Is President Obama one of the best or worst US presidents?
Your son is a lot closer to being right than your mother is. Ask your mother to name the laws he’s broken or the scandals of his administration. Ask her how the economy and unemployment were when he took office and how they are now. Ask her how the budget deficit was then and how it is now. Her views are all sentiment; they can’t be supported by any objective measure.Obama has been hamstrung by a Republican Congress for six of his eight years in office, and if he hadn’t been, he could have done amazing things—like FDR. Unfortunately, he simply never got the opportunity. When he went to the Republicans to ask what they wanted to work together on after he was elected, they said, “You don’t understand. We will never support anything you want to do.” Their explicitly stated goal was to make him a one-term president, not to get the country back on track. He’s had to do that by himself.It’s difficult for a president to get into the “best ever” categories when his whole time in office has been swimming through molasses. He’s certainly one of the smartest, most calm and judicious, and most humane presidents we’ve ever had, and so far as his intelligence and character go I would put him near the very top. But his achievements have depended on Congress and therefore he has not been able to live up to his promise.
Is Sisi an improvement on Mubarak?
tl;dr No, he isn't!Before 2011, most Egyptians saw Mubarak as an uninspired, incompetent, corrupt dictator, and indeed he was.However, in retrospect, he is more of a competent politician than Sisi ever is.Mubarak was able to maintain control over the Army, Police, Intelligence, Business Chronies, while also being able to contain their rivalries. He did all that while maintaining a rather small wiggle room for opposition, and what could resemble a free press (with limits of course).All of this while the Egyptian society was stagnating, suffering over 30 years of inefficient administration, rampant corruption, political repression, police brutality and widespread torture, and falling living standards (hence his incompetence).On the other hand, Sisi managed to crush all opposition - whether Islamists or Secular, ruled the country with an iron fist, silenced all criticism, and has managed to blackmail the International community into accepting this state by presenting himself as a bulwark against terrorism. He is running the country virtually unopposed.Yet, in his two years in power he has not addressed any of the issues that Egyptians have suffered under Mubarak. The economy is not improving, the currency is devaluing, the country is losing its foreign currency reserves, and inflation is sky-rocketing.He also doesn't seem to be able to contain the rivalries with in his own camp. For example, Mubarak-era business chronies - who have supported the army takeover - are not thrilled with the Army increasingly encroaching into the economy and competing with them, neither with the way Sisi is handling the economy in general. It often shows up as shy criticism in businessmen-owned media.He didn't want to explicitly build a political party, but he indeed failed to build a stable block in the parliament - that was carefully crafted not to let in opposition - to support him.Many speculate that there are parties within the state that want to undermine or blackmail him, but of course there is no solid evidence to that.
Have you ever been in a dangerous place? If so, where?
When I was a kid, I had no fear. I used to go to this nightclub in East St. Louis, IL on a fairly regular basis. It was initially a gay fetish club, with techno music and those dark "party" rooms with porn playing on television screens that transitioned into an clubkid hotspot called The Monastery. Now I can't even bring myself to drive through East St. Louis, and when I do, I don't stop at lights, because if you do, you run the risk of being shot. The last time I got lost trying to get to Belleville I stopped off at a bar to ask for directions. I was referred to as "white bitch" and another word, four letters, C-U-Next Tuesday. The bar was actually a stripping establishment and I had no idea.Being from St. Louis, we're always in the Top 5 "Most Crime Laden Cities" lists. We top three in murders, and Springfield made number one in most crime per capita, specifically rape and robbery. I've been in, lived in, hung out in, and worked in, every economic strata of this metropolitan area, from ritzy areas like Frontenac, Ladue, and Wildwood, to the opposite end of the spectrum like North Grand, Old North St. Louis, Baden, South Broadway, ESTL, basically, I've been all over this city. On Thanksgiving a few years ago, I was at my place of employment, a private business run out of a friend's house, off Compton and Chippewa in the South Grand area, and we had to dive on the floor to miss gunshots.As a former raver and clubkid, I went to Chicago a lot for raves and afterparties. Several of them were in the South Side projects area of Chicago. We made the mistake of stopping to ask for directions once, and we were told to follow this guy and his friend in their car. They led us to an empty lot and pulled a sawed off shotgun on us. The one guy had no white parts of his eyes, they were yellow. If we hadn't driven off quicker than they could shoot us, God knows what would have happened. We found an older man near a lake with a German Shepherd we stopped to ask for directions and he was an off-duty officer. His exact advice was, drive up through the light over there, don't stop even if it's red, and get the f*ck out of here and don't ever come back. He wasn't kidding.
If Arabs conquered Israel, how would they deal with the people?
It depends on which Arabs.If Egypt conquered Israel, they would exterminate the inhabitants. The Palestinians would be treated similarly to the way they were by the Israelis.If Saudi Arabia conquered Israel, they would exterminate the inhabitants and build massive luxury sky scrapers in place of their homes. Instead of gaining independence, the Palestinians would all be offered jobs in these new buildings, but would become essentially wage slaves.If Jordan conquered Israel, the U.S would send their ambassador to Ammon and say “hey Abdullah, could you not annex our friends.” If they don’t listen, we would just pay them to release the country. If that doesn’t work, the U.S and Israelis could just wait until the PLO has a falling out with the Jordanian government after failing to grant them statehood and Black September phase two begins.If Syria conquered Israel, the occupation would last three hours because the FSA would begin a new assault in the northern part of the country since the entire Syrian military would be concentrated in the south. Assad would abandon the occupation and the Syrians would rapidly withdraw from the country with as much loot as they can carry. The next week Putin would show up on Russian state T.V sitting on a throne made out of Israeli New Shekels.If Lebanon conquered Israel, the Lebanese government would soon have a civil war over who gets to run the occupation. While their occupiers are distracted, Israel would declare independence and conquer Lebanon.If Iran conquered Israel, they would be half way through committing genocide against the Israeli population when they realize they are not Arabs, get angry at the western infidels for confusing their ethnicity and then finish the job regardless.