So.....I voted for Obama...

Dave, I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with you on the front line if they try to disarm either of us.

You can realize capital gains on your IRA and 401k? When did you buy stocks? The 1950s?

joe, The problem is that 401k's and IRAs were before tax contributions, so even if one lost money in the market, any withdrawal is taxable. UGH~!

After Jimmy Carter, I made a vow to myself never again to cast a vote with the potential to make me feel anything resembling major stupidity a year or thereabouts down the road. If for no other reason and with no other data points than we have I could not cast a vote for Barack Oinkbama.

What about when they (Barack Oinkbama and Raila OInkdinga + followers) come to COOK you??

I hope I don't have to experience what you did.

I was supposed to be a demokkkrat all my life, that's the way I was raised and brought up; my mother was actually a delegate at that 68 convention in Chicago and I was thoroughly brainwashed by the time I got out of school. It took about six or eight years of living in the real world to grow out of it.

A brainwashed mind is awfully easy to refill. You stand as a perfect example of that, Gunga.

U have evidence of this ?

The good news is that I DID grow out of it. Proves it can be done....

I was ALWAYS a libertarian. (excuse my bragging)
I converted my parents from Roosevelt liberals
to vote for Barry Goldwater. (excuse my bragging again)






David

You forgot the rest of the story...

"I fell in love with a girl heavily involved in the McGovern campaign. Two weeks before we were to be married, she left me for a coworker who seduced her with his radical political views. I heated a knife on the stove and carved an elephant on my stomach. I voted Nixon. Flames appeared behind me as I laughed maniacially from a balcony in the twilight."

END SCENE

As a child of a politically active Democratic family, I was a staunch Democrat with typical libertarian leanings until Jimmy Carter provided the wake up call that the Democrats were drifting far left and were embracing unacceptable socialistic thinking. They were no longer the great party of Roosevelt, Truman, and JFK. I was still a registered Democrat when I cast my vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. By 1984, the optimism and common sense of the Reagan years converted me. I changed my party affiliation and the Democrats have done nothing since to persuade me to return to that fold.

Many could say the same thing about Bush and now Palin, foxy. The parties have become so polarized that only an ultra liberal or ultra conservative can survive the primary process. As I said previously in this thread -- there was a time when I considered McCain a moderate. Those times are in the past and his pandering to the Christian right and selection of Palin confirms it. IMO, neither party accurately reflects the majority of American viewpoints (which I believe are more moderate than either party platform would describe). Fortunately, I'm not required to be a registered member of either party to cast my vote because it's something that I couldn't do in good conscience.

My best hope is that the republicans implode and splinter into two groups representing social conservatives and fiscal conservatives respectively.

One can only hope. This would be my dream come true.

It woud make the communists very happy,
with Obama at their head.

This is the kind of general statements made without any proof. Which "communists" are you talking about? China? Russia?

I guess I am more big tent than that. I think there is room in the GOP for social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and those who are both social and fiscal conservatives. I don't require that anybody share my ideology in order to be acceptable, but I do want a President who loves his/her country, who believes that peace is achieved through strength, and who believes in allowing the people as much freedom as possible to pursue their own destinies. I want as little intrusion as possible from government while maintaining sufficient laws and regulations as necessary to achieve an orderly society and protect the unalienable, civil, legal, and Constitutional rights of the people.

So I don't condemn a person just because his/her religion isn't something I could embrace or how he or she looks at stem cell research or whether he does or does not support gay marriage or what he or she considers tolerable or intolerable re abortion or any other controversial issue of that sort. So long as the President believes that the people are better equipped to chart their destiny than is the government, and who, as much as possible, will let the people agree on what is acceptable in their own states and/or communities, his/her personal convictions should not be an issue.

Example: I had no problem with President Bush vetoing federal funding for embrionic stemcell research. That was an issue better left for local and state personal sensibilities to decide whether it should be funded. I would have had a problem if he had attempted to encourage legislation to ban embrionic stemcell research. For me, that would have been an unacceptable intrusion of the Federal Government into an issue best left to the sensibilities and sense of morality of the people.

Of all the candidates running, Sarah Palin comes the closest to meeting my criteria for the proper role of the Federal government. McCain falls short of that here and there, but he is nowhere near as bad as Barack Obama or Joe Biden in his intentions to order and regulate the people. Sarah, for instance, has zero history of even attempting to use her elected powers to impose religious values, nutty or otherwise, on anybody, and I'm confident that would be her policy in all the sticky wicket issues that our society deals with.

The Democrats have been more "far left" since Carter than they were under Roosevelt? In what respect?

Certainly not when it comes to economic policy... no Democrat since LBJ has dared make anything like the kind of push that Roosevelt made for large state social and employment projects and programs.. there was a reason that business Republicans hated him so much.

On cultural issues, yeah, that I can see... much has changed since then, of course. But on socio-economics, the Democratic Party from Carter through to Clinton's triangulation has gone so far right from its FDR New Deal-era politics, it's not even funny...