The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

When Anti-War is Pro-Aggressor

 

The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally if it had occurred in 1941: pic.twitter.com/HIBMMvxurX

— emilio “#StandWithUkraine” vigil 🇺🇦 (@emiliovigil5) February 19, 2023

I genuinely don't think war is great, I don't. It's a brutal, stupid waste of resources and life. It is never the best solution to human difficulties, and only serves to create more problems and misery than whatever unfortunate situation supposedly brought it about. That said, every person at the "Rage Against the War Machine" rally except for journalists and counter-protesters are goddamn dumbfucks, grifters, clueless babies and Russian operatives, and they can go get fucked. And I mean that with all the love and sincerity I can muster.

If anyone purports to be from the so-called left and rallies with a backdrop of Russian flags and shares a venue with pretend-reformed neo-Nazis, wow. Sucks to be you. It's sad that back when a lot of us who were whole adults 20 years ago and were against the US invasion of Iraq we were also looking up to Dennis Kucinich and Scott Ritter, but we know a whole lot more now that we did then. Ditto Madea Benjamin. (I've got no dirt on her background, she's just a clueless peacenik who thinks Putin is a reasonable person who can be negotiated with and that people who tell her differently are warmongers for thinking sovereign nations should be able to defend themselves. In short, she should also get fucked for not using the brain she was gifted with.)

Anyway, it's hard to say folks are anti-war when they seem to have picked a side:

And by picked a side, I mean support absolutely everything Vladimir Putin could possibly want:

Ron Paul Either Did Or Didn't Endorse Jill Stein

I don't actually care, because the number of people who would either vote for Ron Paul or Jill Stein would be able to hold a convention in an elementary school auditorium and still have room for a choir. But it's amazing to me that Ron Paul shouts out Jill Stein. I really did not know they had any significant ideological overlap. Actually, I'm pretty sure they don't. This is basically like taking protest voting to the nth, right?

The 2012 GOP Primary is *Still* With Us. Really.

It strikes me as singularly weird that I'm doing another post regarding the reverb on the 2012 GOP primary and I'm still not talking about TX Gov. Perry's post-indictment chances or the low-level Mitt Romney chatter (Reihan Salam makes a few strong points, but Charles Pierce comedically upends them) . But no, I'm back mentioning this strange little grubby palm-greasing in Ioway. Because it still has ripples, somehow.

Call me a cynic, a skeptic, and a grump, but all the same, I just saw the volte face of Sorenson from Bachmann to Paul as a kind of estimation of their comparative electable merits. Ron Paul has a more or less coherent political message, and Michele Bachmann is not a great maker of coherent statements. End of story?--nope.

Now, to be completely real, until 2012, there was no reason for me to know who the hell Kent Sorenson even is. But it looks like, if you are big in the GOP in Iowa, you kind of are a big deal in getting a presidential primary campaign started, judging from what he seemed to have got out of the deal. (Ya know, before anyone looked into it.)

Something Something Ron Paul's Not Campaigning, Something Something Delegates.

I feel like I should say something to mark the sorta-suspension of the Ron Paul campaign, just as I marked the end of the Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich campaigns. Somehow, my heart just isn't in it. For one thing, even if Ron Paul isn't actively campaigning, you know, deep down, some of his supporters will never say die. And also, Rand Paul. And also, delegate finagling.  (Would Ron Paul get a prominent berth at the Convention to give one of his speeches? Let me reiterate: one of his speeches?)

In other words, to the extent that he was a fixture of this campaign year, his version of not campaigning would still feel to me like he never left, if that makes sense. And if it doesn't, that's probably fitting.

Ron Paul might allow morning after injection for "honest rape".

This is the sort of thing that makes me really question the pro-life view--it disappears the pregnant person from the equation. We look at how this person became pregnant, we judge whether this is a valid reason to abort.  We look at how far along the fetus is, but not how far along the pregnant person is in accepting, understanding, and being able to deal with what has happened to hir. And where the "how" of a pregnancy becomes a topic for discussion, the idea of a pregnancy via rape become a question for speculation: Is it "rape-rape"?  "Honest rape?" The serious, violent kind of course, with evidence of struggle and the attempt of a female-bodied person to protect her feminine virtue, of course. Because nothing less would do!

So, in order to be a good rape victim, our female-bodied person has to present themselves to the hospital and report their rape right away, no matter who their rapist is, or their relationship to that person. They need to be ready to file that police report no matter who that individual who raped them may be. They need to do it before they really know they are pregnant--and then. maybe they are okay.

Piers Morgan says, after posing this difficult question, that it's unlikely that a rape would happen to one of Ron Paul's daughters or granddaughters. Sexual assault affects one in six women. I wish it were more unlikely. But I also wish more people understood that there is no "perfect" rape or rape victim, and that regardless of the circumstances, a person has a right to caring treatment that respects hir dignity and puts hir first. Anti-choice people focus on the condition of the fetus--the condition of the pregnant person should come first. To ignore hir is simply misogyny.

Ron Paul, Racist Crap and the Pointlessness of the Protest Vote

It turns out that it's been corroborated: Ron Paul did proof and sign off on the racist nonsense that was in the newsletters that went out under his name. Dave Weigel points out that Paul supporters don't seem to know or care, mostly because Paul is a protest vote.

I think this might explain a lot of the "yeah but he's against the drug war" arguments, which seem to rest hopes on the idea that if you cast a protest vote, somehow your protest will register and people will know what you meant.

I don't understand this thinking. There's no logical reason a vote for Ron Paul will be assumed to be a vote against foreign escapades, or against the racist drug war. For all anyone knows, it could mean you really, really grok von Hayek or think the gold standard makes sense, or, I don't know know, just agree with Rand Paul, and for that matter, me, that the TSA has no business touching your junk.  It seems sort of like passive-aggressive voting, in a way. The Field of Candidates: "But what did we do?"  Angry Voter: "Oooohhhh, YOU KNOW!"

But the answer is really: they don't know. The message voting is supposed to send is: this is the person I think would best fill the job I'm voting them in for, out of all the people whose names I could have gone for. So when a certain number of votes gets cast for a Ron Paul, there just isn't any way to tell if you identify with Stormfront or NORML. We have to guess that any or all of his ideas are legitimized to an extent.  And that will include that really cheap, crappy, "profiting from racism and homophobia" stuff.

Sigh; but that's just my opinion. You all just do what you're going to do. It's a free country.

Start the New Year off Right--learn why Ron Paul is a weirdo (besides the racism and homophobia, that is.)

Manic Pixie Congressman Ron Paul thinks the social safety net is not part of the "general welfare" and that the judicial ruling upholding the constitutionality of Social Security is as wrongheaded as support of slavery. Although he would allow that the "general welfare" might include "sound currency" (But no Fed? And his problem with fiat currency is what, then?) or "markets".  Okay, srsly?  He accepts the commerce clause?  Because you could have fooled me; I was sort of thinking he was a tenther. But he seems to think the Tenth Amendment is even superfluous to requirements.  He's calling on "original intent".

A-ha.  Now I get it.  He's making it up as he goes along. "Welfare" means what Ron Paul wants it to mean, neither more or less.  The value of the currency and rate of exchange--Congress' business. Whether elderly people die in penury--not a matter of the welfare of the nation at all. After all, those are only people.  We want sound dollars. You know, for people to pay their debts with.  But human beings?  Phooey. What are they for?

Wow. I think we've seen Peak Ron Paul.

Every time I checked in on the internet today, there was some new information about Ron Paul.  What amazes me is, all of this stuff for the most part has been out there for awhile, and although Reason covered it four years ago--well, I guess Ron Paul was never really considered as much of a contender as he is right now. Or, probably, was, like, days ago. So it's only now that everything gets rounded up, whereas before, it was only occasionally that some media types would even bother checking up on Ron's World.

I think this post from former staffer Eric Dondero, though, is the most--how do I put this? Entertaining. It's framed like a defense of his former boss against charges of being racist and homophobic, while giving glimpses of really racist and homophobic attitudes. Insights like Paul being "most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence" and being unwilling to use the bathroom in a gay person's home just sound so ignorant, but fold in nicely with the image we already have of Ron Paul as the person who either wrote or approved of the person who wrote about a gay/government conspiracy regarding AIDS, or who in 2008 had this kind of alarmist crap as his message on immigration.

This recent pile-on gives me a particular satisfaction for a specific reason:  Paulites (I can not bring myself to accept the ablist term, "Paultards") put themselves in front of cameras at Occupy sites, as if maintaining that Paul and Occupy had things in common.  Paul wants to hew away at the government in ways that would empower the 1% even more. There would be no EPA standing between you and mercury in your fish, water, or anything else; asbestos in your breakfast cereal; or whatever the hell else businesses could get away with. And he's a dumb naive cluck if he thinks consumers can fix the inequality themselves.  Government should serve the people--it isn't the problem so much as people have tried to use it to make imperfect solutions. It isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean it should be done away with. 

And there would be no one standing up for the equal protection of minorities in a Paul government. That's a major unremedied bit of inequality right there.

And don't get me started on his denial of a woman's right to choose. 

I will reiterate that I do not understand how any intelligent person can support this guy.

Ron Paul: "Not a racist, but..." or "A racist butt."

The more I look at the surprising things found in all manner of newsletters, etc. published by Ron Paul and his companions, the less I care what he actually thinks, because he let this garbage go out under his name.  Regardless of what he thinks, he didn't think that that sort of thing either would be associated with him (which is a sign that he was stupid and careless) or he didn't see the problem with it (in which case, that's some offensive stuff).  Either way, it doesn't reflect well on him, and strikes me as disqualifying.

The contention that he didn't know what was being published under his name is already weakened by a 1995 interview where does discuss the content of the newsletters. Linkins points out something that undoes a part of the Paul defense on these--that the newsletters' more racist content can't be his because he doesn't talk that way in his current appearances.  I think the internet age has made us a little lazy--we're used to a degree of total information awareness.  But there was a plausible time when politicians could say stuff in front of one audience, or send stuff out to a select mailing list, and actually think it would never be disseminated to a wider public, so long as they didn't say anything really screwed up on camera or in front of the wrong reporter.

The bigger question of "Is Ron Paul a racist? (or a homophobe?)" is one I just don't see the point in--if someone thinks it's okay to use material that is racist or homophobic, regardless of their own professed beliefs, then they have totally sided with the racists and/or homophobes.  It's like when someone you're speaking with says, "I'm not a racist, but...."  You know something totally offensive is coming. I would say the person who professes not to be racist is even more culpable if he or she uses that kind of material--because he or she knows better.  It's still ignorant, it's just a different kind of ignorance.

But going beyond the "fleet-footed African-American street thug" trope, or the "dangerous HIV-spreading gay male" trope, there is plenty of up-fuckedness just on policy grounds that should be flashing warning signs against taking this guy seriously.  Goldbugging. IRS tax-denialism. And regardless of the way it's being packaged right now, his foreign policy is isolationism, not non-interventionism, and his economic bent is deregulation, not old-school anti-corporatism. The guy is just problematic every which way.

Also, I think Sullivan is probably click-baiting with his Paul endorsement. I'm just throwing that out there. I do not see how Ron Paul appeals to intelligent people.

Just some odds and ends of the Best of the Worst 2012 business--

Randall Terry, who isn't a real candidate, got glitter-bombed by Vermin Supreme, who isn't a real candidate either.



Nonetheless, I enjoyed seeing Randall Terry being glitter-bombed. Some people need a little disrespect every now and then to keep the world around them sane.

Speaking of which--Gingrich was called a rude thing:



I'm sticking with, "It's funny because it's true."

Oh, and finally, Ron Paul is finally feeling the actual irritation of being asked legitimate questions by journalists about stuff that appeared under his byline, instead of getting fluffed by libertarian fringistas.

I don't really get the appeal of Ron Paul. Some of the things he's said remind me a lot of Pat Buchanan. The non-interventionist foreign policy, for one thing, and the quasi-racist if not actually racist small gov't/but law and order stuff. And yet, Pat was never cool.  So how come Pat Buchanan's philosophy turns on ignorant hipsters when dressed up as an ol' country doctor?  Am confused.

Anyway--that's my half-assed round-up about some of today's half-assed candidates.

"Let him die?" "YEAAAHH!"

So, the thing I think is really odd, is that the teabaggers are applauding letting someone die in the same state where a long watch over the letting die of Terri Schiavo was made very much a thing. Does the difference over whose life matters really boil down to who is paying? This is of course, after the cheer from the previous debate, over the 234 executions performed during Gov. Rick Perry's tenure. But even the conservative governor was taken aback, here, and also over some of the crowd reaction to his somewhat more moderate position regarding immigration. For that matter, I think Rep. Ron Paul, to whom the question was asked, was taken aback by the reaction of the crowd, as he tried to explain how other means (churches) sometimes filled in the gap to cover for human decency and support life.

The debate last night was a weird one--being specifically a "Tea Party"-centered debate, it would appear to favor radicalism--but I'm not sure it did. Romney's criticism of Perry's (former?) stance on Social Security was pointed and on-target, and Michele Bachmann's pile-on re: Gardasil is both charmingly weird and uninformed and also conspiracy-driven, but probably effective for all that, amongst weird, uninformed, conspiracy-driven folks.

(Bachmann intimated that the "little girls" of 12 shouldn't be injected with the government like that. At 12, I wasn't little, to my own recollection, and I already understood what VD and vaccinations were about. I had the standard measles/mumps/rubella booster actually administered in my public school, once. Is the HPV vaccine so different and government-intrusive because it might involve one's, erm, pee-pee parts? When I hear "little girls"--I don't think of my busty, awkwardly pubescent self so much as a six year old clutching a stuffed bunny: "Oh noes! You are injecting away my puriteeeee!" She dismisses my reality and makes me hallucinate her own. How bizarre.)

If I thought I didn't understand the audience of the last debate, I understood this audience still less. Also, too, we are one step closer to the Romney/Pawlenty ticket that I have already called. I will even stop taking bets at this point.

I do not think your Perry/Jindal ticket is going anywhere, and actually--you people should seek help with your betting issues.

Rand & Ron Paul: Social contracts? How do they f-ing work?

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.



Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.


I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

That's so dumb that I'm going to address the stupid instead of addressing where the moral-fail occurs. If I'm a paying customer, I have a right to make a contract with someone for their labors. My right to health care is the right to be a consumer.  No one is saying Rand Paul has to get up out of bed and look at some eyeballs or the cops are going to force him to do jack shit. The health care debate is about allocating the resources of the community so that when any individual needs Rand Raul to come look at their eyes--Rand Paul gets paid.  He gets paid for what he does. The people in his office get paid.  That's not slavery. That's getting paid.   If he doesn't like looking at people's eyeballs for money, then he should have gone into a different business (OFFS, he went into politics, didn't he?)