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[RedKing]

New poll data!
Different poll in Nevada (PPP), with a larger sample size:
Romney: 50
Gingrich: 25
Paul: 15
Santorum: 8

So there's your better showing for Paul, GreatJustice. Still doesn't change the fact that Romney is going to wax the floor with everyone else in this state, which is unsurprising. The state has some Big Money and a hefty number of Mormons. Might bode slightly better for Paul's chances to continue if he at least takes 3rd place.



Arizona:
Romney: 48
Gingrich: 24
Santorum: 13
Paul: 6

A bit surprised to see Romney do so well in the land of Joe Arpaio, but then his recent hardline stance on illegal immigration is probably paying dividends here. (And will likely bite him in the ass come the general election).

Michigan:
Romney: 38
Gingrich: 23
Santorum: 17
Paul: 14

Somewhat tighter race in Michigan.

One interesting thing to note is that these polls were all dated 2/1, before Romney's "not concerned about the very poor" comment had time to trickle into the popular consciousness. Might see him lose a couple of points from the backlash on that, but even then...Mitt looks poised to boost his lead in delegates in the next few weeks. Arizona, in particular, is a winner-take-all race. Gingrich doesn't have to win these races, he just needs to poll well enough to get some delegates and stay within striking range (and hope for Romney to have yet more foot-in-mouth moments).

Santorum and Paul are already relegated to also-ran status. As I projected earlier, I think Santorum drops out after the CO and MN caucuses next Tuesday, unless he pulls a shocking 2nd place finish somewhere between now and then. No idea who he'd endorse though. I can't honestly see him endorsing *either* candidate if he wants to retain any of the archconservative street cred he's built up. Maybe he'll tell voters to stay home and prepare for the Lord's reckoning (and to vote for him in 2016).

Ron Paul....who knows? Realistically, he'd drop out about the same time, barring a 2nd place finish somewhere. But because this is Ron Paul....maybe he's waiting until Super Tuesday and hoping that places like Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota will give him some wins. But even if they did....it's Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota. He'd probably get more delegates from winning his home district in Texas.

[mainiac]

The Bureau of LaborStatistics  released it's monthly report and said that the economy added 243,000 jobs last month.  Also the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to %.2 to %8.3 (seasonally adjusted means that they account for the Christmas boom and post Christmas bust).  Another 1.2 million workers left the workforce so they no longer count as unemployed (due to the end of the Christmas boom and the weak economy presumably).

This is being hailed in the economy nerd circles of the internet as being "real" good news instead of just "meh" good news like we've had in the past.  The economy needs to add about 100k jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.  But the economy outpaced that by a fairly substantial clip and did so without being attributed to the usual cyclical noise of inventory bounces or seasonal adjustment.  Also interesting is that the BLS revised it's two previous monthly estimates upward (they issue revisions on the previous two months every report) in keeping with it's yearlong trend of revising upward it's pessimistic initial estimates.  Unless something comes along to knock us off trend, this year is going to be where it starts feeling like a real recovery.

This is election related because if things keep going at this pace then things look good for the left.  Obama's reelection odds will pick up and the democrats even have a shot at retaking the house.  If the trend keeps improving like this then Obama would probably be a shoe in.  In that case we might even see the Democrats hang onto the Senate despite having so many seats to defend.  Elections aren't just determined by the economy but the economy is probably the GOP's only shot this election.  What else do they have?  Foreign policy against the administration that nabbed Osama and ended the wars?  Beat a dead horse over culture war?

[RedKing]

Beat a dead horse over culture war?

Bingo. When in doubt, go to the well. Only it probably won't be over abortion or gay marriage, but some more nebulous concept of "overweening Presidential overreach" by pointing out things that he's done by executive order rather than "consulting" Congress. of course, there will be little mention of the fact that those things were done by executive order precisely because the Republican-controlled House was usually too busy sticking its collective fingers in its collective ears and yelling "LALALALALALACAN'THEARYOUNOTGONNADOIT". Try to cast Obama as "out-of-control" and "power-mad". Hell, they already make it sound like he lies awake at night trying to figure out how to possibly be MORE evil.

