I was watching TV, the RNC

I watched the roll call. I'd forgotten how much it reminds me of the parade of states at the Miss America pagent, only with less attractive people. Ron Paul got almost 200 votes, including the entire state of Iowa, but no respect from the convention. His votes weren't called out from the podium. Even CSPAN only listed him as "other" though he got all but about three or four of the "other" votes.

The new RNC rule I mentioned in my update, passed on a voice vote, but everyone I've seen says the nays were louder than the yeas.

Mr. Boehner ignored them, pressing ahead by saying the rules would be adopted “without objection,” even as the crowd continued to roar its disapproval. Mr. Boehner announced that the rules were approved and quickly moved on to the adoption of the party’s platform.

As I said on the twitter, if I was a Ron Paul supporter I would walk of that convention and join Gary Johnson's team.

I lost my internet connection for the best part of the roll call, when Minnesota announced their votes. They had some choice words for the floor:

"Minnesota, where we are very proud of our state Republican Party, which runs a fair convention with integrity," the state delegate said at the RNC on Tuesday night as she announced their count. "We cast 33 votes for Ron Paul, one vote for Sen. Rick Santorum and six votes for Gov. Romney."

The other thing that struck me was how forced the "enthusiam" was in the room. A lot of the older ladies looked rather genuinely thrilled, but most of the good ole boys had that look on their face that said, "Let's get this over with so I can get to the bar dammit." Not feeling any real energy on that floor.

[Dave Weigel photo: "Convention aide tells Ron Paul delegate to put away his sign."]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The Ron Paul revolution

Ron Paul officially gave up his bid for the nomination, but Paul's supporters will not go quietly:

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) - In a revolt against Romney, at least 40 more national convention delegates asked to join 123 previous plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Republican National Committee, and their attorney said hundreds more may soon follow suit.

The first 123 delegates, all from the 9th Circuit, sued the RNC, its Chairman Rince Priebus, and every state party chairman in the 9th Circuit in Federal Court on Monday, demanding the right to vote for the candidate of their choice on every ballot at the Republican National Convention, including the first.

The Ron Paul faithful are alleging all sorts of fraud at the conventions from vote rigging to physical intimidation. And despite all that, they're amassing a significant number of delegates.

Meanwhile, Team Romney isn't winning any friends on the road. One small business owner who loaned her cafe to the Romney campaign for an event ended up feeling rather badly mistreated. They trashed the joint, including destroying personal irrepacable mementos, and she wasn't even allowed to meet Willard.

Willard called her later to lay on some of his "common touch" charm. It didn't go well.

...She says he explained that it was just a misunderstanding that she did not get to meet him, but the phone call didn't smooth things over for her.

"He responded 'well, I'm sorry your table cloths got ripped off, wadded up and thrown in the back room' and I took it as mocking," she said. "We're the ones he's wanting to get the votes from, you'd think we would have been treated better."

To know the Rmoneybot is to loathe him and he still has months of awkward gladhanding to get through. Maybe there won't be a brokered convention, but this could still turn out to be the most interesting GOP convention in decades.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Let it be Paul

by Capt. Fogg

Ron Paul seems at the moment to be the front runner in Iowa, which to me offers some hope that American Conservative dementia might not progress to the point where that miscreant Gingrich might be selected to run against Barack Obama.

And no, I haven't become a Republican, but I'd far rather see Dr. Paul, whose ideas I sometimes agree with and sometimes don't in a debate than be forced to listen to Newt advocate a nation of "believers" where no one can be trusted who doesn't follow a Gingrich approved God, or God forbid, live in a nation with a president who insists he would arrest a judge whose decisions don't fit the doctrines of Newtonian Theocracy and plutocracy. For someone who makes such a fuss about the constitution's limitations on government power, you'd think he could show us the part advocating for a priest-king or a definition of a separation of powers that is subject to suspension at the whim of the President.

Of course one has to wonder whether the inner Gingrich is connected in any way to the outer, all too visible Gingrich, with strings attached to all sorts of crepuscular but malignant entities. Perhaps his outrageous anti-Americanism is simply bait to attract the creepy-crawly political vermin squirming in the anti-American mud and perhaps he's not really an enemy of democracy, Liberty and the rule of law and the other things most of us wish were core values in civilized countries.

So I have to think that at best, he's a fraud who fully intends to betray anyone foolish enough to think he means what he says, but I have to fear, at worst, that he means it. So yes, I'll take the candidate who I think goes a bit overboard with limiting the power of the Government to the man who would be king.

Elective Dictatorship or Leadership?

By Capt. Fogg

Ron Paul, I like you - I really do. I like it when you denounce our military adventurism and imperial urges. I share your distaste for prosecuting harmless, consensual acts and I don't think either of us like having a government dictate morality according to some chosen religious standards.

