First Republican straw poll of the season and it's a doozy!

Lawd have mercy, what a selection of Republicans, most right, many way right, to choose from! Politico of course has the 411, see the bottom of the post for how the email alert words the same information:

Romney won with 35 percent, beating second-place finisher Ron Paul by 24 points in the WMUR-ABC News straw poll of members of the state Republican Party. In third place was former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who won 8 percent—just one point ahead of Sarah Palin, who drew 7 percent.

*jump to*

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won 5 percent, pizza mogul Herman Cain took 4 percent, and Santorum won 3 percent—tied with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The Half-Term Governor from AK did better than I expected and Pence the fuckwit did worse.Santorum and Batshit Bachmann should of gotten nothing, but there is no accounting for some folks tastes is there? Now, the news alert I got in my email put it this way:

The full results from the WMUR/ABC/N.H. Republican Party presidential straw poll are: Mitt Romney with 35% of the 273 ballots cast, Ron Paul with 11%, Tim Pawlenty with 8% and Sarah Palin with 7%. The remaining results: Michele Bachmann and Jim DeMint with 5% each; Herman Cain with 4%; Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee with 3% each; Rudy Giuliani, Judd Gregg, Gary Johnson and "other" with 2% each; and Donald Trump and Haley Barbour with 1% each. Jon Huntsman Jr. and John Thune were on the ballot but received no votes.(emphasis mine)

I did laugh my brown ass off over Thune's returns or lack thereof. I howled over Haley Barbour's one percent. ;) All, in all, the actual Politico writeup seemed much kinder and gentler to the assholes in the bunch, wouldn't you say?

Ron Paul supports Assange and Wikileaks - Be still my heart!

I shouldn't be surprised as Paul voted with the Dim's to extend the tax cuts for the lower and middle class.. From Politico:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing the Wikileaks founder should get the same protections as the media.

Read his entire logical, to me anyway, thoughts here. And he said it on Faux Business Channel of all places.

GOP hates Bob Barr..

And why wouldn’t they? He is a right of the center guy that seems to have more scruples than any Rethug on the ballot. Yes, I am looking at you John Weathervane McCain. According to the NYT writeup yesterday, Barr is trying to appeal to the vast majority of Ron Paul enthusiasts, of which there are many.

Third party candidates can fuck up a party’s wetdream. Nader has done it to the Dem’s and Ross Perot did it to the Rethugs. From the NYT writeup:

On the ballots in 30 states so far, Mr. Barr has the chance to be a spoiler for Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, in several states, among them Alaska, Colorado and Georgia. Mr. Barr’s campaign advisers also assert he has similar potential in other mountain states, New Hampshire, Ohio and other swing states.

The Republican Party and the McCain campaign have swatted away the Barr candidacy, but some Republicans are taking it seriously. If the early polls hold up, and Senator Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee, pours heavy resources into Georgia, that state could be up for grabs, said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia.

Nader isn’t a new face on the general election front and I personally think any damage he will do to the Democratic nominee is marginal, but Barr could embarass the Rethugs. A point to make, and the NYT does, is that no Libertarian has ever gotten more than 1% of the vote. Money isn’t flowing into this campaign yet either. From the NYT writeup:

Yet Mr. Barr faces formidable obstacles. No Libertarian candidate has ever won more than 1 percent of the vote in a presidential election, and Mr. Barr is severely lacking in money, resources and name recognition. He has yet to lease a campaign headquarters, have a fund-raiser, tape a television advertisement or hold a campaign event.

There is also the fact that the convention which nominated him wasn't completely behind him either. It took six votes to hand Barr the nomination, and it was by a very thin margin. Before anyone gets excited about Barr, they should consider his record as a former Rethug member. His votes for the Patriot Act bill, the Iraq AUMF, impeaching Bill Clinton and sponsoring the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 shouldn’t endear him to anyone but the most right of the rightwing nutjobs.

Barr is attempting to distance himself from those votes now however, blaming them on the (R) after his name at the time. He now states he is “for a speedy and complete withdrawal of troops, with no permanent bases; on same-sex marriage, he believes that states should make their own laws; and on wiretaps without warrants, he is fiercely opposed, arguing that the bill that would legalize searches without warrants violates an individual’s constitutional rights”.

Barr is eyeballing the Ron Paulistas right now that consider themselves Libertarian. The Paul supporters aren’t flocking to Barr at this point however. Some are highly pissed off that Barr is pandering specifically to Ron Paul supporters. Ron Paul has refused to endorse Barr’s candidacy as well.

The long and short of it is how much support in November Barr and Nader will draw from the two main parties. Polls, which I hate with a passion, are showing both Nader and Barr garnering 3% of the vote in specific toss-up states. Obama’s bean counters are happy that Barr has joined the fray, saying he might make the difference in states which are important and still close between Obama and McCain.

All in all, it remains to be seen what Barr can do..money is his nemisis right now, and the same goes for Nader. This general election season looks to be all about the money and breaking records for how much you can raise and spend. Obama has the edge there and frankly I just want to get past the Democratic convention and head into the final stretch..I am so ready to get this shit over with, it ain’t even funny.

Like Kucinich before him..Ron Paul to protect his congressional seat.

Thank God..let the voters in his district in Texas put up with him. Ron Paul, per MSNBC, has scaled back his presidential run and is focusing on his congressional primary race, Paul spokesman Jesse Benton acknowledged.

Paul is being challenged by Republican Galveston City Councilman Chris Peden in the 14th congressional district for the March 4th Republican primary, the same day as the Texas presidential primary. Paul's name will appear on the ballot for both races in that district. Paul has raised $400,000 for the TX-14 race, Benton said. Paul cannot use his presidential funds for congressional primary, since he has not withdrawn. The campaign has about $5 million on hand for the presidential race, Benton said.

Buh Bye Ron Paul ;)

On the $5 million, Benton said, "We're not looking to take any with us. We're going to spend it on what donors contributed it for." Even though he said they're "looking to spend every dime on the presidential race," he acknowledged that there is certainly an "organization that has been built out of this campaign" that they will use after the presidential race, including their more than 300,000-person e-mail list.

He managed to build a nice little nest egg for 'other activities' wouldn't you say?

Ron Paul, Americas Bigot-Redux

I am quite certain that the legions of Ron Paul followers aren't liking the latest TNR piece about him, nor any of the blogosphere's minions that are sounding the alarm about this man. I of course am one of those blogosphere minions that want it to be crystal clear;

Ron Paul is a Bigot and a Racist. That he would allow anyone to write and publish such disgusting diatribes under his name and masthead says volume's about the man and his beliefs.

The reason I bring this up again so soon after my own post about the newsletters is that I read a very interesting post today authored by someone that actually did ghostwriting for newsletters like Paul's and knows about which she speaks. The Orcinus is a blog that I have read in the past and I find it intelligently written, without an ounce of screaming nutjob attached...unlike moi who does have a bad habit of putting my personal pov into my rantings..and sometimes not enough fact. But back to Sara's piece on Ron Paul's newsletters..

The title of her post: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, was of course a play on Alice in Wonderland. It's quite long and perhaps some folks do not want to take the time to digest it all..so let me give you some of the highlights:

Back in the day (which corresponds closely to the heyday of The Ron Paul Survival Report), newsletter clients retained my services as a writer under a work-for-hire contract. That means that -- unlike other writing work, to which I retain all legal rights -- the client ordered me to produce work carefully-tailored to their own needs, bought that work outright, owned all rights to it, and put their own names on it. (That's what makes it ghosted. My name might have appeared in a masthead, or nowhere.) My job was to take their ideas, make them sound pretty, and organize the whole into a coherent, readable newsletter. Legally and ethically, it was just as though they'd produced the piece themselves.(emphasis mine)

*snip*

If one of those clients stood up years later and insisted that no, they didn't say that -- "she put words in my mouth that I never knew about!" -- I'd be very very quick to point out that they bought it...and they own it. When they put their names over my words, they claimed full responsibility for them. Once their check cleared, it was theirs. They can't go around blaming me for any problems that might result, because they had full control and ownership from the get.

As Sara points out at the end of her article..Ron Paul can not have it both ways. He is either a man that approves of racism and bigotry that was written on his behalf and paid for by him..or he is just another bullshit politician "using "straight talk" to wow the crowds when it suits his purposes, but equally quick to tell lies to disassociate himself from decades of unsavory "straight talk" that now threatens to keep him off the national stage."

Ronnie can not have it both ways..nope. He is either a racist or a liar..and neither do I find comforting or allowable on the political stage of United States of America. A parting shot from the TNR article that also shows more of Paul's ass than he would like:

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.

Ron Paul is a wingnut..plain and simply an extremist, racist wingnut. Alex Jones is a conspiracy guy that doesn't bother me as much as some folks. As for Ron Paul..Anyone that supports him must accept the fact that their go-to guy hates people of color and won't own up to it now that he is on the main political stage. Does that make his followers racists too? I hope not. I hope it just means they are uninformed as to what their candidate of choice actually stands for.

tags: Ron Paul, ghostwriting, Bigotry

Ron Paul, America's bigot?

In my emails this morning I spied one from POAC, which I get daily and enjoy due to it's diversity of subjects and issues. In it, was a link to a TNR story about Ron Paul's old newsletters, the title of which was " Angry White Man". So, I clicked on the link and was utterly appalled at what I read. Pages and pages of bullshittery that squarely attacked Blacks, gays and others from all angles and levels. Let me give you just a taste of what the article contains, and which it attributes to Ron Paul or writers on his website which contained his name as the owner of the site:

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."

*snip*

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 TNR article's author did speak with Paul's current campaign spokesman, Jesse Benton about the inflammatory content of the decades of newsletters. Benton tried to deflect the damage by saying Paul allowed others to write for the newsletter without actually seeing what type of horrific wingnuttery was being printed underneath his masthead. The TNR author then states; 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.

