U.S. Presidential Election 2008

yes. I am also British and as Labour Party member.


actually, only the British Gas privatisation was reversing an Attlee nationalisation. The rest were nationalised by other governments including postwar Conservative governments.


So what. Monetarism would have been an utter catastrophe in 1945 just as Keynsianism was inappropriate to the 80s.



Don't patronise me you prick. I lived through the Thatcher years in the UK. Where were you? Reading aboput it half way across the world.


I suggest you read Adam Smith rather than claim him (ignorantly) as one of your own. He is the father of economics and actually Marx would have just as much claim to him as a forebear.


Really? All of them? Would Attlee have signed the Single European Act? (probably) Would he have deregulated the stock exchange? (the policy was actually first floated under him but it was decided, correctly, the time was not right) Would he have legislated in favour of small businesses and stimulated the economy with an injection of VC cash? (it was actually Attlee's government that in effect created the UK's first venture capitalist business)

It really is specious in the extreme to present Thatcher as in some way an oposite to Attlee. It would be like saying Bush is the opposite of Rosseveldt.

In any case, this has very little to do with a debate about the next US president so I'll just leave it there.

Current polls:

Because we are the country with idiots.. yup, every other electorate in the world is rational and educated.

FFS every time someone talks about how scary America is lately I want to slap them, and I say this as someone who hates what passes for conservatives these days and spent the better part of my adult life in the south.

I obviously don't know as much about it as you do, DW, but I read the Daily Kos breakdown (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/12/97...0633/713/435590 ) of his Space platform, and it doesn't look all that bad to me. It's certainly not anti or hostile. He may just need some urging in the direction you want him, and compromises are going to have to be made, whatever, given the national debt.
The overview:

Try being an ecologist under the last administration. Obama could do no worse for you than what Bush and his cronies have done for me and my cohorts in terms of potential job opportunities, funding, and general trust that our work won't be abused and misconstrued. This and the erosion of almost every single piece of environmental protection legislation is enough to convince me that we need a change (if I wasn't already convinced). I do think Obama needs to address environmental conservation in his policies instead of just couching everything in terms of energy policy. There is a difference.

before :


After :





nice.

Nice one. It's been a while since we've seen some real ownage on a thread.

Barack Obama answering the phone at 3:00 am!


"Hello. Hello?"

Obama wants to delay the development of the United States' next generation of manned space vehicles by five years and put the money towards other things. I think this is a really bad idea. A 5 year delay in aerospace is tantamount to cancelling the program and starting from scratch; most of the good people with experience won't be content to sit around for five years. Once they're gone, so is their knowledge and experience. This isn't an industry where you can hire people out of college and expect them to contribute. It takes years and years.

It's that (nearly) unbroken legacy of spaceflight that has kept the US so successful in space. Contrast that to Europe. Every new European project gets handed to a new country (geographic return) and that country starts its project from scratch. Either that or there is such a huge gap between projects (example D1 & D2 missions and today's Columbus module) that the people who gained knowledge from experience aren't around anymore. It's a major reason why Europe haven't gotten very far in spaceflight and why they are still so reliant on American and Russian vehicles and American engineers.

You have to admit that's funny, sort of like the one with Bush and the binoculars.

Hence my comment: Furthermore, it demonstrates the folly of such policies as they become permanent.

Pure speculation. A real catastrophe would have been Oswald Mosley.

Irrelevant banter.

Cheers Parnell.

That was Thatcher's quote - not mine. But I do confess a penchant for von Hayek and Milton Friedman.


Irrelevant banter.

I can already see you running up to your room. Don't forget your blanket! Oh, and a get spelling book while you're at it!


Nope. Roosevelt wasn't a shape-shiting lizard from Alpha-Centari.


My point was that the UK has lurched to the Right for the last 20 years, maybe not 30 as Wheel had already said.

Yep, that's why I'm scared of Americans; their impulse to preemptive violence, like your need to slap people, is pretty scary.

Seriously, you seem to have missed my point by a wide margin. BadBob and his ilk would like to paint Obama as an elitist. IMHO, a very large minority of McCain supporters are poorly educated, gullible bigots. My friend's email reminded me of that once again. Regardless of the percentage of idiots in other countries--one need look no further than the recent wave of outrageous xenophobia in Switzerland--the American variety is damned scary. What the Badbobs are trying to say is that a large group of people who have a deeper grasp of politics, history, economics, and geography (i.e., the opposite of the "less-educated" demographic group gently referred to by the MSM as most likely to vote against Obama) are snobby white wine sippers who are somehow, by virtue of their "more educated" status, less American. This is the political equivalent of turning a silk purse into a sow's ear. Put another way, in order to turn away attention from the idiots, the wingnuts would like to make the term "more educated" into a pejorative, as though a greater understanding of politics, history, economics, and geography were a badge of bad will and bad intentions. It's nonsense, of course, but that doesn't make it an ineffective weapon in politics. Nor does it make the people who believe that Obama is implicated in a plot against the government of Africa less scary.

