So? I am glad I live in 2007 and not in 1907. Americans are VASTLY better off than we were back then. You can't argue that isn't the case. And it is relative to other countries, the US has seen much less inflation than the vast majority of the world in the past century. Sure goods cost more, but the monetary supply is also much higher. We aren't on a standard, and we pretty much never will be again. It would be impossible with globalisation and electronisation of wealth.

8/23/2007 8:28:44 PM

Obviously, you're not a tycoon

8/23/2007 10:13:16 PM

Quote :

"So? I am glad I live in 2007 and not in 1907. Americans are VASTLY better off than we were back then. You can't argue that isn't the case. "

Nobody can.....and nobody is. But that is despite bad monetary policy, not because of it.

Quote :

"And it is relative to other countries, the US has seen much less inflation than the vast majority of the world in the past century. "

Relevance? Other countries shoot themselves in the head, so we're pretty smart for only shooting ourselves in the foot?

Quote :

"Sure goods cost more, but the monetary supply is also much higher."

And it's not just coincidence. There's causation. An increased money supply makes the goods carry a higher nominal price, because each unit of money has been devalued.

Quote :

"It would be impossible with globalisation and electronisation of wealth."

Completely untrue.

8/24/2007 11:47:36 AM

Quote :

"But that is despite bad monetary policy, not because of it. "

i'd like for you to back that up a little bit.

8/24/2007 12:42:35 PM

Dunno if this specific link has been included in this thread, but just in case...

This is by far the most thorough, rational, and thoughtful analysis of the neo-conservatism... and why it should outright rejected:

http://www.calgary911truth.org/my_weblog/2007/05/congressman_ron.html

Anyone else somewhat unnerved that a Libertarian is the only true conservative presidential candidate in the 2008 race?

8/29/2007 1:13:57 AM

^
Very true. Today's Republican politician is a far cry from the classical liberal of yesterday.

Quote :

"Comprehensive Health Care Act by Ron Paul by Ron Paul Before the U.S. House of Representatives on August 2, 2007 Madame Speaker, America faces a crisis in health care. Health care costs continue to rise, leaving many Americans unable to afford health insurance, while those with health care coverage, and their physicians, struggle under the control of managed-care "gatekeepers." Obviously, fundamental health care reform should be one of Congress' top priorities. Unfortunately, most health care "reform" proposals either make marginal changes or exacerbate the problem. This is because they fail to address the root of the problem with health care, which is that government polices encourage excessive reliance on third-party payers. The excessive reliance on third-party payers removes all incentive from individual patients to concern themselves with health care costs. Laws and policies promoting Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) resulted from a desperate attempt to control spiraling costs. However, instead of promoting an efficient health care system, HMOs further took control over health care away from the individual patient and physician. Furthermore, the predominance of third-party payers means there is effectively no market for individual health insurance polices, thus those whose employers cannot offer them health benefits must either pay exorbitant fees for health insurance or do without health insurance. Since most health care providers cater to those with health insurance, it is very difficult for the uninsured to find health care that meets their needs at an affordable price. The result is many of the uninsured turn to government-funded health care systems, or use their local emergency room as their primary care physician. The result of this is declining health for the uninsured and increased burden on taxpayer-financed health care system. Returning control over health care to the individual is the key to true health care reform. The Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act puts control of health care back into the hands of the individual through tax credits, tax deductions, Health Care Savings Accounts (HSA), and Flexible Savings Accounts. By giving individuals tax incentives to purchase their own health care, the Comprehensive Health Care Act will help more Americans obtain quality health insurance and health care. Specifically, the Comprehensive Health Care Act: - Provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses. The tax credit is fully refundable against both income and payroll taxes. - Allows individuals to roll over unused amounts in cafeteria plans and Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA). - Makes every American eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA), removes the requirement that individuals must obtain a high-deductible insurance policy to open an HSA; allows individuals to use their HSA to make premiums payments for high-deductible policy; and allows senior citizens to use their HSA to purchase Medigap policies. - Repeals the 7.5% threshold for the deduction of medical expenses, thus making all medical expenses tax deductible. By providing a wide range of options, this bill allows individual Americans to choose the method of financing health care that best suits their individual needs. Increasing frustration with the current health care system is leading more and more Americans to embrace this approach to health care reform. For example, a poll by the respected Zogby firm showed that over 80% of Americans support providing all Americans with access to a Health Savings Account. I hope all my colleagues will join this effort to put individuals back in control of health care by cosponsoring the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act. "

8/29/2007 9:58:47 AM

^ Another dose of pragmatism by Ron Paul... nice post

8/29/2007 1:21:41 PM

It's a nice idea to give tax breaks/credits for healthcare but I don't think it addresses the overall problem that we have now with shady providers trying as hard as they can to deny coverage. I think we need to assure coverage for all essential healthcare. Sometimes you just have to tear the system down to make it work right.

8/29/2007 1:26:52 PM

he was just on 680am this afternoon

pretty much repeated his standard talking points on iraq and the flat tax

8/29/2007 5:45:12 PM

^the beauty of Ron Paul is that his policies are clear cut, simple and easily understood.

The downside is, he can come off as being rather boring in 1-on-1 interviews because it's like "ok Ron, you um, answered all the questions.... sooo.... thanks"

He REALLY shines in debates, where he can decimate the arguments and policies of his opponents.

8/31/2007 11:55:06 AM

what's up with everyone pulling out of the texas straw poll? mitt romney poured a ton of money in the iowa straw poll, and it would seem that texas would be a bigger deal for the candidates

8/31/2007 1:43:05 PM

^^libertarianism is definitely the most closed-form political philosophy (of those popular in america currently). this does not mean it is the best.

[Edited on August 31, 2007 at 5:48 PM. Reason : clarification]

8/31/2007 5:48:20 PM

Libertarianism to me, at least in the past, seemed to take conservative principles to an unhealthy extreme. It's been tagged for being "isolationist," for trying to cut too much out of the federal government, and for over-emphasizing individual liberties (generally speaking).

However, nowadays the US has over-extended itself abroad with the war, expanded the size of the federal government, generated a considerable national debt with increasing budget deficits, and encroached on individual liberties with the Patriot Act and warrantless wire-tapping.

Now, add all that together, and the Libertarian argument sounds more appealing. Ron Paul's point-of-view moves from the political extremes to a more moderate position by virtue of the neo-con influence in the GOP. The core conservative values inherent to Libertarianism now shine much brighter, overshadowing the more extreme positions this political philosophy traditionally held. The GOP has moved away from the conservative values that were once its calling card. Now Ron Paul can honestly call himself the true conservative in this race.

And yeah, he's crushing the mainstream GOP candidates in every debate b/c of it...

8/31/2007 6:39:50 PM

Quote :

"However, nowadays the US has over-extended itself abroad with the war, expanded the size of the federal government, generated a considerable national debt with increasing budget deficits, and encroached on individual liberties with the Patriot Act and warrantless wire-tapping. Now, add all that together, and the Libertarian argument sounds more appealing. Ron Paul's point-of-view moves from the political extremes to a more moderate position by virtue of the neo-con influence in the GOP."

Hit the nail on the head.

Our federal government has swung SO far to the other extreme, that Ron Paul's opposition rings true. It's not that he would create barebones federal government he envisions, but that he would UNDO so much of the retarded pork barrel political spending that has ravaged this country for decades. That's the key element for his campaign. Bringing our government back to a point of responsible spending, responsible taxation and ethical representation.

8/31/2007 8:41:08 PM

Quote :

"Libertarianism to me, at least in the past, seemed to take conservative principles to an unhealthy extreme."

The thing to keep in mind that, like all political thought, libertarianism runs along a spectrum of intensity.

At the far end, you have rabid, uncompromising people..unwilling to consider any notion that isn't pure libertarian principle. At the other end, you have people who just want to tone back gov't control to an earlier level.

