RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Barack Hussein Obama in '08?

it should be noted they didn't poll muslim extremists.

It's what I do.

That's the problem with building your campaign on empty rhetoric. Eventually, people see that everything you are saying is void of anything real. Doesn't surprise me that McCain is catching up in the least.

No shit. Obama be fuckin' up. Might do the "none of the above" option this year.

i find it sad that hope is called empty rhetoric, but an old man who sees continuing a war that most Americans disprove of for 100 years is seen as a leader.
if obama's hope is empty, then it's no more empty than mccain's continuation of bush paranoia, which is also empty. i prefer to roll the dice on hope than to continue the nastiness.

And it's sad that people call obama empty when he talks about restoring the world's respect for America and creating a solid international force to combat terrorism, which is cheaper and smarter than our current unilateral wars.

Fact is that Obama has only talked about things in very general terms. He's not very forthcoming with how he's going to do all these great and wonderful things. Turns out that some of the things he talks about changing has been shown to just be political BS to garner votes without him really planning on doing shit about it (see NAFTA).

I'm not too keen on the McCain running in this campaign; but just to get the facts straight, he never said that the war would go on for 100 years. He said US would most likely still have troops in Iraq for 100 years. Just like we still have bases and troops in Germany and Japan over 60 years after WWII.

Yeah, because those international peace-keeping forces have always worked out so well in places like the Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, etc.

I'm going to vote for the first man that has a solid plan for cutting spending, paying off our loans and buying back bonds from foreign investers, and leveling trade practices with countries that abuse human rights and exploit workers laboring for poverty wages that are undercutting U.S. domestic business.

The largest threat to the united states is our increasing dependence on foreign powers that actually hate us. See; China, Middle East

Barrack says he wants to end the occupation of Iraq and raise taxes. That'll put us half the way to paying for this debacle after 6 years. But it's better than McCain's "let's keep cutting taxes and continuing the occupation while we "pay" for it by selling ourselves to china"

China hates us, and that's not changing anytime soon. I don't honestly know what the fuck these Neocons are thinking, they act like the united states is defended against stupidity by a writ from God or something.

Actually, the last I looked, McCain was a strong proponent of cutting discretionary spending.

Great, but how large a cut? I'm all for a line-item veto and a war on earmarks, but there's not enough money there to balance the budget against the wars ... let alone buy back any bonds.

The sooner we buy back our country from the chinese, the better I'll feel.

If you think Obama is raising taxes in order to pay down our national debt, dream on.
Obama has already made clear that he plans to spend the additional tax revenue on social programs. But even liberal critics have noted that even with his proposed tax increases, Obama's numbers don't add up. Which means more taxes, more deficit spending, or both.

I agree with your other points though, about Britain, Japan and (most unsettling) China holding an increasing portion of our debt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

I'm a reformed neo-con myself. Pat Buchanan's book, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004) has converted me. Neo-cons have a false notion that it's the U.S. mission to save the world and promote democracy worldwide (and many Democrats too, as demonstrated by wars in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and elsewhere, as well as massive foreign aid by presidents and congresses of both parties, over 4 decades)But the neo-con influence is waning anyway.

I've reformed to see the wisdom of fighting war by other means, short of planes and bombs, to more gently leverage the world to see our way, or just stay out of it altogether. In examples where the U.S. has intervened in recent decades, like Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Iran, Iraq, the Phillipines and elsewhere, things have a way of reaching a natural equilibrium in all these places, regardless of what we do.
If we let them fight their civil wars or regional wars, it will run its course, they'll get tired of war, and a new era of peace and hunger free markets and democracy will arise, even without U.S. intervention.

Vietnam, for example, was over-run by communists, had a bloodbath in 1975, and 30 years later, they are taking on free-market reforms and are very welcoming toward Americans.
If we stay and hold a region and exert our influence, they often end up resenting us, no matter how well it turns out (Chile, for example, has one of the best economies in South America, but they'll never forget U.S. involvement with Pinochet).
Likewise the Phillipines.
And Iraq.

The reverse is true, though, of U.S. involvement and occupation in Germany and Japan. Our military presence in Germany and Japan has arguably made our nations remain closer allies than if we withdrew and both went our separate ways.

There are times when U.S. military action is necessary, and there are times when it is not, and just complicates things.

My problem with the neo-cons is they think U.S. military power is the answer for everything, and want to do it alone rather than build an international consensus.

You, and liberals in general, are quick to forget that McCain was a major thorn in Bush's side for openly criticizing Bush's strategy in Iraq, and along with Richard Lugar, Chuck Hegel and other Republicans, called for Rumsfeld's removal and more troops in Iraq to stabilize the nation and get the job done. McCain was called all kinds of names by his fellow Republicans for it, and is FAR from "just like Bush" or "continuing Bush's insanity".

