Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel To Back Trump As GOP Presidential Candidate (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Billionaire tech investor, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a California delegate in Cleveland this summer. He will be one of 172 selected Golden State delegates headed to the Republican National Convention. His support for Trump contrasts many other leaders, like A16z's Marc Andreessen who has voiced his distaste for Trump, tweeting: "OH: Trump is like an Internet comments section decided to run for President." In the past, Thiel, who is a libertarian at heart, has donated $2.6 million to Ron Paul in 2012 and added $2 million to a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz's former running mate ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina. He also gave $250,000 to Ted Cruz's bid for Texas attorney general in 2009.

Comments

Lucas was right....

[beheaderaswp]

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause..."

Enjoy the slide down my dear countrymen. It's Mr. Toad's wild ride from here on out. Enjoy the political litmus tests and loyalty oaths...

Re:Lucas was right....

[sittingnut]

you think liberty was alive in a country that had clintons, bushes, obama, etc running it for decades?
no wonder you live in movie delusions.

Re:Lucas was right....

[msauve]

No more family dynasties. I'm done with Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Roosevelts, Harrisons, Adams, Madison/Taylors. With 320000000 people, Clinton and Trump (and the other runners) are the best the major parties can come up with? That says a lot about party politics in the US.

Time for third parties to gain influence, as a step away from party politics.

Re:Lucas was right....

[beheaderaswp]

Not at all... this is the end game. Wait and watch. The owners of this country are now able to elect one of their own.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, yeah, the thunderous applause happened in 2008 for Obama.
At least with Trump you aren't automatically called a racist and deemed wrong simply for disagreeing with him, which is why he'd be better than Hillary "war against women" Clinton.

Re:Lucas was right....

[fustakrakich]

Nope, they still need your vote. They can't win without it.. So, everybody needs to quit their bellyaching.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Applehu Akbar]

Thiel represents a significant Republican demographic who would have in a saner political year supported Rand Paul. When the party hierarchy decided to shut out Paul before letting the people decide, Thiel and company say, "Let Trump burn the system down."

Re: Lucas was right....

[Applehu Akbar]

Look at the energy plank in Sanders' platform. No natural gas, no nukes. Even the Commies supported industrial civilization, not going back to the Stone Age.

Re: Lucas was right....

[gcswt]

Sanders is a magic bullet that lazy Leftists want to shoot and try to change everything from the top down. Real change comes local and works its way up. If you like Sanders ideas, you need to push them at a local level and change the culture there. You need to actually have conversations with moderates and Republicans and convince them it's the way to go, or god forbid, adjust your own ideas to gain support. The young always flock to a candidate that says all these magical things while calling everybody else names or tearing them down. It's hilarious to see the youth throw their votes away every cycle.

Re:Lucas was right....

[thrich81]

The Roosevelts were kind of an anti-dynasty. The Theodore Roosevelt side of the family didn't support Franklin in his run for President, according to some PBS special I saw last year.. Also Theodore was a Republican and Franklin was a Democrat. They were among the best presidents of the 20th century, though, arguably #1 and #2. I'll take that dynasty.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Livius]

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause..."

Don't forget Sith mind control. Much more elegant than the crude "advertising industry" and "lobbying" that our politicians use.

Re: Lucas was right....

[Fire_Wraith]

Sanders is a step along the road - not a shortcut to the end. It's a long road, and it will be a hike, not a quick skip and a jump. The problem is that too many young and overly idealistic sorts don't get that. Even if Sanders won, it's still far from over. You need to elect people who share the same bent at the local, state, and congressional levels too. Look at how the right wing took control of the Republican party - it certainly wasn't done simply by electing a president, it was done by electing candidates for Congress and elsewhere in primaries, getting involved in local party politics, and showing that they were a faction that couldn't be ignored. Eventually winning the party's presidential primary was almost a foregone conclusion, because in this cycle even the "moderate" ones had already veered hard right.to begin with.

Re:Lucas was right....

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

At least with Trump you aren't automatically called a racist and deemed wrong simply for disagreeing with him...

Well, you are right. It's agreeing with Trump that gets you called a racist.

Re:Lucas was right....

[davester666]

Grumpy Cat would be much better at handling Congress.

Re:Lucas was right....

[allcoolnameswheretak]

you think liberty was alive in a country that had clintons, bushes, obama, etc running it for decades?
no wonder you live in movie delusions.

What's your problem with Obama? It's not like he's from a political family dynasty.

Quite the contrary. If a black guy named "Barack Hussein Obama" who had a muslim father can become the president of the United States, it gives me hope that freedom and democracy are alive and well in the US.

Re:Lucas was right....

[jandersen]

Time for third parties to gain influence, as a step away from party politics.

Reach out to your compatriots across superficial opinions that divide you and join up. The people does have real power, then; just look at how much happened as a result of the youth rebellion and hippie movement in the 60es and 70es - and they were stoned out of this world much of the time. It is no wonder those in power keep piling on the most outrageous controversies they can produce - as long as people think they are fighting over important issues, the elite can hold on to power. The truth is that most people have the same joys and worries in their lives, they believe in the same values, fundamentally, whether they are 'pro-gun', 'anti-abortion', 'libertarian' or whatever; those are nothing more than symbol issues, they have no significance, compared to whether you have a job, a home, education for your children, a future and so on. So join up and work it out together; and ignore the loud-mouths.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Some nick or other]

I think I've got a better idea.

Government by random selection.

You can't have family dynasties if the family dynasts have the same probability to be chosen as everybody else. Expensive campaigning is removed at a stroke, and gerrymandering for House makes no sense because there are no boundaries to gerrymander. Paying legislators ahead of time and expecting a return on investment doesn't work either, because the randomly chosen representatives won't be chosen again next time around.

For electing a president, choose a thousand people at random, hide them away somewhere, and let them find out whom to elect (by majority vote, taking as long time as needed). The candidate could either be among their numbers or from candidates presented by the parties, depending on how you'd like it to work. Same thing with Senators, only within each state. Or have the thousand choose two and let the people vote on them, like it were a referendum.

Not that the system will ever permit it, though. It's incredibly easy to run a campaign against: "Would you want this schmuck to decide your laws?". Appealing to e.g. the Condorcet jury theorem that shows it's the size of the group that makes it good is going to be a lot harder. The image of the uneducated slob deciding a law is much more vivid than that of the wisdom of crowds.

Re:Lucas was right....

[fastest fascist]

Sortition is a good idea, but why water it down with this electoral college idea? Just select the president by lottery. What's that, it's way too risky? Well, maybe a king by another name isn't what a modern society should have in the first place...

Re: Lucas was right....

[Anonymous Coward]

Real change comes local and works its way up.

No True Scottsman. We have many historical examples where radical reform worked as intended, such as the Japanese economic boom, the Nazi socioeconomic policies and the Russian westernization.

You need to actually have conversations with moderates and Republicans and convince them it's the way to go, or god forbid, adjust your own ideas to gain support.

A great strategy if you want to have the benefits of your ideas be available to your great grand children.

The young always flock to a candidate that says all these magical things while calling everybody else names or tearing them down.

And the old always oppose change because they are invested in the old ways(tm). Age doesn't matter, only ideas do.

It's hilarious to see the youth throw their votes away every cycle.

If you voted in any of the US presidents elected within your lifetime, you have done exactly that.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Some nick or other]

Statistically speaking, the variance decreases with the sample size. That is, if you have a legislature of 500, the chance of getting a majority of say, people who'd like to turn the country into 1984 is pretty close to 0%. But if you select the president by lottery, you may be very unlucky and get a Big Brother. In other words, yes, it is too risky.

I agree with you that "a king by another name" isn't really a good way to do things. A parliamentary sortition system would solve this without any problem, because the parliament would work as an electoral college. But you're not going to change the US into a parliamentary form of government. Hence an explicit electoral college instead of an implicit one.

Maybe it is a little silly to compare the chances of getting sortition with the chances of becoming more parliamentary. But I think the latter is a lot less likely than the former, for some reason... at least until the former has run for a while. Perhaps the system would decide to reorganize in that manner after a while.

Re: Lucas was right....

[silentcoder]

So why do you wanna be stuck in the 19th century (fossil fuels) and the early 20th (nukes) ? Sander's plank is that we, in the 21st century, should be using 21st century technology - progress in other words. Literally the opposite of what you're accusing him off.

Re:Lucas was right....

[DigiShaman]

Yes. Out of 320,000,000 people, we've managed to narrow down the selection to these three gems; a communist, a proto-facsist, and a criminal. Yeah, pretty much fucked no matter how you look at it.

Re: Lucas was right....

[tom229]

I think what he's taking about is that there's no evidence "21st century energy" is worth more than making us feel good. I assume you mean solar, wind, etc. While it all sounds good I've yet to hear of a community being able to provide this without heavy subsidising and/or an increase in energy costs. In the area I grew up, the government subsidized a project to build hundreds of windmills. It's been about 15 years now and my parents electricity bill is much higher, the skyline looks like a scene from war of the worlds, and the local government is debating bankruptcy. Like many far left policies that Bernie subscribes to, they sounds wonderful, but lack substance. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So we can run the world on renewables while everyone gets free college, and healthcare? Sounds amazing! What's your plan? Oh, you're pretty sure Norway does it? That's all you've got? Forgive me for being skeptical.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Dragonslicer]

...and deemed wrong simply for disagreeing with him

What does Bush II have to do with this?

Re: Lucas was right....

[jbengt]

. . . but if you think that illegal immigrants or Muslims or Megyn Kelly & Rosie O'Donnell are a race, you might be an idiot

Illegal immigrants (Mexicans) or Muslims are as much as a race as Caucasians are. That is, biologically speaking, there is only a human race - other groupings don't rise to the level of difference to really warrant calling them separate races. But sociology speaking, they are being looked at like inferior "races" by Trump's followers.

Re:Lucas was right....

[XxtraLarGe]

Yes. Out of 320,000,000 people, we've managed to narrow down the selection to these three gems; a communist, a proto-facsist, and a criminal. Yeah, pretty much fucked no matter how you look at it.

Then there's whoever the LP will nominate. They will be on the ballot in all 50 states. Gary Johnson, the likely nominee is currently polling at 11%, which is really big for a third party candidate this early in the election cycle. I imagine he would poll even higher if he were included in the Presidential debates this fall.

Re: Lucas was right....

[Applehu Akbar]

This is what a 21st century energy program looks like: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04...

And yes, at the same time the country is building as much solar and wind as it can manage. It's just under no illusion that these sources are sufficient for an industrial baseload.

Re: Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Sander's ideas fail on the small scale, as working people migrate away from taxes, and the poor migrate towards the entitlements. In the end, socialism requires little or no choice to most people, forcing participation. Which is why it almost always works with big centralized governments who use the threat of government power to subdue the Liberties of the people, just to make the system work right.

"Democratic Socialism" is using mob rule, to suck the productivity from people, and give it to others, under threat of government guns, and a fence (national boundary) to keep them from fleeing.

Or, as Margaret Thatcher once said, "The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money".

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

The vote in Austin is simply a reflection of the Statists who believes that regulation is better for everyone, even when it isn't. The Fingerprint thing is pure hyperbole, using FEAR to restrict commerce. It doesn't actually prevent any of the things it claimed to prevent. FURTHER if you really want to protect people from using Online services, you'd be better off targeting Dating App participants, requiring both Fingerprinting and regular testing for Diseases.

Let me ask you this, why are you opposed to REAL protection (dating) and for illusion of protection (Uber/Lyft)?

Is it because the regulations actually protect the racket called Taxi Medallions?

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Unknown junior Senator from Chicago, who was a "Community Organizer" prior to that, who started his political life in the home of a terrorist is your hope that freedom and democracy are alive and well? I would suggest to you, the ONLY reason why he was elected was because he was 1/2 black vague outsider, of mostly unknown qualities.

And quite frankly, he sucks, on multiple levels. He makes GWB look competent by comparison, something that I think would have been impossible 8 years ago.

Re:Lucas was right....

[fustakrakich]

The content of the regulation is irrelevant. It still takes the peoples' vote to put it in place. I only used this as an example of how little effect money can have on a campaign, if the voters so desire. With the same attitudes in the general, we can purge the incumbents, regardless how much money they spend.

And please, when I hear 'statist', I can't expect the discussion to go very far. It diverts attention from the more basic subhuman motives that nobody will acknowledge.

Re:Lucas was right....

[ganjadude]

trying to stack SCOTUS and prolonging the great depression makes one a good president? id argue the policies put forth by FDR are directly related to the entitlement attitude of kids today. I used to love FDR, was my favorite president growing up, until i read more than school textbooks about him

Re:Lucas was right....

[ganjadude]

repeating a lie enough times still doesnt make it true. He hasnt said anything that leads me to believe he is a racist, and no one has been able to show me anything that proves he is. unlike LBJ who said "ill have these niggers voting democrat for the next 100 years" what has trump said? he wants to keep out illegals (not racist) he wants to ban muslims from a war torn country where we are fighting muslism until we can figure things out? also not racist.

can we stop spreading bullshit??

Re: Lucas was right....

[ganjadude]

you are just making shit up now

Re: Lucas was right....

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Sanders is a magic bullet that lazy Leftists want to shoot and try to change everything from the top down. Real change comes local and works its way up.

If you had been paying even the smallest bit of attention, you'd be aware that virtually every single rally that Sanders speaks at, and virtually every debate performance in which he participates, includes him prominently declaring that real change never comes from the top down but from the bottom up.

Re: Lucas was right....

[ganjadude]

so simply following X online means you support X??? man are you a fucking moron. i follow every candidate running bernie trump johnson, i also follow the anon isis takedown group meaning i sometimes post things literally from a terrorist, doesnt mean i support it

Re:Lucas was right....

[Rob Y.]

Hillary Clinton is not a 'dynasty' in the sense that the Bushes (W's grandfather was a Senator, father was President, brother tried to run, nephew is are being bandied around as 'attractive' potential pols), or Kennedy's (Joe's contacts boosted John, and everybody else came along for the ride - including some of the next gen).

Yep, Hillary's married to an ex-president, and she owes a lot of her political success to that. But she started out pretty humbly, and was Bill's equal pretty much until he became governor of Arkansas. i.e., she didn't get boosted into politics by accident of birth - she worked her way into it. Who knows whether she would've gotten far if she hadn't taken a back seat to Bill. But hers is a different class of 'nepotism' (if you must call it that) than all the generations of Bushes employed. Her qualifications are her own - and the product of hard work. You may not like the person - or the results, but it's disingenuous to equate her with Jeb Bush as a dynasty candidate. You may officially start ranting about dynasty if and when Chelsea runs for office on her daddy's name.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Austin, Trump and Sanders all show that Political Money is almost irrelevant in the open markets of today.

And Statism, is a general subhuman motivation. "I don't like what you're doing, so I am gonna get my buddies and stop you". Which is exactly what you see in Austin. And enough people buy into the notion that Government role in society is to use the threat of force to stop people from doing things they don't like.

The whole "fingerprint" thing in Austin is just a ruse, by the Cab companies to squash competition. Uber/Lyft drivers are more that likely less dangerous than the dude your friend is about to meet on that Dating app. Between Disease and Rape, I would suggest that we require all dating apps to require background fingerprints and regular disease testing of all their customers/clients.

Would Austin support something like that? I don't think so.

Re: Lucas was right....

[vel-ex-tech]

Socialism! Socialism! Oh my fucking god socialism! Anything but socialism! TANSTAAFL!!!! TANSTAAFL!!!! TANSTAAFL!!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS IT'S SOCIALISM!

What the hell do you mean by socialism? Seriously, what the actual shit do you mean by socialism?

Are you arguing that people who can't feed their families shouldn't receive government assistance? If so then kudos. Are you arguing that food stamps and welfare isn't socialism? Are you saying that our current food stamp, welfare, and subsidized housing schemes that actively discourage people from re-entering the workforce because they will make less at the only kinds of jobs they can find aren't socialism? Are you saying we can't possibly do better and try to reform those programs into something more coherent and less of a trap for the people who need to turn to them because you're shitting your pants about socialism ?!

Hint: those things aren't going away. I hate to inform you of that, but no matter how many time I pull the Libertarian lever every other November, those things are clearly here to stay. I am telling you as a practical person that those things are also broken and in great need of reform.

Are you arguing that people who can't afford medical care shouldn't receive government assistance? Are you arguing that these people should be turned away by emergency facilities if they can't pay? If so then kudos. Are you arguing that the old system (which is still pretty much in effect) of employer-subsidized health "insurance" and healthcare cost related bankruptcies wasn't a bad idea? Are you arguing that Romney/Obamacare isn't socialism? Are you saying we can't possibly do better and try to enact something similar to every other developed country in the world because you're shitting your pants about socialism ?!

Hint: Romney/Obamacare isn't going away and even if it does, people will still be clamoring to DO SOMETHING! Well, Romney/Obamacare IS SOMETHING. Therefore, the people said, THIS MUST BE DONE. And look at how much of a fucking disaster it is. I don't want to buy your girlfriend her birth control pill, and you don't want to buy me my HRT pill. Every other November, I keep pulling that Libertarian lever, and no matter how hard I pull that lever, the healthcare system just keeps getting more bureaucratic, asinine, and wasteful.

Are you arguing that people who don't save up enough money to live off of when they retire should be forced to choose between staying in the workforce while their body falls apart due to old age and starving to death? If so then kudos. Are you arguing that people who through no fault of their own become disabled should be forced to beg in the streets or starve to death? If so then kudos. Or do you want to keep the social security retirement/disability system in place despite it being a completely unsustainable wealth redistribution scheme?

Do you have a better suggestion than democracy? Are you trying to say that democracy has failed? Are you trying to say that the people themselves haven't dragged us all to implement so many socialist solutions in the worst ways fucking possible.

Is the only thing you're capable of arguing against here is some strawman you've conjured up out of the words "democratic socialist?" Next you're going to be attempting to educate me about true socialism by throwing numbers about Stalin and Mao I've already seen a million times around. Maybe this time it'll be Venezuela for variety.

The older I get, the less I feel like wasting my time pulling that Libertarian lever at the polls for ideology's sake alone. The older I get, the more I realize that some form of government funded healthcare (medicare/medicaid) and some form of government funded welfare (food stamps/cash assistance/subsidized housing/social security retirement/disability) are here to fucking stay whethe

Re: Lucas was right....

[silentcoder]

Actually almost ALL of Europe does it (not as much the energy part but the other two sure).

In fact you are not doing the math right. You're looking at the expense but not counting savings. In both healthcare and education there is overwhelming empirical proof from more than 100 countries that the savings are bigger than the expense. In other words - neither will cost you anything and in fact will cost less. It costs society MORE to have people pay their own healthcare than to bulk-buy it together for everybody.
People who don't go to college end up costing taxpayers far more over a lifetime than it would have cost to send them - and contributing little, if any, taxes themselves. It's much better for you to pay a bit now to send somebody to college - and have that person pay middle class taxes for life, than to refuse to and end up subsidizing them for life (and even if you got rid of all welfare they would STILL cost you money since most of them earn less than a taxable income but they all use public services like roads and trash collection which you ONLY pay for). Do the math, a person living 50 years past high school (the average in the USA) who doesn't earn a middle class income will, over that time, cost you more than ten times what it would have cost to send them to college, and that's without factoring in inflation -when you do it gets closer to 30 times the cost over the same period. It makes no sense not to get that saving from everybody with the talents to succeed at college.

Re:Lucas was right....

[ganjadude]

no, the fact that you cant point to a thing that he said that is actually racist and use the blanket EVERYTHING he says.... then accuse me of being racist... shows you are a typical piece of shit representative of todays society

have a nice day

Re:Lucas was right....

[fustakrakich]

Austin, Trump and Sanders all show that Political Money is almost irrelevant in the open markets of today.

That's funny. Sanders has corralled almost as much money into the democratic party as Hillary. That is why he is in the race. And Trump's money, well, trust funds and off shore accounts are nice, aren't they? You don't have to reveal any of it. And Hillary is still going to win. The voters sell to the highest bidder.

And don't bother trying to set government apart from from the money it serves. There is no "state". You're just regurgitating the "libertarian" internet meme here. It doesn't even merit a second thought.

Re:Lucas was right....

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Really? I think he is one of the best presidents the US ever had, considering he had to navigate the country across a mess of unfinished wars, economic depression and a probably unprecedented, uncompromising blockade of Republicans in congress (wouldn't surprise me if that was because he was 1/2 black, vague outsider - I guess that rubbed many rich, white boys in the GOP with ambitions the wrong way).

But everyone is entitled to their opinion, fortunately.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Sander's Money isn't political (no PAC) and neither is Trump's. Yes, they have Money, but it isn't the rich and powerful controlling the purse strings. And Trump has used such a small amount of his own money that it is almost laughable in today's political landscape.

Your particular view of the world is quite novel. Big Money Pacs have lost big time this election cycle. I would even suggest to you that Obama's first campaign was very similar to Sander's this year. And that doesn't bode well for Hilary, before or after she wins the nomination (Super Delegates).

I'm not sure if you're a Democrat or Republican (or something else??), I just find your view very narrow.

As for the government and money, you're under the mistaken understanding that the US government is in control of anything having to do with money. It is the privately held Federal Reserve (which isn't federal or reserved). Not knowing how our Monetary system works simply means you're ignorant.

And if there is no "state" please try not paying your taxes (any government level) and see what happens. You're under threat of the state, the moment you don't comply with the rules the state has set up. Which basically means you're not only ignorant, but illiterate.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Unfinshed wars (still unfinshed) we're back in Afgahanistan and Iraq, in case you missed the daily dead American drill from the press (oh wait, they don't care now that GWB is out of office)

Economic Depression is still here, and as bad as it has been. The nearly 100 Million Americans out of the labor force, record levels of Food Stamps etc etc etc. But I am sure you're going to point to the "Official" unemployment rate to justify your view, while ignoring the fact that Obama hasn't had a single 3% growth rate GDP in nearly 8 years in office, a first for the US.

unprecedented, uncompromising blockade of Republicans in congress is laughable, since they gave Obama just about everything he wanted for the last six years in terms of budget. Continued funding of all of Obama's illegal Executive orders. Which is one of the reasons the Republican voters rejected every single mainstream republican presidential candidate this year, without exception.

And the rich white people were those running for the DNC, the Republicans (which I am not one) at least had variation in color, economic status from Very Rich (Trump) to someone who grew up as a poor black boy and became a world famous surgeon. The only "poor" person on the DNC side is that way because he wasn't successful until he figured out how to run for office.

But yeah, keep parroting the same tired lines, while ignoring the real racism of low expectations. After 50 years and three generations, black people would realize that voting DNC hasn't help their community at all. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

Re:Lucas was right....

[fustakrakich]

Sander's Money isn't political (no PAC) and neither is Trump's.

Irrelevant... Money is money, and it is the voters that are under the influence, or you wouldn't see your 95% reelection rates.

...you're under the mistaken understanding that the US government is in control of anything having to do with money.... You're under threat of the state, the moment you don't comply with the rules the state has set up.

You are contradicting yourself. The state serves the industries that prop it up. It is transcribing and following orders, not creating them. It isn't a "state" as much as it a private security and enforcement service for bankers and merchants. The voters choose to believe the bullshit and play along. This could all change in November, but it won't, and the blame game will continue. The philosopher that shoots the furthest wins.

Re: Lucas was right....

[cyber-vandal]

TIL that offering healthcare without a copay and higher education without crippling debt at the end of it is the same as massacring millions, conquering half of Europe and persecuting dissidents.

Re: Lucas was right....

[MTBaldwin]

I'd vote for Col. Sanders before I'd vote for him...oh wait, he is Col.Sanders

Re: Lucas was right....

[MTBaldwin]

Wow. Do I have your permission to use this as my thesis?

Re: Lucas was right....

[MTBaldwin]

Not to mention the fact FDR married his 1st cousin Elenor...

Re: Lucas was right....

[partofthepuzzle]

Sanders at the top will inspire more local activism.

Re: Lucas was right....

[RespekMyAthorati]

Because she was rich.
He actually slept with her secretary.

Re:Lucas was right....

[Archangel Michael]

Money is money, and it is the voters that are under the influence

Money is a tool. It is neither good nor bad. Ascribing motivation to money is your particular bias. You really need to reevaluate your views.

You are contradicting yourself.

Your lack of comprehension isn't really relevant here. The Federal Reserve is a private banking infrastructure. While you and I may agree on its influence on the government (and legality, and need for auditing) it is still private. It is also artificial construct; a creation of man. You can say the same thing for "Government(s)". That makes them similar in construction. But then again, so is money. And Democracy. And ....

Because all of these things are man made creations, they all have related problems in their operation. Those related problems are simply, man is corrupt.

Or as I like to say: Man cannot rule himself, what makes you think he can rule over others?

Which is the basis for limiting the power and scope of Government, because power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely - Lord Acton

Re:Lucas was right....

[fustakrakich]

Yeah well, you can play libertarian "brainy quotes" all day long, deciding who sets the limits for whom is your sticky wicket. I can tell you that the voters already have decided, and will again in less than six months.

We need to help republicans...

[martiniturbide]

...to have more decent candidates.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[alvinrod]

In a free market you can only expect sellers to rise to the level of their competition. Both parties are pushing absolute garbage because the voters don't demand better.

Compared to someone like Cruz, I think we lucked out with Trump.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[msauve]

Why single out the Rs? It's not like Bernie is going to win, or that anyone else with any ethical convictions is running for the Ds.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[gcswt]

Our election system isn't a free market. It's a market with only two sellers that control all the voting districts, funding & campaign spending rules. We need a voting system that lets us reject who is on the ballot rather than be forced to choose from two political monopolies.

Re: We need to help republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bernie would win if people actually cared about the country. The problem we have nowadays is that the television provides so many distractions that nobody really cares about anything because, oooh! Dancing with the Stars is on at 8!

Re: We need to help republicans...

[amiga3D]

How can Bernie possibly win. Even if he gets more votes Hillary gets the delegates. That system is totally rigged, she started the primaries with over 500 superdelegates in her pocket. Don't worry though, I expect Trump's airplane to have a mysterious accident similar to what happened to Senator Heinz. When you can't afford to buy a politician then that's the only way to handle them. They don't want no loose canons in the White House causing problems for the gravy train. Bernie better watch his ass too. He wouldn't be the first problem area for the Clintons to suffer an accident. Who do these guys think they are anyway, they're fucking up the entire script for the 2016 Presidential Campaign.

Re: We need to help republicans...

[gcswt]

Read some non-political analysis of Sanders' support and you'll see that he's not as popular as it seems. (I suggest FiveThirtyEight as one) He's got a very specific demographic and has mostly won Caucus states where white elitists are the norm. He doesn't get very broad support from a greater America and certainly doesn't speak for most demographics. Sanders isn't electable at all. Plus, it's not like he's new.. he has been around for a long time. He's every bit the ego-maniac Trump is.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[Z80a]

People don't want a "better candidate", but someone that will wreck the system so hard, it will have to be rebuilt, because as it is, its just slowly but steadily fucking their lives in a irreversible way.

Re: We need to help republicans...

[dbIII]

I expect Trump's airplane to have a mysterious accident similar to what happened to Senator Heinz

No need. The convention doesn't have to actually support the winner of the primaries as shown by the Democrats some years ago.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[butzwonker]

Perhaps both of you got it wrong. The US election system is a free market, it's just not the voters who buy the candidates (obviously) but rather the lobbyists.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[Stuarticus]

Mugabe 2016.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[butzwonker]

Maybe, but who in his right mind would vote for an egomaniac narcissist billionaire in order to rebuild the party system and support the American middle class? It doesn't make sense.

Re: We need to help republicans...

[silentcoder]

Come now - Bernie is literally the LEAST Zionist candidate to ever run for president. His views are more in-line with the majority of Jews in America -which these days is decidedly anti-Zionist (at least the younger generation). Hell he had a major bouhaha in New York over that. While every other candidate showed up at the dinner for the Jewish Nationalists and pledged the absolute and unconditional support for Israel no matter what - Bernie refrained from going and made a speech saying support for Israel *cannot* be unconditional and should be made conditional on Israel accepting human rights requirements. So that an outcome can be reached which may actually be stable.

Bernie is literally the only candidate in the US since the very creation of Israel to EVER suggest that support for Israel be contingent on them not committing atrocities. That makes him the least zionist candidate the US has had since 1948.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[DigiShaman]

He's the 'wrecking ball' candidate. Before you can rebuild, you must first elect someone to bust it all down.

As Rush Limbaugh stated: how a candidate is chosen is more circumstantial than ideological. Let that sink in for a moment.... Basically, at this time and place, Trump is the guy American's want to elect. If the economy and global stability wasn't absolutely fucked, he wouldn't have had a chance. If anything, it would have been a Clinton coronation!

Re: We need to help republicans...

[amiga3D]

He could just be a Hillary supporter. They're hating that he keeps making their candidate earn the nomination instead of just having a coronation.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[Archangel Michael]

The republicans had 17 candidates, the Democrats had four. One and three "Token" opposition candidates with even less appeal and she's losing to a Socialist failure on a regular basis. Everyone knew it was gonna be "Hilary", but just about everyone thought "Its not gonna be Trump". You can even see that sentiment even now, in your comment.

Mind you, I am a libertarian and from the sidelines I can tell you why I think Trump and Sanders are both causing problems for the political establishment. The people are fed up with politics as usual, and are raging against the machine. Their problem (IMHO) is that they are waging that war from the inside of the political machine, and haven't decided to leave it yet.

