Barack Apppeases his Base

EXACTLY WHAT DID I AVOID, DON!

What I DID was avoid answering it the way YOU WOULD.

I explained why racism is at the heart of many liberals' agenda. And I cited examples!

I explained my feelings about former military being stripped of medals.
- but I think I had better explain THAT, as well.
It cant happen and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. Because it will politicize the military. My meaning to such action is purely rhetorical.

You know 'rhetorical' dont you? Pick any Obama policy statement.

 

If the Iraqis want us to leave we leave, if not we stay until Iraq can at least take care of itself, i.e., be able to stand up to Iran and Saudi Arabia.

We're still in Germany and Korea because Germany and Korea still want us there, and because it beneficial to the U.S. to be there. Hopefully one day U.S. troops won't be stationed anywhere abroad, but unfortunately that isn't going to happen in our lifetime because we're the world hegemon for the foreseeable future.

We also didn't abandon Afhganistan for Iraq. We never had a large presence in Afghanistan, and we won't ever due to the nature of the conflict there. More troops in Afghanistan won't help unless those troops are used to invade western Pakistan, which isn't going to happen because that would be a blatant violation of international law (not even as lawful as invading Iraq) and because Pakistan has nukes and a respectable military which can kill many American soldiers.

Obama is running a campaign on less war, not more war... so Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan are as safe as can be. And that means more war in Afghanistan and continued American and European deaths there.

Obama won't have a single day in office where American won't be engaged in combat. Afghanistan is just going to go on and on and on.... thanks to Pakistan (and the Chinese and Russians who are supporting them).

 

Fog, I agree with you on most of your points. Your combatants in this thread, I believe, at their core, are still pissed about Florida and will look at any opportunity to piss on the right because they lost election. IMHO. I am committed to not posting on these political threads anymore but decided to break my rule one last time.

 

I've lived abroad and this is very much the case. People forget that before 9/11 America was hated just as much as it was hated afterwards. Bush's symbolism probably exacerbated the world's hate for the U.S., but 9/11 was planned during Clinton's administration which tells us everything, i.e. the world was pissed at the U.S. well before Bush was in office and well before the U.S. invaded Iraq.

 

Fog, your extremely long answer still does not point out how liberals are racist. You point out how welfare has contributed to the dissolution of the poor inner-city family and then you proceed to go on a long rant about the seperation of church and state, the OJ trial, Affirmative Action, and local court cases.

The Constitution mandates a seperation of church and state. (You do believe in the Constitution?)

The OJ trial happened when I was 7, 14 years ago, get over it.

It is possible that a black woman from the inner-city can be admitted to an Ivy League school, it wasn't Affirmitive Action. As for Mrs. Obama's thesis, it was her thoughts about black students feeling out of place in an enviroment that is predominantly white. Where's your issue? It's her opinion, you don't have to agree.

And as for Ohio court cases, if you are a registered voter in the state of Ohio as I assume you are, VOTE FOR NEW JUDGES and stop whining that the white man didn't get a fair shot.

All you have done is reinforce the view that conservatives are exclusive not inclusive.

 

Sounds to me like he's making cases for both reverse discrimination and hamstringing minorities through well intentioned but misguided policies. Then he mislabeled it as racism. Unfortunately, he's not alone. Most of the nation misuses the term so much that it's become acceptable to call damned near anything having to do with race racism.

 

EXACTLY!!!!!!

Mislabeled as Racism! You win the PF step back and think prize... one free dodge-the-pf-bullet next time you post something dum.

However, consider this... what is eastern big city politics? Tell me about the Massachusetts Dem party and the voter base there. Who REALLY runs the show?
For that matter, even in Michigan.

I certainly DID explain how that 'racism' works. Too bad some cant read.
When you paint an entire class as victims what the hell else can you call it?
If it's an individual viewpoint you might call it 'bigotry', but what about when it's institutionalized?

As if you havent heard "Anyone who votes against Obama is a racist or fascist'!
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'Affirmative Action'? Aren't you splitting hairs?
Look, what is the difference whether Michelle was admitted under the formal program or because her brother was a good basketball player?
She helped fill a Princeton quota. It is STILL affirmative action on the part of Princeton's admissions office.
MY POINT was that a white midwestern farm boy would have felt just as out of place as she did.
- - -- - - - -- - - - --
Don: I'm not even replying to you anymore. If there's ANYONE on here with BDS, even GOPDS,you got it. There's lots of issues we can agree on but the only kind thing I ever saw you say about Dubya was on the Illegal Amnesty bill.
OTOH, where there's a dem miscreant of any sort... silence!

