2012 US General Election Discussions: Start to Finish

[Gráinne]

I find it ironic that Michelle Bachman calls Obama a "socialist" and herself a strong Christian, when Jesus's sayings and actions were radically socialist for his time. Somehow, I don't think Bachmann and Santorum would even be in his constituency-and I'm a non-Christian.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

"In the repellent race to the bottom (no pun intended) it should be no surprise that Santorum did so well in the Iowa caucuses. Mitt Romney is in a major stall, and in a field of class clowns Rick Santorum stands out as particularly cartoonish. [snip] Santorum's win is not a referendum on who he is as a man (inhumane and ignorant), or who he is as a candidate (pandering and mean). It is simply the gasping statement of a thankfully dying breed of Americans -- those who fear, loathe or hate anyone different from themselves, who mistrust or reject the idea that government can and should be a force for good, and who detest even the slightest exposure to information or ideas that challenge their world view."

- Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center For Lesbian Rights, via press release.

Ah, from her mouth to god's ear. Especially the part about the gasping statement of a thankfully dying breed.

But are they really dying? According to mainstream news, which I was coerced into watching for a few minutes last night, the Republicans and the Democrats are neck and neck and it's anyone's election. Whatever. This past 4 years has shown me that there really is little difference between them anyway. Our elected officials are bought and paid for by corporations and the financial sector. But then I think of how much worse it might actually be if a republican got in. Then I remember Obama, a democrat, our great hope, signed National Defense Authorization Act.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Rick Santorum’s surprising second-place finish in Iowa comes after months of dogged campaigning throughout the sate’s 99 counties and more than 350 town halls. ThinkProgress tracked the former Pennsylvania senator throughout this period and has compiled a list of his top 10 most outrageous claims:

1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”

3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.

6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.

8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”

9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.

10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure.

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/0...gn-statements/

Addressing his record- As his voting record in Congress is more scrutinized, the Tea Party will be seething! The guy supported every Bush 43 "bigger government" plan. Plus, the many actions Bush proposed that had no source of funding- just put it on the gov credit cards!

On Bachmann- she has an uphill battle to keep her seat in MN. Love it! Getting the Tea Party out of our Congress is at least a plus in a better direction.

[MsDemeanor]

If you combine 8 and 10, the logical conclusion is that he believes his daughter should be denied health insurance coverage for life due to a pre-existing condition from birth. I doubt that he is capable of connecting the dots....

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

If you combine 8 and 10, the logical conclusion is that he believes his daughter should be denied health insurance coverage for life due to a pre-existing condition from birth. I doubt that he is capable of connecting the dots....

That's for sure! I was thinking this very thing. Then, there is Paul's "just let them die" stance due to not having insurance. Both of these stances just don't ring as respect for the sanctity of life these yahoos "appear" to believe so deeply in.

Between these two and Newt's total grandiosity about the whole damn election being about him is just nuts. I might have to tune into the debate Saturday to see if he goes postal on air versus Romney. Gingrich is something else- playing the "no going negative" sing song. He invented negative politics. After reading more about his mother's mental illness and the first marriage at age 19 to his HS teacher (Jackie) to which his mother said "raised him the rest of the way," I think his mental instability is quite clear.

And these people are running for president!

[Toughy]

So I am driving home from the VA listening to progressive radio....randi rhodes...and I hear 2 stories about Romney and Santorium and I had heard the Santorium one on Rachel last night.

Romney: He is taking his family on the 'great american road trip vacation' and they are going to take Seamus the Irish Setter family dog with them. Romney STRAPS Seamus to the roof of the vehicle....no not in a crate, actually just strapped down to the roof.........and drives off for vacation. Randi was not sure if the dog lived or not. But this kind of stupidity makes sense to me since Mitt (as an adult male Mormon) wears magic underwear.

Santorium: His wife had a stillborn 26 week old baby...that's 6.5 months...a sad thing for his family. Well, Santorium and wife leave the hospital by loading their other children (one as young as 2 yrs old) AND THE DEAD BABY, in mom's arms in the car and drive across Pennsylvania to grandma's house so grandma can hold and commune with the dead baby. Apparently all the kids got to hold and commune with the dead baby during the car trip. They have the dead baby with the family for about 24 hours before they take it to the mortuary.

I really wish the mainstream Republicans would take back their party. Not one of the Republicans in the race should be President. Even Jon Huntsman has been forced to take far right wing stances on things like abortion. And Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul are the ONLY Republicans in the race (past and present) who understand and believe evolution is the basis for life on this planet. The rest of them think their God created the world in 7 days and believe that is science.

I am getting tired of all of them. Let Nov come very very quickly.

[Julien]

Separation of church and state, what's that? Santorum's view. It is not a good thing.


http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/05/opinio...ss_igoogle_cnn

[Kobi]

This story doesnt do the interchanges justice. The local news had better coverage. I was especially pleased to see young metrosexual looking folks asking very pertinent questions for which the sanctimonious one had few useful retorts. They booed him right out of the building. Made me proud.

------------------------------------------------------

A crowd of mostly college-aged students at a New Hampshire town hall booed Rick Santorum when he compared gay marriage to polygamy. Santorum spoke at the College Convention 2012, a forum organized by New England College, which apparently drew a politically diverse crowd. BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray* transcribes the exchange between the student and Santorum:

"How you justify your belief based on these morals you have about all men being created equal when two men who want to marry the person that they love --"

Santorum cut her off and said "What about three men ... If you think it's ok for two, you have to differentiate with me why it's not OK for three."

The New York Times reports that people booed specifically when Santorum said "If you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that O.K.?” And some in the crowd booed again at the conclusion of the session. This is of course not the first time Santorum has caused conflict with his slippery slope-ish arguments. It also reminds us of Mitt Romney's very tense Q&A with the audience at a New Hampshire event Wednesday, where an Occupy Boston representative and a Chinese-American woman both asked Romney semi-hostile questions. With the Iowa caucuses over, it's "No More Mr. Nice Midwestern Crowd." More like "Live Free or Die" we suppose.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...arriage/47056/

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Toughy

So I am driving home from the VA listening to progressive radio....randi rhodes...and I hear 2 stories about Romney and Santorium and I had heard the Santorium one on Rachel last night.

Romney: He is taking his family on the 'great american road trip vacation' and they are going to take Seamus the Irish Setter family dog with them. Romney STRAPS Seamus to the roof of the vehicle....no not in a crate, actually just strapped down to the roof.........and drives off for vacation. Randi was not sure if the dog lived or not. But this kind of stupidity makes sense to me since Mitt (as an adult male Mormon) wears magic underwear.

Santorium: His wife had a stillborn 26 week old baby...that's 6.5 months...a sad thing for his family. Well, Santorium and wife leave the hospital by loading their other children (one as young as 2 yrs old) AND THE DEAD BABY, in mom's arms in the car and drive across Pennsylvania to grandma's house so grandma can hold and commune with the dead baby. Apparently all the kids got to hold and commune with the dead baby during the car trip. They have the dead baby with the family for about 24 hours before they take it to the mortuary.

I really wish the mainstream Republicans would take back their party. Not one of the Republicans in the race should be President. Even Jon Huntsman has been forced to take far right wing stances on things like abortion. And Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul are the ONLY Republicans in the race (past and present) who understand and believe evolution is the basis for life on this planet. The rest of them think their God created the world in 7 days and believe that is science.

I am getting tired of all of them. Let Nov come very very quickly.

I so agree- the field of GOP candidates is mind boggling. Why the hell the mainstream GOP puts up with this mess is beyond me. What bothers me the most is that a very small group of the Tea Party religious fringe does have the nation held hostage! Just the idea that they think it is OK to NOT act to create jobs due to beating Obama is insane! People are hurting and Congress could act.

Mainly, however, I have had it with the infiltration of religion upon personal rights and freedoms that have no business being handled by government, period. That is BIG government! And i am someone that values faith and spirituality. But feel it is personal.

