping us out of war with Iran right now is President Trump.

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  5. I'm not so sure Trump agreed to a strike and then called it off, either, except for public consumption. That bit also looks like a Trumpian version of a demonstration for Iran's benefit.

    If it were, and whether it worked, are other matters.

    I'm not sure Iran's government men care, or care about casualties:

    If one day, he [Rafsanjani] said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

    That attitude toward casualties extends far beyond any conflict with Israel, and Iranian casualties are included in Rafsanjani's attitude toward any damage to "the world of Islam."

    Eric Hines

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  6. I wonder how many of the people who are making claims about CO2-caused warming threatening all life on earth have made the slightest attempt to understand, at some level, the statistics and the modeling assumptions behind this claim.

    It would be nice if someone would lay out, on not more than 10 sheets of paper each, the historical data, the adjustments if any made to it, and the assumptions for forward projection, in either block diagram or equation form, or both. Do this for several of the leading climate models.

    And, of course, the source code for the models should be open for inspection, showing changes from version to version.

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  7. I don't like engaging in the horse-race aspect of politics, because I'm not good at it, and too many national commentators seem to be obsessed with that at the expense of issues.

    However, the primaries are not the general, and they also have a purpose of sending a message, in the same way that a price signals much about a market. As she has no chance of winning, it would be a good thing if she won a surprising number of votes, for the message it sends. I am considering changing my registration to Independent, as it used to be, in order to vote for her in the NH primary.

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  8. claims about CO2-caused warming

    Leave aside that the data indicate that atmospheric CO2 lags planetary warming rather than leads it. Stipulate CO2-caused warming.

    Now: establish that that's a bad thing. When atmospheric CO2 was several times higher in the past than it is today, and the planet was warmer than it is today, life was lush on earth.

    the primaries are not the general, and they also have a purpose of sending a message

    They also would seem to tie the primary winner to all the things he promised his primary voters in order to get his party's nomination. What promises can he make in the general election? If they're different from what he promised in the primary, he betrays all of those primary voters. If he sticks to his primary promises, he tells the middle of the electorate to go p*s up a rope. In either event, if he's gone too far Left or Right, his betrayals or dismissals would make him and his word unreliable.

    Eric Hines

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