John McCain vs Barack Obama Mega-Politic-Thread of super fun awesomeness.

[Zerzera]

Tell me one time in history a president wasn't re-elected during the middle of a war, he strategically planned it, did anyone see this shit coming, not really. Although it was apparent in 2004 he wasn't a legitimate leader but the Republican Party drew on nationalism and public security to promote fear into the hearts of Americans. Did the media do their job and hold these individuals accountable? Absolutely not. Journalistic integrity started to become a fucking joke.

You're blaming an entire nation of people for an administrations fallacies, do you not understand how this isn't trolling, it's me telling you to knock it the fuck off.

Way to ignore everything I said there. I bet that time in history has been a bit hazy for you. We blame Afghanistan for the terrorist attacks of Al Qaida but we shouldn't hold the people in a democracy accountable for the policies of their government. What kind of tool are you? You sound like Michael Moore.

[Cops]

Way to ignore everything I said there. I bet that time in history has been a bit hazy for you. We blame Afghanistan for the terrorist attacks of Al Qaida but we shouldn't hold the people in a democracy accountable for the policies of their government. What kind of tool are you? You sound like Michael Moore.

Like I said before, Bush originally got voted in on a platform that didn't involve fucking up the economy, invading countries, as well many other shitty things he has done (I'm using the term 'voted in' loosely). Once in office he was re-elected, and to some extent you've failed to understand that the media wasn't holding people accountable and the country was in the middle of a fucking war. Would I have voted for George Bush? Absolutely not. But I can at least understand why this happened. A Journalists job is to protect the rights and freedoms of all citizens, and one can argue that mainstream news failed to inform the masses.

Could the democrats tried to impeach Bush? Probably but this is bad politics and would have caused some serious problems for the Democrats.

You can blame ordinary Americans all you want but you really don't understand why or how he was elected. There's a lot of people to blame for a lot of things America has done in the past 8 years but to say all Americans are to blame is pretty fucking stupid, and you know it. I'll continue this conversation if and when you learn the difference between the American government and the American people. I'm surprised more Americans aren't on your ass about blaming them for George Bush, cause lord knows you'd be getting a few fuck yous if you blamed me for my Prime Minister when I didn't even vote for the guy.

American people find it more important to waste money to invade foreign countries -for the sake of feeling 'more safe'-. That 700 billion would have been there lying in the safe if it wasn't for that.

re-read what you wrote...

[genocidal]

You admit that your democracy is a farce only to have an argument? I think it's pretty weak to shove this into the feet of your president who is supposed to be elected by the people.

No my democracy is not a farce. I'm not sure you know what a democracy is, because the US doesn't have a strict direct democracy, and neither does your country. They are both representative democracies, which is much different. Simply because there is another representative step in America's democratic republic (which is what we are unapologetically called), as opposed to your parliamentary democracy, does not mean it's not a democracy. Bone up on the American system and the electoral college and then we'll have this discussion. Hell, I'll even have a discussion as to whether the electoral college is good or bad for my government if you want, but you need to at least understand what I'm talking about.

Seriously, check his election speeches if you don't believe me, check the first speech he made after the elections. Besides talking about becoming a chief in command and rebuilding a military superpower he even clearly mentioned Iraq many times! Sorry that I remember things longer than 8 years. Sorry that I didn't block anything out that happened prior to the terrorist attacks.

I think you're talking about Bush's inaugural speech, but you're so unspecific it's hard to tell. Assuming you are, you can read it here - there is no mention of Iraq at all.

I'm sure Bush mentioned the nation in some speech sometime during the 2000 campaign but he didn't say, "We're gonna war dem muslams and you sheep will like it!!!!" Iraq has been a pretty important nation in the Middle East, a very important area, for a long time. Guess what: the US had a war with them in the early 90s! If you want to debate the West's involvement in 20th century Middle East history, I'm willing to have that debate too. Again though, you aren't specific so I don't know what you're talking about.

Then people re-elect him a year later why? It was obvious already in 2004 that his government was heading for a fallout eventually. But again the spear head of his campaign was that he was someone that stood for action, he didn't 'flip-flop'.

