Ron Paul: Too weird for the White House

[Spikesoldier]

Guess the Civil Rights movement was a waste of time, IYO. Free markets would have worked it all out fine.

Nope but I strongly believe that EEO and AA should be repealed. Note in Article II of CRA'64 that a small local business such as the pizza shop mentioned which does not engage in interstate commerce, or any business of less than 4 employees does not have to adhere to the employment implications of the CRA.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Yep it's all a conspiracy. :sneaky:

Think for a minute, If dems (like those here in the forum) believe that Obama would trash RP in the general, why shouldn't they be doing all they can to get RP the nomination? Of course you will say it's because the dems are really afraid of him (RP).

I doubt that Dem's would jump into the fray just right now as their main strategy is to sit back and wait for someone to go after when they appear to be in a commanding lead. For example they jumped in to help bring down Herman Cain (with the help of a willing attack dog Gloria Allred) when he started to look like the guy who was going to sweep the nomination.

Now they are sitting back to see who they should go after next when a clear front runner is found. Furthermore Dem's understand that to much interference by them would also cause a ground swell of unification in the party which is something else they do not want to see either so they are picking choosing when to step in a fight a battle.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

This video is funny. Did the person who put it on youtube do so for satirical purposes? Because he doesn't say anything racist in the video at all.


Also... instead of just referring to these 20-30 year old newsletters, how about citing some racist examples from them.

That was a wee bit of sarcasm on my part.

 

[airdata]

Yep it's all a conspiracy. :sneaky:

Think for a minute, If dems (like those here in the forum) believe that Obama would trash RP in the general, why shouldn't they be doing all they can to get RP the nomination? Of course you will say it's because the dems are really afraid of him (RP).

If there really is such thing as "liberal media" perhaps thats why they pretend Ron Paul has no chance, and rather highlight the other clowns. Newt Gingrich is the #1 candidate if you are pro obama because he's going to be by far the easiest to discredit ( since he's already discredited ) and totally smash.

 

[frostedflakes]

He continues to believe that a restaurant owner should have the right to not serve blacks, simply because they are black. He calls this racist attitude "private property rights." He doesn't argue that the restaurant owner should be free of public health inspections - no, it's not a private property right to serve tainted food to the public. It's just a private property right to be as bigoted and racist as Ron Paul is.

Should Curves not be allowed to deny membership to men? I mean it goes both ways, private property rights can be used for things many would consider deplorable and they can be used for legitimate reasons, such as providing women a place where they can work out without being ogled or harassed by meatheads at the gym. It can be an unpopular stance, but if you truly believe in the right of a business owner to decide who they want to provide service for, you can't really support one situation and not the other without being a hypocrite.

And restaurant health inspections are a local thing. His main beef with Title II I think is making it a federal issue, I don't doubt he would be opposed to federally-mandated health inspections as well. But if states and/or local governments want to mandate health inspections or require restaurants to provide service for all customers, more power to them.

 

[guyver01]

Should Curves not be allowed to deny membership to men?

Curves fitness and weight loss facilities are designed specifically for and focused on women, although in some states, men are allowed to join.

 

[davmat787]

This was always leading to a Romney nomination. The rest of the Republican field, Ron Paul included, is insane.

While I can agree the field is very lacking, and I am not defending them, weren't you just contesting in another thread that Kim Jon Il is not insane, since starving 10% of his population was rational in the sense of paying for nukes for his lifestyle self preservation? It seems like your issue was with the word insane itself being misapplied, that Kim Jong Il was not technically insane for his actions? How is your usage any different then?

What part of allowing his people to starve to death is 'insane', at least as it pertains to him using nuclear weapons? It's certainly horrible from a moral standpoint, but if your perspective is to remain in power at all costs (which his certainly was), it was a perfectly rational decision to make.

 

[xj0hnx]

He continues to believe that a restaurant owner should have the right to not serve blacks, simply because they are black. He calls this racist attitude "private property rights." He doesn't argue that the restaurant owner should be free of public health inspections - no, it's not a private property right to serve tainted food to the public. It's just a private property right to be as bigoted and racist as Ron Paul is.

Are you trying to say that's not consistent? It is, a restaurant that doesn't serve black people isn't going to hurt anyone but themselves, a restaurant that sells tainted food does hurt someone else, they aren't related when it comes to freedom of property rights. Not that I agree with his views on the subject, just that your statement doesn't really mean anything.

 

[fskimospy]

While I can agree the field is very lacking, and I am not defending them, weren't you just contesting in another thread that Kim Jon Il is not insane, since starving 10% of his population was rational in the sense of paying for nukes for his lifestyle self preservation? It seems like your issue was with the word insane itself being misapplied, that Kim Jong Il was not technically insane for his actions? How is your usage any different then?

