This open letter by a former Paul Staffer is a must read. I can’t tell if he is trying to help or hurt Paul, and maybe some of you know what his deal is, but the results of this letter are going to be devastating to the Paul campaign:
Is Ron Paul a “racist.” In short, No. I worked for the man for 12 years, pretty consistently. I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth. Not once. And understand, I was his close personal assistant. It’s safe to say that I was with him on the campaign trail more than any other individual, whether it be traveling to Fairbanks, Alaska or Boston, Massachusetts in the presidential race, or across the congressional district to San Antonio or Corpus Christi, Texas.
He has frequently hired blacks for his office staff, starting as early as 1988 for the Libertarian campaign. He has also hired many Hispanics, including his current District staffer Dianna Gilbert-Kile.
One caveat: He is what I would describe as “out of touch,” with both Hispanic and Black culture. Ron is far from being the hippest guy around. He is completely clueless when it comes to Hispanic and Black culture, particularly Mexican-American culture. And he is most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence, (as are a number of Americans, nothing out of the ordinary here.)
Is Ron Paul an Anti-Semite? Absolutely No. As a Jew, (half on my mother’s side), I can categorically say that I never heard anything out of his mouth, in hundreds of speeches I listened too over the years, or in my personal presence that could be called, “Anti-Semite.” No slurs. No derogatory remarks.
He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
Again, American Jews, Ron Paul has no problem with. In fact, there were a few Jews in our congressional district, and Ron befriended them with the specific intent of winning their support for our campaign. (One synagogue in Victoria, and tiny one in Wharton headed by a well-known Jewish lawyer).
***Is Ron Paul a homo-phobe? Well, yes and no. He is not all bigoted towards homosexuals. He supports their rights to do whatever they please in their private lives. He is however, personally uncomfortable around homosexuals, no different from a lot of older folks of his era.
There were two incidents that I will cite, for the record. One that involved me directly, and another that involved another congressional staffer or two.
(I am revealing this for the very first time, and I’m sure Jim Peron will be quite surprised to learn this.)
In 1988, Ron had a hardcore Libertarian supporter, Jim Peron, Owner of Laissez Faire Books in San Francisco. Jim set up a magnificent 3-day campaign swing for us in the SF Bay Area. Jim was what you would call very openly Gay. But Ron thought the world of him. For 3 days we had a great time trouncing from one campaign event to another with Jim’s Gay lover. The atmosphere was simply jovial between the four of us. (As an aside we also met former Cong. Pete McCloskey during this campaign trip.) We used Jim’s home/office as a “base.” Ron pulled me aside the first time we went there, and specifically instructed me to find an excuse to excuse him to a local fast food restaurant so that he could use the bathroom. He told me very clearly, that although he liked Jim, he did not wish to use his bathroom facilities. I chided him a bit, but he sternly reacted, as he often did to me, Eric, just do what I say. Perhaps “sternly” is an understatement. Ron looked at me directly, and with a very angry look in his eye, and shouted under his breath: “Just do what I say NOW.”
***Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
He’s not a bigot cuz he’s hired some “blacks,” he just doesn’t like to be around them or their culture.
He’s not a homophobe, he just doesn’t want to be around them or see any of their gayness.
This should be the end of the Paul campaign. If nothing else, it should be fun watching young Conor contort this to fit his worldview.
Amanda in the South Bay
Sure, if your idea of fun is reading an uninformed, privileged 20 something white guy who knows jack shit about the world outside of his privileged cocoon, then more power to ya.
cathyx
What do gay men have in their bathroom that straight men don’t like?
John Cole
@cathyx: Gay men.
cathyx
I agree, there is so much fodder in this that we could talk about it for weeks.
Citizen_X
I read the whole thing, and I seriously think the guy was defending Paul, “except for his foreign policy.” I mean the guy worked for Paul through years of this shit, with only rare complaints.
Hell, I hope Paul wins Iowa at this point, just to put another torpedo into the S.S. GOP.
cathyx
@John Cole: While the straight man is in it? Like an attendant? Here, let me help you with your zipper, sir.
Villago Delenda Est
This, right here, is an automatic disqualifier for anyone who aspires to be President of the United States, as it indicates a total absence of any strategic thought.
WWII was the last true hot existential conflict. Destroying the Nazi regime was a matter of survival. This much is inescapable. Hitler was a real life Bond villain, out to conquer the world. “Saving the Jews” was totally secondary to saving our own asses in it.
Ron Paul is unqualified, on the basis of this position, to be President of the United States. Too stupid to see a true existential threat right in front of him.
Rommie
Wow, now this is a clean knife in the back. A rare example of “professionalism” from the GOP circus. It almost makes me wonder if somebody outside the clown car did this.
Crusty Dem
FWIW, the gay/black/Hispanic issues will cause him no problems at all, while being “anti-Israel” (and even worse, “pro-Palestinian”) is the end of his political life.
Sick, sad, America.
PeakVT
For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII.
Germany declared war on the US first. What a moron.
or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
It was blowback for French foreign policy errors. What a moron.
cathyx
It would have been a win/win if the Allied Forces had left Hitler alone. No Jews, no Israel.
Jon O
“Hearing about Paul’s discomfort with gays and objections to WWII were shocking to me – much as many must have felt when they first heard about Barack Obama’s associations with known terrorist Bill Ayers.”
c u n d gulag
If you were working for “The Onion” and submitted something like this, you would be told it was too over-the-top to be believable.
But reality intervenes.
Republicans once again stick a fork into the art of fiction, reminding us all that it is, indeed, dead.
Or it’s dead at least as far as describing them is concerned.
Crusty Dem
Cathyx:
Glory holes.
schrodinger's catt
A friend who listens to Limbaugh, assured me that Limbaugh was not racist because his producer is black. This friend has now become a Democrat and is an Obot but still makes excuses for Limbaugh. I don’t get it.
D. Mason
I do see a difference between ignorance and outright intolerance, which most of the other GOP candidates are guilty of. Just saying.
Cermet
Paul is an absolute nutcase – not fight WWII? Uh, Japan attacked us and Hitler would have destroyed us. So Paul does not want Israel to exist? Boy, will that go over well with our religious loons and many Jews … this guy is far, far crazier than I ever imagined.
amk
@Crusty Dem: Bingo. The fucker will be screwed for all the wrong reasons.
seabe
Pretty much confirms my suspicions on his “isolationism.” Yes, he is an isolationist. He’s also an extreme nationalist. Libertarians should not be nationalist. He’s a Paleoconservative/Constitutionalist, a la Pat Buchanan, not a libertarian.
I’ll still vote for him in the primary, though, even though my favored candidate was Gary Johnson. If it was between Paul and Obama, I’d obviously vote Obama.
Amanda in the South Bay
Wanting to have stayed out of WW2 is standard paleocon dumbfuckery 101.
Linda Featheringill
@cathyx:
I really think that if Mr. Paul were securely located in the heterosexual end of the continuum, he wouldn’t be nervous in the presence of gay men.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: There are many reasons why Ron Paul is fundamentally unqualified to be President. You’ve just pointed out one of them.
Another, in case anyone needs one, is the whole newsletter thing. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that Paul is telling the truth when he said that some shadowy Other Guy wrote the stuff that went out under Paul’s name. He, by his own admission, is blisteringly incompetent at choosing subordinates and keeping track of what they are doing. Since that’s arguably one of the more important skills for a President to have…
Lee
What I find odd is that he is out of touch with Mexican-American culture, yet he is from Texas.
I grew up here. Mexican-American culture is part of all of Texas’ history and culture.
Admittedly I have no idea about Black culture.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Crusty Dem:
Have a care, there. Glory holes are not exclusively a gay phenomenon.
Villago Delenda Est
@PeakVT:
Germany did, in fact, declare war on the US, and the US declared war in response.
Which was one of Hitler’s greatest errors. He gave FDR political cover for the war FDR really wanted, one with Germany. FDR knew that Germany was the real threat, and the US immediately adopted a “Germany first” policy, with Japan as slightly more than a sideshow for the first few years of the war.
WWII was blowback for British and French foreign policy errors. If they had embraced Wilson’s ideals, and given them full support (and if the isolationists had not sabotaged Wilson’s efforts at home) Germany’s situation would have been improved. As it was, the German right wing had ready fodder for grievances and seeking to undo the “Diktat” of Versailles.
Lee
@Cermet:
Actually it was not fight the Germans. Fighting Japan was okey-dokey.
I’ve known many of these types. There is no real rational reason for their distinction.
Comrade Scrutinizer
This open letter sounds like classic Nixon-era ratfucking to me. I’d sure like to see the BTS extras on this.
Kola Noscopy
Um…it’s rarely that simple, John; bigotry and prejudice almost never are. Paul clearly DOES NOT mind being around us or seeing our gayness, as made clear by the days-long time he spent in close company with the supporter/organizer and his lover in this story. It is specifically the scary bathroom issue that throws him off track. Irrational thinking like that is most likely a generational quirk.
And who knows? Maybe he has a good reason to fear all the sloppy gallons of Santorum we gay guys leave oozing across the floor when we do our business. :D
4tehlulz
He’s not antisemitic; the author of his newsletter is!
I can’t wait to hear from one of Paul’s black friends.
SiubhanDuinne
@cathyx:
Oh, I’m sure we will.
Hill Dweller
Considering Rand Paul uses civil liberty to rationalize oppression and segregation, I suspect his father drilled it into his head. Privately, I bet the whole damn clan is racist.
That said, Ron Paul has always been crazy. Anyone pretending this disqualifies Paul as a serious candidate, is/was ignorant, willful or otherwise.
Satanicpanic
Well, we can now consider these questions thoroughly debunked.
Bill E Pilgrim
Memo to Republicans:
What makes you think this isn’t the other place?
There is no “A team”. There is only the B Ark, and you’re all Bozos on this ship of fools.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oops wrong thread.
Wiesman
This letter isn’t going to make much of an impact on Paul’s supporters. If you look at the fifth comment at the link, it says this:
A Google search on Eric Rittberg returned hits for Eric Dondero. He’s just a disgruntled ex-staffer. Possibly with a “book to sell” someday!
I hate being the guy who points all this out because I certainly don’t want anyone to accuse me of defending Ron Fucking Paul…
Donut
Nothing out of the ordinary, eh? That this intolerance is discussed and dismissed so flippantly tells you everything you need to know about why 2012 will be one of the last and most freakish primal screams we will hear out of the Republican Party. Some white people are losing their shit completely already; just gonna get worse when they realize the brown-skinned guy is going to win the presidency again.
Professor
@schrodinger’s catt: Limbaugh, Beck the Fox people etc, sell ABSURDITY! It’s the money Lebowski.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lee:
Japanese = Yellow Peril
Germans = Honorary Anglo-Saxons
MattF
I’d wonder about the provenance of this ‘open letter’. Just the idea that Paul would hire the author of this letter as his personal assistant is a big WTF.
