Ditto here. It's certainly a "Hold your nose and vote" election. (Assuming my absentee ballot even comes in on time. I detect many, many, many push-ups in the future of the battalion mail staff.) The candidates I favored got knocked out early, though I admit I liked Newt Gingrich 'cause he wanted to put up a Mars mission. I didn't like any of them, really, but Romney was the guy I disliked the most.
My priorities pretty much go Constitution > space > military > fiscal conservation > screw social agendas.

Looking at 'em, I have difficulty telling the difference between Romney and Obama on many, many things - but Obama comes up looking worse. He's an ivory tower intellectual (my own assessment based on his actions, thanks), whereas Romney is a businessman. The difference is that Romney has to answer to the Republican party (who have the Tea Partiers forming a non-trivial portion of their voting bloc) and won't get away with a lot of the socialist shenanigans I object to, nor will they go with a foreign policy of "bow, kiss booty, and bomb" that Democrats favor, nor will they core out the military in an effort to save a buck today to have the next guy pay ten bucks tomorrow.

Not for me, I'm quite enthused to vote for him. They'll get the economy and government under control again, reign in oppressive regulations, move us towards balancing the budget (though with the 1+ Trillion disaster Obama leaves with it'll be hard/impossible to do in 4/8 years), stop the disaster known as Obamacare, and also stop whatever 2nd term agenda is coming in the pipes.

After a few years with Scott Walker as Governor here in Wisconsin I have witnessed firsthand how much competent leadership and policies from the Executive can make a dramatic difference in how things are run. I am quite enthusiastic about voting, more so than any other election save the Governor and recall elections here.

You gotta quit confusing press releases and campaign adds for facts.

I didn't, I learned all that stuff via google, but seriously, it's more than that, Romney strikes me as a man with no integrity, whether it's encouraging CEOs to tell their employees to vote the "right" way, or the nasty 47% comment, or the excessive flip flopping, all that translates into a man who'd do anything to get in the oval office since that's what the corporations are paying him to do, the dude's top ten contributors are all banks, the same banks that got us into this crappy mess.

We can no longer be friends.
I think the only reason Romney would move to have Congress overturn Obamacare is because he's a Republican. He drafted fairly similar healthcare projects for Massachusetts, if memory serves.

+1

And... Obama strikes you as having any integrity at all? They're politicians. They don't have integrity. They have cleverly consistent lies.
Google is only as reliable as the results it brings up. Likewise, Wikipedia is only as reliable as the group consensus that composes it. Very often, they don't always coincide with reality.

There are significant differences between the plans as well as similarities. Details have been given elsewhere but to say because one state expanded healthcare options and gave an additional tax to the uninsured isn't the same as supporting the destruction of our healthcare and insurance system that is Obamacare.

At least he's vastly more consistent than the political chameleon Romney is. Obama's top contributors are universities such as Stanford, Harvard and UoC. His top corporate contributions are from Google and Microsoft, those things hint at what sort of legislation he is going to push, and has been pushing, he's far more science and education friendly than Romney who, along with Ryan just want to cut everything, deregulate everything and increase the deficit several trillion dollars via 5 trillion tax cut and defense spending. I didn't learn that from press releases and campaign ads by the way. Romney told a bunch of former generals his plans for to increase defense by 2 trillion on video, most of the crap that makes me dislike him, came out of his own mouth. Romney truly wants to do exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

So tell me then Lord Ben, how _does_ his economic plan work exactly, besides some completely unproven and dogmatic faith in income tax cuts magically resulting in massive economic growth; something made all the more ludicrous given the objective failure of the Bush tax cuts, and the lack of any decisive empirical evidence in support of this assertion. Even growth during the Reagan period can be explained by declining interest rates according to the CBO and one of his own economic advisors at the time (Michael Mussa); with regards to assumed revenue growth: Forbes reported IGM survey results. It's also interesting to note that the CBO is not allowed to use assumed revenue growth from taxation decreases when projecting budgets, as it's considered an irresponsible and non-objective practice.

When you're done explaining that, I'd also like to know which oppressive regulations he specifically means to out.

Further, how exactly does Obamacare _destroy_ US health care? Facts? Sourcing? That said it's hard for me to imagine it getting any worse.

I honestly love all this talk about how Romney will save the economy, create jobs, deliver some miraculous silver bullet of policy all without increasing real or effective tax burden on the middle class, or the debt/deficit, and yet not one person in support I've met/spoken to can explain how it'll happen excepting bogus, unproven supply side 'voodoo economics' where the tax cuts will ultimately result in some fantastic recovery. I suppose that's to be expected, because even Romney admitted its reliance on such.

When Nobel laureates of economics like Krugman, Harvard economist Larry Summers, and non-partisan commentators such as chief Moody's economist Mark Zandi, the IGM and the Tax Policy Centre all soundly refute the basic rationale of your plan, it probably isn't much of one at all.


EDIT: As a semi-aside, also found this kind of funny: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/

Then there is this article by CNN which describes the Romney/Ryan fiscal plan as a radicalized insult to Reaganism.

Why I think Romney will overall be bad for the economy: he does not know how to create jobs.

Yes, he may be an efficient businessman. I will even give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he will manage to pull off all these tax deductions and still reduce the deficit. That's all fine and good. But he's still looking at it from a business standpoint. When he did all that with Bane, how many American jobs did it create? Romney doesn't realize that if you want to create jobs in a company, or at least keep the same number of jobs, quite often the company is going to take a loss.

If the company is having a bad few years, you either take a loss and keep your employees, or you cut/lay off people to get back in the black. Obama is trying to keep employees. Romney wants to make profit. Ergo, Romney = less jobs.

It's Bain and not Bane.

Or you reverse the policies and leadership that led you into the bad years instead of tolerating them. Wallowing in economic despair and trying to make us comfortable at the bottom isn't our only option even if it's the only plan Obama has set forth.