Spirit Plants - Discussion of sacred plants and other entheogens

10 reasons NOT to vote for Ron Paul!!

Published January 7, 2008 at the Democratic Underground
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x2618335 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2618335)

1. Ron Paul does not value equal rights for minorities. Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would repeal affirmative action, keep the IRS from investigating private schools who may have used race as a factor in denying entrance, thus losing their tax exempt status, would limit the scope of Brown versus Board of Education, and would deny citizenship for those born in the US if their parents are not citizens. Here are links to these bills: H.R.3863, H.R.5909, H.J.RES.46, and H.J.RES.42.


2. Ron Paul would deny women control of their bodies and reproductive rights.Ron Paul makes it very clear that one of his aims is to repeal Roe v. Wade. He has also co sponsored 4 separate bills to “To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.” This, of course, goes against current medical and scientific information as well as our existing laws and precedents. Please see these links: H.R.2597 and H.R.392


3. Ron Paul would be disastrous for the working class. He supports abolishing the Federal minimum wage, has twice introduced legislation to repeal OSHA, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act and would deal devastating blows to Social Security including repealing the act that makes it mandatory for employees of nonprofits, to make “coverage completely optional for both present and future workers”, and would “freeze benefit levels”. He has also twice sponsored legislation seeking to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act which among other things provide that contractors for the federal government must provide the prevailing wage and prohibits corporate “kick backs.” Here are the related legislative links: H.R.2030, H.R.4604, H.R.736, and H.R.2720


4. Ron Paul’s tax plan is unfair to lower earners and would greatly benefit those with the highest incomes.He has repeatedly submitted amendments to the tax code that would get rid of the estate and gift taxes, tax all earners at 10%, disallow income tax credits to individuals who are not corporations, repeal the elderly tax credit, child care credit, earned income credit, and other common credits for working class citizens. Please see this link for more information: H.R.05484 Summary


5. Ron Paul’s policies would cause irreparable damage to our already strained environment. Among other travesties he supports off shore drilling, building more oil refineries, mining on federal lands, no taxes on the production of fuel, and would stop conservation efforts that could be a “Federal obstacle” to building and maintaining refineries. He has also sought to amend the Clean Air Act, repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977, and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to “restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters”. To see for yourself the possible extent of the damage to the environment that would happen under a Paul administration please follow these links: H.R.2504, H.R.7079, H.R.7245, H.R.2415, H.R.393, H.R.4639, H.R.5293, and H.R.6936


6. A Ron Paul administration would continue to proliferate the negative image of the US among other nations. Ron Paul supports withdrawing the US from the UN, when that has not happened he has fought to at least have the US withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He has introduced legislation to keep the US from giving any funds to the UN. He also submitted that the US funds should not be used in any UN peacekeeping mission or any UN program at all. He has sponsored a bill calling for us to “terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, and to remove all privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the United Nations.”

Ron Paul twice supported stopping the destruction of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States. He also would continue with Bush’s plan of ignoring international laws by maintaining an insistence that the International Criminal Court does not apply to the US, despite President Clinton’s signature on the original treaty. The International Criminal Court is used for, among other things, prosecution of war crimes. Please see the following links: H.R.3891, H.AMDT.191, H.AMDT.190, H.R.3769, H.R.1665, H.CON.RES.23, and H.R.1154



7. Ron Paul discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation and would not provide equal rights and protections to glbt citizens. This is an issue that Paul sort of dances around. He has been praised for stating that the federal government should not regulate who a person marries. This has been construed by some to mean that he is somewhat open to the idea of same sex marriage, he is not. Paul was an original co sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in the House in 2004. Among other things this discriminatory piece of legislation placed a prohibition on the recognition of a same sex marriage across state borders. He said in 2004 that if he was in the Texas legislature he would not allow judges to come up with “new definitions” of marriage. Paul is a very religious conservative and though he is careful with his words his record shows that he is not a supporter of same sex marriage. In 1980 he introduced a particularly bigoted bill entitled “A bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955 A direct quote from the legislation “Prohibits the expenditure of Federal funds to any organization which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style.” shows that he is unequivocally opposed to lifestyles other than heterosexual.


