Support For Obama: Bad For USA

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: mangoskin</div><div class="ubbcode-body">and you notice more ppl trying to enter US than Cuba.... </div></div>


Mangoskin,

Have you any knowledge at all that for 50 years the U.S has been waging war on Cuba's revolution?

Do you have the slightest clue as to why?

Do you know that Cuba is, like Jamaica, a Third World country and is poor and that of course the poor of the world would head for the richest country in the world?
Jamaicans make on the average $1000.00 more than Cubans and how many people come into Jamaica to live as opposed to the 70,000 Jamaicans who leave that paradise for a better life elsewhere some 50,000 more than Cubans who leave each year? ( Jamaica's population: about 3 million, Cuba's population about 11 million)

Did you know that you cannot just pack up and move to Cuba.; that they take in very few immigrants because of the further economic burden newcomers represent?

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: lonrwolf</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Anyone agree with the statements below?


<span style="font-weight: bold">If you hit someone and kill their family, they will hate you and probably hit you back in the future. That’s what blowback is all about. It seems like such a simple concept</span>.

They professed that what our military does abroad has no effect on how the citizens of the world feel towards us. Rudy Giuliani in particular believed that the 9/11 terrorists hated our wealth and freedom so intensely that they sacrificed their lives to prove it. <span style="font-weight: bold">(Of course, our government bombing their countries, propping up their dictators and supplying their enemies with money and weapons had nothing to do with it.)</span>
Instead of securing our borders, we’ve been planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression. Within a few short years, we turned Iraq into the world’s leading breeding ground for terrorists. Our military is spread thin all across the planet, yet we remain involved in dangerous power plays that unnecessarily put the lives of our soldiers at risk. And we brazenly squandered the wealth of our nation as if there were no tomorrow.

<span style="font-weight: bold">It doesn’t make any sense unless you consider increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex to be in the “national interest”, no matter what the cost to the rest of us may be</span>.



</div></div>


Wolfie,
The only people whom you could get to agree with those sentiments would be those who have a basic understanding of U.S foreign policy.
That does exempt Rudy Guiliani and most of the readers of these fora.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Without a good deal of college at a non-conservative university or considerable reading and study on your own, what you get is what I see in your post and that is a Pollyanna Principled view of both the economic and political systems in the United States.</div></div>
We all know that you surely must be the smartest, most principled person that ever posts or has posted here. I was just wondering if you could share with us what country has a more enduring political system than the U.S.? I was wondering too if there are countries who have more creative folk that make more patents? Are there many other political systems where folks can go from the poorest to the richest?... or does one persons success always mean that someone else must suffer?

America's political system is far better than any of the other systems in the history of mankind. It is not perfect, but superior than any other. Northern Europeans are doing well lately, but they don't have nearly the crush of cultures like we do in the U.S. America's system has generated an explosion of wealth, and inventions, that have transformed the planet. And America's political system has endured.

Sure we have poor people here, but they doing better the poorest in most every other country. We like to complain about &quot;education today.&quot; Yet the universities in America is where students around the world long to be educated. Yes, our medical system has become impersonal and expensive as hell, but the hospitals in America are busy using the most amazing equipment and new procedures.

Johnnycakes you are now a Kurzweilian, or Singularist, and the whole technology explosion is driven by American capital. Investors who have more money to spend than you or I will earn in a hundred lifetimes, invested money in new ideas, and new products. Sometimes their investments pay of big time.

I'm a big fan of Ceasar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. He entered the U.S. illegally in 1991. He knew no one. He is 41 now, and recently had his 100th television show. The system works.

I went to my dentist recently. It's really expensive, and Im sure not everyone can afford to see such a superb practitioner. But in my lifetime dental care has sure been transformed from when all a dentist did was pull teeth, or fill cavities. My dentist makes a whole lot of money, and he takes long holidays twice a year. He only works two and a half days a week. But, the way I see it, those are his just desserts. Because it is men like him that drove those medical inventions by learning how to perform them, and by selling that product successfully for decades. That's what makes America so successful.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

40,
It is neither moral nor logical nor christian to have or support an economic system under which 5-10% of the people own 80% of everything and 25% live in absolute and generational poverty.

