Lurker > red sox 777

Well, OWS people aren't creating socialism either, they're only asking for it. And they're not nearly as good at getting what they want. The banks are doing a fair bit of threatening beyond asking too.

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Also I agree Utah would be a fantastic place to live. Super low cost of living too.

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Haven't you realized by now that the banks have become what you hate most? They're the ones creating all the big government keynesian policy. Just look at this latest move which appears completely transparent- why Utah? To make President Romney happy.

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Haha, Goldman Sachs is hiring in Utah. Going to make Salt Lake City their 4th largest hub of employees in the world after New York, London, and New Jersey. Well we know which candidate they support and believe will win!

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Obama - 24
Romney - 9
Che Guevara - 3

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up

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Huh, apparently the People's Bank of China has a larger balance sheet than either the European Central Bank or the Federal Reserve. I knew China was getting pretty high inflation, but I would not have expected that, given how much money the ECB and Fed have printed recently.

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We need a case to litigate the constitutionality of the War Powers Act somehow. Every president has ignored it claiming it is unconstitutional since it was passed. The problem is finding a case to take it to court on. The most obvious remedy is impeachment, but no Congress has been willing to do that.

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More like the President will do what he wants. The US (the executive) controls NATO and can stop anything in the UN it doesn't like.

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Romney seems to be getting slightly less support now than he was getting last year, if I remember right.

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Obama - 21
Romney - 9
Castro - 2

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Obama - 15
Romney - 7
Marx - 1

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up

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Which makes it even worse, right? I mean, isn't the whole POINT of Occupy Wall Street that it's wrong for such a small minority to live so much better than the majority? What do they want, to replace the 1% with a 0.1%?

Actually, thinking about this more, that is exactly correct. This is why kings have been so popular throughout history, while aristocracies have been unpopular- the common people looked to the king as their defender against the evil, greedy, rich aristocracy. People rail against the rich for being rich, but they don't compare themselves to the king. Perhaps he is seen as so far above that a comparison is not merited, or perhaps the commoners don't mind if only 1 person is so much richer than they are. Either way, we get the curious result that through history, kings and queens have generally been popular with the common folk, while the rich, both noble and non-noble, have been almost constantly hated.

If you recall Orwell's argument in 1984, the political struggle is always between the middle (in our country, the 2nd 9%) and the high (in our country, the top 1%). Both sides attempt to enlist the aid of the low (bottom 90%), but the winner of the battle is never the low. If the middle wins and becomes the high, it has the problem that the economy will not support so many people as the high, so it must purge itself of most of its members. You see this in Communist countries, with the large majority of Russian Communist leaders in 1917 eventually being purged, for example. This happened in the French Revolution, with the former upper middle class, having gotten rid of the king and aristocracy, purging itself in the Reign of Terror. I believe Orwell's description was basically accurate.

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You should have heard of it nonetheless.

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Not nearly as cool as cosmology of course!

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Hairdressing, cosmetics, etc.

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Obama - 9
Romney - 3
Lenin - 1

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As an Australian who is forced to endure compulsory voting when I despise all three major parties, I have to ask: what percentage of the Americans on this board will actually be voting when the time comes?

Dunno, we saw voter turnout over 60% of eligible voters in 2008, and the trend has been up since 1996. Turnout among young people is notoriously low, so I'd expect this board's turnout to be much lower, but then, this is the Contest board. The contests are all about voting, so it's natural for people here to finding elections interesting.

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Mitt Romney

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Who gets your vote as of today?

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Also, Wall Street is a bunch of socialists. Their new business model is literally to feed at the government trough.

See, Mittens is different because his firm is based in Boston, and it was private equity instead of investment banking. That meant he did things like buy bad companies, fire everyone, and sell the parts at a profit. A Wall Street bank nowadays would buy the bad company, fire everyone, then demand a bailout from the government.

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The real Communists are okay with that and don't care that everyone is poor, they just don't want others to have more things than them.

