posted
I think that there is a certain reason in being suspicious of charisma. Not that it, in itself is a bad thing, but it can be a powerful thing and, as such, should be approached with caution. Charisma can be used for good or ill so, given a leader with charisma we should use our suspicion as a spur to look rationally at evidence rather than get swpet away.
That should not equate to the idea that everyone who possesses charisma has nefarious purposes.
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quote:That fear of Obama being an evil Muslim seems to be quite widespread. My mother, a German Catholic, has it, as does my stepdad who is a Midwestern protestant.
Its sad how acceptable harboring racist fears of Muslims has become.
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posted
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, although I'm definitely not a big fan of the words. Muslims are not a race just like Catholics are not a race. Prejudice against Muslims would be religious intolerance, not racial intolerance. Prejudice against Arabs (an overlapping, but not identical group) might be considered racism.
Personally, I think the (growing?) conflating of race and religion when its comes to Muslims is somewhat of a danger, but this thread isn't really the place.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by pooka: I'm trying to figure out if that is enthusiasm or sarcasm.
I think a careful paying attention to my positions would reveal this.
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quote:That fear of Obama being an evil Muslim seems to be quite widespread. My mother, a German Catholic, has it, as does my stepdad who is a Midwestern protestant.
Its sad how acceptable harboring racist fears of Muslims has become.
My best friend told me the other day that he was shocked to hear that his mother was voting for Obama, "Even if he is a Muslim." On the one hand, good for her on thinking a Muslim could run this country, on the other, how do people still believe Obama is a Muslim?!
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: My best friend told me the other day that he was shocked to hear that his mother was voting for Obama, "Even if he is a Muslim." On the one hand, good for her on thinking a Muslim could run this country, on the other, how do people still believe Obama is a Muslim?!
A sizable amount of people think that 9/11 was a conspiracy perpetrated by our own government.
Nothing about what people believe nowadays surprises me any more.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: There are people in my family who have said things along the lines of "there's just something about Obama I don't trust...I don't know what it is". When pressed for specifics, they can't give any.
Translation: I'm a racist, but since I don't want to admit it to myself or others, I'll just say there is some indeterminant quality about him that rubs me the wrong way.
I don't know if it's Russian racism coming out or some sort of Jewish fear that he's secretly a Muslim terrorist, but regardless, there is no basis for it and it's infuriating.
note: this is not to say anyone's reasons on this forum for disliking Obama are racist, just relaying an anecdote.
It's a sad anecdote. Obama is far too slick. The idea of someone most Americans hadn't even heard of a few years ago all of a sudden becoming this rock star candidate is more than a little creepy, in a very Stepford sort of way.
He's a left-wing extremist. He's the kind of dangerous populist who appeals to the "I want everything" mentality so popular in this country.
Obama has been manufactured. And he scares the hell out of me. To even pretend to paint that in racist terms is ludicrous.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Lisa finds Obama scary because she is an extreme libertarian who does not recognize the legitimacy of the social contract and sees all those who ever value community over individuality as equivalent to Hitler or Stalin.
I find her very scary!
I most certainly reject the monstrous idea of a "social contract" that places each of us, willy nilly, at the service of whatever some majority determines is for the "greatest good".
But I recognize the true social contract, and would claim instead that it is you and those like you, who have repudiated it out of moral laziness and envy. That social contract is that no one owns another person. Not singly and not in the aggregate. The social contract says that my freedom is only to be limited to the extent that it infringes on that of another ("my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins"). The social contract says that everyone is free to try and convince others to do anything, but that no one is permitted to force others to do anything.
People like you think that if there are enough of you, you're entitled to force the minority to support goals and programs that you favor. You've elevated "might makes right" and mob rule into a sort of sacred principle, and stolen the label of "social contract" in a propagandistic attempt to justify it and as a tool by means of which you can try and intimidate those who simply want to be left to live their lives in peace.
quote:That fear of Obama being an evil Muslim seems to be quite widespread. My mother, a German Catholic, has it, as does my stepdad who is a Midwestern protestant.
Its sad how acceptable harboring racist fears of Muslims has become.
I guess representatives of Islam should take a lesson from that and do what they can to stop their own adherants from giving Islam a bad name.
