Really? It worked for Reagan.



Africa has many problems. Many of those problems stem from colonialism but not all of them. The problem is far too complex to be dealt with in a propaganda film. I also don't think either party wants to take ownership of that whole issue. (You might be interested to learn that in the USA, to this day, land title claims in much of the country rest on a supreme court ruling that upheld colonial conquest based on the racist conclusion that the native people and other non-Christians were intellectually inferior and incapable of possessing land title rights. It's Johnson v. McIntosh if you're curious.)

Let's assume that Obama were an anti-colonialist. How is that bad or relevent? Much of the world is dealing with issues related to undoing colonialism. It is a fairly big deal and effects native title rights to land, water, and mineral resources in many countries. Even the British have been on a decolonialization binge for decades. (I bet Queen Elizabeth was thinking during teh parade of nations at the olympic opening ceremony - "These countries all used to be mine!"). Now, why do they insist on keeping th Falklands? Maybe over some national pride or maybe admission that those still living who fought there fought for nothing? Really Eagle, suppose everything you say is true, that Barack Obama thinks the Falklands should be given back to Argentina. So what? I'd be with him on that one and I bet much of the British public would be as well.



Wow! So you are not a racist but you are a "religionist." I see. You'll ask how many wives Obama's father had. Maybe you should we be asking how many wives Mitt has, or believes he should have, or how many his relatives have had? No, you shouldn't be asking that because IT DOESN'T MATTER!


Um, Bush tax cuts+Bush defense spending+Bush wars= massive debts... but I guess that's all Barack's fault.


Romney has lots of experience destroying jobs and laying people off. As for Obama, it is terrible that unemployment has remained so high. But private sector employment has been growing. There has been a dramatic shrinking of government jobs over the last 4 years. If you are going to sling the unemployment mud then you've really got to drill down further than a headline number. There is also increaing evidence that the unemployment situation in the US is structural for the first time in decades. If that is true then there is very little any president or other government action can do to correct it quickly. If your interest is to bad mouth your president that's one thing. If you want to actually learn something then I encourage you to actually read some thoughtful work on teh current US unemployment situation to educate yourself. This will be found in journals rather than on any network or political news source.



Wow, quoting Joe McCarthy are we ("card carrying member of the communist party")(CCMoCP)

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a CCMoCP as were many of the team that developed the atomic bomb that the US claims won WWII. Many intelligent people and well as socially prominent people in the early part of the 20th century were CCMoCP. It was the "in" thing to do. These people put the party in Party! Then decades later conservatives feared their intelligence and began a purge.

It was my understanding that we take pride in living in a free country. That means that people are free to be communists, tea party members, atheists, and, OMG, even Mormons. Eagle, do you believe that policy of free thinking should be changed or what? Because it sounds like you are criticizing Barack's grandfather for his political beliefs and saying that Barack should be punished for his grandfather's beliefs. If you are not saying that then how is that information relevant?



No CEO has to deal with an obstructionis Congress. What worries me is that the Republicans have done a very good job of preventing anything from happening for the last few years. They have behaved like children. They didn't get their way so they are throwing a collective tantrum. It is pathetic. But it has also been effective. So, if Barack is re-elected I suspect we'll have more of the same. If Mitt is elected, well, the Democrats, not being especially quick learners, will nonetheless soon figure out that they can play the same game.



1. I guess you want us to be surprised there is a Husein in there. Is that what your point is? Do people know that Mitt is short for Mohammed?

2. Who cares?

3. Harvard Law for one. Just like Mitt.

I thought he said smart people will never vote republican.

Taking your comment a little more seriously... there are a few things that raise red flags about this statement - beyond the obvious.

I admit to reading a few forums occasionally that are frequented by some of the fringe whacko, black helicopter, chem-trail, masons-are-controlling-the-world crowd. They use the term "elite" to refer to the cabal that they believe are controlling the world and oppressing them. While I would not call Santorum one of these whackos, he did seem to use the term in the same context they do.

If he is lamenting that the far right will never get the support it needs from smart people, he is probably right. Perhaps that should be a sign that they need to be more thoughtful in developing their platform. I can support a conservative agenda along the lines of what Barry Goldwater espoused. But Barry would be ashamed of the people who call themselves conservatives these days.

I'm in agreement with you but I think with Santorum, it's actually simpler than that. The things he actually said were, "We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do."

"So our colleges and universities, they're not going to be on our side. The basic premise of America and American values will always be sustained through two institutions — the church and the family."

As if smart people didn't go to church (let's face it, some of them do) and didn't have families.

Santorum is basically anti-intellectual but also hypcritical.


