Anybody Unpleasently Surprised?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
One thing, though, Aragorn:

I firmly believe that with ANY President or Congress…“Right” or “Left”…you would have seen similar amounts of money spent when faced with the same crisis.

I simply don’t think that ANY President would have taken a “Let 'em burn” policy.

Mufasa[/quote]

There were actually MORE Presidential candidates who WOULD have let them burn. It’s just that the media has people so fucking whipped into making a choice over only 2 people. Ron Paul would have let them burn, he was a primary candidate who made a stronger than expected showing in the republican primaries and was a write in for the general election about a million times. Chuck Baldwin would have let them burn, he was the Constitution party candidate. And Bob Barr would have most likley let them burn, he was the libertarian party candidate, though some suspected he was a wolf in sheeps clothing.

There is real and viable political solutions to almost all of the problems that face our country. And it would be so easy to change it. BUT BUT BUT the two party system needs to be abandoned with a speed which would blind Hermes himself. If libertarian minded people were elected into our governmental offices in the next election cycle, I’m not even talking about the presidency, just congress, we could see a huge break be thrown on this machine. I think with the increasing utilization of the internet as the main media source for individuals, HOPEFULLY, the power broker controlled networks will start to lose thier grip on what information people get. Once they lose thier grip on that, they will also lose thier grip on WHO we percieve we can vote for. I mean I can’t tell you how many people I talked to about Ron Paul during the primaries who were like, “yea he sounds great but he could never win so I don’t want to waste my vote”. LOL I mean who actually thinks this way unless they are told to. I mean it was so transparent because the “Republican” controlled fox instructed people to ignore him, AND the “Democrat” controlled CNN and MSNBC openly mocked his success and took underhanded jabs at him. Both parties knew his message would resonate with thier bases, and thier stop gap measures to keep people from fleeing thier party to support him was to run him down and ignore him whenever they could. Whatever, that is in the past now. What we have here is a clear truth. Both the Republicans, AND the Democrats are not fit to lead our country, Plan A with bush failed miserably, and plan B with Obama is just as bad if not worse, it’s time for plan C, not plan A again.

V

62

[quote]dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin. [/quote]
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.

63

[quote]waht wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin.
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.[/quote]

I disagree. Yes, in the US all the politics are generally shifed farther right than the conservative parties of Europe. I frankly would rather have it that way than the nonsense I see in the EU. Also, that is the way our country was founded…But I disagree that the Republican party is more authoritarian than the dems. We are seeing the proof as we speak. They are simply equally authoritarian in different ways–

the Reps are more authoritarian (currently, with recent leadership) on social issues. The dems are more socialistic on economic matters. They both love centralized power, they just prefer to apply it in different areas.

64

[quote]waht wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin.
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.[/quote]

Actually considering Obama had the MOST LIBERAL voting record of any of the 100 people in the senate while he was there, his election did bring a large shift in political thought to the Whitehouse. He would even be a large shift from a middle of the road democrat.

As for stances on abortion, on the scale you mention, it depends entirely on whether the infant is intact a person or not. If they are a person, protecting them would be the most libertarian thing to do. As for eugenics, I donâ??t see them as much of a separate issue to abortion, and Iâ??m not sure even what both parties stances on actual â??eugenicsâ?? is, but I canâ??t see them being any different.

I actually agree with you on the issue of homosexuality where the republicans are actually more politically (not socially) left on that issue.

As for global political climate, I like most Americans, donâ??t give a shit what Europe or Canada or whoever you are specifically talking about does or thinks about our ways, there is a reason you donâ??t get a vote. (although our presedent seems to be more friendly with hamas and chavez than the brits, Israel, or hundreds of thousands of protesting constituents).

We have shifted much farther and farther to the left over the years, just not quite as fast as places like Europe. We are however, catching up.

65

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Actually considering Obama had the MOST LIBERAL voting record of any of the 100 people in the senate while he was there, his election did bring a large shift in political thought to the Whitehouse. He would even be a large shift from a middle of the road democrat.
[/quote]
I’m not suggesting nothing would change, but radical changes, like taxing the rich as they are taxed in certain countries in Europe, won’t happen. Further more i think it’s ridiculous how the media portray’s Obama as being ‘far left’ or ‘socialist’. Everyone has left-wing or socialist tendencies but it’s nothing compared to real left wingers or socialists as they can be found elsewhere.

[quote]
As for global political climate, I like most Americans, donâ??t give a shit what Europe or Canada or whoever you are specifically talking about does or thinks about our ways, there is a reason you donâ??t get a vote. (although our presedent seems to be more friendly with hamas and chavez than the brits, Israel, or hundreds of thousands of protesting constituents).[/quote]
Again, i’m not judging, i’m only seeing it from a global perspective.

