My own thoughts:
During the last 10 years or so, the Republicans have had control of congress. For the last 7 years, they have had the white house and a majority on the Supreme Court.
What good has this done for us? Nothing that I can see.
Where have all the real Conservitives gone? The ones that tried to reduce the size of government, deficits, foreign involvement, and their strong hold on Americans with taxes, rules and regulations.
The econemy looks as if it has sustained itself. But according to the GOP candidates, we have over-borrowed from foreign nations in lue of the World Bank and our treasury. Considering that our money isn't based on Gold anymore, where is the money? Is it being printed with nothing to back it? Nothing to base it on? Could it not be the same as using grass clipping? I mean if the printed money isn't based on anything, then it is worthless. The countries that loaned us the money to create this econmey should be smart enough to take this into consideratioon. Therefore will require more than just paper money in return for their investment. Investment? Wait a minute. Are they investing in our econemy? Why in the world would they do that, if they aren't getting anything in return? Maybe our ports, Highways, Business's and other things that Americans count on & need to live in this country.
Are we allowing them to "OWN" America?
I have no problem with Foreign trade. But foreign investments are a different animal.
If our econemy doesn't start "repaying" it's debt, and getting itself back on the right track.
We all know, that China could devistate our econemy in just a matter of weeks. We would be in another depression. But even worse than that, foreign countries would "OWN" American properties, land and Business's which would make us totally dependent on them for everything.
Take a community that has a large foreign owned coorperation. Such as an auto manufacturer that employs thousands with in that community. If they really wanted to, they could cut wages to minimum wage if they wanted to during a depression. And there would be nothing the federal government could do about it. They could drop the freight rates to a bare minimum if they wanted to.
I'm not so much blaming the Republicans, as I am trying to make aware of the situation they have gotten us into.
If the Clinton Administration did this, then why hasn't the GOP, in the last 6 years, done anything to stop it,or turn it around. To me, if they didn't do anything to make it better, that makes them just as guilty.
Accually, there is enough blame to go around to all 3. 3? Yes 3. Democrats, Republicans, and Americans for arguing back n forth with each other about their opposing parties mismanagements. The whole time we spend debating with each other, the polititions are doing what ever they want. And we are seeing, hearing and feeling what they are doing, but we spend all our time working, and debating each other about it.
Right now, Americans, is going to be either the "Re-Birth" of America and it's fight to bring back our soverinty and economic stability. Or the next 10 years will be called, "The Bend Over Years". In which Americans don't do anything. We just continue to take what they give us.
We can continue to take DOT regulations, FBI back ground checks. Pay their log book fines, and parking fines, etc etc. Or we can accually look at the candidates and find one that will get the government off our backs. One that will fight for our freedoms. Does anyone know of a candidate that supports worker freedoms for the trucking industry? I dare say there isn't any. But, by making the Government smaller is one thing that will keep them at bay from us, and keep them focused on trade relations and foreign investors. Which is what the government is for.

Very well said. I'm personally extremely disappointed with our "choices" for our new leader.

Your right, the division of the American people isn't the answer. But don't you think that if they keep us all arguing over the left and right, then we don't have time to really demand change?

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Hrdman just laid out all the reasons why there should be term limits in DC for all politicians, not just the pres.

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Your, and Ron Paul's fixation with the Gold Standard makes no sense. The U.S. does not have in its possession enough gold to back every dollar with gold. In fact I doubt there is enough gold on Earth to do that. Unless you are advocating the price of gold be about $50,000 an ounce.
The U.S. has about 8,000 tons of gold, all told there is about 125,000 on earth. Another problem with the U.S. on the Gold Standard is that nobody else is on it.
Forex trading accounts for $1.5 trillion dollars a day. How cumbersome would that process be if we had to move gold from one vault to another.

Face it, the U.S. dollar is the one everyone follows. They quote the price of oil in dollars, even in Saudi. They quote every other major currency by how many dollars it buys. The Dollar is the granddaddy of them all.

What's backing all these dollars? The U.S. economy, the strongest, most vital economy on Earth.

"Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government" still means something around the world, even if it lost on some here at home.

