Republican nominations - Page 521

On March 06 2012 03:02 Djzapz wrote:

It's funny that gas prices comes into play, as if Obama had a significant amount of control over gas prices.

On March 06 2012 03:02 Djzapz wrote:

It's funny that gas prices comes into play, as if Obama had a significant amount of control over that. Blame "the man", he probably runs them cartels.

On March 06 2012 03:07 xDaunt wrote:


When you're part of the party that constantly obstructs drilling and developing domestic oil sources, then it becomes pretty easy to be blamed for the high gas prices. Obama has not done anything helpful to lower gas prices, but he has done a number of things that put upwards pressure on gas prices, ranging from shutting down offshore drilling, to preventing oil companies from drilling in regions like the Bakkan, to obstructing the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite all of this, he still has the gall to take credit for increased domestic production during his tenure, all of which was the result of Bush administration policies granting licenses to drill (there's a significant lag time between getting permission to drill and getting a productive well online).

On March 06 2012 03:02 Djzapz wrote:

It's funny that gas prices comes into play, as if Obama had a significant amount of control over that. Blame "the man", he probably runs them cartels.

On March 06 2012 03:35 sc2superfan101 wrote:

it may not be Obama's fault that gas prices are going up, but it's still gonna hurt him.

How so? I say that stereotypes are effective. Person A throws out a stereotype and says that he think its bullshit. I say that it must be a bad stereotype. The retort is, "well you just undermined your argument -- stereotypes must not be effective then because this one doesn't work." I say that I can't account for user error.

Here's the point: if someone makes a bad stereotype, then it's not going to stick or be affective. For example, let's say that someone states, "you know, those Germans, they are always late and their trains never run on time." Is that a good stereotype? Of course not, because it's not based in any kind of truth. That's what I meant by "user error."

I originally wasn't going to respond to this post until I saw this part. Let's ignore the socialists and libertarians for now, and focus upon democrats and republicans. For the sake of argument, I'll just assume that it is the universal platform of the republican party to ban abortion and gay marriage. Those are two instances of taking away liberty. There's smaller (though vocal minority) of republicans that would like to clamp down other social issues (whether it be birth control or porn), but they're not large enough to be taken seriously. On the balance however, there isn't much else that republicans have a hard-on for regulating.

Now let's look at a list of the freedoms that democrats want to take away (and this is just a list of stuff that comes right off the top of my head: school choice (vouchers), the right own firearms, a whole slew of economic freedoms in the workplace (ranging from whether people can choose whether to join unions to mandating that health care be provided), high tax policy (taking away people's money is taking away their freedom), carbon emissions (ie this is a huge economic issue in and of itself), and a whole slew of other things that fall under democratic regulations. If you're looking for even more extreme examples, you can go down to local levels where cities like New York have banned salt in restaurants or cities like LA have banned throwing footballs and frisbees on beaches.

And while we're on the topic of liberty, which group pushes the tyranny of the "politically correct" in our society? Here's a hint: it's the left. God help us if we dare offend anyone -- particularly any minority.

Stuff like this makes it hard to take you seriously.

If you say so.

On March 06 2012 03:39 Tor wrote:
While I don't think you're a terrible person for having the view that positive liberty can strip away individual freedom for the freedom of the many, I take issue with your militant characterization of all liberals as some form of lazy human being looking only to the government to take care of them. It's your representation of liberals (this flawed stereotyping) that makes you so off-base on many of your remarks. Democrats are not some free wheeling hippies looking to strip away your rights, they have a difference of opinions on how much government should be involved, and what role government should play, but they aren't ignorant fools, they have good logical reasoning behind most of their beliefs. You may think they're on the wrong side of most arguments, but that's just an opinion. I personally believe you're on the wrong side of most arguments, hooray for freespeech. I, however, don't attempt to stifle communication with idiotic hyperbole or grand stereotypes, neither do I ridicule people based on their positions, nor do I make ignorant assumptions that only work to hinder my own voice, whereas your inflammatory speech often does all these things.

On March 06 2012 03:35 Djzapz wrote:

That's a bit of an extreme position isn't it? It's convenient for you. First you grossly exaggerate the restrictions put on offshore drilling and domestic oil sources, and then you directly blame Obama who frankly has very little wiggle room anyway? As if it were completely ridiculous to be a little bit hesitant anyway after the huge BP disaster.

Let me ask you this - how long do you think it takes for such a project to reach a full drawdown? Do you think the prices would go down significantly now if the Keystone XL project, which would take 10 years to complete. ANWR is the one oil project I can think of that Obama really objected to, and in 20 years it would represent like 1% of the US's oil consumption. That means in 2032 it would be a tiny portion of the US consumption. Also I don't want to be boring, but ANWR stands for "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge".

"Obama we want lower gas prices, let's dig oles errywhere and extract gas during your presidency, also construct the Shrine of Love with magic an unicorns"

On March 06 2012 03:53 DamnCats wrote:
So even though you said you weren't going to respond to me anymore, here's your actual quote:

"Not believing in evolution is not the same as not believing in science."

My interpretation of that is 'evolution is not scientific.' I very much disagree and would very much like to hear what my interpretation of that should have been.

Also do you think it's just a coincidence that the one guy in the republican primaries that actually says he trusts scientists was forced to drop out before someone who says that contraception is a "license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how they should be"?

On March 06 2012 03:51 ticklishmusic wrote:
I just want to throw out that gas prices in the US are pretty low compared to other places in the world. When I was in Austria about three years back, I think gas was four euros... per liter. When I was in Cambodia over the summer, I think it was something similar (since Cambodian money kind of stinks, they use US dollars for most transactions). Same thing for Taiwan.

US gas prices are kind of low compared to these countries. Austria and Taiwan are arguably pretty developed countries, probably on par or higher than the United States (for example, the Taiwanese shit themselves when the unemployment was past 5%, lol). Cambodia is a poorer nation and provides some contrast. Honestly, if all these nations can get by on more expensive gas, the US should be able to as well.

On March 06 2012 04:01 Defacer wrote:


America is enjoying spectacularly LOW gas prices compared to the rest of the world. Come visit Canada and just see how shitty it is.

On March 06 2012 03:39 Tor wrote:
I have no doubt that bad policies (often based on moral grounds) are implemented by both parties. Comparing local levels to federal levels is not a fair comparison however, since there are plenty of dumb laws implemented by everyone. You must understand though, most good laws from a liberal stand-point are predicated on positive freedom. Universal health-care, workplace or economic regulation is all designed to prevent companies or individuals from stripping freedom from victims and grants those victims the ability to live their life freely without the dependancy on insurance companies etc. that can leverage their position of advantage against you.

While I don't think you're a terrible person for having the view that positive liberty can strip away individual freedom for the freedom of the many, I take issue with your militant characterization of all liberals as some form of lazy human being looking only to the government to take care of them. It's your representation of liberals (this flawed stereotyping) that makes you so off-base on many of your remarks. Democrats are not some free wheeling hippies looking to strip away your rights, they have a difference of opinions on how much government should be involved, and what role government should play, but they aren't ignorant fools, they have good logical reasoning behind most of their beliefs. You may think they're on the wrong side of most arguments, but that's just an opinion. I personally believe you're on the wrong side of most arguments, hooray for freespeech. I, however, don't attempt to stifle communication with idiotic hyperbole or grand stereotypes, neither do I ridicule people based on their positions, nor do I make ignorant assumptions that only work to hinder my own voice, whereas your inflammatory speech often does all these things.

On March 06 2012 04:06 xDaunt wrote:


No, most "good" laws from a liberal standpoint are predicated on good intentions. They're looking to fix a problem using the power of government. Take Obamacare as an example. How exactly does it promote "positive freedom?" If anything, it does exactly the opposite by imposing a range of regulations upon persons, employees, and employers ranging from mandating that that insurance be bought/sold to regulating precisely what care must be offered. There's no liberty or property interest being protected here. To the contrary, liberty and property rights are being infringed for the purpose of providing healthcare to everyone, which is merely a welfare benefit and not the same thing as a right.

On March 06 2012 03:51 xDaunt wrote:
I don't think that I am exaggerating about anything. There's less offshore drilling now than there was before the BP disaster. I have a client who has interests worth tens of millions of dollars in the Bakken, so I know what's going on up there as well. I don't know why you say that Obama has little wriggle room. All he has to do is come out in full support of drilling. That's a pretty damned easy bipartisan issue that he could exploit.

You can't look at any one project to understand what's going on. You have to take a broad-based look at all US oil domestic production. If just one project is obstructed, it doesn't really matter that much because the effect is marginal. When substantially all of the projects are blocked, then it matters.

Lastly, I really don't like the argument that we shouldn't drill because it won't have any immediate impact on prices. It's so obviously short-sighted that it isn't even really worth commenting on.

They want to regulate everything to root out and prevent any problems that may arise. Despite how good their intentions are, the fact remains that, by so regulating, they are stomping all over the freedoms of people in this country.