You will have to forgive me the use of some hyperbole. I do believe that the argument of people about nuclear weapons is that these people will use them foolishly because they are genuinely unbalanced, and I find that to be a misguided and dangerous position for the US to take. In the case of Republican candidates, I just mean that they have opinions that are way outside the mainstream of US political thought.

 

[davmat787]

You will have to forgive me the use of some hyperbole. I do believe that the argument of people about nuclear weapons is that these people will use them foolishly because they are genuinely unbalanced, and I find that to be a misguided and dangerous position for the US to take. In the case of Republican candidates, I just mean that they have opinions that are way outside the mainstream of US political thought.

Forgiven as requested.

I had read the two comments maybe a minute apart, and could not resist poking at the juxtaposition of the two.

 

[DAGTA]

and, yet, Ron Paul is still the best candidate in the mix.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Remember how CNN was playing up that Ron Paul walked out of an interview without answering questions about the who newsletter issue?

Guess what it was total bullshit. The fucking interviewer even thanks him for "answering the questions" after a 8 minute interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RLonnC_ZWQ0

CNN is demonstrating that they have a pretty strong anti-Ron Paul agenda but I guess they side with the powers that be that keep the status quo moving along.

 

[soundforbjt]

Thank GOD, this will be the last year of the Paulbots. That is, until his idiot son decides to try and run.

 

[DrPizza]

he also believes that bad businesses with bad management, and retarded policies should be allowed to fail, and not be the benefactors of any bailout.

lets use your pizza joint as an example. if you had a sign that said no blacks allowed, it would probably offend a lot of people, and people wouldnt want to come to your business, due to that retarded policy.

then they would go to the tv station and do a story about your black-hating business. they will then vote with their wallet, the public will stop being patrons, and you will be soon out of business.

let the hateful people that are stupid enough to stick with a retarded policy hang themselves.

You're as stupid as Ron Paul is. There are large areas of the country that are very racist. A racist business would do just fine in such areas. You're also naive if you think a television station would waste their time with such a story. You seem to believe that the whole free market thing would have worked out problems that the civil rights act (that Ron Paul was against) did a lot to eliminate. (Not that the civil rights act fixed everything.) Seriously, that thought is about the most retarded thing I've read today. About the only indication that you gave your reply any thought at all was the attempt to deflect by pointing out that Ron Paul thinks failing businesses should be allowed to fail. That has absolutely nothing to do with this.

 

[woolfe9999]

Remember how CNN was playing up that Ron Paul walked out of an interview without answering questions about the who newsletter issue?

Guess what it was total bullshit. The fucking interviewer even thanks him for "answering the questions" after a 8 minute interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RLonnC_ZWQ0

CNN is demonstrating that they have a pretty strong anti-Ron Paul agenda but I guess they side with the powers that be that keep the status quo moving along.

What gives you the impression that the interview was over other than Paul, who was clearly unhappy with the interviewer, removing his mic? Yeah, she thanks him for answering questions as he's removing the mic. And?

In any event, the problem with the interview wasn't that he cut if short. It was that he denied ever having read the newsletters, but he defended them back in 1996, saying they were being taken out of context.

 

[Anarchist420]

You're as stupid as Ron Paul is. There are large areas of the country that are very racist. A racist business would do just fine in such areas. You're also naive if you think a television station would waste their time with such a story. You seem to believe that the whole free market thing would have worked out problems that the civil rights act (that Ron Paul was against) did a lot to eliminate. (Not that the civil rights act fixed everything.) Seriously, that thought is about the most retarded thing I've read today. About the only indication that you gave your reply any thought at all was the attempt to deflect by pointing out that Ron Paul thinks failing businesses should be allowed to fail. That has absolutely nothing to do with this.

Dr. Paul is the smartest member of Congress.

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can work both ways. What if a black business owner didn't want to serve whites?

They would've had the majority of the customers in some areas of the country.

I also fail to understand how Dr. Paul can be racist if he's against Federal profiling of Arabs. He feels a lot of sympathy for the innocent brown people the U.S. is murdering.

 

[Steeplerot]

Dr. Paul is the smartest member of Congress.

I will never get this creepy cult of personality thing about another damn fundie nutcase Texan who says he hates "the fed" (although he would in reality not do a damn thing about it) and a little lip service about the wars and he is suddenly some internet messiah or whatever.

Here is a hint about Texans: they are known to stack the bullshit as tall as the state is wide.

