People who believe Obama is Muslim on the rise

[SuperMegatron]

I could give 2 shits about him being muslim, but I do care about how he slept with all of those women while he was supposed to be playing golf.

[Eviltaco64X]

^ What Pixel said. People have their heads so far up their asses any more it's ridiculous; and it's downright depressing how ready the media and a large percentage of people are to grab onto whatever manufactured BS is being slung by right-wing hatemongers, regardless of how absurd.

It seems that you're basically implying that it's wrong to question or dislike the actions of Obama. You're also disregarding the amount of BS churned out by MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, and many old-timey newspapers who flipped from bitching all throughout Bush's term "to flowers and sunshine!" in a matter of weeks.

I used to try to engage in meaningful and level conversation with everyone I met, but things have gotten so ridiculous over the past seven or eight years that I'm just fucking done.

Don't play the victim. I've tried to engage in respectful, intelligent conversations with many liberals who turned out to be unintelligent, intolerant dicks.

The American right has become such a farce that there are no two ways about it any more.

If you are "conservative" in the American political sense (i.e. right-wing, a supporter of the Republican party, a teabagger, or anything along those lines), you are either:

A. both grossly misinformed and painfully gullible/naive, or

B. an evil manipulative bastard trying to coax as many people as possible into category A for your own short-term gain, consequences be damned.

If you look above, you'll see a perfect example of liberal bias! Since we're basing the entire right wing of the political spectrum on a few extremists, let's just call the entire left wing Stalinists! That's fair, no? Oh, wait. It's opposition to your own political views! Sorry for hatemongering.

Many liberals are just as misinformed and gullible. Think of all the people who blindly voted for Obama because he was a part of pop culture all throughout 2008. Better yet, think of all the people who even scream in defense of him (I've personally met a few).

Just to clear the air, I'm a Libertarian. While I do prefer some of the Republican's policies over the Democrats, I'm generally against both parties. Both have deep roots in the country and neither can be usurped. There's plenty of corruption on both sides, and both parties exploit ignorance.

I know I'm going to come back to this site in a couple of hours and see several equally sarcastic responses to my topic. Then there will be further debating until people are tired of responding to it. I just know for a fact that none of that pointless future debating would have happened if I bad been complaining in 2008 about some vacation that Bush took.

[Lartrak]

If you look above, you'll see a perfect example of liberal bias! Since we're basing the entire right wing of the political spectrum on a few extremists, let's just call the entire left wing Stalinists! That's fair, no? Oh, wait. It's opposition to your own political views! Sorry for hatemongering.

Two wrongs don't make a right. While Fiddler only talked about right wingers, he didn't claim left wingers weren't guilty of similar actions - he was talking specifically about his personal experiences attempting to debate right wingers. As a left winger, he probably didn't spend too much time arguing with people who generally agree with him.

[DaMadFiddler]

Okay, so I engaged in a little hyperbole. But let me clarify.

If you look back through the history of posts in this sub-forum, you'll see that, more often than not, I've been the first to argue against generalization and lumping everyone together.

I've also never said that Obama's shit don't stink; the fact that people are going "ZOMG SOCIALIST" is particularly irksome; I've been pretty underwhelmed so far, and it's mostly because of how conservative he's been, and how much he's sacrificed sound policy in a fruitless effort to build a bipartisan enviroment that--let's face it--isn't going to happen any time soon.

And I never discounted the complete lack of quality from the news media. Broadly speaking, good journalism in the traditional sense has been dead and buried for many years, and what we do get seems to be more reactionary, less researched, and less substantive with each passing year.

What I DID say, and the reason I've finally reached a breaking point on this, is the overwhelming WILLFUL ignorance, shameless hypocrisy, self-serving, and greedy rhetoric, practices, and policy coming out of the modern right. Of COURSE not every person with conservative views is a racist Bible-thumping moron. But conservative leadership--the people who are running the show, and who conservatives support, watch, listen to, and elect--ARE destructive, conniving hypocrites (even by political standards).

