I thought Sarah Palin was a great choice for John McCain, until I heard her speak. If you can translate her incoherency, let me know.
And if you can explain how she has foreign policy experience because she is next to Russia and Canada in Alaska, in a way that sounds less retarded, please do so.
This explains why Tina Fey has become my new hero. They can do Sarah Palin sketches up until the election, or until McCain kicks her off the ticket, because Palin is going to sink him.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
A Nation of Narcissists
This is so true. We are all narcissists. We are just too damn narcissistic to figure it out. This is from The Week magazine. I hope I don't get in trouble for posting it. My sister suggested I subscribe, and I love the publication. I would recommend it to anyone.
Facebook and Twitter: The new pornography
“Americans are now more interested in social networks than pornography,” said Robert Cringely in Infoworld.com. “No, that is not a typo.” For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, eyeballing porn has been far and away the most popular activity on the Internet. No longer. Self-described “data geek” Bill Tancer contends in a new book that surfing for porn has dropped from 20 percent of all Internet searches a decade ago to 10 percent today, while traffic on networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is soaring. Skeptics note that porn consumers no longer need search engines to find sites featuring sexual content—that’s what bookmarks are for. But I’d argue that Tancer is missing another key point: For most young people today, “social networks are pornography. Have you seen some of those profiles?”
It’s not just the bra and underwear photos that make the networking sites pornographic, said Eric Adler in The Kansas City Star. To an obscene degree, they are “self-absorbed and narcissistic.” Millions of young people spend hours a day checking out their friends’ profiles while obsessively updating their own profiles with new photos, along with the most mundane of tidbits—from what they ate for lunch to the song they’re listening to that very moment. Never in history has there been so much “self-documentation,” and it’s having a profound impact on how people relate. “Today,” says Stanford University’s B.J. Fogg, “if you choose not to do Facebook in college, you have all but chosen to be a social isolate.”
To people over 30, said Clive Thompson in The New York Times Magazine, “the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd.” Yet experiencing it, as I recently did, changes your perspective entirely. While all those individual factoids are petty on their own, “taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends and family members’ lives—like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.” At the same time, “the act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.” That’s certainly a high-minded way of looking at “la vida Facebook,” said Chuck Crowder in the Chattanooga, Tenn., Pulse. You could also just say that Facebook is so successful for the same reason that porn always has been: “We’re all voyeurs.”
Facebook and Twitter: The new pornography
“Americans are now more interested in social networks than pornography,” said Robert Cringely in Infoworld.com. “No, that is not a typo.” For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, eyeballing porn has been far and away the most popular activity on the Internet. No longer. Self-described “data geek” Bill Tancer contends in a new book that surfing for porn has dropped from 20 percent of all Internet searches a decade ago to 10 percent today, while traffic on networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is soaring. Skeptics note that porn consumers no longer need search engines to find sites featuring sexual content—that’s what bookmarks are for. But I’d argue that Tancer is missing another key point: For most young people today, “social networks are pornography. Have you seen some of those profiles?”
It’s not just the bra and underwear photos that make the networking sites pornographic, said Eric Adler in The Kansas City Star. To an obscene degree, they are “self-absorbed and narcissistic.” Millions of young people spend hours a day checking out their friends’ profiles while obsessively updating their own profiles with new photos, along with the most mundane of tidbits—from what they ate for lunch to the song they’re listening to that very moment. Never in history has there been so much “self-documentation,” and it’s having a profound impact on how people relate. “Today,” says Stanford University’s B.J. Fogg, “if you choose not to do Facebook in college, you have all but chosen to be a social isolate.”
To people over 30, said Clive Thompson in The New York Times Magazine, “the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd.” Yet experiencing it, as I recently did, changes your perspective entirely. While all those individual factoids are petty on their own, “taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends and family members’ lives—like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.” At the same time, “the act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.” That’s certainly a high-minded way of looking at “la vida Facebook,” said Chuck Crowder in the Chattanooga, Tenn., Pulse. You could also just say that Facebook is so successful for the same reason that porn always has been: “We’re all voyeurs.”
Friday, September 26, 2008
We Are All Seduced (part 3)
First of all, I want you to watch Jon Stewart from last night. It continues to baffle me that we get the most reasonable news coverage from Comedy Central, but what are you gonna do?
I have had a thousand questions going through my head. If anyone would like to answer any of them, feel free?
