I think it’s time to stop pretending that Obama is “pursuing a preferred policy path of his critics” or “caving” in these negotiations. The first assumes he’s a moron and the second assumes he’s a weakling. He’s an Ivy League educated politician who cut his teeth as an organizer in Chicago, he’s neither stupid nor weak. He’s simply a conservative who is betting that the base of his own party is too stupid to realize that and recognize that they, not the opposition party, is the party he disdains in politics. The O-bots may prove him right. They never fail to fawn on him with religious fervor, not matter what major Democratic ideals he trashes or violates.

Um, on #14, you’re aware that Rand and Ron Paul lie to the public pretty much all the time, right? (Lies of omission are, in fact, lies.) The only difference between them is polish. When someone tries to get Ron to discuss the less popular and easily consumed aspects of his views–the whole “I’m cool with children dying of preventable illnesses, starvation, and exposure en masse in the streets” aspect of it–he gets the old folksy charm going and everyone laughs, the question is dropped, and they move on. When someone does the same thing to Rand, he simply flips the fuck out and has a tantrum on set. They NEVER willingly openly discuss the entirety of their views in public, largely because they’re just smart enough to realize most people would become physically ill when confronted with what a sitting Representative and Senator believe about the welfare of their fellow citizens.

Assuming you’re not posting tongue-in-cheek, outside of Ron Paul’s speeches and debate performances, are you familiar with the basics of the political philosophy he subscribes. ‘Libertarian’ is a fun word. It has a very much intended and visceral connection with the term ‘liberty,’ which can never be bad, right? It’s not like the concepts of liberty, democracy, equality, and their relationships could ever give rise to tensions or have contradictory and mutually exclusive aims, right?

There’s a more precise, less buddy-buddy term for the beliefs Ron Paul and his son subscribe to: market anarchism. In a market anarchist’s ideal world, we live in a radical state of nature, i.e. the kind of environment in which Hobbes said our lives would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” Let’s say your home is burning down, all your valuables are in the home, and you have no means to pay anyone to put out the fire. People like the Pauls would say it’s all right for your home to be left to burn to cinders. Likewise, as a recent GOP debate showed, if you were involved in a horrible accident of suddenly became ill and did not have the means to pay for treatment upfront, people like the Pauls would be perfectly okay with letting you die a completely preventable painful and early death on the streets.

Ron Paul and Rand Paul, in other words, are not “progressive.” They are heralds and representatives of the most loathsome and regressive factions of conservatism, they merely know how to present it in a charitably vague way to the masses. This is why Rand Paul becomes very visibly angry whenever someone has the bad manners to ask him specific, detailed questions about what he believes during election years. He knows he has two choices: let the facade drop and reveal himself for what he really is or avoid the question awkwardly.

Have you ever bought advertising before? Ad targeting is what the buyer of the ad does, not the owner of the space hosting the ad. Otherwise, rather than paying for impressions or clicks, you’d also be paying a consulting fee for the labor of the person designing your ad for you.

When you ask why you don’t see right-wing ads here, I think it’s safe to assume that given that even members of the mainstream progressive coalition–i.e. DLC-style or “New” Democrats–openly view FDL as hostile, that unambiguously conservative orgs and candidates would likely not waste their money targeting this particular audience. It’s probably the same reason you don’t see Obama 2012, MoveOn, and PCCC ads on site like Red State.

In fairness to Mr. Romney–and the people who would use his religion as a wedge issue with hardline, theologically conservative Christians–the doctrinal, normative text of Mormonism is The Book of Mormon, not the Holy Bible. Also, the LDS has a rich history of adjusting its theology and claims derived from it for political convenience. See: plural marriage, doctrine of and black people.

Why do I do this to myself? I always tune into this shit with some hope that he’ll surprise us. Offer some sort of proof he isn’t either completely bought by Wall Street, a crypto-Republican, and/or a total weakling with lingering Daddy issues. And he disappoints on a monumental level every fucking time. In this speech, he literally chastises the Democratic caucus for not falling in line behind taking a torch to the New Deal nine minutes prior to positioning himself as a defender of those programs. I guess, at least, I know why he has such an inflated view of his own intellectual worth: he thinks everyone else is a retard with the attention span of a gnat.

Yeah, I agree with this. Anyone who thinks that the Clintons are far to anyone’s left is, to be charitable, delusional. They’re the people who convinced the national Democratic Party that rebranding as “Republican Lite” was the path to success after 12 uninterrupted years of Republican rule. That is, Obama is the consequence of the Clintons–as Bush was the consequence of the Reagans–not some lesser alternative. Policy-wise, there was pretty much no daylight between the candidates, which is why nobody paid attention to their policy differences. There is no story there.

The only truly progressive viable guy in the entire race was John Edwards. Unfortunately, Mr. Edwards did what an uncomfortably large amount of otherwise good progressive Dems do and let his dick sink his career.

I’m really just surprised that this guy hasn’t been canned. Back during the 2008 campaign, if you were an UNPAID staffer–a full-time intern–or a volunteer and did so much as go off message on your personal Facebook account, they’d send you home. That the state director can now go on and issue pleading, bitch-like appeals to voters via the official email list–the most valuable asset of their goddamn organization–just shows you how much the organization has gone downhill over the last two years.

Social Security is a public retirement investment security program. It is functionally very different from a Ponzi scheme. (This talking point reminds me of the conservative talking point about Keynesian economics–the water cup and river analogy–it makes the dim feel clever, but makes them look even dimmer to the informed.)The end of the Ponzi scheme is to enrich the person heading the scheme at the expense of the group, i.e. it’s closer to the reverse of the goal of progressive policy than it is to progressive policy. The end of an insurance investment plan is to ensure long-term security of the entire group at the short-term loss of the individual investor. It’s the smae concept that guides private insurance companies, which right-wingers oddly never badmouth. If Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, then every private insurance company is just a horrifically inefficient Ponzi scheme.