The key is this:

To listen to a Michelle Bachmann, or a Glenn Back, or a Sarah Palin, or any of dozens upon dozens of conservative media and political leaders I could name, and to take these people seriously, and listen to the inane, self-contradictory, nonsensical and (not mincing words here) FUCKING STUPID things they say on a DAILY basis and treat it as anything other than the inane ramblings of a self-serving sociopath, requires either ulterior motives, or an absolutely baffling lack of basic reasoning skills. And by listening, and watching, and voting, these are the people who ARE the people that conservative consumers and voters are putting into power, and thus are the ones driving the actual impact that the conservative movement has on the country.

After so much coordinated effort has been expended over the last decade to marginalize any and all non-conservative policy and thought, and to constantly hear about how anything progressive is "non-serious" and "fringe" and "un-American," and then have these same people turn around and try to tell me that the Constitution shouldn't REALLY apply the way it says it should (because it weren't meant for brown people! or holy shit terr'ists! or it doesn't mesh with corporate interests, or someone's special interpretation of the Bible says it's wrong to treat some people humanely and thus everyone in the world has to be subjected to their religious views in the form of public policy)... and then to see these dolts taken seriously by so many people, and treated in the media (yes, all the media) as anything other than a joke... it's insane. It really is insane.

I'm sorry. But if you have actually listened to any of the things they had to say, and you still see Glenn Beck, or Bill O'Reilly, or Michelle Bachmann, or Michelle Malkin, or Rush Limbaugh, or John Boehner, or Sarah Palin, or any of these psychos as serious thinkers with worthwhile ideas, then you are either a complete idiot, or someone who stands to benefit from other people being complete idiots.

I just can't see any other explanation.

[Ex-Cyber]

^ What Pixel said. People have their heads so far up their asses any more it's ridiculous; and it's downright depressing how ready the media and a large percentage of people are to grab onto whatever manufactured BS is being slung by right-wing hatemongers, regardless of how absurd.

It seems that you're basically implying that it's wrong to question or dislike the actions of Obama.

Do you not understand that there's a tremendous difference between run-of-the-mill disagreement or criticism and deliberately cultivating hateful ignorance for political gain? The latter is now SOP for the Republican Party and its thinly-veiled media organs (Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, various should-be-disgraced politicians who seem to have standing invitations to appear on "news" shows, etc.). There was a time when the hateful bigots who opposed equal rights for all Americans were mostly Democrats, and a time when the Republicans were a respectable check on the ambitions of the left. Times have changed, and how. The Republicans have forfeited any credibility in calling themselves the "party of Lincoln" or the "party of Eisenhower". Even the "party of Reagan" is quickly becoming a stretch. Likewise, the Democrats have not been the party of FDR for a long time.

[DaMadFiddler]

Thank you, Cyber. That's part of why I'm just fucking done trying to have a rational conversation about it. When the party you are electing into power is deliberately stirring up outright lies and misinformation, racism, and violent hatred for their own gain, you're just fucking done. You don't have a leg to stand on.

I'd be more than happy to have a rational debate between legitimate differences of opinion. But the current product of the conservative movement is deliberate and intentional hatred and social discord for no reason other than to divide the populace for private gain, and it is NOT a rational platform. It's not even close, and the fact that our news media is focusing on (and even taking seriously) the "issues" it currently is... well, that's an outright travesty.

I'm fed up, and I'm disgusted that this party, and this entire media machine, would stoop so low as to take us in this direction as a culture, just for their own short-term benefit. And I'm even more disgusted that so many people in America are buying into it.

It can't be debated, because it's not rational. Trying to refute Tea Party talking points, for example, would be like trying to argue with someone who's sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon and insists that it's pitch black outside because he ate the sun. It doesn't take much to see that his point of view is not only wrong but based on things that are both inaccurate and patently absurd, and there's no logical discussion to be had.

