Rand Paul Has a Little Problem w/ the Civil Rights Act

[82_28]

What's dangerous and what's easy about it 17Breezes? I thought it was a well thought out piece to ponder courtesy of Mr. Riddler.

[17breezes]

What's dangerous and what's easy about it 17Breezes? I thought it was a well thought out piece to ponder courtesy of Mr. Riddler.

Well yeah it's a good piece but it boils down to, as far too many critiques do here and out there, to that whole unwashed mob sheeple who aren't thinking the "proper," thoughts bullshit.

The racist dogwhistle especially is what attracts the numbers to the rallies.

How simple is that? How dangerous is that? How pathetic is that?

[Nordic]

Jack, you're right on the money. It's obvious as hell and, frankly, has been from the get-go.

The tea party "movement" (it's not even movement but a created showboating of a bunch of fringe ignoramuses) was never MEANT to really get anywhere, it was used to distract, divide-and-conquer, and raise money for the politicians (on both sides).

With Rand being in the position he is, it's time to take them down a serious notch. Can't have them actually having any power.

And right on cue, the corporate media is doing its job.

[82_28]

What's dangerous and what's easy about it 17Breezes? I thought it was a well thought out piece to ponder courtesy of Mr. Riddler.

Well yeah it's a good piece but it boils down to, as far too many critiques do here and out there, to that whole unwashed mob sheeple who aren't thinking the "proper," thoughts bullshit.

The racist dogwhistle especially is what attracts the numbers to the rallies.

How simple is that? How dangerous is that? How pathetic is that?

Well it pathetically just about sums it up for one. I thought that was an extremely apt metaphor.

[2012 Countdown]

A minor point, but no one has asked to my knowledge: Is Rand Paul named after the dreadful right wing author Ayn Rand, or after the South African gold currency libertarian economic nut jobs love(d) so much?

Who Is Rand Paul, And Why Is He In Our Politics?

.... What the hell is going on? Where does Rand Paul come from? Is it from my nightmares?
Worse: Kentucky. Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist from Bowling Green. He is the third child of Republican congressman and two-time Presidential candidate Ron Paul, who is a famous Internet meme. Paul got his political start in 1994 when he founded the antitax organization Kentucky Taxpayers United. He announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate on The Rachel Maddow Show in 2009, and just beat out his establishment-backed Republican primary opponent thanks to Tea Party support and an endorsement from Sarah Palin.

So he's a Libertarian. Jesus... is he named after Ayn Rand?
Although it makes complete sense that Rand Paul would have been named after Ayn Rand he was not. Rand was born "Randal Paul," which was later shortened to Randy. When he got married, his wife started calling him "Rand." However, Rand is a big fan of Ayn Rand. She is one of his favorite novelists. He also loves Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky! That explains why he fills me with existential dread. Now, Rand Paul said he was against the Civil Rights Act. So... he's racist, right?
Actually, probably not! Granted, he had to fire a spokesman over some racist stuff that was on his MySpace page, but it appears that Rand Paul is not racist; just crazy. ....

Not sure if I want to know the answer to this... but, can he win?
Yes! A new poll put Paul ahead of Democrat Jack Conway 59% to 34%. Of course, this poll was conducted before Paul voiced his support of business' rights to exclude blacks. So, his lead is probably a lot bigger now.

Are you sure this isn't a nightmare?
Pinch yourself.

Ow.

http://gawker.com/5544166/who-is-rand-p ... r-politics

[Simulist]

Thanks for the information.

I guess I just figured he was named after a "corporate person," his Uncle RAND.

[compared2what?]

What's dangerous and what's easy about it 17Breezes? I thought it was a well thought out piece to ponder courtesy of Mr. Riddler.

Well yeah it's a good piece but it boils down to, as far too many critiques do here and out there, to that whole unwashed mob sheeple who aren't thinking the "proper," thoughts bullshit.

The racist dogwhistle especially is what attracts the numbers to the rallies.

How simple is that? How dangerous is that? How pathetic is that?

(a) Not at all simple.

(b) Not at all dangerous.***

(c) Not at all pathetic.***

Also, the post isn't about a "whole unwashed mob of sheeple." As JackR makes perfectly clear, his subjects' claims of populism are both overstated and self-bestowed:

These are "the people," and they want their country back from the Socialist Muslim Obama.