I don't see much changing as the country is so divided and the order of the day is to be as mean spirited as possible. We are almost evenly split down the middle and just caught up in this whirlwind of hatred.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by AtLast

I so agree- the field of GOP candidates is mind boggling. Why the hell the mainstream GOP puts up with this mess is beyond me. What bothers me the most is that a very small group of the Tea Party religious fringe does have the nation held hostage! Just the idea that they think it is OK to NOT act to create jobs due to beating Obama is insane! People are hurting and Congress could act.

Mainly, however, I have had it with the infiltration of religion upon personal rights and freedoms that have no business being handled by government, period. That is BIG government! And i am someone that values faith and spirituality. But feel it is personal.

I don't see much changing as the country is so divided and the order of the day is to be as mean spirited as possible. We are almost evenly split down the middle and just caught up in this whirlwind of hatred.

That the country could be so divided when they are given a group of crazies to chose from and one sane incumbent, albeit relatively indistinguishable from a republican president, doesn't say much about the sanity of the country in general.

Although I suppose part of the problem is that corporate owned Madmen types frenetically and adeptly spin lies into reality with such success and regularity that most citizens wouldn't recognize the honest truth if it sat down with them at church and introduced itself. The other part of the problem is that most people are too apathetic, disinterested and just plain lazy to root out the truth for themselves and even if they did they are poorly prepared to decipher it from the propaganda. We've been buying the lies for so long the truth is buried so deeply you need experience in excavation to get to it. Selling the Republican snake oil to people is easier than pie at this point. The last piece is its all too overwhelming and depressing to fight, people feel powerless. Better to be blissfully blind cheerfully kicking at the same old enemies we have been taught for years are to blame for any and all our problems. The usual suspects like poor people, immigrants, homeless, jobless, terrorists, drug dealers, foreigners, atheists, queers, feminists, people of color and pretty much anyone who tries to pull the wool from our eyes are to blame. The power elite have done their jobs well.

And despite all the conservative complaints about big government they are prepared to continue to make the part of the government that infringes on our personal freedoms as huge as they can. The best government would be one that has a religious component. The only part of government they want to shrink is the part of government that demands equal treatment and that wants the corporations and the rich to pay their fair share, the part of government that feels a sense of responsibility for all its citizens and would spend some of government money (our money) on social programs and infrastructure. That's what they mean by small government.

[Kobi]

WARNING: Major sarcasm to follow. Try not to miss it


The Republican stuff to date has been kind of interesting to watch.

Romney, as my former governor, is just being himself....a fast talking used car salesman who is so slick most people dont even realize a lot of what he is promising is already in place. They also fail to remember Obamacare is just a federal enactment of the Romneycare he pushed thru this state i.e. mandatory health insurance, penalties for not having it, subsidies for premiums, cant be denied coverage etc. Of course Mitt rammed this thru without any mechanism in place to pay for it and then hightailed it out of the state. (It is a decent and affordable alternative to costly private insurance.) I see Mitt and I have the urge to duct tape his mouth shut just on principle.

Santorum, amuses me. He tries so hard to be sanctimonious. But all I can think of is he is fodder for a SNL skit on "Welcome to the Santitarium of Rick's Mind where the pretty colored pills can cure what ails you." He will play well in the Bible belt but, I expect, he will fizzle even quicker than Perry and Cain. People have real everyday concerns i.e. jobs, the housing crisis, the economic meltdown, the loss of savings and financial security, health care. Gay marriage, rehashing abortions, and the rest of the emotion/faith based stuff some republicans fall back on when they have nothing else of substance to offer, I expect will come back to bite them in the ass given the logistical issues of mere survival these days.

I like Ron Paul. He reminds me of Frank Perdue. I keep waiting for an advertisement of him espousing a "chicken in every pot". Seriously tho, I wouldnt vote for him but his economic stuff has some merit.

OMG I forgot Newt. When I think of Newt which is never, I see 3 witches hovering over a boiling cauldron. One says, "the recipe says add an eye of Newt. F*&^ it. I want this batch to be extra strong. Throw all of him in there!"