There is so much more my dear reader, stuff that will curl your hair..or worse, make you physically ill. I didn't even go into the Theocratic bs contained in the article. I really don't want to post any more of it..check out the article if your so inclined, for a look-see into the wingnut known as Ron Paul..America's biggest publicly-elected bigot and premier homophobic.

tags: Ron Paul, homophobia, racism

OpEdNews-Home for Ron Paul supporters?

Seems it has become just that over there. Check out this new post about Paul. It does NOT contain any references or support links for all the verbage spewed on behalf of Ron Paul..interesting no? So I supported my pov on Paul with links in my comment there, which I will post here:

Facts about Ron Paul

His voting record shows he votes with the Repub party line 75% of the time. Source: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000583/

Key Votes and Pauls vote on those, if he voted at all:

Vote 40: H R 6: This bill would repeal tax cuts to oil companies and mandate that they pay a fee to remove oil from the Gulf of Mexico. It would also fund renewable energy programs. The act would repeal a tax break that oil and gas firms received in 2004. That break effectively lowered their corporate tax rates. It would also bar oil companies from bidding on new federal leases unless they pay a fee or renegotiate improperly drafted leases from the late '90s. Those leases did not require royalty payments on Gulf of Mexico oil production. Oil firms would pay a "conservation fee" for oil taken from the gulf.-Paul voted NO on this one along the Repub party line

Vote 18: H R 2: This bill would increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour over two years..-Paul voted NO on this along the (R) party line

Vote 135: H R 4297: Extended the Bush tax cuts.-Paul voted yes along the (R) party line

Vote 6: H RES 5: Instituted a number of changes in the ethics rules that govern the conduct of individual members of Congress.-Paul voted NO along the (R) party line

Ron Paul has missed 315 votes (27.2%) during the current Congress.Source: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000583/

Ronald Paul has sponsored 350 bills since Jan 7, 1997, of which 345 haven't made it out of committee (Extremely Poor) and 0 were successfully enacted. Source: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400311

His voting record sucks, his bill sponsorship sucks and his environmental support sucks..a real good candidate for anyone that supports Big Oil, wants a President that can't get anything done or one who won't show up for work over a quarter of the time.

Tags: Ron Paul, Ron Paul voting record

Ron Paul, good for progressives? Oh please..

Rob from OpEdNews did a piece recently about how he supports Ron Paul and why other progressives should as well. After I choked on my morning cuppa and read it several times, I was astonished that he would go the route he took to make his point. I guess in the long run, if you have to pick a Rethug to support, RP would stand a better chance than any of the rest of the current crop of jackasses.

But not with this Leftwing Nutjob folks..no sir, no way, no-fucking-how. Now, if I had to live under a Rethug rule..I guess then perhaps I might be able to say Paul would be the best of the slimy lot..but not by much, if at all.

Back to Mr. Kall's writeup. He also posted it over at DailyKos and was promptly tarred and feathered by a bunch of wingnuts. I know..not all Kos folks are wingnuts..but they surely don't like individuals that hold alternative pov's to theirs..thats a fact. You can be as liberal as they come but if you somehow step on their Kos-like toes..all hell breaks loose and they come gunning for ya and want you banned asap. Well, I slogged through many of the OpEd comments and the DailyKos comments where I found the following video:



I heart this guy..really I do..I like how he thinks about Ron Paul and other issues. His blog is pretty good although not current, I might add as is his KosBlog. So, just consider this a little YouTube and blog-whoring for James Risser a good progressive voice in the vast Blogosphere that must have a busy life since he isn't blogging regularly any longer.

Tags: Ron Paul, James Risser, OpEdNews, DailyKos

Ron Paul calls evolution a 'theory'

Ron Paul calls evolution a 'theory'. H/T to Alternet and Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority for the story and the video. Paul is a doctor, and as such I find it incredible that he would call evolution a theory..but the wingnuts will eat it up!

Tags: Ron Paul, evolution

Ron Paul hits the motherload in campaign financing..

From Politico, we get the latest info on Paul's Money Bomb..and its hefty:

Ron Paul raised an astounding $6 million and change Sunday, his campaign saud, almost certainly guaranteeing he’ll outraise his rivals for the Republican nomination in the fourth quarter and likely will be able to fund a presence in many of states that vote Feb. 5.

This makes Ronnie the king of one day fund raising in the history of American political campaigns. What do you suppose his Rethug rivals think of today's haul? If Paul does well on Super Tuesday in Feb..it could be Paul getting the
Rethug nomination. Although it's doubtful that he could muster enough national votes..right?

John Kerry held the previous record for a one day haul at $5.7m, to which I say:

Thats a lot of money for two guys who won't win the presidential election. Ron Paul has stated he wants an end to "that horrible law" Roe v. Wade, that everyone on the 9/11 planes should of been packing weapons or some such nonsense as he was blathering on about the second amendment and the topper: We should do away with most of the departments in the federal government.

Oooh..boy. If you don't believe me on those Ron Paul thoughts..watch this video: