[ivwshane]

So at work today on my lunch I was reading an article on cnn and the ups driver stops by and sees a pic of obama on my screen and says,
"You aren't voting for him are you?"

I asked "why?"
He said, "You know why!"
"Why because he is black?"
"No because he is muslim!", "Not that I have anything against muslims but come on, osama is a muslim and he said he would bring down the US from with in"

I tried correcting him but he said because his dad (obama) is a muslim he is a muslim.


Do people really think like this? I almost wished he said he wouldn't vote for him because he is black!

[Chainblade]

unfortunately, there are a LOT of uninformed/uneducated Americans out there...but it's pretty much how it always has been. The "best" presidential candidate is rarely voted in.

[tex]

I'm voting "against" him because...

a) he wants nationalized/socialist healthcare
b) has a very vaguely defined economical policy (which is one of McCain's few shining points)
c) he (and hilary as well) are pursuing a (stupid) isolationist policy
d) his fucking website claims that he has known about the subprime crisis for a while (and proceeds to (unintentionally) imply that he does not know WTF it is by proposing irrelevant solutions)
e) his whole campaign seems to be based on idealism; "we can make changes" - you and every other politician
f) is super-pro-social-security-YAY! - privatize that shit and save whats left of it...
g) most liberal senator of '07 per the economist (a left-leaning publication if at all)

but yeah, your delivery dude is kind of crazy though....

[ivwshane]

Originally Posted by tex

I'm voting "against" him because...

b) has a very vaguely defined economical policy (which is one of McCain's few shining points)

I'm sorry but I have to disagree on this one.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1X3efvVTLA

If he doesn't know much about the economy how will he know who to appoint to handle that kind of stuff?


I'll give you your point on healthcare and social security but I disagree with the other points.

[Mr. Ali]

^^^ holy fuck that is just scary.

[Scrubbin_Bubbles]

People are so ignorant.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by tex

I'm voting "against" him because...

b) has a very vaguely defined economical policy (which is one of McCain's few shining points)

The only thing McCain has said is that spending is out of control, ripped straight from RP. He knows shit about the economy.

[mistawiskas]

Originally Posted by Scrubbin_Bubbles

People are so ignorant.

Especially to think the prez has any power to do anything about the economic status of this country. Especially to think the prez has any power to do anything that a candidate "promisses" in the first place. Especially to believe anything anyone running for any office says....period. [/jaded]
(PS: the prez is only the whipping boy)

[ninefivezero]

To answer the original question, yes, that kind of ignorance is what EVERYONE is up against. It can work in ones favor or against it though.

[MSP]

Originally Posted by ninefivezero

To answer the original question, yes, that kind of ignorance is what EVERYONE is up against. It can work in ones favor or against it though.

The implication is that people who don't vote Democrat are ignorant. Just like that bogus graphic that circulated after Kerry lost that showed all of the red states had low IQ averages. It's a pretty arrogant, and false, point of view.

But back to the Muslim thing. Even though he isn't a practicing Muslim, his father is. Given that we're currently in an ideological battle with radical Muslims doesn't that put him in a pretty titanic case of conflicting interests?

EDIT: It would be like electing a president with a Russian father during the Cold War. No way in hell it would have happened, and for good reason.

[tweakmonkey]

Originally Posted by MSP

The implication is that people who don't vote Democrat are ignorant. Just like that bogus graphic that circulated after Kerry lost that showed all of the red states had low IQ averages. It's a pretty arrogant, and false, point of view.

I agree. You can't call all Democrats or all Republicans ignorant simply because you disagree with their ideologies.

But back to the Muslim thing. Even though he isn't a practicing Muslim, his father is. Given that we're currently in an ideological battle with radical Muslims doesn't that put him in a pretty titanic case of conflicting interests?

EDIT: It would be like electing a president with a Russian father during the Cold War. No way in hell it would have happened, and for good reason.

Radical Muslim != Muslim
Dad's beliefs != Son's beliefs

I don't follow this. My parents are devout Catholics and I don't give a SHIT about Catholicism. It's not like Obama would be out to kill his own father.

Edit: and didn't his father die 30 years ago?

[MSP]

It's not that he shares his father's beliefs per se. It just puts a very CLOSE human face on a group of people that the president is going to have to order strikes against. It's a conflict of interest, just as the Russian example would have been.

[ThatHideousStrength]

Originally Posted by tex

I'm voting "against" him because...

a) he wants nationalized/socialist healthcare
b) has a very vaguely defined economical policy (which is one of McCain's few shining points)
c) he (and hilary as well) are pursuing a (stupid) isolationist policy
d) his fucking website claims that he has known about the subprime crisis for a while (and proceeds to (unintentionally) imply that he does not know WTF it is by proposing irrelevant solutions)
e) his whole campaign seems to be based on idealism; "we can make changes" - you and every other politician
f) is super-pro-social-security-YAY! - privatize that shit and save whats left of it...
g) most liberal senator of '07 per the economist (a left-leaning publication if at all)

but yeah, your delivery dude is kind of crazy though....

Don't forget, he wants to ban ALL semi-automatics and give all illegal citizens drivers licenses.

I don't like any of them to begin with though.

