Ron Paul Is a Lunatic

Ron Paul - Still nuts and not finished

Presidential candidate Ron Paul is not done yet.

Rep. Ron Paul is the recipient of recent loads of accolades from folks hoping Paul will lay down some kind of interference at the August 2012 GOP convention in Tampa, which will anoint Mitt Romney.

Others have suggested Paul is a man of independence and liberty who would stand up to the American military-industrial complex and the neocons eager for more war after Iraq and Afghanistan, adventures not sating their thirst for empire stamping out any challenge to the huge publicly financed interests running our country—that annoying plight of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering aside.

And the GOP's war on the coming Islamic caliphate nonsense, Ron Paul will stop all that.

That would be nice.

Forget it. Does anyone wonder why Ron Paul is running—such as he is—to be the GOP's nominee for president?

For one thing, Paul is an anti-choice fanatic, whose libertarian pretense is belied by Paul's asserted belief "that life begins at conception;" Roe v. Wade should be repealed; and Planned Parenthood and other "family planning" programs should be defunded.

That's Paul's conception of liberty divined by him from "God" and Thomas Jefferson. Paul is handsomely rewarded by his anti-choice commitment by the religious right fringe, reported by Sarah Posner last month, as Paul and the religious right renew their vow that women are vessels for American children in the worst traditions of American misogyny.

You might be tempted to engage in hyperbole and say Ron Paul sounds like some kind of John Bircher. You need not joke, Paul is firmly committed to the John Birch society and its conspiracy-minded, anti-Semitic, racist, Joe McCarthy-supporting whacks. Paul is perfect for the Birchers, having published racist political newsletters that fit in well with today's Grand Ole Party.

So Paul pays lip service to what even the hawks, Thomas Friedman and Andrew Sullivan, say is AIPAC's influence on banging the drums for more war? Wow, what integrity.

Ron Paul says states, but not the federal government, should be free to outlaw gay marriage. Does anyone see a problem with that position?

It should come as no surprise that Paul has openly said the death penalty for gays is just and other enlightened statements. Last year Paul argued, "Difficulty in implementing Biblical law does not make non-Biblical penology just. But as we have seen, while many homosexuals would be executed, the threat of capital punishment can be restorative. Biblical law would recognize as a matter of justice that even if this law could be enforced today, homosexuals could not be prosecuted for something that was done before." (Marshall. December 29, 2011)

Any unwavering commitment to privacy and liberty on Paul's part vanish when one looks his peculiar notion that states can do anything to individual rights, just not that federal govment, especially now that it's run by a black man.

State nullification, the South's ole time religion.

Come on. Those placing their hopes in Ron Paul are lending support to the nightmare vision of today's GOP and none of the details are pretty.

Racism, authoritarianism, misogyny and anti-Semitism are safe positions to hold today among many Americans, but they are repugnant as hate always has been, and this lunatic Ron Paul should be seen for what he is.

To Ron Paul Apologists: Racism is Never OK

Ron Paul will not win the Republican nomination for president, though I think he'll launch a third-party run this year.

But his racism is not a disqualification for his candidacy in the Party.

The GOP candidates love racism as a tool, and they love their states' rights. [States' rights to take away a woman's right to choose; states' rights to gerrymand voting districts; states rights to obstruct voters, and so on.]

Paul's racism is a disqualification from the more civilized members of our community and Paul's apologists deserve a knock-down.

By Phil Scarr

Ta-Nehisi Coates takes Ron Paul to the woodshed over his position on the abolition of slavery. It’s a thing of beauty.

For those who don’t know, Ron Paul was not OK with freeing the slaves through the Civil War. It represented an illegitimate theft of private property from the southern plantation owners (property the rest of us casually refer to as “people”).

Here is Ron Paul speaking with Tim Russert and blaming the Civil War on Lincoln.

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. “According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery.”

REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.

MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.

REP. PAUL: Oh come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn’t sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.

Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the gaping flaw in Dr. Paul’s logic (the same Dr. Paul who thinks the gold standard is just ducky, he shouldn’t have to share a toilet with gay supporters and that the Federal Reserve should be abolished):

When Ron Paul claims that Lincoln “shouldn’t have gone to war,” he is deploying a convenient and erroneous frame which necessarily holds that the inciting aggression was not in raising an Army, seizing federal property and arms, urging revolution among ones neighbors, and then firing on a federal fort, but in democratically electing a president with whom slave-holders disagreed.

Throughout the War, Lincoln attempted to bring about a peaceful and magnanimous end. He pitched compensated emancipation, and was rebuffed, not by the Confederates, but by slave states still loyal to the Union. When Union armies brought states back under federal control he urged easy paths to regaining citizenship.

The racist states-rights advocates have been advancing the same, tired argument since 1865.

Some things never change.

Iowa Poll: It's Romney, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Bachmann

GOP - Angry, racist, and authoritarian

Update: Romney, Santorum and Paul Top the Pack: What the Iowa Caucuses Reveal About the GOP Base

Murderers’ Row this line-up of Republican liars, shills and whacks is not.

The 2012 Republican field is the weakest slate of candidates offered up for president by a major party in modern American, political history.

Des Moines Register’s latest Iowa Poll Results

Mitt Romney - 24 percent
Ron Paul - 22 percent
Rick Santorum - 15 percent
Newt Gingrich - 12 percent
Rick Perry -11 percent
Michele Bachmann - 7 percent

From the Des Moines Register

The Des Moines Register’s latest Iowa Poll shows a surprise three-way match-up in contention to win the Iowa Republican caucuses: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.

Ron Paul in Shot with KKK Grand Wizard, NAZI, Stormfront Goes Viral

Ron Paul with former American Nazi, Current KKK Grand Wizard
and Stormfront.org webmaster - Shot at the at the Values Voter Presidential debate
in Fort Lauderdale on September 17, 2007.

As "Ron Paul tries to scare the crap out of Iowans about the UN takeover and riots in the streets over the emerging dictatorship in America" (TPM), comes this charming shot (to the right) from the Values Voter Presidential debate in Fort Lauderdale on September 17, 2007.

The keynote speaker to the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society? (Steven Walters in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) Nice.

Publisher of the racist, and pathetically bigoted newsletters in which Ron Paul made $millions and tried to defend, and later attested he never read or approved, first reported by James Kirchick almost four years ago. Really nice.

Now, comes a shot (above) of Ron Paul pictured with former American Nazi Party member and the current KKK Grand Wizard and Stormfront.org webmaster, Don Black that is going viral.

Just maybe our neighbors to the Southwest have the wrong idea about Ron Paul. So Iowa, wise up.

And hey Paul, to win the GOP nomination or even the Iowa caucuses, you need to be subtly racist, not overtly racist.