ron paul=awesome/kickass?

[Nitro Express]

The way I see it is during World War II the US built up this huge military machine and after the war we went into the cold war which justified the big military machine. Once the iron curtain came down we didn't need the big military machine anymore so when 9/11 happened that was a perfect excuse to keep the big military machine going. What I would have done was increased border security and deported the illegal aliens. I would have increased the security on people entering this country. I would have left Iraq alone and used intelligence and special operatives to go after the real terrorists. I really don't buy the terrorism threat because the big juicy target in this country is the power grid. If you know anything about it it would take years to replace the big transformers if enough of them were damaged. So guess what you target and it could be done easy. It hasn't happened and there is zero security around the main power hubs to this date. So it's all a joke to me. Just an excuse for the military industrial complex to make more money and they seem to like to invade countries full of oil, drugs, and natural resources that are in demand (lithium).

There's nothing in these countries worth killing our kids over and don't think there won't be a draft in the future if this gets out of control and this time, the government will be drafting your daughter. Think about it.

There is no such thing as a perfect presidential candidate. Ford is right to a point regarding deregulation but we are also over regulated. Where we currently are is the big corporations can do whatever they want if they have bought off enough politicians but the smaller businesses are put out of business by the government regulatory agencies. Monopolies have taken over the government and the agencies are now their muscle that run mom and pop out of business. Obamacare will do more of this. McDonald's gets and exemption but the small mom and pop businesses will have to pay into it and it will put them out of business due to regulation.

Let's just say regulation now is not fair and is used for political and financial gain more than keeping the free market place a fair place to do business or to keep us safe.

I'm just tired of living in a country that has traded making and selling goods for war. Most the technology we develop is for the war industry and to justify that we have to find someone to use it on and it's gotten so out of hand that the government has even declared our home soil a war zone. The situation is nuts. We should be focusing on consumers goods, affordable health solutions, and exploring space and deep oceans more that the bullets, bombs, and banks program. History has always shown war based countries end up destroying themselves and the US is on the road to doing just that.

[Dr. Love]

Ron Paul is good on domestics; the deficit. His foreign policy leaves something to be desired, IMHO.

I think you have that backwards. Foreign policy is where Ron Paul is mostly correct. And the best thing to do to lower the deficit is to put an end to all this imperialist world police PNAC horseshit.

This is why I think RP can make some traction. He can make coalitions with both sides to get things done, depending on the issue.

[lesfunk]

Im With you Dr. Love. Ron Paul is my man. At least he's not a Muslim...

[lesfunk]

... like Mitt Romney

[Pink Spider]

Not even sure exactly what this link is telling me, members of the Army donated $24K? That's all?

If you combine all branches of active military that donated, it's a decent number. Not as much as Romney's contributions from Goldman Sachs for obvious reasons, but far more than any other candidate recieved from members of the military. We've come a long way, that the most staunch supporters of an anti-war candidate are actually in the military!

It's kind of funny and sad that all of these Republican candidates that are so gung ho and claim to support the military the loudest aren't getting that same support by the numbers, yet they want to send these guys to Iran as soon as they can.

[Pink Spider]

The latest in Ron Paul media censorship:



Ron Paul came in second place with 14%.

[sadaist]

Yesterday (Saturday Jan 7) at a main intersection here in Temecula, CA there were about 5-6 adults holding various Ron Paul signs. they were getting some cheers & honks. It stood out because this isn't a very politically active area for that type of stuff.

[knuckleboner]

Yep. That's what it comes down to for me.

If you like the direction this country is going in,
If you like having your freedoms taken away,
If you like Americans being assassinated by their own government,
If you want your own government to be able to hold you indefinitely,
If you want your own government to be able to spy on you,
If you want your government to give your money to the banks,
If you want your government to go to war after war after war,
If you want the 1% to continue to do whatever they want with your money,
If you want everything that is wrong with the direction of this country to continue...

Then yeah, vote for Romney. Vote for Obama. Vote for Perry. Vote for Santorum. Vote for Gingrich. They are all offering you the same thing.

