*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, July 21st, 2011 12:42am PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

Teenager tries to sleep with prom date. One of the best news stories there is!

He is the best candidate of the Republican candidates.

What's his stance on the introduction of a proportional representational multi-party system?

if there's all this recent commotion about financial trouble due to not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting on payments & losing the AAA bond rating causing more financial panic and hardship, then how in the world can shutting down the federal reserve be good?. and what do we use in its place?. Gold?, do we go back to bartering goods & services?.

Ron Paul seems to be the idealistic choice, but even so either he won't get what he wants put into action (like Obama), or he may not see the ramifications if they are.

I'll be back to kvality.

Ron Paul has a couple huge good ideas. Obviously the US needs to cut its military. Obviously they need to get spending under control.

And then he has some libertarian silliness. Opting out of medicare (or social security) sounds fine as a general idea. Sounds like freedom. But people will gamble their lives this way, and when they do either the system will get cheated (eg. firefighters will put out your house even though you didn't pay your voluntary firefighting coverage) or we'll have outcomes nobody wants (eg. burnt houses, dead children, starving and homeless seniors). Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but that's what we're talking about.

And when I've seen Ron pressed on this kind of thing before, he's retreated to some fairly eye-rolling crap - like "Oh, in my day, doctors would do work for free for people who really need it". Again, that sounds fine and folksy and nice, but doesn't really fit the bill in large scale practice. You can't run a system predicated on "the exceptions" being handled by good will and spontaneous co-operation.

In Canada (where I live), 1000 unwilling healthy people who would, on their own, probably choose to spend very little on health care effectively subsidize one person with a strange and expensive illness. Why should they have to pay for that unlucky person? It's not a fair situation.

But it's the best alternative I can think of.

And I find it baffling how many right-leaning Americans I talk to who are both Christian and staunchly against having to help someone in desperate medical need (especially if it's something that's "their own fault" - it shouldn't be possible, apparently, to get medical help if you are a smoker or obese or have "Bad AIDS"). And they try to reconcile that crap with their professed beliefs - garbage like "Oh, Jesus was all about personal responsibility" or something.

In one of the few things where some Jesus thinking could really help public policy, so many nominal Christians are just super happy to ignore the guy - because it's not fair if their money gets wasted on saving people's lives.

>> ^truth-is-the-nemesis:

if there's all this recent commotion about financial trouble due to not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting on payments & losing the AAA bond rating causing more financial panic and hardship, then how in the world can shutting down the federal reserve be good?. and what do we use in its place?. Gold?, do we go back to bartering goods & services?.
Ron Paul seems to be the idealistic choice, but even so either he won't get what he wants put into action (like Obama), or he may not see the ramifications if they are.


That mirrors my take on Ron Paul. I can't figure if he honestly believes his ideas on the reserve and gold standards, or if he is just saying it to get votes from people who are upset with the status quo. In either case he's a dangerous choice. He's either dangerously ignorant of how the reserve works and it's importance, or he understands it and is just willing to ignore/lie about it and just do what's popular anyways.

^
And further to that, don't tell me you are going to improve the education system by slashing funding to it. Start working on fixes to it right now, and demonstrated that you can improve it, but I'm not voting for you because you promise you'll manage to do it after you get my vote. If you can improve something by cutting the money to it, you shouldn't need my vote to start making those changes, Ron Paul is ALREADY in a strong enough position to improve regional education, if he's not doing that already, why should we expect he'll be able to after slashing it's budget?

Nary a one of the status quo candidates from either party (Dem or Repub) are serious about cutting military spending. Nary a one. Obama promised ending the wars, but expanded the military efforts. Food for thought.

Nary a one of the status quo candidates from either party (Dem or Repub) are serious about cutting military spending. Nary a one. Obama promised ending the wars, but expanded the military efforts. Food for thought.

>> ^blankfist:

Nary a one of the status quo candidates from either party (Dem or Repub) are serious about cutting military spending. Nary a one. Obama promised ending the wars, but expanded the military efforts. Food for thought.


The only expansion Obama really made was into Libya.

A few questions come to mind from that:
1.Do you agree that without Obama's intervention, the rebels would have been long ago wiped out and Libya would again be firmly and completely under Gadhafi's control?
2.As a vehement anti-statist, why do you so strongly oppose aiding in the removal of one of the worlds most repressive and brutal dictators?

>> ^bcglorf:

The only expansion Obama really made was into Libya.

Not true. He expanded the war effort in Afghanistan. Continued the Bush Doctrine in Iraq. And of course Libya. And he hasn't ended any military occupations, nor did he close GITMO, etc. etc.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^bcglorf:
The only expansion Obama really made was into Libya.
Not true. He expanded the war effort in Afghanistan. Continued the Bush Doctrine in Iraq. And of course Libya. And he hasn't ended any military occupations, nor did he close GITMO, etc. etc.


I understood his surge in Afghanistan was merely a redeployment of forces perviously deployed in Iraq, leaving a no net change in military commitment. Am I wrong or incorrect to take expanding military efforts to mean increasing troop deployments, and to say that as a whole, the only increase in deployment outside the existing ones Bush started is in Libya?

And my prior questions re: Libya are still ones I'm curious on, I hope they don't seem snide, I just meant to be direct.

I understood his surge in Afghanistan was merely a redeployment of forces perviously deployed in Iraq, leaving a no net change in military commitment.