Thread: Obama camp furious!

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Thanks, I just think its ridiculous how much stock the American public puts in the aspects of candidates lives that have nothing to do with how they'll run the country. I say cut out all the crap that doesn't deal with relevant political issues and hold weekly debates, round table discussions, anything that gives you a true feel for the person's character as it applies to the issues they'll be facing. All this talk of personal lives, religious beliefs and skin color is little more than sophomoric gossip that distracts good people from assessing what's really important.

So where do you draw the line? Are we voting for a leader of a nation or just some robot who manages things without addressing his personal inclinations and beliefs? I don't know where to draw the line on this one. If I see that a presidential candidate has a poster of Karl Marx, or some Communist revolutionary on his office wall -- I might think a little ----If I see a presidential candidate attend white supremacist organizations or has Hitler posters on his wall, I might think a little ------- Is it the total package or do you think a person can be a president without being affected by his religious beliefs, personal life, etc ------ where do you draw the line.

Justin

Originally Posted by jaegerhund

So where do you draw the line? Are we voting for a leader of a nation or just some robot who manages things without addressing his personal inclinations and beliefs? I don't know where to draw the line on this one. If I see that a presidential candidate has a poster of Karl Marx, or some Communist revolutionary on his office wall -- I might think a little ----If I see a presidential candidate attend white supremacist organizations or has Hitler posters on his wall, I might think a little ------- Is it the total package or do you think a person can be a president without being affected by his religious beliefs, personal life, etc ------ where do you draw the line.

Justin

I see your point, but you don't see these things.
Anything 'personal' you see about the candidates has been professionally groomed and evaluated to determine in advance how they will influence the voter.

When I vote for someone, my vote is based on a) if they give me the impression of being honest and b)how they will do their job.
I don't care about their beliefs, nor do I care about their marital status, or even if they are gay or not, or smoked pot as a teen.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I see your point, but you don't see these things.
Anything 'personal' you see about the candidates has been professionally groomed and evaluated to determine in advance how they will influence the voter.

When I vote for someone, my vote is based on a) if they give me the impression of being honest and b)how they will do their job.
I don't care about their beliefs, nor do I care about their marital status, or even if they are gay or not, or smoked pot as a teen.

You should listen to some of what that alleged "pastor" has said. If he was white and said that about blacks he would be in jail for inciting racial hatred, and threatening insurrection against the government. If Obama believes even a fraction of what he has heard his judgment is seriously flawed and his honesty is right out the window.

Why we put up with this behavior just because someone is a "minority" is beyond me.

Originally Posted by Wildtim

You should listen to some of what that alleged "pastor" has said. If he was white and said that about blacks he would be in jail for inciting racial hatred, and threatening insurrection against the government. If Obama believes even a fraction of what he has heard his judgment is seriously flawed and his honesty is right out the window.

Why we put up with this behavior just because someone is a "minority" is beyond me.

Moreover, while I was watching the video, I was wondering what if "rich white man (men)" was changed to "rich Jewish men" or "the Zionist" ----- I know that white guys can be made the scapegoat of anything without much of a flinch by the media, but if such a substitution was made, I think the racism and bigotry in his statements would be much more obvious. Let a white candidate have a white pastor (that he considers a mentor) say such a thing, i.e., the Jewish money owners with their greedy little hands are responsible for the sorry situation of white people and see how long his race for presidency would last --- not very long and rightly so. I don't know what Obama's true feeling are --- and all of this makes me wonder ---- he screwed up by being associated with this guy for sure.

Today, there was plenty of news coverage on this and Obama's speech to explain himself and this situation. First of all, initially, he claimed he was not aware of such sermons by his pastor --- now he's saying he knew about them but did not agree with them. Hmm.

