Obama would prefer to have some kind of "civil union" for gays rather than calling it marriage, but that just opens a can of worms. Are partners in a civil union entitled to the same rights as married people? Just let them be miserable like straight people and be done with it. It's ridiculous that it's legal in some states and not in others.

 

RON PAUL WINS I AM MOVING:wall:

 

Statements like this are so ironic. Who do you think corrupted that corrupt government? Who do you imagine pays for nearly all the lobbying in that corrupt government? Who is responsible for the majority of campaign contributions in that corrupt government?

Let me see if I understand this: Your idea seems to be that because government has been corrupted by corporations trying to suck the American public dry, we should simply eliminate the government, allowing them to do the sucking without even having to bribe or lobby anyone? Fantastic. I suppose it is at least more "efficient."

**Let us all take a moment of silence to remember the private sector before the evil government stuck its nose in**

Oh beautiful eight year old girl dying of black lung in an 1890's coal mine. You will be missed.

Oh wonderful cotton picking slaves of the south. Might we whip a tree in your honor? You will be missed.

Oh fantastical labor conditions prior to the Wagner Act, you allowed no workers rights, no unions, and saw the deaths of hundreds of labor protesters. You will be missed.

Oh unregulated stock market, you almost crushed this country once before. You will be missed. Ahh, well not entirely missed. It seems you're returning in all your unencumbered glory.

Oh usury banking and loan sharking, you will be missed.

Oh unlabeled and unregulated food and drugs, you were so exciting because you were so dangerous. You will be missed.

Oh private healthcare, which cost the American people nearly twice as much as any other industrialized country and yet did not return better results. You will be...oh, dear me. You're still here?

**Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that government is pushed out of the private sector so that we can return to that Eden which it bestowed upon us without restraint. Amen**

I can't wait for the day when Goldman Sachs can play with my grandfather's retirement funds and then give him the finger of "unforeseen market forces" when they lose it all lining their own pockets. Of course, according to your methods, he wont be getting any social security because that is evil, and he certainly wont be able to afford healthcare after his nest egg goes up in smoke. So I suppose he...dies?

I can't help but think that people of your ilk are simply under-evolved. And I mean that in the most scientific and least demeaning way. It seems to me that you are still living, at least psychologically, in the trees of Mesopotamia. Not too ironically, one of the ways we measure intelligence, especially among apes, is by observing their ability to construct functioning communities, based upon communal care and altruistic behaviors, two of the strongest signs of a healthy civilization.

Now, you seem to be something below most apes; still screaming that we must stick a spear into the old man if he falls over, and trample the children to reach the last banana. We can put the old man in a wheelchair. And we can get another banana at safeway. There are no lions chasing us my friend, and letting the sick and slow members of the tribe die does not save us, it merely makes us murderers. We are making a steady climb towards true community. When you're done trying to kill your grandfather, why don't you come out of the bush and join us?

 

No,,and society understands, that they should not have compared or equivalent rights as a ''married'' couple.

There are a handful of states the do recognize 'civil unions', but the majority of the states dont,,until the majority of states do recognize it,,it should not be a federal issue.

 

I am disappointed, sir. I expected at least an attempt at defending your own position, indefensible as it is.

What a bang up start. I point out that corporations are the major corrupter of government, and you respond by saying that...let me get this right: corrupt government is the reason that corporations corrupt government?

Do you know what a circle is? You happen to be arguing in one.

Allowing what to happen? Your answers are so vague and general and simply pointless. Are you back to saying that the corrupt government is allowing itself to be corrupted? What a plainly ingenious discovery. However, no one denied that they were being corrupted, simply that the reason for the corruption was the very private sector which you want to give more power to.

Get out of your circle and get a hold of the point.

Quite a hapless response. Bravo. If you have no answer, leave the box blank.

Once again, leave the box blank. And what on earth are you talking about "full blown racist?" That implies that I portrayed you as any sort of racist. Did I? No? Then what are you on about?

Good lord man. I have no conscience? Because I'm saying we should strive to treat each other with more care? That is simply upside down. Do you even think about what you're typing or do you just insert words into blank spaces? You have no ____. Conscience!

