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alarmingrick wrote:

biccat wrote:People still support Obama, despite the fact that he's been a miserable failure at just about every aspect of his life.

That's what secretly makes me laugh about you folks so hard. He can't be a failure as President. It has to be every aspect of his life!

He's a failure as a President, which is the only aspect I care about.

His wife is pretty good looking and he apparently knows enough to father two beautiful children. So I guess he deserves credit for that.

Good job Barry, you can have sex.

I guess he's pretty good at golfing too. He at least does it a lot. It's hard not to be good when you play 30 rounds a year.

alarmingrick wrote:

biccat wrote:

mattyrm wrote: They secretly love her. She may be an absolute total utter feth wit, but she proper loves her some Jesus, and that's enough.
Just look at biccat sticking up for her..

People still support Obama, despite the fact that he's been a miserable failure at just about every aspect of his life.

That's what secretly makes me laugh about you folks so hard. He can't be a failure as President. It has to be every aspect of his life!

When one encounters a person with whom one has such massive and numerous differences of opinion about the world, it's often challenging to try to figure out how to bridge that gap and have a useful exchange of ideas. At some points the differences of worldview are so fundamental that a person wonders if he or the other guys is crazy, or deliberately sabotaging their own ability to process and understand the world. Comments like this are always a nice self-satisfying reassurance, but are still tragic.

biccat wrote:
However, Libya and Egypt are yet to-be-determined and his inaction in Syria (which is forgivable only if you ignore the reasoning that led to intervention in Libya) is a problem.

This speaks to how deeply ignorant of foreign policy you truly are.

Committing to Syria militarily would have been a disaster. One, Assad has the explicit support of the military, Gaddafi did not. Two, any significant crisis in Syria directly threatens Israel (note our position regarding Egypt). Three, there was no significant, international support for intervention in Syria.

biccat wrote:
Further, his handling of Iran and Pakistan has been pretty damn poor.

I think he's done quite well with Iran in maintaining a status quo position that implicitly favors the US. He's also done fairly well with Pakistan for essentially the same reason.

biccat wrote:
His biggest successes will be expansion of the air war into Pakistan and ousting Ghadaffi. His biggest failures are pissing off Pakistan, Russia, Iran, and Israel.

You cannot claim pissing of Pakistan as a failure, while also counting expanding the air war into Pakistan as a success (which was a continuation of Bush policy). They're intimately linked, and if one is a failure, then they are both failures.

Honestly, your post, along with several others you have made in this thread, reads as little more than an emotional screed.

biccat wrote:

alarmingrick wrote:

biccat wrote:People still support Obama, despite the fact that he's been a miserable failure at just about every aspect of his life.

That's what secretly makes me laugh about you folks so hard. He can't be a failure as President. It has to be every aspect of his life!

He's a failure as a President, which is the only aspect I care about.

His wife is pretty good looking and he apparently knows enough to father two beautiful children. So I guess he deserves credit for that.

Good job Barry, you can have sex.

I guess he's pretty good at golfing too. He at least does it a lot. It's hard not to be good when you play 30 rounds a year.

Is it racism that would cause a person to focus on sex and sports as his only achievements? To disregard his academic and electoral successes? I can't figure it out. How about your choice to ignore and fail to engage every post Melissia's made in the last 24hrs enumerating and listing his accomplishments as President? What's the meaning behind that?

And what is it that causes you to keep making this remark about his time off, when this was just discussed and a) it was pointed out that Presidential "vacation" time is substiantially spent working anyway, and b) the numbers for his time away from the office are not particularly high?

Mannahnin wrote:How about your choice to ignore and fail to engage every post Melissia's made in the last 24hrs enumerating and listing his accomplishments as President? What's the meaning behind that?

I believe the word is "ideologue".


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biccat wrote:
And honestly, I don't like Palin because of her religious beliefs, her post-election activities have shown that she's a pretty smart and savvy woman. You may disagree, but then you're apparently predisposed to hate her. 'Cause she's a Republican ya know.

Have you seen her approval rating? A savvy woman doesn't tank while running on the flavor of the month ticket.

I guess you could blame that on her being a Republican, but that's roughly equivalent to claiming people don't like Obama because they're big old racist meanies; especially considering that the current climate favors many of the values Republicans (Palin in particular) espouse.

With all due respect to American posters, they wouldn't know socialism if it crept up behind them and kicked them up the backside! Obama is not, and never will be a socialist.

Biccat makes some fair points, but whenever you see the Republican grass roots on the media, read about them in the media, or read the political textbooks, they always come across as a strange bunch. Maybe I'm confusing them with Tea Party members and You could rightly say that the media can often distort these people, but I talked to a few Republicans/Tea party voters whilst in America, and thus I draw the following conclusions about them based on my own experience:

1) Republicans love freedom more than anything, as long as nobody is infringing on their freedom. They're not too bothered about anybody else's freedom.
2) They hate taxes, which is fair enough, I'm none to fussy about taxes myself, but why should billionaires be exempt from taxes.
3) They're against big government, government is not the answer etc etc Yet they're quite happy to see government grow at an astronomical rate if it's in the name of national security.
There are more I could write, but I can't be bothered

In the interests of fairness, I'll say that the Democrats are just as much as a rabble as their opponents. I mean, John Kerry losing the argument with GWB over who had the best war record!! Al Bore!!! Still, things are just as bad in the UK.

As always in these types of debate I'll finish by saying that ordinary Americans are some of the most honest and friendliest people I've had the pleasure of meeting, but they always end up electing bad leaders.

i love how everyone knows who they don't want to win but no one actually knows who they want to win.

I want Obama to win, because he's at least being honest and trying to fulfill more than half of his campaign promises.

Can't exactly say the same things about the republican candidates, whom are almost all either extremist right wing nutjobs or they're flip-flopping in to appearing like them and making promises they won't keep to gain their votes.

*mutters something angry about hoping Perry loses his governorship because of this*

biccat wrote:

mattyrm wrote: Mate, you called me a socialist about 6 months back, now your saying I hate Republicans, do you only read what I type directly at you?!

No, I stand by my position that you like certain socialist policies. Because you do. I'm not sure why you keep trying to deny it.

I dislike epic multi-quote adventures but I really have to ask... like what? What do I support that is socialist. Im curious because I think that what you define as socialist is pretty far from what I do.

biccat wrote: And yet you were happy to have Obama win rather than have "the moose machine gunner with cerebral palsy" as vice president. A position that carries with it somewhere between 0 and lim 0 actual authority.

Yes because I merely dislike Obama, and I utterly loathe Palin. Plus, JM was in his seventies, if he snuffed it... it really doesn't bear thinking about. Hokey hockey mom who doesn't know her arse from her elbow and thinks that being able to see Russia from Alaska counts as "foreign policy experience" is suddenly face to face with Putin?

gak, ive got google earth. I should be in charge of the whole world!

biccat wrote: Well, no, that's not entirely true. I do know why you don't. It's because you're a liberal, and you support liberal politicians.

So, the bloke who prefers the US healthcare system to the UK one, heartily supports capital punishment, thinks we should force 90% of disabled people into work, cap jobless wellfare at 6 months, not pay for students university fees, cut public sector pay and gleefully supports bombing the gak out of almost everyone, especially Palestinians is a liberal...

Its the first time I have ever been called that. In a nutshell the core of your party is seriously fethed up if they class people like me as a liberal.

Can you not be a Republican if you dont agree with every single thing that Pat Robertson says?

Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases, that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it, that the 12m illegal immigrants, even those who have lived in America for decades, must all be sent home; that the 46m people who lack health insurance have only themselves to blame; that global warming is a conspiracy; that any form of gun control is unconstitutional; that any form of tax increase must be vetoed, even if the increase is only the cancelling of an expensive and market-distorting perk; that Israel can do no wrong and the “so-called Palestinians”, to use Mr Gingrich’s term, can do no right; that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and others whose names you do not have to remember should be abolished.

biccat wrote: I'm not sure what's so objectionable about these positions.

So that's a no then eh?

biccat wrote:
People still support Obama, despite the fact that he's been a miserable failure at just about every aspect of his life.

Ignoring the plain hyperbole, its irrelevant if people still support Obama, even if he is a failure, because people do not support Palin. That simple fact, that people do not support Palin, is all that matters when considering whether or not she harmed the McCain campaign, especially given that significant evidence supports the notion that she did.

You're simply making excuses in order to avoid saying "The extremely conservative Sarah Palin had a negative impact on John McCain's 2008 Presidential campaign." I suspect this is because you don't want to internalize the concept that extreme conservatism is not well received by many Americans.

mattyrm wrote:In a nutshell the core of your party is seriously fethed up if they class people like me as a liberal.

They are.

There is very little middle ground in the party, it's a lot of extremists trying to control the lives of everyone else in the country to fit their skewed worldview. And because of the way the primaries work, they have a LOT of control over the party right now, to everyone's detriment.

dogma wrote: I suspect this is because you don't want to internalize the concept that extreme conservatism is not well received by many Americans.

OFT.

Bic is proving right here and now why the Republicans are fethed next presidential election even though Obama is clearly and obviously beatable.

There are about 50 million Americans who would find the idea of being called a "liberal" as hilarious as it is ridiculous and would happily vote Republican.

And it's not going to happen.

biccat wrote:
I'm not sure what's so objectionable about these positions. They're simply the opposite of left-wing positions.

Well, applying my many years experience in political analysis I, unlike laymen, can clearly discern that the issue in question is right-wing positions are in opposition to left-wing positions, and that left-wing people object to things that oppose them.

