Racism and Tea Partiers Part Deux

[']['ear]

Good one, Lewk. Your the best.

Dude. You just blamed W on liberals.

[Loki]

I said nothing of the sort. Why would you make crap up like that? David Stockman actually claimed it.

You've just said that Bush Jr. succumbed to populist pressure to increase spending.

[CitizenCain]

Dude. You just blamed W on liberals.

Because that's what actually happened.

Possibly W's one redeeming quality - as much as he gives liberals massive ass-hurt, he is their creation.

[Nessus]

I can't believe you guys managed to ruin a thread by moving away from a buttsex discussion

Actually I can believe it but it is kinda sad

[Ziggy Stardust]

I can't believe you expected anything else.

Ah, the youth's optimism, it's a wonderful thing to behold.

[Nessus]

I can't believe it's not butt*gunshot*

Go smoke a doobie, gramps

[Ziggy Stardust]

But I'm trying Ringo. I'm trying real hard.

[CitizenCain]

I can't believe you guys managed to ruin a thread by moving away from a buttsex discussion

Don't blame me... I tried to keep the buttsex discussion alive by moving it in another direction. Seriously, *right* above your post:

he gives liberals massive ass-hurt

How you can try to claim I'm not all about the discussion of buttsezking escapes me.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I feel the same way about the Bamster. Fox has never been more entertaining.

[EyeKhan]

Uhuh. And who was it who posted the "starve the beast doesn't work" article, and from what ideological camp does the website/magazine which published that article hail?

What? You? You know I don't read anything you post, ya ding dong.

Seriously... even the conservatives aren't as bad about "us vs them [and that's all that exists]" as you fucking liberals are.

Depends on what stripe of conservative or liberal you're talking about.

[']['ear]

You've just said that Bush Jr. succumbed to populist pressure to increase spending.

No I didn't. I didn't even use the word populist. I said that Bush may well have been engaging in "Starve the beast," but he failed. You do realize that's the kind interpretation, right? Because the other interpretation is that he was just downright fiscally irresponsible, without an underlying agenda to shrink government.

[Loki]

WTF, if he failed, then he didn't actually implement that policy.

[']['ear]

WTF, if he failed, then he didn't actually implement that policy.

So if Russia launches a pre-emptive first strike, but fails due to our vaunted missile defense system (LOL), they didn't implement a pre-emptive first strike policy?

I never realized that "implement" meant "succeed."

Put down the crack pipe!

Edit: Merriam-Webster
Main Entry: 2im·ple·ment
Pronunciation: \-ˌment\
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1806

1 : carry out, accomplish; especially : to give practical effect to and ensure of actual fulfillment by concrete measures
2 : to provide instruments or means of expression for

I can see how one can interpret it that way. I always use it in the "do" sense. Success is, of course, never guaranteed.

[GGT]

The Gospel according to Paul. Rand Paul, that is.

Fascinating US politics. First there was Ron Paul who invigorated the voting youth, now there is Rand Paul invigorating the voting seniors.

Back at the other place it was fun to see everyone dismiss the Revolution, the wingnuts and Paulnuts. And the armchair political science pundits saying the Tea Party was an amorphous blob that could never coordinate voters, let alone make an impact.

Well, that was before, and this is now. The constitution, state's rights, civil rights, smaller federal government....now it's all on the table in a more popular and mainstream way.

Let the interpretations begin!

[EyeKhan]

He just won the party nomination, right?

[Ominous Gamer]

in before partyline hack!!!1!

[']['ear]

Paul apparently misstepped. Check out his take on BP (the irony thread). Most voters are not particularly sympathetic to BP right now, even is Paul is willing to slurp BP's junk in public. Of course, Paul is running in Kentucky, so it's hard to say how much crank Kentuckians will fret about the destruction of another state's major industries (seafood, tourism). Taking care of others not being a notable trait of libertarians and all.

[Loki]

Everything I've read from him tells me the guy is a lunatic, libertarian or not.

[']['ear]

I have yet to see a libertarian politician who doesn't fit that description to some degree. It's why I admire the philosophy but detest it's application: everybody is a purist, which IMO is an automatic fail. Like any other ideology, if it isn't tempered with pragmatism (i.e. comprised and not pure), it will cause more harm than it's worth.

[Loki]

I have yet to see a libertarian politician who doesn't fit that description to some degree. It's why I admire the philosophy but detest it's application: everybody is a purist, which IMO is an automatic fail. Like any other ideology, if it isn't tempered with pragmatism (i.e. comprised and not pure), it will cause more harm than it's worth.

He's not a purist. He doesn't seem to give a damn about property rights of anyone but giant corporations.

[']['ear]

He's not a purist. He doesn't seem to give a damn about property rights of anyone but giant corporations.

Then he's not a libertarian, just a pro-business conservative.

[Loki]

Then he's not a libertarian, just a pro-business conservative.

He does believe in the dumb ideas of his dad, like getting rid of the Fed and implementing the gold standard. He just seems to be an all-out idiot.

[Nessus]

They both have to sit on both sides of the fence on most issues because they're simultaneously courting fuck-witted cranks from very separate groups; the racist, yokel nutjobs who want no taxes except to kill sand people and possibly to persecute faggots and other non-Christians, and the libertarian demagogues who want to clamp the US down like ancient Japan and get the gubment out of everything ever. So they have to "let the states decide" divisive issues like gay marriage.

[']['ear]

Well, "let he states decide" is a red herring to anybody with a couple of neurons to rub together.

[Nessus]

A lot of people seem to gobble it up like so much uncut schlong, though

And I love Rand's (Paul) repeats of how he is definitely against discrimination but he's super miffed that the god-durnit feds went ahead and ruined the rights of crazy racist business owners with the Civil Rights act. That's a real crying shame, that is

And now he has to look fucking awkward in any talk show or interview where he's asked about it

Well played!

[GGT]

Republican candidate Rand Paul's controversial remarks on the 1964 Civil Rights Act unsettled GOP leaders this week, but they reflect deeply held iconoclastic beliefs held by some in his party, and many in the tea-party movement, that the U.S. government shook its constitutional moorings more than 70 years ago.

Mr. Paul and his supporters rushed to emphasize that his remarks did not reflect racism but a sincerely held, libertarian belief that the federal government, starting in the Roosevelt era, gained powers that set the stage for decades of improper intrusions on private businesses.

Mr. Paul, the newly elected GOP Senate nominee in Kentucky, again made headlines Friday when he told ABC's "Good Morning America" that President Barack Obama's criticism of energy giant BP and of its oil-spill response was "really un-American."

That followed a tussle over the landmark civil-rights law, which Mr. Paul embraced after suggesting Wednesday that the act may have gone too far in mandating the desegregation of private businesses. Late Friday, NBC said that Mr. Paul had cancelled a scheduled appearance on the Sunday morning show "Meet the Press,'' a rare development in the history of the widely watched political program. The network said it was asking Mr. Paul to reconsider.

In tea-party circles, Mr. Paul's views are not unusual. They fit into a "Constitutionalist" view under which the federal government has no right to dictate the behavior of private enterprises. On the stump, especially among tea-party supporters, Mr. Paul says "big government" didn't start with President Obama, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s or the advance of central governance sparked by World War II and the economic boom that followed.

He traces it to 1937, when the Supreme Court, under heated pressure from President Franklin Roosevelt, upheld a state minimum-wage law on a 5-4 vote, ushering in the legal justification for government intervention in private markets.

Until the case, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, the Supreme Court had sharply limited government action that impinged on the private sector, infuriating Mr. Roosevelt so much that he threatened to expand the court and stack it with his own appointees.

Following his comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rand Paul said Friday morning President Obama's criticism of BP has sounded "really un-American." WSJ's Jerry Seib joins the News Hub to discuss the latest controversy and the political damage of Paul's recent comments.

"It didn't start last year. I think it started back in 1936 or 1937, and I point really to a couple of key constitutional cases… that all had to do with the commerce clause," Mr. Paul said in an interview before Tuesday's election, in which he defeated a Republican establishment candidate, hand-picked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, Ky.).

Mr. Paul has said that, if elected, one of his first demands will be that Congress print the constitutional justification on any law is passes.

Last week, Mr. Paul encouraged a tea-party gathering in Louisville to look at the origins of "unconstitutional government." He told the crowd there of Wickard v. Filburn, a favorite reference on the stump, in which the Supreme Court rejected the claims of farmer Roscoe Filburn that wheat he grew for his own use was beyond the reach of federal regulation. The 1942 ruling upheld federal laws limiting wheat production, saying Mr. Filburn's crop affected interstate commerce. Even if he fed his wheat to his own livestock, the court reasoned, he was implicitly affecting wheat prices. If he had bought the wheat on the market, he would subtly have raised the national price of the crop.

"That's when we quit owning our own property. That's when we became renters on our own land," Mr. Paul told the crowd.

Rand Paul on the Fair Housing Act

Mr. Paul wrote a letter to the Bowling Green, Ky., Daily News dated May 30, 2002, in response to an editorial on the Federal Fair Housing Act.

Distinction blurred between private, public property

A recent Daily News editorial supported the Federal Fair Housing Act. At first glance, who could object to preventing discrimination in housing?

Most citizens would agree that it is wrong to deny taxpayer-financed, "public" housing to anyone based on the color of their skin or the number of children in the household.

But the Daily News ignores, as does the Fair Housing Act, the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual's beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn't want noisy children? Absolutely not.

Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate.

Alcoholics Anonymous may only accept alcoholics; Madison Avenue advertisers may choose only the young and slender; Boy Scouts may wish to exclude sex offenders; Christian churches may wish to exclude atheists from the clergy.

A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination - even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.

It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin.

It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities. A society that forgets this distinction will ultimately lose the freedoms that have evolved and historically been attached to private ownership.

Rand Paul

Bowling Green

In an interview, Mr. Paul expressed support for purely in-state gun industries, in which firearms are produced in one state with no imported parts and no exports. Guns produced under those circumstances can't be subjected to a federal background check, waiting period or other rules, he reasons.

"I'm not for having a civil war or anything like that, but I am for challenging federal authority over the states, through the courts, to see if we can get some better rulings," he said.

To supporters, such ideological purity has made the Bowling Green ophthalmologist a hero.

"He's going back to the Constitution," said Heather Toombs, a Louisville supporter who came to watch him at a meet-and-greet at a suburban home last week. "He's taking back the government."

But to Democrats, some Republicans and even some libertarians, Mr. Paul's arguments seem detached from the social fabric that has bound the U.S. together since 1937. The federal government puts limits on pollutants from corporations, monitors the safety of toys and other products and ensures a safe food supply—much of which Mr. Paul's philosophy could put in question.

David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said that in many ways Americans are freer now than they were in any pre-1937 libertarian Halcyon day. Women and black citizens can vote, work and own property. "Micro-regulations" that existed before the Supreme Court shift, which controlled trucking, civil aviation and other private pursuits, are gone.

"Sometimes he talks the way libertarians talk in political seminars," Mr. Boaz said of Mr. Paul. "There are not really many people who want to reverse Wickard, but there are many professors who could make a good case for it."

"Rand Paul apparently has a deeply held conviction that corporations should be allowed to do what they see fit without oversight or accountability," Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, Mr. Paul's Democratic opponent in the Senate contest, said Friday.

Mr. Paul's views differ from those of the Republican Party on some fundamental matters. Mr. Paul opposes the anti-terrorism PATRIOT Act, which he says infringes on civil liberties. He opposed the war in Iraq and says any war cannot be waged unless and until Congress formally declares it. And he has expressed misgivings about the nation's drug laws.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R, Ariz.) told the newspaper Politico that Mr. Paul's civil rights comments were comparable to "a debate like you had at 2 a.m. in the morning when you're going to college. But it doesn't have a lot to do with anything."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._WSJ_US_News_5


When abstract philosophy doesn't apply well to life's reality....

I think even Bill Buckley (or maybe was it Goldwater?) acknowledged that the federal government had to intervene for civil rights, because the laissez-faire DIY idea wasn't working.

[']['ear]

In Paul's defense, that actually is a strict libertarian interpretation: the government has no right to dictate to private individuals. So it probably isn't racist per se, especially since he is careful to qualify it.

It's a sound bite that plays like absolute hell in 2010, though.

[GGT]

Continuation of defining libertarianism and the Tea partiers, from a metaphysical point of view.

When I read this, I thought of Spawnie, our resident philosopher. And Nessie, our resident nihilist.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...gry-tea-party/


I also found some great stuff dissecting state capitalism vs democratic capitalism that made me think of our Freeee Market political animals, like Loki, Dread and Rand. But I kinda lost it in all these many windows and tabs on my new computer.

[LittleFuzzy]

In Paul's defense, that actually is a strict libertarian interpretation: the government has no right to dictate to private individuals. So it probably isn't racist per se, especially since he is careful to qualify it.

It's a sound bite that plays like absolute hell in 2010, though.

Even worse, in Paul's defense, the whole endeavor is built on some pretty shaky constitutional grounds. SCOTUS supported it but primary rulings like Katzenbach, expanding the scope of the interstate commerce clause, are just begging to be overturned.

[Dreadnaught]

Continuation of defining libertarianism and the Tea partiers, from a metaphysical point of view.

When I read this, I thought of Spawnie, our resident philosopher. And Nessie, our resident nihilist.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...gry-tea-party/


I also found some great stuff dissecting state capitalism vs democratic capitalism that made me think of our Freeee Market political animals, like Loki, Dread and Rand. But I kinda lost it in all these many windows and tabs on my new computer.

Seems to set up a number of straw men about what the "tea party" represents, and even if it's a real movement instead of a shift in the American political discourse.

This part stuck out:

My hypothesis is that what all the events precipitating the Tea Party movement share is that they demonstrated, emphatically and unconditionally, the depths of the absolute dependence of us all on government action, and in so doing they undermined the deeply held fiction of individual autonomy and self-sufficiency that are intrinsic parts of Americans’ collective self-understanding.

This is a bit of a tautology, no? Some people are demanding the government remove itself from aspects of their life, thus the government is involved in aspects of everyone's lives. Etc. etc.