Who are you voting for today? ** LR Poll **

[Apoptosis]

No need to say who you are, but just seeing who our forum members pick to win the election and how close we are to the real count.

[Major_A]

Voted this morning. Walked in, voted and was done in 5 minutes. 1st time I voted when I was 18 (14 years ago) it took 3 hours.

[Apoptosis]

Took about 30 minutes for me in rural Missouri... Polling place was full with a wait to get your ballot and a wait to get a place to sit and vote.

Looked like the same number of people that turned out in 2008. And I vote every election that I am in town to vote for no matter how big or small.

[vbironchef]

Well my wife (Natasha) is voting today. I am not. Why, you might ask? Well if I vote, her vote would cancel out! So what's the point. Until we have a popular vote instead of a electoral vote I really don't think it matters in my state of California. It's a blue state all the way. I really don't care one way or the other as long as our fiscal cliff and deficit are taken care of A.S.A.P. So no vote for me. And don't count me as a loser because I didn't vote.

I think Romney lost the election do to chris christie telling the American people how great President Obama was doing right after hurricane sandy. Maybe chis christie is thinking about the next election. Maybe he will run, maybe not. Just seems strange, Oh right, that's politics.

[FZ1]

I don't like the electoral college system either...it's antiquated and subject to corruption.

[vbironchef]

If I were to vote today it would have been for none of the above. I would have voted for Ron Paul and I would have hoped that his son ran for V.P. I feel it would have been the only choice to get our house in order. Now I feel we are just going to get more of the same no matter who wins. Bash me if you want, this is just my opinion.

[Apoptosis]

33 views and 2 votes...

hum... We have some cheaters

[InspectahACE]

I didn't like either choice and I didn't put any effort to learn much about them, kinda lame I know...so I primarily rooted for Les Claypool

[KnightRid]

Sad day for America.

At least all the foreign countries can keep making fun of us and our stupidity LOL Gotta love how nasty those foreign people get compared to our own press.

[bubba]

didn't see this till now.

Sad part is that the Senate is still controlled by the dems, House by the reps. Didn't matter who became POTUS, nothing will still get done.

[mmi]

Looks like a rather brilliant tactical victory for the Obama team. Like him or not, David Plouffe is a genius when it comes to using new technology to target and persuade voters.

To someone pretty far out on the left like myself, Obama's policies look like major compromises, designed to provide support to existing private sector structures:

1. The Affordable Care Act is anything but the shift to national health insurance that I support. Its major goals are to:
   1. Bring a lot more people into the insurance market by forcing them to pay what they can to get coverage and thereby avoid the costly and ineffective alternative of waiting until they're really sick and then going to the emergency room.
   2. Create market conditions that influence insurance companies to pay more attention to so-called "best (medical) practices" in their coverage standards. Importantly, individual states are allowed to set those standards, insurance plans are expressly allowed to operate outside the exchanges, and most of the effort to control costs takes place within Medicare, where participation in the biggest cost-saving revision (Accountable Care Organizations) is voluntary. — "Essential Health Benefits Bulletin," Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight
2. The continuation of TARP has gone a long way toward keeping the credit markets viable, while the ongoing effect of stimulus spending has allowed the economy to continue to struggle along in recovering from a major recession. Sadly, we're borrowing all that money.

My humble suggestion to Republicans is that they should recognize what's really going on: The Democrats are already compromising. If they can bring themselves to accept Clinton-era tax rates, and if both sides can make the difficult decisions required to preserve Social Security and Medicare, we can make greater progress toward balancing the federal budget. As I noted in another thread, the annual deficit has been reduced by 22% since the last Bush numbers (FY2009), from 1.4T to 1.1T. Those figures are very depressing, I admit. But we're moving in the right direction. A synergy of fiscal compromise and higher levels of GDP growth can speed up that process.

Didn't matter who became POTUS, nothing will still get done.

Let's not allow that to happen! These conditions are within our control; we just need to do the right thing. "Let Boehner be Boehner." I'd be thrilled to see the speaker and the president shake hands with big smiles at a press conference a few months from now, announcing an historic deal that lifts this country out of the trouble we fell into when we lost sight of our inescapable common interest.

