Ron Paul wins California straw poll

[One Brow]

I don't take talking points from any political party and I don't rely on them to guide my beliefs. So, would Loggrad98 would agree I'm an independent? I'd say sirkickyass would not.

Ultimately, the whole conversation strikes me as a dispute about vocabulary. "Independent means no political loyalties" versus "Independent means a political centrist".

 

[sirkickyass]

I don't take talking points from any political party and I don't rely on them to guide my beliefs. So, would Loggrad98 would agree I'm an independent? I'd say sirkickyass would not.

Ultimately, the whole conversation strikes me as a dispute about vocabulary. "Independent means no political loyalties" versus "Independent means a political centrist".

Fair point. There is some crossover here though which makes it a bit tricky. If you say you have no political loyalties but you consistently agree with the stance of one side, is there a functional difference between that and being actually loyal? Where I'm coming from is "how independent are you really if you share the vast majority of your political beliefs with one of the major parties?"

Based on the definition above, FYI, I would qualify as an independent given that I'm not revising my opinions based upon whatever the consensus platform is. I don't think as classification goes any scheme in which I could plausibly qualify as independent has any real value, but that's the scheme people push on themselves sometimes. It's probably more useful to think about this as a percentage-basis reliability with which someone takes a particular party-aligned position.

 

[Duck Rodgers]

Good Paul interview by Jon Stewart:

www.thedailyshow.com

 

[babe]

Good Paul interview by Jon Stewart:

www.thedailyshow.com

Ron Paul for all I've ever seen treats people with respect and tries to set out his ideas from the fundamental American point of view. . . . . which must necessarily involve the axiom that the government is an agent of the citizen, and should be accountable to the people. He is a gentleman, and he truly is most importantly concerned about liberty for the humans.

If we had a congressionally-accountable FED which had to disclose its dealings to the public, it would go a long way to level the "playing field" for all of us, and would make it harder for the few very wealthy interests to "buy" favors from our government.

The restoration of the Glass-Stegal regulations on banks in the attempt to prevent fraudulent insider deals at our expense would go a ways towards that too.

 

[InGameStrategy]

Kicky, you look at everything as a dedicated card-carrying "progressive" would. to some that's looking at the world though a rosy set of optics. Just taking up this sort of proof against the objectivity of folks claiming to be "centrist" or independent makes you look nuts.

That's what's generally wrong with "progressives" nowadays, they really have abandoned the original meaning of the world "liberal" and just can't leave other folks alone.

Funny you mention that, babe. As for leaving folks alone, effective tax rates are among the lowest in decades, and regulation--at least in key sectors such as the finance sector, despite the recent history of mortgage crises and the insurance meltdown--are still amazingly tame.

Obama hasn't moved the bar much in either of those realms: while he further ballooned the deficit with the stimulus (which did save a million jobs or two but was far less effective than it could have been), he caved in to extending the highly deficit-expanding Bush tax cuts (which have not created/saved many jobs, as evidenced by the massive cash accumulation by corporations and welthy) and he hired Wall Street buddy Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

I imagine that you're against the Affordable Health Care Act (as was Ron Paul in the debates when he didn't protest the notion of letting an uninsured thirtysomething die), but like automobile insurance, mandatory health insurance spreads the risk of medical burden--and universal health care (which AHCA isn't) is implemented by a large number of industrialized countries. Even the non-communist ones <<sigh>>.

 

[babe]

Funny you mention that, babe. As for leaving folks alone, effective tax rates are among the lowest in decades, and regulation--at least in key sectors such as the finance sector, despite the recent history of mortgage crises and the insurance meltdown--are still amazingly tame.

Obama hasn't moved the bar much in either of those realms: while he further ballooned the deficit with the stimulus (which did save a million jobs or two but was far less effective than it could have been), he caved in to extending the highly deficit-expanding Bush tax cuts (which have not created/saved many jobs, as evidenced by the massive cash accumulation by corporations and welthy) and he hired Wall Street buddy Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

I imagine that you're against the Affordable Health Care Act (as was Ron Paul in the debates when he didn't protest the notion of letting an uninsured thirtysomething die), but like automobile insurance, mandatory health insurance spreads the risk of medical burden--and universal health care (which AHCA isn't) is implemented by a large number of industrialized countries. Even the non-communist ones <<sigh>>.

I appreciate both humor and thinking, if it's critical thinking. Sorta helps things in a discussion move along towards actual understanding.

I might be against an Act of Congress actually written bty healthcare cartelists and lobbyists, including Big Pharma, and then passed in the dead of night in multiple thousands of pages of "law" that the Congressmen actually haven't read or understood and which the media has not critically evaluated or reported truthful on, which passes costs on to future generations of taxpayers and prys open everybody's wallets to the tax collectors while destroying individual judgement and choice in what happens with our own bodies, but I actually want affordable health care provided by doctors who are not indoctrinated at medical schools dependent on "donations" from Big Pharma, and therefore who believe all we want is a magic pill to relieve temporarily what ails us.

I want affordable and effective health care I can choose for myself, and I want everybody else to have the same privilege.

I am very much aware of how "our" Republican cartelist-controlled legislators with the complicity of modern "liberal" bank-controlled Democrats have thrown away all the laws that prevent our banksters from robbing our public treasury while professing to be concerned either about getting people into homes they can't afford, for later repossession and resale, or directly transferring billions in printed fake "fiat" currency and future tax obligations into the very same bankster banks in the name of trying to "stimulate" temporary jobs for the needy.

Progressives today are very close kin to the state socialists of a hundred years ago. They want us all to be equal. They say they want to redistribute wealth for social justice, but when the propaganda has run its course the people will see these hucksters operating the government from the best mansions well-staffed by servants and the general population decimated from poor health care if not actual genocidal population management.

If you actually believe it will turn out different, you are not doing good critical thinking yet.