Fuck Ron Paul

[norton ash]

Those same people don't want the asbestos mine to close or the mill to stop dumping mercury in the river if it means their town dies quickly, rather than slowly. They'll accept the cancer and birth defects and abet the crime.

[Elihu]

My god, voting for Ron Paul will do all that before this whole edifice collapses in on itself? He sounds like a SAVIOR.

it's not the man himself. it's the rule of law. it's our Constitution. that's our saviour (temporally speaking of course). there has been a breach of trust in the social compact. that's the tip of the spear, that's where the battle is. other solutions can, have been, and will be proposed. but they will all fail imo...

[barracuda]

The metaphors I get when thinking about it are
Addiction withdrawl
Nuclear de-commisioning

Our financial system is currently structured based on
a) getting something for nothing and
b) having someone else pay for it if you get it wrong.

It is also currently run by people exhibiting all the characteristics of psychopaths.
Perhaps because they, like ARE PSYCHOPATHS??.

My understanding is that Wall Street is currently better that the Euro will fail. This was presented on the news here as a mid news filler with an "Oh those naughty traders!" context.




What might be done in the name of withdrawl?
"We all have to go to one united global currency or the markets will implode!"

What might be done in the name of "decommissioning"?
Like Fukushima - lies, poor communication, no transparency, hiding bad news, spin central

It is a variation of the Red Button problem (Catherine Austin Fitts)

Those same people don't want the asbestos mine to close or the mill to stop dumping mercury in the river if it means their town dies quickly, rather than slowly. They'll accept the cancer and birth defects and abet the crime.

Let me offer some analogies: There's a factory in a small town consisting of a huge assembly line machine which produces weapons of mass destruction and exploits its workers without mercy. Some of the workers recognize the prolem and decide ot disable the machine through a wrench in the works, but in doing so, the resulting explosion kills most of their fellow workers and puts the rest of them out of work. The managers, meanwhile were safely ensconced in a separate building and are unhurt, so they are transferred to another factory in a different location, while the corporate owners accept insurance payments for their losses and largely carry on unscathed. The rubble of the factory is subsequently abandoned, and the people of the small town starve to death or move to another city to find jobs.

Or this one: the people in the vacinity of the asbestos mine or the mercury dumping force the corporation to shut down, so the company leaves and the town is left to rot, while the corporation finds a new outlet for the polluting activities.

My point is, if the fix of the problems of the financial market is such that it requires the deaths of billions, I'm afraid I will find that solution to be unsupportable. If this is the best we can come up with, we deserve to be owned as wage slaves. I don't welcome starving to death or facing the brutal violence of a ravenous mob in hopes that maybe the final outcome might be a more equitable situation in some vague future. There has to be a mechanism in place, or at least a semblance of a plan for accomodation of the lives of real individuals for this to be anything else but an outline of global genocide.

It strikes me as simply the flip side of your average dystopian totalitarian nightmare. We will have proven ourselves little better than insects, and on the same level as those who would have us die for their own capitalist ends.

[Marie Laveau]

My god, voting for Ron Paul will do all that before this whole edifice collapses in on itself? He sounds like a SAVIOR.

it's not the man himself. it's the rule of law. it's our Constitution. that's our saviour (temporally speaking of course). there has been a breach of trust in the social compact. that's the tip of the spear, that's where the battle is. other solutions can, have been, and will be proposed. but they will all fail imo...

*sigh* The Constitution is a document for rich people. Read it. Now the Bill of Rights, which is what every average person thinks of when they say, "Constitution," well, that's a different animal.

And, to a man, the founding fathers DID NOT want to add the Bill of Rights, but they feared the populace who fought their Revolution (and that's another story in itself) and who had guns at a time when guns vs. TPTB actually still meant something. And TPTB have been trying to strip us of our rights ever since. And there must still be some fear there or they already would have.

I edited a Master's Thesis on George Washington's business dealings. Folks, he wasn't a bit different (or any of the others, save, perhaps, Madison) than the Wall Street Bankers are today. From his own letters, in his own words. And neither were the rest of them.

The social conditioning is very, very strong. Flag, country, constituion. Funnily enough, it's not any different in any country in the world.

And, seriously, we should continue this debacle of America that has had a major hand in destroying much of the rest of the planet? Really? See: Colonel Smedley Butler

[Elihu]

is such that it requires the deaths of billions, I'm afraid I will find that solution to be unsupportable.

i find the supposition un-supportable to begin with. irrational fear warning. be calm all is well..

[StarmanSkye]

^^^^
The death of billions seems to be where we're headed, according to the agenda of the globalist syndicate of illegitimate, fraudulently 'elected' ruling-elite scum with their legions of special-interest priveleged fat-cat robber-baron war-profiteers, ponzi-scheme banksters & financial conmen theives, genocidal military zealots, faux-religious extremists & technocratic asskisssers.

No fear-mongering needed to place the prospects for SHTF in perspective. We've been horribly misled, had our sovereign citizenship sabotaged, our democratic republic hijacked and reconstructed as a Corporate feudual Oligarchy of commandeered privelege & franchised 'justice', with rapacious wildcat exploiters hurriedly defoliating & despoiling the enviro-planet, overfishing & polluting, implementing the neoliberal model of debt-indentured consumer-servitude to feed the insatiable demands of provocateured greed & vanity, provoking conflicts to stoke the engines of military-industrial-warfare and creating new categories of crime to exploit victimization and prison growth-industry racket, part of the shock-and-awe doctrine of social-engineering via paranoia-and-starvation/poverty tactics of disenfranchisement & propagandeering society to accomodate the unimaginable and tolerate the unendurable.

AT WHAT POINT does it, will it sink 'IN' that we are in the fight for our lives, choosing between mere survival under THEIR terms of servitude or actively FIGHTING to defend our future and reclaim the ideals we believe in?

I mean, someone crashes thru our door with intent to harm us, we're assumed to have the right -- even duty -- of self-defense; Yet today, faceless, semi-anonymous forces assault us where we live, threaten our lives, our futures, our well-being, destroy our security, deprive us of jobs, steal our resources, impoverish us, pilfer our assets, take away our self-reliance, undermine our sovereignty, denounce our basic human and civil rights, poison our air, water, food, provoke division, discord and rivalries, incite racial and class violence, unleash avaricious appetites and predatory villians, feed-us lies and outrageous propaganda, tell us what we MUST or are PERMITTED to do and who and how much to pay-off to just get by ...

Its tyranny that threatens us. Do we acquiesce, submit or actively resist? The 'political solution' doesn't exist, they completely own and control the system.

Its rotton thru and thru, it slowly spreads its infection, the world of promise and beauty has turned threatening and horrid -- that's the legacy we face.

If we do nothing, they'll lead us to another global war -- you can see the storm clouds of clashing armies gathering along the horizon. That's the only creative thing their blighted imagination is capable of, now dragging us along to be the sacrifice for their made-in-hell principles and self-righteous holier-than-thou visions.

[Marie Laveau]

If we do nothing,

You can count on the masses to do nothing. It's either nothing and they go along like lambs to the slaughter, or all hell breaks loose and we kill each other rather than the real perpetrators.

Happens every single time. What're ya gonna do?

[Elihu]

irrational fear warning. be calm all is well..

as a matter of principle, not in reality of course.

And, seriously, we should continue this debacle of America that has had a major hand in destroying much of the rest of the planet? Really?

it is very late in the day.

edited a Master's Thesis on George Washington's business dealings. Folks, he wasn't a bit different (or any of the others, save, perhaps, Madison) than the Wall Street Bankers are today. From his own letters, in his own words. And neither were the rest of them.

i've read a bit of his private correspondence and did not find that to be the case. he even talked about farming and gold and inflation. try his farewell address instead. it takes awhile to assimilate the classical language but hang in there.

^^^^
The death of billions seems to be where we're headed, according to the agenda of the globalist syndicate of illegitimate, fraudulently 'elected' ruling-elite scum with their legions of special-interest priveleged fat-cat robber-baron war-profiteers, ponzi-scheme banksters & financial conmen theives, genocidal military zealots, faux-religious extremists & technocratic asskisssers.

