No need. He’s been corrupted already. He’s a computer consultant!

Naw that’s just a fancy word for unemployed :D

FWIW I just got some Kerry-bashing spam. I’m sure it’s not official and was an independent effort by an eccentric oil tycoon who simply liked George when he met him once at a coctail party. Is nothing too sleazy for these people? How appropriate that it came in good company; viagra, penile extension, cheap dates and financial scams.

At least in the UK you have the LibDems - even though I don’t think the PM is often (ever?) from that party.

The fundamental problem is that we don’t have run-off elections here. Voters cannot just vote for their preferred candidate since they would often be “throwing their vote away” if their candidate does not win. So we have to choose the most “electable” candidate that we can tolerate. For example, Kerry would likely be my 3rd choice, yet I will probably vote for him.

A small change in the elections law to allow run-offs (usually implemented as “instant run-offs” where you rank all the candidates instead of just voting for one) would eliminate this problem.

Yes i agree with that. Also there was this one time when our PM was elected from LibDems which was in the 70’s. But people dont really like the LibDems because their stack is full of empty promises and they just get counted down to lame critics which i think is their best role in the system.

I admire your courage to vote your conscience.  I voted Libertarian in the last election.  My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.  While many of you on this forum may like that idea, it would only serve to drive this country further into an already rapid moral decline.  I appreciate the criticisms regarding my vote for the Constitution Party, but I am obviously not trying to convince anyone here to vote for Michael Peroutka.  You all know the motive for my vote is biblically rooted.  Bush is too religous for my taste.  It comes across as insincere and plastic to me.  He is only trying to get the Christian vote.  I am not fooled by his political game. 

The 16th amendment needs to be repealed and Government needs to get MUCH smaller.  The Libertarian and Constitution Parties both agree on this.  The Rep and Dem parties are too corrupt to see it, though.  They are too busy lining their pockets and setting up their lucrative retirement plans at OUR expense.  (Must be nice)

I will always wave God’s flag before this country’s any day.  The political condition of this country is enough of a concern for me to vote, but not that much of a concern to me personally.

Neither party seems to have much of an idea how to do this, however. It’s not as simple as just repealing the amendment (never the easiest of things) and cutting spending. They forget the massive debt this country owes. The interest payments alone are about $300B a year. That interest is the third-largest spending category in the federal budget. That and the massive debt itself neads to be dealt with before you can even think of repealing the income tax. It’s something that gets disturbingly little attention from anyone.

[quote author=“Drachen”]the massive debt itself neads to be dealt with before you can even think of repealing the income tax. It’s something that gets disturbingly little attention from anyone.

Who does the US borrow the majority of its money from? I think it is the Asia central banks (China, Japan, etc.) but I’ve never seen the breakdown.

The paranoid among us might observe that this gives them power over our economy and thus over our country. Perhaps this is even a homeland security issue that is not being addressed?

[quote author=“grisjuan”]Who does the US borrow the majority of its money from? I think it is the Asia central banks (China, Japan, etc.) but I’ve never seen the breakdown.

The paranoid among us might observe that this gives them power over our economy and thus over our country. Perhaps this is even a homeland security issue that is not being addressed?

There’s a nice breakdown here . Much of the debt is privately held, but much of it is also held by other parts of the government. Japan and China both try to cover their trade surpluses with these loans. I guess it is a national security problem, but it’s not nearly the problem that natural resources and economics are. Saudi Arabia is about the worst best friend the US has but is virtually untouchable due to how much we need their oil. We also find it very difficult to criticize China due to how much our business sector depends on their manufacturing. Most of the rest is held by corporations, mutual funds and private bondholders.

[quote author=“Drachen”]There’s a nice breakdown here . Much of the debt is privately held, but much of it is also held by other parts of the government. Japan and China both try to cover their trade surpluses with these loans.

That is a great chart! It shows that almost 23% of our national debt is held internationally - I think that’s significant.

Yes I agree that our voting system needs to be alters drastically.  Currently there is no way for a third party to really become president.  But I personally lack an absolute way to do this (although the ranking system sounds very promising).  But something needs to be alters so other canidates actually have a chance of getting into office.

[quote author=“Drachen”]That doesn’t make sense without eliminating the Electoral College.

I’d personally love to see the Elctorial College taken out of the picture myself.

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”][quote author=“MegaManXcalibur”]I’m probably voting for Michael Badnarik.  If you don’t know who he is I wouldn’t be suprised, he’s thrid party (Libertarian).

I admire your courage to vote your conscience.  I voted Libertarian in the last election.  My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.

I know they want to take some freedoms beyond what I’d be comfortable with (i.e. completly legalizing every currently illegal druge) but for a majority of their views I find myself agreeing with them.  But as I said I agree they want to take some things too far.

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]The 16th amendment needs to be repealed and Government needs to get MUCH smaller.  The Libertarian and Constitution Parties both agree on this.  The Rep and Dem parties are too corrupt to see it, though.  They are too busy lining their pockets and setting up their lucrative retirement plans at OUR expense.  (Must be nice)

That’s my biggest issue this year, the amount of power the government now wields.  As Drachen says neither party really has an exact plan on how to do this but they do want to do it, whereas the Democrats and Republicans both seem happy with having a government that is in control of most things.

