I should also add Paul's willingness to cow-tow to racists, anti-semites and all around bigots also drives me away.

Krellin, you and I obviously have a different definition of rationality. Your idea of rationality is you. My idea of rationality is someone that can make sensibility out of their ideas. You, I'm afraid, can't do that. If you don't open your eyes to a view that isn't 100% yours - whether you agree with it doesn't even matter - you are not rational yourself and never will be.

The irony of what Krellin just said made me cough frosted flakes all over.

Thanks, buddy. Coffee wasn't doing it this morning, a jolt of adrenaline did nicely. :P

And the point remains despite all the "inane obfuscation" from people like Tolstoy, Krellin, Invictus, President Eden etc. This thread is about politics not policy.

Paul Ryan is one of the very faces of the congressional gridlock that many ameicans, especially in the center, blame our current situation on. I still believe it makes absolutely no political sense for a guy running as a Washington outsider, to reach into the hellacious congressional battles and pull out a guy, who along with Eric Cantor, has been the face on every congressional breakdown we have had in the past few years.

Its not that I care, but Romney has given the Democrats a huge card to play during the campaign. He has allowed them to tie his potential administration directly to the congessional gridlock (despite whose fault it really is and whose dad can beat up whose). I think it is a brain dead political move, and I think anyone looking at it from a neutral point of view rather than a cheerleaders point of view would agree.

I should say republican face on every congressional breakdown, there are democratic faces too. I assume you cheerleaders would not give e the benefit of the doubt on that one

Quite right, Santa. According to OpenSecrets.org Ryan ranks 349/442 in the House in terms of sponsoring bills this cycle. 430/442 in co-sponsoring.

These are unquestionably very unimpressive figures, especially considering how incredibly unproductive this Congress has been in general with Republican leadership of the House.

"I tend to think differently for someone who thinks a fucking conspiracy is afoot for zionist jews are choosing presidents behind close doors. "

How amusing. Apparently it's now a racist thought crime to point out that Sheldon Adelson has spent tens of millions of dollars influencing elections both in America and Israel. That makes the entirety of the American media 'anti-Semitic'.

There it is! The Jews are really choosing the president behind closed doors! We need free-thinkers like Tolstoy to expose this and people like President Eden to defend him.

Obviously people spending money trying to influence elections in america is a sign of a massive conspiracy.

Lets just ignore that Tolstoy said Obama was chosen by the Zionist world order while hardcore Zionists support the OTHER candidate. Never let facts get in the way of a hair-brained story.

A lot of the American media is anti-Semitic. If they weren't, they'd see the evil that's taken place on both sides of the battle in the Middle East, which, by the way, has progressed for thousands of years and won't end for thousands of years. Not saying Israel will be there that long, but some remnant of it will be there.

I would also like to point out that in the same way Herman Cain is a big pizza guy, Paul Ryan actually worked with Oscar Meyer and the Weinermobile for a little while before coming into politics. The GOP must have some really good conference lunches.

Yeah bo --- god, isn't is *awful* when people come from the private sector into politics? Damn those fools and their real-world business experience!!!

As for the fools here mentionking gridlock....the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED SENATE has not passed a budget in what? 3 years? If you people want to play the game, you better have your facts straight....

To repeat what I just said for the sobriety impaired. Gridlock is obviously a two way street but a senator from the last 3 years is not on the democratic ticket and the guy who is tossing bombs up to the senate in order to perpetuate the gridlock is on the republican ticket. Cantor and Ryan were two faces of the republican budget battles, and while they were the heroes of the right they were not viewed as heroes in the center. They were largely viewed as the irreconcilable of the modern republican party. Now policy wise you might agree, politics wise, I don't know how oyu think this pick caters to anyone but those right of Romney

and I don't think American media is anti-semitic so don't tar me with hat statement.

You're the one equating mention of Adelson to "Jews pick the president behind closed doors", not me.

Santa says, "Blah blah blah blah blah..." and is so blatantly biased it isn't even worth reading most of what he write. THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS HAS PASSED **MANY** BUDGETS. Obama has put forth budgets that not even the Democrats will vote for. The Democrats (other than Obama) don't ever put budgets forth to vote on.

Get a life, Santa.

Maybe if you weren't so drunk you would comprehend simple truths.

Insults =/= politics

There're a lot of things you can call Tolstoy, SantaClausowitz (9/11 denialist, paranoid, delusional) but from what he's written here there's nothing worthy of the term antisemitic.

"No one even mentioned Ron Paul. Sensitive much?"

Tolstoy did, to which you immediately jumped to the usual tired conspiracy nut canards.

"company you keep"

Sorry, what? I actually don't keep that company, keep 'em coming though.

"I should also add Paul's willingness to cow-tow to racists, anti-semites and all around bigots also drives me away."

That's a valid criticism. You would be hard-pressed to find a candidate running who doesn't cow-tow to the extreme ends of their respective political ideologies, which, for Paul, includes company like that - but still valid. Now why would you wait until the third page to make a valid criticism?

"There it is! The Jews are really choosing the president behind closed doors! We need free-thinkers like Tolstoy to expose this and people like President Eden to defend him."

How do you even jump from... what? I don't even follow how this makes sense, but sure, whatever, I'm clearly a Jew-hating-enabler. You caught me good on that one. GG.

No Tolstoy didn't Tolstoy mentioned a conspiracy theory straight up, not Ron Paul

You do keep that company if you defend people spouting conspiracy theories that their is a zionist cabal chosing our leaders.

I'm sorry there was an aside that is completely irrelevant to the post that mentioned paul, which obviously no one was responding to

and on page 2 I believe I stated that Ron Paul wants to bring us back to a 119th century economic system, I believe that is quite a valid criticism. Putting a modern economy on a gold or gold-esque standard is absolutely ludicrous.

Could you please point to where I said "their is a zionist cabal chosing our leaders. [sic]"?

I think the pick is actually a sign that Romney and the central Republican leadership are either confident or desperate to win. Certainly Romney is not being written off by anyone in the party at this point. Why? Because if the Paul Ryan budget and it's philosophy is repudiated on the national stage in a Presidential election, the chances for Republicans to offer convincing messages to voters for the next several years is utterly demolished. Romney is all in, and he's going to take down the party with him.

Unless of course Romney wins, in which case I am going to.... stay in Canada. It's pretty nice here (krellin free since '93!*)

*I am actually not sure when krellin last visited Canada... it would probably cause him to self-destruct

Santaclauswitz,
I would like to add that Tolstoy does not appear to believe that the elections are fixed by Jews (influenced by several wealthy zionists perhaps) and clearly does not appear to be a raging anti-Semite. Come on man. Your incessant accusations are as asinine and unfunny.

Sorry, guess I'm just another of those hypersensitive Jews! Throwing around Zionist as a pejorative and consistently talking about the "powers that be" who fix elections to lead to war with Iran aren't the least bit offensive. What I find as asinine and unfunny is the attitude that Jews exerting influence, or Jews using money, or Jews supporting Israel are enemies of a democratic state which is Tolstoy's bread and butter and has been for some time. You want to have issues with US policy in the middle east, go ahead. If you want to portray Jews who dare believe there should be a Jewish homeland as a bunch of Shylocks steering our country into the abyss, I'm sorry, I call them like I see them.

If you don't like it too bad.

http://95.211.128.12/webdiplomacy/forum.php?threadID=782701&page-thread=2

Just remember all the threads where Tolstoy pulls crap like this.

Personally I don't think anyone who is dropping millions of dollars to influence an election should be excused; Jewish or not. We need strict limits on donations from individuals and corporations regardless of what side or issue is being supported.

Interesting lack of knowledge of human behaviour, i think...

Don't supermarkets know that you put the two bottles of wine at 20$ and 35$ together and people will buy a bit of both, but you put beside them a 85$ bottle and suddenly the 35 seems cheap enough and the 20 seems like a piece of shit...
Nobody buys the 85$ bottle, ever, infact it can be empty... But the increase in sales of the 35$ vs 20$ bottles makes it worth the shelf space.

Having a third party left-leaning candiadate (and/or a ron paul) a green party or communist party candidate would totally change peoples prespective of the choices, even if none of them had a shot at getting elected...

And a single transferable vote would let you rank the politicians in order of preference so no-one loses out!

What a farce!

"Throwing around Zionist as a pejorative and consistently talking about the "powers that be" who fix elections to lead to war with Iran aren't the least bit offensive."

The whole discussion of the creation of the state of Israel has been played out plenty of times on the forum, so I don't want to go back to that, but suffice to say that if, as Tolstoy and I do think, you view the creation of Israel as it was created as problematic, you're not going to view Zionism or its adherents positively. The problem was never the idea that there should be a Jewish homeland, indeed that concept is no more problematic than any other national self-determination sentiment, but always with the way it was done. I know I've made that clear in my past posts and I've felt that Tolstoy did the same, so yeah, you're overreacting here, pal, sorry. (And not in the "one of those hypersensitive Jews!" way, whatever that even means.) There's certainly room for disagreeing, but just as I wouldn't characterize you as calling for Israeli lebensraum just because you want a Jewish state, it would be nice to be able to disagree with the precise way that the state of Israel came into existence without being called an anti-Semite. And no, sorry, I know you're saying you'd allow for this, but whether you mean to carry the position or not, you're not really allowing for it. Adherents to a broad political ideology should not be defined by their most extreme; that this isn't patently obvious is rather sad, honestly.

As for 'fixing elections to lead to war with Iran' - though again not explicitly as in a third world country, it's hard to say elections aren't practically 'fixed' through the incredible amounts of money invested in them by powerful corporations and other special interests - the 'powers that be,' so to speak (though speaking for myself I don't like that phrase). dangermouse made the point already - it's certainly not just rich Jews, it's rich everybody, and the end result, among other things, has looked like war with Iran in the near future and has looked that way for quite some time. And again, it's not just Jews. You threw out the anti-Semite card. After that, Tolstoy referenced Romney aligning himself with extreme Zionists (a fact) as part of - *as part of*, meaning *this is not the crucial point but a supporting detail of the crucial point* - a continuation of the US's neoimperialist foreign policy over the past few decades.

Santa, I like you, I find your posts are fairly informative (particularly with respect to history) and generally entertaining, but I really think you're off the mark here.

And i'm with dangermouse.

Oh and no war with iran is unthinkable. You've got to be crazy. Their ally syria is in the middle of a civil war and the 'west' does nothing. Kofi Anan quit because the countries which make up the UN are sitting on their hands - the UN needs reform?

But the US is able to act without russian or chinese agreement, and getting Iran involved in Syria would be grwat for destabilising the whole region. All the US would need do is say they were going in...