ron paul=awesome/kickass?

[jhale667]

I fully support Ron Paul making Michelle Batshit Bachmann's life more difficult.

[Dr. Love]

RP got shut out in Georgia... just didn't have enough people to stop them from doing what they wanted. They did succeed in getting into some GOP offices, but not many. AZ apparently went not so great. They had locked up the ballots for a few days before announcing the total, and then Romney won. I have no idea if any shenanigans went on or not, but it seems like one of the best ways to lose credibility is to lock up ballots and do a secret count and then tell everyone what the result was.

Win some, lose some.

[FORD]

That's because Georgia is dominated by religious reich wackjobs who think we have to nuke Iran to bring Jesus back. They'll put up with the heretical Mormon cultist, just as long as he's a warmonger.

[Nitro Express]

Mormon cultist? It's more like a multinational corporation with vast real estate, agriculture, and media holdings. The days of hiding out in the western desert with multiple wives is long over. Now they just build high end malls and have enough connections and pull to get an IRS tax exemption even with Obama in office. Me thinks Mormon Inc. plays booth sides. They probably gave a generous donation to get that IRS exemption. That's how Washington rolls.

[SunisinuS]

Lol old school Ron Paul: Charles Rangel weighs in:

[fifth element]

lol....love it!!!

[Dr. Love]

The Ten Principles of a Free Society
by Ron Paul - From the the Appendix to his book, Liberty Defined

* Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
* All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
* Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
* Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
* Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
* Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
* Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
* Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
* All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
* Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.

Interested to see how much of that you guys disagree with.

[Dr. Love]

Is the Ron Paul the Best Hope for Progressives?
The Texas congressman is more conservative than Romney, but he's also more progressive than Obama.

Brian Doherty | May 25, 2012

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race besides presumptive victor Mitt Romney, even after a strategy statement misunderstood by many as “dropping out.” Since that announcement, Paul has won his second state, Minnesota (Maine was the first), and is on target to end up controlling presidential voting delegations in such states as Iowa, Louisiana, and Missouri. Far from fading as a cultural force, Paul continues to draw huge crowds, sometimes over five thousand students, on campuses as well.

As the presidential field has shaped up to a certain Obama vs. Romney in the major parties, the desire for a challenger championing either the serious right or serious progressive left grows. And Ron Paul—though he continues to deny any third party plans and his political machine has clearly hitched itself to the GOP for now—is strangely a viable candidate for either role, should he choose to accept it.

Paul is in many ways the rightest of right wingers, with his desire to kill the income tax, end government interference in medical care, and get to a balanced budget in three years with no tax hikes. A third party Paul, should he make such a radical choice, would provide a choice for right-wingers dissatisfied with Romney’s small-government bonafides.

Yet despite Paul’s impeccable Tea Party credentials on tax and spending issues, he would be an even more appealing choice to progressives dissatisfied with President Obama. Even while running for the GOP presidential nod, Ron Paul has presented a political vision in many respects to the left of the Democratic Party.

President Obama wants to continue and expand every aspect of the war on drugs, including the war on state-legal medical marijuana operations. Paul thinks government attempts to arrest people for actions that harm only themselves are inherently illegitimate. Obama’s administration has set records in deportations. Paul mocks border walls as un-American in Republican candidate debates.

Obama approves of enormous bailouts to huge financial institutions, and his administration’s high-level economic planning is run almost entirely by insiders from such institutions. Ron Paul is opposed to what he (and leftists) calls “crony capitalism.” Paul’s free-market policies would leave corporations with no more power over the American people than the corporations get by selling people things, things people choose to buy. (Unlike the products of the hated health insurance companies, which ObamaCare mandates that we all purchase.)

Even Paul’s stated environmental policies—certainly very far from implementation even in a world where Paul was president—of imposing liability via tort on people and corporations who harm others through pollution, rather than allowing them to do so but “regulating” them—seem more in line with what a progressive who doesn’t want the fatcats getting away with harming the innocent should want.

Paul’s belief in unfettered free markets is supposed, in the minds of leftists, to mean unbridled corporate power. But America’s plutocracy loves activist government—as long as it’s helping them, as Obama’s programs of giveaways to banks and investment firms does. Paul was thus the only GOP candidate with kind things to say about the Occupy movement, for recognizing the dangers of crony capitalism, and the only candidate whose fans proselytized among them.

