[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
…I won’t do it to President Obama.
[/quote]
Ha ha…yeah…I know.[/quote]
“…I didn’t do it to Bush (or Washington or Truman)…and I won’t do it to President Obama…”
(At least post the whole quote, SM…)
Did I call you a “birther”?
Are you?
Mufasa
[/quote]
To sarcastically bring up birtherism, Obama being “Kenyan-born” and a Muslim in response to my posts - how else to interpret that? And no, I’m not a birther.
Wrong again, SM.
I know that I’ve never called anyone a “Nutjob”…
Highly Partisan and judgmental…and it seems like the President brings out some “Nutjob-Like” tendencies…
But I guess the same could be said about me, right?
Mufasa
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Wrong again, SM.
I know that I’ve never called anyone a “Nutjob”…
[/quote]
I didn’t use quotation marks. What you do is sarcastically bring up birtherism in response to legitimate criticism. As I said, how else to interpret that?
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
…while I believe that these guys are probably on to something re: Libya and that answers MUST be given and given in full by the administration, great posts regarding the critique of presidents and the usual “Obama is a radical” paranoia.
[/quote]
Obama promoted himself as a radical in his autobiography bragging about surrounding himself with Marxists. Obama was a leading figure in numerous radical organisations and was elected to the Illinois Senate on a split socialist Party/Dem ticket. You’re talking shit again.
How would you know? Instead of reading the news you consistently try to discredit the source.
Does that go for Obama too? He mentions “Uncle Frank” 22 times in Dreams from my Father.
I agree that Zeb is a good poster, but why are you trying to discredit other posters by dishonestly labelling them “conspiracy theorists?” Mufasa does the same thing by implying that I’m a birther and so on. Pretty weak.[/quote]
You may believe whatever you’d like to believe. I believe that you are well-read and sharp but also given to bumbling paranoid delusions.
I say conspiracy theorists because you and people like you place a gross and inordinate amount of focus on speculation about impressions that radicals made on the President in the past rather than on his actual record as President of the United States. If someone listened to you describe the President without knowing anything about his record in office, they would be appalled and terrified that a radical Marxist flag-burning (Muslim?) tyrant had been allowed into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “He must have destroyed the country,” they would exclaim in horror. Would they be able to guess that this guy bailed out major banks and auto companies in order to save this capitalist economy which he apparently abhors with such deep conviction? Would they guess that he’d have left said economy in the grubby Marxist hands of people like Lawrence Summers and Ben Bernanke (I’m being sarcastic here in case that slips over your head). Would they be able to guess that this embittered anti-colonialist–as if that label can be applied to a man who sought the highest political office in the government of history’s most formidable hegemon–decided to use his Nobel Peace Prize speech in order to make a case for Just War?
You simply cannot deal with the fact that Barack Obama did not turn out to be a Che Guevara. When other posters lay out the tepid jobs numbers and unemployment statistics, they demand to be taken seriously because they are dealing in objective measures of the president’s performance. Your febrile quest to enter the President’s psyche and prove that it is filled with Leninist monsters is nothing close to comparable with a grounded conservative’s gripe with Barack Obama. It is rooted in superstition and paranoia.
I know none of this will phase you, so it’s the last I’ll speak of it. But I would like to be on the record as saying that you will be a caricature to posterity-- a footnote in the history books, the writers of which in the interest of evenly capturing both the successes and the failures of Barack Obama’s Presidency will feel obligated to mention the fact that, at a level of discourse buried miles beneath the legitimate debate about this man and the decent or sub-par job he’s done, there were legions of gullible ideologues hyperventilating and whining about the least relevant and most speculative criticisms that they can possibly find.
edited
[quote]smh23 wrote:
You may believe whatever you’d like to believe. I believe that you are well-read and sharp but but also given to bumbling paranoid delusions.
[/quote]
Then Obama must be subject to the same “paranoid delusions” as he brags about surrounding himself with radicals.
That doesn’t make any sense. Placing an “inordinate amount of focus and speculation” on Obama’s ideology is not a “conspiracy theory.”
Dude, we went through this already. Obama nationalised the auto-industry. That’s why the government now owns 26% of GM and the shares would need to more than double in value to break even. That’s what socialists do - they nationalise industry.
If they’d read Saul Alinsky and understood community organising then yes, they would guess that.
Funny how Obama got it so wrong in the ME: dumped Mubarak for the Muslim Brotherhood, let Iran run rampant whilst taking out Gaddafi. It’s almost as if…nevermind.
It explains his record. If you didn’t know Obama’s background, a reasonable person would be flabbergasted by his decisions. His background and ideology explain his decisions.
This will make it’s way to the next debate.
I began with Libya. Did the White House mislead Americans or was there just confusion about the origin of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2012? In his most definitive statement to date, Romney answered, ?I think there was misleading on the part of the administration.? He continued, ?It took way too long for the president to acknowledge that there had been an executed terrorist attack on September 11, 2012.?
And from the Romney campaign:
With each passing day, we learn more about the ways in which the Obama Administration misled the American people about the tragic events that transpired in the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Nearly a month later, the Obama Administration continues to offer incomplete and indirect responses to simple and straightforward questions. It is up to President Obama and his Administration to ensure that congressional investigators and the American people have a full accounting of the facts not just from that day, but from the days and months leading up to the attack. There are many questions about whether or not the Administration properly heeded warnings, provided adequate security, or told the American people the whole truth in the aftermath of the attack. On an issue of this importance, nothing short of full and complete candor is acceptable. We can?t learn from our mistakes if we don?t undertake an honest, transparent effort to assess them.
You can forget the rest of the debate, everyone else will. Having seen the results of his debate team’s work, and Romney’s ability to deliver those results, he’ll have the chronology down for statements made and the press reports which followed. I have no idea why President Obama has yet to set the record straight as to how these talking points came to be, and as to how they were continued for so long. But he better have his answers lined up for this next debate, or the 3rd debate will be a formality. Romney and his team know these statements will brought up in the next debate, and they’ll be ready for just that.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
And I knew that kind of response was going to come from you, Zeb.
Bush was mentioned only within the context of a greater narrative on how I view and critique Presidents.
Mufasa[/quote]
Sorry I was so predictable my friend.
But, in reality I am correct. I’ve never read anything from you defending Obama’s policies. yet, you project a “give the guy a break he ain’t bad” attitude.
Please give me some really good reasons why anyone should give Obama a break? What has he done other than kill Osama Bin Laden (which I gave him credit for at the time) that has been good for the country?
All I see is a complete train wreck. And as you know I have been following Presidential records, and politics for a long time. And I give democrats credit when it is due. For example Bill Clinton passing workfare.
Quite honestly, Obama is starting to make Jimmy Carter look good.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
This will make it’s way to the next debate.
I began with Libya. Did the White House mislead Americans or was there just confusion about the origin of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2012? In his most definitive statement to date, Romney answered, ?I think there was misleading on the part of the administration.? He continued, ?It took way too long for the president to acknowledge that there had been an executed terrorist attack on September 11, 2012.?
And from the Romney campaign:
With each passing day, we learn more about the ways in which the Obama Administration misled the American people about the tragic events that transpired in the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Nearly a month later, the Obama Administration continues to offer incomplete and indirect responses to simple and straightforward questions. It is up to President Obama and his Administration to ensure that congressional investigators and the American people have a full accounting of the facts not just from that day, but from the days and months leading up to the attack. There are many questions about whether or not the Administration properly heeded warnings, provided adequate security, or told the American people the whole truth in the aftermath of the attack. On an issue of this importance, nothing short of full and complete candor is acceptable. We can?t learn from our mistakes if we don?t undertake an honest, transparent effort to assess them.
You can forget the rest of the debate, everyone else will. Having seen the results of his debate team’s work, and Romney’s ability to deliver those results, he’ll have the chronology down for statements made and the press reports which followed. I have no idea why President Obama has yet to set the record straight as to how these talking points came to be, and as to how they were continued for so long. But he better have his answers lined up for this next debate, or the 3rd debate will be a formality. Romney and his team know these statements will brought up in the next debate, and they’ll be ready for just that.[/quote]
I don’t think Obama is talking about it yet as he doesn’t want whatever he says now to be used in the upcoming debate either. During the debate he will have some convoluted excuse, perhaps “poor communication” or “best information that we had at each time” to try to wiggle his way out of this. Of course, I don’t believe it will work.
I think he’s in too deep on this issue to be able to pull himself out. But, we don’t know his strategy coming in.
Zeb, I’m curious about how you view Obama’s emergency measures to halt what many economists believe could have become a full depression. Do you believe he did the right thing in bailing out Detroit and Wall St.? And are you not glad, given the stakes, that Mitt Romney was not President at the time?
I’m asking this sincerely.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Zeb, I’m curious about how you view Obama’s emergency measures to halt what many economists believe could have become a full depression. Do you believe he did the right thing in bailing out Detroit and Wall St.? And are you not glad, given the stakes, that Mitt Romney was not President at the time?
I’m asking this sincerely.[/quote]
I’m a free market guy and I don’t appreciate a government take over of our largest auto company. Nor do I like him handing the unions the sort of control that he did. I also believe that he could have done far more for the economy his first two years as President when both houses of congress were democrat. Instead he rammed Obamacare through against the wishes of about 65% of the American people. A 4000 page bill that NO ONE READ! Does that make you feel good? Not me! Not only is it the most horrible law ever passed it is also a take over of 1/6th of the US economy.
What Obama would do if given a second term with no electorate to have to answer to scares the hell out of me!
Romney wanting 4 more wars alongside the massive tax cuts he wants scares me. I know you hate the Bush comparisons, but that sounds so much like a good portion the political philosophy that got us into this financial mess in the first place.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Zeb, I’m curious about how you view Obama’s emergency measures to halt what many economists believe could have become a full depression. Do you believe he did the right thing in bailing out Detroit and Wall St.? And are you not glad, given the stakes, that Mitt Romney was not President at the time?
I’m asking this sincerely.[/quote]
I’m a free market guy and I don’t appreciate a government take over of our largest auto company. Nor do I like him handing the unions the sort of control that he did. I also believe that he could have done far more for the economy his first two years as President when both houses of congress were democrat. Instead he rammed Obamacare through against the wishes of about 65% of the American people. A 4000 page bill that NO ONE READ! Does that make you feel good? Not me! Not only is it the most horrible law ever passed it is also a take over of 1/6th of the US economy.
What Obama would do if given a second term with no electorate to have to answer to scares the hell out of me![/quote]
Most of the things we go back and forth on are matters of interpretation and we almost always find common ground. But here I sincerely believe you’re mistaken. I do recognize that this position is consistent with your general economic ideology and I do commend that consistence, but rigidity is usually a liability.
In this case, I’m as hesitant as anyone to step in and save an inefficient company. But that kind of hit, to that many industries, at that time would have been catastrophic. We would be living in a very different country today were it not for those emergency measures. And not different in a better way.
Other than that, I’m not going to defend the ACA because I don’t much like it to begin with and I don’t know it well enough.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
Romney wanting 4 more wars alongside the massive tax cuts he wants scares me. I know you hate the Bush comparisons, but that sounds so much like a good portion the political philosophy that got us into this financial mess in the first place. [/quote]
I just want him to stop insulting my intelligence by pretending that all the popular things Obama has ever done will be continued, but of course the drawbacks like costs and sacrifices will disappear. Free breakfast and handjobs for all.
He will not offset a $5 trillion, 20% across-the-board tax cut by closing loopholes and taking away some deductions for the rich only. If he admits that and gets down to being the numbers-and-reality-oriented businessman everyone keeps telling us he is, he will probably have my vote in November. If he continues to play the part of eager salesman with oceanfront property in Arizona at the next couple of debates, he has lost me.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
Romney wanting 4 more wars alongside the massive tax cuts he wants scares me. I know you hate the Bush comparisons, but that sounds so much like a good portion the political philosophy that got us into this financial mess in the first place. [/quote]
X10!
Romney is a man without convictions (flipflopflipflop…) and a man without convictions will be led around by his nose by the rabid right wing just like John Boehner was effectively neutered by Eric Cantor and the tea party crowd who rode a short and dying wave in 2010.
The neoconservatives lingering in the back room and whispering in Mitt’s ear are a very real and present threat to the stability of the world. Their adventurism in the first 7 years of this decade fueled those that would do us harm and became the cause for the rise in terriorist enlistment around the world. Bluster and bravado are the tools of choice of a weak and reasonless (sp.) mind.
The supply-side, trickle-down economic policies of the Republican Party may sound good to those that get (the supposed “job creators”) but will ultimately be a shrill, piercing siren blaring in the face of the middle-class and poor of this country. Reagonomics was a failure and even George H.W. Bush coined it as “voodoo economics”.
What is most troubling to me is something that has been moving in politics over the last 2 decades and longer: the creeping of the religious right into our politics. I’ll leave this subject for another time.
I was really thinking hard about voting for Romney early this year. This was based on his record as governor and his experience in business in the private sector. But the more he campaigns, the more inconsistency I see in his views many of which I still don’t know what they are because they seem to change so much and the excessive pandering to the base. I think in gathering money to support his campaign, he made too many promises and has been pulled too far to the far right’s ideologies much like Mccain. At this point, my vote will just be a ‘not Romney’ vote. Not a ‘for Obama’ vote.
I for one will now be voting for Romney. See Benghazi arguments above.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
Romney wanting 4 more wars alongside the massive tax cuts he wants scares me. I know you hate the Bush comparisons, but that sounds so much like a good portion the political philosophy that got us into this financial mess in the first place. [/quote]
You are scared because you have bought into the narrative. And do yourself a favor, and let go of this idea that GWB is to blame for the financial mess. That is like saying 9/11 is his fault.
Do some reading. And you can start here:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
Add up revenues in Clinton’s term, and then add up revenues in Bush’s. Who’s is higher? Who had a better economy during their 8 years?
Now… As for the financial crisis, hosing bubble, and following global economic fallout: The wall Street Journal had a good piece yesterday about the IMF and their predictions of the global economy. Find it, and read it. It was on the front page. When you start to pick out the contradictions, you’ll start to see why we are in the mess we are in.
No it isn’t mainly Wall St’s fault either. I know you don’t believe me, but I challenge you to let go of the narrative you’ve been fed and actually start looking into what happened that fall of 2008 and how it came to be.