Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

Reasons to agree: Under Obama's plan, middle-class families would see their income taxes cut, with no family making less than $250,000 seeing an increase. However, he did vote for a budget in June 2008, that would raise the taxes on single people with a taxable income of over $32,000 by pushing up their tax bracket from 25% to 28%. On January 24, 2007, in reference to his stated plan to take public financing should he procure the nomination, he said, "I think that for a time, the presidential public financing system works." On November 27, he said, "I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election," and on February 28, 2008, he wrote that he planned to "aggressively pursue" a publicly financed campaign, later promising to sit down with John McCain to ensure "a public system" of campaign financing is preserved. [75] However, on June 19, 2008, he opted out of public campaign ...

Reasons to agree: This bill deals with how young girls are being secretly taken across State lines for the purpose of abortion, without the consent of their parents or even the knowledge of their parents, in violation of the laws of the State in which they live. 45 states have enacted some sort of parental consent laws or parental notification law. By simply secreting a child across State lines, one can frustrate the State legislature's rules. It is subverting and defeating valid, constitutionally approved rights parents have. Getting pregnant takes a series of choices. If you get pregnant, and you are a child, you are not providing for your own food, or shelter, if you get these things from your parents, these parents who are providing for you, and you live in a state that requires their knowledge of an abortion, it should be wrong for someone who is not caring for the pregnant child, for someone who is not providing food, shelter, to take these children, and assume they know wha...

  Reasons to agree: [An abortion protester at a campaign event] handed me a pamphlet. “Mr. Obama, I know you’re a Christian, with a family of your own. So how can you support murdering babies?” I told him I understood his position but had to disagree with it. I explained my belief that few women made the decision to terminate a pregnancy casually; that any pregnant woman felt the full force of the moral issues involved when making that decision; that I feared a ban on abortion would force women to seek unsafe abortions, as they had once done in this country. I suggested that perhaps we could agree on ways to reduce the number of women who felt the need to have abortions in the first place. “I will pray for you,” the protester said. “I pray that you have a change of heart.” Neither my mind nor my heart changed that day, nor did they in the days to come. But that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own-that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that ...

  Reasons to agree: "It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the video game playing... So turn off the TV set, put the video game away. Buy a little desk or put that child by the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don't know how to do it, give them help. If you don't know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Keep them off the streets. Give 'em some breakfast... I also know that if folks letting our children drink eight sodas a day, which some parents do, or, you know, eat a bag of potato chips for lunch, or Popeyes for breakfast [...] You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school." Reasons  to disagree: Its easy to say that yo...

Obama introduced legislation in the Illinois Senate to ensure that only those embryos that would otherwise be discarded could be used and that donors would have to provide written consent for the use of the embryos. Source: Campaign website, BarackObama.com, “Resource Flyers” Aug 26, 2007 Reasons  to agree:

This is my initial blog here at Mike's new site and I wanted to start off my segment by saying that I agree with Obama's decision to go slow on the troop withdrawals from Iraq. During the campaign I visibly winced every time Obama would promise his minions on the left to precipitously yank the troops out of Iraq, thereby snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. His decision to slow the troop withdrawals has no doubt caused untold anguish in the precincts of the left, but much relief amongst those of us who believe that it would be a tragedy to have invested so much blood, so much human suffering and exhausted so much treasure, just to see victory slip through our fingers at the last moment! Now, on the points where I disagree with Obama............just about everything else! Wait, I have to be more open minded that that. Well, I'll have to spend some time on that one. When I think of something, I promise that you, the faithful readers of this blog, will be the first ...

  Reasons  to agree: Sometimes it seems like some pro-life republicans don't really care about life, but they care about using life as a wedge issue to get themselves elected. For instance they keep sending up all these bills that don't have any provisions for rape, or the parents life. They don't reach out for compromise. They take an absolute position, and demand their way or nothing. It is better to agree on those things that we agree on, and then make arguments to go further... Even though I disagree with Obama on many life issues, I greatly appreciate the respect that he shows my side, and his willingness to move forward on such things as restricting late term abortions.

