Honestly, now that Obama is the nominee........

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Well, call the RNC and ask them because they are making it a huge issue They do this to play on peoples' prejudice. That is sick. Yet, you are for these very people. How can you do that?

Because someone who agrees with me 75% of the time is not my enemy. I am more libertarian, but libertarians don't win elections. I couldn't possibily be a democrat. I am more Republican than not. Besides, the party isn't exactly unified on the issue.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I would be for putting the subdermal or some other relatively long lasting birth control in any pubescent girl on demand, without parental consent, and on the govt.'s dime.

That is WAY too much of an infringement of the parent's rights as far as I'm concerned. Our children are OUR children and not the governments. If the government takes control of the parent's job, the parent is less likely to do so, which means more kids on government programs. Not a good idea.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Um - did I refer to you in that post? I said "Maybe" you were one of the ones, which implied asking for clarification

As for McCain, I believe you are incorrect. McCain voted to authorize W to use force in Iraq? Then, when campaigning for W to get reelected, the "greatest critic" who claimed the war would "fail" stated praised W's leadership and stated:

“But I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.” [NBC, 3/20/03]

“It’s clear that the end is very much in sight.” [ABC, 4/9/03]

“There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiahs. So I think they can probably get along.” [MSNBC, 4/23/03]

“This is a mission accomplished. They know how much influence Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people, how much more difficult it made to get their cooperation.” [This Week, ABC, 12/14/03]

“I’m confident we’re on the right course.” [ABC News, 3/7/04]

“I think the initial phases of it were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise.” [CBS, 10/31/04]

“I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent.” [The Hill, 12/8/05]
___________________________________________________________

McCain can't have it both ways

On edit - perhaps you were stating McCain would have marched on to Bagdad in the first Gulf War. If so, so would I. But, that hardly negates his cheerleading for W's invasion of Iraq in 2003, though he double talked being against it soon thereafter and then was for it as evidenced in the above quotes.

I think, as many of us did back between 2003 and 2005, that things would be much different. As early as 2005, McCain started criticising the way the war was being handled. You can be for the initial war, but against the way it was handled afterwards. I don't see the inconsistency, unless you are not allowing for things not turning outas originally thought. McCain pushed for the surge and it worked. He butted heads with Rumsfeld a lot and eventually won out.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

1. I am for getting rid of the capital gains tax.

2. The captial gains tax to my knowledge applies not only to venture capitalists and the like. It also applies to a stock market portfolio of long established companies. It is with the latter I think a cap. gains tax (at least the raise Obama promotes) will not hurt the economy. I mean how is the former Chairman of the ex Bear Stearns being taxed 20% on $400 million going to significantly effect the economy? It is not. That $80 million (which again I do not think he should be taxed on at all) will sit in some fund. In all probability, he is not going to spend that money or invest it in a start up. But, I agree with you about the former.

Again, you are cherry picking here. Bringing up BearsStearns is throwing out a red herring. Maybe 20% on that guy won't hurt anything. However, Obama stated he would like to see the minimum rate at 20% and the next tier at 40%. Capital gains tax is applied to any investment period. It applies to the guy trying to fund his retirement b buying rental homes, it applies to any of us who invest in 401(k)'s, anyone who invests in small business, etc. If you are taking 40% of any investment profit if you make over $200,000.00 a year, most small businesses will end up going overseas too. Hell, I'd move to Australia or move my money to some overseas company who wants it instead of a greedy US government that wants to punish success. Obama's plan would not just apply to multi-millionaires, but anyone with a successful small business, IE the guy who owns the car lot, the independant supermarket, the plumbing outsit, the construction company owner, the subcontractor, the building developer, the landlord, etc. Basically, anyone with any money in anything organized in a corporation. Taxing investment at that level costs the small business jobs, and at best, costs you your raise. I am never for "taxing the rich" because I've never been hired by a poor person. Under Obama's plan, if your AGI is above $200,000.00 you are paying out 40% of your profit to the government, on top of the other taxes that you would already be paying. It would paralize small business entirely and we would see a global depression that makes our current slowdown look like the biggest boom in history within his first term. Frankly, if you want to vote for the guy, you deserve to be out of work. Remember, it is people that make over $200,000.00 per year that do all of the hiring.

