Debt deal

[Lurker]

@LUrker - Sorry dude, I wasn't taking your posts seriously since they seemed more like a personal attack more than a real attempt at debate.

Gee... I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.

Trying again to get you to explain what on earth you meant by this contradictory drivel.

They've given him his debt ceiling increase, and they are sure to mention that come election time, when the economy is still crap and unemployment hasn't changed.

Since the Republicans only allowed the debt ceiling increase if it contained large spending cuts, and spending cuts are absolutely going to hurt economic growth and the unemployment picture, what exactly will the Republican's be sure to mention come election time?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I'd personally like to send Obama packing for a few reasons, all this debt deal crap aside. The only chance he has at my vote is to cock block someone scary like Palin. And I'm not even against voting Republican if you give me some decent choices. If we get the same old scary xenophobic extremist bullshit that we had last time then Obama will get a rubber stamp IMHO. I'll vote him dictator for life before Caribou Barbie gets my vote.

And yeah, I agree that most people's ire at our elected officials crosses party lines. Nobody is sitting pretty as far as I can tell. The republicans seem a little worse off but I don't think anyone in congress is getting high fives right about now. Fuckers lol.

[Lurker]

I'd personally like to send Obama packing for a few reasons, all this debt deal crap aside. The only chance he has at my vote is to cock block someone scary like Palin.

Can you list the few reasons?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I'd personally like to send Obama packing for a few reasons, all this debt deal crap aside. The only chance he has at my vote is to cock block someone scary like Palin.

Can you list the few reasons?

It's mostly to do with the way he's handling technology, which is how I make my living. I'm just going to blurt all this out and refine any of my points later.

1. The #1 reason I voted for him was that he promosed to increase our world standing.

That didn't happen. If anything, we are percieved worse than we were under Bush, and part of it is industry capture by the entertainment industry. DHS/ICE are seizing domains on behalf of Hollywood in countries where they are operating legally. We're extraditing a Scottish kid for having a web site linking sports videos. The last person we extradited from the UK was for espionage. Yeah, this is right up there with espionage, uh huh. The UK is currently trying to change their laws just so they can block this single extradition. Even our close allies like Mexico are pissed at us over our IP policy. They're going to reject ACTA. Sierra Leone, which I believe is the third poorest country on earth finally capitulated to pressure from the Obama administration over IP policy. We're bullying pretty much the whole world over IP policy. Yeah, Sierra Leone is a real threat to American jobs.

We're no less hypocrites than we were before. We chastise countries over human rights when everyone knows the low priority we place on them. We chastise countries like China over government censorship when we are the censors too. We chastise countries like Mexico for their drug violence when everyone knows that the problem is our demand. We chastise countries like Syria and China for crushing dissent but we have the same knee-jerk reactions they do. But hey, it's ok to toture a traitor like Manning, right? The Syrians use the same language for their rationlizations.

We chastise countries who go after whistleblowers unless it's at home. The Obama administration is the most aggresive in history going after whistleblowers. While Hillary is out there praising dissidents and whistleblowers abroad, we're fucking them at home.
We paid something like 300 million dollars to fund a broadband study that basically gave the money straight to the incumbent providers so they can tell us that everything is fine.

Most of the world sees us as hypocrites and that's really a shame because we have a lot to offer the world that's positive.

2. He promised to bring transparency back to government.

I think it was Wired magazine that declared him the least transparent administration in history. I know part of that was the fact that his administration has the higher FOIA reject rate percentage than any other adminstration before him. Much higher than Bush. Organizations like DHS, TSA and the FBI are no more accountable or transparent to the people than they were under Bush. If anything they are less accountable. Again, we are more secretive than we were under Bush.

3. He promised to be a more tech-friendly president.

He's actually technology hostile and anti-consumer. You'd figure a democratic president would be consumer friendly. I guess not when half the administration has cushy jobs waiting for them in the entertainment / communications industries.

ACTA: Consumer unfriendly. Done in secret without any representation of consumer groups. Government said something like "don't worry, all the stakeholders are there."

DHS/ICE domain seizures: Reduces our world standing and used to suppress some sites that are known to be operating legally in their country of origin. And WTF does this have to do with homeland security? Oh, and ICE's new propoganda video shows a woman talking about how her son died from counterfeit medication. That's nice except they haven't seized a single counterfeit medication sites. They recently admitted under FOIA that every single site they've gone after was at the behest of the entertainment industry.

