The world has turned upside down!!! (Re: McCain vs. Obama for President)

I'm displeased with all the candidates. About the only thing that pleases me is that Hillary will probably forfeit soon. Obama is soft-spoken, articulate, and intelligent, but he is the king of platitudes. His oratory ability can stir a crowd about "real change and real reform," but he has consistently lacked how he would actually implement any of his policies.And McCain, well, as impressed I am with his personal temperament and his service to this country, he has more waffles than an International House of Pancakes. And not on insignificant issues, either. He flip-flops on major issues. Because of his flippity-flip-flops he is now known as a R.i.n.o (Republican in name only). Plus it seems like he's the kind of maverick that would place the US on another front to increase the war effort.

I'm still undecided. I am, however, now slightly leaning toward a libertarian who found a way to cast a third party candidacy named Bob Barr. But this is still very much tentative.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

Yes, so far he is my number one. But that is not really saying all that much since I don't care for the other three candidates. He has experience and I seem to align with him better than everyone else.I guess all I can say is to get the word out there. Most people are not even aware that he's on the ticket. Many people, conservatives and liberals, may simply think that Barr is best suited for the job.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

I've been researching Obama for awhile now. And I actually liked the guy, and would have definitely voted for him over Hilary. I really can't pull the lever for McCain, which means that I might actually have to decide between a lesser of two evils.As time goes on, it is more than evident that Obama and his wife have some serious identity issues that need to be resolved. What bothers me is that Michelle and Barrack harbor racist tendencies. First it was his church and his outrageous "pastor." Then it is the little comments made by both Michelle and Barrack. But now I've been reading from his books which manifest a deep-seated loathing.But don't take my words for it. Obama will tell you himself.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

That's what I thought at first too, until more and more coincidences came up. Obama clearly is both racially obsessed and horribly conflicted about his mixed identity. We all know which of the two he decided to choose, as if he had to make a choice to begin with.I find it remarkable that somebody who grew up in segregation can see past the color of skin, while someone who has not holds a grudge on people solely on the basis of their skin tone. Secretary Rice grew up in segregated Alabama, and even had a friend of hers murdered by Klansman. She doesn't hold an universal grudge against all white people, as if all white people were representative of the bastard that killed her childhood friend.Can't say the same thing for Obama, who, although chooses his words carefully in light of his candidacy, reserves a very cynical outlook. His wife is about a thousand times worse, and expects black people to vote for her husband on account of his blackness -- which is the very epitome of racism. Everyone else is a typical, white person. He claims not to want to make race a big deal, but the 2008 Democratic election was about both gender and race. Why should they have been about either?

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

In respect to his controversies, I think the greater point of what some of his critics are saying could be summarized in two adages: That the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, and bad company corrupts good character. There is no way that Obama could not know that his pastor was a loonbat having gone to the church as often as he did. In fact, his books detail their numerous encounters, and he makes it obvious that he respects and agrees with much of it.The fact that his own words would highly indicate that he privately harbors racial anymosity is the only thing that makes it relevant, otherwise I would tend to agree with your assessment. Democrats and Republicans have always, and presumably will always play these little cat and mouse games, and these he-said, she-said policies. It's politics. In all fairness, Obama himself stated that he was inexperienced just four years ago. He just got elected to the Senate, relatively speaking. In Senate seniority, he ranks in at 98.Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : No reason given.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

It is difficult to walk away not thinking that he at least harbors a spirit of racially charged animosity. Read msg 114 and click all appropriate links. The problem with Obama, aside from his penchant towards obsessing over race issues, he really has no policies to speak of. He just sort of foists platitudes without really describing how said plan would be initiated. A lot of people have picked up on this, especially his whole "change" political slogan. This humorous non-partisan cartoon even calls him out on it.The rest of your post is an uber-liberal screed railing against uber-conservatives, and has less to do with Obama [the topic] than it does with scourging GWB and neocons. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

YouTube has nothing to do with it. YouTube is the intermediary that allows people to post videos. Obama was reading from his own book, from his own words, straight from his mouth, so that it is impossible to come to any other conclusion other than the one he intended. Obama simply isn't as squeaky clean as he would have the world believe. Bottom line...I can't vote for somebody like him, and I can't vote for somebody like McCain. So bringing up McCain with me is useless, cuz you won't see me defending him. Again, he said it himself that he was, as you call it, a "empty suit." It's a little tougher to cry right-wing conspiracy when it comes straight from the horses mouth. Considering that the Bush Administration had more black officials within the current administration, more than any other in the history of the presidency, again the right-wing conspiracy rant turns from a raging inferno to sizzling embers. Just focus on the issue here.Besides, I know many conservatives that would absolutely love for either Rice or Powell to run. If either of them ran right now, I wouldn't hesitate to vote for either. And wouldn't that be something if it were Condi? The first black president would also be the first female president. This thread is about Obama, and whether Obama is a good candidate to be the next president of the United States. Bush had innumerable failures during his tenure, and McCain certainly appears like he'll follow suit. So now that you have no more scarecrows and distractions, let's get back on topic -- Obama. Uhhhh.... I have no idea what you are referencing. Can you elaborate?

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

They aren't taken out of context at all. Obama is very afrocentric, to the point where he deliberately chooses to side with his African side. He even said himself,"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.""There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs. It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names. To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists"Other parts of his books discuss being wary of white people because they are white. Somebody might want to remind him that he himself is white, and that the basis of color is utterly stupid. See, there is a critical difference between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. X thought it was his civic duty to fight racism with racism. Luther thought it best to stamp it out by not basing allegiances on race. Obama is closer to Malcolm X than he his Martin Luther.So if some people are distrusting of Obama, it is with good reason. It is not his blackness that people take exception to. It is his penchant for black activism, which is, at the core, racist and divisive.

quote:

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Our rage at the white world needed no object, he seemed to be telling me, no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure

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He is complementing and lauding these people! He agrees with it, Jazzns. He agrees with them. Are you so daft that you can't realize that he whispers sweet nothings in your ear so that he can get votes!?!? Think about it. This is what the real Obama believes. The nice guy image is a front. And he does a great job at it. I will never deny him that much. Sure I do. The question by the media was if he was planning on running. He stated that he just got to the Senate, and the last thing on his mind was running for president because of his inexperience. One of them. I checked out "Dreams" about 3 months ago from the library. I wish I still had it in front of me so that I could directly take quotes from it now. I tried to get his other book, but apparently it's really popular. I put myself on a waiting list, and thus far I have not been contacted. That's fine with me. I want nothing to do with Neo-cons. They are black eye on the face of conservatism. They're like the obnoxious and embarrassing big brother you spend your time trying to have your friends avoid. Well, that's politics. I hate it too. But really, both sides have been conducting smear campaigns since the dawn of time. Look at the Democratic and Republican primaries. Holy cow, you'd think they all would have killed their own party members if they had the chance! If you'll recall the time line, all this hoopla started in the Democratic primaries. Democrats aligning with Hillary pulled out these tactics before conservatives even realized there was that dirt on him. Correct on what, concerning those nations? When I mention something about Obama, you bring up Bush. We spent 8 years of Bush-hating and Bush-bashing. His time is up. It's over. Much of his debacles are beyond disrepute, so bringing them up again only confirms what we already knew. Right now we are discussing Obama, and whether he is a good candidate for the presidency. Jazzns, that's what pundits do. You act as if McCain doesn't have pundits making fun of him. I think it is a tool to salvage the tarnished legacy of GWB's Administration. Bush is simply trying to appease his critics. He has no plans of leaving Iraq until his goal has been accomplished, which may never be accomplished the way it was envisioned. That is why the use of the word "Time Horizon." Because he can't give a specific "Time Line," because then he would have to specify. Time Horizon allows for an unspecified time, but still tells the people he "intends" on getting out of Iraq.In other words, this is Bush's marketing ploy.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

When you are writing about past events, you have to use past tense. At this moment, as I type, it is the present. When you read it, it will be the past. The past tense is in relation to his college experience.Couple that with what we do know today, his wife, his pastor, and it starts to make sense. I am not saying he is out there rolling with the Black Panthers beating up non-blacks all day long. What I am saying is that he is sympathetic to such causes, which is just as unacceptable as a neo-nazi sympathizer. Trinity United Church of Christ, of which Obama is part of the congregation, is a black separatist church. They cater specifically to a black demographic, instead of whoever wants to know Jesus Christ. Only if I knew his cocaine habits. He doesn't say, "I am afrocentric," rather, what he writes about is afrocentric. No, that isn't clear at all. If you would like to provide quotes proving that I am quotemining, I am certainly open to it.In the meantime, here is a critique I found that expresses the exact same kind of understanding that I came to after reading Dreams:"Forget the content of our character; this is a work preoccupied with skin color. It’s drenched with the legacy of Malcolm X (whom Obama, at least in this book, openly idolizes). At times it’s as if there were no historical injustices in the world other than those visited upon blacks by whites. Obama routinely refers to other black men (but never white men) as “brothers”; he exhibits considerably more concern for the dignity of black men than for that of women or non-black men; and he’s acutely sensitive to perceived racial slights (yet even as he deplores the subordination of blacks in America, curiously enough, he appears to accept as his due his family’s lofty position in Kenya). While occasionally gesturing toward an ideal of colorblindness a la Dr. King, in his heart of hearts he’s anything but colorblind, fervently endorsing black solidarity while repeatedly expressing distrust of, and even contempt for, whites. When, lamenting Kenya’s intertribal rivalries, he tells a relative that “We’re part of one tribe. The black tribe. The human tribe,” the last three words feel like an afterthought - as does his attempt, in the book’s closing pages, to move beyond strict racial line-drawing and to articulate broader sympathies. As if all this weren’t enough, it seems clear by book’s end that his heart’s home is not America but Kenya.