That was part of his campaign, yes. Also, not changing horses in mid-stream is a powerful argument, whether you think so or not. I'm not sure what you mean by "heading for a fallout" since you are, again, unspecific. Do you mean the economy? Because no, that wasn't obvious. Nor did the Bush administration really have that much to do with it. Had it been obvious, don't you think foreign investors would have pulled their money out sooner so their markets wouldn't get fucked?

If you mean the Iraq War, there are arguments to be made for letting his administration, who had started it, finish this thing. I didn't vote for Bush in either 2000 or 2004 but the election was not as cut-and-dry as you seem to think. Kerry being a weak candidate was a pretty major factor in the loss as well. Again though, nobody is sure of what you're talking about because you make ambiguous statements forcefully, JUST LIKE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION (see I can make silly analogies too).

To be honest, Zerz, your opinions on American politics are pretty much clones of what most Europeans' that I spoke to while over there. You have a shallow grasp of specifics because you recite pretty much what your media and schools tell you, just like what goes on in America as well as every country. I'm not criticizing you other than to say you're unspecific because it's an affliction of every analysis at some level but if we're going to debate something you're going to have to back it up or make some clear statements.

[DankNuggets]

umm Jerome can you possibly restart "Jerome's weekly economic rant" threads instead of hijacking the McCain/Obama thread? I know you have a lot of good points, and I actually read those walls of text (though the 3,4,5th posts were getting pretty old). I'm more interested in the politics of what's going on than the opposing economic theories of the past century. Not that i'm not happy to be informed, but this isn't the place.

Please, for fuck's sake, quit calling cops a stoner. He's said that he isn't countless times. Not that smoking a blunt wouldn't expand your mind Zerz. And for the record, Jerome's amphetimine crazed enlightenment reminds me fully of the beatniks, so stay the fuck away from herion my friend.



So back on to the debate:

The way i see it, it's a victory of McCain. Why? Because he was louder and managed to keep all the time on questions he actually has answers to. I missed the first hour, but from what I can tell there really wasn't much domestic policy debated. The whole of what I saw dealt with the Middle East and other foreign policies (that and the veracity of "he said, she said").

He didn't win in the sense that he provided better answers or made Obama look foolish, he won in the sense that every democrat was expecting him to fall flat on his face and he managed to hold his ground very well. I don't think Obama avoided the questions any more than McCain, especially when he expanded (not danced around) questions involving Iraq.

What really gets my balls is that people want to say that he didn't say what he wants to do in Iraq, yet the Republican's main stance on the subject of future plans is "we don't want to make plans ahead of time to give the enemy any indications of us backing down". How absurd to ask the guy in a 2 min question what he'll do in Iraq and expect him to lay it all out for you and not "flip-flop" when the ground situation changes.

As much as the McCain camp wants to clamor that Obama's running a campaign on emotion (Hope, Change, Yes We Can), it's pathetic to see them pulling on the heart strings with all the war discussions and pandering to the crowd by mocking Obama.

Also, people talk about personality. While i think it was a bit disrespectful to repeated address him as John (and once as Tom) instead of Senator McCain, it was also disrespectful for McCain to not even look at him (to busy playing the crowd). And the notion that by saying things like "Well I agree with John on..." makes him any weaker on policy is a joke. People see it as a sign of weakness when he agress with his opponent, I see it as a sign of intelligence and willingness to act bipartisan in matters that they agree in. Really irks me when he can come out and admit when they share policy, but the McCain camp (who shares teh policy) wants to call him out for agreeing with them. Doesn't mean either one of them deserves the credit (though it'll undoubtedly go to McCain, since it wasn't him saying he agrees with Obama).

I too watched some "responses" to the debate. Of course Fox News was all like "MCCAIN PWNS OBAMA, WHITE HOUSE SURE THING" and CNN was all "No one won the debate, but McCain looked strong". I guess that's double victory for the reps who think Fox news is the infalible word of god and CNN the extreme left wing propaganda machine.

But what really got me was overhearing a debate analyist for FXN say "The debate was really only 80% foriegn policy. I'd like to see McCain challenge the moderators to up that percentage." WTF!!? Does this guy even give a shit about the 300,000,000 ppl in his own country? Why should they devote 4/5ths of there time talking about theoretical situations across the globe instead of real situations that are affecting us now?? If we weren't in a war, i'd be unhappy to see even 20% of the questions as foreign policy. The fact is, the president should be focused on the US first, and the world 2nd.

