The Early Results in NH are in: McCain and Obama win

From ABC:

Residents of two tiny towns stayed up late to give Barack Obama and John McCain early victories in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Voters in two small New Hampshire villages, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, cast the initial ballots just after midnight Tuesday.

In Hart's Location, Democrat Obama received nine votes, Hillary Rodham Clinton received three and John Edwards received one. On the Republican side, McCain received six, Mike Huckabee received five, Ron Paul received four and Mitt Romney one.

Leno irked RP wasn't on Fox Forum?

Ron Paul was on Jay Leno's show tonight talking about the Fox News forum snub:



Part II:



Jay was really annoyed with Ron Paul's exclusion: to Dr. Paul "Shouldn't you be kicking somebody's ass?" lol

American Conservative Mag: The Paleocon Dilemma

There did really used to be a wing of the Republican Party that hates the idea of meddling in other countries affairs:

Ron Paul isn’t just running for president. The antiwar 10-term congressman from Texas hopes that as titular head of the Republican Party, he can nudge the Right in a less interventionist direction, both at home and abroad. In fact, reviving an older, less reflexively hawkish conservatism may even be a more important motivation for Paul’s long-shot campaign than actually capturing the GOP nomination.

There’s just one problem: the movement Paul is trying to lead, or at least influence, is filled with people who think he is some kind of crazed left-wing radical. The popular conservative website RedState.com has effectively banned Paul supporters from signing up as commenters and promoting their candidate, partly on the grounds that such people are liberal Democrats merely pretending to be Republicans. FreeRepublic.com founder Jim Robinson, whose website was once more open to constitutionalists than Republican boosters, asserted that “Paul equals Hillary on the War.” National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser has opined that Paul backers are “wicked idiots.”

The whole piece is here.

(pilfered from Red State Eclectic)

Frank Luntz Recycles

Fox News pollster Frank Luntz (F*** you Frank, this is classic) and his undecided New Hampshire voters back post debate a few months back:

Skip ahead to the 3:42 mark if you don't want to watch the whole thing (pay attention
to the guy with the glasses and the gray beard):



Now here's a clip from last nights post Fox News Forum show with, once again Frank Luntz (pay attention to the guy with glasses and the gray beard about the 1:37 mark):



It looks like its the same guy, not that that's a big deal. But, it's interesting to note just the same. Especially in the context of the Penn and Teller piece.

Pilfered from Laura at Red State Eclectic

So that's what SWAT Teams are Good For

Worldnetdaily has the story:

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.

The only thing that would have made this story more realistic would have been if they had busted down the door of the house and Daisy was on the other side of it in some really short shorts and the SWAT guys got distracted so them Duke boys were able to get away in the General Lee and make it back to Uncle Jesse's farm. Yeeeeehawwwww!

Yeah, the Blimp is cool

Ron Paul has a blimp, a crap load of youtubes, blogs (even this one) and forums dedicated to him, but I don't even think any candidate running right now for the Presidency has not one but two different internet radio stations dedicated to Ron Paul programming 24/7:

Ron Paul Radio and Ron Paul Revolution Radio

Inflation and Our Money Supply

I've had a couple of people email me about inflation and our money supply and asking me how come a guy as ridiculously handsome and charming as me can be such a kook when it comes to the dollar. (Kerri, this means you)

Well, needless to say, the headlines about the declining dollar keep piling up and things are looking to get much worse in 2008. England is looking to surpass us in standard of living for the first time since the 19th Century. Anyway, here is a good explanation of the money system and why inflation isn't just rising prices (which is what most people think it is). It does get a little X-fileish in explaining how the Federal Reserve Bank system was formed but it's the simplest explanation I've found as well.

I wonder when this flatscreen is coming out

Over at gizmodo, there's a flat screen demo from Pioneer called "Kuro" and it's 9millimeters thin! I usually don't do posts on technology, but that is pretty friggin awesome. But I'm gonna wait for screens to get so thin that I can fold them like map and stick em in the glovebox. Where do the cords go?

More pics here

The Fox News Forum

I didn't watch the Fox News Forum sans Ron Paul, but Conservative Belle and Strapz live-blogged it. Click here and here for their reactions.

My boy spent some of the 20 million that his supporters raised last quarter and bought an hour of New Hampshire TV time to get his positions out there. I'm posting the youtube version in 2 parts:

Barry Goldwater Jr. makes an appearance (he's campaigning with Dr. Paul in New Hampshire) a and watching RP talk about economics and the Fed and taxes reminds me again how many levels above the other candidates he's thinking.



