"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda." ~ Hannah Arendt (Political Theorist)
The Wall Street Journal published a remarkable hit piece on Ron Paul two weeks ago entitled “Why Ron Paul Matters.” It is remarkable because while purporting to be a defense of Ron Paul’s ideas, it subtly portrays Ron Paul the real candidate as unelectable while distorting or dismissing outright some of his most important positions.
The author of the article, Ed Crane, begins with a solemn expression of regret over the hoary and irrelevant newsletters of yore to “which Paul lent his name” and which contained allegedly “bigoted” and “intolerant” material. Crane concedes that the objectionable ideas expressed in the newsletters are not consistent with what he knows of Ron Paul’s current views and, moreover, that Paul “disavows supporting them.” And yet Crane makes sure that the reader knows that Paul “refuses to repudiate” his association with the “likely source” of this secular sin of intolerant speech. Crane has somehow divined that this cardinal sinner against the official State creed of political correctness is none other than Lew Rockwell—who just happens to be the leading critic of neoconservatism and of its offshoot Big Government libertarianism that Crane’s Cato Institute promotes so zealously. So by the end of the first paragraph we know exactly where all this is heading—and exactly why the neocon Wall Street Journal published it. (Read more)
Ron Paul doesn’t want to be President to “give” me freedom. He doesn’t own my freedom and he didn’t give it to me. The only reason Ron Paul wants to be President is to stop punishing people for using their freedom that is rightfully theirs. He wants no power. This is clear to anyone who listens to him speak.
There are two kinds of human beings. Those who want power, and those who want freedom. You can tell which one’s which very easily. Those who want freedom are straight-edged. They are consistent, principled, and you can feel their human soul when they speak to you. There’s a continuum out there of human souls somewhere in spiritual cyberspace, and when you come into contact with one of these souls, you know immediately, because souls are by definition free. You sense sincerity, realness, consistency, a free human being. If you’re a man who seeks freedom and you come into contact with a real human soul, you become instantly addicted and you swallow up anything you can get your hands on. You want to unite immediately, no matter what you disagree on. There are people in the freedom movement that don’t exactly like Israel, especially me being a “settler” and I don’t care. If they want freedom, I sense it and my human drive for individualism suddenly turns into an intense desire to unite into a collective – but a collective of free individuals. It’s a beautiful dialectic, and it doesn’t matter what we agree or disagree on, as long as we agree on freedom.
You get hooked on Ron Paul and you desperately seek more and more, any video you can find from the past, any speeches you missed, anything he said that you haven’t heard yet, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times already in different words. You can’t help yourself. The voracious hunger to be able to use your God-given freedom takes you over entirely. It’s like you suddenly realize you’re human and the Divine Image with which God created you comes alive and catches fire.
But something else happens to you. Once you get hooked on Ron Paul, you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power, and you become instantly disgusted when they start saying words. Before, they were just boring. Now they’re revolting. Listening to Romney or Gingrich or Bush or Obama makes you sick and you don’t know how Ron Paul gets through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that’s so transparent it’s like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you. You can’t bear it. (Read more)
Ron Paul’s CNN Walkout interview conducted by reporter-wife of huge war profiteer
Well, well, it turns out hit job specialist Gloria Borger is married to Lance Morgan. Morgan is according to the web site of his employer, Powell Tate,”chief communications strategist at Powell Tate in Washington, D.C. He specializes in developing and executing communications strategies for public policy debates, crisis communications and media training.”
So who might be the clients of Powell Tate, where Borger’s husband is “chief communications strategist and crisis communications” adviser for?
Uncut video shows Paul did NOT ‘storm out’ of CNN interview
The uncut version of a CNN interview between Ron Paul and Gloria Borger surfaced online Sunday, leading many Paul supporters to claim that the footage shows the presidential hopeful didn’t “storm out” of the interview, as some media outlets reported based off the edited version that aired on CNN.
In the interview, Borger pushed the Texas Republican about newsletters from the ’80s and ’90s that bear his name and contained racist and homophobic content. In the originally aired video, Paul seemed to walk out on Borger after a terse rebuttal.
But the uncut version shows that Paul and Borger were standing up for the entire interview, and that Paul actually responded to questions about the newsletter for almost three minutes before walking off, and that the interview was likely over.
Paul was clearly irritated by the line of questioning, which he says he covered at length with CNN in another interview the day before, but early reports seemed to indicate that Paul fled the interview to avoid the issue.
The full interview lasted more than eight minutes, and covered issues not aired by CNN, such as negative campaign advertisements and the payroll tax cut.
A post on a website for Paul supporters described the interview controversy as a “creative editing hit job.”
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Frum goes after Paul. Typical slander from a typical war mongering, chicken hawk, neo-con.
