The 2008 presidential field at-a-glance

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by AGDee

I know one couple who have children and live together but will not marry because 1)He can't cover her and the kids on his health insurance and they will lose their medicaid if they marry, leaving the kids with no health insurance and 2) She can qualify for WIC if they are not married.

Just saying... that's just one couple I know.

Is this a long term thing? I can understand needing assistance with supporting your kids short term when unexpected tragedies happen or you lose your job or get divorced, all kinds of things really.

But it's hard to for me to relate to, as a long term plan, the idea that you'd rather rely on government programs to take care of your kids than changing something about your circumstances that allowed you to take care of them yourself. I'm just more speaking theoretically that specifically or realistically. I understand that people's actual circumstances require all kinds of compromises and most of the time people are just doing the best they can.


(Because I can't suppress my natural curiosity though: What does your male friend do that he can't have dependents of his health insurance? Do they also earn over the earning threshold to qualify for health insurance through the state for the kids? In Georgia a family of four can make up to 48,000 and still qualify for PeachCare health coverage for the kids. Certainly, you're not rich at 40,000 but it seems like you'd be out of the range where you could get married if you wanted rather than deciding to keep WIC.)

Again, I can imagine circumstances where doing what the couple you describe is doing might seem absolutely necessary, but as a general guide to personal behavior and citizenship, it doesn't seem like such a good idea.

[RU OX Alum]

i think it is completely unfair and immoral that married couples have legal benefits not extended to single people

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by RU OX Alum

i think it is completely unfair and immoral that married couples have legal benefits not extended to single people

What are you thinking about specifically? I suspect that there are fewer of them than it seems, and many domestic partnership laws are doing a lot to balance out the few that exist. What is it that bugs you?

ETA: When I mentioned them earlier, I was thinking mainly in terms of next of kin and assumptions about beneficiaries and heirs, which you can probably legally set up for non-married folks. My guess was that the family in the article probably wouldn't have though.

[DSTCHAOS]

Super Delegate Donna Brazille was very patient.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSdNmdnu2dc

[AGDee]

First off, I don't consider them friends.. more acquaintances. They are using the system, obviously. I'm not condoning or encouraging, just offering one explanation. The woman gets food stamps and such too.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by AGDee

First off, I don't consider them friends.. more acquaintances. They are using the system, obviously. I'm not condoning or encouraging, just offering one explanation. The woman gets food stamps and such too.

Sorry. I didn't mean to assume and imply that you liked them or their behavior. I didn't want to seem like I was sitting back and judging them, but the behavior is kind of perplexing to me. It sounds from this response that you feel like I do about it.

And going with the generic "you" was probably a mistake as well since I wasn't really addressing you, AGDee. Sorry.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

What are you thinking about specifically? I suspect that there are fewer of them than it seems, and many domestic partnership laws are doing a lot to balance out the few that exist. What is it that bugs you?

ETA: When I mentioned them earlier, I was thinking mainly in terms of next of kin and assumptions about beneficiaries and heirs, which you can probably legally set up for non-married folks. My guess was that the family in the article probably wouldn't have though.

It's not that difficult to set up partnernship agreements, but it's a whole different ballgame getting places to honor them.

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by RU OX Alum

i think it is completely unfair and immoral that married couples have legal benefits not extended to single people

You'd change your turn in a flash if you filed your taxes as a DINK (Double Income, No Kids).

[nittanyalum]

McCain's the guest on The Daily Show....

[moe.ron]

[RU OX Alum]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

What are you thinking about specifically? I suspect that there are fewer of them than it seems, and many domestic partnership laws are doing a lot to balance out the few that exist. What is it that bugs you?

ETA: When I mentioned them earlier, I was thinking mainly in terms of next of kin and assumptions about beneficiaries and heirs, which you can probably legally set up for non-married folks. My guess was that the family in the article probably wouldn't have though.

well taxes etc. but um....let me explain using this example:

I meet a girl, we fall in love. I go and buy her a ring. On my way to propose, I get hit by a car. Under the new constitunial amendment that was passed, it would be illegal for her to visit me in the hospital as I lay there dying. She could only come visit during the normal friends visiting hours IF she is accompined by one of my relatives. Not to even get into the will. I could leave it all to her in the plainest terms, and she wouldn't get anything if anyone as far away as my cousin contested it.

Also, there are no real restraining orders in my state. The law does not recognize co-habitation. If a woman is being beaten by her husband, she has more ways to get protection. If a woman is being beaten by her boyfriend...no she isn't, because legally she has no boyfriend. She can get a protective order that states if he hurts again he'll face a judge. But she cannot have him removed from their home. And that's my biggest concern.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by RU OX Alum

well taxes etc. but um....let me explain using this example:

I meet a girl, we fall in love. I go and buy her a ring. On my way to propose, I get hit by a car. Under the new constitunial amendment that was passed, it would be illegal for her to visit me in the hospital as I lay there dying. She could only come visit during the normal friends visiting hours IF she is accompined by one of my relatives. Not to even get into the will. I could leave it all to her in the plainest terms, and she wouldn't get anything if anyone as far away as my cousin contested it.

Also, there are no real restraining orders in my state. The law does not recognize co-habitation. If a woman is being beaten by her husband, she has more ways to get protection. If a woman is being beaten by her boyfriend...no she isn't, because legally she has no boyfriend. She can get a protective order that states if he hurts again he'll face a judge. But she cannot have him removed from their home. And that's my biggest concern.

Well, the taxes thing can be debatable. Some people argue there's is essentially a marriage tax, but I'm not personally seeing it. I think it depends a lot on your particular assets and income distribution.

As far as the other stuff, where do you live?

Your state sounds crazy. You can't have a will in which you elect who to give your assets to? You all passed an amendment restricting all visitors in the hospital that weren't related to the hospitalized patient? The victim of violence thing just seems kind of bizarre too.

I can see why you feel like you do if these descriptions are accurate.

[DaemonSeid]

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, May 9, 2008; Page A27

From the beginning, Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That's why she is falling short -- and that's why she should be persuaded to quit now, rather than later, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.

If that sounds harsh, look at the argument she made Wednesday, in an interview with USA Today, as to why she should be the nominee instead of Barack Obama. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Senator Obama's support . . . among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."

As a statement of fact, that's debatable at best. As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.

How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America.

In private conversations last year, several of Clinton's high-profile African American supporters made that same argument to me -- that America wasn't "ready" for a black president, that this simple fact doomed Obama to failure, that a Clinton Restoration was the best result that African Americans could realistically hope for. Polls at the time showed Clinton leading Obama among black voters, a finding that reflected not only Clinton's greater name recognition but also considerable skepticism about a black candidate's ability to draw white support.

Obama did prove he could win support from whites, of course, beginning in Iowa. He and Clinton effectively divided the party into demographic constituencies. Among the groups that have tended to vote for Clinton are white voters making less than $50,000 a year; among those who have turned out to vote for Obama are African Americans, whose doubts about his prospects clearly have been allayed.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050802807.html

[Drolefille]

She's done, it's over. He's leading/tied in supers depending on whose count you use and she can't reasonably catch him in pledged.

[jon1856]

In W.Va., Clinton's Disciples Persevere
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. -- They traveled here from New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana last week to stand in the rain on a rural street corner, at a four-way intersection of winding mountain roads. One woman, a doctor, took vacation time from her job to make the trip. Another, a mother of three, hired a babysitter for the first time in months.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...051002440.html

Barack Obama faces an untested set of hurdles
WASHINGTON -- For the first time, a major political party is on the brink of choosing an African American as its candidate for president, but when Democratic strategists and other analysts look ahead, they don't see race as Barack Obama's biggest challenge.
They worry more, they say, about other issues: Will swing voters view him as too young? Too inexperienced? Or too liberal?
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...,2580157.story

Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side
In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago’s South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city’s top politicians.
Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community’s black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race — branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.
But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.
The secret of his transformation, which has brought him to the brink of claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, can be described as the politics of maximum unity.
He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/us...jrMC5I7+doSAmQ

The Electoral Map

Here are what the Obama and McCain campaigns now consider the true battleground states going into the fall campaign, assuming — as both candidates now do — that Barack Obama is likely to win his party's nomination. In addition to these states, both sides have states that they say (or rather hope) will come into play in the months ahead — think New Jersey for Republicans and Georgia for Democrats — but for the time being, this is where the action is going to be.
http://politics.nytimes.com/election...map/index.html