In any case, the basic problem is that Paul is a crackpot. And that’s a problem–you can’t just put that aside because he’s a forthright and sincere crackpot.
PeakVT
@Villago Delenda Est: Exactamundo.
There are a lot of things in history that can be debated, but Germany declaring war on the US first is an incontrovertible fact.
Zandar
The larger issue is not that Ron Paul is doing this, it’s that to a certain extent, all the Republicans running for the Oval Office are doing this. They believe this strategy of leveraging this behavior into political success.
Today, we know that “Get the White vote at all costs populism” approach as the Tea Party. It controls the entire GOP.
Ron Paul is just bad at covering his tracks. Whatever nominee makes it for the Republicans will be pushing this same strategy in 2012.
Time to call it what it is.
Jeff K
@Wiesman Yeah, Dondero’s been a reason.com troll for some time.
Mouse Tolliver
@cathyx:
AIDS. He was afraid of catching the AIDS from the gay toilet.
jon
NOT Homophobic just don’t want cooties from gay bathroom
LOL
Anya
Is it the official stand of this blog to continuously mock Conor Friedersdorf for his inexcusable defense of Paul’s homophopia and racism, while ignoring Glen “Obama has baggage too” Greenwald? Why the double standard?
mikejake
Paul reminds me of the country bumpkin lawyer on futurama who defended zoidberg’s free speech. A champion of freedom, but freedom often exercised in support of noxious ideas. (“I request a satanic funeral”)
Kola Noscopy
@Anya:
Oh. I had forgotten what a tool you are.
Is it your position that Obama has no baggage?
Do you have any baggage? If not, then you and BO are the only two on earth so situated. Congratulations!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Lee:
The reasoning went like this:
Fighting Japan was okay because we were attacked by Japan.
Fighting Germany was wrong because we were getting involved in what was essentially a European matter, and isolationists didn’t believe we needed to re-fight “Wilson’s War”. They also believed that the US had common interests with the Germans, particularly in it’s opposition to the USSR that outweighed what was known about the Reich’s objectives at the time. Whether you agree with this reasoning or not (I don’t), it’s a rational argument.
Hungry Joe
All these guys hit a point where they say, indirectly but sometimes right out front, that Jews are to blame for … everything. American involvement in WWII? Check. The decades-long Middle East crisis? Check. The financial meltdown? Check. Adam Sandler? … Okay, you gotta give them that one.
Donut
Adding, obviously the other types of bigotry are just as bad.
The point being, though, that given that Latinos will soon outnumber whites, the GOP can no longer afford to display its ethnic chauvinism. Regrettably, they can still get away with homophobia and vagina-phobia, but the race/ethnicity stuff is a real killer.
Digging their own graves, thankfully.
Cat Lady
This is going to be just like Cain’s accusers – where there’s one there’s a bunch since Paul has held these views for decades, so if you’re into ratfucking conspiracy theories, there’s going to be another bunch of dots to connect. Too bad for them the GOP establishment power brokers laid the tracks the crazy train is running away on. And by bad, I mean good.
Schlemizel
George Wallace was a liberal judge in Alabama & known for his willingness to work with black Alabamans and treat them as equals. The first time he ran for Gov he lost to a Dixiecrat who played on Wallace’s reputation. While George carried the black vote he lost big with white voters.
George said “I will never get out niggered again” and he held true to that promise the rest of his political career. Was George a racist? No, he really wasn’t – he was worse than that. He was someone willing to stoke race hatred and further the cause of racism despite knowing better.
Is Ron Paul a racist? Who cares? He does the work for racists and furthers their cause.
PeakVT
@Anya: You’re a tad confused if you think this blog has an official stand on anything beyond ‘Lily is the best dog ever’.
Satanicpanic
The right has spent years trying to make it seem like racism is a thing of the past, to the extent that racist people are considered rare by the media. The rest of us know the truth. Ron Paul is a white, conservative, elderly male from rural Texas who put out a racist newsletter- the definition of an open and shut case. Ron Paul would be a very rare individual if he weren’t racist. Knowing how prevalent these people are, I’m not even going to write someone off completely just for that, but let’s not pretend there’s a debate to be had about what’s in his heart.
Marc
@MattF:
I think you just answered your own question there.
Anya
@Zandar:
Unfortunately HRC’s campaign legitimized this approach with her appeal to the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” and the media is constantly talking about how President Obama does not have the support of “real Americans.” Sadly, this is a conventional wisdom among the important opinion makers. Yes, it will hurt the GOP in the long run, but as a short-term strategy, I am not sure it’s that harmful, specially when you factor the low voter turn out among non whites, and the rampant voter suppression tactics employed by the Confederate Party.
AlladinsLamp
@Mouse Tolliver:
He learned this from Bill Frist.
Anya
@PeakVT: I know the front pagers are afraid of GG, except ABL.
4tehlulz
I think we need to be mindful that this may be the work of Mossad.
amk
@Kola Noscopy: hey troll, don’t you have something else scheduled today ? Like GFY ?
Jus’ sayin’.
Professor
@Wiesman: It’s the Republican establishment quaking in their boots with fear so they are sending in the clowns to do in Ron Paul!
Brachiator
It is the holiday weekend, so I am not sure how much traction this stuff will get.
His position on WW II and Israel will cause him more problems than his views on gheys, blacks or Latinos.
Are there any more GOP debates coming up? This would be a venue where these issues might be addressed, otherwise Paul can dodge questions in interviews.
gnomedad
“All-Gay Riverboat Cruise” ad at the bottom of the page. I wonder if rants on winger sites cause these kind of ads to pop up, reinforcing the perception that Teh Gay is closing in on them.
Mark S.
Jesus, if Paul really believes that’s why we went to war with Germany, just, wow. That is some fucking demented shit. I’d be interested in seeing Paul’s bookshelves: they probably contain a treasure trove of anti-Semetic, Holocaust-denying horseshit.
That oughta bury him.
jayboat
Damn… the weirdness is strong here, Luke.
I look at this group of bozos in the clown car and wonder how this shit has gotten so far away from what many (most?) people would call ‘normal’. Or even close to normal.
Here’s an idea. Imagine you could take the most rational political positions and personality traits of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE FOOLS and morph them into a single being (stay with me here). The resulting frankengoober would still be off the mainstream tracks.
Somewhere off to the right… over there in the weeds, I suppose. Taking back their country, looking for the real killers and punching hippies.
Southern Beale
And don’t forget, he doesn’t hate Hispanics, he just hates hearing their language around him all the time.
But hey … lots of people in America are like that! No biggie! What’s the problem???
Cermet
@Lee: Maybe because they so identify with Nazi’s but automatically hate ‘the other’ – ie yellow race … . Sick bastard, one and all.
Cat Lady
@Mark S.:
There goes New York and Florida.
johnsmith1882
@Anya: because young connor will, much too often, use the ‘well, it happened before 2005 and my intellectual ken only extends back five years, so it therefore does not count’ gambit, which disqualifies him as a know-nothing tool. how is that comparable to greenwald pointing out that obama has baggage, when obama does indeed have baggage?
Frankensteinbeck
@Cermet:
Man, you ain’t seen nothin’. Ron Paul is non-stop wall-to-wall crazy. He is so completely paranoid-delusion crazy that people seem to have trouble grasping it, so they grab one or two of his positions to try to make him make sense or fit into any traditional political scheme.
@PeakVT:
You nailed it.
Julia Grey
@cathyx:
COOOTIES!
Hal
Was “saving the Jews” the reason why we entered WWII? I thought it was strictly Pearl Harbor, and the knowledge of the holocaust came later?
Lojasmo
@Kola Noscopy:
LOL. Which “Baggage” does Obama carry, troll?
wilfred
So if the first half of this guy’s comments are correct then Paul is neither a racist nor an anti-semite, both of which he has been accused of repeatedly.
But then he’s a homophobe.
wrb
@cathyx:
Santorum
Amir Khalid
This thing smells like a hatchet job to me — not subtle, but it might work well enough if it catches fire. In particular, it’s a charge of hypocrisy with specifics: Ron Paul says he’s not racist; but he’s clueless about minority cultures and can’t stand to hear Spanish spoken in his presence. He says he’s no anti-Semite; but he says he’s wants Israel abolished and the land returned to the Arabs. (I too think the formation of the modern Israel was a mistake; but as a policy goal, wiping it off the map now seems to me neither realistic nor humane.) He says he’s no isolationist; but he believes America should have stayed the hell out of World War II.
I’m just doubtful that Paul’s hypocrisy, as reprehensible as it is, is such a big deal. In this field of Republican presidential candidates, it hardly disqualifies him.
MattMinus
@Wiesman:
This.
Am I to believe that, right as Paul starts to gain some traction, a former staffer just happens to mount a “defense” of Paul that will make him unpalatable to EVERY constituency?
This is some grade A rat fucking.
IM
@Hal:
Easy: Germany declared the war. In the official propaganda. persecution of Jews was downplayed. The official line was something like Germany and Japan are dictatorships (Italy was treated as a joke) who are bent on conquering the world. Look at all the countries they occupied!
The fact that the allies looked on or helped on much of this conquest was of course not mentioned.
I wouldn’t be surprised that even the Jewish organisations put out declarations like : “that is not a Jewish thing, we are fighting as good americans for the freedom of all nations.
MattF
@Hal: In fact, there’s considerable evidence that the Allies were not particularly interested in ‘saving the Jews’, despite what Paul may believe.
But it is fair to wonder if Paul’s opinion on the question, independent of the facts, betrays his broader views.
Linda Featheringill
Stolen from TPM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW755u5460A&feature=player_embedded#!
Ron Paul on tape, promoting his newsletter. He is taking all the credit for it. Newsletter bit starts at about 1:40 or a little after that.
ETA: 1995.
cmorenc
@schrodinger’s catt:
Probably because though your friend has thankfully come around to recognizing how wrong Limbaugh’s politics are, he is nonetheless unable to yet bring himself to recognize and admit just what a monstrously sick, malevolent person Limbaugh is personally without simultaneously seeing an unbearably dark side to his own personal self if he does so. Your friend needs some more time to psychologically distance himself from Limbaugh before he can complete the healing and recovery process.
alogicafallacy
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Hey, hey, Conor’s 30+. I know this because we went to college together.
He’s still privileged and not terribly well informed, but some things never change. Age, however, does.
Southern Beale
Also, let’s see Andrew Sullivan try to gloss this stuff over, especially the anti-gay thing.
xian
@Mouse Tolliver: Bingo
MattMinus
@gnomedad:
It’s probably got more to do with the concentration of closet cases on that side of the aisle.
rikyrah
they’ll find an excuse for him…they always do
maya
@Cat Lady: North and South Aipac as well.
