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[Africa]

I agree with a lot of libertarian ideology (not counting the Ayn Rand inspired economic aspects).

Which is the part they push hardest.  And the part that will completely obliterate the poor.  There is simply no justification for pushing Randian ideas because they demonstrably do not work.

Not just the poor, all of society eventually. But in the short term it's mostly just the poor and lower middle classes that would get fucked, so rich people and people convinced they don't need the government (while living in states that take in way more government money than they give, of course) love it.

[GreatJustice]

I agree with a lot of libertarian ideology (not counting the Ayn Rand inspired economic aspects).

Which is the part they push hardest.  And the part that will completely obliterate the poor.  There is simply no justification for pushing Randian ideas because they demonstrably do not work.

Not just the poor, all of society eventually. But in the short term it's mostly just the poor and lower middle classes that would get fucked, so rich people and people convinced they don't need the government (while living in states that take in way more government money than they give, of course) love it.

That's why Ron Paul received piles of money from the rich, and the rich provided one of his strongest voting demographics.

Oh wait

[GlyphGryph]

Aren't many libertarians big supporters of negative income taxes and similar things? I don't think things like those would "completely obliterate the poor". I don't know how effective that is, compared to other strategies, but I don't think its reprehensible.

I think libertarianism has one huge problem - the bulk of it's membership is composed of the sort of people who found it it in college and  threw themselves into it because it was superficially attractive, leading them to believe they'd found "The One True Answer". It's as if the Democrats were in large part the hippies Republicans imagine them to be, and the Republican party was composed in bulk of born again evangelicals. It's a probably many smaller movements and parties experience, and they don't really seem to change much until they get larger.

[mainiac]

I agree with a lot of libertarian ideology (not counting the Ayn Rand inspired economic aspects).

Which is the part they push hardest.  And the part that will completely obliterate the poor.  There is simply no justification for pushing Randian ideas because they demonstrably do not work.

Not just the poor, all of society eventually. But in the short term it's mostly just the poor and lower middle classes that would get fucked, so rich people and people convinced they don't need the government (while living in states that take in way more government money than they give, of course) love it.

That's why Ron Paul received piles of money from the rich, and the rich provided one of his strongest voting demographics.

Oh wait

When a candidate is pulling less then 25% of the vote in a contest itself that only reflects the views of la fraction of the populace you can hardly assume the small part of the population that their ballots tally to be representative of their views compared to the population as a whole.  Maybe the views are representative but you need to carefully look at the conditions and these votes are definitely not a representative sample, not assume it.  Yes Ron Paul did well among poor voters who voted in the republican primaries.  But he did not even receive a majority of his votes from people earning less then the national median income (that share was 44%).  More ever there are factors that correlate with voting for Ron Paul much more strongly.

Ron Paul mostly gets support from the liberal and youngs wing of the republican party.  This isn't exactly groundbreaking news.  Nor is it groundbreaking news that young people earn less then the median income.  People's earning power increases as they age.  Likewise you will see that Ron Paul does well among those who never attended a GOP caucus or identify as political independents.  These correlate with poverty somewhat but more to the point they tell us that Ron Paul appeals not to poor people but to people who are on the fringes of the republican party.  All of these factors are much better indicators of voting for Ron Paul then below median income.

To look at it another way realize that you are comparing Ron Paul to the republican primary electorate.  That electorate skews old, wealthy, white and conservative on both social and economic issues.  The people who votes for Ron Paul in 2012 Iowa had a larger percentage above the median income then the people who voted for Obama OR Clinton in the 2008 Iowa democratic primary.  They were also more conservative, older, whiter (though not much), more evangelical and more male then Obama or Hillary voters.  It's not that Ron Paul does well with the poor, it's the he's competing in an electorate that does not reflect america.

So don't naively interpret statistics like that.  It's not good.

[Leafsnail]

Aren't many libertarians big supporters of negative income taxes and similar things? I don't think things like those would "completely obliterate the poor". I don't know how effective that is, compared to other strategies, but I don't think its reprehensible.

I can't see any evidence that either Ron Paul or Gary Johnson or any major member of the libertarian movement supports anything of the sort.  They mostly seem to advocate ending income tax (and estate tax, and capital gains tax - as far as I can tell they want a sales tax, which would be horrible for the poor, but it's difficult to tell with Paul's rambling) altogether.  They certainly do not advocate spending a single penny to help poor people (in Ron Paul's case because his bizarre budget leaves no room for any spending of any kind).

I think libertarianism has one huge problem - the bulk of it's membership is composed of the sort of people who found it it in college and  threw themselves into it because it was superficially attractive, leading them to believe they'd found "The One True Answer". It's as if the Democrats were in large part the hippies Republicans imagine them to be, and the Republican party was composed in bulk of born again evangelicals. It's a probably many smaller movements and parties experience, and they don't really seem to change much until they get larger.

That's one huge problem with libertarianism.  The other is that mainstream libertarian economic policy fundamentally does not work.  Especially in a time when the economy is struggling.

[palsch]

She led a campaign to completely ban "mature" video games, despite the success of the voluntary rating system. She has had a few other gaffs as secretary of state.

I'm not exactly that keen on Clinton as the candidate in 2016, but I don't think this charge is as strong as gamers always make it out to be.

This is the bill in question. It didn't ban mature games. It instead added a penalty to those found selling Mature or AO ESRB rated games to those underage, alongside measures to include review of ESRB ratings, both as a general independent annual review and in specific cases where they were misleading (it was inspired the Hot Coffee nonsense).

It's worth noting that since then the Supreme Court has extended first amendment protection to video games, making such measures no more legal than trying to add regulations to the MPAA. So it was an unconstitutional level of restriction, although arguably not an unreasonable one.

But in any case, it was not a flat ban on Mature games.


My issue with Clinton is that she is, holding video games aside, not especially liberal while being painted as an Arch Liberal by the right. Obama, who I have always seen as rather moderate, is easily to her left on the issues. Her healthcare plan in particular was closer to the compromise position Obama ended up in than Obama's own more leftish proposal.

I don't doubt that moderate liberalism works well in the USA. But she is always going to be painted as a raging communist feminazi with a confirmed murder count by the right wingers. If we have a candidate who is going to get tagged with that kind of crap, could they at least have deserved some of the charges of leftist?

On the other hand, good on gay rights. Most of the longer term supporters of hers I knew back in '08 were from that movement.

I'm hoping someone else comes forwards, but waiting till 2014 for them to show up again isn't very attractive and I haven't seen any particularly obvious new players in this convention cycle.

[Aqizzar]

I don't doubt that moderate liberalism works well in the USA. But she is always going to be painted as a raging communist feminazi with a confirmed murder count by the right wingers. If we have a candidate who is going to get tagged with that kind of crap, could they at least have deserved some of the charges of leftist?

To be fair, the candidate the Democrats wound up getting was a staunchly moderate pro-military market-oriented kinda-liberal law professor, and he was painted wall to wall as a Kenyan Islamo-Hitler Maoist Manchurian Candidate, and he won one election and has a pretty good chance to hold onto a reelection.

Why I would doubt the chances of Hilary Clinton, and this is entirely anecdotal, but ironically for being a female politician with the best shot at being President since... well almost ever, I never meet women who like her.  I'm sure if she actually made it onto the ballot, she'd do as well as Obama with women, but probably just that while likely shaving off support elsewhere.

I've missed you, Aqizzar. Please don't leave ever again. We need you.

Don't say things like that, gives me a weird Alpha Centauri vibe.

[palsch]

Why I would doubt the chances of Hilary Clinton, and this is entirely anecdotal, but ironically for being a female politician with the best shot at being President since... well almost ever, I never meet women who like her.  I'm sure if she actually made it onto the ballot, she'd do as well as Obama with women, but probably just that while likely shaving off support elsewhere.

Her standing by Bill Clinton after he cheated is a big old debate that tends to divide women, from the strident feminists down to the barefoot-and-pregnant types. But even where it doesn't decrease her support I don't think it does much to increase people's trust in her. It's too easily seen as a cynical political move (as much of their marriage can be seen frankly - pretty much everything since Bill's days playing the Dude in the 70's) rather than any actual feelings towards Bill.

[Aqizzar]

It's too easily seen as a cynical political move (as much of their marriage can be seen frankly - pretty much everything since Bill's days playing the Dude in the 70's) rather than any actual feelings towards Bill.

Given how much people seem to still like Bill Clinton, it's hard to say really.  Plenty of women I meet who hate Hilary, mostly because they see her as an empty pantsuit, still love Bill.

And with pictures like that I can see why.  How the Hell did I miss that one?  Gives me hope for the hairy slobs of today.

[mainiac]

Bill Clinton had some real weak sauce cheating.  Just saying.  If he wanted to he could have easily bagged hotties by the score and instead he got a blowjob from an intern who wasn't exactly a looker.  This doesn't even elevate itself to the level of affair.  So Bill probably looked less bad to Hillary due to lack of premeditation.

But it's also not like there is an iron law of the universe that you are supposed to have a divorce automatically if someone cheats on you.  Are there any indications that Hillary and Bill were unhappy in the marriage besides the affairs?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My understanding is that Bill and Hillary mostly have always had a political marriage, so I doubt either one of them cares about him cheating very much.

Still, I agree that Bill's cheating was way too lame for all the consequences it caused. JFK's cheating was much more interesting. If you're going to cheat in the White House, you might as well go straight to the naked supermodel pool party, do not pass go, do not collect HPV.

[nenjin]

I'd question what affairs he had that were never discovered/publicized. BC doesn't strike me as a one-time offender. The fact he jeopardized his political standing (lulz) over someone like Lewinsky tells me he felt there was a lot he could get away with.

[mainiac]

My understanding is that Bill and Hillary mostly have always had a political marriage, so I doubt either one of them cares about him cheating very much.

How can they have a political marriage when they were married before either of them were in politics?  Or are you saying that they got married because they were planning for Bill to launch a failed bid for state senate two years later?  Is every state senate candidate in the country in a political marriage?

[GreatJustice]

I agree with a lot of libertarian ideology (not counting the Ayn Rand inspired economic aspects).

Which is the part they push hardest.  And the part that will completely obliterate the poor.  There is simply no justification for pushing Randian ideas because they demonstrably do not work.

Not just the poor, all of society eventually. But in the short term it's mostly just the poor and lower middle classes that would get fucked, so rich people and people convinced they don't need the government (while living in states that take in way more government money than they give, of course) love it.

That's why Ron Paul received piles of money from the rich, and the rich provided one of his strongest voting demographics.

Oh wait

When a candidate is pulling less then 25% of the vote in a contest itself that only reflects the views of la fraction of the populace you can hardly assume the small part of the population that their ballots tally to be representative of their views compared to the population as a whole.  Maybe the views are representative but you need to carefully look at the conditions and these votes are definitely not a representative sample, not assume it.  Yes Ron Paul did well among poor voters who voted in the republican primaries.  But he did not even receive a majority of his votes from people earning less then the national median income (that share was 44%).  More ever there are factors that correlate with voting for Ron Paul much more strongly.

Ron Paul mostly gets support from the liberal and youngs wing of the republican party.  This isn't exactly groundbreaking news.  Nor is it groundbreaking news that young people earn less then the median income.  People's earning power increases as they age.  Likewise you will see that Ron Paul does well among those who never attended a GOP caucus or identify as political independents.  These correlate with poverty somewhat but more to the point they tell us that Ron Paul appeals not to poor people but to people who are on the fringes of the republican party.  All of these factors are much better indicators of voting for Ron Paul then below median income.

To look at it another way realize that you are comparing Ron Paul to the republican primary electorate.  That electorate skews old, wealthy, white and conservative on both social and economic issues.  The people who votes for Ron Paul in 2012 Iowa had a larger percentage above the median income then the people who voted for Obama OR Clinton in the 2008 Iowa democratic primary.  They were also more conservative, older, whiter (though not much), more evangelical and more male then Obama or Hillary voters.  It's not that Ron Paul does well with the poor, it's the he's competing in an electorate that does not reflect america.

So don't naively interpret statistics like that.  It's not good.

No, you skipped the part that actually counts.

Whether he did well with the poorest demographics is irrelevant for any number of reasons  (and keep in mind, this trend continued even in other states like New Hampshire, so it was hardly an anomaly). What matters is that the richer people were, the LESS likely to vote for Ron Paul.

On that note, how many influential rich people endorsed Ron Paul? Yeah, exactly, basically nil. The one exception I can think of would be Peter Thiel, but he's an entrepreneur at heart and is hardly representative of your average rich person.

The fact of the matter is, libertarianism isn't even remotely an ideology for the rich, since libertarianism happens to involve far more change than they would like.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How can they have a political marriage when they were married before either of them were in politics?  Or are you saying that they got married because they were planning for Bill to launch a failed bid for state senate two years later?  Is every state senate candidate in the country in a political marriage?

I have never seen any sign they really like each other, so I suspect that it was definitely not a marriage of love at least. Political marriage seems like the most likely candidate.