Who did you vote for?

[Badgerinmaine]

After you vote for real, vote here. I'm not setting up a thread for argument here--just curious to see how our board plays out.

[hoosier]

Indiana has had early voting for three weeks, and lines have been surprisingly long throughout. Assuming that continues in the future, it will be interesting to see what kind of long term effects it has on turnout for presidential elections. Is the predicted high turnout this year primarily a reflection of how people feel about the specific candidates? Will an election with two boring candidates or with two familiar faces generate similar rates of turnout? Will long term habits be affected by the general interest that this election has piqued?

[Partial]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

[hoosier]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

Now you have a little insight into how some of us felt in 2000 and 2004. But it can get much worse. Imagine if McCain won the popular vote but the election went to Obama through some technicality. Then we'd really be hearing resentment from the likes of you.

[arcilite]

As someone with a degree in economics, hearing people call Obama a 'socialist' or 'marrxist' makes me laugh.

[LL2]

One thing that is different this year from 2004 is that the media have agreed to a “quarantine” until 5pm on election exit polling results. In 2004 the media starting saying that Kerry was winning, only later to report that wasn’t true.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I might not vote. Of course I'll never tell anyone.

[sheepshead]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

Now you have a little insight into how some of us felt in 2000 and 2004. But it can get much worse. Imagine if McCain won the popular vote but the election went to Obama through some technicality. Then we'd really be hearing resentment from the likes of you.

Here's where youre terribly wrong man. Although the only way i can prove it is for the situation to be played out. But, most right thinking conservatives are also constitutionalists. We don't believe as many on the left do that the document is a living and breathing entity. Up for interpretation by lawyers at every whim. Gore was shameful. An embarrassment to the entire process. The provisions of the electoral college is in the constitution, thus it will decide the election for better or worse.

[MadScientist]

One thing that is different this year from 2004 is that the media have agreed to a “quarantine” until 5pm on election exit polling results. In 2004 the media starting saying that Kerry was winning, only later to report that wasn’t true.

Here's an interesting summary of why to just ignore the exit polls.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/ten-reasons-why-you-should-ignore-exit.html

[digitaldean]

I early voted for McCain on Thurs.

[Cheesehead Craig]

Is Chuck Baldwin the 4th Baldwin brother?

[Badgerinmaine]

Is Chuck Baldwin the 4th Baldwin brother?

If so, he doesn't follow the family political tendency too well, because he's the Constitution Party candidate. :-)

[LL2]

Heard a funny story on the radio at lunch. Early this morning Obama went to vote in his precinct in Chicago, and I'm sure we know who he voted for. The thing is that before he wnet in to vote he was sitting in his vehicle for a while before he got out. People couldn't figure out why he was sitting in his vehicle for so long. After a while the media and people found out that Ayers was inside voting while Obama was waiting outside. Obama didn't want the cameras to catch him voting at the same time as Ayers. I wonder what Obama was afraid of...isn't he just a neighbor down the block?

This was reported on WIMB 560 AM in Chicago.

[sheepshead]

Heard a funny story on the radio at lunch. Early this morning Obama went to vote in his precinct in Chicago, and I'm sure we know who he voted for. The thing is that before he wnet in to vote he was sitting in his vehicle for a while before he got out. People couldn't figure out why he was sitting in his vehicle for so long. After a while the media and people found out that Ayers was inside voting while Obama was waiting outside. Obama didn't want the cameras to catch him voting at the same time as Ayers. I wonder what Obama was afraid of...isn't he just a neighbor down the block?

This was reported on WIMB 560 AM in Chicago.

Yep and Farrakhan came in right after him (for real)

its WIND by the way

[LL2]

Heard a funny story on the radio at lunch. Early this morning Obama went to vote in his precinct in Chicago, and I'm sure we know who he voted for. The thing is that before he wnet in to vote he was sitting in his vehicle for a while before he got out. People couldn't figure out why he was sitting in his vehicle for so long. After a while the media and people found out that Ayers was inside voting while Obama was waiting outside. Obama didn't want the cameras to catch him voting at the same time as Ayers. I wonder what Obama was afraid of...isn't he just a neighbor down the block?

This was reported on WIMB 560 AM in Chicago.

Yep and Farrakhan came in right after him (for real)

its WIND by the way

Ooops! Thanks for the correction. :oops:

[swede]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

Now you have a little insight into how some of us felt in 2000 and 2004. But it can get much worse. Imagine if McCain won the popular vote but the election went to Obama through some technicality. Then we'd really be hearing resentment from the likes of you.

