Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.
But in terms of style and presentation, which I presume this is about, rather to my surprise Romney is coming over the better. He is glib whereas Obama is stuttering a lot; they are both achingly dull, but Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head. Neither of them shows any evidence whatsoever of charisma.
Four years ago Obama was talking with apparent belief about the need for change and inspiring people to follow him. He may even at the time have believed much of what he promised, but given the speed of abandonment of principle in office, I doubt it. Now Obama is just trying to present as a more managerially competent neo-con; a managerially competent neo-con competition is about the only one Romney can actually perform in.
I don’t really care who wins – debate or election.
Komodo at 1.49 p.m. Thanks for the agreement. Sorry, I’ve been amusing myself making another video about how Assange was set up. This episode comes chronologically before ‘Enticement’. Please enjoy and spread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJVGdiuzLLo
Thanks.
Marxist-feminists? I thought it was the homosexual mafia Nazis with their “gay agenda” (where these dastardly gays sneak into your home and redecorate it for you). One thing I’ve definitely noticed, is that those who rant and rave the loudest about gays and their “pre-verted” practices, are the most likely to be closeted themselves.
Glenn and Vronsky
Points taken!
Glenn minced:
“One thing I’ve definitely noticed, is that those who rant and rave the loudest about gays and their “pre-verted” practices, are the most likely to be closeted themselves.”
So I take it that you do not strongly oppose pederasty, paedophilia, incest, or necrophilia !?
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare’s works are a running joke on the insincerity and damaging delusion of sexual “love”. A terrible, transitory, damaging and comical passion. Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Me, I am (oops, senior moment, *was*) an Anysexual. Couldn’t shag my way out of a wet paper bag nowadays. Back in the days when I almost could, I wasn’t fussed about gender. The bedmate could be anything (with the porn star’s contractual restriction: no animals, no kids). However as time wore on, I wanted a woman for companionship. Latent monosexuality is my weakness. I fight it every day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84AFjSTyYuY&feature=youtu.be
Dr Ron Paul discussing the likelyhood of a Mitt Romney win and what would he need to do to accomplish it.
@Jon/Clark
I was just browsing the blogroll and notice the Chicken Yoghurt link is probably not what it once was.
Just thought to bring it to your attention. Please delete this comment.
In the Guardian !!
Taken down: BBC told by MPs to make presenters pay fair share of tax
This story has been temporarily taken down as it broke an embargo. It will be relaunched at 00:01
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guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 October 2012 20.33 BST
BBC not having a good day. Newsnight/Savile and now this. Apparently there are 4000 at the BBC on special arramgements for their pay.
http://allforthegreatergood.com/
Some interesting quotes and ideas there.
JimmyGiro reckons I’m mincing? In your dreams, fun-boy! 🙂
Actually I’m no fan of the other practices you mention. Some of those practices, funnily enough, which seem to obsess homophobes – I’ve rarely heard anyone else mention them. But since three of them are clearly abusive, and one involves acts with dead people, why would they be put in the same category as consensual relationships between adults?
Why are you so afraid of gays, JimmyGiro – do you think they’ll “convert” you if you drop your guard, or are you desperately puffing out your chest to display to all and sundry just how proud n’ hetro you are?
It is also as well that we distinguish between persons who are homosexual in their attractedness to their own sex and those who actually practise/participate in homosexual ‘sex’ -a sort of travesty of heterosexual sex. Sexuality is just a small part of life and sex an even lesser part within that, anything consensual between adults is no-one else’s concern. As a gay guy convinced almost every other guy is secretly gay really, overt manifestations of heterosexuality a conditioned sublimation/cover for their true instincts, I’ve always thought cruelly that bi-sexual people were simply sitting on the fence, having their cake and eating it, and in particular closeted married with kids types were the biggest hypocrites going, but from dialogue with many such people, most recognise and agonise over the ambiguity of their feelings and I’m convinced that infinite human diversity and variability could account even for the improbable bi-sexuals too.
It is a classic and tiresome smear to try associate or conflate mere homosexuality with paedophilia/pederasty, Jimmy. Methinks too, you do protest too much.
Kempe, 4 Oct, 2012 – 2:33 pm
“I don’t think there’s any inherent failing with representational democracy..”
The majority of our politicians agree with you, as you know (the bit about the system not being broken, not the other bit about them all being clones). I think this faith in the system is touching. Well, to each their own.
We are all corruptible, you, me and everyone else. Any difference between us in this respect will be a difference of degree. In a system that is corrupting, we will become corrupted. That is the definition of a systemic, fundamental flaw.
There’a a lot of agreement with oddie’s opinion:
Here’s my opinion: It don’t matter a damn who wins, the probability of an attack on Iran is 100% and the US and UK will support it.
Anyone want to bet against it?
thing is with education, the better it is, the more abstracts, words and theories, the more connected selective clauses one puts forward to diminish one’s own depravity, from Jersey to Northern Ireland to the habits of secret services to use sexual depravity as a lever for other goals is a know fact and the deeper they dig the more silence they will find.
Re-open the inquiry into Haute la Garenne and let the Finnish police do the investigation for all I care, but this opportunity to reform these evil practises by moral guides and people who thought they could just do it, will not present itself again.
who knows what ambassadors know?
