quote:Actually, it is pretty peculiar. They didn't put up a picture of the guy in the classroom (which I think would be a good idea), they put up a projection of him during the pledge of allegiance and turned it off immediately afterward. That sends an entirely different message and I would be uncomfortable with it if my kids were in the school.
I'd be uncomfortable with it too (heck, I think that the Pledge of Allegiance is grossly un-American in itself), but I very much doubt that this actually happened.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Laughing doesn't prove anything about your wisdom or intelligence.
Neither does any post I have seen you make on these topics the past 6 years, but that doesn't seem to stop you....
Actually I am wrong. It does prove something about those qualities. Just not what you think they do.
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posted
I took a look at the site where the issue was first posted (the link is in the article Ron linked to). I didn't read the whole thing, but it looks to me that the poster is saying that he complained and the principal had it all shut down. It seems that he's not providing any specifics, and the school district is denying it, so it's hard to say exactly what happened.
I think it's fine to have a picture of the President in the classroom by the flag. My AP US History teacher had pictures of all the Presidents along the tops of the walls. I wouldn't be terribly pleased if the photo was put up only if it happened to be a President the teacher liked, though.
quote:The photo looks 3d because they blurred the background so as not to distract from Obama. It freaks me too, sad that the Flag is blurred as if it is second rate to Obama. This is a very vain man.
It really is amazing the lengths people will go to to criticize a President they don't like. Yes, the background is blurred so as not to distract from Obama. That's an incredibly common portrait technique, and the photo would be horribly cluttered if everything was in focus (as it is, I think it's not that great a picture because it's too busy). Really, a simple background would be better. Something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George-W-Bush.jpegPosts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:too many people have disrespected the office for too long, IMO. We could do with a generation that views the President as a hero rather than a punchline.
To me, by far the largest disrespect of the office of the President was electing someone so obviously unsuited to it as George W Bush.
To me, I don't think you have much of a leg to stand on when you complain that people are making fun of the god-awful candidate you elected. In that case, your disrespect seems much the greater.
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About Obama's supposed "Messiah" complex: I would agree that the overblown imagery invoked by Hillary, McCain, and others, and particularly the attribution to anything Obama himself has said or claimed, is ineffectual and inaccurate. However, I do think Obama has consciously caste himself as a traditional hero in the Christian (particularly Puritan) tradition. I think this is what Clinton and McCain were trying to tap into. But it fails (IMO) because most people prefer hope to cynicism.
This is (IMO) exactly what drew Democrats to Reagan in the 1980 election. It wasn't his policy stances, it was that he effectively invoked the Puritan ideal of hope for renewal through sacrifice. The same was true of MLK, Lincoln, and others whom Obama frequently invokes (and is consequently favorably compared to).
So, while I think the "Messiah" complaints generally fall on deaf ears, it's not because there's nothing to them. It's just a misjudging of the hearts of the voters. We want hope. We want a President who we can admire. We want to believe.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: To me, by far the largest disrespect of the office of the President was electing someone so obviously unsuited to it as George W Bush.
To me, I don't think you have much of a leg to stand on when you complain that people are making fun of the god-awful candidate you elected. In that case, your disrespect seems much the greater.
I think it extends far further than Bush. It's been since Nixon (and maybe Kennedy) that people have respected the President as "the President." While I feel a certain degree of egalitarianism is healthy for democracy, I think the fact that every President for the past 40 years has been viewed more as a buffoon than a hero is problematic.
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posted
It's difficult for me to really speak about earlier than George H W Bush, but that has not been my experience for him or President Clinton. The majority view of either of those in my experience was not a buffoon.
As for the President as hero, it very much depends on what we mean by hero. I don't want someone is seen as a can't do wrong, will fix everything guy. I don't want a king.
But someone who represents the best and the brightest who behaves and is seen as admirable and who inspires others to do better, yeah, that I can get behind.
---
edit: I think many people seem to want the President to be regarded as above regular Americans and that criticism of him is somehow wrong. I strongly disagree with both of these sentiments
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote: While things in the economy truly are bad, this is not simply about reporting the truth; it's about representing that truth in the most responsible way. A media that is too much in love with stories that bleed is capable of making the recession worse than it has to be.
For instance, I recently read a headline announcing that the recession had begun to hurt small-business owners. The underlying article was about, believe it or not, a survey that registered an increase in the optimism of small-business owners. Deriding that small increase as insignificant, the article went on to tout the many sinister economic beasts awaiting us around every corner.
