OK, now no question, I'd vote for Hillary in the general, no reservations

[© tweed]

Ok, well, please tell us who would make a difference as President, then. I do truly feel Obama can move us into a new era in politics unlike anyone else we've ever seen; is that what you are getting at as well? Or is there something else I'm missing.

I don't like being half-hearted in my support of candidates anymore than the next guy, but the Clintons are still a hell of a lot better than any Republicans we've had. It does matter who wins, maybe not as much as it should, I'll agree with you there, and I'm sick of supporting candidates out of fear as much as anyone else. But I'm not just going to drop out of the process if my guy doesn't win, out of some sense of teaching a lesson. My conscience dictates I must still choose the best possible candidate among those available.

Mike Gravel, David Duke, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, to name a few, for better or for worse...

and please stop the love affair with the Clintons, they're just as evil as the "Republicans" (gasp)...  I know they're the only grasp of power you've had in your lifetime, and the emotional connection to that is oh so pervasive, but please, tell me the difference between John McCain's world and Hillary Clinton's...

and obviously individually "dropping out of the process" isn't going to matter, but if tens of millions of people did it, well, we'd have something...  of course your value currently to the "process" is infinitesimally close to zero, considering about 9 elections in the USA in the past 100 years have been decided by <1 vote...

[© tweed]

free will is infinite responsibility...  we all know BushClintonOklahoma and his ilk could never ever handle that!   (and doesn't it prove my point, in a weird way, that he's changed his username from BushOklahoma to ClintonOklahoma without any major persona swing?)

Why are you all of the sudden attacking me?  I'm baffled.

if you don't believe in free will, what's the point in living?  why don't you just kill yourself?  serious question.

[Joe Biden 2020]

free will is infinite responsibility...  we all know BushClintonOklahoma and his ilk could never ever handle that!   (and doesn't it prove my point, in a weird way, that he's changed his username from BushOklahoma to ClintonOklahoma without any major persona swing?)

Why are you all of the sudden attacking me?  I'm baffled.

Well if God controls every single minute detail of the universe, I guess that would make the answer to your question (and every other single question in the history of the world that starts with why) pretty obvious.

My answer would be he's in a bit of a bad mood today, but we are all entitled to that from time to time. Although I don't agree with you on many issues you are still a good guy and I am glad to have you in our party.

Yeah, thats my guess, is that he's in a bit of a bad mood, and yes he is entitled, thats why i'm not attacking back.  Plus, I like to think myself above personal attacks.

Thanks for your encouragement.  You've always been one of my favorite posters ever since I joined the forum.  In fact, if you remember, you and I used to talk on YIM a lot during the 2004 Presidential Campaign.

[© tweed]

Judicial nominations effect the entire spectrum of issues, including corporate issues. People who focus only on Roe v. Wade don't recognize that the courts are basically an entirely separate branch of government, who do the governing in an entire area of law that effects almost all government policies. And after the past 28 years, they are already dominated by Republicans. Another 4-8 years will only make that far worse.

Very true. It does affect economics and also civil liberties issues a lot. Roe v. Wade is maybe the most overratted Supreme Court decision ever in its true impact.

The fact that most people don't even realize that Roe v. Wade has largely been supplanted by other case law is most telling.

I know, PP vs Casey, I get it.  but the main purpose of language is communication, agreed?  the term Roe takes on a meaning that is easy to communicate.  I'm not going to change the course of dialogue singlehandedly, so I'll fall in lockstep and ignore a small detail.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Judicial nominations effect the entire spectrum of issues, including corporate issues. People who focus only on Roe v. Wade don't recognize that the courts are basically an entirely separate branch of government, who do the governing in an entire area of law that effects almost all government policies. And after the past 28 years, they are already dominated by Republicans. Another 4-8 years will only make that far worse.

Very true. It does affect economics and also civil liberties issues a lot. Roe v. Wade is maybe the most overratted Supreme Court decision ever in its true impact.

The fact that most people don't even realize that Roe v. Wade has largely been supplanted by other case law is most telling.

Yes, it's amazing how'd they'd be shocked to find that Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Gonzales v. Carhart are the land, not the far more permissive Roe v. Wade.  The media likes to keep the sheeple stupid.  Of course there are far more important reasons to have a non-crazy Supreme Court than Roe v. Wade.

[Sam Spade]

Why judicial nominations matter: The Clean Air and Water Acts could be weakened. The Endangered Species Act could be overturned. Gun control laws could be overturned. Workplace protections of women and minorities will be further weakened.  Much of the precedent from the Warren Court is at stake. SCOTUS does matter.

