Why I'm NOT a Democrat

[Bfgrn]

Democrats and their media panicked and called the Vietnam War for their Soviet masters in the North right after we inflicted one of the greatest military defeats on our enemy in the annuals of warfare crushing their Tet Offensive.

Then wanting to repeat our "defeat" in Vietnam, Democrats tried to stop funding our soliders ON THE BATTLEFIELD in Iraq and Afghanistan and were openly hostile to our CinC and outright rooting for the Islamic Insurgency and Mooky Al Sadr to take control of Iraq, Joe Biden wanted to give Al Sadr his own state in Iraq.

Finally, Joe McCarthy warned us that Democrats were a direct to Moscow.

Yeah, there's a Party I want to join.

Yea, when it comes to killing, arresting, incarcerating and executing human beings, the beloved government can do NO wrong; but when that same government tries to help people, it is EVIL and if you support those actions of the government, only THEN are you a 'Statist'.


One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke

 

[johnrocks]

It's the reason why I'm NOT a Democrat, more because of my individualistic attitude or "live and let live" philosophy whereas both parties seem to want more of a "good of society " philosophy, it's not part of me to want to be part of a group yet at the core of the Democratic Party, that seems to be the mindset and the GOP really isn't that different and why I regard myself as a RINO.

Well, that's different than just an "I'd like to roll a joint in my living room" philosophy. If you don't believe society ought to make health care resources available to children, then you're absolutely right not to be a Democrat. The philosophical gulf there is likely just too great.

Health care resources have been available to children since the dawn of medicine, health care isn't in bad shape due to free markets, it is due to government interference to begin with and the GOP defending group insurance is no different when that was a socialist idea to begin with, coupling insurance with a job frankly is more ignorant than government health insurance, if people on both sides would allow markets to work, they would but people have more faith in government than they do the individual.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Democrats and their media panicked and called the Vietnam War for their Soviet masters in the North right after we inflicted one of the greatest military defeats on our enemy in the annuals of warfare crushing their Tet Offensive.

Then wanting to repeat our "defeat" in Vietnam, Democrats tried to stop funding our soliders ON THE BATTLEFIELD in Iraq and Afghanistan and were openly hostile to our CinC and outright rooting for the Islamic Insurgency and Mooky Al Sadr to take control of Iraq, Joe Biden wanted to give Al Sadr his own state in Iraq.

Finally, Joe McCarthy warned us that Democrats were a direct to Moscow.

Yeah, there's a Party I want to join.

Yea, when it comes to killing, arresting, incarcerating and executing human beings, the beloved government can do NO wrong; but when that same government tries to help people, it is EVIL and if you support those actions of the government, only THEN are you a 'Statist'.


One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

 

[johnrocks]

Democrats = socialism/collectivism

Republicans = capitalism/individualism

I know which one I am, and why. I've made more money on my own than the government could pay me in a life time.

Republicans can't be for individualism when they want to tell who they can marry or get pissed just because gays want to use the word "marry", oppose legalization of marijuana or want to have demonstrations regarding a group and their property rights and what does farm subsidies have to do with capitalism?

The GOP loves big government too as long as it's THEIR type of big government, now you and other conservatives may feel different but the GOP has a shitty credit report on fiscal responsibility and keeping government in check also.

 

[Greenbeard]

Health care resources have been available to children since the dawn of medicine, health care isn't in bad shape due to free markets, it is due to government interference to begin with and the GOP defending group insurance is no different when that was a socialist idea to begin with, coupling insurance with a job frankly is more ignorant than government health insurance, if people on both sides would allow markets to work, they would but people have more faith in government than they do the individual.

Now I'm confused about your philosophical inclinations again. It sounds like you're saying that a "free market" for health care (though I'm not sure what that would look like, as any attempt to institute a classical free market for it would be subject to tremendous market failures because of the very nature of the good) would get needed health resources to all children. That's an article of faith I don't share but it doesn't address the interesting question: what if it doesn't?

You're making an outcomes based argument to support a certain system. If that system fails to achieve the desired outcome, would you shrug and retain your ardent libertarianism or would you accept interventions? Should the two diverge, which is more important to you: process or outcomes?

