Is Obama worse than Bush? That's beside the point

[Timshel]

And BAC, I'm a little surprised that you're piling on here. My recollection is that these are the reasons you disliked Obama before he was elected in 2008 and were why you didn't vote for him.

It is why I did not vote for him. I still prefer him to McCain and was uninterested in voting for the lousy candidates the LP put up, but I knew his rhetoric on civil liberties, marijuana, executive power and transparency were all just intended to gain votes from the unsuspecting. That does not mean he did not purposefully mislead voters.

 

[blackascoal]

And BAC, I'm a little surprised that you're piling on here. My recollection is that these are the reasons you disliked Obama before he was elected in 2008 and were why you didn't vote for him.

I didn't vote for him because he's a fraud and a corporatist. I've always been clear about that. Everything about him screams FRAUD.

He's mislead Americans on a hell of a lot more than excessive surveillance. Surely you know that.

 

[I'm Watermark]

It is why I did not vote for him. I still prefer him to McCain and was uninterested in voting for the lousy candidates the LP put up, but I knew his rhetoric on civil liberties, marijuana, executive power and transparency were all just intended to gain votes from the unsuspecting. That does not mean he did not purposefully mislead voters.

Why, may I ask, is this at all noteworthy? The government is completely, wildly subordinated to the interests of our glorious ruling class. As the Walter Lippmann (the progressive, Pulitzer Prize winning democratic theorist) and Benito Mussolini (in terms of domestic policy, our poster boy for foreign leaders) said, the mass of the population is too unintelligent to make their own decisions. So our government puts on these little shows called "elections", while the real decisions are made by Lippmann's "responsible men" and a government completely detached from the population.

Democrat, Republican. They're pretty much the same, with some meaningless distinctions to feed to the public. Anyone who watched the last presidential debates knows that the moderator just spent their time trying to emphasize arbitrary differences between the candidates.

 

[Timshel]

Why, may I ask, is this at all noteworthy? The government is completely, wildly subordinated to the interests of our glorious ruling class. As the Walter Lippmann (the progressive, Pulitzer Prize winning democratic theorist) and Benito Mussolini (our poster boy for foreign leaders) said, the mass of the population is too unintelligent to make their own decisions. So our government puts on these little shows called "elections", while the real decisions are made by Lippmann's "responsible men" and a government completely detached from the population.

Democrat, Republican. They're pretty much the same, with some meaningless distinctions to feed to the public. Anyone who watched the last presidential debates knows that the moderator just spent their time trying to emphasize arbitrary differences between the candidates.

Because dungheap chose to argue it.

The point was that Obama is controlled or doing the bidding of people other than those who elected him. I hate conspiracy theories, but how hard is it going to be to control politicians when the police powers will have had them bugged years before they gain power?

 

[Nick4444]

People who think that Obama has shifted tremendously on these issues only after taking office simply weren't paying attention during the '08 campaign. Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act in 2008, which legalized the Bush program and granted retroactive immunity to cooperated telecom providers. Hell, John McCain called him out for flip-flopping for that vote during the '08 campaign.

To think that President Obama made some dramatic shift by utilizing the authorities that Senator Obama voted in favor of is kinda silly if you ask me.

And, don't get me wrong, I don't agree with it, but no one should have been surprised by it.

Indeed.
Not to be unkind, but it was obvious to many of us just what a demagogue he has always been, given his rhetoric and actual voting positions, and other actions, not to mention critical analysis of what he was calling for, coupled with a sound recognition of the historical context of his ideology.
Irrationality seems to be a necessary precondition for the support of Obama, not only then, but most emphatically now.