None of that will happen.  Sorry.

[Joe Biden 2020]

free will is infinite responsibility...  we all know BushClintonOklahoma and his ilk could never ever handle that!   (and doesn't it prove my point, in a weird way, that he's changed his username from BushOklahoma to ClintonOklahoma without any major persona swing?)

Why are you all of the sudden attacking me?  I'm baffled.

if you don't believe in free will, what's the point in living?  why don't you just kill yourself?  serious question.

To answer your question, I do believe in free will, but I also believe God, being all-knowing, knows whats going to happen long before it ever happens.  Remember Adam and Eve.  God gave them free will to choose the bad apple, and knew they were going to choose the bad apple.

Why do I keep living?  What's the point of living?  My work is not finished on this earth, yet.  My purpose has not yet been fulfilled.  I'm not getting out of here until God takes me out of here.

I hope we can put this to bed, please.

[© tweed]

if you killed yourself, God would know it long before it happened, having KNOWN that's what you'd be doing by placing you on this Earth, so I doubt he'd mind, since he could have stopped it if he wanted to.

[Nym90]

Ok, well, please tell us who would make a difference as President, then. I do truly feel Obama can move us into a new era in politics unlike anyone else we've ever seen; is that what you are getting at as well? Or is there something else I'm missing.

I don't like being half-hearted in my support of candidates anymore than the next guy, but the Clintons are still a hell of a lot better than any Republicans we've had. It does matter who wins, maybe not as much as it should, I'll agree with you there, and I'm sick of supporting candidates out of fear as much as anyone else. But I'm not just going to drop out of the process if my guy doesn't win, out of some sense of teaching a lesson. My conscience dictates I must still choose the best possible candidate among those available.

Mike Gravel, David Duke, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, to name a few, for better or for worse...

and please stop the love affair with the Clintons, they're just as evil as the "Republicans" (gasp)...  I know they're the only grasp of power you've had in your lifetime, and the emotional connection to that is oh so pervasive, but please, tell me the difference between John McCain's world and Hillary Clinton's...

and obviously individually "dropping out of the process" isn't going to matter, but if tens of millions of people did it, well, we'd have something...  of course your value currently to the "process" is infinitesimally close to zero, considering about 9 elections in the USA in the past 100 years have been decided by <1 vote...

Well, I do feel quite inspired by Clinton's personal story from his childhood and such (possibly because it matches my own in many ways, plus just the general idea that someone can rise from basically nothing to become President). I have no particular love for the Clintons, I don't see why thinking they are better than the Republicans mean I necessarily think Bill was a great President per se. He was an effective manager, and was better than his opponents. Nothing more, nothing less.

As far as answering your question about how Clinton would be better than McCain, if you are truly convinced there is no difference it's probably not going to help much, but Clinton does support universal health care, she supports getting us out of Iraq in less than 100 years, she opposes tax cuts for the rich, she would appoint sane people to the Supreme Court, with a Democratic Congress (and yeah I dislike how they've caved to Bush as much as you, believe me, but I think with a Dem in office we'd see some actual leadership finally) there would be a definite force for change there. Hell, even progress on one of those issues would at least be a step in the right direction compared to where we've been.

I'd think of more right now if I wasn't so damn tired.

I still don't think the short term pain of a McCain win would be worth the potential and extremely uncertain long term gain; as I mentioned, it didn't work that way in the past by letting people like Reagan or Bush win.

I truly do share your angst about our political state; I just disagree that a McCain victory helps matters any.

[Joe Biden 2020]

if you killed yourself, God would know it long before it happened, having KNOWN that's what you'd be doing by placing you on this Earth, so I doubt he'd mind, since he could have stopped it if he wanted to.

I'm not going to say any more about this, with all due respect.  The last thing I want to do is argue with you or anybody.  I respect you too much, Tweed, to argue with you.

[Aizen]

what happens if the Pope kills himself?

[© tweed]

nym...

Clinton's story is wonderful, sure, but, shouldn't that have bred compassion on his part?  instead he went along raping the peoples he once belonged to...  look up the 1998 Amendments to Federal student Financial Aid to start with...

Hillary's "universal" system is bullsh**t...  forcing people to get insurance, running it through the hands of the private companies...  not a surprise, considering the hundreds of thousands she takes in from the drug/pharmaceutical/healthcare lobbyists every year she's in the Senate... 

and so on...  don't feel like going blow for blow much longer on these particular points

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Judicial nominations effect the entire spectrum of issues, including corporate issues. People who focus only on Roe v. Wade don't recognize that the courts are basically an entirely separate branch of government, who do the governing in an entire area of law that effects almost all government policies. And after the past 28 years, they are already dominated by Republicans. Another 4-8 years will only make that far worse.

