Mitt Romney: Pioneering New Frontier in US PRESIDENTIAL FINANCING
US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has just ended an international tour intended to prop his political credentials as a world leader.
In the first leg of his trip, he angered the otherwise temperate Britons by voicing an unwarranted opinion on London’s readiness for the Olympic games. His second gaffe soon followed during the now common US presidential campaign pilgrimage to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
During his next international stop, at a closed 50,000-dollar-a-plate fundraiser for Israeli sworn citizens and American donors, he credited Israel’s “providence “and “culture” for the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians.
Romney walked out of the small private event with one million dollars for his presidential campaign.
First, the per capita income figures he used bizarrely as a measure of cultural superiority were dead wrong.
Figures from the 2011 CIA World Factbook show that Israel’s per capita income was more than 10 times that of the Palestinians (31,400 versus 2,900 dollars ), not two-fold, as Romney stated.
“…it came as no surprise to hear a racist remark from a disciple of the Church of Latter Day Saints which until 1978 did not allow black people to attend its services.”
Bluntly speaking, it came as no surprise to hear a racist remark from a disciple of the Church of Latter Day Saints which until 1978 did not allow black people to attend its services. Romney’s dullard per capita gauge of superiority is, nevertheless, self-defeating.
In retrospect, every culture has enjoyed affluence while others, including within the same culture (e.g. East and West Germany, North and South Korea) did not. In terms of economic ranking, Germany comes higher than Israel on Romney’s cultural benchmark. But, fortunately, Germany does not have wealthy donors motivated by a desire to manipulate US foreign policy and enticing Romney to come driving to Berliners on their superior culture.
But who knows? Romney could turn out to be a real pioneer. His Jerusalem fundraising broke a long held American taboo against seeking foreign money in US elections. Following his successful outsourcing career, fundraising in foreign capitals could become the new frontier in US presidential campaign financing.
The reality of being a Mormon candidate, you can’t drink a Coke because of the caffeine but you can take $100 million from the earnings of prostitutes to pay for your “expenses.” We call that “moral flexibility.”two consecutive Nixon elections, both rigged, two consecutive Bush (43) elections rigged as well and our current obscenity, a Mormon candidate for president, financially supported by cabal of drug runners, whore mongers, gamblers and international financial criminals.
I wonder how the Mormon Church manages to explain “their” candidate and Sheldon Adelson? Actually, hypocrisy is the foremost aspect of Mormonism, a religion that, only in 1979 declared “the Negro” a human being. You didn’t know that?
In order to understand Romney, you must understand his recent trip to Israel, one of the debacles of all time. Sheldon Adelson is the man who paid for it and has agreed to fund all GOP candidates with unlimited cash. Please Google the name “Sheldon Adelson.”
Actually, Romney’s “start in business” involved borrowing money from known mass murderers in El Salvador. The initial and still major investors in Bain continue to be those who ran the Death Squads and the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romney backers are cited with the murder of at least 85,000 people, killed to increase Bain profits and underwrite Bain investments. Amy Goodman of Democracy now and Huffington Post give the results of their investigation:
For millions of vulnerable households, it’s nearly a death sentence. It harms their ability to get by, and Ryan plans more cuts. Already, income inequality and poverty are at record levels.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 62% of Ryan’s cuts come from “programs for lower-income Americans.” Over 10 years, it slashes $5.3 trillion from non-defense areas. At the same time, he allocates an additional $200 billion for defense and imperial wars with automatic add-ons annually plus unknown tens of billions in black budgets.
Specific proposed cuts include:
(1) $2.4 trillion from Medicaid and other low or moderate household income healthcare programs. Medicaid loses $810 billion. By repealing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and subsidies for those most in need to buy health insurance, he gets another $1.6 trillion.
(2) $1.2 trillion from programs other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs.
(3) $134 billion from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp aid. If enacted, up to 10 million recipients would be entirely shut out.
(4) At least $463 billion from other programs serving America’s most needy, other than Medicaid and SNAP.
(5) At least another $291 billion in low-income discretionary programs, including Pell Grant tuition aid for needy students.
Ryan directs his cuts at vulnerable households unable to get by on what he wants reduced or eliminated. Millions will lose healthcare. Millions more won’t have enough to eat and will be dependent on what food banks provide. Education will suffer more than already. Poor students will have to forego it altogether.
Mitt Romney called it “an excellent piece of work.” Rick Santorum said it’s not enough. Households most harmed had no say. Opposition Democrats plan coming on board post-election. So does Obama with precise cuts to be agreed on then. For now, Senate Democrats will block Ryan’s plan. Post-election, they’ll go along.
by Stephen Lendman
US elections are farcical. Obama and Romney represent two sides of the same coin. Neither offers choice. Democracy never existed and doesn’t now. Rhetoric substitutes for reality.
Republicans and Democrats offer the worst of all possible worlds. Ordinary people are entirely shut out. Growing numbers reject both parties for good reason. Money power owns them.
“Are you better off” than four years ago, asked The New York Times? “There is really no reason for any hesitancy. The country is unquestionably better off than it was in 2008.”
Fact check
True to form, The Times offered a litany of lies. Bankers, other corporate favorites, and war profiteers fared handsomely. They still do. America’s 99% got stiff-armed. Most US households were thrown under the bus.
Virtually no jobs were created. Full-time/good pay and benefit ones are disappearing. Real unemployment approaches 23%. In the Great Depression, it reached 25%. Serious efforts were made then to reduce it. Virtually nothing is done now.
US Census figures confirm half or more of US households living in poverty or bordering on it. Record numbers need food stamps to survive. Congress plans cuts when they’re more than ever needed.
Feeding America says over 50 million Americans face hunger. One in six people are affected, including over one in five children. Political Washington ignores food insecurity. Serving corporate interests and imperial warmongers alone matter.
Duplicitous political convention rhetoric was enough to make a brash brigand blush. Banality took center stage. Demagogic deception hid reactionary extremism.
Convention delegates and ordinary people inhabit worlds apart. Pre-scripted yammering was predictable. Republicans showed contempt for human needs. Phony populism hid a similar Democrat agenda.
Privilege alone matters. Ordinary folks increasingly are on their own sink or swim. Obama’s first term reflected it. Betrayal and failure defined it. Another four years assures more of the same and then some.
The man promising hope and change broke every major pledge made. Four demagogic years did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough to matter. He’s beholden to big money. He never cared about ordinary people and doesn’t now.
“Yes we can” conceals his dark side. No pun intended. He’s a consummate con man. It’s easy to know when he’s lying, just watch his lips move.
Throughout his political career, he’s been pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Israel, anti-populist, anti-civil and human rights, and anti all values real democrats support.
He put Wall Street crooks in charge of looting the nation’s wealth. He furthered the greatest wealth transfer in history. Rules, regulations, legal restraints with teeth, and taxes were slashed to help them. Plans are on track to make America resemble Guatemala.
Full-time/high pay/good benefit jobs are disappearing. So are social services. They’re on the chopping block for elimination. The nation’s middle class is targeted for destruction. A huge underclass is replacing it. America’s more than ever militarized to control it.
Police state laws threaten freedom. Big Brother spying is policy. Privacy is a figure of speech. First Amendment rights and dissent are endangered. Tyranny, torture, corporate empowerment, and permanent wars define Obama’s agenda.
He exceeded the worst of George Bush’s harshness, lawlessness, and belligerency. Imagine what he plans if reelected. He waged war on Islam, Latino immigrants, animal and environmental rights activists, whistleblowers, people of color, the poor, anyone challenging state power, and civil rights lawyers who defend them too vigorously.
In Obama’s America, only the privileged matter. Growing numbers of others are on their own hungry, homeless, and jobless.
He looted the nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, ravaged one nation after another, and continues waging war on humanity.
He executed two Latin American coups. Honduras’ democratically elected president was ousted. So was Paraguay’s. He militarized Haiti, opened the country for business, occupied it for plunder, rigged its election, installed a pro-Western stooge, and increased the growing burden of impoverished Haitians who deserve better.
He supports the world’s worst despots. He sucks up shamelessly to Israel. He spurns long denied Palestinian rights. He plans war on Syria and Iran. Neither nation threatens anyone. America and Israel menace humanity.
He presides over a bogus democracy under a repressive police state apparatus. Habeas rights, due process, judicial fairness, and other civil liberty protections are quaint artifacts increasingly discarded.
Torture is official policy. So is Murder, Inc. Death squads operate in over 120 countries. Special forces and CIA operatives are licensed to kill. US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe.
Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It’s official Obama policy. Diktat authority affords justice to no one ordered killed.
It also lets Obama order US citizens arrested and indefinitely held without charge or trial. No proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Constitutional protections no longer apply.
US military personnel may arrest and indefinitely detain anyone globally. No one anywhere is safe. Tyranny is policy. Obama seized virtual dictatorial powers. Anyone designated a potential enemy of the state, true or false, is targeted.
Political prisoners fill America’s gulag. It’s the world’s largest by far and one of the worst. Muslims and people of color are most at risk. America’s super-rich and corporate crooks are free to do what they please. Bad as things are now, expect worse.
War rages against labor. Budget-strapped states get little help. Welfare is being cut. So are Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the needy, and other New Deal/Great Society programs.
Public education is being commodified. Plans call for making it another business profit center and ending government’s responsibility. Health care is being rationed. Only those who can afford it will get help when they need it.
Food and drug safety don’t matter. Nor do clean clean air or water. Small farms and businesses are being destroyed. Large ones are bigger and more dominant than ever.
Wall Street ones are up to one-fourth larger today than four years ago. They’re double their size a decade ago relative to the economy. Ordinary Americans are much poorer and more deprived.
Financial reform was fraudulent. Institutionalized grand theft is policy. Business as usual lets Wall Street run the country. Consumer protections don’t exist.
The worst of bad practices continue. Rules either don’t exist or are made to be broken. Bankers get what they want. Ordinary people get scammed.
Obama promised “change you can believe in.” He delivered betrayal instead. He’s anti-progressive, hard-right, reactionary, belligerent, pro-corporate, and anti-populist. He’s heartless, merciless, morally corrupt, and soulless.
Austerity is policy when help is needed. Draconian cuts were enacted. Many more are planned. Eliminating trillions of dollars in social service spending is policy. Democrats are in lock step with Republicans.
Corporate handouts, tax cuts for the rich, and Pentagon spending remain virtually untouched. Bad as things are now, imagine America in four years under either party.
Obama plans more of the same and then some. Romney is a religious extremist/corporate crook/socially destructive/imperial rogue.
He and Ryan plan exceeding the worst of Obama. Both are unapologetic. They’re indifferent to human need and welfare. They represent everything wrong with a broken system. It’s too corrupted, dysfunctional, and rotten to fix.
They’re frontmen for financialized America, super-rich privilege, and imperial lawlessness. They guarantee worse wide awake nightmares than Obama.
America’s choice in November is none. Bad as things are now expect worse. Bipartisan complicity assures it.
Romney-Bain Linked to Organized Crime in UK
US Election 2012: Mitt Romney fortune built with help from Robert Maxwell and Jack Lyons
Robert Maxwell and Jack Lyons, two of the most notorious figures in British corporate history, helped Mitt Romney build his $250 million (£160 million) fortune, it can be disclosed.
By Jon Swaine, Washington for the UK Telegraph
Maxwell, the late owner of Mirror Newspapers, invested $2 million in Mr Romney’s first private equity fund, which launched the controversial career in finance that the Republican presidential challenger now cites as proof of his ability to lead the US to prosperity.
He was recruited by Lyons, a late colleague of Mr Romney’s at Bain & Company and one of the “Guinness Four” who were convicted in 1990 over the infamous share-trading fraud at the drinks firm. Lyons and his family invested almost $3 million in Mr Romney’s fund.
Bain Capital
Both Lyons and Maxwell kept their money in tax havens. The discovery of their financial links to Mr Romney comes amid mounting pressure on the former Massachusetts governor to disclose details of his own offshore holdings, including a Swiss bank account.
Amid an onslaught of attacks from Barack Obama, Mr Romney has repeatedly refused to release tax returns predating 2010.
Mr Obama’s campaign claims the documents may show that Mr Romney profited from the destruction of companies bought by his private equity firm, or paid even less than his current 15 per cent tax rate, thanks to his foreign accounts. The disclosure of the Lyons/Maxwell links also sheds light on one of the worst periods in the history of Bain, where Mr Romney was a senior management consultant. Its London office was ensnared in the Guinness scandal after being paid millions of pounds in fees for advising the drinks company.
In 1984, Mr Romney set up Bain Capital, the firm’s investment arm, overseeing fundraising from his Boston office. Corporate files obtained by The Daily Telegraph show that Lyons, whom Bain hired to help set up its British office, was his first investor, putting in $2.5 million via a front company in Panama.
Colleagues from the time said in interviews with The Daily Telegraph that the “unlamented” Lyons, the Yorkshire-born retail magnate and close ally of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, also reported back to Boston that he had signed up Maxwell, a friend and fellow City giant. “Jack took an interest in Bain almost as if we were his sons,” said one Bain executive based in London at the time. “He wanted us to succeed in the UK and he introduced us to a lot of people . . . I remember attending a luncheon in London with Robert Maxwell.”
Maxwell, an avowed socialist, invested through his British print firm, which was ultimately controlled by his secretive foundation in the tax haven of Liechtenstein. Lyons’s nephew, Graham, and a trust in his name, invested a further $225,000. Graham Lyons, now a barrister in London, declined to discuss Mr Romney’s fund, adding: “I’m not in finance.” He referred queries to Lyons’s son Jonathon, who did not respond.
A string of Bain partners invested about $12 million of their own money; Mr Romney putting up at least $160,000. Millions more came from investors in other tax havens including the Bahamas and Switzerland, and powerful families from El Salvador, some of whom were later linked to Right-wing “death squads” responsible for murders in their country’s civil war. The $37 million fund was a great success, funding among others the global expansion of Staples, the stationers. According to a prospectus, it yielded an average return of 173 per cent a year on stakes in 21 firms, making millions in profits for its investors. “Every couple of years I would get a cheque,” one recalled. “It was always a lot more than I had put into it”. One Bain executive said: “Bain Capital is now a multi-billion dollar fund, and it’s made Mitt very wealthy”.
Maxwell died in suspicious circumstances in 1991 at the age of 68. It emerged he had plundered hundreds of millions of pounds from employee pension funds to plug holes in company finances, prompting a partial bail-out by British taxpayers.
He had sold his British print firm at a vast profit. Its later owners did not respond to questions about what happened to the Bain Capital stake. Meanwhile Lyons found himself at the centre of the scandal at Guinness, which had paid Bain millions to help rescue its fortunes, in a deal approved by partners in Boston, such as Mr Romney.
Lyons, who was being paid $100,000 a year by Bain, agreed to join a group of Guinness allies buying up Guinness stock to boost its share price and make a 1986 takeover bid for rival firm Distillers more attractive. The takeover was successful, prompting Bill Bain, the firm’s founder and Mr Romney’s mentor, to write to Lyons from Boston: “We are all delighted and look forward to hearing the story of how you managed to pull it off.”
