UPI
Tuesday January 8, 2008
New Hampshire cigar shop owner Leonard Seagren is looking forward to a more flamboyant political season.
Seagren, who owns Federal Cigar, says people participating in his quadrennial Federal Forecast exhibited more "flamboyant tosses" in trying to sink a book of matches into bags bearing likenesses of their favorite presidential candidates.
This year's contest, which ran Dec. 31 through Sunday, saw Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, capturing 31 percent of the Republican tosses and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., capturing 46 percent of the Democrats.
"(Voters) were more in favor of their candidates this time than in the past," Seagren told Fosters Daily Democrat.
Following Paul on the Republican side were Sen. John McCain of Arizona with 27 percent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with 21 percent, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 10 percent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 8 percent and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee with 2 percent.
On the Democratic side, there was a tie for second between Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina with 17 percent, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York with 13 percent, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut with 3 percent, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware with 4 percent and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson with 1 percent. Biden and Dodd have both dropped out of the campaign.
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"Final Zogby NH Tracking Poll: Paul in 3-way tie for 3rd
Nick Bradley
Lew Rockwell.com
Tuesday January 8, 2008
Zogby just released the last tracking poll for New Hampshire, and has Paul, Huck, and Benito tied at about 9-10%:
McCain - 36%
Romney - 27%
Huckabee - 10%
Giuliani - 9%
Paul - 9%
Thompson - 2%
Hunter - 1%
Undecided - 5%
McCain opens up his lead, though Romney had a good day. But the 3-day average favors McCain. He leads big among Independents, though Paul is beginning to draw some of the Indies’ support and is now polling double digits again in the North – taking votes away from McCain. Paul does very well among 18-29 year olds. McCain also leads among Republicans, men and women, Moderates, and Conservatives. Again, a good day for Romney, but will he have enough time?
Firebrand Republican Congressman Ron Paul, the only GOP presidential candidate opposing the war in Iraq, also made big gains in the closing day of the campaign before the primary election. In both the Republican and Democratic races, five percent of likely voters said they remained undecided about whom they would support.
This is pretty much what I expect: A McCain-Romney race , followed by a three-way toss-up for third place. At the top of the race, Paul clearly benefits if Romney somehow beats McCain: it keeps him [Romney]in the race and the NeoCon vote fractured; I presume Romney's support would go to McCain and Giuliani if he dropped out. In addition, a Romney victory would prevent McCain from being anointed as "inevitable". Paul's slowly-but-steadily increasing support needs time, and the longer the GOP race remains fractued, the better for Paul.
Let's just hope that independents on the fence between Paul and Obama break republican and those independents on the fence between McCain and Obama break democratic. This could happen, with Paul retaining the support of a small, hardcore group of independents while a larger number soft independents (the type of uninformed voter that would be torn between a faux-independent NeoCon like McCain and a Great Society leftist like Obama) supporters will flock to Obama; if this were to occur, we would see Romney beat McCain, and Paul beat Huck and Giuliani -- at least that's my hope.
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"Vicious Ron Paul Hit Piece Scrapes The Barrel Of Yellow Journalism"
"by Paul Joseph Watson & Steve Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Another hack journalist intent on making a name for himself in the establishment media peanut gallery is the latest to spuriously attack presidential candidate Ron Paul, making completely baseless claims that the Congressman is a racist and a white supremacist sympathizer, going as far as comparing Dr. Paul to Charles Manson.
On Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show yesterday, The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick ludicrously claimed that Ron Paul personally called Martin Luther King a "gay pedophile," and stuffed 20 years' worth of "Ron Paul" newsletters full of "racist, anti-semitic, homophobic invective."
Kirchick also spewed idiotic claims that Paul "called black people animals," and spoke at a "secessionist conference" in a New Republic article.Watch the video of Kirchick's appearance on MSNBC.
Notice that when Carlson asks Kirchick if he ever heard Ron Paul make a racist remark he says "No." But then he announces: "BUT," he DID attend a conference on secession in 1995!!
Did Ron Paul attend such an event? Seemingly yes. Does this make him a racist? NO.
A fellow attendee and speaker at that same conference, Thomas DiLorenzo, explains just how off the mark the ignorant hack is with this attempted slander:
The proceedings of the conference, which the pimply-faced youth is obviously ignorant of, were published as a book: Secession, State and Liberty, edited by Dr. David Gordon, whose Ph.D. from UCLA is in the field of intellectual history. It includes essays by scholars and professors from Emory University, Florida State University, UNLV, University of Montreal, University of South Carolina, and even a lawyer from Buffalo, New York. It was published a few years after the Soviet empire imploded as the result of eleven separate acts of peaceful secession, which made it especially relevant to social scientists.
In fact, secession remains a lively topic of academic discourse, something that the PFY is obviously unfamiliar with. A few weeks ago a secession conference sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities was held in Charleston, South Carolina, featuring some thirty historians and legal scholars. In little Jamie Kirchick's empty mind, the NEH must necessarily be a hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment. (A friend in academe tells me that the participants in this conference spanned the ideological spectrum from left/liberal to Marxist).
Only an ignorant conspiracy theorist like Jamie Kirchick would assume that anyone who studies secession in a scholarly way is necessarily some kind of KKK-sympathizing kook. He knows that Ron Paul will not sue him for defamation because he is a public figure. I, however, am not a public figure.
Tucker Carlson himself acted as if he was somewhat shocked to hear the claims, like he did not know what his own guest was going to talk about. However it is clear that this was another pathetic attempt to smear Ron Paul by the same guy who turned up to a Ron Paul event with hookers and a pimp claiming they were fellow supporters.
Carlson also claims that Ron Paul campaign has recently "apologized on the phone" to him personally about comments made in the same newsletters referred to by Kirchick, something that the campaign would have no interest in doing given that they have already publicly distanced themselves from the writings, 99.9% of which are not written by Ron Paul and have no direct connection to him whatsoever.
Ron Paul’s voluminous writings are freely available to anyone who wishes to look. There is not a scintilla of evidence in any of his personal writings that he is in any way shape or form racist. Kirchick knows this full well, but has hand-picked a dozen or so statements from articles not written by Ron Paul to launch a vitriolic guilt by association slur.
Ron Paul is a gentleman, he has served in Congress over the course of three decades and his record does not have one blip against it. Anyone who has followed Paul for any modicum of time will tell you that to imagine him calling Martin Luther King a "gay pedophile" is the most patently ridiculous claim that could possibly be made.
As one respondent to the New Republic hit piece comments, "That's the problem Ron Paul presents to those trying to smear him, you have to go back 20 years and try to twist somebody else's words to try to make him look bad. With all the other candidates you can just look at what they themselves have actually been doing in the recent past and even the present."
Guilt by association is the only recourse for those who savage the Congressman in search of a pat on the head and a job offer from one of the corporate media monsters. Last time out we had to debunk a similar flailing attack when it was claimed that Ron Paul was a secret Neo-Con because he once co-authored a book with someone who went on to become a Neo-Con fifteen years later.
The New York Times was forced to issue a retraction when they printed an article that claimed Ron Paul regularly met with white supremacists at a restaurant in Arlington, Va., a completely baseless accusation intended to smear the Congressman as a racist sympathizer. In light of the fact that numerous people are now considering suing Kirchick for his libelous garbage, we also expect a swift retraction.
The key to unraveling Kirchick's smear is the complete inaccuracy of his central claim - the contention that Ron Paul hates Martin Luther King and advocates the comments of others who inferred that King was a sexual pervert and a pedophile.
If Kirchick had bothered to actually check Ron Paul's voting record (real research doesn't seem to be his forte) he would have learned that on one of the very rare occasions when the Congressman has voted for something that is not explicitly authorized in the Constitution, it was for America to recognize Martin Luther King day as a public holiday.
"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he voted to authorize the continuing operation of NASA and to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on the third Monday in January," writes Politifact.com.
Why would the Congressman, who is loathe to vote for anything that isn't authorized by the Constitution, go to such lengths to break his consistency in celebrating the contribution of Martin Luther King to society if he thought the legendary activist was a "gay pedophile".
The fact that Ron Paul has also made numerous public first person references, as oppose to 20-year-old articles written by other people, to Martin Luther King being one of his "heroes" is also ignored by Kirchick.
Most of these lies stem from an article that was written by one of Paul's aides fifteen years ago about crime figures and black people in LA - another feeble jab that fizzled into nothing.
Indeed, the very publishers of many of the newsletters that Kirchick alludes to in his hit piece publicly admitted six months ago that Ron Paul had no influence over their content.
“Ron Paul didn’t know about those comments, or know they were written under his name until much later when they were brought to his attention. There were several issues that went out with comments that he would not ordinarily make. He was angry when he saw them," said one publisher.
Since Ron Paul is as clean as a whistle and unlike Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani has no skeletons in the closet, the establishment media are forced to resort to the dirtiest trick in the book - guilt by association.
This was not the only appearance the shifty eyed New Republic hack Kirchick made yesterday.
He also appeared on the albino vampire John Gibson's radio show to spew more of his vile lies. In his introduction Gibson admits to having "been after Ron Paul because I think he is a 9/11 truther". The pair then go on to declare the Congressman an outright racist once more on the back of the same newsletters.
Kirchick states, "From 1978 onwards practically every issue is devoted to conspiracy mongering about the Trilateral Commission, first of all when someone mentions the Trilateral Commission in nefarious terms you know they are a little kooky."
Excuse me? This is the same Trilateral Commission founded by David Rockefeller who wrote in his own memoirs that he and his family have been conspiring against the United States. He expresses his hostility to Americans who seek "first and foremost to serve the national interests of the United States." Is any American citizen who opposes this "a little kooky"?
Kirchick continues, "The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, I mean that's like a real out there conspiracy theory".
No sir, the notion that the Bilderberg Group does not exist and does not play a major role in policy making and lobbying was dispensed with by even the most aggressive mainstream hacks years ago.
What have these issues got to do with allegations of racism against Ron Paul anyway? It becomes clear that Kirchick is grasping at thin air.
The pair then go on to make several extreme slurs against Ron Paul, even comparing the Congressman to Charles Manson, by citing quotes they falsely claim are written by him. They even suggest that when Ron Paul talks about "the international banking elite" he is talking about Jews and is therefore anti-Semitic.
They throw in quotes from material unconnected to Ron Paul and mix it up with selected Paul quotations which are taken completely out of context, such as past criticism of Israeli military aggression. The disgusting pair end by calling Paul a "Dirty Bigot" and "Nazi scum".
Kirchick also refers to the farcical "Stormfront Donation" saga which forced the New York Times to issue a retraction last month admitting to several errors in a post it published which carried assertions that Ron Paul meets regularly with white supremacist groups. Kirchick should be forced to issue the same retraction, Gibson and Carlson should also be brought to task for allowing known lies and smear to be broadcast on their shows.
Lew Rockwell has provided a succinct background on The New Republic in wake of the smear attempts:
TNR has a long and checkered history of pro-fascism, pro-communism, and pro-new dealism. Founded to promote the rotten progressive movement of militarism, central banking, income taxation, centralization, and regulation of business, it naturally hates and fears the Ron Paul Revolution. The mag is also famous for having published a slew of entirely made-up articles by Stephen Glass, which it passed off as non-fiction. Through the 1950s it was an important magazine, of significant if baleful influence, but it long ago declined in circulation and significance, like all DC deadtree ops. Long close to Beltway libertarians, for whom its politically correct left-neoconism is fine and dandy, TNR once published a cover story literally comparing Ross Perot to Adolf Hitler when he was running for president. That is the publication's style--hysterical smears aimed at political enemies.
Ron Paul is a hero. He stands for uncompromised integrity and unwavering adherence to the core principles of the Constitution. He also represents real Republican principals, which is why he is coming under so much attack from neoconservatives and their bootlicking media whores, who rightly recognize him and the reach of his message as the greatest threat to their usurpation of the Republican party and the values of America as a whole.
RON PAUL'S RESPONSE
Ron Paul has already responded to these ridiculous accusations and slammed them as political haymaking to coincide with the New Hampshire primary.
“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’
This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.
When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”
Judging by the deluge of comments that slam Kirchick's hit piece for what it is, the majority remain impervious to this recycled trash.
Another clue to Kirchick's completely disingenuous agenda is the fact that he approached Alex Jones to be interviewed for the New Republic article by claiming he was "doing a story on the momentum behind the Ron Paul for President campaign". In a telephone conversation he also claimed that the article "wasn't a hit piece" when repeatedly asked by Jones.
At the end of Kirchick's piece, he takes an Alex Jones quote astronomically out of context by claiming Alex says the elite want to develop themselves into "superhuman" computer hybrids able to "travel throughout the cosmos". The fact that Jones himself is paraphrasing the dreams of transhumanists in clarifying their agenda as bizarre and elitist is not explained by Kirchick who, in attributing the quote directly to Jones, attempts to associate him with its incredulity.
As one respondent accurately summarizes, "So where's the evidence? Like some photocopies of the actual newsletters? I'm not familiar with any of Ron Paul's newsletters but I am familiar with Alex Jones and your description of Endgame is completely spun so it puts your entire article into question. Alex Jones has interviewed many famous figures that do not share his views. So what? If you can't present some evidence then how do we know that you haven't taken these excerpts completely out of context? It's hard to trust any attack on Ron Paul's character coming from a Neoconservative publication like yours that vigorously defends any criticism of the precious war in Iraq and "global war on terror". Furthermore, it's very difficult to align your allegations with the character of Ron Paul that is presented in his countless speeches, interviews and books. Not a trace of any bigotry and he has many times directly attacked the idea of collectivism that leads to bigotry."
We invite readers to share their views on Mr. Kirchick's article by e mailing him at james.kirchick@gmail.com."
"John McCain Taunts Ron Paul About Fox Debate Exclusion Greg Albert
American Chronicle
Tuesday January 8, 2008
In the ABC New Hampshire debate, John McCain jeered at Paul, "We’re going to miss you tomorrow night, Ron". McCain was probably referring the upcoming Fox News Roundtable (read: debate) from which Congressman Ron Paul has been excluded despite that he is polling higher than many of its invitees (14% in New Hampshire). The New Hampshire GOP withdrew from the Fox event in protest, but McCain seems perfectly pleased with Fox’s decision, enough so to mock Ron Paul on national television anyway.
This raises an important question: How can John McCain be so smug and be the frontrunner in New Hampshire? McCain certainly has name recognition and he was the Granite State’s pick for the nomination in 2000. He has also been endorsed by a major New Hampshire newspaper, but I suspect there is another subtlety that pollsters and pundits are missing.
During the CNN coverage of the Iowa Caucuses, I listened to a layman explain his vote for John McCain. "I’m one of those people who want to get out of Iraq immediately", he said. "I think John McCain is the most credible person to do it…like how it took Nixon to go to China". It occurred to me that perhaps the GOP base does not want to stay in Iraq after all; they just think McCain is most likely to get us out.
They would be disastrously wrong. In this video, a belligerent McCain insists that the U.S. should maintain a presence in Iraq for the next 100 years. While he hopefully meant this in an emissary capacity, voters should note that the "embassy" looks a lot like a military base and it is bigger than Vatican City. Worse, the U.S. presence cannot switch to diplomatic status until military goals are realized and we cannot even define what those are anymore.
As a former McCain apologist, I am especially troubled with his new foreign policy and I have searched for reasons for his change. A haunting answer occurred to me during the CNN/Youtube debacle. There, McCain responded to Ron Paul’s criticism of the Viet Nam War of all things by defiantly stating, "we never lost a battle in Viet Nam, it was American public opinion forced us to loose that conflict". Yikes. I didn’t know the virtues of the Viet Nam War were still debatable. This statement is creepy on several levels. First, it misunderstands the nature of guerilla warfare where the point is not to win open, protracted battles, but to wear the enemy down until fighting is no longer cost-effective for him. Have the pro-war Republicans become so proud that they have turned us into the redcoats in the American Revolution? Would McCain make us continue eating bullets until he decides to learn the dynamics of insurgencies? CIA reports say "yes".
Second, the statement gives me pause about McCain’s motivations. McCain always struck me as a reasonable person, but he changed in the last eights years. Could it be that the Iraq War triggered some unsatisfied convictions about the results of Viet Nam? Are we in this war because McCain cannot bear to admit defeat a second time? Is his sacrifice in Viet Nam going to be a liability?
The sad thing is, McCain admits that he failed the Republican cause. In the same debate, he admitted, "We went to Washington to change Washington, but it changed us." Ron Paul distinguished himself by saying "I don’t think that applies to me." Indeed, it does not apply to Paul, who has held to the same core theory of governance that once earned Republican Party widespread respect. He has held to it in spite of hysteria and threats of internal ostracization. You should not get second chances in politics, especially when the stakes are this high. If McCain blew it between 2000 and 2008, then Republicans should look for a candidate who is impervious to groupthink and maintains the libertarian-conservative cause even when it is inconvenient. Since we actually have one running this time, this Republican will be voting for Ron Paul.
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