Obama announces 2012 bid as he launches ?$1billion? election campaign
 

Is it just me, or does anyone else enjoy US elections? I think they're great. Far more entertaining than anything else on TV, and definitely better than any reality TV show. Will Obama remain his cool, collective, intelligent self and be able to energize huge crowds with amazing speeches?

Will Palin run, and if so, what moronic shit will she say this time around? Will Biden have any crazy old man outbursts, and stick his foot in his mouth? Will McCain be in there, incoherently rambling on about shit he knows nothing about? Will Trump run, and maybe piss of China by constantly declaring them an enemy? What's the Tea Partiers going to do? What dirt will the media dig up?

US elections -- reality TV at its finest!

We agree. What amazes me is Americans see it as something real.

Like anyone needs to spend a 100s of millions or a billion to be worthy of the job. They simply don't get it where the money comes from and who ends up paying the bill.

i have completely given up on US politics..

its all smoke and mirrors.. the govt pretends it's hard at work making things better for the people while they funnel taxpayer money into corporations bank accounts..

i hope someday the people wake up and we have a much needed revolution...





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1 billion ???!

Seriously .... it costs 1 billion to win an election?! Thats just insane !

yeah and then the long repayment begins...hope and change

The elections are always rigged anyway.

Engineered by reptillians. :2 cents:

So true......:2 cents:

It's called an INVESTMENT.

Buy a Presidency and make billions of profit. :1orglaugh

I find politics entertaining too more than anything. Too many people see the news or political happenings as too serious to take lightly though it seems.

Everyday you prove how much more senile you really are.

You can't take politics lightly. Too few people have too much power and can change your life with a pen stroke.

What's happening in the middle east will make it here eventually. I think more and more are finally starting to open their eyes. The old dinosaurs who believe everything their told continue to die off, it won't be long.

Well then let me rephrase my feeling on the subject. Just because the issues may be very important is no reason to take leave of your senses, and I find discussing politics with some people impossible because they go to instant rant mode.

I think there's actually a good chance of that happening. The baby boomers had their generation now. When they were young, it was peace, love, sex, drugs, rock & roll, etc. Once they were older, they moved themselves into positions of power, and well, raped & pillaged like mad, and basically fucked everything up. They had a hell of a good time while doing it though!

Now they're all getting on in their years, and starting to phase out, leaving room for the new generation. Will be interesting to watch what our generation can do. Are we going to fuck things up even more, or be able to actually leave this world a better place than when we found it?

Yeah it would be very entertaining if that's all it was but being that there is real shit actually on the line its pretty sad to have to watch it.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/...70_634x520.jpg

How cute that they made the little wee person stand on a box.

Something will happen again :)

Nope, don't think it matters in the slightest. At a minimum 80% of both houses of Congress, plus the Whitehouse administration are bought & paid for by corporations. Even if some young, intelligent, good hearted go-getter gets elected into the congress or senate, and wants to invoke meaningful change to help the common American, there's not a chance he's going to succeed.

On top of that, you have the Pentagon, which is probably even more powerful than the US government. There's a reason why every US politician is screaming that the deficit needs to be cut, but almost nobody will even hint at cutting military spending. US is a very militaristic country, and the military is running a good portion of the show. The aspects the military doesn't run, the mulit-national corporations fill in for.

If there was ever a president who was going to invoke real change within the US, it would have been Obama. But nope, he turned out to be the same typical asshole as the rest of them.

Sadly I feel the same way. I've been interested in news and politics since I was a kid, I had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal in 8th grade..lol. But things are so ass backwards right now with the public debate that it's nearly impossible to be engaged anymore in a meaningful way.

This is just a theory, but I think a big issue is that people who in the past only had a passing interest in complex political issues now try to be very involved in those issues despite not being savvy enough to truly understand what is going on. So they get tricked very easily and they end up derailing the whole debate.

Passion is good, but passion with no knowledge is how you get exploited, and a huge number of Americans are being exploited.

Unless the unemployment rate drops below 7%, Barry doesn't stand a chance, many people are dropping off the 99 week limit now, they don't say that, instead they are praising the numbers of those collecting unemployment going down.
So here we are attacking another country, still official have one of the wars Bush got us into going and 50k troops in the other country,
Yeah, we are getting fucked

Sad, but totally true... unfortunately... :(

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the Republicans have zero interest in winning the presidency. Think about it, they are getting everything they want as it is, and all the problems can be blamed on Obama. Why upset the boat? If they take over the white house, then they will get blamed for everything. They are better off just waiting since they are getting everything they want as it is and have zero blame.

