Obama General Discussion II

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
Canadiens1131 said:
And this is you over-reacting to an over-reaction about a bad cartoon. You're part of the problem, buddy boy :)

Does it ever get deafeningly loud in the bile-filled echo chamber you live in?
Click to expand...

Wow. You're really losing me.

How am I over-reacting? There are people in this thread, posters on numerous left-wing websites and personalities in the MSM calling this cartoon racist, which it clearly is not. You have Larry O'Donnell (not that anyone listens to him) devoting 7 minutes to this last night in a self-righteous monologue about how the thing is racist and evil and somehow mean because they're drawn cartoon-like. I don't recall people getting this upset over a cartoon when Bush was president, and the vile way he was depicted. I don't recall the recent calls for the lynching of Justice Thomas or the recent attack on Herman Cain as a "monkey" and other black conservatives simply as "Uncle Toms" and "being subservient to white masters" (a notion about which people in this very forum have said is accurate) as being denounced as forcefully as a damn cartoon. Where were you?

This is the 2012 strategy. No, this is the left. A caricature of the Obamas- racist. O'Reilly's interview- racist, says Bill Maher. Truly racist attacks on black conservatives- wait, what?

But thanks for pointing out my over-reaction, buddy boy. :wave:
 
2861U2 said:
There are people in this thread, posters on numerous left-wing websites and personalities in the MSM calling this cartoon racist, which it clearly is not. You have Larry O'Donnell (not that anyone listens to him) devoting 7 minutes to this last night in a self-righteous monologue about how the thing is racist and evil and somehow mean because they're drawn cartoon-like.
Click to expand...



you know, i don't watch much Fox News. perhaps you, too, should cut down on media that makes you angry? it's the only political card you ever play. what about actual issues?

Obama has clearly stood above the fray in matters like this, and since you'd like to see him defeated in 2012, why don't you focus on actual political arguments to make the case for why he should be defeated?
 
I watched MSNBC last night and O'Donnell had this whole segment inditing 'The Right" using this one stupid cartoon.

You had one odd ball cartoonist that drew this, and some guy that published it.

I don't see how this has anything more to do with anyone more than those two people and/or the people that choose to join them and defend it.
 
yolland said:
That she's an effective attack dog, "a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America," as McCain gloated on FOX. That's her real attraction, not her uterus. A culture warrior's attack dog. She's used by them and she also uses them. Grrrly-grrrl power, it's why Paglia slobbers all over her.
Click to expand...



"I am still thinking of leading this country. I am still thinking about it. I haven't made up my mind. We hired a chief of staff because Todd is getting tired of doing it for me."

When asked who else she might envision at the top of the GOP ticket Palin responded, "No one is more qualified to multi-tasking and doing all the things you need to do as a President than a woman."

Palin talks 2012, mocks Michelle Obama – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs
Click to expand...


;)
 
After two years of Obama...

January 2009

TODAY

% chg

Source

Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S.

$1.83

$3.104

69.6%

1

Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)

$43.48

$99.02

127.7%

2

Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)

$38.74

$91.38

135.9%

2

Gold: London (per troy oz.)

$853.25

$1,369.50

60.5%

2

Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL

$3.56

$6.33

78.1%

2

Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL

$9.66

$13.75

42.3%

2

Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. fob

$13.37

$35.39

164.7%

2

Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall

7.6%

9.4%

23.7%

3

Unemployment rate, blacks

12.6%

15.8%

25.4%

3

Number of unemployed

11,616,000

14,485,000

24.7%

3

Number of fed. employees, ex. military (curr = 12/10 prelim)

2,779,000

2,840,000

2.2%

3

Real median household income (2008 v 2009)

$50,112

$49,777

-0.7%

4

Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10)

31,983,716

43,200,878

35.1%

5

Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10)

7,526,598

9,193,838

22.2%

6

Number of long-term unemployed

2,600,000

6,400,000

146.2%

3

Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009)

13.2%

14.3%

8.3%

4

People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009)

39,800,000

43,600,000

9.5%

4

U.S. rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings

5

9

n/a

10

Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10)

29.9

23.5

-21.4%

11

Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date)

140

164

17.1%

12

U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate

89.76

82.03

-8.6%

2

U.S. money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)

1,575.1

1,865.7

18.4%

13

U.S. money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)

8,310.9

8,852.3

6.5%

13

National debt, in trillions

$10.627

$14.052

32.2%

14


Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history. Over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane. 27 times faster, it would be doing 7,555 MPH!

Sources:
(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. of Labor; (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC; (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury




A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization, comparing the current (pre-Obamacare) situation in the US to nationalized healthcare in England and Canada.

Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%

Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%

Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%

Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%

Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18

Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%



Check this last set of statistics!!

The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is?a real-life business, not a government job. Here are the percentages.

T. Roosevelt..........38%
Taft.......................40%
Wilson .................52%
Harding..................49%
Coolidge.............. 48%
Hoover.................42%
F. Roosevelt.........50%
Truman.................50%
Eisenhower............57%
Kennedy...............30%
Johnson................47%
Nixon.....................53%
Ford......................42%
Carter.....................32%
Reagan..................56%
GH Bush............... 51%
Clinton .................39%
GW Bush................55%

And the winner is:

Obama............... 8%


This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business!

That's right! Only eight percent---the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what's best for GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, and you and me?

How can the president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he's never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And when it's the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers? They've spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." They should have been in an employment line.
 
feedthetree said:
They've spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." They should have been in an employment line.
Click to expand...
You slipped up there and lost your composure, boss.

That, and the statistics from a new President taking over at the exact moment the economy was bottoming out.

That, and a random copypaste with no links to sources means this may be a chain email your boss forwarded you.
 
actually, I didn't write it, someone posted it on Facebook and I put it on here for comments.
What I find ridiculous is that we are supposed to actually believe in Jan 09 gas was only at $1.83? Is that in pesos? Because I missed that memo. It was over $3 per gallon, and my memory is not one to argue with.

And FUNNY how all the democrat presidents are under 50%, every single one of them.


I just wonder... do the Republicans on this site believe this? Or do they have brains and actually do research before opening their mouths (or their blogs) to obviously biased bullshit? and more importantly, just because someone spews out numbers and stats, does it make it more legit?
 
is it me, or is it people go crazy hating on politicians for no reason?


ONE person cannot control ALL of this. Why blame just him? :confused:
 
feedthetree said:
This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business!

That's right! Only eight percent---the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what's best for GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, and you and me?
Click to expand...
it also means they're less likely to be bought.
 
As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. "The betrayal that this represents by Obama to everybody is just — we're not ready to believe it," says Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. "He's really fucking us over like that? Really? That's really a JP Morgan guy, really?"

Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses.

So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class.
Click to expand...

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics
 
"What I know is troubling enough," Huckabee said of the president. "And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American...If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."
Click to expand...
Wow, total dog whistle to a certain type of over-50 voter. Wow.

Surprised this came from Huckabee, to be honest.
 
via ABC:
Hogan Gidley, the director of Huckabee's political action committee, sought to clarify the former governor's remarks on Tuesday: “Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia," Gidley told ABC News. "When the Governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the President’s place of birth--the Governor believes the President was born in Hawaii. The Governor would however like to know more about where President Obama’s liberal policies come from and what else the President plans to do to this country--as do most Americans.”
Click to expand...
Bullshit. Anyone knowledgeable enough to connect Kenya, the Mau Mau and British imperialism didn't "simply misspeak" in constructing an extended reference like that.
 
yolland said:
Wow, total dog whistle to a certain type of over-50 voter. Wow.

Surprised this came from Huckabee, to be honest.
Click to expand...

As am I, a bit, considering he said in a recent interview that he didn't believe that and thought those who believed it were "misguided", so to speak.

I'm dead serious, can we PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE tell anyone repeating this inane crap to just shut the hell up already?

Angela
 
Of course it was a calculated "misspeak", but it just goes to show how even the GOP presidential runners are aware of how paranoid and misinformed a big portion of their base is.
 
Mike Huckabee truly, properly repulses me, but you're right, the quote and the clarification say far more about what he assumes of his base than anything about himself.
 
Moonlit_Angel said:
As am I, a bit, considering he said in a recent interview that he didn't believe that and thought those who believed it were "misguided", so to speak.
Click to expand...
What he'd called "misguided" was the case that Obama was born abroad and thus ineligible to become POTUS--so yesterday's statement doesn't necessarily contradict that position. But, for Americans who A) are old enough to remember the 60s and B) were keenly aware of race politics during that time, any mention of "Mau Mau" would instantly trigger a series of associations. Racist 1950s British popular films and novels about savage, bloodthirsty Mau Mau slaying innocent Anglo settlers (the Mau Mau's victims were in fact overwhelmingly fellow Africans) trickled down to the US, where both white supremacists and black nationalists adopted the Mau Mau as a rhetorical symbol. In the former case, this was to fan paranoia about violent Negro mass revenge, perhaps with Soviet backing--the FBI's COINTELPRO project often referenced the threat of an "American Mau Mau," and the US-Kenya student exchange program which brought Obama's father here was an Eisenhower Administration attempt to counter Soviet propaganda that the US was the true power behind British colonialism in Africa (just don't let them see the South!). In the latter case, the "Mau Mau" image was embraced as a swaggering, nose-thumbing show of defiance at the white establishment--Malcolm X proclaimed a "Mau Mau in Harlem," and a notorious self-styled black 'paramilitary' group of the day was "The Mau Mau Society."

