bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Whats Obama's "Pointman" in China ambassador Gary Locke achieved?
2012 US Presidential Election discussion.
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Uh...I do not believe in the Presidential portion of this race so far that Romney has held a candle to the negativity coming from the Obama camp. It's like that is all they have...and in many ways, due to the failed policies of Obama with respect to the economy...it is.
The Obama campaign has either itself done the following, or condoned its surrogated who have:
- Called Romeny a Tax evading Felon. (Come on, had he done this, the IRS would have been all over him long ago, he's far too high profile)
- Insinuated that Romney was directly responsible for a steel worker's wife's death when Romney left Bain Capitol 2 years before the comany failed, and the woman died four years after that...and when she had her own insurance after the man lost his. Even the Washington Post called the ad a completely fabricate story.
- Said that the Romney camp is for dirty air and dirty water for America.
- Said that the Romney camp wants children with Down's Syndrome to suffer.
- Put out ads showing Ryan wheeling an elderly lady off a cliff in a wheel chair.
- Said that the Romney/Ryan economic plan (which is a plan that will stop deficit spending and balance the budget) will deny current elderly people their medicare when in fact the plan specifically does not do anything to the current plans for anyone 55 or over, but only begins (in a staged fashion) altering and fixing the plan for those under age 55 in a fashion where it is economically sustainable.
When ROmney and Ryan correctly point out that Obama himself took 7 billion out of Medicare two years ago to help fund ObamaCare...they say he is fabricating that, when in fact there is video of Obama admitting it himself.
Anyhow, I think at this Presidential level the clear negative campaign is being run by Obama. Go after a man's record and stance on the issues factually...that's okay and not a dirty campaign. If the person's record and stance is bad, then that is what it is and it is not negative to point that out...but to call a man a felonious tax evader when he is not, to say he was directly responsible for the death of that woman, to say he is going to ignore and hurt the Elderly when his plan does no such thing, and to make statements like Romney/Ryan being in favor of dirty air and water, or for having down's syndrom children suffer is just about as far in the dirt as you can get...and, IMHO, it is the indication of how desperate Obama is.
Romney has some pretty specific plans and stances on the issues on his web site for anyone to see:
Anyhow...you kind of hit on one of my hot buttons...I'll step back from the keyboard now.
Here in Europe the majority of the people will love the US president if he's a Democrat and they will hate the US president if he's a Republican. Personally i don't see much difference between the policies of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. And i somehow doubt the Mitt Romney will be any different.
And as for Gary Locke is being the ambassador to China a step up for him than being the commerce secretary ? And he's predecessor Jon Huntsman was the governor of Utah is it a step up for him to be the ambassador to China than being a governor ?
And as for Gary Locke is being the ambassador to China a step up for him than being the commerce secretary ? And he's predecessor Jon Huntsman was the governor of Utah is it a step up for him to be the ambassador to China than being a governor ?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
IMO Gary Locke was moved out from the Commerce Secretary job because any commerce deal with China that did not have 100% favor for the US was going to be spun as Gary Locke looking out for China's interests and not the US. Look at how Obama announced a few months back that he was going to lessen some restrictions of high tech sales to foreign countries. The Republicans already are attacking him on that. If Gary Locke was still Commerce Secretary, we would've saw him portrayed as an agent for China to be blamed on Obama of course. Look at how former Senator Anthony Weiner's wife who works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being portrayed as a secret Muslim terrorist. I mentioned Matt Fong earlier. After he lost to Barbara Boxer, Bush appointed him to a position outside the White House. I believe it was a position in the Defense Department because Fong was an Air Force veteran. The position still had to go under scrutiny of Congress where a single Republican brought up whether he could be trusted because he was Chinese. No Democrat charged racism because Fong was a Republican and Bush didn't offer any resistance and withdrew Fong's name from the position.
On another note, I just saw on CNN the anti-abortion faction claims that gender selection for babies in some Asian cultures is happening in the US and is for some reason being associated with the Akin "legitimate rape" scandal. I guess that's called a distraction. BTW supposedly male/female birth ratio among Asian-Americans are within normal. Just shows some people will make up crap just so their candidate wins the Presidential election. And watch the Democrats not call it an outright lie but spin it so it doesn't offend the people ignorant enough to want to believe it.
