Rick Reuben wrote:Oh my god is Russert a fat alcoholic shill.

This Reaganite clown has been in Congress eighteen years. You can't stay in office that long without bringing home the bacon to your district. I don't care what nutbag filterless worldview one might have, there's no arguing against the fact that Congresspeople must -- must bring jobs and resources back to their constituents in order to have a chance of staying in office for eighteen years.

So wait! You can't bring home the bacon if you're a libertarian, can you?

No you can't! Libertarians know the tax funds have been extracted by applying the jackboot of Big Government to the frail thorax of The People!

Yet somehow, Privateeer Paul's district isn't exactly going the free-market route for its affairs. When it's time to get a shipwreck removed from Galveston bay, suddenly there's no problem with earmarks of public dollars. Hm.

And so when presented with this basic inconsistency, this record of classic re-election-prone spending from a guy who's trying to make his bones as an IRS-demolishing guy who won't spend anything, what does he do?

Lets' just say that he didn't handle the fat alcoholic shill very well.



-r

Agreed, he didn't come across too well on the earmarks. If you are one of those who really buys into his platform, that part had to make you squirm. Nothing compared to the part where he said fighting the civil war was a mistake, but still.

Overall, I thought his performance was pretty much on message. Unfortunatley for him, that message isn't going to convince many new people to vote for him, at least not based on yesterday's show.

AlBStern wrote:Agreed, he didn't come across too well on the earmarks. If you are one of those who really buys into his platform, that part had to make you squirm. Nothing compared to the part where he said fighting the civil war was a mistake, but still.

You all are forgetting why earmarks became an issue. It was never that they existed. That is the way our government functions. Every politician sends in requests for money via earmarks, particularly people who endorse big government like Obama, Clinton, and Edwards (when he was a senator). You pay taxes and the government divides the money up to subsidize private companies after it goes to fund current social security, medicare, government employee, and military needs. The earmark buzzword was a reaction against politicians hiding bogus spending in bills to pay off special interests (ie the bridge to nowhere in Alaska). That problem has been mostly solved as it is now a more transparent process as to who is requesting what. Russert certainly understands this, but like other media outlets is using people's ignorance to smear. It is a no win situation from a libertarian perspective to work within this system. You are either cutting out the people you represent from seeing any benefit from the money they send by not voting for it or you are going along with the system by putting in the requests.

It is an important point to make to those that lean left...your tax dollars that are sent to Washington go to fund private corporations. Y'all hate private corporations but fight to have this system of government. Why? If you read the health care plans by the three top democrats, it is based upon getting everybody under the current HMO system. Why support that? Atleast Kucinich is trying to get the universal health care that everybody wants and thinks that they will be given by the other candidates.

I think there was an argument about this in another thread, but it seems absurd to argue that fighting a civil war is the best way to solve a social problem. If you read any of the Lincoln books by Thomas DiLorenzo, among other people, there is a solid case that the Civil War had very little to do with ending slavery.

Listen to this smirking, soulless, PNAC piece of shit Willian Kristol shamelessly trash Ron Paul on Fox Snooze.

Faux News: More Ron Paul Bashing On Faux News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5smijGv2sI

Ron Paul's position seems pretty reasonable to me. If every other fucking country on the planet can get rid of slavery without one half of the country attacking the other half (and killing ~600,000 people in the process) was the Civil war really such a hot idea?


"I think women should be able to vote"

"well, I don't"

"WAR BITCH!!"

Interesting discussion between Paul and Russert, especially since it's been pretty well established that Lincoln's primary reason for going to war was to preserve the Union, not end slavery.

Abe Lincoln wrote:"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

Merry Christmas EA Forums!

Another Paul interview, on Fox & Friends - Ron Paul gives a very succinct answer to the Mike Huckabee ad, after which Steve Douchey says "Well I certainly don't think Mike Huckabee is trying to sell fascism!"

Yeah, Ron Paul didn't say that either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-d7ODatNmE&feature=related


edit: Also wanted to add an interview with campaign chairman Kent Snyder. Dude looks like a bald Nicholas Cage, and kinda sounds like him too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QOoIdFFw80&feature=related

Rick Reuben wrote:

warmowski wrote:Yet somehow, Privateeer Paul's district isn't exactly going the free-market route for its affairs.

What are you suggesting- that the district needs to refuse their share of federal funding[...]?

Well which one is it? Destroy the IRS or don't? Coercively collect federal taxes and apply them to local problems or don't? Suck the invisible cock of the free market or admit that there is a common good and that a society must govern to reach for it? Which one?

Paulies aren't fans of government, which is exactly what lets them so easily ignore that their guy won eight (eight!) re-elections. Since it is categorically impossible to win that many times without getting lots of federal largesse for his district, it takes a special kind of dumbass to overlook eighteen years of proof that the jackboot of Big Government has been pretty comfy on Ron's foot.

Not too bright, these Paulies.

Jeez, when it came time to get rid of that shipwreck in Galveston Bay, instead of federal public spending, I would have expected a speech from Paul about how the shipping company should pay! Or, wait, the State of Texas should pay! Just Get The Government Off Our Backs!

Could it be possible that people running for president say one thing but do another?

-r

warmowski wrote:...Well which one is it? Destroy the IRS or don't? Coercively collect federal taxes and apply them to local problems or don't? Suck the invisible cock of the free market or admit that there is a common good and that a society must govern to reach for it? Which one?...
-r

How exactly would one congressman do this? You act as if his platform is now null and void if he accepts federal funds.

Skronk wrote:How exactly would one congressman do this?

Do what? The above calls for a final choice in governmental philosophy to be made by a presidential candidate who is hilariously running on the promise to destroy the taxing body that his own constituents have taken from for two decades. Apparently, what is good for the Texas 14th district since 1989 isn't good for the US at large according to the guy - and his supporters don't seem to wonder why. I think it's because they're stupid.

You act as if his platform is now null and void if he accepts federal funds.

No "if" about it and no passive "accepting" either - he chased down and bagged eight re-elections worth of dirty fed tax dollars coerced from Oregonians and Pennsylvanians and Hawaiians. But in his '08 run, all of a sudden the guy is Joe states rights / free market / kill the IRS. What irritates me the most is the libertarian fantasy at work - we are supposed to pretend that there is no greater sin than taxation - as if wasn't true that in the Texas 14th, stuff needed to be done, the public good needed to be funded and he needed to get re-elected eight times.

In brief, his appeal is to people who don't know jack shit about government.

It's my theory that his supporters mainly don't care about his foreign policy or monetary platform, they care about his Reaganite promise of reduced taxes. His supporters are nothing special politically - only the common form of don't-tax-me right-wing turd that fell for Reagan in '80 and gave back every advance labor and populism won following the depression.

Ron Paul is punk rock? No. Ron Paul is...fake populism.

-r

Rick Reuben wrote:Before you continue railing against the motives of Paul's supporters...

I pretty much spotted and showed the giant hole in the guy's libertarian nonsense already, no need for me to keep pointing it out.

could you answer a few questions about the 'taxing body'?

1-....

Oh, no, it's not quiz time. If it wasn't quiz time back then:

warmowski wrote:Well which one is it? Destroy the IRS or don't? Coercively collect federal taxes and apply them to local problems or don't? Suck the invisible cock of the free market or admit that there is a common good and that a society must govern to reach for it? Which one?

...then it's sure not quiz time now.

Merry et cetera!

-r