Financial topics

[Reality Check]

Or eight, or twenty. When the President is ignoring the Constitution, why should he cherry pick?

It seems like a stretch when you say it, but the last two men who had any where close to the personal power Obama now has were faced with that same choice and handled it two different ways.

George Washington exercised personal honor and set a tradition of no President serving more than two terms.

Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to use that power to serve four terms, and only death from illness cut that down to just under 14 years in office.

The constitution now appears to be clear on the two term limit, but the constitution can be "interpreted" any way Obama wants if he is able to appoint a majority of the Supreme Court justices. Only the Senate and the President has a say on who is appointed to the Supreme Court, and tradition says the President can appoint anyone he wants.

[Reality Check]

Elections have consequences.

The Consequences of this one will be huge.

[John]

When you talk about Presidential power, it's hard to beat
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

[Reality Check]

Elections have consequences.

The Consequences of this one election will indeed bring fundamental change to the entire world.

The President has more power in the area of National Defense than any other.

Massive reductions in military power, such as slashing the number of strategic nuclear weapons from 3,000 to 300, making the air force smaller than it has been in it's entire existence and making the Navy smaller than it has been for nearly 100 years is just the start of the what is coming in that regard.

[Reality Check]

When you talk about Presidential power, it's hard to beat
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

'

True. And as I said, benevolent dictators can do great good in times of crisis.

The founder of the Republic of Costa Rica comes to mind.

But the transformation of the United States of America from a federation of sovereign states into a central government dominated system of government also occurred as a result of Lincoln's exercise of coercive military power and voter suppression ( declaring Lincoln's political opponents ineligible to vote ) and using armed force to prevent them from voting and using armed force to prevent elected political opponents from participating in state governments. Many of these acts were, of course, carried out by Lincolns political allies after Lincolns assassination.

During this period of one party rule the U.S. constitution was changed to enshrine some of the political power taken by military force.

[Reality Check]

There are many more examples of "bad" dictators, than "good" dictators.

[Reality Check]

When you talk about Presidential power, it's hard to beat
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

You are absolutely correct. One associates the good of what happened as a result of Lincoln's massive Presidential power with Lincoln because it occurred before his assassination.

The excesses of one party rule and military suppression of voting occurred after Lincoln's death by Lincoln's political allies and are generally not associated with Lincoln.

If Lincoln had lived his Presidential Power, and his place in history might be viewed very differently.

[Reality Check]

Lincoln might actually be a very good comparison to Obama.

Both driven by their personal daemons and both walking to the beat of their internal drummers not the needs of the world around them.

Both believing their personal morality is right and anyone who disagrees with them should be dismissed out of hand.

Both willing to go to war, politically and militarily, with the leaders of those who oppose them.

Obama's preferred way of fighting military war is assassination by drone strike against political leaders that he personally designates as "worthy of being killed".

The Obama administration leaked information about how Obama personally selected leaders who should live, or die, to make Obama appear "in control".

[Trevor]

There are two things we've learned from the hurricanes.

One: things have changed a great deal with our leadership. It used to be that the sole goal was to solve the problem and help others. Now the first priority is trying to assign blame. During Katrina, we cared more about blaming someone else than we did helping the victims of the disaster. Sandy was an opportunity for Obama to make himself look good; same with others, but that was the priority.

Two: if we can't handle something like this, we're certainly not going to be prepared for a Chinese attack which will be much larger in scale.

[Trevor]

Also, now that Obama's re-elected, we still have the fiscal cliff to deal with. Some are saying that this means a new era of cooperation, but we're referring to the same group of jackasses who nearly shut down the government arguing over cuts that amounted to less than our government borrows in a day. And you expect them to deal with the tax cuts expiring, the debt ceiling, and sequestration over the course of a month once their vacation is taken into account.