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quote:That fear of Obama being an evil Muslim seems to be quite widespread. My mother, a German Catholic, has it, as does my stepdad who is a Midwestern protestant.
Its sad how acceptable harboring racist fears of Muslims has become.
My best friend told me the other day that he was shocked to hear that his mother was voting for Obama, "Even if he is a Muslim." On the one hand, good for her on thinking a Muslim could run this country, on the other, how do people still believe Obama is a Muslim?!
Isn't it obvious? I mean, doesn't belonging to a church make someone a Muslim? It's so weird how a big fuss can erupt about his Christian pastor, but people still see him as Muslim.
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quote:Obama has been manufactured. And he scares the hell out of me. To even pretend to paint that in racist terms is ludicrous.
like i said, i wasn't attacking yours or anyone else's reasons at Hatrack for disliking Obama. This was specifically in regards to family members and friends of family. All of whom are Russian Jews. And sadly, Russians tend to be pretty racist on average(maybe just older Russians, i don't hear any of this from the children of all these people), and some of the stuff I've heard them say about Muslims makes me ill.
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posted
Lisa, I in large part agree with your just now stated idea of the social contract. I'm a huge fan of my own individual freedoms, and I'm not a fan of any government in roads into said freedoms. However, I don't see what you see in Obama, clearly, because I'm a huge fan of him. What specifically do you think Obama is gonna do that will restrict your individual freedoms? Are you just against any kind of government programs that use public tax dollars? Do you draw the line some where as to which government programs are acceptable and which are unacceptable? I mean, do you support public education? The keeping of a military? The NSF? Environmental protection agency?
I agree with some of the sentiment, I obviously don't come to the same conclusions you do.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Godric 2.0: Is there any place that has a breakdown of the remaining candidate's current staffs and their resumes?
Here's a good article from The New Republic on some of Obama's advisers. A brief excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole article if you're curious:
quote:...
Sociologically, the Obamanauts have a lot in common with the last gang of Democratic outsiders to make a credible run at the White House. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama's campaign boasts a cadre of credentialed achievers. Intellectually, however, the Obamanauts couldn't be more different. Clinton delighted in surrounding himself with big-think public intellectuals--like economics commentator Robert Reich and political philosopher Bill Galston. You'd be hard-pressed to find a political philosopher in Obama's inner wonk-dom. His is dominated by a group of first-rate economists, beginning with Goolsbee, one of the profession's most respected tax experts. A Harvard economist named Jeff Liebman has been influential in helping Obama think through budget and retirement issues; another, David Cutler, helped shape his views on health care. Goolsbee, in particular, is an almost unprecedented figure in Democratic politics: an academic economist with a top campaign position and the candidate's ear.
posted
Oddly, I just filed a labor law update that a judge ruled that Iranian can be considered a race for discrimination purposes, even though Iran is a country, and complainants are not born in Iran. However, there is more basis to seeing Iran, which is pretty ethnically distinct from the rest of the Middle East, as a race than Arabs or Muslims in general.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: People like you think that if there are enough of you, you're entitled to force the minority to support goals and programs that you favor. You've elevated "might makes right" and mob rule into a sort of sacred principle, and stolen the label of "social contract" in a propagandistic attempt to justify it and as a tool by means of which you can try and intimidate those who simply want to be left to live their lives in peace.
Talk about scary.
Yeah I've always supported mob rule and might makes right. Me and Hitler are just two peas in a pod.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: Oddly, I just filed a labor law update that a judge ruled that Iranian can be considered a race for discrimination purposes, even though Iran is a country, and complainants are not born in Iran. However, there is more basis to seeing Iran, which is pretty ethnically distinct from the rest of the Middle East, as a race than Arabs or Muslims in general.
Replace "Iranian" with "Persian" and I don't really have a problem with that, since they've long been a separate people from Arabs and consider themselves an ethnically separate people. They're ethnically different, they speak a different language (Farsi as opposed to Arabic), and they see themselves as different. Fair game as far as I'm concerned.
Lisa -
You don't think it's a little ironic that a Ron Paul supporter would attack Obama for having come from nowhere and being a manufactured candidate? Ron Paul hasn't been in charge of his campaign from the start. It's being run by a large group of people, an uncoordinated alliance of young people who don't totally understand his policies and libertarians who will happily take those young people's money bombs. Look at his campaign rallies. The crowds are uncontrollable, to the point where a jubilant but not in control Paul just throws his hands up in the air and shouts "yay!" And that's literally happened. It's maybe even more grass roots than Obama's, but at least Obama runs his own campaign. Add that to the fact that Paul was unheard of outside Texas a year ago, and now he's raised more money than half the Democrats and half the Republicans that were running, combined.
That doesn't frighten me though. I think it's this is the dawn of a new kind of voter participation, a new sort of coopting of a political process usually run by fatcats in back rooms, but now primarily funded in small amounts by large groups of people. 10 years ago Obama and Paul would've been stuffed into back rooms and told to wait their turn, if they ever even got one. Now they take their message to the people and they get funding without having to kowtow to special interests (well, mostly). I like the change, but it's not perfect by any means.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: People like you think that if there are enough of you, you're entitled to force the minority to support goals and programs that you favor. You've elevated "might makes right" and mob rule into a sort of sacred principle, and stolen the label of "social contract" in a propagandistic attempt to justify it and as a tool by means of which you can try and intimidate those who simply want to be left to live their lives in peace.
Talk about scary.
Yeah I've always supported mob rule and might makes right. Me and Hitler are just two peas in a pod.
You don't think it's a little ironic that a Ron Paul supporter would attack Obama for having come from nowhere and being a manufactured candidate? Ron Paul hasn't been in charge of his campaign from the start. It's being run by a large group of people, an uncoordinated alliance of young people who don't totally understand his policies and libertarians who will happily take those young people's money bombs.
Non sequitur. When Obama speaks, I hear slick speech writers. When Paul speaks, I hear someone speaking like a person; not like a politician.
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posted
Lisa, I'm just gonna repost this to call your attention to it. I'm really curious to hear the answer:
quote:What specifically do you think Obama is gonna do that will restrict your individual freedoms? Are you just against any kind of government programs that use public tax dollars? Do you draw the line some where as to which government programs are acceptable and which are unacceptable? I mean, do you support public education? The keeping of a military? The NSF? Environmental protection agency?
quote:Non sequitur. When Obama speaks, I hear slick speech writers. When Paul speaks, I hear someone speaking like a person; not like a politician
That's really not a non sequitur at all. Do I need to provide a definition? You saying "non sequitur" after what I said is more of a non sequitur.
Anyway, that's a matter of opinion, so I can't fault you there, but, when I hear Obama speak, generally I hear something fairly unlike what regular politicians have said for quite some time, and he's written the speeches himself. Oratorical styling isn't generally what I base my vote on, but hey, to each his or her own.
When I hear Paul speak, I hear a lot of awesome common sense...but it's badly mangled and garbled by someone who isn't naturally adept at communication. A lack of polish might be desireable to you, but it's one of those things that makes him unelectable. He can't get his point across clearly most of the time. During the debates he would've need a trail of bread crumbs to find his way back to the point he was trying to make from the answers he gave that went off the track.
I'm not dissing him, if you REALLY pay attention, he was making some fantastic points, but he was laughed at and derided by the other Republicans (much to my annoyance) and it was all too easy because his message was getting lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth.
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posted
Paul sounded good to a certain brand of self-styled objectivist who would be unlikely to thrive in their own idea of how things should be.
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posted
My mother in law has been looking forward to a Obama campaign for four years. He got a lot of press when he was elected to the Senate.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I most certainly reject the monstrous idea of a "social contract" that places each of us, willy nilly, at the service of whatever some majority determines is for the "greatest good".
And I most certainly reject the monstrous idea of a society where money is god and where the democratic will of the people cannot be implemented through regulation but rather must be implemented through force. It's easy to jam the negatives of an idea into a sentence (with a little "flavoring" if you know what I mean) and paint it as an absolutely atrocious idea.
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posted
I wore an Obama Senate campaign button to a war protest in Washington in January of 2004. Dozens of people stopped me to say that he was the one bright spot of the 2004 election and that they wished he would run for president.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Alcon: Lisa, I'm just gonna repost this to call your attention to it. I'm really curious to hear the answer:
quote:What specifically do you think Obama is gonna do that will restrict your individual freedoms? Are you just against any kind of government programs that use public tax dollars? Do you draw the line some where as to which government programs are acceptable and which are unacceptable? I mean, do you support public education? The keeping of a military? The NSF? Environmental protection agency?
Well yes, I am against such government programs. I'm also against the whole idea that there are "public tax dollars". Taxing to protect people from violations of their rights is one thing. Taxing to give goodies to people is quite another.
Publically funded and run education is horribly wrong. The EPA would be fine if it were a private organization, but it's certainly not the business of the government. If it can be established -- and it quite easily can -- that polluting in certain ways has effects outside of the polluters own property, that should be a criminal issue, just like if I spray poison in your face. But the burden of proof should be the same as in any other criminal case, and "regulation" isn't the answer.
Police, army, courts. To protect people from the violation of their rights and to mediate disputes. Anything else is just someone, somewhere, flexing his muscles at someone else's expense.
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quote:The social contract says that my freedom is only to be limited to the extent that it infringes on that of another ("my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins"). The social contract says that everyone is free to try and convince others to do anything, but that no one is permitted to force others to do anything.
And if you are in a crowd you may find that you can't swing your fist at all with out hitting someones nose. If you happed to find your self on the Suq Al-Silseleh at midday on a Friday, you will find that you can't make any movement in any direction unless a thousand other people move first. One individualist who decides to stand fast in the road, can effectively eliminate a thousand peoples freedom to move. How many people must that immovable individualist block before forcing him out of the way becomes a defense of peoples freedom and not a violation of it?
Not every place in this world is as crowded as the Suq Al-Silseleh at noon on a friday, yet still it is true that all our actions affect others. In a very real sense, every thing I do or you do interferes with someones freedoms.
That is not just a metaphor, it is verifiable fact.
[ April 08, 2008, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Non sequitur. When Obama speaks, I hear slick speech writers. When Paul speaks, I hear someone speaking like a person; not like a politician
That's really not a non sequitur at all. Do I need to provide a definition? You saying "non sequitur" after what I said is more of a non sequitur.
Anyway, that's a matter of opinion, so I can't fault you there, but, when I hear Obama speak, generally I hear something fairly unlike what regular politicians have said for quite some time, and he's written the speeches himself. Oratorical styling isn't generally what I base my vote on, but hey, to each his or her own.
When I hear Paul speak, I hear a lot of awesome common sense...but it's badly mangled and garbled by someone who isn't naturally adept at communication. A lack of polish might be desireable to you, but it's one of those things that makes him unelectable. He can't get his point across clearly most of the time. During the debates he would've need a trail of bread crumbs to find his way back to the point he was trying to make from the answers he gave that went off the track.
I'm not dissing him, if you REALLY pay attention, he was making some fantastic points, but he was laughed at and derided by the other Republicans (much to my annoyance) and it was all too easy because his message was getting lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth.
And he wants the US out of the UN which would single handedly signal the end of the Pax Americana and the return to Pre-1941 isolationalism.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Not every place in this world is as crowded as the Suq Al-Silseleh at noon on a friday, yet still it is true that all our actions affect others. In a very real sense, every thing I do or you do interferes with someones freedoms.
That is not just a metaphor, it is verifiable fact.
No, it isn't. For me to receive all of the money I earn from my employer would interfere with no one else's freedom.
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quote:Non sequitur. When Obama speaks, I hear slick speech writers. When Paul speaks, I hear someone speaking like a person; not like a politician
That's really not a non sequitur at all. Do I need to provide a definition? You saying "non sequitur" after what I said is more of a non sequitur.
Please, do provide a definition, since you clearly don't know what it means. You were comparing Obama's being a sleek little manufactured product and Ron Paul not being the driving force behind his own campaign. The two things are entirely different. Ron Paul is who he is, and has been for decades. He isn't some daemon ex machina like Obama.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: When I hear Paul speak, I hear a lot of awesome common sense...but it's badly mangled and garbled by someone who isn't naturally adept at communication.
