The Inauguration Day How We Got Here Random Flickr-Blogging Retrospective Extravaganza

The long election cycle that brought us to this historic day was observed here -- in true IIRTZ fashion -- with irreverent and sometimes tasteless derision. While one is tempted to entertain lofty and nostalgic daydreams and memories today, resist and indulge yourself in a retrospective of the political year just past, as seen through the slightly-distorted lens of Random Flickr-Blogging.

Originally uploaded by fabcom.
Random Flickr-blogging explained

We're winning in Iraq. The economy is fine. Voluntary restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions will solve the global climate change problem. John McCain is an independent, straight-shooting campaign-finance reformer. You can have the bridge pictured here for your very own for $29.95, but only if you call in the next ten minutes...
See more...

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Originally uploaded by Robotkid.

The Green Party, having chosen its presidential candidate, examines its prospects for November success.

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Originally uploaded by faustastic.

Based on recent trends within the party, the site committee for the 2012 Republican National Convention decided to consider all options.

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Originally uploaded by rst90274.

Meanwhile, the Ron Paul Revolution rolls on...

Originally uploaded by chrisabad.

"This thing seems to be working -- all of Ron Paul's policy positions are starting to make sense to me."

Originally uploaded by bnidjer.

After visiting If I Ran The Zoo, a Democratic Ron Paul volunteer attempts suicide with a box of Krispy Kremes.

Originally uploaded by androoouk.

"Parachute? What parachute? We're Libertarians -- just relax and enjoy your freedom!"

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The Endless Primary Season

Originally uploaded by Curious_Cynic.

Texas has scrapped its primary election in favor of its own version of the Iowa Caucuses.

Originally uploaded by mkeblx.

The Clinton campaign was accused of employing an aggressive and unorthodox get-out-the-vote methodology last week in South Carolina.

Originally uploaded by urwis.

Bill O'Reilly's vehicle, after he got lost and ran off the road trying to crash another NH primary event.

Originally uploaded by ScottHernandez.

John McCain, the NSA, the TSA, and the Division of Homeland Security have all teamed up to bring the "Living In Fear For The Next Hundred Years" roadshow to your town between now and the November election.

Originally uploaded by Clément Guillaume.

Members of the press as they are marched at gunpoint to yet another Hillary Clinton rally.

Originally uploaded by linktoyou.

Meanwhile, right now, somewhere in this great land of ours, a Barack Obama rally is starting...

Originally uploaded by Mr. T.14.H.

All that was left for Giuliani's staff to do was to clear out the campaign offices.

Originally uploaded by rockfshr.

Poor Chet. One minute, he's having a civil conversation with his wife about Bosnia, Hillary, and "factcheck.org". Next thing he knows, he's camping in the back yard.

Originally uploaded by narrativeMAN.

John McCain released the results of his medical exams in order to defuse any criticisms based on his age, but it backfired when this close-up of his left earlobe and the carbon-dating results were leaked to the press.

Originally uploaded by hbp_pix.
Random Flickr-blogging explained.

These Democrats just found out how long it will be before the Pennsylvania primary.

Originally uploaded by photosbyscott.

Weeks after calling on supporters of both Democratic candidates to put aside their differences, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean appealed to the last holdouts.

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A decision, then on to the general...

Originally uploaded by David Boyle in DC.

"Yeah, dude, check it out -- there's a great antiques and collectibles yard sale going on down the block."

Originally uploaded by DjTweed.

"See, Cindy, now that we've sold off all those other houses, there's no reason anymore for Joe Six-Pack not to vote for me."

Originally uploaded by bigChill.
Random Flickr-blogging explained.

Another former Republican hears about McCain's beer veto.

Originally uploaded by Leo Cloma.

John McCain came under increasing pressure to disassociate himself with a radical religious leader who had been responsible for such inflammatory and anti-American statements as "Love your enemy", "The last shall be first, and the first last", "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", and "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Originally uploaded by resistealeau.

The McCain campaign played second banana to the Obama campaign all last week. While Obama spoke to 200,000 enthralled spectators in Berlin, McCain visited a German restaurant in Ohio. While Obama and General Petraeus toured Iraq by helicopter...

Originally uploaded by btornado.

The vice presidential candidate of the future will not need a $150,000 wardrobe.