My only hope for revolution is that Bernie gets shut out at the DNC convention, runs as a Socialist Party Candidate, they would love to have him run again. And have the Republicans actively supporting a third party candidate against the GOP nominee Trump. A true four way battle, and really screw up the Electoral College. :-D

A man can dream!

Re:We need to help republicans...

[ganjadude]

you mean we need to help america have more decent candidates

Re: We need to help republicans...

[ganjadude]

no he wouldnt. him winning would show that the country is even more retarded than we thought

Re:We need to help republicans...

[riverat1]

Bernie running as a third party candidate is not going to happen. Preventing a Trump Presidency is more important to him than any other consideration. But you can dream.

Re:We need to help republicans...

[Reziac]

As I recall, Nevada's presidential ballot is required to include "None of the Above".

The problem is, this is about as useful as voting for a minor party candidate; generally it just dilutes the votes for the less-horrible major candidate.

I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

so I feel I can make an observation. I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse. No one can disagree anymore without resorting to hateful vitriol, slinging insults, rioting in the streets. I don't get it. It's one thing to have a sense of justice, but quite another to act out.

People confuse freedom with permissiveness. Freedom is the ordered pursuit of the good (or at least that's how I was taught). These days, if someone votes differently, acts differently, they are a bigot, a hater, a misogynist. It's time to restore decent public discourse.

Peter has a right to back whomever he wishes, despite what we may think. We don't have to lambast him for his God-given rights. You would not want people to lambast you for your choices.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely expect that public figures get lambasted for their political positions. That's part of freedom: you get held responsible for your choices, particularly if you make them PUBLIC.

Public discourse isn't about being nice. Or tolerant. It's about ideas, and if your ideas suck, then I get to call you out on that.

I'm not interested in people saying "Oh, Mr. Trump, that idea isn't really a good one. Maybe you might want to change it a little, to make it more nice." I'm interested in calling a spade a spade, and a bigot a bigot. Because that's what much of the rhetoric absolutely is: blatant bigotry.

We've tried to cover up bigotry behind nice phrases and accommodations for too long. Better for it to be out in the open than hidden in niceties.

Re: I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucking hate you and everything you said!! ...even though I didn't finish reading it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take my outrage and protest my way into bestbuy and out the back door with a new flat screen. Then I'll blog about it on twitface.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, 30 years is about right. It's the direct result of conservatives dismantling the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Turn on Rush Limbaugh and you'll see how public discourse was poisoned. But it helped win elections back then so it's all worthwhile!

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

In all honesty, I'd never heard of the Fairness Doctrine, so i looked it up. Thank you for the input. I see the Republicans killed it and interestingly, President Obama has personally said he does not favor bringing it back in play. I wonder why? Interesting.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[gcswt]

People quit talking about issues & ideas and started talking up/down people. Politics has become more about rooting for "your people" like a sports team, rather blindly I might add, instead of actually talking about issues and ideas.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[gcswt]

He's afraid of Muslims and he's concerned about a border that really needs some retooling. Reserve bigot for someone that actually believes a race is inferior. Ignore people's concerns about those subjects at your own risk. I don't think we need a wall and I don't think Muslims should be banned from the United States, but I can see how some Americans have been negatively impacted by the border and I can see how terrorism in Europe has been the result of not so great immigration policies (vetting) and I can empathize that some people are afraid of that happening here. Simply labeling Trump a bigot is politically useless. You need to discuss the issues on hand and bring "better" and rational ideas to the front if you want his supporters to come into a rational way of thinking. Trump represents some of our neighbors that we shouldn't simply ignore off hand.

Re: I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Morals and decency have nothing to do with God

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[amiga3D]

I'm an old fart as well and I can easily remember how public discourse back in the day wasn't all that courteous. The language has gotten a little courser....well a lot courser but other than that it's always been nasty.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Gussington]

so I feel I can make an observation. I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse.

Nostalgia goggles.
When was this magical period of public discourse of which you speak? During the Slavery era? WW2? The Watts riots?
Public discourse is the most widely available as it has ever been, you just need to apply some filters to who you choose to have a discourse with, rather than relying in media outlets to do it for you.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[110010001000]

You sound like a Jesus freak. God didn't give him his rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights did. In 30 years you should have learned that.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Tough Love]

Peter has a right to back whomever he wishes, despite what we may think.

I have a right to despise him for being the founder of Paypal and backer of wannabe facist Trump, and I am exercising that right.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Livius]

These days, if someone votes differently, acts differently, they are a bigot

Many voters tune out everything the media says precisely because words like 'racist' have been used to describe an honest difference of opinion and no longer reliably convey any information. And now there's an air of panic because the politicians can't achieve any credibility with the voters, all while the politicians continue to insult each other and talk past each other, unable to hear anything that doesn't fit their preconceived stereotypes, and therefore never responding on the rare occasion that a legitimate point is brought up.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[dbIII]

The Constitution gives a government rights. We get the rest.
For example, if the 2nd amendment was the only thing granting the right to bear arms we'd have to hand them all back in at 40, and women would get the right to have them at all. Funny how a thing about conscripting citizens into a militia got twisted into "freedom" by some NRA idiots.
We've got the right because there is nothing to say we do not have the right.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[KGIII]

I am old too. I've noticed that when people start yelling, everyone stops listening.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[phantomfive]

I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse. No one can disagree anymore without resorting to hateful vitriol, slinging insults, rioting in the streets

Nah. It's that more people have access to public discourse. People were always slinging insults at those moonbats and calling each other hitlers, but now they can actually get a bigger audience than just their family.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's afraid of Muslims and he's concerned about a border that really needs some retooling. Reserve bigot for someone that actually believes a race is inferior.

Or for someone who labels Mexican/Latino immigrants as rapists, killers and criminals, in general.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[AmiMoJo]

It's not that the art of public discourse has been lost, it's that public discourse has been made ineffective. These days the only way you get action is by destroying your opponents, not by making a compelling argument.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[silentcoder]

You think being afraid of a religion is NOT bigotry ? Do you also oppose us calling homophobes bigots ?

Bigot is not a synonymn for racist.

Even then he still IS a racist, the son of a racist (look it up - Fred Trump was probably the single most racist landlord in US history and a huge Hitler sympathizer) who definitely agrees with everything daddy said. You don't have to hate a particular race to be racist, you only have to think your own is better.

I've seen trumpeters claiming he isn't a racist because "Mexican is not a race" - but considering nearly all Mexicans are not white - that doesn't change it, it's definitely STILL Racism.

Cultural supremacism is also bigotry.

Oh and some things you should know:
- Imigration rates with Mexico is negative and have been for years. More Mexicans are returning TO Mexico than are coming from Mexico. The border is simply not an issue - even if you think immigration is, that issue is solving itself.
- Imigrants are a nett positive to the economy - any economy, everywhere. It's literally a law of economics than migration to your country can ONLY make everybody there RICHER. It's mathematically impossible for there to be any other outcome, and it's been proven a billion times - no country has ever had a large level of immigration that was NOT followed by growth in economic indicators and jobs. Nowhere in history has immigrants EVER taken more jobs than they created. It does not happen because it CANNOT happen. It's mathematically impossible. You can list all the numbers of pi before that will happen.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[silentcoder]

> President Obama has personally said he does not favor bringing it back in play

Because he already had the republican congress actively stalling anything he suggested just because it was him suggesting it - even when he suggested something htey had championed for years they would turn their backs on it... he really didn't need ANOTHER fight with congress.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Evtim]

Partially disagree....most political speeches from 100 years ago if uttered by today's politicians would mean complete destruction of their careers...someone here pointed to the father of Trump as a shining example of civility , eh?

Have you read any "adventure" books where you were a kid [about the Wild West, hunters in Africa and so on..]? Books from authors at the end of the 19th century....racism and Christian supremacy is dripping from every word and no one bats an eyelid because that was the prevailing belief at that time...

Hell, one of my most favorite books of all time [a true world classic] is the Master and Margarita....Bulgakov, living in Stalinist Russia mentions black people in the book only once - as serving drinks and food during the Spring ball of Satan. He also calls them niggers. I know that he actually was not racist - he was a great humanist but as mentioned earlier no one questioned this attitude....after all if those savages were worth something then how come we have cannons but they don't...ah, we can kill them because we are Christians and good people so that gives us a prosperous society [much better than theirs!!!] that is able to manufacture and support a grand army with cannons to go and "civilize" those wackos [this sentiment is always there plain and obvious regardless of the nationality of the writer [Spaniard, Italian, Dutch, German, Briton or American - all the colonial powers]. In other words people equated economical prosperity with rightfulness - if you are rich than you are doing it right.

I used to love those books; recently I wanted for the fun of it to re-read some of them and was literally sick within few pages...sick because I realized it was the norm and the whole fucking white race believed that shit...

Good old times....I don't know....did you watch "true grit"? Did it make you an impression how polite and non-vulgar was the verbal disclosure in the movie? The directors claim that that is how people talked and behaved. Yet, would you like to live in this period? Politely murdering people left right and center [crime rate in a small town at the time was as bad as today's "hellholes" - the likes of Bogota, Rio, etc.].

What else --- ah, I know -- morality in the family. Oh man, those modern people have no fidelity, no sense of morality it is one giant fuck fest.....oh, it was sooooo better in the older days in the little village....actually NO. There was more infidelity and more insect in those days. Today's modern urban male is more faithful com-pared to his grand father in the little quint village...I was lucky that my grandmother told me how hypocrite this is...whenever some old lady in the village tried lecturing me about morality granny would say afterwards "Who, she with the multiple lovers, the one that destroyed this family and that and slept with half the village...don't listen to her"

On the other hand I agree that today's politics is full of hysteria and shit throwing and very little reason. But that is US specific issue and I hope it would stay that way...

Last remark - do you know which world politician talks reason most of the time? Putin. No kidding. I am in total disagreement with most of what he is doing but that guy when he speaks to the Russians, he makes sense, he speaks rather moderately and sensibly. Go figure....