Of course, Americans under 40 don't remember any of this, and unless they're history majors will almost certainly draw a total blank at any mention of "Mau Mau," let alone what a Kenyan anticolonial uprising in the 50s has to do with President Obama's policy platform. So he's definitely aiming for a specific audience here. But the idea that he only "accidentally" cited this whole string of interrelated events which just happen to have strong resonance for US racial politics at the height of their turbulence--bullshit.
 
Last edited:
yolland said:
Of course, Americans under 40 don't remember any of this, and unless they're history majors will almost certainly draw a total blank at any mention of "Mau Mau," let alone what a Kenyan anticolonial uprising in the 50s has to do with President Obama's policy platform. So he's definitely aiming for a specific audience here.
Click to expand...

Which is funny, because while older people might be familiar with the history you cited there, his audience who believes such claims about Obama probably are also the type who aren't exactly interested in delving deeper into such historical stories, shall we say.

Fascinating stuff there. That is new to me, we never really talked about that in school. If ever the day comes when I wake up and all this racial bullshit is no more, I will truly believe I'm in heaven.

Angela
 
Didn't Dinesh D'Souza write a book saying Obama has that anti-colonialism attitude towards Europe, and that explains his "communist" beliefs?

Certainly sounds like Huckabee is trying to appeal to the angry white population, but he's just making an ass out of himself in the process.
 
^ Yes, he wrote a book called The Roots of Obama's Rage (Glenn Beck loved it), which bypasses boring old Obama-as-tax-and-spend-liberal interpretations in favor of the more exotic proposal that Obama is obsessed with resurrecting his long-lost father's failed struggle against the Evil White Man and his predatory ways, which the son shall win by destroying his own country from within. I suppose it's possible that's where Huckabee is drawing this from (well, not the 'grew up in' Kenya part), although D'Souza's standing in the conservative world took a nosedive several years back once he started arguing the position--which he still does--that Islamist hostility to the US is caused by our own culture's prominent sexual immodesty, which conservatives should therefore focus on curbing. Since then, mainstream conservative pundits have largely relegated him to the 'interesting, but loony' bin.

Back when the book came out, I remember there was a hilarious parody of it by another Indian-American (D'Souza comes from Mumbai) making the rounds, where the author basically did to D'Souza exactly what D'Souza did to Obama--he took known facts about D'Souza's family and caste background, then used those to create a boneheadedly deterministic portrait of D'Souza as a snooty Lusophone Brahmin driven by rage at the loss of his folk's privileged place in colonial India to the lower-caste Hindu/Muslim rabble empowered by the independent Indian state.
 
Last edited:
Oh, for fuck's sake...:doh:.

First off, Huckabee says, "I never said he was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii, where he claims to have been born." How about you just say, "other than Hawaii, where he was born"? And, "I never said he wasn't born here, I just think he's anti-American"-oh, well, my apologies, then, 'cause that's SO much better!

Second, all that mocking of the journalists for "getting it wrong", well, the overall sentiment that you're insinuating things that aren't true is right. And if you're tired of those journalists who "can't read" getting your quotes about this issue "wrong", here's a thought: next time somebody asks you if you believe Obama was born somewhere other than the U.S., how about just not responding at all? Or telling them to ask another, more pertinent question? Or how about just saying, "He was born in the United States." and leaving it at that?

Third, I'm confused as to how his father's supposed views of the British mean that Obama is anti-American (and my family didn't go to rotary club meetings, either! Gasp! Guess we're not completely "true Americans"! WTF?).

The fact that people who think like this breed frightens me.

Angela
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Headache in a Suitcase
3 Irishmen and a Dutchman Walk Into A Sphere - General Discussion Thread Part III
51 52 53
Replies
2K
Views
63K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
O
Better late than never “they” say…
Replies
1
Views
275
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
Reggie Thee Dog
Are we NOT discussing the Dolby Atmos Mix of Achtung Baby?
Replies
13
Views
1K
count rushmore
count rushmore
Janet H
  • Sticky
Forum Update - We're back! Ask your questions here.
2
Replies
36
Views
2K
Popmartijn
Popmartijn
C
Hello Hello... Hola!
Replies
1
Views
647
prbiker15
prbiker15

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom