Why Obama??

The economy was already awful before Obama took over. I honestly do not believe he's done anything that has made it worse, and certainly a republican coming in and giving the upper class more tax breaks isn't going to fix the problem.

 

You clearly haven't been following the statistics for anything. Our deficit has gone from 10 trillion to over 16 trillion since Obama has been in office, the unemployment rate has gone wayy up and so have the gas prices.

But anyway the reason everyone here wants Obama in is because he promises to do good things for the LGBTQ community and makes a bunch of other promises like he did in the last election that he didn't follow through on.

 

Everyone hates on Obama because he "has done nothing."

Yes, because Bush's mess is soooooo easy to clean up after -___-

 

Are you sure you've been following statistics? Unemployment started it's upward trend before he took office. When he took office it was 7.8% and going up rapidly. It went up a lot, but Obama was able to stop it and reverse it. Now it's going back down. Due to what Bush did it got over 10%, but now it's back down to 8.1% and still falling.

 

I personally don't like either, I am not old enough to vote anyways, but I like Obama better than Romney. Somehow I doubt that he will change that much either.

 

Gas prices rise because is an item in high demand with a finite quantity. The prices are going to rise regardless of who is in the white house. That is not a valid argument.

 

America has two parties. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Republicans getting into power would ruin the economy and set everyone back by years. So vote for the party that isn't Republican and will mess up the country slightly less.

 

I don't understand people who dismiss presidents because they haven't cleared everything up in a few years. Obama is not at fault. Society is flawed. Nobody could make everything perfect given infinite time, never mind 4 years in addition to having to follow up Bush. Really, what do you people expect of presidents/leaders? We have the same sort of people in Britain who complain about Cameron.

"The economy is still unbalanced! Unemployment is still rampant! Crime still exists!"

Nobody is ever going to make everything perfect, especially when everyone's ideas of perfect are conflicting and more often than not tangle with each other. It's impossible to have a fair society, where everyone is given justice.

Monsters who deserve seven stages of hell often go through life completely satisfied and make huge successes of themselves. Compassionate, intelligent people are often forced into living in the streets. Life isn't fair, and neither is society. Nobody is going to make everything okay. Nobody is going to do anything even remotely close to that.

Obama's doing the best he can with the limited resources he has. I've seen some people call him a dictator. Granted, I'd hope most of you aren't that stupid. I'd like to see these people survive a day in North Korea or Syria. Perhaps then they'd see how lucky they are. America's system is far from perfect, but that goes for every country.

In the end of the day, for all their promises, 4 years from now - The world isn't going to be drastically different whether Obama is re-elected or Romney is elected.

 

Congress has much more power over economic policy than the president does.

The way people talk, you'd think the president had the power to dictate whatever he wants, but mostly his job is to implement policies that are decided on by congress. He has some power as the executive to interpret those policies, and he has a veto power. But he doesn't get to just have everything his way.

For example, when he is presented with a health care bill, he can either sign it or veto it. He doesn't have any direct power over what kind of bill will be produced by Congress in the first place--he can lobby, and apply his influence, but ultimately, it's Congress that decides what goes through. The only thing he get's to decide is "Is this health care bill better than no health care bill."

This is why I always thought it was HILARIOUS during the last election's primaries, when Clinton and Obama were arguing over minor aspects of the health care bill. I wanted someone to ask, "If you were president and Congress passed something that looks like your opponent's health care bill, would you sign it or veto?"

There is no way either of them would have vetoed. It was obvious that their proposals were closer to each other than whatever they got out of congress would be. So it was a silly thing to be arguing about.

Likewise the budget. The president does not have the power to determine the budget. He only has the power to approve or veto the budget presented by Congress. He gets to answer the question, "Is this budget better or worse than not having a budget passed?" (Not having a budget passed can cause really serious problems.)

People seem to sometimes have expectations of the president that are not in line with his actual responsibilities and powers.

 

This "i care about our economy so I'm voting Romney" stuff is really ridiculous when you look at it. Despite how the statistics are trying to be sold to the public Obama has managed one hell of a feat getting America turned around and out of the recession. Let us remind ourselves we have had nothing but job growth since the stimulus took effect, that we where facing the worst recession since the great depression, that Romey's economic policies are the same ones that Bush used to mess it all up in the first place, and that America's debt going up has actually not even exceeded what was projected for America regardless of who was in office (we where in two wars let me remind you).

As for the credit rating anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that was republican grand standing and the use of party politics to do anything in the parties power to make Obama look like he had messed up. And even better despite that the one organization that lowered our rating said it had nothing to do with Obama!

He has faced the most opposition in presidential history from the republicans who have done everything from claiming he isn't an American citizen, to blocking job creating bills they themselves proposed, to try and demonize and blame him and we still see ourselves on the cusp of returning to economic prosperity.

and of course let us not forget he provided universal health coverage to every american (something every other first world country in the world had already taken care of), and has done more for LGBT rights than any president in history.

Plus his economic plan has been backed by Clinton who oversaw the longest economic expansion in american history.

Meanwhile Romney seeks to return us to Bush era economic policies which got us into the mess in the first place and backs de-regulation and trickle down economics that are proven not to work. Not to mention his lack of ability to hold steady in his views on anything and a presidential campaign that has used more misinformation and taken more corporate/Super PAC donations than any campaign in history. At the very least looking at the facts one should be able to see Romney is far less of a valid choice than Obama for almost every reason in the book. If you actually closely look at Romney you see he isn't even a decent human being let alone a decent choice for president imo.

 

Well, since I am, roughly speaking, a Keynesian in terms of economics, having a deficit doesn't strike me as inherently bad. I believe that in times of recession, the government should be deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy. Austerity measures make no sense during a recession. The government, for better or worse, is a huge proportion of the GDP, and removing that money from the economy isn't going to help it.

At this point I'd support hiring people to dig holes and fill them up again, but luckily there are plenty of actually useful things we could be doing with government money. Our nation's infrastructure, from roads and bridges to electricity and water pipes, is crumbling and dangerously in disrepair. Hiring people, from laborers to engineers, to fix it would result in a bump in employment. Those people would, in turn, spend the money they have in the private sector, creating even more jobs.

The upper classes are not the job creators; the middle and lower classes are. Collectively we can spend more money than them because there are so many more of us and there's only so many multimillion dollar mansions an upper-class person will want to build. It's not as though the private sector is going to start hiring on its own steam. Corporations are simply sitting on huge cash reserves right now because they have no reason to hire people. Short of a government fiat ordering them to hire (which I do not support), the best way to get the private sector to create jobs is to have enough demand on them that they're forced to hire people.

 

I saw someone say somewhere (not here) that the Republicans have blocked or otherwise stood in the way of absolutely every bill and proposal that has been made by the Democrats party during the last 4 years. So that's probably why less has been done than people would like.

 

What I truly don't get is why people think its so ridiculous to ask for both things at the same time. Why does one issue have to take the back seat?

Fine, go for Romney because he has a better plan in your eyes, but I also expect you to put pressure on him to be a decent human being while he does the other things he is planning to do.

To say that your freedom has a price is a dangerous line to walk. I will rather die in poverty than feel like I sold my soul in order to have money.

 

You cannot pin the blame of an economy on single man, or even a party. Be it George W. Bush or President Obama. Its the actions government has taken over the years that have lead to the results we are experiencing now.

Obama cannot do anything if he is up against such staunch opposition. The most Polarized government this country has ever seen. Not far off from what Britain's experiencing with a hung parliament, but British parliamentarians have actually been able to come to conclusions.

Republicans have thrown filibuster after filibuster with nothing getting done, what are Democrats expected to do. Republicans filibuster bills even when they are beneficial to the Republican party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There sole aim is ANTI-OBAMA and nothing else.

President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's Thatcherism and Reaganism caused this by initiating consumerism to the extreme. False spending on false profits and just wait about 30 years to allow things to brew and now we have our results!

YAY RECESSION!

Republicans talk about small government, small government, small government. It has been BIG government that have pulled us out of these depressions throughout history. Its big government that has made our lives what they are today!

Haha, if the Republicans had their way we'd regress back to dirt roads.

If I'm to be truthful Id say many of these right wing billionaire evangelicals who run the Republican party solely oppose him so much because he's black. Not to far fetched in my opinion... they complain about his citizenship (WHAT?), they complain about his religion (even though Romney is a Mormon, not much complaints now..eh?), and they complain that his anti-terrorism stances are too harsh...like Bush's werent?

 

:eusa_clap You know when people use that argument, it looks like they have given up part of themselves, as if they're voting to have some of their interests ripped off, and it doesn't sound like a free country to me. It's silly.

 

Even more critically, I think the argument overlooks a very important fact, which is that LGBT people are not similarly situated and this applies on so many levels. Let's face it, some queer folks have a lot more privilege within this community than others. So when some queers say "well, I can take a socially conservative president, so I am going to vote for him," they forget that they are not making an isolated choice. They are making a choice for other people, and not all queers bear that burden the same way. The more privileged are wrong to make a choice like that for those who have less.

 

re: debt increase:

while it is true the debt has continued to increase after 2008, the rate of increase has been steadily and reliably decreased since Bush left, meaning that each year the rate of debt increase is reduced. How you can sit and complain that the deficit has increased (when it has increased at a rate less than under bush's most recent tenure) and blame Obama for it with a straight face is beyond me

re: unemployment

you are either lying or you have been told lies and are unwittingly spreading them. Have another look at unemployment.

re: petrol prices

are you actually even aware how little you actually pay for petrol as a function of the government? Of the ~$3.80 per gallon you pay, 18.4 cents is excise tax. You pay BY FAR the lowest tax on fuel of any first world country. Your fuel prices are primarily a function of the world market and have little or nothing to do with your government's influence.