Peter RV.  Mea culpa!  Obviously my assumption that you subscribed to the Libertarian views of Ron Paul were erroneous.

Well said Peter RV,

Paul, Kucinich and Gravel are the only ones who will “dismantle” America’s military empire overseas.

This action alone is long overdue, the military will spend billions and it will take years to clean up the toxic wastes present at some of these bases.

America has hundreds of bases overseas from Japan to Cuba where the locals for the most part despise us.

Imagine an _________ (fill in nationality) base on the outskirts of Boston or other major U.S. city, where their young soldiers continually mix it up with the locals, jet fighters, helicopters and transports come and go night and day and occaisionally crash and kill locals.  Hard to fathom?  It’s just another day in Japan where all land is at a premium.

Time to support our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines and bring them all home.  Have them spend their pay here in the U.S.

Cyrena, permit me add to your most recent post.  One of the central problems I see in Libertarian philosophy is that it posits government as the problem, when, if properly used, government serves as an essential buffer against the totalitarian excesses of unchecked corporate control under neoliberal economics.

On the cover of Naomi Klein’s monumental book, “The Shock Doctrine,” Chalmers Johnson observes that in her expose of neoliberal economics, Klein “rips away the ‘free trade’ and globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few.  Klein’s is a long-needed analysis of our headlong flight back to feudalism under the guise of social science and ‘freedom.’”

I see Libertarianism as a spin off of the basic laissez faire ideology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that ultimately found its embodiment in the radical capitalist views of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics which are a central target of Klein’s devastatingly accurate expose of how the so-called “free market” theology found its ultimate embodiment in the corporate torture chambers inside Pinochet’s Chile and Argentina’s military junta.  Klein demonstrates how Pinochet, corporations and the Chicago Boys were intimitely linked even prior to the 9/11/73 blood-soaked, coup which toppled the government of the democratically-elected socialist, Salvador Allende.

Murder and torture not only specifically targeted all Marxists and union representatives, but the very concept of collective empathy.  Within the torture chambers, the “ultimate acts of rebellion...were small gestures of kindness between prisoners, such as tending to each other’s wounds or sharing scarce food.  When such loving acts were discovered, they were met with harsh punishment.  Prisoners were goaded into being individualistic as possible, constantly offered Faustian bargains, like choosing between more unbearable torture for themselves or more torture for a fellow prisoners.” Those prisoners who were broken by the process “represented the ultimate triumph for their torturers:  not only had the prisoners abandoned solidarity but in order to survive they had succumbed to the cutthroat ethos at the heart of laissez-faire capitalism--’looking out for No. 1...’”

Given the reality of corporate power the Libertarian’s anti-government philosophy amounts to disarming in the face of an overwhelming hostile force.  It’s overemphasis on individualism ignores the essential nature of empathetic solidarity embodied in res publica and democratic socialism.  The “free market” slogan is nothing short of the embodiment of “freedom is slavery” from George Orwell’s “1984.”

•
#108792 by David
• He’s a Liberatarian and a strict constitutionalist, so regardless of his personal conservative beliefs, his platform maintains that almost all decisions are left to the states.  What is so wrong with that?
David,
In ‘theory’ this would be so wrong, (that ‘almost’ all decisions be left to the States). In reality, it doesn’t carry over. The tenets of Libertarian theory sound attractive to many, who believe that it’s best to ‘keep government out of our business”. I would agree –to an extent- with that THEORY. It just doesn’t play out that way in reality.
Theoretically speaking/thinking, we could (as any State population) simply secede from the “Union”. The Constitution certainly allows for that, and if nothing else, I’m clearly a believer in that document. But in reality, how and who would decide WHICH of these ‘almost’ all decisions would be left to the States? More importantly, what happens when a State, ANY state, falls under the same tyrannical dictatorship that we have been subjected to, under the current federal leadership?
In other words, to WHOM does any State, apply for redress or ‘protection’ from such an entity? Should we leave it up to each individual state, whether or not they choose to provide education for their population? Should we leave it up to each individual State to determine whether or not they will have a Theocracy, and use the Bible as the rule of law, or the Constitution? These are only a few of the considerations, and things to consider. If we left it up to each individual state, to decide on whether or not to tax it’s citizens, (or in what form, sales tax, income tax, etc, etc) how would that all play out on the federal level?
Theory and ideology alone cannot sustain a democracy. So, in that respect, the ideology of Ron Paul, (though I’ve said he’s a nice enough guy) cannot sustain us as a democracy. Not unless you want to simply start carving up the whole, and forcing each state to maintain itself as an independent nation. I don’t know how practical that is.

