You know, I've been thinking...Follow

Dems like Trees, Pot, spending and the color blue. Republicansa like Shotguns, Nascar, Jesus and the color red.
Dems hate war, saving money, guns and the color red.
Republicans hate drugs, the enviroment, minorites and the color blue.



So we need to find a color they both like.

As long as Christians are allowed to get divorced, they are the only ones threatening the "sanctity" of marriage.

Yeah, listen to the guy that almost got impeached. Great idea.

If they were to really work at being the honest, no-mud-slinging party, I think that would go a long way towards winning back their voters and then some.

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well, you mean like being honest and up front, like say, claiming you want to get america out of the "nation building" bussiness?

or claiming the social security surplus would be "safe" under your addministraition?

and distancing your party from mudslinging tactics like claiming a decorated war veteran didnt really "earn" all of his medals?

like that mabe?

rofl. switch the channel away from Fox news. come join the rest of the world.

Squire Meerkatxx wrote:
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The current administration wants the help to be faith based. Which faith? Christian of course, and only Christians who think like them.
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That's a strawman argument. Only an incredibly tiny part of Republican "help" has to do with "faith based" initiatives. And in most cases, it's allowing federal funding to be disbursed equally to chartitable organizations regardless of whether they are religious ones as well. That's not the same as "only" allowing help to come via faith based programs. What's happening is that right now only non-faith based programs recieve any sort of federal funding. So if joe and bob form a charity to help people, they'll get funding. But if it's father joe and father bob, they can't get any money, even if they are doing the exact same thing.



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The current administration wants to lower block grants to the states, that allow states to work on urban blight, that allow states to feed poor children, and that allow states to make sure a mother can afford day care so she can be trained for a job that will allow her to get off public support.
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Sure. But we also want to ease taxes on businesses so those people who are needing handouts from the Dems can get jobs from the Reps. See how that works? It's not about which is helping more, it's about how we go about doing it.


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So, the majority should rule on change of pace? That is total bs because we all know the majority will never change if given the chance. Change for the better more often then not has to be foisted upon people, otherwise they will continue thier old habits. Civil rights was pretty much foisted upon the south, otherwise nothing would have changed down there to this day.
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On social change? On a nationwide level? Yes. Absolutely. Let me explain something that you may not be aware of. We "knew" that slavery was wrong back in 1776. It was the subject of much debate at the time, but the economic, social, and political realities of the time did not allow it to be abolished at that time. We knew it was wrong from every year after that to the year that Abramah Lincoln finally abolished it. The difference is the amount to which the society as a whole desires change for something they know is right or wrong. There simply was not the desire or need to change. On that you are correct.

However, by pushing an educational agenda instead of a purely political one, you can change the minds of each generation and make social change naturally. That's what we saw happen between 1900 and 1960 (with a huge amount post WW2). Those same people who thought that segregation and racism were "wrong" spoke out. They gradually raised the public awareness. Over time, instead of there being a small number who wanted segregation, and a small number that disliked is and a large number who didn't care, many of those in the "don't care" catagory moved to the "it's wrong" catagory. By the time 1960 rolled around, it was now possible to bring the cause to a nationwide audience and get that audience to show support for ending segregation in the south. The "mandate" was there. ML King could have marched 30 years earlier and segregation would not have ended. It required the right time and place. It required judging that the US population as a whole was in firm agreement that segregation was wrong and needed to be ended as a practice. That's how you create and run a successful social change program.

But what we're seeing right now is group of Liberals pushing ahead with whatever agenda they like, with no regard for how the public at large feels about them. They have to realize that they are like the small number of abolitionists in the early 1800s. They are "right", but their first task is to get the people to change their minds on the subject and agree that they are right. You don't change people's minds via political movement. You do it via social movement. You need education and information, not legistlation. But most of these movements jump right to trying to get laws passed, or rullings made, and then accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being "evil" in some way.

Being "right" in a democracy is of no value unless the majority of the people both agree that you are right *and* agree with your course of action (which is a whole topic in an of itself!).


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Republican agenda has turned our national savings that was paring downt he debt into the largest debt in history, and this is not counting the "war" on terrorism, since it isn't even part of the budget.
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What "national savings"? Democrats love to talk about Clinton's surplus as though it would have saved the freaking universe if only Bush hadn't squandered it. Look. He "saved" 300B dollars. That's it. Bush has lowered tax revenues for the federal government by more then that (saving *us* that same amount).


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We have larger and more ever present government then ever before, something Bush said he was totally against.
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First off. "Big government" is not about how much money is involved. It's about how much of our economic lives are tied up in the government, and how much non-discretionary programs we create doing that. So a big wellfare program is "big government". Spending 100B on development of a new warplane is *not* big government. The reason is that once you budget X amount for an entitlement program you can *never* get rid of it. Once we finish designing that new plane, we can move that money to doing something else.

Secondly, every freaking US government has been "bigger" in terms of budget, then the one before. Every single one. So in 1998, that years government was the biggest ever. In 1999, that one was the biggest ever. It's an irrelevant statement that sounds really nifty. It's like saying that todays date is the highest date ever in the history of the Gregorian Calander. It's meaningless.

What does matter is that Clinton's government revenue accounted for over 20% of the GDP of the US economy, while Bush's has accounted for around 17% on average. What that means is that Bush is taking less money from you and me to run his government then Clinton did. Kinda puts a new perspective on that 300B surplus once you realize that he only had that because he taxed it from us citizens in the first place!


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I disagree with the use of the etitlement. Job training, financial aid, grants, food stamps, and even welfare are not entitlements. It is not that the system of helping people doesn't work, it just doesn't work fast enough.

As we both know, welfare is no longer a way of life. People are expected to move on to jobs and school, where they can move on to a better place in society.
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Lol. An entitlement payment is *any* payment the government makes to an individual without recieving a fair market good or service value back in return. Those are all entitlements. Some are reasonable simply because we can expect a greater value back in the future as a result (think of it as the government investing in the future). So job training and financial aid makes sense to a point. Grants make sense to a point (we assume the result of the research/training/schooling the grant generates will be worth the money spent on the grant). Food stamps, and wellfare in general *only* produce the "good" of not having starving people on the streets, and should be looked at that way.

You can talk all you want about what wellfare recipients are expected to do. The reality is that the vast majority who enter the system stay in it at one level or another for most of their lives. Those who don't enter in the first 25 years of their lives almost universally *never* do.


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I will say money may have been misspent, but taking away money from the programs that help people is not going to help anything either. Money doesn't solve problems, but it makes it easier to solve problems.
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Which is exactly the reason why we can never reduce the amount we put into entitlement programs. What we *can* do is reduce the amount we *add* to them over time. That's what the Republicans want to do. That's the opposite of what Dems want to do. It's bizaare that you understand that money often is misspent, and understand that we can't cut programs once started, but don't seem to draw the obvious conclusion that we should maybe be a lot more hesitant about starting new programs in the first place.

Churches would then be able to CHOOSE who they wish to offer marriage to, regardless of gender

Ya know, I think I've figured out why the Search feature isn't working yet:

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"Somebody" is hoggin up every bit of server capacity with his verbosity.