Friday, December 30, 2011

marginalizing ron paul...,

truthdig | It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul’s current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra-secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of their exploited customers.

To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed’s trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.

As for the Times’ complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn’t exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, “Watch out for the military-industrial complex—they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don’t need any more [weapons systems].”

28 comments:

umbrarchist said...

That is the problem with this so called democracy.

The people controlling the media decide what mis-information and dis-information to bombard us.   It is nearly impossible to know if you are making a rational decision even if you are trying to make a rational decision.

How many voters are not or cannot?

John Kurman said...

Put simply, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Ron Paul may offer an alternative plan to the current insanity. He may even have a few sane kernels embedded in his plan. This does not make his plan - or him - sane. To suggest so is the most childish, sloppy thinking I've ever seen - akin to an infantile excuse. But the overall holistic semantics of  Paul's message are clearly understood by the white nationalist dipshits and KKK zombie fuckwads. That's why they like him. And the juvenile excuse that the whole economy was trashed because "the guvmint didn't stop us" is so fucking infantile it makes me want to start castrating the silly little lame-ass limp dicks who generate such night drool and extirpate their progeny from the face of the Earth in order to make room for more sturdy individuals. 

Not that cutting their balls off and killing their kids would do much good, but it would put me in a slightly better mood for a little while.

And with all that I wish you  all a happy 2012!

Cadeveo said...

I read a lot of ad hominem in your comment as well as the fallacy of guilty by association.  Not much else going on there.  I also see a straw man in there--who is making the argument that the economy tanked because "the government didn't stop us"?  Certainly that isn't Ron Paul's argument at all.  Your inaccurate characterization would be an argument for more government intervention in the economy, which is exactly opposite to his position.  Fine if you have valid criticisms of his economic philosophy, plenty exist.  I would love to hear those criticisms rather than a criticism of a position you pulled out of your imagination that isn't actually Paul's opinion at all.

nanakwame said...

It is slippery slope to
profess some person to save us from this Hieratical Bureaucracy that has been
build by human evolution. Utopia is a needed emotive over dystopian, for we
tend towards happiness and away from pain, but it is as dangerous, for whom
will "the people" choose to sacrifice? 

John Kurman said...

Alright, here's a more substantive critique on your boy Ron Paul. The reason he is marginalized is because he plays to the fringes. That is his marketing strategy. Not because he is some lone rebel voice threatening the oligarchical establishment or somehow speaking remarkable insights never heard before. Nor is the Establishment in any askeered of him. (And that, by the way is an ad hominem. The " intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism fear him, and so must marginalize. Puh-lease).

No, Ron Paul sucks a big dick because he has chosen to be a fringe candidate. That's why he is marginalized. Look at those newsletters. I really don't give a shit whether that was a marketing ploy or not, pandering to the racist reactionary right, but the fact of the matter is, if MY name goes on something, then the content is MY responsibility, and I will as a matter of personal honor, keep a close eye on it - and accept the consequences. He has chosen to be a weasel about it, like all scumbag career politicians do.

HE had chosen the creepy associates, the less-than-virtuous employees, the ignorant spew of those newsletters merely by gracing them with his name. Not to mention his purchase of the mailing list Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby. His loony behavior throughout the 90s. His book. The radio shows he appeared on. His conspiracy theories, denials, retractions, his double standards. And then of course, there's his congressional voting record, which clearly shows he is more concerned about getting re-elected than living up to his Libertarian principles. Not to mention his idiot son. I mean come on, if you can't even raise up a decent child, why should I let you lead a country? In short, I don't trust the guy to wipe his ass properly, and I trust him even less to admit to smelling like rancid old man butt when he is called on it.

CNu said...

Ron Paul statement to congress July 3, 2004:
"The Civil Rights Act of
1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring,
employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in
the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private
property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The
federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights
of private property owners to use their property as they please and to
form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all
parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose
actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to
maintain a free society."


John, have Black Americans become more or less self-sufficient, more or less secure,  since legally mandated integration of schools, voting, and housing?

Dale Asberry said...

The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.

My first response to this was "bullshit!" But then realized that there was a bit of truth in it. I take cigarette smoking as my example: smoking is at an all-time low of about 20% from an all-time high of 40% in the 50's. It has declined due to the social stigma and the LOCAL laws that have been implemented from that stigma. It is only through the socially alienating aspects that cigarette smokers "slink" outside to ashamedly grab a smoke in their physically separated smoking areas. Such a campaign of shame would actually draw out the racists and put them in a corner. As it is, I don't know which businesses are owned by closet racists. If I knew which businesses were led by racists practicing in the open I could openly (as well as, economically) shame them. But... this is only a thought experiment, and, I'm white - I have little to lose regardless.

