Romney? Obama? Does it even Matter?

[░▓░]

I can't believe we are just a few months away from possibly having a new president but everyone seems so utterly disinterested in either of the popular candidates.

Is anyone motivated enough to vote this year? Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama are pretty much the same person and the two aren't enough to inspire me to wait hours in line to vote. Both supported the massive multi-billion dollar bailouts (i.e. TARP) at the expense of taxpayers, both would inch closer to an unavoidable war with Iran (How long can you "renew" sanctions?), both are blindly expanding the unnecessary power of the federal government (Gitmo, pro-PATRIOT Act), and neither one seem really capable of curbing wild government spending. Understandably, there is some difference in tone but they are the same animal with different colors.

For some, I am sure they will vote on social non-issues like abortion, gay rights, and etc. but in the jist of it all, does it have any impact? Anyone else struck with severe voter apathy in this election cycle? Does anyone feel strongly about any of the two popular candidates?

[Curious George]

Sure, just like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam who wanted to, he said it in his own words. Luckily most of them never gain enough power to go far beyond. Not for lack of desire.

9 said:

Curious George said:

We should just let oppressive dictatorships go unchecked until they take over the world...

9 said:

Ashley said:

Obama went pretty quick into Libya...

But we aren't occupying Libya and then attempting to rebuild the nation in our own image. However, this doesn't mean I think American actions in Libya are justifed. I just know an invasion or even a strike upon Iran would have much graver consequences.

Dictatorships usually expand their power internally and rarely beyond their own borders. They are more of a threat to their own people as opposed to the world.

[░▓░]

Curious George said:

Sure, just like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam who wanted to, he said it in his own words. Luckily most of them never gain enough power to go far beyond. Not for lack of desire.
9 said:

Curious George said:

We should just let oppressive dictatorships go unchecked until they take over the world...

9 said:

Ashley said:

Obama went pretty quick into Libya...

But we aren't occupying Libya and then attempting to rebuild the nation in our own image. However, this doesn't mean I think American actions in Libya are justifed. I just know an invasion or even a strike upon Iran would have much graver consequences.

Dictatorships usually expand their power internally and rarely beyond their own borders. They are more of a threat to their own people as opposed to the world.

Hitler, Stalin and Saddam never desired to take over the world. They may have invaded or fought with other nations but they never sought to control the world.

[Jade West]

Hitler never wanted to take over the world? Well, maybe not the whole world. Maybe just Europe, and Soviet Union. For all his victims that was the whole world.

[░▓░]

What is the point of questioning my comment in one sentence and later supporting it in the next? Yes, Germany sought to expand it's borders but this doesn't support the claim of dictatorships attempting to conquer the world. Militarily speaking, authoritarian governments concentrate their power in subduing the population from within as opposed to using it flex their powers externally. Just look at countries like Libya under Qaddafi, Jordan under King Hussein, North Korea under Kim Jung Il, Cuba under Castro, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and etc.. All these are the common status quo and it is almost laughable to think Iran, which suffers through so much internal division, would ever try to conquer anyone.

The only country which comes close to conquering the world is the United States; it has navies occupying all oceans and major sea lanes, it has hundreds of military bases occupying various countries throughout the world, has invaded more countries in the last 60 years, outspends any other country in military spending and remains to be the sole superpower in the world. This should generate some pause for anyone who doesn't see the irony.

[Jade West]

You are priceless! I love it! Your euphemism of Hitler's perversion of slaughtering millions and destroying Europe with "Yes, Germany sought to expand its borders..." is stunning. Is that what the NAZI's were about? Expanding borders? You make it sound like the Louisiana Purchase.

[░▓░]

You really think the Nazi ideology was just about slaughtering millions and destroying Europe? Nazi Germany's expansion was based upon the policy of Lebensraum; creating more living space for the expanding German population and forming Greater Germany. In Hitler's book Mein Kampf, he detailed that the German people needed to invade Eastern Europe for it's land and raw materials.

Well, maybe because it is kind of like the Louisiana Purchase? The USA expanded and slaughtered millions of native Americans for "living space" in it's drive westward. The only difference is that people such as yourself are probably lost to that irony.

