2008 Presidential Candidates

I'm curious as to who everybody is pulling for in the '08 elections. I know it's really early to settle on somebody, so even listing a few selections is cool. I really don't want this to devolve into a political pissing match, so please keep any fervent hate for a particular candidate to yourself! (unless it's Hillary, j/k! omg but seriously people)

 

As for myself, I'm really not sure at this point. (Ha!) The guy that I agree with most is Ron Paul, unfortunately he is a little insane and takes some things too far. Extreme isolation is a mistake, and going back to the gold standard sounds like a recipe for disaster. He's also made some interesting comments about "fleet footed" black criminals... >.< (although he claims those comments were from a ghost-written article).

 

This might be the first time I support a Democrat... this last term with Bush has been pretty abysmal.

 

With that said, does anybody have suggestions for me? Here are some criteria that I look for...

 

- Supports decriminalization of marijuana (tax it people, get rid of the defecit! also, it would fix overcrowded jails! hooray!)

- Supports stem cell research (and funding)

- Supports alternative energy sources (and funding)

- Supports vouchers for school choice (but more so for gifted students, if that makes sense)

- Generally fiscally conservative

- Supports death penalty

 

Any other questions of opinion I can answer at request!

Personally i like what Ron Paul has said thus far and his campaign is coming along quite nicely considering he's not considered a main event Republican. Sadly i'm no expert and get the majority of my info from The daily show and Colbert Report. It's not the main stream media but isn't that a good thing lately?

 

Unfortunately i am a Canadian and will have to sit back and watch your elections from afar in the cold cold north in my igloo and watch it all unfold. I hope 5 million votes from swing states don't' go missing this time around though.

 

Rounder.

i shall stick with my democratic ticket and support Obama and hillary, OBama is my favorite though... Mcain used to be cool....not anymore though =\

GO MALAYSIA!!!

Way back in 00 I was really pushing for Mccain, and I thought he'd sweep this election this year but he's really changed. A shame too.

 

Obama has been who I've been leaning toward lately, I like the guy. Clinton isn't bad either and I'd be just as fine wih her winning. Even though she is a maniacal woman and all that, I think she's got the right idea about leading the office. If her and Obama became on the same ticket, I think that would be amazing. (Vice prez/Prez)

 

None of the Republican canidates are blowing up my skirt, and I think that is pretty standard. They're embattled at the moment and will have to get past this election before they can make headway again I think.

 

Those things you listed are pretty much what I am going after too HV. However the Death Peanalty doesn't sway me. I also look to see if they aren't close minded people and are for Gay rights. Gay people dont want any special rights, just equal, and I keep an eye out for canidates that know that.

 

On an different note. Down with the electorial college system. Just count all the votes and whoever wins wins. Kthx.

ugh left wing liberal hippie douches.....

 

But seriously, as much as America says it supports a female candidate, when it comes down to it people wont vote for her because of that fact. I'm not saying that is my opinion because it isn't (although I wouldn't vote for her because she's a bitch,) the USA is not at a point where it is ready for that yet. I think a lot of people would publicly support but when the drape is closed in the private booth, vote for a dude. My 2 cents. That said I have no idea who I'd vote for yet.

Why you gotta hate women shad?

 

I raid with the sons of Duncan Hunter. No lie.

 

Oh, and at work we all took an internet survey about what candidate aligns best with your views...and I got Guiliani.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Lyssa

I pretty cynical about politics. What great feats for our country have any of these candidates accomplished that would warrant the top seat?

 

I don't walk into an employers office without a resume and make promises. I have to show experience and feats. Not just hopes and dreams.

well said joe

 

I support Ron Paul.

 

- Supports decriminalization of marijuana: Yes, Decriminalizing marijuana is good! it shouldn't have been illegal in the first place, and all it does it makes smokers political prisoners, and helps fund crime!

 

- Supports stem cell research: Stem cell research will be huge, it will help many, eff Americas ethical lapses.

 

- Supports alternative energy sources: None of the candidates are supporting a GOOD alternative... they keep pushing ethanol, heres the thing, ethanol requires corn, or another bio product. since they have been pushing ethanol, corn prices have skyrocketed, in some areas costing twice what they use to. Now for us Americans this prob wont be a big deal, but for millions of people across the world who depend on American food exports this is HUGE!!! they are suffering so our candidates can have a "energy alternative". Want a good energy alternative, look to hydrogen, its the only alternative that MAY actually replace oil. Hydrogen can be free too!! Just google hydrogen producing nuclear reactors. Next gen nuke reactors produce hydrogen FOR FREE!!!

 

- Supports vouchers for school choice? Er like... our education system is so horrid a voucher wont do anything, a fix wont do anything, an overhaul wont do a damn thing. What we need is a brand spankin new education system, more education funding, more education research, an end to standardized testing, and teachers who are payed well enough to actually feel like they wanna do a good job. Oh, and ALL YEAR SCHOOL!! Its time to end summer break for k-12, all it does it helps you forget what you have learned.

 

- Generally fiscally conservative: I don't care if you are fiscally conservative or liberal... JUST AS LONG AS YOU ARE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE, and EFFICIENT!

 

- Supports death penalty: Abolish the death penalty, the idea of us being the judge of whether someone lives or dies is BS, not to mention theres so many people that we jail that are ACTUALLY innocent! we are killing people who didn't do anything wrong!!!!! WE ARE THE ONLY DEMOCRATIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WHO STILL HAS A DEATH PENALTY! WTF IS UP W/ THAT?

 

anyway im very passionate about what this country has effed up, hopefully we can get a president who really wants to take this country forward, and not just make decisions that will better his political future...

Edited October 8, 2007 by Bishop

I'm pretty much a libertarian all the way, but they haven't been able to get their act together in 5 or 6 years. Not since Brown ran in '00. It's sad too, because at this time when both parties are becoming far more polar it would be easy for a centrist party like the libertarians to move in and take a lot of ground. If they would stop making legal pot the cornerstone of their campaigns and focus more on things like the Fair Tax, protection of property rights, state's rights and downsizing of federal government they'd probably get a lot farther.

 

As for the next election, since I'm in a very red state it doesn't really matter. The Republican will win Georgia easy. Which is fine with me cuz they're the lessor of two evils as far as I'm concerned. I like that Paul and McCain support Fair Tax and a few other things I care about, but I'm not sure Paul would make a good president and I think McCain will probably be dead by the time he finishes one term plus he's started look like a loony and angry old man lately. Thompson is just too conservative for me I think. Edwards I think is just crazy. I could probably live with Obama, he isn't a nutcase like some of the others, but I'd really rather it not be Hillary. She scares the shit out of me. The Clinton Machine needs to come to an end as much as the Bush machine.

 

 

 

On an different note. Down with the electorial college system. Just count all the votes and whoever wins wins. Kthx.

I dunno, it's there for a reason, not sure if it matters much any more though. Only 2 of the last 5 elections has the winner of the popular vote also won the election. Bush 1 and Bush 2's second election. Even Clinton didn't win the popular vote. It is kinda screwy the way it works and I'm beginning to like it less.

 

But seriously, as much as America says it supports a female candidate, when it comes down to it people wont vote for her because of that fact. I'm not saying that is my opinion because it isn't (although I wouldn't vote for her because she's a bitch,) the USA is not at a point where it is ready for that yet. I think a lot of people would publicly support but when the drape is closed in the private booth, vote for a dude. My 2 cents. That said I have no idea who I'd vote for yet.

 

Most of these people I think are all older, like 60+ at least, and from places like the midwest and southeast. Most of these places are red states anyways and Hillary already has less of a chance there. If it was a Republican woman running, then yeah it could make a difference and that person probably would have a hard time getting past the primaries (see Elizabeth Dole in '00). It could affect Hillary in Florida though. A swing state with such a large percentage of older people.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Hykos

I just mean what you said right there Hykos. You're in Georgia so your vote wont matter, Republicans will win GA. Thats what sucks. So many people in Red and Blue states dont vote cause it wont matter. Like in Utah, it went 69% republican, the highest margin in the union. Any democrat there is really throwing their vote away. It's outdated imo.

