Aw.

What party did you vote for, Jellsprout?

The tea party

The Democrats. At times like these I believe a middle government is more beneficial than a purely Leftist or Rightist government. They are far more progressive than the other major middle party, the Christian Moderates. Their major spearpoint is education, which has been in a steady decline the past decade, and they are probably the most pro-Europe party of all. They are also the only party able to work well together with every other party except the Populists and the more extreme Christian Conservative party.

The Greens have turned into a joke the past few years. Before they were a legitimate party with actual economic and socialist points. But by now they have reverted from a legitimate political party to a mere interest group. In the final debate the day before the elections, the leader of the Greens couldn't speak two sentences without uttering something about clean energy or pollution. The economy is terrible and Europe is about to break apart. At times like these, you need more substance than just saving the trees.
They also heavily suffered from the rise of Labour. As the election was coming closer, Labour and the Liberals were about tied in the polls. So instead of voting for the Socialists, Greens or Christian Moderates, people were more inclined to vote for these two parties just to prevent the other one from becoming the largest and leading the government.

Source? Because I know Obama's admin has said russian and china are our biggest threats long before the elections.
source

But russia is really a threat to everyone because they don't have control over their nuclear weapons stockpile. It's not so much that I think the russians want to nuke everyone, but I know of certain groups who would like to nuke most everyone. Easy access to those weapons... well that's bad.

From your source:

For my source:
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/26/romney-russia-is-our-number-one-geopolitical-foe/

You can just google "without question our number one geopolitical foe" and get lots of different results, but that one will do.  

Well, geopolitical then sure, i don't see how that isn't true.

On another note:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/fed-announces-open-ended-stimulus-to-strengthen-economy.php?ref=fpa

I am not very good at economics, but this is good news, right?

It might be. I'm on bus right now, so I'll read about that in a few minutes.
Holy crap, 40 billion a month? That's half a trillion a year!
I'm torn about it. On the one hand, this better than the previous attempts at stimulus because of the open ended bit (markets love stability), and the injection of cash might help the economy by providing more available capital. On the other hand... Half a trillion dollars!

The way I see it, Russia is certainly a problem for the world. That country never really let go of its superhuge ego; the cold war has ended of course, but still the competition between it and the US exists, and this makes them make choices taht are not necessarily the best. for example - Russia is, of the countries whose opinion matters really, the one who sides with Iran the most; even with Syria..

China? =p

eh yeah they too...same thing... >__> my memory..

US is not talking about threat to Israel, they are talking about threat to themselves. I know it's easy to mix these things up these days.

I am still thinking about whether Israel was a good idea. Taking land from people always ends in disaster, then you add on the fact that the area has been a warzone for millennia...

DUMB QUESTION TIME: Liberal and Conservative definitions in Europe are the opposite of USA, right?

No.

Man, I swore there was something along those lines that always confused me about Europeon politics. I don't have any problem following the multiple party system, so I have no idea what it is, lol.

The thing which may confuse you is that some of the older parties are no longer in the same area of the political spectrum as they were when they were founded. For example, the Liberal Democrats (a new-ish party in the UK) was formed from two parties, one of which were the Liberals. However, the Liberal Democrats are centrists.

Republicans are FAR more to the right than anywhere in Europe.
Democrats are pretty much center, maybe center-right.

There's no genuine left party in the US.

You can't do anything too liberal in the US without being called a socialist. I know that's an exaggeration, but very few people in Ohio that I've heard call Obama a socialist were calling him a socialist for actual things that make you a socialist. The way I see it, the US will always lean slightly towards the right more than other places because the country was founded by people who were sick of being oppressed by their government. Liberals can win elections, but I'm pretty sure once you factor in total vote counts instead of electoral votes and beliefs of people who don't vote, conservatives outnumber liberals.

What the hell are you talking about. Liberals are called liberals for a reason. Liberals are in favour of many things which would reduce governmental oppression. Americans who are conservative because of the 'founding fathers' are goddamn stupid. They were pretty much the liberals of their day, with ideas of freeing slaves and less power to the church.

