http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...or-the-us/article4448517/

I was somewhat surprised at that considering how different it would probably look if you put up Canadian political parties and did it but meh:P

heh interesting

HA HA

Best comment ever.

"OBama is the lesser of two evels"

Oh and Martian - If you did it in reverse, 99% of the responses would be "Canada has political parties?"

that comment is bout as true as it comes... all the money the Corperate heads are putting into him. It'd be stupid to let him win, cause you know they arn't just gonna sit back and be like.... "I felt I spent that money well time to let him do what he wants."

It's probly me, but I'd like to see all that money they are giving him, And watch it fail. 1Bil in donations to Romney... that coulda been used for building that bridge, or improving the water system/roads of the country..

I won't vote for either of them... I'm sick of the "lesser of two evils" choice.

yea, junky, because obamas billion dollars couldn't go feed any of those poor ninety nine percent, right?

when is obama cleaning out his personal coffers for the benefit of the small, under appreciated working man?

give the billion dollars to obama, he'll create jobs in finland or china. they have poor people, too, you know :(

The only people who are more ignorant of the issues and stakes of American politics than 'undecided' Americans are... Canadian. :P

Canadians are only ignorant of their own politics

I'm waiting to hear either of them to say anything that might actually help the economy and do anything to reduce the debt.

But it obvious it a good thing the canadians are in CANADA..lol

Maybe they'll help him get another Peace Prize too.

Hey, US politics have more effect in Canada than Canadian politics.

Actually 99% of the time US politics has no effect on Canada. And most of the 1% doesn't get national press attention in the US.

My comment is that the left/right/center split indicated by the graph would be very different if put Canadian parties in there and repeated the survey. I guess given that there are more than two parties that win seats (historically it has been between 3 and 5) the presentation would have to be changed though...
Canada also has a much larger proportion of the population that is a "swing vote" than the US..
On the other hand "right" is somewhat different than the US definition of right.. especially when it comes to social issues.

You consider Keystone to be the 1% exception? It's still a hotly debated topic and was part of a big story in the Washington Post even last weekend ;).

Romney's personal coffers are larger than anyones ... but he just ends up buying companies and firing the working man or sending the jobs overseas

what an fluff. i can't believe his private company made money. what an absolute fluff, using the free market and being successful and what not- oh, by the way, the people who built the roads and bridges bought the companies, fired the working man and sent the jobs overseas.

i mean, if it works one way, shouldn't it work the other? obama didn't graduate from harvard, somebody else made the roads he used to get himself to school. some poor italian stone mason built the walls.

romney also doesn't give guns to mexican drug cartels to shoot american law enforcement officers, he has that going for him.

Keystone is an exception. And that's because of it's potential impact is viewed (incorrectly) as much larger than some other less "sexy" US/Canada issues, although I'm sure the US environmental lobby is having some influence here.

Although ultimately if that gets blocked the oil will be pipe-lined somewhere else and exported. Although the current alternative route is probably a non-starter.

Braden: your argument actually makes no sense. The issue isn't making money, the issue is how the money is made. I'd love to make a ton of money via shady financial practices.... really:P

oh, i'm sorry, what laws or regulations were broken, stretched, massaged or circumvented?

(serious question)

Ron Paul!

Braden, it is more about him buying companies, moving their production overseas, and then stashing the profits from these companies in off shore and over seas accounts to avoid taxes in the US. Done everything he could to screw over the common man, and now wants them to vote for him. The republicans lately have been so anti-worker, it makes me wonder why anyone except the 1% would think about voting for them.

You an Obama 2012 campaign staffer? You do a good job of spreading his talking point lies.

Lies? Didn't Romney get busted recently for retroactively retiring from Bain Capital earlier than he actually did? It's like Romney's advisers decided to take inspiration from John Kerry's campaign. Where's the swiftboat vets when you need em!!

Hence shooting Gabrielle Giffords in the head is justified if done by the right person who gives the proper justification. Unfortunately, the person who shot her was a loon and had no justification for shooting her.

Fortunately for my congressman, no one in my family has been killed by guns given by our government to drug cartels. Additionally, being a Christian, my religious beliefs prevent me from engaging in vigilante justice against those who use the government to shield themselves from justice and are above the law. However, my political beliefs do not prevent assassination from being a valid tactic against those who commit or cover up serious crimes and use their position of power in the government to shield criminals from prosecution.

If I give a machine gun to someone, and they assassinate Obama, then I am a criminal. Why then is Obama not a criminal if he oversees a program that gives machine guns to known drug dealers, who then kill innocent US civilians? Simple answer: Obama is a criminal.

Disclaimer: I am a left-winger, and I'm critical of both Democrats and Republicans.

The US has been failing at any issue related to drug control and immigration for quite some time, regardless of who is the captain of the ship.

Footnote, I like you personally, but totally in disagreement here. I'm sure you don't have an Iphone, never shopped at a Walmart, and wouldn't buy a television if your life depended on it. You know what's worse than outsourcing? Evil robots. Automation has killed more jobs than outsourcing several times over. And, if you follow the liberal talking points, then it all makes sense--see Romney is a robot and robots take over jobs. (http://www.mightyheaton.com/...fshoring-nonsense-robots/).

