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Obama turns pastor hate controversy into race speech

Discussion in 'Politics & Religion' started by Mia, Mar 18, 2008.

  1. northpointaiki

    northpointaiki Guest

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    #201
    Actually, Jeremy, you're confused. This is precisely what Bogart said, and is saying.

    Good lord, man. I can simply place Dr. Rice's words, and Obama's words, alongside each other, again. Oh, hell, I will:

    Like all else in your posts in this and the Obama paranoid conspiracy thread, Mia, ignoring what is before you doesn't amount to refuting it, and repeating the same falsehood doesn't either. Dr. Rice not only mirrored Obama, she specifically praised his speech, for chrissakes. I'd ask what more do you need to see the error of your ways, but I am convinced you cannot, are not capable, of seeing the reality before you with respect to this candidate.


    What is it, for godsakes, man? Enlighten us! Something so utterly a means to destroy this candidate - good god, man, you want him to lose, bring it on, post it, end this massive deception against the American people! (sound of tumbleweeds rolling down the ochre dust).

    Well, I've just not addressed your falsehood regarding Obama never having held a job, because it's just silly, as with everything else - the guy graduated from law school and became a practicing lawyer and law professor. Perhaps this isn't quite proletarian enough to you, and it would have been more appropriate for the guy to wash dishes, but there is the little problem that he was at one point considered the top law student in the United States, while at Harvard law.

    And I guess I'm left with a big "huh?" when it comes to:

    As this is a deal breaker? So we're left with: wartime presidents can only run for president; or wartime generals, as no one else runs wars. Bit of a logical problem, for starters, as kind of a lot of folks haven't run wars.

    The rest, I'm pretty sure, anyway, the guy's got at least a modicum of ability to, uh, do the job; with a tag of mere reprints of his alleged terrorist/black nationalist/traitorous/hateful self.

    Good lord, this is just so silly. And sad. A guy calling me as having a "hard-on" when I have presented evidence, and specificities, across the board, while the "star chamber" folks can offer zilch, zero, nada - only the spectre of a shadow conspiracy. That, and:

    Makes me truly wonder what kind of hold you have here, Mia. "Muslim ties" "religion" (are these different, in your world?), whiteness (uh, wtf?), do not lend him the experience for the job? These things don't give him experience, and that's the problem? Man, I gotta say, I'm a bit relieved, since I thought his being an Al Qaeda plant was what made him the Son of Satan, not his being an inexperienced tyro.

    Jeremy, Bogart, I hope you will be able to find comfort at some point, should the man take the Presidency. Sincerely.
     
    northpointaiki, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  2. lightless

    lightless Notable Member

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    #202
    A crazy idea that struck me now. :D

    The president of usa doesn't matter at all. You're still more or less stuck with the same face, the same friends, the same enemies, the same brain, the same job or joblessness etc.

    Even if the best man in the world became president we will still have our problems. No man/woman can deliver us utopia in one year.

    The man who is happy with himself and his own life could care less about who the president of the country is.

    The power of change is in your own hands and minds, don't look to the president for the change.
     
    lightless, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  3. northpointaiki

    northpointaiki Guest

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    #203
    Lightless, it isn't crazy at all. I think that's quite insightful. Please allow a bit of a trip down memory lane, but it's germane.

    I've mentioned a guy on this thread, my former advisor while in college, Greg Luebbert. One day, in a seminar on German political development, he spoke of a "politics of banality," when the idea of the individual characteristics of the "Leader" become meaningless, and issues of state are addressed as literally, simply what they are - issues; with all remnants of the cult of personality having gone by the historical wayside.

    Obviously, an abstraction that will never happen. But an interesting theoretical notion; in essence, it doesn't matter who is at the head of state, because the state is just an enterprise stripped of all politics.

    Of course, at such a high level of abstraction that it is meaningless conjecture - "issues" are precisely why we choose specific leaders, out of a belief one will be better than the other in dealing with said issues; but still, as an antipode to the Cult of Personality, the "politics neutral" engine of national needs being addressed...
     
    northpointaiki, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  4. lightless

    lightless Notable Member

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    #204
    Yes. We are fighting more over the individual characteristics of the leader [obama in this case] than the issues.

    We wrongly/rightly correlate handling of "issues" with "leader characteristics". We think that a guy who is associated with the wrong guys will do evil for example.

