That's how it is in regular elections, but primary elections are to decide which candidate among many in a party will represent that party. Therefore, you can only vote for one side (because you can't be a member of two parties at once) and some states require you to be a registered member of that party to vote in that party's primary. In others, you just show up, take a Democrat or Republican ballot and do your thing.
Ron Paul was not "blaming America for 9/11"... you need to listen to what he said again. He simply said that we need to look at reasons for why it happened. If a hornet stings me, I can go and see if I left something lying around to attract the hornets. That would be the smart thing to do. Does that mean I'm to blame? No, the hornet stung me and I will still blame the hornet. But, I want to prevent it from happening again so I'll look to see if I had any part in a contributing factor to the attack.
That's simply what Ron Paul was saying. Look at his history of comments and writings-- he is very patriotic, a 20-year congressman, and he loves America and the Constitution. He was not blaming America at all. That is a straw man that Rudolf set up to make himself look good for the crowd.
The CIA's former head of the bin Laden and al Qaeda unit, Michael Scheuer, had this to say:
"Last week, Representative Paul did all Americans an immense service by simply pointing out the obvious: Our Islamist enemies do not give a damn about the way we vote, think, or live. Though any country they ruled would surely not look like ours, they are motivated by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam, its lands, and its believers...
Of the eighteen presidential candidates now in the field from both parties, only Mr. Paul has had the courage to square with the average American voter. We are indeed hated and being warred against because we are over there, and not for what we are and how we live. Our failure to recognize the truth spoken by Mr. Paul and spelled out for us in hundreds of pages of statements by Osama bin Laden since 1996 is leading America toward military and economic disaster.
And no matter how you view Mr. Pauls words, you can safely take one thing to the bank. The person most shaken by Mr. Pauls frankness was Osama bin Laden, who knows that the current status quo in U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is al-Qaedas one indispensable ally, and the only glue that provides cohesion between and among the diverse and often fractious Islamist groups that follow its banner."
Sorry to burst your bubble, but just because Obama says that he'll respect the Constitution doesn't mean he will. Take a look at Ron Paul-- in 20 years in Congress, he is the only politician who has actually stood up for what the Constitution actually says. Obama isn't that bad, but he has gotten worse lately. (He's a senator for my state, so I'm prone to liking him but he seems to be more and more like the other ones as time goes on.)
If you read about the history of tuition rates, they actually started to go UP in a huge way when the government got involved in student loans. Colleges saw that the government was going to pay for students to attend, so they raised prices accordingly. Tuition and fees at many schools are now going up 15% a year and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. Does Obama realize that? When the government is paying, the receiver of the money knows that they can shake it down and the money will never run out because the government can just print more (which makes everyone poorer). I'm not saying that student loans should go away, but I firmly believe that tuitions would not be going up in such a big way if they didn't exist. Even 20 years ago, the price of college was a tiny percentage of what it is now. It's really becoming a burden on 20somethings.
I like Ron Paul because he's the only one who will actually talk about these issues or acknowledge they exist. No one else talks about how the Federal Reserve causes inflation. No one else will talk about the REASONS things happen. I appreciate Ron Paul so much for what he brings to the table.
Check the Wikipedia article... it's covered extensively there. He's in no way a racist.
If you're truly a libertarian, he comes closest to your ideas. I think he would believe in the libertarian idea of open borders if they could ever actually exist-- if they existed for all countries and from America to all countries. Just opening the border to Mexico comes nowhere near the libertarian vision of open borders, especially when states have welfare in place and illegal immigrants are benefiting from American taxpayers in a large way. He is against birthright citizenship (to those who are here illegally) because many people come over here just to have children so that their kids can be Americans, and their births are paid for by the US or state governments. How is it libertarian to support that? He used to be an obstetrician in Texas and said that he was often required to report to the hospital within 30 minutes to deliver the babies of illegal immigrants, whose births would be on the state and who had never and would never pay taxes.
