Libertarians

An Alliance Between Anti War Liberals And Libertarian Rand Paul? An Unholy Alliance!

Ronald 5 Comments

Are we about to see anti war liberals and progressives form an alliance with Libertarian Rand Paul and his ilk, on the Syrian chemical warfare controversy?

If that happens, then the left will be morally and ethically bankrupt, as to become isolationists is NOT the answer to all international involvement, as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky espouses!

Just because of the corrupt and manipulated action of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Administration in Iraq is NOT a justification to sit back and do nothing about the use of chemical weapons by Syria against its own civilian population, and if nothing is done to punish that government, then the likelihood of further such chemical warfare attacks is likely, and not only by Syria, but by other rogue governments!

And Iran will feel they can get away with nuclear weapons development with impunity, and the world will become a much more dangerous place!

Yes, we have an Iraq Syndrome, as we earlier had a Vietnam Syndrome, but to allow those experiences to dictate our reaction to outlaw governments utilizing weapons banned by international agreements dating back a century, would be tragic beyond belief!

And the fact that Barack Obama is asking for support from Congress should soothe those who worry that the Imperial Presidency is alive and well, as the only way for one to relate to this crisis, is the need to make clear the case for American response, with the understanding that it shall be limited to punishment, not to direct intervention in the Syria Civil War with ground forces.

America must be a moral leader in a world that has too many cynics who wonder if any nation is dedicated to preserving human liberty and freedom!

Obama Brilliant: Call For Congressional Vote Will Gain Public Support And Rent Asunder The Republican Party Big Time!

Ronald 24 Comments

President Barack Obama, in the midst of what may be his biggest foreign policy crisis, the planned bombing of Syria over the use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians, has displayed wisdom, coolness, and good judgment in calling for a Congressional discussion and vote, even though he has the authority as Commander in Chief to take action in the name of international law and common decency, morality, and ethics!

The Congress should be called back by Speaker of the House John Boehner immediately to meet on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, six days early, as this is a crisis which requires debate and vote as soon as possible!

But even if it goes another week, until debate begins, this move by Obama insures that no one can say he took reckless action in a hasty manner!

Of course, the Congress COULD decide NOT to back military action, but that is extremely unlikely, as the Senate is controlled by Democrats, and there are Republicans, a lot of them, who will back Obama, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham in the leadership, but others as well, even if some Democrats refuse to do so!

And in the US House, most Democrats will back the Commander in Chief, and not all that many Republicans, certainly not a majority, are necessary to back Obama!

But what will occur out of this controversy is that the Republican Party, already engaged in its own “civil war” between the so called “establishment” and the Tea Party lunatics, will now see the party rent asunder, cracking into pieces, which will affect the 2016 nomination battle, and the long term future of both groups within the party, with a good chance the GOP, as we know it, will NOT survive!

It will be fun to see the McCain-Graham and other mainstream conservatives fighting against libertarian Rand Paul, and likely Ted Cruz and others of the Tea Party group, and will force Marco Rubio to show if he has “cajones”!

The rhetoric will fly fast and thick, and will show up the Tea Party as dangerous, reckless, lunatic, delusional, and other colorful adjectives, and Rand Paul will see his isolationism, his naivete, his stupidity, his delusional nature, demonstrated for all to see!

And the nation and Barack Obama will come out looking intelligent, knowledgeable, courageous, principled, and we will thank ourselves for the fact that Barack Obama is our Commander in Chief in tough times, as was the case with Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton before him!

Senator Lindsey Graham Faces Whacko Tea Party Opponents In Republican Senate Primary In South Carolina!

Ronald 35 Comments

Anyone who follows American politics KNOWS that South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is a solid conservative.

Graham tends to be critical of President Obama on most issues; was one of the leaders of the fight to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998, while a member of the House of Representatives; and is always a strong supporter of defense and foreign interventions, as is his good friend, John McCain.

But that is precisely the problem he faces now in the upcoming battle for the Senate nomination of his party for a third term election in 2014. That is, he SOMETIMES agrees with the President; is TOO GOOD a friend of John McCain, seen by many conservatives as not conservative enough; and infuriates those who are isolationist and non interventionist in the libertarian movement led by Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

So therefore, Graham is labeled not acceptable to the Tea Party whackos who want to defeat him and put someone more right wing than he is in the Senate! Graham also has the gall to support immigration reform, and support the President on civil liberties policies..

So we have South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright taking on Graham, and this Tea Party activist has gone off the deep end, and demonstrated total insanity in his assertions that Graham is a “Community organizer” for the Muslim Brotherhood!

Think of how crazy and looney that assertion by Bright is, and it is clear that Bright is far from “bright”!

First, Graham Is NOT a community organizer, while Barack Obama was, but somehow these right wing nuts think anyone who helps poor people in urban neighborhoods is, somehow, not legitimate. Apparently, only if someone is involved in the corporate world and makes tons of profit and steps all over workers and consumers, is a person worth anything!

This is a very sick, twisted way of looking at fellow human beings, wishing to do nothing to help those less fortunate, and yet, one can be sure that Bright think of himself as a “good Christian”, which he most certainly is not, as if he examines the life of Jesus Christ, what does he think Jesus was?—A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER!

And to say that Lindsey Graham is working for the Muslim Brotherhood, when Graham is one of the most outspoken critics of that Middle Eastern group, makes Lee Bright certifiable to be committed for a mental examination as to his sanity! It is a totally preposterous idea, but just as much to say that Barack Obama is a Muslim or a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, when Obama has been responsible for the death of more Islamic terrorists and, sadly, some innocent bystanders, than George W. Bush did in his eight years in the White House!

As one observes the total lunatic nature of the Tea Party Movement, one realizes that there is a serious mental illness prevalent among people who claim to follow Christianity, but have no clue as to the teachings of their Lord and Savior!

The only blessing for Graham is that Bright is only one of three primary opponents, all nuts and looney, and that should help him to gain the nomination for a third term, by the division of votes among his opponents!

Sniping Back And Forth Among Republicans: Wonderful To Witness!

Ronald 8 Comments

It is very clear that the Republican Party is bitterly divided on strategy toward President Obama, and on the issue of foreign policy and national security.

So we are witnessing sniping back and forth, and this is a hint of what is to come, as the Presidential rivalries heat up in the coming months!

Examples of the sniping are that between Arizona Senator John McCain and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, with it being clear that the two Senators have no love lost for each other.

At the same time, we see Governor Chris Christie supportive of the gathering of intelligence by the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, due to the reality that New Jersey suffered the second most losses on September 11, 2001, and being critical of those who are libertarian, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky!

Also, New York Congressman Peter King of Long Island has attacked the Tea Party Movement Republicans who were against aid to New York and New Jersey after Super Storm Sandy last fall!

And Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee of Utah, and Marco Rubio of Florida have been criticized for their threat to shut the government down if ObamaCare is not defunded, with major critics being John McCain, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Richard Burr of North Carolina!

And Establishment Republicans such as former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, and George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove are shaking their heads at the splintering of the party, and the recklessness of many of the younger members of the party in the House of Representatives and Senate, as they well know that the future of the party is in tatters, if this extremist wing is allowed to become the face and image of the party! Finally,

Finally, Iowa Congressman Steve King’s ranting against immigrants has led to condemnation by Speaker of the House John Boehner and others in the Republican Party.

It looks more than ever as if the GOP is on the way to the worst Presidential defeat for their party since the demise of Barry Goldwater in 1964, nearly fifty years ago, and even Goldwater now looks “moderate” by comparison, and far less reckless!

Senator Rand Paul, Confederate Sympathies, And Racial Insensitivities

Ronald 19 Comments

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul is making clear his desire to be the GOP Presidential nominee in 2016, and this was known even before he won the Senate seat in 2010 over the opposition of fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Following in the footsteps of his father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who gained the backing of naive college students when he ran for President in 2008 and 2012, Paul hopes to mine the support of Tea Party activists and libertarians to overcome the business establishment, the Neoconservatives who wish military intervention overseas all of the time, and mainline Republicans who see Paul as an alarm bell for the future of the Republican Party.

Rand Paul, meanwhile, has demonstrated again and again of his sympathies with Confederate types who still fight the Civil War, and has shown lack of sensitivity about racism.

Paul has kept on his Senate staff an individual who goes around in Confederate uniform and mask, a person by the name of Jack Hunter. And Paul has expressed in the past his view of his doubts about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And he comes across as naive about the outside world, and his libertarian views, while appealing to naive people, has never worked, and will never occur in reality!

Face the facts: Rand Paul is a lunatic, a weirdo with no qualifications, no message of significance, and with troubling connections to racism (which his father has also shown in his political career), and the odds of his being the GOP nominee against all of the other Republican factions is less than zero!

Were he, somehow, to win the nomination, which would require a miracle, it would lead to the total destruction of the Republican Party, worse than Barry Goldwater in 1964 or Alf Landon in 1936, both men of intelligence, which Rand Paul is not!

And imagine Paul against Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. She would walk all over him in a debate, and would join Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt in a massive win over their Republican opponents!

Al Qaeda And Other Terrorist Groups Have Won: The Battle For Civil Liberties And Personal Freedoms Has Been Lost!

Ronald 3 Comments

This is a very depressing time in the world, with the battle against terrorism being fought, and the victims of this battle are our civil liberties and personal freedoms!

The author is in Toronto on vacation, and just read this morning of a similar eavesdropping and snooping program being exposed in Canada, as it was revealed in the past few days in the United States that the National Security Agency is engaged in such a program of all phone calls and emails and other electronic communication. And we know the same thing is going on in Great Britain, France, Australia and all other “democracies” in this world, all of which are supposedly “better” than totalitarian or dictatorial regimes, which dominate much of the world.

It is hard NOT to be depressed, and to realize that no matter how many protests we might lodge, none of what is happening will ever change, and there are bound to be innocent victims, as there were in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and in the Cold War Era, but this present war on terrorism will likely NEVER be over, and therefore, all “democratic” governments will come to dominate and monopolize our lives and freedoms!

We are in the era of “1984”, George Orwell’s realistic novel, published in 1948, and in many ways, way beyond that stage of government control and interference in our lives. No matter who is elected President in the United States, or Prime Minister in Great Britain, Canada, or Australia, or President in France, as well as other “democratic nations”, we will never regain what we had, or thought we had, and we will have to be even more concerned when a leader or a political party in any of these nations becomes the government, and is a leader or party which we do not trust, which is inevitable!

So Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have won, and continue to win, no matter how many such individuals or groups we kill or destroy!

I wish to give credit here to one of my critics on this blog, Juan Domingo Peron (the name he uses), for making me reflect and realize that while I may trust Barack Obama, I would be alarmed if George W. Bush had been the one to authorize the NSA eavesdropping, or if in the future, any conservative Republican or Libertarian were to become the leader of our nation, because as he said, nearly half the population at any time does not trust whoever our President is!

A dose of reality set in when I read what Juan said, and while I want to trust Barack Obama and his good intentions, the bureaucracy of national security makes me worry about what is being done, and the reality that someday, maybe sooner or later, a leader will emerge who I will NOT trust!

So we all need to be sober and realistic about our struggle for civil liberties and personal freedoms to be preserved in a world gone mad in the fight against terrorism!

Public Safety And National Security Versus Right To Privacy

Ronald 24 Comments

Libertarians and Barack Obama critics are up in arms over the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation authority to gain records of phone calls, emails, voice mails, and all other evidence that could possibly prevent future terrorist attacks, claiming it is a loss of the right to privacy, and that privacy should overrule public safety and national security.