I'm not sure, what exactly you're talking about, so I'll give multiple responses (this is why I try to stay away from this topic. One of the main ideas of this post is that I'm not too familiar with European politics, so things may just be different where you live):

1. I don't assign which political beliefs get which names. But typically IN AMERICA, government deregulation and hands-off approaches are associated with conservatism. I mean, one of the centerpieces of deregulation is free marker economics, and conservatives love to go on about that. Liberals are associated with social and economic measures that the government usually plays more of a heavy-hand in, in order to make such measures possible. Besides main platform issues like abortion, marriage, and fixing the economy, conservatives do try to leave several matters up to the states.
2. Things that liberals promote such as equal marriage, pro-choice, higher taxes on wealthy, environmental protection ARE considered oppression by some conservatives. They usually just want to ban something, get the national government out of state matters, or keep the things the way they are.
EDITED IN: 3. Most conservatives that base their entire belief off of the founding fathers are probably conservatives for the wrong reason. Just like liberals that don't shower and wear Che Guevara t-shirts are the wrong kind of liberals. Most conservatives that take politics seriously believe in their stuff for other reasons. The founding father thumpers are the ones sitting on their porches shouting, "MERICA!".

I know what the hell I'm talking about, by the way. I'm just calling things how I see it. Despite me not agreeing with most of his reviews, please direct all further complaints to Snipereborn, the only other non-Canadian North American who posts in this topic. He can probably answer this better than me.

No, the definitions are the exact same, the only thing is American parties misuse them in their false dilemma. Liberalism is about political, social, racial and economic freedom and equality for the entire population, while conservatism is about following the old traditions and values. There is almost no conflict between the two ideologies, except when it comes to traditionally suppressed minorities such as African Americans in the 60s. But thanks to the dreadful two party system in the US, most Americans have forgot what these ideologies actually stand for, instead translating them as "those things the Democrats want" and "those things the Republicans want".

Also, Dutch Democrats are far more left wing than US Democrats. The Dutch Liberals, the traditional right wing party, are probably closest to them.

Ninja:

In Europe we find this hilarious. Socialism is one of the largest political ideologies in Europe and in better times they receive nothing but praise. All the AAA credit rating countries in the Euro zone have historically had a Socialist party as one of the largest parties. The fact that Socialism is an insult in the US is absolutely hilarious.

I don't think socialism is a bad thing (it seems pretty nice actually), it's just the USA would never ever EVER transition to such a government at this point. It sounds more appealing than capitalism at times, but look how most Americans react even when they think a politician is doing something socialist that isn't really socialist.

The two party system is annoying because you have people who let their views get crushed by the parties ideas in order to conform like pro-gay-marriage-conservatives or people who just throw away their votes on a candidate that doesn't have any remote change of winning in order to "send a message" that nobody counting votes will give a **** about. I know multople parties would decrease the total vote amount of the winner, but I think the voter turnout would be higher. It also would be difficult to count with the electoral college, but my dislike of that is another story.

My idea (which everyone claims will never ever work) is the complete removal of political parties, and so everyone must run as an independent.

Won't work!

You're goddamn stupid.
Not nice is it? Why are you such a bully? Don't you know that this sort of thing is not socially acceptable?

The confusion around what is a conservative vs what is a liberal comes from people having different definitions. It is different in America vs Europe. Modern American conservatives would have been defined as Liberal classically, but that's because classical Liberalism means something different than the modern notion. The founding father did not support centralised government for the obvious reason that they were rebelling against a monarchy. Modern liberals do support centralization. If you disagree with this, that means that you are using a different definition of "liberal" than Americans do, or if you prefer, Americans use a different definition than you do.
There's also the added issue that the political spectrum is two dimensional, not one. One axis is might be centralization - anarchy and the other might be left - right. Classic Liberals were Anarchist Left, whereas modern Liberals are Centralist Left. This can be seen in the Anti-Federalist Papers as well as any French philisophe, which is where Liberalism began.

@Jell
The reason that being a "socialist" is an insult in america is because of the cold war. The USSR was our hated enemy, and they identified themselves as socialists, even though in modern terms they were really centralists who were "communists" (even though modern communist nations arn't Communist at all, as explained by Marx et. al).
My view of socialism is that it can be both good and bad depending on what you try to do with it, and how you try to do that. For instance, having a standing army is a socialist thing to do, but it seems completely reasonable that countries should maintain their own professional armies, doesn't it? On the other hand, socializing food is terrible, as the soviet union shows us. Clearly, there's some grey area in between these two, but welcome to life.

@ flash's new post
Won't work. The party system exists because it's powerful. Take it away, there is a power vacuum. It'll just come back in a different form.