Ron Paul weighs in, and is throwing his support for the Democratic Primary to…

Tulsi Gabbord.  I think Paul may have once egged on Dennis Kucinich, so we’re around the same basic location with Gabbord.

Foreign policy — the non intervention — trumps economics.  I suppose age trumps some things, as Gravel’s program — well he did make a bid for the Libertarian nomination once, right? — though maybe Gravel’s Ron Paul’s second choice.

It does appear Gabbord pulled a bit of switching about on the score, though.  Wasn’t always “non interventionalist”.  Well, none of the candidates are purely consistent — and some are worse than others.  A funny article in the NYT tracks Kirsten Gilibrand — on “electability” — as she points to winning rural districts in the past.  Sure.  She came in as an ex-Republican turned centrist “blue dog” Democrat — and once making the leap to being selected as a state-wide Democrat made the natural changes to become a mainline Democrat who’s now…

Anyway… Ron Paul had a slight pull with some liberals during the Iraq War fights — we’ll see how many of the “some liberals” are about with various levels of commitment and hypocrisy.

On the Events Calendar for you.

FRIGHT NIGHT—If you’re looking to have the poop scared into your pants, you have two choices tonight: FrightTown, the annual big-budget, block-long haunted house at the Memorial Coliseum, and Ron Paul’s Rock the R3volution Tour at Mt. Tabor Theater. One features people dressed up in ridiculous costumes, screaming incoherently, and the other… wait. WSH
FrightTown, Memorial Coliseum, 300 N Winning Way, 7-10 pm, $20, frighttown.com; Ron Paul’s Rock the R3volution Tour, Mt. Tabor Theater, 4811 SE Hawthorne, 7 pm, FREE

Bah de dum!

I would add that the Ron Paulites are so cool, they spell “revolution” with a “3”.  Because that’s just how they roll.

All right.  I’m curious.  Curious enough to look it up, and we have a facebook page for you.

No snippy comments about their write-up in the Mercury?

The redistricting efforts across the country effect many individual members of Congress, and bring to the focus various politicians — it’s here that we get news that Dennis Kucinich is thinking about moving to Washington, as Ohio is losing a seat and Washington has a couple seats to spare.  I see analysis of each new state’s plans in new posts on the dailykos, the posts interesting mainly because of links from various people with more specialized and localized knowledge who can crunch demographic numbers and see why the lines jig and jag where they do.

Naturally, Alex Jones’s “Prison Planet” website is only concerned about one individual.  Ron Paul.  From my far-side glance, I have a difficult time seeing the numbers — tossing some black people into Ron Paul’s district — add up.  If you’d asked me without the analysis, I’d have said that it seems to me more akin to diffusing and making more difficult a Democratic seat than hampering Ron Paul’s safe district.  But I can’t argue with analysis from people more attune to these things.  The other fact may be the powers that be are looking ahead to a post-Ron Paul world, not all that concerned one way or the other about him and doing what’s best for the Republican Party for the rest of the decade.

Naturally the Prison Planet comments are funny.

This might backfire with the increased awareness that Dr. Paul has done more for minority civil rights than any other politician on either side of isle, at any level of government. This was stated on Alex Jones Show by a leading member of the Austin chapter of the NAACP during the last presidential bid. Being Anti-War and Anti-Drug War might be just want these individuals in this widening district want. Ron Paul could win the district.

And of course:

It will not matter. He will not be Congressman Paul in 2012, he will be President Paul.

But then there’s this note.

And Paul’s not alone in this predicament: Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter might run for president in part because he’s losing his district.

The comments for Libertarian themed blogs when they touch on Ron Paul are often pretty funny.  Take, for instance, this sentence.

Ron Paul introduced me to Liberty.

He’s running in 2012.  It looks like.  Rand will float about a run, or feignt a run, if his dad doesn’t run.  None of which adds to this:

Ron Paul is a serious candidate this time. It may take the national media a while to realize it, but when he hits the ground running with a few five-million-dollar money bombs before the debates, runs national TV ads touting his record, and wins the Iowa straw poll, everyone will know.

My fellow Connecticut For Liebermann members may disagree with me on this, but Ron Paul is good for America in my opinion. He gives laughter to normal people and a harmless outlet for the seriously deranged, a political Mr. Bean of sorts.