"Hmm....I know, I'll make a new law that forces straight people to marry their children off....to homosexuals! Muahahaha! And then we'll force them to eat a live kitten at the wedding! Muhaahahaha! And we'll make them PAY for the kitten! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAA!"



Alternately, they'll say the economy still sucks and/or say "Okay, but the recovery would have been EVEN BETTER if we had been in charge! If John McCain had been President, all of you would have had flying cars by now. Flying cars that bathe you in money!"

[Darvi]

"Hmm....I know, I'll make a new law that forces straight people to marry their children off....to homosexuals! Muahahaha! And then we'll force them to eat a live kitten at the wedding! Muhaahahaha! And we'll make them PAY for the kitten! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAA!"

I'd vote for that.

[Dutchling]

I'd rather have flying cars, but eating kitties is okay too.

[Zrk2]

[... ]So long as he didn't let them affect his policy [...]

Is it not the case that that Paul is against the Civil Rights Act ?

Actually, that was more of a moral opposition. As I explained earlier he is a libertarian and so feels negative rights are more important than positive rights, ie the right of the storekeeper to dictate who they are willing to sell to is more important than the right of the shopper to be sold to. In the end it works out the same way but it's important to understand why he opposed them.

Now perhaps we should start a Ron Paul thread a la the moonbase thread?

[mainiac]

I eat pussy on a fairly regular basis already so I'd want the flying car.

Actually, that was more of a moral opposition. As I explained earlier he is a libertarian and so feels negative rights are more important than positive rights, ie the right of the storekeeper to dictate who they are willing to sell to is more important than the right of the shopper to be sold to. In the end it works out the same way but it's important to understand why he opposed them.

Unless it's the negative rights of gay people doing what they want in the privacy of their own homes, or the negative rights of women seeking abortions or basically any negative right that gets in the way of people who are rich, white and male doing whatever the hell they want.

Ron Paul's support of negative rights is about as consistent as Thomas Jefferson's support of abolition.

[Leafsnail]

Actually, that was more of a moral opposition. As I explained earlier he is a libertarian and so feels negative rights are more important than positive rights, ie the right of the storekeeper to dictate who they are willing to sell to is more important than the right of the shopper to be sold to.  In the end it works out the same way but it's important to understand why he opposed them.

Sure it's a "moral opposition".  And yet it would still result in black people being screwed over regardless of why Paul thinks people should be allowed to screw them over.

Now perhaps we should start a Ron Paul thread a la the moonbase thread?

He's a candidate in the American Elections so I'd be inclined to say no.

[Zrk2]

Actually, that was more of a moral opposition. As I explained earlier he is a libertarian and so feels negative rights are more important than positive rights, ie the right of the storekeeper to dictate who they are willing to sell to is more important than the right of the shopper to be sold to.  In the end it works out the same way but it's important to understand why he opposed them.

Sure it's a "moral opposition".  And yet it would still result in black people being screwed over regardless of why Paul thinks people should be allowed to screw them over.

As I noted, I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that his primary motive (AFAIK) was not racism.

Now perhaps we should start a Ron Paul thread a la the moonbase thread?

He's a candidate in the American Elections so I'd be inclined to say no.

Very  well, just wanted to make sure this didn't get out of hand.

I eat pussy on a fairly regular basis already so I'd want the flying car.

Actually, that was more of a moral opposition. As I explained earlier he is a libertarian and so feels negative rights are more important than positive rights, ie the right of the storekeeper to dictate who they are willing to sell to is more important than the right of the shopper to be sold to. In the end it works out the same way but it's important to understand why he opposed them.

Unless it's the negative rights of gay people doing what they want in the privacy of their own homes, or the negative rights of women seeking abortions or basically any negative right that gets in the way of people who are rich, white and male doing whatever the hell they want.

Ron Paul's support of negative rights is about as consistent as Thomas Jefferson's support of abolition.

I never claimed he was consistent, or even right, I was merely explaining why.

[mainiac]

If he says that he cares about negative rights but in practice only cares about the rights of people like himself, negative or otherwise, then it is hardly a difficult deduction to figure out that his reasons for having such non-mainstream views are not because of a philosophical preference for negative rights.

[Aqizzar]

Now perhaps we should start a Ron Paul thread a la the moonbase thread?

He's a candidate in the American Elections so I'd be inclined to say no.

Very  well, just wanted to make sure this didn't get out of hand.

If this goes on much longer, I'm going to say that it is.  I think this is the third round of "Who Is Ron Paul" and I'm getting a little tired of watching it drag on, since I'm at least tangentially responsible for people fighting in this thread.

[Capntastic]

But I was just gonna bust out my "If Ron Paul can't appropriately identify the people he's hanging out with and gladly accepting campaign contributions from, how is average Joe on the Street supposed to use free caveat emptor to determine if the colloidal silver he's being told to buy from a celebrity endorsed commercial is actually poisonous??"

Regardless, in terms of realistic outcomes, we should probably talk about who actually has a probable chance of snagging the Republican nomination.  The current field is so staticy with both Newt and Romney thrashing each other (and themselves) that it's hard to tell who exactly is pulling ahead in a general sense.

[GreatJustice]

Like how your constitution explicitly says it should be? You also ignore that there are any number of things that prevent state governments from going too far, most of which don't do a damn thing when your federal government oversteps its boundaries.

Er, Ron Paul wants to dismantle the things that "prevent state governments from going too far". Actively. I've named one.

The constitution and the right to vote? The first restrains the state governments in a way that the federal government is good at ignoring (if the likes of SOPA, ACTA and the PATRIOT act among others are anything to go by), and the second limits it further to being responsible to those it controls. Frankly, if the result of state governments having more power than the federal government was state governments engaging in clownery, then I find it unlikely that the average American will somehow make the federal government much better.

Also: Ron Paul wants to override anything the constitution says about state law (regarding certain subjects). Let me put it this way: The only way the constitutionality of legislation can be maintained is through the courts stepping in and saying when something isn't constitutional. Ron Paul wants to remove that protection.

Source, please.

And I'm sorry, but no, the constitution does not explicitly state that states should specifically be left to their own devices regarding issues of civil rights and, say, establishment of religion. Hell, there are certain amendments that, according to the generally-held interpretations, state otherwise, such as the 14th.

Again, the constitution overrides state laws. That's a widely agreed upon fact; were that not the case, the US would be a confederation or alliance, not a union.

He supported DOMA for those reasons.

Why would he support DOMA? DOMA was defining marriage at the federal level, which sounds like exactly the sort of thing he'd be against.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. You misread it. From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_marriage_act

Under the law, no U.S. state (or other political subdivision) may be required to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship considered a marriage in another state

So in other words, no US state is forced to recognize gay marriage, but it notably does NOT say that no US state CAN recognize gay marriage. Seeing as how it was signed into law by Bill Clinton AND several American states do, in fact, have gay marriage laws already, its rather silly to claim this somehow does such a thing regarding marriage.

I'm saying that, in addition to being 70, his dislike of homosexuals in utterly irrelevant because (A) unless he inexplicably betrayed his own principles he'd never act on it at all

He already has acted on it. I've specifically mentioned the legislation that acts on it.

Two things:

A. When referring to past statements regarding specific things (EG. DOMA), at least mention them so I know what you're talking about. I really hate to get into long, drawn out arguments about the wrong issue.

B. As shown above, DOMA doesn't force the states to do anything and thus your statement is untrue.

it kills me to watch you vote for absolute crooks like Barack Obama and Mitt Romney over silly details and conspiracy theories.

Do you know what I dislike most about Ron Paul? It's not conspiracy theories. It's not even those newsletters. It's his actual policies and attitudes and the legislation he's written and tried to pass. Don't try to make us sound like tinfoil-hat crackpots when we're giving very explicit and clear reasons for disliking him.

Really? Then why don't you attack him on his issues or his actual problems, rather than digging up extremely suspect "evidence" and primarily sticking to attacking him personally?

I dislike Obama very strongly too, but mostly because he's a fascist that I actually believed might be a bit better than Bush (at least for the couple of months before he actually did anything) and wasn't owned by corrupt banks. It was stupid of me to not even check his donations, but after the recession I figured things couldn't get too much worse.

However, I have yet to start claiming that Obama was born in Kenya or any such nonsense, and it would be disingenuous of me to attack him specifically on such a silly issue when there are far more glaring faults to go after.

Yeah dude, even if he hadn't had his picture taken with the founder of Stormfront, knowing full well who he was, his actual policies are little more than trying to shift America towards a minarchist Hellhole.

He's a presidential candidate, I'd imagine he takes pictures with a lot of people, not to mention autograph signing and giving interviews (He isn't especially picky about who interviews him either; he was "interviewed" by Bruno, and by some college kid in his dorm). I doubt he keeps a photo album of "public enemies" to memorize for people not to take pictures with.

Minarchist hellhole, now that's a new one. What, like Hong Kong? I can't think of many minarchies these days, or examples of minarchist hellholes. "The Minarchists are taking over the government and doing nothing with it! Oh the humanity!"

You could vote for the Green Party who hates the war ondrugs, the other war, pollution, and is fairly solidly pro-rights.  Without the recurring ties with racists or "if someone is molested by their employer, they have the right to find a different job if they don't want to put up with it- otherwise they're partially to blame!" abhorrence.

Well, first and foremost, American third parties have literally no relevance. Besides that, the Greens are very much collectivist and, in my (limited, at least, to non-Americans) are rather unpleasant people with the idea that if only the evil corporations were stopped the world would be nicer.

I think this deserves repeating.  Even if he isn't racist, he writes and supports legislation that will massively harm black people.  Even if he isn't homophobic, he writes and supports legislation that will massively harm homosexual people.  And that's before getting into his horrible economic ideas, and that his possible one USP to end the war on drugs would definitely not work since almost noone inside or outside of his party supports it.

Yes, he massively hurts black people by opposing the war on drugs (which is responsible for an overwhelming number of black imprisonments) and opposing the foreign adventures (which is responsible for an overwhelming number of black deaths, not counting those of foreigners who Americans don't seem to give a damn about). He massively hurts homosexuals, yet his largest donator (of almost a million dollars, actually) is actually gay himself. Go figure.

So there's your better showing for Paul, GreatJustice. Still doesn't change the fact that Romney is going to wax the floor with everyone else in this state, which is unsurprising. The state has some Big Money and a hefty number of Mormons. Might bode slightly better for Paul's chances to continue if he at least takes 3rd place.

I'll get to it later, but its worth mentioning that the polls of the caucus states were remarkably unreliable. Go check the RCP average, but I'll put it up tomorrow if you want. Nevada was a prime example:

-It showed Paul with 7% in 3rd/4th, he came 2nd with 14%

-It showed Romney barely ahead by 5%, he won by something like 20-30%

-It showed Huckabee and McCain as serious competitors when they actually lost to Paul

etc etc. Maybe the pollsters have found a better way to poll Nevada, but I find it unlikely. I guess we'll find out, eh?

The Bureau of LaborStatistics  released it's monthly report and said that the economy added 243,000 jobs last month.  Also the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to %.2 to %8.3 (seasonally adjusted means that they account for the Christmas boom and post Christmas bust).  Another 1.2 million workers left the workforce so they no longer count as unemployed (due to the end of the Christmas boom and the weak economy presumably).

This is being hailed in the economy nerd circles of the internet as being "real" good news instead of just "meh" good news like we've had in the past.  The economy needs to add about 100k jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.  But the economy outpaced that by a fairly substantial clip and did so without being attributed to the usual cyclical noise of inventory bounces or seasonal adjustment.  Also interesting is that the BLS revised it's two previous monthly estimates upward (they issue revisions on the previous two months every report) in keeping with it's yearlong trend of revising upward it's pessimistic initial estimates.  Unless something comes along to knock us off trend, this year is going to be where it starts feeling like a real recovery.

This is election related because if things keep going at this pace then things look good for the left.  Obama's reelection odds will pick up and the democrats even have a shot at retaking the house.  If the trend keeps improving like this then Obama would probably be a shoe in.  In that case we might even see the Democrats hang onto the Senate despite having so many seats to defend.  Elections aren't just determined by the economy but the economy is probably the GOP's only shot this election.  What else do they have?  Foreign policy against the administration that nabbed Osama and ended the wars?  Beat a dead horse over culture war?

Oh my. This deserves a long talk, but I think its worth mentioning that a "robust recovery" and "strong economy" have been pumped ever since 2001 with Krugman advocating the creation of a housing bubble to boost spending. The economy's fundamentals are terrible: a very large amount of money has been printed (digitally, mind), but it sitting in banks because they aren't willing to lend yet; Europe, Japan, and China are all rapidly running into problems; foreign oil is threatened by a war in the Gulf, etc etc

Again, if you want I can go into this more but I'm a bit rushed presently.

---- STUFF HERE ----

I'd get to it, but again, I'm rushed. Sorry! Get to it in a later post tomorrow if I can

Regardless, in terms of realistic outcomes, we should probably talk about who actually has a probable chance of snagging the Republican nomination.  The current field is so staticy with both Newt and Romney thrashing each other (and themselves) that it's hard to tell who exactly is pulling ahead in a general sense.

Its going to be Romney, guaranteed. It was basically always likely to be him. He has the money and is "next in line". He'll be nominated, and if there is a God the economy won't crash until Obama is nominated a second time because Romney presiding over the inevitable crash would be infinitely worse than Obama doing the same.

[Deadmeat1471]

I'm British and I haven't followed American politics since the Bush Jr. days so i'm a little out of the loop.

Romney seems to be a rich, corrupt, elitist, mormon with extremely right wing social views.
So a perfect Republican candidate?

I get that hes a Republican, but why does he appear soo popular?
Obama won the previous election and he is essentially a socialist in comparison. How can the merican people jump from what is essentially a socialist into a religious right wing nutbag.
I don't get you guys.

All I can see in opposition Gingrich has nothing at all to offer. Someone told me he promised to put a moon base inplace within his term, despite the current state of affairs at NASA.
That is moronically insane, if that is in fact what he said. For that alone I wouldn't vote for him.



Santorum I dont know about, and Ron Paul is for the Anarchist who live in fairyland where unregulated capitalism actually works.


My point is, at least when Bush Jr. came along he had some good policies such as his education ones. I wouldn't have voted for him, but he did have some good policies.
At least before he became president and totally flipped the fk out.

[mainiac]

Oh my. This deserves a long talk, but I think its worth mentioning that a "robust recovery" and "strong economy" have been pumped ever since 2001 with Krugman advocating the creation of a housing bubble to boost spending. The economy's fundamentals are terrible: a very large amount of money has been printed (digitally, mind), but it sitting in banks because they aren't willing to lend yet; Europe, Japan, and China are all rapidly running into problems; foreign oil is threatened by a war in the Gulf, etc etc

You and I apparently live in entirely different universes.
Krugman in fact warned about a housing bubble as it was forming:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html
And you are taking him massively out of context when he deliberately said that the Fed should not create a housing bubble:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html?pagewanted=1

And then you engage in the typical behavior of anyone who wants to attack the mainstream: throw a bunch of scary stuff against the wall without explanation and count on some of it to stick because people have genuinely no clue what you are saying.

The irony of the fact that you would portray Krugman's statements as being the diametric opposite of what they were yet claim that your chosen candidate is lied about and maligned isn't lost on me.