Ron Paul takes the lead in Iowa.

[Boris Godunov]

Everybody dies. Why should I have to pay for their free motorized scooters? Why should I pay for a bunch of deadbeat baby boomers who didn't save enough for retirement?

See, this alone is why we we can dismiss Paul and other LOLbertarians as having any reasonable chance of winning major elections in this country. Keep it up!

[kentonio]

Everybody dies. Why should I have to pay for their free motorized scooters? Why should I pay for a bunch of deadbeat baby boomers who didn't save enough for retirement?

Very human of you.

We have the right to peaceably assemble. And there's no Constitutional basis for denying a group of people their right to express themselves, simply because they are a group.

How difficult is this to comprehend really? Noones denying them a damn thing, this is about not giving out extra rights!

I know that your information is skewed at best, and I believe that your sources, whatever they are, are advancing a specific political agenda.

Absolutely, half the supreme court and at least half the US population are indeed 'advancing a specific political agenda.'.

Stevens' dissent is a minority opinion, and it is unsupported by the Constitution.

Except it isn't supported in the constitution, except by the ridiculous interpretation the current court came out with. You might also like to go back and read a little about what the founders and later significant people thought about corporations and the threat to democracy they would potentially pose if allowed to become overly powerful.

Is the Labour Party corrupting British politics by working with the trade unions? I don't believe it does, but you sure seem to think so.

The unions corrupted UK politics for many years, until their power was broken in the eighties, yes.

[Elok]

Let's see, the current GOP field is...

Romney--slightly less exciting than oatmeal, stands for nothing at all, the practical choice
Paul--anti-MI-complex, weird economic views, old racist baggage, crazy followers
Santorum--basically the opposite of Paul, but just as crazy and without the army of (organized) fanatics; dead within two weeks
Gingrich--no good qualities whatever, just a mass of vanity, spite and lies with a doughy human face
Perry--HAHAHAHAHA!
Huntsman--perfectly competent and reasonable, but has too little support and too little time to generate it

So, Romney it is, then.

[Dinner]

Maybe it's the local news bias, but has Biden actually done anything noteworthy as a VP?

No. When he's mentioned in the news at all it's because he said something stupid or screwed up some how.

[Dinner]

I found this funny. Just to show the Paultards are completely wrong about everything in the last year US debt actually had a better return on investment than gold. "KILL THE FED AND BUY GOLD BECAUSE THE HYPER INFLATION IS COMING!!!" He's been making that prediction since the 1970's so at some point he's going to have to give up the ghost and admit he was wrong.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the-year-us-debt-beat-gold/250719/

[MrFun]

I don't know, Dinner . . . . aren't there still people today who believe the world is flat?

[Felch]

See, this alone is why we we can dismiss Paul and other LOLbertarians as having any reasonable chance of winning major elections in this country. Keep it up!

Yeah, let's spend money we don't have on expensive medical care for people who will never again work or contribute anything to society. That's a winning plan. Oh and anybody who disagrees isn't simply a reasonable person with a different set of priorities, but is instead an amoral spawn of Satan who hates old ladies.

There are limited resources. If we spend 13% of the federal budget on Medicare, then who can be surprised when those resources aren't put towards better roads, safer more effective prisons, or cash payments to schools to improve education or provide better medical care for children without insurance?

How difficult is this to comprehend really? Noones denying them a damn thing, this is about not giving out extra rights!

Do you not understand what the McCain-Feingold law did? It forbade groups of people from airing ads prior to an election. In other words, it denied a group of people the right to organize and participate in the political process. It was patently unconstitutional, and the SCOTUS was absolutely correct in striking it down. The only opposition to the Citizens United decision are dimwits who mistake liberty for a zero-sum game. As if letting other people organize and participate in the political process somehow makes me less free.

