Obama Watch - Keeping an Eye on U.S. Leadership

[gunter]

If you dont want Terrorists, dont create them. Thats the simplest argument I can suggest. Dont threaten countries, dont bully nations smaller than your own. If someone holds a hand out for help then help them if you can, dont invade them and make the country adhere to YOUR standards of civilisation and democracy. We dont all want 7/11's and Subways on every street.

Nothing else really needs to said. Jingoists will never understand that people world over may consider that the US bases that surround them and their resources are perceived by them as an existential threat. Is it really so difficult to understand that? Or is there another consideration for guys like Ray that transcends that simple principle? Might it be that he and his ilk are only protecting their princely prerogatives and piggish consumption by maintaining the endless siege and occupation of the third world? Maybe he'd have been better advised to listen to Osama's justification for the attacks on the 'homeland' rather than listening to that moron George Bush. Osama's message is a very plain one that historically resonates with all peoples struggling under the jackboot of empire: "Yankee go home."

[Access Denied]

Terrorism: It Works®



For the hearing impaired…

Megadeth - Holy Wars...The Punishment Due

Brother will kill brother
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don't understand

Fools like me who cross the sea
And come to foreign lands
Ask the sheep for their beliefs
Do you kill on God's command?

A country that's divided
Surely will not stand
My past erased, no more disgrace
No foolish naive stand

The end is near, it's crystal clear
Part of the master plan
Don't look now to Israel
It might be your homelands
Holy wars

Up on my podium, as the
Know-it-all scholar
Down in my seat of judgement
Gavel's bang, uphold the law
Up on my soapbox, a leader
Out to change the world
Down in my pulpit as the holier-than-thou
Could-be-messenger of God

Wage the war on organized crime
Sneak attacks, rappel down the rocks
Behind the lines
Some people risk to employ me
Some people live to destroy me
Either way they die, they die

They killed my wife and my baby
With hopes to enslave me
First mistake, last mistake
Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants
Next mistake, no more mistakes

Fill the cracks in with judicial granite
Because I don't say it, don't mean I ain't thinking it
Next thing you know, they'll take my thoughts away
I know what I said now I must scream
Of the overdose and the lack of mercy killings
Mercy killings, mercy killings, killings, killings, killings
Next thing you know they'll take my thoughts away

[gunter]

Excellent. No need to count beans. It's a matter of principle in the end. Father Ray, are you hearing?

[jbondo]

It's funny how the liberal mind works.

[Chorlton]

It's funny how the liberal mind works.

But.....how would you know?

[gunter]

If sanity is an attribute of the liberal mind then I guess we're them.

[You Can Call Me Ray]

If sanity is an attribute of the liberal mind then I guess we're them.

It's not. Don't delude yourself. Go back to your idealist philofawzy.

I note you still have provided absolutely zero evidence to back your claim that all that needs be done is cut defense spending. I guess maybe I am going to start debating like you...with no facts and just my opinion.

Here is a little wake-up call for you Toon. I suggest you watch the whole thing, if you can muster the attention span. You will no doubt find joy in some of the things in here that point the blame on Republicans, and you will no doubt ignore the ones that make the Democrats culpable for what we are headed for. Inability to see and acknowledge the whole picture that BOTH parties effed us is not a sign of sanity, to be sure.



I always run such economic "gloom and doom" stories through one of my best friends, Doug Jones, who graduated with a Masters in Economics from University of Chicago (the nest of so many Nobel Laureates in Economics). Normally he can lay out points why such a "gloom and doom" scenario is not correct. He watched this video several times before answering me, and when he did his answer was "I cannot refute anything in this video. It is solid. And it is quite sobering."

Ray

[Chorlton]

The one thing that pisses me off about all the economic problems in the world is that the smug bastards who caused it are still sitting their with their nice pile of money, while the rest of us will have to suffer higher taxes etc to pay for their cockups.

[You Can Call Me Ray]

The one thing that pisses me off about all the economic problems in the world is that the smug bastards who caused it are still sitting their with their nice pile of money, while the rest of us will have to suffer higher taxes etc to pay for their cockups.

No worries, as we are slowly purging ourselves of them, for the time being. Several have decided the water is so hot, and their complicity so obvious, that they are not going to run for re-election (Christopher Dodd). Others think no one has noticed their complicity and so they continue to think they will be re-elected (Barney Frank). Based just on the public demeanor and the recent results of elections, these incumbents are in for a rude awakening. Still others who have made things worse with profligate spending, while we cannot get rid of them for a few more years, see the writing on the wall and will be essentially a lame duck by the end of this year.

