To breath life back into this:
1. Well, marriage is supposed to be a State, not a federal, institution. He's respecting the constitution, then, by saying that. Of course, that doesn't mean that he can't make it a federal law that states have to recognize married couples from other states, regardless of their own laws, or that the rights and privileges given to married couples are guaranteed for all, even those who are gay. Something like that. But either way, with other big officials, including our biggest (I think?) general and Dick Cheney, coming out in favor of gay marriage- really the last battlegrounds will be in the deep south.
2. For your first question, Quag, I think it might be =)
For your second, he's promised so far to increase teachers, reduce the retirement age, switch from austerity to spending for the EU (... which, by the way, I've placed an expiration date on at this point. Let's say, a decade? Maybe less.), and income over 1 million shall be taxes at 65 +%. All of this screams disaster. He's basically taken the worst policies of Greece and Italy, woven in a socialist fabric, and added spending to create a large cluster of stupidity. I really don't see this going well. Maybe I'm wrong, and the French (unlike the Greeks, for example) will actually pay their taxes and not borrow to infinity, but I really don't think, even then, this will work (proof: I may be wrong, but didn't India under socialism have a worse economy than India now under a more capitalist regime?).
And to add discussion points:
Syria.
http://www.cnn.com/2....html?hpt=hp_t2To just save time and copy and paste something I wrote on facebook:
"
So, now that Russia (and China, but I think, though I can't find where I read it, that China wouldn't care about abstaining) have decided to not back any sort of intervention, any possible UN backed mission has officially been destroyed. Russia has instead decided to back a peace plan that's already failed so far. While this could easily be a start for wondering about whether the UN needs its own reform, the bigger question is: What now? Do we continue to try and convince Russia to at least abstain from voting (which I'm pretty sure would allow a mission to go through), do we try to get the "Peace Plan" to work, or do we just ignore Russia and send in a NATO mission?"
