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MST.ESQ said:
In a nutshell, the problem lies in the fact that most people will spend more time researching a new car, or you guessed it - even a new mountainbike - then they do their political candidate of choice. Some of the reasons I have been hearing for voting (for either candidate) are disheartening. That my friends is the true issue at hand in today's politics. So if you take nothing else from this post, let's remind ourselves, friends and family members that taking part in the political process is one of our most important duties as citizens. It should be exercised with pride, but as with any other consitutional right, should be discharged (that one was for you gtLuke) with the greatest of care and forethought.
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I agree with what you say here...

First, I think the guy in the Howard Stern bit is full of sh!t. He didn't want to admit why he really voted for Obama, so he was making sh!t up as he went along.

"...greatest of care and forethought"...I agree with that too, but that doesn't necessarily mean an in depth study of the issues/policies/positions. I would hope that each person who votes understands what criteria they're using and have made the conscious choice that the other aspects of a candidate are unimportant in the entire context of their view or at least "livable" given the importance of their primary criteria to them.

In other words, I would hope that every voter could fill in the variables of this sentence: I voted for A, because of B...and B are/is the most important factor(s) for me because C.

And of course, variable C being something other than a restatement of B is what we'd be looking for...not to mention all of it being "accurate"...and make some of sense.

Even if I personally would think B and C are silly reasons/rationales to vote for a particular candidate, that is okay by me as long as the thought process has taken place.

Sadly, this is not the case for most in our society. I'm not even sure if it is possible. If every one were honest, you'd here a lot of stuff like this:

- I voted for Obama because he's the democrat...and that is the most important factor for me because I'm a democrat...though I'm not sure what the reality of being a democrat is.

- I voted for McCain because he's the republican...and that is the most important factor for me because I'm a republican....though I'm not sure what the reality of being a republican is.

- I voted for Obama because he inspired me...and that is the most important factor to me because, uh, I dunno'.

- I voted for McCain because he believes in small government...and that is the most important factor to me because, uh, what does that really mean again?

I could go on and on :D

At least some voters, on both side of the coin, could fill in the sentence in a reasonable way...
 
Fogerson said:
... At least some voters, on both side of the coin, could fill in the sentence in a reasonable way...
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Well stated Fogerson...

Hopefully at the next election we can say "I voted for Frank because he promised each of us a shiny new bike to decrease our dependency on foreign oil."
 
MST.ESQ said:
Well stated Fogerson...

Hopefully at the next election we can say "I voted for Frank because he promised each of us a shiny new bike to decrease our dependency on foreign oil."
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Thanks. And I wouldn't hold my breath, but we can "HOPE".
 
Sparta Brad said:
not really, considering some of his economic plans, such as increasing capital gains.

down about 400 again today.
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I know you really want it to be his fault, but no cigar. I suppose that the anticipation of his election is the reason it has been up-and-down for the last several months.

Take a look what the market has done recent and (the other) events/news of the week; here is a morsel to start with http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081106/wall_street.html

Plus, you are talking about policies/plans that likely won't even be in affect for over a year from now...

P.S. I'm not saying that there may not be an element of the election affecting it, but I doubt it is significant in the context of everything else. It'd be in the shitter if Mr. McCain won too...
 
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linking the stock market to the election makes about as much sense as dancing about architecture.

the market is reacting to key interest rate cuts that occurred overseas last night that hit some interest rate sensitive businesses that didn't need the rate cut. add some incredibly weak job and retail numbers... along with 1,672,477 other financial reasons, and you've got today.

also, this market and credit issue is far from over. i feel like a lot of people saw the market shoot up a bit and stablize for a few days over the past two weeks and thought, "oh we are finally out of that mess". its far from over. the way the market is behaving is exactly what happened during the depression (only worse both in dollars and percentages) which is tons of volatility that eventually (not overnight) creeped further and further down.

our president can only basically affect our economy (in the big econ 101 picture) in two ways: taxes and spending. when taxes are cut, its good for the economy. when the government spends more, its good for the economy. so where's the balance of cutting taxes with the appropriate level of spending? no one knows. just like no one knows how to truly get us out of the hole we are in which was caused by consumer overspending, poor investment decisions, and complicated investment packages.

obama is better for the economy right now. mccain didn't get my vote for two reasons: his healthcare plan was far from a good fix, and his talk of 'government freeze on spending' would have been throwing another huge wrecking ball into the economic mess. unfortunately, we need the government to spend right now... otherwise that economic curve shifts further and further in the wrong direction. i chose the economic lesser of two evils.
 
i've heard people blame hurricanes on george bush,
you have 4 more years of this, get used to it.
 
too bad the same amount of people didn't come out to vote 4 years ago...maybe kerry would be running for re-election:rolleyes:
 
Spencer the Kalmyk said:
too bad the same amount of people didn't come out to vote 4 years ago...maybe kerry would be running for re-election:rolleyes:
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kerry wasn't very inspiring. Much in the same way the repubs nominated mccain this time around, nominating the guy deemed "most electable" will most likely end up failing.
 
gtluke said:
yeah, running someone who is actually qualified is total horse poop now.
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Not for nothing, but how exactly does one become qualified to be president without actually being president? I'm not directing this at you, per se. But I hear this "qualified" argument a lot and the reality is that nobody other than 3 people are currently qualified to be president based on actual qualifications. And I'm not sure about any of those 3 at this point, really.
 
Norm said:
Not for nothing, but how exactly does one become qualified to be president without actually being president? I'm not directing this at you, per se. But I hear this "qualified" argument a lot and the reality is that nobody other than 3 people are currently qualified to be president based on actual qualifications. And I'm not sure about any of those 3 at this point, really.
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The answer is nobody...this is a situation where you have to hire based on potential.

Which, btw, in my 20 years of management, hiring by focusing on potential has yielded much better hires than focusing on "qualifications".
 
For 1, executive experience.
2, Military experience usually helps
3, International experience
4, Legislative experience.

You know, things the president usually deals with on a daily basis.
 
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