Politics

[A_New_Dawn]

Hmm, your post was very well thought out, but not sure if I agree with you saying hes trained to manipulate people. What do you mean exactly? Hes trying to convert others to become baptists? or going to do things one way and if people disagree then there not following God? if thats the case then I strongly disagree with you. ministers aren't trained to manipiulate people, or judge/condem they're trained to provide encouraging words to struggling families and tell of God. If your using the term in a more rhetorical term then your right to some extent I guess. Just not sure what you exaclty mean by 'manipulate'.

[Soulbourne]

I say, not a double post-they're illegal normally-but a dual-post.

[DarnYak]

I have been a registered republican for quite some time... and I voted for George W. Bush. I voted for him because the democratic nominees, at the time, were worse than he was.

His original platform in 2000 was pretty decent, just he didn't live up to most (any?) of it. Kerry was such a horribly weak canidate, and seeing how crazy Gore's become I can't even imagine how bad it could be had he won.

This puts me at extreme odds with our current 2 party system.

The 2 party system is part of what's killing this country, imo.

McCain does not meet my description of a fiscal conservative.

I really need to do some research on this. I know he does have a history of attacking pork projects, but that's all just for show if he favors big government programs.

I will vote for Obama, barring anything extremely stupid he does. Among higher educated, wealthier, and younger voters (my demographic), he's doing very well.

He is, but I'm not sure that means anything. The youth vote tends to be stupid and focused on whoever seems to be the coolest and/or anti establishment. Higher educated usualy means very liberal and very pro diversity. Further, he's gotten this image attatched to him as being not a politician, or at least not a normal politican, which I'm not really ready to accept. This is definitely in part to the media giving him anywhere from a free pass or just short of cheering him on. Good example is the Daily Show, I've only seen him make fun of obama once, and only then when they were making fun of all the canidates weird website content (obama ring tones wtf)

My roommate feels that the country isn't ready for a black president, but I completely disagree.

Just curious, is you're roommate black? I've heard its mostly blacks saying that because of a belief whites won't vote for a black guy.

I feel that the national deficit and debt are more important. According to Henry Paulson, at some point what's going out has to equal what's coming in. We can't afford to finance these reforms and increase our national debt like he's expecting.

The national debt is a problem, but I think its the national trade deficit that's going to screw us over. Well, that and entitlements. But yea, big problems that nobody wants to talk about.

Ron Paul is one of those persons that the more you listen to him, the more you realize what an absolute idiot the guy is. While he has some good ideas, many of his ideas are way too radical and will never work.

Mostly dissagree. No question he absolutely sucks at interviews with real questions, often not knowing the nessary facts and just dismissing it. I wouldn't classify almost any of his ideas as radical, they're just going back to previous times where things were working a hell of a lot better before we burdened it with the current giant ass government...saying they'll never work is absurd, considering they worked great before. Further, he sounds dumb in some respects becuase he talks about the end goal during the short clips, but when he gets a chance to talk he realizes there'd have be a proper transitional period, ie you wouldn't be dropping the IRS overnight. I dont' think he's a viable canidate for several reasons, but he's certainly not an idiot and if he's able to influence the dicussion at all then its a great thing.

Don't understand his obsession with going back to the gold standard though.

DarnYak

[Reaper]

I don't feel like putting in the effort for a serious post.

I did want to say that I agree with yak 100% on the following:

The 2 party system is part of what's killing this country, imo.

I have felt that way for as long as I have understood politics. The 2 party system really really sucks.

[Z.D.T]

Yeah, sorry I can't be serious about this because im not old enough to vote.
Tis a good picture though...

[Reaper]

I'm sorry did you copy my sig???

Get out.

[Z.D.T]

Whos to say its yours, but fine, have it your way.

[Ion]

Yak, you've mentioned several times the statement "big government".

This is not an offensive poke or sarcastic remark, so don't take it that way. I'd like to know exactly what you mean by "big government".

As an example of the statement incase you feel it's too vague, you used it once in the sentence "big government spending".

What is a "big government", and what would then be "big government" spending?

[DarnYak]

Yak, you've mentioned several times the statement "big government".

This is not an offensive poke or sarcastic remark, so don't take it that way. I'd like to know exactly what you mean by "big government".

As an example of the statement incase you feel it's too vague, you used it once in the sentence "big government spending".

What is a "big government", and what would then be "big government" spending?

There's two answers to this question.

The first is the federal government taking over things that were intended to be state and local government stuff. Department of Education is probably my "favorite" example, why the hell anyone thinks its a good idea for us to send money to the federal government, have a good chunk of it vanish to bueacracy, then decide how much of it it wants to send back, is a complete mystery to me. Similarly, part of the greatness of the design of the US was suppose to be about local and state power, and thus if you don't like how its being governed somewhere you have the option to go move somewhere else but stay in the country. Federalized however tends to make that more or less universal across the entire country, and the results are often less then satisfactory Again, see education, I believe if states had more power we'd see a much broader varity of school systems across the various states, and the models that performed better would eventually be adopted. Which is another factor - national policy is very hard to get changed, as the only thing we actualy vote on are president, senators, and representatives. For state and local policies, you can at least get petitions and crap going and actualy have the propositions on the ballot so we can override whatever our state/local government does.