No fear-mongering needed to place the prospects for SHTF in perspective. We've been horribly misled, had our sovereign citizenship sabotaged, our democratic republic hijacked and reconstructed as a Corporate feudual Oligarchy of commandeered privelege & franchised 'justice', with rapacious wildcat exploiters hurriedly defoliating & despoiling the enviro-planet, overfishing & polluting, implementing the neoliberal model of debt-indentured consumer-servitude to feed the insatiable demands of provocateured greed & vanity, provoking conflicts to stoke the engines of military-industrial-warfare and creating new categories of crime to exploit victimization and prison growth-industry racket, part of the shock-and-awe doctrine of social-engineering via paranoia-and-starvation/poverty tactics of disenfranchisement & propagandeering society to accomodate the unimaginable and tolerate the unendurable.

AT WHAT POINT does it, will it sink 'IN' that we are in the fight for our lives, choosing between mere survival under THEIR terms of servitude or actively FIGHTING to defend our future and reclaim the ideals we believe in?

I mean, someone crashes thru our door with intent to harm us, we're assumed to have the right -- even duty -- of self-defense; Yet today, faceless, semi-anonymous forces assault us where we live, threaten our lives, our futures, our well-being, destroy our security, deprive us of jobs, steal our resources, impoverish us, pilfer our assets, take away our self-reliance, undermine our sovereignty, denounce our basic human and civil rights, poison our air, water, food, provoke division, discord and rivalries, incite racial and class violence, unleash avaricious appetites and predatory villians, feed-us lies and outrageous propaganda, tell us what we MUST or are PERMITTED to do and who and how much to pay-off to just get by ...

Its tyranny that threatens us. Do we acquiesce, submit or actively resist? The 'political solution' doesn't exist, they completely own and control the system.

Its rotton thru and thru, it slowly spreads its infection, the world of promise and beauty has turned threatening and horrid -- that's the legacy we face.

If we do nothing, they'll lead us to another global war -- you can see the storm clouds of clashing armies gathering along the horizon. That's the only creative thing their blighted imagination is capable of, now dragging us along to be the sacrifice for their made-in-hell principles and self-righteous holier-than-thou visions.

that was incredible. i guess every american should look deep in their own soul right about now. we had a legacy. i'm as guilty as the next...

[Marie Laveau]

Elihu

i've read a bit of his private correspondence and did not find that to be the case. he even talked about farming and gold and inflation. try his farewell address instead. it takes awhile to assimilate the classical language but hang in there.

I don't feel like digging for a copy of the thesis, but he was a complete scumbag. He wrote a letter to his brother (digression: Washington did not get a chance to "edit," i.e., throw out a large portion that would be incriminating or look bad, his letters because he died unexpectedly) anyway, he wrote a letter to his brother stating (and I paraphrase) that he wanted his brother to put out feelers for the land that had been given to Revolutionary War veterans (because the Republic could not afford to pay them, so they gave them land- many times in the middle of nowhere) and see how many of them were in dire straights (most of them) and needed money. He ended up buying massive amounts of land from desparate veterans because they had no money and no work- for pennies.

And don't even get me started on his WRITTEN IDEAS about the genocide of Native Americans. He actually publicly proposed this, and EXECUTED (no pun) it. And his land dealings would make a current Wall Street real estate speculator blush.

[StarmanSkye]

Marie:

WoW -- ThanX for that most insightful, interesting backgroun tidbit on Washington; I 'fess I've never made a rigorous -- or even halfassed -- study of him, whatever I know i gleaned from public 'ed', stray readings, in-between-the-lines scavenging, parts of something else in a given context, dramatized historical treatments and whatnot; Because he was an overachiever and took great effort to distinguish himself as a self-made-man of aptitude-and-acquired-means, it 'fits' that he would be a kindof rogue hustler always looking for low-effort opportunity and playing the percentages, ie reaping benefit from other's labors or hardship. Kind of shoddy that he would exploit Veteran's lean-times and the nation's shortage of cash, he probably figured if he didn't someone else would.