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[tom229]

What you're seeing is a generation that is markedly lazier than previous ones. Lazy people make decisions with emotion, rather than critical thought. 10 years ago you couldn't bundle a browser with your operating system without being taken to court, and centralized standards, protocols, and systems were vilified. Today this is all commonplace. Imagine if this generation had designed email. We'd still be sending every email through IBM.

While of course I'm taking about the tech industry because it's what I'm most familiar with, I think the parallels are clear. You expect the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp generation to apply critical objective thought to politics? Good luck.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[poity]

The Constitution enumerates certain things the government is not allowed to do. It recognized that people are imbued with their rights from the moment they're born. If he's a Jesus freak and wants to interpret that as "god-given", then he's more legally correct than those who say rights are given by the government.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[roman_mir]

OMG. Constitution enumerates things that the government is allowed to do. It gives government certain powers over individuals. Government must not be able to do anything other than what is enumerated. The complete misunderstanding of this has been cultivated to destroy individual freedoms and to usurp power.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the bigots are the Clintons: Hillary's mentor was former Klan member Robert Byrd, who Bill Clinton tried to defend as "a country boy who did what he had to do to get elected".

*crickets*

Re: I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Bull. Most of the morality and decency we have in Western civilization comes from the enlightenment and is in SPITE of Christianity, not because of it.

Re: I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Sir_Eptishous]

I ran out of mod points right before I read this.
Bravo!

Re: I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Pumpkin Tuna]

I gratefully accept imaginary mod points.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Sir_Eptishous]

so I feel I can make an observation. I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse.

Nostalgia goggles. When was this magical period of public discourse of which you speak? During the Slavery era? WW2? The Watts riots? Public discourse is the most widely available as it has ever been, you just need to apply some filters to who you choose to have a discourse with, rather than relying in media outlets to do it for you.

Wrong.
Utterly wrong.

Go back and watch the debates between Gore Vidal and William Buckley.
Go back and watch(as others have pointed out) what the political landscape was like on television when the Fairness Doctrine was enforced:
"The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the Commission's view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011 the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine."

In general, people today view anyone with opposing opinions as "the other", someone to dehumanize.
These are the tactics used during the rise of fascism in the 1920's and 30's.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[luis_a_espinal]

so I feel I can make an observation. I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse. No one can disagree anymore without resorting to hateful vitriol, slinging insults, rioting in the streets. I don't get it. It's one thing to have a sense of justice, but quite another to act out.

People confuse freedom with permissiveness. Freedom is the ordered pursuit of the good (or at least that's how I was taught). These days, if someone votes differently, acts differently, they are a bigot, a hater, a misogynist. It's time to restore decent public discourse.

I was with you up to this point.

Peter has a right to back whomever he wishes, despite what we may think.

He has a God-given right to back a vulgar misogynistic bigot (which Trump is, there is no question about that.) He does not have a God-given right for insulation from virulent criticism against such a virulent choice.

We don't have to lambast him for his God-given rights.

If you are old enough as you claim to be, I'm sure you remember people using their God-given rights to vote and oppose de-segregation. People do not deserve getting blasted for having the God-given right of choice. It is the exercise of that choice that makes a person deserving of praise or attack.

You would not want people to lambast you for your choices.

A pedo wouldn't want to be lambasted for his choices, wouldn't him. Choices have consequences for the people making them, specially if those choices affect 3rd parties. It is a that point that you crosses the Rubicon from the land of civility to the land of moral relativism where evil is in the eye of the beholder.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[luis_a_espinal]

He's afraid of Muslims

Let's change Muslims with "Blacks" or "Jews".

He's afraid of Blacks

He's afraid of Jews

To be are afraid of a entire class of people with no room for personal distinction or nuance is to revel on spreading a negative generalization on a whole category of people (be it by race or religion). And to revel in such generalizations is to be a bigot.

This is not Europe. Muslims make up less than 1% of the population and Muslims have fought and died for this country. If that later part is not enough of a litmus test for being American, then this society is a piece of shit that deserves no future.

Same with the border. Illegal immigrants make up less than 3% of the population, and the numbers have been falling since 2008 (as predicted by most analysts). So much for "home of the brave" I'll say. I've heard some crazy uneducated shit about illegals. That because of them the auto industry fell (shit, didn't the Japanese auto industry surpassed US car production IN 1970)? And while the Rust Belt is, well, rusting, foreign manufacturers are thriving in at-will states. But who cares about details when simple boogeymen suffice?

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[micahraleigh]

Well, ac, we're just helping people out, you know?

Coercive language helps shame people into having correct political views.

Once everyone in the country believes the same thing we can get past these inefficient debates and let the media spoon feed us these opinions that we don't have to chew for ourselves.

Choices are an antiquated artifact from a bygone era to protect against corruption, but we are totally corruption free these days.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[ganjadude]

except thats not what he did, thats what the media says he did, but not what he did. context matters

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[ganjadude]

how much does your head hurt after doing all those mental gymnastics trying to make what you said sound remotely true?

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[epine]

We've tried to cover up bigotry behind nice phrases and accommodations for too long. Better for it to be out in the open than hidden in niceties.

I must have been about 95% certain this passage was going to end with "hidden under mattresses" so the actual ending caught me short. What strange subconscious tricks the mind plays based on tenor and tone.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[epine]

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your point, but I think you need to be careful about what you wish for.

Go back and watch the debates between Gore Vidal and William Buckley.

A Buckley Revival by Andrew Ferguson, August 2015

But what gasbaggery it was! ... The two had a bitter rivalry in print, as ABC executives well knew, though rivalry is probably too mild a word. They loathed each other. The "analysis" they were hired to provide quickly became a oneupmanship of insults and ad hominem argument. It didn't take Vidal long to call Buckley the "Marie Antoinette of the right" and for Buckley to refer to Vidal, the author of the ambisexual novel Myra Breckinridge, as a "pornographer." Then things got personal.

The pressure rose till the gasket blew in an infamous exchange on the third night of the second (Democratic) convention. When Buckley defended the police in their violent encounters with demonstrators outside the convention hall, Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi." Buckley responded by citing his own service against the Nazis in World War II, calling Vidal a "queer"—this used to be an insult—and volunteering to "punch you in your goddamn face," after which, Buckley went on, "you'll stay plastered."

For the rest of his life Buckley admitted to being ashamed of the moment—not merely for the lapse in manners but for allowing so crude a provocation to produce exactly the effect Vidal intended. But the two weeks of convention analysis, with a narrative arc of intensifying on-air hostility between two compelling characters and a tidy climax to round it off, was an excellent career move for them both. They dined out on it for decades—though never, of course, with each other. Their mutual contempt provided a Punch-and-Judy foreshadowing of what soon became known as the culture wars.

This is a lovely piece of writing, even if its sympathies are tilted in Buckley's favour. To think that W. had a speech writer of this caliber standing behind him. How could one possibly know after W. mangled his words?

That said, this particular cat fight was notable at the time for being the rare exception to the prevailing etiquette, rather than daily fare. So yes, it was a different time—one already rushing headlong in an all-too-familiar direction.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[riverat1]

Section 8 of Article 1 of the US Constitution starts out:

The Congress shall have Power TO lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United State;

We can argue about what the general welfare means but the Constitution was designed to be a flexible document so it didn't handcuff future generations. I don't believe the Founding Fathers would agree with your rigid interpretation.

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[silentcoder]

"Mental gymnastics": to read actual facts by experts in the field backed up by solid empirical evidence

- From the ganjadude dictionary of stupid

Re:I'm far older than most of you on /.

[Gussington]

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949,

Unless you were black, female, Russian or gay then all bets were off. Your version of "fairness" only applied to white middle class American males. This is not really fair by any modern definition

In general, people today view anyone with opposing opinions as "the other", someone to dehumanize.

Maybe, maybe not, but people had those views in 1949 too, they just never had as wide a platform to share that opinion.
Intellectual debate still exists, maybe you just need to try harder than Fox News or TMZ.

These are the tactics used during the rise of fascism in the 1920's and 30's.

I call Godwin and claim my $5.

Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian...

[Anonymous Coward]

... if he's backing Cruz, Trump, Fiorina, and even Ron Paul.

Nothing about the first three's positions have anything to do with Libertarian beliefs. The first is in favor of autocratic theocracy, the second is simply a demagogue with no actual beliefs other than saying whatever pops into his brain at the moment, and the third is a straight up Establishment Republican in favor of lots of regulation (just not on big business), no business taxes, and significant social dictates. Ron Paul only looks like a Libertarian; a closer examination of his policies reveal nothing more than an anti-internationalist foreign policy, long discredited economic views (a Gold Standard, really?), welded to a George Wallace view of social issues.

Thiel's not a Libertarian. He's just a garden-variety Big Money Republican. He might be an interesting tech person, but his politics are pretty reprehensible.

Why do libertarians support him?

[skam240]

Can anyone explain to me why so many libertarians seem to support Trump? He's not small government at all. He even just recently stated that taxes"may need to go up" for high wage earners.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[gcswt]

He's just not of Washington. A lot of Libertarians (if not many independents) simply don't trust this giant Federal Monster. They have seen the middle class destroyed by Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump isn't either of those. Plus, most people bash the man rather than discuss ideas. He's throwing stuff out there and I'll give him credit for that. It may be crazy most of the time, but he's gone out on a limb, politically correct, be damned.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[Maltheus]

I know a lot of libertarians and very few of them support Trump. Like almost none. I know more Democrats who support him, than libertarians. The only small-government case that could be made for him, is that the Democrats and Republicans hate him so much, that they won't likely vote to expand executive power, while he's in office, and may even move to finally curtail it.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[krkhan]

When talking about Trump, policies and logic aren't really part of the equation. Jeff Bezos is also a prominent libertarian and doesn't look like supporting Trump anytime soon.