As a frustrated ’08 contributer, is the Paul campaign going to have adult supervision this time?

Mitch Daniels would be the perfect compromise candidate in my opinion.

I think a Daniels/Johnson ticket would attract a hell of a lot of moderate Democrats as well.

Any reason?

Actually, the more interesting comments come in over here, about Rand singular.

“just maybe we’ll get someone in office with some principles for the first time since Jefferson.”

Hey, I’d take a Grover Cleveland or a Calvin Coolidge

I would be cool with just a succession of William Henry Harrison’s for eternity.
*bell ring* “NEXT!”

You could leave an honorary empty chair.

And the comment that draws my attention:

Example of an insane, yet unfortunatley common response I encountered among liberal arts majors: “Well, Britt, Coolidge was probably a racist, so anything he said and did (even if it was a simple truth like the sky is blue) should be discounted outright, and his name should never be mentioned again in any positive capacity.”
Extrapolating their logic, any president, leader, philospher, or politcal figure before JFK was on par with Hitler and/or slave-whipping boogeymen.

I call b.s.  Nobody is talking about Calvin Coolidge.  And if they are, if this commenter sees to it to interject Coolidge at every conversing opportunity, why would these liberal arts majors go to the “probably a racist” card (do they discuss his silence on the klan or –?)  and not the more frequented “Slept through a false bubble of an illusionary and half baked prosperity” route?

Item:  

Top House Democrats pounced on Republicans’ mishandling of a routine vote Tuesday evening, which caused a bill to extend provisions of the Patriot Act go down in defeat.

The Democrats said Wednesday morning that the failed vote is a sign that Republican leaders aren’t prepared to handle the practical difficulties of governing.

“I don’t think they’ve found their center yet,” Democratic Caucus conference chair Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said. “It seems they’re coming apart at the seams.”

AND Item:

Only 26 Republicans voted against the bill, and there are 52 members of the Republican Tea Party Caucus, whose chairperson, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn)  voted for reauthorization along with most of the rest of her caucus. As Slate’s Dave Weigel  points out, only eight of the 26 were Republican freshmen elected last November. One hundred and twenty-two Democrats voted against reauthorization, I suspect most of them just because they could.

So how did the bill fail? Basically Republicans were trying to pass the bill under “suspension of the rules,” which is considered the process for passing “noncontroversial” legislation.  You need a two thirds majority of those present to pass bills that way. For one brief night, Republicans in the House learned what it was like to be a Democrat in the Senate.

Leave all this aside.  The really interesting storyline here concerns the battle between two supposed Presidential candidates, both representative of strains of something called the “Tea Party”.  Do you side with Ron Paul and his small grouping allying with Dennis Kucinich and his small grouping backed by more cynical Democrats —

— and Ron Paul is running for President, and driving for support to win the CPAC preference poll, sure to lead to moanings from everyone else at the conference who’d rather vote for someone solid like–

Michelle Bachman — supposedly running –, leading the fight to bring extend the Patriot Act (which will inevitably happen, as the Security State is a bipartisan affair, with only an alliance of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich fighting against it).

Depends on which strain:

The failure of the two-thirds vote – with 26 Republicans joining 122 Democrats to vote against it – fractured GOP unity on a key national-security issue and put a faction of the conservative House in line with liberals like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio, who urged the tea party movement to stay true to its ideals by defeating laws like the Patriot Act that give government the “deepest reach into our everyday lives.”

It’s hard to trust the politics of this thing.

The Ron Paulites at the Daily Paul have a mixed feeling about Barney Frank.  Let’s go through these comments.

I think Congressman Frank is learning allot about liberty and the constitution from Congressman Paul…But sadly, it’s impossible to change a zebra’s stripes without a “grinder,” a “torch,” and a waste of time.

To wit.

im pretty surprized with him too. If only he would support the austrian school… it would be amazing me thinks.

Just get Barney Frank to think just like we do, and everything will be Super!

