We are just about three hundred years early. 
Obama in for 2012? Where do you stand?
- Thread starter Danoz
- Start date
The only thing Obama's done/not done that's really disappointed me is Gitmo.
I voted for him in 2008 and will again next year.
I voted for him in 2008 and will again next year.
This.
Voted for him in 2008, will vote for him in 2012. The Republicans have been hijacked by the Tea Partiers.
What should the President do about Gitmo?
There's nothing inherently wrong with having public debt, so long as its ratio relative to GDP remains manageable and interest rates are low. Our ratio lately has been too high, but you can blame the economic meltdown for that.
The problem with a federal sales tax is that it will either be regressive if you don't exempt enough items, or it will be worthless because you exempted too many items. Where do you draw the line?
I agree that the tax code is too complicated and should be streamlined, but I think the progressive tax system we have today is a fundamentally good idea. Keep that, rip out most deductions, and keep the remaining ones simple and sensible. Start off with no deductions or credits at all, then center the debate around which ones should be available.
It's the Supreme Court's job to interpret such things, which they have done many times over the past 200 years. You may not like the results, but there you go.
Well, you can't have it both ways. A concise, vague document will be open to interpretation. The only way to leave no wiggle room is to have a massive, overly-specific document that covers every possible eventuality. It's a tradeoff either way.
I do think the Electoral College is a rather archaic holdover from the days when states were much more powerful and independent. The spoils system we use also skews the way campaigns are run. I'd be cool with just having all states award their electoral votes proportionately rather than giving whichever candidate has 50%+1 votes all of them. That never really made sense to me and we should probably do away with it.
You're right, you would need an Amendment to deal with that, because as far as the current Constitution goes it is a settled matter--people born here are citizens, period.
We also need to acknowledge that there is no feasible way to deport ~14 million people. We can deport some of them, but when you get down to what's realistic in terms of manpower and budget, we're never going to make more than a small dent in those numbers. Best to just find ways to accommodate people who are already here and provide appealing avenues for legal immigration or even temporary work visas.
This is one of those ideas that always gets trotted out but is a horrible concept in practice. All term limits do is rotate people in and out of office. Government is a complicated business, and having novices take over every few years just means the people doing the job won't have any idea how government actually functions. It also means that those who know their time is about up will spend their term trying to secure future employment, which is spelled c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n. Not that our current legislators aren't corrupt, but term limits are likely to make it worse, not better.
A "read the bill" amendment. All bills should have to be released in their entirety for public comment, criticism, and debate for a certain period of time proportionate to its length. No more passing the bill to find out what's in it. OK, so what if it's an emergency? Well, given the abuses that could happen if we allowed Congress to determine willy-nilly what's an emergency and what should be rammed down people's throats without the proper debate time, I would say don't provide an emergency power to go around that amendment. In fact--if it IS an emergency, that should be a clue that there isn't any time to go loading the bill with your loopholes and pet projects, then, shouldn't it?
Congresspeople have staffs to read bills for them and boil it down. I really don't want my Senators and Representatives spending every waking hour holed up in their office reading legislation. They pay staff members to do this and bring to their attention anything that needs it.
I agree that a bill should have a minimum "cooling off" period between its introduction and a vote, to ensure everyone has had time to review it.
So, I don't know. A few of your ideas are basically sound but most of them I would find unsupportable in any form.
Yeah, the Founders really shafted us on that one...
I wish there was a strong enough Republican frontrunner. The field is just not strong enough. Ultimately, I think one will emerge and take the presidency in '12. Just wish it was someone like Herman Cain who I really admire. Then again, you never know... Carter and Obama certainly came out of 'nowhere.'
President Obama didn't come quite out of nowhere. He was fairly well known by the time he was elected Senator. His Senatorial career was seen by many as a training ground for a possible Presidential run. It was the fact that he chose to ran in that specific election which caught people by surprise, not the fact that he came out of nowhere.
The only people I can think of in a comparable position are some of the Tea Partiers. But, because they got elected during the mid-terms, they have even less experience. I could see one of them winning it in 2016 (which will be after one term).
However, it's still early. It's possible that some candidate will establish himself as being better than the pack. It's hard to imagine that they'll be someone completely out of the blue because the media has been pretty active in speculating about a run from anyone who has expressed any interest or has any support.
The only people I can think of in a comparable position are some of the Tea Partiers. But, because they got elected during the mid-terms, they have even less experience. I could see one of them winning it in 2016 (which will be after one term).
However, it's still early. It's possible that some candidate will establish himself as being better than the pack. It's hard to imagine that they'll be someone completely out of the blue because the media has been pretty active in speculating about a run from anyone who has expressed any interest or has any support.
Brilliant logic there. Are you basing this off the fact that Obama is polling about 7 points ahead of Reagan at this point his his term?
Yes. Someone who plays the race card when he's attacked. That's someone who really plays the game like a true conservative.
Well, not really. Obama had announced his campaign 21 months ahead of the election (which was 2 months ago) after being on the national scene since the 2004 DNC convention Carter had the advantage of fighting a sitting President tainted by Watergate and a bumbled at a debate...and he still barely won. A couple thousand votes in Ohio and Wisconsin in the other direction and Ford would've won in 76 (and chances are Reagan wouldn't have won in 1980...but that's a debate for another time.
Where I've always stood:
Outside, looking in--with a somewhat bewildered expression on my face.
Babs is great. I love voting for her. Every time I punch that ballot I can just hear the agonized gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments amongst California Republicans.
All 7 of them.
All of them in the OC.
Not to speak on Robert's behalf, but just in case he missed this... His avatar, sig, and custom user title were sarcastic jokes poking fun at some of the more hysterical rhetoric directed at Obama, not how Robert actually feels. I know there's no way to have known that without knowing his posting history, though, so I just wanted to let you know.
Yep, nothing says "I'm Presidential material" like proclaiming that if you were elected you would violate both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Article VI, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution by discriminating against Muslims in hiring and appointment to office.
Even if one agreed with the bigoted rhetoric (which is especially ironic since he cites bigotry in others as Squiggy pointed out), it's hard to think someone who has so little understanding of the Constitution and civil rights law should really hold the highest office in the land.
Plus, he thinks Muslims are trying to impose Sharia Law and the Muslim faith on the government, which is impressive both in its lack of understanding of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (that pesky Constitution again) and in the amount of tinfoil conspiracy theory bullshit one has to mire themselves in just to think that would even be logistically possible.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aDXCwd65R5o[/yt]
But hey, it's not just him. Newt says we need to be on the lookout for the improbable alliance of "secular atheist radical Islamists" trying to dominate the country. They mostly come at night... mostly.
Wow. Just wow.
It's fun watching some people's descent into madness.
sooo... Brown/Rubio in 2016?
I could see Rubio running (he was a name I had in mind). Brown isn't a tea partier at all. He's actually broken ranks with the GOP too many times to be an ideal candidate. Aside from winning a high profile seat, he hasn't really stood out in Congress.