8. Ron Paul has an unnatural obsession with guns. One of Paul’s loudest gripes is that the second amendment of the constitution is being eroded. In fact, he believes that September 11 would not have happened if that wasn’t true. He advocates for there to be no restrictions on personal ownership of semi-automatic weaponry or large capacity ammunition feeding devices, would repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act (because we all know our schools are just missing more guns), wants guns to be allowed in our National Parks, and repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968. Now, I’m pretty damn certain that when the Constitution was written our founding fathers never intended for people to be walking around the streets with AK47’s and “large capacity ammunition feeding devices.” (That just sounds scary.) Throughout the years our Constitution has been amended and is indeed a living document needing changes to stay relevant in our society. Paul has no problem changing the Constitution when it fits his needs, such as no longer allowing those born in the US to be citizens if their parents are not. On the gun issue though he is no holds barred. I know he’s from Texas but really, common sense tells us that the amendments he is seeking to repeal have their place. In fact, the gun control act was put into place after the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. Please view the following links: H.R.2424, H.R.1897, H.R.1096, H.R.407, H.R.1147, and H.R.3892.


9. Ron Paul would butcher our already sad educational system. The fact is that Ron Paul wants to privatize everything and that includes education. Where we run into problems is that it has been shown (think our current health care system) that this doesn’t work so well in practice. Ron Paul has introduced legislation that would keep the Federal Government “from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.” In a separate piece of legislation he seeks to “prohibit the payment of Federal Education assistance in States which require the licensing or certification of private schools or private school teachers.” So basically the federal government can’t regulate teaching credentials and if states opt to require them for private schools they get no aid. That sounds like a marvelous idea teachers with no certification teaching in private schools that are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. He is certainly moving forward with these proposals!

Remember his “bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955? Guess what? He basically advocates for segregation in schools once again. It “Forbids any court of the United States from requiring the attendance at a particular school of any student because of race, color, creed, or sex.” Without thinking about this statement it doesn’t sound bad at all. But remember, when desegregating schools that this is done by having children go to different schools, often after a court decision as in Brown Vs. Board of Education. If this were a bill that passed, schools would no longer be compelled to comply and the schools would go back to segregation based on their locations. Ron Paul is really starting to look like a pretty bigoted guy don’t you think?


10. Ron Paul is opposed to the separation of church and state. This reason is probably behind every other thing that I disagree with in regards to Paul’s positions. Ron Paul is among those who believes that there is a war on religion, he stated “Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view.”1 Though he talks a good talk, at times, Ron Paul can’t get away from his far right, conservative views. He would support “alternative views” to evolution taught in public schools (i.e. Intelligent Design.) We’ve already taken a look at his “bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955 Besides hating the gays he takes a very religious stance on many other things. He is attempting to force his beliefs on the rest of America, exactly what he would do as president.

So there you have it, my 10 reasons not to vote for Ron Paul. Please take the time to thoroughly review the records of the people running for office so you know where they really stand. Ron Paul has good rhetoric and he opposes the war but he’s not a good man in the human rights sense of the phrase. He is pretty much like every other Republican but more insidious

Saw this piece and had to re-post it here. I've always been suspicious of the Ron Paul campaign, remembering when he used to be a Libertarian by party. When he showed up as a Republican this year, it seemed more than a little fishy. Anyway, read it for what it's worth, and do your own further research if you're still considering him.

I am very suspicious of attack articles. This piece makes no attempt at fairness or balance. It's like some article put out by an arms length political group that backs Hillary and attacks Obama. The writer puts his own extreme spin on everything Paul supposedly did. I do not trust the facts claimed either.

Some of those so called negative things are actually reasons to vote for him. Why the hell should we keep supporting the UN? So on and so on. I am a little troubled by some of the claims but I would like to see independent verification of what was said. If you base your opinions off just one article like that without checking the facts, that's a mistake.

Believe only half what you see and none of what you hear.

Like I said, do your own research, as I've done mine. I like that piece because it sums up things I've seen scattered around about Paul. And all of those reasons are ones that make me dislike him. Every one of them. He opposes the Occupation of Iraq. I agree with him on nothing else.

He is a little exteme here and there. One thing the attack article missed was his support for going on a gold standard. I think that's unworkable.

Why should we give a blank check to the UN? It's rife with corruption. Did you hear about the oil for food scandle? That was just the tip of the iceberg. Waste, fraud, corruption and nepotism are the watchwords of today's UN. It need major reform and not more power over us.

