Freedom is Popular (Video - June 15th)

A stirring Ron Paul address made in Kansas City, June 15:

Ron Paul Leads Republican Candidates in Traffic to Official Website

In line with the Wordtracker analysis I've compiled detailing estimated daily searches for each candidate in the major search engines, ClickZs' Kate Kaye has done a study showing similar results in actual traffic to each candidates official websites according to Hitwise, a tool often used in the Internet Marketing field.

Clinton Surpasses Obama in Site Traffic Race, Paul Rockets to First
› › › ClickZ News
By Kate Kaye June 27, 2007

Hillary Clinton overtook Barack Obama in May, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani held steady and Ron Paul rocketed from fifth place to first. That's according to Hitwise data showing the ebb and flow of traffic to the official sites of the Democratic and Republican presidential primary candidates.

Click here to continue...

Neil Cavuto, Looking for a Ron Paul Knuckle Sandwich (Video - June 26th)

UPDATE: What Can Search Engines Tell Us About The Presidential Candidates?

Here's an update of my May 17th analysis that looked at how many daily searches each Presidential candidate's name get's in Google, Yahoo Search & MSN Search.

While the estimated daily searches before were based on data from February 17th through May 17th, this new analysis looks at data from March 28th through June 28th.

As you can see, Ron Paul has shot to the top of the Republican candidate list and now holds the #2 position for both Republican & Democratic candidates, just 8 searches per day behind Mrs. Clinton:

To find out how the "Predict" number is calculated, click here.

Excellent, New Ron Paul Interview

An Interview with Presidential Candidate Congressman Ron Paul
June 28, 2007
By Joseph Murtagh

Muckraker Report: You seem to have a stronger anti-war stance than even many of the Democratic candidates: unlike Hillary Clinton, for instance, you voted against the Iraq war. In terms of foreign policy, what would a Ron Paul presidency look like?

Congressman Ron Paul: Well, it certainly wouldn’t involve going to war with countries that pose no threat to us. The 2002 Iraq war resolution transferred the authority and responsibility for waging war from the legislature to the executive branch, which is a total breach of the principles of the U.S. Constitution. James Madison pointed this out in 1798, that because the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, the question of war must be vested in the legislature – “with studied care,” I believe his exact words were. You can’t have presidents waging war willy-nilly for reasons that are fundamentally at odds with the basic interests of the American people. I voted against that resolution because I believe strongly that we should avoid getting entangled in foreign alliances and instead seek peace and trade with all nations. This is a reflection of the wisdom of the Founders, who advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy, the most eloquent expression of which can be found in George Washington’s Farewell Address. So to answer your question, if I were president, I would do my best to follow in the footsteps of the Founders by abiding by the rules laid out in the U.S. Constitution, which means limiting the power of the executive to wage war.

Click here to continue...

Campaign Growing Pains

Looks like the Ron Paul Revolution is having some of those adolecent growing pains we all had growing up (a very, very good sign). As an American concerned with the future of our great Republic, it's not hard for me to donate to Ron Paul, "Champion of the Constitution," as our civil liberties are eaten away by the globalist, neo-con virus that's been absolutely decimating the USA. It's my hope that you feel the same way, and show it by donating to the Ron Paul Revolution (something I've been doing as often as humanly possible)...

From the Ron Paul Campaign news desk:

Help! More room needed.
Good news (actually, great news): The Ron Paul 2008 campaign is growing!

Bad news: We’ve run out of space to work.

The Ron Paul 2008 campaign started in the corner of a one-bedroom apartment. It then moved to a small office of 348 square feet, which is where we are now. But our present office has become too small to accommodate the fast-growing campaign...and we need your help to expand.

Our present office is so small that we can't hire the much-needed additional staff for a national campaign. We even have to turn away volunteers because we simply don't have room for them.

Office space in the D.C. area is expensive, and landlords expect tenants to sign at least a three-year lease; preferably a five-year lease. But after we canvassed the area by foot and called numerous leasing agents and watched the local classifieds and checked CraigsList each day, we found a place! It's a sub-lease situation with flexible terms that we just couldn't pass up.

