US Presidential Election: Tuesday November 6th, 2012

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From what i can gather of the incident there are clearly questions to be answered and the paper trail could lead quite high, however any accusations against Obama personally can only be relatively minor ones.

If this had occurred at another time and Hillary wasn't the political figure she is the pressure on her might be greater, as it is they'll try and ride it out.

I've heard it said though that even with the presence of increased security the attack would have succeeded, on the other hand post-war Libya didn't strike me as a place you'd want to be pulling people out of. *shrugs*
 
And funnily enough, Stoke City is also a possible answer as to why people can be so stupid.
 
Mockney said:
He had a sniff of a point on a semi-related tangent, but the stunt was ridiculous. The US doesn't have conscription for a start so who signs up - whilst obviously influenced by economics - is a matter for the individual. Not to mention that no one has the right to sign up their children without even asking them. Let alone to some twat in the street with a camera. It was a stunt with a 100% guarantee of success and entirely engineered to make him look good.

Though the worst one in that film is the lingering shot of a woman crying that almost voyeuristically exploits her grief until Moore comes onto screen to give her a comporting hug.
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I am a liberla but the US should have a draft...of sorts...either the forces, community service...even say the Peace Corp.

Other the character building everyone talks about, it can help them prepare for they do go out into working life...

"Ask not what your country..."
 
I think it all links to this 'apology tour' and 'leading from behind' which is all a load of bollocks anyway.

Romney's problem is that he knows little about FP and the little he does know about, he holds the same opinion as Obama on how it should be handled.
 
Eboue said:
He affects the global food supply!


But seriously, he gives liberals a bad name. I imagine conservatives feel similar about Rush Limbaugh. He is a poor representative of what I believe in and his movies have impacted the public perception of my values.
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Never been a fan of Moore but found this hilarious.

 
Community service and military service are two hugely different things. I'm not a pacifist, but at no point should conscription of any sort ever be back on the table in any civilised country. You can't just force character building onto people. As for preparing them for working life, well school should be better at doing that, which I've long believed it fails miserably at. That still doesn't mean we should plump for the most radical alternative. That's the same rationale as "well Obama hasn't sorted the world out yet, lets give this other guy who isn't telling us anything a shot"
 
Eboue said:
I think we should have a draft so that everyone understands what happens in war. Maybe then we wouldn't wage it so recklessly.
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Who do you think doesn't understand what happens in a war? It's pretty basic stuff...you go somewhere and get shot at...it's dangerous.
 
Grinner said:
I think it all links to this 'apology tour' and 'leading from behind' which is all a load of bollocks anyway.

Romney's problem is that he knows little about FP and the little he does know about, he holds the same opinion as Obama on how it should be handled.
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Yep, it's not working, and you know what I'd do? I'd do better. How? I'd do exactly what he does.....but better.
 
How the hell is Romney going to clamp down on China? I would have thought that America need China more than China need America at the moment.
 
Mockney said:
Community service and military service are two hugely different things. I'm not a pacifist, but at no point should conscription of any sort ever be back on the table in any civilised country. You can't just force character building onto people. As for preparing them for working life, well school should be better at doing that, which I've long believed it fails miserably at. That still doesn't mean we should plump for the most radical alternative. That's the same rationale as "well Obama hasn't sorted the world out yet, lets give this other guy who isn't telling us anything a shot"
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Well yeah, I'm okay with alternate service for conscientious objectors. What I am really getting at is the wealthy who start the wars but don't fight them.
 
Eboue said:
Well yeah, I'm okay with alternate service for conscientious objectors. What I am really getting at is the wealthy who start the wars but don't fight them.
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Well surely the solution is to get more poor people (or people from poorer backgrounds) into politics, rather than sending more people out to be killed.
 
Eboue said:
What I am really getting at is the wealthy who start the wars but don't fight them.
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Back when there was a draft the wealthy always found a way around it, that wouldn't change. Daddy's money can get people out of all kinds of situations, either directly or by getting the best legal advice to get around it.
 
I think that less wars would be fought if everyone had a stake. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Just a guess.


But yeah, more poor people in politics. Which is why the liberal calls for less congressional pay is counterproductive.
 
Red Dreams said:
it matters because Romney has feck all Foreign Policy credentials and needs to bring 'something'...'anything'...
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He's criticised Obama on Syria a fir bit and you argue that is reasonable, yet i've not much if any of an alternative policy on Romney's part. Probably the Republicans advocate flooding the rebels with weapons indiscriminately. Six months later the same people would be complaining about radical Islamists suddenly being armed to the teeth and blowing stuff up.

