(08-15-2013, 06:12 AM)kandrathe Wrote: ]I think if it were limited to, "Our candidate is great, rah rah" it would be one thing. But, it's quite another to use unlimited 3rd party funds to swift boat your opponent, shifting smears and libels until the election.
This kerfuffle is about two potential Hillary Clinton biopics. This is none of: unlimited third party funds, swiftboating, smearing, or libelling.
However, political ads are, by their nature, combative. You are trying to convince people to vote for you rather than the other candidate. Sometimes, that means saying nasty things. I agree with you that lying is something no campaign should do, on basic ethical grounds. Nor should they support their proxies in lying. But that's an entirely different argument, which has nothing to do with unilateral disarmament in campaign finance.
To make that clear: Parties can lie in any medium. Should they forsake them all, because they could conceivably be used badly?
Quote:My issues with Rand Paul are that sometimes he leads with what is ideologically sound, but a realistically impractical idea. Ideally, we can figure out how to privatize retirement, but realistically it has issues that need a detailed and nuanced response.
His campaign staff included someone who toasts to John Wilkes Booth's birthday, right up until it became a major scandal. Is this really "ideologically sound"? Sounds like the same total inability to escape the lunatic, racist, sexist, homophobic fringe that has marked (or even defined) his father's career.
Quote:But, that is much like what Obama has done with say, the coal industry. By 2016, our coal industry (which was 50% of our electric generation) will be out about 1/4 million highly paid union jobs. Not many people understand or hate coal as much as I do, but even so, I would have pressed for a reasonable, painless transition out of coal. As it stands, we'll damage the economy, and drive up the price of electricity -- all in order to score political points.
This is baffling. You hate coal. Presumably, that means there are good reasons to hate coal. And yet, when Obama goes after coal, you can't think of a possible reason for it, except to "score political points"? Maybe he hates it for some of the same reasons you do?
On the practical side, gas seems to be coming online fast enough to make coal irrelevant in pretty short order.
-Jester