No, just reality. Clinton was lucky to be president, in the single easiest time in the US in my 40+ year lifetime. When he took over, the economy was growing at about record pace. When he left, it wasn't. When he took over the military was strong. When he was in and left, they were kicking people out who wanted to be in, and forcing people to stay who wanted to leave, all while cutting the budget and not having the troops with the equipment they need to do their jobs.

Bush Jr. and Obama will both end up being seen as worse presidents because of the condition of the country while they were in office, yet both are probably better than Clinton. I do not see Clinton being able to handle the housing and financial meltdown, on top of 9/11 and Katrina, or the declining economy and Gulf Oil Spill and 2 wars.

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Romney is this, Romney is that. Blah blah blah.

Come on Dakota. You can do better than that.

This is the problem I have with both of you types of people - Romney supporters or Obama supporters. You're both EXACTLY the same.

This is your entire argument.

"Vote for Romney because Obama is the worst President EVER and he'll bring the country to her knees."

"Vote for Obama because Romney is evil and only thinks about rich people and will fuck all the poor people in the ass."

It's not even about "I like Obama because of...." or "I like Romney because of...."

It's vote for my guy because the other guy sucks.

That's a bullshit argument. It's weak, pathetic, and holds NO water with me.

I still love you, man. I just think your reasoning on this issue is dumb.

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Tearing someone else down and obsessing over the other guy is a great way to ignore problems with your own candidate and philosophy. Not to say that we don't all do it, but some people just choose to ignore the phenomenon and keep spitting out the same drivel. It's particularly annoying when they claim to be open-minded or "non-partisan".

And Bush handled Katrina well? Really, shall we revisit the FEMA decisions and the mismanagement of that disaster.

2 Wars.. both decided upon by Bush in response to 9/11, so didn't he really choose that path based on WMD?

Don't take that as I oppose to responding though, but I cannot say that Bush was handed the wars, they were part of his decision process.

On the economy, much of the issues can be directed to lack of control over the energy costs and corruption on Wall Street in terms of commodities. I should say that was the straw that broke the camels back, families that were already stretching their means, could not adjust rapidly enough to handle the rapidly rising energy costs. The economy toppled quickly and each recovery seems to be thwarted by jumps in the energy markets.

Neither Bush nor Obama have dealt with that effectively, and I don't see Romney addressing that either.

But, the bottom line, we as American's are more to blame as a whole as we as a majority live on credit and walk the tightrope of stress because our wants out run our means.. from the very top to the very bottom. And while the middle and lower classes are starting to adjust to that reality, until the leadership of this country, regardless of party, get a grip on living within a budget and prioritizing spending from needs of the society to wants.. we are not moving forward.

That means...

We cannot realistically cut taxes. Every candidate is going to back away from that, but currently we are neck deep in debt.. until we work our way out of said debt, cutting taxes is a pipe dream. But that doesn't mean we need to raise them either, controlling and prioritizing spending to bring things back into check and working our way back out of debt. This isn't a 4 or 8 year remedy.. so no president is going to revert this course in their terms.

We cannot realistically be the defender of the world as we so much want to be.

We cannot overspend on military, space programs and other extensions of similar ilk.

We need to focus on infrastructure of a changing world and economy, dropping some of the old ways and looking at the now and future. Not all employees need to be onsite to do their job, cutting down commuting and reducing energy consumption. However there are parts of the country yet that lack that backbone to realistically do this.

We need to figure out a energy solutions that are sustainable in both resources and cost.

We need to figure out a means to get health care costs under control and kept in check. But realistically, we knew that this boomer generation was going to hit the retirement stages hard and tax the health care dollars and supply rapidly. We planned poorly for this, and we now need to face the reality that our poor planning is going to cost us. That is reality.



But neither party is going to want to be the party that faces reality, shoots straight and deal with the crisis in realistic manners with honest and direct dialog to we the people.

Part of that is we the people aren't ready yet as a whole to roll up the sleeves and dig ourselves out of this, we would rather point blame in another direction and fight each other.

We have not the meaning of United we stand, instead we only want it fixed now. In times of natural disasters we seem to revert back to that meaning, but it is quickly forgotten when in comes to money, economy, health care and such. Hate to say it, but this country is heading face first towards a disaster of national survival and fast. With our debt spiraling out of control, we are closer than we think.

Reality is, there is no quick easy fix, and to ignore the responsibilities we have to each other isn't going to get it down either.

Rich.. Poor.. young.. old.. we all have a burden to carry until we rebound.. either that, or rebounding is just a pipe dream as well. That is if we still view ourselves as a nation of one.

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Best campaign tagline of the season. Wish it was more prevalent.

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Obama had 4 years to show what he can do. He didn't get it done. He said he would lower the national debt. He not only didn't lower it, it's gone up more then 50% of what it was when he took office.
The only thing i see that was positive during his 4 years was Bin Laden was killed while he was president.

Remember all the "hope" and "change" and "yes we can" and now "forward".
What exactly does all that mean? Seriously. Each of those words can, and DO mean something different for each person.
What did "change" mean to Obama? Or "hope", or "yes we can". Obviously something completely different then it means to me, and alot of people i know.
What does/did all those words mean to each of you? Did Obama get the job done, or even a good start in a "forward" direction you want the country to go in?
If not, then he doesn't deserve 4 more years.
That's what it boils down to for me. He did NOT move the country in a positive direction, and i haven't seen anything to make me think he's the answer.

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http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/02/news/economy/obama-jobs-report/?hpt=hp_bn3 



Fun facts: According to the BoLS , there are currently 12.3 million people it considers unemployed. The $787 Billion stimulus cost $63,983.74 for every unemployed American.

According to the 2011 Census, the U.S. population is 311,591,917. The stimulus cost $2,525.74 for every man, woman, and child in the country. There are 205,794,364 "Working Age" Americans  between the ages of 15-64, that is $3824.21 spent for every working-age American.

Even if you add the 386,000 jobs to the 194,000 reported as gained, that's $1,356,896.55 spent per job through the 787 BILLION dollar stimulus. That's correct, 1.35 MILLION dollars. If you take the lower figure of 194,000 jobs created, that' $4,056,701.03/job or $4.06 MILLION spent to create a single job.

If I were to work uninterrupted between the ages of 18-65, I would need to bring home an average salary of $86,383 to meet the higher figure cited above ($4.06 Million), or $28,723 to meet the lower figure ($1.35 Million), not taking into account taxes or other deductions of any kind.

Nick, Nick, Nick, (shaking head)

I know you know that an attack ad hominem says nothing to the merits of the claim. If you want to refute me, you have to come up with an example of a better decision by the Minnesota electorate than the one I specified.

The fact that I'm an academic ivory tower type doesn't say anything evidentiary about whether I got it correct or not in the specific case at hand. It merely restates the obvious -- that in general, academics haven't got a clue.

Regards,
Wade

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This. ⤴

A series of bad economic decisions have been made. The credit cards have to be torn up. We're going to have to wear hand-me-downs for awhile.

It doesn't matter who dumped the shit on the lawn. It's there. It needs to be cleaned up.

And there's so much of it, we all need to pick up our own pooper scooper.

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