Is There A Political Conspiracy Against Obama?

[Alpine]

Hello World.

This thread is something I have been wanting to do for a long time. Why? Because

 

1) I want to make it clear to fellow Hypographers that I'm not an American.

2) I really think the mass media is conspiring against Obama.

Before I go on and present my thoughts and ideas, I want to make this very, VERY clear that as much as I support President Obama (because I think he's a very nice person), I have no interest or affection in American political parties what so ever.

 

Okay, so all of this brain-storming when there were multiple articles in newspapers and television about some poll in which President Obama was voted the WORST President of the USA. Now, that was something I felt was very wrong and clearly he is far from being the worst by a long shot (George Bush & Ronald Reagan anyone?). Surely there have been Presidents worst than him. BUT, it was a few weeks later that I noticed something strange, yet predictable, this idea of him being the worst President spread like wildfire across the internet.

 

The reason why I think this was all a part of controversy is because at that time the Republicans were really high on sugar and were more desperate than ever (mind you, they still are) to get Obama out of the office. I would like to point it out that I knew of all this despite the fact that our news channels (in India) barely cover these things and that I have never been to the other side of the equator. Widespread publishing of this new title Obama inherited was bound to get supporters. The corporations know that there are people out there who are too dumb or lazy to have their own opinion and would gladly accept whatever the TV,newspaper and internet tells them as the SOLE UNIVERSAL TRUTH. The same can be said about the success of Lady Gaga and TV shows like The Big Bang Theory. Do I think they are talented/funny? No! But there are people who do, and I'm not talking about people having their own opinion, what I'm pointing out here is this trend which is more popularly known as a "bandwagon".

 

I would like to post this "status" one of my friend posted on their facebook.

And you thought he didn`t have any accomplishments!

 

Quit Trashing President Obama's Accomplishments.

 

He has done more than any other President before him. He has an impressive list of accomplishments:

 

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

 

First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

 

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

 

First President to violate the War Powers Act.

 

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.

 

First President to spend a trillion dollars on 'shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.

 

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

 

First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

 

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

 

First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

 

First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.

 

First President to terminate America's ability to put a man in space.

 

First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.

 

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

 

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

 

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.

 

First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.

 

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

 

First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

 

First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).

 

First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

 

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

 

First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.

 

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 102 to date.

 

First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

 

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

 

First President to go on multiple "global apology" tours and concurrent "insult our friends" tours.

 

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.

 

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

 

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

 

First President to repeat the Holy Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

 

First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences. Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.

 

First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs Arizona).

 

How is this hope and change working out for you?

 

THERE IS AN ELECTION COMING UP...

 

I HOPE YOU REMEMBER THIS LIST WHEN YOU VOTE!

 

Many of the allegations put up against Obama in this post (in a very sarcastic manner) are have either a superior religion theme (read the Quran and Christian line) or are inaccurate/exaggerated. Some of them are pure cheap shots for taking the "right" side and a few of them are correct. Now, posts such as this don't bother me and they are of no importance whatsoever as I know that my friend has copied it and pasted it on their timeline, just to spread this hatred. What did hurt me a lot was when I asked this friend of mien why they were Anti-Obama and their reply was, "He's not good for the country", "There's something about him that I don't like".(I would also like to point out that they were anti-Obama in 2008 as well and gave me a similar response when I asked the same question back then)

How is he not good for your country? I'm not saying that he is, but is there a reason why you think so? As I predicted, they drew a blank. This isn't the only instance where people dislike something for no reason at all. This is "bandwagon" courtesy of mass media and their corporate supporters in its raw form (Something I expressed in my Prius thread: http://scienceforums.com/topic/24920-the-defamed-prius/page__p__317300__hl__prius__fromsearch__1#entry317300). All I hear is that Obama isn't good and that he hasn't fulfilled his promises. If we go according to PolitiFact (link: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/) , Obama has fulfilled a lot of promises he made but I guess that isn't enough.

 

So, all in all, do you think that behind this relentless bashing is a political agenda of the mass media/corporates (maybe even Republicans?)?

 

Alpine

[Alpine]

I wanted to make a separate post to make sure that I don't hurt people's feelings and especially to make sure that everyone knows that I respect everyone's choices and opinions. So,

 

1) I'm not promoting Obama for 2012 and nor am I against Republicans.

2) I'm not advertising politifact.

3) I'm not American

4) I'm not a Lady Gaga/The Big Bang Theory fan (but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be)

5) I'm not taking a shot at the Republicans but I am questioning the actions of mass media and the intelligence of my friend.

[Buffy]

Nope, this is generally not considered to be a conspiracy even by those on the left. Most observers of this phenomenon are following one of my favorite dictums:

 

"Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can more easily be explained by stupidity."

 

The folks that fall into this bucket are mostly what we call "Villagers": press/analysts who live inside of Washington DC and who survive by avoiding saying anything that would offend the "sources" that they need to "report the news".

