Politics

[Douglas]

It is interesting that Hillary is making such a big deal of her experience given that she only has 6 years compared to Obama's 2. i am not very impressed. The truth is that i count Obamas lack of "experience" as a strength. Less time to get corrupted and sucked in the nasty that seems to make up so much of our current political system.

Another aspect that i love about him is his efforts to remove the lobbyists from the political process. The political process must be founded on principle sold to the biggest bidder. Check out the article at www.barackobama.com/pdf/TakingBackOurGovernmentBackFinalFactSheet.pdf

To those of you who are Republican i hope that we can talk about this. No matter what party is in charge the political process must be protected from those that would manipulate it to their own interest. The bribe has been the plague of politics since politics has existed. I hope that this same issue is being addressed by the republican candidates as well.

[robin]

He wants to remove lobbyists from the political process? How in the world will most Americans get their voice heard? I am a member of the American Health Underwriters Association, and we send lobbyists to Salem, and Washington DC in order to represent our interests. Contrary to popular belief most politicians are not that intelligent. They end up having to voice opinions and vote on vital issues, and one way of making decisions is meeting with Lobbyists, usually on both sides of an issue, and hearing from them. Keep in mind that these lobbyists represent Americans from all walks of life.

If Barak is brave enough to go after lobbyists , perhaps he should decline all campaign contributions which essentially play the same roll in the political system. Saying that we should remove lobbyists from politics, would remove a voice from many Americans that depend on lobbyists to be heard, and realistically it will never happen. It would be like saying, we should remove all money from politics. This type of thing is nothing more than a cheap applause line.

Robin

[Douglas]

Well i need to clarify. It is indeed true that lobbyists are an important part of the process and beyond a doubt most of them are does exactly what need to be done; communicating directly with the polititians so that they can make good decisions based on the needs of their constituents. The issue at hand is the money. The quote from Baraks page is:

"Barack Obama will issue an executive order banning registered lobbyists or lobbying firms from giving gifts
in any amount or any form to executive branch employees."

The point is to make sure that what you just describe above actually happens and that the decision are made based on principle and not on a bride or "gift." The lobbyists and the process that surrounds them is not wrong at its core, we need to work to ensure that we can keep it pure and as free from corruption as possible. Everyone wins if the system works as it should.

[Josh]

Being both deeply apathetic about politics and it's ability to solve the world's difficulties and also being deeply troubled by the division between Christians that I see come about because of political agendas, today I thought of a maxim in regard to Christians and politics. Here's two versions:

"Christians should only earn the right to get passionately political when they have learned to daily live the sermon on the mount"

"Living the sermon on the mount should be a prerequisite to Christian political activism"

I'll grant that politics and political involvement can have some effect, and politics can be a tool Christians use, but while many Christians are passionately political, very few of us are doing anything practical about learning to live the sermon on the mount.

We know that attempts to legislate morality have only modest returns. We know that the government does almost everything in a mediocre fashion.

It's the Church's job to inspire the culture, to convict the culture, to feed the poor and the needy, to turn the other cheek to our enemies, to forgive.

Unfortunately the Church hasn't done very well on those fronts and the government has stepped in- and it may very well be that in the short run we need to support the government in doing our job, but are we looking forward to the day when Christians will lead the world, lead our country in doing those things better than any state can?

This really isn't in direct response to anything anyone has posted here. These are just growing convictions in me that need to be voiced, and, of course, sharpened.

[robin]

dkjohnston said:

Well i need to clarify. It is indeed true that lobbyists are an important part of the process and beyond a doubt most of them are does exactly what need to be done; communicating directly with the polititians so that they can make good decisions based on the needs of their constituents. The issue at hand is the money. The quote from Baraks page is:

"Barack Obama will issue an executive order banning registered lobbyists or lobbying firms from giving gifts
in any amount or any form to executive branch employees."

The point is to make sure that what you just describe above actually happens and that the decision are made based on principle and not on a bride or "gift." The lobbyists and the process that surrounds them is not wrong at its core, we need to work to ensure that we can keep it pure and as free from corruption as possible. Everyone wins if the system works as it should.

Perhaps Barak doesn't go far enough. Maybe he should try to remove corporate, and union influence from the campaign process. All of the arguments that are made about lobbyists donations and gifts should be applied to Political Action Committees (PACs) as well. Bundled campaign donations are a problem, and I would also lump in Union endorsements and contributions. However, if we go this far, we need to limit the amount of money that a candidate can contribute to their own campaign in order to protect the process from being limited to only those who can cut a fat check to themselves (Romney). Getting money out of politics will never happen, and restricting money flow through narrow avenues only inhibits the influence of much of the population.

Robin

[Alex]

Frankly I've been waiting for all parties to be disbanded, just like George Washington recommended. Then we would be forced to weigh in on specific items rather than lumping them together into two separate bags, like kids playing jax.

[robin]

It appears that Barak is planting fainters in his audience. If this is the case, how pathetic.

www.breitbart.tv/html/48404.html

Robin