Juan Williams said something interesting about how Obama couldn't separate himself from this preacher because it was his only tie to the "black community" ---that is Obama, being a very privileged fellow, went to private schools in Hawaii (no real association with the "black community" there), went to Columbia and Harvard (considered fairly white bread stuff by most) and joined this church as a somewhat superficial connection to the supposed black community --- if he disconnects himself from this guy, he thinks he might disconnect himself from all of black America --- as if all black folks think this preacher is right --hmm ------interesting --- maybe, maybe not ---but interesting.

Justin

tick.....tick.....tick.....tick.....tick.....tick. ....tick....

That's the sound of the clock winding down on Obama's 15 minutes of fame.


The real shame of the whole Obama thing is that it took this long for people to start finding out anything about him.

Except the government of the United States of America before 1930 can you give me an example of this! Hopefully one that did not eventually turn sour as our government has been doing for at least the last seventy years?

Keeping in mind, of course, that the government of the United State prior to 1930 permitted horrific atrocities to occur in factories and industries across the nation, allowing such extremes of wealth disparity to occur that the massive stagflation that was the Great Depression was the only possible result, and when it occurred did nothing to alleviate the situation. That prior to the late 1800s, the legal apparatus and enforcement mechanisms necessary for indefinite incorporation and liability protection didn't even exist, mechanisms which make the private enterprise of today, which you seem to hold in such high regard, possible. The government that for nearly 100 years permitted the violent enslavement of others, an atrocity which was only abolished, and could only have been abolished through such a massive intervention of the Federal Government as the Civil War.

Here are some things that government can do, and that our government has largely succeeded in doing, since 1930. Through regulation and tax incentives, it has cleaned up the particulate pollution which was clouding the skies over our cities and poisoning the landscape of our rural areas. Through a judicious compromise on payroll taxes, it has secured a social safety net which preserves dignity in old age and ensured that the poorest among us can have access to basic medical care. It has put American children in schools instead of in sweatshops. It has substantially reduced workplace accidents and deaths. It leveled the income gap between the richest and the poorest (though since the advent of Reagan conservatism, this gap has returned with a vengeance). It has stabilized food prices at an affordable level through the application of farm subsidies. It has built an interstate highway system. It has preserved millions of acres of wilderness for the appreciation of future generations. It built electrical generation and distribution infrastructure that reaches even the most remote parts of our country. It has funded research into the most arcane, and to the layman, seemingly ludicrous ideas, ideas that no private investor would ever have the courage to risk his personal fortune on and which few investors would even have the wealth to fund, and which have resulted in innovations from atomic energy to various pharmaceuticals to transistors and plastics. On the just plain cool side, it has built a space program that has been so successful that to this day, ours is the only nation to have ever put human beings on the moon. And for the most part, it has done all these things without diminishing the personal freedoms and liberties enjoyed by its citizens.

And despite the fact that conservatives have been systematically attempting to undermine these achievements or restrict the benefits that come from them to the wealthy few, these accomplishments remain and continue to make all our lives better, cleaner, safer and more free. What they have succeeded in doing in attempting to turn back the clock to the days of the robber barons is leave us with an economy riddled with debt, not just in the government but in the average household as well, and on the verge of collapse. With their eyes only on short term profits, they have sold off our manufacturing base and sold out the American people.

I won't pretend that the accomplishments of our government since the 1930s have been perfect. The national spirit of a common cause and a common destiny, on which many of these accomplishments depend for political support, lost focus soon after FDR, and rather than focusing on achieving results, we began to build bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, and since that also goes hand in hand with corruption, waste and frustrating interactions with those it is meant to serve, Americans rightly became disillusioned with their government. In truth, it was not government per se that was at fault, but the way in which we were attempting to wield our government to solve the problems we needed it to solve. Rather like getting the angle wrong with your straight. And it's not a matter of getting government out of the way so that private enterprise can fulfill these needs. If private enterprise were capable of fulfilling them, they would already be doing so. But this doesn't mean that it's an either/or choice between government or private enterprise. Government provides the framework for the solution of problems, and only actually does the work when it is absolutely impossible for private enterprise to meet the need. We have public police and fire departments, because relying solely on private police and fire departments simply don't meet the social needs. Even then, it still typically allows the contribution of private enterprise in order to promote the benefits of competition and innovation. There are still private security companies and private fire departments.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