I couldn't agree more that we need to keep the governmental nose out of our personal choices that don't infringe on other people's rights. I think we have an inherent right to be left alone too, but when you assert that that same government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy I find it inconsistent. When you proclaim that President Obama is overstepping his presidential powers by taking action to end a dangerous drug shortage, I'm confused. I'm disappointed. Market forces alone aren't going to induce drug companies to make unprofitable products that some people need to stay alive and if they eventually do, it won't be soon enough for someone's mother or sister or child. There are times when the the noli me tangere market approach does not serve the public interest and times when human life is more important than the sanctity of inflexible doctrine.

Yes, I agree that our government was designed to move slowly, for inaction to be the default action as you said yesterday. I even agree that there is an invisible hand in the market, but I cannot understand how you can ignore the sometimes dire consequences of such slow moving or inert systems in a world that moves at a rate inconceivable in 1789.

Sure, eventually drug shortages will tend to rectify because of market forces. 'Tend to' and 'eventually' are expensive words however and the price is often paid in death and suffering. A car tends to steer itself in a straight line, but you know, sometimes someone has to grab the wheel if staying alive is a consideration.

I have to ask you how much needless death and suffering are you willing to force us all to endure to gild the vision of a withered and minimal state where things move only by themselves and the making of money is the only test of righteousness?

Dictatorship? Seriously? Isn't that a bit like calling the guy who pulls your kid out of a well a kidnapper because he didn't apply to Congress in advance through proper channels?

I believe in Democracy as much as you do and perhaps more. I mistrust radical change and I lean toward Libertarianism in many things, but unlike you, I do not belief in faith over fact. If there is a plague, if a dam breaks -- if that asteroid that passed close to us this morning had landed in Texas, I want someone to grab the steering wheel without having his hands tied by doctrines soaked in the tea of Utopian visions.

I have to ask "why now?" Were you as firm in protest of our previous president's extra-legal activities? The signing statements, the treaty breaking, the torture, the illegal search and seizure and surveillance? The wars that have killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed millions of lives and wasted trillions of dollars? Of course you didn't approve and neither did I, but there is a difference between an asteroid and a sand grain. Are we really confusing necessary course corrections with wanton disrespect for law, due process and freedom?

Why now? Or are you just jumping on the Obama Bashing Band Wagon because you're more of a loyal Republican and less interested in doing what needs to be done before too many people die than you'd like to admit?

Ron Paul: Liberal

By Capt. Fogg

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a Liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing which in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time?

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,”

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,”

which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiferous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

Right but wrong

By Capt. Fogg

You could fault Ron Paul for stating the obvious, but hey, somebody has to do it. Should the country try to save it's triple A rating with Moody's? Why bother when those helium-filled bond ratings proved to be based on politics and greed and by giving investors false confidence, helped precipitate the market collapse of 2008?

“I always wonder about this ratings, the bond ratings before the crash three years ago wasn’t helpful, so sometimes I wonder if it’s political theater to build up the fear.”

said Dr. Paul on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Of course it is, but is he doing the same thing?

But I'm not sure that I agree with the rest of his assessment: that the country is insolvent and bankrupt and got that way by excessive spending on the health and welfare of Americans. It's a bit like telling your spouse that the family could go to Disneyland more often if they weren't saddled with life insurance and a retirement savings plan, but I don't think one can rightly compare the financial problems of an individual or a family with the problems of a country in such a simplistic fashion.

One becomes insolvent and enters bankruptcy because one's income is insufficient to be able to manage one's debt. An individual does not always have control over how much money he makes; can't always find a job, can't always be healthy enough to work, can't always pay medical bills.

That's not so with a government. Our revenue shortfall is in some large part voluntary; an effort to "starve the beast" by thwarting its ability to run programs that the electorate voted for. That attempt is also a bit of political theater with a lot of smokey pyrotechnics and a bit of dramatic hand waving involved so as to obscure the fact that very low taxes on large incomes do not raise revenue, by magic transfer from the people who put much of their incomes into hedge funds and equities to the people who spend most of their incomes on food and shelter.

So yes, Social Security, a government program that did much to create the Middle class and take tens of millions of older people out of abject poverty, is going to run out of funds eventually because they're going to make it run out of funds so that they can do away with it. So yes, it's also political theater designed to create fear and panic, but perhaps the word 'theater' isn't quite strong enough. I'd call it a scam.

Ron Paul wins the money race

By Libby

You know how the media always tells us they ignore peripheral candidates because they don't raise enough money to be taken seriously? Well Ron Paul raised the most dough in 2007.

By the thousands Paul's fervent followers donated $19.95 million to the "Ron Paul Revolution." He spent $17.75 million and at year's end had $7.8 million cash on hand, making him the only Republican candidate to increase his fundraising totals in every quarter of 2007. According to his website, Paul's Paulunteers have contributed another $4.1 million this month...

