Politics: Put Up, or Shut Up

[FML|Mage]

Ok, I've noticed that in general there are some members of FML who have pretty strong political opinions.  That's great, political activism is what makes the world turn.  What's not so great is I've noticed that a lot of people seem incapable of backing up their rhetoric and seem to rely on using straw men fallacies as well as pure ad hominem attacks.  This is not good.  It does not lead to a more productive society, and instead leads to a lack of political cooperation.  As such I've decided to create a thread for politics.  Based off of how much everyone seems to know, I think that this thread should be a huge success.  In particular, I'm calling out Lightweight and Duck.  Time to put up or shut up boys.


This will not be specifically reserved for LW, Duck, and Me.  I'm open to debating with anyone, and I encourage political discussions.  That being said, I'm only knowledgeable on United States politics.  While I realize that a large part of FML is not from the US, I do not feel comfortable enough on foreign governments and policies to debate their choices. I'm more than open to discussing other countries politics though, and am always open to learning more about them. 

Lastly: Trolling will not be tolerated.  It will lead to post deletion.  Repeated trolling will lead to a ban from the thread.

Format

I'll try to make this as simple as possible, since more rules usually means more places that it can go wrong.  Anyone is allowed to challenge me to a political debate, and I'll almost certainly accept.  You are allowed to challenge others, but their is nothing that makes them have to accept.  All challenges will be given 3 days to finish their debate.  This will provide ample time to provide credible facts to back up their points.  It will then be judged by a 3 man team to see who they think made the better case.  Whoever can get 2 of 3 people on their side wins the debate.  Judges will be picked on a volunteer basis with a minimum of 5 judges volunteering, but more possible.  Those involved in the debate will then use voir dire to narrow the pool down to three judges. 

To give an example of how this will work I'll go ahead and issue my challenge.

Challenge to Duck and/or LW.  Topic: Obama vs. Romney

The debate should they accept will cover three major issues.

1) Economics.  This includes but is not limited to; job growth, inflation rates, the value of USD, etc.

2) Social issues.  This includes but is not limited to; nationalized health care (whether or not the concept is good, not the economic side of it), gun rights, legalization of drugs, etc.

3) Foreign policy.  This includes but is not limited to; current wars, diplomatic issues, trade rights, etc.

The point will be to prove why (in my case) Obama is the superior choice to Romney, or in their case vice versa.  Judges will be asked to volunteer should they actually accept this debate.

Cheers!

[Lightweight!]

Ok, i accept the challenge and won't troll as in the chatbox. Although i am no US citizen i will try as good as i can.

1) Economics; Romney is a banker. The job crisis was created by gamblers. Just see the facts. 2008 USA had an unemployment rate around 5% and one year later when the housing crisis began the USA unemployment was around the 10 % mark. And still i think Obama was lucky that he could push down the unemployment to 8 % before the elections, otherwise this would have been a total failure for him.
I don't know about the US healthcare in detail, but it is absolutely necessary to have one. Romney wants individuals to purchase their own insurance rather than via employers which is a good idea if there wouldn't be patients and needy people and if there would be a minimum vage so that everybody could take care of that by himself. For Romney everybody is a tool which is useless if it can't justify his place. So i definetly support Obama in this point, because he won't let insurers cancel policies if they get sick.
I don't know the exact numeral but the indebtedness has raises to an unhealthy limit. It is not only Obama's fault, but still he is the president and responds for that.

2) Social Issues: Well, not much i can say except from that it's "k" from Obama to legalize illegal immigrants by making conditions with them. And a fence @ the mexcian boarder will prevent most of the mid-american immigrants from coming to the US.
In this case i prefer Romney's position who said that he wants a legal immigration which would be limited to trained professionals. Each country needs professionals.
In my eyes one of Romney's biggest failures was that one of his spokesman said that abortions are not allowed, even if they are the result of rape. This opinion is totally disgusting to me and i think most of the us people disscosiated from that. What i personally think about abortions is not important, but since the USA are a country of freedom, this decision should be free also. Big minus to Romney here. This and his opinion about gays may have cost him the election and i am sure there is a lot of gays in the US (One troll has to be allowed  ).

3) Foreign policy:
Can' tell much about that, but as far as i am informed there wasn't much difference between Obama and Romney in foreign policy issues. I think it's better for the US to follow the chosen way instead of having a totally unexperienced guy on this seat. Although Obama ended military operations in Iraq, he moved the troops to the Afghanistan and Iranian boarder. Romney had a different opinion and wanted to keep the military in Iraq to secure democracy which i my eyes would be totally wrong. The situation in Iraq calmed down a lot since the US troops moved out and also troops had 7 years to secure democracy and train a police, but the results were hatress and attacks against the US military. In a country like Iraq without any political trace to follow corruption will always win over democracy. It is very diffcult to imply democracy in muslim countrys.

Summarized i think Obama was the better choice, because people still prefer someone with social competencies and a weak economy instead of a cold banker that will run through minorities just to get his things done. Moreover Romney was a total idiot in my eyes, because insisting on mormon opinion in the case of gays and abortion shows how retarded this guy is. A guy with such interests was close to be the new US president. People who voted Romney were either bankers and company bosses, racists and guys that believed that he is the "holy saviour of economy" or people full of hatress like Duck that just want a change no matter which way it goes, because they are unconfident with their instantaneous situation.

