Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

jetsetter said:
Any scared that if Obama kicks the bucket we have Biden then Pelosi?
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No.

If Obama and Biden are both dead, then we probably have something way more serious to worry about than Nancy Pelosi being President.
 
Dogbert said:
No.

If Obama and Biden are both dead, then we probably have something way more serious to worry about than Nancy Pelosi being President.
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I consider Obama the most stable of the trio. Biden really needs to keep his mouth shut.
 
jetsetter said:
Any scared that if Obama kicks the bucket we have Biden then Pelosi?
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Yes, even I am scared. If Biden leads the US I might just revoke my passport. Then again, if McCain was elected we'd have Palin.... ermmm...:cry:

:lol:
 
Surely there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Who is after Pelosi? When does the Secretary of Education come into the picture....like frackin' President Roslin!
 
Isn't Obama->Biden->Hillary?
No, Biden would elect someone to be his vice president, then the chain would follow like that.
 
^ Not if Biden died before being able to get a VP confirmed. But Speaker of the House comes after VP, followed by President pro tempore (crazy old Robert Byrd), THEN Clinton as Secretary of State.
 
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SpitfireMK461 said:
^ Not if Biden died before being able to get a VP confirmed.
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Like I said, if shit happens where Obama dies, and then Biden dies before he can put another VP in place... Nancy Pelosi will probably be the least of my worries. :p

EDIT: Wait, why did this thread switch from torture to Nancy Pelosi?
 
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^Yes, I was still underage when I first visited the US and liked it enough to decide to have dual-citizenship. Of course, if there was a choice forced by law (house arrest or something) I would probably be shipped back to Britain, but otherwise I have full dual-citizenship. I don't know how it lasted when I am 7 years overage, but I'm not complaining.
 
Interesting. The terms of you getting citizenship just for being underage seems odd, but then again British immigration law is more my speciality, so I don't know the ins and outs of underage US immigration.
 
^I'm not sure if I was offered it just because I was underage, but I know it was made much easier for me because I was. My mum dealt with the legal pretense. It still seems a bit weird to me, and I am somewhat afraid the law might have changed, so I don't ask about it too much for fear of losing the nice setup I have right now.
 
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^Heh, yeah. I saw his situation on the ten o'clock news the other night and thought "I give him a day before he's gone" and sure enough!
 
The Obama administration in their infinite wisdom has appointed Louis Susman to be the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. His only claim to fame is the nickname "Vacuum Cleaner" which of course refers to his ability to vacuum up campaign cash. Good job!!!:rolleyes:
 
On the one hand, do we even need an ambassador to the UK?

On the other hand, appointing a Democratic fundraiser whose last job was vice-chairman of Citigroup? Come on...
 
I've only just caught up with this slice of genius from The Onion thanks to Lexington in this week's Economist. It's about the difficulty that America's brown-nosing liberal media might have in reporting an unflattering story about Obama - say, if he viciously murdered a local couple. Sorry if you caught up with this item at the time, but I can't stop sniggering. Or snickering, as they say in the States.

WASHINGTON?More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.

"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."

Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."

Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime, with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage, and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.

"What exactly is the news hook here?" asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a 'day in the life' of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama's unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?"

"Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now," Kaplan continued. "I don't know. There are a million different angles on this one."

So far, the president's double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets. The only two mentions of the heinous tragedy have been a 100-word blurb on the Associated Press wire and an obituary on page E7 of this week's edition of theLake County Examiner.

While Obama has expressed no remorse for the grisly murders?point-blank shootings with an unregistered .38-caliber revolver?many journalists said it would be irresponsible for the press to sensationalize the story.

"There's been some debate around the office about whether we should report on this at all," Washington Post senior reporter Bill Tracy said while on assignment at a local dog show. "It's enough of a tragedy without the press jumping in and pointing fingers or, worse, exploiting the violence. Plus, we need to be sensitive to the victims' families at this time. Their loved ones were brutally, brutally murdered, after all."

Nevertheless, a small contingent of independent journalists has begun to express its disapproval and growing shock over the president's actions.

"I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but we are in the midst of an economic crisis here," political pundit Marcus Reid said. "Why was our president ritualistically dismembering the corpses of his prey when he should have been working on a new tax proposal for small businesses? I, for one, am outraged."

The New York Times newsroom is reportedly still undecided on whether or not to print a recent letter received from Obama, in which the president threatens to kill another helpless citizen every Tuesday and "fill [his] heavenly palace with slaves for the afterlife" unless the police "stop the darkness from screaming."

"President Obama's letter presents us with a classic journalistic quandary," executive editor Bill Keller said. "If we print it, then we're giving him control over the kinds of stories we choose to run. It would be an acknowledgment that we somehow give the nation's commander in chief special treatment."

Added Keller, "And that's just not how the press in this country works."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian...killer_would_the_us_media_consider_it_a_story
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Lol.:lol:
 
^The Onion is bloody brilliant. Even their archives are funny.
 