Instead, it's about a very vocal, well-defined, but modestly sized segment of the electorate that wrongly purports -- and possibly believes itself -- to be speaking for the country as a whole. Which is exactly how JackR explicitly defines it, in the course of identifying it, accurately, as:

the ideologically committed Republican base[.]

Further, he isn't criticizing its improper thoughts. He's criticizing its racism. Primarily, anyway.

More specifically, he's criticizing its leadership for using racist dogwhistles and its membership for responding to them, which is not only a real-world campaign tactic with a very long, very well-known history that's manifestly attested to both by Rand Paul's spuriously justified opposition to the Civil Rights Act, as expressed in the OP, and also by his core constituency's public, unalloyed, and frequently expressed agreement with it.

For example, to hew as close to the topic as possible:

Paul's stance is "very reasonable, and quite close to the Libertarian position," a spokesman for the Libertarian Party told TPMmuckraker.

"If some private business discriminates we think that's unfortunate, but we don't think the government should get involved in banning it," said the spokesman, Wes Benedict. "That's just a negative that we have to tolerate in a free society."

Walter Block, a libertarian professor of economics at Loyola University, and a senior fellow with the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute, went further. "I think anyone who doesn't believe that isn't a libertarian," he said, calling Paul's comment "a very mainstream libertarianism."

"I'm delighted that Rand Paul said that," an enthusiastic Block added. "I think it's magnificent. I didn't realize that he was that good."

(Link)

I mean, granted, the post doesn't cite chapter and verse on the entire 60-plus-year history of racism as the unifying factor that attracted and bound together the various coalitions that presently form the ideologically committed base of the contemporary Republican Party. Or on the frequent use of crypto-racism as a campaign tactic by right-of-center politicians. (From both sides of the aisle, it must be said, although they're mostly Republicans.) In that regard, it strictly confines itself to capsule-summary recapitulation of the last decade or so.

But I'd say that was commendably on-topic, not overly general. And it certainly doesn't mean that there isn't demonstrably such a history, btw. Because there really, really is.

Which doesn't mean that every single registered Republican is even a little bit racist on an individual level. And I'm neither saying nor suggesting that it does. It just means that on an institutional level, the national party has to keep its platform racist enough to retain its core constituency, although how publicly and/or how actively varies according to circumstance. Seriously. You can look it up.

Maybe you just read the post too quickly.
_________________________


*** I mean "as a statement," in case that's not clear. Because the phenomenon described by those statements is very dangerous. And it could plausibly be characterized as pathetic, too, although I personally wouldn't call it that, I don't think.

[nathan28]

17Breezes, STFU. Whenever i turn your posts on it's like it didn't matter. You have yet to articulate anything.

Rand Paul Has a Little Problem w/ the Civil Rights Act...and any infringement on the freedom of BP to have 'accidents'

Crossposting:

Rand Paul: WH criticism of BP sounds 'un-American'

I'm really fucking bothered by this Rand Paul shit. He has proven to be "libertarian" except when it's better to toe a corporatist line that not even his dad would. As far as I can gather in a "market" solution to the BP problem, BP FOOTS THE FUCKING BILL. Rand has just suggested that everyone in North America should pay for the damages, not BP, which sounds like a SOCIALIZED cost to me. How "libertarian." Motherfucker is going to be the fucking Joe Stalin of Libertarians if he keeps this power-groveling shit up. Yes, i am yelling. This is bad, bad, bad, if he wins that seat. I had dismissed the Teabaggers as being retardofascist mouthbreathers, the same people who think that Eisenhower was a communist--after all, compared to the antiwar movement, they've mobilized less than 1% the same number of people, most of whom are upper-middle-class white male retirees, hardly a "populist" movement. The Teabaggers get media attention that left-wing movements a hundred times bigger don't get because they're right-wing, IOW, the natural allies of the the media owners--and Rand's comments on BP make that clear. But they were still marginal? But they win a candidate spot? Bad news. This shit has to get stopped in KT. Nothing succeeds like success, so better not let them get any.

[norton ash]

Sssshhh, we might yet turn 17Breezes into a real boy.

[undead]

"They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent."

- Ayn Rand

* Source: Q and A session following her address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 - found in Endgame: Resistance, by Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 2006, pg 220

[compared2what?]

There's more to that gold-standard thing than meets the eye, too, incidentally.

