Steve

You know what? I'm not buying the undecided vote thingy. At this stage in the race with only a month to go, you know who you're voting for. The differences between both candidates is so stark I can't imagine anyone not sure. The only undecided I can see is the choice between a 3rd party or to vote for the one big 2. And that is mainly about thinking your vote is "wasted" or not. Are any of you on here really undecided? If so, I'd love to hear your reasons for being so.

Biden was the aggressor and that was expected. Its a matter of personal opinion if he was too much. I suspect it depends on your ideology. On substance, Biden got the better on him on a few things, especially foreign policy in Afghanistan as well as other areas of foreign policy. Biden also cornered Ryan and made him say what he really thought of abortion, which is they want the government to eventually outlaw it.

I heard that the Taliban were willing to give up bin Laden in exchange for a few things. The Afghans are infamous for changing sides. Some how Bush fcked that up. There was no need to invade. Also, there were at least one opportunity to capture him by special forces and due to some agreement that they needed permission to do it or had to let the Afghanis do it. The whole thing was executed badly from what I understand.

I suggest the election is not as close as the media says. Look back at 08. the media did not count mccain out at any point. They were pessimistic as they were with romney but at no time that i can remember did they say obama will likeky win. Maybe journalistic principles. i suggest its to keep people watching tv or reading newspapers and internet news sites. The margin of victory for obama was too big for it to be a surprise. Even on this forum there were still doubts. At the tine i kept sayibg its a matter of how big. I am far from a genius. Thats obvious...lol. The polls are fairly accurate. They have this stuff down to a science. The independent ones that is. Clearpolitics is a great indicator. Too nany things has to hapoen for romney to win. Its pretty much a done deal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-pressler/larry-pressler-obama_b_1948415.html

fact is republicans are punished for trying to work with democrats. Its IMPOSSSIBLE to run the government without compromise. Sure there are obe or two core beliefs that any pol may view as non negotiable. nothing wrong with that at all. Thevold guard that negotiated are punished by the tea party and others. Huntsman was punished for simply being ambassador to China which is non partisan and in everyobes beslt interest. Uniquely qualified. He speaks the language and intimately knows how they think and the issues. The party is fucked up. At least some members are. Enough for it be a huge problem. Dems are no where clise to perfect but at least they are willing to compromise.

No matter how one slices that pie, the election is over if there are no game changers. The jobs numbers was one of the last chances. In fact, I checked the vegas odds. If you bet $100 on Romney you can win about $280 if he wins. However, to win $100 on Obama you have to risk about $300. Bookies have this kinda stuff down to a science but you don't have to be. Way too many things have to happen for Romney. One of the big reasons for the low job numbers is the Republicans blocking any jobs bills. There are a few. The infrastructure one is huge. There are at least a million or so immediate jobs. There was a bill proposed by the white house to give a massive incentive to hire vets of the wars. That got shot down as well by the Republicans. There was the infrastructure bank. Where wall street or anyone can invest in a bond that builds infrastructure things such as making public building energy efficient and the savings would pay down the bond. Government buildings of all kinds, city, state and federal are often using 30 year old generators, or positioned well for solar panels, etc. Republicans shot that down as well. The unsaid, cold hard truth is the Republicans made it a priority to block pretty much any initiative that creates jobs. Even the ones they agree with. Unless it affects their monied backers like oil and defense. That is why they made a fuss about the pipeline and why Romney wants to give the defense money it doesn't need. Obama's ex chief of staff Emmanuel is going ahead on his own in Chicago and massively investing in the infrastructure and its paying off in immediate jobs. He's doing his own version of the infrastructure bill. The no brainer part of is that with modern technology you can pretty much calculate the savings in energy costs and pass that on to the bondhoders. Simple things as painting a roof which can provide unskilled jobs to high unemployment inner city workers. People on wefare, etc. Its a no brainer. I guarantee if Romney is elected he'll do these things. The Dems won't be just as obstructionist. There is a deep un-American-ness about how the Republicans conduct business these days. F*cking over America in order to get power, impediments to voting such as these ID requirements. Republican secretary of states in swing states trying to get Johnson off the ballot. Itstead of doing what's right and sharing in the credit and I wouldn't begrudge them if they told the President secretly, we agree with this and that and if we sign off and its successful we get partial credit as well, stated by you. That's fair because its true.