No, I don't think all conservatives are idiots. Of course not. But the end result is that the conservative movement is collectively giving power to people who DO say and do all this insane bullshit, which is actively hurting all of us in a very dramatic way. Let me put it in the most dramatic terms possible: if someone detonated a nuclear bomb in a major city, and then went on to explain how he's really not such a bad guy because he has all these theories relating to why the bomb should be set off, and he has some other views that you DO agree with... well, fine and dandy, but does that make what he's doing any less horrible?

There's actually a great new book out this week called American Taliban. I don't normally read (and especially don't recommend) political rant books, but it really does cast some elements of modern American society in a light that we need to really think about.

And now, I think it's time to put away the soap box

[Lartrak]

It's not even close, and the fact that our news media is focusing on (and even taking seriously) the "issues" it currently is... well, that's an outright travesty.

I think a part of the problem with the media at times is actually their attempts to be fair. Sometimes, when there are two sides, one side is just obviously wrong and doesn't deserve equal time. As one example, creationists and creationists by other names - you know, delusional people. People who see a lack of evidence as evidence.

[emptythought]

DaMaFiddler, are you a libertarian too because some of your remarks sound down right sarcastic.

[Eviltaco64X]

I don't see how Obama has been "too conservative". So far he's centralized healthcare and supported the stimulus packages (and yes, I know many Republicans supported stimulus as well, shame on them). Those two actions are as far from true conservatism as possible.

As for right-wing news stations complaining about the actions of the current left-wing administration, wasn't that coin flipped the other way around for years? In fact, it was during the Bush administration that you had an overwhelming amount of conspiracy theories against him just as there are conspiracies against Obama now.

As for the Tea Party Movement, I'm in support of it. While it's definitely the Republican Party in revolutionary clothing, it could help different political parties be heard in the future since it's not one of the two parties in charge.

When the party you are electing into power is deliberately stirring up outright lies and misinformation, racism, and violent hatred for their own gain

For some reason the Killian documents, the ignorance of many Obama supporters (i.e. if you don't agree with his policies, then UR A RACSITS), and Keith Olbermann come to mind, respectively. Both parties are guilty of the same shit.

I don't know why you're blaming the right for stirring up racism. In all honesty, I didn't hear about racism on a daily basis until 2008 when the Democrats were exploiting people's guilt for things they had no part in to get more votes for Obama.

[DaMadFiddler]

No, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to get roped into a debate here.

I entered this thread just to vent a little bit and get my rant on; my comments were never intended to be a structured argument from which to build. That was kind of the point, actually. I've been here long enough, and engaged in actual debate and conversation enough times, that I figured folks would pretty much (A) be able to distinguish my logical arguments from my rants (and know my capability to deliver either), and (B) know pretty much where I stand on things by now.

But one last thing I did want to touch on--and I think Lartrak really hit the nail on the head here--is this sense of false equivalency. A large part of the problem is that for too long, our media has been playing "he said, she said" rather than actually taking the time to investigate and present an objective report. As a result, we have "balanced" at the complete expense of "accuracy."

And that's what it seems to be here, too. ET, I could pick apart all the myriad factual problems just in your most recent part, but like I said, I'm not here to debate. Not this time.

The Hardball-esque idea of "Right vs. Left" is at the heart of the problem (though it is not the whole problem). As a result, we have Fox News, which is essentially a mouthpiece of the Republican party, pushing the "right." We have a few hosts on MSNBC pushing the "left" (and I'll grant you Olbermann, but the main two progressives leading the MSNBC lineup are Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and to lump Maddow's highly researched commentary into the same category as the from-the-gut rants of most talking heads is just another example of this false equivalency). And then we have CNN, the *rest* of MSNBC, and most of the rest of the news organizations that aren't definitively "liberal" or "conservative," but instead just caught in the middle going "well, the lib'ruls said A, but the conservatives said B" without a care in the world as to the merits of what was being said.