The only thing for sure to be trusted good coming out of TX is a empty greyhound bus.

And what is with you guys using Dr. as if this lends some type of credibility I see folks do this with that headcase Savage botanist talk radio guy also.

Paul is another fed employee sucking off the government teat for the past 20 years, another libertarian hypocrite pie-in the sky idealist like his hero Ayn Rand.

 

[lopri]

New Republic has the collection.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive

Apparently his "newsletter" had been circulating for nearly a decade. Click any of them to read for yourself and make your own judgment. (1. Whether the views are/were likely Paul's, 2. How sound those views are) I personally don't think a person's belief system, once matured, will radically change without some dramatic extraneous experience. I mean, Paul's worldviews seem to have been quite consistent for the period (nearly 10 years), after all.

 

[frostedflakes]

"Kind words for David Duke" = recognizing that he did well in a primary election? Really? The TNR piece also conveniently forgets to quote an April 1989 newsletter that denounces Duke as "an adherent of the violent philosophy of the KKK" and wonders why the media spends so much time attacking the politically impotent Duke and tiny bands of skinheads instead of going after the likes of Oliver North "who has done much more damage to America than a few scattered fascists."

This is the problem with focusing too much on select excerpts that are clearly intended to portray the newsletters (and by extension Paul) in the worst possible light. And again, remember that these newsletters were published monthly for decades and the hateful comments found in about 8 of them between 1990-1994 is the exception, not the norm.

 

[lopri]

Why don't you give a comparable non-selective list of Paul's newsletters? I'll read them with open mind.

 

[fskimospy]

"Kind words for David Duke" = recognizing that he did well in a primary election? Really? The TNR piece also conveniently forgets to quote an April 1989 newsletter that denounces Duke as "an adherent of the violent philosophy of the KKK" and wonders why the media spends so much time attacking the politically impotent Duke and tiny bands of skinheads instead of going after the likes of Oliver North "who has done much more damage to America than a few scattered fascists."

This is the problem with focusing too much on select excerpts that are clearly intended to portray the newsletters (and by extension Paul) in the worst possible light. And again, remember that these newsletters were published monthly for decades and the hateful comments found in about 8 of them between 1990-1994 is the exception, not the norm.

Who cares if its the exception? There's literally zero context that could make what was in them okay. The lengths that Ron Paul's supporters are going to in order to defend what is quite clearly indefensible does nothing other than discredit them.

Ron Paul edited and published a newsletter that repeatedly said really racist things.

Ron Paul made a lot of money off this newsletter.

When asked about these really racist things, he defended them.

Ron Paul has sent out mailings with his signature on them that said really racist things.


Ron Paul may not subscribe to any of these beliefs now, but to say that he had nothing to do with them in the past means that at best he is totally inept at managing a newsletter where he reaped substantial profits from articles that included obvious race baiting. I guess if you are just arguing that he was an incompetent manager, we can go there too.

As has been said before: Imagine if an identical situation existed except that Obama was the one who owned such a newsletter. His candidacy would have been instantly over. People freaked out because he watched a pastor give rants that weren't as bad as this... Ron Paul has these rants with his name attached to them. Have some perspective and recognize just how shitty this is.

 

[Craig234]

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can work both ways. What if a black business owner didn't want to serve whites?

They would've had the majority of the customers in some areas of the country.

This shows the immaturity of your understanding of the issues. You have no clue about the morality involved in discrimination and segregation - to you, having whites discriminate against blacks and blacks discriminate against whites is just as good as non-discrimination, because it's equal. You point to a black city discriminating against whites and gleefully clap saying 'See! They can to! Yayyyyy!"

All in the service of a pathetic ideology that mass dicrimination is better than the government having a role in preventing it.

This is why people note radical Libertarians can look at our country under their policies filled with poverty and misery for almost everyone and say "the sweet smell of freedom!"

Hence Ron Paul's comment on the hurricane that hit his district that a century ago, in the worst hurricane that killed thousands also in his district, that was BETTER because it had no federal involvement in helping people. He mentioned how that last one went with praise for how much better that was.

Is it any wonder radical Libertarians are compared to North Koreans for brainwashing?

I also fail to understand how Dr. Paul can be racist if he's against Federal profiling of Arabs. He feels a lot of sympathy for the innocent brown people the U.S. is murdering.

I don't think he feels any sympathy for 'the innocent brown people that the U.S. is murdering', any more than bin Laden felt sympathy for the Palestinians he used for propaganda to whip up popular support for his attacks. Paul has an ideology, ;like a cult leader, and it just so happens that his isolationist policies would kill fewer 'iinnocenct brown people', so it's politically conventient to borrow progressive rhetorice and pretend he 'cares'.