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Which makes it even worse, right? I mean, isn't the whole POINT of Occupy Wall Street that it's wrong for such a small minority to live so much better than the majority? What do they want, to replace the 1% with a 0.1%?

Yes, of course!

That way there are only 1/10 as many people who are better off than they are. And they got there through politics, not capitalism.

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I dispute this. Communists SAY they want equality, because that's what you HAVE to say to convince a farmer to grab a gun and die in your revolution. But I think it's safe to say that literally 100% of Communist governments have had massive inequality. Most have greater inequality than the average Democracy does. If Communists really wanted equality, wouldn't we have ONE example of a successful Communist revolution that actually produced some equality?

Most Communist states do have equality: everyone is poor. Everyone except the inner party anyway, but that's a very small group.....like the top 0.1%.

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Is property truly private when government regulates every aspect of its use?

Further, can we really claim to have private property rights when government asserts a superior claim on our means by which we acquire it?

True, allodial property (I love that word) does not truly exist in the US. But then, it has never existed in the US, or in England since William the Conqueror. In Britain the Queen holds allodial title to all land. Here it is the state governments. It's been this way since 1783.

But the thing Communists really want is equality. We don't have that.

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I've seen nothing from Santorum that shows he cares about freedom at all. He doesn't seem to care about economic freedom and is of course big on using government to enforce morality.

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If you look at the official platform of the American Communist Party in the 1930s, nearly all of it has been achieved today.

Except for the most important part: abolition of private property. Today wealth inequality is very close to where it was in 1929, a level it had not come close to in the intervening period.

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Oh, and Santorum and Gingrich are the real fake conservatives.

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No we don't. They'll be dead soon enough. This is a LONG conflict we're looking at here. It's taken the Communists about 100 years to ruin our country. Unfortunately for Dr. Paul, we won't be fixing it within his lifetime. We need to do what the Communists did. Brush the old, set in their ways, people aside, and target the youth. They knew what they were doing. Their two earliest targets were universities and hollywood. Any coincidence that society has been on a steady march leftward ever since?

And that got them nowhere. Everywhere through the most advanced countries of the West, they were rejected. They succeeded in coming to power in the backwards, uneducated, agricultural countries of Russia in 1917 and China in 1949. Not what Marx expected, and not what your model would predict either.

Tells us nothing. Paul's numbers in Virginia were nothing more than Santorum and Gingrich supporters anti-voting Romney because they wanted him to have fewer delegates. That's absolutely all it was.

All a candidate needs to get elected is to have the other guy be anti-voted. This represents a huge part of any candidate's votes. Why does Obama have a great chance of losing this year? It's certainly not because his opponents inspire America much, it's because he's going to be anti-voted really really hard.

I've got a spoiler for you. Obama is going to win re-election anyway. Bush/Gore was close. This isn't going to be. This election is going to be about as dramatic as a Harlem Globetrotters game, but a lot less entertaining.

I don't think so.

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foolmo: I have no problems with RP's current approach and support it. I was attacking the proposal that he enter the general election as a 3rd candidate to force Obama's reelection and basically hold Republicans hostage for next time.

Smuffin: The Communists haven't taken over the country, and your view of history is a bit......um......delusional. The Communists were defeated when the Soviet Union imploded and China abandoned Communism in fact. The true Marxists were defeated much earlier, perhaps when Stalin came to power. And 100 years is way too long for a power cycle like that these days. History moves faster than that these days.

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"In the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for which the government borrowed and spent $1 trillion, $389,357 was spent on researching 'the concurrent versus separate use of Malt Liquor and marijuana.' And rather than pay a cover to get into a comedy club, your college student and his buddies can stay in the dorm and enjoy the fruits of $712,883 spent developing 'machine-generated' comedy (i.e., robots that tell jokes). Although no doubt fascinating research topics which will benefit society, precisely how these projects relate to 'Recovery and Reinvestment' can only be understood while relishing the effects of malt liquor and marijuana and joke telling. At least we'll have something to laugh about when the Act starts cutting into our paychecks."