Reasons  to agree: Governor Romney agrees with Obama and said, “Preserving the definition of marriage should not infringe on the right of individuals to live in the manner of their choosing. One person may choose to live as a single, even to have and raise her own child. Others may choose to live in same sex partnerships or civil arrangements. There is an unshakeable majority of opinion in this country that we should cherish and protect individual rights with tolerance and understanding.“ Governor Mitt Romney,  06-22-2004  Press Release

  Obama has said, "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. Reasons  to agree: It depends on what you mean by gay marriage. If it means, like what happened in Massachusetts, that parents no longer had options of limiting 2nd graders exposure to pro-gay material, then even some very open minded gay people would feel strange about taking away parent's rights to address discussions about sexuality as they see fit. If it becomes very oppressive, like it did in Massachusetts were catholic charities were not allowed to participate operate in Massachusetts as long as they did not place children into gay families, then more reasons for opposing it become apparent.  Some people could care less about giving gay people the right to marry, but worry about judges just deciding to write their own laws. Mitt Romney said,  “This is a subject about which people have tender emotions in part because it touches individual lives. It also has been misused ...

  Reasons to agree: Obama said, "...there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, 'We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby'. Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that's where we can find some common ground, because nobody's pro-abortion. I think it's always a tragic situation. We should try to reduce these circumstances." Sometimes it seems like some pro-life republicans don't really care about life, but they care about using life as a wedge issue to get themselves elected. For instance they keep sending up all these bills that don't have an...

Reasons to agree: A baby that is born is no longer a fetus, it is a baby. It is wrong to kill babies. It is especially wrong to kill babies when the baby no longer requires his or her mother to provide life. Once a baby is born, it no longer requires it's mother and could be given up for adoption. We can agree to disagree on abortions during the first few months, but partial-birth abortion is the way that lawyers, like Obama, allow a mother to kill a baby, before the feet come all the way out. By leaving the baby partially inside the mother, lawyers will say that it is not a baby. This is disgusting, and is an example of why people should specifically hate Obama, and lawyers in general. Obama said that he would have supported the act, if it provided for exceptions to the mother's life. This is a lie. John K. Wilson, an Obama Supporter said; "Although these bills included an exception to save the life of the mother, they didn’t include anything about abortions necessary to...

  Background: Obama said in an interview with IANS he would support "comprehensive immigration reform ", including the H-1B visa program "to attract some of the world most talented people to America". "We know that we cannot and should not put up walls around our economy." [ 147 ] Reasons to agree: America is like a baseball team. If we are going to beat other countries, we have to recruit the best players. We need to make America attractive to smart people. Smart people should be attracted by our freedom, rule of law, free press, and fair system. Immigration has been an important part of our nation's success. The current system, however, puts up a concrete wall to the best and brightest, yet those without skill or education are able to walk across the border. We must reform the current immigration laws so we can secure our borders, implement a mandatory biometrically enabled, tamper proof documentation and employment verification system, and incre...

Reasons  to agree: You should call a spade a spade.

  Reasons  to agree: This would be  one means of depoliticizing the intelligence process Interest  of those who agree (that Obama is wrong): Promoting the Republican Party by attacking a democrat. Racism (critisizing a minority because he is a minority) Interest  of those who disagree (that Obama is right): Promoting the Democratic Party by defending a democrat. Liberal guilt (defending a minority because he is a minority)

Please help me brainstorm the most probable interest of those who agree or disagree with President Obama on each issue. Just leave what you think motivates each side in the comment section, and I will add it to the list. Also, tell me the percentage of those who agree with Obama you think are motivated by each motivation. I will try to put the most likely motivation towards the top of the list. The book Getting to Yes , tells us that we need to focus on interest instead of positions. To understand why someone believes something we must understand their interest. What are their values? Different interest or values lead to different positions. Of course it is best when the author of an idea submits their interest. However others users of the website could submit and then vote on the most likely motivations of each side. We need to also classify interest as opposing interest or mutual interest. Businesses interest might include low taxes and good infrastructure. Typical Format Thesis #1...