I thought the question was pretty straightforward. Do you consider yourself pro life? Or anti abortion? It is a setup question, of course. The right wingers, including those of my own religious persuasion, used to claim to be "Pro Life". That is until folks like meself pointed out that to be truly pro life, one had to be against the death penalty as well as abortion. That is why folks that try to convince me that GWB is a pro life politician are all wet.

Do I think the left will end poverty? I think one only has to look historically at who raised the standard of living and opportunity in this country, and the answer will become evident. When you have conservative leadership, middle class income shrinks, you have more two income families (usually with one of the partners working more than one job), and the gap between the richest and poorest increases. When you look at the left leadership, the middle class income grows as the support structure is increased.

Another example of what happens when the right wingers are in power can be found in the boondoggle that GWB and friends are trying to foist on us with regard to Social Security. I have yet to find a serious analysis that doesn't show that the real winners in this will be the Securities dealers. If the intent here was honorable, he wouldn't be trying to convince everyone that this system is broken beyond repair. It is not. The only thing that has to happen is to put in a couple of fixes to get us through the baby boomers. This could be done with a small rollback in the eligibility age, income indexing, etc. Also the Republicans, AND Democrats have to quit raiding the trust fund. But the Repub's don't want this, because if it were done it would blow their whole argument. Then their friends in the money community wouldn't get their cut.

Mick