John Kurman said...

I'm gonna plead White to that. Which is to say "Insufficient Data" from a selfish, coddled, raised up in a Sundown town where I was not personally introduced one-on-one to black folk before I went to work in steel mills of Gary,IN in 1974, and - oops, sorry, no, in Paul-speak as a "rationally self-interested" individual far too busy enjoying his material security, and unwilling to consider collectivist categories such as "race" to worry about shit like that.

But it's much more fun to just say the first silly to pop out of my head, which is "Why of course, Black Americans are much better off!" Right? Right? I mean, subtracting out mitigating circumstances, such as  the general flow of monies to the top over the past  40 years, the collapse of the manufacturing base, infrastructure, fake-growth through the stock/housing/defense bubbles, etc. etc. You guys are certainly not getting lynched as often.

Seriously, though, I could do some research on the topic and get back to you, but I'm guessing you disagree.

A counter question: Can you direct me to the exact wording in the Constitution involving "rights of private property ownership"? I mean, I hate to be a Paulist about it, but I'd the exact phrases behind the principle. You got the Fifth Amendment, kind of, but not really, no. The 14th Amendment? Taking of property with due process? But this "takings" clause doesn't cover use, only the exercising due process of law. I can't see where "use" deemed a
"property" right.

So, again where in the Constitution does the language provide the Civil Rights Act involves "massive violation of the rights of use of private property owners"?

CNu said...

You guys are certainly not getting lynched as often.

Careful with "you guys" kimosabe. My father and his people were not the sort to have ever gotten lynched and took matters into their own hands with a hardness unfamiliar to the ultra-feminized modern. Matter fact, I witnessed some of his old school self-sufficiency when I was 12 and again at 16.

I'm guessing you disagree.

I lost your drift John and so don't know what it is specifically with which I'm perceived as disagreeing.

Can you direct me to the exact wording in the Constitution involving "rights of private property ownership"?

I cannot, but off the top, there are the bits about freedom of association and of assembly.

As neither a Paulist or a constitutionalist - I don't really have a dog in this hunt. What I know for certain, however, was that the 2nd amendment had a great deal to do with slave-catching and that's something I might be able to dredge up.

I was just curious about your opinion on this question since you had so strongly stated your opinion(s) re Paul.

John Kurman said...

Okay, sorry. I tend to stretch the envelope humor-wise. Little or no sacred cows.

I would suggest that Paul's reliance on the Constitution to justify his modern version of Libertarianism is absurd - rather like saying the Founding Fathers would have preferred Macs over PCs.

I said I'm guessing that you disagree over the statement that Black Americans have seen no progress regarding self-sufficiency or security since the 1964 enactment. Or that the Civil Rights Acts (up to and including the 1991 act) have had a null effect regarding any such self-sufficiency or security.

Quick google searches pointed me to an 2001 article by Jet Magazine which seems to indicate a steady growth of Black American owned businesses. As to whether this is statistically due to the civil rights acts and affirmative action, I've got to say yes. Certainly, at least as far as government contracts. Not to mention the lawsuits filed to move Black Americans up into the executive positions within industry. (Example: Herman Cain). Scholarships? Higher numbers at higher educational institutions. Again yes. Is this affirmative action? Yes. Result of the Civil Rights Acts? Perhaps indirectly.

General statistics regarding home ownership and community integration, social mobility, economic well-being, graduation rates, elections to public office suggest "yes", but as to whether these are artifacts of Civil Rights legislation I canna say without further study.

Certainly armed forces has provided the sanest atmosphere, but I chalk this up to nature of the beast due to a necessary meritocratic system (within cultural constraints).

Can conditions be further improved? Fuck yeah. Should they be? FUCK YEAH. 

CNu said...

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/hidhist.htm You might have better luck accessing Carl T. Bogus The Hidden History of the 2nd Amendment. James Madison wrote the Second
Amendment to assure the southern states that Congress would not
undermine the slave system by disarming the militia, which were then the
principal instruments of slave control throughout the South.

nanakwame said...

The lamenting to the Liberal and Conservative Class kills me. "Liberal Class was to function as a Center and not a Left" Chris Hedges...The end of the 19th Century Party system should be our goal. The idea that the Socialist movement was so pro-Black is another lie.  And the idea that there were no advantages made after the Civil Rights is curious to me. It missing the compromise made especially by Nixon. The fight was even up to the year 2000, when the Metal Union finally open its hiring halls in Philly. The unexpected movement was the advantage of the Afro-American woman which was paralleled with  the war on drugs and the locking up  of Black males...The Constitution is a fucking piece of paper that from the beginning showed how sweat and blood made its abstract laws real. Nock called it the rules of economic men, it even was backward on some issues to the Common Law of the 1200's. The civil rights was forced into it by the Civil War and has been the meme of this nation ever since, b/c of Ethnic difference. As Malcolm stated, the battle is to define what is Human Rights and now it has to be defined globally.
What should be watch by conscious folks is the demagoguery, the mask of Party System. And I thank you for your refreshing take on Ron Paul. When one has studied Lenin on the Party system or Mao, one knows there is no difference in any where in the world, the lingo is just different. Of course. And as man who came here in 1956, it amazes me the mind-set and the angst of my beloved nation, among my favorite Ethnicities. The Empire is falling.

nanakwame said...

an example of dialogue - 82% of of the world's population according to comScore, is reached by social media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/opinion/internet-access-is-not-a-human-right.html?_r=2 

John Kurman said...

Re: Hidden history, yup, pretty much what I have read as well, from Howard Zinn to Gordon S. Wood, and not just to keep tabs on slave rebellions, but anything that flustered the Founding Fathers. I've little use for dead people, or for the moderns who wave their moldering corpses around on sticks and muppet them.

John Kurman said...

If you like my take on Ron Paul, you might appreciate the professional quipsters:

Who is creepier? Ron Paul or Rick Santorum?

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/99234/survey-creepiest-paul-santorum-tnr

Cadeveo said...

This is approaching an actual rational response.  Yep, if you're name is on the newsletter, you're the boss, it's your responsibility.  I'm in agreement with you there.  However, again, your original position was to imply that Paul is alligned with the idea that we're in economic straits because "the guvmint didn't stop us," still don't see where you've corrected the mischaracterization.   By the way, Professor Kurman, insult is a subset of ad hominem.  It's known as abusive ad hominem.  Moving on.

Dale Asberry said...

An insult, in and of itself, is not an ad hominem. It is simply an insult, a value statement that can be evaluated at face value. An ad hominem would be an attempt to discredit one aspect due to a failure in another aspect. Ex: "He couldn't possibly be a good mayor if he can't keep his thing in his pants." Read Big Don's posts, they're the epitome of ad hominem: Black people couldn't possibly be intelligent, it's not in their genes. An ad hominem is a logic failure due to a human cognitive error where people equate a person overall based on the evaluation of one trait. "He's a great mayor, he got the city back on budget and was able to increase tax income by encouraging entrepreneurs to start local businesses."

I did find one ad hominem in John's postings but the rest were value statements even if a bit crude.

nanakwame said...

Santorum/Is
so white it scares – The
three kings ©

Cadeveo said...

A string of expletives,  faux-chest beating (I suppose that passes for being an alpha on the internet) and colorful remarks does not connote any actual thought, not even when you quote someone else's colorful remarks in german.

John Kurman said...

Now you've done it. You've made me feel genuinely sorry for you. You display zero impulse control. You just had to shut down higher brain functions and let loose didn't you? With, I guess what's for you, a puritanical closet authoritarian, a devastating rebuttal.  And your attempt at sarcasm? Why, little Ediacaran jelly creatures - barely multicellular - were producing better sarcasm three-quarters of a billion years ago. Best I leave you alone little jelly. I wonder if you can show the same adult restraint? I doubt it.

CNu said...

rotflmbao.....WHEW!!!

twice in one day - gutbusting, snot-bubbling, comedy gold....,

brotherbrown said...

My father and his people were not the sort to have ever gotten lynched...

:o)

Dale Asberry said...

I have a few friends and relatives who are devout Paulies... half tempted to send 'em here for a spankin' ;-)

Cadeveo said...

It's fascinating how your response displays projection of exactly what it is you demonstrate: zero impulse control, lack of higher brain functions.  Adult restraint?  Please.  That's what your diaper is for.

Dale Asberry said...

FYI, the issue isn't that anyone dis/agrees with your strongly held positions, only that you come around here with an intellectually light agenda and then scream at us because we don't buy your arguments. Do that and you'll deservedly get spanked.

Dale Asberry said...

And, FWIW, I don't really have an opinion of Paul other than he's a nitwit politician like all nitwit politicians. But, I will take John's opinion over yours because he's earned that respect from me. Definitely a logical fallacy but I couldn't otherwise care less on this issue and have no intention to waste brain space on it.

Tom said...

Meh.  I don't trust Ron Paul, but I don't see the rationale for why John has to be such a dick here.

CNu said...

I fully appreciate John's enthusiasm. The world is overflowing with the self-serving smarminess and insincerity of the alternative http://youtu.be/IctBSH5a9Sw