But, as much as this author wishes we lived in a world without terrorism, the reality is that the number one priority of the government is to promote public safety and national security, and if one is NOT engaged in terrorist or criminal activity, what do we have to hide from the government? Why such a protest if nothing we are doing is illegal?

Believe me, after Benghazi, we see the reaction because we failed to stop a terrorist attack, but now some of the same critics are trying to stop the government from protecting Americans on the false idea that somehow, we all have something to hide, and that the government should not be able to track terrorist or criminal actions, in the name of that privacy.

When we discover, however, that liberals from Diane Feinstein on the left to Lindsey Graham on the right, and all of the Intelligence Committee members of the US House of Representatives and US Senate knew about this, and approved of it, the screams and yells of people such as Rand Paul, who lives in his own fantasy world, ring hollow, as making a person such as him our President would undermine our public safety and national security, and we are not about to do such a stupid thing as to consider such a wing nut as Paul for the Presidency!

It is better to do what the NSA and FBI are doing, than it was to torture suspects in the way that George W. Bush promoted, as it will protect our nation, and yet uphold our belief in international law and common decency by the banning of torture methods which produce little substantial evidence, but shame us in the eyes of the world!

In history, Barack Obama will be seen as doing what was necessary and essential, just as much as Abraham Lincoln was bitterly attacked during the Civil War, but is now seen as justified in his restrictions on civil liberties!

Republicans Seem To Be Suicidal In Reluctance To Change Course

Ronald 37 Comments

The Republican Party is in its death throes more and more each week.

The country is no longer interested in their agenda, in their candidates, in their goals, and in their promotion of fear and hate!

The GOP has lost five of the last six popular vote totals for President, despite spending inordinate amounts of money, the most ever in 2012, due to the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court in 2010.

But they have elements that are destroying them from within like a cancer!

These destructive elements include:

The right wing conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, who are making massive amounts of money promoting hate, fear and division, and until the GOP tells Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and their ilk to go somewhere, they will be going down the road to destruction!

The power of the National Rifle Association and Wayne La Pierre, and its campaign to defeat any candidate who wants any reasonable gun regulations, is going to cause the defeat of Senators and Congressmen, who are unwilling to sell their souls to this powerful pressure group!

The Tea Party Movement, which wants to wipe out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and is furious at Republican Governors, including the latest convert on ObamaCare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, making it a total of seven Republican Governors who have decided to accept that program, has plans to run candidates against anyone who does not wish to support their desire to go back to the 19th century and wipe out all aspects of the welfare state, so Maine Senator Susan Collins is on a hit list, as is even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for not being conservative enough! Do not forget that the Koch Brothers and other wealthy billionaires are the brains behind this movement, which is lower class populism gone wild, but they have the ability to harm the Republican Party establishment! And Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the lead elements in this Tea Party uprising, who might cause the Republican Party to go down to defeat in many races, because of their loony libertarianism!

The right wing evangelical Christian movement, which will fight any move toward acceptance of gay rights and gay marriage, abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun regulation, as well as their desire to promote religion in the education curriculum, rejecting science and history, and promotion of a theocracy in states that have large numbers of their believers.

The “NeoCons”, Neoconservatives, who want more money spent on defense, advocate overseas military interventions, and glorify wars in the name of American capitalism and profits! They had power under George W. Bush, but are now trying to defeat Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary.

And finally, the no tax increase crowd, led by Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, a group which is starting to see some Republicans abandon them, but not enough, and willing to back corporate loopholes and the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor, these two groups failing to understand that this elite has no concerns, except to back the establishment on Wall Street and in the corporate world, even at a time when corporate profits are soaring, and the stock market has doubled under Barack Obama!

These are the destructive elements in the Republican Party, and will cause its total dissolution very soon if the direction of the party is not changed to appeal to the moderate center, the tradition of the party under Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and YES, even in the time of Ronald Reagan, when moderates were still a major part of the party success, and Reagan a conservative but not an extremist, as these various elements of the party are in 2013!

