When Obama says things like this...
 

...he hits me straight in my core, finds my resonant frequency and rings me like a tuning fork.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ed..._got_it_wrong/

Does that mean that you like him or you hate him? :confused:

He resonates with me. I don't know if I'll, you know, vote for him. But I find it incredible that a politician, running for President, has squarely addressed the notion that we're in this weird polarized place, all fighting and nasty and non-unified.

Plus, I think he'll win the nomination. He's got all the Bill Clinton-like natural presence that Hillary just doesn't have.

If you look at the whole group of candidates and are just checking off the charisma box, he is the guy. Nobody else is close. The Clinton machine could get her the nomination but her negatives are so high even someone from a lackluster Republican field might beat her. I really think if he gets the nomination he should glide through.

that is exactly what i DON'T want to happen. i want him to come out and earn my vote. what he says is right, but then what? i hear too many of these people identifying "the problem", but not enough give an honest answer about what they feel the solution is. i may see an issue and define the problem in identical terms as another person but we may come to different conclusions about how to solve the problem. I really don't want see another election blown because people keep saying, "I have a plan. It is a good plan. My plan rulz!" without ever going on to tell us anything substantive about what the plan really is.

/on rant/
lookout, thats cuz the plan gets bogged down in the bureaucracy that is our gov't. Thats the problem with all of them. It doesn't really matter what they say, nothing will really get accomplished. Its all just moot rhetoric anymore.


Short of taking everyone in gov't, lining them up, numbering them all from 1 to 4 and laying off all the even numbered ones, nothing will change. None of the politicians seem to actually WORK for their money. They say and do whatever they need to in order to get elected and have the attitude that once they are elected they made it. I think all they have made is the chance to actually start working.
/off rant/

Good plans don't fit in speeches. If any candidate actually has a plan, it will be on their website. Of course, if a candidate says something to that effect, they will be made fun of.

Also, a good plan will have tradeoffs. If a candidate lays out their plan too early, the other candidates will find all the minuses and harp on them. In the modern media environment, it seems to be more effective to have no plan than to have a plan with tradeoffs.

Plan! Plan my ass

Ok.

Blueprint #7167.b. BusterB's ass:


( o )

tight ass: ( * )
big asshole: ( @ )
spanking: ( *#)

:lol: Are you sure you don't work for the government? I'll come in and really clean up the bureaucracy and red tape this town, with my new You Only Have To Number Them 1 and 2 policy!! ;)

Was waitin for someone to catch that. YOU WIN!

That pretty much sums up my feelings as well. In this day and age none of them are to be trusted. We have been repeatedly lied to by every single president for the last 100 years. The canidates will tell you anything to get you to vote for them. Hitlery Cliton is the worst of the bunch IMHO. Obama seems like a straight shooter but I have not seen anything of substance as to how he is going to accomplish all these things he is promising everyone. Wealth redistribution is not part of the equation for me, so figure out how you are going to make it happen and then tell me your plan.:greenface

Plans shmams, when they are elected that's it. It does not matter who you vote for; the Government always gets in. Who could fail against the present incumbents?

Yeah, as of now I am thinking I will vote for the person who will be the best for America symbolically since all of them will fuck us over one way or another. Out of the realistic candidates, I think Obama has that title for more than one reason.

New Iowa polls: Obama, Huckabee tied or leading
The Quad-City Times has a new poll of Iowa showing Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee leading their respective fields by 9 percentage points each.

Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards were tied for second place behind Obama at 24% each. Mitt Romney was in second place with 22% on the Republican side and no one else was in double digits.

Another new Iowa poll by the online political newsletter Hotline shows Huckabee up 13 points over Romney, 36% to 23%, and Obama and Clinton tied at 27% .

What happens if she loses? What looked like a shoo-in, now looks like a campaign ready to implode.

P.S. - Anyone else notice that up until a few weeks ago every pic of Hillary had her smiling or looking real confident - ie: favorable image. Lately they all seem to look really bad. Did the liberal media jump off her bandwagon or are they just hedging their bets?

Not a chance, I would not count her out. The Clitons have a long history of dirty tricks in their bag.

History repeatedly suggests nothing of this presidential campaign is relevant until after the Super Bowl. Giuliani and Hilary are front runners. That traditionally is irrelevant after January which is why current presidential campaign discussions are extraneous.

More relevant is Mitchell’s report on baseball – lessons that apply well beyond baseball – lesson more appropriate than current presidential contenders.