But after all, that's the American Capitalist way, isn't it? It segues smoothly, neatly into profiteering off of war and taking advantage of misfortune of those less-well-off.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

More words of wisdom from ol' bones:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.

You have misunderstood the good Dr. Paul's argument on a fundamental level, Barracuda. He himself is neither a racist, nor a bigot. All he wants (all he's ever wanted) is a world where a racist or bigotted business owner would be free to excercise the same rights as they already do exercise, all the time. The God given right to turn away undesirable customers and disagreeable prospective employees, such as blacks, a certain class of spics, some of them Asians, and poors.

Is that really too much to ask?

If it is, can a wealthy white male who is currently seeking the Presidency for the second time in a decade really be considered a free man at all in our society?

Monstrous demonstrations of state power like the Civil Rights and Emancipation Acts are an affront to all right-thinking ageing wealthy white males who are currently seeking the Presidency on a Republican ticket for the second time in a decade!

[Marie Laveau]

Marie:

WoW -- ThanX for that most insightful, interesting backgroun tidbit on Washington; I 'fess I've never made a rigorous -- or even halfassed -- study of him, whatever I know i gleaned from public 'ed', stray readings, in-between-the-lines scavenging, parts of something else in a given context, dramatized historical treatments and whatnot; Because he was an overachiever and took great effort to distinguish himself as a self-made-man of aptitude-and-acquired-means, it 'fits' that he would be a kindof rogue hustler always looking for low-effort opportunity and playing the percentages, ie reaping benefit from other's labors or hardship. Kind of shoddy that he would exploit Veteran's lean-times and the nation's shortage of cash, he probably figured if he didn't someone else would.

But after all, that's the American Capitalist way, isn't it? It segues smoothly, neatly into profiteering off of war and taking advantage of misfortune of those less-well-off.

He was the richest man in America at the conclusion of the war. Wasn't it Balzac who said something like "Behind a great wealth is a great crime"?

And he wasn't any different than any of the rest of them. Believe me when I say Burr did everyone a favor. But it was short lived.

I was amused a few years back to walk in my library and see a "traveling display" of the incredibly wonderful things Hamilton did for our country.

Ah, yes, the beauty of the Central Bank. *eye roll* That whole traveling display was courtesy of the Koch Brothers, btw. Don't get me started on the Randian "libertarians."

[Marie Laveau]

Ahab summed it up very nicely without me going all ape shit on Ayn Rand.

[bks]

Those same people don't want the asbestos mine to close or the mill to stop dumping mercury in the river if it means their town dies quickly, rather than slowly. They'll accept the cancer and birth defects and abet the crime.

Let me offer some analogies: There's a factory in a small town consisting of a huge assembly line machine which produces weapons of mass destruction and exploits its workers without mercy. Some of the workers recognize the prolem and decide ot disable the machine through a wrench in the works, but in doing so, the resulting explosion kills most of their fellow workers and puts the rest of them out of work. The managers, meanwhile were safely ensconced in a separate building and are unhurt, so they are transferred to another factory in a different location, while the corporate owners accept insurance payments for their losses and largely carry on unscathed. The rubble of the factory is subsequently abandoned, and the people of the small town starve to death or move to another city to find jobs.

Or this one: the people in the vacinity of the asbestos mine or the mercury dumping force the corporation to shut down, so the company leaves and the town is left to rot, while the corporation finds a new outlet for the polluting activities.

My point is, if the fix of the problems of the financial market is such that it requires the deaths of billions, I'm afraid I will find that solution to be unsupportable. If this is the best we can come up with, we deserve to be owned as wage slaves. I don't welcome starving to death or facing the brutal violence of a ravenous mob in hopes that maybe the final outcome might be a more equitable situation in some vague future. There has to be a mechanism in place, or at least a semblance of a plan for accomodation of the lives of real individuals for this to be anything else but an outline of global genocide.

It strikes me as simply the flip side of your average dystopian totalitarian nightmare. We will have proven ourselves little better than insects, and on the same level as those who would have us die for their own capitalist ends.

