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The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread


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We can bicker about the random lunatic who avoided society having, or not having more freedoms, but that's a waste of time.

 

Now, I agree with you on the later parts. Most people, either Americans, or from anywhere else, don't even understand their rights, or why we as Americans have different expectations. I have gotten into arguments elsewhere on the internet over how Americans have a different standard for Freedom of Speech and Expression that anywhere else on earth. Europeans get really pissed. But the simple fact is our system is different, and even while we do have a crapload of issues we should take care of, and endlessly fight over, we are generally in a better situation than just about anywhere on the planet.

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In all honesty, no one in the GOP clown car is capable of winning a national election. They are all pandering to the far right, making sure they are seen and heard being anti-LGBT, and just about every single one of them has nice cozy pictures next to an admitted child molester, who somehow is still some sort of conservative hero. With the impending SCOTUS decision on gay marriage,generally expected to legalize it, there is going to be a political firestorm for conservatives. Add in that every last one of them want to expand Middle East wars, another position the general public wants nothing to do with. There are not much differences between the candidates real stances on positions, just the way they like to talk about them.

 

I would be careful when you talk about 'tea party' views, they are very deceptive. When they talk about "smaller Government" they are only talking about two things. 1, less rules for businesses. 2, remove anything they feel is imposing on their religion. Right now, individuals in this country have more rights than anyone has had in recorded human history, anyone who says otherwise simply has no sense of history.

Re: your last paragraph: When I think of smaller or 'right sized' govt I'm talking about efficiency without compromising duty (Justice, general welfare). Cutting govt just for the sake of cutting govt to fulfill a campaign pledge(or downsizing across the board) often compromises the concepts of justice and general welfare. It takes much more work to make govt efficient (efficient maintains justice and general welfare) than it does to just cut the size. (1)Regarding less rules for business - that should not be a goal in and of itself. Govt needs to protect the general welfare of all - thus certain environmental, financial, labor, etc regulations are needed. Yet too many laws/regs can create bad behavior - businesses sending jobs or moving headquarters overseas to avoid the overly burdensome regs that hinder profitability. Govt tends to view businesses too often as the goose that continually lays the golden eggs. One day, those eggs will stop coming if the rules are overly burdensome. (2) The govt should not hinder the free exercise or expression of religion - it should be religion neutral - not pushing one over the other but not endangering the free expression either.

 

Re: your 1st paragraph. The GOP finds themselves in a hard place: they cannot judge Obama's response to ISIS as being too limited without evoking fears of being entangled again in the middle east.

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In all honesty, no one in the GOP clown car is capable of winning a national election. They are all pandering to the far right, making sure they are seen and heard being anti-LGBT, and just about every single one of them has nice cozy pictures next to an admitted child molester, who somehow is still some sort of conservative hero. With the impending SCOTUS decision on gay marriage,generally expected to legalize it, there is going to be a political firestorm for conservatives. Add in that every last one of them want to expand Middle East wars, another position the general public wants nothing to do with. There are not much differences between the candidates real stances on positions, just the way they like to talk about them.

 

I would be careful when you talk about 'tea party' views, they are very deceptive. When they talk about "smaller Government" they are only talking about two things. 1, less rules for businesses. 2, remove anything they feel is imposing on their religion. Right now, individuals in this country have more rights than anyone has had in recorded human history, anyone who says otherwise simply has no sense of history.

Re: your last paragraph: When I think of smaller or 'right sized' govt I'm talking about efficiency without compromising duty (Justice, general welfare). Cutting govt just for the sake of cutting govt to fulfill a campaign pledge(or downsizing across the board) often compromises the concepts of justice and general welfare. It takes much more work to make govt efficient (efficient maintains justice and general welfare) than it does to just cut the size. (1)Regarding less rules for business - that should not be a goal in and of itself. Govt needs to protect the general welfare of all - thus certain environmental, financial, labor, etc regulations are needed. Yet too many laws/regs can create bad behavior - businesses sending jobs or moving headquarters overseas to avoid the overly burdensome regs that hinder profitability. Govt tends to view businesses too often as the goose that continually lays the golden eggs. One day, those eggs will stop coming if the rules are overly burdensome. (2) The govt should not hinder the free exercise or expression of religion - it should be religion neutral - not pushing one over the other but not endangering the free expression either.

 

Re: your 1st paragraph. The GOP finds themselves in a hard place: they cannot judge Obama's response to ISIS as being too limited without evoking fears of being entangled again in the middle east.

 

How you are defining things is not the way the GOP does. No one really argues against efficiency, but the GOP sit and call for the elimination of whole departments. Something people forget is that all these departments exist because the people demanded the Gov do something about problems, and these were the solutions. And the reasons why the GOP wants to eliminate these departments are back to, 1- Make more money for businesses (the ultra wealthy, lets not kid ourselves) or 2- remove barriers to try to blend religion into more people's lives.

 

Every rule and reg that is on businesses is there for a reason. And the businesses really don't care about anything but making more money. It is not the government's job to protect their earnings. It is the Gov's job to protect the people from businesses. We have far too many documented cases of what happens when you don't have rules in place. And what is deemed "overly burdensome" by businesses eventually becomes "anything that I spend money on that does not return a profit"

 

And the moving jobs overseas line is so old. We are not going to change our ways of doing things to be more on par with 3rd world nations, paying people pennies per hour, and more or less owning them and working them in unsafe conditions. Rules and regs have zero bearing on this. As long as we require employers pay a minimum wage, and don't allow them to belch black smoke into our cites, or dump toxic chemicals in our water, then keeping jobs here is never going to add up for their books.

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Let's not pretend businesses have it so bad here, either.

 

Everyone wants a thriving environment for new businesses to grow.

 

But even businesses need to be protected from businesses. They do what they need to in order to grow and survive, and that includes pulling up the ladder behind them and securing their own position, to the extent that they can. When profits do grow, if the environment doesn't somehow drive incentives in the direction of reinvesting in the economy, competing, and stirring more growth, then that added wealth will simply be sat on and funneled to the top. That's not healthy.

 

It's not evil to be bottom line, it's basic necessity. Similarly, suppose the personal environment was in such a way that families had no incentive to spend, only to save on what they were already getting. That's not healthy for the economy at large.

 

That said, everybody knows the tax code is a burden by complexity alone. Why can't we attack this?

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Wow Stigori you truly believe all that stuff? You truly believe all businesses are that ruthless and conservatives are nasty bastards.

For the most part, yes. Many to most businesses would do anything to increase profit, it only gets worse if they are publicly traded. We have endless examples of it. Businesses are doing fantastic, record stock prices, CEO and exec pay skyrocketing. Meanwhile, everyone else is just trying not to fall behind, and mostly failing at it. We have sickening wealth inequity that could literally be ended tomorrow if businesses and the greedy bastards that ran them gave a crap about anyone else. But they fight against every single min wage increase. They swindle people out of pensions, and give people a 401k. Pick a Walmart court settlement. How about the banking schemes that damned near collapsed the world economies? And that they are trying to undo the regs that were put back into place to keep them from doing all that damage again. Who is backing the guys who want to get rid of the EPA and any rules against pollution? The list could go one and on. Ethical is not a word that goes hand in hand with businesses.

 

Ask yourself, do you trust the company you work for? Do you think they have your interests in mind? They want your loyalty, but will show you none if it costs them money.

 

And conservatives are the champions of these same greedy bastards. All the while waving a Bible, which lists greed as sin, and their savior spends quite a bit of time condemning greed, and championing the poor. The exact opposites of their political positions. Making them first rate hypocrites. And then trying to subject the whole population to other parts of their centuries old book. Its a masterful bait and switch when you really get down to it.

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Wow Stigori you truly believe all that stuff? You truly believe all businesses are that ruthless and conservatives are nasty bastards.

For the most part, yes. Many to most businesses would do anything to increase profit, it only gets worse if they are publicly traded. We have endless examples of it. Businesses are doing fantastic, record stock prices, CEO and exec pay skyrocketing. Meanwhile, everyone else is just trying not to fall behind, and mostly failing at it. We have sickening wealth inequity that could literally be ended tomorrow if businesses and the greedy bastards that ran them gave a crap about anyone else. But they fight against every single min wage increase. They swindle people out of pensions, and give people a 401k. Pick a Walmart court settlement. How about the banking schemes that damned near collapsed the world economies? And that they are trying to undo the regs that were put back into place to keep them from doing all that damage again. Who is backing the guys who want to get rid of the EPA and any rules against pollution? The list could go one and on. Ethical is not a word that goes hand in hand with businesses.

 

Ask yourself, do you trust the company you work for? Do you think they have your interests in mind? They want your loyalty, but will show you none if it costs them money.

 

And conservatives are the champions of these same greedy bastards. All the while waving a Bible, which lists greed as sin, and their savior spends quite a bit of time condemning greed, and championing the poor. The exact opposites of their political positions. Making them first rate hypocrites. And then trying to subject the whole population to other parts of their centuries old book. Its a masterful bait and switch when you really get down to it.

 

Strigori, I think they have anger mgmt classes for this. :steam Just sayin. I like how you conveniently lump conservatives, big business owners and Christianity into the same big bowl and stir it all together to come out with the :devil . It is easy to lump them altogether to create one big 'hate' group. These are 3 separate identities. As I recall, some of the wealthiest members of congress, the wealthiest businessmen are liberal leaning democrats who say little about or have nothing to do with 'faith'. Greed is not a conservative or a liberal trait, it is a human trait. And if you do read this centuries old book called the Bible, it has a lot to say about the subject and how to deal with it individually - most importantly the concept of 'dieing to self' (selfishness) and living for God and others first - the 2 great commandments. It also has a lot to say about anger - you might ck that out.

Regarding the topic: You do realize that most employees work for small business owners. Most are just like you and I - just trying to get through the day, the week and at the end of the year hoping to be a bit more down the road of success than at the beginning of the year. So don't paint all businesses and business owners wt the same broad brush. Businesses themselves are neutral, amoral. Its the people in them that make the difference - owners and employees. Many businesses contribute large sums of money, resources and labor to improve the communities where they are located. They fund special projects for education, health care organizations, United Way, shelters, etc. And many are owned by, dare I say it..... Christians who live out their faith through the work place not by practicing greed but by giving and following those 2 great commandments to love God 1st and your neighbor as self. Are there big & small businesses that place self interest first and exhibit greed or worse? - yes. But it is a reflection of people in general. For you'll find employees within all organizations who live for self interest alone - some conservative and some liberal. Like I said selfishness and greed are human traits we all have to deal with. So where needed, legislation can help curb the expression of these traits by businesses. Thus environmental, health and safety, finance laws, etc work towards that end. That centuries old book also says a lot on how we can deal with those traits on an individual level. And by the way, I'm not a business owner.

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Wow Stigori you truly believe all that stuff? You truly believe all businesses are that ruthless and conservatives are nasty bastards.

For the most part, yes. Many to most businesses would do anything to increase profit, it only gets worse if they are publicly traded. We have endless examples of it. Businesses are doing fantastic, record stock prices, CEO and exec pay skyrocketing. Meanwhile, everyone else is just trying not to fall behind, and mostly failing at it. We have sickening wealth inequity that could literally be ended tomorrow if businesses and the greedy bastards that ran them gave a crap about anyone else. But they fight against every single min wage increase. They swindle people out of pensions, and give people a 401k. Pick a Walmart court settlement. How about the banking schemes that damned near collapsed the world economies? And that they are trying to undo the regs that were put back into place to keep them from doing all that damage again. Who is backing the guys who want to get rid of the EPA and any rules against pollution? The list could go one and on. Ethical is not a word that goes hand in hand with businesses.

 

Ask yourself, do you trust the company you work for? Do you think they have your interests in mind? They want your loyalty, but will show you none if it costs them money.

 

And conservatives are the champions of these same greedy bastards. All the while waving a Bible, which lists greed as sin, and their savior spends quite a bit of time condemning greed, and championing the poor. The exact opposites of their political positions. Making them first rate hypocrites. And then trying to subject the whole population to other parts of their centuries old book. Its a masterful bait and switch when you really get down to it.

 

 

Your first paragraph is an incoherent bunch of blabber.

 

I am happy with the company I work for, my wife and I own 25% of it. It is her families business. We have about 50 employees in 3 locations. We value them greatly. Our business doesn't function with out them. We start people out at 3 dollars north of minimum wage. For work that amounts to unskilled labor. They get 4 weeks of paid vacation every year and 2 profit sharing bonus checks every year. After 3 years they are enrolled into are SEP retirement program. I am probably a bastard, but not a greedy bastard.

 

You talk way too much about things you know nothing about, and I resent that you have some stereotype of what everyone that owns a business is like.

 

Greed is not exclusive to someone that has conservative values. There are thousands of business owners that profess to be liberal democrats that are ruthless business people. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway happens to be one of them.

 

My wife and I donate a lot of time and money to various services within our small community. We were just discussing last night how she would like to really help some people get ahead and create a better life for themselves. Just giving someone money, as our government does, is rarely the answer. Part of making a better life for yourself is wanting to do it, it is not just simply giving someone money and telling them to get an education.

 

Oh, and I have never waved a Bible around in my life. Sure I am a Christian and I go to church regularly, but most fundamental Christians are no better than the some radical liberal. I got to stop now because I am becoming incoherent like you.

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