Politics - 15 June 2007

do they just belive the things that have the LEAST evidence to support them?

one of saddam's former generals says Saddam moved the WMD (the big new ones that Bush said he just made) to Syria or something and they take it as fact...

but the majority of the scientific world does research on something and comes to certain beliefs and your "naive" if you belive them?

now, granted, neither one is indisputable fact true or false... but which one seems more trustworthy?

2007-06-15 12:53:58 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-06-15 12:42:15 · 21 answers · asked by Anonymous

isnt it true that every liberal man running for president,when at home is completely controled by his wife.thats how they seem to me.like that pusssywhipped friend you may have.they are weak people who have no firm stance on anything,are obbssed with political correctness and want us to lose the war in iraq.they fail to realize that this is post 911 and things have changed.they have a pre 911 mentality which is scary.they support extended faimlies in the immagration bill,which will result in about 50 million immagrants to this country.why are they not reasonable.if we capture a terrorist who knows of a plot or bomb that will kill thousands of more americans,they dont want to use any method outher than asking questions to retrieve an answer.like they will ever just tell you.because the men are such sissys isnt it true the only man running for the democrats is hilary clinton?

2007-06-15 12:35:07 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous

I need a lot of detail as to who, what, when, where and why

2007-06-15 12:25:25 · 4 answers · asked by Lori J 1

Me 36%

2007-06-15 12:21:19 · 10 answers · asked by mission_viejo_california 2

2007-06-15 12:19:04 · 13 answers · asked by ? 1

Me $ 202.00 a month.

2007-06-15 12:18:34 · 22 answers · asked by mission_viejo_california 2

What's in the best interest for America, Isreal, and the middle east as a whole?

2007-06-15 12:11:02 · 9 answers · asked by trovalta_stinks_2 3

This outta be good....

2007-06-15 12:09:26 · 22 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-06-15 12:01:04 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous

Spin this one liberals.cnn.com

Bill and Hillary Clinton liquidated the contents of their blind trust upon learning it contained investments of $5 million to $25 million that could pose conflicts of interest or prove to be embarrassing to her presidential campaign.

The blind trust and a bank account valued in the same range place the Clintons' total wealth at between $10 million and $50 million.

The Clintons looked at the contents of the blind trust in April under instructions from the Office of Government Ethics and sold the assets in May, according to a disclosure form filed Friday. The Clintons had the blind trust since former President Clinton was governor of Arkansas in 1983 and had no control over its transactions.

Once they peered inside it, they discovered it included investments in oil and drug companies, military contractors and Wal-Mart, campaign spokesman Phil Singer said.

The report, filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission and the Office of Government Ethics, provides the most detailed look at the Clintons' holdings as their wealth has expanded since the former president left the White House in 2001.

The new report also shows that the former president made $16 million in speaking fees between January 2006 and Wednesday. So far this year, Bill Clinton has given 34 paid speeches for a total of $5.9 million. (Full story)

Trust included oil, drug companies
The blind trust held stock in pharmaceutical companies, including $250,000-$500,000 in Biogen Idec and Johnson & Johnson and $100,000-$250,000 in Amgen, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. It also invested in General Electric and Raytheon, two leading defense contractors. The trust had a varied portfolio, with investments in numerous other companies, including Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Walt Disney and eBay.

The report said all the proceeds of the sales are being placed in a cash account. The massive unloading of stock means the Clintons face large capital gains taxes.

Though all the blind trust transactions were handled over the years by a trustee without the Clintons' knowledge, some of the holdings could have been awkward for Hillary Clinton as she pursues the Democratic presidential nomination.

The blind trust held stock worth $100,000-$250,000 in NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News, which many Democrats have denounced as biased against them. The trust also held stock in Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart de Mexico.

The senator served on the Wal-Mart board from 1986 to 1992, and was close with the Walton family that created the nation's largest retailer. But she has recently called on the company to provide better worker benefits and last year her Senate campaign returned $5,000 to Wal-Mart's political action committee. At the time, Clinton campaign spokeswoman Ann Lewis said the money was returned "because of serious differences with current company practices."

