President Obama

[Park Life 71]

very true.

 

i guess we also have homeless in the UK, but its just the scale of it that is astonishing in the USA.

 

and the fact that they are meant to be one of the richest countries in the world, and even they don't have basic minimums.

 

It's not really that civilised a place when you get down to brass tacks.

[Happy Face 29]

very true.

 

i guess we also have homeless in the UK, but its just the scale of it that is astonishing in the USA.

 

and the fact that they are meant to be one of the richest countries in the world, and even they don't have basic minimums.

 

We cook the books on that score though...

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8156391.stm

[Park Life 71]

very true.

 

i guess we also have homeless in the UK, but its just the scale of it that is astonishing in the USA.

 

and the fact that they are meant to be one of the richest countries in the world, and even they don't have basic minimums.

 

We cook the books on that score though...

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8156391.stm

 

A few thousand in the whole of England is hardly comparable.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Dude, there's like 4,000 homeless (average) in Austin, Texas. Austin. Not Chicago or L.A. or Houston, Austin.

 

The problem is, no one really wants to help them. The Dems just pay lip service so they can keep counting on the poor/ minority vote but institute programs that make it less than cost-effective to get out and get a job, the Republicans are only interested in you if you're rich, white, and male.

 

It's just like this Healthcare bullshit over here. The problem is the HMOs that Nixon signed into existence, not that we don't have nationalized healthcare. The HMOs increased the bill so much that you have to have insurance to be able to afford even the simplest procedures. The uninsured of this country would be it's largest political lobby if they somehow all got together (not that it'd do any good really, you can be big, but unless you've got the money, it's meaningless how big your lobby is).

 

I've just finally come to the conclusion that all these politicians are sort of like me and my maintenance crew at work- if we really did fix everything so it wouldn't break, we'd put ourselves out of the job. What's the sense in doing that?

 

Course, when we make a mistake, we destroy some car parts- not people's lives.

Edited July 20, 2009 by Cid_MCDP

[Park Life 71]

Dude, there's like 4,000 homeless (average) in Austin, Texas. Austin. Not Chicago or L.A. or Houston, Austin.

 

The problem is, no one really wants to help them. The Dems just pay lip service so they can keep counting on the poor/ minority vote but institute programs that make it less than cost-effective to get out and get a job, the Republicans are only interested in you if you're rich, white, and male.

 

It's just like this Healthcare bullshit over here. The problem is the HMOs that Nixon signed into existence, not that we don't have nationalized healthcare. The HMOs increased the bill so much that you have to have insurance to be able to afford even the simplest procedures. The uninsured of this country would be it's largest political lobby if they somehow all got together (not that it'd do any good really, you can be big, but unless you've got the money, it's meaningless how big your lobby is).

 

I've just finally come to the conclusion that all these politicians are sort of like me and my maintenance crew at work- if we really did fix everything so it wouldn't break, we'd put ourselves out of the job. What's the sense in doing that?

 

Course, when we make a mistake, we destroy some car parts- not people's lives.

 

Don't give them food parcels give dem guns yo!

[TheInspiration 1]

The BBC loves Obama though and they certainly didn't love Bush. Why is this a problem?

[Jimbo 172]

Take away his auto-cue and he's a very very poor orator.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8160209.stm

[sniffer 0]

Nobody wanted food parcels in N'awlins, Parky.

 

Now plasma TVs and Nikes........

[Happy Face 29]

Change we can’t believe in

Mehdi Hasan

Published 08 October 2009

 

Barack Obama promised a sharp break from the Bush era, yet he seems to have stepped into the shoes of his disgraced predecessor. As the anniversary of his election approaches, Mehdi Hasan investigates what went wrong

 

 

On a cold February morning, less than three weeks after Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, a lawyer from the department of justice stood up in a San Francisco courtroom to defend the government from accusations of torture. Five detainees, including the British resident Binyam Mohamed, had filed a suit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc, a subsidiary of Boeing, for its alleged role in "extraordinary rendition", in which terrorism suspects are sent to third countries for detention, interrogation and - the plaintiffs claim - torture.

 

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly criticised the Bush administration's treatment of detainees, its rendition policy and the use of the "state secrets" privilege to prevent classified information from being discussed in court. Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2007, he had argued that building a "better, freer world . . . means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law".