Those who would ultimately form a post-Assad leadership aren't a major concern either, such representing an excess of forethought among many within the GOP and lesson learned from Iraq.
 
Eboue said:
But yeah, more poor people in politics. Which is why the liberal calls for less congressional pay is counterproductive.
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Almost irrelevant. The way politicians make the real money isn't through congressional pay, it's through getting work after they leave office because of their acts in office.

Money is politics is also the real reason why America is almost always at war
 
Mockney said:
He had a sniff of a point on a semi-related tangent, but the stunt was ridiculous. The US doesn't have conscription for a start so who signs up - whilst obviously influenced by economics - is a matter for the individual. Not to mention that no one has the right to sign up their children without even asking them. Let alone to some twat in the street with a camera. It was a stunt with a 100% guarantee of success and entirely engineered to make him look good.

Though the worst one in that film is the lingering shot of a woman crying that almost voyeuristically exploits her grief until Moore comes onto screen to give her a comforting hug.
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Not 100%. One of them could have said they already had a son out there. Tho that would have been edited out I'm sure. But that would be unlikely to happen. Because politicians' kids don't tend to sign up. Which was the point.
Balanced journalism it isn't, but it doesn't really claim to be. Doesn't mean it doesn't present a legitimate argument. The film overall I mean, not that stunt.
 
Eboue said:
Saddam was a horrible guy who oppressed his people. That Moore can't admit that makes my point about his utter lack of nuance.
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Saddam was a horrible man but that was irrelevant because a) He was at one point an ally to the states, and b) The states has worse allies. Also, Moore makes it quite clear he thinks Saddam was a nasty fella:

Who doesn't know that Saddam was a bad guy? The media did a wonderful job hammering that home every day in order to convince the public that they should support the war. For 20 seconds in this film, I become essentially the only person to say, I want you to take a look at the human beings that were living in Iraq in 2003. [...] Anyone who takes that and says that I'm trying to say that Saddam's Iraq was some utopia is just a crackpot
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Eboue said:
Someone who was a strong intelligent and intellectually honest liberal would say that we shouldn't be in Iraq because 1) it's not our problem 2) intervention wont work 3) the war was started on false premises 4) it costs money we don't have 5) it costs lives and so on.


Michael Moore doesn't do that because he is a lowest common denominator type. Instead of a coherent philosophy based on looking at evidence and precedent, he says that Iraq was great and no threat to the US.
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Actually he did emphasise the fact that intervention in Iraq wouldn't work, and that it was started on false premises, and that it costs endless amounts of money and lives. He never said Saddam was great and he was right in suggesting that Iraq was no threat to the US (made plausible by the fact that not one of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, and there was also the fact Saddam and AQ hated one another)

Eboue said:
It's true that Iraq was a bad country with a bad leader that hosted terrorists. It's also true that we never should have invaded. But Michael Moore isn't interested in anything but heavy handed imagery and a black and white worldview.
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I'm confused, are you talking about Iraq under Saddam or Iraq now? If its the former then its wrong to suggest it harbored terrorists - it never did.

Eboue said:
As for the take two sides philosophy, look at how he says the Saudis and Dubya were so close and sprouts these conspiracy theories and ignores all evidence that doesn't fit. He'll say that we didn't send enough troops while simultaneously saying we shouldn't have sent any at all. He will say that bin Laden should be treated as innocent until proven guilty and that we shouldn't go to Afghanistan. He does all this because he doesn't have a coherent philosophy. He is just interested in taking cheap shots and making misleading films for the lowest common denominator.
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Well he wasn't wrong about the Bush family and Saudi royal family being close. They've always been chums - heck if you look at recent wikileak cabels you'll see messages where the Saudis are practically begging the Yanks to attack Iran.

His philosophy has always seemed pretty consistent to me - anti-war, anti-Crony Capitalism, anti-guns, pro-Universal Healthcare, pro-Civil Liberties.
 
Kaos said:
Saddam was a horrible man but that was irrelevant because a) He was at one point an ally to the states, and b) The states has worse allies. Also, Moore makes it quite clear he thinks Saddam was a nasty fella:





Actually he did emphasise the fact that intervention in Iraq wouldn't work, and that it was started on false premises, and that it costs endless amounts of money and lives. He never said Saddam was great and he was right in suggesting that Iraq was no threat to the US (made plausible by the fact that not one of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, and there was also the fact Saddam and AQ hated one another)



I'm confused, are you talking about Iraq under Saddam or Iraq now? If its the former then its wrong to suggest it harbored terrorists - it never did.



