Political Opinion

The Lobby
42

As an outsider looking in who usually gets the opportunity to work in the US for about 4-6 weeks a year I think it’s safe to say that the American version of Government has turned into a Plutocracy. The wealthy elite control the vast majority of the major companies and therefore have the lobbyists and in turn your Government by the throat.

Abraham Lincoln’s words ring more true today than during the time of your civil war. “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”

They wield so much influence, I’m not sure how the problem can be solved, but until it does I’m afraid the elite will continue to hollow-out the middle class in any and every attempt to increase their profit and their power.

You need some socialist measures to keep the reigns on things, too much of a ‘good’ thing, including Capitalism leads to greed and corruption.

43

Maybe we should quit blaming the “President”, “Government” or some “elite ruling class” for our problems. In the US we get the government we vote for so maybe we should blame the people, the citizens.

During the 2008 presidential election Obama beat McCain by about 8% of the votes cast, only 63% of the voters cast a ballot, 37% stayed at home and did nothing! Over1/3 of the voters!

And of the 63% of the people that did vote I wonder how many of them understand the roles and responsibilities of office of the President, Senators and Congressman. Based on some of the posts & comments here some of you don’t.

If the voters took some time to study how the US government is structured they would learn who makes the laws, who passes the budgets, who is empowered to start wars and who approves & authorizes every dollar the government spends. It isn’t the president! And it isn’t “the elite ruling class” LOL.

It’s the 100 Senators and 435 Members of the House of Representatives that the American people voted into office.

If you don’t like the way your government is being run quit reelecting your dumb-ass Senators & Congressmen, they’re the problem.

PS: It isn’t Obama’s deficit, it’s the US Congress’ deficit, every dollar of it. The president can’t even buy toilet paper for the White House without the approval & authorization of the US Congress. :42:

44

Yeah, well, that’s how it was explained in [I][B]my[/B][/I] junior high school civics book, as well.

It would be great if that neat, tidy description bore any relation to reality.

45

If you figure in the fact that only 56% of the voting age population was even a registered voter, Obama got elected by a minority :smiley:

46

but what happens in a situation where a candidate wins the popular vote yet loses the election???

The problem is not the people the problem is corruption and lies. Yes the sheeple eat all this crap up and that is there fault bu there are so many things that our government does that people don’t understand.

ever notice how they sneak all this legal jargon into bills and they bargain back in forth to add this or drop that. law should be understandable by the “common man”

Not to digress into a history lesson but isn’t it similar to when the church decided to translate everything into Latin? We call that period of history the dark ages and it was done intentionally so that the average person could not understand the doctrine and therefore needed the church.

In a way our government is doing this today. They make so many rules and create so many complex situations that the average person feels they have no choice but to trust the government and all the while the government is forwarding there own agenda’s.

My opinion is that yes our country is ran by a few elitists. They have controlling interest and they have marketing dollars and we eat it up. I could go on and on. The fact is we like what we are presented with and we do what we are told and at the end of the day it’s all meaningless bullsh** The soda with the biggest marketing budget gets drank, the candidate that is best looking/charismatic gets elected and they all lie to us and blow smoke up our a$$ and tell us al about change and how they are going to fix everything. Than they get into office and they listen to the special interest money and around and around we go…

47

I think a Manx style of law maximisation is necessary in all parts of the world.

The President reads the law on the 1st of Jan. Anything not read is dropped from that date.

48

I don’t agree with that at all. For one, we don’t even have a Pure Capitalist system to begin with… We lost that when a Private Bank was given a money monopoly back in 1913. We used to have a true Capitalist economy… You know, back in the day when America created the foundation to all of its prosperity, back when we were a skyrocketing manufacturing powerhouse, back when we were the envy of the entire planet, back when our innovations outpaced everybody, back when we still produced wealth, back when the middle class actually had a chance at forward progress, back when a parent could rightfully expect their children would have things better than they had it. Yeah. So glad we’re not back there any more!

You get mad at the banks and institutions that got drunk and helped trigger the financial meltdown, I get angry at the Fed and the government policies that liquored them up with easy money and got them drunk in the first place.

FDIC for example. Sounds like a great idea. The Fed will insure your money in the bank if the bank screws up. But their are unintended consequences to everything the government does. Now banks don’t have to worry as much about keeping their depositors money save because the Fed will bail them out… So they are more inclined to make stupid, risky decisions… Then when they fail, it costs everyone.

That’s just one example.

Also, Obama is not just at war with the Catholic Church in regards to the contraception issue… I think the media has been playing that up to make it a narrow issue. Obama is at war with the Constitution and every American citizen by mandating what services have to be free…

Contraception is not the only thing that they want the insurance companies to cover for “free”. There are a bunch of other services like domestic counseling that are now required to be “free”… When you make things like counseling free, all of the sudden a lot of people are going to want it. Because something costs nothing, people will go anyway, even if they think they don’t need it. So now what happens is you have increased demand for all this counseling, birth control or whatever they have required insurance companies to provide for free. So the cost of the service goes up. Now, even though you don’t want these counseling services, not only are you going to have to pay for them, your going to have to pay through the nose for them through your rising premiums.

Look at government student loans… The students will now have extra money for college so the colleges jack the prices up.

Also, about Ron Paul… I live in Ga and attended a mass precinct meeting to become a delegate for Ron Paul. The turnout was INCREDIBLE and reports are coming in from counties across the state that suggests we will be in a VERY good position moving into the County Conventions… Although Ron Paul didn’t when the straw polls in the caucus states, he is going to take in most of the delegates. And delegates are the name of the game.

Just because the corporate media is always giving Ron a political hack job, doesn’t mean he is out of the race and we should give up. If my history books were correct, the odds of the Colonies defeating the British were vary slim… The problem with America is we have been accepting less. There is no reason we should be electing big government Republicans like Rick Santorum, Newt or Mitt Romney, when we have Constitutional and ideologically pure people like Ron Paul. If you check Santorum, Newt or Romney on the ballot box, you may as well check Obama because your not going to get much of a deviation… Just look at there voting records and donors.

The biggest hurdle for Ron Paul is getting past the diatribes from Faux News the Clinton News Network and the rest of the lame stream media. If the reporting wasn’t one sided, Ron Paul would be blazing ahead. And don’t even give me that about Santorum (Who I just met at my church) not having fair coverage… Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns News Corp which owns Fox, WSJ, The national reviews and a bunch of other media outlets supports Rick Santorum.

Very long long winded tonight… Sorry!

For liberty,

Jonathan

49

The electoral college is an odd duck, but after reading up on it for a while I can see the logic in it… Just barely :smiley:

I think it should be done a bit differently though. One candidate can win more states, and still lose, because they lost the elections in the states with the most delegates. Why not just count the states as 1 of 50 total votes, regardless of population?

I have a problem with the fact that Rhode Island, or Hawaii are just meaningless in the terms of delegate counts. They are a state, why should they count for less?

The same goes for “seniority” in congress, or the house. Why should a freshman congressman’s vote, or opinion be slighted in any way in favor of someone like Harry Reid?

Term limits for ALL I SAY!!!

:smiley:

50

definitely term limits for all! I couldn’t agree more

51

Yo, Obama,

Now that you have apologized to the Afghan people for the
accidental burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. military personnel…

…how about apologizing to the [B]American[/B] people for the
[B]deliberate[/B] trashing of the U.S. Constitution [B]by your Administration?[/B]

52

Excerpts from an article in The Foundry this morning:

With the national average of gas prices hitting $3.65 a gallon, nearing $6 in some parts of the country, and poised to head even higher, America’s families are wondering when the bleeding at the pump will stop. But for Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, those steep prices aren’t even a concern. In fact, he says his goal is not to get the price of gasoline to go down.