The other half is the government creating stuff that takes money to run yet almost never gets dissolved, and often shouldn't exist in the first place. Often this is in response to some people deciding the average person can't be responsible for running some aspect of they're own life, and that the government can handle it better. I think social security is a good example for this one. This program takes a chunk of income out of every pay check (sorry i forget the %..5%?) as well as requiring you're employeer to match that amount, and stores it away untill retirement. Why is this an instance of bad big government? First, the government has proven its completley inept at best and irresponsible most often. Social security's interest rate goes up by some patheticly small amount each year, smaller then basicly any normal investment a person would make on thier own, barring high risk stuff (ie house flipping during a housing bubble can obvioulsy end up really bad). Also, the government ended up spending all the money it was suppose to save/invest assuming that there would always be more workers putting into the system then retirees taking out ...which should have been pretty obvoious wasn't the case even 40 years ago with lower birth rates. And, where a normal investment would be part of inherience if you die, social securtiy just vanishes (it carries over to spouse but that's all). And, of course, there's plenty of people abusing the system to get whatever they can out of it. Basicly, Social Security is government replacement for something we had already (personal retirement savings) but its both manditory and mismanaged and it's not anywhere as good.

It could probably be simplified down to: big government is anything that makes the government bigger then it already is. Sometimes its a good idea and justified, most of the time its not. I'm trying to think of a good example of justified bigger government in recent mememory but the only thing that comes close would be Department of Homeland Security (but that's a bad example becuase it should already be covered by departments like the FBI I believe)

DarnYak

[Strychnyne]

I really haven't followed US Politics this time around, and the sole reason for this is that I don't have a TV in my dorm room, so I don't get to watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. All I can say as a comment amidst this serious debate is I don't want Hillary in power 'cause she hates my vidja gaymz, and john.he.is.

[DarnYak]

I really haven't followed US Politics this time around, and the sole reason for this is that I don't have a TV in my dorm room, so I don't get to watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

http://www.eztv.it/frontpage.php

And please tell me you're not one of those people that rely soley on tds/tcr for news ;P They're amusing, and worth watching, but insanely biased (stewart especially, since colbert rarely takes anything serious enough to have a bias built in, compared to stewart more or less ranting about romney for 5 mins on thursday and ending with "FUCK YOU")

DarnYak

[Strychnyne]

Now now, don't jump the gun here. I'm don't get my NEWS from those two, they just do the best coverage of the spectator sport called "politics" you guys play. I can't vote down south, so I don't really follow their policies, flatforms, what have you. What I used to get was from TDS/TCR. I get my news from my RSS feeds thank you very much, though I usually skip over the politics because they're just not entertaining. Once someone is in power I'll pay closer attention.

While I do download my TV now, I tried doing it for those two shows, but they are shows you eat dinner with, not shows you watch the next day.

[AnAngryBearDoctor]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008 ... 298&page=1

[Reaper]

You stole ike's banner!?!?!?

blasphemy

[Storamin]

No, it's a spoiler approaching. Ralph Nader throws a damn wrench in the political system. Kind of like what Huckabee is doing... he's dead, but he won't admit it.

*Not in the context of 2000, as Ralph Nader was second only to Al Gore in costing Al Gore the presidency.

[Kibiyama]

Kind of like what Huckabee is doing... he's dead, but he won't admit it.

o rly?

[jamn455]

This is why I believe that McCain called up Huckabee and told him to stay in the race. If it was just Romney and McCain, then then they would have to pick between them two, where Huckabee gave someone for the ones that didn't want either one of them to be selected, which inevitably caused Romney to drop out of the race.

[Kibiyama]

Naomi Wolf Celebrated Author of "The End of America"

[Storamin]

Kind of like what Huckabee is doing... he's dead, but he won't admit it.

o rly?

When you quote someone, you're implying that you're replying to them.

Your article was not relevant to the McCain/Huckabee comment.




Had you responded in a way as such, you might have actually appropriately responded to the comment.

"Huckabee is not dead, as it is still statistically possible that he could come from behind and win"

[Kibiyama]

No, no, no. I imply, you infer. Specifically, you infer from the article that the most popular Republican candidate being in trouble with the FEC over his own bill is probably good news for the second-place candidate.

Anyways, he's not going to win. But he might as well burn his money, and as long as he's in the race he still has some influence on McCain's platform. Not to say that any president in recent history has cared what platform they ran on.

[Storamin]

No, no, no. I imply, you infer. Specifically, you infer from the article that the most popular Republican candidate being in trouble with the FEC over his own bill is probably good news for the second-place candidate.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/imply.html

Anyways, he's not going to win. But he might as well burn his money, and as long as he's in the race he still has some influence on McCain's platform. Not to say that any president in recent history has cared what platform they ran on.

No, he's in the race to get the VP position.