US Presidential Race

My vote is easily going to Hillary. Even though I self-identify as fiscally conservative (in American terms), the GOP just has way too many loonies nowadays for them to be a viable option. Just can't understand why they won't budge on women's issues and gay rights. It is possibly the most obvious vote bank in recent memory.

America desperately needs a third option IMO. The Democrats will borrow and borrow until they become China's Foxconn.

We used to have third, fourth, fifth options but it didn't work out too well. Other than Lincoln, that is.

Also if you are fiscally conservative then vote democrat. All the republicans do is implement bogus economic schemes and siphon money towards people who don't need it and don't reinvest it into the system. Then they spend all the tax dollars the middle class pay on unnessesary war and build weapons and tanks we are never going to use

Clinton came in and balanced the budget. We were doing so well the topic of the 2000s elections was actually "wow, what are we going to do with all this extra money we have now?"

Then the republicans came in and everything went to shit

The most hard-hitting and important "economic schemes" are set by the Federal Reserve. The government is mostly responsible for fiscal policy, which while having more of a day-to-day impact on people's paychecks ultimately pales in comparison to the monetary policy set by the Federal Reserve in the longer term.

I don't agree with spending tax revenue on warfare either but you have to realize that Bush was unlucky in timing with 9/11 . It's not like Obama is any less willing to be involved militarily, he has been asking Congress to approve the ISIS war for the past year. In addition, "all the tax dollars the middle class pay" is a bit misleading because most of the taxes are paid by the "rich".

http://nomoreclasswarfare.com/images/2005PercentageofTaxbyIncomeLevel.gif

The top 1% pay 39% of income tax but earn 20% of the income. The top 5% carry a whopping 60% of the tax burden.

Anyway, I would vote for a Democrat like Hillary - she's pretty centrist like Obama - but if she makes a turn for the populist (as she seems to be doing), it makes the choice that much more difficult. I find the ultra-liberal wing of the Democrat party extremely unlikeable. The only reason the US has provided most of the technological advances in the world over the past few decades is because it encourages entrepreneurship (at the highest level, not just small businesses) and is very business friendly. These guys would rather turn the entire country into Sweden or Finland, never mind that those countries have populations comparable to cities like New York, and have contributed very little to the world in comparison to the US.

Not only that - I might be revealing too much, but my parents (though immigrants) are in the top 2-5% by income and I will soon be in the top 20% (in 2013 dollars) and I find their characterization of the "rich" very annoying. Sure the top 0.1% or 0.01% are living lavish lifestyles, but I don't think this section of the Democrat party realizes how many ordinary people are actually in the top few % by income. They would bump income taxes to 60%+ if they keep listening to Piketty, Krugman and the likes.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/1percent-pay-tax-rate-80percent

tbh I'm in Canada now so I'm not really that bothered, but reading American newspapers is always so depressing.

I do support reforming the tax code to get rid of loopholes for corporations, but that will likely be a largely bipartisan initiative as both sides agree work needs to be done there.

And yet the top 1% (less actually) own as much of the wealth of the US as the lower 90% combined and the top 1% or so have seen their average salary grow exponentially (both in adjusted and direct value) while the rest have not.

And I tire of the frankly false argument that the US's technological lead was built prominently through lack of regulation or taxation on when the fact is that that lead began and expanded throughout the 40s, 50s, 60s and early 70s when the US federal government was at its peak levels of involvement in such areas. The major accomplishment of the Reagan-era of deregulation was to set free the mechanisms which created the 2008 crash, which itself was remarkably similar to the crash that instigated the Great Depression in the US, and which much of that "government interference" was intended to, and appears to have successfully, protect against.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.


http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-inequality-top-01-worth-as-much-as-the-bottom-90

http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/inequality-wealth-income-us/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/business/economy/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-at-least-30-years-pew-study-says.html?_r=0

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Regardless of the wealth distribution in the country, the fact remains that a huge chunk of the tax revenue is provided by the top 5%. So the phrase "middle class tax dollars" is misleading no matter how you try to spin it.

Are you actually going to deny that the same level of expansion and widespread adoption of technologies in the US would've been possible without deregulation? The biggest leads have come by far in the past 3 decades - and that is because of the ease with which people can borrow money, whether from banks or venture capitalists or other sources. The quick and crucial commercialization of government/military products such as the internet or GPS happened in the 80s and later, and it is difficult to say that the rate of adoption would've remained the same had America been less friendly.

Hitlery going to ferguson to give a speech on race relations today. Where has she been 9 months? Where was she when her Husband used an execution in Arkansas of a mentally handicapped black man to show he was "tough", or when he bombed an aspirin factory in the sudan to take away attention from him getting a blow job from some overweight intern, or when she played her own race card to try to beat Obama for the democratic nomination?

Please Bernie beat her because I couldnt live under another Clinton or Bush.

Sorry, you lost all credibility when opening the post with "Hitlery."

RedOranje wrote:Sorry, you lost all credibility when opening the post with "Hitlery."

That is too nice a name for her. I remember when she celebrated Gadaffi being murdered in cold blood by the people who turned into a bunch of despots who have turned the nation with the highest standard of living in Africa into just another ISIL breeding ground.

She is a nazi, plain and simple.

Bill Clinton, for all his faults, and not doing enough, has still done more for African American quality of life than any other.
Okay, besides Lincoln.

Not saying that she's not going to be horrible or anything, but if you keep in mind that politicians are cynical bastards, the Clinton administration was one of the least bad ones in recent history. Less drone strikes than Obama, less wars than Bush, less saber-rattling than Bush senior...

So yeah. Have your objections, sure. But "Hitlery"?
Kind of makes you lose all credibility, as some would say.

VivaStPauli wrote:Bill Clinton, for all his faults, and not doing enough, has still done more for African American quality of life than any other.
Okay, besides Lincoln.

Not saying that she's not going to be horrible or anything, but if you keep in mind that politicians are cynical bastards, the Clinton administration was one of the least bad ones in recent history. Less drone strikes than Obama, less wars than Bush, less saber-rattling than Bush senior...

So yeah. Have your objections, sure. But "Hitlery"?
Kind of makes you lose all credibility, as some would say.

Is it actually calculated the number of people dead as a result of the attack on a pharmaceutical factory?

VivaStPauli wrote:Bill Clinton, for all his faults, and not doing enough, has still done more for African American quality of life than any other.
Okay, besides Lincoln.

Not saying that she's not going to be horrible or anything, but if you keep in mind that politicians are cynical bastards, the Clinton administration was one of the least bad ones in recent history. Less drone strikes than Obama, less wars than Bush, less saber-rattling than Bush senior...

So yeah. Have your objections, sure. But "Hitlery"?
Kind of makes you lose all credibility, as some would say.

What exactly did he do for "African American" life more than others? I am really curious. I mean I was a kid during the 90's, but I remember him being a hillbilly who used executing a mentally handicapped black guy to show he could be tough, attacked welfare by claiming people on it were lazy(thus adding to the black welfare queen stereotype), and pretty much was president over a tech bubble that abruptly ended when the market crashed. People had money during that time, but that was all of America.

He got a bigger past I guess because he was able to go on Arsenio Hall and pander to the uneducated people who watched him, and because his campaign was not overtly racist the way Bush #1 was.

His wife is a complete corporate shill though, and she tried to play the race card on Obama in 2008 lest we forget. She is about a snake-like as you can get next to somebody like Rick Perry.

Bernie Sanders has to beat her.

He wasn't the one-and-a-halfth coming of Black Jesus(tm), but he did something. As I'm perpetually lazy, I invite you to read (skim, if we're being honest) this here link:
http://archive.vod.umd.edu/civil/clinton1995int.htm
TL;DR:
While he wasn't bold and often remained on the fence on policies that could be seen as "racial", Clinton did advance a couple of civil rights issues, and remaining on the fence while doing that, enabled him to give it an air of bipartisanship that was impossible to achieve otherwise. This of course also meant that he could've done more, had he been willing to sacrifice political leverage.

Question directed at anybody: does Bernie Sanders have a legitimate chance at the presidency? I like the guy but I'm assuming no (I haven't looked at his numbers, haven't researched/been through enough elections to tell whether his trajectory is one that gives him a legitimate chance). This is, of course, if he gets the nomination over Hillary.

Because as much as I would love to see a guy like Bernie Sanders actually have a go at it instead of Hillary, I can't fathom going through (at least) four years of Jeb Bush, or, god forbid, Scott Walker.

I've had four years under the joke of a governorship called Scott Walker, and if he gets anywhere near the presidency I'm moving to Canada. Of all the terrible politicians, he is the worst. Jeb Bush doesn't really make me much more optimistic either, but then again, the entirety of the republican candidates are jokes and Trump being in the lead right now is a testament to that fact

Hillary is the lesser of two evils and if Sanders doesn't have a chance, can't see myself having much of a choice tbh

CBarca wrote:Question directed at anybody: does Bernie Sanders have a legitimate chance at the presidency?

No. Even if being a socialist didn't make him a horrifying bogeyman to about half the all Americans he lacks the name-recognition, financial backers, and political clout to win.

No.

#TeamHillary*

Spelling error

Between a socialist and Trump he might

Trump being so popular in the polls just makes me very sad....

I would also like to officially eat Crow regarding Obama... what he's done since the start of 2015 is nothing short of remarkable. Put himself in the conversation as one of the great US presidents.

While I agree, I dislike how everyone seems to be crediting him with legalizing gay marriage as part of his 'legacy'. He didn't even want to do that in his campaign and now it's one of 'his' achievements?

Reacting to shifts and adapting to changing demands is part of the job. By that logic Nixon shouldn't be given credit for opening up China or, as an extreme example, Lincoln for his handling of the Civil War and slavery.

only Connecticut and Massachusetts had legalized gay marriage before Obama came in. Now all 50 states do.

The entire Republican Party right now is devout to denying reality whether it's climate change, the disaster that trickle down economics has been, and the growing and shifting opinions on the LGBT community.

Had McCain been elected, or Romney, zero chance gay marriage is legalized nation wide like it has been. Obama's support of the LGBT community and push for marriage equality had a massive influence on the support and eventual legalization. While he didn't push it as an issue his first term, he made a big push of support in his second. I think he totally deserves credit especially considering the entire opposing parties stance on it and how they fought it with every possible tactic at every possible opportunity

I think the Supreme Court might've legalized gay marriage anyway because it's pretty obviously unconstitutional to deny rights to small segments of society. Had the Republicans been in power at the time, they would've suffered a lot from being directly contradicted by the Supreme Court.

Not sure it would've happened, but if it had, the Republicans would've taken years to recover from that.

RedOranje wrote:Reacting to shifts and adapting to changing demands is part of the job. By that logic Nixon shouldn't be given credit for opening up China or, as an extreme example, Lincoln for his handling of the Civil War and slavery.

OK, sure. Attitudes change, and in this case they changed quite drastically and very fast. But if the man did not even have the courage to say he was in favor of gay marriage when he was trying to get the job, he shouldn't be credited for it happening through the judicial system. His main contribution was not instructing Eric Holder to stand in the way of states legalizing marriage and having the IRS recognize gay marriages for federal tax purposes (or did this also happen through the juidicial system? I remember there was an important court case about it).

When and why did Obama stop thinking marriage wasn't civil a right?