2012 US General Election Discussions: Start to Finish

[Kobi]

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


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

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

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

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

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

(End of sarcasm)



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

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

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

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Novelafemme]

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

[Toughy]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PumaJ]

Novelafemme, you asked this:

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

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

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

[Kent]

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

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

To add to what has already been said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kobi]

Miss Tick,

Thanks for the Huntsman rundown. I expected the conservative religious crap. It was the economics I was curious about. He, like most politicans today, is firmly rooted in the Milton Friedman disaster capitalism farce.

Briefly, disaster capitalism is when you take advantage of or create a disaster whereby you can overthrow the existing government, because is a threat to individual and corporate profits, and impose a certain economic order and laws to ensure this order proceeds unopposed. ( Think 9/11, think of the host of deregulation that has ensued since the Reagan era, think of selling off the infrastructure to private enterprise, think creative investment instrument expansion i.e. mortgage derivatives that caused this current global economic meltdown, think the busting of labor unions, think Iraq and Afganistan, think the Patriot Act and whatever the name of that newest thing Obama signed was). These are not individual, independent acts. It is a systematic and deliberate strategy.

Everywhere this was instituted i.e. Nixon did it to Argentina, the USA did it to Russia as a condition for financial aid thereby handcuffing Gorbechev, Thatcher did it to the UK, etc. it has been proven to be an unmitigated failure. A few people became fabulously weathy. The rest were fighting to just survive in the widespread poverty created by their new economic order. The coercion of the masses using intimidation, fear tactics, imprisonment and "disappearance" of dissenters is well documented. Sound familiar?

Pure capitalism might work as a theorectical construct. It has been an abysmal failure when it has been systematically implemented/imposed on unsuspecting peoples.

So, any politican from any party who continues to espouse the virtue of continuing down this path is a dangerous, freakin fruitcake to me.

And, I still think, all the crap about gay marriage, abortion, health care and all the manifestations of these, is a very concerted effort to keep "the masses" from concentrating on the bigger picture. Cant see or oppose the forest if you are lost in the trees. Cant focus on the forest when you are busy fighting amongst yourselves.

This is scary stuff but it sounds so surrealistic, it seems implausible. But it is very real, and incredibly scary.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Miss Tick,

Thanks for the Huntsman rundown. I expected the conservative religious crap. It was the economics I was curious about. He, like most politicans today, is firmly rooted in the Milton Friedman disaster capitalism farce.

Briefly, disaster capitalism is when you take advantage of or create a disaster whereby you can overthrow the existing government, because is a threat to individual and corporate profits, and impose a certain economic order and laws to ensure this order proceeds unopposed. ( Think 9/11, think of the host of deregulation that has ensued since the Reagan era, think of selling off the infrastructure to private enterprise, think creative investment instrument expansion i.e. mortgage derivatives that caused this current global economic meltdown, think the busting of labor unions, think Iraq and Afganistan, think the Patriot Act and whatever the name of that newest thing Obama signed was). These are not individual, independent acts. It is a systematic and deliberate strategy.

Everywhere this was instituted i.e. Nixon did it to Argentina, the USA did it to Russia as a condition for financial aid thereby handcuffing Gorbechev, Thatcher did it to the UK, etc. it has been proven to be an unmitigated failure. A few people became fabulously weathy. The rest were fighting to just survive in the widespread poverty created by their new economic order. The coercion of the masses using intimidation, fear tactics, imprisonment and "disappearance" of dissenters is well documented. Sound familiar?

Pure capitalism might work as a theorectical construct. It has been an abysmal failure when it has been systematically implemented/imposed on unsuspecting peoples.

So, any politican from any party who continues to espouse the virtue of continuing down this path is a dangerous, freakin fruitcake to me.

And, I still think, all the crap about gay marriage, abortion, health care and all the manifestations of these, is a very concerted effort to keep "the masses" from concentrating on the bigger picture. Cant see or oppose the forest if you are lost in the trees. Cant focus on the forest when you are busy fighting amongst yourselves.

This is scary stuff but it sounds so surrealistic, it seems implausible. But it is very real, and incredibly scary.

I totally agree with you. The reality is though how can we realistically believe that any national candidate can ever stray from the path and get elected or if elected hold office for any length of time. Unless we take corporations, the financial sector, the fat cats with all the money and all the power out of Washington it is a relatively redundant done deal, with a few minor forest for the trees differences just to keep us believing, no matter who we elect (and I use the term loosely). All the candidates are exactly the same because they are bought and paid for by the oligarchy that runs the country. It's like you said all that other stuff keeps us distracted.

I guess I don't see any individual politicians having much power to stray apart from that unimportant stuff.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I totally agree with you. The reality is though how can we realistically believe that any national candidate can ever stray from the path and get elected or if elected hold office for any length of time. Unless we take corporations, the financial sector, the fat cats with all the money and all the power out of Washington it is a relatively redundant done deal, with a few minor forest for the trees differences just to keep us believing, no matter who we elect (and I use the term loosely). All the candidates are exactly the same because they are bought and paid for by the oligarchy that runs the country. It's like you said all that other stuff keeps us distracted.

I guess I don't see any individual politicians having much power to stray apart from that unimportant stuff.

I totally agree with you. And, I havent a really good solution to offer. I do have suggestions tho.

What I can say, is the pioneers of drastic change in this country, were those who were willing to put themselves out there, organize, speak to the realities, and fight for what was right.

We, as a people, have become very complacent yet we are not powerless. We just dont use the power that we do have in a systematic way.

Some of the power we have:

1. Voting. Not just the right to vote but choosing how we choose to vote. Does it have to be about evaluating and selecting the least offensive donkey in the herd?

Personally, I made the decision a long time ago that I might not be able to fight the machine but I can work to put a kink in things. This means I rarely vote for an incumbent. I figure if we keep turning over the politicians every term, no one can become too entrenched and an intregal part of the farce. The more turn over, the slower the process.

Example - look at the horror show of Congress after the last election. The turnover was unprecedented. The sides are so opposed to one another, so entrenched in their own power shit, so busy fighting one another, they have constipated the entire process of government. This is sometimes scary or used as a scare tactic. I would rather them be embroiled in a pooping contest than steamrolling over the people.

We can choose to NOT vote for the primary party candidates. Period. Both are corrupt. Both have their own agendas and neither have the good of the people as the basis of their beliefs and actions. If people start voting for other parties, it is another stick in the spokes of the machine. If done on a wide enough and consistent enough basis, it sends a message that their power and control are in jeopardy.

For as much as we complain, imo, we have GIVEN those with the power - economic and political, the power they have. And, we can take that power back. They know it too. Retaining that power, and discouraging people from acting against it, is what the Patriot Act and that new bill are all about.

2. We have a boatload of economic power if people would work together. Recent examples....Verizon nullifying their attempt to charge a 2 dollar fee for something or BOA wanting to charge a 5 dollar fee for using your ATM. Both revoked because of widespread complaining and threatening to stop using their services.

How much power would we as a people have if we systematically decided to boycott a particular company for whatever reason? Dramatic decreases in income gets attention....really fast.....not just for the company being boycotted but for others in the same business.

The dynamics of power games is a good guide to the things that can help the collective us. Others here are more versed in them than I am.

3. Sheer numbers. In sheer numbers, there are more of "us" than there are of "them". We have become accustomed to our numbers making an impact using electronic means. What kind of impact would the visual display of sheer numbers have? What kind of impact did sheer numbers have in the past?

My point, I think, is we are not helpless, hopeless, and powerless...unless that is what we want to be. What we might be is unorganized, fragmented, frightened of the uncertainties that come with the process of profound change, and lacking in leadership.

I think it was Einstein who said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. We need to do something different, demand something different, use a different set of rules etc.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

I totally agree with you. And, I havent a really good solution to offer. I do have suggestions tho.

What I can say, is the pioneers of drastic change in this country, were those who were willing to put themselves out there, organize, speak to the realities, and fight for what was right.

We, as a people, have become very complacent yet we are not powerless. We just dont use the power that we do have in a systematic way.

Some of the power we have:

1. Voting. Not just the right to vote but choosing how we choose to vote. Does it have to be about evaluating and selecting the least offensive donkey in the herd?

Personally, I made the decision a long time ago that I might not be able to fight the machine but I can work to put a kink in things. This means I rarely vote for an incumbent. I figure if we keep turning over the politicians every term, no one can become too entrenched and an intregal part of the farce. The more turn over, the slower the process.

Example - look at the horror show of Congress after the last election. The turnover was unprecedented. The sides are so opposed to one another, so entrenched in their own power shit, so busy fighting one another, they have constipated the entire process of government. This is sometimes scary or used as a scare tactic. I would rather them be embroiled in a pooping contest than steamrolling over the people.

We can choose to NOT vote for the primary party candidates. Period. Both are corrupt. Both have their own agendas and neither have the good of the people as the basis of their beliefs and actions. If people start voting for other parties, it is another stick in the spokes of the machine. If done on a wide enough and consistent enough basis, it sends a message that their power and control are in jeopardy.

For as much as we complain, imo, we have GIVEN those with the power - economic and political, the power they have. And, we can take that power back. They know it too. Retaining that power, and discouraging people from acting against it, is what the Patriot Act and that new bill are all about.

2. We have a boatload of economic power if people would work together. Recent examples....Verizon nullifying their attempt to charge a 2 dollar fee for something or BOA wanting to charge a 5 dollar fee for using your ATM. Both revoked because of widespread complaining and threatening to stop using their services.

How much power would we as a people have if we systematically decided to boycott a particular company for whatever reason? Dramatic decreases in income gets attention....really fast.....not just for the company being boycotted but for others in the same business.

The dynamics of power games is a good guide to the things that can help the collective us. Others here are more versed in them than I am.

3. Sheer numbers. In sheer numbers, there are more of "us" than there are of "them". We have become accustomed to our numbers making an impact using electronic means. What kind of impact would the visual display of sheer numbers have? What kind of impact did sheer numbers have in the past?

My point, I think, is we are not helpless, hopeless, and powerless...unless that is what we want to be. What we might be is unorganized, fragmented, frightened of the uncertainties that come with the process of profound change, and lacking in leadership.

I think it was Einstein who said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. We need to do something different, demand something different, use a different set of rules etc.

I completely agree with you. Feet on the street is totally what we need. And yes there are more of us than them, like 99% more, more or less *grin*. And systematically taking our rights away is exactly what is happening. And so much more. Like privatizing war and militarizing the police. Corporations have their own armies and the US army itself is so far removed from the US people it's scary.

First we cheerfully surrendered our rights because we believed we could trade freedom for safety and security. Now we are having them coerced from us. I don't know too many people who supported the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act which allows the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge. Yet pass it did. And Obama signed it as a xmas present for us all. Who is a terror suspect? That is up for interpretation. Perhaps a visual display of our sheer numbers could be interpreted as terrorism? But you are right we are not helpless or hopeless. We just have to come together and fight back.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

It was the economics I was curious about.

Every candidate’s economic position at its root is going to be the same. That’s why nobody is going to point out the lie that putting money into corporations is going to result in jobs. Nobody is going to talk about what free trade is really doing to everyone. Nobody is going to tell the truth about what is happening with the economy. Nobody is going to talk openly about why we will not see the economic sector regulated. Nobody is going to admit that deregulation is the problem and logically speaking regulation is the answer. There is a reason why we don’t ever get to hear a national candidate with a truly different spin. It certainly can’t be because there are no alternatives to what we have. Everyone who ever runs for office, especially nationally, can't all just naturally be free market capitalists. No politician ever ever ever wants to look at some palatable form of social democracy? How can that be? I mean given numbers alone social democracy under some palatable form would have to come up. Unless there is a reason why it can't? And I believe that reason is the oligarchy who runs the country.

[Cin]

It reminds of that movie Super Size Me, when the guy said every time his kid went by a Mcdonalds he was going to smack him so that his kid would not associate good things with Mcdonalds. That’s what has been done to us. Every time anyone ever says socialism they are accused of the most heinous things. Over time nobody associates any thing good with socialism.

[Truly Scrumptious]

If you're looking for a third party alternative . . .why not give the Canada Party a try?

[PumaJ]

Every candidate’s economic position at its root is going to be the same.

Yes, I think that is true of all of the Repub candidates. I don't think that is true of Obama. I say that based on his history, legislatively, & personally. At least I've never seen any hard evidence of that being true of him over the 10 yrs. I've been paying attention to him, ever since he gave his speech against the war in Iraq at an anti-war rally in Chicago on 10/2/02. He was a State Senator at the time. More about Obama's political positions here.

This is not to say that I agree with all that Obama has done, however. It is merely to point out that he is not like any of the Rebup candidates. Some on the Left disagree strongly with Obama. It is my observation that they don't get it about Progressivism in general & that they didn't pay adequate attention to Obama being a rather centrist Progressive on economic & foreign policy issues. Yet he made no secret of his views for they permeated every interview, speech he gave & book that he wrote. Since he has become President it has become searingly clear that he has been forced into some actions as the result of complete obstructiveness by the Repubs in the House & Senate. That several Blue Dog Dems have joined in that obstructiveness is disgusting in my view.

Truman was the President when I was born. Eisenhower became President when I was very young. I started paying attention to presidential politics with Kennedy's campaign. The culture wars on a national level began under Reagan, though they'd begun in California when he was Governor there. What we are seeing today is an uber extreme version of what was begun back then. Including runaway Capitalism with a capital C.

BTW an excellent book about Capitalism via US companies & others & the effect on other nations is "World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability", by Amy Chua.

[MsMerrick]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

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

I have a family member, albeit a bit of a stretched one.. who is a very serious Ron Paul supporter, and has been for quite awhile.
I will say this, many things Ron Paul is for, I agree with, when it comes to Foreign Trade policy, get out of war policy etc.. I also like that he is pretty much not changing any views to fit the moment.
What I don;t like are his die hard Libertarian notions, that we would all be better off, if we rolled back the Constitutional amendments, like Civil Rights and hs general idea that we should all just let the free market decide whatever
Now the kind of "rugged individualism" is very appealing at first thought !
But, at second look, it's more like having a football game, without any rules.. ! Which is essentially might makes right ....and what , imho, the people that wrote the Constitution, were struggling against imbuing out nation with...

[Soon]

/snip/

"Make no mistake: even if Rick Santorum loses the Republican nomination, he could very well become Mitt Romney's running mate," warned HRC president Joe Solmonese. "A Romney-Santorum White House could set back our progress for years."

While none of the candidates is a darling of the LGBT community, the possibility of Santorum emerging even as part of a Republican ticket has the potential to rile LGBT voters like no other. The HRC points out his infamous "man on dog" comments in its letter, but there's a long track record of antigay positions it could have picked from, including a recent comment that gay parents would be worse at raising children than convicts.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...s_It_Possible/

[AtLast]

I've decided that although I will work here in CA for Democrat candidates and Obama campaigns, my main political energy is going to be about a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision.

This will take years to accomplish, but as I see it, the single most important challenge to our democratic processes in the 21st century. The last Constitutional amendment attempt I threw myself into was the Equal Rights Amendment that was never ratified by the number states required. It was initially introduced in 1923, just after women gained the right to vote. It fell apart in 1982 without state required ratification and even if it had gained enough states to ratify, the extension it was give back in I think 1979, most likely would have been overturned.

So strange to look back and think about the biggest "threat" to the ERA given by those that opposed it was that women would be then subjected to combat roles during times of war if serving in the military. Hummm.... such irony when one considers the role of our women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today without the ERA ever being ratified!

There were 59 years in which the ERA was tossed about and never ratified! That is only one year less than my age now and my Grandmother was among suffragists that first introduced the ERA. So, I guess I better get busy with working toward the possibility of seeing Citizens United be overturned within my lifetime! However, it will have to be one hell of a lot shorter time frame!

Bernie Sanders appears to be serious about taking this on, but he is older than I am! So, I think that this effort needs to begin with the gathering of young voters as it may take one hell of a long time to ever see it become a ratified constitutional amendment. However, it has such a direct effect on young people coming up in the US in terms of actually having their vote mean anything! Unless one is a billionaire.

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by AtLast

There were 59 years in which the ERA was tossed about and never ratified! That is only one year less than my age now and my Grandmother was among suffragists that first introduced the ERA. So, I guess I better get busy with working toward the possibility of seeing Citizens United be overturned within my lifetime! However, it will have to be one hell of a lot shorter time frame!

On the other hand, the 21st Amendment was ratified in 10 months.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

On the other hand, the 21st Amendment was ratified in 10 months.

Oh, yes.... I feel better... thanks.... Well, sort of..