Basically party affiliation has this choice: I give up my way of life and my economic security and vote democrat, or I endure a bunch of morality crap from the republicans that has no chance of becoming law and at least maintain what I have.

[BombaySapphire3]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

However, Obama is NO alternative. No wait, that's already been done..... and it is the reason some arrogant and ignorant clown like Obama can become president.

and this coming from someone that more than likely voted for the abomination that is George W Bush twice?

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

The Lawrence V. Texas case is QUITE a stretch . . . .

No, it is not. The R admin in the Lawrence case (which was W's administration while gov. ) arrested and proscuted two gay guys for having consensual sex in the privacy of their own home. That directly responds to and negates your statement in post 214 of this thread:

I would invite you to find a single republican in office that has said that they want to lock up gay people or unmarried people, or anyone having oral sex. That is a plain lie. No one has said anything like that in 50 years, unless you're fringy.

So, it is not a stretch. It is exactly what happened. Can you not see that?

So you know -- here are the facts of Lawrence:

The petitioners, medical technologist John Geddes Lawrence, then 55, and Tyron Garner then 31, were alleged to have been engaging in consensual anal sex in Lawrence's apartment in the outskirts of Houston between 10:30 and 11 p.m. on September 17, 1998 when Harris County sheriff's deputy Joseph Quinn entered the unlocked apartment, with his weapon drawn, arresting the two.

The arrests stemmed from a false report of a "weapons disturbance" in their home — that because of a domestic disturbance or robbery, there was a man with a gun "going crazy." The person who filed the report, neighbor Robert Royce Eubanks, then 40, had earlier been accused of harassing the plaintiffs. Despite the false report, probable cause to enter the home was not at issue in the case; Eubanks, with whom Garner was romantically involved at the time of the arrest, later admitted that he was lying, pleaded no contest to charges of filing a false police report, and served 15 days in jail.

In the end and regardless of political party (though the R's currently are the leaders in the area) -- legislating private consenual sex is never going to work and results in insane laws. But, that is what the R party is all about these days. So, when you vote for them, you vote for that.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

. . . Also, as far as property rights and inheritance rights go, you can own anything as "tenants in common" or any other form of title you choose where the other party gets the property upon your death. Also, writing a good will would take care of most of the issues you mention. Inheritance is another thing the government should stay the hell out of too. What right does the government have to say who I can give my stuff to when I die? If I want to create my own dynasty, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Well, the govt. says it all the time. On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:

joint parenting;

joint adoption;

joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents); status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;

joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;

dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;

immigration and residency for partners from other countries;

inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;

joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;

inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate); benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare; spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;

veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;

joint filing of customs claims when traveling;

wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;

bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;

decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;

crime victims' recovery benefits;

loss of consortium tort benefits;

domestic violence protection orders;

judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;

Federal and state benefits like Social Security survivir benefits

and more

Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for. For example, absent a legal (or civil) marriage, there is no guaranteed joint responsibility to the partner and to third parties (including children) in such areas as child support, debts to creditors, taxes, etc. In addition, private employers and institutions often give other economic privileges and other benefits (special rates or memberships) only to married couples. And, of course, when people cannot marry, they are denied all the emotional and social benefits and responsibilities of marriage as well.

Moreover, here is an interesting article:

Why This Is A Serious Civil Rights Issue

When gay people say that this is a civil rights issue, we are referring to matters of civil justice, which often can be quite serious - and can have life-damaging, even life-threatening consequences.

One of these is the fact that in most states, we cannot make medical decisions for our partners in an emergency. Instead, the hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may have been estranged from us for decades, who are often hostile to us, and can and frequently do, totally ignore our wishes regarding the treatment of our partners. If a hostile family wishes to exclude us from the hospital room, they may legally do so in most states. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions based on their hostility -- with results consciously intended to be as inimical to the interests of the patient as possible! Is this fair?