Family doctors can make a lot of money and there are people out there who will do it. Many well qualified foreign doctors. I posted this a while back but there are tons of rural and inner city areas that are underserved. The government should set up a program where the government would take care of part or all of a doctor's med school loans if he served an under priveleged/poor area. Areas of West Virginia, the inner city, Kentucky, Montana, etc. Also, set up a program where older doctors can mentor them and also go there and provide a stipend for living expenses, etc. I would do the same for nurses. There is a shortage of nurses as well. The bottom line is no one has taken on the AMA and the Nursing industries yet. Foreign doctors are one proposal. Make it area specific. Allow Mexican and other spanish speaking doctors to come to the U.S. to serve areas with a high concentration of poor latinos. There should be some proficiency in English. Have a state/federal government partnership in setting up clinics and hosptitals. The vast majority of maladies can be done by a neighborhood clinic. The serious cases after being diagnosed can be referred to a hosptial. Basic medical needs are what is needed. Not brain surgery. Hospitals charge out the ying yang for basic services. Clinics are more than capable of taking care of bad flus, sprains and broken bones, pre and post natal care, childhood vaccinationas, etc. Allowing medical insurance to go across statelines is a must. Too many monopolies. I'd even allow foreign medical insurance to help keep costs down and allow some competition IF they are fully vetted. They meet reserve requirements, etc. Utilize group insurance more to keep costs down. Have the UN pay for major medical breakthroughs. If some company comes up with a new and better drug for parkinsons, cancer, AIDS, etc. provide a cash incentive for the use of the drug generically world wide. At most it cost a company 4-6 billion for the R&D of the most expensive breaktroughs. As a body of a few hundred nations we can easily come up with 20 billion to the company, government or research facility that has a breakthrough on that magnitude. Its a guranteed huge instant profit for the company and the costs spread out over all nations would be cheap. The G8 alone could pay for something like that. The long term cost savings of being able to use the drug and not pay through the nosse would more than pay for it.

Biden is a known loose cannon so he his not taken as seriously when he flies off the handle. Ryan is not so any comments that are contraversial will be taken more seriously. That said, I wouldn't want either to be President. Ryan far moreso. The PBS big bird thingy from the debate is in the news. What I don't like about is the real reason why Republicans have an almost religious zeal in stopping its funding. The amount the government spends is less than 50 million. The problem they have isn't Sesame Street, its NPR and the fringe left views of some of the people on it. Sesame Street pretty much pays for itself in merchandising, etc. Its 'Americana'. Its worth the 40 to 50 million for that alone. Its proven to be great for pre school kids and has helped many foreigners learn english at a basic level. There are far, far more costly programs that waste 'real' money that are worthless programs. I actually agree that a lot of programming are far left leaning but conservatives have access too. There are a few in some locals. The point is their reasons are petty. Ideological and not based on a pressing need. Its not worth the time and effort when there are obvious bigger fish to fry. My prediction for the future. Obama will win. Very little chance he doesn't. The economy will pick up. Dems may get more seats in the off year elections. Biden and Hillary will run in '16, Hillary will get the nomination and unless the Republicans put a moderate in they won't win. The demographics will continue to work against them. Virginia is now a swing state from a formerly fairly safe Republican state because northern Virginia has expanded its Washington DC suburb flavor. The southern part of the state is southern in culture and attitude, but the northern part has many latinos with a large Salvadorean population and other latinos. A large number of moderates or liberals who work in DC and commute from Virginia. That part is increasing while the white southern part of the state is at best constant. Virginia will eventually lean Democrat. North Carolina shouldn't even be a swing state. This is the home state of Jesse Helms. Almost always Republican in Presidential elections but like Virginia its demographics have changed. NC has an area called the triangle, its the area of 3 cities and is a research and tech mecca of the south. A large number of people have flowed into the state who are liberal or moderate. The state schools get a large number of non NC people who are also not as conservative as the state. They will take longer than Virginia to move to the left but they will be a swing state. Jesse Helms would find it very very difficult to get elected in NC these days. Charlotte has had a black mayor in the past which wouldn't have been possible a generation ago. Charlotte is an example of people moving there who are moderate or liberal. The latino vote in Nevada is growing. Its changed the demographics of the state. Also, many moderates are moving there. Despite having Las Vegas, they voted pretty much Republican in the past. Many mormons and outside the casinoes there are rural conservative folks. The tea party and the religious right are killing the future of the Republican party in national elections and many statewide elections. The party is being reduced to white males and fundamental whites as their base, and that is not a growing base.

Rasmussen uses the smallest sampling number of all the major polls. Real Clear has the best average data from the major polls including Rasmussen. This election is still Obama's by a fairly comfortable margin. Florida is still in play and so is Virginia. Obama doesn't need Virginia. Its over if he wins it because it makes Florida null and void. Obama pretty much has 4 of the 5 biggest traditional swing states. Real Clear has him leading in Iowa and NH. The breakdown Florida and Virginia are in play http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/fl/florida_romney_vs_obama-1883.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/va/virginia_romney_vs_obama-1774.html ohio is Obama by 4 points http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/oh/ohio_romney_vs_obama-1860.html nevada averages out to 4.6 pts http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nv/nevada_romney_vs_obama-1908.html wisconsin is more like 7 points http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/wi/wisconsin_romney_vs_obama-1871.html obama is leading by 3 points in Iowa http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/ia/iowa_romney_vs_obama-1922.html new hampshire is pretty much Obama http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nh/new_hampshire_romney_vs_obama-2030.html michigan is firmly Obama http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_romney_vs_obama-1811.html

The Biden vs. Ryan debate has the potential to be a SNL skit. Romney won on performance but he lost me on substance. He changed positions in the debate. The next one will be interesting. The expectations are higher for him now. No more “handicapâ€. Credit where credit is due. He did a great job and the strategy of looking like a champion of the middle class worked.

Hiyh expectations for Romney in the next debate. i have a feeling we will see a much better prepared Obama on his A game. Romney sounded like a champion of the middle class but his policy is based on incentives for the rich. No one will call him on it because the media is all about the performance. Smart on the Romney teams part.

romney simply has too much ground to make up to win. The debate may tighten things up a wee bit more but it wont get him elected. Papa bush lost on a few things. A recessiin. Breaking promises. The debate against clintin was secondary.

I was watching the debate with a political junkie. I thought Romney looked and sounded good. I had the sneaking suspician though he was saying things about his position that didnt seem right or accurate. My friend, a former Republicdn said he did. It doesnt matter, even if proven, people and pundits will focus on the performance. Romney gave at worst an equal performance if not better.

These Gitmo detainees need to be finalized in some manner. The info we have gotten from them has been used. Its all dated now. Send them back. I know the argument is that they will continue again. Do we have any evidence they do? Maybe they do. I don't know, I tend to think they are a known commodity and know next time they will be killed out right. Send them back to the governments they came from or try them. http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/politics/illinois-prison/index.html

Good to see that some residents in my childhood city have had enough with gun crime. I still think the way to reduce crime is a) re-think the war on drugs and vastly improve education, especially pre-school to 6th grade. By the time you reach middle and high school if you're not prepared educationally its pretty much too late. Frame of mind-wise these students have given up because the system gave up on them from the start. http://www.metro.us/philadelphia/local/article/1153087--ceasefirepa-advocates-take-to-courtrooms-to-tip-scales-of-justice-against-gun-felons

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/01/the_billionaire_obama_hate_club/ And billionaire hedge-fund manager Leon Cooperman, a former Obama supporter, responds with this: “You know, the largest and greatest country in the free world put a forty-seven-year-old guy that never worked a day in his life and made him in charge of the free world … Not totally different from taking Adolf Hitler in Germany and making him in charge of Germany because people were economically dissatisfied.†Cooperman, like so many of his fellow super-rich, is upset at Obama’s class-warfare “tone.†But in response, as Chrystia Freeland documents in her definitive New Yorker treatment of billionaire Obama hate, Cooperman raises the level of divisive rhetoric light-years beyond Obama’s, straight into a galaxy of ludicrous imbecility. It is beyond irrational to compare Obama with Hitler, or to argue that in any meaningful way his administration has waged class warfare against the rich. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times, Obama has been great for the rich! Freeland says it again: The growing antagonism of the super-wealthy toward Obama can seem mystifying, since Obama has served the rich quite well. His Administration supported the seven-hundred-billion-dollar TARP rescue package for Wall Street, and resisted calls from the Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and others on the left, to nationalize the big banks in exchange for that largesse. At the end of September, the S. & P. 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, had rebounded to just 6.9 per cent below its all-time pre-crisis high, on October 9, 2007. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have found that ninety-three per cent of the gains during the 2009-10 recovery went to the top one per cent of earners.

I would like to hear the administrations response.

The Republicans are right. There is widespread voter fraud. How do they know? They're the ones that are doing it. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49227596/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/t/more-suspicious-voter-forms-found-florida/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/ Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that. (You also see a jump after the financial crisis begins in 2008, but we can expect that to be mostly temporary.) Some of those tax cuts for the poor were there to make the tax cuts for the rich more politically palatable. “Do you think we wanted to include a welfare payment to people who don’t pay taxes and call it a tax cut?†A top Bush administration official once asked me. “No. But that’s what we needed to do to get it done.†But now that those tax cuts have passed and many fewer Americans are paying federal income taxes and the rich are paying a much higher percentage of federal income taxes, Republicans are arguing that these Americans they have helped free from income taxes have become a dependent and destabilizing “taker†class who want to hike taxes on the rich in order to purchase more social services for themselves. The antidote, as you can see in both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s policy platforms, is to further cut taxes on “job creators†while cutting the social services that these takers depend on. That way, you roll the takers out of what Ryan calls “the hammock†of government and you unleash the makers to create jobs and opportunities. So notice what happened here: Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich. That’s why Romney’s theory here is more than merely impolitic. It’s actually core to his economic agenda. The 47% "61 percent of them paid payroll taxes — which means THEY HAVE JOBS and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid."

There are a tons of people, millionaires in this country who pay very litte taxes and some that pay none. There are multi-millionaires who pay a far far lower rate than Romney did. Which is almost like paying no taxes due to the paucity of their tax committment. There are corporations that pay no taxes. They make a healthy profit. The FACT is that very wealthy people and companies benefit from the government. In various forms, write offs, tax abatements, low or no interest loans, subsidies, many, many different ways of paying less because they own the pols through their donations, lobbyists, interest groups and PACs and write the laws and regulations that affect them. What is this complete and utter bullshit that the rich are left to pay for the rest of us. They OWN the friggin' government. Again, I have no problem with the rich. I would love to be one of them. Were I in their shoes I would be doing the same possibly although I would like to think I'm better than that but when you have money you want more and you want to keep more of it. The overall point is that the 47% living off the government is a fallacy. Its pretty much everyone. Everyone is taking advantage of some form of government largesse. The rich moreso oftentimes than the rest of us who a) don't have the resources or knowledge to take advantage and/or don't have the voice in the government to get the benefits the rich and powerful do.

actually i dont think hitler would have used it if england wnd america had it. Just a guess. There would be no germany or him to rule it. Both america and the ussr "lost" wars in the modern era and neither felt compelled to entertain the idea.

Regarding Iran, there is good news and bad news. First the bad news, Iran will have a nuke. Probably in the next 12 to 24 months. Now the good news. It won't matter. They won't use it. Countries in the modern age do not acquire or seek to acquire a nuke for offensive purposes. Its always defensive. It may seem like its for offensive purposes but its not. North Korea would have used it years ago if it were for offensive purposes. Either India or Pakistan would have used it were it so. The fact is countries in the modern age acquire it as an insurance policy against being attacked in a conventional war and Iran is no different.

China is presently doing what all emerging powers do. Solidify its power in its own region. Then eventually expand. First and foremost is to modernise domestically. Get its infrastructure up to par.