Who do you want to win the 2012 U.S. Presidential election?

Sure is Republican candidates in here.

Everyone I know absolutely loves Ron Paul, though they don't think he'll become president. I would rather have rick perry represent the republicans, since he might win, whereas Ron Paul would lose to Obama. I hate how the media does everything to make guys like Ron look bad, but that's the cost of giving the people what they need instead of what they want.

I really hate the notion that Ron Paul can't beat Obama and how un-electable he is. It simply isn't true. There have been polls done pitting Ron Paul against Obama and Ron Paul either wins them or comes within 1% of winning. These polls also show that out of all the GOP candidates, Ron Paul does the best against Obama.

I will not be basing my vote on who is likely to win. Even if Ron Paul doesn't win the GOP primary, I will be writing him in. He is the only intelligent choice.

Ron Paul and most of the republican candidates are, frankly, utter loons. I do hope they never get to be in charge of our country.

I honestly want HRC to run again, but she has most emphatically stated that she will not. Sadness. She's doing such a great job as SoS and I'm pretty sure she would be a good president.

[font=verdana][color=green]Now now, you know that America couldn't face two historic-Democrats in a row; the Deep South would have a heart attack at the thought!

But in all seriousness though, I think that, speaking as a Englishman, Obama would be a good choice for a second term. From what I can tell, he hasn't done anything to really piss the rest of the world off, which can only be a good thing, right?

That said, if anyone here on Fakku chooses Bachmann, trolling or not, I will find you and I will kick your ass to the moon. Unless you are a sadist who wants to be considered a common criminal (on par with child molesters) just because you like hentai or anything else not stringently agreed upon by the most right-wing Fascist church groups.

Ron Paul and most of the republican candidates are, frankly, utter loons. I do hope they never get to be in charge of our country.

I honestly want HRC to run again, but she has most emphatically stated that she will not. Sadness. She's doing such a great job as SoS and I'm pretty sure she would be a good president.

Obama has definitely pissed off some countries, mostly in the Middle East, by continuing the Bush wars and adding on to them with the whole Libya issue. But he is the lesser (least?) evil in this case when compared to the nutjobs like Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, Palin, and Perry.

I would like to know why you think Ron Paul is an utter loon. To say such a thing essentially means you also think that liberty and the constitution is loony.

[font=verdana][color=green]And this is the biggest load of reducio ad absurdium I've heard in a long time. Are you seriously insinuating that, under Obama's rule, that you've had liberty stripped from you?

[font=verdana][color=green]And this is the biggest load of reducio ad absurdium I've heard in a long time. Are you seriously insinuating that, under Obama's rule, that you've had liberty stripped from you?

Funnily enough, he gave a doozy of a speech the other week where he talked about all the liberties which Bush undoubtedly did strip from the American people...only to go on to suggest a cack-handed solution to Guantanamo, via indefinite detention somewhere else. Except this one may put the framework in place to do it to anyone.

Not that I disagree with the notion that Ron Paul is an idiot; he fails to realise that society has changed slightly in the couple hundred years since the constitution was authored. 'Liberty' equates to abandonment.

Quite frankly I don't know which of Ron Paul's policies you think is loony. I agree with him on just about everything. If you could elaborate on why you disapprove of Ron Paul, that would be great.

Abolishing the EPA--absolutely fucking bad idea. If you leave environmental protections up to the state, it's not like the states with higher protections benefit from those if they share a border with states with lower standards. Pollution doesn't respect state borders, doncha know. We're all breathing the same air here, and there have to be federal minimum regulations for what we can do to the environment.

What makes you the strongest candidate on energy and the environment?

...On environment, governments don't have a good reputation for doing a good job protecting the environment. If you look at the extreme of socialism or communism, they were very poor environmentalists. Private property owners have a much better record of taking care of the environment. If you look at the common ownership of the lands in the West, they're much more poorly treated than those that are privately owned. In a free-market system, nobody is permitted to pollute their neighbor's private property -- water, air, or land. It is very strict.

But there are realms of the environment that, by definition, can't be owned, right? How would you divide the sky or the sea into private parcels?

