Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has had to learn to live with fellow Kentucky Senate colleagues that have both embarrassed him and made his life miserable! If only one could read his mind, as his body language regarding past Senator Jim Bunning and his successor Rand Paul reveals discomfort, it would be an interesting analysis of how a party leader must survive both fools and loons! 🙁
Rand Paul may only have been in the Senate now for one month, but he is like a hurricane in his promotion of ideas that almost no one will accept, even in his own party, but yet saluted by the Tea Party movement!
Rand Paul seems to love introducing legislation that will never pass, just to draw attention to his looniness and his weird libertarian ideas which will never go anywhere, except into the minds of those who believe that government is a total evil and that we must isolate ourselves from the outside world! 🙁
Rand Paul, in association with Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is promoting a Life at Conception Act, which he believes would overrule Roe V. Wade, and in the process take a woman’s right over her own body totally away! 🙁
He is also sponsoring legislation to prevent the children of illegal immigrants born in America from being citizens, thereby introducing a new interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which grants birthright citizenship!
Additionally, Rand Paul wants all foreign aid to our ally, Israel, ended, as part of his proposal to cut $500 billion from the present year’s national budget with only eight months left in the fiscal year. He wants the $3 billion aid to Israel ended, along with massive cuts in education, housing and energy programs, the most extreme idea of cuts proposed by any Republican, with the party shooting for only $100 billion cuts this fiscal year, with no cut in aid to Israel and other foreign aid, which he wants cut by $20 billion!
Republican leaders such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ilena Ros-Lehtinen of Florida have condemned a cutoff of aid to Israel, and Jewish groups in both major political parties, and both conservatives and liberals have made clear their opposition to such a cutoff, so Rand Paul’s advocacy has no chance of success, anymore than his other ideas mentioned above!
And get this: this past week, the Senate unanimously, except for Paul, adopted a measure making it a federal crime to aim a laser point at an aircraft, with the Kentucky senator feeling that should be an issue for states to handle individually, even though aviation is interstate, and there has been a growing problem of such incidents, thankfully without a disaster occurring!
It is clear that Rand Paul will be a center of attention over the next six years with his outrageous statements and actions, and imagine this. It is rumored that his father, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, may run for the soon to be open seat in that state after Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run for re-election in 2012!
If Ron Paul were to win that seat, he would be the oldest first time freshman at age 77 to take a seat in the US Senate!
Can one imagine having two Senators Paul at the same time? 🙁
The only worse scenario is the nightmare of either Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann as President of the United States in 2013!
If both scenarios were to occur, the nation would be in a living hell of its own making, due to stupidity, ignorance, and lack of common sense of the American people! 🙁
Rand Paul is well loved. It is your ideas that are extreme.
You sound like an absolute buffoon, who would prefer a Patriot Act loving, assassination approving, executive order signing, corporate shill instead of men who would limit the boundless authority of the corrupt federal government! If you are a progressive, where are your concerns for civil liberties and human rights, the right to be free from government coercion and state violence?
That is the Doctor’s Paul main goal- not for self-aggrandizement or personal power; only to restrain the government. The same government that is an oppressive empire around the world, and is bought and paid for by the banks and multinational corporations. Scaling back that government, and reasserting America’s sovereignty is our only hope to live a life of freedom, and of a decent standard of living.
I only wish you would spend 1/10th of the energy fighting for your supposedly liberal beliefs as you do hating anti-establishment Republicans! It is the same establishment that empowered and supported George W Bush- did you not protest him? You are clearly out of touch, professor. Perhaps your secure employment and comfortable pension make it difficult to relate to the “average American”. Just like the disgusting demagogues at MSNBC, you expose yourself as being more opposed to grassroots libertarians than corporately controlled neocons! The common theme for you is that the state have the power to do absolutely anything.
If you love Israel so much, why not move there? If there are an enormous number of Zionists who want to send your money to the poor little middle-eastern underdog- DO IT VOLUNTARILY. Don’t take my money and send it all over the world. The country is broke, do you understand that. The public sector pensions are largely unfunded. If you care about your fellow Americans, should we not stop sending money to foreigners? Do you understand the future that you are condemning the next generations to by demanding that they fit the bill for your every whim!? My God, you even want the whole 3rd world to immigrate here, and then we all can live they do in Mexico. Only hardcore communists and people so wealthy that they have no idea how the people are living could make the assertions that you do.
There have been many times throughout history, professor, that an idea’s time has come. These ideas were rejected by the establishment at the time, mocked and ridiculed by the opposition. Without the violence of the federal government, we could split into our own nations, and truly find out what is successful. But in your endless support for a all-powerful central government, it is only too easy for corporate interests to come in an take over, and move the authority offshore to international bodies. Will you support a world government that rules by fiat, with absolutely no accountability to the people. Do you doubt that this transition is taking place, and that the ultimate goal is an authoritarian, undemocratic world police state? Before you ridicule me, please do just a little research, professor. Surely you are well informed about the Club of Rome, the UN’s Agenda 21, and the economic model of the IMF. To call any of those ideas and their advocates “progressive” is like calling Hitler a libertarian.