I'm voting Obama
He runs for the green party and has socialist views. I think he would run the country far better than obama but he has no chance of winning.
I hate that it is almost impossible for a third party to win.
Nader is a sour puss. In addition, he would be totally useless in a war situation.
ruveyn
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He runs for the green party and has socialist views. I think he would run the country far better than obama but he has no chance of winning.
I hate that it is almost impossible for a third party to win.
Nader is a sour puss. In addition, he would be totally useless in a war situation.
ruveyn
On top of that, he's become something of an ego maniac, running even when he knows his campaign will detract from other liberals who have a better chance of winning than he does, all for the sake of putting himself in the picture.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
I don't think you'd like my alternate scenarios:
Ignorance; his supporters aren't aware of his true record, especially on human rights, civil liberties, executive powers and whistleblowers.
Partisanship; his supporters are aware of his record, but either blame it all on the Republicans (that's your cue to insist that it really is all the Republicans' fault) or think it's better than what any given Republican would have done.
Indifference; his supporters are aware of his many failings, but simply don't care as they are taken by the man's considerable charisma.
Remember, I did vote for this yahoo the first time around, a mistake I won't be repeating.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
Now who's being cynical? Maybe Nader just wants to make sure there's an actual liberal in the race, as opposed to the phony one currently in office.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
might as well. both parties are essentially the same. how is it a democracy when you get to pick between two identical parties. its obvious why the republicans suck but obama sucks because:
guantanamo is still open for buisiness
doma has not been repealed
he upped the number of troops in iraq and afghanistan
he has carried out many imperialist projects elsewhere
he has deported more undocumented migrants than bush, etc
there should be a 3rd option that represents the working class and is actually left wing.
Sweetleaf
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Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 35,157
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
What's the alternative? The Republicans are running a field of candidates where the front runners are proud of being ignorant and bigoted, as if intellectuality is something bad. Huntsman is smart, but he's got a snowball's chance. Romney probably isn't a slump intellectually, but he's been working extra hard trying to fit in with dullards he at one time wouldn't have given the time of day to. And Newt, who is supposedly the intellectual center of the Republican party? When you get down to it, he's just a bully whose solution to everything is to kick the disadvantaged or unpopular minorities in the teeth. That's not even going into his hypocrisy in regard to personal morality.
Barack Obama hasn't lived up to the hype from the first time he ran for the presidency, but he still represents what is best in America.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
So why even vote?
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Sweetleaf
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Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 35,157
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
might as well. both parties are essentially the same. how is it a democracy when you get to pick between two identical parties. its obvious why the republicans suck but obama sucks because:
guantanamo is still open for buisiness
doma has not been repealed
he upped the number of troops in iraq and afghanistan
he has carried out many imperialist projects elsewhere
he has deported more undocumented migrants than bush, etc
there should be a 3rd option that represents the working class and is actually left wing.
Exactly.
_________________
Metal never dies. \m/
That seemed a bit over the top, even considering the source.
Even ardent Obama supporters tend to pitch him as the lesser evil rather than the savior these days.
I bet you can't think up a single valid criticism against Obama. The "scandals" are almost entirely fabricated if not invented entirely out of whole-cloth, and the insanity in the stock market has been between the Republicans in Congress ruining our triple-A credit rating and the Eurozone crisis, neither of which you would be right to attribute to Obama.
Furthermore, when Obama had a predominantly Democratic congress to work with, we were slowly emerging from the recession, not going deeper into it. We didn't start getting into trouble again until the Republicans started doing ret*d things like waffling until the last minute on the budget earlier this year. My boyfriend, who has nearly a million invested in stocks and bonds alone, was making money until early-to-mid-2011. We might have done respectably in spite of that nonsense if not for the Eurozone crisis.
Furthermore, although his healthcare plan is imperfect, plans like it have a fairly good track record for reducing the number of uninsured out there. I still think that more should be done to control costs, but the MIT professor who was one of the main architects of the bill claims it's the same bill almost to a T as the successful health reform bill passed at one time by Romney.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/11 ... z1f6VoIgsP
I don't think that it's necessary to debate over Romneycare. You can try to find grounds on which to criticize it if you want to, but you would just be wrong.
Finds "individual mandate" main reason some buy-in
Updated: Thursday, 13 Jan 2011, 11:54 AM EST
Published : Thursday, 13 Jan 2011, 11:54 AM EST
Nicole Nalepa
(WWLP) - New data has been released on the effectiveness of Massachusetts’s health care law, and most of the findings are positive.
The new study, released this week by a team of Massachusetts economists, shows that the state's health care insurance requirement has been key to the health care law's success. This requirement, which was enacted back in 2006, states that all Massachusetts Residents must have health insurance coverage.
Researchers believe they have pinpointed exactly why this health care law is so successful here. Based upon their findings, there was a greater increase in the number of healthy people who signed-up for coverage, compared to those who were chronically ill. Researchers say this "individual mandate" is the main reason why healthy consumers purchased insurance in the first place. If this requirement was not in place, they say, the only ones who would be buying health insurance would be the ones who were sick and more expensive to cover.
http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/massachuse ... -a-success
So what do you want to try to call Obama out for now? The Bailout? For one thing, the bailout was a Bush invention. Obama just passed it, mainly because it was the only game in town at the time. The economy was going through a major crisis, and it was acknowledged from the get-go that the bailout was an imperfect, short-term solution.
Obama's own stimulus package was in many respects a brilliant move. In some ways, it was revolutionary. Go to this website:
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/default.aspx
You can go to the Recovery.gov website for yourself, and you can see where the money is going. There has been no precedent for this, ever. There have been stimulus bills before, but this would be the first time that you could actually get on your iPhone and find out first-hand whether you are presently DRIVING BY someone who applied for and received money from it. You can go and knock on their doors and ask them what they did with that money. I dare you to try it.
Obama has passed some pretty first-class ideas during his time as president, and I bet you can't think of a single criticism against him that isn't bull crap on a level with the Swift Boat campaign. If the only charges you can bring against him are out there in fantasy land, I think I'm perfectly justified in claiming that President Obama has been one of the most successful presidents since FDR.
No-trial assassinations of US citizens?
Persecution of whistle-blowers in direct contradiction of his campaign rhetoric?
Escalating the drug war and prosecutions of state approved medical marijuana dispensaries, again in direct conflict with Obama campaign promises?
Let's just toss in that DOJ scandal with the gunrunning just for laughs.
Any of this ringing a bell for you? I don't even need to touch any of the failings you claim as debunked to make my case against this president, I can do this all day if you like.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
might as well. both parties are essentially the same. how is it a democracy when you get to pick between two identical parties. its obvious why the republicans suck but obama sucks because:
guantanamo is still open for buisiness
doma has not been repealed
he upped the number of troops in iraq and afghanistan
he has carried out many imperialist projects elsewhere
he has deported more undocumented migrants than bush, etc
there should be a 3rd option that represents the working class and is actually left wing.
It's simply a case of good cop / bad cop being played on the public.
Democrats = good cops who pretend to listen to reason while bending to their corporate owners behind closed doors.
Republicans = bad cops who are going to push obscene and fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy so that down the road they can go "oops we don't have the money anymore" with regard to all social spending put in place since the great depression, while simultaneously refusing to even touch "defense" spending and escalating wars around the world.
Obama to the American public: Vote for me or you'll be sorry! It's either me or we sick the crazies on you! You know they have their loyal partisan cult of a fan base who will vote while everyone else stays home.
Sadly the strategy going to work for me. No way in hell should the Republicans be put in power when 60% of the voting age public opposes their nonsense. It's either vote for Obama or demand that we start doing policy by public referendum and bypass the corporate sponsored politicians completely. Unfortunately the latter would require some kind of mass uprising. It might be warranted if voter turnout is at unprecedentedly low levels due to everyone but the Fox News drones boycotting the elections.
Sweetleaf
Veteran

Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 35,157
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
might as well. both parties are essentially the same. how is it a democracy when you get to pick between two identical parties. its obvious why the republicans suck but obama sucks because:
guantanamo is still open for buisiness
doma has not been repealed
he upped the number of troops in iraq and afghanistan
he has carried out many imperialist projects elsewhere
he has deported more undocumented migrants than bush, etc
there should be a 3rd option that represents the working class and is actually left wing.
It's simply a case of good cop / bad cop being played on the public.
Democrats = good cops who pretend to listen to reason while bending to their corporate owners behind closed doors.
Republicans = bad cops who are going to push obscene and fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy so that down the road they can go "oops we don't have the money anymore" with regard to all social spending put in place since the great depression, while simultaneously refusing to even touch "defense" spending and escalating wars around the world.
Obama to the American public: Vote for me or you'll be sorry! It's either me or we sick the crazies on you! You know they have their loyal partisan cult of a fan base who will vote while everyone else stays home.
Sadly the strategy going to work for me. No way in hell should the Republicans be put in power when 60% of the voting age public opposes their nonsense. It's either vote for Obama or demand that we start doing policy by public referendum and bypass the corporate sponsored politicians completely. Unfortunately the latter would require some kind of mass uprising. It might be warranted if voter turnout is at unprecedentedly low levels due to everyone but the Fox News drones boycotting the elections.
Well if we could only get everyone to boycott the presidential election.....until we get some real people to choose from, but that probably wont happen.
_________________
Metal never dies. \m/
WilliamWDelaney brings a great point actually. Republicans would love you to forget that they have been a wide majority in the senate for the last two years. Where are their promised fixes for the economy?
They have been abusing their majority to do stupid things. Continue the war on women. Reduce science budget. Make cuts that destroyed the economy. They have broken all their promises in regards to fixing the economy. And they now want us to focus on O'Bama, even though the last two years are in a huge part their responsibility.
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No-trial assassinations of US citizens?
U.S. officials allege that Al-Awlaki spoke with and preached to a number of al-Qaeda members and affiliates, including three of the 9/11 hijackers,[18] alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan,[19][20] and alleged "Christmas Day bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab;[21][22][23] he was also allegedly involved in planning the latter's attack. The Yemeni government began trying him in absentia in November 2010, for plotting to kill foreigners and being a member of al-Qaeda, and a Yemenite judge ordered that he be captured "dead or alive".[24][25]
According to U.S. officials, al-Awlaki was promoted to the rank of "regional commander" within al-Qaeda in 2009.[4][26] He repeatedly called for jihad against the United States.[27][28] In April 2010, American President Obama approved Al-Awlaki's targeted killing,[29][30][31] an action unprecedented for an American citizen and an action unsuccessfully challenged by al-Awlaki's father and civil rights groups.[32][29][30][31]
Al-Awlaki was believed to be in hiding in Southeast Yemen in the last years of his life.[24] The U.S. deployed unmanned aircraft in Yemen to search for and kill him,[33] firing at and failing to kill him at least once,[34] before he was killed in a drone attack in Yemen on September 30, 2011.[35] Two weeks later Al-Awlaki's 16 year old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver, was also killed by an American drone strike in Yemen.[36][37][38]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
Manning had been assigned in October 2009 to a unit of the 10th Mountain Division, based near Baghdad. There he had access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, reported to the FBI that Manning had told him during online chats in May 2010 that he had downloaded material from SIPRNet and passed it to WikiLeaks. The leaked material is said to have included 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables; footage of a July 2007 Baghdad airstrike; and footage of the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan.[2]
Manning was held in maximum custody beginning in July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, which in effect meant solitary confinement, conditions that Amnesty International called harsh and punitive. In April 2011, 295 scholars, including legal scholars and philosophers signed a letter saying the conditions he experienced amounted to a violation of the U.S. Constitution; later that month the Pentagon transferred him to a medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, allowing him to interact with other pre-trial detainees.[3]
An article 32 hearing will be held on December 16 in Fort Meade, Maryland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
As far as Barack Obama's actual involvement in how whistleblowers are treated, let me reiterate, he passed a bill protecting them. You are NOT honestly justified in holding him accountable for how many whistleblowers the FBI places under arrest, but I CAN justifiably and honestly credit him with a bill that HE ACTUALLY PUT HIS SIGNATURE ON. Furthermore, you really ought to consider the possibility that violations of the rights of whistleblowers are just being better reported, arguably thanks to the law passed by Obama.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has jurisdiction over allegations of whistleblower retaliation made by employees of the SEC.
Whistleblower Protection Act Complaints should be sent to
U.S. Office of Special Counsel
Complaints Examining Unit
1730 M Street, NW, Suite 201
Washington, DC 20036-4505
The required Whistleblower complaint form is available online at
OSC (www.osc.gov)
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Securities and Exchange Commission will also investigate allegations of retaliation against SEC employees for cooperating with the OIG or for other protected activities. For information on how to report reprisal to the OIG, see http://www.sec-oig.gov/.
http://www.sec.gov/eeoinfo/whistleblowers.htm[/quote]
The only D.C.-based official with whom California U.S. attorneys coordinated, Horwood said, was Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who was chosen by Attorney General Eric Holder, an Obama appointee.
"He's the one who provided the quote for our press release, and he's chosen by Eric Holder," Horwood told HuffPost in an interview. "But we didn't have direct talks with Eric Holder -- not that we wouldn't, he's been out and visited -- but just the way the Department of Justice works, he's not that hands-on on these kinds of details."
An article by Phoenix Times reporter Ray Stern claimed Horwood acknowledged that California's U.S. attorneys received "Obama's blessing" in implementing the crackdown. But in an interview with The Huffington Post, Horwood, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in California's Eastern District, distanced herself from that language.
"What I said, or at least meant to say, was that the U.S. Attorneys in California saw the need for coordinated enforcement actions and spoke with folks in Main Justice in D.C. (not the Obama Administration)," she told HuffPost in an email.
Cole declined to attend any California press conferences on the issue not, Horwood insisted, because he was distancing himself from the crackdown, but because California is a long way to travel.
California voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 1996 with the passage of Prop. 215, later named the Compassionate Use Act, which allows patients to possess and cultivate cannabis with a doctor's permission. The law has been interpreted many times since then. In City of Garden Grove v. Superior Court in 2007, the trial court sided with the patient, finding that it "is not the job of local police to enforce the federal drug law." A California Supreme Court ruling in 2010 found that residents may grow or possess "reasonable amounts" of marijuana with a doctor's permission.
But under federal law there are no such allowances.
Obama as a candidate promised to maintain a hands-off approach toward pot clinics that adhered to state law, with Attorney General Eric Holder publicly asserting that federal prosecutors would not initiate enforcement actions against any patients or providers in compliance with state law, deeming it an inefficient use of scarce government resources.
Such language didn't stop federal prosecutors from launching an attack on medical marijuana shop owners earlier this month, vowing to shutter state-licensed marijuana dispensaries regulated by local governments and threatening landlords with property seizures.
State Senator Mark Leno (D) has joined Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) in requesting meetings with the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to discuss the reasons behind the crackdown.
So far their requests have gone unanswered. "They're talking amongst themselves," said Ammiano of federal prosecutors, "and really causing tremendous, unnecessary chilling effects."
Steve DeAngelo of Oakland medical cannabis club Harborside Health Center said such effects may be the end goal.
"Federal prosecutors are not trying to clean up the regulated medical cannabis industry, they are trying to destroy it," he said at a Tuesday press conference in San Francisco. "Their real target is not criminal gangs, but rather the systems of licensing and regulation implemented by dozens of communities state-wide. This is destroying tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of tax dollars in local, state and federal tax revenue."
The crackdown comes even as 50 percent of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, according to a recently released Gallup poll, up from just 36 percent in 2006.
When asked to respond to the claim that the Obama administration isn't implicated in the decision, Ammiano was indignant.
"Somebody's going to have to fall on their sword about this," he said. "This is becoming more of a mainstream issue. I mean, this was really a mistake."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/2 ... 33482.html
If you want stronger sources for this, just ask. Unlike many around here, I know how to mine out original source documents!

And no, Cefalu was not terminated over it. That's another outright lie. Cefalu was terminated for leaking information about wiretapping that I, for one, think he shouldn't have, and he never testified over Fast and Furious. Of course, if you like styling your political views based on outright lies, you can go on believing that he was the one and only whistleblower over Fast and Furious and was fired over it, but any thinking person would view you as a f*****g ret*d for it.
You know that I can.
As I've said before, the presidency as it currently exists is too much power for any one person to wield, while keeping their morality in governing from slipping away (for those who had morality going in). It's a free-for-all, power-corrupts, all-expenses-paid, temptation-to-exploit-the-people fest -- it's a total joke! The chief "democratic representative" of the people being given virtually the powers of any king! There is little material motivation to actually HELP the people, rather than to use your great powers to simply exploit them for your own material benefits for a minimum of four fricken' years. We can impeach, but that's made very difficult in practice, and doesn't necessarily even result in removal from office. Power tends to corrupt, and the more power, the more the tendency. It's just messed up! And this obviously goes for any and all great-power positions around the world.
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Christianity is different than Judaism only in people's minds -- not in the Bible.
Last edited by Ragtime on 29 Nov 2011, 12:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.
He runs for the green party and has socialist views. I think he would run the country far better than obama but he has no chance of winning.
I hate that it is almost impossible for a third party to win.
Nader is a sour puss. In addition, he would be totally useless in a war situation.
ruveyn
On top of that, he's become something of an ego maniac, running even when he knows his campaign will detract from other liberals who have a better chance of winning than he does, all for the sake of putting himself in the picture.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
What liberal has he ever taken votes from?
Sweetleaf
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Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 35,157
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
Is this thread about Obama or The Republicans........title says obama thread says republicans that, republicans this.
There is hardly any difference between the democrats and republicans other then the fact Democrats seem to do a slightly better job of looking less corrupt then they are.
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Metal never dies. \m/