Interesting characters on a2k

You, for example, are likely to believe companies that keep any of their revenues to be “unfettered,”

I'm unaware of any serious individual or group calling for capitalism without any restraint, but you seem to be an expert on right-wing fringe groups, real and imagined, so perhaps you can identify one.

The Pope seems to be a nice old man, even if he's a leftist religious anachronism, but you have to believe he actually represents a moral force in the world to care what he thinks or says. It's funny how so many left-wingers seem to have reconsidered the legitimacy of the Holy See since Benedict gave way to Francis.

[David]Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 presidential election, sharing the party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark–Koch ticket promising to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE."

Perhaps that's why you were so mystified by such a reasonable statement.

Entirely foolish claim. Please don't waste my time.

I've made no such absolutist claim. The modern conservative stance is that regulation of business or the restrictions on profit-taking work a pervasive effect on the nation and that if these were repealed and minimized then America would be both more free and more prosperous. You're well aware of that and of the constant repetition of this right wing axiom, and the broad moves, where Republicans presently hold power, to put these ideological notions into practice.

All popes are old. Obviously, popes do represent a moral force in the world. It's not a matter of "legitimacy of the Holy See". That body has no legitimacy as a faultless or superior moral authority to me. But I'll cheer the choice made in this fellow and his concurrence with my views.

President Barack Obama praised Pope Francis on Thursday, describing the Catholic leader as an "extraordinarily thoughtful" messenger of "peace and justice."

Speaking during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews airing on "Hardball," Obama spoke highly of the Pope's recent remarks on income inequality.

"I think Pope Francis is showing himself to be just an extraordinarily thoughtful and soulful messenger of peace and justice," Obama said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by NBC News. "I haven't had a chance to meet him yet. But everything that I've read, everything that I've seen from him, indicates the degree to, to which he is trying to remind us of those core obligations."

Obama continued, "And, you know, as I said in my speech yesterday, we live in a market economy that is the greatest generator of wealth in history. We're risk takers. We're entrepreneurs... And we want to maintain that sense of character. But what I always remind people is that what also built this country was a sense of community."

On Wednesday, Obama quoted the Pope during a speech on income disparity.

"Across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length," Obama said.

The president then cited a line from the Pope's apostolic exhortation on poverty.

"'How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?'" he asked.

Re the Kochs and John Birch... god knows what you bother to study. [David]Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 presidential election, sharing the party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark–Koch ticket promising to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE."

If Rand Paul runs (and it seems fairly certain that he will) the terms "libertarian" and "libertarianism" will be incessantly used by the media to describe him. If the left can successfully define these terms for Americans, it will go a long way in eliminating the threat of a Paul candidacy.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.5 Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Kemp, you might remember, had both a personal history — as a pro-civil rights union representative in the American Football League — and a political ideology suited to outreach. He conceived an active role for government in empowering individuals and reclaiming urban communities.

Paul has his own history. He employed, as a close Senate aide, a writer who styled himself the “Southern Avenger” and who authored a column titled “John Wilkes Booth Was Right.” This personnel decision would have been impossible to imagine from Kemp. But it points out the deep affinity between certain strains of libertarianism and the Lost Cause. While running for the Senate, Paul criticized the centerpiece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the part desegregating public accommodations — because it conflicted with his libertarian conception of property rights. And Rand Paul, of course, worked for a presidential candidate in 2012 (his father, Ron Paul) who claimed that the Civil Rights Act “violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty” and argued that the Civil War was a senseless mistake.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul’s 2013 proposal for a balanced budget in five years — which would have eviscerated large portions of the federal government and weakened the social safety net — was less of a blueprint for reform than a demolition order.

However, I do believe the original statement, to which you objected, involved a rational combination of ideas and a result that was not contrary to reason, as we have since discussed.

She was an ideologue of the worst sort - incapable of flexibility and, as I noted, incapable utterly of admitting error. Her politics and her theology were set in stone which made her about as stupid as a stone. I recall her glib dismissal of Elaine Pagel's scholarship and that was just one of a thousand such instances - she simply could not go there because it was theologically verboten landscape within her brand of anti-intellectual, literalist southern protestantism.

And anyone who might imagine that she didn't delight in her "victimization", in the face of which she stood so lonely and heroic at God's side, is being rather dull.

NONE OF THE PEOPLE HERE ARE INTERESTING, DO YOU HEAR ME ! ! ! NONE OF THEM ! ! !