M was smart. My high school graduating class valedictorian. We knew each other, but other than gym, she wasn’t in any of my classes. Only once did we have a one-on-one conversation and that was in our senior year. A rainy day when we were stuck in the gym locker room with nothing to do. As these times often go for me, we began sharing what we had been reading for pleasure.
M monopolized the conversation and I politely listened. Kept expecting her to move on to a book or magazine that we both had read or at least one that interested me. I’d been reading Camus and Harper’s, and working on my lines for a little theater production of The Night of the Iguana (which was of zero interest to M). Her pleasure reading passion – and she was passionate about it – was contemporary romance novels. Instead of smart, she sounded dull. And boring.
Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Rand Paul remind me of M. Labeled smart and academically impressive. Then they open their mouths without a script.
Paul was admitted to medical school after five semesters of college. Apparently because his MCAT scores were at the top. Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton (presumably on the four year program) and magna cum laude from Harvard Law. Then there’s Tom Cotton:
Harvard College, AB magna cum laude 1998 (graduated in three years)
Claremont College – 1998-99
Harvard Law, JD, 2002
clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals, 2002-2003
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher – 2003-04
Cooper & Kirk
US Army – January 2005-09
McKinsey & Co. – 2009
I’ve known and worked with many attorneys. Most not graduates of prestigious law schools. All were intelligent to highly intelligent. (With one exception, but that seemed to be due to aging and/or alcoholism and not his Harvard Law degree.) I’ve also worked with a few McKinsey & Co folks who ranged from bright to wicked smart. Not one of them would ever have received an assessment of his/her work product like this one:
Reluctantly, Rep. Cotton withdrew his amendment when basically everyone on the Committee informed him that he is a dumb, ridiculous piece of shit and a complete embarrassment to the entire state of Arkansas, and even to Congress. The GOP Committee chair basically laughed in his face and told him to go blow a goat.
His amendment?
Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would “automatically” punish family members of people who violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, levying sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
…
Cotton also seeks to punish any family member of those people, “to include a spouse and any relative to the third degree,” including, “parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids,” Cotton said.
“There would be no investigation,” Cotton said during Wednesday’s markup hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Can Harvard Law revoke a JD? With his “Iran letter,” Harvard might want to consider revoking his AB in Government as well. Or perhaps Cotton should demand a refund because he didn’t get an education. Although he did pass the AR bar exam and was admitted on 4/9/03
Cotton on Face the Nation today wrt Iran:
They already control Tehran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sena’a as well.
Duh!
The Atlantic has some choice bits from Cotton’s senior thesis.
Men who seek national office, Cotton wrote in his thesis, are the most ambitious men, seeking the headiest sort of power over a nation’s commerce, finance, and affairs of state. Self-selection ensures that they have “a superior intelligence compared to the unambitious and to the lesser ambitious.” This does not necessarily mean that they are wise, he notes, but “it does imply some amount of sheer, raw brainpower. National officeholders will all possess something akin to shrewdness, cleverness, or perhaps even cunning.”
As sophomoric as that reads, do wonder if his thesis and law school papers could withstand a close scrutiny for plagiarism. Particularly in light of the high probability that AIPAC wrote “his” Iran letter.
Will let Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station take it from here: The Second Coming of Richard Milhous Nixon
…
We haven’t lost enough of America’s future in the Middle East.We haven’t bled enough.
It’s never enough for these sons of bitches.People like Senator Johnson, they walk past those 58,220 names inscribed on the cold black granite of the Vietnam Memorial, they can see it, they can touch it, they argue over the endless appropriations for war and its terrible aftermath, trillions in blood and treasure, bills they can not afford to pay and that they have mortgaged our children’s future for, they have their noses rubbed in the futility and the utter criminal waste of it all every single goddamned day and it’s still not enough for these insane fuckers.
It will never be enough. Never.
…
