Something I have noticed over time to be our big problem in the USA

S

Sid

Member
People are always comiing up with charts and graphs and figure to prove a preconcieved notion. When we were learning how to keep record in AG classes in HS the teacher said "Figures don't lie but liars figure".

People today are pointing fingers at the other side as to the problem. Remember folks when you point your finger at others you have three pointing back at you.

Many people are describing a certain political party as a bunch of uncaring snobs while the other party is a loving caring group intrested in the poor. In my life time the folks around me who belonged to the uncaring side were the ones who slipped me a twenty, or stopped to help. While members of the other party were the ones who said why don't you sign up for welfare. I ask you who really cared?

Folks are taking political sides based on how "This personly helps me and mine" not based "What is the best for our nation". As awhole folks have allowed and are allowing our leaders to split us up. Not only that but those who are driving the wedge are being praised by their followers.

We must remember a "House divided cannot stand" sometimes I wonder if the split will heal or will our do folks even want it to heal.

Just something to think about, or a reason to classify me as a nut case.
 

That's about what my DH says, Sid. Each side points the finger at the other, and anyone in a third party is portrayed as an idiot whose ideas are not worth considering. The race card is being played more than ever, and the media is just as guilty of that as anyone.

We're getting nowhere in a hurry, and I don't have much faith in this nation unless we learn to compromise and think for ourselves. Our leaders aren't helping us, and I'm not sure they intend to.
 
Anne said:
That's about what my DH says, Sid. Each side points the finger at the other, and anyone in a third party is portrayed as an idiot whose ideas are not worth considering. The race card is being played more than ever, and the media is just as guilty of that as anyone.

We're getting nowhere in a hurry, and I don't have much faith in this nation unless we learn to compromise and think for ourselves. Our leaders aren't helping us, and I'm not sure they intend to.
Click to expand...

You're not alone, American friends. :(
 

It's just too eerily similar, right down to that race card thing, to be coincidence. They have to be colluding. Global politicians are hunting us as a pack!

The only difference is that our 3rd Party really are idiots whose ideas are not worth considering. :stirthepot:
 
Sid said:
People are always comiing up with charts and graphs and figure to prove a preconcieved notion. When we were learning how to keep record in AG classes in HS the teacher said "Figures don't lie but liars figure".

People today are pointing fingers at the other side as to the problem. Remember folks when you point your finger at others you have three pointing back at you.

Many people are describing a certain political party as a bunch of uncaring snobs while the other party is a loving caring group intrested in the poor. In my life time the folks around me who belonged to the uncaring side were the ones who slipped me a twenty, or stopped to help. While members of the other party were the ones who said why don't you sign up for welfare. I ask you who really cared?

Folks are taking political sides based on how "This personly helps me and mine" not based "What is the best for our nation". As awhole folks have allowed and are allowing our leaders to split us up. Not only that but those who are driving the wedge are being praised by their followers.

We must remember a "House divided cannot stand" sometimes I wonder if the split will heal or will our do folks even want it to heal.

Just something to think about, or a reason to classify me as a nut case.
Click to expand...

Nutcase? Hardly! Very well stated! It's should be of very serious concern to all, every citizen, as to whether or not the split can be healed. I sincerely hope it can, at least to some level, or we're all screwed to the wall!
 
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All this isnt helping either:
Congressional Approval Sinks to Record Low

Current approval at 9%; 2013 average now 14%
................................
Guess we can now stop saying"Its all Bushs fault."

Obamas approval rating at 39% and that just about equals George Bush.
 
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lemmings-p_50.jpg
 
We're wastin' our time moaning about them, they're a force of nature, like blowflies and herpes, and we'll never be rid of them screwing up our enjoyment of life.

Forget Confucious, the wisest sage was whoever said "It doesn't matter who you vote for you get a politician."

We recently had a National moment of lucidity and rid ourselves of (my opinion only) the most malevolently nasty, plotting and scheming, psycho level narcissist we've ever seen in OZ politics. That this clown was was able to hoodwink people to the extent of being our PM TWICE is beyond comprehension. That the majority of voters finally saw through him is at least mildly comforting. That the people of his own electorate didn't is disturbing.

He's just announced this morning that he's resigning from parliarment forthwith. TGFT!

May he take his mincingly toned mealy mouth and scheming vindictiveness with him! He turned on and shredded his own Party for pure revenge when they turfed him as leader because he was just so bad at it.
Then wheedled his way back in, because by the time the 2nd leadership issue came around he had torpedoed everyone else who had any qualifications to lead it at all! He used every low means to clear their ranks of anyone who knew anything about zot! He got to lead it again when all that were left were his own toadies and rookies who could barely remember the name of their own electorates.
Then, ... it gets better... after all the damage he did to the Party just to call himself PM again, when they lost the election he didn't nominate for re-election as Party leader! Obviously 'Leader of the Opposition' was beneath his own perceived status!

