The Gaming Den

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/0809 ... a_brown_dc

Relevant bit:

A BBC poll of 22 countries around the world on Wednesday showed that all would prefer to see Obama elected U.S. president ahead of McCain. In 17 of the 22, people expect relations between the United States and the rest of the world to improve if Obama wins.

You know, I imagine if you did a pole of the entire world, you would get roughly the same answer. In fact it seems only the U.S. might differ on this point.

Actually, it would probably be better for Obama if news like this didn't come out. There are whole segments of the U.S. population who would use this as a reason to vote for McCain. You know, because "no damn foreigners are going to tell Americans who our leaders should be."

Which is why, in general we don't vote for other people's leaders.

It never ceases to amaze me to see Obama's foreign popularity. McCain couldn't pull the same stunt Obama did in Germany...

And yet, Obama's being blasted for his inexperience with foreign policy. Yeah, he may not have the experience that some people clamor for, but seriously, if the rest of the world would rather work with him than McCain, what other experience does he need to have on his resume?

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Actually, it would probably be better for Obama if news like this didn't come out. There are whole segments of the U.S. population who would use this as a reason to vote for McCain. You know, because "no damn foreigners are going to tell Americans who our leaders should be."

I know, I'm still seeing ignorant cockbags on the forums, saying how they want the next president to declare "Mexico, we're building a wall and shooting anyone who tries to cross. Also, we're forcefully ejecting all illegal immigrants. You're on our blacklist. Same with you, Canada. Oh, and we're making a list of who sucked our collective dicks with our War on Terror. If you did, we'll continue to trade with you as long as you remember who's boss. If you didn't, you're blacklisted and we might randomly drop bombs on you or something.

Oh and Russia, seriously, prepare for nuclear rain."

This is why we need more natural threats - and clever, cunning ones - running rampant in society: the terminally stupid can get weeded out, even if there are simply more in every generation.

Maj wrote:It never ceases to amaze me to see Obama's foreign popularity. McCain couldn't pull the same stunt Obama did in Germany...

Because in the end (and this is not a bash on any one particular country, we do this in the United States as well) our decisions on foreign leaders is based mostly on personality. (We also base it on policy but that only applies after they have been in office for several years and has either directly helped us or directly pissed us off.) Obama has that personality.

Actually I question that "foreign popularity" because mostly these polls are European. How does he really poll in the land down under? How does he fair in China, Japan, and Korea? How does he fair in South America?

No, maybe YOUR decisions on leaders are based on personality.

The rest of the world likes Obama primarily because he is a moderate democrat and not a war mongering loon who could die at any minute to be replaced by a right wing loon so much loonier and so christian she might decide to press the button and start the apocalypse.

The world just prefers the guy with the army and nukes be less likely to use them.

Oh, and the whole American economy triggering world economic crisis of unheard of proportions reflects badly on the Republicans as well.

Really, the world is pretty up on making these decisions of preference based on policy.

It may just be "personality" to you but to places like Iraq it's thousands of slaughtered civilians, in places like Venezuela its assassinated citizens and attempted dictatorial coupes etc...

The fact that you imagine it has nothing to do with real consequences and policies ALSO reflects badly on your character.

tzor wrote:Because in the end (and this is not a bash on any one particular country, we do this in the United States as well) our decisions on foreign leaders is based mostly on personality.

Most foreign leaders speak a different language, and the exposure they get to American audiences are likely clips less than a minute long. We don't know their hobbies, their interpersonal relationships, or how they act or handle themselves in any social setting besides speaking behind a podium.

How much does America know about Putin's personality? I don't know anything at all about it. I just know about some of his aggressive statements and policies towards other countries, and his focus on oil. These things might relate something about his personality, but any deductions are based solely on his initiatives as a world leader.
...
Hmm. Bush based his opinion of Putin not on policy, but instead on 'personality.' Bush "looked into his eyes and saw his soul" or some bullshit like that.

I guess you are partially correct tzor. A person could conjure up a personality for a world leader based upon nothing but meaningless trivialities. And then base decisions on this created thing.

I really don't want to entertain the possibility that more than a few people do this.

tzor wrote:Because in the end (and this is not a bash on any one particular country, we do this in the United States as well) our decisions on foreign leaders is based mostly on personality.

As PL said, we actually think about the policies, and how likely their decisions are to completely fuck the rest of us. Unfortunately, your country is so big that when it sneezes, the rest of us get a cold, except with people like Bush and McPalin, it's more a case of "when America gets a tummy ache, the rest of us get acute intermittent Porphyria".

It's just a shame that the rest of the world, clearly affected by these things, doesn't get a say. I mean, no-one cares when it comes to who is in charge of, say, Switzerland (except possibly the Swiss, with a very small chance of their neighbours vaguely caring), but because America is too big, the rest of the world actually cares and is majorly affected.

Basically, you can afford to not care, or to simply go by personality, when it comes to foreign leaders.

SphereOfFeetMan wrote: How much does America know about Putin's personality? I don't know anything at all about it.

