It is a baseless assumption that the value of all outstanding units of currency must equal the size of the economy.
Then it's completely pointless. We were on the gold standard in the 20's and it didn't do a thing to stop the Great Depression.
Also, where do you get your figures from? According to the CIA World Factbook, the US's GDP = $13t. Maybe Ron Paul appears the loon only to illogical nonfactcheckers.
And other sources say the U.S. economy is overvalued by $7 trillion, illogical nitpicker.
We were on the gold standard in the early 20th century, and it didn't do anything to prevent the Great Depression - it's just the wrong cure for the disease. I do agree with his criticisms of the Fed, however: it's largely an unaccountable, secretive organization that is too quick to inject cash into the economy the second big business gets into trouble.
I do believe Ron Paul is right about deficit spending, which is why I'm supporting him in the primary season. I don't see any other candidate with a realistic plan to get the budget back in the black because you can't do that in a war economy.
You also can't do that without raising taxes, which all candidates avoid with a 20 foot pole due to decades of anti-tax hysteria hurting our economic policies. I also wish that Paul would get more airtime as he's the most sensible Republican in the race.
So if I write a book on what an idiot you are, does that make me right? My statement that Ron Paul is nuts on economic issues is based research and the fact that...Ron Paul is nuts on economic issues. His theories might make for a nice science fiction novel of a Libertarian utopia, but would be a disaster for this country.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce legislation to restore financial stability to America's economy by abolishing the Federal Reserve. I also ask unanimous consent to insert the attached article by Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, which explains the benefits of abolishing the Fed and restoring the gold standard, into the record.
snip
Why isn't gold money now? Because governments destroyed the gold standard. Why? Because they regarded it as too inflexible. To be sure, monetary inflexibility is the friend of free markets. Without the ability to create money out of nothing, governments tend to run tight financial ships. Banks are more careful about the lending when they can't rely on a lender of last resort with access to a money-creation machine like the Fed.
A fixed money stock means that overall prices are generally more stable. The problems of inflation and business cycles disappear entirely. Under the gold standard, in fact, increased market productivity causes prices to generally decline over time as the purchasing power of money increases.
snip
Gold and freedom go together. Gold money is both the result of freedom and its leading protector. When money is as good as gold, the government cannot manipulate the supply for its own purposes. Just as the rule of law puts limits on the despotic use of police power, a gold standard puts extreme limits on the government's ability to spend, borrow, and otherwise create crazy unworkable programs. It is forced to raise its revenue through taxation, not inflation, and generally keep its house in order.
Without the gold standard, government is free to work with the Fed to inflate the currency without limit. Even in our own times, we've seen governments do that and thereby spread mass misery.
If you were making a drinking game from that speech you'd be pretty drunk as he says "gold standard" 11 times and "gold" 45 times. Spank spank, Paulbot.
Secondly, in your hypothetical scenario, ALL four companies would be criminally liable.
Criminal libailites means regulation, which any good Libertarian abhors. The solution is to take the issue to court over property rights - but once again, how do you prove it was Company X's pollution that made it's way onto your property as opposed to the other companies in the area?
Unless you have some better suggestions for solving to the economic problems facing America, I suggest you go read up on what the man has written and chill with the 'nuts' thing. It really makes you look ignorant.
You sound like neocons that demand that anyone who wants to pull out of Iraq come up with a solution for attaining peace. I don't have to come up with an economic policy to say a proposal is laughably unfeasible anymore than I need to be a fit dietician to recognize that a 5'5" individual weighing 300 lbs is obese. I say Ron Paul is nuts because I *have* read his positions, and his economic proposals *are* nuts.
The problem isn't backed vs. unbacked currency, it's unlimited credit expansion. An unbacked currency is simply a major superhighway to that kind of expansion.
And what does a gold standard do to limit credit expansion? Nothing. We were *on* the gold standard in the early 20th century, and we still had economic collapse and the Great Depression. In fact, it may have made it worse as people rushed to banks to withdraw their money. If your solution is to force banks to carry enough gold to back every single dollar they loan, you again run into the problem of the world's wealth vastly outstripping the supply of gold.
And if your solution to that problem is to raise the price of gold, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a steady backing for your currency. Not to mention making manufacturing items such as electronics with gold prohibitively expensive.