 

I like Libertarian socialists. =P Socialist states and a libertarian federal government!

I fail to see why a person who has raped / murdered people deserves to live, siphoning off our tax dollars in the process. Letting them rot in jail doesn't seem like the best choice to me, especially when they stock jails with playstations (wtf, this is supposed to be punishment, amirite?).

 

As far as jailing people that are innocent, I agree. Let the huge amount of people put in jail because of pot out. But how often are people given the death sentence for crimes they didn't commit? Surely advanced forensics have negated that, or so I hope...

 

As far as fixing schools, I also agree. But I don't think such sweeping changes are going to be in the near future. It will take a lot of time. In the meantime, why not let our gifted children choose more advanced schools, so they don't get f(*ked by No Child Left Behind? I saw many smart kids languish in high school; it seems like the idea is to slow everything down so the stragglers can catch up, retarding and holding back the kids who actually want to learn in the process.

 

For alternative energy, I mean things like wind farms, new nuke plants (hooray irrational fear), and devoting A LOT of funding to energy storage. We aren't going to be driving (convenient and fun-to-drive) electric cars until the issue of energy density is solved. I hadn't heard of the hydrogen producing nuke plants, I'll have to look into that.

Yeah new Nuke plants ftw. They are somewhat scary, but it's been 20 something years since we've built one. I'd hope we would have new safeguards to make them damn near perfect. Not to mention all the old ones are still going and havent had an incident.

 

Capital punishment I see both sides on so I dont really have an opinion.

 

Stem Cells needs to happen before another country takes our smartest away from us and does it over there. Not to mention just for the general advancement of medicine. So many possibilities we're not going after like we should.

 

My Grandma was a teacher for 40 years, she was the "at risk" teacher. Ya know, the general F@#@ ups. No child left behind was a horrible plan. I cant wait to see it gone. That and our huge debt needs to stop getting larger. I thought since he was Republican he wasn't supposed to let stuff like that happen. Im surprised other republicans havent gotten more upset about that than I would think they would.

I'd like to stear clear of any more federal school reforms, HV. No Child Left... already took too much control from States and Counties. The Fed just needs to allow states to use the funding on school vouchers and I'm sure many states would allow them. Georgia came close a few years ago, but it would have required a lot more state and county funding to pull off I think.

 

As for gifted kids HV, that depends entirely on the school district. Some handle it better than others. I assume yours did not do so well the way you sound. Mine allows separate classes for almost every thing in High School. All my Lit and Science classes where separate and in smaller groups of kids that I took almost every gifted or AP class with. Higher maths like trig/calc would have been the same way if I chose to take those. The only thing we didn't have separate classes for was history, which sucked for me cuz that's my favorite subject and the classes were always boring and retardedly slow.

 

Even though I don't like public education, as long as it's around they should at the very least increase the pay they give those poor teachers. To put up with the BS they have to deal with and to only get paid like 35-40k is sad.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Hykos

Stang, I think the debt actually went down this past year, surprisingly.

 

As for the death penalty, I don't support a federal ruling against. It's up to the states, but I'd prefer they all change their laws to require DNA evidence before sentencing the death penalty. An eye witness testimony just isn't good enough.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Hykos

Education is extremely important, in my opinion it should be priority 1. Our education system is so outdated, so scrambled from political ambitions, that it just doesnt work anymore. We have too many dropouts, too many kids (myself included) are just way too bored to benefit from education. Ive felt this way since before i graduated, and i feel that if a change is not made, we will have an entire generation of people who will never reach their full potential. Education is our path to the future, with global warming melting the arctic, americas large debt, future wars over resources (for instance oil reserves in the north pole will have canada, america, russia, and greenland fighting for control, its already starting) we will REQUIRE intelligent people to help solve these problems.

