@ bishie: Thanks for the fantastic posts and I appreciate your insight. The more I think about it, I agree Ron Paul would be a great candidate however the American people are not likely to go with it. Hillary is viewed as the "complete opposite" of Little Bush in nearly every aspect and that seems to be what is appealing to the voters right now.
@ EvaLSeraphim: Thank you too for the response. Your efforts here are recognized and appreciated however we may have taken a wrong turn somewhere. My interest is not in arm wrestling people I do not know online for something that won?t make a bit of difference; rather, I am interested in exploring creative, new, or even controversial ideas--something, anything progressive. From my experience there has never been a shortage of people willing to take a stand on what not to do and then not follow up with any alternatives. It is not unlike running a meeting in my office building: A dozen people will organize into a room for a brainstorming session to resolve the fire of the day and generally a few people will offer ideas, but most everyone will sit back and focus their efforts on discussing why that person?s idea will not work rather than spending the energy focusing on the issue. People attending my meetings aren?t allowed to just sit back and just say ?No? without offering some sort of alternative idea--no matter how crazy it may be. Doing so seems to foster progress and minimize people?s fear of criticism.
Anyway, back on track, I?ll do my best to quickly fill in the gaps out of respect and maybe you will agree that continuing down this rat hole is too exhausting:
* Unemployement: The original comment was made to awgee and maybe I misinterpreted this as ?How would America pay for welfare programs? based on the direction of the conversation, so I simply offered my thoughts.
* The Poor: I guess in my mind, not all poor are destitute, but all destitute are poor. I grew up poor raised by a single mother on welfare, but I wouldn?t say we were destitute. Also, I didn't say poor people are lazy, however, I would say my mom is lazy because I?ve never known her to work a day in her life.
* Neutral: Maybe ?non-interventionist policies? is what I meant here as opposed to either expansionism or isolationism. Yes, I support the idea of giving our military a rest for a while and focus being defensive rather than offensive.
* Immigration: My wife is from Taiwan and it was brutal jumping through all the hoops necessary to obtain legal status for her. Legal status took over 4 years to obtain and it didn't help that 9/11 threw immigration processing into gridlock just before we applied. There were times when I felt it would?ve been easier to take her into Mexico and sneak her into the country. I would love to share our horror stories and I can not imagine what other people go through. The immigration process must be reformed to be more efficient and provide an incentive for people to do it legally. Like water, most people will take the path of least resistance.
* Securing Borders: To me, immigration is only a part of it--like performing thorough background checks. Developing the right technologies is another--such as defense shields and dirty bomb detection etc. etc...
* Education: Forgive me if I am wrong about the status quo, but If the children can?t even balance a checkbook by the time they graduate high school, how can we expect them to have enough capacity to be more than just burger flippers? Or even Realtors?
lol, okay, we?ll leave that question rhetorical, but I am not okay with the status quo and money spend on military abroad could be invested in the children and society instead. I would like more to be done here before the world starts passing us by.
* Smaller government: The government is spending money without regard to income taxes. The key word here is ?income? taxes because I fully support other necessary fees, tolls, consumption taxes, etc. I?m simply trying to imagine what government would look like if income taxes were returned to the people. Again, I love discussing new and creative ideas, but I abhor those actions which immediately shoot these ideas down before they?ve been fully explored or tested.
* 10 Things: Ugh. I?m not the one running for election here. Maybe your favorite candidate is perfect and you support a big government. I totally respect your opinion. The linked graphic should make me feel appreciative I?m not paying more taxes? <sarcasm>
Again, thanks for your responses EvaLSeraphim because it was fun reading and I respect your concerns. Please excuse me from participating further in this type of discussion. I?m not here to sell you or anybody anything. I completely understand politics is a highly volatile topic and I simply found something that piqued my interest and wanted to hear the opinions of the IHB community. Thanks!
