Gay Marriage and 2A....

[cclaxton]

Since the left controls the media and mediation of presidential elections, I'd say the bigger problem is nary a Republican can keep on message with "that's a state's right issue and I'll never engage in social engineering, because that's not the job of the president." Instead they always get caught up in the "litmus" questions.

For the record, which Republican has ended abortion or destroyed gay rights? Oh, that's right, none.

I like what Limbaugh said recently and I paraphrase: "Republicans used to be the party of opposition, but now they're are the party of fine tuning the liberal agenda. They exist solely to sell socialist ideas to their conservative base."

"Ownership" of the media is not a simple "liberal" or "conservative" formula. It is misleading, if not outright misinformation to state that "the left controls the media." It depends on how you define "the left" as well. First, all media giants are owned by publicly traded businesses. These businesses are there to maximize profit to their shareholders and their Boards. In most cases these businesses are managed by conservative business-people who are interested in making money. So, I would not classify them as "the left." In fact they are mostly conservative, thus being on "the right." In the past 15 years the news media marketplace has diversified based on which demographics they think are the best for their brand and style. This is important based on the strength of the advertising they are selling. Fox News has a different mix of advertisers at different time slots based on who they are targeting. The facts are that people who watch news are going to watch news that tends to agree with their own views rather than news that has a slant they disagree with. The more they stay tuned, then more ads they watch, and the more they can charge for that time slot.

It's important to understand that "ownership" of news businesses and the political slant of news businesses are two separate things. "The right" owns most, if not all news businesses, but their marketing and business strategies may be targeting left-leaning or moderate demographics. In short, the bias we see in news is not based on ownership, but on marketing strategy. Take a look at this link. This shows the daily viewership for cable and network news: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...5-2015/422952/
Each time slot will be different. But on average Fox News, clearly controlled by Rupert Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (yes, look it up), has more viewers at prime time than MSNBC+HLN+CNN combined, even when you exclude CNBC, which has a more conservative viewership.

In summary, the facts show that "the right" controls the media (and if you say thus the mediation of presidential elections). My view is that slanted media coverage is causing us to become more polarized and less willing to compromise to make government work. The sensationalizing of news and politics is bad for America. It is good to have differing POV so citizens can assess the arguments for/against any particular issue. But that is not what is happening. We are being USED by news businesses to market advertising...at the expense of good governance. I don't view that as good for America.

I hope that news organizations like the BBC and Al Jazeera will challenge American news media to return to a less polarizing approach to the news, and will encourage more bipartisanship and a return to better governance.
Cody

[JTQ]

An even greater problem is the Republican party's seeming desire to increase the likelihood of our youth to be put in positions where an abortion seems like a logical decision. If Republicans would get with the program and the facts, stop pushing abstinence only sexual ed, and properly inform kids about prevention and risk, then I could take them seriously regarding a stance against abortion.

Most other developed nations have far better teen pregnancy numbers than we do. They also have factual education about sex and reproduction, and preventive methods, that is widely and easily available to the people at greatest risk.

You're right, if only we could get sex education in the public schools, and not just for a year or two, maybe we could have say, 40 years of it, so we could have a good data base to see how well it works. One could only hope.

For those concerned about losing your gay or abortion rights, pick the items your 15 year old daughter can legally do without your permission…

1. Get a Motrin from the school nurse.
2. Get her ears pierced at the mall.
3. Buy a handgun.
4. Taker her girlfriend to the prom.
5. Get an abortion.

[Robinson]

I agree that one should try and make actions line up with beliefs. If a politician genuinely believes that abortion is the killing of a human, they should take a stance against it. What I think does these folks great disservice is the stances they take.

You can't reasonably try and force law based solely on religious thinking upon an entire population that is comprised of many secular peoples and those of vastly differing religious beliefs. That's one problem.

An even greater problem is the Republican party's seeming desire to increase the likelihood of our youth to be put in positions where an abortion seems like a logical decision. If Republicans would get with the program and the facts, stop pushing abstinence only sexual ed, and properly inform kids about prevention and risk, then I could take them seriously regarding a stance against abortion.

Most other developed nations have far better teen pregnancy numbers than we do. They also have factual education about sex and reproduction, and preventive methods, that is widely and easily available to the people at greatest risk.

Seriously; drop the instances of unplanned pregnancy and you directly drop the number of abortions. If someone were truly serious about abortion being killings, and wanted to stop killings instead of having an issue to fight about, they would support proper fact-based education.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

You seem to have a thoughtful stance on this. My stance is that it comes down to personal accountability. The government has no business telling people they should abstain -- but we should all expect people to take responsibility for their actions, unless we expect everyone to be too dumb to know where babies come from. After all, a woman certainly DOES have the right to choose -- but the time to choose is before conception, not after. There are unfortunate circumstances where I believe abortion is perhaps the right choice, my problem is that it has become just another form of birth control.

[Malamute]

You seem to have a thoughtful stance on this. My stance is that it comes down to personal accountability. The government has no business telling people they should abstain -- but we should all expect people to take responsibility for their actions, unless we expect everyone to be too dumb to know where babies come from. After all, a woman certainly DOES have the right to choose -- but the time to choose is before conception, not after. There are unfortunate circumstances where I believe abortion is perhaps the right choice, my problem is that it has become just another form of birth control.

This is generally left out of the discussion, but seems to be the central point.

I still have a problem with "I dont LIKE it, there should be a LAW!" mindset though. The discussion seems to miss the obvious, but never mentioned point above though.

[OnionsAndDragons]

In an ideal world, we wouldn't be relying on the public ed system to teach so much to children(this is even the case in upper middle income to reasonably well off households), or it wouldn't exist at all, and there wouldn't be too many idiot parents. Or children of idiot parents that make the same mistakes their folks did due to their folks not learning from it and educating the kiddos, ad nauseum.

Unfortunately, we don't live there. We live in a place that expects way too much of the Ed system, partially because we are conditioned/told to. And many of those Ed systems teach sex ed in an entirely unrealistic, and often counter-factual, way.

I agree more individual responsibility is a one thing we need a lot more of. However, there is only so much of that responsibility that is fair to place on a kid. Yes, if they have been educated of the risks AND proper methods to mitigate them and choose not to do so; that's their fault. Yes there is greater access to good info than ever before, but there are lots of kids today that aren't taught how to educate themselves, how to sift science from biased propaganda masquerading as research.

I put a lot of blame on parents with this stuff. Some are cowardly. Some are just willfully ignorant of what it was like being a teen. They were teens, and probably did the same things that most teens do : fooled around, likely had premarital sex or sex before establishing a solid relationship. This is normal, natural behavior. But they somehow forget that and then expect their kids to do the exact opposite, while failing to give them the knowledge to protect themselves should they make the same choices their parents likely did.

People in our society like to think of children/teens as being with zero sexual agency; but that just isn't the reality of it. Kids will make their own decisions regarding these things, eventually. And if they are not armed with factual information,they will very likely make bad decisions that are high risk when they could have made maybe bad, maybe good decisions with significantly mitigated risk.

And, yeah; this is a big soapbox issue for me.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[RevolverRob]

I tend to believe the Republican presidential candidates have lost more votes during their last four losses because they weren't conservative enough rather than because they were too conservative.

That doesn't make sense.

Where did they lose those voters? Did they stay at home? Or did they vote for someone else? Or did they turn up and change their votes, because they didn't like GOP candidate?

Let's go back to 1988 when Bush I was elected - voter turnout - 50.3%
1992 (Clinton I) - 55.2%
1996 (Clinton II) - 49.0%
2000 (Bush2 - I) - 50.3%
2004 (Bush2 - II) - 55.7%
2008 (Obama I) - 57.1%
2012 (Obama II) - 54.9%

Voter turnout was higher in 3 of the last 4 election cycles and that 50.3% was still higher than Clinton II. Just looking at this trend - I see no discernible way to determine anything of the nature of what you are talking about. My guess is you're actually wrong - this country has been moving towards the middle of the road since Bush I sent us to Kuwait in 1990 for the first time. War didn't sell a second term for Bush I and it was clear in that election. In fact, if anything the Republican Party lost votes in that 1992 election to Ross Perot - Who ran on a conservative fiscal platform - NOT a conservative social platform. Perot garnered 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992. And 9% in 1996 when he ran under the Reform Party who -

A noticeable absence from the Reform Party platform has been social issues, including abortion and gay rights. Reform Party representatives had long stated beliefs that their party could bring together people from both sides of these issues, which they consider divisive, to address what they considered to be more vital concerns as expressed in their platform

. Since 2000 the races have been much closer in terms of percentages than they were in the '90s, indicating increased support for more "liberal" conservatives. The highest voter turnout for Obama I is actually the highest voter turnout since the 1968 election when Nixon was elected for the first time. When you look at 2008, where Obama won by 7.2% of the popular vote - that signifies to me that what he was successful in doing was mobilizing a base of voters that weren't voting at all.

