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Obama or McCain?

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The funny thing about the decisions to pick both Palin and Biden is that they somewhat undermine their own running mates' attacks on the other ticket. Biden is as establishment as you can get and - while he adds experience, particularly in regard to foreign policy - I'd say he somewhat dilutes the Change argument. Likewise, McCain's been saying all along that Obama's far too inexperienced, so he offers us Palin. Granted, she has more executive experience than anyone else in the race, but that's not really saying much when Biden, McCain and Obama have all only really served in legislatures.

I think she's a poor choice in what has been a poor campaign by McCain in my view. I had a broadly positive image of McCain up until fairly recently, what with his somewhat un-Republican views and what seemed to be a pretty well-screwed on head. In some ways while McCain is being viewed as being too liberal (and so the conservative Palin balances the ticket), I don't really see him as liberal at all given how his campaign has been run and the policies he's been outlining. She might win votes, but if I were an American I think she'd only serve to further put me off voting Republican. Not that I probably would anyway, but there's little there to make me even want to reconsider my position. I was hoping for a Hillary win in the Democratic primaries and stand by my criticisms of Obama that he's a fantastic public speaker, but I'm not wholly convinced he can deliver on his promises, however I still see him as a much more viable president than McCain now. In my view, if McCain wanted a woman on the ticket to reassure people about his conservative credentials, I think Kay Bailey Hutchison (Senator from Texas) would've been a much better choice. Certainly compared to Palin who didn't even seem to know what he Vice-President job is for when interviewed on it, who has only apparently met McCain twice before she was picked as his running mate and who just seems to be a generally bad pick for any number of other reasons.
 
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TX Bill said:
Bruce, I agree with you.

The problem when that is applied to the topic of Abortion is that many of us believe that it's out and out murder.

So while I wouldn't want to force my beliefs upon someone else, I certainly would hope that same society would give a child every right to live and have a happy and productive life.

Like you said above, "...live and let live."

Well I wholeheartedly agree.
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The old abortion debate is a pretty divisive one, particularly in the US. I wouldn't go as far as to claim aborting is murder, any more than I would call killing an animal is murder. As I see it, it it is down to sentience. The higher the possibility any living creature has to feel pleasure and pain and even think, then the worse it is to kill that creature. One of the reasons I became vegetarian was solely because I was uncomfortable with barbaric modern farming methods on vulnerable creatures (i.e. the factory farm). Still, it upsets me to think that women might see abortion merely as a method of birth control. I've known of women that have had such surgery on quite a few occasions, which strikes me as wrong. One thing, though, is that you talk about the right for every child to have a happy and productive life. I would agree that that is a goal worth pursuing. However, a fetus isn't yet a child, even though it has the potential to be that. It doesn't have hopes, dreams, abstract thought or any of those things we identify with being properly human. Equally, though, it doesn't really bode well that we see life, even in its basic form, as merely expendable, something which is inconvenient. So I know where you're coming from, although (trendy liberal that I am :lol:) my approach to what I agree is a problem, differs somewhat.
 
Abortion. This has nothing to do with my political views. Before I had kids I was happy for women to do what ever they wanted. The my wife got pregnant and my whole outlook changed. As far as I am concerned, I was a father the second that little sperm made it to the egg. There was a little heart beating, that is a human. End of story.

Abortion is ethically and morally wrong. If you can't go around murdering people on the street, then you can't go around murdering unborn babies.
 

Dylan said:
Abortion. This has nothing to do with my political views. Before I had kids I was happy for women to do what ever they wanted. The my wife got pregnant and my whole outlook changed. As far as I am concerned, I was a father the second that little sperm made it to the egg. There was a little heart beating, that is a human. End of story.

Abortion is ethically and morally wrong. If you can't go around murdering people on the street, then you can't go around murdering unborn babies.
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so much more complex than that. honourable as it is.
 
Dylan said:
Abortion. This has nothing to do with my political views. Before I had kids I was happy for women to do what ever they wanted. The my wife got pregnant and my whole outlook changed. As far as I am concerned, I was a father the second that little sperm made it to the egg. There was a little heart beating, that is a human. End of story.

Abortion is ethically and morally wrong. If you can't go around murdering people on the street, then you can't go around murdering unborn babies.
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understand what you mean, but this isn't til week 4.

I have a neice who was removed by section at 27 weeks and is now 5yrs old. While I support the right of women to choose, I think 3 months is long enough to commit to a decision.
 