No, he isn't. But he's clear enough, and as you said, it's awesome common sense. As opposed to the cliches in which Obama is drenched.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not dissing him, if you REALLY pay attention, he was making some fantastic points, but he was laughed at and derided by the other Republicans (much to my annoyance) and it was all too easy because his message was getting lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth.
I'd rather have someone who isn't the Great Communicator, but who makes sense, than a slickster who just panders to the immature gimme-ism of too many Americans.
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posted
Except that the reason you get the pay you do is largely reliant upon taxes. When you negotiated your salary, that expense should have been factored in. I don't know your exact job, but public education definetely effects the economy in a positive way. There are probably other ways that tax funded programs have helped allow for your job to even exist.
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quote:Please, do provide a definition, since you clearly don't know what it means. You were comparing Obama's being a sleek little manufactured product and Ron Paul not being the driving force behind his own campaign. The two things are entirely different. Ron Paul is who he is, and has been for decades. He isn't some daemon ex machina like Obama.
Actually, I was comparing Obama and Paul's "come from out of nowhere" candidacy and national appeal and recognition. And I was comparing the driving forces and control of their campaigns. Near as I can tell, they are directly comparable.
Specifically your complaint falls apart here:
quote:You were comparing Obama's being a sleek little manufactured product and Ron Paul not being the driving force behind his own campaign.
When you word it like THAT, then I can see how you might come to that conclusion. The two aren't different, they are really very closely related. I was comparing the driving forces and genesis of their campaigns and who controls them. That's directly tied to your view of one of them being manufactured and the other being pure and untainted, despite the fact that they have very similar origins in this campaign. That's the point I was trying to make. You seem to have skipped over it entirely to form your own conclusion.
If I need to elaborate further, I will. I'm guessing I'll figure out pretty quick from how badly you mangle my point whether or not I'll need to.
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quote: For me to receive all of the money I earn from my employer would interfere with no one else's freedom.
Depends on how you look at that one. While I'd rather folks made real plans for retirement, we can't deny that many people rely on Social Security for their sole income. If we stop paying in to SSI, there won't be any money to pay out. If there isn't money to pay out, many of the elderly, disabled, and orphaned would suddenly be without food. And that would deprive them of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I'm all for programs to help people plan better from now on, but there's a whole generation that it's just too late for. They're retired on SSI and they can't go back and undo that.
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quote:And that would deprive them of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yeah but, not in the way that the Framers intended. They have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but there's no rule that it has to be subsidized by the government. To be honest, good liberal that I am, I'm very much against Social Security. I think it's a poorly conceived, poor managed institution in the 21st century. People should be able to plan for their own retirement and use their own money to do so, rather than paying into a wasteful Administration that results in low yields and a lot of paper pushing.
Furthermore, I'll never see a dime of the money I'm paying into it. I think it was a great idea when it was first created, that saved millions from death and poverty, but it was an institution of the post-Depression 40's. It's like 60 years old now, and requires a major overhaul that I think has to include a higher retirement age, smaller payouts, and partially privatized accounts, if we're going to do it at all.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Except that the reason you get the pay you do is largely reliant upon taxes.
Say what? My boss would pay me more if he didn't have to pay employment taxes on what he pays me.
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: When you negotiated your salary, that expense should have been factored in.
No, ma'am. That's ridiculous. That sounds like the shoplifter's excuse. "They price things in the store knowing that a certain amount of the merchandise is going to be stolen, so no one is really being hurt." Feh.
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I don't know your exact job, but public education definetely effects the economy in a positive way.
Public education does not affect the economy in a positive way. It takes money away from people unfairly and gives it to other people unfairly. But worse than that, it gives the government the ability to indoctrinate children. Which, of all the powers the government has wrongly usurped is probably one of the most dangerous.
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: There are probably other ways that tax funded programs have helped allow for your job to even exist.
If someone mugs me than then buys me a cup of coffee with some of the money he stole, I don't owe him any thanks.
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quote:Please, do provide a definition, since you clearly don't know what it means. You were comparing Obama's being a sleek little manufactured product and Ron Paul not being the driving force behind his own campaign. The two things are entirely different. Ron Paul is who he is, and has been for decades. He isn't some daemon ex machina like Obama.