&quot;or does one persons success always mean that someone else must suffer?&quot;

Under capitalism ? Yes, absolutely and positively.

The old saying is that in America anyone can become rich or become president is true.

George Bush and Ronald Reagan show that any ONE can become president regardless of a low intellectual capacity.

In the U.S any ONE can also become rich. That also applies to Zimbabwe, Botswana, even Haiti. But in these countries as well as in the United States because of capitalism not only can not EVERYONE become rich but 25-80% have to live in poverty because a hugely disproportionate share of the goods and services available go to a very small percentage of privileged people.

Eight million people starve to death in the poorest CAPITALIST countries every year.

That is nothing to brag about.

It should be a source of shame and yet here you are pimping for that greatest of immoralities.

I may not be the smartest or the most principled person in the world but morally I'm way ahead of any blind apologist for killer capitalism .

I'm also way better informed than most about just what an evil capitalism is, what U.S. enforcement of capitalism in the world has done in bringing death and immiseration to billions and I surely know better than most how corrupt the so-called democratic U.S electoral system is.

Again, because you haven't read what I have read, or as much as I have over 40 years you don't know what I know, as much as I know and you certainly do not know or understand that what you believe is a fiction that is more convenient and easier on your conscience to believe than the reality.

About dental care: I worked at Tufts and specifically for the dental school for 21 years. I know about the cost of dental school and a great deal about procedures and costs.

That has totally totally nothing to do with the basic human right of medical care which is unaffordable to some 50 million Americans at the least.

That's because it's part of the capitalist for-profit medical care system in the United States which is IMMORAL unless you think that medical/dental/mental health care should be only for those who can afford it.

The civilized countries of Europe and Cuba do not think that way because they are civilized , are morally superior to the United States in at least that way.


You've swallowed the Kool-Aid they handed you.

You believe the unbelievable only because you do not have command of the necessary facts or because (most likely) you choose to ignore them because it would shake your beliefs to their foundation.

As for education in the United States, most adults read and write at the 5th grade level.
The low intellectual quality of the most popular TV programs show the level of intelligence quite well.

&quot;And America's political system has endured.&quot;


In the first place you are totally disregarding what I said about how candidates are nominated and win elections. which in itself negates what you claim above
Secondly, if you think that the corporate control of the government which has taken place since the 70's has not transformed and degraded any sort of democracy we once had then your historic knowledge of the U.S political system is inadequate for you to be making any sort of judgement on it. What we now have is, in no way, either what we once had at the beginning of the country nor what the founders envisioned or planned for.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

According to this survey, the average adult in the U.S. reads between the 8th and 9th grade reading levels.

Sources: http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache...cd=5&amp;gl=us AND http://www.ericdigests.org/1994/locating.htm
............. ................ ...............
You are so convinced that your smartness has made you a morally superior person. You believe that Cuba has a better form of government than the U.S. That puts you way out on the fringe. A tiny minority of citizens agree with you. People are greedy.

Were you ever with the Lyndon LaRouche group? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

40:
According to this survey, the average adult in the U.S. reads between the 8th and 9th grade reading levels.

40,
I stand updated and corrected on the reading an writing levels but it really doesn't change much. since a high school understanding is (almost always) insufficient for the topics we are discussing. The fact that so many people think Obama is a good man, that the WMD's were real, that bin Laden attacked us for no reason except that he hated our freedoms just exemplifies the low level of political sophistication and education of the American public as a whole.j


40:
You are so convinced that your smartness has made you a morally superior person.

40,
Intelligence per se does not make anyone moral.
A sense of morality is developed over the years and yes intelligence helps in this development but there are some not very intelligent people who are naturally moral people just as there are intelligent people who use that intelligence to justify their immorality.

