Presidential Election: 2012

[Tenacious D]

I second what Foolkiller said.

When you boil it all down, liberals in their souls believe that everything oozes from a central government bureaucracy. Liberties, rights, privileges, wealth, happiness... you name it. And their utopian ideas cost money. TONS of it. Our Social(ist) (In)Security is going broke faster than predicted, as many conservatives predicted. NO government program has remained within its cost projections. And yet, liberals can't stand seeing a part of the universe they don't have a program to manage. Nor do they dare tax to the level needed to fund their wild dream world. Every country would go broke.

Is it any wonder that our democrat controlled Senate hasn't produced a budget for three years? I wish I could spend money like I printed it...

There are so many issues which make me sick of the left wing on this planet: political correctness, "hate crimes" and other thought police tactics. Being as hard on law abiding citizens as they are on criminals, and turning all of us INTO criminals with laws some people could NEVER understand their way through. Creating a tax code our own IRS officials can't follow to fill out their OWN tax returns! Demeaning us when we ask that they stop controlling so much of our lives. Getting angry when we remind them that money comes from US, the people, NOT from them or their agencies, and they are ONLY custodians, not lords and masters. That "evil rich people" are necessary to start businesses and fuel the economy. "For that matter, "evil rich people" start a good deal of the businesses. How many "hundred-aires" start car dealerships or construction companies?

I can tell you right now, the last three middle-class people I worked for, I was mowing their yards.

I can't tell you the last time I saw butter - REAL butter, not flavored colored lard - in our cafeteria.

Sorry, left wing. Your nanny state is not just too damn expensive, it's too damn intrusive. It's gotta go.

One more thing. Go Romney/Ryan. Obama/OBiden... just go.

 

[Ven0m]

Alright I'm going to get in this. The city boy from Texas has the floor.

I hate politics. It has to be the biggest show on the planet. It's ominous how far off track this countries views have gone. It's either you're a Hippie Liberal (possibly communist), or a Gun-Toting White Conservative (possibly racist). And whichever you are, you will be viewed as that stereotype by the other side.

I'm so sick of this constant fighting about right or left I could scream. But....(and that's a big But) we can't continue this track we are on. Obama is not acceptable. I could bring on a plethora of agreements that would be argued against from now on. However, I prefer one thing he has done a number of times that has really bothered me. His knack for going around congress to install policies that may not have made it through legislation. This my friends is the biggest reason he needs to go. I'll give Romney/Ryan a shot. But if they follow suit, out they go too.

 

[FoolKiller]

But if they follow suit, out they go too.

Just keep in mind that using executive orders to circumvent Congress isn't a new thing, both parties have done it, and it has been used in questionably legal ways since WWII.

That said, both sides have found their own ways to be wasteful and expensive and to intrude on our lives.

I haven't decided who I am voting for yet, but it won't Romney or Obama.

 

[Joey D]

Ok so I'm a bit confused about Romney's choice for VP. You have a fairly conservative candidate pick a really conservative running mate. Doesn't that royally screw up his chances with moderates, who will probably be the deciding force in the election?

I don't like Paul Ryan at all, his policies seem to put the screws to the middle class and small business and his voting record makes him look a bit like a fanatic. He also denies climate change apparently which I can even begin to understand. Also he support CISPA so that threw any remaining respect I had for him out the window. Oh and he supports a Constitutional amendment to define marriage which I really don't think should be up to Congress, let alone part of the document that lays out everything for the country. Fighting that battle seems like a tremendous waste of tax dollars whether you agree with his stance or not.

I think Romney would have done better to pick Ron Paul for his running mate, both candidates appeal to different types of conservatives and together they probably could beat Obama. With Ryan I really doubt they stand a chance in November just on the account team Romney/Ryan seem to not favor the middle class and if the Democrats can paint them that way through ads, Obama should be a shoe in.

And before someone jumps on me saying I'm an "evil" Obama supporter, I'll say right now I think this election has the two worst choices for an elected leader going back as far as I can remember (so like 20 years, which isn't that long ). I think I like Obama slightly more but that's like saying I like Creed over Nickleback.