I don't really blame him for such statement. It's basically just politics and he's pandering to his base. The smart people won't listen to him. He knows that, and is okay with it. And his target audience will eat up remarks like that. The fact is, we are in a changing world and even in manufacturing, you have to have some measure of education or training to operate NC machine tools. We're not going to discard technological advances to cede efficiencies to our global competitors. So if we're to keep an manufacturing base here in the US, we're going to have to have a workforce prepared to deal with technology. And that means education.

"Manufacturing" has become a loaded word lately. I've heard that the US produces about 90% of the worlds manufactured goods with about 20% of its economy. Now, that statement probably has a lot of caveats but the general point that we remain a manufacturing powerhouse is likely true. But we manufacture big things like aircraft, road graders, and that kind of thing.

But when the "little guy" talks about manufacturing he usually thinks about the old man standing at a mill machining metal parts for some machine. Now, there is nothing wrong with that but the world has moved away from that kind of work because it is far more expensive. That machinist, with overhead and stuff, costs about $50 an hour at least. Anything he makes that takes more than an hour or two is going to have to be pretty special if anyone is going to buy it. What we've done is learned to design machines so that parts are simple and can be made using far simpler processes. We've also dramatically reduced the number of parts in things.

So basically, except in a few industries, the loss of manufacturing jobs is not because of China or lower labor rates overseas. It's because we have learned to make things much simpler and cheaper and to require less skill from workers. One of the things I've accumulated over the years is a set of drawings for making a steam locomotive from the early 1900s. They are beautiful, a work of art. I think I could still find people who could build me a locomotive from those drawings but I shudder at what the cost would be! I could probably buy a brand new locomotive for 1/10 the cost or less made right here in the USA using efficient manufacturing technology.

I disagree in part with this. Much manufacturing of simpler items has indeed moved overseas because of cheaper labor. See the garment industry or electronics, for example.

And I'd argue that what we do manufacture here in the US requires more skill, not less. Take it from somebody who has to walk across a factory floor every day to get to his office. Automation has enabled us to do more with less labor, but that labor has to be a lot smarter than the factory worker of old. It's not just a matter of a guy coming in every morning and pushing the "on" button on a giant milling machine. Nowadays, you have to have pretty good grasp of mathematics just to be a welder in a modern factory. This article explains it better than I can. This is why there are manufacturing jobs left unfilled in this country: they can't find qualified applicants. And when Obama says he wants everyone to have an education, this includes trade schools where the such math skills are taught. This is where at least part of the future of the middle class will be. And if people like Santorum successfully perpetuate the notion that having an education is elitist, then this country's days as a manufacturing powerhouse are doomed.

Well, I don't think I explained myself very well because I would agree with what you say. People who work in manufacturing facilities now do need more education. In the past they required long apprenticeships. What I meant was more that an assembly that used to be made with half a dozen flat parts made on a mill might now be an injection-molded monolith. We have fewer parts and many of those are made by workers with less skill.

I'm having trouble finding the right words here. I think the machinists of today need to be a lot smarter to be able to do math, program their machines, interpret measurements, and understand complex functions. But 100 years ago there was a lot more "art" skill involved. The machinist had to know how to make a locomotive axle and did not necessarily get explicit instructions beyond a general drawing of it that lacked many dimensions.

You can take a high school graduate, put him through trade school for a year and he can get a job in a machine shop. Long ago it took 5-10 years of on-the-job work to be fully qualified for the equivalent position. I'm not saying that means they needed more skills in the past. I think the skills though were the kind were learned rather than taught. You can teach math but you have to learn how to get a 32 finish on a surface. If you teach a class of 100 people to do the math and programming only 2 or 3 will become "good machinists." We've learned to design things so that things can be made by any of the 100 rather than needing the skills of one of the "good machinists." That's what I mean by simpler.

Okay, I get that. And I agree completely.

I wonder where Eagle stands on all this. He started this thread. As he would say, "Curious."

I'm sure he would object to the theory that manufacturing has evolved and instead argue that there has been intelligent design by liberals to destroy jobs in this country. Then he will get tripped up on realizing that in proposing that explanation he had admitted that liberals are intelligent. Then he'd just say that he never said they were intelligent even with his prior posts clearly visible. Then he would just give up and change the subject.

But I'm just guessing. Prior performance is not indicative of future results, right?

Politically I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as a libertarian. One of the bunch of something-or-others, I suppose. Which platform did you look at? Frankly, since it is such a leaderless movement (at least at first, before a bunch of politicians decided to try to get out in front of it), and thus any platform would be at best suspect, I didn't even bother looking at one. It struck me as being a within-the-Republican-Party revolt against "big government" (i.e. for fiscal conservatism and civil liberties). Watching libertarian candidates consistently get sidelined by the RNC and leaving the party to get their 2% as Libertarian third-party candidates, I was and am willing to give pushing the GOP from within a shot. The fact that the whackjob brigade climbed aboard the bandwagon and started coming up with fringe social-conservative planks to throw in their platforms (and the media focused on these elements rather than the core uniting fiscal values) is maddening and saddening. But what I do know is that the "mainstream" Rs and Ds will rarely get beyond being and promoting themselves as the lesser of two evils. At least the various Tea Party platforms reflect honesty, rather than being a collection of triangulation and lowest common denominators.