Except it isn't supported in the constitution, except by the ridiculous interpretation the current court came out with. You might also like to go back and read a little about what the founders and later significant people thought about corporations and the threat to democracy they would potentially pose if allowed to become overly powerful.

Why don't you tell me where in the Constitution, or in the Federalist Papers, or in any other source, you came up with the idea that people shouldn't be able to organize to participate in the political process. I'm curious. Because I haven't come across anything like that.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

It would make economic sense to have everyone over 75 humanely euthanised, but I can't see Ron Paul agreeing.

[Dr Strangelove]

Yeah, let's spend money we don't have on expensive medical care for people who will never again work or contribute anything to society.

You wanna make medicare work? I can make medicare work. It's easy, take the cap off of F.I.C.A. and S.E.C.A., the Social Security and Medicaid "taxes". Currently there's a limit, $ 108,000, to the income that's taxed for Social Security and Medicare. Abolish the cap and you'll see the Social Security fund restored to health and plenty of money for healthcare.

[Dinner]

Yeah, that's been known for years but you'll notice the Republicans keep claiming the system is bankrupt and unfixable so they need to toss the elderly out into the street.

[HalfLotus]

Strange to me that people mock Paul's economic views so much. They are different, but for the most part Paul and the Austrians have been far more accurate than conventional wisdom re: the economic crash and its preceding bubble.

People cling to the conventional Keynsian wisdom which largely ignored the housing bubble, ignored the malinvestment, and ignored the folly of the Fed's and the Congress' policy leading up to the crash.

I guess the propaganda campaign against the Austrians has been very effective, because people still reside in an upside-down, dare I say Orwellian, realm of economic doublespeak and outright denial re: the causes the cures of our current economic woes.

Call it "weird" all you want, but I'll take the diagnosis and recommended cures from the people who called this mess accurately (Paul, Schiff, et al), and for a long time, over the views of the obviously ignorant and confused "conventional wisdom" (Bernanke, Frank, et al) which dominates US economic discourse.

[Hauldren Collider]

Maybe it's the local news bias, but has Biden actually done anything noteworthy as a VP?

Actually, he has. He's Obama's main liaison to the Senate, a mostly backroom position, but he's been fairly important to Obama's efforts to pass legislation.

Cheney was very important. The importance of the VP depends on the administration.

[Hauldren Collider]

You wanna make medicare work? I can make medicare work. It's easy, take the cap off of F.I.C.A. and S.E.C.A., the Social Security and Medicaid "taxes". Currently there's a limit, $ 108,000, to the income that's taxed for Social Security and Medicare. Abolish the cap and you'll see the Social Security fund restored to health and plenty of money for healthcare.

That's a quick fix with an absolutely enormous tax raise. It will just delay the bankruptcy by a few decades. It is not a long term solution.

[DaShi]

So, like global warming, we'll worry about it in a few decades.

[Boris Godunov]

Yeah, let's spend money we don't have on expensive medical care for people who will never again work or contribute anything to society. That's a winning plan. Oh and anybody who disagrees isn't simply a reasonable person with a different set of priorities, but is instead an amoral spawn of Satan who hates old ladies.

Oh **** off. You were the one characterizing people who need Medicare as "baby boomers" who were too stupid to save money. If you're going to characterize those who need it in a negative way, whining when those of use with genuine moral compasses call you out on your compassionless stance is rank hypocrisy.

Prior to the advent of SS and Medicare, 80% of senior citizens lived in horrific poverty and unable to afford basic medical care. Civilized people realized this was an intolerable situation and created a system to address the problem. If you haven't caught up to such civilized folks, so be it, but don't cry when we point out just how uncivilized your view is.

At any rate, that wasn't even my point. The point is, whether or not your argument was a good one, the vast majority of Americans except and approve of the existence of Medicare and would be appalled by the notion we should abandon seniors. Were Paul to manage to get the nomination, all it would take would be quotes similar to yours that he's uttered to ensure he went down to the largest electoral defeat since Mondale.