The air can certainly be identified. If you have a mill next door to me, you don't have a right to pollute my air -- that can be properly defined by property rights. Water: if you're on a river you certainly can define it, if you're on a lake you certainly can define it. Even oceans can be defined by international agreements. You can be very strict with it. If it is air that crosses a boundary between Canada and the United States, you would have to have two governments come together, voluntarily solving these problems.

Can you elaborate on when government intervention is and isn't appropriate?

Certainly, any time there's injury to another person, another person's land, or another person's environment, there's [legal] recourse with the government.

What do you see as the role of the Environmental Protection Agency?

You wouldn't need it. Environmental protection in the U.S. should function according to the same premise as "prior restraint" in a newspaper. Newspapers can't print anything that's a lie. There has to be recourse. But you don't invite the government in to review every single thing that the print media does with the assumption they might do something wrong. The EPA assumes you might do something wrong; it's a bureaucratic, intrusive approach and it favors those who have political connections.

Is it appropriate for the government to regulate toxic or dangerous materials, like lead in children's toys?

If a toy company is doing something dangerous, they're liable and they should be held responsible. The government should hold them responsible, but not be the inspector. The government can't inspect every single toy that comes into the country.

So you see it as the legal system that brings about environmental protection?

Right. Some of this stuff can be handled locally with a government. I was raised in the city of Pittsburgh. It was the filthiest city in the country because it was a steel town. You couldn't even see the sun on a sunny day. Then it was cleaned up -- not by the EPA, by local authorities that said you don't have a right to pollute -- and the government cleaned it up and the city's a beautiful city. You don't need this huge bureaucracy that's remote from the problem. Pittsburgh dealt with it in a local fashion and it worked out quite well.

What if you're part of a community that's getting dumped on, but you don't have the time or the money to sue the offending polluter?

Imagine that everyone living in one suburb, rather than using regular trash service, were taking their household trash to the next town over and simply tossing it in the yards of those living in the nearby town. Is there any question that legal mechanisms are in place to remedy this action? In principle, your concerns are no different, except that, for a good number of years, legislatures and courts have failed to enforce the property rights of those being dumped on with respect to certain forms of pollution. This form of government failure has persisted since the industrial revolution when, in the name of so-called progress, certain forms of pollution were legally tolerated or ignored to benefit some popular regional employer or politically popular entity.

When all forms of physical trespass, be that smoke, particulate matter, etc., are legally recognized for what they are -- a physical trespass upon the property and rights of another -- concerns about difficulty in suing the offending party will be largely diminished. When any such cases are known to be slam-dunk wins for the person whose property is being polluted, those doing the polluting will no longer persist in doing so. Against a backdrop of property rights actually enforced, contingency and class-action cases are additional legal mechanisms that resolve this concern.

Do you think it should be illegal to emit harmful pollutants?

You should be held responsible in a court of law and you should be able to be closed down if you're damaging your neighbor's property in any way whatsoever.

Who would set the law about what pollutants could and couldn't be emitted? Congress?

Not under my presidency -- the Congress wouldn't do it. The people who claim damage would have to say, look, I'm sitting here, and these poisons are coming over, and I can prove it, and I want it stopped, and I want compensation.

You've described your opposition to wars for oil as an example of your support for eco-friendly policies. Can you elaborate?

Generally speaking, war causes pollution -- uranium, burning of fuel for no good purpose. The Pentagon burns more fuel than the whole country of Sweden.

He is anti-abortion. Banning abortion or "leaving it up to states" is a bad idea because it does not do anything to reduce abortion rates; it just ups the number of illegal and unsafe abortions, making it even more dangerous for women and fetuses. Abortions are a medical issue and should just be between the doctor and the woman. Also, the best way of reducing the abortion rate is by increasing contraception, something that Ron Paul does not endorse.

Returning to gold standards--it's not a workable system. Better economists have explained this, so just look it up.

Healthcare--Obamacare is a mess, but less of a mess than what Paul is proposing. Tax breaks for paying for healthcare? End of HMO and other insurance company monopolies? Sure! However that still leaves the fact that many people, tax break or not, cannot afford healthcare. The best solution would be socialized healthcare like the NHS. There are many models of successful socialized healthcare around the world, which America can emulate. Each has its own problems, sure, but they're all still better than the current clusterfuck.

Elimination of the IRS and income tax--again, unworkable and illogical. A progressive tax system is the fairest.