2012 Election thread

[For the love of the game 56]

I'll deal with the rest of your post when I have more time, but I'm going to deal with this sentence right now.

 

I've asked for, and been granted, permission from the MODs of this forum to function as the de-facto MOD of this thread.

 

I want this thread to be an open space for sharing of ideas for anyone, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

 

However, obvious and juvenile flamebaiting like the sentence above has no place in any legitimate discussion of anything. If you want to discuss things freely, you're welcome to, and if you want to ask questions from the opposing side, you're welcome to do that as well. However, obvious flaming and trolling will not be tolerated. You'll get one warning, and then you're done from the thread.

 

FTLOTG, consider this your one warning for this sentence, and for your last several posts. If you have questions about Obama's policies, the debt, or anything else, ask them. But obvious flamebait won't be tolerated.

 

My sincere apologies. Please explain how our dept works. Also, I do not understand how borrowing money is a good thing. Could you please exlain this?

 

Thanks

[fan for too long 2 530]

If anyone believes that Romney is going to do anything positive for the average american, then you either need a massive wake up call or you are naive enough to think that Dwight Howard is really a good guy and wants to win a championship for Orlando.

 

And no I am not a Obama supporter. Romney and Obama are two sides to the same coin. Both are bought and paid for by the richest corporations and to think either will do anything signficant to help the average american is foolish. All they provide is lipservice. Nothing more!!!

[Ibn Battuta 127]

If anyone believes that Romney is going to do anything positive for the average american, then you either need a massive wake up call or you are naive enough to think that Dwight Howard is really a good guy and wants to win a championship for Orlando.

 

And no I am not a Obama supporter. Romney and Obama are two sides to the same coin. Both are bought and paid for by the richest corporations and to think either will do anything signficant to help the average american is foolish. All they provide is lipservice. Nothing more!!!

 

Great insight, will read again.

 

Anyway Romney has announced his running mate (before the convention). Paul Ryan is a solid choice IMO.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Anyway Romney has announced his running mate (before the convention). Paul Ryan is a solid choice IMO.

 

I'm not so sure.

 

For 1, the typical bounce for a non-incumbent VP pick is around 3 to 4 points, according to Nate Silver. The bounce that Romney's gotten so far from picking Ryan is around 1%. If that bump winds up being permanent, that's really good, but there's little indication that it will be. There has typically been a bounce at the VP pick and then another at the conventions, and both tend to fade off over time.

 

For 2, the pick of Ryan does nothing to dent Obama's so-called Southwest firewall, since nothing Ryan supports/has supported will play well in those states. Picking Ryan may very well bring Wisconsin into play(though I'm mildly skeptical about that, since Ryan is only mildly popular outside his district), but even if Obama loses Wisconsin, as long as he maintains the Southwest Firewall, he can lose Wisconsin and still retain the presidency by winning any one of North Carolina(538 has it currently at Romney +2.6), Virginia (Obama +1.7), Ohio(Obama +2.4), or Florida (Obama +0.5). Romney either has to dent the firewall or win ALL of those states.

 

For 3, this is going to wind up being a huge hole that the Republican ticket cannot fill on foreign policy. Simply put, they're going to get slaughtered in the debates on any foreign policy question, because Romney and Ryan have no experience there. Biden has decades of it in the Senate, and Obama is the president who got us out of Iraq, killed Osama Bin Laden, and dealt with Libya without losing a single American life.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

My sincere apologies. Please explain how our dept works. Also, I do not understand how borrowing money is a good thing. Could you please exlain this?

 

Thanks

 

I just realized I never actually re-posted my answer to this after my computer ate my first attempt at this months ago. My apologies.

 

First you have to realize what is meant by debt for the US.

 

Simply put, if the US was to decide to borrow money, they won't just go to a bank or another country and ask for a loan; they'll "borrow" money by selling US Treasury bonds.

 

Second, you need to understand that the increase in foreign debt isn't a by-product of us being part-owned by China or some such bull****; it's a product of countries like China, Norway and Singapore currently running a surplus, and trying to find safe places to invest those surpluses that are secure and financially stable. The reason those countries are flocking to buy treasury bonds from us is the simple fact that T-bills are currently the safest, most stable and secure investment on the face of the Earth.

Those countries' reasons for wanting to invest in something stable and secure with minimal return vary, ranging from "to prepare for a rapidly aging populace" to "our economic expansionism is considered unsustainable in the long term by every economist anywhere ever". They WANT to hold our "debt" because they know, fundamentally, that we will pay them back over time.