This only seems so horrible until you realize how big a number a trillion is. They spent 1 million on those research topics, but that is only 1 one-millionth of a trillion. If the president spent 8 hours every workday constantly signing legislation appropriating $1 million apiece to research projects, and it takes him 7 seconds to sign a bill, it would take him a whole year to burn through that trillion dollars. By contrast, Ben Bernanke can print another trillion much faster.

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If those people aren't going to support Ron Paul in the future, he's not going to win. We need those people. And most of them can change their minds- just look at Virginia. Paul got more than triple his usual tally, because plenty of Gingrich/Santorum people (who certainly don't have the same substantive positions as him) prefer him to Romney. If you held Paul vs. Santorum or Gingrich heads up, I'd expect Paul to win in all the blue states. Not because 50% of people are libertarians, but because 50%+ of them prefer Paul to Santorum/Gingrich.

No, RP should not quit and endorse Romney. That would be hurtful, as you say. What he should do is campaign his hardest until the convention. Then whoever wins the nomination wins the nomination. He doesn't even have to endorse Romney after that, just avoid making himself the spoiler that lets Obama win reelection.

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Basically, either you think people can change their minds or not. If they're not going to change their minds under any circumstances, all your campaign strategies are pointless. If they are capable of changing their minds, it's easier to make it happen if you don't try to bully people into doing what you want. People don't like that, and will resist you with all their strength. Which is this case is a whole lot more than your strength.

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He isn't right now, did not in 2008, and has not expressed any intention to do so. If he were to run in the general election, and Obama wins as a result, it would anger people. Not as much as burning Bibles, but it would anger people and be counterproductive.

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Paul > Romney > Obama > Gingrich/Santorum

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This is ABSOLUTELY not true. Calling Ron Paul an isolationist because he won't start foreign wars of aggression is like calling your neighbor an isolationist because he doesn't break into your house and smash all your stuff.

I apologize then. I wasn't trying to use isolationism as any sort of bad thing. I just thought "non-intervention" sounded lame and that there had to be a better term for it.

As far as the "Republicans will punish Ron Paul" logic goes, once again, I have to ask, HOW? How can mainstream Republicans punish Ron Paul? By not voting for him? They already aren't! By not supporting him? They already aren't? By adopting positions fundamentally opposed to freedom and liberty? They already are!

Yes, exactly. That is punishment when they could change their minds and support him. You're taking away that chance by antagonizing them. It's similar to if gay marriage supporters responded to Christians by burning Bibles. If you didn't do that, you might convince Christians that the state should not ban gay marriage. If you go around burning Bibles, you're going to eliminate that chance.

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Something that many people on all sides of politics seem to fail to understand (but I would expect libertarians at least to know):

The value of an object is purely subjective to each person. The price of an object is what someone else is willing to pay for it.

The myth of objective value is the greatest misconception in the world today. Nothing has objective value. Not goods, not services, not food, not housing, not dollars and euros, not even gold. Nothing.

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Oh hey, you're doing that "interpretation" thing again where you ignore the original meaning and substitute your own that doesn't work

That's absurd. First, my word use has nothing to do with constitutional interpretation.

Now, as for interpretation, how else do you determine what the meaning is? What you say it is? The founding fathers in their wisdom created a whole branch of government just to interpret what the law is, you know!

Why do need a judiciary? Because the Constitution is short and vague. Intentionally. Because that works. Long constitutions that give explicit instructions on how to run a country do not work very well and do not stand the test of time.

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I'm talking about all the stuff that government has been doing that is explicitly against the Constitution. If the President orders never-endings wars without the Congress, that is NOT in accordance with the Constitution in any sense. If Congress says it's okay for the President to execute citizens without due process, that is NOT in accordance with the Constitution. EVEN if these things are "good for the country", they are not allowed. You realize this, right?

Yes, everyone realizes this. But most political questions are nonetheless just that- political questions, not constitutional questions. Because many options all are legal under the Constitution.

If you can't see how they are the same issue, then we mutually don't know what to say to each other.

