Oh, I see. I didn't know that we surrendered our right to free speech when we left the border, and that we aren't free to express our opinions unless solicited in an interview. Thanks for letting me know!
And if they did it with Clinton, I would have been just as upset.
I'm massively skeptical. You sound more like one of those people that was pissed that Clinton "disgraced" himself for having an affair in the White House, but don't bat an eye when the Vice President tells a Senator to go fuck himself on the floor of the Senate.
But instead that used a concert in a foreign country to smack talk a sitting president. Many other people think the same way.
Yes, many people are idiots. As other's people have pointed out: there is nothing more unAmerican than to say something is unAmerican to say. But even if you are consistent in your unAmericanism, there is a big difference between disapproving of what the Dixie Chicks said and banning them from radio while holding nice, fascist type cd burning parties.
Those are nice links and all, but completely irrelevant to my point, as was the rest of your post. So I say again, name some liberal equivalents to waterboarding, indefinite detentions w/o trial, warrantless spying, calling for the "fragging" of Rep. Murtha, calling for jailing journalists who dare to report your criminal actions, etc, etc, etc.
I think everyone can agree that abortion should happen as little as possible. Contraception will continue to improve (current male contraception looks particularly promising), Americans will become less uptight about pushing it's use, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 50 years getting an abortion means going to an adoption agency and having the fetus extracted and grown sans womb.
Colmes is a Fox news pundit (unless this is some other Colmes I'm not aware of), and if you can think of somebody who's opinion I should think less of, I would like to hear it.
Common, pundits are Very Serious people, who have Very Serious opinions, and thus should be taken Very Seriously./sarcasm
I don't have any respect for Colmes, because he lends Fox an air of respectability and balance that they do not deserve. However, I can think of someone much worse: David Broder. There are pundits who have worse opinions, but "Dean" Broder is worshiped in the Beltway. He will snipe at the Administration, but has never come close to the criticism he leveled at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place." And when Democrats try to reign in said Administration, Broder is more critical of them than the Republicans in the government who started the shenanigans in the first place.
Back to Ron Paul...seeing a Republican with real principles (even if I disagree with some of them) is like a big shot of novocaine after a root canal. The national debt and foreign policy are going to dominate politics for at least the next few elections, but one issue I would very much like to see inserted into the national discourse is ending the War on Drugs, or as I like to call it, Prohibition 2.0. I don't know where Dr. Paul stands on the issue, but with his Libertarian background it would be nice if he were to bring it up in one of the Republican debates.
It is unamerican or many people feel it is, to offer unsolicited anti-american statements and trash-talking a sitting president on foreign soil to a foreign audience. This offended people more then what was said. And that is the point.
Ah, I see that like the modern Republican Party, you suffer from Massive Hypocrisy Disease. I have a simple, two step cure:
Remember that Republicans said far, far, far, far, far worse things about President Clinton on a minutely basis throughout the 90's, both at home and abroad.
Shut the fuck up.
See, that was easy! I'll have my nurse send you the bill.
But as far as what they said, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," what exactly made you proudest of Bush at that point? Was it:
Skipping out on is Air Guard duty, when the GOP pillored Clinton for being a draft dodger (that hypocrisy thing again).
Talked about Gore's exaggerations and "fib factor" (both bald-faced lies) while taking credit for health care legislation he vetoed as governor of Texas.
Ignoring Al Queda, failing to pursue them after the U.S.S. Cole bombing after they were implicated in the attack.
Ignoring point-blank warnings about Al Queda launching attacks within the U.S. using planes.
Sitting on his ass for 20 minutes when we were attacked in exactly that manner, rather than getting on the phone with NORAD.
And, my personal favorite: appologizing to a communist government for an air crash clearly caused by their pilot.
One problem: you are an idiot. If you want to find crazy leftists as far to the left as the Republican party has gone to the right, you need to go to North Korea. Try to find one comment from Al Franken or Micheal More that is one tenth as hateful as the crap Ann Coulter spews out on a daily basis.
