President Barack Obama

[Liquid Blue]

edit 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnPQ_qRa6sg

come on, tell me decent human beings won't prefer that over palin... and then you find out he's like pretty radically against abortion and that seals the republican deal

holy shit that guy's awesome

an election between him and obama would be tight as shit



EDIT--

Do you really believe that Palin doesnt know Africa is a continent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnSS0dEv-RQ

A collection of interviews that Palin has done. These interviews are why I don't brush the idea off right away that she didn't know about Africa.

[Kolar]

I think technology is going to be one way they are going to push for more transparency in Government. There are several sites out there that track voting records of politicians but 90% of them are small scale operations and often do not hold up to date information. Another issue is with special interest contributions and lobbyists, if you have all of these stats somewhere in one location people are going to see pretty quickly that their Representative or Senator are more about getting that next trip or kick-back then working for your interests. I think Obama is on the right track with technology. He believes that just because it's Government doesn't mean it has to be inherently slow to change and inefficient. And he believes in reaching out to people like Google CEO Eric Schmidt to work with his administration on technology policy.

Big business completely wants to do away with the current Internet. They want it to be like TV, a one way medium. That's why network neutrality is so important. The grass roots level is for it and so are the big names in IT services (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...). The argument is that it isn't free and open right now. Telecoms are interfering with the basic infrastructure and protocols of the network to their desired benefit over that of the needs and wants of their clients. If they will not preserve the "rules" which made it so successful and want to disrupt the lives of those who use it then Government should legislate away their ability to "manage" the network. The other argument is that Government agencies are already involved in policing the Internet and Bush Co. already reroute all network traffic through the NSA anyways. The idea of a truly free, open, unhindered global network, where everyone is on a fair playing field; died soon after its conception.


Edit: The Republicans are going to have a hard time for the foreseeable future. Their coalition of Independents, Religious fundamentalist and Corporate interest just fell apart. It will take more then an inspiring/intelligent leader to move forward. The party as a whole will move further to the right thus alienating a good portion of their base and push more people to a third party or to the Democrats. What they need to do is decide on which way they want to move and that will probably take them more to the center, alienating the fundamentalists. In the end they might have to secede from the culture war and/or shed the Nonconservative elements of the party which has driven their foreign policy for the last decade or so. They have to redefine the base of the party while removing the fringe elements that has steered it for so long.

If Clinton won the Democratic nomination then Jindal would probably have been McCain's choice for VP. Most people say the credit crisis in September did him in but Palin did contribute to the landslide in the opposite direction, by how much we probably will never know.

[Jerome Scuggs]

I think you'd have an easier time being a democrat trying to instill moderate or republican beliefs into the party than you'd have as a non-right-winger trying to bring intellect into the republican party. You're going to have to win over not only the party, but the people. If you did it the other way, the people would already be more open to what you had to say.

It's because both parties now accept governments, they just debate over to what degree, and how. Remember, decades ago Republicans stood against a big government and for civil rights, which climaxed with Reagan's election.

The reason they had such a broad base was because they used a strong intellectual argument as to why they were truly standing for the people. It rung with people, but imo they failed to live up to their mandate and became more focused on "national security", which was convenient for all of reagan's friends but not the people.

http://change.gov/agenda/technology/

For instance, I agree with Obama's ends, but not his means. He seems to be demanding that people become open and transparent - by government decree, if necessary. The net neutrality bit really scares me, because of the rhetoric: even though it's free and open at the moment, the government should guarantee that by taking it over. I think alot of people have a distrust of government intervention like that and it would be smart to build the base up from those people, as the GOP did years ago - instead of being aligned to rich people and religious fanatics.

[DankNuggets]

Yeah I saw it, but I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

ok, from here on out, i will always use a different font to denote sarcasm. I think i said this before, so i will make sure to stick with it now. afterall, i'm on your side like 90% of the time anyway... - and btw i hope that comment at SC was directed at our idiot voter base, and not at me : (

just because palin didn't know africa was a continent (which i seriosly doubt) doesn't mean all americans suck ass at geography. Well, 80% of them probably do, but you can bet that i know all 50 states + capitals (a feat accomplished by 2 other people in my entire US gov't class in highschool ), most of the world's countries and capitals, and hell if you gave me a map of canada, i could tell you all the provinces and most of their capitals. I do have a BS in engineering, give me some credit..

yeah, a big problem i see with democrats is for the past 8 years they have pretty much focused on "bush bad", they really better have a good backup plan to deploy when the world still sucks even though obama is president and they have control of the house. i'm not saying obama will suck... i'm just saying that the world sucks and obama's got a tough run ahead of him. tbh though, such a large task would probably, literally, have killed mccain

the world is shitty, so Obama needs to not try to fix everything at once. That way, if he can only fix one thing, at least he can say "Hey, I fixed that remember? I'll get this one too, just give me time." Trying to fix the economy, Iraq, energy consumption, and everything else at once spreads attention and resources out thin, also leading those things to take forever to accomplish. As long as he doesn't fail on his first goal, he'll be alright.

to me it seems like the GOP is definitely opening itself up to a populist flavor which presents that interesting paradox. they should get back to their roots. i remember it not being long ago that i called myself a "republican", then a "ron paul republican", but then it was like "fuck republicans". i see alot of conservatives being massively disillusioned and it's because their intellectual roots and their actual platform seem to be at odds with eachother.

if the GOP managed to revitalize and get a platform going which isn't based off of "obama sucks", if it actually has an intellectual merit to it, i could see great things. i think a major task would be to re-invigorate the anti-socialist fires... while also making very clear the danger of republican big-business ties. i think presenting a platform that highlighted a major, major weakness of the "neocons" - their mashup of politics and big business - would be something that would bring the GOP back to a viable position in the political realm without having to adopt a populist attitude to get votes.

the trick is, though, to get mainstream GOP guys to say "whoops, we were wrong". fuck me if that will ever happen.

edit: if palin isn't gone in 4 years, then imo... there's nothing in this country worth saving and we deserve whatever comes our way. sarah palin is a moron. i can't believe she made it as governor, much less VP candidate.

It's a hard sell to go from "obama-bashing" to intellectualism. Especially when a lot of the higher educated already lean to the left. Don't forget that a huge base of the republican party consists of idiots (and democrats too) that would like to have a "common man" (read idiot here) as their leader.

I think you'd have an easier time being a democrat trying to instill moderate or republican beliefs into the party than you'd have as a non-right-winger trying to bring intellect into the republican party. You're going to have to win over not only the party, but the people. If you did it the other way, the people would already be more open to what you had to say.

[Jerome Scuggs]

you should do that

GOP badly needs smart people if it's going to be a viable opposition party

otherwise no matter how good the intentions of various democrats are it'll all go to shit after 8-12 years of rule

yeah, a big problem i see with democrats is for the past 8 years they have pretty much focused on "bush bad", they really better have a good backup plan to deploy when the world still sucks even though obama is president and they have control of the house. i'm not saying obama will suck... i'm just saying that the world sucks and obama's got a tough run ahead of him. tbh though, such a large task would probably, literally, have killed mccain

to me it seems like the GOP is definitely opening itself up to a populist flavor which presents that interesting paradox. they should get back to their roots. i remember it not being long ago that i called myself a "republican", then a "ron paul republican", but then it was like "fuck republicans". i see alot of conservatives being massively disillusioned and it's because their intellectual roots and their actual platform seem to be at odds with eachother.

if the GOP managed to revitalize and get a platform going which isn't based off of "obama sucks", if it actually has an intellectual merit to it, i could see great things. i think a major task would be to re-invigorate the anti-socialist fires... while also making very clear the danger of republican big-business ties. i think presenting a platform that highlighted a major, major weakness of the "neocons" - their mashup of politics and big business - would be something that would bring the GOP back to a viable position in the political realm without having to adopt a populist attitude to get votes.

the trick is, though, to get mainstream GOP guys to say "whoops, we were wrong". fuck me if that will ever happen.

edit: if palin isn't gone in 4 years, then imo... there's nothing in this country worth saving and we deserve whatever comes our way. sarah palin is a moron. i can't believe she made it as governor, much less VP candidate.

edit 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnPQ_qRa6sg

come on, tell me decent human beings won't prefer that over palin... and then you find out he's like pretty radically against abortion and that seals the republican deal

[Vykromond]

you should do that

GOP badly needs smart people if it's going to be a viable opposition party

otherwise no matter how good the intentions of various democrats are it'll all go to shit after 8-12 years of rule

imo the "palin wing" will not survive four years

Let's hope so

[Jerome Scuggs]

it's both i think

jindal is p. charismatic but he's also p. brown so i really dunno about the palin wing going for that guy

imo the "palin wing" will not survive four years... louisiana went pretty heavy mccain (which suprised the fuk out of me, though my city was blue), i think jindal's common sense outweighs izor republicans. plus he's actually got some pretty hardcore kudos with our healthcare, "During his tenure as secretary, Louisiana's Medicaid program went from bankruptcy with a $400 million deficit into three years of surpluses totaling $220 million."

i was actually thinking about getting involved in g.o.p. politix because now would be a great time to say "you guys are morons" and throw in my two cents as to why

[genocidal]

yeah Jindal def. = Muslam.

[Vykromond]

If the problem is just Palin, it's easy to fix quickly. If it's the latter problem, that's a bigger long-term problem for the party and will be much harder to fix.

it's both i think

jindal is p. charismatic but he's also p. brown so i really dunno about the palin wing going for that guy

[Jerome Scuggs]

The craziest thing is that she still believes she has a shot at running for President. She's fucking lucky she's still a governor. I hope she is remembered as the big fucking joke she really is.

alot of people i have talked to irl are putting their sights on bobby jindal of louisiana

i was talking to my dad about the GOP and how it has given way to anti-intellectualism (remember, at one point Reagan was holding copies of Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" in his hand), his take was the rush limbaugh thing really brought that element to the mainstream republican base. jindal is pretty fuckin' smart, though sometimes apparently he 'talks too fast' (genocidal probably understands that one). hopefully america sees the final eradication of that fun decade of republicanism, it would be nice to deal with smart people again

[Capital Knockers]

And SHE WILL BE THE OMEGA SENATOR. NO MORE SENATOR ELECTIONS. PREPARE.

thank you for putting that in your sig, please keep it there so we can choke him with his words later. not that it'll make a difference, like I've been saying, he'll just make some new stupid theory as to why his old ones were wrong.

And SHE WILL BE THE OMEGA SENATOR. NO MORE SENATOR ELECTIONS. PREPARE.

^^

[Da1andonly]

And SHE WILL BE THE OMEGA SENATOR. NO MORE SENATOR ELECTIONS. PREPARE.

[Vatican Assassin]

Governor Palin is going to replace Senator Stevens with herself in a little over three months, prepare yourself.

[Zerzera]

I know but Biden was talking about his role in the Senate, he was wrong about Article I but in terms of fuck ups it pretty tame. Compared to someone who thinks the Vice President runs the show in the Senate.

Yes, but at least she's fond of guns.