Obama and the younger generation

Xceler8x wrote: Obama has much more of a broad appeal than to younger voters. A few reasons: 1 - He is actually compassionate.

A) How do you know? B) Define 'compassionate'.

2 - He is for change.

So it appears at first glance. So has every presidential candidate from the dawn of time. It remains to be seen how much real change he actually WANTS, let alone how much real change he can actually bring about in a system that is utterly evolved to preserve the status quo.

On the broader subject of change: American politics is about as predictable as hemlines in the fashion industry. This season the voters vote them up a little higher; next season they'll vote them down a little lower, but there's a very little actual difference in the garment, and you know damn well there's a certain point beyond which they're not gonna go, in either direction. Yet the appearance of change is always there, because it's always a little different from the out-of-season stuff.

Very few people seem to see through this charade, or care, if they do.

3 - He is intelligent. new-clear. Need I say anything else?

Yes, you need to say quite a bit more, actually. An ad hominem attack against Bush's Texas accent doesn't do anything to indicate that Bush is stupid. And it does even LESS to prove that Obama is intelligent. It does speak volumes, however, about the writer.

4 - He has instant credibility internationally.

How, exactly, does Obama have 'instant credibility', considering he's got very little foreign policy experience at all? Simply by not being Bush?

5 - He is humble. Not much smirking going on there.

Granted, at this point.

A welcome change for nothing else than changes sake. I'd had enough of coke sniffing frat boys in college. We don't need one running the nation anymore.

Yeah, 16 years is long enough.

6 - He speaks about tackling hard problems the current administration shirks. Healthcare, social security reform, the economy, and how to get out of Iraq.

See my rebuttal of "change" above.

What's Bush got? Mars? Remember that? "I have one thing to say...Mars!" Chappelle skewered lil'bush on that. He deserved it too.

Let me just say two things on that subject:

A) It was Saint John the Kennedy who insisted we go to the moon, at a time when "clearly" there were other things to be concerned with right here on earth. Yet of course JFK was the greatest president ever in the history of presidents, ever.

B) The Earth is entirely too fragile a basket for the human race to put all its eggs in. -Robert Heinlein

..and so the right-wing mocking campaign begins.

Wow. Sensitive much? And I'm not even a right winger.

He has a substantial history of organizing in south Chicago. Between dealing with people that have essentially given up and with people that have no interest in improving things he seems to have had some success.

That sort of deal making is a huge part of what a president needs to be able to do.

The guy writes his own speeches and his own books. There probably hasn't been a presidential candidate that has done that in the last 20 years.

Obama is a pretty good example of how the vote still counts.

As for negotiating internationally, unlike Bush, Obama takes input from other people. There are plenty of people to draw on for international relations, the president just needs to be willing to listen to the book smart elitists.

Obama isn't going to tax us any more heavily than the Republicans did. The difference may be that he'll actually collect taxes instead of running up huge deficits for our kids to cover.

914Driver wrote: 2 - He is for change. Any change, in my mind, is good now. 3 - He is intelligent. new-clear. Need I say anything else? 4 - He has instant credibility internationally. * * * I'm not seeing the instant credibility here. What International experience can he tout as credible? I'm not busting stones, just curious. Has he negotiated with anyone, sat with Blair or any of our allies? Are seeing something I don't?

doitover wrote: Obama isn't going to tax us any more heavily than the Republicans did. The difference may be that he'll actually collect taxes instead of running up huge deficits for our kids to cover.

Can you please expand on this statement... seems rather Orwellian in nature...

Bill

Instead of raising taxes to pay for government programs the current administration borrows money passing the bill to someone else. Regan did it to Bush Senior. Bush Jr. is doing it to our future president's now.

Many people would say that growing national debt is largely responsible for the loss in comparative value of the US dollar. Many claim that the loss in comparative value of the U.S. dollar is a stealth tax.

So to sum it up debt in the place of new taxes lowers the value of every dollar in your pocket hence stealth tax or so the argument goes.

You can only speculate on what Obama will end up doing with taxes. He does have a plan to cut taxes for those making less than $250K and raise them for those making more.

My comment is that Republicans have essentially taxed us in the future by running up massive deficits. I don't agree with the philosophy that cutting taxes increases tax revenue for two reasons. One there is no proof of that, and two, if they can't say what the perfect number is then they are just making stuff up. So someone sometime is going to have to pay China and whoever else has loaned us the money for the spending we have been doing, back.

wcelliot wrote:

doitover wrote: Obama isn't going to tax us any more heavily than the Republicans did. The difference may be that he'll actually collect taxes instead of running up huge deficits for our kids to cover.