[HEAVY-D]

People who say this are not ignorant they know exactly what they are saying and doing. They can't say publicly "I won't vote for him because he's Black" but they can say "I won't vote for him because he's Muslim". Yes some people are ignorant and feel this way but most know better. PC is still alive. If a White person comes out and says "I won't vote for him because he's Black" they will be demonized by the media and public.

[namelessentity]

This is a quote from Obama:

For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.

This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.

In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.

It seems to me that he was raised pretty similar to the way you think about religion, MSP.

Snopes also says his parents divorced when he was 2, so I don't really think that in 2 years of life his father influenced him on religious beliefs. This brings me back to the point that people are influenced by fucking stupid trivial shit that doesn't matter AT ALL.

[tex]

Originally Posted by ivwshane

I'm sorry but I have to disagree on this one.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1X3efvVTLA

If he doesn't know much about the economy how will he know who to appoint to handle that kind of stuff?


I'll give you your point on healthcare and social security but I disagree with the other points.

lmao (literally; I almost fell out of my chair) God that video makes him look like a raging dipshit. I love the first "freeze frame" where he has his mouth open. Good find just for comedy's sake

On his response to the fed lowering the rates: I actually think that was good. If he had a major opinion on that, then we wouldn't need a chairman of the fed (actually I don't think we need the fucking fed, but who am I?) And he said he doesn't know as much as he should, at least given my interpretation.

His wanting to cut the corporate tax plus push R&D is what I was specifically referring to. I don't think there needs to be much of an economic policy at all, let the market sort itself out. The stuff I've seen/read just has Obama speaking in broad generalities. They don't need to do a ton, but I really like McCain's few ideas on that.

The only thing McCain has said is that spending is out of control, ripped straight from RP. He knows shit about the economy.

...wait, what? Ron Paul is the first one to have realized this?!?!?!

[ivwshane]

Originally Posted by MSP

It's not that he shares his father's beliefs per se. It just puts a very CLOSE human face on a group of people that the president is going to have to order strikes against. It's a conflict of interest, just as the Russian example would have been.

I'm sorry msp but that logic baffles me. I could understand maybe, maybe, if he was extremely close to his father and studied with his father but the fact is obamas father and mother separated when he was two.

Barack Obama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (born in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Bondo District, Nyanza Province, Kenya,[8] of Luo ethnicity) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas).[9] Throughout his early years, he was commonly known at home and school as "Barry".[10] Obama's parents met while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student.[11] They separated when he was two years old and later divorced.[12] His father went to Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies, then returned to Kenya, where he died in an automobile accident in 1982.[13] His mother married another foreign student, Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967.[14] Obama attended local schools in Jakarta from ages 6 to 10, where classes were taught in Indonesian.[15][16] He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade until his graduation in 1979.[17] Obama's mother, Ann, died of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer a few months after the publication of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.[18]
In the memoir, Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's American middle class family. His knowledge about his African father, who returned once for a brief visit in 1971, came mainly through family stories and photographs.[13] Of his early childhood, Obama writes: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind."[19] The book describes his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[20] He wrote that he used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind".[21] Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear

But lets ignore this, lets say obama is a muslim, what is he going to do? It's not like he's going to start offering arms to the terrorist (and if he did it would be no different than what past presidents have done). Are you afraid that if he gets elected he will fill the white house with muslims and perhaps osama bin laden will be the head of state? Do you think that if we are attacked again that he might hesitate to strike back because they are his brethren?
Or are you worried that he might start infusing muslim religion into american life, like changing, "In God We Trust" to, "In Allah We Trust"?

[smirnoff]

Mccain seems as unclear as anybody on the economy.


Q: Are Americans better off than they were eight years ago?

A: You could argue that Americans overall are better off, because we have had a pretty good prosperous time, with low unemployment and low inflation and a lot of good things have happened. A lot of jobs have been created. But let's have some straight talk. Things are tough right now. Americans are uncertain about this housing crisis. Americans are uncertain about the economy, as we see the stock market bounce up and down. But I think what we're trying to do to fix this economy is important. We've got to address the subprime housing problem. We need to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which I voted for twice to do so. I think we need to eliminate the alternate minimum tax.
A: I think we are better off overall if you look at the entire eight-year period, when you look at the millions of jobs that have been created, the improvement in the economy, etc.



wtf is he blathering about? Straight talk my ass. This is a typical non answer. At the time he gave this statement UI was higher than at any point in 2000...

[ivwshane]

Originally Posted by ThatHideousStrength

Don't forget, he wants to ban ALL semi-automatics and give all illegal citizens drivers licenses.

I don't like any of them to begin with though.

I think that's a valid reason not to vote for some one.

On his response to the fed lowering the rates: I actually think that was good. If he had a major opinion on that, then we wouldn't need a chairman of the fed (actually I don't think we need the fucking fed, but who am I?) And he said he doesn't know as much as he should, at least given my interpretation.

His wanting to cut the corporate tax plus push R&D is what I was specifically referring to. I don't think there needs to be much of an economic policy at all, let the market sort itself out. The stuff I've seen/read just has Obama speaking in broad generalities. They don't need to do a ton, but I really like McCain's few ideas on that.

That video was horrible but it was the first one I found that you hear him say he doesn't know what he is talking about.

As far as cutting interest rates go, it's not black and white, if cutting interest rates is all that has to be done to get this economy going then it would have been done already but instead it's a balance, too much cutting and inflation sky rockets. Inflation is not good, especially when the average income has not been rising at the same rate.