Presidential Poll

[Odale]

You made a political thread, so here I go.

I have a rather open-minded background, so I am somewhat liberal in my decisions.

First femal as president - Who cares? I find nothing wrong with Hillary as president, the talking she is doing is as relevant as the talking everyone else is doing... it's just to get them into the oval office.

First African-American as president - More or less same reason.

Abortion - I have a mixed view on this depending on the situation the mother / unborn CHILD (not fetus) are going through. For instance, if the woman was raped, and she is now pregnant with a baby she did not want, I believe she has a right to an abortion and should also be told that she can give it up for adoption as a second option. Another: If the mother tries to get pregnant and discovers that a baby would endanger her life and the baby's life, I believe she has the right to an abortion. On the other hand, if she is messing around, knowing she and he is using no protection, she needs to have the baby, and should not be offered an abortion. But in the end, if a woman wants to abort a pregnancy, she will get it one way or another. I am not pro-choice or pro-life, but pro-what the doctor says.

Iraq - I am against it 100%. This does not mean I do not support the troops there. Because there is no draft is makes it a little harder to give them support, but their decisions are their decisions, and they are following orders. However, I am all for the war in Afghanistan. Why? That's the country that was harboring terrorists and that is where Al'Queda was located at the time of 9/11, not Iraq. Because our negligent leader and his cronies decided to more or less abort the war in Afghanistan and move it to Iraq, I believe we need to finish what we started. We alone started the war in Iraq, not Saddam, not Osama Bin'Ladin, not Al'Queda. I ask myself sometimes who is worse: Al'Queda for their horrendous attack on New York and the Pentagon (and in no way am I justifying it or making it seem as if it is not important), or the US for leveling an innocent country.

In the end I am still undecided.

 

[Avesther]

I will not vote! But I have good reason, I can not vote as I am Canadian. But this good, because I have no idea of who I'd vote for anyway. I've watched and listened to all the canadites and there is no way I can decide. Maybe if I were an American, certain issues would hit home harder then others. But being emotionally free from the election, I still find it tough to stand up and say "So and So" would be good for the USA. The only real attachment I have is does "So and So" even know where Canada is? Having a good idea of where your largest economic trading partner is, is definatly a plus. Actually it doesn't matter. Hearing President George W. Bush refer to the good Canadian neighbours to the south was worth a few laughs.

 

[The Mighty Gerbil]

Abortion - I have a mixed view on this depending on the situation the mother / unborn CHILD (not fetus) are going through. For instance, if the woman was raped, and she is now pregnant with a baby she did not want, I believe she has a right to an abortion and should also be told that she can give it up for adoption as a second option. Another: If the mother tries to get pregnant and discovers that a baby would endanger her life and the baby's life, I believe she has the right to an abortion. On the other hand, if she is messing around, knowing she and he is using no protection, she needs to have the baby, and should not be offered an abortion. But in the end, if a woman wants to abort a pregnancy, she will get it one way or another. I am not pro-choice or pro-life, but pro-what the doctor says.

Before I start, as I have stated before on these forums I haven't gotten angry over anyone's view, only concerned and advise others to follow suit. P.S. Brave of you to post your view here so kudos to you for that

If you are willing to allow abortion in the case of rape why not allow a woman to "abort" under any circumstances or even after the child is born? Just because one person is wholly dependant on another to live does not mean they can murder them if they wish. If a man commits rape it does not give one the right to go kill their born child, so why is it ok to kill it if it is unborn? Rape should be irrelevant to determining if a child is a child. I pity the woman's circumstance but allowing her to commit another crime because of the first is not justifiable. In addition just how do you prove a woman has been raped? All a woman would have to do to get an abortion is claim she was raped by a unknown person. There are only 2 possible beliefs about unborn children a person can have. Either an unborn child is a human being or they are not human beings. If you aren't sure weather a person is dead you don't bury them. So would you kill a child if you aren't sure they are a child? You appear to believe that a unborn child is a child (with your emphasis on "child" in your post) so I do not understand how you could allow abortion in case of rape any more than in the atypical reasons. If you ask I can point to some scientific/biblical evidence if you are unsure about the status of an unborn child as many here probably could as well.

But in the end, if a woman wants to abort a pregnancy, she will get it one way or another.

That statement shouldn't have any bearing on any argument. That it is impossible to stop so we should allow it has been used to justify many evil things. If a woman wants to find a way to kill a child after it is born she will find a way as well. Slavery was disliked by many before the civil war. The main argument for it was it was inevitable, that the economy simply couldn't live without it thus we just had to live with it. Crime as a whole is inevitable so should we do nothing to stop it? While I'm sure there are some women who would self abort a child I really doubt the bulk would risk imprisonment much less their own life in the process to get one (women have died in botched abortions). Just because their are some who will "as in teens who have their boyfriend hit them in the stomach with a baseball bat until they miscarry" doesn't mean we can't make a difference in stopping it. If you don't agree why not allow everyone to get an abortion, have drugs, have sex (regardless of age), cross the border illegally and commit any crime they wish because some are going to get away with it?

Anyway I will refrain for committing on the Iraq war for now as it is another long subject. Once again I hope I did not come off as angry, I am not, only concerned.

 

[Hescominsoon]

Wow....quite the sexist remark there.

agreed..to a point. Hillary is not thw worst choice due to her being a woman..she is hte worst due to being a feminazi. She fervently believes women are superior over men and also is a total drinker of the socialist kool-aid.

 

[Hescominsoon]

I would be willing to vote for any candidate that is against abortion. Right now, Ron Paul is my top contender, although I disagree with pulling out of Iraq -- it'll just cause lives and instability.

Ron Paul said he would not consider running independent. If he doesn't win the primaries, then he's out. Even then, no one says a single word about him on the news, so chances are he's going no where.

there's this wonderful thing called a write in..if he doesn't run as an indie i'll write him in..

 

[Odale]

Everyone has their views, clearly yours, Gerbil, differ greatly from mine and that is fine. After all, this is America, the land where people can speak their mind and have minimal repercussions because of it.

If you are willing to allow abortion in the case of rape why not allow a woman to "abort" under any circumstances or even after the child is born? Just because one person is wholly dependant on another to live does not mean they can murder them if they wish. If a man commits rape it does not give one the right to go kill their born child, so why is it ok to kill it if it is unborn? Rape should be irrelevant to determining if a child is a child.

Lets make a hypothetical situation. You are married to a good looking young lady, and your family poor, you two can barely make ends meet with just your selves in the family. One night your wife is walking home and is assaulted and raped. She is now pregnant with an unwanted baby that could also compromise your wife's health.

By your reasoning, she needs to have the baby, even though it will be born into a family who cannot support it and give it a firm foundation. So would you have the baby in these dire conditions? You can hardly support yourselves and now you think you can support a baby? The best think would be to have an abortion, in my opinion. Keep in mind that she may have the baby, but a good number of people have the baby and abandon it. Is that what you would want for a child?

Just because their are some who will "as in teens who have their boyfriend hit them in the stomach with a baseball bat until they miscarry" doesn't mean we can't make a difference in stopping it.

If you think its irrelevant to bring into an argument, why bring it up? You know, as well as anyone else that crime happens, and theres nothing we can do to prevent it from totally going away. But we can educate people to be more aware about the options they have.

If you don't agree why not allow everyone to get an abortion, have drugs, have sex (regardless of age), cross the border illegally and commit any crime they wish because some are going to get away with it?

You got a bit carried away there, bucko. Please point out to me where I said to suspend the current laws and let everyone run around like wild animals. When you find it please quote it.

As I said. I am not pro-choice or pro-life. The doctor needs to be the deciding party, and the situation needs to weigh heavily on the matter.

 

[ewoksrule]

As I said. I am not pro-choice or pro-life. The doctor needs to be the deciding party, and the situation needs to weigh heavily on the matter.

That sounds good on paper, but you can find all kinds of doctors willing to do anything you want. We got doctors here in Berkeley that will give you a Marijuana Card for an eating disorder. All you have to do is simply state that when you smoke pot you feel hungry and it cures your disorder. 30mins later you get your prescription for greenbud.

