The difference between Democrats and Republicans

What is exactly the difference between Democrat and Republic in politics?

Republicans:

1. Deeply religious in a conservative sense (No gays marriage, Pro-Life, etc) -Anti-Government (Don’t like a big government, with lots of procedures and social programs that they believe clot up the system and aren’t as effective as a free market economy)
2. Pro-Business (Less taxes, less government regulations of business to help those businesses compete globably, etc)
3. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; (Don’t like social programs because they feel that they just give handouts to people who could ’easily’ be working for the money they are getting for free instead.)

Democrats:

1. Varied religiously, however feel religion doesn’t have a place in politics and government: (Believe that God should not really be an issue in politics, other than perhaps a mild basis on ethics and morality of interactions between people, but in no way used as a condemnation of an individual.)
2. Pro-Government: (Want programs to help those who need help, poor, or confused, believe that it helps the economy because it also gives jobs where they may not exist without government employment.
3. Anti-Pro-Business legislation: (While still being for a free market (although this is varied), most democrats believe that regulations are essential to making sure that businesses don’t overrun public property with polution or create monopolies of a market.)
4. Pro-Social programs: Believe that people need help from time to time, and that giving a little government aid hasn’t hurt anyone to dearly since most of that money is spent within the area that the money came from.

I personally think Republicans give too much power to corporations which leaves little power for the people to fend for themselves without having to depend on large industry for their needs. Creating a nanny state through the corporations. Democrats tend to be a 'big tent' party meaning they do not vote along party lines making it difficult to make sweeping changes. Each party is necessary for the our nation to stay in balance. We are a republic that votes as a democracy. It is a difficult scale to balance.

Yet we have made this far.

Evidence Emerging Of Cheney-Led Smear Campaign Against Pelosi Over Syria Trip

Posted by Faiz at 9:32 am
Permalink

Before Nancy Pelosi left Israel to travel to Israel earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.”


Pelosi delivered as requested, and this week received a thank you call from Olmert. So why then did the Israeli Prime Minister originally issue a statement of “clarification” about Pelosi’s message which became the basis for right-wing attacks against her?

The evidence of White House involvement behind the Israeli Prime Minister’s statement has been growing this past week. Middle East analysts have suggested Bush deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams — a close ally of Dick Cheney — may have been coordinating the attempts to undermine Pelosi’s trip. “‘It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. ‘I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.''


Rep. Henry Waxman suggested that the White House’s coordinated attempts to smear Pelosi were part of an effort to undermine her on Iraq:

Waxman said the administration is focused on building a case against the Democrats in preparation for a showdown over the Iraq War funding bill. The more they can paint Democrats as weak and irresponsible, the more likely the Democrats will knuckle under and let the president continue the war unchecked. It’s been known to happen.

So Cheney trashes the reputation of men like Lantos and Waxman (who, by the way, has doggedly pursued waste and mismanagement in Iraq by Halliburton, the company that made Cheney rich), and it’s politics as usual.

Scientists Detail Climate Changes

By James Kanter and Andrew C. Revkin

The New York Times
Saturday 07 April 2007

Poles to Tropics

BRUSSELS, April 6 — From the poles to the tropics, the earth’s climate and ecosystems are already being shaped by the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases and face inevitable, possibly profound, alteration, the world’s leading scientific panel on climate change said Friday.

In its most detailed portrait of the effects of climate change driven by human activities, the panel predicted widening droughts in southern Europe and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and flooding that could imperil low-lying islands and the crowded river deltas of southern Asia. It stressed that many of the regions facing the greatest risks were among the world’s poorest.

And it said that while limits on smokestack and tailpipe emissions could lower the long-term risks, vulnerable regions must adjust promptly to shifting weather patterns, climatic and coastal hazards, and rising seas.

Without such adaptations, it said, a rise of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century could lead to the inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people. But if steady investments are made in seawalls and other coastal protections, vulnerability could be sharply reduced.

The group, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also noted that the climate shifts would benefit some regions — leading to more rainfall and longer growing seasons in high latitudes, open Arctic seaways and fewer deaths from the cold.

The 1,572-page report, finished here on Friday, was prepared by more than 200 scientists, and a 21-page summary was endorsed by officials from more than 120 countries, including the United States.