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RSDavis
03-28-2008, 03:17 PM
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Ron Paul Roundup (03-28-08)
by RS Davis
The Freedom Files (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371645692&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)


Hello Freedomphiles! Connie Talk is now addressing (http://www.connietalk.com/ron_paul_missouri_032608.html)the Missouri Caucus Coup I’ve been telling you about:

In Jackson county, at least 175 delegates are Ron Paul supporters. Along with other delegates across the state, they will choose 55 of the party’s 58 delegates to the National Convention.

State Republican committee member David Buie said, "There’s potential for embarrassing press overage, with no substantive effect on the outcome." What is embarrassing about voting for the candidate of your choosing? Isn’t that what elections are for?

"We can also help affect the Republican platform," said Missouri Paul organizer Larry Holland, "And bring it back to its conservative, libertarian views."

In St. Charles County, the caucus turned into a six-hour event where Ron Paul supporters gained control: they made up 241 of the 274 delegate slots. And they weren’t just talking: they passed a proposed rule change that could affect presumptive nominee John McCain, as the delegates seek to secure the option of voting for the candidate of their choosing from the Missouri Republican Party.

In Greene County (Springfield), Paul supporters made up 72 of the 112 delegate slots.

Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald wrote (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1724358,00.html?xid=rss-topstories)a piece about Ron Paul:

The real significance of the Paul campaign is not the ubiquitous bumper stickers and lawn signs or the online fund-raising records ($6 million in one day, plus another $4 million, hilariously, on Guy Fawkes Day) but the mirror Paul held up to the modern Republican Party. When his fellow candidates denounced big government, Paul was there to remind them that President Bush and the G.O.P. Congress had shattered spending records and exploded the deficit. When they hailed freedom, Paul asked why they all supported the Patriot Act and other expansions of executive power. And when they called themselves conservatives, Paul asked what was so conservative about sending thousands of young Americans to try to transform the Middle East.

In some ways, Paul is a throwback to the frugal and isolationist wing of the old Republican Party, the fuddy-duddy GOP of Robert Taft and Calvin Coolidge. His fiscal policies evoke the idealistic Republican revolutionaries who seized control of Congress in 1994; he wants to abolish the IRS, the Departments of Homeland Security, Education and Energy, and most of the federal government. He refuses to vote for unbalanced budgets, and he has opposed spending taxpayer dollars on Congressional Medals of Honor, even for Rosa Parks or Pope John Paul II. Typically, his campaign has reported no debts, and still has more than $5 million in the bank. Meanwhile, Paul’s foreign policies evoke candidate George W. Bush’s call for a "humbler foreign policy" in 2000, although Paul goes much further; not only did he oppose U.S. involvement in Iraq, Kosovo and the war on drugs, he opposes U.S. involvement in the United Nations and NATO.

Under Bush’s leadership, of course, the Republican Party has been anything but frugal and anything but isolationist. The congressional Republican revolutionaries seemed to lose their zeal for shrinking the federal government once they controlled it, which is one reason voters expelled them from power in 2006. And these days, it’s usually Democrats who call for a humbler foreign policy. Paul’s leave-us-alone libertarianism hasn’t fit in with a party anxious to read our e-mail, improve our values, assert American power abroad and subsidize friendly industries at home. The party’s recent mix of "national greatness" neoconservatives, evangelical theoconservatives and K Street careerists has had many goals, but leaving people alone hasn’t been one of them. That’s why Paul was the one getting booed at G.O.P. debates...

...Still, even if you set aside Paul’s kookier ideas, there just doesn’t seem to be a road to the White House for any candidate who opposes the war in Iraq as well as higher taxes, the war on drugs as well as higher spending, restrictions on privacy as well as restrictions on guns. That’s a real "freedom agenda," a true assault on big government, and while it clearly spoke to some angry dudes with high-speed web connections and time on their hands, it’s just as clearly not where America stands today. Paul didn’t have a lot of company on the House floor when he rose recently to complain about government overreach in the investigation of the disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after revelations that he had been a customer of a high-end prostitution ring.

But even if Paul’s ideological purity is never going to get him to the White House, it does help illuminate the impurities — and sometimes the hypocrisies — of today’s Republicans, just as Ralph Nader can do for the Democrats. The G.O.P. candidates all claimed to defend taxpayers, but Paul was the only one who refused to accept a taxpayer-funded pension or taxpayer-funded junkets. The candidates all talked about shrinking big government, but Paul was the only one who included the Pentagon and NSA wiretaps and petroleum subsidies in his definition. Bush’s approval ratings have been abysmal for years, but Paul was the only Republican who really campaigned for change.

And The Nolan Chart’s Jake Morphonios commented (http://www.nolanchart.com/article3300.html):

Grunwald uses all the expected ad-hominems. You will find in his article the words nut, kook, wacky and extremist. But a deeper reading of the article reveals Grunwald’s primary purpose - to demonstrate that Ron Paul is a genuine, old-time Republican that is trying to bring his party and nation back to its "wacky" roots.

I agree with that reading of the piece. So does (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/why-ron-paul-st.html) Andrew Sullivan:

These questions have not and will not go away. At its very best, Iraq, it is now more than apparent, is a decades-long, bankrupting, utopian liberal attempt to build a democratic culture where no such culture has ever existed; and at worst, it is a corrupting, demoralizing cancer on America’s reputation and power in the world. At home, the long term fiscal situation is at a crisis-level, with Republicans adding $32 trillion to future unfunded liabilities by the federal government in seven years, and with a commitment not to raise any more revenue for the indefinite future. Neither Obama nor Clinton has any plan to tackle this debt or to restrain entitlement spending in any serious way. Millions of private individuals have taken out idiotic mortgage loans on houses they cannot afford and should never have been reckless enough to buy. The dollar is headed into the toilet as much of the US economy is leveraged on the bona fides of a still-authoritarian regime that is currently brutally suppressing human rights in Tibet and across its territory.

For all his quirks, and for all his unseemly past associations, Ron Paul had some serious view about the gravity of the situation and a philosophy that was once called conservative and is now smeared as nuts. History will be far kinder to him that today’s chattering classes.

Liberty Maven noticed (http://www.libertymaven.com/2008/03/27/ron-paul-republicans-surround-dc/990/)that while everyone looks at Paul, the real rEVOLution is all around them:

It is almost as if it is the second American Revolution has arrived. There are over 40 candidates, inspired by Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign, running for federal office. The media likes to marginalize the impact of the Ron Paul campaign by pointing to the lack of primary victories, but glancing at the list of candidates running for office at PaulCongress.com reveals the underpinnings of a genuine political movement towards freedom, prosperity, and peace.

Perhaps most fitting, six candidates are within yelling distance of the Capitol building in DC. There are four candidates in Maryland who have already claimed victory in their primaries: Collins Bailey, Richard Matthews, Peter James, and Mike Hargadon. The two candidates running for Congress in Virginia have primaries coming up on June 10th. Both are running grassroots based campaigns similar to Ron Paul.

That’s so sweet. I’ve got a man on the inside over at paulcongress.com, who is trying to get some interviews set up for me, so hopefully you’ll see some of these 40 odd candidates in the virtual pages of The Freedom Files.

The rare left-libertarian shows up on The Nolan Chart under the name Random Outlier and writes (http://www.nolanchart.com/article3283.html) about the convention in St Paul:

But let me also suggest creating a Paul presence at the GOP convention requires that an ambitious libertarian cadre begin thinking less about the sublime beauty of the freedom syllogisms and more about booze, food, and comfortable settees.

Too often lost is the reality that a political convention is a gathering of human beings. They differ from the next few thousand people you’ll meet at random only in superficial ways -- a little wealthier, a little (though not much) better informed, a little more egotistical. And the majority of them will hold at least a trivial public or party office which they’ll tell you about within seconds of being introduced.

They’ll be in St. Paul to feed the ego, to store up tales of their personal triumphs for telling back home. "Martha, you just can’t believe how bad they begged me to wear a styrofoam hat with ’ Romney for Veep’ on it."

And the delegates want this stroking in well-fed contentment with the option of a hooker of top-shelf liquor, all taken in surroundings bearing a passing resemblence to the reception parlor of an upscale Parisian brothel.

Never underestimate the power of superficiality.

Fox News business analyst Elizabeth McDonald thinks (http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/03/26/time-to-listen-to-ron-paul/) it’s time to start listening to Ron Paul:

Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.

The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.

The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies...

...Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has "systematically undermined" the US dollar by expanding "the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government."

It’s not just the US gunning the mints. Goldman Sachs figures that three-fifths of the world’s broad money supply growth came from emerging economies over the past year or so. Three-fifths. That’s gigantic...

