Election day is coming up Post your views on this topic here



I am a big suporter of Ron Paul he is one of the only candidates who is against the war in Iraq
and has any interest in getting the american back up any comments?

I'm backing anyone who isn't George W Bush... or I would if I was an american citizen.

Trash I agree Bush Sucks!
If I could vote in the Primaries I would go Ron Paul he is a republican but he is Anti War and against bush on almost every thing, But I am not old enough to vote (If I lived in Ohio I could But I don't turn 18 till February whatever!)
T

Since Bush has veered to a Carter View on the Israel... i find that he is awful. The most likable candidate right now is Gulliani however he looks like he is lagging at the moment. Romeny is good but changes his views too much and mcain is just too egotistical. Rom Paul is ok but he is out soo... who do we choose.

On the democratic side... everyone there is just awful!!!!

Well your right about at least one democrat Clinton hate her sooooo much and ron paul has a lot of suport though hes not with the top i think he could surprise you

Now that michigan was won by romeny this just thows the whole race wide open... however i think Mcain ad especially romeny will have to really fight for the Nevada and Florida to win against Gulliani... i've siad it before and am saying it again... he will be the come back kid

Oh great...I'm up against a bunch of Republicans. <_<
xD

Okay, as an independant leaning more to the Democratic side(Mostly because I'm sick of Republican presidents.) I would have to choose John Edwards.
I think he is a very capable person, plus he seems like the only president hopeful to have is head on straight. I like him, one because of his plans to help kids pay for college(College for Everyone), he agree's with gay marriage, his main goals are, defeating poverty and global warming, withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he has a fantastic Universal Health Care program.

I know most of you do not agree with all of these things, but you have to admit it, he's better than Obama(Who was a CRAPPY Senator), and Hillary Clinton(Although will withdraw troops, she agrees with abortion and killing elderly people)

Judging all Democrats just because of Bill Clintons folly is kind of stupid.
You remember that one Republican that was hitting on all the teenage boys? I think thats worse, and yet, I don't jude all Republicans just because of his idiocy.

*Laughs* Hmm, I hear ya. I actualy agree with alot of the things you just stated, Lady_Naerwen. Although, Ron Paul isn't too bad either. if i had to vote for a republican, it would be him, no contest. Also, I'm pro-choice, so that fact that Clinton isn't necessarily against abotion dosn't bug me too much. i mean, everyone is different and for some people abortion might be the best option.

Thanks, I agree with what you said about abortion. I mean, I'm in between with that issue. It should be a choice, even though it is technically murder..sort of. But, I think that America isn't ready for a female prezzy. And Ron Paul does seem as if he would do good, as well. I know Huckabee seemed fair as well.

Hmm, yeah America might not be ready for a female president. But hopefuly we get someone who does slightly better then Bush. I know it won't be perfect,though. Politics is still politics.

I'm for Huckabee, all the way. He's got a definitive, workable plan for pretty much every issue. And, he doesn't smear people, even when they smear him without mercy.

Ron Paul is extremely anti-semitic, and irrational. Plus, there's no chance he'll get elected. Wasted ballot on a RINO.

John McCain takes a congratulatory ad aired by Huckabee, and he uses it to slap him in the face. Disgusting, and totally uncalled for. Plus, he's pretty much mum on his policy, so who knows how he plans to fix these problems? RINO.

Fred Thompson is a nice, smart guy with no traction. Voting for him is a wasted ballot.

Gulliani is the former mayor of a sanctuary city, which means he wouldn't take sealing the border very seriously. What good is the economy if terrorists are crossing the border wearing sombreros?

Romney's a fake Mormon. His switch to the prolife movement was rather suspicious, and he didn't do anything to make it less so. I doubt that any of his other 'convictions' would hold very strongly against opposition when yielding would be politically expedient.

Unfortunately, I'm not yet of voting age. But if I were, and I didn't live in the second-to-last caucus state, I'd vote for Huckabee. Not because he's the lesser of several evils, but because he genuinely looks like a good president.
He raised taxes? Check his site. The people of Arkansas voted for the raises so that they could fix the roads. He's soft on crime, because he gave clemency for lots of criminals? He also approved the death penalty for more criminals than any other govenor But this doesn't mean he's a homicidal maniac. He carefully read through each file and cosidered for a while before he reached a verdict.
His immigration plan is great. His energy independece plan is great. I'm not sure he's capable of bringing down the IRS, but I do think he'd make a really good president.

Well, that's my position. I won't be available to debate the content of my post. If you wish to debate, research my claims and pick it apart with someone else.

the problem with huckabee ( besides the fact that he is completely mad) is that hes not really campaigning for whats really important right now. all he really is talking about is religion and pro-life but right now we are in the middle of a war that we are stuck in, we dont need to be focusing on abortion issues we need to be focusing on how to get our troops out of Iraq.

While i really dont like Hilary i think she might just be what we need in a president right now. we need someone who is going to make definite decisions in order to get us out of the rut that bush put us in. however i really dont like her as a person so im not convinced im going to vote for her yet.

im just excited that im old enough to vote, because i can finally have a say in what goes on in our politics.

I feel the same way. I just missed being able to vote in the last election, so I'm thrilled I can have a say this time.

Lily, your stance about Huckabee is very well thought out. To me, if I were going to vote Republican it would be him, but honestly I would rather John Edwards be president. I've already listed the reasons why.
To tell you the truth, Huckabee seems a bit to weak to deal with the current problem of war. If he does get elected into office, he may prove me and many others who feel the same way, wrong or right. You never know.
Amd like Kerry said, although he seems to be a good presidential candidate, he's saying things about abortion and religion, rather than the Iraq situation.

Kerry, Hillary isn't an exactly likeable person, at all. But you are right about a couple things, she does seem capable to get us out of the scrap that Bush put us in.
The only problem is, is that I don't agree with alot of things she stands for. She wasn't strong enough to keep Bill under her belt, what about America? If she can't keep control of her husband, will she be able to keep control of the USA?

I don't even give a crap about Clinton and all that gossip. Everyone has marital poblems these days. plus, I think her personal life should just stay her own buisness as long as she can get the job done at the end of the day. i actualy sort of like Clinton, go figure.

lmao. Yes, I hate Bush, personally.


And lol, how many of us are American? Personally, I hate America. I wanna leave really, really bad.

Which country do you want to go to? What kind of government do they have? How much corruption does their government have? What rights do they deny their citizens? How high is their crime rate? How safe are their streets?
When you take these things into account, America is really the least of the worldy evils.

I personally am moving to Sweden. They keep their noses out of peoples business and they seem to function well.
America isn't that great, but I would rather live in Sweden.

I would at least have the option of having a carry permit so that if I get mugged, it's my fault, not the government's that I wasn't able to protect myself.

i agree with the fact that Americans tend to look up to their president as almost a "superhero" a lot of people wont vote for a presidential candidate if they have had a divorce or marital problems, however that is their personally life, and as long as their personal life does not interfere with their job as president i dont care if they were divorced or had an affair.

and America does have a lot of problems but honestly im glad live here because there are so many people dying to get here because of all the opportunities we are given here. i mean we are hoggin natural resources and there are a lot of problems with our system, but it is the best one so far because we actually get a say in our government. we dont have to be worried about getting shot on every street corner, and we are protected by our bill of rights and laws.

England. We might be obese, but we didn't INVENT McDonalds. ^^ I call that safe.

what about australia?? apparently our constistution is the best in the world, and you dont get shot down on street corners and you're protected...sure we're a somewhat obese country but like trash said, at least we didn't invent mcdonalds =P
that, and its rare to find a person who actually likes oru prime minister (we have problems with authority lol)

Yes!
I can't wait to leave the states. It isn't awful, I just don't think it's the place for me. And England is where I will probably end up, seeing as I have been infatuated with it for as long as I can remember.
Australia's too hot for me. Sorry, Lici. :]

Also, by the way:

Some (some, not all) people want to go to America because of the MEDIA veiw of it - the Hollywood Brainwash. People think that America is this amazing place, with sun and sea and beauty everywhere - that may be so in some places, but you don't get that everywhere. People think success is found instantly, but it's not. People think that it's perfect, and it really, really isn't.


Not England's perfect. Far from it ^^

ok...there is no way australia can be too hot/cold for anyone, sure its hot in queensland, but at the moment in sydney its summer and we're having freezing cold days (which is unnatural, but still), and victoria/tasmania are even further south and are cold, they get snow down there!

and once again, i agree with trash, personally i would never move to america, i have no interest in it, that, and the beaches don't look very nice to me.

Yes. It's like when people move to New York City after watching tv shows like gender and the City or Friends or Will and Grace, and then are astounded when they discover that it smells and is crowded and they can't afford to take cabs everywhere because they can barely pay the rent as it is.

And Lici, sorry if I offended you, It's just that Australia is made out to be a desert (media brainwashing again, ha) and I should have checked before I said that. sorry, again.

oh...no offence was taken...its just thta australia day is coming up, and i get all patriotic around australia day

All right. It must be nice to be patriotic. I don't think I've ever gotten excited for the Fourth of July.

I don't even think England HAS an "England Day".

thats kind of sad...i love australia day, it gives us an excuse to wear massive amounts of clothing covered in the australian flag, and eat all day and bag out other countries without being called politically incorrect =P

seriously this country is one of the most if not the most accepting country for gays. in many countries people are banished or shot because they are gay. didn't you recently hear one of the middle eastern countries even said " we do not have gay people like you do". they refuse to accept gays at all. so yes while gay people should be allowed to marry at least in America they are able to show and be proud of their sexuality. and yes while there is a lot of violence here there is a lot of violence everywhere else.

im not a huge patriot or anything but for someone to hate their own country and think it is horrible, is horrible in itself. the grass always seems greener on the other side, violence destruction and corruption are everywhere even in England or Canada or Italy, you will never escape that. so just saying your going to move simply because " you dont like the United States" just proves how naive people really can be to the world outside of the United States . give me real valid reasons and i will consider your points.

The media says that you are treated unfairly. The media says that you are constantly discriminated against. The media says that everybody hates you because you're gay. The media tells you that people think that you're not fit to be citizens.

However, the media has a tendency to not tell you that pretty much anywhere in America, if you speak out against gay rights, or are suspected to have done so, you are immediately shot down and defamed in massively disproportionate ways. A journalist who writes in the paper that AIDs originated within the gay community is in risk of losing their job, no matter that this statement is true. The media depends on high levels of emotion to survive. I mean, who would bother to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer if it did not involve high levels of emotion? Nobody would care about the gay thing if the media didn't constantly scream that gays are being mistreated. It makes people angry, and some even turn gay out of spite.
Gays are not being mistreated to the extent that it's always painted. They may be disapproved of, and even pitied, but they don't get pay deductions, fired, evicted, or openly mocked. When there's tension, it is caused by one party expecting one particular set of behavior from the other. Homosexuals sometimes, and often since the media has turned up the emotion level, expect heterosexuals to be condescending and mean because of their sexual preference, so they treat them caustically. And when the heterosexuals respond in kind, homosexuals put it to, "their narrow-minded bigotry." Realize that here, I am not isolating this expectantly sour behavior to the homosexual community. Heterosexuals do it as well. Men do it to women. Women do it to men. Whites do it to blacks. Blacks do it to whites. It's sadly common.

