Archive for December, 2011
HillBuzz Open Thread: December 11, 2011
An Open Letter to Kevin DuJan about Ron Paul and September 11th
Hi Kevin,
We’re having this discussion in front of God and everybody, so I hope this will be an example of how people who believe different things can discuss things rationally and still respect each others’ basic goodness.
In tonight’s GOP Debate Live Blog, you say,
I am horrified by Ron Paul’s assertion that the United States government was gleeful after 9/11 or that our government knew the attacks were going to happen and let them happen anyway….After these 9/11 remarks, I’ve had enough of this garbage and no longer feel like indulging Fifth-Dimensional craziness in serious debate proceedings. I really hope Paul has to answer a question about his 9/11 remarks; I am sure my friend Jane will be looking down from Heaven with great interest to hear what he has to say.
You and I have not talked about Ron Paul’s comment in private and this is the first I’ve heard about your reaction to it. For those who aren’t familiar, it was part of a speech at the University of Iowa in which Dr. Paul was discussing his foreign policy of non-interventionism, and warning that the Obama Regime is making noises about going to war with Iran:
“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat…That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
I think that after working with you for a year, and helping keep HillBuzz.org going at a significant personal investment of time and money, you know my character. I hope you understand me to be unwaveringly patriotic and dedicated to restoring America to the great Constitutional Republic that it once was. And I hope you know that I would never support a candidate who didn’t love America, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence as much as I do. So I hope you’ll evaluate what I’m about to say while keeping that in mind.
The concepts I’m going to touch on are tough. It takes an open and curious mind to get beyond the knee-jerk, emotional reaction the Democrat-Controlled Media is counting on you to have upon hearing a sound byte like this. Members of the Ruling Class are counting on a dumbed-down electorate who are incapable of critical analysis, and ignorant of even recent history, to keep them in power. I would ask you to take a deep breath and consider this as dispassionately as you can, given the loss of your friend.
Ron Paul has said repeatedly that he’s NOT a “truther” and does not believe that 9/11 was somehow an “inside job.” Dr. Paul has, however, called it (accurately) a massive failure of our intelligence agencies. In a statement before the House of Representatives in February of 2004, Dr. Paul said,
“There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government.
Our intelligence agencies failed for whatever reason this time, but their frequent failures should raise the question of whether or not secretly spending forty billion taxpayer dollars annually gathering bad information is a good investment. The administration certainly failed us by making the decision to sacrifice so much in life and limb, by plunging us into this Persian Gulf quagmire that surely will last for years to come.
But before Congress gets too carried away with condemning the administration or the intelligence gathering agencies, it ought to look to itself. A proper investigation and debate by this Congress– as we’re now scrambling to accomplish– clearly was warranted prior to any decision to go to war. An open and detailed debate on a proper declaration of war certainly would have revealed that U.S. national security was not threatened– and the whole war could have been avoided. Because Congress did not do that, it deserves the greatest criticism for its dereliction of duty.
There was a precise reason why the most serious decision made by a country– the decision to go to war– was assigned in our Constitution to the body closest to the people. If we followed this charge I’m certain fewer wars would be fought, wide support would be achieved for just defensive wars, there would be less political finger-pointing if events went badly, and blame could not be placed on one individual or agency. This process would more likely achieve victory, which has eluded us in recent decades.”
And this is the key point I want to make, Kevin. Ron Paul’s foreign policy comes from the same philosophical basis as his domestic and economic policy…Enlightenment traditions of individual freedom, personal responsibility, free market economics, and the Golden Rule. Treat others as you wish to be treated. His foreign policy views are based on the Constitution and advice of the Founders, including George Washington, who warned the young country to avoid “entangling alliances” in his Farewell Address in 1796. It’s also based on the concept of “just war.”
America was a colonial outpost of a Imperial superpower on which the sun never set, and where the King’s word was law. One of my ancestors took up arms against the British Empire and fought under George Washington’s command, creating what was, at the time, the only country on Earth where citizens held free elections to choose their leaders.
A scrappy, ragtag band of rebels fought and died to found the United States of America, defeating the world’s greatest superpower at the time. And their fight was based on ideas and ideals, one of which was “just war,” a very old concept that had been discussed extensively in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. To many who believe in the “just war” concept, pre-emptive war is considered immoral in nearly all cases.
If you went to government schools (as I did), this may be hard for you to comprehend. It’s astonishing how ignorant and unschooled we all are, compared to our forebears.
Here’s where I admit that I didn’t vote for Bush. I’m a libertarian, and Bush was a big-government, big-spending conservative. Not my cup of tea. And my personal feeling is that George W. Bush is an honorable man who loves America, and loves the military, but made some really bad policy decisions that I can’t support. (Even so, he was a vastly better president than our first postracial, non-Muslim, Marxist and probably gay president, Barack Hussein Obama.)
I think any American with a heart still has a little PTSD about September 11th. And because September 11th was so horrifying and traumatic, it’s very hard for us to remember anything that was happening in the Bush administration prior to that date. Frankly, most of us (including me) weren’t paying much attention.
But several members of the Bush administration have said that from Day One, a number of Bush advisors and members of his administration were, in fact, eager to go to war and affect a regime change in Iraq, and were looking for any excuse to do so.
This goes against everything Ron Paul, and libertarians like me, believe in–the initiation of the use of force in the absense of a a confirmed, imminent threat to national security. And it goes against what I think America stands for.
In an interview on “60 Minutes,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go….For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.” [emphasis added]
And this is the beef I have with George W. Bush. As a libertarian, I don’t believe in pre-emptive war, just as I don’t believe in pre-emptively executing people who might commit crimes but haven’t actually done anything yet.
A story on CNN continues [emphasis added],
O’Neill and other White House insiders gave him documents showing that in early 2001 the administration was already considering the use of force to oust Saddam, as well as planning for the aftermath.
“There are memos,” Suskind told the network. “One of them marked ‘secret’ says ‘Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.’”
Suskind cited a Pentagon document titled “Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” which, he said, outlines areas of oil exploration. “It talks about contractors around the world from … 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq.”
In the book, O’Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded.
“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’” O’Neill said.
Paul O’Neill’s assertions are backed up by former CIA director George Tenet in his book, At the Center of the Storm. In a 2007 article in the Washington Post, Karen DeYoung writes [emphasis added],
White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George J. Tenet.
Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to insert “crap” into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration’s willingness to “mischaracterize complex intelligence information.”
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat”…The debate “was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did.”
According to Ron Paul–who is in a position to know, as a civil libertarian having served 10 terms in Congress–various provisions of the PATRIOT ACT had been floating around Congress for years prior to September, 2001. And after the attacks, in the tradition of Rahm Emanual, Congress “didn’t let a good crisis go to waste,” bundling up a number of privacy-killing, civil-liberties-killing chunks of legislation that had been seen as too extreme into a bill that most Representatives didn’t actually read before signing, and wouldn’t have voted for had it not been called the PATRIOT ACT.
So, in the eight months before the September 11th terrorist attacks, several members of the Bush administration were eager for an excuse to invade Iraq. Several members of Congress were eager for an excuse to start spying on Americans without due process.
I have no reason to believe that members of the Bush administration were happy that nearly 3,000 Americans died on September 11th. None at all. And that isn’t what Ron Paul said, though that is what “news” coverage has implied.
But the record and several contemporary accounts support Ron Paul’s statement, made to a packed house of over 1,300 at the University of Iowa:
“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat…That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
Dr. Paul discussed his statement in an interview on Fox News, starting at about the 5:00 mark:
The money quote is:
“This doesn’t mean [the administration] had glee about 9/11, that’s a total misinterpretation. They had pleasure in knowing that they had an excuse now to do what they’d been wanting to do for so long and what did they do? They marched into Iraq based on lies, there was no Al Qaida, no weapons of mass destruction, and look at the tragic outcomes from that effort. Undeclared war…matter of fact, that is carried over into Afghanistan, it looks like it won’t ever end unless we change the administration.”
Kevin, I sincerely hope that you’ve taken the time to read this whole letter, which, I grant you, is probably only of interest to other liberty wonks like myself.
Most people won’t have read this far. Most Americans–if they’re paying attention at all–will still make their voting decision as though they’re watching an episode of American Idol, thanks to decades of hard work by the teachers’ unions.
But I hope, at least, that you hold me in enough regard to know that both Ron Paul and I recognize the September 11th attacks for what they were–horrible, gutwrenching tragedies. And I hope you believe me when I say I’m terribly sorry for the loss of your friend Jane.
But I think that the loss of civil liberties, and endless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars are equally tragic. Because that means that the sacrifices of those who fought and died to protect those hard-won liberties–including my Revolutionary War ancestor, Moses Gee–were in vain.
Kevin, I know you aren’t going to vote for Ron Paul, but I hope that after reading this, you don’t respect me any less for my decision to do so.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Gee
********************************************
Dear Kathleen,
I’ve never censored anything from you as a Ron Paul supporter and have given you free rein to write as much as you want about him, even though I am not a supporter of his. This generates considerable hatemail for me from people out there who think Ron Paul supporters should never be given a forum, but I’ve never interfered with your making your case for Ron Paul.
The reason I’ve done this is because not only do I respect you on a personal level as a friend and as a writer, but because like him or not, Ron Paul is a phenomenon and he attracts scores of devotees coast to coast. There’s a reason that so many people are so excited by his candidacy…and I want to understand what they are so excited about.
I have tried numerous times to understand this excitement, but every time I try to dig deep and appreciate what Ron Paul is all about, something horrifying jumps out like his feelings toward 9/11.
In the debate tonight, Dr. Paul went on a tear about how we should close the Embassy in Baghdad and bring troops home from shuttered bases all over the globe, with America withdrawing all personnel to the continental US. That’s madness. Pure and utter madness.
While I do believe there are bases that are no longer needed and forces should be shifted in many cases, I don’t think Dr. Paul has a real appreciation of the ripples his dream plan would cause. I do think the US needs to start charging hefty fees for the protective services the country’s military provides, so that American taxpayers are not footing the bill for this ourselves. But I can only listen to Dr. Paul for a few minutes before he goes off the deep end with me.
I don’t think I’m alone in this, and in fact feel I’m more fair to Dr. Paul than 95% of people out there because I do keep trying to understand him and the phenomenon that surrounds him.
But 9/11 is sacred to me, as it’s sacred to many Americans. And Ron Paul’s comments on 9/11 are horrifying to me. So much so that he’s really crossed a line this time. These remarks lost a good deal of whatever credibility I had for Dr. Paul. I’m not sure why his supporters will continue to stand with him after these 9/11 remarks, but I certainly will never see Dr. Paul the same way after this.
I encourage you to keep writing about Dr. Paul and the clear media push against him (which is indeed real). I also think you may be right that Dr. Paul will win the Iowa Caucuses, since ground game is everything there and Dr. Paul’s supporters certainly are motivated to head out into the cold and vote for him. If Huckabee won in 2008, and his “I Heart Huckabee” supporters were only a fraction as devoted as the Paul supporters are, then there’s a very good chance that Paul could, indeed, win Iowa.
To be totally honest, I hope Paul DOES indeed win Iowa…because this might be the final straw that forces the parties to remove Iowa as the first in the nation state come primary season. It’s high time Iowa lost this honor, and a Paul victory following Huckabee’s the cycle before that could be just what’s needed to change the nomination calendar in the future.
I love Ron Paul’s zeal for cutting spending, but am horrified by more of what he says than I’m appreciative of his willingness to go out on a limb. Just as I see the need to recognize the fact that Ron Paul generates such fervent support amongst his supporters, Paul supporters like yourself need to understand the horror Dr. Paul strikes into the hearts of many when he talks about his dreams for American foreign policy.
Ron Paul has a very real problem, in that I am certainly not the only person horrified by his 9/11 remarks. Dr. Paul has a very real communication problem since there always seems to be such a solid disconnect between what supporters like you say he really means as opposed to how non-supporters like myself interpret the words he says.
Respectfully,
Kevin DuJan
Republican Debate Live Blog Transcript: Des Moines Iowa ABC Yahoo Debate Saturday December 10th, 2011
NOTE: This is a live blog transcript of the Republican Debate taking place in Des Moines, Iowa on Saturday December 10th, 2011 and covered by ABC News and Yahoo. In my opinion, that’s as professional a level of coverage as allowing Al’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning Supply and Burger King to host a debate (with no offense intended towards either Al or “The King”). They’re bringing Diane Sawyer out of the malfunctioning cryo-chamber she sleeps in and they’re borrowing a booster seat to prop little Georgie Snuffleupaguss high enough over the table to participate in questioning as well, like a big boy and everything. I fully expect this to be a severely amateur hour performance by the “journalists” playing “moderators”, with ample “Gotcha!” moments where these people beclown themselves in their attempts to harm the Republicans running for president against Barack Obama. Since Newt Gingrich is the latest frontrunner to emerge, the goal tonight for the “moderators” will be to tear him down so that Willard “Mittens” Romneycare becomes the ultimate (and, according to them, “inevitable”) nominee. Let’s see how much these fools get away with tonight, and how aggressively Gingrich serves whatever they’re dishing right back at them.
The debate starts at 9pm EST and 8pm CST.
If you know of a good feed to watch the debate online for those who don’t have televisions, please chime in with that in comments below.
It looks like I’ll be using this feed from Yahoo.com — but I like to have backup ones in case that primary feed fails midway through (which usually seems to happen).
In the few minutes I have before the debate starts, I think it’s a good time to run through my thoughts on each of the candidates and what I expect from them tonight:
Newt Gingrich: I still marvel at the fact that the man I actually hated once upon a time in the 90s is now someone I can actually see becoming the 45th President of the United States. The reality is that voters do not unseat an incumbent president unless a challenger emerges who forms a clear remedy for the current president’s failings: and Gingrich is clearly a remedy to Barack Obama (unlike Willard “Mittens” Romneycare, who is essentially Obama-lite, or Obama-white, as the case may be). Gingrich is fast on his feet and intelligent where Obama fumbles and bumbles with TelePrompTers. Gingrich speaks in cold hard facts while Obama waxes in nebulous platitudes. Gingrich clobbers his opponents in debates while Obama relies on the memories of his soaring orations from 2008. There are a lot of very foolish people out there who keep harping that Gingrich’s three marriages will keep voters from embracing him, but that’s just nonsense. I surely hope that if the Obama campaign attacks Gingrich on a marital front in 2012 that Republicans are smart enough to call Barack Obama’s own marriage into question, and start openly talking about the fact that Obama is a closeted gay man in a sham marriage that includes frequent cheating on his wife with male staffers. I don’t think Democrats are going to want to go there, so the “Gingrich has been married three times” bit really gets trumped by “Barack Obama used to frequent bathhouses in Chicago and still sleeps with men in the White House” reality. The GOP is indeed the Party of Stupid and is meek beyond comprehension most of the time, but something tells me that Newt Gingrich will see to it that all of Obama’s own dirty, bathhouse-scented laundry sees the light of day if the White House decides to try to make 2012 a referendum against heterosexuals marrying and divorcing multiple times.
Willard “Mittens” Romneycare: Romneycare is the least electable Republican in this race because he does not provide any contrast at all with Barack Obama in a general election. If Republicans run Romneycare, they take Obamacare off the table for criticism — which will be a disaster down ticket since this election will really be about jobs, the economy, and repealing Obamacare before it does any more damage to jobs and the economy. If Romneycare is the nominee, the conservatives will lose the ability to criticize Obamacare. They’ll also lose the ability to criticize any of the myriad other things that Romneycare has supported over the years, before deciding to no longer support so long as the polls tell him that’s the best position for him to have today. Barack Obama is vague, nebulous, and manufactured in all that he does; the same can be said for Romneycare. Voters do not replace one president with a man who is so similar to him; voters want a remedy for the current president and will only side with a challenger against an incumbent if they feel the new guy makes up for the key failings of the current Oval Office occupant. Romneycare just doesn’t cut it. Hopefully, enough Republican voters will see that so this can be the last time we have to deal with Willard “Mittens” “But, It’s My Turn!” Romneycare in a presidential election.
Michele Bachmann: I have lost all respect for Michele Bachmann. That’s one of the most disappointing casualties for me of this primary season. I don’t like the way she conducts herself, and don’t like how clearly she has been cozying up to Romneycare in some deluded effort to be his VP pick (mark my words, if Romneycare WERE to become the nominee, his VP pick would be Tim “Droopy Dog” Pawlenty, as those two have a weird bromance going on that Bachmann can never compete with). I used to have a lot of respect for Bachmann, but she’s been behaving foolishly lately and doesn’t seem to stand for anything anymore besides being as negative as possible whenever a microphone is in front of her. I wish she would suspend her campaign and focus on something productive at this point.
Rick Perry: The “Strong” ad was a breaking point for me with Perry, but not in the way you might first think. I don’t care if Perry doesn’t want gays serving in the military — there have been gays in the military since the military was founded, and the matter is now settled so it’s truly beyond foolish for a Republican candidate to keep bringing it up. It’s also incredibly foolish for Perry to make an anti-gay TV ad while dressed up like one of the guys from Brokeback Mountain. That jacket he wore in the “Strong” ad is a dead-ringer for the one Heath Ledger wore as gay cowboy Ennis in Brokeback. I now conclude that Rick Perry is an irredeemable doofus for setting himself up for the merciless parodies the Gaystapo is churning out against him on YouTube and Facebook. A Republican candidate for president just cannot be this oblivious, ill-informed, and downright STUPID. A serious Republican presidential candidate should not need to be told that dressing up as an iconic character from a gay movie is not the best way to wardrobe himself in an anti-gay ad his campaign filmed out of sheer desperation to gin up a little hatred and get himself a new round of attention before the Iowa Caucuses. You know what else is a pretty popular gay movie? To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar. Which of those characters will Perry be dressing up as for his next Iowa ad? I bet if he picks the Patrick Swayze one, maybe he’ll score some points from still-mourning fans the way Jennifer Grey did when she was on Dancing with the Stars last year. Perry supporters keep saying that “this is the last dumb thing he’ll do” or “just give him a chance and he’ll prove he’s not a complete doofus”. Well, he’s had more chances than most people, and he keeps proving how truly stupid he is on all sorts of levels. This guy is Texas toast with scrambled eggs for brains.
Ron Paul: I am horrified by Ron Paul’s assertion that the United States government was gleeful after 9/11 or that our government knew the attacks were going to happen and let them happen anyway. A good friend of mine died when the Towers collapsed, so I take these flights of fantasy from someone like Paul deadly serious. I’m sure my friend Kathleen, a Paul supporter, will have some thoughts on his remarks but I have to note going into this debate that I am furious with this man. For two presidential elections now, Paul has played the role of Mr. Mxyzptlk, saying outrageous things up on the stage and encouraging people who like to run around in V for Vendetta masks to champion him. After these 9/11 remarks, I’ve had enough of this garbage and no longer feel like indulging Fifth-Dimensional craziness in serious debate proceedings. I really hope Paul has to answer a question about his 9/11 remarks; I am sure my friend Jane will be looking down from Heaven with great interest to hear what he has to say.
Rick Santorum: It’s time for him to get off the stage so that the field can be paired down to five or less contenders. Anyone polling with less than 10% needs to join Jon Huntsman off in the ether somewhere. This is the homestretch, and the time to perpetually indulge the vanity campaigns is over.
What are you thinking about as we wait for the debate to start?
What do you think each of the candidates above needs to do tonight?
Transcript starts after the jump below:
GOP Debate Watch Thread: Des Moines, IA – ABC News
GOP Debate sponsored by ABC “News,” local ABC affiliate WOI-TV, The Des Moines Register, Yahoo and the Republican Party of Iowa
TIME: 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m Eastern time tonight
LOCATION: Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University, Des Moines
CANDIDATES: Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mittens Romney and Rick Santorum.
SPINMEISTERS: ABC “News” anchors Diane “Republicans are Nazis” Sawyer and George “Obamatron” Stephanopoulos
WATCH: ABC-TV (check your local listings)
LIVE STREAM: http://www.DesMoinesRegister.com/caucus
PREDICTIONS:
All questions will be “gotcha” questions along the lines of “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Most debates up to now have arrayed the candidates onstage based on poll numbers. However, with Ron Paul in second place, the organizers will be forced to come up with a unique and unusual seating chart that puts him all the way on the end.
Mittens will get 75% of the questions and follow-ups.
Newt and Mittens will rip each other to shreds, and will be giving unlimited time to do so. Ron Paul will laugh inside, where it counts.
Ron Paul will get three questions total. Despite polling at #2 in Iowa and New Hampshire, Diane Sawyer will ask Dr. Paul when he is going to announce his third party campaign. The second question will be about Dr. Paul’s “nutty” statements that the U.S. shouldn’t tell Israel what her borders should be. And for his final question, George Snuffleupagus will ask Dr. Paul when he’s going to announce his third-party campaign.
Rick Perry will nod off, but will receive more questions than Bachmann, Santorum and Paul combined, even though his poll numbers are in the basement.
Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum will pile on to both Mittens and Newt, mainly about Obamacare. Rep. Bachmann will remind the crowd that she was born in Iowa. About 100 times.
UPDATE: Here’s a benchmark by which to judge the TelePrompTer-free performances by GOP candidates…
HillBuzz Open Thread: December 10, 2011
Call Scholastic and Ask for An “Editorial” to Be Noted That Complains About Occupy Wall Street Article in December Scholastic News
Michelle Malkin busted Scholastic for distributing Leftist propaganda to school children in the latest issue of Scholastic News, which went home with grade schoolers this week.
The article in question is called “What is Occupy Wall Street?”; it appeared in the December issue of Scholastic News in the section called “New Shorts”. Please read Malkin’s take on this here, as she does an excellent job of noting the whitewash Scholastic chose to give the Occupoopers (failing to report on the rapes, drug use, vandalism, deaths, and other crimes committed in the Occupooper camps).
Malkin has asked readers to call Scholastic and complain about this Leftist indoctrination in the classroom (since Scholastic has chosen to heap praise on the Occupoopers, while repeatedly showing scorn for Tea Party Americans): the email and number she gave for Scholastic is: bookclubs@scholastic.com or toll-free at 1-800-SCHOLASTIC (800-724-6527). They are available Monday – Friday: 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Central Time, and on Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m
However, I called Scholastic and went through their Customer Service and found a better way to voice complaint about this indoctrination in Scholastic News.
What you really need to do is to ask to speak to a Customer Service Supervisor and have that person write an internal “Editorial” to Scholastic management in their customer complaint computer system.
I spoke with Supervisor Nicole Whittington on the phone, who was very courteous and professional to deal with — her direct line is 417-455-8421. She has the ability to create an “Editorial” in the Scholastic system that would register your complaint about this matter.
The more people who call, the more “Editorials” will be written so that Scholastic executives get an idea of how truly offensive this Occupooper propaganda truly is.
Full disclosure: I’m in my mid-30s and, until today, had incredibly fond memories of Scholastic. When I was in grade school, the nuns used to hand out the Scholastic Book Club catalogs every so often; I believe these came out four times a year. I always saved up my Christmas, birthday, or “just because” money so that when the catalogs came out I’d be able to pick out some books (or fun things like stickers and posters) and order them from the Book Club. It would be a few weeks before the loot arrived at school, where the nuns would distribute the goodies; this was exciting because I never knew what day the things would arrive, and it was such a fun surprise when the stuff would get there.
I also remember the Scholastic News reading materials that we’d get every month or so; at my school, we used these in reading class and always had to write essays answering questions about these “News” items. I never remember any sort of Leftist indoctrination back then. Typically, the “News” items were innocuous and nonpolitical in nature. A lot of them were about animals, people winning marathon races, a tall building being completed, etc.
I am horrified that Scholastic is essentially giving William Ayers run of classrooms coast to coast by turning Scholastic News into Occupooper propaganda.
If you are a parent, or know of any parents you can inform about all this, I highly encourage you to stop making any purchases from the Scholastic Book Club.
Call the principal and teachers of your children’s school and tell them you do not want Scholastic News or other free Scholastic-provided material distributed in your child’s schools.
Call Nicole Whittington at Scholastic Customer Support and ask her to complete an “Editorial” noting your outrage over this Occupooper propaganda: 417-455-8421
HillBuzz Open Thread: December 9, 2011
Question about Grassroots Activism and the GOP Base
I take grassroots activism for granted, as a Ron Paul supporter. During the 2008 campaign, Ron Paul people like me launched the Money Bomb concept, and the Tea Party movement…heck, we even rented a BLIMP for our candidate.
Ron Paul supporters also make our own brochures, t-shirts, our own signs, our own decals, hats, bumper stickers, and websites. We have our own fundraisers, do our own promotional projects, do our own precinct-canvassing, have our own rallies, etc.
And videos…we make a LOT of videos. Here’s my favorite recent one. The production values are professional-quality–and it was just made by some regular Ron Paul peeps. (Content Warning: There are scenes at the end that may cause your mascara to smear, or your monitor to become all blurry.)
The only other GOP candidate I can think of who has this level of grassroots wow-factor is Sarah Palin…who isn’t running for president.
So what makes Ron Paul supporters and Sarah Palin supporters so nutzo for our picks, compared to other campaigns’ supporters?
Everyone seems to acknowledge that among the current candidates, Ron Paul’s fan base is the most enthusiastic and involved. Why are we more enthusiastic than Rick Santorum supporters or Bachmann supporters or Mittens supporters? Is our level of involvement/enthusiasm cultivated by other campaigns?
As a Ron Paul supporter, I don’t know how other campaigns work, or how organized they are, or how active the grassroots are. If you’re a Santorum supporter, or Newt gal or (gulp) a Romneycare voter, please chime in with a report on your campaign’s ground game. Does your guy’s (or gal’s) campaign work well with grassroots supporters? Are there people out there making videos or writing songs or creating brochures for your candidate?
It’s nice that bloggers like Erick Erickson at RedState are starting to notice the strength of Ron Paul’s grassroots support. In fact, today, Erickson actually said that he hopes Ron Paul wins Iowa:
I hope he wins Iowa for a variety of reasons, but first and foremost because Ron Paul has run a stellar grassroots campaign in Iowa. He’s run a campaign there better than anyone and that hard work deserves to be rewarded regardless of what you think of the candidate and his positions.
Most candidates drop by, send some mail, and run lots of television and radio ads. Ron Paul’s team has been organizing door to door in the state. That level of grassroots activity just might pay off and it would be refreshing to see old fashion grassroots pay off.
Do you personally volunteer for your candidate’s campaign? What does that consist of? What’s your sense of your candidate’s “ground game?” How does the campaign treat the grassroots?
Great Merciful Zeus: Longtime Romney Supporters Abandoning Him in Chicago. Is His “Inevitable” Victory Now Impossible?
This is purely anecdotal, so I hope others out there chime in with what they are seeing and hearing on the ground where they live.
If you have been reading this site since 2008 or are at least vaguely aware of our coverage of Willard “Mittens” Romneycare, you’ll know that from the day after John McCain’s defeat three years ago the “Romney Guys” in Chicago have been pushing Romneycare’s nomination for 2012.
These “Romney Guys” are 70% of the reason I have nothing but disgust for Willard “Mittens” Romneycare: the people he has always surrounded himself with are vile, permanent political class dolts; the “Romney Guys” are the “it’s his turn!” crowd that cares nothing about winning elections and ultimately governing and instead want only to advance their individual careers and pad their resumes with high-ranking campaign posts; and Willard “Mittens” Romneycare’s personal behavior while here in Chicago on a fundraising swing in 2010 is what actually gave me the idea to start calling the Republican establishment the “Cocktail Party GOP” soggy cucumber-and-mayonnaise society (which I’ve morphed over time into just the Cocktail Party GOP establishment, as these people are truly a BizarroWorld nemesis of the Tea Party Americans more than the Left has ever been).
Willard “Mittens” Romneycare is a petulant wimp. Those of us in Chicago saw it when he was here in person last year, and he whined about the bland, watercress and mayo sandwiches served to him at a fancy private club in the Loop being “too spicy” for his delicate taste buds. You’ve seen for yourself in interviews and in the debates how red-faced, brittle, and indignant he becomes when even the smallest thing doesn’t go his way. The man has lost every election he’s ever run in, except one, and backed out of a re-election campaign when he knew damn well he’d lose that. His mother was a loser too (she lost a 1970 Senate bid) and his father was an even bigger loser than that (he lost the 1968 presidential nomination, the same way his loser son Willard lost the 2008 and 2012 nominations).
He is named after a movie about a crazy person who befriends and trains enormous rats and is the grandfather of Obamacare (since Robert Creamer, the convicted felon and husband of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, the man who wrote the Obamacare bill while STILL IN PRISON, is the real father of this monstrosity…and he based it all on Romneycare).
And yet, for three years, all the “Romney Guys” here in Chicago have been insisting that “it’s his turn!” and that Willard Mittens Romneycare was “inevitable, so don’t even bother fighting it”.
Well…
Something very interesting just happened a few minutes ago.
I had a very interesting IM chat with someone who has been trying to fundraise for Willard, and the news is “it’s over” as far as the big donors this person deals with are concerned.
People don’t want to throw big money into what they perceive as a losing campaign.
It’s surprising what was the last straw, however: it was the disastrous interview that Willard recently did where he complained about the questions he received and acted like a prissy prima donna.
Something in the donors made their blood run cold. They seem to have realized that Willard Mittens Romneycare is a born loser who is far too brittle and pompous to be able to withstand the Left’s assault in the general election.
“There’s no massive lovefest for Newt Gingrich, but that seems to be where the money’s going to flow. Romney will come in third, or even fourth, in Iowa and will be third at best in New Hampshire”, said someone who once was all-about Willard.
This guy’s jumping ship because he needs to make his fundraising commissions and is going where he thinks the big bucks will be in 2012…and it’s not for Team Romney.
Please take this as just one anecdote, from one political guy in Chicago, but it was worth mentioning because of how dramatic a turn this was from what this former “it’s his turn!” devotee had been saying from November 2008 until just, well, TODAY.
Have you picked up on anything like this too, from people you know in the political world?
Have you gotten the sense that the big money donors no longer see Willard “Mittens” “It’s His Turn For Pete’s Sake!” Romneycare as “inevitable”?
What think you?
Forget the White House For A Minute: What OTHER Races in 2012 Are You Excited About?
I really want to hear from you about what OTHER races, besides the presidency, you are excited about next year.
Every day, I honest to goodness wake up thrilled to have an opportunity to take down Claire McCaskill in Missouri. I have been quietly reading everything I possibly can on the state, down to the county level, and hope to be able to spend as much time on the ground in Missouri as possible to canvass door to door to defeat ClaireBear — whom I have long considered to be the most stupid and inept member of Congress. I’ve wanted this ever since the day early in the 2008 presidential campaign when she insisted her “children bugged her and bugged her” to support Barack Obama, and then McCaskill made an embarrassing ass of herself flying around on Obama’s campaign plane essentially acting as his stewardess (deliberately not flight attendant…but STEWARDESS in the old-timey, meek, fawning sense). Claire McCaskill disgusts me on every level imaginable because she, somewhere along the way, came to symbolize ALL of the fools in the Democrat Party who gleefully turned over the country to a mysterious radical none of these crayon-nibblers had the slightest real clue about.
Defeating Claire McCaskill would be one of the most joyous and thrilling events in my life. I can’t wait for it.
I feel the same way about Ben Nelson in Nebraska. I want to go there too in 2012 so I can be on the ground and hopefully have the chance to hear Nebraskans call him a slut, to his face, for prostituting himself (and his state) to Barack Obama in the leadup to Obamacare’s Christmas Eve passage in 2009.
I want to see everyone who voted to pass Obamacare defeated, but most especially McCaskill and Nelson.
For kicks, I’d also love to see Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher make it to Congress, as another royal F-U to B.O. Once in Congress, it would be my fervent hope that a Congressman Wurzelbacher would somehow be able to defund whatever government-supported entity that Helen Jones-Kelley now works at. Remember her? She’s the Muppet-skinning Obama operative who illegally abused Ohio government computers to attack Wurzelbacher after he DARED to ask Barack Obama a question in the final days of the 2008 election. She ultimately lost her job at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, but after a spell she was hired by some other entity in the orbit of Ohio’s government. I to this day believe she belongs in jail, or a special corner of Hell, so it would be magnificently sweet justice if the man she attacked using the government’s computers made it to Congress and ultimately was able to control the funding that could cost Jones-Kelley her latest patronage position.
I would have to say these are my top three races, just off the top of my head.
Without looking anything up or spending too much time considering it, chime in with the non-presidential contests YOU are excited about being a part of next year.
Bonus question: what do think YOU can do this time around to really make a difference in those races?
