Election

[rodinuk]

You'll find a load of threads on this in the Politics & Religion forum ;)


Politics and Religion (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/forumdisplay.php?f=16)
Two topics to avoid in light company, this board was especially created for you to "tote the party line" and voice your opinions, thoughts and beliefs on whatever tickles your fancy or currently gets your goat. All political & religions threads BELONG HERE.
:

[Willie Escalade]

No you won't...

[Prospero]

Obama has done wonders... read this.


http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

[trish]

Great link Prospero. Thanks.

[Stavros]

Hmmm....

Signed financial reform law allowing shareholders of publicly traded companies to vote on executive pay
-Standard procedure in most large corporations for decades -and is it the business of any government to impose such a regulation on private companies?

Issued executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay
-It is still open, the prisoners are still there, the military tribunal continues to judge them.

Obama's record doesn't look so bad when a list like this is trotted out, even if there are various ways of recording job growth in a context which doesn't do Obama any favours, but then this a biased list of achievements. Luckily I do not have to vote, and there are a wide range of domestic US issues which I don't really understand because I don't live there and thus miss a lot of the nuances of policy that might seem obvious to a US citizen.

On Foreign Policy, Obama has tried to repair the image of the US that was so badly damaged by the Bush Presidency, and has probably succeeded by appearing to be less belligerent, and to be fair to him he has been locked into commitments that I am sure he would rather dispense with, Guantanamo being one of them.

Although a military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan was inevitable, Obama has failed to grasp an opportunity in Afghanistan that would have given the US a strong position in the region, while financially in the long term compensating for the USA's extensive involvement in Afghanistan over 30 years -I refer to the minerals contracts being negotiated by the Karzai government with India, Japan, China, and Russia. It seems almost perverse that even though the wealth is probably not as great compared to, say, South Africa, it is big in Afghan terms, yet there is the prospect that NATO will walk away from Afghan merely counting its bodies, while the rest count their money.

Thus, Obama could have positioned the US as the broker with regard to 1) the development of Afghanistan, and 2) an insistence that India and Pakistan reach a conclusive agreement over Kashmir. Left to themselves, neither India nor Pakistan will reach an agreement on a running sore that is now 65 years old and like many 65 year olds ought to be retired, and as extremists in Kashmir are as volatile and dangerous as their brothers in India and Pakistan, it would make sense to settle the Kashmir problem as part of a 'new deal' for all across the region, based on industry/economics, which, in addition, could become the basis of a new politics, security and the kind of transition which the US has been quietly supporting in Somalia.
This is one area where Obama's Presidency has failed, and unless he addresses it in the second term the US will lose an important opportunity to use economics as a healing process, as it has been in Vietnam.

The inability to comprehend the morphology of revolt in the Middle East is common to many, not just the Obama administration, and at some point one must ask what could the US do anyway? The intervention in Libya was decisive, but no two Arab countries are the same, even if dictatorship appears to have common traits across the world. Libya was always an easier lock to pick, whereas Syria is beginning to run out of control. Here Obama's failure was not to step in as soon as trouble started, to reach out to the Russians and find a diplomatic way of ending the Asad regime's grip on power. It is possible that in spite of Netanyahu's loathing of Obama, the Israeli govt played on its own fears in an attempt to divert US policy from having a creative input into the Syrian crisis. It is also possible that Hillary Clinton played a role by being over-cautious on Syria where the US could have been more activist/creative. I wonder if Mrs Clinton will remain as Seretary of State in the 2nd term, or leave to write her book, and maybe consider a tilt at the top job in 2016-?

More serious has been the increasing use of drones as an alternative military strategy to boots on the ground. The full implications of death by remote control have yet to be considered in terms of their military and legal ramifications. That the US has murdered a US citizen with a drone might be an issue for US citizens -except that when allies of the USA murdered American citizens in El Salvador in the 1980s, President Reagan wasn't bothered- but the precedent it offers is intriguing. Proportional response has been a tricky but vital element in the law of war since the Treaty of Westphalia, if not before. The use of drones to attack targets in Iran -or Iran's potential use of drones to attack targets in Israel, raises issues over what happens next if such weapons become common. At the moment, computing viruses are replacing boots on the ground, but I wonder if we are all stumbling into a future that offers military engagement on a level that is allegedly 'efficient', cheaper, and appears to reduce the risks that accompany troops in the field.

Obama for obvious domestic reasons is turning back to the hydrocarbons industry with a favourable eye -after the moratorium on deep water drilling that followed the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the US is 'open for business' again for conventional and unconventional oil and gas reserves in the Lower 48 -fair enough, if it becomes an important and cheaper source of energy the US would be mad not to exploit it. But the variety of opinion on shale reserves and the hydraulic fracturing used to recover them cannot agree on how far it is safe and how far it runs the risk of provoking land subsidence, contamination of water supplies etc. America, its your call.

Obama has not offered global leadership to the alternative energy future you who are under the age of 30 must eventually live with. It doesn't matter how rich the hydrocarbons in the US are, they will not be enough, and the alternative energy sector has had a poor record in recent years, in part because the technology is still struggling to create mass energy systems at cost, or create things which people want to buy, like electric cars. It remains to be seen if Federal grants to the industry will make a difference, or whether private capital is that interested in the long term energy future to make a real investment, but then there is no reason why the US should be the place where innovations are developed.

But on broader environmental issues, where previous US Presidents clearly didn't care, there is no leadership or inspiration from this President either. I suspect it is not a priority issue for him.

My final note is to say how dull this election has been, the only real issue of interest is the polarisation in the Republican Party, as often happens when a party loses power -the soul-searching seems to have opened up a chasm between those whose view of the world is processed through a biblical prism which distorts what they then see, and those who might these days, like Colin Powell, be as comfortable voting for Obama. How far this lurch to the extreme will benefit or cost the Republicans I do not know, but it doesn't look like a healthy development.

[martin48]

Obama has done wonders... read this.


http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/


Here's another link

http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/what-has-obama-done-since-january-20-2009.html

Not bad for a non-American Muslin :)

[natina]

The U.S. economy remains in a gray area, so it's no wonder that the presidential race is essentially tied. Gross domestic product grew at a 2 percent (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/26/163695543/economic-growth-picked-up-slightly-in-third-quarter) annual rate between June and September, according to figures out Friday. The White House says this means the economy has been growing for 13 straight quarters.
"This report provides further evidence that the economy is moving in the right direction," Alan Krueger, head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/10/26/advance-estimate-gdp-third-quarter-2012/).
But the economy isn't performing nearly well enough, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said in a speech in Ames, Iowa, after the report came out.
"President Obama frequently reminds us that he inherited a troubled economy. But a troubled economy is not all that he inherited. He also inherited the greatest nation in the history of the Earth," Romney said. "What he did with what he inherited made the problem worse."
The final jobs report before the election will be released next Friday. The September report saw the unemployment rate fall below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years — but just barely, to 7.8 percent.
That's how most of the economic data are looking now. Things are improving, but are nowhere near where an incumbent president would like them to be.
"I think the data are consistent with expectations," says Phillip Swagel, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland, who worked in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush.
"The economy is growing, but at a modest pace, with only modest job creation and stagnant incomes for American families," Swagel says. "Not recession, but not satisfactory."
On the other hand, sustained if not tremendous growth makes it more difficult for a challenger like Romney to convince the voting public that a change in course is required.
Recent polling shows Romney beating Obama in terms of whom voters would prefer to see managing the U.S. economy. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/25/post-abc-tracking-poll-romney-50-percent-obama-47/) released Thursday, 53 percent of likely voters said they trusted Romney more on the economy, compared with 43 percent who favored Obama.
But an Associated Press-GfK poll (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20121026_Poll__Romney_besting_Obama_on_the_economy .html) out Friday showed a much narrower advantage for Romney on economic issues: 47 percent, compared with 45 percent for Obama.
That poll also pointed to some economic optimism among voters, with nearly 60 percent saying they expect to see things get better over the coming year.
"Maybe it's direction that matters," says Thomas Hyclak, an economist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
"If things are bad and getting better, it doesn't hurt the incumbent as much," he says. "If things are bad and getting worse, it really does affect the chances for the incumbent."
There's also some evidence to suggest that people's perceptions of the state of the economy is skewed by their partisan inclinations. That is, voters who support Obama are more likely to see the economy as improving than Republicans are. "There's a huge partisan component to views about the economy," says Shanto Iyengar, a political scientist at Stanford University.
A recent Purple Strategies poll (http://www.purplestrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/October_v7.pdf)found that 37 percent of voters in 12 swing states believe the economy is getting better. Ninety-four percent of those voters say they support Obama, compared with just 5 percent of those who believe the economy is getting worse.
The economy is about where most economists would expect it to be at this point, Hyclak says. History suggests that a recession triggered by a collapse in the housing market and a financial crisis is bound to lead to a sluggish recovery with slow job growth.
Yet the nation's economic growth remains at risk. The looming fiscal cliff has shaved 0.6 percent off of GDP growth this year and cost a million jobs, according to a report (http://www.nam.org/Issues/Tax-and-Corporate-Finance/The-Fiscal-Abyss.aspx) from the National Association of Manufacturers. And the mixed corporate earnings season has caused the stock market to zig and zag.
Economists are predicting that the nation's financial picture will brighten over the next couple of years. The research firm Moody's Analytics predicts (http://www.moodysanalytics.com/~/media/Homepage/News/2012/2012-11-10-Monthly-Macro-Outlook.ashx) GDP growth will approach 4 percent in 2014, with unemployment coming down. And the latest forecast (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/02/index.htm) from the International Monetary Fund predicts annual growth of about 3 percent in the U.S. economy over the next four years, which would be much better than in other rich nations.
Happy days might not be here again, but consumers are opening their wallets. Back-to-school spending was up this year, while holiday spending is expected to grow modestly. Recent GDP growth was driven by consumer spending and improvements in the housing market.
A survey (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-26/michigan-consumer-sentiment-index-increased-to-82-dot-6-in-october) released Friday showed the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index at its most optimistic reading since September 2007.
It's possible that people who do have jobs are starting to feel a little less uncertain than they were a couple of years back, suggests Hyclak, the Lehigh economist.
Timing matters. The last one-term president, George H.W. Bush, lost his re-election bid in 1992 — the "it's the economy, stupid," election — even though the economy was growing at a much faster clip than it is today.
GDP grew by 3.8 percent in the summer of 1992 and was growing even faster by the time the election was held. "Yet Americans did not feel as if the economy was recovering," Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz writes in his book The Age of Reagan. "Rather, they thought Bush was out of touch with the suffering and anxieties of middle- and working-class citizens."
Obama doesn't face those same image problems. Polls have consistently shown that Americans believe the president has a good feel for the hard times they're going through.
Still, they're not convinced he's done enough to make things better. At least, a firm majority isn't convinced. And it may be too late at this point to change many minds.
"It will take a large dose of very good news or very bad news to affect the election at this late date," says John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University. "To me, the [new] GDP numbers are neither." Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/ (http://www.npr.org/).http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+The+Economy+Won%27t+Help+Obama+%E2%80%94 +Or+Romney&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxODQzNjMwMDEyMTcyNTM3MTdlYzU2Mw 001)




http://www.google.com/ig?brand=LENN&bmod=LENN#m_9

[danthepoetman]

I find these as funny as they're eloquent...

[Ben]

Is this a reason to vote for Obama or Romney or simply abstain from voting????

************************************************** ********************

Obama’s 284 Drone Strikes in Pakistan

A map of every reported drone strike in Pakistan:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/10/drone_strikes_map_shows_pakistan_drone_strikes.htm l

[danthepoetman]

Personally, Ben, I think the Romney-Ryan duo at the White House would be an absolute catastrophe. The four years of the Bush administration led America in a position Obama has to fight the Republicans to get it out of. Imagine a government more to the right for 4 more years if not 8!

[Ben]

Personally, Ben, I think the Romney-Ryan duo at the White House would be an absolute catastrophe. The four years of the Bush administration led America in a position Obama has to fight the Republicans to get it out of. Imagine a government more to the right for 4 more years if not 8!

I, personally, don't see a lot of difference between the two parties. Albeit Dems are more moderate. And much better on social issues, gay rights, abortion rights etc., etc. (But: I would've voted for Ron Paul. If he were my congressperson. As I like a lot of what he stands for. But I don't embrace the Republican Party. Nor do I embrace the Dems. Although I like someone like Dennis Kucinich.) So, there are some politicians I like on either side of the political aisle, as it were.
Again, there isn't a profound difference between them.
Both support so-called free trade agreements. They aren't really free trade agreements. More investor rights agreements, as it were.
Both support propping up the big banks.... Which are bigger than ever. And, too, another banking crisis is bound to happen. It's inevitable. There is simply too much volatility in the system.
Only thing Romney will do: give massive tax breaks to the super-rich. Meaning: himself and his buddies. Call it: a simple gift -- :)
Anyway, forget all that bullshit. And focus on Derrick Barry -- :)

Derrick Barry as Katy Perry - California Gurls - Drink & Drag - July 13th, 2012 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEI0WOykqGo&feature=plcp)

[Prospero]

Ben wrote: "I, personally, don't see a lot of difference between the two parties."

You may not but Wall Street certainly does - which makes it pretty clear which of the two contenders has the interests of the rich and successful at heart, as opsed to the broader mass of the American people.
From the UK Independent newspaper today....

Why Wall Street is starving Obama of funds
The big money men are riled by what they see as banker bashing from the President and have switched to his rival Romney, says Nikhil Kumar



Money talks, goes the old cliche, and seldom does it boom more loudly than during the quadrennial battle for the White House. Every donor counts as the candidates scramble to fund their way to (or back to) Pennsylvania Avenue.

Wall Street, with its deep pool of billionaires and millionaires, is a key pit stop. In 2008, it was leaning left. The-then Senator Barack Obama had successfully charmed the sharp-suited throngs of lower Manhattan into backing him, lock, stock and chequebook. Goldman Sachs, no less, was his second-biggest contributor, based on donations from the firm's political action committee and those individual donors who listed the investment bank as their employer, according to the Washington-based Centre for Responsive Politics.

But four years on, riled by what many of them see as excess regulation and banker-bashing rhetoric from the President, Wall Street types have changed their minds and they are voting with their bank accounts.

With less than a week to go until the ballots are cast, donations from the securities and investment sector have netted over $19m (£12m) for Mr Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who has said he would "repeal ... and replace" the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law backed by the President and so disliked in the high-rises of New York.

Goldman ranks as his top contributor, based on the parameters above, with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse making up the remainder of Mr Romney's top-five backers, according to CRP figures. In total, the finance, insurance and real sectors have contributed nearly $61m to the Republican camp.

Mr Obama, meanwhile, has received just under $6m from the securities and investment sector during the 2012 election cycle. The only vaguely financial name in the top 10 contributors to the Obama side this year is Deloitte, the accountancy firm. Wells Fargo is the lone bank in the top 20.

The trend is repeated in the CRP tally of donations from the hedge fund business and from Mr Romney's former colleagues in private equity. The Republican co-founder of Bain Capital has booked $5.7m in cheques from the two sectors, against $1.3m for Mr Obama.

Rewind to 2008, before the President called bankers "fat cats" who don't get it, and Mr Obama had Wall Street locked up. The securities and investment cabal gave nearly $16m to the Democratic candidate, against $9.2m to Senator John McCain, the Republican standard-bearer. Hedge funds and private equity, meanwhile, backed the soon-to-be President to the tune of $3.47m. Mr McCain, in contrast, received around $2m.

The shift this year matters, given the cost of securing office. By the time this year's race is over, the Obama and Romney campaigns, along with their parties, would have raised around $2bn. And though individual contributions are capped at $2,500 per candidate per election (the primaries and general election are counted separately, adding up to $5,000) and $30,800 per party per year, deep-pocketed donors have, under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, been funneling millions more to outside groups allied with their preferred politician.

Wall Street's enthusiasm for the Republican ticket was in evidence the other week at a New York cocktail reception with Mr Romney's Vice-Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan. For $1,000 per person, guests from the city's financial elite were invited to hob-nob with one half of the Republican ticket at the Hilton hotel. Another $5,000 bought them a snap with Mr Ryan.

The names of the event's co-chairs was telling. According to The New York Times, the host list featured a number of hedge-fund notables, including John Paulson of Paulson & Co, and senior Blackstone group executives Michael Chase and Prakash Melwani. John Mack, the former boss of Morgan Stanley, was also reported to be on the list, along with ex-Goldman chief John Whitehead.

Not that Mr Obama hasn't tried, despite his commentary on bankers, to win back Wall Street. Earlier this year, for instance, his campaign manager Jim Messina convened some of the finance world's biggest hitters, including Ralph Schlosstein of Evercore Partners and Eric Mindich of Eton Park Capital, to stress that the President was running against Mr Romney, not against the industry, according to Bloomberg reports. But nothing, not the closed-door meetings, nor an array of glittering New York fundraisers, appears to have worked.

As one Mr Obama donor told The New York Times earlier this year: "This administration has a more contemptuous view of big money and of Wall Street than any administration in 40 years. And it shows." Given the numbers, it certainly does.

[trish]

During Bush Jr. the difference was an entire war (in Iraq), a tax cut for the wealthy that gave away a projected ten year surplus and a banking collapse of the likes we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

During Obama the difference was an entire war (ending the war in Iraq), the decimation of the higher echelons of Al Qaeda, the affordable health care act, the Lilly Ledbetter act, the rebounding recovery of wall and the slower ongoing recovery of housing and jobs.

The difference between Obama and Romney is the difference between a president and a boss.

We have a system of checks and balances. The two houses are a check on each other and on the White House. If the one house are occupied by a party steadfastly opposed to the occupant of the White House and the other house can't pass anything without a supermajority, very little change is possible. If you want change compatible with at least some of your progressive ideals, vote for Obama and give him the Congress. If you want kick dirt on your progressive ideals and bury them, vote Romney. Seems pretty clear to me.

An aside on Checks and Balances: It's of no surprise that I lean liberal, however when it comes to practical issues I'm quite conservative. I don't think it's wise to change everything all at once. My preferred modus operandi is to tweak a variable or two or three and watch what happens. Then tweak again. I like a system of checks and balances. However there is a danger in the system that has started to reveal itself at least since the appearance of the teaparty. If a party (or a coalition of parties in a multiparty system) values their own political power over and beyond that of the nation, they can uses the system of checks and balances to hold the well being of the nation itself hostage. We've seen this mechanism put into play quite blatantly over the last four years, but it's also being utilized on the sly as well. It's another reason to give Obama the house he needs.

[Odelay]

If a party (or a coalition of parties in a multiparty system) values their own political power over and beyond that of the nation, they can uses the system of checks and balances to hold the well being of the nation itself hostage. We've seen this mechanism put into play quite blatantly over the last four years, but it's also being utilized on the sly as well. It's another reason to give Obama the house he needs.

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

[robertlouis]

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

It's funny, because the present government in the UK is operating in a massively socially regressive way, introducing largely unwanted market reforms into our cherished NHS - one of the things that makes me proud to be British - and is also taking away social benefits from large swathes of the vulnerable. Marxists would call it class war, and they wouldn't be far off.

But when I look across the pond at the bunch of fundamentalist nutjobs which comprise the GOP these days, even I mutter a silent prayer in thanks for Call Me Dave. Things could be oh so much worse.

[Stavros]

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

I think what happens is that when a party loses an election, the next leadership re-defines its 'values' and vows to take the party in a new direction to gain victory at the polls -Reagan did it after the debacle of the Nixon Presidency which was supposed to roll back Johnson's great society programs and mark a new dawn for conservative America, yet sank in the mire of Vietnam and White House lies and criminality. The Conservatives after Thatcher could not decide if they wanted to move away from her divisive policies, or reinforce them -the Cameron band have argued that they can 'humanise' the legacy of Thatcher, which is why the party is led by her admirers, from Cameron himself, to Chancellor George Osborne and education secretary Michael Gove. The difference is that the Conservatives have to rule with the Liberal Democrats because they didn't win a majority in the commons -and by US standards are not as 'extreme' as the new Republicans who couldn't bear to lose the White House to anyone let alone Obama.

In other words both parties have reinforced their conservative values; the big difference here is that invoking the authority of almighty God is a vote loser where for a hard core of Americans, not just Tea Party drinkers it is their libation morning , noon and night, even as they wave their Constitution around as if it were an extract from the Bible. The question is, does this polarisation win votes? I think it can if enough people are convinced the country is in a crisis, which the US is not.

The other big difference, as Trish pointed out earlier, is that the US has a 'checks and balances' system where determined cliques in the House can prevent Congress from passing legislation, whereas in this country that sort of thing just isn't done. Because the Liberal Democrats are facing annihilation at the next election, having been exposed as a party of liars and cheats -which is what people like me knew all along anyway- they cannot afford to prevent the coalition from functioning, or the government will fall and there will be that conclusive election.

However, if you really want him, please do invite David Cameron to emigrate and lead your Republican Party; as long as he takes with him Michael Gove, Eric Pickles, Liam Fox, George Osborne -well, the whole shower of 'em. Give them West Virginia and see what happens next. And the best of British luck to you.

[Odelay]

However, if you really want him, please do invite David Cameron to emigrate and lead your Republican Party; as long as he takes with him Michael Gove, Eric Pickles, Liam Fox, George Osborne -well, the whole shower of 'em. Give them West Virginia and see what happens next. And the best of British luck to you.
Sure no problem as long as we can send Bachman, Romney, Gingrich, Palin, Herm Cain, and God o God - Rick Santorum, back to you in exchange.

[Prospero]

Erm.... that's not a fair and balanced offer Odelay

[Stavros]

Sure no problem as long as we can send Bachman, Romney, Gingrich, Palin, Herm Cain, and God o God - Rick Santorum, back to you in exchange.

Interesting point would be, should they be here, would any of them get elected to Parliament? Gingrich possibly, but I doubt the others would make it. Nevertheless, its already cold enough here without sending more chills into my draughty dwelling!!

[martin48]

.....

[trish]

Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjrthOPLAKM)

[Ben]

The thing I find flummoxing: Obama and Romney are tied in the latest poll numbers.
I assumed Obama would be way ahead. Considering everything we know about Romney: hiding his money offshore etc., etc., etc.

http://www.news4jax.com/National-polls-Obama-Romney-in-dead-heat/-/475982/17264400/-/3tgwua/-/index.html

[trish]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...donations.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-29/romney-avoids-taxes-via-loophole-cutting-mormon-donations.html)

[danthepoetman]

Posted somewhere else by James Hunt:

[robertlouis]

Hmm. This cartoon from Monday's Guardian in the UK probably captures the reality of the resignation that a lot of voters have towards Tuesday. A Democratic disappointment against a right-wing demagogue.

Swallow hard and vote for Obama. The alternative just doesn't bear thinking about.

[danthepoetman]

Only a few hours before the opening of the voting polls...

[robertlouis]

Watching the BBC coverage - which is entirely non-partisan - but through my fingers.

This thing is CLOSE!!! :nervous::nervous::nervous::nervous:

[Ben]

Mitt Romney speaking about Mormon faith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMD02zU9SE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TxMD02zU9SE)

[danthepoetman]

Some commentators seem to think that Romney is in some trouble, not being able to come up with good surprises so far. Mathematically, without surprises, Romney can't get the presidency. Let's see...

[Jonny29]

I have to admit. Much closer than I thought. Vegas at 3-1 odds for the pres. way to close for those odds.

[Ben]

I think it'll be Obama....
It's nothing but an oligarchical horse race -- :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8x9x5A49s

[Ben]

20 votes away....

[Queens Guy]

Watching the BBC coverage - which is entirely non-partisan - but through my fingers.

This thing is CLOSE!!! :nervous::nervous::nervous::nervous:


Very close. Polls closed at 7pm / 1900 in Miami. People who were in line then are still waiting to vote.

[Ben]

Election Liveblog: Obama Wins...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/liveblog-election-night/58761/#bill

[SammiValentine]

Theyre bouncing round in Chicago on the telly, they think its over :)

[Ben]

Theyre bouncing round in Chicago on the telly, they think its over :)

:) :) :)

[Ben]

The worst news of the night...

Election night smackdown: Ex-wrestling executive Linda McMahon loses Connecticut Senate race:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/election-night-smackdown-ex-wrestling-executive-linda-mcmahon-loses-connecticut-senate-race/2012/11/06/4e38fe0c-2880-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html

[SammiValentine]

Winner....! :D

[SammiValentine]

The worst news of the night...

Election night smackdown: Ex-wrestling executive Linda McMahon loses Connecticut Senate race:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/election-night-smackdown-ex-wrestling-executive-linda-mcmahon-loses-connecticut-senate-race/2012/11/06/4e38fe0c-2880-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html

hahaha wonder how much she has lost now $$$$. Twice now ??

[danthepoetman]

That's it: Obama is reelected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ben]

That's it: Obama is reelected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But Linda McMahon lost -- :(
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/11/06/chris_murphy_wins_connecticut_senate_race_linda_mc mahon_fails_to_buy_a_seat.html

[robertlouis]

theyre bouncing round in chicago on the telly, they think its all over :)

it is now!!!!

[robertlouis]

One good thing to note - the number of Tea Party candidates who lost badly in the Senate race. Is it too much to hope that the GOP might recover just a little of its historic sanity?

[SammiValentine]

hahaha Donald Trump on twitter.

[robertlouis]

hahaha Donald Trump on twitter.

Yes indeed. What a dick. It would be great if his hair - the tonsorial equivalent of a jenga tower - would blow off his beetroot-red face.

He's like a five-year old who isn't getting his way.

[hippifried]

The worst news of the night...

Election night smackdown: Ex-wrestling executive Linda McMahon loses Connecticut Senate race:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/election-night-smackdown-ex-wrestling-executive-linda-mcmahon-loses-connecticut-senate-race/2012/11/06/4e38fe0c-2880-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html
Aw... That's a terrible blow to standup comedians everywhere.

[danthepoetman]

I have to put this one close to that of Trump. Originally posted by Mr Willie Escalade...

[Prospero]

Phew - the wind of sanity blows through the US. But i fear hard hard years ahead for the President.

Well done America.

[tsadriana]

He won ....I knew he will be again president of USA,
523916

[Prospero]

A Russian perspective... from leading Russia news agency....


Russian Observers Question Fairness Of US Elections
By: Ria Novosti

November 9, 2012

Election monitors from Russia claimed on Thursday that a report on the just concluded 2012 US elections by an international consortium, failed to mention a number of key problems that they said exist in the American voting process.

“There is a double standard,” said Sergey Chumarev, a Senior Counselor with the Russian Embassy in Washington and part of an independent Embassy group that worked to monitor Tuesday’s presidential election, but said it had trouble gaining admission to polling stations in the state of Florida and elsewhere.

“For the US you have a lower standard of international observation while observations in many other states, as we say, east of Vienna, essentially Eastern Europe and Russia, there is a strong demand from the US to observe everything everywhere, at every stage of electoral proceedings,” he said. “So for us it’s a clear cut double standard.”

Not so, says João Soares, leader of the international election observation mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and a former member of the European Parliament.

“The standards we use in the US or that we use in the UK are the same standards we use in Kazakhstan or that we use elsewhere east of Vienna, the standards are the same, the principles are the same,” he said.

“We felt the elections were free and fair,” he added. “The main point is that people express their wish, their political wish, with absolute freedom. People can even show the way they are going to vote which doesn’t happen in the majority of European countries where people are afraid to say for who they voted. And that’s important because it means there’s freedom, nobody’s afraid.

The OSCE report released Thursday does mention long lines and overcrowding at polling stations, and highlighted ongoing concerns about possible voter suppression and campaign finance laws that allowed for nearly $6 billion in spending on the US presidential campaign.

“When you have a competitive election process like we do and you have a free press, everything that’s done is looked at very, very closely… so every problem that you hear about will be analyzed from the point of view of whether it complied with our laws,” said US Sen. Ben Cardin, co-chair of the US-Helsinki Commission, which oversees OSCE policy in the US and elsewhere, in an interview with RIA Novosti.

International monitors are crucial to insure the integrity of the system, but also to establish credibility internationally, said Cardin. “Nobody does it perfectly and the international observers help us improve our system.”

But overall, it is a glowing report that said the elections were ”yet another demonstration of the country’s commitment to democracy,” a far cry from the critical report OSCE released after the March, 2012 election of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which questioned the integrity and fairness of the Russian election process.

The US election underscored significant problems with the electoral system that are not highlighted in the report, said Chumarev, who added the OSCE observers tend to go to predetermined polling sites where election workers are organized, prepared, and have been briefed on what to expect.

Separate Russian Embassy monitors were not allowed into polling stations to observe in a number of states, including Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Louisiana, said Chumarev.

The US State Department said Thursday there were no reports of international monitors violating local restrictions or being arrested on Election Day.

“There were a number of states… that had this no observation closer than 100 feet, and our understanding is that in those states where they were asked to respect that, they did respect it,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Because they weren’t allowed to observe problems in Florida, Chumarev said his team talked to representatives from the two main US political parties, who reported “dozens of irregularities and violations… and huge queues (lines),” as well as confusion over the hours for early voting and voting on Election Day.

“So for us it’s a clear-cut double standard. If there are not problems, why not allow us in?” he asked.

Speaking through an interpreter, Olga Alimova, a representative of the Communist Party and an OSCE monitor from Saratov, Russia told RIA Novosti she found the process complied with election laws in the US, but had some concerns about campaign finance regulations and the fact that third-party candidates attract very little attention.

There is room for improvement, Soares said. But he maintained the OSCE does not have a double standard, and cautioned both sides against approaching modern US-Russian relations with an attitude that belongs in the past.

“I personally am very attached to the idea of not looking at this situation with the old eyes of the Cold War times,” he said.

“I think probably for many people in the US and in the Russian Federation, it’s very comfortable because this shame, old shame, was simple: ‘We are the good, this side, the other side, they are the bad side,’ but the reality of the world is not that,” he said. “You cannot look to a new reality with old eyes.”


RIA Novosti is Russia's leading news agency in terms of multimedia technologies, website audience reach and quoting by the Russian media.

[danthepoetman]

Here's someone who obviously wasn't just in it to give a hand to wealthy friends...
'I'm really proud of all of you': Gushing Obama breaks down in tears while thanking campaign staff day after winning re-election
By MEGHAN KENEALLY
PUBLISHED: 02:13 GMT, 9 November 2012 | UPDATED: 08:50 GMT, 9 November 2012

President Barack Obama got so emotional while thanking his campaign staffers in their Chicago headquarters that he began crying.
The normally stoic Democrat had to repeatedly wipe away tears during the five-and-a-half minute talk that was caught on video and posted to YouTube.
'I'm really proud of all of you,' he said.
Video:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230287/President-Obama-breaks-tears-thanking-campaign-staff-day-election.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-cries-2012-11

[trish]

Obama pulls a Boehner.

[danthepoetman]

Some terrible reactions to Obama’s re-election, Bill O’Reily’s being by far the worst…
http://www.heavy.com/comedy/2012/11/best-worst-celebrity-reactions-to-obama-victory/