h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Blimey, I'd have sworn blind he mentioned the heterosexually-challenged alongside everyone else, but the transcript I've got says not.

Gonna have to get my ears checked

I didn't notice any mention toward gays either. I think you're imagining things here.



"I think people need to remember that economic recessions are very common and normal in capitalist economies and no amount of regulation from anyone, let alone the government, will "prevent" them."

~*~This crisis was brought-about by deregulation, it might well have been prevented had the financial sector been properly regulated like it used to be decades ago. Obama alluded to this in his speech: capitalism is alive and well but Reaganomics (which was essentially based on Thatcherite economics) is pretty-much dead and buried.~*~

I agree it wouldn't be as bad as now, but like I said, recessions happen all the time. I don't think this one in particular is due so much to the poor decisions of the government as it is to American manufacturers and businesses being stagnant and unwilling to adopt new technologies and ideas. Also we just have too much stuff; there's more supply than there is demand.

In regards to the idea that this is the onset of a Second Depression, one must remember that some big reasons the Depression was so bad were that there was this big drought going on, everybody panicked and the market crashed, after the drought farms were overproducing crops, President Herbert Hoover was unwilling to intervene, and people were hoarding what little cash they had. After all that was over legislation /was/ put in place to prevent it from happening again, and much or all of it still is in place. If anything, it just needs to be revised a little.

And I expect I'll get my head bitten off for saying it, but as if this moment, I don't think there's anything wrong with America's foreign policy.

The man is doomed to failure - there's no way he can live up to the expectation.

In Britain we had a Prime Minister who came in on such a wave of hope and expectation - turned out to be the worst in the 20th century.

The Wall St. crash and this recession have a lot in common. There was an asset boom, excess speculation then the bubble burst. There were other factors like interest rates being too low for too long, and govts finding other ways of getting excess money into the world economy, but one *huge* factor is the deregulation started off by Thatcher & Reagan.

Those regulations were mostly put in place in resonse to the Great Depression, and similar regulations will be put in place this time too.

Economists understand the causes of depression better now than eighty years ago, so I think this time the reaction of various govts will stave off a depression. In the 30s, govts barely moved interest rates, and let banks fail by the hundred in the states. This time the reaction's been totally different.

I don't get the feeling there is a huge wave of expectation surrounding the election of Obama apart from the fact that he symbolises something in terms of who can become President. I think in many ways he's got a lot going for him, in that expectations about the future are so low. There is no comparison to eg the expectations surrounding Blair coming in when the financial future looked good and there were no big wars presently happening.

I'd have to disagree Effers; he's going to walk to the middle east on his first foreign visit.

And solve the economy, and bring world peace, kill Bin Laden, stop global warming....

Maybe it's because I was stuck at work where it was on the big screen continuously (From 07:30 GMT) but I thought people were expecting him to resolve the Iraq war, sort our Afghanistan, make peace between America and Islam, make the head of every corporation a black person, solve the economic crisis, and restore verginity to all the whores in New York.

Maybe I just over-dosed - at one stage they were commenting on the coaches arriving ~ Yeah David, that's a Golden Arrow coach, you see a lot of them in the mid-west. I'm guessing they'll have been on the road about 4 or 5 hours before they joined the queue. Say that big one there is a Daytone ? ~ I was ready to kill someone.

"When Obama says this stuff, I guess he doesn't really mean it. And that gives me hope."

http://msunderestimated.com/2009/01/21/daily-show-what-differences-between-bush-obama-video/

"The man is doomed to failure - there's no way he can live up to the expectation.

In Britain we had a Prime Minister who came in on such a wave of hope and expectation - turned out to be the worst in the 20th century."

Can I it take your only urging caution rather than presenting a logical fallacy here?


I was disturbed by Rick Warren. His religious brainwashing material has been used on vulnerable US vets in place of real medical help for their fractured minds. He is a homophobic and one those people that makes Fred Phelpps look respectable because at least Phelpps doesn't try to pretend the bible is anything other the hate tract that it is.

"I think that he'll disappoint everyone in one way or another. On foreign policy, it seems hard to see how he can be radically different to Bush, in that troops will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan for a good year at least. Plus, Bush's Defence Secretary is staying on which hardly screams 'change'."

He's kept Bush's defence secretary on because he's done quite a good job (unlike the previous holder of that office), as someone said he's being a meritocrat. And he's committed to fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan so if you're expecting a pull-out there forget it.

I read something yesterday, comparing him to Ronald Reagan. Not in terms of policy, but in presentation. The gist of the (now forgotten) article was that Reagan was all folksy and down-home deliberately, so people would take their impressions of him from that and not the radical policies he was putting in place.

Strikes me that it's possible Obama may be thinking in the same way, hence homophobic pastors and 'we will defeat you' etc. Not that I think he'll be as liberal as some seem to think.

Let's remember - at the end of the day he's a politician. What has done previously that excites us ?

-Let's remember - at the end of the day he's a politician.-

Exactly. The only thing that you know for sure about any successful politician at the beginning of his term is that his one proven skill is in getting elected. Everything that he has said, everything that he has done is tailored to fit the poll results, it has little to do with what he actually believes. Is Rick Warren in with Obama because the President agrees with him or is it because Warren is a fabulously successful pastor with no close ties to the Bush trainwreck?

I'm not one who criticizes politicians for lying. They have no choice, no one would vote for someone who didn't.

>>Everything that he has said, everything that he has done is tailored to fit the poll results<<

That's very cynical. Are you an anarchist, Tumsup?
If not, what sort of system do you think is best?

I'm in no way a cynic. In fact, I'm very optimistic about President Obama. I'm just pointing out that almost any democratic system has a huge flaw which is the hurdle of getting elected.

The problems of getting elected are not the same as the problems of governing. Karl Rove showed stunning genius in getting Bush et al into the White House where they showed an equally impressive ineptitude in governing.

I favour saving democracy by getting rid of elections. They are horribly inefficient, they cost too much and produce such mediocre results.

Forgot to mention. I am no anarchist. It used to be that anarchists were on the Left, trying to get rid of government that favoured the rich. Then, when socialism gained power, the anarchist idea resurfaced on the Right, trying to get rid of government that hobbled the rich.

The Left anarchists were wrong because there is no universal human goodness and the ones on the Right were wrong because there is no f**king invisible hand.

What I'm concerned about is Obama's long-term problems in dealing with extremists
in his own nation ie. USA.

Regards democracy in the UK, I think that Vince Cable is one of our best politicians.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cable<

He used to be a member of the Labour Party.
It's a shame he's not more influential in government now ...

Yes tumsup I agree with you, being successful at getting elected is not the same as being successful at doing things once you've got elected. But I like the democratic principle in that you always have to be aware that your time in power is only provisional; there's always another election around the corner. If you mess up you know the people will boot you out at the next election. But because the American Presidential system limits your time to two terms you don't have to worry much what you do in the second term; you'll be out of office in any case. Obviously this is good in some ways in that it prevents dictatorships forming, but it also means the second term has an entirely different context to the first. In some ways I find it undemocratic though to set an absolute limit to time in office; I think the voters should decide that.