Upon death, in many cases, even very carefully drawn wills and durable powers of attorney have proven to not be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude us from a funeral or deny us the right to visit a partner's hospital bed or grave. As survivors, estranged families can, in nearly all states, even sieze a real estate property that a gay couple may have been buying together for many years, quickly sell it at the largest possible loss, and stick the surviving partner with all the remaining mortgage obligations on a property that partner no longer owns, leaving him out on the street, penniless. There are hundreds of examples of this, even in many cases where the gay couple had been extremely careful to do everything right under current law, in a determined effort to protect their rights. Is this fair?

If our partners are arrested, we can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them, which legally married couples are not forced to do. In court cases, a partner's testimony can be simply ruled irrelevant as heresay by a hostile judge, having no more weight in law than the testimony of a complete stranger. If a partner is jailed or imprisoned, visitation rights by the partner can, in most cases, can be denied on the whim of a hostile family and the cooperation of a homophobic judge, unrestrained by any law or precedent. Conjugal visits, a well-established right of heterosexual married couples in some settings, are simply not available to gay couples. Is this fair?

These are far from being just theoretical issues; they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older gay couple can tell you numerous horror stories of friends and acquaintences who have been victimized in such ways. One couple I know uses the following line in the "sig" lines on their email: "...partners and lovers for 40 years, yet still strangers before the law." Why, as a supposedly advanced society, should we continue to tolerate this kind of injustice?

These are all civil rights issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ecclesiastical origins of marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws by legislation or court precedent over the years in many ways that exclude us from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and even consider their constitutional right. This is why we say it is very much a serious civil rights issue; it has nothing to do with who performs the ceremony, whether it is performed in a church or courthouse or the local country club, or whether an announcement about it is accepted for publication in the local newspaper.

____________________________________________

So, to say (general speaker not really you though you implied it) that all rights can be done by contract is untrue. Moreover, why should gay and unmarried straight people have to pay thousands of dollars to obtain some, but not all, of what married people get for free based solely on a religious argument?

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

Maryland's law concerning interacial marriage also has nothing to do with Republicans. You forget that it was a republican congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the help of a Democratic President. While the Republicans in Congress were working on this act, Bobby Kennedy was busy wiretapping Martin Luther King because he thought he was a threat to national security!

To answer your last question, I don't think the government should have any say in marriage, except for age of consent laws, but that's a criminal matter anyway.

My point had nothing to do the R's. I was refuting (successfully) your statement about marriage liscenses and the prohibition of marriages in general.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

That is WAY too much of an infringement of the parent's rights as far as I'm concerned. Our children are OUR children and not the governments. If the government takes control of the parent's job, the parent is less likely to do so, which means more kids on government programs. Not a good idea.

I don't really care about the parents' rights. I am more for the woman's rights. She has to carry the baby and we have to (usually) pay for it.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

I think, as many of us did back between 2003 and 2005, that things would be much different. As early as 2005, McCain started criticising the way the war was being handled. You can be for the initial war, but against the way it was handled afterwards. I don't see the inconsistency, unless you are not allowing for things not turning outas originally thought. McCain pushed for the surge and it worked. He butted heads with Rumsfeld a lot and eventually won out.

If the surge worked so well (and it did work) then why can't we begin to leave? Why aren't the Iraqi's taking control of their nation? Why isn't the oil rev. reimbursing us as W said it would do?

Also, don't you realize W went there under the guise of freedom when the real intent was so American companies could gouge Iraq and the American taxpayer would have to pay for it? There was a meeting of American companies and they openly talking about the huge financial profitability of working in Iraq.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

Again, you are cherry picking here. Bringing up BearsStearns is throwing out a red herring. Maybe 20% on that guy won't hurt anything. However, Obama stated he would like to see the minimum rate at 20% and the next tier at 40%. Capital gains tax is applied to any investment period. It applies to the guy trying to fund his retirement b buying rental homes, it applies to any of us who invest in 401(k)'s, anyone who invests in small business, etc. If you are taking 40% of any investment profit if you make over $200,000.00 a year, most small businesses will end up going overseas too. Hell, I'd move to Australia or move my money to some overseas company who wants it instead of a greedy US government that wants to punish success. Obama's plan would not just apply to multi-millionaires, but anyone with a successful small business, IE the guy who owns the car lot, the independant supermarket, the plumbing outsit, the construction company owner, the subcontractor, the building developer, the landlord, etc. Basically, anyone with any money in anything organized in a corporation. Taxing investment at that level costs the small business jobs, and at best, costs you your raise. I am never for "taxing the rich" because I've never been hired by a poor person. Under Obama's plan, if your AGI is above $200,000.00 you are paying out 40% of your profit to the government, on top of the other taxes that you would already be paying. It would paralize small business entirely and we would see a global depression that makes our current slowdown look like the biggest boom in history within his first term. Frankly, if you want to vote for the guy, you deserve to be out of work. Remember, it is people that make over $200,000.00 per year that do all of the hiring.

