Official: Romney a moron

[ucfknightryan]

@Sigma -- I'm a Libertarian, too.  The fact half the country is getting a free ride is a problem in itself.  I earn $100k/year and have no kids and end up paying over $20k in taxes each year.  My sister earns $100k/year and has 2 kids and ends up paying a negative tax rate, thanks to earned income credits and various other write offs.  Those people on welfare can also collect a fat payday by having kids, which they often do.  I can walk down the street and get stopped by a beggar asking for $1.  The way our current system is setup, I'm supposed to tell the beggar that the government took my $1 and he should go down to the government building to get his assistance.

Also, on unemployment many people will take jobs under the table and collect benefits.  Texas probably has better laws than most states--you were able to collect $450/week for 99 weeks here in NC, which means if you wanted to stay home and play video games and earn $23k/year while earning $10/hour under the table, you could.  There are thousands of unfilled truck driving jobs--most anyone can get a CDL and drive a truck--that pay upwards of $40k/year.  I do a lot of work in North Dakota--unemployment is 2.9% and Walmart is paying $19/hour to stock shelves and still can't find anyone to hire.

1.) If your sister is making $100k/year she is not getting the EITC unless she's committing tax fraud.  The current limit for a couple with two kids to get any EITC is $46,044.  If your sister is in fact paying a negative tax rate she must be jumping through some truly spectacular tax loopholes.

2.) Claiming that half the people in this country pay no taxes is disingenuous.
That's only for Federal Income Tax, and does not include Social Security Taxes or Medicare Taxes.  Just because they have different names does not mean they aren't taxes.  Since the government doesn't actually segregate that revenue in any way the distinction is fairly meaningless, they are all federal taxes that fund the government.  If you include those the number that pay nothing is somewhere around 17% currently and was around 14% before the economy tanked.  If you are seriously arguing that the country is going bankrupt because we don't collect any taxes from the bottom 17% of income earners you obviously have no idea what the income distribution curve in this country looks like.  You could take all their money and no one would notice the difference in the federal budget.

Secondly even if you want to artificially limit it to the Federal Income Tax, the number has only been almost half during the last 2-3 years,  while we have had high unemployment, wages are depressed, and the government has implemented lots of temporary tax breaks.  It was around 40% before the economy tanked. 

[ucfknightryan]

Not a good answer.  'Taxes' is not sufficient.    What type of taxes?  Jut under 1/2 of americans already pay no federal income tax.   

We could start by eliminating all deductions of any type and eliminating the distinction between earned income and capital gains perhaps.  That would have the added advantage of making everyone's income tax return take about 15 minutes to complete accurately and correctly, and probably enabling the government to downsize the IRS a quite a bit.

[Infinity]

Well now the discussion is over anyway. Despite excessive voter fraud from the republican side, the right man has won.

[Curse]

I like how some Germans know from 5000km distance who's right and who's wrong but haven't understand the unimportance of foreign affairs to people whose direct neighbour countries aren't France or Russia but Kansas, California or Virginia while they live in a country that's half the size of Texas.


We're lucky the rest of the world just see us as very accurate people and not as the annoying smart asses most of us are, even they have absolutely no idea what the particular topic is about.
I can only imagine how yesterday 81 million soccer coaches spread their knowledge how to win the Champions League twice a year.

[swiftus27]

Well now the discussion is over anyway. Despite excessive voter fraud from the republican side, the right man has won.

Explain the voter fraud, please.

[swiftus27]

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/results/ohio

Great map.   Red are counties in Ohio that Romney won,  Blue for Obama.   It is basically the urban centers who vote one way and the rural areas another.  Cuyahoga County voted for Romney 68.8 to 30.2% (a vote difference of ~235,000 votes for Obama).    Columbus, the state capital, is Franklin County (in the center of the state) and voted Obama 115,000 more times.  Cincinnati is the southwest corner (Hamilton County) only 20k more votes for Obama.  The 4th largest city, Toledo in Lucas County leaned 60,000 more votes Obama and lastly the 5th largest city of Akron (Summit) Obama won by 39,000. 

The entire State of Ohio:
Obama 2,672,302 
Romney 2,571,539

A total of 100,763 split the two in the entire state but in the urban centers the difference was almost 5x as much at 469,000.       

I am not spinning this information. 

[swiftus27]

We're lucky the rest of the world just see us as very accurate people and not as the annoying smart asses most of us are, even they have absolutely no idea what the particular topic is about.

Let's just hope no one shoots Prince Ferdinand.... Those local relationships could suddenly spiral out of control.

[Infinity]

Explain the voter fraud, please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMxFGhgVuA

Nuff said.

[swiftus27]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMxFGhgVuA

Nuff said.

That one booth was immediately re-calibrated...

Meanwhile in the same city:  (Keep in mind the county Philly is in went 551,070 to 90,989 to Obama as of this AM)

You have Black Panthers patrolling AGAIN (they did this 4 yrs ago): 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-black-panthers-surface-pa-polling-places/

Massive Obama Mural in between the voting booths (illegal)
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/11/06/philadelphians-vote-under-big-obama-mural/

[Infinity]

I will just say this:
A candidate (partly) owning the Election Machine firm (not directly but via his son and other affiliates) is just shocking.
America would be well advised to return to pen and paper voting. Those machines only make trouble and if a candidate can own them, it is undemocratic. It is absolutely beyond me how a thinking person, no matter what he or she thinks about Obama, can vote for somebody who is as brazen as to unconcealedly own the Voting Machine firm.
From a President, I expect the highest possible degree of integrity, and it is in my eyes a question of self respect and honor to not even think about buying that firm if I run for an office, or sell the shares if I owned them before I considered running. That goes for the immediate surroundings as well.

Also, I just can't understand how some here didn't vote for Obama on the grounds of his Health Care reform being too expensive, when Romney wanted to cut taxes extensively - which would have been as, if not more, expensive as the Health Care act.

I also can't understand how one could vote for a party that has spent the best part of 4 years blocking the House, not even considering bipartisanship no matter how far the President reached out to them, just for the sake of getting him out of office.

Apart from all differences in terms of content - that is just a thing that I would never tolerate in a political party.
But that's just my 2 cents.
I am quite confident that this will not convince any of the Republicans here. I just wanted to state that it is absolutely beyond me how one can muster as much hate as to ignore those hard facts that make the GOP of the day absolutely unworthy of discussion.

[swiftus27]

Facts not all correct.  House has been in repubs hands for 2 yrs.  Senate in dems hands for obamas whole term.  

The Kennedy fortune was off of illegal sales of booze during the American prohibition... Didn't disqualify the from being president and attorney general at the same time.

This shows the bicameral system actually works.  No way too much power is given to one person.

Also the entire opposite viewpoint to above is that many see that all you need to do is to appeal to various groups.   There's no way a person should get 95% of the black vote, 71% of hispanic vote...  that's a statistic abnormality.    Keep in mind the jewish and irish catholic vote is crazily disproportinate too.   These groups would never be seen in public together but always vote party line.  

[Infinity]

Also the entire opposite viewpoint to above is that many see that all you need to do is to appeal to various groups.   There's no way a person should get 95% of the black vote, 71% of hispanic vote...  that's a statistic abnormality.    Keep in mind the jewish and irish catholic vote is crazily disproportinate too.   These groups would never be seen in public together but always vote party line.  

That's all very well, but there is a reason for that. Not all of America is white men. If the Republicans had actually tried to incorporate Latins and Blacks and all the other minorities, maybe they would not have suffered such a devastating defeat. The same goes for women. This irritating attitude towards women some Republicans sport is one of the big reasons they didn't win.

[swiftus27]

That's all very well, but there is a reason for that. Not all of America is white men. If the Republicans had actually tried to incorporate Latins and Blacks and all the other minorities, maybe they would not have suffered such a devastating defeat. The same goes for women. This irritating attitude towards women some Republicans sport is one of the big reasons they didn't win.

You're talking out of your butt.  First off, it wasn't a 'devastating defeat' when youre within 2%.   Married women supported Romney by a larger percentage than did McCain.  Overall 11%, down from 13, of all women supported Obama. 

[ARASKA]

  First off, it wasn't a 'devastating defeat' when youre within 2%.   

Depends on if you look at it as Popular Vote or the 97 more Electoral votes for Obama.

[LemonButt]

Well Obama won and everyone's retirement accounts are worth less today than they were yesterday and treasuries are spiking (QE4, 5, 6, and 7 are on the way).  A lot was said on here since I checked in last, but I like the comment on German's knowing what is right from 5000km away

For those who don't know, America hasn't passed a budget in years.  The last budget proposed by Obama increased spending by $1 trillion and was so unpopular that there was bipartisan unanimous opposition and Obama didn't even get a single vote from his own political party (change you can believe in!).

Also, my sister earns a substantial amount of money from cash tips, which of course there is no paper trail for unless she deposits the cash in the bank (she is a high end hair stylist).  On top of that, she has a 30 year mortgage and I have a 15 year mortgage--I am being punished for my fiscal responsibility as she gets to pay lower monthly payments than me AND write off a boatload of mortgage interest.  Sure, I come ahead in the long run with more equity, but its just another example of how flawed our tax system is when we're encouraged to make poor long term decisions for short term benefit.

I find it incredible that Obama got reelected and it was as decisive as it was.  He has the media in the bag in the US, which was surely a large part of his success.  The good news is now Obama has no one to blame but himself.  There have been excuses about the economy his entire term and why things are so much worse than he projected with his policies (such as the stimulus and the famous unemployment line chart: http://visiontoamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/employmentchart.jpg).  After being in office for 8 straight years, he'll have no excuses left if the economy is still in the tank.

As I mentioned, I am an executive recruiter and I speak to business people for a living and rely on hiring for my income.  The general consensus from the people I talk to is that the economy isn't recovering because of Obama, but in spite of him.  At the end of the day, I make a good living and if prices and taxes go up, my lifestyle isn't going to take much of a hit.  It is the lower classes who are priced out of the labor market by minimum wage, blackballed by unions, and forced to pay increased prices for food and gas ($9/gallon if Obama had his way) that are going to feel the pain.  Not to be bragadocious, but I have over $50k in liquid assets--which is substantially more than many older people have saved for retirement based on surveys, so I'm going to be more than okay no matter who is in power assuming tax rates remain less than 100%.  The unemployment data shows it as as well--those with 4-year college degrees had an unemployment rate of 3.8% last month while those with no college were around 10%.  It's hard to pick up job skills and have income mobility when you can't even find a job.  But that is what the people voted for.  I don't believe in large amount of economic and personal freedom for myself, but for the little guys who weren't as blessed as I was to have the opportunities I've had in life.

[LemonButt]

And on the gun front, here is a great post on what has been happening with Hurricane Sandy: http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/11/04/just-in-case-you-need-another-argument-against-gun-control-contemplate-the-social-chaos-and-government-incompetence-following-hurricane-sandy/

[Infinity]

Germany had a severe flooding in 2002. Not a single case of looting. Case closed.

[exchlbg]

Unbelievable a power that claims to rule the world by gun force is unable to secure flooded parts of a city as long as it lasts.
No wonder you wish to regulate business on own accounts. But if you think that really through, what do you have a police for?
Not needed, if we all use our own guns, police is for sissies.

[swiftus27]

Sorry, but after over 500 years of being the place where people go for hope and opportunity, you sometimes get the bad element with it.

Sorry if having guns is an issue to so many of you.   You can tell we misuse them as millions of blacks fled to the streets shooting ak 47s into the air celebrating Obama's victory. 

Europe has more civil unrest following a soccer match than the usa did following sandy.

[LemonButt]

Actually not everyone's retirement portfolio is down today--gun makers are rallying: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/smith-wesson-gunmakers-rally-after-obama-re-elected.html

For those outside the US, Obama is one of the best gun salesmen this country has ever seen.