Sensible Erection | Rick Perry takes some hits in the GOP debates, Tea Party crowd shows new level of inhumanity.

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Rick Perry takes some hits in the GOP debates, Tea Party crowd shows new level of inhumanity.

quote [ For nearly the entire session, Perry was attacked by his opponents on all manner of topics ranging from immigration, to the controversial HPV vaccine he briefly mandated in Texas to the so-called Texas Miracle to, of course, Social Security. ]

My favorite part was when the crowd cheered at the idea of letting someone without insurance die.

[politics] [by Krutz@4:14amGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

afrasr said @ 4:19am GMT on 13th Sep
How is the HPV vaccine controversial ?!?!?

It stops cancer !

THE FUCK ?!?!

Ankylosaur said @ 4:31am GMT on 13th Sep
It stops sin-caused cancer. Ergo, it is contradicting the will of God and how can that not be controversial?

swiggy said @ 4:32am GMT on 13th Sep
They think that vaccinating against an STD that CAUSES CANCER OF THE GENITALS might make kids want to have more sex.

Yes, that is the actual reason. Yes, I am serious.

I'll understand if you want to take a step away from the computer and scream very loudly now.

graham said @ 3:18pm GMT on 13th Sep
I kind of wish that these peoples parents were as idiotic as they are now so that maybe they wouldn't have had sex and these asshats wouldn't be around. Scalawags.

structured_spirits said @ 4:49pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
They were, the liberal government ensured their survival with forced immunizations, hence allowing them to grow up, vote, and bite the hand that fed them.

willrogers said @ 4:33am GMT on 13th Sep
Right-wingers think it causes/increases promiscuity by removing serious and potentially fatal consequences of sexual intercourse (e.g. cervical cancer), just like how they think comprehensive sex education and making contraceptives freely available or completely paid for by private health insurers cause/increase promiscuity and sex outside fo wedlock.

They basically favor abstinence-only sex ed and Christian moralizing even though research and statistics show that these things only lead to greater rates of promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies, and STD transmission. They'd rather have sluts punished with unwanted children and diseases than make sure that people are having sex safely, even though conprehensive sex ed programs also teach abstience (hell, even Planned Parenthood teaches about abstinence).

They also don't realize that a woman could be chaste her entire life until she gets married and still end up contracting HPV from her partner and later developing cervical cancer, which could kill her.

These are the same people who oppose new research into HIV/AIDS treatments and vaccines because they hate LGBTQ people and promiscuous heterosexuals and think they should suffer the consequences of their sinful behavior rather than "waste" public money funding research.

kitten said @ 4:57am GMT on 13th Sep
Well I think also it has to do with forced immunizations -- the fact that the individual has no free will or choice in the matter.

A lot of the things the Tea Party is against are things that the government is forcing upon the citizens. They feel that the government should stay out of such things because it takes away the freedom of choice.

I know it often turns into things like "oh it means people will be able to have sex now without guilt!" or something with some individuals...but please remember not all right wingers are religious or have opinions based on religion. There are many that oppose the same government action or mandate but not for quite the same reason.

sanepride said @ 5:14am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
Well it's a convenient nexus of both - overreaching government forcing people to give their daughters a promiscuity-promoting vaccine. Makes it an especially tempting target of this crowd. After all, you don' hear much from the tea party decrying state-mandated vaccinations against polio and measles.

willrogers said @ 5:20am GMT on 13th Sep
Exactly.

Where are all the tea baggers bitching about the MMR and TB vaccines that every American child has to get before they can attend school?

They are only bitching about the HPV vaccine because it's sex-related and they are a bunch of puritanical prudes. Keep in mind, these are the same people that are against gay marriage, anti-discrimination laws protecting sexual orientation, and other legislation protecting LGBTQ civil rights.

structured_spirits said @ 5:53am GMT on 13th Sep
They do, they really do, I live in the same community with these people. They think vaccines cause autism, and the ones in favor of the vaccines want them because they're afraid of diseases coming from Mexicans.

willrogers said @ 7:06am GMT on 13th Sep
Like I wrote in my other comment, I know these people exist, but they are very fringe at best.

I mean, I don't really think right-wing militias or lefty yuppies are exactly representative of most of the public on either side of the political spectrum.

cskrat said @ 9:24am GMT on 13th Sep
Don't dismiss the fringe groups too easily. I, and I'm sure many others, thought that the tea-party would burn out inside a year because of their extreme standpoint; instead, they've continued to get louder and more influential.

A fringe minority can sound a lot like a majority voice if they repeat their message loud enough and often enough.

willrogers said @ 9:56am GMT on 13th Sep
That's fine and all but I'm talking about people who think that fluoridated water is a government conspiracy to brainwash the public or sterilize people as part of some UNATCO population control plan.

Those people are very fringe and no one else takes them seriously once the crazy starts flowing even if they agree on other issues.

structured_spirits said @ 11:19am GMT on 13th Sep
I'd again argue that there's a LOT more of those people than you'd expect, and unlike the 20something year old well educated liberal college crowd, every last one of those fuckers votes religiously.

TM said @ 4:03pm GMT on 13th Sep
I think you're both correct. Numerically, the crazies on both ends of the spectrum are much smaller than the moderate, reasonable middle. However, they are passionate: they vote in every primary and election, they give to and work for their candidates, they write letters to editors and lobby legislators, and they just. won't. shut. up. Politically, that means they far outweigh the moderate center that does none of these things, then bitches about "the crazies are taking over."

We ignore them at our peril. "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." (Edmund Burke, 1770).

willrogers said @ 5:17am GMT on 13th Sep
There are plenty of other immunizations that the government forces individuals to get (like TB, MMR, etc.) but you don't hear the tea baggers and right-wing ideologues complaining much about that do you?

The government has a legitimate role in preventing or reducing outbreaks of disease and the HPV vaccine is an extremely safe way to accomplish this. No one is forced to do anything other than get a simple injection that doesn't have any higher rate of complications and adverse side effects than any of the other vaccinations required by the government.

These morons would rather risk having their own children (and everyone else's) get potentially sick and die than to vaccinate their children against an STD, so I don't really give a fuck whether their objections are religious or not. They are completely irrational concerns, which are easily refuted with actual facts and research, but they are also hypocritical concerns because this is the same group of people that votes in favor of politicians infringing on people's rights in other realms, like warrantlessly wiretapping Americans, torture, indefinite detentions, extraordinary rendition, preventing Muslims from building community centers and mosques, etc. Their hypocrisy is glaring in that they only give a fuck about civil liberties when it affects them and they complain about the most moronic, petty bullshit (e.g. new lightbulb efficiency standards).

structured_spirits said @ 5:46am GMT on 13th Sep
"There are plenty of other immunizations that the government forces individuals to get (like TB, MMR, etc.) but you don't hear the tea baggers and right-wing ideologues complaining much about that do you?"

Actually yes you do, these are the same people who claimed that vaccines caused autism and that fluoridating and adding lithium to drinking water is a government plot to pacify the population. They want zero-government involved, or so they think, thye homeschool kids instead of sending them to a proper school, etc etc etc.

willrogers said @ 6:50am GMT on 13th Sep
Yes, I know about those people, but they are the fringest of the fringe.

I was just talking about people who generally aren't insane and disregarded by the rest of the population.

structured_spirits said @ 7:29am GMT on 13th Sep
They're the majority where I live.

willrogers said @ 7:37am GMT on 13th Sep
That doesn't mean they are representative of a significant portion of the overall US population.

It's like reasoning that there are Crips or Florencia gang members everywhere across the nation when you live in South Central, LA.

structured_spirits said @ 8:38am GMT on 13th Sep
You don't know that the majority who you agree with accurately represents the national majority any more than I do, yet you have no problem assuming it while suggesting that I should not.