They share some characteristics. There are also differences. They are not the same issue. There are plenty of reasons to support some of them but not the others. Policy reasons, that apply because there isn't much in the way of constitutional issues in any of them.

Gold standard: nowhere in the constitution, the Fed can print as much money as they want and it'd be perfectly fine constitutionally. Perhaps not as a matter of policy though. There's a long debate about this, and as often happens it may come down to degrees in the end.

War: Again, Congress can declare as much war as they want. Now, I'd agree that the current use of the armed forces by the executive without any declaration of war since WWII is probably unconstitutional. But if we did have a Supreme Court ruling saying so, the president would just ask Congress for that declaration, no? I'm confident he could have gotten it for Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and Iraq II. There's an issue here (should we go to war) beyond the constitutional question of is the president authorized to go to war without a formal declaration.

Drugs: Not explicitly protected in the Constitution. Could you make an argument that drug criminalization laws are unconstitutional? Yes. You could also make a tenable argument for the other side. And once again, there remains a major political policy question that lingers.

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The Constitution is a short document and provides a framework for government. The vast majority of policy decisions are left to the government. By design. Some countries have long constitutions that explain in detail what should happen, ours does not. It says Congress has the power to declare war, and it's up to Congress to decide how often. We could be like Rome and never cease war, or like Switzerland and be perpetually neutral. That's a policy decision for Congress to make.

And this is obvious to 99% of the country. Including Ron Paul.

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And you really need to stop with the "agree with me on all points or you're against me" thing. The world is not black and white like that. If you can't see how gold standard, non-interventionism, and drug legalization are different, I don't know what to say to you.

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Isolationism = non-intervention. I chose isolationism because non-intervention sounds lame.

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Good policy. We do stuff because it's good for the country, not because it adheres to what the founding fathers wrote 225 years ago.

Obviously there are situations where we want to uphold the Constitution for its own sake, or because it is the law and upholding a consistent law is good. But most policy decisions are not questions of Constitutional law, and shouldn't be.

The reason for anything ultimately is that it is good for the country.

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I mean really now. There's a big difference between gold standard and isolationism, and you know it.

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What you say is the Constitution. Not I.

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If there's one thing RP can do to win an election, it's to back off his gold standard thing. People are frightened of an instantaneous mass devaluation of the dollar. And rightfully so, because the immediate result will be that the economy will crash and burn. Will it be better off in the long run? Maybe. For us, and our children? No. Maybe for our grandchildren.

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Well if the main problem people have with him is that he let Obama get re-elected instead of letting Romney get in there, then they surely would not have been convinced to vote for RP.

Once they understand RP's message, they will realize that it didn't matter whether Obama or Romney became president, so they will let go of that issue, and since that's all they had against RP... easy convert.

The problem is that most of the votes in an election come from party affiliation, not the issues. If we had Obama vs. Paul right now, it might go 50/50. And 2/3 of the Paul votes would be for no reason beyond him being a Republican.

You can't expect people to understand your message, and disregard their votes if they don't. There are simply too many voters who won't understand your message but may vote for you anyway.

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So what will they do? Continue to not vote for him while he continues to steal mainstream republican votes?

Eventually, even the most stubborn ones will realize that it's Ron Paul or the democrat from here on out.

Yes, the mainstream Republicans will continue not to vote for him, when they could have been convinced to vote for him if he hadn't antagonized them.

And you know the most stubborn ones would rather have the Democrat than Ron Paul. The key is not to convince them but sensible people.

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No one is a Romney fanboy or a Santorum fanboy, or even an Obama fanboy.

You would hope so, but I really doubt it. Well, you could be right on Romney, but lots of people are Obama fanboys at least. And were GWB fanboys. And so on.

They can be convinced to switch over to Ron Paul

That's exactly why he shouldn't be burning bridges. If he runs in the general election and gets Obama reelected, you bet a lot of Republicans and even non-Republicans are going to be angry with him, because they didn't want Obama back, and he made it happen.

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