Check out the most recent posting by Ernest Canning. (#109084) He does a far better job than I, at addressing these realities.

And, while I’m not suggesting that Ron Paul isn’t a nice guy, or that he doesn’t have a view point to be considered, I don’t see his views as being the guiding policy for what would be the practical realities that concern the nation, as a whole.

Based on that, it pretty much doesn’t matter where he might be from originally. He is and has been (for quite some time) a representative for the state of Texas, and his very conservative views, (specifically these ties to his religious beliefs) can only be quite dangerous, once the realities/practicalities of these views are examined. And, that’s not disregarding, that he’s probably a nice enough guy.

So, if we get to have an election this time around, and if it actually gets to MEAN anything, (like if our votes are actually counted) I think the best chance for all, (in the realities of the day) lie with Kucinich and Gravel, although admittedly, the mainstreamers have done everything they can to squash them.

Leave it to der Fuhrer to mix it up with a shark like Putin after isolating the US internationally with his imperialist, paranoid blood for oil war. Iran doesn’t need to develop a nuclear program, Russian already has them covered. Any hopes for a UN consensus against Iran’s sabre-rattling has been buried by Cowboy George-who seriously needs to be put on Respiradol.
While I can appreciate wishful thinking, and of the major party candidates like Kucinich best, all this talk of ‘President Ron Paul’ and Kucinich as a Great Demo Hope is nonsense. American people are lemmings and this election, if it ever comes off, is just another cliff. The money, the conglomerates that own the US determine who our ‘leaders’ are, and always have. Billary Clinton and Guiliani-do any of you people think either of these stiffs are going to get us out of the Middle East? Stop playing both sides of the Israeli conflict by selling arms to both Israel and Saudi Arabia? Rebuild our inner cities, provide universal health insurance, and take care of aging infrastructure? Dream on.

It isn’t the size of government, but the uses to which it is put that is at issue.  Under the hard-right, ostensibly “public” institutions have been increasingly perverted into tools for maintaining and accellerating wealth disparity.  The military-industrial complex is a core example of that.  It essentially ceased being a matter of national defense the moment they changed the title from War Department to Department of Defense.  No one has truly served in the military solely to “defend” this country since the end of WW II.  The weapons industry has acquired its own raisson d’etat that has nothing to do with this nation, and now the entire process no longer entails simply enrichment of the weapons manufacttures while the elites seek to enforce the “New World Order” but war as an instrument of enrichment even down to the level of replacing citizen-soldiers with well-paid mercenaries.

While I can understand within this context, not to mention within the context of expanded governmental intrusion into our private lives via such things as warrantless NSA electronic eavesdropping, why intelligent individuals like Peter RV, Patrick Henry and Ron Paul find themselves ascribing to libertarian notions that all evil resides in a government that is too large, I think libertarians confuse misuse of government with the function of government.  In our society both the misuse of government and the devaluation of democracy are the function of a growing wealth disparity.

Governments, large or small, can be made responsive to the will of the people, they can serve as a positive source of inspiration and well being only where as modicum of economic demoracy insures the reality of a political democracy.

cyrena,

While I respect your view, I am a states rights advocate and will support the Bill of Rights unto death. 

I believe the federal government is far larger than it should be and forces unwanted and unfunded policies into our day to day lives where it has no business.

Aside from spending extraordinary amounts of money which it prints out of control, it creates incidents to justify its continual expansion.

I’m suprised a council of governers hasn’t elected to reign in the federal aggrandizement, they have the power. 

All politics are local.

#108633 by PatrickHenry
• My friends and myself recently changed our party affiliation from independent to republican so we can vote for Ron Paul in the Maryland republican primary.
I like Kucinich, except his views on gun control.
President Ron Paul is our best chance to avert WWIII and regain America’s prominence as a moral leader in the world.
PartickHenry….

PLEASE, PLEASE…before you do this. It IS a BAD MOVE. Ron Paul is NOT the guy. Oh NO, he is NOT the one. The only hope that could possibly come from a vote for Ron Paul, (if we even get that far) is to take it away from Guiliani, (already slated to be the next President, again…if there’s even an election).

So please, don’t dilute your vote this way. Stay on your Independent ticket. Once we’re past the primaries, (again, if they happen) you can cast your presidential vote for whomever you want.

Ron Paul –again- I have to remind you of this, is probably a ‘nice guy’. He’s also a conservative from Texas. I’m sorry, that simply eliminates him from any consideration, even if he wasn’t an ‘ideologue” who has promised a system that will finish off the destruction of our nation. Libertarian doctrine always sounds good on paper. Just like so many Walt Disney features. Here, in the 21st Century, we are already bogged down (and in rapid decline) by the religious ideologies that surround the likes of Ron Paul, no matter how ‘well intended’ he may sound.

For a whole bunch of people, George the psychopath Bush sounded equally ‘sincere’. Yep, that’s what my ideologically compromised cousin said about him…”I think he’s sincere”. Umm humm, he’s sincere all right, but not in the way my cousin assumed. It’s the religious stuff that makes Ron Paul so dangerous.

Kucinich and gun control are negotiable issues. He’s not gonna take away your guns. We all know how important they are to so many of you. Don’t let that one thing be a reason to plunge us all the way back to Medieval times. Oh my God. Ron Paul. Oh my God.

Please don’t do it.

Peter RV--Bush may well be “insane” but I do not think he is delusional to the point of actually believing the Ahmadinejad either said that he intends to destroy Israel or that he actually believes Iran is seeking to acquire a nuclear arsenal.  His, and more especially Cheney’s, form of insanity has to do with their sociopathic personalities that underscore their lust for total power. 

In 1933 Hitler & Goring immediately rejected the information provided by the non-Nazi head of the Prussian police, Rudolf Diehls, that the Reichstag fire had been the work of a lone-crazed assassination.  Knowing full well that it was, they insisted it was part of a Communist plot, precisely because such a plot permitted them to seize the moment, securing from the non-Nazi ministers of Hitler’s cabinet and from President Hindenberg a decree that transfered most of Hindenberg’s power to Hitler and opened the door to a later transfer of all legislative power to Hitler when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act. 

As revealed by his book, “Against All Enemies,” Richard Clarke found himself in the same position as Rudolf Diehls when, immediately after 9/11, he informed Bush that there was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.  Bush wouldn’t here of it.  He told Clarke to go back and find a connection.  Cheney and Rumsfeld then set about fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy--and low and behold these sociopaths made numerous statements to the American people to suggest just such a connection in the run up to the war in Iraq. 

You cannot accept anything these people say as a true expression of what they believe.

I attempted to call Pelosi, her mail box is full and is not taking any more messages.  Put impeachment on the table and get her head out of AIPAC’s ass.

I sent a similar E-Mail to my representative, Steny Hoyer, who recently got back from his AIPAC sponsered junket to Israel (to kiss the ring no doubt).  Alot of his 5th district voters are turning against him as he is the majority leader of a do nothing congress who continues to allow Bush to operate.

My friends and myself recently changed our party affiliation from independent to republican so we can vote for Ron Paul in the Maryland republican primary.
I like Kucinich, except his views on gun control.

President Ron Paul is our best chance to avert WWIII and regain America’s prominence as a moral leader in the world.

More “persuasion operations” from the current administration ... and as many have noted, very similar to the arguments they made for the invasion of Iraq.

Seeing through the propaganda we face is sometimes difficult, and sometimes it seems very easy.

Maybe we are are just getting more experienced at it or, after seven years of the current administration, we just expect deception to justify expanded war and bloodshed.

Thoughts on this in the article ...

“Mind wars: Americans, global community are targets of deception on Iraq, threats to peace”

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle. asp?articleID=14097

#108516 by mary

• Call the Speaker’s comment line and tell her to put Impeachment back on the table NOW. 202-225-0100....

