Presidential Candidates?

[asterroc]

And my next question for y'all is a request for a summary of a few presidential candidates' stances. I am (in rough order)

1) pro-education (including science education/evolution),
2) pro-gay marriage, pro-environment,
3) pro-universal healthcare, pro-choice,
4) anti-interference in other nations, and pro-union

The candidates I am particularly curious about on these topics are now Clinton and Obama compare, and how Guiliani and McCain compare. I'm also curious about Huckabee, but a bit less so. Ideally I'd love to see a handy-dandy table that lists how all candidates stack up on these (and other topics). I'm sure this's out there on the internetz, even in the exact abbreviated table form that I want, but again, I don't know where.

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

from your previous remarks and general political profile, i wonder if perhaps you meant something a bit nonstandard by ‘pro-life’, or if you meant to type something else.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Durr, no just sleep deprived.

[q10.livejournal.com]

last i checked, no credible mainstream candidate is publicly pro-gay-marriage. some candidates are actively anti-, while others are neutral, and they vary from strongly pro- to strongly anti- on civil unions, but if you're looking for somebody with the slightest chance who actually favors gay marriage, you're going to have to rely on guesswork about what people are privately thinking but not saying.

with education and the environment, it's tricky - very few people would describe themselves as anti- on either of these, but the particular measures people favor might strike you as ineffective or counterproductive, so without knowing about your core environemental issues (e.g. species preservation? ecosystem stability? climate changes? nuclear waste management? - obviously all interrelated but which ones you emphasize get you different palces) and favored plans of attack (e.g. carbon-tax vs. cap-and-trade vs. central planning), it's hard to say. same kinds of things come up with education (homeschoolers love Huckabee - is this a point for him or against him, or does it not matter?).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

For environment, I'd say climate change, reducing our reliance on non-renewable resources, and generally lowering mankind's impact on the environment/Earth are my top issues. I'm mildly for nuclear power b/c it's better for carbon emissions. I would also say I'm interested in species preservation (who wouldn't be?), but it's a lower priority among the environmental issues - especially since a number of the other things I've mentioned also lead to species preservation. I'm not too happy w/ the concept of "trading carbon credits" b/c I feel like it doesn't do much to reduce emissions of the worst offenders, but it's better to have that system than nothing.

For education, I'd say funding for public schools, coming up with a better metric for measuring and rewarding school success than NCLB, increasing the access to higher education for all. I'm not against homeschooling or school-of-choice, but they shouldn't come at the expense of the mainstream school system.

[blahblahboy.livejournal.com]

I don't want to get into a row about political issues (or with anybody reading this), but I've been meaning to ask for your view on higher education. And it's about people who go to college just for the sake of going to college -- ie., their parents say "go to college and we'll pay for it". I think college is really what you make of it, and I wonder what percentage of college students actually learn their $100-200K of information there, as opposed to if they went directly to jail [workforce -- assuming it was allowed] and didn't pass college. Are we nurturing an optimally efficient education system?


Also, my view is that the government should be providing public services and tools to improve the general standard of living without infringing on one person's choices to please another. (read: little to no interference) Obviously gray areas abound. Should the government bail out home owners who did not read (understand!?) their shady mortgage terms and just signed it and are now about to lose their homes? Would that be fair to those of us who are still saving to buy a place, or those who saved diligently and bought within their means? An analogous argument is with universal health care. A lot of us work very hard for our health care benefits, and pay taxes for social security and medicare benefits, which is likely something we will never see come back. I don't understand why pro-choice people also want higher taxes, since that leaves citizens with less choice for how their dollars should be spent.