Election 08

[Gez]

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
Personally, I find this awful, and I think that America should have chosen differently. Anyone else have any other opinions?

Yes.

Oh yes.

The only point I could haven seen in a McCain victory would have been the total self-destruction of the Republican Party that would have followed.

[Alasdair]

I am very glad Obama won, I find it practically inconceivable that even after 8 disastrous years of Bush the American public would even consider a Republican candidate, the fact that McCain was even a serious contender shows that American politics is more of a personality contest than anything about serious political issues. Furthermore, Obama is not a socialist by any definition - American politics is so far skewed to the right, a real socialist in America would be branded a commie and deported to Russia, I regularly see socialist posters around here with slogans like "CAPITALISM HAS FAILED! MARX WAS RIGHT!", that is certainly a lot more than the 'socialist' horror of free healthcare, and a decent welfare system - usually just common sense things in other western democracies.

So, to summarize: YAY OBAMA!!! =) =) =)

[blackbird]

If McCain had won, his first job was to clean the mess from his collegue Bush. Bush ruined almost the US and A with some wars he can't win and neglecting the social security for the poorer people and people with bad luck.
McCain wouldn't have cared about the social security, but I think he couldn't have solved the financial crisis well and creating more poverty. I don't belive he would have anything done to reduce the CO2 pollution and fighting the global warming.
If McCain had died during his reign, then Palin would have become the next president of the USA and she would push her extremic patriotic and her religious fanatism into her job. With her, a new Bush era would have begun and causing the fall and perhaps the destruction of the USA.

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

I don't care what anyone says about all of this "impending destruction of the US" if either party won. If Palin won, the US would survive. Obama is the President, America won't suddenly explode. People just like government run differently, and those who are against a different party will always feel that because someone else believes differently, they must immediately be bad people and want to destroy America. The president does not hold absolute power over the nation and is always at the mercy of the people. If there was ever a big enough issue, the president can be removed from power at any time. I know that many republicans feel now that Obama is president and now America is doomed. I know many democrats who assumed that if McCain was president, it would be another 4 years of Bush and America would become devastated. No, that's just being overly dramatic. However, I really do feel that McCain can handle the country's current issues better than Obama. With the current setup of Obama's plans, we're looking at trillions in extra government spending now, money that is inevitably going to be taken from the workers of America and given to the Leeches and the Needy. The Leeches do outnumber the Needy, that's a definite truth. The people in my town, we all have jobs, we work, and we earn money to help us keep our homes. But that can't be said for towns nearby that I know for certain. There are massive numbers of economic leeches in cities like Springfield and Holyoke Massachusetts, leeching off of Welfare because they do not want to get jobs. Now with economic redistribution in the economy, My family and other working residents of the town I live in will invariably lose a bulk of their income to people like these by mandate of the government. Frankly, I don't like getting my money leeched off of like this, and I think it's unfair of the government to assume that just because we have a certain income, we have extra money that we waste on nothing, which couldn't be more wrong.

[Deeza]

From what I've seen of the election coverage, Obama does at least appear to be a good speaker and skilled at running large organisations, which are useful abilities for any leader, particularly a country as large and complex as the USA. So I'm cautiously optimistic...

As to how many of his election promises he will eventually keep, though, (for good or bad, depends on your point of view) I guess we have to wait and see (though surely it can't be hard to do a better job than the current president, at least I hope).

[Alasdair]

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPERORMy family and other working residents of the town I live in will invariably lose a bulk of their income to people like these by mandate of the government. Frankly, I don't like getting my money leeched off of like this, and I think it's unfair of the government to assume that just because we have a certain income, we have extra money that we waste on nothing, which couldn't be more wrong.

If your family earns less than $250,000 then Obama's tax plan will see your taxes cut by considerably more than McCain's would. Obama's tax plan manages to raise the total amount of tax collected, but it taxes the rich rather than the poor. McCain on the other hand would have given huge tax breaks to the rich, while only slightly cutting the amount for the poor. If you earn more than $250k then you'll pay more with Obama, but then you can afford it - so stop complaining. The amount of needy people is almost certainly larger than the number of 'leeches'. It seems sad that a non-American like me knows more about both the candidates policies than many Americans do, who erroneously think that Obama will take their money and give it to the 'leeches' when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Oh, and given that the US is in a veritable mountain of debt, then Obama's tax plan seems a lot more sensible than McCain's. McCain would have just continued to spend like Bush, but without any additional tax revenue, he would just have gotten the US into even more debt, faster.

Originally posted by Deeza
From what I've seen of the election coverage, Obama does at least appear to be a good speaker and skilled at running large organisations, which are useful abilities for any leader, particularly a country as large and complex as the USA. So I'm cautiously optimistic...

Yes, Obama usually comes of as being smart and intellectual, while McCain and Palin seemed to consider their 'down to earth' ignorance a selling point.

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

Originally posted by Alasdair
If your family earns less than $250,000 then Obama's tax plan will see your taxes cut by considerably more than McCain's would.

First, it was moved down to $200,000, which is bad enough because we reached the $250,000 point anyways and have barely enough money to keep us going.

Second, these "tax breaks", aside from the "rich" folk like my family, where is this money going to come from?

Obama is definitely not going to do a better job with government spending than president Bush would, as I said, his plan currently puts us 3 trillion dollars deeper into debt.

And I've said this a million times, the needy are outnumbered by the leeches. At least it is here. I have no idea what it's like in other places, but there are more leeches than needy here, that is a clear fact and no amount of liberal cover-ups can hide that.

Also, Obama has many contradictory policies, such as "Offshore drilling would do nothing to help our country and we won't do it" and "Offshore drilling would be a benefit to America's energy crisis and would help stimulate the economy, it would help to do it."

Aside from our country, he's also handling the situation in Iraq now terribly. Creating a timetable of when we're going to leave Iraq, then announcing it to the entire world, that's absolutely stupid. Might as well just walk up to the terrorists and tell them that they can all massacre the Iraqi people on this day. Things like this happened before too, in Vietnam, except the people we're fighting against this time are crazy and absolutely brutal.

[Alasdair]

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
First, it was moved down to $200,000, which is bad enough because we reached the $250,000 point anyways and have barely enough money to keep us going.

Second, these "tax breaks", aside from the "rich" folk like my family, where is this money going to come from?

It's 250,000 for families, and 200,000 for individuals. At least that's what Obama's website says, and it's obviously the best source for his policies. Your family is in the top 2%-5% of American families, if you are struggling imagine what the other 95% of hard-working American families are going through right now (foreclosure, most likely).

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
Obama is definitely not going to do a better job with government spending than president Bush would, as I said, his plan currently puts us 3 trillion dollars deeper into debt.

Compared to 4.5 trillion for McCain, it's a lot better. Also McCain said he would cut the debt 'like Reagan'... Reagan almost tripled the deficit.

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
And I've said this a million times, the needy are outnumbered by the leeches. At least it is here. I have no idea what it's like in other places, but there are more leeches than needy here, that is a clear fact and no amount of liberal cover-ups can hide that.

Liberal cover-ups? you are joking right? That is such nonsense.

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
Also, Obama has many contradictory policies, such as "Offshore drilling would do nothing to help our country and we won't do it" and "Offshore drilling would be a benefit to America's energy crisis and would help stimulate the economy, it would help to do it."

Offshore drilling is a huge waste time and money. The oil companies already own the unused offshore oil fields, and there is a reason they're not using them. Firstly the cost of building new rigs is huge, and even then every American refinery is operating at 100%, so you would need new refineries. All that money, time and effort (and oil!) to get at a very small amount of oil which would make up only a tiny fraction of oil used in America. Not to mention that it would take years and years before anything came out of the oil fields. Most Americans don't understand that offshore drilling is stupid, and saying that offshore drilling will bring 'energy independance' is a winning line for politicians, even if it is a complete lie. Obama understands this, and that's why he only supports limited drilling.

Edit: Here's a nice image showing the pointlessness of offshore drilling (take special note of the timescale at the bottom).

Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
Aside from our country, he's also handling the situation in Iraq now terribly. Creating a timetable of when we're going to leave Iraq, then announcing it to the entire world, that's absolutely stupid. Might as well just walk up to the terrorists and tell them that they can all massacre the Iraqi people on this day. Things like this happened before too, in Vietnam, except the people we're fighting against this time are crazy and absolutely brutal.

America can't solve the problem, America is the problem. There will never be peace in Iraq until America leaves.

[Ja-Kha'jay]

US$200000? That is a fuck load of money. If you convert what i make a year in NZ to USD i get US$15000 a year. Stop complaining

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Just one point: Obama has re-focused his attention on finding Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan as opposed to fighting that ridiculous and ultimately un-winnable war that Bush and (satanic) Blair pledged himself to.

The Taliban are a fact. You cannot defeat an enemy that operates the way it does. You can only oppress its people and give it reason to terrorise you. This has to become personal and aimed at the directly guilty party in order to justify the conflict and effect a tidy withdrawal with as little damage to all countries involved as possible. Otherwise, our boys are fighting an invisible enemy that is always successfully recruiting and fighting another day in another gap in the landscape because they care not who they fight. There have been some democratic advances and grounds for agreement between the two parties but, even if Obama just makes it look like he tidied things up by focusing on the facts then we'd be making headway.

Possibly the most difficult thing about Afghanistan in a moral sense is how to deal with what happens there when we leave: the drugs, the oppression and so on but it's always going to be a hard country. In the meantime, there is potential for these factors to be aggressively negotiated without so much military intervention.

As for Iraq, the world and his dog knows that if they were going to 'get' Saddam then they should have done it the first time because the second time was a sham of a sham of a sham. We're still there but not realistically; it's little more than supervision.