Obama: is America ready for this dangerous leftwinger?

[Moshe..]

This better not get buried under all that calender thread clutter.

Gerald Baker, London Times

For most ordinary Americans, those not encumbered with an expensive education or infected by prolonged exposure to cosmopolitan heterodoxy, patriotism is a consequence of birth.

Their chests swell with pride every time they hear the national anthem at sporting events. They fill up with understandable emotion whenever they see a report on television about the tragic heroics of some soldier or Marine who gave his life in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Foreigners don't have to like America - and they've certainly exercised that freedom in the past few years. But most Americans can distinguish between the transience of policy failure and the permanence of the national ideal.

And surely even critics of the US could scarcely deny that there have been real causes for American pride in the past 25 years: the fall of the Berlin Wall; the victory in the first Gulf War in 1991; the nation's unity in grief and resolve after September 11. Heck, I suspect most Americans got a small buzz of patriotic pride this week when they heard that one of their multimillion-dollar missiles had shot a dead but dangerous satellite travelling at 17,000 miles per hour out of the sky so that it fell harmlessly to Earth.

But not, apparently, Michelle Obama, wife of the man who is now the putative Democratic candidate for US president, and at this point favourite to succeed to that job. In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season, Mrs Obama caused a stir this week. She said that the success of her husband Barack's campaign had marked the first time in her adult life that she had felt pride in her country.

This, even by the astonishingly self-absorbed standards of politicians and their families, is a remarkably narrow view of what makes a country great. And though she later half-heartedly tried to retract the remark it was a statement pregnant with meaning for the presidential election campaign.

Now, to be fair to Mrs Obama, she would surely have a point if she had said that it was a source of incomparable pride to her and all African-Americans that in a country with a long and baleful history of racial discrimination, one of their own was within serious range of becoming president. All but the most irredeemably racist Americans would surely agree with that.

But that was not what she said. She said this was the only time in her adult life that she had felt pride in America.

It was instructive for two reasons. First, it reinforced the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate's campaign. There's always been a Second Coming quality about Mr Obama's rhetoric. The claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America has achieved in its history can only add to that worry.

Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is. Mrs Obama is surely not alone in thinking not very much about what America has been or done in the past quarter century or more. In fact, it is a trope of the left wing of the Democratic party that America has been a pretty wretched sort of place.

There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a “militaristic” approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations.

Though Mr Obama has done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of emphasising his belief in American virtues, his record and his programme suggest he is firmly in line with this wing of his party.

This, I think, not his inexperience in public office, is the principal threat to Mr Obama's campaign. His increasingly desperate opponent, Hillary Clinton, keeps hammering away that his message is all talk and no substance - and she was joined this week by Mr Obama's likely Republican opponent in the November general election, John McCain.

But if you listen to Mr Obama's speeches, it is not the lack of substance but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans. His victory speech after his latest primary win in Wisconsin this week was a case in point.

There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education. He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist. He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.

While he speaks of the need for Americans to move beyond partisanship (“We are not blue states or red states, but the United States” is a campaign meme), when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party. If you think about it for a second, it's not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.

America is certainly moving left in the post-George Bush era. The long period of conservative ascendancy is clearly over, buried by a Republican Party of recent years that has preached intolerance and practised incompetence. That a new era in American politics is beginning is not in doubt. But are Americans really ready to leap all the way across in one go to embrace a European-style Left?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com.../gerard_baker/

[Plastic Flute]

Just speak normal.How do you feel ? In a nutshell please
What do you live an see?

[Captain Beefheart]

OHHH NOS let's start making molotov cocktails, because the revolution will start, lulz.

Ultimately, most people's minds are made up at this point. Barring a major slip up, which neither candidate had, they were likely to come out in the same positions they came in in. People are being oversaturated with this primary campaign. And the vast majority have chosen a side.

And the winner of course:

[Moshe..]

