Emma Cory Thompson!!!

She will arrive around 9/25/2007...what a blessing!!!

Which one are you?

According to the folks at Wikipedia

Democrat:

Economic issues
Minimum wage
Democrats favor a higher minimum wage, and more regular increases, in order to assist the working poor. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 is an early component of the Democrats' agenda during the 110th Congress. In 2006, the Democrats supported six state ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage; all six initiatives passed.
Renewable energy and oil
Democrats have opposed tax cuts and incentives to oil companies, favoring a policy of developing domestic renewable energy. Democratic governors have led the way in this issue, such as Montana's state-supported wind farm and "clean coal" programs.
Fiscal responsibility
Democrats are trying to position their party as the party of fiscal responsibility. Democrats increasingly call for responsible tax policies and government spending that keeps the budget deficit under control. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the 110th Congress.[3] DNC Chairman Howard Dean has cited Bill Clinton's presidency as a model for fiscal responsibility.
Health care and insurance coverage
Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care," and many advocate an expansion of government intervention in this area. Many Democrats favor a national health insurance system in a variety of forms to address the rising costs of modern health insurance. Some Democrats, such as Rep. John Dingell and Senator Edward Kennedy, have called for a program of "Medicare for All."[4]
Some Democratic governors have supported purchasing Canadian drugs, citing lower costs and budget restrictions as a primary incentive. Recognizing that unpaid insurance bills increase costs to the service provider, who passes the cost on to health-care consumers, many Democrats advocate expansion of health insurance coverage.
Environment
The Democratic Party generally sides with environmentalists and favors conservation of natural resources together with strong environmental laws against pollution. Democrats support preservation of endangered lands and species, clean land management and regulation on pollutants.
The most contentious and concerning environmental issue championed by the party is global warming. Democrats, most notably former Vice President Al Gore, have pressed for stern regulation of greenhouse gases.
College education
Most Democrats have the long term aim of having low-cost, publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of continental Europe) which should be available to every eligible American student, or alternatively, with increasing state funding for student financial aid such as the Pell grant or college tuition tax-deduction.[5][6]
Trade agreements
The Democratic Party has a mixed record on international trade agreements that reflects a diversity of viewpoints in the party. Generally, more conservative and moderate Democrats favor free trade agreements while those further to the left, supporters of fair trade, populists, and unions often oppose them. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since then, the party's shift away from free trade became evident in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) vote, with 15 House Democrats voting for the agreement and 187 voting against.[7][8]

[edit] Social issues
Discrimination
Democrats support Equal Opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, sexual orientation, religion, creed, or national origin.
The Democratic Party mostly supports affirmative action as a way to redress past discrimination and ensure equitable employment regardless of ethnicity or gender, but opposes the use of quotas in hiring. Democrats also strongly support the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of physical or mental disability.
Same-sex marriage and LGBT rights
The Democratic Party is divided on the subject of same-sex marriage. Some members favor civil unions for same-sex couples, others favor legalized marriage, and others are opposed to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated the Federal Marriage Amendment. Almost all agree, however, that discrimination against persons because of their sexual orientation is wrong.
Reproductive rights
The Democratic Party believes that all women should have access to birth control, and supports public funding of contraception for poor women. The Democratic Party, in its national platforms since 1992, has called for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"—namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that allow governmental interference in abortion decisions, and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception, and incentives for adoption. When Congress voted on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, Congressional Democrats were split, with a minority—including current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—supporting the ban, and the majority of Democrats opposing the legislation.
The Democratic Party opposes attempts to reverse the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which declared abortion to be a Constitutionally-protected right, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey which lays out the legal framework in which government action alleged to violate that right is assessed by courts. As a matter of the right to privacy and of gender equality, many Democrats believe all women should have the ability to choose to abort without governmental interference. They believe that each woman, conferring with her conscience, has the right to choose for herself whether abortion is morally correct. Many Democrats also believe that poor women should have a right to publicly funded abortions.
Stem cell research
The Democratic Party has voiced overwhelming support for all stem cell research with federal funding. In his 2004 platform, John Kerry affirmed his support of federally funded stem-cell research "under the strictest ethical guidelines." He explained, "We will not walk away from the chance to save lives and reduce human suffering."