The country was founded with some insights that are embraced by classical liberals-that true happiness requires freedom, and freedom requires limited government which means very small government. The Founders based our gov't on two key ideas. The first was to limit the power of the central gov't and the second was protection of our individual rights.

People have been subjected to so much gov't expansion in the past 60 years, that any reminder of the traditional foundations of limited gov't and individual rights is something new and exotic...a breath of fresh air.

Ron Paul is pretty much a middle-of-the-road libertarian. But I'm sure his ideas, which were basically the ideas of the Founders, seem more and more foreign and extreme to citizens being surrounded more and more by the nanny-state.

9/1/2007 12:12:54 AM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YDnWT4gCJSE

Is this what it looks like: A blatant refusal by the GOP to allow Ron Paul delegates to vote?

9/2/2007 7:03:21 PM

Quote :

"the beauty of Ron Paul is that his policies are clear cut, simple and easily understood."

We did great the last time we went with the candidate that was "simple and easily unerdstood".

9/3/2007 12:02:17 AM

Wow. You are so insightful. Maybe you should be a pundit, or maybe President. You seem to have this political business all figured out.

9/3/2007 12:13:14 AM

Not really
















Although not being a total mouthpiece for the government seems to help.

9/3/2007 12:30:23 AM

i think you'd have a helluva time finding Ron Paul supporters that you could reasonably describe as being ANY sort of mouthpiece for the gov't.

9/3/2007 12:46:53 AM

I was just responding to your posts and how I see them some of the time.


And I find myself agreeing with Mr. Paul on a lot of things.

9/3/2007 12:53:18 AM

haha, me? a gov't mouthpiece?




i mean, i'll give devils their due sometimes, and i'll speak up when i think people are just being ridiculous and/or unjust in their rants against the gov't, but i'm hardly a mouthpiece for the gov't.

i mean, for example, i voted for Michael Badnarik in 2004 (and BARELY talked myself into voting at all).

9/3/2007 2:50:22 AM

You don't have to vote to be a mouthpiece.















I may be wrong about that though.....and I honestly want to be wrong about that. It is really pointless though for us to continue arguing over what you are, or what you aren't, for another minute. you seem like a decent person either way.

9/3/2007 3:23:39 AM

no, i meant that i'm pretty distrusting of Uncle...like, to the point that I vote Libertarian sometimes.

[Edited on September 3, 2007 at 3:41 AM. Reason : regardless, thanks.]

9/3/2007 3:41:24 AM

Quote :

"ANNAPOLIS— After eleven days of presidential straw poll ballots cast at the Maryland Republican Party’s State Fair booth, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) was announced last night as the winner. The Maryland Republican Party’s first-ever presidential straw poll at the State Fair resulted in nearly 1,000 Marylanders casting a vote for their favorite Republican candidate for president. The straw poll was open to all voting age adults regardless of party affiliation, and the voter had to be present at the booth. The campaigns of all nine presidential candidates appearing on the ballot were invited to have a representative at the State Fair booth at all times. While most campaigns did not have a representative present, the Ron Paul campaign had full representation for all eleven days."

http://www.mdgop.org/News/Read.aspx?ID=5992

[Edited on September 5, 2007 at 6:39 PM. Reason : ag]

9/5/2007 6:39:39 PM

To Ron Paul:

Tone it down at the next debate. You're scaring the old people.

kthx


Btw, a nice attempt to remain unbiased by Chris Wallace...

To Paul, in response to his position on Iraq:"So you would have our troops take marching orders from Al qaeda?"

9/6/2007 1:33:01 AM

Paul got fucking pwnt by Huckabee, that was hilarious. Paul doesn't have the spine to be president, nuff' said.

9/6/2007 7:28:11 AM

How? I didn't see the debate.