[vbironchef]

The stock market today is telling you everything!

[mmi]

But what, in this case, is "everything?" Is it simply that some investors expected a rally in response to a Rombot victory, and now that the president has been reelected, that sentiment has been eliminated? And who knows how the political process will work out in relation to the impending sequestration? Most importantly, isn't the decline on Wall Street yesterday and today a consequence of lower-than-expected earnings being reported for the third quarter due to weakness internationally, numbers that have nothing at all to do with Tuesday's election?

I for one am not much concerned about the expectations investors have about corporate earnings over the next few quarters, the factor that will likely have the largest influence on equity values in the short term. We need to see continued improvement in consumer confidence, with all that entails: continuing recovery in the housing and employment markets and further improvement in the federal fiscal situation. As I've been saying, let's cut a deal on the budget ("Fiscal responsibility, not sequestration, is the goal" — The Hill) and we'll be in a much-improved position.

[kenc51]

just my 2 drunken cent

The country with the largest economy must have free health care

When I say free, I mean free.
Before money is spent on anything else, road works, defence, water; health care should always be paramount.
The primary goal of any government should be to provide for the people.
Health care first - then water - then roads etc.
Everything else follows. When people feel safe they take risks. Risk is what allows us as human beings to move forward.
Every successful company out their took (more than one) risk(s) to get going.
If you hold people back, you hinder progress.

While I'm over her in Ireland and not in the US; I truly believe this is how all countries should act.
I also hope/believe that we eventually evolve to a position where there are no boarders, but I'm a idealist.


Ken

[mmi]

Fwiw, I think we're on the same page, Ken. I think I can anticipate the response some here will have, that nothing is free, or at least that you get what you pay for, and so "free" health care won't be worth much.

But I figure your meaning is that the US should have national health insurance, often described as "Medicare for all." Medicare administrative costs are much lower than those in the private sector, and you don't hear too many seniors complaining about Medicare. The counterargument is that Medicare is in trouble financially. But the Affordable Health Care Act will improve that situation, and we can, if we have the political will, make the changes required to put the program on a more solid financial footing.

Nearly twenty years ago, I had some health concerns (trouble catching my breath that turned out to be caused by Grave's disease), but because I had little income and no health insurance, I didn't go to see a doctor until I more or less had to. As a result, I still have a slightly irregular heartbeat that likely could have been corrected if I had sought medical attention earlier. I admit I was dumb, but I figured I couldn't afford to spend a few hundred dollars I didn't have just to be told that I was getting old and to get used to it.

National health insurance would lower costs and improve outcomes. And if people with lots of money wanted to spend more, no one would stop them.

[FZ1]

Healthcare doesn't have to be free, only affordable for the average person. When you pay $20 for an aspirin, there's a problem. A lot of this is driven from the costs of insurance that doctors & hospitals have to carry to indemnify themselves from lawsuit because we have a very litigious society over here. Mandates need to be set for the cost of basic healthcare. However, if you do that for all healthcare, incentive is lost for companies to innovate and spend gobs of money on R&D because they'll never recover the investment. Medical advances then stagnate and that's not going to work either. Obamacare has some merit in concept but poorly designed and will be a disaster. I'm officially calling it.

[sbohdan]

All these candidates work for the same interest group (Bilderberg group) and all are freemasons. None will care for the people, even though they will all lie about that. Probably the most obvious was, when Bush senior was "battleing" John Kerry, who is his cousin. These criminals can't even lie properly and it is so sad, that the majority of the voters can't see the obvious. They keep voting republican and 4 years later democrat, when it doesn't matter, because both parties work for the same masters and that is not the people. The only man, who at least says the right thing is Ron Paul (if that is true or not would only come out in case he was ever ellected) - the rest is a bunch of (proven) corrupt criminals, who should only be elected for a death sentence, because that's all they deserve.
As for the campaign, it is like a bad play, where the opponents kill each other, fight to the teeth, but as soon as the curtain falls down, they all go down to have a beer or a cofee, they are best friends, went to the same school and their children married one another. Oh and they all listen to and get paid by the same director...