One thing Paul is against is the minimum wage which you are wholeheartedly for, simply because it's part of democrap boilerplate. The min wage just leads inevitably to inflation. The cost of labor is figured into the cost of goods and services. So, when you buy those goods you pay more. That cancels out your increace and you are back where you started. I know I'm wasting my breath on you but some people can see the logic of it.

Likewise with giving handouts to certain favored groups. It just makes them lazier. I'm against handouts to big corporations but also against handouts based on race and sex which I know you love.

If you can refute any of that, lets hear it. Don't go off and sulk, tell us why I'm wrong. I'm not attacking you, I'm discussing issues. Lets talk issues.

The details of Paul's newsletters distributed in the last couple of decades is sure enough to turn me sour to the idea of supporting him. Even if the views were penned by other authors, the newsletters were written in RP's name, for christ sakes!

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... 32a7da84ca (http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca)

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Angry White Man
by James Kirchick
The bigoted past of Ron Paul.
Post Date Tuesday, January 08, 2008

f you are a critic of the Bush administration, chances are that, at some point over the past six months, Ron Paul has said something that appealed to you. Paul describes himself as a libertarian, but, since his presidential campaign took off earlier this year, the Republican congressman has attracted donations and plaudits from across the ideological spectrum. Antiwar conservatives, disaffected centrists, even young liberal activists have all flocked to Paul, hailing him as a throwback to an earlier age, when politicians were less mealy-mouthed and American government was more modest in its ambitions, both at home and abroad. In The New York Times Magazine, conservative writer Christopher Caldwell gushed that Paul is a "formidable stander on constitutional principle," while The Nation praised "his full-throated rejection of the imperial project in Iraq." Former TNR editor Andrew Sullivan endorsed Paul for the GOP nomination, and ABC's Jack Tapper described the candidate as "the one true straight-talker in this race." Even The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of the elite bankers whom Paul detests, recently advised other Republican presidential contenders not to "dismiss the passion he's tapped."

Most voters had never heard of Paul before he launched his quixotic bid for the Republican nomination. But the Texan has been active in politics for decades. And long before he was the darling of antiwar activists on the left and right, Paul was in the newsletter business. In the age before blogs, newsletters occupied a prominent place in right-wing political discourse. With the pages of mainstream political magazines typically off-limits to their views (National Review editor William F. Buckley having famously denounced the John Birch Society), hardline conservatives resorted to putting out their own, less glossy publications. These were often paranoid and rambling--dominated by talk of international banking conspiracies, the Trilateral Commission's plans for world government, and warnings about coming Armageddon--but some of them had wide and devoted audiences. And a few of the most prominent bore the name of Ron Paul.

Paul's newsletters have carried different titles over the years--Ron Paul's Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report--but they generally seem to have been published on a monthly basis since at least 1978. (Paul, an OB-GYN and former U.S. Army surgeon, was first elected to Congress in 1976.) During some periods, the newsletters were published by the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, a non-profit Paul founded in 1976; at other times, they were published by Ron Paul & Associates, a now-defunct entity in which Paul owned a minority stake, according to his campaign spokesman. The Freedom Report claimed to have over 100,000 readers in 1984. At one point, Ron Paul & Associates also put out a monthly publication called The Ron Paul Investment Letter.

The Freedom Report's online archives only go back to 1999, but I was curious to see older editions of Paul's newsletters, in part because of a controversy dating to 1996, when Charles "Lefty" Morris, a Democrat running against Paul for a House seat, released excerpts stating that "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions," that "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be," and that black congresswoman Barbara Jordan is "the archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism." At the time, Paul's campaign said that Morris had quoted the newsletter out of context. Later, in 2001, Paul would claim that someone else had written the controversial passages. (Few of the newsletters contain actual bylines.) Caldwell, writing in the Times Magazine last year, said he found Paul's explanation believable, "since the style diverges widely from his own."

Finding the pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Of course, with few bylines, it is difficult to know whether any particular article was written by Paul himself. Some of the earlier newsletters are signed by him, though the vast majority of the editions I saw contain no bylines at all. Complicating matters, many of the unbylined newsletters were written in the first-person, implying that Paul was the author.

But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul's name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

To understand Paul's philosophy, the best place to start is probably the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Auburn, Alabama. The institute is named for a libertarian Austrian economist, but it was founded by a man named Lew Rockwell, who also served as Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982. Paul has had a long and prominent association with the institute, teaching at its seminars and serving as a "distinguished counselor." The institute has also published his books.

The politics of the organization are complicated--its philosophy derives largely from the work of the late Murray Rothbard, a Bronx-born son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and a self-described "anarcho-capitalist" who viewed the state as nothing more than "a criminal gang"--but one aspect of the institute's worldview stands out as particularly disturbing: its attachment to the Confederacy. Thomas E. Woods Jr., a member of the institute's senior faculty, is a founder of the League of the South, a secessionist group, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, a pro-Confederate, revisionist tract published in 2004. Paul enthusiastically blurbed Woods's book, saying that it "heroically rescues real history from the politically correct memory hole." Thomas DiLorenzo, another senior faculty member and author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, refers to the Civil War as the "War for Southern Independence" and attacks "Lincoln cultists"; Paul endorsed the book on MSNBC last month in a debate over whether the Civil War was necessary (Paul thinks it was not). In April 1995, the institute hosted a conference on secession at which Paul spoke; previewing the event, Rockwell wrote to supporters, "we'll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it." Paul's newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that "the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society" and that "there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it."

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute--including Paul--may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine. Instead, they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history--the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states. As one prominent Washington libertarian told me, "There are too many libertarians in this country ... who, because they are attracted to the great books of Mises, ... find their way to the Mises Institute and then are told that a defense of the Confederacy is part of libertarian thought."

Paul's alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began," read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounced "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks." To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were "the only people to act like real Americans," it explained, "mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England."

This "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" was hardly the first time one of Paul's publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled "What To Expect for the 1990s," predicted that "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" Two months later, a newsletter warned of "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter's author--presumably Paul--wrote, "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which "blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot." The newsletter inveighed against liberals who "want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare," adding, "Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."

Such views on race also inflected the newsletters' commentary on foreign affairs. South Africa's transition to multiracial democracy was portrayed as a "destruction of civilization" that was "the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara"; and, in March 1994, a month before Nelson Mandela was elected president, one item warned of an impending "South African Holocaust."

Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. ("What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!" one newsletter complained in 1990. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.") In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the "X-Rated Martin Luther King" as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as "a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled "The Duke's Victory," a newsletter celebrated Duke's 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Republican Senate primary. "Duke lost the election," it said, "but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment." In 1991, a newsletter asked, "Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?" The conclusion was that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom." Duke is now returning the favor, telling me that, while he will not formally endorse any candidate, he has made information about Ron Paul available on his website.

 

Like blacks, gays earn plenty of animus in Paul's newsletters. They frequently quoted Paul's "old colleague," Congressman William Dannemeyer--who advocated quarantining people with AIDS--praising him for "speak[ing] out fearlessly despite the organized power of the gay lobby." In 1990, one newsletter mentioned a reporter from a gay magazine "who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist." In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." When Marvin Liebman, a founder of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom and a longtime political activist, announced that he was gay in the pages of National Review, a Paul newsletter implored, "Bring Back the Closet!" Surprisingly, one item expressed ambivalence about the contentious issue of gays in the military, but ultimately concluded, "Homosexuals, if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals."

The newsletters were particularly obsessed with AIDS, "a politically protected disease thanks to payola and the influence of the homosexual lobby," and used it as a rhetorical club to beat gay people in general. In 1990, one newsletter approvingly quoted "a well-known Libertarian editor" as saying, "The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is 'Silence = Death.' But shouldn't it be 'Sodomy = Death'?" Readers were warned to avoid blood transfusions because gays were trying to "poison the blood supply." "Am I the only one sick of hearing about the 'rights' of AIDS carriers?" a newsletter asked in 1990. That same year, citing a Christian-right fringe publication, an item suggested that "the AIDS patient" should not be allowed to eat in restaurants and that "AIDS can be transmitted by saliva," which is false. Paul's newsletters advertised a book, Surviving the AIDS Plague--also based upon the casual-transmission thesis--and defended "parents who worry about sending their healthy kids to school with AIDS victims." Commenting on a rise in AIDS infections, one newsletter said that "gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense," adding: "[T]hese men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better. The newsletters display an obsession with Israel; no other country is mentioned more often in the editions I saw, or with more vitriol. A 1987 issue of Paul's Investment Letter called Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state," and a 1990 newsletter discussed the "tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise." Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, "Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little."

 

Paul's newsletters didn't just contain bigotry. They also contained paranoia--specifically, the brand of anti-government paranoia that festered among right-wing militia groups during the 1980s and '90s. Indeed, the newsletters seemed to hint that armed revolution against the federal government would be justified. In January 1995, three months before right-wing militants bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a newsletter listed "Ten Militia Commandments," describing "the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty" as "one of the most encouraging developments in America." It warned militia members that they were "possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance" and printed bits of advice from the Sons of Liberty, an anti-government militia based in Alabama--among them, "You can't kill a Hydra by cutting off its head," "Keep the group size down," "Keep quiet and you're harder to find," "Leave no clues," "Avoid the phone as much as possible," and "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

The newsletters are chock-full of shopworn conspiracies, reflecting Paul's obsession with the "industrial-banking-political elite" and promoting his distrust of a federally regulated monetary system utilizing paper bills. They contain frequent and bristling references to the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations--organizations that conspiracy theorists have long accused of seeking world domination. In 1978, a newsletter blamed David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, and "fascist-oriented, international banking and business interests" for the Panama Canal Treaty, which it called "one of the saddest events in the history of the United States." A 1988 newsletter cited a doctor who believed that AIDS was created in a World Health Organization laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. In addition, Ron Paul & Associates sold a video about Waco produced by "patriotic Indiana lawyer Linda Thompson"--as one of the newsletters called her--who maintained that Waco was a conspiracy to kill ATF agents who had previously worked for President Clinton as bodyguards. As with many of the more outlandish theories the newsletters cited over the years, the video received a qualified endorsement: "I can't vouch for every single judgment by the narrator, but the film does show the depths of government perfidy, and the national police's tricks and crimes," the newsletter said, adding, "Send your check for $24.95 to our Houston office, or charge the tape to your credit card at 1-800-RON-PAUL."

 

When I asked Jesse Benton, Paul's campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted "various levels of approval" to what appeared in his publications--ranging from "no approval" to instances where he "actually wrote it himself." After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, "A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no." He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because "Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero."

In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

What's more, Paul's connections to extremism go beyond the newsletters. He has given extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society, and has frequently been a guest of Alex Jones, a radio host and perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America. Jones--whose recent documentary, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, details the plans of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, among others, to exterminate most of humanity and develop themselves into "superhuman" computer hybrids able to "travel throughout the cosmos"--estimates that Paul has appeared on his radio program about 40 times over the past twelve years.

Then there is Gary North, who has worked on Paul's congressional staff. North is a central figure in Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates the implementation of Biblical law in modern society. Christian Reconstructionists share common ground with libertarians, since both groups dislike the central government. North has advocated the execution of women who have abortions and people who curse their parents. In a 1986 book, North argued for stoning as a form of capital punishment--because "the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." North is perhaps best known for Gary North's Remnant Review, a "Christian and pro free-market" newsletter. In a 1983 letter Paul wrote on behalf of an organization called the Committee to Stop the Bail-Out of Multinational Banks (known by the acronym CSBOMB), he bragged, "Perhaps you already read in Gary North's Remnant Review about my exposes of government abuse."

 

Ron Paul is not going to be president. But, as his campaign has gathered steam, he has found himself increasingly permitted inside the boundaries of respectable debate. He sat for an extensive interview with Tim Russert recently. He has raised almost $20 million in just three months, much of it online. And he received nearly three times as many votes as erstwhile front-runner Rudy Giuliani in last week's Iowa caucus. All the while he has generally been portrayed by the media as principled and serious, while garnering praise for being a "straight-talker."

From his newsletters, however, a different picture of Paul emerges--that of someone who is either himself deeply embittered or, for a long time, allowed others to write bitterly on his behalf. His adversaries are often described in harsh terms: Barbara Jordan is called "Barbara Morondon," Eleanor Holmes Norton is a "black pinko," Donna Shalala is a "short lesbian," Ron Brown is a "racial victimologist," and Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the United States Senate, is a "far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist." Maybe such outbursts mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean he is a man filled with hate.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor at The New Republic.

Other people blogged under his banner and he failed to oversee and edit. This was all covered a decade ago but they dredge it up over and over. He has repudiated the words attributed to him. I'm not one of his big fans but I don't like to see anyone attacked unfairly.

"Even if the views were penned by other authors, the newsletters were written in RP's name, for christ sakes!"

If he didn't write them and did repudiate them, they are not his views. What is the issue here?