 

But on that February morning, the government lawyer Douglas N Letter made the same "state secrets" argument for dismissing the case as the Bush administration had used in previous months. The legal position he was advancing on behalf of the government, Letter said, had been "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration", and this was the "authorised" position.

 

As the prominent liberal blogger and lawyer Glenn Greenwald pointed out at the time, this was "the first real test of the authenticity of Obama's commitment to reverse the abuses of executive power over the last eight years". But Obama failed the test - and he did so not only in this instance, but in a number of similar court cases. Together, these cases suggest that his administration has no immediate or concrete plans to realise the hopes and dreams of liberals at home and abroad by rolling back the imperial overreach of the Bush era. On the contrary, in the field of counter-terrorism and on the issue of executive power as a whole, Obama has distressingly begun to resemble George W Bush.

 

Another San Francisco court case in February this year involved the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity that the Bush administration accused in 2004 of supporting terrorism. The plaintiffs claimed that federal authorities had illegally listened in on their lawyers' phone calls. In 2007, Obama described Bush's warrantless wiretapping programme as "unlawful and unconstitutional", but two years later the Obama justice department again followed in the footsteps of Bush and tried to have the case dismissed on grounds of national security and protecting "state secrets".

 

“Obama has stepped into the shoes of President Bush," Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told me. "He continues to assert the state secrets privilege to resist holdover lawsuits from the Bush era . . . in an attempt to prevent the judiciary from adjudicating on the legality of the warrantless wiretapping programme, and addressing the larger presidential power issues that the case presents." He added: "Change we can believe in? Nope."

 

The distance between Obama and Bush on a host of policies is not as great as many people might hope or have expected - and it appears to get narrower by the day. This should not, perhaps, come as a huge surprise. One reason for continuity between US presidents - even those who are, on the surface, as different as Bush and Obama - is the nature of the modern imperial presidency, at the apex of a bloated national-security state. As the historian Garry Wills pointed out recently in the New York Review of Books, the president "is greatly pressured to keep all the empire's secrets . . . he becomes the prisoner of his own power . . . a self-entangling giant".

 

Then there is the pattern of presidential candidates railing against the incumbent's record, only to find themselves sympathising with their predecessor's predicament and policies once they have taken his place. In 1952, as a candidate, Dwight Eisenhower denounced President Truman's policy of containment towards the Soviet Union, yet embraced it within six months of entering the White House. In 2000, Bush derided President Clinton's attempts at nation-building in Somalia and Bosnia, only to spend two terms trying to build new political structures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

During his inauguration, Obama, it is said, told Bush that he hoped to call on him for advice - and he has since spoken to his predecessor at least once. But there are those who would argue that it is absurd to compare the liberal Democrat Obama with the ultra-conservative Republican George Bush. And some would say it is unfair to hold Obama to account only nine months into his presidency. Others would point to the range of policies on which Obama has marked out new terrain: proposing health-care reform, taking climate change seriously, standing up to Wall Street and announcing an end to torture and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. On these and many other issues, his army of fans would argue, the president has shown the world his liberalism, his radicalism, his enthusiasm for change - that he is, in the words of the writer Michael Tomasky, "the anti-Bush".

 

But let us consider each of these in turn. Now is, in fact, an ideal time to pass an interim verdict on Obama's presidency, with the one-year anniversary of his election fast approaching. Previous presidencies, from FDR on, have been judged on their first 100 days in office: Obama has had more than 250, representing a fifth of his first - possibly only - presidential term.

 

On health, he has proposed reforming the system of care that leaves 46 million Americans uninsured, but has retreated at the first sign of trouble, backing down on the "public option" - a government-run rival insurance plan - even though it may be the only method of ensuring that the private insurance industry so beloved of the Republican Party is exposed to real competition and challenge.

 

On climate change, Obama, unlike Bush, has recognised the need to combat global warming. Like Bush, however, he has failed to persuade Congress to take substantive action on emissions and has yet to pledge significant financial support for developing countries to help them cope with the coming climate crisis. His rhetoric may have shifted since the late 1990s when, as a state senator, he lent his support to a bill condemning the Kyoto Treaty, but it has yet to be matched by action.

