Ron Paul Marijuana debate

Baldwin embarrasses himself by spouting his opinion and stating that is unquestionable fact. "No doubt about it, I don't care what anybody says."

Worse, Baldwin proclaims his position as the Christian one. I have to disagree that putting people in cages for ingesting the wrong chemicals is the position of love.

Baldwin really has no answer for anything Paul says, and I swear at the 8:00 minute mark his face shows that he knows it. This may be the second time that Dr. Paul changes someone's mind on an issue during on air interview as D.L. Hughley gives Paul credit for changing his mind on the necessity of the Civil War during an interview on Bill Maher's show in which they were both guests.

Andrew Sullivan officially becomes a Paulite

From the Daily Dish:

By now, readers will know who I favor in the Democratic race. Here's my most considered case. But what of the GOP? For me, it comes down to two men, Ron Paul and John McCain. That may sound strange, because in many ways they are polar opposites: the champion of the surge and the non-interventionist against the Iraq war; the occasional meddling boss of Washington and the live-and-let-live libertarian from Texas. But picking a candidate is always a mix of policy and character, of pragmatism and principle. And what these two mavericks share, to my mind, is a modicum of integrity. At one end of the character scale, you have the sickening sight of Mitt Romney, a hollow shell of cynicism and salesmanship, recrafted to appeal to a base he studied the way Bain consultants assess a company. Paul and McCain are at the other end. They have both said things to GOP audiences that they knew would offend. They have stuck with their positions despite unpopularity. They're not saints, but they believe what they say. Both have also taken a stand against the cancerous and deeply un-American torture and detention regime constructed by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. In my book, that counts.

I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time - the great question of the last six years - Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain's position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.

Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror - at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East - we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?

McCain, for all his many virtues, still doesn't get this. Paul does.

Paul, moreover, supports the only rational response: a withdrawal, as speedily and prudently as possible. McCain, along with Lieberman, still seems to believe that expending even more billions of dollars to prop up and enable a fast-devolving, ethnically toxic, religiously nutty region is somehow in American interests. Given the enormous challenges of the terror war, the huge debt we are piling up, the exhaustion of the military, the moral and financial corruption that has its white-hot center in Mesopotamia, I do not believe that an endless military, economic and political commitment to Iraq makes sense. It only makes sense if we are determined to occupy the Middle East indefinitely to secure oil supplies. But the rational response to oil dependence is not to entrench it, but to try and move away from it. Institutionalizing a bank-breaking, morale-busting Middle East empire isn't the way to go.

But the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul's federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left to the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.

He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds. And in a primary campaign where the very future of conservatism is at stake, that cannot be ignored. In fact, it demands support.

Go Ron Paul!

Tea Party '07

You know you're a cultural phenomenon when....

Sporting books set lines on how much money you'll raise for your presidential candidate.

http://www.gambling911.com/Ron-Paul-121507A.html

While the news media continues to talk about Barack Obama passing by Hillary Clinton in the early primary state polls and Mike Huckabee seemingly coming out of nowhere to overtake both Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in the very vulnerable Republican race for the 2008 White House, all eyes this weekend (at least when it comes to the bookmaking community) are focused on who many consider to be a long shot candidate - Ron Paul. That long shot, however, is the focus of a much ballyhooed "money bomb" on Sunday forecast by oddsmakers to reel in around $6 million.

"The $6 million mark is where the oddsmakers have set the shortest odds," says Payton O'Brien, Senior Editor of Gambling911.com.

Bookmaker.com had been offering odds on the range of money taken in on Sunday. By Friday evening they had ceased taking any more action on this bet for reasons unknown.

The range was as follows:

How much money will Ron Paul raise on December 16th?

- $1-3 million 3 to 1

- $3-6 million 5 to 6

- $6-10 million 11 to 10

- Over $10 million 2 to 1

Revolution indeed.

Tomorrow is the day!

Mike Huckabee claims he's ordained by God to be President

I guess if he fails in his presidential run God himself is to blame.

Almost overnite, Mike Huckabee has become the darling of the Religious Right in America. Christians are suckers for political a candidate who talks frankly and non-apologetically about his faith and says nice things every once in a while on the issue of abortion. Huckabee fits the bill to tenth degree and has all the charisma and vernacular of the Sunday morning minister he used to be.

It's no problem looking past all the questionable ethics of Huckabee's past for these people. Never mind his aggressive push for the pardon of a convicted rapist who went on to murder. Never mind the destructions of public property on his way out the door when he left office in Arkansas. Never mind he raised taxes during his stay there more than Clinton did during his tenure. Never mind the non-Christian attitude towards members of the media who cross his path. All these things can be easily brushed aside for a soft spoken southern baptist who "says what he believes" even if he doesn't act on those beliefs.

