That ‘insider’s account of Ron Paul is written by a guy whose only claim to fame is hating Ron Paul and having worked for him. FYI, Ron Paul fired him, years ago. He usually is spouting about how treasonous Ron Paul’s foreign policy is, but he’s flexible.

By the way, I understand he may have worked on the newsletters. Who exonerated HIM from writing them?

Japan investigation finds nuclear disaster response at tsunami plant riddled with problems

Ya think?

Happy Holidays, David, and take a well-earned rest.

DDayen:

This insider account of Paul’s character traits from a former staffer is a lot more damning than anything CNN put together, however.

The essence of the account:
1. Paul gets along fine professionally and socially with gays but eschews personal contact with them or their plumbing.
2. Paul was against the AUMF and invading Afghanistan, which supposedly makes him a bad “isolationist” and is a cause for resigning from his staff.

There is nothing “more damning” about those, in the overall scheme of things.

Spaniards head to Germany in droves to escape grip of crisis back home

Number of Spanish immigrants jumped 49 percent in first half of 2011

LINK.

While Jamie Dimon, Jeffery Immelt, Floyd or Lloyd Blankfine, etc., enjoy their vast Harvest of Greed,

Mentally ill flood ER as states cut services

‘”These are people without a previous psychiatric history who are coming in and telling us they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost sometimes their homes, they can’t provide for their families, and they are becoming severely depressed,” said Dr. Felicia Smith, director of the acute psychiatric service at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.”

LINK.

PSC approves sale of Missoula’s drinking water to Carlyle Group

LINK.

The Dems on the public utilities commission voted to approve this.

Misery on top of misery, and all on the tax-payer’s dime.

ID errors put hundreds in L.A. County jails
Wrongful incarcerations totaled 1,480 in the last five years, a Times inquiry finds.

LINK.

Grrrrrrr.

The Curious Case of Mitt Romney, An Abortion, And Eliza Dushku’s Mom

LINK.

The eagle, the bear and the dragon

Here’s a new Cold War fable for an emerging multipolar world.

Interesting article.

Happy holidays, allan.

U 2, fatster.

Here’s a little something to gladden the heart, as only children can.

So how can Germany build twice as many cars as the US while paying workers twice as much? -D. Dayen

The first part of the question is the answer to the second part. If German auto workers are twice as productive as the US’s, then German automaker capitalists can afford to pay their workers more.

I like Hold-em poker and I have played at many online sites. I haven’t won a lot, because I have only played in freerolls (free games with cash prizes) or with money I won in freerolls. So I have never risked a dime of my own money.

I can’t play at brick and mortar sites, because I have a lot of back pain that totally disrupts my concentration when I sit in a chair.

There are ethical considerations about any form of gambling, and there are bluenoses who use the real problem of addiction as an excuse to justify a ban – just like prohibitionists and alcohol. I am sure that if I accuse you of being in that camp, David, you’ll deny it. But before you do, consider this:

What a bold play for the addicted Internet gambler vote.

That’s quite a slant.

Video: “RAP NEWS X – #Occupy2012 (feat. Noam Chomsky & Anonymous)“

It’s written like it’s a whisper campaign of a tawdry gossiper.
Who would hire him after writing that?

My respect for Ron Paul actually went up after reading that critique. He sounds like most Americans of a certain age, but with a better foreign policy.

J.P. Morgan’s hunt for Afghan gold
A team of bankers starts to tap the country’s vast mineral riches, with help from the Pentagon.

But Hannam is not your usual investment banker: A former soldier, he has done business in plenty of strife-torn countries. So have all the members of his team, two of them former special forces soldiers who have fought here.

… A lot of powerful people, including the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, are counting on him to demonstrate that the country is safe for foreign investors. Hannam has chafed at times under the pressure from the Pentagon, and the cold-eyed realist in him wonders whether unrealistic expectations are being placed on this business venture.

The unedited video of Ron Paul with Borger. Looks like he’ll let the unemployed starve. The CNN 1% are so out of touch they overlooked that Americans might be more bothered by being homeless or hungry than outrage over racism charges.

Dick Lugar says Ron Paul doesn’t represent the Republican Party’s values. We are the only country that can afford to be the worlds policeman. Just in case you though deficits were a problem.

Thanks for your good work keeping us informed, David. Hopefully 2012 will give you less bad news to cover.

there’s something likely wrong with the ballot access standards in Virginia if almost the entire Republican field can’t qualify.

Or it could be that these are dreadful candidates, despised in their own political party.

And Dave Weigel has been wrong other issues. But Attacker Man is much more annoying. Especially boring are the lectures where he channels Donald Rumsfeld and compares OWS to terrorists.

There’s a persistent failure by the left in America to meet the culture where it is, rather than where it would like the culture to be…

You guys are obviously not the evil, violent people that AQI is. But let’s be honest: you’ve got an agenda that most people don’t share

Corporations have been maneuvering to lock up the world’s water supplies for 20 years that I am aware of. The seed companies are no longer selling seed that will regenerate. It’s pretty obvious how they are planning to control the world going forward, isn’t it?

David, you are phenomenally good at what you do, but I was really disappointed to see you repeat the CNN/Gloria Borger/Ron Paul-cuts-interview-short nonsense the other day, and was embarrassed on your behalf when Drudge corrcted that before you did. I BEG you not to join the full court press now underway in the media to kill the Ron Paul candidacy. Let’s examine honestly, shall we? The guy is better on some major isssues than any other candidate, including Obama. Wars, rule of law, Fed, NDAA, drug war. Surely deserving of a more careful discussion, no?

And then there are those looking for Aghan “black gold”:

China gets approval for Afghanistan oil exploration bid
China has gained potential access to millions of barrels of oil after it won approval for oil exploration and extraction in Afghanistan

LINK.

I actually don’t care whether Ron Paul has a good personality or a bad one. I think he is completely bogus for a multitude of reasons but now with him signing the Personhood Pledge, I have no time to hear a further lie he might want to offer.

Personhood Pledge? Corporate, or fetal?

See, I really don’t care about whether his best friends are gays or not, or whether he is phobic about where he pees. I am a happily married, heterosexual woman but I get irritable when men leave the seat up. I prefer an all women’s bathroom myself. The detail is meaningless. Other things he has said lead me to believe that he is just as anti-gay as the next of these guys. He cannot possible be trusted on his views regarding wars either. There are huge deficits to his philosophy, e.g. on the safety net. But he said he stood for liberty. Well, now we find out he doesn’t, at least not for women although, don’t tell me, I’m sure he loves his mother, has a daughter who is a CEO of a major corporation producing green children’s toys and a woman chief of staff…….. You get the draft. Probably the only reason he was against wars was that he personally wasn’t making any money from them. If he thinks it will bootstrap him into the White House he will find a way to rationalize that, too. I may be irate at Obama for being the lousy choice I have over these other losers.

Personhood USA fetal pledge. I am still seriously enraged for this. Then they had the nerve to gag and cough about whether he was conservative enough because he started to go all federalism on them. For the love of God. They are all complete craven.

I’ve said enough. You can’t yap about liberty in foreign policy and want to clamp down on half the population. Women are keeping track of these guys.

You can discuss till you are blue in the face, I cannot imagine any more damning evidence of a total hypocrite than Mr. Libertarian signing the pledge to completely demolish reproductive rights. If these guys want to put it front and center, then there it is. If you infringe on us to any degree, we are not voting for you. I don’t need to be reminded that Obama has been enormously crappy on this front as well. You wait and see, Ron Paul will be making exceptions to indefinite detention if it looks more likely that he could get the nomination.

I don’t get blue in the face unless someone is strangling me. I don’t know the details of this pledge, but he has always been pro-life, and so are all the other Rethugs. He wants it to be a state issue, as far as I know. I sympathize with a woman who makes choice her defining issue, just as I would with a gay person who made that their defining issue. Or a black person who supports Obama no matter what, because of his race. Point is, there are issues that affect some of us, and there are issues that affect ALL of us. This just may not be the time when we should be focusing on our pet issues, but maybe we should rather focus on the whole of the body politic.

The guy sucks.

He’s a bloviating hypocrite. He seeks government small enough to fit into a woman’s uterus while extolling the virtues of a “free market” that would tell the disabled “too bad” and minorities “welcome back to days of ol’ where we serve whites only.”

I’ve never been one to extol white male privlege but Ron Paul reeks of it.

“Pet issues”?

Screw you. Reproduction is a life or death issue for women. It was the leading cause of death for centuries for females and continues to be a leading cause of death in countries where women don’t have reproductive rights.

Fine. But Obama is for assassinations, indefinite detentions, NO RULE OF LAW, and destroying the social safety net. Women can practice effective birth control. How can the country survive without civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, and the Rule of Law? There are no simple answers this time around. I don’t think identity issues should be the primary focus in this horrible situation we find ourselves in. I’m not choosing Paul, I’m just saying let’s balance our choices rationally, not by the traditional character assassination techniques.