Idiot Aussies: Grow up and take responsibility

By ALEXANDER DOWNER

May 24, 2009 11:30pm

I DON'T know about you, but it's always nice to get emails. Once upon a time you'd look with pleasure at a handful of letters which dropped through the letter box. Now all you get are those threatening looking envelopes with windows. Or if you're Tom Koutsantonis, those nasty missives which tell you about passing unknowingly through a speed camera.

But this is a generalisation. At the height of the Schapelle Corby affair I received 5000 emails in one day from fellow Australians pleading with me to save "our Schapelle" from the horrors of the Indonesian legal system. Or, to be a bit more honest, the few I looked at said that.

I'm sure my successor as foreign minister, Stephen Smith, had his in box bursting last week as people demanded he save the beer mat mum, Annice Smoel, from the ravages of the Thai police.

I felt for him especially when the media started demanding he "do something" to save her.

After about 10 minutes as foreign minister I was a little surprised to learn I was "responsible" for miscreant Australians who got into trouble in foreign countries.

No, no, no, don't get it wrong - drug traffickers, drunks, kleptomaniacs and fraudsters weren't responsible for their own stupidity - I was.

It's about time that great nanny in Canberra, the Federal Government, turned around and told people they are responsible for their own decisions.

I was in Lebanon the other day and went down to the southern cities of Sidon and Tyre. They're fascinating places - old Crusader castles, bustling souks, colourful little food stalls with generous owners offering you a taste of their wares.

But I couldn't help remembering the awful events in those same places three years ago when Israel went to war with Hezbollah.

There were said to be 20,000 Australians in Lebanon at that time and a hefty percentage of them were demanding the Australian Government save them and fast.

Lebanese support groups hit the airwaves screaming that the Government was too slow getting those Australians who wanted to be evacuated to safety. But hang on, Australia's about 15,000km from Lebanon and we don't dock ships in the eastern Mediterranean ready to ferry Australians to safety.

And there was something else. We'd issued a travel advisory months earlier warning Australians of the dangers of southern Lebanon and the risks of going there.

It didn't matter - apparently we had to get them out.

We were lucky. The Australian ambassador, a petite, charming professional called Lyndall Sachs, worked day and night chartering ferries and providing comfort to the evacuees, who hadn't cared about the travel advisories, and whisked them to safety.

It was one of the great achievements of an Australian diplomat. Almost single handedly, she managed to get around 5000 Australians to Cyprus and Turkey.

We then chartered planes to take them back to Australia. I hope they built shrines to her. Some did, at least metaphorically.

But some just whinged. They felt seasick on the ferry and that was our fault. Could they get frequent flyer points for the free flight back to Australia? And all this cost around $30 million dollars - your dollars.

I'll tell you this - I didn't get 5000 emails of thanks but I got plenty of abuse because we weren't fast enough, the ferries didn't go from their port of choice and we were slow because we were racist, and so on. I mean, we'd warned them and told them not to go to the south of Lebanon. They went all the same. And when the proverbial hit the fan it was, you guessed it, "our fault".

Then there was Hurricane Katrina, which flooded much of New Orleans. A mother of an Australian who arrived in New Orleans the day the hurricane hit came to see me in Stirling and demanded I get her son out. Americans couldn't get out but I had to get her son out. I asked if he'd heard the warnings from the U.S. Government that week to avoid New Orleans.

She started shouting. He doesn't follow the news, he doesn't watch TV or read the newspapers. I see, I said. It was my fault he was in New Orleans, was it? What were we to do? Fly helicopters from Australia to America and pick up Australians and leave the Americans behind?

I didn't have the guts to say this as foreign minister but don't you think you should take responsibility for yourself when you go overseas?

If you're too dumb or idle to read the travel advisories and too mean to take out travel insurance when you go overseas then you ought to take responsibility for your own behaviour.

Sure, if there's a catastrophe like the Bali bombings or you're trapped in a corruption scam the government should try to help. But not if you're too lazy and silly to help yourself.

Remember two things when you travel. First, there are no special laws for Australians overseas. Foreigners make the laws over there, not us. And secondly, foreigners do things differently and they're entitled to.

If you go to a Muslim country and get wildly drunk and women start dressing down (if you know what I mean) it can be bloody offensive to the locals. You'll soon be in trouble.

And learn to take responsibility for your own behaviour. Stealing is wrong, even stealing beer mats. I know, I know, the beer mat mum had a few drinks but, no, she wasn't drunk and she was charmingly polite to the local police.

But she was in a foreign country with a different culture and all of us ought to respect that.

Alexander Downer was Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister from 1996 to 2007
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Now there is a Politician I'd vote for (if I could) he came out and said it straight - good for him. A bit of straight talking, even when its not what some people want to hear. ...
 
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