There are many in this country for whom anything short of pure Marxism is too big a compromise. They look at their leader Obama and say he has no spine, because in three years he has taken us significantly less than half the way from where we started to pure Marxism.

For anyone with a sane point of view, Obama has been more stubborn and unwilling to compromise than any President in history. When that understandably leads to lack of cooperation from Congress (even from his own party) he just throws out the rule book and acts as dictator instead of President: taxes (labeled as "fees") invented by his czars without passing Congress, all manner of spending never approved by Congress (even some specifically disallowed by laws), and recess appointments when Congress was not in recess. Despite what the leftist press will imply, no President has ever before made recess appointments during a 3 day non-recess. Even Truman (a long ago dictatorial Democrat) used a ten day gap that legally might have been a recess.

Obama extended the tax break for the Rich for a deal with the Republicans for the Unemployment Extension.

Obama claims he had Bin Laden Killed even though the Stealth Helicopter crashed into a fence outside of his compound. This would be synonymous to using the doorbell would it not? Conveniently there is no way to prove they killed Bin Laden.

Obama is basically running his campaign that he will for fill the promises of his last campaign. This is admitting that he himself has not kept his campaign promises the first time. "Fool me once shame on you ,fool me twice shame on Me."

Obama thinks that you can borrow your way out of debt. "The problem with our debt is that we are not in debt enough."

Obama is creating massive inflation by putting the Nation More in debt to postpone the problem of going after the people with the fat wallets. If you see a group of people outside of a bank just after it has been robbed, the person carrying the bags of money is most likely the thief. He also said that Derivatives are too hard to regulate while the Fed ; which is privately owned , has decided the FDIC will bail out these toxic investments. This is just plain LOOTING. The American People are just expected to come up with more so the looters can keep on looting. Edit: Bernie Madoff really has done nothing that the U.S government does not do it's self. He is in jail and Obama is in the Whitehouse.

Obama is not trying to broker a fair Middle East peace plan so new extremist are created every day.

Obama is most likely not even a U.S citizen but Bush was a deserter so I guess that makes the two parties equal.

To an extent I agree with the majority of those points.

As an investor in my future through retirement savings and light follower of politics I'm in the same state. I'm very worried about my future. See my response to the below quote and watch the second video as to why I'm so worried.

Well the problem is our whole system and currency is based on debt. It is that way by design and if the government isn't in debt then theoretically it isn't doing enough for the citizens (road maintenance, emergency services, etc.) because it isn't a for profit organization. Another reason is how our money isn't technically money and that there's nothing Federal about the Federal Reserve Bank (it's a privately owned organization) which is where all of our dollar bills come from (look on your dollar and it will say Federal Reserve Note also look up what a bank note even is). You should watch the following videos/series to see a good overview of the relationship between the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve Bank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZM58dulPE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=U8dq1bH1X6s (less dry and more interesting then the last video)

Another problem is the ignorance of the average American on how to properly budget and repay debt. The housing bust largely happened because the value of houses people were living in were less than that of their mortgages. So what was their "logical" solution? Stop paying the mortgage because you'll never be able to sell the house to get that money back. That short sighted point of view is what, in my opinion was the key downfall in the housing bust and one of the primary factors in the number of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and current state of credit. They didn't look at the long run of a 30 year mortgage and ponder that the value would ever bounce back. In addition to that problem which is also part of the domino is that lenders were very lenient in who they would lend to and didn't give much thought of the borrowers credit because they would simply sell the loans to a larger bank. You add all that together and it was the mass stupidity of an entire nation borrowing more than they could ever pay in their monthly installments based on their annual income.

In less extreme ways you aren't entirely wrong. His administration hasn't passed a National Budget in over two years.

Try to bear with all my run-on sentences as I had a streaming thought process which I couldn't let go.

The only problem I have with your arguments is what would you define as "rich". To talk in hypothetical numbers my father has been able to accumulate $900k in his lifetime for his retirement. Now that's a lot of money but not when you compare it to 40 years worth of dedicated savings. He'll be hit hard with any new capital gains tax because some of the stocks he put away for retirement which were bought 40 years ago have nothing but capital gains. We're talking about someone who has just $900k in savings and not making $900k annually. Currently capital gains tax is 15% under the previous republican administration. Obama's plan will increase that to 40% because we'll be "sticking it to the rich". So how are all these f!@# the rich campaigns not screwing over the majority middle working class close to retirement or retired. And how are we not screwing ourselves in our far future? Most the people toting the taxes are young and currently have no/little retirement savings so they think the "rich" should get what's coming to them. But if they're a saver like my father or me then suddenly all these taxes become very real in the future. You should do some actual research and financial planning for yourself before you're all gun hoe about taxing the rich. Because the rich like Bill Gates won't even feel taxes like that. It's the little guy who trys to save as to who will feel it the most.

You slap on enough taxes for the "rich" and pretty soon there will be no incentive to save or retire and we'll forever feel insecure. And you can't save in just a simple bank account because the depreciation of money is so quick that your savings wouldn't be very much if it didn't accrue any kind of interest or expand from stock inflation.

