Ron Paul Newsletters, 140 characters at a time

http://twitter.com/dearnate nate

It is SO UNFAIR that the lamestream media is singling out Ron Paul as a crazy person by, like, quoting him.

jmsptrk

except that they’re not his quotes. and the media has failed to do even the most basic of research on this story (i.e. reporting (what they’re paid to do)).

but a local reporter in ohio did. he found one of the newsletters and it had the byline of the guy who did; James B Powell. who now works for forbes and, oh by the way, works as a contributor to (who else) fox. this is the reporter’s first segment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGH77lZsglU and here is the follow-up segment, where he reveals the author’s name. http://www.fox19.com/story/16458700/reality-check-the-name-of-a-mystery-writer-of-one-of-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters
- http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones
  
  Here’s a story about the newsletters from the archive of the Houston Chronicle in 1996 in which Paul and his staff are interviewed about them. He a) doesn’t deny writing the newsletters, b) defends the contents as factual and stuff he agrees with, and c) talks about continuing to put out other newsletters.
  
  “Some other guy wrote it” is a brand new defense, only recently deployed because running for national office in 2012 is different than running for office in Texas in the 80′s and 90′s. Back then, Paul was perfectly fine with being known as the writer of these newsletters.
  - jmsptrk
    
    I am aware of that angle. And he has acknowledged and admitted this mistake (“some other guy” defense) in subsequent interviews…. and has stated that he should have taken a stand then and fought the charges. But he was in the middle of a campaign and was advised it would be easier just to take the blame. So he did. (As he has taken responsibility for not paying attention to what went out under his name.)
    Regardless, the difference is that “other guy” now has a name. And it’s James B. Powell.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      And he has acknowledged and admitted this mistake (“some other guy” defense) in subsequent interviews…. and has stated that he should have taken a stand then and fought the charges.
      
      Citation, please. Meant non-snarkily.
      
      Also, compare to George Wallace:
      
      Wallace announced that he was a born-again Christian in the late 1970s, and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his earlier segregationist positions…His final term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black appointments to government positions. Also in his final term, Wallace was the first governor to appoint two black members in the same cabinet, a number that has been equalled but never surpassed.
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace#Change_of_positions
    - jmsptrck404
      
      http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2824529/posts
      “His reasons for keeping this a secret are harder to understand: “They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them . . . I actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn’t come from me directly, but they [campaign aides] said that’s too confusing. ‘It appeared in your letter and your name was on that letter and therefore you have to live with it.’” It is a measure of his stubbornness, determination, and ultimately his contrarian nature that, until this surprising volte-face in our interview, he had never shared this secret. It seems, in retrospect, that it would have been far, far easier to have told the truth at the time.”
    - musesum
      
      Ah yes, in so many ways, with Paul, the “buck stops there.”
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      And he put his face and name on them. It seems personal responsibility applies to everyone except him.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IN5QCHWFN2TBI2QPPAJK2DPQM4 Bryce
      
      LOL… quoting freerepublic as if it was even a remotely valid or legitimate source.
      
      that is rich.
      
      seriously… is that a put on?
    - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
      
      Bullshit. If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
      
      Sure some other guy wrote the material, but it’s still representative of his political beliefs.
    - C W
      
      “But he was in the middle of a campaign and was advised it would be easier just to take the blame. So he did.”
      
      Handwaving is not “taking the blame”.
    - C W
      
      “It seems personal responsibility applies to everyone except him.”
      
      Libertarians, in a nutshell.
- Snig
  
  His excuses have been widely reported. He was the publisher/owner of the newsletter, and it had his name on it quite a bit larger than anyone elses. If RP wished to illuminate the issue, he could state who actually wrote them, rather than being coy. If the truth was that he didn’t write them, he could have expressed that earlier, rather than maintaining it was “too confusing” to explain that he hadn’t actually written his newsletter.
  Here’s the timeline on his evolving relationship with the newsletters from the CSM.
  http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1229/Racist-newsletter-timeline-What-Ron-Paul-has-said
  - jmsptrk
    
    “If RP wished to illuminate the issue, he could state who actually wrote them, rather than being coy”
    
    Have you ever considered that he honestly doesn’t know who wrote them? Why is that so hard to believe? Do you realize how many politicians publish books? And do you know how many of these politicians have ghost writers?
    
    http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/23/opinion/la-oe-fehrman-ghost-20100523
    
    Or do you honestly believe they have the time to write all their own books in between sessions and reading thousand page bills? That’s pretty unreasonable.
    
    Besides all that…. It’s out there now. James B. Powell. And yet…. you sure don’t see CNN or any other media sources reporting on this. Only the sensational first part.
    - Snig
      
      Yeah, we all know that many don’t write too much of their books or their speeches, for that matter. But they’re still held accountable for the contents. Not at least knowing who your ghost writer is? That stretches belief.
      
      It was a million dollar a year company. If you own a company making a product that generates a million dollars a year, and you never check what it’s producing, and no one who works for you says anything about you’re newsletter being full of crazy talk, it doesn’t show that you really know how to run things.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6AER7RRFTX3J2OIV7M7GMYSW2U J
      
      “Have you ever considered that he honestly doesn’t know who wrote them?”
      
      He could maybe ask, you know, the few employees that worked for him. (I think it was 8)
      You shouldn’t run for politics though – your excuses don’t really pass a brief smell test.
    - http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan
      
      Or do you honestly believe they have the time to write all their own books
      
      But couldn’t he at least have read them?
    - C W
      
      “Have you ever considered that he honestly doesn’t know who wrote them? Why is that so hard to believe?”
      
      Because the Survivalist social circle is incredibly small and tight-knit.
    - Quiche de Resistance
      
      Others think Lew Rockwell wrote them:
      http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter
      But I guess that doesn’t fit your “the MSM is out to get Ron Paul” narrative like the Powell dude does.
- Phillip Toole
  
  Bottom line – his name is all over the newsletter. If you’re going to let someone ghost write under your name, you’d better read what is being written. Failure to do so displays an extraordinary lapse in judgment.
  - Bodhipaksa
    
    See, it just goes to show he is in favor of small government, even when it comes to “governing” his own newsletter.
  - jmsptrk
    
    I don’t disagree. But that lapse in judgement doesn’t make him a racist.
    - Snig
      
      At the very least, his inner circle would seem to have some folks with racist opinions. He lets them publish racist opinions. With his name on it. And then commits at least a lie of omission about the issue.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Rusty-Boersma/1516044826 Rusty Boersma
      
      But it sure is funny that all kinds of White Supremacists and Neo-Nazi’s are supporting him. And him giving the keynote speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of the John Birch Society doesn’t help either. Have you ever heard of the phrase “You’re known by the company you keep”? Well he keeps some racist company.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IN5QCHWFN2TBI2QPPAJK2DPQM4 Bryce
      
      he can’t keep track of the contents of some podunk racist newsletter he published and made seven figures on… but he should be *president*…? FFS.
      
      even ignoring the newsletters entirely… there are loads of reasons to have serious reservations about Ron Paul being even remotely close to the presidency.
    - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
      
      Nope, but being a racist makes him a racist.
    - Guest
      
      No, but it does make you someones tool. Or are your working for free today?
  - RJ
    
    Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be from Albany, GA, would you?
  - dustin potter
    
    much like boing boing reads every comment here? i think you misunderstand the role of newsletters pre-internet.
    - Tess
      
      You’re on a moderated comment thread, dude, so your point is not particularly well made. Guess who really does read the comments?
      
      Also I have no idea what you mean – pre-internet media was edited before it went to press, whereas comment threads are, well, post-production in a sense.
      
      So newspaper owners and editors get to choose what gets printed in their papers. They really do.
    - dustin potter
      
      “So newspaper owners and editors get to choose what gets printed in their papers. They really do.”
      
      good point, but i was going with the comparison that they work with what’s submitted to them and nothing more, pre-internet. these days they just copy/paste from the AP, etc. there’s a difference in that they didn’t get to pick what’s submitted any more than RP did. i don’t believe for a second that he didn’t read these before publishing, but the longer story is probably much more complicated. even if you don’t draw the line in the same places, can you not imagine him rejecting things he felt were over the top? the fact that these were not rejected shows that they were considered differently at the time and/or the other stuff that was coming in was much worse. there’s a lot of room for doubt on either side if you’re not filling the empty space with your own version of the story (like some people in this argument).
- http://twitter.com/dearnate nate
  
  I’m having a hard time responding to the substance of this because it’s a mind-boggling way to defend someone. I didn’t publish that racist newsletter, it was one of my staff doing so in my name, and I don’t agree with the contents, and the only reason I defended their contents in interviews with the press in 1996 was to avoid confusion…–and then my head explodes.
  - Guest
    
    This is as close to Darwinism as they get. If they make the world intolerable to you, they win.
  - Tess
    
    I know. I try to pretend it’s coming from someone I generally support, and my head still explodes.
- C W
  
  “the mainstream media has failed to do even the most basic of research on this story (i.e. reporting (you know, what they’re paid to do)). ”
  
  The best thing the MSM has done is report Paul’s false denials on his published materials. Better still would be reporting on States Rights and the Dixiecrats, but their memory is short and their IQs are tiny.
- Guest
  
  Libertarianism 101: If you sleep with dogs, you get fleas.

http://twitter.com/Grutte_Pier_ 蓮っ葉ちゃん

Reading this sort of tripe and navigating these kinds of anti-government conspiracy theorist milieus was what drove Timothy McVeigh to do what he did. I don’t understand why more people don’t see the connections, or what someone who tried to curry favour with a movement with a significant terrorist element might do once in office.

http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

One of the other scans they’ve posted on the blog there includes the line “The Jews should manage the militias.” Just FYI. [facepalm]
- http://twitter.com/Grutte_Pier_ 蓮っ葉ちゃん
  
  I don’t see how that would make sense even in their worldview.
  
  Randomly clicking I found something from 1993 that reads “Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in our big cities.” Now, that reads like the plot synopsis of McVeigh’s favourite book The Turner Diaires, which the Southern Poverty Law Center called “the bible of the racist right”.

jeligula

Not so much in Dr. Paul’s defense, but I actually have seen a gang of black girls do exactly that. I wish I hadn’t.

http://twitter.com/Arturo_Ulises The Ethnic Hipster

Wow. Can you give more details? I am honestly curious.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

I don’t think that’s really the point.

Some black teenage boys also mug people, but that’s also not really the point.
millie fink

I call BS–
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/pinprick.asp

(Scroll down–the “maurading gangs of black girls” myth is specifically addressed.)
C W

“Not so much in Dr. Paul’s defense, but I actually have seen a gang of black girls do exactly that. I wish I hadn’t.”

What the ever-loving hell does this have to do with anything?

Anecdotes about whites being raping, murderous monsters does not “prove” any racist stereotypes, why should the opposite be true?
- Tess
  
  Very nearly all rapists are men, and yet we have friends who are men and don’t fear strange men and generally do not assume all men are rapists. Your “there’s a grain of truth” argument fails.
UFIA

You have seen a gang of black girls defending Ron Paul and wish you hadn’t?

Me, I’ve been poking white girls. No syringes used.

Antinous / Moderator

Moderator note: This is a post about Ron Paul. This is not a post about Barack Obama, Rick Santorum, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin or whomever else you don’t like.

You have been warned.

http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

I like turtles.
- SoItBegins
  
  ♫ Looks a little like Che Testudinoidea / Panic in Detroit… ♪♩
- Fex
  
  Watch out Xeni! Antinous is getting out the banhammer!
- LikesTurtles
  
  Of course, who doesn’t?
- benher
  
  But beware!… For turtles, such as Obamas, are fleet of foot!

blueelm

But he is *so* not an old school southerner. Do you hear me!?

rattypilgrim

What do Ron Paul supporters and Cleopatra have in common? They’re both Queens of Denial”! But, seriously, folks…

http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

And why don’t people recognize it’s just a revival of the John Birch Society?

rattypilgrim

Because his base is mostly too young to even know what the John Birch Society is and the knowledge of American history is sadly lacking in way too many citizens, of all ages.
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  Here’s him in a 1998 John Birch Society rant about how the United Nations is about to seize all our guns and private property:
  
  http://youtu.be/X554O6TwiYM
  - IronEdithKidd
    
    Holy crap! Ron Paul is the source of that tripe?
    
    *facepalm*
  - benenglish
    
    Lessee, RP had 4 substantive sound bites in that 18 minutes or so. He said: 1. The U.N. doesn’t like guns and wants them taken away from civilians everywhere. 2. The U.N. doesn’t respect private property rights. 3. The U.N. erodes national sovereignty. 4. I’ve written a bill to get us out.
    
    In between, the narrator shows all sorts of video and makes broad assertions that have little to do with anything RP said unless you assume there’s some sort of 500 steps of logic in between that everyone in the John Birch society understands and us normal folks don’t. So as a “documentary”, that was crap, one giant non sequitur
    
    But as Antinous is cautioning, this is about RP, not any other person or, I assume, thing we might want to attack. So let’s look at each of the 4 things RP said.
    
    1. Demonstrably true, these days. Back then, I don’t know; maybe the guy was prescient. I started to write a short summary of the issue as it currently stands but failed. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, google “UN small arms treaty” and be prepared to read for a couple of days. The treaty doesn’t yet exist, probably will eventually, but there are lots of other anti-gun things going on under U.N. guidance that lump guys that like to shoot cans out in the desert in with Al Queda. There’s lots of PITA stuff that reasonably seems directed toward prohibition. U.S. small businesses that can’t export a minor replacement spring for a gun without a crushing paperwork process and prior government approval are already feeling the impact, but there’s way too much to get into here. U.S. gun control is currently proceeding under the radar with U.N. support. (That last sentence is another google clue but I won’t risk the banhammer by making attributions right here in the thread.)
    
    Bottom line, on this one RP is right.
    
    2. I have no idea. I’ve heard it so many times in so many contexts that I have to believe that, like many seemingly innocuous phrases, the far right folks have some special meaning for “private property rights” that I’m not privy to.
    
    3. True but a not a surprise, I hope. It’s sort of built into the whole concept.
    
    4. True but just politics.
    
    So we get one true and insightful comment from the man, one I know nothing about, and two more that are true but just (non-threatening) business as usual.
    
    Isn’t that a better truth-to-bullshit ratio than we get from most politicians?
    - C W
      
      “Bottom line, on this one RP is right.”
      
      He’s not 100% wrong on all topics, but why not Bernie Sanders? Why not a sane person that’s not a horrible bigot with regressive policies?

ab167

In before young white men come to his defense.

Hubris Sonic

Trying to come up with some snarky, funny comment about this sick racist crap and… I got nothing…

Ian Osborne

I guess it’s your future you’re kicking, but it was Lew Rockwell who wrote those, not Ron Paul. They don’t even sound like him. And don’t even mention there were 14 different newsletters being published at the same time with some association to Ron Paul.

Look at the issues at hand. Do you want to bankrupt the country by policing the world or do you want to have actual liberty where you can freely travel where you’d like, say what you like, and basically be a free person?

http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones

Uh, you do understand that Lew Rockwell was Ron Paul’s Chief of Staff, right? And that Paul knew about these newsletters? And that Paul was earning money off these things? And that he and Rockwell continue to be friends?

“I let my racist buddy publish racist conspiracy theory crap in my name, took the money, but he actually wrote it and not me!” isn’t actually a very good defense. If that’s all you’ve got though, I guess it’s what you roll with, right?
- jmsptrk
  
  Too bad Ian is wrong. A reporter in Ohio found one of newsletters, and guess what…. it had a byline. The real author was a guy named James B Powell. Who now works for Forbes and is a regularly contributor to, of course, Fox.
  
  http://www.revolutimes.com/2012/01/05/breaking-author-of-racist-content-in-ron-paul-newsletter-discovered-a-director-at-forbes-magazine/
- C W
  
  “A reporter in Ohio found one of newsletters, and guess what…. it had a byline. The real author was a guy named James B Powell.”
  
  Yes, “One of the newsletters”.
  
  The newsletters were not all written by James Powell, judging by all the rest that were scanned and uploaded.
dculberson

Be a free person .. If you’re white?
- zyodei
  
  You are aware that the greatest infringement on the freedom of blacks in America today is the racist WoD, right
  - dculberson
    
    WoD? The role playing game? Use complete words or it’s impossible to know what you’re saying.
    - http://twitter.com/_whm w. m.
      
      I believe s/he’s referencing the War on Drugs, which has a hugely disproportionate affect on minorities.
  - C W
    
    “You are aware that the greatest infringement on the freedom of blacks in America today is the racist WoD, right”
    
    Ron Paul is not against imprisoning blacks. He would encourage blacks be imprisoned for violations of segregationist policy. He is against any Federal legislation, he is not against violations of civil rights. He’s against the federal PROTECTION of civil rights.
grimc

“Future”? Try “returning to the 19th Century.”
Flashman

Yeah, seriously. Why would Ron Paul bother to keep tabs on a newsletter called the Ron Paul Report that was sent out to Ron Paul supporters with Ron Paul’s signature printed on it? Who has time to monitor *every one* of the newsletters that get published under one’s name?
- zyodei
  
  He published them for 20+ years. There is some kooky stuff, but the really offensive stuff only occurred in a few issues 15 years in to publishing them.
  - Bodhipaksa
    
    So Ron Paul is completely incompetent even as a basic manager, is what you’re saying?
  - C W
    
    “the really offensive stuff only occurred in a few issues 15 years in to publishing them.”
    
    Why do you say untrue things? They did not occur in a “few issues” and they have been published from the beginning.
C W

“do you want to have actual liberty where you can freely travel where you’d like, say what you like, and basically be a free person?”

You’d better not be black, or gay, or not on the bad side of a corporation or militia, or certainly a corporate-run militia/paramilitary group.

Ian Osborne

I get it stuck to me every time I go through an airport because I protested Dick Cheney in ’03 and one of his sneaky operatives convinced me he (the operative) was running as a write-in candidate.

http://openid.aliz.es/Rule-of-law Rule Of Law

Even if Ron Paul didn’t write that racist diatribe he’s associated with it and he put his name on it. If you can’t get over that you really need to wake up and smell the obviously blatant racism smashing you in the jaw.

http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

I thought these had been debunked? Weren’t they ghostwritten (like most newsletters)? Paul still should have known about them and it’s ridiculous that he allowed his named to be carried on those… but the difference is notable

So while that’s indeed troubling – I’m also worried about having a President who follows the 19th Century equivalent of Scientology.

CSMcDonald

Mostly, but he hasn’t repudiated them enough to satisfy the left or some centrists.
- http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot
  
  Well I can’t blame them – they aren’t light statements.
- http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist
  
  Yes, and I’m sure Jim Jones was also just misunderstood.
  
  Chug that Kool-Aid!
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

Here is Ron Paul in 1995 explicitly taking “credit” for the above newsletter:

http://youtu.be/_m-RhKBfb2g
C W

“I thought these had been debunked?”

No. Paul never took responsibility or discussed who from his campaign administration was involved.

“Weren’t they ghostwritten (like most newsletters)?”

He took credit for them and endorsed their ideas and facts in 1995, discussing some of the more racist “facts” and defending them. This is before ten or so years later changing his story radically, stating that he didn’t know about them. He’s a liar.

http://twitter.com/tomscrace Thomas Scrace

Do you guys actually think that Ron Paul is a racist? I don’t see how anybody could after all the countless times he has made public statements against racism.

He has said that he didn’t write or have knowledge of the things in these newsletters. He disavows them. They do not represent his opinions.

It’s amazing to me that a media-savvy crowd like the readership of this blog is being taken in by such an extraordinarily naked and cynical attempt by the mainstream media to discredit the most radically civil libertarian presidential candidate in the race.

Guest

A Ron Paul presidency means that tens of thousands of African American men will be returning to their families, communities and churches. They can begin working and re-building their lives. That is revolutionary! That is precisely what will happen if Ron Paul is serious about ending the Drug War and pardoning non-violent drug offenders.

A Ron Paul presidency means that the bombs and drone missiles will stop dropping on Arabs, Africans, and Asians.

A Ron Paul presidency means that the Federal government will no longer threaten the interests of gays who want to pursue marriage in their respective states.

No Republican or Democrat (not even Obama) is promising these things; they neutralize the “Ron Paul is a racist” charge, and they expose Obama (and the GOP) for the damage they have allowed the War on Drugs to do to African American communities.
- olrac57
  
  Um… Are you familiar with how our government works? Even if Paul would push for those things, they’d not happen. Ever heard of Congress?
  - Guest
    
    He actually could pardon every non-violent drug offender.
    - olrac57
      
      Yes. He could. Do you believe that he would?
    - Guest
      
      Yes. Why would I believe otherwise?
    - C W
      
      “Yes. Why would I believe otherwise?”
      
      Because he hasn’t stated that he would, only that he would disempower the Federal Government.
    - Guest
      
      He has said he will pardon those individuals multiple times in interviews and in the debates.
  - http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones
    
    The congress which Paul is a part of, has been for decades, and has gotten exactly nothing done in? That congress?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      But….but….he’s magic! You see, when some people were hopeful that some politicians might bring about positive change, that was just delusional. But when other people start snapping little steel splinters off Occam’s Razor in order to believe that Ron Paul will fix everything, that’s noble-minded truth-telling.
  - Guest
    
    Since the Congressional coalitions Paul has been built in the past, especially concerning the first ever audit of the Federal Reserve, do not exist in the counterfactual future you have imagined; I guess all a President Paul might be able to do as Commander-in-Chief is end the wars, bring the troops home, repeal thousands of costly and oppressive executive orders, and wield a veto pen like a butcher axe.
    
    I’ll settle for that.
    - benenglish
      
      Insightful.
      
      Here’s my take. I had the unfortunate experience of attending a kegger with RP’s staff and a bunch of volunteers more than 20 years ago. They were nuts back then and I’m not convinced much has changed.
      
      But I would vote for RP.
      
      One of the things I trained in over a long career in a bureaucratic organization (from which I’ve recently retired) was referred to in our organization as “Facilitation Specialist.” It was a side duty. I was called in to run meetings in work groups where some project had stalled or relationships had become so toxic they weren’t getting any work done. I helped people find common ground. I was also a “Process Analyst” who, at whatever level, helped to understand workflow and improve it.
      
      One of the most valuable things I learned was that sometimes you truly need to “facilitate a process crisis”. Sometimes an organization is in a state where it can limp along forever without fixing problems, at a fraction of efficiency, where everyone is miserable, but no one can change anything. In those cases, sometimes the thing to do is help the organization fail, to give it a little nudge that finally causes it to tip over and crash on the floor. To create a situation where everyone finally acknowledges that things need to be re-built from the ground up.
      
      I think RP is a nut, but I’d vote for him. He’d break so many things so badly that during the inevitable re-build we’d actually have a chance to build something that works.
      
      It might not be much but like Jay said “I’ll settle for that.”
- kaidaigoji
  
  If he’s too incompetent to know what is being published under his own name, why should I accept that he’d be competent enough to enact those policies? But even granting that, here’s some more things the ideal Ron Paul presidency would mean:
  
  A Ron Paul presidency would mean a government that no longer believes women should have the right to choose an abortion.
  
  A Ron Paul presidency means a government that believes your employer should have the right to fire you for being gay, or black, or a socialist.
  
  A Ron Paul presidency means a federal reserve that can no longer do even the tiny amount it is doing to prevent a slide back into a recession. More than that, it means a government that doesn’t believe in a social safety net; a government that believes that in a period with five workers applying for every open job, it’s your fault for being unemployed, and thus cuts unemployment benefits, food stamps, and all of that other frivolous social spending. In short, a government that does everything it can to hasten our slide into a great depression.
  
  A Ron Paul presidency means allegiance to hundred year old debunked fringe economic theories based on ideology and not observations, economic theories that have been predicting hyper inflation “any day now” in Japan for a decade, in America for three years, and a return to the gold standard that nearly strangled our nation.
  
  And don’t even try to play the gay marriage card – Ron Paul wants to send the matter to the states, rather than having the government protect the rights of minorities. Don’t try to play that one off as a ‘pro.’
  - C W
    
    “the right of individuals to a full and fair trial is more important than your right to an abortion.”
    
    The right of an individual to not be arrested for being gay, or black is more important than your Bircher-god to be elected president.
    - Tess
      
      Thank you very much for saying this. The right to a trial won’t actually help me much if my identity is illegal… or if it’s perfectly legal to treat me like a nonperson.
  - Ryan Lenethen
    
    LOL, don’t really dissagree… however:
    
    ” means allegiance to hundred year old debunked fringe economic theories based on ideology and not observations”
    
    That could describe just about every modern candidate within memory. How long had Greenspan been running the show? 20-30 years?
- C W
  
  “A Ron Paul presidency means that tens of thousands of African American men will be returning to their families, communities and churches.”
  
  And arrested in their hometowns for violating policies of segregation.
http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones

Media savvy people look at the actual evidence here. Paul was interviewed by local media about the newsletters back during his congressional run in 1996, and admitted to knowing about them, and even defended the contents.
- http://twitter.com/tomscrace Thomas Scrace
  
  Link?
  - http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
    
    Link is above.
  - Snig
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW755u5460A
    
    Unless this is Mr.Rockwell manipulating an effective Ron Paul puppet.
    - jmsptrk
      
      A reporter in Ohio did a segment and clearly lays out the timeline of events.
      
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGH77lZsglU
      
      He also exposes the real author in a follow-up piece.
      
      http://www.fox19.com/story/16458700/reality-check-the-name-of-a-mystery-writer-of-one-of-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters
    - Snig
      
      No, jmsptrk, the racism started in the newsletters in 1990, and this video was 1995.
    - http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
      
      Even the specific newsletter snapshot at the top of this post is from several years prior to the videos of Paul claiming the newsletters as his own writing and opinion.
    - C W
      
      “Up to the point that this video was made, there was absolutely no racist content contained in the newsletters.”
      Except that was not true, and RACIST CONTENT WAS PUBLISHED AND MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO.
      
      I’d have much more respect for Paul fans if they didn’t lie so very much.
    - Navin_Johnson
      
      Now watch the true believer Paultards make excuses.
      
      Here it is again folks. Paul promoting the newsletters that bear his name, that he apparently, didn’t know about, and had nothing to do with:
      
      http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-spokane/video-shows-ron-paul-promoting-newletter-on-cspan-1995
    - jmsptrk
      
      You’re correct. I thought it was a different video.
- zyodei
  
  Of course he knew about the existence of them. He published them. But he was largely an absentee publisher. It is entirely plausible, however, that he did not know in 1996 about the content that has caused so much controversy.
  - http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones
    
    He was asked about the content in 1996 and defended it. It was controversial back then too…
  - http://twitter.com/dearnate nate
    
    He was specifically asked about the newsletter’s claim that 95% of young black men in DC were criminals, and he defended the statement as factual and provided a ‘citation.’ In response to the OP — do I seriously believe that Ron Paul is racist just because he, like, said a bunch of racist stuff that he later disavowed when it became a liability? — yes, I do. My evidence for this is all that stuff he said.
  - C W
    
    “It is entirely plausible, however, that he did not know in 1996 about the content that has caused so much controversy.”
    
    Watch the interview. It was referenced, and he defended his “facts”.
- Guest
  
  And of course you knew that, up to that point, there was absolutely no racist content contained in the newsletters.
  - http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones
    
    What are you talking about? He was asked about it because even in Texas in the early 90”s, it was seen as racist.
    - jmsptrck404
      
      Apologies. Replied to the wrong post.
davidasposted

Actually, that would be Gary Johnson.
Snig

Nixon also spoke on the importance of the law and integrity and publicly espoused bipartisanship at times. Ron Paul is quite easy to see on youtube discussing the newsletter’s content, and not bothering to mention he hasn’t actually written or read them. Was he lying then, or later when he made public statements against racism?
C W

“I don’t see how anybody could after all the countless times he has made public statements against racism.”

RP: “Racism is bad”
RP: “Racism should be legal for people and States to perform”
RP: “Nobody should be a racist but it’s FREEDOMS and LIBERTIES for someone to oppress another being systemically but it’s bad so nobody do it, K?”

You’re naive as hell.
- Tess
  
  Racism is wrong but losing your ability to codify it into law is wronger!
  
  /snark

http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

*grabs some popcorn and waits for the Paul supporters*

Guest

This article is Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooring.

58 characters

grimc

Not nearly as boring as your contribution.

nowornever

Rome is burning, and only one candidate wants to stop SOPA, NDAA, the drug war and the wars abroad (hint, it’s not Obama!). At some point you have to decide whether these things are more important to you than crap published in a newsletter.

LikesTurtles

As much as I don’t like any of those things, I also don’t like the Confederacy, many states of which would implement these exact policies with President Paul’s blessing. The only thing Paul stands for is letting a smaller government entity take away your rights. Only this is worse because there would be no protection from the worst abuses by the states in Paul’s confederacy like we have with the Bill of Rights.
- nowornever
  
  Do you really thing Ron Paul wants to bring back the confederacy? Really? Have you listened to his speeches, reviewed his voting record? How has the federal government been doing lately in terms of that Bill of Rights, which the constitutionalist Paul understands applies to all people? He may not be as libertarian as many of us would like, but he’s not a fascist (and yes, when you hand over the economy to a cabal of elite bankers and claim the right to detain indefinitely for any reason whatsoever, that makes you a fascist).
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Do you really thing Ron Paul wants to bring back the confederacy?
    
    Yes. State’s rights was never anything but a code for the opportunity to maintain slavery. Now it’s a code for the opportunity for little fiefdoms under the rule of rich, white men to withdraw civil and human rights from people of color, women and LGBT people.
    - CSMcDonald
      
      So the 10th amendment shouldn’t exist? Just curious here.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      It was arguably practical when it took two weeks to get from Washington DC to Maine. What’s the point now? Should citizens of one state have different fundamental rights than citizens of another state and, if so, why are we one nation?
    - http://twitter.com/GideonTJones Gideon Jones
      
      Indeed. It should be noted that when the “Dixiecrats” split off from the Democratic party in protest of Truman’s desegregation of the army and the looming desegregation of the US as a whole, their official name was the States’ Rights Party.
      
      That party failed, as 3rd parties always do in the US, but were eventually absorbed by the GOP. And for the last 60+ years since, the phrase “states’ rights” has been been used by that that same group of Americans in arguments that are sometimes explicitly segregationist, and sometimes merely coded.
    - nowornever
      
      So, he spends 20 year in congress speaking out about government abuses, and voting against them, all as part of a diabolical ploy to give states the power they need to abuse people? Sorry but I’m not buying it. Seems more likely he wants to give states the right to allow medical marijuana, something he’s spoken out about frequently.
      
      And his hated friend Lew Rockwell… just checked out his podcast, he’s an extreme defender of individual freedom versus state power at all levels, maybe even an anarchist.
    - Snig
      
      Nowornever said:
      “So, he spends 20 year in congress speaking out about government abuses, and voting against them, all as part of a diabolical ploy to give states the power they need to abuse people?”
      
      Even if Paul has the kindest intentions, isn’t it possible that some state’s leadership could have unkind intentions to some of their citizens? Imagine a nation being run by a collection of Sheriff Arpaio’s. Or if Santorum were governor/emperor of Pennsylvania. Or if George Wallace was the ultimate authority in Alabama.
    - domuzluk skywalker
      
      Sure, that’s what “states rights” means, but I don’t think you can seriously argue that a Paul presidency would take us to some kind of feudalism. So what are your actual realistic scenarios for what would happen under a Paul presidency? Continuing drone strikes, torture, persecution of whistleblowers, worsening govt secrecy, and everything else we’ve gotten used to under the current prez are at least as beyond the pale as Paul’s handling of the racist newsletters incident. I’m also not buying this idea that Paul’s politics are “really” John Birch society stuff. What it looks like to me is that Paul was into all this anti-government conspiracy BS, and as crazy as that was 20 years ago, in the 2010s, we’re actually in a situation where the surveillance state is a real threat. Paul sounds like as much of an opportunist as most politicians, and I’m sure he realizes that a lot (most?) of his appeal right now comes not from his anti-Federal Reserve and gold standard positions, but from his consistent anti-war and anti-WoD positions.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Sure, that’s what “states rights” means, but I don’t think you can seriously argue that a Paul presidency would take us to some kind of feudalism. So what are your actual realistic scenarios for what would happen under a Paul presidency?
      
      States that outlaw abortion, outlaw sodomy and reinstate Jim Crow laws.
    - cdh1971
      
      Amen Brother.
    - zyodei
      
      There is truth to what you say. But concentration of power is very dangerous as well. I’ve had a number of friends in the EU who have had to quit their small businesses because the ridiculous EU regulations were simply unaffordable.
      
      Why even have countries? Why not just one giant global state? But, what happens if it turns sour?
      
      The benefit of small, largely sovereign governing blocks is that, if one is oppressing you or just gets awful, you can vote with your feet, deprive it of taxes, and leave.
      
      The larger the governmental area, the harder that is to do.
      
      Micro-states+free trade and immigration, that seems to be the best system in my book.
  - C W
    
    “So, he spends 20 year in congress speaking out about government abuses, and voting against them, all as part of a diabolical ploy to give states the power they need to abuse people?”
    
