The 2012 US Election

[axordil]

The question is not the standard of living, but whether there will be any relationship at all between the numbers of people who will need a living and the jobs available to them. The progression through mid-century was: more people need more stuff, so we need to extract more stuff, process more stuff, and distribute more stuff, all of which require more people. There was symmetry.

Now: more people need more stuff, but we *don't* need more people to extract, process or distribute it. In fact, we need less in many cases than we have.

What are the people who are now, and will be, excess baggage to the economy as it stands supposed to do? Retraining is, for the half of the population who are below average, a dubious use of time and resources. You're not going to turn someone who could handle being a farm hand or a bolt tightener into an accountant or a web designer, and even if you could, we don't *need* that many accountants or web designers.

This is not merely altruism. Places where youth unemployment gets too high end up on the news, because bored, poor boys are really easy to rile up. I'd really prefer the whole country not end up like that.

[Holbytla]

I don't know how or if we can stop the ultimate down spiral, but we aren't at that point yet, and there are things we can and should do to delay that.

The trade imbalance is brutal and has been for eons. There is legislation that can be enacted to level the playing field and halt foreign (and domestic) ownership from treating this country like a giant open pit to be mined before moving on.

We haven't been aggressive enough in protecting our interests, and this goes back to Reagan and before.

[vison]

axordil, excellent post.

What can be done is to make us fat, greedy north americans understand that we can and should live within our means and with less stuff. ha. fat chance.

holbytla, the entire world has been ordered by american interests for the last 100 years. maybe not to your particular individual interests, but it's why we north americans live as high on the hog as we do.

[Holbytla]

You mean American business interests?

[Holbytla]

I am really puzzled by the whole Benghazi thing.
Granted, I come from an era of Viet Nam and McNamara and Nixon, and from an era of Watergate and Nixon, so I know I am overtly skeptical and suspicious.

But something about this thing stinks pretty badly to my nose.

And I can't make any sense of it.

Okay I can accept the "fog of war" thing, national security issues, and how long it takes to discern what really happened, but even with all of that, what has transpired doesn't add up.

What is really going on here and why all of the secrecy and flip flopping stories? Are they covering up for inadequacies or are they protecting someone? Or are they (they being in all of these incidents the White House) trying to hide their inefficient policies that cost people their lives?

I know the timing sucks, but there is something going on here that needs to be unearthed. What is it?

Why does Charlene Lamb still have a job?

I know I am way skeptical, but there is something way rotten in Denmark.
Or in this case, Benghazi.

If the White House is not being forthcoming for political reasons, then please may justice serve.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I am really puzzled by the whole Benghazi thing.
Granted, I come from an era of Viet Nam and McNamara and Nixon, and from an era of Watergate and Nixon, so I know I am overtly skeptical and suspicious.

You're beyond skeptical and suspicious of this particular administration. Case in point, your repeated insistence that President Obama promised to end the war in Afghanistan during the 2008 campaign, when in fact that is not what he said. You have made this point a few times, and each time I have pointed out that it is not true, the last time including a link to an article from your home town paper showing what then-candidate Obama actually said. Each time you have ignored it. That tells me that you are simply unwilling to consider the truth.

The situation in Benghazi is certainly troubling, and it certainly is further complicated by politics. It was inevitable that that would be case, but the speed with which the Romney campaign injected politics into the situation made it all the more so. You should know better than anyone how confusing situations like this are, and how easy it is to second-guess after the fact. Did the delegation ask for more security? Apparently so. Is it possible to always grant these types of requests right away? Of course not, particularly when the funding for embassy security was cut by the very people who are now most critical. Were they too quick to attribute the attack to the riots over the video? Maybe, but they certainly were not the only ones who thought that. But to me it seems much more like Romney and the GOP are trying to take political advantage of a tragedy than it does that the president is trying to cover anything up.

Edited to add: CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks

[Holbytla]

I am particularly skeptical of this administration, even though I voted for it. I mistrust Washington politicians. All of them. I'll be particularly skeptical of the next administration as well, whoever may be in the seat.

I don't care who said what or when. I am not happy with how Afghanistan is or was or will be handled. I am sick of hearing Afghanistan being talked about like it is some type of political positive for the president, when it is clear to my eyes that it is no such thing. Troops are still on the ground in harm's way for no good reason. This nation building army building crap is a house of cards that will ultimately accomplish nothing but cost more money and lives. If you are happy with his stance and his record on Afghanistan, then fine. I am not.

You (the collective you) would have to be pretty blind not to be able to see that there is something amiss with the Benghazi situation, how it played out, and who said what and when, and why it is necessary to have a State Department and Capitol Hill investigation into the whole affair.