I saw another headline trumpeting negative job news. Upon reading the underlying article, I learned that initial jobless claims had unexpectedly fallen in the previous week. But this hopeful fact was quickly brushed aside as an aberration, and possibly even a result of layoffs getting an earlier start than in past winters.
quote: President Barack Obama says the recession will turn into a "catastrophe" if the economic stimulus is not passed quickly.
Obama rejected several criticisms of the plan: that tax cuts alone will solve the problem, or that longer-term goals such as energy independence and health care reform are not also critical to address at the same time. The White House released some of Obama's remarks ahead of an event on executive compensation limits.
posted
If the Senate and the House are the ones adding tons of extra spending provisions to the bill, how is it still Obama's stimulus plan? From the looks of things, maybe half of the actual spending in the bill is something he personally suggested.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I do not consider Obama any sort of Messiah. I fully expect him to make mistakes - he has already - and I will come down on him when he does.
But he is making all the moves that I would want a president to make, and saying the things I wanted to hear when I voted, and he is trying his best to work with Republicans even in a situation where he really doesn't have to. He is not going to suddenly drop all his Democratic ways and push tax cuts across the board and he's not going to drop out and put Hillary in his place so some people simply will never be happy with him, but he does seem to be trying, damn near single-handedly, to make government work again.
He screwed up with his nominees. And then, you know what? He admitted it. On the air. Publicly. Something the previous pres never did in 8 years, and the pres-before-that had real problems with. He admitted it and moved on, like a grownup. I almost forgot what that was like.
quote:In view of some of his other miscues, like ordering the immediately shutdown of Guantanamo, only to learn that he couldn't do that, he has to allow a year for it to wind down (and even with that extension, 50% of Americans oppose the shutdown to 44% in favor according to a recent Gallop poll)
You're suggesting that he was backed down. he wasn't. He ordered the shutdown, with a deadline of a year, to allow time for the detainees to be processed. That was the plan, not something forced on him. What, you thought he was just going to fling open the doors? And it may take much less than that year to accomplish it.
quote:ordering that U.S. tax dollars be sent to fund overseas abortions (which 58% of Americans say they disappove of in the same Gallup poll)
I'd be curious to see how the poll would look if the question was what people thought about U.S. tax dollars being sent overseas to fund family planning, which is what the money is used for. No U.S. funds are used for abortions, that's a separate law that's still in place. Only for education, and other resources.
Also, hey, well done on picking out the 2 items out of 7 in the poll where Obama did not enjoy clear majority approval. The name of the Gallup article is even "Americans Approve of Most Obama Actions to Date." Obviously a disastrous first week for our new leader.
quote:Yep, just like Bush--not to mention the diplomatic corners he has painted himself into--at what point does Obama become branded as a doofus?
Which corners are those, exactly?
Re: the pledge to Obama. I'd like to see more verification, but it wouldn't surprise me. People are often idiots. What I'm wondering is what this is supposed to prove. Was the teacher acting on orders? Is there a secret White-House-endorsed plan to indoctrinate children into worshiping Obama? I guess it's supposed to somehow indicate that everyone who supports Obama is a mindless drone or something. One teacher, out of the 6.2 million teachers in the U.S., is an over-enthusiastic nutjob, so obviously we must distrust anything Obama says.
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quote:He screwed up with his nominees. And then, you know what? He admitted it. On the air. Publicly. Something the previous pres never did in 8 years, and the pres-before-that had real problems with. He admitted it and moved on, like a grownup. I almost forgot what that was like.
posted
That really doesn't seem to be the case in my experience in real life.
And, if you look at politics, George Bush admitted to almost no mistakes during his cluster flock of a Presidency.
I have a lot more respect for people who were willing to admit that they were wrong and attempt to learn from these mistakes than people who pretend that they make no mistakes. From what I've seen, the first type tends to make many fewer mistakes than the second type.
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quote:Originally posted by lobo: When you MAKE lots of mistakes, it is easier to admit to some of them...
If that were true, the previous administration it should have been trivial for the Bush administration to admit mistakes yet . . .
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: That really doesn't seem to be the case in my experience in real life.
And, if you look at politics, George Bush admitted to almost no mistakes during his cluster flock of a Presidency.