 

One of Obama's executive orders calls for an increase in motor vehicle mileage standards, but this will only, in the words of Steven Hill of the New America Foundation, "push fuel efficiency by 2020 to a level that European and Japanese cars reached several years ago, and which even China has already achieved". Meanwhile, in May, the administration opted to retain, despite Congressional support to overturn it, a Bush-era rule that limits protection for polar bears in the Arctic - classed as an "endangered species" by the US Environmental Protection Agency - from the effects of global warming.

 

On financial reform, Obama has been accused of being a "socialist" and a "Marxist", intent on nationalising the US economy. The fiscal reality is, however, very different. The multibillion-dollar bank bailout, approved by Bush, has simply been continued by Obama in the same vein (his treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, worked closely with the Bush administration as president of the New York Federal Reserve). Obama has tried to rein in bank bonuses and failed. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan - recipients of bailout aid - paid out billions more in bonuses in 2009 than in 2008. Meanwhile, he has continued to defend executive pay on Wall Street and set himself against European proposals to regulate remuneration or impose a cap on bonuses.

 

Obama came to power with a "firm pledge" not to raise "any form" of taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year. However, despite an off-the-cuff remark that he wanted to "spread the wealth around", his tax plans have done little to advance even modest social-democratic goals. As the treasury department's "Green Book" on revenue proposals has acknowledged, "The [Obama] administration's primary policy proposals . . . [make] permanent a number of the [bush] tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003."

 

Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist at the bipartisan fiscal think tank Concord Coalition, told me that "almost all of the tax policy proposed in the Obama budget is just a continuation of the Bush tax policy". Under the "Bush-Obama tax cuts", the only income group not to benefit is the top 0.1 per cent - households with an annual income of more than $2.7m. Like Bush, Obama seems keen not to upset or disturb the rich and powerful.

 

On torture and Guantanamo Bay, Obama was praised for announcing, in his first week in office, that the world's most notorious prison camp would be closed within a year and that torture - including the Bush-approved technique of "waterboarding" - would be outlawed. Last month, however, with Congress refusing to agree to closure, the Pentagon's top lawyer, Jeh Johnson, said the administration was committed to shutting Guantanamo Bay by early 2010, but stopped short of confirming it will happen. According to the Columbia University law professor Scott Horton, force-feeding operations have continued at the camp, and are apparently administered with "such violence and brutality" that one prisoner has died.

 

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the US is increasing its capacity to imprison people by expanding facilities at bases such as Bagram, where human rights groups have documented many incidents of torture and several unexplained deaths in custody. In February the new administration told a federal judge that military detainees there have no legal right to challenge their captivity. So much for ending the Bush administration's policy of indefinitely detaining "enemy combatants" without trial.

 

Obama has refused to release the shocking photographs of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, as well as CIA documents describing those interrogations. He has criticised Senator Patrick Leahy's proposal for a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush administration's national security policies, and backed immunity for senior Bush officials implicated in torture. In effect, he is covering up the torture he decried as a presidential candidate. As the neoconservative Charles Krauthammer wrote with glee in May: "Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government."

 

It is on foreign policy, and the "war on terror" in particular, that Obama was expected to make the biggest break with the Bush regime. Early on, he announced that he would begin winding down the war in Iraq - but only, it seems, in order to divert US troops, spies and diplomats to the war in Afghanistan and operations across the border in Pakistan. He has approved air strikes there that have killed more civilians in nine months than died in US bombings in the final year of the previous administration.

 

It may have been Bush who invaded Afghanistan eight years ago, but that conflict should now be seen as Obama's war. With the support of a key holdover from the Bush administration, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, Obama has sent more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan since May - almost doubling the US contingent.

 

The pressure for more troops is being kept up by Obama's new commander on the ground, Stanley McChrystal. In true Bush style, Obama suddenly replaced David McKiernan with McChrystal in May. McChrystal is an odd choice for a liberal president and critic of the Iraq war: a favourite of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has been accused of overseeing torture and human rights abuses, under Bush's presidency, at Camp Nama in Iraq, during his deployment there as a special forces commander.

