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[Sirus]

They hate Obama too, so since all other countries think they are awesome then so do we.  You hate us saying it because it's true! 

Err... could you clarify those pronouns? Not sure who is hating who.

From what I've heard from my various international friends, Obama is at least a bit better than Bush. People don't often start conversations with, "Do you hate [President], too?" anymore, at least.

Well, instead of starting two wars and utterly failing to catch the guy responsible for the attack which led to those two wars, he ended at least one and killed the guy. The fact that he's a good public speaker and is much better-looking than Bush doesn't hurt either

[Osmosis Jones]

They hate Obama too, so since all other countries think they are awesome then so do we.  You hate us saying it because it's true! 

Don't know about elsewhere, but we generally like Obama over here in Australia. Possibly because, unlike Bush, he hasn't gotten us dragged into wars in the Middle East. Also, a previous PM had his lips glued to Bush's arse, which kinda pissed many Aussies off with both our leader and yours.

Finally, he doesn't sound like a redneck Texas yokel when he speaks, which is reasssuring considering just how much military might he nominally controls.

[jryan]

They hate Obama too, so since all other countries think they are awesome then so do we.  You hate us saying it because it's true! 

Err... could you clarify those pronouns? Not sure who is hating who.

From what I've heard from my various international friends, Obama is at least a bit better than Bush. People don't often start conversations with, "Do you hate [President], too?" anymore, at least.

Well, instead of starting two wars and utterly failing to catch the guy responsible for the attack which led to those two wars, he ended at least one and killed the guy. The fact that he's a good public speaker and is much better-looking than Bush doesn't hurt either

Well, he ended one war on the timeline established by Bush, and really did nothing to kill Osama other than give the OK.  The framework of the investigation was in place and working years before he was in office.

Bush isn't my favorite president either, but the deification of Obama is rather off putting.  Blaming Bush for your involvement in a war is also rather silly.  If we have that much power then obviously we are more awesome than even I thought.

But anyway, the idea that the world would love America with Obama in power never came to fruition and the fact that fairly liberal 1st Worlders like a fairly Liberal President over a somewhat conservative President isn't exactly the earth shattering break in international diplomacy I think people were expecting.  In fact it is fairly obvious that left leaning people would like a left leaning president.  The hearts and minds that were supposed to be swayed still hate the US and burn Obama in effigy just as they did Bush.

[Montague]

The thing is (and this really holds true for almost any "If you don't like X, then move" arguments)...it's just not that simple to pick up and move. Even if you're a single twenty-something in an apartment, it's not that easy. You need a cushion of money to make the transition possible. You need a job (or certainly the prospects of a job) in the new location. You need a place to live.

If you have a family and a house, it's a freakin' nightmare. You have to sell your existing house (meaning you have to find somebody who wants whatever it is you're trying to get away from) you have to find and purchase a new house (or at least a new apartment) which means either buying sight unseen or shuttling back and forth several times before actually moving. If you have a family, it's essential that you have a new job lined up before you move or else you have a nice fat 6-months-of-living-expenses lined up.

Ideally, drastic policy shifts won't happen in states every few months to cause people to move out for political reasons. I imagine most people will be generally content in the state they are in and put up with policies they disasgree. Unless they feel the tremendous urge to live in a state with stickers on science textbooks saying "evolution is only a theory" -or whatever, they can move on to greener pastures. Hopefully people that care about such things will keep it in mind before buying a house worth 10 years of their salary. The main idea here is that the people living in their particular state will decide what government policies they want to have there, without a federal government in DC mandating policy that might not nessicarily vibe with the people living there. This is just decentralizing government for the sake of greater representation in democracy.

You have a point that it's non-trivial to pack up your life and move it somewhere else, saying 'its not easy to move to another state' is not really good argument against increased states rights.

There are two way this could take place, both of them bad:
1) Fiscal guarantee at a Federal level.  This is basically what we have now.  The states run a lot but the federal government covers a large part of their essential functions.  This means that no state can screw things up too badly because there will always be the federal government to keep people from dying in the streets in large numbers and keep the biker gangs from taking over major cities.  But if you give the badly performing states more leway to screw things up, you just make them a bigger strain on the system.  Right now backwater places like Alabama get by on federal handouts which protects them from the harsh realities of how fucked up they are.  If you give them more leway to screw things up, they will do so and drag places like California and New England down even more.
2) No Fiscal guarantee at the Federal level.  This is what Europe is currently going through.  The problem with this system is that all the states have the same currency but don't share a budget.  This means that there can't be a currency exchange rate correction for economic balances between the states.  So just like we are seeing governments like Spain and Ireland in real trouble in Europe despite them having behaved very responsibly, we would have states get into serious debt crises in the US.

Do have a good point here, I think the federal government should guarantee a few functions, education and state military come to mind, but should probably stay limited at guiding fiscal policy, rather then individual rights policies. I think there would need to be greater constraints on how governments can function and what they are allowed to do, mostly to keep their budgets balanced and prevent them to doing anything too intrustive on individual rights. Though I suppose this is more complicated in reality then in theory.

[lastofthelight]

What I'd like to see is a political candidate in favor of greater power to the states. The federal government has been taking power from the states, and the states from the local, for a long time. And of course, the Executive branch leeches off the federal. It keeps climbing upwards.

And while I like certain compassionate safety nets, I wouldn't be opposed to those safety nets being 'local in nature' rather then 'federal in nature'; but the structure of our society prevents that. You can't just go out, for instance, and start a free health care clinic. You have to have insurance, or you'd be sued off your butt, and there is nothing your town (or state) is allowed to do about it. And while I like the idea of regulating the corporations to protect me from them, I dislike the fact that, when the end of the day comes, most regulations are designed to help them, and benefit them, often at my expense. I worked for major bank once (Servicelink/FNF) - and it was horrible how they made their money. It was blatantly obvious and remarked upon in the company how much of their money was reliant upon foreclosures and favorable government regulations.

So I think the real problems are not the 'right' or the 'left' but corruption and not corruption. I'd like to see an overall reduction in corruption, and a return to a smaller scale government (not the token lies the Republicans claim to support), and I'd like to see an acknowledgement that...endless wars will NOT make us safer, but increase our enemies in countries where we are not wanted.

I volunteered for Obama, but I can't really support him anymore because I feel that he sold me out on the peace issue, on the human rights issue, on the corporatism issue, and... I'm disappointed.

What we really need is to stop looking at any of the politicians/liars in these two parties to do anything to really change the status quo, and to look inwards at how we can fix this country, and ask hard questions about real changes.

Thats what I want.

[Sheb]

I think you severealy underestimate how much the world used to hate Bush. Generally speaking Obama is perceived as a "normal" president now, not the Messiah he was supposed to be, but still leagues better than Bush.

Hell, they had pro-American protests in Libya, when was the last time you saw PRO-American protests in the middle east (outside Israel?).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, those photographs of Libyans with US (and French, and UK, and some others I forget) flags still seem completely surreal.

[Sirus]

The fact that we sided with the pro-democracy rebels rather than the totalitarian leader (for once) probably helped. Hell, I saw a news report about a US college student running away to Libya and joining the rebels. He didn't really do any fighting, and his parents weren't thrilled, but I thought it was a nice story.

[mainiac]

Maybe Obama will get burned in effigy in Israel and the cycle of realignment will be complete.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The US still supports Israel, and so does Obama for that matter. He's just not totally and completely pro-Israel.

[mainiac]

The US still supports Israel, and so does Obama for that matter. He's just not totally and completely pro-Israel.

So he's an anti-semitic jihadist in other words.

[Osmosis Jones]

Yeah, those photographs of Libyans with US (and French, and UK, and some others I forget) flags still seem completely surreal.

You'll find a lot of Iranians (those that remember times before the Ayatollah especially) also like the US, at least according to the Iranian expats I work with. Their government isn't exactly popular with most of the populace, so they actually had a lot of respect for Obama and even Bush for not just taking a nice economic deal and looking the other way with the populace. Kinda contrasts with all the vitriolic anti-western crap Ahmadinejad and his cronies spew.

Of course, waving a US flag in Iran is more likely to get you hauled off by the secret police, and it sure as hell won't be aired by the state tv.

[Sirus]

Though to be fair, at least some of that support comes from Rapture-ites who think that Israel is important to bringing about the second coming of Jesus, or something along those lines. In other words, they only support Israel because they think it's prophecy.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Doesn't Israel actually get destroyed in the conjecture of some of the Raptureite theories? It's supposed to be what kicks off the End Times in at least one of them.

[Sirus]

Yes, but in order for it to be destroyed it must exist first, right? I don't try to follow the "theories", I'm just aware of them.