The truth was the deal secretly included £25 million in “success fees”, or bribes, for the allies to buy the stock, and guarantees of refunds for any losses – all illegal. Lyons and three others were convicted of theft and false accounting. While three were jailed, Lyons avoided prison due to ill health. He was stripped of his knighthood and CBE, and fined £4 million. He died aged 92 in 2008. There is no suggestion that Mr Romney, nor any of the partners in Boston had any knowledge of the wrongdoing.
A Bain colleague in London described the period as “traumatic”. Mr Romney avoided the fallout by focusing on Bain Capital. “Mitt was just another partner watching this thing unfold,” said the colleague. Another British former colleague described him as “bloodless”. He added: “He was the sort of person that you would admire rather than like, and I think that continues to bedevil his political career.”
From other sources……The election in the US is likely to turn violent. We hear things like this but there is actual mobilization and very real terror warnings out tied to the election. Romney is so far behind, there has been nothing like this in US history.
The problem is, world organized crime is behind Romney. Bain has now been tracked to Africa, involvement in the blood diamond trade which is tied to arms and drugs, an explanation as to why so many bank accounts.
One of the groups paralleling his activities in Africa originated in Zimbabwe and has been involved in the development of germ warfare and the actual release of both ebola and influenza strains, not just in Africa but other areas much much closer to home.
Some might say this, certainly not me, but the groups we are talking about have, according to sources, been responsible for acts blamed on Al Qaeda and Boko Harum. Banking terrorism may have reached a new level.
There is a reason things are going this far. How far?
Out of fear of retribution (Obama is not so harmless himself) a large scale blackmail operation, worldwide, to raise funds and gain endorsements is going on.
Look for new endorsements and you will have a list of people with hidden police records of drug use and sales, sex crimes, even murder. There is so much of this going on with the Romney backers, particularly those in Africa, officially “white supremacists” and in a certain area of the Middle East recently visited that the tabloids could be filled for a decade.
Why? Why are things going this far? Part of the answer is two fold:
The military is key. A decade of missing limbs, officers being removed 6 months before retirement, losing wars and watching new ones being staged has turned the military to the left in a big way. All that protected certain people was the Supreme Court and threat of a military takeover. Now the court is coming apart and the military has totally abandoned the likes of Lindsay Graham, the Mormon Religion, the gang at the Air Force Academy and the Christian Zionists who lorded over their now “defunct” crusader army or misfits and mental defectives. Most will now be “public charges” for the rest of their lives, unemployable, many imprisoned, uncountable numbers medicated to the point of collapse. However, as they are veterans, we will continue advocacy for them with the same vigor. Being lied to and believing it is stupidity and many of the crimes committed are simply beyond our scope to sort out. Iraq and Afghanistan, leaders there, sold their own souls, many of them, and reaped a harvest of death for a pocket full of coins.
It is the current belief by many that Obama has plans, post election, to take action to secure America. This means that many “sunshine profiteering patriots” will be dealt with, either by prosecution or some other way. Those “ways” are many. The rationale is simple; great harm has been done to the United States by a few thousand people, some in government and the military and others in the financial industries and espionage. The only real legacy a president can leave anymore is simply removing a disease, excising rotting limbs, as it were. This is the language being used, some of it around the Pentagon. Lists, there are lists everywhere. Many “well known” people are on them. Some will quietly become silent and obscure.
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The establishment is rightly afraid if not terrified of the possibility of President Ron Paul because his platform is largely in sync with what the vast majority of Americans want and have not received under the Obama administration. The Republican right wing is in lockstep with the corporate establishment and committed to the status quo ~ and they also fear a Paul presidency.  “The papers continue to preach the virtues of small-government conservatism and adherence to the Constitution. Yet their editorial pages have been silent about the recently passed provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that allow the President to use military forces to apprehend Americans, both abroad and here in “the homeland,” and hold them indefinitely in military prison, without charge and without trial, if they are suspected of collusion with known terrorists or terrorist organizations. And McQuaid accuses Paul of taking a stand that is, in the publisher’s word, “nuts,” because the Texas congressman insists on the due process rights that the Congress and the President have cavalierly cast aside. The New Hampshire Union Leader/Sunday News supports the Obama policy of targeted killing of American citizens as “enemy combatants,” though they might never have committed an act of violence against the United States or been anywhere near a battlefield.” Now the Ron Paul generation understands that liberty and genuine national security is never advanced under the military-industrial-homeland war party.” The only rational option is to create a true grass roots party that encompasses the disaffected middle class. NeoCons are traitors. Establishment proponents loyal to the two party farce, do not allow genuine conservative doctrines into public policy.  |   |
The time for the truth and transparency is now as we creep into 2012 and the immediate start of the Presidential primaries. In that regard, a vote for Ron Paul in the primaries is a vote against the establishment and the special interest groups that have hijacked our Republic as well as both parties.
Saint Santorum Salafist (excuse me, “deeply Catholic”) Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum appears back in the race for chief elephant after trouncing Mitt Romney in Minnesota and Colorado. But beware: Minnesotans are an unpredictable lot, with the only black Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, their own Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and of course 9/11 Truther and wrestler-governor Jesse Ventura (1999-2003). But Santorum also won in Colorado (Romney won in 2008) and Missouri , riding a wave of distrust of Mitt’s conservative credentials and showing Romney’s one-percenter Achilles heel. Romney’s win in Maine last week was Pyrrhic, as there were no delegates, and he just edged out maverick Ron Paul. Romney and Santorum have each won four states, while Newt Gingrich has won only a measly South Carolina. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and favourite of evangelicals despite his papism, has hammered the former Massachusetts governor as being too moderate to satisfy conservative Republicans who distrust him on social issues such as abortion and gay rights which he has condoned in the past. Rick told CNN that the wealthy Mitt, a former venture capitalist, “had a great career in the private sector, but we’re not running for CEO of the country. We’re running for someone who can lead the country.” Romney was not the best candidate to take on Obama, who is “oppressing and taking away our freedoms, our political freedoms”. Santorum smacks of populism, the little guy’s candidate, thumbing his nose at the rich and (horror of horror) capitalism itself. Hey, which party is this guy in? Never fear. Santorum is just making noises. He intends to gut social security, is a fan of deregulation and torture, and a hawk on Iran: “Islamic fascism rooted in Iran is behind much of the world’s conflict,” and “effective action against Iran” would require America’s fighting “for a strong Lebanon (what?), a strong Israel, and a strong Iraq”. Mind you that was in 2006 and he was opposed to actually attacking Iran, so this newspeak may indicate … nothing at all.
The bitter disillusionment of progressives in the past four years, under the absolute best the Democrats can come up with, once again confirms that there is no real difference anymore between the Republicrats. This is because left and right have been banished from the political dictionary, replaced by what has been called the “radical centre”. This oxymoron has been explored in many (mind-numbing) treatises to describe the post-Soviet era political playing field. Consider the unpalatable 2012 options, a choice between:
Newt the Warrior - Finally Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, said gasoline should be $2.00 per gallon. Based on supply and demand, too much supply, little demand and nothing but negative factors in all energy markets, $1.35 per gallon is more like it. What are we saying? We have seen $15 trillion dollar stolen. This is $45,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, simply taken in a single day based on the signature of two people who made this decision without the advise and consent of any know authority. By these standards, overcharges for gasoline, only about $1000 per year for every man, woman and child in the United States seems trivial. Note a plan here? We haven’t even begun to discuss food prices, utilities and, especially, coal and natural gas. So, we can prove a single $15 trillion dollar theft. We also know we lost $15 trillion dollars officially through the national debt. We are told we have to cut our army, we are told we may have to eat less, live in cold houses or, as thousands seem to be doing each day, simply live outdoors and beg for money on street corners to survive, either that or have our children cleaning toilets as Newt Gingrich suggests. Please take the time with this one.  The reality, of course, is that children either live in plenty, private schools, ski vacations, their own horses, vacations in France or the Caribbean, the best of everything or they eat rats and clean toilets. Newt Gingrich, other than dodging military service and being caught endlessly with his “johnson” in the wrong place at the wrong time, has contributed nothing. He was too good to serve his nation at war:
   |  Rep. Ron Paul read the text above into the Congressional Record earlier this year. Paul's statement provides additional evidence to the established fact the globalist, bonesman, and former CIA director George Bush Senior duped Saddam Hussein, exploited his dispute with Kuwait -- accusing Kuwait of slant drilling its oil -- and gave Hussein a green light to attack Kuwait. (1) Ron Paul advocates abolishing the Federal Reserve, owned and run by Wall Street. In fact, several times in Congress, he introduced the Federal Reserve Abolition Act. With no co-sponsors, no further action followed. Yet, restoring sound money and a healthy economy requires Fed abolition, returning money creation power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates (Article I, Section 8). (2) Paul also wants squandering America’s resources on imperial wars ended, using the nation’s wealth instead for productive economic growth. (3) In addition, he opposes police state laws like the USA Patriot Act, though not for all the right reasons. Key for him is loss of personal privacy. (4) While advocating free trade, he’s against NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other one-sided FTAs, serving special interests, not everyone equitably. (5) Paul calls the war on drugs “costly and ineffective, while creating terrible violent crime.” True enough, but it’s much worse, largely responsible for creating the world’s largest gulag, mostly filled with nonviolent inmates, deserving reprimands and perhaps fines at most, not prison time. This latest Great Game features a unipolar empire asserting its financial and military hegemony on a newly “flattened” playing field (as coined by Thomas Friedman to evoke the joys of globalisation). The empire’s team captain is no longer a left wing or right wing, but an “extreme centre”, a term which entered the US/UK political lexicon with Ross Perot’s Reform Party in the 1990s. These extreme centrists claim to be drawing on the best of both sides in a “post-liberal, post-conservative, post-socialist world”. UK Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg wears the label proudly: “For the left, an obsession with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But as liberals, we place our faith in people. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre.” So socialism is apparently not concerned with people, who are advised to put their faith in “liberals”/ radical centrists/ extreme fullbacks/ whatever. This bandying about and repackaging of ideological catchwords is the bane of our “postmodern” world, where there are no longer any truths, only interpretations. What we are left with are the Santorums on the “right” and the Obamas on the “left” fighting overdivisive social issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, anti-piracy copyright laws, and just how minimal should be state support for health and education, where no candidate (except the court jester Paul) is allowed to question the fundamentals of the system. And what is this playing field really? Karl Polyani in the 1950s clearly saw that capitalism, by turning labour, land and money itself into commodities, was creating a soulless system which would need strong state control to prevent its inhuman nature from destroying the world. This advice was irretrievably lost over the past two decades with the fusion of left and right in the oxymoronic “extreme centre”, extreme in its implicit embrace of neoliberalism (which has very little to do with Clegg’s idol John Stuart Mills), where traditional solutions such as socialism or paternalistic conservatism are excluded.
Together with Israel! Foreign (read: military) policy is also excluded, as the empire requires strict obedience by both its postmodern NATO halfbacks and its neocolonial goalkeepers, so that its market authoritarian team wins. The game has proved to be lethal for all concerned, with a change of strategy no longer possible via the electoral process, now the plaything of the so-called radical centre. According to Tariq Ali, democracy “is being hollowed out” in the West under neoliberalism, which is hostile to “even social democratic parties”. Whether the Obamas and Santorums, both supporters of the spectacularly failing tactics of Team Empire, are “deeply” bad to begin with or merely corrupted by the lure of power and money is moot. They are blinkered by cheerleader Thatcher’s “TINA!” (There Is No Alternative). She meant “no alternative to capitalism” bad enough but to make matters worse, AIPAC et al have made sure that “and Israel” was added to the equation, making the enemy teams all those who protest the rigged game in the Middle East. The Republican strategy to attack a Teflon Obama (besides gay/abortion charges) has been to suggest, as did Romney after New Hampshire, that Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness, and that of course Mitt et al do. That cheerleading is as close as a US politician gets to foreign policy these days. But that has been the tired Republican cheer since Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter. Wiley and politically very correct Obama has both begun the withdrawal from the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and covered his flank by bumping off Osama Bin Laden and quite a few other “enemies”. Given the radical agreement among Republicrats on the essentials of empire strategy both at home and abroad, there is almost no scenario over the next six months where a Republican can trump this. The chauvinistic cheers fall on deaf ears. Paul and to a lesser extent Santorum are better positioned to go for Obama’s one usable weak spot — his role as the big business/ banker darling. As Paul will never get the nomination, we can only hope that Santorum does and that Paul runs as an independent, making the 2012 presidential elections mildly interesting. But Obama is again trying to outflank Santorum, this week calling for a tax raise on the rich. Way to go, Team Empire. The perennial Ralph Nader’s voice-in-the-Democratic-wilderness alone points to the only way out of the crisis: “If you agree that your Republican counterparts in Congress are the most craven, corporatist, fact-denying, falsifying, anti-99 per cent, militaristic Republicans in the party’s history, then why are you not landsliding them?” Well, it should be obvious by now, Ralph.
