2012 Presidential Election Discussion
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Mittens is down to 47.52% of the popular vote; three hundredths of a percent more and it'll be rounded down to 47%.
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@Monkey:
ahahahahaha
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/mitt-romney-surfaces-at-a-gas-station-looking-veryHe's having to readjust to not having Secret Security people pump his gas for him.
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I don't know what's funnier. The picture, or the related articles.
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By the way, Romney is at 47.36% and falling so it'll go down in history that he wound up with 47% of the vote.
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So…..Fiscal Cliff Discussions, anyone?
Everything on Election night (except Bachmann winning lol) was a historic footstep toward the type of progress that our country desperately needs, and I'd personally like that trend to continue and not slip back into a crippling recession especially if it can be easily avoided.
And if it's already not incredibly self-evident, Boehner really needs to go. And I mean Badly. He's an asinine caricature of an apathetic politician who's doing EVERYTHING in his power to impede what gravely needs to be done.
Someone married their stepmom and then got murdered?
Sounds like he used a monkey paw to make a porno story come true.
Then the curse of the paw eventually killed him.
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@Rogues':
http://media.salon.com/2012/12/stewart-fiscal-cliff.jpg
So…..Fiscal Cliff Discussions, anyone?
Everything on Election night (except Bachmann winning lol) was a historic footstep toward the type of progress that our country desperately needs, and I'd personally like that trend to continue and not slip back into a crippling recession especially if it can be easily avoided.
And if it's already not incredibly self-evident, Boehner really needs to go. And I mean Badly. He's an asinine caricature of an apathetic politician who's doing EVERYTHING in his power to impede what gravely needs to be done.I've yet to see why people think America paying its bills with spending cuts and tax increases will cause a recession.
I don't get it - everyone says its bad, but their reasoning seems quite odd.Not that it effects me Australia stopped sucking at the American Teat a while back.
Pell survived because he is a Falcon - Stop using him as a bad example.
The Peregrine Falcon reaches faster speeds than any other animal on the planet when performing the stoop,which involves soaring to a great height and then diving steeply at speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph)
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spending cuts
Spending cuts are a spectacularly bad idea that comes from two different kind of people.
1. People who hate certain programs and will seize on any opportunity to cut them.
2. People who have no idea how economies actually work.The worst, worst, worst, worst thing you can do in a weak economy is cut government spending; the United States government is the largest employer and primary driving force of our economy. Cutting spending means that they have to layoff government employees, scale back government contracts (which has a detrimental effect on government contractors and their employees), pump less money into the economy, and they also have less ability to respond to any further economic crisis.
It's a spectacularly awful idea especially in light of the fact that you can look at how much damage these types of moves have done to countries like Spain and Greece. Europe is probably going right back into recession because of this sort of nonsense.
Complicating things since 2009.
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Spending cuts are a spectacularly bad idea that comes from two different kind of people.
1. People who hate certain programs and will seize on any opportunity to cut them.
2. People who have no idea how economies actually work.The worst, worst, worst, worst thing you can do in a weak economy is cut government spending; the United States government is the largest employer and primary driving force of our economy. Cutting spending means that they have to layoff government employees, scale back government contracts (which has a detrimental effect on government contractors and their employees), pump less money into the economy, and they also have less ability to respond to any further economic crisis.
It's a spectacularly awful idea especially in light of the fact that you can look at how much damage these types of moves have done to countries like Spain and Greece. Europe is probably going right back into recession because of this sort of nonsense.
Yes but Greece, Spain and Europe didn't deal with the debt and just kept borrowing - hence where they are now. If America just keeps borrowing but only manages to keep paying interest it just postpones the crash. I would say the spending cuts now would be less severe then in another 4 years.
Besides even if they kept the spending cuts only to your military that should not effect your economy too much with sufficient tax increases.Pell survived because he is a Falcon - Stop using him as a bad example.
The Peregrine Falcon reaches faster speeds than any other animal on the planet when performing the stoop,which involves soaring to a great height and then diving steeply at speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph)
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Yes but Greece, Spain and Europe didn't deal with the debt and just kept borrowing - hence where they are now. If America just keeps borrowing but only manages to keep paying interest it just postpones the crash. I would say the spending cuts now would be less severe then in another 4 years.
Besides even if they kept the spending cuts only to your military that should not effect your economy too much with sufficient tax increases.Uh there's a key difference between the US and Greece for instance.
The debt we have? The vast majority of it is to ourselves, not to other places/countries. -
@Monkey:
Uh there's a key difference between the US and Greece for instance.
The debt we have? The vast majority of it is to ourselves, not to other places/countries.Really? Who (largely) do we owe?
I don't have that great an understanding of our debt situation.
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Yes but Greece, Spain and Europe didn't deal with the debt and just kept borrowing - hence where they are now.
They had to keep borrowing because the austerity measures reduced government income; spending cuts means that governments have to lay off employees and reduce contracts. The people who had those jobs can't afford to shop or do things that they used to do, which means that stores and other places have to cut expenses as well. Government spending has a multiplier effect on the economy; spending cuts are contractionary. That isn't such a hard concept; the only people who benefit from austerity measures are the people who are owed money since they'll force through measures that guarantee that they get paid first. That's a big part of why Germany has been doing so well lately, but you don't see them (or the Scandanavian countries) embracing austerity measures.
If America just keeps borrowing but only manages to keep paying interest it just postpones the crash. I would say the spending cuts now would be less severe then in another 4 years.
If the United States does absolutely nothing (literally; just let all tax cuts expire and leave Obamacare alone), the budget deficit will go away in a few years anyway and we begin paying down on the debt.
Besides even if they kept the spending cuts only to your military that should not effect your economy too much with sufficient tax increases.
Military spending or not, it's still fifty billion dollars that isn't going into the US economy. That's going to have some negative effects down the line.
More importantly though, the people who want to cut spending have no real interest in raising taxes; most of them only claim deficits are relevant when it comes to cutting programs that they don't like.
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Really? Who (largely) do we owe?
I don't have that great an understanding of our debt situation.
About 20% of the National Debt is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund, about 15% is owed to the Federal Reserve. Another 10% or so is owed to Treasury Bond holders.
Complicating things since 2009.
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About 20% of the National Debt is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund, about 15% is owed to the Federal Reserve. Another 10% or so is owed to Treasury Bond holders.
I thought China had been lending you money so much so they had to start buying up gold to ensure if America crashed they would have gold reserves to keep themselves sustainable.
I know the US sits on its own Oil reserves for the same reason or at least that's what I heard somewhere.Is this accurate?
http://chartsbin.com/view/549Then again I also imagine a lot of countries owe the US money too, I'll admit trying to understand and follow global debts kind of blows my mind with how much money is spent.
Pell survived because he is a Falcon - Stop using him as a bad example.
The Peregrine Falcon reaches faster speeds than any other animal on the planet when performing the stoop,which involves soaring to a great height and then diving steeply at speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph)
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I thought China had been lending you money so much so they had to start buying up gold to ensure if America crashed they would have gold reserves to keep themselves sustainable.
I know the US sits on its own Oil reserves for the same reason or at least that's what I heard somewhere.Petroleum reserves are maintained more to avoid situations where hostilities or some other crisis in the Middle East would result in an oil embargo or halt in production.
The United States would almost certainly rely on their own gold reserves for monetary purposes if the dollar crashed rather than petroleum reserves, which are needed elsewhere; we have 8,000 tons of golds after all.
Is this accurate?
http://chartsbin.com/view/549Pretty much; though keep in mind that this is only showing national debt owned by other countries. China and Japan combined hold about $2T of the national debt by the United States and that's still less about $700B less than what is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund alone. The amount of money owed China has decreased since it hit its high of around $1.4T. As you can see though, foreign debt is much less of the national debt than most people think.
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Then again I also imagine a lot of countries owe the US money too, I'll admit trying to understand and follow global debts kind of blows my mind with how much money is spent.
I'm really not sure as to how much foreign debt is owned by the United States; that's not something that ever gets discussed much by anybody.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/news-outlets-send-letter-to-romney-campaign-contes
The nickel and dime dickishness of the Romney Campaign never ceases to amuse me.
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Moved from General Discussion by
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