Oh please, nearly all performers constantly receive death threats. they are standard and not taken too seriously.
Oh? The threats against the Dixie's were very specific as to a place, a time, and the weapon that would be used. If you don't think celebs take those threats seriously, after the shooting of Lennon, the stabbing of Monica Seles, with all the celebrities that get stalked, you are an idiot.
The radio stations didnt need to lead, they saw the writing on the wall from the fans.
Once again, you confuse cause with effect.
It doesnt take a genius to realize that if you say unpatriotic things to a heavily patriotic populace, you will not have much support.
Unpatriotic, eh? Unpatriotic is sitting on your ass for 20 minutes after you've been told the nation is under attack. Unpatriotic is apologizing to a communist government for an air crash clearly caused by their pilot. Getting more Americans killed than Osama Bin Laddin in a war you lied us into is damn sure unpatriotic. You, and the rest of the wingnuts that put your president and party before the nation, can fuck right off.
Ron Paul's stance on abortion is that it isn't a federal issue, and should be up to the states to decide.
If it's none of the governments damned business, it's none of the governments damn business. Whether it's state or federal changes nothing.
That being said, Ron Paul is more qualified to have an opinion on this matter than Colmes
Being an obstetrician makes him more qualified how?
Stem cell research has not been banned; government funding for stem cell research has been ended. Maybe I don't understand the way university research projects work
Evidently not. A huge amount of research is federally funded, and public research is a lot more open than private research. Would you rather a public university discover a cure for alzheimer's in five years, or would you rather Pfizer discover it in 10 and charge hideous amounts of money for it for the next 20?
I would like to point out that the idea that being "pro life" is restrictive of rights is retarded. Pro-life believes that the fetus is viable; a living human being, with rights.
In the first trimester, a fetus is a blob of up to a few thousand cells with fewer brain functions than a fly. That the "rights" of this blob would outweigh the considerations of the next nine months to eighteen years of an adult with billions of cells and thoughts and personality and a life is what is retarded. The problem that I have with abortion is that fathers have no say in it at the same time they have no say in supporting a baby they don't want for the next 18 years.
As for the Patriot Act, etc, I wasn't talking about Ron Paul specifically, just the remarkable tendency of Republicans to crow about supporting freedom while actually only supporting the things they like. Either your for freedom, or your for freedom for things you approve and against those things that you disapprove of, but you can't have it both ways.
If you were trying to run a small business during the Carter years, inflation was enough to kill you.
Pfft. Just because his speeches trying to raise the country's spirits were about as uplifting as a lead balloon does not mean inflation was his fault. OPEC caused inflation, not Carter. Not only that, it was his administration that did the hard work in fighting it, just as it was his administration that negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran.
IMO Carter was honest and meant well, but he'd give away the farm to anyone who looked needy enough, and he'd help the rest of the world before helping Americans.
Yawn. Don't be such a Scrooge, foreign aid is a trickle compared to defense spending. And aside from not shutting on the door to people dying of starvation, disease, or war, more stable countries equals more customers for our products. As for not helping Americans, he pushed consumer protection laws, consolidating and reducing government agencies, urban renewal, and of course Habitat for Humanity. But asshats were ready to lynch him because he suggested putting on a sweater to reduce energy use.
And telecos have no right to run their wires over our land at no charge. They can start talking about preferential service when they start talking how much rent they plan on paying us for running those wires over our land.
If a provider spends millions or billions of dollars on fiber optic cable, routers, etc... why the heck shouldn't they be allowed to sell different qualities of service and charge differently for them?
They already do. Any broadband ISP sells different connections of various speeds and reliability. What net neutrality is about, is preventing isp's from crippling internet access to sites that don't fork over a blackmail fee. As to why they shouldn't be able to do this, is because A) they've been given a lot of tax breaks and subsidies to do so, and B) because their lines run across public and private land. Once they start paying rent on all those lines, they can whine about the "millions of dollars" they spend on equipment.