Part Deuce

Jackie and Dunlap on the ABC Debate

Pilfered from Red State Eclectic:

The Old Right Conservatives

Over at PearlMississsippiCPA, a blogger named John lays out the case for Old Right Conservatism:

From the founding of our Republic until 1931, state government spending was TWICE the amount of Federal government spending (except for war). The Feds were rarely involved in controlling the economy and sending troops overseas. Until 1917, all of our wars were fought on the North American continent. And with the exception of the War of Northern Aggression ("Civil War" to you Yanks.), there was no military draft. Indeed, Old Right Conservatism was the ruling belief. It is hard to believe that until 1901 all drugs were legal and until 1934 marijuana was legal...

Be sure to read the whole thing here.

The Iowa Caucus

UPDATE: I'm a little late on this but the NH GOP pulled their sponsorship of the debate on FOX yesterday. As far as I know, there has not been any formal explanation of RP's exclusion other than "there was no room at the inn" but whatever. Dr. Paul bought an hour of TV time during FOX's forum and is having his own townhall which you can watch here.

It was Huck's night, he had a huge victory over Romney anyway you spin it. The battle really was for 3rd place. Fred! and John McCain ended up in a virtual tie at 13 percent and my boy hit 10 percent, within striking distance of 3rd place. Good enough in a state that loves government subsidies for ethanol and is socially conservative. Next stop New Hampshire. Speaking of which, CNN has an interesting piece about the Fox News forum that Ron Paul has been excluded from on Sunday. Turns out that the NHGOP is threatening to pull its sponsorship of the forum because Ron Paul has been excluded:

Louisiana Attorney says F*** You to the IRS

The federal income tax is one of the most heinous, oppressive, criminal, and arbitrary exercises in government abuse that has ever come down the pike. I'm just waiting for the day that everyone decides they've had enough and we junk that thing and NEVER let it come back. I'm kidding myself, we're going to have another depression before that happens. But there are people who are fighting to end it on many different fronts.

Tommy Cryer is a highly respected Louisiana attorney who actually took the time to read the tax code and came to the conclusion that there is no law that requires most people to file a tax return and there is no law that makes anyone liable for the income tax. The IRS didn't take too kindly to that and charged him with tax evasion. Well, he was acquitted and now he's suing the agents who allegedly repeatedly disclosed information about him that is protected under federal law.

Good for him. I hope that he wins and ruins the lives of those agents. The end.

Oh yeah, here's the article that has the whole story.

I'd be interested in hearing the whole song

From YBNBY: Sweet Child O' Mine - the Indian Version, sounds kind of funny, but I kind of dug it.



Here's the original:

My Cabinet Wish List

I pilfered this idea from Ron Simpson over at Cluttered Eclectic Mind. Here's mine, which has a lot of similarities to Ron's-

President-Ron Paul
Secretary of Defense-General Petreaus
Secretary of State - Condoleeza Rice
Attorney General- Judge Andrew Napolitano (until one of the SCOTUS spots opens up, then he gets that nomination)
Secretary of Veterans Affairs- Lieutenant General Eric B. Schoomaker, M.D., Surgeon General of the United States Army. (if there were one department that I wouldn't ever have a problem with growing, it would be this one)
Secretary of the Treasury - Alan Greenspan (he's an expert on hard money and would be needed in the transition to eliminating the Federal Reserve system)
Secretary of the Interior - position eliminated and department gutted
Secretary of Education -position eliminated and department gutted
Homeland Security - position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Energy - position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Housing and Urban Development - position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Health and Human Services - position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Labor -position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Transportation - position eliminated and department gutted
Department of Agriculture - position eliminated and department gutted

Well, now that I look at it, I guess it's really not at all like Ron's list.

HR 1955: The Bill about Nothing?

HR 1955 is officially titled: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. It was voted on in Congress and passed overwhelmingly 404-6. So why can't a reporter get anyone who voted for it to talk about it on the record? 404 members of Congress and not one of them is willing to grab a microphone and say why it's necessary to have such legislation?

From the article:

“Violent radicalization,” one of the threats the bill seeks to curb, is defined there as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious or social change.”

Acts of violence are already illegal, whether stemming from extreme beliefs or not. But “adopting” or “promoting” beliefs is supposed to be covered by the first amendment, which Kucinich said “protects freedom of speech, which should also include freedom of thought — thought usually precedes speech, unless you’re talking about Washington — this undercuts the first amendment, [because] lines like ‘ideologically based’ … says government should police ideas, not conduct.”

The whole article is here (with an oversized picture of Dennis Kucinich to go with it, you've been warned).

Observations from New Hampshire

Over at the Crossed Pond, there is great post about Ron Paul's campaign from the grassroots level:

New Hampshire at this time of year is already thick with political signage for all candidates, mostly lots of small yard signs on road medians and in front of most of the houses (I see a lot of McCain and Obama). The difference is, for every single road sign of EVERY candidate, there is a small group of 2-3 Ron Paul supporters holding a 15 foot sign.

Read the whole piece here.

New Hampshire is fertile ground for Ron Paul. He has a very good chance of winning the state outright. But if he places outside of the top tier, I don't anticipate him dropping out of the race, he already has enough funding to get through to Super Tuesday.

Third Reich to Fortune 500

Cracked magazine has 5 popular brands that the Nazis gave us:

Already today you've used at least one product from a company that, at one time, worked for the Nazis. Now, in the name of not getting sued, we'd like to make it clear that we're not accusing any of the below companies of still being in bed with the Third Reich. All of them, to our knowledge, have long disavowed Hitler's regime as being both monstrous and no longer profitable.

IBM made their list:

You're probably thinking, "Wait a minute. IBM was American! The closest America ever got to the Nazis was when Indiana Jones wore that uniform as a disguise in Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

Actually, prior to the war, American business took what can be generously described as a morally ambivalent stance on the whole Hitler thing. American groups, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute, directly funded Nazi eugenics projects in the early '30s (where the goal was to find ways to breed a master race). Of course, once the war started, most American businesses cut ties with Hitler. IBM, on the other hand, decided to stick around and see where he was going with this whole final solution thing.

Pilfered from Gorillamask

At What Cost?

CMStrapz, occasional contributer here at the RogueNation, after launching his own blog and taking a brief absence, has a couple of posts up on who he is supporting for President and who he is not. Click here to see his endorsement. Conservative Belle also has her endorsement posted as well. I would consider their pick to be mine if Ron Paul wasn't in the race.

What I would like to address in this post is Ron Paul and foreign policy. CB and Strapz have concerns about whether Dr. Paul's philosophy of nonintervention in dealing with other countries is the proper course for us. I'll let Strapz make the argument against Ron Paul:

I have felt that the largest external threat to this country is from Islamic fascism, a philosophy that advocates the killing (or conversion) of innocents in order to further its religio-political goals. In typical libertarian fashion, Dr. Paul has essentially refused to condemn this philosophy as evil, and has instead engaged in a blame-the-victim mentality, by alleging that the foreign policy of the United States, specifically its intervention in Middle Eastern politics, is to blame for attacks on civilians throughout the world and on US soil. This position is in complete contrast to several hundred years of history, dating back to the invasion of Spain by the Moors in 711 (lasting until 1492). The list of current world conflicts at Wikipedia shows that nearly all are a result of militant Islamists either not getting along with their neighbors or going to war against their own country. Surely, these cannot possibly all be the result of American foreign policy.

Where Islamic Fascism is a reality that must be dealt with, the question is, has the way that we have conducted ourselves been effective in dealing with that threat, and at what price?

More on that later, but first off, I think "blame America first" is about as accurate a description of Ron Paul's foreign policy philosophy as Kanye West saying "George Bush hates black people" on the government's failure during Hurricane Katrina. While both make good sound bites, they aren't really descriptive for either situation and they don't have a grain of truth to them.

A foreign policy of nonintervention basically means that we don't act like it's high school when we deal with other countries. We treat all countries consistently. Which would mean having the discipline of NOT interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Also it would mean having the discipline of trading with all countries that want to trade with us (and yes, sanctions are a form of internal meddling in other countries affairs. Which is not to say that private citizens shouldn't be able to choose with whom to do business with or not.) Non-intervention means also keeping up a strong defense by keeping its military strong and its citizens armed.

Is there an example of nonintervention like this in modern times? Yes, if you look at Switzerland in the middle of the last century. That country faced a threat from the most modern war machine to exist at the time, Nazi Germany. Hitler did not invade Switzerland because he knew that to do that his army would face certain defeat.

But the real danger to us is not Islamic Fascism, it is economic collapse. All empires collapse not from conquering opposing armies, but from insolvency. The USSR was a prime example. They overextended themselves with entitlements at home and maintaining an empire abroad and the Soviet Union ended when the bills came due.

Social Security, Medicare, our trillion dollar a year foreign policy of interventionism. The bills are going to come due and unless drastic action takes place soon, misery and depression are going to follow.

Ron Paul Linkorama

I've been away from my blog for the past couple of days but I'm back, Happy New Year Everyone!

It's the day before the Iowa caucus and all the energy and time and effort that the Ron Paul campaign and Ron Paul supporters have expended the past 9 months should result in a respectable result tomorrow. Do I think that Ron Paul will place first? That's a long shot, I would say maybe 3rd. But New Hampshire? He'll probably win there, with momentum going into South Carolina and Nevada and Florida.

All of the candidates were available for one last media blitz before tomorrow and here's Dr. Paul's appearances (which I unabashedly pilfered from either Laura over at RedstateEclectic or Lew Rockwell:

On Hannity's radio show (a pretty decent interview)
On MSNBC this morning
With Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room:



Also, The New Republic published a good piece not on Ron Paul, but on the supporters who are campaigning for him in Iowa:

...if the candidates were judged by the quality of their young supporters, I would now be voting for Ron Paul. Beyond just being polite, the Paul volunteers have an incredible passion for the technical mechanics of the American constitution and body of laws.

The whole article is here.