President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

While yes, the tax issue is partially about why rich people get a tax cut they may not need, a big part of it is the GOP selling it as something that will create jobs and give employees raises, which we know won't happen.

 

How are you with eliminating a program that delivers health care to 9 million poor children? Yours is the one and only party that respects life. Or so we are told. So perhaps you're against the cutting of CHIP?

 

If you look at the states that have the highest rate of teen pregnancies, which are one of the largest groups who have abortions, they are usually red states that push for abstinence-only education and have fought against birth control and the teaching and distribution if it in schools.

Two points that aren't frequently said is that the number of abortions has gone down by more than 1/3 since its peak number, and that the number of teen pregnancies has gone down by more than half since the early 1990s. I highly doubt that more than half of the teens are just choosing abstinence. Instead, they're being smarter about the birth control, which conservatives were historically against.

 

No, I don't support that choice. I just don't see how you legislate it, and any attempt to try will likely lead to abuses that will inappropriately and illegally stifle a woman's right to choose.

Also, your answer was useless. You don't have one. That's more of a gotcha than the one you think you have here.

 

It's not even that it can't be enforced. Attempts to enforce it could open the door for anti-abortion judges or law enforcement to try to prevent abortions or punish women who have them after the fact.

 

The decision to pass on testing strikes me as foolish. It does matter. If you know the problem is coming, you can start preparing for it. The only benefit of avoiding it is to avoid having to make a decision regarding abortion.

I understand this is an important issue for you. I hope you realize the irrational and dishonest points it brings out. I'm the same way about smoking, but I freely admit that my views on any legislation that hurts tobacco companies or potentially stops people from smoking is a good thing and I don't care if it is fair.

 

I've been thinking about this, and I think ultimately I view abortion the way I view religion: It's not really anybody's business but your own. I think abortion should be legal. I would also be aghast if society told people that special needs children had to be aborted for the greater good. But for me, those are two sides of the same coin. My ex and I would have terminated a pregnancy that showed signs of significant problems. I wouldn't want anyone to tell me we couldn't. I also wouldn't want anyone to tell me we had to. Those are difficult, personal decisions that only the mother and father should be allowed to make. Like choosing faith.

 

And Cuba.

 

Talked to the president of a local bank this morning at a church breakfast. I asked him about how the tax scam would affect his bank and the industry. He anticipates it will lead to another round of mergers as large local banks are bought by regional ones and regionals are bought by national ones. He said he's certain another round of "too big to fail" bank bailouts will happen in the next 10 years due to it.

 

"tax scam"

 

This is a remarkably uncharitable view of your ideological opponents. For most important questions, we reach our conclusions for a variety of reasons.
These conversations always devolve quickly, partially because we delude ourselves into assuming the worst in the other side. Abortion rights advocates value life and those looking to restrict those rights value bodily autonomy, even in women. These are supreme, universal values that will carry the day in conflict with almost any competing value. Abortion is the unique situation (there might be other, similar questions that come up in end-of-life questions) where these two meet head to head. It rarely brings out the best in any of us.

 

That makes sense, and it has the added benefit of fitting in with the current law of the land.

I don't think I could ever bring myself to agree with that choice if I was personally involved, but I don't expect anybody else to live by my beliefs.