Obama is one of the most trashy politicians in the world. It’s like the political equivalent to mcdonalds, and it’s very popular with your country's badly-schooled kids, and not very good for their health. You should be able to see this for yourself by using some basic reasoning. If you want to see what you think about him, try reading his speeches, and then working out how his words would cash in as actual political policies. How does the rhetoric translate into actual policy? To be honest, I can hardly make any sense of him, he's talks so poorly. It's all sentimental cliche. By 'change' I can only imagine he wants a few expensive socialist projects (which always do more harm than good), as well as some anti-free-trade protectionism (which is plain bad for your economy), and years more of his popularist rhetoric and sappy self-congratulatory cheerleading. It’s not very pretty. I sound like such a spoil-sport, but politics isn't about fun! I’m not an american yeah darling. Thankfully it's not going to make much difference to my life. I don't have to pay your tax bills. I don't have to work! Protectionism would lose so many jobs for your country, it would be so bad for business.

Dangerous Demagoguery: beware of candidates who inspire but don't inform.
By Thomas Sowell,
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
http://www.tsowell.com/

Most of the horrors of the 20th century — of which there were many — would not have been possible without demagoguery or misleading propaganda.

Most people have too much decency and common sense to have gone along with those horrors had someone not found a way to turn off their thinking and turn on their emotions.

That is how Jim Jones led hundreds of people to their deaths at Jonestown. On a much larger scale, that is how Lenin created a regime of mass murder in Russia, how Hitler did the same thing in Germany, and Mao in China.

Yet we seem to be no more aware of the need to be on guard against demagoguery today, in the 21st century, than those people who looked up with open-mouthed adulation at Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and at numerous other demagogues, large and small, around the world throughout the turbulent 20th century.

Many people find it thrilling that the mantra of “change” is ringing out across the land during this election year. But let’s do what the politicians hope that we will never do — stop and think.

It is doubtful whether there is a single human being in this entire country who is 100 percent satisfied with everything that is going on. In other words, everybody is for change.

The real difference between liberals and conservatives is in which specific things they want to change, and in what way.

Milton Friedman was the leading conservative thinker of his time but he wanted to radically change the Federal Reserve, the school system, and the tax system, among other things.

Everybody is for change. They differ on the specifics. Uniting people behind the thoughtless mantra of “change” means asking for a blank check in exchange for rhetoric. That deal has been made many times in many places — and millions of people have lived to regret it.

It is not too much to ask politicians to talk specifics, instead of trying to sweep us along, turning off our minds and turning on our emotions, with soaring rhetoric.

Optimists might even hope for some logical consistency and hard facts.

Barack Obama says that he wants to “heal America and repair the world.” One wonders what he will do for an encore and whether he will rest on the seventh day.

That we have so many people who are ready to be swept along by such rhetoric is a huge danger, for it means that the fate of this great nation is at risk from any skilled demagogue who comes along.

Barack Obama says that he wants to “heal” the country while at the same time promoting the idea that all sorts of people are victims for whom he will fight.

Being divisive while proclaiming unity is something you can do only in the world of rhetoric.

Senator Obama has no monopoly on demagoguery, however. Former Senator John Edwards has been playing this game longer, even if not as effectively in the political arena.

John Edwards built his own fortune in the courtroom, depicting babies with birth defects as victims of the doctors who delivered them. The cost of such demagoguery has gone far beyond the tens of millions of dollars that Edwards pocketed for himself from gullible juries.

Such lawsuits based on junk science have driven up the cost of medical care, not only directly but even more so indirectly, by leading to an increase in Caesarean births and other costly “defensive medicine” to protect doctors rather than patients.

The world of John Edwards, like the world of Barack Obama, is a world of victims, whose savior he claims to be.

What is scary is how little interest the public and the media have in the actual track record of political saviors and the cry of generic “change.”

America is not czarist Russia or Iran under the shah, so that people might think that any change was bound to be for the better. Yet even in those despotic countries the changes — to Communism and to the ayatollahs — made them far worse.

The time is long overdue for voters to demand specifics instead of rhetoric that turns their emotions on and their minds off.

I copy-pasted some obama quotes espousing his (unbelievably stupid and ignorant) protectionism. It's like someone please buy this illiterate socialist person a copy of adam smith and ricardo! If you consider voting for him, you simply need to go back to school, oh dear. We're lucky in england, we have some terrible politicians too, but none of them could get away with saying something this badly-educated.

Obama:
"Decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear.."

"I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements..."

"I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for... American workers."
http://thepage.time.com/obamas-econo...eech-excerpts/

And here's the refutation of obama, which every school-boys knows (oh my god this is basic!): http://internationalecon.com/Trade/Tch40/T40-0.php

[Captain Beefheart]

So you're telling me America would be better off with the veteran who cheats on his druggie wife with a lobbyst? A guy who has reversed his positions on gay marriage, Bush's tax cuts, the idea that the Iraq war would be quickly and easily won, Roe vs. Wade, Jerry Falwell, etc etc, whenever necessary to cozy up to whoever will help give him the nomination in 2008. Maverick indeed. Yah right.

Obama vs. McCain! Young vs. Old! A "war hero" vs. the people's champ! The guy who took out his party's establishment candidate vs. the guy who won because the party's base was divided against him! "Yes We Can" vs. "I hate gooks!"

I'm not american(i'm actually spanish) but I understand american politics. The lunatic nature of their politics bieng extremely polarised. Athough people base their opinions strongly on the character of the candidate, people tend to align themselves with a particular side of the debate and tend to stick with that side for the rest of their life. In America you are either a Democrat or a Republican. It's a two-party system, you pick one team and through unyielding loyalty, you ride it out. No matter how Bush embarassed America or how incompetent he was at running a war that cost American lives and lives abroad or how he can't say "Good morning" in front of a news camera without a Teleprompter the voters still stuck with their guy. Clinton in '96 was the kind of result that produces a real mandate, yet not being a complete ******* he reached across the aisle and worked with Republicans (or maybe that was the completely *******-ish thing to do, considering that it accelerated the expansion of the bubble economy while reinforcing archaic ideas about rugged individualism and even reduced social services in deference to the dittohead idea that Americans deserve a worse government than most of the other industrialized open societies of the world.)

The largest problem in mainstream politics is not that people have shifted to the two extremes of the left and the right. The problem is that everything has been broadened to fit left and right political definitions so that various differing political positions can all be labeled "leftist" or "rightist".

Obama isn't a messiah, i'm not claiming that. This is to say, Obama is not reinventing or revolutionizing the system, he is merely trying to reform it. Thus, the United States will not become a utopia if Obama is suddenly elected, but will face a staggering amount of policy issues. Moreover, political campaigning is the best time for rhetoric, so it is really about putting your proverbial money where your mouth is, and then observing whether the American people think you've held up your side of the presidential bargain.

Also he is not the lesser of two evils. I don't want to see s!hit go there, because it's not true and not acceptable. It'd be a win for McCain (not that he would win, but a win in PR) if that belief were to become widespread. I'll kill it before it stops if I can.

[darko.]

We've had nothing but dangerous left wingers for quite some time now.

P.S. I ****ing hate all those "this day in my *******" threads

[Captain Beefheart]

Personally, I would really like to see the powers that be wake up to the fact that better public policy enriches everyone, profits are higher even while paying more taxes to support a system where EVERYONE prospers greatly than paying less taxes to support a system where the enrichment of the rich must happen in spite of falling standards of living for everyone else. Skimming off the top is so much easier when the whole is vital and growing quickly than when your national economy is unstable and sporadic in its. very best quarter.

And drawing a parallel with France is just plain myopia. But it's expected since most americans are stupid enuff to think "socialism" is a dirty (and apparently also widely misunderstood) word and "communism" is an epithet more likely to invoke thoughts of secret police and tyrant dictators than the underlying and infinitely more noble economic paradigm.

[open32]

I think Obama is a great speaker, he knows how to get peoples attention, how to encourage and create fans like a celebrity.