BlutStein1984 said @ 6:00am GMT on 13th Sep
Thank you. If people are/were objecting because their daughters might be more interested in sex....they're fucking stupid. The problems mainly stems from Perry writing an executive order saying all 12 years girls would get a vaccine shot. It was clear the vaccine had been fully vetted or what percentage might react poorly. It's also shady as all get out that his former campaign director was the head lobbyist for the medical company standing to turn a huge profit by his executive order and the fact he had taken donation money from them.

In Summary, fuck Perry. Nothing Conservative about his record or the fact he is a big pharma tool.

Krutz said @ 6:11am GMT on 13th Sep
I assume you meant to say that it was clear the vaccine hadn't been fully vetted, given your other statements. That's not true, by the way.

BlutStein1984 said @ 6:19am GMT on 13th Sep
In either case, and it pains me to agree with Santorum, it should have been an opt-in program if it was so great, not an opt-out.

willrogers said @ 7:10am GMT on 13th Sep
We generally don't let TB and MMR vaccines be opt-in, you have to get them to be admitted to any public school (barring some medical exception like a poor immune system) and most private schools, too.

Also, it hilarious that you agree with Santorum, who is one of those people you refer to as "fucking stupid" for objecting to the HPV vaccine on religious and moral grounds.

EPT said @ 10:07am GMT on 13th Sep
A lot of the things the Tea Party is against are things that the government is forcing upon the citizens.

Then the Tea Party should say those things, instead of saying "OMG Obama Death Panelz!!!!". If you're a sane voice and you decide to shout out your displeasure by doing so in a room full of screaming monkeys flinging shit, it is not the fault of the observer for not taking the time to zero in on your voice.

structured_spirits said @ 11:17am GMT on 13th Sep
Well thats a good point, the question is, who is the Tea Party? Certainly Ron Paul founded the movement, but people like Palin and Perry are right wing establishment stooges wearing tri-corner hats. I'd suggest that whole death panel scare fiasco, as well as a lot of the anti-Obama rhetoric you saw in the 2008 electrions was republican astroturfing, designed to co-opt the teaparty followers to vote for them and to discredit Obama.

zenviper said @ 1:43am GMT on 14th Sep
Ron Paul founded the tea party?

structured_spirits said @ 2:35am GMT on 14th Sep
Yep, it was originally a party in the sense of a series of fund raising events, not a political party, to raise money for Paul's 2008 run. He raised a lot of cash, which is the point the republicans decided to steal the idea.

the circus said @ 4:28pm GMT on 13th Sep
Free people deserve the right to decline vaccines, they deserve the right to opt out of not being kicked in the head if they so choose, and they deserve the right to have babies.

structured_spirits said @ 5:42am GMT on 13th Sep
Remember that Perry is courting the teabagger vote, and one thing they do not like is government-mandated social programs, even vaccines. He's trying to sell himself as the candidate for more personal freedom and ending big oppressive government, but while he was governer, he wrote an executive order requiring at mandate that all girls be given this vaccine as a condition of being allowed to be enrolled in school. This definitely rubbed the teabaggers the wrong way.

Additionally, do not believe that Perry wrote the order because he cares about reducing cancer rates. This was about getting Merk, a large pharmaceutical firm and the sole manufacturer of this vaccine, a large kickback in exchange for large campaign donations to his election.

todde said @ 10:15am GMT on 13th Sep
It stops cancer which is spread by SEX. If you have sex you need to be punished, especially if you're a *shudder* girl.

RailRoader said @ 4:20am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Informative]
"The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them. I raise about $30 million. And if you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended," Perry retorted.

Hey that's my governor she's insulting ... he goes for way more than $5,000!

Krutz said @ 4:24am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Insightful]
Yeah, it doesn't sound so much like a denial as it does an opening bid...

willrogers said @ 4:42am GMT on 13th Sep
It's like saying, "I'm not a $5,000/night hooker, I just give 500 $10 blowjobs a night."

structured_spirits said @ 5:55am GMT on 13th Sep
I suspect that they actually donated much much more though other channels.

sanepride said @ 1:15am GMT on 14th Sep
In this particular case, you suspect correctly.

sanepride said @ 4:30am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:5 WTF]
Video of the big WTF moment when the crowd (or some in the crowd anyway) calls for the death of an uninsured patient:

swiggy said @ 4:46am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Insightful]
An interesting part of that last bit got to me - we should legalize alternative healthcare, and let people practice what they want, and by logical extension let patients seek whatever treatment they want.

Or, when you think about it for about three fucking seconds, have shitloads of people conned into every flavor of snakeoil imaginable and then die.

sanepride said @ 5:08am GMT on 13th Sep
Yeah I thought that was pretty interesting, especially coming from a physician. Seems like Dr. Paul's ideology runs directly counter to sound medical practice.

willrogers said @ 5:22am GMT on 13th Sep
Exactly.

He cares more about his conservative libertarianism than he cares about science, logic, or facts.

He's just like those asshole right-wing pharmacists that refuse to dispense the moring after pill or other contraception.

BlutStein1984 said @ 5:35am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:-1 Flamebait]
No. Like he always states, in the end he always comes back to Liberty. If you want a certain treatment, you should have the ultimate say in how your health issue is treated. It is your life and your money.

Just like with the rest of science, we do not fully understand everything yet so to put medince into a tiny box and control what people do and do not have access to is BS.

themightyblot said @ 5:41am GMT on 13th Sep
Man, you took a LONG drink of that Kool-Aid.

Insurance companies, which, y'know, are for-profit and decide what you can do with your coverage, won't let you utilize certain alternative treatments for a very good reason; they're either prohibitively expensive without enough evidence that they work, or they're absolute bullshit prettied up to con people out of money.

If you want a certain treatment, go ahead and get it. Just don't expect insurance, Medicaid, or any health program to cover it. They're not stopping you from spending your own hard-earned money on whatever garbage you want. The only things that ARE prohibited are those things that are SHOWN to be dangerous, and are banned by the FDA. Y'know, drugs that kill you and stuff. But if you think crystals are going to cure you of cancer, go ahead and pay a witch doctor a few thousand dollars of your own money to do it. Just don't expect pity at your funeral.

BlutStein1984 said @ 5:52am GMT on 13th Sep
I'm not into crystals, I agree with you on the "fixes" that are way out there, but th choice over one's own body should be there. The FDA is nice in theory but when corporate lobbyist run the show, I wouldn't put 100% of my faith in them getting everything right. Every year it seems there is a class action suit because a drug that was approved ends up killing hundreds because the studies were wrong or were rushed.

Krutz said @ 5:57am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Insightful]
Things like drug-resistant tuberculosis must really tie you and Paul up in knots, unless you rely on the Invisible Hand to somehow keep disease from spreading.

swiggy said @ 6:22am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Interesting]
Well, when typhoid mary 2.0 keeps working at her job at the diner (because she can't call out, her medicine man charges $400 a week to realign her chakras), I'm sure the invisible hand of the market will force the diner to get her legitimate care.

...after dozens if not hundreds of people get infected, sure, but hey, freedom, right? Her body her choice.

danshyu said @ 11:05am GMT on 13th Sep
Well according to the libertarian logics. Since it's more profitable for the masses to be able to buy affortable medicines than just a few rich guys. Those company who can't produce good medicine at affortable prices would be out competed by those who can. Thus it all works out in the end.

Same goes for abolishing the minimun wage. Yes, companies would be able to pay their workers as little as they can get away with. But since that also means majority of people would be earning very little. Thus they won't be buying as much goods. And therefor the market would be forced to lower the prices of the goods to match people's low income inorder to continue making profits. In the end, things all balances out again and nobody starves.

However out of tough with reality these are. They do sound good on paper if you don't think too deep into them.

f00m@nB@r said @ 7:24am GMT on 13th Sep
Herd immunity. Go read.

arctan said @ 1:47am GMT on 15th Sep
Every year it seems there is a class action suit because a drug that was approved ends up killing hundreds because the studies were wrong or were rushed.

