Election thread

[Buster's Uncle]

Wulf, I just saw some numbers for Florida that added up to around 8,250,000.  I bet those were the numbers you had seen when you posted.  Just that one state.

Freaking Out: The Best of the Worst Responses to Obama's Win
By Gregory J. Krieg | ABC OTUS News – 3 hrs ago.. .



 Mitt Romney gave a brief and graceful concession speech Tuesday night after it became apparent that President Obama had won a second term in office. Romney's campaign went a step further, livestreaming the president's remarks from Chicago a little while later. But not all of Obama's opponents have been so willing to let the results pass quietly.
 
Rush Limbaugh and "the Elves"

Surprising precisely no one, the syndicated radio host didn't take Tuesday night's decision well, saying Wednesday: "I went to bed last night thinking we're outnumbered. I went to bed last night thinking all this discussion we'd had about this election being the election that will tell us whether or not we've lost the country. I went to bed last night thinking we've lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this."
 
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
 
Limbaugh then moved on to an "Obama-as-Santa Claus" metaphor:
 
"[Obama supporters] think that the only way they're going to have a chance for anything is if somebody comes along and takes from somebody else and gives it to them. Santa Claus! And it's hard to beat Santa Claus. Especially it's hard to beat Santa Claus when the alternative is you be your own Santa Claus. 'Oh, no, I'm not doing that. What do you mean, I have to be my own Santa Claus? No, no. No, no, no. I want to get up every day and go to the tree. You're the elves,' meaning us."
 
Univesity of Mississippi Students "Riot"
 
"Hundreds of Ole Miss students exchanged racial epithets and violent, politicized chants in response to the announcement of the re-election of President Barack Obama," student reporters from The Daily Mississipian wrote early Wednesday morning.
 
After getting the call, the University Police Department "forcibly dispersed the crowd," threatening students with a trip to jail if they didn't go home. Two people were arrested.
 
Chancellor Dan Jones said the incident wasn't quite up to "riot" standards - "no injuries and there was no property damage" - but acknowledged in a statement that "reports of uncivil language and shouted racial epithets appear to be accurate." Jones said those actions "are universally condemned by the university, student leaders and the vast majority of students who are more representative of our university creed."
 
Victoria Jackson
 
The former Saturday Night Live comedienne, now an active tea party member, was upset with the results. Here are a few of her thoughts, via Twitter:

 I can't stop crying.America died.
 
- Victoria Jackson (@vicjackshow) November 7, 2012

 

But not all is lost:

 America's dead but Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.
 
- Victoria Jackson (@vicjackshow) November 8, 2012

 

And then the requisite conspiracy theory:

 Military Absentee Ballots Delivered One Day Late, Would Have Swung Election For Romney fb.me/1hpkx8JQZ
 
- Victoria Jackson (@vicjackshow) November 8, 2012

 Akin Speech
 
The Republican Senate candidate from Missouri, who during the campaign suggested that pregnancy was unlikely in cases of what he called "legitimate rape," took a page out of the Romney campaign's playbook. In his concession speech Akin told supporters:
 
"There's one class in this country: Americans. We also believe that the source of America's great strength is our faith in a loving God, who allows courageous people the freedom to pursue the unique dreams that each of them have. And we believe that the Constitution is not a list of suggestions. We believe that ordinary people built America. We believe you built that."
 
Karl Rove
 
George W. Bush's former political guru wasn't convinced that Ohio had gone for Obama, so on Tuesday night, he explained his reasoning. But Fox News anchor Megan Kelly was dubious about the math, asking if it was something he "does as a Republican to make himself feel better, or is this real?"
 
Kelly's zinger hardly settled the matter. The Fox News host then got involved in moderating the awkward and contentious debate between Rove and the Fox News "decision desk." Rove believed they had called Ohio for Obama too soon. Ultimately, though, and after some on-air consultation with the behind-the-scenes crew, Kelly wasn't buying it.
 
"They are not listening to Karl," she said. "They don't care what Karl said."
 
Ted Nugent
 
The man who gave us "Cat Scratch Fever" can't stop clawing at the president. In April, Nugent was summoned to a meeting with the Secret Service after making some ugly comments at a National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, Mo.
 
"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again," he said, "I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."
 
After meeting with Nugent a few days later, the Secret Service declared the situation "resolved."
 
Not resolved: Nugent's issues with President Obama and the people who elected him to a second term. His made his thoughts plain on Twitter.

 Goodluk America u just voted for economic & spiritual suicide. Soulless fools
 
— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) November 7, 2012


 
Six minutes later, at 6:40 a.m., Nugent went from mad to sad:

 I cry tears of blood for The Last Best Place & the warriors who died for this tragedy
 
— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) November 7, 2012


 
Everyone's a Critic
 
Kelly Romney, a distant relative of the defeated candidate, told ABC/Univision's Manuel Rueda that he "tried to warn Mitt about his 'mistake'" in not doing more to sway Latino voters "on three occasions" before the election.
 
"It's just a real tragedy I think that he did not connect with us where we could've helped him," Kelly Romney said. "I really think it would've made a difference in the election."
 
Click HERE to watch President Obama's full acceptance speech.
 
Dick Morris
 
Refuting Oasis's Noel Gallagher - who wrote and brother Liam sang that "nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day" - the former Clinton aide turned conservative talker charged Superstorm Sandy with raining on and ultimately "breaking" Mitt Romney's Election Day.
 
Below is a choice excerpt from Morris's Wednesday blog post, titled "Why I Was Wrong."
 
"I've got egg on my face," he began, humbly enough. "I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker."
 
We can debate whether or not an incumbent president makes a squeaking sound while surpassing 300 electoral votes on his "re-election night" some other time, but in the meantime, Morris gets down to the real reason for Obama's win:
 
"The more proximate cause of my error was that I did not take full account of the impact of hurricane Sandy and of Governor Chris Christie's bipartisan march through New Jersey arm in arm with President Obama. Not to mention Christie's fawning promotion of Obama's presidential leadership. It made all the difference.
 
[Sleezebag]
 
The birther's meltdown is well-documented at this point. And that's a good thing, because he deleted some of his more provocative and inaccurate ("more votes equals a loss… revolution in this country") tweets over the past 24 hours. Of what remains, there is this call for what we might understand to be a friendly group visit to our nation's capital.

 We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!
 
- Donald J. [Sleezebag] (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

 

Let's end this on a positive note:

 We have to make America great again!
 
- Donald J. [Sleezebag] (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

http://news.yahoo.com/freaking-best-worst-responses-obamas-win-193457867--abc-news-politics.html



I love it when those clowns manage to actually embarrass themselves.  They get a lot more of a free ride almost all the time than they should.

[Buster's Uncle]

A Continuum of Post-Romney Defeat GOP Meltdowns
By Elspeth Reeve | The Atlantic Wire – 3 hrs ago.. .


If we want to know which way the Republican Party is headed after its big losses on Tuesday, it helps to look at how conservatives are explaining Mitt Romney's loss to themselves. "This should have been a slam dunk," Rush Limbaugh said on Wednesday. "But it wasn't. There are reasons why. We're gonna have to dig deep to find them and we're gonna have to be honest with ourselves when we find the answers to this." From Republican pollsters to talking heads to activists, the reactions are on a continuum from analytical to thoughtful to insane. Here's a guide to the diggingm  deep and not-so-deep:
 
RELATED: The Difference Between Harry Reid and a Birther

How can we make minorities like us?

RELATED: Ames Has Gotten Rather Mean Lately

Because most of the pre-Election Day poll denialism was focused on demographics -- that there was no way the portion of the 2012 electorate that was black and Latino would be as high as in 2008, much less higher -- much of the post-Election Day soul-searching was focused on why the Republican Party is so unpopular with those groups.
 
RELATED: Gingrich Blames Obama for His Attacks on Romney

At The Daily Beast, David Frum, who was outsed from the conservative movement for saying Republicans should have negotiated with President Obama on Obamacare, says that just being pro-immigration won't help the party. "It's necessary of course to refrain from insulting Latinos, or, for that matter, anybody," Frum writes. "But the crying need in the GOP is for a more middle-class orientation to politics, one that addresses concerns like healthcare as well as debts and deficits."
 
RELATED: Romney Ruined a Perfectly Good Moment for Righteous Outrage

However, many prominent conservatives still in good standing failed to meet Frum's first requirement -- the no insults part -- even as they were talking about their unpopularity among those groups. On election night, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said if Romney loses, it's because non-whites want free stuff.
 

"The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore. And 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. Whereby 20 years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority."
 
Rush Limbaugh, too, was at a loss to explain why minorities don't like the GOP. After all, he can name some black and Latino Republicans:
 

Let me take you back to the Republican convention. We had Suzanne Martinez, female Hispanic governor, New Mexico. We had Condoleezza Rice, African-American, former secretary of state.  Both of those people imminently qualified, terrifically achieved... We had Marco Rubio.  We had a parade of minorities who have become successful Americans... Now, why didn't that work, folks?
 
He continued with this theme later in the show:


It doesn't count with Obama voters about whom it is said that stuff matters most. It doesn't count.  Why not? Why, putting it somewhat coarsely, why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Condoleezza Rice?
 
People voted for Obama because they want free things.

RELATED: Mitt Romney Is a Twihard

In the minds of some conservatives, like Bill O'Reilly, this, unfortunately tied to their explanations for why Republicans are unpopular with minorities. But others don't make it a race thing. The whole country has gone to seed, Ann Coulter says. "If Mitt Romney cannot be elected, we've reached the tipping point. We have more takers than makers,"  a forlorn Coulter told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. America "no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts." The Israeli paper owned by Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who blew so much money on the election, ran the headline, "America Chose Socialism."
 
Limbaugh hit on this theme too. "It's just very difficult to beat Santa Claus," he said. "People are not going to vote against Santa Claus, especially if the alternative is being your own Santa Claus." He continued that Obama supporters "think the Democrat Party's gonna punish the people who have unfairly gotten stuff that they shouldn't have. They got more stuff than other people have stuff and that stuff's gotta be redistributed."
 
It's not entirely about free stuff, says John Hayward at Human Events. "It’s really a battle of irresponsibility vs. freedom." He writes that conservatives must explain the true cost of free stuff, "A good portion of the middle-class 'free stuff' crowd, including quite a few of the working poor, would be much less receptive to Big Government if they appreciated that its financing is not a painless skimming of loot from bulging treasure vaults."
 
Was one of our own lying to us?

It's taken for granted that any campaign would feed a bunch of… let's call it malarkey to the press. But was the campaign feeding malarky to donors, too? Where does the malarkey line stop? Politico's James Hohmann and Anna Palmer report that Romney's loss "shocked many who had heard self-assured projections about voter enthusiasm and turnout in private conference calls and meetings in the campaign's final stretch."
 
Romney backers bought the poll deniers' argument that white voters would be a bigger portion of the electorate. But that didn't happen. In Ohio, for example, blacks were 15 percent of the electorate, up from 11 percent in 2008. Romney wasn't close to turning Pennsylvania red. Politico reports an anonymous Republican operative said, "I think Republicans are split right now between confused and shocked, and also I think they are wondering did the Romney campaign have numbers we didn’t have... Was last week a head fake, or were they just not that smart?"
 
Karl Rove's super PAC Crossroads USA spent $100 million this election, and couldn't win Senate seats or the presidency for Republicans. Rick Tyler, who worked for Todd Akin, told BuzzFeed's Rebecca Berg, "Rove spends more for Republican candidates than the NRSC and the NRCC. He's running things... Rove is definitely a problem." Of that $100 million wasted, Tyler said, "It's either malpractice or it's corrupt."
 
The solution is to hurt myself to spite people who might have voted for Obama.

A Las Vegas business owner immediately fired 22 people after Obama's election in anticipation of economic hardship. The anonymous businessman told radio host Kevin Wall on 100.5 KXNT that he'd warned his employees he'd have to take drastic measures to prepare for the costs of Obamacare.
 

"Well, unfortunately, and most of my employees are Hispanic — I’m not gonna go into what kind of company I have, but I have mostly Hispanic employees — well, unfortunately, we know what happened and I can’t wait around anymore, I have to be proactive. I had to lay off 22 people today to make sure that my business is gonna thrive and I’m gonna be around for years to come. I have to build up that nest egg now for the taxes and regulations that are coming my way. Elections do have consequences, but so do choices. A choice you make every day has consequences and you know what, I’ve always put my employees first, but unfortunately today I have to put me and my family first..."
 
And the award for the most far-out reaction goes to Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul aide who leaked tales of Paul's not-so-open-mindedness about gays during the Republican primary. Dondero said he was quitting blogging at Libertarian Republican so he could devote himself full-time to "outright revolt." This will start small, by unfriending all Democrats on Facebook. Then he will sever ties to Democratic friends and family.
 

Do you work for someone who voted for Obama? Quit your job. Co-workers who voted for Obama. Simply don't talk to them in the workplace, unless your boss instructs you too for work-related only purposes...

 Have a neighbor who votes for Obama? You could take a crap on their lawn.
 
Every moment when you think he's definitely joking, the next sentence shows he's not joking. Not because of like a lot of swears or exclamation points, but because he's thought through the consequences of his actions.
 

If I meet a Democrat in my life from here on out, I will shun them immediately. I will spit on the ground in front of them, being careful not to spit in their general direction so that they can't charge me with some stupid little nuisance law.
 
Dondero's every human interaction will be dedicated to his cause.
 

When I'm at the Wal-mart or grocery story I typically pay with my debit card. On the pad it comes up, "EBT, Debit, Credit, Cash." I make it a point to say loudly to the check-out clerk, "EBT, what is that for?" She inevitably says, "it's government assistance." I respond, "Oh, you mean welfare? Great. I work for a living. I'm paying for my food with my own hard-earned dollars. And other people get their food for free." And I look around with disgust, making sure others in line have heard me....

 What I plan to do this week, is to get yard signs made up, at my own expense, that read, "EBT is for Welfare Moochers." I will put the signs out on public property off of the right-of-way so it's entirely legal, in front of every convenience store or grocery store that has a sign out saying "EBT Accepted Here." I may even do some sign waving in front of these stores, holding up my "EBT is for Welfare Moochers," sign, and waving to passers-by.

http://news.yahoo.com/continuum-post-romney-defeat-gop-meltdowns-194313598.html

That last guy hasn't thought out nearly all the consequences of his actions.  -Like how he's why I hate Republicans as a group with a white-hot burning passion, and will until he dies or takes his lithium and grows up. 

My summing-up of this election cycle and analysis of the US political scene to follow.  Much of it will come as a big surprize to everyone who only knows what I've said about politics online.

[Rymdolov]

Dumb curiousity.

Anyone know how/why "The Left" "the Right" came to be? 

As one who is sinister, I find it curious.

I've read somewhere that it stems from the first French parliament. There were two basic groups of MP:s who sat to the right and left, respectively.

[Buster's Uncle]

Ooh, you're correct.  The royalists/loyalists/conservatives sat on the right.  I don't remember for sure whether that was before the revolution, though I think it was, or after, during one of the monarchical revivals.

[cryopyre]

Dumb curiousity.

Anyone know how/why "The Left" "the Right" came to be? 

As one who is sinister, I find it curious.

I've read somewhere that it stems from the first French parliament. There were two basic groups of MP:s who sat to the right and left, respectively.

It's funny to me because intuitively I always reverse them. Perhaps because I automatically associate the left with progress and the right with regress, and we culturally place the right as a time-forward position when visualizing these things.

[JarlWolf]

The sources I had then were false then by that accord. Still, democracy is a fluky system alone; add corporatism and corporate backing of political parties, of which is nearly unrestricted within the United States (And the fact most of your White collars have magic tricks to evade taxes,) its still hardly anything representative.

[Earthmichael]

It is interesting that I thought I was a liberal until my senior year of high school.  After all, liberals are clear-thinking and logical, right?  And conservatives have muddled-thinking and illogical, right?

So I get elected as the representative of my high school, and go to a national student congress; they ask me what I am, and I proudly declare "liberal".  So they ask me a series of issue position questions, and I answer with my well though out positions backed by a considerable amount of study.  And guess what?  I found that my positions placed me as 100% conservative!  How could that possibly be?

It turns out that the idea of liberals as clear thinking and logical, and conservatives the reverse, was simply public school brainwashing for 12 years.  But because I had read some great classic books like "Democracy in America", "Atlas Shrugged", and many, many others, there was no confusion about my position on the issues.

It boils down to this for me: America is the last major bastion for true freedom.  Europe is almost completely socialistic.  Most non-socialistic nations are either communistic or dictatorships or theocracies.

For those who are trying so hard to steer the USA toward the European path of socialism, we should take a serious look at the end results.  Italy is bankrupt, and many of the EU countries are not far behind.  Not surprising when the governments are so generous with wealth redistribution.  And since the New Deal forward, the USA is heading down the same path.  What I would not give for a modern man like Davy Crockett; when he was in the US Congress, and a bill was presented to provide disaster relief to some people in need, he said that he would give $1000 out of his own pocket for the relief, and challenged his fellow congressmen to do likewise.  But he said that the US constitution does not empower congress to take money from taxpayers, and distribute it for this purpose.

But now, congressman completely ignore US Constitutional limiations, and take money from whoever they will, to give to whoever they want.  Interestingly enough, this had been predicted in "Democracy in America" written 200 years earlier, that this would come to pass:  That Constitutional protections would be ignored, and that congress would stomp on the freedoms that were supposed to be guaranteed by the Constition.

Indeed, we see this with Obama, who increased the national debt by trillions to bail out failing businesses.

The only US Presidential candidate that even addressed the issue of the Constituion was Ron Paul, and he was defeated in the primary.

At this point, the US already has more people on the dole than actually pay taxes.  After all tax credits are taken into account, fewer than 50% of the workers in the US pay any US income tax at all.  Many "taxpayers" actually receive a larger refund than their entire tax bill due to earned income tax credits.  The super-wealthy do not care, because they can easily shift their wealth whereever than want, and can completely avoid US income taxes on their wealth.  They only pay income tax on their work, and many of the super-wealthy do not hold such a job.  Which leaves the middle class to bear the brunt of the entire tax burden.

I personally pay over 50% of my earnings in total tax, and that is with 7 children.  Furthermore, although many other people's children benefit from government grants to go to college, but my children are excluded because of my income, so that have to take extra jobs, go to school every other semester, and take loans to get through the school, despite scoring in the 97 to 99 percentile on their PSATs and SATs.

In retrospect, the year before my first child started college I should have quit my job and gone on welfare, so that the FAFSA would have calculated an expected contribution of $0.  Then my children could have gotten a free ride to college given their SAT scores.  The problem is, once enough people figure this out, there won't be enough taxpayers left to put anyone's kids through college.

Is this the direction that we want the USA to go?  That productive people are actually less well-off than those on welfare?

[Buster's Uncle]

Thank GOD!  We've got an actual American conservative on our hands.  This just got a lot more interesting. 

EM, with all respect, that's a load of crap once you got past your personal account.  -Except for the line about Dr. Paul, which is true.  I'm writing up somthing political already for this thread, and I want to finish that and get it posted first, but if you're up for a raucous, passionate, political argument, I'd be interested in getting into it. 

I'd been assuming all along that you were a Euro, because that's the safe bet in MP...

[Unorthodox]

I always love this argument. 

Have you ever lived on this "free ride welfare"?  I say try it for a year before saying how much better off you are.  I've been there as a child, I climbed my way out as fast as I could.  I have an aunt who's "better off" staying at home and taking care of her 4 kids with downs than she is working.  No, she makes less on welfare, but working (as a nurse) wouldn't cover the care she provides herself at home. 

The stupid thing is this whole 'economic crisis' would be extremely easy to fix, honestly.  Purchasing requirements on govt contracts are LUDICROUS.  It costs us AT LEAST twice as much to buy a screw than you or I could buy it for down at the local home depot.  Multiply that over a plane, or a aircraft carrier, or a highway.  You want to cut spending?  good lord, look at appropriations.  You could immediately cut military spending by a third by fixing it.  Or perhaps, better yet leave it but fund more programs, thus creating jobs.  Speaking of, look at all the jobs being held up in the bidding process right now.  Why?  party politics, plain and simple.  Literally billions in contracts being held up, and companies laying off as a result when they could retain people.  I'm looking at military, Nasa, and domestic programs, all held up.  And, yes, right now it's the Republicans purposely holding some of this up, or it has been.  But, the Democrats pulled the same crap on Bush's administration.

My measly 3 mil contract HAS the money, it's set aside, but IT'S NOT BEING SPENT RIGHT NOW, AND HASN'T FOR A YEAR simply because someone wouldn't sign till after the election, hoping to grind it to a halt and influence voting.  YES.  Well, guess what, now there's new people, they gotta review it, so that money sits for another 3 months, minimum.  Months people are not being hired, on a contract that should be being worked, but isn't, and wont until some stupid ass signs something.   

CONGRESS is the one grinding the economy to a halt, and it's sickening.  But, let the talking heads keep convincing you it's all one side or the other.  It's the whole "we'll block everything" mentality both sides have adopted the last ten+ years. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I object to the 'both sides' line at the end.  I WISH the Democrats had been doing their duty as the opposition -and as Americans who cared about freedom and the Constitution, IF they did, which is not in evidence- 10 years ago and done a little blocking.

[Unorthodox]

They were holding up contracts under Bush, just to hold them up.  I probably couldn't list names, as I don't have access to the specific example programs anymore.  The former company was a lot broader in it's scope.  Right now the Rep are the ones in the "block everything" mode, but the Dems did it as well.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, it's a dirty process alright, but how can someone in your industry not know that half the overprice of that screw is the way the Penatagon pays under the table for off-the-books research programs they can't have the politicians picking over and busting security in the process?

[Unorthodox]

Oh, that's not where it goes on a cost plus contract.  That's essentially spending taxpayer money directly.  But, you have to buy from companies that meet certain requirements.  (or more precisely you get rated on how well you meet those requirements and it factors into your award fee).  So, you need to buy from a company that is a 'small business', woman owned, minority owned, veteran owned, disability owned, etc etc.  Well, people have gamed the system.  The worst example I can remember is when I first started and tried to buy some Pallets for $5 down the street.  By the time it went through the process, they cost $13 and we paid a company in China that met all the requirements who in turn hired that company down the street to send them over to us.  I'm baffled how it went to a Chinese broker, but they're "owned" by a person with all the check marks. 

Obama actually TRIED to fix this (or rather had some committee write something to fix it), but it made it worse.  Added more checks which only go to slow down the whole procurement and didn't really solve the root problem. 

No, your $1000 toilet seat contracts are another thing all together. 

[cryopyre]

It is interesting that I thought I was a liberal until my senior year of high school.  After all, liberals are clear-thinking and logical, right?  And conservatives have muddled-thinking and illogical, right?

So I get elected as the representative of my high school, and go to a national student congress; they ask me what I am, and I proudly declare "liberal".  So they ask me a series of issue position questions, and I answer with my well though out positions backed by a considerable amount of study.  And guess what?  I found that my positions placed me as 100% conservative!  How could that possibly be?

It turns out that the idea of liberals as clear thinking and logical, and conservatives the reverse, was simply public school brainwashing for 12 years.  But because I had read some great classic books like "Democracy in America", "Atlas Shrugged", and many, many others, there was no confusion about my position on the issues.

It boils down to this for me: America is the last major bastion for true freedom.  Europe is almost completely socialistic.  Most non-socialistic nations are either communistic or dictatorships or theocracies.

For those who are trying so hard to steer the USA toward the European path of socialism, we should take a serious look at the end results.  Italy is bankrupt, and many of the EU countries are not far behind.  Not surprising when the governments are so generous with wealth redistribution.  And since the New Deal forward, the USA is heading down the same path.  What I would not give for a modern man like Davy Crockett; when he was in the US Congress, and a bill was presented to provide disaster relief to some people in need, he said that he would give $1000 out of his own pocket for the relief, and challenged his fellow congressmen to do likewise.  But he said that the US constitution does not empower congress to take money from taxpayers, and distribute it for this purpose.

But now, congressman completely ignore US Constitutional limiations, and take money from whoever they will, to give to whoever they want.  Interestingly enough, this had been predicted in "Democracy in America" written 200 years earlier, that this would come to pass:  That Constitutional protections would be ignored, and that congress would stomp on the freedoms that were supposed to be guaranteed by the Constition.

Indeed, we see this with Obama, who increased the national debt by trillions to bail out failing businesses.

The only US Presidential candidate that even addressed the issue of the Constituion was Ron Paul, and he was defeated in the primary.

At this point, the US already has more people on the dole than actually pay taxes.  After all tax credits are taken into account, fewer than 50% of the workers in the US pay any US income tax at all.  Many "taxpayers" actually receive a larger refund than their entire tax bill due to earned income tax credits.  The super-wealthy do not care, because they can easily shift their wealth whereever than want, and can completely avoid US income taxes on their wealth.  They only pay income tax on their work, and many of the super-wealthy do not hold such a job.  Which leaves the middle class to bear the brunt of the entire tax burden.

I personally pay over 50% of my earnings in total tax, and that is with 7 children.  Furthermore, although many other people's children benefit from government grants to go to college, but my children are excluded because of my income, so that have to take extra jobs, go to school every other semester, and take loans to get through the school, despite scoring in the 97 to 99 percentile on their PSATs and SATs.

In retrospect, the year before my first child started college I should have quit my job and gone on welfare, so that the FAFSA would have calculated an expected contribution of $0.  Then my children could have gotten a free ride to college given their SAT scores.  The problem is, once enough people figure this out, there won't be enough taxpayers left to put anyone's kids through college.

Is this the direction that we want the USA to go?  That productive people are actually less well-off than those on welfare?

Well, firstly, I'd like to contend the labeling of European countries as socialists. Actual socialists completely dismiss this labeling. Socialism is the idea of democratically and publicly running and operating the means of production. This is a simple definition, and this means that there are many many branches of socialism (easily as many as there are branches of capitalism), but Europe does not adhere to this. Most European countries are social democracies, or as socialists tend to pejoratively term them "band-aid capitalism". It is an attempt to balance out the authoritarianism of private property by creating social safety nets which prevent some sort of neo-serfdom or industrial age class disparity.

And I support Socialism on the simple foundational idea that private property is inherently unethical. To claim that someone who owns stock/capital/property deserves to experience an exponential increase in wealth while everyone else works for a wage is, to me, inherently unfair. One can have market competition without private property ownership on the basis of co-operative operation of firms. I find this to be preferable because it:

A. Increases competition, modern firms internally operate without a market (theory of the firm)

B. Balances out standards of living (democratic operation decreases the authoritarian and planned distribution of goods within the firm)

C. Maintains market signalling (market socialism still has the benefit of signalling where goods are in demand efficiently, there is little loss)

So I maintain that restructuring firms and requiring their democratic operation would alleviate many of the problems capitalism faces today. There are obvious kinks, but I still view it as a vast improvement (it's not as if the multitude of capitalist theories are "kinkless").

[Buster's Uncle]

For my international friends, let me explain that this election was between two VERY weak candidates.  There’s been a lot of lesser of two evils elections during the near 30 years of my political life, but this is absolutely the worst at the presidential  level I’ve ever witnessed.

Bakrama has been a mediocre president.  Period.  Gitmo is still open, and the economy is still in the toilet.  He has failed in the area of his greatest potential, as an inspirational leader.  His healthcare reform is lame -insurance is NOT the answer- and he’s continued to try to be conciliatory in the face of the least sanely reasonable House of Representatives in modern times -they’ve appealed Obamacare 32 times, knowing for sure it wouldn‘t get past the Senate after the first time; is that sane?- for years after it was clear that trying to meet them in the middle didn’t work and never would. 

As Cry and I discussed earlier in the thread, the Socialist the right accuses him of being is just NOT what he is, when some of us would have LIKED a touch of socialism to remedy the ridiculous statist (that’s a polite term for fascist) excesses of the Bush occupation.  At the time that we needed a bold new direction following a strong and bold LEADER, his “Change you can believe in” turned out to be “Not one tenth as bad as the last guy”, which just. isn’t. good. enough.  Something about the man inspired people’s imagination.  The right has imagined him some evil Kenyan communist muslim, while the left has been disappointed he turned out not to be the progressive messiah they thought he would be, and many of them have been angry about it for over three years.

We needed a leader.  A leader who persuaded the American people of what is so plain to the rest of the world - that the Bush/Cheney way was wrong, both morally and practically, and not in our national interests.  He turns out not to be that leader.


Mitt Romney is a good man; maybe a VERY good man.  I believe that.  I don’t think he’s QUITE presidential caliber, but he might have risen to the challenge.  His problem?  To begin with, like Bakrama four years ago, he simply didn’t have enough experience as a public servant holding office to be qualified for the presidency.  A term as Governor of a populous state like Massachusetts might qualify if he’d held lower offices and worked his way up, but that and a couple of failed runs for national office is insufficient.  And to my shame, absolutely no one ever talked about this, even less than they did about Bakrama before him.  This is a country with many very stupid people in it, and stupid ideas get more traction than they should, while the smart-but-hard-to-explain ones are often unheard - TV has that effect.

The list of his problems goes on; he’s a Mormon, which is offensive to the Christians of the Republicans’ political base.  Despite what he’s said all year, he’s actually something of a liberal by Republican standards - that goes over poorly with the small-government conservatives and the social (moral) conservatives alike. 

The biggest single problem ANY Republican candidate for President faces, not just Romney, (McCain had horrible trouble with this, too, which was much of his undoing) is that the Republican Party is a deeply schizophrenic organization.  The social conservatives (those church people you Euros think so little of, and you’re right when it comes to politics) and the small-government (or what I call political) conservatives have no business being in the same party.  They mostly all agree about the low taxes and balanced budgets (although the Republicans in office are at least as bad about balanced budgets in practice - Clinton, a Democrat, submitted balanced budgets to Congress; something no Republican president in my 47 years has done) and, in theory, about small government.  And most of the political conservatives are least sympathetic to the moral stances of the social conservatives.   But those social conservatives (think Tea Party, which amusingly enough, began as a libertarian political conservative movement and than got taken over hijacked by the social conservative/idiots) always support laws regulating moral issues, always want greater powers for the police, support trade sanctions on countries they don’t like, want more guards on the Mexican border (Canadians being, apparently, white enough to not matter) and LOVED the Bush/Cheney gang while they waged war on an irrelevant-to-9/11 nation and sent American citizens to camps.  THIS is the measure of devotion to small government on the part of the statist social conservatives, which is deeply offensive to any intelligent political conservative who’s thought about it.  It’s why Ron Paul, hands-down one of the most conservative members of Congress fought the Bush gang tooth and nail.  He actually loves America and believes in the US constitution - an attitude out of style on the right, though the right mostly doesn’t realize it.

So no candidate can possibly please both Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.  All candidates for major office have that problem, but the last two Republican presidential nominees have been ruined by it.  Ruined.  Romney had to pretend to be far more conservative than he is, which hurt him horribly.  Talk on the right in the last two days indicates some thinkers on the right are beginning to realize this, but far more of the talk is about appealing to latinos - a vein pursuit, as the wealth and status quo party will NEVER have as much appeal to poor people.

Now, the part that I think will shock anyone who’s seen me talk politics online: I am a social conservative.

I grew up Southern Baptist.  That was before the denomination turned into virtually a wing of the Republican Party in the 80’s (which is a bigger reason than my later crisis of faith that you won’t catch me in a Southern Baptist church - that, and I can’t stand being around people wearing too much perfume) but it nonetheless strongly informs my world view.  I grew up around these people.  I understand them and speak their language, and still share most of their personal values.  I’m a prude, folks, just like them.

Where we part ways is in theology (Jesus said “"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's", which I think applies to a LOT more than paying your taxes) and in interpretation.  Jesus said “Go and sin no more” to the adulteress he rescued, but he also said a lot more things like “Feed my sheep” and the thing about turning the other cheek.  I don’t think he’d like the wealth-and-selfishness party one whit more than the do-as-thou-wilt-as-long-as-no-one-gets-hurt party, if that.  In fact, I think he’d be on the steps of the temple railing against the modern Pharisees a lot harder than the modern Sadducees.  Just like in the old days.

I just think personal morality has no place in government; it is a matter for preaching and persuasion, and anyone who doesn’t see that misunderstood their Bible, or hasn’t thought it out.

And I furthermore think that the political conservatives are right a good half the time.  Government is a fat, stupid, inefficient thing, ravenous for your money, your time and dignity, and your freedom.  It cares about its rules more than it does about people.

Every time I have to deal with the medical profession, it is proven over and over.  Likewise for dealing with the DMV.

My problem with the social conservatives is that they are just. plain. wrong. politically, (and stupid) even though I’m technically one of them.  My problem with the political conservative is that they are heartless and selfish, and run with a bunch of jerks.  My problem with the right as a whole?  Well-

Jesse Helms’ big money and nasty attacks style - Ronald Regan’s simple (stupid) answers to complex questions and nasty attacks style.  It is religiously embraced by the right these days, and I, not all that liberal-looking outside labor issues in any decent light, have been offended and driven away and polarized by the hateful behavior, lies and fantasies of the right.  Do not dare, EVER, insinuate that I don’t love America, the US Constitution and most importantly of all freedom, justice and fairness.  -Also?  Not a big fan of Ted Kennedy over here, and sick of having him thrown up in my face 25 years ago.  I never voted for the man, and that’s just rude, and hurts your cause.

This has gotten worse, and worse, and worse -and worse- my entire political life.  (Tell me that you’ve seen as many “WHY THE RIGHT HATES AMERICA” thread and comment titles online as the ubiquitous “WHY LIBERALS HATE AMERICA” (or variations thereof) and I’ll conclude that you haven’t browsed very widely at all, or are a liar.  In either case, I won’t waste my time discussing the issues with you, because I don’t have time to talk politics with people who are stupid about politics.  Be wrong and able to defend it intelligently enough, and you’re suddenly one of my favorite people - it’s a crucial difference.)

Yeah so, my big problem with those Republican jokers?  They’re rude.  They’re hateful.  They’re selfish.  They’re loud and obnoxious liars.  They went fascist in 2001.  They haven’t turned their backs on the fascism since.  The country and the entire world deserves an apology for the monkey and his handler and all the terrible things they did. 

I deserve an apology for all the names I’ve been called for 29 years, and all the insinuations against my character, for choosing the lesser evil and registering Democratic, and for voting for the lesser evil to the best of my discernment since.

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And so anyway, that’s what I think just happened Tuesday; more people voted against Romney than voted against Obama.  Not that many voted FOR either.

All statements contained herein are to the best of my knowledge and considered opinion true and factual.  Selah amen.