Over the weekend, while I was working at a retreat, I walked in front of a tv screen and was pleasantly surprised to see that Dr. Paul won the CPAC straw poll.

Immediately, the neocons in the Hannity and Limbaugh circles started claiming that this was only because a bunch of college kids showed up.

Anytime Ron Paul has a good showing in any poll, etc., it's always because "hackers gamed the system" and other nonsense, see the YouTube below for more examples. Any poll victory is the result of mobilizing your supporters.

This is the result of new blood getting into the mix in the party. Last time around, they were fooled by the dirty tricks from Fox News, GOP party leaders, etc. I think this is the first in a series of steps to show that the Ron Paul Revolution has learned from the mistakes of the past. They are going to be far better organized this time around.

I won't be naive. There will be more dirty tricks, and they will be dirtier than before. During the last campaign, there was a concerted effort to keep Paul supporters from attending debates. Fox News even made sure Dr. Paul wasn't invited to participate in one of their debates.

Since then, he's appeared on the network over 60 times and countless times on the other cable news stations. Now, however, expect dirty tricks. They'll pull out old debunked newsletters that paint him as racist, or they'll try and link him to the most extreme right-wing supporter they can find. The neocons who have controlled the Republican party for so long won't go down without a fight.

He's pretty much the only one in the bunch that has any credibility at all when it comes to the mantra of shrinking the government. Republicans talk about these things, and then don't do them when they get the chance. They don't call Ron Paul Dr. No in Congress for nothing. He votes it down if it is not in the constitution.

If things stay as they are economically, (or get worse, as I am predicting) the only way Obama wins again is to have Palin to run against. Look for the media to really push to get Palin credibility, at least until the primaries are over, and then watch them tear her back down again.

Given Dr. Paul's age, It will be key for him to have a running mate named before the primaries even start. There are some folks out there who could run with him who have gotten enough name recognition and trust built up to be an asset. I'm hoping for Paul/Napolitano.

It's going to be an interesting fight the next few years...

What happened to these empires? The cost of maintaining them bankrupted them. They were unsustainable.

We don't like to call ourselves an empire, but look at the numbers:

There are, according to the Department of Defense's "Base Structure Report" for FY 2009, 716 U.S. military bases on foreign soil in thirty-eight countries. Yet, according to the expert on this subject, Chalmers Johnson, the author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, that number is far too low: "The official figures omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude -- e.g. in Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan." Johnson places the real number of foreign bases closer to 1,000.
from Same Empire, Different Emperor by Laurence M. Vance

Follow the link, the evidence gets even more damning.

It's no wonder we're broke. We still have 50,000 troops in Germany, I guess in case the Nazis come back.

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

We have one ruling party in America right now, it has 2 wings: The Democrat wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. Both sides like power; and neither is interested in your freedom, or in toning down our empire. (ht Andrew Napolitano, who likes to point that out every chance he gets.)

All this in the name of national security? I think we'd find much more security if we brought the majority of those folks home.

As former U.S. comptroller general David Walker points out, it was never really meant to be an investment system anyways, but rather a mechanism to transfer wealth from higher income earners to lower income earners. It's structured so that lower-income earners will receive a higher benefit.

Did you know that the cost of living has apparently gone down in the last  year or so? That's news to me. Our budget for food has increased around 10% over the last couple of years. Everything is costing more. Just go to the convenience store and pickup a soft drink. Used to run you around $1.25 - $1.50. Now it's close to $2. But according to the government, it's actually lower. And so this year, they decided not to adjust the Social Security payout to adjust for cost of living.

Ron Paul is no fan of the Social Security system in general, but he does correctly point out that amidst all this talk of health care reform and how different models would affect seniors, we are completely ignoring how the government has manipulated the cost of living figures to decrease the amount it has to payout in Social Security. Using the older model of calculating the Consumer Price Index, these checks should actually be twice what they are now.

