I’ve hard Ron Paul described as many things. He’s a constitutionalist, he’s a libertarian who is in the Republican party just to get in the game, blah, blah, blah. Today, while driving past a billboard that used to have a Ron Paul ad on it, I heard my first Ron Paul radio commercial. The headline of the ad was loud and clear: Ron Paul is a real Republican. He’s out of the closet now! That’s how he himself is now portraying himself: the only real Republican choice. Finally, he has admitted what I’ve known to be true all along. After all, look at his positions on social issues:

* Against a woman’s right to choose at any point in the pregnancy
* Has been known to laugh at the concept of gay marriage (how respectful)
* Has tried his damnedest to use his *federal* power as Congressman to allow states to push religion into our daily lives
* Has a monthly newsletter bearing his name that has published quotes like “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”, “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”

Yep, definitely sounding like a Real (Southern) Republican now.

Update: As some Ron Paul-bots pointed out, Ron Paul has not been a senator. I wrote that when I meant Congressman. Post has been updated

Apparently 105 million dollars.

In tonight’s overhyped, but better than usual, debate, a lesbian couple asked the candidates if they support gay marriage. The only candidate who had the correct answer was Dennis Kucinich. Bill Richardson was close by saying he thought he could realistically achieve civil unions, but not gay marriage. Christopher Dodd and John Edwards flubbed by by saying they didn’t support gay marriage but support civil unions.

Also, a reverend asked why it was okay to use to use religion to deny people their civil rights. John Edwards blew the question with a mostly idiotic answer about his own personal problems with *gasp* the though of a same sex couple being treated any old married couple under the law. If he can’t get past such bigotry, I suggest he drop out of the race and go back to guilt tripping juries into giving him huge sums of cash.

As a party, the Democrats are pretty pathetic when it comes to the issue of gay marriage. Most of them claim to support gay rights, but only with a “separate but equal” policy. Why do they push this antiquated concept? Either they are too weak to stand up to “Big Religion” in this country, or they have been permanently tainted by religious bigotry.

The issue is simple: Marriage in a church, civil unions under the law. That’s it. That’s how it should be. We shouldn’t have two different kinds of state contracts depending on your sexual orientation. That’s blatantly bigoted. If you want to get “married” and have it blessed by Jesus, Ganesh, or some pagan tree god, go for it. Knock yourself out. Just leave everyone else alone.

To all you anti-gay marriage crusaders out there, stop pushing your conservative, outdated, Abrahamic beliefs in the family structure on every else. Oh, and to the rest of the Democratic party, stop raising my taxes.

I have to ask the question because I’m finding myself agreeing with Dennis Kucinich on an issue. Actually, that’s kind of an exaggeration. While I disagree with most of Kucinich’s platform, he is right on abortion and mostly right when it comes to the drug war. His positions on civil liberties are also mostly right. Where I disagree with him is his economic and foreign policies. I find them to be unworkable and extremely unrealistic. Not sure we need a “Department of Peace” either, when we already have the State department with the capacity for peaceful diplomacy.

But I digress.

What I agree with Kucinich this time, is his outrage at John Edwards and Hillary Clinton for their comments after an appearance at the NAACP. Kucinich has all the details here. (By the way, more props to Kucinich for using Drupal to power his campaign website.).

If Kucinich is being marginalized within his own party, and a major one at that, imagine how hard it is for third party candidates to get national recognition. In 2004, the Libertarian Party had their candidate on 48 of the 50 state ballots for the Presidential election, but were left out of any national debates. The Green Party was also left out, and was actively attacked by the Democrat Party and removed off of some state ballots. The two parties have locked up the system making it very hard for third parties to get any national exposure.

Do I think the Libertarian or Green party candidates had a shot at actually winning? No, I don’t. However, they did have the power to influence the other parties, and they clearly have wide ranging appeal. They should have been allowed in the presidential debates in 2004.

