where does all the money he raises go?

you hear about how much money his mainly internet donors pump into him, and then he speaks at the Charley-Sue County Fair.

take out a fucking commercial man.

7/25/2011 1:24:32 PM

He has a very net savvy base. Why complain about the MSM and GOP establishment when you could run riot on them online? Why the lack of a real campaign to win?

7/25/2011 1:33:22 PM

Actually, a new commercial came out recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNIeOB0whI

Pretty well done, I'd say.

7/25/2011 1:37:16 PM

well put it on every major channel.

7/25/2011 1:51:49 PM

Have you seen any other candidates with TV ads running on cable? It's way fucking early, dude.

[Edited on July 25, 2011 at 1:55 PM. Reason : to be fair, I don't watch cable at all, so it's possible that others have]]

7/25/2011 1:55:07 PM

so what youre saying is ron paul likes to follow the crowd?

7/25/2011 1:55:37 PM

I'm saying it's July 2011 and we're a good 6 months off from primary season.

I agree somewhat, though. Ron Paul could benefit from getting his ad running before the others.

[Edited on July 25, 2011 at 2:01 PM. Reason : ]

7/25/2011 1:56:11 PM

opposes abortion = not a true libertarian

7/25/2011 3:18:09 PM

A "true libertarian" isn't currently electable anywhere in the world. Purism isn't a solution. Prioritize the issues. Abortion isn't going to change. Foreign policy could change if we had the right President.

7/25/2011 3:29:28 PM

Paul gets big endorsement ahead of crucial Iowa contest

Quote :

"Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has fresh bragging rights after picking up what is surely a coveted endorsement on Monday. Cory Adams - the Republican chairman of Story County in Iowa – endorsed the Texas congressman's presidential bid at a campaign event in Ames, Iowa. That's significant for a few reasons. Ames is the largest city in Story County, home to over 50,000 residents. And it is in this city that a widely-watched showdown between the GOP presidential candidates will play out on August 13. The Ames Straw Poll will test the candidates' popularity and could be a sign of their electability. Having the endorsement of such an influential political figure in and around Ames will surely give Paul's campaign something to boast about as it aims for a strong showing in that contest. Adams explained to CNN the rationale behind his endorsement of Paul. "I try to go for the candidates that line up mostly with the values, the principles of the [nation's] founders," Adams said. "Out of all the candidates in this cycle, I found Ron Paul to be the one with the longest, most consistent voting record to back up those principles and concepts.""

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/25/paul-gets-big-endorsement-ahead-of-crucial-iowa-contest/

7/25/2011 4:33:27 PM

All of Paul's ideas that are actually electable have already been included in the tea party republicans. He's a crazy outlier and always will be. Even if he were to magically become an electable candidate, the powers that be within his own party would shut him down. Stop wasting your breath talking about him.

[Edited on July 25, 2011 at 4:41 PM. Reason : .]

7/25/2011 4:40:15 PM

That's very defeatist of you. No one said it would be easy. Ron Paul was fringe 4 years ago. Now his ideas are becoming mainstream.

7/25/2011 4:43:12 PM

But HE is not. He's still the goofy old gynecologist always going on about gold GOLD GOLD!

7/25/2011 5:21:18 PM

Quote :

"opposes abortion = not a true libertarian"

I know. Thinking a child shouldn't be killed really means you are against gov't control of everything. I guess being anti-murder and anti-robbery also make you not a libertarian, right?

Quote :

"All of Paul's ideas that are actually electable have already been included in the tea party republicans."

Not really. The Tea Party doesn't have much to say on foreign wars, last time I checked.

7/25/2011 9:29:28 PM

Quote :

"Now his ideas are becoming mainstream."

Why isn't he?

7/26/2011 10:16:34 AM

7/26/2011 2:20:44 PM

Gold-backed currency? That's crazy talk. Faith-based currency controlled by the banking elite that may or may not have our best interests at heart? Now that's what I call sensible.

[Edited on July 26, 2011 at 2:27 PM. Reason : ]

7/26/2011 2:25:57 PM

7/26/2011 2:30:10 PM

Troll your heart out, babe. You know you've only got one horse in the race, and he's it. Ideal? No. Who else are you going to vote for though, really? Any other non-interventionists with even a remote shot at the Presidency? That's what I thought.

7/26/2011 2:55:51 PM

Are you going to keep ignoring my questions?

If his ideas are mainstream and he has a chance of winning, why are his poll numbers so flat from the end of the 2008 race til now? Feel free to reference the statistics you ignored earlier.

The GOP primary numbers, that is. Since that's what matters right now unless you want to run a 3rd party campaign.

What makes you think he can get to the top of this GOP heap so much that you'd ignore Gary Johnson and throw so much faith behind this guy?

[Edited on July 26, 2011 at 3:47 PM. Reason : x]

7/26/2011 3:44:29 PM

I think he is becoming mainstream. When I say people are warming up to his ideas, I mean they're also warming up to him. He was being lambasted routinely 4 years ago. Now he's admired and respected when he appears on television. He's getting major endorsement from state party leadership and gets positive coverage on major political websites.

His poll numbers are simply not flat from 2008. He was getting less than 1% and at most 4-5% in polls running up to the Republican primary. Now he's getting double digit support in some areas. He polls better against Obama than any other Republican. So, your assertion that he's made zero headway is wrong.

[Edited on July 26, 2011 at 3:51 PM. Reason : ]

7/26/2011 3:47:53 PM

What about the primary poll numbers?

7/26/2011 3:48:21 PM

I mean, in NH for instance, Romney is still far and away the frontrunner. I don't think he can stay at 40% while Bachmann and Paul are at 10%, especially once the debates start up. It's too early to really say if those polls have any validity.

7/26/2011 3:58:24 PM

90% of the country are idiots, who cares what they think. They pick their fucking cereal based on what 2 cent toy comes in the box. These are the same functioning retards that just elected George Bush and Barack Obama in the last three elections. The former was a war mongerer that basically robbed the country blind. The latter is by all accounts the worst President in the history of the United States.


With the people who have any goddam sense and financial knowledge, Ron Paul is very well respected and is well known as the only candidate who actually gives a fuck about the average American.

7/26/2011 8:08:59 PM

Too bad he opposes abortion.

7/26/2011 10:20:49 PM

I think its pretty rad to go to a currency whose value is dictated by yearly mining output. We could probably mitigate that a bit by having the central bank post monthly dollar-to-gold conversion values via telegraph to all major cities.

7/27/2011 6:06:58 AM

Quote :

"via telegraph to all major cities."

lol

7/27/2011 7:56:24 AM

Quote :

"I think its pretty rad to go to a currency whose value is dictated by yearly mining output. We could probably mitigate that a bit by having the central bank post monthly dollar-to-gold conversion values via telegraph to all major cities."

I think it's pretty rad to have a currency whose value is dictated by unaccountable bankers, who literally create as much as they want and give it to whoever the fuck they want. All the while, the people have absolutely no recourse because the Fed is "private" or "independent" and not subject to democratic input.

In any case, gold is not easy to mine, and not enough gets mined each year to cause major price fluctuation. You know what does cause major price fluctuations, though? When the Fed creates 16 trillion dollars and hands it over to banks, many of them foreign.

The American left has to catch up on this issue. The Federal Reserve is not a benign institution. Anyone with a basic understanding of how it functions recognizes that. Ignorance is not an excuse.

7/27/2011 12:03:52 PM

Quote :

"His poll numbers are simply not flat from 2008. He was getting less than 1% and at most 4-5% in polls running up to the Republican primary. Now he's getting double digit support in some areas. He polls better against Obama than any other Republican. So, your assertion that he's made zero headway is wrong."

Read my post again. Of course he's more popular than at the start of the cycle in 2008. No one knew who he was. My baseline was the New Hampshire primary, a primary which is more heavily weighted towards libertarian voters and thus can be reasonably expected to be an upper boundary of his support at a state level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_Republican_primary,_2008

roughly, 8%

A nationwide Gallup poll dated today: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html

roughly, 8%

The most recent NH Primary poll: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nh/new_hampshire_republican_presidential_primary-1581.html

9%

My assertion that, since the NH primaries in 2008, he hasn't gained much in poll numbers is clearly true. My baseline for his support in my previous posts has always been the NH primary in 2008. You changed it to the start of the 2008 cycle to make your point, which is true, but in no way addresses my proven point: that even during the 2009-2011 upswing of libertarian ideas, he's still not growing from the upper boundary of his 2008 support. Libertarians need a better candidate, likely one that will adhere to a simpler, more familiar fiscal policy of monetarism and not the confusing heterodoxy of a totally free market for currency and the belief that only government can create business cycles. No one is arguing against transparency at the Fed here (well, I'm not arguing against it), what people don't want is the pre-20th century panics and the policy that brought about the movement for free silver, greenbacks, etc in the first place.