The Economist had a great article last week discussing the lack of entrepreneurship in the Euro-zone. Since 1970, what 3 of the top 500 companies were created there. Comparatively, 52 were created in America. They have a similar focus on make it hard to fire someone often requiring six months of severance. They make it extremely hard to access financing. And, not surprisingly, they regulate every nook and cranny to the point where launching a business becomes almost impossible.

I think it's a bad status to aspire toward. Politicians (admittingly on both sides of the aisle) love to deal out populist rhetoric, but in the long run it's almost always bad for all of us. And when they try to pick winners and losers, such as Solyandra, is when it gets really bad.

It sucks seeing hard working folks laid off. It's never easy. But the solution isn't in trying to protect those jobs because that protectionist sort of policy only hurts more. It's in helping these folks adjust to the new economy through education, training, and new skill sets. For a pop culture point of reference, I think fictional Democrat candidate Jack Stanton was on the money with his speech to steel workers in Primary Colors (and yes, I realize it's based on Bill Clinton).

I'm sure the Olympics paid him handsomely to "screw over" the comman man relative to his financial sector job. If we're going to play the oversimplification game and make assumptions then can I say Obama supports drug cartels because he snorted coke once upon a time? Therefore he is against hard working parents. C'mon.

This election is about views toward running the country. Yep, Romney believes in the private sector and the free market economics of things like creative destruction. Obama believes in the government has the answer or provider thereof. It's a difference of ideology. The buildup to it is chalk full of a bunch of rhetoric hoping to stoke populist flames-- he's Mr. Superrich who doesn't care, he's Mr. Handout, etc etc.

Do you really believe that though? Obama and Romney's core ideologies are basically the same. They're both free market capitalists. Obama wanting more unemployment benefits or something is just like egg shell white vs. ivory. He's not trying to nationalize any banks or anything like that, he's bought and sold just like the next guy will be, no matter who it is, because the only people with a chance of getting elected are the ones that play that game.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...ument-leak_n_1592593.html

who now wants to explain to me how obama is a free market capitalist?

..preferably without either sides talking points, you know, to make it at least seem unbiased :P

He's the President of the United States of America.

He's a Democrat.

The United States is a member of NAFTA. Under Obama's leadership, the United States signed the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

There are no "sides," there's people who know he's a capitalist and people who are misinformed. He's just a center-right politician who believes in markets with some bare minimum social safety nets (unemployment, social security... his health care plan is even run through private, for-profit insurers!). He's like most Democrats. I'm against him. It's basically the same thing as the Republican Party - they're all neoliberals. Obama even continued the imperialistic spread of neoliberalism through his involvement in the Libya campaign.

And what exactly do those statistics prove? Yes, every country loves having big companies, but how much benefit has the US realized from its company friendly policies?

http://www.google.com/...untry_group&ind=false

GDP per capita ratios between the countries have remained almost constant since 1970, if anything the ratio between US:EZ GDP has narrowed.

Yeah, and how much more has the US GDP had to grow in order to keep pace in GDP per capita given these population numbers?

http://www.google.com/...mp;dl=en_US&ind=false

And European economic stagnation is a big cause of its population stagnation.

so, blid, obama and bush 43 are equal on the american political spectrum?

out of curiosity, reagan and carter? lets then go mussolini and franco?

(again, however dumb, serious questions)

Why don't you try the more logical causal relationship here? US population growth is the cause of its economic growth.

PS change the dates in the graph you present

that's been debunked...

Yeah, thats Eric Holder, not Obama that's responsible for that. I'm sure those considering voting for Obama won't hold him responsible at all for what Eric Holder has done (FYI, Sarcasm),

Actually, we almost didn't sign any of the three FTAs. They were proposed under Bush and held up by Democrats (and one can argue by Catepillar too).

I don't think Obama is really so much of a free market capitalist by any means. I think his leaning toward a more left/government-interventionist thinking is checkered some by his staff, namely his chiefs of staff, who are far more pro-market than him.

I think Romney is at his core much more of a businessman, albeit not entirely what one would define as a "free market capitalist" either. However, I do see significant difference between the governance beliefs of Obama and Romney.

Yes and no. Sometimes how you handle something out of your control or relatively out of it says more about you than the actual event. Such as making shielding some documents under executive privilege--something ironically enough then-Senator Obama chided President Bush for on at least one occassion ;).

If there were any free market capitalists among Republicans and Democrats, companies wouldn't need such huge legal departments.

Republicans and Democrats are Oligopoly Capitalists. They favor a government run by big business and big banks.

A free trade agreement doesn't need to be 900 pages long. Free trade means no tarifs, no government support of domestic industries. But we don't have free trade. We have massive corporate welfare. We have price controls. We have massive government intervention in the 'free' market.

Calling NAFTA a free trade agreement is like calling the PATRIOT act patriotic. It's completely false. Just because you give it a certain name, doesn't mean the name is accurate.

oh, i'm sorry, i didn't realize eric holder wasn't part of obamas administration. i mean, romney gets held accountable for his private business, why shouldn't obama be held accountable for his administration murdering american law enforcement.

you can argue the rhetoric, i'm clearly biased, but this doesn't change the fact that [alleged] tax shelters aren't worse than supplying guns to drug cartels.


so, wait, rockman.. you aren't really made of rock?

I've been blessed with a family name of Rockman. It's a rather cool last name to have.