Slashdot Mirror
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.
No more
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.
Don't worry, Republican friends, Mitt will just claim he wasn't actually running for President anyway.
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.
God bless America. Or flying Spaghetti monster. Or random evolutionary processes. At least it wasn't that mutant.
Now, we have to:
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.
But is there any difference ?
Yes.
Now my turn for a question: do you pay the slightest attention to what our politicians do?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Romney could probably have gotten the Republican nomination fair-and-square, and if he had done it that way a bunch of people wouldn't have been alienated and abandoned the Republican party. Instead his people cheated blatantly and publicly and drove away, not just a few hundred thousand hardcore Ron Paul supporters, but a bunch of non-Paulite Rs. He lost FAR more than the margin by which he lost some key states in the general election.
The behavior of his people in the primary/caucus period proved they couldn't be trusted with government power. So they got what they deserved. And I'm proud to have been a part of it.
Take that, Neocons!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But really! I was expecting Slashdot to have this news tomorrow at the earliest!
The electoral college is fine. The problem is the Winner Takes All system. The founding fathers never intended that.
Obama may not be perfect, but at least he doesn't wear magic underpants. I don't think america's reputation would recover if they handed control of their nuclear arsenal over to _that_ particular flavour of crazy.
Hey, don't knock magic undies. I traded an excellent sword for my +7 Knickers of Protection, Levitation, and Seduction.
Only problem is that they can only provide two benefits at a time, so I have to avoid some of the obvious things that come to mind.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And both seem to want to increase government surveillance and trade freedom for safety.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Then you'll see a huge difference.
In your opinion, do you think an Al Gore administration would have led us into war with Iraq?
Oh well. I guess I'll go watch Fox News slip into a channel-wide suicidal depression.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If they can't beat Obama in this economy, with his results, they really need to stare at their navels and figure out why people hate them so much. They can start with GWB, one of the worst presidents in history, move on to what they think of rape, and then figure how much they need the religious nutjobs that forms their so called base. Their anti-science, anti-women BS is driving the country away from them.
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.
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.
Sorry Canuck, no hockey, no trades.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Also, to repeat it, for no apparent reason, 11 weeks from now.
This person does not speak for us. Harper is... uncomfortably far right for many Canadians. And yet still sits to the left of Obama on many issues. He only appears deranged and extreme compared to our regular variety of center-left or outright left politician.
Well, no, he is a little deranged all on his own. But still, we'll take him over damn near anyone you could send us in return. Should only be another election or two before his party collapses on itself and we can move on.
Mitts strategy was to rely on moderate Republicans (who vote for the party and what it ideally stands for, even if it falls short) and appease the far right, in an effort to push him over the line. Essentially playing the numbers game (Hey, it made him rich!).
The Republicans didn't bother trying to engage broader America. This is now proven to be a loser move (and demographics are against this). So: Is the Republican party going to move towards the centre or go further right? A reagan-esque war is about to happen in the GOP.
...Thankyou American voting public.
We choose between the party that taxes us to subsidize farmers and hollywood, or the party that taxes us to subsidize banks and oil companies. You may claim there is a difference, but I don't see enough of one for it to matter.
Geez. Anyone can list some things that they don't like and both parties do. Do you seriously generalize that to no meaningful differences at all?
And there are also matters of degree. For example, I think Obama is a jerk (or criminal) for allowing the drone attacks to continue and even escalate, but at least he's not trying to rush is into a war with Iraq.
Your values may be very different from mind, but you can easily spot topics where the parties differ significantly, if you pay attention and think for yourself instead of joining in the knee-jerking.
Vote the worst bastards out, then start working on the next layer.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If either DemoPublican candidate had promised to abolish the TSA, and to put some sanity into copyright, and otherwise respect the Constitution, I might have voted for him.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Otherwise we'd never have been certain that 93% of people voted Obama and the other 88% voted Romney.
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.
Here's a specific difference: 2 trillion dollars in additional defense spending. (That is equal to 4,000 times Soylindra). Good idea or bad idea?
At lest we wouldn't still be stuck there a decade later. When Democrats go to war, they tend to strike surgically based on the advice of expert strategists who actually went to school to learn how to do these things. They don't tend to crow about mission accomplished before we've even gotten started.
So we don't have to liberate you - for now...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
The electoral college math was obvious months ago. Responsible media outlets (e.g., the PBS Newshour) crunched the electoral college numbers long ago and were honest about how difficult it would be for Romney to run the table with all the swing states. Many mainstream commercial news outlets ignored the reality of the electoral votes, invented a story arc that Romney somehow dominated the first debate but Obama came back, and failed to cover demographic shifts that made an Obama victory obvious. This helped them keep people interested and sell more advertisements, but became so excessive that it bordered on delusional. Now Fox News is orchestrating a debate where embarrassingly Rove is insisting that the race isn't over rather than admit that he was completely wrong.
Watch that first debate again; it is one of the best televised presidential debates ever. It was policy-rich, even-tempered, and didn't feature any distracting, bogus, irrelevant attacks from either side. Lehrer took the high road and didn't throw any red meat question about the 47% out there and focused on real issues. The press loathed that there was no gotcha moment. They replay debate clips from previous elections highlighting sighs and watch-checking vs. policy issues and in the midst of insisting that Obama "lost" the first debate, can't produce a single clip to demonstrate that it was anything less than an even debate from both sides.
The country deserves better, more honest press coverage. There is objective data here: this was not a close race by the electoral college and some people said so long ago. Any outlets that selectively highlighted popular vote polls vs. electoral college math to deceive their audience should suffer appropriate reductions in viewership/readership.
Fuck man, I would have campaigned for him....
Maine and Washington (and possibly Maryland) legalized gay marriage. Minnesota had a referendum to ban it, results still inconclusive.
Massachusetts, Washington and Arkansas (and probably Colorado) legalized marijuana. Montana "reformed medical marijuana". Oregon had a referendum to legalize, which failed.
The Massachusetts assisted-suicide referendum is still undecided, but seems to have failed from early numbers
Florida rejected a referendum to limit "Obamacare" ("prevents penalties for not purchasing health care coverage in order to comply with federal health care reforms"), but Alabama approved a similar referendum. That will probably lead to the Supreme Court as a states-rights conflict.
California had a referendum to ban the death penalty, which failed.
Finally, Puerto Rico had a referendum to decide whether to pursue statehood, leave the union, or to remain a non-state commonwealth. While this could be one of the biggest actual changes of the election, I can't find any results as of yet.
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
You seem to be mixing up Afghanistan with Iraq. It is understandable, because they speak foreign languages in both countries.
Iraq had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and 9/11. It was all about the imaginary weapons of mass destruction.
...that if the President unilaterally decides to have me secretly shot and disposed of, it will be a Democrat doing it and not a Republican.
This space available.
You had a choice: http://www.jillstein.org/issues
"FINANCIAL REFORM
* Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail," starting with Bank of America.
* Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
* End bailouts for the financial elite and use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
* Bring monetary policy under democratic control by prohibiting private banks from creating money, thus restoring government's Constitutional authority.
* Let pension funds be managed by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
* Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
* Require banks to use honest bookkeeping so that toxic assets cannot be hidden or sold to unsuspecting persons.
* Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
* Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
* Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Good reminder. I don't think people remember that anymore. When they didn't find any then the Bush administration suddenly found an interest in human rights or claiming to be champions of the oppressed or whatever other excuse for invasion they could muster up. Except the fact that Bush made us known as a torturing state made that kind of laughable.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.
Do you really think Romney's policies would have been less disastrous? Did you think that Romney would be able to shake off the control of nutjob right-wing Republicans as President? Or has that question not entered your consideration?
(I am honestly curious)
It's a shame we learned so little from Vietnam. Yes, I was there in '68.
The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states. Civics education in this country is going down the pooper.
I think you're confusing the Senate with the Electoral College. The distribution of electors by state within the electoral college is determined by each state's population. So no, it does not keep any kind of "balance" between large and small states. What it does is keep control of the federal government directly at the State level. The States get to choose who is President of the US, and thus they get to decide what method to use to represent the popular vote of their citizens. A couple states (Maine and Nebraska) are more "democratic" than others, in that they split their electoral votes by district, thus it is possible for some of the state's votes to go to one candidate, and some to go to another.
But the spirit of the electoral college is simply that of the union of separate States into a federal government. When is the last time you, personally, got to vote on ANYTHING to do with the federal government? Never. However, the representatives you elected for your state and congressional district do get to vote. The electoral college is in this same spirit, in that we "elect" individuals to represent us at the federal level.
So why is the electoral college separate from, say, the House of Representatives (IE why doesn't the house decide the president since we chose them to represent us already, and they are even allocated by population just like the electors)? To maintain proper separation of the 3 parts of our government. The electoral college is unique and independent of the legislative and judicial branches, as it should be to maintain balance of power.
Not that I'm an advocate of the electoral system as it stands, but I can see how the concept applies to a union of individual states. Personally, I'm tired of feeling that my vote doesn't count, because it was trumped by urban voters in a few areas of dense population 400 miles from where I live. They have different needs, concerns, demographics, etc, and are not representative of those who live in my region of the state, yet only their voice is heard when it comes to electing a president.
Better known as 318230.
Can you put two and two together looking at this graph?
(Numbers and graph Courtesy of the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities).
No fair, my post used actual numbers and yours are complete baloney.
We know now that Iraq had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and 9/11. But G. W. Bush included a false claim that Iraq was connected to 9/11 as one of the reasons to invade the country.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
... that would be the appearance of safety. I don't think anything that has been done has actually added any significant safety.
The military does not want or need the money. We don't need any better fighter jets or bombers because that's not how the next war is going to be fought.
The next war will be in stealing money from people, companies and banks and, so far, the Europeans, Asians and Africans are winning.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
LBJ made a grave mistake in Vietnam. Now look at who seems to have learned from that mistake and who still wants to blunder in against the best advice available.
And both seem to want to increase government surveillance and trade freedom for safety.
They're trading our freedom for something, but it's not safety (as Bruce Schneier points out on a regular basis).
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
LBJ just escalated a policy that had been set in place long before by Truman in '49. The presumption by Truman, then supported by Eisenhower, was that a domino effect of communist revolutions across Indochina could lead to a Trotskyite victory for communism over the long run (the so-called 'domino theory'). Going back to all the way '49 the United States sent 'advisors' and significant funds and weapons to French controlled Vietnam to sustain operations against communist guerrillas.
Thus, the foreign policy of the United States was to prevent a communist win by engaging in proxy wars rather than direct conflict. But the French lost control and pulled out, ultimately losing Algeria as well. The French gave up on colonialism as a result, but this left the United States to sustain cold war operations in Indochina. Eisenhower increased the 'advisor count' (special operations troops) as a result and Kennedy continued the policy until his assassination.
LBJ just escalated a longstanding policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans back when the country had a unified foreign policy across the parties. And you'll notice that contrary to his campaign pledge to 'end the Vietnam war', Nixon escalated as well. Who just happened to have been Eisenhower's Vice President.
Opposition to the Vietnam war in the Democratic Party in the late sixties and early seventies was only seen in a minority wing of the party that had little policy control at the top. By the time popular majorities opposed the war, Democrats then just rode the populist wave with anti-vietnam war rhetoric. But they had been staunch supporters of the policy from the start of the cold war. Just as had been Republicans.
Either party is deeply toxic towards America with their own unique blend of anti-freedom, anti-citizen agendas.
FTFY. Replacing the word citizen with consumer in public discourse is one of the toxic things they have done.
one that wants to make the country beholden to christian interests (pretty much above all, other than the almight dollar).
the other is nearly neutral (as neutral as you can get these days) on the subject.
in obama's speech, he talked a lot about inclusion.
in romney's speech, he said he'd 'pray' for the other side.
if you don't get that they are *worlds* apart, you have your head hidden somewhere dark.
we got the right guy. luckily, we avoided giving mandate to the american taliban party.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Police/TSA officers are more of a threat to US citizens compared to Osama ever was.
Bush wasn't afraid of a quagmire. He respected the UN. The UN mandate only authorized us to eject Iraq from Kuwait, nothing more. So that's all he felt we could do. That was the reason he did not come to the defense of Iraqis rebelling against Saddam after the war. He didn't protect them until the UN authorized the no-fly zones over Northern and Southern Iraq.
Bush Jr. OTOH decided the UN was unimportant and invaded Iraq on his own.
I'm sure the new security theater measures in USA airports have helped a lot in finding and killing bin Laden. Sorry, but military actions aren't usually considered security in normal parlance.
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.
Begpardon?? Clinton was the first and only President in several decades to leave the Office with a budget balance or surplus. Before him was Nixon, before him Eisenhower, and before him Truman. Obama begins his second term in the Oval Office after adding six point one Trillion Dollars to the deficit. More than doubling it in just four years from the previous eight!
As he should have; recessions are precisely the times when you need the government to step in and keep the evonomy moving, because the banks aren't adding liquidity and private citizens are busy digging themselves out of unemployment.
The unexcusable, fiscally irresponsible moves were made during the previous decade, where we racked up huge deficits in the middle of a market boom. 2001-2007 should have been a time of budget surpluses, where the country built up a rainy day fund to pay for the next market downcycle. Instead we gave the money away to trust fund rent-seekers like Romney, in the hopes that these "job creators" would trickle down jobs on the rest of us.
the republicans are butt-hurt about a black guy winning.
twice.
the first time, they swore that their goal was to ensure he was a 1-term president. they cared little about getting things done; instead they stood for blockage and non-compromise.
they had nothing other than 'our guy is not the black guy'
america is sad, like that. half of us are racists and won't admit it. they hide behind 'the businessman can fix our jerbs!' but its really what everyone in the room sees and just won't call out by name.
the good news is that we just barely beat out the racists and backwards thinkers.
the bad news is that it was not overwhelming like it should have been. a majority but not big enough, considering what most of the R voters were using for voting criteria.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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
1- Because the majority of the current deficits of the last 4 years were due to the wars and the Bush tax cut. Thus, he is not responsible for their effects. He tried to stop both, but met with limited success. Further, another good portion of the deficits were due to reduced tax revenue and increased mandatory spending because of the recession that appeared before he took office. Gonna have deficits during a recession.
2- Federal discretionary spending, which is spending that isn't forced by some law requiring it, is flat or down for Obama's term.
3- He will continue the hard work of helping the country build growth and jobs, and no doubt continue reducing any spending he can while trying to get the Bush tax cuts cancelled.
You talk about facts, but you don't seem to actually know any.
When Obama took office, the deficit was over $1 trillion. Go talk to any economist and he will tell you that during a recession you should NEITHER reduce spending nor raise taxes. Otherwise you risk making things worse. And Greece is a perfect example of what happens when you try austerity during a downturn (the austerity made the downturn worse, so the revenues decreased right along with their reductions in spending). If you want to reduce the deficit then you have to reduce spending or raise taxes (or wait for the economy to get better to increase revenue). I have found it very ironic that Republicans keep screaming that we are going to be just like Greece, and then keep pushing for the policies that caused Greece's economy to collapse (austerity).
It is all relative. If Obama had come into office with a balanced budget, he would have been able to maintain a deficit of a few hundred billion dollars and still stimulated the economy. Instead, he had to tack on a few hundred billion onto the trillion dollar deficit. What is not fiscally responsible is living beyond our means and running up the debt when the economy is doing well ($5 trillion added to the debt 2000-2008). If you do that, then there is a LOT less flexibility to handle emergencies (and the 2008 financial crisis WAS an emergency) in the future.
the republicans are butt-hurt about a black guy winning.
twice.
the first time, they swore that their goal was to ensure he was a 1-term president.
As the number of minorities increases, it will be interesting to see how the Republican party responds. There was a lot of chatter last night on the news networks about how Bush really mobilized the Latino vote, but Romney couldn't get any of it in this election.
Some predicted someone like Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida as a potential Republican candidate in 2016. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Republican party if the son of Cuban immigrants is their candidate for President. Either the party will evolve, or it will simply cease to be relevant in American politics.
In a very safe country, where the large majority of people die from diseases (mostly at old age), the appearance of safety is as important as the real safety.
We have never really grown up. Instead of monsters under the bed, there is terrorism and rogue states. All we need is someone to tell us that things have improved. Reality is irrelevant.
Obviously, it really helps that the media first gave us the feeling of insecurity in the first place.
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.
It isn't the terrorists that will bring down the US...it will be our mismanagement of the economy, and I'm afraid we as a country put a few nails in the coffin with the re-election of this guy. Sad day for the US....
I don't see it. It took Bush's economic policies (tax cuts for the rich, getting our country attacked by not listening to the previous adminiatration or his own FBI agents), and starting two very expensive wars to nearly bankrupt us. Bush went into office with a balanced budget and a booming economy, and left it with the largest defecit in US history and the economy in ruins. You expected Obama to fix in four years what Bush took eight to destroy? Are you mad?
When your wife leaves you broke and in debt, what do you do? You cut spending as much as you can, get a second job if you have to (increased revenues), and guess what? You're going to go even deeper in dept before you can get out of it. You gotta eat. That's where the country is now.
Unemployment is lower than when Obama took office, there are far more jobs available than when he took office (Bush is still history's only President to leave office with fewer jobs than when he was elected), the Iraq war is over and Afghanistan winding down. Things are getting better, fool. But Romney's plan is to go back to the Bush policies. All I can say is WTF?!?
Free Martian Whores!
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.