Ron Paul, 2012

Just to switch to the gold standard the value of gold would have to exponentially inflate.

I personally think he is full of BS. To be more precise, I trust him about as far as I can throw him. There are politicians that I oppose because I don't like their policies. And there are politicians that I oppose because I think they're not being truthful about their policies. Paul is in the strange position of being in both camps.

I would like weed to be legalized. Not because I believe it's right, but because both sides of the pro/anti-weed debate are so bloody obnoxious I just want them to shut up.

Approving of a candidate because their stance on one or two issues happens (for entirely the wrong reasons) to be appealing while ignoring that the rest of their views are somewhere between impractical and disastrous is just plain nuts. It's the equal opposite of Hitler Ate Sugar.

Alternately, perhaps my ability to detect sarcasm is on the fritz.

Gold is more Nostalgia Filter and possibly True Art Is Ancient than anything else. That and there's a belief among the far right that the banks themselves are illegitimate and only commodities matter (which they do, but not in the way they think).

And the advertisements on this page show it, because they're all about those Gold investment scam operations.

I got Forex Trader or something. And the new Star Trek movie. (Oh wait, now I'm seeing gold trading. Teh adz, they can read zomg)

I admire Paul for for the rather pointed questions he brings up. He struck me as a good debater. Some of his viewpoints strike me as rather extreme, though. If we gain one thing we like ffrom his platform but lose out on ten different other things, I won't be happy - but that goes with pretty much any candidate.

In any case, I don't want "business as usual", with a candidate that says and does the expected things that we've come to expect. Trump should be fun to watch (even if I rate his chances at right about zero) due to that.

edited 26th Apr '11 9:57:28 AM by pvtnum11

On Trump: how can you trust a guy who's gone bankrupt several times with the economy? Also, he has absolutely no political experience whatsoever (at least Reagan was a governor). He's a real estate agent.

Besides, the only people that would take him seriously are one percenters and birthers (yes, Trump is one of those).

Exactly, which is why i rate him at zero. But it'll still be fun to watch him crash and burn. He's already starting to insert his foot into his mouth and is working his jawbone pretty good.

Yeah, the Republican party is not marshalling a good resistance this year.

It is almost two years to the election, you know. Yeah, there were candidates already by this time for the 2008 election, but that's because that was such a huge contest. This one's still big, naturally, but nowhere near the same level. Give it time.

I was at my Granny's last night and O'Reilly came on, and the first few talking points were nothing but hype, hype, hype for Trump. It's like they know he has zero chance and they're flogging him in the hopes of catching a few of the lunatic fringe.

@Buscemi:

Because he's on TV! Duh!

Why do you think The Governator came about?

Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger at least was a Governor. Trump hasn't done anything to justify a run at President.

I wouldn't mind if he was just a businessman but if you look at his record he's not a very good businessman. The only thing he's really good at is being an Attention Whore. Reagan, Ahnold and Ventura all have gubenatorial experience, Ron and (if he ever runs for President) Rand have Congressional experience.

Still, I'll give Trump this: an outsider to the political system. Might be refreshing if we had someone outside the typical political sphere consider running that actually was more or less normal, though.

Nobody normal runs for office.

Are you sure about that? Maybe they just don't get far. ;)

It's no trifling matter to run for such an office. You probably need to be sitting on a pile of wealth or something to afford to run the campaign - ad time, flyers, phonecalls, public outreach, billboards, and all the crap I probably don't even know about.

What with Obama taking about raising a billion dollars for his campaign, I can't see how Mr. Middle Class American woudl even consider a serious bid for the Presidency - they might run for local office, though.

Your comment reminds me of the California gubernatorial recall that landed The Governator in office, the resulting election pulled every freak and screwball in the state out of the rafters. The atmosphere was absolutely bizarre.

Yeah, I liked Ahnold. He was pretty decent as a Governor too, he tried his best but the Cali legislature is pretty fucked up.

Wouldn't it be fun if we had federal recall options?

Kind of funny, now that I think about it, the situation is broadly similar: A decent if spineless bureaucrat (Davis, Obama) is held hostage by a fake crisis (the energy crunch, the recession) perpetrated by a bunch of wealthy scumballs (PG&E, the banks.) Instead of using government powers at his disposal to take back the people's money (eminent domain and utility reregulation, government held shares and loanshark laws) he kowtows to their outrageous demands (the rate spikes, the bailouts) and was brutalized by public opinion as a result.

Where's our current equivalent to Enron execs getting tossed in the can?

@Pvtnum: contrary to popular belief, generally, the reason people with an "outside view" dont get listened to is becausr that also means they have no idea about the subject

Oh, I understand that part - I'm not going to pay much attention to some wag who spouts off a bunch of stuff about cars who hasn't even so much as changed his oil, or something.

However, having an outside viewpoint is useful in some cases. Shutting out external viewpoints can lead to groupthink, while an outside opinion may be able to make a less-biased conclusion. That wag I mentioned? He might ask a pointed question that may give me pause.

So I wouldn't discount an outsider strictly for being an outsider.