Mona Charen of NRO Skewers Ron Paul
by Big Dog on Nov 23, 2007 at 11:21 Link Fest, Political
I am not a Ron Paul supporter but to be clear, I have not gotten on the bandwagon of any candidate. I need to see more before I take a decision as to whom I will support. I understand there is a big net roots campaign for Ron Paul of Texas. I have written in the past that I like most of Paul’s views on domestic policy but I have some real issues with his foreign policy especially with regard to the war on terror in Iraq. I just can’t get my hands around this idea that we caused the attack on 9/11.
However, I have found that Paul appears to be an honest man with strong devotion to his ideals. While I might not agree with all of them, I can see his is true to them and does not flip flop around like many other candidates. Mona Charen of NRO wrote a piece about Paul and in it I think she went out of bounds. She makes some good points but then likens him to some of the groups who happen to support him. She also took a stab at him because he received money from a person (or people) who have bad beliefs.
I do not think a politician has to give back money just because the donor has ideas that others do not like. This is not to say that candidates like Hillary Clinton should be able to keep money that was donated under questionable circumstances which border the realm of illegality (if they are not down right illegal). This goes for all candidates but when donors just happen to be people with whom others disagree it is unreasonable for anyone to expect them to return the money. The politician in question does not have to agree with the donor to accept the money.
Imagine if Clinton were required to give back money from the gay and lesbian or ILLEGAL immigrant support groups because others found their positions detestable? Of course Hillary agrees with the groups so that makes it easier but I imagine that she would accept money from any conservative group that donated it legally regardless of their positions. If the person wanted Hillary to win she would take their money no matter what positions they personally held as should any politician, so long as the donations are legal. Charen makes the leap that Neo Con (a term that more people than Paul use) is shorthand for the Jews. How many times have Democrats used that term and why have Jews not found it offensive?
There is a little battle going on and the Paul campaign sent a letter to clear up some of Charen’s assertions. Whether or not that will do any good is hard to say.
However, it might be helpful if the Paul supporters stopped inundating email in boxes with their ardent support for Paul. Ticking off the people who have the power to write widely read columns does not seem to be a smart course of action.
As always, please feel free to comment.
Others with similar items:
Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, Three Forces Of Evil, Right Truth, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Chuck Adkins, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: Democrats, domestic policy, Hillary Clinton, honest man, illegal immigrant, mona charen, neo con, nro, ron paul, war on terror
Interesting. I’ve never heard neo-con used to refer to Jews, but a quick Google search brought up a lot of results to that nature. I suppose there are several Zionist parts to neo-con thought though so it makes sense.
Neo-conservatism has always been about 3 things with me: prioritizing lower taxes/good economic growth above fiscal responsibility and smaller government, expansionist/preemptive foreign policy, and raising up moral values to fight the idea that values are eroding in America.
It makes sense that Ron Paul is against these ideas. He’s more of what I’d call an old-school conservative: placing high value on fiscal responsibility, lowering taxes and smaller government, and upholding the constitution.
Being from the South I have certain veins of that old-school conservatism in me, but I cannot get ahold of the more aggressive tenets of neo-conservatism.
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It is interesting because Jews overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party.
Neo meaning new is not what I use to describe myself. I believe in old conservative values, many of which you described. I am willing to bet that if my party would actually go back to those roots you could support someone like that.
Though I have to say that the idea of expanding foreign policy is a government wide agenda. They just go at it from different points of view.
As far as the idea that values are eroding in this country, they are. Of course I guess that depends on what one considers a value…
Hope you and your bride had a great Thanksgiving…
I know, no meat. Save the turkeys!!
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Paul’s foreign policy ideas are laughable, not only would they be a disaster for US, but our friends would no longer be, and our enemies would be stronger.
I do like some of the things I’ve heard from RP, but for the most part I find him to be a whiny little apologist, he is no better than Kucinich, in that he believes we are the worst country on earth, everyone hates us, and it’s because of our foreign policy…Not true, several nations love us BECAUSE of our policies, South Korea, Japan, Germany, England, Australia just to name a few.
