Friday 29th of March 2024

it's likely to go down like a lead balloon with the republican hawks and american warmongers...

 

rand paul

Louiseville, Kentucky: Senator Rand Paul promised to be a different kind of Republican on Tuesday, launching a 2016 White House bid that he said would highlight the conservative principles of reduced government and spending as he vowed to break up "the Washington machine."


The senator from Kentucky, a libertarian who has built a national reputation for challenging party orthodoxy, criticised Republicans in Congress and recent Republican presidents for helping to drive up the federal debt and reducing personal liberties.

"We have come to take our country back," he told cheering supporters on a flag-draped stage in Louisville, Kentucky, promising to break up "the Washington machine that gobbles up our freedoms and invades every nook and cranny of our lives".

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/rand-paul-promises-to-break-up-the-washington-machine-in-2016-presidential-bid-20150407-1mgauw.html

 

cat food allowed...

Rick Brattin, a young Republican state representative in Missouri, has come up with an innovative new way to humiliate the poor in his state. Call it the surf-and-turf law.

Brattin has introduced House Bill 813, making it illegal for food-stamp recipients to use their benefits “to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.”

“I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs” with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, the legislator explained, according to The Post’s Roberto A. Ferdman. “When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s dime to afford those kinds of foods either.”

Never mind that few can afford filet mignon on a less-than-$7/day food-stamp allotment; they’re more likely to be buying chuck steak or canned tuna. This is less about public policy than about demeaning public-benefit recipients.

The surf-and-turf bill is one of a flurry of new legislative proposals at the state and local level to dehumanize and even criminalize the poor as the country deals with the high-poverty hangover of the Great Recession.

Last week, the Kansas legislature passed House Bill 2258, punishing the poor by limiting their cash withdrawals of welfare benefits to $25 per day and forbidding them to use their benefits “in any retail liquor store, casino, gaming establishment, jewelry store, tattoo parlor, massage parlor, body piercing parlor, spa, nail salon, lingerie shop, tobacco paraphernalia store, vapor cigarette store, psychic or fortune telling business, bail bond company, video arcade, movie theater, swimming pool, cruise ship, theme park, dog or horse racing facility, pari-mutuel facility, or sexually oriented business . . . or in any business or retail establishment where minors under age 18 are not permitted.”

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rush-to-humiliate-the-poor/2015/04/07/8795b192-dd67-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html

people's corner...

ON DECEMBER 26, 2011, a week before Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, an influential Republican state senator named Kent Sorenson and his wife, Shawnee, arrived at a steak house in Altoona, a suburb of Des Moines. A goateed Mr. Clean look-alike, Sorenson was a hot commodity. His deep ties to the state's evangelical leaders and home-schooling activists made his endorsement highly sought after by GOP presidential hopefuls, particularly the second-tier contenders who had staked their campaigns on a strong Iowa showing. Sorenson had picked his horse early, signing on as Michele Bachmann's Iowa chairman in June 2011—a coup for the Minnesota congresswoman's upstart campaign.

Joining the Sorensons was a bespectacled political operative named Dimitri Kesari, the deputy campaign manager of Rep. Ron Paul's 2012 presidential bid. As caucus day neared, Ron Paul's campaign was surging in the polls but needed a late boost if he wanted to meet his goal of finishing in the top three.

That's where Sorenson came in.

When the state senator left to use the restroom, Kesari produced a $25,000 check—drawn from the account of Designer Goldsmiths, a jewelry store run by his wife—and gave it to Shawnee Sorenson. Two days later, Kent Sorenson left a Bachmann campaign event, drove straight to a Ron Paul rally, and declared that he had defected.

As it turned out, Paul's inner circle had been secretly negotiating for months to lure Sorenson away from the Bachmann campaign. In an October memo to Paul campaign manager John Tate, a Sorenson ally outlined the state senator's demands, which included an $8,000-a-month payment for nearly a year, another $5,000-a-month check for a colleague of Sorenson's, and a $100,000 donation to Sorenson's political action committee. The memo explained that these payments would not only secure Sorenson's support in the near term but also help to "build a major state-based movement that will involve far more people into a future Rand Paul presidential run." Kesari's $25,000 check, in other words, amounted to more than a down payment on an endorsement for Ron Paul; it was an investment in Rand Paul 2016.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/rand-paul-2016-kent-sorenson-iowa

now calling for 1,000 more FBI agents...

Our Lives in the Larder: Celebrating Another Defeat for Freedom


I was going to write about the bizarre and rather sad celebrations across the progressosphere about the great paradigm-shifting “victory” in the passage of the “U.S.A. Freedom Act” — but I find that Tarzie has got there the fustest with the mostest with a fine piece that nails this momentous event as the tremulous sham that it is. He was notes that Rand Paul — new hero of freedom-lovers everywhere — is now calling for 1,000 more FBI agents to monitor the thoughts, beliefs and actions of Americans to make sure they don’t get up to none of them terroristic-like activities … just as AP reveals that the FBI is conducting a vast, secret airborne surveillance across the country. So what’s the takeaway of this historic event? Just this: “We should privatize a few of the NSA’s Stasi operations, while letting the myriad other ‘security’ agencies run wild.” Smell the liberty!

Tarzie has long pointed out a fact ignored by nearly everyone else: the intense focus on some activities of the NSA occasioned by the Edward Snowden saga (coming soon to a multiplex near you) has totally obscured the dozens of other agencies and programs that feast on the corpse of privacy and keep our lives locked in their larders, ready to be devoured at their pleasure. In the end, the main outcome of the Snowden revelations has been to enshrine all-pervasive surveillance as the “new normal”: witness the fervent championing of the NSA by the bipartisan American elite, celebrating and legalizing intrusions beyond the wildest dreams of the KGB and the Gestapo. Meanwhile, with so-called Freedom Acts, FBI airplanes, drones, satellites, fusion centers, vast barns full of private data and so on, the constriction and strangulation of human existence goes on apace.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/2501-our-lives-in-the-larder-celebrating-another-defeat-for-freedom.html

USA, at a crossroads...

 

...

Since President Trump took office, our country finally seems to be heading in the right direction. In just the past year, the American people have seen enormous tax cuts, more judges appointed who take the Constitution seriously, relief from the massive regulatory state, and an economy rapidly gaining strength and offering greater opportunities for those seeking to turn their dreams into reality.

But when it comes to our place on the world stage, we are at a crossroads. We can continue to build on our recent successes by reaffirming America’s role as a trusted, powerful nation guided by principle. Or we can throw it all away by allowing neocon interventionists to infiltrate our leadership and make America the purveyor of destruction.

For decades, we have failed to bring about real peace thanks to a foreign policy guided by the idea that war and intervention are the answers. “Blow up and rebuild” has been the battle cry of those determined to keep us perpetually in conflict.

It was the battle cry of Hillary Clinton, who supported military intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. I supported President Trump during his campaign because he advocated for less military intervention. He opposed the Iraq War. He acknowledged that nation-building doesn’t work. He understood the damage previous foreign policy missteps have caused, including helping to strengthen ISIS.

I want to continue making America great again. That won’t happen if we give power-hungry neocons the reins to our nation’s foreign policy.

People already distrust the CIA. So why on earth has this administration picked someone to run the Agency who was instrumental in running a place where people were tortured and then covered it up afterwards?

Multiple undisputed accounts have detailed how Gina Haspel not only ran a CIA “black site” in Thailand but also destroyed video evidence of torture.

The retraction of one anecdote from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter doesn’t absolve her of wrongdoing and certainly doesn’t negate the rest of the facts, which remain the same. Those actions alone should preclude her from ever running the CIA.

Unfortunately, Haspel is just one of many potential neoconservatives being considered to serve in our country’s top leadership roles. The current CIA director and the president’s pick to become the next secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has defended torture in the past.

Further, he’s been a stalwart defender of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) unconstitutional spying programs and has even written in support of expanding the information government can collect.

I could not support appointing him as CIA director in 2017, and for those same reasons, I will oppose his nomination to be our chief diplomat now.

Just as troublesome are recent news reports that John Bolton is being considered for a senior administration position. Just recently, Bolton advocated for a preemptive strike against North Korea. If he had his way, our nation would be embroiled in dozens of armed conflicts in every corner of the world.

I want to be clear. This issue is much bigger than a simple disagreement over policy—and far more consequential. These are dangerous appointments.

Allowing the failed foreign policies of the past to have a place in this administration, and sanctioning the infiltration of our government by those who eagerly await the next opportunity for war, not only says we don’t learn from our mistakes, it will result in a world with far more enemies than opportunities for stability and peace.

If we are to avoid a future that is war-torn and mired in endless conflicts, we must do better than appointing these flawed nominees. I find them unacceptable, and I won’t support them. I hope the president will reconsider, too.

Rand Paul is the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky and a Republican

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rand-paul-why-ill-fight-...

a clear advice for peace from rand paul...

 

by Rand Paul

 

Today, the Senate passed the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to authorize the programs and policies of the Department of Defense.

Our national defense is incredibly important; it’s mandated in the Constitution. It is arguably Congress’s primary constitutional responsibility.

I have great respect and honor for those who serve in uniform. In fact, I recently introduced a bill to give each soldier who served in the war on terror a $2,500 bonus and at the same time officially end the war in Afghanistan. Ending the war in Afghanistan would save us about $50 billion a year.

Unfortunately, the bill that passed today does not end any of our multitude of wars. It continues the status quo and throws more money around the world at conflicts we can’t even begin to fathom.

Before the Senate rubber-stamped that money, I urged it to take a step back and consider two things.

First, we need to ask ourselves whether borrowing billions of dollars, year after year, to fuel our appetite for more military spending is a wise policy.

Second, we need to look at how this bill has been loaded up to carry things only somewhat related, or not related at all, to national defense.