Barney is so transparent here. He is trying to gain popularity by “trying” to sound like Ron Paul. If all you ever saw is this much of Barney Frank, you would think he’s not a bad guy…..Seeing 3 inches of a dorsal fin in the water, does not mean it is only a 12 inch shark. “dah dummm———-dah dummm———–dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum”

Yes.  Nothing screams popularity like Ron Paul.

He’s exploiting Dr.Paul’s message for his own political gain. Notice how he says he has “teamed up with one of the most conservative members in congress, Ron Paul” and then that’s it. He goes on to make it his cause and his idea.

Ron Paul came up with the whole “Remove Foreign Bases” idea?

The real thoughts come in here:

P.S. I just had a thought – I think we should all pull a Betty White and campaign hard to get Ron Paul on SNL. As mentioned above I think it would really help Ron Paul’s image (and drum up support for a potential presidential run) if he had more exposure in pure entertainment settings, thus making him appear more personable and likable to the wider average TV audience.
What do you all think, should we try and get Ron Paul on SNL?

Yes.  Um.  Ron Paul.  Saturday Night Live host.  Brilliant!

My thoughts when I posted this idea was that Ron Paul could just play himself (i.e. the straight man), and let the SNL cast provide the comedy.

I think the comedy would write itself with endless possibilities based on the absurdities in Wash.DC. For example, perhaps a skit with a cast member playing an over-the-top smug Mr. Bernanke giving outrageous answers to questions from Ron Paul during a hearing.

We’re verging into the didactic.

what skits would he be in?
He/Lew Rockwell/Napolitano would need a long sit down with the writers.

Because Lew Rockwell KNOWS Comedy.  What, he is the man responsible for the racist “Ron Paul Newsletters” of the early 1990s — and those were downright HILARIOUS, right?

Here’s my idea: We give Saturday Night Live a skit, in the skit Will Ferrell can play George Bush. Chris Rock can play Barack Obama.

Why is Chris Rock playing Barack Obama?

Anyway, bottom line on the Saturday Night Live appearance:

SNL is a Zionist production
mike in st. lucia
They would never give Ron Paul that kind of exposure.

In its defense, this is the only “Zionism” mention on this post.
It’s been a pretty uneven go for the Zionists, this “Saturday Night Live” enterprise.  Not up to the game on the many “Saturday Night Dead” eras, and the odd uneven variances of the show — I guess they were up to something else at those points in time.

Recall this moment during the 2008 Republican Primary campaign.   Ron Paul met up with Rudy Giuliani at the Republican primary debate.  Both had the better of each other, and received their plaudits from their constituencies.

Skipping forward to his progeny, the Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, who we fairly ascertain as capitalizing on Ron Paul’s following — and the first campaign ad he’s putting out there.

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul has aired the first television ads of the 2010 election cycle with a 30-second spot that touts his position on national defense.

“I think prisoners of war, enemy combatants and terrorists captured on the battle field should be tried in military court and not brought to the U.S.,” Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist says in the commercial. “I do not believe they should be tried in civilian court.”

David Adams, Paul’s campaign manager, said the ad is running on the Fox News Channel on cable television systems throughout the state.

That’s the type of talk that will get you that much desired Sarah Palin endorsement, the Fox News employee who was interviewed on Fox News (?) and said that Obama can save his presidency by bombing Iran.  Also the type of talk which will firmly establish Rand Paul as a Tool of the Police and Security State, hard to see where .

Once upon a time, a whole mass of peoples threw up Guy Fawkes paraphernalia on the fifth of November (Remember, Remember, the fifth of November) for promotion of Ron Paul — mixing up British and American history items for a Guy Fawkes “Tea Party”.  And last week the thing came to its full circle to it’s basic RNC fund-raising tool.

In a previous time, about a year ago, it was interesting to take note of the Ron Paul acolytes taking on various candidates on the localest of levels in precints in Idaho, and up to the Senate races in Connecticut and Kentucky.  Things have changed.  Ron Paul is now getting three “Tea Party” primary candidates. Curious criticisms, “ineffective”, after the raising acolytes Paul has received as of late — see, for instance, or.

The Ron Paul Revolution is dead.  Bury it, stick a fork in it, give it its last rites.

Item the first:

All politicians need money for their campaigns. But a congressional candidate from Santa Fe is asking supporters to give his campaign something he says is far more valuable than cash: gold and silver.

