shakran

I'm going to answer these without reading any of the replies. I think it's more honest - you know you're getting my ideas rather than me regurgitating and taking credit for someone else's So if I say what you said, congratulations, you got it right.

The current "lower taxes and increase spending" model, surprisingly enough, doesn't work. My bank wouldn't let me do that, why should the nation?

We're gonna have to raise taxes. Yes, that sucks and yes, it's unpopular as all hell, but we've been spending through the nose for years and refusing to pay for it. I for one am tired of being bankrolled by China. But here's the trick. If you're poor or middle class, your taxes won't be touched, or if they are, they'll go down. If you're makin' a million a year, prepare to pay. You can afford it. You'll just have to wait one more month to buy that 3rd Ferarri.

Withdraw from Iraq. I'll go into the political reasons later - but the economic ones are obvious. We're not throwing a fortune down a rathole here, we're throwing MILLIONS of fortunes down a rathole. Newsflash: We can't afford it, whether you agree with the mission or not. And it's time to stop living in that fantasy parallel dimension that says we can do it whether we have the money or not.

Now most of the money we save by not pissing it away in the desert, will be used instead to lower the rate of debt expansion. It won't pay off the debt, because it's not our money anyway - we're borrowing it all, and using borrowed funds to pay off a loan is rather silly. Some will have to be funnelled into funding education, public health, and all the other programs Bush has decimated in the past 6 years.

Basically what I'm saying here is that the repayment is going to hurt for a long time, but the longer we wait to start doing it the worse it's going to hurt.



WAR in IRAQ:

Pull out. Economic reasons above. Other reasons here. 1) we're not doing any good in there. 2) we will NEVER do any good in there. 3) Why get our guys killed for a lost cause? This "stay the course" crap didn't work in Vietnam, and it won't work here.



Close up the borders, illegal immigrants go home, and we start instituting REAL security measures over ALL of our transportation/shipping industries. We're not going to worry about Grandma taking her knitting needles on the plane anymore, but we are going to start security checks on train passengers, and we're going to tighten security at our ports. We're going to get rid of the bullshit security measures that don't work, and we're going to stop giving money to cities for "homeland security" purposes that is then spent on things like park benches. We're going to stop securing cornfields in Iowa or statues in Georgia, or whatever the hell else we're declaring as bogus terrorist targets.

The national moodring terror alert system goes away because all it's used for is to scare the public. I'd like to think the average american is smart enough to understand that a threat is a threat, and doesn't need pretty colors to help him work that out.

We're going to stop going after fake terror threats, like Iraq, and we're going to FIND bin Laden by actually LOOKING for him.

We're going to increase our foreign spy network significantly because humint is much better than satellite photos. We're going to scale back a lot on military hardware that we don't need anymore. We don't need the systems that were designed to stop the Russians anymore. We need faster, more agile, more versitile systems like the F22 and the JSF. And we're going to lower our cost per unit by not pulling asinine stunts with the defense contractors. We're not going to order up a new airplane that costs umpteen jillion dollars to develop and then only order 20 of them. Doing crap like that is WHY the stealth bomber costs 2 billion dollars per plane. I could go on all day like this, but basically we're going to take a skunk works approach to military development - develop it fast, develop it cheap, and use off the shelf parts when possible, because it costs a crapload more to custom design a part when an already-built part will do.

And most importantly, we're going to stop pissing the entire world off. Conflicts between two nations are not our business unless we have a strategic alliance treaty with one of them. We are not going to go nosing into everyone else's business because that just pisses people off. The whole reason bin Laden hates us is because we propped him up against the russians when it was fun for us to play wargames against russian hardware, and then cut his legs out from under him as soon as the game was over. Whether bin Laden is wrong or right in his ideology (and obviously he's wrong) if we hadn't provoked him with needless nosing in on the business of other countries then he wouldn't have bothered to attack us.

we are not privatising social security. If President Bush thinks social security is in trouble perhaps he should quit stealing from it to pay for his little pet projects. We will leave social security alone, and let it build equity again instead of taking money out of it whenever we feel like paying for something else.





