Teaparty 2007

$4.2 million was the total raised on November 5th. December 16th is the date for the next Ron Paul "moneybomb". He's probably looking at anywhere between $500,000 to $8 million raised on that day. As an aside, I'm so accurate with my predictions my gift is more of a curse really. But anyway, be a part of history again, donate!. In the meantime, watch this vid (complete with Iron Chef theme music!):

Ron Paul Supporter Spotlight

300 with Ron Paul. This made me laugh because it's so over the top.



Meanwhile, Conservative Belle has Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris in their
first commercial together. Admittedly, I found it quite entertaining.

Federal Agents Raid Private Coin Maker

Couple of different stories talking about the "Liberty Dollar" and yesterday's raid on their mint:

Washington Post- "Liberty Dollars" Can Buy Users a Prison Term

WorldnetDaily- Feds raid Liberty Dollar offices

New York Sun - US Raids Issuer of Ron Paul Coins

Is there a crime that is being committed? If there is, what would it be? If you go to http://www.libertydollar.org/ you will find on the front page this quote:

"There is no law that says goods and services must be paid for with Federal Reserve notes. Parties entering into a transaction can establish any medium of exchange that is agreed upon."

Andrew Williams, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.

With the value of the dollar in freefall, people are going to be looking for ways to preserve their wealth. One way to do that is by conducting transactions in alternative currencies. Supermodels are doing it now.

Here's a question: Who gets hurt the most when alternative currencies are not made available? Hint: It's not the young, rich, and good looking people like me. If you are a member of the poor or the middle class, or are elderly or on a fixed income, and that income comes to you in dollars. You should be very worried.

BONUS: I've been meaning to post this link for a while. It's a story that has Ron Paul, the IRS getting beat (at least not winning) in the courts, fiat money, and gold.

My Dr. Dre CD is nearly 15 years old

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Grandfather Inflation Report

How much inflation have we seen since the 50's?:


Inflation in my adult years increased average prices 1,000% or more:

example 1: a postage stamp in the 1950s cost 3 cents; today's cost is 41 cents - 1,266% inflation;

example 2: a gallon of 90 Octane full-service gasoline cost 18 cents
before; today it is $3.05 for self-service - 1,870 % inflation;

example 3: a house in 1959 cost $14,100; today's median price is $213,000 - 1,400% inflation;

example 4: a dental crown used to cost $40; today it's $1,100 - 2,750% inflation;

example 5: an ice cream cone in 1950 cost 5 cents; today its $2.50 - 4,900% inflation;

The chart below shows CPI since 1800:




It is only since we moved completely off of the gold standard in 1971 that the CPI rocketed upward. The curve is probably steeper since the methodologies in computing CPI have changed in recent times.

The day is fast approaching when people are going to be buying loaves of bread with wheelbarrows of cash.

Pilfered from dailypaul.com

What does $100,000 get you these days?

A full page ad in USA today of course:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=37965

The full page ad commissioned by Lawrence Lepard is complete and is set to appear in USA Today on Wednesday November 21st with a right hand placement in the first section- NEWS. The word is that USA Today was willing to do this ad because it was a grassroots effort, amazing.The concept for the ad was originally developed by "max" here at RonPaulForums.com and tailored based on Lawrence's wishes from hundreds of comments from forum members in an open source ad development methodology.

Reason # 4,234,345 why Ron Paul will win the GOP nomination.

What even the blogosphere hasn't figured out yet is that the "unofficial" campaign overshadows the "official" campaign in so many ways. Sure,$2300 is the maximum contribution that an individual can make to a candidate. But the value of people going out there, on their own, waving signs, paying for advertisements on their own, creating youtubes, writing blogs, paying for banners to flyover football games (OSU vs. Michigan is one I know is happening this weekend) and Nascar events (that's happened at least once) is beyond estimation. How do you measure the value of that? Has that reached tens of millions of dollars? At least, in my guesstimation.

Goldwater endorses Ron Paul!

Well actually it's his son Barry Goldwater Jr.:

“America is at a crossroads,” said Mr. Goldwater. “We have begun to stray from our traditions and must get back to what has made us the greatest nation on earth or we will lose much of the freedom we hold dear. Ron Paul stands above all of the other candidates in his commitment to liberty and to America.”

I'm really not one for endorsements (it doesn't make or break my decision on whom to vote for). But it's nice to see and it makes me think I haven't gone too far off the GOP reservation.

Linkorama

Instead of watching the Democratic debate I thought I'd put random stuff I've found on the web.



I originally found this on Tammy Bruce's Blog and it made its way to Gorillamask:

Men who look like old lesbians!



Phil Spector is candidate number one, but Roy Orbison and Eddie Money also make the cut. If you go through their archives you'll find other not so flattering pictures of everyone from Newt Gingrich, to Imus, to Al Pacino.


Gorillamask also linked to a clip from Best Week Ever that shows Bear Grylls hollowing out a camel ala Luke Skywalker and crawling inside:



Finally, the crew at the Onion talk about how to raise awareness among the people of Darfur to let them know how much we are doing for them:



How Can We Raise Awareness In Darfur Of How Much We're Doing For Them?

Reason TV: Emminent Domain

Drew Carey continues his series with Reason TV, this edition: Eminent Domain

Click here for his video as well as additional links about government seizure of property.

I thought this wasn't as good as his other 2 episodes for Reason. But only because I think that it's a little too movie-of-the-week-ish. But this is yet another example of the erosion of the freedoms that we once had in this country. Now if Boss Hogg wants to take Uncle Jesse's farm, there's nothing that those Daisy and the Duke boys can do about it.

I do wonder, if in my lifetime, there will be a violent revolution in this country. I hope not, it definitely won't be good for anyone. But I'm actually thinking our economy will collapse first.

Ron Paul supporter Spotlight

This youtube makes a lot of sense when you find out who made it. It was good for a chuckle on my part:

A Sign Your Campaign has Arrived

UPDATE: I was trying to add this link earlier (pilfered from ronpaulforums.com) but for some reason it wouldn't load. Now it has. It's a call by the American Enterprise Institute for Ron Paul to return the $4.2 mill people donated to him last week:

Ron Paul is an iconoclast, a principled libertarian, and an entertaining presidential candidate, but he has gone too far. Last week he raised boatloads of money from admirers who celebrate the violent overthrow of established government. For the sake of his reputation and his responsibility to the Congress in which he serves, he should disown that support.

Is this all that the braintrust over at AEI can come up with to rationalize why Paul should give up his candidacy? A. The campaign (as noted by the poindexters at the Weekly Standard) had nothing to do with the "moneybomb" that his supporters unleashed on the 5th. B. So what if his supporters chose V for Vendetta as a theme for that day? It doesn't mean that they want a violent overthrow of the established government. Just like when someone says "I'll give them an offer he can't refuse" doesn't mean that that person wants to join the Mafia.

