UPDATE III: ‘That’s How Ron Paul Rolls’ (Tosses & Gores Trump )

Energy, libertarianism, Liberty, Republicans, Ron Paul

Finally, Ron Paul takes the gloves off and goes hard-core. Yes, we want to drain the swamp. Yes, we are tired of the Tea-Party bark which has turned into the whimper of little Shih Tzus (or is it shit-so-and-sos). Department of Education? Gone. Interior, Energy, HUD, Commerce? Gone. Later bureaucrats. That’s how Ron Paul rolls.”

Excellent ad (thank you Roy Bleckert for sending the link). Give me more. If Ron Paul shakes off the shackles of the Beltway libertarians, and sticks to his original Old-Right instincts, we’re there. One problem: My man Ron forgot the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The goons must go. That is the first peace offering any candidate of mine must offer up.

Now how does a president do all this without his party taking both Houses? And how does he do all this as a pragmatic matter?

UPDATE I: JT (on Facebook): We need a uniter in this fractured country of ours. If Ron Paul can drum some sanity into the Nation of Islam, what’s wrong with that? Today I heard the Left speak fondly of him, on MSNBC, and joke about Paul’s cutting everything. Good. We want the Left neutralized. Paul is the candidate most likely to remain on the Right, and unite all factions.

UPDATE II: Newt; Serial Hypocrite and worse—serial statist. I feel a visceral urge to vomit each time I see that sanctimonious so-and-so. Still, this anti-Newt ad is unfocused and confusing. It’s hard to tell that its subject is Ron Paul. The new ad above is in a new mold.

UPDATE III (Dec. 6): Paul tosses and gores Trump. Needless to say, BAB won’t be covering the upcoming Idiocracy debate—and not because Trumpt promised to attend, but was a no-show at the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Reagan Dinner:

“The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee rejects the selection of Donald Trump as moderator for the Republican presidential debate to be held on December 27th in Iowa.
“We have conferred with our Iowa campaign chairman Drew Ivers and vice-chairmen David Fischer and A.J. Spiker who are all RPI State Central Committee Members, and they concur with this decision.
“The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity. Mr. Trump’s participation as moderator will distract from questions and answers concerning important issues such as the national economy, crushing federal government debt, the role of the federal government, foreign policy, and the like. To be sure, Mr. Trump’s participation will contribute to an unwanted circus-like atmosphere.
“Mr. Trump’s selection is also wildly inappropriate because of his record of toying with the serious decision of whether to compete for our nation’s highest office, a decision he appeared to make frivolously. The short-lived elevation of Mr. Trump’s stature as a candidate put him on the radar of many organizations and we recall that last spring he was invited to keynote the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Reagan Dinner, yet at the last minute he left RPI holding the bag by canceling. In turn, RPI canceled its biggest fundraising gala of the year and suffered embarrassment and in addition RPI was required to engage in refunding measures. Our candidate will not even consider participating in the late-December debate until Mr. Trump publicly apologizes to Iowa party leaders and rectifies in full the situation.
“Therefore our candidate Ron Paul, the champion of the Constitution, has advised he will not attend.”

UPDATED: Oy Vey Egypt (Evolution?)

America, Democracy, Elections, Gender, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Middle East

9 Replies

With few exceptions, the American media slobbered mightily over the revolution in Egypt. As a European relative put it: Americans from all political persuasions lack the smarts, the sophistication, and the familiarity with history to be … skeptical.

So, you had the Beltway libertarians joining Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News), and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) in spirit at Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate Egypt’s democratic spring; you had America’s female journos rushing to the mainly macho scene to show solidarity with the generic freedom fighters, who, it turned out, doubled up as common-or-garden gropers and rapists.

At the time, this writer wrote about the impossibility of a happy ending “in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s.” I added that, “Mubarak’s dictatorial powers were directed, unjustly indubitably, against the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim brotherhood.” Unjustly, but probably quite usefully—for now, much to the surprise of the American Idiocracy, Islamic fundamentalists have won 61% of the vote in Egypt’s first democratic election.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 36.6% of the 9.7m ballots cast last week, followed by the Salafist al-Nour Party with 24.4%.” [BBC]

The secular Egyptian Bloc came third in the first round with 13.4% of the vote, followed by the liberal Wafd Party with 7.1% and the moderate Islamist Wasat Party with 4.3%. The Revolution Continues, a group formed by youth activists behind the uprising that ousted Mr Mubarak in February, won 3.5%

“This is about freedom,” said the immensely silly Lara Logan before the freedom fighters piled up on top of her.

Indeed.

UPDATE (Dec. 6): I was waiting for a wise man to point out that the historical parallels between the Muslim world and the West are few. Islam and its people aren’t stuck in the 1950s; they’re stuck in the 7th century. Thanks to Huggs for stating the obvious. In touting the sea-change underway in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world, our moron media interviewed 0.1% of the country’s population, the intelligentsia, to extrapolate to the majority. But there is also the deep stupidity so prevalent in the US whereby under the skin, all human beings are said to be the same.

Tea Party Congress has Failed to Tackle TSA Terrorism

Homeland Security, Justice, Regulation, Terrorism

Lenore Zimmerman is defiant and articulate. Would that individuals like her replaced the Occupy Wall Street Idiocracy. The “85-year-old Long Island grandmother” is the latest victim of the homegrown terrorists of the TSA. She might be tiny and fragile, but unlike so many other TSA “victims,” Lenore is not weepy or weak:

Lenore … says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”
But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.
She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.
When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.
She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.
“I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.
As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash.
“My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.”
She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

These TSA legalized assaults happen daily in police state USA. The triumphant Republican majority in Congress claims to have a new-found affinity for freedom. If this were so, their first order of business would have been to stop the molestation en masse at the country’s airports. So far nothing has been done about the ongoing violations of the individual’s constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches without probable cause.

Face it, the Republican Party’s fidelity is to the security state, not to liberty.

Job Crushers

Business, Economy, Labor, Political Economy, Politics

Trust the public broadcaster to report the facts in detail and accompany them with transcripts. High marks for that PBS service. However, the service comes with a high price: full-on Keynesian propaganda. PBS’s jobs report begins in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), with an employer who understands that the cost of doing business is increased with every little regulatory tweak issued in DC. Says Bobby Joslin of “Joslin and Son Signs”:

“Well, two years ago, three years ago, we had to have all our tow motor people certified to operate a tow motor. … A forklift. And that cost the company $3,600. Now we’re having to dispose of all our lightbulbs. We’re in the sign business. We create a lot of volume of fluorescent tubes. So we just got through spending $8,500 on a lightbulb crusher.

Then there’s “Obamacare. When we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people and then laying them off.”

But our intrepid PBS reporter can recognize a Republican ruse when he hears one. PAUL SOLMAN thinks the small businessman he just interviewed is one dim bulb. Solman editorializes as follows: “Uncertainty of taxes and regulation crippling job creation; it’s become a Republican talking point.”

According to such Keynesians, who have always struggled with the chicken or the egg problem, business is struggling because, well, because it is struggling:

“Joslin told us business is down 35 percent over the past three years. So of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? … lack of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? But if sales drive everything, how important can policy uncertainty be?”

There is always an expert on hand to expatiate about the mysterious cycle of poverty that starts with reduced demand, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Brownian motion of the DC wealth-consuming machine:

And every businessman I know says exactly that. Non-financial companies are sitting on over $3 trillion of cash, the latest IRS data shows. Companies are not investing that money because there’s no demand. It’s not because they’re concerned that tax rates may go up or regulations may change. They need to have people and businesses with money to spend in order to invest.

[More about Voodoo economics here.]