Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

During a speech at the Value Voters Summit on Saturday, Rick Santorum attacked “smart people” and the media:

“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

Santorum then proceeded to attack members of his own party:

“When it comes to conservatism libertarian types can say, “oh, well you know, we don't want to talk about social issues”. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”

Quote of the Day

“Ron Paul’s supporters ask that their candidate not be judged by his associates. Or by the people he chose to employ. Or by the newsletters he published. Or by the book he wrote. Or by the way he earned the largest part of his living when out of office in the 1990s. Or by his purchase of the mailing list of the Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby. Or by the radio shows he chooses to appear on. Or by his strategic decision to reach out to racist voters. Or by the conspiracy theories to which he lends credence, from government creation of AIDS to Israeli culpability for the 1993 bombing to a putative 9/11 “coverup.”

And here I thought that libertarianism was a doctrine of personal responsibility?”

- Not-a-“modern”-Republican, David Frum, on Ron Paul. Frum was responding to a piece by Andrew Sullivan, whereby Sullivan is supportive of Ron Paul whilst pretending not to support Ron Paul, having received much condemnation when he actually endorsed Ron Paul.

Morning Quote: Glenn Greenwald

Salon.com blogger, Not-a-Liberal-a-Libertarian, Glenn Greenwald on Twitter yesterday, told prominent Obama supporter, @AngryBlackLady [Imani Gandy], that  she and other Obama supporters (or “Obots” or “cultists” as he likes to call us) would support anything President Obama did, including assassination and rape.

Dr. Dawg: “ @AngryBlackLady @g_p_g @ggreenwald @emptywheel ABL, Obama could rape a nun live on NBC and you'd say we weren't seeing what we were seeing.”

Glenn Greenwald: “ @DrDawg @AngryBlackLady @g_p_g  @emptywheel
No - she'd [AngryBlackLady] say it was justified and noble- that he only did it to teach us about the evils of rape. ”

When Twitter exploded with recriminations against Greenwald’s use of a rape metaphor to criticize Obama supporters, Greenwald doubled down with this tweet:

“ @jennpozner @JamilSmith It is NOT a "rape metaphor": it's a statement they they'd defend ANY evil: assassinations, child-killings: EVEN rape. ”

Got it? According to Salon.com head writer, Glenn Greenwald, if you are a supporter of President Obama, you are a defender of any and all evil in the world including rape, assassinations, and child killings.

Adding......Greenwald has blocked me on Twitter so I can’t link to his individual tweets, but you can view them here, and Zerlina Maxwell of The Grio has a good takedown of Greenwald here.

Oh, and Happy New Year!!

Sixteen Things You Should Know About Ron Paul

Let's start with this - he is absolutely not your benign Uncle Fester.

1. Ron Paul has financial ties to the white supremacist, Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and currently a Neo-Nazi leader whose website is the largest hate site on the internet. The image is of Ron Paul with Don Black, and Don Black’s son, Derek Black.
2. Ron Paul is absolutely a racist; there is no real room for doubt.
3. Ron Paul told Chris Matthews that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He also stated that Jim Crow laws should not be illegal.
4. Ron Paul is an anti-Semite, and has a terrible record on Israel.
5. Ron Paul has been closely allied with the John Birch Society since the 1970’s. In fact, Ron Paul was the speaker at their 50th anniversary shindig.
6. Ron Paul believes that we should abolish FEMA. Should a natural disaster occur, you can only hope that your neighbors will help you, and that they have the money to help you.
7. Ron Paul opposed raising the U.S. debt ceiling, even if it meant that we would default on our obligations.
8. Ron Paul encouraged Wikileaks/Julian Assange to go after the Federal Reserve.
9. Ron Paul claims that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional and has even equated them with slavery. He has said that he would abolish these programs. (And yes, Ron Paul is himself on Medicare.)
10. Ron Paul believes that both our monetary system and our system of taxation are unconstitutional, and would like to abolish our centralized banking system (Federal Reserve), paper money, the IRS, and the income tax.
11. Ron Paul believes that abortion should be criminalized & “is the most important issue of our age”.
12. Ron Paul believes that the following departments of the Federal government are unconstitutional and would like to abolish all of them:  the Dept. of Education, the Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Agriculture, the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Commerce, and the Dept. of Labor.
13. Ron Paul would like to eliminate all federal involvement on multiple issues such as marriage, abortion, prayer in school, civil rights, education, and others. In a Ron Paul world, the Federal government would defer to the individual states on most  issues.........that is, providing that the Federal government first does things such as declare a fetus a “person”. 
14. Ron Paul is an isolationist. This is not the same thing as “anti-war” which seems to confuse some Liberals.
15. Ron Paul wants to eliminate the 14th amendment -- to end “birthright citizenship”, and has called for attacks on the benefits of undocumented workers.
16. Ron Paul would eliminate the student loan program, leaving students at the mercy of the banks, and despite the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind other developed nations in education.

Some Liberals say that Ron Paul holds “progressive views”. I think not.

VIDEO: The Koch Brothers Effort to Resegregate Our Schools

If you haven’t yet watched Part I [an overview] of  Robert Greenwald’s documentary film series, “The Koch Brothers Exposed”,  you should do that prior to watching Part II, which concerns our public education system.

Part II is about the Wake County school system (one of the largest school districts in the country) in North Carolina, where the Koch founded and funded ‘Americans for Prosperity’ funded a resegregation effort on the part of a group of parents in Wake County. Resegregation. In 2011 America.

Since the Koch brothers are very bullish on privatizing our schools, both I and apparently the films producer, Robert Greenwald, believe that this resegregation effort is just a stepping stone to privatization.

