[ATOMICFIREBALL]

Thompson would have supported the "fair tax" & he could have been a front runner.
Huckabee will win the nomination probably.

 

[Plummit]

Keeping in mind its not always a bad thing to take a look at issues affecting the nation as a whole from viewpoints other than our own. A look from the ultra-right, as in Pat Buchanan. I normally don't agree with a whole lot of what he says, but here he gives not an unfair assessment on the state of our economy and gov't spending.

Copied here:

WND Commentary Subprime Nation
Posted: January 14, 2008
9:29 p.m. Eastern


Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United States triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.

Last week, Moody's warned that if the United States fails to rein in the soaring cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's credit rating will be down-graded within a decade.

Our political parties seem oblivious. Republicans, save Ron Paul, are all promising to expand the U.S. military and maintain all of our worldwide commitments to defend and subsidize scores of nations.

Democrats, with entitlement costs drowning the federal budget in red ink, are proposing a new entitlement – universal health coverage for the near 50 million who do not have it – another magnet for illegal aliens. Moody's is telling America it needs a time of austerity, while the U.S. government is behaving like the governments we used to bail out.

(Column continues below)

California has already hit the wall. With an economy as large as a G-8 nation, the Golden State is looking at a $14 billion deficit in 2009 and a $3 billion shortfall in 2008. Gov. Schwarzenegger has called for slashing prison staff by 6,000, including 2,000 guards, early release of 22,000 inmates, closing four dozen state parks and a 10 percent across-the-board cut in all state agencies. The Democratic legislature is demanding tax hikes, which would drive more taxpayers back over the mountains whence their fathers came.

Meanwhile, Washington drifts mindlessly toward the maelstrom. With the dollar sinking, oil surging to $100 a barrel, the Dow having its worst January in memory, foreclosures mounting, credit card debt going rotten, and consumers and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow, we appear headed into recession.

If so, tax revenue will fall and spending on unemployment will surge. The price of the stimulus packages both parties are preparing will further add to the deficit and further imperil the U.S. credit rating. This all comes in the year that the first of the baby boomers, born in 1946, reach early retirement and eligibility for Social Security.

To stave off recession, the Fed appears anxious to slash interest rates another half-point, if not more. That will further weaken the dollar and raise the costs of the imports to which we have become addicted. While all this is bad news for the Republicans, it is worse news for the republic. As we save nothing, we must borrow both to pay for the imported oil and foreign manufactures upon which we have become dependent.

We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy.

We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called "isolationism."

And the chickens of globalism are coming home to roost.

We let Europe to get away with imposing value-added taxes averaging 15 percent on our exports to them, while they rebate that value-added tax on their exports to us. Thus, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar in the Bush years, as NATO Europe begins to bail out on Iraq and Afghanistan.

We sat still as Japan protected her markets and dumped high quality goods into ours and China undervalued its currency to suck jobs, technology and factories out of the United States. Now, China and Japan have $2 trillion in cash reserves. The Arabs have an equal amount of petrodollars. Both are headed here to spend their depreciating dollars snapping up U.S. assets – banks, ports, highways, defense contractors.

America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world.

Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank.

Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore.

Bain Capital is partnering with China's Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers.

This self-indulgent generation has borrowed itself into unpayable debt. Now the folks from whom we borrowed to buy all that oil and all those cars, electronics and clothes are coming to buy the country we inherited. We are prodigal sons, and the day of reckoning approaches.

 

[ATOMICFIREBALL]

Fun link.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21116732

Here is a simple test.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

 

[Plummit]

Interesting that of the 10 million or so times that quiz has been taken, the majority of the results are by far centrist or libertarian, split about equally at 32-33%... Of course, could be in how the test was designed and is scored...

 

[MikeD]

This test is taken by people looking for information on libertarianism. Think a lot of socialists are googling the site and bothering to take the self-assessment??

 

[Plummit]

From the Washington Post article linked on the quiz page:

The quiz has gained respect as a valid measure of a person's political leanings; last year, Rasmussen Research used the quiz in a poll about how likely voters viewed themselves.

 

[MikeD]

It's not the test itself. It's WHO IS TAKING THE TEST (by virtue of its placement on a particular website) that destroys its validity as a representation of America/whatever world population you're discussing as a whole.

Libertarians or those interested in libertarianism take the test. Any wonder lots of people show up as libertarian?

 

[Plummit]

How do "Satinists" typically score?

 

[MikeD]

Poorly.

 

[$tinkle]

back when i used to read wnd, i also owned slaves (transacted in gold bullion exclusively), and fantasized about ann coulter sodomizing ariana huffington with terri schiavo's feeding tube.

i see it hasn't changed much since.

 

[ohio]

How do "Satinists" typically score?

with Goth chicks

 

[MikeD]

"most rep given in the shortest amount of time award goes to..."

 

[Plummit]

back when i used to read wnd, i also owned slaves (transacted in gold bullion exclusively), and fantasized about ann coulter sodomizing ariana huffington with terri schiavo's feeding tube.

i see it hasn't changed much since.

I've never really read WND (sounds like you were a diff. person 'back in the day.' Was it a 12 step program or did you go cold turkey?), and Buchanan's admittedly off the deep end on a lot of topics. However, he's not far off the mark in terms of our borrowing for our military adventures, nor about our engagement in trade deals where we actually get the short end of the stick. In light of these, his pointing out the candidates' plans for continued spending, whether through entitlement programs, wars, or stimulus, do effectively highlight the challenges Hillary, Obama or McCain (can we agree that one of those three is currently the mostly likely candidate to win?) will face. If the next pres takes no action the problem will only continue to compound.

None of the headline candidates are talking about these issues in a meaningful way, and even the one candidate (who shall not be named) who has addressed the subject hasn't explained how taking a few hundred billion out of the federal budget every year while doing away w/ the income tax will address our mounting debt.

 

[RenegadeRick]

Poorly.

That is too bad. I got 100%.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 100%.

I am soooooo Libertarian.

 

[fluff]

I beez a liberalz. (Your PERSONAL issues Score is 90%. Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 40%.)
I is in your quiz, mezzing with your statz.

 

[ohio]

It's not the test itself.

I disagree. The wording of the questions themselves borders on truisms and definitely guides the responder towards "agree." I would be shocked if the whole US population wasn't skewed towards Libertarian based on this test.

edit:
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 80%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 60%.

 

[Silver]

I love how we are magically going to cut taxes and spending by 50% on that quiz. I'm all for that, but you can wave good bye to the military. The Coast Guard would be king...and that's not something most Americans (who have the attitude that bouncing their dicks off the face of the world is something that is a Jesus given right) would accept.

 

[MikeD]

I disagree. The wording of the questions themselves borders on truisms and definitely guides the responder towards "agree." I would be shocked if the whole US population wasn't skewed towards Libertarian based on this test.

edit:
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 80%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 60%.

I didn't even read the test--I just took a look at where it was placed and figured that was biased enough.

 

[MikeD]

I took the test and think I'm gonna start another thread.

 

[$tinkle]

I took the test and think I'm gonna start another thread.

"courage"

 

[MikeD]

I failed. After a page and a half of writing, I'm not starting it. Just don't have the stones or the time. I'll save it for later.

 

[RenegadeRick]

Proof of Ron Paul's Racism!
ROCK SOLID EVIDENCE!