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Barack Obama Retains US Presidency
Fox News, NBC, and CNN have called the U.S. election for incumbent Barack Obama. Of the so-called 'battleground states,' Obama carried Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, which, along with all of the solidly Democrat-leaning states, was enough to push him beyond the 270 required for victory. You can check this chart to see the full list of states that have currently been called, and by which news networks. The NY Times has an excellent interactive map showing all election results updated in real time, as does CNN. It's currently projected that the Republicans will retain control of the House of Representatives, and the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.
Not sure whether I consider that a good thing or not; but at least somebody did something about the health care problems the USA has and maybe the conservatives will work a little bit with him now to improve it, rather than just chanting to repeal it like some kind of mantra.
Tweedledum lost !
But is there any difference ?
I mean, Democrooks are as bad as the Republicrooks - and both are there to fleece the people and to ensure that their power is not challenged by the people.
The Bill of Rights be damned.
The Constitution also be damned.
As long as Washington D.C. is under the control of Demo-Republicrooks, they will continue to allow this charade to continue.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Not really. Two sources of data I user are electionprojection.com and electoral-vote.com. One is run by a liberal, the other by a conservative, but both are data driven based on several polling services. Both has Obama winning 303 electoral votes, Both sources have predicted correctly each state, and I see the possibility of two states going against their prediction (Florida, they predicted for Romney, Va they predicted for Obama). Based on the polls, this election has really been over for a couple months. So, only a media wanting a major even was predicting a long, drawn out affair.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Obama or Romney, whoever gets elected, get rid of the Electoral College.
Then you'll see a huge difference.
1. Declare a national holiday so all can vote on a day off to eliminate the lines.
2. Get rid of the electoral college.
3. Get Congress to override Citizen United.
4. Take the money out of the electoral system.
Funny, I'd put "educate the voting public" ahead of any of those.
Of course, it will never happen, since it suits both major parties perfectly well to keep the voters ignorant.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The 'free world" is an exoplanet, still waiting to be discovered.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Please, let's stop pretending that Bush started anything.
1) He started the invasion of Iraq.
2) He started torture as official US policy.
His predecessors were hardly any better.
After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war. The US government hanged them for that crime.
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Ok, honestly, I wish people could try to be a little less partisan. Both men were good men and would try to serve this country. Sure they both have selfish motivations for some of the things they do but, seriously, who the hell wouldn't in that position???.
Let's all agree that, though Obama may do things differently than you personally think he should, he's going to lead America as best he can.
I'm generally conservative/libertarian in my politics and most of my friends align in that direction. I infrequently use Facebook and when I looked this morning I was disgusted with the ridiculous epithets and flat out doucheiness of a LOT of people who call themselves "Christians" or at least moral people.
Obama is a good man. I would lead a bit differently than I but he's NOT a "Baby Killer", the "Antichrist", the "Nigger in the White House", or any other hateful and decidedly unchristian thing so many morally ugly people are saying about him.
He's your president. He's your supreme leader. He's under tremendous pressure and stress to serve America and her interests. Speak of him that way or shut the hell up.
Lots of people disagree. Bush was the one who got tens of thousands of Americans killed for a pointless war in Iraq.
The republicans got Clinton impeached for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office and then lying about it.
Tell me one of these is not worse then the other. Bush was a madman who screwed up this country far more then any other president in recent history, including Nixon. And that Nixon asshole was a dirtyhanded SOB.
ACA is a bridge to a other system at least in part
The health care problems in the usa are to big to fix at one time and there is room to change ACA or to use it while working on a better over all idea.
...Thankyou American voting public.
I'm sure people remember where it was when Bush took office in Jan 2001. I'm sure people remember Iraq and pallets of US$100 bills which "disappeared, 4000+ Americans dead and a 2 trillion US$+ cost. I'm sure people remember the 2007-2008 crash. I'm sure people remember 9/11 which was on George Bush's watch. The US Deficit is a product of republicans and George Bush. They took 8 years to destroy the US. It will take more than 4, maybe 6, maybe 8 years to turn the time. Luckily Obama won. Mittens would have just turned around the good Obama and the democrats have done over the last 4 years and returned the US to it's downward spiral into oblivion. I'm not an Obama fan, but as always in US elections it's the lesser of 2 evils.
Please mod the parent up. I remember back during the Clinton days in a red state the amount of vitriol and extremely vile and vulgar things said about Clinton. Then in the Bush days, particularly in the second term, it happened all over again. Remember the stupid "miserable failure" campaign to manipulate Google's search? If I recall at the time many slashdotters thought it was pretty clever. Some people went so far as to claim Bush would hold onto power somehow (watch the same things will be said of Obama now).
Now again we see the same crap uttered by those who voted for the other team.
It's this behavior that's destroying America as much as any party or policy. It's time to stop it. No, just because the majority of Americans voted a different way then I did, it doesn't mean democracy has failed and the country is going to self-destruct. And no, just because the majority of Americans *did* vote the way I think they should have doesn't mean that those who didn't are somehow less important than I am.
Yeah, Clinton with his 3.5% unemployment, 3 years of balanced budgets and 8 years averaging 3.7% GDP growth really sucked. I'm glad those days are gone.
[/sarcasm]
Socialism? Are you kidding? Both major parties are sliding head-long into fascism, not socialism. Methinks you need to read up what socialism really is. Maybe you should actually read what Karl Marx said about capitalism. I think you'll be hard-pressed to disagree with his observations about capitalism, though he was dead wrong about what would happen because of it.
I think you'll have better mileage with the birther argument than the socialism one.
>Both men were good men and would try to serve this country
Please tell me you're kidding. Mr. Romney has not denied bullying a classmate and shaving his head or transporting his dog on a vacation in a way most would consider abusive and was a professional corporate raider. While Mr. Obama is really not who I would prefer in office (I am a small-c conservative), Mr. Romney has shown a shocking lack of human decency in a variety of ways.
If anything, this election has shown that nearly half of the the United States is not just financially bankrupt but ethically bankrupt as well.
Can you say Telecom explosion? Clinton prospered because our ability communicate went supernova.
Good-bye
I am a solid liberal, but some of the finest times in my life is having a serious discussion with an intelligent conservative. But tonight, William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave. The economy is weak. A shallow analysis says Obama should have been voted out. But you didn't deliver.
Because the Right in the U.S.A. has been taken over by shrill blind ideological fanatics and well, frankly, the stupid. So the only guy who could maneuver from the primaries, where the truly crackpot rightwing idiots held power, to the general elections, was an empty vapid lying suit like Romney.
The pendulum swings left and right in this country, your time will come again. But the only way you are going to get there, Republicans, is to use your brain. Stop pandering to the loud shrill dumb voices on the right. Cut them out, excise them, ignore them, marginalize them as they deserve, because they are a liability, not a strength. And thereby be a serious power again. Otherwise, you collapsed tonight, and you will continue to collapse, until you come to grips with the raging Randroids, hatemongers, and assorted narrow minded morons on your side of the fence.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of stupid moronic liberals as well.
But the difference is, they don't hold the power in the Democratic party for now.
Yours,
one happy elated American liberal tonight
The path of lies, empty suits, vile sources of cash, and fearmongering was repudiated, soundly.
All is good in the world.
I sleep the deep happy sleep of the mightily vindicated tonight.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In contrast, there was 9/11 - sure, most people think it was the Saudis, but there are too many questions unanswered, like the lack of debris, lack of video, lack of an airplane at the Pentagon
Lack of debris? Lack of airplane? If you believe that, I'd seek a second opinion if you said the sky is blue.
No, Mitt Romney is not a good man. His campaign was too dishonest for him to possibly be a good man. I don't care that he had some selfish motivations, his complete lack of integrity is without doubt to me.
I'm not calling him a crazy Mormon Polygamist, I'm not even calling him an evil Corporate CEO, I'm just referring to how he conducted himself in this election.
Heck just his remarks about the size of the US Navy being smaller than it was after WW1 was enough for me to recognize the fundamental lack of honesty in the man. Nobody who understands a single thing about the military would be fooled by that, and yet he stood by it even after he was given an explanation as to why it was so terribly flawed.
I'd list his mendacious conduct in detail further, but that's already been done enough.
You want to show some REAL integrity? Give up on the notion of being non-partisan to the point where you can't even call a man out for being the most dishonest man to run for President since Ronald Reagan.
They didn't vote for Romney, they voted republican and Romney was the name next to the (R). Even saying that they "voted" is kind of a stretch, it implies a decision with at least some consideration behind it. People have their favorite brands, and for some people that brand is republican.
ACA is a bridge to a other system at least in part
Actually it's what's left of what might have been a decent system, if the Democrats hadn't compromised on issue after issue to secure Republican votes. (And then the Republicans didn't vote for it anyway. I fear and detest them, but I don't call them stupid.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war. The US government hanged them for that crime.
US justice consistently ruled waterboarding a crime from the time of the Spanish-American War until this century. We have convicted foreign troops for doing it to ours, our own troops for doing it to foreigners, and even civilian law enforcement agents for doing it to criminals or suspected criminals.
But no one has the political courage to slap a President and Vice President in prison for it. We'll impeach a president for lying about an illicit blowjob, but not for authorizing war crimes.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They go further to the right (unfortunately). I think there's a good chance the Republicans repeat what happened after 2008: savage their nominee by complaining he wasn't conservative enough. Their solution will be to move further to the right to address that rather than realize they likely lost because their candidate moved too far to the right to appease the extreme wings of the party for the primaries.
It is easy to look back now and say that they are both good people with the best interests of the country in mind, and that is probably true. But elections and candidates are not mirror images and there are not two equal sides; this election was Dreams From My Father versus No Apology. After John McCain corrected an audience member that called Obama an Arab, the response from the electorate was a net negative; Obama supporters were mad about the comment and McCain supporters were mad that he looked "weak." That was the exact moment that truth-telling became a liability in the eyes of political advisers and name-calling whisper campaigns came back into fashion.
This year, the Romney campaign decided that intellectual honesty and demonstrable facts are no longer important in presidential politics and almost managed to win the White House with that strategy. All politicians lie at times, to various degrees, often by omission, but the Romney campaign correctly observed that the resulting sound bites are a net positive, e.g., the first debate.
Neither man is Hitler, but during the post mortem, which will be all about demographic shifts, business cycles, and the "ground game," everyone will pretend not to notice Romney's flaming pants. Nixon would have been embarrassed by the GOP campaign this year (including all the talk about "legitimate" rape and the complete abandonment of science and observation.) And it's our fault because, over the next four years, we will let the Obama administration lie to us and equivocate over everything from regulatory reform to drone strikes while FOX News tries to drum up another faux scandal. People will put their partisan blinders back on and pretend that it's ok when "our guy" lies--and besides, Romney was so much worse.
I'm happy to see Obama back in office and I'm relieved that there won't be a republican in the White House to acquiesce to this bat-shit crazy House, but I don't buy the argument that Romney would have done a good job as president; he would have tried, but he is a self-obsessed moral relativist that is too comfortable with lying to be the figurehead of (what is still) the most powerful nation on Earth. He further damaged political discourse, further legitimized the fringe, ultra-right-wing of the party, and did nothing to discourage the hate-filled name calling to which you refer. Childish name-calling serves no purpose and denigrating the president just further polarizes the country, but lies are lies and we shouldn't be afraid to call Obama out on them and hold his administration accountable when they will inevitably start oozing from the White House.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Just like they did to McCain. I really wanted McCain as president back in 2000. But when he became the party nominee in '08, the GOP broke him, just like they've done with Mitt.
The GOP needs to ditch the extremists, but I don't see how they've be able to with the insurgent tea partiers dominating their primaries. The inmates are running the asylum.
the above comment is exhibit A of the kind of shrill blind fanatic that you need to lose in order to win again
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I didn't vote for either.. I'm part of the roughly 5% who voted Libertarian... Full run.. every race that had a libertarian, that's who I voted for.. I have very little aside from disdain for the current (R) and (D) candidates... I don't think either one of them would do anything but strip more personal freedoms and civil liberties in either rubber stamping almost everything that seems to come from congress, or via executive order that simply ignores the law.
It happened under Bush, it spread further under Obama...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
THIS, this right here, was why everyone on the right side of the aisle did a "Anybody but Romney!" song and dance for the entire primary, as they KNEW that Mittens for so damned spoiled and THOUGHT he was clever and just wouldn't STFU and instead his "Richie Rich" persona bled on through.
I knew the man was dead in the water before the primary even ended, when he did his "I'm a normal guy!" speech when he talked about having to go through late HS and early college with "a truly ugly car" and someone said "Uhhh...that "ugly car" was a BRAND NEW LUXURY CAR that rolled straight out of daddy's plant and into your garage Mittens" and that was when I knew this guy was DOA, when even his "I'm normal!" story ends up involving luxury cars handed out by daddy? Yeah they were fucked, the LAST thing you run in a bad economy is a Grey Puopon spoiled little rich kid.
What is truly scary is...this is it folks, this is the BEST the parties have to offer. Kinda sad isn't it? Man do we need a new system, something where we can have multiple parties like they have in EU, gotta be better than this "Coke VS Pepsi" races we have here.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think you're deluded. The public knows what the Republicans are, and they like that. You think people are basically good and reasonably logical, and if shown the facts will change their opinions. This is demonstrably false for most people, they're basically emotional and tribalistic, and will do or believe almost anything to stay a part of their chosen tribe/social group. The fear of ostracism is often stronger than the fear of death (witness soliders dying for their country) and changing the chosen tribe of a person is very, very difficult.
The same applies for most other groups of people.
Not a sentence!
FoxNews, gun shops (NRA), and Rush Limbaugh are ironically more profitable with a Democrat in office. Aggravation and paranoia are their secret formula for profits.
Table-ized A.I.
I think Nixon would be saddened to see what his Southern Strategy has morphed into.
One thing is clear, the Republicans have to recognize now that they have a serious problem. Yes, they've still got the House, but so weak, fractured and dominated by fringe special interests is the Republican Party that they could not even push over a President mired in economic woes, and whose major policy initiative (Obamacare) is still distrusted by over half of Americans.
To Republicans I say this. You will hear Tea Party and social conservative types blame Nate Silver and the other pollsters, talking about media conspiracies and so forth. It's time to tell Donald Trump to form his own party, time to tell the Tea Party that they're influence has been purely malign, a tumor on the Republican Party that is forcing poor compromise candidates who are then further shackled by having to try to find some way of convincing Americans they aren't social Neanderthals while still maintaining the support of these social regressives. If you cannot purge the party of these types, or at least put them back under the stone from whence they came, you will be denied the Presidency again in 2016. You have to decide what core conservative values are, and if you cannot align them with the national mood, then you're going to come back disappointed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Democrats are crooks.
Republicans are evil.
They will both kill your for a dollar but the Democrats won't rape you first then skin you and steal your kids.
Read up on the antics Republicans went through to stop people from voting, 7 hour queues? There are countries just coming out of war that have this sorted better.
Even top economic newspapers said people should vote for Obama because Romney just lied to much and his economic policies made no sense.
People joke about choosing the lesser of two evils but that is still a difference. With a democrat, there is always a chance he will do something decent by accident. With a republican, that will NEVER ever happen.
The funny thing seems to be that Romney as Governor was pretty moderate but got persuaded/forced by the extremist to change his tune and it lost him the election. If you look at the states Romney won in, those are exactly the states no EU person should ever go to, redneck states all and you might think you are right-wing in the EU but you are NOTHING compared to a moderate Texan.
The republicans basically tried to win the election on abortion, gay rights and drugs. These are things the extremists care about but not if it is a choice between their job and something that doesn't affect them. Two states even voted for legal recreational drug use. This puts two American states miles ahead of the most liberal EU countries. That is... well... republican attitudes couldn't be father removed from the voter on the street.
Oh yeah, they also objected to Obama bailing out the car industry because you know, creating jobs, that is something that the voter really hates... and they seriously thought they had a chance in Ohio were Obama basically rebooted the economy?
That it is even so close shows that many Americans would cut of their nose to spite their face. "Oh I hate gays so much I will vote for the guy who hates my guts and thinks I am a leech and should go and die already."
No matter how bad things are under the democrats, the only certainty in the universe is that under the republicans it will be worse.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I saw that too. McCain did multiple appearances on The Daily Show over the years. Before his nomination, he sounded sane and thinking and even justified some of the "maverick" label he had acquired. After he "won" the nomination, the money people of the RNC completely hosed him. They told him what to say, what to wear, what to eat, what to think, and none of it was him. It was some neocon wetdream that is such a tiny minority it continues to astonish me how much power they've acquired over the Republican party, at all levels.
We know where that power comes from, too: money. There are a few completely insane exceedingly rich people who basically control the Republican party lock, stock, and barrel, because of their money. They "donate", they call the shots. And they're NOT conservative. They're ridiculously regressive. Conservatives like to keep things more or less the way they are. That's the definition of the word. Don't rock the boat if the boat is floating and making progress. The people that control the Republican party are anything but conservative. They want to change everything, starting with Roe vs. Wade and working their way down a very long list that would push us back to as close to pre-Civil War society as makes no difference. Even further, in some cases, to pre-Revolutionary War. I swear their ultimate goal is to engender a literal American aristocracy, with themselves as the aristocrats. It's sick, and it's un-American, and they should be stopped.
Congratulations to the real winners of last nights race: Nate Silver, Sam Wang, Intrade and all the other "Quants" (statisticians) who never characterized this election as "close" or a "tossup," but stuck to their Bayesian models predicting Obama as a heavy favorite. If their predictions were wrong, they would be looking for new jobs today, but the hiney hobbit pundits who characterized these brilliant nerds as "effeminate UnAmerican eggheads" will pathetically deflect responsibility for their own failed predictions this morning--but the nerds know the score. Science works bitches.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
There are many excellent reasons to think that Romney would not be a good president (47%, flip-flopping on every issue, refuse to tell us his plans, tax returns) but neither the mistakes he made as a kid nor the way in which he transported his dog are things that an intelligent voter should use to decide on the next president.
Grover Norquist.
To expand somewhat, particularly if you haven't heard of him (I don't know how closely you follow the bizarre inanities of US politics), Grover Norquist is a conservative lobbyist and activist who has, through means I haven't particularly explored, managed to convince enough of America that taxes are, in and of themselves, bad, that it's nearly impossible for a Republican to get elected without signing his pledge. This pledge effectively states that those signing it will never ever raise taxes, and seems to be getting interpreted lately as meaning they will never do anything that increases the share of revenue the government collects.
This idea, that taxes are the source of all our government's financial problems, has now been sold to a huge proportion of America, whose grasp of math apparently extends to, "Taxes are money that I pay out of my pocket. I like having more money in my pocket. These people are telling me that not only will I be happier if I'm paying less taxes, we'll all be better off if we pay less taxes and the government gets shrunk!"
Unfortunately, particularly in times of crisis, people want simple answers to their problems. The answer, "Well, if everyone making more than some very low yearly income pays a little more, and we make the very rich pay a lot more, we can do a lot better for everyone because of this, that, and the other," just doesn't have the same appeal as, "We can fix everything in America by letting you keep more of your money!"
This, of course, becomes even more true when you look at the effect the very rich can have on the landscape, because they are able to essentially buy public opinion for their ideas (not even getting into their ability to actually buy legislation for their ideas). Furthermore, America has a special vulnerability to their blandishments due to our historical culture of "rugged individualism" and whatnot: there's still a strong streak in American culture that believes that not only does everyone have a right to the fruits of their own labours, but everyone in America has a real chance to somehow become very rich themselves (see some politician this past election cycle boldlyand utterly falsely proclaiming that "we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves"). And people who believe that they will, someday Real Soon Now, be rich themselves, do not want to see there being serious restrictions on the rich or attempts to steal away their hard-earned money, because "That's gonna be me someday, and I wanna keep all my money for myself!"
tl;dr version: People are stupid, especially about money and what it means for a society.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I don't think anything that has been done has actually added any significant safety.
How about ending our presence in Iraq? Do you think that has anything to do with your safety? It does. Allow me to explain.
Check out this wiki page. Give it a good once-over, then let's talk about the contents.
You'll find that a good base number for civilian deaths in Iraq is a little over 100,000. That seems to be the average agreed upon number. We'll go with the AP number, 110,600 deaths. AP is reliable, and it's a decent average for the most conservative estimates for loss of life. Now note the time period. "March 2003 to April 2009." That's 6 years and one month. Are you with me so far?
On 9/11, the terrorist attacks accounted for the loss of 2,977 lives. Now let's look at those numbers and see what they mean.
110600 / 2977 is 37.15. So what that means is that we have killed 37 times more civilians than the 9/11 attackers did. The 9/11 victims and the civilians in Iraq are alike - all innocent people that did not deserve to die.
March 2003 to April 2009 is a period spanning 6 years and 1 month. That's 73 months. And 73 / 37.15 is 1.96. That's almost exactly two months. That means that what we've done to Iraq is like a 9/11 style attack every two months for over six years. Remember how pissed off we were after 9/11? Imagine that every two months for six years running.
110,000 families missing a loved one. A child they raised, a mother they loved, a father that will never come home. 110,000 families that have a good solid reason to absolutely poisonously passionately hate our guts.
Still feel safe? It took only 19 guys to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
My point is that it absolutely matters who is President. Decisions will be made that will affect your safety directly. You need someone at the helm that makes good decisions.
It matters. A lot.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.