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I figured this was going to happen if Barack Obama won the presidential election: self-professed "conservatives" would be quick to blast Obama and the Democrats for violating the Constitution... when in fact those same conservatives have turned a blind eye at every opportunity during the past eight years when "their guy" George W. Bush did the same.
That's the kind of hypocrisy that I cannot forgive. And so far as the "Christian" ones go, it tells me that they are not interested in the truth at all.
Chuck Baldwin agrees, writing in his latest essay. The "Constitutional crisis" that many conservatives claim is there because of the dubious nature of Obama's birthplace is diminished, because these conservatives refused to condemn their own just as equally...
Many conservatives seem to be obsessed with this controversy, calling it a "constitutional crisis." The fact is, however, we have been in a "constitutional crisis" for years! The problem is, most conservatives only get worked up over a potential abridgement of constitutional government when it serves their partisan political purposes. In other words, when a Democrat appears guilty of constitutional conflict, conservatives "go ballistic," but when Republicans are equally culpable of constitutional conflict, they yawn with utter indifference.
(snip)
But, again, most conservatives care little about the Constitution's requirement that a President be a "natural born Citizen." Like liberals, most conservatives are afflicted with a very debilitating disease that I call Selective Constitutionalism. They only want to apply constitutional government when it helps Republicans or hurts Democrats. Most of them really could not care less about adherence to the Constitution. If they did, they would have been up in arms for the last eight years as President George W. Bush repeatedly ignored--and even trampled--the U.S. Constitution.
Where were these "constitutional" conservatives when George W. Bush was assuming dictatorial-style powers and contravening Fourth Amendment prohibitions against warrantless searches and seizures? Where were they when Bush was ordering our emails, letters, and phone calls to be intercepted by federal police agencies without court oversight? Where were they when Bush was obliterating the Fifth and Eighth Amendments? Where were they when Bush overturned Posse Comitatus by Executive Order? Where were they when Bush dismantled the constitutional right of Habeas Corpus? Where were they when Bush lied to the American people about the invasion of Iraq and took the United States to war without a Declaration of War from Congress? Where were conservatives when Bush turned nine U.S. military installations over to the United Arab Emirates? Where were they when Bush ordered his Department of Transportation to open up America's airlines to foreign ownership? Where were they when President Bush nullified (using "signing statements") over 1,100 statutes he did not like? Where were they as President Bush and his fellow Republicans reauthorized one of the most egregiously unconstitutional pieces of legislation in modern memory: the USA Patriot Act? Where were they when Bush signed the blatantly unconstitutional McCain/Feingold Act? I could go on and on...
Baldwin is correct, again. But to those who are looking more for rationale supporting their ideology than daring to question whether that ideology is even right, it won't matter.
We do not need any more elected officials who believe that God is telling them to change the world.
What we need and cannot get enough of are elected officials who are letting God change them instead.
(And if more common folk would be willing to let God control them instead of trying to control the world for God, this would be a much happier place anyway...)
Today U.S. House member Ron Paul, who has been a candidate in this year's presidential election, called on voters to end the "charade" of the two party system and look to traditionally third parties for leadership, citing that there was no fundamental difference between Democrat candidate Barack Obama and Republican contestant John MCcain. Paul also announced that he had refused to endorse McCain, a fellow Republican.
From the CNN story...
Instead, Paul will give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.
Paul said he's supporting the third-party candidates because the two major parties and media had "colluded" to avoid discussing issues and falsely presenting the difference between McCain and Obama as real.
"I've come to the conclusion, after having spent many years in politics, is that our presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else, and I think that is true today. It is a charade," he said.
Paul offered an open endorsement to the four candidates because each signed onto a policy statement that calls for "balancing budgets, bring troops home, personal liberties and investigating the Federal Reserve," an aide to the congressman said.
Paul said a strong showing by the third-party candidates would express the public's frustration with the current system.
"I have no doubt that the majority is on our side," Paul added, citing public opinion polls. "We represent the majority of the American people."