Sadly, following the US primaries, we can only conclude they have very little value for Egyptians now reconstructing their political system after a century and a half of colonialism. Hence, the startling events of the past few weeks in Cairo: even as the army, parliament and revolutionaries all attack each other as traitors, they all support the arrests of National Endowment for Democracy funded “activists”, in the first place, the Independent Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House. In a recent Gallup poll, 74 per cent of Egyptians called for an end to all foreign financing of NGOs and 71 per cent called for an end to all US aid. In a front-page caricature in Al-Akhbar, a seedy Uncle Sam points a Foreign Aid pistol to a confident young Egyptian who calls to his Dignity cannon, “Let’s defend ourselves.” Apparently Egyptians have had enough of US political coaching. |
| (AP/The Huffington Post) -- During a stop in Iowa on Saturday Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry stood by his criticism of Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme." He said the entitlement program amounts to a "monstrous lie" for young Americans, the Houston Chronicle reports. HuffPost's Elise Foley reported last week:
While on the trail in the Hawkeye State, Perry warned that President Obama has driven the nation's economy into a ditch, arguing that his own record as governor qualifies him to lead the way out. "Instead of eliminating our economic crisis, he worsened it," said Perry. "Instead of addressing the debt, he exploded it." Perry told nearly 400 activists that he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas, all during a stretch where the nation was losing 2.5 million jobs. Perry said he'll take his record of cutting taxes and regulation to Washington and he said the Texas rebound proves that those efforts work. Perry was joined at a county GOP picnic by fellow candidates, Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, but Perry was getting the bulk of the attention. Perry singled out recent comments by former Iowa governor and current Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's that food stamps were helping to bolster the economy by getting buying power into people's hands. "Food stamps are not a solution, they are a symbol of the problem," said Perry. "Today's leaders see it differently." Perry sought to drive the problem home, noting that Iowa has suffered as well under the Obama administration. "Today, one in eight Iowans is on food stamps," said Perry. "That is a testament to the widespread misery created by this administration." Perry has moved near the top of most polls only a couple of weeks after announcing his decision to run for the Republican nomination. He was making his second visit to Iowa, where precinct caucuses traditionally launch the nominating season, and he has made it clear he will compete for those caucuses . He's begun building the organizational structure essential to delivering backers to those caucuses. With his solid standing in the polls, he ignored all of his rivals and focused on Obama and Washington. "It's a statement that the state that feeds the world has so many people dependent on the government for food," said Perry. "You have lost 12,000 jobs since the current resident of the White House took office," said Perry. He said that is precisely the opposite of his own record in office. "Since I've become governor, Texas has created more than 1 million jobs, while the rest of the country has lost 2.5 million jobs," said Perry. His twin themes: making life easier for business, and making life tougher for government. "We've got to stop spending money we don't have," said Perry. "I promise you this, I will work every day to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential to you as I can." While there haven't been any recent polls in Iowa, most activists here put Perry in the first tier of Republican candidates. Kevin McLaughlin, one of the organizers of Saturday's event said Perry's rapid rise comes because he's a governor of a big state, but also because he offers a message that resonates with the Republican base. "He's the governor of a state that doesn't have an income tax and he's riding the wave," said McLaughlin. Paul has caused something of a stir in the state, building a deeply committed core of backers that allowed him to post a very close second- place showing in the Republican straw poll. "Our problem is government is too big," said Paul. "As government gets bigger, your personal liberties are limited. We don't need a federal reserve system, we need a gold standard for our money." The mainstream media is now pushing Newt Gingrich toward the top of the pile among Republican Party Presidential hopefuls. Newt would be a bigger disaster for America than just about any other. See the video for all the evidence needed. Newt Gingrich is quick on his feet, and he has decades of experience in the Beltway world, so many may be overly impressed. How soon we forget. It was Newt who led the crusade against American Sovereignty and Our Constitution back during the Clinton administration, Yet he had the chutzpah to agree with Ron Paul during one of those alleged debates on television; slipping in comments that appeared he also opposes the Federal Reserve and big government. Nothing is farther than the truth. This video brings up the Newtsters sordid Internationalist past with stunning detail. Even progressives will relish this presentation because it has so much obvious truth it warms the heart of genuine people who still revere the American Constitutional Republic’s original purposes.  Rick Perry and Ron Paul get intense during Republican presidential debatePhotos show Republican candidates Rick Perry and Ron Paul in heated discussion during a presidential debate ad break
Rick Perry makes a finger-wagging point to Ron Paul during an ad break in the Republican presidential debate. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters There appears to be little love lost between the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and the longtime Texas representative Ron Paul. As these photos show, during an ad break in the middle of the Republican presidential debate, Perry appears to have given Paul a piece of his mind, with the Texas governor above making a forcible gesture to Paul while gripping his wrist.
Before Wednesday night's debate, Paul's campaign launched a series of attacks on Perry's political career, including a hard-hitting TV ad, and followed with some snippy comments by Paul during the debate itself.
Several photographers captured the scene on stage at the Ronald Reagan Library – and of course there's no way of knowing what was being discussed. But given Paul's recent attacks, I'm guessing it wasn't about the chances of the Texas A&M football team this season. What's strange about of all of this is that in previous debates, Ron Paul has been content to do his own thing, extolling his brand of libertarianism and staying out of the dogfight. That included a savage attack by Rudy Guiliani in 2007. But something has changed that has drawn Paul's ire by Perry compared with the obviously more moderate Mitt Romney. The news that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is seeking the Republican presidential nomination may well send a tremor through the Muslim world. That’s because Perry, an evangelical Christian who would make a formidable candidate, appears to actually believe the U.S. military is divinely directed and is liable to continue U.S. interventions in the region. At a prayer rally only this past August 6th in Houston’s Reliant Stadium that attracted 30,000, he “called on Jesus to bless and guide the nation’s military and political leaders,” the New York Times reported. And his announcement August 11th that he plans to run for president, the Associated Press said, will delight “conservatives looking for a candidate to embrace.” Indeed, if Perry is elected with the the fervid support of the Religious Right, they’re surely apt get one! His election, though, could spell doom for any chance of the restoration of peace in the Middle East in our time. In a campaign against President Obama, Perry could rally the tens of millions of charismatic Christian voters who have done so much to support the transformation of USA into a full-blown warfare state, supporting the military at every juncture, endorsing the illegal Middle East wars of the Pentagon, blindly backing Israeli interventions, and supplying the military with chaplains who spread an ultra-conservative philosophy among the troops. According to the website “On The Issues,” Perry told a veteran’s group in a Memorial Day speech in 2008: “Today our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are on patrol, securing freedom for oppressed people, guarding the tender shoots of a blooming democracy, working to eradicate an infestation of terrorism, so that it does not revisit our nation.” This, when the invasions had to do with oil and where the occupiers have shown little, if any, concern for “blooming democracy,” only how to make a buck. Perry continued, “Time and again, I speak to soldiers who have seen the positive impact of US efforts and tell of Iraqi communities responding to the rule of law.” This is sadly hilarious given the thousands of Middle East peoples who have been jailed by USA for years without attorneys and trials and some of whom have been mercilessly tortured and murdered in secret prisons hidden from the Red Cross. Perry believes, “We have come too far and sacrificed too much to simply walk away and allow the dark forces of oppression to regain control of these places that have been consecrated by the blood of our nation’s best.” This, as if U.S. occupiers are not widely seen as “oppressors”! So Rick Perry paints a self-portrait in his own words of a politician who strongly supports military intervention in the Middle East. You won’t hear from him that President Bush lied America into a war. And like President Bush when he was governor of Texas, Perry is one Christian who believes in the death penalty. Writing in “The New American Militarism”(Oxford University Press), Andrew Bacevich, Director of the Center for International Relations of Boston University, notes that evangelicals account for about one-third of the U.S. population and “tend to be conservative and vote Republican.” He notes that after the 1960s they abandoned “their own previously well established skepticism about the morality of force and inspired in no small measure by their devotion to Israel, they articulated a highly permissive interpretation of the just war tradition, the cornerstone of Christian thinking about warfare.” What’s more, he writes, “they developed a considerable appetite for wielding armed might on behalf of righteousness, more often that not indistinguishable from America’s own interests” and “came to celebrate the military itself…” As evangelical Jack Graham, president of the Southern Baptist Convention put it, U.S. intervention in the Middle East is nothing less than “a war between Christians and the forces of evil, by whatever name they choose to use.” In sum, Bacevich writes, conservative Christians “have fostered among the legions of believing Americans a predisposition to see U.S. military power as inherently good, perhaps even a necessary adjunct to the accomplishment of Christ’s saving mission. In doing so, they have nurtured the preconditions that have enabled the American infatuation with military power to flourish.” Outside the Houston rally where Perry spoke, stood dozens of protestors who objected to his official presence there as governor on grounds that it violated the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state. (A judge disagreed.) Other protestors, the New York Times reported, included gay activists who criticized Perry for supporting the American Family Assn., which organized and financed the rally. “The association is a conservative evangelical group based in Mississippi that is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center,” the Times noted. If the election comes down to a choice between incumbent Obama and Gov. Perry next year Americans who stand for peace and oppose the military-industrial complex will have no candidate to represent them. | At the same time, as a libertarian, he believes government’s only role is to respect, protect, and defend personal freedoms. As the Libertarian Party’s Preamble advocates, everyone should retain “sovereign(ty) over their own lives,” not “sacrifice (it) for the benefit of others.” In other words, government’s responsibility for universal healthcare, education, and other essential services is incompatible with personal freedom. Everyone should be on their own to provide them, even though millions, through no fault of their own, can’t. In contrast, progressives define freedom and responsibility differently, believing government must assure equity, social justice, and safety net protections for society’s least advantaged. Throwing them overboard can’t be tolerated.
Rick Perry – George Bush on Steroids? Who can know, but be concerned. Texas-based commentator Molly Ivans (1944 – 2007) called him “despicable” and much more. Ridiculing him as “Gov. Goodhair,” she compared him to George Bush, saying, “O Please, Dear God, Not Another One,” quoting a country song. She railed against his appointing an Enron executive head of Texas’ Public Utilities Commission. In return “the next day” came a $25,000 thank you check, signed by former Chairman/CEO Ken Lay, infamous for being behind one of the nation’s greatest ever financial scandals. She denounced his “spectacular failure on public schools by convincing Texans that gay marriage was a horrible threat to us all.” At the same time, he tried “to disguise” the decrepit state of public schools “by proposing that we teach creationism in biology classes,” not math fundamentals, good English, literacy and computer skills, and real history and political science, omitting any reference to religion that has no place in public education. She also hammered him in other articles, exposing an extremist governor not fit for any public office, let alone the nation’s highest that should chill everyone at the possibility, except his lunatic fringe supporters and big-monied backers, assured of substantial returns on investments with him as president. On August 13, he announced his candidacy in South Carolina, not Texas, knowing angry mobs would confront him, saying: America “is the last great hope of mankind….Socialist systems (deliver) misery and stagnation….Americans (are) not defined as class….’Spreading the wealth’ punishes success….(B)ig-government policies have prolonged our national misery….It is time to get America working again.”  Besides mischaracterizing his dismal pro-business, anti-populist record as governor, his rhetoric concealed extremist positions he’ll force on all Americans the way he did to Texans, including Christian fascism. More on that below. Right Wing Watch.com lists some of his allies, including: (1) The American Family Association, endorsing censorship and advocacy against women’s and LGBT rights. (2) The International House of Prayer, wanting Jews to become Christians and opposing abortion and LGBT rights among other extremist positions. (3) The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, known for calling gay rights activists “intolerant,” “hateful,” “vile,” “spiteful,” and “pawns” of Satan. (4) The Response, another extremist religious group. (5) Rev. John Hagee, a preacher and practitioner of Christian fascism. (6) James Dobson, a replica of Hagee, founder of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, two prominent extremist hate groups. (7) David Barton, “a self-proclaimed historian known (for reinventing history) and the Bible to justify right-wing positions.” (8) Rob Schenk, an anti-choice extremist. (9) Loren Cunningham, co-founder of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist.” (10) Doug Stringer, “who blamed American secularism (and) acceptance of homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks.” (11) Che Ahn, John Hagee’s mentor who compared “the fight against gay rights to the fight against slavery,” and others also endorsing the same ideological extremism. With these type allies and financial backers, be concerned, very concerned. Perry for President Perry’s web site (richperry.org) calls him “a true conservative,” omitting how he defined that as governor, serving Big Monied Texans at the expense of all others, what he’ll replicate nationally as president. Besides his religious ideologue allies, he also stacked his campaign team with neocon advisers and Tea Party extremists, likely endorsing his belief that: “We are now confronted with the rise of new economic and military powerhouses in China and India, as well as a Russia that is increasingly aggressive and troublesome to its neighbors and former satellite nations that are struggling to maintain their relatively newfound independence.” As a result, he added: “The United States must be prepared for the ramifications of shifting balances of power,” stopping just short of endorsing war. A racist uber-hawk, he presided over 230 executions since December 2000, more than any other modern governor. At the same time, he refused to admit the possibility that anyone put to death was innocent, despite over 130 exonerated inmates since 1973, including 12 in Texas, besides known and unknown others unjustly facing execution. His college academic record also raises concerns, an August 5 Huffington Post article headlining, “Rick Perry’s College Transcript: A Lot of Cs and Ds,” saying: “A source in Texas (supplied) transcripts of his years at Texas A&M University.” It showed less than classroom distinction. “While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so.” His D grades were in economics, Shakespeare, and veterinary anatomy. He flunked organic chemistry. A classmate called A&M not “exactly Harvard on the Brazos River,” adding: “This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke.” His office “did not return a request for comment from The Huffington Post.” Perhaps potential supporters should demand it, besides holding him accountable for his dismal record as governor. An August 14 HuffPost article explained more, headlined: “Rick Perry’s Record in Texas May Not Convince Latino Voters,” saying: Texas is 38% Latino, including many undocumented ones through no fault of their own. Perry opposes amnesty. He’s “argued for (using) National Guard, military-style special ops and (drones) with high-tech cameras” to monitor border areas. His administration “spent over $400 million since 2005 on border security programs.” He supports “valid residency documents from driver’s license applicants,” who aren’t US citizens. He opposes state “sanctuary cities,” wants voters required to show photo IDs at polls, and “local police (required to) comply with federal immigration laws.” Civic and Hispanic leaders oppose these policies, arguing they’ll escalate intimidation and anti-Latino discrimination. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro called Perry’s initiatives “easily the most anti-Latino agenda in more than a generation, without shame.” Many agree with Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirsten Gray that Perry “needs a pink slip, not a promotion (because) he’s been a disaster as governor and would make an even worse president.” Besides his pro-business, pro-war, racist agenda, he embraces religious extremism, breaching the inviolable separation of church and state, the Constitution’s Article II, Section 6 stating: “The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable.” In other words, religion in any form, may not engage in or interfere with affairs of state, and vice versa under the First Amendment, guaranteeing the right to free exercise of religion. With leaders like Rick Perry, expect the religion/state firewall to be naplamed as a practitioner of Christian fascism. Broadly defined, it embraces extremist political, economic, social and religious ideology falsely called conservative. Sociologist Sara Diamond wrote extensively on the rise of America’s right wing groups, including in her “Roads to Dominion,” in which she traced various movements over the past 50 years, identifying four types: 1. Anti-communist conservatives, including the Christian Right’s moral traditionalists. 2. Racist right-wing groups, including the KKK, other segregationist groups, and the paramilitary white supremacist movement. 3. The Christian Right with its evangelical roots, and 4. Neoconservatives with roots during the Cold War under Republicans and Democrats. Not entirely monolithic, these groups share common views with regard to the economy, the nation state in the global context (military and geopolitical), and moral norms relating to race and gender. They also advocate free-market capitalism, anticommunism (now anything left of center), US global military hegemony, traditional morality, superiority of native-born white male Christian Americans, and the traditional nuclear family. Moreover, they cloak their ideology in Christianity and patriotism to gain political power they claim God sanctions, giving moral legitimacy, even to steal from the poor, give to the rich, and wage war. As a result, these ideologues are morally and politically indefensible, toxic and dangerous. They also embrace:
If elected, he’ll use his ideology as a crusade to wage war on democratic values, social justice, rule of law principles, and peace even more than they’ve already been desecrated. As a result, America now is unfit to live in. Perhaps under Perry, so will planet earth. What better reason to shun and denounce him. But much more is needed to save the soul of a lost nation. Begin by rejecting the corrupted two-party duopoly, run by warmongering kleptocrats, damning the public interest for their own. Vote independent or not at all. Voting for any Republican or Democrat – for president, Congress, state or local office – is wasting it, defiling your own welfare. Unless duopoly power ends, Americans won’t be free, safe or equitably treated. Now’s the time to start abolishing what’s wrecking the country and planet earth. The alternative is perishing with it – under Perry, Obama or anyone representing either party. They’re beholden to a higher power, America’s monied interests so far having everything their own way. Survival depends on replacing them before it’s too late to matter.