 

[hipeter924]

I don't drink,smoke or do drugs BUT if I want to sit in my Den; in my Fruit of the Looms; and drink,smoke Marlboro Lights, fire up a joint, do a line of coke or eat three foot long chili cheese Coneys then what the fuck business is it of anyone else, if I go out stoned,drunk or otherwise shit faced into the public, if I harm someone or their property while out, then punish me accordingly but don't treat me like a 10 year old before I have done anything wrong!

I have no idea what this paragraph has to do with the title of this thread. You're not a Democrat because you'd theoretically like to have those vices. I am a Democrat and I do have some vices. I couldn't care less if you fire up a joint in the privacy of your own home. And certainly I don't care if you get shitfaced once in a while.

Being a Democrat is more about agreeing it's alright to stick an extra sales tax on your smokes to pay for health insurance for children. Or believing that a there's a right amount of regulation to assure that you're not getting ripped off (say, with something impure or something laced with something else--you don't want any of that but the underground economy doesn't always self-regulate). The notion that Democrats care very much how you live your life is either funny or narcissistic, I'm not sure which. I'm pretty sure most of them don't. But don't mix up those who tell you that you can't drink or smoke a little weed because it's bad for you--usually, "moralizing assholes" (and yes, some Democrats fall in this category, as do some Republicans)--with those who have a genuine liberal/progressive/whatever political philosophy.

Lots of room for the pro-legalization, pro-choice folks in the big tent party (and, since the tent is big, you'll find lots of the other folks under it, too). I will say, though, it is kind of usual for someone who doesn't actually do any drugs, legal or otherwise, to have drugs as his primary issue when choosing parties. But to each his own.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sonYFxHHvaM"]Marley[/ame]

It's the reason why I'm NOT a Democrat, more because of my individualistic attitude or "live and let live" philosophy whereas both parties seem to want more of a "good of society " philosophy, it's not part of me to want to be part of a group yet at the core of the Democratic Party, that seems to be the mindset and the GOP really isn't that different and why I regard myself as a RINO.

Sure it makes me lonely here, but fuck them. I must be the only extreme libertarian in New Zealand so I have learned to not talk about what I believe in because if I did they would either:

a) Treat me as evil/a monster
b) Go on some tirade about how socialism works
c) Go on some nationalist tirade and call me a traitor (some one told me "go live in the US then, and leave us alone that like the country"*) just when I state that the economic situation is bad and that all the government parties are corrupt/incompetent and holding the country back.
d) Call me a racist, islamophobe,etc
e) Ban me from university here for protesting. Where they ban leftists from my university for protesting against fee increases, SURELY they will ban a person for protesting for a secular middle east (when there are so many international students from Muslim nations gracing their account books), and no first amendment to protect me.

*I think I will some day when I get out of university, at least for a little while so I can get away from narrow minded people (not a single tea party here....and that is the lower reaches of my comfort zone).

 

[johnrocks]

Health care resources have been available to children since the dawn of medicine, health care isn't in bad shape due to free markets, it is due to government interference to begin with and the GOP defending group insurance is no different when that was a socialist idea to begin with, coupling insurance with a job frankly is more ignorant than government health insurance, if people on both sides would allow markets to work, they would but people have more faith in government than they do the individual.

Now I'm confused about your philosophical inclinations again. It sounds like you're saying that a "free market" for health care (though I'm not sure what that would look like, as any attempt to institute a classical free market for it would be subject to tremendous market failures because of the very nature of the good) would get needed health resources to all children. That's an article of faith I don't share but it doesn't address the interesting question: what if it doesn't?

You're making an outcomes based argument to support a certain system. If that system fails to achieve the desired outcome, would you shrug and retain your ardent libertarianism or would you accept interventions? Should the two diverge, which is more important to you: process or outcomes?

Then show me where children died in droves prior to SCHIP. The market worked prior to government involving itself, look at the costs prior to Medicare, it was a constant 5-6% of GDP , the Medicare/Medicade/HMO Act/ERISA came along and it started mushrooming, even group was not that big a percentage of the market until the HMO Act was implemented.

Seems like the mindset is...."We have problems even after decades of government intervention so the solution has GOT to be....more government".

 

[johnrocks]

I have no idea what this paragraph has to do with the title of this thread. You're not a Democrat because you'd theoretically like to have those vices. I am a Democrat and I do have some vices. I couldn't care less if you fire up a joint in the privacy of your own home. And certainly I don't care if you get shitfaced once in a while.

Being a Democrat is more about agreeing it's alright to stick an extra sales tax on your smokes to pay for health insurance for children. Or believing that a there's a right amount of regulation to assure that you're not getting ripped off (say, with something impure or something laced with something else--you don't want any of that but the underground economy doesn't always self-regulate). The notion that Democrats care very much how you live your life is either funny or narcissistic, I'm not sure which. I'm pretty sure most of them don't. But don't mix up those who tell you that you can't drink or smoke a little weed because it's bad for you--usually, "moralizing assholes" (and yes, some Democrats fall in this category, as do some Republicans)--with those who have a genuine liberal/progressive/whatever political philosophy.

Lots of room for the pro-legalization, pro-choice folks in the big tent party (and, since the tent is big, you'll find lots of the other folks under it, too). I will say, though, it is kind of usual for someone who doesn't actually do any drugs, legal or otherwise, to have drugs as his primary issue when choosing parties. But to each his own.

Marley

It's the reason why I'm NOT a Democrat, more because of my individualistic attitude or "live and let live" philosophy whereas both parties seem to want more of a "good of society " philosophy, it's not part of me to want to be part of a group yet at the core of the Democratic Party, that seems to be the mindset and the GOP really isn't that different and why I regard myself as a RINO.

Sure it makes me lonely here, but fuck them. I must be the only extreme libertarian in New Zealand so I have learned to not talk about what I believe in because if I did they would either:

a) Treat me as evil/a monster
b) Go on some tirade about how socialism works
c) Go on some nationalist tirade and call me a traitor (some one told me "go live in the US then, and leave us alone that like the country"*) just when I state that the economic situation is bad and that all the government parties are corrupt/incompetent.
d) Call me a racist, islamophobe,etc
e) Ban me from university here for protesting. Where they ban leftists from my university for protesting against fee increases, SURELY they will ban a person for protesting for a secular middle east (when there are so many international students from Muslim nations gracing their account books), and no first amendment to protect me.

*I think I will some day when I get out of university, at least for a little while so I can get away from narrow minded people (not a single tea party here....and that is the lower reaches of my comfort zone).

Keep on fightin bro People can look to New Zealand in some areas though, like people who thinks we have to have farm subsidies to survive, one only needs to look to your country to see that this isn't true
BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | New Zealand's hardy farm spirit

 

[hipeter924]

It's the reason why I'm NOT a Democrat, more because of my individualistic attitude or "live and let live" philosophy whereas both parties seem to want more of a "good of society " philosophy, it's not part of me to want to be part of a group yet at the core of the Democratic Party, that seems to be the mindset and the GOP really isn't that different and why I regard myself as a RINO.

Sure it makes me lonely here, but fuck them. I must be the only extreme libertarian in New Zealand so I have learned to not talk about what I believe in because if I did they would either:

a) Treat me as evil/a monster
b) Go on some tirade about how socialism works
c) Go on some nationalist tirade and call me a traitor (some one told me "go live in the US then, and leave us alone that like the country"*) just when I state that the economic situation is bad and that all the government parties are corrupt/incompetent.
d) Call me a racist, islamophobe,etc
e) Ban me from university here for protesting. Where they ban leftists from my university for protesting against fee increases, SURELY they will ban a person for protesting for a secular middle east (when there are so many international students from Muslim nations gracing their account books), and no first amendment to protect me.

*I think I will some day when I get out of university, at least for a little while so I can get away from narrow minded people (not a single tea party here....and that is the lower reaches of my comfort zone).

Keep on fightin bro People can look to New Zealand in some areas though, like people who thinks we have to have farm subsidies to survive, one only needs to look to your country to see that this isn't true
BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | New Zealand's hardy farm spirit

Actually the government here (or at least their economic think tank) suggested forcing Fonterra (the national dairy corporation) among other agricultural corporations to sell 60% of their company to overseas investors. So all that could be erased very quickly.

Here the farmers own most of the company and are the main shareholders, the government (both center-left and right) wants to force the farmers to sell most of their property i.e. the company against their will to foreigners to quote "Increase competition and economic efficiency".

If that isn't economic insanity, what is?

 

[Bfgrn]

Democrats and their media panicked and called the Vietnam War for their Soviet masters in the North right after we inflicted one of the greatest military defeats on our enemy in the annuals of warfare crushing their Tet Offensive.

Then wanting to repeat our "defeat" in Vietnam, Democrats tried to stop funding our soliders ON THE BATTLEFIELD in Iraq and Afghanistan and were openly hostile to our CinC and outright rooting for the Islamic Insurgency and Mooky Al Sadr to take control of Iraq, Joe Biden wanted to give Al Sadr his own state in Iraq.

Finally, Joe McCarthy warned us that Democrats were a direct to Moscow.

Yeah, there's a Party I want to join.

Yea, when it comes to killing, arresting, incarcerating and executing human beings, the beloved government can do NO wrong; but when that same government tries to help people, it is EVIL and if you support those actions of the government, only THEN are you a 'Statist'.


One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

FDR is responsible for a program that started seven years before he was president and an accepted cure for the disease was discovered two years after his death? I guess it's like Obama is responsible for the economic crisis.


Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

 

[Dick Tuck]

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

Please get your facts straight. The Tuskegee experiment began in 1932, under Hoover, when there was no efficacious treatment. The fact that it continued after penicillin was shown to be effective, in 1941, is a national disgrace, shared by all administrations until 1972, when it took a whistle blower to call public attention to it.

 

[007]

Democrats = socialism/collectivism

Republicans = capitalism/individualism

I know which one I am, and why. I've made more money on my own than the government could pay me in a life time.

Republicans can't be for individualism when they want to tell who they can marry or get pissed just because gays want to use the word "marry", oppose legalization of marijuana or want to have demonstrations regarding a group and their property rights and what does farm subsidies have to do with capitalism?

The GOP loves big government too as long as it's THEIR type of big government, now you and other conservatives may feel different but the GOP has a shitty credit report on fiscal responsibility and keeping government in check also.

There's no need for homosexuals to bastardize marriage when they can have all the same rights with a civil union. I support Republicans fight against homo marriage, and it's got nothing to do with individualism. As far as your other examples, they're convoluted, and I'd like a link to what you're trying to say.

Democrats = Big government/redistribution of wealth.

Republicans = Small government/keep what you earn.

That's the gist of it, no matter how you care to spin it.

 

[Greenbeard]

Then show me where children died in droves prior to SCHIP.

You've already demonstrated that you know that "government involvement" with health care didn't begin in the late '90s so I'm not sure what the point of this challenge is. EMTALA has guaranteed access to emergency rooms, independent of ability to pay, since the mid '80s. Government payments to help disproportionate share hospitals pay the costs of providing indigent care have been around slightly longer. Certainly the Medicaid child benefit (EPSDT) has been around since 1965 (though that doesn't cover the CHIP kids). And even before government insurance existed, group insurance plans absorbed the costs that providers passed on for providing charity work. But you are correct in pointing out that those group plans (i.e. socialized payment mechanisms) existed in part because of a tax benefit, offered to employers, installed after World War II. But the government didn't create health insurance; group plans started popping up at least as early as the 1920s to help people pay for care.

Was population health lower before these changes? Of course, but that's likely due to lots of things, not least of which is the rapid advance of medical science in the last 75 years (and a number of unrelated government interventions that improved public health). No, children weren't dying in the streets before CHIP passed in the late '90s (though I think you could point to a number of interventions that prevented that sort of thing); but many of them also weren't getting care adequate for the needs of a growing child. CHIP has made strides toward improving that.

The market worked prior to government involving itself, look at the costs prior to Medicare, it was a constant 5-6% of GDP , the Medicare/Medicade/HMO Act/ERISA came along and it started mushrooming, even group was not that big a percentage of the market until the HMO Act was implemented.

It worked at what? Providing access to those who needed it? Maximizing population health given the resources available? For your comparison to really work, you have to believe that medicine in the first half of the twentieth century is equivalent to medicine in the second half of the twentieth century and, ceteris paribus, there was no reason costs should ever have grown at more than the rate of inflation. Do you believe that? The labor and equipment costs of having a medical procedure done in 1935 are roughly equivalent to what they were in 2005?

Seems like the mindset is...."We have problems even after decades of government intervention so the solution has GOT to be....more government".

The mindset is that we have a system with terrible inefficiencies and the free market, by and large, isn't going to change that by itself. We don't price health as an output good and given the information asymmetries inherent to that field, that's not going to change unless certain steps are taken. And we haven't considered the distributional issues, which I still don't see how you incorporate into your philosophy: you argue that an equitable distribution of health resources (at least for kids) will arise from the structures you're proposing when in fact the whole point of those structures is that it won't. I don't know how to reconcile that.

 

[johnrocks]

Democrats = socialism/collectivism

Republicans = capitalism/individualism

I know which one I am, and why. I've made more money on my own than the government could pay me in a life time.

Republicans can't be for individualism when they want to tell who they can marry or get pissed just because gays want to use the word "marry", oppose legalization of marijuana or want to have demonstrations regarding a group and their property rights and what does farm subsidies have to do with capitalism?

The GOP loves big government too as long as it's THEIR type of big government, now you and other conservatives may feel different but the GOP has a shitty credit report on fiscal responsibility and keeping government in check also.

There's no need for homosexuals to bastardize marriage when they can have all the same rights with a civil union. I support Republicans fight against homo marriage, and it's got nothing to do with individualism. As far as your other examples, they're convoluted, and I'd like a link to what you're trying to say.

Democrats = Big government/redistribution of wealth.

Republicans = Small government/keep what you earn.

That's the gist of it, no matter how you care to spin it.

I joined the GOP because I "thought" that they supported Small government too, then Bush Jr. opened my eyes, he and his entourage grew government more than at any time since LBJ , adding a new entitlement program and Department in the process.

This thread is titles "Why I'm NOT a Democrat" but that does not mean that I'm going to blindly defend the party of borrow and spend either.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

Please get your facts straight. The Tuskegee experiment began in 1932, under Hoover, when there was no efficacious treatment. The fact that it continued after penicillin was shown to be effective, in 1941, is a national disgrace, shared by all administrations until 1972, when it took a whistle blower to call public attention to it.

Tuskegee Experiments where blacks were subject to untreated syphilis was owned and operated 100% by FDR and the Racist Southern KKK loving Democrats. Do not now or ever blame Hoover for it.

Have you come to terms with the fact that LBJ Called Thurgood Marshall a ******?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Why I'm NOT a Democrat and barely a Republican(I'm a RINO and proud to be one.....for now)

I am more libertarian and here's why in a nut shell, I don't like being told what to do, I don't like being told how to live my life..

Huge disconnect alert!!!

"I'm a RINO and..." & "I don't like being told what to do."

 

[Bfgrn]

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

Please get your facts straight. The Tuskegee experiment began in 1932, under Hoover, when there was no efficacious treatment. The fact that it continued after penicillin was shown to be effective, in 1941, is a national disgrace, shared by all administrations until 1972, when it took a whistle blower to call public attention to it.

Tuskegee Experiments where blacks were subject to untreated syphilis was owned and operated 100% by FDR and the Racist Southern KKK loving Democrats. Do not now or ever blame Hoover for it.

Have you come to terms with the fact that LBJ Called Thurgood Marshall a ******?

Hey Frank, can you give me ONE conservative or Republican that led ANY opposition groups to ANY of the transgressions you always try to pin on Democrats?

The 'Dixiecrats' were conservatives that now call themselves Republicans.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Please get your facts straight. The Tuskegee experiment began in 1932, under Hoover, when there was no efficacious treatment. The fact that it continued after penicillin was shown to be effective, in 1941, is a national disgrace, shared by all administrations until 1972, when it took a whistle blower to call public attention to it.

Tuskegee Experiments where blacks were subject to untreated syphilis was owned and operated 100% by FDR and the Racist Southern KKK loving Democrats. Do not now or ever blame Hoover for it.

Have you come to terms with the fact that LBJ Called Thurgood Marshall a ******?

Hey Frank, can you give me ONE conservative or Republican that led ANY opposition groups to ANY of the transgressions you always try to pin on Democrats?

The 'Dixiecrats' were conservatives that now call themselves Republicans.

Frank will NOT respond with reason. He's incapable.

and you take his posts with a bit of credibility instead of incredulity?

 

[Dick Tuck]

FDR's Tuskegee Experiment was designed to help white people by seeing how blacks handled untreated syphilis. Did FDR actually have polio or was it syphilis?

