Then why is he anti-SSM?
He wants to win elections in Kentucky?
That’s different. That’s the liberal government trying to force its way into marriage by redefining it and thereby infringing on the religious liberty blah blah blah Jesus…
That is why Libertarianism is a crock. It’s not about ensuring liberty for all, it’s about giving states the liberty to have as barbaric practices as they want because there won’t be any national standards. Libertarians have a BIG problem with the feds decreeing anything “un liberty” but the states doing it are just dandy.
There’s lots of kinds of libertarians. The Pauls are first and foremost constitutionalists.
And the Constitution limits the power of the federal government, while leaving state power limited only by the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution limits state power, too. Check out the supremacy clause.
And whence comes the Constitutional authority for the federal government to pass the Defense of Marriage Act?
Fair enough - I misunderstood what you were saying.
I have no idea. Perhaps she doesn’t want to alienate her base. Perhaps she’s actually talking to Obama in a less publc forum. Perhaps she feels that she can get more done by shouting directly at the regulators and hopes this will inspire Obama to be more pro-active in this area. Perhaps she’s grandstanding. I repeat: I dunno. But she’s doing more than most.
Also, many of the “banking misdeeds” are not actually major felonies which might prompt FBI involvement, but rather playing fast and loose with regulations, the enforcement of which falls to the regulators. You’d have to have a pretty serious case to get the FBI in. I note the FDIC are in the news at the moment though.
What, in this context, is a “squish”?
Obviously, in the few areas where the federal government has the power to act, states must submit, much as the federal government must submit where international bodies have the power to act and where it has signed appropriate treaties.
The federal government does have authority to decide who is an who isn’t eligible for marriage benefits in regards to federal law.
Politicians, mostly from states where their party has a hard time getting elected, who try to split the baby on every issue rather than taking a firm stand.
So…people who aren’t dogmatic? I thought the whole “splitting the baby” thing was an example of wisdom?
The end result is victory for the right side, the splitting the baby thing was a trick in the Bible. Squishy politicians actually split the baby and call it justice. Or build half a bridge and call it a good compromise between a bridge and no bridge.
In the end, it’s not the policy that matters, it’s whether the politician managed to stay viable in his or her next election. There’s always a tension between pleasing your constituents and your party caucus when you represent a state where your party is usually a minority.
Elizabeth Warren arguing for Glass-Steagall. She kills it, watch the whole thing. I hope she runs, she might be the only Senator that gets it.
- Honesty
If she got it, she’d know that Glass Steagall wouldn’t have stopped the financial crisis. At least half of the institutions that went under were never under Glass-Steagall to begin with.
This is right up there with her lame student loan suggestion. She’s coming off as a left-wing Michelle Bachmann, ignorant as hell.
She already concedes that it wouldn’t have stopped the financial crisis, however, she makes an excellent point that the Glass-Steagall allowed for 50 years without a single bank crash. I also like the point where she gives an emphatic “No” when she was asked whether “boom and bust cycles” should be considered the norm of Wall Street.
It’s obvious from listening to her that Sen. Warren is a very learned individual and is not ignorant of the facts. Look at her questioning of Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner: she knows her shit. To compare her to Michelle Bachmann is just stupid, frankly, in terms of raw intelligence, I’d compare Warren to Hillary Clinton, Condi Rice, or Olympia Snow. Easy.
It’s a shame you didn’t like her student loan suggestion because it was a good one. Interestingly, there’s another thread on the SDMB about McDonalds jobs - basically, the argument is that people at McDonalds should go to school to get a better education to get a better paying job. The best way to do that is to offer low rates. Unfortunately, we live in a society, where we give corporations more of a benefit (subsidies, low interest rates, etc) than individual citizens. It’s quite a shame.
- Honesty
No, you heard that wrong, he’s into S&M.
This leaves it unclear, then, why Rand Paul is anti-SSM.
Warren is a learned woman, but she’s also been stuck in the ivory tower for too long. Reminds me of the last progressive ivory tower leader, Woodrow Wilson, who was arrogant enough to believe that the country could be centrally managed by experts, and who imposed a virtual fascist state during the war.
Given that, I’d actually rather have dumb politicians. The academic culture gives people the impression that there are solutions to every problem if only the experts put in charge are smart enough.
:rolleyes:
You even showed all how dumb that point was, indeed during the war there are reasons why that was done, gearing your economy in to a war footing was deemed necessary to shorten the war in Europe. After the war, those “fascist” programs did go away. I suspect the dumb politicians of today would tell all to continue shopping and not even gather taxes to finance a war like they did in the past…
Oh, wait, Bush the lesser did that very same dumb thing.
And as the ozone layer, river contamination by phosphates, acid rain and many other subjects showed, following what the experts advice is common sense and saves us a lot of grief, doing the opposite is indeed following that old saying of: “If you think knowledge is expensive, try ignorance”.
I wrote this in the other thread on Hillary but it’s relevant here too:
I could easily see someone like Elizabeth Warren beat her in 2016:
a) Warren has a major issue: curbing the power of Wall Street, where she has credibility and which excites the Democratic base. Hillary doesn’t have anything comparable. She may not have Iraq as a millstone any more but she doesn’t have any positive issue to fire the base either.
b) Just about the only exciting thing about Hillary is becoming the first female president and Warren takes that off the table.
c) While Warren is only two years younger than Hillary she is a much fresher political personality.
d) Obama showed in 2008 how to create and fund an outsider campaign using modern technology among other things. That playbook is available to Warren and I would bet a lot of his campaign would love to work with her to stop Hillary. At the same time Obama benefited from insiders who wanted to stop the Clintons and many of those people are still around.
One more factor that is more intangible is “likability”, more precisely a quality of being comfortable in one’s skin that IMO voters respond to strongly. In their different ways, I think Reagan, Clinton, Bush jr. and Obama had it. Obviously this is a completely subjective quality of the “you know it when you see it” variety, but I think Warren has it while Hillary doesn’t.
I would vote for Warren over Hillary, although I’m sure Hillary would do a fine job, too, if it went her way. I would vote for Warren over pretty much every one else I can think of.