Gyroscopic Investing

Desert wrote:

MediumTex wrote: Moda,

I agree with you.

Dismantling the government-industrial-surveillance complex would be a very hard thing to do.

I've long assumed that newly-elected presidents are taken into a special room where it is explained how things really work in this country.  "Nice little campaign, George, but we're gonna need you to shut your pie hole and start invading the Middle East.  You can choose not to, of course, but I wouldn't if I were you.  You love your family, don't you, George?"

I will never forget how George W. Bush ridiculed Gore during the 2000 debates over the futility of "nation building."  By late 2003, guess who had undertaken two of the largest nation building projects since WWII? 

Bush also ridiculed Gore for being a big spending liberal.  I don't know how much Gore would have spent as President, but it would have been hard to top Bush's multiple wars, Medicare expansion, and budget busting tax cuts.

As far as Obama and his campaign rhetoric, I am still waiting for him to keep his promise to close Guantanamo.

More and more, I am starting to think of Obama as a more urbane and suave version of Richard Nixon, except where the country was outraged at Nixon's paranoia, secrecy and attitude that he was above the law, the American people don't seem that upset at the way Obama has quietly carried on the Bush administration's consolidation of executive power and build-out of a surveillance state.

MediumTex wrote: More and more, I am starting to think of Obama as a more urbane and suave version of Richard Nixon, except where the country was outraged at Nixon's paranoia, secrecy and attitude that he was above the law, the American people don't seem that upset at the way Obama has quietly carried on the Bush administration's consolidation of executive power and build-out of a surveillance state.

That's a good comparison between Nixon and Obama and I've heard others make it too.

But I don't recall the American people being that outraged at Nixon. Like Obama he won two elections, one in an overwhelming landslide. I don't think the average American was any more upset about Watergate than they were about the Obama IRS scandals. The liberal media, of course, a much different story.

The thing about Nixon that always gets me is that what finally brought him down was the Watergate break-in, trying to steal some secrets from the democrats for use in the election. Conducting secret, unauthorized wars in Laos and Cambodia, killing nearly a million people, no big deal.

Ever wonder why your opinions about isolationism gather so few votes? Let me guess. People are brainwashed.  They're manipulated.  They're uninformed. Why is Rand Paul always so low in the polling? Is it his hair?

Reub wrote: Why is Rand Paul always so low in the polling? Is it his hair?

I think the hair is part of it.  Someone said that Paul's style reminded them of the Everly Brothers.  I think that people are craving a sense of "modernness" in candidates, and I think that's why people like Trump, Carson and Fiorina are inexplicably appealing to people.  These candidates are like the bell bottoms of the political fashion cycle: popular, gaudy and sort of stupid-looking.  Ross Perot blazed this trail back in 1992.

Can you imagine Trump on the debate stage with George Bush and Ronald Reagan during the 1980 campaign?

Reub wrote: Ever wonder why your opinions about isolationism gather so few votes? Let me guess. People are brainwashed.  They're manipulated.  They're uninformed. Why is Rand Paul always so low in the polling? Is it his hair?

Because isolationism is conservative and interventionism is progressive?  We're a progressive nation now, in case you haven't noticed.