Death of an Obama fanboy

Drones are a massively overhyped issue. The only reason you think it's a problem is because the media has successfully sensationalized it.

That said, I don't think we can be too critical of Obama's not wanting the bust of a man who was, avowedly, quite racist.

Do you think the uber-hype as being more related to the technology (unmanned aircraft) or to the deaths of innocent victims?

Myself, I don't find the technique troubling, it's the deaths themselves the are the problem. If we had B-52s dropping 500lb bombs on weddings I think we'd see just as much righteous outrage.
 
See, I have a different take on it.

I'm not an Obama fanboy, but to most of my friends I come across as one because I challenge them on their assertions. They interpret these challenges as defenses on my part - and thus endorsements.

To be honest I think he's actually been a very good president. Far from perfect, but extremely far from bad.

I guess it comes down to the definition of 'good president' for me.

GWB was just about the worst president I could imagine. In fact, if you had told me back in 1992 - when I proudly voted for Ross Perot [thankfully he didn't win] - that a faux Texan would be awarded the Office by the Supreme Court, fumble the worst attack against American interests in half a century, start a war on false pretenses, yadda yadda yadda; I would have assumed you were talking about an alternate sci-fi future fiction book. Not reality.

So, against that low bar, Obama has been a really REALLY good president.

I even think he's been better than Clinton, GHWB, and Reagan. Domestically he's much better than any of those, with the exception - and it's a huge exception - of domestic spying.

I never attribute the failures of an administration solely to the President. As others have mentioned, the President appoints advisers. His choice of advisers is arguably the best measure of a President's potential. When I hear that Joe Beltway is running for President, I sort of throw up my hands in frustration, because *nothing* that person does or says is relevant to how they will manage the affairs of governing except who they choose as advisers. The necessary skill of the Administrator in Chief is selecting Good, Wise, Skilled people to his cabinet. All else is negotiable.

By this measure I think he's been an excellent president (with the glaring exception of AG Holder). Holder is the most Bush-like of Obama's appointees. Someone who's got a long history with the president, but may not be the best person for the job. Someone whose mistakes are granted a pass every time, while those same mistakes by someone without the personal history would have consequences.

So this all may read as fanboyism, but I didn't vote for him either time. But that doesn't mean that I'm not glad he won - I am, considering who the competition was. Pragmatism at it's finest, here :lol:
You make good arguments. But I have to ask both you and Cutlass, what all are you talking about with respect to transparency? As I said, there are legitimate reasons to maintain state secrets and Obama has done a lot to open up the inner workings of the government to the people (which some sides then use to bludgeon him with when they sense a story they can hype to uber proportions).

On Holder, I agree, the man has got to go.

One thing I meant to include in the Economy section: The fact that no bankers are in jail is a travesty and our current policy of appeasing the banks and letting them continue what they were doing that caused this mess is despicable.
I was never an Obama fanboy. But I did hope for a great deal more out of him than we got. But I certainly underestimated the shear severity of the opposition that he would be facing. So my disappointment in him is somewhat mitigated by the fact that we haven't had a president that has faced what Obama has faced in decades. We haven't had a president that has faced the economic problems Obama has faced since FDR. We haven't had a president inherit a mismanaged war since Nixon. We haven't had a president with such a hostile Congress since I don't know when, but it was almost certainly before the 20th century.

That said, I don't think Obama has done well with what has been within his power to do about these problems. Part of that is his inexperience showing. Part of that his basic conservatism.

It's hard to say, from the outside, just what is passing between Obama and others behind closed doors. And, ultimately, Obama has failed at transparency, and so what he has tried to do, if different from what he has done, has been lost for that reason.

Obama's failure to form relationships with key members of Congress to get better legislation done is in part the fact of the unacceptable and intolerable misbehavior of Congressional Republicans. But Obama failed to really try to reach out to them, and to Democratic members as well. That's on him.

My biggest problem with Obama is the lack of transparency and his crackdown on whistleblowers. One thing that should have been learned from the Bush years is that we desperately need more public scrutiny of what the government is doing. This to me is Obama's most significant, and personal, failure.