Paul’s greater appeal to an honest progressive goes even further. Obama has expanded the president’s powers to unilaterally imprison and even kill American citizens beyond even George W. Bush’s attempts. Paul gets thousands of students who gather to hear him booing any mention of the controversial yet sadly little-known National Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama, giving legal cover to the presidential power of unilateral imprisonment. Obama has started new unauthorized wars, greatly expanded a civilian-killing drone program, and presided over the biggest defense budgets in history. Ron Paul campaigns for peace and withdrawal of the U.S. military from the world. In doing so, he’s done more than Noam Chomsky to normalize discussion of U.S. foreign policy as the behavior of a criminal empire, not as the world’s great defender of liberty.

President Obama loves the Patriot Act and hates whistleblowers; Paul is opposite on both points, including defense of accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.

On a wide range of issues involving individual autonomy and liberty, and protecting people from oppressive concentrations of power, Paul is clearly more progressive than Obama.

Progressives love income redistribution, though, and Paul does not. Still, while Paul is opposed in principle to things like government funding for NPR and even medical care, he mocks his fellow Republicans who act like such programs are the most important place to start practicing austerity—the former because it’s cultural red meat to their base, the latter because it feeds an ugly strain of opposition to “welfare bums” that plays no part in how Paul campaigns.

While Paul is the loudest and most consistent voice for many progressive goals, he rejects their choice of tool to equalize income, which is why progressives' disappointment with Obama hasn’t led them to turn to Ron Paul. But Paul and the movement for peace, civil liberties, and ending government's explicit support for corporate power that he leads offers progressives an alternative, and a dilemma: Are those values more important than fealty to the Democratic Party and hugely expensive income redistribution programs?

http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/25/ron-paul-the-progressives-best-hope

[knuckleboner]

http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/2...ives-best-hope

laughable.

paul's pure, fend-for-yourselves sentiment would NEVER attract any progressive support. true, progressives do not view obama as liberal enough. but even without the tax issue, they'd choose obama over ron paul every time.

[FORD]

Reason.com = KKKoch Brothers front.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation

[Dr. Love]

laughable.

paul's pure, fend-for-yourselves sentiment would NEVER attract any progressive support. true, progressives do not view obama as liberal enough. but even without the tax issue, they'd choose obama over ron paul every time.

I don't think you speak for an entire population, but regardless, I do believe Paul is much more progressive than Obama on a lot of issues.

Obama supports the PATRIOT Act, Paul does not
Obama supports the continued War of Drugs, Paul does not
Obama supports the NDAA and indefinite detention of Americans, Paul does not
Obama supports increased restrictions on protests, Paul does not
Obama supports killing Americans without trial abroad, Paul does not

The big problem I think progressives have with Paul is partly what you say -- Paul does not believe in a Nanny state, but also that progressives view Government as the solution to every problem. Every problem has the same solution: More Government. This, despite that incredibly apparent abuses by government and their corporate owners. Yes... let's give more power and authority to an organization that is already infested with corruption under the belief that somehow it won't be abused and somehow the corporations won't turn it to their advantage despite having done it in practically every other area.

This is what more government looks like:







Yes, it is very laughable.

[Dr. Love]

Reason.com = KKKoch Brothers front.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...son_Foundation

FORD, by that line of reasoning I could also say that Reason.com = Drew Carey front.

[FORD]

[1] http://www.voterocky.org/rocky_anderson_preempts_ndaa

[2] http://embed.crooksandliars.com/v/Mj...E?color=C93033

[3] http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/energy/

[4] http://www.voterocky.org/healthcare_solution

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbJBHhqftc

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3PXANu7mUc

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AvPmtfjx8

[8] http://paul.house.gov/index.php?opti...=365&Itemid=60

[9] http://www.revolutionpac.com/

[10] http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/...mericaPlan.pdf

[FORD]

FORD, by that line of reasoning I could also say that Reason.com = Drew Carey front.

I don't think syndicated reruns of the Drew Carey show are going to make him enough money to fund a superpac.

[Dr. Love]

[1] http://www.voterocky.org/rocky_anderson_preempts_ndaa

[2] http://embed.crooksandliars.com/v/Mj...E?color=C93033

[3] http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/energy/

[4] http://www.voterocky.org/healthcare_solution

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbJBHhqftc

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3PXANu7mUc

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AvPmtfjx8

[8] http://paul.house.gov/index.php?opti...=365&Itemid=60

[9] http://www.revolutionpac.com/

[10] http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/...mericaPlan.pdf

That sounds great -- is there a line in there about reducing/ending the deficits and the ballooning national debt?

edit: also lol on the civil rights thing ... Ron Paul doesn't support any government mandate forcing private business to serve customers they don't want to. He thinks that people shouldn't buy from racist companies rather than have the government force them not to be racist. That doesn't mean he doesn't support equal rights under the constitution and the law.