IMO, the author has an axe to grind with Ron Paul:

I ran across this side of Paul in my work on continuity of government. The Continuity of Government Commission issued a recommendation that there should be temporary appointments made to the House of Representatives in the extreme case of hundreds of members being killed in an attack so that the House could continue to function. Paul was the first member to oppose this recommendation; he called it "dangerous" and said that it "handed terrorists a pre-emptive victory over republican government." His piece was picked up by conspiracy theorists who accused our Commission of trying to impose a dictatorship on America.

Ahh, I see a rehashed joke coming on: What do you call 535 Congressman at the bottom of the Potomac? A good start.

********

After Ron Paul's record breaking week last week, it's no surprise that there would be MSM reaction coming out this week. The Weekly Standard leads things off:

So why have America's lunatics taken such a shine to the formerly obscure Ron Paul? There's a simple explanation: Although Paul spends most of his time talking about the Constitution and such cherished old time policies as the gold standard, he's as close to an anarchist as we're likely to see in presidential politics.

...Ron Paul has taken a good, hard look around America and hates everything he sees. He hates the Iraq war. He hates the rest of our foreign policy. He pretty much thinks we shouldn't have a foreign policy. He hates our bloated and meddlesome federal government. (What's that they say about stuck clocks?) He hates abortion. He hates the Treasury and floating currency...

And so on. What the Standard story doesn't state is why Dr. Paul is gaining momentum now. He's been pushing his message for 30+ years. What has changed? As much as Barrett tries to dismiss Paul's views and his supporters as "lunatic fringe" (ok, some of them are) he doesn't say why Paul's campaign is growing.

*******

Wonkette published an open letter to Redstate:

This is a call for internet bipartisanship. We must bipartisan…ly declare war on the Paultards!

Redstate responded:

Bombing starts in five minutes.

Ohh noo, who knows what will happen now that Wonkette and Redstate have joined forces to ignore Ron Paul? They're like the Superfriends of sites nobody pays attention to. What will probably happen is what happened with the Pajamas Media Presidential Poll. They made so many machinations trying to exclude Dr. Paul from their poll (changing their criteria 3 times by my count) that people stopped participating in it. They will probably change it again this week now that he met their criteria AGAIN.

Napolitano: Let's Turn the Cameras Back on the Government

Pilfered in it's entirety from Lewrockwell.com:

I just finished Judge Andrew Napolitano's great new book, A Nation of Sheep, which I recommend without reservation. A full review is forthcoming, but in the meantime, I especially liked this passage about government cameras:

Why should government agents spy on us? They work for us. How about we spy on them? On cops when they arrest and interrogate people or contemplate suspending freedom; on prosecutors when they decide who to prosecute and what evidence to use; on judges when they rationalize away our guaranteed rights; and on members
of Congress whenever they meet with a lobbyist, mark up a piece of legislation, or conspire to assault our liberties or our pocketbooks.

LRC readers will also appreciate this paragraph from the same chapter, answering the question, "Where Do We Go From Here?"

At this writing, sixteen politicians are competing nationally to replace President Bush; there are eight Democrats and eight Republicans. With the exception of Ron Paul (R-TX), in terms of fidelity to the Constitution, it does not matter which one of them wins. Except for Congressman Paul, they all love power for its own sake, believe that Big Government should redistribute wealth, regard the Constitution as a quaint obstacle, and would enforce or disregard laws as they saw fit; all this, without regard to our history, our values, or our natural rights.

Tom Tancredo has a new Campaign ad

US Holds Going out of Business Sale

No comment, other than it's funny because it hits pretty close to home. From the Onion

The Weekly Buchanan: Is World War III on Hold?

According to Buchanan's column this week it is:

The latest indication is a candid interview in the Financial Times with Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, head of Central Command, who would be the Tommy Franks of any naval or air war on Iran.

"The Pentagon is not preparing a pre-emptive attack on Iran in spite of an increase in bellicose rhetoric from Washington, according to senior officers," concluded the FT in the lead of its story.

Dealing with Iran is a "challenge," a strike is not "in the offing," Fallon is quoted. His comments, said the Times, "served as a shot across the bows of hawks who argue for imminent action."

"[G]enerally, the bellicose comments" out of Washington "are not particularly helpful," said our CentCom commander. That is naval gunfire directed right across the bow of the West Wing.

Interesting comments by the top military man for Central Command. But bellicose comments regarding Iran aren't just emanating from the White House, they are coming from most of the top advisers to the GOP Presidential candidates as well. Like this one.

Yoga with Tara Stiles Ford Model

This week: Yoga in the morning

Check out Tara's myspace www.myspace.com/tarastiles

Ron Paul Linkorama part II

It's been a good week for Dr. Paul and his campaign. The record setting $4.2 million dollars that his supporters raised on November 5th generated tens of millions of dollars in free publicity. With the economy and the value of the dollar both heading south, Ron Paul gave Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a very public dressing down that was broadcast on CNBC (and had traders cheering his name while the market was in session). He spoke yesterday at a rally that was attended, by some estimates, as many as 4000 supporters. This past week could very well be the week that Dr. Paul's campaign officially moved into the "top tier".

Building on that momentum, December 16th will be the date for Ron Paul's next "moneybomb". Why that day? Because that's the day of the Boston Tea Party silly! http://www.teaparty07.com/




Links to some of the interesting vids and stories and interviews of Dr. Paul's record breaking week:

New York Times via Cnet.com fairest and best overview of his campaign so far

Dr. Paul on Meet the Press: Part I and Part II

Lew Rockwell with the top 100 political websites

Paul and Bernanke and the report of the traders cheering Dr. Paul's name

A local PA paper gives does an article on Paul

Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful

The Marines are 233 years old today, here is a little bit about one of the greatest:

Chesty Puller was the most decorated Marine in history, he was the first and only Marine to be awarded the Navy Cross, 5 TIMES. I found this article that described what happened with his 3rd Navy Cross (emphasis mine):

The action that brought him that medal occurred on the night of October 24-25 1942. For a desperate three hours his battalion, stretched over a mile-long front, was the only defense between vital Henderson Airfield and a regiment of seasoned Japanese troops. In pouring jungle rain the Japanese smashed repeatedly at his thin line, as General Puller moved up and down its length to encourage his men and direct the defense. After reinforcements arrived, he commanded the augmented force until late the next afternoon. The defending Marines suffered less than 70 casualties in the engagement while 1400 of the enemy were killed and 17 truckloads of Japanese equipment were recovered by the Americans.