So instead we should have *no* distinction between drugs that are or are not FDA-approved, let busy/ignorant/foolish laypeople make the decisions entirely on their lonesome, and let the hundreds who die balloon into thousands or millions.

Sometimes traffic lights don't work, so there should be no traffic lights.

I don't get this logic.

ComposerNate said @ 8:50am GMT on 15th Sep
It seems that whenever Republicans cut funding to federal agencies, that more mistakes end up being made which cost lives.

willrogers said @ 5:58am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:3 Underrated]
No. Like he always states, in the end he always comes back to Liberty. If you want a certain treatment, you should have the ultimate say in how your health issue is treated. It is your life and your money.

That's the way he phrases every issue. Everything is phrased as some kind of battle between the people and government over freedom and it's obtuse at best.

He's phrasing the healthcare issue that way to absolve himself of any moral responsibility for the health and wellbeing of his fellow citizens because it gets in the way of his libertarian ideology. The people of every other first-world nation, all of which have universal healthcare systems, aren't "less free" or have less liberty because they have those kinds of healthcare systems. It doesn't infringe on anyone's liberty to not have a laissez faire healthcare system, especially since such a system would allow for rampant abuse by businesses selling unregulated drugs and medical services that could potentially harm people or at least prevent them from seeking real, demonstrably effective medical care.

Ron Paul is an ideologue that cares more about having a libertarian economy than actually having a system that works. He's an intentionalist that cares more about the system unpholding his values than caring about what actually happens in the end results of those values. All the problems he complains about in this video clip (e.g. high costs, pandering to insurance companies, inflation, etc.) are better solved by any of the universal healthcare systems employed by the rest of the first world, not laissez faire systems.

All Ron Paul cares about is that we aren't "socialist" and that there is "personal responsibility," not how much helthcare expenses cost our economy, not the health and wellbeing of his fellow Americans, and not the maintaining the high quality of science and care we currently have.

Just like with the rest of science, we do not fully understand everything yet so to put medince into a tiny box and control what people do and do not have access to is BS.

That is just completely unscientific horse shit.

The medicine regulated and practiced by most physicians is based on extensive evidence and statistical research. The stuff Ron Paul is alluding to is pseudoscience and snake oil like chiropractic, homeopathy, and reflexology.

We need oversight and regulation so that resources and time go towards treatments and procedures that actually have demonstrated effects, as these resources are finite. We control this by requiring rigorous scientific research into treatments, rather than simply letting everything go and just having individuals decide which treatment is "science." If some new treatment or procedure can demonstrate efficacy under rigorous, controlled conditions, then great, let's use it, but all this "alternative" stuff out there today is complete bullshit and has been demonstrated as such by numerous studies showing zero efficacy beyond a simple placebo effect, i.e. not real scientific medicine.

You are obviously ignorant of science and medicine, being more beholden to your conservative beliefs than the science and logic that should be controling medicine and healthcare.

BlutStein1984 said @ 6:08am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:-2 Overrated]
Ok, you talk a mean game but completely misunderstand science and it's progress through history. To close doors and assume answer is not how science works. Neither I, nor Paul are proscribing crystals and homeopathic treatments but stating it is up to the individual to determine their medical treatment, and not politicians and lobbyists.

He is against limiting access or the nanny state "better good" like is currently found in examples where the federal government does raids and locks people up for selling raw milk. Is drinking it a good idea? Maybe not but throwing someone is jail for choosing to drink raw milk is just as stupid as putting nonviolent drug users away in prison for smoking dope.

foobar said @ 6:39am GMT on 13th Sep
No one is saying you shouldn't be able to sell homepathic enemas or whatever, just that you shouldn't be able to claim they're going to do anything they're not.

willrogers said @ 6:49am GMT on 13th Sep
Exactly.

The government should be there to regulate medical treatments (i.e. the FDA) and marketing practices (i.e. the FTC).

For people like Blut and Ron Paul, it's just a massive false choice fallacy. Either we're living in their libertarian paradise or we're living in some fascist hellhole with jackboots on our necks.

willrogers said @ 6:40am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:5 Insightful]
Right, as a practicing scientist, I'm sure that I misunderstand science and its history.

No one is "closing doors" on any medical treatments, that's just a red herring and propaganda from "alternative medicine" advocates and those who seek to profit from them.

Medicine functions through science, which means that anything is open and available as long it is backed up by empirical evidence. The things that currently aren't paid for by the government and many private insurers are things that have not demonstrated their efficiacy through the rigors of scientific methodology and statistical analysis. Once something does demonstrate its value through the rigors of science, then it will be valued by actual scientists and actually used as real medical treatment, including being paid for by insurers and the government.

That's the long and short of it. Nothing is being restricted because of some "Nanny state." What is happening is that pseudoscience is not regarded as medicine, which is the way science actually functions. Science and the government aren't closing the doors on anything forever, not even current pseduoscience. They are simply saying "Go away until you bring back proof that you are right."

If you look at the actual history of science and medicine, those theories that went against the status quo were rightly rejected until their proponents actually demonstrated their validity through evidence, like Marshall and Warren's theories being disregarded until they clearly demonstrated that most gastric ulcers are caused by helicobacter pylori. This isn't a fault of medical science or some "nanny state," this is how science is supposed to work and an excellent example of the self-corrective nature of science and it's sub-disciplines.

As for Ron Paul, he's in favor of just letting healthcare be like the Wild West, letting the free market work things out without any government involvement, which is fucking stupid as shit. Even with current regulations, bad stuff still happens from time to time, like the Vioxx controversy, but it would happen far more often if there were not government bodies actively trying to prevent them from happening. Ron Paul is also against medical licensing, which is fucking stupid as hell and this is obvious to anyone who isn't retarded and/or blinded by ideology. It's not in anyone's best interest for there to be less regulation in the quality of doctors and their educations, except maybe those who would profit from such an arrangement, e.g. diploma mill-style med schools, unqualified individuals who want to make money as an unlicensed doctor, etc.

What's most revealing about your comment is that you fail to provide any examples of the "nanny state" limiting healthcare or medical science. Your raw milk example is actually functioning against your position, as the government strictly regulating food and drug safety, especially in requiring pasteurization for certain kinds of foods, is a shining example of the government following medical science to protect public health. The government isn't shunning real science or stunting it's development, it's clearly following the real science to enhance public health.

Maybe throwing people in jail is a bit extreme as far as punishments for raw milk go but there needs to be sufficient punishment to back up the government regulations to protect public health, especially in preventing large agro corporations from skirting the law if the regulations are toothless compared to their massive coffers.

As far as drug prohibition goes, I agree with you and Ron Paul that the drug war is awful and counterproductive, but I disagree that it means there should be no government involvement. The government should be involved in reducing drug usage and its consequences through evidence-based practices, like harm reduction programs (e.g. needle exchanges, safe injection sites, "wet houses," etc.), drug addiction treatment programs, and regulating drugs so that users don't get any adverse effects from any adulterants, impurities, or other problems with their drugs.

Gn0me said @ 12:43pm GMT on 13th Sep
its

TM said @ 4:04pm GMT on 13th Sep
But not Dr. Kevorkian's.

willrogers said @ 5:06am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Insightful]
Fuck Ron Paul up his stupid fucking ass.

His "solution" to our healthcare crisis is to let people who can't afford insurance coverage to just hope that churches or private charities will take care of them (thereby hinging the entire system on just how charitable people feel in a given year, creating a potentially snowballing economic and social disaster if people were to stop donating to charity during poor economic times) and basically removing the regulation provided by medical licensing to let every manner of snake oil bullshit flow into the market.

Ron Paul doesn't know shit about economics and it sure as hell seems like he doesn't know a hell of a lot about medicine, despite having a medical degree. Doctors are supposed to practice and promote real science, not bullshit pseudoscience.

The whole reason the quality of our healthcare is so good is because medical schools and licenses are so highly regulated, it prevents morons from getting medical licenses and preserves the high quality of medical education and services. The converse to this is the legal services field, where there are way too many law schools and way too many lawyers compared to demand, which causes wide disparities in the qualities of law schools and the lawyers they produce.

Our current healthcare problems are just that many people don't have coverage (or the coverage they do have is insignificant and therefore functionally quite useless for most medical issues other than catastrophic problems), medical procedures/treatments/drugs/etc. are extremely expensive, and we spend too much money as a nation on healthcare. All of these things would be almost completely dealt with by switching to a universal healthcare system utilized by virtually every other first-world nation, as they cover the entirety of their populations while spending far less on healthcare, nominally, as a percentage of GDP, and per capita. And there are so many different kinds of universal healthcare systems around the world that we can pick the best one or combine several of them for our own needs and save literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year from our economy while ensuring medical coverage for every citizen.

The solution is not to simply deregulate everything and hope the market solves all our problems just because Ron Paul hates government. Ron Paul is an obtuse ideologue, but it's far worse that people are actually voting for him and in favor of the terrible policies he promotes.

It's fucking embarrassing to hear the callousness of that audience declaring that a person should be left to die rather than have the government help them. Fuck each and every one ofthose people who cheered in favor of that evil bullshit.

BlutStein1984 said @ 5:48am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:-1 Troll]
Ron Paul has probably forgotten more about Economics then you will ever learn. The dude has written multiple books on the subject alone and is well versed in how the markets work. He has repeatedly predicted changes in the market place 5-7 year before they occurred. You are lying to yourself to paint him as a simpleton.

Recently read an article detailing his stock portfolio and the returns on his investments have bucked all the trends during the last few days. His record would be the envy of any investor. His portfolio is heavy on mining companies and companies managing gold and silver. He has put his life's earnings where his mouth is and it has paid out handsomely.

=====
Notice, if you are able, he did not join the handful of assholes in the crowd that called for the guy in the coma to die. No part of his answer was based in evil but from his own life experience has a doctor before government run medicaid was around. Before the almightily government came to save us, it was the community and churches and voluntary associations that insured and cared for the sick. Government is not always the answer and things worked before government took over certain segments of society. Do not fool yourself.

willrogers said @ 6:15am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
Ron Paul wrote some books, so he must know more than I do, right? It's not that he's an ideologue who ignores evidence that refutes his personal beliefs, right?

Show me some evidence that he predicted any macroeconomic changes with any reliability and accuracy beyond the vague "Something bad is gonna happen" with no specific details or dates.

The guy is advocating for even more deregulation when it was deregulation that got us into our current shitty economic situation. He's an ideologue that just hates government, which drives all of his policies, rather than being driven by facts and evidence.

The facts are that every other first-world nation has some system of universal healthcare and spends far less than us to cover every one of their citizens, as a percentage of GDP, per capita, and nominally. The solution to our healthcare problems isn't to deregulate, which would likely only decrease the quality of medical care and increase overall costs as more people go bankrupt due to healthcare-related causes (e.g. actual expenses, losing their jobs from preventable healthcare issues, etc.), more people are unable to avoid preventative care and early treatments to reduce overall healthcare costs, more people get sick or injured and thus reduce workplace productivity, etc.

The facts are that the nations with the best educational outcomes (e.g. Finland, Sweden, etc.) have had some of the greatest government regulation of education and greatest government spending on both education and anti-poverty measures. Finland is a perennial leader in education and only accomplished this with a massive government effort to improve education and was only able to cede control back to municipalities after education was dramatically improved, not before and not as a method to improve education.

The facts are that deregulation has resulted in some of our worst economic situations in the past century, including the Great Depression, the 1980s S&L crisis, and our current Great Recession. These incidents would have all been prevented by the New Deal regulations that prevented most major economic downturns and reduced the severity of those that did happen, e.g. Paul Volker eliminating late 70's and early 80's stagflation as head of the Federal Reserve. Beyond economics, regulation is frequently a demonstrable good, including our measureably and dramatically better air and water quality after being regulated by the EPA.

The facts are not on Ron Paul's laissez faire side, but it doesn't matter because he can always propagandize to right-wingers about how evil government is, rather than provide any actual evidence to support his positions.

swiggy said @ 6:26am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Funny]
appeal to authority.

(note: When your entire argument can be refuted by just NAMING THE LOGICAL FALLACY, you have a problem.)

willrogers said @ 6:46am GMT on 13th Sep
But of course Ron Paul must be right. I agree with him about the drug war and war and military spending, so he must be correct about everything else, right?

Right?

Anyone?

EPT said @ 9:53am GMT on 13th Sep
To be fair, the (rather selective) part he was replying to was a simplistic ad hominem ('doesn't know shit about economics')

willrogers said @ 10:12am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
It's not really an ad hominem if I back it up with details.

Ron Paul explicitly argued that healthcare is too expensive in our country and articulated one of his usual libertarian tropes as a solution to the problem.

I then pointed out that this is a poor argument because the rest of the first-world which has some form of universal healthcare system operates at far cheaper rates than we do with our private capitalist system, whether your metric is per capita spending, spending as a percentage of GDP, or simply nominal expenditures.

Ron Paul has presented no evidence that his "program" (which isn't an actual plan but a libertarian laissez faire platitude about "competition" and deregulation making things cheaper) would be cheaper than our current system nor that it would be cheaper than the universal systems in any other first-world nation. He especially has not established any evidence that it would be a medically superior system, irrespective of cost, so he fails on both ends.

Thus, it's not like I just called Ron Paul a "poopy head" and left it at that. I stated my opinion that he's largely ignorant about economics, cited a specific example from the linked video clip, and explained why it was economically unsound reasoning.

The important thing here is Ron Paul has been repeatedly presented throughout the media, across the internet and via various other mediums as being an authority on economic issues and I was attempting to refute his authority on both economic and medical issues.

blindnerd said @ 5:55am GMT on 14th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
Ugh, this one is really bugging me as of late.

Saying that "Ron Paul is a poopy head" is not an ad hominem, it's just an insult.

Saying "Ron Paul is a poopy head therefor everything he says is wrong" is an ad hominem.

Saying "Ron Paul is a poopy head because he is wrong about the following things [followed by a description explaining all of his wrongness]" is also not an ad hominem but instead an insult followed by the reasons you insulted him.

Calling something an ad hominem carries the implication that you are attacking the speaker in an attempt to discredit his arguments without having to deal with them.

Drawing conclusion about an author, based on his arguments is therefor not an ad hominem -- provided you can back up those conclusions..

thepublicone said @ 1:24pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2 Insightful]
He didn't join the handful of assholes in the crowd calling for the guy to die, but he didn't chastise them for being Un-American or ridiculous either.

Oftentimes, in politics, what's left unsaid speaks volumes about what a candidate actually thinks.

arctan said @ 1:55am GMT on 15th Sep
Ron Paul doesn't openly say horrific racist things and he doesn't openly cheer for the deaths of the unfortunate or foolish.

However, he seems to attract such people wherever he goes, and such people seem to feel free to be out, loud and proud around him, whereas if Barack Obama has many fans who talk about fleet-footed Negroes or cheer wildly at the thought of a comatose man dying they seem to keep it to themselves out of embarrassment.

You really don't think this correlation means *anything* about Ron Paul? At all?

At the very least, Ron Paul's enemies on the Left would not seem to be the problem. The people putting that shit in his newsletters and showing up in his audiences are a problem, and if you don't get that they are in fact a humongous problem and that people being massively skeeved out about Paul by their proximity is a rational response because of how horrifying they are, then you also have problems.

arctan said @ 1:53am GMT on 15th Sep
Ron Paul has no degree in econ as far as I know, and econ is one of those subjects it is incredibly easy to write lots of books about that sell a lot of copies while knowing nothing (same with, say, philosophy, psychology, self-help, etc.)

Recently read an article detailing his stock portfolio and the returns on his investments have bucked all the trends during the last few days.

This is such a fucking stupid argument. If you want to go that route, Warren Buffett has made a great deal more money being right when other investors were wrong than Ron Paul, as has George Soros, and they both have political views wildly different from Paul's (though I wouldn't regard them as my allies).

Before the almightily government came to save us, it was the community and churches and voluntary associations that insured and cared for the sick.

...Who frequently got only palliative care, which is all these organizations were able to afford (if even that), and generally died a whole fucking lot faster.

Mother Teresa was able to put a lot of people in beds and pray with them and create great photo ops for herself. Did she actually *cure* anybody or give them real medicine that would've actually prolonged their lives or even significantly reduced their suffering (like actual anesthetic drugs, which she had a nice supply of herself)? Fuck no -- the point wasn't to help people, it was to fulfill her narrowly defined religious crusade based on the very limited funds she allotted through people's tithes. And she's not a special case, it's how tons of private charitable organizations work, because their funds are generally extremely limited and their operations very heavily directed by people's personal prejudices.

Naruki said @ 2:10am GMT on 15th Sep
Wasn't Mother Teresa a big fan of suffering? I think that might also factor into it.

structured_spirits said @ 6:00am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
To be fair, he said "no" when asked if the society should let the patient die. I'm assuming he thinks that a private charity that people can either donate to or not donate to would foot the bill in a similar manner to how things actually worked before government healthcare. In other words, that was a very loaded question designed to discredit him to wider audiences. I still believe that the media is assassinating Ron Paul's campaign purposefully.

BlutStein1984 said @ 6:14am GMT on 13th Sep
They are to some extent. In this debate they asked everyone about the Federal Reserve but Paul. He is the one that made this a discussion point in the first place. He has written numerous audit bills and written a whole book on just the Federal Reserve. It is because of his audit bill that we know the FED created $16 trillion dollars out of thin air and that 30% of it went to bail out foreign banks and not to save the American economy.

In the last debate they asked everyone on stage about health care but him, a medically trained doctor who has practiced for over 40 years and delivered over 4,000 babies. If anyone is qualified to talk about healthcare and medince, it is Ron Paul.

foobar said @ 6:48am GMT on 13th Sep
There's a simpler explanation: they just don't take him seriously.

willrogers said @ 6:58am GMT on 13th Sep
It's hard to take a walking false choice fallacy seriously.

With Ron Paul, everything is "close down every government department" and "let the free market/competition/libertarian trope work."

The logical and rational position is to look at each department individually and look for ways to be more efficient, more sensitive to the public's needs, and less intrusive and onerous all while not sacrificing the benefits of that department. If some other department, organization, etc. is demonstrably better at doing the same job, then we look at reducing or eliminating the department while examining any consequences of doing so.

The Federal Reserve is a perfect example of this. Ron Paul just wants to eliminate it entirely but the Fed does a pretty good job with monetary policy and it isn't something a private organization could do. The solution is not to eliminate the Fed entirely, but to reform it to increase transparency and accountability.

Naruki said @ 11:45pm GMT on 13th Sep
No, it's actually true that they are deliberately excluding him. As wise as that sounds based on how fucking insane Paul is, it clearly isn't fair ball compared to how they cover differently but equally crazy candidates like Bachmann and Palin and Perry.

Because he actually has a valid point this time, I am withholding his normally due downmod for lying about Ron Paul.

foobar said @ 6:48am GMT on 13th Sep
That's exactly what the media are supposed to do to political candidates.

structured_spirits said @ 8:30am GMT on 13th Sep
Except that they don't actually do that to certain political candidates. Lets see them toss Romney so questions of religion.

Krutz said @ 2:32pm GMT on 13th Sep
First of all, none of the candidates mentioned religion, either, except for Santorum who claimed his Catholic faith made him vote for the '96 welfare reform act. Romney is free to bring it up as he chooses, as are the other candidates.

If the moderators had asked about religion, how loud would the cries of bias have been as CNN attempted to make them all "look like crazy street preachers" or what have you?

structured_spirits said @ 4:40pm GMT on 13th Sep
But why didn't they, seems like at least one area where there's some differences. They all look like shit candidates to me, but it seems like only Paul gets called out on it on television.

willrogers said @ 7:21am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
That's bullshit.

It's not a loaded question, it's a reality that happens to people on a daily basis in America.

They call the people Blitzer alluded to as "young invincibles" because they are healthy young adults who don't get insurance because it's expensive and they are generally healthy, but all it takes as one significant illness or injury to ruin a person's entire life or even kill them.

The fact is that these hypothetical charities referred to by Ron Paul exist today and they are not even close to enough to deal with our healthcare problems, so while Paul wasn't directly advocating for letting this hypothetical person die, it is a very likely outcome under the sustem for which he is advocating.

We know for a fact that there are healthcare systems in virtually every other first-world nation that cover every single one of their citizens and do so while spending far less money than we do to cover a fraction of our populace. Paul knows these systems exist (he'd have to be completely comatose or in a vegetative state to not know), but he directly fights against them and similar programs coming to the US because they conflict with his personal beliefs and philosophy. In one of those systems, Blitzer's hypothetical scenario wouldn't even be a problem, so Ron Paul's answer is an implied consent to just let this man die because it's better than "welfareism" and "socialism."

snowfox said @ 6:13am GMT on 13th Sep
The church should pay for the young man's healthcare... ok... where does the church get its money? What if the church doesn't have enough money? Other than the inability to equitably spread the financial burden among the populace and a lack of clear accountability, how is this any different from using taxes?

Libertarian fail.

BlutStein1984 said @ 6:17am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:-2]
Open a history book. Things occurred and solutions were found long before the almighty government stepped in during the 1950s. To think nothing can exist outside it's caring hands is to sell yourself short.

f00m@nB@r said @ 6:20am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:4 Underrated]
No, you open a fucking history book.

Krutz said @ 6:29am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:3 Underrated]
You mean how nobody died of disease for lack of medication or care, no matter how poor they were? How no one was turned away for any reason, like race or creed? And we're comparing the costs of medical procedures and drugs from the 1950's to ones in 2011?

What do you do for an encore? Claim that the nation's computing needs were once met by EINAC so we don't need PCs in classrooms today?

LethalFlatulence said @ 2:45am GMT on 14th Sep
don't forget infant mortality rates.

lilmookieesquire said @ 7:32am GMT on 13th Sep
Things occurred... like polio!

willrogers said @ 7:47am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
And you know how we got to our current state where polio doesn't exist in the US at all?

The government mandated polio vaccination, which eliminated symptomatic occurrences and carriers of the disease.

The same pretty much happens with most other disease we vaccinate for, but we still have to maintain those (MMR, TB, etc.) because they are still quite common in the rest of the world, and immigrants and world-traveling Americans could easily cause an outbreak here without vaccination programs.

f00m@nB@r said @ 7:37am GMT on 13th Sep
Pertussis, rubella, mumps, measles, smallpox, cholera.

EPT said @ 10:02am GMT on 13th Sep
To think nothing can exist outside it's caring hands is to sell yourself short.

That strawman's so enormous, it could be the finale at Burning Man.