(End of sarcasm)



The person getting a lot of play here lately is Jon Huntsman. The Boston Globe has endorsed him, people around town are talking about him. Have to do some research cuz I dont know anything about him. Any one have any insights on where he stands on stuff?

Elections always worry me, more so during tough times. IMO, American voters are notorious for being un and undereducated consumers who have relatively narrow focuses when evaluating candidates during the best of times. They seem to have absolute tunnel vision during difficult times. This makes them very unpredicable and prone to vote with their emotions rather than their heads.

Kind of gives new meaning to....it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Toughy

So I am driving home from the VA listening to progressive radio....randi rhodes...and I hear 2 stories about Romney and Santorium and I had heard the Santorium one on Rachel last night.

Romney: He is taking his family on the 'great american road trip vacation' and they are going to take Seamus the Irish Setter family dog with them. Romney STRAPS Seamus to the roof of the vehicle....no not in a crate, actually just strapped down to the roof.........and drives off for vacation. Randi was not sure if the dog lived or not. But this kind of stupidity makes sense to me since Mitt (as an adult male Mormon) wears magic underwear.

Santorium: His wife had a stillborn 26 week old baby...that's 6.5 months...a sad thing for his family. Well, Santorium and wife leave the hospital by loading their other children (one as young as 2 yrs old) AND THE DEAD BABY, in mom's arms in the car and drive across Pennsylvania to grandma's house so grandma can hold and commune with the dead baby. Apparently all the kids got to hold and commune with the dead baby during the car trip. They have the dead baby with the family for about 24 hours before they take it to the..."

Every time I think that I have read and heard it all, something else about these right-wing lunatics just leaves me so flabbergasted, I barely have words to articulate how I feel!

Truly, what has happened to the United States of America? What ever happened to separation of church, state and insanity?? When are the citizens of this country going to wake up and take the USA back to the principles on which it was founded ( though by a bunch of white bio men)?

What indeed ever happened to the Rebublican party? Even my 87-year-old father who has voted the ticket in every election since he was 21, told me thinks all the Republican candidates are a bunch of idiots.

I used to be a political activist but got away from it while trying to live my life and support my family but also because I got so discouraged and felt so disenfranchised as a woman and as a lesbian in this country. I have 3 granddaughters. I worry that abortion rights will be chipped away to zero by the time it will matter to them.

I just feel so frustrated by all of it.

[MsMerrick]

Originally Posted by Toughy

Santorium: His wife had a stillborn 26 week old baby...that's 6.5 months...a sad thing for his family. Well, Santorium and wife leave the hospital by loading their other children (one as young as 2 yrs old) AND THE DEAD BABY, in mom's arms in the car and drive across Pennsylvania to grandma's house so grandma can hold and commune with the dead baby. Apparently all the kids got to hold and commune with the dead baby during the car trip. They have the dead baby with the family for about 24 hours before they take it to the mortuary.



.

Apparently, the lesson he wished them to learn, was that that, was what abortion did..... From what I heard this morning...

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by MsMerrick

Apparently, the lesson he wished them to learn, was that that, was what abortion did..... From what I heard this morning...

This just is so creepy weird- and I believe it was his way to make an anti-aborion point to his kids.

I wonder if his wife really wanted to participate in this- post stillbirth. My Mom had to carry a dead fetus full term and give "birth"- from what she said about this experience (I wasn't born yet), she experienced both accute and post-truamatic stress symptoms. My parents had a service for the baby- with only themselves in attendance. It was a very personal loss for them and it sounded like they needed to just have this be between the two of them. This just feels so controlling in terms of his wife being in any state to think through doing this. He is just creepy!

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

The person getting a lot of play here lately is Jon Huntsman. The Boston Globe has endorsed him, people around town are talking about him. Have to do some research cuz I dont know anything about him. Any one have any insights on where he stands on stuff?

