Glenn Greenwald: Who are the real "crazies"?

From here:

Last night, the crazy, hateful, fringe lunatic Ron Paul voted to repeal the Clinton-era Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy (or, more accurately, he voted to allow the Pentagon to repeal it if and when it chooses to) -- while 26 normal, sane, upstanding, mainstream House Democrats voted to retain that bigoted policy. Paul explained today that he changed his mind on DADT because gay constituents of his who were forced out of the military convinced him of the policy's wrongness -- how insane and evil he is!

In 2003, the crank lunatic-monster Ron Paul vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq, while countless sane, normal, upstanding, good-hearted Democrats -- including the current Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Senate Majority Leader, House Majority Leader, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, and many of the progressive pundits who love to scorn Ron Paul as insane -- supported the monstrous attack on that country.

In 2008, the sicko Ron Paul opposed the legalization of Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program and the granting of retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, while the Democratic Congress -- led by the current U.S. President, his Chief of Staff, the Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House, and the House Majority Leader -- overwhelmingly voted it into law. Paul, who apparently belongs in a mental hospital, vehemently condemned America's use of torture from the start, while many leading Democrats were silent (or even supportive), and mainstream, sane Progressive Newsweek and MSNBC pundit Jonathan Alter was explicitly calling for its use. Compare Paul's February, 2010 emphatic condemnation of America's denial of habeas corpus, lawless detentions and presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens to what the current U.S. Government is doing.

The crazed monster Ron Paul also opposes the war in Afghanistan, while the Democratic Congress continues to fund it and even to reject timetables for withdrawal. Paul is an outspoken opponent of the nation's insane, devastating and oppressive "drug war" -- that imprisons hundreds of thousands of Americans with a vastly disparate racial impact and continuously incinerates both billions of dollars and an array of basic liberties -- while virtually no Democrat dares speak against it. Paul crusades against limitless corporate control of government and extreme Federal Reserve secrecy, while the current administration works to preserve it. He was warning of the collapsing dollar and housing bubble at a time when our Nation's Bipartisan Cast of Geniuses were oblivious. In sum, behold the embodiment of clinical, certifiable insanity: anti-DADT, anti-Iraq-war, anti-illegal-domestic-surveillance, anti-drug-war, anti-secrecy, anti-corporatism, anti-telecom-immunity, anti-war-in-Afghanistan.

There's no question that Ron Paul holds some views that are wrong, irrational and even odious. But that's true for just about every single politician in both major political parties (just look at the condition of the U.S. if you doubt that; and note how Ron Paul's anti-abortion views render him an Untouchable for progressives while Harry Reid's anti-abortion views permit him to be a Progressive hero and even Senate Majority Leader). My point isn't that Ron Paul is not crazy; it's that those who self-righteously apply that label to him and to others invariably embrace positions and support politicians at least as "crazy." Indeed, those who support countless insane policies and/or who support politicians in their own party who do -- from the Iraq War to the Drug War, from warrantless eavesdropping and denial of habeas corpus to presidential assassinations and endless war in the Muslim world -- love to spit the "crazy" label at anyone who falls outside of the two-party establishment.

Ron Paul Changes Stance on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

From here:

So why did Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), after supporting "don't ask, don't tell" since its introduction in 1993, vote to begin the process to repeal it?

"I have received several calls and visits from constituents who, in spite of the heavy investment in their training, have been forced out of the military simply because they were discovered to be homosexual," Paul said Friday. "To me, this seems like an awful waste. Personal behavior that is disruptive should be subject to military discipline regardless of whether the individual is heterosexual or homosexual. But to discharge an otherwise well-trained, professional, and highly skilled member of the military for these reasons is unfortunate and makes no financial sense."

Paul's vote was the lone surprise among the five Republicans who bucked their party to vote for the amendment sponsored by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.).

Parish President Nungesser Speaks on Federal Government Indeptness in Louisiana

Obama Fail.

Obama had a mandate to remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of his presidency. Fail.

Rand Paul and the Civil Rights Act

Protecting individual liberty is always hard because our neighbors will not always make decisions we agree with, and will sometimes make decisions we abhor, that is a nature of humanity.

Those who have no respect for individual liberty will always use the mighty and violent arm of the state to stomp on those who say abhorrent things or perform abhorrent actions. While the cause maybe just, the solution is not.

Since Rand Paul won the Republican nomination for the US Senate in Kentucky on Tuesday night, he has spent much of his waking time defending his position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its encroachment on private property.

Last night he was on the Rachel Maddow Show where Maddow grabbed onto Paul's position on the Civil Rights Act and would not let go. She tried hard to prod him into making a gaffe that could be used as a soundbite, and even though Paul was functioning on very little sleep due to the previous night's celebrations and was probably exhausted from the non-stop interviews he gave throughout the day yesterday, he managed to avoid providing a damaging sound bite. He did, however, present himself and his position very poorly and sounded like a broken record, often avoiding the direct questioning with an answer that always began with "the interesting thing is..." and then he would mumble on about something unintelligible. Again, if you watch the interview, it is clear Paul was exhausted. He did very poorly in providing the intellectual support for his position that does exist and gave much fodder for the media to attack him with today.

That said, today is a new day and thankfully, the intellectual support for Paul's position is coming out of the woodwork. Here is one video blog that provides a clear explanation as to why Paul is on the right in regard to this issue:



On Rachel Maddow's blog, the following comment was posted:

Rachel,

I am a 45 year old Black American male who loves your show but I strongly disagree with you about your position on Rand Paul. Just so you know I voted for Obama and Kerry because I was horrified by both Bush and Palin respectively. Here's where I disagree with you.

1. If someone in the Klan owns a restaurant and doesn't want to serve me, why on earth would I want to support him by giving him my money? I don't want my money going to buy little Klan baby clothes. I'd rather the privately owned establishments wear their racism on their sleeves so I know who to support. If they want to lose my money, and the money of all other minorities and people with brains and a conscience, then fine. Racism is bad business.

2. There's two facts none of us can get around. Churches are still the most segregated places in America every Sunday morning. Its called freedom of religion. There are still restaurants where you can't go in D.C. and I can't go in Georgia. That's called tribalism. Integration cannot be forced privately, only publicly. Tribalism cannot be defeated by legislation. Freedom of speech and of religion means also freedom of @!$%#s. I prefer them with their hoods off.

3. I respectfully say that I think you're wrong to imply that Rand Paul is a racist for believing that

Woolworth's should be allowed to be segregated. I will go on the record right now and state that I believe that Woolworth's and any other privately owned business should be allowed to be segregated. We Black's have a choice now that we didn't back before the Civil Rights Act. Why would I want to support cracker ass Woolworth's if that's who owns the store? I'll take my money elswhere. If you had your way, I wouldn't know one from the other. I hope we can one day agree to let Woolworth's be free to take off its Klan Hood so you and I both know where to spend our money. Its not like and oil company. We all "have to" buy gasoline for now. We blacks have a choice which lunch counter we want to sit at in 2010. Rand Paul stated that when violence occurred it was wrong. He said it was morally reprehensible and he would never support it? He shouldn't be smeared as a racist.

I love you to pieces and as a person of color I identify with your pain, but I'm glad these racists and homophobes want to come out into the open now. I don't think Rand Paul is one of them.

Oteil Burbridge

Bassist Allman Brothers Band

Lawrenceville, Georgia

Also, as Paul gets attacked mistakenly as someone who would support Woolworth's right to segregate lunch counters back in 1960, we should all remember that it was not the Civil Rights Act that desegregated Woolworth's lunch counters, it was the people protesting just as Paul says he would too.

Paul will be on Meet the Press on Sunday. Hopefully he can diffuse the attacks on national television.

Obama Jokes About His Power To Kill. Not Funny.

Rand Paul Wins Republican Primary

Rand Paul Makes GlobeandMail Front Page

Rand Paul is on the front page of the GlobeandMail today. Even during Ron Paul's run in 2008, to my knowledge, he was never on the front page of the Globe and Mail.

You can find the article here.

Rand Paul's Primary is Today.

Schwarzenegger Makes Tough Decisions; Is Nova Scotia Heading In A Similar Direction?

RawStory.com has an article here in regard to the cuts coming out of the Governator's office in California.

Here's a list of some programs that will be hit by the budget cuts:

• California's welfare-to-work program
• Childcare for low-income families
• Community mental health
• A freeze on local school funding
• Cuts to state workers' pay
• State worker pension reform
• State parks
• Prison system

The transition individuals who depend on these programs will experience as they find new solutions will certainly be painful. Local governments and communities will certainly have to step up to assist their neighbors in need. Thankfully, the new budget does not increase taxes which would be devastating to an economy suffering 12.6% unemployment.

There is a large amount of opposition to the budget, but no other real solutions are being offered to fill the $19.1 billion budget deficit. In fact,  Schwarzenegger's budget only closes the gap by $12.4 billion, leaving $6.7 billion in deficit spending for a State government already drowning in debt. While the state Democrats are attacking the Governor for the cuts, fiscal conservatives could make a strong argument that this budget is too liberal as is and further cuts are required to address the remaining deficit.

Earlier today I was listening to Marc Faber discuss why he was long on the Euro over the US dollar even though many believe the Euro will take a big hit as the EU attempts to bail out Greece. His primary reason for picking the US dollar over the Euro was California. The bankruptcy (or bailout) of the State of California, because it is significantly larger than Greece, will burden the US economy far more than the bankruptcy of Greece will damage the European economy. In the new budget, California is counting on $3.4 billion in help from China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Europe Washington, D.C., and one can only believe that will be just the beginning of what it will take to get California back on its feet as the state continues to run massive deficits.

Now. Take a hard look at your national or regional government and the people running it. Are they enabling a situation to occur similar to that of California or Greece? Are they further indebting the public they are supposed to serve and leading them to an era of poverty?

Here in Nova Scotia the NDP recently passed a budget running a $222 million deficit. Nova Scotia's total debt is $14 billion, with a 36.9% debt-to-GDP ratio. In Canada, this is second only to Quebec.

Bruce Wark from The Coast made the following commentary in regard to Nova Scotia's debt:

I quickly flipped to the budget table showing government expenses: $3.6 billion for health; $1.3 billion for education; $971 million for social supports such as welfare, money for poor kids and public housing. All that added up to more than $5.8 billion or almost two-thirds of Steele's $9 billion budget. Health, education and welfare must, therefore, be largely responsible for the elephantine NS debt, I concluded.

My reasoning stirred more nagging questions. Why does our technology-driven health system put expensive band-aids on the ailments of affluence---heart disease and stroke, cancer and diabetes----when real health depends on things like adequate nutrition, loving relationships, plenty of leisure and a decent income? Ka-ching! Why do we coop young people up in classrooms for at least 15 years memorizing stuff they could learn in half the time and saddling them with serious debt in exchange for the paper credentials required to get a good job? Ka-ching! And could it be that we spend almost $1 billion every year supporting people who fall through the cracks because we'd rather maintain an expensive poverty system than work toward shrinking the income gap between richest and poorest?

With the Bank of Canada keeping interest rates near 0, Provincial governments have been enabled to borrow to destroy business stimulate economies through the recession. Governments, like the Province of Nova Scotia, typically even bring out a committee of witch doctors statist & keynesian economists promoting the deficits to promote job growth (all the while ignoring that fact that deficit spending for the past decade hasn't helped Nova Scotia job growth).

Is a province like Nova Scotia in dire straights currently? Nope. But just wait until interest rates rise, and they will.

During the early 1970s the US inflated their currency much like the Bank of Canada is doing right now. They did it to pay for government deficits and an unjust war in Vietnam. By the end of the decade the country was suffering through stagflation; the economy was in a recession and price-inflation was on the rise in a big way. The Federal Reserve could have continued to inflate, sending the economy into a hyper-inflationary spiral (like the Weimar Republic in Germany, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and many other irresponsible governments) or they could raise interest rates as high as 21% to choke off the inflation. They raised interest rates, choked off inflation and stablized the economy. If government debt then had been as large as it is today, many western governments would have been forced to default due to massive increases in interest payments (much like many Americans were forced to default on their mortgages after their teaser rates jumped).

In years to come Canada will face a similar decision. We're borrowing large amounts of money to pay for our governments' deficits and an unjust war. Due to the inflationary policies of the Bank of Canada over the past few years, we too will face the option of hyper-inflation or spiked interest rates. If we choose spiked interest rates, our governments are screwed. Interest payments will consume significant portions of government budgets forcing higher taxes, massive budget cuts, or both. If we choose hyper-inflation we're all screwed anyway, so fuck it.

Patent Absurdity

Must Watch Documentary

Meltup - The beginning of a U.S. currency crisis and hyperinflation.

Stand Back!

Found on LewRockwell.com.

Latest Example of Police Brutality

B.J. Lawson Wins Primary

Grayson Gets It Right On The Fed

Southern Avenger: Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and the GOP

Sanders Flakes

Is America Turning Into A Police State?

From the Cato Institute:

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Calvin and Hobbes vs. Christopher Robin and Pooh

From here.

With ads like these...

...who can still say that taxation isn't robbery? If it was a mutual agreement, would the State of Pennsylvania have to intimidate its citizens like this?

My Life In Tech Support

From here.