Brachiator
@Schlemizel:
This is an odd bit of nonsense that keeps popping up here in Balloon Juice and elsewhere. For some reason, some people want to reduce racism to personal hatred of a group, bigotry as just being a bad person.
Wallace was a moderate as a judge. Big deal. The judicial system was still stacked against black people in Alabama. And throughout his active political career, Wallace helped to maintain and extend the wretched American apartheid that oppressed blacks.
wrb
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
The argument can be extended: entering into European affairs led to the National security state, the military industrial complex, and the belief that the world needed up to run it, and thus Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq etc. I think there is at least some legitimate appeal to our 19th century prosperous isolation.
The Ancient Randonneur
By the end of January they’ll find Ron Paul wandering around a race track with a note pinned to sweater that reads: ” My name is Ron and my family couldn’t handle all the crazy any more. Please put me in a home … signed .. a grateful GOP.”
dmsilev
@Southern Beale: Sullivan will probably just ignore it, at least for a while. Once he’s fixated on something or someone, it takes a lot of beating with the good old Clue Stick to get him to even temporarily change course.
suzanne
I suppose he’d allow his neighbor’s house to burn down, too, even if his garden hose was sitting right there.
I hate this argument.
Protecting the human rights of other people is a valid use of military power, even in the absence of immediate strategic gain.
I cannot take seriously anyone ho argues in earnest that we shoulda just let Hitler do his thing. The most gracious thing I can say is that this is morally bankrupt.
Southern Beale
@Linda Featheringill:
Of course he’s taking all of the credit for it. Last week I linked to the Houston Chronicle’s original reporting on these newsletters. Back in 1996, Paul’s defense was:
Not, “I didn’t write them, I should have been more actively involved in the content of my newsletters, these ghost writers were hired by staffers, I didn’t know … blah blah blah …” No, back when these racist newsletters first surfaced, in the course of a hotly-contested Congressional campaign, the excuse was, “they were written in the context of “the current events and statistical reports of the time.”
Which is pretty fucking awful. But clearly in Texas no one gave a shit. Now that it’s national and 15 years later, it’s even worse. And the excuse changes.
Wiesman
Yeah, this letter will just reinforce what everyone has already chosen to believe. Dondero/Rettiger/whoever will be dismissed as a disgruntled ex-staffer with a book to sell by Paultards, liberals will laugh and point at the stories of Paul being afraid to use a bathroom, and “undecideds” will go back to eating paste because it’s not October 27th yet and they aren’t paying attention to LOLpoliticsSOboring.
Weird post by Cole, imo. He’s usually about the last person whose posts could be described as “breathless” but this was a doozy. He describes the letter as a “must read”, “devastating”, and that it “should be the end of the Paul campaign.” WTF? Maybe having only animals for companions at the holidays is a bad idea, Cole.
Crusty Dem
@Southern Beale:
Sully’s been finding common cause with people who’d rather see him die for 30 years, I can’t imagine him having any concern that Paul is scared of getting teh gay on him..
Mark S.
Also, too, the idea that it wasn’t in America’s interest to defeat the Nazis is pure lunacy. Having Hitler in control of all of Europe, the Middle East, and the western half of Asia (with Japan in control of the eastern half) would not have been super awesome for the United States. We would have been fucked.
Anya
@johnsmith1882: Calling racism a “baggage” is mock worthy, if not shunning.
Cermet
@wilfred: Far, far worst he is a total loon – please, what is worse than that? The man is bat shit crazy and you care about what? Come on, you are missing the entire forest,trees, weeds, dirt, sky, Earth, this planet, solar system, local star system but you did notice the galactic arm relative to Ron’s views… that at least is a start.
eemom
@johnsmith1882:
is this snark or are you, in fact, hilariously ignorant of the fact that Greenwald was likewise oblivious to what went on in the world until approximately that same time?
Southern Beale
Slay a dragon for Ron Paul!
The poor dears.
Alison
Whether this is ratfucking or not, IMO when Person A insists that Person B totally isn’t racist/sexist/anti-Semitic/whatever, to me the important thing is: what are Person A’s own views? Because if Person A is a drooling racist fuckwad, then them telling me Person B is totally cool with the “blacks” doesn’t mean fuck all. I have heard and read plenty of people insist that something or someone which was clearly bigoted in some way totally wasn’t bigoted, and it’s basically always because those doing the excusing think exactly the same way, and they’ll be damned if you label them as a bigot just because they happen to know for a total fact that the black woman next door is a welfare cheat and they’re really sick of hearing people speaking so much Mexican in line at the grocery store.
Remember, there were people who insisted that Perry’s hunting camp name totally wasn’t racist at all and didn’t mean anything at all about Perry’s character or whatever. You know who can say that shit with a straight face? A fucking racist.
So some random asshole swearing up and down that another asshole has no problematic views only carries the slightest bit of weight if they actually know what the fuck is problematic.
Linda Featheringill
@cmorenc: #81
Very perceptive analysis.
trollhattan
Admittedly, the Nazis would have kept John Galt’s trains running on time, so there’s some attraction there.
NYT finally addresses the Paul newsletter thing today, so I’m thinking his baggage car is officially overloaded. Time for the reBachmanning? Draft Sarah(tm)?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/politics/ron-paul-disowns-extremists-views-but-doesnt-disavow-the-support.html?_r=1&hp
burnspbesq
@johnsmith1882:
“how is that comparable to greenwald pointing out that obama has baggage, when obama does indeed have baggage?”
Greenwald’s problem is two-fold: (1) he can’t see anything other than the baggage; (2) he refuses to acknowledge that we have a government comprised of three co-equal branches, and erroneously ascribes to Obama baggage that really belongs to Congress and the judiciary.
Mark S.
@trollhattan:
I’ve been seeing more and more Village Idiots jumping on the Mike Bloomberg/America Selects (or whatever it’s called) train.
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid: #76
Hatchet job:
I had to think about your comment for a bit before deciding that you could be correct. I’ve seen signs of people on the Right going after Paul. Rather viciously, actually.
Maude
@PeakVT:
53 No, no. Tunch Rules, is first.
GregB
With the Paul-Galt crazy train going off of the rails, it is time for some frothy Santorumentum.
It must be the case because CNN was running a scroll indicating that Santorum was about to reveal a “major endorsement”.
I think the major endorsement is major league asshole Steve King.
Someone please tell CNN to stop running GOP press releases on their bottom screen scrolls.
BO_Bill
I work with a big black guy. A football player. And he calls me ‘brother’ in public. Having a big black man outwardly express kinship with you, as a white man, represents more Progressive street-cred than being a white man claiming to have a black friend.
So there.
The women at McDonald’s this morning as especially attractive. Something must be wrong.
Anya
@Amir Khalid: Hatchet job? Why are they afraid of Ron Paul all of a sudden? He ran before, so why this time? Is it because their eventual nominee is an android that no one likes, except maybe, his wife and children. Are they afraid Paul’s devoted followers will disrupt the convention if they don’t kill him politically now?
chopper
@4tehlulz:
it wasn’t me, it was my ghostwriter. honest!
wrb
Perhaps because he can’t win but can hand the nomination to Romney by splitting the notmit vote, and unless he tanks, it is looking like he will.
So if you are a rational notmit/teabagger you want Paul dead and stomped into the mud, and now.
Ella in New Mexico
@cathyx:
This was in 1988, don’t forget. In spite of the best efforts of Magic Johnson and Ryan White and the frigging CDC, the conspiracy-prone and misinformed among us were still stubbornly holding on to the belief that HIV-AIDS was a “Gay disease” that you could catch off a toilet seat.
And Ron REALLY had to poop that day, so actually, it all makes sense if you just put things into their proper historical prospective.
johnsmith1882
@eemom: um, hasn’t greenwald been blogging/writing since w bush’s first term? i’m no expert on greenwald, as you apparently are, but he came to my attention during the valerie plame/scooter libby business. i’ve never seen greenwald make the ‘it happened before i payed attention to anything, it doesn’t count’ argument. i’ve seen him make the ‘i didn’t have an opinion one way or the other before, because i wasn’t paying any attention, but then this happened, and i now do have an opinion’ argument. which is similar, but in my hilariously ignorant view, is intellectually honest, unlike young conor’s dismissal of ‘facts’ of which he knows ‘nothing about’ so ‘don’t count’.
Brachiator
@wrb:
You are leaving out the 19th century with Britain, attempts to invade Canada, war with Mexico and Spain, the Indian Wars and other adventures, including the passive aggressive non recognition of Haiti.
There is more prosperous hypocrisy than it is prosperous isolation.
Linda Featheringill
@Anya:
Some on the Right are acting like they are afraid of Paul. I don’t know why.
ChrisNYC
This is the greatest thing ever, this letter. The weird caps and scare quotes make it that much better.
Linda Featheringill
@Ella in New Mexico:
Ron Paul has been medically trained. Ignorance of how AIDS is transmitted is no excuse for him.
Donut
@Schlemizel:
—
I don’t mean to be a dick, so don’t take it that way, but I kinda think you have it backwards. George Wallace, Ron Paul, and a goodly chunk of white Republicans (not to mention white Democrats) are not necessarily bigots in their day-to-day, one-to-one situations where they have to interact with a known gay person, a Latino, an African American, or whatever.
But they are Racists with a capitol “R” in that they believe there is no problem with institutionalizing bigoted beliefs and seeing that codification of bigotry used to further the interests and well-being of one ethnic/racial/religious group(s) over others.
We too easily confuse racism, which is institutional, societal and macro, with bigotry, IMO.
One can be a bigot, without believing in institutionalized racism that says one group is superior to others due to innate genetically inherited traits.
One can also be both a bigot and a racist, of course, which I believe Paul actually is, as are a significant number of white people, regardless of geography.
Just a pet peeve. Carry on.
johnsmith1882
@burnspbesq: still, how is that comparable? young conor completely dismisses facts because they happened ‘before his time’. greenwald gets stuff wrong, sure, but isn’t utilizing doublethink. they are not wrong, or however you want to put that, in the same way.
Zagloba
The Catholic church does charity work, which balances out their altarboyfucking? Greenwald’s beat is civil liberties, and the federal government at all levels has been truly shitty on civil liberties, under both the faux Texan and the Hawaiian.
Now you’re just making shit up. Or do you just not care about all the things the executive branch does without “needing” or wanting legislative authorization?
wrb
@Linda Featheringill:
It wasn’t just the misinformed for a while there. A few years earlier (82 I think)
my father came back from lunch with a medical school classmate who had become chief of infectious diseases at Stanford. He claimed his lunch had been spoiled because his friend had spent the entire lunch describing in graphic detail the most exotic sexual practices of the San Francisco gay community. They were being swept by a baffling plague and the doctors had no idea what was causing it. They suspected it might be due to some internal injury or other effect of a particular practice so they were researching everything gay men did, in search of the key.
ChrisNYC
I may have left this comment before and if so, apologies.
