Tag Archives: Election/Politicians

Alien vs. Predator, and the hypocrisy of Allen West

Originally published on Ad Libertad:

The battle lines are forming in Washington DC. Barring any tricks which the embattled (racist, redneck, kooky, backward, radical, unelectable) libertarian wing of the Republican Party may still have up its sleeve, it seems to be another contest between Marxist-Leninist Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of social welfare, and National Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of national security. Much like in Alien vs. Predator, whoever wins, we lose.

I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon toward tyranny and fiscal ruin long ago, and the important thing now is to brace for calamity. A fiscally conservative friend of mine is appalled by my cynicism. He invokes America’s greatness and my veteran status in an attempt to bring me back to the noble cause of shutting up and blindly supporting the Republican Party. He recently encouraged me to watch Allen West’s speech at CPAC 2012. He wants, presumably, for me to give people like Allen West my time, money, attention and respect, because nothing is more important that defeating Obama (. . . says the Predator about the Alien).

In the speech, Allen West goes on at length about the virtues of the Constitution. He said, “[The founders] laid out in no uncertain terms the types of things government would have the right to do, and the types of things it wouldn’t.” I’d love to hear him reconcile this with his discussion of “a Chamberlin-Churchill moment,” and “kinetic solutions” to Iran’s nuclear research, and “the precipice of World War Three.” Does he know the Constitution requires presidents to seek congressional declarations of war? Or does he, like most politicians, only believes in the Constitution when it foils his political opponents.

He said, “The founders knew that if government were allowed to restrict the freedom of the people . . . freedom would not long survive,” yet he voted in favor of renewing Patriot Act provisions.

He decries reckless spending: “We’ve allowed the federal bureaucracy to balloon out of control,” yet he voted in raise the debt ceiling. When questioned by Young America’s Foundation’s Ron Meyer, he asked for the thing all politicians have always requested: unity and support. Presumably, Allen West’s rapid betrayal of the principles he invoked in his campaign would be remedied if only I gave him more money, time, attention and respect. . . .

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Romney and the Israel Lobby

JTA headline: Romney’s Jewish backers enjoying front-runner status, even as challenges continue from his right
open quoteRomney’s financial backers are a who’s who of the Republican Jewish establishment, and his foreign policy advisers are culled from some of the pro-Israel community’s best and brightest.
 [emphasis added]

Romney has cultivated Jewish Republicans since he launched his unsuccessful bid in 2007 for the ’08 nod, said Fred Zeidman, a longtime backer.

“Every major Jewish Republican fundraiser has been with Mitt” since then, said Zeidman, a Houston lawyer who was a major backer of George W. Bush.

. . . .

An invitation last month to a Romney fundraiser by NORPAC, one of the pre-eminent pro-Israel political action committees, underscored Romney’s precarious status.

“Governor Romney is well known to our community and is one of two front-runners for the Republican Nomination,” the invitation said. “While things are certainly subject to change in an election, Governor Romney is currently the betting site favorite to win the Republican nomination.”

Most galling for Jewish Republicans are the potshots that proxies for his rivals are taking at Romney’s Mormon faith. The latest salvo came over the weekend at the Value Voters Summit in Washington when Robert Jeffress, a pastor at a Dallas megachurch who supports Perry, the Texas governor, called Mormonism a cult.

“I can’t believe as a Jew that anyone is going to be involved in someone’s religion,” Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate and leading Republican donor who is backing Romney, told JTA. “What’s that got to do with running the biggest enterprise in the world?”

Sembler, a former ambassador to Australia and Italy who has served as the national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, suggested that Romney was not out of the woods.

“Everything has an impact; some people don’t like the way he combs his hair,” Sembler said. “I would hope people would not be focused on what his religion is but what his capabilities are.”

Zeidman said that Romney’s strategy would remain as it has been: acting like a front-runner and focusing most of the fight on President Obama instead of his GOP rivals.

“If you’re the front-runner and [Obama] is the only person between you and the presidency, focus on him and let the others look at your tuchas,” is how Zeidman described the strategy.

Especially frustrating for Romney’s backers is that the Value Voters Summit kerfuffle overshadowed Romney’s first major foreign policy speech, on Friday at The Citadel military academy in South Carolina.

Israel policy was a significant part of the speech. Romney said he would increase defense assistance to Israel, raise the U.S. military profile near Iran and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

He cast Obama’s policies as contributing to Israel’s isolation.

“I will bolster and repair our alliances,” Romney said. “Our friends should never fear that we will not stand by them in an hour of need. I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

The Obama and Netanyahu governments have smoothed relations in recent months, and Israeli officials credit the administration with tightening defense ties and backing Israel at the United Nations. Obama also refers to Israel as a Jewish state.

Sembler, who took Romney to Israel in 2007, said the former governor “gets it.” He recalled the overflight of the country, requisite for VIP guests, and a view of the security fence.

