I disagree that they’re stupid. His foreign policy itself would cut a great deal of spending. Domestically, their is certainly some fat that can be trimmed. Yeah, once you cut a ton of spending, you can cut taxes. I wouldn’t advocate cutting taxes otherwise.
He’s saying it’s ironic that people who “don’t look very American” are the ones doing the security screening. He’s not pointing out an irony in what people want.
This gets repeated again and again (I’m not singling you out, mweb; it’s a constant refrain of the Tea Party, among others). I’d love to see a specific enumeration of what in the federal budget is “fat”.
What a difference when the thread’s title is changed from “Ron” to “Ru.”
That’s your interpretation. I disagree.
It’s not an interpretation, it’s what he said.
It makes no difference. Both Pauls have an equal chance of “pulling it off” in the sense of being elected President.
Well ending the war on drugs would both generate and save considerable money.
As far as specific examples from the budget, I would have to really analyze it. But it’s not like we don’t often hear about government waste in terms of spending.
I’m guessing that lots of the people that repeat it again and again would point to some or many of the social programs. I would have to further look into those, but I suspect there can be reductions.
I don’t claim to be anywhere near an expert on the budget. But with the deficit continually increasing, it seems that some reductions in spending have to occur. I’m not saying it would be easy to make the decisions on what to cut or that it wouldn’t hurt to cut some of these things. Hard decisions need to be made, though.
Ok, so there’s only way to interpret people’s attempts to make points. Got it.
As long as you’re suggesting he might’ve meant something he plainly did not say, why not suggest he was actually talking about his favorite pancake recipe? Here’s what he said, with italics added:
“We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked,” he says. “Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me. If I’d have been looking, they look suspicious … I mean, a lot of them can’t even speak English, hardly. Not that I’m accusing them of anything, but it’s sort of ironic.”
He says TWICE that he is talking about how those people look TO HIM. He is not commenting on the irony of how the hiring composition of the TSA compares to the types of people consumers want investigated. He is saying HE THINKS it’s ironic that the TSA has hired people who “don’t look very American” and “can’t even speak English” to conduct security at airports because those people look more suspicious than the Americans who get investigated. This isn’t a matter of interpretation. It’s a question of reading what he said.
A reminder that Ron Paul said these people look un-American to him. Ron Paul himself, in his own words, said that he, Dr. Ron Paul, thinks they look un-American. Please explain to me how 1st or 2nd generation immigrants in a TSA uniform look un-American. How many generations will it take before they start to look American? How would you tell them apart from real Americans, and what criteria do you think Paul is using?
The deficit isn’t continuously increasing.
I’d love to see him whip it out and pull it off.
How “considerable” that would be depends on how one calculates the the societal cost of a potential increase in legalized drug use, including the cost of law enforcement to handle additional crimes committed in order to get money for drugs.
I’m not saying that decriminalizing some aspects of drug use is a concept that totally lacks merit. I am dubious that we’ll save and/or generate gobs of money that way (I suspect drug lords/smugglers will have some say about the degree to which their product will be superseded by any legally produced drugs). It is also questionable to claim that drug laws in total are racist; one could easily argue that “ending the war on drugs” is likely to have some detrimental effects on minorities.
What, his Fountainhead?
His fake eyebrow?
Not this again.
The deficit has decreased every year under Obama, and the first year was lower than the last Bush budget. It’s not very high right now, historically, when calculated as percent of GDP.
See the charts at Deficit charts.
The **debt **is increasing, as it must whenever there is a deficit of any size. Even if you got the deficit down to a dollar, the debt would increase.
Therefore, you’re not only wrong on the basics you’re also wrong on the argument. A very real economic argument to be made that **increased **spending during a recession is the best policy. You can dispute that and argue that real cuts need to be made, but you need to specify those cuts: anybody who uses the meaningless talking point about government waste - no real economist thinks that waste is a significant percentage of a $2.7 trillion budget - doesn’t deserve to be listened to. Similarly, anybody who claims that the deficit is too large or that the debt is increasing by just looking at a number doesn’t deserve to be listened to because that number - like all numbers - has meaning only in a context, and that context is how to revive the economy at this particular time.
Most people don’t understand either economics or government. Those are difficult subjects. Making an argument about something you don’t know even the most basic points of by repeating someone else’s talking points is certain failure.
“Gov. Romney makes a good point questioning whether I might be too old to be President. But can a really old guy do this!”
He probably didn’t mean black, he probably meant not white.
You seem to be deliberately misreading what Ron Paul said. I haven’t seen evidence of him saying that whites are superior to minorities but he was saying that brown skinned people don’t look American to him, while white people do.
Ron Paul has been pretty specific about what he would cut. He would cut a LOT fo the defense department, he would virtually eliminate all social programs and all departments outside of state, treasury and defense.
Its not a matter of interpretation. Its a matter of reading comprehension.
People are not arguing the point that Paul was trying to make, they are saying that when you say that the folks don’t look American to him, what is it that made him think they didn’t look American?
Minorities picked up for possession are convicted at three times the rate of whites picked up for possession, perhaps not racist in intent but perhaps racist in execution and certainly racist in effect.
If they legalized recreational drugs, Carlos Escobar will not be controlling the manufacture and distribution of these drugs, Merck and CVS will. Perhaps some drug dealers will go legit but then they will in fact be as legit as all the bootleggers who went legit after prohibition. I can point to all sorts of social ills associated with alcohol, especially on the minority community and noone is trying to reinstate prohibition for the sake of the minorities. We’ve been down this road before.
Don’t be too hasty! One benefit of the war on drugs? Check emergency room admissions for marijuana overdose. They are waaaay down!