fred thompson pulled out and now denying its not his kid
:bowdown:
Wonder if Paul will pick up any of his supporters.
Pro Thompson blog: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/01/22/report-fred-dropping-out/
and no, Dr. Paul wont get many Thompson supporters. Fred’s gang hates “Paul-bots.”
if they want a candidate as “conservative” as Thompson claimed to be, they should at least be considering him.
Big difference between “Southern Conservative” and “Libertarian Conservative”…VERY big difference.
…
His ‘major’ effort barely got him second. :jerkit: Let’s see what happens in Floridia…
Florida is not a particularly Paul friendly state. he won’t do amazing. but he doesn’t have to. :bigthumb:
The fact that you go to the polls and vote for someone who doesn’t do what they say they are going to do in their campaigning. So you have to make a guess at who won’t do the most damage to our economy and everything, and even then they might not become President. So why follow lies and deceits for almost a year or so and then go to polls and screw up your vote anyway? I guess that’s just politics.
Also to go with what I said about not voting I’m not one of those nonvoters that complain about things that go on in the white house or with our country. I’m in the military right now in Iraq, but my voting isn’t going to stop us being here since we’re already here and know we’re not leaving for a while. I like to poke fun at people who are into politics and have argumentative debates about it and I like to argue with them. Makes for interesting conversations.
He’s anti gun law, Pro-life, anti-big govt. anti-taxes. he’s a doctor and a devout Christian. :dunno:
I am not anti-Ron Paul…Just trying to see where you are coming from Dr. Darkstar 
What is it beside him being from Greentree and honest, that you are so in favor of? How is he going to establish all these radical changes that he is so interested in imposing? Getting rid of all government agencies? Removing income tax? How are the poor in this country going to survive? Ton’s of people sit on SSI/DLA money and count on it every month/year etc. With all the babyboomers retiring in the next couple of years, how much is that going to drain the economy alone? I haven’t made up my mind about my candidate, but from previous elections they all overpromise and underdeliver. For instance, Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. That never came to fruition, but i thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell us the truth about his ventures and what he’ll actually do vs. what they promise. Ya know…
Well his record is pretty solid:
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
Can any other candidate claim such a fantastic voting record?
building on what beat said, the thing I personally like the most about him (not that I don’t adore the rest of his platform) is his foreign policy. He wants to get rid of all of the foreign military bases. We have over 700 military bases in over 130 foreign countries. Any idea how much that costs the taxpayer? Any idea how bad that pisses off the residents of said countries? Here’s a hint. There was one guy that got REALLY pissed off about our military base in Saudi Arabia. So much so that he organized a bunch of people to fly planes into a couple of our skyscrapers and our military headquarters. The United States spends more on our national defense than all of the other countries in the world combined. Yet, the continental US has never been attacked by a foreign country (in modern times).
:dunno:
The world hates us because we are the world’s bully. We do what we want, when we want, we tell everyone else what they can and cant do. Look at Iran… who the hell are we to tell them that they can’t have a nuclear program? It’s this crap that MAKES THE TERRORISTS WANT TO KILL US. The war on terrorism we’re pretending to do is only making them want to kill us more. And there is no way we can stop them from doing it except to make them NOT want to kill us. Which, if we just had a reasonable, non-interventionist foreign policy… would happen in a decade or so.
I have heard Ron Paul speak a number of times on Air America, during a few debates, and in several other venues. So many people were calling in to say they supported him, that I was very curious to see what the man was about. He is definitely a Libertarian, which means basically that he wants government out of our lives almost totally. I say almost, because Libs very much believe in police forces and armies; that’s about it. They do not see our society in terms of a “social contract”, that we are all in this together and have to organize things to supply the basics necessaries to that achievement of happiness in which our Founding Fathers believed. Libertarians want to privatize the government exactly the way the Bush administration is doing. Libertarians see business/corporations as the way to achieve the dismantling of government, and it’s really interesting to hear someone like Ron Paul try to explain how this will happen without our (the middle/lower classes) being impoverished and gouged. Like so many people who call themselves Republicans, he wants to see everyone “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”—without answering the charge that the deck is pretty much stacked against the little guy when it comes to corporate business practices.
Thom Hartmann likes to say that Libs are Republicans who want to smoke pot and have free sex. I also would like to see those things, but other than that they’re fairly nuts. I can’t see how turning our country over to corporations has done us much good thus far…
I happen to find Ron Paul personable. He is, however, not our friend IMO, no matter how correct he is about Iraq or the Patriot Act. This is why there are people out there who think he the Republican answer to the Bush Admin. He isn’t, unfortunately. No Libertarian can be. Ron Paul is a Libertarian, even if he’s calling himself a Republican to try to get to the White House. Although, this is my current view on him, it may change over time, so far that’s how I see it.
You can jump my reply and call me a Dem all you want. Yeah, I have some of those views and some republican ones and I agree with what Ron Paul propagates in his campaign, but not everything. I haven’t made a decision on a candidate and just reading over many facts now to get myself prepared to vote over the next year.
I don’t really know where you were going with that, but “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” hehe
The problem with helping the little guys in our current system is that the truly successful businesses and corporations are well connected with the congress and other federal level bureaucracies. The poor are also given some assistance and advantages. This leaves the actual working people in the middle to get crushed by the tax burden with no special favors (poor) or easy revenue (rich).
Either we’ll return to truly free markets or we will decline. Taking money from the masses, and giving it to the poor, and giving it to the rich (by way of government contracts and inflation) will not work much longer.
You do realize I’m a Libertarian, right?
I don’t really know where you were going with that, but “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” hehe
The problem with helping the little guys in our current system is that the truly successful businesses and corporations are well connected with the congress and other federal level bureaucracies. The poor are also given some assistance and advantages. This leaves the actual working people in the middle to get crushed by the tax burden with no special favors (poor) or easy revenue (rich).
Either we’ll return to truly free markets or we will decline. Taking money from the masses, and giving it to the poor, and giving it to the rich (by way of government contracts and inflation) will not work much longer.
Freedom is that right, I agree. I think you missed the first part of what I wrote: “He is definitely a Libertarian, which means basically that he wants government out of our lives almost totally. I say almost, because Libs very much believe in police forces and armies; that’s about it. They do not see our society in terms of a “social contract”, that we are all in this together and have to organize things to supply the basics necessaries to that achievement of happiness in which our Founding Fathers believed. Libertarians want to privatize the government exactly the way the Bush administration is doing.”
Sorry, you don’t just remove government from society. It won’t work and will only create unnecessary turmoil. I think Ron Paul has tons of valid and good points, but I just do not see how it will help America as a whole for all classes, especially lower and middle. The rich have been flourishing in this 8 year stint, we can put them on the backburner for at least 1 presidential term.
:doh: Then you should vote that way, not Ron Paul who is in the Republican GOP. I thought this was about bettering the USandA, not what party you want to support? Aren’t we talking about what these candidates stand for? You said that you like him mostly for his Foreign Policy ideas. (Only reason they are ideas is because he’s not elected and until he is, they cannot come to fruition). He isn’t the only one with similar views on Foreign Policy. I was doing some more reading, feel free to do the same.
Ron Paul:
Mitt Romney:
Shillary:
Barack Obama:
John Edwards:
John McCain:
Mike Huckabee:
Rudy Giuliani:
Some of the others aren’t as descriptive as the ones I found above! Kucinich/Gravel/Keyes/Hunter etc…
There will always be rich people hoss. If you want to get rid of rich people and have us all be equal, then you are advocating communism.
Please explain “Libertarians want to privatize government the way Bush is now.”
