%18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing facts

[Amaris]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Two huge things Bush couldn't accomplish while his party controlled both the WH and Congress:

1. Immigration reform.
2. Social Security reform.

Case fucking closed. gturner is full of it.

This is the kind of stuff I want to hear in live Presidential debates.

Yeah. Bush banked a ton of political capital on those issues and got burned beyond belief. How quickly we forget...

Unfortunately, the political memory of the average U.S. citizen is in proportion to the number of sound bytes that can be used to spin the issue. People are easily distracted.

 

[gturner]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Two huge things Bush couldn't accomplish while his party controlled both the WH and Congress:

1. Immigration reform.
2. Social Security reform.

Case fucking closed. gturner is full of it.

And most of his party in Congress wanted neither of those, nor were those wanted by most of the people who voted for him. Bush hoped to reduce the friction over immigration, but the friction is inherent in the conflicts: Between immigrants lowering wages (by increasing the supply of cheap labor) and Americans who want to earn higher wages, between companies that want to keep labor cheap by making sure the immigrants won't have bargaining strength versus companies that want to make hiring guest workers simple and risk free, between Republicans who want hispanic votes and Republicans who know more hispanics just means more Democrat votes.

As for Social Security, the recession has put an end to the idea of privatizing it and the current skyrocketing debt is putting an end to the idea of even keeping it.

 

[Guartho]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Between immigrants lowering wages (by increasing the supply of cheap labor)...

Who's got that study handy that shows that illegal immigrants take home a higher average wage than minimum wage?

 

[gturner]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

It probably helps to put some numbers to these things.

Politifact has been keeping track of the promises Obama made during his campaign and whether or not he's followed through. Linky!

They've tracked 506 promises. Out of those, 79% are marked as "kept," "compromise," or "in the works." The other 21% are "broken," "stalled," or "not yet rated."

(And yes, almost half of them are "in the works." But then it can't be said they aren't being worked on.)

24% of the total are marked as "kept." So, in two years, Obama has accomplished about 1/4 of what he promised, and almost half of what he promised is being worked on right now.

But yeah, he's a "failure."

That list is freakin' hilarious!

The first kept promise is #6, create an "advanced manufacturing fund," which was supposed to support advanced manufacturing technologies. They count it as "kept" even though the only grants were for end-use products for electric cars that nobody is going to buy, not manufacturing methods, not even a single manufacturing method or technology.

The next kept promise is #16, increase "minority access to capital" (aka "give more money to black folks). Yep. Done.

Then promise #17 is listed as kept. The promise was to "require economic justification for tax changes." You'd think it has something to do with Congress, but no, they just adopted a policy of requiring people being sued by the IRS for tax evation to prove that they had an economic justification for a transaction beyond just lessening their taxes. "Make it easier for the IRS to sue taxpayers" wasn't the promise, but that's what is listed as fulfilling it.

The next kept promise is #27, "direct the Federal Communications Commission to provide an accurate map of broadband availability using a true definition of broadband instead of the current 200 kbs standard." Um, . Any of us could've done that one ourselves over the weekend. A better promise would've been to prevent ISP's from spamming us daily with their updated maps of broadband access.

I'm pretty sure the Politifacts list reflects what G.W. Bush called "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations."

 

[gturner]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Between immigrants lowering wages (by increasing the supply of cheap labor)...

Who's got that study handy that shows that illegal immigrants take home a higher average wage than minimum wage?

Basic economics says that an increase in the supply of labor will lower the price of labor, which is why we established a minimum wage in the first place. All those jobs that Americans "won't do" are merely jobs that Americans won't do as cheaply as illegals, whose presence enables much lower wages than would be required to fill those same jobs with Americans. Think of them as abundant unemployed scabs competing with union labor when the union has no power to lock them out.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

This is the simple fact. When you suck your political world view from Glenn Beck's nose, nothing you say has any merit in reasonable dialog.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

People who say Obama's a failure do so because they want him to be a failure and nothing more. He could cure cancer and somehow he'd be a failure to these people. There's no way to really talk sense into such people. They refuse to listen to reason. No fact, statistic, poll, hand drawn picture will convince them otherwise.

That's because they don't really think he's a failure. They think he's the enemy. And they'll say or do anything to get rid of him.

Can we just conclude the fact that some people are idiots and called it a day?

I think that's a reasonable conclusion.

 

[gturner]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

People who say Obama's a failure do so because they want him to be a failure and nothing more. He could cure cancer and somehow he'd be a failure to these people. There's no way to really talk sense into such people. They refuse to listen to reason. No fact, statistic, poll, hand drawn picture will convince them otherwise.

That's because they don't really think he's a failure. They think he's the enemy. And they'll say or do anything to get rid of him.

So that explains why so many Congressional Democrats are renouncing or avoiding him in their campaigns. Democrats think he's the enemy.