It would behoove Paul to not be so negative in his quest for President.
Also Paulettes should consider that Paul has been in congress for a while, he is in the minority on most votes, he has been trying to get his points across to no avail in congress… What makes them think he’d be more effective as President?
I do agree with you about the money issue, and Paul gave back some funds that came from somewhere he didn’t like…Kudos for that.
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I think Paul and Kucinich are pefect for Congress but not made for national politics. I campaigned for Kucinich for the 2004 election in more of my idealogical anti-establishment college times, but in the last few years I’ve become much more of a pragmatist with my political views. The seat of President is for a person who can build coalitions and mend political differences to get stuff done. I think Clinton did this better than Bush has by far, but his grade in the subject would be a C- when you think back to all the bickering of the time. It’s all well and fair to say Bush stands by his word, doesn’t pander to polls and so on, but what has he really accomplished in his time? I’m biased I guess but I can’t think of one single thing Bush has done that has made me proud to be an American. I’m not sure any of the candidates from either side of the isle will do any better in 2008 but you never know…
I can think of a couple of things Bush has done that makes me proud to be an American:
1. He has appointed a Supreme Court Justice that might be the start of reversing the damage done by that uber liberal group of degenerates.
2. He stood up to Islamic radicals and actually had the balls to do something about it, I don’t like the way he did it, I wish he would have authorized the dropping of several kilo’s of Nukes rather than sending our boys in, but I guess that’s why I’m not Prez.
3. He stopped the partial Birth abortions.
Other than those I agree with you Adam 8 years and all we have is those 3.
Big Dog, I tend to agree with Mona Charen on this one. Anyone who has attracted the adoration of such extreme radicals makes me nervous.
I agree with your assessment of Ron Paul. I like alot of what he says but could never vote for him because of his foreign policy.
The fact that he has such a large group of these conspiracy theorists as followers has to say something. You are judged by the company you keep. If he resonates with these people there has to be a reason.
As Daddy used to say, “Lie down with dogs, you get up with infested fleas.”
I knew that, when I first searched for RP, on Youtube, and saw ‘Strippers for Ron Paul’, as one of the first videos, exactly how the media was trying to portray him. They can’t attack him, personally. You won’t find any examples of him soliciting sex, from other men, in bathrooms. You won’t find any example of him sending e-mails to House Pages. And you won’t find any stories of him getting a b.j. in the Oval Office…
So they go to his constituents. Question: How hard would it be to find a couple of uber Bible beaters that believe the world is going to end, in 2010, that support Huckabee? And how hard would it be to find a group of unemployed crackheads that want to see their welfare checks keep coming that support Obama or Clinton? Probably not very hard. Would the media ever report on them? What do you think?
The reason people, like this chick, write what they do is b/c they either truly, genuinely disagree with R.P.’s policies and ideas, they are paid to do so, or they are simply trying to get hits and stir it up.
They say that since he wants to end support -read: nation building-, he hates Jews and Israel. Fact: The majority of money we send to Israel is done so with the stipulation that it be spent on U.S. military contractor products. The money goes right back into the hands of the already-plenty-rich contractors. Most of the products are considered inferior, by the Israeli military. Or so I’m told, by Israeli friends. But those people also say that they’d rather have their own sovereignty and quit having the ‘support’ from us.
His comment about 9/11 and foreign policy simply speak to our government’s arrogance. ‘As the ‘most powerful nation on earth’ yada yada, we can do whatever we like. And if you don’t approve, our new F-22 Raptor will take up the issue with you’… The people, out there, that say, “Yeah. That’s how it should be,” have a real inferiority complex. That or they believe that simply b/c they were lucky enough to be born here gives them some right to dictate to others -in the sense that our government does this- how they should live their lives.
His issue with big government and the tax system are right on-point. Fact: there is NO law requiring you to pay a federal income tax. So why do you? Either because you believe that ‘that’s just how it’s always been and that how it’ll always be’ or you’re smart enough to know that if you don’t, guy with guns will show up at your door. Either way, if YOU write the government and ask them to point you to the law, they either won’t respond or, if you take the matter to court, as some have, they’ll simply tell you that they don’t have to show you.
Question: Black helicopters and tin foil hats aside, how hard is it, to believe that your government isn’t always working in your best interest? How hard is it, to believe that the billionaire guys that run the major networks and hang out with the billionaire guys that run the country don’t ever get together and make plans, other than games of golf? And why is it, that with big media, they either do their best to ignore Ron Paul, make their own conspiracy theories about his supporters spamming text polls, or paint him in a bad light, because of the few fringe that support him?
Why do they only print bad things about a guy that’s never really done anything wrong? They do this, because if they were to talk too much about his policy ideas -or ever worse, discuss them openly-, there’s a risk more people would join the fray. So for them, it’s only ‘Ron Paul: The Jew hater that only Nazis like’.
As for Jews that support Ron. Search youtube for Bill Maher and John Stewart.
I’m an IATSE Local 600 Union member, former Senate Page, my dad voted for Clinton and now support Ron, and I support him as well. Oh and my grandfather was a Jew. So I guess I got that too.
*No black helicopters outside.
BD,
I just want to know who did Hitlery and RP give the money back to? RP probably to the banks that got hit with the credit cards. But who did she give her’s back too? Bubba?
Kucinich and Paul, I think they were twins separted at birth. But Paul has more sense Kucinich not to run all over the house chamber after the President finish’s his State of the Union speech to get in front of the camera’s. I think that’s when everyone knew for sure that he was a nut job.
I also don’t want his ridiculous impeachment charges to go behind a closed door committee and get lost. I want him on the House floor with his written documentation for everyone to read. He should be made to explain himself or resign.
If those who are in a position to write widely read articles are airing view you disagree with then what should be the mode of correspondence?
Surely if such people are posting to a public forum like the internet they should be mature enough to expect responses of various strengths?
If such writers are irked by responses to their views then I am afraid that is the nature of free-speech and adult interaction.
If those who are in a position to write widely read articles are airing view you disagree with then what should be the mode of correspondence?
Surely if such people are posting to a public forum like the internet they should be mature enough to expect responses of various strengths?
If such writers are irked by responses to their views then I am afraid that is the nature of free-speech and is a normal adult interaction.
To avoid annoying such people is tantamount to allowing them free-reign.
Michael, There is a tax code codified into law and the court has ruled time and again that taxes are legal. The XVI Amendment allows them to extort the money from you.
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It is interesting Adam because I cannot think of anything Clinton did to make me proud. He was a disgrace to the office, he sold secrets to the Chinese and he sold the Lincoln bedroom for campaign donations. He was involved in scandal after scandal and the only reason he is not in jail is because he was able to skirt the law through judges he appointed (which is how his wife avoided jail for her video taped breaking of the campaign laws).
The economy was not any better under Clinton despite all this clamoring by Dems about fixing the economy. The numbers for Bush are the same or better than they were for Clinton and yet he had a great economy and Bush has a bad one. Liberal prattle. That is one thing I wish they could learn to tell the truth about.
Clinton reduced our military by half and refused to pursue people who kept attacking us. Clinton sent the military into Bosnia preemptively and without UN approval. He acted unilaterally and people are skewering Bush for doing the same thing and calling it some new policy. Bosnia never attacked us, why did we go there?
People who look at Clinton as a great president obviously have rose colored glasses on. For any bad thing one says Bush did I can show Clinton did it too (including warrantless wiretapping) and I can show numbers that make the economies about the same. Yet, Bush is the bad guy and the left views Clinton as a prophet.
Ayone who thinks Hillary will do any better is out of their minds and if she is elected and stuff goes south she and her supporters will be the first to blame everyone but her including the VRWC. She NEVER accepts responsibility and always blames someone else (usually George Bush).
Kucinich is a certifiable NUT.
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Big Dog,
http://youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=-PvaNWrkFeQ
http://youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=s1UT2Ms5E2k
http://youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=6Xb3pKzWikk&feature=related
Also, Ron Paul considers Kucinich to be one of the few congressmen of decency. It should be noted that Kucinich was one of ONLY SIX representatives that voted against HR1955 (Senate bill to be titled SR1959).
However, when questioned about the housing bubble and the reason for its collapse, his response was that adequate oversight was not given to the Federal Reserve. So I find fault with this, as I don’t believe the Fed would have worked in the people’s interest. I do believe that the majority of the homes loans were given, knowingly, to people of questionable credit and income. As the amount of money required for down payments on the homes, today, is significant, I can only determine that banks that foreclose on these homes and then sell them have collected large amounts of people’s savings, upfront, and will lose little money on the subsequent sale of the foreclosed homes.
It is my belief and that of Ron’s that preemptive war is wrong and unconstitutional. Traditionally, war is only waged, when our country is directly threatened. The congress (read: the people) DECLARES war and the president oversees it. In both cases, this has not been the case. I don’t know what historians say about preemptive wars. But I can only imagine that it would be tied, historically, to the beginning of the collapse of a nation or empire. We now strike out of fear, rather than defense. Of course, it’s sold, to us, as being in our nation’s best interest. We are left only to trust that our government knows what’s best for us. This gets diluted, what the people ask their government questions and that the response is that the questions can’t be answered for reasons of national security. Again, we are only left to trust.
I think it’s important to understand that the only thing that’s happened, since the Iraqi war has started, is that money has been, once again, placed directly into the hands of our military contractors. We have not gained anything for the Iraqi people. They and we are no safer than we were before. Sadam was a bad guy. But we (our CIA) is responsible for him being there, to begin with. We have government documents stating that the nation of Iraq was no credible threat to the United States, contrary to what was sold to us. And yet we persist. The Democrats that once said that we should pull out, immediately, have now changed their tune. The Republicans say that the ‘war’ may be open-ended. What they are both saying, in their own, unique, way is that MORE MONEY must be spent.
Ron Paul openly states that our country currently borrows app. $2.5B, every day, from China to pay our bills and sustain the invasion. Neither Democrats nor Republicans deny this. Nor will they mention it themselves -it’s better not to let the people know… What we are told is that the economy is doing fine, that jobs are up, and inflation is low. So how then has our dollar been passed, in value, by the Canadian dollar? Why is the dollar even weaker against the Euro? Why is gold back up to nearly $850/ounce, when it was only $300 two years ago? All is NOT well, as they would lead you to believe…
The Fed used to print a paper called the M3 Statistic. It basically told us how much money they’d printed, how much was in circulation. In short, it told us how much inflation there was in our currency. Either this or last year, they said that they were no longer going to do this. Why?
While Ron Paul has to address issues such as welfare, government programs, abortion, et-cetera, it’s important to note that his platform is strongly centered around finance. He understands that if our country goes under, things like abortion and welfare aren’t going to matter. If we go broke, a situation that looms closer and closer, every day, while those are great topics of debate, little will done to experiment with the concepts and ideas. We will be back into another depression and so desperate that an idea like having a new currency, such as the Amero, will sound great.
I’ll sign off with this: While Ron Paul has received more campaign contributions, from military personnel, than any other candidate, Hillary Clinton has received more campaign contributions, from military contractors, than any other candidate.
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[…] Big Dogs Weblog Says: November 23rd, 2007 at 4:21 pm eMona Charen of NRO Skewers Ron Paul…I am not a Ron Paul supporter but to be clear, I have not gotten on the bandwagon of any candidate. I need to see more before I take a decision as to whom I will support. I understand there is a big net roots campaign for Ron Paul of Texas. I have w… […]
Wow, I’m pleasantly surprised to find some intelligent people here debating both sides of these issues! I somewhat follow Charen’s columns and I’m even more inclined to do so now. I like to laugh at her tiresome neocon rhetoric. I had some time to kill and couldn’t help writing a letter to Charen, not that she will read it, and her editor…enjoy
Dear Editor,
This is a copy of a letter that I recently wrote to Mona Charen and thought that I would pass it on to you, as well.
Thank You
———
Dear Mona,
It is not a habit of mine to send personal emails to columnists, but your article “Too Close To Kooky” prompted me to read virtually every article written by you within recent months and to read more about you, in general. Not because my personal beliefs and opinions about Ron Paul are similar to your own, not by a long shot, but because I thought that your incredulous attempt to discredit Dr. Paul was rather …. “kooky”.
I won’t bother addressing your individual claims here (I certainly will, at your request), but suffice it to say that while I do agree with some of your commentaries, and find your witticisms somewhat entertaining, I find that much of your work lacks criteria that would be considered editorialization based on factual truth. Now, I realize that this is a trend very popular in our “infotainment” industry, but it worries me when I see so many columnists basing their opinions on rhetoric and not actual fact. Your tendency to call names and use labels like a schoolyard bully, in my mind, makes you no better than the people that you claim to despise so much.
After reading your material it’s easy for me to form the basic opinion that you are just an average person who shares their opinion in the guise of an objective report. Is this true? Care to comment?
“The problems we face do not cry out for a man on a white horse, but for someone who can persuade the nation about what is required to face our problems” ~Mona Charen
Well said. If you think that you can persuade me into believing that there is a person who can better shoulder this monumental task than Dr. Paul, then please, I would like to hear what you have to say.
I’m curious: was Iraq ever involved in ANY terrorist attack on the United States? If so, it’s been covered up pretty well. Of course there are a couple of conspiracy theorists who think they were involved in 9/11, but such reports have been debunked again and again.
So what “terror” were we fighting when we invaded Iraq? George Bush’s utterly irrational fear of the coming Iraqi invasion of the United States? Wouldn’t that be something to see? No army, no navy, no air force, no marines, no industrial plant, and trying to invade the most powerful country in the world. What a hoot! It would be like “The Mouse that Roared”!
I have been trying ever since the war drums started beating for Iran to get somebody to describe to me the logistics of Iran’s coming invasion of the United States. So far, I’ve found no takers.
Nobody can, including Paul. This is why he has never made this statement. Many liars and scumbags have made the statement for him, but he never said it.
What he has said is that one of the most important reasons that we were attacked is that they are angry with us, which is pretty obviously true, and that one of the most important reasons they are angry with us is because we have been meddling with their affairs since we overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953, under Eisenhower. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is simple fact, and well documented. It sounds odd, because people almost never mention it … even during the hostage crisis under the Peanut Farmer.
Does this mean the attack was justified? No.
Does this mean that America is the worst country on earth? F**k no.
Does this mean that we might be better off if we did not waste our time and money manipulating the affairs of other countries? Yes. Absolutely. Obviously. This is a no-brainer. We gained nothing by our “regime change” in 1953, and lost much.
What I don’t understand about the neocons who want so badly to “win” the war is Iraq is this — what the f**k do we win? Are we going to take enough oil, without paying for it, to pay for our enormous costs in restoring their country? I doubt it. This is not the 19th century, and I don’t expect that we would act that way. So what do we get? What can we possibly gain, that is worth the lives of 4000 American soldiers, and several more huge steps toward our national bankruptcy?
Rich,
Hussein has been a problem since the first war. He had WMD and he used them to kill thousands (tens of thousands in Iraq) and the major concern was that he would sell these and other WMD to radical groups. Now, these debunked ideas, do they include the meetings between bin Ladn and Hussein, the gifts and the mutual agreements to destroy the US. Do they include the papers that have been translated or the tapes that have Hussein and his people discussing how to be involved in attacking America.
You act as if the fact that they have no huge military assets means they cannot attack and use the mouse that roared. bin Laden has no army, navy, marine corps or air force and he struck us in our country using our planes as weapons. This is the problem with people that underestimate the threats or the people who make them.
Paul has said, why did they attack us, because they are mad at us for meddling in their affairs. That means we made them mad and they attacked us.
As for the war, we can debate all night if it was a good idea or not but we are there and the only exit strategy is winning. If Paul gets his way and pulls us out then the radical Islamic world will claim victory and follow us home. They will continue to attack and they will kill lots of people here. This is what Paul fails to understand. This is not like taking care of a pregnant woman, this is deadly and requires people to be willing to fight. Paul is not that man.
How will all the Ronbots respond when he brings them home and we are attacked? Paul is old and won’t be around for much longer but the younger people will have to be here to clean up that mess.
We can fight them there or here. I prefer there and some folks prefer here. Unfortunately, those who prefer here won’t be the ones fighting.
Big D,
Again, I have to take exception to the assumption that they’ll follow us home. That, I believe, is the source of the fear generated by the government and media. And I believe that it’s only being done so to continue giving tax dollars to weapons suppliers… There is no ‘winning’ this war. There is only the loss of people and funds. We are not going to change the mindset of the middle east. Only they can do that for themselves.
Ron Paul’s idea of leaving people alone not only means pulling out of Iraq and letting the situation unfold in the direction that which it has the most potential -be it a democracy, a divided state, a civil war- it means the discontinuation of the financing of nations in the middle east -and all nations everywhere, for that matter.
Ron has received a lot of bad press for the allusion that he doesn’t support Israel. His argument and that of a lot of Israelis is that they don’t need or want our support. Their military industry produces some of the finest weapons available. If you’re typing this blog on a Core 2 Duo processor, that is thanks to Intel’s Israeli development team. They have the weapons, technology, and toughness to defend themselves, as they’ve shown time and time again. The lion of Egypt was little match for the mouse of Israel.
I knew that the outcome of the Iraq invasion was going to be the destabilization of the nation. My prediction, from day one, was that it was going to turn into nothing more than a middle eastern Ireland. Maybe rightfully so. The majority has long since been controlled by the minority. It translates well to our country also.
Leave them (the entire middle east) alone, completely, hands-off alone, and see what happens. Give them ZERO REASON to ‘terrorize’ us. They’ll be just fine. And so will we.
When making my Ron Paul case to a Democrat friend, one of his arguments was, “What about the War on Terror?” I couldn’t believe my ears. After all of his intellectual grandstanding, he’d finally given in to that idea. After all, the War on Terror is an idea. And nothing more. There is no winning. Stamp out and kill every person on the planet that does not like us and what will happen? Others will see. And they will, in turn, hate us. Give them no reason to hate us, i.e. let them be, let them live their lives, and the thought will never cross their minds. Of course, the other possible outcome of stamping out all the nay-sayers, is the fear of us. And that is what you have to decide you want to be, as a person. That is the neocon approach. Because if people fear them, they have control. That is the evil empire people speak of, when referring to the current administration and direction of our country.
“…the only exit strategy is winning.” Big D., you should lobby for Boeing:) So perhaps we do win. Iraq is made to set up its democracy, under our guise, all of the terrorists are killed and captured, and all the different Iraqis decide to stop killing themselves; what next? According to neocons and now Dems, Iran. Next we launch a war against Iran. Iran has made the statement that Israel should be wiped from the planet -nevermind that they have zero nukes, while Israel has app. 130. They’re also financing terrorists -I think we all know that the money comes and came from the Saudis; but they sell us oil…
With the current war and in this hypothetical war, economics eventually has to come into play. In short, we go to war, at our own peril. This country cannot afford what it has gotten itself into. Like I said before, gold is up to $850 an ounce -from $300 two years ago. Why do I make such a big deal of this and why does Ron Paul stand for a currency backed by something tangible, instead of the current fiat dollar that we use? Because the value of gold doesn’t change that much -the amount of it, barring some huge jackpot discovery of thousands of tons of gold, stays the same. It pretty much is worth what it’s worth. Despite the supposed great economy and low inflation, the truth in the value of our dollar is in how much gold it can buy. And right now, it’s a lot less than it was two years ago. This is why the middle class and poor are having such a hard time. It costs more dollars, which are now less valuable, to buy the same thing. This is the effect of the government printing more dollars to finance the war, social programs, and other expensive bureaucracies. We can’t afford it all. And to stay willfully ignorant of that fact is only going to lead our country into a post-USSR era. We’ll be broke!
