Yup, it's an exciting night in the US of A - the
presidential election of 2012 (a four-yearly event)! Just look at how excited Kristina is hehe. For those of you who have been living under a rock,
Democratic president
Barak Obama is up against the
Republican nominee,
Mitt (baseball glove) Romney. We're spending the night watching a bunch of grey-haired men on
CNN giving us all the facts and figures. As I write this it's still very early in the count, and much of the country is still casting their votes. Kristina is from Texas - a Republican stronghold so naturally she voted for Romney. I on the other hand am rooting for the black man (not that I'm eligible to vote of course). Although it has little to no bearing on me personally, here's my view on the matter...
The Republicans, under the leadership of
George W. Dumbass Bush, were in office for eight years between 2000 and 2008. During that time, they single-handedly managed to royally screw this country. They took us into two very questionable wars:
Afghanistan in 2001 right after the
9/11 attacks on the hunt for
al-Qaeda and
Osama Bin Laden (who appears to have been in Pakistan most of the time), followed by
Iraq in 2003 under the assumption they possessed weapons of mass destruction (which was later found to be false). Both wars have cost a combined total of around the $1.4 trillion dollar mark, depending on the source. They went on to deregulate the financial sector like crazy to the point where financial institutions had almost total free reign to do what they wanted. And do what they wanted they did. Before long the financial markets collapsed (and took the housing market with them) and we went into a near-global recession (because rightly or wrongly, when the shit hits the fan in the US, it hits the fan everywhere). In short, by the time the Republicans lost the
2008 election and the Democrats took over, they had left behind an absolute shambles.
Obama took office amid great hope for the future. He promised a lot, but in a nutshell he has failed to deliver fully on everything he promised (don't they always). However, he has delivered. We pulled out of Iraq in 2011, and a complete pull out from Afghanistan is imminent. He overhauled the
healthcare system (dubbed "
Obamacare"), aimed primarily at decreasing the number of uninsured Americans and reducing the overall costs of health care, though he's pissed a lot of people off in the process. Above all, the financial sector was reigned in, the economy is slowly but surely growing again as is the housing market, unemployment is on the decrease, and everything is heading in the right direction.
One of the Republican's main arguments is that Obama hasn't delivered on what he said he would. For example, unemployment is still higher than Obama said it would be, and the economy isn't growing as fast as he said it would. Fair enough. But, all things considered, not least of all the utter mess Obama inherited from Bush, to be in the position we're in today with the key statistics heading in the right direction, I think Obama has done an amazing job! My opinion is the Republicans brought this country to its knees over their two terms in office, and their big argument for re-election is essentially that Obama hasn't fixed their mess fast enough - ha! Why on earth would we want to put them back in charge to potentially screw the country over again?! We're heading in the right direction, let's stick to what's working.
One thing I haven't mentioned is the
national public debt of some $16 trillion dollars (it was $10 trillion when Obama took office). That's a pretty piss-poor statistic, but I don't know enough about it to comment. On that subject, I don't know which party I really identify with the most (if any) - the
left-wing Democrats or the
right-wing Republicans. I certainly don't agree with some of the Democrat's policies. With that in mind, assuming I'm still in the country four years from now I may have a different opinion on who I'm rooting for and why, but for now I believe sticking with Obama is in the country's best interest. But that's only my 10 cents :)