FCC Broadband study: A total farce. We basically gave 300 million dollars to the incumbent carriers for a broadband map that showed exactly what they wanted it to show. Yep, there's competition, just ask us and we'll tell you. The FCC (in an emerging pattern) claimed that all the stakeholders were present. Yeah, the lobbyists and those that will soon work for them.

Wikileaks: Where do I start with this. Ever heard of the Streisand effect? The federal government has a moratorium on any site with the word "wikileaks" in any of it's content. It's a poor imitation of China's great firewall and just as retarded. Federal employees have to use their home internet connections to do any research based on wikileaks. Yep, all our enemies have copies but federal employees can't connect to it. Our reaction to wikileaks shows that very few of our elected officials truly understand technology.

AT&T's secret "NSA closet": AT&T illegally gave the NSA a straight tap into their backbone under the Bush administration. Other companies resisted, and wanted some official requests and clarifications instead of the "psst hook this wire there" that they got. Wouldn't you? But AT&T just laid down and said "here you go". It was widely believed that Obama would not shield AT&T from prosecution. Nope, one of his first official acts was to give AT&T blanket immunity.

Industry capture: Most of our technology policy is pretty much just a copy and paste of lobbyist talking points. In some cases it's been shown to be an exact copy and paste. FCC: Captured. DHS/ICE: Captured. Biden: Captured. Most of congress/senate: Captured. It'd be a great win for these industries if there weren't so much consumer backlash.

I read a quote somewhere that's stuck in my head (paraphrased): "Obama realizes that he can't change all the things that he wants to change, so he's just going to hide the stuff that he doesn't like but thinks he can't change."

Those are just the technology unfriendly things I can think of off the top of my head. Sorry for the wall o'text lol. FYI I respect everyone here and look forward to a lively debate on this. Maybe there should be an Obama thread?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Actually, I'm an outsider in this politics section. It's not something I'm really passionate about other than what I care about for my particular industry. You guys hammer on each other day after day and I think that's not something I have a taste for. I'm not going to back up any of my statements or drill down on any of it. I'm just going to call it my opinion and go back to lurking on this thread. But all sophistry aside, let's just say I'm really disappointed in Obama lol.

[Lurker]

Thanks for posting that. I'm won't debate you on your reasons. I was just curious what they were.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

And thank you for understanding /bow

[Embar Angylwrath]

Freecare for President!

Excellent post Free. And even though it galls me, I'll have to refine your point on Obama on point #2, transparency. Yes.. he's judged less transparent on the criteria you posted.. BUT... FOIA requests have jumped dramatically when he became President. I give him some leeway on adjusting to the sheer volume of the increase of FOIA requests. Dig a little deeper, and some of the FOIA requests are assinine.

That said... I do think he hasn't lived up to his own standard of transparency. The debt ceiling negotiations were a prime example. Hell, even rank and file members of the House and Senate were complaining about being kept in the dark. And the Reps have some shit sandwich to eat here as well... they promised 72 hours from post to vote. That clearly didn't happen in the debt ceiling increase. Fuckers.

Your larger point stands. Obama hasn't been the "Hope and Change" he portrayed himself to be. All those grandiose statements about changing the nature of how Washington does business and being able to bridge the divisive gap between Reps and Dems were fiction. By all accounts (except maybe his own and those of his campaign team), he's been largely ineffective at bringing about change to the way Washington does business. In fact, he's been even more polarizing.

People can point blame to the Reps for being what some would call obstructionists, and others would call true to standards. People can point blame to Dems for being recalitrant to compromise, or frozen because of political backlash (failure to present a budget anyone?), or both. Obama understood, or said he understood, the dynamics of the relationships between the Dems and the Reps. We are seeing that his statements, although heartfelt and delivered with gusto, were false. Ant centrist Rep presidential candidate will have much fuel there.

Dd is somewhat correct, although the leftists on this board want to disagree. Any centrist Rep has plenty of ammo to use against Obama, and could win the WH. I disagree with Dd that the campaign has to turn negative. The facts of the economy and the unemployment will do the work for the Rep candidate. If I was campaigning, I'd use Obama's words against him. "This Is Obama's vision of hope and change. How do you like it?"

[Lurker]

Nothing you said is supported by the facts.

Obama and the Democrats bent over backwards trying to compromise with Republicans on nearly every issue. For example, they spent months during the design of health care legislation trying to get Republican support, agreeing to their demands only to see them refuse in the end anyways. Remember, it was the Republican's stated strategy to say 'no' to everything and that's exactly what they did, even if they had to vote against legislation that they had originally proposed.