I think you’re risking false dilemmas here with the narrow range of remedial actions you’re envisioning.

Let’s alter the analogy to better reflect an actual, recent, highly disturbing case. Let’s say it wasn’t simply exploitation, it was slow murder. The murder extended to the families of the miners, who unwittingly poisoned their wives and children when they carried the dust home with them on their clothes and in their cars. The miners became aware of this over time despite official statements to the contrary from the mine and gov’t, until such time as it could no longer be denied.

I don’t see much evidence here that the workers kept working because they figured that W.R. Grace would just get away with it and go do it somewhere else. They kept working because of a self-defeating, yet incredibly robust notion of masculinity that held that having a job and providing for your family was of paramount importance [even if that ‘providing’ might kill you and them]. It was bolstered by another plank in the ethic: ‘do not cause discomfort or harm to others in an effort to alleviate a grievance you have.’ This was the real killer, I think. ‘I can’t say or do anything that might cost my neighbor his job [even if it might save his life 20 years from now].’ Grace exploited this, obviously. Some of their own executives died from working at the mine [google Earl Lovick], and knew they were dying from it. The workers were friends with management. They trusted them to tell them if they were at risk of some terrible health consequence, and they basically lied for about 35 years. The company even had extensive health records that made clear that its workers were dying of lung-related sicknesses, yet they hired doctors to lie to workers about the ailments they were suffering. Men took nitroglycerin tablets for YEARS b/c they were told by company doctors they had heart problems, when they really had LUNG problems.

When the gov’t got interested in helping them, the workers cooperated with the gov’t to little avail. It was not like the workers conducted a long but unsuccessful campaign to alert the world to the injustice in Libby. They kept quiet, when they did, because of an ethic that wound up killing them, and will continue to kill them and their loved ones. I say all of this without a hint of judgment, as I fully expect I might have done the same thing in their shoes were I similarly imbued with that ethic. [ON EDIT: A quick review of my own employment history reveals I just might be]

What would the effect have been of a general strike, with a simultaneous media campaign to alert the rest of the state to the conditions in Libby? There was not a giant labor pool to draw on in the middle of nowhere. The company would certainly have been adversely affected for awhile. It’s not like the only options were blowing up the mine or to keep working.

[barracuda]

The 'political solution' doesn't exist, they completely own and control the system.

Any solution is a political one, because the problem of tyranny is itself political in nature. A revolution, war, global depredation, succumbing to the hegemony - these are all actions within the political realm.

irrational fear warning. be calm all is well..

as a matter of principle, not in reality of course.

Of course not, because the various scenarios available for selection in which billions wind up dead or very badly off are nearly too numerous for a tidy list. The only mitigating fact we can cling to is that somehow, someway, it hasn't happened yet.

That is, it hasn't happened for us. The 50,000 or so people who've needlessly died everyday worldwide for the last twenty five years or so as a result of hunger, water-borne diseases and AIDS, for example, would probably find any quibbling about irrational fear mongering pretty meaningless.

I think you’re risking false dilemmas here with the narrow range of remedial actions you’re envisioning.

I'm perfectly happy to admit a smidgen of hyperbole there, and that the analogies weren't perfect. But what I've been trying to figure out over the last page or so is exactly what might happen in the case of the banishment of the Federal Reserve. Yes, let's get rid of it. Let's say Ron Paul becomes president and banishes the Fed. Now what? What are the repercussions? How can they be effectively managed? What do we get back once the Fed is gone? Does the existing currency still have value? How about securities? Do we also do away with stocks? Do we then require Congress to manufacture coinage, as suggested by a strict reading of the constitution?

Just for starters.

What would the effect have been of a general strike, with a simultaneous media campaign to alert the rest of the state to the conditions in Libby? There was not a giant labor pool to draw on in the middle of nowhere. The company would certainly have been adversely affected for awhile. It’s not like the only options were blowing up the mine or to keep working.

Obviously we have to do something. All I ask is that we go a bit further down the road of hypothetical outcomes than we yet have.