The issue is, of course, more complicated than that, but still one that's very easy to illustrate if one is willing to take the time (I'm not). Indeed, I'm sure Google could very easily point you to hundreds, or thousands, of pages written as to why the positions expressed by Pat Robertson are objectionable. If that volume of information cannot present to you a reason according to which someone might consider a particular Robertson position objectionable, then you simply aren't very bright.

That being said, this statement biccat has made is rather iconic in its portrayal of the political divide in America. Many people, often the most politically active, cannot even fathom why someone might object to the positions that they hold.

IMO a lot of people, not just on this site, but in the wider society, have no idea what Liberalism or being a liberal is about. I blame Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown for this.

Matty, you're wrong on this. Most Americans are liberal. It was Liberal Americans that kicked out the British, Liberal American that believe in free market principals, gun ownership and religious freedom, low taxes and small government. That is what classic Liberalism is, not the unholy mess that Nick Clegg claims to be. Conservatives have done none of these things. Conservatives supported King George III for feth's sake.

It has always been a mystery to me how Liberalism has been replaced by Conservatism, because traditionly, Conservatism has always been a reactionary force.

Liberalism is FREEDOM. It is John Locke, John Stuart Mills, Adam Smith etc etc How in god's name it got hijacked by the Right, I will never know. Apologies for going off on one
But Liberalism should be the natural home for most Americans.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Matty, you're wrong on this. Most Americans are liberal. It was Liberal Americans that kicked out the British, Liberal American that believe in free market principals, gun ownership and religious freedom, low taxes and small government.

Oh come on.. Its 2012 not 1776.

The ratio of dem vs independent vs rep has remained fairly consistent for a while, each having roughly 25-40% of the populace. And frequently the independents lean towards dems, but the rep base is much more easily roused than the dem base, making up for the difference.

The country has strong, Liberal foundations. Liberalism is not a dirty word. Time for America to embrace it's past. Well, most of it,anyway.

I think it's time to bring back Manifest Destiny and enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

Forgot to add. I would love to see Donald Trump as President. Imagine the scene if he got angry and threw his wig at his chief of staff! Comedy gold.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Liberalism is not a dirty word.

Tell that to the Conservatives.

That wig could hurt someone.

All liberals want to do is make you gay-marry an abortionist. And you'll have to do it too, because they took away your guns!

Monster Rain wrote:All liberals want to do is make you gay-marry an abortionist. And you'll have to do it too, because they took away your guns!

Thank you MR! God, it's been a crap day and that funny nugget had my wife and i both rolling!

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:The country has strong, Liberal foundations. Liberalism is not a dirty word. Time for America to embrace it's past. Well, most of it,anyway.

In common discourse "liberal" denotes people on the left side of the political spectrum. According to classical definitions, almost everyone in the US is a liberal of some description.


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Monster Rain wrote:All liberals want to do is make you gay-marry an abortionist. And you'll have to do it too, because they took away your guns!

But not you bear arms, they aren't monsters.

Right, you can keep those monstrous transplanted bear arms all you want.

biccat, are you still so sure that Obama will be defeated that you are willing to agree to my bet?

I'm giving you good odds, too! I'll buy you a Battleforce / Battalion should a Republican win president in 2012 and all I ask is that you buy me a $40-$50 box set when the nominated candidate loses. That's 2:1 odds!

Who do I want to win? Ron Paul. Yes he is nutty, but he is rock solid on economics, and that is my #1 issue.

The odds are against him even getting the nomination, but hopefully he will do well enough to secure a cabinet position should one of the other Republican candidates win.

Barring that, anyone besides Obama.

Please watch your language when posting on Dakka, we don't allow or encourage the usage of offensive slurs on the site.

Reds8n.
Frankly, some added benefits and protections as well as the miliary service availability mean jack squat when you are barely making ends meet, or in the base of about 20% of the entire population, not at all.

@Melissa, you and I will disagree again about politics, and I foresee this not changing anytime soon. Obama most certainly has not created more employment. When theunemployment, and the u6 unemployment numbers have gotten bigger, the idea of more jobs created is laughable. Not even increase in population for the last several years makes up the difference.

Better for small business? Nope. Wrong again.

I am a small business owner, and this have certainly not gotten easier or better in any way. My business was steadily increasing until Obama got elected, then it has steadily decreased, and quite rapidly. Losing more than 30% of your income in 3 years is not what I would call a winning situation.

And as a homosexual. yay?! seriously. no. See paragraph 4.

Hey posters. Where can I find that political graph thing? I have a feeling my views have changed since deciding to enlist.

Nope, not at all. About the same place as before

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:Who do I want to win? Ron Paul. Yes he is nutty, but he is rock solid on economics, and that is my #1 issue.

I would actually say that economics is one of Paul's weakest points. His strength is his ability to appeal to constitutionality, and the nominal American distaste for government.