As I’ve reminded my colleagues often, Admiral Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the national debt was our greatest national security threat. His exact wording was “[t]he most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”

This was in 2010. When he made that remark, our debt was about $13 trillion. It’s over $23 trillion now. We just keep borrowing, and there is no end in sight.

Under our new budget deal, we will be borrowing $2.75 billion every day next year, nearly $2 million every minute.

We spend more than the next seven largest militaries in the world combined.

Our Defense Department is so large that it took them a decade to even figure out how to audit themselves. Then they said that the audit itself would cost almost half a billion dollars. Last year, we arrived back at square one: after all that effort, we still couldn’t audit the Army, the Navy, the Marines, or the Air Force.

We spend so much money that the Department of Defense literally can’t keep track of it all. We don’t even have a great idea of how much, exactly, we’re wasting.

A few years ago, the Defense Business Board, which is a defense advisory panel of corporate executives that reports to the secretary of defense, suggested that the Defense Department could save $125 billion on administrative expenses.

According to news accounts, that report scared the Pentagon, so they buried it. Everyone tried to keep it away from Congress for fear that they might actually cut something—not that I would have been too worried about that.

We’re set to spend $738 billion on military spending this year, up $22 billion from last year. Our budget deal provides $740 billion for next year.

Over the past six years, military spending has risen over $120 billion.

We say we’re for accountability and efficiency and savings, yet we keep piling money on top. How can we demand better accounting and efficiency when budget increases are seemingly guaranteed every year?

And to be clear, I support national defense. Backing our service members is a worthy cause, and there are things in this bill I like.

I’m a cosponsor of a bill to eliminate the so-called “Widow’s Tax,” which I’ve argued is the right thing to do, and that we should find the money to pay for it. That’s in this bill.

I support returning the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell to its full air assault capacity with the return of a Combat Aviation Brigade. That’s in this bill.

I support giving our service members a pay increase. That’s in this bill.

But I take issue when Congress adds other things that don’t have anything to do with our military.

This bill sanctions NATO allies and potentially American energy companies if they have any involvement with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That pipeline is basically done, yet we want to jeopardize our relationships with our allies over it anyway.

This bill drops more sanctions into the middle of the Syrian civil war, as well as funding for so-called “vetted” Syrian rebel groups. All this would do is prolong the Syrian conflict and with it the humanitarian suffering and displacement we’ve seen in the region. The Syrian civil war is largely over. I agree with President Trump that it’s time to come home.

Another problem with our insatiable appetite for more military spending is that it requires conservatives to make bad compromises. If you want $40 billion in new defense spending, then you have to give the other side $40 billion in new domestic spending. That’s the nature of today’s bipartisanship: you can have your money as long as we get our money.

The dirty little secret is that there is actually too much compromise in Washington. Republicans want more military money and Democrats want more welfare money. Every time they compromise, Congress chooses to spend and borrow more.

For example, this bill provides a new mandatory benefit program—paid parental leave for all federal employees starting next year. That will cost more than $3 billion over the next five years, and, of course, Congress failed to provide for any means to pay for it. In essence, Congress today is simply saying, “Add it to my tab! The deficit be damned.” Regardless of how you feel about the issue, this represents a better benefit than many working Americans enjoy, and it has nothing to do with national defense.

Conservatism is about more than supporting military spending at any cost. We have to do more to make the tough decisions that enable a strong national defense AND a balanced budget.

Many so-called “conservatives” will hail this bloated military spending, but in truth there is nothing fiscally conservative about borrowing money from China to pay for our armed forces.

In fact, I would argue that borrowing to buy more tanks or planes or to police the far corners of the earth actually damages our national security.

Some have charged that our military is hollowed out, exhausted from so many far-flung conflicts. They will argue that we must expand military spending to meet the mission.

Perhaps we should do the opposite. Perhaps it isn’t that our military budget is too small, but that our military mission is too large. I, for one, hope for a day when Congress rediscovers that our constitutional mandate is to defend America first and to only become involved in war as a last resort. And even then, America should only become involved in war when Congress has debated and done its constitutional duty to declare war.

Until that day, I will continue to argue that the only fiscally conservative, fiscally responsible course of action is to vote against expanding the military budget.

Rand Paul is a Republican senator from Kentucky.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rand-paul-why-i-voted-a...

 

 

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Note: Rand Paul is a major moderate advisor to President Trump.

 

I'll pay one dollar extra to a parking meter in the Inner West, shoud the impeachment of Trump is successful in passing through the US Senate...

positive rand paul...

The Kentucky politician has become the first US senator to test positive for coronavirus as the number of people infected nationwide has surpassed 27,000 with over 340 dying from the virus.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced on Twitter on Sunday, adding that he is in quarantine and feels "fine".

The statement specified that Paul showed no syptoms of falling ill, adding that he was was tested out "of caution due to his extensive travel and events".

The senator intends to continue his work "for the people of Kentucky at this difficult time” once the quarantine period is over, according to the statement.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202003221078670866-us-senator-rand-paul-tests...

 

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