I managed to make it through a 1,300 word column on Alex Jones yesterday without giving myself the kind of excruciating migraine that usually leads me to spend hours hovering near the sink out of fear that I’ll need to throw up into it at some point. Jones has that kind of effect on me, simply by virtue of his insufferable insanity and his followers’ mindless, slavish devotion. So how do I cleanse myself after that kind of horrific experience? How do I go about allowing myself a tiny break so that I might be able to regain my own soundness of mind and recharge my drained psyche? Well, there’s one way I won’t be able to do it — and that’s to write about Ron Paul, the older, more seductively leprechaun-like version of Alex Jones, but really a guy who may as well be Jones both in the conspiratorial nonsense he espouses and the sycophantic loyalty he inspires among the nihilistic hipster set.

For those who worship at the altar of Dr. Paul, go ahead and get your fingers ready to bang out angry screeds in the comment section in defense of your god, because, yes, I probably won’t be able to help myself and may wind up purposely antagonizing you at some point over the next few minutes. I’ll do this because there’s a pretty good chance you’re not very bright. Or you’re high. Or both.

Thankfully, Ron Paul has zero impact on the actual U.S. lawmaking process these days given that he left Congress in a giant poof of indignation and self-pity last November, leaving us all with one final 48-minute-long rant about fascism, fiat money, the erosion of our civil liberties, “psychopathic authoritarians,” and, of course, liberty! But despite his official departure from the hallowed halls of the institution he claimed to despise, it should have been abundantly clear that he wasn’t simply going to stroll off into the sunset to dodder away his twilight years ranting at telephone poles about the dangers of functional government. Freed from the shackles of decorum, you just knew he was going to rip the gloves off and begin spouting whatever kind of insane horseshit popped into his brain in whichever direction he felt like. That’s the attitude that led to his first post-resignation op-ed, subtly titled “You’re Not Free If You Can’t Secede from an Oppressive Government.” And that’s the attitude that no doubt led to the diatribe he threw together for his friend Lew Rockwell’s website, a piece published yesterday called “Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston.” (LIBERTY!)

In the essay, Paul rails not against the two alleged terrorists who killed four people and maimed dozens more during the Boston Marathon bombing two weeks ago and the manhunt that followed; that would be far too conventional. Paul instead, of course, chooses to aim his ire at the men and women who most of us felt were doing their absolute best to protect average American citizens as a couple of killers armed with explosives were on the loose in Boston: the cops. Cue the “police state” boogeyman:

“Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down. These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

As usual, the various police departments and state and federal law enforcement agencies called on during extraordinary events like the manhunt following the Boston bombing aren’t made up of actual people, dedicated public servants whose goal is to keep us all safe to the best of their ability. Instead, the cops are one big mechanized monster that’s always a faked safety drill away away from subduing the public and instituting martial law in the name of facilitating the one-world government takeover. The authorities — the people requesting that you stay indoors because there are potential terrorists somewhere nearby who’ve already proven that they’ll kill a well-armed cop — are the ones you really need to be afraid of. When the police instruct you to do something during a crisis situation in the name of trying to keep your ass out of the line of fire, you should immediately react with suspicion, lest you surrender your “precious civil liberties” — like the right to do whatever the fuck you want, man! — so that “the government can pretend to protect us.”

The interesting thing about Paul’s laughably melodramatic lament about the dangers of us passive sheeple being led to the slaughter by government troops, is that it mirrors almost word-for-word the wailing and gnashing of teeth that came from the usual suspects on the pissy far-left in the wake of the Boston manhunt. Falguni Sheth, a regular Salon contributor who I swear was engineered in a lab somewhere in San Francisco, she’s such a perfect example of a perpetually indignant and alarmist liberal, penned a column not long after the search for the Tsarnaev brothers ended that bemoaned the “surveillance state” and the public’s servile willingness to take orders from the police. In the fantasy world Sheth lives in, the fact that there are now cameras surrounding us almost 24/7 — some institutional, some the result of our own social media activity — had nothing at all to do with how quickly authorities managed to zero in on and ultimately neutralize the Boston bombing suspects. Like Paul, she thinks the real threat wasn’t from the guys with the explosives but from the people we pay to protect us — because, like Paul, the government is never under any circumstances to be trusted, no matter how many local citizens it may be made up of. If nothing else, the Paul/Sheth nexus proves that the political spectrum isn’t a straight line, it’s a circle — and the two extremes eventually loop back around and meet.

Yes, state, local, and federal law enforcement shouldn’t always be given carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want and there’s a reason they’re the subject of constant oversight. But only the most delusional paranoiacs, the people convinced that they need to be heavily armed and have doomsday bunkers that are well-stocked for the coming rise of the NWO dystopia, would think that the police exercising special measures under very special circumstances for all of 15-hours is cause for panic. Most people would just say thanks — and are saying thanks – to the cops for selflessly putting their asses on the line and for getting two killers off the streets.

By the way, the owner of the website Ron Paul wrote his piece for, Lew Rockwell? He used to be Paul’s chief of staff back in the late 70s and early 80s and oversaw “The Ron Paul Political Report.” That’s the newsletter that Paul tried unsuccessfully to distance himself from that featured racist, homophobic, and conspiracist anti-government writings.

Tell me whose judgment I should really be questioning here.

In fact, tell me why I should give a damn about anything Ron Paul has to say.

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Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, answering questions while campaigning in New Hampshire in 2008. (Photo credit: Bbsrock)

By Robert Parry:

Rep. Ron Paul, an icon to the libertarian Right and to some on the anti-war Left, gave a farewell address to Congress that expressed his neo-Confederate interpretation of the Constitution and his anti-historical view of the supposedly good old days of laissez-faire capitalism.

In a near-hour-long rambling speech on Nov. 14, Paul also revealed himself to be an opponent of “pure democracy” because government by the people and for the people tends to infringe on the “liberty” of businessmen who, in Paul’s ideal world, should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want to the less privileged.

In Paul’s version of history, the United States lost its way at the advent of the Progressive Era about a century ago. “The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be ‘progressive’ ideas,” said the 77-year-old Texas Republican. “Pure democracy became acceptable.”

Before then, everything was working just fine, in Paul’s view. But the reality was anything but wonderful for the vast majority of Americans. A century ago, women were denied the vote by law and many non-white males were denied the vote in practice. Uppity blacks were frequently lynched.

The surviving Native Americans were confined to oppressive reservations at the end of a long process of genocide. Conditions weren’t much better for the white working class. Many factory workers toiled 12-hour days and six-day weeks in very dangerous conditions, and union organizers were targeted for reprisals and sometimes death.

For small businessmen, life was treacherous, too, with the big monopolistic trusts overcharging for key services and with periodic panics on Wall Street rippling out across the country in bank failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures.

Meanwhile, obscenely rich Robber Barons, like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, personally controlled much of the nation’s economy and manipulated the political process through bribery. They were the ones who owned the real “liberty.”

It took the Great Depression and its mass suffering to finally convince most Americans “that sacrificing some liberty was necessary,” in Paul’s curious phrasing, for them to gain a living wage, a measure of security and a little respect.

So, under President Franklin Roosevelt, laws were changed to shield working Americans from the worst predations of the super-rich. Labor standards were enacted; unions were protected; regulations were imposed on Wall Street; and the nation’s banks were made more secure to protect the savings of depositors.

Many social injustices also were addressed during Ron Paul’s dreaded last century. Women got the vote and their position in the country gradually improved, as it did for blacks and other minorities with the belated enforcement of the equal rights provisions of the 14^th Amendment and passage of civil rights legislation.

The reforms from the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the post-World War II era also contributed to a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth, making the United States a richer and stronger country. The reforms, initiated by the federal government, essentially created the Great American Middle Class.

Paul’s Complaint

But in Paul’s view, the reformers should have left things the way they were – and he blames the reforms for today’s problems, although how exactly they’re connected is not made clear.

Paul said: “Some complain that my arguments make no sense, since great wealth and the standard of living improved for many Americans over the last 100 years, even with these new policies. But the damage to the market economy, and the currency, has been insidious and steady.

“It took a long time to consume our wealth, destroy the currency and undermine productivity and get our financial obligations to a point of no return. Confidence sometimes lasts longer than deserved. Most of our wealth today depends on debt.

“The wealth that we enjoyed and seemed to be endless, allowed concern for the principle of a free society to be neglected. As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary.”

But Paul’s blaming “progressive” reforms of the last century for the nation’s current economic mess lacks any logic, more a rhetorical trick than a rational argument, a sophistry that holds that because one thing happened and then some bad things happened, the first thing must have caused the other things.

The reality is much different. Without Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Era and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the direction of America’s capitalist system was toward disaster, not prosperity. Plus, the only meaningful “liberty” was that of a small number of oligarchs looting the nation’s wealth. (It would make more sense to blame the current debt problem on the overreach of U.S. imperialism, the rush to “free trade,” the unwise relaxing of economic regulations, and massive tax cuts for the rich.)

Besides his reactionary fondness for the Gilded Age, Paul also embraces an anti-historical attitude toward the Founding Era. He claimed that the Constitution failed not only because of the 20^th Century’s shift toward “pure democracy” but because of a loss of moral virtue among the populace.

“Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed,” Paul said. “The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.”

However, there’s no compelling evidence that people were more moral in 1787 or in 1912 than they are today. Indeed, one could argue that many slave-owning Founders were far less moral than Americans are now, a time when tolerance of racial, gender and other differences is much greater.

And as for the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the pious morality of the Robber Barons included the cruel exploitation of their workers, the flaunting of obscene wealth amid widespread poverty, and the routine bribery of politicians. How that measures up to moral superiority is a mystery.

In his speech, Paul declared that “a society that boos or ridicules the Golden Rule is not a moral society,” but many of the Founders and the Robber Barons did not follow the Golden Rule either. They inflicted on others great pain and suffering that they would not want for themselves.

Misreading the Constitution

Paul’s historical incoherence extends to what the Framers were doing with the Constitution. He argues that they were seeking “to limit government” in 1787 when they drafted the Constitution. But that was not their primary intent. The Framers were creating a strong and vibrant central government to replace the weak and ineffective one that existed under the Articles of Confederation.

Of course, by definition, all constitutions set limits on the power of governments. That’s what constitutions do and the U.S. Constitution is no exception. However, if the Framers wanted a weak central government and strong states’ rights, they would not have scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which governed the United States from 1777 to 1787. The Articles made the states “independent” and “sovereign” and left the federal government as a supplicant.

The key point, which Paul and other right-wingers seek to obscure about the Constitution, is that it granted broad powers to the central government along with the mandate to address the nation’s “general Welfare.”

The key Framers of the Constitution, particularly George Washington and James Madison, were pragmatists who understood that a strong and effective central government was necessary to protect the independence of a large and sprawling nation. For that reason, they recognized that the Articles had been a failure, preventing the 13 states from functioning as a cohesive nation. Indeed, the Articles didn’t even recognize the United States as a government, but rather as a “league of friendship.”

General Washington, in particular, hated the Articles because they had left his Continental Army begging individual states for supplies during the Revolutionary War. And after the hard-won independence, Washington saw European powers exploiting the divisions among the states and regions to whittle away that independence.

The whole American enterprise was threatened by the principle of states’ rights because national coordination was made almost impossible. It was that recognition which led Madison, with Washington’s firm support, to seek first to amend the Articles and ultimately to throw them out.

When Madison was trying to get Virginia’s endorsement of an amendment to give the federal government power to regulate commerce, Washington wrote: “the proposition in my opinion is so self evident that I confess I am at a loss to discover wherein lies the weight of the objection to the measure.

“We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be.” [For more on this background, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]

On to Philadelphia

After Madison was stymied on his commerce proposal in the Virginia legislature, he and Washington turned their attention to a convention that was technically supposed to propose changes to the Articles of Confederation but, in secrecy, chose to dump them entirely.

When the convention convened in Philadelphia in spring 1787, it was significant that on the first day of substantive debate, there was Madison’s idea of the federal government regulating commerce.

As the Constitution took shape – and the Convention spelled out the sweeping “enumerated powers” to be granted to Congress – Madison’s Commerce Clause was near the top, right after the power to tax, to pay debts, to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare,” and to borrow money – and even above the power to declare war. Yes, the Right’s despised Commerce Clause, which was the legal basis for many reforms of the 20th Century, was among the “enumerated powers” in Article 1, Section 8.

And gone was language from the Articles of Confederation that had declared the states “sovereign” and “independent.” Under the Constitution, federal law was supreme and the laws of the states could be stricken down by the federal courts.

Immediately, the supporters of the old system recognized what had happened. As dissidents from the Pennsylvania delegation wrote: “We dissent … because the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government.”

A movement of Anti-Federalists arose, led by the likes of Patrick Henry, to defeat the Constitution. They organized strong opposition in the states’ ratifying conventions of 1788 but ultimately lost, after winning the concession from Madison to enact of Bill of Rights during the first Congress.

The inclusion of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states and the people powers that the Constitution does not give to the federal government, is the primary hook upon which the modern Right hangs its tri-corner hat of anti-federal ideology.

But the amendment was essentially a sop to the Anti-Federalists with little real meaning because the Constitution had already granted broad powers to the federal government and stripped the states of their earlier dominance.

Remaking Madison

The Right’s “scholars” also make much of a few quotes from Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 45, in which he sought to play down how radical a transformation, from state to federal power, he had engineered in the Constitution. Rather than view this essay in context, the Right seizes on Madison’s rhetorical attempts to deflect the alarmist Anti-Federalist attacks by claiming that some of the Constitution’s federal powers were already in the Articles of Confederation, albeit in a far weaker form.

In Federalist Paper No. 45, entitled “The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered,” Madison wrote: “If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS.” Today’s Right also trumpets Madison’s summation, that “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

But it should be obvious that Madison is finessing his opposition. Whether or not some shadow of these federal powers existed in the Articles of Confederation, they were dramatically enhanced by the Constitution. In No. 45, Madison even plays down his prized Commerce Clause, acknowledging that “The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained.”

However, in Federalist Paper No. 14, Madison made clear how useful the Commerce Clause could be as he envisioned national construction projects.

“[T]he union will be daily facilitated by new improvements,” Madison wrote. “Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in better order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be opened throughout, or nearly throughout the whole extent of the Thirteen States.

“The communication between the western and Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete.”

Founding Pragmatism

The Framers also understood that the country would not remain locked in a late 18^th Century world. Though they could not anticipate all the changes that would arise over more than two centuries, they incorporated broad powers in the Constitution so the country through its elected representatives could adapt to those times.

The true genius of the Framers was their pragmatism, both for good and ill, in the cause of protecting American independence and unity. On the for-ill side, many representatives in Philadelphia recognized the evils of slavery but accepted a compromise allowing the states to count African-American slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress.

On the for-good side, the Framers recognized that the American system could not work without a strong central government with the power to enforce national standards, so they created one. They transferred national sovereignty from the 13 “independent” states to “We the people.” And they gave the central government the authority to provide for the “general Welfare.”

Yet, the fight over America’s founding principles didn’t end with the Constitution’s ratification in 1788. Faced with a growing emancipation movement – and losing ground to the industrial North – the Southern slave states challenged the power of the federal government to impose its laws on the states. President Andrew Jackson fought back against Southern “nullification” of federal law in 1832 and the issue of federal supremacy was fought out in blood during the Civil War from 1861-65.

Even after the Civil War, powerful regional and economic forces resisted the imposition of federal law, whether intended to benefit freed slaves or to regulate industry. In the latter third of the 19^th Century, as Jim Crow laws turned blacks into second-class citizens, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan created industrial monopolies that rode roughshod over working-class Americans.

For different reasons, the South’s agrarian oligarchs and the North’s industrial oligarchs wanted the federal government to stay out of their affairs – and they largely succeeded by wielding immense political power until the 20^th Century.

Then, in the face of widespread abuses, President Theodore Roosevelt went after the “trusts,” President Franklin Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression with the New Deal, and post-World War II presidents and federal courts began the process of overturning racial segregation.

The Right’s Emergence

In reaction to those changes – federal regulation of the economy and rejection of overt racial discrimination –the modern American Right emerged as a sometimes uneasy coalition between the “free-marketeers” and the neo-Confederates, sharing a mutual hatred of modern liberalism.

Those two groups also drew in other constituencies harboring resentments against liberals, such as the Christian Right – angered over Supreme Court prohibitions on compulsory prayers in public schools and abortion rights for women – and war hawks, drawn from the ranks of military contractors and neoconservative ideologues.

These right-wing movements recognized the importance of propaganda and thus – in the 1970s – began investing heavily in an infrastructure of think tanks and ideological media that would develop supportive narratives and disseminate those storylines to the American people.