Mary, I too thank you for including this number. I fear using it right at the moment. I’m sure I’d ‘tell’ her more than to put Impeachment back on the table. Oh my, I’m just SURE I would. And, it wouldn’t be nice. And, they’d come and lock me up. So, I’m gonna let purplewolf put my comments in as well. (ya’ll know pretty much how I feel about all of that).

#108508 by MLMrev

MLMrev…

Thank you so very much for including this information, on
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”. We called a hasty meeting last week, to try and explain what was going on, and how to prepare for it. (at least one of our professors is on the “100 most –dangerous- professors- list”. It’s so disgusting, seeing as he is top notch…the best…a true gift, at least to his students, not to mention being a brilliant humanitarian). Anyway, at the time, we didn’t have the petition, or these links available and assembled.

So, thanks so much for providing them. I’ll get this stuff out right away.

Matter of fact, I’m thinking I should maybe post this on a few of the other threads.

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week would be more appropriately named…Spread the Ideological Infection of Xenophobia Week”. Or…just shut everybody up, and don’t allow them to think.

(They claim that University campuses are ‘hotbeds’ of radical thinking/dissent.)

No, that would be the White House and supporting institutions, both political and religious. (even though they are now the same)

More “intelligence”......

This is really “fun-da-mentaL!!! Keep your eyes on the “spies” - maybe you can see Osama bin Laden amongst the “bedsheets”.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrJ-GHa3ufI&mode=re lated&search=Aashiyaana troupe practice

Mary, last I heard,I believe it was on Realtime with Bill Maher,only 19% thought he was doing a good job. Thanks for the phone ##.

And can you believe 27% of the country still think he’s doing a good job!  Since I’ve never been very religious, I guess I just don’t get it.  I agree, if we don’t take action real soon, we are going to see just how much the rest of the world hates us.  Call the Speaker’s comment line and tell her to put Impeachment back on the table NOW. 202-225-0100....

And on campuses in the U.S., there is a concerted effort to silence critical thinking and equate dissent with treason; under the guise of “academic freedom” and “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"…
All with the aim of creating an atmosphere on campuses where an attack on Iran would not seem so awful.

GREAT SITE WITH LOTS OF INFO/PLANS/ETC.:
DefendCriticalThinking.org

RECENTLY CREATED BY PROFS: Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University (PETITION)
Petition

VIDEOS:
“Horowitz and Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” ( http://www.worldcantwait.org)
YOUTUBE VIDEO

“Expose ‘IFAW’” (independent)
another YOUTUBE video

Someone should just give Bush and Cheney some boner pills and then maybe this would end.

Dajani is correct; this is reminiscent of the cold war with one exception: we currently have a crazy president at the White House who surrounds himself with dangerous people. I believe that an attack on Iran is imminent. I find these intelligence reports you have been lately posting insightful and different.

#108453 by weather on 10/20 at 5:54 am: “...as the climate moves center stage and humbles our little plans and designs, we will come to learn we mattered little all along....”

This is the other lesson Bush + Co failed to learn from Katrina!

Osage posts a direct hit on the reason as a country we are suffering from such low self-esteem.

As the climate moves center stage and humbles our little plans and designs, we will come to learn we mattered little all along.

There is one major player in the U.S. which would benefit immensely from a return to the Cold War--the military-industrial complex.  Since the perception of a threat has always driven defense spending, merely threatening WW III is worth billions.  (The use of the words “defense spending” and “Department of Defense” are somewhat Orwellian.  Most of these weapons are for offensive purposes, and what we really deal with is a War Department).  And don’t expect this to change if Clinton succeeds Bush.  As revealed on Democracy Now, “new figures show Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton has emerged as the candidate most favored by the nation’s leading weapons companies.  Clinton has received...more than half the amount given to all Democratic candidates and 60% of the total that has gone to Republicans.”

......and set right the balance of dark and light in the universe.