I can't speak for America here, but many aspects of his personality are fairly well known: he acts very aggressive and confident, walking with a swagger and outright saying things like "When an aggressor comes into your territory, you need to punch him in the face". He is a national champion of Sambo wrestling (similar to judo, but with more emphasis on "I break you.") and has been known to do things like a Bond villain.

Also, rumour has it that when he frowns, people explode.

Still, that's basically all we get - their projected personalities, quotes and the like. What's known about Medvedev? He's a lot more calm, apparently. That isn't much to go by. "He doesn't have Putin's cocky swagger" is hardly a description.

Wow, google chrome bites for posting on this forum.

Overstrike cursor only for the loss - so no quote tags.

But the rest of the world totally gets a say:
https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/main

remember, we're a plutocracy now.

PhoneLobster wrote:No, maybe YOUR decisions on leaders are based on personality.

The rest of the world likes Obama primarily because he is a moderate democrat and not a war mongering loon who could die at any minute to be replaced by a right wing loon so much loonier and so christian she might decide to press the button and start the apocalypse.

O really? (Sorry but I can't bring myself to use the Internet slang ... it looks too much like that FOX news commentator and I don't want to enter that factor.)

First off all he is not a "moderate" Democrat by any means, but that's almost beside the point as from a European perspective the Democratic party is far from what they generally consider "liberal."

Second of all he is just as much a war mongering loon; it's only Afghanistan (and indirectly Pakistan) where he wants to war monger. He has stated several times that Bush's Iraq was an improper diversion against the greater war in Afghanistan. He has also said on several occasions (and also while in Europe) that Europeans have to share the burden of the war in Afghanistan.

PhoneLobster wrote:Oh, and the whole American economy triggering world economic crisis of unheard of proportions reflects badly on the Republicans as well.

O my, there you go again. Let's not try the blame game, that doesn't work outside the United States and there is certanly no economic crisis of "unheard of proportions" going on in the world. One can in fact see the seeds of this crisis all the way back in the Clinton administration.

Once you gloss over the general issues and you remove the issues that don't have direct impact on you the rest is personality. That's why, for example Americans loved both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair even though they were in vastly different parties with vastly different policies.

Koumei wrote:As PL said, we actually think about the policies, and how likely their decisions are to completely fuck the rest of us. Unfortunately, your country is so big that when it sneezes, the rest of us get a cold, except with people like Bush and McPalin, it's more a case of "when America gets a tummy ache, the rest of us get acute intermittent Porphyria".

You know the old saying about the butterfly causing a hurricane? My job is to maintain a system that distibutes market closing information from all over the world so I keep an eye on what happens and how the "storms" of the financial world spread across the globe. You would be surprised at how a simple wave that starts in the Tokyo market can cause a major run of bears in Wall Street. The world is massively interconnected.

But that is perhaps not the point. The world is massively connected but the president is far from connected to the world, at least from a financial perspective. Remember the financial disaster that was Enron happened under Clinton's watch. The financial disaster that was Fannie Mae / Freddy Mac happened under Bush's watch.

tzor wrote:Second of all he is just as much a war mongering loon; it's only Afghanistan (and indirectly Pakistan) where he wants to war monger. He has stated several times that Bush's Iraq was an improper diversion against the greater war in Afghanistan. He has also said on several occasions (and also while in Europe) that Europeans have to share the burden of the war in Afghanistan.

Except that the war in Afghanistan started off as a response to an attack on American soil. Saying that we should have limited our foreign incursions to Afghanistan in the absence of real proof that Saddam had WMDs, and that we should probably finish the job of stabilizing that country (which was sidetracked by the war in Iraq) hardly makes someone "just as much a war mongering loon" as Bush.

Besides, isn't "pulling out of one war that we're losing* and focusing on another one that we were already in" better than "Let's keep losing two wars at the same time, for the next hundred years!"?

And America still affects the rest of the world way more than the other way round - putting finances aside, when they want to invade someone, the rest of us have to scrounge for spare troops to donate. When they help supply a foreign army and then cry at Russia, the rest of the world is expected to condemn Russia as well. And when Palin decides to crack the planet in half with nuclear fire, just to kill all of those evil atheists, that also becomes the world's problem.

*Consider all of the collective losses in money, lives, public opinion and the rights the government trampled on in the name of this war. Also consider that, when you are invading someone else, if you're not winning, then all of your losses are meaningless - you're losing. Bush's goals were not achieved, it's just dragging on and taking more sacrifices.

Palin decides to crack the planet in half with nuclear fire

That's just not fair. Method 6 explains why

Well that's very comforting. If we all die from an enormous cock-up, then at least the Earth remains.

there is certanly no economic crisis of "unheard of proportions" going on in the world.

Considering you claim to be in the know on this and act like you are sufficiently informed to simply dismiss what is frankly common knowledge among experts AND the man on the street I am simply amazed at your total wilful ignorance.

Have you LOOKED at a graph of debt? Of housing prices?

This is the biggest economic bubble ON RECORD. We haven't even begun to experience the "correction" and people are hurting pretty damn bad.

Here is a pretty good transcript of an interview I saw the other day that highlights the whole "unprecedented in history" aspect.

Here's a key quote "We have gone back to twice as much debt as we had before the Great Depression began "

Naaah, no economic crisis at all...

So there you have it.
The world endorses Obama as president.

Maybe.... World President.

Tzor, what is the rent like in the fantasy world that you live in?

What part of "restructuring the financial system such that more people own property and debt has been a Republican platform item for years" do you not understand? The Republican legislature has been working on the creation and maintenance of a housing bubble for a decade, the fact that it's a really stupid plan and destroyed a trillion dollars out of the economy was a predictable result. The last eight years have come with the slowest job expansion of any administration in the previous 75 years.

It's a really big deal. The Republicans have handled the economy the worst it has been handled in modern times. These guys are really really bad at this. And you have the gall to come in with a Palin quote! She's part of the machine that rips us off! She billed the state for 312 days of travel expenses for days she spent at home during her first 19 months in office. She's really corrupt, the administration we've had is really corrupt, and the consequences are billions, even trillions of dollars. People are dying of starvation and disease because these guys embezzle so much money.

And you Tzor, are helping them do it. You disgust me.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:(...) the fact that it's a really stupid plan and destroyed a trillion dollars out of the economy was a predictable result.

Could you elaborate on how said money "left the economy", or give a good source?

tzor wrote: Let's not try the blame game

For some reason that always sounds like an admission of guilt.

Bigode wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:(...) the fact that it's a really stupid plan and destroyed a trillion dollars out of the economy was a predictable result.

Could you elaborate on how said money "left the economy", or give a good source?

Banks don't actually physically hand people paper money when they loan it out. Indeed, in most instances they don't really have that kind of money in paper - or for that matter any solid format. They instead give people electronic IOUs representing an assumed amount of wealth, and they do this on the basis of an agreement that financial institutions can leverage their assets as if they were currency so that the grease on the economic wheels never runs out.

Well... when the bank's assets turn out to be a bunch of properties that are being re-evaluated at lower than projected values... then the amount of virtual money that the bank has to loan to people diminishes. They haven't spent any money, they haven't moved any money around, there's just less money. In the world.

That's what the Credit Crunch is. People restructured the banking industry so that it could float a lot more money, but it also took on a lot more risk, and when things didn't go super well in other aspects of the economy the massive risk exposure that the banks were left with ended up taking all that extra floating money and a lot more beside off into the ether with nary a trace.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Tzor, what is the rent like in the fantasy world that you live in?

Don't look at me, I've been "cheating" the system since a long time. I think the last time I paid a real "market" rent was in Poughkeepsie in 1990. When I lived in Key West I rented a place owned by my boss and his rents were well below market. Now I'm renting a space from my parents.

FrankTrollman wrote:What part of "restructuring the financial system such that more people own property and debt has been a Republican platform item for years" do you not understand? The Republican legislature has been working on the creation and maintenance of a housing bubble for a decade, the fact that it's a really stupid plan and destroyed a trillion dollars out of the economy was a predictable result. The last eight years have come with the slowest job expansion of any administration in the previous 75 years.

It's a really big deal. The Republicans have handled the economy the worst it has been handled in modern times. These guys are really really bad at this. And you have the gall to come in with a Palin quote! She's part of the machine that rips us off! She billed the state for 312 days of travel expenses for days she spent at home during her first 19 months in office. She's really corrupt, the administration we've had is really corrupt, and the consequences are billions, even trillions of dollars. People are dying of starvation and disease because these guys embezzle so much money.

And you Tzor, are helping them do it. You disgust me.

-Username17

It's been a part of both parties for a long time. As for Palin, she chopped so much off of the standard Governor expense package that it sounds like you are complaning about a person who saved dollars but wasted pennies.

Awesome!

tzor admits he lives in his parents' basement, a silver spoon stuck in his ear.

No wonder he's so disconnected from reality.

-Crissa

Admittedly, Palin didn't spend the average Republican amount of half a million dollars on herself. However, she lost half a million dollars by selling the governor's jet; charges for the commute from her home to the remote office in Anchorage (instead of living/working in Juneau), sends her kids along on $700-per-night junkets, and has instead of spending money on first-class airlines for herself gives the money to church functions and organs.

It's more like she saves pennies so she can graft more to her Republican Religious buddies and family.)

No, I live in the guest room. My room was converted into a den years ago and my Father lives in that room, along with bookcases, my old computer (and the wireless transmitter) and the TV which he watches these days.

It was supposed to be a temporary thing when I moved back from Key West in 1999. The rental market around here is dullsville and I didn't want to go in over my head over a McMansion.

You don't want to see the basement (which actually has a ground floor door and picture window) as she took most of it over to store food she would get at the bulk discount stores (first Price Club which changed hands and now it's BJ's) as well as other stuff. We've been talking about turning it into an office for ages.

I never had a silver spoon in my ear, but I did hit the Redundancy jackpot and now I make far more money as a consultant for the company that made me redundant.