Like some pro-life groups who oppose abortion in the name of the fetus but oppose practically any help for the child after being born, Paul might happen to oppose some killing of 'brown people' but he'd also just as soon watch them starve before one cent of government program was used to help them.

I haven't heard a word from Paul that sounds like sympathy for anyone - only spouting his ideology, hate government, hate taxes.

And it's disengenuous of you to try to address his history with racist writings by scrambling for an angle to 'spin' as if his isolationism had anything to do with anti-racist principles.

 

[Craig234]

Who cares if its the exception? There's literally zero context that could make what was in them okay. The lengths that Ron Paul's supporters are going to in order to defend what is quite clearly indefensible does nothing other than discredit them.

Ron Paul edited and published a newsletter that repeatedly said really racist things.

Ron Paul made a lot of money off this newsletter.

When asked about these really racist things, he defended them.

Ron Paul has sent out mailings with his signature on them that said really racist things.


Ron Paul may not subscribe to any of these beliefs now, but to say that he had nothing to do with them in the past means that at best he is totally inept at managing a newsletter where he reaped substantial profits from articles that included obvious race baiting. I guess if you are just arguing that he was an incompetent manager, we can go there too.

As has been said before: Imagine if an identical situation existed except that Obama was the one who owned such a newsletter. His candidacy would have been instantly over. People freaked out because he watched a pastor give rants that weren't as bad as this... Ron Paul has these rants with his name attached to them. Have some perspective and recognize just how shitty this is.

Let's say that Paul supported the writings at the time for the sake of discussion.

In that case, I haven't seen any evidence that his views have changed - his denials now - 'idsavowing' it - look only like not wanting accountability, showing no change in views.

Rachel Maddow made the same point - she said he needs to explain why the racist views are wrong, to show his thinking and policies, not simply 'deny involvement'.

I'm not sure, but I suspect Jack Abramoff is likely really repntant about his history. I say that in part because I felt he always had a 'moralistic' side to him that had been perverted when he was doing wrong, such that it was morel likely he could understand his wrong more eventually, and part because he cam make detailed explanations of how he was wrong and his views now that sound believable.

Paul has none of that. He'll speak for hours passionately about his hate for government, but look for one sentence that's passionate against racism - it's not there.

That's not in his views, not his concern.

Imagine a man who has an affair and is caught and confronted. He says 'oh I'm sorry ok I'm changed now, but let's talk after this football game'. That's the message of someone who doesn't want the accountability - deny he supports cheating - but has little to say showing he's changed, and shows very little concernand respect for his partner. That's Paul - rip off the microphone and storm out of the interview annoyed, but can't put a few sentences together really explaining how he's passionately against racism.

So when you say Paul might not subscribe to these views now, if he did before, I see no evidence to say that's changed other than not wanting to admit it for political gain.

It's common for people who 'believe in a cause' to not want to think their leader in that cause is a fraud. While I'm not saying for a fact Paul is a fraud on this, I do think if he is, his followers may largely have a hard time accepting that - they're in denial because they're heavily dedicated to him being that 'honest politician they can count on'. Without him, they feel lost.

To people who don't care for Paul as a leader for other reasons, it's a lot easier to consider the allegations.

One theory I haven't seen mentioned is that Paul didn't care that much about the issue earlier - and just allowed the racist newsletters because it helped him to have those followers.

If that's the case, it'd be easy for him to 'disavow' the views he didn't really care about in the first place now that the racists are a liability instead of a help.

If that's the case, no wonder he just wants the issue to go away and finds it annoying. What can he do but admit mistakes that wouild greatly damage him?

His 'had no idea what his own newsletter said for years' sounds a lot like Anthony Weiner's 'someone hacked into his facebook account to send photos he's never seen'.

'I did not have editorial relations with that newsletter' - Ron Clinton.

 

[frostedflakes]

Who cares if its the exception? There's literally zero context that could make what was in them okay. The lengths that Ron Paul's supporters are going to in order to defend what is quite clearly indefensible does nothing other than discredit them.

Ron Paul edited and published a newsletter that repeatedly said really racist things.

Ron Paul made a lot of money off this newsletter.

When asked about these really racist things, he defended them.

Ron Paul has sent out mailings with his signature on them that said really racist things.


Ron Paul may not subscribe to any of these beliefs now, but to say that he had nothing to do with them in the past means that at best he is totally inept at managing a newsletter where he reaped substantial profits from articles that included obvious race baiting. I guess if you are just arguing that he was an incompetent manager, we can go there too.

As has been said before: Imagine if an identical situation existed except that Obama was the one who owned such a newsletter. His candidacy would have been instantly over. People freaked out because he watched a pastor give rants that weren't as bad as this... Ron Paul has these rants with his name attached to them. Have some perspective and recognize just how shitty this is.

If you're referring to the tax document from 1993, it reported *income* of $940k for Ron Paul & Associates. We don't really know how much Paul actually made from RP&A after expenses and taxes, or if the venture even broke even. Maybe the profit (or lack thereof) reported in this unreleased tax document was less damning, which is why only income ended up in that Reason article that cited it. Also remember that the newsletters weren't the only thing being published under RP&A, other projects like The Ron Paul Money Book were as well. So we don't know what portion of that income is from the newsletters either. This notion that he "reaped substantial profits" from the newsletters seems dubious at best. And even if he did, if 99% of the newsletters were the normal stuff he talks about (limited government, individual liberty, the Federal Reserve, etc.) and only 1% (a handful of articles out of the hundreds published over the decades) contained the more shocking excerpts being quoted, is it fair to say that he profited from race baiting?

Also AFAIK there's no evidence he edited the newsletters during that period (TNR uses newsletters from 1987 and 1988 listing Paul as an editor as proof, never mind that the newsletters during the period hateful comments were published do not contain any references to Paul being the editor that I know of). He wasn't even really running the newsletters during that period from what I understand.

When those issues were published, Paul was a full-time medical doctor and a busy family man, as well as an in-demand speaker and a student of politics and current events ― in short, a man with tremendous demands on his time and energy. He had recently ended an exhaustive presidential race, returned to private practice, and was not in Congress or involved in electoral politics. He had given up control of his newsletter business; he kept only a minority share in the newsletter that bore his name. He made an ill-advised decision to turn the newsletter over to others, to let others write it and edit it and publish unsigned articles in this newsletter with his name in the title. He apparently failed to closely monitor it. That turned out to be a ghastly error.

But you're right that his name's on it and it's hard to escape that, which is probably why campaign advisers back in 1996 suggested that he not even try to deny authorship and just accept that the newsletters will be associated with him and to try to downplay them instead by saying excerpts are being taken out of context (obviously in hindsight it would have been better to disavow them from day one, but at the time I guess what they did made more sense).

He definitely deserves criticism for not being more careful about what went out under his name, though. A mistake he has probably wished for the last couple decades that he could take back.

'I did not have editorial relations with that newsletter' - Ron Clinton.

 

[fskimospy]

If you're referring to the tax document from 1993, it reported *income* of $940k for Ron Paul & Associates. We don't really know how much Paul actually made from RP&A after expenses and taxes, or if the venture even broke even. Maybe the profit (or lack thereof) reported in this unreleased tax document was less damning, which is why only income ended up in that Reason article that cited it. Also remember that the newsletters weren't the only thing being published under RP&A, other projects like The Ron Paul Money Book were as well. So we don't know what portion of that income is from the newsletters either. This notion that he "reaped substantial profits" from the newsletters seems dubious at best. And even if he did, if 99% of the newsletters were the normal stuff he talks about (limited government, individual liberty, the Federal Reserve, etc.) and only 1% (a handful of articles out of the hundreds published over the decades) contained the more shocking excerpts being quoted, is it fair to say that he profited from race baiting?

Also AFAIK there's no evidence he edited the newsletters during that period (TNR uses newsletters from 1987 and 1988 listing Paul as an editor as proof, never mind that the newsletters during the period hateful comments were published do not contain any references to Paul being the editor that I know of). He wasn't even really running the newsletters during that period from what I understand.


But you're right that his name's on it and it's hard to escape that, which is probably why campaign advisers back in 1996 suggested that he not even try to deny authorship and just accept that the newsletters will be associated with him and to try to downplay them instead by saying excerpts are being taken out of context (obviously in hindsight it would have been better to disavow them from day one, but at the time I guess what they did made more sense).

He definitely deserves criticism for not being more careful about what went out under his name, though. A mistake he has probably wished for the last couple decades that he could take back.

And what about the solicitation mail warning about future race wars and the 'federal-homosexual coverup' of AIDS? The one that claimed he had expertise because he was a doctor and that had his signature at the end? (yeah i know it's a printed signature, but still)

I genuinely don't get the sense that he is a racist now and I consider it to be quite likely that he had little or nothing to do with what was written in his newsletter back then. It doesn't change the fact that he defended it though. People can still support Ron Paul despite these letters, but I think it's important for people to accept that he fucked up pretty badly instead of trying to claim some vast conspiracy against him.