political stuff

[Sheepy]

well by that logic even voting for the candidate who will lose in your state is throwing your vote away

but it's not

Well, I'm not the one who says it. But I will say this: As much as I like Stewart Alexander or Jill Stein, their chances of even coming close to that of the Democratic or Republican parties are extremely slim. The media never covers third parties, they don't have any money, corporate sponsors; It's all about Romney and Obama or Obama and Romney. It's ridiculous. They both have the same barbaric foreign policy, their economic plans aren't anything new, nor do they ever work. "HOPE" and "CHANGE" don't even mean anything, they're just meaningless slogans. "Binders full of women" too, I mean what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's just a popularity contest between two celebrities sponsored by corporations, at this point there's hardly any talk of any of the real issues. Romney says absolutely nothing and resorts to the same right-wing populist rhetoric void of any meaning, and the media is of course forgetting about Obama's beloved drone strikes. I hate them both. Bipartisanship representative democracy is a joke. I refuse to listen to any of that "lesser evil" talk regarding Obama. A man with a Nobel peace prize and here he is signing his name on the NDAA. You got a right-wing party, and a centre right-wing party: pick your poison.

I'd rather stand by what I think is right.

[ZennyPLUS]

well by that logic even voting for the candidate who will lose in your state is throwing your vote away

but it's not

Well, I'm not the one who says it. But I will say this: As much as I like Stewart Alexander or Jill Stein, their chances of even coming close to that of the Democratic or Republican parties are extremely slim. The media never covers third parties, they don't have any money, corporate sponsors; It's all about Romney and Obama or Obama and Romney. It's ridiculous. They both have the same barbaric foreign policy, their economic plans aren't anything new, nor do they ever work. "HOPE" and "CHANGE" don't even mean anything, they're just meaningless slogans. "Binders full of women" too, I mean what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's just a popularity contest between two celebrities sponsored by corporations, at this point there's hardly any talk of any of the real issues. Romney says absolutely nothing and resorts to the same right-wing populist rhetoric void of any meaning, and the media is of course forgetting about Obama's beloved drone strikes. I hate them both. Bipartisanship representative democracy is a joke. I refuse to listen to any of that "lesser evil" talk regarding Obama. A man with a Nobel peace prize and here he is signing his name on the NDAA. You got a right-wing party, and a centre right-wing party: pick your poison.

I'd rather stand by what I think is right.

What do you think is right? I already have an idea, but I think I'd be interesting for others to know.

[rtil]

well by that logic even voting for the candidate who will lose in your state is throwing your vote away

but it's not

Well, I'm not the one who says it. But I will say this: As much as I like Stewart Alexander or Jill Stein, their chances of even coming close to that of the Democratic or Republican parties are extremely slim. The media never covers third parties, they don't have any money, corporate sponsors; It's all about Romney and Obama or Obama and Romney. It's ridiculous. They both have the same barbaric foreign policy, their economic plans aren't anything new, nor do they ever work. "HOPE" and "CHANGE" don't even mean anything, they're just meaningless slogans. "Binders full of women" too, I mean what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's just a popularity contest between two celebrities sponsored by corporations, at this point there's hardly any talk of any of the real issues. Romney says absolutely nothing and resorts to the same right-wing populist rhetoric void of any meaning, and the media is of course forgetting about Obama's beloved drone strikes. I hate them both. Bipartisanship representative democracy is a joke. I refuse to listen to any of that "lesser evil" talk regarding Obama. A man with a Nobel peace prize and here he is signing his name on the NDAA. You got a right-wing party, and a centre right-wing party: pick your poison.

I'd rather stand by what I think is right.

no i totally agree, i was just making sure you didn't actually think that, even though the way elections are treated in this country now make the two party system something we'll probably have to deal with for a long time. the fact that elections cost over a billion dollars now is absurd, and third party candidates should get a chance to speak at debates if they can qualify for the ballot nationwide (and i believe most of them have - there are 5 parties on my ballot).

the debates for the most part were very politically correct and full of softball questions, although at times it's quite obvious how much more progressive obama is than romney. still, it makes me sad to hear him defend the NDAA on the daily show and talk about how great drone strikes and a potential war with syria could be - as well as him pretending to be a christian just so he can stand a chance at being re-elected.

i really don't think obama stands for some of the things he talks about when it comes to foreign policy, war and religion. if you look at his career as a senator he was extremely critical of the wars and religion's effect on national policy. but once he took office he was smart enough to realize he had to play a certain part. in some ways it's crept into his decisions in office and that's really unfortunate.

i like to think that deep down inside he is still the same person. but some of the things he's done during his first four years makes me wonder. even though i think he's done a lot of great things and stood up for some important and divisive issues, usually regarding civil rights, it's hard for me to fill in that bubble on the ballot. and so far i haven't. maybe if i lived in a swing state i would care more (i live in washington state which is strong D), but i just feel like if i do fill in that bubble , i'm approving of not just all the great things he's done as president, but all the horrible things he's signed off on as well.

i'm assuming as i get older i will come to terms with the fact that all politicians will lie, make promises they can't keep, and no candidate will ever be perfect. 4 years ago i would have never considered voting for obama. now i'm really on the fence. so i've already changed a lot. but i definitely don't agree that romney and obama are the same at all. i honestly think a romney presidency would completely destroy this country because he truly does not care about the average american. i read a good quote today that described romney as someone being "born on third base thinking he hit a triple" - he doesn't know what it's like to be an average american. he will also lie whenever he has to. and i think that's really dangerous.

however obama and clinton were avrage americans at one point. and they care a lot more about the actual facts, and admit they can make mistakes. so while they do live different lives now, i don't think they will ever forget their roots, and i do think that to some degree they care a lot about the people and not just the ones in their pockets.

[Casey Pixmintro]

I just happen to be living in Ohio this election season. And Ohio inexplicably is the most important thing in the world in Presidential Elections now, so every politician and their brother is trying to take Ohio out to dinner, and them tipsy enough to agree to their bidding. You literally can't go 5 seconds without something of the Presidential Election smacking you in the face. Radio ads, TV ads, billboards, yard signs etc. It's also kind of hard to tell if the billboards are for or against Obama. For example, you see a billboard of Obama and it says Obama for Reelection... then underneath it says "He'll destroy America". But yeah, there are basically no ads SUPPORTING Mitt Romney, only stuff either for, or shitting on Obama.

I voted early, about 3 weeks ago, super easy which was nice (even registering to vote since I just moved to Ohio was very simple). I voted for Obama, I feel he's done an OKAY job so far, especially with a lot of the shit he's had to deal with. But in reality it was more of a vote against Mitt Romney, the guy's a bastard, and Paul Ryan is a fucking ideologue. Also this GOP Platform is the most backwards fucking thing I've ever seen! I could go into detail about my views if anyone really cared, I don't wanna crap out all that for no reason. I actually got a little thing featured on Rachel Maddow's blog a few weeks ago because I got a misleading mailer from the Ohio Secretary of State in the mail. Republicans in Ohio have been trying to gut early voting because it favors Democrats for months now and they lost several cases over it. Wanted to cut the time in half and stuff, but the most recent shitfest about it was, they wanted to cut out all Early Voting on the 3 days directly before the Election. A state court said nuh-uh you can't do that, unfair. The Secretary of State wanted to continue challenging it, and even after that ruling, they continued sending out mailers and advertising there would be no Early Voting after November 2nd. The Supreme Court last week told him to knock his shit off so that stuff's finally over with.

Also my girlfriend and I went to an Obama rally today in Youngstown, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were there. If you heard anything about Obama having to cancel a campaign stop in Ohio today, that was the one we went to. We had already gotten tickets, then last night received an email saying he couldn't attend due to having to be in DC to respond to Hurricane Sandy... which is totally a fair reason, upon seeing that way he couldn't attend, I 100% didn't mind. It was a pretty fun event, Bill Clinton is good at laying numbers down in easily digestible bites which is one of Obama's problems, he totally can not sell his policies to the public very well. Joe Biden was pretty good, it was actually pretty nice he was included as a consolation for Obama not being able to attend.

I will say about how the election is being perceived by people in Ohio. People working in the auto industry, even conservatives, love what Obama has done to keep the factories open here. Production is booming again and the state's unemployment rate is declining faster than the national average. Romney's been hurting himself here by shitting on Obama's bailout of the auto industry. Also this week Romney pulled some bullshit out of thin air, saying Jeep is moving ALL of their production to China and you have Obama to thank. 100% not true, even Chrysler had to come out and be like, "shit this guy is lying". In reality, Jeep has been doing so well that they can now REOPEN their factory they had to close in China due to the recession and build cars there for Chinese citizens. So yeah, they're getting to expand internationally because the company has been able to be more competitive now in the global market. Also there's some shit where all the factories Mitt Romney gave speeches at in Ohio, where he shit on the Stimulus, were either benefited or saved by the Stimulus. But yeah, I could go on and on...

Oh! Did you guys hear about Paul Ryan doing that fake photo-op at a soup kitchen where he came in and just cleaned some already cleaned pans, stayed 10 minutes and left? He did apparently clean a few dirty dishes but the whole thing is just such a cynical display. That happened in Youngstown also, about 5 minutes from me and there's been a lot of attention on it. The guy who runs the soup kitchen was pissed cuz 1. Ryan didn't even attempt to help since he came in after everything was done for the day and it's just a pandering photo-op and 2. The organization is apolitical and he was pissed cuz now people would possibly pull their donations over partisan support. Well that DID happen, except it was conservatives pulling support for him cuz they saw it as him attacking Ryan despite him being like "If ANY politician came here (especially unannounced like Ryan did) I'd turn them away, we have to be completely apolitical". Now the 100,000 poor people who benefit from this soup kitchen will have to suffer cuz some people took their anger out on the guy running the place. So yeah, everyone in the area was super pissed about how this guy got shafted but the good news is, the internet has mobilized and made an Indiegogo for the organization.

Okay, now I'm done.

[rtil]

i believe the reason why ohio is so important is that once again the GOP cannot afford to lose ohio. without ohio it would take a statistical miracle for romney to have a chance at receiving enough electoral votes to beat obama. he'd have to take every swing state and the way things are looking that is just not going to happen. votemaster blog explains this pretty well.

i saw your post on facebook about the misleading mail. it's scary how much that is happening all over the country. then there is the guy dumping voter registration forms, the ties to diebold and the romneys, and fox blabbering about the non-existent voter fraud - the real fraud is happening to the voters, not being caused by them.

and yeah. the ryan photo op was not even about whether or not he cleaned any dirty dishes. it was so annoying how the media focused so much about that.

god so much stupid shit has happened during this election cycle. i can't wait until it's over. and i don't even live in a swing state!

[Casey Pixmintro]

Yeah sorry, I didn't go into detail about Ohio, Romney knows he's probably going to lose the state now so he's trying to fixate on Wisconsin which is even dumber cuz Obama's leading even more in that state. Electoral College wise, Obama's looking pretty comfortable, despite the EC system always being dumb as fuck.

In Ohio, we've also been seeing anonymous organizations buying Ad space in black and latino dominant communities being like "VOTER FRAUD! 3 yrs in Jail and a something several 100,000 fine" to intimidate voters there. Luckily, the ads were deemed illegal due to anonymous organizations not being allowed to run political ads. Now they're being replaced with billboards paid by city councils like "Voting, it's a right, not a crime!" and whatnot.

Yeah also there's been shit with Voter Fraud where all the mailers made by some STATES, not fringe groups but actual election officials, sending mailers giving the correct date for voting in English, then saying November 8th in Spanish translation instead to hamper the latino votes. There's some where it's like 6 November/8 Novembre right next to each but a lot are being specifically mailed to latino people with only the wrong date on them.

Yeah regarding the photo-op, I think the media was trying to fixate on that extra layer of cynicism, despite it already being egregious to begin with.

The election cycle being over probably doesn't mean we're gonna see the end of this shit. If Obama wins, conservatives are gonna continue to fight, and claim he stole the election. If Romney wins, liberals will yell about voter fraud (although their case is based a lot more in evidence than the other side). So yeah... never ending party, the kind of party where everyone's getting food poisoning and there's only 1 toilet.

[rtil]

obama will win. the lawyers will bark but i don't think that it's going to change anything. all i know is that the EC needs to go (even though if it was romney would probably win the election..frightening to think about), and there needs to be serious campaign finance reform.

i can't believe we go through this shit every 4 years.

[Casey Pixmintro]

Yeah, I do blame this election being ESPECIALLY bad because of that fucking Citizens United Supreme Court case, both campaigns have been spending BILLIONS this time around. Ohio's seeing the most expensive senate race in American history this year. Sherrod Brown is the incumbent, gravelly-voiced senator running against this fucking Tea Party toddler named Josh Mandel. The Republicans have spent something like $30+ million to get Mandel into office (90% of it is dark money, no one knows where it's coming from), and this guy is the most conservative conservative possible I mean shit. But it's funny, Sherrod Brown is barely doing any campaigning and he's still going to win by at least 7 or 8 points despite Republican effort.

But yeah they need to recap campaign financing, I mean jesus

[redmongoose]

which end did america want a pile of shit shoved into, the ass or the mouth; tune in this november to find out

[rtil]

Yeah, I do blame this election being ESPECIALLY bad because of that fucking Citizens United Supreme Court case, both campaigns have been spending BILLIONS this time around. Ohio's seeing the most expensive senate race in American history this year. Sherrod Brown is the incumbent, gravelly-voiced senator running against this fucking Tea Party toddler named Josh Mandel. The Republicans have spent something like $30+ million to get Mandel into office (90% of it is dark money, no one knows where it's coming from), and this guy is the most conservative conservative possible I mean shit. But it's funny, Sherrod Brown is barely doing any campaigning and he's still going to win by at least 7 or 8 points despite Republican effort.

But yeah they need to recap campaign financing, I mean jesus

the warren vs brown race in mass is pretty pricey, too. looks like brown might lose as well despite his comfy demeanor, not like he has a record to stand on

i could see warren running for president in the future

[Greenkitten]

which end did america want a pile of shit shoved into, the ass or the mouth; tune in this november to find out

This is why I prefer European politics, at least there you have a few fascist parties that actually have a chance. Hell, Jobbik has a seat in the European Parliament, this is the same group that organises civilian militia to go bash gypsies and Romanians. Along with Golden Dawn in Greece things are really heating up.

[Sheepy]

You say that as if that's a good thing. :V

[sev]

voting obama because my state is actually very 50-50 right now.

and because fuck romney.

[Gladius]

which end did america want a pile of shit shoved into, the ass or the mouth; tune in this november to find out

This is why I prefer European politics, at least there you have a few fascist parties that actually have a chance. Hell, Jobbik has a seat in the European Parliament, this is the same group that organises civilian militia to go bash gypsies and Romanians. Along with Golden Dawn in Greece things are really heating up.

not to mention france's generation identitaire

today's youth waking up and arising to reclaim their lost heritage

[Blordow]

poLOLtics

I HAVE A DRONE: Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney (RAP NEWS 16)

[Sinitron]

bring back richard nixon

[Sheepy]

Augusto Pinochet for President 2016

[psi43]

I was considering writing some stuff about the American presidential campaigns (in general) and the  general public and voters. Then I saw rtil posted in this topic. No disrespect - I'm actually somewhat sure that you'd agree with at least a little bit of the stuff about voters and stuff in general I'd have to say, but I know very well that I don't know enough about the specifics to even start arguing on anything haha.

^I wrote that before writing the monstrosity that you can see below. GUESS I CHANGED MY MIND!

Short version: (<-I lied there guys)
American voters seem to like Slogans and expensive Presidential Campaigns with a lot of baby-holding by candidate ooooor..
go for whatever Presidential figure there currently is, claiming to represent the will of God and lead the country by the bible.

OF COURSE that is a huge generalization of the vote-eligible citizen, which quite honestly I hate doing. Especially considering the second statement I made about the God stuff (it never seemed to get even close to what I'd say is "out of hand" from what I know).
I do know that there's still hope and all, there's probably a lot of people like rtil in the U.S. who at least give enough of a shit to read about what they're voting for and what they are not voting for first.

Sadly though, a lot of the people I know (most of them just entered voting age) keep telling me about the people/parties they vote for and make them out to be amazing. Once you ask them why and what those parties want to change, more often than not (on personal experience) they can't tell you at all - the usual answer is stuff like "I watched him a bit on Television". I actually asked 4 people (all turned 18 this year) about this recently and I also asked them who their parents are voting for. Well, for all of them, their parents voted the same party.
Now I don't want to make up facts, but if you can't name more than 2 things that the party you're voting for has on their agenda and your information is based on "seeing them on telly" and probably talking to your parents, their opinion doesn't seem to hold up well.
It seems like their opinion hasn't been formed in their own minds, but rather by their environment.

As I said before though, it's mostly personal experience and observation from the last elections (and the one before that) what I'm talking about here. I kind of just noticed that the general public seems to vote for "characters" more than their agendas.

If you're not entirely sure what I mean, basically it's this:
Imagine a candidate, Candidate:A, running for president and another, Candidate:B, also running for it with less funds.
Candidate:A has a largely expensive line up of extravagant campaigns/appearances all around the U.S.

Now, Candidate:B visits all the same cities that Candidate:A visited, but with campaigns and appearances costing maybe 1/4th of the money.

Even if the agenda of Candidate:B would be lots more favorable when fully understood by the masses, most people would still vote for Candidate:A.

To me it all seems like a long TV-Show, similar to "Come Dine with Me" but about who can throw the coolest celebrations. The one who spends the most money and has the most charisma points will win over the first impressions, and a lot of humans like to do things quickly without having to look into the details too much. Thus, whoever ships out the coolest shit and gets the best first impression has a higher chance to win over the voters - slogans help.

When George W. Bush was up against Al Gore I actually thought "oh wow that's interesting" when they said Al Gore had more votes. Then George W. Bush won and in my head the word "interesting" changed to "bullshit". The Obama slogan thing and the low-color range posters made me be sure that he's going to win, cause I never even heard much about the other person. His "promotion" was worse, but apparently he also had the worse agenda, so it worked out for the best that time.

The behavior I'm talking about are turning presidential elections into a puppet show in my eyes - from what I can tell nothing has been majorly fucked up by it or anything (well the George W. Bush vs. Al Gore thing was kind of silly) but I'm afraid that this behavior will grow further in the future and actually get some fuck-bag in the office who wants to be a president just for the sake of being the president (and cause he has money).

Also your election system is rather confusing. We're been discussing the election systems of a lot of different countries in school and the U.S one seemed to be the one that aged the worse. I do understand that it's kind of necessary due to the huge size of your country but still, it could definitely be improved imo.


-Sorry for the long post where I probably repeat myself 12 times and all that, I wrote this on and off within an hour or something but I hope my main point kind of came across. I won't be able to jump into detailed discussions about agendas or candidates, seeing as my knowledge of that is limited. I was merely expressing a trend I saw going on since I started following your elections and my concers, 's all!

[bd648]

can we elect bill nye or sheepy president?

[Sheepy]

I'm bad at holding babies though.