The employers not only compete in the area of retail sales, but also in providing wages and benefits. That draws the better employees and or makes it to where people can afford to chose where they are better suited to work.

I want every one to have health care benefits, but I want them to work and earn them. For those that can not work the government has been taking care of them, by educating them, feeding them and providing housing. We will always have a certain percentage of the poor with us, we will always have people that lose their homes, due to taxes they can not pay or people that lose jobs. These folks want too much, they are narcisstic and need to get over it and work. It is hard to respect someone that believes that others should support them. We are led to believe that they are underprivleged but in reality they exhault themselves over us making us their slaves. we work and they play. The government agenda seems to be exploiting those people, using them as poster children when in fact I do not believe for one minute the agenda is to provide health care. Not when you take away to give away, That is the key GIVE AWAY – when it is all over it was all given away and no one really benefits. Let people earn by merit so they appreciate what they have earned, so that they experience the self satisfaction of what they have acheived. Political exploiters rob individuals of their self worth.

We’ll be praying to him as we build levees.

But what I want to know is: Why is your “solution” any more amicable than simply saying gay men and lesbians may marry each other and have all the same rights and responsibilities with each other as straight couples?

And how is it any more of a “solution” than people going to the ballot box and voting to say that they’re willing to tolerate homosexuality, but that they aren’t going to endorse it by recognizing their marriages? (Which is what happened in California.)

It isn’t any more amicable and it isn’t any more of a solution to just get the government out of it. It’s a cop out. It’s splitting the baby in half to be “fair”. It’s an attempt to avoid conflict in the courts and at the ballot box. But you aren’t going to. Gays are born that way and it’s very likely that homophobes are too.

It is also proof of what I was saying.

The community recognizes the marriage, formalizing it. Think about it. Even in a marriage that doesn’t have a license – common law – what is required? That you represent yourselves as married to others, in one way or another. Why do the others matter? Why should the church matter or witnesses?

Formality matters to us. Next time you fill up your tank, think about the difference between paying for the gas with legal, formal tender or paying with an IOU. If you find a gas station that will take the latter, please tell me where it is. It matters in relationships as well. Married couples behave differently than cohabitating couples, even if they cohabitated previous to the marriage. Making it “legal” changes things, some of them for the better.

Like it or not, you and your girl aren’t an island. Your marriage affects your immediate family, your extended family, your church, your neighborhood, everyone around you. You say a marriage is simply an agreement between you, your bride and the deity of your choosing. I say that’s bullshit. I say that’s the way you want it to be, but it isn’t. 5000 years of recorded human history and reams of scientific research back me up. You have wishful thinking.

You’re saying that the community doesn’t necessarily mean the government. But why shouldn’t it in this case? So that people who DON’T want to recognize or endorse the marriage don’t have to. That’s your solution. It’s inherently an encouragement of segregation, not an elimination of it. It sacrifices all the benefits of family law so that social cons can feel better about themselves or so that gays can feel accepted, but without actually resolving anything. What a waste of time and energy you’d impose on everyone just so you don’t have to take a position on the subject.

As I said, gays marrying doesn’t bother me. What’s wrong with marriage in this country isn’t that the gay community wants in on it. It’s that we breeders have cheapened it. We’ve turned marriage into a romantic gesture that makes breaking up expensive. We have fundamentally misunderstood it and built our current civil laws around those misunderstandings. Those laws need to be changed, not repealed. Babies and bath water. But we’ll save that for a whole post. This retort is too long as it is.

Society can still recognize marriage in any form it wants…but government will recognize it differently.

The word you meant to use in that last paragraph was “pact” not pack. As in contract. Which our government does have a legitimate function in enforcing, just as it does with any other.

The recognition by the community of the marriage has always been a part of marriage. Still is.

Jethro: I don’t rightly know. I ain’t ever kippled.

But neither of them is president yet. They’re both Senators and a decision needs to be made on this one way or the other. They both need to get their asses to work and do the jobs they currently have. Whatever deal is worked out, I want both of their names next to a vote. As The King would say, a little less conversation, a little more action. It’s time to TCB, baby.

Until then, and maybe after depending on the details of what’s worked out, I say a plague on both their houses.

It isn’t that the electorate doesn’t care; it’s that those who care about it as an issue have already lost this election. But I only point it out as a missed opportunity for us. And actually, running that ad would hurt Obama because, he and McCain aren’t all that different on the subject.

As always, unless something spectacular happens in the debates, this one will come down to turnout in a few purple counties in a few purple states. And those people will be deciding who to vote for on the basis of who they like better.

Speaking of immigration, it will be interesting to see what the electoral map looks like after the 2010 census. Lotta people moving south for the jobs and the lower cost of living.

Maybe they’re leaving the states bluer and maybe not, and maybe they’re bringing some electoral votes with them. Be interesting to see.

I think the GOP is playing this right. I think it’s simply going to get worse for the junior senator, the republican attack machine is a well oiled machine. It’s greased it treads with guts from the Gore and Kerry campaigns. Plus, McCain’s narrative is giving him a second and third look by independents, which seem to be swinging towards him.

I want to believe that somewhere in the corner of John McCain’s mind, is the embedded belief that he’s going to be a one term president. And what he’s handed his party – even though he disagrees with at times – is a bright future in Sarah Palin.

-a Real Clarke Fan for a number of years!