 

If he is to chart a course independent of the war crimes, torture, chaos and general lawlessness of the Bush years, Obama has to start with the Afghan debacle. He can, in the words of the New York Times columnist Frank Rich, emulate President John F Kennedy's decision-making on Vietnam, and resist lobbying by military leaders and a hawkish media for more troops and more war, or he can continue down the Bush road of perpetual war for perpetual peace.

 

Obama will have to act soon to reverse the slide in his ratings, to reassert his authority at home and abroad, to keep his army of liberal Obamaniacs on board. Disenchantment and disillusionment with the candidate of change are beginning to harden. Some will argue that the left is forever prepared to scream "betrayal" at those it elects to power - be that Lyndon B Johnson, Harold Wilson, Bill Clinton or Tony Blair. But the case of Obama is different.

 

With his presidential campaign, the former Illinois senator raised the hopes of millions of people across the US and the world to an extent never seen in modern politics, talking repeatedly of change, reform and renewal, and suggesting he would erase the legacy of his disliked and disgraced pre­decessor from day one. It was inevitable that even the slightest sense of continuity in policy, personnel or practice would disappoint, as it has. Obama, however, has gone further, adopting his predecessor's positions on a wide variety of issues, from the parochially domestic to the grandly geopolitical.

 

The lawyer Jon Eisenberg, who continues to battle the Bush-like Obama justice department in the courts, has been a registered Democrat for 30 years. He considers himself to be a "moderate leftist" and echoes the opinions of growing numbers of Americans: "I voted for Obama - even contributed a substantial amount of money to his campaign. I want my money back."

Edited October 13, 2009 by Happy Face

[AgentAxeman 169]

 

Happy, please dont tell me that people are turning against Jesus incarnate!! I dont think i could handle it!!

 

[Happy Face 29]

 

Happy, please dont tell me that people are turning against Jesus incarnate!! I dont think i could handle it!!

 

 

I turned on him before the election, but yes, others are catching up

 

I hope he keeps it up, in 3 years time it'll grow the vote for Ron Paul or Ralph Nader

[The Fish 10659]

Anyone care to summarise?

[Happy Face 29]

Anyone care to summarise?

 

 

 

About does it.

 

Quarter of the way through his stay and he's achieved nothing.

[Ayatollah Hermione 13760]

Anyone care to summarise?

 

 

 

About does it.

 

Quarter of the way through his stay and he's achieved nothing.

 

Not many people could win the Nobel Peace Prize and bomb the moon on the same day tbf

[Happy Face 29]

38 percent say he wants to take away Americans' right to own guns.

32 percent say he is a Muslim.

29 percent think he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government.

29 percent think he has done many things that are unconstitutional.

27 percent say he resents America's heritage.

27 percent say he does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do.

25 percent say he was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president.

25 percent say he is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of.

23 percent say he is a racist.

23 percent say he is anti-American.

23 percent say he wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers.

20 percent say he is doing many of the things that Hitler did.

 

24 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of Democrats say he may be the Antichrist

 

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/...ence&title=

 

[luckyluke 2]

They really don't deserve him. Mind you, a lot of people in this country wouldn't either.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

38 percent say he wants to take away Americans' right to own guns.

Might be right. He was a Senator from Illinois after all.

 

32 percent say he is a Muslim.

Perpetrated by the usual FUD outlets.

 

29 percent think he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government.

Probably don't know what "sovereignty" means to begin with.

 

29 percent think he has done many things that are unconstitutional.

This is sorta true in my opinion as he hasn't repealed the USA PATRIOT act.

 

27 percent say he resents America's heritage.

Translation: He isn't a white guy and doesn't generally carry a Bible on him at all times.

 

27 percent say he does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do.

Like all the rest of our politicians.

 

25 percent say he was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president.

Again, perpetrated by the usual FUD outlets.

 

25 percent say he is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of.

Also probably believe that the authors of the Constitution were gypsies with the ability to foretell the future.

 

23 percent say he is a racist.

Are most likely racist themselves.

 

23 percent say he is anti-American.

And probably also believe Borat should be in jail for making fun of us in that gay homosexual movie he made.

 

23 percent say he wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers.

Because that's never happened before in this country...

 

20 percent say he is doing many of the things that Hitler did.

But probably couldn't find Germany on a globe.

... or

Because that's never happened before in this country...

 

24 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of Democrats say he may be the Antichrist

I got nothing. Seriously.

[Park Life 71]

America the only country dumb enough to vote in the antichrist.

[ChezGiven 0]

Obama is guilty of naivety, nowt else. Cant believe people still dont get it after watching healthcare reform.

[Bombadil 0]

Happy Face,

I haven't had time to read all of the article you posted above, but if it says what I think it says then I don't get this particular point of view and hatred of Obama from liberals. I can understand that they're pissed off about Obama not being liberal enough after some of the things he promised during the campaign, but do they/you seriously believe that there are any realistic alternatives? Voting for a 'true' liberal is of course what got Bush elected in 2000, and it will be 2000 all over again if liberals don't support him in 2012 or 2016. The truth is, there simply are no realistic alternatives. There will be no more Wilsons or FDRs as presidents, at least not for forseeable future.

Apologies if I've completely misinterpreted your posts BTW.

[acrossthepond 866]

I don't rate Obama. I never have. I said before the election that he was a demagogue who would accomplish nothing. But for them to say he is the Antichrist - I think we need to take a step back and examine what that means. It means he is the physical embodiment of Satan in our world, come to corrupt the world with evil and destroy the forces of good at Armageddon. They are, essentially, saying he is the devil and this is the end of the world. That says all you need to know about White America's worldview: to them, a black man becoming president equates to Armageddon.

[Happy Face 29]

Happy Face,

I haven't had time to read all of the article you posted above, but if it says what I think it says then I don't get this particular point of view and hatred of Obama from liberals. I can understand that they're pissed off about Obama not being liberal enough after some of the things he promised during the campaign, but do they/you seriously believe that there are any realistic alternatives? Voting for a 'true' liberal is of course what got Bush elected in 2000, and it will be 2000 all over again if liberals don't support him in 2012 or 2016. The truth is, there simply are no realistic alternatives. There will be no more Wilsons or FDRs as presidents, at least not for forseeable future.

Apologies if I've completely misinterpreted your posts BTW.

 

 

I don't hate Obama.

 

If i see him doing exactly the same thing I'd have slagged Bush off for, then I slag him off for it too. It's just consistency.

 

The notion that ANYONE should remain quiet and put faith in the inherent goodness of Obama to do what he says, and ignore what he does, is absolutley insane. He's a politician, he will react to public opinion positive or negative. If it's only conservatives giving him stick for being too liberal then he'll sway to the right to appease them.

 

Obama is the best option at the moment but he has to be kept honest with constant scrutiny of every decision. If he did piss off democrats enough to lose the election then 4 years of pushing a slightly more liberal agenda would have been preferable to 8 years of kowtowing to bipartisanship without any objection.

 

Anyway, he's losing far more votes by perpetuating Bush policies than he's gaining by not undoing some of the most egregious of Bush measures.

 

I was taking the piss out of Americans posting the article above, not Obama ;o)

[Billy Castell 0]

I am surprised that the healthcare reforms were pushed through. Democrats are usually useless with exploiting a majority in the Senate and the H of R. Normally the Republicans are ruthless in exploiting things from such a position, as the Democrats almost proved by the narrow margins the bill has been passed.

 

Obama has the charisma of a great President, but he isn't radical enough to really rip up the gun tottin' FOX News watchin' good ole boys who sleep with their sisters and marry their cousins.

[Christmas Tree 4669]

Im not that interested in American politics unless its on the West Wing, but isnt the bottom line here that Obama was just so overhyped during the elections as well as being black and the expectations were immense.

 

Everyone surely knows that once you win, its pure trade off with whatever lobby comes knocking to get some legislation through.

[Park Life 71]

I am surprised that the healthcare reforms were pushed through. Democrats are usually useless with exploiting a majority in the Senate and the H of R. Normally the Republicans are ruthless in exploiting things from such a position, as the Democrats almost proved by the narrow margins the bill has been passed.

 

Obama has the charisma of a great President, but he isn't radical enough to really rip up the gun tottin' FOX News watchin' good ole boys who sleep with their sisters and marry their cousins.

 

People need to get this straight. It isn't FOX it's Murdoch.