McCain or Obama?

I agree completely. It only shows that the candidates are good at insulting and spending millions to dig up old shameless actions from each other's past. They should spend more time on saying why we should vote for them instead of why we shouldn't vote for their opponent. Thankfully, the debates should give us a better view into the candidates' platforms than the media has.

 

You are absolutely correct! I want to know what my party's candidate has to say about himself and his plan, not what he thinks about his opponent. See, even though we are on opposite sides of the voting platform we can agree on this. I just wish our candidates would do the same.

 

Yeah, that won't work at all.

 

Are you kidding? A bipartisan government is just a load of bull and George Washington himself said to avoid the division of politicians into separate groups. I agree that we should at least try to get rid of this bipartisan stuff, though to be quite honest, it's impossible to stop people from being Democrats of Republicans at hears even if no official party is established.

 

If you did have everyone as being separate, the system would become even more complicated than it already is. I personally think that the party system should be done away with too (especially considering the American system is virtually a two-party dictatorship), but it would be very hard to put into practice =/

 

I was referring to the don't vote part.

 

Oh, he was just saying that if you don't know about the candidates then you might as well not vote.

 

The Problem

Wages are Stagnant as Prices Rise: While wages remain flat, the costs of basic necessities are increasing. The cost of in-state college tuition has grown 35 percent over the past five years. Health care costs have risen four times faster than wages over the past six years. And the personal savings rate is now the lowest it's been since the Great Depression.
Tax Cuts for Wealthy Instead of Middle Class: The Bush tax cuts give those who earn over $1 million dollars a tax cut nearly 160 times greater than that received by middle-income Americans. At the same time, this administration has refused to tackle health care, education and housing in a manner that benefits the middle class.

Let's discuss our parties current standing, Advent.

 

Alright, well let me preface with this. I'm a moderate, so I don't just follow one party, I go for the candidate I prefer.

Anyway, I have a few problems with The Democrats this time around.

ProChoice

Don't get me wrong, abortion is necessary. But not for just any woman who wants to abort a baby. In my opinion, there should be perquisites for women getting abortions. Such as a provable rape having occurred, being early along enough in pregnancy so that the baby doesn't have brain function yet, giving birth being lethal to the mother, etc.

The War in Iraq

Contrary to the Democrats' standpoint on this, I believe we need to stay at least for a few more years. Should we have gone in the first place? Debatable. Should we have stayed as long as we have. Probably not, but not we're in, and we have to stay in or let even worse chaos consume Iraq. And before anyone starts pinning this on Bush, realize that most of the American public was for the war in the beginning, so you can't put all of the blame for this on Bush.

The Idea That Bush Is Responsible For Our Economic Turmoil

That couldn't be farther from the truth. It's Bill Clinton's fault. He's the one that made banks loan money to people with bad credit or who would never be able to pay it back. This lead to the housing crisis, the foundation of the economic disaster we're in. People love to blame Bush for everything. Well this is one thing Bush wasn't responsible for.

 

ProChoice

I just don't understand why people seeing a problem with a woman's right to choose weather or not she should incur another financial burden on society. I know it sounds mean, but who am I to judge. If she feels her child shouldn't be in any other hands but her own, she should have the choice to do so before the embryo becomes a thinking creation.

The War in Iraq

I agree that the war should continue. I DO NOT however, believe that it should continue for a matter of years. We have already spent billions on a valiant effort to deter terrorism and I feel that it is simply time to turn things over to THEIR government.We accomplished so much and have greatly improved conditions there. It's time to wind things down in the next year and start focusing on our Homeland. Let's see if we could find a better way to spend our money.

The Idea That Bush Is Responsible For Our Economic Turmoil

Clinton did make an unwise decision BAILING OUT all those people. But adding a war and now another bail out to our already critical economy made things way worse.

 

I would personally take Obama over any republican.

I live in Maine where the pipes will burst if you don't have heating oil, and you can freeze to death. We can barely afford oil this year. My parents are barely scraping enough with the prices.

I just graduated college and with the job market the way it is, I can't find any job that accepts students fresh out of college in my field Business that will give me the experience I need to work up.

With the war, I don't care about national pride, there's people dying there every day and they're predicting about it being another Vietnam. That lasted for at least ten years, only riots and Nixon brought our troops home and got the place slaughtered in the process.

A slow withdrawal is best.

I am for abortion, kids can be stupid. No offense to anyone, they can get pregnant. If they do, they have a whole future ahead of them, the kid isn't going to help that in most cases. Adults get raped and god-knows what else, it's needed. I would say a limit before a law is brought in like sterilization for the woman, but it still should be a choice.

As for the economy, the bailouts aren't helping, but do realize, we were in the largest deficit in history BEFORE the mortgage crisis happened. Bush put us from a surplus to a record deficit in four years. Now he's breaking his own record for having an even larger deficit when he leaves.

Something is seriously wrong there. The dollar is going downhill for a lot of reasons, one is the rate cuts because when it's cut, the dollar falls and vice versa. But the stock market, job market, mortgage crisis, and a bunch of other factors together are causing a massive collision all at once in our economy. The people who are walking away from it is the CEO's with cash.

The banks dug their own graves by being greedy and giving out those loans. Yes, they might need the bailout, but there might be worse to come, what's going to happen then?

There are warnings of another housing crisis riding on this one, there's already signs, what's going to happen then?

I have a bachelor's in Business Economics and studied the news all summer to get this info, by the way. This is all true.

I'm fully for Barack Obama.

 

Wow. Your background story and epic truth in the matter are truly heartwarming.

 

Being a fresh graduate with loans coming up and finding jobs that mostly say: "Three to five years in blah blah blah field is needed or strongly recommended." and doing a summer paper on the economic events of this year helps it.

I mostly got it from NY Times. This is without all the politics, I scraped all that off and pulled the bare bones out.

This is basically the background in the housing right now:

People can't afford housing, they probably could during the time they were mortgaged ten years ago, but a deal was made to have something called a floating interest rate. This means that at some point the interest rate is going to explode up to god-knows what in say ten years. All of a sudden the mortgages were at say three percent, now it's up to fifteen or twenty. The monthly payments go from a hundred a month to a thousand. Most people can't afford that kind of money, they stop paying, this causes a delinquency problem, where people are behind on their housing and are being evicted.

Banks after a while are noticing this as a strong trend, more houses pile on the market, and people who want a house banks are seeing as ticking time bombs for delinquency in a few years or even sooner because of the economy. Note: This goes with all types of credit, it's not just the housing, credit cards, cars, loans to businesses are all seeing the same amount of problems.

Houses are staying on the market because more people are being forced to leave, there's not enough people who want to buy right now, and if they do, the banks are seriously having problems with giving out loans, and it's all shutting down.

Do note: This is the LOWEST housing mortgage deal available. Called a sub-prime mortgage, the ones for the people who can't afford anything else. This is the thing, while this is still going on, the economists and wall street are already seeing another trend coming along the way, which is the Alternative A mortgages. This is already showing an alarming rate towards delinquency payments to the banks, and this is predicting to be much worse than the sub prime problem as of now. It might not be, but it's already starting to show signs of strain.

Job Market problems:

People aren't buying, all over the U.S. last Christmas and to now, nobody's buying as much anymore. The stock market is having a severe reaction to the news from the banks, oil, dollar and a bunch of other problems, people can see it and see the price of oil, rising prices, and other stuff. Companies are declaring bankruptcy and shutting down stores because there's not enough money. People are giving up meats to be able to pay for gas, amongst other things. The price of oil and inflation are causing people to no longer buy what they want and less what they need. This causes a lot more problems, and the people who get fired or quit are now struggling to find a job because with the job market flooded as they call it, the employers can pluck whoever they feel like from it.

I'll do one more, and this is important to a lot of things.

Oil:

I know it hasn't been mentioned much. But in my paper, I found oil being in most of the economy based news articles. Why? Because it is causing damage everywhere. Take the war in Iraq, remove everything else and look at simply the amount of oil they have. The companies control most of the oil, here's the thing, and from what I got it is true. EVERY thing that happens in Iraq causes the oil to spike or lower. It is forecast by economists that basically it takes six months to cause the oil to spike after something affects Iraq. The prices are changed that moment here in the U.S., the oil companies got, I kid you not, forty billion dollars last year in profits. That's also a record for profit for them. If the supply was hurting that much, they would be LOSING profits, not gaining. The same thing with Katrina, and other hurricanes, but the spikes happened all along last year, not simply during hurricane season. The price of oil is fluctuating right now, granted, but it still is at massively high prices.

This brings up money for transporting goods, higher prices for anything shipped. Higher money for flights, higher prices for traveling, higher prices for electricity, higher prices for heating... Higher prices for driving, higher prices for anything that's grown in a field, you need oil to run your machines...

Everyone's life rotates around oil. With the price spiking for oil, it's simply more expensive for everything, and it's more expensive for people to get around, or to go to work, or to do anything anymore.

People quit their jobs to get closer to home to spend less money on gas.

I'm not saying it's totally Bush's fault, but there's something wrong with that picture if there's that much problems and little reaction.

Note: I did read about the politics part, there were calls to action to get the housing crisis at least looked at before the rate cuts, even now people are asking what other actions are going to be done, and so far, there hasn't been any.

That's why I'm voting for Obama, because I don't want someone else who is on the same party as Bush and might dig us even further in.

 

Sara, that was very insightful and what I was mentioning somewhat in the other topic on 'is Obama ready to be president'. You outlined in exquisite detail the problem with the housing issue and why the people who took out the loans are screwed. It isn't just 'their' fault that this happened. It's the loan companies and the interest etc. Well done, and you pointed out some things in more detail than I knew so I appreciate the learning.

ProChoice
I am definitely in support of Pro Choice. Women have done abortions for years whether legal or not and Pro Choice is safest for her health. Also Pro Choice again is not just for the right to have abortions. It is also for better medical options, assistance and getting birth control etc. I do think that abortions in the 3rd trimester should be considered a no unless there are medical issues or mental trauma, but otherwise I believe it is the right of the woman to rule over her body.


The War in Iraq
Pretty much anyone with commonsense knows the war in Iraq must be contended with and we do need to still keep supporting them since Bush was a weenie and went into Iraq way too soon. Though we should have dealt with Afghanistan first and not just danced into Iraq, the past is the past. However, staying there for several years down the road is just not plausible. The government of Iraq in power needs support and also needs to get its butt in gear and get the people involved and into it more. They need encouraged to work on building up morale and their own military more than it is and we should help them with that. However, as they build up, we should be withdrawing. Our military is spread very thin and it is not a great strategic move by any means to keep soldiers stuck in Iraq for long.

The Idea That Bush Is Responsible For Our Economic Turmoil
Bush is greatly responsible though Clinton must take his blame for it as well. Clinton did get the economy back up and helped the budget a lot but yes, this bank housing deal is partially on him. The problem for the loans more lies in the responsibility of the loan companies which Reps and Dems both support. These loan companies are also wretched with student loans too and since students have a hard time finding jobs that pay out quite a bit to pay their loans off, these too rise in interest. The interest is the real problem and people shouldn't be totally blamed for what happened when these corps love to screw with people.

Because Bush supports big corporations, he's let them get away with spending a ton of money where they should not have. We pay for this and our debts have risen substantially by his poor management. He also has done quite a few other things that can be viewed at congressman Dennis Kucinich's site. http://kucinich.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=3750 which is why some people are asking for him to be impeached. His cowboy politics and looking out for the top 5% of Americans while expecting the rest of us to pay off ridiculous debts owed sucks. Yes, regardless of who is president, I expect we will have more taxes to pay in the upcoming years to bring the federal reserve back into control, so we should all expect it. However, I just can't support a person that has voted on some of these policies in practice now. I'm for Obama all the way right now because McCain has helped support all of this way too much and if we are going to continue to go into debt from wars, poor decisions etc, at least we will be taxed and know it's going to help stabilize us in the future so hopefully our children won't suffer as badly as we are going to.

 

Thanks, L...

Just a note, Alternative A is the level above Sub-prime, think about it as the tier right above it.

McCain might not be like Bush, but his choices, and Palin, who I won't even try to go into, sounds like it won't help us. Obama just sounds like a better choice.

 

mccain's opinions are incredibly out-dated. He's trying to appeal to the ultra-religious, ultra-conservative, arab-hating minority that made up President Bush's entire base. In the end, he's not going to win by whoring out his values to the previously mentioned 20% or less of the country. he's going to have to make some compromises, and he'll look like a fool when he does.

 

arab hating? i seriously doubt he's appealing to "arab-hating" people, what gave you that idea? and since when did Bush's entire base compose of "arab-hating" people? also, according to many news sources, Mc Cain and Obama are close to even, though occasionally one or the other gains a slight lead. so 20% is an understatement.

 

I'm simply going for McCain because of his vice presidental candiate Sarah Palin. For one thing she is not a corrupted politician like so many in the senate and congress and she seems to be a "real person". We need change and Obama is not going to accomplish that for he wants the government to have more control and that's the last thing this country needs. Government control eventaully leads to communisism. As a tax payer like so many of you out there I want control of my choices and not be a sheep to a wolf's den.

 

I've been looking at the national polls every day for a while now, Obama has been ahead every time. The points fluctuate, but he's been ahead of McCain.

As for Bush being an Arab hater, I don't know, but he just has made some of the poorest decisions for this country. I think it's hilarious that people defend him for the Iraq war over 9/11. That was Afghanistan that flew the planes into the buildings. The whole world practically bent over to help us with that war, as soon as Iraq started, everyone bailed except a few countries.

I'm hoping Obama, if we get into any more wars or any more problems, he seems more of the one willing for new policies.

Also, looking at his policies, his job-making is almost exactly what FDR did for The Great Depression. He's making jobs and helping out the country at the same time. McCain is making jobs, but is also polluting the environment at the same time.