Do you mean the technicality of the electoral college?

A statement like this shows how little Democrats know about the constitution or conservatives.

[digitaldean]

Constitution, schmonstitution....

The libs want to squelch free speech with the Fairness Doctrine too. Never mind that lil' ol' thing called the First Amendment that they cling to whenever it suits their purposes.

[Bretsky]

I voted for the Vikings but I'm pretty sure the Bears will win

[sheepshead]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

Now you have a little insight into how some of us felt in 2000 and 2004. But it can get much worse. Imagine if McCain won the popular vote but the election went to Obama through some technicality. Then we'd really be hearing resentment from the likes of you.

Do you mean the technicality of the electoral college?

A statement like this shows how little Democrats know about the constitution or conservatives.

Scroll up my brother.

[HowardRoark]

I was disenfranchised.

[GrnBay007]

I'm surprised our little PR poll is so close.

[Iron Mike]

http://www.ronpaulforpresident2008.com/images/writeinguide.gif

[wist43]

It's sad... hopefully Obama and dems won't be able to do too much damage.

I'm a Constitutional Libertarian, but voted for McCain just b/c I see Obama as such a threat to our nation in every way - Constitutionally, socially, economically, institutionally, et al.

With a complicit media, and large majorities in both houses, he really could put the finishing touches on America's socialization. I'm afraid we'll never be able to turn this nonsense back.

Our founders warned us, but we didn't learn the lessons of history. It's not that complicated, but people are really, really dumb.

[falco]

wow our government is going to look a lot different soon

[Deputy Nutz]

I would have voted for Bob Barr, but I didn't want to throw away my vote. It went to Barry Goldwater.

[HarveyWallbangers]

wow our government is going to look a lot different soon

They'll act the same. Then, we'll throw the bums out for more people that act the same. We'll repeat this cycle again and again.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I honestly do not know what conservatives want. It seems that you are focused on process only - you want small government, low taxes, a free market. But these are just policies, a means to an end. What about the result? If you had your way, what do you expect the country would look like?

I expect there would be SEVERE social problems, extreme gaps between the haves and have-nots. And I fear conservative wouldn't be OK with this outcome.

Wist complains about the coming soicalization. (greatly exaggerated, I would say.) but market economics have FAILED in key areas: health care, finance. You don't address these realities, except to fall back on ideology: "things would have worked fine if there was even less government intervention." But the theory doesn't pass the smell test when you examine the facts on the ground. A free market makes health insurance costs wildly different for different people, leaving many uninsurable. A free market in credit has led to dangerous instability.

[HowardRoark]

market economics have FAILED in key areas: health care, finance. You don't address these realities, except to fall back on ideology: "things would have worked fine if there was even less government intervention." But the theory doesn't pass the smell test when you examine the facts on the ground. A free market makes health insurance costs wildly different for different people, leaving many uninsurable. A free market in credit has led to dangerous instability.

What you repeatedly fail to acknowledge is that these were/are NOT free markets.

[Harlan Huckleby]

What you repeatedly fail to acknowledge is that these were/are NOT free markets.

Ya, i do get what you are saying.

We don't have a test case of totally free markets.

So that means you have to look carefully, try and figure out what aspects are screwing things up. Bad government policy or market failures?

I have yet to hear a single conservative acknowledge the obvious fact that a free market leaves people with pre-existing conditions uninsurable. They just ignore the problem. McCain's answer of tax credits ignores this reality.

Conservative got heads in sand, they simply fall back on ideology.

[falco]

wow our government is going to look a lot different soon

They'll act the same. Then, we'll throw the bums out for more people that act the same. We'll repeat this cycle again and again.

QFT

[HarveyWallbangers]

Harlan,

I'd like to get your take on this article. The source is a conservative, Rich Lowry


End of the Reagan-Clinton Era?
By Rich Lowry

All hail the end of the Reagan era! That’s the cry going up throughout liberaldom as the financial crisis and the impending Democratic electoral sweep threaten the Reaganite troika of deregulation, low taxes and free trade.

What’s at stake in the response to the financial turmoil and the deepening recession is more than Ronald Reagan’s legacy. It’s a bipartisan consensus in favor of a robustly open economy — welcoming competition at home and from abroad — that began to take hold in the 1970s in the Carter administration, found its ultimate champion in Reagan and got cemented into place under Bill Clinton.

In terms of our globalized economy, we’ve been living in the Reagan-Clinton years. As David Smick writes in his compelling new book on the financial system, The World Is Curved: “Globalization was not a Republican or Democratic phenomenon. Indeed, there was not much difference in economic policymaking between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Ronald Reagan.”

Conservative bogeyman Jimmy Carter deregulated the aviation and trucking industries. His Labor Department loosened rules restricting how pension funds could invest, freeing up a vast pool of new capital. In 1978, the Democratic Congress cut the capital-gains rate and established 401(k)s.

Reagan accelerated the trend toward deregulation, while cutting taxes, killing off inflation and promoting free trade. Leveraged buyouts honed the competiveness of American companies, and entrepreneurial creativity bubbled up from below. “By the mid-1980s,” Smick writes, “liberalized financial markets were feeding capital to the once-ignored small- and medium-sized ventures through a modernized, multilayered financial system.”

Clinton moderately raised taxes. Otherwise, he operated within the Reagan framework. He signed bills deregulating agriculture, telecommunications and financial services. A tireless advocate of globalization, he pushed through NAFTA and the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Later in the 1990s, he cut capital-gains taxes and the estate tax, earning the condemnation of his former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich for “the largest federal tax cut on higher income since Ronald Reagan.”

Clinton himself remarked sarcastically: “We’re the Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?” For the economy, the answer to his frustrated rhetorical question was undeniably “yes.”

In his book The Competition Solution, former Clinton economic official Paul London credits the prosperity of the 1990s to “more than two decades of bipartisan policymaking affecting specific industries, which ultimately made competition in these sectors far more intense.” Time and again, policymakers rejected the pleas of industry and unions for government protection from competition, thus stoking investment-driven productivity gains. This kind of special pleading had often carried the day in the 1960s and 1970s.

The deregulatory thrust of the Clinton years has frustrated opportunistic attempts to pin financial deregulation solely on Republicans. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin advocated repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial from investment banking and that critics (unpersuasively) blame for the current financial mess. Rubin also opposed regulating derivatives under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and a bill to bar their regulation sailed through Congress in December 2000 with bipartisan support.

Even Alan Greenspan has admitted this was too sweeping. We’ll have to update our financial regulations while avoiding a lurch into overkill, like the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley law passed after the accounting scandals of the tech bubble.

But the temptation to break fundamentally with the past 25 years will be strong. The government already has, in response to the economic turmoil, its tentacles in the banking, insurance and auto industries. Barack Obama is declaring deregulation a failure, proposing higher taxes on capital, promoting unionization and signaling a hostility to free trade. The danger is that we will blunt the economy’s entrepreneurial edge and lose out as a prized destination for global investment.

Declaring the demise of Reaganism will be emotionally satisfying for Democrats, but Reaganism only dies if Clintonism does too — along with a golden period of bipartisan economic policy.

[Joemailman]

NBC has called Ohio for Obama. If that's right, it's over.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I don't know about Obama, I am concerned.

He is a neophyte, and full of himself.

I am deeply depressed over this election. I do fear that OBama may prove to have lousy judgment.

I don't like the left-wing of the Democratic Party and their protectionist streak, and OBama's dependance on them.

Despite my many differences with McCain, I would have been much more comfortable with him directing things.

I don't know what to make of Lowry's take. There are pro-business democrats, like Bill Clinton, we'll just have to see if Obama is a balanced person. HE's an enigma.


Harlan,

I'd like to get your take on ths article. The source is a conservative, Rich Lowery


End of the Reagan-Clinton Era?
By Rich Lowry

All hail the end of the Reagan era! That’s the cry going up throughout liberaldom as the financial crisis and the impending Democratic electoral sweep threaten the Reaganite troika of deregulation, low taxes and free trade.

What’s at stake in the response to the financial turmoil and the deepening recession is more than Ronald Reagan’s legacy. It’s a bipartisan consensus in favor of a robustly open economy — welcoming competition at home and from abroad — that began to take hold in the 1970s in the Carter administration, found its ultimate champion in Reagan and got cemented into place under Bill Clinton.

In terms of our globalized economy, we’ve been living in the Reagan-Clinton years. As David Smick writes in his compelling new book on the financial system, The World Is Curved: “Globalization was not a Republican or Democratic phenomenon. Indeed, there was not much difference in economic policymaking between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Ronald Reagan.”