Besides, our currency arguably is still backed by gold - black gold. As oil is traded in dollars, it insulates our currency from wild fluctuations. And there's a lot more oil on this planet than there is gold.
But if you want an economic plan, here's your economic plan: healthy economies depend on a healthy middle class, but our middle class doesn't have any damned money. Between the decline of unions, stagnant wages, offshoring, the H1-B visa program, "free trade" and exploding fuel, housing, health and education costs, the middle class is having to work much harder for less and less in return.
Solutions: bring back the 70%+ income tax rates while cutting payroll taxes, roll out single payer health care, repeal Taft-Harley, and replace our military-industrial complex with an education-infrastructure-industrial complex. This would restore the standing of the middle class while saving money on needless misadventures like Iraq. None of this should be radical - it would only seem that way because the political Overton window in this country has moved so far to the right it's wading in fascism territory.
My sarcasm detector is fine, thank you. There are, however, a whole lot of Kool-Aid drinking Republicans out there that spout that kind of nonsense for breakfast. Case in point: Fox News.
No, we don't "create" extremists. Look, if you are so fucked up in the head that you think it's a good idea to murder people, you're beyond all help. You're owed nothing. I'm sick of people apologizing for these sick psychopaths, saying that because the US has troops in some country it's OK for them to murder-- it's not!
Ever hear the old chestnut that "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it"?
Let's start with the current Republican whipping boy, Iran. Britain and the U.S.S.R. invaded Iran in 1941 because the neutral country wouldn't let the Allies use the Trans-Iranian Railway and also to ensure that Iran's oil fields did not fall into the hands of the Axis forces. In 1951 the democratically elected government of Iran nationalized it's oil fields (previously under control of British Petroleum). Two years later, the British government talked the U.S. into backing a coup to overthrow Iran's government and put the western-friendly Shah in power. It was considered a great success - until the backlash overthrew the Shah in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. So the next time you hear a rant about Iran's government, remember that it used to have a secular, democratic government until the CIA came along.
But of course it doesn't end there - the U.S. backed Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, in which a million Iranians died. Towards the end of the war, the USS Vincennes shot down the civilian Iran Air Flight 655, killing almost 300 people. The crew of the Vincennes tried contacting the plane with emergency channels, which civilian planes don't typically monitor. They didn't bother trying civilian channels, and fired two missiles at the plane despite the fact that its transponder was on and it was flying a civilian route in Iranian airspace. The Vincennes was also in Iranian territorial waters, which the Navy lied about for three years until an admiral admitted the truth on Nightline. The U.S. never apologized for the incident, in fact George H.W. Bush said:
"I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are."
Which is quite a contrast to the response given to the U.S.S.R. when it shot down Korean Air Flight 007 just five years previously:
And make no mistake about it; this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea. This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations. They deny the deed, but in their conflicting and misleading protestations, the Soviets reveal that, yes, shooting down a plane--even one with hundreds of innocent men, women, children, and babies--is a part of their normal procedure if that plane is in what they claim as their airspace.
Finally you have the last few years of warmongering from the neocons, which wanted to repeat the Iraq war fiasco, right down to the bogus intelligence. And you wonder why these countries want nuclear weapons, especially given the fact that Pakistan and North Korea already have nukes but haven't been invaded.
And then there's Israel.
In 1917, the British government made the Balfour Declaration, a policy statement favoring the creation of a Jewish state in the former Ottoman Empire. Britain floated a plan, approved by the newly created United Nations, to create Jewish and Palestinian states in the
Wait, wait, wait - Apple fans are mocking other people for "practically nonexistent marketshare" and "taking their precious [whatever] waaaay to seriously"?
And your point is what, exactly? Apple is perennially in the top five computer manufacturers, has a third of the marketshare of the behemoths Dell and HP, and dominates the mp3 player market - so if you're trying to make a witty analogy here, it's pretty damned weak.
In addition, I want other people to make informed choices when they buy something because if lots of people buy iPhones, they become a de-facto standard that we'd be stuck with, just like we're stuck with another technically bad standard that ignorant people bought, namely Windows.