This is so depressing.
For all that I detest the "leader of the free world" line, the US presidency is still the most important election on Earth. And here we are, about a year out from the poll, not waxing enthusiastic about how wonderful the candidates are and how hard it will be to choose which of these great people should be president, but instead, sifting through the chaff trying to find one that doesn't seem like a total loser. Inexperience is bad. Too much experience is bad. Idealism is bad. Lack of ideals is bad. Firm opinions are bad. Having no opinions is bad.

Darn it, America. 300 million people and this is the best crop of potential leaders you can scrape up? The last candidate who I thought was worthy of the post was Gore, and that was probably because I didn't look closely enough to see his shortcomings.

unfortunately the best and brightest won't go anywhere near the realm of politics. those that won't sell their souls for a vote won't make it past the state office level. national politics is a theater reserved for only the most self-impressed attention whores now.

I hate to tell you but for many of us this has been the situation for the last 3 election cycles (to include this one). Who is the best of the bad choices is becoming a common theme. I think the media frenzy and the power of the internet has contributed to the current environment.

Does Bush's unpopularity have anything to do with it? What was the presidential race like after Nixon?

the race was like this before bush was even elected.

I think it started with the Bush Sr.s reelection. ITs been a downhill ride ever since.

Strange that Clinton got us out of a loser's war in Somalia before it became "Mission Accomplished", conducted a complete solution to the Balkan without a "Mission Accomplished" fiasco by getting Milosevic to negotiate himself out of a job, solve the Haiti situation without war, solve the N Korean problem (a solution that George Jr destroyed by using wacko rationalisms), moved the Oslo Accords to its closest solution (to only have the Norwegian foreign minister accurately predict that George Jr would subvert the Oslo Accords), turned a massive debt into a surplus (to only have the scumbag president destroy both a surplus and created massive debts), empowered the computer industry by forcing open the last mile (1996 Federal Communication Act that finally forced the telco to provide a 1981 technology - DSL, et al), did not threaten war over non-events such as a silly spy plane, addressing gays in the military issue (only to discover so many of us are that wacko extremist as to hate gays), took massive risk to stop a nuclear war between Pakistan and India that (we now know) was only hours from happening, stopped terrorist attacks on LAX, Toronto, Egypt, Jordan, and NYC Times Square by empowering the little people to find and stop those possible and known attacks, and ... well at what point do we ignore all those accomplishments because 3000 people did not die in so many falling buildings.

The scumbag president was all but told those attacks were coming. When Clinton got the same vague warnings, he reacted - did not sit in a child's chair for 15 minutes doing nothing as Americans were dying.

The presidency went downhill when wacko extremist got the president they wanted. Only two presidents in 100 years deserve every four letter curse word. Nixon and George Jr.

Dear god – taking to the one who encourages this wacko president – even every living president was critical of the “Mission Accomplished” war. At what point does it finally become obvious what constitutes a bad president?

The presidency went radically downhill when extremists took power – extremists who especially and still support one who does as religious extremists recommend. George Jr even creates a war by only consulting Cheney and god. He would even advocate attacking Iran when he knew six months previously that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. We should call that only equal to any other president? Where must one go to find a president so bad? Nixon is the only other ‘as bad’ president. None - even Gerald Ford - come that close.

well that was a nice dissertation on your opinion of Bush, but the rest of us were talking about the candidates available to us, not what an idiot GWB is - We all figured that one out long ago. Try adding something to the current conversation

Since, IMHO, the major problem is that candidates are "bought", maybe some wealth redistribution would be good. If the middle class had more wealth, we could buy candidates who would then do things that would benefit us. As it is, the wealthy folks buy the candidates who then do things that benefit them.

This thread was about the current candidates, but then it took a jog into past elections. You posted that "it's been a downhill ride" since Bush Sr. tw did a good job pointing out specific successes of the Clinton presidency to counter your opinion. However, he misses the point slightly, because I think the conversation was about the elections of the past, not the presidents of the past.

I remember the race between Bush, Ross Perot, and Clinton. It was the most interesting and exciting presidential race I can recall. A lot of people were very excited by Ross Perot. The democrats were more excited about Clinton than I've ever seen them, and the republicans were happy with Bush. All three men were strong candidates. It was nothing like this election of duds.

Ross Perot ended up taking votes away from Bush Sr., so Clinton would win. This understandably pissed off the Right, but they would get their payback later, when Nader took votes from Gore, so Bush Jr. would win. Karma or something.