You're a moran.

Typical latte liberal chickenshit. You vote for Obama therefore you think that you are smarter than someone who doesn't vote for him. If you're that intelligent and don't see that his weaknesses as a general election candidate go beyond this irrational "fear" by a "large minority" of McCain supporters, you've got something else coming.

You do mean moron, don't you?

Agreed JW. That stance doesn't do anybody any good.

As shocking as it may be for some people to realize, many smart people will vote for McCain and many smart people will vote for Obama. Both will do so for good reasons.

I think that he has the potential to be a decent candidate, but that he should have cut his teeth in congress at least another term before running. Then again, when he announced his candidacy a couple of years ago, Clinton looked like such a lock to even win the general election hat he would have been looking at being able to run himself in 2016, considering that Hillary would have as the incumbent in 2012. I wonder if he really believed that he would get this far?...

Nope, he means Moran.

Can we have a vote on whether this is a McCain or an Obama supporter?

All I'm saying is that emails like your friends perpetuate the idea that you can't walk around in America without being accosted by some mouth breating inbred racist and that this is the atomsphere everywhere you go. There are plenty of them, but emails like your friend sent make it seem alot worse than it actually is, thats all I am saying. I fully agree we live in a kakistocracy, but thats the nature of the democracy, the uneducated plebs are going to have more say by their sheer knowledge than the educated citizens.. The trick is to manipulate the uneducated ones to vote how you know is right - the right wingers are better at this as they don't tend to call people uneducated rednecks as much.

That being said I don't think this election is necessary the 'educated' vs the 'undeducated'. The conservative baptists are generally the later, but McCain isn't catering to them as hard as previous republican elections.

I rest my case. Thanks, Jules, for proving it so forcefully, if not exactly gracefully.

You're still a moran and an Egghead.

You don't understand. I'm probably not even going to vote! It's your attitude and people like Eurovol's who alienate people who are sitting on the fence.

I agree that it would have been preferable, but we get what we get, and obviously I still think it's pretty good (far better than Hillary IMHO).

Jules, I wish you'd read my post again and then re-read your comment. Why don't you take specific things I wrote in that post and show me how I'm wrong. There IS a sizeable minority of McCain support that DOES believe astoundingly idiotic things about Obama. I don't give a flying shit whether my opinions alienate you or not. None of the Wingnuts who post their hate-fear-ignorance based ravings here seem to worry about alienating anyone. Why aren't you castigating them and complaining that they will push you to vote for Obama?

I thought it was fucks that flew? Anyway...

You made a generalization based on some anecdote which took place at an airport. Do you really think that's credible? There are surely many people who believe stupid and/or untrue things about McCain... Who has posted "ignorance based ravings" here? TT is like Obama Central!!

The Amazing Racist

Any response to that, eurovol (aka Overseas Campaign Manager and Top Dawg of Barack).

The Iranian nuclear program has been around for decades, and they worked on it secretly from at least 1985. It can't be blamed on anything happening "lately".

Believe it or not, Obama is a US politician running in a US election.

What exactly does he have in common politically with the Tories or the CDU?

I wonder what eurovol would say to that. I think that is debatable, and to the extent it has, not a "long" way.

Ooh, wow, that's such an impressive example of left-wing "thought". It's a shame one person can't congratulate another without Her Majesty's Far Left's feathers going aloft.

Is that Badbob on youtube?

I think the EU would be trying to make business deals at the expense of the US in such a negotiation. Europe doesn't spend enough on defense to be a superpower.


I don't think Barr will get enough votes to be a significant factor. I think only a Bloomberg candidacy could.

Nice little unsubstantiated anecdote and associated rubbish. I've heard one about Carter voters in 1980 being inebriated as they waited to vote for him.

If Obama were to serve two scandal-free terms as Governor of Illinois and clean things up there I would be far more impressed.

Where do you get the idea, that "the left" (in its broadest sense) who post on here are of a single opinion?
I've certainly have had political differences with BtC and Eurovol in the past for example.

But our disagreements tend to be discussed in an atmosphere of rspect and a willingness to share ideas rather than descending into personal attacks, smears and attempts to ridicule.

