Obama or McCain - who would you vote for?

[Bgile]

I see things done by my elected representatives that I approve of and that enrich the lives of people here where I live. I agree that there are places where this doesn't happen, but certainly not everywhere and particularly not as much in my locality.

It will be difficult for Obama, but I believe he will try to make things better and if he has 8 years he might be able to make a difference. I think he understands that. Of course, my "better" might not be someone else's "better".

[Vic Dale]

I see things done by my elected representatives that I approve of and that enrich the lives of people here where I live. I agree that there are places where this doesn't happen, but certainly not everywhere and particularly not as much in my locality.

It will be difficult for Obama, but I believe he will try to make things better and if he has 8 years he might be able to make a difference. I think he understands that. Of course, my "better" might not be someone else's "better".

Clearly you have a lot in common with many of your fellow Americans - if you think that your elected representatives are enriching your lives then your expectations have been lowered to the point where you will accept just about anything which is put before you.

You live in a land which has produced the greatest productive force in history. The development of the US means of production post war, caused an economic boom world wide, which eclipsed by 6 times everything which human kind had ever produced. Yet now your machines lie idle, your people are out of work and your poor are dying for want of adequate medicine and affordable medical care.

How is this possible? Do your machines not work? Do you fellow Americans not want to work? Does nobody want cars or washing machines anymore? Are US products so poor in quality that nobody will buy them?

The fact is, your economy is too narrow for the means of production you have created and is even now destroying that fabulous productive force and is laying workers idle. Experience here shows that it does not take long for terminal decay to set in. Those who have been made redundant only recently will be utterly useless as workers in a short while. Millions of your people are living in their cars - 3000 families are homeless in Michigan alone, your car industry is fast disappearing and the main isssue for the Whitehouse - republican or democrat - will be the war on terror. Has the penny really not dropped there yet?

Has Obama declared war on the fat-cats? Has he promised to solve the matter of healthcare. If he had any intention on those two lines alone he would have swept the board in the election and the opposition would have bowed at his feet even before the first vote was cast. The oozing treacly eulogies issuing from the lying lips of senior republicans, are saying; "We have nothing to fear from this guy. He won't rock the boat. He's one of us. He says change, but he means status quo."

I listened to Obama's speech tonight and it made me sick to think that what he is saying has been carved in stone and proclaimed by Americans since the war of independence and most of it has been ignored. It is to be spoken but not acted upon. That is precisely how parliamentary democracy works, they talk but do very little unless it is time for war and then they do more than they should. For the good they actually do they may as well go to the devil.

It is a wonderful paradox that the state justifies it's existence on the basis that it is protecting us from people whom our statesmen have turned into enemies.

Vic Dale

[Bgile]

The USA has become less competitive in an international world because our standard of living (and pay) is higher per capita than the competition - mainly China - and so our corporations have taken their factories overseas. That is pure and simply the crux of the problem. While our efficiency is greater per person, it isn't enough greater to make up the difference. Whatever we do, as long as we don't exploit the poorer countries to a greater extent than we do now, our standard of living is bound to get lower and lower as we attempt to compete with them in the international labor market.

A certain segment of our population doesn't have this problem, primarily because they have good educations and do work that the average third world person can't do. As we attempt to go more into those areas, we become even more dependent on overseas enterprises for manufactured goods. In addition, as the Chinese and Indians become more competitive they use more oil and compete with us in the world market, driving up the price. This is a difficult problem in a world market, and I don't know the answer near term.

I live in a state where we have attempted with some success to provide medical care for people the system has overlooked. It's called the Oregon Health Plan. In spite of our small population, we have good representatives and good Senators at the national level and they often manage to get us money to help pay for light rail and other worthwhile infrastructure projects. This is what I meant by being happy with my representatives at the national level. They also voted (for the most part) against the war in Iraq, and generally do things at the national level that I approve of.

Obama is not in favor of International military intervention in general. He is in favor of some kind of national assistance with healthcare, but not the British model. Bill Clinton attempted to enact one, but the big insurance companies managed to stop him. I think Obama has a better chance ... we shall see. Bush has tied his hands financially, along with the recession. In any case, I'm happy with what I think he intends to attempt. He may be smart enough and charismatic enough to succeed and maybe not. Time will tell, but I like what I believe he will at least try to do, which is quite different from Bush, who would do anything to help high income interests. There are many other reasons I support him, but I don't have time to spend detailing them all.

[lwd]

...
Whilst everyone is hyperventilating about getting a black president - a wealthy, priviledged and middle class, black president -

You can't even stay consistent in the same paragraph. IE wealthy does not equal middle class.

...The nearest any of the pundits have come to finding the slightest nuance of a policy is in regard to Iraq, where it is "thought" that troop numbers will be reduced, so as to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan. Have these people learned nothing?? The Russians died like flies in Afghanistan and so too will Americans. .... It is another Vietnam and isn't it funny; ...

The evidence is that we have learned and PLS note that Americans are not dying like flies there didn't even happen in Iraq. It's a long way from Vietnam but I'll agree it isn't funny.