We will have the second floor of a modest, older, two-story building in Arlington, Virginia. It's only two blocks from a Metro station, making it convenient for staff and volunteers. The office is on a busy street; across from a very busy grocery store. Large windows will be perfect for a "Ron Paul 2008" banner! But most importantly, the new office will give us the space to build a national campaign.

However, office space here is expensive regardless of how modest the building is. And most landlords require political campaigns to pay the total rent in advance.

So we need your help.

We plan to move on July 15th. To do so, we will need to give the landlord a check for $54,000.00.

Will you help us write that check?

Enthusiasm for Ron Paul's bid for the presidency grows by the day. Our goal: put Ron Paul in the White House. And we all know why.

Help us write that check. Donate today by going to https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/

Thank you!

Kent Snyder, Chairman
Ron Paul 2008

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag!

Really funny Ron Paul video:

Ron Paul Get's the Infamous Colbert Bump! (Video - June 21st, 2007)

Ron & Ronald

A couple great pics of a much younger Ron Paul with Ronald Reagan.



                                             Dr. Paul brings the Groovy!...

Lone Star: Ron Paul Article from The American Conservative Magazine

Excellent cover-story article about Ron Paul in the latest issue of The American Conservative magazine:

Lone Star

Maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul finds that being right is the one thing his party won’t forgive.

by Michael Brendan Dougherty

At first glance, he looks like every other congressman in the Canon Building. His suit is dark. His tie is striped. He is convivial with his colleagues, who genuinely like him. But there is something different about Ron Paul.

You can hear congressmen when they walk down the hall, strutting their own importance. After all, there are regulations to be implemented, special interests to serve, a teetering American Empire that would collapse without their management. They wear black or cordovan leather shoes—captoes, wingtips, and brogues—clacking down the hall, their bellies full of medium-rare steak from Capital Grille. They are surrounded by ambitious interns and legislative aides. They fiddle with their BlackBerries. You can’t miss them tromping out of the elevators.

Ron Paul is easy to overlook. He takes the stairs; he does not have an entourage. You can’t hear him coming because he’s wearing plain black tennis shoes. In a bag he carries a can of soup that he will heat for himself in the microwave in his office. Beneath pictures of Austrian economists Frederick Von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, he will eat his lunch alone and in peace.

What is the purpose of Ron Paul’s candidacy for the presidency of the United States? Some longshots run because their egos demand it. Others want to raise their lecture fees. Some run because they have plenty of money and nothing better to do. Following a flood of viewer requests, the Texas congressman recently appeared on Fox News to explain himself. His answer was buoyant though laconic: “I want to be president because I have this dream. I’d like to reinstate the Constitution and restore the Republic.” His answer was also revolutionary.

Paul’s doggedness in advancing the causes of individual responsibility and limited government could intimidate almost anyone who clings to the label “conservative” or “libertarian.” Perhaps that is why he avoids those abused designations and calls himself a “constitutionalist.” His philosophy is simple: “no government intervention, not in personal life, not in economic life, not in affairs of other nations.”

Naturally he opposes almost everything Congress does. The physician cum congressman earned the nickname “Dr. No” early on. His opposition to what he considers unconstitutional spending even earned the grudging respect of GOP leaders. When Newt Gingrich cracked the whip on party members to support a messy budget compromise, he excused Paul from the duty to support the budget, and the “Ron Paul exemption” entered the congressional vocabulary. What did it take for other members to earn this privilege to buck the party? A voting record that opposed all unnecessary federal spending, even in their home district. No one else has been granted the exemption.

When Paul does propose legislation, it is simple, direct, and radical. He’s compiled an impressive list of bills that remain ignored to this day. H.R.1146 : To end membership of the United States in the United Nations. H.R.776: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception. H.R.1658: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.

His cheerful consistency doesn’t end there. Paul not only votes against nearly all government spending, he has refused to be the beneficiary of it as well. As a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, he has delivered over 4,000 babies. He accepted no money from Medicare or Medicaid, often working for free for needy patients. With his support, his five children finished school without subsidized federal student loans. He has refused a congressional pension.

Monetary policy is the issue that brought Paul into politics in the ’70s. Having read deeply in the Austrian school of economics, he was incensed at Nixon for going off the gold standard and ran in a special House election in the 22nd district of Texas.

It still preoccupies him. Paul gave a thrill to surviving goldbugs in the first GOP debate this year when he referred to “sound money.” Since bimetallism and William Jennings Bryan shuffled off the political stage, widespread passion about monetary policy has been in short supply. But for Paul, the issue is still one that pits the people against the Beltway: “I think it’s very convenient for them [politicians] not to worry about it—whether they are spending money they don’t have for a war, whether you are liberal and like big welfare or a neoconservative and you like entitlements. They know somehow or another if the taxes come up short, there is a system, of course they know we borrow it and they complain about that, but I complain about the printing to pick up the shortfall. It’s such a serious problem.”

This is what he refers to as the “inflation tax.” With a paper currency, Paul says, “You get too many bubbles. And people suffer. Whether it’s the NASDAQ bubble or the housing bubble. It’s also the reason people are poor. … There is this transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle class to the very wealthy. And it leads to conflict. There are lots of people in this country who haven’t had an increase in real wages in 30 years. The Republicans deny it. And the Democrats say, ‘Well we need more taxes on those who have too much.’ They tax productivity to give it to others. I would not immediately close the doors on the Federal Reserve. But the doors may get closed if there is a monetary crisis. There are no paper currencies that last for a long period of time.”

While he lost his first re-election to a Democrat, Paul came back to win in a 1978 rematch, then won again in 1980 and ’82. He later lost a 1984 Senate GOP primary to Phil Gramm. Not wanting to be a lifelong politician, he returned to the practice of medicine full time. Tom DeLay won his seat.

Paul ran as the Libertarian candidate for president in 1988, “just to talk to about the issues” in his own recounting. He drew a meager 0.47 percent of the vote but found an enthusiastic following.

In 1995, he decided to run for the 14th Congressional district, which had been redrawn to include his home in Lake Jackson. His opponent, Greg Laughlin, despite being a recent Republican convert, received the support of the party establishment, including then Gov. George W. Bush. Paul’s return to congressional politics was based on the results of the ’94 Republican Revolution: “I thought, ‘Maybe they are serious and they will shrink the size of big government.’” Paul sighs recalling that burst of optimism, “but there was no truth to that.”

His second go-around in the capital focused on many of the same issues that animated his first tour. His principles never changed, though some of his libertarian supporters have been dismayed by his stands on trade deals and immigration.

While Paul considers himself a staunch free trader, he opposed CAFTA and deplored its predecessor, NAFTA. Paul explains, “I was on the side of the protectionists, and I’m not a protectionist. It’s not true free trade. It’s special-interest trade. It’s managed trade. … I didn’t like the trade deal because it was another level of government and a loss of sovereignty.”

On immigration, Paul finds himself on the side of restrictionists. On LewRockwell.com, Paul outlined a six-step approach: 1) Physically secure the border. 2) Enforce current visa laws. 3) Reject amnesty. 4) End welfare state incentives to immigrants. 5) End birthright citizenship. 6) Standardize legal immigration rules and waiting periods. When questioned by Reason about what he’d say to libertarians who disagree with him, Paul was brusque: “If they don’t agree, they’d have to be anarchists, and I’m not. — I do believe in a responsibility to protect our borders, rather than worrying about the border between North and South Korea or Iraq and Syria, and I think that’s a reasonable position.”

Increasingly, foreign intervention has come to dominate the political discourse. “I had concentrated on monetary policy,” Paul said. “Over the years I’ve learned to tie that in with the war policy. You can’t fight wars without inflation. You never have a war without inflation. … The ’70s were hectic times. We had 15 percent inflation, interest rates went to 21 percent, we had the highest unemployment since the Depression. It came as a consequence of the philosophy of guns and butter. And of course the same thing exists today, except one thing is a lot worse: there are many more dollars circulating around the world, and we’ve lost our manufacturing base.”