I don't doubt that. Most Americans do want solid principles and moral integrity in their public officials. But there are a myriad of obstacles that get in the way of people who are serious about serving others from doing so. Neither the Republican or Democrat party leaderships have an interest in allowing the truly selfless and competent from having a shot at high office... or low office for that matter. In fact, as the past few elections have demonstrated, the Republicans and Democrats prefer to have, well... idiots as their front-runners! They're the ones who promise to uphold the status quo the most, without "rocking the boat" too much. The corporate press? That's why it never gives any serious consideration or airtime to the third party candidates either: because it's grown too lazy and content, and it prefers a dumbed-down citizenry than one encouraged to think and stand on its own. Candidates like Ron Paul would mess up what has been too good a thing for them.
But the bigwigs in the two major parties and the mainstream media are blind to the fact that without a serious infusion of new blood, America is withering and dying in our own generation.
I see Barack Obama, and I see a man who is stuck in the same mindset as the Sixties, and he's trying hard as he can to channel the memory of John Kennedy toward his own favor. I see John McCain, and I see a very bitter man lacking any confidence (remember, he left his wife just so he could have a younger woman... which screams out feelings of inadequacy in my book) who is still a prisoner of Vietnam.
Neither of these men - or their running mates - is going to bring America to the bright and shining future that our children and theirs deserve to have. They are going to keep us stuck here, with no clear vision or identity besides "we aren't that other party..."
We can't keep playing this kind of game anymore: the one that expects us to believe there's a real difference between the Democrats and Republicans. We can't afford it any longer.
The alternative is to keep "voting for the lesser of two evils" until a rotten and decrepit America is finally driven into the ground. At that point, will it matter who happened to have been at the wheel when it did?
In case anyone's wondering: currently I'm registered as a Republican. I helped a friend run for statewide office this election season as his treasurer, running on a platform of parental choice in education. Prior to that I ran for office myself, partly regarding issues of fiscal conservatism. In my opinion Ronald Reagan was the last real President that America has had and I'm very thankful that I got to drive to Washington D.C. a few years ago to pay my respects as his casket lay in state at the Capitol.
I never vote for the party though. I've voted for Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians and independents and a lot of people in between since I first registered to vote several years ago (the day after my eighteenth birthday).
I would never vote for Barack Obama. The man's social spending ideas are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Neither can I ever vote for John McCain: this is a man bankrupt of any principle and I absolutely cannot believe that so many professed "conservatives" are now lining up to support him. This was the Senator who pushed through McCain-Feingold, fercryingoutloud. And as I've said before: any man who dumps his wife just so he can have a younger woman, does not have the moral fiber to be given the responsibility of the most powerful office on Earth.
Now y'all know where I'm coming from. Which brings us to the matter of Sarah Palin. A woman who I have had great admiration for.
Until now.
And trust me: this has nothing to do with what is going on with her family at this moment.
When McCain announced that Palin would be his running mate, I didn't know what to make of it. That Palin, who had previously expressed support for Ron Paul (a candidate as unlike McCain as there's apt to be) would now hitch her wagon to McCain didn't make any sense to me. And after considering it at length, my first assumption was that Palin is a very good governor, who has no idea what she is being drawn into and is perhaps not ready for this at all.
Let me put it another way: I thought that Palin was being used as a tool by the McCain campaign. As one friend put it, Palin as a running mate was analogous to putting lipstick on a pig. She's got a tremendous reputation and is by widespread acclaim "easy on the eyes", but she does nothing to change the fact that John McCain himself has a horrible record on so-called "conservative" issues. Palin, many have told me over the past few days, is only meant to be a distraction from the real John McCain.
Then I started, for the first time, to take a seriously hard look at Sarah Palin's record as mayor of Wasilla, and then governor of Alaska.
And you know what?
There's no way that I could support Sarah Palin now, even if she were to run for President herself (which I earlier had suggested I wouldn't mind happening).
In fact, the notion about Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, is now downright scary.