That candidate, I believe, could be more acceptable to people like me. That and I don't accept that taking away programs that do nothing to bust budgets like WIC or college aid for truly needy students.

Quote :

"The American left has to catch up on this issue. The Federal Reserve is not a benign institution. Anyone with a basic understanding of how it functions recognizes that. Ignorance is not an excuse."

I think they can accept an argument for transparency, but you'll have a hard time making a historical argument in favor of the aforementioned system that gave rise to popular movements for expanded credit, greenbacks, free silver, etc. People can't fall back on being subsistence farmers as easily now.

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 4:42 PM. Reason : x]

7/27/2011 4:37:22 PM

You're comparing actual primary results (where many of the candidates had already dropped out) to polls of likely primary voters 6 months before the actual primaries happen. That's not a valid comparison, simply due to the fact that there are more candidates in the ring than there will be when the primary rolls around.

All things considered, I'd rather have Gary Johnson be making headway, but it's not going to happen. Either we get Romney/Obama (virtually the same person), or we get someone different. If we don't get someone different, then we're just fucked, but I'm not prepared to give up yet.

Quote :

"I think they can accept an argument for transparency, but you'll have a hard time making a historical argument in favor of the aforementioned system that gave rise to popular movements for expanded credit, greenbacks, free silver, etc. People can't fall back on being subsistence farmers as easily now."

This isn't a coherent argument. The problem isn't just transparency, it's that the whole system is built on debt, money creation, voter dependency, and perpetual warfare. As long as the Fed has a "dual mandate" and monetary policy is seen as a way to fund deficits and fuel booms, these problems will continue to build. Greenspan is a monetarist. Bernanke is a monetarist. Both are responsible for expanding credit and blowing up the bubble. A central bank can only work if you've actually got people running it that are willing to do what's unpopular, but since it's a quasi-political institution, that won't happen.

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 4:51 PM. Reason : ]

7/27/2011 4:44:24 PM

Well, the best measure we have of voter behavior and preferences at this point are those polls. What would you say is a better measure of his popularity among likely primary voters?

And I don't accept your either/or argument, and neither do most peer-reviewed economists.

Quote :

"Greenspan is a monetarist. Bernanke is a monetarist."

They're convenient boogeymen, but you're forgetting the flip side of monetarism and people like Paul Volcker in the late 70s and the other economists in the early 70s that were against wage/price controls instituted by Nixon that led to that inflation, which, by the way, isn't the major issue right now.

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 4:56 PM. Reason : x]

7/27/2011 4:54:46 PM

Quote :

"Well, the best measure we have of voter behavior and preferences at this point are those polls. What would you say is a better measure of his popularity among likely primary voters?"

I don't think there's a great measure right now. I'm not sure what you're expecting from me right now. Baseless optimism?

Quote :

"And I don't accept your either/or argument, and neither do most peer-reviewed economists."

Haha, great. I take any peer-reviewed economist's opinion with a grain of salt, given that they're educated by the very system that seeks to perpetuate itself. We're witnessing the end of U.S. hegemony. The gig's up, and it's becoming more clear by the day. We grew up in the glory days. Now we get to grow old while rebuilding our pathetic infrastructure...if we choose to stay here.

Quote :

"They're convenient boogeymen, but you're forgetting the flip side of monetarism and people like Paul Volcker in the late 70s and the other economists in the early 70s that were against wage/price controls instituted by Nixon that led to that inflation, which, by the way, isn't the major issue right now."

Like I said, it only works when the people at the wheel are willing to put on the brakes. Bernanke is backed into a corner. If he raises interest rates, we enter a depression. He can't lower interest rates. So, we're in perpetual borrow/print/spend mode, with no exit in sight.

7/27/2011 5:03:42 PM

hahah "peer reviewed economists"?

You mean like the universally rejected failure economists like Krugman (who are being paid by the administration to continue the big lie) or the failed policymakers like Summers who collected their billion dollar free payouts before leaving Obama's cabinet?

Or do you mean his lead economic advisors that fled in a panic to get their old jobs back this year as professors (i.e. can't get a real job) after they realized they literally were too horrible in the real world to make any headway?

Surely, you aren't talking about the "i just landed a tax-free billion" dollars but I cant figure out how to make a sandwich for lunch on my own Tim Geithner...


Get a grip. This will all be over soon. Stock some blackeye peas they have protein and fiber, you're going to need it lightweight.

7/28/2011 12:37:37 AM

The thing about doomsday predictions is that you can keep making them without any sort of justification, they're like conspiracy theories.

7/28/2011 9:41:52 AM

Economists are all charlatans. They have no clue what the fuck they are doing, and if they ever appear right, it is coincidence.

7/28/2011 9:49:10 AM

Quote :

"I take any peer-reviewed economist's opinion with a grain of salt, given that they're educated by the very system that seeks to perpetuate itself."

The "I don't accept your reality, so I substitute my own" argument is Austrian Economics in a nutshell. They've been excluded from the field due to a lack of academic rigor outside of their own fan clubs so they blame the rest of the profession for being corrupt and use boogeymen who have been wrong to symbolize anything that isn't in line with them. Why am I bothering? Your answer is always going to be "Oh yeah! You mean you believe in fiat currency like that FAILURE Y?" and an insistence on magical thinking which can't be proven wrong because 1) the markets will never be perfect enough for you, just like how "true socialism" will never be tried in order to satisfy Marxists and 2) no one is dumb enough to try your way and see what chaos the tearing down of the current world system entirely would mean. But hey, things suck and some people who are not on your side screwed up, so that validates your worldview and sticks everyone against you with dolts like Greenspan, right? Talk about fallacy...

Actually, what I'm more interested in now is not the endless list of criticisms of non-Austrian Economics (as if its all some amorphous blob) but rather the solutions. I'd prefer ones that don't begin with a long list of unproven axioms. Theories that don't assume so much are acceptable, since that's what the rest of us have to play with.

Quote :

"I'm not sure what you're expecting from me right now. Baseless optimism?"

Maybe accept the reality that your guy will probably end up alongside people like a long list of others in American history who developed a cult-like following and then ended up a footnote in history? If you form a 3rd party now, maybe you can get mentioned alongside Eugene Debs if you're lucky.

Quote :

"Economists are all charlatans. They have no clue what the fuck they are doing, and if they ever appear right, it is coincidence."

Welcome to the social sciences. Thank god I got out of trying to be a sociologist when I did.

[Edited on July 28, 2011 at 10:00 AM. Reason : x]

7/28/2011 9:59:38 AM

Quote :

"Actually, what I'm more interested in now is not the endless list of criticisms of non-Austrian Economics (as if its all some amorphous blob) but rather the solutions. I'd prefer ones that don't begin with a long list of unproven axioms. Theories that don't assume so much are acceptable, since that's what the rest of us have to play with."

Once again, you prove that you've never actually read Mises or Rothbard. Every point you make is addressed in the first two chapters of Human Action.

The primary axiom of Austrian economics is that people form priorities and act in ways that they believe will help them get what they want. That's self-evident. People are conscious beings.

7/28/2011 5:40:27 PM

Quote :

"Theories that don't assume so much are acceptable"

So in other words virtually all economic thought is more or less off the table?

7/28/2011 5:55:52 PM

Yeah, Austrian economics actually assumes less than any other economic school I know of. That's why mainstream economists are so critical of it. They say it doesn't have enough predictive power and doesn't make use of econometrics.

7/28/2011 5:58:07 PM

Keynesian economics is only promoted by government economists and the bribed educational administrators. Much to their dismay it has never been proven correct at anytime in its history, nor has it ever even been considered legitimate by real economists.

In fact, over the past decade (or 40 years really) it has been proven incorrect too many times to count.

Hell, if you want to go back further than that it was actually proven incorrect in the Great Depression/World War II.

Keynesians would have you believe that government stimulus and world war ii spending is what drove us out of a 21 year depression, despite the irrefutable evidence of 20+ years worth of horrible economic data.

In reality, the END of World War II sparked one of the greatest booms in US history in the 1950's.


Keynesian rose to power because it gives more power to governments because it emphasizes government spending at all costs. The shills out there like Krugman who are paid to write government sponsored op-eds promoting more government spending are the only ones who don't believe in Austrian Economics now that it has been yet again proven correct over the last decades false boom and subsequent bust.


