Ron Paul on Torture

http://www.dailypaul.com/

turned the power to the have-nots

I meant to post this last week, but a lack of time and then the power outage delayed it. Ron Paul was recently on CNN urging his supporters not to vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama but to support third-party candidates, such as Bob Barr or Ralph Nader. Here's the speech Paul gave, in which his does a good job explaining how our political system is so slanted against anyone from outside the two major parties. He also addresses why it's time to abandon the idea of voting for "the leser of two evils" and instead vote third party in an attempt to shake up the politcal landscape.



And here's an interview with Paul and Nader on CNN talking about the same subject (and featuring CNN hack Wolf Blitzer):

the universe is shaped exactly like the earth

Ron Paul responds nicely to this horribly biased question from a "fair and balanced" Fox News debate. Since Paul just took second place in Nevada, I'm not sure how you can consider him "unelectable" already, and the real outrage is that the media has no business whatsoever trying to tell viewers who is electable and who is not. I'm fairly certain a network that is truly "fair and balanced" would simply report and let viewers make up their own minds. Apparently Fox ended up cutting this clip from their replay of the debate. I'm not sure if that's because they realized how awful their question was, or (more likely) because they didn't like the way Paul turned it around nicely. Meanwhile, a local Fox affiliate actually conducts a great interview with Paul:

get out of the road if you want to grow old

I'm bored, so here's a few random stories I've been reading:

• It seems that Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee's son has aspirations to become Michael Vick. In 1998, at the age of 18, David Huckabee and another boy were kicked out of the Boy Scouts for killing a dog by hanging it, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death. Thanks to his father's connections, David "The Dog Killer" never faced any charges. I don't know about you, but I'm fairly sure I don't want the father of a budding serial killer running our nation, especially if Daddy's just going to bail him out every time. Disgusting.
  

• Six states-New Hampshire, Montana, Maine, Washington, South Carolina, and Oklahoma-are opposing a federal law to create new national id cards, claiming that the new cards are too expensive and, more importantly, are an invasion of privacy. New Hampshire State Representative Neil Kurk defended his opposition to the id cards, saying, "The people of New Hampshire are adamantly opposed to any kind of 'papers-please' society reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. This is another effort of the federal government to keep track of all its citizens."

• The RIAA would like to inform you that those mp3s on your computer--the ones you copied from CDs you paid for with your own hard-earned money--are still unauthorized and illegal. In fact, if you even listen to the music you pay for, you're probably still a criminal, and should be sued for ridiculous sums of money. Let this be a lesson to you kids: it's okay to drive your business into the ground by alienating all of your customers, as long as you can find ways to sue them in order to make up for the profits you're continually losing.

• It seems that Senator Joe Lieberman will endorse Arizona Senator John McCain as the Republican Presidential nominee. It's nice to see that old, irrelevant, has-been politicians stick up for one another.
  

• The official poster for Indiana Jones IV, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been released. Neato.

• And finally, I'll leave you with an interview of Ron Paul on Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" show. I know you didn't think I could post all these random stories without throwing in one about Congressman Paul...
  

the smoldering rubble of empires

Looks like John McCain needs a history lesson. And a dictionary so he can learn the difference between isolationism and non-interventionism.

I took some time to watch the CNN/Youtube Republican debates online, and they didn't seem like an enormous waste of time. There were some decent questions and most of the candidates had me either rolling my eyes or shaking my head in disgust most of the time, but there was some worthwhile information to be had.

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been the two top-tier candidates (according to the mainstream media), and both look like huge sleezeballs. These men are fantastic politicians; giving actual answers to questions is unimportant, as long as you can create a good sound bite. Everything out of Giuliani's mouth either relates back to New York or 9/11, and it looks like he's content to try riding his popularity from those into the White House. Romney also avoided answering most of the questions directed his way; the worst example of this came when he was questioned about waterboarding. He made it clear that he was against torture, but then refused to classify whether tactics like waterboarding are or are not torture. Kinda hard to stop torture if it isn't clearly defined, isn't it, Mitt?

I'm surprised that Mike Huckabee isn't the Republican front-runner. I don't trust him one bit, but he does a decent job of sounding sincere. He says all the right things to win the support of most Republicans: he makes sure to throw out the religion card, he still supports the war in Iraq, and he promised to cut taxes. I think he gives off the impression of being the most electable candidate and I'm surprised that the Republican Party and the media aren't pushing him more. I don't actually believe most of what he says, but I think he's great at playing the political game.

Fred Thompson seems like a scumbag as well. His attitude and swagger just oozes the stereotypical figure of the old Southern aristocrat sitting on his porch in a clean white suit, sipping whiskey while plotting his way into political office, not really caring about average people at all. I'll admit that the man has a good sense of humor, but I could never take him seriously enough to want him leading our country.

McCain is the saddest figure in the run for the Republican nomination. I used to like the way he refused to follow the typical Republican mantra and simply follow what he thinks is right. Now I feel that he's invested his reputation far too strongly into the Iraq war and has lost of lot of his renegade spirit. He split his time at the debate between sniping at Ron Paul, giving a passionate and well-spoken thrashing to Romney over the use of torture, and looking depressed and defeated the rest of the time.

Ron Paul was fantastic, in my opinion (not that I'm biased or anything). Obviously an audience full of war supporters and people who still think Bush is a good president booed half of what Paul had to say, but there was still a surprising number of supporters cheering very loudly for him. One of the things that most stood out to me is that Paul may have been the only one in the debate who didn't take shots at the other candidates. He was there to argue his point, not to sling mud at his rivals. The amount of time given to Paul over some of the other candidates was very limited--Paul himself pointed out to CNN in their post-debate interview that almost thirty-five minutes went by without any questions being directed his way. Despite this, he had a strong finish at the end and he got his message across well in the limited time he had.

To be fair, I'll mention two other candidates on the far right and far left of the stage. I admit I didn't remember either of their names without going back and looking them up, and both got about as much time to talk as Ron Paul. Neither made much of an impression, although I thought Lefty (Tom Tancredo) was dead-on when he criticized Huckabee for promising to cut government spending while also promising to fund a NASA mission to Mars. Righty (Duncan Hunter) had a great smirk and spent too much time talking about his father's old rifle that he used to own instead of saying something important.

I wanted to end this with the clip of Ron Paul on the Daily Show (to quote Jon Stewart on Ron Paul, "You appear to have consistent, principled integrity... Americans don't usually go for that") but I couldn't find a good clip online. Paul's visit to the Colbert Report wasn't quite as good at getting his message across, but it's still entertaining. I suppose I should watch the Democratic debates from a couple months ago as well, although watching that much Hillary will be difficult.

my weariness amazes me

"Surrender Should NOT be an Option" by Ron Paul

Surrender Should Not Be an Option

Faced with dwindling support of the Iraq War, the warhawks are redoubling their efforts. They imply we are in Iraq attacking those who attacked us, and yet this is not the case. As we know, Saddam Hussein, though not a particularly savory character, had nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons claim surrender should not be an option. In the same breath they claim we were attacked because of our freedoms. Why then, are they so anxious to surrender our freedoms with legislation like the Patriot Act, a repeal of our 4th amendment rights, executive orders, and presidential signing statements? With politicians like these, who needs terrorists? Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? This seems the epitome of cowardice coming from those who claim a monopoly on patriotic courage.

In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat.

They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.

The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one.

The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us?

The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.