Conservative bogeyman Jimmy Carter deregulated the aviation and trucking industries. His Labor Department loosened rules restricting how pension funds could invest, freeing up a vast pool of new capital. In 1978, the Democratic Congress cut the capital-gains rate and established 401(k)s.

Reagan accelerated the trend toward deregulation, while cutting taxes, killing off inflation and promoting free trade. Leveraged buyouts honed the competiveness of American companies, and entrepreneurial creativity bubbled up from below. “By the mid-1980s,” Smick writes, “liberalized financial markets were feeding capital to the once-ignored small- and medium-sized ventures through a modernized, multilayered financial system.”

Clinton moderately raised taxes. Otherwise, he operated within the Reagan framework. He signed bills deregulating agriculture, telecommunications and financial services. A tireless advocate of globalization, he pushed through NAFTA and the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Later in the 1990s, he cut capital-gains taxes and the estate tax, earning the condemnation of his former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich for “the largest federal tax cut on higher income since Ronald Reagan.”

Clinton himself remarked sarcastically: “We’re the Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?” For the economy, the answer to his frustrated rhetorical question was undeniably “yes.”

In his book The Competition Solution, former Clinton economic official Paul London credits the prosperity of the 1990s to “more than two decades of bipartisan policymaking affecting specific industries, which ultimately made competition in these sectors far more intense.” Time and again, policymakers rejected the pleas of industry and unions for government protection from competition, thus stoking investment-driven productivity gains. This kind of special pleading had often carried the day in the 1960s and 1970s.

The deregulatory thrust of the Clinton years has frustrated opportunistic attempts to pin financial deregulation solely on Republicans. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin advocated repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial from investment banking and that critics (unpersuasively) blame for the current financial mess. Rubin also opposed regulating derivatives under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and a bill to bar their regulation sailed through Congress in December 2000 with bipartisan support.

Even Alan Greenspan has admitted this was too sweeping. We’ll have to update our financial regulations while avoiding a lurch into overkill, like the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley law passed after the accounting scandals of the tech bubble.

But the temptation to break fundamentally with the past 25 years will be strong. The government already has, in response to the economic turmoil, its tentacles in the banking, insurance and auto industries. Barack Obama is declaring deregulation a failure, proposing higher taxes on capital, promoting unionization and signaling a hostility to free trade. The danger is that we will blunt the economy’s entrepreneurial edge and lose out as a prized destination for global investment.

Declaring the demise of Reaganism will be emotionally satisfying for Democrats, but Reaganism only dies if Clintonism does too — along with a golden period of bipartisan economic policy.

[HowardRoark]

What you repeatedly fail to acknowledge is that these were/are NOT free markets.

Ya, i do get what you are saying.

We don't have a test case of totally free markets.

So that means you have to look carefully, try and figure out what aspects are screwing things up. Bad government policy or market failures?

I have yet to hear a single conservative acknowledge the obvious fact that a free market leaves people with pre-existing conditions uninsurable. They just ignore the problem. McCain's answer of tax credits ignores this reality.

Conservative got heads in sand, they simply fall back on ideology.

In both of your examples, it is bad government policy (redundant I know) that has caused bad outcomes.

As much as we can hear people scream how dumb Bush is and that every problem on earth is a direct result of his stupidity (damn, that will be a tough one tomorrow morning for Obama and the gang), this is not grown-up thinking. The problems in the mortgages can be traced directly back to horrible policy of Left thinking people who wanted home ownership to be one of your so-called “rights.” By manipulating the free-market we have horrendous outcomes. Do you see this?

As far as health care, I think that most conservatives would disagree with your assertion that we don’t care about people. I have mentioned before my personal experience with healthcare. At a relatively young age I had a stroke which in the blink of an eye changed virtually everything concerning my healthcare. Without coverage, it would have cost me personally well into the six figures for the care I needed immediately following that event. Of course I thought about what would have happened had I not had coverage.

I think there are two issues; costs are too high and too many people are not properly covered. We have some kind of conglomeration of both free-markets and government interference that falls on it’s face. We do have socialized healthcare, just really poorly managed. The consumer has to be more directly involved in the buying decision. As far as the TRUE uninsured, I am OK with some kind of safety net that gets them covered…but it has to be market driven.

But here’s the rub. Now we hear from good-hearted people such as Ziggy who say that too many people are not smart enough to figure out all this stuff, so we need to just take it over to guarantee that everyone is taken care of. That’s the macro-problem. Every day we spit out dumber and dumber people who can’t figure out how to: take care of their healthcare, take care of their retirement, take care of their mortgage, take care of educating their kids………so it will just be better for the ever more intrusive Federal Government to be involved in my life.