It doesn’t take a lot of foresight to see these things coming. This isn’t end-of-the-world Armageddon-type stuff. This is what’s happened to plenty of other countries before ours. And it’s exactly what we’re lining ourselves up for right now.
I hear a lot of talk about conspiracy theories. When I hear people say those words, I can tell that most of them are thinking of UFO’s, Roswell, 9/11, and David Icke lizard people. I wish people would undo that type of thinking, because are very real conspiracy theories that are present. There are very real conspiracies taking place. Enron was a conspiracy. The Clinton real estate deal (White Water, Waterhouse, Whatever) was a conspiracy. Martha Stewart’s stock scandal was a conspiracy. Plenty of conspiracies do, in fact, exist. What makes you think the government, in cahoots with big corporations, is impervious to this? They are people, just like the people I mentioned above.
One question that I would like to have answered is why World Trade Center: Building 7 fell. Not a lot of people know that a third building went down that day. It was blocks from the twin towers. Yet it was caught, on video, coming down. The 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges this. But it offers no explanation. How does a building like that fall, unless it’s intentionally being done? Conspiracy? Maybe. Maybe not. But what I do know is that the answers don’t line up with the realities of that day.
I’ll sign off with this: If you think you can walk outside, every day, and toss a bucket of paint onto your neighbor’s house, without him making retribution against you, I wish you the best.
Michael, you make a lot of assumptions in order to provide facts to refute my assumptions. Let us just say that Somalia is a good example of what happens when you show weakness.
I might agree with you about our financial situation but ending the war will not stop our demise. The BILLIONS in pork, the unnecessary social programs like Social Security, Medicaid, welfare, etc are bankrupting us. None of those are Constitutional. Funding a military is.
I knew we would have trouble as well, not with fighting the war because no one can beat us if we use our forces but we did not have enough. I though half a million would have done the trick.
In any event, once DC cleans up all the waste,, then we can talk about how much we spend on war.
BTW, Iran is supplying arms to Hamas whether you think so or not.
D,
The question is not whether the government is charged with funding the military. By the Constitution, it is. The question is whether or not the war is necessary.
Agreed. You make assumptions to back up your beliefs. And I make assumptions for mine. I think that getting you and me to agree on the question is about as futile as our government getting those people to agree how to live. I don’t know about you. But I think that if I were show up, at your door, with an army at my back, and tell you how to do things, it would only harden your resolve that you are right and I am wrong. Maybe not. But I think people just don’t like being told what to do.
As far as governments supplying weapons, we were no different w/ the Russians in Afghanistan and with Israel today. They use the same tactic we do; Get others to fight your war. How is it right for us to do it and wrong for them?
I think we can agree that we have similar goals, we just disagree on how to attain them.
The point about the weapons was that you indicated it was SA and not Iran. It is both but Iran denies it just as they denied enriching Uranium while they were doing it.
Israel wants our support and has not asked us to stop providing it. It is one little country surrounded by a lot of people who want to wipe it out.
I have been a fan of letting all the Middle East fight it out and we can deal with who is left. But that means we stop ALL support including financial and humanitarian. Let the bastards starve to death and if an Earthquake or tsunami hit them they can figure it out on their own.
As for whether the war is necessary it is a moot point now that we are there. I did laugh though with the Army showing up at my door thing. I got a picture of the Alamo in my head…
I absolutely agree that we should cut off every dollar of foreign aid to every country in the world. That would allow wonderful things to happen:
1) We could end WWII, and bring our troops home from Germany and Japan
2) We could end the Korean war, and bring our troops home from South Korea
3) Socialist governments which we prop up would fall. Perhaps they would be replaced with something better.
4) We could pay down the national debt.
Paul is neither Anti-Israeli nor Anti-Arab. He’s Pro-American. He believes in the radical idea that the American government exists for the sole benefit of America.