USA Politics

Well, I don't know what to form my opinions on because this country is so damn divided. Maybe I should just live my life and not really worry about all of it.

Oh, you should have heard Savage when Bush was in office.
 
Well, again. I encourage you to bring your thoughts here. We'll give you our opinions from all over, and things to read that aren't based in anger.

Yes, Savage disliked Bush - but that doesn't make him a moderate. That means he disliked Bush!
 
LooseCannon said:
Allow me.

The USA is already a social democracy, and has been for some times. Social programs like Social Security, welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid are very classic examples of social democracy. If Obama was a president like some have demanded, then he would allow the economy to do whatever it wants - in the opinion of most economists, a mistake.
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There are some signs since Obama took over, yes. But having seen the Michael Moore documentary 'Sicko', I'm not sure about before.
 
LooseCannon said:
Allow me.

The USA is already a social democracy, and has been for some times. Social programs like Social Security, welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid are very classic examples of social democracy. If Obama was a president like some have demanded, then he would allow the economy to do whatever it wants - in the opinion of most economists, a mistake.
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Like John Stewart told O'Reily, (and I'm paraphrasing) "If you agree that we shouldn't get rid of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid then we are just arguing over what shade of red we are..."
 
LooseCannon said:
Name me a policy of the last four years that you think is Obama's fault, and is creating a socialist nation. One. And we can start sorting it out with real facts, with real ideas. Not strawmen and appeals to emotions and a thousand other logical fallacies that prey on your lack of understanding. Please.
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Since Travis never responded to this, I would like to, because I do wonder about a few of them. Mostly the NDAA which he did sign into law. I don't think it's leading to a socialist nation, but from what I've heard, it's a harmful bill.
 
Mosh said:
Since Travis never responded to this, I would like to, because I do wonder about a few of them. Mostly the NDAA which he did sign into law. I don't think it's leading to a socialist nation, but from what I've heard, it's a harmful bill.
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The NDAA means the National Defense Authorization Act. This is a yearly law passed that approves the military spending of the US government. The NDAA is often controversial because it includes additional provisions ("riders") that extend the power of the US president (in recent years).

This act has been used in the past to approve long-term no-trial detention for enemy combatants, giving the President powers to remove habeus corpus, etc. There's a lot of reasons why each one has controversy. Generally, Republicans oppose the bill because it is extremely expensive, and Democrats because of rights restrictions, but that's an extremely general statement.

In its core, the NDAA is a defense act that provides the money for the US armed forces. It is passed and signed yearly almost by rote, and because of this assured passage, both sides use the NDAA to pass policy they want. Wikipedia has summaries of individual NDAAs that may explain each one more indepth.
 
Any thoughts on this and whether there's any truth to it?

From: https://www.facebook.com/SorryIfTheTruthHurts?ref=stream
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Conspiracy theory nonsense. Let's handle the points one at a time:

1. Obama isn't hiding anything. Why would he? Let's be 100% honest. Hundreds of Americans have already died under his command - why would he try to cover up four more? 150 Islamic militants attacked a consulate compound that had security under review. There was a failure - but it was the failure of the US State Department to properly assess the risk in the Benghazi area. There was no attempt to cover this up.

2. Which Admiral and General are being portrayed there? Names are relevant so we can examine whether or not those persons were actually fired, and if so, for what causes? I've not heard of any US general officers being fired lately - nor does the US president have the ability to dismiss general officers from the services of the US military. This sounds like either misinformation or exaggeration.

3. It's standard procedure for the US government to declare classified any videos that show US soldiers or diplomatic envoys classified. That's why there aren't death tapes of US soldiers being shown on the news. This is the same sort of thing, and when people do the same sort of thing for similar incidents, it's not evidence of government collusion. This is a completely unimportant fact.

I want to make it clear that it looks very much like people did fail the guys in Benghazi. Obama may not have called it terrorism immediately, but that was the correct move. What if it was an angry riot, and not a deliberate attack? Calling that terrorism is a bad move. According to the committee that investigated the failures of the State Department, the US government openly admitted their errors. That's a good thing.

If there was errors said in the early weeks of the investigation, it's because nobody in the US government knew what happened. They didn't know there was 150 militants who attacked. What they did know was that it seemed timed around the 9/11 holiday and that video. Nobody wanted to leap to conclusions, and leaders who take their times and think should be lauded, not hated.
 
Conspiracy theorists are masters at making people see things that aren't there. Benghazi is a failure, yes. The reason why we saw so many mixed messages is because it was a very, very confusing attack in a part of the world where the local intelligence is poor.

It's important to remember that most Libyans see NATO forces as liberators.
 
LooseCannon said:
The NDAA means the National Defense Authorization Act. This is a yearly law passed that approves the military spending of the US government. The NDAA is often controversial because it includes additional provisions ("riders") that extend the power of the US president (in recent years).

This act has been used in the past to approve long-term no-trial detention for enemy combatants, giving the President powers to remove habeus corpus, etc. There's a lot of reasons why each one has controversy. Generally, Republicans oppose the bill because it is extremely expensive, and Democrats because of rights restrictions, but that's an extremely general statement.

In its core, the NDAA is a defense act that provides the money for the US armed forces. It is passed and signed yearly almost by rote, and because of this assured passage, both sides use the NDAA to pass policy they want. Wikipedia has summaries of individual NDAAs that may explain each one more indepth.
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This makes sense, thanks. So would this be a case of a basic bill being overcomplicated with more (and perhaps unpopular) provisions? I know this is something that happens when local amendments are in the polls. Also, if the president doesn't sign it, is there an opportunity for it to be revised and passed shortly thereafter?
 
Travis The Dragon said:
Now, onto this. What are "banksters"? Would this work? Is it a good idea?:
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I believe the president meant "bankers". I would say that many countries bailed out their banks - Iceland's recovery, as well, has been circumspect at best. It should be noted that the USA officially exited the recession in 2009 according to the official notes - before Iceland.

However, I think it would be very much against the idea of capitalism to arrest the bankers - unless you can prove they deliberately broke the system, and a law or three. I don't think they did it out of malice - I think they did it out of greed and incompetence, by taking what they could today with no concern for tomorrow.

I am personally critical of the banking sectors in both the USA and Europe, and I wonder how many of the predatory practices that brought the recession were allowed to continue. I supported President Bush's TARP program - and it was a very successful program that actually made money for the US government. Looking at the economies that weathered the Great Recession the best, the leader there is Canada - a country with much stricter banking regulations, as our Conservative Prime Minister explained to Fox News a couple years ago. Our growth never stopped during the recession, which technically means we never even had one.

I think the banks need to have smarter restrictions on them to avoid this sort of thing in the future.
 
Mosh said:
This makes sense, thanks. So would this be a case of a basic bill being overcomplicated with more (and perhaps unpopular) provisions? I know this is something that happens when local amendments are in the polls. Also, if the president doesn't sign it, is there an opportunity for it to be revised and passed shortly thereafter?
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Remember that to many liberals the size of US defense expenditure is in itself distasteful. Usually, local riders aren't attached to this sort of bill - it tends to be things, of recent years, related to executive power in terrorism-related situations.
 
LooseCannon said:
Remember that to many liberals the size of US defense expenditure is in itself distasteful. Usually, local riders aren't attached to this sort of bill - it tends to be things, of recent years, related to executive power in terrorism-related situations.
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Alright, that makes sense.
 
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