Amen. I tried to make the same argument once and I had Slashdotters all over me! You put it very nicely.
No, he didn't. He ignores the facts that these companies were given tax breaks to lay fiber, and that it's done across public land. And across private land with the use of eminent domain. The telecos are free to start charging rent when they start paying taxpayers rent for running lines across our land. Until then, they can get lost.
While he personally is a Christian, he is the only candidate who believes in true personal liberty and the government minding its own business.
Cough*abortion*cough. He's no better than the rest of the Republicans - he can talk about freedom, but it's always selective freedom with restrictions for the social issues he doesn't like.
Ron Paul was totally against giving any money for Katrina--it's not the (national) Government's job.
Bullshit. Among other things, the state's national guard is hung up in Iraq. No state was capable of handling a disaster like Katrina on their own. Or if you think they should be, do you really want your state taxes to go up 10x to prepare for such events? As opposed to say, having mobile resources that can serve multiple states?
Ever heard of a thing called inflation? That is from not being on the gold standard
No, it wasn't. We haven't been on the gold standard for decades and inflation has been very low. Besides, there is a much, much better, more plentiful standard: oil, which is traded in dollars.
Read about it before you call these the ideas of a "nitwit".
Ron Paul was right about the 9/11 attacks being motivated by the US's involvement in Iraq (and Saudi Arabia) during the 1990s. But I'm sure that Bin Laden is not happy about the results. If the Iraqi government fails, the possible beneficiaries will be the governments of Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. They are as much the rivals of Al Qaeda as Saddam Hussein ever was.
Small potatoes compared to getting the U.S. to bankrupt itself, break its military, and piss off most of the world at the same time.
Huh, and I always thought the abortion issue was about the pro choicers trying to avoid birth control.
Then it looks like you were always wrong. Pro-choice is pro-choice, not pro-abortion. For example, if you check out the Planned Parenthood website, you'll see that the first link in their "Health Information" area is for birth control. Birth control is always preferable to abortion: cheaper, less emotional, less controversial, less invasive, and you can get it at any Wal-Mart as opposed to having to see a doctor. But it doesn't always work - I know a lady that had three kids. First kid with her boyfriend: condom failed (and not from ripping). Second kid: birth control pills failed. Third kid: condom *and* birth control pills failed. She's raising all three but has since got her tubes tied.
But I can not comfortably sanction abortion because I don't know at one point in the pregnancy it isn't just like killing a baby.
Ah, the old "magic line" chestnut. The thing to do is not to pick a single arbitrary line where a fetus goes from being a blob of cells to a full human being, because that is impossible. So you pick two arbitrary lines: third trimester abortion is off limits except in cases of severe birth defects or to save the health of the mother, and first trimester abortions should be ok for any woman to have at any time for any reason.
The problem that I have with abortion is that the father has no say in it. A woman can abort the fetus or keep the baby and the father has no say in it. The woman can even give the baby up for adoption without the father's knowledge or consent, or raise the baby without telling the father and then start collecting child support years later when the father has no chance of getting custody. When a man fathers a baby he doesn't want, he's told "you made a choice, now deal with the consequences", but the same does not hold true for women. As for the "her body, her choice" argument, why are those nine months of a mother's life sacrosanct but 18 years of a man's life irrelevant?
Maybe the bankruptcy judges are just afraid they'll be out of a job?
Hardly, since the bill didn't reign in business bankruptcies. Much like changes in the tax code that disallowed people from writing off interest on personal credit card debt while allowing interest on business debt to be tax deductible, the bankruptcy bill was nothing but a screwjob for the public.
# No federal funding of abortion, and pro-life. (Dec 2000)
-- Government is not supposed to be promoting particular social agendas
Medial procedures are "social agendas"? WTF?
Bankruptcy was originally intended to be privilege that would be exercised responsibly by the citizens. Unfortunately however, enough of us proved to be irresponsible enough to ruin it for the rest of us who might need it at some point in our lives for legitimate reasons. The specifics of the bill in question are debatable, but pretty much everyone agreed that *some* type of reform was needed to reign in the freeloaders.
That was the industry/Republican/Corprocrat spin. But as usual, the industry/Republican/Corprocat spin was complete bullshit. As I said in another post: Of course people need to take responsibility for their spending, but the financial industry also needs to take responsibility for their predatory lending. They send out millions of credit offers for people with high debt to income ratios, people with mediocre to bad credit ratings - and then are shocked, shocked! when they go under and declare bankruptcy. It's like taking your recovering alcoholic sister out to bars and keep putting drinks in front of her face, and then being outraged when she takes you up on it, gets drunk and then crashes your car. The bankruptcy bill was nothing but a big giveaway to the financial industry and a big FU to consumers.
In the words of Justice Rehnquist
Rehnquist was full of it. The Pledge suit was an open-and-shut case of schools supporting Christian religion. The court chickened out by ruling that Newdow did not have standing to sue on his daughters behalf, as he "only" had custody 10 days out of a month. Which in itself was a horrible ruling and a slap in the face to secondary custody parents (i.e. fathers).
It is well known that us Libertarians have long supported the school voucher program as the best solution to the problems of our public school system.
And, as is usually the case, the Libertarians are nuts. In the first place, vouchers are a red herring, because funding schools is about providing the public an education, not with providing _your_ kids an education. Secondly, taking money away from failing schools has always done wonders to improve them.
Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
-- That is a tough one, very tough indeed.
I hope that was sarcasm. The FISA statues already allow the government to spy with the flimsiest of pretenses. The only reason to ignore them is if the government has no pretense for spying on an individual. This is pretty much the antithesis of everything Libertarians stand for, and should disqualify him on the spot.
See above comment about thinking for yourself...but with regard to immigration it boils down to this, "Uncontrolled immigration into a welfare state cannot be allowed without bankrupting the state."
Reality rears it's well known liberal bias once again. That reality is the fact that illegals actually subsidize government programs by billions of dollars every year, programs that they can't take advantage of, like Social Security.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I see. I didn't know that we surrendered our right to free speech when we left the border, and that we aren't free to express our opinions unless solicited in an interview. Thanks for letting me know!
And if they did it with Clinton, I would have been just as upset.
I'm massively skeptical. You sound more like one of those people that was pissed that Clinton "disgraced" himself for having an affair in the White House, but don't bat an eye when the Vice President tells a Senator to go fuck himself on the floor of the Senate.
But instead that used a concert in a foreign country to smack talk a sitting president. Many other people think the same way.
Yes, many people are idiots. As other's people have pointed out: there is nothing more unAmerican than to say something is unAmerican to say. But even if you are consistent in your unAmericanism, there is a big difference between disapproving of what the Dixie Chicks said and banning them from radio while holding nice, fascist type cd burning parties.
Those are nice links and all, but completely irrelevant to my point, as was the rest of your post. So I say again, name some liberal equivalents to waterboarding, indefinite detentions w/o trial, warrantless spying, calling for the "fragging" of Rep. Murtha, calling for jailing journalists who dare to report your criminal actions, etc, etc, etc.
I think everyone can agree that abortion should happen as little as possible. Contraception will continue to improve (current male contraception looks particularly promising), Americans will become less uptight about pushing it's use, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 50 years getting an abortion means going to an adoption agency and having the fetus extracted and grown sans womb.
/sarcasm
Colmes is a Fox news pundit (unless this is some other Colmes I'm not aware of), and if you can think of somebody who's opinion I should think less of, I would like to hear it.
Common, pundits are Very Serious people, who have Very Serious opinions, and thus should be taken Very Seriously.
I don't have any respect for Colmes, because he lends Fox an air of respectability and balance that they do not deserve. However, I can think of someone much worse: David Broder. There are pundits who have worse opinions, but "Dean" Broder is worshiped in the Beltway. He will snipe at the Administration, but has never come close to the criticism he leveled at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place." And when Democrats try to reign in said Administration, Broder is more critical of them than the Republicans in the government who started the shenanigans in the first place.
