At 9/12/12 10:20 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Also, like I said before, think of the parameters here. We don't exist in your pseudo-intellectual world where theory is everything and the real world be damned (see: any economic theory ever made). Just because you don't think it's conservative enough, doesn't mean it's not conservative to those who exist in the real world.

toldddd

At 9/12/12 07:31 PM, Bolo wrote:

At 9/12/12 10:38 AM, TheMason wrote: asdf

We're both seeing what we want to see, that is, our favorite candidate coming out with the victory.

Sorry...but no.

Like I said before, I don't watch the convention coverage because it is just political theater: all sound & fury signifying nothing.

I am a trained political scientist and I've also worked on a couple of campaigns. So in the past 20 years I've learned a thing or two about elections. I'm pretty steeped in the history and have knowledge of how the predictive models work.

In the end, elections are kind of like my fantasy football league and presidential elections are my Superbowls. So while yes I want Romney to win...what I want to happen and what I think will happen are two different things. The first (want) is based on my ideology and education. The second (prediction) is based on my training and objective data (professional polls, predictive models).

But if you wish to ignore these things (the stuff the pros talk about and what's keeping both sides awake at night), and just go off your own gut-feeling based upon info that is highly subjective and filtered through ideological lenses...then go right ahead my friend.

The fact remains, though, that Obama's record is sterling -- the website you criticized as "liberal" is quite liberally sourced, and perfectly accurate. Nearly all early indicators favor Obama, pundits are predicting his victory, etc. People will vote on the things that have happened during his term, and quite frankly, there have been a large number of good things. The weakness of Romney as a candidate is definitely apropos. A great many people vote for the stronger candidate, or at least abstain from voting for the weaker one.

* The economic indicators do not favor Obama...in fact the only way to put the phrases 'economic indicators' and 'favor Obama' in the same sentence (and not be totally full of shit) is to put 'do NOT' between them. The only indicators favoring Obama are the head-to-head polls.
A) His average approval rating has averaged under 48% (the number that virtually guarantees re-election) since about 2010. It started ticking up last month to 49% today...but it needs to stay there. It could be 'bounce' (ie: goes up then down) from the convention or a 'trend' (ie: stays up). We won't know until October.
B) The direction of the country polls have been pretty consistently 60% wrong track his entire presidency.

* Just because something is sourced does not mean it is NOT biased. It's actually kinda cute that you think it's sourcing is in any way relevant. I'm not saying that absolutely zero has been done on Obama's watch. I'm just saying that: 1) not much since his stimulus and ACA...nothing much of consequence has happened on it. 2) What has happened (including stimulus & ACA) happened without his leadership. He stumped for those things and organized and advocated for them...but providing leadership for them...not so much.

* The weakness of the challenger is not totally irrelevent. (You read a lot of absolutes into things, don't you? Are you sure you're not Sith?) However, in a poor economy it doesn't matter. In 1992 a weak candidate beat out a guy who started the election cycle with a 92% approval rating. Early on most pundits were predicting a Bush victory and thought that the Dems were just phoning it in with Clinton. In 1980 many thought Ronnie was far too right wing to stand a chance against Carter. In fact Ronnie was trailing Carter (as much if not more than Romney is Obama) in the polls. Hate to burst your bubble...but in bad economic times (1980, 1992 and possibly 2012) a guy the punditry counts out often wins.

Now as for Romney...he is not far right. And I'm not sure that he will flop in the debates like some of the Dems on this thread think he will. Afterall, he did go through a challenging primary fight which means he's used to it at this point. He's warmed up, while Obama will step into the first debate cold.

* This week is shaping up to be potentially very bad for Obama. Violence in Lybia & Egypt undercut his argument for his foreign policy record and could cast doubt on his Natl. Security cred. Plus the teacher strike in Chicago will put public unions back in the news and could damage Democratic party unity since this isn't a Republican vs the Unions but Obama's ex-Chief of Staff vs the Unions. My point in bringing this up is these kind of unexpected events can quite often turn on the incumbent pres/VP/party. (ex: 1980 & 2008.) Obama does not want/need this kind of press this close to the election.

I'm pretty confident Obama will win. I'll revisit this thread on November 6 and either pick apart my analysis if it was incorrect, or gloat if it was correct.

Honestly I think BOTH candidates as of today stand a 48-52% chance of winning. (Fancy statistical talk for a 50/50 shot.)

At 9/12/12 10:15 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Let's not forget that George Bush encouraged Greenspan to keep the interest rates low thus providing massive fuel to the subprime crisis.

That is fair, I concede that point.

I can also blame this on Wall Street, Consumer America, the Baby Boomers, the Greatest Generation, WalMart, Homer Simpson, that angry looking cloud in the sky, and that one really big spider that scared me as a child. Blame Clinton if you want, ...

Yes but you confuse the issue and don't really address my point: it was Clinton who de-regulated in the 1990s while Bush talked a big de-reg game...but expanded government's regulatory powers more than Clinton. From 2000-2004 I was a Bush fan...I'll admit it. But over time I came to realize he was speeding us towards a cliff. You can be fiscally responsible and cut taxes but you have to cut spending as well. You can also be fiscally responsible and raise social spending...but you have to raise taxes. Bush lowered tax rates and increased spending on not just the military but social spending like medicare, education (technocrats...not teachers) and foreign aid. In terms of government spending...Bush was incredibly reckless.

But Bush's shortcomings are not what is at issue at the moment. The issue is de-regulation which someone erroneously painted Bush as a de-regulator; when it was Clinton who was responsible for the de-regulation that blew-up around this time four years ago.

As for your point about no one being responsible for the bad acting that goes on in government in general and the White House in particular then let's be intellectually honest and say:

* Clinton overstated his accomplishments at the DNC; afterall all the stuff he took credit for was done by 95% of the people working in his administration and not him.
* Bush then wasn't as bad as ppl give him credit for; afterall if he's a slow, dim-witted and retarded as ppl claim then he probably only did about 1% of the things done 2001-2008. (Cheney picked up this 4% difference and because he is more machine than man and lives off of the Dark Side of the Force; Cheney did 60% of the bad stuff of the Bush era...and none of the good.)

Black Vote & Presidential Elections

I thought I'd take a look at how blacks vote in presidential elections. This is my source for my data. I wanted to go back to 1972; but UConn didn't post results going back that far. But the results are:

SINCE 1976
AVERAGE BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 87.33%
AVERAGE BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 10.78%

Of the last 9 elections the Republicans have won the White House 5 times and the Democrats 4 times. So I thought I'd look at the % Black Vote Republicans win both when the won and lost the White House.

REPUBLICANS WIN WHITE HOUSE: 10.8%
REPUBLICANS LOOSE WHITE HOUSE: 10.75%

SINCE 1976 WITH 2008
PEAK BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 95% (Democratic Win)
LOW BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 83% (2 Democratic Wins & 1 Republican Win)

PEAK BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 17% (Democratic Win)
LOW BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 4% (Democratic Win)

SINCE 1976 WITHOUT 2008
PEAK BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 91% (Republican Win)
LOW BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 83% (2 Democratic Wins & 1 Republican Win)

PEAK BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 17% (Democratic Win)
LOW BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 9% (2 Republican Wins)

Then I decided to look at the last three elections.

====

SINCE 2000
AVERAGE BLACK VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: 91%
AVERAGE BLACK VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS: 8%

REPUBLICANS WIN WHITE HOUSE: 10%
REPUBLICANS LOOSE WHITE HOUSE: 4%

(NOTE: I almost didn't run the second set of numbers because of the small sample size. One loss and two victories does not really make for a good trend.)

====

CONCLUSIONS

1) There is no trend indicating that a swing in the black vote effects who wins the White House. If you take out 2008 and look at the top three times Democrats have polled the black vote (91% in 1984, 90% in 2000 and 89% in 1988) the Republican won. Likewise if you look at the elections where Republicans did their worst (9% in 1984 & 2000, 10% in 1992) they won 2 and lost 1.

2) The average Republican vote for either a win or loss is around 10%. In fact of the three years that Republicans did best amongst blacks (17% in 1976, 14% in 1984 and 12% in 1996) they lost two of those contests.

3) While 2008 was a slaughter for the Republicans with the black vote (4%) and 2012 probably won't be much different; the black population is in decline as a % of the US population. Combined with Obama's 'evolution' on gay marriage and the incredibly high rate of unemployment in black communities this demographic's turn-out may be depressed; however there may be a racially charged element to the race that could provide a boost to turn-out. My main point here is that it all about turn-out in the black community. It could be 100% but with a low turn-out amongst blacks...Obama looses. Likewise, Romney could poll (if it 1976 not 2012**) 17% of the vote but with a giant turn-out Obama would win.