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Rick Perry and Ron Paul continue their off-camera 'discussion' during the presidential debate ad break. Photograph: Mike Nelson/EPA 
Rick Perry continues forcefully, despite Jon Huntsman appearing between the Texas governor and Ron Paul. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP 
| The Coverage of Ron Paul Perhaps the most egregious illustration of special pleading of my lifetime—apart from the bias the press has displayed in relation to 9/11 and JFK (on which I am planning to publish a complementary column)—has been the shameless suppression of information about the candidacy of Ron Paul for the GOP presidential nomination. He has won straw poll after straw poll, in California, in Ohio, at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Louisiana and at the Value Voters Summit held in Virginia; he has raised millions of dollars in funding, second only to Mitt Romney and Rick Perry; and he has won run-away polling victories in relation to the GOP debates. On 11 October 2011, he won the Value Voters Summit poll 37% to 23% for Herman Cain, where Tony Perkins of the Family Research Counsel, which sponsored the event, repudiated his own poll and declared Cain as the one who had attained the real victory. On 24 October 2011, Ron Paul won the Ohio straw poll, 54% to 26% for Herman Cain and just 9% for Romney. After a GOP presidential debate held on 22 September 2011, FOX NEWS published poll results showing that Ron Paul had won with 30% trailed by Romney with 27%, Perry with 15%, and Cain with 9%. Even Russia Today reported “Fox Freaks after Ron Paul Wins Debate” by taking down the poll results after Ron Paul took the lead. RT even quoted Ralph Nader, whom most of us have long admired, who said that, in his opinion, Paul was the most appealing of the GOP candidates and offered the following reasons: “He wants to get out of these wars overseas, he wants to bring the soldiers back, he wants to cut the bloated military budget, he wants to change some of the anti-civil liberty provisions in the Patriot Act, he hates corporate welfare and all these bailouts of Wall Street crooks,” said Nader. “He ought to get more attention, instead of ten times more attention being given to Michele Bachmann.” The Debate Poll Perhaps the most astounding result of all followed the Republican debate held at the Reagan Library, where msnbc published the following results:
Since this poll occurred following the Republican debate on 7 September, I infer that, by 22 September, when Fox pulled its results, the corporations that control the media had determined that it was better to publish no poll results at all than to publish poll results that massively favored Ron Paul. Some might contend that Ron Paul was even featured on “Meet the Press” on 23 October 2011 as part of a series that featured the GOP candidates. His exclusion would have been too blatant a form of bias for any American to miss, so they included him. As I watched the program on that Sunday, I was not the least surprised by the direct and pointed fashion in which Ron Paul answered the questions that were posed by David Gregory, even one that was loaded about student loans. I was equally unsurprised when his explanation of why he would phase them out was the only answer that was featured in articles in the Wisconsin State Journal (24 October 2011, A13) which led to a letter (28 October 2011, A13) of complaint about that move, but which was accompanied by another objecting about the near-compete media blackout. Notice how this technique combines special pleading with the straw man, where his proposals to end these wars of aggression, bring our troops home, close our bases abroad, cut defense spending, abolish the FED, restore civil liberties, and end crony capitalism are just too much for the major corporations who control the media to tolerate. They do not even publish the Constitutional reasons he would end student loans, which may not be a plank we all want to support but deserves a fair explanation. So if there are any lingering doubts about whether we in the United States have a free press, they are decisively refuted by this example, where the media are combining the suppression of information about Ron Paul with special pleading by only publicizing positions of his that they believe will diminish his support, which betrays the principles upon which this country was founded. Thomas Jefferson would not have been pleased. |
| Profound thoughts and predictions of Ron Paul in 2008, that show intelligence and economic savvy. Ron Paul's... "Something Big is Happening" There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it’s been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers.
Being an unchallenged sole superpower was never accepted by us with a sense of humility and respect. Our arrogance and aggressiveness have been used to promote a world empire backed by the most powerful army of history. This type of globalist intervention creates problems for all citizens of the world and fails to contribute to the well-being of the world’s populations. Just think how our personal liberties have been trashed here at home in the last decade.The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stockmarkets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we’ll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression? There are various reasons that the world economy has been globalized and the problems we face are worldwide. We cannot understand what we’re facing without understanding fiat money and the long-developing dollar bubble. There were several stages. From the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 1933, the Central Bank established itself as the official dollar manager. By 1933, Americans could no longer own gold, thus removing restraint on the Federal Reserve to inflate for war and welfare. By 1945, further restraints were removed by creating the Bretton-Woods Monetary System making the dollar the reserve currency of the world. This system lasted up until 1971. During the period between 1945 and 1971, some restraints on the Fed remained in place. Foreigners, but not Americans, could convert dollars to gold at $35 an ounce. Due to the excessive dollars being created, that system came to an end in 1971. It’s the post Bretton-Woods system that was responsible for globalizing inflation and markets and for generating a gigantic worldwide dollar bubble. That bubble is now bursting, and we’re seeing what it’s like to suffer the consequences of the many previous economic errors. Ironically in these past 35 years, we have benefited from this very flawed system. Because the world accepted dollars as if they were gold, we only had to counterfeit more dollars, spend them overseas (indirectly encouraging our jobs to go overseas as well) and enjoy unearned prosperity. Those who took our dollars and gave us goods and services were only too anxious to loan those dollars back to us. This allowed us to export our inflation and delay the consequences we now are starting to see. But it was never destined to last, and now we have to pay the piper. Our huge foreign debt must be paid or liquidated. Our entitlements are coming due just as the world has become more reluctant to hold dollars. The consequence of that decision is price inflation in this country—and that’s what we are witnessing today. Already price inflation overseas is even higher than here at home as a consequence of foreign central bank’s willingness to monetize our debt. Printing dollars over long periods of time may not immediately push prices up–yet in time it always does. Now we’re seeing catch-up for past inflating of the monetary supply. As bad as it is today with $4 a gallon gasoline, this is just the beginning. It’s a gross distraction to hound away at “drill, drill, drill” as a solution to the dollar crisis and high gasoline prices. Its okay to let the market increase supplies and drill, but that issue is a gross distraction from the sins of deficits and Federal Reserve monetary shenanigans. This bubble is different and bigger for another reason. The central banks of the world secretly collude to centrally plan the world economy. I’m convinced that agreements among central banks to “monetize” U.S. debt these past 15 years have existed, although secretly and out of the reach of any oversight of anyone—especially the U.S. Congress that doesn’t care, or just flat doesn’t understand. As this “gift” to us comes to an end, our problems worsen. The central banks and the various governments are very powerful, but eventually the markets overwhelm when the people who get stuck holding the bag (of bad dollars) catch on and spend the dollars into the economy with emotional zeal, thus igniting inflationary fever. This time—since there are so many dollars and so many countries involved—the Fed has been able to “paper” over every approaching crisis for the past 15 years, especially with Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, which has allowed the bubble to become history’s greatest. The mistakes made with excessive credit at artificially low rates are huge, and the market is demanding a correction. This involves excessive debt, misdirected investments, over-investments, and all the other problems caused by the government when spending the money they should never have had. Foreign militarism, welfare handouts and $80 trillion entitlement promises are all coming to an end. We don’t have the money or the wealth-creating capacity to catch up and care for all the needs that now exist because we rejected the market economy, sound money, self reliance and the principles of liberty. Since the correction of all this misallocation of resources is necessary and must come, one can look for some good that may come as this “Big Even” unfolds. There are two choices that people can make. The one choice that is unavailable to us is to limp along with the status quo and prop up the system with more debt, inflation and lies. That won’t happen. One of the two choices, and the one chosen so often by government in the past is that of rejecting the principles of liberty and resorting to even bigger and more authoritarian government. Some argue that giving dictatorial powers to the President, just as we have allowed him to run the American empire, is what we should do. That’s the great danger, and in this post-911 atmosphere, too many Americans are seeking safety over freedom. We have already lost too many of our personal liberties already. Real fear of economic collapse could prompt central planners to act to such a degree that the New Deal of the 30’s might look like Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the 30ss and the early 40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up. But the good news is that it need not be so bad if we do the right thing. I saw “Something Big” happening in the past 18 months on the campaign trail. I was encouraged that we are capable of waking up and doing the right thing. I have literally met thousands of high school and college kids who are quite willing to accept the challenge and responsibility of a free society and reject the cradle-to-grave welfare that is promised them by so many do-good politicians. If more hear the message of liberty, more will join in this effort. The failure of our foreign policy, welfare system, and monetary policies and virtually all government solutions are so readily apparent, it doesn’t take that much convincing. But the positive message of how freedom works and why it’s possible is what is urgently needed.
One of the best parts of accepting self reliance in a free society is that true personal satisfaction with one’s own life can be achieved. This doesn’t happen when the government assumes the role of guardian, parent or provider, because it eliminates a sense of pride. But the real problem is the government can’t provide the safety and economic security that it claims. The so-called good that government claims it can deliver is always achieved at the expense of someone else’s freedom. It’s a failed system and the young people know it. Restoring a free society doesn’t eliminate the need to get our house in order and to pay for the extravagant spending. But the pain would not be long-lasting if we did the right things, and best of all the empire would have to end for financial reasons. Our wars would stop, the attack on civil liberties would cease, and prosperity would return. The choices are clear: it shouldn’t be difficult, but the big event now unfolding gives us a great opportunity to reverse the tide and resume the truly great American Revolution started in 1776. Opportunity knocks in spite of the urgency and the dangers we face. Let’s make “Something Big is Happening” be the discovery that freedom works and is popular and the big economic and political event we’re witnessing is a blessing in disguise." SECRETS AND LIES.......................So, what is it with 'Secrets' that makes them so irresistible to the Darkside and how exactly were secrets & lies used to first steal and then privatize virtually this entire society. One of the basic parameters for creating an entirely new constitution for the United States was to free the people of this new nation from the stench of the darkest secrets & lies of old world Europe. This was a major reason why so many fled their native lands to come to America for a new start not just economically, but for the freedom of opportunity that was 'promised.' by a government that actually was not tyrannical but enabling on many fronts for ordinary people. That was then: but that idea was viciously & systematically murdered a long time ago by the income streams created by privatization with massive help from 'Secret' everything! Secrets and Lies have largely escaped notice in Occupied America, as there are currently so many other things that threaten every aspect of our lives! The owners of this place use Secrets & Lies in such a myriad of ways that to understand the nature of this side of our public and private lives is to begin to come to grips with "how we've all been had"! WAR... Secrets & Lies are the key to the newly created never-ending wars that the Empire and Israel want us all to subscribe to. The secret no-bid contracts, the secret numbers of the dead and damaged within the US military actually the US Department of Veteran's Affairs has published these numbers for the whole war on Iraq that began in 1991 and continues to this minute. Compare this report with what the government now says. (1) Then there is the illegal censorship of the deaths of those who die serving the privatized police-state of the Corporatocracy. Since when did America make the death of its troops a secret: Perhaps since this dictatorship began making illegal wars upon people that did nothing to harm us? In this secrecy & lies have served the darkest of twisted dreams, because they protect the owners from the public's certain knowledge of the true costs to our military adventures, and of the actual weakened-readiness of our war-weary troops. Even 'WAR' itself has been permanently changed by the secrets & lies in which all has been cloaked. Who profits from these contracts; who benefits directly from the stock portfolios that rely on 'War, War, Lots More War'! And of course because so much of this secret is built on lies, there will be no consequences for any of those that make all of this "a slam dunk." Before 911 there were 17 people on the no-fly lists: today there are over a million. So in the intervening seven years the government is saying that they have FAILED to such a degree that the USA now has over a million ENEMIES that cannot be trusted to be allowed on a plane. This is the same government that started spying on all American citizens seven months BEFORE 911. In addition the telecom giants that went along illegally with the president's demands (before 911), should all be 'doing time' because there was absolutely no reason for these private corporations to have violated the laws of this nation with such impunity at the time that they did so, without even a question! Of course all this was secret from the public and clearly illustrates how secrecy and privatization work hand in glove with lies to get whatever is needed in any given situation, without the "problem" of legalities or justifications never mind having to accept responsibilities for their actions-ever! POLITICS... Here secrets & lies have taken a page from old-world Europe and resurrected the power and influence of secret-societies, worldwide. These self-appointed bands of criminals have, with massive help from the technology of today, perpetuated and expanded their ancient desire to rule absolutely over the entire planet. There have always been 'secrets & lies' and secret-societies, but never before have these self-centered mono-maniacal criminals had so much access or so much power as they have been able to amass in the twenty-first century! One example of this cancerous behavior can be seen in the cabal that created the Spanish Inquisition which was created when Spain became an Empire. The program lasted from the 1478 until 1964. It succeeded in destroying the success of the Spanish Empire in the first fifty years of its tenure, but few tracked the fact that the barbarity of the Inquisition was the reason for the failure of that empire-just as our blood-soaked history and policies will kill any chance for any lasting rule. The US and Israel have ignored this historical legacy of torture and secret imprisonments that were currently redesigned by the US Department of Justice and the congress for use by the military as well as by own current dictator! And because of so many "secret-secrets" and outright lies, nothing is being done about any of this! The US once had a government built upon open discussion and accessible law-making with oversight. That has now been stealthfully re-created by the owners through nightmares within nightmares; of secrets within secrets and lies within lies-all of it protected by secrets & lies. By privatizing virtually everything that was once owned and directed by the public, the owners get not only the benefits and the vast resources at ten cents on the dollar, but also total control, which was the point! (2) PRIVATIZATION... With Reagan's "Morning in America" came a massive privatized income stream that was created out of what were public services in almost every area. Public institutions were closed and their inmates thrown into the streets, because they did not "make money." Public transportation systems that had been created (with taxes) to help people get from place to place but were privatized and forced to show a healthy profit or be canceled. Public library's and many public hospitals were also included. Much of the national power grid, as well as the water companies that were once public; have now gone into the shadows of privately held corporations: No oversight, no public participation, no checks or balances on their profit margins or their practices. Now California is beginning to privatize fire fighting: Hey if it was good enough for schools, police, prisons, hospitals, as well as water and energy needs why not just privatize the entire nation! (3) Cheney and his friends have privatized virtually the entire field of energy policy, with all its vast components and worldwide 'partnerships' that screw the public here and make billionaires of all their friends. The current chaos over oil prices being just one of their little tricks to drain every drop of cash from everyone that drives, or shops, or flys in America! We also have the largest privatized prison system in the world, and we've begun to militarize the police forces here, using privatized mercenaries to secretly train just another bunch of armed mercenaries with heavy weapons and an attitude that shoots first and maybe talks later, if at all. . . We pay government to provide services, yet relentlessly those public services are sold off or converted to private corporations: Do we pay less in taxes for the loss of public services-hell no! The same is true of public infrastructure, roads, highways and bridges; many private contractors have become part of what were public contracting services, tripling the costs and eliminating the oversight. On the highways we are now 'thinking about' hot lanes! Those with enough money can pay a small fortune to use the public's highway like a toll-road, just for themselves (in their own private lane of course). But then many parts of the Interstate Highway Program, have recently been sold off or leased long term to other countries: Some of those were converted to toll roads that were built by Americans with tax dollars-did the public benefit from any of these sales or leases-of course not, in fact we get to pay again, to ride on roads we already paid for with taxes. What most fail to realize is that America is becoming a place where the only jobs available will either be in administering the capture and imprisonment of their fellow citizens, or they can join the military and become part of that meat grinder that has killed 73,846, and permanently disabled 1,620,906! These numbers only count the 17 years from 1991- 2008, which is how long just the Iraq War has continued! The other choice we have now for 'new employment opportunities' is to become part of the homeless or the unemployed that will serve as targets for all the privatized programs that replaced this nation-state with a Fascist-police-state that now rules over Occupied America! This is the reason that there is no interest in saving jobs, providing health-care, education or anything like a job with any future whatever. "We are the business of America." You and me and all the hundreds of millions of us that work to stay alive: the owners have made taking everything we have their number one priority! How many will continue to pay for services they no longer get, in an Occupied America that is made only of Secrets & Lies! References 1) U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs http://groups.google.com/group/total_truth_sciences/browse_thread/ thread/57a63154dbd1fa8c 2) Plundering the public library http://www.kirwanesque.com/ politics/articles/2006/art27.htm 3) Private Firefighters http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/07/27/MNNR11S8D0.DTL&hw=California+to+privatize+some +fire+departments&sn=001&sc=1000 Submitted by SadInAmerica on 2008, August 10 - 3:41am. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has warned millions of radio listeners that the United States is heading into an illegal attack on Iran, stating his amazement at members of Congress who have openly voiced support for a criminal nuclear strike. "If we do (attack) it is going to be a disaster," the congressman told the Alex Jones radio show. "I was astounded to see on one of the networks the other day that the debate was not are we going to attack, but are we going to attack before or after the election?" Paul continued. Paul recently voiced concern over House Congressional Resolution 362 which he has dubbed a "virtual Iran war resolution." "If that comes up it is demanding that the president [put in place] an absolute blockade of the entire country of Iran, and punish any country or any business group around the world if they trade with Iran," Paul told listeners. Experts have predicted gas will rise to $6 per gallon if the resolution passes. Paul believes that may happen anyway, just by anticipation. "The frightening thing is they say they are taking no options off the table, even nuclear first strike," Paul said. Paul believes from talking with his contacts in and around Congress that a strike on Iran has already been green-lighted. Ron Paul - August 9, 2008 Compared to a rogue’s gallery of Republican aspirants, supporters claim Paul looks good by comparison. Look again and think carefully about America in his hands. True enough, he wants the Federal Reserve abolished. He calls it “dishonest, immoral, unconstitutional,” and America’s “great(est) threat to….security and prosperity.” “Out-of-control (and) secretive, (it) pumps money into the economy whenever it chooses and makes secret deals with Wall Street executives, foreign central banks, and other politically-connected insiders without any significant oversight from Congress.” Several times in Congress he introduced the Federal Reserve Abolition Act. Without co-sponsors, no further action followed. Yet, restoring sound money and producing growth requires Fed abolition. Money power in private hands is scandalous. Returning it to public hands where it belongs is essential; namely, the US Treasury as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 mandates. Wanting America’s wealth used for productive growth, Paul opposes squandering it on imperial wars. At the same time, his hard-right world view stops short of criticizing US imperialism and endorsing peace, despite saying: “We can no longer afford to police the world, in terms of both dollars and American lives. We will destroy ourselves if we do not stop, build a strong national defense at home, and focus on commerce with the world instead of empire.” Nonetheless, he backed attacking Afghanistan, no matter its illegality. However, he strongly opposed war on Libya, saying: “The current situation may be a short-term victory for empire, but it is a loss for our American Republic.” He also called Washington’s involvement “unconstitutional,” but stopped short of including all US post-WW II wars. Only Congress, not presidents, can declare war under UN Charter provisions. None were since December 8, 1941. Addressing the House in October 2002, Paul’s main opposition to attacking Iraq was over ceding congressional power to Bush. It was also about giving UN members say over US foreign interventions and undermining national defense by costly spending and overstretching US military forces. Rather than UN resolutions, he “like(s) it more when the president speaks about unilateralism and national security interests.” When America “depends on the UN for our instructions, we end up in no-win wars.” Paul left international law unexplained. Supporting congressional power on war, not the executive, he omitted under what conditions belligerence by one state against another is justified. UN Charter power is inviolate. Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use. And Article 51 allows the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.” In other words, justifiable self-defense is permissible. However, Charter Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral threat or use of force not:
Although he knows better, he said Bush I “didn’t go all the way” in 1991 because “the UN did not give him permission to.” Going “through the back door” with UN-declared wars lets them “last longer and you do not have a completion, like we had in Korea and Vietnam.” Weeks after Bush II invaded Iraq, he promoted his American Sovereignty Restoration Act to “end US membership of the United States in the United Nations.” He also credited Bush for “ultimately upholding the principle that American national security is not a matter of international consensus, and that we don’t need UN authorization to act.” In other words, he believes “the supreme law of the land” under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) doesn’t matter even though all treaty obligations automatically become US law. He warned that if America didn’t leave the UN, its “global planners” would establish “true world government” that would “interfere not only in our nation’s foreign policy matters, but in our domestic (ones) as well (and) America as we know it will cease to exist.” He’s also against police state laws like the USA Patriot Act, though not for the right reasons. Key for him is loss of personal privacy. While advocating free trade, he’s against NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other one-sided FTAs. They serve special interests, not everyone equitably. Saying prohibition laws negate freedom, he calls the war on drugs “costly and ineffective, while creating terrible violent crime.” It’s also largely responsible for the world’s largest gulag. Filled mostly with nonviolent offenders, at most they deserve reprimands or fines, and those incarcerated for drug-related crimes deserve freedom. As a libertarian, he believes government’s only role is to respect, protect, and defend personal liberties. As the Libertarian Party’s Preamble states: Everyone should retain “sovereignty over their own lives,” not “sacrifice it for the benefit of others.” In other words, government’s responsibility for universal healthcare, education, and other essential services is incompatible with personal freedom. Everyone should be on their own to provide them, even though millions, through no fault of their own, can’t. In contrast, progressives have different view of freedom and responsibility. They believe government must assure equity, social justice, and safety net protections for society’s least advantaged. Throwing them overboard can’t be tolerated. Paul’s Background Paul served on and off in Congress since 1976. In 1988, his Libertarian Party presidential campaign failed. So did his 2008 Republican bid. Instead of running as a Libertarian or independent, he endorsed Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. He’s also a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. Reportedly, he delivered thousands of babies. In 1976, he founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE). It’s “dedicated to public education on the principles of free-market economics, sound money and limited government.” His books include “Gold, Peace, and Prosperity;” “Challenge to Liberty;” “Freedom Under Siege;” “Ten Myths About Paper Money;” and “The Case for Gold.” In 1989, a FREE spinoff called the National Endowment for Liberty (NEFL) was established to disseminate more information about its ideology. Paul’s Ten Principles of a Free Society (1) Personal freedom. (2) Support for all peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations. (3) The inviolable right to justly acquired property. (4) Opposition to government redistributing wealth or special privileges to any individual, group or business. (5) The inviolability of individual sovereignty. Governments must never protect people from themselves. (6) Governments must never claim monopoly power over a people’s money nor engage in official counterfeiting for any purpose. (7) Opposition to aggressive wars, no matter their stated purpose. (8) Jury nullification, pertaining to jurors judging the law as well as related facts. (9) Opposition to all forms of involuntary servitude, including slavery, conscription, forced association, and mandated welfare distribution. (10) Requiring governments, like people, to obey laws, abstain from force to coerce behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave. Paul’s Plan to Restore America Its elements include: (1) Balancing the budget. (2) Cutting $1 trillion in his administration’s first year by eliminating five departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration, ending corporate subsidies, halting foreign aid, prohibiting foreign wars, and returning most spending to 2006 levels. (3) Entitlements: Maintaining them for seniors and veterans, but letting younger workers opt out toward eventually ending them altogether. Block-granting Medicaid and other social programs to states. In other words, transition Washington entirely out of social spending. (4) Cutting the federal workforce by 10%. Slash congressional pay and perks, and curb excess federal travel. (5) Lowering corporate taxes to 15%. Let US companies repatriate capital tax-free. Extend all Bush tax cuts, and abolish income, capital gains, estate and personal savings taxes. (6) Repealing Obamacare, Dodd-Frank financial reform, and Sarbanes-Oxley, pertaining to new or enhanced standards for corporations, top officials and public accounting firms. Also, mandating REINS requirements, pertaining to congressional up or down votes on all proposed measures with economic impact over $100 million. Moreover, abolish all onerous regulations by Executive Order. (7) Conducting full Federal Reserve audits, and implement competing currency legislation to strengthen the dollar and stabilize inflation. Paul on Other Issues (1) Taxes: Abolish income, capital gains, and estate taxes, as well as the IRS. Provide more tax credits and deductions. Rely on excise taxes, non-protectionist tariffs, fees, and minimal corporate ones. (2) Energy: Remove all restrictions on drilling, mining and nuclear power. Repeal federal taxes on gasoline. Abolish the EPA, and provide tax credits as incentives to develop and produce alternative energy technologies. (3) Immigration: Enforce border security to keep undocumented immigrants out. Prohibit amnesty and social benefits for those here, and end automatic birthright citizenship for their children born on US soil. (4) Abortion: Repeal Roe v. Wade granting abortion rights up to viability (fetal survival outside the uterus). Define life as beginning at conception, even for rape victims. (5) Gun Ownership: Assure the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms even though it pertains to militia rights “to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” Repeal the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban restricting firearms purchases, and end US support for global gun control laws and other initiatives. Presidents, says Paul, should “be 100% committed to defending our God-given right to keep and bear arms,” even those most destructive apparently. (6) Right to Work: Without saying so, he opposes hard-won labor rights, including failed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) provisions to let workers “form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and other purposes.” Paul on Israel Paul emphatically denies accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. He calls Israel one of America’s “most important friends.” He supported Israel attacking Iraq’s Osirak reactor in June 1981. He also believes America should be less involved in its affairs. “They can take care of themselves,” he said. “Why do we have this automatic commitment that we’re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel?” “I am personally against all foreign aid. We give $3 billion to Israel….It is ridiculous for us to be borrowing money from China and giving it to” other countries. “The First Amendment grants all citizens the right to petition the US government, and this applies to AIPAC as much as anyone else. However, I oppose certain lobbying groups having more of an undue influence than others, and since one of the main purposes of AIPAC is to lobby for generous taxpayer subsidies to Israel, that portion of their influence would end under my administration.” Racism Accusations Truth and fiction define them. In 1992, commenting to on the Los Angeles riots, his newsletter said “(o)rder was only restored in LA when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.” It added that looting resulted from government providing Black communities with “civil rights, quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black TV shows, black TV anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” He also denounced America’s media support for establishing “an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.” On January 8, 2008, New Republic contributor James Kirchick added more, quoting Paul’s newsletter saying: “(I)f you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” It called Black representative Barbara Jordan “the archetypical half-educated victimologist (whose) race and sex protect her from criticism.” “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities (because) mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’ ” “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set of black rage, it seems.” Whether or not Paul wrote or endorsed these and other comments isn’t clear. However, they appeared in newsletters bearing his name. He now disavows them. According to his 2008 campaign spokesman, Jesse Benton: Paul granted “various levels of approval” to newsletter material, ranging from “no approval” to material he actually wrote. However, he never saw many issues so attributing comments in them to him appear suspect. Responding to charges about hanging out with white supremacists, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other extremist views, Texas NAACP president Nelson Linder said he’s known Paul for 20 years not to be racist. In fact, he called Martin Luther King a “hero.” He also condemned police repression in Black communities and discriminatory mandatory sentencing rules directed mostly at them. Obama should be on the rocks, so why is his millionaire jet-skiing rival struggling to stay afloat?During recent weeks, Mitt Romney has been subjected to a lesson in the dark arts of Washington politics. He has been pummelled relentlessly by Barack Obama’s outriders over his past career as a private equity mogul and portrayed as a callous, out-of-touch plutocrat who invests his fortune in Swiss bank accounts, and the tax havens of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. He has faced demands to release 12 years of tax returns, as his father George did when running for the U.S. presidency in 1968, rather than the measly two years he has agreed to so far. Even people from his own Republican party have joined in the chorus for him to release stacks of documents which will shed a clearer light on his financial affairs.
Wrong message: Romney and wife Ann on a jet-ski at their opulent holiday home Indeed, the former Massachusetts governor, who will be crowned as Republican nominee at the party’s convention next month, has been forced on the defensive almost every day. One senior adviser at Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters has likened Romney’s business career at the venture capital firm he founded in 1984, Bain Capital, to that of Gordon ‘Greed is Good’ Gekko, the anti-hero portrayed by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street. The latest line of attack from the Democrats is to suggest that Romney — though the Republican candidate denies it — was still at Bain when the company laid off a large number of employees at firms it owned.
Set backs: Romney's suggestion that London is not ready for the Olympics has not won him any friends this side of the pond Meanwhile, an Obama campaign ad declared that secrecy shown by Romney — who is worth at least $250 million — over his financial affairs ‘makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all’. Given all this flak, Romney could be forgiven for viewing as a welcome relief his visit to Britain this week, which is in part to meet David Cameron but also to watch the Olympics and raise campaign dollars from wealthy expat Americans. He was first, however, forced to backpedal after earlier asking on American television whether Britain was ready for the Games and if people here would even support them But Romney cannot allow his focus to drift away from the U.S. for very long. Rather than be on the back foot, Romney should be exploiting Obama’s handling of America’s economy — with unemployment stuck at more than 8 per cent for 41 months (the longest period at such a high level since the Great Depression) and consumer confidence at rock bottom.Instead, he has been forced to explain what, in fact, was a glitteringly successful business past — something which he could, with skilful spin, present as his biggest campaign asset. He has allowed his financial acumen and business experience to be twisted by political enemies into headlines about how out of touch he is from ordinary Americans. Of course, he had not helped himself in recent days by taking a week-long holiday at his opulent holiday home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, where he was photographed on a jet-ski with his wife. The incident drew comparisons with the infamous footage of Senator John Kerry windsurfing in 2004, which badly damaged his Democratic presidential campaign. On policy, meanwhile, Romney, 65, was outmanoeuvred by Obama’s decision to allow children who were brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents to remain in the country if they were considered productive and law-abiding — a move that could be crucial in winning Hispanic votes in swing states. All in all, at a time when Obama’s leadership of America has proved woefully lacking, leading Republicans have been close to despair, fearing their man is about to lose an election in which the incumbent President should be the underdog. Not surprisingly, there’s a new aura of confidence at the President’s campaign HQ in Chicago. The President has thrown the kitchen sink at Romney, who has been unable to respond by spending similar sums on TV ads because the campaign laws dictate that he cannot spend money he’s raised for the election until late August. Yet, for all that, it’s far too early to conclude Romney has blown it. The latest New York Times/CBS poll puts Romney on 47 per cent and Obama on 46 per cent. In the same poll in April, they were tied. In March, Obama was three points ahead. Meanwhile, 55 per cent disapprove of the President’s handling of the economy. World tour: Mitt Romney gave an interview to NBC's Brian Williams from the Tower of London. The trip to Britain kicks off an international tour that includes Poland and Israel These poll findings came before Obama — a former Chicago ‘community organiser’ who has never run a business in his life — uttered perhaps the most extraordinary statement about free enterprise and capitalism ever to have spilled from the lips of an American President. In Roanoke, Virginia, Obama made the case that the wealthy should be taxed at higher rates because their success was due to the government and other people. ‘If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that,’ he said. ‘Somebody else made that happen.' In response, during a speech in the small town of Bowling Green, Ohio last week, Romney ripped into Obama for denigrating entrepreneurs. ‘This idea of criticising and attacking success, of demonising those in all walks of life who have been successful, is so foreign to us we simply don’t understand it.’ Perhaps more significant was the disgust expressed about Obama’s comments by the owners of small businesses. These were Romney supporters, admittedly, but seldom in a decade of reporting on American politics have I experienced such a visceral reaction to a candidate’s words.
Obama is fundraising in New Orleans at present: Obama's team have spent $100¿million in eight 'swing' states where the polls will be closest, mainly on TV attack adverts ‘I wanted to punch him in the nose,’ I was told by Lois Wilson, 66, who has run her business cutting the hair of the elderly in their homes for 19 years. ‘For Obama to say the government created my business makes me really mad. I sacrificed everything.’ Judy Journay, 56, owner of a screen-printing and embroidery business, said: ‘Obama’s never run a business — he’s always been on the government payroll. He has no concept of what the working person does. ‘We pay our taxes, we do everything by the book and then he insults us by saying that we didn’t work hard for it and we don’t give enough.’ Romney can be a somewhat dull speaker, but Obama’s anti-business comments drew a fiery response, and in recent days he has stepped up his campaign rhetoric and spoken with much more passion. His aides also went on the attack.
Obama made the case that the wealthy should be taxed at higher rates because their success was due to the government and other people John Sununu, a wily old former governor of New Hampshire, and co-chairman of Romney’s campaign, dredged up the story of Obama smoking pot as a youth and his involvement in a dodgy land deal with a criminal. He branded Obama ‘unqualified’ for the Oval Office. He went on to declare: ‘I wish this President would learn how to be an American,’ which Democrats angrily condemned as an ill-disguised side swipe at the continuing rumours that Obama was not born on American soil. The message was that if Obama was going to hit below the belt, then Romney would not play by the Queensberry rules either. All this was welcome red meat for traditional conservatives worried their man was going to shy away from personal attacks on Obama in the same way that failed Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain largely did in 2008. In playing dirty, Obama also risks damaging his idealistic message of hope and change that was so potent four years ago. ‘The Democrats have completely squandered that,’ says a senior Romney adviser. ‘Now they’ve crossed the line. They’ve lost something that was very special, and once you lose that you can’t get it back.’ The Obama strategy now is to try to denigrate Romney in the eyes of voters before the two party conventions in late August and early September. This is what George W. Bush did successfully to John Kerry in 2004 — building an image of a haughty Massachusetts elitist. He even managed to turn his Vietnam War record against him. At least Romney’s presence at today’s Olympics opening ceremony will allow him to highlight his extraordinary feat of rescuing the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from disaster when they became mired in corruption and a shortage of money. As head of the organising committee, he brought in a new management team, cut costs and boosted fundraising. When he gets back to American shores after his trip to Britain, Israel and Poland, there is little doubt that the 2012 campaign will continue its descent into becoming the nastiest, most negative presidential race of modern times.
Romney can be a somewhat dull speaker, and is at present prevented for using his campaign money to hit back at Obama's TV ads Obama may be right in his calculation that his chance of re-election rests on ‘winning ugly’. But Romney is at last showing he’s determined to fight back and channel the anger so many Americans feel about the state of their country into ejecting Obama from the White House. By inviting Romney to Number 10 yesterday, David Cameron has sensibly rectified the error he made in March when he visited the U.S. On that trip, the British PM declined to meet the Republican but fawned over Obama, despite being cynically used as a campaign prop as they sat together eating hotdogs at a basketball game in Ohio. Perhaps Cameron’s staff have impressed on him what many Americans are now beginning to realise — there’s at least a 50-50 chance that Mitt Romney will be the next leader of the free world.
| Ron Paul: The NDAA Repeals More RightsDecember 28th, 2011 (Ron Paul) – Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say “I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry.” However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The PATRIOT Act, as bad is its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly. The main section of concern, Section 1021 of the NDAA Conference Report, does to the 5th Amendment what the PATRIOT Act does to the 4th. The 5th Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning. It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented or access to legal counsel. The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes “substantial” support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force? Additionally, this legislation codifies in law for the first time authority to detain Americans that has to this point only been claimed by President Obama. According to subsection (e) of section 1021, “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” This means the president’s widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law. That should chill all of us to our cores. The Bill of Rights has no exemptions for “really bad people” or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the bill of rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire Unites States is a battlefield in the War on Terror. This is a very dangerous development indeed. Beware.
  Ron Paul is America’s leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, and a pro-America foreign policy. Politicians need to understand that without real change default is inevitable. In fact, default happens every day through monetary policy tricks. Every time the Federal Reserve engages in more quantitative easing and devalues the dollar, it is defaulting on the American people by eroding their purchasing power and inflating their savings away. The dollar has lost nearly 50% of its value against gold since 2008.The Fed claims inflation is 2% or less over the past few years; however economists who compile alternate data show a 9% inflation rate if calculated more traditionally. Alarmingly, the administration is talking about changing the methodology of the CPI calculation yet again to hide the damage of the government’s policies. Changing the CPI will also enable the government to avoid giving seniors a COLA (cost of living adjustment) on their social security checks, and raise taxes via the hidden means of “bracket creep.” This is a default. Just because it is a default on the people and not the banks and foreign holders of our debt does not mean it doesn’t count.Perhaps the most abhorrent bit of chicanery has been the threat that if a deal is not reached to increase the debt by August 2nd, social security checks may not go out. In reality, the Chief Actuary of Social Security confirmed last week that current Social Security tax receipts are more than enough to cover current outlays. The only reason those checks would not go out would be if the administration decided to spend those designated funds elsewhere. It is very telling that the administration would rather frighten seniors dependent on social security checks than alarm their big banking friends, who have already received $5.3 trillion in bailouts, stimulus and quantitative easing. This instance of trying to blackmail Congress … We need to stop expensive bombing campaigns against people on the other side of the globe and bring our troops home. We need to stop allowing secretive banking cartels to endlessly enslave us through monetary policy trickery. And we need to drastically rethink government’s role in our lives so we can get it out of the way and get back to work. Despite his objection on military occupation as a foreign policy, GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul consistently has said that the United States should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and that American military bases around the world should be closed. In this campaign, Paul is getting more donations from people who work for the military than either President Obama or any of the other Republican presidential candidates. That analysis comes from Paul's campaign and was confirmed recently by Politifact, the fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times. "Our fighting men and women take an oath to protect America, defend our Constitution and defend our borders," Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton said. "They look at Ron Paul and see a leader who takes their oath seriously and who will fight to ensure that we don't misrepresent that oath by sending them off to police the world, instead of defending our country." This is a trend that also came up in the 2008 campaign. USA TODAY's Fredreka Schouten reported then that Paul and Obama got the most military donations in the last White House race, using an analysis by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. There's no way to know for sure whether the campaign donors who list the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy and National Guard as their employer back Paul because of his stance on the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars or for his libertarian views on the economy and fiscal policy -- issues for which he is well known. Still, the military donations to Paul are worth noting. Paul first mentioned the latest trend in a July 20 interview. Politifact went to fact check his comments and, using its own review of the campaign-finance reports for April through June, found they were true. Paul's campaign told Politifact that Paul raised $34,480 from people in the military, compared with $19,849 for Obama and $13,848 for the other GOP presidential candidates. The Center for Responsive Politics says $11,350 of Paul's military donations come from people who work for the Army. In the 2008 campaign, the center found that individuals employed by the Army, Navy and Air Force were Paul's top three sources of campaign donations. But it’s not just military service people who are growing tired of America’s unaffordable foreign empire. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, conservatives in general are losing their appetite for war. Only 15 per cent of of likely U.S. Voters think the situation in Afghanistan will improve over the next six months, while more voters than ever before – 59 per cent – now want an immediate troop withdrawal or a firm timetable to be set for ending the occupation. Republicans are more pessimistic than Democrats about the future course of operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The 59 per cent figure represents a significant swing from less than two years ago in September 2009, when just 39 per cent wanted the troops pulled out of Afghanistan. Crucially, a slim majority of Republicans now want the troops brought home from Afghanistan, 43 per cent to 42 per cent. Wars launched during the administration of George W. Bush have now become Obama’s wars. Indeed, there are more troops deployed under Obama than there were at any time under Bush. In addition, a mere 13 per cent of Republicans support US military intervention in Libya to topple Colonel Gaddafi. The myth that Republican candidates must not deviate from the neo-con dogma of supporting America’s unsustainable foreign occupations and the ludicrous policy of pre-emptive warfare in order to be electable is disappearing fast. Although a gaggle of self-proclaimed “conservatives,” who in reality have nothing in common with the founding fathers, may have booed Paul’s explanation last night, the majority of Americans, and indeed the majority of US Military servicemen and women, were applauding him.  Speaking about his contention that the CIA had orchestrated a “coup” in America against the government, Congressman Ron Paul told the Alex Jones Show that the Agency was also behind the choosing of dictators around the world. “For the CIA to really be running the show….the CIA is involved in war, they’re involved in military activity, they pick targets from Langley in Virginia, they can shoot missiles to any spot in the world, generally killing a lot of people they shouldn’t be killing and missing the one’s they’re trying to target,” said Paul, adding that such activity was even outside the realm of Obama’s unconstitutionality in terms of the Libya bombardment. “Now we have the DoD person Petraeus going over to the CIA and then the CIA head going over to the military,” said Paul, adding, “I know the CIA’s been involved in so many elections around the world, they pick and choose dictators….I don’t think there’s any doubt they’re very much involved in these revolutions going on in the Mediterranean, we’re just trying to pick dictators,” said Paul, adding that the CIA’s secrecy was “out of control”. Paul’s original comments regarding the CIA “coup” were made during a Campaign for Liberty Regional Conference in Atlanta, GA, in January 2010. “There’s been a coup, have you heard? It’s the CIA coup,” stated Paul. “The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They’re the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. … And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. … And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They’re in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators … We need to take out the CIA,” he added. Watch the clip of Paul’s original comments below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2dECSYm5bSM Paul was in his element at the Iowa debate and delivered the most comprehensible and impassioned performance seen at any of the debates thus far. Every other candidate in attendance attempted to scramble over their rivals to lead the charge for the military industrial complex, while Paul stuck firmly to his anti-war principles, demanding that US troops be brought home with immediate effect. During a heated back and forth with Rick Santorum regarding a potential conflict with Iran, Paul showed true statesman qualities, arguing that merely slapping sanctions on the country and refusing to even entertain the idea of negotiating with the Iranian leadership would lead directly to conflict further down the line. “They have no evidence that they are working on a weapon,” Paul said. “At least our leaders and Reagan talked to the Soviets. What is so terribly bad about this? Countries you put sanctions on, you are more likely to fight them. I say a policy of peace is free trade, stay out of their internal business. Do not get involved in these wars and bring our troops home.” The Congressman added. When Santorum insisted that Iran had “killed more American men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis and Afghans have,” Paul urged the American people to see through such examples of war propaganda. When Santorum added that Iran had been “at war with us since 1979″, Paul countered that it was the meddling of the CIA in Iran in the 1950s that had directly caused such “blowback”. “The senator is wrong on his history,” Paul urged. “We’ve been at war in Iran for a lot longer than ’79. We started it in 1953 when we sent in a coup, installed the Shah. The reaction, the blow-back came in 1979, it’s been going on and on because we just plain don’t mind our own business. That’s our problem!” The Congressman asserted as the crowd in attendance erupted into riotous applause and cheering. “Iran is a threat because they have some militants there, but believe me they are all around the world, and they are not a whole lot different than others.” The Congressman added. “Iran does not have an air force that can come here, they can’t even make enough gasoline for themselves.” Paul said as he fended off constant attempts by Santorum to interrupt him with authority. “They are building up this case just like we did in Iraq, build up the war propaganda. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq, and ‘they had nuclear weapons and we had to go in’, I’m sure you supported that war as well,” said Paul, directing his words toward the former Senator. In the stand out moment of the entire evening, a clearly emotional Ron Paul almost burst out of the screen as he boomed into the microphone “It’s time we quit this. IT’S TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS WE’RE SPENDING ON THESE WARS!”
In other particular highlight, Paul schooled phony tea party wannabe candidate Michele Bachmann on the rule of law after Bachmann defended the gulags at Guantanamo Bay and insisted that accused “terrorists” have no rights whatsoever under the American justice system. “I thought our courts recognized that you have to be tried,” Paul responded. “This administration has already accepted the position that when you assume someone is a terrorist, they can be targeted for assassination – even American citizens, that affects all of us eventually, you don’t want to translate our rule of law into mob rule.” Paul hit back.
