It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

It looks like he's going to get the Republican nomination, and that's probably a good thing. He seems like the republican with the best chance of avoiding the unmitigated disaster that would be Hillary Obama. I still think Thompson could have been a better candidate, but I sorta got off his train when he started pitching himself as the more conservative, pro-life choice. I get the strategy, but sticking to his real beliefs (federalism, civil liberties) might have played better than pretending you were the hardcore conservative candidate, when even the republican base is looking for someone less inclined to crap on civil liberties than G-dub. Then again, I'm certainly not a political strategist. Anyway, grats to McCain, good luck to him in November (most everyone in the country with an IQ over 60 is rooting for you, let's hope it's enough). Note for future candidates: ignoring the early-vote states is political suicide, no matter how much Florida et-all wants to be r...

Just my personal opinions, major points. Economy: Hard to do the right thing here (which would be to let people who were financially idiots lose money), and Bush scores a solid 'C' with his PC plan to have the government bail out dumb people with massive, poorly concealed inflation. It could be worse, the democrats will almost certainly do worse when/if they get into power. Trade: Who cares. I mean, yeah, it matters to macro-economics, but in ways no normal people understand. Let Warren Buffet make the policy, and do that. Domestic Surveillance: Sorry, G-dub, gotta go with the dems on this one. There is no way in hell the corporations which co-operated with you shady, pseudo-legal (ok, common... blatantly illegal) warrant-less wiretapping should be given immunity, for the same conceptual reason the idiots who lost billions buying securitized bad housing debt should not be bailed out by the government at the taxpayer's expense: it encourages people to not consider the conseq...

I'm looking for a reference, maybe someone could help me out. I've been trying to find when it became acceptable and sound policy for the government to take money from people who are financially responsible and save it, and give it to people who are financially irresponsible and waste it. I don't remember this being in the mandate for the government, and I'm fairly sure this was not the intent when the country was founded, at least as far as I remember from civics lessons. Yet here we are, with Congress and Bush both praising a plan which does just that, and it seems to be both accepted by the people and welcomed with open arms. When did the US become a socialist country? I think I missed the memo... can someone direct me to it? And how do I get off the socialist welfare-state boat?

Taking a break from my normal non-partisan-ish ranting to rant specifically about the current political candidates. Now, I consider myself an independent for the most part; socially liberal, financially conservative. That said... I couldn't tell you who would be worse for the country: Hillary, Obama, Ron Paul, a random bystander, or a rock. The democrats seem to be fairly identical; their platform is spend more, socialize medicine, tax the rich till they take their money and leave, encourage business to leave the country, evangelize Global Warming (the religion), expand welfare, destroy the currency, cripple the military, ignore problems outside of our border because people "over there" can't possibly hurt us, and ignore all long-term problems. Fortunately this platform plays well to the uneducated masses that are allowed to vote, so they should do well. Ron Paul has some really good ideas (he's the only candidate with the first clue about encouraging financial re...

Ok, the titles a little misleading; at beast, this would be one step toward preventing another housing bubble. That said, it would be a fairly substantial step, and benefit pretty much everyone I think. Idea: States should pass a law (each state, perhaps based on a template) which does a couple things: 1. Makes all lienholders with a claim on a property jointly liable for all taxes and assessments on the property in the event that the title holder is in default 2. Allows the state to take possession of a vacant property on which there is no claim of ownership after a period of time (say, 6 months), and after all lienholders have been afforded the opportunity to buy out the others and take possession of the property (say, 1 month after notification of state's intent to possess). If the state takes possession, it would auction the property within a month, sold as-is, but with a guaranteed clean title. The proceeds would pay off the lienholders in the legal precedence for proceeds fro...

The government has a problem, and a different perceived problem. The perceived problem is that the economy is headed toward a recession, and the various government institutions should take actions to prevent that. The actual problem is that the government takes a bunch of dumb actions trying to help the economy, which causes the economy to bounce up and down like a 5 year old on a see-saw blowing bubbles (and financial insiders to get rich while everyone else gets screwed). Regardless, it looks likely that this will not chance any time soon, and I fully expect the next president to come up with a stimulus package to do more long-term damage to the economy (more-so if it's a democrat proposal, which looks likely). The goal of "stimulus" is to cause more money to be spent in the economy, so businesses sell more stuff, there are more jobs, etc. Americans have been spending their home equity over the last 5 years, and it's run out, which is what's causing the current ...

Ok, so the way a democracy works is that a small number of people are elected to represent the population as a whole, and they get together and make the rules which govern the society. The theory is that small groups of people can put forward bright, knowledgeable, experienced people to make intelligent decisions on their behalf. How, then, did we get to the situation where every single one of the elected politicians seems to have the IQ of silly putty? Take, for example, the governator (Arnold Schwarzenegger, for those people not in California). On the one hand, California is expected to have a $14 billion deficit this year. If you padded-helmet slow like the California legislature usually is, that means you retards are spending $14 billion dollars more this year than you expect to take in from taxes, fees, kickbacks, bribes, campaign donations, favors, special interest lobbying, and all the other ways government and its officials are financed. So that's bad, huh? It would take a...

So I was reading this article about the Supreme Court hearing a challenge to a voter identification law. In this case, it's opposed by the democrats and the ACLU, presumably on behalf of the many, many people who have registered to vote (which requires an ID and a verification of voting eligibility, in addition to registering you for other government service such as the draft and jury duty), but would forget to bring their ID to the voting booth with them. Now normally, I'm about 50/50 with/against the ACLU. Sometimes they have good points, and sometimes they are out there. As the political opposite of the Cristian Coalition, I think they do serve a valuable function in our society (and I tend to side with them far more than I side with religious zealots, be they Christian (eg: anti-abortion groups), Muslim (Al'qaeda), or otherwise). But this time, you guys are wacked. If anything in our society should require a government issued means of identification to have access to,...

Not mine, but a really good idea: limit copyright on music (and I would add movies, and possibly television shows) to 5 years. I totally agree with the premise which motivates the suggestion: namely that copyright exists to promote innovation by allowing the innovator a period in which he can exclusively profit from the innovation, but that has to be balanced against the public interest in sharing the fruits of the innovation. The pendulum has swung much too far in the corporations' direction, and the public interest has been essentially ignored by the legislature (since being purchased by special-interest lobby groups). 5 years is plenty of time to exclusively profit from artistic "innovation", in my opinion. And, as an added bonus, it would no-doubt dramatically reduce the amount of copyright infringement being aggressively fought by the RIAA/MPAA. It's a no-lose proposition! In fact, it's such a good idea that it makes me kinda sad that our legislature is so co...