re: #311 Obdicut

And are you going to back up your claim that there’s a lot of retirees depending mainly on capital gains income that’d be highly affected by any of the changes proposed by Obama et al?

I have to run, and I have beat this thing to death, while I should have been working, but let me say this to respond to you:

I don’t need to defend it. People retiring, no more working income. They have investments that they live off. Those investments generate primarily capital gains. a 10 or 15 or 25 point swing in cap gain, will impact their disposable income. Maybe they benefit from the Bush tax cuts, don’t want to lose them either. Maybe they have a fear of a value added tax down the road and view some of this as the thin edge of the wedge. Whatever it is. It is their issue. It is not mine and I don’t need to defend it. The fact that they have that belief is sufficient.

As for your question about what if the right was denied to me, that is essentially the crux of the point. Voter’s weigh impacts. The impact of right to marry for gays is measured against some other interests. It is not about right or wrong. assholes or not assholes. Ethical vs unethical. It is about where this issue sits in the perception of the voter. I can tell you, there are a great many people in the US, that spend exactly a second thinking about gay marriage as a factor in this election. Not because they hate gays, but because the issue is remote for them. Not because they want to deny gays that right, but because they vote on issues that are immediate to them. Not because they are assholes, though they may in fact be.

You may believe that the only ethical course for a voter to take is to vote only for a candidate whose every position is one you are in lockstep with philosophically. I disagree and have voted in enough elections to know otherwise. You may believe that some issues are so big, that even if you are willing to believe a candidate can differ from you on some things, they cannot on others. To that I say, welcome to politics. Not everyone has those same grail issues. You may believe that there is no personal situation that might cause you to vote in a way that contradicts a belief you had only a few years earlier. I disagree.

You may certainly respond, and I will likely read it, but I am not going to continue, as I have to do some other things and am pretty certain we are unlikely to convince each other.