As a historical matter, the US didn't risk troops to end the Holocaust; FDR rejected Morgenthau's entreaties that he bomb the train lines to Auschwitz or take similar actions, on the theory that the US wouldn't support the war if it became perceived as a War for Jews. FDR seemed to believe there was a lot of anti-semitism in the country.

Speaking of which:

And so I asked Congressman Paul: if he were President of the United States during World War II, and as president he knew what we now know about the Holocaust, but the Third Reich presented no threat to the U.S., would he have sent American troops to Nazi Germany purely as a moral imperative to save the Jews?”
And the Congressman answered:
“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t risk American lives to do that. If someone wants to do that on their own because they want to do that, well, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t do that.”

Paul then looked at me, and I politely thanked him for his time. He smiled at me again and nodded his head, and many of his young followers were also smiling, and nodding their heads in agreement. Clearly, I was the only one in the room who was disturbed by his response.

We didn't fight WW2 to end the Holocaust, of course. FDR specifically rejected any actions which might reduce the German's Jew-murdering machine.

But Ron Paul seems to believe we did. It's always the Jews.

Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.

I would challenge him, like for example, what about the instances of German U-boats attacking U.S. ships, or even landing on the coast of North Carolina or Long Island, NY. HeÂ’d finally concede that that and only that was reason enough to counter-attack against the Nazis, not any humanitarian causes like preventing the Holocaust.

But Ron Paul goes a step further than that: He actually casts WWII, which was not a "humanitarian" intervention, as a humanitarian intervention, just so the facts agree with his eternal conclusion.

Of course Ron Paul's supporters don't sweat details like that. They've got bigger issues to worry themselves about.

When not listening to Alex Jones and Jeff Rense, chemtrail believers obsessively take photographs of the “poison trails” and “evil clouds.” Of course, since the alien-lizard-Zionist-Bilderbergers forbid the puppet governments of the world from admitting that chemtrails exist, the intrepid chemtrail hunters have been stymied. Sure, they can photograph them, but they can’t stop ‘em.

Or CAN they? This year, a movement has spread like dengue fever among chemtrail sleuths. This movement claims that chemtrails can be “killed” with vinegar, sprayed upward from the ground. And hundreds of chemtrail true believers are doing just that – and they’re uploading videos to Youtube, Dailymotion, Ebaumsworld, and elsewhere, documenting their chemtrail “kills.”

Of the hundreds of “chemtrail kill” videos, the majority are made by self-described Ron Paul supporters. I’ve dubbed this branch of the Paul camp the “Paulsamics” (as in “Paulsamic vinegar”). If you want to see the sheer volume of Paulsamic videos online, just Google or Youtube-search “chemtrails” and “vinegar.” Below, I’ve embedded the very best video of the lot. It’s ten minutes long. Normally, I would grab a video of that length and edit a highlight reel. But it’s impossible to edit this one down; it’s too damn perfect as it is. Watch as a chemtrail-obsessed, Ron Paul-obsessed mom uses her trusty spray bottle to combat the marauding trails, as her long-suffering teenage son is forced to record her. Witness her great victory as she reemerges later to find that she has “cleaned the sky.”

Video at the link. This is what really bothers me about Ron Paul. He's not merely courting the paranoid fringe; he is the paranoid fringe. I can almost deal with the racism and antisemitism. These are easily understandable, at least. We're used to such things and prepared for the distortions in thought such impulses will produce.

What I cannot abide is a "man's" full-tilt white-knuckle freak-out over the "New Money."

Congressman Ron Paul

Monday morning

Dear Fellow American:

You may not have much time left.

Next year, or next month, the New Money could wipe you out — destroy everything you’ve worked and saved for — and leave your family destitute.

It could happen any time. And I donÂ’t mind telling you IÂ’m scared. For myself, for my family, for my friends, for my country.

WeÂ’ve seen a lot of financial tyrannies from Washington in this century. This one could take the cake. And popping out of the cake, with a big Surprise!, will be an IRS agent with an AK-47.

Picture this: your feet are aching, your back is sore, and your patience ran out about two hours ago. How dare these bureaucrats treat you like this? How dare they make you wait in this line, this incredibly tedious line, to turn in your greenbacks? Then, when itÂ’s finally your turn, itÂ’s not so tedious after all.

An IRS agent with the dead eyes of a mako shark, asks — with that chilling police politeness — for your name, address, Social Security number, and “explanation.” From his tone and body language, you expect the Miranda warning next.

While muggers, robbers, and rapists run free on the streets, the power of the state is focused on you.

And no wonder. YouÂ’re a suspicious character. YouÂ’ve always kept some emergency cash. And now youÂ’re in trouble. . . because you tried to take care of yourself and your family, because you saved and planned ahead.

When President Bush announced the New Money during a War-on-Drugs speech, few realized what it meant, or just how bad it would be — for innocent Americans, not drug dealers. Turning in all your old money for a new currency wasn’t so bad. They’d done it often enough in Latin America, after all.

...

I uncovered the New Money plans during my last term in the U.S. Congress, and I held the ugly new bills in my hands. I can tell you — they made my skin crawl.

These totalitarian bills were tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms. It wasn’t money for a free people. It was a portable inquisition, a paper “third-degree,” to allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens.

As one federal scientist confirmed to me, these bills can be computer imprinted and read, to lay a paper trail hundreds of transactions long. Who uses them, when, and where. The taggents — chemical alarms — will set off federal cash-detection machines at airports and anyplace else they choose. And there are other swindles involved as well.

Thank goodness, a patriotic American within the Federal Reserve told me about this financial Manhattan Project. But this time, the government wants to drop the bomb on us.

To manufacture the New Money, the feds have built a colossal blockhouse in Ft. Worth, Texas, as ugly as it is evil. Designed in Stalin-style, guarded by KGB-level security, and full of three-color printing presses and spy device embedders, it belongs in Moscow, not Texas.

Stage One of the New Money — microprinting and a polyester thread — was meant to lull us to sleep, before the knife fell. But the bureaucrats’ scheme went awry when the old Bureau of Engraving and Printing plant in Washington, D.C., couldn’t handle the new technology.

TheyÂ’ve fixed that now, and Stage Two will chill your blood.

The New Money will steal our freedom and our prosperity; it will accelerate the transfer wealth and power from the people to the government and its friends.

Yeah, the "New Money" is now in your wallets and it exists, as was always planned, to make it a little harder for North Korea to counterfeit.

If a man were a dedicated UFOlogist and believed in all of it, and was convinced Men in Black existed and all of that too, would we consider electing him just because some of his alleged "policies" were conservative-sounding?

No, we wouldn't, because we'd question his judgment. A man who is afraid of shadow-people and faeries in the garden has an addled mind which cannot distinguish between serious threats, less serious threats which are nonetheless real, and just made-up "I want to worry about this so I don't have to worry about real things" fun-time phantasmal threats.

Ron Paul is crazy. People toss this term around a lot, but I'm saying it seriously, not metaphorically. Political paranoia is just a low-grade, livable form of the serious mental illness called paranoid schizophrenia. And it causes all sorts of misprioritizations.

While Ron Paul worries about Conspiracies Against The Currency, for example, others of us worry about, say, Islamists killing people by the hundreds.

Now, Ron Paul insists the former worry -- the Conspiracy Against the Currency -- is real, and the latter concern, the terrorist one, is made-up by neocons and Jews (but I repeat myself).

The man is literally crazy, at least in a low-level, non-commitment, doesn't-expose-himself-in-public way, and apparently Step One in our effort to take back the White House is to announce to America, in Iowa, that this man represents our views.

Of course, half or more of his support isn't even from conservatives or Republicans, but what are conservatives and Republicans doing adding to his numbers?

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (385)
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Make it stop.

“We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans,” Gingrich wrote in 2006.

And, Gingrich wrote, the key to achieving that goal was doing what Romney did in Massachusetts: Requiring everybody who could afford it to buy health insurance. In fact, Gingrich makes an impassioned case for the so-called individual mandate — which is also at the center of President Obama’s health plan — on conservative grounds.

“We also believe strongly that personal responsibility is vital to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System,” Gingrich wrote in the memo which was found on an old Gingrich website by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski. ”Individuals who can afford to purchase health insurance and simply choose not to place an unnecessary burden on a system that is on the verge of collapse; these free-riders undermine the entire health system by placing the onus of responsibility on taxpayers.”

That's ABCNews' characterization, but a comparison with the actual document shows it's ballpark accurate. Newt does not endorse the RomneyCare plan entirely; he does have some objections:

The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.

We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans. Individuals without coverage often do not receive quality medical attention on par with those who do have insurance. We also believe strongly that personal responsibility is vital to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System. Individuals who can afford to purchase health insurance and simply choose not to place an unnecessary burden on a system that is on the verge of collapse; these free-riders undermine the entire health system by placing the onus of responsibility on taxpayers.

The Romney plan attempts to bring everyone into the system. The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan. Under the new bill, Massachusetts residents earning more than 300% of the federal poverty level (approximately $30,000 for an individual) will not be eligible for any subsidies. State House officials had originally promised that there would be new plans available at about $200 a month, but industry experts are now predicting that the cheapest plan will likely cost at least $325 a month. This estimate totals about $4000 per year, or about 1/5 of a $30,000 annual take-home income.

While in theory the plan should be affordable if the whole state contributes to the cost, the reality is that Massachusetts has an exhaustive list of health coverage regulations prohibiting insurers from offering more basic, pared-down policies with higher deductibles. (This is yet another reminder that America must establish a cross-state insurance market that gives individuals the freedom to shop for insurance plans in states other than their own.)

In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.

So he objects to the liberal goal of forcing poorer people to buy expensive policies that are typically given to middle-class and upper-income earners in lieu of pay, and urges pared-down policies, and cross-state insurance.

But he also suggests that only those making $54,000 per year and up be forced to buy health insurance. Even as he agrees with the goal of 100% insurance coverage and the individual mandate itself. Such folks would continue to get health care paid for by the state, I imagine, or have the state issue them a policy, gratis.

Gingrich has a novel explanation for this newsletter which speaks with the pronouns "we" and "I:" Someone else wrote it.

Mr. Hammond said the Newt Notes essay wasnÂ’t written by Mr. Gingrich himself.

I realize the "heartless" comment was offensive and stung people emotionally. But we're not nominating a Best Friend here, for crying out loud.

But since "heartless" is enough to make half the party collectively say "Oh no he di'n't," I guess Perry is done for. If we're going to have a nominee who supported RomneyCare either way, I'm not sure what we gain with Newt. He has a great deal of baggage. Romney's kind of dick and seems to have little sense of people, nevermind conservatives, but on paper he's... well he's something. Not sure what.

Posted by: Ace at 06:37 AM | Comments (320)
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To get you started:

Fallout from GoDaddy's now-rescinded endorsement of SOPA continues to cause drama. GoDaddy lost over 70,000 domains last week.

Rick Santorum bagged four birds while hunting in Iowa yesterday, but didn't bag an endorsement from hunting buddy Rep. Steve King.

For the sake of argument, let's say we take Ron Paul at his word for a second: he didn't write the newsletters and he disavows their content. Great. The next reasonable question is if Ron Paul didn't write them who did? Right? If Ron Paul is telling the truth about not having anything to do with a million-dollar business in his name, who did?

The chuckleheads over at Reason think we shouldn't even ask that much because it'll ruin their "amazing moment where a very libertarian politician seems on the cusp of actually winning" the Iowa caucuses. Reason's defense of Paul's letters was despicable in 2008. It's still despicable, but also embarrassing this time around.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:06 AM | Comments (316)
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I'm still kinda on vacation which means the ONT is going to be minimal for the next few days.
So you'll have to entertain yourselves by yourself IYKWIMAITYD.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (347)
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The news has taken a day off. I assume.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (332)
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I got a Kindle. I'm really enjoying it. I'm going to review it at some point, but at the moment, I'm really loving this object.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (506)
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Yup.

And if this bores you-- Open Thread.

Former Aide: I Swear He's Not Racist. He's Just Crazy. Interesting. Worth reading in full.

On one other matter, IÂ’d like to express in the strongest terms possible, that the liberal media are focusing in on entirely the wrong aspects regarding controversies on Ron Paul.

ItÂ’s his foreign policy thatÂ’s the problem; not so much some stupid and whacky things on race and gays he may have said or written in the past.

Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.

I would challenge him, like for example, what about the instances of German U-boats attacking U.S. ships, or even landing on the coast of North Carolina or Long Island, NY. HeÂ’d finally concede that that and only that was reason enough to counter-attack against the Nazis, not any humanitarian causes like preventing the Holocaust.

There is much more information I could give you on the sheer lunacy of his foreign policy views. Let me just concentrate on one in specific. And I will state this with absolute certainty:

Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.

On the eve of the vote, Ron Paul was still telling us staffers that he was planning to vote “No,” on the resolution, and to be prepared for a seriously negative reaction in the District. Jackie Gloor and I, along with quiet nods of agreement from the other staffers in the District, declared our intentions to Tom Lizardo, our Chief of Staff, and to each other, that if Ron voted No, we would immediately resign.

Ron was “under the spell” of left-anarchist and Lew Rockwell associate Joe Becker at the time, who was our legislative director. Norm Singleton, another Lew Rockwell fanatic agreed with Joe. All other staffers were against Ron, Joe and Norm on this, including Lizardo. At the very last minute Ron switched his stance and voted “Yay,” much to the great relief of Jackie and I. He never explained why, but I strongly suspected that he realized it would have been political suicide; that staunchly conservative Victoria would revolt, and the Republicans there would ensure that he would not receive the nomination for the seat in 2002. Also, as much as I like to think that it was my yelling and screaming at Ron, that I would publicly resign if he voted “No,” I suspect it had a lot more to do with Jackie’s threat, for she WAS Victoria. And if Jackie bolted, all of the Victoria conservatives would immediately turn on Ron, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

This gets at a question I keep asking: When has Ron Paul taken a stand against government spending that was difficult politically? He always makes sure his home district gets the pork, even as he casts a purely symbolic vote against a spending measure.

And when his political career would have been threatened by a "No" vote on attacking Al Qaeda, he turned tail and voted "Yes." But then began badmouthing it and claiming he's been tricked by Bush.

Oh, and also in there, he isn't just anti-Israel. He's against the existence of Israel, period.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (181)
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Update: Just a reminder to visit the HQ's Amazon store or search the full Amazon site from the HQ if you have gift certificates to redeem or some after-Christmas deal hunting to do.

Returns? That's someone else's problem.

Posted by: andy at 04:53 AM | Comments (330)
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Merry Christmas All!

Tonight I'm just chilling with the family so it'll be a BYOT kind of ONT.

Oh and prayers and best wishes to CDR M who is in the hospital with pneumonia.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:07 PM | Comments (524)
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Because you can really never get enough of them.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:11 PM | Comments (216)
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