Can someone explain to me in simple terms. USA elections

Does that mean (the Fox news quotes) that even the Fox network is turning against the Romney/Ryan ticket?

As do I.

I believe Math lives in the US, yes.

not a US citizen or a US resident then?

I am Irish...

I love that. That rather special.

OK Let us have a FOX NEWS opinion on Paul Ryan...and I quote...

"To anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan?s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.?.

"The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan?s mouth"

FOX NEWS

the thread was full of Brits expressing mainstream European socio-cultural views

Wow, who could have expected that?

Latest Republican lie

Paul Ryan the Vice President candidate boasted about running a marathon in 2hour 50 minutes the other day. A running magazine then check his time with the organisers and they said his real logged time was 3 hours 50 minutes.

Later when questioned on TV about the lie Ryan said oh he had simply rounded the time in the wrong direction and should have said he ran 4 hours.

If he is the man who wrote their wonky budget, and he is, yet he cannot even round a simple time would you trust him with your economy?

And if he can lie about this to try t appear cool what major things will he lie about to save his ass. Once again the man is proven to be a liar.

Electorate figures
The popular vote was 69,456,897 to 59,934,814, respectively.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008

extro
I went to Ellis Island Museum a couple of years back.
Their timeline started 100 years AFTER the third wave of my family arrived in New England.
DO NOT presume to speak for the majority.
My ancestors appear in Revolutionary military records.
But I do not believe Romney is the right person to lead my homeland.

Popular vote 1992
Clinton: 44,909,806
Bush Snr: 39,104,550
Perot: 19,743,821

Popular vote 1996
Clinton: 47,401,185
Dole: 39,197,469
Perot: 8,085,294

Popular vote 2000
Bush: 50,456,002
Gore: 50,999,897

Popular vote 2004
Bush: 62,040,610
Kerry: 59,028,444

Popular vote 2008
Obama: 69,456,897
McCain: 59,934,814
Obama received the most votes for a presidential candidate in American history.

Nowhere close to 100,000,000 voters vote Republican. Turnout in US elections tends to be very low. I would hazard a guess that 100,000,000 would be the total turnout for an election that drew a lot of interest.

extreme-left

ROFLMAO.

We're not afraid of baddies, DH just hunts. :)

To be sure, he'd shoot someone if our house were invaded and the gun was loaded; it usually isn't and is kept in the garage at any case. Plus, we don't ever even lock our doors except to keep them from blowing open during thunderstorms, so what are the odds really.

Piglet The reason I posted was originally because the thread was full of Brits expressing mainstream European socio-cultural views (abortion-rights, heavy gun control, tax and spend etc.)and saying how bad the Americans who aren't Democrats are, including the use of ultra-negative words like "reactionary". I wanted to redress the balance. Now pro-Obama Americans are only piling in to back up the mainstream "consensus" views which I consider to be extreme-left and extremely wrong.

"The American voter" after all includes over 100,000,000 Republican voters.

The proportion of teetotalers in the USA is around 40 % and in Europe 30%
www.gfk.com/group/press_information/press_releases/003343/index.en.html
The religious right were never going to vote for Obama even if he joined a temperance group

The Americans are used to the price of goods on the shelves in stores not equalling the price at the checkout.
Such things are illegal in the EU.

I always chuckle at the New Hampshire Liquor stores right on the state border with excellent roads leading to them.
Then again Europeans always find it odd that you can buy beer anywhere but wine and spirits are tightly regulated

British people have to remember that 93% of Americans do not have a passport. Not travelling to other countries rather affects one's world view.

A member of my family travelled to Europe and was freaked that people in Spain did not all speak English - so ended up in London !

Slight off topic but I just read this article on the BBC and it amused me. Apparently Obama brews his own beer and people demanded the recipe.

It then says at the end of the article:
One of the oldest political cliches states that people vote for the person they would most like to have a beer with - and Mr Obama's rival in the November election, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, does not drink.

trying to find your way through US bureaucracy is also very difficult when you are not familiar.

Some of it is much more complex for visitors.

To be fair, the upside of rules is that they can give greater transparency on how decisions are made and what will happen (at least, until the rules get so complex no one can understand them!)

There were a number of times in the UK where it felt like I was just supposed to send all this information to whatever office/agency, they would look at it in some obscure manner, and then get back to me about what they decided. This is really frustrating to an American!

Talkin - Absolutely. A source of endless confusion to US clients when I saw them advised (used to be a lawyer, though not tax) on transactions in the UK. They were really uncomfortable with the idea they couldn't go through a list, tick all the boxes and know whether the authorities would be happy with what they were doing. Feeds back into the inherent distrust of government.

Interesting comparison between the US and the UK that I have always found revealing :

The UK tax code talks about the principle of a transaction - it may not be written that a particular transaction is legal or illegal but if it follows a pattern and standard then it can be decided upon.

The US tax system is all about exact rules
box 18 on the first page of EVERY US tax return is about Farm income - even though only a fraction of the population is involved in farming

if something is now banned in a rule it is allowed
so the rules proliferate
and in the UK the principles adapt.

I think actually that 'slippery slope' thinking is a big driver of American beliefs that don't make sense elsewhere.

I found this to be one of the biggest differences when I moved to the UK, there seemed to be a decided lack of slippery slope arguments. For example, my uni department would waive rules for individual students, in a way you wouldn't have in the US because 'if we do it for you, we'd have to do it for everyone'. Or the fact that the Brits have limits on hate speech, which in the US would not only be unconstitutional but everyone would be freaking out that it would mean all unwanted speech would be banned.

Basically the Brits seem a bit more pragmatic to me, whereas there is a kind of hysteria in the US sometimes that doing anything to address a certain issue is impossible because of the inevitable consequences.

In part I think this is because the US is a more precedent-based society, legally and even emotionally. But perhaps it also ties into these American fears of tyranny and too much government, etc and so on.