In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

(I have bolded two sentences, above, for emphasis.)

When some tribe of desert nomads
discovers that they are sitting on a gazillion barrels of oil,
they declare themselves to be “royalty”.

Then Barack Hussein Obama, Peace Be Upon Him,
who will not allow America to become energy independent,
runs to the desert and bows down to the phony “royalty”.

570×530

Is this really the sort of “president” we want?

53

:o
$3.65 a gallon? You guys don’t know how lucky you are.
This kind of price we had in the 1950s, if ever.

Currently a liter of gas costs around €1,70 in Germany … this translates into $10.25 a gallon (EURUSD 1.34). :smiley:

Obama looks ready to kneel and …
America really needs to get rid of him in November.

I wished Paul had a chance, because the choice between Obama and Romney/Gingrich/Santorum is a pretty crappy one.

O.

54

Check your math. 1 US gallon = 3.785 liters. I get €1.70 / liter = $8.62 / US gallon.

We’re working on that.

[B]If it’s Romney vs. Obama — vote for Romney.

If it’s Gingrich vs. Obama — vote for Gingrich.

If it’s a cardboard cut-out of Abraham Lincoln vs. Obama — vote for the cardboard cut-out![/B]

55

No need to work on my math, I just forgot that the US (only God knows why) decided to have it’s own gallon, instead of just using the Imperial gallon (4.5 liters) … probably upon gaining independence from the Empire they wanted to distinguish themselves as much as possible from anything British.

Re Obama: If I were an American, I’d probably even vote for a cardboard cut-out of Bill Clinton rather than giving Obama an opportunity to sink what is left of the US … compared to Obama, even that clown was a statesman.

Very much looking forward to hearing what that Arizona Sheriff has to say tomorrow.

O.

57

The post that was here originally has been deleted, voluntarily, by me.

No, I was not contacted by the Moderator (or by the CFTC).

I just decided, after re-reading it, that it was a little heavy-handed.

I apologize to anyone who loved that post, and is now sad because it’s gone.

58

Isn’t gas more money in Germany because it includes the tax for maintaining the roads? Instead of taxing everyone, even if they don’t drive, they just tax the gas.

59

Yeah, the major part of what we pay for a liter of petrol at the filling station is tax, although it doesn’t go into road maintenance specifically, as far as I know, but is just split between state and federal governments, as is every tax revenue.

Hehe, shows that our politicians aren’t any less greedy than American ones.
I guess politicians are all the same, no matter the country or party affiliation.

Cheers,
P.

60

Ahh okay, makes sense now. My cousin Volker told me something along those lines like 5 or 6 yrs ago, so it’s been a while haha.

61

Oliver,

I’ve been expecting you to post a follow-up on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference.

His Cold Case Posse — a team of volunteer detectives, forensic document experts, and lawyers — have presented convincing evidence that Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate is a forgery. In addition, Obama’s Selective Service registration card is also a forgery.

Since April 2011, when Obama released his “long-form birth certificate”, many document experts have declared it to be a forgery. See the video posted by johnnykanoo, here on this thread.

But, Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is the first [I]law enforcement agency[/I] to investigate this document as a potential crime.

So, there you have it, folks —

[B]Obama was born in Cyberspace, sometime between 2008 and early 2011. His real father was Photoshop.[/B]

Here’s a YouTube video of the Sheriff’s press conference. It’s very poor quality video, but the audio is clear enough to understand. I’ve looked for a better quality video, but haven’t been able to find one.

This was a very long press conference, and casual viewers will probably find it boring. But, for anyone who cares about this issue, the evidence presented is compelling enough to watch.

Here’s a video of some local t.v. coverage in Phoenix (Arizona).

62

I’ve tried to find a text version to link to, but haven’t been able to.

Also, I find the outcome rather disappointing: I’d (naively, I guess) hoped for Obama to be prohibited from candidating in Arizona as a result of the investigation.

P.