Trump is a cult of personality. His words, his promises, his supporters and his detractors -- everything related to Trump has to do with his personality and not with any incoherent policy crap he tees from /dev/urandom day-to-day.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[gcswt]

I think it's a mistake to believe that. There are a lot of Americans that feel NAFTA and the crony Capitalism in Washington have destroyed our manufacturing base. (I'm not saying that is true, I've just actually listened to what they say.) They don't necessarily believe Trump will fix it, but he's a voice of their concerns. No other candidate has talked so bluntly about those issues. Ignoring the border is a huge political gamble for Clinton, she could do a lot to disarm Trump by putting a reform plan together for the border & immigration. Calling Trump names and calling his follows a "cult" actually empower him. If you don't like Trump, talk about how is policies are bad, don't talk down about the man.. it only feeds that narrative that Washington wants to protect itself more than it wants to tackle problems.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trumps tells stories of historical events that never happened, but have a strong racial or ethnic component. He is both a Truther and a Birther, including his remarks implying Obama is a secret Muslim. He is a bad business manager and he lies about his wealth. When neo-Nazis support a candidate, you know something ain't right.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[Z80a]

Trump is not a president, he's a nuke meant to destroy the system.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[skam240]

Wow, that is not similiar to my experience at all. I don't know a single Democrat who finds him even acceptable as president while the few libertarians I know seem to love him. Likewise I've seen articles like the above pop up a few times.

Maybe It's a regional thing. I'm in Northern California.

I suppose the labor end of the Democratic party might subscribe to his politics but I put myself a good bit in that group and aside from his objections to the two major trade treaties currently floating out there I find him appalling.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[skam240]

So it's the politically incorrect angle that is getting him this support? The "not of government" angle is bullshit as his multiple files for bankruptcy only helped increase his wealth, He isnt small government at all which is why it baffles me he gets any libertarian supporters at all. Why not vote for a communist who promises to keep all the foreigners away? I suppose I shouldnt be surprised as so many people I meet seem to not be able to rationalize their political choices in any meaningful context, including those within the generally left wing category I fall in.

Re:Why do libertarians support him?

[poity]

A lot of self-styled libertarians aren't really libertarians philosophically. They just despise the two establishment parties, and the LP happened to be the biggest alternative for a "fuck you" vote. Now that Trump has become the biggest "fuck you" vote, they flock to him. Sanders is other "fuck you" vote, which is why you have the seemingly incomprehensible scenario of significant number of people who are willing to cast their vote for the polar opposite if the other fails.

Trump is the best internet comments section!

[russotto]

If there ever was a +5, Troll that deserved it, it's Trump.

Not a bad bet

[MikeRT]

Trump has loads of experience dealing with the upper echelons of finance, which is something that none of the other candidates have. If there's any candidate who is prepared to kick Wall St in the pants without destroying finance in general, it's probably him. Say what you will about him, but in bankruptcy, he forced them to come to the table and help him get out in order to save everyone's hides. That's the kind of man you want controlling the federal side of the table the next time Wall St threatens that if they don't get there way, we'll see an economic collapse.

Re:Not a bad bet

[Kohath]

If there's any candidate who is prepared to kick Wall St in the pants

Why does everything relating to government have to be about punishing people (who are different than you and therefore apparently "fair game" for whatever ill treatment)? Why can't we ask government to make things better for all of us rather than pursuing old grievances and settling scores?

It's not just Wall St either. It's 100 different designated villains of whatever story, true or false, someone wants to tell. Hillary is "fighting for you" against the villains (a.k.a. your neighbor the banker or pharma researcher). Trump wants to expel the villains (a.k.a. your neighbors who are muslims or whomever he has mentioned in his latest tweet).

When is being nasty to people supposed to start paying off? Never? Let's stop doing it then.

Re:Not a bad bet

[amiga3D]

Their, there and they're. One of the finest examples of why people despair of learning English as a second language. People born to it can't even handle it.

Re:Not a bad bet

[Livius]

There are real villains out there. That's why it gets people's attention when politicians talk about villains, even though they actually only talk about decoy villains while they protect the actual villains.

Re:Not a bad bet

[Z80a]

Try the portuguese/spanish "porque/por que/por quê/porquê".

Re:Not a bad bet

[dbIII]

Perhaps you should think about that a bit more and perhaps take a look over at Russia's oligarchy for some parallels to help you out with it.

Re:Not a bad bet

[dbIII]

Why does everything relating to government have to be about punishing people

It's easier than solving problems.

What?

[SeaFox]

Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a California delegate in Cleveland this summer.

What is that supposed to mean?

Re:What?

[amiga3D]

It means the money people are starting to get on board. At least some of them. I suspect a lot of others will be much more reluctant. I'm loving this election. I thrive on Chaos and thanks to Bernie and Donald it's been great so far.

Ah yes...

[SolemnLord]

Peter "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" Thiel.

There's a man whose opinions I'm going to care about.

Re:Ah yes...

[gcswt]

They aren't. Freedom is being protected from your neighbors so you may live the life you want to live. Democracy empowers your neighbor to have an equal say in how you want to live. If you were stranded on an island with 100 people and they decided to hold a vote to decide who to eat first to fight off starvation, tell me how Democracy helped the freedom of the loser of such a vote?

They got the best one possible

[SuperKendall]

The Republicans got a candidate that in the general election will bring in a huge number of Democratic votes - one poll shows Trump at 2x the support of minority voters as any other Republican candidate (like Romney) has had.

Yes Trump will lose some women, but more because Hillary is running than because of Trump - and that doesn't really matter because again polls show Hillary losing as many male votes as Trump loses female. That part is a wash.

Lastly Trump is finally a candidate who is not a political insider like Hillary.

The Democrats had their chance to elect someone as good, Sanders, but they choose to go with the most ancient rapist-protecting white person they could find, so they are toast in the general election.

The very first debate will seal the deal with Trump dancing verbal rings around Hillary.

Some Republicans right now say they will not vote for Trump but Hillary is a rather powerful counterforce for that notion...

Re:They got the best one possible

[_Sharp'r_]

Hillary is probably the only candidate who could make someone like Trump able to win the election. She has even worse negatives and has just as many people who will never vote for her.

We've somehow ended up with the two candidates with the highest negatives from people in general. For the Dems, that's because of their "superdelegates" originally supposedly setup as a quota system for minorities, but which coincidentally turned into ensuring the (D) party elite continue to control everything. For the Reps, that's because the candidates not name Trump split the non-Trump votes for too long across too many states because some guys named Rubio and (especially) Kasich refused to face reality and there are enough populist/celebrity (R) primary voters to form a sizable minority for anyone who tells them what they want to hear while pissing off their enemies in the left.

Bottom line, I'm voting for who will select the next Supreme Court nominee. Trump will make a deal with a GOP Senate if he wins. Hillary will push another Obama-style appointee (albeit a rich one who can bribe her foundation?) through the Senate with her "mandate" if she wins.

Re:They got the best one possible

[Anonymous Coward]

> For the Dems, that's because of their "superdelegates" originally supposedly setup as a quota system for minorities,

I really enjoy seeing unintentionally revealing statements like that. It totally blows a writer's cover of trying to appear impartial. It says "not only am I heavily biased, I am not smart enough to pull off pretending to be unbiased so it is unlikely that anything I have to say is the result of deep thought."

Re:They got the best one possible

[_Sharp'r_]

I'm not actually sure which bias direction you're accusing me of, but nothing in my post was intended to convey that I don't have an opinion on the election. Quite the opposite and mostly very negative toward the two currently leading candidates.

As far as the superdelegates... their purpose is widely suggested by party leaders to be for racial/minority diversity (So minorities don't have to compete with the elite party leaders for delegate spots anymore), but there are very few people who actually believe that.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D) Congress: Unpledged delegates are our party leaders and elected officials who actually can make up their mind at any point and change their mind. We separate those so that we don’t have elected officials and party leaders running against the activists, but want to make sure are helping to diversify our convention. That is something we take great pride in. A Native-American cancer survivor. Those people should have an opportunity to be delegates, too. And they shouldn’t have to deal with very well-known officials and party leaders. And that’s why we separate them.

or

Kendra Cotton (D) political director: Democrats have quotas for gender and preferences for minorities to become pledged delegates, but they don’t give them too much power.

Re:They got the best one possible

[dbIII]

Lastly Trump is finally a candidate who is not a political insider like Hillary.

I keep seeing that but it's not his first run for President and he has effectively been an insider since the day he was born.

Re:They got the best one possible

[Maow]

The very first debate will seal the deal with Trump dancing verbal rings around Hillary.

You keep spouting that bullshit, so I'll take the liberty of repeating myself:

She stood face-to-face or toe-to-toe against her interrogators in the eleventeenth Benghazi! investigation and didn't break a sweat from what I heard.

Trump got a couple tough-ish questions from Megyn Kelly and had a tantrum.

Unless he buries her with a Gish-Gallop(?) stream of conscience bullshit from start to end (which is entirely possible), I wouldn't count her out yet in any debates.

Re:They got the best one possible

[SuperKendall]

Wow, she was able to stay TOTALY STILL in a hearing!

Freezing up certainly will look awesome on national TV while Trump ridicules her mercilessly! Good luck with that.

You said "Trump had a tantrum" but whatever "Tantrum" trump had seemed to have value to voters, as his poll numbers only climbed... funny that people prefer other people over robots.

Re:They got the best one possible

[AmiMoJo]

Not sure where you are getting your numbers from, but Clinton is the most unpopular candidate in history... Except for Trump, who is 2x as unpopular as she is.

Trump has enough support within the fractured GOP to get the nomination, but it's far from certain that even his own party will unite behind him, let along if he can attract much support from outside it. His disapproval rating is off the charts with minorities, women, people with a > high school education, Bernie supporters...

Re:They got the best one possible

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Is this some sort of ironic comedy routine you are working on?

Re:They got the best one possible

[Archangel Michael]

SuperDelegates: The racist idea of protecting minorities so that they can be "represented" adequately by the party elites.

It is a Plantation system at best, and overtly racist social engineering to keep the minorities voting DNC. You might want to look at the LBJ quote regarding certain minority voting DNC for the next 200 years. Racism is actually a Democratic theme. They NEED racism to keep their power.

Blaming GOP for being Racist is just a very nice trick.

Take a look at who ran on the GOP vs DNC for the ticket this year, four old white people vs a diverse group of 17, black, white and hispanic. But the GOP is racist!

Re:They got the best one possible

[quantaman]

The Republicans got a candidate that in the general election will bring in a huge number of Democratic votes - one poll shows Trump at 2x the support of minority voters as any other Republican candidate (like Romney) has had.

I think the technical term for that is an "outlier".

Yes Trump will lose some women, but more because Hillary is running than because of Trump

A claim contradicted by the fact that Trump has done worse with women against everyone so far.

- and that doesn't really matter because again polls show Hillary losing as many male votes as Trump loses female.

I'm not sure how that math squares with Clinton being way up in virtually every poll.

The Democrats had their chance to elect someone as good, Sanders, but they choose to go with the most ancient rapist-protecting white person they could find, so they are toast in the general election.

Republicans on the other hand went with an actual rapist.

The very first debate will seal the deal with Trump dancing verbal rings around Hillary.

Some Republicans right now say they will not vote for Trump but Hillary is a rather powerful counterforce for that notion...

I'm sure Trump will claim victory but 1 on 1 debates are a lot less susceptible to Trump's insult comic debate style. His understanding of policy is still atrocious and contradictory and Clinton is used to handling personal attacks, debates are not a place where Trump will gain votes.

Re:They got the best one possible

[quantaman]

Hillary is probably the only candidate who could make someone like Trump able to win the election. She has even worse negatives and has just as many people who will never vote for her.

I think her negatives are overblown. She's in the unenviable position of being so established that she's no longer "fresh" but not being president so she no incumbency advantage. Still I don't think the negatives will grow over the campaign since she's already so well known. Her favourability might even grow if Trump starts attacking her or if the campaign gives her a chance to control her own image instead of only coming up in the context of a pundit pinata.

We've somehow ended up with the two candidates with the highest negatives from people in general. For the Dems, that's because of their "superdelegates" originally supposedly setup as a quota system for minorities, but which coincidentally turned into ensuring the (D) party elite continue to control everything.

Clinton won the primary because she had way more votes and pledged delegates, despite the talk the superdelegates had virtually nothing to do with it.

Bottom line, I'm voting for who will select the next Supreme Court nominee. Trump will make a deal with a GOP Senate if he wins. Hillary will push another Obama-style appointee (albeit a rich one who can bribe her foundation?) through the Senate with her "mandate" if she wins.

Presidents do more than nominate judges. Trump would be a disaster for your country and would pull white nationalists and crazy conspiracy theorists into the heart of the Republican party.

Re:They got the best one possible

[_Sharp'r_]

Clinton won the primary because she had way more votes and pledged delegates, despite the talk the superdelegates had virtually nothing to do with it.

Regular delegate counts: 1,716 Clinton to 1,433 Sanders
Delegates in future (D) primaries: 1,065
Clinton current advantage in regular delegates: 283, or 27% of the remaining delegates available
Clinton advantage in superdelegates: 484

She actually still hasn't officially won yet, although everyone expects her to. The main reason they expect her to are 1. Superdelegate lead (which assumes they won't flip) and 2. polling in future state primaries, especially CA.

It won't happen (they'll likely just decline to prosecute any FBI referral), but if for example the Obama Justice department announced they'd indicted her for multiple felonies and misdemeanors around the ongoing classified email criminal investigation, then the superdelegates can until the actual convention vote choose to flip overnight, in which case Sanders would suddenly be in the lead in the overall delegate count.

Hillary's negatives among conservatives play into the picture. Many Cruz/Rubio supporters will be tempted to just stay home and not vote for Trump, but having someone they dislike even more on the other side (Clinton) will convince a lot of them to go vote anyway. Also, don't underestimate the Sanders supporters who have a negative attitude toward her, enough to stay home or (latest poll 30% of Sanders voters) crossover and vote for Trump. She really is disliked at both ends of the spectrum.

Hillary would have the highest negative rating of any Presidential nominee in recent history, except Trump's is even higher .

Trump+PayPal?

[Chas]

As if Trump weren't objectionable enough!

PayPal...UGH!

Re:Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

He's a "libertarian" in the weak sense that he combines an enthusiasm for 'seasteading' and similar probably-lost-causes with a conventional dislike of paying taxes; but that's not saying much.

Sheesh!

[jenningsthecat]

First he helps to create the utterly evil PayPal; then he starts funding a list of politicians who, (with the possible exception of Ron Paul), are venomous and/or vacuous scuzzbuckets. "Peter Thiel - Raising Corporate Political Influence while Razing Your Country". Sounds rather like a campaign slogan, doesn't it?

Re:Sheesh!

[Fire_Wraith]

Meanwhile, the other co-founder of PayPal has gone on to do awesome and incredible things that will probably contribute significantly to the betterment of humanity. So I guess it's a wash?

Dude, have you ever been on Fidonet's FLAME?

[Taco Cowboy]

I was there

I was even the moderator (no shit, I was) for one summer, until I had to drop it because of workload (I was working for Bell Labs at that time, severe lack of sleep negatively affected my research)

What is going on right now is chicken shit compared to what we had over there

But I gotta level with ya ... there was a difference, in substance

The cursing, the threats, the whatnots going on in FLAME were (largely) based on substance

Nowadays most of the online arguments are pretty much content-less, void of substance

sigh!

Who woulda thunkit

[Tough Love]

Rich guy founder of famously abusive financial racket backs rich guy fraudster thug presidential candidate. Who woulda thunkit? Chickens lay down and prepare to be plucked.

No nukes was decided years ago

[dbIII]

With Carter undermining a scam and Reagan pushing oil etc with nobody to promote civilian nuclear since (except for a stillborn thorium project in Clinton's time that the nuclear incumbents actually opposed), it's been dying for years. If you want a nuclear industry (or just about any industry) you've got to keep on building equipment or you end up with nobody capable of building or running it. As an example, if it wasn't for a pile of R&D paid for by the Japanese taxpayers Westinghouse would have nothing viable to build today. If it wasn't for a pile of work for them ordered from China they wouldn't have the skilled people to build anything tomorrow. In the USA civilian nuclear died long ago. You want nukes, you've got to fund a nearly complete restart of an industry or rely on imports.

Re:No nukes was decided years ago

[Stuarticus]

Nuclear just isn't that practical despite what the fanboys keep shouting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

Yeah I know don't bother responding, $NewReactor is going to cost pennies and only emit unicorn farts, it'll be too cheap to meter, etc, etc.

Re:No nukes was decided years ago

[dbIII]

How does that refute what I wrote in any way? I think it reinforces it. It the fanboys actually thought on more than a very shallow level on the issue they would understand that a lot of infrastructure is required to keep civilian nuclear going and that a lot has to be rebuilt before much is possible let alone a competitive option.
If they want their nukes that look good on paper they have to understand that it's a long road to anything better than the odd 1970s throwback as anything other than a prototype - and they seem to think the paper designs will work perfectly first try without a prototype and advocate building dozens of untried things at once (which would not be possible anyway without building up a LOT of infrastructure).
I'm very offended that you didn't bother to try to comprehend my post and then threw the "unicorn farts" dismissive insult in my face. Why bother to put in the effort to reply when you don't put in the effort to read?

Not a political insider

[SuperKendall]

You should read more on Trump's history. Despite having money Trump has always been an outsider, because he was not from NYC proper originally. He's vastly farther away from being a political insider:

1) Never been elected.
2) Not from Harvard or Yale (how long ago do you have to look through presidents to find one that is not?)
3) Not a lawyer

You may think of him as the 1% because he is rich but the 1% generally do not really consider him to be "one of them". You know how it is in any group, some will not be accepted.

Re:Not a political insider

[AthanasiusKircher]

2) Not from Harvard or Yale (how long ago do you have to look through presidents to find one that is not?)

Ronald Reagan.

Other 20th century presidents who didn't go to Harvard or Yale: Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Eisenhower, Truman, Hoover, Harding, Wilson, McKinley.

Once you go back to Reagan and before, less than half of 20th-century presidents had a connection to Harvard or Yale (and before 1900 only 3 presidents had such a connection).

So it's really just the last four presidents that have made the "streak." Before that there was only one case where two consecutive presidents had such connections (T. Roosevelt and Taft).

I'm not saying it isn't an important trend, but it's a relatively recent one. Personally, I find it more disconcerting regarding recent Supreme Court appointments.

Re:Not a political insider

[dbIII]

You should read more on Trump's history

His track record is exactly what I am writing about FFS!

wheren't there alternatives to this powerlessness?

[quixos]

whatever happened to Condorcet voting? just sayin, we do have Elon Musk.

So he's without influence?

[dbIII]

So somebody with a great deal of political influence who was even born to it, and who has even run played politics to the extent of this not being his first run at President is still an outsider? It looks like the inside is a very tiny group by your definition. I consider your three points fairly worthless as a definition since they would even fit some of the "neocons" that hung around Washington for decades.

Re:So he's without influence?

[silentcoder]

The rich have been buying government power from politicians for decades... Trump's one brilliant move was to figure out how to cut out the middle man. It is cheaper than using a politician as a power-contractor and more reliable.

Because what the world needs more than anything a rabid coyote with the nuclear launch codes...

Alive and kicking

[golodh]

@sittingnut

Care to substantiate any part of that disparaging comment?

Last time I looked both the first and second amendments were in rude good health. Plus all other essential freedoms.

Please don't confuse "freedom" with "I want things done my way", or "I'm angry about ... whatever" with "someone's encroaching on my freedom". Citizens will always have duties, will always face laws and regulations, will always need experts to formulate policy details for them and then administrate that policy, and will always have to pay tax to pay for all of that.

Even mr. Trump has no plans to change any of that, and won't change any of that if he ever came to think about it. Chaos like that would be bad for business, you see.

Plus it would be an extremely unstable state of being, because some gang boss would step in where the government withdraws.

Re:Alive and kicking

[Stuarticus]

I think he supports classic American Freedom, freedom for oneself and solitary confinement for everyone else.