Well then, what about euthanasia?

Theres abortion, theres the death penalty, and theres euthanasia.

Do you support one and not the others? Theres lots of ways to die on this planet but these three best represent death by choice in the modern era, barring suicide.

Im pro all three. If a woman decides she doesnt want a baby why would you want an unloved baby to grow up in todays world? It seems the pro-lifers are mainly religeous folks, and wouldnt the soul just find another body to come to Earth? And if not isnt it going to heaven anyway?

If you decide to do something somewhere that warrants the death penalty, then you made your choice there. Im surprised in the States you still have it though. Surely the act of killing something is frowned upon by the Lord? But I guess it does say you can stone your wife to death if she cheats on you in the Bible, so maybe we should steer clear of the big man's views about this issue.

Euthanasia is as devisive an issue as abortion. You cant deny that if someone wants to die, well they will find a a way. I'd rather a sanitary peaceful end to these tortured souls than see them surprise it on family members, which has happened to a member of family recently.

I guess the issue is that some people are so against some forms of death and pro others, dividing their allegiances when it suits their own moral stance.
 

McBain said:
Well then, what about euthanasia?

Theres abortion, theres the death penalty, and theres euthanasia.

Do you support one and not the others? Theres lots of ways to die on this planet but these three best represent death by choice in the modern era, barring suicide.

Im pro all three. If a woman decides she doesnt want a baby why would you want an unloved baby to grow up in todays world? It seems the pro-lifers are mainly religeous folks, and wouldnt the soul just find another body to come to Earth? And if not isnt it going to heaven anyway?

If you decide to do something somewhere that warrants the death penalty, then you made your choice there. Im surprised in the States you still have it though. Surely the act of killing something is frowned upon by the Lord? But I guess it does say you can stone your wife to death if she cheats on you in the Bible, so maybe we should steer clear of the big man's views about this issue.

Euthanasia is as devisive an issue as abortion. You cant deny that if someone wants to die, well they will find a a way. I'd rather a sanitary peaceful end to these tortured souls than see them surprise it on family members, which has happened to a member of family recently.

I guess the issue is that some people are so against some forms of death and pro others, dividing their allegiances when it suits their own moral stance.
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great post, i disagree on the death penalty part, mainly because i see all 3 issues as ambigious. for both euthanasia (which is actually different from physician assisted suicide), and abortion, the state is not the actor. the way i see the issue, is that there's no way to objectively decide it, which is why people should be left to their own devices (within reason). with the death penalty, the state is directly taking a stance on the issue, by saying that it is acceptable to take a life, whereas with the other two the state takes no stance on it.

without a death penalty, the state isn't saying directly that killing is absolutely wrong, but just that it won't take part in it, just as it doesn't take part in the supposed "killing" for the other two. thats why i personally am against the death penalty.

other than that, what you said was spot on, and should you run you can count on my vote
 
gordonjblair said:
understand what you mean, but this isn't til week 4.

I have a neice who was removed by section at 27 weeks and is now 5yrs old. While I support the right of women to choose, I think 3 months is long enough to commit to a decision.
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A couple of problems with that view is that the woman could in fact be a girl and very vulnerable. She might not even realise that she is pregnant. It could also be a pregnancy due to rape. I'm just saying that there are times when 3 months was not long enough to be be able to reach a decision. I think in the UK it is about 6 months or so, which strikes me as way too long seeing as the fetus effectively possesses sentience. Maybe up to 4 months would be more sensible. After this time limit, perhaps it should be possible but a woman might need to seek special "permission" to undergo surgery. I'm sure a feminist would argue against this "permission" thing, but we're dealing with a sentient life form not just a woman's body.
 
toffeestillidie said:
sorry about the delayed reply, i've been away on holiday. on the subject of government spending, i really agree we need to cut spending, i just think the first place we should cut spending is the defence budget. with the current system, so much money is spent by the government just to line the pockets of contractors, the United States' defence budget is huge, theres no reason for that much money to be spent on it. additionally, our defence budget includes money like billions of dollars being sent to israel, which is an industrialized nation, theres no need to send aid money to an industrialized nation.

on taxation: you said it yourself that the top brackets contribute the majority of the money to the system, which i don't think is a bad system really, as they're less burdened by the loss of money (losing that higher percentage of money constitutes less of a strain on their financial means, just because the financial priorities of different brackets are so different). also, because they contribute so much more, the government can raise their taxes slightly, and be able to lower the taxes of lower brackets drastically. i don't know the math exactly, but a 1% increase on the taxes of the top 2 brackets would allow the government to lower the taxes on the lower brackets by a substantial amount and still have the same amount of revenue.

so to modify your scenario for simplicity purposes, lets say instead that each person earns 10 grand and 1 million respectively, if you raise the taxes on the top person by .1%, you can cut taxes for the bottom person by 10% without losing any revenue. thats why, since the top brackets contribute so much, it makes very little sense to give them negligible tax relief and lose so much money, as it greatly hurts the federal government's total revenue. it may not seem fair, but lets say in that scenario, they raised the top person's taxes by .05% and cut the bottom persons taxes by 5%, i gaurantee the less well off person would feel the benefit of the tax change much much more than the top person would feel the loss.

and as for the low income people who don't pay taxes, here in virginia, if you make less then around 8,000 dollars year, you get your federal and state withholdings back. That means there are people who make around 10,000 dollars a year who still have to pay taxes, and are hurt by the loss of income even though the federal government is barely benefitted by the taxes levied from them. seems a backward system to me. with the extra revenue that can be generated by taxing the top brackets marginally higher, the government could fix our healthcare system to help alleviate the struggles of the working class, and reinvest in other programs that will working and middle class americans.
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While I suspect that you and I are on differing ends of the political spectrum and that our votes are likely to cancel this Nov. It is refreshing to have civil discourse. We aren't that far apart in some respects.

On spending... agreed. Too much spending. You would look to cut defense first, I might look elsewhere if prioritizing but we agree that the gov. is too hungry to spend our hard earned cash. My solution would be to:
1. Unilaterally cut all programs/department budgets 5% (certainly there is that much waste without having to even look hard. All companies accumulate dead-wood over time and need to prune.)
2. Require each department to then do the heavy lifting of specifically finding and additional 5% to reduce or eliminate.
3. Identify duplicative and unnecessary departments/programs to eliminate. (here's where you and I may differ. From a fiscal perspective, I am a strict constitutionalist. The federal gov. IMO exists only to provide those services that would not be provided by the states, localities, or private industry. ex. defense, interstate highways, international treaties, legitimate welfare for the handicapped and limited others on a short-term basis...) The goal would be to eliminate another 10% of the remaining total gov. spend withing 3 years.

My goal for tax relief would not be to provide tax relief to just low-income earners. I think it is a misconception that tax relief always benefits just one economic stratum. You make the case to provide tax relief to low-income earners by raising the taxes of others. That would not be my goal. I feel all tax-paying Americans should receive tax relief. Why must tax relief for one stratum come at the expense of another?

The tax code is way too complex, antiquated, and is covered with the fingerprints of special interests. I have ideas for scrapping that too (www.fairtax.org being my fav.) but that's tangential. But let's say low-income individuals pay an effective tax rate of 15% and high-earners pay 25%. The fairest method of distributing tax relief would be a reduction of an across-the-board 10% to where low-payers pay 13.5% and high-payers pay 22.5%. That's fair and it maintains a graduated tax structure which seems so important to some (I disagree with that too by the way but I am trying to compromise here.) Any other way of distributing tax relief is income redistribution. You can argue that the effective rates for different strata should be different but I suggest that we not complicate tax relief for our legislators. That should be a separate discussion from tax relief. One should receive tax relief based on how much tax one pays in the first place.
 
SuitsBlue said:
so much more complex than that. honourable as it is.
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This is a tough issue because both sides are so entrenched - both feeling that science and logic back their conclusions. In the interest of self-disclosure I am pro-life, anti-abortion, whatever you want to call it.

There is no scientific consensus as to when life begins. Some choose when the heart begins to beat, others when rational thought begins, conception, birth, brain activity, 3 months post conception, etc. I suspect that a person's conclusions to that question is drawn in order to support the emotional side of their agrument.

But let me try to take emotion out of the argument. What seems blindingly obvious to me (knock me back pro-choicers) is that since there is no scientific consensus, why doesn't society err on the side of caution? Do we devalue life so much that we will take the chance of killing a fellow human being?

Scenario - There is an urgent matter that must be dealt with in the barn in your back pasture. You are apprised of the situation but are told that you can not go into the barn. The only way of eliminating the problem is by tossing a grenade in. The barn contains either:

A. A machine that would cost you frustration, thousands of £/$ and hours of your time over the next 2 decades and would bring you no intrinsic value.
B. Your one year old child

Would not caution be prudent?
 

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