Ron Paul can't keep dodging.

  

   Anyone who has kept up with recent presidential campaign politics is aware of the controversy about the Ron Paul news letters from previous decades. They were sent to subscribers and contained numerous offensive, racist, and nutty ideas. The New Republic has links and summaries of them here. I was aware of them during the 2008 election but I bought Paul's excuse that they were written by a ghostwriter and that he had little involvement in them. I still buy that, but a recent revelation (for me at least) has made me reexamine whether that explanation is enough.

  Some of the newsletters make it very clear from the way they were written that the author is supposed to sound like Paul. They are written in the first person  in a kind of "from the desk of..." style. My impression had been that all of them were written as random unsigned articles under the heading of the Ron Paul Newsletter. The fact that some were written in his voice and that some even bore a signature, makes me question his judgement. Even if he didn't write them, I question why a person would think such words are the sort of thing Paul would endorse. Paul needs to answer to these emails with a fuller explanation.

   If he didn't write them, then, to put it bluntly, the media will need a scalp. Whoever did write them needs to be offered up. If he did write them, then he needs to admit it and then get out of the race. Those are the only options. As much as I can't stand her, I think about how much more extreme the response would be against a Michele Bachmann if she had published similar articles under her name. Fairness dictates that Paul must answer for this, no matter how much I appreciate his dissenting views on foreign policy and the war on drugs.

GOP presidential candidate preference in descending order.

The candidates that this blog likes (or could live with) at this moment:

1. Jon Huntsman-a great background with experience as a governor, businessman, and ambassador. And a foreign policy that isn't neoconservatism but hasn't embraced isolationism either.

2. Gary Johnson-a very popular (in his state at least) former governor of New Mexico. Ron Paul with executive experience and less crankiness.

3. Ron Paul- just for the grand experiment his presidency would be. I predict a lot of gridlock, but maybe some meaningful reevaluation of our country's place in the world.

4. Mitt Romney- has definitely let a little bit of the meanness of the rest of the GOP field into his campaign, but at least he doesn't seem to preoccupied with Muslims, gays, or our "anti-colonialist" president.

Rick Perry enters pander mode.

In recent weeks we have witnessed two examples of a candidate drowning and grabbing onto anything that can pull his numbers up. That candidate is Rick Perry. Okay okay. I know this blog is sympathetic to Huntsman, and I'll admit that his numbers are low but at least they're so low that any movement has only been up (in New Hampshire at least). Perry's fall has been something to behold. He's even tied at 3 percent in some state polls with Huntsman. Perry's candidacy has been just as embarrassing and silly as Herman Cain's. But on to the panders...

Pander #1: this one hasn't gotten as much attention because of pander #2, but Perry recently went anti-Wall Street in a recent speech, which is fine and dandy for this blogger. But it's pretty hard not to see this as an attempt to grab some of the anti-Wall Street sentiment that is even on the right. After all, you'll see a few Ron Paul supporters and libertarians mixed in Occupy Wall Street crowds.

Pander #2: This is the biggie. In case you haven't seen the horrendous video, please enjoy:

 

I won't bore anyone trying to explain the BS and logical fallacies of this ad (The Daily Dish does a much better job of it here). But in putting the ad together it's as if the campaign put a list of hot button items that bother the most extreme cultural conservatives, threw darts at the list, and then picked the ones that the darts hit.  Thud (War on Christmas). Thud (prayer in schools).  Thud (gays in the military). Thud (Obama isn't really a Christian). 

Anyone who reads even just a little bit about Rick Perry would have a hard time believing that either pander #1 or #2 are very close to his heart.

The reason Huntsman hasn't had his moment (and Gingrich is having his)

  

   Pundits have been speculating for awhile as to why Jon Huntsman hasn't had his moment in the polls as the anti-Romney. There's been all sorts of reasons given, from his service in the Obama administration to his views on climate change and civil unions. But the real clincher in my opinion? The man doesn't talk enough trash for GOP primary voters.

  If it was only Huntsman's views then why the heck was Chris Christie forgiven for his lapses from GOP orthodoxy and so salivated over for a month or two during the "will he/won't he" phase of the primary? Because he was a big mean guy with a Tony Soprano-ish presence. Even Romney, the consistent frontrunner and generally reasonable seeming human, has engaged in hyperbole about Obama to try to sound tough. But Romney wasn't rough enough in his criticism. He's smart, and primary voters like smart....actually, let me rephrase that...they like the appearance of being smart. But he isn't a dirty SOB. Shooting verbal bullets at O and sounding like you read stuff, that's the golden combo. Have they found it with Gingrich? Maybe.

  Every answer the man gives in a debate is a mini history lesson and he still manages to get in digs in interviews about Obama's "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior". Dang. Look at that quote. Pure partisan beauty. It's like something Rick Perry would say if he'd read a book or two in his life and could cobble together the brain cells to remember what was in those books.

   If Huntsman had managed a few more of those zingers his numbers would be the ones rising. Of course, those of us who believe there is still some decency hiding in the GOP are glad he hasn't.

New West Memphis 3 article is a waste.

  

  The Democrat Gazette ran a new article on the West Memphis Three case that covered the reflections of two state crime lab workers. The article can be found here.  The only comment on the article, as of the time of this blogpost, pretty much nails my opinion of it. We know for sure that at least one of the men, Mr. Peretti, thinks the West Memphis Three are guilty. We also know that both men from the crime lab feel like their work was unjustly attacked. These attacks were by the defense trying to claim that the causes of the wounds on the victims weren't what the crime lab claimed.

  I'll agree that knowing what caused the wounds is an important element of this case, but this article never once explains why Mr. Peretti is so certain the three men who were convicted of the crime are the culprits. This man handled the physical evidence, the one part of the case that both sides agree is very weak as far as linking the WM3 to the crime. What did he see in his work that convinced him. He's free to talk about it now. Why didn't the reporter get more information?

    Not to be cynical, but I wonder if the purpose of this article is to further the subtle bias the Dem-Gaz has always had against those questioning the convictions from this case. Otherwise, all we are left with is a story that basically says "Two AR crime lab scientists were very sad from the West Memphis killings and think that their work was unjustly attacked." Wow, who would ever be surprised by that?

 Oh yes, and one more thing, the quote by Mr. Peretti, also mentioned by the commentor on the story, is absurd: “They are being worshipped as child killers".  That is what Mr. Peretti thinks of the WM3. I don't care if he thinks the supporters of the Three are wrong, but you'd think he'd be classy or intelligent enough to acknowledge that those who are supporters don't think the three men committed the crime.

BUYcott Black Friday: even more stupid than Occupy Black Friday

  Caught this story about a Philadelphia Tea Party group that encouraged people to "BUYcott Black Friday" to help the economy and to respond to the OWS crowd that wanted people to "Occupy Black Friday". Both ideas are incredibly stupid but BUYcott takes the cake.

    So many Tea Partiers are criticizing the "violence" and "chaos" of Occupy Wall Street, was the Philly group not also aware of the violence and chaos of Black Friday? There have been deaths and severe injuries from shopping frenzy. Also, for a group that prides itself on fiscal responsibility I have to ask, just how fiscally responsible are the ill advised additional purchases that so many people make because they're in the Black Friday zone?

     Look at the pictures of people waiting in the cold or people in a constant state of shopping orgasm with mountains of junk in their carts. A lot of them look like the sort of people that Tea Partiers blame the housing crisis on. I wonder what the average credit score of a Black Friday line at Walmart is?

    So for your viewing pleasure, two great examples of what Philly Tea Party groups want for our country. And by the way, the item those people are scrambling for in the video? $2 waffle makers.

Further thoughts on Ferneau police officer incident.

 This post is kind of a reaction to a response to some comments I made on another blog. I don't know what happened at Ferneau, but then again I've never claimed to know. All I've done is told how things appear to me. This is partially based on my perception of the video and what I find believable about police officer actions. The latter is due to my witnessing the incident referred to in my previous blog post. Still I've never said that the officer should be fired or made similarly disparaging remarks about him, unlike many of those who commented on the Arkansas Times blog post about the incident.

  But I also won't say for sure that the officer was justified. The video appears to show an unarmed man getting punched in the face by a police officer without sufficient reason. It appears to show this. I have no clue what happened before, but it appears to show this. Just as so many people on the AR Times blog were calling for the officer's head, just as many people were saying a stupid drunk got what was coming to him. Both of these kinds of people are blindly subscribing to one view or the other, and knowing nothing of the complete story. I have shared my initial reactions to the video since it's my blog and it's a forum for my thoughts and opinions. But in the end, all I've said is that it's not certain that an officer used excessive force, but it's definitely believable. If you don't even think it's a possibility you are naive.