<Congradulations> U.S.A On Your New President!!

If he declared himself as not christian would he have been elected? I doubt it, America is still a heavily christian country, more so than the UK and most places in the EU. Not many here would care if our prime minister was atheist or not, in the USA its different though...

While I agree that the ability to speak is a good trait for a leader to have, do you seriously believe that is what makes a person a good leader, or a good decision maker, or anything other than a good speaker? Many of the most terrible men in history were excellent speakers.

Even as an American myself, certain parts of this country disgust me. There is still a lot of racism in places, a lot of people do get persecuted for their Religious or Spiritual beliefs.

Hell. I've known people who have gotten put on anti-psychotic medications just because of their beliefs, which were semi-Wiccan. Really sucks.

When it all boils down, Christianity IS the main religion of the country, because that is what the majority claims to be. Anything that clashes with the majority's beliefs gets persecuted and spat on by a lot of Christians, and a lot of people end up hiding their beliefs, instead of freely being able to display their beliefs.

You know its bad, when Christians are persecuting each other, and they're the same exact denomination. I grew up in church, and my family ended up not ever going to church again, because of their really backwards, un-loving, pompous crap. Saying someone had a miscarriage because they "didn't believe in god enough" or "because they must be worshipping Satan" is just going way too far.

And sadly, at least in my part of the country, its not uncommon for Christians to be like that, AND force feed everyone their religion. Oh. And tons of racists. Most of the African-American people in my area end up being homeschooled because of the public schools here, and I've never seen an African-American accepted or welcomed warmly in churches here. Makes me sick.

I'm glad I'm not religious anymore. :s Woo-hoo for having wierd beliefs, that aren't even a religion! XD

There are opportunities everywhere that invite further investigation. Movies are one of many. I didn't mean reference as a source to cite, because yes, that would be ridiculous in of itself. It's a reference in so far as a jumping off point. :) Hope this clears things up. I didn't realize I was being so confusing. Silly me!

I see that many are still hanging on to the Bush bashing that is pointless now. Might want to consider finding somewhere else to misplace your hate now. Its starting to seem pretty pathetic.

BTW, if Obama does half as good at protecting the homeland as Bush. I will give him and the Democrats a thumbs-up. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I believe a good speaker goes a long way, I don't belive it makes a good leader. Actions make a good leader. I was only making the point that since bush was such a horrible speaker you never could really get what he was trying to do. But, then his actions never did help anyways. lol

The only logical outcome of starting a thread like this is creating a flame war.

Aside from a handful of horny mental lunatics, that commited a murder/suicide into a building. There was never any "protecting" needed in our homeland.. in the middle east. The middle east is pretty far away from our homeland..
Anyways, he's an idiot, always will be, (recovering coke-head) ahem, but I wasn't bashing him, just comparing him.

To note on that Bart.. I do reply with the upmost respect for anyone on here. I never mean to put anyone down.

I'd hope so but sadly, given the Anonymity of the internet, it's usually very hard for people to bring a respectful debate to the table and end up resort to name calling.

Your joking right? So by your logic, if another attack happened here, then he didn't do his job by not protecting us, and "as is the case" there were no further attacks, we didn't need protecting in the first place? ummm wut?

I don't even need to comment on anything else you wrote. This alone is more than enough to show that nothing you say should be taken seriously. There are thousands if not millions of people world wide who hope, support, plan and pray for the death of Americans and the destruction of the United States every single day. Wake up!

Why is this?

Category 5 Shitstorm incoming.

lol thailand.. nuff said

Woo pics of shirtless Obama at the beach!

That is a whole different discussion, but I believe you're being sarcastic and implying that our "foreign policy" is a decent reason to kill innocent Americans.

OK, before this gets anymore misunderstood..
I said "aside", basically meaning, there are some things, like that attack, which you can do nothing about. We had numerous security measure's in place to "protect" us from that very thing. Yet they still got by. (Supposedly some knew about it and didnt do anything)
What I was referring to, from your usage of the word "protecting" is what bush started to do after the fact. Infringements on our rights, and freedoms. AKA "protection measures" That's what I don't believe needed to be done.
Now you are very right about numerous ppl around the world that hate this country and would like nothing more then to see us burn completely to the ground. BUT. If our country didn't go around on it's self-righteous white man, high-horse spree of telling smaller countries what they can and can't do, invading, starting wars,<-(MURDER) etc etc, just so we can do what we want to do. THEN All those ppl might just not hate us....

Not at all lol I didn't mention anything about your foreign policy, don't forget the brits are in iraq and afganistan too. There is no reason to kill innocents be they American, British or the people of the Gaza strip they are dieing in thier hundreds.

End of the day humanity has evolved culturaly and come a long way over the past 60 years and will continue to do so imo. Global awareness, acceptance of religion and race, helping people in other countries out. We still got a long way to go but we'll get there.

It's time to put the past behind us and move on, can't really judge Obama until he's been in power for a bit, if he can reconcile with the middle east/ sort out the economy as he mentioned was his goal then good luck to him :)

Lmao bart.

Ok, I'm out of this discussion.
I don't believe letting innocent people die, but I also don't believe in starting wars. I'm a pretty religous person, and believe in things like "he without sin, cast the first stone".. lmao who the *** is innocent? That alone makes war wrong. War is deliberate, hence, premeditated. (see the definition of murder) Now if a country, which those handful of people that attacked us were not, was to attack us, then I'd be all for defending ourselves and protecting this country. That was not the case though.

If he was fully white and John McCain was fully black would he of been elected?

People need to realize theyre all a waste of time. That crystal "china" they gave him made me sick. A "public servant" eats off of crystal and people are losing their jobs.

Obama is just like every other politician-- A box of bubblewrap with no pop.

Maple syrup.

As far as I'm concerned, if people want to believe in the Christian God, the Catholic God, the Muslim God, the Spider God, whatever....who cares? As long as it doesn't impose it's moralities on other people. Unfortunately, Christianity often DOES impose it's belief on others through it's influence on our laws...and that's pretty messed up.

For instance, gay marriage. Who's really opposed to it that ISN'T being influenced by some religious moral standard? Does it really matter what the gender of a persons partner is? I thinks it's deplorable that same sex partners aren't offered the exact same rights and privileges that traditional marriages are on a federal level. Polygamy falls into the same category as well, for me; if consenting adults are comfortable with a marriage of three or more partners, who are WE to tell them that it's wrong? Unless there's abuse going on (which obviously warrants investigation and prosecution), in my opinion, it's nobody's business except their own. If they're happy, so be it. I mean, isn't the "pursuit of happiness" for ALL U.S. citizens one of the main ideals this country was founded on? (I realize that at the time of the Declaration of Independence's writing, due to the social norms of the day, "all citizens" meant white male landowners, but we've moved beyond that, obviously).

Many of the "hot button" issues as far as laws are concerned are influenced by religious ideals, such as abortion, euthanasia and drug use, to name a few. I'll admit, I'm a little biased against Christianity...I lived in the deep south for a lot of years, and religion was imposed in a lot of areas it had absolutely no place, such as my high school biology class that had an entire chapter and two weeks of class time spent on Creationism, and school mandated prayers every morning, where believers and nonbelievers alike had to sit quietly and do nothing, no reading, no homework, because it was "disrespectful".

At any rate, unfortunately at this point in time Christians "rule the roost" in the U.S., so to speak, so even if Obama DIDN'T fully identify with Christianity and Christian ideals, he would have been foolish to not publicy endorse them. Do I think it's complete *** that it's pretty much a requirement to get elected in a position of power in this country? Absolutely. Do I fault him for doing it? Not at all...the sad fact is, if he would have came out and said "I am Muslim" or Buddhist, or Hindu, he probably would not have been elected. We all saw all the drama that entailed due to the fact that he want to a Muslim school when he was a CHILD.

Anyways...back on topic, I'm proud as a U.S. citizen that Obama got elected. I'm typically a pretty pessimistic sort (could you tell? lol), especially as concerns matters of government, and his election and inauguration today definitely kicked me into an optimistic frame of mind for the future of our country. Time will tell, of course, and what he will accomplish remains to be seen...but it's nice to see a lot people united under a blanket of "hope and change", and not the "anger and resentment" that was so prevalent after 9/11.

Just my 2 cents...