Who will take on Obama in 2012?

So...still no answers, then, eh? Going to keep on believing all those things anyway?

Cool.

It's very telling that you think defending what you say is a "nuisance." Believe me, I don't find it convenient myself, but it's the price you pay for proclaiming things. Particularly really forceful, inflammatory things.

Yeah, it's easy not to "buy" things when you just arbitrarily decide they can't be true and ignore all evidence and arguments to the contrary.

"Brainwashed" is an interesting word here. Because, to me, a good sign that someone is brainwashed is that they continue to believe things that they can't really explain or defend.

Er, yes you can, on a number of grounds. The fact that you've ignored these arguments doesn't mean there aren't arguments, though I am kind of curious about whether or not you even read them, or if you read them and forget them, or just decide they can't be true somehow and move on, or what.

There is a difference between being technically poor as a debater and not being able to argue effectively. Walter Mondale was a horrible speaker, much worse than Perry with zero charisma in front of the cameras, but he was able to argue his points. He zinged Bob Dole for his absurd "Democrats start all wars" and did in the much slicker Gary Hart with his "Where's the beef?", but of course was no match for Ronald Reagan when Reagan was prepared (he blew the first debate). If a presidential candidate cannot articulate his vision and effectively explain himself, he has serious problems. It isn't enough to be right on the issues. You have to convince voters you are right. That is separate from slickness, but being slick doesn't hurt.

Look how clumsy Mondale is, how he stumbles over his words, but that was the debate he took Gary Hart out of the race with three words.

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I meant "nuance." Okay, so you keep telling me how off-base I am for not lavishing the concept of privatization of all societal need, now explain to me how healthcare or even basic needs are met for those who are disabled or elderly? Please, enlighten me, how would a company make money off of such privatized social programs?

I've made points, but you disregard them. For instance, if a major utility company is engaging in unethical or irresponsible practices, how exactly are the consumers supposed to fight back without federal involvement? Refuse to buy gas, water, electric?

Having a society function under the pretense of what is profitable, and human greed leads to overall problems.

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...uh the post is up there...

Which party is the Socialist Party? There isn't one called that on my ballot.

On ours, it doesn't show. I'll have to look it up.

Maybe Ralph Nader's party is socialist. I never paid much attention to their platform.

I think he's Green Party, kind of an off-shoot.

If it's close, I might have to vote for Obama. I couldn't stomach letting the Repubs have total control of the government.

To reiterate a point, I said Perry's biggest problem wasn't the moment when he botched going after Romney in the last debate. It is his inability to explain himself, not his uneven efforts at attacking Romney (which he actually does a good job of most of the time). That is very important criteria for a President. A President has to address the public and Congress to persuade us and them to pass his agenda. He has to give press conferences. He has to be able to communicate. Yes, even Bush could do that. He wasn't as effective as Clinton, Reagan, or Obama, but he could do it. Perry really struggles to explain the vaccine and in-state tuition decisions. Why is that? Could it be they were political decisions done for expediency and not out of conviction? And he is all over the place on Social Security because he is afraid to reiterate what he said in his book because he knows it would be unpopular, that Social Security should end as a federal program. Rick Perry, the fiery ideologue, keeps clashing with Rick Perry, the practical politician. Romney doesn't have that problem because he doesn't have conflicting halves. He is solution oriented and not driven by ideology.

And Obama being a good speaker with good political skills is the only reason he still has a chance of being re-elected with a struggling ecconomy. If he was Jimmy Carter he would be toast.

And what evidence is there Romney would be a good President? He is an angry firebrand extremist. You called that congressman who I never heard of a bad guy. That is Perry as far as I can see. Remove the ideiogy from him and he is mean spirited, a flame thrower, a religious demagogue hypocrite, bad temperered, vindictive (check out the stories about him) and operates on very shaky grounds when it comes to political ethics. Perfect presidential material.

The question doesn't even make sense, because it's based in the bizarre assumption that conservatives (or capitalists) are advocating the "privatization of all societal need." There is a need for some level of government welfare, absolutely. I've never said otherwise. It just has to be sustainable.