BONUS: One of my favorite movie scenes of all time

Ben Bernanke testifying this week

This week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified in front of Congress. It wasn't pretty:



Bernanke's response "If somebody has their wealth in dollars, and they are going to buy consumer goods in dollars...then [with] the decline of the dollar, the only effect it has on their buying power is it makes imported goods expensive."

Greenspan was so much better at the the Fedspeak than Bernanke is.

Yes, thanks Ben, so the senior citizens who are on fixed incomes lose 10% of their buying power. Well, maybe the old people can go back and work at McDonald's. Old people die anyway if they don't keep active, right?

As a side note, when Alan Greenspan (a noted gold bug before he was appointed Fed Chairman) was on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked him if the Fed was even necessary. With the dollar in freefall, this could be an issue that may loom large come the 08 elections.

BONUS: Reaction to Bernanke's testimony from the trading floor

Gunmen storm South African nuclear facility

A preliminary report from WorldnetDaily:

An early morning attack by four gunmen who stormed and reached the emergency-response control room of a secured nuclear facility in South Africa has left one of the plant's operational officers hospitalized and officials with the country's nuclear agency threatening a newspaper with charges of violating national security laws for publishing an account of the intrusion.

I don't know if this is a big deal or not, but hopefully we'll get the full story soon.

Condi Rice gets a C-

Newsmax offers their assessment Condoleeza Rice and her performance as Secretary of State:

Condoleezza Rice arrived in Foggy Bottom in January 2005 to a standing ovation.

With critics of the Iraq War still a marginal faction of the liberal left, the new secretary of state was an international star in an administration that had few. Supporters urged her to consider a 2008 run for president as chatter of “Condi vs. Hillary” filled the airwaves.

Three years and more than 60 global trips later, Rice’s profile has plummeted, even among the conservatives who once viewed her as their ideological savior and soulmate.

In light of her changing image, Newsmax decided to take a hard look at Rice’s performance and issue a report card on her efforts to date. Her results have been mixed at best, which is reflected in our overall grade of “C-.”

I think Newsmax is overly harsh on Condi. As the events this week in Pakistan make glaringly clear, the message we send out to the world is inconsistent. When it came to the choice between dictator and democracy, we chose dictator. We then sent Musharraf more of our money. It's no wonder Putin makes Condi "outside his Moscow office like a pesky salesman peddling office supplies."

Maybe in a world where the dollar is being abandoned as the world's reserve currency, and our economy is on the verge of collapse, and the Great War on Terror is percieved by some of our friends and all of our enemies as American empire building. Maybe Condi is peddling something nobody wants.

Hmm, maybe it's this video that gave me this rating. Because college for me was always about seducing the ladies!!! :

Peter Schiff on Glenn Beck

Peter Schiff of Europacific Capital on the Glenn Beck show:




Peter is a noted economist who really understands what's been happening for the past several years. He had a good teacher, his father. If you have any money for investments, I would look into his firm.

BONUS: Since today was the day that everyone was collecting endorsements. Guess who Schiff is endorsing because of his economic policy? He sent this email to all 60,000 of his clients. Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Reason: Ronald Reagan circa 1975

A great interview with Reagan from 1975, his explanation of the toxicity of federal funding for education is so clear:

At first, there was a great opposition to most of the Federal revenues that are going to education on the part of many educators. Once the money was there, however, it was like the farmer who went into the woods and came back with the wagon loads of wild pigs. When they asked him how he had done it–they’d been wild for a hundred years–he said, "I built a fence and I put corn down and fed them, and they got used to eating the corn there, so l extended the fences’s sides and finally I had an enclosure and I corralled them." He said, "If I can get them to take food from me, I’ll own them." And this is what really happened with Federal aid to education. You know, the Federal Government could have done it differently if the Federal Government did not at the same time want control.

The whole interview is here.

BONUS:
From page 421 of Robert Novak's autobiography The Prince of Darkness (on gold):

I asked Reagan: "What ever happened to the gold standard? I thought you supported it."

"Well," the president began and then paused (a ploy he frequently used to collect his thoughts), "I still do support the gold standard, but--"At that point, Reagan was interrupted by his chief of staff. "Now, Mr. President," said Don Regan, "we don't want to get bogged down talking about the gold standard."

"You see?" the president said to me, with palms uplifted in mock futility. "They just won't let me have my way."

Pilfered also from Reason.

Ron Paul Supporter Spotlight

One of Ron Paul's supporters just threw this RP ad together, why? Just because. But it's pretty awesome.

Ron Paul on Fox News w/ Shep Smith talking about yesterday

UPDATE: Fox News Hottie talking about Ron Paul (dare I say she's almost as hot a Julie Banderas?)



UPDATE: Cafferty talking about Ron Paul

The Weekly Buchanan: An Intrusion of Reality

Pat on Pakistan and Bush making the world safe for democracy:

What is happening in Pakistan exposes, too, the limits of U.S. power and the failure of President Bush -- because of the democratist ideology to which he converted after 9-11 -- to see clearly the real dangers to his country. Our enemy was always al-Qaida. It was never Iraq. And it is not Iran, at whom the GOP candidates are all braying their bellicosity. After 9-11, those who viewed the horror and asked, "Why do they hate us?" were hooted down as unpatriotic. We were told Muslim militants hate us because we are free, democratic and good, and they are evil.

This November 5th

UPDATE: 9:38 PM PST - East Coast tally $4.3 million, another 2+ hours till midnight on the west coast. There is some speculation that the total number for the day may exceed $5 million based on a possible backlog in processing credit card transactions... http://www.ronpaulforums.com


38k + individual donors over 24 hour period (EST) http://www.ronpaulgraphs.com/index.html

21k brand new donors - Jesse Benton, Paul campaign spokesman, quoted in NYT

UPDATE: 5:04 PM PST and the total for the quarter is $6,240,167.28. With another 7 hours till midnight out here, it looks like Paul's campaign will net around $4 mill for the day. There should be a bunch of MSM coverage tomorrow.

UPDATE: 2:45 PM PST and Ron Paul's campaign is closing in on $3mil for the day. CNN just did a story on it:




BTW - in answer to Wolf's question, those are donations in real time by people using credit cards/paypal



UPDATE: HOLY CRAP!!! It's 9am PST on November 5th and the ticker shows $4,628,450.69...Nearly $2 mil since 8:30 pm PST last night. Is it possible to get to $4 mil by midnight?

To keep this in perspective, Barack Obama's campaign raised $1.83 mil in 3 DAYS. On top of that, this is exclusively grass roots. Dr. Paul's supporters decided to choose one day where everyone commits to donating (ideally at least $100). I get a kick just watching the totals go up.

UPDATE: Well it's 10:40 pm PST and Ron Paul's campaign ticker shows $3,323,075.07 which, according to my calculations, translates into $547,751.99. A half a million dollars in a little over 2 hours. The pace can't keep up overnight, but tomorrow should be a big day. I feel a little better about Dr. Paul getting closer to 3 mil by the end of the 5th...



As of Sunday November 4th at 8:30 PST Ron Paul's campaign ticker shows $2,775,323.o8 raised so far for the 4th quarter, at 12 EST the biggest fundraising drive for Dr. Paul's campaign begins.

At the end of the day on November 5th, the total dollars donated could be somewhere between $500k to $3million-4million.

Some Ron Paul supporters from NYC are streaming live video from Times Square:

http://www.thisnovember5th.org/

Donate to Dr. Paul's campaign if you are so inclined:

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/

Star Parker on Social Security

Social Security always reminds me of that movie "Dumb and Dumber" where Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels characters find that suitcase full of cash and they end up spending it all. In the process they write "IOU's", to keep track of where the money goes. "Don't lose THAT one, that's a Lamborghini!" one of them says (or something to that effect). It's obvious that there is no way that the money is ever going to come back upon presentation of the "IOU".

That's what our national "pension" system is. A big scam and a looming economic calamity for us. It's a stack of IOU's that are never going to be able to be redeemed.

Star Parker writes a column that talks about how Chile has been able to privatize it's Social Security system by giving its citizens a choice on whether to continue to participate in, or to opt out of the government administered program.

Hardly surprising, but 90% of the citizens choose to opt out of the government system.

Star's article is here.

Reason Magazine: The Real Causes of Prosperity

Ronald Bailey writes about the results of a 2 year study by the World Bank:

A Mexican migrant to the U.S. is five times more productive than one who stays home. Why is that?

The answer is not the obvious one: This country has more machinery or tools or natural resources. Instead, according to some remarkable but largely ignored research—by the World Bank, of all places—it is because the average American has access to over $418,000 in intangible wealth, while the stay-at-home Mexican's intangible wealth is just $34,000.

The article is interesting because it calculates the value of an intangible such as the rule of law and assigns a value to it. According to the World Bank 57% of a countries intangible capital is composed of how much that country respects the rule of law. Education is 36%.


Read the whole thing here.

A Time for Choosing: Classic Ronald Reagan

How far has the GOP moved from Ronald Reagan's conservatism? Here's his classic speech from 40 plus years ago:

Conservative Belle: Whose Decision Is It? The Easter Bunny?

Conservative Belle: Whose Decision Is It? The Easter Bunny?

As much as I dislike the direction the GOP is going, I dislike Hillary even more. Her debate performance is encapsulated by this vid that I pilfered from Conservative Belle, who pilfered from Ian Schartz

The Weekly Buchanan: Sinking Currency, Sinking Country

Buchanan talking about the economy and our sinking dollar:

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45.

The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century.

Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800.

Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years?

Nope. The dollar has plummeted in value, more so in Bush's term than during any comparable period of U.S. history. Indeed, Bush is presiding over a worldwide abandonment of the American dollar.

The reason gold has hit the historic highs this week is not only in response to the uncertainty of world events, but as a response to the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Fed has pumped into the economy in the past few months. M3, or the money supply, (which the government stopped publishing a few years ago) has been calculated by some private entities to be as high as 14 percent. Is it doom and gloom time? Yes. We are witnessing something historic, we are witnessing the flight away from the dollar as the reserve currency in the world.

Gold and bicycles people, put your money into gold and bicycles.

Can our problems be easily solved? Well the answers are easy, but it will take sacrifice. We need to give up the empire that we have. Take the troops out of South Korea, of Europe, and yes, Iraq. Put that money into the liabilities that we have here at home. Social Security, medicare, can all be paid for if we stop being the policeman of the world. It's tough medicine, but the country will be better off in the long run.

Yoga with Tara Stiles Ford Model

This week: Counteracting hangovers

Check out Tara's myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tarastiles

Tara is looking particularly healthy in this vid.

Time Magazine: The Revenge of the Nerd

Joel Stein from Time.com writes about Ron Paul's campaign (pilfered from www.ronpaulforums.com):

It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he's given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T shirts who go nuts — giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand because there were only 400 seats, a hipster-looking student worked his way through the half-hour-long line to shake Paul's hand. This was surely it — the moment when the straight faces would break and Paul would be wedgied up the flagpole. "When you see Bernanke," the kid said, "will you tell him to stop cutting rates when gold hits 1,000?"

The piece goes on with a quote by the ubiquitous pollster Frank Luntz:

"His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass," says GOP consultant Frank Luntz. "It's not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff. They just like him because he's the most anti-Establishment of all the candidates, the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, 'Hey, Washington, f____ you.'"

Quite the potty mouth Frank has, I wonder where he got that from? Oh yeah:




F___ you, Frank!

Luntz is correct of course, the anti-Washington sentiment is what's driving Ron Paul's campaign. Why shouldn't people be angry? Pick any issue, Iraq, the border, government spending, the erosion of our civil liberties and I'll show you something that the government has screwed up. The Democrats took back Congress in '06 IMO, specifically to stop funding the war in Iraq and what happened? Nothing. Even at a recent Dem debate, none of the "top tier" could make a commitment to bringing the troops home within the time frame of their first term in office. Amnesty keeps getting brought up again and again for illegals and it's only through vocal opposition by bloggers and other concerned citizens that keeps killing it.

The real test comes in less than 3 months in New Hampshire.

Senate Panel backs Law of the Sea Treaty

From AP:

The Reagan-era "Law of the Sea" treaty was primed for its first-ever Senate vote, boosted by strong support from the Bush administration and an emphatic vote of approval Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee.

With Senate ratification, the United States would join 155 nations that are party to a convention that sets rules and settles disputes over navigation, fishing and economic development of the open seas and establishes environmental standards.

Really, why do we even have a State Department? It's their job to talk to other countries. Do we really need to submit our sovereignty to the UN? What a joke. If I were running for President, I would be hammering all of the Senators who want to abdicate their duty to protecting and defending the Constitution by supporting this ridiculous treaty. This should be brought up at every debate for every presidential candidate to answer.

Postapathy: A little about drugs, "Real Women of Canada"#links

Postapathy christens his blog with a first post on marijuana.

I'm not a fan of illicit drugs, but I'm an enemy of all policies and bureaucrats that would take away the civil liberties and freedoms and traditions our country was founded on. I can't stand the fact that the "War on Drugs" has been a waste of hundreds of billions of dollars of valuable taxpayer money and the only results we have to show for it are hundreds of thousands of citizens jailed or branded as criminals, a militarized approach to law enforcement (and the attendant growth of government that has gone along with it) and the trampling of civil rights that is the inevitable consequence of government trying to legislate morality.

