Recession-curative fiscal policy is like physical therapy for recovery from a major injury. There is a point at which you pass a threshold and are then able to care for yourself again, and make yourself better under your own power (until the next injury), but if you take the therapy away prematurely, you'll just collapse back to zero. The problem is that you get used to the crutches or the wheelchair, and that is the danger to these solutions, that they are easy to vote for and easy to collapse into, though you are ultimately weaker because of it

Barack Obama: 'I deserve a second term':

US President Barack Obama has said he believes he deserves a second term in the White House.

His declaration, in an interview with NBC, came as a new poll showed his approval ratings moving past 50% for the first time since May 2011.

The ABC News/Washington Post survey also suggests Mr Obama would beat Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.

Mr Romney and his rivals are now campaigning in Colorado and Minnesota after his weekend caucus win in Nevada.

States across the US are currently holding nominating contests to pick a Republican nominee to challenge Mr Obama in November's general election.

Mr Obama's NBC interview was broadcast ahead of the Super Bowl, the most-watched TV event of the year.

It came two days after improved employment figures prompted analysts to suggest his prospects for securing four more years in the White House were improving.

"I deserve a second term, but I am not done," Mr Obama said. "We've created 3.7 million jobs in the last 23 months.

"We've created the most jobs since 2005, the most manufacturing jobs since 1990, but we're not finished.

"What I'm going to just keep on doing is plodding away, very persistent. And you know what? One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on."

The ABC News/Washington Post poll - carried out over the end of last week and into the weekend - indicated that some of the positive economic data of the past few months could be filtering through to the electorate.

Asked directly to choose a president if an election were being held now, 51% of the 1,000 respondents chose Mr Obama, with Mr Romney on 45%.

Matched against former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is running second in the Republican race, Mr Obama came out ahead by a wider margin, 54% to 43%.

Mitt Romney is campaigning in Colorado on the eve of the caucuses there

Mr Gingrich, as well as Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, has vowed to stay in the nomination fight, despite seeing Mr Romney win 50% of the votes in the Nevada Republican caucuses at the weekend.

Although his approval ratings are up, Mr Obama remains a polarising figure. Asked whether or not he should have a second term in office - but without being asked to choose between him and an alternative president - the respondents were split 49%-49%.

Despite his winning record in primary season, Mr Romney has endured a barrage of hostile advertisements from rivals, and a lengthy focus on his wealth and business interests.

Some 52% of those polled said the more they learn about the former Massachusetts governor, the less they like him.

However, Mr Romney is still considered the favoured Republican candidate on economic issues, the poll suggests.

Although he is the front-runner, Mr Romney faces a long path to the Republican nomination.

He needs 1,144 delegates from across the 50 states to secure the mantle, and currently has 101 to his name. Mr Gingrich is his nearest challenger, with 32, while Mr Paul has 17 and Mr Santorum is on nine.

On Monday, the Romney campaign turned its attacks on Mr Santorum, after recent polling showed the former Pennsylvania senator ahead of Mr Romney in Minnesota and second in Colorado.

Tim Pawlenty, a former Republican presidential candidate and Romney supporter, told reporters that Mr Santorum has "held himself out as the perfect or near perfect conservative when in fact, that's not his record".

"As a US senator, he was a leading earmarker and pork-barrel spender," Mr Pawlenty said, referring to ways lawmakers steer federal dollars towards their home districts.

The Colorado and Minnesota caucuses will be held 7 February 2012.

Source: BBC

Ron Paul wins few votes from Mormons in Nevada:

Before Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, Texas Representative Ron Paul tried to make inroads with the state’s Mormon voters. It didn’t matter.

According to an analysis of the Nevada results by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, based on exit polls, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s support among Mormons dropped slightly between 2008 and 2012 – from 95 percent to 88 percent. That remains an overwhelming amount of support for Romney, a former leader in the Mormon Church. Around one quarter of caucusgoers were Mormon.

Romney won the Nevada caucuses with 50 percent of the vote, followed by Newt Gingrich with 21.1 percent, Ron Paul with 18.7 percent, and Rick Santorum with 9.9 percent.

The Globe reported that Paul had been reaching out to Mormon voters. And Paul did come in second among Mormons – but with just 5 percent of the vote, up from 3 percent in 2008.

In fact, the results showed that Paul would do well to keep religion out of his politics. Paul did best among religiously unaffiliated voters, winning 54 percent of that group. (Paul won among non-religious voters in 2008 as well, when he came in second overall.)

For Romney, the most significant takeaway is that he is continuing to struggle to get widespread support from evangelical voters. His margin of victory among non-evangelicals was twice as large as his margin of victory among evangelicals. Polls have found that evangelical voters tend to be wary of Romney’s Mormon faith.

Source: Boston

this is true, and i'm not sure at what point you think we are in this analogy.  We are far past the point of being able to recover with any type of therapy.  That would have been possible 5-10 years ago maybe.   The recovery isn't happening, the illusion of a recovery is happening at the cost of much bigger consequences in the future, and the longer we keep this going the bigger and bigger the correction is becoming.  I do believe that Obama and the fed "saved us" from a bigger recession in the short term, only to dump us into an even bigger one after he is out of office.  Politicians simply don't care, they think in terms of 4 years time.

I don't get this type of thinking... at least in regards to this type of recession.

This type of recession isn't physical.  There are no muscles to be relaxed back into place... it's not like a huge drought wiped out product.

Everything is there that once was, it's just not worth as much.

This recession is psychological, it's more akin to a "breakup" and realization that your back to your crappier single life.

All the stimulus and therapy is doing is trying to convince consumers that "Good days are back" or that "Good days will be back soon."   That our old girlfriend is coming back.

When the reality is, the good days are why we had the bad days, because we never put down the fundamentals to live at that high level, and things came crashing down to "real" valuation.  She doesn't want to come back, and won't, because while we were having fun, there was nothing substansive about the relationship.

The economy is slowley improving because more and more people are saying "Fuck it, clearly the old days aren't coming back, this is reality, so it's now or never."

And people are slowley building the fundamentals that didn't happen before.  More and more people have stopped putting off "pleasure buys" because they are realizing that a government fix-all was never in the cards to begin with... and they have to enjoy what they have now... but responsibly so they don't end up in the poor house.  (Fundamentals.)

Stock prices are actually making weekly gains, despite the fact that news is actually pretty grim at greece and the rest because "This is our market, it's what we're stuck with."

Paradoxicly, realizing your stuck in a crappy situation is the first step to getting out of said situation.

EEA, NDAA, SOPA, ACTA, PIPA, TSA, potential voter fraud, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Patriot Act... welcome to the 21st century.

At least we have iPhones and Xbox.

Some unexpected Santorum wins. Things heat up...

I dunno, i'd consider the incompetence in Nevada to be... well.... incompetence.

Everyone around here has their heads up their asses.

I mean they can't even run a proper caucus. Allowing absentee balloting, which kinda defeats the entire purpose of a caucus, which is, your forced to listen to peoples ideas and argueing before making your opinion rather then people just voting for name recognition,or the cool name.

So much of it seems so byzantine, like how the Missouri primary is just the lead-in to a caucus that occurs later.

But u need to ask why did it increase by 5 trillion.

Terrible econonmy which started in December 2007. This signifigantly reduced revenue to pay the bills.

Unfunded programs started by administrations/congress. Were they ongoing (Medicare Part D, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, Bush tax cuts) or 1 time (Stimulus).

With this in mind the Obama Administration has only created 2 short term 1 time programs.  That being the stimulus and the payroll tax cuts for last year and this year (so far only 2 months). While the Bush Administration created things that the Obama Administration cant just cut cold turkey. We are finally getting out of Iraq and in the next 2 years Afghanistan. The affordable care act will finally start paying for Bush's Medicare Part D program when it is fully enacted. 

So it isnt as simple as saying the debt increased or decreased based on who is in power. It is why is it increasing or decreasing. The fact of the matter the vast majority of the increasing the past 3 years was because of new unfunded programs that were not 1 time that occurred during the previous administration.  Through that in with a Great Recession and debt goes up.

Heck, i'd just start with the fact that the primary schedule is always the same, and i literlly can't find one good reason why.

Or... any reason really.

I could see plenty of ways you might want to do it.

1) Voter Percentage.  The higher your state voted for your party in the last presidential election, the sooner your primary.  Rewards loyal states.  Makes sure that states that don't vote for you anyway won't corrupt your candidate.

2) Voter Percentage, Middle, to highest, then lowest.  The candidate that does best in the middle has an advantage since he theroetically ahs the best chance to win.

3) Combination of 1 &2.

4) Lottery System.  First 30 states draw numbers for order, last 20 staes are last.

5) Rotating primary system in blocks of 5.

I haven't seen one reason why it's done in the same order as always... outside of... that's the order we do it in.