Paul believes the Republican Party lost its way by not remaining the peace party. Recently, when speaking to a group of skeptical conservative journalists, he pointed out in his grandfatherly tone, “In 1952, Eisenhower ran as a peace candidate. In 1968, Nixon ran on obtaining peace with honor.” Paul also mentions that Bush won, in part, by touting a “humble foreign policy.” Even warmongers won elections that way: “Wilson ran on peace. FDR, same thing.”

When he is inevitably asked if he is running in the right party, Paul states plainly, “I don’t think the Democrats have any intention to change our policies in the Middle East. I want the antiwar position to be traditional, conservative, and constitutional and not only for the far Left. I don’t object to the Left being opposed to the war. But that Michael Moore image is not going to persuade housewives. I think a lot of Republicans have forgotten their traditional position of being antiwar.”

Making the antiwar message broadly appealing may be difficult for Paul because of his temperament. The exchange between Paul and Rudy Giuliani in the South Carolina debate raised Paul’s profile nationally but was thought to have been the moment when Giuliani won the debate. After Paul explained that terrorists attack the U.S. not because they hate our freedoms but because they hate our policies, Giuliani rephrased his answer to suggest Paul thought America “invited” the attacks. He said he’d never heard such an idea and declared it “absurd.” Paul didn’t back down, but he gave a technical response about “blowback” that, while correct, didn’t connect with the audience emotionally. He was hit hard, and while he didn’t drop to the mat, he didn’t hit back.

At a press conference later, Paul presented a list of books to inform Giuliani that, indeed, policies do have consequences. On the list were the 9/11 Commission Report, Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, and Dying to Win by Robert Pape. Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris appeared alongside Paul. The press conference underscored both the strength and weakness of Paul’s personality as a candidate: his professorial approach makes it difficult to dismiss his views as “loony,” but the academic style doesn’t motivate people to rally to him. His manner is always refreshing but rarely stirring.

When asked how he would confront his opponents’ charges, Paul’s answers are as straight and flat as a Texas highway. “The media would love it if you got real, real personal. But I just have trouble drifting from the issue itself. … I’m challenging them to think about policy. Nobody, liberals or conservatives, Republicans or Democrats wants to challenge overall Middle East policy. It is sacred. There’s oil. There’s the neocon idea of spreading democracy. There’s Israel. You just shouldn’t dare challenge our eternal presence in the Middle East. So they attack the messenger in a personal way.”

When asked if any Republican constituents who had initially supported the war have thanked him for his foresight, he shrugs and says, “Some, but not too many. Someone told me once: ‘They never forgive you for being right. They’ll always forgive you for being wrong if you apologize.’”

Paul understands that electing him president wouldn’t by itself “reinstate the Constitution and restore the Republic.” He is a realist: “You just can’t turn one switch and solve every problem. You have to build coalitions. I’d put a lot of pressure on Congress to live up to their responsibilities.” He does know what he can do on day one of the Paul presidency. His first act would be to begin cleaning up the mess we’ve made in the Middle East: “What you could do in ten minutes to send a signal to the world that things were going to be different is tell the Navy to turn around and leave the shores of Iraq. We have two aircraft carriers there, another arriving, and seven ships that just moved into the Persian Gulf. I would just tell them to turn around and leave. Tell the region that this isn’t my approach, and I’m willing to talk. I think that would immediately raise our standing in the world tremendously.”

It’s a vision that will inevitably be ridiculed as naïve by the imperial intelligentsia who helped American into this mess. But it’s also so noble in its simplicity that it is already causing Americans who are tired of the warfare state to look at this mild-mannered physician and see the politician they’ve always wanted: a man of unbending conviction, of proven fidelity to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

After his latest debate appearance, Ron Paul’s name leapt ahead of Paris Hilton in Google searches. Bill Maher, who had given him a tough time weeks earlier on his HBO show “Real Time,” became desperate to invite him back for this season’s finale, declaring “he’s my hero.”