It was her record as mayor of Wasilla that sent the first red flag popping up in my mind. When she was sworn in after being elected in 1996, the town of Wasilla, Alaska had no debt. When she left, the town was twenty-two million dollars in the hole. We're talking a town with a population of about five thousand souls. My own hometown has about three times that amount, and I don't think it's ever been that much in the red.
Where did all that money go on Palin's watch? Much of it went to a new sports and entertainment complex. A bit went to a new park. None of it apparently went to actually improving the infrastructure of Wasilla or toward urban planning. I'm now hearing plenty of horror stories about how the town is a cacaphonic sprawl of bad streets, run-down buildings and big-box retailers like Wal-Mart.
But think about it: Wasilla went from owing no money, to owing $22 million during Palin's tenure. Does that sound like sound economic conservatism to anyone?
Then the tales came out Palin's dictatorial style: how she set down a policy that no city employee could talk with the press without her permission, and how she fired the town's respected librarian and lost a police chief (in addition to several others who she tossed out) because she believed they weren't "loyal" enough to her. So forget financial discipline: now we're dealing with matters of personal discipline and humbleness as a public servant. Palin apparently thought that since she was now mayor, she could be "the decider" of Wasilla. She quickly filled the vacant positions with people that she had previous relationships with. It began a pattern of cronyism that continued into her time as Governor of Alaska and is now come back to haunt her in the form of a state trooper firing scandal.
Maybe some of this could be attributed to being "young" and "fresh" on the job. Some eagerness to over-excel. Kinda like how Barney on The Andy Griffith Show is always getting in trouble because he wants Mayberry to be like a big city rife with organized crime. That's a heap of fun if we're watching a Sixties-era television comedy... but in real life, when the pattern persists from small-town mayor to state governor, it stops being funny or excusable.
It was how Palin became mayor of Wasilla in the first place that finally convicted me to no longer be able to give her any credence as someone I would ever want to be within a hair's breadth of so much power. In what is usually a non-partisan, friendly election in small town America, Palin injected her mayoral race with "wedge issues" like abortion. She received heavy backing from the Alaskan state Republican Party. At one point she was apparently making it out that she was going to be Wasilla's "first Christian mayor".
How is abortion possibly an issue for a sleepy burg of five thousand people tucked away in a valley in Alaska? That's like trying to teach A.P. history in what's supposed to be a high school woodshop class.
Palin's campaign for mayor of Wasilla had little to do with actual issues, and too much to do with exploiting people's emotions. That's how she came to elected office to begin with: not by appealing to intellect, but by playing off of base psychology.
Which brings me to the final reason that I will share for now about why I cannot ever support Sarah Palin being in the Executive Branch of the United States Government...
...namely, that the Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual.
Understand this about me too: I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I've been a Christian for going on a dozen years now. And even before then I saw how having a faith in God is not something that is supposed to be used as a weapon against other people or other countries. In my opinion, God has not blessed America because America doesn't care about God anyway. Too many self-proclaimed Christians in this land think nothing of exploiting God for their own temporal motives, however. That's something that I not only cannot stand, it scares the hell out of me.
So now witness Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, speaking before a church service and telling the congregants that the war in Iraq is a "task that is from God"...
Anyone else see that movie Jesus Camp? Anyone else think that Sarah Palin seems way too much of that same mindset?
As Christians, we are supposed to represent the Kingdom of God to those that we come in contact with. We are meant to do so by loving them, in spite of their beliefs or what their opinion is of us. We are called to love even our enemies. That doesn't mean that we don't defend ourselves when we must, because I believe that is a moral right for individuals and families and nations. But we were never given an ordained duty to seek out and destroy our enemies in the name of Christ! That's just more of the world's way, and not God's at all. And it is the absolute height of arrogance to assume that God's plan is our own plan enough that we have a license to believe He will grant a blanket blessing on all of our endeavors.
The more that I read of Sarah Palin, the more that I cannot but believe that the woman is an adherent of Dominion Theology. As a theology professor of mine put it ten years ago, that's something that "will beat a path straight to Auschwitz". And as I've studied it since then, the less that I've been able to deny that he was right.
If for no other reason, this alone is why I cannot trust Sarah Palin. God Only can judge her heart, but in my mind the woman is way too infatuated with the power of God and not nearly enough with the love of God.
That won't deter a lot of the so-called "evangelicals" from adoring her, from supporting her without question however. I've even heard a few of them quite seriously declare that Palin is a modern-day "Deborah for America". They're the ones who still believe that America has a special place in God's divine plan for the world. They're also the ones who tend to hold that God allowed George W. Bush to be elected so that it would "help" to eventually trigger Armageddon.
Don't think that I don't know what I'm talking about here. I used to attend a school that was eventually taken over by such apostles of the Apocalypse. And Sarah Palin, now that I've examined her, is precisely the kind of politician that they have been hoping and praying for. Maybe... maybe... even more than George W. Bush turned out to have really been.
These people have forgotten that what makes America special is her virtue. And in the name of God, these people - who should have been the most virtuous - gave up their virtue for sake of a little power in the fleeting span of their lifetime.
And now it is a question of whether there is any virtue left for their children, and their children's children.
And it looks like they're ramping-up to sacrifice even more.
Suddenly, the idea of a John McCain presidency, which I've always felt would be a disastrous continuation of the policies of Bush, threatens to become something much worse than most of us have yet imagined.
There is nothing "conservative" about Sarah Palin, I must sadly conclude. If anything, she seems cut from the neoconservative cloth that espouses bigger government and glorious empire. To her credit, Sarah Palin seems very much to be an all-American wife and "action mom". I certainly respect her strong stance for the Second Amendment. But her track record as an elected official indicates that if given far more power, she would continue the precedent that the current White House administration has set for detaching the American government from the American people.
There is nothing about that which is the least bit conservative.
That's still not enough to prompt me to vote for Obama, however. Nothing could possibly entice me to do that. So this election year I'm either casting a write-in vote for Ron Paul, or writing in what is rapidly becoming the most sensible alternative to the mess that this country is hellbent on becoming...
I watched some of Barack Obama's speech last night. I'm not voting for him. But I could see where a lot of people would vote for him based on charisma and presence.
(Parse that as you will...)
I'm not voting for John McCain either. And so far I haven't found anyone jazzed about him enough to cast their ballot in his favor. Any man who by all accounts left his wife just so he could have a younger woman, is not a man that I can trust to be President of the United States under any circumstance.
In a sane world, Sarah Palin would be running for President, and I would vote for her regardless of what party she's coming from. That's still not enough to entice me to ever vote for McCain though, now that she's set to be his running mate. But I've been following her for awhile now and she seems to be the kind of lady who's on my wavelength so far as good clean outrageous behavior goes: the gal shoots moose and makes burgers out of 'em... that's awesome!
In the end it will not matter who is elected President, I hate to say. There is simply too much rot at work in the timbers and one man - or one woman - can not stave off what history has demonstrated is the inevitable consequence of too much bureaucracy, too much extension, too much empire, and too little enlightenment.
MSNBC has an article about conservative-leaning members of the Republican Party who are trying to de-rail what they see as John McCain's extreme policies regarding immigration, the environment and several other issues. Lots of the Republican "grassroots" don't want McCain's views to be implemented in the party's official platform when they have their upcoming national convention.
But this quote by a McCain spokesperson says it all...
"We are confident that this process will produce a platform that all Republicans will enthusiastically support," said Joe Pounder, a McCain spokesman. "Our party is united, and will continue to work together to elect John McCain in November."
This is by and large the line by the Republican National Committee as well.
Once again, as has happened too many times from "the party of principle", the Republicans are going to throw out all principle just for sake of getting "an electable candidate".
And you wouldn't believe the stuff that I'm seeing on the Free Republic site these days so far as getting McCain to win goes. It's... well, downright Clintonian how they're thinking. Rush Limbaugh used to quip that the motto of the Clinton Administration was "How can we fool them today?" For too many of the "Party Über Alles" Republican die-hards, that's now become their own mindset as well.
