Thread: The State Of The Union

I try not to confuse intelligence with wisdom.

A friend of mine says that for the last three decades all the options he has had have been a crooked Democrat or a stupid Republican. He now calls himself an independent.

I cannot trust Obama due to his past associations and the people he has appointed to high offices in his administration.

Down at the local hardware store Obama is referred to as the "Manure salesman with a whole mouth full of samples.

Let's all vote independent and give some new people a shot. The last twenty years have been the biggest argument for term limits that this old man has ever observed.

It is a crying shame that all the men who have given thier lives for us to have freedom and it is abused so shamelesslly.

God Bless America.

God Bless America!

Originally Posted by northpaw

I agree with a lot of that, but could you clarify what you mean in #4, please?

Oh things like there is a law in California that you are not suppose to use a cell phone while pumping fuel, there is not enough energy in a cell phone transmission to do jack.

The spotted owl thing comes to mind....never really real but the "feel good" legislation ruined the timber industry in California.


Passing a law that black cars should not be sold in California because they use more energy to run. Science research indicates that it just ain't so.

Whether you agree with Global Warming because of CO2 or not what is the best way to combat the warming issue.

Making DDT illegal and not letting any UN countries use it either has resulted in 2 Million deaths in Africa alone in the past 10 years.


Just a few but the idea is that we need regulations and laws that are based on science not Voodoo and urban half truths.


Later,
Richard

I was listening to (Takes long breath ) Mr. Obama talking about health care, and the stalled bills in House and Senate. "If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let me know. I'm eager to see it." Actually, he has not been eager to see other ideas at all. John Conyers has had another idea: extending Medicare to cover everyone. He had it in the form of a bill, HR 676, but at the urging of the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept that bill from even getting a hearing. Earlier, almost a year ago, Obama held a conference at the White House to hear ideas about health care reform, but he excluded from that conference any advocates of what is called "single-payer"--shorthand for a Canadian-style health system in which the government insures everyone, and sets the reimbursement amounts for doctors and hospitals, medical services of all kinds, and drugs. But the truth is, he doesn't want to talk about it and doesn't want to even hear about it.
Then the president, to loud applause, said he would have all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year. At another point, though, he went further, saying that "all our troops" would be "coming home." The truth, though, is that they won't be. In fact, though, as many as 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq after this August. Whether they will be "in combat" or not is really not up to them. If they are attacked, of course they will be in combat. They may well be sent into battle too, though who knows if we'll hear about it. There are unlikely to be too many members of the press with them, as the focus shifts to Afghanistan. But 50,000 is a lot of troops--much more than the US has in South Korea, for instance. It's hardly an end to the war in Iraq.
The president slipped by the new big war, Afghanistan, in an astonishingly abrupt single paragraph. Think about it. He has ordered an escalation of that conflict, where the US already has committed 70,000 troops, with another 30,000 on the way, not counting perhaps 50-60,000 more private mercenaries, and has called for a new aggressive strategy of capturing and holding territory--a strategy that is bound to increase both US and innocent Afghani casualties--and he only said a couple of sentences about it.
Obama said the US is "training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home," but he knows his own advisors are telling him that those Afghan military forces are incapable of being expanded to do that job. The whole country is basically illiterate and not capable of being trained to handle much of the equipment, the military and police are hopelessly corrupt, and the tribal system makes a unified national army a pipe-dream. He said the US will "reward good governance," but in fact has allied itself with a corrupt narco-regime led by Hamid Karzai, whose own brother is a leading drug kingpin.
There were more lies and misleading statements through the speech, for example his lie that his administration has "prohibited torture," but these alone make it amply clear that the president was not doing his constitutional duty of giving Congress an accurate report on the "state of the union."
Yeah, Obama gives a good speech. He's smooth, unruffled by audience response, good at a timely ad-lib remark, and knows how to win over a tough crowd...all skills that were in evidence at last night's State of the Union address. But he's also good at telling lies.

Again, sorry for the long post.

Originally Posted by Jasongreat

I didnt find much humor in his post, so I dont know where the jester part comes from.

He identifies himself as a "Jester" in his custom title, right beneath his username?

I wasn't implying that there was humor in his post, but was hinting that I found it a little ridiculous - kind of like a Jester's behavior? (Not the most obvious association, I agree. But there it is.)

The comment in which I scoffed, "You actually expect a politican to keep his promises?" really wasn't the best cue to start talking about Adolf Hitler, socialism or pagans. Sure, there seem to be plenty of people here who enjoy reading such posts in Obama threads (as evidenced by the gratuitous "Thank-You's" by the same members, over and over), but in this instance it struck me as being off-topic and more of an an attmpt to rile a few people up than anything else.

Originally Posted by Blade Wielder

The comment in which I scoffed, "You actually expect a politican to keep his promises?" really wasn't the best cue to start talking about Adolf Hitler, socialism or pagans.

Right. Let's start slowly. "You actually expect a politican to keep his promises?" is a rhetorical question. It seems safe to assume from the context of this sentence that you were trying to convey the following message: "I do not expect any politician to ever keep any of his promises. And I expect other to do likewise." If not, a rhetorical question would have been an inappropriate rhetorical figure to use.

Based on the assumption that you were actually implying that all politicians are liars, it is equally safe to assume that (a) you came to this conclusion based on research and observation, and (b) found a benchmark, ie a non-lying politician, whether fictional or real.

Therefore, I took the liberty of pointing out that the only politicians known to me who ever fulfilled their promises were totalitarian dictators. This is, of course, an overly broad statement, verified by the fact that Hitler's deficit spending would have rendered Germany bankrupt (but with lots of formerly unemployed Germans building Autobahnen), but still a close enough approximation for "truth" in this context.

With a bit of research, you will find the same to be true for socialist (or communist, you can never be sure with these people) dictators. Or other dictators, for that matter, hence the beauty of the theory of totalitarianism.

As far as pagans are concerned, a shared feature of totalitarian movements (whether right or left wing) is an elaborating guiding ideology, commonly referred to as a secular religion. Add to that strong pagan elements in, for example, what is commonly referred to as "The SS-State", you will find that the term is actually sensible.

Originally Posted by Blade Wielder

Sure, there seem to be plenty of people here who enjoy reading such posts in Obama threads (as evidenced by the gratuitous "Thank-You's" by the same members, over and over), but in this instance it struck me as being off-topic and more of an an attmpt to rile a few people up than anything else.

Well, sincere apologies for hurting your feelings, Blade Wielder. Relax, take some shallow breaths, re-read. It was not my intention to rile you, or anyone else. I was merely putting your statement into perspective, thus blowing your argument out of the water. In a liberal democracy, there is no way a political party (represented by its leader to varying degrees according to the concrete design of the democratic system, cf eg US vs Germany) can fulfil all promises made in an election. The shopping cart theory of political agenda is an interesting topic in this context, as is globalisation.

Regards,
Robin

You certainly must have "started slowly," since I observed your presence in this thread over the course of 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours as you typed that post of yours.

You mentioned "blowing [my] argument out of the water," but if you notice, I didn't make an argument, so you really only blew yourself out of the water. All I did was type a cliche one-liner, and then you went to town with your little editorial. You seem to have a habit of projecting. You do it in your last paragraph here when you make an insincere apology for hurting my feelings (you didn't) and then try to condescend to me (poorly) by telling me to take shallow breaths. You didn't rile anyone up directly, but the habit a lot of users have for inserting their political views into each of their posts, only to rack up the obligatory "Thanks!" from their usual train of followers is becoming increasingly subversive.

Originally Posted by denmason

I was listening to (Takes long breath ) Mr. Obama talking about health care, and the stalled bills in House and Senate. "If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let me know. I'm eager to see it."

Lol I'm eager to see it too. That kind of plan does not exist. Can anyone explain to me how spending more can "bring down the deficit"? And also while providing 95% of Americans with tax breaks.

Yes I realise it will lower the deficit rate of increase (10 trillion instead of 11 trillion) but I don't think it will actually create surplus to decrease the deficit in anyway. Obama's biggest issue is that he conveniently mixes up rates with quantities.

Originally Posted by Blade Wielder

the habit a lot of users have for inserting their political views into each of their posts, only to rack up the obligatory "Thanks!" from their usual train of followers is becoming increasingly subversive.

Come on, its not a habit, it is a compulsion, conservatives rule and despit my best efforts I never get thanks from my follower (simply because I can't thank myself).

I didn't hear mr Obama's speech and why even should as he's not my president (didn't hear ours either as when it came out about a month ago i had some better things to do, walk the dogs or shovel the snow, for example).

Without taking any comments on the politics of your president it seems very obvious that he doesn't even have a change to work for what he has promised for, if he is so hated as it seems.
It is strange. People seem to wait that he takes care of your country, and at the same time they do everything they can to make him fail.

I'd like someone to explain to me how/when 95% of americans are/will be getting a tax break. Tax tables for 2010 looks exactly like the 2009 ones.

Medicare recipients are experiencing an increase on their monthly premiums.

Or is this another one of the lies in the speech.