Do I think that the president is directly responsible? No. Nor is the Secretary of State, despite her willingness to throw herself on the sword on the day of the debate. But the administration on the whole is responsible for the lack that ended up getting 4 people killed and a two week dance around what really happened.



Documents Back Up Claims of Requests for Greater Security in Benghazi

[Frelga]

I'm a bit confused about the facts (I don't even begin to talk about truth) of this. By all accounts, the administration was slow to call the attack an act of terror, and Romney used that against Obama in the debate. But then Obama claimed that he did speak of it as an act of terror the very next day, and the moderator actually supported him. So what's the story?

For the record, what I saw was this Jon Stewart segment http://on.cc.com/RbBjvs, but it did include the actual debate footage.

[Holbytla]

The president made an oblique reference to terror the day following the attacks in Benghazi.

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”

Yet for days there was talk of a demonstration and anger at a movie as the supposed cause of the attacks.

There is no way anyone in DC had all of the facts the next day or even days after, but it took almost two weeks for the administration to actually label the attacks as a planned "terrorist" attack.

There was naturally a lot of confusion and incomplete information, but the whole thing is weird dating back 6-8 months.

I'm still confused by everything and I suspect it will be some time before we learn who, when, what, why and how.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't care who said what or when.

That is abundantly clear, and deeply disturbing.

[Holbytla]

It's disturbing to me that you choose to take my words out of context and ignore my statement as a whole.

What is even more disturbing is that you are hanging onto what was or wasn't said instead of impartially looking at what is actually transpiring and at what cost.

[Holbytla]

Obama won the election in 2008 after promising to end the "war" in Afghanistan.

You keep saying this, and it simply isn't true. What he said was that he would end the war in Iraq, and turn the attention back to the war in Afghanistan where the real fight should have been. I do not agree with the course that was taken, but it is not inconsistent with what President Obama said he would do as a candidate.

Edit: Here is one of many articles, from your home paper: Obama: Afghanistan, not Iraq, should be focus

My apologies for totally missing this post. I never saw it, and never meant to ignore it.
I can see how it is frustrating to prove a point and not have it addressed, like it was being ignored by someone who wasn't willing to listen.

That is all my fault, and I have no idea how it was missed by me.

I should have responded and acknowledged that I was mistaken by what was said.

Sorry for missing that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I appreciate you saying that very much.

[Primula Baggins]

There's a reason I love you both.

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

As a woman, a liberal, the mother of an unemployed son, and a person with a pre-existing condition, I would find it more than a bit condescending and dismissive to be told that Sesame Street is the largest difference between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

I think you'd be wrong to assume any kind of attitude on someone else's part simply because their perspective is different from yours. Maybe someone who is not a woman, a liberal, a mother of an unemployed son or a person with a pre-existing condition has a different perspective on what constitutes a meaningful difference between the two parties.

That was pretty much my point. Taking CG's assertion at face value, he was saying that funding for Sesame Street is all that distinguishes Obama from Romney—which effectively dismisses the candidates' positions on access to birth control, fair pay for women, and health care reform, among other serious issues, as trivial and unimportant. I meant only to point out that they are important differences to many people.

Or that the differences on those issues are much smaller than they appear on initial examination (as in "he has an R after his name so therefore he holds these positions" is an initial examination).

I very much doubt that Romney has any intent to restrict access to birth control. Even assuming that abortion is called a form of birth control, I doubt he has plans on that either. Now there is a new belief amond Democrats that if you don't get it for free then your access is restricted. 20 years ago Democrats understood that no restrictions meant you could walk into any store and buy it.

On the issue of healthcare reform, I know we have to recast Romney as some sort of hard right monster. It's the same thing that happened to McCain in 2008. Taie a Republican that is generally highly regarded among Democrats, put him on the top of a major ticket, and suddenly he's a radical for the duration of the election. Romney passed Romneycare. In the case of Obamacare, he is the father.

And yes, even on equal pay for women, I'm pretty sure the difference that you describe isn't there.

And on my favorite issues - war, monetary policy, domestic liberty - there is even less difference.

So that brings us back down to Sesame Street. And remember, Reagan promised to get rid of the Department of Education and did not do so. So the Sesame Street difference is probably only rhetorical.

[Dave_LF]

Well this had me doing a double-take:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

How so, Dave? The fact that the president made the comment? Or the fact that it was considered a winning moment? Or something else? I'm not sure what you are getting at here.

[Dave_LF]

Read the second line of black text in isolation.

[yovargas]

Did Romney come out during the debate?? You'd think that'd be bigger news today...

[ToshoftheWuffingas]