    And we have no shortage of "evidence" and "proof" when we believe something to be true.[Some logical fallacy, forgot the name].
     
    lightless, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  5. wisdomtool

    wisdomtool Moderator Staff

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    #205
    The issue is the seat of Presidency has not evolved into that of an institution, the President is not just a representation of that institution, he has with him all his individuality as well as the ability to use the powers of his offices unhindered by any institution.

    Look at Bush Presidency, he had redefined the Presidential powers, declared war on Iraq and encourage domestic spying and so on. Clinton was a President of a different kind and nature, certainly less trigger happy.

    USA Presidency has not evolved to that stage of maturity yet. This stage would be something like Marx Utopia.

     
    wisdomtool, Apr 3, 2008 IP
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  6. northpointaiki

    northpointaiki Guest

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    #206
    Wisdom, I agree - we will never be there. As I said, it is ultimately just a theoretical abstraction, at such a high level as to be "meaningless conjecture." Were it ever to become reality, I don't consider it a marxist utopia as much as an administrative view of government over a "leadership" view.

    OK, please allow a bit more - don't want to get too academic in focus, but I think it's applicable.

    Democracies compete for votes, and those votes come from among various coalitions - what Seymour Martin Lipset famously addressed as "cleavages" in his work. Sometimes those cleavages line up - such as a socioeconomic cleavage (poor, rich; producer/labor, etc.) with a geographic cleavage (i.e., the poor tending to be aggregated in one part of the country) or religious cleavage (i.e., the catholic party's electorate also being middle class). Sometimes these cleavages "cross" - such as a catholic centre party that has both poor and rich in it, because of another cleavage - say, centre/periphery; a good example here would be the counter-revolutionary movement in France, La Vendee, where both peasants and aristocracy, heavily concentrated in Western France (Bretagne and south), raised a fight against the nascent French republic. "Normally," in other times, these would be fighting each other. But the French Republic's ignorance of the relatively peaceful co-existence of the peasantry and nobility in that part of France, coupled with the Republic's strong anti-clericalism, meant it couldn't bank on peasant support. Cross-Cleavages.

    Sometimes cleavages align. In such a system of "aligned cleavages," it can be difficult to tap constituencies wherever the alignments meet. Two historical examples should serve.

    In postwar Italy, you had dozens upon dozens of government collapses because of the cleavage structure in place in Italian politics. Grossly overbroad, the catholic centre was also the socioeconomic middle class. The cleavages "lined up" and did not cross-cut. What this means is that for any government to secure new coalitions, it had to increasingly vie for support leftwards and rightwards; what has been called in academese "centrifugal competition." Eventually, under such a system, absent a profound demographic shift, where competition towards the center opens up, you have what you had in Italy - such a polarized postwar world that eventually parties just left electoral politics altogether. The Red Brigade's political murders are the modern emblem, for example.

    In such a system, as we have even today in Italy (see Berlosconi's Ruling "House of Freedoms" coalition, for example), you have an incredibly polarized electorate, and personality politics loom large. As wikipedia describes it, quite rightly, the leader position in the House of Freedoms coalition is held by forza Italia - "Personality-driven party led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi." In this coalition, you have the catholic centre, along with neo-fascist parties as coalition members.

    On the left side in Italian politics, you have The Union, which is a centre-left coalition that includes radical left parties.

    In other words, an incredibly polarized polity, where two things obtain:

    1. Personality politics - "leadership" necessarily plays a huge role. The same kind of system was in place in the interwar world, among the soon to be fascist nations in Western Europe; and

    2. Competition is centrifugal - necessarily, increasingly "outwards" for constituencies, since the center - by cleavage structures - is effectively locked up.

    Contrast this, now, with democracies in England, the U.S., for example. In a word, "boring." The differences between the left and the right are, realistically, quite negligible when compared to the differences between right and left in "centrifugal" countries like Italy. Cleavages allow for moving to the center - what some disdain as "compromise" politics - to secure working coalitions. These polities are not characterized by the kind of polarity, personality politics - the "Great Leader" - that we see in the "centrifugal" countries. In a word, again academese, "centripetal" competition.

    I would argue that looking over the last century, "boring politics" outtrumps the Cult of Personality as a normative good. Hence, there is something to be said for looking at the state administratively, over some kind of beast requiring a "Great Leader" to drive.

    In this respect, again, I am not a groupie of Obama. Beside his planned policies, I just consider him to be an incredibly capable guy, from all that I can know of him. He has the ability to sit down and hammer things out, with widely disparate interests at the table. This example says it well, I think - just a cursory example drawn from two of Obama's economic advisors, economists at Harvard:

    http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522177

    Admnistrative - "get er done." Quite the opposite to me of what some are saying, in effect, all air, no substance, etc.
     
    northpointaiki, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  7. guerilla

    guerilla Notable Member

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    #207
    That is a myth. The real difference between Bush and Clinton, besides the mindless jingoism of my reich wing forum buddies, is that Clinton had to deal with a partisan Congress. He didn't have free reign the way Bush did between Republican control of the Congress, and the constant coercion by way of fear and war propaganda.

    But Clinton was a murderer and war criminal just like Bush. The people of Serbia know about that.
     
    guerilla, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  8. pizzaman

    pizzaman Active Member

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    #208
    obama got the support of lee hamilton of indiana and co-chairman of 9/11 commision
     
    pizzaman, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  9. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #209
    No they both had to deal with an equally divided mix of both partisan and non-partisan house/senate over their 8 years a piece.

    Do keep in mind too that a slim majority does not equal a majority. It's pretty much the same for the most part.

    Now that is just ignorant and sick.
     
    Mia, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  10. guerilla

    guerilla Notable Member

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    #210
    You got some Republican bills that didn't make it to back that up?

    All you need is 50%+1, and the Bush signs it into law.

    Indeed it is. As was Clinton's bombing campaign on the Iraqis, and the apartheid of Food for Oil.

    If you're going to piss all over Clinton, make it for something truly evil he did.

    We don't want people to come into America and attack civilians, but it is ok to invade other countries or to bomb them. Quite the double standard.

    Oh yeah, I forgot. We had to bomb the Serbs. They hate us for our freedom. :rolleyes:

    urm, they hate us because our women drive cars. :rolleyes:

    uhm, they hate us because the Orthodox Christian Bible says kill the infidel. :rolleyes:

    errrr because ??
     
    guerilla, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  11. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #211
    Do your own homework.
    Yeah, and Bush has managed to do that more often with a Democrat House/Senate.. Go figure.. Looks like you need to do a bit more homework here.

    Ah, I was referring to your statement when I said "ignorant and sick":eek:
     
    Mia, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  12. guerilla

    guerilla Notable Member

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    #212
    I'm not asking you to research something for me. You already claimed to have done the research. You should be able to back up your posts with a source or is that standard too high for the anti-intellectual conservatives now?

    You're saying that Congress has passed more legislation in this current session than the 3 that preceded it?

    Why is it ignorant? Clinton broke international law by targeting civilians, hospitals and schools in Serbia. If Saddam Hussein is evil for using chemical weapons, why wouldn't Bill Clinton be evil for bombing civilians in a war that had nothing to do with the United States?

    You do realize that Clinton has killed more people than Bush?

    In your world, you hate Clinton for being weak, and yet he was a much more accomplished killer than Bush, because when he left office, people still liked and believed him. That's the mark of a pro.

    As far as sick, what's sick is that you show anger and preach vengeace at Al Queda attacking American civilians, but you're more than happy to endorse the slaughter and genocide of other innocent people in the world by your country.
     
    guerilla, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  13. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #213
    No I just illuded to the fact that I think you are lazy.

    Nope, I am saying that even with a democratic congress, Bush still got everything he wanted!!!

    It's ignorant to label Clinton a war criminal. A bad president that made some stupid decisions, but a war criminal? Come on, get real.

    Clinton made decisions based on intelligence that indicated a threat to our interests and acted accordingly.

    Saddam killed people mercilessly because they disagreed with him.

    That you do not see the difference? That is why I called you ignorant.

    Another ignorant statement. Grow up, get our of mum and dads basement and get a job.

    I don't hate Clinton. I just disagree with many of his policies. I would not call him weak. More like inept, or distracted.. Those are probably better terms.

    Neither one is a killer. Again, that you think and say such things is why you are perceived by many here as ignorant.


    Sick? You, you're sick. Your thinking. The fact that you seek to compare two very compassionate and caring presidents with an evil dictator that raped for sport, killed for fun, and gassed those that disagreed with him.

    Again, that you do not see the difference is why you are perceived as sick.

    At this point I am thinking the only recourse I have to rid myself of such ignorance is to use the coveted ignore button. That is unless you want to behave and come down from this Hitleresque montage/rewrite of history you keep spewing.
     
    Mia, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  14. ThraXed

    ThraXed Peon

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    #214
    LMAO. :eek::eek:

    While Serbia had to be stopped, bombing civillains is not the way to do it!
     
    ThraXed, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  15. guerilla

    guerilla Notable Member

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    #215
    Mia's trying to ignore Clinton's war crimes in Serbia because there is no defense for them. Instead, it's an exclusive focus on Saddam.
     
    guerilla, Apr 3, 2008 IP
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  16. ThraXed

    ThraXed Peon

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    #216
    How would he like it if Serbia bombed his sons school?
     
    ThraXed, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  17. micksss

    micksss Notable Member

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    #217
    Who are you referring to by "he"?
     
    micksss, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  18. guerilla

    guerilla Notable Member

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    #218
    Am I lazy, or do I have too much TV to watch? You still haven't provided a source.

    He's had a hell of a time getting his immunity for the warrantless wiretapping. Regardless, it's an opinion that I'm not seeing backed up as fact.

    If someone commits a war crime, are they a war criminal? Because by that definition, Clinton is indeed a war criminal. As is Bush.

    What is this "our interests" crap? A general disclaimer whenever it's time to go to war somewhere? Couldn't it be argued that our enemies are always acting in their interests?

    I'm not talking about Saddam, although I would be happy to. The only reason why he was even in power is that the CIA helped put him there.

    But let's get back to targeting schools and hospitals in Serbia by Clinton. Is this a war crime? Is the use of violence against civilians for political purposes the definition of terrorism?

    If another country bombed an American school, and claimed it was in "their interests" would you be ok with that?

    Ignorant how? Perhaps distasteful to you. Perhaps a truth and a question of morality you're not willing to address, but to call it ignorant implies a lack of knowledge. What knowledge do you possess that I am missing?

    I don't care what many perceive. I'm interested in facts.

    How can you say neither one is a killer? If you're the Commander in Chief, you're responsible for the Armed Forces. Both Bush and Clinton have taken responsibility for the military actions under their watch, so how can you say they are not killers? Do you think the civilian casualties their tactics and policies have created died by someone else's hand?

    Please, rationalize killing civilians to me. Explain to me how you think you have the moral authority to kill someone else's mother, daughter, father or son.

    And while you're at it, I'd be interested to hear your explanation for the use of chemical weapons (white phosphorus) in Falluljah. The pictures are pretty gruesome or I would post them, since you don't seem to have the stomach for killing that our so-called "compassionate and caring" leaders commit.

    Is there a difference between killing for fun and killing for profit? Again, is intentionally targeting and killing civilians a war crime, yes or no?

    Perceived by whom? These are everyday facts Mia. Clinton chose to target civilians and civilian infrastructure in Serbia. Food for Oil killed hundreds of thousands of children.

    Wouldn't bother me in the least. I have a feeling this is uncomfortable for you to discuss. That our President would target and kill civilians in hospitals. In a country that was never a threat to the American people.

    Hitleresque? What is hitleresque about what I posted? Or is this just badly crafted name calling?

    Explain where I rewrote history. Feel free to debunk whatever I have written. If you're going to charge me with lying, back it up.

    Otherwise, you better use the ignore button, cover your eyes, ears and pretend that history hasn't happened, and the world is not going on around you.
     
    guerilla, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  19. ziya

    ziya Well-Known Member

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    #219
    It seems Obama is going to be elected ,
    More than three quarters, 76 percent, of respondents in a CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. poll said the country is ready to be led by an African-American, up 14 percentage points since December 2006.
     
    ziya, Apr 3, 2008 IP
  20. bogart

    bogart Notable Member

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    #220
    You are free to move to Iran or Saudi Arabia :D

    I base my views on the millions that dance in the streets when the US is attacked by islamic terrorists.

    I don't come for the street nor was I raised there.

    I am on the "street" every day in New York. I hear the views of the man on the street and the corporate world. I don't base my views on forums.

    Being an intellectual is not about intellect. Nixon had a great intellect but was not an intellectual.

    Obama plays up being an "African-American". Obama was raised a muslim in Indoneisa. His father was an immigrant and his mother related to Dick Cheney. I don't consider that to be a "legitimate" African-American in the context of using "African-American" to define yourself.


    The only place that I discuss Obama is a couple of threads on dp.

    I think the the primary process for both major parties is broken.

    There's got to be a better way to select a President
     
    bogart, Apr 4, 2008 IP