It was especially important to convince Americans that the New Deal and federal interference in “states’ rights” were a violation of the Founders’ core principles. Thus, the Right could pretend that it was standing up for the U.S. Constitution and the Left was out of step with American “liberty.”

So, right-wing “scholars” transformed the purpose of the Constitutional Convention and recreated James Madison in particular. Under the Right’s revisionist history, the Constitution was drafted to constrain the power of the federal government and to ensure the supremacy of states’ rights. A few Madison quotes were cherry-picked from the Federalist Papers and the significance of the Tenth Amendment was exaggerated.

The success of the pseudo-history can’t be overstated. From the Tea Party, which arose in angry determination to “take back our country” from the first African-American president, to the hip libertarians who turned the quirky Ron Paul into a cult figure, there was a certainty that they were channeling the true vision of the American Founders.

A large segment of the American Left also embraced Ron Paul because his ideology included a rejection of imperial military adventures and a disdain for government intrusion into personal lives (although he is a devout “right-to-lifer” who would deny women the right to have an abortion).

Paul’s mix of libertarianism and anti-imperialism has proven especially attractive to young white men. He is viewed by some as a principled prophet, predicting chaos because the nation has deviated from the supposed path of “liberty.”

However, as his farewell address revealed, his ideology is a jumble of anti-historical claims and emotional appeals. For instance, he posed unserious questions like “Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?” – apparently oblivious to the need for energy conservation and the threat of global warming.

In the end, Ron Paul comes across as little more than a political crank whose few good ideas are overwhelmed by his neo-Confederate thinking and his sophistry about the inherent value of free-market economics.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

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By Bob Cesca: Four years ago yesterday, John McCain and Sarah Palin were 1.9 percentage points behind then-Senator Barack Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are 2.8 percentage points behind President Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Romney is currently doing worse than McCain’s ill-fated attempt at the presidency.

And there’s nothing on the horizon that could really change the dismal course of events in Romney’s favor, shy of a major presidential gaffe or an out-of-the-blue scandal of some sort. (Though I hasten to warn: this thing is far from over and any number of factors could dramatically shift the outcome of the election.)

So knowing all of this, it’s astonishing to me that Mitt Romney would rewind back to the failed McCain/Palin campaign and, specifically, its big bad red-scare “redistributionist” attack against Obama. It’s not surprising given how Romney has an impulsive habit saying whatever pops into his bulbous head — anything to get him through the day, anything that might work. Why not resurrect McCain’s failed attack, too? In fact, why not indiscriminately leap onto something that right-wing propagandist Matt Drudge posted on his site: a 14-year-old piece of video in which the president said, “I actually believe in redistribution at least at a certain level…”

Shock horror!

At a fundraiser in Georgia yesterday, Romney responded by saying, “He [Obama] really believes in what I’ll call a government-centered society. I know there are some who believe that if you simply take from some and give to others then we’ll all be better off. It’s known as redistribution. It’s never been a characteristic of America. There’s a tape that came out just a couple of days ago where the president said yes he believes in redistribution. I don’t. I believe the way to lift people and help people have higher incomes is not to take from some and give to others but to create wealth for all.”

That’s a big lie.

Of course Mitt Romney believes in redistribution. Everyone believes in redistribution to some extent. It’s literally how the government is funded — how it collects and spends tax revenue.

Elsewhere, Paul Ryan joined in, “You know, President Obama said that he believes in redistribution. Mitt Romney and I are not running to redistribute the wealth. Mitt Romney and I are running to help Americans create wealth.”

Ooga-booga! Be afraid! By the way, yes, they’re absolutely running to redistribute the wealth. Everything from their military spending position to their support for charter schools is about redistribution.

The reason a well-known and accepted function of government has become a rhetorical boogie man was chiefly due to McCain/Palin’s relentless demonizing of the word itself, accompanied by McCain’s over-used “dick quote” finger gestures every time he said “spread the wealth around,” thus allowing slack-jawed yokels to assign their own uninformed definitions to the term. Mainly, the Obama government is plotting to take your hard-earned money and give it to lazy, shiftless minorities. Secondarily, as I noted earlier, more than a few McCain supporters assigned a 1950s red scare collectivist/communist usurper definition to the word.

The upshot: we should fear the ultra-liberal black man who’s coming for your money (and guns and God)!

New York Times‘ editor David Firestone defined redistribution like so: “Government takes money from those who have it and uses it for the common good, whether that involves building roads or submarines, or handing some of it over to those who are desperate. In that sense, even a flat tax would redistribute wealth somewhat, although far less efficiently. Social Security and Medicare, though considered ‘insurance’ programs, actually take money from one generation and hand it to another.”

It’s as simple as that. No liberal bias, just the factual process by which the nation collects and spends money.

Come to think of it, the whole idea of Romney and surrogates like Chris Christie demanding that everyone in the “47 percent” pay taxes in order to have “skin in the game” is absolutely a redistributionist concept. Romney said on Fox News Channel, “I think people would like to be paying taxes.” Skin equals taxes. The game equals government. The government collects taxes, shoves the revenue into a massive pile and then spends it on predator drones, bailouts, roads, schools, soldiers, healthcare for retirees, disaster relief for Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry’s state budget deficit (stimulus money helped to balance his budget), Secret Service protection for Mitt Romney, health clinics for Paul Ryan and a million other things, including, yes, welfare programs, Medicaid and food stamps for poor people — the majority of whom live in red states. That’s “redistribution.” (McCain dick quotes intentional.)

Are Romney and Ryan seriously against using tax revenue to build roads or our military? Are Romney and Ryan suddenly opposed to Social Security? Are they opposed to federal aid to nations like Israel? If so, they’re even farther to the right than objectivist Ron Paul who, in spite of his adolescent Ayn Rand hero worship, collects Social Security: quite literally money that’s paid into a trust fund by today’s workers and is redistributed to Ron Paul every month.

Hell, if all three of these anti-redistributionist hypocritical demagogues are so rabidly opposed to wealth redistribution, can we have it all back, please? Can we have back the $10 million in redistributed government money that Romney received as a bailout for Bain Capital? Can we have back the redistributed stimulus money and the healthcare reform money that Paul Ryan received for his home district? And when will Ron Paul return his redistributed Social Security money?

Short of crackpots and contrarians, find me someone who’s seriously against this process. Everyone else who claims to be against redistribution is either intentionally lying about what it is, or they’re utterly clueless about what it means. Actually, those two groups are busily swapping the scare-definition of term back and forth like a rhetorical, incurable herpes virus.

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President Barack Obama's signature on the health insurance reform bill at the White House, March 23, 2010. The President signed the bill with 22 different pens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Bob Cesca: Yesterday, I covered the new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing the infuriatingly contradictory views on the Affordable Care Act. But what I didn’t note was that Republicans, naturally, are the most infuriatingly contradictory of bunch.

Okay, I know. Duh, right?

They’re always contradictory about everything. They hate “socialism” while sending their kids to public schools. They claim to be the party of law and order, and yet they don’t mind allowing police officers and firefighters to be sacked in the midst of their spastic Johnny-Come-Lately crush to destroy government spending (government spending was lovely during the Bush years). Ron Paul, the most conservative Republican in nearly a century and a staunch Ayn Rand libertarian, gladly accepts Social Security benefits. Mitt Romney is a computer generated spreadsheet of contradictions unraveling every time he opens his digitally-animated yammer.

In fact, it’s a miracle more Republican heads don’t explode on a daily basis out of the sheer cognitive energy generated by their gray matter racing in two separate and distinct directions.

Goddamn socialism is evil so get your government paws off my Medicare — POP! SPLAT!

Support the troops! But torture the enemy with such viciousness that it encourages the enemy to torture the troops with greater ferocity — KERPLOP!

Predictably, Republicans love the Affordable Care Act, too. They just don’t know it. And if you recite these poll results to any of them, make sure to bring goggles and a protective Gallagher-style tarp because heads will explode like the most watery summertime watermelons.

–Reuters/Ipsos found that 80 percent of self-identified Republicans support the idea of healthcare exchanges — pooling health insurance and distributing it among recipients to get lower group rates.

–Around 52 percent of Republicans like the idea of forcing corporations to offer health insurance plans to employees.

–The same percentage of Republicans support allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

–Nearly 60 percent of Republicans support that idea of government subsidies to help middle and working class families pay for health insurance.

–The pre-existing conditions language in the law? A massive 78 percent of registered we-hate-Obamacare Republicans support that part of the law.

In other words, Republicans — more so than the rest of the population — hate the law, but love everything in the law.

By the way, independent swing voters? They support the above provisions by nearly unanimous margins — in the 70 and 80 percentile range.

So what does this tell us? Mainly, Republicans love the message but hate the messenger. They love what’s in the law, and probably wish that a Republican — because of the word “Republican” — invented it (like David Putty from Seinfeld, they have to support their team even if it means dressing up in stupid face makeup).

This president has bent over backwards and angered parts of his base as well as chunks of the progressive movement in order to reach out to Republicans, and, in spite of his efforts, Republicans hate him more than Satan and Stalin and the very rare demon Satanstalin combined, because AM talk radio and Fox News told them so. Hell, the individual mandate, which Republicans hated in the Reuters poll results, was invented by Republicans! But remove the name “Obama” from this legislation, and they love, love, love it by both majority and supermajority margins.

Once again, it’s all about the reasonable African American smart guy liberal. They hate that guy. But they love his healthcare reform law.

Now if by some twist of reasoning they could reach the conclusion that the man and his laws are intertwined, perhaps Republicans would be easier to deal with. But for now, they’ll continue to look like confused screechers who are incapable of realizing how buffoonishly contradictory they appear in light of polling and basic math.

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The Affordable Care Act: Many benefits for regular Americans

By Bob Cesca: A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the disconnect among senior citizens regarding the healthcare law and who they’re intending to support in the election. Once again, seniors are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act more than any other demographic group (around 14 million of them alone have received new preventative care coverage), yet they don’t like the ACA and intend to vote for Romney over President Obama. A Romney victory would mean the repeal of the ACA and, along with it, the re-opening of the Medicare Part-D donut hole, forcing seniors to once again pay out of pocket for prescription medicine several months out of the year. It would mean the end of preventative care coverage and an array of other benefits that would deeply impact the health and financial stability of seniors.

And this is evidently what they want.

Or do they?

It turns out that most Americans don’t even know what’s in the law. And as we’ve all observed too often, Americans notoriously fear what they don’t understand. For example, evolution and African American presidents from Hawaii.

Seriously, a new poll indicates that Americans are totally flummoxed by the law.

Many Americans do not have a clear understanding of what’s in the health care law. About one-in-five (18%) say they understand the law very well and 49% say they understand it somewhat well; nearly a third (31%) say they understand it not too well or not at all well.

These numbers are precisely in line with conversations I’ve had with friends who happen to be on the periphery of the political debate. They just don’t know.

Some of them think it’s basically a single-payer government program that eliminates private insurers. Some of them think the public option is still in there. Most of these same people have employer-based coverage and won’t be impacted by the law much at all, while others, my uninsured non-political friends, are just clueless about the array of benefits they will personally receive when the law begins to get serious next year and especially the year after that — 2014. (Incidentally, I once overheard someone griping about the individual mandate, insisting that they will refuse to be forced into government insurance in place of their existing employer-based insurance policy. Ugh.)

Not shockingly, none of these people support the law, and that bears out in polling. 51 percent of Americans won’t be happy if the Supreme Court upholds the law, while 51 percent will be unhappy if just the mandate is ruled unconstitutional.

And you know what? It’s no wonder. The Democrats and especially the Obama administration have done a terrible job educating the public about the law, possibly for fear of standing too closely to something that’s perceived as unpopular. So they don’t seriously pitch it.

They don’t talk about the fact that it will reduce the deficit. They don’t talk about how tens of millions of Americans will be able to afford healthcare through the exchanges — the marketplaces which uninsured Americans can use to purchase affordable coverage. They don’t talk about the ban on pre-existing conditions. They certainly don’t talk about the required coverage — without copays or deductibles — of preventative and reproductive care since the Republicans turned that part of the law into a war against vaginas. They don’t talk about how insurance companies are being forced to spend more of your premiums on medical care, rather than pedantic commercials and CEO bonuses. They don’t talk about the expansion of Medicaid, they don’t talk about the thousands in subsidies for middle class families to pay for insurance, they don’t talk about the ban on lifetime limits in coverage (if you’re covered, and you get cancer and use up your lifetime alotted amount of coverage, it used to be that you would lose your coverage entirely — not any more) and they don’t talk about the tens of millions of young people who will continue to receive coverage under their parent’s plan. On and on and on.

There are no ridiculous death panels. The government won’t be mandating that you avoid sausage or beer. The IRS won’t be marching its armies of accountants through the streets rounding up uninsured people. And, by the way, if you don’t get insurance and refuse to pay the tax penalty, there’s no enforcement mechanism or punishment for not paying. But you should buy insurance instead of freeloading off the system. I digress.

Here’s a handy-dandy interactive timeline of what’s in the law and when it goes into effect.

Fact: uninsured people will be covered under a similar plan that ultra-far-right paleoconservative Ayn Rand fetishist Ron Paul receives from the government.

Fact: the ACA will only improve the quality, availability and affordability of healthcare.

At some point, the Democrats need to stand up and say those words. But they’re not. They’re running away from the law even though the bulletpoints are obvious winners for them. To be fair, Health and Human Services is running a series of TV commercials explaining the benefits of the law. And while the spots will reach some viewers, it’s wasted money and time. President Obama should air a one hour prime time “master class” on the ACA. He could invite some Republicans to grill him about various provisions, just like those Question Time sessions he held a few times.

Unless something like this happens the law will be repealed as soon as Republican X is elected alongside a congressional majority. Educating the public about the law will stop the “repeal and replace” effort in its tracks — chiefly because most Americans are clueless about what’s being repealed.

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Welcome to this weeks edition of The Daily Banter Mail Bag! Today, we discuss the continued idiocy of austerity, whether there is a double standard when it comes to racism, and the point of Wolf Blitzer.

The questions:

Greece is about to default on its debt, Spain has 25% unemployment, Britain is in recession, France has had no growth. The common thread? All of them followed austerity measures and all of them are in deep s#*t. Why on earth would any politician in the US want to attach himself to austerity policies given what’s going on over there? How is it possible for people like Romney, Gingrich, Graham, Ron Paul etc etc to keep banging on about deficits and cutting spending??? What the hell is going on???
- Jon

Bob: It’s sabotage. In early 2009 when the economy was mostly dead (deliberate Princess Bride reference), I wrote something about how the fiscal hawks would (thankfully) shut up for a while and let Keynes take over. Then, once the economy was fully stabilized and chugging along again, we should take a good look at the deficit. But in addition to the Republican Opposite-Day strategy (doing the opposite of the president, regardless of what it is), the Republicans have determined that a weak and unstable economy is good for their 2012 chances and so they’re deliberately sabotaging the economy by blocking any further stimulus spending. This is where austerity comes in: they know full well that large scale budget cuts will harm growth, but they don’t care. They’re going to do whatever hurts the president, even if it craps up the economy and backslides us into another recession. They’re just that irresponsible. And yet they’re still taken seriously by half the country.

Chez: First of all, calm down. It’s politics — and politics is inherently awful. The reason the right continues to push austerity is simple: It’s only the government and the people the government helps who are forced to be “austere.” The people at the top of the food chain don’t suffer from austerity measures, and the Republican party is about protecting that top financial tier at all costs — literally. The interesting thing is that those measures, as seen through the GOP prism of sociopathy, wouldn’t affect things like the defense budget or other the one or two others areas of the government the right holds sacred — they’d mostly be applied to programs that help people, what the right derisively considers “entitlements.” Eliminating social government programs has been at the heart of the Republican political design for years — and if it happens here we’ll likely see at least some of the same upheaval happening in Europe.

Ben:  Hi Jon, I’m as frustrated as you on this. As clear as the sky is blue, austerity measures are a gigantic failure and it defies logic that any sane politician would argue their merit. However, you must understand that we live in an age dominated by the cult of the free market. It’s a highly dangerous cult because it is not only based on a philosophy that is evidently absurd, but is actively dangerous. The mythology is perpetuated by the business community and the rich because it works in their interest (at least in the short term), and blank slate politicians like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will parrot whatever their paid to say. Romney isn’t an idiot and he probably understands that without government spending, the economy will continue to shrink. But he doesn’t care, he just wants to get elected and will say whatever he needs to in order to get in.

This is mostly directed at Chez. Your piece on double standards in racism was very interesting and I kinda agree. I think the ‘White guilt’ thing in the media is taken to an extreme. I don’t like Fox, but sometimes they have it right. Sometimes there is racism against white people and it needs to be called out. I don’t think this is a racist view, but the liberal media seems to act like it is.
-Callum

Chez:For years there’s been a debate over the definition of “racism” — whether it involves simply judging someone based on the color of his or her skin or the subjugation of a less powerful race by a more powerful one. I don’t really know where I stand on this, but I’m not sure I feel comfortable calling the black-vs.white double-standard in news coverage “racist.” I’m not even sure if it’s wrong — I simply pointed out that it does in fact exist. My issue when it comes to Fox being willing to go ape-shit over all these supposed examples of “reverse racism” is that the network absolutely doesn’t care one bit about fairness or journalistic ethics — it’s not doing it for some noble reason but rather to throw handfuls of red meat to its angry white audience. I don’t think it makes anyone a racist to ask questions about the difference in the way the media can occasionally cover stories dealing with race — particularly race and crime — but I really don’t think Fox News is the outlet to champion the cause of fairness for white people in the news. Honestly, I’m kind of burned out on talking about this subject, but there’s a companion piece to my original that runs today. Feel free to check it out.

Ben: I have a hard time calling out racism against white people, even though it clearly exists, mostly because I think the racism inherent in American (and British) society has been so incredibly damaging throughout history that it’s sort of irrelevant. Sure some white kids get their butts kicked because of their color, but compared to hundreds of years of slavery, murder, rape, theft and impoverishment, it isn’t exactly a pressing problem. Whites are not oppressed in America for one good reason: They overwhelmingly control government, police and business. Blacks are severely under represented in virtually every sphere of influence and have no way of fighting back against institutionalized prejudice, and this is something no white person will ever fully be able to understand. Look, personally I hate racism in any form. I’ve have black people make assumptions about me because of my race, and I’m sure I’ve inadvertently done the same – as has everyone if they’re honest. The difference is, as a privileged white person, my prejudice can seriously affect the life of a black person. And generally speaking, it rarely works the other way around. So no, I don’t think the media needs to start breaking stories on black on white racism. Just go back 50 years and the Klu Klux Klan were hanging blacks on trees for supposed crimes they had committed against whites. We don’t want to see a repeat of that.

Bob: You’re creating a false equivalence. There’s not racism against white people in the U.S. The minority would have to be in a position to racially and economically oppress the majority, and that clearly isn’t happening in America — nor has it ever happened. Racism oppresses back the advancement of minorities at both the societal level and on an individual level. Racist beliefs, racist language and racial discrimination requires an ability to control and manipulate the other race. White people control the press/media. White people control the government (there are exactly ZERO African Americans in the U.S. Senate). White people control industry and the financial system. African Americans at almost every level have very little recourse for justice, given that whites control law enforcement and the judicial system as well. For the entire history of this country, white people have enslaved, oppressed and exploited African Americans in the worst ways imaginable, and one of the two major political parties, the GOP, along with the right-wing press, Fox News and talk radio, is actively demonizing African Americans in order to stoke white anger and, thus, angry white conservative voter turnout and ratings, respectively. This is otherwise known as the Southern Strategy. I assure you, not even the most militant African American group could ever come close to oppressing whites. What you might be observing are fringe examples of anti-white resentment (hmm — I wonder why?) and anti-white bigotry (again — why?). We’re talking about a sliver of a fraction of a percent of the American population hates white people — nowhere near equal to the systemic racial intolerance coming from the white power structure. But there’s no such thing as anti-white racism. Also, the term “white guilt” is an insulting, simplistic term. It reduces the noble pursuit of racial sensitivity and an understanding historical context to a trivial colloquialism. And finally, I urge you to read this DailyKos post by author Tim Wise: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/15/884494/-Reading-Racism-Right-to-Left-Reflections-on-a-Powerful-Word-and-Its-Applications

What is the point of Wolf Blitzer? Can anyone explain his existence to me?
-Mark

Bob: He’s an unwaveringly monotone anchor-unit devoid of human emotion. Honestly, when I see him talking, I envision his face popping open to reveal a tiny Men In Black space alien controlling various toggles and servo motors inside Blitzer’s polymer-alloy skull. Seriously, though, I think he’s the “face” of CNN. He’s their straight news guy. Their “look! we’re very serious!” guy. If CNN lost Blitzer, I think the network would crumble.

Ben: I believe Wolf Blitzer was the prototype of the modern news anchor created in a giant lab somewhere in Atlanta.  The corporations wanted someone completely bland and innocuous to run their news shows in order to not piss off advertisers, and through trial and experimentation, they came up with Wolf Blitzer. They’ve had to fill his show up with holograms and spinning pie charts to stop people falling asleep, but generally speaking, he does a great job.

Chez: Wolf actually is a wolf. He can summon the creature at will and only the elders buried deep beneath CNN Center can contain it. Speak of this to no one.

—-

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I can’t stand Ron Paul. Why? I should have some sort of warm sentiment towards him, right? He is, after all, an anti-war conservative riding against the tide of brainless militarism that still rules the GOP, right? But like almost everything else with Paul, it is wrapped up in the type of brain-dead simpleton talk that renders it effectively useless.

Besides bring back some pork for his district like any other congressman, what the hell has Paul actually done in his tenure in the House? He hasn’t seriously affected the mainstream thinking of the GOP and his Simple Simon view of the federal government’s role in America isn’t ever happening.

Thank God. (The invisible hand of the market was never going to desegregate the Jim Crow south)

As much as people despise the sort of dippy-hippie views espoused by some people on the left, they are often equaled by the late night dorm room bong hit logic of the libertarian movement. Only they’ve been even less effective politically. The hippies at least had some effect on public sentiment on the Vietnam War and even nominated a “peace” candidate within one of the two major parties (he went down in flames to one of the worst presidents ever, but still).

By comparison, Ron Paul couldn’t win a single real contest in the 2012 Republican nomination process. This is a nominating contest where tired retreads like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum actually won states!

Newt. Gingrich.

What’s the point of Ron Paul then? He has cultists online who don’t actually show up to vote for him and he doesn’t seriously influence the debate within his party like past, fringe candidates have.

What’s the point?

At the Republican Convention, there’s this idea going around that Paul and his supporters are going to cause a ruckus. Not going to happen. The parties have both become experts at stage managing their national conventions. This isn’t the smoke-filled room of yore or the chaos of 1968. Do people really think that Reince Priebus is dumb enough to let Paul’s trickling of supporters disrupt the coronation of Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee?

Give me a break.

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By Ben Cohen: A note to our readers, I will be discussing the double dip recession in the UK on the RT network at 4pm ET with Abby Martin, so please tune in if you have time. I wrote a piece yesterday about the crisis, arguing that the austerity measures passed by the Conservative government are not working, proving that it is impossible to cut your way out of recession.

As the election looms, I think this argument is going to become more and more prominent, and will probably be the focus of the debate between Obama and Romney. Each candidate offers a different approach to the economy, and choosing the right one will be crucial to the economic future of the US. In short, Romney wants to cut, and Obama wants to spend. We’ve seen the results of cutting in Europe (double dip recessions, extreme unemployment, and bleak projections for future growth), while the US economy continues to grow after the injection of stimulus money into the economy.

I’m consistently amazed that politicians continue to argue that cutting spending is the way forward despite the very visible evidence that is not. I watched the debate last night between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman and found it fascinating to see Paul regurgitate his fanatical belief in free markets regardless of facts on the ground. Krugman did his best to point out the madness of Paul’s beliefs, but there was little point as Paul refused to acknowledge government could do anything positive in the economy.

Paul’s points are often difficult to argue with as much of his analysis is correct – the US monetary system is deeply corrupt and unsustainable in the long run, and much of this has to do with the reliance on debt as a motivator for growth. The Federal reserve has been complicit in funding bubbles, jacking up inflation, and encouraging unsustainable levels of debt – all acts Paul believes are fraudulent and illegal.

“Inflation is theft,” argued Paul. “You’re stealing value from people who save money. Why should people get 1 percent for their money for savings in the banks get it for practically free? Why did the Federal Reserve bail out the rich and not give the money to the mortgage holders?”

While Paul makes some salient points, his solutions are flat out crazy. Dismantling the entire monetary system when it was responsible for building much of the nation’s wealth would be utterly suicidal – a fact that Paul never wants to acknowledge.

“You can’t leave the government out of monetary policy,” Krugman told Paul. “If you think that you can avoid that, you’re living in a world that was 150 years ago….We have an economy in which money is not just green pieces of paper with faces of dead presidents on them. Money is a part of the financial system that includes a variety of assets — we’re not quite sure where the line between money and non-money is. It’s a continuum.”

Krugman also pointed out that even Milton Friedman argued that the Fed was responsible for the Great Depression in the 1920′s as it didn’t print enough money:

“It’s really telling that in America right now, Milton Friedman would count as being on the far left in monetary policy”

Milton Friedman: A Lefty? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paul stuck to his guns arguing that the only way to create a stable economy for the future would be to radically undermine the powers of the Federal Reserve and ensure government had as little to do with monetary policy as possible.

“The point is, the Fed does either too much or too little and they can’t do it,” said Paul. “They don’t have a good record – they’ve ruined 98 percent of the value of the currency since 1913.”

While Paul may be technically right, since 1913 the United States has also become the greatest economic power in human history.

Obviously, it’s doing something right.

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Two giants in economic thought squared off last night to debate their competing economic theories on Bloomberg TV. On the Right was Congressman Ron Paul, champion of extreme libertarianism, and on the Left, Paul Krugman the most prominent advocate of Keynesian economics. The two argued about the role of the Federal Reserve, whether the debt needs to be cut, and how America can avoid the crisis currently sweeping Europe.

Paul argued that the Federal Reserve was responsible for the country’s economic woes, that debt levels were dangerously high, and that markets should be self regulated rather than controlled by government. Krugman countered that without government intervention, the economy would collapse completely, and contrary to prevailing wisdom, the current debt levels are not  unmanageable.

Watch below:

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Romney wins again (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mitt Romney will win all five Republican presidential primaries Tuesday night, completing a sweep of contests in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware, CBS News projects.

Romney boasted more than 50 percent of the vote in all five states, according to early returns.

In Connecticut, with 90 percent of the expected votes in, Romney led Ron Paul 67 percent to 13 percent. In Rhode Island, with most of the expected votes counted, Romney led Paul 63 percent to 24 percent.

In Pennsylvania, with nearly all of the votes in, Romney had 56 percent. Rick Santorum, who dropped out of the Republican presidential contest earlier this month, followed with 20 percent of the vote.

In Delaware, with most of the votes counted, Romney led Newt Gingrich 56 percent to 27 percent. And in New York, with 51 percent of the expected votes in, Romney led Paul 60 percent to 17 percent.

Romney is likely to add more than 200 delegates to the 692 estimated delegates he had already secured before the evening’s five contests.

Romney will still lack the 1,144 delegates necessary to formally clinch the Republican nomination after Tuesday — but the former Massachusetts governor is clearly claiming the mantle of presumptive Republican nominee. Even as he continues to put in the requisite work toward officially sealing up the Republican nomination, he pivoted to the general election in a speech Tuesday night in New Hampshire.

Speaking to supporters, the presumptive GOP nominee focused his attention solely on President Obama. Romney did not mention either of this remaining Republican rivals by name,  instead casting himself as an improvement over the current president and promising “the start of a new and better chapter.”

Read more at CBS…

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