Buzzfeed hit piece on Rand staff: "Why Rand Paul Lost"

[nikcers]

do you guys know how expensive treatment is? who is going to pay for it? we dont have the resources for all of these addicts.

It depends, without treatment these people are more likely to just be a drain on society. It would be much more cost effective if we were to actually treat addiction so that they can contribute. It costs a lot more to keep people in jail for 20+ years, then it does do put them in treatment for 6

[GunnyFreedom]

i already addressed this.

No, you didn't, you made an emotional appeal. You said:

Meth is also confirmed to be neurotoxic (even in low-ish doses) to both dopamine and seratonin receptors (oxidative stress etc.), whereas d-amp is generally only neurotoxic in high doses.

Adderall is basically pharmaceutical meth. The affects (as claimed by people who have tried both) are indistinguishable. Given that they are basically the same, and have the same effects, why are people on the streets smoking meth and not Adderall?

Is it because of substance prohibition that people are smoking the stuff that will kill them instead of the stuff that won't?

If not for the War on Drugs, don't you think people will choose the exact same high but that won't kill them?

have you ever known a meth addict? did you notice the chemical schizophrenia? they also tend to be violent to family members and extremely neglectful to their children (not to mention abusive). they destroy not only themselves but their families too.... it is a nightmare and the numbers have exploded.

Emotional appeals are the resort of the weak-minded.

[GunnyFreedom]

So why aren't people who take Adderall losing hair and teeth and turning into skeletor? Why isn't the massive prescription of Adderall devastating our schools where it's regularly consumed?

It's not about the substance, it's about the double standards. We put people in jail longer for crack cocaine then powder, whos the people that do the powder stuff? The rich, if you were to take a "serious" tone on drugs like he is suggesting it would require a police state, we would have to put people in jail like charlie sheen for just talking about it or texting about it on their phones. It still wouldn't stop it from getting created, you're not going to cure addiction without curing addiction. Everything else you suggest you are doing in the name of curing addiction is just making profit prisons and drug companies richer.

What exactly do you think I am advocating here?

What exactly do you think I am advocating here?

[nikcers]

What exactly do you think I am advocating here?

I was contributing to your argument- substance doesn't matter prohibition wasn't designed to end the drug use. We have a walgreens on every corner to remind us that prohibition doesn't work.

[Matt Collins]

Rand's decision to attack the outsider trend, instead of triangulate it and Trump, as Cruz did, was the crucial body blow to his campaign. Cruz also triangulated Rand by adopting his liberty positions, which eliminated the reason to go with Rand to begin with. Cruz and the others all had to deal with Trump's domination, but clearly some (Cruz, and for a while Carson) navigated it much better than Rand.

If Rand had not positioned himself as a compromising libertarian, he would not have been vulnerable (or as vulnerable) to somebody else posturing as a compromising libertarian stealing his views. Not having the foresight to see his finessing of liberty issues could be matched by somebody counter-finessing them turned out to be a fatal mistake.

Probably the most intelligent and insightful post on the entire 2016 effort...

[Matt Collins]

The tendency is to blame specific people for failures. No keyboard warriors know the details of what happened and what was done by inside individuals. Even insiders don't know everything that happened. It is more productive to talk about the strategies, tactics, political environment, issues and competition.

No, some people do know the dirty details.

[Matt Collins]

Stafford, Gor and May are three of the biggest clowns you could ever encounter in any presidential campaign. They were kept around for 1 reason only - personal rapport.

Not sure about Sergio and Elanor, I have never really worked with them, but Doug is one of the most brilliant and sharpest guys around. And that is what befuddles me about the whole thing. And also why it makes me think that it was really more Rand's fault than anyone.

[Matt Collins]

Matt Collins told me about a month or two ago that the Rand campaign had been taken over by a bunch of Romney people who had alienated the Ron Paul folks. Folks want to get mad and ban him for telling the truth. Matt was expecting Rand to do better in Iowa than he did but everything he told me was quite bleak.

heh... I remember that conversation, kind of.... the only night in 6 months I broke from my diet lol

[Occam's Banana]

i know many of you libertarians think your cause is the greatest but it's not

Yes, it is.

survival of this nation is

No, it isn't.

and she can't take another 8 years of massive immigration or you will never ever see precious liberty.

LOL. The last real vestiges of "this nation" and "precious liberty" (such as they were) died about 150 years ago.

Everything since then has been a shuffling, lurching zombie-walk to what we have today (and what is yet to come).

Hell, some would say "this nation" and "precious liberty" died almost 230 years ago, when the product of a "back room" coup d'état was allowed to replace what had supposedly been won in 1783. (And I am not much inclined to argue with them.)

Mounting Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or any other figurehead (including Rand Paul) on the prow of the ship of state is not going to do anything to significantly alter the course of our leviathan-cum-Titanic ...

[Erazer]

Not sure about Sergio and Elanor, I have never really worked with them, but Doug is one of the most brilliant and sharpest guys around. And that is what befuddles me about the whole thing. And also why it makes me think that it was really more Rand's fault than anyone.

Can you name the last successful campaign that Doug Stafford ran?

[Occam's Banana]

im also against the war on drugs but if i were president i'd go hard against meth.

i am against the current war on drugs, especially the seizure laws. that said i would go after meth hard

"I am against the War on Drugs" ... "I would declare an all-out jihad against meth" ...

IOW: "I talk out of both sides of my ass ...(just like Donald Trump ...)"

[snip a bunch of glib "easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy" gibberish (such as "keep the illegal drug cartels out of our country and you have solved about 95% of the meth problem") and various hyperventilated emotionalisms (à la "ZOMG! It's for the children!" etc.) to the effect that a War on Meth would somehow turn out any differently than previous or current Wars on Booze or Pot or Cocaine or Heroin or etc. ad nauseam ...]

LMAO [insert a certain well-known definition of "insanity" here]

[tod evans]

i am against the current war on drugs, especially the seizure laws. that said i would go after meth hard ... you obviously don't know the first thing about this epidemic.

I'm pretty sure I know more about meth and the circumstances surrounding it's uptick than you can imagine.

Government, the DEA and the war on drugs has pushed people to use readily available chemicals to get high, if there were other easy options meth would go right back where it came from in a matter of months.

Do not call for more government to "fix" problems created by government.

How foolish.......

[otherone]

Emotional appeals are the resort of the weak-minded.

LOL
One good fallacy deserves another.

[Matt Collins]

Can you name the last successful campaign that Doug Stafford ran?

Rand Paul 2010.

[GunnyFreedom]

LOL
One good fallacy deserves another.

That is not a fallacy because it was not an argument. The argument was the part you clipped. What you quoted was simply an observation. An observation can be accurate or inaccurate, but it cannot be fallacious unless you try to use it as an argument.

[LittleLightShining]

As far as Rand getting in trouble with supporters, he had a hard line to walk. He could talk about any issue, and half the supporters would say "he's moving to the right!" and the other half would say "he's moving to the left!" Ron could walk that tightrope, but Rand couldn't.

He couldn't because he positioned himself as a conservative and was cornered by the definition. The fact is, most people are some left and some right. Most, if not all, people want a better quality of life than they have now. I think most people are in more constrictive circumstances than they were before and want financial relief. I don't think a lot of people really understand how the government pays for things, I really don't. A lot do, and they know all the ins and outs to keeping what's theirs. So the burden falls on the people with the w-2's who may or may not be making ends meet already. There are only so many true believers. You can't tell these same people we need to stop sending money toward services that they need to get by or get through a crisis. Sh*t is realer now than it has been for a very long time.

Rand's campaign staff failed in every way but getting paid. Why anyone didn't see this coming I can't fathom. I know I tried to warn you before I got run off. Oh well. The "movement" successfully spun its wheels for an election cycle. Glad I didn't waste a bit of energy on it.

[Erazer]

Rand Paul 2010.

So you found one Senate campaign from 6 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of a national Tea Party wave and Ron Paul 2008? Which Stafford didn't even run, but rather latched on to after spending years wasting donor money at organizations that do next to nothing?

And this makes Stafford qualified to run a national presidential campaign?

[Matt Collins]

So you found one Senate campaign from 6 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of a national Tea Party wave and Ron Paul 2008? Which Stafford didn't even run, but rather latched on to after spending years wasting donor money at organizations that do next to nothing?

And this makes Stafford qualified to run a national presidential campaign?

Yes, Stafford ran Rand's 2009 campaign, him and Jesse. Neither came on until later into it, but yes both of them were at the top.

And RTW does actually do things, they get RTW legislation passed.