Obama: I always thought Bush was a 'good guy'

[mpohl 1]

Look it up at your favorite news site.

Two things: (i) I want my money, that is, campaign contribution back; (ii) we are fucked, really fucked!!!

[billvon 2,991]

I think he's a basically good guy as well (as opposed to an evil or cruel one.) I'm sure he'd be an interesting guy to talk to in a bar. He just wasn't a very good president.

[mpohl 1]

I am sure that Saddam was also an interesting person to get to know over a beer at a bar. So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Suffice it to say that Obama was elected on a platform of CHANGE; I am beginning to hear undertones of more of the same.

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I think he's a basically good guy as well (as opposed to an evil or cruel one.) I'm sure he'd be an interesting guy to talk to in a bar. He just wasn't a very good president.

[FallingOsh 0]

1. Do you think Bush is a bad or evil guy?

2. What would you expect the President-elect to say about the outgoing President? I feel he made his opinions of the Bush administration clear during the campaign.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[SpeedRacer 1]

When GW Bush met with Clinton as Clinton was leaving office, Bush later remarked, "You can't help but like the guy."

Speed Racer
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[mpohl 1]

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1. Do you think Bush is a bad or evil guy?

The results of his actions are evil: you know how many wedding ceremonies in Afghanistan, Iraq have been bombed into oblivion? How many children and women have become casualties of friendly fire? And while it's cliche: do you think Hitler was an "evil" persona per se? I don't think so! Except what he believed in his heart to be right and pure, made for a very evil outcome.

2. What would you expect the President-elect to say about the outgoing President? I feel he made his opinions of the Bush administration clear during the campaign.

When the newly-founded Germany had to make a clean break w/ 1933-45 they minced no words. America has been through the dark ages 2000-2008 no less. Maybe it's time to say: "We are sorry! This shall never happen from American soil again!" Of course, acknowledging guilt and wrong-doing is the hardest part.

Saying, in essence that Bush is "a good guy" does nothing to ameliorate American standing in the world. It's especially disappointing to hear that from Obama: because, in my books, Obama is our last, best hope. If he fails, the US of A as we know it today is done.

[tkhayes 348]

change will come from the congress more than the president. while Bush fucked it up 'all by himself', he actually had a lot of support and help.

When was the last time you railed at your senators and congressmen/women?

I do it all the time. Real change requires the senate and congress.

[FallingOsh 0]

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The results of his actions are evil:

That's different than him being evil. Obama may agree with you on that point. That's not what he said.

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you know how many wedding ceremonies in Afghanistan, Iraq have been bombed into oblivion?

Not nearly, nearly as many as MSNBC would have you to believe.

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And while it's cliche: do you think Hitler was an "evil" persona per se? I don't think so!

Yes. Hitler believed in the extermination of races. If you fail to see the difference and honestly don't think Hitler was evil, then it's just plain sad.

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Saying, in essence that Bush is "a good guy" does nothing to ameliorate American standing in the world. It's especially disappointing to hear that from Obama: because, in my books, Obama is our last, best hope. If he fails, the US of A as we know it today is done.

The US is done the way we know it or it will cease to exist? Apparently, you and others on this board would be happy if the US as we know it today was done.

If you think Obama is the sole savior of this country then I think you're going to be very disappointed. If you think Obama is the last chance for this country to exist then that's even sadder.

Obama is smarter and more professional than to say anything other than something positive about the out-going President. I hope you don't get this wound up over every little thing he does over the next 4 years.

I also can't believe I'm defending Obama against a liberal. Back-asserds.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[billvon 2,991]

>So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the
>man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Yes, but you can separate his intentions from the results of his actions. I think he was a decent guy who was simply in over his head, and did not think through the results of his actions or indeed put much thought into what the potential consequences might be. His flaw was incompetence, not malice.

A pilot of an airliner might well make an error and kill hundreds of people. A man trying to murder a family of five might well fail and merely wound himself in the attempt. Judging them purely by the results of their actions, the pilot is by far the worse man; far more people are dead as a result of his actions. But generally the pilot is going to be the better man.

[mpohl 1]

ad (1)

To the 100,000+ Iraqi civilians or 4,000+ American Service Men, it does not make a difference whether they were killed by malice or incompetence. They are, for all practical intents and purposes, quite dead!

ad (2)

The pilot of an airliner has seconds or minutes to make a decision; cf. the Hudson river landing. The Bush administration spent months to built an intricate web of lies and deceptions to "justify" their invasion of Iraq.

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>So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the
>man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Yes, but you can separate his intentions from the results of his actions. I think he was a decent guy who was simply in over his head, and did not think through the results of his actions or indeed put much thought into what the potential consequences might be. His flaw was incompetence, not malice.

A pilot of an airliner might well make an error and kill hundreds of people. A man trying to murder a family of five might well fail and merely wound himself in the attempt. Judging them purely by the results of their actions, the pilot is by far the worse man; far more people are dead as a result of his actions. But generally the pilot is going to be the better man.

[mpohl 1]

This is from the Wall Street Journal. Now, of course, this does not make it gospel; but, it provides a different point of view.

Suffice it to say that Russia has been around a lot longer than the USA...heck, come to think of it, most every country on earth has.


29, 2008
As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America 'Disintegrates' in 2010
By ANDREW OSBORN

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin's ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country's top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin's English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin's predictions. "Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin's theories don't hold water.

Mr. Panarin's résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB's successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are "classified."

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

"When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. "They didn't believe me."

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles," he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

The article prompted a question about the White House's reaction to Prof. Panarin's forecast at a December news conference. "I'll have to decline to comment," spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino's response was significant. "The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully," he says.