You prefer “identity issues”? Fine. It’s about issues that affect some but not all, OK? You don’t have to tell me to screw myself for seeing that distinction. And you don’t have to lose your mind, either, and pretend that all woman will die if Paul or any other Rethug gets elected.

Who made you the arbitrar of which issues affect “all of us”? Women are daughters, wives, sisters and mothers. Last I saw a void left from the death of ANY of those “identities” affects the male half of the species unless they are unfeeling callous asses.

All people haven’t died due to our occupation of Iraq. So what is your point in making that a defining issue that affects all of us equally? Oh wait. I forgot. Men’s issues are issues that affect all of us. Womens issues are just “pet issues and identity politics.” Who cares if women die in childbirth. No biggie eh? What a charming sentiment! It’s only half of the species.

You know what? I know you are smarter than what you are showing here, because I’ve dealt with you in the past. So, if you want to indulge in an hysterical fit here and now (yes, I said hysterical, because what you are attacking sure isn’t anything I SAID OR BELIEVE), I’ll just disengage and let you do your special female victim thingy. I don’t need to dance with this particular tarbaby.

Actually I wasn’t aware that Ron Paul has always been “pro-life.” I had been misinformed. I am well beyond a one issue voter but that said, I am with cwaltz above: it is sort of amazing that control of one’s reproduction either through contraception or through abortion or through abstinence for that matter which makes equality possible for women, is just a really small thing. OK, I accept that it is a small thing in the sea of big things to other people although one has to wonder why the whole GOP has gone into nuclear war over women and gays in the last few years if it was such a small thing. And equality for me as a woman is not a small thing. But leave that aside. Let’s talk like BIG people. I have a granddaughter with CP who could not live without Medicaid. I have a pre existing condition which was not due to a bad lifestyle and am waiting another year to get on Medicare. I have been self employed all my life and paid into Social Security without help from anyone. I don’t use drugs, don’t support the efforts we make to war over them but do know that they are not harmless. And why do we give Ron Paul extra ordinary kudos for voting against indefinite detention. Both of our senators did! All I was saying is that it speaks volumes about a person’s credibility if they swear up and down they are for LIBERTY and then want to lock up all the women. It completely undermines whatever else they say. They may say really welcome things like war is over if we want it. But we don’t believe it because they are busy currying favor with all the war mongers and other undesirables. (And BTW- no one is “dealing” with anyone else. We are discussing.)

If choice is your only issue, then you are voting for Obama. There is no way I would vote for that traitorous, lying, fascist bastard again. So, all I’m saying is, let’s take a careful look at all the other unappetizing choices we have, without the media assassination stuff getting in the way. I resent being called names like I am some anti-woman extremist, and cwaltz has “dealt” with me enough that she should know better.

Heh

What’s hysterical is the idea that war is an issue that affects us all but the ability to have control over your own body for half the population is not.

It’s a “little thing” if you never have to worry about dying in childbirth or happen to not know anyone who might. For the rest, it’s a matter of human rights and understanding historically what the cost was and is to women when they don’t get to choose their own destinies but instead are FORCED to risk their lives based on OTHERS belief sets.

As I stated above Ron Paul is a hypocrite. He’s all about freedom as long as it coincides with his particular belief set. Worst of all, he’s the worst kind of hypocrite. The kind who’d force women to risk their lives to bring life into the world and then whine incessantly about the cost associated with caring for those forced lives or even worse ignore it entirely(making it a “state issue.)

Look, I like you, I’m not looking to fight with you. I am totally in support of women’s rights, and always have been. But, does this mean you must vote for Obama? Cuz I’m even more opposed to blatant political betrayal, fascism, assassinations, disappearing people, tearing down the rule of law, and delivering regular people wholesale to the corporate oligarchy, than I am in favor of keeping the abortion issue at the federal rather than the state level, which is the only change Paul has talked about favoring. I am disgusted at the menu we have in front of us, and frankly would rather see a people’s revolution.

If you believe choice is something that is a “pet issue” than you are either not very informed concerning mortality rates or anti woman.

Feel free to read up on the issue.

http://www.who.int/features/qa/12/en/index.html

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/288998

http://healthandrights.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/reproductive_health/abortion.html

http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access-contraception-empower-women

To sum it up, Paul’s position on women’s choice may not be seen as having a broad reaching affect to you. However, it is widely documented that women’s access to reproductive choices have national, and even worldwide implications. Limiting those choices, means limiting half of the species to second class status.

I’m not voting for either corrupt party. I reject them both.

As for Paul, he also seems poorly informed on the issue.

Anyone who would defund Planned Parenthood because they perform abortions can’t see the forest through the trees. Planned Parenthood also provides low cost birth control and access to that helps prevent UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES.

http://contraception.about.com/b/2007/10/17/one-in-five-pregnancies-worldwide-ends-in-abortion-listen-up-washington.htm

You know, “pet issue” and “identity issue” are just accepted ways of referring to issues that mean more to a specific group, because of some innate characteristic they have, than to the rest of the population. It’s not intended to cause offense. You seem determined, for some unfathomable reason, to paint me as one who is uninformed about your primary issue. I am not. I will point out that you seem remarkably unconcerned about my primary issues, which are issues that affect us all equally and fundamentally determine virtually every aspect of our lives as citizens. Why is that?

I would also say that if your position is that you don’t want to vote for either major party, then we are in the same place. I just don’t like when I see all the usual suspects agreeing that one guy is the crazy one-makes me want to know more, so I can make my own judgment.

I think he’s crazy because his positions are crazy. You can’t be pro freedom and yet insist that half the species be required – no FORCED to accept the risks of reproduction. A sane person doesn’t mutter that the same free market that had existed for almost 100 years in the South after freeing AAs would have magically changed from Whites only signs to integration without the Civil Rights Act. It’s crazy to insist that you have to find a restroom outside of someone’s house because theirs might give you “gay cooties.” Sane people recognize that a free market doesn’t cater to the minority, it caters to the majority. The governments responsibility is to regulate so that people who are minorities, like the disabled, don’t get walked all over.

I don’t care for the Fed’s actions and I opposed the Iraq war and seriously think the DoD needs a revamp but those things aren’t enough to overlook the insanity that is Ron Paul on far more than 1 issue.

If you and I were in charge, we would agree on policy down the line, I’m pretty sure. I’m not voting for Paul, or arguing for him. If you check the beginning of the thread, this is about David mis-reporting some negative stuff about Paul, and the major media all over Paul, calling him crazy, and I’ve seen this pattern too often in the past to blindly accept it. I want to learn more and make my own decision, free of media mindfuckery. That’s all. Frankly, to me, they are all either evil or crazy or both. I just get suspicious when one gets singled out as being the designated crazy one. Especially when he is the only one standing up for a complex of issues that are very important to me.

DDay didn’t get a thing wrong about Ron Paul.

Paul is nothing but a bag of incoherent mess. Explain to me how his no-fed-regs-evah stance and States Rights work with his stance on DOMA and Women’s rights (which you’ve poo-pooed as a pet issue and disgustingly so) jive together?

They don’t.

His no-regs-free-market stance is nothing more than a statement of “he who has the gold rules” and is completely inconsistent with what would need to be done to reign in war-machine-making companies.

There couldn’t be a finer tool for fascism than Ron Paul – he’s just dressed it up pretty to sap the rubes of campaign cash IMO.

Yes he did, Kelly. He reported a few days ago that Paul cut short his interview with Gloria Borger after she questioned him about his newsletter. That was not true. Even Drudge corrected that record before David did. I don’t like media hit jobs and pile-ons, no matter who the target is. I like to get accurate facts, and then make my own mind up. Having someone else pronounce a person “crazy” does not impress me. And this is not about David, I admire the hell out of David.

See this bullet point with the links?

Turns out that Ron Paul didn’t storm out of that interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger; the segment was just edited that way. This insider account of Paul’s character traits from a former staffer is a lot more damning than anything CNN put together, however.

There is nothing wrong there. Not a thing.

So there’s your accurate facts.

What you cannot do is defend Paul policies and try to rationalize Paul into a reasonable candidate – because his positions are inconsistent and incoherent at best, disingenuous and lies at worst.

And I find your beating the drum of women’s rights as a “pet issue” secondary to your “complex of issues that are important to me” in light of the provable inconsistencies of Paul’s positions frankly vile and odious.

Yes, women’s rights are a pet issue for women, and gay rights are a pet issue for you and Teddy, and getting a black man elected was a pet issue for blacks and getting Hillary elected was a pet issue for women, etc. And as a straight white man, lacking a uterus, with an investment in the study of law and critical thinking, the rule of law and civil liberties are my pet issues. So, Kelly, if you are so offended that people take their personal preferences into consideration when making political choices, then I am forced to find you vile and odious, as well as delusional.

Now, go back and look at David’s post on Paul from three or four days ago, and you will see where he mis-reported the CNN/Gloria Borger interview. You can find it yourself, cuz I’m a bit too pissed off at you right now to do it for you.

HERE. Feel free to apologize anytime, Kelly.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/12/22/ron-pauls-newsletter-problem-re-emerges/