Back to the topic at hand: there are still plenty of true-believers in the Republican rank and file who sincerely care about issues like stopping illegal immigration and abortion. But it's now well past time for them to leave the Republican Party. Because the Republican leadership does not give a damn about such things. The fact that it has fought tooth and nail against its own candidates who are sincerely interested in such matters, and that it has now produced someone like John McCain to be its standard-bearer, screams more about what's wrong with it than I could possibly devote the time to writing about here.
Hell, this is the same party leadership that forced George W. Bush on us... 'nuff said.
Although I do not call myself a conservative (or any other label), I do profess that my own leanings are very much toward what would be defined as "conservative" in the traditional sense. And I'm saying once again: real conservatives have no place, and are not welcome, in the Republican Party by its leadership. And it is foolish to continue putting any measure of faith in that party at all.
No, I'm not voting for Obama either. I'm not voting for either one of the two clowns from "the major parties" for President. As things stand now it'll be either a vote for Ron Paul (as I've already indicated I'll probably do) or Chuck Baldwin.
But McCain or Obama? If I was forced to choose either from among those two or be on the receiving end of a Coca-Cola enema, I'll pick the enema.
So now, he's winding-down his drive for the Oval Office. What do I make of this?
Personally, I think that in years to come the Ron Paul presidential campaign is going to be one of the most appreciated things to have happened in the era of modern American politics. But that's not going to happen before some very rough times we'll have to go through.
Here is why I am inclined to call Ron Paul's campaign a success: it demonstrated that there is a complete absence of principles and honor in the current American political system. And if one demands further proof, he need look no further than the "two major candidates" that our system has wound up producing, with the demand that we must "choose" one of the two.
I think Ron Paul's campaign has given ample evidence that there exists between the two major parties, the corporate media, and government in general an unwritten rule that the status quo must be preserved at all costs. Those who might threaten The Way Things Are, are effectively quashed. We saw this happen numerous times during this past year to Ron Paul, especially how he was prevented from participating in numerous "debates" and when he was allowed, the "objective" moderators from Fox News or whatever made it their mission to openly question Dr. Paul's viability as a candidate. They never did that to Romney, or Huckabee, or McCain, or anyone else.
Maybe the biggest lesson we can take from the Ron Paul presidential campaign is that: "You cannot beat the system".
Maybe we don't have to try to beat it, either.
Because the system that is modern American politics is crashing and burning quite well on its own, without any help from us.
Look at what's happening around us: soaring gas prices and even higher kerosene prices (which will soon make trucking goods a much less attractive career for those who this country depends on for shipping). Skyrocketing cost of food. Illegal migrants flooding into the country. Flagrant use of illegal labor (which has led to many recent problems involving food production). Plummeting value of the dollar. Increasing taxes. Government continually stripping rights away. Wars without end, hallelujah, amen...
Those "stimulus" checks that we all got? I made a sound investment with mine (which is all that I'm going to say about that). If there had to be a sign that ours is a broken and defeated country, that was it. "Stimulus" was socialism. It was crumbs thrown to us from the table, and we gobbled it up without thinking about it. I understand that retail buying was up last month. "Stimulus worked," some will tell Chris.
Okay, fine. But now the stimulus money has run out and the economy is grinding to a halt again. Are we supposed to expect another stimulus? Believe it or not, I have heard that this is seriously under consideration. Which will pump more money into the supply, making the dollar worth even less...
I don't even want to begin to speculate on what's been going on with the weather lately, and how this has already caused the price of corn to shoot through the roof. A number of people have suggested that if there is anything like a severe hurricane season this year, the cost of commodities like oil and food will become unconscionable. Granted, there's not much we can do about acts of God. But there has been plenty that we could have already done about managing what's been granted our purview.
Except not one of the "leading contenders" for President has a damned clue about what to do about any of this. Heck, we've pretty much been promised higher taxes, no matter who is elected.
It can't be said that we didn't have a choice. Ron Paul and a very few others who took a stab at this wanted to bring legitimate concerns and solutions to the table. They never stood a chance. They were derided as "joke candidates", "also-rans" while we were supposed to believe that people like McCain and Clinton and Obama were... what, serious?!
Can anyone tell me that any of those three have been out for anything other than the power and the opportunity to stamp their names in the history books?
I don't know what that's a worse commentary on: the ones who perpetuate this system or the American people who continually buy into it.
But hey, this system already gave us George W. Bush: bar none the worst President in American history. Why should we expect any better from it?
So it is that I'm sticking with the vow that I made over a year ago: I am voting for Ron Paul for President, or I am voting for no one at all. And if I have to go to the poll and not mark down anyone for President, so be it. I've no problem with that. My conscience will be clean. Because the sad fact of the matter is, it's not going to matter one whit who among the candidates of the two major parties is elected President.
The inertia has become too great. The timbers have become too rotted. It is the acme of either foolishness or insanity to put faith in either party, or the present system at all, to stop what was already in motion long ago.
Trust me, having done the politics game already: this is not something to stock your hopes in.
But even so, I can't help but believe that Ron Paul's campaign was not only a success, it had a divine hand behind it. Maybe it was just one of the ways that God let the American people have a chance to turn back from the brink.
But we didn't take it. Now we've got two childish punks, drunk on power, fighting for control of the steering while while the car of state speeds full-tilt toward the cliff...
Hang on tight, friends and neighbors: it's a long way down.
Georgia Republican Party chairwoman Sue Everhart said Saturday that the party's presumed presidential nominee has a lot in common with Jesus Christ.
"John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross," Everhart said as she began the second day of the state GOP convention. "He never denounced God, either."
Everhart was praising McCain for never denouncing the United States while he was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"I'm not trying to compare John McCain to Jesus Christ, I'm looking at the pain that was there," she said.
What's worse in my mind is that Everhart is ascribing divinity to the United States: basically saying that America is like God.
And some people wonder why I've grown tired of politics.
It's looking like so far as "the two major parties" go, it'll be the proverbial Hobson's choice between McCain and Obama for President this November. I won't be voting for either one of them.
And once again, I have to wonder how many self-professed Christians are going to spin this election as "a vote for Obama is a vote for evil" thing. You'd think that after two elections of voting for "God's anointed man" that most would have learned better.
Probably not. Mark my words: you'll still see Pat Robertson, James Dobson and their kind shilling for McCain and saying it's one's "Christian duty" to support him.
They had more than enough opportunity to do what they could to turn America around spiritually and intellectually. Instead they prostituted their principles so they could sit at "the king's table".
Anyone left who still believes that we have to "work within the system" to effect change in this country had better read this and think real hard about what they're advocating.
Because the undeniable truth is: the system no longer works. The system has not worked in a long time. The system is hopelessly broken. We're just now becoming able to see how bad the damage is.
And anyone who still believes we must abide by the status quo and stay within the confines of the system is... well, an idiot.
The status of the Republican Party of the United States isn't much different from that of the Communist Party of China, when you think about it. Both are controlled by hardliner old guards who won't bend and will crush like a bug any new blood that tries to bring fresh ideas to the scene. I'm not talking about Republicans as a whole mind you: I'm talking about the Republican National Committee and too many of the individual states' party leaders. Witness, f'rinstance, the lengths of chicanery they've gone to in order to shut out Ron Paul: the one sincere believer of Constitutional rule of law who's run as a candidate from that party.
At the statewide convention of the Republican Party in Nevada yesterday, the Ron Paul delegates were set to win control in a super-majority of votes. And then GOP officials actually SHUT DOWN their own convention to keep that from happening. As of this morning Nevada Republicans don't have delegates to send to the national convention. All because their party bosses insist on sending pro-John McCain delegates.
I'm especially disgusted at what one McCain shill is quoted as saying in that story...