Anyway, the candidates today don't really appeal to me. I haven't liked a candidate since Clinton ran against Dole. I voted for Gore in the next election, but only because I agreed more closely with his politics and hated Bush, not because I thought Gore was a strong leader. I'll probably end up doing the same thing in this election. I'm leaning towards Obama, but that's mostly because I'm leaning away from everyone else.

I was not endorsing any president at all. Certainly not Bush Sr who only got in because of Reagan. I was specifically talking candidates, not presidents. Perhaps that was not clearly articulated.

Specifically the last three elections have been full of, to me, very lackluster candidates. I am not specifically talking bout the final two either I mean the crop that we have to choose from in each party do not really excite me at all. Guess I'm just disheartened about the whole thing.

Somehow I don't think it will get much better either unless there is a big change in the way America sees its leaders.

I think my problem is that someone who would possess the qualities which I would look for in a leader won't be involved in politics.

H R Pufnstuf for president!

But you are the one whose grasp of history is confused. To find a useful candidate, first learn from history. All candidates during the George Sr reelection appeared unspectacular. And yet we ended up with a good president. We were also asking back then who would want this job since the economy was slowing falling into recession; things appeared to be going downhill. I specifically recall so many Cellar dwellers back then complaining about how the economy was only getting worse.

Back then, nothing useful was observed among candidates until after the Super Bowl. The book Primary Colors demonstrates the concept - including the winning answer to that Cellar complaint.

Also from history is to learn how George Jr got elected. First to be established is that he is one of if not the worst president in history. A man who routinely lies. A man in the tradition of “I have a secret plan to end the war”. Often George Jr may lie because he does not even know he is lying. He was always regarded as dumb. Having identified a president so bad (and by also learning how Nixon got there), then how do we avoid making those same mistakes? How do we learn from history?

Well first we must establish some facts that others routinely deny. George Jr, like Nixon, is one of the worst presidents this country has ever seen. How (and why) were we so stupid as to elect him? That question requires the predicate be established - as found, irrefutably, in that previous post.

Besides, the man is so dangerous to any decent American that the scumbag president must be identified alongside bin Laden, who George Jr protected by being so anti-American. The 10th Mountain Division was not even allowed to go after bin Laden? Only a mental midget would have permitted that to happen. How were we so stupid as to elect and then reelect this fool?

How to learn from history? Learn what constitutes a worst president - and how not to make that mistake again. Even Tommy Smothers learned from history.

yeah, but it was an old radio. and besides, custer probably had it coming.

I have the recent example of William Jefferson Clinton and the distant example of Warren Gamaliel Harding as worst Presidents.

That GWB is not appreciated by the Left hardly makes him among the worst of history -- except among the Koolaidsters there, and I set their opinion at nil.

Who was worse Woodrow Wilson or George W. Bush? They are one and two, you pick the spot. Don't make the mistake of thinking the left constitutes all the anti-Bush feeling out there. Some people would just prefer a quietly industrious Republic. It has been said that democracies are perfect for war making because once you get the population on board with there are no barriers. These two clowns support that point.

The destruction, the vitiation, of undemocracy is not, so far as I can see, the work of clowns, however hostile the Left may be to an increase of genuine democracy's chances worldwide and to the reduction of less-than-democracies. This is why I support George Bush, and nobody here has presented a good enough reason to stop doing it. Many very bad, pro-fascist, reasons have been presented. Phooey and out upon 'em!

Sometimes blind loyalty is a good thing,
sometimes we need to simply trust.
Sometimes that trust is broken,
Sometimes irrevocably so.
Sometimes...

Some claim my loyalty has to be blind -- because they do not share it, nor desire to, apparently out of the rankest prejudice against Republicans.

They know so little, so very little.

And yet, they write as people who assume I should follow them.

The kindest thing that may be said of such is that they enjoy democracy, but do not value it.

Bravo

Ahh my dear UG - sometimes you read, but do not see.

This is not one of those times -- I never floccinaucinihilipilificate without reason.:elkgrin: And do I have to look any too hard?

yes, for twice now you have missed that which I said.

Get used to it...

Not so badly I didn't know it for nonsense, CM. You're not reading me any too well, or you'd understand why I reject it for being nonsense.

Rank prejudice against Republicans for trying to reduce antidemocracy globally is just capital-S Stupid: you wouldn't want to live under anything less than a democracy, so this kind of ranting is screaming against your own interests. Dumb dumb dumb. Also it puts you in a posture of hostility to all mankind, yourself at least putatively included. Stupid stupid stupid.