I'm sure you could find a doctor that will give you an abortion because you found out your baby has blue eyes and that bothers you.

 

[Odale]

You're right, and I should have posted that in my original post when I wrote it last night, the medical field would require changes.

But, this is a poll about who you will vote for, not a discussions about beliefs vs. beliefs, so I'll refrain from the continuation of my point of view.

 

[The Mighty Gerbil]

You're right, and I should have posted that in my original post when I wrote it last night, the medical field would require changes.

But, this is a poll about who you will vote for, not a discussions about beliefs vs. beliefs, so I'll refrain from the continuation of my point of view.

I will refrain as you have, but, have posted this because I already spent several hours writing it before I saw the above. No reply is necessary.

Everyone has their views, clearly yours, Gerbil, differ greatly from mine and that is fine. After all, this is America, the land where people can speak their mind and have minimal repercussions because of it.

Yay America!

Before I start Please Note I have not brought up if the "mother is going to die thus the child part" of your posts at all, just the rape part, those are two different issues.

Lets make a hypothetical situation. You are married to a good looking young lady, and your family poor, you two can barely make ends meet with just your selves in the family. One night your wife is walking home and is assaulted and raped. She is now pregnant with an unwanted baby that could also compromise your wife's health.

By your reasoning, she needs to have the baby, even though it will be born into a family who cannot support it and give it a firm foundation. So would you have the baby in these dire conditions? You can hardly support yourselves and now you think you can support a baby? The best think would be to have an abortion, in my opinion.

Yes I would unequivocally have the baby. The problem with your hypothetical question is the situation can and does occur when a woman is not raped. Birth protection does fail and people can be careless and get their spouse pregnant. The "economic need for abortion" is a common argument but has nothing to do with rape. One could also say that a family with a born child could fall into poverty, does that condone the murder of the child to make ends meet? Now there is some expense and risk entailed in the actual birth however there is some expense and risk for abortions too (yes abortion is a lucrative industry so don't think doctors are unbiased). After a pregnancy there is the option of adoption (actually there are some hospitals that have a set place to leave children anomalously).

On a larger scale It is also interesting to note that one of the economic plights exacerbated by abortion is with 48 million less tax payers (and people living longer lives in general) social security is not getting the money they would have paid it. Yes social security is doomed to fail regardless but it's made worse by abortion.

Keep in mind that she may have the baby, but a good number of people have the baby and abandon it. Is that what you would want for a child?

Oooook so you are saying lets murder it now to prevent murdering (abandoning) it later ???

If you think its irrelevant to bring into an argument, why bring it up? You know, as well as anyone else that crime happens, and there's nothing we can do to prevent it from totally going away. But we can educate people to be more aware about the options they have.

You got a bit carried away there, bucko. Please point out to me where I said to suspend the current laws and let everyone run around like wild animals. When you find it please quote it.

I thought you were bringing it up as making the statement with...

"But in the end, if a woman wants to abort a pregnancy, she will get it one way or another."

It is similar to the reasoning "since it is going to happen anyway lets make it or retain it as a legal option". I've encountered that mode of thought on many subjects from many people so I listed them to show how absurd the reasoning was (yes it was deliberate in it's absurdity). Abortion should not be given as a option any more than in the other examples I gave. The whole of that paragraph was to dissuade you from that way of thinking. I am happy to see I was mistaken in understanding your mode of thought .

As I said. I am not pro-choice or pro-life. The doctor needs to be the deciding party, and the situation needs to weigh heavily on the matter.

Ok please clarify. Are you in favor of the doctor deciding if an abortion is necessary because the mother will die without it (thus the child) or are you in favor of the doctor deciding if a baby is a baby? You see I thought you believed a unborn child was a child from your early statement so I still remain mystified as to what getting raped has to do with the status of a human being.

Now If you are using a doctor to determine whether a human being is one I can list many medical facts that support it. Here is some text for a t-shirt I was making a year or so ago (still working on it), all the dates where researched online to be accurate as to the time they occur.

Day 98 she sucks her thumb
Day 140 a loud noise startles her
Day 168 she’s sensitive to pain
Day 175 she grasps her umbilical cord
Day 197 she recognizes her mother’s voice
Day 210 her eyes follow a light
Day 224 she sleeps and dreams
Day 226 she’s aborted

Of course I've read of other doctors claiming that they can't feel pain and it's just a involuntary reflex (in pre-natal surgery babies recoil from sharp instruments) and I am sure they have explanations for the other ahem "phenomena".

On a interesting side note some abortions have occurred at times when the baby has a chance to survive outside the womb so there is really no basis for those when you can have a c-section as easily as an abortion. Specifically the third trimester or partial birth abortion was particularly absurd. It's just what the name says, the child is in the birth canal except the head which is held in the womb while a catheter is inserted in the base of the skull to suck the baby's brains out (accurate drawings and info here http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm ) In fact there was a case of a abortionist botching an abortion and pulling a baby out all the way then completing the abortion. Except because of those couple inches he was charged with murder.

Really no doctor is going to say a unborn child is not "alive". It's alive, but, so are groups of cells. So the real question is "is it a human being"? That is the question which is a great problem to a supposedly secular society and one doctors cannot answer. If we go by science there is nothing that makes us any more than animals so by science why does our life have any more value than animals, unborn or born? If you think intelligence makes us human newborn children don't have any more than unborn and retarded people would be lesser humans wouldn't they? An ideology so conceived can only endure at the expense of the weak. It's only course of action to prevent crime is a physical deterrent as it can provide no reasoning against survival of the fittest. It would have no mercy, no love, and no hope as those ideas could only be relevant to the individual if it furthered their whims.

I will state a few questions plainly.
1.Do you or do you not believe a unborn child is a human being?
2.If you don't believe it explain how John in Luke 1:44 could have had "Joy" at meeting Mary while in the womb. (I think there have been better discussions and Biblical quotes on this in the forums).
3.If you do believe a child is a human being how can you allow it to be murdered "solely" because a woman has been raped?

One popular pro-life quote is Horton the elephant once said "a person's a person, no matter how small". Rape doesn't change that.

Shalom everybody

 

[one2dredd]

Ok I have two people I am looking at supporting Ron Paul and Huckabee. Both want to rid us of the IRS which I think is needed. Both want to increase Americans ability to sell our own Products in our OWN country. Both seem to be very Godly Men. Where I disagree with Dr. Paul is the Iraq issue. Do we need to get out yes. But not until we are able to let the Iraqi people have a fighting chance. I have had/have friends over there and they whole heartly believe in being there and they are making a difference. Now I say something about Afgahn that we gave up there. That is not true most of our Soldiers being killed are in Afgahn. How Casulties are reported it is by region and Afgahn and Iraq are in the same region and the casulties are shared between the two as well as a few smaller countries that most of us do not know we are even there. If you ask soldiers which place they would rather be stationed Iraq wins everytime. I believe we need to finish the fight in both places and get out of there. Ron Paul is for smaller government that is really good. Huckabee is not as outspoken on that issue but wanting to get rid of the IRS is also on his agenda. Now where I really like Dr. Paul is on the issue of ridding us of the Federal reserve. That is unconstitutional and needs to be abolished. it is actually a private business. Those are the two I lean towards because they have a shot of winning. I love Mr. Keyes but he does not have a chance of winning. I hope Dr. Paul does not run if he loses because all that does is take away votes for a lesser evil as president and basically gives the election to the Democrats. Now that may not be a bad thing, but I disagree with Obama and Clinton on almost every issue and will not vote for either of them.

 

[Odale]

I just recently saw a Ron Paul Youtube video of clips of things he has said... they made me a tad bit nervous.

I hate when candidates pull religion into their campaigns. I firmly believe they should keep them separate. You can be a model Christian (or Muslim or Jew or Buddhist or Hindu... you get it) and be a fine president without shoving it into the populous' eyes. Not only is it annoying, its beside the point, they are running for a public office, not the papacy. Also, once in the office they run the risk of making Christianity look bad of that make a mistake, I think thats a fair risk, now that all they've talked about is their faith and how current issues tie into it.