The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin.

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The results of his actions are evil:

That's different than him being evil. Obama may agree with you on that point. That's not what he said.

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you know how many wedding ceremonies in Afghanistan, Iraq have been bombed into oblivion?

Not nearly, nearly as many as MSNBC would have you to believe.

Quote

And while it's cliche: do you think Hitler was an "evil" persona per se? I don't think so!

Yes. Hitler believed in the extermination of races. If you fail to see the difference and honestly don't think Hitler was evil, then it's just plain sad.

Quote

Saying, in essence that Bush is "a good guy" does nothing to ameliorate American standing in the world. It's especially disappointing to hear that from Obama: because, in my books, Obama is our last, best hope. If he fails, the US of A as we know it today is done.

The US is done the way we know it or it will cease to exist? Apparently, you and others on this board would be happy if the US as we know it today was done.

If you think Obama is the sole savior of this country then I think you're going to be very disappointed. If you think Obama is the last chance for this country to exist then that's even sadder.

Obama is smarter and more professional than to say anything other than something positive about the out-going President. I hope you don't get this wound up over every little thing he does over the next 4 years.

I also can't believe I'm defending Obama against a liberal. Back-asserds.

[ryoder 1,590]

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>So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the
>man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Yes, but you can separate his intentions from the results of his actions. I think he was a decent guy who was simply in over his head, and did not think through the results of his actions or indeed put much thought into what the potential consequences might be. His flaw was incompetence, not malice.

Yes, his incompetence was to a degree that makes the Carter administration look like a roaring success. In fact your description sounds more like Carter than Dubya. But incompetence is only half the problem. Dubya took an oath when he was sworn into office to:

"...to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Then he proceeded to do everything in his power to ignore and undermine everything in the Constitution. That was deliberate.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[mnealtx 0]

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change will come from the congress more than the president. while Bush fucked it up 'all by himself', he actually had a lot of support and help.

When was the last time you railed at your senators and congressmen/women?

I do it all the time. Real change requires the senate and congress.

Well said. It took both sides of the aisle to get us into this mess, something that is apparently lost on several posters here.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[mpohl 1]

If Obama fails, I can only conclude that change cannot come from within the system. Let me be very blunt here for a second: in 200 years this country, for the first time, elects a nigger to the highest office. Rightfully so! What do we need to do to get real change! "Bush was a good guy"; does that constitute a change?

I am just wondering aloud.

P.S..: And yes, my black acquaintances refer to themselves all the time as "niggers".

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change will come from the congress more than the president. while Bush fucked it up 'all by himself', he actually had a lot of support and help.

When was the last time you railed at your senators and congressmen/women?

I do it all the time. Real change requires the senate and congress.

Well said. It took both sides of the aisle to get us into this mess, something that is apparently lost on several posters here.

[normiss 800]

Well there went the entire discussion.

[Ron 10]

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Suffice it to say that Russia has been around a lot longer than the USA...heck, come to think of it, most every country on earth has.

Only if you want to count buildings, not governments.

US Govt: Founded 1776

Current Russian Govt: Founded 1991 but it is considered to be an continuation of of the USSR which was founded in 1922.

Current French Govt: was approved by referendum on 28 September 1958. If you do not accept that date, the French Revolution was in 1789 when they changed from a Monarch to a Democracy....Of course, they went right back to Monarchy in 1804.

England: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was established in 1927. Even if you wanted to go back the the acts of union it is only 75 years older than the US.

Germany: After WWII it formed a Republic in 1949.

China: People's Republic of China was also founded in 1949.

Don't confuse old buildings with old political systems.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[FallingOsh 0]

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If Obama fails, I can only conclude that change cannot come from within the system.

So Obama is the only possible hope for America to succeed in the future? Don't put all your eggs in one basket, man. For the sake of the country, I hope he succeeds. If he doesn't, I hope someone comes along who can. I don't think we're all doomed to the dark ages if Obama isn't the savior you're hoping for.


As far as the other post, are you really surprised that a former KGB agent is predicting the end of America? Did you skip over this part?

Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin's predictions. "Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin's theories don't hold water.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[BillyVance 34]

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Well there went the entire discussion.

I have to agree. Arguing with this guy is just pointless.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[billvon 2,991]

> it does not make a difference whether they were killed by malice or
>incompetence.

Correct. They are dead. However, I still think that Timothy McVeigh (total death toll due to his actions: 168) is more evil than Capt. Edward Smith (total death toll due to his actions: 1517.) You may have a different opinion; that's fine.

[Andy9o8 2]

OK, well, this is 2 minutes of my life I'll never get back...

[j5okeefe 0]

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I am sure that Saddam was also an interesting person to get to know over a beer at a bar. So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Suffice it to say that Obama was elected on a platform of CHANGE; I am beginning to hear undertones of more of the same.

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I think he's a basically good guy as well (as opposed to an evil or cruel one.) I'm sure he'd be an interesting guy to talk to in a bar. He just wasn't a very good president.

Really late into the game with nothing significant to add, but I must inject "Godwin's Law". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

I'll be whatever I want to do!

[Skyrad 0]

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I am sure that Saddam was also an interesting person to get to know over a beer at a bar. So are Hitler and Jack the Ripper. I am sorry, but you cannot separate the man from his actions and consequences thereof.

Suffice it to say that Obama was elected on a platform of CHANGE; I am beginning to hear undertones of more of the same.

Quote

I think he's a basically good guy as well (as opposed to an evil or cruel one.) I'm sure he'd be an interesting guy to talk to in a bar. He just wasn't a very good president.

Reality bites.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca