hahahaha janskeet,
You are wasting your time(I have found its very hard to argue with some people on here so I just in general don't anymore). Most of the people here probably don't know me, but I have been around since the start(2003) of the site despite it saying i joined last year(hey my 5 site birthday was only july 24th yay. Anyway back to my point. I am Canadian so all I have is an external POV to the American system. As someone from a different country I personally think America would be better off with a democrat like Obama in power in the next term.
As for my presonally veiws. I find that more often then not I line up better with democrates then republicans, but thats not to say that there isnt stuff thats republican which i really agree with as well. For example right now I think the offshore oil drilling should go through(america needs to stop being so relient onthe middle east), however substancial money should be put into alternate energy, and also the 36 Nuclear power plants is a great idea. Most people dont know that newest generations of NPP, are almost completely waste free, the french are the best with those. Now if you look at it that way, I am more inline with john macCain then obama.
I think the reason why so many democrats get frustrated with republicans is because the politicans are so, shall we say, tainted. From what I have seen, and keep in mind I do not put MacCain in either of these catagories, but i either see SUPER rich old families like the bushes, OR i see completely intolerable neo-christians with veiws that are so far right that they might as well have gone around the world are a starting to be left(that was a joke), Mike hucabee comes to mind here a man that talked about love, kindness and charity but that pulled medicare from a teenage girl cause she got raped became pregnant and wanted an abortion. Now the same goes with people on the left but i see a greater upside and less extremes in the democrat ranks.
Another point i wanted to talk about was this, I noticed someone say that when taxes are low charity donations go up. I always thought that it was the same in the US as in canada but i guess it isnt. Here in canada when you fill your taxes out, you get certain deductions from the money you pay. Just to make it easy ill give an example. If i make 100 000, I am in the highest tax bracket, so i pay 50% tax. So my bill to the gov is 50 000. Now say during the year i made 5000 worth of donations. Most if not all of the 5000 is deducted from my taxes, so i only pay 45 000. Is that not how it works down south?