It is just common sense that supporting capitalism is immoral if you look at the hundreds of millions who have died from the effects of poverty that exists in many Third World countries where capitalism denies them a chance to make a decent life.

40:
You believe that Cuba has a better form of government than the U.S. That puts you way out on the fringe. A tiny minority of citizens agree with you.

40,

The Cuban government and economy are under attack by the United States and have been for 50 years. That is what is causing most of the problems there.
Our 9th grade level population hasn't got a clue about the Cuban reality nor much about U.S foreign policy so of course they believe what the U.S government tells them about Cuba just as they swallowed the line about the WMD's and a whole mess of other lies.
YOU know that the U.S government lies like a rug yet you choose to believe them about Cuba. Why is this?


40:
People are greedy.

40,
Greed is a learned trait. It is not in our genetic makeup . If it weren't taught or rather, enforced by capitalism, humans would be kinder to one another.

40:
Were you ever with the Lyndon LaRouche group?

In the late 60's and into the seventies, I was affiliated with the Socialist Worker's Party which was a Marxist group with Trotskyist leanings ( anti-soviet anti-capitalist, internationalists). Since then I have tended towards the thinking of people like Noam Chomsky ( communist/anarcho-syndicalist) .
You'll have to do your own research into what these terms mean since it would take too long for me to explain..
I will agree with you completely that I (and Chomsky ) are on the far left fringe and that our thinking is very far from that of the general and disinformed public.

I will take the time here to tell you a true story that explains why this is so and why the public doesn't get to hear what we on the real left have to say:

Jeff Greenfield who produces Frontline or one of those other hour-long network programs on things political was asked why he never had Noam Chomsky on his show and he replied: &quot; He's from Pluto&quot; meaning of course that his views were so far from what the public accepts as reality that he might as well be from Pluto he's so far out.

The questioner then went to Noam Chomsky and told him what Greenfield said and Chomsky said: &quot;He's right.&quot; and proceeded to say why.

Were I to go on his show and tell the public that Moammar Ghaddafi was a criminal and a danger to the world (this was back in the 80's) EVERY viewer of the program would know and understand what I was talking about&quot; (because the news at that time was full of anti-Ghaddafi items and stories just like now) but, he continued, were I to go on that show and say that George Schultz ( then Secretary of State) were a criminal and a danger to the world, people would say that I was from Pluto because no media outlet ever reported such a thing and as far as the viewing public was concerned he was a good man and a good American politician.

&quot;In order for me to present the evidence and historical proof that Schultz was indeed a criminal and a danger to the world would take me longer than the program runs since they only allow five minutes at most for an answer to a posed question.&quot;

That's why when people hear what I say, they think I'm from Pluto. They have no idea of reality and the view that they have has been drummed in constantly and to the point that the truth has no chance of being accepted by them when they hear it for the first time.&quot;

40, I am in the same position as Noam Chomsky. I cannot begin to download to anyone all that I have learned in 40 years of rather intense study of U.S foreign policy, media and electoral processes in the time spent here and like you , most would just prefer to think that they have the facts correct and that I'm from Pluto so different is my reality from theirs.
I live with this understanding.
You are far from the first person with whom I've had these sorts of discussions/debates and all I can say is read Chomsky, read what is presented at ZNET daily for a month or two and see for yourself what Chomsky said about being from Pluto is all about.

The writers at ZNET, including Chomsky, are far better versed in the things we are discussing than am I and you owe it to yourself to compare your reality with theirs and THEN you'll get some sense of the factuality of our reality verses what you have come to believe.

You're shortchanging yourself if you don't expose yourself (and in depth) to views that contradict your own.

Question authority.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the &quot;greatest country in the world&quot;,a comment that he later clarified by saying, &quot;Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired.&quot; He has also said &quot;In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.&quot;</div></div>
This is pretty much where I stand.

I have an interest in linguistics... speech and languages, and their relationship to consciousness. Chomsky is a great genius no doubt about that.

[R_C]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">If it weren't taught or rather, enforced by capitalism, humans would be kinder to one another.</div></div>

jc, I'm not sure if the broad sweep of human history supports that.

Anyway, interesting discussion nonetheless.

[MarieK]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The following two paragraphs were excerpted from an article by Paul Street in today's ZNET.

They explain why supporting Obama because of his skin color is hypocritical and very bad for the anti-war movement.
Those people who think he's a minor god will owe the dead from Obama's wars an explanation and an apology for their stupidity.


&quot;...........This dark suspicion was born out by the retreat of the contemporary “antiwar movement” after the election of the militantly imperialist Democratic president Barack Obama. As Cindy Sheehan noted in 2009, thinking of all the liberals she could no longer interest in opposing Washington’s imperial policies, “Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama.” Alexander Cockburn chimed with the observation that numerous supposedly left and liberal Americans who opposed criminal wiretappings, immoral and illegal wars, plutocratic bankers’ bailouts and other vile policies when they were implemented in the name of a white Republican moron from West Texas but who became all too strangely silent when those same policies were enacted under the portrait of an eloquent black Democrat from Chicago. Democrats can be very dangerous.

There is some new evidence on just how bad this problem was and remains. Consistent with Sheehan and Cockburn’s complaint and my own voluminous warnings on what Tariq Ali calls “the Obama syndrome,” a recent major study by University of Michigan political scientist Michael Heany and his colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University finds that the antiwar movement in the United States “demobilized” as Democrats withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then with the presidency in 2008. Democrats had been sparked to participate in antiwar activities when the war (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) they purported to oppose was being conducted by a Republican president. &quot;As president,” Heany notes, “Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war inAfghanistan...The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.&quot; 3


source:
http://www.zcommunications.org/were-the-...-by-paul-street
</div></div>

kissteet dis wd be more valuable if it was printed on toilet paper

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">If it weren't taught or rather, enforced by capitalism, humans would be kinder to one another.</div></div>

jc, I'm not sure if the broad sweep of human history supports that.

Anyway, interesting discussion nonetheless.
</div></div>

Hi R_C,

I understand your doubts on the innate goodness of humans given the history of the race but I feel that as a race we are progressing/evolving as regards becoming civilized.

Just as we couldn't fly until about 100 years ago or perform organ transplants or have telephones on the technical side of life, we/many are unable to think of anything different because all we know IS history.

IMO IMO IMO

The advent of Kurzweil's Singularity, the exponential leap in technology will make many things possible that would be considered miraculous or magic even now. Those leaps in things like cheap power and the elimination of most manual labor will also bring along social changes the like of which are unimaginable.

This will also mean the end of the capitalist economies and the the selfishness and lack of social cohesiveness we, as a race have known for our entire existence on the planet.

This thought fits whether you are a communist (as I am) or a believer in God.
Those who have a dim view of man's intrinsic morality or lack thereof will have a different view of this future and a very difficult time trying to grasp these changes and what will drive them.

I am basing my predictions largely upon things that Kurzweil has predicted but perhaps extrapolating a bit on the social effects of the exponential changes in technology.

I am guessing/feeling that the technological advances will bring enhanced learning techniques, perhaps direct links to the brain's learning centers but certainly some advance means of absorbing information that will make education very effective cheap, and in a future socialist society universally available.

and...an educated world will be be a kinder gentler world IMO since a Golden Rule society will a be direct outfall of a society based on logic.

Again, I can fully understand why there is now a great reticence in believing this is possible and even more difficult for disbelievers to think that it will all happen in about 40 years given that all we know ands all we can base our judgements on is our societally primitive history and that includes the present.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

&quot;kissteet dis wd be more valuable if it was printed on toilet paper&quot;


No rebuttal of the charges against Obama and his supporters?
Your statement indicates that you are less than pleased yet all you have to offer is the statement you posted?

If you feel that strongly, you must have thought that there were things said that weren't true, that falsely defamed President Obama

Why not present some sort of rebuttal of what you thought wrong in the article?

Indeed, why not go and read the whole article and really tear up what was written.

You couldn't be that vexed without having a lot of factual information to the contrary.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this .