The USA has not demonstrated strength in electing Obama,...

That wasn't the point. So even if what followed was correct it was irrelevant.

Obama's legacy will be physically and mentally mutilated Middle-East-Vets in shop doorways askign passers by; "Got any change buddy?" Unfortunately for them, Obama's policy (what ever it is) is unlikely to enrich the lives of the working people to the extent that will have any change to spare....

I'm sure glad I don't live in your world.

[Vic Dale]

Firstly, middle class has nothing to do with how much money you have, it is about how you get your money.

Working class people or proletarians have to work for all they get and they have to work for other people - they have only their labour to sell.

The bourgeois or big capitalist class own the monopolies and cartels and they dominate the whole of industry and the finance sectors of the economy, their capital is used to buy the labour power of the working class, to create wealth which they then recycle.

The middle class are a relatively small section of the population, who on the one hand are not classed as workers, they don't sell their labour to others, but neither do they own heavy capital concerns. They may be small time employers, writers or shop owners. They fall into two categories - higher and lower middle class, the higher middle class may be able to dispose of millions of £/$ worth of capital but they sink or swim according to how the monopolies bear down on them. The lower middle class may be struggling along owning a shop or small factory garage, home insulation, painting and decorating firms and though they work long 14 or 15 hours a day, may take home less than a car worker working less than 40. They are not workers since they are not employed and they are not bourgeois since they don't control large capital. They are a class apart and stand quite distinct from the other two.

During the 1990s there was scam put about by which the governments of the advanced nations tried to split the working class, by declaring that certain sections of the working class were now middle class. Nurses, of all people, in Britain suddenly were lifted out of the working class and made into middle class people. That btw includes me. I am a nurse.

I work long hours for a relative pittance and I do not own any part of the work I do. I sell my labour power just like any other proletarian. I am working class, but the government wants me to think middle class. Idiots. Many nurses fell for this at first, n but not a single one of us now says anything other than that we are working class - and we are angry.

Another trick was performed in the 1970s when company directors were given the right to pay their national insurance contributions through Pay-as-you-earn - PAYE. Suddenly they became working class, whilst the small shopkeepers painters and decorators etc, were still paying the private stamp. This is another con to try and blur the edges of the class divide.

These things work for a time, but the penny eventually drops. I can remember when my spouse came home and told me gaily that nurses were going to be moved into the middle class and when I asked her to explain how that was to come about all she could tell me was that the name of her income group was being changed.

So "middle-income" does not automatically translate to middle class.

In my world I see things for what they are. How many dead US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa is not the point. As I have said body count matters for nothing until it is your own dead son or daughter who is in the list of honoured dead. It is the fact that young lives are being wasted or at best put at risk for what? Don't tell me freedom. We have freedom coming out of our ears, you couldn't get more freedom. What we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is suppressing the will of a sizeable section of society and it is a strange coincidence that each time we step on a small nation favouring one side against another the side we favour also favours us.

Have we ever in the whole of history taken the righteous side of people who hate us? Of course not, so the notion of freedom doesn't exist at all. We are feathering our own nests when we go traipsing into small nations to create "freedom". Another cover for helping ourselves is "education" We educate very few people. Oh yes we build schools, but there are no teachers. We don't build the infrastructure, we create favourable conditions so our corporations can help themselves to the lesser nation's wealth. In Iraq, some corporations didn't even bother with Iraqi assets, they simply pocketed the development money.

If you take a real close look as I have done, you will see that far from helping these small nations develop, we actually hold them down so they cannot develop.

China is probably one of the best examples of a nation which was "helped" to choke on her own blood for the first half of the 20th century by the advanced world and not until she broke free did she begin to develop from her own internal strength and from her own resources. To the capitalist world, it doesn't matter a damn if the Chinese embrace a Marxist philosophy or not (in fact they don't - Mao would not have known Marxist philosophy if it bit him), what matters to the world's capitalists and their strategists is they could no longer exploit the Chinese workers and peasants and take their wealth. The Sino-Soviet split meant that Russia wouldn't be able to do it either. Today, although there is much that is not right with China, she has emerged into the 21st century as a major producer, with the potential to put the USA in the shade. Is that what the US foreign policy means when it says freedom? You can bet you lunch-money it doesn't.

The change in China has meant that raw materials must be bought form that country at market prices yet at the same time, China is free to drop her prices to capture the market which she does quite well. China - the revolutionary workers-state has it seems adapted to the ways of the capitalist on the world market quite well, whilst at the same time keeping to her planned economy within.

We can watch and enjoy Alice in Wonderland but anyone who tries to live it will come a cropper. The real world is a hideous and dangerous place and we have the choice, we can blind ourselves and sleep soundly in our beds unaware of what is coming, or we can learn and prepare. I know what I am happiest with

Obama will change nothing in real terms, so to my mind it is as well to establish this firmly in our minds and be ready for the sting. I think for some people the technology should be advanced to produce the much sought after "React-to-Peril" spectacles as catalogued in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" If worn in times of travail, these spectacles will turn opaque at the first sign of peril, so that the wearer will not know what is going to hit him.

