The Republican YouTube Debate
The CNN/YouTube Republican debate is tomorrow night and, as of right now, almost 5000 video questions have been submitted (click here to view them). Though I don't have anywhere near the time it would take to view them all, I did sample quite a few. Many of them are truly bizarre and most are quite amateur (which I suppose is the point), but many of them ask excellent questions. Here are some of the ones I'd like to hear the GOP candidates respond to (feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments):
On gays in the military:
On the detention of U.S. citizens:
On taxes:
On waterboarding:
On the Confederate flag:
On the national debt:
On the Unitary Executive Theory:
On telecom immunity:
On healthcare:
On the estate tax:
On gays in the military:
On the detention of U.S. citizens:
On taxes:
On waterboarding:
On the Confederate flag:
On the national debt:
On the Unitary Executive Theory:
On telecom immunity:
On healthcare:
On the estate tax:
posted by A.L. at 1:17 PM
4 Comments:
Hell, I guess I'll go first (too much time on my hands).
The first and only one I've looked at so far is the one on the Laffer curve. The guy asks the perfect question about it, and the only truthful answer (in my opinion) is that it is not possible to know, except in extreme cases. Reagan, in my view, was presented with such an extreme case in the form of the then-prevailing 70% top marginal rate. I think his cuts did, indeed, result in a net increae in federal income tax revenues, although even that is a matter about which at least one or two reasonable minds differ. But ever since the Reagan cuts, no one has known, and no one knows now. And the changes in marginal income tax rates since Reagan have not been large enough to provide a good test.
The capital gains tax provides a separate and distinct test case, and again, you really can't be sure. I believe that each time the tax has been reduced, it has resulted in a net gain in revenues from that tax. I have a hunch that reducing it below 15% will not increase revenues over the long term, and that increasing the rate might well reduce revenues. In other words, it's probably at the optimum level right now. But I can't prove it.
(A.L. have gone round and round about this. I suspect he disagrees in some manner or other.)
This is a question that SHOULD be asked:
see video: CNN/YouTube Republican Debate: Giuliani 9/11 Question
http://representativepress.googlepages.com/CNNYouTube.html
Giuliani claims, "American foreign policy had nothing to do with the September 11th. September 11th happened because these people who hate us, hate us because of the freedoms that we have." Giuliani is lying to us.
and CNN senior vice president David Bohrman is a clown
Well, Tom, to find out what was the "root cause" of the 9/11 attacks, why don't we check out what the people who did the attacking had to say?
Osama bin Laden said it had to do with such matters as the Tragedy of Andalusia (1492) and the American use of atomic weapons under the administration of Democrat Harry Truman (1945). Mohammed Atta said it was because of the skyscrapers that blocked his view of the pyramids in Egypt.
Of course, if one has a Jones against American foreign policy, what better means of denouncing it that to say that it caused the 9/11 attacks? But it's a little unseemly that such a claim comes from the American Left instead of the attackers themselves.
But we can certainly agree that the folks at CNN are bozos of the first water. Let's shake on that one, Tom, in the conservative spirit of compromise.
Simply because it is such a joyous thing to do, let us perform a little exegesis on the words of Mr. bin Laden, and contrast his explanation of the reasons for the 9/11 attacks with those of Mr. Tom.
Here is bin Laden in the first tape released after the attack:
"Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine. We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish....
"And what America is facing today is something very little of what we have tasted for decades. Our nation, since nearly 80 years is tasting this humility. Sons are killed, and nobody answers the call."
In the first reference, bin Laden alluded to the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula in 1492--which was a little bit before the New World's foreign policy had had a chance to take hold.
In his mention of the events of 80 years before, the man whom Mr. Tom seems to want to defend, or at least explain, was referring to the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire between the British and the French after World War I. It would be nice if Bin Laden would note that the United States objected to the Sykes-Picot agreement as a betrayal of the principle of self-determination, but that's probably asking for too much. Perhaps Mr. Tom has a different view, which I would love to hear. I suppose it could be argued that the whole thing was Warren G. Harding's fault, since as president in 1921 he failed to prevent it. How about it, Mr. Tom?
Bin Laden continued: "People--event of the world--in Japan, hundreds of thousands of people got killed. This is not a war crime. Or in Iraq, what our--who are being killed in Iraq. This is not a crime. And those, when they were attacked in my Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam, Afghanistan, and Sudan were attacked."
Again, Mr. Tom, let us hear from you. Who, exactly, was being killed in Iraq in 2001? And what, exactly, did bin Laden mean about his Nairobi, and etc.? Wait, I get it: Nairobi was the very epicenter of the nefarious American foreign policy.
Remember when Jeanne Kirkpatrick spoke of those who "always blame America first?" She was talking about the 1984 version of the Democratic Party, but I'm sure she never dreamed of the likes of Mr. Tom.
Ground control to Mr. Tom...Ground control to Mr. Tom...Take your protein pills and put your helmet on...
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