American Politics: THANKS OBAMA

[John Madden]

i see this thread has given up any pretense of actually being any kind of representative "debate" since i stopped posting in it, if the last few bits of hyperbole about healthcare.gov and weird fixations on approval ratings instead of any actual discussion and/or thoughtful ideas regarding policy are any indication

 

[Queequeg]

Yes thank God we don't have a crazy warmongerer and instead are stuck with a man who invaded Libya, wanted desperately to invade Syria and constantly invades Pakistani airspace

But hey he has a Nobel Peace Prize or something

What a weak reply. Not even sure what you're trying to get at lol.. The NPP has nothing to do with this and I wasn't defending Obama, I sad "lesser of two evils." Look that up.

 

[Maedar]

And what is Mr. Obama's approval rating now?

I think it is worth noting that while 39% (depending on the poll source) seems quite low, he still has plenty of time, and capability, to sink to new depths.

Wow, grasping at straws here, are we? Why don't we compare Bush and Obama, and see if we can see something interesting.

Bush's highest approval rating, as I said, was 90% on September 21, 2001, while his lowest was 25% on October 31, 2008. His average over his eight-year term was 49.4%

Obama's highest point was 68% on January 22, 2009, while his lowest was 38% (in both the second half of August and the middle of October, 2011). His average for his as-yet unfinished term is 49.0%

As you can see, his average is just shy of Bush's average, despite the fact that Bush's highest was over twenty percentage points more than Obama's highest. What does that mean? It means that Bush had a very low approval rating far more often than he had a high one, and that his rating was "under water" far more often than Obama's has been.

Here's something else to consider. The disapproval rating. Obama's highest for that was 55% in the second half of August, 2011. Bush? 71% in October 31, 2008. (That's the highest disapproval rating a President has had since they started keeping records with FDR. Not even Nixon got that bad a score.)

Who was really less popular? IMOHO, Mr. Obama's unpopularity is only a problem among people who didn't vote for him, which is the entire reason the Tea Party - which has caused most of the mess in Washington - was founded.

And "hate" is a pretty strong word, you know.

Edit: Btw, hear what the guy whom the GOP has such high hopes for in 2016 is saying?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...m_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=sailthru+slider+

If there is, indeed, a "civil war brewing" among the Democrats, then the Republicans are in even worse shape. Christie is not only criticizing the other Republican leaders, he's sympathizing with the President.

 

[John Madden]

What a weak reply. Not even sure what you're trying to get at lol.. The NPP has nothing to do with this and I wasn't defending Obama, I sad "lesser of two evils." Look that up.

same thing he always seems to try to get at: everything that remotely represents leftism in america is the devil and unworthy of any kind of positive outlook (which gets kind of problematic when ~*both sides*~ agree on something's worth)

 

[Maedar]

By the way, a lot of people ask me, "How can you support Obama?"

First of all, that's "Mr. Obama", or even better, "Mr. President".

Second, why do I support him? Last time I said, "He's better than the alternative", but now that I have more time, I'll elaborate. Not so much the things he pledges to do, but more the things he pledges to prevent by opposing the Republicans, seeing as I oppose a great deal of their goals. If the Republicans were in complete control of the government, they have pledged to:

1) Dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
2) Reinstate the "Don't Ask / Don't Tell" law
3) Ban all state same-sex marriage laws
4) Reduce taxes on the rich and corporations and raise them on everyone else
5) Shrink programs that help the poor or immigrants
6) Repeal the ACA and block medical assistance for 30M uninsured people
7) Eliminate international aid programs
8) Deport all undocumented immigrants
9) Abolish the CFPB and SEC
10) Abolish the DOE, EPA and all environmental regulations
11) Abolish the Department of Education and FEMA
12) Make all abortions illegal
13) Eliminate support for Planned Parenthood
14) Ban the birth control pill through Personhood bills
15) Weaken child labor laws
16) Eliminate the minimum wage
17) Destroy all unions
18) Obstruct all Obama Administration initiatives
19) Create laws to make registering and voting more difficult
20) Regulate speech and Internet communications
21) Destroy the PBS and NPR
22) Eliminate all public funding for the arts
23) Reduce spending on infrastructure
24) Oppose all regulations of guns
25) Establish English as the official language of the United States
26) Establish Christianity as the national religion for the United States
27) Ban all Muslims from entering the United States
28) Go to war with Iran and Syria

...and those are just their priorities.

Which is why I support the President and his party. They oppose all that.

 

[BigLutz]

Wow, grasping at straws here, are we? Why don't we compare Bush and Obama, and see if we can see something interesting.

Bush's highest approval rating, as I said, was 90% on September 21, 2001, while his lowest was 25% on October 31, 2008. His average over his eight-year term was 49.4%

Obama's highest point was 68% on January 22, 2009, while his lowest was 38% (in both the second half of August and the middle of October, 2011). His average for his as-yet unfinished term is 49.0%

As you can see, his average is just shy of Bush's average, despite the fact that Bush's highest was over twenty percentage points more than Obama's highest. What does that mean? It means that Bush had a very low approval rating far more often than he had a high one, and that his rating was "under water" far more often than Obama's has been.

Here's something else to consider. The disapproval rating. Obama's highest for that was 55% in the second half of August, 2011. Bush? 71% in October 31, 2008. (That's the highest disapproval rating a President has had since they started keeping records with FDR. Not even Nixon got that bad a score.)

Who was really less popular? IMOHO, Mr. Obama's unpopularity is only a problem among people who didn't vote for him, which is the entire reason the Tea Party - which has caused most of the mess in Washington - was founded.

And "hate" is a pretty strong word, you know.

A better comparison would be where both were at during this moment in their career, which so far is tied at 39/40 percent according to polls which means Obama could very well be heading into the same territory in the end

By the way another brutal warning for Democrats heading into 2014...

"The health-care law has become a political burden for elected officials who support it. Almost four in 10 Americans say they are more likely to oppose a politician who backs the legislation, while just over a fifth say they would be more likely to support such a politician. That’s the biggest gap recorded in Post-ABC polling during the entire debate over the law. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...cdbc2c-507c-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html

What a weak reply. Not even sure what you're trying to get at lol.. The NPP has nothing to do with this and I wasn't defending Obama, I sad "lesser of two evils." Look that up.

What I was getting at, was that your argument has been that Obama was the "lesser of two evils" because he was not and I quote a "war-mongering" yet as we have seen he has turned out to be just that!

 

[Silver Soul]

Well remember the time Bobby Jindal says the GOP needs to stop being the stupid party? His words not mine.

 

[Maedar]

What I was getting at, was that your argument has been that Obama was the "lesser of two evils" because he was not and I quote a "war-mongering" yet as we have seen he has turned out to be just that!

And yet, you sided with the Republican fundraiser who said that best solution for dealing with Iran was to nuke it.

 

[101stkillah]

By the way, a lot of people ask me, "How can you support Obama?"

First of all, that's "Mr. Obama", or even better, "Mr. President".

Second, why do I support him? Last time I said, "He's better than the alternative", but now that I have more time, I'll elaborate. Not so much the things he pledges to do, but more the things he pledges to prevent by opposing the Republicans, seeing as I oppose a great deal of their goals. If the Republicans were in complete control of the government, they have pledged to:

1) Dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
2) Reinstate the "Don't Ask / Don't Tell" law
3) Ban all state same-sex marriage laws
4) Reduce taxes on the rich and corporations and raise them on everyone else
5) Shrink programs that help the poor or immigrants
6) Repeal the ACA and block medical assistance for 30M uninsured people
7) Eliminate international aid programs
8) Deport all undocumented immigrants
9) Abolish the CFPB and SEC
10) Abolish the DOE, EPA and all environmental regulations
11) Abolish the Department of Education and FEMA
12) Make all abortions illegal
13) Eliminate support for Planned Parenthood
14) Ban the birth control pill through Personhood bills
15) Weaken child labor laws
16) Eliminate the minimum wage
17) Destroy all unions
18) Obstruct all Obama Administration initiatives
19) Create laws to make registering and voting more difficult
20) Regulate speech and Internet communications
21) Destroy the PBS and NPR
22) Eliminate all public funding for the arts
23) Reduce spending on infrastructure
24) Oppose all regulations of guns
25) Establish English as the official language of the United States
26) Establish Christianity as the national religion for the United States
27) Ban all Muslims from entering the United States
28) Go to war with Iran and Syria

...and those are just their priorities.

Which is why I support the President and his party. They oppose all that.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic with some of these, or if you are actually serious. Ban all Muslims from entering the United States? Can we get a source please? Oppose all regulation of guns? What?

I want sources on both man. Basically, you have just said that Republicans would have no problem allowing full auto weapons to become legal. Maybe I'm looking too far into it...but please, you can't be serious. I think the problem today is that as a country, we are too polarized. It's lists like this, and false accusations on both sides, that prevent any work from getting done.

Let's also not forget how eager our President was to strike Syria himself.

 

[BigLutz]

And yet, you sided with the Republican fundraiser who said that best solution for dealing with Iran was to nuke it.

I did but how does that relate to the policy of President McCain or President Romney?

And then there is...well this story on Obamacare

"Jessica Sanford was cited by the president as an Obamacare success story at a health care event he had here at the White House in the Rose Garden on October 21," says a reporter for CNN from the White House. "That of course being just last month. The 48-year-old single mom from Washington state purchased what she considered to be affordable health care, life-changing event, she said, on the Washington state health exchange. She decided she was so excited about this news, she wanted to write an e-mail to the president to say that this had really changed her life and that she was thankful for the Afforable Care Act. The president included her e-mail in his remarks to people on hand for the event. Here's a bit of what the president had to say."

The CNN report quotes President Obama as saying, "I recently received a letter from a woman named Jessica Sanford in Washington state. And here's what she wrote, I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed. and I haven't had insurance for 15 years because it's too expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so much stress lifted."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...s-story-now-cant-afford-obamacare_767868.html

 

[101stkillah]

I did but how does that relate to the policy of President McCain or President Romney?