 

Unfortunately Bill Maher has it right: "We don't have a left and a right party any more, we have a center-right party and a crazy party."

 

The crazier the right becomes, the need for the Villagers to "maintain balance" requires them to avoid making any judgements on increasingly crazy positions being taken on the right. Moreover, for the Democrats, it's become necessary to move further and further to the right because to stick to standard positions like favoring social programs or allowing for Keynesian stimulus through short term debt makes them subject to being called "radical commie socialists" by the right....which the villagers mus repeat because they must be even-handed in their coverage: all sides claims must be presented as equivalently valid positions, no matter what the facts are.

 

This is not "favoring the Republicans" this is abdicating their roles as journalists in the old meaning of the term. I was watching an old tape of Nelson Rockefeller being mercilessly badgered by the press after he'd been announced as the new Vice President by Gerald Ford, and thought about how you'd *never* see that kind of questioning today, because the Villagers would not want to offend him and risk not being able to get an "exclusive interview" or talk off the record.

 

Today if you're a reporter and you say something the Republican's don't like, they cut you off from all contacts and start trashing you publicly as part of the "biased liberal media" and your job is probably going to disappear. The left does not do this much, because they're moving rightward right along with the media.

 

Fortunately along with the liberal blogosphere we have MSNBC, which although blasted by virtually everyone for having "the same bias as Fox News" is really just a manifestation of Stephen Colbert's line:

 

"Reality has a well known liberal bias."

 

It's also one of the main reasons that in the US CNN's ratings have fallen below MSNBC's.

 

PolitiFact has tried to be unbiased just like the rest of the Villagers, and has been caught with calling some real whoppers "mostly true" because they did not want to get thrown in the "biased" category.

 

Facts are stupid things, :phones:

Buffy

[sman]

Nope, this is generally not considered to be a conspiracy even by those on the left.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0ccPh3YYH4

 

 

The leftist radical commie socialists that made this video (Art Not War) would vote “yes”.

 

Lots of facts are given very quickly. I try to quickly verify/falsify as much of the info as I can with simple web searches, (this is what I encourage people to do before they comment on or otherwise propagate this kind of thing) but I wouldn’t mind some help.

 

Mind that conspiracy (two or more persons working secretly to obtain some goal) is implied, not explicitly stated.

[Buffy]

Lots of facts are given very quickly. I try to quickly verify/falsify as much of the info as I can with simple web searches, (this is what I encourage people to do before they comment on or otherwise propagate this kind of thing) but I wouldn’t mind some help.

 

Mind that conspiracy (two or more persons working secretly to obtain some goal) is implied, not explicitly stated.

Sorry, I apologize because I was very unclear: a lot of what Alpine referred to was by implication related to how the press cover what the partisans say. My argument about lack of conspiracy is really limited to the press itself: Fox is not the press, they're the PR arm of the Republican party (while it's important to note, MSNBC, esp. Rachael Maddow, and earlier Cenk Uygur and Olbermann regularly show problems with the Obama administration's initiatives), so to that extent they're in on the "conspiracy", while the rest of the press (the "Villagers") are really just morons stuck in an echo chamber of conventional wisdom that bears no resemblance to reality. They're useful idiots, as seen by Cheney's use of NBC's Tim Russert as a means to do an interview where he could "control the message" because of Russert's Villager-standard unwillingness to ask anything more than softball questions.

 

While certainly there is a "conspiracy" between the Republicans and big money interests from the Koch Brothers to the Banks to the Chamber of Commerce, it's not very well hidden (except for the Villager's moronic inability to actually do *reporting* on it), and for a lot of folks all's fair in Love and Politics, and given the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision, there are no longer any rules. Since there are no rules, there's no need to keep the conspiracy secret other than it's an inconvenient PR problem at times--solved by making greed as American as apple pie--so actually calling it a "conspiracy" starts to beg the question, if we want that word to have any meaning, what's being done needs to be made illegal again! :o

 

Some people do believe that rich people's speech should be more valuable than others because they spend more money on it, but it's never been good when that's happened in the past (Tea Pot Dome, Tammany Hall, etc. etc. etc.)....

 

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary "quo" given in exchange for a substantial "quid," :phones:

Buffy

[lawcat]

Yes, but it is not unique to him. Every president is subjected to criticism, and political conspiracy. Opposing party conspires to overturn him, with full force.

[paigetheoracle]

Obama wants to shake America out of the state it has got into. He wants you lot to progress because it is in your best interest to do so. The current economic depression is social. It is caused by those afraid to let go of their fears and change.

 

Change is about trust. Peace comes through tolerance and patience, not impatience and violence. The violent are losers - reacting and storming off. Winners are the patient because they stay and fight their prejudices, not other people. There is a science to how reality works and this we must fight to understand and promote, for all our sakes.

 

He wants to change things. The republicans want to block him. The outside world can clearly see this - can you insiders see it too or are you allowing yourself to be swayed by emotional diatribes, aimed at his policies by vested interests?