[edit] Foreign policy issues
Invasion of Afghanistan
Democrats in the House of Representatives and United States Senate near-unanimously voted for the authorization of military force against "those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States" in Afghanistan in 2001, supporting the NATO coalition invasion of the nation. Most elected Democrats continue in their support of the Afghanistan conflict, and some have voiced concerns that the Iraq War is shifting too many resources away from the occupation of Afghanistan.
Iraq War
In 2002, Democrats were divided as most in the Senate voted for the authorization of the use of force against Iraq while a majority of Democrats in the House (81 for, 126 against) voted against it. Since then, many prominent Democrats have expressed regret about this decision, such as former Senator John Edwards, and have called it a mistake, while others, such as Senator Hillary Clinton have criticized the conduct of the war but not repudiated their initial vote for it. Amongst lawmakers, Democrats are the most vocal critics of the Iraq War and the President's management of the war. Democrats in the House of Representatives near-unanimously supported a non-binding resolution disapproving of President Bush's decision to send additional troops into Iraq in 2007. Congressional Democrats overwhelmingly supported military funding legislation which included a provision that set "a timeline for the withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq" by March 31, 2008, but also would leave combat forces in Iraq for purposes such as targeted counter-terrorism operations.[9][10]On May 2, 2007, the Democrats failed to override President Bush's veto of a war-funding bill, and both sides then met at the White House to seek compromise language.[11]
Unilateralism
Democrats usually oppose the doctrine of unilateralism, which dictates that the United States should use military force without any assistance from other nations whenever it believes there is a threat to its security or welfare. They believe the United States should act in the international arena in concert with strong alliances and broad international support. This was a major foreign policy issue of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign; his platform attributed rifts with international allies to unilateralism.
In a general sense, the modern Democratic Party is more closely aligned with the international relations theories of liberalism and neoliberalism than realism and neorealism, though realism has some influence on the party.

[edit] Legal issues
Torture
Democrats are opposed to use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the military of the United States, and deny that categorizing military prisoners as unlawful combatants excludes them from the rights granted under the Geneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, decreases the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results.
USA PATRIOT Act
All Democrats in the U.S. Senate except for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold voted for the original USA PATRIOT Act legislation. After voicing concerns over the "invasion of privacy" and other civil liberty restrictions of the Act, the Democrats split on the renewal in 2006. Most Democratic Senators voted to renew it, while most Democratic Representatives voted against renewal. It should be noted renewal was only allowed after many of the most invasive clauses in the Act were removed or curbed.
Right to privacy
The Democratic Party believes that individuals should have a right to privacy, and generally supports laws which place restrictions on law-enforcement and intelligence agency monitoring of U.S. citizens. Some Democratic Party officeholders have championed consumer-protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations. Most Democrats believe that government should not regulate consensual non-commercial sexual conduct (among adults), as a matter of personal privacy.
Crime and gun control
Democrats often focus on methods of crime prevention, believing that preventive measures save taxpayers' money in prison, policing and medical costs, and prevent crime and murder. They emphasize improved community policing and more on-duty police officers in order to help accomplish this goal. The party's platform in 2000 and 2004 cited crackdowns on gangs and drug trafficking as preventive methods. The party's platforms have also addressed the issue of domestic violence, calling for strict penalties for offenders and protection for victims.
With a stated goal of reducing crime and homicide, the Democratic Party has introduced various gun control measures, most notably the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Bill of 1993 and Crime Control Act of 1994. However, many Democrats, especially rural, Southern, and Western Democrats, favor fewer restrictions on firearm possession and warned the party was defeated in the 2000 presidential election in rural areas because of the issue.[12] In the national platform for 2004, the only statement explicitly favoring gun control was a plan calling for renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

Republican:

The Republican Party includes large numbers of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, and members of the Religious Right.
The Republican Party is the more socially conservative and economically libertarian of the two major parties. The party generally supports lower taxes and limited government in some economic areas, while preferring government intervention in others. In the 1980s, the Republican Party was more strongly conservative than before. In his 1981 inaugural address, Republican President Ronald Reagan summed up his belief in limited government when he said, "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."[1] Since 1980, the GOP has contained what George Will calls "unresolved tensions between, two flavors of conservatism -- Western and Southern." The Western brand, wrote Will, "is largely libertarian, holding that pruning big government will allow civil society -- and virtues nourished by it and by the responsibilities of freedom -- to flourish." The Southern variety, however, reflects a religiosity based in evangelical and fundamentalist churches that is less concerned with economics and more with moralistic issues, such as opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Noting the waning influence of libertarian philosophy on contemporary Republican ideology, Will describes the current Republican Party as "increasingly defined by the ascendancy of the religious right."[2]

