Ron Paul Critique

[Tristam]

Yeah I am terrible at these types of conversations because I suck with words, always choosing the wrong ones. I mean specifically that it takes the same amount of faith to believe in creation as it does for Big Bang / abiogenesis /what have you. I've not denied evolution as existing, just the big "macroevolution" as was being mentioned before. I however still believe (mostly) in that, I just think all the theories and rules and facts were created by God and used by him in the creation of everything, while also holding on to the belief that at any point God may have just placed us here with those scientific facts present anyway.

Before you use the meaningless term "macroevolution" again, it's important to note that contrary to the lies told to creationists, we HAVE observed speciation in plants and animals. Partial reproductive isolation has been observed in populations of fruit flies and algae kept apart for as little as 25 generations, while full reproductive isolation has been observed and new species named for decades. Strains of corn, for example, have achieved full speciation naturally in north america.

I haven't kept up to date on the common household goldfish, but I know it has changed quite drastically from the first freshwater carp from which it was isolated and bred from in Japan some century and a half ago. I know there's a japanese lab working to show that the common goldfish is an entirely new species now, and the next step in most of these lines of research might be to characterize which genes have mutated more than others. I'm not a developmental biologist, so I'm not as qualified as others to explain the fine details, but the research is convincing.

All these candidates avoiding the evolution question are only showing that they are pandering idiots who pander to idiots. Ron Paul is no exception.

[guartz]

I hate atheists who think they are better/smarter than everyone

Lol, don't you realize God has that teenage know-it-all attitude?

[Charla]

I hate atheists who think they are better/smarter than everyone

Lol, don't you realize God has that teenage know-it-all attitude?

And apparently he uses hand puppets a lot.

[archibaldcrane]

Ron Paul is an internet cult leader, white supremacist, libertarian Republican congressman from the state of Texas, and a 2008 candidate for President of the United States. Worshipped among Alex Jones and Hal Turner fanbois, Ron has already been elected as President of the Internets. He's either a batshit fundie and major redneck or engaged in a historically epic trolling of a major political party. Either way, his supporters are definitely batshit insane...batshit insane like a retarded fox.

Ron Paul's supporters happen to be some of the most rabid of all of the internets, even surpassing Anonymous in terms of terroristic capability. In an attempt to please the lulz Gods, and piss off all the talking heads on teevee, a particularly cunning terrorist-hacker sect of Paultards have set out spamming the internets with Ron Paul propaganda, and filling Paul's coffers with stolen money.

The hilarious thing is, there is a chance he may place ahead of noted Republican fucktard, Rudolph Guiliani, in the January 8th New Hampshire primary. If you live in New Hampshire, and are of voting age, the internet declares that you must VOTE RON PAUL.

I lol'ed, especially at the idea he's participating in "historically epic trolling of a major political party".

[evilbau]

Busy with work for a few days and look at how this thread ended up haha (wtf evolution argument?)

First in reference to the FairTax: There was a Fairtax thread here ( viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21602 ) and I ripped into it with lots of examples. Since then, I have come across this document: a critique of the FairTax by Bruce Bartlet (link: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... ir_tax.pdf ).

In the document, he touches on some of the points I made, as well as some others. On the whole it summarizes some of the things wrong with the FairTax, although I am skeptical of the veracity of some of his claims.

Anyway, some important points: It is in actuality regressive even with the prebate checks because like others have said, lower incomes spend proportionaly higher amounts of their incomes. This in itself is not regressive, but for one: prebate checks are based on poverty level (10k and change) which I'm sure most of you don't live on (especially those of us in big cities like Los Angeles). Two: Higher income households are more likely to save, essentially making that money tax deferred. This creates an incentive to save (not necessarily a bad thing) and reduces consumption. Money/Income not spent results in less tax revenues from the saving going on from the upper class, tax burden is again shifted to the middle and lower class; most likely in the form of changing the national tax rate. This creates an incentive to buy goods overseas or to buy 'used' goods since they are not subject to the tax. A new black market economy of tax evaders will emerge (as shares of eBay skyrocket lol) and ushering in new forms of fraud (all you need is some extra SSNs ).

There also seems to be some confusion about what I was talking about with the current credit crisis. This isn't an argument, but an explanation of how we got to the situation we are in (if you are unfamiliar with the mortgage industry).

Mortgages are bundled together and sold as investment vehicles. The riskier the loan, the higher apr you have to pay, which generates more money for the investor (for taking on this additional risk). The rate of default is priced into it, but what we have here is a higher than expected rate of default (foreclosure).

A mortgage bank works by financing loans, then immediately selling it on the secondary market in one of those vehicles. Semi-federal agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae also buy these loans if they meet certain federal guidelines. This allows mortgage banks to continue to underwrite loans as long as they can move them off to investors. The terms of these loans (which are attractive to investors) are horrible and may have been caused by predatory lending. Huge pre-payment penalties (heavily dissuading the prospect of refinancing), ARMs resetting to higher rates and houses underwater (owners owing more than the value of the house) has led people to foreclose and in some cases, just walk away from their financial obligations.

So the house goes back to the bank. This sounds like a good deal to most (they get the house for whatever was left on their mortgage), but in actuality it is a huge drain on resources. Banks are not in the owning property business, they earn it off interest and avoiding the liabilities associated with homes. The huge amount of equity tied up in home ownership is not something they want: they want the money out there in the form of loans, earning contract-outlined interest rather than the speculation that is real estate appreciation.

Which brings us back to the loans themselves. In lots of cases, bad loans go back to the originator. This is a more direct way of foreclosures affecting businesses. These are the Novastar, Countrywide, Wamus we are talking about.

More indirectly, when the talking heads on tv speak about 'subprime exposure', they are talking about how much of their capital/equity is tied up in these loans, or REITs, as they probably will result in a loss. These are all companies who invested this way, and also the companies themselves who provide and receive credit (Citigroup, Merill Lynch, Bank of America, UBS, Salomon Smith Barney, and Lehman Brothers, etc all had HUGE write-downs) and all of a sudden, they can't get anymore credit. Countrywide was | | <-- this close to being bankrupt due to cash flow issues and inability to get credit: even though they had plenty of good loans worth a lot. The short term cash crunch was so severe that long term prospects didn't matter (kind of like starving before the harvest is ready). This affected many, many financial institutions who had these investments on their books (as it was such a spectacular money maker up until it popped).

The current issues with credit have almost nothing to do with individual's credit cards or their car and home loans, and I wouldn't expect most people to have been affected unless they had money in the market. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned our financial markets are a house of cards. So a higher than expected number of home owners have defaulted and are facing foreclosure. Does that mean our financial markets should have a complete meltdown with huge multibillion dollar write-downs and bankruptcy (byebye novastar)? We need to fix this situation but, for example, moving away from fiat currency will result in a similar credit crunch (for completely different reasons).

Sorry for the tl;dr, but maybe someone will learn something from reading that ^^

[guartz]

I hate atheists who think they are better/smarter than everyone

Lol, don't you realize God has that teenage know-it-all attitude?

And apparently he uses hand puppets a lot.

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2679

this one made me lol