You give Clinton too much credit for Welfare Reform. He vetoed it twice and then finally signed it when he knew his veto would get overturned by a supermajority of Congress. Of course, Clinton being Clinton, he promptly took full credit for it when he flatly stated he was against before he had to sign it into law.

Obama tax plan is so he can bribe the bottom 3 tiers which are approximately 60% of taxpayers into voting for him. He may call it a tax plan, but I call it a bribe. If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and smells like a duck, then it is a duck even if you try to call it a swan.

[quote]I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to criticize the liberal media, when they don't apply the same standards to the conservative media it frustrates me.[/quote}

And many conservatives feel the exact same frustration when liberals criticize the conservative media but won't apply the same standards to liberal media. Only difference is for the most part, conservative media announces they are indeed conservative. Liberal media lies and says they are objective.

You ask if I served in the military to protect first amendment rights, which shows you have little notion of what the military does. Not only the First amendment, but also the second, third, fourth, etc. Plus, we defend you. Without a military, we would all be Islamic by now or beheaded.

One little known fact is that when you join the military, you actually give up certain rights. First amendment rights are curtailed. Fifth amendment rights are pretty much given up. Millions of people have voluntarily given up their rights in order to protect you. Now that I'm retired, I've have full use of those rights once again and I guard them jealously.

Nice post, but it brings to mind two things:

1) As far as people claiming a conspiratorial liberal agency, last I heard, people have the right to claim that. Liberals were very quick to claim First Amendment rights whenever someone tried to debunk their claims of a vast Right wing conspiracy.

2) Yes, the media has a right to be liberal, but also, the common people and conservative media have the right to call them on being liberal when the media lies outright and claims they are objective.

We could debate this all week, but keep in mind, I put my life on the line and gave up a lot of rights in order to protect the rights of all Americans, not just the journalists. I'm a fervent believer in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Whenever I see someone claim rights, but then turn around and try to squash someone else's rights, I get angry. I didn't give up 21 years of my life, a normal family life and accept low pay to see someone abuse the Bill of Rights, Constitution or Declaration of Independence.

You sir, are barking up the wrong tree!
Matt Dunlap
Chief Petty Officer (Ret.)

Isn't it interesting when someone defends the overtly liberal established media, they tell you to move or get over it.

Personally, I don't like that the media claims they are objective when it is pretty obvious they are not. But, I served 21 years in the U.S. Military protecting their First Amendment rights. I don't agree with what they say and stand for, but I fervently believe they have the right to say it. In the same token, when someone exercises their First Amendment rights to criticize the established liberal media, they have the right to do so and shouldn't be shouted down or told to get out of the country.

Liberals are famous for claiming First Amendment rights, but curiously they love to shout down and shut down anyone else who doesn't agree with their viewpoint and in essence they deny First Amendment Rights to anyone who does not fall in line with their liberal viewpoints.. That's the main beef I have with liberals in general.

Nice hypocrisy. First you say that media has the right to be liberal, but then you blast Fox News that they are doing more harm than good.

17. If African American’s life expectancy is around 65 years old, why should they not be allowed to opt out of social security, which taxes people at 6% + 6% (from employer) = 12% of their income for their entire lives.

“First, there is no guarantee that people would see the matching social security payments from their employers added to their paychecks if they dropped it. Second, in actual answer to your question - no, they should not be able to opt out, just as the rich should not be able to just because they can afford to pay for their own retirements. It's a social pact designed to keep the unfortunate among us from falling through the cracks and into poverty in their golden years. Everyone sacrifices a little to make sure no one has to risk sacrificing a lot at the end. “
Oooh, a deliberately inflammatory question. Beyond the race part, we should do away with Social Security completely. It is and has been shown to be a Ponzi scheme that someone (either us or our grandchildren) will eventually be screwed completely by.

18. If we scrapped our military, and kept the Bill Clinton Tax levels, we would still have a deficit, so are you willing to cut Medicare or Medicaid?

