Do Any of You Gimps Still Believe in Obama?

[Ben Kenobi]

So you're arguing that he's not the worst/least popular president, just the 3rd or 4th from the bottom. Aim high.

No, that's not what I said.

I said he is in the middle in terms of popularity, if we use, as a benchmark, his percentage of the popular vote earned in his re-election bid. He beat out 6 other sitting presidents.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Thanks for your insight Imran.

Gepap might think it obvious, but all he said is the margin of victory. That statement in and of itself is ambiguous.

Then he clarifies, and his statement is still ambiguous.

I asked, if he meant electoral college (which is actually a good question), or percentage of the popular vote.

If I'm being obtuse, why is it that the first thing I mentioned is what you think he meant?

All gepap had to say is that he meant the margin of the percentage of the popular vote, and then bob's your uncle.

Ben, maybe you have missed this little thing called POPULATION GROWTH, which makes actual number of vote margins a worthless piece of comparison because the electorate is always expanding. After all, going by actual vote numbers, I could say that John Kerry won more votes that FDR did in 1932 and 1936, which he did. Of course, that is a meaningless
statement.

Also, how exactly would you talk about margins but in percentages?

[Ben Kenobi]

Wrong. According to Wikipedia, Bush won in 2004 with a margin of 2.9% of the electorate. IN 1916 Wilson won with a margin of 3.1% of the electorate, and in 1948 Truman won with a margin of 4.5% of the electorate.

Percentage margin of the electorate, not margin of the electorate. They are very different things.

I'm not sure where you get 2.9, that's a mistake in my favour, but go ahead and trust wikipedia. You might want to check those numbers again.

The Margin of the electoral vote for Bush was over 3 million. For Wilson, it was 1.75 million, so yes, Bush had a larger margin of the electoral vote, even as he had a lower percentage margin, and a higher percentage of the overall voters then Wilson.

No, it's not. After all, he got close to 40% of the vote. Bush doesn't even poll 30% support. So besides being a different type of data, even if we assume it the same, Bush's numbers are worse.

So popularity polls!= Actual elections? You are comparing apples to oranges.

Bush received 50 percent, and won. Hoover received 39 percent and lost. Even Carter received 41 percent as a sitting president.

There were polls in LBJ's days, and his numbers weren't as bad as Bush's current numbers. The fact he resigned means nothing, since that is a personal action by one man.

And what were his poll numbers then?

NO, you are as usual not understanding the point. My point is that Bush is reaching unprecedented lows. RIGHT NOW, Bush is as unpopular as any president has ever been, as far as we can tell from polls since we have had consistent polling data. That right after 9/11 he got an immense jump in popularity doesn't mean **** today since, unless you have missed it, its 2008, not 2001.

Then why are we using a measure you have no confidence holds anything but immediate significance?

If you are going to say that his momentary popularity now is significant, then so is his popularity back in 2001 if we are assessing his popularity as a president.

[Elok]

Posts like that are why we need a "popcorn" smiley. That's some quality psychosis, right there.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Joseph
Sorry Bush was an Texas Air National Guard Pilot, AKA U S Air Force Pilot. He flew F-102s. Granded he did not fly that much because he was grounded for missing to many training flights. However don't lie about the man. I would not vote for him, but will lie about him.

I chose my words carefully. The Texas Air National Guard is NOT the U.S. Air Force.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Lorizael

We're running a secret gulag?

Ummm.... yeah.

Gitmo is in the open, but there are other detention centres scattered throughout the world that are essentially "black holes". People have been abducted from many countries and taken to these places (that is, when you haven't been sending them to other countries for torture).

Not much can be said about these places or the people imprisoned within them, since they are now unpersons. You can call it whatever you like, but your country does this.

You're the new Nazis.

[tinyp3nis]

Also secret but empty camps inside US.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Agathon
Ummm.... yeah.

Gitmo is in the open, but there are other detention centres scattered throughout the world that are essentially "black holes". People have been abducted from many countries and taken to these places (that is, when you haven't been sending them to other countries for torture).

Not much can be said about these places or the people imprisoned within them, since they are now unpersons. You can call it whatever you like, but your country does this.

You're the new Nazis.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The US is really bad at being evil. What we do now is pitiful compared to what the Nazis did during World War II.

Scratch that - what we do now is pitiful compared to what we did during World War II. Remember Dresden, the Japanese internment camps, Tokyo, the ****ing nukes we dropped?

Get back to me when we've killed twelve million. Until then, save the label "Nazi" for those that truly deserve it.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

I don't think Al Gore would have handled 9-11 well, and yes it is true I would have voted for him back in 2000.

Our contention isn't that Gore would have handled 9-11 excellently, merely that he would have been better than Bush.

You watch too much Annie get your gun? Seriously, you believe the Dems wouldn't have fouled up an invasion, and that everything would be hunky dory in Iraq? Under what basis do you have for your opinion? Look at the Dems in Vietnam. A complete disaster while they were at the helm.

No, Saddam would still be in power and Iraq would be (relatively) stable. Afghanistan would be a mess, but less so than now simply because the focus would still be there.

I doubt that. They wouldn't HAVE a budget, since the House and Senate dems would strip them of the cash, just like they are doing now to Bush.

Oh wait, no, I think they would actually fully fund a Dem war.

The GOP would have still controlled Congress... we're considering the hypothetical situation where Gore won in 2000 due to different outcome of the Florida debacle, not some magical land of make believe where Democrats control everything.

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by Lorizael


I've said it before and I'll say it again: The US is really bad at being evil. What we do now is pitiful compared to what the Nazis did during World War II.

Scratch that - what we do now is pitiful compared to what we did during World War II. Rember Dresden, the Japanese internment camps, Tokyo, the ****ing nukes we dropped?

Get back to me when we've killed twelve million. Until then, save the label "Nazi" for those that truly deserve it.

Nazis lost power and some got killed, you are doing it better. Bush will go free and people will be against impeachment if media tells them to be.

[Imran Siddiqui]

not some magical land of make believe where Democrats control everything.

You seem to forget that Ben lives in make believe land.

[Ben Kenobi]

The GOP would have still controlled Congress... we're considering the hypothetical situation where Gore won in 2000 due to different outcome of the Florida debacle, not some magical land of make believe where Democrats control everything.

I don't see why if the Congress is so committed to making sure things work in Afghanistan why they would want the troops to leave immediately.

What they have done in Congress gives me no confidence that if Gore were in power, that the war would have gone better.

The problem with speculation is that Gore is pure and pristine, due to not actually having had to do anything. I don't see why he would be more successful then LBJ in Vietnam. Fact of the matter is that Bush proved he could succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this vitriol against him is more from sore losers then anything else.

[Elok]

Food for thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...Census%2C_1790

It says there were a little less than four million people all told, of which 700K were slaves. Which leaves 3,230,000 free people, more or less. Cut that in half to remove the women (this was waaaay before the nineteenth amendment), and you've got 1,615,000. IIRC you had to own property to vote back then too, but I don't know how many were landowners so we'll ignore that.

The upshot of all this is that, by Ben Kenobi's reckoning, George Washington was the least popular president ever elected, with, lessee...100% of the EC vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

[Ben Kenobi]

First you call me insane, and now this.

Having a bad day Elok?

Who put a burr in your britches?

[Theben]

All you "I agree with Aggie" posters realize that what he said was that Americans voters are stupid, right?

If there's anyone thinking that an Illinois senator from Chicago would be a radical leftist, I have a stack of subprime loans to offer you.

My main concern these days is the attacks on democracy that the Bu****e neocons are waging. If nothing else, I expect Obama to reverse the trend of ideological far right conservative appointees to the federal judiciary. That alone is enough for me to vote for him.

I also noticed his campaigns ability to come from behind in both the democratic primary and in his race for the senate seat. He obviously is good at picking people to run his campaign; I figure if he can do half as well as pres he'll outstrip McCain and Bush by a long shot. In fact any area I think of I can't see McCain doing better. He'd be too beholden to the same far right nutjobs who got him elected to fix things.