TM said @ 5:00pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:5 Underrated]
You want history? Here's some. The Food and Drug Administration was created in 1906, under the Pure Food and Drug Act, specifically to regulate and prosecute food and drug vendors who were selling products adulterated with whatever substances they felt like adding, however toxic (which many of them were). Ten years previously, numerous American Army soldiers fighting the Spanish-American War in Cuba were issued canned meat rations that were downright putrid, so dangerous that some commanding officers had stockpiles burnt. The 'free hand of the market' that Dr. Paul likes to talk about was making as much money as it could, producing canned meat as cheaply as possible. Economically that's fine, but many of the people who ate that garbage were seriously sickened or killed. That's not fine, and no amount of mudslinging like 'Nanny State' (or the contemporary favorite, 'muckraking journalism') can justify it.

sanepride said @ 5:51pm GMT on 13th Sep
Obviously true liberty is the thrill of opening your tin of tuna fish without knowing if it's riddled with botulism or dolphin meat or both.

Viking_Biochemist said @ 8:09am GMT on 14th Sep
No, you don't understand the free market. The dead people won't buy any more canned meat from that supplier!

Krutz said @ 1:05pm GMT on 14th Sep
Oddly, the meat supplier's costs drop when the number of available corpses increases. Yay for the Invisible Hand!

f00m@nB@r said @ 7:19pm GMT on 13th Sep
I won't keep you from your Radithor.

willrogers said @ 6:45am GMT on 13th Sep
What funny is that medical coverage would be more costly if things were dealt with on a smaller, more local scale.

If you look at health insurance companies, there are much higher overhead and administration costs (around 30 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare) for individual and small business policies and programs. Conversely, those policies and programs for huge corporations and organizations (at least thousands of employees/enrollees) have far lower overhead and administration (less than 10 cents of every healthcare dollar)costs, comparable to the costs of federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Thus, the message is that, when it comes to healthcare coverage, bigger is better, and having a national universal healthcare program should have the lowest overhead and administration costs possible.

ENZ said @ 12:42am GMT on 14th Sep
I like how Ron Paul doesn't even consider the possibility that the hypothetical young man is an atheist or otherwise a member of a religion that doesn't have the kind of communal structure more mainstream religions do.

Also, it's funny how people who are selfish with their taxes seem to have so much faith in charity picking up the slack.

Naruki said @ 2:28am GMT on 14th Sep
He probably just puts that down to you making the wrong choices (of religion), and the IHOTFM decides if you live or die.

Didel said @ 6:53am GMT on 13th Sep
What gets me about it too is the part about "we used to take care of one another, chruches and neighbors..." part. Yeah, and that didn't work, because people are selfish cunts, and thus the gov't had to step in to help people. So why the fuck would he think that would work now? It's as if he doesn't realize that those neighbors he speaks of, collectively they form a society, and what he's talking about is straight up socialism! (not really, but you know, that seems to me like an easy troll, I'm going to save it for a libertard sometime)

But yeah, I really don't get the "people will help other people, but not the gov't who is made of the people, they can't help other people."

That guy is nutso.

EPT said @ 10:04am GMT on 13th Sep
The other issue with welfare is that people like to give... for disasters. Large or small, people will shake the can for you.

But ongoing charity? Nope, doesn't happen. Got a disabled child that needs constant supervision, yet will live a full lifespan? Who's going to provide you with the income so that both of you can live?

Hell, out of work for a year despite desperate attempts to find some? Who will give to that sort of charity for a lengthy period?

a.talisan said @ 6:57am GMT on 13th Sep
I become screaming mad when I hear this logic:

"Well, if the government would just keep their noses out of it, then all the churches would take care of everyone in hard luck cases and everyone would be fine all the time."

OH yes, all those magnanimous churches out there.

willrogers said @ 7:45am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
Also, you have to remember that churches and charitable organizations rely on charitable contributions to function, which means that their programs lie or die (no pub intended) based upon how charitable people are feeling in a given time period.

Thus, if people stop feeling so charitable or, more likely, the economy goes to shit, then these groups have less money in charitable donations and the population to which they were supposed to provide medical services, food, shelter, etc. are left shit out of luck.

Conversely, if the government provided these services (i.e. homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food stamps, universal healthcare), then they could at least continue in poor economic conditions through deficit spending until the economy picked up again.

More importantly, the government continuing these programs would bolster consumption and aggregate demand in poor economic times, helping stimulate economic growth, whereas charities pulling back on services through lack of donations would likely cause economic contraction, because they aren't paying for goods and services at the same rate anymore.

BergZ said @ 11:10am GMT on 13th Sep
Wow. I knew Ron Paul was crazy, but you can really see him going off the rails in the last 20 seconds of that clip. He must have been flustered because he's just spouting Palin style nonsense: “special interests!”, ” insurance companies!”, ” the inflation!”

structured_spirits said @ 11:22am GMT on 13th Sep
He's flustered because he knows he's just been fucked over and realizes there's nothing he can really do about it.

Krutz said @ 1:26pm GMT on 13th Sep
His response doesn't help him. Let charities and churches take up the slack on health care? Putting aside the whims of said organizations to deny whoever they want for whatever reason, be it skin color or they're the wrong sort of believer (or non-believer), they don't have nearly the resources needed to cope.

He fucked himself over.

booga said @ 2:34pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:2]
Let me say first that i'm canadian and i love our healthcare and do not support the death penalty.

That being said, how the question was phrased, i'd support letting the guy die too. I wouldn't like it but i can see how its necessary in that system. I'd support easing any pain and keeping him comfortable but wouldn't expend a lot of resources to artifically keep him alive.

Either everyone pays in, like Canada, or you take it upon yourself through insurance companies to make sure there is a safety net in place should things go bad. Sure sometimes you don't feel you're getting your money's worth if you are lucky enough to not get sick but for others its the most important thing they ever did.

The hypothetical person has a good job and has money so affording insurance isn't an issue. He chooses to spend the money on something else (if he's saving it maybe he could afford paying for treatment up front if it's an option). He rolled the dice and lost. Again, would i want him to die? Nope! but in that system its not a way of thinking that can be sustained (especially since taxing the rich a fair share seems to be off the table).

Look at the stories where people have to pay a small fee to be serviced by the fire dept but choose not to. The firefighters come out and make sure it doesn't spread but don't save the house because they didn't pay. Sucks to be sure but if everyone knew a free net was there they wouldn't pay in so that net could even exist.

I think everyone should get healthcare by making everyone pay into it to some degree (obviously need to go easy on poor people) but he isn't poor and can afford it but chooses not to. he already decided the 300 a month is worth more than his life by not getting covered. Why should we argue with him?

the circus said @ 5:25am GMT on 14th Sep
How about we save his life and just give him an appropriate bill instead?

Tang said @ 5:44am GMT on 14th Sep
i should have listened to my parents and become a magician

Dantron said @ 4:52am GMT on 13th Sep
So glad i don't live in the states. W.T.F

Supreme_Coconut said @ 5:29am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if he thought the uninsured should be allowed to die instead of receiving state care. Before Paul could answer, several in the crowd yelled out, “yes!,”

I'm ashamed to think that such people live free in our country. No wait, they're not people. People have dignity and compassion. These.. things are monsters.

structured_spirits said @ 7:35am GMT on 13th Sep
Or political plants used to discredit candidates.

willrogers said @ 7:40am GMT on 13th Sep
Seriously?

You're going to manufacture a conspiracy theory with absolutely no evidence to support such a wild assertion?

A more reasonable skeptical position regarding these monstrous individuals is that their interjections genuinely reflect their personal beliefs, but they are not representative of the Tea Party as a whole. It was a self-selected audience at the debate of likely the most passionate Tea Party members, which may mean that they are a statistically different sample compared to the overall population that they were supposed to represent.

structured_spirits said @ 8:35am GMT on 13th Sep
Why does it have to be a "conspiracy?" You've never gone to a sporting event and sat you're home team section and cheered when the opposing team scored just to piss people off? It's exactly the same kind of thing. All that's required is a couple of loudmouths who want to make someone look bad.

willrogers said @ 9:19am GMT on 13th Sep
That's not the same as a "political plant used to discredit candidates."