..."Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate," Congressman Paul warns. "We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late."

Wow. Nice stuff, lady. Right libertarian rtbohan writes (http://www.nolanchart.com/article3296.html)on The Nolan Chart about libertarianism and a march on Washington:

People have become supporters of libertarianism and of the Paul campaign for a variety of reasons. Some have become supporters because of opposition to the erosion of our civil liberties, a reason which might lead them to be members of the ACLU, as some undoubtedly are. Some are supporters because of Representative Paul’s consistent record of opposition to the war. Some have become members because they believe that the federal system of government is being eroded by the expansion of powers in the national government. Some have become members because they support Representative Paul’s position that the income tax is unconstitutional. The Paul movement is larger and more diverse than can be represented by a protest against the IRS alone.

I am opposed to the income tax because I view its demise as either a result or a cause of a smaller, less intrusive government. Since my retirement, by the way, I probably pay less tax on my income than I would pay under the 24% sales tax on everything, with which conservatives want to replace it. So while I support Representative Paul on this question, it is not the most salient issue for me.

The Granny Warriors, as part of their appeal for support, stress that they have all of the necessary permits and site locations for their demonstration and have already lined up speakers and entertainment.They note that the Ron Paul march is rather slow in getting organized. This is a valid point, but the latest news is that the permits have been granted for the demonstration, although the date has not yet been secured. (http://revolutionmarch.com) The better preparation for the April 15 March shows the effort the Granny Warriors have put into it, and the short notice given for the Ron Paul march. But I now believe that the latter march will occur, and I think that it is important to show not only the size but the diversity of libertarians. For those who have been brought into the Ron Paul movement primarily by his position on the income tax, and for those who can afford the time and the money to go to two demonstrations in the next few months, I recommend the Freedom Day March. But I feel that the Ron Paul march is far more important to the movement and to the nation, so I recommend that, forced to make a choice, Ron Paul supporters and libertarians in general opt for the June 21 march.

Top-diamond libertarian creator writes (http://www.nolanchart.com/article3302.html)on The Nolan Chart of an effort to create a libertarian news channel:

WE must fight fire with fire, using the visual / audible medium of television that every American child alive today has been weaned on, to begin promoting the genuine, the honest, the truthful. WE must be able to say to our friends, "TIVO this show" and give them a time and channel where they can get a daily dose of reality.

So, you say, This sounds like a BIG task. How can we possibly do something like this?

Remember the Ron Paul money bombs? $4 million one day, more than $6 million a month or so later? Who would have believed such a thing possible? The answer is, hundreds of thousands of people who yearn to breath the air of a free country once again!

(...)

Would it be worth taking a minute or two, right now, -- YES! I’m talking to YOU! -- to Thumb and Digg this article, to send it in an email to a friend, to go to http://americanlibertytv.com/ and sign up to donate to this great cause? The very best way to spread an idea is "word of mouth," also known as a "viral campaign." This is one of those ideas that’s worth spreading. Tell your wife, husband, children, friends, neighbors, Ron Paul meet-up group members. This is a good one, worth a few bucks, worth a few minutes, worth lighting a fire under. What are you waiting for? GO!

I think it is a very intriguing idea. Now, if you are a regular reader of The Freedom Files, you already know (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=370830171&Mytoken=CBA19DB5-D6D4-43CE-8F4AB7A146BEC46449590505)that would-be Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel just defected to the Libertarian Party. The Washington Post comments (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/26/gravel_joins_the_libertarians.html):

The elephant in the room, so to speak, is whether Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who has run for president on the Libertarian ticket in the past, will drop his bid for the Republican nomination and take his legions of loyal supporters back into the Libertarian fold for a third-party run in November. Paul this week reiterated that he has no intention of doing that.

But still, one can dream. A Paul-Gravel ticket? "That would be interesting, no doubt," said Davis.

Liberty Maven writes (http://www.libertymaven.com/2008/03/27/ron-paul-the-draft-and-john-mccain/991/)about the future under Paul or McCain:

John McCain has said publicly that he is against reinstating the draft. He also has admitted that we need 100 thousand more troops to effectively wage the war on terror. Perhaps McCain has some magic pill to feed our young people so they will enlist in the service "voluntarily". Without a draft or another 9-11 like event he will be hard pressed to get enough young people to raise their hands to fight in the doomed perpetual war on terror.