The only one who came close to his totals was Romney, and most of Mittens cash came out of his own pocket. So do you think Ron Paul will be on the all the Sunday talk shows now that the figures have been released? I don't either.

Outing Paul

By Capt. Fogg

Today, of course, marks the official celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday. Not everyone is happy about it. "what an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it," said one dissenter at the time. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey day."

Back in the 1990's King was excoriated by a certain publication as a world class philanderer who beat up his paramours, seduced underage boys and was a Communist sympathizer. Claiming that black activists wanted to rename New York city after Dr. King, he suggested Welfaria, Zooville, Rapetown, Dirtburg and Lazyopolis as alternatives. "Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions" is a typical analysis and one of many, many more quoted in The New Republic's current article: Angry White Man.

Of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles he wrote: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began." and "I've urged everyone in my family to to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming." Of racial disturbances in Washington DC the previous year, he announced in his newsletter: "Animals take over the DC zoo" and "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990's."

It's obvious that I'm talking about Ron Paul, the puckish and charming Republican candidate who tempts us with things we want to hear about the tendency of our current administration toward a bloated, secretive, rapaciously greedy, authoritarian nanny-state with little respect for the balance of powers or constitutional authority. He got my applause when the Republican debate audience jeered at his mention that the US had once forcibly ended Democracy in Iran and I'm usually glad to see him undercutting the empty sloganeering of his opponents. But anybody can say anything and some have said too much for me to believe in their motives or veracity.

If one can believe the words that have been published for decades in Ron Paul's various newsletters, he doesn't much like black people, Jews, ( who blew up the WTC) homosexuals or people who don't take a stand against them and their civil rights. "Bring back the closet" shouts one of his headlines. Other articles decry gays for trying to poison the blood supply and for enjoying having AIDS because of the sympathy it provided them. AIDS, of course, had been deliberately concocted by the World Health Organization claims another of his articles.

Ron Paul's various newsletters, published under his name since the 1980's show strong ties to extremists like David Duke and their extremist causes. Although he claims not to have read or be responsible for the countless outrageous statements made over the decades, it's rather hard to believe in him any more.

Best in Show

By Capt. Fogg


Hark, hark The dogs do bark
The beggars are coming to town

-13th century nursery rhyme-

Do we really believe Ron Paul has no idea about who wrote the articles that went out under his name during the 1990's? Does anyone buy the statement that he never read them? Does anyone think it's irrelevant because it happened before the 6 week memory span of the American public? Paul says what I want to hear about our drift away from a constitutional Republic toward an oligarchy driven by expedience. He is willing to directly address many problems that his opponants are either ignorant of, or afraid to incriminate themselves by mentioning, but anyone can say anything. His customary candor seems to have gone missing when it comes to the Ron Paul Political Report.

Does anyone believe the pusillanimous pandering of Fred Thompson?

“On the one hand,” he said last night “you have the Reagan revolution, you have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security."

Actually we never did, we had a corrupt president with a progressive neurodegenerative disease who inflated the government to record size, ignored the law, trained terrorists in Central America sold missiles to Iran and a military that tripped all over it's inadequacies while invading the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada. A pretty revolting sort of revolution it was.

"He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies”

Thompson said of Huckabee. The Pope would be a Christian leader too, even though neither man could be accused of being Liberal or being qualified to be our president, nor could Jesus be accused of being conservative. Perhaps that's all there is to Thompson's campaign: just say Reagan and Liberal and lie about what that means until the dogs start to bark.

“The Air Force has a saying that says if you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target,” he said. “I’m catching the flak; I must be over the target” was supposed to be a demonstration of the Huckabeean wit and probably was, to anyone dumb enough to let the false syllogism pass unnoticed.

And then there was Rudy.

"There were other people on this stage that also supported the surge. The night of the president’s speech, I was on television. I supported the surge, I’ve supported it throughout.”

Me too, me too you guys - it wasn't only him, it was me too! 9/11 - 9/11 - I was there! What about a candidate that isn't afraid to criticize the grotesque and fatal errors of the worst president and most inept Commander in Chief in American history? Not amongst the Republican kennel club.

"I’m going to fight for every single job. Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country. We’re going to fight for jobs and make sure that our future is bright.”

Says Uncle Milton Romney. Sure you are, Mitt and I'm sure you'll explain just how you're going to do it after the election is over.

Then came McCain.

“One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth, and sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear along with things that they do want to hear.”

Right, whatever suits the occasion and the audience and that's usually the latter.

Are we bothering to name a "winner" in these debates any more? For may part, I don't give a damn and I don't have a dog in this fight anyway but It's easy enough to name a loser of course. There may be about 300 million of them.

