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Obama - basically Hitler.

SkeptiKilt said:
And neither did Jack Kennedy. "Ich bin ein Berliner" no more means "I am a jelly donut than "I am a New Yorker" means "I am a snooty weekly magazine"...
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Still, I'd rather be an Oscar Meir weiner than a Frankfurter or a Hamburger.
 
RandFan said:
Interesting that you say that. Watching Keith Olberman pointing out McCain's gaffe on ABC yesterday I thought the same thing. Still, I'm pro Obama so it could be confirmation bias.
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Exactly my thought on it. I have passed the point where I am objectively looking at evidence for one candidate or the other and I am at the point where I look for evidence to confirm the decision that I've already made.

In some ways I wish I could step out of my biases and observe objectively what is going on in this election. It is one of the more interesting of my life and I wonder what I'd see if I could just sit back and take it in as a perfectly objective observer.

On the one hand, you have a wildly charismatic candidate that has excited not only people in this country but people in other countries. I got a little choked up when I saw the Germans waving American flags. It was nice to not be the hated Americans for a moment. His campaign staff seems to be the most skilled of my life. Succeeding at bringing a man with Obama's limited experience to the forefront of American politics was just flat out brilliant.

On the other hand you have a plodding sort of fellow who arguably has more experience for the job and who has despite some missteps along the way shown some courage in his life and in his politics. Outside of the issue of Iraq where I think he swings between cynical jingoism and just strangely uninformed McCain has reasonable views that he does an adequate job of defending.

But the time when I could have observed these candidates or this election objectively has passed and I will for the rest of this election period be rooting for Obama, minimizing his missteps and celebrating McCain's.
 
davefoc said:
Exactly my thought on it. I have passed the point where I am objectively looking at evidence for one candidate or the other and I am at the point where I look for evidence to confirm the decision that I've already made.

In some ways I wish I could step out of my biases and observe objectively what is going on in this election. It is one of the more interesting of my life and I wonder what I'd see if I could just sit back and take it in as a perfectly objective observer.

On the one hand, you have a wildly charismatic candidate that has excited not only people in this country but people in other countries. I got a little choked up when I saw the Germans waving American flags. It was nice to not be the hated Americans for a moment. His campaign staff seems to be the most skilled of my life. Succeeding at bringing a man with Obama's limited experience to the forefront of American politics was just flat out brilliant.

On the other hand you have a plodding sort of fellow who arguably has more experience for the job and who has despite some missteps along the way shown some courage in his life and in his politics. Outside of the issue of Iraq where I think he swings between cynical jingoism and just strangely uninformed McCain has reasonable views that he does an adequate job of defending.

But the time when I could have observed these candidates or this election objectively has passed and I will for the rest of this election period be rooting for Obama, minimizing his missteps and celebrating McCain's.
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I too was moved by the reaction of the audience. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, I think Obama is very bright and has the kind of political savvy that Bush hasn't been able to grasp even at this late date. I kinda doubt Obama would creep Merkle out by massaging her shoulders or boast about being the worlds number 1 polluter. I think McCain is miles better than Bush but I'd like to avoid any senior moments in the next administration.

Though, let's face it, there will be mistakes. Being president is a gotcha game. Your opponents are scrutinizing every move to find any error to blow out of proportion. Bush just made it easy for his opponents.
 
davefoc said:
Outside of the issue of Iraq where I think he swings between cynical jingoism and just strangely uninformed McCain has reasonable views that he does an INadequate job of defending.
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My edits to your post. Since your preceding phrase was "strangely uninformed" did you mean to write my changes? Or did you mean that he does an adequate job of defending his uniformed stands?
 
As something of a flaming moderate I actually meant it the way I wrote it. Of course once again my biases may prevent me from seeing the truth.

It was my observation that McCain seemed to be reasonably adept at explaining some of this ideas and I was attempting to give him credit for that. But maybe I thought that because he was saying some things I agreed with.
 
davefoc said:
I got a little choked up when I saw the Germans waving American flags. It was nice to not be the hated Americans for a moment.
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And the last time this happened, was for a few weeks after 9/11. Bush's visible arrogance and his disrespect ('Amnesty International call that illegal Mr President' 'So what?') for the rest of the world's opinion changed this. A demagogue like Michael Moore took it further.
 
davefoc said:
.... I got a little choked up when I saw the Germans waving American flags. It was nice to not be the hated Americans for a moment. ....
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If I may interrupt: Germans simply do not hate Americans.

Apart from Oliver and a couple of neonazi skinheads in what used to be in East Germany, modern post-WW2 Germans have always been quite friendly to the USA. They may these days shake their heads more in sorrow than in whatever over the lunatic USA healthcare system (costing the average American taxpayer more than twice as much as the much better, far more comprehensive German system costs the average German taxpayer), but there never was widespread hatred of the USA, not even when the twattish insanities of Bush were at their height. Germans are quite capable of distinguishing between Bush and the USA.

I'm often amazed at the sheer hatred some American posters here display for Germany, or France; it reflects the kind of "freedom fries" idiocy there was in the USA, and it seems the hatred (or paranioa, or whatever) is very largely driven from the USA side, not from any European side.