 

It's also the reason that foreign investors are buying up so much private American debt; the American economy is completely awesome, we're the largest, biggest spending consumer base on the planet, and foreign investors know that buying our debt is better than buying anyone else's.

 

Third, looking at the debt level without context is meaningless. Of course we have substantially more debt than Barbados does, but that doesn't really mean anything. A fortune 500 company will carry more debt than a mom and pop pizza restaurant, but that doesn't mean the restaurant is more financially stable. So you need to look at a few factors, such as GDP, inflation rate, what kind of economy you have, and what the long term effects of a country defaulting would be.

 

In our case, all of those things work in our favor. We have the highest GDP on Earth, with ours being over twice the size of the next largest country. We produce 21.6% of all goods and services in the world. We are *****ing awesome when it comes to making and selling ****.

 

That also ties into the long term effects of a potential default. Simply put, people invest in T-bills because of how stable they are, to the point that T-bills are basically the stable standard by which all other investments are measured. If the US were to ever default on their debt, all world trade would effectively stop and the whole global economy would unravel. Despite the fear-mongering some of the people who are on the very far-right would tell you about China suddenly cashing in and crippling our economy, a) that's not how T-bills work and B) no one wants that to happen.

 

It also helps that our inflation rate right now is extremely low even against the low projections being made. People like to complain about potential hyper-inflation, but we could actually inflate away a not-small portion of our debt without any real long term crisis from it. Australia is largely doing the same thing without any concern over hyperinflation, and their inflation rate is more than twice ours, for instance. This is also one of the things the US did after WWII to get out of our MUCH bigger debt than.

 

Lastly, we're a global economy. This is a double-edged sword, of course, since it means that a crisis in another part of the world will effect us(what's up, Greece?), but it also means that what happens here effects everyone else. Again: a US default would be catastrophic. But everyone knows that, so if the US were to ever teeter, we'd likely still be able to find investors.

 

It's hard to think of numbers like "16 trillion" and think of it meaningfully, so try this:

 

A man, we'll call him Bob, owns his own business that has made him 250k a year on average for the last 10 years. That's a good living. But every year, Bob has borrowed money for various things: a mortgage, a new car, expansions to his business , expansions to his home, another new car, sending Bob Jr off to a nice college, etc.

 

You might argue that Bob is in trouble taking on more and more debt, and it's entirely possible that he could end up being that way, but as long as the payment terms are something that Bob can afford, the total amount of the debt isn't really an issue; it's whether or not Bob can make the payments on his debt that is the core issue.

 

The US debt is the same way, and right now, there is little financial evidence to suggest that the US can't afford to pay it's debt, which is what made last year's debt ceiling fiasco so fascinating: Republicans were arguing we couldn't afford to raise the debt ceiling, but that's not even a little bit true, and their claim about it being about not borrowing more money was just absurd. They were just arguing that we should stop paying the debt we already had, since that's all the debt ceiling IS. Raising the debt ceiling had nothing to do with borrowing more money; all the money involved had already been borrowed.

 

Back on point, one last thing to keep track of is the deficit. Obama's core strategy regarding the debt level has largely been "focus on raising employment and closing the deficit first, then worry about austerity measures". But too often analysts use the debt and the deficit interchangeably, and in a just world someone would walk on camera and shoot them in the head for doing so. It's ludicrous.

 

The debt is how much we've borrowed. The deficit is the comparison of what we're spending to what we're bringing in. And that's an important thing to note: if the deficit is eliminated, then the debt problem would *eventually* go away on its own, so any path forward HAS to include deficit reduction.

 

The problem with that is that, for the time being, no one has the political willpower to actually do it, since it would require both noticeable increases in revenue and some rather unsavory cuts to things like the military.

 

But "lacking the political will to solve a long-term financial problem" isn't the same thing as an imminent financial crisis. Our current debt is around 102% of our GDP. That sounds like a lot, but we've had debt up to over 130% of the GDP before and been fine. Britain has twice been above 170% of their GDP, and gotten it back below 80% both times. Hell, Japan is currently sitting at 230% debt to GDP ratio.

[Berto 338]

I don't think Ryan was a good pick either. It's probably never a good idea to pick a running mate that your opposing side would have chosen for you had you let them. Ryan plays right into the Obama narrative, and now the president gets to dictate to the terms of this campaign. That's just flat out dropping the ball as far as I'm concerned. Politics aside, strategically I think this pick is a failure.

 

And I've been saying all along, barring some kind of drastic change in the global economy, Obama pretty much has this thing in the bag. Every time I look at the electoral college map, I just can't see any path that leads Romney to a win. Like DoM said earlier, there's no way Romney can make a clean sweep of all the close/swing states. And with the Ryan pick, I think Romney gave up Pennsylvania and made Florida lean Obama.

 

I think I'm smelling a pretty sizable win for the president. That should speak volumes to how important the likeability factor is in national elections.

[barnettej 263]

*You know I keep on forgetting about these threads*

 

Ahhh.... Politics.... My favorite game where I get to see who in the hell actually has a brain and who just follows what they hear or see, without ever really researching it.... much like our usual basketball conversations.

 

Is he left, is he right, is he in the middle?

 

The answer is simple this, im for the whole.... I dont pick sections that would placate just to me. I wont fall into the "Super Bowl" mentality of my team verse your team because it makes you look like a child.

 

I get a kick out of these same politicians bashing the system they are trying to be employed by. It would be the same as Rush Bimbo bashing the Democrats, all the while voting for them ( Closet-Crat ?).

 

What really kills me though is how we treat the subject as a whole, its almost as Taboo as talking about doing a line of coke on your bosses desk. It would seem that we are ignoring a very important part of our daily lives, while its being bought out by people who know this. And so because of our "forced" ignorance we are now seeing what happens when we dont become actively engaged.

 

What I have seen so far these past 4yrs, makes me sick and irritated. House of Rep, has been run into the ground by alot of people who happen to mostly Republicans and some democrats. The Senate is worthless. And Congress needs a fresh start in alot of places.

 

However if I would suggest that any party has been hijacked, it would have to be the Republicans. Wow. Who ever is has been allowed into this party has not followed its framework, from back in the day (Pre-Regan). I mean you have individuals claiming a sub party within a parent party, who in the hell does that?.

 

You have individuals signing a document even before they serve their first day, "NOT" to do something that is logically disturbing and mind numbing (Fix Taxes / Grover Norquist). Not to mention the financial hijacking that lead to a lower world credit rating then what we had before during the recession. Honestly that has to be an historic achievement alone of failure.

 

What ever happen to being financially conservative, something the Republican party stood for as one of their backbones. Instead the Republican party votes for more money being spent on Defense, while cutting anything and everything else.... well until it comes to marriage and abortion. Which leads me to the separation of Church and State, because right now the Republican party is full of Judas action figures from all religions. Pick me, I love God.

 

As for the Dem's, your old and have no backbone. Although I am noting that technically "NOTHING" can be accomplished when all "3 GROUPS" have to agree to it. But it still doesnt mean that The Dem's would of been any more successful, it just means we wont ever know, until we decide differently and vote them in.

 

That reminds me, why does it seem like everyone forgets all of the other parts of the Government instead of the Presidency? I had a guy tell me that the President could do what ever he liked, even reverse veto House Bills. I just shook my head and walked away, because I knew that conversation was going to go nowhere. The House of Reps, Senate and Congress are equally as important as the Presidency.

 

Voting.... Another hard misconception that I have a problem with. Delegates..... screw them. There are no delegates in the Marines, there are individuals that act as "one unit". Each man gets a vote if a group decision is needed, which does happen alot (24 Heads are better than 1). The freedom I fought for and protect, is the individual freedom that I think everyone deserves. Everyone plays their part in this nation, even the bad guys. Everyone should have the right to voice "their" thoughts and have it equally count as their thought, one for one... population vote.

DOM:

"The problem with that is that, for the time being, no one has the political willpower to actually do it, since it would require both noticeable increases in spending and some rather unsavory cuts to things like the military."

 

 

Exactly, and the fact that our current Politicians are not working for us but for their own selves. Looking back on the recent insider trading sandal that broke about Nancy and John buying stock while having knowledge of their future trends. But yet they are still working and getting paid as we speak.

 

Shoot, they even had a Bill pass because of their actions and their formers actions. Lets face it im not dumb enough to think this doesnt go on.

 

People can comment about, well it goes on all the time... blah, blah, blah.... Screw that. I will never condone these types of actions from our highest job positions in America. In the Marines, we demote these people, we ensure the problem doesnt repeat itself. In the government, there is no penalty it seems like. Cheney can shoot a guy in the face and call it a accident. If i shoot a guy in the face they will call me a serial killer.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Barack Obama has been re-elected to the presidency of the United States.