"But at the end of the day, part of the job of being a national delegate is to do what is best for the party in November. And that means supporting the party’s nominee."
Just drag everyone kicking and screaming into the smoke-filled room and get it over with already, why don't ya?
Here's a delegate to the convention, who posted a YouTube video about what happened yesterday...
And then I received an e-mail from a friend who said that the same thing has been happening here in North Carolina as well...
The same thing happened at the NC 2nd District. Only they allowed counties to choose the Delegates and when the Ron Paul folks called for a point of order (40 of them) someone else made a motion to dismiss and the chair called it.
My friend further commented that "It amazes me that the GOP will eat their young just because they don't agree with them."
This is the "democracy" that we're trying to convince other countries is a good thing that they should adopt?
And how in the Hell does anyone even remotely like John McCain become the anointed candidate of the supposedly "conservative" Republican Party? More to the point: Why should anyone of good conscience feel obligated, in any way, to support McCain? Is personal conscience the price that must be paid for ultimate loyalty to a political machine?
Has America finally arrived at that terrible line where both rule of law and private character are made sacrifice for sake of power?
Because if so, then America is lost already.
Here's what I think: the Republican rank-and-file, the "grassroots", is finally waking up to what it's own leadership has been doing to it for going on decades now. And that's the last thing the GOP leadership wants. Their control is now more threatened than ever before. And it's become patently obvious that the Republican National Committee and other GOP elites actively despise the grassroots Republicans.
And now it's been laid bare before everyone.
It wouldn't surprise me if this election year is the final one for the Republican Party as a viable political force in this country. The rift between the sincere believers in limited government and the "blue blood" party management that's exploiting them threatens to become the greatest political divorce in this country's modern memory.
And I can't help but think that maybe that will be a good thing. Something as inherently corrupt as the two major parties should be let to collapse and fall into ruins. The Republican leadership should have been thankful for Ron Paul, and for the wisdom and fresh perspective he brought with him. Instead it conspired to shut him down at every conceivable turn.
Now it's going to have to pay the price. If Clinton or Obama win the White House, the GOP's honchos will have no one to blame but themselves.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain using WWE Pro Wrestling to pimp themselves.
America really is turning into that movie Idiocracy, isn't it?
What a contrast. Last night we watched the finale of HBO's John Adams, which conveyed the virtue and nobility of the Founding Fathers as beautifully as any production that possibly comes to mind. And less than 24 hours later, we see what has become of the fruits of their labors and sacrifice: three of the worst possible candidates for office of President of the United States, using metaphorical bread and circuses to reach out to what is supposed to be an enlightened constituency.
Some smart-alec is probably going to say that this is nothing different than when Richard Nixon appeared on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. But I disagree. Laugh-In was a smart show, and had serious cultural relevance. And that was just a gag anyway. This presentation by the three "front runners" smacks too much of serious campaigning.
John Adams, I'm sorry: we couldn't be responsible with the freedom you and your friends gave us.
Me calling into Star Talk on WGSR Star 39 a few nights ago...
I've voted in every election for as long as I've ever been able to be a registered voter. And more than that, I've gone the extra mile and run for public office. Nobody can ever accuse me of being an apathetic citizen.
But I mean it: as things stand now, I won't be casting a vote for either the Democrat or Republican nominee for President this year. Because none of these people have demonstrated that they sincerely want to serve the American people.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. There is no excuse for it.
Not once did I vote for Bill Clinton, and not once did I ever vote for George W. Bush. The two worst Presidents in American history can never claim that I cast a ballot for them. I'm proud of that (though I will admit that had I been wiser I would have refrained from voting for President at all in 2004). Why should I cast a vote for President this time, knowing full well that Obama, Clinton or McCain would ruin America even more, no matter which one of them is elected?
I've got a Ron Paul bumper sticker on my car. It's going to stay on there 'til well after this coming November. If I get the chance, I'll write in Ron Paul's name on the ballot come Election Day. But I sure as hell won't vote for any of these three losers.
