2012 Presidential Election

[Ephemeral]

Last election there were a lot of posts in these forums about the shit job Bush had done. Oddly for this election, no one has made any posts about the shit job Obama has done. In my opinion Obama’s leadership has failed just as much as Bush. Just the other day Obama said that he had given up on trying to change Washington, that it would take a grass root effort to implement any significant changes inside the beltway. Another example of leadership failure, what happened to the ‘I will close Gitmo’ promise? Sure Obama signed an ‘executive order’ but followed up with no leadership to get what was needed to make it happen. They can blame previous administrations all they want but this is just a way to justify failing at leadership. Leadership means being able to pull people together and accomplish objectives and the current administration has clearly crapped out in this regard.

My opinion is that ALL politicians are the issue here and not one party or the other. First we need strict term limits. Change it so ‘public service’ is not a career. If you cannot get something done in 4 years than so be it. Any good programs and projects will carry themselves across term limits but we have to stop career politicians from having self interest in this stuff or every election our choices will be ‘bad’ or ‘worse’. I’ve voted since the 1970s and I am here to tell you, doesn’t matter if they are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. They are all simply out for themselves and will do whatever makes the most self preservation sense.

Of course the big downside to strict 4 year term limit is that it would take each person some time to come up to speed at their new job. While this is true I believe that a term limit approach simply cannot be any worse then what we have now.

I think this election will result in Romney in winning the popular vote but losing the election to Obama. This sets up the worse possible scenario, another 4 years of business uncertainty with a ineffective President being completely neutered at getting anything significant done.
eph

[kthx]

First off - Who the fuck is mani and why the fuck would he trying arguing with me, the kid is probably 10 years old and has no understanding of the real life and what politicians do or don't do that affects people who aren't attending elementary school.

Secondly - Eph is totally right, lot of people here last election that were all about hope and change and Obama going to fix everything when he hasn't done jack shit, everything is worse than it was before. Also republican/democrat are both trash.. RP12 :/

[DKFett]

@Eph it wasn't so much a leadership error as much as illegal invasions, etc...
@kthx QQ cry me a river

[Reaver]

This forum sucks. I can't see anything im typing

[mtine]

Change it to the white one, duh.

[Summa]

Secondly - Eph is totally right, lot of people here last election that were all about hope and change and Obama going to fix everything when he hasn't done jack shit, everything is worse than it was before. Also republican/democrat are both trash.. RP12 :/

I was one of the people sippin the obama cool-aid last time around; and while I don't necessarily fully agree with eph or wark's summary of the Obama presidency thus far; I ain't so hot about the guy anymore. With the 1 caveat that he has basically been screwed over in any of his efforts by the abuse of the fillibuster in congress (something that probably now needs a constitutional or some form of amendment with how rampant and dominant it has become); he has done a successful job of somewhat properly patching a giant gaping wound.

Wark says that everything is worse than before, I wholeheartedly disagree with that. The country was in a much worse place 4-5 years ago imo. But also imo, any president ever elected (except maybe 1 or 2) could have done what needed to be done to stabilize the American economy to where it is at. The health care bill was a watered down pos that should have gone much further, troop deployment is down which is good imo, and Bin Laden died (although that's probably more of Obama taking political points for something purely circumstantial). That's not exactly the great hope and change we were promised.

I think he has been an okay president through 4 years. Probably somewhere in the middle of the road area, because he hasn't really done much harm in my view; and not much good either. However, Romney has demonstrated in my eyes that he is a straight up awful candidate for presidency. I am deciding between not voting or voting Obama, and its actually a bit difficult this time around. (at least voting to keep homosexual marriage in Washington State is a no-brainer).

[PapaRaazi]

Both are clowns, Ron Paul 2016!

[Ephemeral]

I am not so sure that filibusters are a good example. First, the Obama administration has had about the same amount to deal with as the last Bush administration did. But more importantly, filibusters are not the same animal as years past. It probably should not even be called ‘filibuster’ any more since it no longer has anything to do with standing on the floor and holding it hostage.
The biggest reason that ‘filibusters’ have become so common is that everything changed about 1975. Until then, you really could not stop a filibuster since it took an over whelming two thirds of the Senate to break it. It lost most of its effectiveness when they changed it to three-fifths. In fact it might as well be simply called the 60 vote requirement. In this day and age it simply takes a minimum of 60 votes to get anything passed. So while it is true that filibusting has become more common it has also become far less effective. The trend is clearly that the filibuster bar is being raised with each passing administration and Congress. That said, obviously the Republicans did everything they could to block everything coming from the White House (no matter what it is called, the original framers clearly desired to prevent a majority from being all-powerful). But being able to overcome this kind of thing is exactly what I think quality leadership is all about. A skillful White House could have gotten things done. Bush failed. Obama failed.
I concur with Summa when he stated, “…he hasn't really done much harm in my view; and not much good either.” The country has been business stagnant for years, this is why I stated that another four years of the same is the worst possible scenario. Whether you point a finger at the White House or Senate the result will be the same, few businesses are going to loosen up and take the chances in this environment. Even if the economy gets better, companies will hold on to their cash with a Democrat White House and Republican Congress configuration. I gave up voting for any of these chumps years ago. We should throw them all out and start over with strict term limits.
eph

[Money]

summa said it all

[Summa]

Idk eph, I think that the use of the filibuster (now turned into a motion for cloture) in the U.S. Senate is one of the largest problems in our country. I mean simply look at this graph straight from wikipedia that shows the motions for cloture in recent history.



Something is seriously wrong there. Some people may argue that what has become essentially a 60 vote limit almost forced bi-partisan efforts in order for anything to not get killed by cloture; but essentially it just gives us watered down bills and a way for one party to neuter the other party for political points around election times rather than actually put the country first. I think that either the filibuster needs to be amended or something like 2 term limits need to be extended to senators much in the same vein as the president has. There is no urgency to pass an agenda in our senate, there is no pressure, and there is tons of dead wood; set up a way that forces them to actually do something or set up a way where they can't just sit pretty doing nothing.

As for Obama and the business environment. I honestly don't know if it's him and his leadership or it is congress. I also don't know if it took 4 years to stabilize the economy to its current point or if he did a shitty job. But I think you're right except for when you say that another 4 years would be the worst possible thing. I think the world possible thing would be military intervention into Egypt or Libya like Romney has mentioned on 1 or 2 occasions, coupled with typical Republican tax cuts would be a repetition of much of what went wrong concerning Bush and the economy (or at least what was in his control); and would be much worse. However, Romney has been pretty flip-floppy, so at the foreign policy debate we may see whether or not he still holds that stance on Egypt or Libya.

[Ephemeral]

I don’t know of a good alternative for counter-balancing the power in a majority situation but you will get no disagreement from me that the current system needs improvement.
I also don’t know who is to actually blame but I can tell you that American business considers this a Democrat/Obama problem. And at the risk of over-simplification I think there are only two ways for a country can fix a recession; one is for the private sector to spend its way out of it and the other is for the government to spend its way out of it. Personally it helps me if the government spends its way out of it, I have no kids to be concerned about and I have a very large Federal grant hanging in the balance right now. But my opinion still is that Big Brother government should be made smaller, we really don’t need more people in the Department of Agriculture than we have farmers in this country.
In terms or hawkishness, I am not that sure that the Executive office has that much influence over what happens. The military stays the same independent from elections and hopefully advise the President free from political agendas. I don’t see any issues with Egypt or Libya involvement because I highly doubt that Romney/Republicans would get sucked into that right now (not because they don’t like being hawks, but because they wouldn’t want to spend the money with such a high political price tag). I think they will have plenty of domestic issues to beat their chests on (i.e. gay marriage, repealing Obama care, etc.) and won’t need another costly war to generate re-election votes. The one Middle East problem that will drive the US into the fray again is the stupid Iranian/Israeli nuke crap-fest. There is no question in my mind that the US (and rest of the world) will get sucked into this when it goes down and the table is set for this to happen over the next four years. Hopefully there will be a moderator at the next debate who has an IQ over 75 and/or isn’t feeble and they can spend some time asking each candidate how he will answer this challenge when it happens.
eph

[gran guerrero]

If Romney is elected he will go to war with Iran. BANK ON THAT.

Once USA and Israel is in open war with Iran, China and Russia will rush to defend their oil trading partner. WORLD WAR III BITCHES!!!

If Obama is elected, the same shit will happen anyways, because they're both puppets on a string for the the banks (Rothchild, JP Morgan, etc)


Elect Ron Paul, he will bring all the troops back home, secure our borders, legalize weed, and bring us back to respectability and diginity.

Unless you want.. war to happen, then by all means. Vote for Turd Sammich or Douchebag Salad.

[Zeebu]

im voting big bird.

will need a new job anyways.

[Zeebu]

if he doesnt get elected at least there is a future on snl

[Summa]

Well I don't know if it's an Obama/Democratic problem, but it is a regulation problem in a way. I am gonna put this graph here moreso for the general image than its specific statistical value.

From the FDR presidency on, in American history, the introduction of Governmental involvement and regulation of the economy has increased dramatically. And as this graph shows, the disparity in boom/bust has narrowed quite significantly. We have sacrificed rapid expansion (if you look at the 90s and .com boom, the slope there is less than even during the late 60s) in order to minimize the severity of the bust cycles, thus private sector profits in the US economy can't really "strike gold" per se like they used to, instead they are faced with more constant profits and minimal expansion. Now why this is relevant is that the end of the graph isn't fully filled out because the statistical data wasn't all there @ its time of creation. And it takes a pretty harsh dip down. The way to solve that, as is suggested by everyone and eph is to either unchain the system and let is go back to the more profitable but disparate times or to trudge through it at a fairly constant slope like we have been and keep our GDP growth as close to constant as we can. Personally I favor as close to constant as possible, but that's personal. I feel that larger cycles provide periods of perceptive weakness and that letting go of regulation once would make it almost impossible to re-enable in any timely manner. Constant just makes more sense to me.

As for the Republican party and their Hawkishness. I think that the Republican Party (and to some extend the Democratic Party) is a large part of why the U.N. has never grown any teeth over the course of its existence. The U.N. was formed to resolve situations like what happened in Libya or what is happening in Iran, but because we have always stepped in and footed the bill; the U.N. has never needed to develop the proper problem-solving mechanisms to deal with these situations. I think that Obama's passivity in some regards has forced the U.N. to start to grow a little bit in those regards; which is beneficial from a global perspective, and indicates that when Iran does come to a head, we may not start a world war or dump endless money into it. However, I am fully confident in the Republican party to "put America first" and get us into another cash dump. Romney is just kinda scary in the Foreign Policy area. Maybe that's just me growing up under Bush and now being scared of Republican foreign policy though.