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I am not certain I am for Perry yet. To this point, probably. But I like the direction he suggests and the way he says it. We don't need another soft-on-America politician, like Romney, who seems to believe in the state over the citizen. And we don't need more politicians who have never actually, you know, done anything but run for minor offices. Nor does a businessman seem to be a wise choice. No matter how successful, business isn't politics. Much like you don't put a pro football player into world class swimming competitions, blindly based on his other accomplishments.
It is funny. I hear people complain about the feminization of the military, the queerification of the military, the immoralization of education, the islamification of America and Europe, and all the rest, and yet then turn around and despise the real solutions to the problems. Why can't we offer special rights AND not have these things? They might as well ask why we can't fly. If they have to ask, they are lost. Whatever. I don't receive responses to my comments anymore because I put it the way it is, not the way it should be, or could be in some fantasy land. And that is fine. All I am saying is if you are going to complain about it, then don't turn around and support it. You can't have it both ways. I have decided, other than on personal matters or with those few of you I usually chat with, comments are off (as much as is possible).
You can't pick one or two groups to support, but not the rest. Just like you can't pick some government glut spending and not other spending. It ends up that everyone picks too much. Special rights and glut spending has to end for America to remain free. Or, more, regain freedom. Even so, even should we do the right things, we will do so under the yoke of a huge debt. Nothing will cure that now. Best to decide whether to freely begin working to get out from under that yoke or choose to live with it and without freedom on top of it.
If nothing else, the republican nominee won't be some sort of community organizer, i think that's a big plus, who ever it is.
ReplyDeleteWe would like far better that obama, but if we don't get perfection, i think can settle for the next best thing.
Au contraire! Zero is only called a community organizer. He is of the false kind. A real president will bring people, the right people, together to rebuild America. He won't do it by claiming to do it, he won't do it by giving out handouts to the undeserving, he will do it almost as much simply by being pro-American and doing his job as minimally as possible (other than a goodly bit of undoing, as is necessary).
ReplyDeleteAs for perfection, that isn't to be had. While I like the notion of someone like Ron Paul, I can't trust national security in his hands. Those hands are made for vaginas (no crack, he is a gynecologist), not diplomacy, obviously. No, we need someone a bit more mainstream, but one off. Perry, Palin (save that she is a woman), et. al. Yes, women are not considered by me, and most other actual conservatives (many women included).
Warts must be had, but if he is close enough, we can work with him and work him over, as we had to with Bush from time to time.
Bush didn't give us (conservatives) much more than thin gruel, if that.
ReplyDeleteI'm against any form of Bush redux.
I can't support Perry because he is pure shyster and is saying exactly what he thinks us (conservatives) want to hear. Not that he means a word of it.
At least I'm reasonably confident Paul means what he says.
Uhrm, I don't believe any of them any more than any other. What I do see is that Perry would have to perform to some degree. He has painted himself into a corner. Paul would have no reason to perform in the ways I would like him to, and has said he won't in many of the ways I would expect him to. Paul has no connections, unless you include Kucinich, so no restraints. Nor does he have allies, which will be required to be an affective president. Perry does, to a degree.
ReplyDeleteBut, fair enough. And I can't argue with you in one sense. I think we disagree on what is vital, or at least the arrangement of the chairs on the deck of our Titanic, to some degree, at this point.
My question is, are you voting for Paul regardless? While I have limits on who I would vote for, and Paul is included if not favored, I won't vote third party. I would simply not vote if one of my choices doesn't pop.
Okay, there is one other thing about Paul. I don't believe, fundamentally, that he does believe in America. With Perry, I think he does. Right or wrong, fundamentally, that is necessary. To me. Not America a hundred or two hundred years ago. That is gone. That will never be again. Warts, and all, I am still with the USA, easily, and above all other nations. Not in a nationalistic manner, but in an awed manner, and what Americans have done for the world. Just by existing as we are. American exceptionalism, which I see slipping away or outright being thrown away by the current POTUS.
