2008 Presidential Election

[Lithrael]

(...)believe that if you believe anything I say, I specifically said it because I know this is an American dominant audience. Also, why say I'm lecturing Bob? didn't he try and "lecture" me on the definition of the word "slavery"? as if I don't know it.

It would seem, in the Libertarian caricature of the world, doing anything compulsory is slavery. Doing a little compulsory community service is simply not slavery in the sense that anyone else uses the word. I did community service instead of paying some fines and fees when I was a poor student. I didn't have the money so it was compulsory work on pain of further legal action. Was that slavery in any meaningful sense? If so, that kind of slavery does not seem wrong to me.

[quote author=Sanguinius]As for your “common good” remark, if you think your Great leader knows what the “common good” is, and so superior to all others in determining this that he can force them to do things they would otherwise not do and produce the “common good” by doing so, then okay.[/quote]

That sentiment seems to be against authority having the power to do more than make stern suggestions. Also against taxation of any kind. I'd like to know how you expect the roads to be paid for, managed and maintained without letting anyone be in charge of the common good in any way.

 

[Sanguinius]

It would seem, in the Libertarian caricature of the world, doing anything compulsory is slavery. Doing a little compulsory community service is simply not slavery in the sense that anyone else uses the word. I did community service instead of paying some fines and fees when I was a poor student. I didn't have the money so it was compulsory work on pain of further legal action. Was that slavery in any meaningful sense? If so, that kind of slavery does not seem wrong to me.

I said before I use the word Fascist; Socialist etc even though I knew other people would not understand what I said but merely think they understood what I said because they analysed what I said by looking at what I said with a misunderstanding of what those words mean. It seems I was too narrow, there seems to be a whole extra list of words I have to add to that particular list.

You did community service in lieu of paying a fee and you equate this to forced labour? So let me get your thinking here, you received a good or service and in return payed for that good or service with service in the form of community service rather than money and you think this is equivalent to being told do 3 months community service or go to prison or face a fine? It must be that warped Libertarian thinking of mine that sees your case as an utterly voluntary and beneficial transaction and the other as coercion.

In your second case where you do community service in lieu of paying fines, yes this is forced labour although in the case of paying a fine it’s meant to be. It is after all a punishment; it’s a strange thing to engage in voluntary punishment. It’s meant to infringe on your liberty, you’re being punished in order to recompense those you wronged and/or to alter your future behaviour and that of others. The difference here is that you render the whole populace to the status of criminals or children when you bring about mandatory Labour for all in order to achieve the "common good", as judged by the Great Leader.

That sentiment seems to be against authority having the power to do more than make stern suggestions. Also against taxation of any kind. I'd like to know how you expect the roads to be paid for, managed and maintained without letting anyone be in charge of the common good in any way.

That kind of attitude is meant to say be cautious, Caesar isn’t a God. It’s not meant to say that there should be no government, it says that government should act in a way which leads to the general advancement of individual liberty within society. In that sense the government should act in a manner which advances general liberty and prosperity. That means government must act to protect the weak from the strong, so government must have laws that protect the weak by protecting private property rights; enforcing contract; protecting people's own person etc. For the powerful don't need a protector they can protect themselves and take from the weak. Government must enforce equality before the law because the strong will never of their own accord make the weak equal to them but only subject to them. So government needs a police force to enforce and the courts to judge and a national defence force to protect against aggression from those outside the community.

A Governments' role is to remove obstacles that limit an individual citizens ability to pursue their own version of how their life should be so long as by doing so they do not prevent others from doing the same. Because government's aren't made of Gods and all knowing beings they do not know how everyone should live their life, so they have to leave people to live their own lives so long as they don't directly stop others from doing the same. When an individual does act in a way which infringes on others, through theft murder etc then they should have their liberties removed to protect the common good. That’s how the common good is achieved, by protecting the individual, because it’s always the weak that need protection and hence government and the weakest minority of all is always the individual.

Thank you all, and Goodnight!

 

[Vampire_Hunter_Bob]

Stuff

There's worse things in the world Sang then zit faced teenagers and twenty year olds being told to work for their college education. Again I don't think real slaves would really appreciate you mocking their plight.

I'd say it to anyone if I felt it applied; believe that if you believe anything I say, I specifically said it because I know this is an American dominant audience.  Also, why say I'm lecturing Bob? didn't he try and "lecture" me on the definition of the word "slavery"? as if I don't know it.

I was commenting on your very liberal use of the word, slave. 

Wasn't the Hitler Youth 'voluntary' at first?

Uhh yeah, Hitler Youth was the equivalent of the Scouts. You might be thinking of the SS.

Or drafts college students without a war?

US Peace time draft pre-WW2.

 

[Aazealh]

I suggest you read your 3rd point and not just post it. "The condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence." Being subject to the influence of a government that forces labour is clearly being "subject" to an "influence".

As if that were the definition you meant. A slave to heroin. A slave to OBAMA! It all makes sense now, they're addicted to his influence, just like you're addicted to this thread it seems. Can't help coming back to it. ;) Anyway, people are subject to a lot of influences in general. When taken like that you can make the definition say anything, to the point where it has nothing to do with "slavery" anymore.

I said before I use the word Fascist; Socialist etc even though I knew other people would not understand what I said but merely think they understood what I said because they analysed what I said by looking at what I said with a misunderstanding of what those words mean. It seems I was too narrow, there seems to be a whole extra list of words I have to add to that particular list.

Being arrogant and condescending, feigning misunderstanding and arguing in bad faith does not suffice to justify the sensationalistic way you go about this. Blatant trolling really. As if you're ignoring the enormity of the sloppy comparisons you're making.

Thank you all, and Goodnight!

Cheerio, old chap. I don't know why you did it, but that was a fine baroud d'honneur anyway.

 

[Lithrael]

I said before I use the word Fascist; Socialist etc even though I knew other people would not understand what I said but merely think they understood what I said because they analysed what I said by looking at what I said with a misunderstanding of what those words mean. It seems I was too narrow, there seems to be a whole extra list of words I have to add to that particular list.

Yes, this communicating in the vernacular is such a pain in the ass. People just react to a word's connotations and history instead of the definition in unloaded English, third from the top in the dictionary. They should cut that right out.

ETA: Aw, I didn't realize he left. Ah well.

 

[Griffith]

This is disappointing, and I don't really understand it other than maybe Sang just felt tired or discouraged. Though we often disagreed, I thought that disagreement was an important contribution to the general dialogue.

 

[SaiyajinNoOuji]

People just cant take different opinions in stride and tend to make rash decisions... hence why we as people always mess each other up. I think its a fine example with what is wrong with the world today. A lot of people in power just cant understand that people may have a different opinion then theirs and end up doing something rather surprising, usually in a bad way.

 

[Griffith]

Another true story coming out about the Obama adminstration:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama

I'm just waiting for the blogs to pick it up.

 

[Walter]

Another true story coming out about the Obama adminstration:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama

I'm just waiting for the blogs to pick it up.

Yeah when I read this I thought maybe the Onion staff were pulling from the South Park ep about the aftermath of the election, "About last night."

 

[SaiyajinNoOuji]

Another true story coming out about the Obama adminstration:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama

I'm just waiting for the blogs to pick it up.

The sad thing is I am sure a lot of people would actually buy into it.

 

[Aazealh]

Another true story coming out about the Obama adminstration:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama

Hahaha this is just fantastic. They failed on the French translations of the books though.

 

[_Noone_]

Uhh yeah, Hitler Youth was the equivalent of the Scouts. You might be thinking of the SS.

US Peace time draft pre-WW2.

And a fine bunch of Scouts they were, heh.

Yeah, I read FDR did it in 1940. Didn't read about the reason for it, though. My guess may not be accurate.

I see many avid admirers of Obama and I can see why, he is certainly charismatic and classy. From what I gather, to get this big in politics you have to play a highly corruptable game involving a mind boggling sums of money. If this is true, and if pork barrel politicking continues to grow I doubt this will be good for the country.
Economy getting worse maybe our dollars more worthless. To me, it is hard to trust winners of this game and therefore harder still to admire them.

I completely understand that by saying this I have no 'hope'. Only in football will rooting for the underdog payoff now and then. Haha.

 

[Aazealh]

I see many avid admirers of Obama and I can see why, he is certainly charismatic and classy.

Well I don't think people are really "avid admirers", they're just happy their new president looks a little more serious than the last and has some decent ideological beliefs while being pragmatic enough not to try to do the impossible. And yeah, at least he's classy and charismatic. I certainly can't say the same of MY president.

From what I gather, to get this big in politics you have to play a highly corruptable game involving a mind boggling sums of money. If this is true, and if pork barrel politicking continues to grow I doubt this will be good for the country.
Economy getting worse maybe our dollars more worthless. To me, it is hard to trust winners of this game and therefore harder still to admire them.

I completely understand that by saying this I have no 'hope'. Only in football will rooting for the underdog payoff now and then. Haha.

I understand your point of view and I think many people do as well. No one's really ever clean in politics. But you also have to realize that small candidates with no real chance of winning are only able to put forward sweet and radical propositions because of the fact they have no chance of winning in the first place. They can stay closer to their ideological vision because they don't have to make compromises yet at that level (nor do their policies have to go through in-depth scrutiny). When your chances of winning grow you just can't do that anymore. Even though the candidates can't please everyone they have to try to please as many as possible in order to be elected.

But you know, sometimes people feel the need to be optimistic, and I think it's what's going on with Obama.