The big problems I have are the DMCA and the PATRIOT Act (which I have a HUGE problem with).  Both laws pretty much take our freedoms and flush them down the toilet.  One of the main reasons I’m voting for Badnarik is because he’s dead set on repealing both of these acts.  It would be nice to live in the land of the truely free again as opposed to living in the land of the fairly free unless the government decides there is a slight possability you could be up to something.

I would also like to return to the days where America didn’t involve itself with every country’s problems.  I really don’t see what gives us the right to head over to country X and tell them their form of government isn’t the right one and they need to become a decmocracy like us.  Then you have Iraq, we went ahead and put Saddam into power during the cold war to prevent Iraq from becoming communist.  Now we decided he was our enemy (and he decided we were his) and went over all gung ho to take him out.  But we never really settled on a reason why (was it because he was funding terrorism, because he had weapons of mass desctruction, or were we just liberating the people of Iraq?). 

I don’t see how we as American’s have the right to go attack a country who has not directly attacked us.  What makes our way the only way anyhow?  Things like Vietnam, Iraq, ect. need to be stopped and the best way to do that is to simply not involve ourselves with other countries politics. (As for trade relations and relief efforts (food, materials, water, ect. to people in need) support I’m 100% for it, I just don’t agree with our idea that we need to police the world).

But I also agree with what Drachen said, we need to fix the national debt before doing to terribly much.  Oweing $300 billion dollars a year in interest along is just outrageous.  But then again I don’t really see any canidate who has an actual working plan to get this under control either.  But not going off and fighting wars with countries that don’t agree with our way of life is a good way to chop a good amount of spending every year.

And I already know that to everything I said there are about a hundred issues I’m not addressing (all political situations are far to complex for any one person to understand).  Everything I’ve said is simply based on what I’ve personally observed and have been able to wrap my brain around.

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.

Isn’t pornography already legal?

If the religious right succeeds in banning “pornography” - who gets to decide what is and is not banned? Art and literature come to mind. I know my objections are the obvious ones, but I still think they are important ones that any person who wants to ban things should address.

[quote author=“grisjuan”][quote author=“TruthSeeker”]My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.

Isn’t pornography already legal?

If the religious right succeeds in banning “pornography” - who gets to decide what is and is not banned? Art and literature come to mind. I know my objections are the obvious ones, but I still think they are important ones that any person who wants to ban things should address.

That’s what I was going to say, as far as I know, porno is perfectly legal.

[quote author=“sina3001”][quote author=“grisjuan”][quote author=“TruthSeeker”]My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.

Isn’t pornography already legal?

If the religious right succeeds in banning “pornography” - who gets to decide what is and is not banned? Art and literature come to mind. I know my objections are the obvious ones, but I still think they are important ones that any person who wants to ban things should address.

That’s what I was going to say, as far as I know, porno is perfectly legal.

Not only is it legal..
it’s fabulous.

Depends what kind of porn, how old you are and where it’s sold to you. Child porn for example is highly illegal. In many places it’s illegal to buy porn if you’re under 18 (possibly 21 in some areas) and there are definite restrictions on where you can sell porn. For example in the West Village in NYC, there’s been an explosion of sex shops even though the area is technically not zoned for it. They fudge their stock so that under 60% of it is porn (like stocking spanish-dubbed Popeye VHS tapes) and they technically fall within the law.

And that’s just the common stuff. The only set of laws that come even close to the ridiculousness and arbitraryness of local sex laws in the US are local alcohol laws.

[quote author=“tmkt”][quote author=“sina3001”][quote author=“grisjuan”][quote author=“TruthSeeker”]My only problem with their stand on issues is that they want to take certain freedoms to the extreme and legalize pornography.

Isn’t pornography already legal?

If the religious right succeeds in banning “pornography” - who gets to decide what is and is not banned? Art and literature come to mind. I know my objections are the obvious ones, but I still think they are important ones that any person who wants to ban things should address.

That’s what I was going to say, as far as I know, porno is perfectly legal.

Not only is it legal..
it’s fabulous.

I think you guys know what I mean.  The morality of any country is the thermometer for its perpetual existance.  Pick out any history book.  The founding fathers did not have in mind a land rampant with pornographic content when they framed our Constitution.  When are freedoms considered taken too far? 

If the biblical zealots get their way, who really gets hurt?  Are not the principles set forth in the bible meant to help us and not hurt anyone?  Please give this serious thought before you respond!

Getting back to the election thou, i think from what i’ve seen of these elections i think the american people are really really confused about the 2 options. May be thats the reason we are seeing an emerging number of “swing” states , or states that are not really decided. The 50-50 states. It was different in 2000 where both candidates were new and there wasnt much to lose. But this time its so much more intense, because where people are dissatisfied at the way bush has handled internal affairs and the iraq war, they are also unsure about kerry. Very precarious if you ask me.