Now THAT'S a first for presidential campaign ad.....
Ron Paul's third NH TV ad is up and ready.
I've heard a lot of grandiose and/or vague claims in campaign ads. And usually the vaguer the ad, the more emotional and grandiose the message.
Here, Paul's message is simple, clear and unique:
I'm Ron Paul and I'm the only presidential candidate who'll bring our troops home from Iraq immediately and stop wasteful government spending. But here's something else I care about, and I hope you do too. The war on terror and the growth of big government have had a dangerous side effect: The loss of privacy rights for the American people. Both parties have put their pet schemes ahead of our rights. Not me. As president, I won't stand for it. No national ID card, no invasion of privacy. I'm Ron Paul and I approve this message.
I've never heard right to privacy and civil liberties defended as a campaign pledge. I think the folks in a state like NH will appreciate this message. Let's see if it helps chew into Rudy and Romney's lead. A good showing by Paul on this kind of platform will help embolden the stance in their favor and make whoever the candidates are pay attention.
BTW, I came across this new ad at Reason TV , a new mutlimedia site by Reason. There's lots of stuff including the "Drew Carey Project" whose latest installment is Medical Marijuana. Good Stuff.
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Comments :
it was not too bad of an ad
not that I fully agree with the message but ok. Too bad though he unfortunately attracts some vocal anti-semites... (I remembered that when I read some of the first youtube comments) Similar to Buchanan. He is far less objectionable than Buchanan ever was but still I am wary.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Well
attracting anti semmites is a meaningless quality. It's not revealing about his views on Jews. Paul just sees no reason to bolster Isreal. He says they can take on the rest of the middle east by themselves. Our backing is not only unneeded, he says, but also complicates our foreign policy. He's right.
I disagree
In a world that overwhelmingly hates Israel (because too many people pretty much hate the Jews) it is the US support that has prevented Israel from turning into much more of a pariah that it already is.
Removing that support (not even monetary but alliance and other international support) would drastically change the equation and hurt Israel.
I absolutely prefer to keep supporting Israel (though don't care as much about the financial support) especially morally, and doing everything US can to bring the Islamist regimes to their knees, especially through financial means - by throwing all our resources into stopping the reliance on their oil. Without oil most of the Mideast states would be worthless.
Also morally it is the right thing to do - not abandoning the morally good party in favor of neutrality with evil. I think Islamofascism must be vigorously fought which is not an endorsement of WW3 in case some liberals would throw that at me. There are other ways.
I strongly disagree with Ron Paul's isolationist message on the War on Islamist ideology. Violent anti-reason ideologies that threaten the West must be defeated.
That does not mean that the neocons are automatically right - we do not need to bring democracy or improve states that are clearly not ready for it, but we can instill the fear of God (US) in their hearts and minds just like we did with Japan. ;)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Whoa Nellie!
Didn't mean to strike a cord. I guess not being Jewish, Muslim, anti-semmetic or someone who really thinkis about anti-semmitism, it doesn't really strike as being as prominent an issue as maybe it should be.
That said, I don't really see what policies Paul would be nixing that you feel we should be pursuing. It all seems pretty innocuous.
Moral support and words are free. He's talkinmg about military alliances and entanglements.
Nonetheless, Jews aside, I totally and respectfully disagree with zeal and over-importance that you place on this issue along with "Islamo-fascism". Zeal begets zeal. I think Paul's cooler demeanor on the matter would be a step in the right direction in fostering peace.
eh well no big deal
well it is a consideration for me. Paul, from what I can remember, did specifically say that he would not support Israel. That is too much for me.
That said however I do not think he would be able to do it even if he became president. I think Congress would actually rebel at that - for example trying to yank foreign aid to Israel would be overridden.
We can get our troops out of the Middle East, and Germany, and Japan, but ending the alliance is too far. Plus we still need them in South Korea.
Islamist ideology is dangerous to the rest of the world and if radicals, such as those in Iran, were able to get a nuclear bomb, they would be able to blackmail a lot of countries and potentially seriously hurting US economically. It is not an existential threat, but it is a threat and I prefer to take threats seriously and not just ignore them by retreating and closing eyes and ears.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Reality
I forgot who said it but it went something like this:
Iran says it wants to establish a world-wide caliphate. Iran has a GDP that is approximately equal to Connecticut. Do you think Connecticut could take over the world?
The people who are worried about Iran need to take a good look at the facts and realize that the Iranian government can't get anywhere close to realizing their purported goals.
The most tragic part of this whole fixation on Iran is that the reformers were starting to gain traction. The Islamist regime was coming to an end, but Bush had to blabber on about the Axis of Evil and invade countries on either side of Iran. We really were *this* close to having the problem resolve itself. Now the reformers are discounted and people really believe that America is on a crusade to purge Muslims from the land.
The cheapest, most thoughtful policy wouldn't lose us anything but pride: reopen diplomatic relations and formally apologize for the support the Shah and the associated coup in 1953. Whether or not conservatives could swallow their pride to do such a thing is to be seen.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Pride gets in the way
Somehow this whole thing is a big backfire...... I thought Iraq was partly about keeping the world markets trading in dollars, by dominating the oil resources.
The soveigrn wealth funds. US is lagging behind there. A great big pile of money that we don't have a peice of.
It is the economy, stupid.
Good point
That's the problem when nationalist paranoia taking strength on both sides of a matter like this.
One reinforces the other in a perfect symbiotic circle while dissenting views are seen as weak and dangerous.
When did Israel become the 51st state?
Why I don't take as absolutist position as Paul when it comes to foreign aid, I have lost patience with the US militarizing the rest of the world(we are the largest arms dealer in the world) while we enact Patriot Acts at home. What's the logic of simultaneously awarding aid and militarizing both Israel and Saudi Arabia--there's no peacy treaty between those 2. No doubt, with respect to saudi Arabia, now part of some cock-eyed scheme for the Saudis to support sunni militias in countering al-aqeda and shitte militias in Iraq.
Our response to 9-11 response should have been to rebuild the towers, reasonably increase airline security, take out al-qaeda in Afghanistan and deal with the Near Eastern al-qaeda organizations/cells.
But no, we had to embark on some Neocon masturbatory foreign policy fantasy that borders on criminal in terms of it's massive incompetence. Perhaps the worst aspect of it all is that these systemic high oil prices have entrenched Putin in Power in Russia, throwing Russia back into Totalitarianism and resurrecting, in many respects, the cold war. Kristol's 'beneveolent hegemony" is in ruins.
Now we are supposed to take the assertions of a nutjob like kristol that Iran, that spends an equivalent of around 5-10 billion dollars annually on defense and which hasn't invaded an external country with a standing army since the fall of the Persian empire is out to impose a global caliphate and pass out nuclear weapons to terrorists to use against the United States. It's complete fantasy.
indeed
I absolutely agree with you on what our 9/11 response should've been. And of course Iraq was one of the worst foreign policy mistakes ever.
However it is the willful decision to ignore the dangers around us while doing everything to prevent us from actually addressing and defending against those dangers is why people like Ron Paul, libertarians supporting him, and liberals in general are off the wall and are very far from what our country needs right now.
We have barely existent security at all entry points, millions of unidentified non-Americans residing in our country, thousands upon thousands of fanatics willing to throw away their lives to kill Americans, and regimes feverishly trying to develop nuclear bombs (not for some stupid Caliphate) in order to blackmail the Western world that is overwhelmingly willing to surrender everything that has made our civilization great at the first sight of an angry radical mob on TV.
And then we have people screeching about any attempt to actually address the incredible gaps in our security, to close, as a sovereign nation, the borders to uncontrolled human traffic, and actually identify who the hell is a US Citizen and who is not. In the name of "liberty" we have these politicians and their supporters trying to block even the most basic attempts of the only truly legitimate governmental functions to try to keep Americans safe.
Just because we should have never gone to Iraq does not mean we do not have real enemies. You do not need a trillion dollar budget to fly airplanes into buildings or smuggle a nuke into an American city through the most absurdly porous borders a country that cares about its citizens can possibly have. Just because the current morons in power are incompetent does not lessen the desire of the millions-strong hordes to intimidate and destroy our way of life.
Aside from Iraq I pretty much agree with close to 0% of the libertarian stick a head in the ground foreign policy. And it is a huge weakness, and just one of the reasons why libertarian party is not viable. This is not a pre-ww2 world anymore.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
no offense though :)
aside from security/military/war/foreign policy I agree with libertarians on the vast majority of the issues and respect them for their ideological strength and rational approach. Far more respectable than both current Democrats and Republicans.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
For me, I've come to the opposite conclusion...
Any latent sympathies I might have held toward "Pax Americana" ended abruptly when we passed the Patriot Act.
Paul created a stir on the Street today...
Here's Paul's statement/question that caused the stir
BTW. I've always liked Rick Santelli. He's the best thing CNBC has going for it by far.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I was hoping Paul would have dug deeper
and really challenged Bernanke pre-emptively on his very expected comebacks like talking about price stability...as if that makes everything OK. There was more but I really don't have the mind to get into it.
Very Limited time allocated to each congressman
for questioning...
I'm sure Paul would love to be allocated unlimited time to engage Bernanke in an extended debate...
Both Paul and Bernanke are right, in part
The odd thing is: I think they agree with each other, for the most part. Inflation *is* a problem. The dollar's decline *is* a problem. Paul made a few errors that Bernanke corrected, and on those minor technical points, Bernanke is indeed correct. For example, Paul's comment that the dollar's decline is a problem for people on a fixed income isn't really accurate -- it's only a problem if you are spending a lot of money on imports, and import price increases *are* reflected in CPI figures. There is a connection between the dollar's decline and inflation, but it's not as strong as Paul indicated.
Back in his academic days and his early days at the Fed, Bernanke was well-known as being something of an advocate for explicit inflation targeting -- he advocated an explicit annual inflation target of 1-2%. In some nations, the central bank *is* indeed tasked with an inflation target. I am personally an advocate of inflation targeting, despite some of the practical real-world difficulties in trying to implement it.
But the harsh reality, as Bernanke pointed out in his reply to Paul, is that the Fed was *not* tasked by Congress with the goal of price stability or an inflation target -- it was tasked by Congress with the impossible
, namely, full employment *AND* price stability. Well, sorry, but there are sometimes cases where you can have one or the other, but not both. The result of this legislative mandate is that the Fed tries to walk the tightrope between recession and inflation. Generally it falls off that tightrope sooner or later, and we end up with recession or inflation. Sometimes both at the same time, like in the 70s until Paul Volcker cleaned up the Fed's act (at the cost of a pair of very severe recessions).
What Paul *should* do, if he wants to fix things rather than just making a political statement, is advocate changing the Federal Reserve Act to remove the Fed's mandate to pursue full employment, and to clarify the "price stability" mandate to be more specific.
If this were the Fed's policy, most likely the result right now would be a nasty recession. Jim Cramer would throw a serious fit, but in the end it would be a good thing, just like the '80 and '82 recessions induced by Volcker's policies ended up being *very* good things for the US economy in the long run.
Even then the Fed's job would not be easy -- there is a fine line between aggressively fighting inflation and causing a deflationary depression (bank runs, massive stock market blowup, etc.). Bernanke is not an idiot. Bernanke knows all this. It's just that, as Paul said, the Fed is between a rock and a hard place, and the law that dictates what the Fed must do isn't helping matters one bit.
I don't disagree at all...
I've always been from the Chicago School rather than from the Austrain School when it comes to the Business cycle.
The world's central bankers are all monetarist--there is no secret cabal to to debase the national currencies.
The central bankers are libertarians(at least since the early 80s) but the politicans are not, and it is their policies that ultimately debase the currency.
Hope Ron Paul runs as Independent
But I am not sure who will he hurt Republicans or Democrats,
I have a feeling Democrats will be hurt when he runs as Independent
Ron Paul (I)
It will at the very least make for interesting debates. (If he gets invited!)
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki