2012 General Election Thread

[tbst]

A place to discuss the 2012 General Election. Since it has started, we may as start deciding how much we will hate each other in November! :hunter:

Post interesting articles, your opinion, polls and anything else relevant to the election.

Lets be civil.

 

[tbst]

It is looking like Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee. What do you guys think of a running mate?

Rob Portman - Seems like the media is hyping him because they have nothing better to do.

Marco Rubio - Freudian slip or...?

 

[tbst]

My electoral map prediction as of now.

I think in the end FL, PA, CO will go to Obama.

 

[tbst]

Toss Up in Arizona

A new Merrill/Morrison Institute poll in Arizona finds Mitt Romney barely leading President Obama in a general election match up, 42% to 40%, with another 18% undecided.

Said pollster Bruce Merrill: "The eventual outcome also may be dependent on whether former Surgeon General Richard Carmona can mount a vigorous campaign for retiring Sen. John Kyl's seat, a campaign that would stimulate turnout in the Hispanic community. While I think if the election were held today Romney probably would win, it appears Obama can mount a competitive campaign in Arizona."

 

[BucknutBob]

Well, so far you have the right strategy for running a peaceful, non-combative political debate, tbst--being the only person posting greatly reduces the chance of getting flamed by other forum members! Personally, I try to steer clear of politics and religion in open formats, especially where those commenting have relative anonymity behind their keyboards.

 

[tbst]

HAHA. Maybe I will be the only person that comments on the entire thread! Then all of my opinions will be correct.

I think the behind the keyboard is a problem, but I also think people refusing to admit their position is another problem.

I guess we will see. We could have a really good and perplexing thread until the election or we could just get shutdown for berating each other, immediately.

 

[BrianSD_42]

tbst--being the only person posting greatly reduces the chance of getting flamed by other forum members!

That is a good strategy LoL!

 

[BrianSD_42]

Personally I hope it is Rick Perry. I already miss his great speeches :rockthrow:


:snacker:

 

[1engineer]

Ha! Nice try but you won't get me to comment on politics or religion on an internet forum. I will make my choice known in November in the form of voting.

 

[ndcent]

Dog on the roof of your car > dog on the roof of your mouth

 

[tbst]

Creating jobs > firing people and laughing about it.

 

[Millerad1651]

I see Indiana going Repub this time. As much as I don't want to say it, we will. Especially with the conservative legislations that have been passed these last couple of years.

 

[tbst]

Yes, with your boy Mitch and Lugar and Coats, it would be a hard sell. I think in the end it is going to go R, unless something dramatic happens.

This is great about Lugar.

Lugar Defends Himself On Residency Question - Indiana News Story - WRTV Indianapolis

Sen. Richard Lugar defended himself during an appearance in Indianapolis on Monday that came days after opponents claimed that he isn't qualified to run for office because he doesn't live in the state.
Lugar said two attorneys general have affirmed his position that the Indianapolis address on his Indiana driver's license is valid, even though he sold that home in 1977.
Lugar said he and his wife sold their house in Indianapolis because the only way they could afford to keep the family together and be part of their sons' school and after-school activities was to move to Washington, D.C. full time and buy a home there.

"We had a home that we had built in Indianapolis with room for our four boys and our family. It was too expensive, at least for us at that time in our lives, to maintain two houses," Lugar said. "So we sold the house the following year after we had been elected."

Nice!

 

[ndcent]

My money's on Romney. It's true he's running against the greatest presidential failure since Jimmy Carter.

ALLBAUGH: It's Romney versus Carter - Washington Times

Mr. Obama took over in the throes of a reeling economy. He made it worse. His stimulus plan was taken hostage by Democrats in Congress, who loaded it up with pork and precious few sources of actual economic stimulus. Then, $787 billion later, our deficit reached record heights while our economy listed.

No president in the modern era has been re-elected with unemployment above 8 percent. Add to this the fact that our president has displayed absolutely no seriousness about addressing the debt, which led to the first downgrade of our credit in history, and you have economic conditions that give voters great worry, not encouragement.

 

[RunninInGA]

The 2 main candidates are unfortunately 2 sides of the same coin. Those voting RP will undoubtedly ensure BOs re-election.

 

[theizzardking]

I think this is more opinion than fact. The stimulous was GWs as well as Obama's and as of April 2012, roughly 2 months after he took office, the US had shed > 8 million jobs since September 2011. Pretty crazy. Those jobs have only partly come back.

I think Obama holds blame for being too willing to appease the right, to centrist to the point where he no longer has a base at all. We probably wouldnt even be talking about the "Buffett rule" if OWS had not occured.

Anyways, it is this simple:
If you support trickle down econimics vote Romney.
If you support talking about progressive policies but carying on GW's policies then vote Obama.
If you support anything else vote Ron Paul.

I live in San diego and Obama has already won this state but I'll be voting RP.

 

[michael833]

Maybe I don't know how to read a graph, but our current debt is ~$15 trillion, our GDP is somewhere ~$14.5 trillion. GDP rose nearly $4 trillion while Bush was in office (half a trillion a year), and not nearly as much as half a trillion in the past 4 years. Also, GDP only measures the final goods and services produced, not bought or sold, etc. Let's not forget our friend Inflation.

When it comes to GDP we can't really praise or trash any president for anything. We have to look at the economy as a whole and see what was going on during that time (we have a free market economy, don't we?). One of the main reasons the economy was so booming during Clinton's era was the .com boom, which pretty much crashed in 1999/2000.

 

[tbst]

Anyways, it is this simple:
If you support trickle down econimics vote Romney.
If you support talking about progressive policies but carying on GW's policies then vote Obama.
If you support anything else vote Ron Paul.

I live in San diego and Obama has already won this state but I'll be voting RP.

With the operative word being "anything". That is the problem with supporting Paul. All the other nonsense that comes a long with it, especially the complete whack jobs associated with his campaign.

Do you guys predict Obama winning?

 

[tbst]

How is that Exxon paid $0 in taxes and everyone is ok with that?

This too.

Two dozen Fortune 500 companies paid no corporate income taxes in 2011

The Center for Tax Justice has an update to the big report they issued last November, detailing how much the Fortune 500 corporations paid, or avoided, in taxes. They found then that "30 of the companies paid no net federal income tax from 2008 through 2010." None. Nada. Zip.
In their follow-up, they find that 24 of these companies avoided paying taxes again in 2011.

In fact, all but four of the 30 companies remained in the no-federal-income-tax category over the 2008-11 period.
Over the four years:

26 of the 30 companies continued to enjoy negative federal income tax rates. That means they still made more money after tax than before tax over the four years!
Of the remaining four companies, three paid four-year effective tax rates of less than 4 percent (specifically, 0.2%, 2.0% and 3.8%). One company paid a 2008-11 tax rate of 10.9 percent.
In total, 2008-11 federal income taxes for the 30 companies remained negative, despite $205 billion in pretax U.S. profits. Overall, they enjoyed an average effective federal income tax rate of –3.1 percent over the four years.
You read that right. These 30 companies had an effective negative tax rate of –3.1 since 2008.
So how much federal revenue was missed out on in those four years? Or, more to the point, how much did all the rest of us schlubs who actually pay our taxes end up subsidizing those companies over the last four years?

That would be $78.3 billion, that's how much they received in tax subsidies by avoiding the 35 percent tax rate they're supposed to be paying. "Wells Fargo alone garnered $21.6 billion in tax subsidies over the four years, followed by General Electric ($10.6 billion), Verizon ($7.7 billion), and Boeing ($6.0 billion)."

Meanwhile, the Republican budget (the Romney-Ryan budget) would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Maybe they're shooting for a –10 percent tax rate for corporations. Rep. Paul Ryan says that of course that massive tax break, as well as the one for millionaires, will be revenue neutral, and they'll somehow magically find enough tax loopholes to close to make up the difference. He just can't tell us which loopholes. That's super secret information. Of course, even if he does have real loopholes in mind, a revenue neutral plan would still mean that American taxpayers would be cheated out of about $20 billion a year that these companies should have paid.

 

[1engineer]

Whrere did the chart come from?