So overall...the black vote will most likely NOT be key factor in and Obama victory (or a Romney defeat). However, depressed turn-out could be important (secondarily or tertiary) to a Romney victory.

NOTE
** This year the Obama campaign is taking a very ballsy campaign strategy where they have essentially abandoned the white working class voter in favor of making a coalition of minorities. Obama would be the first to win election/re-election without winning this demographic especially white males.

At 9/12/12 11:32 PM, TheMason wrote: Black Vote & Presidential Elections

All fine and dandy. Those statistics are far too general to hold any meaning now.

How about you pop out a comparison in the states of Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. If even just 20% of the 10% black population it takes to gurantee a Republican in the White House go Democrat, that could be enough to tip these swing states in Obama's favor.

Usually Nort Carolina isn't a swing state, and we don't know how much this demographic has played in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia before. If the blacks are more conservative than Cali, Illinois, and New York blacks a smaller shift could mean big trouble now that the general populations of these states is slowly purpling.

At 9/12/12 10:53 PM, TheMason wrote: Yes but you confuse the issue and don't really address my point: it was Clinton who de-regulated in the 1990s while Bush talked a big de-reg game...but expanded government's regulatory powers more than Clinton.

While I may not necessary agree with his minutae, he did achieve the end game goal: surplus.

As for your point about no one being responsible for the bad acting that goes on in government in general and the White House in particular then let's be intellectually honest and say:

Personally, I would credit the accomplishments of the highest two tiers of the executive (Secretaries and their immediate underlings) as accomplishments of the Office of the President. They are hand picked by, organized, controlled (either directly or through oversight/delegation), and generally work through the policies of the President.

What my point was before is that no one cause was significant enough to be named "THE cause of the subprime".

At 9/12/12 10:20 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 9/12/12 08:42 PM, LemonCrush wrote: How can one be a conservative, yet never hold or implement any conservative ideals?

Favoring businesses in order to perform the actions that should be taken by the government is a conservative position. Just because the word "government" is involved doesn't mean it's not conservative. A Pizza with cream sauce instead of tomato sauce is still a pizza.

Also, like I said before, think of the parameters here. We don't exist in your pseudo-intellectual world where theory is everything and the real world be damned (see: any economic theory ever made). Just because you don't think it's conservative enough, doesn't mean it's not conservative to those who exist in the real world.

The thing is the government tends to favor business while not giving the citizenry equal treatment. We pay more taxes and have less rights than any corporation does. Giving industry the freedom to operate with impunity, while taking away the peoples' rights to keep them in check isn't conservatism. That's fascism.

The term "conservatism" is not open to interpretation.

At 9/13/12 01:57 AM, LemonCrush wrote: The term "conservatism" is not open to interpretation.

Actually conservative is a relative term. What is conservative in Sweden is Liberal in the US. What is conservative in the US is ultra liberal in Iran.

At 9/13/12 02:33 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 9/13/12 01:57 AM, LemonCrush wrote: The term "conservatism" is not open to interpretation.

Actually conservative is a relative term. What is conservative in Sweden is Liberal in the US. What is conservative in the US is ultra liberal in Iran.

Ok, American conservatism. Founding principles...whatever you wanna call it

At 9/12/12 11:59 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 9/12/12 11:32 PM, TheMason wrote: Black Vote & Presidential Elections

All fine and dandy. Those statistics are far too general to hold any meaning now.

Actually, no they are not. They show a trend.

How about you pop out a comparison in the states of Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. If even just 20% of the 10% black population it takes to gurantee a Republican in the White House go Democrat, that could be enough to tip these swing states in Obama's favor.

Here's the thing that is unique about the black vote: it is incredibly homogenous and I doubt their would be a shift in the black vote in NC and Virginia...that wouldn't be reflected elsewhere.

Usually Nort Carolina isn't a swing state, and we don't know how much this demographic has played in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia before. If the blacks are more conservative than Cali, Illinois, and New York blacks a smaller shift could mean big trouble now that the general populations of these states is slowly purpling.

Here's the thing, from everything I've seen on it blacks in Va or NC will not be that more conservative than blacks in NYC, Ca or Il. For example black turn-out in liberal bastions such as Ca has been important for anti-gay and anti-immigration legislation.

It's just that with this segment of the population; they are more partisanly conscious than ideological conscious.

What will matter more is how blacks turn-out. So what would be important to look at would be:
* Blacks as a % of a given state and
* Some measure of likely turn-out of that population.

The second is difficult in '12. On one hand they shouldn't turn-out for Obama b/c of black unemployment and some feelings that the first black president only has his own back over that of his community. On the other hand, Obama is black and his proxies have been playing the race card pretty heavily so racial loyalty could motivate an energized turn-out.

As with the rest of this election, when you look at the fundamentals and take emotion out of it...all the indicators contradict each other.

At 9/13/12 06:09 PM, TheMason wrote: Actually, no they are not. They show a trend.

This is an election that looks as if it may come out to a few swing states with large African American populations where the victor, whomever he may be, will win by eeking it out. Even just slight variations in a national trend could tip the scale in a state like North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia.

Normally this would be splitting hairs, but when victory is expected by less than a hair...

At 9/12/12 08:51 PM, LemonCrush wrote:

At 9/12/12 08:29 PM, Warforger wrote:

..........Trickle Down economics is just lowering taxes on the upper class so they invest it in the other classes. That seems roughly the minimum.

Which is not a conservative viewpoint.

.....Dear lord. So Conservative's don't give a shit about the economy at all and just want rich people to get richer, which they do by investing in the other classes. Wait this doesn't make any sense. I don't see how this is "Liberal". Why am I reminded of Communists accusing anyone to the left of them of being Right wing Fascists?

What? So de-regulating is liberal as long as you don't de-regulate everything. I look forward to my meat filled with saw dust and hundreds of coal miners dying due to little inspection or oversight.

Sorry, I trusted you were smart enough to know wtf was in your food without the having to trust a corporate-driven government entity. Does the government also need to teach you how to wipe your ass?

Wow. If everything was de-regulated corporations would control the flow of information, they would also get away with alot of shit like I said. Perhaps if you read up on US History during a time called the "Gilded Age" you'd realize that regulations are necessary and probably why libertarians aren't taken very seriously.

Otherwise yes sawdust was put into food, in fact tainted food was a huge problem in the days before the FDA. During the Spanish American war more American soldiers died because of the tainted food than because of combat just to put that in perspective. Corporations responded that they'll be destroyed if they weren't allowed to produce tainted food.

He did cut taxes, that was one of the first things he did. The thing though was that this wasn't healthy so he eventually had to raise them. Common misconception there.

Yes, cut taxes on SOME. Then raised them on SOME. That isn't equality, therefore has no basis in conservative ideology.

So raising taxes on people is inequality. Wow.

No he cut social spending, thus the whole thing about not helping out minorities. Furthermore it was the military spending he did which annihilated the budget, not welfare.

Cut social spending? By increasing Social Security and entitlement spending? Okay.

The first thing Reagan did when he took office was propose a cut to medicare. Otherwise he stabilized the trend which before was growing tremendously. I'd say that's a good job.

Classical liberalism doesn't work because it marginalizes the American people. True conservatives, IE libertarians,

Wow. So you still think despite me explaining to you that Libertarians aren't the same thing as Conservatives, that Libertarians are Conservatives? Because they're not. They're cut from different backgrounds which I explained.

believe in true equality for everyone.

All serious political ideologies advocate that, it's just they disagree on what "equality" is and how it should be achieved. Libertarianism on the other hand, probably has the weakest definition and at the end of the day has little to do with it, it merely has to do with freedom (which seems to always be made peculiar by labor unions).

It's not hard to see that when the government get involved, someone is favored over the other, and 99% of the time it's industry. Mussolini tried this decades ago. Didn't work so well for Italy, did it?

Oh great let's mention Fascism, a completely irrelevant discussion.

The only way America can ever be truly just, is if government, and private citizens have equal power. This can never happen if government keeps protecting and encouraging industries' behavior of taking advantage of and stomping on the people.

You know, intervention is there for a reason. The government didn't just go by and say "oh I want to destroy business", it was more like Muckrakers kept pointing our how fucking horrible unrestrained business was, they called for a boycott, nothing happened, they kept going until finally a large public outcry came up and yet no boycott, just the government regulating business finally. Thus I find these notions that the "private citizen" go up and fight corporations hilarious, devoid of reality and lacking of understanding of psychology.

Also did you even look at the vast majority of regulations? I mean of course some are corrupt, but this doesn't mean that regulations in general are. Most of them hinder business, not supporting it.

Overall you assume the President is a supreme dictator. Hint: He's not. Yes you're finding things that don't agree with Conservative ideology, that's because he didn't control Congress. Otherwise he was a Conservative, it is baffling how you argue he isn't.

At 9/14/12 01:13 AM, Warforger wrote: Perhaps if you read up on US History during a time called the "Gilded Age" you'd realize that regulations are necessary and probably why libertarians aren't taken very seriously.

You mean that period of time which saw one of the fastest rates of economic growth, real wages, and falling prices?
That period that built the foundation for the industrial american economy?

Oh gee look how much better we are nowadays! Lucky we have all those millions of pages of regulations! Otherwise there would be stagnating/falling real wages, huge corporations sheilded from competition and a shitty econo-oh wait.

#ifobamadontwin

And black people wonder why people view them as idiots.

At 9/14/12 03:16 AM, Light wrote:

At 9/14/12 02:43 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:
And black people wonder why people view them as idiots.

Only racists such as yourself think black people are dumb.

Majority of black people voted for Barack Obama and many of them plan on re-electing him despite the fact he proved to be a failure. Unemployment rates has increased 3%, housing values decreased, gas pries are a dollar more expensive, and food inflation is going up. So yeah, those particular "black people" would be considered dumb and trust me, there are a lot of them.

At 9/14/12 02:42 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

At 9/14/12 01:13 AM, Warforger wrote: Perhaps if you read up on US History during a time called the "Gilded Age" you'd realize that regulations are necessary and probably why libertarians aren't taken very seriously.

You mean that period of time which saw one of the fastest rates of economic growth, real wages, and falling prices?
That period that built the foundation for the industrial american economy?

Oh gee look how much better we are nowadays! Lucky we have all those millions of pages of regulations! Otherwise there would be stagnating/falling real wages, huge corporations sheilded from competition and a shitty econo-oh wait.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA......HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA. Dear lord are you this ignorant of American history? The economic growth back then was shit in comparison to today, wages were fucking horrible and prices were horrible due to monopolies. Economic recessions today mean a couple of people are pissed and moving in with their parents, back during the Gilded Age economic recessions (and yes there were many) meant people starved to death. Oh yah and those wages? Yah say you make 40 $ a week, during a recession in the Gilded Age that would drop to 20$ per week, but during the next economic boom it would go up to 22$ per week. It also didn't match the cost of living either, so in order for people to have enough money often times the entire family had to go to work. Even then that still meant the majority of people lived in poverty (By the way during the "Roaring" 20's, 50% of Americans lived in poverty and another 20% were in danger of joining them). This at the end of the day was not even mentioning working conditions, which often led to things like I said before with Sawdust in meat. Overall economic booms did not benefit everyone evenly, wages for the average worker would go up slightly but then go up ALOT more for the upper class, this if of course why Labor Unions became large (despite winning no strikes) this is also why during the subsequent period criticism of Capitalism was very acceptable and why Socialist organizations reached such performance as taking a couple of seats in the House or taking the governorship of cities.

So yah, in today's economic world things aren't great, but dear lord in the Gilded age you ate shit and who knows even literally back then. It was fucking terrible. To compliment on it being a success and calling the modern economy crap is just flat out ignorant.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: Majority of black people voted for Barack Obama and many of them plan on re-electing him despite the fact he proved to be a failure. Unemployment rates has increased 3%

.3%, and that's not taking into account the economy was still crashing when he took office, it was 10% in Oct. 2010, it's 8.1% now. So again that's mediocre, that's not amazing and it's doubtful Romney would do any better.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: housing values decreased,

Um Housing is projected to go into a boom again, so there isn't much he can do.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: gas pries are a dollar more expensive,

I know right Obama is the one who overthrew all those dictatorships in North Africa which caused Oil to go up.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: and food inflation is going up.

Because Republicans ignored Global Warming in the last 8 years and now its coming to bite them in the ass (which is why they won't mention it), which Obama has done all he could to promote things like Solar Energy.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: So yeah, those particular "black people" would be considered dumb and trust me, there are a lot of them.

Conservatives have again proven how amazing they are at debate by insulting people who disagree with them.

At 9/14/12 07:12 PM, Warforger wrote:

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: Majority of black people voted for Barack Obama and many of them plan on re-electing him despite the fact he proved to be a failure. Unemployment rates has increased 3%

.3%, and that's not taking into account the economy was still crashing when he took office, it was 10% in Oct. 2010, it's 8.1% now. So again that's mediocre, that's not amazing and it's doubtful Romney would do any better.

He'd do better than Obama, though. Obama already proven to be a failure, so why re-elect someone who has proven to be a failure? That makes no sense.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: housing values decreased,

Um Housing is projected to go into a boom again, so there isn't much he can do.

No, home values decreased significantly. It's one of the many reasons as to why the housing market collapsed. You can thank the illiterates like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for that.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: gas pries are a dollar more expensive,

I know right Obama is the one who overthrew all those dictatorships in North Africa which caused Oil to go up.

Obama continues buying oil from Saudi Arabia instead of invading the country and stealing it from them. Kind of stupid when you control the world's best military, don't you think? Or perhaps over-spending was his plan this whole time...

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: and food inflation is going up.

Because Republicans ignored Global Warming in the last 8 years and now its coming to bite them in the ass (which is why they won't mention it), which Obama has done all he could to promote things like Solar Energy.

No moron, it's because of environmental jackasses are using corn as oil. Almost all foods are made with corn. When supply decreases when demand is up, that creates the cause of inflation. You idiots still believe in that un-proven theory that has never been proven once.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: So yeah, those particular "black people" would be considered dumb and trust me, there are a lot of them.

Conservatives have again proven how amazing they are at debate by insulting people who disagree with them.

No, we just insult morons like you who have no clue what they are talking about.

At 9/14/12 08:07 PM, Light wrote: I can't say I take you as a poster seriously. Just like SadisticMonkey, you are an avowed racist; you've frequently and explicitly expressed on the BBS a belief in the inferiority of of African-Americans, simply because they are black.

I won't be responding to any future posts you make in this thread because you adhere to a disproven and hateful ideology. Such adherence speaks volumes about your intellect, and I can't say it would be a good idea to carry on this discussion with someone such as yourself.

I was wondering how one can be soo freakin stupid, but then I read your sig. Yeah, I destroyed you plenty of times in the past in many debates. You call anyone who destroys you in a debate a racist. Hey buddy, the race card died off years ago. Ironically, you said that I am not worth your time of debate? No, it's the opposite way around. I've proven to be mentally superior to you in many ways, such as countless debates.

Sorry light, or jedi-master, but you are beneath me. I speak factually, but then again, you're soo primitive that you probably don't even know what logic is. I'll let you squabble in your own pool of stupidity because I don't waste my time with idiots like you.

At 9/14/12 05:03 PM, hateyou1 wrote: Majority of black people voted for Barack Obama and many of them plan on re-electing him despite the fact he proved to be a failure. Unemployment rates have increased 3%, housing values decreased, gas pries are a dollar more expensive, and food inflation is going up. So yeah, those particular "black people" would be considered dumb and trust me, there are a lot of them.

It's a mixed bag and I would certainly not say that the people who voted for him were dumb, they just had hope (perhaps misguided) that he would turn around our economy immediately. I feel that the Barack Obama will probably receive the majority of the African American vote, but then again there are many who have become dissuaded by Obama's plan for America. Coming from a Liberal Arts University, I have many friends of different cultural backgrounds (African, Indian, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) and many of them do not plan on voting for Obama again because they feel he focused on policy making when he should have been focused more on job creation or because of they feel his stances are against their religious convictions. Many African Americans still believe (rightly so) that unemployment is too high and are incredulous to give Obama another shot. If you looked at the graph you can see that while we might be back at employment levels seen in 1999 and 2000, we are worse off. Obviously the population has grown since then; and on a percentage basis, employment is considerably worse than it was in any of those years. The jobs he did create have been relatively disappointing as they give less benefits for the workers and contain lower wages. Also, much of the minority vote that believe in different religious constructs are unwilling to vote for the president due to the ramifications of his policy making (i.e. his support of homosexual marriage, HHS mandate, etc.).

Obama received a mixed bag of votes coming from many different ethnic groups and he did receive much of the white vote during his first election. As I stated earlier, I don't believe the majority of people that voted for him are in any means dumb, they simply had "hope". It will be interesting to see how Obama fares in the debates now that they know his records, have witnessed his policy implementation, and seen how he handles himself in foreign affairs.

I doubt he'll get re-elected

At 9/14/12 09:15 PM, hateyou1 wrote: He'd do better than Obama, though. Obama already proven to be a failure, so why re-elect someone who has proven to be a failure? That makes no sense.

Yah he would do better by doing the policies that Bush had tried for 8 years which failed to produce tangible results and ended up being all for nothing.

No, home values decreased significantly. It's one of the many reasons as to why the housing market collapsed. You can thank the illiterates like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for that.

So you just narrowly missed my point. Economists are predicting that the Housing market is currently going into a position to be able to experience a boom again, they're just not sure when.

Obama continues buying oil from Saudi Arabia instead of invading the country and stealing it from them. Kind of stupid when you control the world's best military, don't you think?

No you sound stupid. No one would support an invasion of Saudi Arabia just to get cheaper gas, inside the US or outside.

Or perhaps over-spending was his plan this whole time...

Nah overspending it's the Republican plan, they've been tricking the American people into thinking they balance budgets when each successive Republican President starting with Reagan has produced record deficits and debts.

No moron, it's because of environmental jackasses are using corn as oil. Almost all foods are made with corn. When supply decreases when demand is up, that creates the cause of inflation. You idiots still believe in that un-proven theory that has never been proven once.

No it's because of drought which has been hitting the nation and the world for the last couple years. This drought has been determined to have been a result of Global Warming. Corn oil has nothing to do with it.

But anyway, go take comfort in your pundits while I'll just sit back with the entire scientific community which has constantly brought forth more evidence for its existence while you deploy your arguments which contain roughly cherry picked data which you probably know nothing about and still claim to be an expert on.

No, we just insult morons like you who have no clue what they are talking about.

I'm starting to think that you're trolling.

At 9/14/12 07:06 PM, Warforger wrote: The economic growth back then was shit in comparison to today,

Um, it was greatest period of economic growth in American history

wages were fucking horrible and prices were horrible due to monopolies. Economic recessions today mean a couple of people are pissed and moving in with their parents, back during the Gilded Age economic recessions (and yes there were many) meant people starved to death. Oh yah and those wages? Yah say you make 40 $ a week, during a recession in the Gilded Age that would drop to 20$ per week, but during the next economic boom it would go up to 22$ per week. It also didn't match the cost of living either, so in order for people to have enough money often times the entire family had to go to work. Even then that still meant the majority of people lived in poverty (By the way during the "Roaring" 20's, 50% of Americans lived in poverty and another 20% were in danger of joining them).

Wages were terrible? America was basically a new country starting from scratch. Without the capital accumulation that takes centuries, of course wages aren't going to be good. The point is, the growth was enormous. That's what matters.

pro-tip; EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD HAD SHITTY WAGES. That was life. Except, nowhere else were things improving as much as in america.

Seriously though, if the taxation adn regulartory structure that is in place was enforced back then, america would never have gotten off the ground in the first place and would be a third-world country. Yes, really, because the gilded age made america industrialised, which is what makes higher wages and better standards of living possible.

This at the end of the day was not even mentioning working conditions, which often led to things like I said before with Sawdust in meat.

This has nothing to do with "regulations". Because America was in the middle of economic DEVELOPMENT they didn't have the productivity that they do today and so would have starved if they didn't eat shit.

Overall economic booms did not benefit everyone evenly, wages for the average worker would go up slightly but then go up ALOT

a lot*

This is why you don't send your kids to public school.

In any case, the period of real wage increases of the poor during the gilded age has never been matched since. There are no absolutes in economics, only relatives, and relatively speaking, the poor never saw a greater rate of improvement after the gilded age.

more for the upper class, this if of course why Labor Unions became large (despite winning no strikes) this is also why during the subsequent period criticism of Capitalism was very acceptable and why Socialist organizations reached such performance as taking a couple of seats in the House or taking the governorship of cities.

This just means there was inequality, it does not mean that the lasseiz-faire system was not optimal.

So yah, in today's economic world things aren't great, but dear lord in the Gilded age you ate shit and who knows even literally back then. It was fucking terrible. To compliment on it being a success and calling the modern economy crap is just flat out ignorant.

I don't think you understand, the economy of today is only possible because of the gilded age.

NO COUNTRY was ever good right from the beginning. No system could have made live comparable to today during the gilded age without killing off most people and giving their resources to the ramining few, but this would have meant that there wouldn't have been economic development in the future.

I really don't understand how you don't get it that until the means of production are built up, you can't have modern standards of living. And it was precisely the guilded age that led to this building up.

The reason things are so much better now has nothing to do with regulations, but because of productivity. We can produce way, way more things now at much better quality and much lower cost because of centuries of capital investment.

At 9/14/12 03:16 AM, Light wrote:

At 9/14/12 02:43 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:
And black people wonder why people view them as idiots.

Only racists such as yourself think black people are dumb.

Did you actually click on the link? Of course they're dumb, gosh.

Just keep in mind that SadistMonkey is an unironic supporter of social darwinism and laissez-faire economics before debating with him.

At 9/16/12 03:50 AM, Feoric wrote: Just keep in mind that SadistMonkey is an unironic supporter of social darwinism and laissez-faire economics before debating with him.

He cant be serious

Other reasons why I want our current President to lose the 2012 elections, you guess it, broken promises. Here's the link (PolitiFact, The Obameter: Campaign Promises that are Promise Broken) witch shows the list to the promises he broke in the past.

Taken for granted when a promise is broken and not keeped, that alone leads to inner corruption in it's wake and people will know it, even more so when an individual has a history of broken promises, this alone proves that no President, in fact no Leader should ever swear a series of promises that are just going to break in pieces in it's wake.

Instead if I was ever elected President of the Untied States myself, I only have one promise to the American people, this promise is simple but strict, "Helping the American People by the Needs of the American people". It isn't by the Wants of the American People but by there Needs and only by the Needs.

Why by the Needs? It's what they Need, like fix the economy, but that's just one of them, the other things the American people ask what Needs to be done is up to the American people themselves, that including the locals around the area within the United States of America itself, uphold the Constitution, even if it came to the point where the American people ever ask for alterations, changes expanding or even abolishing & replacing pieces within the living document itself (since the US Constitution after all IS a living document). And when I mean the idea of "Abolishing & Replacing a document piece within the Constitution is when such piece actually dose more harm then good to the American people themselves (such as the Jury Duty system, it needs to change in wake of this incident in the UK, the same can happen within the US as well).

Well that sums it up on why our current President should lose the 2012 elections, broken promises is one of the big reasons why he deserves to lose because he's already underwent inner corruption.

At 9/16/12 08:31 AM, Thecrazyman wrote: Other reasons why I want our current President to lose the 2012 elections, you guess it, broken promises.

Implying every other president hasnt done that

At 9/16/12 11:52 AM, tyler2513 wrote: I'm obviously conservative (I'm Canadian, so duh)

Ah yes, it's so obvious that Canadians would be conservative with their socialized healthcare and high tax rates, things conservatives love and respect.

At 9/15/12 12:36 AM, Warforger wrote:

At 9/14/12 09:15 PM, hateyou1 wrote: He'd do better than Obama, though. Obama already proven to be a failure, so why re-elect someone who has proven to be a failure? That makes no sense.

Yah he would do better by doing the policies that Bush had tried for 8 years which failed to produce tangible results and ended up being all for nothing.

In all seriously War; how different are Obama's policies from Bush's? You keep bringing Bush up, but when faced with a recession early in his presidency...how were Bush's policies significantly different from Obama's early on? Likewise, Bush and Obama worked together in the early stages of the 2008 crisis...which means Obama's early economic policies were continuation of Bush's policies.

With Romney's latest attack on the 47% of Americans, I doubt he has even a sliver of a chance. He needs to drop out before he makes a fool of himself at the polls.

At 9/17/12 08:31 PM, HiryuGouki wrote: With Romney's latest attack on the 47% of Americans, I doubt he has even a sliver of a chance. He needs to drop out before he makes a fool of himself at the polls.

Unless he's on track to do worse than Dukakis, there's no reason to drop out. There is still a strong possibility of Romney being elected. The polls slowly slipping away from him means it's looking slightly dimmer than before, but nothing is given until the polls close. Sometimes, not even until much later.