Rest of you, go to the Forum index.

What that MEANS is it's too damn hard to keep one subforum flame-free. And I changed it months ago.

 

I can't tell you much about Massachusetts, but Michigan is a politically split state. The lower peninsula is predominantly republican, which includes the state's second largest city, Grand Rapids. The only exceptions are the metropolitan areas of Flint and Detroit and District 1 which comprises of the entire UP and part of the northern lower peninsula. 9 of 15 congressional seats are republican, when you add our two senators and our governor that brings the grand total to 9 republicans and 9 democrats.

The state has a law banning the use of quotas or point systems in the use of affirmative action in college and university applications processes. It got a lot of national media attention because the University of Michigan had a point system version of affirmative action and had to overhaul their entire applications process.

As for the MDP, were run by people who want to help the US auto business pull itself out of a rut, help Michiganders find work, and bring new business to the state.

But here's the answer you want to hear, THE STATE OF MICHIGAN IS RUN BY TROLLS, AMERICA HATING, MUSLIM TROLLS WHO WANT TO SEE AMERICA AND HER CITIZENS DESTROYED. THE STATE WILL CONTINUE TO USE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, SO THAT YOUNG BLACK MEN AND MUSLIMS CAN FINALLY TAKE AWAY ALL THE ADVANTAGES THAT WHITE PEOPLE HAVE.

 

Add Terry to the personal attacker list, in lieu of debate. What party is the governor, Terry?

What does UM's affirmative action {to be specific} got to do with Princeton's? Are you saying UM is like Princeton .. with 'Insiders' and 'outsiders'?

I didnt say a damed thing about 'New Fallujah'! So there.. I just did, but remember who brought it up. And what did it have to do with this thread?
Why DID you bring it up... to claim I hate Islam same as others who cant stand the issue?
I'll say it again: Not the 'Muslims' I have issues with, it's their imported Imams and preachers.. like their own 'Rev Wright', so to speak.

Again, not the issue of the thread.

 

Agree completely. I lived abroad during the Clinton years, and even then blaming and criticizing the US was a much loved past time of Europeans. The only time we have had the world on our side was in the wake of 911 when we were stunned and counting our dead. If you ask me that's way too high of a price to pay for popularity.

 

Disagree completely. And be careful not to confuse "envy" with "hate," as the article does blatantly.

I lived abroad during the Clinton years, and the Lewinsky scandal was very embarassing, but overall I believe that the world "envied" the US and relished in the scandal. But we could, at that time, still lead the world, ellict global participation, and affect change.

The US had the world's sympathies for the months following 9/11 - and we completely blew through all of that capital with Premier Bush's decisions. Now the world "hates" us, and we have alot of image repairing to do. Obama, at a minimum, is invested in repairing our image, which apparently confounds alot of conservatives... Now the US is in a position where, if we had a global initiative that we wanted to start, there wouldn't be many, if any, takers.

 

You didn't pay much attention while you were abroad then. As the world hegemon the United States will always be hated or despised by people around the world.

Lots of Europeans had schadefreude from 9/11. Which means they were actually happy 9/11 happened to the U.S. They were happy about it because they had despised the U.S. long before 9/11.

It's just totally wrong to say the U.S. squander whatever sympathy the country had after 9/11. What happened was Europe and the World just went back to how they felt before 9/11, which was to despise and hate the U.S.

Of course not all Europeans and people feel this way and hate is a strong word, but the animosity people have for the U.S. has less to do with Bush and more to do with the U.S. being the lone superpower in the world.

The envy, hate, and jealousy.... all of it flows from our power. When Barack Obama is President of the U.S., the world, deep down, is still going to hate the U.S.

"Premier" Bush also wasn't in charge when the 9/11 highjackers decided to terrorize the United States. The planning started more than 2 years before the actual event. The first Trade Center bombing also happened in 1993. So neither of these events had anything to do with "Premier" Bush.

 

Disagree completely. I've seen 9 foreign countries while in the Army, most of them are places that you wouldn't spend money to visit.