Those are my thoughts, but other than that he is fine.

 

[Zazzy]

I hate when candidates pull religion into their campaigns. I firmly believe they should keep them separate. You can be a model Christian (or Muslim or Jew or Buddhist or Hindu... you get it) and be a fine president without shoving it into the populous' eyes.

After thinking about what you said, it kinda just makes sense to me. I never intend to vote for someone just because they claim to share the same faith in Jesus as me. I guess it just kind of soothes a voter when they think, "hey, this guy is a Christian too! He should be good in office because he believes in the morals of the Bible!"

So much for that theory. I kinda believed that about Prez Bush during the 2004 election. But some things he's done in office has shown me differently.

But anymore, especially during this election, seems like everyone on the ballot claims to be a Christian or "believe in God", so I don't take too much worry in the fact that Ron Paul is amoung them.

I respect you a lot Odale, and really enjoyed playing WoW with you. God Bless

 

[Baron Squirrel]

i'm curious as to what dissolving the IRS is supposed to solve. we pay taxes to the US government, and isn't it them who keep track of all that? are huck and Paul planning on keeping track of that their selves, or are we going to stop paying federal taxes?

 

[vibrokatana]

i'm curious as to what dissolving the IRS is supposed to solve. we pay taxes to the US government, and isn't it them who keep track of all that? are huck and Paul planning on keeping track of that their selves, or are we going to stop paying federal taxes?

The IRS deals mainly with income tax iirc.

 

[Baron Squirrel]

so are they planning to do away with income tax? that'll never pass.

 

[Zazzy]

so are they planning to do away with income tax? that'll never pass.

I tend to agree with you. But it probably appeals to many people to hear something like that.

The United States didn't always have income tax. An Amendment was passed in 1913 that gave the Gov the ability to take in income tax, and we've been taxed ever since. The first income tax was in like 1861 I think and it was only 3%. I wouldn't mind something like that

Maybe their goals are to get the US back to that point where it's not dependent on all of our incomes, but instead of sales tax, business taxes, tariffs, traffic tickets, and who knows what other means. But is it possible? I doubt it, until our country is out of the RED budget wise.

 

[vibrokatana]

Well if you reduce the tax on the income tax the people will spend more. Basically what they are looking at is a system similar to the fair tax, which reduces the amount of tax laws drastically and could provide the same income for the gov't without stealing people's paychecks.

What they really need to do is increase tarrifs on foreign goods (primarily from china/taiwan) to stop the migration of wealth from america.

 

[ishylynn]

I don't know who I am going to vote for, and that's what I put in the poll.

On the subject of abortion, there's something a lot of pro-choice activists won't talk about, and that's the fact that 1) the abortion industry is an industry, ie. a really big moneymaker, and 2) the pro-choice activist groups, like Planned Parenthood, get a lot of money from the abortion industry to continue to push the idea of abortion as "freedom of choice".

I had a friend who worked in an abortion clinic, whom I met at UGA, and she revealed that a lot of the stuff about how abortion clinics are all about freedom of choice is just a big load of balooey. They are there to make money, and they will advertise it the way that gets the most people in there. And like Gerbil (I think) said, botched abortions are not uncommon, and neither are late trimester abortions. Plus, they advertise in high schools, and pay high schoolers to pass out pamphlets for commissions. I know that is true, because I had someone approach me with one in high school (the pamphlet is marked with a number or name of the person handing them out). They also do not usually counsel people in the best alternatives (even though many states require it). Their "counselors" are there to sell abortions, not provide alternatives. In both the "counseling" and the pamphlets, they also encourage teenagers not to tell their parents, as it's "their choice". Abortion clinics are also not subject to the same medical standards, and they use the "freedom of choice" platform to keep from being held to the same standards.

Someone I know has had eight abortions; she uses it as a form of birth control. The media advertises "freedom of choice" when really it's just an extensive ad campaign, and a lot of people don't bother really looking into it farther before deciding on the subject. Whenever the subject comes up in politics, people start yelling that to be against abortion is to be against "freedom of choice", but the truth is that the abortion industry wants to keep people from regulating it and causing it to lose money.