That, or they can read polling data.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

People who say Obama's a failure do so because they want him to be a failure and nothing more.......

..... They think he's the enemy. And they'll say or do anything to get rid of him.

So that explains why so many Congressional Democrats are renouncing or avoiding him in their campaigns. Democrats think he's the enemy.

That, or they can read polling data.

I think we all understand the difference, though, between politicians who might be making decisions so to distance themselves from Obama's policies because they think it will help them stay in office vs. those people who believe that Barack Hussein Obama is REALLY an "enemy"- a Muslim sleeper agent working with the sole intent ("EEEVIL!! EEEEEVIL!") to actually destroy the United States of America.

It sounded ridiculous when some of my friends on the left "knew" George W. Bush was intentionally trying to destroy the country, and these claims about Obama from the Far Right seem even worse. Two different flavors of crazy.....

 

[George]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

13% of Germans think that Vladimir Putin is still President of Russia
15% of Germans think that Christmas mourns the death of Jesus
17% of Germans think that Palin is McCain's wife
23% of Germans think that Santa Claus is a Christian figure

'strue

'Nuff said.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

This is the simple fact. When you suck your political world view from Glenn Beck's nose, nothing you say has any merit in reasonable dialog.

Well, since I don't watch Glenn Beck (because he's a freakin' idiot) and yet am still a critic of Obama, does that mean what I say has any merit?

13% of Germans think that Vladimir Putin is still President of Russia
15% of Germans think that Christmas mourns the death of Jesus
17% of Germans think that Palin is McCain's wife
23% of Germans think that Santa Claus is a Christian figure

'strue

'Nuff said.

 

[Rii]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Here's a disturbing fact: by 2030 China will have 221 cities with a population of at least one million people.

13% of Germans think that Vladimir Putin is still President of Russia
15% of Germans think that Christmas mourns the death of Jesus
17% of Germans think that Palin is McCain's wife
23% of Germans think that Santa Claus is a Christian figure

'strue

'Nuff said.

You know that those are all retarded counter-examples, right? Eh, well the Santa Claus one is a little far-fetched.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Two huge things Bush couldn't accomplish while his party controlled both the WH and Congress:

1. Immigration reform.
2. Social Security reform.

Case fucking closed. gturner is full of it.

And most of his party in Congress wanted neither of those, nor were those wanted by most of the people who voted for him. Bush hoped to reduce the friction over immigration, but the friction is inherent in the conflicts: Between immigrants lowering wages (by increasing the supply of cheap labor) and Americans who want to earn higher wages, between companies that want to keep labor cheap by making sure the immigrants won't have bargaining strength versus companies that want to make hiring guest workers simple and risk free, between Republicans who want hispanic votes and Republicans who know more hispanics just means more Democrat votes.

As for Social Security, the recession has put an end to the idea of privatizing it and the current skyrocketing debt is putting an end to the idea of even keeping it.

You completely fail since you've now moved the goalposts. You were specifically talking about how Presidents accomplished all of their goals when their party controlled both Congress and the White House. And now you're saying it doesn't count if the rest of the party doesn't want what the President wants.

Fail.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

Between immigrants lowering wages (by increasing the supply of cheap labor)...

Who's got that study handy that shows that illegal immigrants take home a higher average wage than minimum wage?

Perhaps a higher real wage because they don't have to pay the same taxes that legal workers do. But they still flood the labor pool and depress overall wages for legal workers.

 

[scotpens]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

13% of Germans think that Vladimir Putin is still President of Russia
15% of Germans think that Christmas mourns the death of Jesus
17% of Germans think that Palin is McCain's wife
23% of Germans think that Santa Claus is a Christian figure

'strue

'Nuff said.

I refuse to believe it. No country that produced a work of art like this can have that many dumb people.

 

[Rii]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

No country that produced a work of art like this can have that many dumb people.

Except that only one of the items on that list is at all damning. Hell, if anything the Putin result is a testament to the worldliness of your average German citizen. Frankly, I'd be surprised if even 13% of Australians disagreed with the statement that Putin is President of Russia.

Whilst on the subject of Germany and knowledge, I recently came across the following Spiegel piece arguing that one of the key factors behind the rise of Germany in the 19th Century was its wanton disregard for intellectual property:

Höffner has researched that early heyday of printed material in Germany and reached a surprising conclusion -- unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century.

German authors during this period wrote ceaselessly. Around 14,000 new publications appeared in a single year in 1843. Measured against population numbers at the time, this reaches nearly today's level. And although novels were published as well, the majority of the works were academic papers.

The situation in England was very different. "For the period of the Enlightenment and bourgeois emancipation, we see deplorable progress in Great Britain," Höffner states.

Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually in England at that time -- 10 times fewer than in Germany -- and this was not without consequences. Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development -- in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

Interesting stuff. And of course we're seeing the same effect globally today, most notably in China.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

People who say Obama's a failure do so because they want him to be a failure and nothing more. He could cure cancer and somehow he'd be a failure to these people. There's no way to really talk sense into such people. They refuse to listen to reason. No fact, statistic, poll, hand drawn picture will convince them otherwise.

I don't 'want' Obama to be a failure, but I think he has failed at what I believe to be the most important issue he has on his plate - that being the economy. However, I believe that Dubya was a failure at this also.

But then, I'm not a particular partisan. I call 'em as I see 'em, regardless of political party. I don't see Obama through the rose colored glasses of his supporters...nor did I see Dubya through the rose colored glasses of his supporters.

All I see is a piss-poor economy that has been bad for a number of years now - under both Bush and Obama, and is not getting better, but worse (at least here in Georgia). And make no mistake - I want it fixed VERY badly. And don't give a rat's ass who broke it, who fixes it, or who gets 'credit' for fixing it. I just want it fixed.

And until we get some governmental officials in there who ARE able to fix it, they will all be failures to me - Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between. Because I am tired of seeing my friends and family members losing their houses and their savings and everything they have worked hard for their entire lives. And now I am in real danger of losing everything myself - it took the economy a while to get around to me, but it finally has and there is no one left to help me, like I helped them. Because the economy got to all of them earlier and they are all broke and barely (if at all) hanging on.

This is WAY beyond 'wanting' someone to succeed or fail based on silly political party posturing. Down here in Georgia, the economy is one of the worst in the nation, and I believe that we no longer have that particular luxury. We need this fixed, we need it fixed now, and we need it fixed by whoever can.

If that's Obama, then let's get to it already. Chop, chop - time's a-wastin and we are circling the drain here. If it's not Obama, then he needs to get the hell out of the way for whoever CAN do the job.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

I refuse to believe it. No country that produced a work of art like this can have that many dumb people.

People are alike all over. It doesn't matter where they live.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

But then, I'm not a particular partisan. I call 'em as I see 'em, regardless of political party. I don't see Obama through the rose colored glasses of his supporters...nor did I see Dubya through the rose colored glasses of his supporters.

Yes, everyone look how open-minded and flexible I am while I break out the same "Obamessiah supporters are unquestioning drones who think he can do no wrong" shtick I started harping on two-and-a-half years ago and never fail to mention in every single post I make about Obama, because I'm so rebellious against The Establishment that I don't watch or read the news (as I've said before) and therefore haven't seen the numerous instances of his current or former supporters criticizing many of his decisions.

Everyone clap for my apathy and need to look down on people who supported a different candidate than me, because I didn't think he should have gotten the nomination since a black man stood no chance of winning and would gaurantee a victory for the Republicans (as I've said before). I'm so different and special because I'm tired of politics. Blah, blah, blah, fourteen more paragraphs to make a two paragraph point.

 

[George]

Re: %18 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and other disturbing fac

13% of Germans think that Vladimir Putin is still President of Russia
15% of Germans think that Christmas mourns the death of Jesus
17% of Germans think that Palin is McCain's wife
23% of Germans think that Santa Claus is a Christian figure

'strue

'Nuff said.

I refuse to believe it. No country that produced a work of art like this can have that many dumb people.

Well, it's because the German educational system, as several natives explained to me, is one big failure. This is what they do:

Elementary school goes from the age of 6 to the age of 11, or 4 school years. The children learn, in essence, nothing. They take 4 years to just do basic maths (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), learn how to sing the ABC in English, do basic Syntax in German and additionally learn some random stuff, be it history or geography, which is more or less irrelevant for the rest of their education and which they forget pretty soon.

Then, at age 11, they are classed into three groups: Good, mediocre and horrible. The good ones are sent to the Gymnasium (no, not a gym in the English sense, Gymnasium doesn't mean that in German - it confused me too at first), the mediocre ones to the Realschule and the horrible ones to the Hauptschule. Basically, only Gymnasium kids and perhaps very very good Realschule kids have any chance of not ending up in relative poverty later in life. The not-as-good Realschule kids and all of the Hauptschule kids basically know that they have no chance to succeed in pretty much anything and thus stop bothering with school. So, to say it bluntly, they all end up daft.

Now that system worked well in the German Empire because the sense of discipline and everything sort of caused most of the children to end up in Gymnasiums. That has shifted, with about 50% ending up in the Hauptschule, 30% in the Realschule and only a measly 20% in the Gymnasium.

What I'm saying is, more than half the German population are idiots. Sad, but true. Also the reason why I send my son to a private school.

Oh, and

Who needs constitutional constructionism? Not one in three Americans, apparently: that's the proportion that said in a 2008 First Amendment Center poll that the constitutional right to freedom of religion was never meant to apply to groups most folks think are extreme or fringe—a 10 percent increase from 2000.

I belong to those people. Idiot cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology have done enough damage.