Video: Obama On Atheism

[quixotecoyote]

First, I don't dislike him ... merely his policies.

Second, higher taxes means less $$$$ to spend on research, growth and salaries. Less $$$$ for salaries means fewer hirings. It also means less choices for companies to choose how they want to spend their profits, or at the very least it puts tighter limits on them. And restrictions are limits to further growth and further profit. So you see, it does in fact put a cap on how fast a company can expect to grow.

Oh wait ... they can send even more work over seas. Silly me ...

.

And round we go!

In other words, given the fact that we need some sort of taxation, and the mere presence of taxes is not necessarily burdensome taxation, please provide examples of Obama's support of taxes which are either frivolous or unduly burdensome.

I'll wait.

 

[WildCat]

I don't know how you can tax an economy back to health, but that's just me. Especially if it's just going to be accompanied by even more spending.

 

[Just thinking]

No kidding, Wile E., I did a modest search and came up with this ...

Here is his [Obama's] wonderful plan. Raise taxes on the rich businesses and give it to seniors, lower middle class earners, and the poor. He claims there are a trillion dollars in corporate tax loopholes. Well the entire economy is only around 13.2 trillion dollars. Total corporate profits in the entire decade of the 1990’s was only 4.5 trillion dollars. Total annual corporate taxes are just 370 billion dollars or so.

He is a career activist and professor of law. I would like to help the Senator a little. Read the Fair Tax Book. It’s your assignment before the next press release on economic issues. The only place your plan will create jobs is in a mythical land.

 

[Solus]

Who are you voting for then? Feel feel to pick at Obama but please give us your own better alternative...

 

[Piggy]

Piggy, from post 42 I quoted ...

Obama told the newspaper the top priority of the next president should be the creation of a more lasting and equitable prosperity than achieved under Presidents Bush and Clinton.

Just exactly how does a government do that? How does it create prospertiy with greater equality? You need to read up on basic Marxism.

It is your assumption -- an incorrect one -- that Obama sees no role for private enterprise, that the means to that end will not involve a balanced role of limited government and robust private enterprise.

 

[corplinx]

Who are you voting for then? Feel feel to pick at Obama but please give us your own better alternative...

No thanks. Not necessary. It isn't necessary to endorse Hillary or McCain to be critical of Barack Obama.

I'm a skeptic, not a cheerleader.

 

[latent aaaack]

Obama is implying (giving him the benefit that he's not just spouting emotionally manipulative fluff) that he's going to give speeches as president which will contain religous terminology such as "the judgement of the Lord" in referenincing people who's policies he disagrees with, like CEOs who don't hire or promote enough minorities for Obama's liking. He believes this will change their behavior and help make them realize that they're immoral.

Can someone who is as intelligent as purported to be believe that? Do you think that by Obama giving MLK-like speeches as president and by implying that people that disagree with him are disobeying religious code that Obama will cause CEOs to suddenly change their behavior and believe that all this time they've been disobeying religious commands accidentally?

This is an example of why I think Obama is narcissitic, preachy, naive and plain weird. I agree that it makes Obama a "nice man" that he believes atheists can be moral too, though.

Bush has really head-****ed this nation good, is all I can think about when observing a lot of Obama supporters, not you necessarily, but the warning signs are so loud and the supporters so desperate and weird.

Are you speaking to me, here? Using the quote function would help b/c when there are intervening posts, I can't be sure.

But yes, I'm an atheist and an ardent defender of the separation of church and state, but I don't support the denial of reality.

It's perfectly OK for a President, when addressing the nation, to speak of the predominant moral codes we embrace -- across religions and outside of religions.

What I like about Obama is his willingness to simultaneously remind people that there is such a thing as secular morality and no religion has a monopoly on ethics, that ethics does not flow from nor depend upon a religious creed.

Compare that to Romney's atrocious performance, which effectively excluded me and other atheists.

 

[latent aaaack]

And how does he get away with physically mocking and mimicking his rival, accusing her of being a bad, fake dancer and simultaneously play the role that he's a "uniter not a divider" and wants to "change the tone" of politics rather than "tearing people down" and so on. This guy's going to have a heck of a time when the media stops coddling him in the next 9 moths of the election campaign.

 

[latent aaaack]

When did he say Hillary and all progressive leaders shouldn't use religious language? He said people who aren't religious shouldn't fake it, if they are progressive and secular they should talk about morals and ethics from their secular point of view. He didn't say that all Democrats were secular, and he never even mentioned Hillary.

And yes, I think addressing problems from a religious, ethical, or spiritual point of view is helpful, as there are spiritual elements to many problems.

The contradiction is that the passage is extolling the need and glory of using religious language to help convince people to support your policy, and saying progressives have failed at this and need to change, partially because it's what Lincoln would want. He thinks that this will help make the religious right like progressives. This is wrong and stupid for separate reasons.

Then he says

As Jim mentioned, the other politicians have come and they're clapping kind of off rythm (mimicks someone moving awkwardly and clapping off rhythm) to the choir. We don't need that (crowd laughs and claps). In fact because I do not believe religious people have a monopoly on morality I would rather have someone who is grounded on morality and ethics and is also secular, affirm their morality, ethics and values without pretending they are something they are not." .

That's a clear dig at other democratic candidates like Clinton and Edwards. Not only is it offensive and makes baby Obama weep to publically accuse someone of faking their religion, but these "the other politicians" are broadly representative of the level of religion of the liberal progressives. Only republicans are as authentically and politically usefully as religious as Obama.

There is virtually no progressive democrat remotely as publically, authentically, and usefully religous as Obama and yet his arguement here is that the tiny amount of progressive democrats that are as religious as he is are the only ones who can speak to Americans meaningfully and morally, in 'their language.'

My point is that Obama's speeches often contain no logical continuity or point, but are just emotionally manipulative fluff aimed at convincing people he's unassailably moral, religious, and philosophically sage-like and so above the criticism and rational scrutiny that candidates are normally exposed to.

 

[Piggy]

Bush has really head-****ed this nation good, is all I can think about when observing a lot of Obama supporters, not you necessarily, but the warning signs are so loud and the supporters so desperate and weird.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm voting for Obama. It's just that I don't think he's a socialist or is anything like what the extreme detractors describe him as.

And every candidate has weird supporters. But Obama's core support is likely more educated and well-off than that of any other candidate left in the race. It's just that they're not out there flapping up the dust.

 

[SezMe]

Off Topic:

Oh. I won't be watching it, then. I consider QuickTime to be malware.

Me too. Every time I happen to hit a QuickTime site, it puts an icon in the taskbar and inserts an entry in the registry to automatically start it up at boot time.

So I have to remove the registry entry and reboot. Which simply reboots my aversion to QuickTime.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This was a great speech... It's 40 minutes long, but if you've wanted to hear a no nonsense speech about those with and those without faith in this country, this is it:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid353515028?bctid=416343938

Please, lets do everything we can to get this man into office and begin to heal some of this divide that has been hurting this country for so long now. Donate money, time, and especially get out there and vote!

I don't have 39 minutes right now, could you sum up what he says about atheism?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm voting for Obama. It's just that I don't think he's a socialist or is anything like what the extreme detractors describe him as.

And every candidate has weird supporters. But Obama's core support is likely more educated and well-off than that of any other candidate left in the race. It's just that they're not out there flapping up the dust.

Clinton's policies are just a tad to the left of Obama's and I don't see her's as socialist. I think that charge is just one of those slogan attacks you can expect to hear more of should Obama be the nominee. For that matter, expect the same regardless of Clinton or Obama being nominated.

As far as slogan attacks go, however, it bothers me to hear Obama imply Clinton is the same as Bush. It's the last 8 years that need changing, not the last 16. Obama is not likely to have major differences from Bill Clinton's policies. It's disingenuous to use the talking point that you get the same thing changing the same old people around in positions and expecting a different outcome.

I realize in a campaign you use what works. It still bothers me though to hear BS from the guy and have so many people believe they are really hearing something different. I wonder how naive people are being to believe the Republican unified resistance is just going to shake hands with Obama and, "hallelujah the country's going to be healed".

Yeah, right.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
My point is that Obama's speeches often contain no logical continuity or point, but are just emotionally manipulative fluff aimed at convincing people he's unassailably moral, religious, and philosophically sage-like and so above the criticism and rational scrutiny that candidates are normally exposed to.

Gosh, I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

And how does he get away with physically mocking and mimicking his rival, accusing her of being a bad, fake dancer and simultaneously play the role that he's a "uniter not a divider" and wants to "change the tone" of politics rather than "tearing people down" and so on. This guy's going to have a heck of a time when the media stops coddling him in the next 9 moths of the election campaign.

I'm not sure the media is going to do that. Obama sells the news commodity as much being 'the miracle man' as Clinton sells it being 'the hated one' (even though she isn't hated, and neither was/is Bill).

I found it interesting to hear Anne Coulter claim the McCain Feingold campaign financing bill made it so the media controls the campaign information instead of donors. This seems to be one of the new Republican Talking Points. I wonder if Rove sends her personal copies?

I think we're close but not quite to the place where the news media's distortions on the candidates has less influence and the Internet has more. Current broadcast news reports on such political tripe and they repeat it enough for it to be the equivalent of commercial ads. But Coulter's idea rich donors should monopolize the message is worse.

Anyway, I think for the moment the news is selling, "Obama the sensation".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't know how you can tax an economy back to health, but that's just me. Especially if it's just going to be accompanied by even more spending.

If you weren't giving your cronies billions in cash and contracts they didn't have to perform on, then borrowing the money to pay for it plus all the actual military costs and excessive markups, and if that war hadn't boosted oil prices several hundred percent making everything shipped by truck cost more along with direct consumer fuel prices, then maybe you could make your stupid argument.

However, it's easy to claim you are going to tax the nebulous evil corporations. Obama will have no more ability to do that than anyone else since corporations just move offices to locations out of the country with better offers. Hopefully he will increase taxes on those wealthy people whose taxes Bush cut.

But are you seriously buying Bush's argument that the rich just get out of their taxes by deductions so we should cut the taxes on the rich? That is the logic he actually claimed and I find it hard to believe people don't ask, what the f***? Did he really say that?

And if it is so great to cut taxes, well by that logic, if you cut them to zero the government coffers should be overflowing.

Perhaps you might want to look past both sides' BS claims and think about who really will have the better economic policies. If you do that, you'll see that under the Republicans before and after Bill Clinton, the deficits grew by leaps and bounds. You can only do that for so long before the creditors want their investments repaid. Neither before nor after Bill Clinton did spending get under control.

But guess what? Under Bill Clinton for 8 years the deficit quit growing.

This graph is pretty telling if you really care about the facts and not just your belief in the Republican images projected and the campaign promises made. I, for one, think Hillary will do as well as Bill when it comes to the economy. That's more supported by the evidence than the slogans and images.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

The contradiction is that the passage is extolling the need and glory of using religious language to help convince people to support your policy, and saying progressives have failed at this and need to change, partially because it's what Lincoln would want. He thinks that this will help make the religious right like progressives. This is wrong and stupid for separate reasons.

He didn't say it would change the mind of the religious right... And I don't see the contradiction. Progressives shouldn't be afraid of using religous language, and that there are spiritual aspects of problems that need to be addressed, unless using it would involve them faking belief. That seems to be what he is saying.

Then he says



That's a clear dig at other democratic candidates like Clinton and Edwards. Not only is it offensive and makes baby Obama weep to publically accuse someone of faking their religion, but these "the other politicians" are broadly representative of the level of religion of the liberal progressives. Only republicans are as authentically and politically usefully as religious as Obama.

There is virtually no progressive democrat remotely as publically, authentically, and usefully religous as Obama and yet his arguement here is that the tiny amount of progressive democrats that are as religious as he is are the only ones who can speak to Americans meaningfully and morally, in 'their language.'

My point is that Obama's speeches often contain no logical continuity or point, but are just emotionally manipulative fluff aimed at convincing people he's unassailably moral, religious, and philosophically sage-like and so above the criticism and rational scrutiny that candidates are normally exposed to.

Um, is there any logical continuity in concluding all that from him making fun of all the politicians that try to pander at Black churches? And I don't see where you got that he wasn't making fun of Republicans as well, they do it too.

And he didn't say he was the only one to talk to people morally because he was religious, he specifically said that secular people could speak morally as well.

His speech clearly has a point of saying that progressives need to address religion, or the religious right will claim monopoly on what a religious person should vote for. Also that there is a moral or spiritual aspect to many of the social problems that also can be addressed. But secular people can talk morally as well and shouldn't fake being religious.

I agree with all that, and I don't see where you get your conclusion from.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Funny how the only people drawing weird conclusions from the speech are people who were against Obama from the beginning...

 

[Piggy]

Gosh, I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing.

I reckon my expectations are a skosh lower than others'.

Far as I'm concerned, walking in the voting booth and picking your candidate is like walking into the colloseum and picking your lion.

 

[Bododio]

I watched the video when it was first posted to his web site. And I watched it again recently. As a skeptic-agnostic, and one who firmly believes in the separation of church and state as being, if I can use the word, sacred, out of all the candidates with a valid chance of being elected, both Democrat and Republican, I fear Obama the least.