Last election he ran on transparency, change and hope.
And as three years went by there was no transparency in billions of dollars (TARP) given to big corporations. Change? yeah sure, for worse. And he does not talk about hope any more, since millions of Americans does no have job and economy is not even getting better.
In this campaign he is all about class warfare, soak the rich taxes. Do we even count him as leader who divides people of the country every day in his speeches?
Make me fool once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
All of this is true, but the implication when we say something like "most of it was paid off" is that the money has actually been returned. In reality, most of it was paid off using new loans that are not under EESA. I could say "I paid off all the credit card debt I accumulated in the last 5 years" after I get two new credit cards and transfer my balances to them, but it would be a bit underhanded to say that.
You mean to say Bush bailed out GM, Citibank, AIG and other long list of companies??? Please at least know a little about the subject before you jump in to comment.
People don't care, he gets blamed for stuff that happened before he was in office all the time. I've seen Republican members of congress publicly blame him for TARP too. The downturn we're in right now is the "Obama economy" even though it started before he was elected.
Who will vote for him then? I am honestly curious. My impression was that young voters (users of the internet) were the key to Obama's success last time. Are the other republican candidates so weak that Obama can just scoop up a bunch of their voters?
1) The Republican party will nominate Mitt Romney, and the election will be a closely contested competition between two men who are disliked by the most active parts of their respective parties.
2) The Republicans will nominate one of the crazy brigade, who will have a small set of very loud proponents but will scare moderate Republicans enough not to vote, and scare Democrats and independents enough that they will turn up to vote for Obama.
(There are other, less likely options. Huntsman is centralist enough to gets votes from unsatisfied independents, and I think Perry could win if he managed to get the nomination. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/how-can-... is a good summary of the current state of the Republican race)
3) Republican party wakes up and realizes they have an amazing opportunity to beat Obama if they nominate Ron Paul - who opposes SOPA http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3250330 but the Republican establishment would rather have 4 more years of corporatism under Obama than that.
I understand Paul has some support on HN, and I even understand why, but there is no way that he can win the election.
This isn't because of some conspiricy, but simply because what he believes isn't supported by enough people. Worse, many (most?) actively oppose at least some of his policies.
Not only will Democrats oppose him, but most Republicans don't believe he represents them (see recent comments from various Republicans about how they wouldn't vote for him)
(Personally, I think SOPA passing would be a minor price to pay compared to Paul becoming President (and I am totally opposed to SOPA - I just think its importance is much less than some of the things Paul would do))
Among many other things, his support for Israel is poor to non existent, and someone who doesn't support Israel has no chance of winning. Support for Israel is around 63% in the general public, and in the high 80's among Republicans.
His positions on a host of other things appear completely crazy to most people, and they'll never vote for him.
Considering the qualities of the republican candidates trying to meet him in the general elections, he could be the lesser of two evils. But frankly, I am so disillusioned with both parties, I don't even know how to feel anymore.
Start asking around, and find out how many people (outside your circle of informed technical friends) even know that SOPA/PIPA are happening (just their existence/names, not to mention what they are about). (Hint: Not many, in my experience.)
