[worry]

HoosierDaddy, on 14 September 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

Terez, on 14 September 2012 - 06:36 PM, said:

HoosierDaddy, on 14 September 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

"Romney defined middle income as 200 to 250 thousand dollars a year."

That statement was apparently corrected: "Romney defined middle income as $200,000 to $250,000 a year and less."

"Under 250,000 a year." Simpler yes? It shows where his thoughts immediately go and his first option is people between 200 and 250 a year, oh "and less."

Also, that range is actually literally in the top 5% of earners: http://www.census.go...les/12s0696.pdf

[Terez]

I agree with those who say that Mitt Romney running for president was one of the best things that could have happened for America since everyone has the opportunity to understand a little bit more about where the fruits of our labor are going, and how.

[worry]

It's like you can only repackage the facade so many times (trickle down economics, the thousand points of light, compassionate conservatism) before you run out of euphemisms. The "lift all boats" rhetoric and the Social Darwinist reality are just nakedly not compatible without the misdirection.

[Terez]

Ugh, I just wandered into the comments of this article, and it was a very, very bad place.

[worry]

Why do you think these events are being treated like such an important litmus test? It's clear Romney's opportunistic jumping the gun was disgusting, so the reaction to him was proportionately nauseated. But what I'm getting otherwise from this is a renewal of anti-Islam fervor from people who generally feel that way anyway but have maybe been out of the limelight as a national topic, and now they're frothing at the mouth now that the attention is back. Or is it just election season in general? Or is it really as important as depicted?

[Terez]

worrywort, on 15 September 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

Why do you think these events are being treated like such an important litmus test? It's clear Romney's opportunistic jumping the gun was disgusting, so the reaction to him was proportionately nauseated. But what I'm getting otherwise from this is a renewal of anti-Islam fervor from people who generally feel that way anyway but have maybe been out of the limelight as a national topic, and now they're frothing at the mouth now that the attention is back. Or is it just election season in general? Or is it really as important as depicted?

To quote Hillary: "It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless." I think it's a strange dynamic and isn't necessarily logical on the individual level at all. I get excited when my local friends (people I truly like) get on Facebook and start sending around political stuff. Most of them don't even vote; they just swallow this stuff whole and do their part to perpetuate the culture. I was raised in that culture. Trust me, there is not a lot of meaningful thought going on here.

[worry]

So you do think there is a disconnect between the (outsized?) reaction and the actual real world significance of these events?

[Terez]

worrywort, on 16 September 2012 - 12:23 AM, said:

So you do think there is a disconnect between the (outsized?) reaction and the actual real world significance of these events?

Eh, it's hard to say because it's kind of like apples and oranges. On the one hand, you've got significant international events with a significant attack on US personnel. On the other hand you've got a politicized nation that can literally spin anything significant into a story about how We are better than Them. The more significant the event, the more hype, and the more spin, and the more emotion it evokes in the ranks of the opinionated.

Foreign policy is obviously a hugely emotional issue since 9/11, even more so for the militaristic, generally anti-Islamic portion of the US electorate. These are people who think Obama is a Muslim because of his name and his race; they're going to jump on any opportunity to paint him as an apologist for Sharia law and a traitor to American principles. They're still sore that Osama bin Laden was taken down on his watch.

I've been watching Al Jazeera over the last few days and they've had some US ultra-liberals on talking about how the Obama administration has, by virtue of reaching across the aisle, driven the GOP even further to the right because they feel the need to be to the right of Obama on principle. Hence the Paulies coming out and getting back to the left of Obama on foreign policy and other issues; many people couldn't handle the extremities. The moderate GOP is exasperated; they don't know what to do.

PS:

http://maddowblog.ms...eek-in-god?lite

This post has been edited by Terez: 16 September 2012 - 01:16 AM

[Fiddler-in-Black]

worrywort, on 15 September 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

Why do you think these events are being treated like such an important litmus test? It's clear Romney's opportunistic jumping the gun was disgusting, so the reaction to him was proportionately nauseated. But what I'm getting otherwise from this is a renewal of anti-Islam fervor from people who generally feel that way anyway but have maybe been out of the limelight as a national topic, and now they're frothing at the mouth now that the attention is back. Or is it just election season in general? Or is it really as important as depicted?

Ok, so I'm venturing out here, I have only read a few of the pages posted prior but from I have read it appears to me there a large number of left leaning individuals and not so many conservatives, therefore...

Hello, I am a conservative with an operating brain, feel free to ask away=P That way I can respond directly to questions instead of posting lots of stuff on the tail-end of this thread and not se eit connected...

Anyway, for the above: The Islamic world in the middle east is a very nasty place to be if you are a non-muslim and even worse if you are an American of any stripe. The "radicals" as they're termed aren't some isolated group of Islamic nutbags who spring up every so often to do awful things, they do awful things Every Day you just don't here about them because the Muslim countries see these things as "not a big deal" or "matters of religion" or whatever and the tens of thousands of Honor Killings in Turkey/Pakistan/Iran/Iraq/Egypt/etc, stonings, rapes, pedophilia and such go unreported every year for the vast majority of them.

Now understand, having said that, I'm not a bigot nor do I say all Muslims fall under the above, but in my experience the ratios of "radicals" to non-radical muslims is something in the area of 40/60 respectively, if for no other reason than the dense population of them in the middle east and northern africa. Most of the radicalism is bought and paid for, when it comes ot education for the next generation and such, by one of two sources, either by the Imams/Royal Family from Saudi or from Iran, which by the way actually manufactures the majority of the sofisticated munitions used against Coalition forces in Iraq/Afg.

Having said that, any assault on a US embassy, let alone the death of American Diplomats and soldiers is an extremely serious matter and not presenting a strong front to the offenders and possibly the host country is just inviting more of the same, most Americans may not understand it that way but that is because most Americans have not met your average "radical" and don't understand how they process thought. Effectively a weak response allows them to declare open season on Americans abroad when in my honest opinion, I'd like them to be scared shit-less of messing with official and unofficial American travelers just to keep my fellow citizens safe no matter their views on the world as a whole.

I ascribe to the Sheep-Dog principle and I will continue to be a Sheepdog no matter what others may think of other things, we protect the flock and their ignorance of how the majority of those countries in that part of the world operate...and yet its frustrating when they then do not understand why they shouldn't go outside and negotiate with good faith for a cessation of hostilities on the trail to grandmas house.

*Puts Soap Box Away*

[Fiddler-in-Black]

Terez, on 16 September 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

Foreign policy is obviously a hugely emotional issue since 9/11, even more so for the militaristic, generally anti-Islamic portion of the US electorate. These are people who think Obama is a Muslim because of his name and his race; they're going to jump on any opportunity to paint him as an apologist for Sharia law and a traitor to American principles. They're still sore that Osama bin Laden was taken down on his watch.

Oh and ^^

Militaristic I may be, anti-Literal(radical)Islam I certainly am but I have no issue with non convert or die types. I don't know if Obama has any true religious afiliation beyond the fact that he needed something to be palatable to the majority of Americans on both sides who have sympathies to one religious ideology or another. The Usama bit doesn't bother me at all, him mentioning it when he's receiving our fallen brothers this past week went right through me however but that's just me and my opinion no politician really had much to do with it other than deciding not to commit political suicide when it eventually got out you let him go after he hit the most-wanted-list and authorizing the Operators to move on target.

[amphibian]

Fiddler-in-Black, on 16 September 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

Anyway, for the above: The Islamic world in the middle east is a very nasty place to be if you are a non-muslim and even worse if you are an American of any stripe. The "radicals" as they're termed aren't some isolated group of Islamic nutbags who spring up every so often to do awful things, they do awful things Every Day you just don't here about them because the Muslim countries see these things as "not a big deal" or "matters of religion" or whatever and the tens of thousands of Honor Killings in Turkey/Pakistan/Iran/Iraq/Egypt/etc, stonings, rapes, pedophilia and such go unreported every year for the vast majority of them.

Now understand, having said that, I'm not a bigot nor do I say all Muslims fall under the above, but in my experience the ratios of "radicals" to non-radical muslims is something in the area of 40/60 respectively, if for no other reason than the dense population of them in the middle east and northern africa. Most of the radicalism is bought and paid for, when it comes ot education for the next generation and such, by one of two sources, either by the Imams/Royal Family from Saudi or from Iran, which by the way actually manufactures the majority of the sofisticated munitions used against Coalition forces in Iraq/Afg.

What experiences or proof do you have of these assertions? The 40/60 ratio is egregiously off.

Most of the attacks against coalition forces these days are with IEDs made with parts sourced locally. There are ambushes on convoys with guns and RPGs, mortar attacks or green on blue suicide attacks and few of those come directly from Iran. The techniques and the strategic know-how does often come from state-supported/military groups like the Quds Force, but it's not limited entirely to them.

