My grievances against the present administration

I love you VT.

[blushes and pulls up skirt]

Don't forget the inability to pronouce Dirks last name correctly.

In all seriousness.

Allowing foreigners to drill for oil off US coasts but blocking US firms.

gogogo sticky on front page

just vote for ron paul, geeze

I'm pretty liberal (probably considered radical extremist by WSO) and acknowledge Obama was a complete failure. I have a feeling Romney won't be much better. I like Ron Paul's foreign policy and personal freedom stances but his economic views scare me

tldr - We're fucked homies.

I love all this talk how Romney will suck because he is going to put off ending social programs or wont scale back debt fast enough. While I agree with gutting entitlements, last time I checked the President has to represent the will of the people. For some reason I don't think the majority of people want to gut programs they grew up with.

I feel you guys, but no way in hell half this country wants to scale back housing credits, child tax credits, farming credits, charitable deductions, the multitude of credits for low income people, student loan interest deductions, on and on. We all benefit from it and very few Americans will sack up and hurt their bottom line for the sake of the country.

This is why it is nearly impossible to eliminate an entitlement once it gets rolled out.

Virginia Tech 4ever:

3) EEOC: a. Guidance suggesting that it should be considered discriminatory and illegal to require high school diplomas without tangible justification

Why should a janitor applicant be required to hold a high school diploma? Wiping shit doesnt require math or writing skills. This should not be an issue for a conservative. It adds extra cost to a the market.

6) Legislation: a. Obamacare b. Dodd-Frank c. The Stimulus slush fund d. Contributing 30% of the national debt in 4 years

Obamacare is irrelevant. Nobody (and certainly NOT Romney) will repeal it. The ONLY controversial part of it is the individual mandate and that will be struck down by the Supreme Court this summer anyway. PS: The Heritage foundation was actually the first to propose individual mandates for private insurance in the mid-90s.

Dodd-Frank is a weakling, watered down bill that is far more bark than bite. Its only practical effect might be to make banks gradually devolve from consumer banking. And in my view, that is a really good development. Consumer banking is low margin, BS grunt work and has customers who whine over basic $5 monthly charges. But repeal this impotent law and another shit storm gathers, the torches will really be out for the Street.

Stimulus is not gonna be a negative for anybody. Obama would probably pound it in that when he came in the economy was losing 750,000 jobs per month and he had to do something. Relatively easy to negate especially IF the economy continues to chug along 150k+ per month for 2012.

Bush left an annual deficit of 1.4 trillion dollars (yes, true story!). Bush used to use the nice trick of putting the wars under "emergency funds" and out of all budget consideration. Also remember the 2009 Budget and deficit belongs to Bush as the fiscal year and budget begins October 2008. Deficit for 2012 is now 1.1 trillion. And shrinking. So adding trillion dollar deficits per year adds 30% to the debt on autopilot.

7) Foreign policy: a. Conducting a war in Libya without the consent of Congress

POTUS does not need congressional approval to "attack an alleged enemy" without the involvement of ground tropps. Shady yes, but the constitution did not envision drones back in the day. So he skates that one.

b. Cutting Poland off at the knees by removing missile shield

Poland were not paying us ANYTHING. But we were meant to protect them? Why not Germany? Or some other country? Why is it always the US protecting all these random countries! We should SELL them missile shields. We've got problems at home.

8) Other: b. Recess appointments made while Congress was still in session

Technically the congress was not in session. And all other presidents have done the same thing more often.

c. Appointing self-proclaimed socialists and communists to cabinet or to cabinet-level or “czar” positions

A leftwing, borderline socialist appointing fellow leftwingers is not shocking. It is expected. Elections have consequences. It would be like asking a conservative Republican to appoint Barney Frank as AG.

d. Appointment of left-wing judges to the Supreme Court

Why would an elected leftwinger NOT appoint a leftwinger to replace another leftwinger in the SC. I fail to understand this point.

In the end ALL this is irrelevant. What Americans really care about is their "personal connection" with either candidate between August and November. Nothing else.

Why could the GOP not find a normal, baptist, WASP male with a solid WASP name from the northern South, who is over 6 foot tall, not fat, who isn't overly into the weeds on social issues. That guy would probably wipe Obama 60-40.

It is absolutely incredible that not one of the candidates or potential ones satisfied that simple criteria (other than Jeb Bush).

I have a lot of liberal friends who are good people and I think Obama is a pretty decent guy--he reminds me of my college roommate who was a real nice fella but who ended up marrying an absolute b*tch. My grievance isn't with him PERSONALLY, but as a conservative his administrative bureaucracy has given me heartburn. I think at the very least a conservative will be a lot less offended by a Romney (or substitute the name) administrative bureaucracy. Then again, a lot of this stuff is inside the beltway Washington stuff. The number of people who actually care about Operation Fast and Furious is pretty limited.

Just to respond to a few of the topics:

The EEOC guidance is absurd on its face because people don't require a high school diploma for the tangible skills. They require a high school diploma for the same reason many jobs "require" a college degree--it gives a basic and quick overview of one's basic mental functions and allows them to weed down the resume stack of hundreds of people.

