Recently Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been garnering a lot of grass roots attention. Even as an unrepentant liberal, a lot of what Paul says appeals to me because of his unequivocal stand on the Bill of Rights and ending this absurd war on terror. This anti-war/anti-police state stance is the main issue that seems to attract a lot of younger supporters who might otherwise consider themselves to be more left-leaning. Unfortunately, there are no Democrats aside from Dennis Kucinich who are so strident on these issues.
Unfortunately, as appealing as Paul’s stand is on these issues, he has some equally disturbing positions on other issues that just aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Paul has made it clear that in spite of his belief that the government should stay out of people’s private beliefs, that doesn’t apply to a woman’s right to decide whether to have a baby. Paul want’s the supreme court to repeal Roe v Wade and thinks abortion should be outlawed by states. Perhaps even more disturbing, when he was asked at a recent event about his response to a debate question on whether he believed in evolution, he made it clear that he does not. Any potential president who can simply disregard scientific evidence in this way has absolutely no business even being considered for the position. In an increasingly technological world with a lot of problems that we must address, it is critical that we have a president who has basic scientific literacy. On this count Ron Paul along with several of his GOP colleagues fails and should be dismissed from the race immediately.

We were watching the documetary Iraq for Sale the other day, and it just never ceases to amaze me how corrupt everything associated with this war and the Bush administration is. One thing that the new congress should do is pass a law on war profiteering. Better yet, a constitutional amendment. If someone is found to be a war profiteer, they should be forced to pay back all money received from the government, and all officers of the company should receive a lifetime ban from ever doing business with the government in any way, shape or form. Furthermore, any company doing business with the government should be prohibited from any association with any individuals or companies who have been found to have been war profiteers.

Also all the tasks that were formerly done by military personnel such as maintaining equipment, security, feeding troops, etc, should be brought back into the military. A proper accounting system also needs to be established for the military. Past accounts are so screwed up that they can never be fixed, but all future expenditures need to be accounted for properly. Cost plus contracts also need to be eliminated, since they are a breeding ground for corruption. Past administrations from both sides of the aisle are to blame for this mess, but clearly the republicans will not take responsibility for cleaning it up, so the democrats must.

If your read my previous Bullshit post, or other posts you might get the impression that I’m paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just look around me at what is happening and what people say and come to my own opinions. Based on the “truthiness” record of anyone associated with Bush administration and real story that ultimately comes out after their highly touted terrorism “victories” I think anyone paying attention would be foolish not to be highly skeptical of anything that they say. Remember the Miami terror cell a few months ago?, the Tonawanda 6?, Jose Padilla?, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? All of these were huge stories when they broke. But every one them also turned out to be much ado about nothing. The guys in Miami were a bunch of losers trying to hatch some plot, and they weren’t even Muslims. Padilla never actually did anything. Same with the guys from Tonawanda. And the violence in Iraq has only gotten worse since Zarqawi’s death. After each one of these instances, the media followed the Bush line and made a huge deal about important the bust was. However, once it became clear that there was nothing of importance in each case, the story was forgotten by the major media.

Now this morning, I saw on AmericaBlog that NBC is reporting that a senior British official is now acknowledging that no attack was imminent. This runs contrary to the words of Bush, Cheney, Lieberman et al, a few days ago. Evidently the suspects had not yet even purchased airline tickets, and most of them didn’t have passports. The White House obviously denies this:

“There was unprecedented cooperation and coordination between the U.S., the U.K. and Pakistani officials throughout the case,” said Frances Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, “and we worked together to protect our citizens from harm while ensuring that we gathered as much info as possible to bring the plotters to justice. There was no disagreement between U.S. and U.K. officials.”

I believe that in this case “unprecedented cooperation” means that we need to scare the people in the wake of Lieberman’s loss, and the British went along with it. The only hope the Republicans have of maintaining there majority in congress is to convince enough ignorant people this year that only they can protect them from the terrorists. But if people actually look at what has been claimed versus reality, they will see that not only can the Republicans not protect America, but they have utterly mis-managed everything they have touched in the past six years. Assuming that there even was a real plot (and I’m skeptical of that) I think that is more likely something along the lines of this cartoon I saw yesterday on BoingBoing. We have a government that seems to be so set on keeping the nation in a constant state of fear and war (see 1984 for the rationale), that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have to actually do anything. They just have to plant some “plots” so they are found, and wait for the government to destroy democracy and freedom from within. I believe the ones out to get us and destroy are civilization are not the Islamo-Fascists, but the Christian-Fascists sitting amongst us.

It is time to ignore the warnings from the White House, and start working to bring into office people who actually believe in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.