No. If you scrapped Medicare and Medicaid and kept the Bill Clinton tax levels, we would still have an even larger deficit. Are you willing to cut the military budget? Reducing the deficit will not happen overnight and it will require some compromises if that is our ultimate goal. Perhaps you can answer me why conservatives, when in power, do not seem to care so much about the deficit, as it has grown the most during the Reagan and G.W. Bush years, while the budget was balanced in the Clinton years.
Another strange answer. From what I’ve heard and read, Medicare and Medicaid take up the highest percentage amount of our National Budget. The military budget is somewhere in the area of 3%. Also, yes, we had a balanced budget in the Clinton years, but we still had a deficit. From what I’ve seen of government budgeting (remember I was a government worker for 21 years), it’s full of accounting tricks that disguise the true nature of the budget. No proper business would ever accept the way government does accounting. Usually because they would end up in jail.

19. When millions of people have their pensions invested in the stock market, and work for corporations, why are you against profit?

I am not "against profit."
Good for you. So why are Democrats against profit? They complain mightily that the oil companies are making record profits. It’s been shown that the oil companies show roughly 10% profit year in and year out. 10% is respectable unless you happen to be an oil company. I read somewhere that about 50 companies and/or industries make a higher percentage profit than oil companies and nary a word about them from the Democrats.

20. Why do you think that working for a living is exploitation?

I do not. I believe companies who make hefty profits but pay their employees low wages - with little recourse for the employees to fight for better wages to be exploitation. I do not think working for a living is a bad thing. No progressives do, because it is in fact what most of us do with our lives. What I don't like is when working becomes less and less likely to provide a living because of explicitly pro-corporate, anti-worker government policy.
Not sure I understand the question, but the answer is typical double-speak.

15. Why do you support "Universal Healthcare" when Canadians who really get sick come to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle to get care?

“I support "Universal Healthcare" because that means, literally, "everyone gets healthcare," not "let's do exactly what Canada does." Also, why are you against government funded "Universal Healthcare" when under the struggling free market system, millions of Americans cannot afford coverage, or their coverage is incomplete, and many United States citizens go to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and pretend to be Canadian so they can get the care they can't afford in the United States?”
Call me extreme, but I’m at the opposite side of the spectrum here. I don’t think there should be health insurance at all. Administrating the paperwork necessary for health insurance drives the cost up way higher than it should be. Out of control lawyers drive it up more, but that’s a topic for later discussion.
16. Why do you believe in Anthropogenic global warming when CO2 lags behind temperature in the ice core record by 100s of years, the climate models have not been accurate for the last ten years, the 2007 temperatures were so low that the Earth is now cooling, polar bear populations have been on the rise for the last 50 years, we have had over five ice ages, and it will cost multiple trillions of dollars in initiatives that will not change the temperature of the Planet .05% of a degree. UPDATE: August was the first month in a century with no Sun Spots!

“The 2007 temperatures were not so low that the Earth is now "cooling" unless you are saying that because they were lower than 2006, that counts as "cooling." Temperatures fluctuate year-by-year, but it's beyond scientific question that global temperatures have increased in the last 100 years, that the past decade has been the hottest in recorded history, and that human influence is very likely the responsible. Your whole post is predicated on speaking reasonably to the concerns of conservatives. I'm going to ask you to do your part, too - you're not going to get anywhere with progressives, or with the majority of the population of the United States and the world - by denying global climate change.”
Ok, when someone states that this or that is “beyond scientific question”, I got to throw the B.S. flag. I believe that the earth is big enough and complex enough that we mere humans are pretty vain to think we can affect it as much as the global warming people say we do. Besides which, global warming, regardless whether it was man-induced or natural has been a boon to this country and the world at large. It has given us longer growing seasons whereby we have been able to grow enough food to feed not only ourselves but export billions in food.

11. If economic sanctions cause harm, why support protectionism, which is essentially placing economic sanctions on your own country?

“Protectionism is not placing economic sanctions on your own country. Economic sanctions - those that are harmful - are specifically targeted and designed to cause harm. "Protectionism" is designed to protect a country's own interests. They have completely different targets and restraints.

