Your top 3 political issues.

[MC Twinkie]

What are they? When you vote for a leader, what made you pick them? List more than 3 if you gottem

1) healthcare
2) immigration
3) war

[zymote]

1.) The environment
2.) Healthcare
3.) Iraq.

[jaesun]

1) war victory in Iraq
2) illegal immigration close the borders first
3) Economy including gas prices must drop, jobs must stay in America, tax-cuts should be made permanent, etc.

[umalak_]

1) Foreign Policy as a whole (but it'd be nice if they'd talk about the Middle East more)
2) Schools/Education
3) Economy - how about putting as much attention to the U.S. as you are in bringing a democracy to Iraq...

[BrandonWhat]

Originally Posted by jaesun

1) war victory in Iraq

And what, by your terms, would constitute a victory?

2) illegal immigration close the borders first

And the maquiladoras?

[jaesun]

Originally Posted by BrandonWhat

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And what, by your terms, would constitute a victory?

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Its not cutting and running after being there for so many years. Should we have been there to start with....nope. Would it be smart to bring everyone home in 18 months....hell no. Is Barack's plan to cut'n'run and then return later if (I mean when) we need to a smart plan....that puppy needs to dry his ears and realize how stupid that is. Not only to the US and the Middle East but to the rest of the world if AQ or any other group uses the country as a stronghold.

But, ask Ron Paul...we screwed it up so we must leave it there as fast as we can and say "We're outta here, sorry for the mess" and then focus on why the US is at fault for the terrorists types to hate us so much.

[BrandonWhat]

And for me:

1) Environment--this means turning away from Iraq with our spending and possibly even oil as a staple resource and really beginning to press towards alternative energy resources to resolve any growing crises, curbing all negative outputs and excessive resource consumption, creating more green architecture and more green-collared jobs, and placing tougher sanctions on the dirtiest corporations; this would also require some firing and hiring in he EPA, promoting deeper concern for organic farming and improving our means of transportation.
2) Education--the idea that only the privileged should be rewarded with education is a bad idea and is certainly due for extinction; the more and better educated we all are, the better off we'll all be, morally, economically and ecumenically. This includes sex education over abstinence-only programs which seek to dominate rather than inform, and telling creationism to please wait in the hall while biology class is in session; higher pay for teachers, lower tuition for students, easier access to grants and scholarships, etc.--these should all be placed on the table for consideration as no-brainers.
3) Health--note that I excluded the words "care" and "system", although I do think that what it grinds down to is caring and having a better system or systemic approach to bettering our health. We smoke like chimneys, drink like fish, perpetually fill our bodies with garbage, and, in the end, the only ones who really benefit from our blatant stupidity are the fast food and pharmaceutical Goliaths who would keep us all fat and sick and utterly dependent on insurance companies to wipe our asses for us because we were too lazy to get up off of them and start eating right and working out everyday. That's probably the one page on which I'm definitely at the same place as Huckabee, and, while I've touted the need for universal health care before, I've begun to recoil from the idea of actually paying for smokers and junk food addicts to have health insurance. Start caring about your health and stop leaning on big business and big government to do it for you; nutrition is an imperative and is not going to happen until we start spending our money in the right places.

But items 1 and, especially 3, start with us, with our viral growth of information, with an infallible fervor to evolve, not with more political clutter. Getting some balls and preparing for the long haul of working in the media as janitors is a place to start, because that's quite a fucking mess to clean up, particularly in advertising. What we don't know is going to kill us all if we don't wake up and lube up our necks to pull our excrescent heads out of our asses.

And there are other issues that count really rather high up on my scale of concern, as I'm a flaming social liberal, not to mention an artsy, bookish, bisexual, avant-garde worshiping, borderline socialist, intensely spiritual yet politically atheist, anti-bureaucratic margin dweller, but I think these are the best, and arguably the roughest, and probably the most encompassing areas to engage in; addressing these umbrella issues first will initiate a feedback reaction that can help resolve so many other issues, and will beautifully tip the scales back to an equilibrium we've never really had.

[BrandonWhat]

Originally Posted by jaesun

Its not cutting and running after being there for so many years. Should we have been there to start with....nope. Would it be smart to bring everyone home in 18 months....hell no. Is Barack's plan to cut'n'run and then return later if (I mean when) we need to a smart plan....that puppy needs to dry his ears and realize how stupid that is. Not only to the US and the Middle East but to the rest of the world if AQ or any other group uses the country as a stronghold.

But, ask Ron Paul...we screwed it up so we must leave it there as fast as we can and say "We're outta here, sorry for the mess" and then focus on why the US is at fault for the terrorists types to hate us so much.

I agree we've got quite a mess to clean up over there, which we started, and the growing closeness of the ties between Ahmadinejad and Iraq could be a cause for concern in the years to come, if we do pull out, but troop withdrawal or none, things have got to be executed differently than they have been; the mercs in Blackwater getting the kind of pay they do to only create even further turmoil is one problem I don't think she go unaddressed. And we've got to cut back on spending out there; we can maintain stability for a long time without having to plunge into further outrageous debt that, in the end, only debilitates our economic ability to fix things at home.

My take, anyway.

[Keith P]

1.Education
2.Education
3.Education

[zerojunkie]

1. Iraq, and foreign policy in general.
2. Education and Energy independence are tied for 2nd, and it means I get to add one more to the list.
3. Immigration (by way of reformed immigration policy)
4. Research funding, primarily in physics and space, but most definitely elsewhere.
5. dammit, last one i promise, fiscal responsibility.

[DataBass]

1) Less harsh drug penalties
2) More favorable legislation for rave promoters
3) Annual government rebate checks

BAM!

[Adam D]

In no particular order:

1. Poverty
2. Foreign policy
3. Healthcare

[TragicallyUnhip]

1) Iraq (pulling the majority of our troops out without leaving the people there high and dry)
2) Healthcare (making insurance affordable for everyone)
3) Foreign relations/diplomacy (we have a lot of damage to undo before we can make any real progress, thanks to the Bush administration)

[umalak_]

someone deleted a post

i'll add campaign finance reform to my list

[Sindell357]

Stem cell research