printWatching Diane Sawyer struggle to come up with a remotely coherent question to the Republican presidential front-runners in Manchester, New Hampshire, was a reminder of the ABC “news” network’s close ties to the Walt Disney Company. What a gushing imbecile is Sawyer.
Here are some impressions off the top of my head, since, naturally, transcripts are not available from ABC:
Ron Paul was hardly approached on any matter. He ought to have certainly butted in on the proper perspective on marriage, gay or other. Leave it up to the churches and synagogues to decide who to marry. The state has no place solemnizing any marriage, gay or other.
Mitt Romney thinks that state infrastructure projects are different in their economic “stimulative” effects to other state spending. And he says he understands the economy? (He merely understands economics better than Barack.) The funds for both kinds of projects come from the same source: taxes, or deficit spending. I’d like to know how certain state spending generates plenty, and how these smart Republican statists can calibrate these finer points.
Mitt’s Synophobia certainly tracks with that of the atavistic idiot Donald Trump.
Sadly, Sinophobia is sanctioned among American opinion makers. The dislike for China falls within the realm of perfectly respectable economic theory. Accordingly, the Chinese have levered themselves out of poverty not through industry, frugality, and ambition, but by manipulating their money and stealing American intellectual property.
All these asses were apoplectic about Obama’s proposed tokenistic cuts to the sacred military-industrial-complex. By the CATO institute’s assessment, “the Pentagon’s new strategy justifies a minor defense budget cut. The Obama administration wants to grow military spending at a pace slightly less than projected inflation for a decade.”
The US’s military budget is six times that of China. Obama’s proposed “pared-down military” would still leave us with the largest military in the world (and some of the most porous national borders too).
The federalization of marriage and whether Ron Paul would make a third party run: In terms of the debate’s level of abstraction, these topics were all poor Diane could cope with. When matters constitutional were discussed for a little too long, Disney’s Diane protested the flight into abstraction.
This was possibly the worst debate so far.
UPDATE I: CTV ON PAUL’S “LEFTIST RANT.” You won’t find the Paul excerpt below on ABC, which moderated the New Hampshire debate, last night. After all, for ABC, a “leftist rant” is a righteous rant. Canada’s CTV, however, has both excerpted and editorialized about what, in my opinion, was Paul’s misguided, if not unusual, lurch to the Left in calling American cops racists:
Paul also praised civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. when asked about 20-year-old newsletters published under his name containing racist and homophobic themes.
“One of my heroes is Martin Luther King, because he practiced the libertarian policy of peaceful resistance,” Paul said.
He then went on a positively leftist rant about how drug laws are enforced in the United States, pointing out that black men are incarcerated at disproportionate rates.
“How many times have you seen the white rich person get the electric chair?” he asked. “If we really want to be concerned with racism…we ought to look at the drug laws.”
A rightist like myself abjures anti-drug laws on the grounds that they are wrong, not racist. The fact that these laws ensnare blacks is because blacks are more likely to violate them by dealing drugs or engaging in violence around commerce in drugs, not necessarily because all cops are racists.
Cops deal with the reality of crime. It is an error—and wrong—to accuse them all of targeting blacks when the latter actually commit more crimes in proportion to their numbers in the population. This is also a losing strategy with rightists. It is akin to aping Obama, who went hell-for-leather at Sgt. James Crowley, calling him a racist for mishandling his pal Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. That strategy helped BHO lose the midterms.
UPDATE II: The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism.
Myron, your list below is hardly an exhaustive list of why the arrest racial differential is what it is. List of priors, perhaps? As for Paul’s contention, last night, that blacks suffer most from wars waged. I was almost sick. More lefty nonsense. Try poor white kids from the South, who are also least likely to get into college even when they whip black applicants and rich whites with their test results.
There is nothing worse than a left liberal man—he’ll sell his mother for the little pat on the head from the lefty establishment. He’ll watch his son near death because of black racism, against which he never warned the poor soft boy, yet he will reach out to his son’s killer.
I am beginning to think that left-liberal men who keep scrutinizing themselves for signs of racism against their black accusers, and accuse others like themselves of the same—actually derive a homo-erotic kick of bowing and scraping to those accusers.
You guys have read my book, and yet you still believe in the myth of white privilege?! There really is no cure for obsequious left-liberalism. I recommend reading The Cannibal again, although that is not punishment, and one should be punished for lapping up left-liberal nonsense.
I feel I aged a year watching that dreadful debate – oh yes, it’s my birthday (and Ilana’s).
Ron is uncomfortable and unconvincing trying to defend his negative ads (against Santorum and previously Gingrich) in person.
Rick Perry – send the troops back to Iraq (how about Vietnam too! and Lebanon!) – because Iranians are invading at “literally the speed of light” (what the F is he talking about – a cyber attack on Iraq??).
Gay Marriage – we have a 1.5 trillion debt, 20 million illegals, more people in jail than China has, dreadful unemployment and we have to discuss gay marriage? Contraception? What’s next – questions on cough drops and bicycle training wheels?
What is all this idiotic hoo-hah over how many jobs did some Governor “create”? Who the heck decreed that some politician is supposed to “create jobs”?
The best performance last night was by Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints — sadly, I missed a few touchdowns listening to Newt’s big visions, Santorum’s big government “conservatism” and Romney making war on the evil Yellow Peril. If Obama wasn’t such a socialistic dolt, perhaps the Republican blather wouldn’t matter at all.
One additional comment – Santorum (or Fimian here in Virgina) and the other Republicans that create LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND and all this big Spending and then clamor for an idiotic “Balanced Budget Amendment” – – –
They are like drunks clamoring for Prohibition!
Diane Sawyer is the most despicable human I have ever watched grow up. After a lifetime of watching our news reporters I can say that they all turned out to be liars with agendas. It was indeed the worst debate I have seen and that says a lot since i have seen a lot. The whole system is beginning to show cracks in its validity. The people asking and the people answering are bogus. Dr. Paul stays on the simple side of truth, which confuses many….” a penny saved is a penny earned. ” A talking head would ask ” exactly what penny are you referring to here?” Their agendas have overcome their limited brains. Ilana I fear for the whole system.
I can’t watch the debates. Too painful. The MSM has an agenda, and it isn’t to educate voters.
If there is an industry that desperately needs to go bankrupt (other than the banks), it is traditional media. They’ll be bailed out and we’ll be given the bill. Count on it.
As evidenced by this and the other debates, the MSM , the GOP, the Dems, unions, arms dealers, etc. all want to maintain the status quo. Any deviation or attempt to deviate is not to be allowed and only the approved script is to be presented. With the dumbing down of our citizens, most can’t or won’t see the forest for the trees. Goodbye, New York; hello, East Orange!
Since, I don’t watch the debates or much other television, I missed Dr. Paul’s Leftist rant; however, on his comments above, I can understand his points. MLK was protesting discrimination in the south. It existed and the government had no legal right for its existence. No matter what type of person he was personally, he was right in protesting. It was the US Congress and President that made the broad sweeping Civil Rights Law, not MLK. Paul would be right commending non-violence. The drug laws do not discriminate, nor do the police and judges; however, circumstances surrounding them do. A white is a better candidate for probation, White drug crimes normally have less violence connected to them. Whites are harder to catch, not because they are smarter, but if you know black society, it is easier to catch Blacks. It’s not racism, but the facts of life that put them in that position, which appears to be what Dr. Paul means, the system is racist in result. Like abortion hurts blacks more than whites, because they abort a higher percentage than whites do, the law doesn’t discriminate but effect does.
It seems that Ron Paul is attempting to make amends for the sophomoric and insensitive comments in the 1990’s newsletters by sounding like a born-again leftist on the issue. I find him partially right and partially wrong. I am not a social scientist or expert although there are various websites about the war on drugs such as
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/64
which has some of these statistics (which, arguably, can be skewed to make various points). One stat has blacks 4 times more likely than whites to be ARRESTED for marijuana but 12 times more likely to be IMPRISONED – now this could be because (a) the amounts of pot are different OR (b) whites have better access to better legal defenses OR (c) juries/judges show racial bias OR (d) some combination of all these. Certainly the Kennedy and Bush kids are less likely to do hard time for their problems (for example, Chappaquiddick) as some random noodnick.
[See post update.]
Still, I get a bit uncomfortable with a the blanket statements that Paul made implying that the death penalty is racist because blacks get it more than whites. What if it is because blacks committed much more heinous murders and at a much higher rate?
Her it goes:
1. Drug. Watch “GANGLAND” on cable TV and see what happens in most large metro cities and who conducts and profits from these distribution operations.
2. Read about “celebrity” drug users, e.g. Lindsay Lohan, and all the other repeat arrestees. My Black, teenage neighbor in the Detroit eastside spent 3 years in hard time for using…did Lohan?
3. SINOPHOBIA??? Please read “BOWING TO BEIJING” by Decker & Triplett II.
4. Diane Sawyer: she’s s-o-o-o passe’
5. Ron Paul has to do one thing every time he counters a point made by the others: WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION DOES THE FEDGOV GET THE AUTHORITY TO DO…?
6. DISCRIMINATION IS AN INHERENT PART OF LIFE EXCEPT FOR GOVERNMENT.
7. Betcha Cough Drops are FDA controlled and Training Wheels under Vehicle Safety Standards for Children!?!?
Good points Glisson! Happy Birthday RP!
I am afraid that with every debate and interview with Ron Paul it is getting harder and harder to defend him. Some of his liberal or libertarian ways are just more than I can handle. If we were all armed and ready to protect our families with those arems then I could follow free to do as one wishes, but we are not and if we raise our voices with any anger in it to a neighbor we will find ourselves deemed to be presenting a terroristic threat by the local Sheriff. Oh yes I have seen it first hand and it is ridiculous but true. It is time we bring Sara Palin out of the north country and put someone in there that might put some excitement and logic to the fray. With Ron falling apart I despise all the other folks on the stage. I liked Bachmann also, at least over the other clods up there. If we can not pull Palin in then I am going to have to go third party no matter.
Collectivist sociologists analyze people by groups as if people were electrons and protons – with ”statistical” validity but it ignores our nature as distinct individuals (vs. “identical particles”). Oriental women collect more social security than black men by living longer but black men can get into colleges with lower SAT scores than oriental women thanks to affirmative action… etc. – the “level playing field”, however idyllic, is never attainable.
The DRUG WAR is bad on several grounds: (1) it is a constitutional abuse of federal power with the “interstate commerce” excuse, (2) it penalizes a victimless crime, (3) it encourages violations of civil liberties because of its “personal” nature – e.g. no-knock home raids, etc., (4) it allows mafias to thrive to fulfill the needs of casual users and addicts.
The “racial argument” (drug war impacts blacks more than white) does not stand up by itself. One could argue that BASKETBALL IS RACIST since blacks outperform whites or that PHYSICS IS RACIST since Jews outperform Hispanics. By the reasoning of the left, ANTI-RAPE LAWS ARE DISCRIMINATORY since most rapists are men (sex discrimination) and non-white (race discrimination). Ron Paul gave in to shoddy thinking trying to defend himself against “racism” charges.
I don’t believe Dr. Paul is capable of shoddy thinking. This reeks of conscious strategy. I don’t blame him. Rhetoric is unimportant to me. If he ends up accomplishing what he promised, the reasons he cooked up for the media are uninteresting. Just git ‘er done!