9/6/2007 7:32:45 AM

Found it:

Quote :

""We've dug a hole for ourselves and we've dug a hole for our party," Paul said. "We're losing elections and we're going down next year if we don't change it, and it has all to do with foreign policy and we have to wake up to this fact." Huckabee responded sharply: "Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor, and that is more important [to] … the Republican party." "We have lost over 5,000 Americans killed in - we've lost over 5,000 Americans over there in Afghanistan, in Iraq and plus the civilians killed," Paul retorted. "How many more you want to lose? How long are you going to be there? How long - what do we have to pay to save face? That's all we're doing, is saving face. It's time we came home." A mixture of boos and applause that followed indicates just how divided even a Republican audience in New Hampshire is over the issue of Iraq. "

It sounds like Huckabee is a moron.

Honor? Fuck honor, this is about human lives, not some fucked up form of chivalric knight's code where you sacrifice soldiers lives to retain honor.

9/6/2007 8:45:33 AM

yeaaaa, i was watching that. i sure thought huckabee got pwnt, but i guess i'm just biased. although the moderators' constant disrespect towards paul combined with hannity's constant smart alec remarks afterwards would certainly want you to think paul got pwnt.

9/6/2007 9:50:32 AM

Huckabee certainly came out the loser in that argument as far as I'm concerned.

I also think Huchabee is a completely worthless candidate though, so I might have a bit of bias.

9/6/2007 10:11:14 AM

Americans would rather hear about honor and staying the course than what Ron Paul offers.

9/6/2007 9:05:21 PM

All Huckabee did was try to appeal to people pride.




Huckabee got owned by paul.

[Edited on September 6, 2007 at 9:57 PM. Reason : .]

9/6/2007 9:56:50 PM

Did you guys see how Ron Paul won the Fox news instant poll "text in who won the debate" by a LANDSLIDE, which sent Hannity into another conniption fit. He ACTUALLY tried to say that Ron Paul supports rigged the vote. Hahahahaha.

9/7/2007 1:07:21 PM

they did. It is well known that Paul supporters are rigging the polls.

9/7/2007 1:09:36 PM

Polls can be Rigged? NC State really isn't the number one choice of winning a championship this year? OMG

9/7/2007 1:20:35 PM

i'm not a big fan of ron paul, and it seemed to me that huckabee got his ass handed to him.

9/7/2007 1:28:00 PM

^ I thought the exchange with Huckabee was a close call, but in the end I think Ron Paul got the better of it. A lot of people think, as Huckabee said, that we really need to make sure we pull out on a high note in order to save face. Americans don't want to see us forced to retreat, or admit that we're wrong. I don't agree with that mentality, but I understand the sentiment.

Still, Ron Paul is routinely CRUSHING the other candidates on Iraq. I think Ron Paul is telling the public what they need to hear, while the other GOP candidates are saying what the public wants to hear.

9/7/2007 1:47:56 PM

Quote :

"they did. It is well known that Paul supporters are rigging the polls"

Rigging a few online polls, definitely.

Not this one, though.

http://picasaweb.google.com/J.SkyWave/FoxPoll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxQadgSkoA

They blocked attempts at more than one vote and that's proof. They set up the poll perfectly - Ron Paul just plain won.

They did the same thing with their last text-message poll specifically because of the Ron Paul spamming that had occurred at the previous MSNBC Debate polls. Fox saw that, and went with a text poll instead the first time. Paul got 28%, I believe. This time, they did the same thing, and he got 33%.

It is legit and here's why:

Ron Paul's voters are rabid. And I mean rabid. They are the most active, impassioned supporters of any Presidential candidate by far. I'm willing to bet that Ron Paul supporters at turned out at 10 times the rate of any other candidate's supporters, if not more.

All those loud audience cheers for him at a Republican debate? It's not because die-hard debate-attending Republicans hate the war, it's because Ron Paul people from all over the Northeast trekked there just to show well at the debate. Their supporters outside the stadium were overwhelming in number, to say the least. The whole UNH campus had been 'chalked' beforehand by supporters on their own time.

He's got 40,000+ registered volunteers making their own signs, handouts, grassroots created and funded tv/radio spots, booths at fairs, etc. This is all spontaneous by RP supporters, with absolutely no direction from the campaign.

Ron Paul consistently draws crowds in the hundreds, sometimes over 1,000, for plain ol' speeches.

More evidence: He polled, at the time, even lower than other bottom-rung candidates in the 2nd quarter....yet he raised 2, 3, and 5 times as much money as they did, with an average donation of less than $100. In the end, he had more cash on hand than all the rest of the bottom-tier combined. The Donor/supporter ratio is incredibly high.

That's why he won the Fox poll...not spamming.

It's also why, at any post debate blog or article on a major news website, 50+% of the debate comments mention Ron Paul positively.

If it's spamming, are those spammers also simultaneously creating hundreds of different usernames and posting unique messages on every blog on the internet?

His supporters also skew young and techie - further adding to their higher text-vote participation.

[Edited on September 7, 2007 at 2:03 PM. Reason : Donator is not a word ]

9/7/2007 1:52:21 PM

^well put. nutsmackr, I was specifically referring to this poll, which could not be rigged. and im a pretty good poll rigger.

9/7/2007 2:04:02 PM

kick ass....GO RON PAUL!!

9/7/2007 2:28:32 PM

ron paul is right on Iraq and the middle east and war

and that's about it

ron paul on the domestic front....ehhhh, i'm not so sure about all that



[Edited on September 7, 2007 at 3:45 PM. Reason : .]

9/7/2007 3:42:58 PM

Too bad young people don't vote in real elections.

9/7/2007 3:49:11 PM

Quote :

"ron paul on the domestic front....ehhhh, i'm not so sure about all that"

a small federal gov sounds good to me.

9/7/2007 3:53:14 PM

yeah, sounds good to me

but the impression i get from paul is he wants an anemic federal government

9/7/2007 4:05:24 PM

I don't think "anemic" is actually possible. The best he could do is reduce it to "moderately overweight".

9/7/2007 6:25:28 PM

^exactly.

Bush wanted to be the fucking King of the USA, but he only got away with taking away a half dozen of our civil liberties. At Best, Ron Paul could maybe UNDO the retardedness we have put in place for the last couple of decades.

9/7/2007 7:52:20 PM

im officially a ron paul support, ive pledged and bought a tshirt and mug, fo Ron

9/7/2007 7:55:29 PM

^^enough reason for me to vote for him.

9/9/2007 10:12:08 AM

Quote :

"Peggy Noonan delivers a warning to the Republican presidential pack: “The debate was full of fireworks about Iraq, about its essentials--the rightness of the endeavor, and what should rightly be done now. From the libertarian Ron Paul a blunt argument against the war: We never should have gone in and we should get out. ‘The people who say there’ll be a blood bath are the same ones who said it would be a cakewalk. . . . Why believe them?’ His foreign policy: ‘Mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend our country, defend our borders.’ After Mr. Paul spoke, it seemed half the room booed, but the other applauded. When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something’s going on. “Ron Paul’s support isn’t based on his persona, history or perceived power. What support he has comes because of his views. As he spoke, you could hear other candidates laughing in the background. They should stop giggling, and engage in a serious way.” Those clowns will be laughing out of the other side of their mouths come election day, when the GOP ship sinks straight to the bottom. Noonan spoils her good advice, however, by praising Huckabee for his pious comeback: we can’t be “divided,” we have to be “united,” and “history will judge whether we were right to go in, but for now, ‘we’re there.’” Maybe the Huckster is the frontrunner, she muses, and “we just don’t know it.” Yeah, sure, Peggy: he’s got the trailer-park vote, and the “fair tax” vote. All he needs now is $50 million, a $500 haircut, and a squadron of new speechwriters flown in from AEI, and before you know it, he’ll be the New McCain, zipping around the country in the Bromide Express, pontificating about how A Nation Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand, and wearing a stovepipe hat. -- Justin Raimondo"

9/9/2007 10:27:15 AM