 

[Griffith]

Supreme Court Overturns Bush v. Gore


Finally!

 

[Guts intestines]

I wish this were true because I'd take Gore for a month, gotta love political humor.

 

[pippin22]

Pimpin, pimpin.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/obama_youth/obama_youth_04.jpg

 

[Vampire_Hunter_Bob]

Pimpin, pimpin.

That's great, I thought something important happened.

 

[pippin22]

Looks like you were wrong...

 

[Griffith]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/obama.inauguration/index.html

Saw this in the news, don't know if you've heard?

 

[Rhombaad]

I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the inauguration at work this morning. Joe Biden only got to be President for five minutes.

 

[fuxberg]

I've rarely seen occasions that I could use the expression "The eyes of the world were upon them", to its full extent.
I really liked when Obama said "the son of a man who, less than 60 years ago, would not have been served at a local restaurant". In overall i really liked his speech, though its still missing that sentence that would've been remembered. It was a very harsh speech, like a wake up call i think.
Well i hope he has luck on his side, because he has one of the toughest terms in the last decades.

 

[Griffith]

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_disappointed_cabinet_failed

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

Excellent, if you can't relate as literally as I can, just imagine it was Berserk.

 

[Vampire_Hunter_Bob]

Since my dad is the biggest republican ever he signed me up for Newsmax one of the best sources for paranoid republicans to express how Obama is going to end the world. This was one of their sponsors that I couldn't help but laugh at while reading.

Dear Newsmax Readers,

I almost can't believe it.

Last week liberal Democrats slipped into the so-called "economic stimulus" bill a provision to give millions, if not billions, of dollars to ACORN.

You remember ACORN, the ultra-left-wing group that has been accused of voter fraud and funneling millions of dollars in taxpayer money into liberal political activism.

ACU raised awareness about ACORN in the last election campaign. FBI agents raided ACORN offices and is investigating for falsifying thousands of voter registration records. We produced short documentary videos on ACORN; it's ties to left-wing groups, the Obama campaign paying it for voter turnout and other activities. Worse, we showed that ACORN was actually involved in the push for subprime loans and the mortgage meltdown that has driven down our economy. If you have not seen our short videos, you can see them on our ACORN action page: http://www.conservative.org/acornaction.html

Now, the Democrats in Congress are trying to give ACORN millions - even billions - more of our taxpayer dollars.

We need your help to fight back. We want to flood Capitol Hill and the news media with petitions against these attempts to take our tax dollars and give them to left-wing advocacy groups. Please go here, now to sign our ACU ACORN stimulus bill petition and support ACU on this critical endeavor.

There are votes pending related to this provision and we need to fight back now. Even though the House has voted once on the so-called Stimulus Bill, there are still Senate votes to come and possible final passages as changes are made. We must work to have this removed as the process moves forward. Multiple votes will take place over the next few days as the House and Senate goes back and forth on this legislation.

On Friday, House Republican Leader John Boehner raised the alarm with the discoverey that, buried in the trillion-dollar spending bill approved last week in the House Appropriations Committee was a provision for more than 4 billion dollars to go to "neighborhood stabilization activities."

Instead of providing these funds just to state and local governments, their bills says funds can go to "States, units of general local government, and nonprofit entities or consortia of nonprofit entities."

Why did the liberals who control the House Appropriations Committee slip that language into the bill? Because the "nonprofit entities" are units of ACORN.

We need your help to fight back. We want to flood Capitol Hill and the news media with petitions against these attempts to take our tax dollars and give them to left-wing advocacy groups. Please go here now to sign our ACU ACORN stimulus bill petition and support ACU on this critical endeavor.

Boehner noted that, "The House Democrats' trillion-dollar spending bill also includes $1 billion for the Community Development Block Grant Program." He then went on to point out that ACORN reports filed with the Office of Management and Budget shows that ACORN spent almost $1.6 million in federal taxpayer funds for the grants from 2003 through 2007. Now they are going to come back for more.

Boehner's analysis also shows that ACORN has been awarded more than $53 million in taxpayer dollars over the last several years. This amount does not reflect the millions more ACORN has received in federal block grant funds awarded to state and local agencies which passed them on to ACORN.

We need your help to fight back. We want to flood Capitol Hill and the news media with petitions against these attempts to take our tax dollars and give them to left-wing advocacy groups. Please go here now to sign our ACU ACORN stimulus bill petition and support ACU on this critical endeavor.

President Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress have said that they want this trillion-dollar stimulus bill to create jobs in America. What they haven't said is that this is becoming part of a political payoff bill to reward their liberal friends with billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

What is sad is that our economic crisis was in part caused by these very same groups who are now seeking to get their hands on billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

As our video and other documentation pointed out, ACORN pressured lenders and regulatory agencies to promote subprime loans, a chief culprit in our economic collapse. In turn it received millions from the mortgage companies themselves and in turn Obama's friends at Fannie Mae reaped millions more in the process. Remember our note last week? Joe Biden's new vice presidential chief of staff is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae.