Finaly…..The Texas congressman may be labelled a maverick for some of his unorthodox views but his support is rock solid,
Ron Paul's likes and dislikes quickly become apparent at any of his campaign rallies. The Republican candidate - he describes himself as libertarian, others prefer oddball - likes gushing patriotism and conspiracy theories. He does not like tax increases or any US military adventures abroad, advocating a near-immediate pullout from Iraq. A night at the veterans' hall in Des Moines, Iowa, is not untypical. His rally opened with a narrator providing an extremely long account of the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of Independence that led to the penning of the Star Spangled Banner. As a piece of history, the details are dubious and, at times, offensive. "What sets the American Christian apart is that he will die on his feet rather than his knees," it says. What about British Christians fighting in the War of Independence or even American atheists and agnostics, of which there were some even in the 18th century. This was followed with a speech by John Holland, co-founder of Rolling Thunder, the organization campaigning for the release of American PoWs allegedly still being held overseas. Holland said the US government knew they were being held in Asia - in places such as Laos and North Korea - and in the former Soviet Union, and even knew the names of the security guards, but was not prepared to do anything about it. Next up, Paul himself, who promised Holland that, in the unlikely event of becoming president, he would open up to the public all records relating to PoWs. Turning to the campaign, he protested about his coverage - or lack of it - in the US media. He and his followers, often young and almost messianic in the enthusiasm with which they campaign for him, frequently complain the American press discriminates against him and bombard news outlets with demands for equal treatment with other candidates. "I know we are going to do a lot better than they( the media) think we are going to do," Paul said before the Iowa vote. He did not. He won only 10%, which put him in fifth place. The big pitch in his speech, following in the tradition of rightwing isolationists such as Pat Buchanan, was a pledge to bring US troops back from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries where they prop up dictatorships, and elsewhere around the world, in particular, Iraq. Unlike the other Republican candidates, Paul, who voted against the Iraq war, promises to bring US troops back from Iraq as close to immediately as possible. He argued the presence of the troops in foreign parts and meddling in the affairs of other countries had not done the US much good. He denied he was an isolationist, saying he wanted to talk to other countries and to trade with them, just not go to war with them. His other big pitch is the abolition of federally-imposed income tax. Throughout his long years as a congressman, he has also consistently voted against every tax increase - hence the nickname Dr No - and most spending measures too. He claims that most of the tax and spending is not what the founding fathers had in mind and is, therefore, unconstitutional. Although he has done badly in the campaign so far, following up his poor showing in Iowa with an equally poor one in New Hampshire, in spite of the latter being an anti-tax bastion. He took only 8% of the vote, a poor return on $3.5m (£1.75m of advertising), and again ended up in fifth place. But there is a constituency out there attracted by the idea of getting rid of income tax and military adventures. He made political history when an appeal for funds in December produced $6m, more in 24 hours than any other campaign. Born in Pennsylvania on August 20 1935 and brought up in a relatively humble household, he joined the air force after graduating from medical school and served overseas, though not in Vietnam. Elected to the House of Representatives from Texas, he served from 1976 - 1977 and from 1979 - 1985. He voluntarily relinquished his House seat and returned to his medical practice. He was re-elected to Congress in 1997, where he remains today. In the 1990s, he was forced on the defensive when newsletters bearing his name emerged containing bigoted remarks. He later said he took responsibility for the comments, even though he did not agree with them: he said they had been ghostwritten and he had not read them at the time. They surfaced again in the present campaign, publicized by the The New Republic magazine. One of the newsletters,the Ron Paul Political Report, published in 1990, stated: "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities". After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the newsletter referred to African-American rioters as "barbarians" and suggested that the riots only stopped when it came time for "blacks to pick up their welfare checks". Asked about the remarks on CNN, he said: "Libertarians are incapable of being racist." He has raised a total of $28m, enough to keep him in the race for a long time yet, maybe even as an independent after the Republican nomination is resolved. The first myth to dispense with is that the GOP is a conservative political party. The millions of registered Republican voters, that truly want a genuine conservative to lead this nation, are disappointed with every election cycle. The aspirants that emerge as the standard-bearer of the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, are would be despots, wrapped in the flag of a failed empire. The comic performances in the arena of staged debates, just proves that the party of NeoCons, deserves trouncing into the ground of their blood stained soil. Only Ron Paul has the dignity and courage to claim the consent of the public and lead a revolution that dismantles centralized government. So why won’t rank and file Republicans demand that the Grand Old Party go to battle against the forces of the New World Order? Who in the mug shots below will make a clear break from the tragic treasonous policies of the last three Republican administrations? Examine each, one at a time.
Michele Bachmann is a Christian Zionist. Her viewpoint that America must be the chief defender of Israel places her in the camp of the NeoCons. The question for her centers on her definition of what exactly is pro-American. Her version of an Israel-First course of action, is inconsistent with the traditional canons of national defense, established in Washington’s Farewell Address. “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?” – Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling for a new McCarthyism, Oct. 2008. Herman Cain plays the victim, while he champions the Federal Reserve as the crown jewel for the gatekeepers of the corporatist criminal syndicate. Yet, he claims his character is above charges of indiscretion, don’t blame me. “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself! ” When the erudite Newt Gingrich proclaims himself a “cheap hawk”, he is really saying his neo-conservatism loyalty is to a government imperium that is efficient in its pillage and conquests. Newt supports the CIA sub-rosa government. “Frankly I believe that there’s too little funding for intelligence, we have too few assets and too few analysts. And I think if the Congress and others are going to demand a greater capacity in intelligence we’re going to have to be prepared to pay for a more sophisticated and a more intense structure of intelligence capabilities, and I think its wrong for some members of Congress to vote to cut intelligence spending, to vote to cut the number of intelligence analysts and then to set unrealistically high demands on the intelligence community.” Jon Huntsman, Jr. accepts that government economic development is a necessary function. How conservative is it to institutionalize FDR socialism as a cornerstone of the corporate/state? “I was criticized at some level within the Republican Party by those who say government should not be in the economic development business at all. My response is that the only country I know that doesn’t have an economic development plan is Papa New Guinea.” Ron Paul stands out from the crowd of candidates for several reasons. This quote reflects the insight lacking in the other GOP hopefuls. “As recent as the year 2000 we won elections by saying we shouldn’t be the policemen of the world, and that we should not be nation building. And its time we got those values back into this country.” It is because of this distinction that the elitist masters of the Republican Party are so scared to allow the Congressman from gaining the nomination. 
Rick Perry, Oops . . what can you say about the governor? This video of Highlights of Rick Perry’s Bizarre (Drunk) Cornerstone Speech, explains a lot. Perry and Cain have much in common neither are ready for prime time. How is Mitt Romney any different from the NeoCons? “We will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might, and standing by and strengthening our intelligence officers.” Here is where Mitt and Newt become joined at the hip. Both are able to deliver an articulate message that seems to resonate to many, but when you dissect their actual methods for implementing policy, the similarities with the Bush era gang of internationalists, is exposed. Rick Santorum bills himself as the most socially conservative among the latest gang of dwarfs. But, he buys hook line and sinker the phony war on terror. “This is a huge victory for the people of the 911th and the team we put together. Not only did they get the expanded mission, they get to keep what they’ve had, too. It’s more than a complete victory.” 
The excoriation of the John Birch Society by the Republican Party proves either the sinister betrayal or the ineptness of the GOP faithful to protect real conservative values. View the video of Robert Welch in 1974 Revealing Agendas Of New World Order and reflect the truth in his words and the profound legacy of bona fide conservatives. 1) The Identity Crisis For Conservatives “We have heard the resounding voices of our patron saints from the Right lately that depart from the usual message of common sense and advocacy of Liberty. They have become the ‘new jingoist’, defender of the State and ‘revenging angel’. You know of who they are: David Horowitz, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. They all claim to be Conservative. But what does that really mean, especially in today’s crisis environment?” 2) What is Happening to Conservatives? “Will our mainstream raconteurs experience an epiphany of a ‘Conscience of a Conservative’, to use Barry’s words; or will they run to the beat of the Jonah Goldberg’s? Barry’s notion of Liberty is our prize! Transform the ‘War Party’ into an assemblage of Justice seekers, that promote Liberty.” 3) What is Conservative Populism? “A person can’t be a real conservative if he rejects the primary populist message. The political solution is to become a populist and convince the uninformed that real conservatism is the best hope for promoting the maximum opportunity for the greatest number of people.” 4) What Makes a Republican – a REPUBLICAN? “For Republicans knew what they were all about and had an example of a true champion of principle in one, Senator Robert A. Taft.” “The vast apathetic hordes of the American public desperately want to follow a serious change in the status quo. The reason that so many have dropped out of the process is because the nature of the Republicans resemble the mirror image of a Democrat, only in a better suit.” “The Republican Party has long pursued a path contrary from its heritage. Under President George W Bush, that direction has cumulated in a repudiation of traditional conservative principles. Any honest conservative maintains a core roster of values and policies that reflect their passionate support for the Republic.” 7) The Future of the Conservative Movement, evaluates Russell Kirk’s conservatism. A short reflection of Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk is in order. Read the explanation of each.
“The Republican Party’s attempt to co-opt the spontaneous spirit of the Tea Party geneses illustrates the panic that both entrenched parties have from a true populist movement. The mind dead voters who continually vote for the lesser of two evils, or adhere to the squishy William Buckley rule guarantee perpetual servitude.” 9) The Reemergence of the NeoCons “Paleoconservatives have their own message for the Congressional freshman class. Dump your leadership. Purge NeoCons from your party.” 10) Liberty for the Ron Paul Generation “The stark reality about the Ron Paul revolution is that the power elites could not survive in a society based upon individual liberty. Now the Ron Paul generation understands that liberty and genuine national security is never advanced under the military-industrial-homeland war party.” These ten essays map out a clear distinction that the conservative tradition in American politics is virtually absent in the current Republican Party. If you believe you can work to take over the national GOP and restore time-honored principles, you are naive. The only rational option is to create a true grass roots party that encompasses the disaffected middle class. NeoCons are traitors. Establishment proponents loyal to the two party farce, do not allow genuine conservative doctrines into public policy. Explain how a sincere Republican can ignore Ron Paul and support any of the phony status quo clones for the nomination? The straightforward explanation is that the average GOP voter is just as dumb as a Democrat supporter. End the tyranny of the NeoCons and regain your own dignity.
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After campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Republican presidential candidates are campaigning their way across Florida before the state’s primary on January 31st. Thursday’s debate was the 19th since the race for the Republican nomination began last year. Opinion polls show a close race, with a slight advantage for Romney. Two other contenders, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, were far behind.
Take a look at the GOP campaign so far.
A truck displays a sign for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, Nov. 7, 2011. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Newt Gingrich stand during The Pledge of Allegiance as they prepare to debate during the event sponsored by CNN and The Tea Party Express at the Florida State fairgrounds on September 12, 2011 in Tampa, Florida. The debate featured eight candidates ten days before the Florida straw poll.
| In the pathetic field of losers that are running for the GOP presidential nomination, the one candidate that seems to have held a steady 25% is Mitt Romney. Most Republican voters really don’t like him, but somehow he just keeps moving ahead. There has been a steady stream of candidates who have surged ahead (Bachman, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum) only to fall off a cliff shortly. The only candidate who has held steady is Romney. Why, I don’t know; maybe it is his consistent inconsistency and mediocrity. I think a lot of voters are holding their noses and voting for the least objectionable and perhaps the most electable candidate in the general election. |
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Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (L) talks with former presidential nominee U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Romney's campaign bus in between events January 4, 2012 near Manchester, New Hampshire. McCain announced his endorsement of Romney the day after Romney beat former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum by only eight votes in Tuesday's "first in the nation" Iowa Caucuses. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Newt Gingrich stand during The Pledge of Allegiance as they prepare to debate during the event sponsored by CNN and The Tea Party Express at the Florida State fairgrounds on September 12, 2011 in Tampa, Florida. The debate featured eight candidates ten days before the Florida straw poll. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
Herman Cain, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, hikes up his pants before taking a picture with Mike Swiderski at the Airport Diner in Manchester, N.H., on Nov. 17, 2011. (Cheryl Senter/The New York Times) #
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks with attendees of a campaign event at Joey's Diner in Amherst, N.H., on Nov. 29, 2011. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who called himself the "toughest sheriff" in the country, endorsed Perry at the campaign stop. (Joseph Sywenkyj/The New York Times) #
John Strong waits for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a campaign event for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Dec. 7, 2011. Christie sought to assure Iowans that Romney would be a better leader, at a moment when Newt Gingrich was leading in a poll of likely Iowa caucus goers. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
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Rick Santorum featured in Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelists list in 2005 Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population–a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican primary in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won the primaries in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy? Santorum is a self-styled “true conservative,” right-wing, Christian fundamentalist of Catholic background. In 2005 Time Magazine called him “one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.” That is still certainly true today. Santorum believes that religious values (at least his religious values) should play a large role in shaping government policies. For those not sure what this means, Santorum has a list of examples: Part I – Rick Santorum the Moralist 1. Santorum wants “a blanket ban on abortions.” The fact that the U.S. had this very same prohibition up until 1973, and the result was black market abortions that killed not only fetuses by also lots of pregnant women, seems to have escaped the former senator. 2. Santorum wants a ban on gay marriages. He would likely bring back antiquated anti-sodomy laws as well. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have a right to bigamy, you have a right to polygamy, you have a right to incest, you have a right to adultery. You have a right to anything.” When Santorum gets on the subject of homosexuality, one can’t help noting a tinge of hysteria, along with a generous helping of illogic and exaggeration. Santorum would probably try to ban other related activities, such as the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. He certainly wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. What this adds up to is that when Santorum says religious values should play a greater role in government policy, he means that there should be lots of laws regulating your personal life, particularly your sex life. This is pretty typical of religious fundamentalists, particularly American Christian ones. They just can’t leave other people’s bedrooms alone. Part II – Rick Santorum the Economist On the economic side of the ledger, Rick Santorum takes a slash and burn approach. 1. There should be a $5 trillion cut in the federal budget (but defense spending would be held at present levels). In order to realize this Santorum would do away with, greatly reduce or freeze the Environmental Protection Agency, healthcare reform and medicaid, subsidies for housing, food stamps, job training, energy and education. He would “reform” medicare and social security in draconian fashion and pass a balanced budget amendment. One might agree that the present U.S. federal deficit verges on the insane and still find Santorum’s cure equally crazy. For instance, just about holding exempt defense and “security” spending when combined they make up 20% of the budget and are notorious for waste, redundancy and corruption, makes no sense. 2. There should be an elimination of financial and other regulatory laws. This is true insanity. Regulation is the only thing that makes capitalism an enduring system. Eliminate it and you have financial crashes, dangerous sweatshop working conditions, falling wages and benefits, runaway corruption and theft and, ultimately, depression. That Santorum cannot understand this suggests that he has substituted a discredited free market ideology for history. 3. As a nation Americans should “live within our means” and if we do so “future generations will have a brighter future unburdened by oppressive debt and high taxation.” These are fine slogans, but in practice they probably spell eventual revolution in the streets. If you reduce the debt by slashing expenditures Santorum-style while refusing to increase taxes, you will eliminate almost all of society’s safety nets. That means increasing poverty and all its attendant miseries. You will also make infrastructure maintenance much more difficult. Someone should tell Mr. Santorum that the U.S. population is not over-taxed. Out of sixty two industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of its income tax rates. It is, of course, possible to over-tax a people to ruination. It is also possible to under-tax a people to ruination– to tax so low that you can’t assist the less fortunate or fix the pot holes and keep the bridges from collapsing. If Santorum was to get his way the nation would not have his predicted “brighter future.” More likely it would be a future of more poor and more pot holes. That might well lead to disillusionment with the capitalist system among both the lower and middle classes. Personally, I have no objection to such growing disillusionment. I would, however, like to minimize the suffering and violence that surely goes along with it. Part III – Rick Santorum and Foreign Policy When it comes to foreign policy, Santorum is a warmonger plain and simple. 1. As to Iran, Santorum would “work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed” to put a end to that country’s nuclear weapons program. It seems not to matter to the former Senator that every U.S. intelligence agency that has ever investigated this issue has determined that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. 2. As to Syria, Santorum would go after the strongman (Bashar al-Assad) “covertly or otherwise.” Does that mean that Santorum act-alikes at the helm of other nations could use the same logic to go after a U.S. president? 3. As to Iraq, Santorum would “continue to stabilize Iraq” presumably by re-invading the country. This belies the fact that it was the American policy of draconian sanctions and ultimate invasion that destabilized Iraq in the first place. 4. As to Afghanistan, Santorum would set no time lines or limit resources “in the war effort.” Yet, if al-Qaeda is as weakened as Washington claims, there seems to be little point in more war. If a stable and competent Taliban government reappears in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to invite future attacks by providing a haven for terrorist organizations. On the other hand, this on-going war is almost certainly providing a breeding ground for more terrorists. 5. As to Islam, Santorum believes it is a religion that is “stuck in the seventh century.” With rare exception, such as Saudi Wahhabism, this is untrue. Actually, it is Rick Santorum who is stuck in the past. It is he who, like some political ecclesiastic, wants to regulate everyone else’s lives. If Mr. Santorum simply changed hats, he could be a Saudi cleric. Compared to people like him, most Muslims are much more tolerant and contemporary. 6. As to Israel, Santorum takes an uncritically approving position on the Zionist state. This makes sense when you realize that Israel is essentially a religious state–a nation on the brink of becoming a theocracy. Part IV – Conclusion
Rick Santorum speaks during a visit to the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coralville, Iowa on Dec. 11, 2011., Charlie Neibergall / AP Photo Rick Santorum is a religious ideologue. He wants to turn the U.S. into a “faith based” Christian country through the imposition of those “family values” he personally has decided are God given. He believes that America’s founding fathers would agree because they were, supposedly, men of faith just like him. Quoting the Declaration of Independence to prove this point, Santorum reminds us that it says that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” From this he concludes that rights come from God and not from government. Government’s role is simply to implement and protect those divine rights. The truth is that the man who penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was nothing like Rick Santorum. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a Deist. Jefferson’s phrasing was meant to impress a wider world in an age when religion was interpreted in a more literal fashion than it is in today’s United States. Jefferson certainly did not mean for Americans to take the notion of God given inalienable rights literally. After all, he was a slave holder. The number of Americans who respond positively to Rick Santorum’s message is probably in the range of 20%. In terms of the Republican Party, they probably represent about one-third of the membership. Being ideologically driven, these people are motivated to vote. And, that is significant in a nation where voting turnout is traditionally low. So, Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population–a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.  | Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks with employees of the Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 12, 2011. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) Supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, hold signs during the "Rock the Caucus" event held at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) # Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and his wife Karen, right, at the "Rock the Caucus" event held at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # A supporter of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, holds a sign in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # A supporter of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, holds up signs in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # Supporters leave after a campaign event for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Dec. 21, 2011. Several candidates campaigned in Iowa, with just 13 days remaining before the state's first-in-the nation caucus. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at a campaign event in Bettendorf, Iowa, Dec. 20, 2011. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # Former Pennsilvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, attends the Warren County GOP Dinner in Indianola, Iowa Dec. 17, 2011. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, takes part in pheasant hunting during a campaign stop in Adel, Iowa, Dec. 26, 2011. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) # |
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, stands on a chair while speaking at a campaign stop at Penn Drug in Sidney, Iowa, Dec. 27, 2011. Bachmann accused her Republican rivals of being "confused" about abortion and gay marriage as she sought to make a final appeal to social conservatives in Iowa before the Iowa caucuses the following week. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, signs a poster at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2011. Bachmann lost a top Iowa campaign aid to the campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) the night before. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, during a campaign stop at Pierce Street Coffee Works in Sioux City, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2011. With just five days left before the state's caucuses, Gingrich's Jobs and Growth Bus Tour had stops in Denison, Storm Lake and Carroll. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) #
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at a news conference outside WHO radio station in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2011. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, watches his wife, Ann Romney, as she addresses the crowd at Music Man Square in Mason City, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2011. Romney was courting supporters in the northern part of Iowa before making a brief 36-hour jaunt to New Hampshire, where his campaign strategy had always been firmly rooted. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times) #
A child listens to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speak during a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 30, 2011. Gingrich openly cried during the event with a group of mothers in an Iowa coffee shop as he described his own mother's illness. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, greets patrons as he stopped for lunch at The Farmer's Kitchen restaurant in Atlantic, Iowa, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) #
A sign near farm building in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Jan. 1, 2012. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul disputed claims that they were not electable, as a poll suggested they were the main threat to Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, signs a book during a campaign stop at the Heartland Acres Agribition Center in Independence, Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012. Gingrich and the other five GOP contenders were fanning out across Iowa in rallies and meet-and-greets in a final push to woo the state's fickle voters before the caucus. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
A crowd listens to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at a campaign event at the SteepleGate Inn in Davenport, Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, leaves a campaign event at the SteepleGate Inn in Davenport, Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, signs a cowboy hat at a campaign event in Perry, Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks during a campaign rally at the Temple for Performing Arts in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and his wife Callista board their bus after a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Daniel Acker/The New York Times) #
A campaign volunteer makes a call at a campaign office of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in Urbandale, Iowa, Jan. 3, 2012. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) #
Charlie Spano displays signs in support of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in Concord, N.H., Jan. 4, 2012. After a disappointing showing in the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich followed the quest for the GOP nomination to New Hampshire. (Cheryl Senter/The New York Times) #
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) exits a news conference alongside her husband, Marcus, in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 4, 2012. Bachmann said that she would not continue her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination after finishing sixth in Iowa's caucuses. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) #
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks with diners during a campaign stop at the Tilt'n Diner in Tilton, N.H., Jan. 5, 2012. Santorum had inched up to third place in New Hampshire, according to the daily tracking poll conducted by Suffolk University in Boston. (Richard Perry/The New York Times) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks at a campaign event in Meredith, N.H., Jan. 5, 2012. Gingrich dropped a new opening into his usual remarks while campaigning in New Hampshire, promising to fight a power line project from Canada, which is controversial in the state, unless the cables were buried. (Marcus Yam/The New York Times) #
Attendees listen to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speak at Lawrence Barn during a campaign stop in Hollis, N.H., Jan. 7, 2012. Santorum is among six Republican candidates that would gather that night in New Hampshire for a two-hour debate sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo and WMUR-TV. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times) #
A group of students on a field trip from Mamaroneck High School in New York, march in support of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in Manchester, N.H., Jan. 8, 2012. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, holds hands with his wife Ann as he is surrounded by his son, Tagg, left, grandchildren, and members of his family backstage before he campaigns at McKelvie Intermediate School in Bedford, N.H., Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) #
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a candidate for the Republican nomination, with his wife, Mary Kaye, greet voters outside a polling station Manchester, N.H., Jan. 9, 2012. As New Hampshire voters began to cast ballots, the Republican candidates sought to slow Mitt Romney's march to the nomination, branding him as a corporate villain. (Cheryl Senter/The New York Times) #
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas supporter, Melina Brajovic calls out to voters driving into a polling station, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, during the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, at Hilltop Middle School in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) #
A New Hampshire voter steps out of the Old Town Hall after voting in the nation's first primary on January 10, 2012 in Canterbury, N.H. Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led by double digits in most polls, and was expected to finish on top in the first-primary. (Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images) #
Neal Conner and Brandon Hall show support for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, outside a polling station at Memorial High School in Manchester, N.H., Jan. 10, 2012. (Nathaniel Brooks/The New York Times) #
Supporters of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, wait for Gingrich to make a campaign stop at a polling station at Bedford High School in Bedford, N.H., Jan. 10, 2012. (Marcus Yam/The New York Times) #
Supporters of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, surround members of the media and Gingrich during his campaign stop in Merrimack, N.H., Jan. 10, 2012. (Marcus Yam/The New York Times) #
From left: Fox News Channel personality Greta Van Susteren, speaks to Abby, Mary Anne and Mary Kaye, the daughters and wife of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a candidate for the Republican nomination, on the day of the New Hampshire primary election in Manchester, N.H., Jan. 10, 2012. (Cheryl Senter/The New York Times) #
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, react as it was declared that he was the winner of the New Hampshire Primary Election at his reception in Manchester, N.H., Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) #
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and his wife, Ann, greet Romney's supporters at his primary night party at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H., Jan. 10, 2012. Projections show that Romney won the New Hampshire primary. (Nathaniel Brooks/The New York Times) #
The campaign bus for Republican presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney drives to a campaign event on January 11, 2012 in Columbia, South Carolina. A day after winning the New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney was launching his campaign in South Carolina. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets supporters during a campaign rally at The Hall at Senate's End on January 11, 2012 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, looks up during a campaign stop at the Jones Memorial AME Zion Church, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as he arrives for a Huckabee forum on January 14, 2012 in Charleston, South Carolina. Republican presidential candidates continued to campaign for votes in South Carolina ahead of the primary on January 21st. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and his, Mary Kaye Huntsman greet a voter in their car after a visit to Virginia's restaurant on January 15, 2012 in Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul waves to supporters after speaking at a South Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition Event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, January 16, 2012. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, arrives for a town hall meeting at the Rioz Brazilian Steakhouse in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination during the Fox News Republican Debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. The five remaining major candidates for the Republican nomination squared off with just five days before the state's primary. From left: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination during the Fox News Republican Debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. The five remaining major candidates for the Republican nomination squared off with just five days before the state's primary. From left: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Women take pictures by the campaign bus for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, during his visit to the Carolinas Hospital System in Florence, S.C., Jan. 17, 2012. With five days remaining before the South Carolina primary, Gingrich continued campaigning in the state with stops scheduled in Florence and Columbia. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Volunteer Jim Bartley holds his hat as he waives traffic toward a town hall meeting hosted by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at Phillip's Market in West Columbia, S.C., Jan. 17, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Attendees listen to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as he hosts a town hall meeting at a Holiday Inn in Rock Hill, S.C., Jan. 17, 2012. Paul was taking a day off from campaigning on to return to Washington to vote against an increase in the nation's debt ceiling, forgoing a day on the hard-fought trail just three days before South Carolina's presidential primary. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
The campaign bus of Republican presidential candidate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sits outside a town hall meeting at the South Carolina Farmer's Market on January 17, 2012 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, during a campaign stop at Christ Central Community Center in Winnsboro, S.C., Jan. 18, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Mallory Ruhling waits for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, to speak during a campaign stop at Summit Pointe Conference Center in Spartanburg, S.C., Jan. 18, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, laughs with Mike McKinney during a campaign stop at Bullock's Barber Shop in Greer, S.C., Jan. 18, 2012. (Luke Sharrett/The New York Times) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at a grassroots rally at Winthrop University on January 18, 2012 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
People listen as Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in Beaufort, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) #
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul speaks during a whistle-stop tour at the Grand Strand Airport in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Friday, January 20, 2012. Paul vowed that his fight would go on, despite what happened in Republican primary vote. (Steve Jessmore/Myrtle Beach Sun-News/MCT) #
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney holds a campaign rally at Harmon's Tree Farm in Gilbert, South Carolina, January 20, 2012. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) #
Harold, right, and Linda Smoak, of Charleston, S.C., leave a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich aboard the USS Yorktown Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) #
Betty Bradham, left, Peggy Langdale and Mark Dever, South Carolina poll workers, wait for voters at an armory in West Columbia, S.C., Jan. 20, 2012. (Kirsten Luce/The New York Times) #
Paton Blough and his daughters, Macy Dunn, 9, right, and Piper Dunn, 5, shield the rain with a sign in support of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, after attending a campaign stop by Gingrich at TommyÅs Country Ham House, where Mitt Romney also made a stop, in Greenville, S.C., Jan. 21, 2012. (James Estrin/The New York Times) #
Whiteford's Restaurant where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, made a campaign stop in Laurens , S.C., Jan. 21, 2012. GingrichÅs victory in South Carolina's primary came just 10 days after a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire left the impression that his candidacy was all but dead. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
A crowd gathers at Whiteford's Restaurant, where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, made a campaign stop in Laurens, S.C., Jan. 21, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
Jina Campano holds her daughter, Chloe Lee, 3, as Elizabeth Lee, 6, looks on, at a victory party for Newt Gingrich after the South Carolina primary in Columbia, S.C., Jan. 21, 2012. GingrichÅs victory in South Carolina came just 10 days after a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire left the impression that his candidacy was all but dead. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
A man watches Rick Santorum speak on a TV at a victory party for Newt Gingrich after the South Carolina primary in Columbia, S.C., Jan. 21, 2012. (Travis Dove/The New York Times) #
A crowd awaits former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, outside All-Star Building Materials in Ormond Beach, Fla., Jan. 22, 2012. Romney held a campaign rally there after making an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." (Jason Henry/The New York Times) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney waves as he arrives on his bus for a campaign event at All-Star Building Material January 22, 2012 in Ormond Beach, Florida. Mitt Romney arrived in Florida one day after coming in second in the South Carolina primary and ahead of the January 31 Florida primary. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney arrives in for his Florida kickoff with a rally at All-Star Building Materials January 22, 2012 in Ormond Beach, Florida. (AP Photo, Roberto Gonzalez) #
Audience members listen as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at Allstar Building Materials in Ormond Beach, Fla., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) #
Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gestures as he speaks during an event at the The River Church on January 23, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. Newt Gingrich arrived in Florida to campaign before votes before the January 31, primary. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
People listen as Republican presidential candidates, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) as they participate in the NBC News, National Journal, Tampa Bay Times debate held at the University of South Florida on January 23, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. The debate is the first of two before the Florida primaries on January 31st. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) #
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks during a Treasure Coast Tea Party Rally at the Community Christian Academy in Stuart, Fla., Jan. 24, 2012. After participating in the 18th presidential debate for the GOP nomination contest, Santorum spent the day campaigning throughout Florida. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times) #
Supporters leave the National Gypsum Company's factory after hearing Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney deliver a speech January 24, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. According to Romney, the home building supply company idled this empty factory in 2008 due to the slowdown in the housing marking. Romney's speech was billed as a "prebuttal" to the State of the Union speech by President Barack Obama. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) #
Violinist Luis Haza plays before the introduction of Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during a campaign event billed as a Latin American Policy Speech at Florida International University on January 25, 2012 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) #
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (C) is accompanied by (L-R) Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R- FL) and former Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) as he arrives for a US-Cuba Democracy political action committee event January 25, 2012 in Miami, Florida. Romney was campaigning in Florida ahead of next Tuesday's state primary. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) #
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, during a space industry roundtable at Brevard Community College in Cocoa, Fla., Jan. 25, 2012. (Marcus Yam/The New York Times) #
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks at American Douglas Metals in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 25, 2012. Romney called President Obama "detached from reality", accusing him of saying one thing during his State of the Union speech and doing another during his presidency. (Chip Litherland/The New York Times) #
Supporters attend a tea party rally with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in Mount Dora, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012. (Marcus Yam/The New York Times) #
A supporter holds up a bumper sticker while waiting for the start of a campaign event with Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at Paramount Printing January 26, 2012 in Jacksonville, Florida. Romney spoke at the printing business because President and CEO John Cummins said health care costs, Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, the loss of business and other factors have forced the company to close. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) #
Supporters cheer while listening to Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during a campaign event at Paramount Printing January 26, 2012 in Jacksonville, Florida. Recent polls show that Romney and fellow GOP candidate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), are in a statistical tie heading into next Tuesday's Florida primary. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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