Grover Norquist has said of the good doctor that in Congress “one Ron Paul is grand; and 218 Ron Pauls would be even grander; but 20 Ron Pauls could cripple the party since the usual half-steps toward less government and less taxation might not find support among the more ideologically rigorous.”

Fanatics, dreamers, and constitutionalists long for the day when hundreds of Ron Pauls disinterestedly discuss monetary policy and the philosophy of the founders each morning between the trees that line New Jersey and Independence Avenues. In the afternoon, they can go into the Capitol and maintain the Republic by leaving most of us alone. On weekends, they can fly home. We’ll even let them wear comfortable shoes if they want.

But until the day when scores of Ron Pauls overrun the Capitol Building in sneakers, we have one man who heats his own soup and fights for the Republic, not the Empire. If America elects him president, he’ll sit atop a bucking federal beast that withstood the taming of convinced small-government riders like Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge. It would be a wild ride for the thin, unassuming Texan. He might never forgive us for putting him in the saddle.

Ron Paul Now Getting Mainstream Media Attention...FINALLY.

Over the past few days, the American mainstream press has published a few decent, high-profile pieces on Ron Paul:

1. Washington Post - An Also-Ran in the GOP Polls, Ron Paul Is Huge on the Web

2. San Francisco Chronicle - 'Ron Paul, who?' no longer applies - GOP hopeful big hit in YouTube videos

3. Seattle Times - Ron Paul: nowhere in polls, but everywhere on the Web

Let's hope Ron Paul continues getting the attention he deserves.

INN World Report Interviews Ron Paul (Video - June 14th)

Check out this excellent Ron Paul interview done by the always interesting INN World Report.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Ron Paul Interview from The Colbert Report (Video - June 13th)

Here's The Colbert Report footage of the Ron Paul interview which originally aired last night.



Click here for pictures of the rally that took place for Ron Paul just before taping.

Andrew Napolitano says Ron Paul is "The Thomas Jefferson of our day"

Andrew Napolitano, Fox News' Senior Judicial Analyst, gives a speech entitled "Civil Liberties in Wartime" at The Future Freedom Foundation's "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties" conference, June 3, 2007, at the Hyatt Regency Reston, in Reston, Virginia.

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The Scourge of America: Meet the Neo-Cons

It's funny, when George W Bush was campaigning for President in 1999/2000, he preached a "no nation building" philosophy, making him seem more like a true-blue Republican, and less like a Neo-Conservative war monger. Well, it's clear now to anyone with a brain, that he was obviously lying through his teeth as Dick Cheney stood behind him like the Simpons character Mr. Burns, evil smirk and all.

To be honest, we should have seen it coming a mile away. George W. Bush & Dick Cheney were simply pushing their Neo-Con ideology, which includes lying to the public to further their disturbing, un-American cause.

It's time Americans understand what a Neo-Con is, so as to not be hoodwinked again by these fake Republicans. Taken from a Congressional speech made back in 2003, entitled Neo-Conned!, Ron Paul lays it out in full view for America (or at least anyone watching C-Span 3 at the time):

More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means—that hardball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.

11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

I would encourage anyone reading this to check out the full Neo-Conned! address Ron Paul made to Congress in 2003 that apparently fell on deaf ears. Wake the hell up, these people are scary!

Tucker Carlson Interviews Ron Paul on MSNBC (Video - June 6th)

Ron Paul KILLS in 3rd GOP Debate on CNN (June 5th - Video)

Vote for Ron Paul in these major "who won the debate?" polls:

1. CNN Poll
2. MSNBC Poll
3. AOL Poll
4. ABC Poll
5. More polls will be added, check back later!

Here's a chart detailing who was alotted what amount of time to speak at the debate last night. Looks like CNN is just as un-fair and un-balanced as the Fox News debate was.



In other GOP debate news:

1. Corporate Media Sidelines Ron Paul Again - Texas Congressman put in shadows while establishment shills lavished with time and attention, yet Paul still wins post-debate polls.

2. 3rd GOP Debate Most Staged Yet - Highly controlled forum lends propaganda to establishment darlings' grandstanding, with prescreened questions and disproportionate time for every candidate.

3. 9/11 Truth Reporter Arrested for Asking Rudy Staffer a Simple Question After Debate - Matt Lepacek of the 9/11 Truth outlet InfoWars.com confronts Rudy Giuliani pollster Ed Goeas in the spin room after the 6/5/07 Republican debate in Manchester. He is arrested; later, his colleague Luke Rudowski is led outside by police. Rudowski is let go and explains what just happened.

Getting to Know Ron Paul (Pt. 1)

From Wikipedia:

Medical career: Paul began his medical practice in Lake Jackson, Texas as a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology and has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He took over the practice of a retiring doctor and was busy as the only obstetrician/gynecologist in Brazoria County. Paul said of his time as a doctor, "I delivered forty to fifty babies a month and did a lot of surgery."



Dr. Paul did not accept Medicare or Medicaid as a physician; instead, he would do the work for free or work out a lowered payment for needy patients.

That's a whole-lotta babies man!

Speaking of babies, I went and saw the movie "Knocked Up" this past weekend. For those of you who've seen it, I think I'd rather have Ron Paul in the room delivering my baby more-so than that Asian, control freak obstetrician! I wanted to punch that guy in the face!

Ron Paul Not Being Well Represented in "Scientific Polls"

It's funny; looking at all the major Republican candidate polls, whether it be the major television network polls, USA Today polls, Washington Post polls or New York Times polls, you'd think Ron Paul doesn't have a single supporter in the entire United States of America.

Why is this? It's quite obvious to anyone who uses the internet more than 15 minutes per day that Ron Paul has a large base of support in the 35 and under crowd. Mr. Proloy of USAElectionPolls.com seems to have the answer.

Proloy says "It is not sufficient enough to match up percentages. There is a large number of students away from home in college, many youth do not use a landline, and many voters that were previously disenfranchised with the political process that are likely to flock to Ron Paul."

"The age of land-line phones is setting. More people everyday are canceling their hard-line phones for cellular phones, which could explain a lot" said Anthony DeLelles, founder of VoteWriteIn.com. "If you look at all the noteworthy polls conducted entirely online, Ron Paul is in the top three GOP candidates 99% of the time, often times in the #1 position, blowing the other candidates out of the water. Old-school radio pundits like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh love to say Ron Paul supporters are gaming these polls, and point out their un-scientific backbones. I'd ask them how scientific a Gallup pole that relies entirely on land-line calls is. Not very scientific in my opinion. In the new age of the internet, these dinosaur polling services need to look to broaden their so called scientific means of collecting data."

USAElectionPolls.com is a centralized location for all of the latest national and state polls and is one of the most visited websites of its kind according to Quantcast Internet ratings.

For more on Ron Paul's natural boost, go to http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/articles/ron-paul-natural-boost.html

To see how Ron Paul has done in all the national and state polls, go to http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/candidates/Ron-Paul.html

The Daily Show - Ron Paul Rally Pictures (Pt. 2)

More pictures of the rally yesterday in front of The Daily Show studios can be found here at Meetup.com, including two of myself (brown shirt) with a big, stupid, ideological grin on my face.





Video of the Ron Paul arrival (added June 8th, 2007):

The Daily Show w/Jon Stewart - Ron Paul Interview (June 4th - Video)

Here's the video footage from The Daily Show Ron Paul interview. In my humble opinion, Ron Paul did a really great job getting his message through the overall humor Jon Stewart likes to sprinkle into the interview process. Contrary to most interviews Jon Stewart does with the awful Neo-Con elitists, there were no hints of negativity or subtle jabs at his belief systems. Ron Paul's voting record is as perfect as you can get, 100% based on the Constitution, and Jon Stewart knew that, providing Dr. Paul with the respect he so rightly deserves.

The Daily Show - Ron Paul Rally Pictures (Pt. 1)

Today in New York City, Ron Paul pulled up to The Daily Show studios in Midtown to find many an excitied fan awaiting his arrival. As Dr. Paul stepped out of his modest, black taxi, people cheered with huge, freedom loving grins on their faces.

As Dr. Paul made his way through the bevy of supporters, his campaign manager made it clear to The Daily Show security team that Dr. Paul wanted to spend some time talking to everyone before making his way inside for the taping, set to air tonight at 11pm on Comedy Central.

Here are a few pictures I managed to snap off during the impromptu campaign rally:

New Ron Paul Article by Michael Scheuer

Excellent article by Michael Scheuer, 22-year CIA veteran and former head of the the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. The original article can be found here, care of AntiWar.com.


Rep. Ron Paul and the Founders versus
Our Interventionist Elite
by Michael Scheuer, June 1st, 2007

America’s bipartisan governing elite never expected their common interventionist foreign policy to be damned by a man who has long worked among that august group. But Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) proved himself not only a political maverick, but one of the few elected federal officials who still prizes – indeed, treasures is a better word – his status as an American citizen. Rep. Paul does not view himself as a citizen of the world who deems unrelenting U.S. intervention abroad as the acceptable price the world demands of America for this higher form of citizenship. Rep. Paul rejects that price, which is, of course, enormously expensive in monetary terms, as well as in terms of the blood of American kids, most of whose parents and other kin are seldom if ever found in the country’s governing elite.

In the Republican debate in South Carolina, Dr. Paul had the unmitigated gall to tell his fellow candidates the exact truth: America was attacked by Islamists on 9/11, and untold other times since Osama bin Laden declared war on us in 1996, because of the United States government’s foreign policies and their impact in the Muslim world over the last thirty-five years. Dr. Paul then consigned to history’s trashcan the motivations assigned to bin Laden and his ilk by the Bush and Clinton administrations; the nine other Republican candidates; the eight please-don’t-ask-us-about-what-Ron-Paul-said Democratic presidential candidates; most of the media; and the think tanks, left, center, and right. Quite correctly, Rep. Paul deep-sixed – hopefully forever – the idea that our Islamist enemies are attacking us because of our freedoms, liberties, elections, freedom of speech, and gender equality.

In response to Rep. Paul, Rudy Giuliani – is there a more unctuous, ill-informed, and arrogant man in American politics? – dismissed the idea that we were attacked for being "over there" as, in his opinion, "absurd." Giuliani added that he had never before heard such an analysis, demanded Dr. Paul retract his words, and clearly implied that Dr. Paul was unpatriotic. In other words, Giuliani applied the usual crude denigration reserved for any American citizen who dares question the establishment’s self-serving interventionism.

Sadly for Americans, Giuliani probably was telling the truth, both for himself and the American governing elite. None of the elite’s denizens appear to have heard, read, or even sensed anything that runs counter to the Muslims-hate-us-for-our-freedoms dictum that became revealed scripture on 9/11 and which, in truth, has governed the elite’s perceptions of and actions in the Muslim world for decades. Dr. Paul is right, our governing elite are obsessed with searching abroad for dragons to destroy, especially Islamic dragons; they thereby ignore the Founders’ clear warning that such activity all but assures the ruin of our republic.

Soon after the debate, the bone-deep interventionism of both parties focused on by Rep. Paul was underscored for Americans by the spending bill for the Iraq war passed by Congress and signed by President Bush. The bill allowed the intervention in Iraq to continue until at least September and showed there is no real difference between the two parties; the Republicans want to continue pursuing the military option, while the Democrats argue the military option has failed and there must now be a U.S.-dominated political solution. Neither party wants to leave Iraq; each just has its own view of how the intervention should be managed. And they cynically have stage-managed the next three months so that each will have ammunition – in the form of dead U.S. military personnel – to support their agendas when the next Iraq spending bill is debated. The Republicans will argue that the "surge" has been costly in lives but is succeeding and cannot be given up; the Democrats will argue the surge has failed and the high number of U.S. dead show that we must find a political settlement. Odds are the next spending bill will be signed and leave the situation substantially unchanged because no one – save Rep. Paul – really wants to get out of Iraq. Indeed, there is every chance that the next presidential election will come and go and we will still be in Iraq because the gentleman from Texas is the only presidential candidate who is not a rank interventionist.

Faced with this reality, the struggle to make Americans face facts on foreign policy must be fought now and the spark struck by Rep. Paul fanned into a fire. Make no mistake, the United States is fighting and losing a growing war against al-Qaeda and its allies. And our evolving defeat is not the result of military weakness on our part, or any God-is-on-the-side-of-the-Islamists factor on al-Qaeda’s side. We are losing because we have underestimated the enemy’s strength and motivation thanks to the belief of Mr. Giuliani and our bipartisan elite that Mr. Paul’s assessment of the Islamists’ motivation is "absurd." That belief – which can now be called the "Giuliani Doctrine" – is al-Qaeda’s only indispensable ally and its maintenance is the Islamists only hope for victory.

Our Islamist enemies are motivated by the U.S. policies that have produced America’s military presence in the Muslim world; approval for the repression of Muslims by Russia and China; exploitation of Muslim oil resources; unqualified support for Israel; and a half-century of protecting Arab police states. No American, of course, has to agree with Muslim perceptions of U.S. policies. But perception always is reality, and there is no doubt that most of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims – even those opposed to bin Laden – perceive U.S. foreign policy as an attack on their faith, lands, and brethren. Thus, while our bipartisan governing elite fight a non-existent threat – the freedom-haters and the liberty detesters – the threat fueled by hatred for the impact of U.S. foreign policy grows broader, deeper, and more visceral among Muslims.

What to do? Take Rep. Paul up on his idea of debating the components of U.S. foreign policy that are at issue, not to denigrate their authors and upholders, but to allow Americans to assess whether the policies are doing the only thing they must do – protect America. In this nation there should be nothing too dangerous to talk about; energy, Israel, and our tyrannical Arab "friends" ought to be on the table for thorough, even vitriolic debate. An honest, wide-ranging debate would do two things: (1) It would destroy the myth that Muslims hate us for who we are and how we think and live, and (2) it would help Americans see that U.S. foreign policy has consequences, good and bad, and that Washington’s current policies ensure war with the Islamists for the foreseeable future, and probably much longer.

Might I suggest, therefore, that the next Republican and Democratic debates focus on a single proposition, and that proposition be taken from the finest book on the history of U.S. foreign relations published in the last quarter century, Walter A. MacDougall’s, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776. In the debates, the proposition before the house for discussion – to adapt the words of Dr. MacDougall – should be:

"Foreign policy defines what America is at home and is the instrument for preserving and expanding American freedom at home. Foreign policy conducted in the form of crusades for democracy or other ideologies abroad belie America’s ideals, violate its true interests, and sully its freedom. The Founders never intended foreign policy to impose their values beyond America’s own land and waters. None of the Founders perceived a mortal conflict between morality and the national interest; indeed, foreign policy is moral when it is in the national interest."

Initially, such a debate would amount to Dr. Paul against all comers, but Dr. Paul would be quickly joined by tens of millions of Americans when they hear the fatuous, theory-stuffed attempts by the seventeen other candidates to justify the profligate waste of American lives, treasure, and security for exactly the kind of ideological crusading – democracy, freedom, human and women’s rights, etc. – the Founders not only warned against, but damned. At debate’s end it would be clear to Americans that their self-appointed, inbred emperors have no clothes. And the way then would be clear to think about a foreign policy that protects American liberty at home and genuine U.S. interests abroad, and one that is not the republic-destroying play thing of our elite interventionists and the interest groups, foreign lobbies, and domestic military industries that fund their election campaigns.