Comments on: Ron Paul Meet the Press failure

By: blog of bile » Blog Archive » David Shuster goes head to head with Ron Paul

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:17:36 +0000

[...] a pompous group. I think bosco put it well… they “might as well have a bucket over [their] head[s] and shout “I CAN’T [...]

By: bile

bile — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:49:37 +0000

What kind of logic slams together using 9/11 to justify a more careful immigration system and use of 9/11 to justify the PATRIOT Act? They aren’t related. He’s not the one threating Texas home owners with eminent domain to build huge walls on the boarder or force a national ID on people. Besides… after a second watching he clearly says it’s primarily an economic issue and secondly "9/11 occurred, why shouldn’t we looking at the people coming in?" What kind of political dancing are you otherwise referring to? He was asked very specific questions and answered them specifically regardless of whether they were considered legit. The only parts which I’d think people would consider "political dancing" would be about earmarks, supporting Reagen or running independent. Only because people don’t understand how to differentiate how things work vs how they think they work or what they become.

By: bosco

bosco — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:55:54 +0000

After having watched it the word I can best use to describe it is "weak". Paul was weak as he did stupid political dancing BS. Tim is an outright dick who's weak in the head. This interview did not make me very happy. Paul needs to shit or get off the pot. He can't use 9/11 to justify immigration policies when he likes to rant about 9/11 being used to shoe-horn fascist policies. Tim needs to realize that if he continues to be that confrontational he'll never accomplish anything. He might as well have a bucket over his head and shout "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" while interviewing people. lolcats sums it up well

By: bile

bile — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:24:58 +0000

Wanting a "journalist" to read up on who and what he’s talking about is a cop-out? How the fuck is that? That’s what he’s supposed to do. If you are ignorant of his whole platform than why only give him 30 minutes? You’ll need hours. Especially given he was going back 20-30 years. How many other candidates did he do that with? I’d bet zero. He tried to explain his points many times and was cut off by Russert. When he did get a word in Russert ignored his reasoning. He generally didn’t argue his reasoning… just ignored it. The earmarks thing, the slavery/Lincoln question… Russert just blew him off. Don’t ask questions you aren’t prepared to understand the answers to. Not on TV when you are only going to give the person seconds to answer and then force them to the next question. It’s like Bill O’Reilly’s "We don’t have time for a history lesson." You simply can’t sum up a couple thousands pages of material in 30 seconds. If the interviewer is completely unfamiliar with the reasoning behind the platform and is obviously hostal to it… it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

By: bile

bile — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:12:14 +0000

What’s unrealistic? Cutting 1.1 trillion in spending is hardly impossible. Check out my Facts/Stats page. We could have the budget of 1998 and still cut income taxes by over 70%. I have a hard time believing we couldn’t survive on $2.1 trillion or that it would be difficult to shrink to that size in 4-8 years. The FairTax is a 30% sales tax…. no thanks. A small consumption tax would be better than what we have now but 30% is heavily regressive. As far as I understand the prebate is for upto the federal poverty line which is fairly low. I’ve not crunched numbers but I’d suspect the FairTax wins out but I’m not interested bothering with it unless the only way Congress would get rid of the income tax would be by instituting a consumption tax. And then I’d want a explicit plan to phase it out. I think a President Ron Paul would be able to cut many many things and save quite a bit allowing for large tax cuts. The fact he got elected IMO would be enough to get many in congress to go along.

I also don’t support Huckabee in the least.

By: bosco

bosco — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:08:01 +0000

A few things.

Here is another take on the interview.
I think telling people to read things as opposed to taking the time to explain it to them is a political cop-out. At the very least you could do your best to minimally explain it. If you can’t explain it in brief terms, chances are you don’t understand it yourself.
Words cannot express how much I love Sinclair Lewis.
Thanks Ian for your post.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:06:35 +0000

Paul is simply unrealistic in his approach - although I concur with where he'd like to take America. Huckabee has gotten on board with a well-established movement - the FairTax - and his advocacy has simply accelerated what has been a growing national movement over the last nine years. (Paul could have made the point the the U.S. manages to waste almost all of the revenue that it collects from the income tax, but the quirks of his cratchety presentation style does not tend to exude confidence in his stability.) Huckabee's FairTax will point the country in a better direction of greater accountability through increased visibility of the tax load by those who ultimately pay for it - the working American.