Tea Party-Republican Split To Be Aired As Response To Obama State Of The Union Address!

Ronald 10 Comments

Two days from now, President Barack Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address, detailing his priorities for his second term.

Immediately following Obama’s address, Florida Senator Marco Rubio will deliver the Republican Party response, and Time Magazine has called Rubio the “savior” of the GOP.

But now, to steal Rubio’s and the Republican Party’s thunder, the Tea Party Caucus in Congress is also to give a response to the State of the Union Address, which will highlight the growing split within the Republican Party.

And the man who will be challenging Marco Rubio is a person who is clearly planning to run for President in 2016, as much as Rubio seems likely to run. That is Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian inheritor from his father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Rand Paul has his loony followers, but his movement represents a threat to any possibility of Republicans regaining the US Senate, keeping control of the US House of Representatives, and having any chance to regain the Presidency.

While Rubio “flirted” with the Tea Party Movement when he ran for the Senate in 2010, he has attempted to separate himself from the destructive image that group represents. But now, he will be in mortal combat with Paul and others who have no scruples in their desire to bring America back to the 19th century, a time of laissez faire economics, and to a pre World War II foreign policy of isolationism.

So the biggest news of Tuesday’s State of the Union Address may come not from Barack Obama, but instead from the competing ambitions of two new Senators who both see the other as one of his leading rivals.

Rubio not only faces the threat of Rand Paul, but also of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, as outlined in a previous entry on this blog a couple of days ago. And Cruz is also a committed member of the Tea Party Caucus.

Oh, and by the way, this is the third time that the Tea Party Caucus and Movement has had a response to the State of the Union Address, with the two earlier statements being by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and by businessman Herman Cain, both embarrassing candidates for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012. Enough said!

1913: A Year Of Two “Progressive” Amendments To The Constitution, 16 And 17!

Ronald Leave a comment

A century ago, as the Presidency of William Howard Taft came to an end, and as Woodrow Wilson was about to be inaugurated, the Constitution had two new amendments added within two months of each other—the 16th Amendment and the 17th Amendment.

Other than the original ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, never was the country to be so affected by constitutional change that transformed the nation, as with these two amendments.

President Taft, the so called “conservative” leaving office, supported both of these amendments, and they have have a massive impact on the nation ever since.

The 16th Amendment established the “progressive” federal income tax, at a time when we had seen the tripling of population, and the multiplication of social and economic injustice since the Civil War 50 years earlier. Without the federal income tax, there was no way that the nation could ever have moved forward and met its responsibilities to its citizens. The only problem was that over the years the wealthy would find all kinds of ways to manipulate the system, and so, today, the federal income tax is no longer very “progressive”. And also, there is a move on by conservatives and libertarians to repeal the income tax amendment, and have a national sales tax instead, a move that will not happen, but it if did, it would mean greater taxation based on consumption, and would hurt the poor and the lower middle class much more than the wealthy and upper middle class.

The 17th Amendment, the most democratizing amendment we had yet seen, called for direct popular election of the United States Senate, a move encouraged by muckraker David Graham Phillips and his book, THE TREASON OF THE SENATE, published in 1909. Instead of corrupt politicians in state legislatures choosing US Senators, an indication that the Founding Fathers did not trust the masses to choose their Senators, the decision was to allow the people to choose their Senators for a six year term.

How could anyone find fault with this, even with the recognition that often states may make “bad” choices for their Senators? Whatever we think about the choices, it is still better to have the people select their Senators, and in a sense, to be held accountable if they make an embarrassing, or disastrous choice. This is the power of the people, a movement toward direct democracy. And yet, there is a movement among conservatives to repeal this amendment, as well as the 16th Amendment.

Fortunately, it is very difficult to accomplish an amendment, and only the repeal of prohibition of liquor, the 21st Amendment effectively negating the 18th Amendment, has ever occurred.

We can look back on a century of the 16th Amendment and the 17th Amendment, and applaud what progressives accomplished a century ago!