I'm not sure how you could post in this thread as many times as you have and still not "get" the thing you're arguing with. Do you not read the responses, not understand them, or just choose to ignore them and make up some other argument to reply to? Those are the only three explanations I can see to explain why you think the argument is about privatizing absolutely everything or having absolutely no social safety net.

Is this a joke? I've responded meticulously to everything you've said. Back this up.

After you've done that, please explain to me why you get a free pass for disregarding almost every point I make.

Well, first off, you haven't specified what "pratices" you mean, and my answer will change depending on the specifics. But assuming you're talking about collusion or monopolies or something, I already explicitly responded to this by offering to point you to a discussion I had not long ago about the myth of monopolization. As I said before, I'll gladly point you to it, but you've given me no reason to believe you'll even read it, let alone consider it, let alone respond to it meaningfully.

That said, there are laws against many of these sorts of things. So you sure aren't arguing against capitalism here, or conservatism. You're really only arguing with Ron Paul. And that's one of the big problems with most of what you're posting. You start off with broad criticisms of conservatism and/or capitalism, but when you're questioned about this you retreat and make arguments that only apply to out-and-out libertarians, or certain small segments of conservatives. It's a bait-and-switch.

If you were, from the very beginning, only taking shots at people who think government has no role in anything, you wouldn't have gotten a lot of argument from me. But that's not what you did. You made far broader claims, and now you've backtracked like crazy to the safety of arguing with ardent libertarians, which is much easier to do, but not a reflection of the actual things I've been taking issue with.

You mean except for that part where it's led to the highest standard of living and longest life spans of any society in human history, ever?

You're really just making my point for me: that people care about how someone sounds more than they care about whether or not they're right. If I see Rick Perry stumble over his words defending the HPV vaccine, and I look into it for myself and find it reasonably defensible, I don't think "well, it looks like an understandable decision...but he explained it badly, so I guess I'm mad about it." That'd be ridiculous. Similarly, it is ridiculous that people far more about a candidate's ability to articulate their decisions than they do about the validity of the decisions themselves. Those priorities are out of whack. I'm not sure what part of what you're saying is supposed to serve as a counterargument to this.

Also, what you're saying is self-perpetuating: the President has to do these things not always because of some inherent, unalterable reason, but because we say the President should be able to. In other words, the President has to be a great communicator partly because we simply keep saying the President has to be a great communicator. This was not always the case. It is the case now because we've simply grown to have that expectation. That doesn't make it a good expectation to have, especially when it comes at the expense of actually examining the wisdom of a given policy.

I assume you mean Perry and not Romney. And if you're comparing him to Grayson, all that means is that you don't understand Grayson. Lumping Perry in with him is ridiculous, and you should probably read up on the guy a little before tossing out some lazy equivalency about someone you admit you've never even heard of.

It is absurd trying to claim that being a good communicator isn't important for the President of the United States. It is probably the most important quality he can have. It wasn't always important? It has been important since the radio was invented. The last President we had who was considered to be near great who didn't have those abilities was Thomas Jefferson. It is sometimes claimed Lincoln was a poor speaker. Maybe, but he was a great communicator. He wrote great speeches. He came to fame because he held his own and probably did better than that in the debates with Stephen Douglas who was considered to be a superior speaker.

I can't prove it, but I am convinced the vaccine decision was a back door political deal to appease an important contributor. Am I saying Perry did anything illegal, that he was bribed? No, but look at it. The opt out for parents was a phony, they could only do so if they objected to all vaccines. That clause was clearly written by their lobbyist and the executive order wasn't a mistake, it was a deliberate attempt to avoid the state legislature, but they didn't count on the huge backlash it created. You say it was a reasonable decision? How? No state has made that vaccine mandatory. It was rejected in California by a legislature controlled by Democrats and I doubt that legislation in any state ever has been proposed by a Republican. It is completely out of character for someone as conservative as Rick Perry. Perry doesn't seem very concerned about the health of other Texans in a state that has the largest percentage of uninsured in the country.

All I know about Grayson is what you said about him and he doesn't sound any worse than Perry. I assume you highlighted the worse stuff. As for what he said in that speech, the Republican health plan is to let people die, that is what some of them said in the audience in a recent Republican debate. If Grayson made that speech in front of Tea Party supporters they might have cheered, "Yeah, let them die!" I concede Grayson doesn't sound very thoughtful and is a flame thrower, but so is Perry.

And I am going to say it again. Perry is not a bad speaker. He is a good speaker. But he wilts in debates because he can't reason well. He can't defend his positions. How can anyone get elected to high office who can't do that? It is very clear why Perry has avoided debates for most of his political life. And if it isn't important, then why do we have these debates at all? It is how Americans get to know candidates, to see how they perform under pressure, and watching Perry isn't pretty.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's not important, I'm saying it's importance is a) inflated, and mostly I'm saying that b) it shouldn't be treated as far more important than being right, which it currently is.

Re: vaccines. You mentioned the allegedly "phony" opt-out before, and I asked for a source (some light Googling yielded nothing, so I thought it simpler to ask). Though I don't think it's "phony" even then (or what you originally claimed, which was that it was actually false, I believe). But he's admitted a mistake in going around the legislature, anyway, so there's no argument there. Also, the idea that you can morph Texas' rank of the uninsured into him "not caring" about people's health is ridiculous for, like, four different reasons.

Re: Grayson. Click on the link I posted. He deliberately edited his opponent so it sounded like he was saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he was saying. I'm not exaggerating or spinning that at all, that is precisely what he did. Then called him "Taliban Dan" based on this. There is no comparison with Perry. The difference is between a political firebrand and an actual fire.

It isn't the exact opposite, what he was saying was more nuanced than that, but it certainly is a distortion, and is it much different than Fox News deliberately distorting the facts about the Justice Department going after that guitar company Wintertriangle posted a clip from? And is it much different than Rick Perry deliberately lying that the Obama Administration never called him?

http://www.politifact.com/texas/stat...elded-phone-c/

I finally figured out how to google to get a direct source and here is the actual wording of the supposed opt out of the vaccine and proving once again Rick Perry lies even more than the average poilitician.

http://www.politifact.com/texas/stat...uld-have-been/

Actually the link whle saying what Perry said is mostly false still misinterpets the order and Prager is correct. The only opt out is an exisitng form for parents who object to their children accepting any vaccinations on religious or philosophical grounds. They can't selectively opt out of one vaccine. So Perry was lying more than the source claims. And quite frankly their interpetation they have about private schools being forced to give the vaccines is probably a load of crap, an unintentional loophole that would have been cleared up if the order was ever implemented.

Maybe reading it again Prager is wrong The wording is very confusing because the opt out is an existing form based on narow religious/philosophical grounds, not based on health concerns, but it is automatic. It also isn't a snap for parents because they have to request the form (do they have to mail for it?). It isn't like when I was a kid and they gave you a consent form to take home your parents had to sign. But it does show Perry at one point was lying about the order, characterizing it as voluntary and after being called on it is now a little more careful.

No replies to my previous message, eh? I guess when you write something cogent, common sense, and relatively non-ideological, people don't really care to respond. I guess it's better to continue fighting with each other

Actually, I didn't reply (yet) because it's entirely too long to do justice to.

I like some of the things in it, but it contains quite a few platitudes and several mistaken implications (I mean that as a matter of fact, not of ideological disagreement). I'd be glad to list some of them, but it'll be a little curt, because the post is far too lengthy to dissect thoroughly.

What was I supposed to say? I gave you a positve rep for it. I just post what I think. If nobody replies to it, that's how it goes. We all read it. Isn't that what matters?

Yoda, you were one of our posters that I was hoping would reply. I am very much looking forward to you pointing out what you perceive to be my platitudes and inconsistencies. I have followed your posts and find you to be an intelligent and informed representative for the conservative point of view. I often disagree with what you have to say, but I always feel as if your points, even when I disagree, are well expressed.

If you want to, you can always write multiple posts and dissect the elements you wish to talk about that way. That way it would limit the length of your posts and make it easier to dissect things more thoroughly. If you don't have the time or interest to do that, that's okay too. I will be looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

I hope you're doing well.

i will not take on Obama in 2012. I hate him enough

Canada and Australia would beg to differ.

Just Sayen.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.