Eurovol doesn't have any idea what anyone other than him believes (hence his bizarre assumption that anyone criticizing Obama during the primary season was a Hillary supporter). Of course, the President of the Munich chapter of Democrats Abroad is obviously not going to be the best source for an explanation as to what others believe.

Clinton's administration nixed an oil deal between US firm Conoco and Iran in 1995, and imposed complete sanctions on trade between the US and Iran so you can hardly say his position on Iran was one of being willing to do business.

The Axis of Evil speech was foolish, but I think you whitewash completely Iran's role as a huge supporter of terrorism at a time when you claim they were so helpful to the US. Iran's role in promoting terrorism is a huge barrier to an improvement in US-Iranian relations. The Taliban were an enemy of Iran, so it's not as though they didn't have a vested interest in regime change there. In the case of Iraq, I am not aware of any genuine proposal by Iran to be of assistance and to do comprehensive negotiations (would be good to have a source on this) but I am skeptical especially since the January 2002 Axis of Evil speech which caused such a kerfluffle (and which was unbelievably dumb) preceded it. Do you really think after that speech, there could have been comprhensive negotiations with the US? Saddam was also reviled by the Iranians.

Khatami, while a relative liberal, was already exposed as not being one of the Western style variety when the student demonstrations in 1999 were violently repressed (he denounced the students). Khatami did want better relations with Europe for economic reasons and he did want to allow the Iranian people somewhat greater personal freedoms, but he had relatively little power and did not pose the slightest challenge to clerical rule, which is the crux of the problems in Iran. To be fair to Khatami, he was limited in what he could do, but his election in 1997 raised unrealistic expectations both at home and abroad (including my own, I might add). Improving Iranian relations with Europe (especially with Iran's nuclear program being secret at the time) was a far simpler matter than doing so with the US (where security issues were paramount) thus the two cannot reasonably be conflated.

I welcome the election of a reformist Iranian president next year, if that does indeed happen, and I would be happy to see US-Iranian economic and diplomatic relations being normalized (under the right set of circumstances) if it was to occur. However, I have yet to see any evidence that the Ayatollah Khamenei , the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts is interested in it, much less the Iranian people.

Iran is a country I would like to visit one day, so you bet I would like to see normalized relations between the US and the Islamic Republic. I do favor back channel negotiations with Iran on issues of bilateral concern (at levels much lower than that of heads of state) and once a US withdrawal or permanent presence of some sort in Iraq has been negotiated with the Iraqis, I do favor regional and international discussions on the transition.

MT, it would certainly be a landmark occasion if you were to denounce leftists such as eurovol, BTC, and bookmanjb for doing exactly the sort of things you mentioned.

You want to sit in a cool dark room dear before you froth over.

Intelligent men with a sense of balance and some well thought out views that are fairly standard for the centre-left.
But "Leftists"?

To call someone a "Leftist" within a European political context, they'd have to be clearly associated with the directly Marxists / Trotskyist line of though and activity on the left of established social democracy. And they are not. I'm not sure it would even apply in an American context; as I'd like to hope the snds are shifting there.

If you think eurovol has a sense of balance you need to re-read his posts and actually pay attention. BTC does occasionally exhibit some balance, I'll give him that. Not so for the third stooge of that bunch. No surprise that you scrupulously avoided acknowledging their own infractions.

I don't always agree with what's posted by other people.
But as I have said before, I'm not obliged to say anything just becasue you think I "should" do so.
You do believe, as a good American in the right to free speach?

Of course Eurovol is partisan in his party politics. But as a poster on TT, he has more strings to hs bow than just that.
The other poster you mentioned, I'm aware of, but must admit I haven't followed their posts closely.

My basic feelings on the Democratic party at this point in time is that Obama is a strong candidate I do however find a couple of things about the whole Primary and now election which may hurt him going into this election. Funnily enough I think some of Obama's biggest liabilities are some of his fervent supporters. I personally think, and people may disagree, that the difference b/w Hillary and Obama in regards to political platform is relatively small. So logically if one was planning on voting for Hillary, Obama would be a logical second choice. Unfortunately I think people who supported Hillary may feel disenfranchised towards Obama by being demonized, by some of his supporters, as part of the 'Hillary Camp'. The number of people who were supporting Hillary is very large and it would definitely hurt Obama not to have those people voting for him.

The other thing that makes me nervous, and maybe this is because I've never seen people so exited about politics before, is the apparent blind love some of his supporters show. You get an almost beatle mania feeling from some of them. You get the sense that they are following someone as if he was a religious leader. Now I can't think of anything I trust less than organized Religion.

