Iowa Strikes Back

Krista Swisher, Indianapolis, IN — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:49:20 GMT

Hey, good Friday afternoon! When did Iowa become Iraq?! Hell, I must have slept through that. Steve, are you still with us, bud?

Ah yes...state fair season is here - deep fried food on a stick, 4H displays (remember, I'm originally a farm girl, so if I need to explain "4H", I will later), and pork and lamb food tents strategically placed next to the lamb and swine animal barns. Indiana is even getting into the butter "art" here. I wonder if all the people who make this stuff have seen the movie LAST TANGO IN PARIS?

I actually read an interesting blurb about the LOGO debate on the Yahoo! website. The group wanted to have a forum for Republican candidates, but no Republicans wanted to show up. Hello??! Last I checked, this was 2007 - not the 1950's where homosexuals were "security risks." Although, having said that, some of what the Democratic candidates had to say made me shudder a bit (not just what came from Bill Richardson).

Iowa Strikes Back

Steve Turner Cedar Falls Iowa — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:57:25 GMT

"Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain." festooned on a banner, held by a Bald Eagle, and squarely in the middle of a French Tricolor or a flag that looks exactly like a French Tricolor. We do have our butter sculptors and even a few tallow scupltors, who would put Congress to task for creativity with fat. Just a few notes from Ten-WA .

Iowa Strikes Back

Rocky Mountain Guy, Colorado — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:59:36 GMT

In my best Homer Simpson tongue hanging out gurgling sound, "Mmmmmmm butter cow"

Iowa Strikes Back

Carol, still undecided in Long Valley NJ — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:15:47 GMT

On paper, his resume made Governor Bill Richardson look like the perfect candidate. In the beginning, he had my vote. To bad he's not doing as well in person. His handlers and his debate prep folks should be fired.

Is there such a thing as finishing school for politicians? Nixon obviously attended one, after losing in 1960 and resurfacing to win in 1972.

Iowa Strikes Back

Sue, West Allis, Wisconsin — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:32:11 GMT

They gotta be first so they can keep feeding us High Fructose Corn Syrup without government regulation or oversight.

At this rate, the first primary or caucus will the the day after inaguration.

Iowa Strikes Back

Bill Rochester NY — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:52:19 GMT

Does any poster to this blog actually CARE about the Repugnican Straw Vote on Saturday? ANY of the Democratic Candidates will make a better President than ANY of the Repugnicans. That includes Hillary.(gulp). The Repugnicans are intellectually and morally and BANKRUPT.

Iowa Strikes Back

Brandon in IA (hates Des Moines) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:19:25 GMT

LOL, the butter cow!!

God...Iowa State Fair...

too bad it's in/around Des Moines, otherwise I'd go.

Oh, and kudos to Steve for beating me to the punch on the Iowa motto and flag and seal.

Other Iowan things, from very near me: Clarence Chamberlain, the guy who would've beaten Lindbergh across the Atlantic if he hadn't gotten sued, Former Treasury Secretary (we're talking Teddy Roosevelt administration) Les Shaw, and that nutjob Steve King.

Iowa Strikes Back

jen,il — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:38:56 GMT

So does that mean the winner of the republican straw poll gets to be the Butter Queen? Guiliani has quite a bit of experiance in gowns.

Iowa Strikes Back

Matt, Minneapolis, MN — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:57:38 GMT

I hope Guiliani and Romney don't tank too hard too early. The dems really need those guys in the race. Otherwise the GOP might find a candidate that actually has a chance at winning.

Iowa Strikes Back

Steve Turner Cedar Falls Iowa — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:34:26 GMT

As for the other items, rumor has it that the current administration bought two hundred million gallons of that ink from Halliburton for use in Democratic Elections all over the Muslim World. Now they find out that it has a shelf life, so they are sending it out to the States. Get used to it, OK? (Hint, Hint). As for Richardson's comment? Who cares? Some sex is by choice, some is out of boredom, and some is even on TV, but most of it is unexplainable except by the people having it, no matter what gender, race, blood-type, automobile preference, belt-size, or number of fingers, they prefer. Let's leave the Sexual-Hysterics to the people who aren't having any, OK?