Re:Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian

[Anonymous Coward]

Libertarians aren't 'Libertarian' - because behind all the rhetoric, Libertarianism is all about decentralizing/dismantling public power, so that power can be centralized in private democratically-unaccountable hands.

Trump is perfect for them,

Re:Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian

[butzwonker]

That sounds like a reasonable description of modern US 'right-wing' libertarianism, especially because it manages to keep libertarianism somewhat distinct from 'left-wing' anarchism. But there is one thing I don't get: If taxation is theft, how on earth would a government be able to pay for anything? Police? Military? Roads? Electricity? Water lines? Dams? Food and water safety (to avoid poisoning)? Aviation safety? Disaster response? Nuclear safety? Embassies? Railroad tracks?

The list could go on and on. There is a bazillion necessities for modern society that cannot be handled at the local level and require lots of money. Where does this money come from if not from taxes? Is the idea that the government sells these things to citizens, and if you don't buy them, you can't have them? Like, if you don't pay your road toll, you can't drive with your car on public roads? How would that work and how would it be better than having taxes?

I've never heard any coherent explanation of that, hence my suspicion is that US libertarianism is either "moderate libertarianism" -- a nebulous desire to have less government interference -- or is just not well thought through.

Re:Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian

[Anonymous Coward]

See also An Anarchist critique of Anarcho-Statism

In particular:

"Anarchists have long argued that, as a class, workers have little choice but to "consent" to capitalist hierarchy. The alternative is either dire poverty or starvation. "Anarcho"-capitalists dismiss such claims by denying that there is such a thing as economic power. Rather, it is simply freedom of contract. [10]

Anarchists consider such claims as a joke. To show why, we need only quote Murray Rothbard on the abolition of slavery and serfdom in the 19th century. He argued, correctly, that the "bodies of the oppressed were freed, but the property which they had worked and eminently deserved to own, remained in the hands of their former oppressors. With economic power thus remaining in their hands, the former lords soon found themselves virtual masters once more of what were now free tenants or farm labourers. The serfs and slaves had tasted freedom, but had been cruelly derived of its fruits." [11"]

Anarcho-capitalism turns all power into economic power and then denies that economic power exists.

Re:wheren't there alternatives to this powerlessne

[Some nick or other]

Voting reform is very hard because the people who benefit from the biased voting methods are also those who decide what goes.

How is it ...

[garry_g]

... that with all Trump is known for, and who is supporting him, that he has a large following in the low-income parts of the people? The myth of "trickle down economics" has been shown to not work, as proven by the US economics, as well as world wide, with the gap between the wealth of the wealthy and that of the poor ever widening ... how can ANYBODY (apart from the very well off) vote for someone standing for the policies that Trump (and, for that matter, most of the other GOP candidates)??

Just wondering ...

Re:How is it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy gives you the government you want, not the government you need. If your population is comprised of TV fed brainwashed masses then exactly what kind of government do you think they're going to elect?

Re:How is it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that with all Trump is known for, and who is supporting him, that he has a large following in the low-income parts of the people?

That's been debunked as a myth, you know...

Re:How is it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Many voters support a candidate based on gut feelings rather than cold hard analysis of the candidate's stated positions, actual positions, and the probability that he/she will be able to get any legislation enacted.

Electing President should be like a JOB INTERVIEW

[Cortexia]

It's hard to imagine that a successful entrepreneur would hire an executive for a company who has NO EXPERIENCE in that job, LITTLE KNOWLEDGE of the issues that the company faces on a daily basis, and has demonstrated a tendency for racism, sexism, and bullying. So how can any successful entrepreneur back Trump? I don't get it.

That would be Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrat establishment despises him, and is terrified he will upend the globalist systems their Wall St paymasters demand and disrupt the massive incompetent bureaucracy they have built and staffed with huge numbers of unionized (therefore mostly Democrat) workers who have good pay and great pensions and no concern for productivity or the public.

The Republican establishment despises him, and is terrified he will upend the globalist systems their Wall St paymasters demand and disrupt the mighty (and fake) military/foreign policy machine which pretends to be about "national security" while refusing to actually secure the nation's actual borders but then goes around the world wearing out equipment (so more must be bought from big contractors) and grinding up soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines securing the borders of other nations.

BOTH party establishments are terrified he will look at the government with the eyes of a businessman and actually demand performance out of the government, possibly eliminating or replacing parts of it that fail to perform for the public. BOTH party establishments are freaked out by the degree to which his run has highlighted the corruption of the electoral systems they have rigged, and his run thus far has used the least money per voter of any recent national campaign, which is a HUGE threat to the beltway army of wealthy campaign consultants, pollsters, analysts, media and marketing "experts" etc. There are literally thousands of wealthy people in the Acela corridor who are in full panic mode that their industry is being shown to be unnecessary and their "expert" prognostications are being exposed as a mix of partisan wishful thinking and fanciful daydreams.

2016 is the first time in decades that there is an actual disruptive candidate who can win and who has both party machines in a panic and leaders of both parties flinging hate at him like a bunch of monkeys flinging feces. In November the public will have a choice: one of the most notorious machine politicians who has been given every position she has ever held, become rich by speaking to various groups behind closed doors while making NOTHING and has a 40+ year record of unethical behavior (starting by getting kicked off the Watergate investigation by Democrats for her ethical shortcomings) hiding things from the public and the courts, etc.......... or a rouge business guy with decades of executive experience actually making things, employing people, and demanding performance, who is hated by the entire political machine. Neither is a perfect choice. It's telling that entrenched politicians in BOTH parties have talked about their desire for Clinton. She has a long toxic record making her predictably bad, but would preserve every bit of the political machine both parties have meticulously built for their own benefit. Trump, as a business guy, has a long record but none at all in government making him far less predictable (for good or for bad) and has proven he is willing to completely upend the applecart.

Trump's far from perfect. He's not as left-wing as the progressives would want, but he's also nowhere near as right-wing as conservatives would want. Social conservatives in the GOP have had to accept that he is not one of their own in order to vote for hm anyway to give the machine in Washington the middle finger. The question is: will other voters be similarly willing to support him even though he does not meet their particular litmus tests, in order to also give Washington the same finger, or will they double-down on establishment machine politics and policies. We'll know in November.

Sanders? Never had a chance. He's just misleading his followers into fantasy land like Kasich or Rand Paul on the GOP side - the Democrat party rigged its primaries over a year ago for Hillary with their "Superdelegates"; it does not matter how many primaries Sanders wins, Hillary gets more delegates and becomes the nominee. It's "her turn".

Oh, and the US is NOT a Democracy. It was founded as a Constitutional Republic with democratic elections.

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - John Adams

Re:Absolutely wrong...

[Pumpkin Tuna]

"and 44% of Sanders voters will vote for Trump [thehill.com]." Yeah. In WEST VIRGINIA. Do I even have to point out exactly how skewed that makes your "statistic?"

Re:Absolutely wrong...

[amiga3D]

Well you twist the truth then complain when he does it too. Kettle meet black.

Re:The racists are now circling the wagons...

[micahraleigh]

Are you saying Hillary is a racist and that's why the FBI is going after her?

Re:This is privilege talking

[ganjadude]

you didnt fix anything, you simply decided to insult someone because you are a dick

Re:Electing President should be like a JOB INTERVI

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Just to stir the pot.
The same could, and has, been said about Obama, just from the other side. Now it is Democrats saying these things about Trump, before it was Republicans saying it about Obama.

Re:This is privilege talking

[luis_a_espinal]

you didnt fix anything, you simply decided to insult someone because you are a dick

No. I pointed that Trump is a bigot (he is). And if someone supports a bigot, that person is a bigot himself. Whether I am a dick is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether my argument is valid or not (and it is unless you prove it otherwise.) If bigots get offended by accusations of bigotry, gee, maybe they should stop being bigots.

Re:This is privilege talking

[ganjadude]

no accusing someone of being a bigot because you misunderstand what he is actually saying is simply stupid. I dont support trump, i refuse to vote for trump, but at the same time baseless lies like yours push me daily to defend this idiot and are pushing me towards voting for him. good job

Re:This is privilege talking

[luis_a_espinal]

no accusing someone of being a bigot because you misunderstand what he is actually saying is simply stupid. I dont support trump, i refuse to vote for trump, but at the same time baseless lies like yours push me daily to defend this idiot and are pushing me towards voting for him. good job

The only person with a misunderstanding (or rather a problem with reading comprehension) is you. I didn't accuse the poster of being a bigot. Maybe I need to replace every occurrence of "you" with, I dunno, "you, the generic you" and break that shit down Barney stile for your benefit.

This is what I wrote:

Thiel represents a significant Republican demographic who would have in a saner political year supported Rand Paul. When the party hierarchy decided to shut out Paul before letting the people decide, Thiel and company say, "Let's vote for a bigot."

There, fixed that for you. That type of political grievance described by this that you call "significant Republican demographic", it amounts to a first world problem talked from a position of privilege. Because it is only through privilege that a person can think voting for a bigot is an acceptable idea. No legitimate grievance could morally justify this (they *can* explain, but never justify.)

I replaced the original "Let Trump burn the system down" with "Let's vote for a bigot" because that is the actual consequence of that action. And if you (again motherfucker, the generic you), vote for a bigot, then you, the generic you, are giving props to said bigot's bigoted platform.

You, the generic you, might have a grievance with the political establishment. But that doesn't justify voting for a bigot just to, and I quote, "burn the system down". There is nothing in my post that accuses the OP of being a bigot. I am accusing Trump of being one (because of his actions through history), and his supporters, regardless of reason, by transitivity for promoting his platform.

And as far as I can tell, the OP did not say he supported Trump, but he was explaining the thinking behind some Republicans for doing so. I corrected his statement by indicating that said Republicans cannot in good faith support a bigot without being bigots themselves (using the "you" as in "generic you" quite liberally.)

I am not going to break it down any further for your elucidation.

Re:wheren't there alternatives to this powerlessne

[riverat1]

Being foreign born Elon Musk is not eligible to be President of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln

[NewYork]

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"--Abraham Lincoln
http://www.petition2congress.c...