President Obama Re-Elected - Page 559

On September 21 2012 09:43 sunprince wrote:


Yeah, whatever your opinion of Obama's policies, it's hard to deny that he's mastered the art of politics to an uncanny degree, rivaling JFK.

On September 21 2012 11:21 xDaunt wrote:

Surely you must be joking. No one who knows anything about politics confuses Obama with being a master politician. He pales in comparison to people like Clinton. Even Bush was a better political actor.

On September 21 2012 11:26 Souma wrote:


I have to agree with xDaunt. I never thought of Obama as a master politician.

On September 21 2012 11:32 rogzardo wrote:
He's not a dumbass. Immediately shoots him out ahead of the pack.

Things are so bad that a day where the Romney campaign doesn’t self-immolate is now officially considered a good day.

On September 21 2012 11:21 xDaunt wrote:

Surely you must be joking. No one who knows anything about politics confuses Obama with being a master politician. He pales in comparison to people like Clinton. Even Bush was a better political actor.

On September 21 2012 11:49 Darknat wrote:
Which state does everyone live in and who are you going to vote for?

I live in Oregon and am voting for Romney.

On September 21 2012 11:51 Defacer wrote:


He's not a master politician, but he has an innate ability that you can't buy or teach. For whatever reason, he makes the people that like him feel great about themselves and the people that don't look petty. He has a magical aura that causes his enemies to sabotage themselves.

People try to draw him into controversy or bring him down to their level, but he refuses to bite. The 47% remark is an huge opening for him to attack Romney with harsh criticism, but if anything, his responses have been tempered and thoughtful. Can you imagine the melodramatic conniption Biden would have had with that red meat on the table?

He rarely over-reacts, which gives his opponents very little to work with.

On September 21 2012 12:00 xDaunt wrote:

It is really depressing to see people mistake Obama's rhetoric for political savvy. It is all bullshit. When you look past the grand speeches to see what Obama has actually accomplished politically, it really is pathetic.

On September 21 2012 07:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:


For me its double taxation. Right now companies have an incentive to replace equity in their capital structure with debt, simply because there is a tax advantage to do so. I don't like that since debt has a greater chance of causing harm to to society because of bankruptcy and other forms of financial stress. So I'd like the tax code to keep that effect at a minimum.

Edit: I do think the taxes on dividends and cap gains can be structured better. Giving the preferred tax treatment to the corporation (tax credit for dividends paid) rather than the investor (now taxed at the normal rate) might be more effective at keeping capital invested at home. Not sure if it would work, but it should be looked into.

On September 21 2012 12:36 Sanctimonius wrote:


Absolutely he has political savvy. I think you're confusing the speeches with his politics, personally. Yes, the man turns a pretty phrase. But he was able to convince an entire generation to believe in the first black president. He was able to come through the Chicago political system, be associated with anarchist terrorists and extreme pastors and not come out looking bad - if anything, he comes out cleaner than clean. Compare that with the previous presidents and presidential campaigners and how they've all been made to look like fools, time and again, and I think it's pretty obvious Obama has some political nous.

Now, whether he has done anywhere near what he set out, that is very debatable. On the one hand, no, he hasn't. He killed Osama, pushed through Obamacare, set out timetables for ending the two quagmires of wars started by Bush. On the other hand, he hasn't done enough - kept up the Patriot and NCLB acts, keeps up the wire-tapping, extra-judicial renditions, Guantanamo. That said he has had to face a near rabid animosity from both the Congress and the Republicans in this country, frequently compared to being a Nazi, a Socialist, a commie etc, largely, from what I can tell, because he is black. Honestly I struggle to see any other reason - he isn't particularly left-leaning, he hasn't set out to do too much that offends the Republican moderates - hell, Obamacare was based on a blueprint given to him by his presidential rival.

Obama is many things, and certainly hard to nail down. But don't confuse the pretty speeches with any lack of political skill.

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

Never lacking ambition or self-regard, Obama promised in Cairo, June 4, 2009, “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.

But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.

First, he would cleanse by confession. Then he would heal. Why, given the unique sensitivities of his background — “my sister is half-Indonesian,” he proudly told an interviewer in 2007, amplifying on his exquisite appreciation of Islam — his very election would revolutionize relations.

And his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar al-Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the United States and Israel.

These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.

It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist.

What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence?

Religious provocations are endless. (Ask Salman Rushdie.) Resentment about the five-century decline of the Islamic world is a constant. What’s new — the crucial variable — is the unmistakable sound of a superpower in retreat. Ever since Henry Kissinger flipped Egypt from the Soviet to the American camp in the early 1970s, the United States had dominated the region. No longer.

“It’s time,” declared Obama to wild applause of his convention, “to do some nation-building right here at home.” He’d already announced a strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific. Made possible because “the tide of war is receding.”

Nonsense. From the massacres in Nigeria to the charnel house that is Syria, violence has, if anything, increased. What is receding is Obama’s America.

It’s as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America’s friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed.

Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf states beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.

Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.

What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”

A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama “reset.”

On September 21 2012 12:36 Sanctimonius wrote:


Absolutely he has political savvy. I think you're confusing the speeches with his politics, personally. Yes, the man turns a pretty phrase. But he was able to convince an entire generation to believe in the first black president. He was able to come through the Chicago political system, be associated with anarchist terrorists and extreme pastors and not come out looking bad - if anything, he comes out cleaner than clean. Compare that with the previous presidents and presidential campaigners and how they've all been made to look like fools, time and again, and I think it's pretty obvious Obama has some political nous.

Now, whether he has done anywhere near what he set out, that is very debatable. On the one hand, no, he hasn't. He killed Osama, pushed through Obamacare, set out timetables for ending the two quagmires of wars started by Bush. On the other hand, he hasn't done enough - kept up the Patriot and NCLB acts, keeps up the wire-tapping, extra-judicial renditions, Guantanamo. That said he has had to face a near rabid animosity from both the Congress and the Republicans in this country, frequently compared to being a Nazi, a Socialist, a commie etc, largely, from what I can tell, because he is black. Honestly I struggle to see any other reason - he isn't particularly left-leaning, he hasn't set out to do too much that offends the Republican moderates - hell, Obamacare was based on a blueprint given to him by his presidential rival.

Obama is many things, and certainly hard to nail down. But don't confuse the pretty speeches with any lack of political skill.

On September 21 2012 12:54 MinusPlus wrote:

Interesting thing about all these labels being applied to Obama is that it's "never" because he's black, and if you even hint that maybe race actually has been a factor, then you're just being a racist yourself or...something, idk. It's one of those uncomfortable phenomena that you're not allowed to acknowledge, because otherwise you're just playing the race/victim card, even when "because he's black" is the only sensible justification for some-odd criticism.

(Sorry for off-topic once again. I've been wanting to mention this for about a hundred pages, but hadn't seen a better chance.)

On September 21 2012 12:49 DetriusXii wrote:


So if you were in favour of a single tax income tax structure on corporations, then what do you suppose should happen to the limited liabilities of a corporation? A small business owner that takes on debt or gets sued for misconduct is still held responsible for the debt after the business shuts down. Why would anyone choose a small business structure rather than a corporate structure if a corporate structure would offer all the advantages of a small business structure without the responsibilities the owners of a small business have to a small business?