Showing posts with label Ron Paul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ron Paul. Show all posts
Yes, yes, I know there was that eye-catching "head stomping" to talk about yesterday...
... but that just highlights the lack of anything serious in the political news this week.
Yes, yes, I know that liberals would like to purvey the notion that tea partiers are violent and that incident fit their template, but:
1. One data point proves nothing about a large group (unless you follow the thinking style of bigotry).
2. The "violent Tea Party" meme has been pushed since the very beginning of the Tea Party movement, so it's nothing new. And the failure to pick up enough data points to look anything like a pattern is glaringly obvious.
3. The MoveOn.org woman came to the event to create an incident and caused the Ron Paul's supporters to worry about his safety, so that violent incident was prompted by the urge to defend, in which case even that one incident isn't a data point that fits the gapingly empty template.
4. "A person in a disguise, carrying a sign from a radical organization, tries to push through the crowd to hand a political opponent an unknown object. What would the Secret Service have done to her?"
Indeed!
5. I bet some of you, reading #4, thought of saying: "Person"?! It was a woman. How threatening could a woman be? But:
7. And let me say one more thing to those who delighted in what they imagined was the political usefulness of the "stomping" incident. There is a big rally in Washington this weekend that will draw many thousands of persons. Within that throng of presumed liberals and lefties, there will be all sorts of characters, with their diverse problems and motivations. You don't know who will act up, what foolishly overstated signs they will carry, and what provocations will lead someone with clouded judgment or poor impulse control to do something that will look awful on video. That will happen 3 days before the election, leaving very little time to explain. If that happens, you will want to eat all the words you've been saying about the stomper.
ADDED: New video shows the aggressive behavior of the woman — Lauren Valle — that took place before the men took her down.
Yes, yes, I know that liberals would like to purvey the notion that tea partiers are violent and that incident fit their template, but:
1. One data point proves nothing about a large group (unless you follow the thinking style of bigotry).
2. The "violent Tea Party" meme has been pushed since the very beginning of the Tea Party movement, so it's nothing new. And the failure to pick up enough data points to look anything like a pattern is glaringly obvious.
3. The MoveOn.org woman came to the event to create an incident and caused the Ron Paul's supporters to worry about his safety, so that violent incident was prompted by the urge to defend, in which case even that one incident isn't a data point that fits the gapingly empty template.
4. "A person in a disguise, carrying a sign from a radical organization, tries to push through the crowd to hand a political opponent an unknown object. What would the Secret Service have done to her?"
Indeed!
5. I bet some of you, reading #4, thought of saying: "Person"?! It was a woman. How threatening could a woman be? But:
A: That's sexist. You think women cannot be dangerous?6. Are we really going to elevate every prank and beating to a political event deserving analysis? That "stomping" had nothing do with anything worth thinking about in deciding who to vote for. If that counted as substance, it's evidence of the extreme dearth of substance this week.
B: Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore. It happens.
7. And let me say one more thing to those who delighted in what they imagined was the political usefulness of the "stomping" incident. There is a big rally in Washington this weekend that will draw many thousands of persons. Within that throng of presumed liberals and lefties, there will be all sorts of characters, with their diverse problems and motivations. You don't know who will act up, what foolishly overstated signs they will carry, and what provocations will lead someone with clouded judgment or poor impulse control to do something that will look awful on video. That will happen 3 days before the election, leaving very little time to explain. If that happens, you will want to eat all the words you've been saying about the stomper.
ADDED: New video shows the aggressive behavior of the woman — Lauren Valle — that took place before the men took her down.
Ron Paul! You need to come speak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Yesterday, after the faculty meeting, I walked down Bascom Hill, which was extremely well-posted with student activist posters....
(Enlarge.)
... including this one, which is horrifying for so many reasons...
"Fast Trains Are Cool." As if the government should provide us with everything, even coolness. Big Brother loves you, and Big Brother will also supply the coolness that's currently missing in your gray little life. Wow! We can go fast. Train go fast. Student not think about who pay for cool fast train. Ride train. Train cool.
I kept walking, down to library mall, where I was accosted by a guy with a clipboard, a sort of campus character I would normally discreetly evade, but he was part of a group of students I'd noticed earlier, telling people it was Constitution Day, and therefore we ought to sign a petition to bring Ron Paul to campus to speak, so I stop...
... and even sign the petition. He tells me Ron Paul has said that if students collect 1000 signatures, he'll come to the campus to speak. I ask him if he's finding many conservative or libertarian students on this campus. He admits that there don't seem to be too many, but that he does think the students these days are pretty open-minded and interested in hearing different points of view. Is it possible that the new generation of UW students is more flexible and less rigidly committed to left/liberal ideology? He thought so. I asked if I could take his picture, and I got the picture above, and that sparked this convergence...
... and I asked if it was okay if I blogged them, and the answer was "Blog?!" as if it were 2004 again. I felt young. Cool. On my own. Without a fast train or a Big Brother. And I'm thinking: Ron Paul! Come to the University of Wisconsin! I need to blog this to help get Ron Paul to the University of Wisconsin to talk to our possibly really open-minded young people before they get swept too far by the empty promises of cool things. Before they get... railroaded.
(Enlarge.)
... including this one, which is horrifying for so many reasons...
"Fast Trains Are Cool." As if the government should provide us with everything, even coolness. Big Brother loves you, and Big Brother will also supply the coolness that's currently missing in your gray little life. Wow! We can go fast. Train go fast. Student not think about who pay for cool fast train. Ride train. Train cool.
I kept walking, down to library mall, where I was accosted by a guy with a clipboard, a sort of campus character I would normally discreetly evade, but he was part of a group of students I'd noticed earlier, telling people it was Constitution Day, and therefore we ought to sign a petition to bring Ron Paul to campus to speak, so I stop...
... and even sign the petition. He tells me Ron Paul has said that if students collect 1000 signatures, he'll come to the campus to speak. I ask him if he's finding many conservative or libertarian students on this campus. He admits that there don't seem to be too many, but that he does think the students these days are pretty open-minded and interested in hearing different points of view. Is it possible that the new generation of UW students is more flexible and less rigidly committed to left/liberal ideology? He thought so. I asked if I could take his picture, and I got the picture above, and that sparked this convergence...
... and I asked if it was okay if I blogged them, and the answer was "Blog?!" as if it were 2004 again. I felt young. Cool. On my own. Without a fast train or a Big Brother. And I'm thinking: Ron Paul! Come to the University of Wisconsin! I need to blog this to help get Ron Paul to the University of Wisconsin to talk to our possibly really open-minded young people before they get swept too far by the empty promises of cool things. Before they get... railroaded.
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook"/"The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist."
There's this Ron Paul quote that's getting some attention:
Now, Nixon was denying his own guilt. Ron Paul is raising the issue about the President and providing the denial. Nixon stepped in it. Ron Paul is doing something else. But what?
Let's pull it apart:
1. The beginning of the statement, paraphrased, says: There's an important question about whether the President is a socialist. We should address it. Some people believe it. You ought to take it seriously. That's the opposite of a denial. That's massaging the concern about socialism into our heads.
2. Next we hear that there is a technical, economic definition of what socialism is, and according to that restricted definition, Obama is not a socialist. We are left to think that there is some less technical definition that would include Obama.
3. Ron Paul's next statement is therefore key: "He's a corporatist. And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country." It seems that Paul is warning about some vast alliance between government and business that isn't technically socialism but is dangerous in the same or worse way.
So, lefties, don't get all excited about that Ron Paul statement. He's not on your side.
"The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist. I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he's not a socialist."And what strikes me about it is the rhetorical similarity to the famous Nixon quote:
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."Rhetorically, the acknowledgment that there is a question has more impact than the denial. Indeed, the denial seems to underscore the seriousness of the question.
Now, Nixon was denying his own guilt. Ron Paul is raising the issue about the President and providing the denial. Nixon stepped in it. Ron Paul is doing something else. But what?
Let's pull it apart:
1. The beginning of the statement, paraphrased, says: There's an important question about whether the President is a socialist. We should address it. Some people believe it. You ought to take it seriously. That's the opposite of a denial. That's massaging the concern about socialism into our heads.
2. Next we hear that there is a technical, economic definition of what socialism is, and according to that restricted definition, Obama is not a socialist. We are left to think that there is some less technical definition that would include Obama.
3. Ron Paul's next statement is therefore key: "He's a corporatist. And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country." It seems that Paul is warning about some vast alliance between government and business that isn't technically socialism but is dangerous in the same or worse way.
So, lefties, don't get all excited about that Ron Paul statement. He's not on your side.
"Bruno" disappointed me.
I'm a big fan of "Da Ali G Show," where Sacha Baron Cohen plays 3 characters in short scenes that wrap up in half an hour. But, having seen "Borat" and now "Bruno," I have to admit I don't want to watch one of the characters for 90 minutes, especially "Bruno." I'm not a fan of story arcs. I love disjointed little bits. I like Bruno as the Austrian fashion reporter with the microphone in his hand. People who want to get on TV and to appear trendy will tumble into agreement with praise for Hitler or take direction that makes them look gay. (Here's an example I find especially funny.) But in the movie "Bruno," Bruno is fired from that job and comes to America to try to get famous again. That's not much of a story. It's just a narrative thread to connect different scenes — possibly generated after many of the scenes were filmed.
But why am I complaining? Didn't I just say I liked disjointed little bits? Well, but now Bruno is kind of down and out, and much of it is Sacha Baron Cohen trying to show us what Americans are really like. Fortunately or unfortunately, Americans failed to give him the homophobia footage he seems to have hoped for. I'm sure a ton of unfunny footage was thrown out, and that what went into the film was the closest he could get to hilarious, but most of these Americans simply remained stone-faced and tried to preserve their professionalism and dignity in the face of a very clownish man. Cohen did what he could — for example, wielding multiple big dildoes at a martial arts instructor — to goad people into flipping out about the gay guy, but — other than getting Ron Paul to blurt out "queer" twice — it just wasn't happening.
And the struggling Bruno can't be so outrageously bitchy. He wants people to help him. He's needy. He's more like Borat. But he's not lovable. I don't want him lovable. The Bruno I like needs to believe he's wielding power so he is able to trick people into showing their desire to leverage their fame through him. We see that in the movie in the one scene where some parents are trying to get their little kids hired as models. They think Bruno has some showbiz power, and they grovel before it. One woman is ready to make her 30 pound daughter lose 10 pounds in one week and to submit to liposuction if she can't get all that weight off. Now, that was something! It would be daring as hell to have 90-minutes on that level of pain. But that wouldn't be too funny, and it wouldn't be a blockbuster.
But why am I complaining? Didn't I just say I liked disjointed little bits? Well, but now Bruno is kind of down and out, and much of it is Sacha Baron Cohen trying to show us what Americans are really like. Fortunately or unfortunately, Americans failed to give him the homophobia footage he seems to have hoped for. I'm sure a ton of unfunny footage was thrown out, and that what went into the film was the closest he could get to hilarious, but most of these Americans simply remained stone-faced and tried to preserve their professionalism and dignity in the face of a very clownish man. Cohen did what he could — for example, wielding multiple big dildoes at a martial arts instructor — to goad people into flipping out about the gay guy, but — other than getting Ron Paul to blurt out "queer" twice — it just wasn't happening.
And the struggling Bruno can't be so outrageously bitchy. He wants people to help him. He's needy. He's more like Borat. But he's not lovable. I don't want him lovable. The Bruno I like needs to believe he's wielding power so he is able to trick people into showing their desire to leverage their fame through him. We see that in the movie in the one scene where some parents are trying to get their little kids hired as models. They think Bruno has some showbiz power, and they grovel before it. One woman is ready to make her 30 pound daughter lose 10 pounds in one week and to submit to liposuction if she can't get all that weight off. Now, that was something! It would be daring as hell to have 90-minutes on that level of pain. But that wouldn't be too funny, and it wouldn't be a blockbuster.
"This guy is a queer!"
Ron Paul quote from the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie. A spokeswoman defends the elfin libertarian:
"We don't want it to distract from his message," said press secretary Rachel Mills. "Now is the time when people need to be listening to him on economic issues."
Mills, who was present at the taping, did elaborate on the "queer" line. "I heard him say 'weird,' " she wrote in an e-mail. "In any case, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer as Folk … it's not exactly a shocking term if that's what he did say."
Mills also noted that Cohen's people were "very deceptive in their tactics." At the time, she thought they were "legitimate," but now confesses to some concern. "I'm familiar with his work, so you can imagine how I feel about it," she said.
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