No, you're hopping up and down because the iPhone's billeted list of features doesn't match your must-have list. If feature X is important to the consumer and they don't do a reasonable amount of research before plunking down $400+ dollars, I don't have much sympathy for them.
The iPod isn't a phone, so that observation has no bearing on whether removable batteries and storage are important for phones.
A distinction without a difference. The iPod has proven that for millions of people, having a replaceable battery on an electronic device is no more vital than supporting Ogg. Unless you are watching video, you can get a good couple days worth of use out of either an iPod or iPhone before needing a charge - and the number of people who go for two days without any access to a power source is pretty damned small. And for those who do, you can always get an external battery pack to charge your iPod/iPhone.
Nowhere was that proven in your links, you ungodly shitsack. By your own logic, smoking cigarrettes causes car accidents, as would insulin or wearing a red shirt. Now, try again, or visit the nearest castration clinic for the sake of the gene pool, stat.
That's the problem you wingnuts in a nutshell: if you don't agree with the facts, you scream bias. For gawds sake, Fox just labeled McCain a Democrat, after doing the same to Alen Specter and Tom Foley. You're a Gooper and get in trouble or displease the wingnut base, you get labeled a Democrat by Fox News.
FOX was the only television news outlet to report on the Obama Madrassa scandal. Sure, it turned out they made it up, but still.
So the other networks are bad because they fail to report made up news? Hmm.
They have also recently hired Karl Rove as a commentator (I'm serious), further proving their alliance to objectivity.
Ah, I see. Good boy, now good back to your bridge.
FWIW, all my music is in mp3s. But if someone was comparing phones, and their music collection was in OGG, ridiculing them with "well it's not popular" is hardly going to win them over.
Practically nonexistent marketshare + higher battery drain + taking their precious format waaaay to seriously = much deserved mocking.
Oh, stop mincing words. The iPhone falls flat on open standards: no Java, no supported OTA SyncML, no supported and documented communications protocols, no supported and documented disk access, etc.
Then don't fucking buy one.
Really? Where do you get this astounding piece of wisdom?
From the fact that the iPod has been out for over 6 years, has never had an (easily) replaceable battery, and still has 80% of the market. Bitch.
You should try it sometime. It is called diversity of ideas
No, it's called blatant propaganda. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you aren't entitled to your own set of facts. Fox doesn't care about facts, their mission in life is being a tool for the Republican Party.
So far the Fox hosted debates have been dramatically more useful to me, as a Republican primary voter, in deciding on a candidate.
They've been great for two things: fisticuffs between Romney and McCain, and seeing who has the biggest hate on for brown people.
I suspect, had the Democrats the courage to appear
They've had the courage to boycott a blatant propaganda outlet. You can complain about Democrats refusing to debate on Fox once the Republican candidates attend a debated hosted by Al Jazeera.
Don't judge the quality of Fox's journalism by the blowhards they run in primetime.
Local Fox outlets can be quite good. Until the reporters piss of the wrong sponsor and get fired anyway.
I can't stand Bill either, but I guess neither of should be arguing against the highest rated talking head on the air since it is obvious somebody likes to watch his gimmick.
It's called being a big fish in a small pond. CNN is packed to the gills with right wing blowhards, but if you really want your fascist fact-free news, Fox News is the place to be.
But the question you leave unanswered is, should we modify our foreign policies due to the views and actions of extremists?
Given the fact that poor foreign policy was what created extremists in the first place, yeah we should step back and re-evaluate our priorities and our approach in dealing with other countries.
No. Libertarians are opposed to corporate welfare, and also regulations that are written to give the corporate establishment a competitive advantage and keep potential competitors out of the game.
Insignificant potatoes next to having no regulation or anti-trust law.
That you'd hate the president that drug us out of the Great Depression, helped defeat the Nazies and set up the next 70 years of prosperity says a lot about how delusional you are.
That having them pair up for a "super ticket" would probably be more negative than positive.
I only see that happening if Hillary wins the nomination, as Barack would help get more votes for the ticket. Whereas Hillary really wouldn't add much as Obama's VP, and she would bring along her negatives.
My current ideal scenario: Obama as pres, Edwards as AG, Gore as Secretary of Energy, and a Dick Cheney as VP. And I don't mean Dick Cheney as in a warmongering authoritarian asshole, but as someone who would add to the ticket but wouldn't be interested in their own run for the White House so Edwards could run again in 2016.