Now, after they've suffered their biggest loss ever at the last election, he has decided to snatch his big fat superannuation payout and perks and leave them to years in the wilderness of opposition.

They weren't my Party of choice but they needed to be strong enough to keep the now Governing Party on it's toes. He did irreparable damage to the whole Country with his rat behaviour in reducing experienced and wiser heads from our political ranks.

Does it show that I never did like him much!?

I smell a book being hatched. It will no doubt be a ripper. He will have to explain that he was just too good for us all and we should have been more appreciative of his superior talents. Hell, he's sure of it, why weren't we? If Kim Jung Un worries you, he's got nuthin' on this bloke in the ego department.

Don't worry 'bout Dubbya either, he seemed just a tad dumb, our bloke was downright ... yeah... malevolent!

I can't express how glad I'll be to see him gone from Canberra, but I fear it's not the last we'll hear of him. He's a media junkie and we will be no doubt blighted with his doughy face and annoying voice for years to come.... groaaaan.

Should have put that rant in 'Group' but why hide it away? I felt I needed to reassure others that they don't have any worse politicians than anyone else.
 
"Folks are taking political sides based on how "This personally helps me and mine" not based "What is the best for our nation".

Sid, amen to that. It's a perfect description of what motivates the Tea Party, which has alienated a majority of the Republicans and most of the rest of the nation, with its selfishness.
 
Politicians are what they are. It takes a specific type to even want to hold office, both a good and bad thing for us, but that's not likely to change. In my lifetime, IMO, we've had only one President who was a deeply spiritual man, but not nearly politically savvy enough to serve the office well -- Jimmy Carter. Pres Carter was brilliant & idealistic, wanted the best for everyone. But he surrounded himself with very poor advisers and wasn't at all successful in his role. Southern democrat here, loved the man, but I couldn't vote him back in office 2nd time.

Wonderful as he was as a person, he was way too naive. Still, he's one of my heros and I admire him greatly. He and his wife, multi-millionaires, plus being close to 90, have dedicated all their senior years to volunteering and making life better for others through Habitat for Humanity. They were still building homes last time I heard, downright amazing at their age!
 
Katy I must admit that Carter passed pretty much unnoticed by me, but it's frustrating to see someone you had faith in not live up to expectation, not always from their own shortcomings, but because they were simply the wrong horse on the wrong course.

I believe politicians have changed because society and the voters within it have.
We've become the instant 'fix' and gratification era. We don't talk any more, we Twit. We don't think in sentences longer than the data allowance or space on a cell phone screen can cope with.
We send the ratings of the dumbest shows sky high.
There's a massive advantage now in marketing your product to the lowest common denominator and that is exactly the demographics politicians have evolved to cater to. They talk dumb to us, they patronize us and insult our intelligence and there's not a damned thing we can do about it as long as so many don't even see that they are being treated with contempt. They react like Pavlov's dog to a pat on the head for their fad crusade of the day and accept that as evidence that a politician 'cares' about them or 'gets' them.

Voters elect performers along the lines of an X Factor or Who's Got Talent. They need only perform for very short attention span time grabs. It has to be 'out there'. It has to 'glitzy'. It has to grab audience attention in less that 3.5 seconds. It has to include 3 word phrases that sound as though there may be a meaning beneath but nobody has the time, interest or attention span to really bother looking into that.

Simply parroting the catchphrase is sufficient to proclaim your 'belief' in your favourite performing clown's policies.

Elections are no more than popularity contests. Of course the best lookin', slickest talkin' smoothest operator will win the fan's votes. Their qualifications for the job are irrelevant, they just have to look and sound good, and lurve dawgs 'n babies. Brains are optional.

Politicians don't need to be expert economic managers or have any knowledge of the lives and worries of their constituents, they are only required to be masters of the craft of politics itself. They are only good at being politicians.

Unfortunately there are no expert judges to include input of their scores into the outcome of an election, it's all down to the 'fans'.
That's what Democracy is all about isn't it?

We can't blame our politicians for being arseholes, they are simply the kind who know best how to play to the crowd and manipulate social media. Deeper, more ethical thinkers seem to miss that aspect of politics and fade to back benches at best. Common sense is booooring.
We get what we deserve when we vote because they are the people who's act impressed us most in the talent quest.

Gawd 'elp us.


... or does it only work that way in OZ?

I think voting age should be raised to 50 and then made compulsory. That would focus their attention beyond a clever Twitter quip and selfie photo.

Of course for all that we can't forget the part the media, other than social, plays in promoting their faves and denigrating their foes. They have taken subtlety and subliminal messaging to a high art form. All we can rely on is that we are never seeing the full unvarnished picture of any of them.
But as through the media is the only way most get to judge a politician I really don't see what we can do to change the situation we are in now.

Maybe throwing a net over random crowds, taking their names and drawing the winners out of a hat would get a more balanced representation of the population than the current systems throw up. God I hope I'm joking about that.
 
Diwundrin said:
Katy I must admit that Carter passed pretty much unnoticed by me, but it's frustrating to see someone you had faith in not live up to expectation, not always from their own shortcomings, but because they were simply the wrong horse on the wrong course.

I believe politicians have changed because society and the voters within it have.
We've become the instant 'fix' and gratification era. We don't talk any more, we Twit. We don't think in sentences longer than the data allowance or space on a cell phone screen can cope with.
We send the ratings of the dumbest shows sky high.
There's a massive advantage now in marketing your product to the lowest common denominator and that is exactly the demographics politicians have evolved to cater to. They talk dumb to us, they patronize us and insult our intelligence and there's not a damned thing we can do about it as long as so many don't even see that they are being treated with contempt. They react like Pavlov's dog to a pat on the head for their fad crusade of the day and accept that as evidence that a politician 'cares' about them or 'gets' them.

Voters elect performers along the lines of an X Factor or Who's Got Talent. They need only perform for very short attention span time grabs. It has to be 'out there'. It has to 'glitzy'. It has to grab audience attention in less that 3.5 seconds. It has to include 3 word phrases that sound as though there may be a meaning beneath but nobody has the time, interest or attention span to really bother looking into that.

Simply parroting the catchphrase is sufficient to proclaim your 'belief' in your favourite performing clown's policies.

Elections are no more than popularity contests. Of course the best lookin', slickest talkin' smoothest operator will win the fan's votes. Their qualifications for the job are irrelevant, they just have to look and sound good, and lurve dawgs 'n babies. Brains are optional.

Politicians don't need to be expert economic managers or have any knowledge of the lives and worries of their constituents, they are only required to be masters of the craft of politics itself. They are only good at being politicians.

Unfortunately there are no expert judges to include input of their scores into the outcome of an election, it's all down to the 'fans'.
That's what Democracy is all about isn't it?

We can't blame our politicians for being arseholes, they are simply the kind who know best how to play to the crowd and manipulate social media. Deeper, more ethical thinkers seem to miss that aspect of politics and fade to back benches at best. Common sense is booooring.
We get what we deserve when we vote because they are the people who's act impressed us most in the talent quest.

Gawd 'elp us.


... or does it only work that way in OZ?

I think voting age should be raised to 50 and then made compulsory. That would focus their attention beyond a clever Twitter quip and selfie photo.

Of course for all that we can't forget the part the media, other than social, plays in promoting their faves and denigrating their foes. They have taken subtlety and subliminal messaging to a high art form. All we can rely on is that we are never seeing the full unvarnished picture of any of them.
But as through the media is the only way most get to judge a politician I really don't see what we can do to change the situation we are in now.

Maybe throwing a net over random crowds, taking their names and drawing the winners out of a hat would get a more balanced representation of the population than the current systems throw up. God I hope I'm joking about that.
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It's not just Oz, Di, it's the same case in every free country. The pill my neighbor shared with me for anxiety is working so my bed is calling, but I don't know if we'll ever get a good selection of candidates that please the majority of people. I hear so many say..I didn't vote for "so & so," I voted against the other one. Sad! I think the reason we may not always get the best choices for leadership is who in the hell wants to have their past history magnified under a microscope...as they always do to the point of absurdity! It's been proven, the voters don't care about certain bad behavior....certainly not about indiscretions. But if you don't want the world to know something you may have foolishly done in younger years, don't run for a high office. The medial will stalk your life and find out more about you than you know about yourself.

I don't know why anyone of sound mind would want to go through all that, and I'm sure it keeps many wonderful candidates away. But it doesn't stop there, once you're in office, it's a thousand times worse living in a fish bowl. Your every move/words/facial expressions are analyzed and a gazillion opinions expressed on it. It boggles my mind that anyone would subject themselves to such scrutiny. And, simple as it is, I think many candidates who would make excellent leaders would never consider putting themselves or their families in this position.
 
Only Narcissists and meglomaniacs could tolerate the pressure. Which leads me to wonder about those in the past who we hold up as role models. Maybe they weren't any better than we today, they just didn't get their closets rattled by the press back back then. They could get on with the job of leading, steering, and doing what they thought was best for their voters without those pressures.

No way I'd vote for a man of saintly virtue, I want someone in charge who has a bit of experience and nous about how things really work, and the brains and flexible ethics to enable him to out-think the competition in other Nations without having to answer to the gasp horror puritans.

I honestly don't give a toss who or what he sleeps with, I only need to know how well he can manage the job of running the joint. That's what I'm paying him for, his brain. Not his soul. That's entirely his own business.

... or damned well should be!
 
Diwundrin said:
I honestly don't give a toss who or what he sleeps with, I only need to know how well he can manage the job of running the joint. That's what I'm paying him for, his brain. Not his soul. That's entirely his own business.

... or damned well should be!
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... until a borderline ally sees pictures of who and what he sleeps with, decides that this is the final straw, and decides to push the button on us because of our deteriorated morality and obvious lack of ethical leadership ...
 
Of course. That'll always happen. Always has to some degree, that's 'diplomacy.'
The skeletons were always there of course, it was just harder in the past to find them, and harder still to get them out where the public could see them in time to be useful. It all went on behind closed doors. Nations have been spying on and blackmailing each other since before Egypt had Pharoahs.

Oh and thanks for that whoops moment getting caught spying on Merkel, we're being put over a barrel by Indonesia over the deal we had about the thousands of 'refugees' they send on to us because the US has been spying on them using our Embassy or somesuch. They always knew it was on, everybody does, but it's just too good a chance of scoring a point to let pass when it's out in the public arena. siiiigh. What's the entry IQ qualification for spooks these days?



[opinion ramble]
Soap opera politics is the price we're paying for technology.
Strange that these days the only 'perfect' politicians seem to reside in Nations who have the least electronic media?

Our value judgement of politicians' worth has changed. As electronic media technology progressed our focus changed from watching what they were accomplishing and how they explained their policies, into watching how they 'acted' and how well they had their 'patter' down. We stopped hearing the message and judged them on their delivery of their lines.

The standards of behaviour that our grandparents expected, and took for granted, in our elected representives were never, as a rule, shaken. There may have been whispers of impropriety but with rare exception, the details were never made official.

Our forebears only had a column in a newspaper to read, they didn't have 24/7News beamed into their homes.
All the opinion pieces, current affairs programs and News reports, with the accompanying innuendoes and biases that we expect from journos today simply wouldn't fit on the page of a newspaper. It only had room for the barest of facts, couched in far more formal terms than we use today, by journalists who still adhered to a code of propriety and a duty to the facts.
Our grandparents' illusions of superior intellect in their leaders weren't shattered by paparazzi and spin doctors. Lucky them perhaps.

It all started to go titsup in the 50s here, probably earlier there, when TV watching became the principal source of information.
We weren't going to be satisfied with a photo and a talking head, and away it went from there. For us/me the first change of perspective came with the Kennedy obsession. Poor old Ike and the rest had been figures seen in the paper or at a newsreel, just photos and facts about people who didn't concern us. But TV had hours to fill and away we went with the personality politics.
The romance of the Camelot hokum was like Disneyland compared to our boring bunch.... and .. well we can see how that all went from there. Personalities take priority, not intelligence and aptitude.
[end ramble]
 
Diwundrin said:
Only Narcissists and meglomaniacs could tolerate the pressure. Which leads me to wonder about those in the past who we hold up as role models. Maybe they weren't any better than we today, they just didn't get their closets rattled by the press back back then. They could get on with the job of leading, steering, and doing what they thought was best for their voters without those pressures.

No way I'd vote for a man of saintly virtue, I want someone in charge who has a bit of experience and nous about how things really work, and the brains and flexible ethics to enable him to out-think the competition in other Nations without having to answer to the gasp horror puritans.

I honestly don't give a toss who or what he sleeps with, I only need to know how well he can manage the job of running the joint. That's what I'm paying him for, his brain. Not his soul. That's entirely his own business.

... or damned well should be!
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you, Di, nor do I care at all about the stupid mistakes one may have made in their youth (as long as it's wasn't something on the order of murder, fraud, theft, or involved children) -- we all made immature decisions before adulthood. I hope that in the not too distant future this will be the way it is....we're not that far from it now.

Look at how his constituents are for the most part backing Mayor Rob/the crackhead. They say he vastly turned things around for their city and are extremely appreciative, to the point of cutting him tremendous slack! Apparently, his predecessors were one level above nothing and put the city in dire straits. Rob began making huge improvements for the city immediately upon taking office. There is a lot to be said for that and I appreciate their loyalty. And if he gets his personal life in order, and that's a definite "IF," he may very well have a great political future. Remembering Marion Berry, mayor of D.C., we forgive and forget easily. (Also thinking/hoping that rehab will improve Mayor Rob's cocky & belligerent attitude.)
 

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