It doesn't, and Maedar seems to have failed to realize that.

 

[Maedar]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic with some of these, or if you are actually serious. Ban all Muslims from entering the United States? Can we get a source please? Oppose all regulation of guns? What?

I was exaggerating a tad, but I am very serious, at least in spirit. I honestly believe those are the ultimate goals of the Republican Party as a whole.

Lutz, what I meant was, you were condemning the President for being a "war monger" but supporting an even worse Republican warmonger, who favored using nuclear weapons against a country who had not even made a declaration or act of war against us. That was, IMOHO, blatant hypocrisy.

 

[BigLutz]

I was exaggerating a tad, but I am very serious, at least in spirit. I honestly believe those are the ultimate goals of the Republican Party as a whole.

Lutz, what I meant was, you were condemning the President for being a "war monger" but supporting an even worse Republican warmonger, who favored using nuclear weapons against a country who had not even made a declaration or act of war against us. That was, IMOHO, blatant hypocrisy.

You are not getting the point of my post, I was criticizing the point that they choose Obama over Romney or McCain because they are warmongers yet as I pointed out Obama has done more than his own fair of warmongering. Again my view on what the fundraiser said is irrelevant to my point

 

[101stkillah]

I was exaggerating a tad, but I am very serious, at least in spirit. I honestly believe those are the ultimate goals of the Republican Party as a whole.

Exaggerating a tad? Your list sounded one step away from slander. Ban all muslims from entering the United States. That sounds like Hitler, when he wanted to first remove the Jews from Germany. I feel that it's more than exaggeration when you begin comparing the Republican Party to the Third Reich. And you surely don't think that the ban of a religion or the abolition of gun laws will ever come into fruition, do you? If so, then you have bigger problems than I thought.

 

[BigLutz]

Some shocking news about how far the Obamacare website has to go.

REP. CORY GARDNER: Well how much do we have to build today, still? What do we need to build? 50 percent? 40 percent? 30 percent?

HENRY CHAO: I think it's, uh, just an approximation, we're probably sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent because we still have to build...

GARDNER: Wait, 60 or 70 percent that needs to be built, still?

CHAO: Because we still have to build the payment systems to make payments to insurers in January.

GARDNER: Let me get this correct. Sixty to 70 percent of Healthcare.gov still needs to be built?

CHAO: It's not really about Healthcare.gov -- it's the federally-facilitated marketplace.

GARDNER: The entire system that the American people are being required to rely upon...

CHAO: Healthcare.gov -- the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled, generating the enrollment transaction -- that's 100 percent there.

GARDNER: But the entire system is 60 to 70 percent away from being complete.

CHAO: There's the back office systems, the accounting systems, the payment systems...they still need to be done.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...es-web-system-still-hasnt-been-built-n1749461

As for security? That is in a even worse state

The website at the center of U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul has security flaws that put user data at "critical risk" despite recent government assurances it is safe to use, a respected security expert said on Tuesday.

"There are actual, live vulnerabilities on the site now," David Kennedy, head of computer security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC, told Reuters before testifying at a congressional hearing on the topic "Is My Data on HealthCare.gov Secure?"

Kennedy, a former U.S. Marine Corps cyber-intelligence analyst, presented a 17-page report describing the problems to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. It does not go into specifics in some areas, he said, because that could provide criminals with a blueprint for launching attacks.

...

"There is a lot of stuff that we are not publicly disclosing because of the criticality of the findings," Kennedy said. "We don't want to hurt people."

When asked to describe the severity of the threat that they posed to the public, he said it was a "critical risk."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/us-usa-healthcare-security-idUSBRE9AI0NR20131119

60 to 70% still being needed to be made and a critical risk of security still being posed. Yeah... seems like this will be all ready to go come 11 days from now.

 

[LDSman]

I was exaggerating a tad, but I am very serious, at least in spirit. I honestly believe those are the ultimate goals of the Republican Party as a whole.
.

So basically you are making up crap again and quoting Democrat lies?

 

[Maedar]

So basically you are making up crap again and quoting Democrat lies?

Are you calling me a liar?

To answer your question, no, I am not. Like I said, that is truly what I believe the ultimate goals of the Republican Party are.

 

[BigLutz]

Are you calling me a liar?

To answer your question, no, I am not. Like I said, that is truly what I believe the ultimate goals of the Republican Party are.

Then provide proof from a high ranking NRC official or comparable national republican office for each point.

 

[LDSman]

Are you calling me a liar?

Yes. You stated something you know is not true.

http://www.jackpelham.com/2011/12/08/why-exaggeration-is-lying/
http://thesaurus.com/browse/exaggerate
Synonym - lie

To answer your question, no, I am not. Like I said, that is truly what I believe the ultimate goals of the Republican Party are.

Just because you believe it is true does not make it so.

 

[Maedar]

Let me see if I understand this again.

I stated that my comment was what I personally believed, and you're claiming I'm lying about that?

I have a right to my personal opinion, and I'm free to express it, right? This is still a free country is it not?