"McCain is a hero, but an airhead and always has been." [UPDATED]

"I would actually fear the candidate that thought just as I thought. Consider for a moment, if you will, that person. Is he fit to be President? Are you?"

"Botox Biden? [...] A heart beat away from the presidency? Are you serious?"

"Getting captured, imprisoned and tortured is tragic. It is not heroic."

"Her party has dubbed her a 'maverick who stopped the bridge to nowhere,' while overlooking the fact that she was the mayor of nowhere."

"I hate this election."

"Which is the truer measure of a man - his words or his deeds? Think about it."

"The only thing McCain has [been] tested on is how to deploy an ejection seat."

"This Flatbush Yeshiva graduate will stick with McCain."

" Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, by current definition, a terrorist. [...] William Ayers is a hero but it will take another generation or two to see it."

"The other day I started thinking of how I would go about orchestrating a coup d'état. Just an average, everyday thought. Don't we all sit around considering how to overthrow a government?"

"In a twinkling, this nation has gone from, 'Ask not what your country can do for you....' to, 'Where is the next federal tittie to which I am soooo entitled?' So, as you vote for ever more expensive and intrusive government ask yourself [...] Has [government] delivered on any of the promises it lacks legitimacy to make in the first place? [...] Here is a shocking assertion: neither presidents nor congress (or even judges) are competent to do for you what you are unwilling or unable to do for yourself."

And those are just the comments. 

H/T:  T.A.

UPDATE:  I should explain that this is not a blog comment thread, but the comments on a New Republic piece by Leon Wieseltier on what's wrong with both candidates.  While his ambivalence does not match mine, it's vintage ambivalence, and many of his observations of the candidates are cruelly on the mark, although he is a knee-jerk Palinophobe:

Obama is too cool, but McCain is too hot.

I cannot shirk the feeling, as I watch him rise, that I am witnessing not so much the triumph of a cause as the success of a plan. [...] Obama's passionlessness spooks me. His friends tell me that my impression is wrong, but [...] the lyricism of some of Obama's friends is embarrassing.

McCain [...] was splendidly right about the surge, which is not a small thing; and the grudging way Obama treats the reversal in Iraq, when he treats it at all, is disgraceful. Tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency. And yet it is impossible any longer to ignore the contradiction between the nobility of his past and the ignobility of his present. He is abstracted, dispersed, out of focus, Stockdalesque, mentally undone.

What a time for a novice! I dread the prospect of Obama's West Wing education in foreign policy: even when he spoke well about these matters in the debates, it all sounded so new to him, so light. He must not mistake the global adulation of his person with the end of anti-Americanism.

All that said, Wieseltier is voting uneasily for Obama.  His piece is worth reading; it will make you laugh and piss you off, in either order.

Comments

[Donna B.]

Wow... that comment thread is almost a replay of my conversation with my brother this evening.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Augh. being tortured is not heroic.

Refusing release and dishonor, and being tortured and crippled because if it, *is* heroic.

[Peter Hoh]

Just as a moth is well-advised to stay away from flames, I need to stay away from thread like that one.

[amba]

Charlie, that commenter went on immediately following that line to say: "What about his observing the rule of seniority of release, when he could have allowed himself to become an exception to it? By his own admission, he thought that he would be getting out in a few months anyway and would have little to lose by deciding to stay." Huh? I hadn't heard that before. It's certainly not how he's telling it now.

I didn't quote it all because I was pretty much sticking to epigrammatic wisecracks.

[Peter Hoh]

If you want to see the unhinged working a thread, try this one. It's follow up on the rumor that "African Press International" is about to release a damning Michelle Obama tape.

[Melinda]

Amba, I read that piece last night and was going to e-mail you about it, but I didn't because I figured you'd read it. Great minds think alike (if I've been doing any thinking at all this week.)

[amba]

My brother David had e-mailed me the link.

[karen]

Why would the African Press do that??

No, i'm about finished w/the debating of any point(i hope). I agree w/Peter as i tend to singe pretty easily.

[amba]

I just got an e-mail calling the Republican ticket "Geezer/Strumpet '08."