That's pretty much why I say I am libertarian (but definitely not Libertarian.)

I don't know which platform I looked at but it had things like:

- Eliminate the Federal income tax
- Require a balanced budget
- Have a strong, well-equipped military
- Something about restoring christian values

Now, taking the last item first, I guess stating right up front that you want to force your religious views on all Americans was a turnoff for me. But I know it was there to draw in more people so I can let that slide.

The moronic part is that balancing the budget, funding the military, and reducing or even eliminating taxes sound appealing taken alone, at least to some degree. But you cannot convince anyone but a complete moron that all three are possible. If all we did was pay for the military we still could not eliminate the deficit. If we eliminate or even significantly reduce taxes we can't do the other two. Even the people who argue for a flat tax or similar major reform are not trying to change the amount of tax collected. They are just trying to change who pays or at least which activities are taxed.

Even the Bush tax cuts, which have had a dramatic impact on the debt and the deficit were very minor. The people who benefit pay rates that are 35% instead of 39% for example. I like saving that money. But I don't like undermining the future of the country for political gain and relatively minor savings. Those tax cuts were sold as revenue neutral and predicted to generate fantastic economic growth. They didn't. Does that mean I don't like them or want them repealed? No, not now.

So, do I think that someone who wants lower taxes or a balanced budget is a moron? No. I want those things to. But do I think they can both happen? Of course not. The tea party movement seems to be populated by whackjobs who are attracted by the last platform statement (perhaps 80%) and another 20% who I think are morons because they believe the other statements are perfectly consistent.

iDude, it does not sound like you truly believe in that platform. It sounds like you just think it is the only way to express your views given that the GOP is otherwise so far off track.

Nah. It wouldn't take that long. He'll do what he always does when confronted with facts that he can't refute. He'll bail. He did this in the National Debt thread. He did this in the Medicare/FUD thread. He did this in his own ObamaCare thread. He did this when proven wrong about his assumptions regarding the history of the Bible.

Pity. I was actually hoping to hear why he actually believed some of the easily disproven idiocy of that movie. In fact, I challenged him to support his views on why he thought the movie to be accurate enough to base his vote on it. He didn't even try.

I'm disappointed though, that he went back to the $16T National Debt subject. After we thoroughly dissected that issue in the other thread and showed all kinds of charts and figures, he resurrects it here as if the other thread didn't even happen. I suspect that he's the GRS equivalent of Mitt: sent here to discredit the GOP by making ridiculous statements on their behalf.

Yeah, and it's disappointing. I'm here to discuss as I believe you are as well. I enjoy reading conflicting views because they make me think. Eagle seems ill-equipped to dealing with challenging thoughts though. What a shame.



I have a theory... I believe he was home schooled and never subjected to any rigorous challenge to his beliefs or to any development of his abilities to engage in intellectually persuasive discourse. Perhaps I am wrong.



He is not concerned with facts, obviously.



Now you've thrown me for a complete loop. You and I don't know each other beyond our public exchanges here on these forums. Yet I had you pegged as a conservative in the traditional sense. I didn't really care who you would vote for because I knew you would vote based on actual thought. I actually assumed you'd be voting for Mitt...and I could respect that. By the way, that is a compliment, though maybe it seems like an insult.

But now we hear the truth. You see Mitt for the sorry pawn he is. I am genuinely surprised. I respected your views when I thought you were a conservative Republican because your statements were supported by documented facts. Mitt has some great education, experience, and accomplishments. Now that I know the true extent of your free thinking I might have to re-evaluate.

Fortunately, come November 7, Barack will still be our president and we'll still be having great discussions here. Eagle will either be spitting nails and saying the election was stolen by Chad or celebrating a victory he soon realizes is completely hollow.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks Eagle is a shill for Obama masquerading as a Romney supporter to make them look bad.

No, I don't really believe that, but I do wonder if Eagle realizes his posts (and refusal to discuss them) actually hurt his cause.

I'm no fan of Obama, but I don't care for Romney much either (though I do think Romney was the best from an extremely poor field of "contending" Republican). I've gotten to point this election cycle, that I'm not even paying attention anymore. I've been meaning to read Ryan's budget proposal since he received the VP nod, but haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet, and probably won't. I'll likely vote for whomever is running on the libertarian (I'm a little "l" libertarian) ticket.

I think I just realized, not much will change no matter who wins.

THAT would be an election campaign bumper sticker I'd actually put on my car! Someone needs to make these and sell them!