All this being said I like the guy and I hope he wins the election.

I never said it didn't. Clinton never followed the European lead with Khatami but I think a Gore presidency would have as he has said as much himself.


I didn't whitewash it at all. I just didn't deal with it. Khatami and the liberals were uncomfortable with their role with Hezbollah et al and did offer talks over the Middle East as a way to get them out of the whole thing in 2002. These were rejected by the US as I pointed out and pretty much finished that as an option. A Gore presidency would have had a dialog with Iran. Khatami also refused to meet Moqtada al Sadr and the proto-terrorist Shiite militias during his presidency. Of course Ahmedinejad reversed that totally and is widely known to fund many of these militias. Possible not face to face at first and maybe using Switzerland as an intermediary. I don't pretend to know what the outcome would have been but it just seems to me that the one way out of the revolutionary extremes of Iran was through liberals like Khatami and we fudged that totally.Hopefully in 2009, if a liberal is elected, we won't make that mistake a second time.


Reference to Iran's offer was covered in the Observer last year I think, though I cannot find it. It is howevere referred to on Wikipedia - reference 8 on that page is a pdf sourced from the Washington post with step to step details of secret contacts that came to light after Khatami was well gone.


during his period in office he liberalised the media and encouraged them to criticize within reason the leaders of the nation including the Surpreme Council. He also introduced the "Twin Bills" that would have limited the power of the Supreme Leader while increasing the powers of the presidency. If that had succeeded in the Majlis then maybe the process of reform could have begun in earnest. However, it was during its initial parliamentary stages that the Axis of Evil speech was given and I think you can guess what happened. The bills were resoundingly defeated effectively finishing Khatami as a political force.


Can be hard to read but Khamenei has openly defied Ahmedinejad , who is also very unpopular over domestic policy. The politician who is being lined up as a possible challenger (can't remember his name but he is an acolyte of Rafsanjani) is probably more of a pragmatist than a liberal. But quite possibly a pragmatist is more likely to get things done?


well good and I probably agree with you up to a point. However, the civil war in Iraq is still a concern and if possible, a meeting of heads of state with two of the principal sponsors might deliver substantive change faster, particularly if timed with an announcement of US troop withdrawals. It would be a leap in the dark and I can see why it has been attacked as a proposal. But Barrack Obama did not actually come up with it himself, Tony Blair actually advocated it some time back.


Not putting words in his mouth, but MT is efectively daggers drawn with he Labour Party (of which I am a longtime member). We get on as friends but our olitical differences are probably fairly profound. However, on these boards the terms of debate are rarely on home territory. With such a broad transatlantic spread of opinions, the Europeans tend to end up concertina-ed into what you would call a 'leftist' grouping. pause for a moment to consider whether Owain Glydwyr (sp?) and (gideon) both long time UK conservatives could really be considered 'leftist' and yet in these debates I frequently find myself agreeing with them and they with me though in the realm of UK politics we are poles apart.

@iain
hammer. hit. nail. head.

"For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of the Black Panthers!"

Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose

Bob, I can't wait til your etch-a-sketch breaks.

Indeed.

I also enjoy the company of Gideon and OG.
We can have a bit of rough and tumble politically, but it happens in an atmosphere of give and take and generally good humoured.

Still accepting bids.

Jim Johnson, a former Fannie Mae CEO who also helped vet running mates for Walter Mondale in 1984 and John Kerry in 2004, was under fire following reports that he received favorable loan terms from a lender Obama has sharply criticized on the campaign trail.

What a scumbag!

The problem here, MT, is you refuse to acknowledge, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary that your fellow leftists do enagage in personal attacks, smears, etc. against people who regularly disagree with them on political issues. It is that fact that I suggested you acknowledge. The fact you refuse to do so does not surprise me. That you are able to have discussions with some non-leftists without descending into personal attacks definitely does not mean all leftists here on TT are able to with non-leftists. If you look at BTC's unprovoked and agressive personal attack on me (joined by several other leftists) you would have to agree that it's merely one example of such behavior. In all likelihood if I had attacked BTC in a similar vein, you would have been up in arms.

god the way he keeps saying "leftists" makes it sound as if we are all wearing black polo-necks and having earnest discussions about Rosa Luxembourg - - - -

FFS, get a sense of humour jimmy!

Some of you, e.g., Pleb, Monkstown and First Citizen might be... BTC, you are, by your own admission, a man of the left. Certainly not as far left as the aforementioned three collectivists, but still a man of the left.