# Change your SDMB location to Obama Country! **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 18, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094 "2012-03-18T00:37:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/61 "2012-03-19T19:20:29Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Unlike the whackadoodle left on this very board, I generally do not regard a victory by my political opponents to be an Earth-shattering tragedy. If Obama wins, he is likely to pursue certain policies I won’t like, but they are not likely to have much real impact on my daily life. For that matter, if Romney wins, the same theory applies. What if Romney doesn’t win the nomination? What if its Santorum? Don’t you think a war in Iran would affect your life? > [@Oakminster](#): > > Sure it is. POTUS doesn’t have a huge effect on the daily lives of…pretty much anybody we aren’t bombing. Gay rights are a rising tide that no politician is going to be able to stop, and Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned. What happens if Ginsberg is replaced by someone like Bork? > [@Oakminster](#): > > Yet you somehow survived 2000-2008, as I have 2008-2012. It’s not that big a deal. Likewise, neither are politics. Political opponents are roughly equivalent to fans of a rival sports team, not demonic entities intent on stealing your soul. Blacks survived segregation for the most part as well. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Ditto, I’m an upper middle class conservative and really nothing has changed for me at all since Obama took office and Bush left office. > > Hell, I view it as somewhat of a victory for my side that on many issues of policy the choice between Obama and whoever the GOP nominates is a choice between the “very conservative” (GOP) and the “conservative” (Obama) positions. > > Obama has some genuinely liberal and leftist positions, but on the whole he’s the least left-leaning President the Democrats have had in my lifetime. Some of us who lived through Carter and Johnson think people are crazy that think Obama is even a real liberal, let alone something conservatives should be afraid of. Its Obama’s sprint to the center that makes moderate Republicans afraid, because lot of Republicans are running further right to distance themselves from Obama. This is what makes republicans scary in a way that Democrats are not. > [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I’ll never understand this thinking, though I encounter it a lot. The markets have done nothing but go up since about six weeks after his inauguration. The Dow is up 40% since January of 09. When I ask conservatives what specifically has Obama done that irks them so much, they answer with things that either happened under the previous President (recession), or something that never happened (my taxes went up!), or something that hasn’t happened and probably won’t (radical Muslim takeover in Egypt, Sharia Law, government “takeover” of healthcare.) The funniest argument is the sort of stuff you hear from the NRA. "Sure Obama hasn’t taken away your guns during his FIRST administration, he was using his first administration to lull you into complacency by doing a bunch of conservative things so he could get reelected and go buck wild and take your gun during his SECOND adminstration. THATS the plan!!! > [@](#): > > The fact is, things are much better now than when Obama took office. We’re out of the dumbest war the country was ever involved in, Osama Bin Laden is dead, the economy is vastly improved and should continue to improve, the Arab Spring happened without our heavy-handed involvement, etc. I wish people would tell me very specifically what is worse now than four years ago. You can say that the debt is increased, and that is true, but virtually all economists will say that things would be much worse without the stimulus. It worked. So did the auto bailouts. The stimulus wasn’t done just because Democrats like spending money, it was done to avert a Depression, and it worked. If the economic conditions weren’t so grim, it never would have been done. In quite a few areas, the Republicans are monday morning quarterbacking a quarterback that won the game by saying that they could have won by more. Its hard to criticize Obama’s foreign policy unless you are Ron Paul and want to be isolationist or McCain and you want to bomb the middle east to the stone age. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from doing so now that the economy (other than gaas prices) isn’t really cooperating with them. > [@rogerbox](#): > > The “free world” is not shorthand in any way for “U.S.A.”, it’s an incredibly stupid statement Americans need to stop and think about before mindlessly blurting out. > [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > He is not the goddamn “leader of the free world.” That is so offensive. He is the leader (kinda) of _America_, a country that needs to do a whole hell of a lot before it ever could call itself the “leader of freedom” or any of that nonsense. > > Sorry, but that shit drives me nuts. Why do you hate freedom? > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So who is? Don’t mind them. It hurts their feelings that they are junior partners in the endeavor. There’s nothing wrong with that but their ego’s won’t allow them to admit it. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Presidents may not have much impact on your day to day lives in the short term but they can have a pretty huge impact in the long term. We’re all going to be feeling the effects of Bush’s SCOTUS appointees for decades. Obama’s, too, but to to a lesser extent since they were replacing liberals. Roberts, Kagan and Sotomayor probably didn’t shift the court very much in any direction. Replacing Sandra Day O’Connor with Alito probably did. The oldest member of the court is Ginsburg. If they replace someone like her with someone like Alito, it will affect our everyday lives. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/62 "2012-03-19T21:05:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So who is? There isn’t one. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/63 "2012-03-19T23:37:09Z")
I don’t think this campaign is particularly effective. That said: > [@](#): > > If Obama wins, he is likely to pursue certain policies I won’t like, but they are not likely to have much real impact on my daily life. For that matter, if Romney wins, the same theory applies. I don’t think there’s any analogue. Here’s why: policies that slightly address income inequality are a major pain to a miniscule population that command enormous tracts of public opinion. Their actual quality of life is affected by a negligible amount. We can say with some confidence that Pete Peterson is not going to starve to death. On the other hand, something like healthcare is an issue that dogged insistence on behalf of the head of government may [save the lives of American citizens](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/). I still have not seen any satisfactory reason why the lifespan in the US is tied with a country that has a healthcare expenditure 1/14th of the size of it. So I don’t accept your premise. Perhaps changes will be slight for upper-middle class heterosexual white males under a Democratic or Republican presidency. But upper-middle class heterosexual white males with empathy can realise that a slight reduction in quality of life for them is worth a massive increase in quality of life for the nation. I also note that you like fucking. [How about remaining employed while fucking the person that you love](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By-ohi3vO2w)? (in private, of course, but making no effort to conceal that fact). I highly doubt we would have seen the repeal of DADT in McCain’s administration. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/64 "2012-03-20T00:58:49Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > The fact is, things are much better now than when Obama took office. … I wish people would tell me very specifically what is worse now than four years ago. I had a cute little Obama-related location prior to the election of 2008, but I will not have one in 2012, nor will I vote for the guy. The number of things that are worse, or at least as bad, now as in the Bush Administration is depresisngly large. The U.S. military is still launching drone strikes against unarmed civilians in Pakistan and Yemen and countless other places. U.S. forces are actually on the ground now in more countries than they were back then. The military-industrial complex is still a behemoth almost as large as the combined militaries of the rest of the planet, even though we face no serious military threats, and we continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on military programs, weapons, and research that have no conceivable use. In many issues of civil liberties and government secrecy, activists have categorized Obama as “worse than Bush”. In short, Obama has made clear his intention to continue Bush’s program of making the American government-military-corporate behemoth the supreme ruler of the entire world and killing anyone who gets in its way. Anyone heard of any good third-party candidates running this year? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/65 "2012-03-20T01:02:01Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I had a cute little Obama-related location prior to the election of 2008, but I will not have one in 2012, nor will I vote for the guy. The number of things that are worse, or at least as bad, now as in the Bush Administration is depresisngly large. The U.S. military is still launching drone strikes against unarmed civilians in Pakistan and Yemen and countless other places. U.S. forces are actually on the ground now in more countries than they were back then. The military-industrial complex is still a behemoth almost as large as the combined militaries of the rest of the planet, even though we face no serious military threats, and we continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on military programs, weapons, and research that have no conceivable use. In many issues of civil liberties and government secrecy, activists have categorized Obama as “worse than Bush”. In short, Obama has made clear his intention to continue Bush’s program of making the American government-military-corporate behemoth the supreme ruler of the entire world and killing anyone who gets in its way. > > Anyone heard of any good third-party candidates running this year? Shouldn’t you have put Obama’s _war on religious freedom_ in that screed? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/66 "2012-03-20T01:13:12Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > There isn’t one. Excellent! I can start next Monday! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/67 "2012-03-20T02:51:12Z")
I can’t - I live in Cameron country and I strongly suspect his policies are one elaborate prank just to see how far he can go and how many people he can piss off. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/68 "2012-03-20T03:12:16Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I can’t - I live in Cameron country and I strongly suspect his policies are one elaborate prank just to see how far he can go and how many people he can piss off. Cameron, not Cameroon, right? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/69 "2012-03-20T03:35:30Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Cameron, not Cameroon, right? Yes, David Cameron. This is better than having a foreign nation as our Prime Minister, I guess, but they’d have to try hard to be worse. It’s got ridiculous - starting the privatisation of the NHS and the police, attempting to sell off our canals, forests and, recently, even our roads, passing tons of laws that adversely affect the poorest (esp. with regard to housing), passing tons of other laws that benefit the richest (also esp. wrt housing), reducing all public-sector pensions, limiting minimum-wage laws, having people on benefits work for free full-time for private companies like supermarkets, removing state benefits from people with very serious disabilities, including terminal cancer, planning to reduce the top rate of tax when even the right-wing think tanks are saying “what? Dude, seriously?” And that’s just the first few things off the top of my head. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/70 "2012-03-20T05:21:58Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Blacks survived segregation for the most part as well. Nouveau Godwinizing is lame. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/71 "2012-03-20T18:34:03Z")
😕 “Nouveau Godwinizing?” Is that a real thing? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/72 "2012-03-20T19:17:56Z")
Do you know who ELSE liked Nouveau? ---
**Author:** ![gatorslap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gatorslap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorslap)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/73 "2012-03-20T19:19:36Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Yes, David Cameron. This is better than having a foreign nation as our Prime Minister, I guess, but they’d have to try hard to be worse. > > It’s got ridiculous - starting the privatisation of the NHS and the police, attempting to sell off our canals, forests and, recently, even our roads, passing tons of laws that adversely affect the poorest (esp. with regard to housing), passing tons of other laws that benefit the richest (also esp. wrt housing), reducing all public-sector pensions, limiting minimum-wage laws, having people on benefits work for free full-time for private companies like supermarkets, removing state benefits from people with very serious disabilities, including terminal cancer, planning to reduce the top rate of tax when even the right-wing think tanks are saying “what? Dude, seriously?” > > And that’s just the first few things off the top of my head. What the hell happened to the Lib Dems? I thought they were supposed to be a moderating force. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/74 "2012-03-20T19:27:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Oakminster** : > > I’m talking about voters rather than elected officials. You vote lefty. I vote righty. We disagree about political issues. As neither of us have the power to implement our preferences, it is pretty much analogous to rooting for different sports teams. All of us have the power to implement our preferences. That’s the whole point of living in a democracy. And even those of us who can’t vote (foreign nationals, minors, disenfranchised felons, whatever) can urge others to vote how we’d like. Heck, even in a despotism, we’d still be able to urge our leaders to change their policies-- You can’t persuade your football team to move their goal posts to the other end of the field. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/75 "2012-03-20T19:28:13Z")
Eh, what the hell… I’m in. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/76 "2012-03-20T20:56:56Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I had a cute little Obama-related location prior to the election of 2008, but I will not have one in 2012, nor will I vote for the guy. The number of things that are worse, or at least as bad, now as in the Bush Administration is depresisngly large. The U.S. military is still launching drone strikes against unarmed civilians in Pakistan and Yemen and countless other places. U.S. forces are actually on the ground now in more countries than they were back then. The military-industrial complex is still a behemoth almost as large as the combined militaries of the rest of the planet, even though we face no serious military threats, and we continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on military programs, weapons, and research that have no conceivable use. In many issues of civil liberties and government secrecy, activists have categorized Obama as “worse than Bush”. In short, Obama has made clear his intention to continue Bush’s program of making the American government-military-corporate behemoth the supreme ruler of the entire world and killing anyone who gets in its way. > > Anyone heard of any good third-party candidates running this year? Yeah, I understand how you feel and i felt like that too until I saw the Republican debates. I remember the last time people felt this way, we elected George W Bush, but least in 2000, we weren’t confronted with the current crop of Republican candidates. If you were in California, I’d say, fine, no harm done but if you live in Northern Virginia then you are in a swing state that looks like it might be as close as North Carolina was last time around. Obama might not need Virginia to keep the White House but youa re going to feel like an ass if someone like Santorum wins because you (and a few thousand people like you (I think the swins was like 0.2% of total votes cast)) decided that you needed to make a statement. > [@Oakminster](#): > > Nouveau Godwinizing is lame. Godwinizing is specific to Hitler. What I did was called analogizing. Sure segregation was tougher but you seem to be under the impression that homosexuals are not second class citizens in many ways. > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > 😕 “Nouveau Godwinizing?” > > Is that a real thing? 😕 No he just made that up because he thinks the comparison is over the top. its abit over the top but when you flippantly blow off other people’s civil rights, you are inviting those comparisons. If it was his rights being infringed, he would have a cow but since its only the yucky gay people… meh, no big deal. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/77 "2012-03-20T21:28:29Z")
Doing it on a board where the vast majority of posters are Obama supporters seems a little… tacky. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/78 "2012-03-20T21:48:45Z")
> [@](#): > > What the hell happened to the Lib Dems? I thought they were supposed to be a moderating force. I used to be a card carrying member since they were the only major party that were against the war. There’s no question that they were closer to the Labour government than the Conservatives on every social and (presumably) financial issue though and the only reason they formed the coalition with the Conservatives rather than Labour was because they would have been massively unpopular and incapable of forming an actual majority. However, they’ve now sold out on every issue: student fees, privatisation, slashing of benefits… The one party where they really stood apart from the Conservatives was in wishing to overturn age discrimination legislation introduced by Labour, which is a real relief. Looking back, while Labour was complicit in the war in Iraq and introduced student fees, they also introduced minimum wage laws, devolution to foreign parliaments, comprehensive employment discrimination laws and moderate House of Lords reform. They were just as willing as the Lib Dems to introduce electoral reform towards the end of Brown’s stint and more willing to introduce constitutional reform. I think they did so poorly at the last election as a result of the recession, internal disputes and Gordon Brown’s mismanagement. I think Ed Milliband is just about useless: David Milliband would be a far better leader and Tony Benn much better than either. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/79 "2012-03-21T00:25:28Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Hell no. He’s another failed Democratic President, right up there with Jimmy Carter. I look forward to his defeat this fall. I wasn’t going to change my location tag, but now I’m in Obama Country. I think I can depend on Northern VA to go for a sane candidate in November. ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094/80 "2012-03-21T00:42:16Z")
I almost did what the OP requested. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-your-sdmb-location-to-obama-country/616094.md?page=5)