Illegal immigrants can even collect Social Security and there are talks of building a Social Security office in Mexico City. Can you believe that? How can you get Social Security without a Social Security number?... yet it's possible and it's done through forging or stealing a Social Security number, and it doesn't matter because Congress has ruled they can still collect. That's the policy of a world gone mad. Even if they steal someone else's SS# to do it, they can collect benefits. I have a friend who is here on a H1-B visa from China; she actually pays Social Security and Medicare snd so does her employer but she would never be allowed to collect on them... yet illegal immigrants, not on visas, who don't pay income taxes, are given amnesty to do exactly that? How is that fair? She pays full income taxes on her salary. Why are Mexican illegal immigrants given carte blanche when a Chinese legal immigrant can't collect? It's hardly fair.
If there was no welfare, open borders could exist and I believe Ron Paul would be for them. I am a tried-and-true libertarian, but I think that unless all social welfare is gotten rid of, open borders are not a possibility, and I am for securing the borders to prevent that from happening.
I find it amazing that illegal immigrants are given such cushy treatment in the US. A friend of my mom's had a terrible time trying to collect on her Social Security off her dead husband when she turned 62; the process took upwards of a year of paperwork. It seems she would have been better off forging a Social Security number (a felony, btw) in the first place and living in Mexico.
But anyway, Ron Paul is most likely the one who fits your views the best. I urge you not to discount him simply because of that.
As someone who has moved from a red state to a blue state, I just can't agree with you on this one, mate. Are Texas and North Carolina net negatives on the federal government? I'm just not buying this argument.
Have to disagree. Giving the rights to the states does protect the minority-- if you live in a state with policies you don't like, it's much easier to change than at the federal level, and if not you can move to another state with policies more amenable to yours.
Yes, but the idea is that without government requirements and regulations (and taxes!), it would be so much easier to start a business, create new jobs, and switch jobs that the poor would be better off.
Listen to Ron Paul's ideas on how to help the poor. He really tells the truth-- everyone else just says to raise taxes or lower taxes, but he comes up with actual plans. The Federal Reserve rewards Wall Street at the expense of poor people with inflation.
First of all, it's probably a dog on your feet, not a cow.
Secondly, cows actually are quite intelligent as far as animals go, right below the pig (which is as intelligent as a human 4-year-old), more than the dog and they do have feelings-- if they are hurt by someone (cow or person), they remember it and even can hold a "grudge."
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenlivescows_knowhow.asp
Most leather comes from India and China. China has no animal cruelty laws on any level and slaughters dogs and cats for their fur on a routine basis. Then, they use the skins for leather. Many of them are skinned alive because it's cheaper. "Hundreds of thousands of dog and cat skins are traded in Europe each year; it's estimated that 2 million dogs and cats are killed in China each year in order to meet this demand." [http://www.peta.org.uk/feat/feat-china.asp]
There's no question that all these animals feel pain when, for example, their throats are slit while they're still alive, they're bludgeoned to death, or in the case of the poor turtle, slowly hacked away for steak by customers until they bleed to death.
When you purchase something made of leather, you're supporting all this.
Do you have a link for the random raids? I thought the raids were after riots or crimes in the area.
Sarkozy did steal some voters from Jean Marie Le Pen, but I believe most people voted for his relatively sound economic policies than his race. There was a woman in the election and few people mentioned that. The main thing is that he's trying to lift them out of that life by giving them jobs, so that there are some Muslims represented in politics and on TV and perhaps things can change in France. According to this article, the so-called "racaille" even like his ideas to help get them jobs, they just don't like being stopped by police: http://news.sawf.org/Lifestyle/35788.aspx I believe it's more up to the individual police officers rather than a higher-up in government on who exactly to stop. (He could have told them to focus on an area with 40% unemployment and higher crime statistics, which makes total sense anyway.)