Watch Part II of  The Koch Brothers Exposed - Why do the Koch Brothers want to end public education?

From kochbrothersexposed.com:

The Facts

1. 1. After the November 2009 elections, the Wake County school board dismantled socio-economic diverse schools and began to implement a neighborhood schools plan that would resegregate schools.
2. 2. Resegregation in schools would be a disaster. It would turn back the clock fifty years with the creation of high poverty, racially isolated schools. The integration plan destroyed by Koch-supported board of education members was used as a model for high achieving, diverse schools throughout the country.
3. 3. This October 2011, Wake Country elections will decide if schools become resegregated. Koch-supported candidates are still pushing for neighborhood schools and to end diversity.
4. 4. The Koch brothers free market, libertarian ideology rests on privatization in society, especially the privatization of education.
5. 5. The Kochs founded Americans for Prosperity in 2004, and AFP indirectly poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Wake County school board elections and helped jeopardize the diversity policy.

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RELATED POSTS:

- Koch Brothers Exposed, Part I
- Koch Brothers (page)

Ron Paul Calls Social Security and Medicare Unconstitutional

From Think Progress:

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) defended his longstanding view that Medicare, Social Security (and pretty much everything else) violate the Constitution. At one point, Paul even claimed that letting Social Security and similar programs to move forward is just like permitting slavery:

WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.

PAUL: Technically, they are. . . . there’s no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn’t say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause. . . . That is such an extreme liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and that’s what we have to reverse—that very notion that you’re presenting.

WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal to, and we had to reverse that.

Ron Paul Showing His Roots

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last night, Ron Paul (who just announced his second run for the presidency yesterday), told Matthews that he wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it was “unfair to property owners”:

MATTHEWS: You would have voted against that law. You wouldn’t have voted for the ’64 civil rights bill.

PAUL: Yes, but not in — I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws.

MATTHEWS: But you would have voted for the — you know you — oh, come on. Honestly, Congressman, you were not for the ’64 civil rights bill.

PAUL: Because — because of the property rights element, not because it got rid of the Jim Crow law.

MATTHEWS: Right. The guy who owns a bar says, no blacks allowed, you say that’s fine. … This was a local shop saying no blacks allowed. You say that should be legal?

PAUL: That’s — that’s ancient history. That’s ancient history. That’s over and done with. [...]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. We have had a long history of government involvement with Medicare, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. And I think you are saying we would have been better off without all that?

PAUL: I think we would be better off if we had freedom, and not government control of our lives, our personal lives, and our — and policing the world.

Watch:

Can we just say that this has to qualify as one of the dumbest quotes ever from a contender for a presidential nomination?

Ashby:

The bonafide lunacy of Randian disciples and their leader Ron Paul isn't exactly news, but given the embarrassing nature of the current Republican presidential field and the Libertarian under-current running through the veins of the Tea Party right now, Ron Paul could become a significant 3rd Party candidate if not the actual nominee.

Of course, I would love, love, love to see a third party Conservative candidate, or… let me be honest, I would also love to see Ron Paul as the GOP nominee!

Adding….I shouldn’t be surprised. Earlier in the day yesterday, Ron Paul called for eliminating FEMA.

Rep. Ron Paul Endorses Unconstitutional Nullification Movement

During the civil rights era, after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, a majority of Southern congressmen signed a document titled the “Southern Manifesto,” . This document claimed that the states were free to ignore federal laws.

Almost 50 years later, led by right-wing historian Thomas Woods, Conservatives have returned to that blatantly unconstitutional idea, and the nullification movement has been gaining steam.

The nullification movement, which asserts that in order for states to legitimately get around the U.S. Constitution, they just need to nullify federal laws, has now been endorsed by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Libertarian whacko:

Idiotic Libertarians

Libertarians suck. Really. Libertarian, Nick Gillespie, via Digby:

Social security is one of the most immoral programs ever.

So why do Libertarians think social security is immoral? According to Gillespie, social security is immoral because it’s unfair to the poor. Right. The truth is that Libertarians think that all forms of taxation are no more than theft; they have zero sense of the common good.

Within the mess of Libertarian prose, Gillespie provides the real reason behind Libertarian hatred of social security, and it isn’t the fact that they think it’s unfair to the poor:

How much, when, and in what form one should provide for retirement is highly individual--and is properly left to the individual's free judgment and action. Social Security deprives the young of this freedom, and thus makes them less able to plan for the future, less able to provide for their retirements, less able to buy homes, less able to enjoy their most vital years, less able to invest in themselves. And yet Social Security's advocates continue to push it as moral. Why?
The answer lies in the program's ideal of "universal coverage"--the idea that, as a recent New York Times editorial preached, "all old people must have the dignity of financial security"--regardless of how irresponsibly they have acted. On this premise, since some would not save adequately on their own, everyone must be forced into some sort of "guaranteed" collective plan--no matter how irrational. Observe that Social Security's wholesale harm to those who would use their income responsibly is justified in the name of those who would not. The rational and responsible are shackled and throttled for the sake of the irrational and irresponsible.
Those who wish to devote their wealth to saving the irresponsible from the consequences of their own actions should be free to do so through private charity, but to loot the savings of untold millions of innocent, responsible, hard-working young people in the name of such a goal is a monstrous injustice.
Social Security in any form is morally irredeemable. We should be debating, not how to save Social Security, but how to end it--how to phase it out so as to best protect both the rights of those who have paid into it, and those who are forced to pay for it today. This will be a painful task. But it will make possible a world in which Americans enjoy far greater freedom to secure their own futures.