Ahh, I thought you were coming from the exposure angle. I would agree that order seems to be about right. So what is it about mean/distasteful rhetoric and sensationalised misinformation that catches the public's eye so quickly?

It's been a pretty ugly election year.

I would say 527's and the lack of FEC enforcement on the McCain-Feingold law are what are the cause of most of the problems. The Democrats, primarily George Soros and Peter Lewis dumped 10's of millions of dollars into these shady groups to just run non-stop attack ads on Bush, questioning his National guard service etc... The Republicans responded with the Swiftboat ads, and shit just started hitting the fan.

Michael Moore is more of a fanboi, who probably did more damage to his credibility with his own ludicrous claims than any pundit could actually spin it. But, people love to read the National Enquirer, and Michael Moore is like the political version of it.

I wouldn't really rate Talk radio as a factor. It's been around for years and they always say the same stuff, and usually to the same niche group. Normal people don't actually listen to that crap, and when they do it's more for amusement that anyone would believe it. I wouldn't even mention Fox news as it's not really a factor. They learn slightly right in their broadcasts, like a few organizations lead slight left. If you're "influenced" by rose colored broadcasts on news, you're either already supporting what the person is saying, or you ride the short bus to school.

our government is officially $7,400,000,000,000 in the hole. that's 7.4 trillion. i remember reading it was Reagan's administration that saw the govt debt get large, and then bush sr. and bush jr. caused it to grow a crapload as well. clinton, i read, actually had a govt surplus (+$). anyone know the statistics on this? anyone concerned a bit? does it mean anything? sounds bad to me.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... _2004oct14

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Well, to make things better HR 4520, that is now awaiting the Presidents signature, is going to drop about 200 billion dollars into various corporate tax breaks and supposedly cover up loopholes.

I like this however:

(Sec. 313) Establishes as a general business tax credit a manufacturer's jobs credit equal to a certain percentage of wages paid to the employees (including employees eligible for a trade readjustment allowance) of a taxpayer that has a certain level of domestic production gross receipts in the current and preceding taxable year and is not disqualified as an inverted domestic corporation (a foreign corporation that manipulates its structure to evade U.S. taxes). Terminates the credit after 2005.

brilliant! take in less taxes and the national debt will magically disappear?

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Seems like the bill is really trying to bring the proverbial hammer down on inverted corporations. That is good, at least on paper. There is nothing to stop corporations from moving 81% of there stock to foreign countries with lower tax rates. Once they do that they are out from under US taxation code completely. I doubt any inverted corporation would have difficultly buying out or convincing share holders to do so. Heck, maybe they should just commit corporate suicide with liquidable assests outside the US, then relocate.

This bill gets better and better:

(Sec. 473) Limits to $25,000 the cost of a sport utility vehicle of 14,000 pounds or less that is not subject to the limitation on depreciation for luxury automobiles that may be expensed.

To put it in the vernacular, WTF over...

Do you think there will really be huge differences between the way the country is run depending on who wins?

I mean, when it boils down to it, isn't it all just the same old stuff regardless of who wins?

This graph will probably be more useful in explaining the current debt.



The best way to think of our debt versus GDP is to use the analogy that we all face in life. Think of the GDP being your wages for the year, and the debt being your Visa Bill. Let's say you make $50,000 per year take home, at this point you would have $31,000 on your Visa bill. The real kicker is that of that $50,000 per year, you are spending roughly that or a little more and keep racking up the cash on your Visa.

During a recession like we are having, that's actually the economically intelligent thing to do. There are two ways to stimulate growth in our economy and that's where the two parties differ. The Republicans believe that by maintaining the current level of spending and cutting the tax revenue to encourage growth (i.e. more money to pay for health insurance). The Democrats believe that you increase spending, while maintaining the current level of taxation to encourage economic growth (i.e. cheaper health insurance). Both philosophies have been proven to work, the difference is that one increase the money in the consumers pockets, while the other decreases the amount of money the consumers must spend to get the same goods and services. Both of them unfortunately generate debt for the government as spending outpaces revenue.

The positive side of course is that over time the increased spending of the consumers generates more tax revenue and pulls us out of the recession. At that point, Ideally the revenue has increased to a point that it exceeds the spending. (Whether you cut taxes or increase spending the gap between the two generally stays the same regardless of which party is doing the economic recovery)

One serious problem we have had for a considerable amount of time is that we have been raiding the Social Security trust fund to pay for that increased spending. In effect it's like borrowing money from your own retirement to buy a boat, and then finding out that when you want to retire, you forgot to put the money back in your retirement fund. That's pretty much where we sit today with Social Security.

When we're finally out of the recession, the government is going to have to make some serious cutbacks somewhere, either in Social security expenditures (Raise the age you can retire, reduces benefits, counterfeit someone elses currency to pay for our debt with funny money), or elsewhere like in areas of Defense or social programs. Of course no politician wants to do this because telling the people you are reducing their benefits would be the equivalent of pissing away your political career. In 1999 we _almost_ ran a surplus without raiding Social security, but missed it by 100 million. But hey, what's 100 million dollars among friends right?

Unless someone starts doing some serious social security reforms, the program will be going tits up in around 2042, and then we won't have anything to borrow from to cover our overruns. Of course neither of the morons running for President this year are fiscally responsible, so I expect this will be a problem for another 4 years. Hopefully, whoever wins, McCain will decide to run in 2008 and straighten out the budget and perhaps institute some drastically needed reforms.

One major problem with social security is that it was never intended to be a long term retirement fund. At the time it was instituted, most people on average only lived to about 65 years of age. Ironically the age at which you could begin collecting benefits was 65 years of age. It was more of a, 'I can't believe you lived this fucking long, it's time to relax until you die, and since we're now an industrial society, you can't go relax with the kids on the farm so here's a few pennies to enjoy florida bingo'. Now of course, we have people living to be 90-100 years old with the average life expectancy average of 77 years. People are taking more out of the system, than they paid into the system. Not a bad deal if you're the retiree, but not such a great thing if you're one of the people who actually has to pay for it and will probably never see it.

Add onto that the Baby boomers who will soon be retiring and it's headed for a grand catastrophe because those SOB's will probably live to be 80-85 years old.

That was a really good post, but I'll probably have to read it at least once more to fully understand. To say the economics is my weakness would be a gross understatement. But, the visa analogy was helpful.

But this:



mad me laugh out loud!!

i very much like mccain and would vote for him over any dem i can think of

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

from Yahoo! News:
"For example, if just New Hampshire and Nevada (or West Virginia) shifted from favoring Bush to the Democrats this time, there could be a 269-269 tie, leaving it to the House to pick the next president and the Senate to pick the new vice president come January.

That would leave open the jarring possibility of a Bush-Edwards or Kerry-Cheney pairing, depending on the political leanings of the new House and Senate."

i'd actually like to see this happen.. then maybe politicians will realize the electoral college is a joke

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

There's nothing drastically wrong with the electoral college.

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Dark is banned from ever touching my computer again.

I prefer the electoral college rather than direct elections. It forces the candidates to adopt and speak about a wide range of issues that appeal to all Americans, rather than just concentrating on the large states like California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvannia, Illinois, and Ohio.

If we had to do away with the electoral college, I would be in favor of scrapping our entire system and adopting a representative parliamentary system.

Direct elections would be fine if we had 100% voter turnout, but now the elections are just "general surveys" of states.

And if we try to do Direct Elections, we're fucking with the foundation of this country. That's exactly what they DIDN'T want to happen.

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Dark is banned from ever touching my computer again.

California New York and Texas are already decided long before the election. Why vote if you live in Texas? I'm officially living in Texas now, and I thought to myself, why vote? Of course the answer should be, "because it's your right, and you should exercise it, it doesn't matter who wins, you vote for who you want" (which i agree with), but even still i came to the conclusion of "fuck it." and i'm politically concerned. just think what other people, who aren't politically concerned, think. big states are totally overlooked in the election. so are tiny states. it's all about the same middlesized states that have a tendency to lean one way or the other, which there aren't many. the candidates mosey on over to those states and say, "I care about YOU!"

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

It changes from year to year what states become the swing states. Also the electorate has this wierd habit of moving around every 4 years and the types of voters in each state can shift from one candidate to the other depending on their stances.

They also have to gain the swing states without alienating their base of support in their core states. It's probably less important in this election since the bases are so polarized, but in prior elections, saying the wrong thing could easily lose you a large state.

Additionally, there are local offices that you should at the very least be voting for where the races won't be so cut and dry. I lived in Dallas and we consistently had Democrats and Republicans for various offices.

If this was an election on the popular vote, I can tell you exactly how it would go down. The Democrats would incessantly pander to the lower class voters and the left with offers of free social programs and the Republicans would pander to the conservative and religious people. If either can get their base out they'd win the election in a walk. The electoral college does a good job of forcing candidates to present a broad platform in order to win. Democrats have to throw a bone to the rural folks who inhabit many smaller states (AFL-CIO doesn't really mean shit in Idaho), and Republicans have to throw a bone to big city inhabitants that bring in the big electoral votes (Farm aid and religious values aren't all that important in Chicago).

George Bush took California in 1988 (R)
Ronald Reagan took California and New York in 1984 & 1980 (R)
Jimmy Carter took Texas in 1976 (D)
Nixon took almost everything in 1972


I will agree some more commonly stick with the others. But it'll be you kicking yourself in the ass if it's decided by a few votes in your state contrary to the polls and you decide not to vote

i feel like 3rd party candidates won't stand a chance until we do away with the electoral college

btw reagan won all but like 1 state

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Third party candidates will never stand a chance. Unless they split the vote into thirds, and then we need to start having run-offs.

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Dark is banned from ever touching my computer again.

Poll results posted on Yahoo! News regarding how other countries feel about G-W and USA:

"The polls found that to an overwhelming degree, respondents in most of the countries have a more negative view of the United States now than a few years ago, disapprove of the war in Iraq, and dislike Bush.

Only in Israel — whose prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has won strong backing from Bush — did more people say their view of the United States had improved than worsened, by a margin of 40 percent to 26 percent. "


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Anyone who doubts this obviously hasn't been overseas lately. People hate us. Sure some of you say it might be because they have a media bias in other nations: that doesn't change the fact that we are becoming hated. We are becoming hated.

As for Israel liking us...lol. I like Jews and everything but this all started because we and uk decided we had to perform our modernday crusades in palestine. We..brought..this..on..ourselves.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Do you understand what that says?

"They hate us, but now they hate us more because we fucked up their oil deals"

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Dark is banned from ever touching my computer again.

I could have sworn I pointed out in the not too distant past how moronic polls are that show who they would "vote" for in our election are... Is this like deja vu?

Americans have been brainwashed. Big conspiracy, occurs in Public Schools.