And the issue I'm having, and the reason I've been in rant mode about this whole thing, and why I'm not interested in even trying to debate it, is because the conservative movement as it currently stands (and for the hundredth time, not ALL CONSERVATIVES, but the MOVEMENT and the things that are ACTUALLY BEING SAID AND DONE BY THE PEOPLE CONSERVATIVES ARE GIVING POWER TO) is just flat-out fucking wrong, end of story, no argument.

Your opinions may be valid, and based on evidence and personal experience. You may be very fair-minded, without a hint of bigotry or injustice. You may not be a religious nut, or a corporate shill, or any of the other major generalizations commonly associated with modern Republicans.

But by voting for the Republicans currently on the national stage (especially Tea Party-affiliated candidates) as the party currently exists, and by giving audience to the current crop of conservative commentators, you ARE PROMOTING racism, exploitation, and willful ignorance. You are giving those people power, and that's what they are doing with the power you are giving them.

And I don't want to hear any bullshit about how it's not REALLY the conservative talkers and Republican politicos who are ginning this up. I'm not an idiot. Why is it that racist fervor, religious bigotry, and all this other hateful sentiment always comes to a head shortly before election season? Last weekend we had a man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial preaching to a crowd of scared old white people about how they were "losing their country" and about how every interpretation of religion and public policy except his was not only wrong but perverse. We have people like Michelle Bachmann--an elected official, and a leading figure in conservative politics--saying on the floor of Congress that we need to hunt out the "Muslim infiltrators" in our government.

We have these sociopaths telling us that the Constitution is sacred, and that "damn lib'ruls" are trying to subvert it... then a few months later, trying to tell us that parts of the Constitution don't REALLY mean what they say ("oh, the First Amendment doesn't really mean that religion should be free to everyone and separate from government; it means I should have the freedom to force MY religion on everyone and tie it into the government, because I think my religion is right") or that it's wrong ("oh, forget that 14th Amendment thing; we might end up with too many scary brown people").

You can't make an honest argument that the racism, religious bigotry, gross misinformation on what the government is doing (see: the actual health insurance reform bill vs. what all the nutjobs out there THINK it does, and how conservatives hoping to bank votes on that misinformation are promoting the ignorance) is not being fed by a willful and deliberate effort to rile up and turn out conservative votes. You also can't argue against the fact that this behavior is bringing about violence and hatred that we would otherwise not be seeing to this degree.

"Oh, but the lib'ruls said something mean! So, see? Everyone's doing it!"

We're not the ones feeding a movement that bombs medical clinics and tries to burn down people's house of worship.

And if you are giving your money or your vote to Fox News and/or the Republican party or the Tea Party movement or any of the other major components of this conservative power structure that is increasingly encouraging and relying on hatred to maintain its power, or if you are voting for these yahoos, then you are supporting the BROAD MOVEMENT THAT INCREASINGLY *IS* DOING THESE THINGS. Conservative talking heads make a huge deal over anything they think might even tangentially be funding terrorists, and the connection of support between the average conservative consumer/voter and the groups that are actually instilling hatred and suffering here is a hell of a lot more blatant and direct than most of those tenuous connections they love to trumpet regarding Islamic extremists. Conservative leadership is promoting hatred, ignorance, and misinformation on a scale that's just absolutely baffling, and it's shocking how many people are soaking it up, despite the wrongheaded and often illogical nature of many of the things they're saying.

And that's why we're at the breaking point here. I've already let myself get drawn into this topic far more than I intended. There's no logical debate to be had.

It basically boils down to this:

In order to be a supporter of the conservative movement in America, in the form it exists in 2010, you'd have to be either really fucking stupid, or really fucking evil.

[pixel]

As for the Tea Party Movement, I'm in support of it. While it's definitely the Republican Party in revolutionary clothing, it could help different political parties be heard in the future since it's not one of the two parties in charge.

