The American Politics thread

[Spikey]

oh sh -

[Ikki]

Originally Posted by Top_Cat

One of the first refs you quoted specifically states a voluntary international system and the second one is 60+ years old. ****, eugenics and phrenology papers were still getting accepted back then.

What does that have to do with anything? As I said, I'm busy; I can't find articles then read them all for you too.

haha, no. That's not how it works. There's plenty of evidence against what he said. For example, the US is not a subsidiary of The UN (inc) or a dictatorship by any reasonable standards, it's still a sovereign nation and last I checked, there were no blue-hatted soldiers marching on Washington forcing Obama to give up the presidency. The burden of proof is on Paul to show where things are going. He has his reasons, does he? Why isn't he providing them in an explicit, open manner?

I'm not sure what you're looking for. The burden on him is to do what?

He is saying the UN makes America less sovereign. It does. Even many of those that tend to argue that America's sovereignty is not in danger contend that it is for a good reason - or even to protect its sovereignty. But as I said; it is a definitive act. If a member says it will refrain from doing X, with all the other members, based on some loophole it finds in its constitution...that is losing sovereignty.

Its about as controversial as free market proponents arguing that the continuance of regulations, or expansions of bureaucracy, undermine freedom. Which is, not much. You can disagree with the position, but lets not pretend he pulled it from his arse.

As for the attention this is getting, please. This has blown up the last couple of days and will go away fairly quickly. Obama's been getting hammered by foreign and US-based newspapers, op-eds and on TV about his drone program, guns, not closing Guantanamo and his war on whistle blowers for the past year at least (and rightly bloody so). The pressure doesn't bear comparison.

No, I don't think it will - well, not for Paul. Because stupid things like these will always be brought up for Paul because his opposition are desperate to look for any perceived flaw. Honestly, the ironic thing about the above wrongs for Obama is that the people more up in arms about it are from his party and uniformly vote for him. And heck, if they had an election next year they'd still vote for him...what pressure? If he had pressure it was in his first term, and look how great that went.

[Spark]

Look, Ikki, I think the fundamental mistake you are making is assuming that anyone outside the political class, his own ideological subset or certain other ideological groups give a **** about Ron Paul or even know what his positions are.

They don't. He is small, small fry.

[Ikki]

Originally Posted by Spark

Look, Ikki, I think the fundamental mistake you are making is assuming that anyone outside the political class, his own ideological subset or certain other ideological groups give a **** about Ron Paul or even know what his positions are.

They don't. He is small, small fry.

Acting like you don't have your own Ron Paul mug.

[silentstriker]

The state of the union was a bit meh...

[Top_Cat]

The state of the union is a bit meh.

[silentstriker]

The reports of our deaths are greatly exaggerated. In 20 years, we will have a population younger than China. I think our future looks fine, overall.

[Jono]

Nah you're ****ed.

[silentstriker]

Actually Australia one of the few countries with a definite rosy future.

Nah, and OT: I think almost everyone's going to be better off in the future than now.

Locally, considering the relative situations of everyone else, the US is ahead or at least not far behind, other people in terms of long term economic outlook. Demographics is destiny. Europe is way too anti-immigrant - and it's going to hurt them long term. Certain Scandinavia countries, and probably Germany, are probably going to continue to do quite well though. I think there will certainly be more parity in the world - China, India, Brazil and other economies (china should become the largest economy in the world before 2020 for sure), but they all have really massive problems - from crime to infrastructure to corruption. But this is all RELATIVE - everyone will likely be doing better overall - the declines will be relative to other people growth.

Economics is not a zero sum game. The British no longer have an empire, but a larger percentage of their people are way better off economically now than they ever were during the height of the empire.

I think generally, I'm pretty optimistic about the world in general. We only see the bad things but violence overall is as low as it has EVER been in the history of the world - a HUGE percentage of people used to die in some kind of conflict not too long ago.

Anyway, I highly recommend this: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: Steven Pinker: 9780143122012: Amazon.com: Books

[Jono]

[Top_Cat]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Actually Australia one of the few countries with a definite rosy future.

Nah, and OT: I think almost everyone's going to be better off in the future than now.

Locally, considering the relative situations of everyone else, the US is ahead or at least not far behind, other people in terms of long term economic outlook. Demographics is destiny. Europe is way too anti-immigrant - and it's going to hurt them long term. Certain Scandinavia countries, and probably Germany, are probably going to continue to do quite well though. I think there will certainly be more parity in the world - China, India, Brazil and other economies (china should become the largest economy in the world before 2020 for sure), but they all have really massive problems - from crime to infrastructure to corruption. But this is all RELATIVE - everyone will likely be doing better overall - the declines will be relative to other people growth.

Economics is not a zero sum game. The British no longer have an empire, but a larger percentage of their people are way better off economically now than they ever were during the height of the empire.

I think generally, I'm pretty optimistic about the world in general. We only see the bad things but violence overall is as low as it has EVER been in the history of the world - a HUGE percentage of people used to die in some kind of conflict not too long ago.

Anyway, I highly recommend this: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: Steven Pinker: 9780143122012: Amazon.com: Books

Read it, **** it was a slog beyond the first 1/3. Bit more editing and it would have been a classic. I know it was meant for wide consumption but explaining relative rates without using the words and theory behind them made it so verbose sometimes.

[Ikki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us...anted=all&_r=0

Minimum wage to $9. Let's see how that turns out.

[Jono]

Originally Posted by Ikki

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us...anted=all&_r=0

Minimum wage to $9. Let's see how that turns out.

Rubio not a fan of that.

[Spikey]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

The reports of our deaths are greatly exaggerated. In 20 years, we will have a population younger than China. I think our future looks fine, overall.

you'll def have more school children killed over the next 20 years than china tho

[Ikki]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Actually Australia one of the few countries with a definite rosy future.

Just curious: do you happen to see a lot of Americans emigrating? I've never encountered more Americans than in the past few years in Australia. It seems like they're coming for work.