Here is a little something about Jon Huntsman. I left out the obvious stuff like who he is, how rich he is, how like Romney he is etc. And concentrated on his ideas. And how the moderate label seems to mean that he’s not crazy like the rest of the Republican candidates but his ideas are eerily similar. That’s how they get ya, smoke and mirrors. You’re just happy to be able to vote for someone who doesn’t need to be committed. Anyway there are a few quotes, some of his platform, and, of course, commentary by yours truly.

“As governor of Utah I signed every pro-life bill that came to my desk,” Hunstman told the crowd. “I signed the bill that made second-trimester abortions illegal, and increased the penalty for doing so. I signed the bill to allow women to know the pain an abortion causes an unborn child. I signed the bill requiring parental permission for abortion. I signed the bill that would trigger a ban on abortions in Utah if Roe v. Wade was overturned.”

“I do not believe the Republican party should focus only on our economic life — to the neglect of our human life,” he said. “That is a trade we should not make. If Republicans ignore life, the deficit we will face is one that is much more destructive. It will be a deficit of the heart and of the soul.”

In 2004 Huntsman supported Utah’s constitutional amendment outlawing marriage for gays and lesbians, but then later strongly supported a 2009 initiative to allow civil unions.

Apparently most of Huntsman’s economic policy is tax reform. And most of it will hurt the working class and help the rich especially lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and eliminating capital gains and dividend tax rates. He also claims to want to eliminate all tax deductions, credits, and loopholes. I guess that would hurt or help everyone equally depending on how you look at it. But I don’t see much there that will actually help the economy.

Huntsman claims to want stuff to be made in the US once again but he wants to open up trade even more. Free trade agreements are what make it so easy for companies to take their money, their business and their jobs offshore in the first place. We need huge tariffs not less or NO tariffs. If we don’t tax imports from US corporations who do no business in the US, the economy, the infrastructure and the country itself will continue with its downward spiral. No matter how many tax cuts we give businesses and corporations, no matter how much government money we make available to businesses and corporations it will not help the people in the US unless we force corporations to pay for importing goods into the US, which will either generate money for government spending or force corporations to stay and make stuff in the US which will create jobs at home. It’s not rocket science. It’s just logical. And to continue to say otherwise, which is what politicians/elected officals insist on doing is just outright lying.

Yet the meme continues to be that giving money and tax breaks to corporations and the rich will result in jobs for the rest of us. When clearly anyone with a coherent thought process can see that nothing even remotely like this is happening or has been happening. And unless some laws are changed it will continue to NOT happen. This throwing money at corporations and the rich and getting nothing in return has been the case for a very long time. And since it would be impossible to be in politics and not understand the idiocy of this oft regurgitated propaganda about this behavior resulting in jobs, I can only surmise it is a purposeful deceit that is willingly propagated in order to further the interests of the rich and powerful regardless of the result to the rest of us and to the country itself.

I’ve yet to see a politician running for president who seems to actually give a fat rat’s ass about the country.

Jon Huntsman purports to be a moderate republican. I think he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is someone whose supposed politics will be such that voters may be able to tolerate them so he looks to be quite dangerous to me. Dangerous because he is just another potential political arm for big business like Obama is, but he is also a right wing conservative dressed up for public consumption and that could be even more costly in the end. It’s possible I could be just a paranoid conspiracy theorist. However, neither of those options are mutually exclusive.

Here is an article about Huntsman:
“'Moderate' Jon Huntsman Releases Right-Wing 'Jobs' Plan
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163098...wing-jobs-plan

“Huntsman, a former Utah Governor, positions himself as the sane, mainstream alternative to the wingnuts that make up the rest of the Republican field. But the plan is a compendium of conservative hobbyhorses.

The vast majority of his plan has nothing to do with creating jobs, at least in the short term. He focuses heavily on “regulatory reform,” which sounds like some non-ideological effort to streamline government but is mostly code for pandering to the Tea Party. Huntsman would repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and the Affordable Care Act. He would “Dramatically Rein In The EPA” and “Curb The Excesses”—meaning eviscerate the essential regulatory power— of agencies like the National Labor Relations Board. All of this will please the Koch brothers, but what it has to do with spurring hiring in the near future is unclear, especially since conservatives like to moan about business being unable to hire in a climate of uncertainty. What they mean by uncertainty, it turns out, is if a business owner doesn’t know if his top marginal income tax rate might go up by four points when the Bush tax cuts expire. The uncertainty of proposing enormous alterations to existing law is apparently no problem at all.”

