I'm voting Obama

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The house and it's only been a little under a year. There isn't much you can do with only a half of 1 of the 3 branches of government. I'm no fan of Boehner either tho, the least the GOP-controlled house could do is hold the Obama administration accountable for their crimes but that would mean they would be held to the same standard as well. The neocons will protect their own even across party lines.

A valid opinion. However, I think that Republican POLITICIANS are nowhere near as evil as their SUPPORTERS in the media make them look. I think that ones like Richard Burr and John McCain can justifiably be called, if not paragons of honesty, relatively decent in their intentions. I do wish they'd come to their senses and come over to the Democrats, of course. Giuliani constitutes an example of one who is, if not necessarily a perfect example of pristine integrity, competent enough and possessed of sufficient redeeming qualities to make up for some of his faults. There are many other GOP politicians whom I can honestly say I am opposed to only because I disagree with them, not because of anything objectively wrong with their morality. If I want an example of true moral corruption and egotistical assholery, I need look no further than Democrat John Edwards. Then again, I never have trusted populists.

The Republicans who comment on these dang forums, though, are largely complete r-tards and dungheads.

What WilliamWDelaney said.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

He had actually siphoned votes away from both Gore and Kerry.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yeah. Although I think that Gore is on many levels a penis, I took back every criticism I ever made against Kerry's character after I heard that John Edwards disliked him. Anyone John Edwards dislikes must be right up there with Ghandi, Jesus and Captain America.

Gore and Kerry are not liberals.

Oh, they're liberals, alright. Gore just happens to be a liberal who is also a bit of a jerk. Not a huge jerk but a jerk all the same. Being a liberal is a major factor in him not fitting the criteria for being "a huge jerk." I'm sure conservatives loathe him.

John Edwards is more of an asinine populist than a liberal. The only "liber-" anything I consider him to be is "libertine."

I voted for him and would never have voted for Gore or Kerry. I am not a Democrat or Republican.
All three presidential elections that I could legally vote for I have voted green party.
I know that they Will never win because they are not a major party but I agree with the ideas of the Green party.
Each election more and more people are voting green. Nader has a bit of an ego because he is a politician and all politician have egos.
I have seen Nader in interviews and I like him better than most other politicians.
I hate when people say he took votes from the liberals. Many people that vote green have radical views like socialism and would never vote liberal.
Many Green party members are environmentalist and activists who want to make a difference in the world. You are thinking of independents. They often vote liberal.

That very well may be so.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

At the very least , this means republicans were dishonest as heck when they promised to fix the economy if they were only going to get 1/6 of government.

There's a certain type of person I try not to waste my time arguing with, even on the internet, so I'll keep this brief.

I love the argument that whacking a US citizen is OK so long as the government says he was a bad guy, and he has a scary sounding "terroristy" name. Let's not forget that the government, the Obama administration to be specific, went to court to argue that not only could they legally kill this guy without anything resembling a trial, they didn't even have to provide any proof, they just had to say it was necessary for state security. Bush and Cheney didn't go that far, and they went pretty damn far in the executive overreach department.

The rest of the "counterpoints" can really be addressed with one question; "do you really believe that multiple federal law enforcement agencies and the armed forces of which the president is the commander in chief acted against his will and without his authority in carrying out all the questionable actions and policies?" The choice then becomes "is Obama incompetent and impotent or is he a disingenuous manipulator?". The answer to that question also adds a new choice to my earlier breakdown of his supporters; the delusional.

Here's some very informative and readable Reason articles detailing Obama administration policies and how they're implemented:

http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/29/war-counsel

http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/12/bummer

Anyone really interested in the civil liberties end of Obama's scurrilousness should check out Glenn Greenwald over at Salon, he's been covering that beat a long time, and isn't so easily dismissed by those with Kochophobia.

WOW man..... I cant post what I think about your ideas but ill just say you left me speechless except the word wow. I will say i disagree with you 100%

for me, the dems are the lesser of two evils- i found out that if i stepped off the reservation i would get slapped big-time, that is what happened when i voted for john anderson [instead of carter] back in '80 and reagan ended up getting landslidden into office TWICE. the 80s were a lost decade for me.

Reagan was the only Republican my Grandmother ever voted for, and she voted for him against Carter, then she voted for him to be re-elected, (she was from the south dad's side of family). My mom's side was from the North and no they didn't get along.

You trotted out several claims, and you carefully put them together in order to create a sinister image of a cigar-smoking dictator of a third-world banana republic living in the White House. You were not content to point out valid criticisms against Obama's presidency, but you carefully tailored your claims to create the ugliest image that you could. You were not content to point out perfectly valid criticisms against the Obama administration, which I can assure you there are ample enough grounds for if you're not looking for material for a hollywood script, but you seem to have this need for Obama to be just plain bad.

I called out your claims as at least somewhat dubious and overturned some of them resoundingly, and now you seem to be angry with me. It seems to me that you are so wedded to the idea that Obama is the Great Satan that it disturbs you deeply that I have managed to damage your case for this notion that he is an all around bad guy. Now, let us consider our respective positions in this discussion, and ask yourself: what does your conscience tell you?

Since your conscience seems to be piss drunk in the back of your cobweb-infested attic, let me serve as his surrogate: you, sir, are amoral. You are rotten for your use of distortion and falsehood to support your case. Your alarming lack of consideration for whether anything you believe has actual fact behind it might fly over some people's heads, but you and others like you have succeeded in filling me with such disgust for the human race that I am filled incessantly with an urge to vomit.

