American swing/independent voters, meaning ones who are not straight ticket democrats or republicans, are generally a "in the moment" conscience people who generally put blame on American hardships on the President and his party. Just like when Bush was in office, my people did not like his policies or his way of running the country and the result was durning his 2nd term, voters overwhelmingly voted in democratic senators and house representatives as well as the next president was a democrat. This overwhelming defeat lead to democrats running the show in america. Though it proved that in this nation if a party has an overwhelming control over the house, senate, and has the presidency, it is bad. Neither party can Efficiently run this nation so it does need balance. I fell the republicans will also win out in 2 year and take the oval office as well. This will lead to a lot of conservative changes. And will at first look to be great, then teeter off and go too far right. Then democrates will win out 6 years after that. And so on and so forth. It is a cycle of ********.
2010: Republicans Block Small Business Lending Bill http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38469644/ns/b ... Fp9zTTF9O4 2012: Republicans block small-business tax break on procedural vote http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/12 ... --20120712 2014: Republicans block bill to renew expired tax breaks http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-1 ... limbo.html Unless you're a big company, Republicans are not your friends. By the way, as of August 8 2014, vacation days: Bush 407, Obama 125. As for the poor people your money is going to, why is that welfare for profitable corporations is fine, but welfare for poor people isn't? And many of the lower class have jobs. They can't live on them. That's why you see stuff like this: Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconno ... ssistance/ Which technically is welfare for both kinds of people. Walmart gets to make bigger profits by paying low salaries that people can't live on and the workers make up the difference with your tax dollars. It's a win win. Well, for Walmart at least. Here's an idea. Let's tax the NFL. It makes about $10 billion annually and it's a federal tax exempt non profit 501(c)6. All kinds of things like that in the tax code. Anyway, when I see conservatives getting upset about stuff like that like they do about things about food stamps, I'll start thinking they're serious about fixing welfare.
Now see, this is what I love about low information voters. It's like the vacation thing I just posted about. The last guy took 407 days off by this time, but the new guy with only 125 days off is the one they call lazy. Go figure. Anyway, let's talk about how he's "making more poor people everyday" How exactly is he doing that? Don't just say something like "his polices" or "he sucks". Be specific. Name some polices. You posted the meme. You must agree with it. Obviously you know how, right? Let's talk about it.
Most of what dragon said is right, but I want to point out one thing. The vacation days is dumb. Most of Bushes vacation was before 9/11 when the usa was doing great. He actually did not vacation much afterwards.
You quoted my joke post but i guess you did not read the one before it. First off, do not classify me from a joke. I do follow politics, i just don't give a damn about the 3 major parties.
Yes the vacation days are all relative, Obama has very poor timing with with his vacation days and leaves a bad taste in many Americans mouth. Both parties have good and bad feelings about small business. Obama flat out hates them, he hates business in general. That's why i hate him. Of course if you are so blindly in love demarcates they are always right and republicans are always wrong. And you can pull out and look at all the good they do and ignore the bad. Obviously there is a ton of bad looking at this election and American are fed up. I don't look at parties I look at people, and Obama sucks as a person haha.
On a metalevel, it is well documented that presidents lose control of Congress in their 6th year. This even happened to the wildy popular FDR and i believe has happened to all Presidents in their 6th year, without fail (except possibly Washington). Obama losing control of Congress isn't really any different; it could simply be described as voter fatigue. Thanks for bringing facts and an informative opinion to the discussion, Dragon.
You're right, I didn't see it. But you did post the meme. If you want to know when we started creating more poor people, it was around the mid 80's.
It is unfortunate, but this is consistent with the political cycle of the past however many years. The Republicans take power and drive the country into economic hardship (Reagan, Bush, and Bush Jr.), and the country turns to the Democrats to get the economy back on track (Clinton, Obama). After the economy has been turned around and is in recovery, the Republicans can push their wedge issues and return to power. Hopefully, the economic policies put in place can survive the Republican control long enough to continue to let America recover. Otherwise, the whole U.S. could end up like Kansas.
I'm not blindly in love with Democrats. I think many Democratic politicians lack spines. Hell, I voted for Reagan. But I don't blindly follow parties either. When it became clear to me that Trickle Down economics doesn't work, I stopped voting Republican. As for Obama, I think he has faults. I don't like how he's basically ignored the big banks. I think his people skills need work. But on many issues, I think he's right. We don't need to be in the middle east, shifting to the Pacific is smart. We need to rely less on fossil fuels subject to price swings and market fluctuations. Switching to renewables is smart. I think infrastructure spending is not only needed, but will create jobs. I don't wet my pants over whether they go to Union members or not. Jobs are jobs. Union members spend money and stimulate economic activity just like everyone else. I don't think we need to send a bunch of troops to Iraq to fight ISIS. We can help, but let Iraq do the bulk of the fighting. I think staying out of Ukraine was smart. I'm not worried about Putin looking tougher than us. I don't lose sleep over Putin. I think the top 1% can pay more taxes. Why not? They're making most of the money and federal income taxes are actually low right now. They damn sure were higher during my fathers lifetime. I think women should get equal pay for equal work. The libertarian in me thinks women should have the final say over their reproductive systems. I could go on, but my point is I agree with Obama on many of the issues. More than I did Romney or McCain. All I heard from them was the same platitudes about "Freedom" and "Liberty" and how it'd be a utopia if we just got government out of the way. My ass. I've seen what happens when you deregulate. You get crap like bank implosions. Not my first by the way. It happened in the 80's too. Of course, you need to watch the government too, but that's what Congress is supposed to be for. They're the ones supposed to making sure things work right. That's why they have oversight. Not trying to break everything. Besides, the Ryan budget plan was a freaking disaster. None of the math added up and I didn't think we needed to double our spending on more weapons. So no, I don't automatically think Democrats are always right and Republicans are always wrong. I just think they're wrong on many issues right now and their current agenda seems to be to destroy the other party by breaking things rather than do anything to help me. If they start coming up with solutions I like, I'll vote for them. Until then, I'll vote for the other guys. I'm a pragmatist. I work with what I got.
Excellent factual argumentation Black Dragon, not very common on those US politics forum threads. I do like your reasoning... Well, my 2 cents (or the opinion of a decently educated European) on this topic: It is a bitter defeat for Obama, basically signifying the end of his presidency. His late unpopularity has torn down the democrat candidates all across the country as a large part of the voters used this election to out their frustration and deception. However, if you take a second look at it, it's much less dramatic. Most presidents in their sixth year got punished by the same voters that confirmed them two years ago... Winning the majority of the Senate by the Republicans won't really change the political constellation. They won't be able to do much more than what they did through having the majority in the House of Representatives: block all slightly important law projects. For the Republicans, this victory (certainly not due to their political program) might be a poisoned gift as it certainly will foster the inner party civil war going on between their radical conservative Tea Party members and the more moderate members coming out strengthened by this election. And gaining the majority in Congress implies a certain responsibility to deliver some constructive politics, to behave in a mature way. Will they be able to deliver it or might the retirement of Obama in two years bring some new wind to the Democrats?
I agree, Romney and especially McCaine would have been bad. However you say Obama wants to stay out of the Middle East. This is not a truth. He has been trying to get into Syria for awhile now. Also the weapons going into Syrian rebels are supplied by us. Benghazi was a jump off for supplying those arms before embassy attack. I don't think this can be considered staying out of the Middle East. The covert operation of supplying anti tank weapons was anything but covert. Not that republican chicken hawks would do any better. Which is why Romney and McCaine were denied IMO. Helping and defending the Kurds in northern Iraq, and a all out offensive in Syria are two very different things as well. Foreign affairs haven't gone well with Obama. That where I find my biggest issues with the adminstration.
Thanks. Here's my take on the "unpopular" thing. Obama’s approval rating is about 40%. That’s not great, but if you look at his overall trend, his approval rating has gone between 40-50% pretty much since about six months after he took office. So it’s not as if his numbers have suddenly shot down to 40%. You want unpopular? Right now the approval rating for Congress is at 14%. Boehner's currently at 28%. That's unpopular. So why is there a perception Obama is unpopular when his ratings are about where they always are? Messaging. Six years ago we were on the verge of another depression. There was panic in the streets. Six years later we've got good job growth with almost 10 million jobs, economic growth, manufacturing growth, a booming stock market, record corporate profits, and we reduced the deficit by $1 trillion. If Obama were a Republican they'd be pushing to name a holiday after him. Americans wouldn’t be “worried about the economy” because Republicans wouldn’t be shutting up about its successes. Hell, many of them think Bush was a good President and Bush set new standards for sucking. Instead, we've been hammered day after day, year after year by the right about how bad things still are and everything is a failure. And Democrats let them get away with it. Democrats were too weak to stand up and proudly say that "Yes, we did all of that. What did you do?" Instead, Democrats let the GOP dictate the message and set the tone. And by doing that they were basically agreeing with their opponent’s false political rhetoric that the leader of their party has been a failure. Democrats lost running away from a successful president because they didn’t have the internal fortitude to stand up and fight. Republicans didn’t win big this election year because of their party’s ideology. Their issues actually lost on the ballots. Democrats lost because they ran from theirs and they didn't have the will to stand up for what they believe in. Anyway, what's done is done. Now the GOP has to govern. And I get to have fun watching them trying to put an agenda together between Tea Party extremists and the GOP establishment. It's going to be interesting.
The republicans put together a agenda? They aren't that smart are they? I mean those extremist tea party members. Watch out. The next ISIS. This is the problem. Ideologues. One that think they are smarter than everyone else. People who credit their party for what banks business and the federal reserve achieve.
I think people should work for their money and not have it taxed away. They should keep taxes low like before, but still help people need it. Not throwing it away to people who do drugs in the hood all day. That's why if the government is smart with their money and actually would check welfare people every month then it would be a step in the right direction. Like seriously George Washington was afraid there would be political parties which they tried to escape in GB. People other than bipartisan people such as Paul Ryan for example who are too concerned with staying in power are gay. I'm a republican, but they should legalize weed or at least make research easier on it for medical purposes. Go america the; the reap terrorists