[illigal immigration]There are a few BIG things that I don't appreciate about W. [/illigal immigration]

It's entertaining to hear people complain about him though. He's the focus of everything bad that has ever happened in the universe. Is incapable of doing anything positive.

Many times just hearing them go on and on is better than watching cable TV. :D

Well, if you're singing "Schadenfreude, Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium..." sotto voce, maybe.

Sounds like the repubican take on the Clintons. :Flush:

Bush is just a scapegoat that doesn't mean much. Next election we will elect someone who will just do the same thing as him and nothing will change.

True enough. The problem is that the extremes are becoming more dramatic.

One side is down and bitching, then the other side is down and bitching even louder. Each polar shift slides us closer to the extreme.

What happens for me when the tide shifts again and we've got a liberal socialist in office again? What the fuck do you think I'm doing cruising the world digging out a space for? I'll just leave until the political winds change. There will be options. I'm certain that many will appreciate my absence and I'll surely appreciate getting away from a left leaning US.

What does the next swing mean for the rest of the Americans? Will the election of the most devisive woman in the history of politics make half of the population crazy? Absolutely. Will they appear as crazy as the anti-Bush whackos? Surely.

Either way things go, there is a place for me to step out of the way and keep liberals and the like out of my life. It's a win-win. :)

Is it liberals that you don't like, or the concept of liberalism?

Interesting question.

Actually, the problem is the illiberality of the socalled liberals. Socialism is not liberalism. If it's anything, it's childishness, the making of the State into a parent-figure, which has no way of not reducing the citizen to a dependent. The clearsighted see that this is a role the State is ill suited for, and cannot be modified into becoming without destroying a society, of which the State is an adjunct.

Dependency prevents adult thinking. I'm sure you can see how.

There are very few people that I can't imagine myself having a beer with, regardless of where they are coming from. If there is an ability that I have in life it's being able to relate to people one on one.

The friction starts when someone doesn't recognize when they are talking about something that I clearly don't believe in or support in any way. Or going further, that I actually despise. Read the body landguage and the tone of the people that you're around. Do you really want to irritate them? If yes, then you can normally learn how pretty quickly.

If you aren't trying to start and win some grand debate that you fancy yourself ( not you specifically ) as the world's leading authority, we'll get along fine. There are many of those people here at the cellar.

That goes the same for me. I can remember a few years ago at my brother's wedding in Pa. a re-learning experience for me.

Two of the female guests aked me to sit wth them as I was wandering around. I sat down and tried to make some small talk.

"I'm very glad to be back in Rep territory again. It just feels different being here in Pa as to being in Mass. It just seems free here." I said without thinking much at all. Most of the guests were my brothers friends and our relatives are almost all Reps. What's to think about?

The moment that I said that, one of the women got visibly red. You could just see that she was very pissed at what I would consider to be a plainly honest statement of my opinion. I can't remember exactly what she said but it was vile. Evil Reps this and W Bush that. I was shocked but I really should not have been. I wasn't paying attention.

This woman had a clearly "Hillary" hairstyle which should have bumped a message into my head. "Hey, make nice for a few minutes and bail out. She's one of those "Hillary's the greatest" bitches. Say a few benign sentences and slowly back away from the bitch."

Now I'd not say that out loud at that moment but that's what I'd think.

Do I hate liberals? No. Do I hate the ideas that they probably support and thier arrogance? Yes.

It's not my planet but if it was there wouldnt be any liberals. There wouldn't be long lines for organ transplant recipients either.

That's the reality. I can't change it. Liberal philosphy just doesn't add up to me. I'll do what I can to make the best of it. If what I used to think of as my country has changed in ways that I don't wish to adopt, I'll simply go somewhere more suited to my expectations.

She yelled at you, you would kill her if it was up to you... which side is more tolerant? S'a serious question.

But you can have a healthy debate without going overboard and insulting the other person's opinions. Some people do not know how to debate in good way.

On this I agree with you. Body language is a large part of communication. Something many folks do not recognize, however, I think most the candidates have this in check pretty well.

Until you consider the chances of this Hill bitch opening her mouth......and me ruling the planet. ;)

No one needs to be concerned. But if it were up to me......

In this specific case the woman was just worked up over a long period of time. A lot of anti Bush people have been. I should have been thinking at that moment.

It was clear as a bell what her leanings were just looking at her. Now days I look for people that "look like peope". It's not a mistake IMO.