On another note, I just saw on CNN the anti-abortion faction claims that gender selection for babies in some Asian cultures is happening in the US and is for some reason being associated with the Akin "legitimate rape" scandal. I guess that's called a distraction. BTW supposedly male/female birth ratio among Asian-Americans are within normal. Just shows some people will make up crap just so their candidate wins the Presidential election. And watch the Democrats not call it an outright lie but spin it so it doesn't offend the people ignorant enough to want to believe it.
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Equation
Lieutenant General
Well like they said..."you can't fix stupid"...sometimes there's no winning when it comes to logic and practical thinking with these people. You're right...I hate it when they use Chinese or Asian in a particular way just to get there political P.O.V across to an already ignorant masses.
This is a very slow thread for something in principle pretty important. But the talks of and about the candidates seem to avoid important matters. That led me to consider the history of Western superpowers.
In their way the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire were superpowers but very different from the modern superpowers. I define them in this way: an adequate army, a world wide reaching armed ( merchant ) navy and strong finances to pay for them. There have been six, starting with Spain in the 16th century.
Spain got enough silver out of the New World by 1525 to pay for a strong army. It intervened effectively in Italy and developed its tercios to be the best infantry of Europe. Its sea power was first needed to defend its silver against pirates and, mostly galleys, to fight Turkey. It was strong enough in the Pacific to set up the Philippines colony, named after the king, from Mexico.
Its finances were always a mess and it depended on the Fuggers to finance its operations. Grandees connected with the colonial operations got themselves some ( much? ) of the silver but others could only try to "keep up with the Jones's" by more brutally exploiting their peasants. The average Spaniard got poorer which of course helped recruitment for the army, the navy and the colonies.
Spain nearly succeeded in defeating the Dutch rebellion when the army mutinied in 1576 and nearly the whole of the Dutch possessions were lost. Of course much was won back in succeeding years but Spain had ceased to be a superpower after a mere half century. But it reached its largest extend after 1576 when the Duke of Alba occupied Portugal in 1580 for the Spanish king and so extended his reach also to Brazil and Angola and the Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean
The United Provinces were the next superpower. After the twelve year truce with Spain ( 1609-1621 ) it was able to drive the Spanish from roughly the area that is now The Netherlands ( roughly, a few years ago I lived in a village that in the 17th and 18th century had been ruled partly from The Hague, partly from Brussels ). It set up its colony in what is now Indonesia, occupying only a tiny part of the area but making huge profits from the trade in spices and from a lot of trade between Asian countries from which traditional shipping was excluded by the use of armed force. The Netherlands also developed a huge merchant fleet for use in European waters, using little violence, but by using more efficient ships and trading methods. This made it possible to maintain and man a navy that was able, in 1673, to defeat the combined English-French fleet.
In 1689 the town council of Amsterdam concluded that the time of Dutch superiority was over, after less than seventy years. During that Dutch "Golden Century" the ordinary people were less well fed and on average shorter than in the century before.
Then during about 100 years there was no superpower, until about 1790. England and France were balancing each other until after the French Revolution the French navy was disorganized (initially ), while RN got a lot more resources.
Marx and Engels developed their vision of a better future by looking at the miserable condition of working people in superpower Great Britain.
It had lost its superpower status when it had to have its part in WWI financed by the US.
Some thirty years later the US was, quite clearly, the superpower. ( According to my definition the USSR and France never were a superpower ). After the war against Viet Nam the US were formally financially exhausted, but President Nixon moved the world from the indirect gold standard to the dollar standard ( He was one of the best presidents the US ever had. A pity about Watergate ). Now that the financial underpinning of US power has been destroyed by incompetence after Nixon there is not really a superpower in the world.
Btw the poor got poorer and the middle class not richer after Nixon.
Will China be the next superpower? It seems likely to me that there will be too many medium sized powers to have room for a "superpower", especially if there is no large war to let one country grow to that position. That were for Spain the wars in Italy, for the Dutch the eighty years war, for the British the war against revolutionary France, for the US WWII. I read a few years ago that now only two countries really believe in the efficacy of war, the US and Israel. So if the US cannot intervene as easily anywhere in the world anymore and if we accept the principle of the Westphalian Peace Treaties or something like it we can safely reduce armament spending and rebuild the economy in many countries.
