Comment by good_golly

The link said nothing about Clinton’s withholding documents. Try again.

ain’t too big a deal to me – good for him and all, but come on, who’s doing all the hollering about it??????

Gore himself would be the first to say that the focus should be on the world’s climate — not on him. And the conditions of the world’s climate are the same whether an American magazine bestows a made-up title on him or not.

Comment by good_golly — December 19, 2007 @ 1:25 pm

Yes, your clarification demonstrates better that you’re completely inane.

Comment by good_golly — December 19, 2007 @ 9:37 am
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George W. Bush has been choosen twice, George H. W. Bush once, and Reagan Twice.

Your point is?

And, I’ll choose a Nobel prize over a “Person of the Year” of a magazine any day. Just saying.

No flags here as this is an open thread.

Given that Amy Winehouse has multiple award noms and wins for Back in Black, Feist received acclaim for her latest work and Fergie’s Clumsy is getting alot of airplay, I believe it was a big mistake for Kelly Clarkson’s record label to undermine her latest album, My December. There are a couple songs, Irvine and Chevas, that are very similar to those listed above, and very well performed, that are in step with the latest trends, and Kelly’s record label missed the boat. No vision at the top there.

As always, proglodytes measure popularity and subterfuge as achievements and real power. Just because someone can burn down your home doesn’t mean they can build one.

In my estimation, Putin got lazy when he wasn’t able to democratize his country, and resorted to dictatorial / totalitarian methods to acquire power and prestige.

How you continually approve and support this administration absolutely astounds me!

Two questions:

1) Why did you feel the need to change your name from Cold_Hard_Liberal?

2) How the heck do you have so much time to post here? Do you have a job, or is this your job?

Just curious.

Comment by RUCerious — December 19, 2007 @ 11:47 am

How do you expect them to answer that?
They can’t remember past Bush’s last fumbled, English butchering lie.
That is unless “Clinton did it too!!”

Comment by RickS — December 19, 2007 @ 12:00 pm

That describes 99.99% of todays “Conservatives”…..

That’s just sick.

Tell us again, trolls, what the stated purpose of the temporary surge is/was/will be?

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007
Choosing Order Before Freedom
By Richard Stengel

In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad’s politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer’s Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga—one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.

Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.’s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world—and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world’s largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin’s story comes from his grandfather’s job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.

When this intense and brooding KGB agent took over as President of Russia in 2000, he found a country on the verge of becoming a failed state. With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map. And he intends to redraw it himself. Though he will step down as Russia’s President in March, he will continue to lead his country as its Prime Minister and attempt to transform it into a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West.

TIME’s Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years. Whether he becomes more like the man for whom his grandfather prepared blinis—who himself was twice TIME’s Person of the Year—or like Peter the Great, the historical figure he most admires; whether he proves to be a reformer or an autocrat who takes Russia back to an era of repression—this we will know only over the next decade. At significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize, he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power. For that reason, Vladimir Putin is TIME’s 2007 Person of the Year.

…On global issues, it offers alternatives to America’s waning influence, helping broker deals in North Korea, the Middle East, Iran. Russia just made its first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran—a sign that Russia is taking the lead on that vexsome issue, particularly after the latest U.S. intelligence report suggested that the Bush Administration has been wrong about Iran’s nuclear-weapons development.