 

[Keef]

Romney/Ryan certainly doesn't appeal to liberty-minded individuals. Pretty sure they won't be getting votes from us and that makes it a close call between them and Obama.



Vote for whoever you want as long as it isn't Romney. If Obama wins, at least the country will be so furious by the next election that they'll elect somebody sensible like Rand or Judge or something. I'd vote Judge for President.

 

[Dotini]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/19271041#
BBC take on Ryan's budget plan to get the US out of debt.

Respectfully,
Steve

 

[Keef]

Is America beautiful without Medicare?

Still looks like America to me. More beautiful, perhaps, because my paycheck has a few extra dollars on it.

 

[Joey D]

You can't screw with Medicare, you'll have every old, retired person in the country up in arms about it and they are the ones who typically vote. I do find it funny though that most of the older people I know hate Obama's healthcare reform but absolutely love their Medicare. Go figure huh?

 

[Keef]

That's because they're dumb. I appreciate the things they've helped produce but I don't respect the poor decisions they've made, and the good decisions they haven't made. They drank the Kool-Aid years ago and are so indoctrinated there's no hope for them. The world will move on without the most hopeless generation(s) of American history. They're responsible for allowing the birth of programs which steal my earnings against my will. They had a pretty damn long time to reverse that decision and they refused. Now they expect me to fund 30 more entirely unproductive years? Right.

I don't care if you can't screw with Medicare. It has to be eliminated eventually. If that means many of the elderly are abandoned then so be it. Nobody is to blame for their own lack of foresight except themselves, and nobody can be forced to care for another against their will because that is slavery.

 

[Dotini]

More likely, those currently receiving Medicare will continue with it, and Medicare would be gradually denied to the younger generations. I think that's how it goes.

Respectfully
Steve

 

[Keef]

By "denied" do you mean "not charged to their paychecks"?

There should be an opt-out option for very young people, maybe 35 or 40 or whatever. But the baby boomers, the largest generation of Americans ever, some of whom have already started retiring and the rest who will be over the next 10 years or so, the ones who lived irresponsibly because they banked on receiving benefits when they turned old, brought it on themselves to be steadily denied benefits but still charged the tax. If you stop taxing them you cut half of Medicare's income which already isn't enough to cover the bills. But they need to stop charging those who never want to receive the benefits.

 

[FoolKiller]

I ran across an article about our two candidates a few days ago that I feel must be read. It really expresses the truth about the need to have the right guy win this election.

The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.

The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to the Other Side if it could ever be verified.

I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks – remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.

My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Don’t take my word for it, though. I recently read about an analysis by an independent, nonpartisan organization that supports My Side. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything I have been saying about the Other Side was true all along. Of course, the Other Side refuses to acknowledge any of this. It is too busy cranking out so-called studies by so-called experts who are actually nothing but partisan hacks. This just shows you that the Other Side lives in its own little echo chamber and refuses to listen to anyone who has not already drunk its Kool-Aid.

Let’s face it: The Other Side is held hostage by a radical, failed ideology. I have been doing some research on the Internet, and I have learned this ideology was developed by a very obscure but nonetheless profoundly influential writer with a strange-sounding name who enjoyed brief celebrity several decades ago. If you look carefully, you can trace nearly all the Other Side’s policies for the past half-century back to the writings of this one person.

To be sure, the Other Side also has been influenced by its powerful supporters. These include a reclusive billionaire who has funded a number of organizations far outside the political mainstream; several politicians who have said outrageous things over the years; and an alarmingly large number of completely clueless ordinary Americans who are being used as tools and don’t even know it.

These people are really pathetic, too. The other day I saw a YouTube video in which My Side sent an investigator and a cameraman to a rally being held by the Other Side, where the investigator proceeded to ask some real zingers. It was hilarious! First off, the people at the rally wore T-shirts with all kinds of lame messages that they actually thought were really clever. Plus, many of the people who were interviewed were overweight, sweaty, flushed, and generally not very attractive. But what was really funny was how stupid they were. There is no way anyone could watch that video and not come away convinced the people on My Side are smarter, and that My Side is therefore right about everything.

