2012 US Election thread - slowly going nowhere

[Rer]

Which ones?

[Brooks Puuntai]

Which ones?

Colorado, Missouri, Minnesota.

[somedude76]

Don't know about Missouri, but Minnesota and Colorado politics are wacky.

[Brooks Puuntai]

Don't know about Missouri, but Minnesota and Colorado politics are wacky.

Missouri must be fucked up since Santorum got 55% of the vote.

[Phey Onat]

All Santorum does is Win Win Win

[Brooks Puuntai]

All Santorum does is Win Win Win

The sweater vest must go on. Seriously though if by some fucked up fate that Santorum wins the presidential election, I will move to Canada.

[somedude76]

lol, no you won't

[Hilmar Keller]

We're talking about Missouri, people.

Missouri.

Not exactly a dealbreaker.

[Rer]

Colorado, Missouri, Minnesota.

And suddenly this makes perfect sense.

(I was guessing something a bit more out in the middle of fucking nowhere but this will suffice)

Edit: Lololol, I'm from Indy and I'm talking about states being in the middle of fucking nowhere. Goddamn this Superbowl smug is infectious.

[Brooks Puuntai]

lol, no you won't

Yeah probably not. Have to much debt to relocate.

And suddenly this makes perfect sense.

(I was guessing something a bit more out in the middle of fucking nowhere but this will suffice)

Edit: Lololol, I'm from Indy and I'm talking about states being in the middle of fucking nowhere. Goddamn this Superbowl smug is infectious.

Lies Naptown is where its at. Party town USA............Actually there really is fuck all to do in Indy.

What will be interesting however and what I'm looking forward to is "Super Tuesday" which is March 5th. Where 11 states will hold their primaries, and by then it should be clear who will be the nominee.

[Night]

Grand victories for Democratic Party in midwest.

[Fartman]

Santorum has just won 3 states wtf.

He's the only really viable not-romney left, and since all three states weren't assigning delegates from this, there was more
incentive for the people wanting to make a 'statement' to go out and vote in it, and those people would mostly be the not-
romney people. That would be my take on it anyway.

[Raketefrau]

I think it's because he doesn't want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

There are no white people on welfare. Anywhere.

[Raketefrau]

http://universenumberfive.wordpress....ndcore-band-2/

Newt Gingrich Rally In Las Vegas Interrupted By Local Grindcore Band

February 4, 2012

A rally for Republican Party Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in Las Vegas on Thursday morning was interrupted by local Nevada grindcore band Traumatic Anal Devastation. Apparently the band showed up outside the rally, plugged their instruments in, and generated what Gingrich staffer Terry ‘The Stick’ Foley called “the sound of a tank driving through a minefield.” Police showed up and pulled the plug on the youthful thugs after about 5 minutes (the equivalent of 20 songs, according to estimates from our grindcore research staff).

[Brooks Puuntai]

He's the only really viable not-romney left, and since all three states weren't assigning delegates from this, there was more
incentive for the people wanting to make a 'statement' to go out and vote in it, and those people would mostly be the not-
romney people. That would be my take on it anyway.

Thought it was only Missouri that was a non binding primary, the other 2 should count. Everything else is true though, even the GOP doesn't seem to really want Romney.

[Fartman]

There are no white people on welfare. Anywhere.

if there wasn't before obama, there certainly is now!

http://news.investors.com/Article/60...dent-obama.htm

[Grim]

The report also found that spending on "dependence programs" accounts for more than 70% of the federal budget. That, too, is up dramatically. In 1990, for example, the figure stood at 48.5%, and in 1962 just over a quarter of federal spending went to dependence programs.
At the same time, fewer Americans pay income taxes, the report notes. Almost half (49.5%) didn't pay income taxes in 2009, the latest year for which the researchers have data. Back in the late 1960s, only 12% of Americans escaped the income tax burden.

Cut the military. Clearly they are to blame for our budget woes.

[Brooks Puuntai]

if there wasn't before obama, there certainly is now!

http://news.investors.com/Article/60...dent-obama.htm

This is what I don't understand. Most actions taken by a administration transcend their presidency by a couple years. Which according to that site shows that within 2 years of Obama's presidency the figures went up. So wouldn't that point more towards the Bush administration then Obama's? Add to the fact that the economy's downfall started prior to Obama taking office, which would make sense that more people are relaying on federal aid in a bad economy. All it seems like is that people are splitting the effects of a bad economy in order to try and place more blame on the current administration.