Israel is a great problem for us largely because we dumped the jews in the middle of the palestinians after WWII. Of course the palestinians are going to be a bit put out by that. I go back to my previous answer, where I said the affairs of other countries are not our affair. Israel and the Palestinians will have to work these problems out themselves. It's not our concern, and we have enough problems at home that we should solve before we go marching around trying to solve the problems of others.


Already went into this above, but specifically on Iran and N. Korea - - for one thing quit provoking them. I can't say that I blame N. Korea for sabre rattling with their nukes. After all, we said Iraq and North Korea are in the Axis of Evil. Then we invaded Iraq. What exactly is N. Korea supposed to think?

I want to send out a very strong message. We will leave you completely alone. If you ask us for help solving a humanitarian crisis, such as the tsunami, we will in all likelihood help you out. But we will not horn in on your affairs. You have nothing to fear from us. However, if you attack us, we will destroy you, and we will not support you after we're done.

Illegal immigrants go home. No exceptions. None. Period.

However, we make it a lot easier for people to immigrate legally. One of the big reasons we have illegal immigrants is because it takes years, sometimes decades, to get through all the bullshit red tape that is the immigration process. Streamline it. Has two advantages - fewer people will want to take the chance of illegally coming here and getting sent home, and we'll get rid of a bunch of bureaucrats who don't do anything useful anyway.


Education is broken. We must fix it. No more unfunded federal mandates. No more federal mandates based on a test that everyone will then teach to. No more assuming that just because some kid memorizes a bunch of multiple choice answers that he's actually learning.

Our teachers need higher pay because we need to attract better teachers. There are a lot of good teachers out there but there are also a lot of just plain lousy teachers. Education reform isn't going to be easy, but this fake learning that we call education in this country will be our undoing. We're already seeing that - a culture with a good educational system produces people who love to learn. Our society produces people who love to watch Fear Factor. Big difference.

Do nothing on abortion, because the law's already the way it should be. Her body, her choice.

Well this much praised privatized healthcare system that the republicans all angrilly told Bill Clinton was the only good way. . . it's not workin' so hot now is it? Socialize medicine. Universal healthcare. It's absolutely pathetic that in the most powerful country on earth with the best medical technology that's ever been seen on this planet, many people can't afford to go to the doctor to get necessary treatment. That cannot be tolerated. It must stop. Don't get me wrong. There will be aspects of medicine that are still privately funded. If you want breast enhancement or baldness treatments, you're on your own. But no one is going to die of a curable disease just because they can't scrape up the money to treat it. That's the kind of crap you read in a 19th century England novel, and it's simply not acceptible in a modern wealthy society.

Sending people to mars right now is stupid. Sending people to the moon right now is stupid. Continuing to fund the ISS and the space shuttle is stupid. We are in a major economic hole and funding projects that don't work, are unneccessary, and/or are needlessly dangerous is just plain stupid. We're cutting funding to the Hubble, which can actually advance science by leaps and bounds, in favor of sending people to mars, which on a cost/benefit analysis just doesn't make sense. we can find out almost everything about Mars from a robot probe that we could if we sent people, and it'll cost a LOT less and be a LOT less dangerous to boot.

Is idiotic. Prohibition didn't work. Neither will this. Do all the drugs you want, just don't give them to kids, and don't smoke them in public where you might hurt someone else.

Eliminate the death penalty. Eliminate easy prison stays. Inmates should not be getting cable TV and weightlifting equipment. Inmates should be sentenced to hard labor, not hanging out in their cells and shooting hoops in the yard. Let's make prison genuinely unpleasant. Let's make it a place that, if you ever go there, you'll do just about anything to never have to go back.

I'm not interested in bringing both parties together because neither party is truly in line with the general population. The republicans are way the hell out on the right wing and the democrats are way the hell out on the left wing, and most of the country is sitting in coach wondering who those idiots out on the wings are. If i were president I'd focus on eliminating bullshit. I'm tired of politics boiling down to who can lie the most convincingly. Either tell the truth or get the hell out. I'd take a much more combative approach - if there's something that needs to be done for the good of the people and a politicain (no matter what party he's from) decides to attach a bunch of riders that end up sinking it, or partisan politics get in the way, I'll go on TV and out the sonofabitch responsible for gumming up the works.


Patriot act needs to go, and the power that the current president has been amassing has got to be dissolved. As to the electoral college, it should go away as well. The people should vote for the president. Period.