Well he wasn't wrong about the Bush family and Saudi royal family being close. They've always been chums - heck if you look at recent wikileak cabels you'll see messages where the Saudis are practically begging the Yanks to attack Iran.

His philosophy has always seemed pretty consistent to me - anti-war, anti-Crony Capitalism, anti-guns, pro-Universal Healthcare, pro-Civil Liberties.
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Saddam paid money to Palestinian suicide bombers, he hosted one of the guys involved in the 1993 WTC attacks and his police tried to kill Bush Sr. The idea that he was some anti-terrorist crusader who posed no threat to the US is false.

If the Saudi royal family and Dubya were BFFs then why didn't they join the coalition? The Saudis hate Iran but that doesn't really have anything to do with Bush. They hated Iran under Clinton and Obama too.

He painted Iraq under Saddam as an idyllic paradise where everyone holds hands until the Yankee bombs fell from the sky.

He's inconsistent in the ways I pointed out above with regard to the royal family relationship and the troop numbers.


I'm a non interventionist who thought the Libya operation was a bad idea and I definitely didn't support the Iraq invasion. But the idea that many liberals have about Dubya being a bumbling idiot who holds phones upside down while simultaneously plotting to look the other way during 9/11 so he could kill Saddam is just inaccurate. There are lots of good criticisms of the disastrous Bush years that don't engage in dishonest hyperbole. Moore's blunt dishonesty just makes it harder for the good stuff to be taken seriously. It's aimed at the people who just want to get angry without really understanding why.
 
Hectic said:
Evra, Jaz and MJS all have something in common, and it's not their republican tendencies.
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I am not a republican. Would never consider voting for the GOP

Grinner said:
Being on the wrong side of the issues eats away at your soul, I reckon.
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I am sat right on the fence with this election. On health care, education and SS I am WAY left of Obama's current polices.

- I would implement a national health service routing all current funding into one admin, set up boards for procedure costs and have a single payer system.

- I believe education should be free for all kids through four years of college. Areas of need like nursing should be eligible for grants to make going to college completely free.

- SS should be a safety net for everyone. Not 100% sure what changes I would make but no one should be without food, housing, health care and education.
 
Eboue said:
Saddam paid money to Palestinian suicide bombers, he hosted one of the guys involved in the 1993 WTC attacks and his police tried to kill Bush Sr. The idea that he was some anti-terrorist crusader who posed no threat to the US is false.

If the Saudi royal family and Dubya were BFFs then why didn't they join the coalition? The Saudis hate Iran but that doesn't really have anything to do with Bush. They hated Iran under Clinton and Obama too.

He painted Iraq under Saddam as an idyllic paradise where everyone holds hands until the Yankee bombs fell from the sky.

He's inconsistent in the ways I pointed out above with regard to the royal family relationship and the troop numbers.


I'm a non interventionist who thought the Libya operation was a bad idea and I definitely didn't support the Iraq invasion. But the idea that many liberals have about Dubya being a bumbling idiot who holds phones upside down while simultaneously plotting to look the other way during 9/11 so he could kill Saddam is just inaccurate. There are lots of good criticisms of the disastrous Bush years that don't engage in dishonest hyperbole. Moore's blunt dishonesty just makes it harder for the good stuff to be taken seriously. It's aimed at the people who just want to get angry without really understanding why.
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Never said he was an anti-terrorist crusader. But the Bush administration had desperately tried link him with the 9-11 attacks despite the fact that there were no feasible links - Bush himself knew this but persisted anyway. And I stand by my point that Iraq wasn't a threat to the states - the country was devastated by sanctions, military morale was low, and dissent within the Ba'ath party was ripe.

The Saudis didnt join the coalition because the war was vehemently unpopular amongst Arabs in the region. They were essentially saving face. Its the same reason why the Qataris carry out their diplomacy with the Israelis in secret.

Again, he never painted Iraq as an Idyllic paradise.

You could argue that Moore's hyperbole is crude, but I think its necessary in the sensationalist culture that is the US. It certainly hammers the message home, and I certainly don't think much of what he's saying is false or inaccurate. He might more sophisticated in his delivery I'll grant you that.
 
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