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What does it say about the young Obama that he was well-nigh obsessed with his vain braggart of an absentee father but trivialized his mother’s accomplishments? What does it mean that he himself plainly can’t see that his father comes off in these pages as a world-class jerk and his mother as a woman of admirable self-discipline and quiet achievement? What does it mean that throughout his account of his work as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama himself is in sharp focus while the underprivileged folks he’s supposedly trying to help are hazy figures in the distant background? What does it mean that some of the characters in this book - whom one would otherwise assume to be important people in his life - are, as he admits in the introduction, composites? What does it mean that despite his fixation on his father and his Kenyan kin, their religion (Islam) is barely mentioned, and that in the most substantial reference to it, he gives a genial thumbs-up to his brother’s newfound religious fervor?" - sourceThere is nothing in the book describing any kind of change of heart. I would encourage you to scour the book(s) for any such renunciation. There is a pattern being established here. His own words indict him. His pastor, of whom he spokes so fondly of in the books, his own wife who makes tacit assertions that "black America" should "wake up" and vote for Barrack on the basis of his blackness. Something isn't quite right here, and quite frankly, it is disconcerting to see this kind of rationale coming from someone who might just be the next president of the United States.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

McCain is politicking. He was one of the most outspoken critics of waterboarding, and other forms of torture, mostly on the basis that he claimed to sympathize due to him having been tortured.What he also did, however, was support a veto on the Waterboarding ban, suggesting that he is playing both sides of the field. McCain's rationale was this:“I said there should be additional techniques allowed to other agencies of government as long as they were not torture. I was on the record as saying that they could use additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment."The problem is that a successful veto would most likely allow the CIA to continue using methods that might constitute as torture per the Geneva Convention.It is more of McCain flip flopping.

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

Well, the troops are in danger of themselves being tortured no matter what stance the US takes on torture. Heck, half of the people beheaded by Al Qaeda were there in defense of Iraq against Coalition forces. These individuals have a different mindset. If they think it will terrorize people to mutilate them, they're all too willing to that in the name of Allah. The problem with interrogation and torture is that the lines can be blurred easily. The CIA has reasoned that since waterboarding has no lasting damage, physically, that it is therefore acceptable. And since it instills in the victim a sense of terror and panic, they reason they can make people talk without resorting outright torture and mutilation.The problem is that any of it is unreliable. Many people in Al Qaeda or Coalition forces that are out in the field really aren't privy to the kind of information that their handlers and superiors have. They often honestly don't know much. So torturing the hell out of them is not only cruel, but it also produces disinformation. Its counterproductive.If you were being tortured and were pressed for information, but you honestly didn't know any significant information, but your captors thought you did and kept persisting, eventually you are going to make things up just so you can have them stop torturing you.It's a no-win situation for both the captors and the captive. I know most conservatives weren't happy with it over his habitual fence riding. I guess they reason that he is a lessor of two evils since they don't trust Obama.Personally I don't like either of the candidates. I will either be voting for an unknown third party candidate, or I won't vote for either. I am washing my hands of this one. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : edit to add

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

Since this is all off-topic, I would like to invite anyone interested in the Georgian/Russian conflict to move to a more appropriate thread.

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“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito"

Though it has escaped my attention for a long time, a not-so-new (new to me) revelation has recently come to my attention. Senator Obama is apparently so in favor of abortion that he has voted against the Congressional act of Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA). What is this bill?Occasionally abortions don't go as planned. And by some miracle, the fetus, sometimes horribly mangled or severely brain damaged, survives the termination attempt and is born alive (no longer a fetus and is now an infant). This bill ensures that, in keeping with the Born Alive Rule, that infants born alive are guaranteed the right to his or her own personhood.What Obama believes is that, if a mother had predetermined that the fetus be terminated prior to his/her birth, regardless of the failed attempt to take its life, the mother should still be guaranteed a dead baby. And so, what the doctors will do is either terminate the child upon birth through several gory techinques, or simply let the baby die from hypothermia in a medical receptacle.Wow! What a nice guy!!! As I understand it, not even Barbara Boxer, the Queen of Mean herself, voted against BAIPA. Just how "moderate" is Obama really? That's pretty hardcore, and is unambiguously infanticide. There is no ambivalence here to speak of on his part. He signed against the bill with deliberation.Even among Pro-Choice advocates, does this not seem ghastly and barbaric? Doesn't this clearly violate the terms set forth for abortion during Roe v Wade? If so, does this change your opinion of Obama, however slightly it may be?

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“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito"

Here is the most impartial, two-sided debate. I don't have more time right now, gotta get to work.

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“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito"