http://www.youtube.com/whitehouse?feature=ticker

Cairo, Egypt at the moment.

EDIT: Speech now over.

He hit several major points, and outlined his plan to have us out of Iraq by 2012. His stance on Israel/Palestine is very fair, I think, though he didn't really bring up any new ideas for it. Couple things I found interesting: He admitted we made a mistake invading Iraq; He quoted the Qua ran far more often than the bible; He took great care to pronounce the names of the nations/cities/cultures he was talking about and mentioning as if he were from that nation/city/culture. An instance of this is his pronunciation of Bangladesh, which matched exactly the way other people I know from Bangladesh pronounce it.

Your interesting things sound like good diplomacy to me. Do you mean interesting as in "Hey! He bothered caring about Diplomacy! Nifty!"?

Something tells me that if this was any other president, we would be hearing nonstop complaints about America thinking that they are the leader of the entire world.

Did anyone hear the speech by the GM leader regarding the bankruptcy? It sounded to me like, "We are now owned by the government of US and Canada, and the government will tell us what to make and what not to make, but the good side is, we get to decide HOW to make it all on our very own! YAY!"

I thought government being directly involved with corporations, and talking to the rest o the world as if they were under American authority was a bad thing?

The interesting thing about that statement is...it's totally subjective to the people you are talking to. If you feel like the person talking is trying to control you, you'll feel that way. If you don't, you won't. This only goes to show that he is a good president, and understands diplomacy and how to talk to people.



Also subjective. Why is it a bad thing? People have this notion that anything that goes against the grain of traditional capitalism is automatically evil. It will pay off for America in the long run once it finally gets going again. It's easy to say 'let the free market reign, and everything will work out.' Well, history has proven that that rarely ever works. Plus, try telling that to everyone who loses their job in the process.

Because this is not about capitalism. Capitalism is running just fine.

The last time a government was greatly involved in the manufacturing segment of its economy, that government was labeled Fascist. Now obviously, there is a far cry from fascism at this point in time, but its the only other government type where this sort of activity happens. (i.e. capitalism headed by government interests)

If you don't understand why this is evil, read this blog entry:

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/05/r...tributions.html

Now, I don't know if the findings of that blog are true or not. But the possibility of it being true are very high. Why? Because the Government has a majority vote and ownership of the company. If you don't see why this is a bad thing, well then I guess the concept of independent thought is dead.

Economically, Fascism has all the benefits of Capitalism, and all the benefits of Socialism. Independent wealth and competition creates better products and incentive to improve, government control insures the needs of the people are met. The price for this better economic situation is the loss of power that individual segments of the country hold. The concept of the United States (independent governments unified by a common cause) goes away, and instead you just have a purely federalist government powered by the power that large corporations have to modify public behavior and opinion.

You might think this is a good thing cause Obama is such a swell president, but the next president may not be, but he will still have all these powers.

Guess what... Al Qaeda feels like Obama is trying to control the Arab countries. (because he is)

We know they are very rational.

If the people were rational, Obama never would have needed to make this speech in the first place. He could have just done a press release, or had this views revealed through his policies. Speeches like this have nothing to do with rationalism.

The biggest thing about this speech is his remarks about Israel. It's starkly different to hear an American president even SAY the word Palestine, let alone make it clear that they have a right to their country. It's a hard line, and both Republican and Jewish big wigs will have a say about his remarks. Yet, I think it's a good idea for creating peace by taking a stance in the middle instead of always backing Israel. That backing of Israel is what started 90% of the conflicts with the Muslim community anyways.

Now, about the Fascist part... I can't argue with you there. Government IS taking control of big business, and that's dangerous. I personally believe that the businesses that made mistakes should be allowed to fail. Small businesses, which are hurt most by the economic crisis, are NOT getting bailouts. Not that I think they should get bailouts at all. A Bailout for big business was what started the American Revolution. It wasn't about the rising cost of tea, no, it was about a huge tax cut bailout for the East India Company.

This isn't to say that we're going down that kind of road. If done responsibly and transparently, it will work just fine for our economy. But it's not easy.

I would just like to point out here that this would not be the first time the automotive industry was told what to do by the US government. Every time we've gone to war the government has taken out massive contracts under market value for a large number of things from every manufacturing segment. When the fascist government was taking over in Germany? Ford was producing more tanks than cars. And American families were issued ration stamps so that there would be enough raw materials for the army to maintain itself without problems.

From here:



Just to put things in perspective!

BTW, the "Government Motors" thing isn't about saving the auto business or even the government controlling a business. It's a $50 billion jobs program designed to keep 2 million people employed (which is pretty cheap as far as it goes) to keep unemployment from spiking and tanking the economy even further. I think it's naive to believe it's anything else.

(Ultimately, I believe GM will go under or be sold off or merged to another automaker. It's unsustainable IMHO.)

His comments about Israel are nothing new. He has the same position on Israel that Bush did.

I'd like to see what that chart looked like before Obama became president.

And how is this chart going to look after health and energy reform is passed?

Obama is the first US president ever to refer to Palestine as a country. He's definitely taking a harder line about the Israel occupancy there, which is something that Bush didn't do. I'm not even saying it's good or bad, it's just different.

I'm not sure about Ford, but many United States companies (mostly New England if I remember correctly) sold technology and weapons TO the Third Reich when the fascist government was coming to power. Before the Lusitania sank, the US and Germany were doing lots of business. Most of the technology that Germany used to begin the war was American-made.

Personally, I wouldn't dismiss the fact that they were doing business during and after the war, too. A lot of weird stuff happened back then, but I'll not derail this thread with government conspiracy.

I thoroughly enjoyed the speech.

I think this speech will go down in history as one of his more influential and famous ones.

I was at work.

I caught most of it on NPR while working out at the gym. Being that I'm tired from the gym, I will simply comment that I enjoyed it, and we could use talk like that. We could also use action like that.

Dag, you're hilarious.

Anyways, I think the speech was well done, but perhaps a bit theatrical and insincere. A lot of that is probably a symbolic "Hey guys, I'm not Bush" gesture, which is probably appreciated by most of the world. Definitely appreciated here at home.

The real irony here is that Obama's really trying to do what Bush just wasn't smart enough to do: try to be viewed as a liberator working for the benefit of the people (as opposed to the governments) of the Middle East. It's not bad timing. According to CNN, President Ahmadinejad is catching some flak internally for supposedly misrepresenting the Iranian people on a television interview, and his statements were a lot less critical of Iran than I expected, at least. The places where he didn't push were generally the things that matter to individuals, especially the nuclear program, which the talking heads say has become a source of national pride for Iranians.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Bush was the first US president to push hard for the "two state solution" (or so I'm told.. I could have sworn that Clinton pushed for it also, but it seems he always worded it in a way of "if" not "when")

Don't you remember Bush's last minute effort?
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2302

It still bothers me that people find this speech "important". Mainly because it sounded like a re-iteration of U.S. policy from the past 4 years at-least (maybe last 10 years?) And I didn't hear anything new or different in the substance from what has been happening the past few years. Too often Obama says things that sound very new, but in practical realities, it is the status quo. (And people lick it up as if it's something special)