There are aspects where McCain and Bush support the same policy (particularly amnesty and free trade), but it's deliberately misrepresentative to say McCain is just like Bush.

and he takes being a thorn in bush's side literally.
seriously though, I don't hate Mccain. I just think he's past his prime. I'm more concerned with his visible slowness when he speaks. I've seen him since 2000 and he has gotten slower mentally. He's the oldest candidate ever to run and I don't think it's a good sign for where he'll be in 4 or 8 years.

You know, ray, unlike certain liberals, many people can disagree with President Bush without out and out hating the man.

you know g-man some people would call a retarded man who starts a war based on lies that kills hundreds of thousands of people and then tanks the economy to pay for it a contemptable man.

Ray, do you really expect us to believe that you didn't hate him even before the Iraq war?

g-man do you really hate people who you don't know personally? i mean hate, real hate, is a strong thing. maybe if you were into the san francisco liberal scene you might have some zen exposure to give you a stronger sense of peace.
i never liked bush, he's an idiot and had no place running in the first place. i don't like the fact that he only got in because of his dad and the supreme court justices his dad appointed. i was uncomfortable with the fact he lost the popular vote, i found his reaction to 9/11 to be very troubling and the resulting wars and the needless deaths because of his actions to be something very sad and unsettling.

Two columns by Pat Buchanan, advocating a change in foreign policy :

• Honorable Exit From Empire
  
  Where Buchanan pragmatically suggests the timing is good to give up occupation and costly defense alliances in places that are no longer vital to the U.S., such as Taiwan, Poland, South Korea, and provocatively... Iraq, and Afghanistan, which he says would free us to shift our resources toward Pakistan, which is far more vital.
  I'm not sure I agree with the last one, but it's an interesting question to raise. Iraq is largely won at this point, and I think within a year or two we'll be out completely, regardless of which candidate wins in November.

and

• Obama's War
  
  Suggesting that Obama is pursuing pretty much the same shortsighted focus on gradual buildup of forces in Afghanistan, that Kennedy and Johnson did in Vietnam.
  I wonder when liberals will start chanting "just like Bush" about Obama.
  
  Although Buchanan fails to mention that while Obama advocated 2 brigades (about 10,000 men), McCain advocated 3 brigades (about 15,000 men).

Regardless of one photo-op of Bush and McCain together, which McCain is obligated to (and which you post the photo for endlessly, as if it occurred a thousand times), if McCain wants the nomination.
Bush and McCain have clearly had their differences, including a 2000 smear by the W.Bush camp (without factual basis or any evidence) that McCain had allegedly fathered a black child, which lost McCain the South Carolina primary, and for which McCain scolded Bush on a T.V. with unrestrained anger during a panel they appeared on together a few days after.


Regarding McCain's age, his mother is a very alert and spry 95, and even appeared in a Mother's Day commercial with McCain, that demonstrates McCain comes from a good gene-pool and ages well, even at 95.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2XTDHltNVU
The allegation that McCain has "become mentally slow" is a new one on me, and I haven't seen any stories to support what you allege.

Yep. Ray always hated Bush.

If I were to balance the budget and start buying our country back ..

1 ) End the occupation of Iraq, for better or worse.
2 ) Close our bases in countries that can defend themselves. (England, Italy, Germany, Turkey, ect ect. )
3 ) redistribute those resources to the southern border to combat para-military narcos.
4 ) Introduce a line-item veto. This will effectively kill any desire to load a bill with earmarks. Thus, allowing a bill to pass or fail on it's own merit.
5 ) Raise taxes.
6 ) Cut all social spending for those persons who are not citizens of the united states, or here through visa

7 ) Disband all trade agreements with countries that do not meet our humanitarian or economic standards. Thus, restoring the viablity of local production and manufacturing. No longer will an American company be forced to compete against a foreign producer that employs what ammounts to slave labor.

8 ) Work closely with the EU to continue to combat terrorism using their local assests instead of our extremely costly extended assests.

9 ) Stop proactively meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations.

and

10 ) Make everybody realize that the world has shifted from a trade based economy to an energy based economy and begin aggressively producing clean abundant domestic energy.

You know, if I could have a crack at it.

And I'm not Liberal, nor Conservative.

Yes.



No.



Depends on the country.



Yes.



Yes.



No.



YES YES YES YES OH GOD YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!



Yes. But more than that, most trade should be cut off anyway. Even if China and Saudi Arabia cleaned up their acts, they still shouldn't have as much of America's assets as they do.

Isolationism for the win!



Good luck making them work with us.



Even the threatening nations?

Still, this is something you should be saying to the UN.



