The race for the White House is well and truly on.

Let's have some early predictions and thoughts on whose gonna be the victor?

Romney's gaff laden tour of Europe, and the sad, mumbling support of Clint Eastwood can't have been very advantageous to his chances?

Having said that, the American right will be dogged in their attempts to get shot of the present incumbent.
Romney, has apparently mustered a huge financial election war chest to fight the upcoming campaign.

I'm going for a very nip and tuck race with Obama winning by a short-head.

Thoughts?

Well Romney's going to win Utah as if he were the only candidate

I have some artist friends from that state (yes, they are Mormons too) and whilst under normal circumstances they are perfectly pleasant, intellectual, "normal" people who I exchange gifts and xmas cards with, when you mention politics they make Margaret Thatcher sound like Dennis Skinner, seriously these are the people who don't want any form of healthcare from taxation, in fact don't want taxation at all, preferring instead to have to pay for everything as and when they use it, its "Small Government" with an "s" on the "small" so minute that you can't see it.

If Romney gets to be President then he'll make Cameron look positively Communist.

All you need to knowhttp://spydersden.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/voting_republican.jpg%3Fw%3D640%26h%3D552" >

It's difficult to get across to some US citizens that having a social conscience is not the same as Soviet communism. They honestly believe that they too can be the next Mitt and haven't woken up to the fact that Paul Ryan took his lead from Ayn Rand and his endgame is simply to lower taxes for the richest few.

Romney 2012.

Its worth repeating again but one evening I was involved in an online discussion with a Utah resident and former graduate of the Brigham Young University where they seem to churn out Survivalists by the cartload every year, his base point argument was that the UK, even under a Tory government ran a form of socialism that was only slightly removed from communism whereas he preferred to be completely independent of any government "interference", of course he was still in his twenties, thought he was invincible and any thoughts of retirement or illness were still light years away - independence from the state is a luxury that the young enjoy for a decade or two.

I thought it was time that he, and a few others who seem to flock to that sort of discussion discovered exactly what our form of communism costs us every month and so I got my last months pay slip and itemised the salary element, tax and nat ins deductions, described what each of them will provide for me in terms of healthcare and state pension, and what the stages of Tax and NIS were dependent on salary - enough information for them all to work out what they would be paying on their own salary if it were taxed in the UK.

I then asked them to come back to me and itemise their last pay check in terms of government and state tax, provision for private healthcare and pension savings and then to describe what level of healthcare and its limits they would receive for their self-sufficiency.

Strangely enough the discussion stopped right there.

I think Obama will still win the election this year. Hasn't Mitt Romney only picked Paul Ryan as his running mate to get the Christian right to vote for him with their wish to stamp all over womens rights and their hatred of homosexuality ?

The conservative right in the US are going to fight this election on the basis that Romney's business background gives him a better idea of how to run the economy than Obama. At least that's what they are saying in public.

We all know it will descend into a series of racially and religiously motivated smear campaigns, funded by those with no other interest than how little tax they will pay.

Well hopefully small government will mean the US stops wasting taxpayers money on the forces of the state, the military, arming the police to support police brutality, hopefully if Romney comes in he can promote liberty and take the US away from this kind of militarised tyranny.

don't get your hopes up. I'm sure I read somewhere that Mitt Romney had pledged to cap spending across all government departments except one, defense.

To be fair Romney is of Mexican descent himself, so it would pretty rich to start throwing racial slurs around, but nothing would surprise me in an American election. Interestingly, I read somewhere recently that Obama is likely to receive the majority of the Mex-American vote.

Also I'm pretty sure (although please feel free to correct me) that a democrat hasn't received the majority of the white vote since the 1960s.

Absolutely spot on.



I work for a US company and a couple of years ago I went over for three weeks training. I already have several good friends over there, ex-pats and some Americans who worked over here for a few years so I had plenty of nights out while I was there. On one of those nights we met up with some people who my friends socialise with who used to work for the company but who had been made redundant. Their biggest concern? Healthcare.

I bet they will be voting for Obama. They have to wait until they are 65 to get Medicare and in the meantime could not afford treatment of various ailments. They were middle aged and so were finding new jobs hard to get.

The company paid their health insurance and once you left than that ceased and you had nothing. One of my friends was actually made redundant the day I arrived in the office. He had the option to continue his health care plan as provided by the company at the cost of $1000 a month for 12 months. After that nothing.

However he ended up getting a job pretty quick . Another friend had a job at an insurance company in the same city and both had a policy of never making anyone redundant and I believe they never have.

If you have that sort of job security with free healthcare I can see why they might not like a tax hike to pay for others. What they don't understand is that their health insurance is probably limited in some way and "jobs for life" may well be on the way out. And that is before we consider the social conscience side of it.

So I can see why some people won't see Obama's healthcare ideas as a vote winner. A lot of them will be under the misapprehension that they are covered.

If anybody has seen the very good documentary film Inside Job narrated by Matt Damon, you may recall Glenn "give it your best shot" Hubbard, who gave a very aggressive, spiteful account of himself during his interviewhttp://t0.gstatic.com/images?q

Hubbard is Romney's chief economic adviser.