Iowa Strikes Back

Robert, Staten Island, NY — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:19:32 GMT

I think Bill Richardson's comment about if being gay is a choice or biological is small when compared to Rudy Giuliani's statement that he spent more time at the 9/11 WTC site after than some of the rescue workers. It was an awful comment and he should be the worse person in the world just because of that. Check out the link below for some more of his 9/11 lies.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0732,barrett,77463,6.html

Iowa Strikes Back

Niels, not raised in a barn on Bayou DeGradeabelle, Post-Katrina MS — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:03:44 GMT

"The Iowa Governor Who Saved Christmas" sounds like another heartwarming made-for-TV movie for this holiday season. Just don't get those warm hearts too close to the cow . . .

Iowa Strikes Back

Steve Turner Cedar Falls Iowa — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:44:35 GMT

....'clarified' his Position? Is that a Butter Joke?

Iowa Strikes Back

Russell in Maryland — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:51:07 GMT

That cow is in an air conditioned room -- right? We have hit 100 a couple of days this past week.

Iowa Strikes Back

John Warrenton, Virginia — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:51:54 GMT

There is one republican who is not morally bankrupt...Ron Paul. He is refusing his govt. pension, returns a portion of his office budget every year, has never taken a government paid junket, voted the taxpayers best friend, never voted to raise taxes, never voted for an unbalanced budget, always votes against congressional pay raises, believes in gun ownership, voted against the war (because he ACTUALLY READ the intelligence), voted against the patriot act (there are other ways of protecting us, including our borders, instead of waging a war on our freedoms), voted against regulating the internet, and has great plans for the war, sound economic practices (we are going under folks, in case you hadn't noticed) and immigration reform. There can be no better man that is running right now. Actually, he is not a Republican. He is a Libertarian. But since there will be no "libertarian debates", he jumped on the Repub. bandwagon due to his belief in a limited constitutional government not tempted by special interest groups...AS TRUE REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE!!!

Check him out...you won't believe his record. Highly respected, with a SOLID, CLEAN history. Officer in the military, medical doctor, 10 term congressman. He is qualified for everything we need for the job...military leadership, health care, and a damn good president.

Iowa Strikes Back

Tim, NY — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:44:13 GMT

"They have a butter Last Supper. And guess what's on the table?" "What?" "Butter."

Iowa Strikes Back

John Warrenton VA — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 12:29:05 GMT

I leave a simple post discussing the positive attributes of Ron Paul and you censor it? Shame on you msnbc. This is why I quit watching Keith O. Even though he's honest in exposing the truth about our corrupt government, he still WORKS FOR a corrupt news organization. You are clearly playing a leading role in the break down of this country and our democracy.

Iowa Strikes Back

John Warrenton VA — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:18:51 GMT

Wow. I am surprised. Thanks for being honest and putting up both posts.

Iowa Strikes Back

Steve Turner Cedar Falls Iowa — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:44:44 GMT

Plans were in the works for a 'Butter Woodstock" for this year, but the amount of Butter available was not enough to make the crowd of 500,000+, let alone the gigantic figure of Bob 'the Bear' Hite, of Canned Heat.

Iowa Strikes Back

Terry Columbia, SC — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:05:15 GMT

John Warrenton VA - yes, Ron Paul is a libertarian but not well publicized is his standard libertarian position on social security and Medicare ... he's not having any of those either and does not support the continuation of said federally funded benefits (and now greatly in need of reform). I sincerely hope he's a rich guy (probably) otherwise he might one day need all those benefits he's turning down. Libertarians have some good ideas but small government, limited defense forces, and no funded retirement benefits are just not going to fly, being from another era. On the other hand, failed government spending oversight, massive government waste, pork-barreling, fraudulant government subsidies, elimination of corporate lobbies, campaign reform and healthcare reform are a few of the other items that should be on every candidate's agenda - most are conspicuously missing. I will give Ron Paul credit for paying more attention to the crisis in government than other candidates with programmed agendas - these are the questions that need to be asked over and over - for example, who gives a rat's a$$ about Bill Richardson's opinion on the origins of homosexuality?? After all, it probably comes from the same mysterious place everything else emerges from - my current theory is 'holograms' -check it out. That said, if Libertarians can modify their ideological stance to the point of accepting the inevitability of federally funded benefits for us working stiffs they might just become a valid political force to contend with - in my opinion we need more that two parties any more, and with a real voice in government. While the platforms of democrats and republicans seem markedly different, what you actually get in the flesh seems markedly similar when all is said and done. We are indeed seeing a crisis in government but neither party is paying the slightest attention.