I have a lot more respect for people who were willing to admit that they were wrong and attempt to learn from these mistakes than people who pretend that they make no mistakes. From what I've seen, the first type tends to make many fewer mistakes than the second type.
quote:But it turns out that Obama's words, well, mattered. They made it harder to ignore scandal, as the Bush administration had done. The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes. This has made for a more troubled transition, but will probably also result in a cleaner administration. For all the embarrassments, this, in a concrete sense, is what change looks like. It's not an administration that decides to be clean so much as one that has little choice in the matter.
posted
I think Obama should have different ethics rules for his appointees. It was a nice principle to storm onto the scene and say "no lobbyists...except for these two or three or ten guys!" I think instead he should have included the new rules and guidelines for what lobbyists can serve and where, and what rules there are for ensuring there are no shady financial dealings.
Because as I've said before, a lot of these guys really are professionals who know what they are doing and could be a boon to government service, but they're limited by the stigma, and Obama loses more points than he gains by making grandiose rules that he immediately, and very publicly, asks for exceptions for. There's a principle and a PR problem at work there.
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posted
"The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes."
Or, he is just putting more people forward who are slimy creeps...
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quote:Luckily for BHO, nobody expects him to fulfill even half of what he promised...
I do, so your entire argument is flawed. As are pretty much all arguments based on sweeping generalizations that bear little resemblance to reality.
[whispers]Psst... "the media" includes Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, et al, who are most decidedly not giving him a break.[/whispers]
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posted
So, given that Obama admits Daschle was a mistake, what does that make Geithner? Why is it a mistake to appoint a tax evader as Sec HHS, but not as SecTreasury? Or are their situations materially different?
<edit>I didn't mean for that to sound as confrontational as it does. I'm not trying to play some gotcha game, nor am I trying to malign Geithner. I'm just wondering what the difference between the two is, and how the administration can justify keeping Giethner given their condemnation of the Daschle appointment.</edit>
quote:Or, he is just putting more people forward who are slimy creeps...
Do you really, really want to go there and start comparing politicians from both sides? Ain't neither side without its embarrassments...
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posted
Oh dear, I pointed out that your statement was half wrong and I'm "nitpicking."
"Mainstream media" includes Rush, Hannity, Coulter, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Joe Scarborough, David Brooks, Michelle Malkin, Charles Krauthammer, Drudge (off the top of my head, I'm sure I'm missing some obvious names). I suppose Townhall.com, NewsMax and WorldNetDaily.com might not be mainstream, but they certainly have the traffic to compete with the liberal sites. You can certianly claim bias by specific networks/newspapers/commentators, and with justification, but you don't get to play the underdog and claim "the media" is against you.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
You make it sound like half the mainstream media is conservative and half is liberal.
The big difference is that the people listening to Rush et al. are mostly conservative and they don't claim to be news - they are commentators.
Those that hear the news from abc/nbc/cnn/fox etc. are expecting unbiased journalism. That is not what they are getting...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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quote:Originally posted by lobo: You make it sound like half the mainstream media is conservative and half is liberal.
The big difference is that the people listening to Rush et al. are mostly conservative and they don't claim to be news - they are commentators.
Those that hear the news from abc/nbc/cnn/fox etc. are expecting unbiased journalism. That is not what they are getting...
I expect honest journalism. I do not expect unbiased journalism. But I think we've had this conversation before.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:What will be more telling is seeing who has the last laugh.
You said stuff like this before the GOP got wrecked in two consecutive elections and lost the presidency to the candidate you repeatedly assured us was unelectable.
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posted
You didn't say the news. You said the media. Yes, the news programs are often biased. FOX is helping even things up a bit, there.
But when it comes to shows and people who influence how people think, I think the right-wing isn't nearly as victimized as they might have us believe. An awful lot of people out there -- left and right and other -- really don't draw that much of a distinction between the news and the guy commenting on it afterward. And when the radio personality complains that no one ever reports the stuff he does, and he has an audience of 13.5 million people (at last count) to complain to, I have to think that the message is getting out there.
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quote: The Senate Intelligence Committee is taking up the last of President Barack Obama's nominee for a high-profile national security post, the surprising pick of Leon Panetta to head the CIA.
Going into Thursday's public hearing, the former Democratic congressman from California knows he will have to give up lucrative seats on boards of directors, end his consulting work and do without well-paid speeches while running the spy agency.
quote: In choosing Panetta, Obama passed over current and former CIA officials with impressive credentials. The other candidates had either worked in intelligence during the Bush administration's development of policies on interrogation and torture or earlier, during the months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
Panetta was not expected to face major opposition. Obama failed to consult with the committee's new head, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., before going public with the selection. But a hastily arranged phone talk involving Obama, Panetta and Vice President Joe Biden smoothed the ruffled feathers.
quote: Panetta is a strong supporter of Obama's rules.
"Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground," he wrote in the Washington Monthly last year.