If you want someone that won't be bought and paid for, someone that you know what they believe in, someone that will absolutely stand up and change the direction of this country, then vote for Paul.

i understand and respect your concerns on most of that. but with paul's economic agenda - as sincere as i believe he his - the direction of the country will certainly not improve. under ron paul's plan, the invisible hand may eventually right the economy, but whatever short-term pain and chaos ensues, he's ok with, in the name of liberty.

take giving money to banks. yep, universal hatred. TARP is a toxic word. republicans who voted for it are just as likely to lose in a primary because of it. yet most economists say that TARP was actually one of the better things the government did. perfect? no. but the for whatever reason, the financial sector was heading into a severe tailspin. a few too many failing banks, especially the big ones, and the subsequent run on banks that would occur would have been devastating for millions.

but what would ron paul's solution have been? he'd have gotten rid of all regulations, in the name of liberty, and allowed the banks to make whatever risky moves they wanted to make, assuming that those the market will reward those that succeed and cast aside those that failed. then, when they start failing, the market will simply eventually sort things out. if grandma and grandpa lose their entire savings, then they'll learn to chose more wisely the next time.*

(*which may or may not have been a thinly veiled rand paul reference...)

[Seshmeister]

Do you really want to make someone president who runs out a room just because someone's pants have fallen down?

[Dr. Love]

i understand and respect your concerns on most of that. but with paul's economic agenda - as sincere as i believe he his - the direction of the country will certainly not improve. under ron paul's plan, the invisible hand may eventually right the economy, but whatever short-term pain and chaos ensues, he's ok with, in the name of liberty.

take giving money to banks. yep, universal hatred. TARP is a toxic word. republicans who voted for it are just as likely to lose in a primary because of it. yet most economists say that TARP was actually one of the better things the government did. perfect? no. but the for whatever reason, the financial sector was heading into a severe tailspin. a few too many failing banks, especially the big ones, and the subsequent run on banks that would occur would have been devastating for millions.

but what would ron paul's solution have been? he'd have gotten rid of all regulations, in the name of liberty, and allowed the banks to make whatever risky moves they wanted to make, assuming that those the market will reward those that succeed and cast aside those that failed. then, when they start failing, the market will simply eventually sort things out. if grandma and grandpa lose their entire savings, then they'll learn to chose more wisely the next time.*

(*which may or may not have been a thinly veiled rand paul reference...)

The regulations are the one area that I disagree with him on, but I have no illusions that he could get his vision through without a lot of temperance, even in the areas where he can act unilaterally.

[Nitro Express]

Since when is using public money to bail out mismanaged and corrupt businesses a good thing? What the banks did was convince the government to make 100 times leverage legal. Here's a true story. The banks approved a $750,000 mortgage to a person in California who didn't make the income to legitimately be approved. It didn't matter they just wanted to sell mortgages and so they take that $750,000 mortgage and they can count it as an asset to make loans on. 100 more loans thanks to Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan. So they make $75 million out of nothing while everyone get's foreclosed on and then they buy everything up cheap and resell it again. Then you stick the loses on the taxpayer.

Exactly how is TARP a good thing when it will saddle generations of Americans in so much debt, nobody is going to be able to pay it off. If we would have let these corrupt institutions fail then sure, it would be a couple years of pain but then you pull out of it for good instead of prolonging it for decades which is what they are doing now.

Of course if you are part of the American public who pay no taxes I guess you don't care.

[Nitro Express]

Do you really want to make someone president who runs out a room just because someone's pants have fallen down?

Who is that?

[knuckleboner]

Since when is using public money to bail out mismanaged and corrupt businesses a good thing? What the banks did was convince the government to make 100 times leverage legal. Here's a true story. The banks approved a $750,000 mortgage to a person in California who didn't make the income to legitimately be approved. It didn't matter they just wanted to sell mortgages and so they take that $750,000 mortgage and they can count it as an asset to make loans on. 100 more loans thanks to Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan. So they make $75 million out of nothing while everyone get's foreclosed on and then they buy everything up cheap and resell it again. Then you stick the loses on the taxpayer.

Exactly how is TARP a good thing when it will saddle generations of Americans in so much debt, nobody is going to be able to pay it off. If we would have let these corrupt institutions fail then sure, it would be a couple years of pain but then you pull out of it for good instead of prolonging it for decades which is what they are doing now.

Of course if you are part of the American public who pay no taxes I guess you don't care.

dude, it was a damned if we do, damned if we don't moment. but the damned if we don't was damn near eternal damnation.

i won't argue whether or not the banks were corrupt, greedy, stupid, risky, illegal, whatever. yes, regardless, they at the least acted very poorly, and by themselves, they certainly deserved to fail.

but seriously, without TARP, a LOT of banks fail. and a lot of people lose their savings. and i'm not talking about 401ks, where you expect the value to go up and down, at least to some extent. i'm talking about a run on the banks where people lose cash in accounts. and a complete lack of lending credit. this is DANGER ZONE for the economy.

millions more would have lost their jobs. no joke. millions. in the worst of the recession we did have, 700,000 lost their jobs each month for 3 months straight. 2 million jobs lost in 90 days. if credit got a lot worse, and if big banks failed, you would literally have added millions more to that total.

so if you want to argue how bad the banks were, great; i won't disagree. but by the time september 2008 rolled around, all that shit was moot. already happened. so it was up to the choice of the lesser of 2 evils. and not doing TARP (or something similar) would've been WAY more evil.

[sadaist]

I swear we had this exact conversation the last time Van Halen toured. Deja Vu.

[sadaist]

Or 'Vuja De'......the feeling that none of this has ever happened before?

[knuckleboner]

I swear we had this exact conversation the last time Van Halen toured. Deja Vu.

dude, i think the only discussion we HAVEN'T had in the front line before, is the, "meghan mccain or huntsman daughters."

but the tour doesn't start for another month, so we've still got time...

[Seshmeister]

I don't have the figures but I wonder if instead of propping up the banks the government(s) had just protected people up to say $250k on any savings they had in a failed bank then it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper and allowed the deadwood to go. There would be very little bad feeling about the government bailing out losses by people who had not acted badly rather than giving huge sums to the bastards that caused the problem and who are still sticking multi million dollar bonuses into their greedy thieving pockets.

[Nitro Express]

dude, it was a damned if we do, damned if we don't moment. but the damned if we don't was damn near eternal damnation.

i won't argue whether or not the banks were corrupt, greedy, stupid, risky, illegal, whatever. yes, regardless, they at the least acted very poorly, and by themselves, they certainly deserved to fail.

but seriously, without TARP, a LOT of banks fail. and a lot of people lose their savings. and i'm not talking about 401ks, where you expect the value to go up and down, at least to some extent. i'm talking about a run on the banks where people lose cash in accounts. and a complete lack of lending credit. this is DANGER ZONE for the economy.

millions more would have lost their jobs. no joke. millions. in the worst of the recession we did have, 700,000 lost their jobs each month for 3 months straight. 2 million jobs lost in 90 days. if credit got a lot worse, and if big banks failed, you would literally have added millions more to that total.

so if you want to argue how bad the banks were, great; i won't disagree. but by the time september 2008 rolled around, all that shit was moot. already happened. so it was up to the choice of the lesser of 2 evils. and not doing TARP (or something similar) would've been WAY more evil.

You only have to look at other countries. Sweden let the banks fail and they went through a tough time but recovered. Japan bailed them out and their economy never recovered in two decades. By letting the losers fail you have a faster recovery. You have to get rid of the bad wood. You have to kill the termites or they eat the whole house. I'm sorry but when you spend more than you have or your central bank prints too much funny money there's going to be some pain. No way around it but if you continue to print funny money and you throw the good money after bad, you eliminate some short term pain but create a worse long-term situation.

Of course the politicians are going to go for the short-term solution and kick the can down the road. It's what they do. We are now at the point where we can't kick the can any longer. Historically when they politicians have no solutions they take you to war and looky looky what's happening now. If we just let the losers fail, we could have avoided all this.

[Seshmeister]

Who is that?

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-ylr...aul_interview/

[Seshmeister]

They are having to come up with new words for the debt Japan is in.

Quadrillions.

1 000 000 000 000 000 yen in debt.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jap...ort-2011-11-07

A quadrillion pennies looks like this.

[FORD]

dude, i think the only discussion we HAVEN'T had in the front line before, is the, "meghan mccain or huntsman daughters."

but the tour doesn't start for another month, so we've still got time...

These are Huntsman's kids?? Holy Elohim!

[Nitro Express]

I don't have the figures but I wonder if instead of propping up the banks the government(s) had just protected people up to say $250k on any savings they had in a failed bank then it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper and allowed the deadwood to go. There would be very little bad feeling about the government bailing out losses by people who had not acted badly rather than giving huge sums to the bastards that caused the problem and who are still sticking multi million dollar bonuses into their greedy thieving pockets.

Exactly. In Occupy Wall Street terms we bailed out the 1% and stuck it to the 99%. Let's just say it's welfare for the rich. Giving the FDIC insurance settlements would have been far cheaper.

[Nitro Express]

These are Huntsman's kids?? Holy Elohim!

The one redeeming value of the Mormon church is there is no shortage of pretty girls in it. Then as David Lee Roth said in his book, they couldn't wait to get to Utah because of the women there. Religious oppression brings in great rebellion. I had many good times in the beehive state. Max if he was still with us would agree I'm sure. Utah actually is a good place to get laid. The problem is these girls go through their rebellious stage but too many marry another Mormon and get sucked back into it and pop out a bunch of kids. To leave you basically have to disown your family and most just can't do it.

Actually these young girls are used as bait by the church leaders. They will tell them not to marry anyone who is not a returned missionary and they get a bunch of horny young guys to give up two years of their youth slaving for the church in hopes to score one of those cute things. They control these people with sex. It's a pretty sick system once you learn how it works. It's how they keep the next generation in the cult because only disturbed people like Glenn Beck convert to Mormonism these days. Everyone else knows it's a silly cult.

It's one of those things that makes you think the sane reality is somewhere else in the universe and what's going on here is down in some strange rabbit hole you fell into. This world is truly nuts and with the increase of technology, it becomes just more insane. LOL!

The older I get the more I realize I'm glad I rolled one on and had a good time allowing a Mormon maiden to live a little before she went back to the prison waiting for her.

[Nitro Express]

They are having to come up with new words for the debt Japan is in.

Quadrillions.

1 000 000 000 000 000 yen in debt.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jap...ort-2011-11-07

A quadrillion pennies looks like this.

The problem is the world financial system due to leverage and printing money from thin air has gotten out of touch with reality. The math no longer makes sense. Money should be an IOU based on real goods. Once it becomes pure fantasy and speculation it no longer works. It's easier to buy political influence and move money around than actually making real goods and selling them. That's why and investment banker once joked to me he could teach a dog on a three day weekend to be an investment banker. I've never heard anyone running a real productive operation ever joke that it was easy.

After World War II it was universally agreed with the Brenton Woods Accord that the US, U.K., and France would run the world financial system until 1996. When that expired those same countries still wanted to be in charge of things and nothing else has been set up. I'm sure there is a lot of infighting between Asia (Where the real money is) and the west (Where the world's biggest debtor nations are) that we don't see.

The reality is we are going into a stage now that people don't trust paper anymore. Once you no longer can trust some of the oldest and biggest institutions in finance the system has been compromised. People can't make any interest in banks so they are buying real assets now. We are going to go into more of a commodities economy than a paper economy but the paper economy owns most the politicians and is trying to take over the commodities side. If you work in agriculture you certainly see this. So what we are seeing is a failed paper economy pulling out all the stops to stay relevant even if they have to start more wars to do it.

It's one big mess and the only way to solve short of settling it out in an all out world war is to erase a ton of debt but of course the bankers don't want that.

[Dr. Love]

A lot can change in 4 years.

[DRD]

Nitro, I am with you 100%

[Pink Spider]

CBS poll: Ron Paul, Mitt Romney tied with President Obama

http://www.thestatecolumn.com/articl...esident-obama/

A new CBS poll finds Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are tied with President Obama.

According to the latest national poll, Mr. Romney leads Mr. Obama by two percentage points, 47 percent to 45 percent. Mr. Paul trails Mr. Obama by one percentage point, 45 percent to 46 percent.


Among the rest of the Republican field, Mr. Obama leads former Sen. Rick Santorum 47 percent to 43 percent; he leads Texas Governor Rick Perry 49 percent to 42 percent; he leads former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman 48 percent to 41 percent; and he leads former Newt Gingrich 49 percent to 41 percent.

The poll comes as recent polls out of New Hampshire and South Carolina how Mr. Romney leading the Republican presidential field. The Massachusetts Republican also leads in Florida, which holds its primary at the end of the month. Meanwhile, Mr. Paul has faced a surge in support since taking third place in Tuesday’s Iowa caucus. The Texas Republican announced earlier this week that his campaign has raised upwards of $10 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, placing him just behind Mr. Romney’s campaign.

The poll is the latest indication that Mr. Obama will face a tough bid for re-election. The incumbent Democrat has struggled to lower the nation’s rate of unemployment, a key issue for voters in the upcoming race.

The CBS News poll was conducted Jan. 4 to 8, surveying 1,413 adults, for a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. The poll includes a subsample of 1.247 registered voters.

[lesfunk]

[ELVIS]

Yep. That's what it comes down to for me.

If you like the direction this country is going in,
If you like having your freedoms taken away,
If you like Americans being assassinated by their own government,
If you want your own government to be able to hold you indefinitely,
If you want your own government to be able to spy on you,
If you want your government to give your money to the banks,
If you want your government to go to war after war after war,
If you want the 1% to continue to do whatever they want with your money,
If you want everything that is wrong with the direction of this country to continue...

Then yeah, vote for Romney. Vote for Obama. Vote for Perry. Vote for Santorum. Vote for Gingrich. They are all offering you the same thing.

If you want someone that won't be bought and paid for, someone that you know what they believe in, someone that will absolutely stand up and change the direction of this country, then vote for Paul.

Amen brother!

[BITEYOASS]

At the ABC debate, Ron Paul totally PWNED Newt Gingrich! Which is pretty easy considering that Newt is just a sack of shit with a wig on.

[FORD]

If that's a wig, he needs to stop spending $500K at Tiffany's and spend a little money at Hair Club for Republican Douchebags.

[ELVIS]

Where Romoney is the president...

[FORD]

Romney is never going to be President of anything other than Bain Capital. Or possibly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (President is the official title, though he would also be called "the Prophet")

[LoungeMachine]

Neither is Romoney for that matter.....



Obama is going to win, the RePukes really screwed themselves this time with this Clown Show

[ELVIS]

President Paul

[kwame k]

If that's a wig, he needs to stop spending $500K at Tiffany's and spend a little money at Hair Club for Republican Douchebags.

Newt can afford it.......

Casino executive Sheldon Adelson, a long-time financial backer and friend of Newt Gingrich, has given $5 million to a political action committee supporting the former House speaker’s presidential candidacy, according to a person close to the chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Link

[kwame k]

President Paul

Never gonna happen.......

[LoungeMachine]

President Paul

Not even you believe that for a moment.....

You might be an unmitigated asshole, but you're not dumb.

[FORD]

Yeah, it's actually sad that the reason Ron Paul will not be the nominee, let alone the President, is because of the things he's actually on the correct side of (ending PNAC wars, the war on drugs, and overhauling/abolishing the "Federal" reserve)

[LoungeMachine]

Make Ron Paul Sec Of State or Treas. Sec......