Friday's report comes on the heels of Hillary Clinton's Senate disclosure report, made public Thursday, which only covered activity in 2006 and did not reflect this year's liquidation of the blind trust.

Clinton and other presidential candidates were required to file financial disclosure documents with the Office of Government Ethics by May 15. But Clinton and Republican candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain asked for 45-day extensions because they all had blind trusts that the ethics office demanded be opened.

Campaign: Reporting goes 'above and beyond' requirements
"As a presidential candidate, Sen. Clinton was required to make her assets public," campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said. "As a result, she had to dissolve her blind trust. Upon its dissolution, she and the president chose to go above and beyond what was required of them and liquidate their assets in order to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest."

When it comes to family affluence, the reports show that the New York senator is the wealthiest of all members of Congress seeking the presidency. Among all presidential candidates, however, Republican Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, stands alone with assets of between $190 million and $250 million. Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat John Edwards have each reported assets of about $30 million.

Last year and this year, Bill Clinton earned fees from $100,000 to $450,000 speaking to such corporations as IBM, General Motors, and Cisco Systems, finance giants such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, and trade groups such as the National Association of Realtors and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He also has been paid to speak to nonprofit or charity groups, including the TJ Martell Foundation, which finances leukemia research, Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund and, last March, to the Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles.

2007-06-15 11:53:34 · 12 answers · asked by dez604 5

2007-06-15 11:50:01 · 5 answers · asked by sierrabr 1

or would you want the minority who needed "affirmative action" or minority concessions to get into college and med school, not on merrit alone?

2007-06-15 11:47:00 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous

Americans are obsessed with rights. We always have been.



But the concept of rights our forefathers laid out in the Declaration of Independence has changed dramatically. Those rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – were acknowledged to come from the Almighty, given equally to all people. Today’s rights come from Almighty Government.



Health care is the newest “right.” From presidential candidates’ universal plans to the return of HillaryCare to Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko,” it’s all over the media.



Calling it a “right” is an emotional argument advanced by those who want others to pay for their health care. They bring out the children and ask whether anyone can deny them the “basic human right” of health care – but don’t bother with the evidence showing how health care in this country would be harmed by government control.



A look at other modern “rights” might give us a clue about how well a new system would work. These rights started out as privileges, among them education and a paid retirement.



Now education is not only considered a right, it’s a mandate. How well has it worked? American students attend school at least until their teen years, but 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 29 countries in aptitude for “real-life math problems,” according to The Washington Post. Literacy surveys suggest one in five American adults is functionally illiterate. And taxpayers keep shelling out money to fund the system.



Americans also cherish the right to retire – but we expect to be supported in our old age. Younger workers and employers are forced to support retirees, funding another right.



And how well has that worked? The poorly designed, outdated Social Security system is disintegrating rapidly as the number of retirees balloons. But once you’ve established a right, it’s difficult to take it away. The government, which promises such rights, must go to its sugar daddy – taxpayers – to keep the rights coming.



We’re already well on our way toward the health care right/mandate. Want to be more like Canada? It’s not that far off. Cato’s Michael Cannon has pointed out that third parties in America pay 86 cents of every dollar of our health care – about the same as Canada’s socialized system.



What we – or rather, those third parties – pay for health care is already determined by the government as well. Emory University medical professor Robert Swerlick has noted that “the pricing of medical care in this country is either directly or indirectly dictated by Medicare.” This market meddling even causes doctor shortages, he says, in needed areas of specialty.



Prescription drugs are already considered a right, thanks to political moves like the Medicare drug benefit and massive media support. A Business & Media Institute study found broadcast journalists treating prescription drugs as though they grew on trees. Overall, the coverage supported the idea that medications should magically be available to everyone at far lower costs.



Of course, the magic behind new “rights” is your money.



Cannon and fellow Cato expert Michael Tanner explained problems with tax-funded care in their book “Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.” If health care is guaranteed to everyone, how much does everyone get? Who decides who receives what, and how would the care be administered? What happens if everyone wants the most expensive treatment available?



“With the wide variety of medical tests and treatments that consumers may claim as their right, someone at some point must decide where the right to health care ends, lest the nation be bankrupted,” they wrote.



We’re well on our way toward that as well. Our “rights” to Social Security and Medicare devour about 40 percent of the federal budget. State and local property tax revenue, which normally funds education, mushroomed about 35 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the Tax Foundation. We can’t afford any more “rights” like that.



But the left says tax-funded care is right for the children. Meanwhile, what becomes of them? They’re growing up in an America where the “rights” mentality is deeply ingrained, and the media continue to feed them with it.



When the children come of age, perhaps they’ll want the right to a job. They won’t remember that France already tested that idea for us, and it led to high unemployment and rioting. Perhaps they’ll guarantee Disney vacations for all families and force childless Americans to pay for it. “The pursuit of” will conveniently fade away as they look to government to guarantee happiness.



They will know less and less of a true right – liberty – and have no idea where it comes from.

2007-06-15 11:41:38 · 17 answers · asked by mission_viejo_california 2

Who has the inside scoop on this? What has a poor little ferret ever done to upset Rudy?

2007-06-15 11:38:17 · 14 answers · asked by Lisaa 3

2007-06-15 11:36:42 · 25 answers · asked by Lindsey G 5

Isn't it unfair to the people who deserve a position to give preference to someone less qualified just because of that person's race?

Is any of the candidates promising to end Affirmative Action?

2007-06-15 11:36:35 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-06-15 11:35:19 · 17 answers · asked by AB17 4

George Soros has been putting billions in the democrat party to help rid the U.S.A. of the Republican Party, and to provide Hillary Clinton in turning the U.S.A Socialist. Also helping the enemy in iraq to cause are soldiers problems. Ted Kennedy, John Kerry have also been helping Soros.

2007-06-15 11:32:57 · 22 answers · asked by abigail t 1

Many people would refer to this behavior as hillbilly'ish

2007-06-15 11:29:00 · 25 answers · asked by Anonymous

WOW! Amazing how many people are taken in by this woman

2007-06-15 11:23:07 · 35 answers · asked by abigail t 1

Some 45% of all Republicans report being very happy, compared with just 30% of Democrats and 29% of independents. This finding has also been around a long time; Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey began taking its measurements in 1972. Pew surveys since 1991 also show a partisan gap on happiness; the current 16 percentage point gap is among the largest in Pew surveys, rivaled only by a 17 point gap in February 2003.
Could it be that Republicans are so much happier now because their party controls all the levers of federal power? Not likely. Since 1972, the GOP happiness edge over Democrats has ebbed and flowed in a pattern that appears unrelated to which party is in political power.
For example, Republicans had up to a 10 and 11 percentage point happiness edge over Democrats in various years of both the Carter and Clinton presidencies, and as small as a three and five percentage point edge in various years of the Reagan and first Bush presidencies. Also, we should explain here a bit about how our survey questionnaire was constructed. The question about happiness was posed at the very beginning of the interview, while the question about political affiliation was posed at the back end, along with questions about demographic traits. So respondents were not cued to consider their happiness through the frame of partisan politics. This question is about happiness; it is not a question about happiness with partisan outcomes.
Of course, there's a more obvious explanation for the Republicans' happiness edge. Republicans tend to have more money than Democrats, and -- as we've already discovered -- people who have more money tend to be happier.
But even this explanation only goes so far. If one controls for household income, Republicans still hold a significant edge: that is, poor Republicans are happier than poor Democrats; middle-income Republicans are happier than middle-income Democrats, and rich Republicans are happier than rich Democrats.
Might ideology be the key? It's true that conservatives, who are more likely to be Republican, are happier than liberals, who are more likely to be Democrats. But even controlling for this ideological factor, a significant partisan gap remains. Conservative Republicans are happier than conservative Democrats, and moderate/liberal Republicans are happier than liberal Democrats. Hmmm, what other factors might be at play? Well, there's always...
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-h...

2007-06-15 11:16:31 · 16 answers · asked by mission_viejo_california 2

2007-06-15 11:14:33 · 9 answers · asked by vegaswoman 6

I've been scoping out YA on the politics front and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of questioning going on.

Usually, somebody with some pretty strong polical beliefs asks a leading question, such as "why do [conservatives/liberals] have to [do something that the asker feels is completely stupid]?"

Often times the "best answer" to these types and other political questions are not ones that challenge the asker's beliefs or get the asker to consider the other side in a new light but are rather along the lines of "I'm totally with you, bro."

It is mathematically impossible to be right, all the time. So sometimes liberals are wrong and sometimes conservatives are wrong, yes? Both camps have some good values and some not so great values, yes?

Does anybody feel that it's pretty insane the way conservatives just go after liberals, or vice versa, as if they are one big group and dismiss anything this other camp offers?

What does this mean to our democracy?

2007-06-15 11:06:56 · 16 answers · asked by skeeter j 1

I have been too busy lately to learn about the republican presidential candidates. I know the names of who is running, but I am not sure of what they stand for???? I am a conservative, so I am wanting to know things like what their stand is on abortion, stem call research, etc.

2007-06-15 11:01:51 · 7 answers · asked by mikeysmom 3

He blamed the state government for the lack of response to Hurricane Katrina. What did george W.bush accomplish as Governor of Texas?

2007-06-15 10:51:47 · 7 answers · asked by .................... 2

Why does Bush's administration and those that support it think that by killing people and causing chaos and war in Iraq it is somehow making us safer. Are the terrorists supposed to forget we are in America because they are so busy?

2007-06-15 10:31:25 · 15 answers · asked by Ethan 3

Just for gits and shiggles, I typed "Why are liberals so stupid" [comma] Yahoo Answers into the Google search bar.

I got 113 hits.

Then I typed in "Why are conservatives so stupid," followed by a comma and Yahoo Answers.

I got 7 hits.

Try this, if you like.

Of the 7 hits, only one Yahoo question actually asked, "Why are conservatives so stupid?"

This question was deleted by Yahoo customer care.

Of the 113 "Why are liberals so stupid," I could not find one that was deleted by Yahoo customer care.

What gives?

Personally, I think the question "Why is [insert group of people] so stupid," is a ridiculous question because a) the asker is not bound to get a real answer that somehow sheds light onto their confusion and b) the question assumes that all people in the group are stupid.

But aside from this, should Yahoo customer care treat the liberal question as it does the conservative question?

Yahoo customer care, do you all have an answer?

2007-06-15 10:11:29 · 7 answers · asked by skeeter j 1

Since 2005 President Bush has acknowledged that humans are the primary cause of global warming.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/34/12476

This is Bush, whose administration altered government reports to make them sound less certain that GW was caused by humans.

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives Tuesday to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"

The list of Republican politicians who have accepted this goes on.

Even if you think global warming is some hoax perpetrated by liberal scientist in cahoots with Al Gore (which is incredibly stupid), how can you deny the conclusions of the president that you elected twice, and of Gingrich who many Republicans want to nominate for president in 2008? These are supposedly some of your most valued and trusted politicians.

At the very least doesn't their acknowledgement of the human cause of global warming mean that it's not a liberal hoax?

2007-06-15 10:06:50 · 8 answers · asked by Dana1981 7

from m"Yahoo censors the Truth" (I know I know)
"HANNITY SPEAKS THE TRUTH ABOUT LIBERALS...
He rips them to shreads, like Rush, and all the truth tellers at Fox. Liberals can't stand being exposed for the political hacks that they are, relying on government patronage for their jobs, their suppression of blacks, stealing from the working man to support a communist agenda, ghettoizing America etc."

Even most REAL conservatives do believe that kind of martini infused talk.

Barry Goldwater would be rolling in his grave.

2007-06-15 10:04:47 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous