2012 US Presidential Elections

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iceblox
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by iceblox »

stuie299 wrote:Personally while their are some things I wish he would have done differently/better, I don't think hes by any means a bad president. If America really doesn't like Obama, I'd hate to see what would happen if a Republican wins.

Jeez. I voted for Obama in 2008 and campaigned for him because he said he would END THE WARS! Did he? No.
He said he would close Gitmo. Did he? No.
He said he would allow imported prescription drugs. Did he? No.
He said he would allow five days of public comment before signing bills by putting the bills online. Did he? No.
He said he was going to stop the revolving door practice between lobbyists and bureaucrats. Did he? No.
He said he won't allow any taxes on families with less than $250K income. Obamacare screws that up.
He said he would eliminate subsidies for oil companies? Did he? No.

I could go on and on. Not to mention all the new unconstitutional wars he has started - Libya, Uganda etc, and how he is letting this country turn into a police state.

I feel terribly cheated. Why aren't YOU feeling the same? If you are a liberal, you should be outraged at the loss of civil liberties and the useless wars. :evil:

Pickpocket
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by Pickpocket »

iceblox wrote:
stuie299 wrote:Personally while their are some things I wish he would have done differently/better, I don't think hes by any means a bad president. If America really doesn't like Obama, I'd hate to see what would happen if a Republican wins.

Jeez. I voted for Obama in 2008 and campaigned for him because he said he would END THE WARS! Did he? No.
He said he would close Gitmo. Did he? No.
He said he would allow imported prescription drugs. Did he? No.
He said he would allow five days of public comment before signing bills by putting the bills online. Did he? No.
He said he was going to stop the revolving door practice between lobbyists and bureaucrats. Did he? No.
He said he won't allow any taxes on families with less than $250K income. Obamacare screws that up.
He said he would eliminate subsidies for oil companies? Did he? No.

I could go on and on. Not to mention all the new unconstitutional wars he has started - Libya, Uganda etc, and how he is letting this country turn into a police state.

I feel terribly cheated. Why aren't YOU feeling the same? If you are a liberal, you should be outraged at the loss of civil liberties and the useless wars. :evil:

To be fair to every other president ever, they all say shit like this every time they are running and nothing ever happens. Hopefully you learned to never rely on the government for anything and realize they would tell you that we would all become billionaires if they thought it helped any chance of them becoming elected. And in a few years some new guy will be like "we need change" and a bunch of idiots will rally around him thinking that this is the one (Neo) and the same thing will happen again, nothing.

iceblox
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by iceblox »

Pickpocket wrote:
iceblox wrote:
stuie299 wrote:Personally while their are some things I wish he would have done differently/better, I don't think hes by any means a bad president. If America really doesn't like Obama, I'd hate to see what would happen if a Republican wins.

Jeez. I voted for Obama in 2008 and campaigned for him because he said he would END THE WARS! Did he? No.
He said he would close Gitmo. Did he? No.
He said he would allow imported prescription drugs. Did he? No.
He said he would allow five days of public comment before signing bills by putting the bills online. Did he? No.
He said he was going to stop the revolving door practice between lobbyists and bureaucrats. Did he? No.
He said he won't allow any taxes on families with less than $250K income. Obamacare screws that up.
He said he would eliminate subsidies for oil companies? Did he? No.

I could go on and on. Not to mention all the new unconstitutional wars he has started - Libya, Uganda etc, and how he is letting this country turn into a police state.

I feel terribly cheated. Why aren't YOU feeling the same? If you are a liberal, you should be outraged at the loss of civil liberties and the useless wars. :evil:

To be fair to every other president ever, they all say shit like this every time they are running and nothing ever happens. Hopefully you learned to never rely on the government for anything and realize they would tell you that we would all become billionaires if they thought it helped any chance of them becoming elected. And in a few years some new guy will be like "we need change" and a bunch of idiots will rally around him thinking that this is the one (Neo) and the same thing will happen again, nothing.

Yes, that is true for the most part. The only ever thing we can almost be sure of, is that any president is going to indulge in more power-grabs than his predecessor. I do have some hope for Ron Paul though, because of his consistent voting history in the Congress. He has voted against every unconstitutional bill or law, sometimes being the only one on the floor to do so, for like 30 years. He has been pushed, shoved, intimidated, isolated and threatened, but he has never budged from his principles. That is not to 100% guarantee that he won't become a monster the day he becomes president, but it's highly unlikely. If we can't trust him, then we can trust no one. I am not being blindly faithful, but just being pragmatic.

iceblox
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by iceblox »

movieboy wrote:
iceblox wrote:I feel terribly cheated. Why aren't YOU feeling the same? If you are a liberal, you should be outraged at the loss of civil liberties and the useless wars. :evil:


Weren't you outraged at loss of civil liberties when he voted for the FISA legislation in June 2008 before the Presidential elections?

I am not a liberal per se, but yes, it was bad that he did, but I was so sick of Bush that I might have even voted for Mickey Mouse if he was running. McCain was not an option because he was a neo-con warmonger.

prowler
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by prowler »

iceblox wrote:
prowler wrote:
iceblox wrote:Is that an exact quote or are you just putting words in his mouth?

it's a quote from the only rep debate i watched this year


don't get me wrong i like the guy, he's certainly more interesting than the other GOPers but let's be honest, he's insane :)

C'mon, these kind of generalizations help no one. I think we have become so addicted and used to the government providing us everything, that any deviation from it is perceived as "insane". It's very sad really. :| I'm not sure if you are an American living in Europe or an European. If you are the latter, I guess you guys are very used to government intervention in every aspect of life. (Which also happens to be a contributing factor to the sovereign debt crisis going on in EU right now.)

haha man, you say you're against generalizations then you proceed to generalize. "government is bad" is a generalization, what I said was a clear cut issue where Paul's position is just crazy.

I'm an east-european. Romania was horrible in communism but i'm not too happy about how we're doing the democracy thing either

my bigger point is that "pure" ideologies that disconsider human realities are absurd and dangerous. It happened with communism and it could happen with Paul's libertarianism. Again, the notion that people will act like rational beings is simply wrong.
Of course there's a part of me that wants to put this to the test, and like I said, I like the guy in many ways. I just think lots of Americans would suffer were he to be President.
Last edited by prowler on Tue Nov 01, 2011 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MmzHrrdb
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by MmzHrrdb »

iceblox wrote: He isn't getting rid of the function of the Dept. of Education which gives out student loans. He is simply transferring that piece elsewhere.

Transferring it where though? Specifically in regards to student loans he mentioned a switch to state/local government or to corporations. I felt I raised fairly logical questions: If he moves responsibility for student loans to the state, how does he deal with differences in revenue between states? It seems to me that this would hurt students in poorer states, and help those in more prosperous states. And if he moves responsibility for student loans to a corporation, what kind of regulations is he prepared to impose to stop them from screwing us over? In fact I think both those questions are very good questions to ask Mr. Paul himself. Personally I don't have the time right now to watch the documentary, but I might be able to get to it sometime this week or weekend.

iceblox wrote: Why does it bother you if someone decides to homeschool their children?

It doesn't. In fact, I agree that it is a choice that should be afforded to the families, and I even know a few kids who have been homeschooled who are really smart; however, Ron Paul seems to favor homeschooling as the best method for teaching children. I mean cutting the department of Education would result in a loss of funding (to be fair though the department doesn't provide nearly as much funding to schools as I thought- about 10% is contributed by the department), but I think the biggest loss would be losing federal guidelines for curriculum. It seems that states would then be able to create whatever curriculum they want, and uniformity from state to state goes out the window. Personally I think we should have a national curriculum. I already think it is bad enough that things like this can happen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/educa ... texas.html). I think it will cause huge differences in education from state to state. Homeschooling can be better than public schools IF a children's parents are responsible enough to give them a good education. That is something that I don't see as a possibility. Take my parents for example: both of my parents work 40-50 hours a week and neither of them have college degrees. They had neither the time or the ability to homeschool me and my siblings. Sure if a children's parents are both Engineers, I can see them providing their children with very good educations, but I'm not so sure that will be the case most of the time. And I don't know how he plans on providing families with a $5,000 tax credit per each child for homeschooling with his massive planned decreases in government revenue. That right there gives parents an incentive to homeschool their children. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a mass exodus out of public schools. Do people who homeschool their children still pay taxes towards public schools? I really don't know if they do. I'd be fine with this, if students who are homeschooled are required to take examinations to prove that they are learning. Otherwise, it seems to me that the parents are just in it for the tax credit.

Regarding healthcare, I think we both think that it is far too expensive, but we disagree on how it should be fixed. I personally don't see how Mr. Paul's plan would change anything. It still involves the buying of for-profit health insurance. Something else must be done, or I fear we are destined to remain number 37 on the WHO's list of healthcare rankings.

iceblox wrote: You are just so wrong on this. Our Founding Fathers wanted the exact opposite - a decentralized government!

I'd really be interested in other opinions on this in this forum. In fact, I think the point of the Constitution was to establish a centralized government (this might explain it more and where I am coming from- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism ... t_policies). The federal government has been doing more duties than listed in the Constitution for probably a majority of our history. Once again I think this comes back to the Constitution being hundreds of years old, and the fact that our founding fathers, as smart as they were, couldn't have possibly thought to address every issue in it. This is one of those issues I think that everyone is divided on. Mr. Paul seems to prescribe to the belief of New Federalism (which is described in the wikipedia link) in which there is a push for balance of power towards the states. On the other side, there are people like me and probably other liberals, who feel that the federal government is needed to ensure that all states are being treated equally.

iceblox wrote: WHAT??!! Following the Constitution is a JOKE? I have been sympathetic to everything you said so far, but this frankly makes me angry and sad.

I apologize for offending you. I spoke too strongly. I definitely believe the Constitution should be used as a guideline, but again as it is over 200 years old, I don't think it can be taken literally. The living constitution concept refers to interpretation of the constitution. It doesn't involve disregarding what is in the Constitution, but updating the interpretation of the document to present day.

I also looked at the link you posted. Honestly I stopped reading when I read this sentence: "the Department of Commerce, Department of Education and other Cabinet positions would be eliminated. Civil service employees would be ushered into other government jobs." That simply is just unbelievable. On his own campaign website, Ron Paul states that he wants a 10% reduction in the federal workforce. Now, I don't know how many people are employed by the departments Ron Paul plans on cutting, but I have a hard time believing that they are all going to be given other jobs within the government. In fact, it seems likely that the majority will lose their jobs. And moving people from one department to another is not exactly cutting the workforce, is it? I have read numerous, things about Ron Paul's policies being good for the long term, but every one of them mentioned how in the short term his plan really hurts us. Who knows how our recovery will be in 2012? But I doubt cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs and further adding to our unemployment is going to help our recovery.

Once again I apologize for the length. Feel free to respond to whatever you want, but I can't promise I will respond back. Frankly, I get sick of arguing about politics.

iceblox
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by iceblox »

dougied89, I will bow out of a discussion with you. Not because of anything else, but simply because you think the Constitution, the law of the land, should not be adhered to or can simply be brushed aside because it becomes inconvenient for you. It's hard to make any sense to such people. I wish you good luck with whoever you decide to vote for.

Keep one thing in mind - you might applaud a government who chooses to ignore the Constitution if what that government does is to your personal liking. You will then have no right to be outrageous at the next government who also chooses to ignore the Constitution, but now does everything you hate, because you have given up your right by condoning the idea that the Constitution can be disregarded.

stuie299
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by stuie299 »

iceblox wrote:
stuie299 wrote:Personally while their are some things I wish he would have done differently/better, I don't think hes by any means a bad president. If America really doesn't like Obama, I'd hate to see what would happen if a Republican wins.

Jeez. I voted for Obama in 2008 and campaigned for him because he said he would END THE WARS! Did he? No.
He said he would close Gitmo. Did he? No.
He said he would allow imported prescription drugs. Did he? No.
He said he would allow five days of public comment before signing bills by putting the bills online. Did he? No.
He said he was going to stop the revolving door practice between lobbyists and bureaucrats. Did he? No.
He said he won't allow any taxes on families with less than $250K income. Obamacare screws that up.
He said he would eliminate subsidies for oil companies? Did he? No.

I could go on and on. Not to mention all the new unconstitutional wars he has started - Libya, Uganda etc, and how he is letting this country turn into a police state.

I feel terribly cheated. Why aren't YOU feeling the same? If you are a liberal, you should be outraged at the loss of civil liberties and the useless wars. :evil:


I think you are being way to harsh. Its simply foolish to think that a president won't promise things he can't deliver on. After watching several Frontline episodes regarding Obama's presidency I get the feeling like he was a little over ambitious while campaigning. Also when he tried to do things like fix healthcare or even something simple like raising the debt limit hes gotten absolutely 0 cooperation from the Republicans and even from some Democrats as well. I don't know what has happened but it seems like the animosity between Democrats and Republicans has gotten so bad that the Republicans will stop at nothing to keep Obama from winning in 2012.
Last edited by stuie299 on Tue Nov 01, 2011 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

stuie299
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by stuie299 »

ShogunRua wrote:
stuie299 wrote:The two main reasons people dislike Obama is:

1. Irrational, the economy is bad so lets try the alternative.


Yeah, let's ignore everything that trained economists have written about his horrific economic blunders over the last 3 years. It's still Bush's fault!

The two main reasons people like Obama;

1. The media constantly writes stories about how awesome and wonderful he is.
2. His skin color is different than that of most candidates.



I'm not saying Obama hasn't made mistakes but have you even considered what a Republican would do if elected president? I think it is irrational to think that just because the Republicans would be offering up a different solution that it would automatically be better.

Except among the African American community, I don't see his Skin color being a factor. I really disagree with the first one, as its not the media its Obama making himself look better than he actually is. I personally like Obama because he tries to be bipartisan even if the Republicans have taken advantage of his bipartisanship on numerous occasions.
Last edited by stuie299 on Tue Nov 01, 2011 9:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

hellboy76
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Re: 2012 US Presidential Elections

Post by hellboy76 »

Oh fuck it, I'll chime in. For one, whoever keeps saying the main reason people voted for Obama because of the color of his skin is an asshole. It's as limp wristed as liberals who desperately latch onto "It's all Bush's fault."

Two, parts of the constitution are as batshit crazy as the bible, i.e. the section saying we should count black people as 3/5ths of a person for census purposes. A guideline? Fine, but it should NOT be followed blindly.

Three, Ron Paul is batshit crazy, having spent the better part of a decade in Texas and listening to this numb nuts spout his utopian view of libertarian principals was almost unbearable. He has some very interesting ideas that should be dissected and discussed, but when it comes to dissecting and discussing them (and how to implement them) is where you hit the crazy talk.

Four, Anyone who thinks a president is going to do everything they campaigned on is naive and deserves the disappointment. As long as we are involved in a two party system that FORCES people to basically divide along those party lines we will be stuck in this quagmire of shit never getting done.

Five, your grandparents were right, never talk politics with family, friends, or a movie recommendation message board.

Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

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