However, if there is one truth you can count on it is this: There always have been crooks in the world, and no amount of idealistic hoping will ever make them completely go away. Sometimes governments even institutionalize the business of crookery (global warming and carbon credit scams). All honest people can do is remain vigilant, and perhaps at some point decide they will no longer fork-over their hard-earned cash to bail out the crooks.

Ray

[Chorlton]

However, if there is one truth you can count on it is this: There always have been crooks in the world, and no amount of idealistic hoping will ever make them completely go away. Sometimes governments even institutionalize the business of crookery (global warming and carbon credit scams). All honest people can do is remain vigilant, and perhaps at some point decide they will no longer fork-over their hard-earned cash to bail out the crooks.
Ray

I would suspect that having a devious slightly 'bent' view of monetary matters would be a prerequisite of being employed in the Financial sector. Its like being a UFO sceptic, you have to at one time have had a belief in them before the penny drops.
Those responsible for the situation in the UK were Bankers, the people running the BIG banks. In certain cases the Government had to nationalise those banks to protect investors but it was the Public Sector that created the problems in the UK. The Government for once, had little to do with it.
They were too busy filling their own pockets with expenses fiddles !

[You Can Call Me Ray]

... it is not looking good (for him).

Middle Class is Abandoning Obama

But when the president’s approval is separated by incomes groups, it is only the lowest income bracket recorded by Gallup—those who earn less than $2,000 per month—that gives Obama a majority approval rating, with 52 percent saying they approved of the job he is doing as president.

Perhaps his (fallacious) thinking is that once he gets done that the majority of Americans (who are remaining, because we know wealth will flee since they have the means to) will be in this "poor" category, and then by the nature of this poll's results, we will all love him as much as he loves himself!

Sadly though, as seen in so many liberal programs of the past, those who get harmed the most by such programs and policies are the very ones that the liberals claim they are trying to help!
Ray

[You Can Call Me Ray]

Lying about not using alternate names? Concealing the things he wrote during his well-known "socialist" days. The suspicion of SS fraud.

Ray

[Chorlton]

Interesting video Ray, some questions need to be asked but, surely, your CIA ir FBI or whatever would have done the background business on him before he became Monsieur le President?
Before his election, what I saw of him here in the UK was encouraging, but he seems a totally different man now he's in power.
Maybe that 'Manchurian Candidate' implant is working now?


However, I still support the basics of Socialism, and Im no Communist.

[gunter]

Screw it. He's essentially a kind and empathetic man. What more could we ask for to help mitigate the pain of the Bushist meat-grinder?

[You Can Call Me Ray]

Screw it. He's essentially a kind and empathetic man.

Who has no clue, nor experience, in leading. His idea of leadership is giving good teleprompter, and his naive and mistaken belief was that was all that was necessary to "lead the sheeple" to his wonderous new world of hope-n-change. Even the liberal-dem dopes in Europe have not bought his snake oil! That right there is EPIC FAIL. He is an empty suit.

What more could we ask for to help mitigate the pain of the Bushist meat-grinder?

Oh, I dunno.... how about this list as a start:

1) Keeping your promises of change, and especially transparency (he and his operators have failed in that one terribly).
2) Taking responsibility instead just blaming the other party/past adminisation (which is the very definition of NON-CHANGE in the political domain).
3) Actually being a "reach across the aisle" centrist, instead of just believing he is in his own head. (You do remember he was assessed as THE MOST LIBERAL member of the Senate, don't you?)
4) Revealing his OWN convictions (all those things he wrote in school that he is keeping in Al Gore's "lock box") and seeing if they will float with the American people, rather than just doing what the extreme left of his party demands (via Nancy and Harry).

This last one is the most telling, for as much as people disliked how Bush merely catered to the religious right of his party (and I did not like this about him either), Obama is doing the exact same, brain-dead thing with the looney left extreme of his own party. It is the pendulum swing that I have talked about many times in this thread, and 180 degree phase shifts are anything but good for a neutrally-stable system such as our political climate in this country. It promotes divergence, not convergence. And we see the exact same hypocrisy in Congress. Back when Dems were in the minority, all we heard from nails-on-the-board-screeching Nancy was how they were being treated unfairly, and how they would never do this to the Repubs if they were in control. Which we now have evidence that it was just more political lies, for they close-out Republican ideas (and the hope of centrist balance) at every opportunity. The mantra and talking points of the left have loved to say the Repubs have "no ideas", and this is patently false. The problem is that media rarely reports on all the motions brought by the minority party (no matter who is the majority), and the majority power bases their "no ideas" only on the motions that are carried, and never count the motions that are defeated (along party lines).

But then again, I would never expect for you to engage in a real, honest political dialectic (as much as you claim for that to be the center of your philosophy). No, for hypocrites like you, it is enough to simply "do the Bush Bash" dance, and ignore anything uncomfortable about the aholes you vote for.

Ray