Posting this now before I repost it later

[solarbird]

I'll probably repost this later, after the "holidays," so that people actually see it.

Immigration locks up a legal immigrant for five and a half years without charges, eventually dumping him out on the street. Unlike most detainees, he had phone calls out. Clearly Islandic tourist Eva Ósk Arnardóttir got off light with just being "handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing [her] whereabouts" for only 24 hours. One member of the GOP base is quite happy about her treatment.

Early in the Korean War, J. Edgar Hoover, the archetypal weirdo transvestite, planned the arrests and indefinite detentions without charge of 12,000 Americans. Over at Powerline, John condemns the scope, but not the substance, noting that "Hoover was too quick to judge people disloyal--it would be interesting to get a look at the list of 12,000" but adds that "some may feel nostalgic for a time when disloyalty was at least acknowledged to be a bad thing."

CATO discovers that leading GOP candidate Mike Huckabee has been working with not just fundamentalists, not just theocrats, but outright Christian Reconstructionists as recently as this month, raising money. Christian Reconstructionists, as longer-time readers know, want to impose Old Testament law as civil law, including the death penalty for queers, uppity women, and well, you know. But that's yet another thing people don't want to talk about.

Most of the other leading GOP contenders, unfortunately, are fascists. So there's really not any winning there. I mean, Sullivan pointed to The American Conservative's denunciation of the Rudy Giuliani campaign and its plans for endless war as fascist this week; that's good. Check out that cover, and worse, check out that platform.

But wait, there's more! Another leading candidate, Mitt Romney, believes that the President is bound by no law or treaty, Constitutional or otherwise. He's onboard with the idea that the President can void law via signing statements, unilaterally start wars, ignore already-passed laws without reservation, and, of course, endorses all the Bush administration's obscene power grabs. The man is running for absolute dictator. Unlike the other fascist candidates, he at least answered the Q&A. Most of the GOP didn't. (Glenn Greenwald has a longer discussion of this here). The sane amoungst you might find Rep. Paul's and Senator McCain's answers much less distressing. You might even find Rep. Paul's quite pleasant and worthy of support.

By the way, according to that useless rag known as Newsweek, Rep. Paul is no longer ruling out a third-party run. Given that his current party is dominated by fundamentalists and absolutists of all stripes - and his own polling at 6% in Iowa (and about the same in the GOP nationally), I can see that.

Here is a first-hand account, in detail, of the reality of the torture technique called waterboarding, a technique that the AP still refuses to call "torture" despite being defined as such for centuries, and, in fact, invented as such. The account is fairly short and educational and includes the key point: Torture is not about truth. Torture has never been about truth. Torture is about getting someone to say whatever you want them to say, true or not. Torture is the opposite of truth.

Speaking of which, it looks like there were hundreds of hours of torture-interrogation video destroyed by the CIA, and that they were withheld, intentionally, in 2003 and 2004 from the 9/11 study panel.

And meanwhile, in Nigeria, Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities. Basically they label random children "witches" and demand money to clense them. What happens most of the time is the children get tortured or killed. Ah, evangelicals. Gotta love 'em.

ETA: Glenn Greenwald, again, has good coverage of the contempt the DC Establishment has for anyone who fights what it has decided it wants. It's worth reading. They really don't like you. Read that as a reminder.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

On Meet the Press Paul was trying to distance himself from the third-party run thing, but certainly wasn't very willing to rule it out. (Kind of an amusing interview if you have or can snag it.)

[cow.livejournal.com]

Speaking of third-party runs, Bloomberg (http://www.nypost.com/seven/12182007/news/nationalnews/mike_eyes_08_team_792708.htm) is considering his own. And is willing to put $1 billion of his own money into it.

Should be interesting.

[solarbird]

Yeah, that's been being floated around for some time. Hopefully he will. I don't even really care what his positions are. We are long overdue for a set of party breakups and realignment.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Just FYI, if Bloomberg runs he's likely to pull more from Democrats than Republicans, and his position on civil rights and civil liberties is no better than theirs (we're talking kinder, gentler Giuliani here). So the end result of a Bloomberg candidacy would probably be a GOP president who by your own reckoning would be a fascist.

I strongly hope he doesn't run. I'm OK with Paul running as his constituency is right-wing "patriots," white racists, and affluent corporate Libertarians, all of whom would otherwise vote for the GOP candidate. (Oh, he's got a few clueless single-issue antiwar liberals on his side, but they're the kind who would otherwise not vote or vote for the Green Party, which I think is running Cynthia McKinney this time.)

Be careful what you ask for with a political realignment, because you might get it. In today's political climate, the third parties are as likely to be openly fascist or otherwise worse than the two main parties as they are to be any better.

[solarbird]

I am continually disappointed in the left slagging the thus-far most-viable seriously anti-authoritarian, anti-drug-war, anti-interventionist candidate as a tool of the Klu Klux Klan. At least someone who is actively and seriously against the idea of an American empire with Great Leader is polling more than 1-2%. (Dodd and Kuscinich are both at 1% in the most recent polls I can find.)

I am also far past the point of the "wasted vote" theory, as I would think you might be aware.

I am seriously not fond of some of Rep. Paul's positions. Some of them actively set back me and people like me. But he's also the only person polling more than 1% who is actively running on an anti-authoritarian platform.

(I mean, if the shameful actions of the Democratic party fighting Senator Dodd to grant the Bush administration the Cheney-written FISA bill does not convince you that the Democrats are part of the problem, I don't know what would. They are actively furthering the creation of the authoritarian state, not hindering it.)

I would like to think that anti-authoritarian leftists could manage to react to his candidacy without attacking his supporters as either "white racists" or "clueless single-issue antiwar liberals."