A simple question: if Government run programs are so great, why do we constantly hear about how we have to fix education?

As far as a true test case for free-markets. Take a look at you daily life. Anything you could possibly want or need is available to you. And many times, you don't even have ot leave your couch to get it. You can surf the net and check prices. I bought a boat on e-bay this summer......how can you possibly claim that you don't know where true free markets are?

[Harlan Huckleby]

The problems in the mortgages can be traced directly back to horrible policy of Left thinking people who wanted home ownership to be one of your so-called “rights.” By manipulating the free-market we have horrendous outcomes. Do you see this?

Sure, these government policies were foolish, but they aren't the core of the problem. IF you latch on to this aspect because it aligns with your ideology, you miss the forest for the trees.
The larger, core problem is that financial institutions were over-leveraged. More gov regulation of financial markets is evidently needed to protect the public from the consequences.
And the second huge issue: market theory suggests that the credit markets should have been able to get out of this mess on their own. But things froze up, no bottom was found where money started flowing again. The free market tanked, a gov bailout was necessary to unfreeze the gridlock.


As far as the TRUE uninsured, I am OK with some kind of safety net that gets them covered…but it has to be market driven.

OK, please elaborate. Should the government subsidize people who are charged high insurance rates? Or should insurance companies be forced to insure everyone at the same rate?

[HowardRoark]

The problems in the mortgages can be traced directly back to horrible policy of Left thinking people who wanted home ownership to be one of your so-called “rights.” By manipulating the free-market we have horrendous outcomes. Do you see this?

Sure, these government policies were foolish, but they aren't the core of the problem. IF you latch on to this aspect because it aligns with your ideology, you miss the forest for the trees.
The larger, core problem is that financial institutions were over-leveraged. More gov regulation of financial markets is evidently needed to protect the public from the consequences.
And the second huge issue: market theory suggests that the credit markets should have been able to get out of this mess on their own. But things froze up, no bottom was found where money started flowing again. The free market tanked, a gov bailout was necessary to unfreeze the gridlock.


As far as the TRUE uninsured, I am OK with some kind of safety net that gets them covered…but it has to be market driven.

OK, please elaborate. Should the government subsidize people who are charged high insurance rates? Or should insurance companies be forced to insure everyone at the same rate?

I would argue that the Leftist policies were the "core"....the leverage was bad regulation. The mark to market accounting (regulation in response to Enron) also added fuel to the fire.

As far as the healthcare, I am probaly not smart enough in this field to give you all the answers. I would first determine those people who are uninsured but still could afford insurance and strongly encourage themto get some insurance. if they don't, I am OK letting them die in the streets. For those who truly can't afford insurance, I'm OK with the Feds giving these people somekind of "voucher" to buy covrage in the private sector.

[hoosier]

the packerrats presidential election appears to be doomed to end up as a draw. to avoid such an ignominious fate i suggest we appoint a vice president and let her/him cast the deciding vote. it would have to be someone who hasn't voted/posted in this thread of course.

[MOBB DEEP]

...yo mama...

[bobblehead]

Socialists. This day sickens me.

Now you have a little insight into how some of us felt in 2000 and 2004. But it can get much worse. Imagine if McCain won the popular vote but the election went to Obama through some technicality. Then we'd really be hearing resentment from the likes of you.

you mean some technicality like the constitution.....

[bobblehead]

As someone with a degree in economics, hearing people call Obama a 'socialist' or 'marrxist' makes me laugh.

ah yes...education. Obama espouses socialist policy...if you don't see that then you should have flunked your economics class.

[bobblehead]

What you repeatedly fail to acknowledge is that these were/are NOT free markets.

Ya, i do get what you are saying.

We don't have a test case of totally free markets.

So that means you have to look carefully, try and figure out what aspects are screwing things up. Bad government policy or market failures?

I have yet to hear a single conservative acknowledge the obvious fact that a free market leaves people with pre-existing conditions uninsurable. They just ignore the problem. McCain's answer of tax credits ignores this reality.

Conservative got heads in sand, they simply fall back on ideology.

I have acknowledged this. I want MANDATORY high deductible policies with REAL penalties for not having one. In the startup pre-existing conditions would be an issue, but once you got the populace insured it would be irrelavent.