Can you please expand on this statement... seems rather Orwellian in nature... Bill

And yet, the thought of just spending less berkleying money never crosses anybody's mind up there... because remember, from the voters on up, American politics is about appearance of change, not the real thing.

Many people would say that growing national debt is largely responsible for the loss in comparative value of the US dollar. .

And if so they'd be proving they don't understand how the currency market works.

Nor understanding that it can be (and has been) the goal to have a weak dollar.... it's not like having a low stock price in measuring the worth of a company, though to the uninformed it can look that way.

Bill

doitover wrote: You can only speculate on what Obama will end up doing with taxes. He does have a plan to cut taxes for those making less than $250K and raise them for those making more. My comment is that Republicans have essentially taxed us in the future by running up massive deficits. I don't agree with the philosophy that cutting taxes increases tax revenue for two reasons. One there is no proof of that, and two, if they can't say what the perfect number is then they are just making stuff up. So someone sometime is going to have to pay China and whoever else has loaned us the money for the spending we have been doing, back.

I can speculate that Obama has promised to spend even more than the irresponsible GOP, so that part of the equation isn't going to improve. And with a DEM supermajority in Congress, I predict we'll see spending increases unparalleled in modern times... no matter who is in the White House.

So you don't believe that lower taxes encourage economic growth (resulting in higher tax revenues) nor that higher taxes discourage growth? How exactly do you think the budget suddenly came into balance under Clinton? It certainly wasn't due to spending restraint...

Believe it or not, no economy has ever taxed itself into prosperity... only into fascism/communism.

Bill

i do agree that there are benefits to a weak dollar.

I dont think anyone understands how global currency markets work.

George Soros understands how global currency markets work. Maybe we should vote for him. Oh wait, we are.

Yeah, Duke, no one ever talks about just spending less money. It just somehow never comes up. Amazing, isn't it? Even Reagan spent more. He bragged on taking in more taxes than any time ever before in history because he lowered the tax rate. Seems to me that equates to more taxes.

I'd like to see a true accounting of how much of our tax dollar goes to the banking system. We should look at history: The banks would finance both sides of a war and then wind up owning both countries afterwards. Debt is slavery.

Brain/Pinkey in '08!

Brain/Pinkey nothin'!

I thought she already dropped out of the running? ;-)

wcelliot wrote: 7. His solution to most of the above is socialism and that's what young people have been taught since preschool, so they are preprogrammed to accept it. They have thus far only been on the receivng end of socialism and have not yet recognized its cost.

Even then, socialism in some systems is excellent. There are quite a few systems that are not served well by the open market advocated currently. Healthcare for instance. When there isn't a profit motive for a particular medicine or service, no matter how badly needed, it will not be provided in a free market system or capitalistic society. In cases such as those socialism has proven to be an adequate system when run correctly. You can find your own examples or I can provide them.

I do think it's funny that you would seem to want to characterize Bush of being a "coke sniffing frat boy" when that's noting more than an unproven accusation (though likely true) while in Obama's case it's freely admitted behavior. ;-)

I like running down Bush when I can. He has led a life of privilege and shows it by his inability to work with anyone or compromise. As well as his free spending ways. It's obvious the guy has never met a spending limit in his life by the way he squanders tax dollars on as many gov't bureaus as he can dream up. That or wars...

A bit like calling Obama a muslim after creating some security theater implying all Muslims are anti-US.

914Driver wrote: I'm not seeing the instant credibility here. What International experience can he tout as credible? I'm not busting stones, just curious. Has he negotiated with anyone, sat with Blair or any of our allies? Are seeing something I don't?

It's there. I know I just saw it...keep looking.

You can bust stones. It's cool.

His instant credibility comes from not being the ignorant, blow hard, intolerant, religious nut that Bush has come across as. Bush, to the international community, represents a lot of what's wrong with America.

Bush has often invoked the imagery of a religious war when talking about the Middle East. A very bad, bad thing to do when you're already dealing with religious extremists. It plays into their hand. Also a hard thing to downplay when you yourself are viewed as religious-right advocate within your own country. Religious fervor has no place in government. Our founding fathers knew this from the many religious wars fought in Europe before our Independence. They wanted nothing to do with that influence blinding logic when making decisions concerning the Republic. I agree with them.

Obama is also more representative of the nation as a whole. He has experienced other cultures and not by shooting them. This alone indicates that he has a wider view of the U.S's role in the world as a whole.

Obama can also speak to people whom he disagrees with without coming across as angry, patronizing, or confrontational. Bush has had issues with all of those. Have any of you noticed that Bush hasn't been allowed to speak to the press or anyone else that isn't pro-Bush in months if not years? That's no accident. Bush can barely get through meeting with the Washington press corps, which are veritable lap dogs at this point, without appearing angry and defensive.

Obama can also say big words correctly. Unlike the current President.

Besides, I think we can all agree that the Nation has not been run well in the last few years at least. Look at our economy, our level of respect around the world, our national infrastructure (bridges, air traffic control, roads, monetary safety nets like social security, military...), as well as our ability as a nation to drive innovation and technology. We are at a low ebb in all those areas. Bush has had 8 years to make any of those things a priority. Name one in which he was successful.

Clinton raised taxes on incomes over something like $75K in 1993. The economy's growth in the 90's was due mostly to new technology, telecommunications and the internet. Both of which would probably not have happened here if it were not for breaking up AT&T and government support for the original arpanet. Both of which were largely Democratic initiatives I believe.

Republicans think government doesn't work because they are so lousy at it. Obama is going to do fine.

wcelliot wrote: So you don't believe that lower taxes encourage economic growth (resulting in higher tax revenues) nor that higher taxes discourage growth? How exactly do you think the budget suddenly came into balance under Clinton? It certainly wasn't due to spending restraint... Believe it or not, no economy has ever taxed itself into prosperity... only into fascism/communism. Bill

Do you have a list of other industries you favor nationalizing? You can use the same (false) arguments for socialism on any industry.

The one thing they have in common is that when profit is no longer a motive, either the product suffers, becomes rationed due to lack of availability, and/or becomes more expensive.

Unless completely voluntary in nature (like car insurance) or on very small scales, socialism never works and always depends on a totalitarian Government to enforce it.

Bill

< Republicans think government doesn't work because they are so lousy at it.

LOL!!

That is the funniest thing I've read in a LONG time. You should use it as your signature so that people could place your posts in the appropriate perspective! ;-)

Bill

You guys are going to wear out my typing fingers! I have to say...I learn a lot talking to people who have a different point of view. I need to work on my delivery as I'm coming across much more strident than I truly am. I'll work on it.

Dr. Hess wrote: So, just out of curiosity, how does someone's opinion in a foreign country of who should our next President be matter? Seems to me that if foreigners like someone, that's a minus because it would indicate that they think they can get more from him at our expense than the other guy. Not that I think the other guy is worth voting for either, mind you.

It matters in the pressure we can bring to bear on foreign powers who may defy us alone.

BHO's attributes. I'll respond to Hess and Duke below:

Hess and then Duke wrote: A) How do you know? B) Define 'compassionate'. ~~~~~ 1. Compassionate. How do you figure that? Because he says he's compassionate? What actions has he done that would indicate he was compassionate? Vote for killing babies while the momma is pushing them out? Is that compassionate? Voting to take your money away from you and give it to me? That would be compassionate for whom?

Compassionate because he talks about fixing problems that don't have a profit motive or don't benefit his cronies. Bush has done both in his war in Iraq. He benefited Haliburton therefore enriching Cheney and all his boardroom buddies. He also worked to pass tax cuts that benefit the wealthy infinitely more than the majority in this nation. More pork for his friends.

I consider Obama compassionate because he is thinking of working on behalf of people other than his political allies. I doubt many of which are at or below middle class.

Hess and then Duke wrote: 2. For change. Change in and of itself is not necessarily always for the better. Things will get worse. ~~~~~ So it appears at first glance. So has every presidential candidate from the dawn of time. It remains to be seen how much real change he actually WANTS, let alone how much real change he can actually bring about in a system that is utterly evolved to preserve the status quo....Very few people seem to see through this charade, or care, if they do.

I agree with you both. Change can make things worse. Also, change can often be an illusion. At this point in the game our nation needs some sort of change. Illusion or not. We are on the wrong path.

Hess and then Duke wrote: 3. Intelligent. Based on his reading of a teleprompter? Graduating law school? Plenty of questionable people graduate law school. Where's his great contribution to society besides managing to get elected to the senate? I see no strong evidence here. Great speaker, though. If you want to pick the smartest man for president, you'd better come up with a test and put them all through it. I bet Little Mac is no slouch either. ~~~~~ you need to say quite a bit more, actually. An ad hominem attack against Bush's Texas accent doesn't do anything to indicate that Bush is stupid. And it does even LESS to prove that Obama is intelligent. It does speak volumes, however, about the writer.

As another poster stated, Obama writes his own speeches and books. That, to me, requires a level of intelligence. To write them well requires quite a bit more.

Also, I'm from the south. I don't judge people on accents. What I do judge them on are their actions. Bush has done more to provoke that than most anyone else. His accent is immaterial. Not to mention I have met many southerners who can say nuclear correctly, southern accent or not.

Hess and then Duke wrote: 4. International credibility. Is that important? I say berkeley the "international community." ~~~~~ How, exactly, does Obama have 'instant credibility', considering he's got very little foreign policy experience at all? Simply by not being Bush?

I was typing a response when this came through. Check out my prev post for the answer.

Hess and then Duke wrote: 6. Hard problems. Bush tried to address SS. The D's killed all attempts at fixing it. ~~~~~ A) It was Saint John the Kennedy who insisted we go to the moon, at a time when "clearly" there were other things to be concerned with right here on earth. Yet of course JFK was the greatest president ever in the history of presidents, ever. B) The Earth is entirely too fragile a basket for the human race to put all its eggs in. -Robert Heinlein He is a great speaker.

I don't think that putting SS on the stock market was a good idea. It was poorly thought out at best. So, by saying the D's killed all Bush's SS fixes is a bit simplistic. His "fixes" were, much like the rest of his domestic policy, half-a$$ed attempts at best.

Duke, I hear you about Kennedy. The guy was deemed a Saint all while running around on his wife. puke. I'm with you on the Heinein quote! I read RH quite a bit. Still do. Farmham's Freehold, Number of the Beast, The Moon is Harsh Mistress, etc. I loved that guy's writing. Haldeman is excellent too if you like that stuff.

Back on topic..the Earth is to fragile. I would've LOVED to see Bush take us to Mars instead of Iraq. He never did. The funny part was that he said this after a discussion with the white house press corps. of "Where are the WMD's?" He was on the rack and at the end he says "Enough of this war stuff! MARS!" It was yet again a pitiful attempt at statesmanship on his part. The old rope-a-dope of public speaking. If you can't argue your position on it's merits you get the crowd to look over there instead. That was my point. Not that Mars is a goal we should not strive for. We should. Most definitely we should. But don't use it as a political gambit to distract everyone from the very real and deadly business at hand. We were going to war on false evidence. A questionable war at that. Space missions are important enough to warrant their own press conferences.

wcelliot wrote: I can speculate that Obama has promised to spend even more than the irresponsible GOP, so that part of the equation isn't going to improve. And with a DEM supermajority in Congress, I predict we'll see spending increases unparalleled in modern times... no matter who is in the White House.

He's got a hard act to follow after Bush and Reagan. Both of those guys spent money like a sailor in port. We're still paying on Reagan's spending spree. We'll be paying on Bush's for quite awhile longer.

I find it interesting that Ron Paul advocated cutting back spending to year 2000 levels. Yet, the Republican party wrote him off as a quack. In my mind, he's still the most Republican candidate running. The rest are religious-right populists.

wcelliot wrote: The one thing they have in common is that when profit is no longer a motive, either the product suffers, becomes rationed due to lack of availability, and/or becomes more expensive.

From Fox news (I picked those guys so you can scream bias at a right-wing news agency)

U.S. Trails Others in Health Care Satisfaction Americans are more dissatisfied than citizens of other nations with their basic health care even while paying more of their own money for treatment, a five-nation survey released Thursday notes. ...One-third of Americans told pollsters that the U.S. health care system should be completely rebuilt, far more than residents of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the U.K. Just 16 percent of Americans said that the U.S. health care system needs only minor changes, the lowest number expressing approval among the countries surveyed...

Currently all of the countries listed in the article have socialized medicine. According to the Fox new article they all have higher customer satisfaction levels than the U.S.'s style of medicine. It is also less expensive to seek healthcare in those countries.

Interestingly enough the U.S. also has socialized medicine, but only for Veterans and the poor.

Xceler8x, "satisfaction" is terribly subjective. Imagine this: You have two groups of people. Group one you bombard 24x7 with "Your car sucks big time." Group two you bombard 24x7 with "You have the finest car in the world." Then you do a poll on both groups and ask them their satisfaction level regarding their cars. Is that survey going to be a realistic reflection on their cars?

Oh, and veterans and the poor don't seem too happy about their healthcare either. If you removed the lawyers and the insurance companies, our healthcare costs would be below those foreign governments you think are so great.

As someone said above, its fun to talk change, but no one really wants to do what is needed. Most Democrats only want to talk a big game, and not act unless it's to bring in more money. (for an example, see the recent proposed penalty on oil companies instead of understanding what's really going on, then check what fund they really wanted to put the money in)

The problem I see with college kids supporting Obama, is that they already live in a world that's a bit fairy-tale like, and college professors perpetuate it even further, as they too are disconnected from reality. Not only did I go through it, but my sister has been a college professor for close to 20 years now, and she's warped beyond all capacity. Simply dealing with the government system most colleges and universities employ would drive most people to insanity, and can you say waste money? They're true micro-enviornments of our government at work, and not in a good way. Our education system is out of hand, and even the Republicans suck at it, as Bush brought us "no child left behind", but that's another argument.

As to the problem at hand, I'm no Bush supporter, but most of what people complain about, the President has no real power to fix. The Iraq mess is his, but a good chunk of the economy is not, and gas prices certainly are not. I've long maintained that a lot more care should be taken in selecting Congressmen and Senators on both State and National levels, as these people affect our lives a lot more than the President does. If you want real change, start here. Most of our poor spending starts and stops on the House and Senate floors, not from the Oval Office.

Oh, and another word on taxes, if you liked your stimulus check and lower income tax rates, think hard about where you place your vote. Obama stated as did Hillary that he thinks the Bush tax cuts were wrong. Even though he says the government needs to control spending, he also believes that taxes are too low.

Now to my last bit of Democrat hate spew...ok, not really as there are Democrats I like, but one of the reasons we're in this gas issue started with Bill, and the abolishment of CAFE standards. It opened the door for the large SUV market, and the weight gain for passanger cars. Had this not happened, it's difficult to say what shape the car market might be in now, but certainly the US companies would have had to do a better job than just build big, heavy trucks loaded down with crap. They'd actually had to continue to improve and compete, something they eventually did anyway when all the other companies started building big trucks, etc.

For people that didn't see this crisis coming, they've been living in a different world than I have, and you can't blame the governement for it, we need to look in the mirror.

Dr. Hess wrote: If you removed the lawyers and the insurance companies, our healthcare costs would be below those foreign governments you think are so great.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner, folks.

Have a central "bank" were we all pay in, and there will be enough left over to pay for the insurance of all the uninsured + another 20% of the American population. (this based on the data that says that Medicare uses 5% of input for costs, vs. 20% for insurance companies)

BTW, for all of you who are so strong on the war in iraq and on Terrorism- I'm still assuming that you want to do this to save American lives, right? Part the world with people who just want to see Americans die, right?

So if saving American lives is part of our National Security, why isn't national heathcare a national security issue?

Especially when you consider that only 10,000 Americans have died over the past decade either due to Terrorism/ War in Iraq. Compare that with the 250,000 Americans who died of Cancer in 2005 (according to the CDC).

Seems to me that we could save a lot more American lives via a national health cares system vs. a war on Terrorism/Iraq for a whole lot less money....

yeah. I don't like obama either.

War can be justified in some instances. But socialism cannot be.

Dr. Hess wrote: 4. International credibility. Is that important? I say berkeley the "international community." It's about time we stopped feeding them and see how they like us then. About time for the "international community" to do some serious butt kissing on the U.S.A. It is possible that this is what the current play on food prices is, by the way. We'll just burn our corn in our gas tanks and ya'll can go hungry and see how you like it.

One thing on this- some past Presidents thought that it was very important to engage our worst enemy- don't forget that Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan all engaged Russia, and did manage to prevent a pretty horrible war.

Reagan was really the shocker on this one- I'm sure most of you remember him best as the one who labeled the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire, and who spent SO MUCH MONEY ON defense that we are still paying for it. None of them really started a hot war, although, one could blame most of Vietnam on Kennedy.

But he also talked to all of the Soviet premiers he had to.

So it's not exactly weak to speak to your enemy, especially when you do hold the upper hand. And one does not have to use force to get what you want (at least if we use past Presidents as examples of what CAN happen).

E-

Who is this George Soros and why is he the boogie man?