Noam Chomsky - 'Obama is Worse Than Bush'

[NobleSavage]

 

[fromderinside]

Who the F, gives a F about the views of this apologist piece of S. He's a failed - because he's dead wrong - linguist, geneticist, philosopher, leftist.

There. That should balance the crap in the video.

 

[Narapoia]

Who the F, gives a F about the views of this apologist piece of S. He's a failed - because he's dead wrong - linguist, geneticist, philosopher, leftist.

There. That should balance the crap in the video.

Okay admittedly I'm not across Noam and all his positions but what is he an apologist for? Also my understanding was that he was a relatively well respected linguist and I've never even heard of him being involved in genetics before, his Wiki entry certainly makes no mention and a google search only brings up hits on the genetics of language. I'm not pretending to speak from a position of authority, I read a couple of his books when I was at uni, found them interesting, and that's about it really.

 

[Bronzeage]

Who the F, gives a F about the views of this apologist piece of S. He's a failed - because he's dead wrong - linguist, geneticist, philosopher, leftist.

There. That should balance the crap in the video.

He maybe a failed linguist, geneticist, philosopher, leftist, but he's the one on the video, not you or I. Someone must give a fuck about his views and if no one at all cared, it wouldn't affect their validity, or lack of it.

As he is a linguist, I find his choice of words interesting. Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign. Calling Obama a worse President than Bush is his opinion, based on issues of importance to him, but I don't see any factual errors in his statement.

 

[SimpleDon]

I have to be honest, I can't hear very well and I couldn't really understand him. I know that I don't often agree with Chomsky.

Obama hasn't been able to provide what we need, a push back to the left. There are a lot of reasons for this but the most basic one is that the country is still near majority conservative. Until the country backs away from this no one is going to be able to correct the excesses of the conservatives over the last thirty years. And have no doubt it is the conservative policies of the last thirty years that are causing our problems today.

It would be hard for me to say that he is worse than Bush II. Obama hasn't yet started a war to settle a personal vendetta or as Bush's apologists say, started a war by mistake, based on faulty intelligence. This is enough for me to put him ahead of Bush II.

Bush II was a proponent of ever increasing income inequality. This is the largest economic problem that we have going forward from here.

The dedication of the Bush II administration to the rather ridiculous notion that the financial markets didn't require any adult supervision and any regulation was the direct cause of the largest recession since the great depression, a recession that threw millions of people out of work, millions of people out of homes that they wanted to live in and cost us more in wealth and growth than the total costs of all of the so-called entitlements paid out by the US government in history.

Obama did do something about our health care problems, although he picked the absolute worse way to do it that he could.

Torture. Illegal imprisonment. Corporate subsidies. Anti-Trust. All where Bush II was worse than Obama.

Even the worse of Obama, droning, giving arms to drug dealers, NSA spying, the IRS targeting political groups, etc. almost all started under Bush II.

No, it is hard for me to say that Obama is worse than Bush II. Bush II has a record of incompetence that hopefully will never be equaled.

 

[dismal]

I have to be honest, I can't hear very well and I couldn't really understand him. I know that I don't often agree with Chomsky.

I think he's saying Obama took his girlfriend to a Clippers game.

But I could be wrong.

 

[Underseer]

Who the F, gives a F about the views of this apologist piece of S. He's a failed - because he's dead wrong - linguist, geneticist, philosopher, leftist.

There. That should balance the crap in the video.

I never understood why you rightists always seem to think someone must either be right all the time or wrong all the time.

 

[fromderinside]

I never understood why you rightists always seem to think someone must either be right (you're) ... or wrong all the time.

...gotta spread some atta-persons around first.....

 

[boneyard bill]

SimpleDon writes:

I have to be honest, I can't hear very well and I couldn't really understand him. I know that I don't often agree with Chomsky.

It's not just you. The audio is really bad.

Obama hasn't been able to provide what we need, a push back to the left. There are a lot of reasons for this but the most basic one is that the country is still near majority conservative. Until the country backs away from this no one is going to be able to correct the excesses of the conservatives over the last thirty years. And have no doubt it is the conservative policies of the last thirty years that are causing our problems today.