Back to Ron Paul...seeing a Republican with real principles (even if I disagree with some of them) is like a big shot of novocaine after a root canal. The national debt and foreign policy are going to dominate politics for at least the next few elections, but one issue I would very much like to see inserted into the national discourse is ending the War on Drugs, or as I like to call it, Prohibition 2.0. I don't know where Dr. Paul stands on the issue, but with his Libertarian background it would be nice if he were to bring it up in one of the Republican debates.
No.
Ah, I see that like the modern Republican Party, you suffer from Massive Hypocrisy Disease. I have a simple, two step cure:
- Remember that Republicans said far, far, far, far, far worse things about President Clinton on a minutely basis throughout the 90's, both at home and abroad.
- Shut the fuck up.
See, that was easy! I'll have my nurse send you the bill.But as far as what they said, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," what exactly made you proudest of Bush at that point? Was it:
One problem: you are an idiot. If you want to find crazy leftists as far to the left as the Republican party has gone to the right, you need to go to North Korea. Try to find one comment from Al Franken or Micheal More that is one tenth as hateful as the crap Ann Coulter spews out on a daily basis.
Oh please, nearly all performers constantly receive death threats. they are standard and not taken too seriously.
Oh? The threats against the Dixie's were very specific as to a place, a time, and the weapon that would be used. If you don't think celebs take those threats seriously, after the shooting of Lennon, the stabbing of Monica Seles, with all the celebrities that get stalked, you are an idiot.
The radio stations didnt need to lead, they saw the writing on the wall from the fans.
Once again, you confuse cause with effect.
It doesnt take a genius to realize that if you say unpatriotic things to a heavily patriotic populace, you will not have much support.
Unpatriotic, eh? Unpatriotic is sitting on your ass for 20 minutes after you've been told the nation is under attack. Unpatriotic is apologizing to a communist government for an air crash clearly caused by their pilot. Getting more Americans killed than Osama Bin Laddin in a war you lied us into is damn sure unpatriotic. You, and the rest of the wingnuts that put your president and party before the nation, can fuck right off.
Ron Paul's stance on abortion is that it isn't a federal issue, and should be up to the states to decide.
If it's none of the governments damned business, it's none of the governments damn business. Whether it's state or federal changes nothing.
That being said, Ron Paul is more qualified to have an opinion on this matter than Colmes
Being an obstetrician makes him more qualified how?
Stem cell research has not been banned; government funding for stem cell research has been ended. Maybe I don't understand the way university research projects work
Evidently not. A huge amount of research is federally funded, and public research is a lot more open than private research. Would you rather a public university discover a cure for alzheimer's in five years, or would you rather Pfizer discover it in 10 and charge hideous amounts of money for it for the next 20?
I would like to point out that the idea that being "pro life" is restrictive of rights is retarded. Pro-life believes that the fetus is viable; a living human being, with rights.
In the first trimester, a fetus is a blob of up to a few thousand cells with fewer brain functions than a fly. That the "rights" of this blob would outweigh the considerations of the next nine months to eighteen years of an adult with billions of cells and thoughts and personality and a life is what is retarded. The problem that I have with abortion is that fathers have no say in it at the same time they have no say in supporting a baby they don't want for the next 18 years.
As for the Patriot Act, etc, I wasn't talking about Ron Paul specifically, just the remarkable tendency of Republicans to crow about supporting freedom while actually only supporting the things they like. Either your for freedom, or your for freedom for things you approve and against those things that you disapprove of, but you can't have it both ways.
If you were trying to run a small business during the Carter years, inflation was enough to kill you.
Pfft. Just because his speeches trying to raise the country's spirits were about as uplifting as a lead balloon does not mean inflation was his fault. OPEC caused inflation, not Carter. Not only that, it was his administration that did the hard work in fighting it, just as it was his administration that negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran.
IMO Carter was honest and meant well, but he'd give away the farm to anyone who looked needy enough, and he'd help the rest of the world before helping Americans.
Yawn. Don't be such a Scrooge, foreign aid is a trickle compared to defense spending. And aside from not shutting on the door to people dying of starvation, disease, or war, more stable countries equals more customers for our products. As for not helping Americans, he pushed consumer protection laws, consolidating and reducing government agencies, urban renewal, and of course Habitat for Humanity. But asshats were ready to lynch him because he suggested putting on a sweater to reduce energy use.
Ah, so no more of the "Give me your tired, your poor,. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," it's now "gimme those with cash."
And telecos have no right to run their wires over our land at no charge. They can start talking about preferential service when they start talking how much rent they plan on paying us for running those wires over our land.
If a provider spends millions or billions of dollars on
fiber optic cable, routers, etc... why the heck shouldn't they be allowed to sell different qualities of service and charge differently for them?
They already do. Any broadband ISP sells different connections of various speeds and reliability. What net neutrality is about, is preventing isp's from crippling internet access to sites that don't fork over a blackmail fee. As to why they shouldn't be able to do this, is because A) they've been given a lot of tax breaks and subsidies to do so, and B) because their lines run across public and private land. Once they start paying rent on all those lines, they can whine about the "millions of dollars" they spend on equipment.
Amen. I tried to make the same argument once and I had Slashdotters all over me! You put it very nicely.
No, he didn't. He ignores the facts that these companies were given tax breaks to lay fiber, and that it's done across public land. And across private land with the use of eminent domain. The telecos are free to start charging rent when they start paying taxpayers rent for running lines across our land. Until then, they can get lost.
While he personally is a Christian, he is the only candidate who believes in true personal liberty and the government minding its own business.
Cough*abortion*cough. He's no better than the rest of the Republicans - he can talk about freedom, but it's always selective freedom with restrictions for the social issues he doesn't like.
Ron Paul was totally against giving any money for Katrina--it's not the (national) Government's job.
Bullshit. Among other things, the state's national guard is hung up in Iraq. No state was capable of handling a disaster like Katrina on their own. Or if you think they should be, do you really want your state taxes to go up 10x to prepare for such events? As opposed to say, having mobile resources that can serve multiple states?
Where's the bit in the Constitution about "providing services"?
Try reading the Preamble.
He's all about the liberty of the individual
No, he isn't. He's anti-abortion.
Ever heard of a thing called inflation? That is from not being on the gold standard
No, it wasn't. We haven't been on the gold standard for decades and inflation has been very low. Besides, there is a much, much better, more plentiful standard: oil, which is traded in dollars.
Read about it before you call these the ideas of a "nitwit".
Yes, written by other nitwits.
...in an isolated hamlet of a few hundred people. In a nation of 300 million, it would be an absolute disaster.
Yes, it is easy to discount him. Principles are jolly good and all that, but they don't make up for crazy policy positions.
Ron Paul was right about the 9/11 attacks being motivated by the US's involvement in Iraq (and Saudi Arabia) during the 1990s. But I'm sure that Bin Laden is not happy about the results. If the Iraqi government fails, the possible beneficiaries will be the governments of Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. They are as much the rivals of Al Qaeda as Saddam Hussein ever was.
Small potatoes compared to getting the U.S. to bankrupt itself, break its military, and piss off most of the world at the same time.
Obama reminds me a lot of Jimmy Carter. And tho I like the man and think he means well, I also think he could mean us well into the poorhouse.
Not sure where you're getting that comparison, since it was his successor that invented the trillion dollar national debt.
And finally, he is the only candidate I have drunken a beer with, and that seals it!
Sorry, but Bush ruined the "presidential drinking buddy" think for me.
Huh, and I always thought the abortion issue was about the pro choicers trying to avoid birth control.
Then it looks like you were always wrong. Pro-choice is pro-choice, not pro-abortion. For example, if you check out the Planned Parenthood website, you'll see that the first link in their "Health Information" area is for birth control. Birth control is always preferable to abortion: cheaper, less emotional, less controversial, less invasive, and you can get it at any Wal-Mart as opposed to having to see a doctor. But it doesn't always work - I know a lady that had three kids. First kid with her boyfriend: condom failed (and not from ripping). Second kid: birth control pills failed. Third kid: condom *and* birth control pills failed. She's raising all three but has since got her tubes tied.