Vic Dale

[lwd]

Firstly, middle class has nothing to do with how much money you have, it is about how you get your money.

That's your defintion I simply don't accept it nor does most of the rest of the world. The US actually has at least semi official defintions that are related to income.

Working class people or proletarians have to work for all they get and they have to work for other people - they have only their labour to sell.

You are establishing a false dicotomy. Almost any working class person with a job much above minimum wage has capital to invest as well and indeed has invested it.

The bourgeois or big capitalist class own the monopolies and cartels

Looks like another pathological definition.

The middle class are a relatively small section of the population, who on the one hand are not classed as workers, they don't sell their labour to others, but neither do they own heavy capital concerns.

Again a rather pathological defintion and as usual a self surving one.

...
During the 1990s there was scam put about by which the governments of the advanced nations tried to split the working class, by declaring that certain sections of the working class were now middle class.

That defintion has been in use in the US at least for decades previous to the 1990s.

In my world I see things for what they are.

No you see things through the greatly distorted vision provided by your religion (an apparently pahtological version of socialism).

How many dead US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa is not the point.

Then why did you bring it up? And to a large extent you are wrong again.

As I have said body count matters for nothing until it is your own dead son or daughter who is in the list of honoured dead.

That may be true for you, it isn't for me and I doubt it is for most on this board or the world for that matter.

It is the fact that young lives are being wasted or at best put at risk for what?

No it's not a fact it's your opinion.

Don't tell me freedom. We have freedom coming out of our ears, you couldn't get more freedom.

Your hyperbole has strayed well into the region of fantasy.

...., so the notion of freedom doesn't exist at all.

So how can you talk about it?

I hope you enjoy your fantasy world I know I wouldn't.

[Bgile]

Vic,

I'm a wage earner, but I've always thought of myself as middle class. I think of people who don't make enough money to pay for what I consider the essentials to be lower class. I think of upper class as people who make more than 99% of our population. Noone told me that, that's just how I think of it. Your definitions are interesting, but I think most people in the USA are more likely to think of something closer to my definition when they use those terms.

I really don't know why the USA invaded Iraq the last time. I am convinced the reasons given by the Bush administration were untrue and I don't believe they would have justified invading another country even if true. I would be in favor of prosecuting the persons responsible for starting that war for war crimes, and I'd be happy to turn them over to a tribunal in Zurich.

You seem to have forgotten why we attacked Afghanistan. The regime in power was harboring the person responsible for attacking the World Trade Center. I supported a punitive expedition and I would probably do so again. I do not support "nation building".

[Bgile]

But is the point valid? There have been more publicised assaciantion attempt vs Republican presidents in recent years than there have been vs Democratic ones. I'm not at all convinced that Obama would be in any more danger from assacination than McCain would be.

Furthermore by equating right wing radicals to racist to murderers he to some extent encourageing the generalization to all on the right.

If one states an opinion with little to back it up then one should expect those who disagree or merely don't agree to ask questions and point out falicies.

From a recent issue of STRATFOR Security Weekly : Obama and the Presidential Security Challenge

"Due to the perceived threat against Obama, a detail equivalent to a full presidential protection team was assigned to him. Such a high level of protection is unprecedented for a presidential candidate, and it helped stretch the USSS very thin."

[lwd]

And?

That's a political decision. Once the possibility was published no one could afford for it to happen on their watch so of course they increased his protection. The greatest threat to presidents is nut cases. Once he's president Obama probably faces less threat from say Islamic terrorist than McCain would but more from white supremacist. I'd guess the former are a bigger threat than the latter but that's hard to quantify. IE any relative assessment is opinion and it's an opinion about very low probability events.

[Bgile]

And the experts felt Obama was in greater danger than any other candidate. But that didn't fit your world view, so you don't consider it relevant.

[lwd]

And the experts felt Obama was in greater danger than any other candidate. But that didn't fit your world view, so you don't consider it relevant.

Not at all. I thought we were talking about the dangers if elected president. The quote above was referring to Obama as a candidate. I'll agree that as a candidate he was in greater danger. It's not at all clear that as president the same would hold true. Don't forget that in a risk analysis you weight not just the probability of an event occurring but the damage said event will cause. When dealing with politicians and bureaucrats they pretty much automatically include personal damage in the above. If a danger has been publicized and they haven't done all they can to counter it even if it doesn't make sense their heads are on the line. Thus in a case like this they will tend to be over protective (not necessarily a bad thing as they may not have included all the potential damage in their assessment). Indeed if Obama had been assassinated or even seriously injured in an attempt it might have been a disaster for the country. Even a failed attempt would in some ways have tainted his election in that some would have claimed he won due to the sympathy vote. So even if the probability of an attempt was the same as with other candidates the risk was higher and justified additional protection.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Still discussing? Obama is already preparing his office taking speech...

[RF]

Just five days to go Karl, we shall soon see....

[RF]

Now that we have heard the Inauguration speech, I was wondering what the US members of this forum thought of it, and what hopes do they have as to what President Obama will achieve over the next 12 months?