Again, excepting Oliver and a couple of sad little twat neonazi skinheads in what was formerly East Germany.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
And the last time this happened, was for a few weeks after 9/11. Bush's visible arrogance and his disrespect ('Amnesty International call that illegal Mr President' 'So what?') for the rest of the world's opinion changed this. A demagogue like Michael Moore took it further.
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I think I understood you until the last sentence. Why is Moore a demagogue? What is he a demagogue for or about? When you say he took "it" further, what does "it' mean?

TIA
 
Gurdur said:
If I may interrupt: Germans simply do not hate Americans.

I'm often amazed at the sheer hatred some American posters here display for Germany, or France; it reflects the kind of "freedom fries" idiocy there was in the USA, and it seems the hatred (or paranioa, or whatever) is very largely driven from the USA side, not from any European side.

Again, excepting Oliver and a couple of sad little twat neonazi skinheads in what was formerly East Germany.
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Gunder the animosity to Americans and not just Bush is well documented in Germany :

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,496731,00.html

Exchange Students Find a New Way to Deal With Germans
By Jan Friedmann

US students are having a hard time in Germany, as they find themselves having to justify Washington policy from day to day. A new pilot project in German schools is meant to help Americans deal with the endless drill.
<snip>
Many of the roughly 3,200 US students enrolled in foreign study programs in Germany share Janssen's experience. They are reluctant ambassadors, routinely taken to task by students and even complete strangers for the perceived offences of their government at home -- an affront that visiting students and academics from China, Russia and Arab countries rarely encounter.
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The only way this kid gets off the hot seat is to basically grovel and even that isn't enough


Bashore, a 22-year-old student at the University of Michigan who majors in German and Voice, starts by passing around photographs: a picture of her school, one of her family celebrating the 4th of July, even a portrait of her family's mixed-breed dog. But the students want to talk politics. They read their prepared questions out loud: "Do you believe that a different president could change your country's image?" Bashore says "Yes," and stresses that she didn't vote for Bush. Her vote in the next election, she says, would go to Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

But the students are unrelenting. Do you think it's good, the way Americans consume natural resources? Bashore says no. Do you approve of the death penalty? Bashore says she prefers the German system. Do Americans support the Iraq war? Bashore tells the students about anti-war demonstrations on her campus. This sets the students at ease, and the next thing they want to know is why Americans eat so much fast food and whether they too have organic grocery stores.
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Andrei Markovits, author of "Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America" -- and one of the most prominent US experts on Germany -- is highly critical of German academics. "Anti-Americanism is the only prejudice in Germany that increases with social status and higher education," says Markovits. It is for this reason, he adds, that "students are usually worse than your ordinary citizen."

Germany's guests from abroad have developed their own strategies for dealing with the Germans' ambivalent image of America. "Texas Kate," for example, gets plenty of laughs from her roommates when she voluntarily takes out the carefully sorted trash -- "in penance."
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The only way for an American to gain German approval appears to be to have as much disdain for their country, its culture and its leaders as the Germans do.
 
At the peril of my soul, I have to chime in with Texas. My daughter worked as a barrista at a Starbucks in Belfast, Northern Ireland for a couple of years in the period just after the Iraq invasion in order to pay her way through grad school. She has story after story of the hateful comments she received when customers heard her American accent. Starbucks had to tell one guy that he was not welcome due to all the crap he threw at her.

Yeah, I know it is not Germany and it is just an anecdote but there it is.
 
Hey, leave him alone, he is suffering, can't you see that? :(



Or the English version for you who have not learnt the language of the master race:



Nein! That damn Churchill! :D
 
I was recently in Luebeck for work, and during the trip up from Hamburg a very friendly woman in her eighties was chatting me up about her travels in China and whatnot. When she first approached me, after a brief exchange about travel itineraries and such, she said,
"You're not American?"
"Yes, I'm American."
"Oh... You must be one of the eight percent."
"???... I don't know. What's the 'eight percent'?"
"Only eight percent of Americans have any sense."
":rolleyes: I don't know about 'eight percent' but I certainly hope I'm part of whatever percent it really is."
"My husband says it's closer to six percent."

She was very friendly, and I did enjoy the bus trip with her, but she kept blaming me for Arizona's desert and other bizarre takes on America's "failures":
"You didn't use good farming practices in Arizona, and now it's a desert."
I never had anyone accusing me a desert-creation before, so I didn't know quite how to respond at the time.

"America is finished," she kept saying with finality. It got tiresome after a while.
 
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SezMe said:
At the peril of my soul, I have to chime in with Texas. My daughter worked as a barrista at a Starbucks in Belfast, Northern Ireland for a couple of years in the period just after the Iraq invasion in order to pay her way through grad school. She has story after story of the hateful comments she received when customers heard her American accent. Starbucks had to tell one guy that he was not welcome due to all the crap he threw at her.

Yeah, I know it is not Germany and it is just an anecdote but there it is.
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You are quite right. It is simply an anecdote, and as an anecdote, it will simply not do.
 
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Undesired Walrus said:
You are quite right. It is simply an anecdote, and as an anecdote, it will simply not do.
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http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=247

247-5.gif


Honestly, it seems the 51st state has the worst opinion of us.
 
chipmunk stew said:
The data in the link also show this:
[qimg]http://pewglobal.org/reports/images/247-2.gif[/qimg]

It seems that Germans are favorable towards Americans (citizens), but unfavorable towards America (government and its policies).
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41% is now favorable?

I'd say that mixed would be the most generous adjective you could use. Favorable isn't justified by the evidence (thought it amuses me that Americans think Americans are greedy more than any other nation).
 
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