I love poker as much as anyone here and have contributed and supported the PPA written letters ect ect. I have also served 22 yrs in the military and even if it meant that the game I love would be abolished if evil republicans were voted in to office I still love my country a hell of allot more then I love poker. First of all the religious right does not make up the majority of the republican party, not does the maniacal left make up the majority of the democratic party. The fact is the internet gaming bill ban was passed in the middle of the night piggybacked on the port security bill and was voted on unanimously by both parties, this issue is not going to be resolved by voting democrat. The Republican party stands for more individual freedoms, lower taxes, and a strong defense of our country, even though they have not lived up to that platform in recent times IMO. The democratic party stands for higher taxes, more government spending, this is a part that�s philosophy believes you are not smart enough to make proper choices about how to spend your money and feels the government is better suited to make these decisions for you. Where in their platform have they stated they support poker, the democrats have had the majority in the house and senate for the last 2 yrs, and online poker has never been in a worse state. So in closing if you feel that internet poker is the most important issue facing this nation and feel that voting democrat will resolve our online problems, many people have lost their lives to secure that freedom for you to do that. But as for myself I value my country, our individual freedoms, our economics, and a strong nation defense well above any delusions of how the democrats will help pass new internet poker laws.

Who cares about platforms, votes matter, and as you can see, democrats are clearly on our side and republicans clearly arent

"HR 5767 King Amendment

32 votes for: 29 Dems, 3 repubs
32 votes against: 28 repubs, 4 dems

87.5% of republicans who voted on this topic do not think that we deserve to make an honest living.

I bolded the good guys, so you can see who is on our side.

Democratic Members
Chairman Barney Frank: Y
Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, PA: Y
Rep. Maxine Waters, CA: N
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, NY: NV
Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, IL: Y
Rep. Nydia M. Vel�zquez, NY: Y
Rep. Melvin L. Watt, NC: Y
Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, NY: Y
Rep. Brad Sherman, CA: Y
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, NY: N
Rep. Dennis Moore, KS: Y
Rep. Michael E. Capuano, MA: Y
Rep. Rub�n Hinojosa, TX: Y
Rep. William Lacy Clay, MO: Y
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, NY: Y
Rep. Joe Baca, CA: Y
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, MA: Y
Rep. Brad Miller, NC: N
Rep. David Scott, GA: N
Rep. Al Green, TX: Y
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, MO: Y
Rep. Melissa L. Bean, IL: Y
Rep. Gwen Moore, WI: Y
Rep. Lincoln Davis, TN: NV
Rep. Paul W. Hodes, NH: Y
Rep. Keith Ellison, MN: Y
Rep. Ron Klein, FL: Y
Rep. Tim Mahoney, FL: NV
Rep. Charles Wilson, OH: Y
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, CO: Y
Rep. Christopher S. Murphy, CT: Y
Rep. Joe Donnelly, IN: Y
Rep. Bill Foster, IL: Y
Rep. Andre Carson, IN: Y
Rep. Jackie Speier, CA: NV
Rep. Don Cazayoux, LA: Y
Rep. Travis Childers, MS: Y

Republican Members
Rep. Spencer Bachus, AL: N
Rep. Deborah Pryce, OH: N
Rep. Michael N. Castle, DE: N
Rep. Peter King, NY: Y
Rep. Edward R. Royce, CA: N
Rep. Frank D. Lucas, OK: N
Rep. Ron Paul, TX: Y
Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, OH: N
Rep. Donald A. Manzullo, IL: N
Rep. Walter B. Jones, NC: N
Rep. Judy Biggert, IL: N
Rep. Christopher Shays, CT: N
Rep. Gary G. Miller, CA: N
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, WV: N
Rep. Tom Feeney, FL: N
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, TX: N
Rep. Scott Garrett, NJ: N
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, FL: N
Rep. J. Gresham Barrett, SC: N
Rep. Jim Gerlach, PA: N
Rep. Stevan Pearce, NM: N
Rep. Randy Neugebauer, TX: N
Rep. Tom Price, GA: N
Rep. Geoff Davis, KY: N
Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, NC: N
Rep. John Campbell, CA: N
Rep. Adam Putnam, FL: N
Rep. Michele Bachmann, MN: N
Rep. Peter J. Roskam, IL: N
Rep. Kenny Marchant, TX: N
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, MI: N
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, CA: N
Rep. Dean Heller, NV: Y "

Very good posts

Well said Skall.

The reason I do not support McCain or Obama has little to do with poker. A McCain or Obama administration are equally as bad IMHO. McCain's choice for running mate really disturbs me. McCain has a extremely good chance of dieing of natural causes if serves as president, the avrege life expectancy of men is 73.6 years of age, McCain is 72 years old. Palin lacks in too much in political experience to be president. She has only served as Governor of a small state for two years, and has held no prior offices. If he puts this much thought in picking his other cabinet positions, we will be screwed. I am a life long Republican, but the direction the party has taken makes me sick to my stomach. The Republican party needs to weed out the Neocons and get back on the smaller government track. I plan on not voting for McCain because I like Obama, but to help send a wake up call to them on my disapproval of the track the party has taken.

 

Originally Posted by turkster1

The Republican party stands for more individual freedoms, lower taxes, and a strong defense of our country, even though they have not lived up to that platform in recent times IMO

This is why we need to fire them

 

Originally Posted by kasilof

The republican party generally supports fraud corruption, deception, lies, anti-freedom, and anti-defense. Generally they are anti-religion as they only support the southern christian religion. Their sole objective to to keep the power of old money. Their idea of a good president is a CEO or businessman. But, generally they want a patsy. They want a president that fishes, goes to nascar, owns a ranch, looks good, and generally just signs off to what the neocons want.

i stopped reading after this. you know how rediculous this sounds?\

The Alaska Permanent Fund, isn't that where they give everyone that lives in Alaska a few thousand bucks for allowing large corporations to rape the land? Palin is a big oil stooge, a liar, and an opportunist. End of story.

The Republican party does not stand for it's original ideas. They are so corrupt and in bed with so many war-monger, fossil-fuel squandering lobbyists that they do anything, while stating they're doing the exact opposite, to get what their puppet masters want. They don't want small government, they want absolute power. They want religion in schools, they want tyranny, they want to know everything you do and everywhere you go. They, along with many democrats, are the NWO.

Libertarians are closer to old republican ideals than all but about 3 current republican congressmen, as shown by the list above. I would consider myself a libertarian. I could be a Republican if they were really Republicans, but they're not.

The party doesn't stand for freedom, only the illusion of freedom. They don't stand for small government and low taxes, they stand for interventionist foreign policy, war on every noun that describes something they don't like, and deficit spending, which as someone else said is a direct tax on every American. They get the Fed (a private group of high-powered bankers) to print baseless money which they borrow. This money, since it has no backing, reduces the value of every dollar out there.

I'm not saying the D's don't do a lot of the same things but at least they're generally taking our money and giving it to poor people and doing some good in the world instead of giving it to people that already have way too much money, making more bombs, and blowing up defenseless 3rd world countries, creating a much more dangerous world than ever before. In 8 years we've gone from defenders of freedom to killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people (They were liberated from their bodies) for reasons that are either blatant lies or blatant stupidity. We are one of the most hated countries in the world. Our schools have gotten worse, our wallets have gotten thinner, and our government has gotten so far away from what it originally was intended to be that it may be impossible to restore the balance.

In short, Fuck those Republican cocksuckers, I hope they burn in their Christian Hell.

First off I'm a registered independent because I hate both parties equally. If your voting specifically based who will support online poker you could be hurting yourself in other aread of your life. There are number of issues that could sway you to one candidate or another.

Which party stands for more individual freedom? It was the Republicans until Newt Gingrich and the current Bush. Now it is the Democrats that are fighting for individual freedoms. George Bush has set back individual freedoms back almost a century. You can't really make individual freedoms a one party over another issue depending on where you live. Research your candidates voting records. If you look at the current vote to revoke the UIGEA then you will see members from both parties crossing over to the other side. The bill is co-sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican. The curtailing of individual freedoms, especially gambling, can be blamed directly on religous conservatives. While conservatives have considerable influence on the Republican party as a whole, if you check individual Representatives you will find some conservatives are Democrats.

Each party has a completely different theory on taxes and the economy. Both parties theories can work if the public does what they expect. Republicans base their tax policy on trickle-down economics. That is if they give tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals then the financial benefits will trickle down to the lower and middle classes. In other words increase the supply side in which companies have more money to expand for the future therefore creating jobs. If you noticed in the last 10 years, before the current recession, a lot of companies were reporting record profits. The trickle down effect was not occurring. Corporation were using the tax breaks to improve their profitablity for their stock holders. They haven't been creating the jobs that Republicans expect. The Republicans tax policy/theory causes them to have close ties with corporations and is why they look often like they are pandering to big business over the 99% of the country that isn't rich.

The Democrats tax policy/theory is quite the opposite. They want to give the tax breaks to the lower and middle class. Their thought is that increasing the money that lower and middle class has to demand products and services will create jobs. We haven't really seen this policy fully applied in the last 30 years. Since President Reagan introduced trickle-down economic policy in 1980 the Oval office and Congress have mostly been controlled by Republicans. Is the current economic problems the Republicans fault? Partially but it is also on the heads of big business who stopped participating in the trickle-down effect which came back to bite them with fewer people having jobs and the money for their products and services.

In regards to who wants smaller government, the answer these days is neither party. The Democrats are responsible for creating most of the welfare programs in the last 80 years. The most well known is social security. The Republicans have been the one's responsible for increased defense spending and a higher percentage of pork barrel amendments in the last 50 years. This is the subject that brings about much of my angst with both parties. The subject of national health care has been mentioned in the recent past and bailouts of a number of important companies to the US economy has occurred this year. These are new programs and policies that are expanding the size of the federal government and its role in our every day lives. We never hear about programs that are being ended or funding is eliminated for.

I can go on and on about the a number of other topics involving the federal government: social security and medicare funding, beaurocratic ineffectiveness of government agencies, getting the government out of our bedroom, the national debt, national defense, etc. I'll stop here because my hand is killing me. It's not as if anyone will read this whole post anyways.

Begin Quote

Each party has a completely different theory on taxes and the economy. Both parties theories can work if the public does what they expect. Republicans base their tax policy on trickle-down economics. That is if they give tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals then the financial benefits will trickle down to the lower and middle classes. In other words increase the supply side in which companies have more money to expand for the future therefore creating jobs. If you noticed in the last 10 years, before the current recession, a lot of companies were reporting record profits. The trickle down effect was not occurring. Corporation were using the tax breaks to improve their profitablity for their stock holders. They haven't been creating the jobs that Republicans expect. The Republicans tax policy/theory causes them to have close ties with corporations and is why they look often like they are pandering to big business over the 99% of the country that isn't rich.

End Quote

It is not a theory it is a lie. In 2004 Bush visits Home Depot in Maryland claiming how cutting business taxes will increase growth of companies such as Home Depot. In 2000, Home Depot was growing square footage at 25% per year. In 2004, that dropped to 10% per year. In, 2008, that number dropped to 5% per year.

The reason, Home Depot became too big and got a new competitor in Lowes. You can only build so many stores before the market becomes saturated and your company is to big to grow fast. Income taxes have minor effect on companies growth. Furthermore this growth came at the cost of smaller building retailers and Sears.

If anything, increasing taxes on the wealthy will only give more opportunity to poor people, giving them more cash to spend at Home Depot. You can create new businesses never before seen.

As for using the profitability to their stockholders. Stockholders are the public. Generally stockholder and employees come last. CEOs and managers will make sure they are paid off first, then they will throw the crumbs to their employees and stockholders. Hopefully the directors have enough power to keep the CEOs in line for the stockholders.