Nick Gillespie Talks Free Markets on Parker Spitzer's Political Party

Reason's Nick Gillespie was on CNN's Parker Spitzer last night. His first segment is online here. And below is the show's "political party," where Gillespie mixed it up with three other guests. Among the topics discussed: Are today's candidates worse than those in the past?; whether markets or government created monopolies; and whether Gillespie is a mouthpiece for "plutonomy" (whatever that is).

Bonus: Working blue on CNN leads to bleeping (circa 2.30 mins in).

About 9 mins.

Comments

[dennis]

Plutonomy is an economy where plutonium is used as money.

[Almanian]

Thanks - I was wondering about that

[mofo]

maybe in the future, plutonium can be purchased in every corner drug store, but in 1955 its a little harder to come by.

[Anonymous]

+1.21

[NotLinky]

Huh. I thought Plutonomy was a government run by a large dog.

[Marvin the Martian]

Oh, goody! A Plutonium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator! Now I can blow up the Earth!

[spitzer's leather sack pouch]

icky

[Fist of Etiquette]

Patton Oswalt and Richard Branson were dead weight, and the liberal's answer to Katherine Harris on Nick's right might as well have stayed home.

Gillespie was the only person at that table who had a sound notion. The people running the government are idiots, so limit the impact of government as much as possible.

[Name Nomad]

That's just a symptom of the time though. To get on news, you just have to espouse an idea that's opposed to another guest. Got someone talking about the holocaust? Clearly, to be "balanced" they need a holocaust denier. Discussing 9/11? Find a hobo on the corner who keeps mumbling something about Bush doing 9/11 and stealing all of his donuts while he was sleeping.

[Fist of Etiquette]

And they couldn't have found a rightwing attention whore to play contrarian to the rest of the group?

[Name Nomad]

That's why Nick got invited at all. Anyone who isn't a Dem = right to them.

[Rhayader]

Yeah, notice how Gillespie was immediately called out when the host asked if anyone wanted to defend Republicans? Every time I think I've finally decided that "conservatives" are slightly more retarded, a liberal goes and does something like that.

[J.E.C.]

I think plutonomy would etymologically mean 'named wealth' or 'the naming of wealth.'

[Rhayader]

Haha, awesome. You know that's one of his go-to lines against libertarians who are way more liberal than he'll ever be.

"Autonomy? More like plutonomy." Buuuuuuurn.

[J]

Nick is better at bashing Republicans than any of the other leftist commentators. Perhaps because he has actual reasons for it, instead of just trying to come up with the best slogan like other nimwits. "We prefer coffee." Pure genius.

[Mr Whipple]

That shit pisses me off to no end. They'll have a lefty bashing the right, and a righty bashing the left, and they are both using the wrong fucking reasons. It's a wonder a beer bottle hasn't gone through my TV, yet.

[Sanjuro Tsubaki]

That's because they can't have an honest debate about government in this country. Republicans are complete hypocrites and Democrats can't run on their real agenda.

[d]

One disadvantage with flat screens. The bottles tend to bounce.

[Douglas Fletcher]

It would just bounce off.

[Rhayader]

There was also a nice, Orwellian flavor to that "don't let the inmates run the asylum" bullshit too. That is, if you want to go as far as trying to make any sense whatsoever out of that terrible analogy.

[J]

I also enjoyed his elephant in the room comment about how no major Democratic politician at the national level has talked about or taken any steps towards drug legalization. That ALWAYS pisses off liberals.

[Mr Whipple]

I think David Nolan debated John McCain very well. He won the online poll after the debate with 53%

[Mr Whipple]

That guy's a douchebag, "the problem with libertarians..."

Rat fucker!!!

Hey asshole, the problem I have with libertarians...

Asshole.

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Wow, that show really is as shitty as it sounds. No offense, Nick, wasn't your fault at all, but wow...

The answer to The Nation guy when he said you'd hand the keys to Morgan Stanley etc. should've been that the Left have proven to be the true corporatists, giving enormous sums to corrupt and incompetent CEOs - instead of breaking up the "too big to fail" entities, they only prolonged them.

Moreover, regulation, taxes, impractical accounting laws, etc are food for large corporations like Goldman Sachs (supporters of financial reform) who can handle the economic hit with their large legal/accounting/political outreach departments, while benefitting from the much more painful hit against their smaller business competitors who can't absorb it. The quickest path to conglomeration and "too big to fail" is big government that makes mergers more practical than competition, then pays you if you are too big and get yourself in trouble.

Leftist love to whine about how monopolists and megacorporations can always throw their weight around and get what they want, regardless of party, so the solution is to give more weight to government? Thus increasing the corporate interest in influencing politics by expanding political control over corporations?

I love the Left's idealism and dream of equal opportunity, but they really are fucking stupid when it comes to economics and attaining their own desired ends.

[Pope Jimbo]

Every time I argue with lefties about the evil corporations, I always bring up the RIAA. 1) They truly are a bunch of rat-fucking bastard corporation trolls and 2) they had their asses handed to them by everyday folk.

They aren't even bothering with their pathetic "we'll sue your ass unless you pay us $2500 because you downloaded a song - we think" suits anymore.

If corporations truly had so much power (and they truly did get the nobs in Congress to do their bidding with the DMCA act) how did they lose?

The answer is that the market worked. People decided that $1 a song or so was about the right price and started buying from Amazon and Apple.

[Mr Whipple]

Sure, I know that, you know that, and I'm sure Nick knows that, but try explaining that in 5 seconds. That's why these "news" programs suck donkey balls.

Jesus H Christ, that guy is a fucking sports writer. What the fuck?

[Rhayader]

The only thing to do is laugh about it.

[Sam Grove]

Left-Right stupidity equivalence:

Left: If you don't have strong government, plutarchs will rule.

Right: If you legalize marijuana, kids will be able to get marijuana on the street.

[Mr. FIFY]

Wait, Sam... isn't that how things are right this minute?

NTTAWWT.

[JoshINHB]

Spitzer calls today's politicians icky

BWWWAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHa

At least he has a future in comedy.

[shrike]

My money is on the whoremonger over the wistful conservative who knows her philosophy is for shit.

[shrike]

OUR whoremongers, however, have the best philosophy... where the state runs everything for everyone, cradle to grave.

[Pope Jimbo]

Why did Gillespie go on this show? The only acceptable answer is the Krusty defense:

Bart: How could you Krusty? [smugly] I'd never lend my name to an inferior
product.

Krusty breaks down..

Krusty: They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house! I'm not made
of stone!

Don't feed the trolls in real life.

[Attorney]

I was wondering the same thing. How could Nick stand to be in the same room with Spitzer without punching him in the face?

[Atanarjuat]

The libertarian sounded the best of all of 'em. I'm going to go beat off now.

[shrike]

smoke some weed, beat off, polish your gun .... Libertarian Nirvana.

[Mr Whipple]

You forgot, fuck a sheep, douchebag.

[Atanarjuat]

That doesn't sound too bad. Except I think I'll pay a legal prostitute to do the honors.

[shrike]

I'd do it for free.

Oh, and some government cheese.

[Spiny Norman]

So we've learned that Matt is barbaric and Nick is a mouthpiece for plutonomy.

They should get t-shirts made or something.

[sage]

"We prefer coffee"

Yeah, I'll take a 20 oz drip, EXTRA HOT, so I can throw it in the ugly mug of that ignorant twunt.

[Rhayader]

Good job, Jacket.

There were plenty of pathetic moments, but the collective (besides Nick) back-in-my-day discussion about how "it's worse now" was my personal favorite. Oh, everything is viral now. Go read a newspaper from 1907 and tell me the discourse has declined, fucktards.

[capitol l]

Hell, look at the presidential races after Washington between our revered founding fathers. They were fucking brutal.

Or fast forward almost 200 years and you have LBJ calling his opponent* a pig fucker. And they say we have grown too course in our political dialogue.

*Don't know if this is apocryphal or not. Hopefully, for LBJ, it's true because it is the only cool thing that he ever did.

[JoshINHB]

Swinging Him by the ears was pretty cool.

[kiwi dave]

The "back in the old days" meme requires an astonishing level of historical ignorance. Can you imagine what would happen to JFK now? The drug-addicted, semi-crippled, serial philanderer, gilded youth running on his gangster daddy's money?

[?]

Plutonomy is my Alan Parsons tribute band. Thanks for the plug, Jacket.

Patton Oswalt and Richard Branson were dead weight

I don't know Branson (though he owes me money), but I can assure you that Patton is nothing if not living weight.

[Almanian]

Jesus fucking Christ. Horrible! I couldn't make it past KP introducing the topic and the first prick starting to answer. "Do you have any new words?" WHO FUCKING CARES???!!11!

I bet this show does gangbuster ratings for CNN, though, because they're just that unwatchable any more.

Nick - how you tolerate being "The Only Intelligent Person" on all these shows, I'll never know. As Ali G says, respeck....

[Tman]

They talked about refudiate for three whole minutes.

The Parker/Spitzer magic is just unstoppable.

[emerson]

Everything's so viral now. God dammit, Carl Paladino can't even make homophobic comments in public without it making it onto YouTube.

What happened to upstanding, forward-thinking candidates like evolution-denying William Jennings Bryan and anti-Semitic Richard Nixon?

[roo_ster]

That was...awful. Inanity, thy name is [so inane I can't recall].

NG was the only one not tripping over his own lameness. Not his best performance, but he didn't need his big league game to crush the minor leaguers.

I'm not sure who I disliked more: Spitzer or Parker? Parker is closer to me politically, but that just makes me despise her more.

I haven't had cable TV in nigh on ten years. I didn't see anything to make me want to rush out and subscribe to cable or satellite TV. Grainy 'net video is all that mess deserves.

[Elliot]

Talking about the decline of intelligent political discourse on a 9 minute clip with 6 commentators is quite ironic. How can you be heard without coming off as loud or an asshole?

[Sanjuro Tsubaki]

Nick was clearly the only person on that program who wasn't a total idiot. You could tell he was getting impatient with the most outspoken of the Democrat hacks. As for the leather jacket and black attire, he must be the coolest guy around not to sweat like a hog even when he's not underneath studio lights.

[octothorpe]

Parker Spitzer sounds like a slogan for a lady's bidet.

[Douglas Fletcher]

++

[Mark V.]

I watched a few minutes and had to turn it off before I would puke, listening to Nick, this arrogant jerk. "Geithner is a joke." If you are so smart, why don't you apply apply for that job. "No one in America knows what we are doing in Afghanistan." Speak for yourself, Nick!