A single jerkoff being a troll by themselves is one thing but there were obviously at least several people doing the same thing, so we either have several people coincidentally being "political plants" independent of one another or it's a conspiracy to "discredit" Ron Paul. Either way, your theory is irrational and unwarranted without some kind of evidence.

But seriously, do you understand how crazy it sounds to take every criticism or negative association with Ron Paul as some kind of ploy against him?

EPT said @ 10:11am GMT on 13th Sep
Do you give leftist vandals and graffitists the same consideration? That they might just be conservative plants attempting to make the left look bad?

structured_spirits said @ 10:48am GMT on 13th Sep
Oh there's no doubt about it. Look back on the London riots and the G20 summit Toronto where the police had undercover officers impersonating rioters to make them look bad and damage property so there could be a crackdown.

structured_spirits said @ 8:48am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
And I'll give you another theory. Assume teh guy reading the questions doesn't like Paul, or has just been told by someone else who doesn't like Paul to read him that question. See he could have read that question to any of the candidates, and the audience would have cheered just the same, and that kind of thing is predictable if you know the teabaggers. Yet he read Paul the question.

willrogers said @ 9:21am GMT on 13th Sep
or has just been told by someone else who doesn't like Paul to read him that question.

Again, more conspiracy theories from you.

Isn't it far more likely and rational that Blitzer read Ron Paul that question because he, more than any of the other people on that stage, has come out against government having any nearly any role in people's lives and would therefore be the one most ardently opposed to any government involvement in healthcare?

structured_spirits said @ 11:08am GMT on 13th Sep
I think the mainstream media has a pretty long documented history of trying to keep him off the air and make him look crazy.

For example:
http://youtu.be/cUXBz6AGJFM - 2011 straw poll omission on daily show.

f00m@nB@r said @ 9:29am GMT on 13th Sep
Someone told someone who told someone else to tell Blitzer to ask the question. Of course, it was Obama, ultimately.

structured_spirits said @ 10:58am GMT on 13th Sep
Actually Obama's best move would be to donate to Paul and keep him in the running as long as possible. It's Romney/Perry along with Faux Newz type people, like Rove, that want him to disappear. See if the votes are split too many ways in the primary they might not end up with an electablt candidate, which I think they've already decided is Mitt.

Krutz said @ 12:57pm GMT on 13th Sep
So wait, is it a liberal conspiracy or a right-wing conspiracy? You've got them acting in concert, as if both somehow control the nomination.

Frankly, as one who isn't smoking the Illuminati crack pipe, none of the GOP need any help to look like they're nuts; they do just fine on their own.

structured_spirits said @ 1:34pm GMT on 13th Sep
And you think that that's an impossibility? In a very real sense the two party system is all about both parties working together to get what they both want. Take abortion as a wedge issue or the 2004 presidential election that was fixed and never challenged. I any event, I'm not suggesting a single alternative theory but several. Do you really have to have everything happening only one way in your mind so that you can't even consider different possibilities and discuss them without committing to any single one of them?

Krutz said @ 2:00pm GMT on 13th Sep
Abortion has always been a wedge issue that the GOP has used to woo voters. Ironically, they don't seem to want to actually ban it or they'll lose that method of motivating their base.

And it's nice to have all those different conspiracies to draw on, ain't it? You've always got a scapegoat in the shadows for every occasion and never have to take a firm position.

structured_spirits said @ 2:07pm GMT on 13th Sep
I'm not running for office, why should I take a frm position on anything when I can pick and choose and change my mind as teh situation develops.

Krutz said @ 2:28pm GMT on 13th Sep
"As the situation develops" appears to mean "as counter-arguments are put forth," but the answer always seems to be "it's a bunch of cigarette-smoking men from the X-Files pulling the strings."

Sorry, but it's quite possible that Ron Paul isn't taken seriously because his arguments don't stand up to much scrutiny when taken to their logical conclusions. Not to mention complaints that he wasn't asked about X or Y when his supporters will rattle off a laundry list of issues he's supposedly an "expert" on; if that's the case, they can't cover everything he allegedly "knows" without leaving things out, especially if there are other candidates to question on the panel.

structured_spirits said @ 4:20pm GMT on 13th Sep
Yes of course it is, did I ever dispute that possibility?

f00m@nB@r said @ 2:30pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Funny]
I get it, now.

structured_spirits said @ 4:39pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Good]
I guess it just bothers me that none of the candidates, either democrat or republican or teaparty really appeal to me this election. I feel like they're all talking to other people that have completely different concerns than I have. They seem more like puppets than people, all of them completely fake, and so it seems to make sense to be looking for strings and puppeteers.

arrowhen said @ 9:24pm GMT on 13th Sep
So you've already decided it's all a conspiracy, but the specifics change according to the latest flimsy evidence that crops up? ;)

I'm not going to say conspiracies never happen, but I'd suggest that in MOST cases of Bad Shit Going Down, the only "conspiracy" in play is that of primitive human instinct to undermine reason and progress.

GrungD said @ 7:57am GMT on 13th Sep
Or run-of-the-mill, callous libertarians. I find that much easier to believe than someone actually spending money to discredit Ron Paul.

willrogers said @ 8:21am GMT on 13th Sep
Yeah, it was probably not some conspiracy but that doesn't mean that those people are representative of the general public, libertarian or not.

It's a self-selected group at a major conservative political event, so it's probably going to be the most passionate partisans available, which probably means they are more extreme and certain in their views than the average Republican voter.

I mean, I may strongly disagree with virtually every Republican/conservative policy position, but I'm not about to let a few bad apples spoil the bunch or poison the well.

klingon_fodder said @ 4:55pm GMT on 13th Sep
cf mob mentality

tea party is a lynch mob, plain and simple, whipped to a froth by koch- and murdoch-funded propaganda, yearning for a golden age when niggers and women knew their place and vacation was the period between jobs

pretty gut-churning

GrungD said @ 9:32pm GMT on 13th Sep
My apologies, then. run-of-the-mill, callous true believers.

arrowhen said @ 5:18pm GMT on 13th Sep
Dude, there are people right here on SE that think such things.

"Callous, selfish dickbag" is pretty much the natural state of humanity.

klingon_fodder said @ 11:01pm GMT on 13th Sep
you must be prosperous
studies show that the prosperous lack empathy

arrowhen said @ 11:34pm GMT on 13th Sep
Empathy is a part of human nature too, but left to our own devices, selfishness almost always wins out. Note that most of your major religions have some kind of "do unto others" clause; no one needs to remind us to be selfish dicks.

sacrelicious said @ 5:38am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
keep in mind, what plays to the tea party is poison in a general election (and from the looks of it, mainstream republicans as well).

go ahead, pander you son of a bitch. pander yourself into obscurity...

Krutz said @ 1:24pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:5 Insightful]
Speaking of GOP pandering, it's quite the 180 they've done:

sacrelicious said @ 3:54pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Informative]
all we have to do is plant some narrative about how tax payyer money shouldn't be spent on pre-natal care for the underprivileged, and we can get them off our backs about the whole abortion thing!

ComposerNate said @ 5:28pm GMT on 13th Sep
Compassionless conservative.

Tang said @ 5:51am GMT on 14th Sep

Tang said @ 5:52am GMT on 14th Sep
o_o ...
seriously like one of the first images i found of her

structured_spirits said @ 7:28am GMT on 14th Sep
What's your IQ?!?

ComposerNate said @ 10:04am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
For every person Perry imprisons or kills, at least one new job is created.

