Oh, great, Gov Brown wants to cut education even more to help the deficit. Wouldn't educated people with high paying jobs help reduce the deficit? Also how about cutting corporate taxes so companies don't pack up and leave. It's like a friggen sieve.

http://malibu.patch.com/articles/gov...fall-more-cuts

I'm disappointed in the outcome. However, I respect the process. And herein lies the debate.

I have long been in favor of returning power to the individual states, opposed to broad federal laws. This amendment was put in front of the people of that state and they voted for the ban on gay marriage. The people have spoken.

Now, should any group of people be allowed to create laws which infringe upon the rights of others? And, is it a "right" to have the government recognize a marriage?

Is Marriage a Fundamental Right? Is it our natural born right to have a government or principality recognize a union between two people?

The Washington Post has reported a pretty disturbing incident of Romney supposedly bullying another student pretty badly. I have to say while the dog abuse incident left a super bad taste in my mouth for the way this guy treats animals, this incident is highly disturbing and really takes my dislike for him to a whole other level. I can't say I want my president to be someone who feels it is okay to treat another human being this way. And I don't really want to hear the excuse that he was "young". He was old enough to know that behavior was wrong on so many levels.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...KFU_story.html

A bill is moving through congress to stop former US presidents from taking money from US taxpayers. I think aside from secret service protection, they do no deserve the money. We all know they all make millions with their book deals and speaking gigs.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-pl...100551264.html

Looks like its finally reared its head - the election is officially about gay marriage and wether the government has the right to define marriage for its citizens.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/n-c-vote-ban-g...060012987.html


So does North carolina send a message to Obama and the democrats?

Here's a list from Wikipedia of actors who have played a POTUS, fictional or non-ficitonal on TV and the movies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._United_States

List your top 5 favorites . .

Here's mine:

Morgan Freeman - Deep Impact (His voice is "presidential".. no dobut)
Peter Sellers - Dr. Strangelove
Kevin Kline - Dave
Henry Fonda - Failsafe
William Devane - a definite JFK Clone, played him in Cuban Missile Crisis: Missiles of October, also presidents and assorted cabinet members on TV.


eta:

I was wondering why Mary McDonnell in BSG was missing from the list, but forgot she was from a different planet altogether. lol.

Conservative Alabama Politician Bill Johnson "Addicted" To Donating Sperm

Conservative Alabama Politician Bill Johnson "Addicted" To Donating SpermFormer Alabama gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson, a conservative Christian who opposed gay marriage and unsuccessfully ran for governor in the 2010 GOP primary, is leaving his wife Kathy and her three children from a previous marriage for a new life in New Zealand with children he fathered via sperm donation. Johnson and his wife were unable to have children, which he told her was "a need that [he has]." Now, he says that he has no plans to stop donating (albeit from here on in, to lesbian couples who need it).

It was revealed in December that Johnson had fathered children in New Zealand, but after he assured Kathy that the conceptions were "non-sexual," the two-time Miss America finalist said that she was willing to forgive him. However, for the five months that followed, he remained fixated on donating sperm and being present in the lives of the children he created.

"He is obsessed with this," she says, adding that he asked her to move to New Zealand with him for the sake of her kids. "I will not chase him to the other side of the world so he can be a part-time father to children he created with other women... He says he created these children and he has a responsibility to them. I said 'What about your commitment to your wife?' He walked out."

While in Christchurch to work as a contractor for earthquake recovery in 2011, Johnson created a number of donor profiles under the anonymous handle "chchbill" and donated sperm to at least 10 women, some of whom later claimed he misled them about his identity and the number of other donations he had made. Kathy claims that not even Johnson knows how many of his children are out there, and that some of the women were so furious about his deception that they cut off contact with him.

Of the known children fathered by Johnson's donations, the first is a girl due this month and at least two other girls due in June and July.

LMFAO!!!! :rotfl:

source

If the election was held today, who would you vote for? I will make the results private to get more of a response. But, feel free to say why.

I read a ridiculous piece of crap from a right wing think tank trying to paint Thomas Jefferson as a staunch christian. I have always thought of him as a champion of non-christians in this country, so what they wrote made me a bit upset. It seems that many Americans believe they can change history by mob rule.

Jefferson was a Diest and decidedly not a christian.


Things Jefferson gave America:
1. He wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence
2. He was the first secretary of state
3. He was the third president of the United States of America - serving 2 terms
4. He was vice president under our second president, John Adams
5. He wrote the majority of the Virginia constitution which was used as a framework for the US constitution.

Quotes on Religion:

1. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

2. -Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

3. -Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

4. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

5. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

6. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

7. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802







Although Jefferson believed in a Creator, his concept of it resembled that of the god of deism (the term "Nature's God" used by deists of the time). With his scientific bent, Jefferson sought to organize his thoughts on religion. He rejected the superstitions and mysticism of Christianity and even went so far as to edit the gospels, removing the miracles and mysticism of Jesus leaving only what he deemed the correct moral philosophy of Jesus.