In Iraq, when I was in Baghdad, 98 percent of the people there were glad to see us, in varying levels. By that I mean a general friendliness from the adults, to the kids, who were constantly underfoot, like kid cousins at a family reunion. The large majority of the remaining 2 percent were glad we were there, but also wanted us to expedite what we were doing and get out of there. Fair enough, military personnel would agree with that one. There were approx. 10K bombthrowers in the area who managed to keep life interesting; as a means of comparison, Baghdad had about 6 million residents. That figure was probably a little low, as NW Baghdad is the wild wild west, but you get the idea.

I was in Nicaragua in the summer of 1999, a few months after a level 5 hurricane crushed everything in its path. We were treated like royalty by the locals. In Panama, in 1996-1997, many wanted us to stay longer, as we were a lot better visitors than the militant drug smugglers next door in Colombia who only control roughly 25 percent of the country, but from what I gathered was land closer to Panama than some would have liked.

In Korea, we are very much accepted there. Sometimes there is the occasional student protest, but they are looked at by the elders of the country as a case of young people not knowing as much as they think they do. Aside from the bar district in Seoul, which has gotten unruly in recent years, soldiers can go anywhere in the country and be on cordial terms with anyone they come across -- a lot of Koreans speak English today, they teach it in the schools there.

I never was in Europe on Uncle Sam's dollar, if anyone has any experiences to add, please do so.

Something else to remember is that Americans overseas, in most parts of the world excepting Western Europe, Australia, and I would imagine large portions of Asia, are comparatively very wealthy. As a result, locals want to sell you something. You help put more food on their plate. If my soldiers bought $10 worth of cola, or ice, or satellite phone use (that guy did real well!), or whatever the Iraqis were trying to sell us, that family would eat like kings for a week with that 10 dollars. Same in Korea, same in Mexico. Ah, capitalism.

Maybe they didn't want to take us home to Mom, but hate is what the Koreans do to the Japanese, what many Shiite and Kurd Iraqis did to Saddam's regime, what the Chinese feel towards Japan, what the Nazis felt towards the Jews. They may roll their eyes at us, or want us to shut up already, but hate? I submit you overstate your case.

Also, the areas that love to hate us in W Europe have been that way since before Clinton. JFK would ruminate about why the French were so antagonistic to America when over 9000 Americans were buried at Normandy, and that was only 20 years later! Left wingers in Italy, France, Spain, they have axes to grind. You can't make them happy, and you sure can't make them pipe down -- those with grievances to make will always spout off at the mouth, more so than those who are reasonably happy.

I don't know where you get your info, and I am sure there is a grain of truth to it -- we are the last superpower in the world and have an arrogance as a result. Maybe we shouldn't trumpet in the fashion we siometimes do, but some overseas want us to apologize for it, and that ain't gonna happen. Read something that challenges your point of view, like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I was a military policemen, people "hated" us until they needed something from us. That isn't hate. Without trying to sound like an arrogant American, who answers the call when the wolf growls at the door? The French?

 

This is kind of what I'm talking about... from a German.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... 6640ea7eb4

"In Berlin, hundreds of thousands will cheer a projection rather than a flesh-and-blood Obama on Thursday. After Inauguration Day, alas, Europe and the world will not face a Dreamworks president, but the leader of a superpower. Whether McCain or Obama, the 44th president will speak more nicely than did W. in his first term. He will also pay more attention to the "decent opinions of mankind." But he will still preside over the world's largest military, economic, and cultural power. This vast power differential is what Germans and Europeans don't quite fathom in their infatuation with Obama. Their problem was not Mr. Bush, but Mr. Big--America as Behemoth Among the Nations, unwilling to succumb to the dictates of goodness that animate post-heroic, post-imperial, and post-sovereign Europe."

Read the whole thing. Normally Josef Joffe writes for "Die Zeit".

 

Don,

... but you're missing the point that 9/11 came about because of America's actions well before Bush. And Europeans had schadefreude over 9/11 because of how they felt about America long before Bush, and definitely prior to the invasion of Iraq.

 

Well, schadefreude doesn't manifest itself in any kind of outward display of emotion.

And obviously the hijackers from 9/11 hated the United States well before Bush was in office. I was living in Germany the year before 9/11. Trust me, America was neither popular or liked on all kinds of fronts. The left in Europe even hated America for bombing Serbia, i.e., protecting Muslims.

Read the Joffe article.

 

Again, I really dont get this thinking. Capital gained by the murder of innocent men, women, and children? How were we supppose to use this capital? Do what Europe and the rest of the world approves of or do what will prevent similar carnage in the future. I didnt agree with Iraq, but I must say I prefer trying to address a situation to staying popular other nations.