I can't understand why people like you can't just stay in their asinine and bizarre fantasy lands and leave those of us who prefer to live in the real world alone. How about from now on you keep your head buried in your David Icke novels or whatever overly trendy moron you get your ideas from? Your whole concept of American politics is fit only for the bottom of the most idiotic Hollywood rubbish pile. You are culpable in this horrible trend in American politics toward being based more on grandstanding and glamorous-sounding rhetoric than anything resembling a serious exchange of ideas. You are the reason our government has gone so far south. You are the substance of everything that is wrong with the world right now.

That's the kind of person YOU are.

I remember you said "I can do this all day if you like," referring to the casual claims you were making. Yeah, I know you could. If I wanted to, I could pull half-baked claims out of my lower orifice. With as much ease as you have spouted these claims, though, I have hunted down relatively credible journalistic sources to contradict them. I offered further substantiation if you wanted it. I have put no obligation on you to accept any single source that I used to substantiate my argument, and I put the ball in your court as to whether to accept it. I have demonstrated more respect for valid debate in this one discussion than you would otherwise see around here in a month.

That's the kind of person I am.

So you didn't read past the first line of the article I linked you to on him and posted part of. Here is another one:



Since you're such a big fan of the New York Times, I chose them, just for you!

There were three principle differences between Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki:

1) Awlaki was American-born

2) Awlaki was a traitor

3) Awlaki had less excuse

You have deliberately portrayed it as if these guys were hand-picked by Barack Obama's political campaign.



And I understand that Adolf Hitler owned dogs. Do you really want to trust someone who owns dogs like Adolf Hitler?

lol I got sick and tired of people demonizing Bush back in 2006. I finally matured enough to realize that I shouldn't view a president as Satan's right-hand man just because I thought his administration was a festering cesspool of corruption. I don't think Bush was an especially good president, but I think that I can validate this opinion to myself easily enough without having to suspect the involvement of Satan's minions. Bush actually tolerated a lot more nastiness against him than a lot of past presidents, good and bad, would have. He did appoint Gates, which was a vast improvement over Rumsfeld, whom I still regard as a mega-boner. I don't think that Bush's administration was especially good, but I don't have a psychological need for him to be evil incarnate, especially in retrospective. Therefore, you are not going to make an impression on me by drawing comparisons of President Obama with President Bush.

What is disingenuous is the false dichotomy you engineered there.

Manning had passed along classified material. Although I sympathize with his situation, it would be wrong to decry his arrest and detention. The USA has a legitimate interest in protecting the security of material that is important to the safety of its service-members. It would be perilous and disingenuous to portray Manning as a major enemy of US interests or as a bad guy with evil intent, but it is necessary to hold him at least minimally accountable for his actions.



Because I think you're phony to pretend that Obama personally ordered the arrest of Bradley Manning for being a threat to his 2012 political campaign, when in fact Manning had been placed under arrest by the FBI for leaking classified documents in a manner that could have jeopardized the safety of American soldiers?

Or because I think it's dishonest and dishonorable for you to portray the assassination of a well known terrorist as if Barack Obama were ordering hits on his political adversaries, for political reasons?

...

A columnist? You are citing...a columnist?

Well, I clearly can't take you seriously, but I'll humor this guy enough to read what he has to say. It's not his fault a complete idiot is citing his ideas, which I consider to be a particularly unjust form of defamation, so I will show him enough respect to treat him with what seriousness he deserves. Although I do not find myself agreeing overall with Sullum, he is at the very least a fairly legitimate political commentator. He isn't nearly as crass as some columnists I've been subjected to.

Jacob, I agree with you that the "boots on the ground" argument was complete sophistry. Although this caused me some consternation even at the time, this is overshadowed by the fact that the USA was taking part, at the time, in a multilateral, international effort to protect the Libyan rebels from Qadaffi's heavy artillery. If the USA and others had not intervened, we could have ended up with a situation similar to the one that we had at one time in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I only hope that the new Libyan ruling power doesn't turn out to be worse than what it has replaced, which is still a very real and scary possibility.

The second article by Sullum you linked is a little disingenuous in some of its claims.

For one thing, Obama talking so openly about his drug habits during his youth was populist posturing, not exactly a campaign promise. Although I find this a bit offensive, it's no big deal. If I find any part of his posturing offensive, it's walking around with his collar unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled-up. It is soooo affected, it makes me want to hurl. Again, it's just part of politics and is no big deal.

However, I'm not sure Sullum intended it as an outright lie, but it is categorically untrue that Obama promised to legalize marijuana.



The next paragraph in Sullum's article seems closer to the truth, and I suspect he added the following after doing some fact-checking of his own:



Later, he gets a little disingenuous again:



Sorry, Mr. Sullum, but let's recall that Obama's campaign promise was to do a better job of fighting the war on drugs, not to abolish it.

In any event, Mr. Sullum is, to his credit, significantly more balanced than a lot of what I've seen in the mainstream media. However, I am really not seeing anything here that I consider to be especially damning.

"Scurrilousness"? You almost made me break with my strict policy of avoiding the use of smilies to make my point.

Dox, you have insulted me on several levels. If I am worried about anyone's scurrilousness, it's that of people like you, who don't care about honest debate and don't give a damn in general about honorable conduct. You seem to think that name-calling and ridicule is grounds to dismiss my views, which is laughable.

What really sticks in my craw and leaves the taste of lead in my mouth, though, is that people like you act all feeling-hurt when someone calls you out for the top-shelf filth you are. You freely insult me, yet it is you who will go seeking pity. Screw you, Dox. I've exerted a thousand times more effort than you deserve to present a credible case. I've tried to be balanced. I even tried to be fair with your pet columnist, which you tried to equate with true journalistic sources. I think I deserve some reciprocation.

You flipped that backward - its the house that has a republican majority, slight democrat majority in the senate.