At the very least I'm worried that most people are just pissed off but don't know why they're pissed off. So they latch onto things such as these "Occupy <INSERT CITY>" but don't take a hard look at the economy or their future. What they should have occupied in the first place was congress, the white house lawn, and the Federal Reserve steps. Oh, and you gotta love how they're all exempt from their own plans for the future. How is it that I'm the only one who is upset about that? If their plans are so great then why don't they want to be apart of them?

johnsfine, I wish I had the spare time to rebut your comments point by point, but then again I'm not sure what the point would be. The economic state and unemployment have little to do with uncertainty over taxes. Most of our economy is not based on creating jobs in America any more, it's based on speculation and getting the quickest return on investments. That means mechanization, overseas labor. Meanwhile we're eroding the natural resource base upon which all the rest of the economy, along with our very lives, depends. Wonder why the price of oil is hovering around $100/barrel? It is because global energy demand is growing faster than production can keep up. And new sources will keep costing more to produce to the point where they're no longer viable options. About all that is left is an artificial economy based on speculation and leveraged financial vehicles that are completely unsustainable and inevitably pop.

Gotta run!

Cheers,
Jim

Excusing myself from this thread...politics are bad enough as they are, I'll not let them ruin my experience on this forum.

Have fun ranting, everyone...

That reads like the sort of taurine excreta we get in the Daily Mail over here.

It mostly has everything to do with his decision making and his extreme inexperience in running anything.
He basically went from being a community-organizer to a senator, then to the presidency.

In real-life terms there is no substitute for experience.
How many rookie quarterbacks have won the Superbowl?
How many rookie Nascar drivers have won the Championship?

Being a rookie is a learning process.
He could have chosen many experienced people to be part of his cabinet and advisors, but again he chose inexperienced people in high positions.

Inexperience often spells doom in any situation.
That's his biggest issue.

You misunderstood it completely.

The Senate banking committee coerced regulators (with budgetary carrot and stick) to make regulators coerce banks (with threats of abusive investigation/enforcement of ambiguous laws cover other parts of their business) to give loans to minority home buyers that could not afford those loans. Since fewer minority home buyers qualified under rules intended to make sure lending was safe, the Democrats considered it discrimination against minorities to enforce those rules.

Unsound loans drove up the housing market, while increase in housing prices drove up the size of the loans and the extent to which they were unsound. The bubble had to burst at some point, but the Democrats worked hard to increase the size of the bubble before it burst. That included regulatory pressure on a wide range of financial institutions to make them buy unsound securitization of loans.

The Democrats ensured cooperation from executives in the financial institutions by helping the push for extreme compensation packages and bonus formulas. Where the government should have be working to protect shareholders and depositors in financial institutions, they were instead helping the executives loot those institutions. In return, the Democrats got big kick backs both personally and campaign contributions from the financial industry.

When it all collapsed, the Democrats demonized the financial institutions as an excuse to steal the remaining equity from the shareholders, while working hard to protect the bonuses of the executives. So the country lost big, the home owners lost big, the shareholders were wiped out. But the executives and the politicians got rich.

As long as the media continues to demonize institutions, the politicians can continue to rob the shareholders and split the take with the executives.

To add a further insult on top of the original government idea that failing to give loans to unqualified minority home buyers was discrimination, the government did an amazing flip and decided that giving loans to unqualified minority home buyers was discrimination against those minorities. Even though the government forced those loans to be given; even though the financial institutions giving those loans collapsed (wiping out the shareholders); even though the government forced the assets and debts of those institutions into the hands of the remaining healthy financial institutions; the government has now slapped massive financial penalties on those remaining institutions as punishment for the past "discrimination" that those institutions played no part in.

In the end it is my humble opinion that, at least in U.S., our government has become quite tyrannical against the middle and poor class in this way-

a) ALL senators/congressman are MILLIONAIRES

b) ALL parties (Republican/Democrat/Independent, ETC) constantly quarrel for one purpose alone, to ensure their own wealth and to keep the status-quo.

In simple terms the members of the parties distract and confuse the public with in-fighting, etc in order to facilitate and propagate their universal agenda, which is as it was during the times of nobility, an aristocracy.
Therefore, just as it was back then so it is now, you have a upper-class of people who seek to hold power and further their own agenda.

There is no imminent answer to this problem, nor has there ever been.

You can take out Independent parties there. They're independent because they aren't part of the status-quo.

The basic problems are

1. The USA is trying to run at 21st century country with an 18th century constitution. No-one is in charge. The president can't introduce legislation (only veto it) and gets blamed for what the Congress enacts.

2. Democracy doesn't mean the majority doing what they want. It means the minority being able to live with what the majority wants. The USA is so polarised that no-one is prepared to co-operate anymore.

3. The USA has no political parties in the sense that other countries understand them. There are no manifestos: you have no guarantee that 2 Democrats (or 2 Republicans) will support the same policies or a president of their party. The presidential candidates, campaigning without party funding, have to be millionaires.

4. Many of its citizens are (to be blunt) pig-ignorant. Anyone who looks at Obama and sees a Marxist is several sandwiches short of a picnic.

5. Of course they're racist. And that goes for the 96% of blacks who voted for Obama as much as for the 55% of WASPs who voted against him.

The nice thing about Americans is that they're over there.

Well thanks, David! I guess the ignorance and arrogance of Americans is sort of an echo of the Brits from 100 years ago or so, before you handed us the keys to the empire...

We shut down the Empire, and rebooted into the Commonwealth. We stopped playing at imperialist bullyboys, when will you?

If you want him in Canada, then take him. I can't see how much has changed except for the worse. There was no hope. Just a dope.

In all fairness, you can't blame him. He didn't do anything.

You only stopped because of circumstances and because we agreed to take the wheel. Undeniably you have still benefited from the arrangement.