1. How much do we have to lose before we stop trusting our politicians? How long before we stop saying, "Well...er, um...I think they have our best interests at heart."? How much do they have to screw up before we say that maybe it's more by design that just simple "incompetence?"
2. Why, why would you trust those who are responsible for the mess to then take your money and do something logical to clean up the mess? [No, it is not "big business" or "Wall Street" that are the only ones responsible. Yes, there are a lot of crooks. But what can we say for our representatives that knew it was going on for years - decades - and looked the other way?]
3. Why are you so afraid of Barack Obama, worried about what he can do with the economy? Aren't you more concerned about President Bush, the man you probably voted for, who has screwed up the economy more than anyone since the GREAT DEPRESSION? Why do you think this man is so much more virtuous than Obama?
4. Why will you vote for John McCain, not to vote for him, but to vote against Obama?
Why do I even have to bring Obama up? As someone in a forum I frequent said, "Would you like Amahlakiah, or Gadianton?"
5. Why do you support the war on terror? Another worthwhile quote, which I am unsure to whom I should attribute it: President Bush, and our Congress have done what 19 terrorists could not do, completely bring the U.S. economy to its knees. How much more damage do they have to do before you wake up and realize we are being destroyed from within, not by Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
6. How long will you support troops in Iraq? How many trillions of dollars are you willing to spend while our economy is sputtering to a hault? How many more wars will the U.S. have to declare preemptively? How many more lives are you willing to see die for lies?
7. How do you not see the parallels? The Patriot Act was passed behind closed doors, in a time of unprecedented fear among everyone in this country. It is unconstitutional, and is an attack on the people. But how could you be against it? After all, it's called the "Patriot Act!" How long will you be seduced? Why do you think they are changing the name of their plan from "bailout" to "rescue?"
Just a few things to think about. Again, I iterate, and reiterate, we are all seduced at one level or another. It will be a long journey to wake up and stand up against the forces that have taken over so much of our government, and country. But choosing to be seduced when one knows better, is, in my estimation, a great sin. I cannot stay silent any longer. You may choose to go to sleep. You may choose to listen to what the mainstream-in-the-pockets-of-Washington-politicians-media are telling you.
I am going to do what it takes to start throwing off the chains.
I have had a thousand questions going through my head. If anyone would like to answer any of them, feel free?
1. How much do we have to lose before we stop trusting our politicians? How long before we stop saying, "Well...er, um...I think they have our best interests at heart."? How much do they have to screw up before we say that maybe it's more by design that just simple "incompetence?"
2. Why, why would you trust those who are responsible for the mess to then take your money and do something logical to clean up the mess? [No, it is not "big business" or "Wall Street" that are the only ones responsible. Yes, there are a lot of crooks. But what can we say for our representatives that knew it was going on for years - decades - and looked the other way?]
3. Why are you so afraid of Barack Obama, worried about what he can do with the economy? Aren't you more concerned about President Bush, the man you probably voted for, who has screwed up the economy more than anyone since the GREAT DEPRESSION? Why do you think this man is so much more virtuous than Obama?
4. Why will you vote for John McCain, not to vote for him, but to vote against Obama?
Why do I even have to bring Obama up? As someone in a forum I frequent said, "Would you like Amahlakiah, or Gadianton?"
5. Why do you support the war on terror? Another worthwhile quote, which I am unsure to whom I should attribute it: President Bush, and our Congress have done what 19 terrorists could not do, completely bring the U.S. economy to its knees. How much more damage do they have to do before you wake up and realize we are being destroyed from within, not by Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
6. How long will you support troops in Iraq? How many trillions of dollars are you willing to spend while our economy is sputtering to a hault? How many more wars will the U.S. have to declare preemptively? How many more lives are you willing to see die for lies?
7. How do you not see the parallels? The Patriot Act was passed behind closed doors, in a time of unprecedented fear among everyone in this country. It is unconstitutional, and is an attack on the people. But how could you be against it? After all, it's called the "Patriot Act!" How long will you be seduced? Why do you think they are changing the name of their plan from "bailout" to "rescue?"
Just a few things to think about. Again, I iterate, and reiterate, we are all seduced at one level or another. It will be a long journey to wake up and stand up against the forces that have taken over so much of our government, and country. But choosing to be seduced when one knows better, is, in my estimation, a great sin. I cannot stay silent any longer. You may choose to go to sleep. You may choose to listen to what the mainstream-in-the-pockets-of-Washington-politicians-media are telling you.
I am going to do what it takes to start throwing off the chains.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
We Are All Seduced (part 2)
I have never been more angry at President Bush than I am right now. There. I said it. I have thought some awful things about him, have tried to hold those opinions at bay, and have had all of them reinforced and confirmed to me through the current crisis.
What an arrogant fool. What a loser. This man, who up until a week ago, only had things to say about the economy like, "our economy is healthy," and baloney like, "we only have five percent unemployment," and "people are just focusing on
the negative." What an idiot. And now he expects me to trust him with 700 billion dollars more, after he's lied, and lied, and lied, about the state of the nation, for seven and a half years.
If you can vote republican again after having this man as president, you are a special person. I don't want to touch a republican with a 100-foot pole.
Except for one: here's what he has to say about Mr. President's bailout plan.
- Expletives were self-deleted -
___________________________________________________________________
Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary. The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question? Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty, Ron Paul
What an arrogant fool. What a loser. This man, who up until a week ago, only had things to say about the economy like, "our economy is healthy," and baloney like, "we only have five percent unemployment," and "people are just focusing on
the negative." What an idiot. And now he expects me to trust him with 700 billion dollars more, after he's lied, and lied, and lied, about the state of the nation, for seven and a half years. If you can vote republican again after having this man as president, you are a special person. I don't want to touch a republican with a 100-foot pole.
Except for one: here's what he has to say about Mr. President's bailout plan.
- Expletives were self-deleted -
___________________________________________________________________
Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary. The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question? Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty, Ron Paul
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
We Are All Seduced (part 1)
The other day I got an email forward with a picture of a pick-up truck that had the words, "I'm a REPUBLICAN, because EVERYONE can't be on WELFARE," on the back. I don't know why, but terse bloviations like that just really make my blood boil a smidgen. Once I got over it, and turned on the news for the day, I just had to laugh. Bailouts, bailouts, bailouts. 
Here's the short of the story: if you are a democrat or a republican, you are part of the problem. Grant it, we all are seduced to various degrees, but if you are a democrat or a republican, you are likely going to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain. So, you're supposedly not for welfare, but your candidate is for the biggest bailout ever in the history of the United States, since the Great Depression.
Here's what Ron Paul has to say about it. He's telling the truth, something you aren't getting from the media, from Obama, or from McCain or President Bush. If you support them, you may say you oppose welfare; welfare for the poor "lazy" people. But you are voting for corporate welfare, make no doubt about it. It's lamentable, and it's the truth. ___________________________________________________________________
Here's what Ron Paul has to say about it. He's telling the truth, something you aren't getting from the media, from Obama, or from McCain or President Bush. If you support them, you may say you oppose welfare; welfare for the poor "lazy" people. But you are voting for corporate welfare, make no doubt about it. It's lamentable, and it's the truth. ___________________________________________________________________
Dear Friends,
Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.
The events of the past week are no exception. The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder.
Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters." That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.
The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook.
The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!
• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.
• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.There goes your country.
Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh. Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people.
The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.
Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.
The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.
In liberty, Ron Paul
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Ron Paul Speaks, McCain: the Lipstick-Wearing Pig
Texas representative and former presidential candidate Ron Paul held a press conference today, detailing how he rejected an invitation from the John McCain campaign to back the senator. He urged people to vote for one of the four candidates running on third-party tickets: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.
He also called the current two-party election system a charade. The vast majority of people realize this, but they continue voting for the "lesser of two evils."
Really, the candidates talk about how different they are, when they are not really different at all. They both talk about change, but neither one stands for anything but the status quo.
In related news, the 'charade' continued, and this writer concluded he will not vote for John McCain.
Speaking of McCain's economic policy, Barack Obama used the phrase, 'you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,' alluding to the congruences between McCain's economic plan and George W. Bush's plan. McCain's camp latched onto the statement, calling Obama a sexist, because apparently Sarah Palin wears lipstick. Good for you, McCain. Way to raise the level of debate. I am glad to have one choice eliminated. If only Ron Paul would run!
P.S. I don't see what the big deal is, even if Obama was calling Palin a pig. Palin called herself a pit bull at the Republican National Convention. I think pigs are much more cuddly and cute. I guess Palin is the pit bull, and McCain is the pig (but one of the uncuddly, uncute types).
He also called the current two-party election system a charade. The vast majority of people realize this, but they continue voting for the "lesser of two evils."
Really, the candidates talk about how different they are, when they are not really different at all. They both talk about change, but neither one stands for anything but the status quo.
In related news, the 'charade' continued, and this writer concluded he will not vote for John McCain.
Speaking of McCain's economic policy, Barack Obama used the phrase, 'you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,' alluding to the congruences between McCain's economic plan and George W. Bush's plan. McCain's camp latched onto the statement, calling Obama a sexist, because apparently Sarah Palin wears lipstick. Good for you, McCain. Way to raise the level of debate. I am glad to have one choice eliminated. If only Ron Paul would run!
P.S. I don't see what the big deal is, even if Obama was calling Palin a pig. Palin called herself a pit bull at the Republican National Convention. I think pigs are much more cuddly and cute. I guess Palin is the pit bull, and McCain is the pig (but one of the uncuddly, uncute types).
Friday, September 5, 2008
Daily Show Gems
Thank goodness for John Stewart. He is one of the only intelligent people out there, who reminds us what candidates and pundits said, sometimes just a few weeks ago, contrasted with what they say now.
Not surprising, you might guess, that it's often just the opposite of what they said before. These folks are professional double-standard-bearers. And they take for granted that we're going to be stupid enough to forget. Thank you to The Daily Show for reminding us.
Not surprising, you might guess, that it's often just the opposite of what they said before. These folks are professional double-standard-bearers. And they take for granted that we're going to be stupid enough to forget. Thank you to The Daily Show for reminding us.
My True Feelings for McCain
All right. I've tried to mask it. I've tried to downplay it. I've tried to give the benefit of the doubt.
I even came within a sliver of deciding to vote for presidential candidate John Sydney McCain III after he chose Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate. Her story seems very compelling, and she seems to be an average, every day american, who will fight to reform some of the nonsense that goes on in Washington. The more I learned about her, the more I was impressed. I listened to her acceptance speech this week, and I was again pleasantly pleased.
Then it happened - I listened to John McCain again. I listened to him give his speech last night, and all of the "benefit of the doubt," crap just hit the fan. And now it comes out in full force: I do not like John McCain. I don't like what he stands for. I don't like to listen to him speak. I don't like his flip-flops. I don't like him. Period.
Here's a good video for those of you who feel John McCain is a straight-talking "maverick."
And here's one more.
So I'm coming out right now. It is not very likely that I will vote for John Sydney McCain III. Not very likely at all.
P.S. For those of you who need it spelled out for you: this is still not an endorsement of Barack Obama. That would look like, "I am going to vote for Obama." I also nowhere said I would not vote for McCain. I just said it's not likely at this time. But let's be honest: I don't think I will come out and say who I will vote for, or who I voted for - after the saga has concluded. It just makes things much more intriguing for those of you in the dark, wondering - "what is this crazy weirdo really thinking?"
I even came within a sliver of deciding to vote for presidential candidate John Sydney McCain III after he chose Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate. Her story seems very compelling, and she seems to be an average, every day american, who will fight to reform some of the nonsense that goes on in Washington. The more I learned about her, the more I was impressed. I listened to her acceptance speech this week, and I was again pleasantly pleased.
Then it happened - I listened to John McCain again. I listened to him give his speech last night, and all of the "benefit of the doubt," crap just hit the fan. And now it comes out in full force: I do not like John McCain. I don't like what he stands for. I don't like to listen to him speak. I don't like his flip-flops. I don't like him. Period.
I don't want to hear about your POW Vietnam experiences anymore, McCain. I've listened to it over and over and over again. There are thousands of soldiers who were just as brave and selfless as you. That doesn't make them good candidates for president alone. So stop trumpeting your heroism all day long. It sounds self-serving, which seems to be just the opposite of how most real war heroes actually conduct themselves. I don't want to hear it.
I am not going to vote for a guy just because I'm afraid of what the other scary muslim guy (Obama) might do.Here's a good video for those of you who feel John McCain is a straight-talking "maverick."
And here's one more.
So I'm coming out right now. It is not very likely that I will vote for John Sydney McCain III. Not very likely at all.
P.S. For those of you who need it spelled out for you: this is still not an endorsement of Barack Obama. That would look like, "I am going to vote for Obama." I also nowhere said I would not vote for McCain. I just said it's not likely at this time. But let's be honest: I don't think I will come out and say who I will vote for, or who I voted for - after the saga has concluded. It just makes things much more intriguing for those of you in the dark, wondering - "what is this crazy weirdo really thinking?"
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