Please get your facts straight. The Tuskegee experiment began in 1932, under Hoover, when there was no efficacious treatment. The fact that it continued after penicillin was shown to be effective, in 1941, is a national disgrace, shared by all administrations until 1972, when it took a whistle blower to call public attention to it.

Tuskegee Experiments where blacks were subject to untreated syphilis was owned and operated 100% by FDR and the Racist Southern KKK loving Democrats. Do not now or ever blame Hoover for it.

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment[1] (also known as the Tuskegee syphilis study or Public Health Service syphilis study) was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, by the U.S. Public Health Service. Investigators recruited 399 impoverished African-American sharecroppers with syphilis for research related to the natural progression of the untreated disease, in hopes of justifying treatment programs for blacks.​

source

You really don't care about your lack of credibility, do you. If someone provided me with facts that showed me wrong, I sure as hell would continue to sell something that I'd now know to be false. I guess conservatives have different family values than the rest of us.

Have you come to terms with the fact that LBJ Called Thurgood Marshall a ******?

What's to come to terms with? Johnson used racial epithets often in his career. But the bottom line is he still arm twisted and passed the most sweeping civil rights bill since Lincoln, and as a result, Southern racists left the Democratic party in droves to become Republicans. Good riddance.

You do know that Johnson was the only Southern Congressman to vote for the Anti-Lynching Act of 1938, don't you? You do know that he and his wife helped Rosa Parks find a job, after she was fired for her participation in the bus boycott, don't you? You do know that it was Johnson who marshalled the 1957 Civil Rights Act through, in spite of Strom Thurmond's record breaking filibuster, and many of the provisions in that act made the passage of the 1964 act much easier?

No you probably don't know these things.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

i didn't mean to derail your thread and i hope i didn't. but the reality is that for now, there are only two parties that can win elections. that might have changed with campaign finance reform which should have, if done properly, leveled the playing field for third party candidates.

The citizens's united decision effectively destroyed that possibility. Corporations are now 'people' for the purposes of the first amendment. (That sound you heard was the people who dumped a lot of tea into boston harbor because they protested a monopoly by the British East India Co.).

How did Citizen's United do that? Citizen's United is a group of people who came together with a common goal. That partnership is legally called a corporation, but just because a group of people get together, that does not mean they give up their right to free speech. The law that got overturned as a result of Citizen's United was specifically designed to protect incumbents by specifically restricting the rights of certain groups to speak during the period immediately before an election.

If you truly want to see third party candidates that have a chance you should support fewer restrictions on speech, not more.

In terms of what is left, we are left with a choice between people who claim to want 'small government' yet think it incumbant upon them to tell people how to live, who to marry, what life/death choices to make (a la terry schiavo) and what we're supposed to believe about g-d. Dems may be a little paternalistic and may see government as being able to do more than perhaps it can, and may be a little paternalistic in terms of protecting people from meanies who commit hate crimes, but overall, they don't hate education. they don't hate intellectualism and don't resent anyone who isn't exactly like them. They don't hate the environment and don't 'apologize' to oil companies for having to clean up their own mess.

that's how i see it anyway.

Now you are spouting partisan rhetoric. The truth is that Democrats are more likely to believe that Jesus will return by 2050 than Republicans. That tells me that Democrats, as they cater more and more to that base, will be more likely to support restrictions based on religion than Republicans.

I could be wrong, but last time I looked only the fringe were even proposing restricting marriage to heterosexuals, or telling me that I could not do what I want to in my bedroom. Do you really trust a big government to keep its nose out of your bedroom more than a small one?

By the way, no one apologized for telling the oil company it had to clean up the mess, he apologized because he thought that Obama exceeded his legal authority to demand a settlement from BP. I think he was right about that, but BP agreed, so it is moot.

so come to the light... richard nixon (who would arguably have been considered one of our greatest presidents but for his having a problem with paranoia and a problem obeying laws) wouldn't even get past the republican primary today.

what party do you think barry goldwater would be affiliated with today?

And JFK would probably not get past the Democrat primary. I am not sure what criteria you would use to scale Nixon as a great president, but even without his paranoia he barely made it through the first time, and the only reason he won is the Democrats did not have time to rally behind a candidate after LBJ bowed out of the race.