    You appear to have missed what he’s voted FOR, which is the ability to give states the power they need to abuse people. JFC, you have no clue what legislation Ron Paul HAS offered, only the FEDERAL legislation he’s denied.
  - http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist
    
    @CSMcDonald:disqus
    Actually the tenth amendment doesn’t exist, not in its original sense. It’s superseded in parts by subsequent amendments.
    What do you think the word amendment means?
Snig

Actually, the world is burning, and Paul doesn’t believe global warming is an important issue.
- domuzluk skywalker
  
  Now THAT’s actually a decent argument against Ron Paul.

zyodei

At your suggestion, I looked into it. Blacks don’t commit rape more often than whites.

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/black-rape-statistics/

frmore

Try FBI crime statistics instead.
- laurzilla
  
  Per the US Dept of Justice’s 2008 national data, 54% of rapists were identified as white and 32% as black (the only two categories possible for race in this survey), with 12% of unknown race.
  
  Considering the margin of error here, the other socioeconomic factors at play, and the fact that this pretty well mirrors the demographics of the country as a whole (63% white, 12% black, and 37% total nonwhite)… If you think that black men commit more rapes than whites, that is a belief founded more in prejudice than fact.
  
  Source: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2173#one, “victims and offenders: 2008,” page 27
  - E H
    
    “this pretty well mirrors the demographics of the country”
    
    No. (32/12)/(54/63) = 3.11. So blacks are over 3 times as likely to be convicted of rape as whites. Undoubtedly some of the difference is due to prejudice and inability to afford effective counsel, but to assume that there is no difference in the underlying rates of commission of crimes isn’t supported by the evidence you provided.
    
    (Edit: I am not the “EH” who more often posts here; note the space between the “E” and “H”.)
    - C W
      
      Adjust this for social class.
LikesTurtles

And why should it matter anyway? If 5% of whites were rapists and 10% of blacks rapists, that would still mean that 90% of blacks weren’t rapists and shouldn’t be prejudged against just because the race they happen to be born into has twice the frequency of rapists as another race. It’s tragicomedic to see the Paul’s self described libertarians treat an entire race of people as a collective being instead of individuals. Seems very anti-libertarian.
blueelm

Those statistics are disturbing because no one seems to notice the glaring fact that raping black women historically has been perfectly legal for whites, and that there *might* just be some effect of racism that might make one of the most vulnerable groups of women to sexual violence less likely to report rape especially if the rape is of the most common kind (i.e. some one you already know uses their position of power to threaten you).

But hey…. what do I know?

http://twitter.com/Grutte_Pier_ 蓮っ葉ちゃん

Enough Paul people, I hear the sirens going of in the distance and you know what that means. Time to fork over al your worthless federal reserve money and get on the cattle trains to the FEMA death camps at the Bohemian Grove.

benher

Will there be bread at the camps?! I was told there would be circuses as well!

http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

Oh noes, Xeni Jardin is a secret Reptilian zionist!

Antinous / Moderator

Secret?
- http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski
  
  Well, I didn’t know.
benher

It’s spelled Xionist.

http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

I like this one: “I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

Man, where can I get more of these Ron Paul newsletters? I feel like I’ve been missing out on important information about how the black man is keeping the white man down.

http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

If progressives should support Ron Pauk, why is he against abortion? Why was Lew Rockwell his chief of staff? Why does he speak for the John Birch Society? Why does he appear on conspiracy theory nutcase Alex Jones’ radio show? And that only scratches the surface.

Ian Osborne

Thanks for buying my former employer’s (Gannett) crap so long you can’t tell what the truth is anymore. Sure Alex Jones is a sensationalist, but at least he has journalistic integrity and is actually quite ethical in his reporting.
- http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski
  
  Can you hear the Black Helicopters buzzing under your bed?
  - cdh1971
    
    No time for helicopters love, he’s too busy checking for alien anal probes and black-Jewish Log Cabin Republicans in his closet. OOPS, did I say closet, I meant in his bed…oh my, I’m not doing well…I meant under his bed.
  - Marko Raos
    
    Did you ever listen to what he has to say? He may be a lowbrow sensationalist in his approach, but dismissing him as a “conspiracy theorist” automatically dismisses you from any debate. Btw, nazi final solution was also a “conspiracy theory” as were the Tuskgee experiments.
    The “conspiracy theory” label lost any weight long ago. Using it just makes you look uncritical and close-minded.
    - http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist
      
      No, those things you describe weren’t “conspiracy theories,” they were conspiracies. One’s all the way on the other side of the room from the other, and it’s a big room.

Daemonworks

Are the republicans capable of fielding even one sane candidate?

Antinous / Moderator

Huntsman doesn’t seem to be (obviously) crazy (yet). Honestly, I don’t think that most of them are crazy so much as just willing to say anything to get elected.
- grimc
  
  This should push Huntsman over the brink:
  
  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/10/idUS403831293320120110
  
  Gah; no more anchor tags?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    The truthy shall set you free.
- zyodei
  
  You know, I thought that too..until…
  
  http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/12/14/389312/huntsman-ground-invasion-iran/?mobile=nc
- rattypilgrim
  
  Not obviously crazy but Huntsman supports Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan. Not a good thing.

zyodei

I’m a libertarian and a Ron Paul supporter. I’m going to make the case for why I continue to strongly support him, despite my misgivings.

This newsletter issue is serious and a black mark on him, and I hate how he has dealt with it. I believe he is covering somebody. While it appears that the scan above was written by one “James B. Powell”, he needs to make a statement fully addressing people’s concerns about the newsletters and telling the full story. I believe that there probably are reasonable explanations: the newsletters were published for 20+ years; the racist material occurs only in a few issues over a six month window when RP was practicing medicine full time and was living in a different city from the publication.

Ron Paul has published multiple books, and given all manner of speeches and interviews over the last 20 years; the fact that not a single word directly uttered by him is at all racist is telling.

Still, as a longtime RP supporter (since around 2003), I am really dismayed that he hasn’t made a stronger statement and explanation.

And, I won’t lie, RP is entirely too socially conservative for me, and has a record on social issues that I frankly don’t like. Also advocating ‘states rights’ falls short of advocating true libertarianism.

So, why am I still supporting him?

Frankly, because of just how bad the military industrial complex, the wars, the prison industrial complex, pressuring other countries to adopt destructive laws (ie, WoD), the burgeoning police state, our provocation and encirclement of China, the central bank/wall street axis, are immeasurably bad and damaging, both at home and abroad. They cause far more human suffering than anything the Federal government claims to improve at home.

The US empire has been involved in impoverishing and making miserable literally billions of people. Our war on Iraq was not an unique thing; it was a continuation of our multi-decades foreign policy. Our historical and continued support for cruel dictators, our arming both sides of conflicts, the ceaseless bloodlust of our military machine is not just an issue, it is THE issue of the day. It outweighs all others. The moral imperative of ending this madness, before we attack Iran and touch of a global firestorm, trumps all else.

In the moral calculus of human affairs, if you give to charity, volunteer at the soup kitchen, and help disabled children, but also murder somebody, you are a murder. That’s it. One act of evil outweighs a thousand acts of good. Why don’t we see governments through the same lens?

Ron Paul has spent his entire political career fighting this murder machine. I first came onto him in the early 2000s, when he was the strongest opponent of George Bush and everything he stood for in the whole of Washington DC. Watching or reading his floor speeches from that time is inspiring. In the 1990s he was decrying the murderous sanctions against Iraq; before that he denounced other imperial adventures like Panama.

If I trust Ron Paul with anything, it is to fight the Military Industrial Complex tooth and nail.

There are other reasons I support him too: he brings a fresh perspective on many economic issues; he sheds light on the negative side effects that well intentioned government programs can have (ie, the connection between student aid and loan guarantees and the spiraling cost of college and ensuing debt slavery, the connection between medical regulation and the outrageous cost of medicine, how the Federal Reserve has reduced standards of living since 1972 and funded the war machine, etc.) How centralized federal control (the Department of Education, for instance) is a dangerous thing. He speaks with a candor and a moral clarity; while he might be less than honest on the newsletter issue, he gives his opinion straight about policy issues. He correctly points out the nexus of corporate/state power that is at the hub of Washington DC (I don’t know any other politician who regularly uses the term ‘corporatism’ to describe the US political apparatus). He rightly denounces the many types of corporate welfare. He works to restore a moral center to the utterly abominable and corrupt GOP. He seeks to restore the legitimacy of the roundly ignored constitution.

