TMK Votes

[MaxVance]

I thought Sarah Palin was also chosen as a tactic to grab disaffected female Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. I had never considered her ties to the religious right.

"Any publicity is good publicity." Sad, but I fear that this may be true.

[PaperLuigi]

I thought Sarah Palin was also chosen as a tactic to grab disaffected female Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. I had never considered her ties to the religious right.

"Any publicity is good publicity." Sad, but I fear that this may be true.

I agree. Palin is only there because she's a woman.

Also, the religious right aren't the only ones who "vote in droves." They just vote like everyone else. Heck, I consider myself one and I'm questioning whether or not I should vote at all this year.

[MaxVance]

Vote, but don't vote based off of what your peers think. Vote based on what you believe to be correct. America has secret voting for a reason.

[Turtlekid1]

Why Palin then? If that's the case then he should've picked Mike Huckabee, unless he isn't popular with the right for some reason.

Because we (I would definitely say I'm part of the "religious right") want someone who will practice their faith in the white house, not just claim to be a member of that faith.

I hate hate HATE liberal fiscal policy.

I agree with you there.

Never mind teaching creationism in science.

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Never mind abstinence only sex ed (if you have any questions about how well this works, look at her daughter. Her 17 year old pregnant unwed daughter.)

Again, you put that in a bad light.  And her 17 year old pregnant unwed daughter may be pregnant because she wasn't taught abstinence-only.  Even if she was, no one is perfect (you think that if one person doesn't do something right, it reflects on everyone else in that person's group?  Well, yes, it does, but it shouldn't).  

Never mind banning -all- abortions, including pregnancies where the faetus get stuck in the Fallopian tubes... which is very dangerous (can be fatal) to the mother and practically never results in a viable child (in the history of recorded medicine... well, however long this is recorded, only one child in the history of the world has EVER survived a pregnancy of this type).

Forgive me for being skeptical, but... aren't you invoking the exception instead of the rule?

Sarah Palin is worse than a typical politician; she's perfectly willing to abuse even her own family to get ahead in politics. Show off your child with Down's Syndrome to show how family-oriented you are? Yep.

Showing off her child with Down's Syndrome?  As far as I know, that shows consistency; she didn't abort her disabled kid.

Force your pregnant daughter to shotgun marry a self-proclaimed "f[---]ing redneck", AT AGE 17, so you look better to the social conservative base? Yep.

Forcing her daughter to marry a... when did you hear him proclaim himself a "****ing Redneck?"... anyway, she's just trying to make her daughter respectable for her (daughter's) own good as well as her (Palin's) own.

Lie about who gave birth to the aforementioned Down's Syndrome child so the public can't say that your daughter got pregnant prior to hitting the age of consent? ...maybe, this one's a mere rumor but it wouldn't surprise me.

Given your custom title, it doesn't surprise me that it wouldn't surprise you...

She's on record as telling Bristol that if she were raped and got pregnant, she would be forced to have the child. WHEN SHE WAS 14.

If she was raped and got pregnant at 14 and had the child, good for her!



...Lest you should take this post as being "uncivil," please don't take it personally/close the thread.  I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

[Insane Steve]

1) Because we (I would definitely say I'm part of the "religious right") want someone who will practice their faith in the white house, not just claim to be a member of that faith.

2) I agree with you there.

3) You say that like it's a bad thing...

4) Again, you put that in a bad light.  And her 17 year old pregnant unwed daughter may be pregnant because she wasn't taught abstinence-only.  Even if she was, no one is perfect (you think that if one person doesn't do something right, it reflects on everyone else in that person's group?  Well, yes, it does, but it shouldn't).  

5) Forgive me for being skeptical, but... aren't you invoking the exception instead of the rule?

6) Showing off her child with Down's Syndrome?  As far as I know, that shows consistency; she didn't abort her disabled kid.

7) Forcing her daughter to marry a... when did you hear him proclaim himself a "****ing Redneck?"... anyway, she's just trying to make her daughter respectable for her (daughter's) own good as well as her (Palin's) own.

8) Given your custom title, it doesn't surprise me that it wouldn't surprise you...

9) If she was raped and got pregnant at 14 and had the child, good for her!



10) ...Lest you should take this post as being "uncivil," please don't take it personally/close the thread.  I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

1) Meh, I always thought that this goes against the whole "separation of church and state thing" but then again I just don't get religion as an institution so I'll back off this comment.

2) In general I support most (not all, most) things where the government stands back and doesn't get actively involved in social or fiscal policy. So I tend to be more conservative fiscally.

3) Creationism is NOT SCIENCE. Again, church and state, don't mix them. Take an optional theology course somewhere if you're interested in Creationism as a theory.

4) From what I can tell, telling most 15-17 year olds "DON'T DO THIS" makes them want to do it more. There's exceptions, obviously, but just because she's the daughter of a governor doesn't make her exempt from this human tendency.

5) The exception is important because it's the one case where even the "abortion kills babies" argument doesn't fly -- the faetus will not become viable in this state. Period. You're risking the lives of people who did nothing wrong by forcing your ideologies on them.

6) By "show off", I mean the GOP is planning to use the child in their ad campaigns. Basically her child is being used in a way he can't approve of to further a political agenda.

7) His MySpace said it, in those exact words, before it was deleted. Also, explain how being forced to marry at 17 is a GOOD thing again?

8) I've seen a few pictures that suggest this, it's not just whacko liberal slander. It may not be true, but it's not exactly baseless, either.

9) Yea, we'll never see eye to eye on this. Moving on.

10) Actually that's a rather civil post. I disagree with most of it, but it's substantial, which is more than I can say for most politiks debate. Well, compared to the post below yours at least that I deleted for being idiotic (it was, essentially, "you're wrong because I have different beliefs than you"). -_-

[Reading]

10) Actually that's a rather civil post. I disagree with most of it, but it's substantial, which is more than I can say for most politiks debate. Well, compared to the post below yours at least that I deleted for being idiotic (it was, essentially, "you're wrong because I have different beliefs than you"). -_-

...Wow. You have just won my respect for being pretty much the only political debator I've seen who actually doesn't act like their opinions are obvious fact. Turtlekid too. I'm really liking the Fungi Forum's atmosphere of debate.

Might it actually be safe here for me to post my opinion without conservative/liberal/environmentalist/elitist/whatever extremists jumping all over me? I never get into political discussions for that very reason. Well, OK. I support McCain. I'm not old enough to vote at the moment, but he's an experienced guy with some good plans, and his VP has the energy they need to keep it going. I don't like Obama's policies.

If I had to, I would classify myself as mid-conservative, but I consider myself outside of the political spectrum. If that makes me an elitist or whatever other name you can come up with, I don't care.

[Turtlekid1]

Well, if by "elitist" you mean "not satisfied with the average," nothing wrong with that! ;)

Also, I like how Insane Steve's "8" followed by a ")" reads as a sunglasses smiley.

[Chupperson Weird]

Because we (I would definitely say I'm part of the "religious right") want someone who will practice their faith in the white house, not just claim to be a member of that faith.

Well, I don't know whether "Christians" take offense at this stuff, but... Palin's oldest child had to have been conceived before she was married, and I think that goes against Christian beliefs, right? (As well as her daughter being pregnant before being 18/before being married.)
Aside from that, I personally don't think that shooting tons of wild animals from planes (and trying to invalidate wildlife preserves) is in any way a good thing to do.

[CrossEyed7]

You know, there's actually a fair chance that we'll end up with Obama as president and Palin as vice. If Obama and McCain each get 269 electoral votes, which is quite possible (just a few states need to shift 5 or so percentage points from where they are now), then the election goes into Congress. The House of Representatives chooses the president, with each state getting one vote. The Democrats do control Congress by a fair margin now, but a lot of those are out of the 30 reps from New York and 50 reps from California. With each state getting only one vote, it would be pretty close, though Obama would probably still come out on top. Meanwhile, the vice-president is chosen independently by Senate, with each state again getting one vote. By my rough estimations, it could still be pretty close to a tie there -- and if it is, I'm guessing the current vice-president, as President of the Senate, would break the tie like he normally does, and I doubt Cheney would choose Biden.

That's an interesting thought, isn't it?

Anyway, as for this:

Palin's oldest child had to have been conceived before she was married, and I think that goes against Christian beliefs, right?

Christians believe in forgiveness.

[Chupperson Weird]

But they believe in just ignoring it and saying that it's perfectly fine?

[PaperLuigi]

This is why politics and Christianity don't mix. In Christianity, you're supposed to see a person's evil actions as a sin and do your best to forgive them no matter what. In politics, you hold everyone accountable to their evil actions (this could be anything from being a hypocrite about a policy you made to having sex with an intern) and no one forgives anyone (I doubt anyone is gonna want to forgive Bush for Iraq). In this way, being private about your religion is a great thing, but politicians do a grand job of mixing a secular idea and a spiritual idea together. I'm guilty of it too because I just said I was a "member" of the "religious right" when it came to politics, mainly because I really don't know who else I belong to. I'm torn between both my country (secular) and religion (spiritual). If I had to give up one of them I'd give up my country. Then I'd be a spiritual monk/nomad, and there are people that do this.

[Chupperson Weird]

What I'm trying to get at here is that I don't see her practicing her faith at all, and also while I'm down with forgiveness, forgiveness doesn't mean that you just turn a blind eye. You still realize that it's wrong according to your belief system, and then the act of overcoming that somehow makes you a better person, or somesuch. It doesn't erase what they've actually done.

[Turtlekid1]

You gave the definition for secular/human forgiveness.  I think CrossEyed7 was talking about the Christian/biblical definition.  Also, the more I think about it, the more I realize the point is moot.  Sarah Palin isn't the one who got pregnant before marriage in the first place.  I'm not going to vote for/against her because of what her daughter did.  Her daughter isn't the one who would be in the white house.

PS: Great solution to the political discussion!

[CrossEyed7]

I have to admit that my judgment is probably a bit skewed. Whenever I hear of some high-profile pregnancy like this, I'm so happy that they didn't abort that I can't find it in me to be upset about it being premarital. Maybe I should be, I don't know. But anyway, I don't think you can combine Christian and political ethics like that.

Palin's oldest child had to have been conceived before she was married, and I think that goes against Christian beliefs, right?

In here, it sounds like you're saying that from a Christian perspective, premarital sex is wrong, and from a political perspective, if you do something wrong, it never gets erased from your slate. But from a Christian perspective, if she's received Christ's sacrifice, then she's been forgiven, and from a political perspective, premarital sex isn't that significant in the first place. You can't mix them like that.

I'm not, however, saying that religion shouldn't play a role in politics. I think it is incredibly detrimental to ignore religion and act like politicians aren't affected by their religious beliefs. Religions are just a subset of worldviews, something everyone, religious or not, has. It's the filter through which you see the world, and every decision you make is based on how you see things. Palin primarily has a traditional conservative Protestant worldview. Obama primarily has a globalist humanist worldview, with some elements of Marxism (seeming to mainly be in the form of black liberation theology). Those worldviews will profoundly impact the way they approach every decision they make in the White House, and so I think it is perfectly legitimate to explore the doctrines of their respective churches, and let the voters make their decisions based on which worldviews they want their president and vice-president to have. I don't think that the media should mesh together pieces of a Christian worldview and a secular worldview as it's convenient. But I'm way off on a tangent here.

Aside from that, I personally don't think that shooting tons of wild animals from planes (and trying to invalidate wildlife preserves) is in any way a good thing to do.

I haven't done much research on this yet, but for now, I trust that the governor of Alaska knows more about Alaskan species than I do. I will look into it when I get a chance, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, and trying not to be swayed by the cuteness of the animals in question.

[Chupperson Weird]

Might I mention, she's trying to get the wildlife preserves un-preserved in order to drill for oil.