George W. Bush personifies the most malevolent, irredeemable and diabolic aspects of mankind. Not only is he wantonly destructive, purposefully dishonest and shamelessly unremorseful, he disgracefully defends his catastrophic decisions by hiding and perpetuating the devastating impact they have on the lives of defenseless human beings. Hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men, who have not harbored a harmful thought toward another human being, have been murdered, eviscerated and maimed as a direct result of George W. Bush being the president of the United States of America. And yet, his overriding priority is to prolong the inhuman carnage he has instigated, not to end it. George W. Bush is an indelibly chilling example of what man is capable of doing to his fellow man......the worst example imaginable.

IMPEACHMENT is the only means we have of stopping the devastating consequences of the unrelenting IGNORANCE, ARROGANCE, INCOMPETENCE, DISHONESTIES, INSECURITIES, HOSTILE TEMPERAMENT, VINDICTIVENESS and PRONOUNCED PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS of George W. Bush. He is an intellectually and emotionally mean-spirited immature child who is destroying America’s honor and integrity single-handedly.  And politically correct Democrats are standing by watching as he dismantles our Constitution and rules of law creating an all powerful and self-ruling/policing ONE branch oppressive/fascist American government.  No individual in our history is more deserving of CONDEMNATION and IMPEACHMENT than George W. Bush!

This video link was posted on another thread by our resident Mudwallow. I thought it was so impressive, that I decided to pass it along.

For a psychological antidote to the river of political diarrhea spewed from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, click on and watch this video of Mike Gravel speaking to a bunch of Googlers at their headquarters in Mountain View. It’s inspiring simply hearing someone saying the words no other politico will say but that we all know are true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_OBslG2Arc

In a galaxy near you, there once was a war - and another and another....... WW3 in three parts, uhh!

bu$h is a mindless idiot. Or perhaps he arrogantly thinks you’re a mindless idiot who will buy anything he says like many of you have done in the past 7 years.

I know where bu$h was during the Vietnam war when everybody (in the American political spectrum was telling us all about the “Domino Theory”. He was hiding just like many others in his administration. Hiding from service that is.

Where was he when the world tried to say the same thing about Pakistan. Remember the “sanctions” used against them?

Now Pakistan is an essential ally of the West, America in particular.

Frankly, I can understand why Iran might have thoughts of joining the Nukuler (bu$h speak) community. They have Afghanistan on their North-East border, and Pakistan on their South-East border. They have Israel just over the horizon to their West fully nuclear ready).

Finally they have Iraq to their immediate West. Remember the Eight years war started by Iraq, some say with the full assistance and support of America. And don’t forget the Western Puppet the Shah we helped put into power in Iran.

With regard to the integrity of Putin. I respect him much more than I respect bu$h. He (Putin) like his recent predessors is acting on the basis of reality.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian leader in the 80’s not only undertook the task of guiding the Soviet Union back from financial disaster brought on by their Military/Industrial complex interacting against the American Military/Industrial complex resulting in their going broke (like we are about to do now), he also unilaterally decided to end the “Arms Race”. Of course many in America still believe the stand down between the two countries was negotiated by the Reaganites but they were just opportunists that had to get on the band wagon before The Russian leader left them in the political dust.

So, this is the second time in the last three decades that a Russian leader is trying to act to bring a peaceful resolution to what bu$h poses as a serious threat of Dubbia Dubbia III (insert bu$h smirk here).

Since I’m not religious, I’m thanking whatever I conceive to be my own “Higher Power” for the fact that Putin has come to try and save us from George Bush.

Having grown up in the Cold War times, who the hell would have thought, that I would be looking at the leader of Russia as a savior against my own dictatorship.

Whether or not he can do anything, I don’t know. I only know that George Bush and Dick Cheney are madmen. How has the world dealt with these kinds of tyrants in the past?

Well, that’s a scary thought as well. Look what had to happen to contain Hitler. If WE don’t do something about Dick Bush, and soon...we’re in the firing range, and we’ve seen this coming for 7 years.

I still wonder what it will take, for folks to comprehend that. The rest of the world is NOT going to take this lightly. Why should they? They’ve already seen the damage these psychopaths can do to the rest of the world. Must we assume that they will all sit back and allow it to happen, just because WE have?

It’s a very dangerous assumption.

A dangerous and defective little boy at the wheel of a country running out of gas on a road we’ve never seen before.