Sure, RP isn’t perfect. To be honest, I probably like him a bit less than I did 4 years ago. But he is still one of th most radical and independent minded people in DC.

If I knew of any other candidate on either side of the aisle (Paul’s good friend Kucinich comes to mind) that so fervently and consistenly denounces the corporatism, domestic surveillance, and warmongering of the USA, they would gladly get my vote. Although it would be a protest vote, because RP 2012 is the only anti-MIC candidate in many decades who seems to have a chance.

TL;DR: preventing WWIII outweighs some kooky newsletters.

kaidaigoji

Martin Luther King Jr “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.” Dec. 1990. Sorry, it wasn’t just a 6 month window.

http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Dec90_p8.pdf
- zyodei
  
  That quote isn’t racist. It’s simply consistent with the libertarian view that force=bad.
  - C W
    
    “That quote isn’t racist.”
    
    The “right to free association” is inherently racist.
  - Guest
    
    and that he, and by association you also, assume that just force == unjust force.
    
    It ain’t. it just ain’t.
cdh1971

Zyodei - Nicely written post and you make some good points but I really must strongly, but respectfully disagree about the suitability of Ron Paul. Please don’t take offence, some of my best friends are Ron Paul supporters.Sure, the newsletters were years ago, and people do change their opinions given time, but he has obfuscated, denied and changed his explanations of the newsletters. I’d be less leery of him if he acknowledged the newsletter straight on and said something like ‘ Yes I/my columnist wrote this, it was racist and wrong, I no longer believe this, I refute this’…and so forth. George Wallace was rehabilitated after similar statements.

The fact that Paul has not made such a statement – even if insincere – makes me believe he is a ‘True Believer’ in these racist ideals and does not want to look like a pussy in the eyes of the other racist true believers. Yes, I know that other politicians have lied about their personal life, but Paul is lying about the nature of very racist and white supremacist statements that were quite clearly spelt out in a newsletter published in _his_ name.The wording and tone of this writing and the other writings he does acknowledge, plus his demeanour, affect and short fuse are not the combination we need in possession of the nuclear launch codes – also let’s not forget the President is also Commander in Chief of the United States military.

Ron Paul and the persona he publicly projects reminds me of the various right-wing white supremacists and left-wing holocaust deniers I have had the misfortune to speak with. I live in the NW, in Eugene, Orgeon, home of the infamous Pacifica Forum among other groups and have encountered some really ‘kooky’ ideas first hand.

I have hippie acquaintances who just love Ron Paul just because he wishes to legalize pot and promotes bio-fuels. These hippies just have their heads up their arses about what Paul really is. The holocaust deniers and white power folks who just love him know _exactly_ what and who he is.

Ron Paul and the persona he publicly projects – with his short fuse and other mannerisms – reminds me of these right-wing white supremacists and left-wing holocaust deniers. Then there is what flows from his mouth and compu…er…typewriter.

Oh, almost forgot – he acts like the sort of cult-leader you’d expect from central casting.
- Snig
  
  I’ll second that I appreciate Zyodei’s post on his thinking even if I disagree with his conclusions.
  - zyodei
    
    Ron Paul simply seems like the best shot in 50 years to start to purge these sociopathic murderers and warmongers who have tarnished the soul of America out of the system.
    
    That’s why it would take a great deal to shake my support in him.
    
    Agressive War > All Other Issues
    - blueelm
      
      Let me make it clear that I *wish* that I believed you or felt the same way. I just don’t. I wish I had a candidate I thought I could trust. Ron Paul is just not that man to me. I would not trust him so far as I could throw him. Perhaps this comes from growing up in the south and remembering a little too much about him, but that is how it is. He is simply not a progressive force and I am damned sure not going to throw people under (or in the back of) the bus just to keep them out of the way of a herd of elephants.
    - C W
      
      Purge them to operate on a state by state level, which is their “right” to murder our citizens.
- zyodei
  
  I think you are pinning him with guilt by association..but association with people you know, not him!
  
  RP 2008: “The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts…. I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”
  
  Ron Paul is the most ardently anti-military/prison/surveillance industrial candidate in generations. The only truly anti-MIC candidate since there has BEEN an MIC (except perhaps for Kennedy).
  
  What plan do you have to reign these maniacs in?
  - eryximachus
    
    When you get Paul to reign in his idea of letting corporations and rich people do whatever they want to poor people.
    
    Because it’s just as horrid.
  - Guest
    
    Based entirely on his previously poor choices of association, and that’s our fault?
    
    We’re giving the man a button that can end the world as we know it, and he has all his personal holdings in gold.
    
    Appearance of crazy is quite close enough.
  - grimc
    
    The only truly anti-MIC candidate since there has BEEN an MIC (except perhaps for Kennedy).
    
    Kucinich? Nader?
    
    Your Paul blinders are truly effective.
    - C W
      
      Eh, I wish Bernie Sanders or Franken would run for office :(
rattypilgrim

I know this has become a cliché, but if you want to live in a Ron Paul, Libertarian country why don’t you move to Somalia? See how that works out for you. Oh, and if your kids die from cholera because of the polluted water they drink-hey! That’s the breaks in a “free” society via Ayn Rand and the crankster Dr. Ron.
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  And nothing is more government-created than the internet itself.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Hey, here’s an idea:

Find a progressive, anti-war, libertarian who DOESN’T have a monster SUV full of Texas back-country baggage.

Really, is Ron Paul like Aragorn, a one-and-only irreplaceable creature who is the only one who can advance a particular bundle of policies? (I had written “his particular bundle,” but they’re NOT “his.”)

zyodei

The problem has to do with the inherently corrupt idea of political parties.

In most cases, the party, rather than the people, choose the politician.

Additionally, only two fairly narrowly defined and not that different schools of political thought are accepted. The Texas GOP has fought Ron Paul tooth and nail for decades, but somehow he has kept his seat.

So, even though a significant member of the population of the country would call themselves ‘anti-war libertarians,’ they generally have nobody to vote for. It’s either the fascist, profligate republicans or the economically myopic democrats. Third parties generally find it impossible to have a go for various reasons.

So, there is really no other national stature politician who is a principled anti-war libertarian. There is really no one on the horizon if RP doesn’t make it in 2012.

The political elites couldn’t be happier.
C W

There is nothing “progressive” about Ron Paul. Every one of the ideas you confuse for “progressive” comes from regressive, anti-civil rights States Rights roots.
jmsptrk

Gary Johnson.

stephenl123

The bigger problems with Ron Paul are not his disgusting words. They’re his disgusting actions. He has voted almost entirely along the John Birch Society line his entire career in congress. And he actively promotes the John Birch Society. For anyone who things he’s “not like those others’, consider that he is close friends with the Kock brothers and a protégé of their father.

zyodei

No. That’s not true. The second part anyhow. The RP/Rothbard side of libertarianism has been at a long conflict with the Koch brothers. The Koch controlled libertarian publications have generally been quite hostile to Ron Paul..they have eased up a bit in the last few months, but they were one of the first media outlets to run with this newsletter story four years ago.

Yeah, he is friendly with JBS, but so what? I think their biggest crime was discussing conspiracy theories, the ultimate ‘no-no’ in the political dialogue.
- http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski
  
  The John Birch Society is a pretty vile organization. That’s what.
- rattypilgrim
  
  You have no idea what the John Birch Society’s biggest crime was. It was witch hunting every one they called communists especially after the Civil Rights Act. They’re looking for commies everywhere even though Communism no longer exists. You’re listening to the rants of an old man who doesn’t get that the cold war and all the history attached to it has passed him by.
- C W
  
  “The Koch controlled libertarian publications have generally been quite hostile to Ron Paul..”
  
  They’ll still benefit from his policies.

sam1148

The “we the people act” written by Ron Paul sums it up:

Full text: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.539:

Some gems here:
The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court–

(1) shall not adjudicate–

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

(B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or

(C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and

(2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

Which would mean it’s up to the states to invade your home for sexual pactices, not blessed by your home state, No?

Equal protection under the law? Nope…that’s a state issue. Probably upto and including interacial marriages, as that was overturn by that nasty suprime court under ‘equal protection of the law”.

And this Gem:
(1) shall not adjudicate–

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

Would that mean and imply that a State (not fedral goverment) can establish a state religion? Because it reads that way.

