Presidential Election (2 Viewers)

[SylviaB]

look mate im glad obama won

 

[halapenyo]

Romney will (would) be the best president in decades.

look mate im glad obama won

wot

 

[moll.]

I think Sly is pointing out (like Lentern did more explicitly) that Romney as an individual is a good bloke and would have been a good president, but because of the corrupting influence of his party and their more ridiculous policies, in reality he would have been shit.

 

[Riproot]

look mate im glad obama won

Deal with it.

 

[funkshen]

Not quite my point, yes his party dragged him down but that was more about weakening his chances of becoming President. If he won, the Tea Party couldn't make him do shit. I see Mitt in much the same light as Malcolm Turnbull, a sort of urbane social progressive who believes strongly in the free market, nobody in his party gets along with him much but because he's so gifted he managed to persuade them to give him a go but only at a time when the party was in dire straits so he never really had much chance of winning.

it blows my mind that someone like you, lentern, could ever hold romney in such high esteem, no less liken him to malcolm turnbull. i really don't get it. or i do, i guess. its all mythological. there's this story of romney the caterpillar who we all thought was supposed to metamorphosise into a beautiful butterfly but, alas, somewhere, something went wrong. the caterpillar was poisoned and came out a dirty moth instead. the party dragged him down, it wasn't his fault.

is mitt romney is a good bloke or not? very few people are privy to such information. no one really knows whether the party and circumstances truly ruined him, or whether it is he who is ruinous. indeed, we have good reason to suspect the latter. sure, you might say that, as governor of massachussetts, as the story goes, his reign was moderate and bipartisan, and embodied the sensible, modern politics that we should all aspire to. well to this story i say cool, brah, but who the hell thinks any other sort of republican would have ascended to the office of a new england governor in the 21st century in another way? no one, not you nor i, knows which is the real mitt; the left mitten, governor romney, or the right mitten, presidential hopeful romney... but it seems the only real difference is that, as governor, he didn't have the track record; he couldn't be called a flip flopper. but romney was playing the long game, always shooting for the white house. by 2004 he knew that new england wasn't going to take him there. he changed tack. no more mitt playing the middle. romney rolled right, and left his massachussetts office with a shocking approval rating - 37% - and a demos that loathed his increasingly judicious use of the veto to obstruct progressive policy, such as stem cell research among other things.

of course, there was a time before politics - you know, when romney was the pirate sailing the private equity seas, enjoining the most vile of corporate raids. from this one susecpts that he's not free-market loving at all. in fact, he's the opportunist who abritraged inequities and inconsistencies in the law and leveraged the old boy network to gut companies for personal gain, not to engender the optimal allocation of resources like a 'free marketeer' might (unconsciously) do. not that i might not have done the same, but that's not the point; no one knows can say with a shred of certainty whether romney is the moderate, the bipartisan, the "urbane social progressive who believes strongly in the free market", the bridge builder, or rather the despicable homonculus that ran for president. yet the evidence seems quite to always favour the contrary. romney is less cicero, more constantine; rather a rootless opportunist, as power hungry and detached as the rest of the glutinous american bourgeoisie that too often see politics as a sport - big game.

rather than being the teflon president he surely modeled himself after, romney is the play-dough non-president. his political handlers have shaped and moulded him in the forms they comport to be best, and he has only been too willing. because, for romney, it's always been about the long game; not to lead the free world, or to have a 'new vision for america' (i'm sure everyone is tired of new visions) but to bag a truly rare beast, the most prized real estate in the world: capitol hill.



tl;dr romney is the whore of babylon.

 

[funkshen]

I think where you've got it a bit wrong is that you think I hold Malcolm Turnbull in higher esteem than I actually do. All that business with Kerry Packer, yuck.

good point and i acknowledge that, but i consider

Steady on, Romney is a decent, capable and fair man, he was a good governor of Massachusettes and would have been one of the better Presidents the United States had had.

to be a qualified endorsement of a presidential candidate you hold in esteem that we might say was approaching 'high'. this is the position controverted in my statement

 

[Lolsmith]

Received wisdom says it is.

except that he has the power to end both wars and chooses not to

 

[funkshen]

except that he has the power to end both wars and chooses not to

hey have you ever heard of this crime called treason? even presidents may be found guilty of it. the false dilemma you propose - ending the war or not - is in reality not anywhere as neat as you think. the president has the power to immediately withdraw U.S. forces, say, from afghanistan... but that's fucking stupid. considering that congress declared that the U.S., as a nation, is at war with afghanistan (though not iraq anymore), immediately withdrawing all forces might be considered as providing comfort to the enemies of the nation (and even worse considering the U.S. is party to an international coalition of forces in both countries, and is bound by UN law)

of course, this is all beside the point; the iraqi war is officially over, and the drawdown of the afghan war is on schedule.

 

[SylviaB]

wot

it is not because I think obama will be a better president than romney

 

[moll.]

Yeah Xtian, what do you mean he chose not to end Iraq? They're not there anymore. He did end it.

 

[funkshen]

Yeah Xtian, what do you mean he chose not to end Iraq? They're not there anymore. He did end it.

uhh... they're still there

 

[Lolsmith]

hey have you ever heard of this crime called treason? even presidents may be found guilty of it. the false dilemma you propose - ending the war or not - is in reality not anywhere as neat as you think. the president has the power to immediately withdraw U.S. forces, say, from afghanistan... but that's fucking stupid. considering that congress declared that the U.S., as a nation, is at war with afghanistan (though not iraq anymore), immediately withdrawing all forces might be considered as providing comfort to the enemies of the nation (and even worse considering the U.S. is party to an international coalition of forces in both countries, and is bound by UN law)

of course, this is all beside the point; the iraqi war is officially over, and the drawdown of the afghan war is on schedule.

look stop unravelling my false dichotomies and play along all right Ron Paul said he could end the war and therefore Obama should

Yeah Xtian, what do you mean he chose not to end Iraq? They're not there anymore. He did end it.

they still maintain a presence in Iraq brah and so does Australia

 

[funkshen]

ron paul noam chomsky 2016

romsky

 

[moll.]

Oh please. It's not any functional form. They have advisers there. But the Iraqi government specifically asked for the American ground troops on combat operations to leave. Next you'll be claiming that Obama failed as a president because he didn't withdraw from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Colombia and a dozen other nations where they advise on military matters too. Don't be ridiculous.

 

[halapenyo]

who's going to be the leader of the republicans now?

 

[funkshen]

Oh please. It's not any functional form. They have advisers there. But the Iraqi government specifically asked for the American ground troops on combat operations to leave. Next you'll be claiming that Obama failed as a president because he didn't withdraw from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Colombia and a dozen other nations where they advise on military matters too. Don't be ridiculous.

no, i mean because at least 10,000 americans remain in Iraq to execute american foreign policy whims... they're just not 'troops' per se. i'm saying while the war is over, the occupation isn't

and american forces in latin america and pakistan aren't just military advisers, either

 

[moll.]

no, i mean because at least 10,000 americans remain in Iraq to execute american foreign policy whims... they're just not 'troops' per se. i'm saying while the war is over, the occupation isn't

and american forces in latin america and pakistan aren't just military advisers, either

Yes, exactly. America technically "occupies" dozens of nations around the world. Why are you and Christian blaming Obama for this? He has categorically decreased the amount of servicemen in Iraq and ended their role in direct combat, handing back primary responsibility for Iraqi security to the Iraqi government. How is that not classified as "ending the war"?

 

[funkshen]

Yes, exactly. America technically "occupies" dozens of nations around the world. Why are you and Christian blaming Obama for this? He has categorically decreased the amount of servicemen in Iraq and ended their role in direct combat, handing back primary responsibility for Iraqi security to the Iraqi government. How is that not classified as "ending the war"?

i never said the war wasn't over; in fact, i said quite the opposite. read up; what did you write, what did i write. you said "they're not there anymore". i said they are. and you agree with me.

also, are you really equating the ongoing occupation of iraq with the "dozens of nations around the world" where U.S. forces are stationed?

 

[moll.]

Christian said that the war wasn't over. And no, I'm equating it with the dozens of nations around the world where US forces take an active role in advising and aiding the local government in their fight against insurgents, be they drug cartels, Andean guerrillas or Islamic insurgents.

 

[funkshen]

Christian said that the war wasn't over. And no, I'm equating it with the dozens of nations around the world where US forces take an active role in advising and aiding the local government in their fight against insurgents, be they drug cartels, Andean guerrillas or Islamic insurgents.

because the U.S. has more personnel in iraqi than in all those "other countries" combined. the iraqi occupation continues, as does the sunni insurgency, and americans are still dying. you can hardly blame Christian for saying the war isn't over. the U.S. embassy alone employs 15,000 people (though many would be locals and third nationals)