Actually, I was comparing Obama and Paul's "come from out of nowhere" candidacy and national appeal and recognition.
See, and I wasn't talking about anything like that. Hence "non sequitur".
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quote:The idea of someone most Americans hadn't even heard of a few years ago all of a sudden becoming this rock star candidate is more than a little creepy, in a very Stepford sort of way.
What's this mean then?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: For me to receive all of the money I earn from my employer would interfere with no one else's freedom.
Depends on how you look at that one. While I'd rather folks made real plans for retirement, we can't deny that many people rely on Social Security for their sole income. If we stop paying in to SSI, there won't be any money to pay out. If there isn't money to pay out, many of the elderly, disabled, and orphaned would suddenly be without food. And that would deprive them of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
God, it's hard to know where to start. I mean, I could start with the obvious fact that neither you nor I are ever going to see a penny from Social Security. That we're paying into a system that simply cannot last, no matter how much people want it to. But I'm sure you have some sort of expectation that someone (who?) will manager to pull a rabbit out of a hat and supply that money eventually.
I could start with your wrongheaded assumption that I'm talking about shutting Social Security down right now and depriving the people who paid into it of any money coming out. I'm not. This is a case where a wrong was done, and while two wrongs don't always make a right, a debt was incurred when people were forced to pay into that system. But other things can be cancelled and their funds used to ease the transition out of Social Security. Continuing the madness by forcing people now to pay into a system that cannot last is beyond sick.
But instead, I think I'll start with the bizarre idea that not giving something to someone can somehow deprive them of their rights. That's not true. It's never been true. It will never be true.
You have the right to insist that I not punch you in the nose. You do not have the right to insist that I pay you money if you fall on hard times. You have the right to ask me to. You do not have the right to demand it.
Your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not a lein on the life and liberty of others. Your right to life means I can't kill you. Your right to liberty means I can't own you. Your right to pursue happiness means I can't stand in front of you and say, "No." It doesn't mean that I have to supply you with life or liberty or the means of pursuing happiness.
quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: I'm all for programs to help people plan better from now on, but there's a whole generation that it's just too late for. They're retired on SSI and they can't go back and undo that.
So you want to create another generation just like that one? Or do you want to solve the problem instead?
Even Ron Paul, who wants to abolish the income tax and shut down the IRS, doesn't have any idea of doing it from one day to the next. Of course things will have to be done gradually. But you can't achieve anything, ever, unless you set the achievement up as a goal. Right now, the goal should be phasing out Social Security. Phasing out government run social programs. Phasing out government run education (pardon the redundancy, since that's just another social program). Phasing out the existence of the Federal Reserve system. Restoring all of those things to the private sector, where they belong.
Recognizing a problem is the first step to admitting it. You seem to recognize that Social Security is a problem. So the question becomes, do you perpetuate it, or do you work to end it?
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quote:The idea of someone most Americans hadn't even heard of a few years ago all of a sudden becoming this rock star candidate is more than a little creepy, in a very Stepford sort of way.
What's this mean then?
Ron Paul has been in Congress for a very long time. While his supporters have helped him a lot, this isn't even the first time he's run for president. It's apples and oranges.
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posted
Ron Paul's rise in popularity was significantly influenced by internet support which was in turn significantly influenced by the efforts of Paul supporters on social news sites such as Digg and Reddit. In other words, Paul's popularity was due to a new phenomenon. The fact that he has been around for a while isn't too relevant.
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Yeah, because every American knows EVERY member who has ever served in the House, especially third party candidates running under the guise of the Republican party. To say nothing of the fact that his previous presidential bid was also as a third party candidate, the Libertarian party in 1988, where he got less than a half million votes nationwide.
Quick show of hands, how many people here know the Libertarian candidate for president in 1984 and 1980? The answer is David Bergland and Ed Clark, and I'll bet every dollar I have that if you ask 10,000 Americans who those two people are without any prompting, you'll get "I have no idea" as a response from 9,999 of them.
Outside of his home district, how many people do you REALLY think would know who he is? And outside of the Libertarian party, how many people do you really think remember him from his presidential bid TWENTY years ago? Considering the fact that his most vocal and visual support is coming from people who either weren't born then or were toddlers, I think the answer is "not many."
Edit to add: Or, what Threads said (which was much more concise and without the snark I felt was necessary).
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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You're living in a fantasy world Lisa. The United States you want has never existed and will never exist. You wanna know why? Cause the government's right to tax is written into the constitution of this country. And it's written in not just for the things you mentioned, defense of rights, but "For the general welfare of the country". I'd say people who like social programs (and there are a lot more of them than there are people like you) are well with in reason interpreting that as supporting their programs.
Here's the exact bit, from article 1 section 8 of the constitution of the United States:
quote:The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
So sorry Lisa, you've got no leg to stand on arguing that the government has no right to tax you. And I'd say the generations of people who have interpreted that to mean the government can tax you for social programs are on pretty solid turf. And if you think being taxed in anyway is evil as you seem to... I'd suggest you find yourself a new country. Because you're very alone in your view in this country and -- unfortunately for you -- for the most part, majority does rule here.
As for the ideological side, I'm not even gonna go there. I differ from you so fundamentally that it would quickly turn into either useless head bashing or a flame war. Instead I'll simply comfort myself with the knowledge that you're the one who's gonna be stuck with the useless head bashing for the rest of your life and go about my merry way enjoying the social programs, like that evil public education, I'm quite happy to give my tax dollars to support.
*wave* Have fun with the bashing, try not to crack your skull, okay?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote: Your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not a lein on the life and liberty of others.
I'm just wondering why you're using the Declaration of Independence as a source for the laws of our country, what they were and what they should be.
The US Constitution is a much more valid document in that area, both on what was intended to be, what is, and what should be the laws of our land.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I think that the guy was refering to people who decided to watch the Masters instead of going to a political rally.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Alright Lisa, good luck with your campaign to do away with fireman.
I can't believe Mark Penn hung on so long. I heard calls for his ouster 6 months or so ago on various blogs but never dug into it. Now I hear Gore fired him in 2000, and saw this review by Ezra Klein of Penn's book Microtrends.
quote: I first flipped through Microtrends while at the YearlyKos convention, and Penn, astonishingly, seemed to comprehend the importance of the loosely connected, grassroots-driven, progressive movement’s flowering. “I suspect the lefty boom will bring a surge in the promotion of sheer creative energy,” Penn writes, “driven by an idea that is at the heart of this book—that small groups of people, sharing common experiences, can increasingly be drawn together to rally for their interests.” I was shocked—Penn was speaking admirably of “lefties,” not trying to recast them as moderates, not trying to write them out of the party? He was endorsing open-source politics, rather than a top-down structure? I had misjudged the man!
I read on. Penn was talking about actual lefties—people who are born left-handed. Increasingly grim, I absorbed the first hard blows of Penn’s interpretative technique: “More lefties,” he enthuses, “could mean more military innovation: Famous military leaders from Charlemagne to Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Napoleon—as well as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf—were left-handed.” He uses the same thunderingly awful logic to argue that we’ll see more art and music greats, more famous criminals, more great comedians, more “executive greatness,” and better tennis and basketball players.
This is what statisticians—or anyone who has taken a statistics class—call a “correlation/causation error.” It is not enough to cherrypick a couple famed military leaders, notice that they’re lefties and assume that something intrinsic to their handedness caused their tactical genius. It is not enough to say that past cultures discouraged left-handedness and use that as a stand-in for discouraging creativity of all sorts. To say that Bill Gates is right-handed does not suggest that a greater proportion of right-handed people would mean more Bill Gateses. For a professional pollster to imply that correlation equals causation is like a firefighter trying to put out flames by tossing a toaster into the blaze—it bespeaks a complete unfamiliarity with the relevant techniques.
quote: As microchapter after microchapter passed, reviewing this book began to feel like dropping a grenade into a barrel of fish.
Clinton should never have let him become a chief strategist of her campaign. Like her choice of her former scheduler to become Campaign Manager, it reflects a loyalty over competence mindset in Clinton. Something 7 years of Bush has shown is a bad idea.
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