At worst it’s a very sloppy bil, at best it’s a method for creating states as their own rules of goverment, with a patchwork of laws and prehaps roadblocks and customs check points for each state to comply.

http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist

SSSHHH! Don’t quote Ron Paul, his supporters hate it when you do that!

D Wyatt

In order for me to be convinced someone is a racist I have to see it for my own eyes, hearsay like this is not legal nor does it have any real worth. Just more lies for the liars to say.
Ok so last minute they are going to play the blame game and name him a racist? Wouldnt that be a PERFECTLY pathetic attempt of misdirection when there just so happens to be a mixed candidate against him? Calling him a racist for a ridiculous and obvious paper put out by an entirely different person and entity 20 years ago is profoundly shortsighted.

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THIS “JUST SO HAPPENED” TO BE PUT OUT THE SAME YEARS THAT THEY WERE WORRIED ABOUT RON PAUL FIGHTING FOR OFFICE AGAIN IN 1992 AFTER HE TRIED IN 1988 FOR THE FIRST TIME….. Coincidence? Maybe, but probably not…

This guy is the right guy for the job, plain and simple, he has been all along. BUT, stuffy elderly people dont like true change so they fight it tooth and nail with any ammo they can find no matter how unworthy. Stating the man is a racist in this instance is like someone saying im racist because my store manager hired a bagger who said something racist while they were in my “insert my name” store.

Look here, many varied groups of people put their hopes and beliefs in Obama and got NOTHING in return. Just the same lies every last president says, pre-office=whatever you want to hear buddy!” Post-taking office=Pretend I didnt say that, and every comic gets a punchline. “NO NEW TAXES”=Tax them to high heaven. “CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN”=Good luck having change in your pocket, let alone change in the government……

RON PAUL has real thoughts, real plans of action, and its time to stop dismissing him and all the PREDICTIONS he has made for the last 30 years. That scares people, namely people making a boatload of money of the CURRENT FAILED SYSTEM.

ALL MY LIFE I wished and hoped for a REAL PERSON as a candidate, all I ever witnessed was lies upon lies upon lies. I had gone way past hope until about 10 years ago I heard Ron Paul speak in person, and found myself, for the first time since childhood, ACTUALLY believing and hoping again in a candidate. Then as you know he was a 3rd party and all the Dems/Reps were only allowed in the TELEVISED debates. Therefore they werent given a fair shake and as such only garnered a small % of the populous vote.

I didnt believe in Obama from day one, its just now taken people years to realize what I already saw, just another guy smiling and saying what you want to hear. Cant call Obama a racist because he is mixed, even though Ive read his book that he penned himself and clearly see racist remarks and thoughts made against “white folks” as he put it.

Do yourself a Favor and actually listen to some old Ron Paul video on youtube, HE PREDICTS THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING NOW, HE PREDICTS THINGS THAT HAPPENED 10 YEARS AGO. He has FORETHOUGHT and the ability to affect action, none of the other candidates say a single thing about replacing the system with real people, just more of the same BS and I for one am beyond sick of all the lies all the time. Society is ruined and its because:
YOU PEOPLE KEEP OVERWHELMINGLY PICKING THE WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATES ELECTION AFTER ELECTION ITS THIS JERK OR THAT IDIOT ALL BACKED BY FUNNY MONEY AND PEOPLE WHO THEY NOW OWE SOME TAX OR LAW TO!

Never real men with real solutions and real understanding and compassion for the other real people out there getting the shaft.
So yeah, keep doing what you’re doing, its working so darn good right now I cant hardly stand it!

cdh1971

Yawn…you’ve had your wheaties today haven’t you. I hear your friends at your AOL chatroom calling. You’d better see what they want. Might be important.
EvilTerran

Ah, yes. Randomly littering your prose with all-caps… a sure sign that you have something meaningful and well thought-out to contribute.

ಠ_ಠ
C W

“In order for me to be convinced someone is a racist I have to see it for my own eyes”

Why do Klansmen wear hoods?
http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist

I HAVE a broken CapSloCK key TOO!

http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

I PREDICTED THIS COMMENT THREAD WOULD BE HAPPENING NOW, I PREDICT THREADS THAT HAPPENED 10 YEARS AGO. I HAVE FORETHOUGHT.

Ian Anthony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJTisovvjc
- Snig
  
  It was well known in intelligence circle that there were terrorist threats against the US well before 1998. That’s why there was an interest in al-quaeda and the taliban back then. And the question of doing nothing against them or using force against them was also continuously argued. No prescience needed here. Clinton had sent a cruise missile against Osama Bin Laden after he and his minions had already bombed US embassies. US embassies are US territory. OBL was not fond of us well before then, having declared war on us in 1996.
  
  Also, if Paul is such a strict constitutional believer, why is he here admitting that he’s voting to impeach Clinton for his politics not to the matter at hand, the issues covered in the Starr report? You don’t get to do that. You listen to the evidence submitted, you don’t get to judge on anything else. That’s against the rule of law.
  
  Isolationism is not a new idea, and it’s effective only as long as everyone else in the world believes in it. Unfortunately, not everyone else believes in it.
  - zyodei
    
    He’s saying that the real crime Clinton committed was illegal war, and that the starr report was a waste of time.
    
    Non-interventionism != isolationism.
    
    North Korea is isolationist. Costa Rica, or Canada, or Sweden, or a whole host of other deeply connected but non-agressive countries are not. And it works OK for them. Using the word to describe RP’s foreign policy is dishonest.
    - Snig
      
      I got that, but to vote for the censure/impeachment you are addressing the issue at stake. If Bush were being impeached for lying about Iraq, and a democrat said, I’m voting to impeach, not for the Iraq thing, but because of his stance on social issues or global warming, that would be similarly wrong.
Ian Anthony

Oh, and also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Gfzgxh3ZQ&feature=related

But yeah, totally comparable to reducing his predictions to an all-caps barrage.
Snig

Warn me next time and just include a synopsis of the arguments in the thread. I really could have used some sleep.

zyodei

I think most people on this board don’t want corporations controlling the world.

And most people would also agree that TV news is owned by corporations.

They also believe that RP is a great ally of the corporate plutocracy.

So, how do you explain the unrelentingly biased and unfair treatment the TV news has given to Paul?

Giving him the least time at debates, repeatedly ‘forgetting’ to include Paul on polls, lining up interviews full of questions designed to elicit the most damaging possible soundbites (as opposed to other candidates, who get softballs now and again), constantly repeating the mantra that he’s ‘unelectable’ and ‘can’t win’ and ‘doesn’t matter,’ openly misrepresenting his views, etc.

I won’t even mention the absolute hatred, vitriol, and outright lies that right-wingers such as Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh spew all over him.

If the corporate media hates him so much, is he really so bad as liberals make him out to be?

Think about that for a minute.

Snig

So you’re saying the targets of the bubbleheaded TV people are therefore inherently wise and has our best interests at heart? Should I pay more attention to Casey Anthony and Lindsay Lohan? Anyway I believe Spew is the native tongue of both Savage and Limbaugh, so I wouldn’t really put much credence in that hypothesis.
- zyodei
  
  I’m saying that, of all the GOP candidates, they have been the most malicious to him. They have slobbered over Perry, Palin, Bachman, even Santorum, rarely asking hard questions. They have been generally brutal and exclusionary to Paul.
  
  And pretty much ALL voices from the hard right/neocons have been united in their condemnation of Paul.
  
  Yes, it does mean something.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    You’re repeating yourself. Please don’t.
    - zyodei
      
      Sorry Anti, I’m done.
      
      *exits thread stage right*
C W

“So, how do you explain the unrelentingly biased and unfair treatment the TV news has given to Paul?”

Just the opposite. He’s gotten big sloppy blowjobs as he’s a traditional Dixiecrat/Republican. There’s nothing new or exciting about him.

Ian Anthony

Obama had a nearly identical problem with his longtime reverend’s anti-white stances, and all it took for him was a well orchestrated press conference and speech where he owned up to it and asked everyone to move on.
Also, let’s grant that Paul wrote every single line of those newsletters. All of it. Are you seriously going to then convince me that, in the 20 years since their publication, he has literally never said or done a single racist thing? Not once? The guy who allegedly wrote about keeping a weapon because ‘the animals’ are out tonight has said /nothing/ else about race in 20 whole years?

Okay, sure.

ialreadyexist

Stop that! Logical thinking won’t get you anywhere.

Mister44

This sort of cements my opinion about him. He’s a little nutty.

zyodei

P.S. Here’s Kucinich on Ron Paul:

“If you had to pick someone who’s seeking the Republican nomination for a running mate, who would you choo…” DK: “Ron Paul”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py8cXlLyX18

Genre Slur

I’d rather have the americans with Ron Paul as president than Stephen Harper running Canuckistan. You bats? Look up his church, Rock Pointe…

John Korondy

Dr. Paul accepted responsibility and he has disavowed the contents. Can we move on?

Non-interventionism is quite different from isolationism. Pls Google them.

Why doesn’t Canada, or Australia have the kind of problems with terrorism we seem to have? Could it have something to do with them not butting their noses into other soverign countries’ internal affairs? We Americans would not tolerate another country’s armed forces occupying our land and telling us how to govern ourselves. Should [insert enemy du jour]?

Maybe we could find some worthwhile issues to tackle here back home instead of waging a war against whatever Iran is cooking up, or what evil lurks in the minds of the new N. Korean leadership. Just sayin’.

Dr. Paul is real, unlike the merry marionettes paraded out from the creepiest crevasses of the GOP establishment’s smoke-choked hall of mirrors.

zyodei

“Calling Ron isolationist for his foreign policy views is like calling your neighbor a hermit for not coming over and smashing your windows.”
C W

“Dr. Paul accepted responsibility and he has disavowed the contents.”

Both of these are lies. Paul never accepted responsibility for the contents, and he admitted to knowing the contents in 1995.

http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Well, those newsletters seem to have given a pass to the blah people, so there’s that.

zyodei

OK, last reason to support Paul (or at least his ideas).

Has anyone ever read ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman?’

There has been a very deliberate pattern that has played out around the 3rd world over the last fifty years.

1) Prop up lousy leaders
2) Loan them lots of money for useless crap, mostly to buy weapons systems with
3) Call the loans in, taking over the real assets and lawmaking decisions of the country in payment.

This has been the IMFs game plan for a long time.

Now, after perfecting the technique with poor countries, they have been moving to richer countries. Ireland and Greece are two recent good examples.

This is why deficits are so dangerous. But nobody seems to acknowledge this fact. The God of Keynesianism says “Borrow, borrow, borrow!” (at least, that’s how its interpreted).

If the supposedly ‘financially responsible’ GOP has utterly abandonded this traditional role (which they have since Reagan), who is left to keep the USA from falling into debt servitude?

SeattlePete

So you’re saying I should support Ron Paul because the IMF might be trying to take over the US? Ok. You should support Obama because he’s the only one keeping a lid on the north pole, containing hollow earth and the UFOs inside. Or maybe you’re already under control of the mole-men?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IN5QCHWFN2TBI2QPPAJK2DPQM4 Bryce

totally not racist or bigoted Ron Paul quote from *well after* the newsletters stopped being published…

“We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked,” he says. “Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me. If I’d have been looking, they look suspicious … I mean, a lot of them can’t even speak English, hardly. Not that I’m accusing them of anything, but it’s sort of ironic.”

they don’t look “American” to him.

can a Ron Paul evangelist tell me *exactly* the specifically visual characteristics of an “American” might be…?

http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

It is pretty ironic that people that don’t look American look pretty suspicious, especially if they can’t speak English.

Wait, what?

http://twitter.com/JosephBelBruno Joseph BelBruno

The U.S. Presidential election is the ultimate exercise in trolling.
Please do not feed the trolls, the best way to win most games is not to play.

Roscoe

His stated position, to end the drug war will do more benefit to worldwide civil rights than any other single policy could.

http://twitter.com/michaelsayyes michael b

He has a problem with a Federal drug policy. He has no problem with states choosing to make those same drugs illegal, even if he disagrees.
C W

He doesn’t want to end the Drug War. He’s fine with States illegalizing everything, including blackness and homosexuality again!

Sundown Towns. Not Civil Rights.
- Mister44
  
  Yes – but it is MUCH easier to address problems at a state level and enact change. Very hard on the federal level. The closer you are to the problem the better.
  - C W
    
    It’s also easier for corporations to buy their own legislation. Why pay 1mil for a federal politician when you can pay 10k?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDBCSJ67QEF6I5EBWZLVPZB5K4 william shannon

Ron Paul is a cultural dinosaur. He is a white male who lived his heydays of youth in the Madmen era of race relations. Like many of his repiglican opponents notions of racial identity, Pauls are crusty and dusty never digital. Meanwhile many are enjoying watching the new orifice Ron Paul is tearing into the heart of the repiglican militaristic interventionists dogma. Racist idiot Paul may be. The dumbocraps are no better. They suckle the teet of this racist global warmaking threat. All the ME wars are racist to the core as were the South Asian ones, South American etc etc.. Predicated on the “dangerous savage paradigm” and far more hateful than a pamphlet these are the deeper questions of race. So when you are thinking hope.racial equality in words. Just look at the first ever presidential address from a Pentagon Press Room Podium and ask your self is race really the question here or is race once again the traditional divisive tool used to tear everyone apart?

Navin_Johnson

“Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.” -Ron Paul Survival Report

http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist

That infamous racist Congressman James P. Dowell.

p1w1

I don’t quite understand the leap made between the federal and state level, namely that the only thing that prevents states from acting like a gaggle of assholes is the federal government looming over them. If all you withdrawal federal oversight, does everyone suddenly become a segregationist, pro-life homophobe?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6TS5S6EHYUS6SOJNMP2GHE7KMM AlexD

YES!! lol
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6TS5S6EHYUS6SOJNMP2GHE7KMM AlexD
  
  In all seriousness, I think that there certainly is a time and a place for the Federal government to step in when it thinks states are out of line or abusing groups of people. But to me, it just seems like individual states can look after the the needs of it’s own people better than the Federal government can. I mean the way it stands states like NY and CA have more say over laws that effect smaller states like NH and VT than their own residents do. Doesn’t really seem right…
  - C W
    
    “In all seriousness, I think that there certainly is a time and a place for the Federal government to step in when it thinks states are out of line or abusing groups of people.”
    
    Then your viewpoint is at odds with Ron Paul, who only believes this is such with white Christian males.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6TS5S6EHYUS6SOJNMP2GHE7KMM AlexD
      
      Not necessarily. The Constitution actually has this built in feature called the ability to create Amendments. It’s pretty cool, you should totally check it out!
      
      Based on the current Constitution, I would say that the CRA does in fact violate the Constitution. And no I am not arguing with the morality or even that I disagree with it. However, I think they should have done it right by making it an actual Amendment to the Constitution not just another Act.
    - http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist
      
      @AlexD
      
      It’s so cool, that we made thirteenth and a fourteenth one following a bloody civil war. Please read them. They make the CRA constitutional.
C W

“If all you withdrawal federal oversight, does everyone suddenly become a segregationist, pro-life homophobe?”
http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/20149

No, they already are, some human rights are needed to be kept in check by the Federal government.You apparently don’t pay attention to the language that’s STILL in State constitutions.

Piotr Ługowski

What a shameful newsletter and it is connected to the man with iron bounds of some past acquaintance. He might have the best economical and foreign policy, but these are minor things for the potential president. They are easily trumped by this! Who really cares about going bankrupt or waging another war when theres is a hint of a hint of racism?

Navin_Johnson

Hint = raging, blatant neo-confederate/Bircher racism.

“best economical policy” lulz..
- C W
  
  Right, I wish he would just acknowledge his mistakes WRT the newsletters so we could get through the rest of his goddamned awful ideas.

domuzluk skywalker

Habeus corpus is a foundational right: if we don’t have the right to a full and fair trial* then NONE of our other rights can be guaranteed, including the right to an abortion (which is and must be a right). So I ask you or any Paul supporters here, what would Paul as president do when STATES deprive people of their habeus rights? (or other entities other than the federal government?) Would a Paul presidency intervene to preserve habeus against abuses by state and local governments?

marilove

Yeah! Fuck bodily autonomy Lemme guess: You can’t get pregnant.

http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist

And where in the first ten amendments (the only ones Ron Paul seems to think we have) do we extend those rights to people in the States? We don’t. We don’t even guarantee that people can’t be enslaved.

Tess

These are not mutually exclusive things, you know.

C W

“what would Paul as president do when STATES deprive people of their habeus rights?”

Go into another rant about how it’s better to let a person have the Freedoms and Liberty to move to another State than to Federally protect civil rights, which takes away the civil rights of white Christian males to oppress others.

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