Jefferson Bible - Edited by Thomas Jefferson - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible


I have always felt closer to the beliefs that Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson shared, a Desist view of Christianity.

Personally, I say no. It shouldn't matter at all. But I think lots of people disagree with me.

source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...-mormon-faith/

This thread is going to show 2 sides to one argument: Did polls show Southerners thought Obama a muslim?


First the yays:

Source: http://content.usatoday.com/communit...1#.T5cnl-0kCrI


Then the counterpoint:

source: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/13/is...he-five-hosts/

(CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday endorsed a movement announced by other congressional Democrats on Wednesday to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged in by corporations as opposed to individuals.

The First Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

Television and radio networks, newspapers, publishing houses, movie studios and think tanks, as well as political action committees, are usually organized as, or elements of, corporations.

Pelosi said the Democrats' effort to amend the Constitution is part of a three-pronged strategy that also includes promoting the DISCLOSE Act, which would increase disclosure requirements for organizations running political ads, and “reducing the role of money in campaigns” (which some Democrats have said can be done through taxpayer funding of campaigns).

The constitutional amendment the Democrats seek would reverse the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that decision the court said that the First Amendment protects a right of free speech for corporations as well as for individuals, and that corporations (including those that produce newspapers, films and books) have a right to speak about politicians and their records just as individuals do.

“We have a clear agenda in this regard: Disclose, reform the system reducing the role of money in campaigns, and amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns,” Pelosi said at her Thursday press briefing.

“I think one of the presenters [at a Democratic forum on amending the Constitution] yesterday said that the Supreme Court had unleashed a predator that was oozing slime into the political system, and that, indeed, is not an exaggeration,” said Pelosi. “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”

At Wednesday’s forum, a number of House and Senate Democrats were joined by representatives from People for the American Way and Common Cause in declaring their dedication to enacting a constitutional amendment to restrict speech by corporations.

The participants noted that several members in both houses of Congress have offered various versions of an amendment to reverse Citizen United v. FEC and curb unwanted speech by corporations. Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) is one of the members sponsoring an amendment.

“I've introduced a People's Rights Amendment, which is very simple and straightforward,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) said at the forum. “It would make clear that all corporate entities, for-profit and non-profit alike, are not people with constitutional rights.

“It treats all corporations, including incorporated unions and nonprofits, in the same way, as artificial creatures of the state that we, the people, govern, not the other way around,” said McGovern.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D.-Md.) explained the basic principle this move to amend the Constitution is advancing.

“In Citizens United, what the court said is that Congress has no authority to regulate this kind of political speech,” said Edwards. “And so all of these constitutional amendments go to this question of giving Congress the authority that the Supreme Court, I think wrongly, decided isn't within Congress's constitutional--our constitutional purview.

“And so, you know, the traditional rights of free speech that we have known as citizens would not be disturbed by any of these constitutional amendments,” said Edwards. “But what it would do is it would say, all of the speech in which, whether it's corporations or campaign committees and others engage in, would be able to be fully regulated under the authority of the Congress and--and under our Constitution.”

“I mean, in my view, a corporation is not a person. It is not an individual,” said Edwards. “The rights that it has are those that are granted by the state, granted by the, by the Congress.”

In 2009, when the Supreme Court first heard oral arguments in the Citizens United case, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart told the court that the administration believed the Constitution allowed the government to ban a corporation from using its general treasury funds to publish a book if the book advocated voting for something.

"Take my hypothetical," Chief Justice John Roberts said to Stewart as he asked him about what kind of books the Obama administration believed it could constitutionally ban, "... This [book] is a discussion of the American political system, and at the end it says: Vote for X."

"Yes," said Deputy Solicitor General Stewart, "our position would be that the corporation would be required to use PAC funds rather than general treasury funds."

Roberts followed up: "And if they didn't, you could ban it?"

"If they didn't, we could prohibit the publication of the book using corporate treasury funds," Stewart answered.

When the court ruled against the Obama administration's position in this case, Chief Justice Roberts wrote a concurring opinion underscoring the fact that the administration had wanted the court to allow the government to prohibit political speech.

"The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech," wrote Roberts. "It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concerns."



source

Is welfare a much needed hand up for those temporarily finding themselves unable to cope through no fault of their own?
Or is it an abused hand out that has spawned an entire class and culture of parasites?
How would you deal with the inevitable portion of people who cannot cope or do not contribute?

http://www.examiner.com/article/hous...r-middle-class

You got to love it. These guys want to keep giving tax breaks and cuts to the richest Americans and corporations. They don't feel it is fair to take what those folks have earned and put it back into the system. "Redistributing" wealth is baaaaad, m'kay. But it is NOT fair that there are Americans that pay NO taxes!! Never mind that most of these Americans don't pay because they are too freaking poor and can barely afford to live.

I also wonder if when they claim 45%, if they are making that claim based on the TOTAL population of the US- including prisoners, children, and other people who wouldn't pay taxes anyway.