Exactly.

[Boris]

Mike Gravel, David Duke, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, to name a few, for better or for worse...

How would any of those individuals change anything? They'd get stonewalled by Congress at every opportunity domestically. Withdrawal of troops from Iraq? You wouldn't have had an Iraq War with establishment hack President Gore in the first place. The only thing that differentiates those people from Hillary and McCain is rhetoric, which [In America] is completely empty and meaningless without the money and votes to back it up.

Although I guess saying that is somewhat paradoxical, since were one of those individuals actually elected, Congress would probably follow them into whatever depending upon their popularity.

The problem, I think, is that most Americans are too attached to the status-quo and thus fear meaningful change. To use an example, do you know anyone who actually lacks health insurance? I don't. But they're 40,000,000 of them, apparently. But that's just a statistic. Increasing my taxes to pay for their health insurance and thus limiting my purchasing power is more than a statistic, from my perspective. And if my taxes weren't specifically raised, why on earth would I care about corporatist thugs running Hillarycare? See what I'm sort of getting at? Maybe it's akin to the South Carolina illegal immigrant statistic you brought up in another thread. The only thing I care about is how these illegal immigrants raise my taxes and seemingly contribute to crime rates; why on earth would I actually consider what mass deportations would actually look like? Although mass deportations would obviously be quite different than the stauts quo, so, apparently, I have no clue what I'm talking about.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If you can count me as someone you know, then you did know someone who didn't have health insurance for about two weeks (Beginning of the year till mid-January)

[Person Man]

Well, my wife doesn't have health insurance right now, either and she's falling apart due to depression.

...and yeah, not just abortion is at stake. The court is coming closer everyday to overturning WestCoast and Brown. Soon, there could be no minimium wage or minority rights.

[Keystone Phil]

Soon, there could be no minimium wage or minority rights.

The drama.

[Person Man]

Soon, there could be no minimium wage or minority rights.

The drama.

...and how are you not an arch-conservative?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and obviously individually "dropping out of the process" isn't going to matter, but if tens of millions of people did it, well, we'd have something...

Tens of millions, no more than that, have been "dropping out of the process" for years. And has this brought about the sort of changes that you would like to see? Why would you expect more of the same to give a different result?

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The point of voting is that it is as much a collective exercise as it is an individual one.

[Gabu]

considering about 9 elections in the USA in the past 100 years have been decided by <1 vote...

Technically speaking I don't think it's even possible for an election to be decided by less than one vote.

[Ebowed]

Anyone who is honestly not bothered by the thought of 24+ years of Bushes and Clintons probably doesn't really deserve to vote.

And 'Democrats' who are willing to vote for this couple after the horrifying years of Bill Clinton's presidency either have long term memory loss or are actually hardcore conservatives.

[© tweed]

considering about 9 elections in the USA in the past 100 years have been decided by <1 vote...

Technically speaking I don't think it's even possible for an election to be decided by less than one vote.

ties

[© tweed]

and obviously individually "dropping out of the process" isn't going to matter, but if tens of millions of people did it, well, we'd have something...

Tens of millions, no more than that, have been "dropping out of the process" for years. And has this brought about the sort of changes that you would like to see? Why would you expect more of the same to give a different result?

most of those were never involved in the process, and aren't even registered to vote...  very few volunteer for a campaign one year and don't bother to vote the next...  if the latter happened, en masse, it would make a difference.

[© tweed]

Anyone who is honestly not bothered by the thought of 24+ years of Bushes and Clintons probably doesn't really deserve to vote.

And 'Democrats' who are willing to vote for this couple after the horrifying years of Bill Clinton's presidency either have long term memory loss or are actually hardcore conservatives.

exactly, and they don't even realize it...  they don't realize that the Democratic Party is, essentially, an extreme conservative/reactionary organization that endorses 99.99% of the status quo.  they can't see it, perhaps, because they never entertained the thought, because the big bad Republicans just seem so...  bad...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

most of those were never involved in the process, and aren't even registered to vote...

38% of registered voters in your state didn't vote in 2004. When you consider how voter registration works in the United States, that is an astonishingly high figure. That figure has been pretty stable in all three Presidential elections since 1996 and is, of course, even lower in mid-term elections.

Try again.

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You are not going to get huge numbers of activists dropping out of a system that they have a stake in.