Ron Paul and the Latin vote

Just in from Carlos Reyes, who blogs at http://www.cuentasdebolivia.blogspot.com/

The candidates debates are getting more and more numerous here...but most seem to miss a large part of the audience, the ever growing Latino voter. UP 26% from 2008, it is now 12 million here in los Estados Unidos. Do the math; a winner needs at least 50 million votes. Even though the selection for the president is not based on a clear majority, it is done by electoral college, a system somewhat unique to this country, there is still a numbers game. So 12 million will make or break it for the candidate.

And then there is the black vote. And the Asian vote, and that of many other groups. Just now, Obama may think he has most of the minorities and is safe. Four years ago he could think so; but four years is a long time in politics. So he may be in for a serious disappointment; which some say he has been.

Personally, I don't think he is quite such a disappointment - but then again, how did he let the bankers off in the latest round of Wall Street scandals? That hurt everyone. And he ought to have sent the bums to jail, not bailed them out. I just mean that I do not blame him for everything, or the general state of the economy, which is bad worldwide. Too may candidates are making their platform out of an anti-Obama tirade. Michele Bachman comes to mind, who was mentioned in El Diario/La Prensa (the largest Spanish largest daily in the US) as having, after Mitt Romney, the largest possibility of winning the GOP nomination. Heaven help us! She is so gaff prone that it scares me so bad I would rather see Obama in...I mean, the woman does not know her American history...and she brags about a John Wayne coming from her hometown, oddly named 'Waterloo'...which she has right except that the JW from Waterloo is not the star of the silver screen but rather a JW Gacy who screwed young men in Chicago and then chopped them up. No one, least of all all a Hispanic, wants a woman from Waterloo with a pyscho killer living down the road from her to be in the White House. 

And the other candidates scare me as well, some simply for their lack of experience...or the fact that they quit the job they had to go on a campaign trail...

But on a positive note, there is one candidate in the GOP roster who has a good chance of getting that crucial 12 million votes: Ron Paul, who was listed as being in 4th back in November among the GOPers but has soared to second.  He is a doctor (as was Che Guevara...apropos of doctors, and just to digress a bit...) and a former flight surgeon in the US Air Force...no draft dodger here. 

His issues are spot on, with the economy at the top of the list. His district, in heavily Hispanic Houston-Galveston area of Texas, is doing very well. And of course, there is the big issue of immigration, which he is very realistic about. I say that in light of the fact that many think that to woo the Latin community they ought to go out and let in every last illegal and give them free this and free that. En absoluto; which translates as absolutely not. Those of us born here want to help our hermanos as much as we can, but we also have a respect for the law, and balance our desires in the light of reality. The US simply cannot let in everybody and their hermano...Nations have borders, whether they are between Texas and Mexico or Venezuela and Colombia. And people must work within the law or we would all just be stepping on each other. There is a problem with immigration to such an extent that it is not just illegals intruding into the realm of the anglo-sajone, but to the point that illegals are intruding upon their legal cousins and causing trouble in the ethnic communities in which they try to assimilate. And it cannot just simply go on.

That said, Obama is the only GOP candidate NOT endorsing the 'send 'em all back' mantra

or wishing to have an armed border.

Recently Obama visited Puerto Rico, in a veiled move to secure millions of votes - the boricua vote being the largest of any Spanish speaking voters. It may or may not work; the precedent for it is JFK, who gained a lot of support from that quarter, which has voted largely democrat ever since. That is how the likes of Charles Rangel stay in power here after all the scandals - bear in mind also he invests in the Dominican Republic, at least that is where he had his house which got him in trouble with the IRS. 

The GOP seems to alienate many Latin voters, especially the likes of John McCain who after being against a border fence with Mexico is now supporting it and blaming the recent wild fires on illegal aliens; as if there were no other source of forest fires in the summer in Arizona. The Latin community was itself aflame at his remarks, which were rebutted by the likes of Fernando Escuelas here in NY on Radio Wado (1280 AM) on 21 June. It is one thing to be realistic about immigration - but another to fan the flames of rhetoric with unfounded accusations that target the Latin community - there has been enough of that lately, what with Casey Anthony trying to blame the death of her daughter on the maid, and the news reporter falsely crying rape and blaming non-existent Hispanics. That the GOP should join this chorus does not do much to secure 12 million votes.

What the GOP supporting Hispanic sees in this party is the pro-life stance, especially as over 10 million of those votes are Catholic; but was not JFK of that flock? And few people seem to know this, but Joe Biden is also a Catholic. 

From perusing the Latin press, it would seem that the Latino vote is not set to go GOP - read Chris Canavan opining in El Diario/La Prensa on the 4th of July - and it is clear that the GOP, and its hardcore cousin the Tea Party, are not seen in a good light; he writes: "Al paracer, Bachman y sus aliados en el Tea Party prefieren ignorar la vision de Madison y, en su lugar, apoyar a una minoria  en el congreso que promete detonar una bomba atomica si no consigue todas sus demandas." In plain English, it seems that Bachman and her mates in the Tea Party perfer to ignore Madison's ideas and replace them with their own, supporting a minority in Congress that will set off an atomic bomb if their demands are not met. 

Of Democrats, who I personally see as much the same, I do not find such rhetoric in this or any other major Spanish language paper. Perhaps the fact that this paper is published in NY, along with a slew of others down to the freebies such as El Especialito - gives it a pro-Democrat slant; 11 out of 13 local reps are Democrats here, all or most long term incumbents. (12 out of 13 it was until Rep Weiner got caught with his pants down...)

And after such exposure Little Anthony got replaced by Bob Turner of the GOP, due in part to the Latino voters on Long Island. 

 

Obama will not go as easily as Weiner; but whether he goes or stays I can guarantee will depend on the Latino vote. Which is not leaning towards the GOP lately, especially as Mitt Romney is in the lead. Romney, the son of a Mexican immigrant, well, technically, as his father was born in Mexico and came to the US at the age of five, is against most immigrants, as Albor Ruiz noted so well a few days ago in the New York Daily News - just in time to cast light on Romney's efforts to recruit the Latin vote in Florida. Today I heard this effort laughed at on 1280AM. So no wonder that in a room of 500 or so fundraisers last night at the Sheraton, right here in NYC with millions of Hispanics, there was not one to be found; the room was whiter than  KKK meet in the deep south.

So with the far right of the GOP, or with the KKK, he may have made his mark. But he and most other GOP candidates these days are not wooing the 12 million.

It would behoove the GOP to choose the candidate(s) that will secure that for them, and Ron Paul is now the only choice.

Meeting Mitt Romney

Tonight a friend and I were on the list for a Mitt Romney fundraiser at the Sheraton in Manhattan. We went, we saw, and we were a bit puzzled. First off, it was completely devoid of any ethnic group other than white; which is my own, and I am proud of it, but this is America and something so unrepresentative of the US public as a whole, that is trying to represent and govern the US population as a whole, is off pitch. It also had a very low percentage of veterans - in a room of about 500 people, when asked to raise our hands, only about three hands appeared; and one of them was mine. So do the math; it was a bit awkward. Lots of rich white people who had little or no military experience between them trying to get a rich white man into the position of Commander-in-Chief of the world's largest military.

Then Mitt spoke; actually somewhat well at first, let me give him some credit, he is not a bad speaker. But then he went on and on, reciting stanzas of the US national anthem, and seguing into a story about how he personally took a casket of a dead soldier to the grieving parents, and how everyone on the plane had their hands on their hearts etc etc etc. He jerked those tears a bit too much, and should have refrained from using this family's loss as his personal photo op. When I reached out my hand to him and mentioned that I was a former serviceman, his face went dead and he could not turn away from me fast enough.

I guess he likes his servicemen dead in a casket. That kind does not talk back; that kind does not tell him that America needs a better man than him to lead, as I did. I came at him live, and all I got for it was a ridiculous security detail telling me it was a crime to embarrass the candidate.

A crime? Well, maybe, yes, somewhere in the world I am sure it is. But this was NYC, part of NY state, part of the US of A. Not a crime. A right. Then they told me not to leave, and physically blocked me from leaving. Which, as any American citizen might well know, is a crime. I was on the way out. They had no right to obstruct my exit. They would have been in their rights to open wide the door and see me out into the night, tossing out the dissenter with various exhortations about going to the lower realms, but instead they tried to hold me and threaten me with arrest. But none dared call the police, as they knew damn well what would happen. The NYPD does not allow itself to be used as a silencing tool for politicians. If they had made arrests, it would not have been me.

So their tough guy antics just served as welcome comic relief after listening to Mitt Romney making long speeches about how he loves the military - probably in an attempt to block out the reality of his multiple deferments. He needs to cut that nonsense out and refrain from threatening servicemen if they show up and ask him hard questions. Which they have every right to do - they fight for that right to exist when they join up. Romney did not fight for that right; he fought against it.
Truth will out. And it will embarrass people like Romney. But thanks to the Constitution, everybody here, whether they were in the military or not, have that right....unless maybe Romney gets in and sics his goon squad on us.

So I hope he doesn't. And I also hope that the US gets a better president that Romney, hopefully someone with real military service.

So my friend, who they told to stop filming this, met me outside and we just had a laugh about the whole episode. Lots of clowns get lots of money and try to buy the White House but we're pretty certain this is not going to happen. Watch for Mitt Romney to get voted out of any states that have lots of servicemen or non-white populations. The GOP would do well to take note of his lousy performance in NY and start thinking seriously about a candidate with a wider base of appeal and military service.

Appeal to Iowa caucus voters to support Ron Paul

Today is the first day of the New Year. So far, so good. And even better that Ron Paul is gaining in the polls.
I happen to have some ties to his constituency, after all, it is my business address - my sister and I moved Minawear - a natural clothing company using hemp and other natural textiles - to it after many years in Santa Monica. In my youth I joined the navy in Houston, which is Ron Paul country. His district is one of the largest in the nation - about the size of the state of Massachusets. It is doing much better economically than that state, and much better than other districts on average. They call it the  Golden Triangle.
So I have I guess a very basic reason to support Paul: the economy, stupid. But there are other reasons. One is the military. For starters, Paul was in. An officer and a doctor during Vietnam. Added to this he is balanced on his military thinking, not  just running around gung-ho like some other candidates, many of whom were never in uniform. No surprise that there is presently a groundswell of support from active and former serviceman such as myself.
And then there is his initiative to create jobs in the US. That ought to be JOBS. Again, the economy stupid. But not without the ecology. What Paul wants is to make hemp - from which the first flag was made - and on which the original copy of the US Constitution was printed - legal for US farmers to grow. Some are against it, especially if they do not want the US to compete with China. Or to have its own textile industry, or manufacture paper....or use it for 25,000 other uses, as Popular Mechanics noted it had. 
I spend most of my time on the East Coast. And I see what Santorium and  Romney have done. And I compare it to what Paul has done. And I pray to God Paul wins.
And my plea to my fellow beings in Iowa is that you back the man who has the years of experience, military service, professional standing, is a veteran of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Banking Committee - Congressman Ron Paul. For a stronger America.

Support gathers for Ron Paul

Ron Paul, as we predicted, is overtaking the rest of the GOP candidates. After months of ignoring his sensible, level headed policies, the media are forced to take note and in the last two weeks there has been a plethora or pieces written on him. In mid-December, Katharine Q. Seelye in the New York Times noted "After Mr. Cain suspended his campaign on Dec. 3, many non-Romney, non-Paul voters coalesced around Mr. Gingrich....A November poll by the Des Moines Register placed him second in Iowa behind  Mr. Gingrich, with the support of 18 percent of likely caucusgoers."
Note the words "behind Mr Gingrich." Then fast forward a week to Christmas day when the same reporter, talking about Gingrich's failure to even get on the ballot in Virginia, has this to say of Newt: "The misstep is bad news for Mr. Gingrich on several levels. Virginia is his adopted home state. Failing to gather enough signatures in one's backyard creates an image problem, at the very least." The state is one of 10 that vote on 6 March, known as Super Tuesday.
Some of the reporting on Paul was negative, as the press scramble to give its readers some idea of who he was, they turned to some old newsletters and found some articles that he had not written that they used to put him in a bad light - Jim Rutenberg and Richard A. Oppel Jr., on the 20th of December published an article titled "New Focus On Bias In Articles Paul Printed." Then it all disappeared as quickly as it came. Someone else tried to imply he was anti-Israel, conveniently forgetting that he was the only GOP congressman to defend Israel in 1981. Paul may be said to be neutral in Israel and more concerned with US interests than what other countries are doing. Aliyah Shahid  of the New York Daily News on Christmas Eve weighed in with a distraction to all this when he talked about the Donald dumping the GOP - as if that made any difference to anyone.
That same day, in the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal, David Yepsen, a longtime political correspondent  for the Des Moines  Register, noted that the one candidate attracting hordes of new people is Ron Paul. He follows with criticism of the GOP for their stance on immigration, which is alienating people of Latino ancestry and driving them into the Democratic Party. Prescient this was as Romney was to take a hard line stance on immigration during the holiday season, which saw most GOP candidates busy as beavers in Iowa. The NYT on the 27th went into detail about all of this, their poor reporters forced to spend their holidays far from 8th Avenue; some went even further and ventured yet further, going far afield of the main activitiy in Des Moines, where they noted that Ron Paul was operating in small towns like Maquoketa, a three-hour drive from the Iowa capital.
Wherever the canvassing was taking place, the fight was getting rough, and the NYT reported on the 30th that a wealthy Republican called up two servicemen to fly his private jet around Iowa and attack Ron Paul for his foreign policy. This never happened, and in the same article (by Richard A. Oppel Jr.) it is reported that "Mr Paul's national security positions drew raves from many veterans, students and others..." Quoting Ret USArmy Sgt 1st Class Tony Snook, the article showed strong support for Paul from the service. Snook noted: "He would get us out of our difficulties overseas. You should choose your fights wisely." Snook, it mentioned, was wounded in Iraq in 2007. Oppel went on to note that active-duty and retired service members overwhelmingly lean to Mr. Paul, who received almost double the amount of contributions that all the other GOP candidates together received in September. He is certainly gaining strength, and his opponents senseless attacks are not working. What is working is his common sense; Bill Watson, a former GOP central committeeman, summed it up for the article: "If you listen to him long enough, he makes more sense."
And people are now listening long enough, not being dissuaded by wealthy GOP members with private jets or ignorant journalists.
One person listening is Kelly Clarkson, the first ever "American Idol" winner, whose popularity shot up just after she tweeted her support for Paul; her new song, "Stronger", shot up on Amazon from #38 to #2 and is on Apple's iTunes charts at #10.
That's all for now folks, I am going out to buy a copy of "Stronger" and hope you will too...and of course, vote for Ron Paul - so this nation can be stronger.

Surprising turn around in New York Post

The New York Post usually seems to be anti-Paul, but an article by Jacob Sullum on 24th December is 100% in support, and rebuts the obnoxious critics. In its entirety, here it is below:

"Ron Paul vs. Empire" 
Reporters routinely describe Ron Paul's foreign policy views as "isolationist" because he opposes the promiscuous use of military force. This is like calling him a recluse because he tries to avoid fistfights.
The assumption that violence is the only way to interact with the world reflects how oddly circumscribed foreign-policy debates are in mainstream US politics and why Paul's perspective is desperately needed in the GOP.
As the Texas congressman has explained many times, he supports international trade, travel, migration, diplomacy and cultural exchange. He supports military action when it's necessary for national defense - in response to the 9/11 attacks, for example.
The innaccurate "isolationist" label marks Paul as a fringe character whose views can be ignored. Given the dire consequences of reckless interventionism, that clearly isn't the case.
This week, America officially ended its Iraq war, nearly nine years after launching it based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to us because he had weapons of mass destruction.
The war, which replaced a brutal dictator with a corrupt government that may not be able to maintain peace, cost us $800 billion and nearly 4,500 American lives. More than 100,000 civilians were killed.
The regime American installed in Afghanistan is even weaker and more corrupt than the one in Iraq. Ten years later, we still have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. So far, the war has cost about $500 bilion, 1,800 American lives and thousands of civilain casualties.
The United States would've avoided both of these costly nation-building projects if Congress had listened to Paul - or even to George W. Bush circa 2000, who (as Paul frequently notes) ran on a premise of a "humble" foreign policy that would not aim to solve all the world's problems. Now that the same people who supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are portraying Iran as an intolerable threat, some Paulian skepticism surely is appropriate.
That's especially true when the federal government borrows 36 cents of every dollar it spends, racking up a debt as big as the entire US economy. At the Nov. 22 debate, Paul corrected Mitt Romney, who complained that the Obama adminstration is "cutting a trillion dollars out of the defense budget." Actually, Paul said, "they're not cutting anything"; rather, "they're nibbling away at baseline budgeting and its automatic increases."
America has its military personnel in 150 countries, has nearly doubled its defense budget in the last decade and accounts for more than two-fifths of the world's military spending.
Paul challenges this mindless militarism. "We have an empire," he bluntly noted at the same debate. "We can't afford it."
For 35 years Paul has spoken truths that foreing policy mavens pf both parties prefer to ignore: that the Constitution give Congress alone the power to declare war, that unjustified interventions breed resentment that undermines our security, that there is a difference between military spending and defense spending, that foreign aid rewards autocrats and their cronies and that economic sanctions are an "act of war" that hurts people in the name of punishing the governments that oppress them.
If there's really no room for these arguments in the GOP, that it the party's fault, not Paul's.

