Billionaire Forbes says oil will be $30 $35 a barrel within a year

CJT snip

Well, but it is important to know your enemy and yourself, as Sun Tzu said. If you do not have a coherent model of your opponent then you cannot win a battle. A theory that explains everything explains nothing.

And when your view of your opponent is fundamentally incoherent, you will be apt to turn to conspiracy theories when your opponent wins over and over and over.

Which is the problem I think that too many Democrats have been having for years now. Too many are in fact sounding like loons and it is starting to pee me, as a Democrat, off.

The secret, that should be an open secret by now, of GWB, is that GWB relies on the intellectual vanity of his opponents, for example, Kerry. There was a bit in one of the debates for the '04 election which perfectly illustrates my point. (Incidentally, FactCheck completely missed the point of the little exchange in question as far as I know. So did many partisans on both sides, was my impression at the time)

Kerry asked GWB about his timber investments. Now GWB, with the bit previous about taxing small businesses had basically called Kerry an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, or a liar, but not in so many words. So it must have stung Kerry.

So Kerry says (paraphrasing) GWB is a liar too, in his comment about "$84 from a timber company" and implies that GWB is using the definition of small business to be deceptive. GWB did indeed have part ownership of a timber company, as I understand it. Never mind that. Not the point.

Kerry was laying a trap, but he was also probably acting based on an emotional reflex whereby he needed to make a fast riposte to the implicit insult he had just endured. A natural politician wouldn't think too much about responding any more than a pro basketball player about a layup.

The trap was supposed to work like this: GWB, if he were vain like most people, would protest that 1. he didn't own a timber company or 2. his timber company was only part-ownership, or 3. his timber company didn't make him a small business. Because his first concern would be with his own ego and being called a liar.

All three possibilities I listed would have been deadly. Because (1) is, as far as I know, a lie, and (2) and (3) are worse. They are worse because GWB was supposed to have his buttets in a blind trust, and not be paying attention to them. So unless I am missing something, that could have torpedoed him right there; it could have blown up into a real scandal, possibly an actual crime.

And if Bush was honest (hypothetically) he couldn't have been prepared for the trap. So it was a brilliant, brilliant trap, it seems to me. And I think it seemed so to Kerry.

And the next thing GWB said was:

The only way to salvage the situation, from the Democratic perspective, was to mock him for not knowing what he invested in, since people wouldn't generally focus on the detail of the blind trust, and spin the exchange as a denial that GWB owned a timber company and thereby claim he was a liar.

In a sense, Kerry asked GWB whether he would pay the price of being called a moron to be reelected. GWB did not skip a beat. He did not react to being called a liar since it was not to his advantage. If he had paused and fumbled, it would not have looked good at all.

Kerry could not bear to put aside his intellectual pride, his ego, and that's why I think GWB was reelected.

Kerry thought he was golden, and he got *reamed*. Not only on one occasion but many times. It would be tiresome and painful to recount them all.

Some people, possibly redstaters, may get a charge out of watching GWB do that to a 'city-slicker' enough to vote R just because of that. Not me, but I couldn't vote for Kerry either after watching that crap. Among other reasons.

Tell me I'm full of it. Go on.

Oh, by the way, Forbes is a shill. I don't know for who, but he says what someone wants you to believe, not what he thinks is true.

Have a nice day.