The fact that words speak louder than actions for the Christian Right is, of course, nothing new and Huckabees behavior as a Governor is not exactly earth shattering. Indeed, corruption in politicians is as common as politicians themselves (Ron Paul excepted of course). All these things can probably be tolerated as typical political shenanigans. I've come to expect those type of activities from politicians and have based a lot of my political philosophies on those expectations. Those dishonesties aren't the real problem with Mike Huckabee.

The real problem with Mike Huckabee is that he's a warmonger.

John Hagee is a Christian Zionist and televangelist. He's known for his books Jerusalem Countdown and more recently In Defense of Israel, a pair of books that make outlandish and fear-based claims about end times and biblical predictions. Like Huckabee, Hagee purports to know the very will of God in order to further his own agenda. In older days these type of men were known as charlatans, now-a-days we call them leaders in the Christian Right.

Hagee's evil beliefs are based on a twisted theology of fundamental dispensationalism is comprised of the belief that the nation state Israel is the fulfillment of Bible prophesy and that thus, it deserves full political and military support from the US. But any friendly gestures from the likes of Christian Zionists like Hagee or Pat Robertson are merely formalities, because the ultimate prediction is Armageddon VIA nuclear war and the conversion of the Jews that survive or some such nonsense I can't be bothered to fully learn. Of course all of his prophesies are dependent on war, so he preaches and writes and gives interviews encouraging preemptive war with Iran.

Worst of all, his theology is that which 99% of practicing Christians would instantly reject. Watch here as he openly claims Jesus Christ DID NOT come to Earth to be the messiah.



And this is a man who is shaping the politics of the Christian Right. And endorsing Mike Huckabee.

You might be wondering what any of this Hagee business has to with Mike Huckabee. Well Hagee's publisher and long time friend Stephen Strang is directly linked to Huckabee. Just before fall Strang's magazine The New Man endorsed Huckabee. Likewise, Huckabee added Strang to his Faith and Values Coalition, an event for which John Hagee was in attendance. Strang has written and supported Hagee's threat's to Iran.

The Huckster sounds eerily like Hagee in this interview with Wolf Blitzer making the case to first starve the children and poor in Iran in the same way we did to Iraq inbetween Iraq Wars I & II, then using a preemptive nuclear strike to bomb Iran into compliance with his will. Of course all this tough talk of preemptive war against Iran sounds altogether more frightening with the NIE report that came out recently saying that Iran has long abandoned it's nuclear program. Imagine what a preemptive strike would have done to our country's security and prosperity if Huck and Hagee had their way already.

Compare Huckabee and Hagee's warmongering tones to those of Ron Paul at a debate earlier this year speaking on the subject of preemptive war with Iran:

“I do not believe that [pre-emptive war] is part of the American tradition. We, in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or [to] go to aid somebody.

But now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity. And now tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a pre-emptive nuclear strike, against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security!

We have to come to our senses about this issue of war and pre-emption. [We have to] go back to traditions and our Constitution, and defend our liberties and defend our rights, but not to think that we can change the world by force of arms and to start wars.”

-Ron Paul

Who sounds like the true Christian candidate?

Fellow libertarian Christian William N. Grigg (one of my new favorite bloggers) recently posted on the ties between Hagee and Huckabee and posited the follwing:

"The only authentic conservative in the race, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, disqualified himself in the Christian Right's eyes by taking the teachings of the Prince of Peace too literally, and applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy. The Mullahs of the Mega-Churches, and many of their followers, are mortally offended by the notion that decades of bellicose interventionism by Washington might have something to do with the antagonisms that breed and feed anti-American terrorism."

....

"I suspect that if Mitt Romney is elected president, Hagee would have no difficulty reaching across the theological divide -- as long as Romney remains true to the gospel of militarist bloodshed. If Huckabee makes it to the Oval Office, it's likely that Hagee would be part of the Inner Court. Either prospect would be troubling to the Christian Right, were it more interested in defending Christian principles than in accumulating and preserving political power."

Amen to that.

Ron Paul is money

A pretty good interview with Tucker Carlson on his November 5th success.



The message is decentralization of power, and the movement is decentralized in nature.

Housing Market Problems

Things are looking bleak.

High-Risk Credit

by Ron Paul

As markets went on a rollercoaster ride last week, our economy is coming close to a day of reckoning for loose credit policies being followed by the Federal Reserve Bank. Simply, foreign banks we have been relying on to buy our debt are waking up to the reality of much higher default rates than predicted, and many mortgage-backed securities have been reduced to “junk” ratings. Wall Street fears the possibility of tightening credit and the tightening of America’s belts. Why, they say, “if Americans spend only what they can afford, think of the ripple effects throughout the economy!” This is the cry, as the call comes for the fed to cut rates and bail out companies in trouble.

More inflation is, however, never the answer to inflation.

The truth is that business involves risk, and businesses that miscalculate risk should be liquidated, so their assets can be reallocated to businesses that correctly judge risk and make profits. Instead, the Fed has injected $64 billion into the jittery markets, effectively amounting to a bailout that keeps these malinvestments afloat, but eventually they will become the undoing of our economy.

In addition to the negative reactions in financial markets, many Americans have taken on too much personal debt owing to exotic mortgage products and artificially low interest rates. Unfortunately, these families are now in the position of losing their homes in unprecedented numbers as the teaser rates expire and the real bills are coming due.

The real answers are, and always have been, found in the principles of the free market. Let the market set the interest rates. If we had been functioning under a true and transparent free market system, we would not be in the mess we are in today. Government, like the American household, needs to live within its means to get back on stable fiscal ground.

We’ve been headed in the wrong direction since 1971. This week marks the 36th anniversary of Nixon’s decision to close the gold window, which convinced me to seek public office to call attention to the runaway money train that would come in the aftermath of that decision. The temptation to print and spend money with impunity, like the temptation to max out lines of credit, is too strong to for government to resist. While Nixon brokered exclusivity deals with OPEC to prop up demand for the tidal wave of green pieces of paper the Fed pumped into the markets, the world is tiring of marching to the beat of our drum in order to secure their energy needs. The house of cards Nixon built is now on the verge of collapsing on our heads, and on our children’s heads.

As the dollar weakens, it becomes ever clearer that we need a return to sound, commodity-based money for a secure future. Money based on real value, not empty promises and secretive backroom machinations, is the way to get out of the current calamity without causing even bigger problems.

A few months a go Ron Paul had a little debate with Giuliani over foreign policy in the war with Iraq.

The crowd at the time was notably on the side of Rudy Giuliani.

Well the tides are changing...

Ronpaul
Uploaded by krs601

He's more confident.
He's got a consistent message.
The Romneys and Giulianis have no answer.
They look befuddled.

And most of all, he's the same thing he's always been.

Right.

RON PAUL'D!

Not exactly a substantially informative video but it made me crack up laughing.

From 1988

Lest We Believe the Myth....

.... that foreign policy some how changed in America when George Bush was elected or 9/11 occured, or the now popular stance that America was somehow at peace during the Clinton years. Or the ever prevaltant myth that Democrats and Republicans are, you know, different. A short, two minute John Stossel clip from the 90's (aka the Clinton years) showing quite the opposite. And who's that lone man speaking truth in the face of the mainstream tide?

Little stuff

A few things to chew on while I do tshmom's interview questions.

First, for Zombieslayer, it turns out fully automatic weapons do come in handy during a zombie invasion. Also we saw 28 Weeks Later last nite and it's really pretty intense. Not exactly a "zombie" movie I guess, since it involves a virus not the undead, but still pretty good.

Second, for Rudy Giuliani, if you ever do take Ron Paul up on his offer to debate foreign policy, it might help if you read this first. Facts are fun!

And lastly, regarding this article. I'm fine with the silly little photoshoped picture of Ron Paul and Micheal Moore. I don't really care if someone wants to call Ron Paul nutty. I don't expect much more from left/right political "thinkers", but this quote really got me upset:

Strict constructionism and original intent are fine things, but shoving every problem and every issue through the Founder’s Intent meat-grinder is lunacy. Besides, this rigid orthodoxy brings him down on what both Andrew and I consider to be the wrong side of the gay marriage question.

Heck yeah, if the NeoCons want to kill a few thousand innocent Iraqi's and Iranians we, as good Christians, can live with that. Just so long as they say some nice things about gay marriage being bad.

When did Christians sell their souls to the Federal government in exchange for the privilege of ruling over a minority of gays? It makes me rather ill. We sure as heck can't support a guy who doesn't think the federal government shouldn't be the enforcer of God's Will. No, what we need is a man who will kill us some Muslims and hate us some gays. That's the kind of leader we need. That's conservatism.

Anything else is just nutty.

Non-Intervention 101

Watch it.



Giuliani is a fool.

Hearing that made my blood boil. Ignoring his absurd assertion that his proximity to the event somehow makes his opinion more valuable, his statement and demand for a recant from Paul is totally baseless.

We don’t have to guess why we were attacked on September 11th, we’ve been told by the very person who planned it. In Bin Laden’s manifesto he stated the exact reason why he declared war on the United States a full 5 years before the 9/11 attacks.

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").

In fact, Bin Laden wanted to make the point that our intervention was one of the main reasons he declared was so clear that he entitled the declaration “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.”

I’m not at all justifying their actions so don’t even bother getting all worked up about that. That’s not even the issue. Read again what Dr. Paul said (Paraphrased):

I believe the CIA is correct when it warns us about blowback. We overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and their taking the hostages was the reaction. This dynamic persists and we ignore it at our own risk. If we think we can do what WE want around the World and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They’re not attacking us because we’re rich and free, they’re attacking us because we’re over there.

Why is Ron Paul the only one suggesting we don’t have to take part in building and running other countries? Why is he considered a “fringe” candidate anyway just because he’s anti-war? The vast majority of the country wants to end Iraq TODAY and there are only three anti-war candidates from both parties. (Paul, Kucinich, and Gravel) All of whom are considered long shots.

The United States citizens did not invite 9/11, its government did. 9/11 was the culmination of one hundred years of US politicians playing a game of chess with the World as its board and our money as its pawns. While THEY (politicians) experimented with regime changes, foreign aid, and alliances WE (citizens) did nothing to piss off the rest of the World. Just a handful of men have decided for the rest of us who around the World should be pushed around and for what reason, doing it all in the name of the United States and democracy.

On September 11th a few thousand innocent civilian lives were ended as a result of that game.

Anti-War.com needs help

Please keep going on the King for a Day post, but I wanted to bring up the fact that AntiWar.com is having a fund raising drive. They are on the verge of bankruptcy and need help. If you were frustrated with the mainstream media's lack of information leading up to the Iraq war, then you should know that not only did AntiWar columnists like Ron Paul write and predict the chaos that is now Iraq, others called the lies the government was telling. And just in case you think they're simply anti-Bush, or anti-Republican, they actually started the site to speak out against Clinton's actions in the Balkans and Iraq.
You can read about their history here and their mission here.
If you have a few bucks, consider helping. If not, carry on with your day. Later.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.~Joseph Goebbels

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.~James Madison

Politics without rhetoric

Ron Paul is running for President in '08, but will not make much a splash in the scheme of things due to lack of funds. Welcome to democrazy in America. His name doesn't show up much next to the likes of Giuliani or McCain, let alone the elites like Obama or Clinton II.

I wouldn't necessarily endorse Paul, but he certainly is better than any GOP candidate that's going to run in the next 5 elections. He is, in fact, not a Republican at all, but a Democrat. A Democrat in the line of Grover Cleveland or many of our political leaders prior to the Civil War. Part of a political party that exists only in name in America, as the principles that once loosely held it together have long since dissolved. Much in the same way the name Liberal is bestowed upon those who are anything but liberal.

This is how our political system has evolved. It matters little what a politician says, save the occasional "clean and articulate" slip of the tongue, and much more what they are called. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, Greens, Libertarians, independents, and the worst of all, the cursed Neo-Cons! Now I'm not writing this to defend or persecute any of these groups, but does anyone really know what defines them? Neo-Con has become the most tossed around pejorative lately, slapped on anyone who dares to oppose the goals of the mainstream left.

Modern politics have become nothing more than a rhetoric filled sound bite with the left blaming "corporate fat cats" for all the ills of society and the right blaming crazy Muslims. Neither has a plan for change, and admittedly that is because the Federal Government can't fix many of the problems that we wish it could. But the sad thing to me is that so many have given up learning what is the cause of this out of control government. They're fixed on Government as the solution, not the problem. What's the solution to Neo-Conservatives? Vote Democrat.

But how did we come upon this Neo-Conservative movement? Where did this idea of preemptive war come from? How about the expansion of the welfare state during a Republican administration, is that something we could have foreseen?

Ron Paul laid out and assessment of the Neo-Conservative movement a few years ago and it has been preserved on Google Video (God bless the Internet). Sure it's a long lecture and starts out a little slow, but simply put some things take more than a 30 second sound bite to say. Maybe if we sat down and actually listened to what the Neo-conservatives believed BEFORE the past elections things could have been different today. Then again the only other option was Democrats so it's hard to believe it could have been all that much better.

Neo-CONNED! by Congressman Ron Paul

"Authoritarian rule is authoritarian rule, regardless of humanitarian undertones." -Ron Paul

Follow-up reading:

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (1996)
The End of History? by Francis Fukuyama (1989)