[R_C]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

jc, your belief in the innate goodness of humanity is admirable but at this point in my life I must say that I have learned more about why the world is the way it is and it is likely to be long after I’m gone by studying human history not by speculating about a alleged golden age to come. For at the end of the day, the best predictor of how human beings will behave tomorrow, either collectively or as individuals, is how they behaved yesterday. I have yet to be disappointed in that regard.

I would venture to say that we don’t have to wait on <span style="font-style: italic">“The advent of Kurzweil's Singularity, the exponential leap in technology”</span> to see how <span style="font-style: italic">“many things possible that would be considered miraculous or magic even now”</span> affects human behavior. The technology available to us today would already appear “magical” as you say to civilizations that existed a mere century ago. And what have we done with it? How has it changed us? Well, apart from creating physical comfort and industrial efficiencies that have touched the lives of a tiny fraction of the planet’s population, it has been put to use by the world’s armies to kill in larger numbers and with greater ease than ever thought possible before.

Again, your faith in the ability of technology to change how humans behave towards each other is admirable. I just don’t see, beyond mere speculation, what basis exists for us to think that this is possible in any significant way.

[Tulip]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

I have a simple question. Support for who as president of the US is good?

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the &quot;greatest country in the world&quot;,a comment that he later clarified by saying, &quot;Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired.&quot; He has also said &quot;In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.&quot;</div></div>
This is pretty much where I stand.

I have an interest in linguistics... speech and languages, and their relationship to consciousness. Chomsky is a great genius no doubt about that. </div></div>


40:

I find it interesting that you managed to find perhaps the one part of Chomsky's writings in which he had something good to say about U.S society yet for the most part your thinking rejects the other 99% of what Chomsky stands for.

You cannot have read much of Chomsky's work and think as you do.

I have an old VCR double tape on Chomsky that opens by saying that in Poland the people think that there are two Noam Chomskys in the United States, one a genius in the field of linguistics and the other the best versed critic of U.S foreign policy and the U.S. media.

You know that you and I could go around and around debating various subjects and not get anywhere. This is why I ask you to read a few of Chomsky's seminal works since he is far and away a better writer, and a far better educated person on the matters we attempt to debate here.

It would be far better for you to bang your ideas up against his thoughts since I am in near total agreement with all of whatever I have read or heard from him over the years, but he can and does explain it far better and in far greater detail than I can.

You might not know it from how I project myself in these fora but when I read Chomsky I always realize just how little I know about the matters on which he writes even though I am fairly well versed.

I find it interesting that three of the most influential people in my thinking at this time in my life. Chomsky, Kurzweil and Hitchens all actively seek out for debate those who are diametrically opposed to what they espouse and the three are rarely ever bested in any debate.
A complete command of the facts is what makes these three so formidable.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Support For Obama: Bad For USA

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tulip</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I have a simple question. Support for who as president of the US is good? </div></div>


A good and a fair question given my low opinion of all presidents and most candidates this century and last.

IMO you should support any candidate who is moral or who comes close to your view of morality.
It is more principled to support and vote for someone you really want and not get them than it is to vote for someone you don't really want and wind up with that person.

I do not support any lesser-of two-evils candidates.

I often vote for the Green Party or Ralph Nader but never for someone like Obama who is all image and no substance. For that matter I never vote for anyone from the Democrat or Republican parties because I KNOW that each of those has been hand picked by their parties to never change a thing.

Obama should be a classic case in point of this very thing and all his supporters should be calling for his political head but he gets a pass because he's black, speaks well and isn't George Bush.

I advise doing what Noam Chomsky advises. Participate in your LOCAL elections and boycott the national elections because the two parties will never give you/ nominate a moral person for whom to vote. Moral people are not members of the Republican or Democrat parties because as members of Congress or as President of the United States you HAVE to do a great many immoral and criminal things .

I know this will make a lot of people kiss their teeth here but Obama is no better than Bush and electing McCain and Palin would not have produced anything very different from what we are experiencing now.