Here are some things that government can do, and that our government has largely succeeded in doing, since 1930. Through regulation and tax incentives, it has cleaned up the particulate pollution which was clouding the skies over our cities and poisoning the landscape of our rural areas. Through a judicious compromise on payroll taxes, it has secured a social safety net which preserves dignity in old age and ensured that the poorest among us can have access to basic medical care. It has put American children in schools instead of in sweatshops. It has substantially reduced workplace accidents and deaths. It leveled the income gap between the richest and the poorest (though since the advent of Reagan conservatism, this gap has returned with a vengeance). It has stabilized food prices at an affordable level through the application of farm subsidies. It has built an interstate highway system. It has preserved millions of acres of wilderness for the appreciation of future generations. It built electrical generation and distribution infrastructure that reaches even the most remote parts of our country. It has funded research into the most arcane, and to the layman, seemingly ludicrous ideas, ideas that no private investor would ever have the courage to risk his personal fortune on and which few investors would even have the wealth to fund, and which have resulted in innovations from atomic energy to various pharmaceuticals to transistors and plastics. On the just plain cool side, it has built a space program that has been so successful that to this day, ours is the only nation to have ever put human beings on the moon. And for the most part, it has done all these things without diminishing the personal freedoms and liberties enjoyed by its citizens.

I contend that any of the above that is truly good or useful would have been brought about by private individuals had they been allowed to. Most of it though you will have to explain why it is a good thing for all of us not just the one individual who gets to suck at the government teat. Why is it now that private individuals can put things into space for a fraction the cost of a NASA launch yet they are not allowed to do so.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

And despite the fact that conservatives have been systematically attempting to undermine these achievements or restrict the benefits that come from them to the wealthy few, these accomplishments remain and continue to make all our lives better, cleaner, safer and more free. What they have succeeded in doing in attempting to turn back the clock to the days of the robber barons is leave us with an economy riddled with debt, not just in the government but in the average household as well, and on the verge of collapse. With their eyes only on short term profits, they have sold off our manufacturing base and sold out the American people.

How has the government deciding it has a right to nearly a quarter of my earnings made me more free?

We have no manufacturing left in this country in large part because the workers organizations and government regulations make the work force in this country far more expensive than the workforce elsewhere. In other words there is a greater supply of workers worldwide than there is a demand for them to work yet American workers are not allowed to meet the markets price so the work goes elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

I won't pretend that the accomplishments of our government since the 1930s have been perfect. The national spirit of a common cause and a common destiny, on which many of these accomplishments depend for political support, lost focus soon after FDR, and rather than focusing on achieving results, we began to build bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, and since that also goes hand in hand with corruption, waste and frustrating interactions with those it is meant to serve, Americans rightly became disillusioned with their government. In truth, it was not government per se that was at fault, but the way in which we were attempting to wield our government to solve the problems we needed it to solve. Rather like getting the angle wrong with your straight. And it's not a matter of getting government out of the way so that private enterprise can fulfill these needs. If private enterprise were capable of fulfilling them, they would already be doing so. But this doesn't mean that it's an either/or choice between government or private enterprise. Government provides the framework for the solution of problems, and only actually does the work when it is absolutely impossible for private enterprise to meet the need.

There you go again assuming that a large organization is required to 'solve' the social issues of the day. The solution would be for the government to step out of the way of the individual. Then it would be governments only job to ensure that each individual has the protection to act in his ore her on self-interest. The beauty of what the founders of this nation laid out is that it is a system designed to work best when all the citizens are the most free to act in their own interest. Of course along with that is being responsible for ones own poor judgment or failures, this is the part that seems most difficult for most liberals to grasp.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

We have public police and fire departments, because relying solely on private police and fire departments simply don't meet the social needs. Even then, it still typically allows the contribution of private enterprise in order to promote the benefits of competition and innovation. There are still private security companies and private fire departments.