My take on this is that if the GOP doesn't abandon its anti-free society movements soon, they will suffer long and agonizing defeats propped up only be clever non-independent redistricting to maintain the few seats they can.

[Dagga Boy]

Sometimes Texas pisses me off to no end. Rather than immediately filing lawsuits to have every state that does not recognize Texas CHL's to recognize them, to really make a point (most are the same States that Texas has to accept gay marriage certs from). No, they want to allow some municipal clerks to deny marriage certs on their personal religious grounds. This is utter bullshit. Some municipal clerks personal religious ideals should not have a single bearing on doing their job. I don't want a Muslim clerk denying a permit for a "Draw the Prophet" event. I don't want a deeply religious person to deny some permit for events that fall,on their day of sabbath. Government employees religious convictions need to stay at home. Imagine a Quaker at DPS who refuses to issue CHL's because of their religious views. I don't want to live in anybody's religious state,even if it is mine.

[JTQ]

Ross Perot is correct in the two wins for President Clinton. If Perot wasn't in the race would those votes more likely go to President Bush/Senator Dole or to President Clinton. President Clinton would not have gotten any significant amount of the votes that went to Perot. Did the voters bail on Bush/Dole because they were too conservative or not conservative enough? With Perot out of the race, President Clinton would have been in an uphill battle and most likely would have lost.

Did the conservatives love Senator "Gang of Eight" "Reach across the Isle" McCain or did they show their disdain and just stay home. Were the conservatives in love with Governor Romney from Massachusetts, one of the bluest of blue states, and the man that created "Romney-Care" and come out and vote, or did they just stay home?

I jumped on the Perot bandwagon the first time around thinking we needed to get more conservative. I learned my lesson, all that did was get President Clinton elected. While I haven't made that error again, the problems is other folks keep making that mistake. The conservatives of the Tea Party are not trying to drive the Republican party to the right, it is just trying to keep it from going left. The problem we have is if the conservatives don't get their guy, as was the case with McCain or Romney, they just stay home or vote for somebody that just can't win like Perot. If you want the rest of the country to be just like the big blue gun unfriendly zones like all of California, and New York, or such crime zones as cities like Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington, DC, Baltimore, etc., keep voting Democrat or telling yourself the Republican party is too conservative or is infringing on your rights somehow.

[RoyGBiv]

Sometimes Texas pisses me off to no end. Rather than immediately filing lawsuits to have every state that does not recognize Texas CHL's to recognize them, to really make a point (most are the same States that Texas has to accept gay marriage certs from). No, they want to allow some municipal clerks to deny marriage certs on their personal religious grounds. This is utter bullshit. Some municipal clerks personal religious ideals should not have a single bearing on doing their job. I don't want a Muslim clerk denying a permit for a "Draw the Prophet" event. I don't want a deeply religious person to deny some permit for events that fall,on their day of sabbath. Government employees religious convictions need to stay at home. Imagine a Quaker at DPS who refuses to issue CHL's because of their religious views. I don't want to live in anybody's religious state,even if it is mine.

Agreed. Total BS.

Our public servants forgot to leave their bibles in the desk drawer on this one.

I voted for Smitherman (in the primary). I wonder where he would have gone on this issue.

[Jeep]

Sometimes Texas pisses me off to no end. Rather than immediately filing lawsuits to have every state that does not recognize Texas CHL's to recognize them, to really make a point (most are the same States that Texas has to accept gay marriage certs from). No, they want to allow some municipal clerks to deny marriage certs on their personal religious grounds. This is utter bullshit. Some municipal clerks personal religious ideals should not have a single bearing on doing their job. I don't want a Muslim clerk denying a permit for a "Draw the Prophet" event. I don't want a deeply religious person to deny some permit for events that fall,on their day of sabbath. Government employees religious convictions need to stay at home. Imagine a Quaker at DPS who refuses to issue CHL's because of their religious views. I don't want to live in anybody's religious state,even if it is mine.

Let some other clerk who doesn't care issue the license or permit. We (rightly) allowed Quakers to avoid military occupations that involved carrying firearms; we allow Sikhs to wear beards in service. Allowing government employees who have religious scruples against doing something to avoid doing it if those scruples can be reasonably accommodated seems to me a good thing.

The spirit of the age is definitely "one size fits all" but I think that is a big mistake.