Help Educate me about Kerry

No time to go into it now but... John Kerry on the issues
True, the front blurbs are sound bites, but if you are willing to dive in a little deeper you'll get it.

 

I thought this had been denied for years?

 

You should be. Just because you feel your vote is "already decided" doesn't mean it is. If everyone actually voted and turnout was higher than it is, there are many more states which would become battlegrounds.

I believe Florida was considered an easy Democrat pickup in 2000.

No matter what, be sure to vote.

And yes, check out Kerry's website. That's the easy place to start. Look there first before you look at people's opinions on what they think his stances are. Furthermore, it may help to look at voting records, as both major candidates can be seen as inconsistent. I'll see if I can find a link for you.

 

From Kerry's Website:
John Kerry has the courage to take on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. However, he believes that we should keep the middle class tax cuts that Democrats fought for in 2001 and 2003. Specifically, he wants to protect the increases in the child tax credit, the reduced marriage penalty and the new tax bracket that helps people save $350 on their first level of income. He strongly disagrees with Democrats who want to repeal these tax cuts because it would cost a typical middle-class family with two children an additional $2,000. These families are often already struggling with higher health care costs and higher state and local taxes. In fact, John Kerry wants to give more tax breaks to the middle class with new tax credits on health care and college tuition. These tax cuts are part of his plan to restore the economy and cut the budget deficit in half in four years.

Ok some one versed in Kerry answer me this:
Is his plan to repeal Bush's tax cut or to just tax the wealthiest people more. There is a huge difference in my mind. Bush's tax cuts helped all Americans who paid Federal Taxes, granted it helped out the wealthiest more because they paid more (seems obvious).
Sounds like to me Kerry wants to repeal Bush's tax cuts (to everyone who paid taxes) and decide who gets teh money based on criteria (do you have kids, do you make $X dollars or less, do you pay for college, do you pay for your own health insurance).
Again it's the typicla liberal vs. conservative tax issue on who can best utilize the money, but the issue Kerry won't answer is HOW WILL HE RAISE TAXES (exactly how will he do it and who will it effect).
Bush in his campaign vs Gore said he wanted to lower the 15% bracket to 10% along with other changes. Why can't Kerry (or where can I find teh specifics) on his plan to increase taxes.

 

Personally, my support of Kerry is based primarily on the way he wants to fight the war on terror. Specifically, he wants to increase funding to the intelligence services in order to ID potential terrorist plots before they happen, then take them out with covert military operations.

It just seems to me that this is the best way to do it.

 

The has been a paradigm shift in the intelligence community recently. The old thinking was that if an attack hadn't happened [recently] it meant that the enemy couldn't attack us. That is unfortunately no longer the case. Thank God we haven't been hit, and I do credit intelligence with prevention, but I wouldn't sleep easy just yet. It is only a question of when for these guys.

 

If somebody wants to get you bad enough, they will find a way. That is just the nature of the beast.

Our approach to warfare has so radically changed. Now we seem pretty focused on figuring out why they do the things that they have done. Rubbish. You cannot apply logic to the illogical. Before the argument starts, if you blow yourself up or fly jets into buildings, you are not a logical person. The threat exists, so the only logical thing to do is to identify any of those involved operationally or financially, and dispatch them with extreme prejudice.

<steps off of soapbox>

 

Why is it rubbish? The true war lies within the mind. They are very logical. The problem lies within their corrupted views. People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. Dehumanizing them does not help.

Once again I would like to quote Thomas Merton:

"The discoveries Freud and others in modern times have of course, alerted us
to the fact that there are certain imperatives of culture and of conscience
which appear pure on the surface and are in fact bestial in their roots. The
greatest inhumanities have been perpetrated in the name of "humanity,"
"civilization," "progress," "freedom," "my country," and of course "God."
This reminds us that in the cultivation of an inner spriritual consciousness
there is a perpetual danger of self-deception, narcissism, self-righteous
evasion of truth. In other words, the standard temptation of religious and
spiritually minded people is to cultivate an inner sense of rightness or of
peace, and make this subjective feeling the final test of everything. As
long as this feeling of rightness remains with them, they will do anything
under the sun. But this inner feeling (as Auschwitz and the Eichmann case
have shown) can coexist with the ultimate in human corruption."

 

Making these guys out to be nuts or terrorists belittles their strength. Al-Queda is a multi-national army that has been active for almost 20 years now.

Al-Qaida is a multi-national support group which funds and orchestrates the activities of Islamic militants worldwide. It grew out of the Afghan war against the Soviets, and its core members consist of Afghan war veterans from all over the Muslim world. Al-Qaida was established around 1988 by the Saudi militant Osama bin Ladin. Based in of Afghanistan, bin Ladin uses an extensive international network to maintain a loose connection between Muslim extremists in diverse countries. Working through high-tech means, such as faxes, satellite telephones, and the internet, he is in touch with an unknown number of followers all over the Arab world, as well as in Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada.

The organization's primary goal is the overthrow of what it sees as the corrupt and heretical governments of Muslim states, and their replacement with the rule of Sharia (Islamic law). Al-Qaida is intensely anti-Western, and views the United States in particular as the prime enemy of Islam. Bin Ladin has issued three "fatwahs" or religious rulings calling upon Muslims to take up arms against the United States. (see Bin Ladin’s Declaration of War).
Attempts to radicalize existing Islamic groups and create Islamic groups where none exist.

Advocates destruction of the United States, which is seen as the chief obstacle to reform in Muslim societies.

Supports Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritera, Kosova, Pakistan, Somalia, Tajikistan and Yemen.

In February 1998, bin Ladin announced the formation of an umbrella organization called “The Islamic World Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders” (Al-Jabhah al-Islamiyyah al-`Alamiyyah li-Qital al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin) Among the members of this organization are the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian al-Jihad. Both of these groups were have been active in terrorism over the past decade. (see Attacks of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad).

Osama bin Ladin entered on his current path of holy warrior in 1979, the year Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. He transfered his business to Afghanistan--including several hundred loyal workmen and heavy construction tools--and set out to liberate the land from the infidel invader. Recognizing at once that the Afghans were lacking both infrastructure and manpower to fight a protracted conflict, he set about solving both problems at once.

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