It is no big secret that Rand Paul wants to be President. In beginning his campaign one thing he wants to convince Americans of. He wants us to believe he is a different kind of Republican. He wants us to believe he is looking out for us and wants to protect us from the big old bad government. However, when one really looks at Rand Paul and what he believes one thing is clear. He is just as bad as any Republican and possibly worse. In the end there is really only only one group of people he is seeking to protect. Like the Republican Party as a whole right now Rand Paul is desperately hoping to balance the budget on the backs of working Americans. He has publicly stated that he thinks we should work for less and like it. He and the party he works for are trying to take Social Security, Medicare and any program that helps folks left behind by trickle-down idiocy and throw them to the scrap heap of history. Just like the whole of the modern Republican Party he thinks those of us who actually work for a living are the problem.
Even more telling? Who Rand Paul defends and thinks is not a problem. Today while Apple's executives were in Washington to get an earful for refusing to pay their taxes and being a
Benedict Arnold Corporation what did Rand Paul do? He apologized to them that anyone would dare question there greed at a time when Americans living in poverty are being asked to sacrifice and Apple is pulling in billions of dollars in profit:
He complained that instead of celebrating the firm's success, senators were "dragging in" Apple executives and berating them.
"Apple has done more to enrich people's lives than politicians will ever do," said the Kentucky lawmaker, a favorite of the tea party. "To the Apple executives here I apologize for this theater of the absurd."
So just what is the Mad Doctor with the twisty curls defending? At a time when all Americans except those like Rand Paul are being asked to sacrifice, he is defending the indefensible:
Under US law, profits held by those subsidiaries would be taxed in Ireland, where the subsidiaries are incorporated. Under Irish law, the profits would be taxed in the US, the country from which the subsidiaries are controlled and where they hold board meetings.
So they weren't taxed at all. (If the money were repatriated to the US, it would then face corporate income taxes.)
Through this maneuver Apple withheld at least $76 billion in profits from taxation between 2009 and 2012, according to subcommittee investigators. In 2012 alone this cost Uncle Sam $12 billion in receipts, according to subcommittee figures. Two other Apple subsidiaries incorporated in Ireland pay taxes there.
So the question we should all pose to Rand Paul as he kisses Apple's ass for avoiding the payment of taxes on billions of dollars of profit? How in the hell is this looking out for us and "protecting" us from anything?
One thing is obvious. Rand Paul cares about nothing and has no values whatsoever. He is just a typical Republican that expects Apple to get a free pass and wants working Americans to pick up their tax bill.
Mr. Paul Goes to Washington: One of life’s great truths is that nobody likes a whiner. And I’ve been whining for weeks about what I would find in the national press post-Derby. And then I remembered we have a couple guys in the Senate that tend to make a headline or two. So. Anything going [...]
Rand Paul is moving ahead with his 2016 Presidential campaign right on schedule. Next stop, South Carolina. Yes, today Paul is making his presence felt in one of the early primary states. With his eye on the White House he is endorsing Mark Sanford for the 1st Congressional seat in that state. However, today he is not alone in his endorsement of Sanford and upon further review these two appear to be kindred spirits in more ways that just political. First to the Rand Paul endorsement of Sanford, Conservative hypocrite and Argentinian womanizer:
GOP congressional candidate Mark Sanford was formally endorsed Tuesday by Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite whose support could help in the final days of the special election for South Carolina's 1st District seat. The senator's father, former Texas congressman Ron Paul, threw his support behind Sanford last week.
"More than anything, Washington needs strong and consistent voices for fiscal responsibility and liberty," the younger Paul said in a statement. "Mark has proven during his time in office that watching out for taxpayers and holding the line on spending are his top priorities."
Ah, but Sanford has shown that he is watching out for a lot more than the taxpayers, and that indeed he is holding onto "the line" He always has his eye out for Argentinian G-strings and is more than willing and ready to hold a tan line in a bikini.
Well, the Mad Doctor with the twisty curls was not alone in his endorsement of Mark Sanford. It appears as if the married but looking website Ashley Madison was all ready to endorse him to. To use their service:
The dating website AshleyMadison.com paid for a billboard with an image of former Governor and current 1st District Congressional candidate Mark Sanford that reads " Next Time Use AshleyMadison.com To Find Your Running Mate."
The sign takes a jab at Sanford's extra-marital affair with a woman from Argentina.
AshleyMadison.com Founder & CEO Noel Biderman said "Mark Sanford's overcome a series of personal and professional hurdles to earn his place back in public service. While he recognizes the consequences of his actions, he maintains that his affair refined his life, but should not define it."
The dating website is designed for people already in relationships.
But hey as this picture shows Rand Paul and Mark Sanford have a hell of a lot in common:
Yes, it appears that these two both like to take women to the waterfront for a good old fashioned dose of Aqua Buddha worship. Only in the case of Mark Sanford it does not appear as if he had to tie his up. That must come later.
Indeed, it is funny how politics does make strange bedfellows. Let us just hope in the case of Rand Paul, Mark Sanford and his Argentinian sweetheart they do not take the term literally. That would give a new definition to the term "thirteen hour filibuster".
One thing we can all be certain of. The Mad Doctor with the twisty curls who became the Mad Senator now very much wants to be the Mad President. However, one thing that stands in his way is one simple fact. The American voter sees things a little different and is a little less forgiving than the voters of Kentucky for radical views. So to actually be President Rand Paul is going to have to embark on a "cleaning up" tour of radical statements he made that were forgiven in his Kentucky Senate campaign. Today, that "cleaning up" tour began in Washington D.C. at Howard University. One problem the Mad Doctor who would be President created for himself a couple of years back? He stated that although he "supports" civil rights he thinks that a private business owner should be able to tell certain races or people that they are not good enough to patronize their businesses. Just listen to the Mad Doctor in his own words:
In other words Rand Paul believes if someone owns a restaurant and just so happens to not like lets say Asian-Americans that when an Asian-American who has not caused any disruption, has not broken any law or done anything whatsoever to deserve to be singled out for any reason that business owner can just say "Hey, your Asian-American. Your money is not as good as other folks money, you can go to hell". No sitting in separate rooms, drinking at separate water fountains or using different bathrooms they can just tell them to go away.
Of course for some groups that have a long history of being discriminated against, this might be a little bit upsetting. That is why the Mad Doctor went to Howard University. He is hoping to "clean up" and defend these comments to a mostly African-American audience, an audience in which discrimination is still fresh on their minds. Of course as this last election has shown with changing demographics anyone who expects to be President is going to need at least some votes from the ever-increasing minority populations in this country. The Mad Doctor was clearly in "damage control" mode:
"I've never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act," the Kentucky senator said.
"The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview. What gets lost is the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights."
But of course the Mad Doctor was talking about a totally different Republican Party. The modern Republican Party he belongs to hates their government and if slavery were still alive today would rail against the federal bureaucracy that thought it could tell states they were not allowed to have legal slavery inside American borders. I mean, back then the "free market" dictated that slaves were needed to produce really cheap labor and create profits for those business owners who should have been free to decide whether they wanted to pay someone to work or not didn't it?
He went on to hammer that point home and to stumble upon himself further:
"I don't like the idea of telling private business owners - I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant - but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership," he said in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal at the time.
"But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind."
But this is a man who believes almost nothing should be publicly owned. He would replace public ownership with the "free market", a market in which the ownership society would be free to discriminate against anyone they saw fit at any time. How is that supporting the rights of anyone? It doesn't even have to be ethnic in nature. Rand Paul believes if a person who owns a business doesn't like women, men, red-headed people or the elderly they should just be able to shun them because they own a business.
In typical Rand Paul fashion while trying to "reach out" to the African-American voters he also managed to insult them in the process:
Paul argued that the reason black voters now overwhelmingly support Democrats is because, following the Great Depression, the Democratic Party became synonymous with entitlements.
"The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible -the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets," he said.
"Our federal mandatory minimum sentences are simply heavy-handed and arbitrary. They can affect anyone at any time, though they disproportionately affect those without the means to fight them," he said.
In other words Rand Paul believes that African-Americans have been voting for Democrats in such huge numbers for decades now for one simple reason. They want a government handout. They are too lazy to get out in the "free market" and find a job and would rather draw a check. It seems also that he believes they are more inclined to commit crimes so the best thing he could do for them is to cut their jail sentences.
And of course the Mad Doctor would not be a true modern Republican if he did not insert a big dose of hypocrisy into his message:
"Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky. The law could have put both of them away for their entire young adulthood. Neither one would have been employable, much less president."
Of course he is talking about the fact that both Presidents Bush and Obama have smoked pot. My question to the Mad Doctor is why did you not insert your name into this statement also? The simple fact of the matter is that Rand Paul himself probably did much worse things in his "entire young adulthood" than the former or current President ever dreamed of:
The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."
Maybe the Mad Doctor should look into his own past before being so "bi-partisan" in his criticism of one former Republican President and one present Democratic one.
In the end however, it appears as if the Mad Doctor may have shown his true hand. His complete and total ignorance of the history of those that differ from him came shining through and he did what he usually does. Made fool of himself:
He was met with incredulous shouts of "Yes!" when he asked the crowd if they would have known the NAACP was founded by Republicans. At one point, Paul blanked on the name of the first popularly elected African-American senator, and drew derisive laughter as the crowd helped him with the name: "Edward Brooke!"
While it remains to be seen if Rand Paul will actually accomplish "cleaning up" some of his views and outrageous statements we are hoping around here that in 2016 while they may win a Republican primary the voters of America will see them for what they are. The ramblings of a zealot who hates his government and believes the ownership society in America should be able to do whatever the hell they see fit to the rest of us.
But Rand Paul has always seemed to walk between the raindrops. He is probably the only person to ever be elected Senator after telling his constituents they should work for less and get used to it:
And that it is perfectly okay if a few of them die for someone to make a profit:
So will these "values" be able to be sold to America as a whole? For the sake of our country and everyone that lives, works or just hopes to go somewhere for a bite to eat here I sure as hell hope not.
Rand Paul has been making a lot of headlines lately. It appears as if the Mad Doctor with the Twisty Curls has his sights set on one thing. Being President, something his father never even got close to. In that regards it seems as if Rand Paul thinks his brand of anti-government at all costs libertarianism will help Republicans do something they have only done once in twenty years. Win the popular vote in a Presidential election. However, as with his filibuster on drone attacks on American soil one fact continues to ring true. Even when Rand Paul says or does something that seems on the surface to be the right thing, he must lace it with a poisonous dose of hypocrisy because of the underlying dark truth of his true vision for America. First, for anyone who believes that a libertarian President like Rand Paul would mean the legalization of Marijuana your hopes are unfounded. Rand Paul stands with virtually every other politician on criminalization of Marijuana and in fact believes if you "fire up" you are a lazy slacker leeching off the government that should not exist:
Paul admitted legalization would encourage marijuana use, which he said has negative effects.
"I don't want to encourage people to do it," Paul said. "I think even marijuana is bad to do. I think it takes away your incentive to work and show up and do the things you should be doing. I don't think it is a good idea. I don't want to promote that, but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake. There are a lot of young people who do this and later on in their 20s. They grow up, get married and quit doing things like this, and I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."
In other words, unlike his dad behind the scenes Rand Paul has been converted to a Republican politician the party has given a little rope to hang himself with. Hence he attempts to make headlines working with a real Progressive that really care about the rights of average Americans that just so happen to smoke a little weed:
"The main thing I've said is not to legalize them, but not to incarcerate people for extended periods of times," Paul said. "I'm working with Sen. [Patrick] Leahy - we have a bill on mandatory minimums. There are people in jail for 37, 50, 45 years for nonviolent crimes. That is a huge mistake. Our prisons are full of nonviolent criminals."
But of course that is something that many people of all stripes have long believed should happen. America should only pay to incarcerate violent criminals for long periods of time that pose a real threat to society. While we are glad Rand Paul has come aboard one thing that should bother everyone. Like his "drone filibuster" even this "awakening" for Rand Paul is tainted with hypocrisy. You see, Rand Paul thinks that marijuana use should be decriminalized because George W. Bush and Barack Obama smoked marijuana and it could have destroyed their lives needlessly:
"The last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use, and I really think - look what would have happened," he continued. "It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky but, poor kids - particularly in the inner city - don't get lucky. They don't have good attorneys, and they go to jail for these things. And I think it is a big mistake."
Hence the hypocrisy. In his obsession with being President Rand Paul would attack two Presidents, one Republican and one Democratic for smoking pot. He would point out how they could have been jailed for their "drug use". But what about Rand Paul? If these Presidents could have been jailed for simply smoking pot what would have happened to Rand Paul?:
The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."
Nearly 30 years later, the woman is still trying to make sense of that afternoon. "They never hurt me, they never did anything wrong, but the whole thing was kind of sadistic. They were messing with my mind. It was some kind of joke." She hadn't actually realized that Paul wound up leaving Baylor early. "I just know I never saw Randy after that-for understandable reasons, I think."
Indeed while Presidents Bush and Obama may have very well fired up some of the finest green in their youths, I am sure that they never tied up young women, loaded them into a trunk and forced them to pray to a false idol. Such Christian values shown in his youth by the future President Rand Paul!!
This latest hypocrisy by Rand Paul shows him as nothing but a typical Republican. You see, whether it is the deficit, debts, or the stealing of rights from the American people Republicans have long been good at one thing. Saying publicly that Democrats are doing bad things like running up debt, stealing rights, and bankrupting Social Security and Medicare while they themselves are behind the scenes doing the very things they blame on others all in a shameless attempt to redistribute everything in America to the top 2%. Unfortunately for all of us, young and old and in between they have been very successful at it.
In truth a Rand Paul Presidency would offer a few things to the young and everyone else. Your Social Security would be taken away from you and given to Wall St. Your Medicare would be stolen and given to insurance companies. Your rights in the workplace fought and died for by generations of truly brave Americans would be stripped away and you would be forced to work for the robber-barons and Corporate America for any wage they deemed sufficient with any protections and conditions they see fit.
In other words Rand Paul is far from a new breed of Republican. He harkens back to the old days of Republicanism before the Progressive movement of the early 1900s. He might wrap his extreme brand of America in a shiny new package but all his politics would achieve is this. An America where the rich and powerful and the ownership class gets to do whatever the hell they see fit to everyone else. That is why he hates government so much. It has created rules and regulations to keep that from happening.
In truth Rand Paul offers nothing to younger Americans except a return to the America their grandparents and great-grandparents fought so hard to change into something better, a fight very few now scarcely remember. Let us hope Americans of all ages and ethnicities are smart enough to say one thing to Rand Paul and his new generation of old Republicans.
Love him or hate him, Kentucky’s junior senator is red hot in the media right now. Whether it’s filibustering the Obama Administration’s nominee for Central Intelligence Agency director or advocating drug legalization, Sen. Rand Paul is not shy about taking a position, which of course guarantees him 24-hour media coverage. Insider Louisville has even considered [...]
Rand Paul might have had one thing right. Drone strikes on American citizens should not be allowed. However, as always with the Mad Doctor with the twisty curls he simply cannot leave it at that. During his filibuster "defending" Americans he had to do what he does best. Argue that employers should be able to ruthlessly exploit their workers. So while we agree with the fact that our government should not be able to kill its citizens with drone attacks without due process Paul simply had to poison the waters. One thing we do not agree with is the Supreme Court decision of Lochner vs. New York.
In this horrible decision from 1905 in which a bakery owner sought to strike down a New York law that allowed bakeries to overwork bakers and most hypocritically for Paul the "right to contract" it invented also appears nowhere in the Constitution:
Lochner fabricated a so-called right to contract in order to strike down a New York law preventing bakery owners from overworking bakers, but its rationale has implications for any law intended to shield workers from exploitation. In essence, Lochner established that any law that limits any contract between an employer and an employee is constitutionally suspect. If desperation forces someone to agree to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for a dollar a day in a factory filled with toxic air, then courts must treat that law with heavy skepticism. Not every workplace law was struck down during the so-called Lochner Era - the justices of that era sometimes valued sexism more than they valued exploiting workers, for example - but Lochner placed any law benefiting workers on constitutionally weak footing. Needless to say, the "right to contract" it invented appears nowhere in the Constitution.
Now, look at the text of the ruling Paul so much admires:
The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this includes the right to purchase and sell labor, except as controlled by the State in the legitimate exercise of its police power.
Liberty of contract relating to labor includes both parties to it; the one has as much right to purchase as the other to sell labor.
There is no reasonable ground, on the score of health, for interfering with the liberty of the person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of labor, in the occupation of a baker. Nor can a law limiting such hours be justified a a health law to safeguard the public health, or the health of the individuals following that occupation.
Section 110 of the labor law of the State of New York, providing that no employes shall be required or permitted to work in bakeries more than sixty hours in a week, or ten hours a day, is not a legitimate exercise of the police power of the State, but an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract in relation to labor, and, as such, it is in conflict with, and void under, the Federal Constitution.
As with everything with Rand Paul his view of the Constitution is tainted with hypocrisy. While his paranoid mind is so afraid of the federal government preying upon American citizens one thing he does not fear whatsoever?
Business preying upon those very Americans and making them work for nothing. Which makes Paul's hypocrisy even more disturbing. He is so suspicious of the federal government because it establishes standards and regulations that Rand Paul and his ilk hate to keep the rich and powerful and those who employ workers from trampling upon their rights.
I am much more afraid of the greed of folks like Rand Paul than I am of getting hit by a missile from an Obama drone.
Louisville, Kentucky Service Branch: Special Operations Command Types of UAS: Wasp, Raven UAS Activities Status: Future
Fort Knox, KY Service Branch: Army Types of UAS: Shadow UAS Activities Status: Current
Fort Campbell, KY Service Branch: Army, Special Operations Command Types of UAS: Shadow, Wasp, Raven UAS Activities Status: Current
Does anyone real believe these drones aren't spying on us?
Wired We like to think of the drone war as something far away, fought in the deserts of Yemen or the mountains of Afghanistan. But we now know it’s closer than we thought. There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.
Drones are even flying near airplanes landing at airports.
The Hill The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is investigating a drone that was reported by a pilot as he landed his plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The pilot, who was flying Alitalia Flight 608, told air traffic controllers he spotted the drone as he approached JFK airport on Monday.
The FBI said the drone came within 200 feet of the airplane when it was three miles away from the JFK airport. The incident occurred when the airplane was flying at an altitude of 1,735 feet, the agency said.
It's about time someone in Washington. DC denounced the Bush and now Obama phony war policies.
Wired 11 Years Later, Senate Wakes Up to War on Terror’s ‘Battlefield America’ Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster will inevitably fail at its immediate objective: derailing John Brennan’s nomination to run the CIA. But as it stretches into its sixth hour, it’s already accomplished something far more significant: raising political alarm over the extraordinary breadth of the legal claims that undergird the boundless, 11-plus-year “war on terrorism.”
Big f?$king deal. Why can't I read the memoranda authorizing the targeted killing of U.S. citizens who’ve never been charged with a crime.
Wired John Brennan is now overwhelmingly likely to become the next CIA director. To speed his Senate confirmation, the White House agreed to let senators view its top-secret legal memoranda authorizing the targeted killing of U.S. citizens who’ve never been charged with a crime. You, however, still can’t read them.