One of the biggest complaints against Obama from the left is that he compromised too much on legislation. It was often his strategy to give Republicans what they said they wanted in the hopes that they would meet him halfway. They never did.

Sure, Obama failed to change the way Washington worked but that isn't because he was polarizing. Obama has been mostly centrist. He failed because the Republicans made it their strategy to demonize him and to obstruct and refused to compromise on anything, and they've done that because the Teapublicans expect it and reward them for it.

Dd is somewhat correct, although the leftists on this board want to disagree. Any centrist Rep has plenty of ammo to use against Obama, and could win the WH. I disagree with Dd that the campaign has to turn negative. The facts of the economy and the unemployment will do the work for the Rep candidate. If I was campaigning, I'd use Obama's words against him. "This Is Obama's vision of hope and change. How do you like it?"

You keep dodging. The Republicans have blocked legislation that would have helped and have pushed through legislation that is guaranteed to make things worse, like the debt increase legislation that they insisted on. Why do you seem so confused about basic facts of what's going on? Why do you want to reward them for it?

[Kulaf]

Rick Perry might announce he is running. If so then the President has a serious challenge on his hands.

[Lurker]

You mean the guy that wanted to secede from the nation?

[Ddrak]

I would just like to pitch in on Free's point #1. The US is perceived much more warmly overseas under Obama than it was under Bush. Obama himself probably has a higher popularity internationally than he does at home (for various reasons). Sure, the tech crowd are getting all pissy about ACTA, ICE and other silliness but that stuff is happening in every western nation so it's hard to single out the US as the bad guys there.

#2 and #3 certainly have merit, but I don't see Obama as any different to anyone else you'd vote in. Most of the blame of the tech policy I'd actually place on Biden, who's been in the xxAA's pocket for decades now and historically been very pro-big-content/anti-consumer.


On Ron Paul - I like his policies in general, but he's way off base on how to deal with a recession. Vote him in and you'll see unemployment skyrocket and markets tank right now.

Dd

[Kulaf]

You mean the guy that wanted to secede from the nation?

You have a direct quote where he says that? I doubt it, because here is the actual quote:

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

The man is a really good politician. He was speaking at a Tea Party event.....and he got them motivated. TX has always been a very idependent state and it wouldn't surprise me if many TX politicians had rattled that particular sabre in the past, such as Sam Houston.

[Embar Angylwrath]

@ Lurker - You say I'm dodging, but I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the Republicans in Congress did or didn't do. A center-right Rep candidate can disavow the way things are done in Washington without disavowing core principles. Essentially, he or she can say... I don't like how it happened, but I like the result. A candidate can draw a distinction from the process (which everyone hated) and the results of the process.

[Lurker]

Kulaf,
Yes, that's the quote I'm talking about; the one where Perry was pandering (or maybe speaking honestly) to the Tea Party. Why do you think he's a threat in the coming election?

Embar,
As usual, you are all about perceptions and how things can be spun regardless of what's actually true. At least you finally admitted that the Republicans do not have facts on their side and would need to resort to pure political spin. Now if you could only explain what you meant by the absurd statement that Republicans can point to the debt limit legislation and the bad economy and claim victory, when they are the ones who made them worse.

[Harlowe]

Rick Perry has too much of a religious agenda and panders to the Tea Party too much to win, imo. We won't have a great deal of confidence internationally either if veer down that ignorant road.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

How does anyone have "too much of a religious agenda"?

Since when is it bad to be Religious and a Politician?

[Lurker]

Do you seriously not know the difference between a politician who is religious, and a politician who's pushing a religious legislative agenda?

[Harlowe]

Holy shit....you don't know the difference between a person having religious beliefs and a person having a political religious agenda?

So you want the laws of the land, scientific research and education based on whatever the religion of the masses is at the moment? Because too much religion in politics isn't a bad thing? Would you feel the same if the country became predominantly Catholic or Islamic?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

1) This has always been a 'Christian' nation and still largely is.

2) Religion is where many peoples morals come from, and they do a lot of good with those morals. The problem with our society today is that many people no longer attend church or simply don't care enough about religion to develop any sort of morals. I know this should also be in the laps of parents, but many parents neglect exposing their children to any form of religion (mine included). Example: Religion used to be allowed in schools and morals were something included in cirriculum around the country.

3) Policy based on religion isn't bad unless it isn't good policy. For example: I may be against gay marriage, that does not mean I'm against civil unions and partners sharing benefits that way (the same as a married couple would). I personally think gay marriage is contradictory to religion and as such just bad policy since marriage historically has been between a man and a woman (both with and without religion).