For the record, I have not given money to Rep. Paul's campaign. The only campaign to which I have donated money thus far is that of Senator Dodd.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Ron Paul isn't anti-Drug War. He's anti-federalist, which means opposing the federal drug war. Given his stance that it's OK to support government repression against reproductive rights and discriminate against gays at the state level, there's no reason to suspect he would have any problem with state-level restrictions against drugs. He's not anti-authoritarian either. Paul is a conservative Christian even if he's not a Dominionist (his Christmas ad was just as bad as Huckabee's), and he's more than willing to support repression at the state level. Yes, he's anti-interventionist, but so were the America Firsters who wanted to stay out of WWII because they supported Hitler. I say this not as a smear but because Paul's politics are a direct descendant of the politics of that era. You have to look into the real history of right-wing libertarianism in this country. Just read some of Justin Raimondo's posts at antiwar.com for a while, and if you don't get a distinct sense of crypto-fascism then you're not paying attention. (You can also look up Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell while you're at it.) The terms "paleolibertarianism" and "paleoconservativism" might also buy you half a clue. This is a movement of far-right social conservatives using states rights as a shield for attacking the liberal changes of the last century, in particular the end of legal segregation. Their state's rights nonsense is a resurrection of segregation by a different name, applied to a much broader program of retrograde repression. It's not an accident that far-right patriots and white racists are enthusiastically on board.

Ron Paul is just as much of an authoritarian as any of the other Republicans, he's just a different flavor. Any Democrat would be better.

Ron Paul also has a long history of seeking out and refusing to repudiate the support of far-right patriots and white racists. That's not a smear; it's history. David Duke is supporting Ron Paul and Ron Paul has not repudiated him, just to take one example. It's not a smear to say that--he's the spearhead of the white power movement and they are actively campaigning for him.

And yes, you do have to be clueless as a liberal or true libertarian to support Paul, because his platform is a total repudiation of social and political liberalism and libertarianism. You might as well be supporting George Wallace.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

And what's the Democratic Party offering? More of the same gutless behavior (on Iraq, on the Drug War, on the Patriot Act, etc) and unwillingness to be a real opposition party. I'm of the mind that the Democrats may need another major defeat before they finally wake up and present a real alternative to the Republicans (and even then they may not).

In the meantime if RP does run as an independent in the general election I believe he will take a non-trivial portion of the Democrat's younger voters. Not because they support all (or even most) of RP's positions, but simply because they admire the fact that he's willing to stand up and take a strong position against the status quo of the Democratic/Republican party.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

It takes a huge degree of privilege to just shrug off a Democratic loss. The damage done by more conservative justices alone will be tremendous. The imperial powers of the presidency will continue to get worse at a higher rate. Economic problems will get worse. Global warming will remain unaddressed. If someone like Paul was elected, which thankfully is highly unlikely, we would see a dismantling of not only the civil rights structure that prevents the worst kinds of discrimination but also the elements of social democracy that make our current economic and social order viable. Our country has already tried laissez-faire economics--it doesn't work. Getting rid of drug prohibition, ending the Iraq War, and devolving Patriot Act style repression to the states (Paul only objects to these as federal powers, not state powers) would not make up for any of this. And really--getting Paul is highly unlikely. A vote for Paul is more likely an effective vote for someone (i.e. the GOP nominee) as bad or worse than Bush in terms of the war, civil liberties, and drug policy. Mitt Romney has said he wants to "triple" Guantanamo and one of his main foreign policy advisers is deeply involved with Blackwater. Giuliani wants to expand the powers of the presidency and go farther with repression in the name of anti-terrorism. McCain is the only one on that side (other than Paul) who isn't completely insane, and he supports the war and was instrumental in helping Bush pass the 2006 Military Commissions Act that effectively legalized most forms of torture at the will of the president, and created military courts with no due process. Any Democrat is better than any Republican and a third party is not going to make a whit of difference except to direct votes away from the two major parties. Real change will only happen outside of the electoral process or by changing the existing parties from within, either of which takes a long time and doesn't absolve anyone of the responsibility of voting for the better major party candidate in 2008.

[solarbird]

Do you really think President Paul - as an independent, I mean - would be allowed to get anything done?

The assumption under which you're operating is that the President gets whatever the President wants. That this isn't laughable - and it's not - only highlights the depths of the system's dysfunction.

Also:

A vote for Paul is more likely an effective vote for someone (i.e. the GOP nominee)
A few comments ago you were saying that a Paul third-party run would be okay since it would mostly only attract white racists who would otherwise vote for the GOP.

As for the rest of your strategy, as I've said before, it's how we've gotten here. I suggest again that it's not working.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

"Hey, this band-aid isn't working. I still have an infected wound. How about I hit myself with a hammer a whole bunch?"

You're right my comment about Paul's likely effect as a third-party candidate was inconsistent. He'd probably attract crazies disproportionately, but there's a chance that he'd attract clueless people who would otherwise vote for the Democrat, and that's enough that I hope he doesn't run. Either way, a serious third-party campaign in 2008 is no better than a hammer to the head.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

To the contrary, I know a significant number of people voting for RP who have historically voted (and not Green party but generally Democratic) and they're attracted by more than his anti-war stance. I don't think they're clueless either, they're simply fed up with the system. And if Clinton gets the Democratic nod I think their numbers will swell.

CR stuff, oh aaargh

[maellenkleth]

Tonight we will all be north of the border for the first time ever. Had not actually contemplated the meaning and potential significance of that until reading your post just now. Maybe hearing about the Christian reconstructionist business just drives that point home. Thank you for timeliness.