[EmperorMagus]

Fiddler-in-Black, on 16 September 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

Ok, so I'm venturing out here, I have only read a few of the pages posted prior but from I have read it appears to me there a large number of left leaning individuals and not so many conservatives, therefore...

Hello, I am a conservative with an operating brain, feel free to ask away=P That way I can respond directly to questions instead of posting lots of stuff on the tail-end of this thread and not se eit connected...

Anyway, for the above: The Islamic world in the middle east is a very nasty place to be if you are a non-muslim and even worse if you are an American of any stripe. The "radicals" as they're termed aren't some isolated group of Islamic nutbags who spring up every so often to do awful things, they do awful things Every Day you just don't here about them because the Muslim countries see these things as "not a big deal" or "matters of religion" or whatever and the tens of thousands of Honor Killings in Turkey/Pakistan/Iran/Iraq/Egypt/etc, stonings, rapes, pedophilia and such go unreported every year for the vast majority of them.

I don't think I should post in this topic as I'm not an american, but I know I should ask this: where did you find those statistics?

[Terez]

Lots of non-Americans post in this topic, so feel free. Especially if, you know, the outcome of the election determines whether or not we're going to bomb your country.

[worry]

amphibian, on 16 September 2012 - 09:49 PM, said:

What experiences or proof do you have of these assertions? The 40/60 ratio is egregiously off.

Yah, the 40/60 is way off. Uh, there's 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, if you think 640,000,000 of them are "radicals" then I dunno what to tell you, except that you've already lost whatever war you're hoping to get into. As far as the "open season" reasoning, I don't buy it. If it wasn't open season before Chris Stevens, that sure didn't seem to matter to the people who killed him. It's just rhetoric to foster a false sense of urgency and scale.

[Vengeance]

Terez, on 16 September 2012 - 11:16 PM, said:

Lots of non-Americans post in this topic, so feel free. Especially if, you know, the outcome of the election determines whether or not we're going to bomb your country.

magnus pay no attention to Terez. We like to here from different parts of the world. I for one like to expand my education.



Plus Israel will most likely get there first.

This post has been edited by Vengeance: 17 September 2012 - 12:28 AM

[Terez]

Vengeance, on 17 September 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Terez, on 16 September 2012 - 11:16 PM, said:

Lots of non-Americans post in this topic, so feel free. Especially if, you know, the outcome of the election determines whether or not we're going to bomb your country.

magnus pay no attention to Terez. We like to hear from different parts of the world. I for one like to expand my education.

I feel like you misunderstood what I said, or something. I think it's vital we hear from different parts of the world; that's part of why I come here.

Vengeance, on 17 September 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Plus Israel will most likely get there first.

If Obama wins, certainly. If Romney wins, well, he and Bibi are best buds and all so it becomes a different thing.

In f-i-b's defense (sort of), there was some chatter about the ratio thing on Al Jazeera English the other day. There was a professor from Cairo on talking about how these protests were very small, and not representative of the population in general, but one of the other guests compared it to Occupy Wall Street in the US, how relatively the number of protesters was very small, but close to half of the country sympathized with the movement.

From my own observation: within the OWS protesters, the number of people willing to destroy property or break laws was relatively small. (The violence came almost entirely from the police.) But even anarchy is arguably a legitimate form of protest if the circumstances are bad enough, so even still there were a lot of people willing to support OWS despite the anarchists because the enemy was worse. You might say that the most extreme end of the OWS protests was 9/11/01 (despite it also being about other things; symbolically it will always be about the WTC), and maybe the most extreme political protest ever seen. And clearly there are very few in the US who sympathize with that level of violence in protest. OWS sympathizers notice the connection, and while they're disturbed by the connection, they're not deterred by it.

If f-i-b 1) has military experience or 2) knows people who have military experience, the comments might make sense because it's easy to see people as being sympathetic to the terrorists from the American perspective in the Muslim world because they are both resentful of American military presence and Muslim, maybe even anti-Christian. 60% of the people you meet are nice to you if you're nice to them, but about 40% are not happy to see you either way, which means they sympathize with the terrorists. So maybe that's not really a defense of the thought process but I thought it might do for an explanation of what appears to have been a transparently anecdotal proposition.

This post has been edited by Terez: 17 September 2012 - 01:40 AM

[Terez]

Sorry for spamming but I wanted to address a couple more things:

Fiddler-in-Black, on 16 September 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

Having said that, any assault on a US embassy, let alone the death of American Diplomats and soldiers is an extremely serious matter and not presenting a strong front to the offenders and possibly the host country is just inviting more of the same, most Americans may not understand it that way but that is because most Americans have not met your average "radical" and don't understand how they process thought. Effectively a weak response allows them to declare open season on Americans abroad when in my honest opinion, I'd like them to be scared shit-less of messing with official and unofficial American travelers just to keep my fellow citizens safe no matter their views on the world as a whole.

I think this really sums up the difference between the conservative hawks and the average pragmatist. That last line in particular is problematic. We simply don't have the capability to make people scared shitless of messing with us, and in the process of trying we make them even angrier. That doesn't mean that the US shouldn't protect its interests, but Obama has a responsibility to reach out to the saner element of the Muslim world because it is in our best interests for sanity to eventually prevail in the Muslim world. His line about Egypt being neither ally nor enemy was, for example, a pretty strong statement about our expectations—hawkish enough for even W—but conservatives don't interpret it that way, instead jumping on technicalities to try to demonstrate that Obama is an idiot instead of recognizing that Obama considered those words carefully and meant what he said: Egypt has a choice to make if it wants to be considered an ally of the US. Libya didn't get the same treatment because we had cooperation from the beginning, and there is no evidence that the Libyan authorities are aiding or even egging on the extremists.

Fiddler-in-Black, on 16 September 2012 - 09:48 PM, said:

Militaristic I may be, anti-Literal(radical)Islam I certainly am but I have no issue with non convert or die types. I don't know if Obama has any true religious afiliation beyond the fact that he needed something to be palatable to the majority of Americans on both sides who have sympathies to one religious ideology or another.

What bothers me is that conservatives are more willing to question the stated religion of political candidates on the left than candidates on the right because conservatives tend to have a narrow view of religion that insists one cannot be a 'true Christian' if one does not believe exactly as the conservatives on religious issues. It's a logical fallacy. I don't see any reason to doubt what Obama has said about his beliefs, but if you're going to analyze this sort of thing, he's far from the only politician with a motive to play the religion card, and GOP politicians have even more pressure on that front.

Fiddler-in-Black, on 16 September 2012 - 09:48 PM, said:

The Usama bit doesn't bother me at all, him mentioning it when he's receiving our fallen brothers this past week went right through me however but that's just me and my opinion no politician really had much to do with it other than deciding not to commit political suicide when it eventually got out you let him go after he hit the most-wanted-list and authorizing the Operators to move on target.

I think the same goes for most military operations, but conservatives tend to hold up presidents' records on military actions anyway. That's because decision-making ultimately does matter. From what I understand, Obama had to be convinced that they had good intelligence; no one had ever gotten a good look at anyone inside. It was, of course, the elaborate evasion that convinced him to make the call, but it impresses me more that he considered he might be wrong and was concerned for civilian life.

[Morgoth]

Quote

Militaristic I may be, anti-Literal(radical)Islam I certainly am but I have no issue with non convert or die types. I don't know if Obama has any true religious afiliation beyond the fact that he needed something to be palatable to the majority of Americans on both sides who have sympathies to one religious ideology or another.

This sort of thing is why conservatives are laughed at. What sort of indication is there of Obama not being a devout christian other than your need to create a fictional president to justifies your own political position?

[Terez]

1. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.
2. He lived in the Muslim world as a child.
3. He's pro-choice.
4. He doesn't hate gay people.
5. His preacher was a radical.

I could go on...

[Vengeance]

Terez, on 17 September 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

Vengeance, on 17 September 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Terez, on 16 September 2012 - 11:16 PM, said:

Lots of non-Americans post in this topic, so feel free. Especially if, you know, the outcome of the election determines whether or not we're going to bomb your country.

magnus pay no attention to Terez. We like to hear from different parts of the world. I for one like to expand my education.

I feel like you misunderstood what I said, or something. I think it's vital we hear from different parts of the world; that's part of why I come here.

Terez I was just messing with you.


I would rather have a atheist President who took the time to logically think out solutions to problems and examine different options. Then a President who prays to a imaginary god (with a horrible human rights record) and wears magical underwear to bed. Since the likely hood of a atheist president ever being elected is .000000000000000000000001 I will instead take a President who doesn't push his religion on anyone and uses logic to make his decisions.