Instead, there is no real money in a fund for Social Security, only IOUs as it's all been spent on wasteful projects over the years.

We've had several friends have one of those late in the game surprise babies.

Now, I could've told you that if A and B do C, then the result will be X (or XX/XY). This story reminds me of that very same thing. Yet, what are we going to do to reverse the course? More of the same.

"This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter,"

Yet we're still going to take the advice of these same forecasters. Ridiculous.

Scary. Yet another sign that we live in a police state. With all of my blogging on Ron Paul during the campaigns, I'm sure my name is in a database somewhere on a watchlist.

Are you a terrorist too?

Just think about that the next time you support the government being able to go out and just declare someone a terrorist and lock them away in Cuba. There may come a day when our government locks up dissenters as political prisoners. No due process, just lock them away. It's been done here before, and it will likely happen again.

I started to watch this and after 30 seconds or so, I started to turn it off because this whole attack Rush Limbaugh thing is nothing more than a sideshow. The media and DNC need a sideshow to keep us from dealing with the reality that the economy isn't getting better and likely won't soon given the Obama administration's strategy (which is just an accelerated version of Bush's strategy). They won't talk about the real issues out there.

And Ron Paul deftly turns discussion back to real issues.

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan – and bombing Pakistan – is directly related to the hatred directed toward us and has nothing to do with being free and prosperous?

What if someday it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens, no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced?

What if we finally decide that torture, even if called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” is self-destructive and produces no useful information – and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil?

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What if conservatives, who preach small government, wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government?

What if conservatives understood once again that their only logical position is to reject military intervention and managing an empire throughout the world?

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empire eventually destroys all great nations?

What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq?

What if a military draft is being planned for the wars that will spread if our foreign policy is not changed?

What if the American people learn the truth: that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security and that it never changes from one administration to the next?

What if war and preparation for war is a racket serving the special interests?

What if President Obama is completely wrong about Afghanistan and it turns out worse than Iraq and Vietnam put together?

What if Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression?

What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes in protecting America?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded – nothing!

What happens if my concerns are justified and ignored – nothing good!

Delivered on the floor of Congress on February 13 by Representative Ron Paul.

He's going to be pretty old in 2012, but I think that he's going to have a much better shot at the Presidency than he did in 2008. Ron Paul supporters are quietly taking a more active role in state Republican parties, where they were shut out in the previous election.

Mr. Obama had it exactly right on Thursday when he warned against reducing “the scale and the scope” of the economic measure. If anything, the government should be more ambitious in its spending on economic stimulus, recovery and growth.

Peter Schiff: Stimulus Bill Will Lead to "Unmitigated Disaster"

Schiff scoffs at the notion the economic decline is starting to level off and concedes no government action means a "terrible" recession. But the path of increased government intervention will lead to "unmitigated disaster," says Schiff, who gained notoriety in 2007-08 for his prescient calls on the housing bubble and U.S. stocks.

If we don't act, it's still going to be terrible. If we do act, it's going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Follow the link for a good video laying out the situation and the consequences of what they're planning on doing.

Here's an analogy of what we're up against:

Over the last 12 months, I have changed my lifestyle. I run 2 miles every weekday, do some weight training, eat a diet based on lean meats, vegetables, whole grains, and fruits. I was overweight and borderline obese for about 12 years. And that was never going to change unless I changed what I was doing. There was no magic pill, no easy solution.

There are a lot of Americans who are in the same boat. The statistics are scary. Jamie and I started watching the Biggest Loser a couple of seasons ago and it's interesting to see how many dozens of pills a day some of the contestants were taking. After 2 weeks on the show, they were able to stop taking almost all of them. But it takes some hard work and sacrifice to get there.

It's the same thing with finance. I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan (though I don't agree with everything he says 100%—I think there's value in owning gold, though I can't get Jamie to buy into that. It's a hedge againt the inflation that is inevitable going to render your $1 worth $.50). We have been living on debt instead of on a solid financial footing. We have been gaming the system. Those in charge in Washington will quote Keynes and his "Paradox of Thrift," which states that saving is bad and it negatively affects the economy. The problem is that our economy is based on people being in debt.

This essay from John Hasnas, an associate professor at Georgetown U, does a good job of laying our how frustrating it can be to be a libertarian:

If you’d like a taste of what it feels like to be a libertarian, try telling people that the incoming Obama Administration is advocating precisely those aspects of FDR’s New Deal that prolonged the great depression for a decade; that propping up failed and failing ventures with government money in order to save jobs in the present merely shifts resources from relatively more to relatively less productive uses, impedes the corrective process, undermines the economic growth necessary for recovery, and increases unemployment in the long term

Hang on folks... this may get worse. If you have a good job, count yourself lucky.

Meet the new boss, indeed.

I found it very inspiring to watch the reactions of many African Americans. Especially when they talked about how for their own kids, becoming President is a possibility, not just a dream. In that sense, it was a historic day. A moment in history. But beyond that, the honeymoon will be short. No one can live up to this kind of hype. Will he undo some of the Orwellian policies of the Bush administration? Certainly. Gitmo is a good start. The problem is that too many Americans are living in a fantasy world (Bill Clinton, the most conservative president in the last 25 years, was right about living in a fantasy) where money rains down from the heavens, and Obama's the new Messiah who is going to make it rain. Maybe I just haven't yet embraced what is right.

In Excelsis Deobama?

“I would say any one of the Biblical leaders,” said Denzel Washington’s mother, Lennis Washington, who was attending the inauguration with her son on Tuesday. “The apostle Paul, Moses, John the Baptist – any one of them. Seriously, he is like one of those apostles for our day. He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth.” -- Denzel Washington

One of my favorite articles from yesterday:

If you don’t want your money given to others — say, Wall Street banks, auto companies, welfare recipients, stem-cell researchers, military contractors, the Israeli air force, the Iraqi and Afghan rulers — too bad. You have no say. Correction: you have one impotent vote every four years. That’s virtually the same as no say.
If you don’t want the armed forces killing people in your name, again, too bad. No one asked you.
If you don’t want the Treasury and the Federal Reserve stealing your hard-earned money through deficits and inflation, you may as well shut up. It’s going to happen anyway.
This is the power the peaceful transfer of which we celebrate.

While this is only part of the picture, it's an important piece of the puzzle and it lays out exactly where we're headed. And we're headed there even faster given our current economic climate. It's a fascinating analysis and it has some great art direction with great illustrations of most of the concepts.

A particularly interesting segment is the one on Financial Warfare. Considering the direction that we're headed, it's a little scary how exposed we are to being manipulated just like we did Britain and France in the 1950's. China could pull that off against us.

The American Majority
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
Carroll Quigley – Author of Tragedy & Hope
The coverage of the presidential election is designed to be a grand distraction. This is not new, but this year, it’s more so than ever.
Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Many who help to perpetuate this myth are frequently unaware of what they are doing and believe that significant differences actually do exist. Indeed, on small points there is the appearance of a difference. The real issues, however, are buried in a barrage of miscellaneous nonsense and endless pontifications by robotic pundits hired to perpetuate the myth of a campaign of substance.
The truth is that our two-party system offers no real choice. The real goal of the campaign is to distract people from considering the real issues.
Influential forces, the media, the government, the privileged corporations and moneyed interests see to it that both party’s candidates are acceptable, regardless of the outcome, since they will still be in charge. It’s been that way for a long time. George Wallace was not the first to recognize that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties. There is, though, a difference between the two major candidates and the candidates on third-party tickets and those running as independents.
The two parties and their candidates have no real disagreements on foreign policy, monetary policy, privacy issues, or the welfare state. They both are willing to abuse the Rule of Law and ignore constitutional restraint on Executive Powers. Neither major party champions free markets and private-property ownership.
Those candidates who represent actual change or disagreement with the status quo are held in check by the two major parties in power, making it very difficult to compete in the pretend democratic process. This is done by making it difficult for third-party candidates to get on the ballots, enter into the debates, raise money, avoid being marginalized, or get fair or actual coverage. A rare celebrity or a wealthy individual can, to a degree, overcome these difficulties.
The system we have today allows a President to be elected by as little as 32% of the American people, with half of those merely voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Therefore, as little as 16% actually vote for a president. No wonder when things go wrong, anger explodes. A recent poll shows that 60% of the American people are not happy with the two major candidates this year.
This system is driven by the conviction that only a major party candidate can win. Voters become convinced that any other vote is a “wasted” vote. It’s time for that conclusion to be challenged and to recognize that the only way not to waste one’s vote is to reject the two establishment candidates and join the majority, once called silent, and allow the voices of the people to be heard.
We cannot expect withdrawal of troops from Iraq or the Middle East with either of the two major candidates. Expect continued involvement in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Georgia. Neither hints of a non-interventionist foreign policy. Do not expect to hear the rejection of the policy of supporting the American world empire. There will be no emphasis in protecting privacy and civil liberties and the constant surveillance of the American people. Do not expect any serious attempt to curtail the rapidly expanding national debt. And certainly, there will be no hint of addressing the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationship with big banks and international corporations and the politicians.
There is only one way that these issues can get the attention they deserve: the silent majority must become the vocal majority.
This message can be sent to our leaders by not participating in the Great Distraction—the quadrennial campaign and election of an American President without a choice. Just think of how much of an edge a Vice President has in this process, and he or she is picked by a single person—the party’s nominee. This was never intended by the Constitution.
Since a principled non-voter sends a message, we must count them and recognize the message they are sending as well. The non-voters need to hold their own “election” by starting a “League of Non-voters” and explain their principled reasons for opting out of this charade of the presidential elective process. They just might get a bigger membership than anyone would guess.
Write-in votes should not be discouraged, but the electoral officials must be held accountable and make sure the votes are counted. But one must not be naïve and believe that under today’s circumstances one has a chance of accomplishing much by a write-in campaign.
The strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two-party system, which in reality is a one-party system with no possible chance for the changes to occur which are necessary to solve our economic and foreign policy problems. This can be accomplished by voting for one of the non-establishment principled candidates—Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, Nader, and possibly others. (listed alphabetically)
Yes, these individuals do have strong philosophic disagreements on various issues, but they all stand for challenging the status quo—those special interest who control our federal government. And because of this, on the big issues of war, civil liberties, deficits, and the Federal Reserve they have much in common. People will waste their vote in voting for the lesser of two evils. That can’t be stopped overnight, but for us to have an impact we must maximize the total votes of those rejecting the two major candidates.
For me, though, my advice—for what it’s worth—is to vote! Reject the two candidates who demand perpetuation of the status quo and pick one of the alternatives that you have the greatest affinity to, based on the other issues.
A huge vote for those running on principle will be a lot more valuable by sending a message that we’ve had enough and want real change than wasting one’s vote on a supposed lesser of two evils.

Here are the key considerations for voting for one of these third party candidates:

Foreign policy [ more ]
Privacy [ more ]

National Debt [ more ]

Federal Reserve [ more ]

Some have argued with me about by me voting for a third party candidate, I may be allowing Obama to win. That's a ridiculous, defeatist argument. If McCain loses, it will be his own fault. He will not have convinced enough people to vote for him. It wasn't Nader's fault that Gore lost vs. Bush. Al Gore didn't convince enough people to vote for him. It wasn't Ross Perot's fault that George Bush lost vs. Clinton. George Bush just didn't convince enough people to vote for him.

I refer you to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

You just may vote for someone who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, and that's ok. The end of the two-party system has to start somewhere.