Iowa Strikes Back

Jamie, CV, CA — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:06:39 GMT

'Wow. I am surprised. Thanks for being honest and putting up both posts.
John Warrenton VA (Sent Saturday, August 11, 2007 10:18 AM)'

You're obviously new here, or you would know that the post don't usually appear automatically. They can literally take seconds, minutes, hours or days (especially on the weekends), to show up.

No great conspiracy or a shut down of opposes views-trust me! Sometimes the posts even appear in threads that they weren't intended for-it happens.:)

Iowa Strikes Back

Jamie, CV, CA — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:08:29 GMT

BTW, John Warrenton, VA: Ron Paul has been mentioned here many a times-and in a positive light. Stick around-you might find yourself pleasantly (and no doubt unpleasantly) surprised at times.:)

Iowa Strikes Back

MK, Indianapolis — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:04:37 GMT

I love Ron Paul! Check him out, he's the real deal. He is a republican I can support and I can't stand republicans! My oldest daughter and I have spent the weekend talking about him, she is fiercely independent and she has convinced me to take a look at him.

Iowa Strikes Back

Christopher Courington, Florence MA — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:34:35 GMT

Terry of Columbia, SC, and John of Warrenton, VA:

Thank you for the discussion of Ron Paul, which was conducted in a civil, informative way. If you two decide to stick around, you will discover that 99% of what is posted here follows those same principles. Yes, there is a lot of pro-dem cheerleading and anti-neocon booing, but you shouldn't be surprised or dismayed by this, as Countdown has established itself as a source of vehement criticism--refreshingly filled with facts and analysis--of the current administration. Is the show and this blog partisan? Of course it is. But plenty of people here know their stuff--even some of the pro-neocon dissenters here have the decency to provide links to contradicting facts and opinions. What this blog does not do is censor opinions, as long as the language is not threatening to an individual or overly profanity-laden (which is to say, you have some leeway there). I hope you stay and engage open discussion. Such is the fabric of democracy itself.

That said, I would like to briefly discuss why I would not consider Ron Paul a viable Republican option, even in the face of the appalling array of ideologues in the pocket of the "Christian" right.

1) He is not viable because--and I realize this gets uncomfortably close to an invalid teleology here--there is no way he can win, even with fairly distributed media coverage and a fundamentally revamped debate structure that demands substantive answers rather than continuing to allow for rehearsed cant. He cannot win for two reasons: a) he appears, at least, as a social moderate, which instantly loses him 30-35% of the (potential) vote; b) his libertarian perspective against all social entitlements is--regardless of whether you feel it is the best way to go, which is a different discussion--never, ever going to fly with disillusioned dems and a significant amount of independents. It will overwhelm the left appeal he might have gained with his anti-war stance. This isn't yet to address the intellectual validity or honesty of his positions, it is simply to say that having his positions is going to get him marginalized, a fact which--though I disagree with Mr. Paul on many things--I recognize is bad for democracy and profoundly unfair.

2) As concerns the intellectual validity and honesty of some of his positions, I find that there are substantial issues with Mr. Paul here as well. It is no secret that he is whisper/close to libertarianism, which is a position whose social and political analyses, as well as the philosophical underpinnings supporting these analyses, I find astonishingly simple-minded and fundamentally dishonest in the way it is promoted by folks such as John Stossel of ABC, to say nothing of the laughable Ms. Ayn Rand herself. To explore those points anywhere near adequately here is not possible, but as they apply to Mr. Paul, we can do that:

1) His proposed revocation of all social entitlements is based upon a theory of economic philosophy starting with Adam Smith, continuing through Jeremy Bentham, and espoused by such "giants" as Milton Friedman and his disciples. It says--quite similarly to the hard right--that the market will determine what is best for the economy, and that people, when presented with this basic, if harsh, reality, will behave in enlightened self-interest, rationally and towards self-preservation and independence, which serves the good for both the individual and the state. You can see this working a little in the background with the "welfare-to-work" Clintonian intiatives, as well as very much in securities deregulation. However, the problems with this perspective are so profound that I hardly know where to begin. First, there is simply NO evidence that, when provided with independence, that people behave "morally" and "rationally" according to what appeals to the greater good. This alone squashes the allged objectivity (which is different from Objectivism, the all-time--and seemingly hypocritical--libertarian philosophy) to which libertarianism lays a claim. People behave rationally according to what they have experienced, not according to an abstract notion of the social good. In fact, "enlightened self-interest" itself is an organically relativistic position, as people have many different sets of social experience, which are based on economic, parental, biological, geographic, cultural, linguistic, and other types of determinants. Moreover, how many examples do you need which show that big business does NOT behave in the name of the greater good--the new lending collapse, the outsourcing of jobs, crisis tendencies, among others? Capitalism was built for profit, not democracy. We have our system of government--ideally, at any rate--to keep those forces from ravaging the lot of us. So, to claim that the "market" will fix us all is both shockingly ignorant and naive. You personally may say that there are still some principles of free-marketism that hold true, but if there are, I cannot see them. It is one thing to promote the development of business with economic incentives, but it is quite another to provide multi-national corporations with enough loopholes to avoid paying ANY income taxes (disclosure: they do pay other types of taxes, but these are paltry compared to what they get away with not paying, like the rest of us are required to do--and more and more, for that matter).

My personal feeling is that taxes are the admission price for democratic freedoms--if you want your trash taken away, your roads paved, your schools rebuilt, and other things, then pony up. What is appalling--again, a sign that the market does not behave in the greater good--is the disproportionate amount of tax that the ever-shrinking middle class, as well as the dramatically increasing amount of the population below the middle class, have to pay as a percentage of their income.

(As a side note, it's a fucking joke that the party of "family values" has rigged the tax code to further gouge working families, making it tougher for them to get by and raise good, god-fearing republicans. Oh--what's that? They could have approved private social security accounts based in the stock market? You say that would have levelled the playing field? Isn't the huge increase in the Dow Jones Index a sign that, if people had been already invested, that they would be rolling in the cash right now? You're joking, right? Have you not been paying attention to the lending crash? To say nothing of the fact that, the stocks that have been soaring have been those of the very same lending companies which have batched loans and sold them as securities, which means that those "unfortunate" souls who never had the opportunity to sink their savings into the market would now be shouldered with unbelievable losses, if not soul-crushing debt.)

I realize I have not come close to finishing what I set out to say, but this post is getting rather long. If you wish to continue this discussion, I will be more than happy to do so. Peace to all.

Iowa Strikes Back

Sue, West Allis, Wisconsin — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:23:41 GMT

I had good feelings about Ron Paul too until I checked him out. Sorry to rain on the parade, but the truth about this guy makes BushCo look like a great president.

He has appeared on a lot of talk shows including the Colbert Report where he said he doesn't believe that the federal government has a role in anything other than defense. He has been specifically asked about Social Security, FEMA, food safety, consumer protection, worker safety, environmental protection, etc. and has said that they would disappear if he was president.

Can you imagine all the Social Security checks going away and every senior citizen becoming homeless? Can you imagine an even bigger crap shoot when you go to the grocery store as to the contamination of the food you buy (yeah, I know BushCo has reduced or eliminated inspection, but at least there are rules now)? Can you imagine how many mining "accidents" and other workplace "accidents" there would be if employers decided for themselves what working conditions were unsafe? Can you possibly imagine how many untested new drugs would be marketed by an unregulated pharmaceutical industry? Can you imagine how many airplane crashes there would be if aircraft safety, inspections and air traffic control went bye-bye? Can anyone possibly imagine how polluted our air and water would become without environmental laws?

While it's true that some corporations and businesses would do a good job, the regulations exist to make the unscrupulous ones meet minimum standards.

I don't know about you, but I think that there are some jobs that are so big that they can only be done by the feds.

Iowa Strikes Back

Steve Turner Cedar Falls Iowa — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:33:29 GMT

Is Ron Paul related to Ru Paul?