2012 GOP Presidential Primary

Obama could make Galveston another Gitmo where he piles the bodies of his assassinated US citizens so his drone followers dance around the carcasses in circles yelling "tax the rich" while ejaculating on the remains.

 

He's got my vote, in that case.

 

It can be fun to paint the Paul-bots into ridiculous corners. Congratulations!

 

I like the Saturday Night Live debate skit on the Republicand debates in which the moderator pushes the Ron Paul character into a corner in which he would let cute little squealing puppies burn to death rather than use a governbment funded fire department to rescue them. The moderator then says; "Well at least he is consistent!"

 

Look, I don't agree with all of his views either, but I agree with most of them and I will be voting for him. Ending the wars, balancing the budget (w/ no cuts to Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid), and preserving civil liberties is a plan I agree with.

As I am fiercely against the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the assassination of US citizens w/o trial, SOPA, and NDAA - I really don't have another choice.

If Obama didn't have his head up his ass on these issues I wouldn't even be considering this....

 

Must be some strong Kool Aid you're drinking. I'd slow down a bit. If it was possible to have a less than Newt (zero) chance of winning, Ron Paul would be the one. It's more likely a late draftee like Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels is selected than Paul.

 

That would be awesome.

 

Which one? Obama's gotten us out of Iraq, and didn't do much in Libya. Sure, he hasn't retreated from Afghanistan the minute Bin Laden was killed, but the fact that he killed him is good enough for me to give him the benefit of the doubt, and besides, Paul would have had us withdraw from Afghanistan without killing Bin Laden and has explicitly stated he would not have ordered the raid. Obama's done an excellent job foreign policy wise.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Your own link basically says, "I won't kill Social Security immediately, I'll just do it slowly enough so that all the old people who I need to vote for me don't get pissed off" And destroying the Department of Energy, Commerce, and Education are things I don't like at all, and while there are problems with the TSA, is Paul seriously suggesting privatizing airport security, which would inevitably result in airport going back to how it used to be for 9/11?

Not to mention, you forgot that whole "I'm going to destroy the Federal Reserve and implement the gold standard" thing. Paul could be Jesus Christ reincarnated and crap kittens and puppies, I'm not voting for him if he does that.

I don't really understand the furor over Guantanamo. Yes, mistreatment of prisoners is bad, but closing or opening Guantanamo doesn't change that one way or the other. Just change how the prisoners within Guantanamo are treated, and besides, I haven't heard anything about prisoner mistreatment since Obama was elected, even from Paulbots. And we have the right to imprison enemy combatants, as we are at war.

I've talked about how NDAA is hype over nothing, and I believe Obama said he'll veto SOPA, so that's a moot point.

 

One can only dream...

 

Obama didn't get us out of Iraq, we were kicked out. We are leaving leaving Iraq under the status of forces agreement signed by Bush. Also, Paul did vote for the authorization to go after Bin Laden. His problem is that we were bogged down in nation building instead. I encourage you to see what he said in a debate from 2007.

IIRC, the budget deficit was $1.5 Trillion dollars in 2010, any balanced budget (which I think we need) will have cuts that people won't like. And I agree that ending the Department of Energy, Commerce, and Education aren't the greatest idea but I would prefer to cut these than cut the entitlements.

Because - as you should know - the Republicans are going push for cuts in the entitlements to maintain the warfare state they crave for. Having a candidate who will drastically reduce military spending will do wonders to save these programs.

Well, he said he wasn't going to destroy the Federal Reserve for now...

But he did say he would appoint someone who would 'reign in' the Federal Reserve from excessive printing of money. Do you remember that story about how the Fed printed out $7.7 TRILLION dollars to bail out their banker buddies in 2008? I don't know about you, but I see something wrong with that.

That is your opinion and that is fine and dandy - but he did promise to close it during his presidential campaign and it was one of the reasons I voted for him...

Ok, can you link to the thread where you talked about the NDAA? Also, please provide the proof where he said he'll veto SOPA.

 

Why do we have to see what he said in 2007 about the raid in 2011? Why don't we look at what he said in 2011?

“I don’t think it was necessary, no. It absolutely was not necessary,”


I'm not sure if it's possible to look more hopelessly naive and dumb to say that, especially given the circumstances of his demise.

Game Over - not presidential material on that basis alone (though of course therea are many, many more).

 

Tomato, tomatoe, we're out of a stupid war. If Obama honored Bush's agreement, I'm fine with it.

He may have voted for the authorization But this is what I am talking about. He explicitly says no, I would not have authorized the raid that Obama did.

I never said cutting entitlement spending was a bad thing. I just observed that if he really claimed that he wants to balance the budget without touching entitlements or raising taxes ( and obviously he wants to slash them), that's complete bull.

The NDAA page is on the front page of this section of the forum. My argument is that it's not something which will substantially change how things are regarding enemy combatants, whom we do have the right to imprison - it's a struggle between Congress and Obama over whom has the authority, which is why Obama opposed it and why the Senate was so overwhelmingly in favor of it (this is the same group that can't pass a budget. Ask yourself why they would so overwhelmingly support this then.)