Basically party affiliation has this choice: I give up my way of life and my economic security and vote democrat, or I endure a bunch of morality crap from the republicans that has no chance of becoming law and at least maintain what I have.

So, you did poorly under Clinton - the largest economy in decades

If you did, you were way behind the curve http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accompli...tyears-03.html

Caveat - I readily admit Clinton did not do it by himelf -- no Pres. could. But, he did do alot.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

Because someone who agrees with me 75% of the time is not my enemy. I am more libertarian, but libertarians don't win elections. I couldn't possibily be a democrat. I am more Republican than not. Besides, the party isn't exactly unified on the issue.

If the blacks were still in the back of the bus -- would you say the same thing? All, for a few more dollars in your pocket? That is a little alarming to say the least. How many times do you have to touch the hot stove before you realize it burns?

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

I think we attacked the wrong country and we should have done the job the first time back in 1991.

We did do the job the first time in 1991. Saddam had nothing but smoke and mirrors left when we went in there this time. Also, the United States does not go around executing leaders of other countries, if that's what you're referring to by your doing the job comment. Just remember, you are young and the world and history still has a lot to teach you.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

First off, I don't trust the party to curb spending. I do trust McCain to do so, because he has a track record of stopping wasteful spending.

Like all the money we're spending on the war which is bankrupting this counrty? He thinks the war should go on for another 100 years.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

No, it is not. The R admin in the Lawrence case (which was W's administration while gov. ) arrested and proscuted two gay guys for having consensual sex in the privacy of their own home. That directly responds to and negates your statement in post 214 of this thread:



So, it is not a stretch. It is exactly what happened. Can you not see that?

So you know -- here are the facts of Lawrence:

The petitioners, medical technologist John Geddes Lawrence, then 55, and Tyron Garner then 31, were alleged to have been engaging in consensual anal sex in Lawrence's apartment in the outskirts of Houston between 10:30 and 11 p.m. on September 17, 1998 when Harris County sheriff's deputy Joseph Quinn entered the unlocked apartment, with his weapon drawn, arresting the two.

The arrests stemmed from a false report of a "weapons disturbance" in their home — that because of a domestic disturbance or robbery, there was a man with a gun "going crazy." The person who filed the report, neighbor Robert Royce Eubanks, then 40, had earlier been accused of harassing the plaintiffs. Despite the false report, probable cause to enter the home was not at issue in the case; Eubanks, with whom Garner was romantically involved at the time of the arrest, later admitted that he was lying, pleaded no contest to charges of filing a false police report, and served 15 days in jail.

In the end and regardless of political party (though the R's currently are the leaders in the area) -- legislating private consenual sex is never going to work and results in insane laws. But, that is what the R party is all about these days. So, when you vote for them, you vote for that.

Since the Republicans were the leaders in the area, they are all responsible for the actions of the cops? That is a stretch still. It is more likely that, because a neighbor complained about a weapon, that the police decided to arrest them on the sodomy charges until they could investigate them further. That happens in law enforcement. You can find people that were picked up on minor charges in the meantime while the police investigate a larger charge.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Like all the money we're spending on the war which is bankrupting this counrty? He thinks the war should go on for another 100 years.

He didn't say that about the war. He said that he cares about American casualties and that he would win the war no matter how long it takes.

The basic problem here is that we went to war in the first place, but it would be horrendous to pull out now. I mean, do you know what happened when we pulled out of Vietnam? The death toll went up by more than ten times the previous death rates. Iraq would be worse if we left now.

I agree we shouldn't have done it in the first place, but imagine the death and destruction if we left prematurely.