Except for the fact that Hillary has come out against some of Bill's fantastically horrible policies, like, you know, free trade.
There, fixed that for you. "Free trade" has been a disaster for blue collar workers in this country. And I put in quotes because so called "free trade" laws actually come with plenty of restrictions and obligations - they just benefit large corporations instead of workers and consumers.
The "lack of experience" accusation against Obama is a Republican/Clinton "talking point" that is widely circulated, and many people have apparently bought into it. It is also false.
Not really. He has some nice billets on his resume, but he would be a better candidate with more experience, specifically in the Senate. Which is why I was hoping Obama would run in 2016 after racking up some more time in committees.
But more to the point, Hillary doesn't want to harp on the "experience" line too much, in case she does in fact win the nomination and ends up facing McCain, who blows her "35 years of experience" out the water.
Oh, you mean as opposed to the constitutional right of a family that saw fit to have four babies but didn't see fit to think through the costs of keeping them healthy to get the government to take the required money from someone else in order to pay for it?
You can be as "responsible" as humanly possible and still get fucked. Pay $800 a month in premiums? You'll still get hit with high deductibles, coverage caps and have treatments denied even if they are decades old.
Though I'm still voting Republican (democrat leftist politics bother me greatly)
Given the fact that the DemocraticPartyis a conservative party, it looks like you're another winger who needs to take a nice, long vacation to North Korea to see what "leftist" actually looks like.
Imagine Reagan if he were thirty years younger
Reagan is like Jesus: republics praise them all the time, but if they were alive and running for office they'd be torn to pieces in today's republic party. Republic pundits are trying to run McCain out of town largely because he supported amnesty, when the Gipper actually did it in the 80's.
Hillary downright scares me - the FIRST dem candidate I am genuinely afraid of, particularly with a dem majority in Congress.
Yes, conservative rationality quickly goes out the window when a Clinton is involved. Hillary was a Goldwater Girl and sat on the board of Wal-Mart for six years. And her husband pushed NAFTA, deregulation, a balanced budget, and was big on law enforcement. There should have been Clinton Republics the way there were Reagan Democrats in the 80's, but the republics engaged in a witch hunt instead.
general supply-side economic theory
AKA the "give the rich more money" policy. But hey, you too might luck out and get ten bucks in 25 years.
proactive national defense (I think Iraq was good idea, with poor execution)
Your "proactive defense" has gotten more Americans killed than Osama bin Laddin. Along with Israel getting a blank check to fuck over the Palestinians, a "proactive defense" is what gave rise to extremist Muslims in the first place.
The United States is surrounded by two friendly, peaceful nations and the world's largest oceans. We don't need a large defense budget, much less outspend the rest of the world combined.
Slashdot Mirror
Correction. The current US Economy is closer to $14 trillion. (NY Times estimate for 2007)
Correcting your correction: others say the U.S. economy is overvalued by $7 trillion.
You can quibble all you want over GDP numbers, but the fact remains that the amount of wealth in the world vastly outstrips the supply of gold.
It is a baseless assumption that the value of all outstanding units of currency must equal the size of the economy.
Then it's completely pointless. We were on the gold standard in the 20's and it didn't do a thing to stop the Great Depression.
Also, where do you get your figures from? According to the CIA World Factbook, the US's GDP = $13t. Maybe Ron Paul appears the loon only to illogical nonfactcheckers.
And other sources say the U.S. economy is overvalued by $7 trillion, illogical nitpicker.
We were on the gold standard in the early 20th century, and it didn't do anything to prevent the Great Depression - it's just the wrong cure for the disease. I do agree with his criticisms of the Fed, however: it's largely an unaccountable, secretive organization that is too quick to inject cash into the economy the second big business gets into trouble.
I do believe Ron Paul is right about deficit spending, which is why I'm supporting him in the primary season. I don't see any other candidate with a realistic plan to get the budget back in the black because you can't do that in a war economy.
You also can't do that without raising taxes, which all candidates avoid with a 20 foot pole due to decades of anti-tax hysteria hurting our economic policies. I also wish that Paul would get more airtime as he's the most sensible Republican in the race.