The major reason Obama hasn't succeeded in pushing the country to the left is that he hasn't even tried. In fact, he's moved the country in a more authoritarian direction. What I did hear Chomsky say is that Obama has been worse than Bush "on civil liberties." He pointed out that, as bad as Bush was, he had procedures in place to decide who should be killed, but Obama just orders people killed on his say-so. So that someone who preaches against the US (I assume a reference to al Awaki) can get assassinated on the grounds that his preaching caused someone to act. I don't think he even mentioned the NDAA in which the president's authority to indefinitely detain American citizens was expanded to encompass very vague standards that could include just about anybody. Moves in Congress to weaken the provision were met with a veto threat by Obama. Chomsky is certainly on firm ground regarding Obama and civil liberties.

I am no fan of Chomsky, but at least he represents the legitimate left rather than Obama who's just a puppet for big corporate America and the military-industrial complex.

Fifteen years ago we had a balanced budget and a booming economy. The dollar was rated at 120 on the dollar index compared to 80 today. How you can blame measures taken 30 years ago for the problems we have today is beyond me. A lot of things have happened during those thirty years including numerous increases in taxes and regulations and at least one major addition to entitlement programs. We've also seen a quadrupling of the monetary base by the Federal Reserve. The changes that have taken place in the last 30 years dwarf the changes that took place during the Reagan administration or even Reagan and Carter combined.

It would be hard for me to say that he is worse than Bush II. Obama hasn't yet started a war to settle a personal vendetta or as Bush's apologists say, started a war by mistake, based on faulty intelligence. This is enough for me to put him ahead of Bush II.

Hold on to your hat, Obama's term isn't over yet. He's on a very dangerous course in Ukraine, and now we're up to our old tricks in Syria by accusing Assad of hiding chemical weapons.

Obama did intervene in Libya and actually escalated the war in Afghanistan. That doesn't add up to as much as Bush yet, but it is not insignificant. And like Bush's policies, it has done nothing to increase US security.

Bush II was a proponent of ever increasing income inequality. This is the largest economic problem that we have going forward from here.

I fail to see where Bush "proposed" income inequality. In fact, his "opportunity society" what was promoting home ownership for all Americans was just the opposite. Of course, it didn't achieve that, but it certainly doesn't make Bush a "proponent" of income inequality. Quite the reverse. Meanwhile, Obama policies have actually achieved far greater income inequality than we had under Bush.

Talk is cheap. Obama's actual policies have been a huge failure.

The dedication of the Bush II administration to the rather ridiculous notion that the financial markets didn't require any adult supervision and any regulation was the direct cause of the largest recession since the great depression, a recession that threw millions of people out of work, millions of people out of homes that they wanted to live in and cost us more in wealth and growth than the total costs of all of the so-called entitlements paid out by the US government in history.

Sorry, but you've got that wrong as well. Bush WANTED to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae but he couldn't because the government only had a minority representation on their boards. It got so bad that he refused even to appoint new government members as a protest against the reckless decisions of the Boards of these businesses. Efforts to get Congress to act were blocked by, guess who? Dodd and Frank! The very guys who have written the so-called reform of banking were the very guys who blocked the government from intervening!

Obama did do something about our health care problems, although he picked the absolute worse way to do it that he could.

I have to agree with that. In fact, what did is all bad. It worse than nothing.

Torture. Illegal imprisonment. Corporate subsidies. Anti-Trust. All where Bush II was worse than Obama.

Not sure about torture. Obama may have ended it, but he does not appear to have ended rendition (the practice of sending detainees to other countries which torture them for us). So I don't think there is much difference on that regard. I'm not aware of "illegal" imprisonment by either Bush or Obama. Certainly, there has been a lot of unconstitutional imprisonment, but again, Obama's authority under NDAA is actually greater in this area than Bush's was, and it is the result of policies that he insisted upon.

Your claim on corporate subsidies is so off the wall that it's a joke. Apart from the bail-out of General Motors which cost the taxpayer about $30 billion, you have literally trillions of dollars that have been funneled to the Wall Street Banks under Obama. Meanwhile, Republicans sought to end the Export-Import Bank, the most egregious of corporate subsidies and it was blocked by Democrats in Congress. So was a Republican attempt to cut agricultural subsidies, most of which go to agribusiness.

Claims of Republican largesse to business is simply Democrat propaganda totally unsupported by the facts. Apparently you have fallen for it.

Even the worse of Obama, droning, giving arms to drug dealers, NSA spying, the IRS targeting political groups, etc. almost all started under Bush II.

We didn't have predator drones under Bush so airplanes had to do the job, but that's a minor point. I don't think it's decreased under Obama. Do you have any evidence that it has? I suspect it's gotten worse. You may have a point on arms to drug dealers and NSA spying, but so what? Obama is still responsible insofar as he has continued those programs. Where is there any evidence at all of the IRS targeting political groups under Bush? I haven't heard anyone make that accusation I don't think that even the Democratic National Committee is making that claim. Sounds to me like you're making it up.

No, it is hard for me to say that Obama is worse than Bush II. Bush II has a record of incompetence that hopefully will never be equaled.

I didn't expect much from Obama, but he's turned out to be a huge disappointment. Where he has been liberal (Obamacare) he's made a huge mess of it. Where I hoped he'd be more liberal, civil liberties and foreign policy, he's been far worse than Bush.

That last thing I wanted to see in 2008 was a Bush third term, but now I have to think that even a Bush third term would have been better than Obama.

 

[Zeluvia]

Are you kidding? We would be at war in Egypt and Syria and the Ukraine.

 

[Ford]

Are you kidding? We would be at war in Egypt and Syria and the Ukraine.

You forgot Iran.


I think it is really difficult to be worse than Bush in the foreign policy department. The Iraq War was a catastrophic blunder fueled by the idiotic neocon notion that as the world's remaining superpower we could reorder the Middle East as we saw fit. Just invade one crucial country and next thing you know...Democracy!

If the "Arab Spring" has shown us anything, it is that even when people overthrow their dictators (mostly) on their own, it does not set the nation in question on the primrose path to democracy. These are countries with deep-seated problems that no amount of "shock and awe" can fix, but a third Bush term (McCain or even Romney) would have undoubtedly led to more military engagement as a solution.

And that wouldn't be a solution to anything.

 

[boneyard bill]

Are you kidding? We would be at war in Egypt and Syria and the Ukraine.

I don't think so. Bush learned from his first term. Unfortunately that was one term too late. But he dumped the neo-cons and Cheney was pretty much in the dog house for Bush's second term. And he dispatched Admiral Mullins to Israel to tell them in no uncertain terms that they had better not bomb Iran.

 

[travc]

As he is a linguist, I find his choice of words interesting. Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign

He isn't that sort of linguist. His word choice, as always for him on political topics, is a product of being immersed in a left-wing echo-chamber where every new grievance is the worst ever.
That echo-chamber a much much smaller one than on the right-wing (no Moore-Coulter equivalence), but it is there.

BTW: He isn't a 'failed' linguist... his contributions were extremely significant. However, I think he has made significant contributions anytime recently, and his previous work is being steadily being supplanted and made irrelevant outside of its historical context. That isn't an incitement though, that is just how science and *successful* academic careers normally go.

 

[Bronzeage]

As he is a linguist, I find his choice of words interesting. Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign

He isn't that sort of linguist. His word choice, as always for him on political topics, is a product of being immersed in a left-wing echo-chamber where every new grievance is the worst ever.
That echo-chamber a much much smaller one than on the right-wing (no Moore-Coulter equivalence), but it is there.

BTW: He isn't a 'failed' linguist... his contributions were extremely significant. However, I think he has made significant contributions anytime recently, and his previous work is being steadily being supplanted and made irrelevant outside of its historical context. That isn't an incitement though, that is just how science and *successful* academic careers normally go.

He states his criteria and lists facts to support his judgment.

Is anyone able to contradict him or show him to be in error.

 

[boneyard bill]

As he is a linguist, I find his choice of words interesting. Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign

He isn't that sort of linguist. His word choice, as always for him on political topics, is a product of being immersed in a left-wing echo-chamber where every new grievance is the worst ever.
That echo-chamber a much much smaller one than on the right-wing (no Moore-Coulter equivalence), but it is there.

BTW: He isn't a 'failed' linguist... his contributions were extremely significant. However, I think he has made significant contributions anytime recently, and his previous work is being steadily being supplanted and made irrelevant outside of its historical context. That isn't an incitement though, that is just how science and *successful* academic careers normally go.

He states his criteria and lists facts to support his judgment.

Is anyone able to contradict him or show him to be in error.

On the subjects under discussion in the video, I don't think anyone could. (Admittedly there were some points I couldn't hear very well). I'm the last one to say that Noam Chomsky is right on everything or even necessarily truthful. But what he's reciting here is the left-wing "echo chamber" of the American Civil Liberties Union which was originally formed to defend people from going jail for criticizing conscription in WW I.

Eugene Debs (and quite a few others) were put into prison because of it. Do we really want that to happen again? So, while I think Chomsky is raving lunatic on most of his domestic policy prescriptions, I'm glad to see him and others speak out against the expansion of the police state.

 

[travc]

He states his criteria and lists facts to support his judgment.

Is anyone able to contradict him or show him to be in error.

I was commenting about his word choice, not claiming that there isn't some validity to the points being made.
"Echo chamber" is a pretty great metaphor... there is an original sound, but it gets amplified and distorted the more it bounces around.

 

[tupac chopra]

As he is a linguist, I find his choice of words interesting. Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign

He isn't that sort of linguist.

What sort of linguist? The type who carefully and deliberately chooses their words? The sort of linguist who is able to see through the abuse of language when it is used by politicians and re state what is happening in plain English?

His word choice, as always for him on political topics, is a product of being immersed in a left-wing echo-chamber where every new grievance is the worst ever.

Yes, yes. Why has it taken backward Americans so long to see the beauty of sentencing people to death without any trial?

 

[untermensche]

Some call it drone strikes and Chomsky calls it an international assassination campaign.

Yeah, some remove meaning with their choice of words. "Drone strike" means very little. Some use language to hide truths and nullify crimes.

While others call things what they are. They have no agenda or ulterior motives beyond exposure of the facts.

 

[Bronzeage]

Is this discussion really a rehashing of the question, "Is it moral to steal bread if your children are starving?"

Chomsky says President Obama is worse than Bush because he has ordered(officiated over, delegated, PYL) the death of more people than Bush? Some might argue that Obama would not have faced those choices, if not for the situation he found when Bush left office. Does that make him worse than Bush?

Since metaphor is part of this discussion, is Chomsky talking out his ass, or is his reasoning valid?

 

[boneyard bill]

Is this discussion really a rehashing of the question, "Is it moral to steal bread if your children are starving?"

Chomsky says President Obama is worse than Bush because he has ordered(officiated over, delegated, PYL) the death of more people than Bush? Some might argue that Obama would not have faced those choices, if not for the situation he found when Bush left office. Does that make him worse than Bush?

Since metaphor is part of this discussion, is Chomsky talking out his ass, or is his reasoning valid?

I think his reasoning is perfectly valid and, in fact, he discussed that in his comments. He said that Bush didn't have very good procedures for deciding who should get killed, but at least he had some, whereas Obama has no checks on the process at all. I don't think it was about the numbers as to why he said Obama was worse but with regard to the procedures. And I think he also cited the increase in presidential powers with the NDAA which Obama insisted upon.

So it's a question of Obama's willingness to use presidential powers in an even more arbitrary way than Bush was. It isn't about who killed more (although I suspect Obama would win that one too).