The Official Barack Obama Thread (ticket, country, American, effects)

[boo boo]

I'm not against taxes, but I think the income tax is a load of BS.

I think a consumption tax would be a lot more fair, not that I'm actually recommending that, unfortunately with this whole recession thing, it would just cause all the tight walleted rich f*cks to not spend a dime. But I wish that's what we had.

[CAPTAIN CAVEMAN]

Originally Posted by Wayfarer

4. why do people seem to have it in their heads that the only thing holding back some awful sea of destruction is the state? this simply isn't true. there are plenty of examples of anarchist societies that functioned just as well as any American town these days, if not better

i don't get into these political threads usually, but can you give an example/s?
out of curiosity.

[gunnels]

guantanamo bay=closed bitches

[Surell]

Originally Posted by RezZ

Mainly dislikes. WHile its great to have Bush out of office, BO has done nothing but "talk ****" which I have never seen to this extent before in any election.

I think that was his whole wacky "change" campaign. Stupid, right?

[Molecules]

the guy's leading by example, our government should be taking notes, taking the blame and (at least be seen to be) moving forward rather than passing the buck.

Sure it's unlikely America will be powered by solar winds and be a completely open and equal society in 3 years but positivity is what the world needs to bring it off the brink of another depression, right?

[sleepy jack]

Originally Posted by Wayfarer

i'm not saying it's true or untrue, i'm saying it's not necessarily true. perhaps if the US government ceased all taxation, it would turn out to be a huge mistake. i don't personally believe it would, but it's always a possibility. similarly it's at least feasible that in the right conditions a country could thrive without taxation.

I don't think were in the right conditions at all; we're in two wars right now.

i don't even know where to start with this one

1. the US does not need the military it has now
2. a state-funded military has no competition and thus prices are driven up
3. the state has proven to be inefficient at defending the people of the country, both on a small and a large scale
4. why do people seem to have it in their heads that the only thing holding back some awful sea of destruction is the state? this simply isn't true. there are plenty of examples of anarchist societies that functioned just as well as any American town these days, if not better

again, i'm not saying i advocate abolishing state-funded defense, all i'm saying is it's a bit naive to claim that a society couldn't function properly without a government stealing money from everyone, and not because i disagree with it on a moral level but simply because relatively peaceful anarchist societies have existed in the past.

Anarchy doesn't tend to work on large scales; particularly in a country like US which, if it had no military or an incredibly down-sized military would be targeted since it's the world's only remaining superpower. In addition to that its bred into our political culture to pay taxes, etc. If, say, a Ron Paul government actually took over America the general populace would be freaking out over the lack of all the government funded programs they're use to it. You really can't just start over fresh in a society with a new form of government; some traces of the last one always linger. It's why democratic reform in Russia hasn't worked and why nation building is basically one of the worst ideas ever.

or they could be hired, be it by individuals or communities or whatever. like i said, people aren't just going to settle for having no police. i don't know why people always seem to assume that without the government providing health care or police services or schools or what-have-you, they simply wouldn't exist. it's called supply and demand. a government is not absolutely 100% necessary for anything, some just prefer it.

The American government doesn't provide health care now and a good deal of citizens (I don't know the exact percentage) don't have it. I don't want to get into my thoughts on economic rights because it's complex and requires a lot of explaining and diving into why it isn't Marxism but I believe a certain amount of welfare is necessary for every citizen to live up to the preamble of the constitution (the pursuit of happiness and all that.)

yeah, though that might actually help get this recession moving along. all the Obama administration seems to want to do is get people to spend even more than they already do in an unfortunate attempt to revive Clinton's bubble economy of the '90s.

This is just an observation but one of my favorite things about Clinton's presidency is how, depending on which side you're on, he was either great or the Republican congress was great. I remember prior to the recession Republicans were running around going "Greenspan gave us the economic prosperity of the nineties" and now these same people are saying Clinton set us up for failure in the nineties. Reverse the roles for the Democrats.

I also notice this with how they refer to Clinton. When he said something negative about Obama to keep on Hillary's good side the Republicans would quote it and be all "William Jefferson Clinton said that!" as opposed to saying Bill Clinton said that. The Democrats do the same thing when saying something negative about Bill Clinton. Extreme partisanship is so amusing.

[lucifer_sam]

While there are enormous problems with having such a large populous, we simply can't afford to take radical steps to remove our system of government from power. I favor a very minimally systemic government myself but I'm aware that it will be impossible to conduct this on a large scale while our government still supports fifty million lower-class citizens.

I do think that a lot of people need to wrap their heads around the idea that if our government is to provide subsidized healthcare & other goodies that taxes will have to eventually be raised.

[Yukon Cornelius]

Originally Posted by Wayfarer

that's...why you end them. all other arguments aside, the US simply cannot afford to be in a war right now.

I mean isnt this nations debt a joke?? Sure, maybe mentally we cant afford war but the supply getting cut off? nah

Shall we lean closer to conspiracy here?

[TheBig3]

I don't know whats difficult to get here, Obama = Jesus and you pseudo-intellectuals are hedging your bets with your finger on the I-told-you-so button but this time you're going to lose. And when you do I'm going to never going to let you forget that your intellectual oppertunism bit you in the ass.

Have some balls and take a stand. Backing your third party will-never-wins is a cop-out. DK, RP, RN; its all a bad joke.

You know who I voted for? The Unicorn-Mermaid ticket, if only people would see that their the right direction for the country, we'd all be ok.

No, no they won't. Why don't we elect an Iron-man/Flash ticket and vote the ****ing Justice League in Congress. Expect failure people, you can't pick someone whos right on everything. its ok for your candidate to **** up.

Its no ok to be an absolute pussy about things and never pick anything real.

[TheBig3]

You shouldn't have. I didn't cite those folks on party, I did so on the basis that they won't get elected. Saying you're voting for them is claiming to vote for fictional people.

Thats not to say that 3rd is bad. Its to say those individuals are bad. I don't think Ross Perot in '92 was a bad vote, or even a '00 Nader, but at this point they've rendered themselves irrelevent.

And it is, by every mark, a choice made so that one can appear intelligent. I'm not saying jump on the bandwagon, but all this "how's obama going to do X,y,z?" Its like my Grandmother freaking out when things didn't go exactly as planned.

In short, i'd hate to be trapped with you people in a serious situaiton.