Managing the retreat of the US from superpower to great power and cooperating with other countries to do that safely is surely vastly more important than Mr Akin and his bizarre pronouncements. Are the candidates thinking? Are they afraid to talk about important matters?
In their way the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire were superpowers but very different from the modern superpowers. I define them in this way: an adequate army, a world wide reaching armed ( merchant ) navy and strong finances to pay for them. There have been six, starting with Spain in the 16th century.
Spain got enough silver out of the New World by 1525 to pay for a strong army. It intervened effectively in Italy and developed its tercios to be the best infantry of Europe. Its sea power was first needed to defend its silver against pirates and, mostly galleys, to fight Turkey. It was strong enough in the Pacific to set up the Philippines colony, named after the king, from Mexico.
Its finances were always a mess and it depended on the Fuggers to finance its operations. Grandees connected with the colonial operations got themselves some ( much? ) of the silver but others could only try to "keep up with the Jones's" by more brutally exploiting their peasants. The average Spaniard got poorer which of course helped recruitment for the army, the navy and the colonies.
Spain nearly succeeded in defeating the Dutch rebellion when the army mutinied in 1576 and nearly the whole of the Dutch possessions were lost. Of course much was won back in succeeding years but Spain had ceased to be a superpower after a mere half century. But it reached its largest extend after 1576 when the Duke of Alba occupied Portugal in 1580 for the Spanish king and so extended his reach also to Brazil and Angola and the Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean
The United Provinces were the next superpower. After the twelve year truce with Spain ( 1609-1621 ) it was able to drive the Spanish from roughly the area that is now The Netherlands ( roughly, a few years ago I lived in a village that in the 17th and 18th century had been ruled partly from The Hague, partly from Brussels ). It set up its colony in what is now Indonesia, occupying only a tiny part of the area but making huge profits from the trade in spices and from a lot of trade between Asian countries from which traditional shipping was excluded by the use of armed force. The Netherlands also developed a huge merchant fleet for use in European waters, using little violence, but by using more efficient ships and trading methods. This made it possible to maintain and man a navy that was able, in 1673, to defeat the combined English-French fleet.
In 1689 the town council of Amsterdam concluded that the time of Dutch superiority was over, after less than seventy years. During that Dutch "Golden Century" the ordinary people were less well fed and on average shorter than in the century before.
Then during about 100 years there was no superpower, until about 1790. England and France were balancing each other until after the French Revolution the French navy was disorganized (initially ), while RN got a lot more resources.
Marx and Engels developed their vision of a better future by looking at the miserable condition of working people in superpower Great Britain.
It had lost its superpower status when it had to have its part in WWI financed by the US.
Some thirty years later the US was, quite clearly, the superpower. ( According to my definition the USSR and France never were a superpower ). After the war against Viet Nam the US were formally financially exhausted, but President Nixon moved the world from the indirect gold standard to the dollar standard ( He was one of the best presidents the US ever had. A pity about Watergate ). Now that the financial underpinning of US power has been destroyed by incompetence after Nixon there is not really a superpower in the world.
Btw the poor got poorer and the middle class not richer after Nixon.
Will China be the next superpower? It seems likely to me that there will be too many medium sized powers to have room for a "superpower", especially if there is no large war to let one country grow to that position. That were for Spain the wars in Italy, for the Dutch the eighty years war, for the British the war against revolutionary France, for the US WWII. I read a few years ago that now only two countries really believe in the efficacy of war, the US and Israel. So if the US cannot intervene as easily anywhere in the world anymore and if we accept the principle of the Westphalian Peace Treaties or something like it we can safely reduce armament spending and rebuild the economy in many countries.
Managing the retreat of the US from superpower to great power and cooperating with other countries to do that safely is surely vastly more important than Mr Akin and his bizarre pronouncements. Are the candidates thinking? Are they afraid to talk about important matters?
Equation
Lieutenant General
It's important, it's just that the majority of the US public don't find it interestingly enough for discussion, therefore the candidates would not want to risk jeopardizing their chances of winning the election to even brought it up.
I will give a length view on this. I got some free time today, so can actually write more than 2 sentences on this topic.