I tried to argue as good as my english allows me. I hope you understand.

[FML|Mage]

Don't have time to fully respond now, but very well done LW.  I think you make some excellent points and I appreciate the actual effort that you put in.

[Q-veta]

I would have voted for Romney instead of Obama if I was a fat american. Can you guess why?

[Persuade]

I would have voted for Romney instead of Obama if I was a fat american. Can you guess why?

Because he wanted to enslave the jews?

[FML|Mage]

I would have voted for Romney instead of Obama if I was a fat american. Can you guess why?

Because he's Mormon like you are?

[CatLikeThief]

Mage you have not exactly made your post yet???

[FML|Mage]

LW isn't arguing with me.  He agrees with me on most parts, and in fact he made an excellent post that I'm very impressed by.  The point was to have a full debate, not just compliment each other and build off of each other.

Not sure what there is too post about, but should you want to debate this with me I'm still more than happy to do so although I'm going to be a bit busy in the upcoming days.  I will go through and point out a few things that I found notable in LW's post if that makes you happy though.

And a fence @ the mexcian boarder will prevent most of the mid-american immigrants from coming to the US.

Highly disagree on this issue.  I do not believe that building a fence would really solve anything.  I think that it might temporarily stem the problem, but it would by no means solve the problem.  It would more be treating the symptoms and not the problems.  Instead I would suggest trying to find ways to work with Mexico more and focusing on preventing the dangerous things like firearms smuggling, drugs, cartels, etc. 

An interesting article on the fence that is currently being built between San Diego and Tijuana can be found here.  It discusses a bit about the cost as well.  The Secure Fence Act of 2006 has tried to implement this along about 1/3rd of the US Mexico border.  It obviously has not gone into effect, but the estimated cost for implementing this particular sections was $4b.  In addition, Governor Perry of Texas estimated that to secure the Texas border alone would take 10-15 years and cost $30b. (sauce)


And gotta go for now, will edit in other things later.

[Lightweight!]

Wow, that was a very informative article Mage. After reading it and also after rethinking the topic i come to the same result as you. I should have known better since i live in a country that was split in two parts and i heard enough horrible drama stories like people trying to climb the wall and being shot without a warning.

I didn't think about the costs that are brought with such a big project. Moreover it is just passing responsibilities as you say, because immigrants will try to invade through other states. Since the US has enough financial problems it is more then questionable if it is worth to maintain such a project with it's cost that goes into billions. In addition to that there is better ways to invest moneylike for example schools and jobs. A fence will probably create violence and riot. Many people will die during their "escape". There has to be a diplomatic exchange between Mexico and the USA although i think that there are different interests. In the end of that issue i ask myself why Obama is planning this project although it seems logical that this is not a good idea. From my experience i can say that the wall in Germany was one of the worst ideas in the German history and it won't solve the immigrant problems.

In the end it is surprising that Obama supports a fence, because that way he risks winning the election 2016  .

[FML|Mage]

Another really nice post LW, keep it up :)

I don't have time to give a full post that you deserve this weekend since I'll be out of town, but I'll do it when I get back for sure.

A couple of thoughts to chew on.

First, Obama won't be able to be re-elected in 2016.  2 term limit and all that jazz. 

Second, He hasn't strongly supported, or strongly dissented about the wall (like a lot of positions), he's just kind of gone with the flow and tried to please everyone.  If forced to put him somewhere I would say he leans in favor of the wall, but I have no idea if that's purely political or what he actually believes.

Lastly, there's a lot of politics involved in this issue.  Immigrants are a lot like gay issues for Obama.  They're a group that is going to vote his way no matter what, and as such Obama doesn't feel the need to do anything for them except the occasional lip service to prove that he's their man.  He doesn't have much to gain by doing a lot in favor of their issues because they're his voters no matter what.  However, if he goes to far he stands to lose a lot of votes from independents.  I think it'll be interesting to see how some of this changes, if it does, in his second term since he won't be trying to get re-elected.

Cheers!

[Lightweight!]

It will be very interesting to see how Obama is going to act in his 2nd term, because he won't have the pressure that everything he is going to do will be put on the table in the next election (as you said there won't be another). Maybe he will try to make politics now and increase the taxes, although republicans contradict. Right now the ditch between republicans and democrats couldn't be deeper and to me it feels like they don't do the best for the people but for themselves. Could be that republicans will block all the Obama proposals due to their majority at the house of representatives. I hope that won't happen, because a strong US economy is also good for the european export. I often asked myself why there is only two parties in the US. In Germany we have 2 very strong and like 3-4 small parties that also make it into the parliament. For the two big parties it is important to convince the small ones of their ideas to get a majority. Also again the us election brought up to my mind how retarded the elections are in your country. Not necessarily the guy with the most people who voted for him wins, but the guy with the most electors. Another system could have prevented you guys from 8 years of George Bush and losing a big amount of reputation in the world when Al Gore had more votes than Bush in 2000.

[everyhope]

why no one continued on this thread? Politics are interesting!

[Ugri2]

not sure I wanna talk about american politics...

Maybe talk about syria? Should we end the war so another islamic governement takes over?

[everyhope]

haha.. i'm not inclined to having another islamic govt to take over since the western powers are having a headache trying to gain full cooperation from the middle east continent. Such as getting Iran to end his nuclear reactor programmes which it claims for peaceful power generation or seeking Israel's cooperation to stop attacking its neighbours..