For example, the spotlight that Anthony Weiner is currently shining on the less-than-savory quid-pro-quo arrangements that the scamsters and fearmongerers at Goldline International, Inc. have made with Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Miller, and various other prominent spokespeople from the "conservative" "libertarian" wing of the GOP comes complete with a very informative corporate pedigree.

The short version of which is that Goldline was founded by Nicholas Deak in 1960. And remained among his holdings until they were broken up following his murder in 1985 by your basic, common-and-garden-variety lone-nut assassin.

More details about which can be found (along with embedded links) in the same place that the following excerpt regarding Nicholas Deak's life and career came from:

At one time, Deak was a major figure in the American intelligence community, and later, in the 1970s and 80s, he was major drug money launderer for Colombian drug lords. Put Deak’s huge foreign exchange network and gold brokerage business into that mix–as well as Reagan’s cocaine-for-contras program, in which the CIA sold crack cocaine to America’s blacks, and used the profits to buy weapons for Nicaraguan rebels–and you start to understand how unlikely it is that someone like Deak, the nexus between intelligence and money laundering, was killed so randomly by a lone nut from the other side of the continent.

Nicholas Deak was born into a wealthy Hungarian family in 1905, and he moved to America in the late 1930s as the Nazis geared up for conquest. Deak, a polyglot and economics whiz, joined the American war effort by enlisting in the OSS, which later became the C.I.A. By 1945, Deak rose up to the top ranks of the OSS, running missions in the Balkans and Southeast Asia. As an example of how high up Deak was, when the Japanese surrendered in Burma, they surrendered to Nicholas Deak.

Later in 1945, when Vietnam’s communist guerrillas started to rise up against the French occupiers, Washington sent Deak out to assess the situation, line up support for the French colonial forces, and “observe” French counter-insurgency operations.

Deak returned to the US and started up his foreign currency and gold-trading firm. According to one book, when the CIA needed to launder money for its 1953 coup in Iran, it used Deak-Perera.

[snip]

But then it all came crashing down in 1984 when Deak was accused of laundering tens of millions of drug money dollars, much of it in the company’s New York offices. It was in the middle of the whole Scarface/cocaine/Contras era, when Reagan was looking for a good money launderer to finance his sleazy war in Nicaragua. At the same time, Reagan was cracking down on other money launderers not on their favored list. Maybe Deak wasn’t being cooperative because in 1984, a Reagan-appointed commission on money-laundering accused Deak of laundering tens or hundreds of millions of drug dollars, and within a year, Deak-Perera was bankrupted and sold off in pieces, and Nicholas Deak was murdered in his office.

Which does kind of raises some questions about what was up with Ron Paul's co-ownership of that coin dealership between 1976 to 1988, imo. As well as about his present investment of the bulk of his money in precious-metals mining concerns that are active in various geopolitical hotspots around the globe.

Although I don't know what the answers to them are, I freely admit. I merely point to an extant pattern. And hence a possibility.

[lightningBugout]

Well yeah it's a good piece but it boils down to, as far too many critiques do here and out there, to that whole unwashed mob sheeple who aren't thinking the "proper," thoughts bullshit.

If there is one group of people I'd wholeheartedly accuse of behaving like sheep, it's those who use the term "sheeple."

on edit: this was not directed at you breezes. just an opening.

[norton ash]

C2W = GPS + 411

Thx.

[Simulist]

"They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent."

- Ayn Rand

* Source: Q and A session following her address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 - found in Endgame: Resistance, by Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 2006, pg 220

If a 3-year-old could continue to scream, "Mine! Mine!" until his eighteenth birthday, he might well be on his way to becoming an Ayn Rand enthusiast.

[JackRiddler]

There's more to that gold-standard thing than meets the eye, too, incidentally.

For example, the spotlight that Anthony Weiner is currently shining on the less-than-savory quid-pro-quo arrangements that the scamsters and fearmongerers at Goldline International, Inc. have made with Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Miller, and various other prominent spokespeople from the "conservative" "libertarian" wing of the GOP comes complete with a very informative corporate pedigree.

The short version of which is that Goldline was founded by Nicholas Deak in 1960. And remained among his holdings until they were broken up following his murder in 1985 by your basic, common-and-garden-variety lone-nut assassin.

(SNIP nice piece about Deak's CIA/Reagan connections and Paul association.)

Fascinating.