Obama '08?

and isn’t it interesting that gun nuts in general seem to show an increased propensity for racism?

OCCOM BILL wrote:

and isn’t it interesting that gun nuts in general seem to show an increased propensity for racism?

No, that's not interesting at all; nor is it completely accurate.

I'm sure I'd be described as a gun nut by a few here, and I voted for Obama.

Quote:

I think independently, act independently, vote independently, just me, and I form my own opinions, just a person unconnected to fellow groups or admirers of whomever.

I don't think you could get any educated person to agree with such self-flattering bullshit of that nature okie.

Wrong again, okie. We are not emotionally joined at the hip. We don't all agree with each other or each other's methods. We spend a lot of time arguing about it. I bet there hasn't been a day in the last two years that I haven't had over 300 emails in my New Mail box, most of it duplicates or endless debates, much like this A2K message board. Some days I delete it all without reading any of it because I get sick of all the bickering; other days I skim through the subject lines and read what catches my attention and add my two cents worth. Just like we do on this message board.

The fact that you keep coming back to A2K to do the exact same thing tells me that you aren't the loner you pretend to be. Face it okie, you are a groupee!

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Hey Bill

You tend to be a reasonable guy.

I am. In fact; I am the man Okie professes to be. Whose politics on this site would you consider more Independent than mine? Would you pretend Okie fits that description in any way shape or form?

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Why ridicule Okie?

Because his claim was as ridiculous as it would be for Foxy, or CI to make. Completely ridiculous.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Because he has no use for Obama?

Convenient as that might be to assume, no. I fairly consistently ridicule unwarranted attacks on any candidate, including both Obama and McCain in this last cycle.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Obviously, I haven't read 100% of Okie's postings, but I've read enough to reach the conclusion that while he is opinionated (and who in this effin forum is not?) he is very rarely irrational, and almost never obnoxious.

I’ll grant you innocence in being opinionated and rarely obnoxious; but dissent on the issue of irrational. He fairly consistently believes and repeats some of the most absurd crap that comes out of Rush’s mouth. Stuff that you, with your strong partisan convictions, would never believe let alone repeat.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Hey Bill

You tend to be a reasonable guy.

I am. In fact; I am the man Okie professes to be. Whose politics on this site would you consider more Independent than mine? Would you pretend Okie fits that description in any way shape or form?

This has got to be one of the funniest posts I have ever read, Bill. You dislike me so much and disagree with me so much, and I am so irrational, but you now claim to be the man that fits my description of me! Speaking of irrational, Bill?

And to think that not long after I joined this forum, I was naive enough that after reading one of your opinions that I thought was pretty reasonable, I sent you a personal message complimenting you. I regret doing that now, as you have really drifted leftward, to the point that you are getting pretty far out there, you seem to have lost your way.

By the way, you loved to accuse everyone of being a racist or a bigot. Now, have you moved onto your next whipping boy, gun nuts?

Is everybody a gun nut now?

I did read that gun sales are really sky rocketing. Why would that be? I guess a bunch of irrational gun nuts!

By the way, people, is the Obama born in Kenya business gone forever? I've seen stuff on this for a while, and more or less dismissed it, but one thing nags at that conclusion, did the Kenyan grandmother say, and is this on tape, that she was in the room when he was born there? How could this be made up? Why would she lie? Now, I am sure that if there is anything to this, the powers that be will totally expunge the record, and it could have been nothing to it, but still I find it much more intriguing and possible than Bush bringing down the towers, and even Jesse, the Body, Ventura almost believed that one, or did believe it.

But then again, where was Hillary if this had anything to it at all? Probably another loser of a story, but I do like the Obama born in Kenya thing, wouldn't that turn out to be a doozy if that one got renewed life, through more information of some kind?

But that's just the half of it. Much of this Herculean effort -- which will run Obama into the strongest collected interests and lobbies in Washington -- is simply to set the platform for the slow, humbling restoration of moral authority. That's as much about what we do here in the United States -- how we, again, begin to lead by example -- as it is about our actions overseas.

This is the thorniest part of the equation. The new president will have to lead the country through a process that people may know from their own lives: getting out of the doghouse. Large errors demand large responses, and not just for show. You have to mean it.

The American list of sins is long -- from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, from human rights abuses to actual legal violations.This sort of cleansing -- of confronting the truth and taking the consequences -- is the only way to move forward on a moral arc. It is the sign of a mature country -- steady, prudent, ready to re-chart its course when needed. One worth following.

But here, at least, there's a revealing precedent for how difficult, self-correcting actions at home can, over time, improbably change world views: Watergate. In 1974, many observers were worried that President Richard M. Nixon's resignation would embolden America's enemies and send a message that the mighty United States was adrift. Someone who harbored such fears was a Nixon aide named Dick Cheney, who felt that the mistake of Watergate was that Nixon was over-briefed: Had he never been told about the break-ins, Nixon would never have been engaged in the illegal cover-up.

A quarter-century later, Cheney expanded that concept for the current president, making sure that Bush was not over-briefed so that he could, if necessary, deny his own presidential statements and dodge accountability. At day's end, it fooled no one. But the error made by Cheney and the complicit Bush was deeper -- they misread the nature of real power and misunderstood the way it flows from a truly honest conversation among leaders and, in a democracy, their bosses, the people. There is a strong consensus among historians about what the world learned from Watergate: that the rule of law in America is not a matter of convenience. In fact, under the duly constituted laws, a president is no different from the garbage collector rolling a can to his truck on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Along with the power of its example, America might finally start diverting significant funds earmarked for overwhelming force toward the goal of becoming a true humanitarian superpower. In this connected age, such efforts work as never before. To wit: The U.S. approval rating, languishing in the teens for years in the linchpin country of Pakistan, jumped to 48 percent after America's humanitarian armies arrived in Kashmir in 2005 to lead earthquake relief. A few months later, though, after a Predator drone bombed a village in the Pakistani tribal areas, killing 18 civilians, it dropped back to the teens, where it remains...

During the presidential campaign, I interviewed a London radical with suspected connections to al-Qaeda. He was particularly concerned about how Obama might be the agent of such change. "Obama would be a nightmare for us," he said. "He looks like the world, he knows Islam, his grandfather was a goat herder from Kenya, living like much of the world still lives. As president, he might finally unify the world's Muslim moderates, who outnumber us four or five to one. They know who we are, where we live. They could crush us."

Gordon Brown today pledges to work with Barack Obama to create a new world order where 'markets need morals' and people come first, in a first real glimpse of how he plans to conduct the new special relationship.

Writing here today, the Prime Minister says that the path of history has been changed by an election in which American voters backed a progressive candidate offering more government intervention to protect families and businesses.

'It is up to us whether 2008 is remembered for a financial crash that engulfed the world or for a new resilience and optimism from a generation which faced the economic storm head-on and built the fair society in its wake,' he writes.

So just who am I a puppet of, spendius?