Some in rags and some in Jags
And one in a velvet gown

Cross posted at Human Voices

A whole lot less of Jesus and a lot more constitutional law

By Capt. Fogg

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-Sinclair Lewis-

Sinclair Lewis and Ron Paul. I've quoted both of them frequently and it seems that Doctor Paul has read the Nobel Prize winning author too. Asked for his opinion of Mike Huckabee's faith dripping Christmas ad where he poses with a cross and talks about the birth of Christ, he gave Fox News the above quote.

I admit, I usually find other people's faith to be as unpleasant to view as their dirty underwear but since I don't consider Jesus of Nazareth to be the divinely anointed king of anyplace, I don't call him Christ and am not about to have some overweight Gomer Pyle tell me to. As Christmas, the birthday of Deus Sol Invictus , is an entirely pagan holiday established by a Roman emperor who considered himself to be God and was until recently eschewed by many Christian sects, perhaps the few American Christians with a rudimentary sense of history might agree that this cheap, tawdry and condescending assertion of faith doesn't indicate a president who represents all of us but rather a power hungry preacher seeking a captive congregation of 300 million people.

I have to agree with Ron Paul that the constant harping on Christian identity and Christian power and Christian celebration by someone who should be talking about restoring the rule of law; should be addressing the growing economic problems caused by the Bush administration, the diminishing role of the US in world affairs, the quagmire in Iraq, the disaster in Afghanistan, the shrinking of the middle class and a host of other things including religious divisiveness reminds me of the kind of Godblathering, flag waving rhetoric that has paved the road to power of so many despots. I have said it over and over and Thom Jefferson said it over and over and I will say it again; any government based on religion is not a democratic government but a form of tyranny to which I will not submit.

Ron Paul has his own blimp

Anybody have an extra five thousand bucks they don't need so they can sponsor me for a ride? I don't think I'm major media enough to get a free one, even if I promised to write lovely posts on all five of my blogs.

Ignore the man behind the curtain

By Capt. Fogg

How anyone can think that anyone in the latest TV blabberfest is presidential material is beyond me. The latest nausea inducing exhibition featured Bible waving and professions of faith and idiotic declarations like Fabulous Fred Thompson's "A nation that cannot and will not defend its own borders will not forever remain a sovereign nation." Isn't anyone tired of xenophobia as a crucial issue at a time when we face economic disaster and another war without end? Funny that we were a sovereign nation for most of our history of unguarded borders and that New York was a sanctuary city for the forbears of just about everybody listening to the actors on stage in St Petersburg.

Funny too, that the media isn't making much of the polls showing a preference for Ron Paul's arguments other to mention that McCain told us Paul's policies are the type that facilitated Hitler's rise to power. And here I thought it was the Germans who elected him. Not only is it getting harder to ignore Paul, it's requiring that once again, Fox News ignore it's own numbers. The nervous laugh and the near hysteria of Hannity's declarations of disbelief are music to my ears.

Cross posted from Human Voices

A penny for the old Guy

by Capt Fogg

"Guy Fawkes is a guy that tried to assassinate some king -- King Henry or King George or King -- James! ... So I guess that's a libertarian thing to do. Try to assassinate kings. And so they had a celebration of this dastardly act."

So said Joe Scarborough this morning on MSNBCs Morning Jo[k]e. Had this been a nation where more than 10% of the TV audience had the knowledge of history appropriate for an 8 year old or the ability to reason sufficient to be called dull, you would have heard the giggles even with your windows closed, but of course it isn't that sort of nation. It's the United States.

Of course Scarborough is trying to confect the successful Ron Paul fund raiser yesterday with the Gunpowder Plot that was foiled on November 5th, 1605. That event was of course, a plot to blow up the House of Lords, King James I and all, but the celebration of Guy Fawkes day in England is about how the government was saved, not about making a hero of the government hating conservative British kids burn in effigy every year. Joe doesn't know, really, and I guess the people who watch that made-up carved wooden ventriloquist's head the network uses the way Macy's uses window dummies are only looking for a way to banish the specter of Ron Paul and aren't too scrupulous about fact or reason, which is my way of politely calling them stupid.

Stupid people watch such stupid shows because it gives them a collegial feeling without having actually having attended college, or grade school for that matter. It gives them a feeling of knowing something the smart people don't know and they will follow anyone who gives it to them like rats after the Piper. it worked for Reagan, it works for Limbaugh and it almost works for Scarborough.

Fawkes was a "terrorist" and he was caught on November 5th and Ron Paul raised a lot of money on November 5th and that means libertarians are terrorists and Ron raised money in the name of terrorists. Seems stupid and pathetic beyond belief when you set it out stripped of the typical Fox banter. It easily rivals the Limbaugh rant from the 1990's when he blasted the idea of electric cooperatives because cooperatives are like communes and communes are run by hippies.

It's tempting to speculate or actually to hope that 400 years from now kids will be gathering pennies to make straw effigies of these legendary morons and throw them on the bonfire of the idiots.

Cross posted from Human Voices