It's true that Police and Fire protection are areas the Government should handle, as well as road maintenance. However if you talk to anyone in government the don't encourage competition they resent it. If they were doing their jobs as well as they are supposed to there would be no need for the private companies, companies which by government regulation are not allowed to compete directly with the government in these sectors. Also when cities contract with private companies to provide these essential services essentially putting them back into the private sector why does service invariably improve?

Originally Posted by Wildtim

I contend that any of the above that is truly good or useful would have been brought about by private individuals had they been allowed to. Most of it though you will have to explain why it is a good thing for all of us not just the one individual who gets to suck at the government teat. Why is it now that private individuals can put things into space for a fraction the cost of a NASA launch yet they are not allowed to do so.

I am not going to go into the political side of this argument, but I can shed some light on this one, since I worked in the space industry for a couple of years as consultant.

Each space mission is subject to a horrendous amount of planning, design and QA.
When I was the team lead for a system that was used to validate a 'weather sattelite'(say cheese ), the stack of requirements for the test system was 2 fists thick. Literally.

And in the intermediate design reviews, we had to prove that ALL individual paragraph sized requirements were taken into consideration in my design and interface documents (another fist thick stack of paper that we had to write).
This meant creating a huge traceability matrix, linking requirement IDs to chapter numbers. And trust me when I say that QA checked every single one.

And that was the design phase.
Acceptance testing itself consisted of hundreds of scenarios that had to be documented, set up, and tested. And each one had to pass. The fianl test report was another 2 fist stack of paper.

As for programming, as soon as we started integration testing, all modifications to the sources had to be linked via source code control to issue / bug report items, and had to be closed with an explanation that included all changed files and the modifications that were made, the root cause of the problem and the solution.

The actual work to build the system was < 25% of all the time and money that was invested.

The reason that private companies can outperform ESA and NASA is that they can take the armadillo aerospace approach: think about it; build it; launch it; see what happens.
A LOT of those startups are nothing but sinkholes for money, and go tits up.
The ones that make it trough are indeed more efficient (survival of the fittest) but you would not want a national program to be run like that. The stakes are simply too high.

The only way to make a reasonable guarantee beforehand that nothing will go wrong is by taking the slow, expensive approach.
If you don't have to make that guarantee, then you can take the McGuyver approach and indeed, it will be more cost efficient if it works.

I contend that any of the above that is truly good or useful would have been brought about by private individuals had they been allowed to. Most of it though you will have to explain why it is a good thing for all of us not just the one individual who gets to suck at the government teat. Why is it now that private individuals can put things into space for a fraction the cost of a NASA launch yet they are not allowed to do so.

But you see, this is precisely where your logic fails, for all these things I mentioned were needed at a scope and scale that no private actor could provide. These are not things needed by some small segment of society, but by everyone. And for the most part, government did not implement those solutions blindly. Social Security and Medicare are merely different types of insurance, and private insurance is a very old practice indeed, in fact so old that at one time, it was specifically outlawed by at least one state as a form of fraud, after all, how much sense does it make to bet against yourself? However, when used prudently, insurance can be an important and even necessary safeguard against the contingencies of living in an unpredictable and dangerous world.

And it's not as if something was preventing private companies from providing such insurance to everyone prior to the 1930s, it certainly wasn't the government stopping them. What keeps them from being able to provide that service universally are two simple economic facts. First, very few private individuals or companies ever acquire a resource base large enough to meet these needs. The scope of the social requirement is simply too large to wait for some one individual or group to amass the wealth necessary to meet this universal need. Second, there is no profit in providing such coverage universally. This is easier to see when we look at our electrical infrastructure. It takes many millions (if not billions) of dollars to build the power plants and run the lines to provide juice to those who live outside the cities and suburbs. Yet so few people live out there, and those that do on average have such little money, that even combined they do not have the wealth to pay for such needed infrastructure. No private company would lay out such a huge investment when there is literally no way they can make their money back on that investment, even in the mid to long term. But we have a social, that is universal, need for such access to this infrastructure. What economic production occurs in these rural areas is made vastly more efficient when they have access to power, and the universality of coverage permits flexibility in growth, permitting new companies and factories to have a much wider choice in where to site their new business.

You see, while there can be profit in providing those goods and services to some narrow sector of the population, those who can pay for it and who can leverage the benefits it brings into immediate profits themselves, there isn't any profit in providing these thing universally, not because there isn't real value created by doing so, but because what value is created is spread so diffusely through society that there is no mechanism for the private enterprise to capture some part of that value as profit. The only way to recoup the value of their investment would be to *gasp* impose universal taxes, but if they did so, they would simply be the government, and worse, a undemocratic government accountable only to its owners, and not to its citizens.

This is part of where the government gains the justification to take a quarter of your income in taxes, but more fundamentally, they have that right because without the framework that only government has the capacity to provide, the legal and infrastructural framework that all modern business depends upon to produce their products and reach their consumers, you wouldn't be able to have an income at all.

Thank you, Bruno, for explaining the necessity of a state-run space program as a first step to the possibility of any space program at all, whether public or private. I applaud the steps private enterprise is now taking in reaching for the stars, but these steps would not be possible if it weren't for the research, innovation and discovery blazed by our public space program. Let me add that not only must government be the trail-blazer here, but in all areas where the benefits of such investment lie in the remote future and where such benefits are diffused throughout society as a whole, or where such research might run down an expensive, but dead end. Moreover, many of the innovations we rely upon today, and which generate massive profit for the private sector, would not have even been thought of were it not for the pressure on research and creativity provided by this project. Everything from velcro to the very computer you are using and the cell phone in your pocket would not have been possible without the technological innovations demanded by the space program, and as eloquently argued by Bruno, such a program must first be a public program.

Then it would be governments only job to ensure that each individual has the protection to act in his ore her on self-interest.

On this we agree, where we find our disagreement is in what constitutes that protection. You believe that it is sufficient that we simply keep people from directly and intentionally harming others, while I believe that much more is needed. The individual does not have the capacity to act on his or her own self interest when they are restricted in their access to the basic resources needed to provide for it. Moreover, harm can be caused indirectly and unintentionally as well. You might not think you are harming me by driving a gas-guzzling SUV, and indeed, directly you are not. But indirectly, your higher consumption of gas has down-stream market effects on the price of fuel, and that effects me and harms me when it causes fuel prices to rise. The pollution generated by that vehicle, in itself insignificant, but when combined with millions of other similar vehicles, damages the environment and makes me less healthy, which is certainly an indirect harm. Every economic activity has externalities, and taxation and regulation are the social means of pricing those externalities back into the cost of that activity. Otherwise, everyone pays for the costs of such activity, while only a few reap its benefits.

Look how well FedEx and UPS deliver packages. Our US Postal Service has sucked for a long time. I wonder how well FedEx and UPS would handle the mail? We need to dismantle much of our government and put it into the private sector.

Did it ever occur to you that the only way these private delivery companies can maintain such high standards of service is because the vast majority of mail delivery is still routed through the USPS? I find it funny that conservatives point to the longest running and most successful domestic government program as evidence that government doesn't work, simply because a few private couriers appear to be able to move packages faster. They wouldn't be able to do so if they had to deal with the sheer volume of mail, literally in the trillions of pieces per day, that the USPS does. The wonder is that they are as efficient as they are considering the task before them.