Originally uploaded by swetieduck.

Weeks too late, they finally found McCain's campaign strategy under a back seat in the Straight Talk Express.

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Finally...victory! From Grant Park, election night:

Originally uploaded by graemetallan.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible..."

Originally uploaded by orangeambrosia.

"...who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time..."

Originally uploaded by SnowInSummer.

"...who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

Originally uploaded by Kealor.

"This is your victory. And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead."

Originally uploaded by Pugnation.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there."

Originally uploaded by ChevyGuy454.

"And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too."

Originally uploaded by jo3c00l.

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

Originally uploaded by { вянoOoм ~.

"America, we have come so far. We have seen so much..."

Originally uploaded by arnoldzafra.

"...But there is so much more to do...This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace..."

Originally uploaded by Ice Cream Bears.

"...to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one..."

Originally uploaded by Dustin Hall.

"...that while we breathe, we hope..."

Originally uploaded by SamoDiva Stefana.

"...And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't..."

Originally uploaded by ufdance.

"...we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes..."

Originally uploaded by thoa_hnmtc.

"...we..."

Originally uploaded by Martin & Julia.

"...can."

"No, Mister GOP--I Expect You to Die!"

It just keeps getting wackier and wackier: Steve M. links to someone who claims Ron Paul's candidacy is a plot by George Soros to destroy the Republican party--along with other instances showing the theory has gained some traction on the right. As Steve says,

it's kind of perfect that there's a paranoid, probably racist conspiracy theory about a racist candidate who, along with his supporters, is full of conspiracy theories.

But then wherever Soros comes up on the right, he's bound to be part of some imagined conspiracy. Soros is the dark power behind everything the wingnuts hate.

Truth is, when wingnuts see 'Soros' they think 'Blofeld'. They see him as some mad, all-powerful super-villain. A Bond villain. Which, in moments of near-self-awareness, they even make explicit. Start from the assumption that Soros is Dr. No, and the idea that Ron Paul is his pawn makes all kinds of sense.

Or maybe it's not Blofeld or Dr. No; maybe George Soros is really Auric Goldfinger. Think about it: wouldn't that Fort Knox caper be worth a whole lot more if we went back to the gold standard?

(Apologies to Deborah for treading on her turf.)

17 57 Reasons Why!

Why no liberal should even consider supporting Ron Paul¹, that is. Snave has the list. My personal favorite: "36. He is the only member of Congress to receive a 100% rating from the John Birch Society."

Think of all the people he beat out for that distinction.

[Hat tip: Generik]



¹Steve H. pointed out a while back that there is one possible exception to this: if the Democratic race is already decided in your state, it would be okay to vote for Paul in the Republican primary. Just to fuck with them, of course.

And Unlike Romney, He Doesn't Even Need to Pander

The other day Bulworth posted an excellent summary of Ron Paul's positions (taken verbatim from Paul's own issues pages) showing just how appalling (and, in some cases, bizarre) his political beliefs are. (If you missed it, be sure to go back and read the whole thing.) Apart from the Iraq thing, it turns out, he really does represent today's GOP.

I have just a couple more data points to add. On Sunday's Meet the Press, Paul came out against the Civil War and for 'gradual emancipation'; meanwhile, Kos dug up a 1992 quote in which Paul said "95% of the black males in [DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal" (hat tip: Instaputz and Scott Lemieux).

In a saner party at a saner time, either of these would be a candidacy-killer. But the GOP has become a de facto (Southern) regional party, and I have a feeling a lot of Republicans are suddenly giving Paul a serious second look.

[Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog]

Framing Ron Paul

Steve M. is right: if Ron Paul does run as a third-party candidate, we will need to work to make people see beyond his opposition to the Iraq war and understand him as the wingnut he really is.

It shouldn't be that hard; the raw material is abundant. In the event of a third-party run, I would like to see someone running ads for him saying things like "he's the only candidate who will protect the rights of the unborn", or "he opposes special rights for homosexuals", or "Giuliani opened his city to illegal immigration; Ron Paul will close America to illegal immigrants".

In a series of ads, hit all the pet obsessions of the wingnuts: cutting taxes, abolishing the Department of Education, no affirmative action--the whole nine yards. There's nothing dishonest about this; that's his record. You could probably pull in a lot of righties with a slogan like "Ron Paul wants to get America out of the UN, and get the UN out of America". Pull in a lot of righties, and (more importantly) push away a lot of lefties.