[edit] Separation of powers and balance of powers
The Republican Party believes that making law is the province of the legislature and that judges, especially the Supreme Court, should not "legislate from the bench." Most Republicans point to Roe v. Wade as a case of judicial activism, where the court overturned most laws restricting abortion on the basis of a right to privacy derived from the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some Republicans have actively sought to block judges who they see as being activist judges and they have sought the appointment of judges who will practice judicial restraint. Other Republicans, though, argue that it is the right of judges to interpret the constitution and judge actions by the legislative or executive branches as legal or unconstitutional.
The Republican party has supported various bills within the last decade to strip some or all federal courts of the ability to hear certain types of cases, in an attempt to limit judicial review. These "court stripping" laws have included removing federal review of the recognition of same-sex marriage with the Marriage Protection Act[3], the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance with the Pledge Protection Act, and the rights of detainees in Guantanamo Bay in the Detainee Treatment Act. These limitations were overruled by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the precedent of Marbury v. Madison on the court's ability to review the constitutionality of laws overruled the Congress' ability to make exceptions in Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.
Compared with Democrats, many conservatives believe in a more robust version of federalism with greater limitations placed upon federal power and a larger role reserved for the States. Following this view on federalism, conservatives often take a less expansive reading of congressional power under the commerce clause, such as in the opinion of William Rehnquist in United States v. Lopez. Many Republicans on the more libertarian wing wish for a more dramatic narrowing of commerce clause power by revisiting among cases, Wickard v. Filburn, a case which held that growing wheat on a farm for consumption on the same farm fell under congressional power to "regulate commerce ... among the several States..."
President George W. Bush is a proponent of the unitary executive theory and has cited it within his signing statements about legislation passed by Congress. The administration's interpretation of the unitary executive theory was ruled unconstitutional by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the Supreme Court stated the President does not have sweeping powers to ignore or revise laws and court rulings. The Bush administration has now sought Congressional authorization for its previously executive mandated programs, as was the case with the Military Commissions Act, or abandoned the illegal programs, in the case of the National Security Agency domestic wiretapping program.

[edit] Economic policies
Republicans emphasize the role of corporate and personal decision making in fostering economic prosperity. They favor free-market policies supporting business, economic liberalism, and limited regulation. Recently, opponents have stated that Republicans are no longer the party of fiscal responsibility, citing the 2006 federal deficit as the largest in US history.[4]
The predominant economic theory held by modern Republicans is Reaganomics. Popularized by Ronald Reagan, this theory holds that reduced income tax rates increase GDP growth and thereby generate more revenue for the government from the taxes on the extra growth. This belief is reflected, in part, by the party's long-term advocacy of tax cuts, a major Republican theme since the 1920s. Republicans believe that a series of income tax cuts since 2001 have bolstered the economy.[5] Many Republicans consider the income tax system to be inherently inefficient and oppose graduated tax rates, which they believe are unfairly targeted at those who create jobs and wealth. They believe private spending is usually more efficient than government spending.
Republicans agree there should be a "safety net" to assist the less fortunate; however, they tend to believe the private sector is more effective in helping the poor than government is; as a result, many Republicans support giving government grants to faith-based and other private charitable organizations to supplant welfare spending. Members of the GOP also believe that limits on eligibility and benefits must be in place to ensure the safety net is not abused. Republicans strongly supported the welfare reform of 1996, which limited eligibility for welfare and successfully led to many former welfare recipients finding jobs.[6]
The party opposes a single-payer universal health care system, such as that found in Canada or in most of Europe, sometimes referring to it as "socialized medicine" and is in favor of the current personal or employer based system of insurance, supplemented by Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. The GOP has a mixed record of supporting the historically popular Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, all of which Republicans initially opposed. On the one hand, congressional Republicans and the Bush administration supported a reduction in Medicaid's growth rate.[7] On the other hand, congressional Republicans expanded Medicare, supporting a new drug plan for seniors starting 2006.
Republicans are generally opposed by labor unions and have supported various legislation on the state and federal levels, including right to work legislation and the Taft-Hartley Act which gives workers the right not to participate in unions, as opposed to a closed shop which prohibits workers from choosing not to join unions in workplaces. Republicans generally oppose increases in the minimum wage, believing that the minimum wage increases unemployment and discourages business.[4]

[edit] Social policies
The majority of the GOP's national and state candidates oppose abortion on religious or moral grounds, oppose the legalization of same sex marriage, and favor faith-based initiatives. There are some exceptions, though, especially in the Northeast and Pacific Coast states. They support welfare benefit reductions and oppose racial quotas, but are split regarding the desirability of affirmative action for women and minorities.[8] Most of the GOP's membership favors capital punishment and stricter punishments as a means to prevent crime. Republicans generally strongly support constitutionally protected gun ownership rights.
Most Republicans support school choice through charter schools and education vouchers for private schools; and many have denounced the performance of the public school system and the teachers' unions. The party has insisted on a system of greater accountability for public schools, most prominently in recent years with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
The religious wing of the party tends to support organized prayer in public schools and the inclusion of teaching creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution. Although the GOP has voted for increases in government funding of scientific research, many members actively oppose the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research because it involves the harvesting and destruction of human embryos (which many consider ethically equivalent to abortion), while arguing for applying research money into adult stem cell or amniotic stem cell research.

[edit] National defense, counterterrorism and security policies
The Republican party supports unilateralism in issues of national security, believing in the ability and right of the United States to act without external or international support in its own self-interest. In general, Republican defense and international thinking is heavily influenced by the theories of neorealism and realism, characterizing the conflicts between nations as great struggles between forces of nature, such as Reagan's "evil empire" stance on the Soviet Union and George W. Bush's Axis of Evil.
Republicans secured gains in the 2002 and 2004 elections with the War on Terror being one of the top issues favoring them. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the party supports neoconservative policies with regard to the War on Terror, including the 2001 war in Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The doctrine of pre-emptive war, wars to disarm and destroy dangerous foes before they can act, has been advocated by Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush administration, but the civil war within Iraq has undercut its influence. However, Rudy Guliani, a prominent Republican presidential candidate, has recently stated that Republicans must keep America "on the offensive" against terrorists, stating his support of that policy.
The Bush administration supports the position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, using the premise that they apply to soldiers serving in the armies of nation-states and not terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda.

[edit] Other international policies
Republicans support attempts to spread democracy in the Middle East and around the world. But, Republicans have reiterated the need for realism in international policy, when the Bush administration forged strong alliances with dictatorships such as Uzbekistan and Pakistan in pursuit of international policy goals.
The party, through former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has advocated reforms in the UN to halt corruption such as that which afflicted the Oil-for-Food Programme. Some Republicans oppose the Kyoto Protocol (although there is a section which supports it within the party), claiming that the treaty would hurt America's economy and do nothing to stop warming from major competitors such as China. The party strongly promotes free trade agreements, most notably NAFTA, CAFTA and now an effort to go further south to Brazil, Peru and Colombia.
Republicans are opposed to illegal immigration, mostly Latin American. The Bush administration made appeals to immigrants a high priority long-term political goal, but that goal is not a high priority in most local GOP parties. In general, the business community supports more immigration and social conservatives oppose it. In 2006, the White House supported and Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform that would eventually allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens, but the House, taking an enforcement only approach, refused to go along.[9]

I made it to last call...

I thoroughly enjoyed my birthday weekend complete with mani & pedis with the girl's, a 3-hour dinner at the Melting Pot---too long, too much food...drinks, and more drinks. Shelley's sister, Heather and her husband, Brian are 2 of the funniest people I have met. Brian says everything that you want to say...but don't have the guts to say it--which is always entertaining. Gary & I even made it to last call...I don't remember the last time I made it to last call.

I am so happy to not be a 20-something anymore-the majority of my twenties were not that great. 30 looks good so far-lots of stuff going on. Work is a little challenging right now---I am feeling burned out, and itching for the next level. I know what my strengths are---and I think that in a year I need to explore some other opportunities. I love this area and the friends that I have made, but part of my heart still wants to be closer to my family. I need to be still and trust in God...lean not on my own understanding. Maybe the Donald Miller lecture that I am going to see tomorrow night will shed some light...yes, that's right Donald Miller!!!

Hard to believe that the Hubik's will celebrate their first anniversary this weekend...it does not seem like a year has passed-Congratulations!!!

I find out if I am going to have a little neice or nephew tomorrow morning, I think Peanut is a boy!