If you're sitting under the banner of small government, more personal freedom — fine. Then I can at least tolerate the Tea Party. I've always admired Ron Paul as a good politician.

However, some people may parse your statement as an endorsement for the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. If that is correct, I cannot ever support those lunatics and their subversion of the political process.

A few rants:
• Beck foams at the mouth and ranting about keywords like honor and freedom, but never defines what that actually means. His rhetoric only incites the fearful factions of society and sends them spinning the drain with him. He keeps repeating that America will no longer exist unless his 9-12 army "takes back Washington." At this point, his message has moved from disagreeable to a complete rabbling of insane ideals. Don't like recent health care legislation? Okay, what's you argument? If your answer is a staunch "It will destroy America," you aren't part of the argument. And don't get me started on gun control. It's a fucking non-issue, so move let's move on with our lives.

• Sarah Palin — holy crap. It almost seems passé to continue to denounce her. I'm sorry, but even discounting her retarded comments and backwards policy, it still boils down to her quitting during her public service. You want to fix the country? Maybe you should have started in the state where your people had faith to vote you into office. Instead, she warped her lack of responsibility into some sort of battle cry. Ugh. What a waste of space.

• Oh, and the whole Christian thing drives me fucking insane. Michelle Bachman is the absolute worse. She says God has chosen her to lead her people. WTF is this? I almost want to move two counties over just to vote against her. I love my friends who are strong in their faith. Myself? I lead a different path, but I aim to be a good person. Just because I don't attend services doesn't mean I'm an abortionist that makes meth for kids and grandmothers.

• I also hate the Tea Party pandering to the fundamentalists with the words of the founding fathers. Using quotes and excerpts from the 18th century to justify your claims in the 21st century is laughable. You cannot take the lessons of people from a completely different time and cram them into a new century. Under Washington's rule, only land owners could vote. Does that seem democratic? They created the electoral college because they figured people were morons (mostly true). Several leaders from colonial times said there must be a division between politics and religion. But, rebel rousers today say that Jefferson and the like wanted a Christian nation.

{b]Edit:[/b] Looks like I'll be tacking this rant onto the end of Fiddler's. Good showing, slim.

[pixel]

Oh, and two words that drive me insane:

Anchor babies.

That is all.

[DaMadFiddler]

But, rebel rousers today say that Jefferson and the like wanted a Christian nation.

Especially funny because Jefferson and a handful of the other founding fathers were atheist. In fact, that's one of (several) reasons that the new conservative social studies curriculum in Texas de-emphasizes Jefferson as a historical figure.

[DaMadFiddler]

We already know the numbers. Pew finds that 18% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim. A new Newsweek poll, taken after the controversy over the New York mosque, places that figure at 24%. Even if he's not a Muslim, Newsweek finds, 31 percent think it's "definitely or probably" true that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."

When the focus is narrowed to Republicans, a Harris poll finds 57 percent of party members believe he is a Muslim, 22% believe he "wants the terrorists to win," and 24% believe he is the Antichrist.

These figures sadden me with the depth of thoughtlessness and credulity they imply. A democracy depends on an informed electorate to survive. An alarming number of Americans and a majority of Republicans are misinformed. The man who was swept into office by a decisive majority is now considered by many citizens to be the enemy. Some fundamentalists believe he is the Antichrist named by Jesus in the Bible.

This many Americans did not arrive at such conclusions on their own. They were persuaded by a relentless process of insinuation, strategic silence and cynical misinformation. Most of the leaders in this process have been cautious to avoid actually saying Obama is a Muslim. They speak in coded words and allow the implications to sink in. I recently watched Glenn Beck speaking at great length about Obama's Muslim father, but you would not have learned from Beck that the father, who Obama met only once, was not a practicing Muslim in any sense.