@ Craig,
” Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head”
I “watched the “debate”…ha!
I do not recall if anything was said about foreign policy ( I think very little).
The observations I make:-
1. The US polical system is now a duopoly – very little difference between the two main political parties (which is why Obama seemed to be Mr. Nice Guy making conciliatory overtures and comments that both he and Romney could share much common ground on).
2. There will be no real change in the military-industrial complex and in US foreign policy regardless of who wins the election.
3. The future for the US is bleak, and the people are going to suffer regardless of who wins come November 2012.
How, pray tell, does one sustain a deficit running in the trillions – without pain inflicted on the people?
Yes, the lesser of two weevils is the bar standard.
So many critique the performance of poliitcians when they mirror the Electorate. Where do you think these people come from, Alpha Centarui? No, they are the stock and trade of our interest/apathy toward the dirty details of governance.
Two quotes come to mind; the first I dunno the author. The second is B. Franklin.
“After two years, you get the government you deserve.”
“You have a Republic, if you can keep it”
“No he’s just a psychopath.”
You seem rather obsessed with this idea. Time for a little redemptive self-awareness?
Good riddance to bad rubbish;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/oct/04/norman-bettison-retire-hillsborough-tragedy
Hopefully his retirement won’t shield him from any future investigations.
Nuid: I think they get Welsh names wrong on purpose, it’s a little joke with them. The BBC has been doing it for years, even though – as you say – they manage to get all manner of complex foreign names bang on, through the use of their excellent pronunciation department. But Welsh names? Naah. Just make a complete hash of it, or wade through in a stuttering way with a bemused frown (and possibly a slight shake of the head). Typical anti-Welsh condescension from the English that we’re well used to.
=====
But they have a TAFF sternly reading the propaganda to the plebs every night?
Huw Edwards (journalist) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Edwards_(journalist)Huw Edwards (born 18 August 1961) is a BAFTA award-winning Welsh journalist, presenter and newsreader. He is a news presenter for BBC News in the …
I hope Obama wins as he’s less bad than Romney, though i agree he’s basically a conservative (and even neo-conservative) in foreign policy too. He is at least holding back war with Iran (at least for now), though this may be just to weaken it with sanctions and by removing it’s allies (e.g Assad) before attacking it.
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Dearie me mate, they are BOTH identical.
No such thing as left or right, repub or demo, do you not understand that at your age?
The folks that BUY the presidency just keep on rollin.
House always wins.
I’m surprised at you lot, I honestly am.
Carry on.
Anders7777: You write about Huw Edwards. WTF has that got to do with anything whatsoever, notwithstanding your presenting this amazing bit of information as if it were some kind of zinger?
@ Anders
Jesus mate,you’re like a throwback caricature to the real action 10 years ago.
You never exist,as you know.
[Mod/Jon: deleted a swathe of unattributed quotes from other posters, plus copy and paste material from the web – disruptive]
Anders: Dude, you’ve posted 12/18 of the previous posts, with no attribution about who you might have been ranting against, and included lengthy quotes which surely you didn’t expect anyone to read.
What is YOUR point?
Anders,
You’re fast becoming a ranting bullying overposting ego-freak bore.
Why don’t you condense? Quality,after all,is surely better than quantity.
I also am beginning to find your starry-eyed gushing tropes an insult to most of us who know what you’re posting already,long time baby.
You’re not the first to make,or deduce,these discoveries.
Quality and evidence over adolescentish gushing speculation and Daily Mail links masquerading as proof please?
why couldn’t our own MSM write this?
Oct 4: Haaretz: Iraq 2002, Iran 2012: Compare and contrast Netanyahu’s speeches
The arguments are the same, the intonation is the same, even the advisers are the same
A video clip from the 2002 hearing has been making the rounds of the Internet over the past few days, after it was posted by American blogger Jim Lobe at almost the same time as Netanyahu was addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week…
Netanyahu’s remarks during the 2002 congressional hearing sounded very similar to his UN speech. The arguments are the same, the intonation is the same, even the advisers are the same – Netanyahu’s current diplomatic adviser, Ron Dermer, who wrote the prime minister’s UN address, can be seen in the 10-year-old video sitting behind Netanyahu in the congressional hall…
Aside from the fact that both Dermer and Netanyahu look 10 years younger, the primary difference between the two videos is one word: 2002’s Iraq has been replaced by Iran in 2012. Here are some more quotes…
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/diplomania/iraq-2002-iran-2012-compare-and-contrast-netanyahu-s-speeches.premium-1.468213
btw Jim Lobe is not just a blogger, he is washington DC bureau chief for IPS (Inter Press Service) news agency, writes for other media and has a blog http://www.lobelog.com/ which carries articles by himself and others.
This Anders freak is clearly stupid or drunk. Probably both.
Mods… kindly do you’re duty. There’s a nutter in need of deleting.
Gah, sorry for the grammatical howler. Nuff said. Goodnight.
Craig – Hear, Hear.
At least we can say the UK is ahead of the US on this game. Obama is Tony Blair all over again…