I think the political climate in the US shifted leftward during the last months of 2008 with all it’s bailouts.

66

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
<<< And I certainly won’t blame all the Government’s current problems on Obama. >>>[/quote]

I don’t blame any of our current problems on Obama. I blame them on the ideology he represents and that has been increasingly practiced to varying degrees by both parties, but more so by the Democrats.

In the end the real blame rests with the disturbingly myopic voting (and non voting) public that has come to believe that the United States is an innately eternal country that will forge on forever just because they live there.

The statist policies of this present power base are exactly what has diminished or doomed every other society in which they’ve been tried.

Try this out. After you read this go out and buy a 5 million dollar mansion somewhere, 7 Rolls Royces, a few top end RV’s and a showroom full of the best most expensive electronics you can find.

Don’t let the fact that you can’t afford it bother you my friend. Just charge it and if that doesn’t cover everything by god print your own money. Why does that have to sound unethical, irresponsible and suicidal, not to mention IMPOSSIBLE for you, but is somehow salvation for the nation?

67

[quote]waht wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin.
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.[/quote]

you don’t even know you right from your left.

68

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
waht wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin.
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.

I disagree. Yes, in the US all the politics are generally shifed farther right than the conservative parties of Europe. I frankly would rather have it that way than the nonsense I see in the EU. Also, that is the way our country was founded…But I disagree that the Republican party is more authoritarian than the dems. We are seeing the proof as we speak. They are simply equally authoritarian in different ways–

the Reps are more authoritarian (currently, with recent leadership) on social issues. The dems are more socialistic on economic matters. They both love centralized power, they just prefer to apply it in different areas.
[/quote]

You guys both need to look up the meaning of autoritarianism.

69

[quote]dhickey wrote:
waht wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Obama and his cronies are on a whole nother level. They are not different sides of the same coin.
Nonsense, the Republican and Democratic party of the United States differ very little compared to all other parties on this world. Both are considered right wing, with the Republican being a little bit more right wing than the Democratic party. Opinion differences on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia make the Republican party somewhat more authoritarianistic (on the libertarian-authoritarian scale) than the Democratic party. Ralph Nader would be a real difference from both the Democratic and Republican party.

Ofcourse not judging anyone or anything. It’s just that while in the US the differences might seem huge, from a global perspective the differences seem less big.

you don’t even know you right from your left.
[/quote]
Damnnn, good argument.

70

Time to bump this

71

I didn’t vote for him, but I would’ve guessed he’d be more rational center-left.

This latest barrage of literally childish, amateurish bullshit about (a.) wanting to impose some inane tax on the banks – which by the way have ALREADY paid back all the TARP money that was given to them (UNLIKE Fannie, Freddie and the auto companies) – which is TRANSPARENTLY being done purely to try to score populist political points, all the while sending the markets into a frenzy of uncertainty, is now making me officially FUCKING LIVID.

Now he just came out yesterday and made ANOTHER asinine proclamation about wanting to stop banks from engaging in proprietary trading (?). HELLO!! (a.) It’s where they make most of their money at present. (b.) Prop trading isn’t what caused the damn financial crisis – underwriting hocus-pocus mortgages with nothing solid underlying them was the fucking problem!

I’m in the midst of having gone out on my own, quit my job (in mid-2008) and am trying to start my own damn business, and this idiot could literally, single-handedly kibosh my entire operation. If the savings and investments off of which I’m living and finance my venture continue to dwindle because he causes the entire world to lose confidence in the state of the U.S. financial markets as a place to invest . . . yeah, I’ll be fucking furious. If what he proposed passes, taxes (and bank fees!!) of all kinds will rocket up, the dollar will plummet, unemployment will continue to drag, the economy will not have a chance to improve because the government won’t get out of its way, banks DEFINITELY won’t start lending more because when you whip them and tax them and penalize them, well . . . they hold onto more of what they can! They don’t free up more capital and suddently become more friendly!

I never thought he was a bad guy on a personal level, but I now officially have to say: This guy’s a fucking idiot.

Hopefully none of what he’s proposing gains ANY traction.

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Time to bump this[/quote]

72

This is what makes me mad, in light of what Damici wrote, was that when you increase fees on banks and companies, they trickle down to the consumer.

73

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I’m honestly asking this question. I’m not even picking a fight though it will probably end up there, not that that’s bad, but it will.

Is there anybody, now that we see clearly before our eyes where our country is going with the far left wing of the Dem power structure in place, who wonders if some of us raving lunatics on the right might have been a bit more justified in our concerns than they did during the campaign?

This is as sober and sincere a question as anybody could ever be asked.

I’ve had some customers, one in particular who is a black woman probably in her 50’s who owns a small interior design business, that got me thinking about this.

She still has all her Obama/change paraphernalia on and in her house. He was on her TV while I was working on her computer last week. I’ve gotten to know her a bit in the last year and a half, but we’ve never talked politics at all.

She stood there watching for a few minutes and just simply said something like “I don’t know how much I like all this”.

She came over and sat next to me and I said “well, what they’re talking about certainly isn’t what made the United States the United States”. She looked at me for about 30 seconds with a sort of half blank half dismayed stare on her face. I went back to working on her machine.

She started talking. What began as a this what I thought when I voted for him picture of regurgitated hope and change ended up being a mildly angry catalog of big government fantasy and intrusion I could have said myself. The more she talked the edgier her voice became. After a pause at the end she says “How is this gonna help anybody but them?”

I glanced at her with a raised eyebrow “I know what you mean” look on my face, but didn’t say anything.

She has to represent at least some other people who are beginning to suffer from “what have we done” syndrome.
[/quote]

Well, I certainly know what you mean. At the end of a single year Obamas main tasks have been to repair the economy and restructure and revamp healthcare. Certainly the former task was a necessary aspect of his job, but taking on healthcare in addition to that when so many Americans were fearful for their money was a big gamble.

From an economic standpoint this country has appeared to make, at best, modest improvements. Big business is doing better, but wasn’t it the failures naturally entwined with big business that got us into problems in the first place? The old philosophy that some companies are too big to fail was shown to be far from the truth. What we should have realized is that the exact opposite is true: local businesses with a local perspective are simply too small too fail and also reveal the best products in many industries. We should have used this painfully apparent knowledge to propel us into a new direction for America.

Regrettably, there remain many lost jobs in America. Although a rational man with a healthy perspective has to see that Obama really hasn’t lost many at all relatively speaking. He has at least stopped jobs from being lost, and that’s a start.

What we’ve seen from the battle for changed healthcare in this country is a number of things: America is painfully divided by philosophy to the point of lack of progress, and that the congressman we’ve entrusted with creating our laws are ill equipped to write them. For the last year congress has been divided by a growing resentment between the right and the left, and has been mired in a thick soup of questions and controversy. In this mess, the fundamental questions that divide us as a country still remain: do all people deserve a right to health, and just how far should a government stretch its hands into peoples lives. These questions are still awaiting responsible answers, if only we knew about responsibility in this country. Indeed, many of the answers we need are in the governing bodies of other countries who have written successful healthcare policies already, our congressman need to start looking around.

All in all, Obama has shown that he’s committed to serious issues right or wrong. In the coming year we will likely see major changes in both of these issues. Stay tuned a little while linger to find out just how right or wrong he is.

75

[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
<<< Stay tuned a little while linger to find out just how right or wrong he is.
[/quote]

I knew how wrong he was hours after his convention speech in Boston in 2004.

76

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
This is what makes me mad, in light of what Damici wrote, was that when you increase fees on banks and companies, they trickle down to the consumer. [/quote]
he’s not an idiot. he knows this. it’s a way of taxing people without them knowing you are taxing them. most of the people that voted for him will gobble this shit up.

77

[quote]Damici wrote:
I didn’t vote for him, but I would’ve guessed he’d be more rational center-left.

This latest barrage of literally childish, amateurish bullshit about (a.) wanting to impose some inane tax on the banks – which by the way have ALREADY paid back all the TARP money that was given to them (UNLIKE Fannie, Freddie and the auto companies) – which is TRANSPARENTLY being done purely to try to score populist political points, all the while sending the markets into a frenzy of uncertainty, is now making me officially FUCKING LIVID.

Now he just came out yesterday and made ANOTHER asinine proclamation about wanting to stop banks from engaging in proprietary trading (?). HELLO!! (a.) It’s where they make most of their money at present. (b.) Prop trading isn’t what caused the damn financial crisis – underwriting hocus-pocus mortgages with nothing solid underlying them was the fucking problem!

I’m in the midst of having gone out on my own, quit my job (in mid-2008) and am trying to start my own damn business, and this idiot could literally, single-handedly kibosh my entire operation. If the savings and investments off of which I’m living and finance my venture continue to dwindle because he causes the entire world to lose confidence in the state of the U.S. financial markets as a place to invest . . . yeah, I’ll be fucking furious. If what he proposed passes, taxes (and bank fees!!) of all kinds will rocket up, the dollar will plummet, unemployment will continue to drag, the economy will not have a chance to improve because the government won’t get out of its way, banks DEFINITELY won’t start lending more because when you whip them and tax them and penalize them, well . . . they hold onto more of what they can! They don’t free up more capital and suddently become more friendly!

I never thought he was a bad guy on a personal level, but I now officially have to say: This guy’s a fucking idiot.

Hopefully none of what he’s proposing gains ANY traction.

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Time to bump this[/quote]
[/quote]

Having recently opened my own business, I can relate to your concerns.

And BTW, where have you been hiding out? You haven’t posted in the PWI forum in a while.

78

Just randomly surfed in but I’ll give this a shot.

For one thing, the issue is not left wing vs. right wing the way most people say it is. Ask anyone and they are all over the map on this.

The issue is authoritarian vs. liberal (in the original sense).

Authoritarian thinking is mostly manifested today in a bureaucratic mentality, where there is no appeal, no transparency and not much anyone can do about bad decisions short of just sabotaging the system or avoiding it. It is immaterial if the underlying political theory is right or left leaning. Rule by decree does not work and I suspect it will work even less so as technology makes communication easier.

Liberal thinking – and we are back to “classical Liberalism” does not forbid governmental control, far from it. It does prohibit it the way it is being done now. For instance, my gripe with the bailout was not the bailout itself, but that the way each supporter essentially agreed to vote in favor of it if s/he got their own pork barrel project included.

Nobody had any idea what the full scope of it would be and there was nothing even remotely like a good public understanding. A more palatable way to do this would have been to have the Fed buy stock in the affected companies and with a controlling share, steered the companies in a better direction. (I’m not saying this is the only solution, just giving an example of a different way to do it.)

In other words, a more devolved, modular approach that would allow for public re-assessment. Said another way, private citizens and organizations should be permitted to do what they can. Public institutions may intervene only as needed and in a distributed way (so the way powers are distributed in the US between Fed, State, city, county &c.) No massive all power Federal institutions should be running anything without seriously considering what happens.

As for rights taken away, nothing so dramatic has happened nor is it likely to. That’s just goofy. What is apt to happen is that people will find themselves highly regulated and be left with no options. Healthcare in the old Soviet Union was a good example of how that can go awry. Doctors were so heavily regulated that most of their patient time was spent filling out paperwork.

Since their fees were restricted, a thriving black market in medical care arose and the poor got frequently awful care in practical terms. While free and open on paper, the life expectancy was much lower then in the West. The practical results were anything but salubrious…

The elemental mistake most people make is to assume that since something ought to be done, a failure to agree on a plan of action means the country is broken and we should “fix” it. No, no and no. This is the safeguard to prevent abuse by a minority. The scope of democracy is what we can all agree on. If we can’t agree on it, then it is probably because the decision is so complex that there is no solution that works.

As for your last few points on how were we better off in 1955 or 1700 than now, that is rubbish. In 1955 we had 50% of the world’s economy in our back pocket because, yet again, Europe decided to blow itself to bits.

The world would be very different now if, say, the EU (forced upon them by those nasty Americans in the much reviled “Pax Americana” post WW II, I might add) had come into existence in 1912. The US would not be the major world power it is and we’d still be dealing with French and British colonies all over the place. Do you realize that the US had only something like 20,000 men at arms at the start of WW I? Nobody thought a standing army was really worth it.

In 1700 we were a backwater in the British Empire. What was so great about that? Mostly people who talk about these times in glowing terms just have a mawkish nostalgia for something that never was. What they consistently miss is that the US has managed to have a continuously functional government that has effected some remarkable social change.

We have Obama, more women than men are in the workforce now and many of the most pressing social issues, while far from solved, are not acute and have improved over the last several decades. This is in large part due to the way the system works.

Conservatism can be summed up easily in two thoughts

#1 If you think it is broken, then you must convince everyone of that before we do anything. Otherwise

#2 If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And as always, I might just be full of shit…

– jj

79

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
<<< Stay tuned a little while linger to find out just how right or wrong he is.
[/quote]

I knew how wrong he was hours after his convention speech in Boston in 2004.[/quote]

Why exactly?

80

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
…All in all, Obama has shown that he’s committed to serious issues right or wrong. In the coming year we will likely see major changes in both of these issues. Stay tuned a little while linger to find out just how right or wrong he is.
[/quote]

Surely you won’t mind if examine how wrong he’s been so far and use that as a tool in our prognostication efforts, will you?[/quote]

Only if you’re willing to read my opinion without suggesting to isolate me on a desert island with Oprah.