Kokesh is a supporter of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who campaigned for president last year on a platform that included returning U.S. currency to the gold standard.

I’ve seen much the same story before.  I guess running for office to make a point — in this case the Glories of Precious metals — is an honorable use of the ballot access.

The thing about this race, when compared to the earlier Oregon race in 2006, is the rise of Ron Paul into the insertion of the story.  “Ron Paul supporter” becomes either a shorthand, or an explainer for a phenomenon of candidates in Republican primary.  Or else we could say that these candidacies have been taking place from time immemorial (or at least since around the heyday of the Birch Society), but are now being corralled into something else.

… which happened somewhere around the point of:
Item the Second.

Nope.  Nothing cultish about that.
And what in the world is this?

Meanwhile, interesting twists in the race of Rand Paul, enter Kentucky AND Item the Third.

“I was actually going to offer to pay for Rand’s registration myself today with a personal check if he would file what he really is – a Libertarian,” said Mike Bryant, a Paul protester.

Party hack.  It’s a primary — and I do believe a two way primary at that.  If you want the mainline Republican to go to the general against the Democrat instead of the “Libertarian trying to take over the Republican Party” — mobilize your Republican base to beat the Paul.

From Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview with Sacha Baron Cohen, regarding the movie Bruno, and the scene with Ron Paul.
GROSS: It’s a really funny scene. But you know, really, seriously thinking about it, like what options did Ron Paul have? He couldn’t very well stay in the room while you’re stripping, you know? So what could he have done?

Mr. COHEN: Well listen, you know, a lot of this comedy is about putting people, hopefully who are good targets, in uncomfortable situations. That’s the experiment. What does somebody as powerful as this, you know, somebody who’s standing to be the leader of the free world, how does he cope with a man dancing in front of him, you know?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. COHEN: It shouldn’t be the biggest challenge in the world considering, you know, if he would’ve got the job he would’ve been in the U.N. facing Ahmadinejad or deciding whether to press the red button. You know, how does this guy – is he going to be able to cope with it if he has a Austrian fashion reporter dance provocatively in front of him in a hotel room? I mean incidentally, on the DVD as well, we’ve got – we did the same scene with Tom Ridge and John Bolton.

GROSS: Oh, and also Gary Bauer, the Christian activist.

Mr. CHARLES: Yeah.

Mr. COHEN: Yes.

GROSS: Yes. And why did you try out several different people – tell us why you did it several different from the political world…

Mr. COHEN: Well, well…

GROSS: …how they reacted differently and why you chose Ron Paul in the end.

Mr. CHARLES: Keep in mind that again, this is one take filmmaking. So if we try with Gary Bauer or John Bolton and it doesn’t quite work, it’s very hard to make that scene work in the movie then. And so we try to do it more than once in different locations with different people, sometimes, if we can get those people.

And in this case, we did it a few times all in one day in Washington. We flew to Washington from Los Angeles, shot this all in one day and then flew back – these four different interviews. And ultimately, Ron Paul was the last and we had refined the process through the four – the three times we had done it previously. And so when Ron Paul came in it just wound up being the funniest version of the scene. And he was also probably the most powerful person of all the four people that we had.

From a week ago:

The straw poll at the Value Voters conference should give some indication about the Nuge Factor that is rattling some traditional Republicans. Nugent was the star of the show in some of the Texas “tea party” rallies on April 15. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, was sent almost to seizures when a purely conservative crowd started chanting “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul … ” to the tune of “USA, USA, USA … ” during one of his speeches. Paul is not a Republican, Graham shouted back at the group.

I don’t know how that works.  “USA” is three syllables.  “Ron Paul” is two syllables.  Is it “Ron Paul Ron”, “Paul Ron Paul”?  Doesn’t that throw the cadence off?
Is this on youtube so that I can figure this conundrum out?

See also the comment in the postings:

Ron Paul is the only hope for the United States of America, and you and everyone else knows it. Some may be afraid to admit it and some may be too uninformed to recognize it, but by 2012 it will be plain as day.

Individual Liberty my arsh!

I will say, though, that the Lindsey Graham versus Ron Paul supporters storyline is one of the political matches worth watching.