[Jade West]

This is truly amazing.You use what Hitler wrote in Mein Kamph to rationialize, apologize, and defend Hitler's "need" to invade Eastern Europe to create "more living space?" And you use such lofty words as NAZI idealogy, as if it was some philosophy. Perhaps, you will discuss the methods that Hitler implemented his idealogy.
You seem to like the word "irony?" The true irony is that today's Germans reject everything in Mein Kamph. Perhaps that is why Germany now has the strongest economy in Continental Europe. All without invading their neighbors

[Dario Western]

I am not an American, but I think Barack Obama is the best President the country has had in a long time since Jimmy Carter. At least he is not an adulterer or a warmonger like his two predecessors were.

You Americans need more government spending on health and education, especially having a healthcare system that is subsidised and accessible to all and improvements on the education system so that everybody knows how to read, write, spell, count, and punctuate properly before being allowed to use a computer let alone the internet. The whole K1 education system is a joke. If you fail a grade, your loss. You only get one chance to pass - the real world is not like a computer that will give you an infinite amount of chances to get a question right before moving onto the next one.

That's what it was like when I was at school. You were only allowed to repeat one grade if you failed it, usually in primary school. If you copped out on high school you were put into the workforce or had to go on the dole until you found a job.

Also, gay rights and abortion are not non-issues. There are many powerful politicians from the RRR who want to ensure that they do not become legal across the whole of America no matter how much the general public might support these causes. They might not be as pressing as health and education matters as such, but they are still important that they are not denied to women and GBLT people who want to get married.

Over in Australia, we have had one politician from the right-wing Liberal-National Party resign after he recently said in an interview that legalising gay marriage was a prelude to allowing polygamy and bestiality in our culture.

In a nutshell, I would definitely vote Obama if I lived in America. But it'd be nice if someone like the Libertarians, or the Greens were to get in for once. Republicans are thick as planks IMHO.

[░▓░]

Since when did elaborating a position equate to justifying an action? Come on, Jade, I know you are more mature than this. You honestly think Hitler energized an entire population to commit some of the most notorious artocries in the last century for fun? There was an ideology, how else can you motivate people to do such horrific crimes? And genocides don't happen out chaos but through control. Whether it was his eugenics, holocaust or systematic extermination of Eastern Europeans there was organization and conviction involved. Of course,

While I understand many people, such as yourself, are comfortable with condensing the world simply into a comic book viewpoint of bad and good people but it is more complicated than that. Why don't we see Manifest Destiny in the same light as Hitler's Lebensraum? Why is the holocaust remembered more than the holodomor?

Ask the Greeks and the critics of the European Union. Germany has been the strongest proponent of the European Union and through the EU they have conquered Europe faster through economical means as opposed to military.

[goodomen]

Vote for Obama because he's black!

[Jade West]

Why do you think Jimmy Carter was a good presidenT?
Dario Western said:

I am not an American, but I think Barack Obama is the best President the country has had in a long time since Jimmy Carter. At least he is not an adulterer or a warmonger like his two predecessors were.

You Americans need more government spending on health and education, especially having a healthcare system that is subsidised and accessible to all and improvements on the education system so that everybody knows how to read, write, spell, count, and punctuate properly before being allowed to use a computer let alone the internet. The whole K1 education system is a joke. If you fail a grade, your loss. You only get one chance to pass - the real world is not like a computer that will give you an infinite amount of chances to get a question right before moving onto the next one.

That's what it was like when I was at school. You were only allowed to repeat one grade if you failed it, usually in primary school. If you copped out on high school you were put into the workforce or had to go on the dole until you found a job.

Also, gay rights and abortion are not non-issues. There are many powerful politicians from the RRR who want to ensure that they do not become legal across the whole of America no matter how much the general public might support these causes. They might not be as pressing as health and education matters as such, but they are still important that they are not denied to women and GBLT people who want to get married.

Over in Australia, we have had one politician from the right-wing Liberal-National Party resign after he recently said in an interview that legalising gay marriage was a prelude to allowing polygamy and bestiality in our culture.

In a nutshell, I would definitely vote Obama if I lived in America. But it'd be nice if someone like the Libertarians, or the Greens were to get in for once. Republicans are thick as planks IMHO.

[Jade West]

According to Obama, only half black.
goodomen said:

Vote for Obama because he's black!