Liberty Maven

Bob Barr appeared for an interview on CNN “American Morning” this morning discussing Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic Convention and his own campaign on the issues.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

“It will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws.” - Dick Cheney

“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…” - Bill Clinton

Subject: The Worst of All Worlds

Why did nearly half the Democrats in the House vote for the “FISA Amendments Act” that’s now pending in the Senate, when most of them had opposed warrantless spying and telecom immunity before? The answer is that they were bribed, using your tax dollars.

The Washington Post claims a deal was cut: the Democratic Leadership would support the FISA bill if the President would agree to add $95 billion in DOMESTIC spending to the latest Iraq appropriation.

In other words, House Democrats voted to continue the war and sold the Fourth Amendment for $95 billion.

Republicans say they want less spending. Democrats say they want less war. What’s their compromise? More spending and more war.
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Ron Paul has received 23% of the vote in the Idaho primary with 41% of the precincts reporting. Hillary Clinton has received 17% with 100% reporting on the Democratic side. Obama has beaten Clinton by a larger margin than McCain will likely beat Paul.

It looks like Idaho will become Ron Paul’s best primary showing yet. McCain is going to be haunted by Ron Paul right up to the convention. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Except perhaps, for Ron Paul to be on the winning end of the nomination.

See the Idaho results via CNN here.

Prior to Ron Paul entering the presidential race I was never deemed a conspiracy nut nor a racist. I was never labeled a “moonbat” nor a “something”-tard. I was just a 36 year old libertarian leaning guy who went to work every day with career ambitions and came home to my two children and wife. Things are a little different now.

Because I chose to support Ron Paul for President through donations, time, and effort I’m now considered by some to be all of the things above. I’m regularly called a “Paultard” by a nice gentleman at work (Thanks Wonkette). I constantly read the “moonbat” and “racist” charge on forums and news/blog comments all over the web. I only take mild offense at these comments. Mostly it just makes me sad. Sad at what America has become. Sad that the general populace devours the media like fish on hooked bait oblivious to the danger that lies within.

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Ron Smith, Baltimore’s premier conservative/libertarian talk-show host had an especially poignant commentary regarding Senator Clinton and her recent comments:

But Hillary is a special kind of scary. Take for example what she said the other day while campaigning in Pennsylvania. She was asked what action she would take as president if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. Let’s forget for the moment what a nonsensical question that is, since Israel has the nuclear bombs and Iran does not, and just focus on what she said in response.

She promised to “obliterate” Iran in such an event. Obliterate is a strong word. In fact it is one of the strongest words available to the English speaking person. What she said was she would see to the destruction of the Iranian people, somewhere between sixty and seventy million human beings, all the mullahs, all their supporters, all their political opponents, all the women, all the children, an entire ancient nation.

I recommend you read the entire article.

For most, “politician” has become a dirty word. Calling someone a “politician” these days has negative connotations. One need not even use the modifier, “typical”, in front of the jab anymore to maintain its full effect. Ron Paul is hardly a politician, but he practices politics. He is the worst example of a politician. Today that is probably the nicest compliment one could give to one who practices politics. On the other end of the spectrum lies Hillary Clinton. She is a politician. She served as an apprentice under probably the greatest politician of recent years: Bill Clinton. That is no compliment.

Like many from the left, Hillary Clinton’s brand of politics panders to emotion. The truth is treated as a secondary unnecessary evil. Her willingness to lie and distort in order to gain favor is quickly becoming legendary. The writing is on the wall though. If she were to become our next President, there seems to be no doubt her legendary chronic lying will equal her husband’s grand lies. I’m not saying she will say the words, “I did not have sex with that woman…”, although that certainly would be interesting. I’m merely saying she comes from the same mold.

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The ideological Ron Paul math can be summed up with the following expression:

Ron Paul(Foreign Policy) + Ron Paul(Economy) = The Solution

Ron Paul’s position on foreign policy is consistent with his position on economics. He preaches non-intervention overseas and the deregulation of markets. His positions are interesting in that they steadfastly refuse to contradict each other. Likewise, He is pro-life and against the death penalty. Many other Republicans contradict their pro-life view by supporting the death penalty.

His is a true non-interventionist position. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have a faux non-interventionist position. They make the colossal mistake of thinking that pulling out of Iraq is enough non-intervention. Ron Paul correctly and consistently points out that Iraq is only part of the entire foreign policy portrait. Obama and Clinton do not preach non-interventionism because they don’t believe in the principle. They will not bring our troops home from Germany or Korea. They advocate repositioning troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. This is hardly any real “change” from George W. Bush. Chances are neither would even follow up on their promise to bring our troops home from Iraq. Certainly, some new excuse to keep troops there can be manufactured when the time comes.

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The buzzword “change” has been tossed about by candidates of both parties, but it has been mostly associated with Barack Obama and the Democrats. In fact it now seems like the Democrats are addicted to change so much that they vote against their own front runner out of habit rather than conviction. Early in the campaign Hillary was the anointed one. They didn’t like that much so Obama had his own messianic rise to the top.

Apparently that too wasn’t good enough for the blue team. With Hillary Clinton’s recent big victories in Texas and Ohio the race for the Democratic nomination changes yet again. Perhaps the voters are a whimsical bunch on the Democratic side. Perhaps some strategic minded Republicans put Hillary over the top in Texas, as some conservative talk show hosts have suggested. Whatever the reason, this most recent swing shows the Democrats may not only have an addiction, but an identity crisis as well.

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Today voters in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island go to the polls. The polls suggest a neck and neck race on the Democratic side. Originally I though Obama would probably win both due to his momentum we keep hearing about. Now he seems to have become the candidate with a bullseye on his back. The front runner backlash has taken him down a few notches. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him win both, but I have a feeling Hillary may eek out a few victories today. It really is too close to say for sure one way or another.

On the Republican side McCain is set to lock up the nomination. If he wins just half of the delegates at stake today he would do so. I’m interested mostly in Ron Paul’s results in Texas and Vermont. Texas because he’s on the ballot twice. We get to see if he can win his own parties primary. He’s up against a neo-conservative warmonger named Chris Peden. Polling suggests Paul will win and win big. We’ll see if that remains true. As for his performance in the Presidential election I’m hoping for double digit percentages in at least 2 of the states tonight. McCain locking up the nomination may help with that since he is now a foregone conclusion.

I wish I was living in Ron Paul’s district at least for today. Why? If I lived there I could vote for him twice. The results tonight should be interesting.

Hillary Clinton announced a “child poverty plan” today. Her plan expands the government nanny state towards socialism. She’s merely playing politics here. It’s a last ditch effort to win votes from Obama. Sure, it’s nice to take care of “the children”, but why does the federal government have to do it?

She says she will pay for it by toughening enforcement to collect taxes currently owed but not paid. Uh-huh. So she’s going to use the IRS to terrorize people in to paying unconstitutional taxes so that the federal government can deliver “free” and “fresh” food to children living in poor areas.

I have a better idea to help with child poverty. Repeal the income tax to free up poor families to make more money to feed their own. Repeal the income tax so that people will be more likely to give their money away to charities and churches that always do a much better job at helping the poor than the federal government.

The federal government can’t even help people properly after a disaster like hurricane Katrina. Instead of putting free market measures in place to encourage charitable giving we get a a dose of Hugo Chavez-like socialism.

At some point we are going to have to change the term “land of the free” to “land of the coerced.”

Read about Hillary’s latest act of socialism here.