-TSS-

Well, what we have here is the classical question: How long can a government or a president blame the previous government or the previous president for all the problems? Not forever, obviously, but it must be said that Obama had some rotten legacy from W. However, he has been elected to his job to fix things. If he can't fix things then he should go even though he is not to be blamed for how things stood when he came in.

I thought it must be a joke that the EU got the prize but it wasn't.

Here in Europe we have the Schengen-area which allows unrestricted movement across the continent. Therefore it is easy to undertsnad how the Roma people manage to move around. However, in North-America you are supposed to have some of the strictest immigration-laws and unless you can convince the authorities that you can support yourself you have no chance of moving to the USA or Canada. So, how on earth have you managed to get these people in your country?

According to conventional political wisdom an incumbent President seeking re-election during a time of economic uncertainty loses. That is what happened to Bush senior against Clinton 20 years ago. However, these are not normal times; even though people may regard Obama as incompetent they might still consider him less harmful than Romney who is tarred with a stigma of belonging to the corporatist elite whose fault the whole financial crisis is considered to be.

All countries become secular sooner or later. If Islam ever becomes the largest religion on Earth, which I very much doubt, it wil happen when most of the Islamic countries have become secular. There is a clear correlation between growth of wealth and secularism. It wasn't that long ago, less than 100 years ago here in Europe when religion was a major part of everyday life and reluctance to have anything to do with religion or even hostility towards religion could land you in a serious trouble. Today all of the European countries are very secular in character. I'm not sure about the Latin-American Catholic countries but I am inclined to believe that they are also much more secular than they used to be only 10-20 years ago.

For the first time ever protestants are not in the majority of followers of religion in the USA: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215025/Protestants-longer-majority-U-S-time--rising-number-Americans-religion.html This trend is more than likely to continue.

I think Romney should keep quiet on foreign policy as that is just not his strong part. Besides, the vast majority voters almost everywhere place more emphasis on the economic outlook rather than foreign policy and in the USA that proportion of people is even larger than elsewhere.

It's sad to see that still in this day and age victim-mentality is still a very central part of black men's identity.

When Thatcher was still PM of Britain her husband Dennis was regarded by many as one of the most influential men in Britain. So, similarly the wives of powerful male politicians are often more influential than women in real positions of decision-making.

I didn't watch the first presidential debate but everyone says that Romney totally outclased Obama. Perhaps that was what this election needed in order to become interesting again as Romney has really done his best to destroy his own chances. Romney can only blame himself if he loses as the election was there for him to be won because there is missing the essential feelgood-factor that every incumbent president needs to get re-elected. The economy is not doing fine and people are in general disillusioned with Obama. In similar circumstaces Bush senior lost to Clinton 20 years ago.

No sympathy for the millionaires' squabbles.

It was clear from the start that people like Obama more as a person than Romney so Romney's only chance of winning the election is to present himself as a much more competent leader than Obama. By declaring 47% of the population as hopeless losers is not exactly very good tactics by him.

The video was a silly provocation but it astonishes me and certainly many others how the video is considered as an alleviating circumstance to the resulting riots; as if ofending people's religios sensitivities gave them some right to run amok and destroy and even kill people who share the same nationality of the ones who made the video. It is frightening how many people here in the western world believe that we must bow to every whim made by muslims or if we didn't we deserve the consequences.

Politicians only tell people what people want to hear. If politicians told people that people's standard of living is based on debt and that house of cards will collapse soon, that would be the end of the career of that politician even though he would be telling the truth.

I agree with you. There is a popular cliche that people who doubt their parental skills would make very good parents. That's just what it is, a cliche. The vast majority of those who think they would make lousy parents are right. They would. Why does it irritate some people so enormously that not everyone wants children? I wonder what is behind that as after all as long as you agree with your partner on that issue it is really none of anyone else's business. There are some interesting comments on this thread how people in white rich countries such as Canada or the USA should have children as some sort of a counterweight against immigration from Asia or Latin-America.

Would people who have inherited property be eligible to vote in your ideal society?

People who have children often have a very hostile attitude towards those who choose not to have any children. This thread is just another example of it. However, thinking about it, such an attitude doesn't make any sense, does it? You'd expect exactly the opposite as all people want the best possible future for their children, therefore one would expect that they would thank those people who have not had children to compete for the diminishing resources and scarce jobs and student-places with the children of those who decided to have children.

I just don't think the number of population of the nation or a possible threat of extinction of the nation is the first thing in anyone's mind when deciding whether to have children or not, or at least it should not be. Neither is the worry about future tax-payers.

Imagine what the one child-policy will cause in the long run as baby boys are preferred over girls. At some point in the future there will be tens of millions of young Chinese men who are unable to find a wife for themselves or even a girlfrined simply because the number of men is going to be so much higher than the number of women of roughly the same age. Even though China is developing into an economic super-power not all men are going to be rich enough to import themselves a wife from some poorer country.

This debate is useless for Canadians or Americans as endless immigration will always provide new people to cater for the needs of their societies. This debate is much more serious in most European countries where the birth-rate is below the death-rate and as nation-states people are very much more against immigration than in North-America.

You are selfish either way, if you want children or don't want them. Or that's the impression I've got from what people say. Some argue about saving the world and not producing any more human beings here to destroy the earth while others wret about ageing population and how there is bound to be a future pensions-crisis unless people have more children. Personally, I've noticed that many people who have children harbour a mindset about people who deliberately have chosen to remain childless as if those people are some sort of freeriders of people who shirk their duty as if producing children ever was a duty in the first place. I have never heard anyone who have voluntarily remain childless complain about other people having children.

Of course Obama could lose but Romney is doing his best to level the playing-field for the president. Somehow it is difficult to believe that an experienced politician like Romney could unintentionally make such ill-judged statements as he did this week. I know this election is more than before about getting your core-voters to the pollss instead of trying to woo the centre-ground but insulting 47% of the eelctorate is not very good campaigning.

The worrying thing about all this is that, at least here in Europe, too many people want to understand the reactions of the madding crowd. It is as if the people who are rioting were not in any manner responsible for their actions but those who provoked them are. That is equal to portraying the rioters as some mindless morons who can't help themselves. Surely that was not the intention of those people who understand the reaction of the people who are running amok.

I can see that you have fallen to the trap set up by the troll who abuses the name of a good comedian.

The big question is how long can a government or a president keep on blaming the previous government or the president for the problems of a country. Even if people generally realise it is not the fault of the current guy on the job the way things are he has been put there to fix things. On the other hand, replacing him with someone who was one of those people who created the problem is hardly going to help.