USA´s next Prez?

[santa klaus]

I could pretend this is business-related - after all, if you manage to elect another butthead who will kill your economy for good I will end up being jobless. Americans are responsible for no less than a third of our revenues.

There are a few opinionated Americans on this board, please give me a clue.

My opinion:
I have watched Obama´s Iowa "victory speech" on Youtube yesterday. He´s a brilliant speaker. Wow. Absolutely, err, touching, even for a cynic like I am. Jeez, I almost cried!
I´m pretty sure he will make it if he doesn´t say something very stupid in the next months, or if he won´t be assassinated (it happened before, so I wouldn´t rule that scenario out). Your thoughts?

But then:
Is this good news? He can speak for 25 minutes without saying something important. Is he just a good preacher, but the same kind of cynic like everybody else he claims to fight against? He has done a few weird things, like voting for Cheney´s energy bill. Why? Opportunism?
Doesn´t he set the bar too high for his own good? He will have to do some very unpopular things, should he really get elected.

Also:
What´s your word about Hillary? Is Edwards´ claim that "she represents the status quo" unfair or at least half true?

Finally:
Is there any chance a Republican can win this election? Who? And why? They all seem very pathetic to me, but then you guys have a record of electing pathetic Presidents, if you will pardon my saying so...

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

I´m pretty sure he will make it if he doesn't say something very stupid in the next months, or if he won´t be assassinated (it happened before, so I wouldn´t rule that scenario out). Your thoughts?

I think he is the one that the people would be the most likely to vote for. Hillary is more connected though. Also Barak's middle name is Hussein and the right wing is going to attack him on that point if he gets nominated because they could work up the right-wing about having a president with a Muslim name--especially one that is the same as Saddam's. I read a poll that said something like 40% of the viewers of FOX News (right-wing channel) thought that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I think the right-wing would use Obama's name to work up their less-educated people into a frenzy to get them to show up at the polls and vote Republican.

The Republicans fight dirtier and control the electronic voting machines.

Ron Paul is popular and scary, but if he runs as an independent maybe he will take votes away from the Republicans. Not that the alternatives are much better.

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Is there any chance a Republican can win this election? Who? And why? They all seem very pathetic to me, but then you guys have a record of electing pathetic Presidents, if you will pardon my saying so...

Hard to believe that a guy who sat through 9/11 reading "My Pet Goat" got re-elected. We have a corrupt voting system.

I was in South Florida for the last two elections. This video is a joke, but maybe not totally removed from the truth.

Remember the exit polls? Excerpt from the article:

"Recall the Election Day exit polls that suggested John Kerry had won a convincing victory? The media readily dismissed those polls and little has been heard about them since.

Many Americans, however, were suspicious. Although President Bush prevailed by 3 million votes in the official, tallied vote count, exit polls had projected a margin of victory of 5 million votes for Kerry. This unexplained 8 million vote discrepancy between the election night exit polls and the official count should raise a Chinese May Day of red flags.

The U.S. voting system is more vulnerable to manipulation than most Americans realize. Technologies such as electronic voting machines provide no confirmation that votes are counted as cast, and highly partisan election officials have the power to suppress votes and otherwise distort the count.

Exit polls are highly accurate. They remove most of the sources of potential polling error by identifying actual voters and asking them immediately afterward who they had voted for.

The reliability of exit polls is so generally accepted that the Bush administration helped pay for them during recent elections in Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine. Testifying before the House Committee on International Relations Dec. 7, John Tefft, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, explained that the Bush administration funded exit polls because they were one of the “ways that would help to expose large-scale fraud.” Tefft pointed to the discrepancy between exit polls and the official vote count to argue that the Nov. 22 Ukraine election was stolen."

(bold text is my addition)

Look up "electronic voting machines" and there is a lot of information on the Internet about it.

[santa klaus]

I take it for granted that there are ways to "bend the rules" or even downright fraud. We all know it has been done. It´s pretty sad that America has degenerated into that sort of banana republic.

Anyway, for the sake of the argument, let´s ignore that point, or let´s assume the Democrats will most likely win a landslide victory which makes it extremely difficult to steal THAT election.

Apart from possible fraud, what´s also alarming should be that nothing any candidate says can be taken "for real". Were Hilary´s tears for real? Or was it all staged?

There was a pretty good video on http://www.guardian.co.uk/ yesterday about the Obama campaign - how they keep journalists away from people at their rallies - that is journalists suspicious of asking the wrong sort of questions. I can´t find it any more, but it really looked as if they were totally paranoid. Not at all the grassroot-democratic way they pretend they are.

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

It´s pretty sad that America has degenerated into that sort of banana republic.