Why don't you start talking about the rationale of my argument when you can actually respond to it? Rather than flapping about and pretending you've made a point. I would be terribly interested to hear your rationale for putting things like social security in the hands of a totalitarian private sector which answers to no one. To hear your reasons for being against nationalized healthcare when it not only delivers better results, it also costs less. And aren't you all about costs? And I'd like to hear about your fear of a big government take over as the reason for wanting them out of all things private sector. Then, of course, reconcile that view with all the governmental intrusions into the private sector which you support. Is it just convenient picking and choosing?

It is ironic that you labeled me a liberal politician, as I have just been labeled a conservative cook in another thread. Perhaps you'll need a bigger box.

 

That all sounds awesome...if he'd just take a sensible stance on the war in Afganistan we'd be good.

 

Well, I suppose there is no longer any point to wringing our hands over Ron Paul.

Ron Paul's biggest selling point is that he would withdraw U.S. troops from the world's foreign theaters, demilitarize us, and bare our necks to our enemies.

Barack Hussein Obama is proposing to do the exact same thing.

Kind of makes Ron Paul a moot point, huh?

If we're going to commit mass suicide, we might as well stick with the devil we know, and drink Obama's fruit punch.

This will be reassuring to CFH420 and all the other inquiring minds who have been looking for an alternative to our present commander in chief. Now CFH and the others can vote for Barry instead, and feel good about it, even if that filthy Mormon RINO, Mitty-poo, robs the candidacy from their guy.



BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA 2012

 

Perhaps somebody needs to revisit philosophy?

 

The President is one person. That person does not have all the power to make every choice for the country. I'll probably vote for Obama only because I feel that other nations respect him and or view him differently than our other presidents. Why do I feel that way, probably because he is half black. Honestly I'm apathetic .......

 

I wonder if you honestly believe this nonsense when you give it two good seconds of thought? Bearing our necks to our enemies and committing mass suicide? Perhaps you have a penchant for hyperbole, but it does seem that you actually see our ship suddenly sinking if we're not engaged in an endless war with an ever changing enemy.

Suppose we halved the military budget(far more extreme than Obama's proposition)? We would still be spending far more than any other country in the world. Is that not enough? Would we immediately be trampled by Iranian soldiers, floating over to our shores in their non-existent naval force? Look out for Saudi Arabia, they just purchased a few outdated fighter jets from us? Prepare for Russia, they're still broke? Look out for China, they're trying to get a navy going...how cute? Are our hundreds of thousands of troops in Japan, Germany, Korea etc, really necessary? Were something to happen have we not shown already, through our attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, that we could reach the war zone almost immediately from anywhere in the world?

What are you so afraid of?

Put another way: Even with a halved budget no army could stand against ours, and so terrorist attacks and nuclear strikes would be the only real threat to our internal safety. As for terrorist attacks, we have stopped those on our shores through small pockets of intelligence, not with tanks and battleships. And as for a nuclear strike, well, again, our usual standing army would be of no use against such an attack. So what exactly do we need all of this for? Does it just make you feel safe, or even empowered to have an excessive military? Do you feel proud when you see how much more we spend on our military, rather than ashamed of how wasteful it is? I would honestly like to know what you, and so many others like you, are so terrified of. You always talk about our enemies destroying us if we cut the budget by so much as a dime, but who are these all powerful enemies, and how on earth are they going to do it?

What are you so afraid of?

 

Try being born in a different country. See if you have the same rights and freedoms.

 

Other armies routinely do stand against the U.S. military.

The U.S. routinely fails to meet its objectives in foreign theaters.

The proposed cuts, according to the Pentagon, would deny us the ability to wage protracted war in two theaters simultaneously- an ability that has been central to our military strategy for decades, because it is an essential component of deterrence.

We have the ability to destroy the world several times over, but our nuclear force is a deterrent. If we were to lose our ability to wage multiple wars conventionally, the nukes would no longer be a deterrent. They would become a front-line instrument of force projection.

I adore hyperbole, you effete, arrogrant little prick. Nevertheless, in my view, the mere contemplation of using nuclear weapons for hot engagements, even as tactical battlefield weapons, encourages escalation and is tantamount to suicide. :rose:

As to what I am afraid of, the answer is, "Not much." Nevertheless, the things we are not afraid of can kill us, and routinely do.

If I fear anything, it would be this country's accelerating abrogation of superiority. And before Kimi, Stumbler, and you, yourself get on my case on whether it is our place to lord it over the rest of the world, let me clarisify: I mean superiority in the senses of inquiry, stewardship, advancement, the notion that humanity has a bright future, and that the United States has a pivotal role in humanity's fruition.

Most of you are laughing, now. And that is exactly what I mean. Forty years ago, you would not have been laughing at my assertion. You would have scoffed at the question.

I mean, just look at us. We are debating the question of American exceptionalism on the Internet, a spin-off of DARPANET, developed by the American military, and in real time, on communications satellites developed by the American military, using serial gated processors developed by the American military. (Yes, U.K. friends, Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web. But DARPA gave him the essential foundation, TCP-IP.)

The military is just one aspect of this trend. The dismantling of NASA is even more troubling. And more troubling still is the way we've blithely ceded high energy physics to Europe.

Certainly the proposed cuts are not simply about fixing the budget. (How could that possibly be the case, when total military expenditures account for just 20% of the federal budget?) No, it is not about money. It is more insidious. These trends are symptomatic of systemic decay.

Countries that fail, do not do so quietly. The decay hits the knee of the curve, and then accelerates to a state that is gruesome. We are not quite there, yet, but the turning point is coming.



P.S. Telling Devious Dave to "revisit philosophy" makes you sound like a petulant little brat who has not had sufficient nap time.

 

Which vividly illustrates the futility of trying to project American military power on a global basis to address problems that are not military in nature. The reason we fail is that we cannot change people's hearts and minds by occupying their lands and killing their countrymen. We only make the problems worse.

On the other hand...when in the last 50 years was there a truly credible threat to the United States' national security?

Do you think that the test of the adequacy of our military budget is whether or not the Pentagon SAYS it's adequate? What is their definition of a "protracted war in two theaters simultaneously"? Is THAT a credible threat in today's world? All of the "wars" fought since World War II have been against enemies far weaker than the U.S. Some have not been against nation-states at all, but against ephemeral, ill-defined enemies like "terror". But in any event, our success or failure, on one front or two or three, was never about how powerful our military was. It was about the feasibility or infeasibility of our objectives, if we could even define them.

 

The U.S.S.R. was a credible threat. We kicked their scrawny butts, by outspending them on MX Peacemaker installations and strategic subs, without firing a single shot.

I would trust the assessment of the Pentagon (i.e., the consensus of career generals) as to "adequacy," before I would trust the opinion of a politician.

But again, to clarisify, I am less concerned with our ability to wage war, per se, than with the decline of our infrastructure. The war machine is viewed by many as a cost-center, a heatsink that saps vitality. Yet the war machine has given us almost every major scientific advance since the forties.

If there were something viable, a peacetime mechanism for scientific advancement, to replace it, Obama would have me sold. But there is no such mechanism. His big vision is to channel his peace dividend into another expansion of the bread-and-circus, so that a nation of decadent, indigent profligates can piss it away on beer and Saltee-Krunch while they petrify in front of their flat-screen TV's, wishing they could strut their fat asses on American Idol and accomplish something with their lives.

Note to Grimm Tea: there's some hyperbole for you.

 

At the end of the Second World War a certain amount of tension was probably inevitable between the Soviet Union and the United States, but most Americans greatly overestimated the Communist threat, just as they overestimate the danger of Islamic terrorism

During the Second World War the Soviet Union lost an estimated thirty million dead, and one third of its industrial and farm plant. It should have been obvious that a country that had been harmed like that was in no position to begin a campaign of world conquest, but Winston Churchill and Harry Truman assumed it was, and convinced most people in Great Britain and the United States that it was.

In the United States many reactionaries used the fear of Communism in order to discredit the New Deal.

Communist subversion was never a legitimate concern for the United States. It only worked when a right wing dictatorship protected a parasitic oligarchy against an impoverished populace.

In the United States members of the American Communist Party and Communist sympathizers had every conceivable right to express their opinions. Unfortunately, their ability to propagate their message was often denied, or at least suppressed.

 

It's really funny that you have no clue and you didn't bother trying to figure out why I said that you should revisit philosophy.

People like you think they're oh-so-enlightened

 

A lot of Americans seem to think that the United States is the only free and democratic country in the world. Unless by "freedom" you mean low taxes and lax gun control laws, there are plenty of countries that have as much freedom as the United States.

 

I'm sure it is hilarious. I'm afraid I don't really have the time to start reading century old philosophy books. I'm not really all that interested in the deep psychological meaning behind what it means to be free, have liberties or whatever it is you are talking about. I'm not even bothered if I'm the only one who doesn't get what you're talking about.