well all things considered

[samuelmichaels]

Then there's the other extreme view on abortion by a strongly religious country such as Northern Ireland where they refuse to perform an abortion as long as there is a foetal heartbeat:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741

I my opinion that instance is nothing less than murder of both the mother and the unborn child.

Just a minor correction--the article describes events in the Republic of Ireland,
and not Northern Ireland (which is part of UK).

[Seastallion]

Fel, with all due respect (and your stories have earned you a lot of respect from me!) I thing the racism your attributing to the TEA party is a regional thing. I grew up in Ohio and my grandmother was raised in WV and I heard plenty about how racist and 'hillbilly' people from WV were. Of course there was plenty of racism to be heard in Ohio as well. Now hillbillies are called red necks and white trash and other racist types of remarks (which I also think is being racist.)

I have to agree with you. None of the Tea Party people I know are racist. My dad is a member of the Tea Party, and he is married to a Jewish woman. She's a really sweet lady. My dad objects to the government over regulation and general interference with commerce and self determination. My dad owns a farm/ranch and he is just trying to be self-sufficient with his property. He's not rich by any stretch of the imagination, and is always working hard everyday on various projects around the farm, or his off property work. He's just sick of the bloated government. I agree.

I attended one of the early TEA party rallies in Joliet IL, which is just outside Chicago. Most of the signs had to do with stopping spending and government irresponsibility and how we felt we weren't being represented those elected. Plenty about Obamacare as well, and this was before it was passed. The crowd was predominantly white. However the crowd was very accepting of an no-whites and everyone was in high spirits because we were all among those who felt the same. We were mostly upset about how Obama and Bush for that matter had raised the national debt from $3 trillion to $6 trillion under Bush in 8 years, and then Obama doubled the national debt in a few short months with these stupid bailouts that didn't appear to have much effect.

I agree again. Tea Party members are primarily about Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, and Free Markets. The social issues are at best side issues, and not the Tea Party's primary concerns. It is true, they tend to lean socially conservative, but it isn't their primary focus.

The T.E.A. party stands for Taxed Enough Already. Some of the entertainers at this event were black. One black singer I remember was cheered just as much as all the whites. I've been told by many that the TEA party is racist and I've been quite confused about it and I blame the liberal media. I saw the coverage of the TEA party rally I attended. While there I asked a police officer of his opinion of how many were there. He said there were about 150,000 people and there were so many trying to gain entrance that they had to shut down access to the site because is was blocking the highway. The news that night said there were about 10,000 there and really down played it.

The Tea Party has basically been labeled by the mainstream media as a "Far Right" extremist faction, supporting anti-abortion, anti-women, anti-color, etc., issues. None of which is true. Like I said, their primary focus is the government getting the debt under control, and to STOP SPENDING the country into oblivion. I've always said myself, that the problem is NOT taxes per se, it is the spending. Taxes aren't helping either though...

I can't honestly say of course that the party hasn't since been highjacked and corrupted, but at least at the beginning it wasn't. Perot's Reform party was also corrupted be established politicians. I remember Pat Buchanan ran under the reform party ticket, so I know it happens.

Just by 2 cents.

The main problem with the Republican party is the Establishment members, not the Tea Party, that are pro Big Business, but no so much for the small businesses, despite their lip service. I sincerely hope the party moves in the direction of Ron Paul. I'm not so sure about his foreign policy, but I agreed with him on just about everything else.

[GBLW]

Actually one of the things I noticed and found extremely strange about that election was the fact that Evangelical Christians were willing to support a Mormon candidate - especially since not that many years ago I had heard several radio broadcasts made by those same Evangelical Christians when they had been denouncing the LDS in any form.

All I can say is that politics makes for 'strange bedfellows' and even stranger alliances.

[Griffinmane]

The main problem with the Republican party is the Establishment members, not the Tea Party, that are pro Big Business, but no so much for the small businesses, despite their lip service. I sincerely hope the party moves in the direction of Ron Paul. I'm not so sure about his foreign policy, but I agreed with him on just about everything else.

I honestly haven't looked into Ron Paul's opinions. But we agree on big business. I'm sure like many people we are sick of seeing Big Business pretty much running the political system with all their money. I honestly think we need to start splitting a bunch of them up, like railroads and oil was split up back in Carnegie's day. The biggest problem is the banks. The top six banks now hold the same percentage of the money (?) as the top 25 banks had only a decade or two ago. That is clearly too much influence. We should have let many of them fail instead of bailing them out.

I would like to see us give more tax breaks to small businesses.

[Seastallion]

My biggest problems with the Corporations is that they are LITERALLY given the same rights as an individual. That is completely insane to me. How such a thing ever got passed into law is so far beyond me. I don't necessarily have problems with the rich, it is the unscrupulous scoundrels that step on others with no remorse that I don't like. I don't have a problem with the competition of the free market either, but I do think there are areas where the ideals of fair trade (as opposed to free trade) might be given room in certain instances. There are actually ideas that Democrats have, that I support, but in general I tend to lean to the Right. I do think that College Education should be far easier to get. Honestly, I think maybe it ought to be partially compulsory, just like High School. That is just my opinion though.

[Wingsolution]

An interesting topic, you haven't mentioned economics very much and I'm wondering what the views are on that front. I've seen several political cartoons about taxes among the high income, and I read an article about space travel (NASA has had the same budget for decades bastards!). I was wondering on the global economy front if it wasn't bringing down the standard of living in the US, how much has the standard of living gone up in say china? If Corporations are moving all their jobs to the third world to increase profits, how are first world citizens going to pay for them? A janitor making minimum wage should be able to support a family of three. Should all citizens get jobs running the companies that run the world, and use non-citizen labor for menial positions? Both places I've lived have had bad unemployment (Santa Cruz, CA; Central Oregon). Both places are touristy, so I'm sure that has something to do with it, but tourist places survive on Extra money the middle class earns, the fact that places are closing in those areas indicates a shrinking middle class.

My proposition, (a simple sweeping solution guaranteed to make more problems and solve nothing) is a tariff on all imports baised on the ratio of the difference in pay between workers in the two countries. This ratio is only affected by people who qualify for unions, so just workers, no management.
Ex: using made up numbers if min wage in US is $10/hr and workers in china get $0.10/hr then the tariff would be 100x the value of the goods imported.
This MAY cause more of a balance between first world and third world wages without totally disrupting the global economy. I think we need to do something, as the US economy is broken, and that's hurting how much taxes are collected, and our current spending to fix it(running up the national debt) is only attacking the symptom, not the disease. I agree with seastallion on personal responsibility, as that's the disease that's causing the abortion problem symptom.

All that said, I'm interested in what people who disagree with me have to say, and I don't think what I've said is THE solution, though it MAY be the beginning of a plan.