Panetta comes with strong management skills, an insider's grasp of government, and the trust and confidence of the new president. But he has no professional intelligence gathering or analytical experience. The CIA's current deputy director, Steven Kappes, is expected to remain in that job.
quote: Shoppers grappling with rising layoffs and shrinking retirement accounts dug deep into survival mode last month, leading to sharp January sales declines for many retailers. The poor results raised more concerns about the financial health of the industry.
The malaise crossed the spectrum of retailing, from department chains to teen chains. Wet Seal Inc., Stage Stores Inc. and Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. were among those posting deeper-than-expected sales declines.
Sounds extremely dire and there is no hope for anyone yet....
quote: A sales tally by Thomson Reuters found that 12 retailers it tracks beat expectations, while 11 missed projections. The tally is based on same-store sales, or sales at stores opened at least a year, which are a key indicator of retailer's health.
One more than half of the retailers being tracked beat expectations? While not great it is certainly not completely terrible.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
DK: they don't say how many met expectations, neither beating them nor missing them.
But yes, while retailing is in bad shape, it doesn't seem to be unpredictably bad shape, which is a good sign.
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posted
Fugu, no it doesn't say that and it would be nice to know how many met expectations. If many of them met expectations combined with 12 beating expectations then I would think the economy is on a small decline but not anywhere close to the Great Depression
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.
In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that's been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.
quote: Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing.
"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the newspaper piece titled, "The Action Americans Need."
He rejected the argument that more tax cuts are needed in the plan and that piecemeal measures would be sufficient, arguing that Americans made their intentions clear in the election.
"I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," he wrote.
Is the change Obama voters went to the polls for? I guess economies no longer run in cycles so if we don't allow President Obama to spend well over 900 billion dollars we will never ever recover. The only solution is the Government? A lot of articles I read state that even if we do nothing the recession will end in a few years.
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posted
Oh, we're not anywhere close to the great depression in terms of effect on most people. Destruction of wealth, arguably, but not consumption effects in the general populace.
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quote:I guess economies no longer run in cycles so if we don't allow President Obama to spend well over 900 billion dollars we will never ever recover.
You know, in fairness to Obama, the $900 billion isn't his idea. The package is hardly "his" to own.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by lobo: "The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes."
Or, he is just putting more people forward who are slimy creeps...
Dude. You have no credibility whatsoever. You have ignored everything, but EVERYTHING reasonable that is being said here. I don't know what makes you take the 8 seconds out of your day to type in the stupidest possible comeback when someone says something actually valuable, but I wonder at it, when I'm not glancing past your gnomic "contributions"
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight: Is the change Obama voters went to the polls for? I guess economies no longer run in cycles so if we don't allow President Obama to spend well over 900 billion dollars we will never ever recover. The only solution is the Government? A lot of articles I read state that even if we do nothing the recession will end in a few years.
I'm no economist and I didn't vote for this particular stimulus plan. I voted for people to represent me in making that decision. Spending that money makes me nervous but then again, so does the current economy.
The trouble with the cyclical view of this recession is that a lot of bad decisions, especially bad loans, led to our current problems, which suggests to me that this isn't just normal.
What concerns me -- and maybe I'm nuts -- is that I still see a problem with an economy based on credit, which ours still seems to be. In his appeal last year, Bush's stimulus package was supposedly all about bolstering lines of credit so that people could get loans.
So basically what I'm saying is that I see some very real problems that need fixing. This isn't the sort of thing that can just be left alone. My fear about the stimulus package is that it's just a band aid and that it doesn't solve the right problems.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
*%&^#^@&#&!! Now they're talking about cutting a bunch of the stuff I liked in the stimulus bill. What the hell? I recognize that it's too big, there's too much pork and it needs to be shrunk, but if they need to shrink it then they should remove the %&#*&^ pork! No these good programs that are useful on a national scale.
quote:Among the initiatives that could be cut are $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $14 million for cyber security research by the Homeland Security Department, $1 billion for the National Science Foundation, $400 million for research and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, $850 million for Amtrak and $400 million for climate change research. But so far, none of the suggestions come close to being enough to shrink the package on the scale proposed.
I mean those aren't pork -- pork is national funding for local stuff. And those are tiny peaces of it. But tiny peaces that help the economy in very real and good ways!
What's more the MSM is NOT backing up Obama the way you lot (DK, lobo, SenojRetep, etc) are claiming. Quite the opposite, they're placing the blame for the @#*$(& congressional Republicans obstructionism at his feet! As if he hasn't done every thing humanly possible to be bipartisan!
