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They all suck (Score:4, Informative)
They all suck donkey balls.
Libertarianism Is A Dream (Score:5, Informative)
For a Libertarian country to work the majority of the population has to be well educated, have resources, be well informed, be strong thinkers and have a sense of civic duty stemming for a sense of enlightened self interest.
That is the exact opposite of what we got in the U.S.
Libertarians don't talk about how they are going to get Americans ready to be libertarians.
The libertarians I have met have been Republicanish business types who want the government to leave them alone to abuse the environment and other poeple...........or.....they have been pot heads who want the government to leave them alone to do their drugs.
When I asked how would things like fire departments and libraries run in a liberatiran country they could never tell me and they would accuse me of being inflammatory. Well, even the worst democrats and republicans have a story to tell about how they are going to do things ( well, maybe not Mitt Romney, he doesn't think people need to know how he is going to pull off a mathematically impossible budget of tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases ).
Libertarians live in the world of ideas, without being burdeoned by how to make things work when the rubber hits the roads.
That is why Ron Paul has his popularity. Nobody knows more than he does that he isn't ever going to be POTUS, so he can uncomprising in his ideals, rather than someone who might actually have to do something.
Re:Dems vs Reps (Score:2, Informative)
Aren't the republicans the ones who took all my money to spend on wars? It's funny, they seem to actually want more of my money than the dems do (and I suspect this is true for everyone who isn't a millionaire).
Re:Pirate? (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party [wikipedia.org]
Re:Libertarianism Is A Dream (Score:4, Informative)
Like most people, you seem to think that the only Libertarians are *RADICAL* Libertarians.
Few people who would call themselves "Libertarian" are anywhere near that extreme and do believe there is a place and need for public services and protecting the environment.
Re:Dems vs Reps (Score:4, Informative)
Social Conservative Christians (Score:5, Informative)
Are they necessarily different? Consider, hypothetically:
"Republican in principle but holy fuck what happened with them!?"
Social Conservative Christians - that's what happened. And we can blame Ron Regan for that cluster fuck.
If you look at a Republican before the party was taken over by the Christian Taliban, Barry Goldwater for instance, you will see what is considered a Libertarian today.
Of course that's not the whole story and a book can be written about what went wrong and the multitude of things that happened other than Christian nuts who want to increase the size of Government, throw the Constitution in the trash, and have government regulate people's personal lives - all because of values written in a book of iron age myth.
And then there is the fact that the American people completely forgot what happened between 2002 - 2008: the Republicans controlled BOTH the Executive branch and the Legislative branch of our government and went apeshit with the spending AND had the brass to lie and say it was ALL because of the wars. Only then to blame it ALL on the Obama administration.
But wait there's more ... Paul Ryan when he was a Congressman, made a really ballsy move and said that we need to do something about Medicare - like cut $700 billion+.
Now as a VP candidate, he has gone 180 degrees and the republicans have completely forgotten what he wanted to do in Congress or they are so horribly uninformed, that they don't know.
TO get the Rep vote, just say, "No gay marriage. No abortion. Cut taxes and spending." Because contrary to what they hear from their leaders on Talk Radio and Fox News, they think most of the Federal budget is going for paying welfare mothers and their pink Cadillacs; even though the largest expenses in the Fed budget is Medicare and Interest on the debt that they got rolling.
But wait there's even more! You see the Reps are allegedly against wealth transfer - from "rich" to "poor", but they are ALL for wealth transfer from young to old (Medicare and SS) and from poor to rich (capital gains are taxed less, home mortgage deductions [rich have more than one house and therefore get more Government subsides], and all the other loopholes that are only available to the 1%)
The Republicans are laughed at for good reason, I'm afraid. They used to be a decent counter to the Democrat's Depression Era thinking, but now they're just too loony.
Obama on the 6th, baby!
Re:Dems vs Reps (Score:2, Informative)
The line that the Democrats want to control your money is a Republican lie.
What did Clinton do? He lowered taxes.
What has Obama done? Lowered taxes.
Who was the last president to significantly raise taxes? The famous Democrat, uh, Ronald Reagan.
In reality, the Democrats and mainstream Republicans have very similar policies on fiscal matters. (That's not counting the Tea Party, who are indeed different, but only had any significant clout for a few months in 2010.) The only places where the two parties differ meaningfully are the bedroom, the pharmacy, the rape crisis center, the abortion clinic, etc.
Re:They all suck (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1st vote? (Score:2, Informative)
Our liberal administration sure has done a lot to shut down the Cuban torture camp, block the TSA from profiling based on speech, and stop the bombing of Pakistani villages.
Re:Missing option (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, you can leave boxes blank. You can show up, vote for 3 out of X of the local/state propositions and leave the presidency blank if you want.
I tend to leave boxes blank for issues or offices that I didn't (for whatever excuse...what? It happens) properly research and thus only vote on what I feel I have an informed opinion on. I've only broken this on a few propositions in the past that crept up on me that were obvious bald faced horseshit.
Re:Birthday! (Score:4, Informative)
I tend to prefer the Bad Seeds, but Grinderman was great.
Re:Libertarianism Is A Dream (Score:4, Informative)
What use is any label, in that case? Republicans can be pro-choice, for instance. You don't have to agree with everything your political party does, you know.
Ah, but they line up and VOTE together. There is practically no dissent in Republican party when voting comes! Democrats sometimes scatter on both sides, but Republicans never do. The recent "give veterans jobs" bill failed with 4 Republicans dissenting (and Olympia Snow is retiring because she is sick of dealing with other Republicans), so it will be 3 dissenters next time.
I will hold them responsible for how they vote. The fact that they may privately/officially disagree is useless if that is not how they vote.
Re:Fascism (Score:2, Informative)
Oh yeah. Because you were arrested and shot for making that comment, especially after curfew! You either don't understand what fascism is, or you're grossly exaggerating the state of the States.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Social Conservative Christians (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the deficit crisis, it has fuckall to do with religeion and everything to do with class. Republicans will not do shit that will upset a single person earning over 250k.
Re:Obama ordered Gitmo closed day 3. Blame Congres (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't have a super-majority for 2 years, idiot. Between the time Franken was allowed to assume his seat (7 July 2009) and when Kennedy died (25 August 2009), they had their 60 votes in the Senate for around six weeks, and most of that time was used in negotiations for the healthcare law.
Re:Obama ordered Gitmo closed day 3. Blame Congres (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The reason they needed 60 votes in the Senate to get a damned thing done is the GOP's party discipline and willingness to abuse the filibuster. 60 votes are needed to break filibusters and the only time they had the ability to get anything done without the GOP scuppering it was during that six weeks, because the Republicans could and did filibuster anything with their 41 votes.
The filibuster rules were changed in IIRC the '70s. You don't need one senator standing up and reading from the DC phonebook for 24 hours straight to block action anymore. You just need 41 votes and bam, that house is at a standstill until the minority (you know, the people who lost the '08 election badly because America was tired of them) gets what they want, which in this case was usually thumbs in the eye like completely unacceptable amendments offered just so they could say next election "Senator X voted to allow imprisoned sex offenders to get Viagra".
I get that you're unhappy with the Dems (I am too, but probably for different reasons), but it's stupid and ignorant to blame them for things outside their control. Do try to educate yourself some more about how things are really done in this country before you vote next week.