Further, we really need to roll back government, and for that matter, private sector, infringements on liberty. Yet Obama has been a failure in regards to both of critical issues.

As a national issue, conservatism in economic policy needs to be eliminated. And Obama is an economic conservative. That is perhaps the most significant issue for the continued prosperity of the American nation and people. So he gets really bad marks there.
So how has he failed in transparency?

Basically, I agree with you, but I also agree with the "apologists" (in quotes 'cause I'm about to agree with them) above:

He's not been awesome. But, here's my point: he's been better than the alternatives. We had 2 choices, basically: Obama or McCain; Obama or Romney. I think it's important that you look at the alternative. Would either choice, either time, have been better?

That's what matters. I'm often disappointed in Obama, on a number of issues, but the fact remains: would the alternative have been better? On every issue that matters to you, would the alternative have been better?

That's why I support him, despite my frequent disappointments. Would McCain/Palin have done things differently? Probably. Would they be better? Would Romney/Ryan have done things differently? Probably. Would they be better?

Yeah, lesser of two evils is a bad choice to be presented with. But, to be honest, I think of it more as tarnished good vs. actual evil. We'd probably be at war with Iran. We wouldn't even have the Affordable Care Act, as flawed as it is. Billionaires would be paying less taxes, not ever so slightly more. Do you think McCain/Romney would have implemented Lilly Ledbetter? Who would they have appointed instead of Sotomayor & Kagan? Would either one have ended the Iraq War and/or be willing to end Afghanistan?

Obama's not great. I don't suggest anyone be a fanboy. But compared to the alternative? Don't lose Hope.
I was actually heavily inclined to disagree with you and the others over whether or not the Obama-alternatives made any difference about how good Obama is. But you made the issue clear for me and now I tend to agree though with hesitation. I am still uncomfortable giving a pass to someone because the other guy was worse, but you make sense.
I would love to hear more about Space Policy.. So if Hobbs, or anyone else for that matter, can explain the perspectives to a layman go right ahead.
I know that a lot of our current technology can be traced back to the moonlanding. Do we know anything about what's at stake in our time? And to stay on topic; what has Obama done/not done, and does the avarage american feel that this is relevant at all?

EDIT: I recently read an article about NASA starting a research project with 3D-printing food. The goal of the experiment is to print a pizza from different kinds of powder. Apparently this is one of the major challenges with a manned Mars landing. I cant help but thinking about the perspectives if this turns out to be possible..

For starters, Obama is giving the private space industry a lot of money to get off the ground so they can do things such as creating space hotels, space factories, space tourism trips around the moon and so forth. The potential is limitless here.

Imagine a world where gold and platinum and the rare earth minerals are cheap and ubiquitous. There are so many uses for these elements, but because of their high prices and so cheap substitutes are used. With asteroid mining, this won't happen any more as there is so much of these elements to be had that the value of them will plummet and they can then be used in all sorts of novel applications. Then you have companies such as SpaceX who talk about setting up Martian colonies. When humans begin making serious pushes out into space, all sorts of new and unpredicted technologies will be created to deal with the hazards. I simply can't predict what all will come of this.

Obama is also making sure our next big NASA-led push into space is adequately funded so it doesn't fall apart as our last Bush-era attempt did. Bush wanted to get us back to the moon by 2020, but he never gave the funding to make it happen. Now Obama is giving the funding so that our astronauts can travel to the moons of Mars in the next decade and even capture an Asteroid.

There is lots of extremely exciting stuff going on in this area but most Americans have no clue because NASA does a pretty bad job of marketing the progress they make.

Definitely Australia's propensity to suck up to and blindly follow America at all times remains unchallenged regardless of who is in the Whitehouse. We are rock solid.
And so long as we have a Minuteman III to our name, you will always be free of Chinese domination. :lol:

In the history of blowing things entirely out of proportion, this one gets at least an honorable mention.
It's not even blown out of proportion if you discount Quackers tendency to talk about it all the time. No one cares, like at all.
Do you think the uber-hype as being more related to the technology (unmanned aircraft) or to the deaths of innocent victims?

Myself, I don't find the technique troubling, it's the deaths themselves the are the problem. If we had B-52s dropping 500lb bombs on weddings I think we'd see just as much righteous outrage.

Here's the thing though that can't be understated:
We didn't drop bombs on weddings with B-52, we carpet bombed entire countryside's and defoliated jungles. That's the difference, the drone attacks are taking a scalpel to the problem while the previous approach was to use a sledge hammer. I'm personally coming to the point of view that we aren't doing enough 'winning the hearts and minds' while we go after terrorists such that people only hate us for going after our enemies. So I think we may be reaching the point of diminishing returns when it comes to drone strikes as it may breed more terrorists now than it eliminates. But the drones themselves are not the problem, possible the policy is. But drones themselves are the smart way to fight the war if you are going to fight it at all.

To directly answer you, yes I think part of the problem is the technology both of the drones itself (which are new and somewhat frightening - ROBOTS!!!!!) but also with the ubiquitous nature of the internet and the ability of people to post pictures of mutilated babies devoid of all context besides OBAMA THE BABYKILLER.
 
I think Obama should be judged according to his VORL (value over replacement leader), which in this case is most reasonably McCain. I'm of the personal conviction that Things wouldn't be much better under McCain (quite possibly worse, even).

This opinion might come off as a bit equivocal but that's only because I don't see enough to complain about in Obama to make a federal case of it unless we were to equally indict all politicians. But since the business of politics is the business of lesser evils a little equivocation is called for.

That's not what VORL means.

VORL derives from VORP which is a baseball statistic which measures the value of an individual player expressed in the amount of runs that player generated (and saved via defense or pitching) compared to those generated by an ordinary AAA/AAAA callup. VORP necessarily doesn't target a specific player as that would kind of defeat the purpose of the metric. A team composed entirely of Replacement Players would go 40-122.

So the question shouldn't be Obama's perceived value over McCain, but Obama's perceived value over an ordinary Presidential Candidate, as compared to McCain's perceived value over an ordinary Presidential Candidate.
 
And so long as we have a Minuteman III to our name, you will always be free of Chinese domination. :lol:

We are already enslaved to the Chinese. If they didn't buy our minerals we would be in terrible shape.

Also I don't think anyone should be a fanboy of any politician. We should not be putting any politician up to that level of near worship since it is disturbing.
 
I would love to hear more about Space Policy.. So if Hobbs, or anyone else for that matter, can explain the perspectives to a layman go right ahead.
I know that a lot of our current technology can be traced back to the moonlanding. Do we know anything about what's at stake in our time? And to stay on topic; what has Obama done/not done, and does the avarage american feel that this is relevant at all?

EDIT: I recently read an article about NASA starting a research project with 3D-printing food. The goal of the experiment is to print a pizza from different kinds of powder. Apparently this is one of the major challenges with a manned Mars landing. I cant help but thinking about the perspectives if this turns out to be possible..

Here's another tidbit of the kinds of things I'm talking about which are a direct result of Obama's policies toward outer space.
 
Transparency and Open Government
Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment

Do you think he's lived up to this? We aren't really seeing the man behind the curtain, seems to me.

edit, the rating by others. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/subjects/transparency/
 
Argh I asked for your arguments and opinions cause I don't want to play quote wars and fact check bickering in this thread. If you had given me some examples (and not something you linked to) I would take you at your word and debate the meaning of what you said if I disagreed but not dispute the factual basis of it.*

Given what I asked for in the rules, I won't comment on the link(s). To your question, I think he's done an OK job with transparency. I haven't been reason to doubt it yet but I'm willing to listen.

*Keep in mind I've already accepted your arguments about Obama failing to manage congress and it didn't require linked articles to do so. I considered and accepted your arguments at face value. Again, I don't want people to make stuff up and I trust that we won't, but I don't want quote/link/fact check wars in this thread.
 
Do you think the uber-hype as being more related to the technology (unmanned aircraft) or to the deaths of innocent victims?

Both, which is the problem. As someone who works with drones I get a lot of comments from people about how drones are eroding our freedom. The naivete of these accusations never ceases to push my buttons.

That's not what VORL means.

Whatever, nerd.
 
The Sequester
Obviously the Sequester's bad all around, but especially after the December tax deal, it mostly hits the Democrat base, and none of the republican base. Which is why the republican won't stop it.

Iraq
I think Obama deserves praise for getting us out of Iraq. It was a campain promise, and he followed through.

Drone policy
Unlike the news, I does not concern me that the enemies that the drone program targets are sometimes US citizens. I am also not opposed to the use of drones in preference to go after legitimate consipirators against the US. However I wish there was more transparency and checks on what it takes to be a drone target.

Libya
Job well done. A Republican would not have leveraged international support like Obama did.

Education
Definately a problem that needs to be fixed, but It needs congress. Obama could make a big push for it, but I don't think it'd work.

Transparency
More transparency is needed in the drone policy, CIA, and FBI.

Space Policy
Seems to be going the way it should.

Obama's dealings with Congress
Can't blame him on this.

Immigration
Congress needs to act, obviously. But what Obama has done is strengthen border control. When this means more security at the Mexican border, I'm ok with that. When that means a customs offical asks eveyone on my bus in Rochester, NY if they are a US citizen or otherwise have paperwork, that's not so good.

Health Reform
Well done. More should have been done, and needs to be done, but it's not because of Obama that it didn't.
 
I disagree.

Guatanamo is still open, more and more drones mistakenly murder Pakistani civilians. The drone part of US foreign policy is expanding not contracting, my friend has Pakistani relatives and the words they use is "hate" for America.

Than if you're a Briton you have Obama meddling in our European relations, his tacit approval of Argentinean sabre rattling and his churchill bust hatred.

The only thing this President has changed is his pigmentation.
I think the most telling difference in the international perception of the two presidents is the difference between Iraq and Libya. Bush would not have sought international support for doing anything in Libya. And I think other countries appreciate that Obama did.
 
Argh I asked for your arguments and opinions cause I don't want to play quote wars and fact check bickering in this thread. If you had given me some examples (and not something you linked to) I would take you at your word and debate the meaning of what you said if I disagreed but not dispute the factual basis of it.*

Given what I asked for in the rules, I won't comment on the link(s). To your question, I think he's done an OK job with transparency. I haven't been reason to doubt it yet but I'm willing to listen.

*Keep in mind I've already accepted your arguments about Obama failing to manage congress and it didn't require linked articles to do so. I considered and accepted your arguments at face value. Again, I don't want people to make stuff up and I trust that we won't, but I don't want quote/link/fact check wars in this thread.



The question of transparency is about to what extent can the public see what the government is doing. Remember that the government is ours, we are not theirs. They are the servants, we are the masters.

Now, that said, we delegate immense powers and authority to these people. But, having done so, it is our responsibility to monitor how they use that power, and force changes as necessary.

Now this is complicated by the reason that we delegate this authority to them. What these various advocates of "direct democracy" don't get, (or sometimes they do, and that's even worse) is that familiarizing yourself with all the issues that government addresses, worse still, the nuts and bolts of the hows and whys government does, should do, and should not do, what they do, is actually one hell of a lot more work than a 24/7/365 job.

In short, nobody could do it. It's just too much. It's just beyond human capacity.

And so we delegate to those we elect. And those we elect delegate to those they appoint. And those they appoint delegate to those they hire.

In that sense, the extreme libertarians almost have a point. Almost. Because all of that delegation takes things out of the realm of having the people who are ultimately in control being actually in control. Where their point falls apart is what I mentioned earlier: No one person could master all of what government does to make all these decisions.

And that includes Obama, or whoever else is president at the time. Carter was famous as a micromanager. He was also famous for not actually getting much of anything done. Reagan was famous for not having much of any interest at all in what his subordinates did, or how they did them. He was also famous for one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in modern times. Obama is somewhere between the two.

Now Obama has to delegate, and the people he appoints has to delegate. So did the decisions on the IRS scandal, the AP scandal, the Bengahzi scandal come from Obama? No, they came from 2-3 steps removed from anything Obama actually made a decision on. We may say "the buck stops here", meaning with him is ultimately the responsibility. But the modern political rhetoric has lost sight of the difference between "responsibility" and "fault". As in, he may ultimately be responsible, but he is not at fault for causing the events we call scandals.

Now how does that lead into transparency? It's this: Obama is not the top of the food chain. We are. The ultimate responsibility is not Obama's, it is ours. And we are at an even further remove from what is going on than Obama is.

The president has a sizable staff to keep him informed and help him understand any issue that he thinks he needs to know about. In fact, ultimately, he can question pretty much any federal employee for information concerning what is going on. But, ultimately, he can't work on it 24/7/365 either. The human mind needs breaks. And so most of what actually happens is delegated.

Now in the IRS scandal it's coming to light that Obama's top people in the White House chose to keep Obama in the dark even after they knew that this was starting to blow up. That's a price you pay for delegating to the wrong people or giving them the wrong instructions.

OK, so having delegated through so many layers, how do you know that what people are doing is what you want them to be doing? Well, in a word, transparency. The more open the system is to public scrutiny, the more someone will notice when something goes wrong. The job of the press, and why the Founding Fathers gave the press so much protection in the very first of the Amendments to the Constitution was that they understood this. They understood that the voter was the ultimate boss of the government, and to keep that government under control, to keep checks and balances operating, the press had to be free to operate and tell the public what the government was doing.

If we are going to let the voters decide, the voters need to be well informed. Or, at any rate, as well informed as possible. And so the press must have access, and so the press must have the liberty to act to inform others.

Now when you have a government that freezes the press out, or worse, one that restricts, investigates, or intimidates, the press, now you have lost the ultimate check and balance on the power of government.

The information that the government has is the property of the people of that nation. Now we allow a lot of restrictions on what information can be released. But we always need to keep in mind that we have to balance the needs of confidentiality with the responsibility of keeping the public informed so that they can choose. All to often you get public officials suppressing information, not because there is a valid need for confidentiality, but rather because they think the public will react in ways harmful to them if the information goes public.

Covering their own asses rather than serving the public interest.

And an awful lot of this is policies that Obama inherited as part of the "war on terror", which are really above any beyond what it is in the national interest to keep secret. But it is a convenient excuse. Now more than ever we need to know what the government is doing. And we don't.

And that, ultimately, is the biggest risk to our future safety and prosperity as a nation.
 
Obamadrones 2.0

Moderator Action: Please try to include more than just a link. Sentences with opinion or other comments would be nice. And, furthermore, the Onion is not much a source for discussion.
 
That's not what VORL means.

VORL derives from VORP which is a baseball statistic which measures the value of an individual player expressed in the amount of runs that player generated (and saved via defense or pitching) compared to those generated by an ordinary AAA/AAAA callup.

I disagree. You're trying to make VORL match up to VORP, but it can't work like that. There are no "ordinary" leaders that can be called up or compared to. If we're gonna make this [imaginary] statistic work, it has to be a stat that we can compare to "alternatively available leaders".

In baseball, you have a farm system, free agents, trades, etc. For Leaders, we don't have that. We've got one, maybe two, alternatives. That's the extent of our farm system. VORL has to be compared to [viable alternatives in the same party] & [viable alternatives in the opposing party]. That's all we got. We don't have the vast array of players that VORP has available.

Obama's VORL has to be measured against Hillary, McCain, & Romney, & I'll also grant any hypothetical 2012 Dem candidates who might have run had Obama not won in 2008. Feel free to submit the Replacement Leader value of any other candidate you think was viable under those circumstances, but I'm proposing that we essentially only have Hillary, McCain, & Romney to choose from as a basis of comparison. Obama's VORL has to be calculated relative to those three.

Basically, what I'm saying is, you can't measure a current Leader against a generic candidate, because there's no way to approximate a generic candidate's value. You can only VORL a given Leader against a handful of viable candidates, & we know who those viable candidates are in this case: Obama's VORL has to be measured only against Hillary, McCain, & Romney. And against those three, he wins, IMO.

EDIT: Or maybe ties Hillary, it's tough to say.
 
While I'm happy that a throwaway idea I had in one thread ages ago has turned into a semi-legit topic of discussion here, I would like to point out that on this issue I myself was somewhat inconsistent. Which probably didn't help things.

At times, I described it the way Owen is: value over a theoretical "average" leader, a statistical creation as opposed to a physical entity. But my initial example on the subject was the way Crezth and Rob are talking about it: I compared Churchill to Lord Halifax, the most obvious alternative for the premiership in 1940.

I guess the way I got into the idea helped the confusion, because my initial motivation was not out of seeing the baseball stat, but a basketball one with essentially the same purpose. The problem is that, since Tim Thomas, a notoriously uninspired small forward who basically just cruised through games on autopilot, scored exactly at replacement level, some authors, e.g. Bill Simmons, nicknamed the stat "VOTT: Value over Tim Thomas". (I used Thomas explicitly in those initial example posts, too.) So the idea was already connected in my mind not with a statistical fiction, but with a physical person.

In a sense, it's kind of impossible to compare somebody to a theoretical "average" leader because the concept of an average leader is hard to articulate, and even harder to mutually agree upon. What sorts of constituencies would an "average" leader pander to or rely on for support? What sorts of policies would she enact? Is there really an "average" position for somebody to take on every political issue? (Yes, people talk about "moderates" and "political spectra" all the time, but the extent to which those are even valid representations of political positions is, well, debatable, and I tend to come down on the side of them being not particularly useful.)

And in another sense, the whole argument's kind of pointless. Comparing the difference between two alternative leaders' values over a theoretical replacement is effectively the same as comparing the difference between the two alternative leaders' values over each other. If this were a valid mathematical concept, such a comparison would be objectively simpler.
 
US's reputation abroad

I tend to agree that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize (as opposed to deserved it) for not being Bush, and I think he has improved the US's perception around the world for the same reason. While there's supposedly a lot of animosity between Bush and McCain, the rest of the world may not have been aware of this, so I'd alter the argument somewhat. Obama has improved the rest of the world's perception of the US by being a Democrat who courted anti-war sentiment in his campaign. Obama has continued a number of US policies that were very unpopular abroad (Guantanamo, Iraq).

It may well be that a large percentage of people outside of the US, who are interested in US politics, bought into the hope and change spiel.

Iraq

Souron:
I think Obama deserves praise for getting us out of Iraq. It was a campain promise, and he followed through.

But he didn't keep his promise. He kept McCain's promise. Bush already had an approximate withdrawal timetable. McCain said he would stick with it. Obama wanted an earlier withdrawal. I'm not actually criticising Obama for sticking with the Bush plan. I didn't like that part of this election platform and he went with the better option. I guess you could argue that he was able to buy enough good will from the anti-war movement to make the established timetable more politically feasible.

This is actually one of the ways that Obama has done a better job than I feared he would.

Drones

Most people outside of the US don't care about drones any more than they care about other forms of airstrike. They're technologically superior. That's it. I think that the fear of the technology is being blown out of proportion.

Criticism of how they have been managed is justifiable but also blown out of proportion. I don't think there was anything malicious in how the bureaucratic infrastructure of drone strikes arose. Technology moves faster than the rules that govern it. The power of drone strikes allowed the organisation managing them to use them far more frequently than were anticipated when the guideline were written.
 
It may well be that a large percentage of people outside of the US, who are interested in US politics, bought into the hope and change spiel
I think the majority bought into the change spiel as in "change from Bush". I believe that taken Palin out of the equation, mcCain would have had a similar, albeit a slightly lessened effect. But Palin's bumbling idiocy also made it across the pond, so had they been elected, perceptions would have been: "Americans are willing to vote for Palin, boy they must be ******ed"
 
I think the majority bought into the change spiel as in "change from Bush". I believe that taken Palin out of the equation, mcCain would have had a similar, albeit a slightly lessened effect. But Palin's bumbling idiocy also made it across the pond, so had they been elected, perceptions would have been: "Americans are willing to vote for Palin, boy they must be ******ed"

I'll somewhat agree with that. But prior to his VP pick, I was in favour of McCain and seemed to be very much in the minority in this country.
 
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