It’s sad and squalid that Ron Paul finished ahead of Jon Huntsman. Gov. Huntsman has the elements of a president; Ron Paul is not even a fanatic. He’s a bunco artist. May I repeat something I’ve said about him before? (The piece can be read here on CNN.com)
Ron Paul is something more (or less) than a racist crank. As Michael Brendan Dougherty aptly observed in the Atlantic last week:
Al Gore encourages voters to dismiss Ron Paul as a ‘silly’ candidate
Analyzing the returns, Gore said, “He does not have a ceiling in fantasy land, but in the real world when people take a look at his actual positions, when Republicans take a look on at his actual positions, come on.”
Americans’ frustration with the economic and political situation in the country was, Gore said, the only reason Paul would even been considered by voters.
“That all is part of a general attitude that you know, let’s just play 52-card pick up,” he mused, “let’s just up end things and do something radically different. And I think he does culturally, psychologically tap into that.”
“At some point when people look seriously at what his positions are, I mean getting rid of the Federal Reserve,” Gore jeered. “Look, the wars are enormously unpopular, but bringing all the American troops home from no matter what the dangerous situations are? It’s so silly.”
Gore additionally claimed that Paul wasn’t being pummeled sufficiently for so-called “racist” passages in newsletters from the 1980s, which Paul claims he did not write. (Read more & see video)
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Marginalizing Ron Paul
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.”
. . . .
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. (Read more)
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MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Calls Ron Paul A Fraud!
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Ron Paul Booed by Insane Debate Audience for Endorsing the Golden Rule
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CNN’s Dana Bash is Worried About Ron Paul
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Jon Stewart Exposes Ron Paul Media Bias After New Hampshire Primary
GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country’s “slip into tyranny” and virtually assures “our descent into totalitarianism.”
“The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty,” Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporters. “To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly.”
The NDAA is the nearly $670 billion defense spending bill that covers the military budget and funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Read more)
1) Starting tonight, Ron Paul will begin winning caucuses. This will be followed by either an assassination, or, in the long term, prosperity. Remember, they killed Bobby Kennedy after he began winning primaries. The chances of this are probably small. I do think there are powerful people and institution who would consider it.
If Ron Paul is assassinated, it’ll be followed by isolated instances of violence against federal institutions. These will be used to discredit anything libertarian. Government will declare new powers for itself, and the gigantic anti-terrorism apparatus will turn its full attention to Americans. An assassination would also be followed by large scale tax protests which would cripple the state. They will resort to printing money and slander tax protesters as domestic terrorists.
If, on the other hand, Ron Paul wins the primary, he will defeat Obama. Democrats will defect en masse to support him. The media mud slingers will realize their impotence. The markets will celebrate, perhaps with the exception of large commercial banks. They will threaten to blow-up the economy as revenge upon a public that elected Ron Paul. We will call their bluff.
2) At least one country will leave the Euro Zone. The EU will remain intact, but calls to end it will grow louder and more insistent. The turmoil in Europe will continue to create the illusion of economic stability in the U.S. and capital will flow away from the headlines, but once things have stabilized there, expect the much bigger and much more destructive problems of the U.S. to resume their unfolding. The prices of precious metals will resume their climb. Let’s hope Ron Paul is in power so the crisis isn’t used to lead us further down the road to serfdom.
3) SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a thinly veiled attempt to censor the internet will fail. However, it’s proponents will very quickly put another piece of legislation on the table. They will not stop until it is passed.
4) A massive troop reduction will occur in Afghanistan. It will be done for political reasons. The media will spend weeks praising Obama.
5) A galvanizing incident will be provoked or staged in Iran. There will be an outbreak of hostility, but the United States, despite the propaganda from neo-con politicians and the media will not fully commit to a war.
Notice anyone missing? This is an unconfirmed picture that a Ron Paul supporter took of his television showing Fox News election coverage in New Hampshire.
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FANTASTIC COMPARISON of media comments about Iowa Caucus in 2008 vs 2012
CNBC coverage:
- They name the candidates at the start of the coverage, ignoring Ron Paul.
- “The guy to stop is Mitt Romney.”
- When the show the polls with Paul leading: “The leader is now Ron Paul, now he’s not much of a threat to Mitt Romney because he doesn’t have a chance to win the nomination.”
- Long discussion of Romney vs. Gingrich and Perry.
- “If Ron Paul wins, who stands, I mean, who loses, who does he take votes away from the most do you think?”
- Long explanation of why Romney is most likely to win in Iowa.
- “If Ron Paul wins Iowa, what does it mean for New Hampshire and South Carolina down the line?” “I think it all depends on who’s second and third.” Discussion of Gingrich vs. Romney. “Ron Paul is no threat to win the nomination. . . . He’s not going to break out of the libertarian box.”
- “Romney or Gingrich, who has the better chance beyond Iowa?”
- “Is he [Ron Paul] going to be Ross Perot of this race? Is he going to be the spoiler for the Republican Party?”
- “Ron Paul is going to be a long term irritant. He’s not going to be a significant threat.”
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Fox News:
- “Ron Paul is an unthinkable Republican nominee. He’s the ideal Democratic version of the nominee.”
- If Ron Paul goes through the election winning 15-20% of the vote, “he would stand at the end of it the leader of a sizable faction of the Republican party that supports views that are antithetical the views of the mainstream of the Republican party.”
- Discusses 20 year old newsletters.
- “He’s not only unacceptable in the Republican party . . . He’s unacceptable in America because of what he’s written.”
- Discussion of how Iowa’s importance will suffer if Ron Paul wins.
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Gingrich: I wouldn’t vote for Ron Paul
He called the candidate’s views “totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American” and that the congressman couldn’t win because “people won’t take him as a serious person.” He added that he personally wouldn’t vote for Paul, saying, “I think the choice of Ron Paul or Barack Obama would be a very bad choice for America.
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Headline: ‘Ron Paul wishes Israel didn’t exist’ Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul negates Israel’s right to exist, Eric Dondero, who served as a senior aide to the 76-year-old Texas congressman for over 12 years, said on Monday.
“So I come back from my weekend and I see this thread and I’m just plain disgusted by all of this circlejerk, fanatical, conspiratard, inter-party warfare bullshit.
You guys have zero respect for the rest of your “people.” This whole ‘if you aren’t voting RP, you’re a neo-con’ talking point is pitifully weak and over used. It wouldn’t be problem if it were here and there, but it’s damn near every thread that has some Paul cocksuckery going on. Anyone how objects gets slammed with little to no room for discussion.
So for at least until I’m bored with it, I’m going to be removing any new Paul-specific threads. You don’t like it, go to one of the many sub-reddits that are dedicated to his worship. Conservatism doesn’t revolve around Paul’s ideology, and for the people who thinks it does, I truly pity you. You should know, it’s a lot broader than that excessively narrow and hostile perspective.
Feel free to make up whatever conspiracy theories about me being paid for by the establishment, or call me a neo-con. It’s not going to hurt my feelings, nor is it going to change anything.”
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Daily News: Ron Paul in racist newsletter flap A blast from the past is blowing a big hole in Ron Paul’s campaign.
A recently surfaced video from 1995 shows the GOP presidential hopeful discussing controversial newsletters that he claimed this week he didn’t even read until about 2001.
The Texas congressman has come under fire in recent days for the newsletters, called Ron Paul’s Political Report, Ron Paul’s Freedom Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report, which went out under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s during his time in and out of office. (Read more)
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Mitt Romney surges in N.H., but No. 2 Ron Paul gets no media loveNew polling data shows Mitt Romney cruising in New Hampshire, with nearly quadruple the support of Jon Huntsman, the GOP candidate in third place. Wait, why’d you skip to the third place guy? Who’s in second? Texas Congressman Ron Paul, of course.
Even though Huntsman and Paul both gained the same amount (six percentage points) since the last Suffolk University poll in June, and Paul has 14 percent support to Huntsman’s 10 percent, Decoder isn’t seeing any media love being thrown Paul’s way this morning.
This, despite the fact that the canned, ready-to-be-quoted bit from the Suffolk press release gives equal billing to Paul’s improvement alongside Huntsman’s.
Huckabee knows well that Dr. Paul has never said that he thinks it is perfectly OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. As a matter of fact, being a true man of peace, he has many times stated that he does not want anyone to have nuclear weapons.
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Al Sharpton Goes After Ron Paul WERE TALKING ABOUT RACISM & SLAVERY!!
This MSNBC coverage also discusses his supposed walk off from a CNN interview, even though it had been found that the walk off never happened. It was made to appear that way by fraudulent editing by CNN.
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- “Iowa has voted for exotic candidates before.”
- “Huckabee, same thing.”
- “They’re [the media] watching a Mitt Romney New Gingerich runoff.”
- “If Ron Paul wins Iowa, we just take it out.”
- Donald Trump tweet: A vote for Ron Paul is a totally wasted vote. If he wins Iowa — bad for Iowa’s credibility.
- Huckabee refers to “fanatical believers.”
TPM’s Josh Marshall: On Ron Paul “He’s The Candidate Who Thinks Gays Should Be Executed”
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I just found a great website, RonPaulFlix.com paying special attention to bias Ron Paul coverage.
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Addition: Occasionally I tune into NPR to hear the latest propaganda. I just listen to NPR’s All Things Considered describe Mitt Romney as the front runner in the race. (4:30pm Dec 20, 2011.) Ron Paul is leading in the polls! They then cut to Perry talking about how Obama should have bombed Iran, and the rise of Santorum. No mention of Paul whatsoever.
The Wall Street Journal published a remarkable hit piece on Ron Paul two weeks ago entitled “Why Ron Paul Matters.” It is remarkable because while purporting to be a defense of Ron Paul’s ideas, it subtly portrays Ron Paul the real candidate as unelectable while distorting or dismissing outright some of his most important positions.
(Read more)
