I agree with you for the most parts but the deficit is primarily a product of the Bush tax cuts, and not the wars. They're part of it, but the lowered tax revenues from the recession are bigger than the wars.

That is to say, You the caller, not You the party. People don't vote one way or another based on robocalls, the point is they're ineffective at anything.

The DNC is doing fine, they're raising more money than ever. Sure, those statements are going to be tough but they can be worked around, especially considering that elections are between two candidates, and it's easy to hit a guy when there isn't anyone running against him.

First: Gitmo nobody cares about except progressives and they'll pull the lever once they see who is running against him. The Iraq war is as good as over since we're not taking casualties. The stimulus will be a problem in that it wasn't big enough for the job, but in the face of a Republican whose solution will be to lower taxes for the only people that aren't suffering, he'll do fine. Health care reform is popular on the merits and repeal isn't as popular as it was in 2010, so much so that allowing the law to work or strengthen it is the plurality position.

Second: Libya doesn't involve troops, so Americans hardly care and Republicans will never be the anti war party. The deficit reduction deal that is coming down the pike will be owned by both parties and the Republican candidate won't be able to hit Obama hard on it since his party went along with it anyway, and when you get into specifics almost every cut is unpopular. A worsening of employment would be bad, but all the President has to do is put out some proposals for the Republicans to block and keep things from getting worse than they have been recently (most of the public still assigns Bush blame for the economic collapse). Americans don't care what foreigners think. Immigration enforcement has been stepped up during Obama's term, with deportations up, the fence almost done, and more guards on the border. All he needs to do is emphasize some small immigration reform and he can increase turnout among latinos. Your last point makes no sense.

In short, Obama is not Carter, or Clinton, or Reagan, or anyone but Obama. He got Osama, he's got cred on foreign policy now and Americans broadly like the man, even if they don't care for the direction of the country.

It's pretty common, especially now, but the way they went about it was just stupid. At best a negative robocall campaign is worth maybe a tenth of a percent at the margins, probably less. TV ads, mailers, and actual calls are so much more effective in shaping the electorate. What these guys did was just dumb.

There are also better ways to suppress voter turnout than confusing robocalls and they don't even get you indicted. For starters, running a hard negative campaign and hoping it rains are probably the best way for a Republican to affect turnout in their favor. These days your campaign doesn't even have to be the ones doing the mudslinging, you can just publish your opposition research and let the 501c(4)s take care of the rest with no need to reveal doners or do anything but do dirty things to the other guy.

Any politico worth his salt knows that robocalls, no matter how many and who is talking, do nothing but piss the electorate off at you. They aren't even good at raising awareness because people tune out. It's a waste of time up until the summer before an election anyway, and then it's only any good if you're using volunteers and getting people to turn out. I've run call centers for campaigns before and it's incredible to me that somebody who was affiliated with statewide campaigns, that is someone who has experience winning elections, would be this stupid.

That's correct, the draw of the Wii U to me would be the neat things that could be done with 2+ of the controllers in a local setting, but since it seems that won't be the case I will go for the pretties of Battlefield 3, since I've always enjoyed that series and their refinements have continued to make the series more fun for me. I don't see any contradiction with that.

I think it was fairly clear in the article that 1 is the hard limit, and to me 3DS connectivity is about as useful as hooking a GBA up to a Cube.

http://www.slashgear.com/wii-u-to-support-only-one-controller-per-console-at-launch-10158774/

When they said only one player gets to use the fancy new controller at a time. I understand the limitation, but it just makes the whole thing seem half baked to me. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to spend my money on a PC to run Battlefield 3.

I think you overestimate how much people consider public transit when visiting metropolitan areas. The real barrier is the cost/hassle of flying from, say, Eugene to San Francisco. That's not to mention the kind of incentive to build up public transportation within cities that a more fluid population would provide. LA is another story, that shit needs work.

I could see that being really great, and certainly better than if it were just in the US, but I think a lot of the ski areas in Oregon would be more popular with the California crowd than it is now. Either way, it would be a boon to the region and I think we ought to invest in it.

You're mistaken in thinking any future conflict with a nuclear armed nation would take place inside that nation's borders.

I wish Oregon, Washington, California could get together and fund high speed rail from Seattle, down the I-5 corridor, to San Diego just to prove to the rest of the country how awesome modern public transportation could be in the US.

This has serious long term benefits to their state. For one, all that construction and maintenance will further add to their middle class and domestic consumption, not to mention tourism and trade from Europe. Consider what such access has done for Europeans when they opened their borders to each other and it makes perfect sense for the Chines to do the same. Plus, they're control freaks and I'm sure see incredible value in recording every word on one of their trams. True that it's expensive now, and they won't have a return on it for a long time, but it's nice to see that at least one country is forward looking in terms of their infrastructure, especially compared to the austerity and oil jerks in the US.