Fuck Ron Paul

[Nordic]

Short answer: yes, the presidency is a lost cause, and the sooner americans figure that out the better.

We can't "consume" our way out of this mess.

The choices we have are the ones they let us have. Which means we have no choices at all.

[The Consul]

Let there be a final hope to offer

To Nobodaddy.

Why art thou silent & invisible
Father of jealousy
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye

Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy words & laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily serpents jaws
Or is it because Secresy
gains females loud applause

- Wm Blake

[barracuda]

[Simulist]

"The Constitution! The Constitution! The Constitution!"

I think he drank the Constitution, inked quills and all.

[wordspeak2]

That was hilarious. "What's the first amendment? You don't even know!"

JR, I don't understand your suggestion that Paul run in the Democratic primary. I don't think diehard anti-choice politicians are allowed to get anywhere in the DP. Get your rosaries off our ovaries, you know. I agree that it would be great if he would de-prioritize the relentless assault on Keynes and run hard on just ending foreign wars and the Drug War as both morally indefensible and financially ludicrous... but, alas, that's not Ron Paul. Maybe someone else? I wonder if Jesse Ventura has any thoughts of going back into politics.

P.S. Unrelated, but Elizabeth Warren currently winning (!) in polls for Massachusetts Senate race. By a hair, but nonetheless.

[JackRiddler]

That was hilarious. "What's the first amendment? You don't even know!"

JR, I don't understand your suggestion that Paul run in the Democratic primary. I don't think diehard anti-choice politicians are allowed to get anywhere in the DP. Get your rosaries off our ovaries, you know. I agree that it would be great if he would de-prioritize the relentless assault on Keynes and run hard on just ending foreign wars and the Drug War as both morally indefensible and financially ludicrous... but, alas, that's not Ron Paul. Maybe someone else? I wonder if Jesse Ventura has any thoughts of going back into politics.

P.S. Unrelated, but Elizabeth Warren currently winning (!) in polls for Massachusetts Senate race. By a hair, but nonetheless.

I mean, if he wanted to accomplish something, he could drop all other issues as not directly feasible and focus on those two, speaking to the people likelier to respond. Obviously he wouldn't win, which is exactly what he won't do where he is now (and good thing, that). But in the Democratic primaries he could force empire and drug war into a national discourse that is otherwise largely trivial (politician personalities) or distractive ("deficits" instead of capitalist economic disaster and ecocide). That's something he could accomplish. Playing to the social atavists, anti-abortion fanatics and goldbugs on the Tea Party side is easy, and thoroughly inconsequential. I don't know why so many basically hippie idealists who really want a better world still follow him, it shows the dearth of options in the whole electoral political scene that he would seem like an alternative.

.

[eyeno]

No. Obviously. He's 101 years old. "Politically a good move on his part," if he wanted to stir some shit on behalf of his causes that would make a difference, would be to stop posturing for brute fundamentalists and run in the Democratic primaries against Obama on a two-plank platform: end the empire and wars, and end the drug war. He could say these are the two most pressing issues affecting liberty and you can't have it all and he doesn't want to divide but at least make these changes of revolutionary import. That would be politically a good move. What he's doing? Fuck him. And fuck all apologists who should know better. (I'm most willing to forgive the kids on the street who've learned to eschew fractional reserve banking but haven't figured out yet that the banksters are not the nemesis but the embodiment of libertarian philosophy.) His banking and economic policies amount to replacing Saruman with Sauron proper. I don't want to "end the Fed," I want public national and state banks and rules to advantage credit unions and a break up of the zombie TBTFs and clawback of all the wealth they've plundered and criminal proceedings against the makers of the subprime frauds and a clampdown on bullshit speculation and HFT and naked trading and an open, strictly regulated market in derivatives and a Tobin Tax. He wants practically the opposite: Let them run wild, but without bailouts. And take away the peoples' hard-earned retirement income. And police the wombs of women. Fuck him.

Jack I respect you and I always read your financial commentary. But, but, but, this is so riddled with dead ends and inaccurate information that I just cannot follow it. Nuking the federal reserve would accomplish your wishes, but yet you want to keep the federal reserve? That is a contradiction that I cannot resolve. The only way to accomplish your wishes is to abolish the fed. Simple as that. As someone earlier upthread said, "take away the keys". Because as long as the money printing is in private hands there is NO SOLUTION.

According to Paul he would nuke the fed. That is the first and only step towards resolving this huge problem. Policing wombs? You see that as a greater problem than a debt based money system in private hands?

[eyeno]

I'll take this guy over the federal reserve. At least he knows what he is talking about, drunk or not...

[Jeff]

Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011 8:00 AM

Ron Paul’s phony populism
The libertarian presidential candidate is a true friend of the 1 percent

By Gary Weiss

....

... The success of the Ron Paul campaign with young voters, which David Sirota pointed out in Salon Monday, is but the latest example of how Americans can be persuaded to support the most reactionary politicians in America when they’re suitably manipulated, even if they aren’t reactionary and, sometimes, even when they identify themselves as progressive.

...

This is not a plan for the 99 percent. It is about as much of a 1 percent-oriented ideological meat cleaver as you can find anywhere in the annals of politics. Paul would take an ax to the federal budget, hacking off $1 trillion in the first year alone, ripping and cutting and deenacting and deregulating so as to ostensibly return America to “its former constitutionally limited, smaller-government and less-burdensome place.”

...

After spelling out the good stuff from the leftist perspective — a 15 percent Defense Department spending cut ending all funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the hard charge backward commences:

* No more aid to education. Goodbye, Department of Education.

* No more government-subsidized housing. Goodbye, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

* No more energy programs. Goodbye, Department of Energy.

* No more programs to promote commerce and technology. Goodbye, Department of Commerce.

* *No more national parks. Goodbye, Department of the Interior.

His opposition to the very existence of the Federal Reserve — he wrote a book titled “End the Fed” — is straight out of Rand, as is his promotion of the gold standard.

Paul would not reform the abysmally flawed and underfunded Securities and Exchange Commission, he would eliminate it. The only agency of the federal government that stands between the public and greedy bankers and crooked corporations would be gone. He is philosophically opposed to it, as he is to Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, the reform measures enacted after Enron and the 2008 financial crisis, respectively. His Reformed America would no longer discomfit Wall Street with the latter’s restrictions on banks or annoy corporate executives with Sarb-Ox’s ethics and fair-disclosure rules.

And this is but the beginning of the shower of blessings that would rain down upon the very richest Americans. He would end the income tax, thereby making the United States the ultimate onshore tax haven. The message to both the Street and corporate America would be a kind of hyper-Reaganesque “Go to town, guys.” With income, estate and gift taxes eliminated and the top corporate tax rate lowered to 15 percent (and not a word about cutting corporate tax loopholes), a kind of perma-plutonomy would come to exist in the land — to the extent that there isn’t one already.

The guts of Paul’s grand scheme, where its rubber hits the road, is in the all-important theme of cutting programs that benefit the poor and middle class. Despite all its window-dressing and spin, the heart of every libertarian plan for this country is a kind of mammoth subtraction: making deep cuts in programs benefiting millions of Americans, out of a belief that such programs are morally wrong. Restoring America is a moral statement, an enshrinement of the Randian belief that aid to one facet of the population (the poor) is really “looting” of resources from other facets of the population (the wealthy).

...

... The only question is, how long is Paul going to be allowed to get away with his faux-populist con job? I agree with his backers in this sense: He is less of a fringe candidate than he is sometimes portrayed in the media. His positions are increasingly infecting mainstream Republican politics, and it’s scary.

No, strike that. His positions are scary only if you know what they actually are, and not how he spins them.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/ron_pau ... singleton/

[Searcher08]

Bloomberg
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/20 ... g-reports/
In a story that sheds new light on the extent of the country’s financial crisis, Bloomberg Markets magazine reported today that the Federal Reserve lent trillions of dollars to beleaguered financial institutions, with $1.2 trillion going out on just one day in 2008.

“The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy,” Bloomberg reported today. ”And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”

Bloomberg Markets said it went over 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions.

“Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse,” Bloomberg reported.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had argued back in 2008 when the crisis hit that revealing borrower details would create a stigma that would have led to more banks collapsing. And the Fed fought to keep the details of the loans, which totaled $7.77 trillion, secret long after.

Gary
His opposition to the very existence of the Federal Reserve — he wrote a book titled “End the Fed” — is straight out of Rand, as is his promotion of the gold standard.


Riiight...


Weiss wants sticking plaster solutions like "reform of the SEC". Doing that will keep in place the same systemic clusterfuck.

I wondered if there might be an element of this being driven by Ron Paul's stance on Israel...

Oh look...

Every candidate but the libertarian Ron Paul has made a point of jumping on Obama's distance from Israel, usually in exaggerated terms, but with more than a grain of truth to their attacks.

Indeed, the Israelis have a justifiable beef that Obama has undercut their negotiating stance every step of the way, not only by his settlement-freeze pressure but by his insistence that Israel deal with borders and security in the first phase of negotiations, and only later deal with refugees and other thorny issues. Israelis would like all these issues dealt with at once. While that is calculated to bring the parties to the negotiating table, so far it hasn't worked.

Funny, that

[Canadian_watcher]

if it makes anyone feel any better my daughter, 18 yrs old, enrolled in a very liberal program at a politically active university, and also a young person who reads 'reddit' multiple times a day & considers herself a 'hipster' sees right through Ron Paul. To quote her, "Everyone's all Ron Paul this and Ron Paul that but I don't know.. he doesn't seem very good to me."

[Searcher08]

if it makes anyone feel any better my daughter, 18 yrs old, enrolled in a very liberal program at a politically active university, and also a young person who reads 'reddit' multiple times a day & considers herself a 'hipster' sees right through Ron Paul. To quote her, "Everyone's all Ron Paul this and Ron Paul that but I don't know.. he doesn't seem very good to me."

Not very good compared to....?
I value transparency in politicians - and think he is not a lying scumbag unlike 99% of pols.

From the top page of reddit - this was too good to pass - entitled
"Why I don't use public transport"

[Elihu]

The only agency of the federal government that stands between the public and greedy bankers and crooked corporations

as he is to Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, the reform measures enacted after Enron and the 2008 financial crisis, respectively.

theme of cutting programs that benefit the poor and middle class.

if one accepts the premises that these things are what the fedgov is doing, that benevolence is the purpose sans ulterior motive (remember, it's not possible to have two motivations for something. one is supreme over the other), then yes we can bring the discussion of paul down to the level of "is he a bloodthirsty hobgoblin or not?" frankly it's childish. for those of us that support him it's not about paul. it's a matter of civics. is the fedgov doing the right thing? is it even being honest about what it's doing? look at the state of our nation. how much more failure do we wish to countenance? tingly feelings induced by pandering is not going to save us.

latest example of how Americans can be persuaded to support the most reactionary politicians in America when they’re suitably manipulated,

need to cure the wrongthink. the problem is not the problem. its the way our opponents think. and the dupes they manipulate.

The only question is, how long is Paul going to be allowed to get away with his faux-populist con job?

send in the thought police, embrace the ministry of love.

a kind of perma-plutonomy would come to exist in the land — to the extent that there isn’t one already.

astounding. unless we keep everything re the fedgov we have now and in fact expand it. it's not wrong. just wrong-hearted people in charge. go ahead, embrace your slavemasters and thank them.

After spelling out the good stuff from the leftist perspective — a 15 percent Defense Department spending cut ending all funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan —

is it realistic to discuss any change prior to ending the wars? i do not think so.

No, strike that. His positions are scary only if you know what they actually are, and not how he spins them.

trust your fear. how could it be wrong?

His positions are increasingly infecting mainstream Republican politics, and it’s scary.

to who? the people or the republican half of the oligarchy?
this piece is additionally loaded with inflammatory speculative opinion eg

out of a belief that such programs are morally wrong.

and

The message to both the Street and corporate America would be a kind of hyper-Reaganesque “Go to town, guys.”

and

His opposition to the very existence of the Federal Reserve — he wrote a book titled “End the Fed” — is straight out of Rand,

but it's indicative of the mental state and level of *cough* debate.

[semper occultus]

^^ yeah I can't stand people on trains with those headphones making irritating tish-tish-tish noises...

the only US pol in my limited knowledge that I'd pull unconscious out of a burning building is Spitzer - if only he'd kept it in his pants for a couple more years - the rest I'd not even piss on their incinerating carcasses

[ninakat]

Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011 8:00 AM

Ron Paul’s phony populism
The libertarian presidential candidate is a true friend of the 1 percent

By Gary Weiss

Peter Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. And Schiff's a proud and cocky 1 percenter. But sure, Ron Paul's gotta be a man of the people (well, certain people -- of the white, male, straight, "christian," rich, powerful kind). If people thought Obama could walk on water, wait til they see what Ron Paul can do!