[Fartman]

This is what I don't understand. Most actions taken by a administration transcend their presidency by a couple years. Which according to that site shows that within 2 years of Obama's presidency the figures went up. So wouldn't that point more towards the Bush administration then Obama's? Add to the fact that the economy's downfall started prior to Obama taking office, which would make sense that more people are relaying on federal aid in a bad economy. All it seems like is that people are splitting the effects of a bad economy in order to try and place more blame on the current administration.

i dont know, man. for eight years the democrats were telling me that everything bad that happened was the fault of the guy
in the white house. guess that's no longer the case. how convenient!

[Grim]

I think its a fair assesment to say that more people are on the dole because the economy went into the shitter. Its not Bush's fault, and its not Obama's either. Recessions/depressions happen, and it takes time to pull yourself out. Even if Obama was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ he wouldn't be able to "fix" the economy in 4 years. Its just unrealistic. These things take time, thats just how it works. Unfortunately (from some viewpoints) he will take the blame for unemployment and everything else because he is the guy in charge because that is also how our society works.

[somedude76]

Presidents get too much credit and blame for the economy's ups and downs. The real debate is whether Obama's policies have hampered our recovery or not. And that is impossible to prove beyond a doubt, one way or the other.

I wish there was more debate about spending and deficits.

[Grim]

I wish there was more debate about spending and deficits.

The problem is that neither of our political parties or candidates (maybe Ron Paul) plans to do anything meaningful to the deficit. Republicans insist on cutting taxes without being able to make meaningful cuts, and Democrats want to cut relatively small things but can't even agree on that.

Example, to cut the military budget as planned last year the DOD is planning another round of BRAC (base closures). Everyone who originally bitched about high military budgets is now screaming like a little girl that "their" base is super important and cutting it would mean the terrorists win. States and cities are hiring lobbyists to keep their base alive and kicking, oblivious to the fact that something has to get cut. The hypocrisy is amazing from both parties.

[Raketefrau]

This shitstorm we're living through now has been building for like 25-30 years. You can't blame it on either party or any President, it's just the way banking and credit have been pushing us for decades.

My favorite thing is that when the economy shit the bed because everyone was overleveraged, the solution was MORE CREDIT! At near zero percent! Woo! Our economy is 2/3 consumer-driven, but the consumer piece of the wealth has been steadily shrinking, masked by the ever-increasing use of credit. All that debt we built up? Yeah, they figured out how to make even more money on THAT. Shit, meet fan.

Anyone actually follow Greece's entry into the EU, the numbers they had to make up to do so, and the easy credit they got, which has fucked them even worse? PIMCO ftw, really. If you take a look at it, it's basically a perfect example of what happened to the US over the last 3 decades in miniature time-lapse.

That's another dog and pony show that needs to end. There's no way out for them short of bankruptcy. Get it overwith already.

[Grim]

One thing I saw today that made a world of sense to me was this: How can the EU insist that Greece get its act together, while they themselves have out of control deficits and no plan to control them. The good ol USA is probably the worst offender, we just havent quite driven over the cliff yet.

The Greeks should just go bankrupt, leave the EU, and live with the results. They deserve it.

[Zakhodit]

The Greeks should just go bankrupt, leave the EU, and live with the results. They deserve it.

And thus the gyro falls... or is that Euro?

[Dunarad]

The problem is that when banks can seek funds in the BCE for near 0% interest rate, the states must finance themselves via the banks for incredibly hight interest rates : the intesrests on the depbt are killing every possibility to recover our economy, the spendings are not.
So there are only 2 solutions : nationalise the banks, or modify the Lisbon act.

[Raketefrau]

The Greeks should just go bankrupt, leave the EU, and live with the results. They deserve it.

I think the main reason the EU isn't just letting this happen is that right now all the negative press attention is on Greece. Once they take their fall, whoever is the next-worse-off will take the forefront.

It's like they've got a slow-motion video of dominoes falling, and they just keep making it slower and slower....

[somedude76]

Twice now I've heard talk of a brokered convention for the republican candidate. A recent article flirted the idea of Jeb Bush getting the nomination through a brokered convention.

I don't know if Jeb Bush as a brokered candidate is realistic or not. I don't think the country is ready for a third Bush. I don't know anything about the guy though. Would be great for all the conspiracy folks.

Perhaps it would be somebody else like Paul Ryan or Mitch Daniels who you may seen recently giving the rebuttal to Obama's latest State of the Union speech.

If "super tuesday" is all over the place we will be hearing a lot more about a brokered convention.

[Fartman]

nationalise the banks

lmao

[Iratus]

I have a question for you 'muricans, honest and no-troll.

Do you believe you can actually make things better, both for you and the entire planet your government is fucking up, trough your current electoral system?

[Raketefrau]

I have a question for you 'muricans, honest and no-troll.

Do you believe you can actually make things better, both for you and the entire planet your government is fucking up, trough your current electoral system?

Nope. President's a figurehead, pretty much just a puppet to distract us usually. Occasionally they'll drag the whole country into an illegal war for personal reasons, but they're generally just punching bags for us to complain about when all the shit they have no control over goes pear-shaped. See: Economy

This whole "non-binding straw poll" thing is not something I've ever really noticed before, it's about as ass-backwards as I could possibly imagine.

[Night]

Do you believe you can actually make things better, both for you and the entire planet your government is fucking up, trough your current electoral system?

Democracy is the worst system except for the other ones, etc.

[Matos]

Democracy is the worst system except for the other ones, etc.

Not sure if you can still call it Democracy ...

[Fartman]

the entire planet your government is fucking up

perhaps you could be a bit more, i dont know, specific about what we're supposedly "fucking up". you say
that as if we're just supposed to know somehow. so please, enlighten us!

to answer you question in general: no. politics/government rarely ever makes anything "better." thats the
nature of government, not of our government specifically - all "government".

[Fartman]

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/12/in...organizations/

i have a hunch that the loons who spend their days and nights yelling into megaphones about "faux news"
don't think there's anything terribly amiss with the WH/MM/DNC axis. nope, nothing wrong with it at all!

[Zakhodit]

I don't think the country is ready for a third Bush. I don't know anything about the guy though. Would be great for all the conspiracy folks.

Jeb is much more like his father than his brother. Not that this is an improvment, just a difference. As for if the country is ready... well we are on the verge of electing someone with a silly name so Jeb seems to fit into the mix.

I have a question for you 'muricans, honest and no-troll.

Do you believe you can actually make things better, both for you and the entire planet your government is fucking up, trough your current electoral system?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Stay out of stuff that has nothing to do with you. We don't pick on the gay sport of soccer, you leave our electoral shit alone.

(However, that was a good troll. )

Nope. President's a figurehead, pretty much just a puppet to distract us usually.

See: Zaphod Beeblebrox

perhaps you could be a bit more, i dont know, specific about what we're supposedly "fucking up".

Didn't you know that all of the worlds problems are the fault of the United States? Sheesh.

[Raketefrau]

Not sure if you can still call it Democracy ...

Are you saying that your representative government doesn't represent you?

Commie.

And also, our government doesn't fuck up the planet anywhere NEARLY as efficiently as our corporations do. PIMCO alone could be blamed for this whole Euro nightmare, especially when it comes to Greece.

[Tyrael]

Hey what about Ron Paul

[Bill Schwartzski]

I have a question for you 'muricans, honest and no-troll.

Do you believe you can actually make things better, both for you and the entire planet your government is fucking up, trough your current electoral system?

Remember that old saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions? America is built on compromise, the very foundation of the system is almost a perverse merry-go-round of compromise. You want to know what we are always compromising? Balancing long term well being, with short-sighted hardcore greed.

A more accurate question would be - "Do you believe you can actually make things better when you are so willfully ignorant and destroy your own educational system by choice?" I don't think our country has a lock on corrupt politics. We just happen to have a lot of weapons.

[Iratus]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Stay out of stuff that has nothing to do with you. We don't pick on the gay sport of soccer, you leave our electoral shit alone.

(However, that was a good troll. )

Hey, you should pick on it, it is indeed a pretty damm gay sport.

[Brooks Puuntai]

Hey, you should pick on it, it is indeed a pretty damm gay sport.

And so is our electoral.

[Fartman]

Hey, you should pick on it, it is indeed a pretty damm gay sport.

so what do you guys have down there anyway? an el presidente? a junta? whats doing these days?

[Grim]

so what do you guys have down there anyway? an el presidente? a junta? whats doing these days?

I prefer to be the Generalissimo.

[Securitas]

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/12/in...organizations/

i have a hunch that the loons who spend their days and nights yelling into megaphones about "faux news"
don't think there's anything terribly amiss with the WH/MM/DNC axis. nope, nothing wrong with it at all!

This website also links to pages like this, so take the article with a grain of salt.

"RAISING RIGHTEOUS & ROWDY GIRLS is here to help fathers with daughters. In my new book, I table scores of road-tested, historically proven, can’t miss principles for raising girls with a fighting spirit, discernment, a winning attitude, and a holy vision to overcome this feces filled culture. "

-http://righteousrowdygirls.com/

[Jambe]

To you goobs crowing about democracy: ugh. Our problem in the US is, if anything, too much democracy (at least insofar as the government is concerned — I'd wager the goings-on of corporations and businesses have far more to do with depressions, recessions, etc and that governments are historically incapable of doing much about such things, but that's another issue).

The founders were quite aware and afraid of the terrors of democracy run rampant and that's why they designed for us a republic with only one branch of government popularly (read: democratically) elected (i.e. the House). The 17A changed Senators from being elected by state reps to being popularly elected, and how the states ended up divvying out their presidential Electors meant the Pres was more-or-less directly elected, too, against the wishes of most Framers (although two states, Maine and Nebraska, are not winner-take-all states). Far fewer people know their local Reps and Senators than they should, and the Senators (because they're popularly elected) are not at all beholden to their states' interests as they would be if they had to answer to State Reps (instead of being able milk gerrymandered districts year after year).

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy.

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

And just because it's perfectly germane, Benjamin Disraeli during the mid 19th-century gave this speech:

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

Emphasis mine. Also from Dis:

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

lss: we dun fucked ourselves. The Constitutions both of the USA and of each state therein are totally devoid of the word democracy and if we had any sort of worthwhile history education here, we Americans would bandy the word around much less commonly. Of course, we could also do much less with the rampant individualism-at-all-costs and the anti-socialist kneejerk idiocy which results therefrom, but that's part of our cultural heritage at this point and our comical egos and laissez-faire circlejerking won't go away until the nation crumbles. It is deliciously (and sadly) ironic that some of the most ardent supporters of decentralization and hands-free capitalism are decidedly blue-collar sorts (i.e. the very people who are screwed over most by, e.g. flat taxes, low corporate regulation, union-busting, etc).

Sorry for the tangent, but I find actual history far more interesting than the crazy-ass fucks making fools of themselves for the GOP (which should, like the Democratic party, just be abandoned altogether).

Also, on the same track, I think we in America have developed a sort of institutionalized aversion to expertise, and that it's related to our core individualism. Many people here seem to think their opinions (on pretty much anything) are worthwhile or worth just as much as anybody else's, despite any gulf in education or experience that may exist. It's fucked up. Everybody's voice matters equally, everybody should have a say, etc ad nauseam. Mega-cripes.

[Malaclypse]

This website also links to pages like this, so take the article with a grain of salt.

"RAISING RIGHTEOUS & ROWDY GIRLS is here to help fathers with daughters. In my new book, I table scores of road-tested, historically proven, can’t miss principles for raising girls with a fighting spirit, discernment, a winning attitude, and a holy vision to overcome this feces filled culture. "

-http://righteousrowdygirls.com/

Sounds like erotic roleplaying to me, to be honest.

[Iratus]

so what do you guys have down there anyway? an el presidente? a junta? whats doing these days?

A president and a half. The now-ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez put Juan Manuel Santos Calderón on the spot (after the constitutional court didn't allow him to re-elect himself indefinitely) trough shady electoral shenanigans... and was promptly betrayed by his puppet-to-be. A lot of his minions and underlings are being prosecuted, in jail, or bailing out of the country, while the ex-president rages trough twitter to anyone who'll listen.

[Grim]

Its countries like Columbia and Greece that make the USA look like a beacon of prosperity and stability.

[Iratus]

Its countries like Columbia and Greece that make the USA look like a beacon of prosperity and stability.

Heh. True that. I have to be honest about the situation above, and say that I'm quite pleasantly surprised of how it turned out. I was a fervent supporter of Antanas Mockus Šivickas (The crazy math teacher who ended up second in the elections), and was pretty pissed about Santos taking the spot... and then the main figures from Uribe's corrupt government started being prosecuted and bailing out of the country, and that moved Santos from "scourge" to "well, at least he's doing some good" (in my mind, at least). Now El Presidente is starting to talk about legalization, and I don't know what to believe.

Stabilty-wise, we're far above Greece and most third world countries, tho'. We still have a lot of issues to iron out, but we're not the Mexico-level failing state of the 90s... at least not in most areas. Also, at this rate, the US will have a higher unemployement rate by 2013. Unless you guys get your act together ASAP, the comparisons will cease to be that easy to make.

That said, I much rather see your country go trough a revolution, than getting your old act together again, because... well, I like to blame US intervention of most of my country's problems.

So, please elect an oustable jackoff and then go la bastille on him.

[Fartman]

This website also links to pages like this, so take the article with a grain of salt.

"RAISING RIGHTEOUS & ROWDY GIRLS is here to help fathers with daughters. In my new book, I table scores of road-tested, historically proven, can’t miss principles for raising girls with a fighting spirit, discernment, a winning attitude, and a holy vision to overcome this feces filled culture. "

-http://righteousrowdygirls.com/

thats the best you got? lame.

oh hey here's the latest installment
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/13/me...fox-employees/

but dont worry none of it could possibly be true because that site links to some other site about chicks or something.