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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
In 2008 James Kirchick at The New Republic broke a disturbing expose about the anti-war, self-proclaimed libertarian candidate for president, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Lake Jackson, Texas; 14th District), now for the first time leading polls for the GOP nomination for president in Iowa, and who has a plausible path to the 2012 GOP nomination, to the utter panic of many Republicans.
Kirchick, whom many regard as a neocon writer, took a lot of grief from the many, loyal pro-Ron Paul fans. [So did I for merely applauding Kirchick in a piece that drew a lot of hits at the site, Uppity Wisconsin.]
Some of the political commentariat point out that Paul received a lot of support from veterans in 2008, though Ron Paul 2012 does not list Veterans Benefits as an issue in his webpage, and his anti-government benefits ideology makes this writer dismiss him as a veterans' advocates.
What's ironic is that a fairly rightwing writer, James Kirchick, may be dooming Ron Paul again and some believe throwing away the GOP's last, best hope to defeat President Obama in a GOP field dominated by lightweights and to be candid: Whacks.
Paul, who has a distinguished record as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force, also has a political past where he was the publisher of several racist, anti-Semitic newsletters uncovered by Kirchick who concludes, "Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing -- but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics."
Ron Paul is a radical, a politician who in the words of Gary Weiss "is a true friend of the 1 percent" engaging in a campaign of phony populism. In fact, just months after Kirchick's 2008 blockbuster, Paul traveled to Wisconsin (Steven Walters in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) where it was reported the "(f)ormer Republican presidential candidate ... will keynote Saturday's session of the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society." The John Birch Society, dating back to the 1950s, is infamous for its conspiracy-minded, anti-Semitic, and Joe McCarthy-supporting radicals.
"As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled 'What To Expect for the 1990s,' predicted that 'Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities' because 'mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’' Two months later, a newsletter warned of 'The Coming Race War,' and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, 'If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.' In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, 'Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.' 'This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,' the newsletter predicted."
Below is a video from C-SPAN in which Paul discusses his newsletters [starting at the 1:40 mark] in which Paul, speaking in the first-person, ["I"], describes his racist nonsense as a business-investment, political-type of investment-monetary newsletter.
How panicked is the GOP? Here's some recent pieces indicating why even a nomination of Newt might bring Karl Rove and the Koch brothers better news than a potential Ron Paul nomination:
Paul’s newsletters have carried different titles over the years--Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, TheRon Paul Survival Report--but they generally seem to have been published on a monthly basis since at least 1978. ... What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. ...
[In a] special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, Kirchick cites:
According to the newsletter, the looting (1992 LA riot) was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with 'civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.' It also denounced 'the media' for believing that 'America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.'
And these beauties, noted by Kirchick:
[L]iberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”
One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” were better alternatives.
While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled “The Duke’s Victory,” a newsletter celebrated Duke’s 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary. “Duke lost the election,” it said, “but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.”
In an item titled, “The Pink House?” the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush’s decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite “the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony,” adding, “I miss the closet.”
“The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is ‘Silence = Death.’ But shouldn’t it be ‘Sodomy = Death’?”
His adversaries are often described in harsh terms: Barbara Jordan is called “Barbara Morondon,” Eleanor Holmes Norton is a “black pinko,” Donna Shalala is a “short lesbian,” Ron Brown is a “racial victimologist,” and Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the United States Senate, is a “far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist.” Maybe such outbursts mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean he is a man filled with hate.
Kirchick must have had to research long hours to dig up these Ron Paul newsletters housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's State Historical Society [a state agency in itself), which maintains a very broad and deep collection of political material dedicated to preserving American history for the benefit of people of all states.
The Wisconsin State Historical Society has been collecting political newsletters and other material since 1849, the year after Wisconsin became a state.
At the very top of Rep. Paul's Congressional site, Paul quotes Frederic Bastiat, "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."
Right about now, Ron Paul likely wishes that preserving his racist tripe were not done at all.