LOL, you must be going absolutely nuts. Our credit? Our credit, in the past few years is getting worse and worse. Cause we have resorted to using our country as colateral. If you hadn't noticed, the Bush administration has made us the laughing stock of the world. Or Econmey is based on how much money our country is taking in. Our exports. Thats where the majority of our budget comes from. And when foriegn companies are taking their proffits back to their country, then the whole "proffit from our exports" means nothing, and can't even be used in real numbers. And when we allow illegals to take $60 billion a year back across the borders, that reduces our tax base. Which is another thing our econemy and budget is based on.
Therefore, when you get the real numbers, you will see that we (our government) has created a recession.
As it stands now, America is using what credit it has, to buy more time.

As far as the term limits go, I see the point in that. But I think that there should be a way for a good congressman to keep his seat. We can't fire the good ones.

(Ronno, your doing exactly what they want you to do. Debating with people who are on your side. I'm not against you, or anyone else in this forum. I just see things from a differnent point of view.)

Good post Hardman, I like to see opinions rather than cut and paste
jobs, and yours are interesting.

When Clinton lost both houses of congress, the new republican
congress did a great job with the contract for America. My
favorite was welfare reform, which Clinton vetoed but finnally
signed under public pressure. Siince I got out of the Military
in 94 we have emerged as the only superpower, kicked Alquida
all over the globe and managed to maintain an economy that is
the envy of the rest of the world. The Chinese has a faster growing
economy, but much less freedom with worse polution, we have the
best of all worlds right here in the US.

I too am disapointed in both the latest republican congress and the Dems.
If you believe in somthing you should fight for it, filibuster, and show
the american people you want to acomplish somthing for your paycheck.
The last bunch of Republicans were cowards IMO, they did not fight
for anything and should have lost.

I disagree with a lot of Ron Pauls opinions but admire his courage
and wish Fred Thompson was as forthcomming with his stands on issues,
but I realize he and Hillary are playing the game to try to get the swing
vote while not angering their base. I will be disapointed if Rudy gets the
nomination because I refuse to vote for a pro-gun registration candidate.
I will never vote for Hillary and did not vote for Bill. But when I voted for
Perot it helped him get in there. I hope Ron Paul does not go independent
when he does not get the nomination because if he does I can see Hillary
winning as a result.

All this is what make us Great. There is always room for much improvement but no other country comes close. I pity people
that have never experianced liveing in a third world country
first hand and know how good we have it here......

Just curious, but if our credit is so bad, why do they keep buying it?

And just so we can put a little perspective into who owns our debt.

Totals $2,240 Billion owned by foreigners........Thats just proves my point. So when when the Euro becomes more valuable than the Dollar, And those countries start trading in EURO's, America will be in worse shape than a depression. We will only wish that we were in a depression.

Backing our $$$$ and credit with fake money (money printed with no value) is like Enron........And we know what happened there.

WHY GOLD?
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

As with all matters of investment, everything is clear in hindsight. Had you bought gold mutual funds earlier this year, they might have appreciated more than 100 percent. Gold has risen $60 since March 2001 to the latest spot price of $326.

Why wasn't it obvious? The Fed has been inflating the dollar as never before, driving interest rates down to absurdly low levels, even as the federal government has been pushing a mercantile trade policy, and New York City, the hub of the world economy, continues to be threatened by terrorism. The government is failing to prevent more successful attacks by not backing down from foreign policy disasters and by not allowing planes to arm themselves. These are all conditions that make gold particularly attractive.

Or perhaps it is not so obvious why this is true. It's been three decades since the dollar's tie to gold was completely severed, to the hosannas of mainstream economists. There is no stash of gold held by the Fed or the Treasury that backs our currency system. The government owns gold but not as a monetary asset. It owns it the same way it owns national parks and fighter planes. It's just another asset the government keeps to itself.

The dollar, and all our money, is nothing more and nothing less than what it looks like: a cut piece of linen paper with fancy printing on it. You can exchange it for other currency at a fixed rate and for any good or service at a flexible rate. But there is no established exchange rate between the dollar and gold, either at home or internationally.

The supply of money is not limited by the amount of gold. Gold is just another good for which the dollar can be exchanged, and in that sense is legally no different from a gallon of milk, a tank of gas, or an hour of babysitting services.

Why, then, do people turn to gold in times like these? What is gold used for? Yes, there are industrial uses and there are consumer uses in jewelry and the like. But recessions and inflations don't cause people to want to wear more jewelry or stock up on industrial metal. The investor demand ultimately reflects consumer demand for gold. But that still leaves us with the question of why the consumer demand exists in the first place. Why gold and not sugar or wheat or something else?

There is no getting away from it: investor markets have memories of the days when gold was money. In fact, in the whole history of civilization, gold has served as the basic money of all people wherever it's been available. Other precious metals have been valued and coined, but gold always emerged on top in the great competition for what constitutes the most valuable commodity of all.

There is nothing intrinsic about gold that makes it money. It has certain properties that lend itself to monetary use, like portability, divisibility, scarcity, durability, and uniformity. But these are just descriptors of certain qualities of the metal, not explanations as to why it became money. Gold became money for only one reason: because that's what the markets chose.

Why isn't gold money now? Because governments destroyed the gold standard. Why? Because they regarded it as too inflexible. To be sure, monetary inflexibility is the friend of free markets. Without the ability to create money out of nothing, governments tend to run tight financial ships. Banks are more careful about the lending when they can't rely on a lender of last resort with access to a money-creation machine like the Fed.

A fixed money stock means that overall prices are generally more stable. The problems of inflation and business cycles disappear entirely. Under the gold standard, in fact, increased market productivity causes prices to generally decline over time as the purchasing power of money increases.

In 1967, Alan Greenspan once wrote an article called Gold and Economic Freedom. He wrote that:
"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense--perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire--that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."

He was right. Gold and freedom go together. Gold money is both the result of freedom and its leading protector. When money is as good as gold, the government cannot manipulate the supply for its own purposes. Just as the rule of law puts limits on the despotic use of police power, a gold standard puts extreme limits on the government's ability to spend, borrow, and otherwise create crazy unworkable programs. It is forced to raise its revenue through taxation, not inflation, and generally keep its house in order.

Without the gold standard, government is free to work with the Fed to inflate the currency without limit. Even in our own times, we've seen governments do that and thereby spread mass misery.

Now, all governments are stupid but not all are so stupid as to pull stunts like this. Most of the time, governments are pleased to inflate their currencies so long as they don't have to pay the price in the form of mass bankruptcies, falling exchange rates, and inflation.

In the real world, of course, there is a lag time between cause and effect. The Fed has been inflating the currency at very high levels for longer than a year. The consequences of this disastrous policy are showing up only recently in the form of a falling dollar and higher gold prices. And so what does the Fed do? It is pulling back now. For the first time in nearly ten years, some measures of money (M2 and MZM) are showing a falling money stock, which is likely to prompt a second dip in the continuing recession.

Greenspan now finds himself on the horns of a very serious dilemma. If he continues to pull back on money, the economy could tip into a serious recession. This is especially a danger given rising protectionism, which mirrors the events of the early 1930s. On the other hand, a continuation of the loose policy he has pursued for a year endangers the value of the dollar overseas.

How much easier matters were when we didn't have to rely on the wisdom of exalted monetary central planners like Greenspan. Under the gold standard, the supply of money regulated itself. The government kept within limits. Banks were more cautious. Savings were high because credit was tight and saving was rewarded. This approach to economics is the foundation of a sustainable prosperity.

We don't have that system now for the country or the world, but individuals are showing their preferences once again. By driving up the price of gold, prompting gold producers to become profitable again, the people are expressing their lack of confidence in their leaders. They have decided to protect themselves and not trust the state. That is the hidden message behind the new luster of gold.

Is a gold standard feasible again? Of course. The dollar could be redefined in terms of gold. Interest rates would reflect the real supply and demand for credit. We could shut down the Fed and we would never need to worry again what the chairman of the Fed wanted. There was a time when Greenspan was nostalgic for such a system. Investors of the world have come to embrace this view even as Greenspan has completely abandoned it.

What keeps the gold standard from becoming a reality again is the love of big government and war. If we ever fall in love with freedom again, the gold standard will once more become a hot issue in public debate.

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Since 2002 it's only gotten worse!

Good luck with that. LOL