In regards to my own political beliefs on "free trade" versus "fair trade," I think that it's very important that some collective power be exerted to ensure that workers are treated well, that the environment is protected, that corporations can't hop borders and obey laws where it's most convenient, while workers are bound by the restrictions of the country the live in (for the average worker, there's no taking advantage of the economy of the United States, but buying your basic supplies for cheaper in South East Asia and hiding your savings in a tax-free shelter in the Cayman Islands). There's a reason why people come together to form a government - it's to protect the interests of the people, not to say "okay, let's not do anything and let the powerful be as powerful as they always were." If I didn't know any better, I'd say conservatism in its purest form is one step away from anarchy.”
As I said in the beginning, I’m just a dumb hick from the country, so I wouldn’t even begin to answer this question. Though I do have a comment about your last sentence. From what I’ve read and heard, anarchists have always been one left step from far-left wacko’s.
12. Why are you against drilling and converting coal to oil, when speculators will drive the price of gas down the very day we announce that we are going to drill?

“I'm not going to trust the future of the economy to the whims of speculators. 1929 - been there, done that.”
Funny you say that. You trust speculators about your food all the time and have so for decades. Haven’t you heard of corn futures, hog futures, orange futures? Oil futures work the same way. At times it will be rather bumpy, but in the long run it tends to even out things.
13. Why are you against Nuclear Power when more people have died of vending machines falling on them in America than Nuclear Power in America?

“I'm not personally against Nuclear Power when it's put up against something like Coal Power. However, I think wind and solar power are much better investments, in both the long and short run. Also, you are only counting the immediate deaths of Nuclear Power. It is unknown how much increased incidence of cancer in America has to do with Nuclear Power. I am fairly sure falling vending machines aren't responsible for cancer, and don't leave expensive waste clean-up projects to prevent further harm.”
So by not letting the country build more Nuclear Power plants or even upgrading the existing ones we have, you think wind and solar will do the trick for us. Sure it will if we were the size of France. Oh wait, their electrical power is about 80% Nuclear and with much safer Nuclear power plants than we have. Besides that, I’m pretty sure that if we did go completely solar and wind powered then the Sierra Club and other eco-terrorists would complain that we were killing too many birds.
14. Why are you against "urban sprawl" when 95% of America is undeveloped, meaning if everyone doubled their land use, 90% of America would be untouched?

“I'm against the negative effects of urban sprawl, which force people out of their communities and lead to worsening living conditions for the poor. Why are you against the poor?”
I’m at a loss here. Since when does urban sprawl force people to move? How does that lead to worsening living conditions for the poor. Why are they poor? Dependent on the government and forgot how to work? Urban sprawl leads to more jobs, which leads to less poor people for those that will work.

9. Why do you want to take money out of the hands of people who create jobs, give it to politicians, and then have the politicians give it back to the people who were just fired because their bosses no longer had the money to pay them?

“That's a simplistic way of looking at things. The biggest mistake that conservatives make is treating the government as a separate entity from the market. The government is part of the market - an actor in it the same way as any corporation or individual. The government also creates jobs. Growth of the government can also mean growth of the economy, if it's the right kind of growth. Yes, some growth in the government can hurt the economy. The same is true of growth in corporations (ie: corporations can grow their personal profits by moving jobs overseas or hiding profits in tax shelters, both of which hurt the economy). The difference is that corporations have only their own interest in mind, whereas government, though imperfect, can take the larger view and fight to create the best possible growth that will help the people at large.”
Got to completely disagree with your answer here. I am retired from the U.S. Navy and as such was a government worker for 21 years. Never once did I see where profit was a motivating factor in government. As my late Daddy used to say, “Government don’t work. Government takes money from people who do work.”
10. When we spend more taxpayer money on education than any country in the world other than Switzerland, at what point will you realize that "more funding for education" is not the solution to solve failing schools?

“I do realize this. I think every progressive does, so there's no point in attacking your straw men here. We should all agree that blanketing a problem with money will not work with education in the next administration any more it has with Terrorism under the current administration. It's how the money is spent that matters. I happen to trust the Democrats much more with my money than I do the cut-and-spend Republicans.”
Second time I’ve seen you say “straw men” now. What in the heck does that mean? Some secret progressive code? Got to agree with your answer on how the money is spent that matters. We as a country had a fantastic education system 50 years or so ago. Money for education was controlled locally and spent locally. Since then, big government advocates (i.e. Democrats) took over funding schools and how it was spent. Unfortunately, President Bush also bought into this and passed NCLB which stripped all control from local school boards.