Quick Links

For people who want more content, here are some links to other blogs you might be interested in:

• Paul Can Run But He Can't Hide: "The Paul campaign said in a prepared statement that Gray was not forthcoming about his background. But way back in August, Gray posted a notice on a prominent white nationalist blog announcing his involvement in the campaign. Moreover, this blog, along with others, exposed Randy Gray's activities before January 17 (that's when I first reported it). The Paul campaign, in releasing the statement, claims that they only learned about this over the past few days. This is a lie, since they took down the photograph of Paul and Gray as soon as vigilant bloggers exposed Paul's association with Gray."
• Stunning Ignorance: "Good grief. First, Paul isn't about defending the Constitution at all. He is a states rights conservative who confuses the Constitution with the Articles of Confederation. Worse, a lot of his philosophy is squarely in the neo-confederate camp." (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• Ron Paul is an Ignoramus Part II: "Ron Paul could not be more wrong in his economic arguments. He blames government intervention and the Federal Reserve for economic problems. He says monetary policies are the cause of the business cycle. When was the Federal Reserve created? How interventionist was the federal government prior to that moment? Why do we have government intervention in the first place?" (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• More independent research on Ron Paul's vote against MLK Day, and his criticism against Phil Gramm for not doing the same. (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• A Dimension of the Hegemony of Whiteness: "Paul is thus useful to the elite and this is why the media is playing along with the charade. To be sure, the corporate media pushes him back down when he starts to get a little too popular. Capitalists discovered in in the first half of the twentieth century that when you go all the way with right-wing authoritarian types, the results leave a lot to be desired. Thus it's better to have the ideas injected into the public and manipulate them that way rather than have the countermovement actually come to power." (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• Ron Paul Forums: "Why can't Ron Paul do what the other CFR does? Why can't we run 5 Ron Paul Republicans, so we can max out our donations to each of them...then let them all drop out one by one and endorse Ron Paul?" (Thanks to the Ron Paul Tumblelog)
• DailyPaul.com attempts to steal a page from Bioshock. (Thanks to the Ron Paul Tumblelog)
• Ron Paul Campaign removes Vox Day Endorsement from website. (Thanks to Sultan Knish).
• Top Ron Paul Supporter Defends Slavery (Thanks to Sultan Knish)
  

If there are any other blogs I should know about, post a link.

BREAKING: Ron Paul's Klansman Kampaign Koordinator

Paul Henry of dailykos has the story:

As voters in Michigan go to the polls to vote in today's primary, volunteer coordinators for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are working hard across the state. One of these is Randy Gray, a 29-year-old resident of Midland, Michigan whom the Ron Paul 2008 Michigan Campaign Web site lists as the Midland County coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign. Gray's campaign profile page, a cached version of which can be seen here, doesn't go into much detail; there's a picture of Gray with the candidate, along with Gray's statement that "I support Ron Paul because he is in the fight for freedom." The page contains no mention of one of Gray's other roles: organizer with the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan.

This is almost poetic. First the Blacks, then the Whites, and now the Grays.

In other news: Happy Birthday, Dr. King. I hope you're looking forward to Ron Paul's upcoming fund raiser in your your name.

New FreeAtLast 2008 Video

The campaign at FreeAtLast2008.com have released a new ad, which attempts to use footage and audio from MLK to imply that he would have endorsed Ron Paul's campaign:

This isn't the first time the right wing has pulled a stunt like this. In 1996, advocates for Proposition 209 used images of Martin Luther King in their advertisements, in order to imply that he would be against affirmative action, until the King family protested. Now, it looks like history may be repeating itself. And it's not a coincidence. During the video, the narrator makes the following statement:

"Please join us on January 21st, as we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, by acting together to support Dr. Ron Paul. A new hero who fights for the same American principles of liberty and justice for all."

The last sentence is seems out of place. Out of all the documents you had availabel to you, why quote the pledge of allegiance? This looks like it may be a reference to Ward Connerly, a republican/libertarian who was the main driving force behind proposition 209. With Liberty and Justice For All was the title of his 1996 essay, where he would once again falsely imply that Martin Luther King would have opposed against affirmative action. Ron Paul and his cronies are wrong when they say that they respect Martin Luther King, when what they actually seem to respect is the Ward Connerly reinvention of him. It isn't all that different from what they did to supply side Jesus.

More on Ron Paul and Martin Luther King

Was Ron Paul in favor of Martin Luther King Day?
If there's one thing that Paulbots love, it's spreading rumors to the point where they are accepted as irrefutable truth, even if there is no real evidence to support it. From Ameros to staff firings to to the idea that Ron Paul voted in favor of Martin Luther King Day. Unfortunately for them, they always seem to be short on actual evidence. Even more unfortunate, Andrew Austin, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, has dug up at least one example to the contrary. The scan on the right comes from The Paris News (11/21/79).

Ron Paul and LewRockwell.com
LewRockwell.com currently features several pieces of Anti-MLK propaganda and other criticisms. For instance, Michael Epstein's Myths of Martin Luther King accuses King of being a plagiarist, a communist, and an adulterer. Despite this, not only does Ron Paul freely choose to associate with Lew Rockwell and write regular columns for him, but Lew Rockwell boasts that his website has received Ron Paul's first Freedom Website Award. The Paultards will likely respond by talking about freedom of speech even if you disagree with the content, but that's irrelevant. I have the freedom of speech as well, but I don't that Ron Paul will award me with a Freedom Website Award anytime soon.

Does Ron Paul support Martin Luther King's actual policies?
The following excerpts were pulled from The Right Has a Dream by Paul Rockwell (No relation to Lew as far as I know) and Misreading the Dream by Tim Wise:

"Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up." -MLK, "Why We Can't Wait"

"...for two centuries the Negro was enslaved and robbed of any wages — potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation." -MLK, 1965 interview

Wise also presents the following real life example of how republicans had come to distort Dr. King's message, until protested by the King family estate:

For example, during the ultimately successful campaign in California to eliminate racial "preferences," supporters of Proposition 209 conjured the image of King repeatedly and, until criticized by the King family, had been planning to air a TV spot showing the "content of their character" segment of King's "Dream" speech.

Ron Paul insists that he considers Martin Luther King to be a hero. Does that mean that he actually supports and respect Dr. King's real policies? Is Ron Paul even familiar with Martin Luther King's real policies? Ron Paul's FreeAtLast2008 campaign appears to be making the same mistake as the Prop 209 campaign, attempting to capitalize on Dr. King's image to promote a platform that he would have opposed.

FreeAtLast2008's Disclaimer
When FreeAtLast2008 first went public at DailyPaul.com, even some of their own supporters cried foul. One of them wrote the following:

On December 21st, 2007 cactus1010 says:
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ACCORDING TO THE KING FAMILY LINK...NOT WITHOUT PERMISSION. YOU CANNOT USE HIS NAME FOR PUBLICITY WITHOUT PERMISSION. AND I WOULD THINK THAT WOULD GO FOR USING IT TO RAISE MONEY AS WELL.

The website founder, Vijay Boyapati thinks that it's important to create a disclaimer disassociating the website from Ron Paul's campaign, but he doesn't think to provide the same courtesy and respect to the family of Doctor King Family Estate. This, despite the fact that all of the graphics and banners rely entirely on the use of Dr. King's image, rather than Ron Paul's. This, despite the fact that Ron Paul has publicly endorsed the campaign in the national media and referred to it as "our" campaign, where as the King Family has not.

Ron Paul to be honored as America’s Civil Rights leader?
It just keeps getting worse and worse. Apparently the Paultards are using this event, not just to absolve Ron Paul of racism, but to try to prop him up as the next great civil rights leader. Check out the article here, which writes that freeatlast2008 is "designed to honor both Dr. Paul and Dr. King as Civil Rights leaders," and will "generate a 10 million dollar plus cash infusion for Paul’s campaign along with nationwide marches to honor Dr. Paul and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

In other words, just like a dog can be programmed to associate the idea of a ringing bell with salivation, the Paultards are trying to program their followers to associate the idea of "Dr. Paul" to "Dr. King." When you think Ron Paul, think "Nobel Prize Winner." You may think you're donating to Ron Paul, but you're really donating to civil rights. You may think you see people marching for Dr. King, but they're really marching for Ron Paul. Success! I'm surprised I haven't seen any youtube videos of Paul morphing into King and vice verse, but maybe that's only because I haven't looked

Ron Paul and his "Language"
In yesterday's post, I mentioned the January 1991 edition of Paul's newsletter. Here's an excerpt:

The official line among some conservatives and libertarians is that the civil rights movement started out well, but went astray after King’s death. In fact, it was bad from the beginning, never seeking the mere removal of Jim Crow laws, which would have been legitimate, but forced integration and wealth redistribution.

In 1988 when I ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, I was berated for hours by LP members because I had refused to vote, while in Congress, for a Martin Luther King national holiday.

The Paultards will claim that this was a ghostwriter. If this was a ghostwriter, then why bring up Ron Paul's personal experience from the 1988 campaign for Libertarian Presidential candidate? Why would he refer to his past congressional votes? The Paultards will claim that this is not Ron Paul's language. Note Paul's criticism of the civil rights movement as "forced integration," a term her would use to justify his vote against the civil rights act in 2004. But is it really Ron Paul's language? Lots of people could use that phrase? Well, maybe. But I found something on google just now.

• "forced integration" yields 26,600 results.
• "forced integration" +"Ron Paul" yields 4,230 results.
• "forced integration" -"Ron Paul" yields 22,100 results.

In other words, if you find a page with the phrase "forced integration" on it, then there's a 1 in 6 chance that the page will somehow be related to Ron Paul. And that's just a general use of the phrase -- rather than in the specific context of an opinion column protesting the civil rights act.

Similarly, when Wolf Blitzer ran the newsletter segment, the first quotation he provided was "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks." Later, Ron Paul attempted to defended himself by claiming that he didn't "participate in that type of language," only to use that same phrase several more times during the interview.