I'm not sure that proves repudiation to me, stoney. These wern't bolgs, but newsletters put out by ron paul. As most were without author, but written in the first person, and he's funding the newsletter, what gives?

lw

Both of you are being a little dishonest here. So he funded a newsletter and let other run it. So have many others done the same. He has emphatically refuted and repudiated the controversial junk. If he had said he didn't write it but agreed with it, I'd agree with you guys. If he had said he didn't write it but didn't say one way or the other if he agreed, then you would have some case to make. Under the circumstances, you have no case.

"I'm not sure that proves repudiation to me, stoney"

He has disavowed those articles. What do you want him to do, wear a hair shirt and flog himself until bloody? It's really rich coming from cenacle who never says a word about Kennedy's chappaquiddick incident or Hill-billy's rosewood lawfirm misadventures. Those can firmly be tied to the candidates in question. Here, it's more like a campaign staffer saying something wrong and you trying to hang the candidate for it.

"What do you want him to do, wear a hair shirt and flog himself until bloody? It's really rich coming from cenacle who never says a word about Kennedy's chappaquiddick ......."

What's that got to do with anything?? I'm with LW on this one, and you are a contentious man, Stoney.

quote from above: When I asked Jesse Benton, Paul's campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted "various levels of approval" to what appeared in his publications--ranging from "no approval" to instances where he "actually wrote it himself." After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, "A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no." He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because "Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero."

In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.
..................................................

That pretty much says it all, imo.

lw

What does that have to do with it JRL? I know what your beef is, the anti-semitic thing. He disavowed the statements. You and lw seem to think that's not enough. I ask what would be enough and you say "What's that got to do with anything?" It's got everything to do with it. He said he did not agree with it and did not write it. What more do you expect him to do?

He can't go out and get back all the newsletters. All he can do is say if he agrees or doesn't agree. I ask again, what is he supposed to have done that he didn't do?

What about all the scurrilous comments made by many candidate's staffs over the years? They say something like 'that person was not authorised to say it' and take it back in a lukewarm way. You guys are perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones when it's someone else but not when it's Paul. Then the words written by someone else become graven in stone and can never be explained or wiped away. Again I say, what could he reasonably have been expected to do that he didn't do?

You all are just biased and prejudiced and no amount of reason will ever sway you in the slightest.

OK, let me put it another way.....

If Ron Paul actually was the "naive" overseer who funded these hateful newsletters  and allowed his name to be used on them for decades, then that leads me to grave doubts about his ability to function in capacity of president of the U$. And that's the name of this game.

lw

First of all, you are the only one calling him "naive". Volunteers with an agenda wrote things he didn't agree with.

Secondly, it didn't happen over a period of decades, it was over a decade ago. Big difference. OK mr perfect lw who has never made a mistake, answer my question about what he should have done but didn't do? And you, mr perfect #2 JRL, you answer it too. You guys shoot from the hip mighty quickly but are slow on the draw to come up with answers.

The newsletters were printed over a period of DECADES. Please read the article above.

What should he have done?

Beats me.

I'm not perfect, but I'm not running for president, either.


If RP is incapable of overseeing a staff of volunteers to that degree over that period of time, I'm not interested in voting for the guy.

However, I really believe the guy is a wing nut, after reading some of the ideas spelled out in his newsletters over the course of decades as well as his public affiliation with various right-wing fringe groups.

lw

He put out a newsletter over a period of decades. The controversial comments were during a very short period of time. Nice try, lw.

"What should he have done?

Beats me."

You are quick to beat up on him for not doing something. But you can't even tell us what he should have done. If the mighty JRL, lw and even cenacle can't tell us what he should have done, how do you know he did anything wrong?

You don't. That's why it's all bias, no facts. He did nothing wrong, it's all guilt by association. He is the victim of people with an agenda.

quote from above: Paul's newsletters have carried different titles over the years--Ron Paul's Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report--but they generally seem to have been published on a monthly basis since at least 1978. (Paul, an OB-GYN and former U.S. Army surgeon, was first elected to Congress in 1976.) During some periods, the newsletters were published by the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, a non-profit Paul founded in 1976; at other times, they were published by Ron Paul & Associates, a now-defunct entity in which Paul owned a minority stake, according to his campaign spokesman. The Freedom Report claimed to have over 100,000 readers in 1984. At one point, Ron Paul & Associates also put out a monthly publication called The Ron Paul Investment Letter.

......................