[Cops]

Good point about Kerry, it's too bad the Democrats didn't put up a guy who could answer a frigging question. In all reality though I just want him to admit there's a difference between the American government and the American people, and that the American public for the most part didn't fully understand who they were voting for.

edit: or what that person would do once elected.

[DankNuggets]

On the SE gas shortages:

Gas, here in the capital of my state, is higher than any other part of the state. It's the same in Atlanta, and Charolette (not the capital, but probably the biggest city). The reason is simple, people use a hell of a lot more gas commuting into the city. The cities are also tied heavily into pipelines instead of relying on ports. In Charleston, or biggest port and only 2 hrs away, gas is like 50 cents cheaper and abundant. It's the same all up and down the coast and in small towns. The reason being: there were less people to buy into the gas panic. All around Atlanta and here too, people paniced and filled up every container they could find with gas. This drove the stations to initially up the price in fear they'd run out of gas (and they did).

That then fueled price gouging complaints. That fueled gas stations to limit how much gas you could buy since they couldn't up the price to limit you. This made people both freak out since it was limited, and hit up the cheap gas stations. Now no stations have gas.

The thing that gets me is the excuse of "the pipelines aren't flowing full because the refineries aren't up to 100% yet". Have we in the SE changed the way we get fuel in the past 5 years? Maybe, I dont' really know. But I do know that the refineries have been shut down before, and there was no supply crisis. Call it a combonations of all the factors if you will, but i see it as an artifical lessening of the supply to increase future profits, all while having a perfectly plausible excuse.

Now we can go back to the debate about making America more "oil independent" and off shore drilling. The very reason we're in a crunch right now seems to be our dependence on OUR OWN OIL (more explicitly, our refined gasoline and diesel). If we were to expand our off shore drilling, and base our supply more on that, WHAT'S TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING ON BIGGER SCALE? I mean, hurricanes hit the east coast, florida, and the gulf EVERY YEAR. We'd see the exact same problem with the refineries multiply once we start basing more of our supply off of this apperantly "risky" location to store our valuable assests. You can say that it'll be lessened if we spread our assest out, but then those regions become even more dependent on their closer gas refineries.

[Vihta]

http://www.videosift.com/video/Diese...Commercial-SFW

Anyway... the way I see it: McCain is about 103 years old and could die any day. Then you would have a crazy psycho religious bitch as president who beliefs humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

[genocidal]

Not immediately related to the discussion, but a pretty funny example at how desperate the McCain Campaign has become.

Irresponsible propaganda at its finest, folks.

Also, here is a letter that has been in the news lately written by a woman from Sarah Palin's hometown of Wasilla about her. It's quite an interesting read for what it is; I'm not claiming it's 100% true but you'd be hard-pressed to prove much of what it says wrong.

[Epinephrine]

Epinephrine / Jerome; I've accredited you both with having superb English skills but your egos are bullshit, it doesn't help that Epinephrine claims high ground then stereotypes people who consume drugs as well as attack people based on age.

My English skills aren't really all that great, I'm ESL for god's sake. As far as I know, I haven't went around telling people on this forum that everyone thinks I'm a genius and asks me for advice.

And Jerome was complaining that people don't take him seriously because he's young and does drugs.. well I was just reiterating that point. I'm sorry if you take offense, but common knowledge tells us that's how the real world works as well. Not to mention that the very fact that I keep on responding to Jerome means that I take him seriously enough to spend so much time debating with him, I wasn't exactly attacking him.

[Zerzera]

No my democracy is not a farce. I'm not sure you know what a democracy is, because the US doesn't have a strict direct democracy, and neither does your country. They are both representative democracies, which is much different. Simply because there is another representative step in America's democratic republic (which is what we are unapologetically called), as opposed to your parliamentary democracy, does not mean it's not a democracy. Bone up on the American system and the electoral college and then we'll have this discussion. Hell, I'll even have a discussion as to whether the electoral college is good or bad for my government if you want, but you need to at least understand what I'm talking about.

I think you're talking about Bush's inaugural speech, but you're so unspecific it's hard to tell. Assuming you are, you can read it here - there is no mention of Iraq at all.

I'm sure Bush mentioned the nation in some speech sometime during the 2000 campaign but he didn't say, "We're gonna war dem muslams and you sheep will like it!!!!" Iraq has been a pretty important nation in the Middle East, a very important area, for a long time. Guess what: the US had a war with them in the early 90s! If you want to debate the West's involvement in 20th century Middle East history, I'm willing to have that debate too. Again though, you aren't specific so I don't know what you're talking about.

That was part of his campaign, yes. Also, not changing horses in mid-stream is a powerful argument, whether you think so or not. I'm not sure what you mean by "heading for a fallout" since you are, again, unspecific. Do you mean the economy? Because no, that wasn't obvious. Nor did the Bush administration really have that much to do with it. Had it been obvious, don't you think foreign investors would have pulled their money out sooner so their markets wouldn't get fucked?

If you mean the Iraq War, there are arguments to be made for letting his administration, who had started it, finish this thing. I didn't vote for Bush in either 2000 or 2004 but the election was not as cut-and-dry as you seem to think. Kerry being a weak candidate was a pretty major factor in the loss as well. Again though, nobody is sure of what you're talking about because you make ambiguous statements forcefully, JUST LIKE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION (see I can make silly analogies too).

To be honest, Zerz, your opinions on American politics are pretty much clones of what most Europeans' that I spoke to while over there. You have a shallow grasp of specifics because you recite pretty much what your media and schools tell you, just like what goes on in America as well as every country. I'm not criticizing you other than to say you're unspecific because it's an affliction of every analysis at some level but if we're going to debate something you're going to have to back it up or make some clear statements.

I told you to read his speeches during that period of time, because I am not an American like you, but at least I know he did say in his speeches in 2000 that he wouldn't let Saddam sit in power. Why I know? Because I was helping Iraqi refugees during that time and I wondered why he would stir up the war again. Of course he never mentioned muslims because it was prior to september 2001.
That's the only thing important to me, whatever you lack to know is not my problem. You will never have to hold yourselves accountable for this.

It's guillable to think I don't know what you are talking about, but it's just that I like to hold your people to the same standards as you do to other countries. Why would you install democracies in other countries when you have the United States as example?
"Well we aren't really sorry we illegally attacked your country, but in any case; our president is the one that did it" Or as we like to put it; Wir haben das nicht gewusst

But you convinced me, the American people aren't responsible for insignificant actions like invading Iraq because they vote in a president and are powerless from that moment on. Never had Bush a mayority of support when it came to attacking Iraq and no impeachment on this matter would have been valid. I stand corrected.

[Squeezer]

why do these threads always devolve to Euros explaining American political culture?

edit: case and point.

The republicans are smart. They don't bail out the rich.

This is not an accurate statement regarding US Politics since the late 70s-early 80s.

[HateTheFake]

why do these threads always devolve to Euros explaining American political culture?

this made me laugh

[DoTheFandango]

The republicans are smart. They don't bail out the rich.

wait, what?
what about the years of tax cuts for the rich and the fact that THEY ARE TO BLAME FOR THIS MESS FFSFSFSFFFS FSFSFSFSF FUCK

[Jerome Scuggs]

if you really want to blame someone, blame woodrow wilson

i mean... once you've got a centralized bank, everyone who works within that framework is inevitably going to fail. they can be honest or evil or theoretically sound or gut-feelin'... doesn't matter.

and then you pile on the further twists and turns: democrats and republicans alike, regulating and de-regulating and then regulating some but not whole but only this (all required forms in sec. 6 2001-e5, triplicate) part or that part.

much like a human is made up of hundreds of different muscles, bones and organs (and those are made up of all kinds of cells), something this massive and significant probably has an incredibly complex backstory, and even jerome "question everything" scuggs can't see that deep. when humans get sick, "the aids" doesn't mean like, you got some aids. there's thousands of tiny, tiny events that have to occur that noone could probably ever even track... so we just call it "the aids".

[Zerzera]

wait, what?
what about the years of tax cuts for the rich and the fact that THEY ARE TO BLAME FOR THIS MESS FFSFSFSFFFS FSFSFSFSF FUCK

But it's elections time. It's the season of tricks and lies. The plan will make it nonetheless but now with 10% more relief!! for the common man.