Obamacare is egregious not because of the individual mandate, but because of the unfunded mandates on the states and because a federal--not state, but federal--mandate is clearly unconstitutional and it being upheld would turn a constitutionally limited federal government into a government of limitless power. I actually see no problem at all with a state-level mandate unless it violates a state constitution.

Technically, Congress was not in session. That's the point. And my fundamental problem with Libya is that our representatives fundamentally believed it was bad public policy to side with future Islamic fundamentalists against Gaddafi, who had reluctantly become a castrated tiger. Obama unilaterally conducted an operation with the consequence of young fundamentalists taking power and he did it in violation of the law.

This country is divided. Some people believe in freedom and personal responsibility and other believe it is morally justified to take from those who work to support causes that they personally believe in.

Jeff, off the top of my head I just rattled off a dozen or so fundamentally different things between the parties, from immigration to health care to labor relations to the 2nd Amendment to oil drilling to internet freedom. I don't accept the assertion that there's not a dimes worth of difference between the 2 parties. In a lot of ways they're similar because we have a centrist to center-right electorate and many of the same values, but I don't think the facts dictate that the 2 parties are the same or even that similar, particularly not the parties' base constituencies.

I am confused. Businesses should not require a high school degree so government interference is ok? How about businesses being able to set their own hiring standards.

This sums up my views pretty well: http://lewrockwell.com/reed/reed225.html

Jeff, thanks for posting the article.

Simply put, libertarians lack a natural home. They are on the far right and far left on all the issues. That just doesn't work well in a big tent, winner-take-all 2-party system. If we had a parliamentary system the libertarians would be a force to be reckoned with. As it stands, in our system the libertarians lack a natural home and will likely remain on the outside looking in.

If I were giving advice to the libertarian movement I'd say rather than focusing on winning elections, which is unlikely, that they should focus on influencing the GOP, which is a slightly more natural fit than the Dems. I think the libertarians have begun to bring the GOP back from the concept of nation building and policing the world. That said, the libertarians are shooting themselves in the foot on the Iran issue. America: World Police has become an unpopular American opinion, but most people recognize that military action taken with regard to self-interest is not interventionism or policing the world. On this one issue alone Ron Paul has tanked his candidacy. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Ron Paul would be neck and neck for frontrunner right now if he would have simply acknowledged that Iran is an Islamic tyranny that has global ambitions and views the world from a religious, and not a secular, viewpoint and is a destabilizing force in the region. If he had simply acknowledged that then the Ron Paul movement would be taking off.

Edit: let me also say that I think libertarian candidates lack wisdom generally speaking. Wise men choose their hills to die on. Ron Paul could be fundamentally changing the way America operates if he would choose his battles. Instead, he picks a fight with 90% of the GOP base that is committed to friendship and the defense of Israel over a few billion dollars in foreign aid. Right or wrong on the issue, you can't fight every battle and libertarians have not been wise about choosing their battles. What's more important? Ending military foreign aid to Israel in the amount of $3 billion per year, thus alienating your entire political base, or total reform of the monetary system?

Libertarians need to start taking seats in Congress. That will be the only thing that helps them. The problem liberty is an intangible benefit. Entitlements are a very tangible. People really need to turn away from the short term benefit of their entitlements in favor of longer term intangibles such as increased freedom. Very few are willing to do so.

Following up on that, what I don't understand is why RP keeps trying to be President. He has incredible support from grass root sources and the general population. Find some congressional seats that are weakly held and would support a libertarian candidate. Finance them and get a block of lib's in congress. Imagine a 20 man block of libertarians putting up bills and demanding to be heard. That is how you get change.

Ok, so by your logic then it should be an EEOC violation to require college degrees for traders, investment bankers, etc. How exactly is a college degree needed for those jobs? They hire liberal arts majors and train them how to do the job. Couldn't you easily hire a high school grad to do the job of a trader or PE analyst? The culmination of this argument is that government should be able to tell private businesses what qualifications are required for a job. This is insane. This is ludicrous! If such a law were implemented the number of lawsuits would be tremendous. The amount of paperwork for hiring managers would be horrendous. And as I've already stated, nobody requires a high school diploma because of the tangible skills of a high school graduate. They require a high school diploma because they can, because there is the labor pool available to demand a high school diploma and this is a free republic. Washington bureaucrats dictating hiring qualifications is one of the most counterproductive policies I've ever heard of.

BTW, if your main beef with Obamacare is the individual mandate then you, like Nancy Pelosi, have no clue what's even in the bill. Obamacare is one of the worst pieces of legislation in human history. The most egregious aspect of the bill is that it transfers the lion's share of the costs to state government Medicaid programs, programs that are alread teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

This is my manifesto I wrote against Obamacare on January 20, 2011, almost 1 year ago:

1) ObamaCare mandates that (already bankrupt or fiscally struggling) states hugely expand Medicaid coverage, tipping state budgets to the breaking point. However, states are given the option to opt out of the bill's mandate, but will then forfeit their federal Medicaid funds entirely. Basically, the state budgets are damned either way under ObamaCare, which will necessitate de facto bankruptcy for some states and sharply higher taxes for most states.

2) ObamaCare adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) asserts it "cuts" the federal budget because it has to operate under the bill's assumptions, but the former head of the CBO and the Medicare actuaries, who don't have to operate under flawed assumptions, estimate the bill will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit for numerous reasons, including the fact that Congress ex post facto passed a Medicare “fix” which will negate ObamaCare’s cut in Medicare payment distributions to doctors and the fact that the economics are structured such that the public option healthcare program will necessarily receive millions of “unexpected” customers who were dropped from their company’s program because the penalty for not covering employees is far less than the cost to cover them.

3) The economics of ObamaCare make no sense and require constitutionally questionable mandates to make the economics work. The bill forbids insurance companies from “discriminating” (as if actuarial mathematics “discriminates”) against persons with pre-existing conditions and from charging persons of different genders, ages, and overall health risk profiles (i.e. using actuarial science) different insurance rates. Of course, this makes no logical sense. Who would pay monthly insurance premiums when they’re healthy when all a person would have to do is wait to sign up for health insurance when he or she becomes sick or injured (after all, insurance companies cannot deny coverage for pre-existing conditions)? In order to make the economics work for the insurance companies, Congress issued an individual mandate, requiring that you purchase a product (insurance) as a means of remaining a legal United States citizen. Of course, one can easily determine the $64,000 question: where does Congress get the constitutional authority to require you to buy a product just because you exist?

4) ObamaCare creates literally hundreds of new federal bureaucracies in order to enforce all the regulatory minutiae of the law. From price controls (yikes!) to micromanaging the percentage of insurance company revenue that must be used on delivering insurance coverage, this bill seeks a bureaucratic “solution” to a healthcare system that already has the approval of the vast majority of its customers. If you believe disembodied and poorly trained federal bureaucrats will improve the delivery and quality of health insurance then I've got some oceanfront property to sell you in Arizona.

5) ObamaCare includes at least 2 dozen increased or entirely new taxes, which will amount to one of the larger tax increases in American history. And this doesn’t even factor in the necessarily higher state taxes that will be required to fund the state Medicaid mandate.

6) Expanding Medicare and Medicaid coverage may sound charitable, but the combined impact of an increase of ~44 million new patients and sharply lower Medicaid reimbursements will severely degrade the quality of healthcare for ALL Medicare and Medicaid customers. The majority of doctors already do not accept Medicare/Medicaid. After ObamaCare is implemented, imagine what the dramatic decrease in doctors who will accept these patients will be. What will be the end result? Medicare and Medicaid patients may technically have health coverage, but they'll have no doctor to see them, and if they do, they'll have considerable wait times for any procedure. Waiting lines. Welcome to Canada.

I just think government meddling in things is bad. It always starts with good intentions, but causes more harm and more problems than before.

One could also argue that government standards have increased drop outs or made the quality of graduates decline. Also, think of how many jobs are done by illegal slave labor when they could be done by US citizens who dropped out.

Or better yet, done by machines produced by John Deere.

wow newt won that debate lol

If you want to help high school drop outs you should eliminate illegal immigrants. They aren't hurting educated, middle class white kids. They are fucking over uneducated laborers.

It's not hyperbole. Social Security and Medicare actually serve some purpose. Obamacare is a never ending entitlement that is expensive, unpaid for and actually serves no purpose. $100 ineffeciently spent (Medicare) is still not as bad as lighting a $5 bill on fire.

I don't know how a seriously thinking person could allegedly know what's in the bill and say that they have no problem with it. You have no problem with a huge unfunded expansion of Medicaid? You have no problem with hundreds of new bureaucracies? You have no problem with large tax increases and large additions to the national debt? You have no probelm with the degradation of the already poor quality of Medicare and Medicaid service? Seriously?

I'm not sure you read a single word I wrote about Obamacare. It was about 600 words. Obamacare is far, far more than the individual mandate. It's a bureaucratic nightmare with unfunded mandates that shifts a huge portion of its costs to state governments.

There IS a fundamental difference between Obamacare and Medicare and SS. Mediacre and SS have been around for 80 years. Obamacare doesn't yet exist (it hasn't been implemented). Therein lies the fundamental difference. SS and Medicare are here to stay. Obamacare can still be stopped. That's why the bill is so bad.

Romney doesn't have to dismantle it. He just needs to sign the GOP Congress' repeal. Since Romney has staked his candidacy on repealing Obamacare and since the GOP has an 80% chance of having both houses of Congress next January I'd say it's a likely scenario if Romney were to win.

It's not ok because it's 80 years old. But since I'm not a college age student I recognize the reality of the situation that neither SS nor Medicare will ever be voluntarily repealed. What you aren't separating in your brain is the fundamental difference between how the world should be and how the world is.

An opt out clause would make SS and Medicare even less fiscally solvent. That's a totally illogical position and it would be rejected on its face.

You're against net neutrality?

This is pure curiosity, so spare me whatever vitriol might be coming ... but when an ISP wants to throttle a user's bandwidth because the user is viewing Hulu and the ISP gives preferential treatment to its own VoD service, you see no problem?