Vlad Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once notice that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The guests ate and drank late into the night. Vlad himself then made an appearance and asked them, "What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" When they responded positively Vlad ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Vlad explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this "in order that they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in my realm."
http://www.donlinke.com/drakula/vlad.htm#Anecdotes

sacrelicious said @ 4:26pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
there's another version of the story that goes something like this:

Vlad had noticed that many people seeking alms were in fact wealthy merchants posing as paupers, so he invited them to partake of a free meal, and yadda yadda yadda, he burned them alive.

not saying that is the more accurate account, but it's on the basis of that version that Vlad is considered a hero in Romania. the version you cite is the more popular version west of Romania, possibly due to the his being characterized as a villain thanks to Bram Stoker's book.

it's anybodies guess as to what actually happened (if anything) as accurate accounts of anything in the middle ages are often difficult to come by. bear in mind that in the millennia preceding modern notions of journalistic objectivity, rumor was given the same weight as fact.

structured_spirits said @ 4:47pm GMT on 13th Sep
What little we do know of the man is that he was deposed twice by political enemies within his own country and after gaining power for a 3rd time, he ultimately died in battle against invading turks, leaving his enemies both at home and abroad to write his legacy. I'd say he was definitely a ruthless leader, were there any other kind in this era in this region?

blackpsypher said @ 11:06am GMT on 13th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
If these people are the answer, I don't even want to know what the question was.

thepublicone said @ 1:38pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:5 Insightful]
Fuck this shit; I'm taking my Socialist Canadian Free Healthcare, quality education, cheap University, non-crippling debt having ass and going home, back to Socialistville, where the comas are paid for and crazy people don't think my cyborg Prime Minister is a Muslim.

Last night was the scariest shit I've seen in a LONG time. Leave all the fucking debate alone: The only thing this debate should prove to anyone is that EVERYONE on that stage last night is batshit fucking crazy, and incapable of running a Starbucks, let alone a country.

I don't care how bad you think Obama has fucked shit up- If you have an ounce of fucking sense in your head, he gets re-elected. And Clinton after that. And whoever runs democrat after that, etc, until the Republicans shed this Tea Party bullshit and decide to close down Jesusland and come back to the real world.

The alternative is absolute fucking disaster on every imaginable level. Any fool can see that; these people will set America back a century at best, and destroy it at worst. There's simply no hiding it now- The Republican party is literally fucking insane, and those few who aren't will pander to the insane to get their vote.

Straight-jacket wearing, spittle flying, talking to god on a CB radio batshit nuts.

Everyone else in the world knows this, and last night was the biggest demonstration of it. I hope to baby Jesus y'all realize this after last night.

bruceski said @ 3:40pm GMT on 13th Sep
Unfortunately there are difficulties. My father still considers himself a conservative, but realizes that the Republican party has shifted past what he considers conservative and hasn't voted for a non-Democrat president for over 20 years (other positions are another matter, New Mexico gets competency and idiots on both sides of the party line fairly regularly). Not everyone can manage to do that; they find a party that in general matches with their values and assume it will always match with their values. Then there's the echo tunnel effect, when people choose sources of information that clearly support one side or the other and the same message gets repeated over and over again, so it seems like the whole world agrees with it because to the listener that IS their world. You don't even need to be actively malicious to make this happen, or be an idiot to let it happen to you.

For as much as this era of communication allows people to be much more informed about issues, it's also that much easier for them to seal themselves away in bubbles of idealist ignorance. I try to aim for middle of the road on my news sources (BBC, PBS Newshour, Nightly Business Report, Tavis Smiley and Charlie Rose) but I realize that even though those sources try to stay neutral (or in the case of NBR remain focus on what it means for business) and deal with a variety of topics they all lean towards the American Left. Never trust any news source that does not admit it's impossible to be fully unbiased.

bruceski said @ 3:45pm GMT on 13th Sep
...I think I got into Ramble Mode there. What was my point?

Krutz said @ 7:39pm GMT on 13th Sep [Score:3 Insightful]
More people need to stop treating political parties like sports teams and actually realize what they're doing?

CapnSilver said @ 12:40am GMT on 14th Sep
Gooooooooooooo Democrats!

f00m@nB@r said @ 2:08am GMT on 14th Sep
Question for the non-Americans: is coverage of elections, and the run-up to elections, like sports coverage where you are? Because it is in the US. It's the same sort of smug commentary on strategy and tactics by armchair coaches.

thepublicone said @ 12:31am GMT on 14th Sep [Score:4 Insightful]
That people will only watch what they believe will agree with their views.

On that, I'd normally agree.

My point was that this was a Tea Party debate.... On CNN. Not FOX, not MSNBC, CNN; the news network no one watches because its the only network in America that comes anywhere close to being the middle.

During this debate, the candidates refused to refute nutbars in the crowd who called for the government to let sick folks die, advocated a return to relying on the CHURCH for medical treatment, got upset because one of their candidate DARED to think realistically and mandate that young girls get a vaccine against CANCER, openly called for complete REMOVAL of the American Education system, the EPA, social security, ObamaCare, and several other things that people who don't light cigars with C-notes need to survive. Ron Paul- a medical fucking doctor- actually said that the medical industry should be de-regulated, or, in his words "let people practice what they want."

Just think about how fucking scary that is. I, with no medical training, could call myself a "medical professional" and sell my menthol flavored "Magic Tobacky Stick" that cures cancer. Pepsi could sell "Magic healing Elixirs" with whatever the fuck they want in it.

Legally.

Not only without repercussions, but with the government's blessing.

They bandied about lowering- or even removing- taxes and regulations on corporations, bragged about how they wanted to remove every single safety net for the public they could get their hands on, and blatantly told an Afghan women that they really could care less about their half-finished attempt to bring the barest of women's rights to Afghan women, which will promptly disappear in a hail of brutal repressions and honor-killings when the Americans remove all of their support for SHIT A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT STARTED.

They throw the word "Treasonous" around like it's a meaningless word in America, with the same frequency that I use "fuck", when NONE of them know the first thing about patriotism, democracy, or sacrifice, let alone what makes the country they claim to love so remarkable and special. The last time I checked, the last time before this bullshit that term was used was Oliver North. Before that, those Russian spies in the fifties. Before that? Benedict Arnold.

End of fucking list.

Treason is not a word you toss around in order to buoy your own political stance. The fact that its not only tolerated, but encouraged by certain groups is disgusting, un-American, and, by its very nature, a symbol of a quickly weakening moral code, not a code of religious beliefs or thoughts on family make-up, but rather on the fact that the once mighty United States of America would dare to allow this bullshit to exist in its backyard.

None of these candidates have served the country, either in the military or in actual hands-on service to the nation. They are, for all intents, either professional politicians or businessmen who've realized that politics could be just as lucrative. None of them have EVER been near the poverty line, had to scrape to survive, or lived off of those very programs they're talking about cutting. They're a bunch of fucking hypocrites who use their position of importance to cater to the agendas of folks who pad their wallets. They care not for their country, yet they cloak themselves in the flag, call themselves patriots and saviors of a hurting nation, and hide behind the illusion of self-righteous devotion to a god who would smote them instantly if he were to actually exist.

Hell, I'm a fucking Canuck, and I love your country more than all of them combined, and that, my fellow Erectioners, is a sad fucking thing indeed, and a statement on the people that you the people think are worthy of steering your nation.

Remember, these same folks are running the same platform that Bush operated on for the last 7 years of his presidency; they've just amped it up 10 notches, draped it in a flag, and put a giant fucking cross around its neck.

Batshit.

Fucking.

Nuts.

Unedited.

On live TV.

On a platform watched by their own constituents.

Now, I know there's MANY Democrats who are just as fake as the Republicans. Perhaps there's more. But what separates the two of them is one simple thing: One party still actually cares about the people of America.

The other just wants the money.

I don't care if you're a deluded Jesus-freak who didn't graduate high-school, and believes Muslim Obama is coming for your guns, job, and dog: After that performance, something in your simple redneck brain has to have sounded an alarm.

America would be the laughing stock of the world right now, if it wasn't for the fact that the very thought of these folks in power is so motherfucking scary that the entire world gets this queasy feeling in their stomach at the very thought of it.

zenviper said @ 1:44am GMT on 14th Sep
Interesting, well thought out comment.