I regard myself to be extremely fiscally conservative, progressive on most social issues (which is weird for most people, because I also consider myself an evangelical Christian) and dovish on foreign policy. There was one perfect candidate as far as I'm concerned -> Ron Paul, but he will never get either the Republican party nomination (for being too anti-war amongst other things) or the Democrat party nomination (for being fiscally conservative). Of course, he tried to run as Libertarian candidate in 1988, but that didn't go so well.
Among the two candidates we have, they are basically one and the same to me. On all the major issues, I can't really tell difference between them. Of course, Obamacare was copied from RomneyCare. Obama obviously has no understanding of economics at all and isn't remotely interested in balancing budget. For all of his talk, Romney offers up no real plans and also has no interest in balancing the budget. Despite having one of the highest corporate taxes in the world, neither of them having a corporate tax plan that makes sense. Neither of them are really thinking about curtailing the powers of Federal Reserve and stopping this corruption of bailing out wall street. Obama got the most donation from Goldman Sachs in 2008 and Romney got by far the most this year. But it should be pretty obvious by now that most of our politicians have lost all principles and are bought. Of course, Ron Paul gets no money from Goldman Sachs and special interest. But America doesn't seem to like candidates that has integrity, not paid for by special interest and never flip-fliops on positions.
Even more than that, neither Obama or Romney are willing to end this insane war on drugs. Neither of them are willing to end foreign aids. I mean seriously, why are money getting sent to Middle Eastern countries, when this country has a serious debt crisis?
The national debt right now sits close to 100% of the GDP and it's going up by over 1.5 trillion this year. And that's the good news. When you put that together with the estimated increase in social security and medicare in the next x amount of years. It's going to become much more difficult to balance budget as we go forward. Of course, all the plans by the Republicans and Democrats use very optimistic growth projections that never happen in reality. Is it any wonder that China uses 5 year plans and all the American government plans are using 10 year plans now? Of course, the worst part are all the liabilities when it comes to state and local governments when it comes to pension plan, health care package. There is no way any of that will ever get paid off. We are already seeing municipal bankruptcies across the country.
The funny part about all of this is that America is still in a better position than the Peripheral Eurozone nations, Japan and GB.
That brings us to the defense budget. This may shock people, but I'm in favour of a huge cut to the defense budget. Not to be hypocritical here, I'm also in favour of China making cuts to its defense and internal police budget too. But in my opinion, there really is no reason that America should be subsidizing countries like Germany and South Korea by stationing troops there, so those nations can have smaller defense budgets. If America has the money, then great, but it doesn't. Also, any time you fight a war, this will stretch the military budgets for years to come, because you have to pay pension and health care to injured soldiers for many years after. Of course, neither Obama nor Romney really wants to reduce America's foreign presence. And despite what Romney may accuse Obama of, Obama is quietly angling the country into a conflict with Iran. Take a look at the blog that I write for InformationDessimination, Galrahn really does a good job of talking about this. Seriously, does the Republicans constantly have to use the age old argument of "the democrats are being weak on national defense and selling out the country" in every election cycle?
So what do we have here? Romney will be slightly better on taxes for me, because he is in favour of lower corporate tax (although whether that will happen is a different story). Romney scares me with his "I'm getting into a trade war with China" talk, because anyone who knows economics knows that this trade wars hurt everyone involved. Romney is slightly better with oil and gas drilling, although he doesn't seem to understand that oil is a fungible commodity. Obama is slightly better on war, because I think he is less likely to start new ones. Although as we saw with Libya, he doesn't really care about this thing called the congress before authorizing war actions. I generally like the democrat position on female reproductive issues, although forcing Catholic institutions to supply contraceptives is a serious over reach of government power. I think Romney is more bought out by big corporations and wall street than Obama is. Obama should understand foreign policy a lot better than Romney by now. It's evident from his trip to Europe in July that Romney would simply embarrass himself every time he leaves this continent. So, they are about equally terrible candidates. Also, the Republicans need to stop kidding themselves if they actually believe Romney is a conservative.
I think Paul Ryan truly understands economics. So if Romney gets elected, I hope Paul Ryan can seriously influence the country to really address the debt issue. If Obama gets re-elected, I think that could be a good thing. I think America will do so badly by the time that he leaves the office, that it will finally be interested in a real conservative candidate like Rand Paul or Chris Christie to address the debt issues.
