I didn't get to see that much of the convention but I wish I was there. There were a lot of interesting people there including the Mayor of Sarotoga Falls, Utah (Mia Love). Romney gets my vote regardless of what a bunch of class warfare spewing, hypocritical liberals say. At this point, even the rotting corpse of Jerry Falwell would do a better job than Obama since I don't have to worry about a corpse driving up the debt at a faster rate than Bush 43, adding more bureaucracies to an already unsustainable federal government, and claiming that things are going fine when the U-6 unemployment rate is at over 15%. Let's not also forget the Operation Fast and Furious coverup and the crony loans to Solyndra and other so called "green energy" companies.

These claims made by the Democratic Party leadership against Romney and the bulk of the Republican Party is pathetic. They claim that there's a "War Against Women" just because people like me feel that not every health plan should have to cover $10 worth of birth control or that Republicans will kill Medicare in favor of "millionaires" when Obamacare takes billions from that program they claim to love and funnels it into the new bureaucracies while Paul Ryan's plan simply gives people like me more options when we get old.

Honestly, Romney's campaign understands the real issues better simply by stating the real issues such as the national debt, jobs, and economics while the DNC seems to act as if all that matters is birth control "rights."

Also, the claims that the Republicans are only appealing to men or old angry white people is pathetic and hilarious. I'm half-Asian and in my early twenties and I'd rather have a conservative in office regardless of race than any liberal. Also, these Democrats should look at some of the speakers at the GOP convention like Mayor Love.

Not sure how anyone could turn into a European style socialist when we are seeing every day in the news where that has gotten them... Talk about running the train into a brick wall... But yes - I am finding more and more that I have to agree to disagree with people. My libertarian views are polar opposite of so many I encounter. There really seems to be less and less common ground - which I find frightening.
I wonder how much debt I will be passing on to my children after another 4 years of this ideology. I have seen zero serious attempts at reigning in spending in these 4 years and have zero faith that this would change in the next four. To me, insanity would be watching what is happening in Europe (Greece, Spain, etc...) and following in their footsteps.

I find it appaling that we have not passed a budget in 3 years as required by law. And before you go blaming the Reps for that, let's all remember that the Dems controlled both houses for the first two of those 3 years. Absolutely inexcusable.

Zero discipline with our hard-earned taxes.

You realize there is more to Europe than Greece and Spain right? And that we are having our own financial problems as well? Have you looked at our standings in the world when it comes to education, medical care and general happiness lately?

Where exactly do you guys think the money comes from that pays for all the social programs in this country? The government? The government doesn't make a dime. It comes from the taxes collected from hard working men and women that... gues what... wait for it... work for private enterprises and corporations. So yeah... Makes perfect sense to demonize them... Who needs them anyway?
No - I am a thumbless inbred who knows nothing about the rest of the world. (to quote another poster)

We have the best medical care in the world. We invent the majority of drugs, we are the leaders in innovation and people travel to this country for treatment for all over the world. What European country can compare to us in this respect. I am not talking about cost, I am talking about quality mind you.

Agree with you - education is a joke in this country. My answer is more school choice and competition, more merit based salaries for teachers as opposed to tenure and seniority, etc. etc.. Happiness? People risk life and limb to come to this country. No where else in the world is a person more in control over their personal situation and fate then here.

Change that? No thank you.

Politics in this country is in serious need of reforms. First off their should be limits to how much people can donate to anybody, and they should be low. The richest already have enough say as it is. Secondly, there should be an organization that must fact check all ads, and if there are Any lies those ads can't be run. Period.
I am tired of both parties lies, I want the American's who don't comprehend how bad the lies are to be shown the truth. What each candidate really wants done, and more importantly, what they really have done. Not a bunch of flag-waving, high-minded talk, fear-mongering, and baseless attacks. Lastly, I 'm tired of there being just two parties, it is not good for this country, and has become much worse lately, with the no compromises ever strategy. It makes me sick, things have been going downhill, and all that matters to these looser politicians is who gets the power next. I wish we could vote them all out and replace it with people who cared about the future of this country and not fulfilling their own ambitions. Well, now I will go back to chasing the rabbit with the big watch. I'll have better luck catching that.

EDIT: 582B-V8EK-XGP8-AEVK (REDEEMED)

Because this thread needs some good vibrations in it

Thanks for the game (Which surprisingly nobody noticed for half an hour)

Didn't watch it, don't really care. Talk is cheap and they never say much of anything anyway.

Speaking of war, continuing on the fascist Keynesian economic path (even if it's without the racism) will be the most likely thing that would lead to war or continue on a war path, IMO. Didn't Krugman say he wished there was an alien invasion or something similar? Fucking stupid broken window fallacy. I remember Keynesian economics was all the rage for Obama back in 2008.

You're welcome. May it give you more joys than any political speech, or thread! ;D

Look up infant mortality rates, or "happy with health care" results. It's not about which country has the best doctors for the richest people who can afford them, it is about which country has the best overall health care.

I certainly agree throwing more money at the problem is not the answer, but I'm not sure competition is either. I think it's more about accountability and stopping this "ever child is a winner" nonsense. Raise standards, raise discipline, and if a kid fails then he fails, and if the parents cry they are told their kid didn't work hard enough.

And us being on the border with Mexico and nearer to South America has nothing to do with that? Or Hollywood? The whole idea of us being "more free" or "better" than most of Europe is kind of silly.

I find it appalling that you apparently have no insight into your own legislative decision process.

Last time I checked the United States has three branches of government. Executive, legislative and judicial. The president (executive branch) can't do everything on their own. Herein lies the problem. For the last 3 1/2 years the Republicans in Congress dragged their feet, stuck their fingers in their ears and didn't get very much done for the sole purpose of blaming President Obama for basically everything, which seems to be their only tactic now. They've even resorted to blaming Obama for the failures they are themselves responsible for - more blatant lies.

Anyone with a high school education should know that the president can't magically do everything himself. And the Republican Party have been refusing to cooperate in legislation that is supposed to help people just so they can try to blame it all on Obama when it doesn't get passed.

You really need to look no further than Mitch McConnell's statement that "our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term." Clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc

The Republicans got the snot beat out of them in 2008, and consciously determined that the only way to regain their power was to work against and not with the new President. Combine that with the opinion of many in the Republican party that the reason for their defeat was because of a retreat from "conservative principles" during the Bush years,* and you've got a perfect storm of political dysfunction geared toward conservative extremism. The result has been bad for the President politically to the extent that the Republicans have managed to blame the effects of their intransigence on the President.

This, by the way, is the stupidest thing I ever heard, and I have a fit everytime I hear someone say that the deficit increase during the Bush years is reflective of a retreat from conservative ideals. Bullshit. What happened during the Bush years? Tax cuts and the use of expensive war instead of diplomacy to advance national security: two things that give conservatives hard-ons. Oh, and an unfunded prescription drug benefit to satisfy the elderly republican base. Give me a fucking break. Republicans USED to stand for fiscal responsibility, i.e. if you buy it, you gotta pay for it. Now, deficits don't seem to matter so long as they're the result of cutting taxes and increasing military spending.

You need to check your fact before you start posting shit.

Both in 110th and 111th Congress Democracts had the majority. Only in 112th Congress Republicans won, and the 112th Congress exists since January 2011. So they could "block" Obamas "brilliant" reforms only for one year so far.

But yeah, blame the opposition :D It always works :D Our govt. is using the "opposition" argument even though they're rulling for 5 years , and 3 more to follow,and they have the majority.

"It's not me, it's them" worked in a preschool too.

Just a little FYI friend...You don't need a majority in USA to have filibusterers, and thus block votes. The democrats showed the republicans how to do this in the Bush years, the republicans then picked it up rather well or so I heard. Our political system was designed with the idea of compromise, lately though this really has not happened I'm afraid.

This goes even beyond that, at purely ideological level. Our neocapitalist world is going down the tubes. For the left, it's the proof that neocapitalism is a shitty, short-sighted, predatory, self-cannibalising system (benefitting only assholes and only on the short term because they'd need their ever-impoverished victims to stay wealthy enough to participate in, and sustain, the system, but it's not what happens, so it's collapsing under its own weight and eat-its-own-feet frenzy). For the right, neocapitalism is awesome, and its only issue is that there are still inacceptable remnants of social ideas and redistributive justice, that hinders the system, and prevents it to reach the state of absolute freedom, which everybody would automatically benefit from. So, current problems are the proof that the system is not right-winged enough.

It's the same principle as witchcraft. If unwitching doesn't work, and the witched person still dies, it proves for some people that witchcraft is bullshit. And for others it proves that the enemy witcher was really too strong. If a magical recipe fails, it proves that magic doesn't exist, or that you didn't follow the (impossibly complicated and abstract) recipe closely and litterally enough. If the miracle didn't happen, it proves that the religion is false, or that you haven't put a strong enough (unquantifiable) faith in it or cleansed your way of life enough. All these belief systems are reinforced by their own failures (as well as their self-attributed "successes"), because they also always provide coherent in-world reasons for these failures. Often in the form of "impurity" issues : its failure itself proves that you should endorse and embrace the system even more completely, even more exclusively, than you do.

Political logics are closed upon themselves, they are self-sustained, in logical loops. It makes for clashing monologues that never truly articulate to each others. It's actually a matter of faith (or a matter of identity, which "side" people want or are used to or are socially expected to identify themselves to, which side is stigmatised by their peers), disguised with pseudo-rational arguments, arbitrarily interpretative.

It's a matter of degrees, the Democrats didn't have the unity to be able to obstruct as much as the GOP has.

The GOP OTOH, has not only been filibustering Democrat ideas, they've been filibustering their own ides when the President signaled a willingness to sign and has been pulling out of agreements they've made whenever there was the possibility of something happening. Which is not something that ever happened when Bush was President.
Can't agree with you more. Supply Side Economics and Keynesian Economics are both valid and useful within a limited range of problems. What the Right doesn't understand right now is that this is a problem in need of boosting demand, not supply. We have a glut still in several markets and the only way that's going to change is if people supply less and others buy more.

Back in the '70s when we had those recessions in the US the top tax rate was somewhere over 70% in the US. That was cut by Reagen and the Democratic congress one year down by a bit over half. The next year they raised it a bit because they needed the revenues.

But for the right St. Ronnie never raised taxes and lowering taxes leads to more tax revenues, even if the tax rolls never show any.

Liberals have their own issues, but places with liberal policies seem to be doing a lot better than places with conservative values for the most part these days.