Libertarians want the government to be a fraction of its current size and role in the lives of the people. Actually, the constitution does as well, if you’d care to read the 10th amendment, you’d see that most of our Federal bureaucracy is completely unconstitutional, and that makes it…illegal.
You do realize that Ron Paul ran as the Libertarian candidate in '88, right? And I dont vote on party lines, I vote for who I think would do the best job…
:doh:
:ugh2:
Who said anything about communism. Don’t jump the gun. All I said, is that the rich (which is roughly 1% of the USA) have been obtaining tax brakes and incentives while Bush is/was president. If they don’t continue to get the tax brakes, it ain’t gonna kill them. Bush is using the government to privatize certain things dealing with the War and you know what I meant.
The 10th Amendment deals with giving power to the Commonwealth/States. Usually, there are cases involving the 10th amendment dealing with environmental issues or gun free school zones or even better interstate commerce.
Here is what the 10th amendment deals with usually/recently:
Most recently, the Commerce Clause was cited in the 2005 decision Gonzales v. Raich. In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one’s own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana, citing the Wickard v. Filburn decision. It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the penumbra of the Commerce Clause.
I think this is what you are confusing it with:
A minority opinion is that since the Constitution splits all federal powers into two groups, those of Constitutional level and those of lesser stature authorized by the Necessary and Proper Clause, the 10th Amendment, being of Constitutional level, prohibits all Constitutional level powers not authorized. By definition, any and all powers mentioned in the Constitution are of the Constitutional level and all those not mentioned are of lesser stature. Since mentioned powers are mostly prohibitions on the states, according to this interpretation the 10th Amendment makes those prohibitions effective on the federal government as well, except in cases where specific authorization is granted. This interpretation is contrary to the widespread use of the Necessary and Proper Clause to authorize the use Constitutional level powers mentioned but not authorized.
Now, getting back to the voting that you identified:
Well his record is pretty solid:
Quote:
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.
He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
Can any other candidate claim such a fantastic voting record?
What you say is absolutely correct. Except it’s that old privatization bugaboo again. Right this moment I’m listening to Thom Hartmann interviewing a Brit who’s written a book about why we should privatize our road system, that the government shouldn’t be in the business of keeping up our roads. He thinks that the police force and army should be in the hands of the gov, but not our substructure. Hartmann gave some examples of what is happening with the “public commons” that already has been privatized, and it’s terrifying to think we might be heading back to the day when you had to pay for all these services outside of taxation. At the turn of the last century, for instance, fire depts. would let your house burn down if you hadn’t paid them first to put our fires!
Ron Paul has such a voting record above because he does not believe in the social contract of our Founding Fathers. It’s almost like saying, how so many good Germans do today, that Hitler was good because he gave people jobs and eliminated crime by getting rid of “bad elements”. Privatizing the gov means putting the public commons into the hands of people whose primary goal is profit over service.
You will note, that all the votes listed above deal directly or indirectly with the purging of government functions.
Believe me, there is no one more interested in keeping government out of my private life than I (which is why I support a gun owners right to own guns etc etc.), but I won’t do it by voting for anyone who even vaguely is libertarian. If you want a real eye-opener of what life would be like here if people like Ron Paul get their way, read a history of Clarence Darrow’s courtroom battles with the Pullman railway and other companies who refused to let their workers unionize.
One thing I have learned from history is that you shouldn’t solve short-term problems by using something or someone who is going to cause bigger problems down the road. Too many Americans have become disenfranchised since the days when Roosevelt tried to give enfeebled Americans a voice and some basic stability from which to launch their version of the American dream.
Yeah, I know he ran Lib in '88. That didn’t get him very far, so he jumped ship because he doesn’t want to waste his time fighting to get on certain ballots. The biggest gripe I have is the privatization of Health Care. That isn’t something that should be put into straight capitalist thinking hands. What Paul did with his own practice isn’t what is going to happen with privatization of healthcare! Do you really think these radical changes aren’t going to have negative long term effects on our own people?