ReplyDeletePaul is sorry that America has been and does act as what we have become, a super power. Not only can't we, we shouldn't give up our role in the world. This was given and gained for a reason. Humility about it, fine. But I think we have shown that in spades.
Does Libya make sense?
ReplyDeleteAnd if Libya, then why not Syria and Iran for the same reasons? Or are the reasons given really the true reasons?
Can it be that Gaddafi planned to set up an oil bourse that did not utilize the American Dollar, as did Saddam Hussein before him?
I do take issue with expending American blood and American political capital protecting, not American interests per se, but the interests of the Bankster class that rules the West from their seat of power in the financial heart.
I love America. I loathe much of what the elite continue to do in our name. Does converting secular dictatorships into Islamic fundamentalist "democracies" make any sense from the perspective of American national interests? Where is America's interest in, first fighting against Al Qaeda, and then turning on an ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in order to provide Al Qaeda operatives an opportunity to seize power in that nation? Unless there are interests more powerful than American interests in play.
Paul is at least a realist about what we can and should try to do. He is far from perfect, but Perry...slithers.
From a purely partisan standpoint, it would make some sense to prefer the Republicans not hold the Whitehouse during the next term. Implosion seems inevitable, and how better to implement a conservative agenda than after the other team can be fully blamed for the implosion.
Well, about Paul and realism. The problem with that is the realism isn't that the military and what it does, arguably right or wrong (because we probably do disagree on some of these issues), is that one of the few things the government is doing that it should do is looking after US interests. If Paul, or any politician, were perfectly honest, the military would be the last thing to go. Social Security, Medicare, all of the deadite government employees... these would be the primary and only focus. Once that was sorted out, then we could negotiate about the military.
ReplyDeleteEvery time we cut the military, we end up regretting it. Then we are forced to impose a draft, arguably one of the worst things for any military and very possibly, on some grounds or other, unconstitutional. Draftees make wretched soldiers and sailors, the ones who don't want to be there. But you can't build the armed forces overnight, either, without the draft, if you strip the military.
I don't see Paul as any more realist, especially since he hasn't said "Boo" about those other things for the most part. Come out, with Perry, and fight to at least call SS what it is, and Medicare even worse, and work to get those things in line with reality, if not outright privatize those things.
All have warts. I don't trust any. But I see Perry as the only viable way. Beats Romney, Paul can't win even if I wanted him to, and none of them are really on our side. They are all on whoever's side will win them the election.
Don't jump to conclusions here. I said nothing about cutting into military readiness. My missive specifically questioned the wisdom of efforts to depose specific dictators (but not specific other dictators) for doing (or threatening to do) the very same thing that our own FEMA, DHS, ATF, National Guard local police paramilitary forces and, yes, even US military would do in this country if faced with the same insurrectionary forces.
ReplyDeleteI smell hidden motives in this kind of crap, and they're not necessarily things that the American people and the American soldier should be spilling blood and spending gold upon.
You don't, but that is not the message I am getting from Paul. If I read him right, he is going to gut the military in a way that makes what has already been done seem like a minor thing.
ReplyDeleteI was against going into Lybia at all. To be honest, I am not sure about any of the candidates (save maybe Paul, who I don't think would have gone into Afghanistan, or... anywhere, if he had the choice (and no, the president doesn't always have that choice)). Well, not at the time or for the reasons Lybia was attacked. To a degree, I think Zero went along with Europe much the way Clinton did, and foolishly.
As for comparing Libya's forces with our forces, you may be right to a degree. I would like to think our forces wouldn't be so mercenary, but I wouldn't count on it. Look to our Civil War for an example. Not just how the war was fought, but that civil liberties were often suspended and civilians and companies were often targeted.
Actually, I think our government, at least the current admin, thinks we the citizens ARE war criminals/enemy combatants. If they could get enough of the armed bureaucracies on board, they would wage war on specific citizens (you, Vox, and me for sure (oddly, even though we amongst ourselves have great disagreements). And I think the left would be amazed how many of them would be targeted, they never understand that their "heroes" hate them at least as much as those admins hate conservative/libertarian types).