So if I write a book on what an idiot you are, does that make me right? My statement that Ron Paul is nuts on economic issues is based research and the fact that...Ron Paul is nuts on economic issues. His theories might make for a nice science fiction novel of a Libertarian utopia, but would be a disaster for this country.
Secondly, in your hypothetical scenario, ALL four companies would be criminally liable.
Criminal libailites means regulation, which any good Libertarian abhors. The solution is to take the issue to court over property rights - but once again, how do you prove it was Company X's pollution that made it's way onto your property as opposed to the other companies in the area?
Unless you have some better suggestions for solving to the economic problems facing America, I suggest you go read up on what the man has written and chill with the 'nuts' thing. It really makes you look ignorant.
You sound like neocons that demand that anyone who wants to pull out of Iraq come up with a solution for attaining peace. I don't have to come up with an economic policy to say a proposal is laughably unfeasible anymore than I need to be a fit dietician to recognize that a 5'5" individual weighing 300 lbs is obese. I say Ron Paul is nuts because I *have* read his positions, and his economic proposals *are* nuts.
The problem isn't backed vs. unbacked currency, it's unlimited credit expansion. An unbacked currency is simply a major superhighway to that kind of expansion.
And what does a gold standard do to limit credit expansion? Nothing. We were *on* the gold standard in the early 20th century, and we still had economic collapse and the Great Depression. In fact, it may have made it worse as people rushed to banks to withdraw their money. If your solution is to force banks to carry enough gold to back every single dollar they loan, you again run into the problem of the world's wealth vastly outstripping the supply of gold.
And if your solution to that problem is to raise the price of gold, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a steady backing for your currency. Not to mention making manufacturing items such as electronics with gold prohibitively expensive.
Besides, our currency arguably is still backed by gold - black gold. As oil is traded in dollars, it insulates our currency from wild fluctuations. And there's a lot more oil on this planet than there is gold.
But if you want an economic plan, here's your economic plan: healthy economies depend on a healthy middle class, but our middle class doesn't have any damned money. Between the decline of unions, stagnant wages, offshoring, the H1-B visa program, "free trade" and exploding fuel, housing, health and education costs, the middle class is having to work much harder for less and less in return.
Solutions: bring back the 70%+ income tax rates while cutting payroll taxes, roll out single payer health care, repeal Taft-Harley, and replace our military-industrial complex with an education-infrastructure-industrial complex. This would restore the standing of the middle class while saving money on needless misadventures like Iraq. None of this should be radical - it would only seem that way because the political Overton window in this country has moved so far to the right it's wading in fascism territory.
Your sarcasm detector is great.
My sarcasm detector is fine, thank you. There are, however, a whole lot of Kool-Aid drinking Republicans out there that spout that kind of nonsense for breakfast. Case in point: Fox News.
Ever hear the old chestnut that "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it"?
Let's start with the current Republican whipping boy, Iran. Britain and the U.S.S.R. invaded Iran in 1941 because the neutral country wouldn't let the Allies use the Trans-Iranian Railway and also to ensure that Iran's oil fields did not fall into the hands of the Axis forces. In 1951 the democratically elected government of Iran nationalized it's oil fields (previously under control of British Petroleum). Two years later, the British government talked the U.S. into backing a coup to overthrow Iran's government and put the western-friendly Shah in power. It was considered a great success - until the backlash overthrew the Shah in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. So the next time you hear a rant about Iran's government, remember that it used to have a secular, democratic government until the CIA came along.
But of course it doesn't end there - the U.S. backed Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, in which a million Iranians died. Towards the end of the war, the USS Vincennes shot down the civilian Iran Air Flight 655, killing almost 300 people. The crew of the Vincennes tried contacting the plane with emergency channels, which civilian planes don't typically monitor. They didn't bother trying civilian channels, and fired two missiles at the plane despite the fact that its transponder was on and it was flying a civilian route in Iranian airspace. The Vincennes was also in Iranian territorial waters, which the Navy lied about for three years until an admiral admitted the truth on Nightline. The U.S. never apologized for the incident, in fact George H.W. Bush said:
Which is quite a contrast to the response given to the U.S.S.R. when it shot down Korean Air Flight 007 just five years previously:
Finally you have the last few years of warmongering from the neocons, which wanted to repeat the Iraq war fiasco, right down to the bogus intelligence. And you wonder why these countries want nuclear weapons, especially given the fact that Pakistan and North Korea already have nukes but haven't been invaded.
And then there's Israel.
In 1917, the British government made the Balfour Declaration, a policy statement favoring the creation of a Jewish state in the former Ottoman Empire. Britain floated a plan, approved by the newly created United Nations, to create Jewish and Palestinian states in the
Wait, wait, wait - Apple fans are mocking other people for "practically nonexistent marketshare" and "taking their precious [whatever] waaaay to seriously"?
And your point is what, exactly? Apple is perennially in the top five computer manufacturers, has a third of the marketshare of the behemoths Dell and HP, and dominates the mp3 player market - so if you're trying to make a witty analogy here, it's pretty damned weak.
In addition, I want other people to make informed choices when they buy something because if lots of people buy iPhones, they become a de-facto standard that we'd be stuck with, just like we're stuck with another technically bad standard that ignorant people bought, namely Windows.
No, you're hopping up and down because the iPhone's billeted list of features doesn't match your must-have list. If feature X is important to the consumer and they don't do a reasonable amount of research before plunking down $400+ dollars, I don't have much sympathy for them.
The iPod isn't a phone, so that observation has no bearing on whether removable batteries and storage are important for phones.
A distinction without a difference. The iPod has proven that for millions of people, having a replaceable battery on an electronic device is no more vital than supporting Ogg. Unless you are watching video, you can get a good couple days worth of use out of either an iPod or iPhone before needing a charge - and the number of people who go for two days without any access to a power source is pretty damned small. And for those who do, you can always get an external battery pack to charge your iPod/iPhone.
Your ability to miss the point is what is truly impressive.
Contributes, not causes.
Nowhere was that proven in your links, you ungodly shitsack. By your own logic, smoking cigarrettes causes car accidents, as would insulin or wearing a red shirt. Now, try again, or visit the nearest castration clinic for the sake of the gene pool, stat.
Now you are just coming out completely biased.
That's the problem you wingnuts in a nutshell: if you don't agree with the facts, you scream bias. For gawds sake, Fox just labeled McCain a Democrat, after doing the same to Alen Specter and Tom Foley. You're a Gooper and get in trouble or displease the wingnut base, you get labeled a Democrat by Fox News.
FOX was the only television news outlet to report on the Obama Madrassa scandal. Sure, it turned out they made it up, but still.
So the other networks are bad because they fail to report made up news? Hmm.
They have also recently hired Karl Rove as a commentator (I'm serious), further proving their alliance to objectivity.
Ah, I see. Good boy, now good back to your bridge.
FWIW, all my music is in mp3s. But if someone was comparing phones, and their music collection was in OGG, ridiculing them with "well it's not popular" is hardly going to win them over.
Practically nonexistent marketshare + higher battery drain + taking their precious format waaaay to seriously = much deserved mocking.
Oh, stop mincing words. The iPhone falls flat on open standards: no Java, no supported OTA SyncML, no supported and documented communications protocols, no supported and documented disk access, etc.
Then don't fucking buy one.
Really? Where do you get this astounding piece of wisdom?
From the fact that the iPod has been out for over 6 years, has never had an (easily) replaceable battery, and still has 80% of the market. Bitch.
Many of Nokia's Series 60 phones.
Not really. Though the 3G is nice.
You should try it sometime. It is called diversity of ideas
No, it's called blatant propaganda. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you aren't entitled to your own set of facts. Fox doesn't care about facts, their mission in life is being a tool for the Republican Party.
So far the Fox hosted debates have been dramatically more useful to me, as a Republican primary voter, in deciding on a candidate.
They've been great for two things: fisticuffs between Romney and McCain, and seeing who has the biggest hate on for brown people.
I suspect, had the Democrats the courage to appear
They've had the courage to boycott a blatant propaganda outlet. You can complain about Democrats refusing to debate on Fox once the Republican candidates attend a debated hosted by Al Jazeera.
Don't judge the quality of Fox's journalism by the blowhards they run in primetime.
Local Fox outlets can be quite good. Until the reporters piss of the wrong sponsor and get fired anyway.
