Well, it says in the forum description, politics, jump right in.

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Although I am in Virginia, I am just desperate to see this guy Peter Schiff take Chris Dodd's seat. I just watched some great footage from a Tea Party forum up there -
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=226446

Peter's got a facebook page, of course, and a youtube page, and a Schiff for Senate webpage, all highly googlable. I'd *love* to hear that ADG's backing him.

I am very mad at the interlopers from Fox News etc. who have been doing their best to claim the tea party people. It didn't start with them, and I really don't believe the GOP's claims on "conservatism" because, for example, they're not even backing Rand Paul, Ron's son, down in Kentucky. That just ticks me off! And then on the other side, the people who get on the NYTimes and WashPost comments sections and talk down tea party people as being anti-intellectual - guess what, it's just their "intellectualism" that I'm "anti-". 'Cause here's Peter at Yale http://dailypaul.com/node/124255

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Progressive and liberal Dems everywhere are licking their chops over the emergence of this "Tea Party" phenomenon (fad?). All it's going to do is hurt Republican candidates across the board. Good luck, and be careful throwing those crates of tea overboard; you might hurt yourselves.


mikey

Ah, but Peter Schiff is running as a Republican. Primary coming up.

Fakestars are the new media darlings. If you fake it, you make it. But it doesn't last. See John Edwards.

1. It's comfortable politics because America doesn't take sides. Americans play all sides against the middle.

2. I was entranced by Sarah Palin's speech in Nashville. Seeing George Wallace in a skirt 40 years later is so heart warming. While so completely fake in message, she is so real in the person. She is what she seems to be. We don't have to like that but failing to appreciate the combination is a serious mistake.

3. The Dems denouncing her as merely that are throwing themselves into the fire. Demogoguery requires a little nugget of truth to work. Populism works because it is popular and the best and brightest always underrate the power of that and tend to get handed their heads in midterms because of it. You can throw all the invective you like. She'll only get stronger. Until you cut to the truth that is heating the boilers, you can't bring down the balloon. The distasteful necessity is you will have to watch and listen to her to find that truth. Otherwise, all the energy you throw into unhorsing her makes her invincible.

Watching The Who at the SuperBowl, it struck me how real and natural Arlo looks doing what he does live or on tape and how unnatural they looked. It is the music that makes the difference. People want it real and appropriate. The music and the image have to work together or the act suffers.

Authenticity matters. The Democrats are setting themselves up for a big fall because they just can't understand that magic beans and a singing harp are still not worth the milk of one much abused cow.

Being a CT resident and knowing the guy's been a great AG, I'm going for Dick Blumenthal. He's got tenacity, integrity, seems to be an honest guy and has mostly gone after those who deserve to be gotten after. If he applies that to the Senate he can only be an asset. I haven't seen much in the Tea Party as far as candidates or issues. Seems like most folks can complain about how things are and what the other candidates are or aren't doing but nobody's got any tangible solutions. We need politicos who work out problems, not work their pointin' finger.

Captain Zap, take a look at Schiff, though, won't you? He does have very well-thought out, reasoned solutions. He's not Tea Party, not the version that a lot of people like me don't care for, i.e., the Beck/Palin or Bush corporatist or neocon versions. I don't like Glenn Beck, I'm not keen on Palin, and I don't like either the GOP-to-date nor the Democrats. I think the Democrats are continuing, on overdrive, the bad money policies of the Republicans. Overbearing meddlesome regulation, lawyers dickering, government/corporate control, that's what's weighing this country down, it's going to do us in if we keep it up.

Schiff saw the economic catastrophe coming years ago and has been raising alarms about it all along. He's an independent thinking guy. He's brilliant. I've never heard anything he's said that didn't make sense. Schiff is Mr. Smith going to Washington. He does have solutions. He knows how the economy works. He wants to go to work out the problems. He wants to educate the senate. He doesn't want to be a career politician, he wants to get down here and explain to all these lawyers, and Federal Reserve approved economists, what their policies are doing to the American economy, and what they need to do to get it back on track. He doesn't put out carefully crafted ads, there is a ton of youtube footage in which he goes into great coherent, reasoned, detail. Not speechwritten or carefully crafted statements - direct uncensored full coverage of what he says at town hall meetings, question and answer sessions, and generally what's on his mind. I've never seen anything like it. The man's got a brain and he knows how to use it, and he's completely loyal to the Constitution.

I'll look but Blumenthal has a great track record. He's taken on big corporation, the oil companies and he's not afraid to dig in for the hard fight. He's not your typical do nothing AG and I believe that he'll bring those same attributes to the Senate. To be honest, I haven't heard much about Schiff in CT at all.

That's why I'm here! On this thread anyway.

Well, from what little I have heard of Schiff, I'm not too keen on the guy.

I'm with Captain Zap. Schiff is essentially just another free-market capitalist. Being that I'm an old-school Keynesian, never the twain shall meet.


mikey

It's cool to see someone else from VA on here...

::waving at Cheryl::

Zap, I think you're set in your ways and I should just let you be! I say that in a friendly sorta way.

Mikey - just on the capitalism/Keynes point -

What Schiff has said is that we've never seen free-market capitalism. The government practicing free-market ideas doesn't (a) hyper-regulate in a manner favorable to large lobbying corporations such that small businesses can't get off the ground (b) allow powerful individuals, who meet on the side in private, exclusive meetings to manipulate markets via such a thing as the Federal Reserve (for example, holding interest rates ridiculously low to artificially grow the housing market) (c) subsidize big industries so that they don't have to compete, making what we get lower quality, higher price, and again closing out better ideas, small businesses and individuals from getting into the market, or (d) bail out banks which fail. Etc.

The government we've had has gotten us Monsanto patenting GMO seeds, big Food outlawing raw milk, and big Pharma pushing pills that make us sick while they work with big Docs (AMA) to squash out herbal/alternative medicine, having already gotten Big Paper (Hearst) and big Monsanto-assisted Cotton to get hemp outlawed.


http://dailybail.com/home/peter-schiff- ... om-ju.html

I can't find where he was saying the following about Keynes, so caveat this - but I think I heard Schiff saying something to the effect of - we've never seen Keynesian economics in action anyway - because we spend our way out of recessions, but then when things are booming, we don't use policy to curtail the boom, we just keep spending, good times or bad. So in "good times" you get, for example, school districts (like mine) building ridiculously luxurious administration buildings, and mall operators building Tysons Corner which is going to become a ghost town.

I'm hesitant to post much more on this, I'm willing, but don't want to wear it out - if anyone's into perusing, there is just so much out there. Here are some recents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk3mDYdKbsc
http://schiffforsenate.com/?q=press-rel ... l-business
Home link for the campaign site http://schiffforsenate.com/ of course. He's on facebook.

Is there a limit on post length? This was the last thing I was going to include - sometimes I really enjoy reading comments sections, just read this one, it was pretty good. http://washingtonindependent.com/46496/ ... for-senate

Likewise.

Not to mention that I won't be able to vote for him in the primaries so, for me, it's a moot point unless he makes it to the final round.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with bigger gov't if it makes us all better off. Smaller gov't can be just as bad or worse. Deregulation is good in some sectors but look what it's done with the banks, credit card companies and the health insurance industry. Same with taxes. I see nothing more with more taxes if we all benefit from it. You're not going to get something for nothing. But it should be fair.

And raw milk, as far as I know, is regulated state by state. Maybe it is Big Food lobbying but Louis Pasteur had a good idea. The incidence of milk borne diseases was pretty high once upon a time. In fact, as a child my father contracted TB from raw milk. Fortunately, for him, it turned dormant but a lot of these regs are there for a reason.