........Yes. However, this shouldn't be an excuse not to drill for oil. In lieu of a new energy source's slow development into mass production and distribution, we need to have oil till then.

it's kind of sad someone of your advancing years is so shallow and petty.

Actually, Ray, I would respectfully submit that the people who hate Bush no matter what are the shallow and petty ones.

i listed many reasons for disliking bush. many reasons that make the man dislikable, even contemptable. many reasons that justify people opposing him as president.

For such a "zen exposed" guy, with such a "strong sense of peace", you sure do express a lot of spiteful and vitriolic anger on these boards.

The U.S. Supreme Court, if it wanted to pick our president in 2000, would not have kicked it back to the Florida state supreme court the first of 2 times it was handed to them, they would have picked Bush the first time.
It was because of the blatant partisanship of the Florida supreme court that the U.S. Supreme Court, the SECOND time it was presented to them for a ruling, opted only then to decide the issue.

And further, as Ann Coulter points out in a chapter of her book Slander (detailing how liberals and the liberal-partisan media slander conservatives and avoid an honest dialogue to push their liberal agenda) it was the media who rigged the election by prematurely calling the state of Florida falsely for Al Gore. A mistake the media only corrected AFTER the polls had closed in Florida, thus suppressing Republican voter turnout by an estimated 10,000 votes, when compared to the Republican voter turnout in the previous 1992 and 1996 elections.
10,000 votes that would have decisively given the election to Bush, without decisions by the U.S. and FL supreme courts.
Also, several of the most respected papers in this country (liberal media) did several recounts of the ballots in the months after the election, that also found on each recount that Bush was the winner.

And further, Gore tried to cherry pick the districts to count, and tried to suppress counting of strong Bush districts, and also tried to exclude overseas military votes, which are consistently strongly Republican as well.

For the record, as I've said often, I didn't vote for Bush in 2000 (I voted Nader), and only voted Bush in 2004 because Kerry was the unthinkable alternative. If the Democrats had given us a candidate such as Lieberman, Biden, Graham, Richardson or Dodd, I would have gone for an alternative to Bush.
Bush wasn't my first choice, but I do accept that he is our legitimately elected president, and he is the 3rd or 4th to win the election but not the popular vote. [ Thomas Jefferson(1800), John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes(1876), Benjamin Harrison(1888), and W.Bush(2000) ]
Richard Nixon would have been perfectly justified to challenge the 1960 presidential election (there is no dispute that the Kennedys have rigged elections, particularly RFK's seat as N.Y. Senator, through mob assistance), but out of patriotism chose not to bitterly divide the nation by doing so. If only Gore could have followed his example.

Finally, if you think Bush is an "idiot" (but you don't hate people, right? ) then you must really think Kerry and Al Gore are idiots, since their grades are actually lower than Bush's.

• Kerry's low grades
  Gore's low grades

But amazingly, the oh-so-neutral media hails both these guys as geniuses, and barely mentions their poor academic achievement. No bias at all, none, I'm sure.

Kerry was allowed to skate along and pass himself off as the latest manufactured genius, and only revealed his college transcripts a few months after the 2004 election.

you know, wondy. there really is no point in arguing with you. we'll never agree and i just feel a lot of energy is wasted on all sides.
but i will address the black or white stance your side often takes. why can't i call someone an idiot without "hating" them? and even if i did "hate" bush (a very strong emotion to have for someone i don't know personally) have i not listed enough actions on his part to justify my dislike of him? seriously, don't you think it's ok to dislike someone who has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the world based on eithr faulty intel or flat out lies?

Calling Bush an idiot is a rather personal, bitter, insulting, and non-specific way to address your disagreement with Bush.

As I just deconstructed, what you allege about Bush isn't even true.

I've voiced my fair share of criticisms of Bush (particularly his undue loyalty to corrupt incompetents, amnesty for illegals, the Harriet Miers nomination, not using his veto power to cut spending, not conducting the first 4 years of the Iraq war with the needed troop strength, and his costly go-it-alone approach of unilateral action, when diplomacy could have split the cost across many nations, as Bush Sr managed to arrange in 1991).

Again: if the whole world had the same intelligence as us, and believed Saddam's Iraq had WMD's, then it wasn't a lie. It was going to war with the best intelligence available at the time.
And as I pointed out elsewhere: MATERIAL BREACH is still WMD's, and there was plenty. (in another topic, I called it the story the liberal media absolutely refuses to report)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kay
  
  Testimony Before House and Senate Committees
  
  In testimony on the progress of the Iraq Survey Group on October 2, 2003 he revealed to House and Senate committees that the ISG had found that Iraq had a network of clandestine laboratories containing equipment that should have been (but was not) disclosed to UN inspectors. He also said that the ISG found an undeclared prison laboratory complex and an undeclared Unmanned Aerial Vehicle production facility. The Iraq Survey Group also found out that a UAV had been test-flown out to a range of 500 kilometers even though the agreed upon limit was 150 kilometers. Kay said that Iraq lied to the UN about the range of that particular UAV.
  
  He testified that Iraq had done research on Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever and Brucella but had not declared this to the UN. Iraq also continued research and development work on anthrax and ricin without declaring it to the UN.
  
  Kay told the committees that between 1999 and 2002 Iraq attempted to obtain missile technology from North Korea that would allow them to build missiles with a range of 1300 kilometers, far beyond the UN limit of 150 kilometers that Iraq agreed upon in UN Resolution 687. They also sought anti-ship missiles with a range of 300 kilometers from North Korea.
  
  "With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War," Kay testified
  

and:

• On January 23, 2004, Kay resigned, stating that Iraq did not have WMD and that "I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them."[1] Kay was replaced in his role by Charles Duelfer and spent the following days discussing his discoveries and opinions with the news media and the U.S. political establishment. He testified on January 28, 2004 that “[i]t turns out that we were all wrong” and “I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarized chemical weapons there.” However, Kay defended the Bush administration, saying that even if Iraq did not have weapons stockpiles, this did not mean the nation wasn't dangerous. Kay also blamed faulty intelligence gathering for the prewar WMD conclusions. On February 2, 2004, Kay met with George W. Bush at the White House and maintained that Bush was right to go to war in Iraq and characterized Saddam Hussein's government as “far more dangerous than even we anticipated” when it was thought he had WMDs ready to deploy.

you're still beating that dead horse?

Associated Press:

• A day after Democratic candidate Barack Obama warned that Republican rival John McCain would tell voters “he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills,” McCain’s campaign on Thursday accused Obama of playing racial politics.
  
  Obama “played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. He called Obama’s remarks “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
  
  Stumping in Missouri, Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain the GOP’s hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.
  
  “Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, ‘he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”‘

so what you're saying is that republicans can call emphasize his middle name, show pictures of him in foreign garb, call him a muslim, complain about the black church he goes to and the issues of race raised there, but if Obama mentions it at all then he's "playing the race card?"
classy

McCain never said that so Obama really shouldn't be saying it either.

Just a few opinions:

• I like all of Wesley's ideas
• If Obama's camp said it, it's his responsibility. If McCain's camp said it, it's his.
• There are no WMD's in Iraq. There never was. Digging up twenty-year-old fragments of what could have been a chemical-something is not a WMD. It is, in fact, a piss-poor excuse to try to make up for the fact that our administration outright lied to us. Flail and cry all you want, the truth is the truth.
• I have the right to call George W. Bush a complete and utter fucking moron just for being who he is. He has more than proved he's not only unfit for the Presidency, but has no place in 21st century politics. Thanks to him and all the rest of his liars, he's killed thousands of innocent Americans with the Iraq Disaster, setback global relations by about twenty-years, and destroyed our economy. Yeah, he's a real winner.
  
  You don't agree? I understand. Even Hitler had apologists...

yeah, mccain keeps himself safe while other people around him make the comments.

There are WMDs in Iraq. I know people that have seen them.

One of the reasons the economy is so bad is because of all the money hating anti-American "environmentalists" they are the ones who stopped us from making new refineries in America which would have lowered gas prices. They are the ones who said ethanol would solve all our problems. Guess what? It didn't. All it did was waste who knows how much money and created a global food shortage.

I don't know enough about ethanol to comment on it, but we don't need more refineries. Our over dependence on foreign oil and our overuse of petroleum products is the problem. We need to find a way to cut pollution, not keep polluting just because we don't want to undermine our way of life.

And no, a few mustard gas containers given to him by Reagan in the 80's and some feelers to buy missiles he wouldn't have been able to get do not justify the claims of colin powell at the UN or bush in his state of the union address.

I know we joke around a lot about Obama here, but we're not McCain. Also, the issue with Obama is that he seems to think every possible criticism one can make about him, his views, his experience, etc., is "divisive" or "out of bounds."

He needs to develop a thicker skin if he's going to be President.

Also getting on to the question of more refineries, mentioned most recently by Ray, you can argue about whether or not that's a good idea. However, when you have Obama saying stuff like "we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling — if everybody was just inflating their tires... And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!"

So, the man who would be the next president thinks underinflated tires caused an energy crisis?

Seriously, and people think George W. Bush was stupid and under-qualified?

Rex, you have to leave the basement to know "people". Besides, I "knew" a guy who swore to me he had Saddam in his sniper-sights when he did his six-month tour over there. I believed him, too!



Yeah, THAT's it. Funny, I don't remember us having this problem before we hauled off and attacked Iraq for no readily understandable reason...