I can't stand Bill either, but I guess neither of should be arguing against the highest rated talking head on the air since it is obvious somebody likes to watch his gimmick.
It's called being a big fish in a small pond. CNN is packed to the gills with right wing blowhards, but if you really want your fascist fact-free news, Fox News is the place to be.
But the question you leave unanswered is, should we modify our foreign policies due to the views and actions of extremists?
Given the fact that poor foreign policy was what created extremists in the first place, yeah we should step back and re-evaluate our priorities and our approach in dealing with other countries.
No. Libertarians are opposed to corporate welfare, and also regulations that are written to give the corporate establishment a competitive advantage and keep potential competitors out of the game.
Insignificant potatoes next to having no regulation or anti-trust law.
That you'd hate the president that drug us out of the Great Depression, helped defeat the Nazies and set up the next 70 years of prosperity says a lot about how delusional you are.
That having them pair up for a "super ticket" would probably be more negative than positive.
I only see that happening if Hillary wins the nomination, as Barack would help get more votes for the ticket. Whereas Hillary really wouldn't add much as Obama's VP, and she would bring along her negatives.
My current ideal scenario: Obama as pres, Edwards as AG, Gore as Secretary of Energy, and a Dick Cheney as VP. And I don't mean Dick Cheney as in a warmongering authoritarian asshole, but as someone who would add to the ticket but wouldn't be interested in their own run for the White House so Edwards could run again in 2016.
Except for the fact that Hillary has come out against some of Bill's fantastically horrible policies, like, you know, free trade.
There, fixed that for you. "Free trade" has been a disaster for blue collar workers in this country. And I put in quotes because so called "free trade" laws actually come with plenty of restrictions and obligations - they just benefit large corporations instead of workers and consumers.
The "lack of experience" accusation against Obama is a Republican/Clinton "talking point" that is widely circulated, and many people have apparently bought into it. It is also false.
Not really. He has some nice billets on his resume, but he would be a better candidate with more experience, specifically in the Senate. Which is why I was hoping Obama would run in 2016 after racking up some more time in committees.
But more to the point, Hillary doesn't want to harp on the "experience" line too much, in case she does in fact win the nomination and ends up facing McCain, who blows her "35 years of experience" out the water.
Oh, you mean as opposed to the constitutional right of a family that saw fit to have four babies but didn't see fit to think through the costs of keeping them healthy to get the government to take the required money from someone else in order to pay for it?
You can be as "responsible" as humanly possible and still get fucked. Pay $800 a month in premiums? You'll still get hit with high deductibles, coverage caps and have treatments denied even if they are decades old.
John Edwards' ambulance-chasing was one thing.
Why not go all-out and complain about "jacuzzi cases"?
Though I'm still voting Republican (democrat leftist politics bother me greatly)
Given the fact that the Democratic Party is a conservative party, it looks like you're another winger who needs to take a nice, long vacation to North Korea to see what "leftist" actually looks like.
Imagine Reagan if he were thirty years younger
Reagan is like Jesus: republics praise them all the time, but if they were alive and running for office they'd be torn to pieces in today's republic party. Republic pundits are trying to run McCain out of town largely because he supported amnesty, when the Gipper actually did it in the 80's.
Hillary downright scares me - the FIRST dem candidate I am genuinely afraid of, particularly with a dem majority in Congress.
Yes, conservative rationality quickly goes out the window when a Clinton is involved. Hillary was a Goldwater Girl and sat on the board of Wal-Mart for six years. And her husband pushed NAFTA, deregulation, a balanced budget, and was big on law enforcement. There should have been Clinton Republics the way there were Reagan Democrats in the 80's, but the republics engaged in a witch hunt instead.
general supply-side economic theory
AKA the "give the rich more money" policy. But hey, you too might luck out and get ten bucks in 25 years.
proactive national defense (I think Iraq was good idea, with poor execution)
Your "proactive defense" has gotten more Americans killed than Osama bin Laddin. Along with Israel getting a blank check to fuck over the Palestinians, a "proactive defense" is what gave rise to extremist Muslims in the first place.
The United States is surrounded by two friendly, peaceful nations and the world's largest oceans. We don't need a large defense budget, much less outspend the rest of the world combined.