Who terrorized London and the rest of England for years, causing the UK to be covered in police cameras and not have trash cans in the tube? The IRA (born out of conflict between Catholics and Protestants). Who committed genocide in Albania? The French (Catholic). Who conducted the Crusades? Who bombed abortion clinics and the Olympics in the US? Hitler invoked God and the Bible before he killed six million Jews. I could go on. It's completely ridiculous to start a tirade against an entire religion. If you don't see that, you're not up to the level of intelligence most Slashdot posters have. The problem is not Islam, it's sects of Islam. Just as most US Christians would disavow religious fundamentalists, these sects are not part of mainstream Islam.
One reason is we'd have to pay workers overtime to work on a weekend day.
Since Sarkozy's dad was an immigrant, I don't think he's against immigration. He actually wants to increase skilled immigration to France. He is for law and order, though, and not for people (immigrant or not) breaking the laws. I don't see how that's "anti-immigration."
Just because you're not influential doesn't mean you're active. Libertarians are pretty darn active to try to get their message out there. They have to be.
Actually, it's often the French themselves who don't practice religious tolerance: they banned Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in state schools. They believe in a secular state and take it to the extent of not practicing freedom of religion.
Actually, the problems in both England and France (the ones bombing the subway, plotting to blow up planes in England and setting cars on fire outside of Paris) are second- or third-generation immigrants. Their parents completely assimilated to the extent that many of their parents didn't practice Islam much at all, and when the disenchanted kids hear a bit more about Islam on a trip home to Pakistan, they fall completely into it and want to bomb their home countries. I have no idea why this is, but it's not a matter of immigrants assimilating because their parents have already assimilated completely in most cases.
He wouldn't have gotten far, because he never knew Hungarian:) His dad was Hungarian, his mom was French and his parents were estranged. He rarely saw his dad and was never taught Hungarian.
Since Segolene Royal once tried to ban Japanese anime from French airwaves and spoke out against allowing violent TV shows and the like, I doubt she's really into freedom of media either. All in all, the world is better off with Sarkozy.
France also has an interesting take on this idea-- they have a secular government, and so they prevented Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in schools (which are state-run). That would fly in the face of everything America stands for, but in France, maintaining secularism was more important than assimilating minorities (and accepting their religion) or freedom of speech.
So, not all Western countries have the same values.
It's not equally so in the US. The Economist did a survey on this a few months ago. Muslims make up a large percentage of the population, probably equal to blacks in the US, but they do not have the status that blacks have in the US. There is no Colin Powell or Condi Rice or Barack Obama. Muslims have very little representation in government, in business, or even on TV. It is not the same situation at all.
We know nobody cares about that stuff in France, that's obvious. The point was that in America, all that would be a huge deal and Royal wouldn't have had a chance of running for president because of it. (And why do you mention that his wife was divorced previously?)
I don't see why that's a big deal at all that Sarkozy doesn't mention his wife. He said those things about his wife because they were married and he loved her, and he stopped saying those things when she left him for another man. It makes sense that he would stop talking then. What's he going to say? "I can be a better president because I have been humbled by my cheating wife?" Where's the proof that he had this editor sacked?
Actually, she was too conservative for many socialists to support her as well, and many in her own party didn't agree with her ideas. She wanted to send young offenders to the military, for example, and punish them, and she wanted to be tough on crime. She was socialist in one big way-- spending a lot of money and raising taxes to pay for it.
Is Sarkozy really for big corporations? That's the insinuation of many, but I haven't seen policies that back that up. It seems that his policies towards jobs-- allowing people to work more than 35 hours without taxes, easing the rules on firing workers, etc.-- are geared more towards allowing workers to earn more and companies to create more permanent jobs rather than temporary or part-time ones and end France's unemployment. Royal's solution was to build more housing for poor people, rather than work on creating jobs.
Sarkozy is actually very protectionist of French corporations not being bought out by international companies, which is technically a position against big business... because those businesses actually want to be bought out/merged with larger companies. How else is he pro-corporation?
Slashdot Mirror
That's how it is in regular elections, but primary elections are to decide which candidate among many in a party will represent that party. Therefore, you can only vote for one side (because you can't be a member of two parties at once) and some states require you to be a registered member of that party to vote in that party's primary. In others, you just show up, take a Democrat or Republican ballot and do your thing.
Ron Paul was not "blaming America for 9/11"... you need to listen to what he said again. He simply said that we need to look at reasons for why it happened. If a hornet stings me, I can go and see if I left something lying around to attract the hornets. That would be the smart thing to do. Does that mean I'm to blame? No, the hornet stung me and I will still blame the hornet. But, I want to prevent it from happening again so I'll look to see if I had any part in a contributing factor to the attack.
o f-cia-osama-unit-why-they-attack-us/
That's simply what Ron Paul was saying. Look at his history of comments and writings-- he is very patriotic, a 20-year congressman, and he loves America and the Constitution. He was not blaming America at all. That is a straw man that Rudolf set up to make himself look good for the crowd.
The CIA's former head of the bin Laden and al Qaeda unit, Michael Scheuer, had this to say:
"Last week, Representative Paul did all Americans an immense service by simply pointing out the obvious: Our Islamist enemies do not give a damn about the way we vote, think, or live. Though any country they ruled would surely not look like ours, they are motivated by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam, its lands, and its believers...
Of the eighteen presidential candidates now in the field from both parties, only Mr. Paul has had the courage to square with the average American voter. We are indeed hated and being warred against because we are over there, and not for what we are and how we live. Our failure to recognize the truth spoken by Mr. Paul and spelled out for us in hundreds of pages of statements by Osama bin Laden since 1996 is leading America toward military and economic disaster.
And no matter how you view Mr. Pauls words, you can safely take one thing to the bank. The person most shaken by Mr. Pauls frankness was Osama bin Laden, who knows that the current status quo in U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is al-Qaedas one indispensable ally, and the only glue that provides cohesion between and among the diverse and often fractious Islamist groups that follow its banner."
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/05/22/fmr-chief-
Sorry to burst your bubble, but just because Obama says that he'll respect the Constitution doesn't mean he will. Take a look at Ron Paul-- in 20 years in Congress, he is the only politician who has actually stood up for what the Constitution actually says. Obama isn't that bad, but he has gotten worse lately. (He's a senator for my state, so I'm prone to liking him but he seems to be more and more like the other ones as time goes on.)
If you read about the history of tuition rates, they actually started to go UP in a huge way when the government got involved in student loans. Colleges saw that the government was going to pay for students to attend, so they raised prices accordingly. Tuition and fees at many schools are now going up 15% a year and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. Does Obama realize that? When the government is paying, the receiver of the money knows that they can shake it down and the money will never run out because the government can just print more (which makes everyone poorer). I'm not saying that student loans should go away, but I firmly believe that tuitions would not be going up in such a big way if they didn't exist. Even 20 years ago, the price of college was a tiny percentage of what it is now. It's really becoming a burden on 20somethings.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8Hfa7vT02lA
I like Ron Paul because he's the only one who will actually talk about these issues or acknowledge they exist. No one else talks about how the Federal Reserve causes inflation. No one else will talk about the REASONS things happen. I appreciate Ron Paul so much for what he brings to the table.
Check the Wikipedia article... it's covered extensively there. He's in no way a racist. If you're truly a libertarian, he comes closest to your ideas. I think he would believe in the libertarian idea of open borders if they could ever actually exist-- if they existed for all countries and from America to all countries. Just opening the border to Mexico comes nowhere near the libertarian vision of open borders, especially when states have welfare in place and illegal immigrants are benefiting from American taxpayers in a large way. He is against birthright citizenship (to those who are here illegally) because many people come over here just to have children so that their kids can be Americans, and their births are paid for by the US or state governments. How is it libertarian to support that? He used to be an obstetrician in Texas and said that he was often required to report to the hospital within 30 minutes to deliver the babies of illegal immigrants, whose births would be on the state and who had never and would never pay taxes.