But I can not comfortably sanction abortion because I don't know at one point in the pregnancy it isn't just like killing a baby.
Ah, the old "magic line" chestnut. The thing to do is not to pick a single arbitrary line where a fetus goes from being a blob of cells to a full human being, because that is impossible. So you pick two arbitrary lines: third trimester abortion is off limits except in cases of severe birth defects or to save the health of the mother, and first trimester abortions should be ok for any woman to have at any time for any reason.
The problem that I have with abortion is that the father has no say in it. A woman can abort the fetus or keep the baby and the father has no say in it. The woman can even give the baby up for adoption without the father's knowledge or consent, or raise the baby without telling the father and then start collecting child support years later when the father has no chance of getting custody. When a man fathers a baby he doesn't want, he's told "you made a choice, now deal with the consequences", but the same does not hold true for women. As for the "her body, her choice" argument, why are those nine months of a mother's life sacrosanct but 18 years of a man's life irrelevant?
Maybe the bankruptcy judges are just afraid they'll be out of a job?
Hardly, since the bill didn't reign in business bankruptcies. Much like changes in the tax code that disallowed people from writing off interest on personal credit card debt while allowing interest on business debt to be tax deductible, the bankruptcy bill was nothing but a screwjob for the public.
# No federal funding of abortion, and pro-life. (Dec 2000)
-- Government is not supposed to be promoting particular social agendas
Medial procedures are "social agendas"? WTF?
Bankruptcy was originally intended to be privilege that would be exercised responsibly by the citizens. Unfortunately however, enough of us proved to be irresponsible enough to ruin it for the rest of us who might need it at some point in our lives for legitimate reasons. The specifics of the bill in question are debatable, but pretty much everyone agreed that *some* type of reform was needed to reign in the freeloaders.
That was the industry/Republican/Corprocrat spin. But as usual, the industry/Republican/Corprocat spin was complete bullshit. As I said in another post: Of course people need to take responsibility for their spending, but the financial industry also needs to take responsibility for their predatory lending. They send out millions of credit offers for people with high debt to income ratios, people with mediocre to bad credit ratings - and then are shocked, shocked! when they go under and declare bankruptcy. It's like taking your recovering alcoholic sister out to bars and keep putting drinks in front of her face, and then being outraged when she takes you up on it, gets drunk and then crashes your car. The bankruptcy bill was nothing but a big giveaway to the financial industry and a big FU to consumers.
In the words of Justice Rehnquist
Rehnquist was full of it. The Pledge suit was an open-and-shut case of schools supporting Christian religion. The court chickened out by ruling that Newdow did not have standing to sue on his daughters behalf, as he "only" had custody 10 days out of a month. Which in itself was a horrible ruling and a slap in the face to secondary custody parents (i.e. fathers).
It is well known that us Libertarians have long supported the school voucher program as the best solution to the problems of our public school system.
And, as is usually the case, the Libertarians are nuts. In the first place, vouchers are a red herring, because funding schools is about providing the public an education, not with providing _your_ kids an education. Secondly, taking money away from failing schools has always done wonders to improve them.
Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
-- That is a tough one, very tough indeed.
I hope that was sarcasm. The FISA statues already allow the government to spy with the flimsiest of pretenses. The only reason to ignore them is if the government has no pretense for spying on an individual. This is pretty much the antithesis of everything Libertarians stand for, and should disqualify him on the spot.
See above comment about thinking for yourself...but with regard to immigration it boils down to this, "Uncontrolled immigration into a welfare state cannot be allowed without bankrupting the state."
Reality rears it's well known liberal bias once again. That reality is the fact that illegals actually subsidize government programs by billions of dollars every year, programs that they can't take advantage of, like Social Security.