“I remember us flying around with the two generals,” Sembler recalled. “The generals kept apologizing for the fence. Governor Romney said, ‘Are the people on the other side of the fence shooting, because I see bullet marks.’ The generals said yes, so Governor Romney said, ‘Don’t apologize.’ ”

Romney in his speech suggested that Israel might become further isolated if Obama remains in office.

“Will Iran be a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, dominating the world’s oil supply with a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz?” he asked. “In the hands of the ayatollahs, a nuclear Iran is nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.close quote (Read more)

Glenn Greenwald: Repulsive progressive hypocrisy

Glenn Greenwald is one of the most honest reporters out there. He reminds me of Henry Hazlitt who worked for the NY Times and had always considered himself a progressive. When FDR’s fascist New Deal came about, he assumed all his colleagues would oppose it. He was wrong.

open quoteDuring the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates:

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig at Guantanamo Bay and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.

The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.

Beyond that, Obama has used drones to kill Muslim children and innocent adults by the hundreds. He has refused to disclose his legal arguments for why he can do this or to justify the attacks in any way. He has even had rescuers and funeral mourners deliberately targeted. As Hayden said: ”Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel.” But that is all perfectly fine with most American liberals now that their Party’s Leader is doing it:

Fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year. Support for drone strikes against suspected terrorists stays high, dropping only somewhat when respondents are asked specifically about targeting American citizens living overseas, as was the case with Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni American killed in September in a drone strike in northern Yemen.

The Post‘s Greg Sargent obtained the breakdown on these questions and wrote today:

The number of those who approve of the drone strikes drops nearly 20 percent when respondents are told that the targets are American citizens. But that 65 percent is still a very big number, given that these policies really should be controversial.

And get this: Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team.

It’s hard to imagine that Dems and liberals would approve of such policies in quite these numbers if they had been authored by George W. Bush.

Indeed: is there even a single liberal pundit, blogger or commentator who would have defended George Bush and Dick Cheney if they (rather than Obama) had been secretly targeting American citizens for execution without due process, or slaughtering children, rescuers and funeral attendees with drones, or continuing indefinite detention even a full decade after 9/11? Please. How any of these people can even look in the mirror, behold the oozing, limitless intellectual dishonesty, and not want to smash what they see is truly mystifying to me.close quote

From Israel: Vote Ron Paul and Let My People Go!

open quoteRon Paul doesn’t want to be President to “give” me freedom. He doesn’t own my freedom and he didn’t give it to me. The only reason Ron Paul wants to be President is to stop punishing people for using their freedom that is rightfully theirs. He wants no power. This is clear to anyone who listens to him speak.

There are two kinds of human beings. Those who want power, and those who want freedom. You can tell which one’s which very easily. Those who want freedom are straight-edged. They are consistent, principled, and you can feel their human soul when they speak to you. There’s a continuum out there of human souls somewhere in spiritual cyberspace, and when you come into contact with one of these souls, you know immediately, because souls are by definition free. You sense sincerity, realness, consistency, a free human being. If you’re a man who seeks freedom and you come into contact with a real human soul, you become instantly addicted and you swallow up anything you can get your hands on. You want to unite immediately, no matter what you disagree on. There are people in the freedom movement that don’t exactly like Israel, especially me being a “settler” and I don’t care. If they want freedom, I sense it and my human drive for individualism suddenly turns into an intense desire to unite into a collective – but a collective of free individuals. It’s a beautiful dialectic, and it doesn’t matter what we agree or disagree on, as long as we agree on freedom.

You get hooked on Ron Paul and you desperately seek more and more, any video you can find from the past, any speeches you missed, anything he said that you haven’t heard yet, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times already in different words. You can’t help yourself. The voracious hunger to be able to use your God-given freedom takes you over entirely. It’s like you suddenly realize you’re human and the Divine Image with which God created you comes alive and catches fire.

But something else happens to you. Once you get hooked on Ron Paul, you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power, and you become instantly disgusted when they start saying words. Before, they were just boring. Now they’re revolting. Listening to Romney or Gingrich or Bush or Obama makes you sick and you don’t know how Ron Paul gets through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that’s so transparent it’s like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you. You can’t bear it.close quote (Read more)

Another Ron Paul Slander Round Up

Ron Paul’s CNN Walkout interview conducted by reporter-wife of huge war profiteer

open quoteWell, well, it turns out hit job specialist Gloria Borger is married to Lance Morgan. Morgan is according to the web site of his employer, Powell Tate,”chief communications strategist at Powell Tate in Washington, D.C. He specializes in developing and executing communications strategies for public policy debates, crisis communications and media training.”

So who might be the clients of Powell Tate, where Borger’s husband is “chief communications strategist and crisis communications” adviser for?

Just about every part of the military industrial-complex that Ron Paul wants to shrink or shutdown.close quotewww.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/12/hot-ron-paul-walks-out-during-cnn.html

See also,

Uncut video shows Paul did NOT ‘storm out’ of CNN interview

open quoteThe uncut version of a CNN interview between Ron Paul and Gloria Borger surfaced online Sunday, leading many Paul supporters to claim that the footage shows the presidential hopeful didn’t “storm out” of the interview, as some media outlets reported based off the edited version that aired on CNN.

In the interview, Borger pushed the Texas Republican about newsletters from the ’80s and ’90s that bear his name and contained racist and homophobic content. In the originally aired video, Paul seemed to walk out on Borger after a terse rebuttal.

But the uncut version shows that Paul and Borger were standing up for the entire interview, and that Paul actually responded to questions about the newsletter for almost three minutes before walking off, and that the interview was likely over.

Paul was clearly irritated by the line of questioning, which he says he covered at length with CNN in another interview the day before, but early reports seemed to indicate that Paul fled the interview to avoid the issue.

The full interview lasted more than eight minutes, and covered issues not aired by CNN, such as negative campaign advertisements and the payroll tax cut.

A post on a website for Paul supporters described the interview controversy as a “creative editing hit job.”close quote

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Frum goes after Paul. Typical slander from a typical war mongering, chicken hawk, neo-con.

open quoteIt’s sad and squalid that Ron Paul finished ahead of Jon Huntsman. Gov. Huntsman has the elements of a president; Ron Paul is not even a fanatic. He’s a bunco artist. May I repeat something I’ve said about him before? (The piece can be read here on CNN.com)

Ron Paul is something more (or less) than a racist crank. As Michael Brendan Dougherty aptly observed in the Atlantic last week:

close quote (Read more)

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Al “Skinny” Shartpton banging the race drum

See also:

Compilation of Black Ron Paul supporters

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Al Gore encourages voters to dismiss Ron Paul as a ‘silly’ candidate

open quoteAnalyzing the returns, Gore said, “He does not have a ceiling in fantasy land, but in the real world when people take a look at his actual positions, when Republicans take a look on at his actual positions, come on.”

Americans’ frustration with the economic and political situation in the country was, Gore said, the only reason Paul would even been considered by voters.

“That all is part of a general attitude that you know, let’s just play 52-card pick up,” he mused, “let’s just up end things and do something radically different. And I think he does culturally, psychologically tap into that.”

“At some point when people look seriously at what his positions are, I mean getting rid of the Federal Reserve,” Gore jeered. “Look, the wars are enormously unpopular, but bringing all the American troops home from no matter what the dangerous situations are? It’s so silly.”

Gore additionally claimed that Paul wasn’t being pummeled sufficiently for so-called “racist” passages in newsletters from the 1980s, which Paul claims he did not write.
close quote (Read more & see video)

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Marginalizing Ron Paul

open quoteIt is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

. . . .

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra-secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of their exploited customers.close quote (Read more)

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MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Calls Ron Paul A Fraud!

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Ron Paul Booed by Insane Debate Audience for Endorsing the Golden Rule

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CNN’s Dana Bash is Worried About Ron Paul

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Jon Stewart Exposes Ron Paul Media Bias After New Hampshire Primary

Romney & Gingrich advisers are war profiteers

open quoteNational security advisers to the Republican presidential candidates have ties to defense, homeland security and energy companies that have received at least $40 billion in federal contracts since 2008.

Five of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 41 national security and foreign policy advisers have links to companies that last year alone received at least $7.9 billion in federal contracts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government analyst Christopher Flavelle. Of that, $7.3 billion came from the Department of Defense.

Romney and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who are leading in the polls, have advisers who sit on the board of directors of BAE Systems Inc., which has received at least $37 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2008, the most of any of the companies with ties to Republican national security advisers.close quote (Read more)

The Progressive Liberal ‘Tea Party’ Candidate Newt Gingrich

open quoteLew just posted Newt’s interview with Beck wherein Newt describes himself as a “Theodore Roosevelt Republican.” OK, let’s go straight to the legend himself, TR:

[I]n the days of Abraham Lincoln [the Republican party] was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation. . . .

The course I followed, of regarding the executive as subject only to the people, and, under the Constitution, bound to serve the people affirmatively in cases where the Constitution does not explicitly forbid him to render service, was substantially the course followed by both Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. . . .

I bound myself more than ever to treat the Constitution, after the manner of Abraham Lincoln, as a document which put human rights above property rights when the two conflicted.. . . . I believed in invoking the National power with absolute freedom for every National need.
[Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography (New York: Macmillan Company, 1913) pp. 381–382, 394–395, 420 (emphasis added)]

Yeah, I’d say TR fan Gingrich is a progressive liberal.close quote (Read more)

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