Ron Paul had some predictions back in 2002 about where we may be headed due to our government intervention into our economy and overseas. Many of these predictions have come true. One of the predictions was the the reinstatement of the draft. He made this prediction prior to the US going into Iraq. Certainly, John McCain would balk at the idea now, but if he were to become President would it surprise anyone if he pushed for the draft? After all, he has a history of voting against his own rhetoric.

Many view foreign policy as McCain’s strongest issue. On the surge, he’s a blind squirrel lucking into finding a nut. A nut he likes to crack over the heads of anyone who will listen. If McCain is such a foreign policy maven why did he predict failure for the US in Kosovo back in 1999? Why does he still cling to the idea that the terrorists attack us because of our freedoms in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Now he wants to wave his war wand and produce 100 thousand troops without reinstating the draft? And we all thought George Bush was out of touch with reality.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, and a leading author/expert on US foreign policy, was interviewed on a radio talk show yesterday about what he sees in the future if McCain wishes to continue with his brand of the war on terror. Listen to the short audio clip here (Scheuer MP3). That’s right he said it: Conscription.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/27/uselections2008.usa)an amazing piece on Dr Paul for The Guardian UK:

This includes the quixotic presidential bid of Dr Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from southern Texas and one of America’s most fascinating political figures - who this month has again demonstrated his independence and courage in the House of Representatives, on a subject where all other Washington politicians speak with one voice.

Unlike some of our own "Dr" MPs, Paul is a real physician, serving as a US air force doctor before delivering more than 5,000 babies as an obstetrician. He is an intransigent libertarian, who believes that "rights belong to individuals, not groups; that property should be owned by people, not government; that government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth; and that the lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government’s".

All of that would make David Cameron shudder: Paul advocates low taxes, the gold standard, and "the return of government to its proper constitutional levels". Quite apart from his abhorrence of the welfare state, many of his views will seem eccentric here, not least his belief that Tony Blair is a rabid socialist. A loopy reactionary from the boondocks, then? Not for the first time the concept of "left and right" proves most unhelpful. Paul is called a conservative, but in British terms he is an extreme liberal-individualist in the tradition of FW Hirst and Sir Ernest Benn.

Anyone dismissing him as rightwing should look at his unflinching opposition to the Iraq war, and more generally to the foreign policy of George Bush and previous presidents. Ten years ago Paul called "the fateful" Iraq Liberation Act "a declaration of virtual war", as it proved. In 2002 he voted against the coming Iraq war, or more accurately the pre-emptive abdication by Congress of its constitutional right to declare war. He opposed the equally shameful Patriot Act and, to his credit (and my delight), the granting of a Congressional gold medal to Blair - on the thrifty ground that "forcing the American people to pay tens of thousands of dollars to give a gold medal to a foreign leader is immoral and unconstitutional", and because he thought Blair a mountebank.

Finally, if you are in Baltimore, take notice of this announcement (http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/020227.html):

I haven’t seen this posted anywhere, so here goes: Ron Paul will deliver a lecture in the President’s Forum Lecture Series at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 14 at 7:30pm, in the college’s Kraushaar Auditorium. Afterward he’ll sign copies of The Revolution: A Manifesto, which will already be available notwithstanding the official April 30 publication date.

UPDATE: Be sure to reserve (free) tickets for this event. Call 410-337-6333 or e-mail.

See ya next time, Freedomphiles!

Top blogs since the last Roundup:
Drop Your Nipples and Step Away With Your Hands Up! (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371600461&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
Don’t Speak Your Mind in Texas (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371568078&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
Do You Hate Emo? (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371282724&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
Emos Whine Back, Cry, and then Cut Themselves (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371557811&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
I Swear it’s for My Glaucoma, Officer... (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371310884&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
My Gayest Look?? (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371228701&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
Kiddie Cage Fighting (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371210184&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
You Guys Totally Rock!!!! (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=371183634&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
That’s One Hot Pussy (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=370889323&Mytoken=6EB47A79-733F-4CA2-86FE27F8C9D0BCEF47866628)
Apparently They DO Need Those Pesky Civil Rights... (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=370882781&Mytoken=CBA19DB5-D6D4-43CE-8F4AB7A146BEC46449590505)
Loitering Is Now a Sex Crime? (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=370849798&Mytoken=CBA19DB5-D6D4-43CE-8F4AB7A146BEC46449590505)
Another High-Profile Defection (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=370830171&Mytoken=CBA19DB5-D6D4-43CE-8F4AB7A146BEC46449590505)

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