[Novelafemme]

Since Kobi brought up Ron Paul, does anyone else feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on him with us? I am taking a serious look at him but have never voted any other way than a full Democratic ticket.

[Toughy]

Paul is a die hard Libertarian dressed up as a Republican. He does not believe in government except in the actual smallest way possible. No Social Security, no Medicare/Medicaid, no welfare/aid to dependent children, no free lunch in public schools, no Departments of Education, Housing, Health and Human Services, Commerce, no EPA, no Labor Relations Board, no military bases outside the US, no foreign aid, no United Nations, no civil rights act, no affirmative action, no government subsidies, no regulatory oversight of anything (banking, farming, oil drilling, health and other insurance, etc).

He believes in only free market capitalism and that an individual is responsible for their lot in life no matter what. The free market is the conscience of society. He suggested in a debate that a person without health insurance should just die because it's their fault they don't have insurance. He is also an MD and is incredibly narcissistic. His son, Senator Rand Paul (R) (KY), is just as scary.

Read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Any Rand...or any of her books.....

He does however believe in evolution. He believes all drugs should be legal.

Go to his website and read and then actually think about the consequences of his free market economy and rugged individualism philosophies.

edited to add: the one inconsistency in his no government politics is abortion. He does believe the government should outlaw abortions.

[PumaJ]

Novelafemme, you asked this:

"Since Kobi brought up Ron Paul, does anyone else feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on him with us? I am taking a serious look at him but have never voted any other way than a full Democratic ticket."

I find Paul's stance on too many issues to be much too extreme for my tastes. In addition, I find his ideas about our foreign policy to be poorly informed & frightfully naive. Though he has a few ideas that on the surface seem appealing, I find that they are based on a point of view that is very far away from my basic values.

The Nation has a pretty good article about him, "Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows"

[Kent]

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

Since Kobi brought up Ron Paul, does anyone else feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on him with us? I am taking a serious look at him but have never voted any other way than a full Democratic ticket.

To add to what has already been said:

There are some things about Ron Paul that really scare me. His stand on immigration for one. Among a wide assortment of immigration reform he wants to see implemented that are disturbing this is my favorite; he doesn't want children of illegal immigrants who are born in the U.S. to be citizens.

He doesn't want us to get involved in a war with Iran and that is surely our next war so that's good.

He is adamantly against a woman's right to choose.

He has a sort of left handed upside down backward stand on gay marriage. He believes it is a state's decision. He doesn't want to see a federal law. He did vote for DOMA. He doesn't want marriage legalized across the country. And he hopes to do this by keeping it in the hands of individual states and allowing, as DOMA allows for the federal government to refuse to recognize state gay marriages, for one state to refuse to recognize another state's or another country's marriage. Not very good news for binational couples and Paul's immigration policies would also be a nightmare for binational couples.

Not that it's up for questioning to my knowledge but here Paul wrote of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

"[It] not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife."

Apparently Paul is of the opinion that we are in need of a color-blind society. And since we do not have one the Civil Rights Act failed. He also appears to believe since on cannot legislate tolerance then human rights and whether people get them or not should be kept out of the hands of government and left to individual citizens to decide. A feeling which explains his position on gay marriage a bit more clearly.

He is against abolishing the electoral college and would also like to see the members of the state legislatures chose US senators instead of having them voted in by popular election as they are now.

From what I can gather economically Paul is still with the rest in protecting big business and corporate America. He just has different jargon to explain his positions. He takes a slightly different road but it's the same route. As with most of his stands it's all very convoluted but mostly the results are the same. To me the reason why shit things are happening isn't as important as shit things are happening. If you just shift the reasoning for allowing shit things to continue to happen I don't see how that will make those to whom shit things are happening feel any better.

To me really it's the same old free market capitalism bull shit.