Anyway, I watched an RP town hall and this letter jibes with what I saw there.
Somebody asked the NDAA, expressing concern about the detention provision. So, right up RP’s alley. Shared concerns. Perfect question. His answer basically was, “I’m glad one of you yahoos among the public actually cares about this because I’m the only one who REALLY knows what’s going on. The rest of you are sleeping and I’m impressed that someone at least can keep up with my amazing awareness of the threats to liberty.”
It made me think he’s particularly prone to conspiracy theories and “they’re not fooling me into thinking that toilet is safe” stuff. He seemed very wedded to the paranoic idea of “there are many plots afoot and I am the only one who knows the truth.”
techno
How this will hurt Ron Paul is beyond my comprehension. These are people who are used to finding their thoughts openly ridiculed in the Washington Post or NYT. Beating up this crowd with political correctness isn’t going to work.
Moreover, they have complex “crank” positions on things. While I don’t call Ron Paul supporters Paultards like some I know, I am not especially impressed by anyone who seriously thinks the world or any country in it could go back on the gold standard.
Furthermore, Paul’s views on foreign policy are widely shared in this country. For example, the support for Israel has just collapsed. I know no one personally who wants to send another dime to that failed experiment—and that includes some very liberal Methodists who are actively working on a boycott of Israel. I also know that every last one of them would say the “politically correct” thing to a pollster so this collapse in support is WAY under the radar.
If anything, this article will only increase the fervor of the Paulists. Go figure.
dance around in your bones
This whole letter would be freakin’ hysterical if it weren’t so tragic.
I mean, it’s a parody, right? RIGHT?!!
Ok, off to read the comments now.
catclub
@wrb: They also say that the Civil War was the first step in making the government an all powerful thing. But they never backtrack the next little bit and think that if the South had not started the war, all the development of the big government powers would not have happened ( or at least not as soon or as effectively).
Paul is very popular with racists and neo-nazi militias.
Probably the MOST popular House Representative with that crowd. (Anybody else even close? Maybe Paul Broun.)
Buy he personally is not racist or anti-semitic.
… yeah, right.
Southern Beale
One of the really strange things about this letter which struck me when I read it this morning off Teh Twittahz is that Ron Paul would not use a gay man’s bathroom but WOULD use a public restroom at a fast food restaurant in San Francisco … where in all probability a gay person at some point had also used the bathroom.
I mean, aside from the raging homophobia, it just makes no sense. He probably would have caught the gay cooties in the public restroom, too. So, you know, either travel with your own personal camp toilet or just don’t leave home.
In other words, Ron Paul is not just a bigot, but he’s batshit insane. I really question his decision making ability.
catclub
@techno: “For example, the support for Israel has just collapsed. I know no one personally who wants to send another dime to that failed experiment.”
Funny you should say that. Sounds like the people who knew no one personally who voted for Nixon.
chopper
@Linda Featheringill:
also, the assumption that a gay guy must have AIDS. really it’s all just a huge cup of stupid.
chopper
@techno:
not among goopers it aint.
PeakVT
@techno: It’s not the effect on the Paulbots that matters. What this letter and the other bits of incriminating backstory that are surfacing do is make it impossible for his support to expand beyond the crazies. That’s important.
Ella in New Mexico
@Linda Featheringill:
Exactly. Although, as a nurse I can vouch for the fact that there are quite a few doctors out there who hold completely unscientific beliefs and impose scary religious or political values on their patients…which takes us back to my reference to
A medical degree is no panacea for willful ignorance–pardon the pun. ;-)
catclub
@Ella in New Mexico: in 1988 Magic Johnson played in the NBA finals in June. I would guess it was almost two more years before he announced his HIV status. Wikipedia quote: “Johnson retired abruptly in 1991 after announcing that he had contracted HIV, but returned to play in the 1992 All-Star Game.”
Amir Khalid
Further to my comment #76:
I have no idea of the former Ron Paul staffer is wielding the hatchet on his own, or if he’s doing it on someone else’s behalf. But he’s clearly (to me) calling Paul a hypocrite on racism and anti-Semitism; the language ‘defending” Paul reads like snark to me.
Shalimar
At least we know one staffer who didn’t ghostwrite the newsletters. Or read them, for that matter.
Gustopher
The root of tolerance is tolerate, not like or approve of, merely tolerate. It sounds like Ron Paul is able to tolerate brown people who don’t ever speak spanish, and gays that don’t go to the bathroom.
So, ahead of the curve for his party.
Scott Supak
This will help Paul with a certain core Rethug constituency: those who think you can catch HIV from a toilet seat and those who don’t want to wait for the rapture to see Jews die in a lake of fire.
You couldn’t separate Paul’s followers from him with a nuclear powered dildo.
Trentrunner
Relevant quote, from RP_Newsletter twitterfeed (a direct quote from the Paul Newsletter). These are tips for caring for an AIDS patient, which Paul says are correct because he is a doctor:
Guess Sully will have to settle for a handshake at inauguration.
Yutsano
The Iowa caucuses are in eight days. I’m suddenly…giddy.
Drew
i’m a pretty big Ron Paul supporter. Still am, in fact. But this letter is friggin’ hilarious. “It’s not homophobia, he just dislikes gays personally. Like a lot of Americans, and it’s his right to be that way!” I’ll be laughing about it for weeks.
That said I have to shake my head at the people calling it “the end of the Ron Paul campaign” etc. If our political system is so fragile that a scree from one guy on the internet can keep someone with an impeccable record fighting big government from being the elect of the anti big government party at a time anti government rhetoric is at its zenith, I weep for our nation.
goddinpotty
Re Dondero, how many mustachioed, overweight, creepy-looking libertarian-who-is-really-a-militarist named Eric does the world really need?
It’s not clear that the contents of this screed are more damanging than the fact that Dondero worked for Paul all those years.
Doc Marten
This just goes to show just how unelectable Paul is. If he gets the GOP nomination, Obama will wipe the floor with him. I suspect this is just another flavor of the month with the anybody but Mitt crowd. Also, this just goes to show what a dumbshit Andrew Sullivan really is-there is no way in hell he should have endorsed this stupid old man.
The Sailor
Paul has dismissed him as a ‘disgruntled ex-employee who was fired.’
Paul offered nothing recently except the Sgt. Schultz defense about his newsletters. Which directly contravenes his earlier statements.
Ron Paul is a lying, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic, republican asshole who wants to make gov’t so small it can fit into a uterus.
Pandering to pot heads and anti-war noobs is his only appeal.
burnspbesq
@johnsmith1882:
Really? Blaming Obama for the continued use of Guantanamo as a detention facility, after veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress repeatedly denied him the resources necessary to close the place and transfer the detainees, is either double-think or evidence of a fundamental misunderstanding of how our Constitutional system works. YMMV, but I know which of those I think is the problem.
Conor’s not stupid, but he’s profoundly (and perhaps purposefully) ignorant in a number of areas. Greenwald can’t fall back on ignorance as an excuse.
Chrisd
@Ella in New Mexico:
Bingo. He was afraid he’d catch something off the toilet seat. If not HIV, something else. The fact that he is an M.D. makes me sad, but not surprised.
Drew
@SatanicPanic – LOL. “Ron Paul is an old white guy, so clearly a racist.” Aaand the “most oblivious poster of 2011” award goes to… judges, the envelope, please?
burnspbesq
@Zagloba:
Not even remotely relevant, except in truly twisted minds (for the record, I am Catholic, but you will search in vain for anything I have ever written here or anywhere else that can fairly be read as taking any position other than that priests or members of the hierarchy who have committed crimes should be brought to justice).
Am I? Which branch of government voted overwhelmingly to prohibit the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to pretty much anywhere?
Apparently Santa brought you eight pounds of stupid in a five-pound bag.
Ian
@Lee:
Japan-brown German-white. Clearer?
arguingwithsignposts
@burnspbesq: I’m with you except for the fact that conor is not stupid. this is a man who said he greatly admired the writing of Jonah Goldberg, fercrissake.
Ruckus
@Southern Beale:
I really question his decision making ability.
I don’t question it at all. I know he has none.
And it gets even easier.
Conservative politicians are batshit and have non working decision making abilities. Find me one that this does not apply to. Go on, give it a shot.
PeakVT
@Doc Marten: Paul won’t win the nomination. Even if he were to win enough delegates, the party would find a way to deny it to him.
moonbat
@The Sailor: The thread, sir, is yours.
Zagloba
@burnspbesq: You know what Glen keeps pointing out would be untouchable by the power of the purse? Putting everyone in Gitmo into the usual criminal justice system, trying them in open court, and putting every one we can’t convict of a crime on a boat back to their country of citizenship.
Never mind that Gitmo is a very small part of what GG writes about.
FlipYrWhig
I took Anya‘s point to be that Greenwald, like Friedersdorf, has praised/defended Ron and Rand Paul, but that Greenwald didn’t get zinged here.
FlipYrWhig
@Zagloba: Wait a minute, though… How do you “put” prisoners someplace without involving officials who need to be paid, thereby triggering a consideration of who pays? And wouldn’t that be an act justified by specifically the kinds of executive privilege trumping the legislative process that civil libertarians find anathema?
Kola Noscopy
@amk:
Ah, amk, always so eager to yell “troll.” Troll yourself with a rusty pie tin, dear. I’m sure it will fit.
Cole likes me here. That’s why he always un-bans me after ABL does her usual hatchet job. That must piss you off. I hope it does.
I hope your Christmas was bright. At least enough to temper the utter, soul crushing darkness of your demeanor for a moment or two.
gaz
@Kola Noscopy:
Considering you’ve admittedly been banned multiple times, you might want to reconsider your use of the word “like”. Clearly, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
*headdesk*
You are stupidity, unbound.
Zagloba
Paying the people who are involved is only subject to special Congressional approval if they’re on a specially carved-out line-item in the budget.
If you use the plain old FBI, US Marshals, and assistant federal Attorneys General, and use your usual, ample appropriation to do so, Congress can’t defund that action without defunding the whole FBI etc.
johnsmith1882
@burnspbesq: faulting obama for not fulfilling his campaign promise to close guantanamo is not the same as pretending everything that happened before a certain date never happened. greenwald has faults, call him naive or an ideologue, but his writing is honest. wasn’t every liberal, rationally or not, unhappy with obama over guantanamo? young conor’s writing is not honest, he is purposely ignorant. these two things are not the same.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
humbly submitted as fixeteth.
gaz
@johnsmith1882:
Thanks for the lulz
wrb
@johnsmith1882:
Were any real liberals who aren’t idiots upset?
Doubt it.
He tried to close it, congress refused.
Frankensteinbeck
@Zagloba:
Actually, no. These things are all affected by the power of the purse. Congress has commanded that Obama cannot so much as buy a tank of gasoline for a motorboat to ship these people to the mainland. Their home countries have refused to take them back – he already sent off the ones who would. When the Senate is willing to vote 92-8 on an issue, they utterly override the President. The system is designed assuming this won’t happen for something as jackass as invalidating the regular justice system, but it did.
And Greenwald does talk about a lot of other stuff. ALL of it having to do with Obama is either flat out made up, or more commonly he lies by not telling his audience things that he as a lawyer should know. Really crucial things, like ‘There’s a section of law devoted to when someone can voluntarily give up their right to fair trial and a federal judge ruled that the Al-Alwaki case matches it perfectly.’
Look, Greenwald is a Ron Paul supporter and an admitted Libertarian. He thinks the government is always, automatically evil. Why does this surprise anyone?
Satanicpanic
@Drew: Oh yeah, I’m really leaping with my logic there. Elderly white conservative male from Texas who put out a racist newsletter doesn’t fit the profile of racist at all, jackass.
johnsmith1882
@gaz: ha, ok, fine. glenn greenwald is _exactly the same_ as conor friedersdorf.
eemom
@Zagloba:
So Obama could use the plain old FBI, US Marshals, and assistant federal Attorneys General to do pretty much anything and Congress couldn’t defund that action without defunding the whole FBI etc. and you and Greenwald would be just fine with that as long as it was something you wanted Obama to do, that about right?
wrb
This common use of “campaign promise” is an extraordinarily irritating bit of juvenilia.
Many of the things candidates describe are goals, not promises. They don’t have the power to bring them about by themselves. But infants in the press and the peanut gallery label them “campaign promises” and act when they do not come to pass for reasons entirely beyond the president’s control as if their wealthy parent had neglected to buy them the dolly they promised for Christmas.
b-psycho
All the credible sources out there, and you quote Eric Fucking Dondero…
gaz
@johnsmith1882: I never said that.
You can assume from implication that I think you have trouble discerning intellectual honesty from the crap that Glenn peddles to the rubes.
He’s not the same Conor. But there are many ways to be a dishonest douchebag. You apparently only know a few of the flavors.
johnsmith1882
@wrb: like i said, ‘rationally or not’. that doesnt make me an idiot, that makes me someone who feels strongly against the united states holding prisoners of war and prisoners of not war indefinitely on a prison island, in our name. politics isnt all facts and figures and parliamentary process, humanity factors in. or should.
Zagloba
Not a lawyer, but in the discussions I’ve had with lawyers about things like this, I’ve gotten the sense that laws which micromanage the way an executive branch agency carries out its duly assigned powers have a lot of precedents lined up against them. That is, the only possible use for the law as you’ve described it (assuming your representation is fair, which I’ll do), is to provide an excuse for impeachment.
Basically, Congress has no power to exempt Gitmo detainees from federal prosecution, and given that, interfering in the usual legitimate exercise of federal power is also outside its purview.
Zagloba
Well, I’d probably throw a stinkfit if Obama used the FBI, federal marshals, and AGs to do unconstitutional things. Investigating, indicting, and trying those accused of terrorism sounds like exactly what we have those agencies for, however.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
first they came for cain, and i largely didn’t give a shit, well, just because.
now they are coming for paul, and i still don’t give a shit, even though there is nothing coming out about him that wasn’t there 4-8-10 years ago.
someone with the capacity to direct a narrative sure wants to take some contenders out of the field before the rank and file gop gets a chance to vote them up or down.
they all fall down like toy soldiers
gocart mozart
@Lee:
Mack Lyons
@Kola Noscopy:
I doubt that. Every blog needs a living example of an odious troll to gaze upon and denote for future encounters with similar specimen elsewhere. You are a shining example of the utter, remarkable stupidity of which some people are capable of. The fact that you are proud to serve as such an example only highlights this failure in basic intellect.
Comrade Baron Elmo
This has the stink of ratfucking all over it.
The money shot is the part about Israel, which any conservative with a quarter-portion brain must know would torpedo the chances of any Republican for the White House.
This piece is so genially insulting to Paul that I figure the author can’t be from the South, else he’d have thrown a “Bless his heart” in there somewhere (the surest sign that a knife-to-the-back is imminent).
burnspbesq
@Zagloba:
Amazingly enough, lawyers are capable of not knowing what the law really is. The ones you’ve been talking to, don’t.
Kolohe
DONDEROOOOOOOO!!!
Kola Noscopy
@gaz:
It’s the clown lady who always does the banning…never Cole.
Sorry that hurts your fee fees.
A blog stuffed completely full of brainless lovers of the echo chamber circle jerkers such as yourself would be boring
gaz
@Kola Noscopy: Doesn’t hurt my fee-fees.
You must be autistic.
First – you confuse “like” and “tolerate”
And now – you seem to think my fee-fees are hurt, when in fact, I’m laughing at your bone-headedness.
You don’t understand people very well, do you?
Mona
Eric Dondero, the former Paul staffer and author of the piece under discussion, is not attempting to defend Ron Paul; Dondero is a crazed neocon (recognized and reviled as such in venues such as John’s loathed Reason site) and seeks only to exculpate himself with his spewings about his former boss’s views on race and gays. “Why did you stick around, Eric?”
I honestly can see myself voting for Paul, but only for the post-911 reasons Dondero
so opposes him, and with a certainty that no Congress would permit him to move ahead on whatever retrograde social or economic views Paul might hold. But if I am wrong to flirt w/ supporting Paul, it is not for Dondero’s reasons; his reasons are a selling point.
Kola Noscopy
@Mack Lyons:
mmmm-hmmm…that’s so interesting. Tell us more about that…
(You need to work on the affected pomousity vibe though; this comes off a little juvenile…)
Christian Sieber
I’m sure Conor’s response will be that this is about on par with the tape of Michelle Obama ranting about whitey.
FlipYrWhig
@Zagloba: IANAL but the argument Obama and his executive branch have made, as I understand it, is that the new provisions in the NDAA on “indefinite detention” (made by the legislative branch) do not constrain and must not constrain the powers of the executive branch on matters of conducting warfare. (Including the executive’s power to circumvent the law’s dictates on military justice and use the standard civil justice system.) Civil libertarians raged at that argument.
Your argument, though, seems at least on the surface to be similar: the executive branch should be able to assert precedence over the legislature’s attempt to exert power over how these suspects are treated. It’s just that you find that claim of executive power more meritorious than the other claim of executive power.
Mack Lyons
@Kola Noscopy: Perhaps I should have just called you a fucking moron and left it at that. Yeah, you’d understand that mo’ better…
By the way, is sucking John Cole’s dick your way of thanking the man for keeping you “unbanned” or something? Just asking.
FlipYrWhig
@Zagloba: I think a lot of these disputes between the branches of government are thorny, and everyone concerned is leery that clarifying them would have effects that ripple in unpredictable ways. Case in point: the War Powers resolution, which, IIRC, has never been fully put to the test. So, sure, an administration or a Congress could force the issue of which branch has final say over something like “detainees,” but no one really knows what would come down, or how happy anyone would be about it. The resident lawyers on the blog can correct me if I’ve gotten that terribly wrong.
Mona
@Frankensteinbeck: Glenn Greenwald is not Libertarian, and nor is he a Ron Paul supporter. I defy you to find one instance of Greenwald claiming the Libertarian label (warning: such does not exist). He has also written in strong criticism of *actual* Paul supporters who purport to see no reason any should find even one of Paul’s positions to constitute a reasonable deal-breaker.
For a writer whom so many (falsely) accuse of dishonesty when it comes to Greenwald’s trenchant evisceration of Dear Leader Obama, it is amusing how much dishonest invective is actually hurled at Greenwald himself.
Benjamin Franklin
In light of the discussion, I think a little context is called for.
Obama may have done everything he can within the current Congressional, or he may not have.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/obama-sides-wit/
“The Obama administration is also siding with the former administration in its legal defense of July legislation that immunizes the nation’s telecommunications companies from lawsuits accusing them of complicitity in Bush’s eavesdropping program, according to testimony last week by incoming Attorney General Eric Holder.
That immunity legislation, which Obama voted for when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois, was included in a broader spy package that granted the government wide-ranging, warrantless eavesdropping powers on Americans’ electronic communications.
Craig
@Mona: So you believe that the things that Ron Paul stands for on, say, foreign affairs and the War on Drugs, that there is almost no constituency for in either national party for the time being, is likely enough to actually to be implemented that it is worth thinking about voting for him, and the economic batshittery that he also believes in wholeheartedly, which is close to (if not quite) the post-Obama GOP’s entire raison d’etre, would be blocked by Congress, so there is no need to worry on that front. There’s a pretty heaping dollop of magical thinking here.
MikeJ
I like candidate X because I know no congress could ever possibly be so batshit insane as to actually implement the policies of candidate X.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mona:
that’s the kind of horseshit that makes it impossible for me to take people like you seriously. Comparing Obama to the late North Korean dictator is about as flat-out stupid as one can get.
Mona
@Craig:
Yes, and I do not entirely accept your prefatory assessments. There is a great deal of grassroots support for ending the wholly pernicious war on drugs. Moreover, Commander in Chief Paul, Head of State Paul, these would be incredibly important victories for sane foreign policy and contracting the Intelligence/Defense-Industrial Complex. And if Paul can achieve an audit of the Fed, good on him.
Ron Paul is not going to use the presidency as a bully pulpit to, say, abolish Social Security; that is nowhere near to being a priority for him and the GOP isn’t — even in the unlikely event of owning control of both houses — going to hand Democrats elections for a generation by doing so. But even if there is some risk of them being foolish enough to go that route, I consider ending the corporatist, authoritarian war state to take paramount importance.
FlipYrWhig
@Mona: When I google Glenn Greenwald Ron Paul, I find a number of hits that appear sympathetic — including this
…Although to be scrupulously fair (in a way I don’t believe Greenwald would reciprocate) some of them are more like criticisms of Paul critics than straightforward defenses of Paul.
Mona
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I used the same honorific for Bush back in the day when trying to reason w/ Bushbots. I did not then, or now, have a NoKo tyrant in mind. Just garden variety, irrational party partisanship and all the contorted special pleading attendant to same.
Kola Noscopy
@Mack Lyons:
Hmmm…kind of a homophobic/hateful comment. I wonder if I should complain to ABL so she can ban you…? I’m sure she’d get right on that…
Nah…that’s for losers like you and your pals here. But does the fantasy of something like that dick sucking thing going on around here kind of make your nether bits tingle? Does it make your fat little typing digits moist?
Mona
@FlipYrWhig:
I have been reading Greenwald daily since his blog’s inception; I line-edit his books. I’ve known him and his views for a long time — he is not, and has never claimed to be, a Libertarian. He is critical of some of Paul’s views, but also of the many meritless accusations lobbed at Paul.