This is also the primary, the idea is to go far left or far right at this stage. A change to the extent that the article portrays wont happen. If Obama is anything like Bill Clinton im perfectly ok with that. I want him to get into a debate with Mccain, see if he can realistically answer difficult question. The people do pick up on stupid unrealistic proposals and poor answers and it does effect the vote (ie Clintons college fund at birth plan).

Profits and tax revenue are actually higher more often then not when taxes are low. Socialism is an issue where if there to much or to little you have a problem. You start putting restrictions on American companies like 15$ minimum wage, no out sourcing allowed, 50% tax rate; there just not going to be American companies anymore.

[Captain Beefheart]

Obama is cool as a cucumber when it comes to debating. Clinton appeared to be the one reaching for soundbytes last night. She was sloganeering with the best of them. When the issue was brought up about Obama's alleged "lack" of experience for the job, she played it safe, talking about why she was prepared. Obama, on the other hand, spoke about why she wasn't ready (Iraq vote, etc.). Great, subtle moment that I hope resonantes.

[Jocasta]

Obama: is America ready for this dangerous leftwinger?

No, I think not. America, like the UK after 3 terms of Thatcher, is ready to move to the left but the leap from Bush to Obama is too great, like the move from Thatcher to Foot would have been. (As it happened it was Major to Kinnock, but even that was too much of a stretch).
The only way the UK could elect a "left wing" party was for that party to reinvent itself and move closer to the right than ever before.
Bush to Clinton might be a small enough leap but Obama from Bush, I don't think so.

[darko.]

WE'VE BEEN STEADILY MOVING TO THE LEFT SINCE (just about) LINCOLN WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT???

good lord.

*CLOSED*

[Jocasta]

Originally Posted by darko.

*CLOSED*

darko the admin.

[Captain Beefheart]

How has America radically moved to the left? Cite sum samples apart from sum tea zipping limey from the Times that's still sour about losing his Empire.

Americans are bombarded with "news" that is slanted to the right 24-7. They hear nothing else. The vast majority are primarily concerned with everyday life and have no interest in studying the issues in depth. The vast majority are still making their house and car payments. The ones that can't seem to be easily convinced that their plight is caused by "liberals interferring with the free market". No one has done more to undermine investiment in the private sector than Dubya, who has practiced a "borrow-and-spend" policy that, combined with utterly irresponsible tax cuts, not only insures that future generations must pay higher taxes than today's workers and investors, but also that high returns on more widespread public debt cause bonds to compete much more strongly against stocks, actually discouraging the kind of growth he must have imagined wantonly slashing taxes would create.

Anyways the more intelligent and less extreme conservatives and liberals aren't all that different: in fact they have much common ground. But politics has been co-opted by the lowest common denominator in rousing people to action: the common enemy. Rather than a common goal or a common purpose. Nearly all sitting Democratic officials in the U.S. are solidly conservative by world standards, because other representative governments around the world have not been afflicted with this "corporations über alles" mentality that not merely drives political fundraising in the US. Democrats vs. Republicans is not a contest between socialists and capitalists. Rather it's a contest between two sets of people who have very slightly different views on how to best enrich their corporate paymasters.

Even conservatives who are not thoroughly brainwashed know enough to realize that what hairs the two corporate parties do split in economics and directly related areas like education, taxes, and welfare are disagreements about how to promote success. Democrats do not want to punish the rich any more than Republicans want to see senior citizens eating out of dumpsters.

[Dennis]

Obama is a vapid rhetoretician.

McCain and Petraeus are among the most important figures in recent American political and military history, respectively.

Dennis projection:

If by the end of the summer the Iraq troop surge continues to produce positive results, the American people will not in good conscience elect an Obama who would so readily end American presence in that region.

[Captain Beefheart]

If by the end of the summer the Iraq troop surge continues to produce positive result

HAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHHAH

Vamos Dennis ahora cuenta uno de gallegos!

10/10


McCain is DINOSAUR. You know, the one's that didn't fit in Noah's arc.

[Dennis]

Haha, yeah. He actually looks way older than 72. But at least he's still got his sense of humour.

But seriously...just as in 2006 Republicans couldn't deny that the Rumsfeld strategy was failing, nowadays Democrats can't seriously deny that the Petraeus strategy is succeeding.

[Captain Beefheart]

McCain was getting Gary Hearted with the sister of Pat Buchanon, what came of that?. The cynic in me expects this story to be another Dan Rather swiftgate, in which the liberal media gets pwned for outing their bias and not properly factchecking, thereby giving talk radio plenty to talk about till November.

As for Petraeus report, didn't you learn your lesson after Powell's infamous "mobile weapons lab" testimony before the UN. Powell had earned his honors, too, yet his presentation turned out to have been complete BS. Fool me once, blah, blah, to quote Dubya, I mean The Who.

[open32]

The difference is Petraeus's report is backed my real numbers.

I can never see what Mccains age has to do with anything.

Americans are bombarded with "news" that is slanted to the right 24-7. They hear nothing else.

Its only right to someone who is far to left, with the obvious exception of Fox News.

[Captain Beefheart]

So basically you're saying Powell's wasn't real evidence, that he was lying? HAHHAHA. No s!hit!

Most of the world never took seriously neocon talking points about Iraqi nuclear weapons or some sort of alliance between prewar Baghdad and Al Qaeada. When American political hysteria brought back a return of UN weapons inspections, military pressure opened all doors to them, and yet these trained professionals failed to turn up so much as a promising lead on the subject. Of course, after the fact we all (perhaps save a few bona fide dittoheads) knew that the only weapons of mass destruction in all of Iraq were a few rusty old relics with nice "made in the USA" stamps on them.

There's nothing remotely positive to come out of Iraq, and you're just lying to yourself with figures and sum silly data to support what you wanted to hear in the first place.

Facts: The American military can't leave, nor significantly reduce deployed troops, without leaving the Iraqi's in a quagmire of civil war. You are bound to stay the course, and this will end up being the costliest mistake a national military has ever made in recent history(hell history records are forgivable enuff that you could possibly write it off as just a "mistake", like pundits who think you actually managed to tie Vietnam)

You can see the dividends of their stubborn streaks in the fact that many still talk of demilitarizing Iraq policy as "cut and run" (when the failure to have, at the very minimum, some sort of plan for demilitarization publicized shortly after the invasion was a very real and decisive abandonment of the Iraqi people.)

Its only right to someone who is far to left, with the obvious exception of Fox News.

Conservatives seem to believe that the media is liberal simply because there are a few shows that will have both a liberal guy and a conservative guy talking about the same conservative issues day after day. At no point does anybody ever discuss liberal issues.

Image this. A lefty TV station! It would have been consistently and loudly presenting evidence and argument for the impeachment and trial of the sitting Vice-President, and probably President as well. The sensationalism would have included video showing absence of paid-for stuff, interviews and attempted interviews (Michael Moore/ 60 Minutes/ Fox style) with contractors and offshore bankers, attack journalism focused on Halliburton execs, review footage of W being cozy in Ken Lay's corporate jet, etc.

Conservatives are good for big business and the mainstream media is big business, so it's not hard to see a chain of cause-and-effect there. I mean it would seem pretty clear to me that there has been a shift in the media away from truth-seeking and toward duelling punditry. Features have grown shorter in recent years, and not because reporting techniques have become pithier. There is clearly less emphasis on hard data and more emphasis on partisan opinions. The shift away from a public service paradigm to a commercially competitive paradigm has made reporters and editors much more intent on sensationalism. It is hard for a straight up fact-based piece to be sensational, because the kinds of things that really get people's blood up are generally not supported by actual facts.

And while I don't doubt/care if the members of the media are indeed voting Democrat more than Republican, I DO NOT SEE IT IN THE ACTUAL MEDIA PORTRAYED. Hence, the point is moot. Unless you'd care to show stats that address the liberal-slant of the actual media, not the members behind it. Again, the connection between what the members of the media vote and what they dish out is not apparent, and I challenge anybody to show me any sort of fair statistics that clearly indic