The emotion thing also gets called into the issue of the war. Not to mention exaggeration. No, the majority of the country does not think that Iraq was a mistake. The mainstream news stations, paired with the popular entertainment shows, all repeat these things over and over, so that at least in the minds of their viewers, these things will become true. Those who say that we never found weapons of mass destruction simply don't rely on reason to draw their conclusions. We found some, not to the extent that we looked for, but we did find some. However, let me ask you: If I started taking cocaine, and I kept it in my room, and I found out that my mom was going to look in my room to find it, would I just leave it there for her to find? Of course not. I'd panic, and move it so that she wouldn't find it. Why should anything else have been done by Saddam Hussein? Another question. If you received reliable word that a boy in your class was going to murder you, wouldn't you look into it? Or would you let him knock you off first? The same principle was at play in Iraq. And though you will doubtless argue that the intelligence was flawed, when such a threat was found, we had a duty to look into it, and to act on our information as quickly as possible. Otherwise, a bomb might have exploded in your city, and you wouldn't be alive to be making these arguments.

Shootings are relatively rare in America. This is because we have the Second Amendment, which allows us the right to keep and bear arms. This amendment isn't in place so that we can keep on hunting, it is so that we can defend ourselves against criminals, and, in extreme cases, the government. A criminal is less likely to go into a house if there might be a person with a gun inside. In England, guns are illegal. Strangely enough, however, criminals don't follow the law. If you tell them that they can't get a gun, "Forget you!" they say, in much ruder terms. And they find a way. They always find a way to get what they want. And then, they have a gun, and you don't. And they won't hesitate to put a bullet through your head if you make them nervous.

I will probably get called narrow minded for my post, but on the issue you raised about narrow-mindedness, let me say this: I have my point of view, and you have yours. Liberals have no room in their minds to consider mine. That, I consider, narrow.

Actually, the homicide rate in america is the highest in the western world because they have the second amendment.

I doubt that claim would hold up under scrutiny, Lici.
Again for my illustration, when a guy's sticking a revolver in your face, do you want to be without one? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, if you're sticking a revolver in someone else's face, do you want them to have one? A criminal will get a gun no matter what. The second amendment allows law-abiding citizens to have a gun so that they can protect themselves from those who don't obey the 'no murdering people' law.

Lost Prophet

i never personally called you naive i said for people to think that this country is horrble when there are obviously worse places in the world to be is naive. and no you did not hit a nerve with the war. i believe this war is stupid and pointless and we should have never been involved in fact today, my friend Jan who is in Iraq right now called me and told me how they are literally doing NOTHING over there. i am all for ending this war

another thing is i didn not intend for you to take it personally i saw it as a debate. its politics im not trying to get you off the boards im trying to debate with you. its nothing personal. i do see what your trying to say about how we do stick our noses into business that is not our own. im just tying to debate with you about political issues which is what this topic is for.

Im sorry if you felt at all offended, and if you felt I was personally attacking you. That was never my intention, and i hope you continue to post here because you do point out a lot of valid arguments.

haha no im not offended at all the problem with the topic of politics is that people feel so passionatly about what they believe that it often ends in a fight haha but im not looking for a fight just debate.

and yeah it really is horrible over there he is a marine and he said that htey are all literally going crazy because there is nothing to do, and they are just sitting around. he has only fired his gun once since being over there since September ( which in some ways is a good thing) however our economy is falling and we are paying billions of dollars for our soldiers just to sit there.

its horrible we need to get out of there.

Actually, it would hold up under scrutiny. Very strongly might I add.

And if the second amendment is so wonderful then why are there so many schootings in America? It seems that at least once a month even over in Australia we here of a shooting thats happened, and thats only the larger ones, I'm sure we don't here about the smaller shootings that happen everyday.

And moving onto the war issue, from what is happening on the stock market, I think there is about to be a recession, the stock market is slowly falling, all throughout the western world, all because we are spending money on a war that didn't have to happen in the first place. Not only are the americans and australians, and anyone else who has soldiers fighting over there in danger, the native people to those countries who have never had any intention of harming America, are being attackd and killed, all on suspicion.

It's a stupid war, reminds me of Vietnam actually, and we shouldn't be a part of it. Personally I'm praying that our new prime minister will take the Australian soldiers out, and maybe without the support of yet another country, America will pull out.

I agree with everyone that says we need to get our troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.

I'm not going to get angry with you, L_P. If the tone of my post was caustic, it wasn't my intention. For that miscommunication, all readers of this thread have my apology.

Listen: what happened to you was wrong, and people shouldn't treat each other like that. I'm sorry and disgusted that such things happened to you. It is still my observation that the media does depend on raising people's emotions, especially when drawing people to their conclusions.

I'm already abused for my differences. Everybody is. It's human nature. It's wrong, but it's nature. And we can work to change that.

True, but with less terrorists running around, the likelihood tends to drop.

We are, in their own vocabulary, 'The Great Satan.' What do religious people tend to do about Satan? They try to defeat him. Now, any Muslims reading this realize that I am not generalizing about your people. This is strictly about jihadists. They hate us. They consider us corrupt and lewd, and they think that they must fight all who deny Allah until Islam reigns supreme. They would have bombed us anyway. And if we didn't retaliate, like a shark drawn to blood, they would have scented what they considered to be weakness, and set off on a string of bombings until we were annihilated. That is the predatory nature of jihadists.

We have been very careful not to kill citizens. When the evening news comes on and tells you, "Today, 15 Iraqis were killed." Do they tell you how many of those were terrorists? The ones who set off car bombs which widow and orphan who-knows-how-many? Not generally.

The problem quite often is with us, I will agree with you there. But applied in different settings.

How many times a month does that happen?

And that's why I didn't say it did.

True, it isn't. But it gives you a better chance than if you didn't have one.

I do agree that we need tougher standards to go into purchasing a gun. I think that people who legally purchase a weapon should have their criminal records, and mental health checks, put in a database so that a shopkeeper won't sell a gun to a guy with Schizophrenia, or a history as a sexual predator. It wouldn't prevent all criminal ownership, but it would cut down some. Not to mention, it would be reasonable. Sane, law-abiding citizens would still be able to purchase guns for defense.

I fully agree with you on this point. Teenagers (to which group I belong) are nasty to each other, brutal and without mercy if it can get a laugh from surrounding people. This is primarily what causes these school shootings. But the people at Virginia Tech died because they had been taught not to fight back. At a school in my area, some guy in a trench coat pulled out a gun in his classroom. It was only because a football player jumped him that nobody died that day. We need to fight back, but primarily, we need to treat people with love and respect in the first place so that people won't be pushed to this point.

As do I. It's just that my beliefs all seem to be eminated by one particular party at the moment.

It was my intent in my post to simply present my point and avoid bitterness. Apparently, my tone didn't emanate this; and for that I am sorry. I don't hate or disrespect you. Particularly not for being gay. I don't approve of homosexuality, but preferences or behavior should not be a factor in how you value and treat a fellow human being.

It was not my intent to insult you. And I do not demand that you respect me. I just feel that I should not deserve less respect than someone equally outspoken on the liberal spectrum.



Lici, there are other factors that come into play in the violence level in America than the Second Amendment. I have already listed one: disregard for people who are different. At the risk of sounding like an anti-entertainment person, violence is glorified in movies and games. Why else would we have movies like Fight Club?
When you have games like Mortal Combat, you have true scenarios of some teenage girl and her boyfriend getting drunk and beating her seven-year-old sister to death 'kung-fu style'. (note, this did actually happen.)
You have your opinion on Iraq, and I see that there is no shifting you from it, so I shant bore you by trying. But if you learn about the philosophy and beliefs of jihadists, I expect you'll see that pulling out would be dangerous.

~Lily

but not everyone in iraq is a mujahid...And you're still generalising there, and when i say crime rate, I mean crime rate involving firearms. I'm sorry I didn't put this in my first post, I thought I did, but just re read it and saw that I hadn't.

And if you've studied the belief of jihad so much, why are you calling the people who follow the juhad the wrong thing?