I regard myself to be extremely fiscally conservative, progressive on most social issues (which is weird for most people, because I also consider myself an evangelical Christian) and dovish on foreign policy. There was one perfect candidate as far as I'm concerned -> Ron Paul, but he will never get either the Republican party nomination (for being too anti-war amongst other things) or the Democrat party nomination (for being fiscally conservative). Of course, he tried to run as Libertarian candidate in 1988, but that didn't go so well.
Among the two candidates we have, they are basically one and the same to me. On all the major issues, I can't really tell difference between them. Of course, Obamacare was copied from RomneyCare. Obama obviously has no understanding of economics at all and isn't remotely interested in balancing budget. For all of his talk, Romney offers up no real plans and also has no interest in balancing the budget. Despite having one of the highest corporate taxes in the world, neither of them having a corporate tax plan that makes sense. Neither of them are really thinking about curtailing the powers of Federal Reserve and stopping this corruption of bailing out wall street. Obama got the most donation from Goldman Sachs in 2008 and Romney got by far the most this year. But it should be pretty obvious by now that most of our politicians have lost all principles and are bought. Of course, Ron Paul gets no money from Goldman Sachs and special interest. But America doesn't seem to like candidates that has integrity, not paid for by special interest and never flip-fliops on positions.
Even more than that, neither Obama or Romney are willing to end this insane war on drugs. Neither of them are willing to end foreign aids. I mean seriously, why are money getting sent to Middle Eastern countries, when this country has a serious debt crisis?
The national debt right now sits close to 100% of the GDP and it's going up by over 1.5 trillion this year. And that's the good news. When you put that together with the estimated increase in social security and medicare in the next x amount of years. It's going to become much more difficult to balance budget as we go forward. Of course, all the plans by the Republicans and Democrats use very optimistic growth projections that never happen in reality. Is it any wonder that China uses 5 year plans and all the American government plans are using 10 year plans now? Of course, the worst part are all the liabilities when it comes to state and local governments when it comes to pension plan, health care package. There is no way any of that will ever get paid off. We are already seeing municipal bankruptcies across the country.
The funny part about all of this is that America is still in a better position than the Peripheral Eurozone nations, Japan and GB.
That brings us to the defense budget. This may shock people, but I'm in favour of a huge cut to the defense budget. Not to be hypocritical here, I'm also in favour of China making cuts to its defense and internal police budget too. But in my opinion, there really is no reason that America should be subsidizing countries like Germany and South Korea by stationing troops there, so those nations can have smaller defense budgets. If America has the money, then great, but it doesn't. Also, any time you fight a war, this will stretch the military budgets for years to come, because you have to pay pension and health care to injured soldiers for many years after. Of course, neither Obama nor Romney really wants to reduce America's foreign presence. And despite what Romney may accuse Obama of, Obama is quietly angling the country into a conflict with Iran. Take a look at the blog that I write for InformationDessimination, Galrahn really does a good job of talking about this. Seriously, does the Republicans constantly have to use the age old argument of "the democrats are being weak on national defense and selling out the country" in every election cycle?
So what do we have here? Romney will be slightly better on taxes for me, because he is in favour of lower corporate tax (although whether that will happen is a different story). Romney scares me with his "I'm getting into a trade war with China" talk, because anyone who knows economics knows that this trade wars hurt everyone involved. Romney is slightly better with oil and gas drilling, although he doesn't seem to understand that oil is a fungible commodity. Obama is slightly better on war, because I think he is less likely to start new ones. Although as we saw with Libya, he doesn't really care about this thing called the congress before authorizing war actions. I generally like the democrat position on female reproductive issues, although forcing Catholic institutions to supply contraceptives is a serious over reach of government power. I think Romney is more bought out by big corporations and wall street than Obama is. Obama should understand foreign policy a lot better than Romney by now. It's evident from his trip to Europe in July that Romney would simply embarrass himself every time he leaves this continent. So, they are about equally terrible candidates. Also, the Republicans need to stop kidding themselves if they actually believe Romney is a conservative.
I think Paul Ryan truly understands economics. So if Romney gets elected, I hope Paul Ryan can seriously influence the country to really address the debt issue. If Obama gets re-elected, I think that could be a good thing. I think America will do so badly by the time that he leaves the office, that it will finally be interested in a real conservative candidate like Rand Paul or Chris Christie to address the debt issues.