Coincidently, Reason magazine has a story today on how literally our government war on drugs killed one of its citizens:

Last March, when the Drug Enforcement Administration seized less than half an ounce of cannabis that Robin Prosser, a Missoula lupus patient and medical marijuana activist, had been sent by her caregiver, the special agent in charge of the DEA's Rocky Mountain Field Division said it was "protecting people from their own state laws." Last week, unable to find a reliable supply of the only drug that relieved her pain without causing unacceptable side effects, Prosser killed
herself. Although the use of medical marijuana is legal in Montana, friends say suppliers were spooked by the DEA. Writing in the Helena Independent Record,
activist Tom Daubert calls Prosser's death "a direct result of DEA actions."

About a month ago I debated drug policy on the Dallas PBS station with a former head of the local DEA office, who insisted that marijuana was not a big priority for the agency. When I pointed out that his former employer was continuing to raid medical marijuana growers and dispensaries in California and other states, he said it couldn't very well sit back and allow that sort of thing. To which my response was: Why not? It is hard to understand, even from the DEA's point of view, how half an ounce of pot can be such a threat that it's worth risking an outcome like this one.

Of course, there may be negative consequences to ending the "War on Drugs" but is it going to be anything like this:

Ron Paul on Jay Leno

Most Influential Conservatives

The Telegraph has a listing of the top 100 conservatives and has been doling the names out 20 at a time. Today, Nos - 61-80 :

Couple of notables today:

Thomas Sowell - My favorite economist, (yes even above Milton Friedman). Basic Economics and Applied Economics made it through the recent culling of my book collection. I've been reading his books and columns for nearly 20 years.

Pat Buchanan - When I was in college, people would always smear Pat as a racist, blah blah blah. Which made me curious about his ideas, so I started reading his writings and have become a fan over the years.

BONUS: The Weekly Buchanan, video style (admittedly a couple of years old but classic)

Cracked: The 25 Secret Perks of Working at Google

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Wolves and Sheep

Judge Andrew Napolitano, legal analyst and a regular on Fox News has a new book out called "A Nation of Sheep". Andrew Young has an overview at LewRockwell.com:

Judge Napolitano dedicates a significant portion of his book to detailing the Bush Administration’s assault on the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unlawful searches and seizures of their homes, person, and property. He perceptively notes that one of the main justifications for the American Revolution was the British policy of allowing soldiers to conduct searches by simply writing their own warrants. The Framers specifically outlawed this practice when they adopted the Fourth Amendment, which bans searches and seizures unless a judge has signed a search warrant.

Ed Morrissey: Terrorism is a tactic

Over in the Captains Quarters, Ed Morrissey makes the point that many neo-conservatives and the Bush administration have been ignoring since 9/11:

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter -- and the State Department finally has discovered this truth. In a long-overdue act, State has forgiven the "terrorism" of the Hmong and Montagnards who fought so bravely beside us in Southeast Asia, allowing them to enter the country and allowing those already here to become legal residents.

I've stopped by CQ off and on over the past few years, and I don't know if I recall him ever making a statement so, well, um, Michael Moore-ish. His post does address something further down that I don't think gets talked about enough:

...We have used "war on terror" as a label because it allows us to avoid the more accurate -- and more provocative -- descriptor of a war against radical Islamist terrorists. Using that phrase clearly identifies our enemies, but we have avoided it to keep those enemies from twisting it into a war on Islam for their own propaganda purposes.

Unfortunately, this declaration of war against a tactic leads to a lot of conclusions, many of them self-defeating. It calls into question what terrorism means, how it's defined, and under what circumstances it becomes terrorism.

What Morrissey didn't add in his critique is how we define victory in a war against a tactic. The truth is, there is no way to win the GWOT. Just like murder, kidnapping, extortion or any other tactic, it's always going to be around. There is a way to counter radical Islamic terrorists, but that's material for another post.

So why not just be more clear on who our enemy is? The explanation given by Morrissey is inadequate because it doesn't address our own internal propaganda purposes. Look at the rights that we have given up in the name of fighting the GWOT. The Patriot Act has allowed warrantless searches, and the elimination of habeaus corpus to become a norm. Has there even been a discussion about even amending the Constitution to reflect that norm? Not at all. But that's OK, it's all in the name of fighting terror.

All of the amendments that make up the Bill of Rights are equal, and should be respected equally. Assaults on the 4th and the 5th amendment should be met with the same resistance as attacks on the 1st and 2nd or the other 6. Terrorists hate us because of our freedoms Bush says, well our government is working on that.

Ron Paul, Alex Jones, and Neo-Nazis

Hotair printed a mea culpa today regarding a "payment" that the Ron Paul campaign had made to radio host/truther Alex Jones. The $1300 payment to the talk radio host turns out to be a partial refund of a campaign donation for Dr. Paul's presidential run.

Allahpundit writes:

You’ll find the disbursement here about three-quarters of the way down. I could have done without the insinuations of laziness (”bloggers can’t be bothered to do five minutes of research”), especially when bloggers are credited in the same post for having discovered the donation from Don Black — can the campaign “not be bothered” to police for that sort of thing, given their unsolicited yet rising support among white supremacists? — but kudos to Paul for returning, well, not quite all of Alex Jones’s filthy $2,300 but a good-sized chunk of it.

Come on Allahpundit, you belong to "Pajamas Media", there's no intimation of laziness from THAT? But that's beside the point.

Why the name calling and ridicule among the neocons at all? Granted, Dr. Paul isn't Ronald Reagan, he isn't the great communicator. But the histrionics that would make Patti Labelle or Mariah Carey blush have been a hallmark of the neo-conservatives who really get hysterical about the thought of a conservative who literally doesn't tow the party line. Dr. Paul raised 5 million dollars on a message that hasn't changed in 30 years, could it be that the party has left it's base?

Ron Paul's message is resonating with people who are sick and tired of having to choose between 5 degrees of Nelson Rockefeller GOP moderate when what people are looking for is a return to Reagan/Goldwater/Taft conservatism. It isn't just antiwar lefties who are flocking to his campaign. It's libertarians and small government conservatives who have left the party because W's administration has become the second coming of LBJ's "Great Society". It's getting so bad in the GOP that anti abortionists can't even get a seat at the GOP's table...

Gold price closes in on 800 dollars

According to Breitbart

24 Season 7 trailer

I haven't seen this before:

Five Degrees of Moderate

Not quite siren worthy according to Drudge but a big deal to the "Values Voters" whom Huckabee has been gaining endorsements and momentum. Pilfered from the WSJ:

Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, is even more blunt. "He (Huckabee) destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles," she says. "Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us on George W. Bush as a 'compassionate conservative' are now trying to sell us on Mike Huckabee."

The Weekly Buchanan: Conservatism is a Tower of Babel

From his column this week entitled Conservatism is a Tower of Babel:

Sixty years ago, Robert A. Taft was the gold standard. Forty years ago, it was Barry Goldwater, who backed Bob Taft against Ike at the 1952 convention. Twenty years ago, it was Ronald Reagan, who backed Barry in 1964. Reagan remains the paragon – for the consistency of his convictions, the success of his presidency and the character he exhibited to the end of his life. About Reagan the cliché was true: The greatness of the office found out the greatness in the man.

Just as Taft begat Goldwater begat Reagan and now Ron Paul. Giuliani traces his political lineage to McGovern and Rockefeller, and more recently the Bushes. Which, in my opinion, is what the nomination will come down to: Giuliani vs. Paul. Unless any of the other candidates start to gain traction (Huckabee seems to be the latest media anointed flavor of the month but I don't think his fundraising will keep him in the race for much longer).

The five million dollars that Paul raised last quarter will likely be doubled in the fourth quarter. The army of volunteers that have sprouted up spontaneously and the advertising they are doing independent of the campaign is worth millions. Giuliani has brought big money to the table since he announced his candidacy, there is no reason to believe that the money will stop flowing (compassionate conservatism takes a lot of money to work after all). At this point, I wouldn't even say Dr. Paul is an underdog, he is a player in the GOP race who is saying something completely different from Rudy and the other candidates and offers a true alternative in the direction that the party is going to go.

Is 2008 a redux of 1976 or 1980?

BONUS from The Hill:

Kate Rick, Dr. Paul's media coordinator in New Hampshire says this:

“[GOP pollster] Frank Luntz has said on TV that the GOP base has shrunk from 34 percent to 30 percent of the voting population, driven by the war issue,” said Rick. “When your base shrinks it’s extremely damaging to the party. Ron is the onlycandidate who can bring those people back.”

Of course this is the same Frank Luntz that was on Penn and Teller's show "Bullshit!"

Yoga with Tara Stiles, Ford Model

Check out Tara's myspace: www.myspace.com/tarastiles

This week, a routine for beginners



Yoga for Beginners with Tara Stiles

I'm adding Kristeen's vid, just because she's hot. She doesn't do yoga, and all she's talking about is her pictures. But I like her look, sort of Jessica Alba-ish.

A look inside Kristeen's model portfolio

The Ron Paul Remix feat R Kelly -

This is pretty funny, it's short also:

Thank You! And Don't Watch this Movie

The fires here in San Diego have really captured my attention the past few days, luckily I haven't had to evacuate, yet. But I have a number of friends who live where the fires have hit hard that have had to leave. I'm hoping and praying for the best for them.

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who has called and emailed me expressing their concern about the situation out here, I know that things could be a lot worse, not just for me, but for everyone around here.

All of that being said, I wanted to direct everyone's attention to another tragedy in the making:
"Repo: The Genetic Opera" has a trailer out. Paris Hilton is in it, so is the dude from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Sara Brightman (the woman who sings the Bellagio song with the blind dude)

I really don't know what to make of it:



it could be the second coming of "Grease" OR it could be as bad as this:




I will say that if they were trying to make a trailer that makes someone NOT want to see the movie, this is probably the way to go about it.

San Diego Fires

10/23/07 7:57 AM UPDATE:

I had scheduled this appointment last week and am getting my car serviced this morning, they are running a skeleton crew and advised me that they will close early if advised to evacuate. I can overhear a number of employees talking about how the fire has affected them.

I had to get on the freeway for a couple of miles to get to the dealership and there was no traffic at all.





UPDATE: And Still I Persist has tons of updates from Escondido



I hadn't really been paying attention to the fires that have been ravaging the Malibu area of Southern California. Then I take a step outside of my place here in San Diego and there is ash falling everywhere. I turn on the radio just now and Governor Schwarzenegger is holding a press conference about the fires raging east of San Diego and to the south close to the Mexican border. It looks like areas of Solana Beach (a beach community north of San Diego) is having some evacuations now.

So far there have been 250,000 evacuations. Qualcomm Stadium (where the Chargers play) which is 2 miles east of my location has been converted into a shelter area.

Local news reports indicate that the government emergency services infrastructure has held up well, with few problems coordinating and communicating with each other.

KUSI has their newsfeed streaming here:

http://www.kusi.com/home/10720631.html?video=pop&t=a

KNSD the local NBC affiliate has news as well:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/index.html

their live feed is here:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/videostream/11724377/detail.html

Will update soon.

Zakaria says that we have lost all perspective on Iran

From Newsweek:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

In fact, Zakaria writes, the evidence is to the contrary:

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Why does President Bush feel that Iran is such a threat to our national security, going as far last week as to say that World War Three would be inevitable if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons? Here is something that Zakaria fails to mention about Iran. The war rhetoric from Bush on Iran has been nonstop since his "Axis of Evil' speech in 2002. Our transformation of Ahmadinejad into Hitler started when he was elected to office in 2005. One gets the feeling that Mother Theresa could be elected into the Iranian presidency, and, come hell or high water, they would be the new monster that the administration would have to slay in the name of stopping terrorism.

Ron Paul post debate interview w/Hannity 9/21/07

Yoga with Tara Stiles Ford Model

This week: Hamstrings

Check out Tara's myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tarastiles

Homage to Salma Hayek's boobs

I've always had a thing for latinas and now Uber (NSFW for nudity, but totally worth it) has a top 10 tribute to uber-hottie Salma Hayek and her boobs. I can't believe that Salma is pushing 40.

Here's Conan hypnotized, from uber's list:

LieStoppers: Professor Anderson tells it like it is

LieStoppers: Professor Anderson tells it like it is

I started reading Professor Anderson's columns for his take on the Duke Lacrosse case over a year ago. Here it is 6 months after North Carolina AG Roy Moore declared the accused innocent and a criminal investigation of Nifong and the local law enforcement hasn't even begun. Are we ever going to see criminal charges for DA Nifong or the police department involved with the Duke Lacrosse case? William Anderson says "When hell freezes over":

The reason is simple: the politics of race. Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans are white, and their accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum, is black. The NAACP and other black organizations had staked all of their credibility to the charges being true, and desperately tried to keep the case alive, even when it was exposed as a lie. Furthermore, the rape crisis organizations and feminist groups also refused to let go of the lies that propelled this case in the first place. The radical faculty members, employees, administrators and students at Duke also rebelled at seeing this "opportunity" slip through their fingers, so they insisted that Cooper either had covered up the evidence or had been kowtowing to white supremacists. In other words, even the truth could not stop business as usual, so people from these groups simply comforted themselves with the Big Lie that the players were guilty of rape, but were going to skirt justice because of their race and family incomes.

Racial politics at the expense of justice, I shouldn't even act like I'm shocked.

Bill Maher and 9/11 truthers

Who is screening his audience? The TSA?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzrUD-5hf1A

The real highlight of the show was the interview with World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov. He is an interesting interview because his insight on Russia and Russian politics is fascinating. His opinions on us are even more illuminating:

Tucker, Buchanan, and Press on Ron Paul

Ron Paul's donor list is eclectic:

The Coming Market Correction (part 2)

Back in August I had said that there was going to be a huge market correction, that the meltdown was coming.

This week, we've seen continued decline of the dollar compared to the Euro. We've seen oil futures trade at record highs, and as of close today, the dow jones ended up down 2.64%. With other indices down by similar percentages.

Next week will be key, will the freefall continue? It's going to be bad, very, very, bad.

Blowback - Cold War Style

Pat Buchanan not mincing words this week:

At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.

We blew it.

We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles.

Who restarted the Cold War? Bush and the braying hegemonists he brought with him to power.

Great empires and tiny minds go ill together.

Note to Lew Rockwell, you need to update Pat's stock photo.

The TSA sucks at its job

From USA Today:

Security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY.

It turns out that at LAX, the screeners there missed fake bombs 75% of the time. Don't you get the sinking feeling that the fake bombs that they used for the experiments were a bunch of candles tied together with a ticking alarm clock attached on top?

What is also interesting is that the private screeners (non TSA employees) at San Francisco airport were able to CATCH the fake bombs 80% of the time.

As if there wasn't enough evidence that the private sector works much better than the public sector in doing most things, add this to the list.

Alan Greenspan on Fox Business

He's promoting his book, but at the end, I think it's interesting that, for the second time I've seen, the interviewers asks him about the need for a central bank. He even uses the term "fiat money".

8 PS3's and then you can destroy the world!

I spotted this article on Hotair:

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s

...Prior to obtaining his PS3s, Khanna relied on grants from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) to use various supercomputing sites spread across the
United States "Typically I'd use a couple hundred processors -- going up to 500
-- to do these same types of things."

However, each of those supercomputer runs cost Khanna as much as $5,000 in grant money. Eight 60 GB PS3s would cost just $3,200, by contrast, but Khanna figured he would have a hard time convincing the NSF to give him a grant to buy game consoles, even if the overall price tag was lower. So after tweaking his code this past summer so that it could take advantage of the Cell's unique architecture, Khanna set about petitioning Sony for some help in the form of free PS3s.

That last paragraph is just another example of what happens when the government gets involved in doling out cash. The costs of doing something goes up, when you compare trying to do the exact same thing where government is NOT involved, it ends up people find cheaper, more creative ways to meet that goal.

Talking Radio: Randi Rhodes is the Victim of a Violent Attack

Talking Radio: Randi Rhodes is the Victim of a Violent Attack Never Mind

UPDATE- She fell down

The way this story sounds, it's remarkably familiar, oh yeah:


Domestic Abuse No Longer A Problem, Say Bruised Female Researchers



I don't listen to Air America, but I have seen Randi Rhodes on CNN:



Hopefully she's alright.

Being that this is someone's blog they do put their spin on the story:

"Is this an attempt by the right wing hate machine to silence one of our own," he asked. "Are we threatening them. Are they afraid that we're winning. Are they trying to silence intimidate us."

Yeah, that's right, like most of the ideas on the left don't suck anyways.

Conservative Belle: Wiretapping Concessions Are Necessary

UPDATE and BUMP:

According to Verizon Communications, they turned over to the government information without court orders 720 times since 2005:

From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon provided data to federal authorities on an emergency basis 720 times, it said in the letter. The records included Internet protocol addresses as well as phone data. In that period, Verizon turned over information a total of 94,000 times to federal authorities armed with a subpoena or court order, the letter said. The information was used for a range of criminal investigations, including kidnapping and child-predator cases and counter-terrorism investigations.

Now the telecoms are lobbying Congress for legal immunity when they turn over records or eavesdrop on conversations without a court order and they don't want to be held liable for doing this in the past as well.

The 4th amendment is very clear:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The negative consequences of granting immunity to the telecoms are huge. You can count abuse by the government with no recourse for the individual among them. How many more fishing expeditions are going to come about because there is no incentive for the phone companies to maintain the privacy of their customers?

Some will argue "But if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide" but I don't think that argument has as much validity now considering we spent the better part of a year watching a government official put the Duke Lacrosse team on trial so he could get re-elected. While justice is supposed to be blind, it is applied by people with their own biases and interests. The 4th amendment is supposed to be a backstop against that.



I made some comments over there since I'm too lazy to blog about it over here. But it's an interesting topic to me.

European Cities do away with Traffic Signs

This article was published a year ago.

Imagine what it would be like if there were no stoplights, traffic signs, speed limits or sidewalks. They are experimenting with this in Europe and the results so far have been LESS fatalities and accidents.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-448747,00.html

Fred Thompson interviewed on Fox News

What is it that Larry David said from "Curb Your Enthusiasm"? "I'm completely nonplussed"



Pilfered from Hotair.com

With Fred in the race, it looks like we have all of the Spice Girls:

Mitt Romney is Posh - good looking, polished but sometimes out of his depth
Mike Huckabee is Sporty - he is into healthy lifestyles
Rudy Giuliani is Scary - in your face attitude, and I'm sure he's had paternity issues to deal with
Fred Thompson is Baby - welcome to the party
John McCain is Ginger - a cool demeanor with a hint of crazy, which makes him cool to hang out with but he missed his opportunity and he's getting long in tooth.

What about Ron Paul? He's Elvis.

Cover Song of the Week

I thought it was time to dust off this Roguenation feature and throw out some songs that I'm waxing nostalgic for:

Social Distortion - Ring of Fire



I can't believe Social Distortion released the album this cover came from almost twenty years ago...

Of course, Social D was totally cool when I was younger (they still are) but not as cool as this (consider it a bonus track from the RM archives)

Ron Paul ignored at CNBC Debate?

According to this article, Ron Paul got less airtime than even all of the "second tier" candidates. I guess we now know what raising $5 million in a quarter doesn't buy you in a Presidential race.

Ron Paul interviewed on PBS

Part 1


Part 2

Warrantless Searches

Over at Conservative Belle's blog, there is a post that talks about how telecom companies should have immunity for helping the NSA eavesdrop on conversations without warrants.

I understand that we should be concerned about terrorism here in this country. But if the argument I have heard from Republicans of the Bush/Romney/Giuliani school for why we were attacked on 9/11 was because of our freedoms. Aren't we appeasing our enemies by making our country less free?

Aren't we doing exactly what the terrorists want us to do? Terrorists can't invade or occupy us. They can't bomb us back into the stone age. But they have scared us into changing the very things that make our country great.

That Poll Spammer is Ruining it for Everyone

Earlier this week, there was a GOP debate on CNBC, like every other one that's been held, there was a post-debate online poll. Who won? The same person who always wins, Ron Paul. Going away. The numbers were skewed so much in Dr. Paul's favor that CNBC pulled the poll. In its place they put this.

In response, Bob Murphy (author of the book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism" a highly recommended read) wrote back:

By all means, let’s explore this "show of hands" analogy. What Wastler is complaining about is that, in a giant conference room of 300 million people, a higher percentage of Ron Paul supporters raised their hands than did the supporters of the other candidates. So that when Wastler counted up the hands in the air, he got "phony" results. Well whose fault is that? Sure, if a Ron Paul fan raised both hands (the equivalent of hacking the CNBC poll and registering more than one vote per person), that would be cheating. But Ron Paul supporters aren’t to blame if the other candidates are so blah that their own proponents don’t bother voting for them.

Which is true, even the highly touted Fred Thompson, who made his debate debut, was less than impressive.

Yoga with Tara Stiles, Ford Model

BUMP

This week: twists

Check out Tara's myspace here.



People ask me all the time: Randolphus, are you really into yoga or what? And isn't it mostly for chicks?

I used to be really hardcore into lifting weights and going to the gym, in fact, I started seeing a massage therapist because I was having shoulder and neck and back problems. A lot of it coming from sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours a day, and also from weight training. Anyway, my massage therapist recommended that I go do yoga as a way to enhance my flexibility. So I went to my first class. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but by the end of that first session, I found out that there was a LOT of muscle groups that I wasn't really using. Some of the poses I had real problems with at first and my competitive instincts made me want to push hard. But the instructor made an effort to NOT do that "find the balance between effort and ease" she said. I've been hooked since that day.

I started going 3-4 times a week, I tried different studios, different styles and different instructors. It was a whole new experience and I'm still learning, I only wish I had discovered yoga earlier in life.

If you are looking to try yoga here's a couple of tips:

1. Try different studios and instructors-There are a number of different studios in my area (San Diego is a big city, if you live in a rural area your options might be limited), each with a different atmosphere and different intructors who each have their own style. You should feel comfortable in your practice.
2. Don't get competitive with the person next to you, or across the room from you. It's not a contest like seeing how much you can bench press, or leg squat. Focus inward and on that "balance between effort and ease"
3. Pay attention to how you are breathing during the poses
4. Don't be afraid to ask questions and don't be afraid to use the props (straps, blocks, etc.)

Lastly, I will say that the female to male ratio at the studio I frequent is usually around 2 to 1 and remarkably they all are models like Tara (just kidding about the last part). It is a fringe benefit, attending class regularly, you will definitely meet some interesting people and get to chat with them before and after class. Everyone has the shared experience of spending an hour in a room sweating together. So everyone can relate.

So definitely try yoga, it's good for you, you get to learn something new, and you get to meet interesting people. What else is there?

One of the best Ron Paul videos I've seen

RP's followers make vids all the time.

This youtube has over 50,000 views, over a thousand comments, and been favorited nearly 1500 times. All in 24 hours.




The Obama girl vids are the only ones I can recall that reached that "viral" stage for any of the other candidates. This one is well on its way.

A Fascinating Discussion (Audio Link)

From back in 2005. The players are Harry Browne, Eric Dondero, and Alex Jones?!?!

Harry Browne-Libertarian presidential candidate from 1996 and 2000
Eric Dondero-Former employee of Ron Paul, who is currently running for Dr. Pauls Congressional seat
Alex Jones-9/11 truther and radio host

This is from Escaping Ineffability and Ron Paul

Dr. No leaves a message

UPDATE: YOUTUBE LINK ADDED - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0pFuoJt3I

Pat Buchanan Never Liked the War in Iraq

In fact, he thinks that Bush's policies (foreign and domestic) have crippled us. From his column yesterday:

Interventionism gave us Iraq, the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. Big Government conservatism wiped out the surplus, fattened the federal bureaucracy and enlarged its share of GDP, and destroyed the Republican reputation as America's bastion of fiscal prudence.

This Still Doesn't Quite Explain It

Right Wing News has an article entitled "Why So Many Conservatives Hate Ron Paul". One reason is his stance on the Iraq War:

When you aim that sort of rhetoric at people who strongly support the war and feel that it's justified, moral, and in America's best interests, it's guaranteed to generate a huge wave of hostility. Additionally, Paul's thoughtless, "we must leave immediately, regardless of the consequences," position on Iraq comes across as poorly thought out. Even if you thought that the war was a bad idea and opposed it from day one, the idea that we can simply extricate ourselves from Iraq immediately because it's unpleasant, with no consequences, is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from a 16 year old at an anti-war rally, not something you expect from a candidate for President. Even Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, all of whom have spent months trying to convince their base that they're the most anti-war of all the top tier candidates, are saying we may be in Iraq for years to come.

The piece goes on to talk about how his platform is impractical, that it's too idealistic, and that he's a 9/11 truther, and that his supporters are obnoxious. The last part is true, his supporters are really, really, vocal. Obnoxious at times even. But people who buy into Ron Paul's views can't help but get excited. I get giddy when I hear Ron Paul say things about eliminating whole federal departments or ending the War on Drugs, or getting rid of the Patriot Act. His idea of the role of government in peoples lives makes sense to our collective memory. We know inherently that Ron Pauls ideas are true (just like the founding fathers did), that they are timeless. It's also true that our status as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world rests on the idea of us being a free country and getting government out of running our lives. So why do conservatives, who profess (as a principal) to believe in limited government, freedom, individual rights, hate Ron Paul?


I think that the conservatives who hate Ron Paul, to a certain extent can't bear the thought of what people would do without them. That the need to dictate to people on how to live their lives isn't monopolized by the left in this country. The conservatives who believe democracy and freedom can be imposed at the point of a gun are doing the exact same thing and telling people how to live their lives.

That's why if you look at some of the "conservative" boards. When they talk about Ron Paul, the arguments against him much degenerate into unhinged name-calling. Like what you would see on Daily Kos talking about George W.

Carl Cameron interviews Ron Paul Post New Hampshire Debate

I thought that this was after the CNBC debate, but it turns out that this came after last months New Hampshire get together.



I wonder why Carl is holding the hand held? Shouldn't he have a camera man with him?

GOP Debate right now

CNBC is having a debate, streaming live here:

http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/Sections/Video/CNBC_Live/player/live_video_ymyv.html