There is a reason Keynesians always promote the fallacy that "economics is counter-intuitive". It's because if you think intuitively, Keynesian economics smells like total garbage to the casual observer. And that's because it is.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

Formal education is merely a biased entity designed to propagate favoured ideas. Few teach how to think rationally, but instead teach us to rely on indoctrination and memorization. Consequently, formal education has handed down, from one generation to the next, theories that not only clash with the reality of events, but insure confusion for years to come. - Martin Armstrong

[Edited on July 30, 2011 at 4:44 PM. Reason : a]

7/30/2011 4:35:10 PM

Ron is looking pretty good in the GOP Debates right now

8/11/2011 10:18:16 PM

yes and no. Unfortunately, I think the Iran with nukes thing is gonna kill him. and it's a shame, cause he's probably right

8/11/2011 11:58:37 PM

Quote :

"Economists are all charlatans. They have no clue what the fuck they are doing, and if they ever appear right, it is coincidence."

Ironically, this is a fairly strong argument for the implementation of Austrian theory. Since no-one knows what the fuck is going on, why not just let people make decisions on their own.


That being said, there is a lot of gray in implementation whether purists of any type like it.


And lets be honest, the REAL reason Keynesianism is popular not because it works (which we could debate all day) but because it provides intellectual cover for patronage by the political class.

[Edited on August 12, 2011 at 1:31 AM. Reason : asdf]

8/12/2011 1:31:15 AM

Quote :

"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion."

I posted this earlier in the thread, but when posting it I didn't actually notice Paul says that the Constitution is "replete with references to God."

areyoufuckingkiddingme

8/12/2011 11:16:51 AM

Quote :

"Ironically, this is a fairly strong argument for the implementation of Austrian theory. Since no-one knows what the fuck is going on, why not just let people make decisions on their own."

This argument in form is illogical, but frequently used to support a number of arguments, here are some examples:
We're not sure if there's a god, so let's just assume there is so we don't go to hell.
We're not sure if a fetus is really a child, so in order to avoid murdering someone, let's just assume it is and not allow abortion.

We're not sure which economic theory is correct, but that doesn't somehow validate your case simply by not validating others. It's an argument from ignorance, not knowing something cannot justify an argument.

Quote :

"And lets be honest, the REAL reason Keynesianism is popular not because it works (which we could debate all day) but because it provides intellectual cover for patronage by the political class."

Let's really be honest, the REAL reason free market capitalism is popular not because it works (which we could debate all day) but because it provides intellectual cover for theft by the economic class.

8/12/2011 4:49:23 PM

Quote :

"yes and no. Unfortunately, I think the Iran with nukes thing is gonna kill him. and it's a shame, cause he's probably right"

I'd probably vote for him based on his foreign policy alone and we all know that the president can project his foreign policy much more easily than they can their domestic policies.

I couldn't believe that he was brave enough to tell the real reason why Iran doesn't like us and justify irans right to have a nuke. I fell in love with him at that moment despite the fact that I disagree with most of his stuff.

It doesn't matter if i disagree with his other stuff, if we don't stop wasting money on other countries, we're screwed anyway.

8/13/2011 7:05:39 PM

His hard-line isolationist foreign policy stances are one of the bigger things that distance me from Ron Paul.

[Edited on August 13, 2011 at 7:34 PM. Reason : and I feel like I tend towards isolationism more than most of our politicians]

8/13/2011 7:34:01 PM

great showing by Ron Paul in Iowa losing 28%-27% to Bachmann.

Ultimately, its a setback though as Bachmann will get all the headlines and the media will ignore Paul because he is dangerous for the establishment.

If he'd won they'd do their best to downplay the event's significance but they'd still be forced to acknowledge he won the thing.

Hopefully, he picks up some Pawlenty supporters (eh, not sure it's going to happen) and hopefully this nutjob Perry will dilute Bachmann and Romney some.

8/14/2011 10:58:45 AM

Quote :

"great showing by Ron Paul in Iowa losing"

He sounds like the chicago cubs of presidential candidates, where you can be really excited about just not losing bad.

8/14/2011 12:06:33 PM

I would take Paul over Bachmann or perry, mostly because I think he'll listen to reason more than either of those two.

If Paul ever became president he'd realize really quickly how nut ball a lot of his ideas are, but that's fine.

8/14/2011 12:14:21 PM