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posted
The dirty secret is that there really isn't a lot of "pork" in the bill, relative to the massive amount of cash handed out to the poor. Of that $900 billion, about $600 billion of it is income redistribution.
The problem with income redistribution as it's being done here is that they're not raising taxes on the rich to pay for enough of it yet (which is after all a bad idea in a recession), so they're attempting to pay Paul before robbing Peter. Which in itself would be perfectly Keynesian, except that they're actually borrowing money from Yang to pay Paul while making angry eyebrows at Peter the whole time.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Dude. You have no credibility whatsoever. You have ignored everything, but EVERYTHING reasonable that is being said here. I don't know what makes you take the 8 seconds out of your day to type in the stupidest possible comeback when someone says something actually valuable, but I wonder at it, when I'm not glancing past your gnomic "contributions"
Don't have a cow.
Feel free to ignore my posts if they affect you so...
I wouldn't characterize my post as a comeback. It was referencing an article someone linked to. My point is that the article claimed that the reason so many of Obama's appointments had some controversy attached to them was because they were being vetted more than past presidential appointments. I offered another take on that. Sorry it doesn't jive with your Obama man-love. Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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quote: You know, in fairness to Obama, the $900 billion isn't his idea. The package is hardly "his" to own.
He is the President and is pushing the stimulus package as the only way to save the economy...so yes it is "his" to own...along with Democrats too but it starts and ends with President Obama.
quote: What's more the MSM is NOT backing up Obama the way you lot (DK, lobo, SenojRetep, etc) are claiming.
I believe I posted articles on how some media/news outlets and President Obama are making the economy sound extremely dire when the news is only bad.
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quote:so they're attempting to pay Paul before robbing Peter. Which in itself would be perfectly Keynesian, except that they're actually borrowing money from Yang to pay Paul while making angry eyebrows at Peter the whole time.
quote: . I offered another take on that. Sorry it doesn't jive with your Obama man-love.
I'm sorry it was a pathetic attempt at spin. Your "different takes" are idiotic- therein lies the problem. It's very easy for you to take what someone has said, which is backed up with actual evidence, ignore that evidence, and then offer your "different take." That makes you a shill. It also makes you annoying.
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posted
Actually the response was fine, up until the "Sorry it doesn't jive with your Obama man-love" part which is simply condescending, dismissive jingoism.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Actually the response was fine, up until the "Sorry it doesn't jive with your Obama man-love" part which is simply condescending, dismissive jingoism.
True, but please use smaller words...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Alcon: What's more the MSM is NOT backing up Obama the way you lot (DK, lobo, SenojRetep, etc) are claiming.
*looks around* Who me? I've questioned Obama's handling of Daschle, whether the specific sort of government spending in the stimulus bill is appropriate, and whether Obama feeds the Obama "Messiah" meme through rhetorical style and heavy-handed symbolism, but I haven't asserted what you claim. Actually, I think the MSM has beaten up the bill quite a bit (rightly so, IMO).
As far as Susan Collins list, which you cite, they are exactly the sort of intelligent, long-term spending proposals that don't belong in a stimulus package. If you want to increase these bureaucracies' budgets, that's great. Do it through the budgetary process that is in place. If you want to stimulate the economy through government spending, that's great: do it through definable, finitely-scoped, goal-driven projects.
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posted
I saw a breakdown the other day of the renewable energy spending in the bill and if it passes, it's incredible. It's everything environmentalists have been wanting and more for the last decade.
Between that and the new money for student aid, and electronic health records, there's a lot in this bill that I like personally and that I think will actually help stimulate the economy both in the short and long term.
But I think there's probably several billion dollars there in wasteful spending, and necessary though this may be, it doesn't mean we can be lazy about it, not with what we're paying out in interest on the national debt every year.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:As far as Susan Collins list, which you cite, they are exactly the sort of intelligent, long-term spending proposals that don't belong in a stimulus package. If you want to increase these bureaucracies' budgets, that's great. Do it through the budgetary process that is in place. If you want to stimulate the economy through government spending, that's great: do it through definable, finitely-scoped, goal-driven projects.
I totally agree. If it's necessary to pass this massive stimulus package, then do it, but don't try to slip a whole mess of other things onto it.
It was even worse last year when the bail-out wouldn't pass until they attached a whole mess of pork to it to bribe the Republican hold outs.
edit:
The "let's slip completely unrelated stuff onto a popular/necessary bill" thing is something I think is really wrong.
I don't support a full Presidential line item veto, but I'd love to see an ability for the President to send amendments like that back to Congress to pass or fail on a simple majority.
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