Or it could be much simpler than that. There is a slogan that could do the trick all by itself--could appeal to the Republicans we want to defect while repelling the Democrats we want to keep--especially if the nominees are Clinton and Giuliani:

Vote for Ron Paul. He's from Texas.

It just might work.

[Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog]

A Note to Ron Paul Supporters

When you donate money to this blog (and as the Worst Blog Ever, we could obviously use the cash), please donate genuine U.S. currency--not Ron Paul dollars.

Thank you.

Ron Paul Campaign HQ

Stonington, Maine

Ron Paul and 'Centrism'

Paulapalooza continues, with a commenter leaving this quote from Carroll Quigley ("Clinton's Mentor", as if that's supposed to mean something to us), from Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time:

The chief problem of American political life...has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

Which, of course, is a more scholarly expression of High Broderism--of disdain for ideological difference and party politics, of a yearning for some kind of high-minded bipartisan 'centrism' (which, of course, reflects nothing more than the preferences of the person yearning for it). All of which is very interesting and all, but it raises the question: what the hell does this have to do with Ron Paul?

Because of course Ron Paul is an extremist on every single issue except one (the one issue on which the establishment regards him as an extremist: the war in Iraq). On abortion, on Social Security, on immigration, on taxes, etc.: extremist. He takes positions that are extreme even for his extremist party. And yet here's this Paulista citing Carroll Quigley in a way that he thinks supports Ron Paul. And that passage is obviously important to the Paulistas--one of the other commenters cites it as well (without quoting, but it's obvious what he's talking about). And then there are other commenters describing Paul as "a candidate that unites people" and "far more educated on matters of domestic and foreign policy then you could ever hope to be".

And then it clicks: these Paulistas (or at least a significant subset of them) remind me of nothing so much as the Anderson geeks in 1980.

Fiscally conservative but socially liberal, Anderson was exactly the sort of 'centrist' Broder could swoon over. He wound up pulling a lot of Democrats disgusted with the conservative shift (from Vance to Brzezinski, in a sense) in Carter's foreign policy--and in particular, college students subject to Selective Service registration (I was one of those, but never supported Anderson). The single most annoying thing about the Anderson geeks was their sense of superiority, of being somehow above mere partisan politics.

Which, of course, we're seeing again with Ron Paul--to whom (for reasons that are beyond me) the would-be Anderson geeks are currently gravitating.

So Broder has his post-partisan 'centrist' candidate, the one who can pull equally from left and right. What Broder never envisioned is that he just happens to be a radical right-wing bomb thrower. That's a joke I can appreciate--as long as the joke is on Broder, and doesn't wind up being on us.

Friday Ron Paul Random Ten

Ron Paul & Garmarna - Vengeance
Ron Paul & the Sonics - Walkin' the Dog
Nina Simone & Ron Paul - I'm Feeling Good
Siouxsie & Ron Paul & the Banshees - Overground
Ron Paul & Shriekback - Gunning for the Buddha
Pet Shop Ron Paul Boys - West End Girls
Ron-Sleater-Kinney-Paul - A Quarter to Three
Ron Paul & the Vibrants - Zorchy
Ron Paul & Joy Division - Passover
Kurtis Ron Paul Blow - Hard Times

All killer, no filler--definitely one of my better lists.

So in Walkin' the Dog there's this line: "she broke a needle, and she can't sew". And the question is: can she not sew because she broke her needle? or is the fact that she can't sew a tipoff that we're talking about a different kind of needle altogether? The song sure sounds like a coded drug song, but I don't know enough about the background (it's originally by Rufus Thomas, but I'm not sure that's helpful) to say one way or another.

So anyway, what are some lyrics you've always wondered about (from your list if you have any there, or elsewhere if you don't)?

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it earlier, any Democrat who votes for Ron Paul is too stupid to live.

Colonial Homestead in Ron Paul Fogbank

North Castine, Maine

Ron Paul and Stupidity: A Clarification

This post appears to have touched a nerve among Ron Paul supporters, many of whom have left comments hoping to show that they are not, in fact, too stupid to live. Not all of them have been entirely successful.

But I think some of them labor under something of a misapprehension about the nature of my original post. I am emphatically not saying everyone who votes for Ron Paul is too stupid to live. If you support conservative policies and you vote for an extreme conservative, that's a rational choice. If you're a wingnut and you're voting for a wingnut, go with God.

If, on the other hand, you support the broadly-defined goals of the Democratic party, the only way to promote those goals is to vote for the Democratic nominee. If you vote for some über-progressive no-hoper (*cough*nader*cough*), then you're incredibly stupid, because you're effectively casting a vote for the Republican candidate and thus (in practical terms, which are the only terms that matter) you are working against the goals you claim to support.

But even then you would be a towering intellect compared to people who support Democratic values but vote for Ron Paul, who would be casting their lame-ass throwaway protest vote for someone who is opposed to everything they believe in. Those people would, in fact, be too stupid to live.

So, to recap: if you're a conservative, by all means vote for Ron Paul; if you're at all progressive, don't. Thank you.

Any Democrat Who Votes for Ron Paul Is Too Stupid to Live

I've been trying not to let Ron Paul occupy any significant amount of real estate in my brain and by and large I've succeeded, but recent developments make it necessary to think about him just long enough to point out that any Democrat who votes for Ron Paul is too stupid to live.

I've been assuming that if Paul runs a third-party candidacy, he would draw some (but very few) Democrats (the ones who are too stupid to live) but more Republicans; in fact, I argued as much in a couple of Steve M.'s comment threads. After all, apart from opposing the Iraq war, Paul is a wingnut's wingnut (Dave Neiwert has the details, including his legislative record). Abortion, immigration, taxes, gun control, public education, environmental protection, gay rights, minimum wage, Social Security--whatever it is, he's agin' it.

I figured his support for forced pregnancy¹ and opposition to gay rights² had the potential to attract a non-trivial number of authoritarian evangelicals unhappy with a philandering cross-dressing pro-abortion city slicker like Giuliani. I also figured, of course, that any Democrat who voted for Ron Paul would have to be too stupid to live. I figured the number of the former would be at least 2-3 times as great as the number of the latter.

Then today a Rasmussen poll covering a hypothetical 4-way race (Clinton, Giuliani, Paul, and Nader) included this bit: "Perhaps because of his position on the War in Iraq, Paul attracts more support from Democrats than Republicans." Which came as something of a shock to me, given that any Democrat who votes for Ron Paul is too stupid to live.

Steve M. wrote about the poll³:

It can't be a huge discrepancy -- in the last two-way Rasmussen poll, Hillary beat Rudy by six points, and in this poll she beats Rudy by three, even with Nader and Paul in the mix....Still, it's a sign that the Democrats are actually going to have to do a bit of work to frame Paul (accurately) as a wingnut if he does run in the general election.

Which is exactly right. Apparently there really is a non-trivial number of too-stupid-to-live-ocrats for whom the prospect of President Giuliani just isn't terrifying enough to motivate them to vote for whomever the Democrats nominate. People who stupidly think voting for Paul would actually express their true preferences, instead of expressing the exact opposite of every single progressive political preference except one. And somehow, some way, we have to make it clear to them (or to some non-trivial number of them) just how wrong they are.

Anyway, this is all sort of a long and rambling way to get to my main point, which is this: any Democrat who votes for Ron Paul is too stupid to live.

Any questions?



¹He sponsored bills to "provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception", and a constitutional amendment declaring "that the right to life vests in a human being from the moment of fertilization."
²He sponsored bills to prohibit the federal judiciary from handling claims arising from discrimination based on sexual orientation
³Steve did not say 'neener neener neener', even though he could have.

Quote of the Day

Glenn Greenwald, on "The Ron Paul phenomenon":

I don't want to push the [Howard] Dean/[Ron] Paul analogy too far. There are obviously very major differences between them and what fueled each of their candidacies. But the hallmark of both was that they tapped into the widespread and intense scorn for the rancid establishment governing the Beltway, and anything that does so is something to be cheered.

Update: Or Kevin Drum could be right:

It's cheap and easy to take extreme, uncompromising positions when you have no actual chance of ever putting them into practice, so Paul's extreme, uncompromising positions really don't mean a thing. They don't reflect either well or badly on him. They're meaningless, and I wish grown adults who know better would stop pretending otherwise.