 

also, inner city schools, as much as polititions wanna place blame for their poor performance on the kids themselves, you must understand they don't receive enough resources. when people complain of too many drug dealers and crime in cities, these are miniorities that cant afford college, but still want to make money, The only education they can recieve is public and what will that get them? a job at burger king? plz... if i had to work at BK after highschool, id start selling crack too!

 

If we don't act to improve education and our debt, expect a brain drain in the future.

In general, I'm fairly conservative, however, I really dislike what republicans have become.

 

Ron Paul has some great things to say, but some crazy things to say, so I couldn't vote for him.

 

I suppose I would support Hillary, but not because I really want to, but because there aren't any better choices?

I imagine most of you would feel the same...and isn't that sad? We have to choose the person who we think sucks the least?

 

What I would look for in a candidate:

 

1:

Stop the war, and bring the troops home in a reasonable time. It was mentioned that none of the candidates thought that they could bring a full withdrawl

inside of 5 years....wtf?

 

2:

Somebody who understands that what goes on in the middle east is none of our business. We are not the policemen of the world. We shouldn't act alone, that's why we have the UN.

 

3:

STOP GIVING BIG CORPORATIONS TAX BREAKS. It kills me inside. I don't have a link to the source, but I was reading other day, that if large corporations were paying the same tax percentages as they were 50 years ago, the entire budget deficit would be gone. 50 years ago, taxes from large corporations made up a full 1/3 of the revenue, today it is less than 10%.

 

4:

Stem cell research... I support the research done, I really do. However, I hate the idea of harvesting stem cells. Creating life only to destroy it for research is horrific to me. (I am also against abortion incase you were wondering ). But there are other methods for getting stem cells (bone marrow and such) that I believe are great and worth while to explore.

 

5:

Death penalty: Our justice system is flawed. The legal expression goes "better to let 10 guilty people go free, then to convict innocent man." I believe that to be true. However, I can't say that if something were to happen to a family member or friend of mine that I would argue that the person should live in prison. If we had something more similar to 'solitary confinement in a very small room for life' as opposed to the death penalty, I would be all for it.

 

There is also the issue of guard safety to consider. Someone who is facing consectutive life sentences without the possiblity of parole has no qualms about killing guards, since there are no consequences.

 

6:

Remove the 'no child left behind act'. Stop basing school funding on local tax revenues. That's what causes such variation in school quality.

 

7:

Universal health care ftw.

 

Oh, forgot:

 

8:

Time to go green.

Edited October 8, 2007 by Coeus

Oh I def. think they should pay teachers more, as my mom is one : ]

 

Yeah, we had access to AP classes and honors classes. AP was ok, but its success was largely dependent on the teacher - for example, my AP Physics teacher "learned" physics the summer previous to teaching our class. Our school couldn't afford to hire an actual physics teacher. My AP calc class was much better - it was actually much more difficult than the calc 1 I took in college 0_o. Honors classes still catered to the lowest common denominator it seemed.

 

Stang - I don't know why more Republicans aren't pissed at our fiscal situation. I know I am. It flys in the face of traditional conservative ideology.

This may surprise all of you but I don't support the legalization of marijuana flat out. Medical yes. Speeding ticket fines, yes, but not all out legal. Look what Marboro and Camel did to tobacco. I don't want that shit in my joint.

 

Stem cell research huge benefit besides we allow abortions. And stem cell has the possibility for creating good.

 

On the topic of abortion. You cant say yes or no on the bottom line. Excessive abortions or excessive births people cannot support deserve a snip-snip of said persons genitals. You are screwing with a life either way and they obviously don't have the responsibility to be safe. So lets take a page from Darwin.

 

Death penalty... I don't think we use it enough. Bullet cost > years of prison. Just think how much of that we could dump into the school system.

 

The whole voting system is screwed. Electoral college these days definately isn't the way to go. You want people to vote, make their vote count. Not a mere ratio for a majority vote of a state system.

 

NO ONE should be against alternative fuel. Do we really want to rely on countries like Iraq, Iran Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to fuel our country. Fuck no. And we end up having to send America lives to protect our economic interests in countries that don't want us there to begin with.

 

I don't even know where to start about the school system.

 

The division of Red and Blue, left or right, is the beginning of the dissolution of the focus of what the government is there for. This is for the country not your god damned political party.

 

 

EDIT: Gay Marriage. All the arguments I've heard against man-man/woman-woman marriage can still be applied to man-woman so whats the point?

Edited October 8, 2007 by Joesf

lol i took that candidate quiz thing....

 

#1 Kucinich

#2 Chris Dodd

#3 John Edwards

#4 Obama

#5 Hillary

 

and so on...lol

 

i dont I even need to post my opinions now!

On the topic of abortion. You cant say yes or no on the bottom line. Excessive abortions or excessive births people cannot support deserve a snip-snip of said persons genitals. You are screwing with a life either way and they obviously don't have the responsibility to be safe. So lets take a page from Darwin.

 

This is pretty much how I feel on this issue... I like the idea of conditional abortions, i.e. rape, the mother could die, and other extenuating circumstances. This is because I feel that if we totally legalize it, people will just take it to an obscene level. Why take the pill / use a condom (barring STDs) when you can just vacuum that sucker out? The only problem is, how the hell do you enforce it? I guess you could have a case-by-case review to determine whether the person qualifies, but people will find a way to exploit it.

 

Edit:

Marijuana legalization - I know what you're saying about Big Tobacco Joe, but everybody is still perfectly free to go to the store, buy tobacco and rolling papers, and make their own cigs. Why couldn't marijuana be the same way?

Edited October 8, 2007 by Hvilelos

This is pretty much how I feel on this issue... I like the idea of conditional abortions, i.e. rape, the mother could die, and other extenuating circumstances. This is because I feel that if we totally legalize it, people will just take it to an obscene level. Why take the pill / use a condom (barring STDs) when you can just vacuum that sucker out? The only problem is, how the hell do you enforce it? I guess you could have a case-by-case review to determine whether the person qualifies, but people will find a way to exploit it.

 

Edit:

Marijuana legalization - I know what you're saying about Big Tobacco Joe, but everybody is still perfectly free to go to the store, buy tobacco and rolling papers, and make their own cigs. Why couldn't marijuana be the same way?

 

That's pretty much what I meant regarding abortion. I don't feel it's 'right', but under some extenuating circumstances it may be necessary. I am just sick of seeing people sleep around, getting pregnant, then running to a clinic to destroy a life. Also, when there are thousands of couples out there looking to adopt and have families, I just think there are infinitely better options.

This may surprise all of you but I don't support the legalization of marijuana flat out. Medical yes. Speeding ticket fines, yes, but not all out legal. Look what Marboro and Camel did to tobacco. I don't want that shit in my joint.

 

Your argument is flawed, as its based on what you want/don't want in your trees. The issue is much deeper, i do smoke, and feel it should be legal because it doesn't harm anyone else, my smoking doesn't hurt anybody! So who are you to say i cant smoke? this is the land of the free? right? so allow me to be free.

 

My idea of freedom is, i should be able to do whatever i please, as long as i don't infringe on your rights/property/privacy/life by doing so.

also, inner city schools, as much as polititions wanna place blame for their poor performance on the kids themselves, you must understand they don't receive enough resources.

 

You're kidding, right? Most inner city schools these days have more resources than suburban schools. The government just throws money at them. I know a couple years ago Atlanta City schools were spending something like $12k a year per student on education, more than twice the state average. (That's about as much as Atlanta's best private schools cost). And they had absolutley nothing to show for it. It all comes down to the students and their parents.

 

The governments solution to every problem is to throw money at it and it never works. Watch the same thing happen to healthcare if we end up giving control to the government. It'll be no better than the UK's or Canada's, which are pretty poor as I understand it.

 

7:

Universal health care ftw.

 

I'd leave the country if that happened.