Okay, after looking further, I think I confused Obama with Pelosi. Oh well. Regardless of the merits of the bill, there's no point in condemning Obama until he takes an actual stance on the bill. The fact that Paul opposes the bill is irrelevant to me - everyone has one or two things that Paul says that they like, after all.

 

So you want to keep SS/Medicare/Medicaid as is, but are for slashing basically every other major discretionary spending program we have? Keep health care for the poor, but eliminate all the programs like job training, education grants, etc that help keep people from being poor in the first place? I wonder how that might impact how many poor people we have, and how that will affect Medicaid costs ...

 

What he was saying he would have done if differently - not that he wouldn't do it. He was simply saying he would have cooperated w/ Pakistan (which by the way we did cooperate with to capture many terrorists). Video

Look at the numbers in his plan - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are not cut, there are no raises in taxes, and the budget is balanced in three years.

On the surface having the power to indefinitely detain US citizens without a trial seems a gross violation of the US constitution. But anyways, I will look into what you say about the NDAA.

p.s. You never addressed the assassination of US citizens w/o a trial issue. Do you support Obama's stance on this as well?....

Listen, I don't support Ron on everything - just on four major points.

1. End the wars
2. No cuts to entitlements
3. Balance the budget
4. Preserve civil liberties

He just seems to be the best option right now. Everyone else seems to be a vote for exploding out of control debt or severe cuts to entitlements (which old & poor people depend on)....

 

Ah yes, the same Pakistan who totally didn't know where Bin Laden was even though he was hiding in their equivalent of Malibu.
Also, it doesn't get much more clear than "I don't think it was necessary, no. It absolutely was not necessary", you know.

Where does he say he's not going to cut it? In that agency budget comparison section of his plan, Medicaid is slashed by almost half, and Social Security and Medicare just aren't mentioned. Of course, gotta care for those old people who'll vote as opposed to the poor.

AND LOOK AT WHAT HE DOES CUT:

For starters, it's pretty funny that he slashes the budget of the Department of Defense by about 30%, while that of State is slashed by 75%. Interesting for a guy who talks about how we need to reassess diplomacy.

Foreign aid? Completely gone.
Department of Energy. Completely gone. Guess the free market will build those new nuclear power plants, like occurred in France. Oh wait.
Department of Education. Completely gone. Because God knows I want Rick Perry figuring what needs to be taught in our schools.
Food stamps. Cut by over half.
Department of Commerce. Gone. How's the census getting done, among other things.
The FAA. Privatized. I can't believe this.

There were Americans who fought for the Nazis in the Second World War. We shot them. I don't see the difference.

Also, I forgot this:

First off, I think if 7.7 trillion dollars was actually injected into the money supply, there would have been inflation in 2008, something which Paul keeps harping about, but hasn't happened.
Secondly, I think it's pretty funny that he freaks out about government officials touching women's boobs in an airport security line, but giving the government officials the right to the money supply? What a great idea, and what could possibly go wrong! It's not like we had problems when we didn't have a central bank!.

 

Watch the video again. He clear states he would have done it but that he would have cooperated with Pakistan.

If you are saying that Pakistan knew where he was and were purposefully hiding him - I'd disagree with you. They have helped us catch many terrorists in the past on such cooperate raids and are also a country that has been suffering from severe and repeated terrorist attacks.

I can't and won't defend everything he cuts - as I also disagree with several of them. But do note that some these functions will be transferred to other departments. If I find a list things he transfers to other departments and things he cuts outright - I'll let you know...

That is far different than a government death panel who decides which persons can be targeted for assassinations (including US citizens).

The Fed sends unbelievable amounts of cash to the banks at near 0% interest. The banks turn around and loan to the government at interest. The banks essentially make money for free. In essence, whole Federal Reserve system is a big gravy train to the bankers at the expense of taxpayers. It is no coincidence that the same year the Federal Reserve act was passed (1913), the government instituted the Federal income tax.

So yeah, you are right. That bank bailout wasn't necessarily injected into the money supply. But when the Fed does quantitative easing (QE) then it does and the dollar loses more of its value. The banks benefit the most because they get to use the money first.

 

There's no way to conclusively deal with this, as this delves into counterfactual history, but it's also a symptom of how Paul really showcases the idea of "The perfect is the enemy of the good".

Furthermore, I can posit another scenario: Pakistan DID know, but they can't go out and celebrate Bin Laden's death, because there's lots of Pakistan who think Bin Laden's a good guy - we know that there have been moments where Pakistan publicly b****ed about some American attack but in reality didn't mind them but b****ed for the sake of appearance.

I would first observe that you seem to believe that the United States conducting assassinations in general is inherently bad, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered with the including US citizens line. I don't.
Secondly, I'd ask a question which I observed back during that Awaki controversy: If Lincoln had had the opportunity to send commandos to kill Lee outside the battle, and he did, would that have been a bad thing?

Semantics. If the dollar loses more of its value, it would be the equivalent of significantly higher inflation, and that isn't true.

Secondly, it appears that you have some sort of problem with both the income tax and the Federal Reserve. Am I wrong?

 

Maybe Boehner will do it. He's doing such good job right now.

 

Considering he's the Speaker of the House and he's not even in charge of that (Cantor) I don't see him making a very good argument for his leadership abilities.