Yeah... very sad... The country has been hijacked...

Originally Posted by santa klaus

...let´s assume the Democrats will most likely win a landslide victory which makes it extremely difficult to steal THAT election.

I thought it should have been a landslide last time also, even though Kerry was a terrible alternative.

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Were Hilary´s tears for real? Or was it all staged?

She scares me also...

Originally Posted by santa klaus

...it really looked as if they were totally paranoid. Not at all the grassroot-democratic way they pretend they are.

Politics are ruthless. Politicians are professional liars.

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by Hostels

Politics are ruthless. Politicians are professional liars.

That´s what bothers me about Obama´s strategy. His whole strategy as made around the claim not to be ruthless or a professional liar, but then is it possible at all to live up to that? If not, he will be EXTREMELY unpopular after a few months in the White House - at the latest. Without much support from his own party and bad approval ratings he would be a lame duck from the start.

Originally Posted by Hostels

Ron Paul is popular and scary, but if he runs as an independent maybe he will take votes away from the Republicans. Not that the alternatives are much better.

Ron Paul is indeed a very weird character, but some of his views are pretty extreme, so I don´t think he has a chance.

I find Rudy Giuliani scarier. OK, he is pretty liberal (for a Republican) on gay marriage and abortion, but his praise of neocon dogmas on economic policies are even more extreme than Dubya´s. I think most of the mess America now finds itself in originates from implementing Chigago School economic dogmas. BTW, Naomi Klein makes a convincing point that the same can be said about the current situation in Iraq. I´m not aware of anyone else looking at it from that angle, so she deserves some credit for this.

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Ron Paul is indeed a very weird character, but some of his views are pretty extreme, so I don´t think he has a chance.

His supporters are fanatical and very savvy about Internet marketing. That is why I think he could cut into the Republican's chances if he runs as an Independent.

You know a lot about US politics... I don't even know what Giuliani thinks, except he keeps saying things like, "there is only one issue: terrorism!".

Is that from the Shock Doctrine? I haven't read it, though it looks interesting...

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by Hostels

His supporters are fanatical and very savvy about Internet marketing. That is why I think he could cut into the Republican's chances if he runs as an Independent.

I know, but that´s not (yet!) enough to win an election.

Originally Posted by Hostels

You know a lot about US politics... I don't even know what Giuliani thinks, except he keeps saying things like, "there is only one issue: terrorism!".

Well, let´s say that´s business-related. At least insofar as I need to be pretty fluent in English because that´s the language of most of our customers. Being that, what´s more obvious than to use it to follow what´s going on in America? It´s a pretty important country anyway. Americans can afford to be ignorant about Austria (hey! that´s not the country with kangaroos! ) but what´s going on at the other side of the big pond is pretty important for everyone on this planet.

Originally Posted by Hostels

Is that from the Shock Doctrine? I haven't read it, though it looks interesting...

Yes. It´s a very good book but you need to take it with a grain of salt. She can be very dogmatic, too and often only tells only half of the truth. Example: her rage about the IMF forcing down on the first ANC government in South Africa that they have a really independent central bank, saying that this idea is taken from the extreme fringes of neo-liberal dogma and was never really tried anywhere before, hence lunatic. The truth is, the German Bundesbank was always VERY independent and is still widely regarded as a "best practice" story, so the same model was later applied to the European Central Bank. Which already became a success story in itself.

Without a little backgrounf in economics, her book is unfortunately a tad misleading sometimes. Still, it´s a great read, if you need argument ammo against neocons go ahead read it, but read some Joe Stiglitz, too. He knows a lot of things first hand from his jobs in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, which makes his books very interesting indeed.

"It´s the economy, stupid" - the quote of the century.

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

I know, but that´s not (yet!) enough to win an election.

I doubt he could actually win -- but maybe perform a "Ralph Nader"...

From Wikipedia:
"Having pledged never to raise taxes, he has long advocated ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies... He also opposes...gun control. "

Sounds like chaos to me. No government, and everybody can buy as many guns as they want...

"Never raise taxes" -- that's a good one.

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Americans can afford to be ignorant about Austria (hey! that´s not the country with kangaroos! )

I can imagine...

Originally Posted by santa klaus

...if you need argument ammo against neocons go ahead read it, but read some Joe Stiglitz, too.

I will check it out when I have some time to read...

[Hostels]

Who will it be? McCain vs. Obama?

(I haven't been following it that closely.)

[santa klaus]

Obama vs McCain, I think - but then, who knows? Watch this:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hHL_YMBolRs
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PKQEQ7qHvgM
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs

"Those who cast the votes, they decide nothing. Those who count the votes, they decide everything" -J.Stalin


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