Besides, it’s clear that the people on the Other Side are driven by mindless anger – unlike My Side, which is filled with passionate idealism and righteous indignation. That indignation, I hasten to add, is entirely justified. I have read several articles in publications that support My Side that expose what a truly dangerous group the Other Side is, and how thoroughly committed it is to imposing its radical, failed agenda on the rest of us.

That is why I believe 2012 is, without a doubt, the defining election of our lifetime. The difference between My Side and the Other Side could not be greater. That is why it absolutely must win on November 6.

 

[Pupik]

I thought it was the Far Side and the Dark Side.

 

[Adamgp]

Electoral College Prediction Model Points To A Mitt Romney Win In 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=195989

Two University of Colorado professors, one from Boulder and one from Denver, have put together an Electoral College forecast model to predict who will win the 2012 presidential election and the result is bad news for Barack Obama. The model points to a Mitt Romney victory in 2012.

Ken Bickers from CU-Boulder and Michael Berry from CU-Denver, the two political science professors who devised the prediction model, say that it has correctly forecast every winner of the electoral race since 1980.

"Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble," Bickers said in a press statement.

To predict the race's outcome, the model uses economic indicators from all 50 states and it shows 320 electoral votes for Romney and 218 for Obama, according to The Associated Press. The model also suggests that Romney will win every state currently considered a swing state which includes Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Colorado.

The professors' model shows a very different picture than what current data suggests. Currently, The Huffington Post's Election Dashboard shows Obama with 257 electoral votes to Romney's 191 with only six "tossup" states including: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

Berry cautions that just because the model has worked in the past, doesn't mean it will work this time. "As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict," Berry said in a statement. Some of those factors include the timeframe of the current economic data used in the study (the data used was taken five months before the November election, but Berry and Bickers plan to update it with more current data come September) as well as tight races. States that are very close to a 50-50 split, the authors warn, can fall in an unexpected direction.

According to current data from The Huffington Post Election Dashboard, there are at least 13 states that are either dead heats or within a handful of percentage points in either direction.

Currently HuffPost's Pollster, tracking 403 national polls, estimates Obama leading the tight race nationally with 46.3 percent to Romney's 45.2 percent.


This kind of Electoral College model developed by the Bickers and Berry is the only only one of its kind to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions -- both national unemployment rates as well as per capita income, according to a press release about the study from University of Colorado. Research suggested that voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.

"The apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent," Berry said. To which Bickers added, "The incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states."

Interesting, to say the least, if not less.

This prediction model has predicted the winning candidate since 1980, which I believe was when it was used for the first time. (not sure on that)

Just have to wait and see if keeps the streak going, but I like the prediction.

 

[FoolKiller]

Anyone wondering why Ron Paul won't be speaking at the convention or where he stands compared to Rand's endorsement of Mitt, the NYT has the answer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/u...h-to-a-libertarian-legion.html?pagewanted=all

Mr. Paul, in an interview, said convention planners had offered him an opportunity to speak under two conditions: that he deliver remarks vetted by the Romney campaign, and that he give a full-fledged endorsement of Mr. Romney. He declined.

“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

 

[hogger129]

Haha. Ron Paul says "Yes" and suddenly the Presidential race has begun. It could have been the day before the election and the race wouldn't have begun until he was on the starting line.

Exposure is what he needs. Simple language is what he needs. Actually, what he needs is to be a little more like Rand. More subdued, more mainstream in appearance, so he doesn't scare away his largest and most stubborn audience, the baby boomers. Rand doesn't ramble as much and makes sense to a lot more people. Whether he's as "hardcore" underneath as Ron is on the surface, I don't know, but the same talk that makes people like us love Ron is what makes everybody else think he's crazy. They don't have nearly enough background and are far too naive to follow his logic. If he's going to win he will need to ignore us a little bit - it's okay, we already know what he's about - and dumb it down to appeal to the people who are, frankly, idiots.

I think Rand tries to be a little more mainstream than Ron because like you said - he doesn't want to scare away the traditional Republican voters.

By "denied" do you mean "not charged to their paychecks"?

There should be an opt-out option for very young people, maybe 35 or 40 or whatever. But the baby boomers, the largest generation of Americans ever, some of whom have already started retiring and the rest who will be over the next 10 years or so, the ones who lived irresponsibly because they banked on receiving benefits when they turned old, brought it on themselves to be steadily denied benefits but still charged the tax. If you stop taxing them you cut half of Medicare's income which already isn't enough to cover the bills. But they need to stop charging those who never want to receive the benefits.

I agree.

I think a large part of why Medicare is broke is because the government is giving it to people who never paid into the system, like illegal aliens who were granted amnesty over the years.

They also borrow from programs like this and Social Security so they can fund their pet projects.

 

[BobK]

...

...

A bit of friendly advice, you should learn how to use the multiquote feature here on GT Planet.

If you look at the bottom right of every post, immediately to the left of the "Quote" button, there is a small icon that looks like two speech bubbles. If you click on it, then click on the Quote button of another post, you'll have quoted both of the posts.

That way you can avoid making multiple consecutive posts, which are strongly frowned on here and will eventually attract moderator attention.

 

[hogger129]

A bit of friendly advice, you should learn how to use the multiquote feature here on GT Planet.

If you look at the bottom right of every post, immediately to the left of the "Quote" button, there is a small icon that looks like two speech bubbles. If you click on it, then click on the Quote button of another post, you'll have quoted both of the posts.

That way you can avoid making multiple consecutive posts, which are strongly frowned on here and will eventually attract moderator attention.

Ok, thanks for the advice.

 

[Keef]

"Even though they don't want to admit it, they depend on the United States of America to lead and to bring moral purpose to the globe."



@ 9:30

**** yeah.

Screw it I'm voting Kasich!

 

[Bye Ya]

I would like to know what people think about this video.

 

[FoolKiller]

I would like to know what people think about this video.

When Romney loses and you see enough of a difference having gone to Gary Johnson or Ron Paul write-ins this will be why. Dr Paul carried between 10% and 15% of the primary votes. If the RNC thinks that by rejecting those people they will somehow gain their votes then they deserve to lose.

 

[glassjaw]

I think I like Obama slightly more but that's like saying I like Creed over Nickleback.

That is about the least emphatic endorsement of anything I've ever heard

Unfortunately though, I'm in the same boat. I haven't made up my mind yet.

 

[dylansan]

What do you guys think about this? I haven't had time to look through them all for accuracy but if they are all true, this needs more attention.

 

[Bye Ya]

What do you guys think about this? I haven't had time to look through them all for accuracy but if they are all true, this needs more attention.

To be fair, some of those lies are repeats.

 

[BobK]

"Mitt Romney lies" and "Mitt Romney is a politician" are equivalent statements. You can substitute just about any other politicians' names for Mitt Romney there. Including Barack Obama.

 

[dylansan]

To be fair, some of those lies are repeats.

I think they did that because he repeated the lies, though.

 

[Adamgp]

Keeping it fair and balanced, a list of Obama lies:

http://obamalies.net/list-of-lies

 

[glassjaw]

What do you guys think about this? I haven't had time to look through them all for accuracy but if they are all true, this needs more attention.

It does need more attention, and luckily the media has stated to notice.

All politicians manipulate the truth. Taking the words of your opposition out of context, or twisting them around - every candidate does it. But to blatantly state something that isn't true, that's quite different. And that's what the Romney camp has been doing as of late.

Now obviously there are some "lies" in there that I wouldn't call lies. Romney saying that Obama has "launched an all-out attack on small business" is not a lie at all, it's Mitt's judgement of Obama's policies. That's quite different than saying "Barack Obama presided over the first trillion-dollar deficit in American history," which is indisputably false.

 

[Dennisch]

It is good to see that getting people to vote for you means finding all the lies and errors the other candidate makes.

 

[Pupik]

It is good to see that getting people to vote for you means finding all the lies and errors the other candidate makes.

That's why we need a mega-wealthy third-party candidate in the race (like Ross Perot); the media couldn't keep him out of the race even if they dismissed him, because he was impossible to ignore as soon as he opened his jaw.

Well, he was right about that "sucking sound"...an entire year of American news disappeared from the year 1998.