Category Archives: Ron Paul

Trump Could Send The System’s Sycophants Scattering

Democrats, Elections, Media, Republicans, Ron Paul

“Trump Could Send The System’s Sycophants Scattering” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

During the first primetime Republican debate, in Cleveland, Ohio, Donald Trump delivered the same slogans and failed to flesh out positions. While the man is quick and engaging; he came unprepared.

Ideas have not solidified Trump’s success, but a powerful persona, true-blue patriotism and a willingness to put his substantial estate to the service of both. Trump now enjoys more support than he had prior to Cleveland, leading in national polls and in early voting states.

Henpecked though he was by the “Murdoch Media’s” golden goose—Megyn Kelly—Trump demonstrated that he is what his constituency craves: A man in the old mold. Trump is not an excuse for a man who’ll bolt like so many rabbits when a couple of girls get in his face and grab his mic. I allude to socialist-in-Seattle Bernie Sanders (D), over whom two African-American women rode racial roughshod.

When members of the media pontificate that Trump’s ascent reflects the base’s disgust with the establishment, they fail to include themselves in that detested clique.

To befuddle viewers and malign The Base, media even fib about who the establishment is. Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, a bastion of the Republican establishment, asserted on Fox News that the Koch brothers of Koch industries, big bankers for the Republicans, are not of the establishment.

Central to the media enterprise is a worldview that looks to the state and its stooges as the sole repository of the public good. The idiot’s lantern is monopolized by men and women who’re of The system and for The System. Is there any wonder they are bucking the force of nature that is threatening their equilibrium?

Donald Trump must be observed from the standpoint not of policy, but of someone who could smash apart the political system and send its sycophants scattering to the four corners of the earth.

Trump is making this stagnant political spoils system oscillate. The particles—political and media movers-and-shakers—hate him for it.

So it was that GOPer Jonah Goldberg accused Americans of throwing a tantrum at the politicians and the pundits. The word “tantrum” is meant to demean; it implies a hissy fit; a childish outburst of rage.

The establishment, Republican and Democrat, has a tendency to hunt in packs. Thus did compadre John King of the liberal network CNN offer a variation on the Goldberg theme: “The base wants to break all the glass.” (I hope J. S. Bach forgives the pairing of his sublime Goldenberg Variations with Jonah.) …

Read the complete column. “Trump Could Send The System’s Sycophants Scattering” is now on WND.

Featured on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine: “Dinesh D’Souza’s Epic Doozie.”

Rand Paul Looks Down At The Little People, Too

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Rand Paul (R-KY) has the eyes of a dead fish. The man is charmless; antipathetic. Not surprisingly, he has a nasty streak. Rand, too, looks down on the little people for finding merit in Donald Trump.

“Wolf,” whined Paul to the CNN reporter, “if you would give [sic] some other candidates time from eight in the morning until eight at night all day long, every day for three weeks, I’m guessing some other candidates might rise as well.”

“I think this is a temporary sort of loss of sanity,” he added, “but we’re going to come back to our senses and look for somebody serious to lead the country at some point.”

Like Rand Paul, another dynastic politician, who, like liberal and Republican regimists, looks down at the little people?

The rest.

Related: “Liberals Look Down At The Little People*“

UPDATED (6/7/2017) Political Pimps Feathering Their Nest On The Public Dime

Democrats, Ethics, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

UPDATE (6/7/017):

The Post below is from 2015, but the problem is ongoing and undetected. Politicians arrive in DC and right away begin feathering the nest and flogging products, on the taxpayer’s dime. Conservatives detect nothing unethical. Sen Mike Lee is selling a book. AGAIN.

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What do you know? Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee were on Fox New today to flog their books, among other things. The problematic Patriot Act and its impending renewal seemed incidental to the job of promoting their products on our dime. So lax are the ethical standards that bind these politicians that they can move seamlessly between their roles as politicians, authors and all-round eternal self-promoters.

It sticks in one’s craw that we pay them to feather their nests. Ron Paul also used his celebrity to sell stuff (although I forgave him because of his outstanding service to liberty). To be honest, I’ve never read a book of his. He’s not a particularly good writer. I am sure the former congressman did not improve on Murray Rothbard when it comes to thinking about the Federal Reserve’s workings. I’ll stick with Rothbard. I have his books.

What #RandPaul Gives With One Hand, He Takes Away With The Other

Homeland Security, Intelligence, libertarianism, Regulation, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State

Sen. Rand Paul went astray. His rousing remarks against the renewal of the PATRIOT Act were softened by a call for “the hiring of a 1,000 more FBI agents.” “We need more FBI analysts analyzing data,” said Paul.

Moreover, and as reported at Target Liberty, it is the legal opinion of Judge Andrew Napolitano “that the US government is lying to the American people with the claim that the mass surveillance would be suspended upon the expiration of the PATRIOT Act provision used to justify the mass surveillance program.”

Essentially, the Patriot Act will be revamped, only to reemerge as the USA FREEDOM Act.

Napolitano states:There are two other provisions in the law that the NSA relies on which will cause it to continue to spy on Americans even if section 215 of the PATRIOT Act does expire. One of those is a section of the FISA law called section 702, and one of them is a still-existing executive order signed by President George W. Bush in the fall or 2001, which has not been tinkered with, interfered with, or rescinded.

By Robert Wenzel’s telling, the “best analysis of the Patriot Act renewal and the USA Freedom Act” comes courtesy of “Glenn Greenwald in discussion with Jameel Jaffer, the Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU,” at The Intercept.

The question of whether “the sunset of Section 215 will be a meaningful step towards reform” is especially informative:

GREENWALD: That’s what I was going to ask next, actually.

JAFFER: That’s a good question. The problem –

GREENWALD: Let me just interject there: the argument that people make, and I’m sympathetic to it, which isn’t the same thing as saying I agree with it, is how significant would it really be?

The NSA has all of these other authorities. They can cite executive orders and other things, on top of which they’ve done a really good job of co-opting laws in the past. We had this FISA law that said you can’t eavesdrop on Americans’ communications without a warrant, and they did it anyway.

They invented this incredibly radical interpretation of the Patriot Act – of 215 – that says “This lets us collect everything we want,” and that was the interpretation the Second Circuit, ten years later, rejected, finally, just a couple of weeks ago.

So given how adept they are at kind of co-opting the process to do what they want – the other authorities – and their propensity to circumvent the law or even break it to do what they want, how significant would it really be?

… MORE.