I recall the excitement of Election ’06 as Glenn liveblogged the senate races and where joy abounded among us when the Democrats took the Senate and House. With time, after the ’08 election, he, I, and many came to a great sense of anger and betrayal with the Obama for whom we had voted.
That history hardly makes any of us either Libertarians or Paul supporters.
Kola Noscopy
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Hey, nostradumbass, she’s not comparing O to anyone; she’s comparing your slavish Obama worship to that of N. Korea’s benighted populace.
Craig
@Mona:
What sort of sorcery does a person have to do to come to this conclusion? I’d remind you that the House GOP did, in fact, hold a vote to abolish Medicare, and that they have mostly paid no price for doing so. I don’t believe that Ron Paul would “use the bully pulpit to abolish Social Security” mostly because as soon as someone starts talking to me about the stupid fucking bully pulpit the Meow Mix song plays in a loop in my head, but I certainly do believe that a President Paul would work very hard to pass legislation that would do deep damage to the social safety net, because that is what his party primarily stands for. Every single GOP candidate stands for an economic plan that would funnel more and more wealth to the top. So the notion that the GOP would walk back from the precipice of turning us into a banana republic because they would pay some sort of deep and long-lasting political price sort of elides the fact that that’s exactly what they stand for already, and they pay no price for it. The idea that a rational person would turn over to Ron Paul the ability to load up the Supreme Court with justices who would return us to the Gilded Age, based on the notion that the fucking GOP would curb his most draconian economic policies? That is motherfucking, cocksucking insane.
Gwangung
@Mona: Then be a more careful and aware writer.
wrb
@Craig:
I’ve thought, when reading Glenn, “Can’t this guy at least get a sane editor?”
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@Mona:
No one is saying that, so quit the damn special pleading.
What I, as an African-American, is saying is this — I don’t give a ratfuck is Ron Paul is racist or not. His personal views and life is just that, and given how fucked any conversation about race is here in the US, I’d just rather not take it that personally.
But his viewpoints and policies give succor and solace to a range of people who are racist/sexist/homophobic, and so on. His belief that the Civil Rights Act(s) are wrong-headed may not mean that a President Paul would try to overturn them — but it sure as fuck means he won’t focus his Justice Dept. on making sure they are fully and rightly enforced. His views on Hispanics may not mean he’ll toss ’em out the country — but it likely would mean that people like Sherri Aparo(sp) in AZ will receive at least a blind eye to racially-charged law enforcement, the kind that leads to more friction and disruption in the communities.
Paul forgets that we’ve already did the experiment where communities were left to whatever racial strictures they’d like, with the free market choosing. Ask my Dad, grew up in the South in those years, how well the (then) Negro dollar went to shift opinion, when the majority Whites benefited from the lack of competition for business, from Negroes too poor to own businesses, and thus required to spend the money they made at White-owned work at White-owned businesses.
I know I’m not going to convince you the free market isn’t always awesome. But I hope you might understand that those who differ with either Ron and Rand Paul aren’t idiots, aren’t blind fools, but people who have taken very different lessons from the historical record. What Paul wants has, to me, already been shown to not work, and not that long ago to boot. Why try it again?
eemom
So apparently the mighty Glenn can’t be bothered to do his usual drive by “Dear Leader” sneer personally today, and he’s deputized his personal hit-woman to do it for him.
Someone who takes it on, um, faith? that “Ron Paul is not going to use the presidency as a bully pulpit to, say, abolish Social Security; that is nowhere near to being a priority for him.” And we’re the blind, credulous followers here. Uh huh.
And that is about as shining an example as one could ask for of what fucking disingenuous liars you and your Master are, as he was dripping with disdain for Obama long before he ever even won the nomination.
Tom Levenson
@Anya: Really? News to me.
The Moar You Know
Neat thread. But I can’t tell who the rats are fucking.
Earl Butz
I don’t get all the Greenwald hate on the thread here, but I don’t get the Sullivan hate that so frequently makes the rounds here either. They’re both old-school arch-conservatives. For that matter, neither one is an American citizen! If you don’t like ’em, don’t read ’em. They’re both pretty irrelevant, and certainly neither one in any way understands the issues we face in 21st century America. Hard to do, admittedly, if you don’t live here, as neither one does.
Mona
@eemom:
Only as Sen. Obama began to break w/ the pledges made by Candidate Obama — such betrayal did, indeed, commence pre-nomination. And yet, O *does* remain the unfairly maligned Dear Leader for too many; some of us were over Hopey Changiness not too far into his administration.
As for Ron Paul, I take nothing on faith; I attempt to inform myself and am thus aware that, e.g., it is his aspiration to end Social Security for the youngest generation of adults, but he has pledged to leave it intact for those who have been promised and relied on its benefits. Paul is the single candidate I deem least likely to bail on urgent issues of the ever-expanding war- and national-security state, with their abhorrent infringements on civil liberties and pollution of our republican form of government. As a constellation, such issues are paramount for me, and I see evidence that is also true for Paul.
Mona
@Earl Butz:
Oh my, where to begin: Glenn Greenwald is an American citizen who was born in Queens, NY and raised in Broward Co., Florida. In early adulthood he practiced American law in Manhattan, much of it constitutional law.
One cannot reasonably regard him as an “arch-conservative.” Neither his economic views nor his positions on issues such as gay rights or drug legalization would support such an absurd proposition. Greenwald is best labeled as anti-authoritarian, not a description generally associated with conservatism.
For 7 years or so he has lived in Brazil, for the simple reason that his domestic partner is a Brazilian national and as a gay couple they are not eligible to live together in the U.S.
Lysana
@Mack Lyons:
I hate to agree with a troll who I usually have pied (this browser can’t use that script), but this was a homophobic remark. Kindly skip that kind of bullshit in public, at least. You claim to be a liberal; act like it.
I’m amused that there’s a derail going on in these comments relating to Greenwald. Who, I recall, has been lambasted here more than once in the last month alone. Gee, Greenwald and Paul attracting similar trolls, whodathunkit.
As for the letter, I had a personal memory moment. I went to Laissez Faire Books once. Amongst the various texts on small government and conspiracy theories, I spotted materials from N@MBL@ (elided in case of filtration issues), Calling Peron “very Gay (sic)” is.. interesting in relationship to that. Either he was sufficiently consistent that he supported allowing adults to fuck any human they wanted or he wanted to do it himself. Either way, I spotted that and couldn’t leave the store fast enough. I wonder if Paul knew (not that this justifies his bathroom phobia; Mouse was right about him being paranoid about AIDS).
A Humble Lurker
@Mack Lyons:
Cole’s too old for a Kola Noscopy special. And by too old, I mean over ten.
chopper
@Trentrunner:
“also, watch out when you walk down the street. you might slip, fall on a dirty soup spoon and catch AIDS”
Jewish Steel
Full disclosure: Mona writes for Tiger Beat. Mainly about GG.
ABL
Ron Paul signed the personhood pledge. That along with what Woodrow said at number 202 ends the inquiry for me.
Anyone who thinks that Ron Paul would be able to implement his isolationist policies through use of the magical bully pulpit is high. There is no way in hell that his “no aid to Israel” policies would get off the ground. What we’d end up with is the same exact foreign policy and a complete gutting of social safety nets and an evisceration of reproductive rights.
Mona? You’re cracking me up. Really. Just hilarious. Glenn must be pretty busy today to send you to do his bidding.
chopper
@Mona:
it is ironic that a guy who makes his living pitching fits over civil rights and liberties in america purposefully lives in brazil. if he’s really worried about the ability of the US government to hold people without a trial he needs to look out his window sometime. but hey, marriage rights.
henqiguai
@The Moar You Know (#205):
It’s a circle-jerk/daisy-chain…
Shawn in ShowMe
How much does the Greenwald Patrol get paid for monitoring Balloon Juice threads? He might want to consider applying for stimulus money to expand his surveillance operations. GG gets more foot soliders to push back against enemy blogs and more Americans get to go back to work. Sounds like a win-win.
eemom
@The Moar You Know:
Ask not for whom the rats fuck…
An Idiot
Shorter Eric Dondero: Ron Paul *can’t* be a bigot! He has a gay friend!
In all seriousness, though, it’s pretty obvious that yes, he is trying to defend Ron Paul, this isn’t all some grand conspiracy against Our Sainted Savior, The Only True Anti-War Candidate (who would have planned it, Rick “Three Agencies of Government” Perry? Give me a fucking break.) But he still thinks of himself as being too honorable for the kind of dissemblance that defending Ron Paul requires, and the end result is really just sad and pathetic.
AxelFoley
@Drew:
Stopped reading right there.
Mack Lyons
@Lysana: I didn’t come here to get dressed down or upbraided about my speech. If you have a problem with it, that’s your problem and yours alone. If it drives you to agree with a resident troll, so be it.
gbear
Hey, even more cool Ron Paul stuff is turning up:
AxelFoley
@Mona:
Infested by trolls today, aren’t we, ya’ll?
b-psycho
@An Idiot: Eric Dondero opposes Ron Paul because of the Anti-War Candidate reputation, to which the homophobia and bigotry are trifling issues to him. Read what he wrote again.
Mona
@chopper:
Brazil is superior to the U.S. on the issue of civil liberties for gay couples; Glenn is allowed by the Brazilian government to acquire a visa to live there based on his domestic partnership w/ a Brazilian citizen. The U.S., by contrast will not so accommodate them. None of this would be relevant except an ignorant person posted that Glenn is not a U.S. citizen — he in fact is, but lives in Brazil because that nation declines to break up his domestic partnership.
amk
@eemom: Given the whiny tone and the unnecessary verbiage, methinks, mona = gg.
Benjamin Franklin
@amk:
Bullshite…….
Mona
@ABL:
How lucky for me then that the Executive branch has its widest berth in foreign policy, having primary responsibility for it, sans any need of the bully pulpit. Should he, however, veto a foreign aid bill pertaining to Israel attendant with public explanation, he could almost single-handedly force a crucial media spotlight and instigate a long-overdue national discussion.
amk
@Mona: Does this neanderthal (both age wise and his ‘views’ wise), for all his decades of suckling on congress/gobinment teats, have any record fronting/pushing any anti-israel bill ?
kay
When Ron Paul says that private entities should be allowed to discriminate based on race who does he think is going to enforce that?
The police or a court, right?
You know, while we’re waiting for the market to work it’s magic and put the bigots out of business.
While we’re waiting several centuries for markets to work, someone is going to have to enforce those private property rights.
Has he ever addressed the state role in his vision?
Mona
@amk
Well now, several believe I am here at Glenn’s bidding, while you speculate that I actually am Glenn. Reality is more boring.
Altho I have commented very little here or elsewhere in the past 18-24 mos, John and I are cyber-pals, having exchanged a bit of email over the years, commencing before Greenwald was blogging. (I found John to be a welcome oasis of unwavering sanity during the Schiavo Derangement and parked here for the duration.)
All this silly speculation is, I suppose, rather flattering. Claims that my style is like Glenn’s are hardly anything I take as an insult,tho he is verbose.
Benjamin Franklin
@Mona:
And, a little impersonal. But maybe that is an asset.
wilfred
Somebody wrote on another blog that:
An Iran War would probably collapse the US and global economy — Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate standing up against an Iran War.
Paul is the only presidential candidate who got it right on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who is standing up against neocon attacks on the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and basic American civil liberties.
That last is why Glenn writes about him. I’m always astounded by the complete lack of empathy on this site.
Benjamin Franklin
@wilfred:
Have you conversed with GG? It has been said ‘it is easier to love the whole world, than it is, one person’
His people skills are a little lacking…….
Jewish Steel
When I’m looking for empathy the first place I head is to the political blogs.
ABL
@Mona: I’ll keep that in mind — this national discussion borne of a futile veto — while Republicans are setting up
tiny governments in my uterus.
Kola Noscopy
@A Humble Lurker:
Glad to see your pedo fantasies are keeping you out of harm’s way. Better to have you masturbating in your pajamas in your mom’s basement than out among the public.
Kola Noscopy
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Hey Clueless Wonder: Cole himself has a lot of admiration for GG and his writing. Whatever makes you kool kids think you run this blog?
chopper
@Mona:
yeah, and inferior in pretty much every other civil liberty. but hey, marriage rights.
Anya
@Tom Levenson: You and Kay are not included in that list. I would also say that Dengre, who’s never been on the Conor Friedersdorf beat, is excluded from that list.
Yutsano
@chopper: WINNING!! And stuff. Or something.
amk
@Mona: so geegee is a coward too then fighting for teh gays from a different utopia of a continent (or is it a country) ?
tomvox1
Reading that just completely cleared up my lingering Holiday blahs. So good I think I need a cigarette…and I quit smoking 14 years ago. I laughed so hard milk came out my nose.
Ratfuck or dimwit defense, thank you for posting this, Mr. Cole.
P.S. Will this latest flameout of the not-Romney frontrunner lead to a Draft Jindal movement from the Sullys of the world? Maybe back to that fat bastard in Jersey? Or Jeb “like it never happened” Bush? Pricey wine enthusiast and would-be Medicare assassin Paul Ryan? Magic 8-ball time, methinks…
Laertes
This is an obvious ratfuck. Whoever wrote it meant to do Ron Paul harm. That he’s pretending that he means to be defending Paul while actually sticking the knife in demonstrates his bad faith and is reason enough to dismiss the piece entirely.
We can’t even “withhold judgment” or “wait to hear more” or whatever without committing what dsquared memorably called “the fallacy of giving known liars the benefit of the doubt.”
Whoever wrote that piece is a proven liar merely by the fact of having written it. Knowing that you gotta ignore him, even though–hell, especially because–he’s telling you what you want to hear.
Mona
@chopper:
Look, he does not opt to live in a more gay-friendly nation by way of some vacuous political statement; rather, he does so because it is the only means by which he may remain united with his life partner.
Got it?
Laertes
Well, dammit. Having read the piece again, and more carefully this time, I have to take it back: It’s not so obvious a ratfuck.
The guy isn’t pretending at all to be defending Ron, and I can’t imagine why I thought he was. Further, the claims he makes about Paul’s views on Israel and WW2 are plausible. They’re consistent with Paul’s isolationist views, though I imagine Paul isn’t eager to address those two examples specifically, since he’s surely aware of just how radioactive they are among the current Republican electorate.
If this guy’s right, all it’s gonna take is one question about Israel to torpedo the Ron Paul campaign.
dance around in your bones
I don’t know, who gives a shit, really? The guy has like one chance in ten (MAYBE) to win, and has maybe two ideas I actually agree with.
Like, nevah gonna happen. Gawd, the Replugs suck this year. Hahahahhahaha!
Jewish Steel
@Laertes: Yes, I agree. It sounds like a perfectly plausible portrait of a daft old bigot.
dance around in your bones
@Kola Noscopy:
Ya know, what is YOUR fascination with Cole and the ‘Cool kids’ ?? Get a grip, man. Grow up….we aren’t in high school anymore.
Tony
As much as I dislike Paul, being emotionally homophobic but recognizing it as something politically counterproductive strikes me as a conscious act, one of his very, very few.
Gwangung
Given that we were taking about Paul and race, I find this more than a bit lacking in awareness.
wilfred
Empathy means understanding that someone can think or feel differently than you do and appreciating that. Here empathy means understanding that people agree with the things I mentioned in my comment. A lot of people are willing to ignore infringements on civil liberties and constitutional protections in exchange for whatever political agenda they have is satisfied.
Other people think differently; thus, lack of empathy.
Believing this guy’s comments about Paul and gayness demands believing the guy’s comments that Paul is neither racist nor anti-semite, no?
Kola Noscopy
@dance around in your bones:
Man…that is SO freaking deep, man…
Peter A
Just to jump back to the top. This kind of thinking “Hitler was a real life Bond villain, out to conquer the world.”
is the mirror image of Ron Paulism, and just as stupid. The scary thing about Hitler is that he was not a supervillain, just a self-aggrandizing politician at a particularly bad moment in history. He had plenty of allies who shared his goals, and even made some of the more evil decisions. Hitler wasn’t even an original thinker, he was simply applying the anti-semitic German nationalist ideology he had learned as an impressionable angry young man on the streets of Vienna from older radical right political leaders. I can easily imagine that a young Newt Gingrich or Limabaugh, placed in 1920s Germany would have joined a party like the Nazis and supported it wholeheartedly. They share a lot of the same personality traits. Hitler’s mystique, like a lot of famous hedge fund and business owners, is also backlit by a lot of luck. Had the French made one right decision in 1940, the German attack would have failed, Hitler would have been overthrown in a military coup, and he would now be an embarassing joke – “the crazy corporal.”
JMochaCat
@Mona: Even if I could support Paul for parts of his currently stated position (e.g., the War on Some Drugs), his “smaller government except in your uterus” is an absolute showstopper for me.
He’s introduced/sponsored a bunch of personhood-at-conception bills. He’s signed PersonhoodUSA’s pledge — http://www.personhoodusa.com/files/Keith%20Ashley/Ron%20Paul%20Personhood%20Statement_0.pdf — with details on how he would implement it. In that letter, he specifically mentions RU-486 which is *not* (as far as I can find with my google-fu) covered, tho Plan B is.
Ironically (maybe), one of the ads in rotation is a picture of Paul the Younger looking concerned(TM) with the caption “Isn’t it wrong your tax go to fund abortion?” *facepalm*
kay
@wilfred:
Ha! An insult in a plea for empathy. What does “whatever political agenda” mean, wilfred? Are you talking about laws? Why do you assume you’re principled and I’m not? Why do you dismiss all of the many, many concerns with Ron Paul with a swipe at the people who don’t support him?
You’re doing exactly the same thing as you’re accusing others of doing. I/P is one of your big issues, so you’re defending Ron Paul and completely ignoring all of his other positions.
I don’t support Ron Paul for many, many reasons, but let’s just pick one. His support of a “personhood” amendment to the US Constitution. Besides the laughable hypocrisy of a libertarian amending the constitution to codify second class citizenship to every women between the ages of 15 and 65, and the ridiculous inconsistency of a libertarian who recognizes only amendments one thru ten talking about adding one, LOOK at a personhood amendment, real-world.
Take the word “person” in every state and federal statute and incorporate “at conception”. What does that do to the rights of every single female between the ages of 15 and 60? MY rights? How do you think it’s going to work out for me when conservatives like Ron Paul put me and a fertilized egg as legal equals? Imagine that. A court is going to decide whose rights trump? Mine or the fertilized egg? How is Ron Paul going to enforce that? For someone with such a HUGE “concern” about civil liberties, I would think you’d give that at least a passing thought.
I could go on and on and on. The libertarian position on the environment? How many people are going to die early there? Just last week we had an environmental air quality rule that will prevent birth defects, and will prevent 11,000 early deaths a year. Is my supporting that a “political agenda”? Why? Why is it less principled than your position on I/P?
Support whomever you want. But don’t pretend you aren’t making profound trade-offs, and sacrificing whole segments of the population to your “political agenda”, because you are. Your “political agenda” is no more principled than any other person here.
wilfred
@Kay:
The usual agenda politics. I pointed out the following:
An Iran War would probably collapse the US and global economy—Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate standing up against an Iran War.
Paul is the only presidential candidate who got it right on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who is standing up against neocon attacks on the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and basic American civil liberties.
If I were faced with a choice of plunging the country into another fucking war – this would be a the last, I think – or maintaining a particular agenda, I know what I’d do.
The problem with you Kay is that you can’t see your own essential corruption. You champion all the right causes, all the precious things that a lifetime of agenda politics have taught you ‘really matter’ while you turn your back on the sorts of things that have ruined the country as a whole – things like Iraq, Gitmo, etc.
Johnson always said that in order to have the Great Society he had to give ‘them’ Vietnam. In order to have your precious fucking agenda we’ve had a host of things that only Paul seems to have the courage to speak out on. Once he’s gone, then nobody will speak out.
You’ll be ok, though.
kay
@wilfred:
Since you’re principled and we’re all just political hacks, let’s talk about civil liberties and Ron Paul’s stance on federal law that protects regular people from the virulent bigots who write the newsletters he puts his name on.
Who is going to enforce the ” private property rights” he worships, like the “right” to deny entry to a place of business for any reason, including race and (presumably) gender? Police and courts, wilfred, that’s who. The state. Who is Ron Paul’s business owner going to call when the wrong race enters that “private property” business? His business owner is going to call a state actor.
He’s full of shit when he says private property rights don’t intersect with state action, because they do. Of course they do. Tell me about your principled commitment to civil liberties when the state is sanctioning people for having the temerity to enter a business owned by a bigot, in any state run by bigots, because that’s the Ron Paul vision of “freedom”.
kay
@wilfred:
I love how you’re pretending Ron Paul isn’t a member of a political Party, too. He’s a Republican. He takes advantage of all of the institutional benefits of belonging to a political Party. They carried his ass over the finish line in his last congressional race, because he was fucking terrified of the voters in his own district. You know why they did that? Because he’s a rubber stamp “yeah” vote for every libertarian-conservative economic deregulatory wet dream “political agenda” out there. Trade offs, wilfred. You make them. I make them too. Yours are no more principled than mine.
But he’s pure and above the fray, a gentle flower who will be silenced if his legions of admirers don’t rush to his defense, and no one should read his positions, his actual words, because that’s unfair and “partisan”. Baloney.
Support whomever you want, but don’t insist that your priorities are more principled than mine. They aren’t.
kay
@wilfred:
The last time we talked you were telling me Democrats were victimizing union members. Union members were too stupid to know that, supposedly, so it’s important you tell them.
What’s Ron Paul’s position on unions, wilfred? You were passionate on unions three weeks ago. They go under the bus? Trade offs. Gotta break some eggs when you’re pursuing your I/P political agenda, right?
wilfred
Ok, what’s your position on incinerating Pakistani children with Hellfire missiles? Don’t have one? You’re an Obama supporter, aren’t you? Paul’s against it, you know.
I’m not a Paul supporter, but I hope to heaven he wins the nomination and gets to debate Obama. What I want is a real debate on what is in the best interest of the United States. Paul won’t win, but people are shitting themselves with the questions he’ll raise.
People like you, Kay.
kay
@wilfred:
Why do you say this again and again to me? You said the same thing with OWS. That I was “terrified” of OWS. I was never afraid of them. Unlike you, I went out and talked to them. Unlike you, I knew I wouldn’t be joining them, because I know what I’m willing to do, and I choose to work within the process. I’m not afraid of Ron Paul. I have contempt for him, actually, now (I didn’t before) because he won’t OWN the positions he champions, NOW he won’t own them. He was happy to own them ten years ago.
Read this thread. The Paul supporters are defensive, probably because they had no fucking idea of his positions before they announced they supported him from their pundit/internet perch.
He said some things you liked in a debate. Great! Maybe he’ll move the overton window. Maybe we can have another fucking roundtable. Those are always so productive.
kay
@wilfred:
Yeah, it’s funny, though. Ron Paul likes to ask questions, but when he gets a question he runs away. He’s a real warrior, wilfred. He can’t run away from his own words fast enough.
wilfred
Your self-importance is fucking astounding, really. Only You, Kay, poor, honest Kay, fighting the good fight in the face of all the odds ever faced by anyone. Why, you’re a veritable fucking Norma Rae.
I spent 22 months a State Department fellowship trying to convince Arab Muslims that we don’t hate and intend to kill them. Which was a complete waste of time, especially after President Hopechange walked away from his high-flown rhetoric at Cairo.
You got your equivalent of a Great Society – all the precious agenda politics fueled by coffee and crumbcake. What you don’t see is the slaughter that came with it.
At least Ron Paul is against that, who else is?
kay
@wilfred:
Paul ran as a Libertarian then came back as a Republican, because he wanted a seat in the House. I don’t have any problem with him doing that, but, then, I don’t pretend he’s some principled giant who is “of no Party or clique”.
He’s running away from his 1990’s positions because he wants to win Iowa. Yucky “partisan politics”. Such a shame he has to sink that low to win a caucus. Does he feel….dirty? Poor baby.
kay
@wilfred:
I just want to know if you stick with an ally longer than 3 weeks. You were all unions, then you were all OWS, now you’re looking to Ron Paul. What’s next week? Who goes under the bus?
Laertes
It’s frustrating that the only candidate of either party who’s serious about dismantling the Empire is also armpit-deep in unrelated evil horseshit.
I hope Paul does well in the primaries just to prove that the ideas that are currently driving his popularity could drive someone else’s. Maybe next time around we can get a candidate who’s strong on civil liberties and shrinking the military-industrial complex without all the John Birch craziness.
wilfred
“I hope Paul does well in the primaries just to prove that the ideas that are currently driving his popularity could drive someone else’s. Maybe next time around we can get a candidate who’s strong on civil liberties and shrinking the military-industrial complex without all the John Birch craziness.”
This. The ad hominems serve to suppress his legitimate, and deeply threatening (to the powers that be) positions.
@Kay:
This is twice that you’ve brought up this union business. Just to be clear – I don’t give a shit about CEIU unionism or Wisconsin state employees. I take the Lewis position that unions are there to oppose capitalist excesses – and I oppose capitalism. My family was connected to UMW here and anarcho-syndicalism in Europe. That’s unionism to me. Period.
kay
@wilfred:
If that’s your single issue, wilfred, fine, have at it. Just don’t try to tell me you’re somehow purer than the other single issue people here. You’re not. You’re horsetrading. You want a dialogue on I/P so you’re willing to listen to the 90% of Ron Paul rhetoric that goes against the positions you held three weeks ago.
That’s a trade off. It’s no more principled and pure than anyone elses. I don’t care if he wins Iowa, and I have no reason to “silence” him. I accept the results of elections. If GOP caucus goers want to elect Ron Paul, I’m fine with it. I do think it’s amusing to watch him have a fucking panicked hissy fit when his own words are thrown back at him. He’s a little thin-skinned, for a warrior. He’s like his son, who also got petulant and annoyed when he had to compete and defend his own positions. The one saving grace of Ron Paul as compared to Rand Paul is Ron Paul didn’t lie and dodge, which is what Rand Paul did, in order to get elected, but now Ron Paul doesn’t even have that to point to.
kay
@wilfred:
I “bring up” the union business because you were telling me all about “labor”.
Who do you think provided the numbers, the people in the street, to OWS, which was your last political crush? Unions!
Oh, wait! That was last week. You’ve moved on. I can’t keep up. I’ll have to spend more time on the internet, to spot these fads.
kay
@wilfred:
My outlining the libertarian legal position is not an “ad hominem”. It’s what libertarians believe. I have very little interest in the “newsletters” or whatever else is the Topic Of The Day. I could give a rat’s ass about who Ron Paul hires, or who his friends are, and whether he IS or ISN’T personally, a bigot. I don’t care.
I know how libertarians interpret US law, and I know what Ron Paul believes because I listen to him. That’s why I’m not a libertarian, or a Republican. That’s a substantive position, and unlike Ron Paul, I’m happy to defend it.
wilfred
Now you’re just screeching. I was against the OWS movement having anything to do with the political face of the local unions and was very clear that the movement could not survive being polluted with the sort of party politcs you wallow in.
My last crush? What a stupid,puerile person you are.
kay
@wilfred:
Were you “against” unions providing the bodies in the street? Because that’s what they did. You wanted their bodies, but not their yucky “political agenda” because that would “co opt” the purity of The Idea?
People keep getting in the way of your political agenda, wilfred. If Paul loses Iowa, you can blame the rabid, partisan GOP caucus goers. If he wins Iowa, those same people will be no party or clique heroes, right? Funny how that works.
kay
@wilfred:
The “political face” of the “local unions” are elected. Unions elect their leaders. What you wanted was union members, out in the street, as long as they left their opinions and political agenda at the door?
Anything else they can do for you, these people without agency? Why don’t you fight your own battles?
chopper
@wilfred:
coming from your keyboard, this is fucking hilarious. this is like greenwald bitching about someone else’s blog posts being too long.
chopper
@wilfred:
of course not. who cares about workers when there’s bitching to be done on the internet?
chopper
@kay:
wilfred is a classic leninist. he believes it’s the job of the political vanguard (aka our betters, such as wilfred) to do the real work and the dummies on the street just need to show up and stay quiet and let their betters write all the copy. when the proles start talking it just ruins everything.
kay
@wilfred:
That actually wasn’t fair, applied to you, so I am sorry for saying that. I think you’re sincere/committed on I/P and anti-war.
We just see this differently. You see it as some great new development in a larger theme, a voice in the wilderness, etc. I see it as this week’s topic.
Again, that doesn’t apply to you, personally, because you’ve been commenting on these issues as long as I’ve been reading, but Sullivan and the rest of the punditry? I think it’s this week’s topic.
If they’re still talking about Ron Paul in 3 weeks I’ll pay you five dollars :)
ABL
So much for empathy, eh Wilfred?
ABL
I agree with everything Kay said. If it were possible for a US president to be anti-war (even though I think Paul is isolationist and not anti-war out of some expression of his deep humanity) then I wouldn’t find this obsession with Ron Paul so irritating. And I say irritating because he is so wrong on every other issue and it is so impractical to expect that he could implement anti-war foreign policy that it actually makes me angry that people are willing to throw women, the poor, and minorities under a bus for a chance at a totally futile albeit necessary national conversation about foreign policy.
Meh.
Paul in KY
@Peter A: Newt & Limbaugh, as nasty as they are, couldn’t hold Hitler’s truss when it came to being a driven, despotic, madman.
He would have had them both offed by 1932.
Benjamin Franklin
@Paul in KY:
Rush is more like Lewis Prothero. It’s the Power of Bloviation which enables
the Schickelgrubers of the World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)#Cast
Paul in KY
@Benjamin Franklin: Agree with your characterization of Limpbaugh. Appreciate the link.
Benjamin Franklin
@Paul in KY:
I think the Wachowski Bros specifically had Limbaugh in mind for the part.
Glen Tomkins
What I expect of a politician
I am not the least bit upset over this story about Ron Paul’s issues with using a gay supporter’s bathroom. By definition, no one is in control of their visceral reactions. The most we can expect of anyone, is that they recognize which of their visceral reactions are acceptable and which aren’t. By this account, Paul seems to have gotten that question almost exactly right.
Like all of us, he was raised in a homophobic society. He learned homophobia on his mother’s knee, and so of course his distaste is visceral, automatic, unconscious and beyond his control. But he can and does control his behavior so as not to act upon visceral impulses that he, as a civilized adult, clearly understands are wrong. As a politican he supports gay rights. As a politician, he goes even further than many who support gay rights, and is willing to make a series of public appearances with an openly gay couple. His only failure to achieve completely moral and civilized behavior is that he entrusted the secret of his visceral reaction to using a gay couple’s bathroom to an aide whom he presumably assumed would never share that with anyone else. He’s guilty only of misplaced confidence in the aide.
I think Paul would be a disaster as president. But I think that mainly because of his beliefs about public policy.
There is indeed also the question of racism. But I think the contrast between what he wrote, or even only allowed to be written, if you accept that explanation, in his newsletter about blacks, and this making of excuses not to use a gay bathroom, is exactly the distinction I’m trying to make. You are not going to find white men of Paul’s age raised in TX who do not have visceral anti-black reactions. But what we can expect of anybody of even the most benighted upbringing is that they be appropriately ashamed of what they now recognize are inappropriate reactions. Instead of being ashamed of his visceral reaction to blacks, and controlliing it appropriately, he traded publically on that prejudice, and thereby helped to perpetuate into the next generation visceral reactions that civilized people all need to recognize need to end with this generation. Not only is that breach sufficient to disqualify him from holding any publc office in a country that has already paid so high a price for the perpetuation of that visceral reaction of white men to blacks, his defense that someone else wrote the offending comments takes away from his only attractive feature, a willingness to speak candidly and take unpopular stands no matter what the political cost.
In a better world we might have the luxury of wanting only people with sound visceral reactions in public office. But in the real world in which we live, our upbringings were not controlled by any even nearly perfect set of moral sensibilities in those who raised us before we were able to judge right and wrong ourselves.
dance around in your bones
@Kola Noscopy: Just about as deep as your comments.
JR
@Anya: Conor’s name is funny, Glen’s is not.