What you conservatives have to get through your thick skulls is that our government is not some nameless, faceless malicious and incompetent "other" merely out to raid your pocketbook and line theirs. I know it seems that way given that this is how conservatives have attempted to govern in the past 20 or so years that they have been in power, but in our country, WE elect our government, and WE are responsible for the direction it takes and the things it does. In other words, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or James Sensenbrenner or Mitch McConnell and certainly not George W. Bush. They are our servants and representatives to our government, mere tools for us to discern and implement the public will. Stop playing the victim and take responsibility for the way our government works and the things it does. Let government solve the problems only it can solve and let private enterprise provide the goods and services only it can provide. There is no contradiction between private and free enterprise and a robust and active government. The choice is not between communism and anarchism. There is a rational and sensible middle ground, but it takes a great deal of work and trial and error to find it. Stop being perfectionists and start getting on board with making things better.

And for God's sake, drop the unreasonable and unjustified faith that whatever government can do, private individuals and corporations can do better. When we look through history and across the face of this planet, we see the nations that have attempted to implement private market solutions to public problems. To a "T" every one of them is a third-world banana republic with huge amounts of social unrest. When we look at nations with the lowest infant mortality rates, the lowest poverty rates, the lowest levels of illiteracy, and so forth, we find that every one of them has a robust and very active government that works with and complements private enterprise, and that indeed have fairly high levels of taxation compared to our own, but also have greater opportunities for advancement and personal enrichment. Stop seeing this issue as black and white, us against them, and recognize that there are huge shades of gray, and that each of us have dreams, hopes and desires in common. We all need peace, security, good food, adequate shelter and access to basic medical care. We all desire a better future for our children, and work that is fulfilling and makes us feel like we are part of something larger than ourselves and larger than some narrow money-making scheme of capitalist investors.

On what I hope to be a conciliatory note, I would like to say that I have enjoyed the opportunity to present and explain my views, and what I take to be the views of progressive and liberal Americans. I may not be able to convince JMS, Wildtim, 2sharp, or fallout55, but if others read this thread and are at least inspired to think seriously and deeply about these things, rather than simply accepting the easy talking-points and stereotyping from either left or right, then I would consider the time and effort I have spent here to be well spent indeed.

Thank you, that was a wonderful load of waffle, but it doesn't have anything to do with Obama.
You have successfully generalized a whole lot of garbage that has little to do with why Obama could be the right guy for the job.

If you want to break down Democrats vs. Republicans
Why not look at areas controlled by a strong partisan contingent.

I live in California, a very liberal state. We have the strictest gun control laws with the exception of Washington DC, and the highest violent crime rates... again with the exception of Washington DC.
Your government suported police force has little influence on everyday life here, they can't stop violent crime. In fact according to some of the highest courts in the US they have no obligation to protect us. They are here to protect the public in general. If the liberal democrats had their way, guns would be outlawed, and only criminals would have them.
I personally find this foolish to a fault. On 3 separate occasions a loaded gun has saved my life. Without firing a shot. Brandishing a weapon has prevented 2 armed robberey attempts, and an attempted home invasion. When the police were called they didn't even show up to take a report.
More violent crime goes unreported in California every year than most states have in a decade.
You want to look at race in this? more black men are murdered in California each year than in Texas and Alabama combined... There's your liberal politics at work.
You can't regulate everything with government unless you have absolute power to enforce these regulations. California is sliding down hill very quickly under a democrat controlled circus show.

Now lets get back on topic... Obama.
How is he supposed to fix things?
He's making promises he's going to single handedly fix the world...
He's going to overhaul NAFTA, and end the war in Iraq...
Great speeches don't fix problems.
I don't care if he voted against the war, that doesn't stop it...
The only absolute way to stop one people from hating or fighting with another is genocide... is that his great plan?

I'm sick of politicians making empty promises to get votes, I'm sick of political waffle. Obama strikes me as nothing more than another dishonest politician.