Now, I realize that we can’t let every presidential candidate in on the debates. There must be some objective criteria, like being on the ballot in a certain number of states or receiving a certain percentage of the vote in the last election. Otherwise, we would have Gary Coleman and Gallagher in the debates. I’m not sure yet what the criteria should be, but what we have now is ridiculous.

This might be the first and last post where I write how I agree with Dennis Kucinich, but on an issue like this, it’s easy.

A recent Gallup Poll shows Ron Paul carrying 0% support. I realize in the blogosphere, Ron Paul is the best candidate since Howard Dean. Apparently, Digg users and bloggers love an economically conservative, gay hating, sexist, godbagging Republican. Oh, yeah, I forgot, he’s against the Iraq war, and that trumps all his bigotry. My bad.

I know it gets talked about a lot, but I wonder if Ron Paul is really affecting the “debate”, whatever that means. After all, Republicans have always tried to ban abortion, discriminate against gays, and push their religious beliefs onto others. That’s not something new that Ron Paul brought to the debate. No Republican is adopting his other platform of tearing apart the federal government. So he’s not had an effect there either. As for the Iraq War, please. Republicans are running away from the President because they want to get re-elected, not because of Ron Paul. Does anyone really think Republicans looking to be re-elected would support the war if not for Ron Paul?

So, I see little influence from the Ron Paul campaign. Yeah, he’s big on Digg and YouTube, but come on, big deal. He’s not getting votes, he’s not influencing campaigns. He’s just a gay bashing, woman hating, religious pushing white male from Texas. Um, don’t we already have enough of those?

During the 80’s, one of the only shows I watched on Nickelodeon, was “Mr. Wizard’s World”. Some of my most vivid memories of the show we the early flight simulator software packages for PCs, and the experiment to show that sound waves traveled slower than the speed of light. Don Hebert, aka, Mr. Wizard passed away today at 89. His website has the details:

Mr. Wizard Studios

The media has fallen in love with Ron Paul. Doing a quick Google News search comes up with 2,520 recent articles when just searching for “Ron Paul”. My guess is that because Ron Paul is against the war and is pushing the idea that 9/11 was our “fault”, the press loves him. I can’t really think of any other reason. I can’t believe the majority of journalists are as libertarian as Ron Paul when it comes to the role of the federal government. I doubt many journalists want to eliminate any vestige of a social safety net as Ron Paul does. It has to be his position the war. He’s against the war and he “blames” us for being attacked.

Even though I think Ron Paul is somewhat wrong with his position on the war, at least it’s a position I can respect. There are definitely points to being totally non-interventionist in our foreign policy. It’s a legitimate argument to make. However, the one issue that Ron Paul is totally wrong on and the press is ignoring, is Ron Paul’s abortion position. He is very pro-life, and has lately tried to hide behind “returning the power” to the states. I’m not buying it.

In 2005, Ron Paul introduced H.R. 4379, which has the purpose of “To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.” Now, it is the job of Congress to create the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, and it has the power to restrict, but this is quite a radical step. And just what is Ron Paul wanting to restrict?

The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court–

(1) shall not adjudicate–

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

(B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or

(C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and

(2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

It almost sounds reasonable until you realize that this law would allow individual states to setup state religions, and the Supreme Court would be powerless to rule on state *established* religions. It’s also curious that a state’s rights advocate would only target very socially conservative issues. Why not gun control? Commerce? Why such religious based targets?

I think the answer is that Ron Paul is no libertarian. Instead, he wants to use his power as President to push his far right agenda.

It gets worse.

Also in 2005, Ron Paul introduced H.R. 776 which said:

(a) Finding- The Congress finds that present day scientific evidence indicates a significant likelihood that actual human life exists from conception.

(b) Declaration- Upon the basis of this finding, and in the exercise of the powers of the Congress–

(1) the Congress declares that–

(A) human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, without regard to race, sex, age, health, defect, or condition of dependency; and

(B) the term `person’ shall include all human life as defined in subparagraph (A); and

(2) the Congress recognizes that each State has the authority to protect lives of unborn children residing in the jurisdiction of that State.

Ron Paul wanted a federal law that declares life begins at conception and at the moment the sperm enters the egg, the zygote is a full person and protected under the law as any born human. I don’t think I’m way off base to say that this law would effectively ban abortion. If a zygote is a person, then abortion would be murder, prosecutable under the law. This is a very, very extreme position, and very un-libertarian. It’s downright draconian.

Ron Paul and the media can continue the charade that he’s just a small government, pro-liberty maverick. I know the truth, that Ron Paul would use his power to push his far right agenda. I will not buy the hype.

I know lots of people take issue with the style of Christopher Hitchens. I don’t agree with him on every issue, and I think his style can sometimes take away the power of his arguments. However, there is one thing that Hitchens is dead on almost every time: religion. His book, The Missionary Position, which revealed to me more filth and evil about Mother Theresa than I ever imagined, is possibly his best work. When I had him, in obvious sarcasm, sign a picture of Mother Theresa for my wife, he gleefully called Mother Theresa a “fucking cunt”.

Here are some links to transcripts, where Hitchens obliterates Jerry Falwell. Must reads.

Hannity & Colmes Transcript

Anderson Cooper 360 (quarter way down the page)

Update: I made it clearer that Hitchens was calling Mother Theresa a cunt, and not my wife.

The top story today will undoubtedly be the school shooting at Virginia Tech today. How long before the shooting is blamed on Marilyn Manson (who though I can’t recall having a recent hit seems to always be the poster boy for this type of thing) and/or video games. I’m sure the tallking heads will have a field day over this. Parents groups will be outraged, breathlessly exclaiming “Won’t someone please think of the children!?”. Religious “leaders” will be demanding the Ten Commandments be put back in school.

It’ll be Columbine all over again.

I was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and I still am today. I was never a supporter just because of WMD’s. While I did believe he had WMD’s, and though his previous behavior with inspectors was indicative of someone who had something to hide, it appears Saddam was only hiding his non WMD’s from his generals. These possible weapons, though, were not my main reason for wanting to go to Iraq. Simply put, I think leaving homicidal dictactors in power is a bad thing. Leaving homicidal dictators in power in the Middle East is an even worse thing. So, while people can argue about strategy and our planning, it doesn’t change the fact that I think it was the right thing to do.

Now we find ourselves four years into an unpopular war, with both our political parties failing us all in any attempt to resolve it. The main lesson of Vietnam was not to play politics with war, and here we are thirty years later with both parties playing politics with war. Lately, I’ve been wondering should we stay, or is it time to cut our losses and leave. It wasn’t easy but I think I can be happy with it.

Republicans have accused Democrats of a “cut-and-run” attitude towards Iraq. They’re only half right. What the Democrats are really proposing is “cut-and-forget.” What are they forgetting? The 26 million Iraq’s who have gone from the rapacious dictatorship of Saddam to the incompetent elected government of Maliki. What do Democrats think will happen once we leave? They say it’s a civil war now, that it’s not our fight. Fine. So, because Democrats are afraid of conflict, 26 million Iraq’s could suffer indefinitely. Very nice.

The Republicans have been constantly going on about “sending the wrong message to the terrorists.” It’s not about the terrorists. The terrorists aren’t going to beat us. Stop worrying about what the terrorists think. The terrorists in Iraq are a bunch of cowardly, religious, whack jobs. Forget them, and start worrying about the *people of Iraq.* You know, the people we liberated? This isn’t even about “winning” any more. Win what? We beat Saddam’s army. The terrorists aren’t going to win. What we need to do is focus on getting the Iraqi people a real government. Republicans need to stop with the byline

So what did I conclude? We should stay. Not to “Stay the Course™” or to avoid “Cut-and-Run™”. Simply because the people of Iraq deserve a chance. We probably need a new strategy, but I doubt one will happen while both parties are more worried about appearance than subtance.