The offensive material has been uncovered recently in issues of his newsletter going back to the late 70's. I'm guessing the offensive material you are speaking of was uncovered on-line awhile back and dates to the late 90's. There is DECADES of trash-talk recently discovered in archives of major universities. The offensive material was published under RP's name in the 70's, 80's AND 90's.

Too naive for me.

NEXT!!!!

lw

Lets see some proof of that. I'm suspicious of people who have their minds already made up and then just happen to find exactly what they were looking for. Your statements are too vague to take at face value. Sounds like gossip to me.

He is accused of the greatest cardinal sins in the minds of the politically correct. No, not murder, not rape or corruption, not anything like that. Real serious crimes like "antisemitism" "racism" and the worst of all, "homophobia" whatever that means.

Bill Clinton faced credible accustations of rape and forcible groping but just laughed it off. At least he didn't say "nigger" which would have unleashed a flood of disapproval. He murdered many people not the least of whom were the innocents killed when he sent cruise missiles to blow up a hospital on the eave of impeachment trial in the senate. But he didn't call anyone a "dirty jew" so he's A - OK.

Sen Kennedy killed an aide when he went for a swim a few years back. But he didn't call anyone a queer so it's no biggie. Hill-billy stole from clients at the rose law firm but she is always pc so who cares about that?

Yeah, lets not worry about who has the best policies or direction for the country. Lets just talk about who's the most pc and leave it at that.

Most pc?

Paul was my second choice for prez until I found the info concerning his decades of hate/trash talk through news release.

As far as his policies go, I was willing to overlook many of the nut-bag proposals he's made due to his vision of smaller, less obtrusive gubmit. Couple the current nut-bag proposals and the decades of releasing hateful/spiteful propaganda under the name of RP and the dude isn't a person I want as president.

Btw, your post directly above is an example of why I rarely read your posts anymore, stoney.

lw

"What does that have to do with it JRL? I know what your beef is, the anti-semitic thing. He disavowed the statements. You and lw seem to think that's not enough. I ask what would be enough and you say "What's that got to do with anything?" It's got everything to do with it. He said he did not agree with it and did not write it. What more do you expect him to do? "

How do you know what my beef is??  My question was speciffically aimed at your ATTACK on Ray with Ted Kennedy issue. That seemed truely left field to me, as does your anti semitism statement.

I think lw made a good point here: "If RP is incapable of overseeing a staff of volunteers to that degree over that period of time, I'm not interested in voting for the guy. "

Plus he is anti choice.

hang him with his own words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw)

A medical doctor with an undergraduate degree in biology...go figure...

 :twisted:

"How do you know what my beef is??"

Because I know you.

"My question was speciffically aimed at your ATTACK on Ray with Ted Kennedy issue."

What attack was that? Now that you've dragged in all the red herrings.

And lw, no one reads your anti gw rants anymore.

Quote from: "Stonehenge"What attack was that? Now that you've dragged in all the red herrings.

And lw, no one reads your anti gw rants anymore.

stoney: I no longer read your posts partly because you are the king of red herrings. For example, were talking about ron paul and you bring up the Kennedy fiasco. Somehow, in most discussions, you manage to get off track, throw up a bunch of unrelated opinions and then accuse others of being the idiot.

Btw, how many rebel flags you flying in your shack by the swamp?

Long live the Union. Long live President Lincoln!

lw

The issues I brought up are central to the criticism leveled at Paul. He is not accused of being wrong, he is accused of not being PC, though his critics will never admit that's the case.

"1. Ron Paul does not value equal rights for minorities. Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would repeal affirmative action"

In what way is affirmative action the same as equal rights for minorities? This is typical of liberal double talk. Out of one side of their mouth they say they want equal rights, and out of the other side they say they want affirmative action which is extra rights for certain ethnic groups. So which is it?

As a matter of fact, doing away with aff action IS giving equal rights to minorities. It puts them on the same footing as others. So by supporting equal rights, Paul reveals the hypocricy of the left and violates the prime tenent of Political Correctness. PC = saying one thing and doing another.

Kennedy, Clinton, Hillary and others do this very well so they get approval.  The fact that they have done evil, illegal and immoral things means nothing as long as they are PC. Not being PC is central to the attacks on Paul.

I would not vote for Paul because I disagree with several things he is in favor of. But cutting back on the UN and a few other things are right on the money. The PC crowd doesn't even want these subjects to be discussed. I get whined at by the usual bunch when I bring them up.