Rush Limbaugh has told his listeners he can find "no evidence" that Obama is a Christian. In Paul Krugman's op-ed column in the New York Times on 8/29, Limbaugh is quoted: "Imam Hussein Obama, is probably the best anti-American president we've ever had." Limbaugh obviously doesn't believe Obama is an imam. How many of his listeners realize that? Is he concerned that his words will be taken seriously?

These opinions have an agenda. They seek to demonize the Obama Presidency and mainstream liberal politics in general. The conservatism they prefer is not the traditional conservatism of such figures as Taft, Nixon, Reagan, Buckley or Goldwater. It is a frightening new radical fringe movement, financed by such as the newly notorious billionaire Koch brothers, whose hatred of government extends even to opposition to tax funding for public schools.

The money behind the movement has been shaken in its boots by the recent exposure of criminal activities in the money markets. Our economy has collapsed and it seemed clear to many Americans that the unregulated greed of Wall Street trading, especially in derivatives, was responsible. These were not investments in industry, the economy or the future. They were investments in a bold Ponzi scheme which defrauded home owners into fronting for a pyramid of worthless loans. Citizens lost their homes, investment houses went bankrupt, but the criminals responsible continued to pay themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses.

From the same column by Krugman: "Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland."

Say what? Proposals to end loopholes? Read that again. Our recession and the collapse of the housing and jobs markets squeezed through those loopholes. And if you agree with the Democratic attempts to close them, you are compared to Hitler? Republicans in Washington vote nearly as a block against financial reform. Shouldn't the implications be clear to an informed electorate?

This process may soon be arriving at a moment of truth. The new issue of Vanity Fair mentions in its profile of Sarah Palin, as a casual aside, that Glenn Beck has booked the Dena'ina Center, the largest venue in Anchorage, for the date of September 11, 2010. What do you think that means? It could mean Beck simply wants to hold a rally in the home state of the woman who shared his podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech.

Beck says he chose that date without realizing its significance. But it cannot be a coincidence that he has chosen 9/11. Nor does it take special insight to connect that date with Palin's many statements about the "Ground Zero Mosque" and the even more pointed "9/11 Mosque." The association is obvious: "9/11" feeds into "mosque" feeds into "Muslims" feeds into the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. Beck and Palin speak about "taking back America." The buried message is that they will take it back from Muslims. This is a heartless misuse of the tragedy of 9/11 and its victims.

If Beck had planned to come to Anchorage on another date, it wouldn't have excited much notice. But any meeting in Alaska on 9/11 without Palin also present will be anticlimactic. It's too far to go not to feature her. The symbolic date of 9/11 invests this event with the inescapable possibility that he and Palin plan to announce their Presidential candidacy for 2012.

This is their privilege, and is not exactly unexpected. What is inescapable, given the timing, is that their candidacy would benefit from the paranoia already infecting so many Americans about Obama's fictitious Islamic religion. Palin and Beck have so far both been content to let this process work without specific comment on their part. Their silence is a symptom of a cancer infecting American democracy. Our political immune system has only one antibody, and that is the truth.

The time is here for responsible Americans to put up or shut up. I refer specifically to those who have credibility among the guileless and credulous citizens who have been infected with notions so carefully nurtured. We cannot afford to allow the next election to proceed under a cloud of falsehood and delusion.

We know, because they've said so publicly, that George W. Bush, his father and Sen. John McCain do not believe Obama is a Muslim. This is the time -- now, not later -- for them to repeat that belief in a joint statement. Other prominent Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul also certainly do not believe it. They have a responsibility to make that clear by subscribing to the statement. Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh must join, or let their silence indict them. Limbaugh in particular must cease his innuendos and say, flat out, whether he believes the President is a Muslim or not. Yes or no. Does he have evidence, or does he have none? Yes or no.

To do anything less at this troubled time in our history would be a crime against America.

[Ex-Cyber]

I don't see how Obama has been "too conservative". So far he's centralized healthcare and supported the stimulus packages (and yes, I know many Republicans supported stimulus as well, shame on them). Those two actions are as far from true conservatism as possible.

