magekillr

Obama criticises Bush for his policies, but he's carrying on some of the very same policies. There's nothing special about this leader except for his rhetoric skills and charismatic personality. Other than that, he's your average politician; they don't really give a [bleep] about you. Here's why I hate both parties: Democrats are usually hypocrites, and Republicans usually nominate imbeciles with a religious agenda. Neither parties are as good as they say they are, and they usually don't help civilians. (Supporting the average person would be Socialism, which is evil :roll: ) While I strongly disagree with this stance of Obama's, I don't think you're being fair to him, AT ALL. He's not carrying on "the very same policies," he is just doing that WITH THIS. Everything else, quite frankly, has been like a dream to me, and I think Obama is a conservative relatively speaking to my ideology. And frankly, I love politicians like Obama. Sure I love Dennis Kucinich's and Ralph Nader's policies. However, what would they get done in government if they're [cabbage]ty politicians? Nothing. Obama is a master politician, and I love it. I know where he's [cabbage]ting (such as with this, the drug war, his lack of support for gay marriage; I know he doesn't support this but is letting power get to his head, he has called the drug war a massive failure, and a survey was found by him acknowledging support for gay marriage), but I know that he's genuinely trying to change the government for the better. Unfortunately you have obstructionist Republicans who are doing nothing but saying "no" to anything he says regardless of what it is (which is why I'm hoping the right starts calling Obama out on this wiretapping nonsense), and you have pansy conservative Democrats that get in the way of important policy like Cap and Trade for carbon emissions, or lifting the trade embargo on Cuba. It takes a politician to one them up.

In these situations, most certainly. You end terrorism by ending recruitment and funding. He's attempting to get the Afghan people to find a new crop to harvest like they did in other countries such as Thailand. Most of their funding comes from poppy sales, and I doubt they'd be made legal anytime soon. And you end recruitment by investing in their countries, and ending this "war on terrorism" rhetoric.

They're living in Palestinian territory illegally through their settlements. Thankfully, Obama has demanded that they get rid of these, and ban any future ones:

Anyone who has a brain would justify the war on terror by mentioning how destructive and ludicrously fundamental terrorists are, not by their opposition to Western freedom. You win people's hearts and minds by peace and words, not arms and guns:

How about I have rights, and it's the President's job to defend them? Apparently you don't care if your rights are trampled on, so long as you "live unhindered." Sorry, I can't adhere to such totalitarianism that can and will be abused if it continues. You might like to pretend that the fourth amendment to the Constitution doesn't exist, but I don't. It's as real as my right to free speech, probably the second most important amendment behind the first. I'm sorry that you embrace such Orwellian rules like these, perhaps when your rights are infringed upon "directly" after an ever expansion of the government's secrets you'll understand why things of this nature are dangerous and illegal. I'm certainly not an anarchist. I am protecting the document by which this government and country was founded upon. If anything, I'm a statist.

The storm is rolling in: http://www.politico.com/singletitlevide ... 8852128001

Obama being President really has nothing to do with this, except that once something corruptible like this is instated, it will not leave until there is a scandal like there was with Water Gate. After Obama the next administration will only continue this, unless it's someone like Dennis Kucinich, and it will continue expanding until there's a scandal or public outcry. So no, I'm not necessarily surprised, but as the lawyer I quoted noted, we don't yet know the administration's position on this....yet. It doesn't look good, though.

Some updates about this: I've read other lawyers that have represented the government confirming this. This is lawyering, not policy, and doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the Obama Admin's policy re: surveillance. However, the problem that I have with these arguments is that while they're ethically correct in a court of law and could set dangerous precedent if overturned, Obama's votes to continue FISA while in the Senate certainly doesn't help this argument along. For the time being, I will see Obama guilty as I charge him, as he voted for telecom immunity on more than one occasion. Maybe it was pragmatism, maybe it wasn't. What I know is that he voted for it, and for now, I'll take the lawyers' positions as the administration's until I have reason to do otherwise.

It's not communism. Communism involves direct democracy. America is a Republic, and by default cannot be Communist. Second, Communism is not tied at the hip with totalitarianism. Lastly, if this is Communism, we've been communist since 2001.

God, maybe you should learn what you're talking about before you try and talk about foreign affairs and United States politics. China cannot afford for us to fail, and quite frankly, neither can the rest of the world. With a globalized economy, ours providing a significant chunk, it will feel like a shock wave that dismantles how the rest of the world operates. This banking crisis? It's mostly the US's fault, even though the EU deregulated many of their own banks. CDO's, however, are not strictly defined as an investment to be made in the US, they were made elsewhere. Anyway, about your claim that they're "preparing for the US to fall:" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... china-debt http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat ... _chinese_a http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opini ... ef=opinion We're not going anywhere, and China won't allow it to happen even if we were in such a danger.

SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... .DTL&tsp=1 A few things. First, I have to say that the Department of Justice under Obama has been the largest failure of his administration thus far. They still haven't released the torture memos that they have, even though Holder wants them to. Apparently the Republicans are blocking the nominations of two key people that will define torture for what it is: torture, and illegal. Why? Because unless Obama drops the talk of releasing these torture memos that will allow for the prosecution of the Bush admin, they will continue to filibuster these nominations [1]. Now I'm not sure if Obama is just shifting the blame onto the Republicans and is listening to one of the CIA's most important people, John Brennan [2], but ultimately it doesn't matter if they're blocking the nominations or not, it's NOT an excuse. Second, this administration's DOJ is even more totalitarian than Bush's with regard to telecom immunity. Under Bush, supposedly the government could be held accountable, but private enterprise could not. The DOJ is now pushing to bring the government under that same protection by dropping charges against the Bush administration, and using "state secrets" as their excuse. [3] Glenn Greenwald notes many of these injustices in his blog, here: [4] Lastly, I'm very much aware that Obama doesn't want to make enemies over at the CIA as JFK did after the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco, but this is no excuse. He is failing to do his job as President by protecting the Constitution with all of his power. This is not justifiable, and it's very dangerous. My only hope is that the right side of the political spectrum that wants to chastise Obama for every little thing will jump on board and help the left's voices to grow stronger. Keith Olbermann has begun the charge among the MSM , so maybe Sean Hannity will be interested in helping...unless he's still busy criticizing Obama for his criticism of the United States and Jeremiah Wright. [6]

Everyone else isn't allowed to get married. And lol @ whomever decided to quote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Screw the U.N. and it's crappy declarations which no country follows in its entirety. Yeah, damn those human rights. Those blasted things are just horrible for humanity! I mean, condemnation of genocide? Pffft, genocide happens all of the time, people. Get over it!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00021.html

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ ... r_the.html Fail. It was a perfect gift.

The last thing Obama will do is give a knee jerk reaction. Apparently you guys haven't been paying attention to the new leader of the free world. Just a recap of what he's been up to: The rest is here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch ... oba-3.html And of course his resolve between China and France: Rest here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch ... ma-pl.html And finally, a call for all nations, including the US and Russia, to suspend all nuclear weapons programs. Of course it's only a dream, but we all have dreams, and hopefully something will come of it: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090404/pl_ ... ama_europe

I think I just puked up my macaroni. "Over run by gays?" What exactly do you mean by that? Is it at all related to the people in the 60's hoping that they wouldn't be over run by dark people?

That's all I have got to say.

Congratulations, Iowa. Now don't fail us in 2010 or 2012 with a ballot initiative that will define marriage as between a man and a woman only.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... er_Freedom I am not a fan of PETA's tactics, but this accusation is just plain ridiculous. I don't believe it when this is your source.

Who cares if religion is a very sensitive topic? The Muslims are doing themselves a disservice by silencing all criticism for their religion. Long gone are the days of the Spanish Muslim culture that was once the greatest place to question authority, and serve as a center of learning.

Doesn't mean anything. International law like this is rarely ever enforced, and I suspect that this will never receive enforcement except by the countries that wanted it passed. It's not like they allow criticism already anyway, this just enforces their ability to enforce it in their own countries. What's even scarier? People in a lot of the southern states value religion just as much as these Muslim countries: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/Alaba ... ommon.aspx

I wish. I want my eye brow pierced but I can't do that while I'm working for big name engineering firms and/or the government.

UGH! NO! You'll be given ADDITIONAL money if you do community service. No matter what, you will still be given assistance.

No. Lol. Currently, college students are given federal loans if they apply for them. It's called a FAFSA form. Depending on your parents' income, you'll be given a choice of loans, and/or grants. The grants (Pell Grants) have been significantly increased through this legislation, so more people will have access to more educational aid. Everyone regardless of income is given a certain amount of loans (typically it's $2500 for freshmen, $3000 something for sophomores, $4000 something for juniors, and like $5500 for seniors). This legislation also made it so if you do 100 hours of community service, you will be given $4,000 in education assistance. You don't have to do the community service, but you won't be given the additional $4,000 in money. The $4,000 is not a loan. I don't know if the number is still $4,000, that's what it was during the campaign. This also gives more money to organizations like Americorps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmeriCorps). Now, what Alex Jones did was take Obama's campaign "Obama Campaign 2.0," and mix it with this volunteer assistance plan. Obama's campaign is calling all of his volunteers to try and get support for certain parts of his agenda, such as his budget, because Republicans are acting as obstructionists to certain pieces of the agenda. So Alex Jones takes that, mixes it with the education assistance, bastardizes it in his own language, and makes it seem you must do this or face the consequences.