I think they have figured out the perfect plan. They can get everything they want politically, but they don't share any of the blame when everything is going to hell. In fact, the worse things get, the easier it is for them to get what they want.

Is that why the Republican party is putting forward all these joke candidates that everyone knows will never win?

The Republican party is very well organized and controlled, the fact that they are not grooming a candidate speaks volumes.

Republican/Reptillian = Same difference. :2 cents:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/su...&cid=n00009638

good data on where obama got his $750 million the 1st go round. i agree with vend, gonna be hard to get the same level of private donations with his current approval rating.

all those americans he filled with hope were bullshitted.

The bulk of campaign money is contributed by individuals not corporations.

Latest polls show that 51% of Americans approve of him. All of the people (Independents and Dems) that he pissed off will come back home once they see the lot of no-names and wacko's running on the other side of things.

With the Republicans having no clear cut front runner - they'll have to run the first leg of the race against Obama and their fellow Republicans. A daunting task. Especially when the current President (and one of the greatest speakers ever) will most likely turn the charm back on.

Note: Fox News ratings are dipping to the lowest they have been in years. CNN is beating them in some cases. The political atmosphere is changing once again. Clinton 96 all over again.

Charlie Sheen for president!

To me his chances of winning a second term come down to 2 things:

1.The economy. If, when the election comes, unemployment is down to somewhere in the 6-7% range he will be very hard to beat. If it is more than that he could be vulnerable on the economy.

2. The republican contender. If he ends up with someone like Palin or Huckabee who really only has support among the extreme right it will be easier for him to get elected again, but if the candidate turns out to be more moderate and someone who can win a lot of the independents it will be a lot harder.

i thought romney was the next in line for the repubs.......... sarah and newt are just distractions.

maybe all the upcoming campaign spending will knock us out of the recession.........!

Romney has big issues to overcome. First off he is a Mormon and the religious right will likely not vote for a Mormon. Many of the early primaries are int he bible belt states so he could have trouble getting off to a decent start because of that. Second, when he was governor he brought universal healthcare to everyone in his state. Going after healthcare is one of the major republican battle cries. He will likely be crippled on that topic because Obama is already pointing out that his plan looked to the Romney plan as a blueprint.

As I have heard these stats also, one big factor, the other side needs someone to run against him.

Not only does the other side need a strong person, that should come out soon, and not wait till the last minute, as a last pick person. There also has to be other people NOT running and splitting the vote, like Palin.

i wonder how the repubs will play this.. as i understand the party, they historically nominate whomever has paid their party dues and is next up.

I should say, the numbers of getting re-elected.

Unemployment use to say at the bottom, that these numbers do not include people not on benifits, and have no job. Doesn't even say that now.

Unlike North America, I doubt the water system in the middle east is full of fluoride. The vast majority of Americans will remain docile, and sit back while their country continues to go to shit.

The few that do protest/revolt will be labeled domestic terrorist and will be deligitmized.

blah blah fema camps, new world order, police state, etc.

this post explains your email address.

:)

sheep //

To some degree this is true, but they really wanted Romney last time not McCain, but he jumped out to an early lead. They want to avoid that from happening again with Palin this time so they have changed the rules. It has always been whoever wins a state gets all the delegates for that state. Now they have changed it so that if a state holds their primary election before a certain date the delegates are split up based on the percentage of the vote each candidate gets. This way Palin (or Huckabee or someone like them) can't jump in and win 6-8 of the early bible states and run away from the rest of the group. Now someone like Romney could finish in 2nd or even 3rd place in each of these early states and still be in it and he will just hold out until the election moves out of the bible belt and into the more progressive states.

I think the powers that be want the candidate they feel has the best chance of winning, but right now I don't think they know who that is. The base of the republican party has fractured. The religious right is suddenly fickle and the Tea Party only supports certain types of candidates so it is hard say who they might support in general election and without the support of those groups any candidate they nominate will have a very hard time winning.

I read that article too...i was at the airport last week and picked up a copy of the NewYork Times.
The paper was full of interesting *facts*.

he will win again cause the tea party whackjobs will manage to get their favorite running and that will be unvotable for the big majority of voters

Opportunities..... this is going to be a hell of an election, TONS of traffic.... I love political season, the masses are out looking for information and begging to be sold something stupid.