Please explain how Obama "centralized healthcare". I don't need a doctoral thesis, just a brief outline of the policies that accomplish the centralization of healthcare. Note: actual policies, please (see below for more on this point).

As for right-wing news stations complaining about the actions of the current left-wing administration, wasn't that coin flipped the other way around for years? In fact, it was during the Bush administration that you had an overwhelming amount of conspiracy theories against him just as there are conspiracies against Obama now.

This statement misses the point in two crucial ways:

1) The problem isn't conservatives complaining about the actual actions or proposals of the current administration, it's that they're complaining about "actions" and "proposals" that never fucking happened. I had debates a while ago with people who were completely convinced that the health care reform bill would create "death panels" and outlaw private insurance plans, based on completely crazy and out-of-context readings of the bill that they heard about from a friend of a friend (almost certainly Palin, Beck, and/or Limbaugh).

2) Mainstream liberal leaders didn't, to my knowledge, embrace the batshit crazy fact-free conspiracy theories about Bush (e.g. the "let 9/11 happen on purpose" stuff). The media didn't embrace people who promoted such things. The only things that were even taken remotely seriously, as far as I remember, were the accusations of misconduct by Katherine Harris in the 2000 elections in Florida, and that story fizzled pretty quickly (note that it is well-documented that problems existed with that process, just not that such problems were deliberate attempts to reduce the number of voters).

[Jeeba Jabba]

Taco... As a right-wing libertarian, I learned years ago that you don't say too much on subjects like this. You're outgunned 10 to 1 every time on this board.

[Eviltaco64X]

Taco... As a right-wing libertarian, I learned years ago that you don't say too much on subjects like this. You're outgunned 10 to 1 every time on this board.

Yeah, but I like to share my opinions regardless of how many people I'm outgunned by. Especially when saying something as simple as "I dislike Obama" is like setting off an explosion.

[Ex-Cyber]

Taco... As a right-wing libertarian, I learned years ago that you don't say too much on subjects like this. You're outgunned 10 to 1 every time on this board.

Yeah, but I like to share my opinions regardless of how many people I'm outgunned by. Especially when saying something as simple as "I dislike Obama" is like setting off an explosion.

You seriously need to take reading lessons if you think that's what I'm responding to.

PROTIP: I don't actually like Obama.

[Eviltaco64X]

Taco... As a right-wing libertarian, I learned years ago that you don't say too much on subjects like this. You're outgunned 10 to 1 every time on this board.

Yeah, but I like to share my opinions regardless of how many people I'm outgunned by. Especially when saying something as simple as "I dislike Obama" is like setting off an explosion.

You seriously need to take reading lessons if you think that's what I'm responding to.

PROTIP: I don't actually like Obama.

Well, I never said it applied to you.

[DaMadFiddler]

Taco... As a right-wing libertarian, I learned years ago that you don't say too much on subjects like this. You're outgunned 10 to 1 every time on this board.

Yeah, but I like to share my opinions regardless of how many people I'm outgunned by. Especially when saying something as simple as "I dislike Obama" is like setting off an explosion.

You seriously need to take reading lessons if you think that's what I'm responding to.

PROTIP: I don't actually like Obama.

^ this. I'm guessing this is directed at me since I'm the one who had a big explody rant in this thread, but if you actually bothered to read it you'd notice that (1) I consider Obama a significant letdown (he's not *terrible*, but he certainly is playing it far more cautious and conservative than what I and most of the people who supported him in the election were hoping for), and (2) what I'm so pissed off about, like Cyber, is not people disliking him. There are plenty of good reasons you could find to dislike just about any politician, past or present. It's people who dislike him for batshit insane reasons that are completely divorced from fact, and the combination of mainstream conservative politics and mainstream media that are engaging and feeding that insanity that is a problem.

Also, Cyber appears to have taken up the mantle of trying to start a rational debate here. A good starting point would be to answer his question above (back before Jeeba's post).