Updated: Ron Paul Raises Over $5 Million

Elections 2008, Journalism, libertarianism, Media

A miserable Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC just broke the splendid news that Ron Paul has raised over $5 million. She repeatedly tagged him an “isolationist,” which we know is a pejorative intended to discredit individuals who do not support recreational, unprovoked wars. Yet more nonsense on stilts from the malpractitioners in mainstream media; Paul is no isolationist; an advocate of free, unfettered trade is never an isolationist.

O’Donnell had Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter on to confirm that, having surpassed the mummified McCain, Paul was now officially a player. You don’t say, toots.

Update: on his show, Tucker Carlson mentioned Ron Paul’s high-water mark fund raising. The ubiquitous empty dress, A.B. Stoddard of The Hill, called Paul a “spoiler.” That kind of comment, meant to indicate Paul was taking votes from a bigger ticket, is the standard shallow, smart-alecky quip one has come to expect from the commentariat. Meaningless fluff.

Bill Press, to his great credit, put her in her place perfectly. Press said Paul was the real deal; that he was raising money because he had a message people craved. It took Press, a left-liberal, to galvanize the smart but smarmy Tucker (a conservative), who then vaporized a bit about how he liked Paul, but how Paul hadn’t a chance, “Given we are all socialists now, believing government should do most things for us.” Then he muttered incongruently how he still liked Paul.

Once again, if Tucker wants to see freedom prevail and socialism defeated, why not muster some courage and stand by the man who promulgates this? That is, if you really like what you hear. Why keep up this, “I’m so witty and cynical” façade—one moment mocking the man and his chances, the next, conceding Paul’s principles are the better ones.

I can’t respect such dissembling. These commentators have no yen for freedom. I guess, feeding so close to the trough as they do, they are free. Being part of what I call the Military-Media-Industrial-Congressional-Complex, they are free. It’s you and I who lack freedom, not the connected punditocracy. They benefit from power; we don’t.

Updated: Republicans Hate the Troops

Republicans, The Military

Or else why would they have voted against Jim Webb’s “proposed amendment forcing the Pentagon to give troops more time off between deployments”? Webb comes from a military family; he’s a Vietnam veteran, a father to a son fighting in Iraq and son to a World War II warrior.

Chief among the objectors was “Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has made winning in Iraq the focus of his bid for the presidency.”

Not that he’s any less hypocritical than the Republicans, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is quite right to say that “most of my Republican colleagues are much more concerned about protecting their president than protecting our troops.”

Update: As I understand it, the idea is a simple one: to allow soldiers worn-out by lengthy deployments sufficient time to recover—allow them at least to rest up. That’s why I say Republican puling about loving the troops is nothing but posturing. They won’t even allow the poor sods to get a break from the Iraqi inferno.

Quotations

IlanaMercer.com, Political Philosophy, The Zeitgeist

The quotations on IlanaMercer.com are now organized under topics. If you find a quote you like (in my work), which hasn’t been included in the hundreds of quotations, let me know. I am updating them as we speak, and am including some fun quips on the Vagina Monologues, under “Feminism & Feminization,” and others under “Homosexuality & Sexuality.”

Rudy’s Repulsiveness

Conservatism, Elections 2008, Politics, Republicans

About Giuliani, Clyde Haberman of the New York Times writes this:

“Non-New Yorkers got a taste of it the other day when Mr. Giuliani interrupted his speech — a very important speech — to the National Rifle Association in Washington. His cellphone rang. It was his wife, Judith. Smack in the middle of his talk, he whipped out the phone.

‘Hello, dear,’ he said in a syrupy voice. ‘I’m talking to the members of the N.R.A. right now. Would you like to say hello?’ He listened, and laughed. ‘I love you, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m finished, O.K.?’ he said. He listened a bit more. ‘O.K., have a safe trip. Bye-bye. Talk to you later, dear. I love you.’

Campaign aides said it was a spontaneous moment, with Mrs. Giuliani calling just before she boarded a plane.

Granted, lots of people call loved ones before a flight. But a presidential candidate doesn’t shut off his phone, and instead takes a call, in the middle of a major speech? The episode was so bizarrely cutesy-poo that more than a few people in the audience went, Eeeww! Nor was it an isolated incident; the same thing happened in Florida three months ago.

The cellphone routine was not Mr. Giuliani’s sole icky moment last week.

While rattling the cup in London, he told reporters that he was ‘probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.’ Oh? And who, someone asked, also makes that rarefied list? ‘Bill Clinton, Hillary,’ he replied before aides hustled him away.

Offhand, we can think of any number of Americans who might be more famous worldwide. President Bush, anyone? How about Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey?

The real revelation was Mr. Giuliani’s sense of his own importance. It was on display again in his N.R.A. speech. Freshly returned from London, he told the audience, ‘It’s nice to be here in England.’ Then, seeing an American flag, he said, ‘Ah, America.’
He meant it as a joke about the mental scrambling that the rigors of campaigning can cause. But the underlying assumption was that people were so focused on him that they knew his travel schedule by heart. Many in the audience didn’t get it…

It kicked in hard several times with the mayor’s cross-dressing skits, including one time when he squealed in delight as Donald Trump nuzzled his fake breasts. It turned up in 1999 when he joked to a black audience, of all groups, about the hard time he had getting a New York taxi to stop for him.
It emerged when he told reporters that he was leaving his wife — his second wife — before he bothered to tell her. It resurfaced a few months ago when wife No. 3 allowed that this was her third marriage and not her second, as she had let everyone believe for years.”

Don’t forget how Giuliani Nifonged great business men like Michael Milken.