Now, ACORN is set to receive funds from the trillion-dollar stimulus package.

This has to end. The revolving door of political and financial interests that have led our country to economic collapse must be stopped. We must push back against this effort to give funds to a group that has shown it is directly involved in liberal political action and voter fraud.

We need your help to fight back. We want to flood Capitol Hill and the news media with petitions against these attempts to take our tax dollars and give them to left-wing advocacy groups. Please go here now to sign our ACU ACORN stimulus bill petition and support ACU on this critical endeavor.

Thank you for your help with this important effort to shine the light on efforts to give billions to ACORN.

Sincerely,

Dennis Whitfield
Executive Vice President

P.S. President Barack Obama's campaign gave more than $800,000 to ACORN for voter turnout. ACORN then was raided and investigated for voter fraud, and now the liberals in Congress are trying to reward them with millions-even billions- in taxpayer funds. Please help us fight back now!

 

[fuxberg]

Millions... Even Billions... Give 'em Trillions!

Jeez someone is paranoid... I'm surprised they didn't say that Obama was the anti-Christ

 

[Vampire_Hunter_Bob]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090201/ap_on_go_pr_wh/war_on_terror

WASHINGTON – The "War on Terror" is losing the war of words. The catchphrase burned into the American lexicon hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is fading away, slowly if not deliberately being replaced by a new administration bent on repairing the U.S. image among Muslim nations.

Since taking office less than two weeks ago, President Barack Obama has talked broadly of the "enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism." Another time it was an "ongoing struggle."

He has pledged to "go after" extremists and "win this fight." There even was an oblique reference to a "twilight struggle" as the U.S. relentlessly pursues those who threaten the country.

But only once since his Jan. 20 inauguration has Obama publicly strung those three words together into the explosive phrase that coalesced the country during its most terrifying time and eventually came to define the Bush administration.

Speaking at the State Department on Jan. 22, Obama told his diplomatic corps, "We are confronted by extraordinary, complex and interconnected global challenges: war on terror, sectarian division and the spread of deadly technology. We did not ask for the burden that history has asked us to bear, but Americans will bear it. We must bear it."

During the past seven years, the "War Against Terror" or "War on Terror" came to represent everything the U.S. military was doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the broader effort against extremists elsewhere or those seen as aiding militants aimed at destroying the West.

Ultimately and perhaps inadvertently, however, the phrase "became associated in the minds of many people outside the Unites States and particularly in places where the countries are largely Islamic and Arab, as being anti-Islam and anti-Arab," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Now, he said, there is a sense that the U.S. should be talking more about specific extremist groups — ones that are recognized as militants in the Arab world and that are viewed as threats not just to America or the West, but also within the countries they operate.

The thinking has evolved, he said, to focus on avoiding the kind of rhetoric "which could imply that this was a struggle against a religion or a culture."

Obama has made it clear in his first days in office that he is courting the Muslim community and making what is at least a symbolic shift away from the previous administration's often more combative tone.

He chose an Arab network for his first televised interview, declaring that "Americans are not your enemy." Before his first full week in office ended, he named former Sen. George J. Mitchell as his special envoy for the Middle East and sent him to the region for talks with leaders.

According to the White House, Obama is intent on repairing America's image in the eyes of the Islamic world and addressing issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unrest in Pakistan and India, Arab-Israeli peace talks and tensions with Iran.

Using language is one way to help effect that change, said Wayne Fields, professor of English and American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

"One of the contrasts between the two administrations is the care with which Obama uses language. He thinks about the subtle implications," said Fields, an expert on presidential rhetoric. The Bush administration "didn't set out deliberately to do things that were offensive but they liked to do things that showed how strong they were, and to use language almost in an aggressive sense."

Obama, he said, understands that language and conversation must be worked at and that it's "not just a series of sound bites."

White House officials say there has been no deliberate ban on the war-on-terror phrase. And it hasn't completely disappeared. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has used the wording in briefings, and it's still in vogue among some in the Pentagon and State Department.

Asked about Obama's avoidance of the phrase, Gibbs said the president's language is "consistent with what he said in his inaugural address on the 20th. I'm not aware of any larger charges than that."

Juan Zarate, who served as the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism during the Bush administration, said he has seen signs that the new White House is trying to subtly retool the words, if not the war.

"There's no question that they're looking very carefully at all issues related to how the war on terror is packaged, to include lexicon," said Zarate. "All of this is part of an attempt to see how they could at least frame a change in policy even if, at the end of the day, the actual war on terrorism doesn't change all that much."

I'm glad to see restoring the US's image is actually being worked on.