Pro-socialized health care, Pro-Ron Paul?

Mike Mejia argues that despite Ron Paul's opposition to socialized health care, voting for him would best improve the chances of seeing that goal realized.

Ron Paul: The Pragmatic Choice


:-)

The latest from the police state: Privacy Shmrivacy!

Headline!
Definition Changing for People's Privacy

The government is literally spying on us:

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco. Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

The government's response?

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

They are not even lying about it anymore. Why bother? Hardly anyone is paying attention. Britney Spears' train-wreck of a life is more important.The World Series is more important. Halo 3 is more important. Oh! The Superbowl's coming up too!


...so went my thoughts, when I ran across this amazing bit of standup: Comedian Bill Hicks on the JFK Assassination.





His closing is downright poetic, and echoes my sentiments exactly.

Jewish Republicans against Ron Paul?

A few weeks ago, the Republican Jewish Coalition refused to allow Ron Paul speak at their "Victory 2008 Republican Jewish Coalition Candidates Forum". The reason: He opposes aid to Israel.

Does this amount to being anti-Israel? Seeing as how this "U.S. aid" is really just a subsidy for its own defense industry, not at all. So says Israeli libertarian Boris Karpa. Check it out.

Beating the drums for Gulf War 3

Democrats worry Bush's setting up a war with Iran. And for good reason; this administration has tried to use "diplomacy" to trigger a war at least once before.

No joke. In Fall of 2002, Bush made an appearance at the U.N. demanding Iraq be pressured to shutdown its (non-existent) WMD program.

U.N. Resolution 1441 was passed to give Saddam Hussein's Iraq one last chance to comply with its "disarmament obligations", set by previous resolutions. To the neocon's dismay, Hussein obliged and completely cooperated with the inspection process, as stated in these U.N. press releases:

IRAQ COOPERATING WITH DISARMAMENT PROCEDURES, BUT MANY BANNED WEAPONS REMAIN UNACCOUNTED FOR, INSPECTORS TELL SECURITY COUNCIL

Quote from the release:

Since the Commission's arrival in Iraq, it had conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites, he continued, including industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case had he seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.

UN INSPECTORS FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF PROHIBITED WEAPONS PROGRAMMES AS OF 18 MARCH WITHDRAWAL, HANS BLIX TELLS SECURITY COUNCIL

Quote from the release:

Given the media attention to mobile facilities, he said that even before UNMOVIC began its inspections in November 2002, the Commission had received information about such facilities and the inspectors were looking for sites where such mobile units could be hooked up for support services. Upon his request, the Iraqi side had presented some information about mobile systems they possessed. As evident in his report, neither the information presented nor pictures given to the inspectors by the Iraqi side matched the description that had recently been made available to them, as well as to the media, by the United States. At UNMOVIC, he could not, of course, make a proper evaluation of the depicted vehicles on the basis of published material alone.

When the U.N. inspectors failed to find a single non-existent weapon of mass destruction, Bush decided to invade and ordered the inspectors out. Repeat:

- He gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to comply
- Saddam complied
- Bush invaded anyway.

So much for diplomacy!

I wrote "to the neocon's dismay" above because the Bush administration never intended to deal with Iraq peacefully. They intended 1441 to be the trigger that would justify their invasion. i.e. They fully expected Saddam to violate 1441 by rebuffing the U.N. inspectors, thus justifying the invasion.



So I'm a bit wary when this administration calls the sanctions against Iran a "pathway of diplomacy". This exchange between a reporter and the State Department's spokesman isn't encouraging either:

QUESTION: So in other words, this is a way to avert war, the way you look at it?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I'm not going to -- it is a way to prevent Iran from obtaining the technologies that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon.

QUESTION: And a way to prevent the U.S. from launching military action, which would be unpopular.

MR. MCCORMACK: It is exactly as I said.
(source)

"It is exactly as I said": Translation: "No, we are not trying to avert war..."

Ron Paul raises more than $5 million in third quarter

Ron Paul has raised $5,080,000 dollars this quarter, which is already earning him a LOT of media attention. Highlights:


From Reason Magazine:

So he's raised about $8.2 million and spent $2.9 million, a burn rate of around 35 percent. That's a little lower than the burn rate for the frontrunning candidates


From the NY Times' The Caucus:

On Tuesday, The Hotline, a political newsletter, speculated, “If Paul outraises Huckabee, won’t we need a new evaluation of ‘dark horse?’ ”

With Mike Huckabee expected to report receipts of about $1 million, Mr. Benton thinks a re-evaluation is in order.

In terms of money in the bank, Mr. Benton said, “we are going to be amongst the very top. I would argue that we’ve stepped into the first tier.”


From Reuters:

Democratic candidates generally have been raising more than their Republican counterparts, but Paul's performance puts him in the same financial territory as two prominent Democrats -- the $5.2 million raised by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and $7 million raised by former Sen. John Edwards.


And check out this amusing bit in Lew Rockwell's blog.


Amazing!

Update: There really aren't any gays in Iran...

...at least not from their point of view, Justin Raimondo points out.

The last three links in his post are 3 parts of a documentary about "the most vulnerable civil rights movement in the world": The Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization. Check it out.

Ahmadinejad of Kazakhstan

I usually find bigotry funny. Absurdity is at the root of all humor, and a ranting bigot is nothing if not absurd.

Case in point: Here's an excerpt from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial talk at Columbia University:

In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country.

Really!??

I read that quote, looked at a picture of the guy, and realized he reminded me of another famous anti-semitic homophob.

Then I giggled.

Democrats are useless

Back in 2006, after details of Bush's illegal wiretapping program were leaked, there wasn't any hope of stopping the President from playing dictator. The Republicans controlled Congress and had no problem watching Bush hack away at our rights. Nevertheless, Russ Feingold (one of the only Democrats with backbone) decided to at least attempt to hold the President accountable. He introduced a resolution to censure the President for authorizing the program (i.e. a formal declaration that the Senate disapproves of the President's actions). His fellow Democrats immediately shied away from the resolution, decrying it a waste of time.

Flashforward to today. The Democrats now control Congress, voted into power by a country tired of the war and sick of being lied to. So what have they delivered to their constituents after nearly a year in power? A measure condemning (censuring) MoveOn.org for an ad that exposes the latest lies about the war. Instead of getting us out of Iraq and putting an end to the false propaganda, they've decided to spend their time tacitly endorse both. Pathetic.

Assuagement for Haggard Savants

I'm still friends with undergrads who are in need of stress relief! Bored old people are welcome to participate as well :-)

Copter

SpearToss

Mini-Golf

Snow Trooper

Curveball

Tennis Challenge

Maze Game

Ski (no score)

OJ hypothetically'll kill me for posting this

A quote from this article:

We live in a country where thousands of people boycott television networks if they allow a bare breast or question religion. Yet scores of those same people will be eating out of Fox's hand those two nights, when it allows a (alleged) murdering scumbag to promote a book describing how he would've killed the mother of his children. You know, if he really did it. Which he didn't. Just ask him.

to introduce this article:

O.J. isn't the problem anymore ... we are

Perfidious Bipartisanship

Here's a letter I sent to the Hartford Courant (slightly modified for this post):

Lieberman's supporters laud him for being one of the few truly bipartisan politicians in our government. Just what does mean for Lieberman to be "bipartisan"? It means not denouncing Bush for deliberately deceiving the public into supporting the war. (Perhaps he feels it was justified?) It means devitalizing checks against excessive public surveillance (spying) through the Patriot Act. It means refusing to censure Bush over a wiretapping scheme he acknowledged to be illegal.(Apparently the President cannot be held accountable for his actions during the indefinitely long "war on terror".) And recently, his "bipartisanship" meant voting for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This act technically gives the President the right to suspend anybody's right to habeas corpus. (Yes, U.S. citizens are at risk of being imprisoned without due process).

Is this what we must put up with in order to "get things done for Connecticut"? I, for one, refuse to vote for anyone who ignores corruption, discourages dissent, and is willing to sacrifice my civil liberties in order to get tax dollars into Connecticut. Shame on anyone who is.

From Boondoggle To Disaster

So why are we in Iraq?

To get those weapons of mass destruction!

Wait no, Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

And apparently, this administration was well aware of that months before the invasion, and deliberately deceived the public into supporting the invasion.


To stop a dictator who threatened the world!

...with his non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs), and feeble army?

So we get rid of an enemy of Al-Queda, and ignore a guy who does have nukes?

(Well, we did up until he demanded our attention)

For Democracy!

Because nothing bad ever comes from Democracy?

The theory that Democracies don't war on each other is b.s. Case and point: Hamas ruled Palestine and Israel

To Stop Terrorism!

... by providing then with a "training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists"? By galvanizing the Islamic extremists? By furthering Bin Laden's goal to bankrupt our country? (No, the oil is not paying for the war).


Whatever! We're already there, and things are improving!

Says who? Iraq's vice president has had a third sibling assassinated. There are attacks on our troops every 15 minutes. The deathrate has skyrocketed in Iraq since Bush declared "mission accomplished". Just ask the citizens. (By the way, Bush is lying when he says that the study has been discredited)


We have to stay! If we leave, the country will be torn by civil war!

That's what they said in 1917, the first time this happened. But what are we really trying to accomplish at this point? What is victory? The establishment of a government as weak and helpless as the Somalian government? According to British General Richard Dannatt, the very presence of Western armies is "making the security situation worse". The problems we face there are insurmountable. It's not a matter of will; we won't find a solution to this mess just because we want to find one. "Good intentions" don't create miracles.

This is what happens when an idealist ignores reality. What do we do now?

Pullout.

What other choice do we have? Our continued presence is only making things worse, and nobody has a logical plan to turn things around. We need to admit the invasion was a mistake and pull everything out of Iraq (including our permanent military bases) before Bin Laden's goal of bankruptcy is realized.

Perhaps then we can deal with the true achievement of the War On Terror.