Illegal immigrants can even collect Social Security and there are talks of building a Social Security office in Mexico City. Can you believe that? How can you get Social Security without a Social Security number?... yet it's possible and it's done through forging or stealing a Social Security number, and it doesn't matter because Congress has ruled they can still collect. That's the policy of a world gone mad. Even if they steal someone else's SS# to do it, they can collect benefits. I have a friend who is here on a H1-B visa from China; she actually pays Social Security and Medicare snd so does her employer but she would never be allowed to collect on them... yet illegal immigrants, not on visas, who don't pay income taxes, are given amnesty to do exactly that? How is that fair? She pays full income taxes on her salary. Why are Mexican illegal immigrants given carte blanche when a Chinese legal immigrant can't collect? It's hardly fair.
If there was no welfare, open borders could exist and I believe Ron Paul would be for them. I am a tried-and-true libertarian, but I think that unless all social welfare is gotten rid of, open borders are not a possibility, and I am for securing the borders to prevent that from happening.
I find it amazing that illegal immigrants are given such cushy treatment in the US. A friend of my mom's had a terrible time trying to collect on her Social Security off her dead husband when she turned 62; the process took upwards of a year of paperwork. It seems she would have been better off forging a Social Security number (a felony, btw) in the first place and living in Mexico.
But anyway, Ron Paul is most likely the one who fits your views the best. I urge you not to discount him simply because of that.
As someone who has moved from a red state to a blue state, I just can't agree with you on this one, mate. Are Texas and North Carolina net negatives on the federal government? I'm just not buying this argument.
Have to disagree. Giving the rights to the states does protect the minority-- if you live in a state with policies you don't like, it's much easier to change than at the federal level, and if not you can move to another state with policies more amenable to yours.
Yes, but the idea is that without government requirements and regulations (and taxes!), it would be so much easier to start a business, create new jobs, and switch jobs that the poor would be better off.
Listen to Ron Paul's ideas on how to help the poor. He really tells the truth-- everyone else just says to raise taxes or lower taxes, but he comes up with actual plans. The Federal Reserve rewards Wall Street at the expense of poor people with inflation.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul334.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=peBGJwE9NXo
You're right on-- that guy has no idea what he's talking about.
Yes, I would consider that a problem.
First of all, it's probably a dog on your feet, not a cow.
p
Secondly, cows actually are quite intelligent as far as animals go, right below the pig (which is as intelligent as a human 4-year-old), more than the dog and they do have feelings-- if they are hurt by someone (cow or person), they remember it and even can hold a "grudge." http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenlivescows_knowhow.as
Most leather comes from India and China. China has no animal cruelty laws on any level and slaughters dogs and cats for their fur on a routine basis. Then, they use the skins for leather. Many of them are skinned alive because it's cheaper. "Hundreds of thousands of dog and cat skins are traded in Europe each year; it's estimated that 2 million dogs and cats are killed in China each year in order to meet this demand." [http://www.peta.org.uk/feat/feat-china.asp]
There's no question that all these animals feel pain when, for example, their throats are slit while they're still alive, they're bludgeoned to death, or in the case of the poor turtle, slowly hacked away for steak by customers until they bleed to death.
When you purchase something made of leather, you're supporting all this.
Do you have a link for the random raids? I thought the raids were after riots or crimes in the area.
Sarkozy did steal some voters from Jean Marie Le Pen, but I believe most people voted for his relatively sound economic policies than his race. There was a woman in the election and few people mentioned that. The main thing is that he's trying to lift them out of that life by giving them jobs, so that there are some Muslims represented in politics and on TV and perhaps things can change in France. According to this article, the so-called "racaille" even like his ideas to help get them jobs, they just don't like being stopped by police: http://news.sawf.org/Lifestyle/35788.aspx I believe it's more up to the individual police officers rather than a higher-up in government on who exactly to stop. (He could have told them to focus on an area with 40% unemployment and higher crime statistics, which makes total sense anyway.)
Who terrorized London and the rest of England for years, causing the UK to be covered in police cameras and not have trash cans in the tube? The IRA (born out of conflict between Catholics and Protestants). Who committed genocide in Albania? The French (Catholic). Who conducted the Crusades? Who bombed abortion clinics and the Olympics in the US? Hitler invoked God and the Bible before he killed six million Jews. I could go on. It's completely ridiculous to start a tirade against an entire religion. If you don't see that, you're not up to the level of intelligence most Slashdot posters have. The problem is not Islam, it's sects of Islam. Just as most US Christians would disavow religious fundamentalists, these sects are not part of mainstream Islam.
One reason is we'd have to pay workers overtime to work on a weekend day.
Since Sarkozy's dad was an immigrant, I don't think he's against immigration. He actually wants to increase skilled immigration to France. He is for law and order, though, and not for people (immigrant or not) breaking the laws. I don't see how that's "anti-immigration."
Just because you're not influential doesn't mean you're active. Libertarians are pretty darn active to try to get their message out there. They have to be.
The French president has more powers than any in Europe, and is half-king. They can even dissolve the National Assembly. It definitely matters.
Actually, it's often the French themselves who don't practice religious tolerance: they banned Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in state schools. They believe in a secular state and take it to the extent of not practicing freedom of religion.
Actually, the problems in both England and France (the ones bombing the subway, plotting to blow up planes in England and setting cars on fire outside of Paris) are second- or third-generation immigrants. Their parents completely assimilated to the extent that many of their parents didn't practice Islam much at all, and when the disenchanted kids hear a bit more about Islam on a trip home to Pakistan, they fall completely into it and want to bomb their home countries. I have no idea why this is, but it's not a matter of immigrants assimilating because their parents have already assimilated completely in most cases.
He wouldn't have gotten far, because he never knew Hungarian :) His dad was Hungarian, his mom was French and his parents were estranged. He rarely saw his dad and was never taught Hungarian.
Since Segolene Royal once tried to ban Japanese anime from French airwaves and spoke out against allowing violent TV shows and the like, I doubt she's really into freedom of media either. All in all, the world is better off with Sarkozy.
You have smart comments, but then it all devolves into racism at the end, which tempers the smart things you said before. :)
France also has an interesting take on this idea-- they have a secular government, and so they prevented Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in schools (which are state-run). That would fly in the face of everything America stands for, but in France, maintaining secularism was more important than assimilating minorities (and accepting their religion) or freedom of speech.
So, not all Western countries have the same values.
It's not equally so in the US. The Economist did a survey on this a few months ago. Muslims make up a large percentage of the population, probably equal to blacks in the US, but they do not have the status that blacks have in the US. There is no Colin Powell or Condi Rice or Barack Obama. Muslims have very little representation in government, in business, or even on TV. It is not the same situation at all.
We know nobody cares about that stuff in France, that's obvious. The point was that in America, all that would be a huge deal and Royal wouldn't have had a chance of running for president because of it. (And why do you mention that his wife was divorced previously?)
I don't see why that's a big deal at all that Sarkozy doesn't mention his wife. He said those things about his wife because they were married and he loved her, and he stopped saying those things when she left him for another man. It makes sense that he would stop talking then. What's he going to say? "I can be a better president because I have been humbled by my cheating wife?" Where's the proof that he had this editor sacked?
Actually, she was too conservative for many socialists to support her as well, and many in her own party didn't agree with her ideas. She wanted to send young offenders to the military, for example, and punish them, and she wanted to be tough on crime. She was socialist in one big way-- spending a lot of money and raising taxes to pay for it.
Is Sarkozy really for big corporations? That's the insinuation of many, but I haven't seen policies that back that up. It seems that his policies towards jobs-- allowing people to work more than 35 hours without taxes, easing the rules on firing workers, etc.-- are geared more towards allowing workers to earn more and companies to create more permanent jobs rather than temporary or part-time ones and end France's unemployment. Royal's solution was to build more housing for poor people, rather than work on creating jobs.
Sarkozy is actually very protectionist of French corporations not being bought out by international companies, which is technically a position against big business... because those businesses actually want to be bought out/merged with larger companies. How else is he pro-corporation?