I haven't been following this thread, so if this was mentioned earlier, I apologize.

There is an email circulating with some erroneous information about how taxes will skyrocket under Obama. The requisite Snopes link.

My point with Obama and his praise of Beijing is that, well, he's praising Beijing. As far as context, you are correct in that he's saying why businesses would want to locate there, and of course it is deniable. The pollution is undeniable....how long do you think they will keep their factories shut down and the cars off the roads? Obama is suggesting that we need to look at the example of China and how they've invested in Beijing and do the same in our cities. What he doesn't either acknowledge or realize is the cost paid in Beijing and other areas in China to build stadiums and put more trains on the tracks.

I suppose we could also look to the Three Gorges Dam as an example of the superiority of China (he did use the term vastly superior), but that displaced well over 1 million people. Should the US do similar things? Mind you, I was pissed that imminent domain was used to evict a lady that had lived in her house in downtown Phoenix for 5 decades to build a freakin' baseball stadium.

Obama has taken the image of what has been shown on the Olympics and is touting it as what it is really like there. Honestly, I don't know why a business would look to what he's listed, note what he is ignoring, and decide to locate there.

Just my opinion.

He didn't say it was done ethically or without great cost (he started by pointing out how much they spent). All he's saying is that China has used the Olympic spotlight to make themselves VERY attractive to businesses, which is something we need to be aware of. He didn't say we should emulate it, he was just pointing it out because it's something that should be taken into account going forward.

I didn't take it like that at all.....uh, I suppose that's obvious, but in using words "vastly superior", it would seem like he is saying that we should emulate it.

Should we emulate trying to improve our infrastructure? Absolutely. Do you seriously think he means we should do so by exploiting workers and displacing entire cities? That's not even an option in America, it would seem pretty self evident that it's not an option and I wouldn't expect any candidate to have to explicitly say, "We need to improve our infrastructure, but let's try to do it without being evil."

All he says in that quote is China improved their infrastructure and made themselves attractive to business in a world market. We need to react to that.

I don't think he needs to say "without being evil".

However, I think that he has bought into the propaganda. Perhaps it might have been prudent to acknowledge that it isn't the entire picture and we need to be aware of that as well.

I am *shocked* that you feel this way. I mean, you, coming to your own conclusions about what he might be meaning? Shocked!

Reading the quote, I'm with GD on this one. "We need to stay competitive because we have countries like China that are working hard to try to make themselves as attractive as possible to businesses. Look at what they've done with the Beijing Olympics. We need to stay on our toes" is how I read it. He's basically stating the obvious... China set out to showcase itself with propaganda emanating from the Olympics. He's just pointing it out.

I'm not surprised that supporters of Obama come to differing conclusions (shocked!) than those who oppose him.

I haven't read the remarks in their entirety, and I guess he was talking about infrastructure, but I'm surprised that someone urging this country to take steps to remain competitive with China isn't the nominee of the Republican party.

The brilliance of Obama's Veep-announcement-by-text has just struck me. Forget all the other plebeians subscribing to the announcement, the real benefit comes from the threat of the average Joe "scooping" the media, therefore forcing the media to also subscribe to his updates, giving him several days of feeding his appearance dates directly to the necessary parties to ensure coverage (not that he needed *that* much help, but it's still smart as all heck).