Ron Paul takes the lead

For months now we have been getting press about this or that GOP candidate who was going to be the big winner. Bachmann started it off when she came in #1 in the Iowa straws, then fell fast; Rick Perry, who did
not even bother to attend the Iowa caucus, suddenly started off like a Texas messiah; he too fell fast after people questioned the sagacity of having a leader who could not finish a sentence; then Romney appeared to take the lead, but was hit hard with the fact that he does not stay true to issues; Newt Gingrich crawled out of a swamp and in some reptilian way started to outrun the hare, only to be undone by his own infidelities and inconsistencies. So yesterday's New York Post and New York Times were weighing the possibility, as we put forth here, that Ron Paul would wait and pace himself and despite the lack of press, emerge in the fore. Geoff Earle in the Murdoch owned Post, writing in an article titled "Newt's lead evaporates", was forced to note that a new Public Policy Polling survey shows Paul seizing the top spot, with 23%, Romney getting back up to 20%, and Gingrich falling to 14%. But leave it to Murdoch accolyte Rich Lowry to bash Mr. Paul; he writes that in 2008 the surest way to get applause in the GOP was to excoriate him. So what? Then he tries to dig up some material that Paul did not write that appeared in a newsletter years ago. And leave it to Murdoch to bash his opponents with anti-Israel views, which Paul does not have. Paul's warning about the CIA taking over the US military are then brought up, and if Lowry had a brain he would have given Paul much credit for this. Let us look at reality here, let us examine history...the CIA has ties to companies like Bechtel, which in WWII was instrumental in undermining the military in the Pacific by getting milions of tax dollars spent on useless projects in Alaska when money was needed for Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, etc. Tens of thousands died or were wounded while Bechtel used the war as an excuse to make money. And look at its relationship today to the Bushes, Halliburton, etc. Look at how in Vietnam Philip Habib suppressed genuine intel reports about Hanoi and US soldiers, left unprepared, were slaughtered. Habib, in an account by former DIA intel agent Mark Philipps, was more powerful at the White House than was Reagan in the Reagan years; third he was, according to Philipps and his co-author Cathy O-Brien, to George H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Anyone who is well versed in the history of the CIA would see the pattern of it using the troops for rich idiots and failing to gather real intelligence; in yesterday's NYT there was also the story about the total lack of intelligence about Korea, which goes about building nuclear weapons and destablising the region - where is the CIA when you need it?
One answer could be - in the newsroom, trying to bring America to its knees by supporting stupid, hapless candidates who will do their bidding while trying to suppress an honest and experienced one who knows what is really going on...and another answer might be Dallas, shooting a president who tried to keep Operation Northwoods from going forward. Long would be this post if I were to explain such a stupid and evil plot that involved killing US military men and civilians to start another war-for-profit, so I will leave the reader to exercise their fingers on the google machine.
But getting back to Ron Paul and yesterday's coverage of him - Lowry belittles his fellow Americans when he closes his piece with this: "Iowa caucus-goers are protective of their pre-eminent place in the nominting process. If they deliver victory to a history-making Ron Paul, no one should take them as seriously again."
That from a man who works for a corporation known for aiding and abetting murderers and child molesters, and suspected of hacking into 9/11 victims' families' phones.
So not surprising the Murdoch press should attack Ron Paul. Nor does it surprise that the NYT follows, somewhat lightheartedly, by trying to associate him with racists in an article by Jim Rutenberg and Richard A. Oppel Jr. The New York Daily Mail did not cover this issue much, with its attention focused on the funeral of a policeman gunned down in the line of duty by a career criminal who was let out by some liberal judge, and then the man who set fire to a woman who had tried to help him; both of which atrocities show us the lack of leadership in America today and why, if we care, we need to get Ron Paul in and the clowns out.
So we watch the debates and see how the press will react, and hope that Ron Paul wins.

No news is no news

I haven't blogged for a while. There seems to be no news on Ron Paul, while every day Herman Cain
gets about a full page; Perry and Romney get almost the same. Why? For lying? For suddenly not being able to remember your words mid-sentence, or not knowing the voting age or the right date of election day in America?

All of which means that bad candidates get free press. Lazy journalists love it, they have lots to write about, but the voters do not get much information about sensible candidates.

In the meantime, much press has been given to the OWS movement, which is headed by rich kids who spend $700 a night on hotel rooms and eat luxury organic food. Another waste of time. 

The circus grinds on, fools are in fashion and clowns rule. Somewhere in the background a sensible candidate
is calling for the abolition of government red tape and for American farmers to grow hemp. And a tree falls in a forest. We hear nothing, we see nothing. Then we ask why it is all falling apart.