ron paul=awesome/kickass?

[Dr. Love]

Waldo County mostly missing from official Maine GOP results
Ron Paul preferred choice among local caucusgoers
By Ethan Andrews | Feb 13, 2012 Share

BELFAST — The Maine Republican Party drew criticism over the weekend for declaring Mitt Romney the statewide winner without results from Washington County, where voters had planned to meet on the same day as the statewide announcement — Feb. 11 — but canceled the night before based on reports of a potential winter storm.

A press release, issued by the party on Saturday, downplayed the importance of Maine's caucuses, describing them as a "beauty contest" in which "there are no national delegates 'won' or 'bound' to any Presidential candidate."

The release described some caucuses as having "decided not to participate" in the poll, choosing instead to caucus after the statewide announcement. This was followed by the disclaimer that, "Their results WILL NOT be factored into this announcement after the fact."

In a nutshell, tough luck Washington County.

And, as it turns out, most of Waldo County, where voters from 18 towns gathered for municipal caucuses in a countywide event held a week before the announcement. In the press release from the Maine GOP, results from all but one of those communities were given as a series of zeros below the name of each candidate, as though no one had voted.

Northport was the exception. The town participated in the countywide event and results consistent with those provided by the local organizer were listed in the statewide press release.

Between Feb. 4 and Feb. 11, a number of Maine's 16 counties held countywide gatherings, where attendees collectively listened to various candidates, their representatives and other speakers but caucused as individual communities.

In some cases, results from those gatherings were included in the press release issued Saturday. Knox County, for example, held a countywide event on Feb. 4, the same day as Waldo County, and results from participating Knox County communities were included in the party's official press release.

According to Mike Quatrano, executive director of the Maine Republican Party, and the person who issued the press release, the omission of the Waldo County votes was not a typo. Quatrano did not offer to review the results, but said simply that what appeared on the press release was what was counted by the party.

The GOP leader noted the deadline for local caucus organizers to submit results and chalked up the rows of zeroes after dozens of towns around the state, including 17 of the 18 that participated in the Waldo County event on Feb. 4, to either a lack of participation or a failure by organizers to submit results.

According to Raymond St. Onge, who organized the multi-town Waldo County gathering, neither was the case.

Speaking on Feb. 13, St. Onge said he submitted the results of the Feb. 4 caucuses to the party immediately after the event, which was held a week before the deadline, and said he didn't realize that the votes were not factored in the statewide results.

"They had the numbers to count," said St. Onge, referring to state party officials. "Why they didn't include them, I don't know the answer to that."

According to figures supplied by St. Onge, Ron Paul came out the winner among the 18 towns that gathered on Feb. 4 with 43 votes, followed by Rick Santorum with 41.

Mitt Romney, who was declared the statewide winner in Maine by GOP officials, took third place with 35 votes, collectively, among the 18 towns. And Newt Gingrich, who several participants at the Feb. 4 event described as the only candidate who could stand up to Barack Obama, came in a distant fourth with 18 votes.

Five Waldo County towns, including Frankfort, Montville, Palermo, Stockton Springs and Unity held separate caucus events, the results of which were counted in the statewide results.

St. Onge noted that the tallies from the more than 100 total votes cast at the Feb. 4 countywide event wouldn't have been enough to sway the final statewide outcome.

"But they would have changed the margin of victory," he said.

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/news/story/waldo-county-mostly-missing-from-official-maine-gop-results/484636

Lots of murmurs going around about typos in the counts, missing towns and other problems... we'll see how it pans out.

[kwame k]

As I recall it, Obama asked for an extension and only announced troop withdrawal after the Iraqis said 'no'.

That date was already set when Bush tried and the Iraqis said no.

Why were we involved at all? How about letting the other nations in the world spend their money taking out regimes they don't like?

I disagree, in a limited capacity if we can help people who are already fighting for their independence and are going to be slaughtered if no one steps in.....why shouldn't we do like we did in Libya. Drop a few bombs and back the fuck off. If they do gain their independence we have made a new friend. It sure beats Bush's strategy of invading countries and hoping we'll be greeted as liberators.

We acted in accordance with the UN, which we are a member of.

Good point. I'll keep that in mind if some other country decides to start striking inside the United States against people that they feel threatened by.

Come on, Doc....you're saying that there weren't terraist going back and forth.....hiding there and being sheltered there? Guess that was some other place we killed Bin Laden, my bad.

I forgot to mention ... didn't Obama campaign on closing Guantanamo? How'd that go again?

And I'm on record here as being pissed about that, too. What does that have to do with what we were talking about?

Or how about signing the NDAA and giving the military the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely? Or wait, what about authorizing the assassination of American citizens?

Again, I'm on record as being pissed about that, too.

Remember Congress passed that.

[Dr. Love]

We were talking about ways in which Obama is just as bad as those other bozos.

As for Libya, it's not like there wasn't a lot of other nations stepping up to do the heavy lifting, and we didn't need to get involved. As for Pakistan, I think we wouldn't even be in that part of the world chasing terrorists if we'd stuck to our own affairs to begin with instead of antagonizing a lot of other nations and peoples.

[Seshmeister]

If I came below Santorum in any vote for anything apart from 'Biggest douchebag' I would retire immediately.

[Dr. Love]

The Empire Of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Ron Paul And The Sacred Fire Of Freedom

Who stands in opposition to “the [central] bank of the United States, public debt, a navy, a standing army, American manufacturing, federally funded improvement of the interior, the role of a world power, military glory, an extensive foreign ministry, loose construction of the Constitution, and subordination of the states to the federal government”? Hint, these words were not written about Rep. Ron Paul.

This is Garry Wills’s description of Thomas Jefferson. The elite political class looked with disdain, and now looks with a certain measure of bemusement, upon Dr. Paul. Paul represents the re-emergence of a great American tradition. That tradition reawakens in the person of Ron Paul, who has a fair claim to be our era’s Thomas Jefferson. As Jefferson’s heir he commands deep respect if not always (as in the case of this Supply Side, Hamiltonian, writer) complete fealty.

One of the keys to America’s greatness is how George Washington was able to harness both the great centralizing, industrializing forces represented by Alexander Hamilton together with the great decentralizing, Arcadian forces represented by Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton’s positions prevailed, tilting America toward a stronger central government. Jefferson, affectionately enshrined in our national memory, has a Memorial. As for Hamilton, “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.”

The Hamiltonian version of America is ascendant. Yet the Jeffersonian streak of subsidiarity lives on, is essential to America’s identity and greatness, and is a rising force. It has found its most powerful exponent since, at least, Goldwater in the person of Ron Paul.

Thomas Jefferson’s agenda including eliminating the national bank, reducing the military, and dismantling the federal taxation system. These are at the heart of Ron Paul’s agenda.

Jefferson was a courageous radical. His anti-(federal)-government convictions often are indistinguishable from those of Dr. Paul. Dr. Paul unabashedly went to bat for secession after Gov. Perry came under fire for rhetorically toying with that. Jefferson’s anonymous co-authorship of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions is in many ways the charter text on the primacy of states rights.

Jefferson envisaged America becoming the world’s great “empire of liberty. ” On departing the presidency he wrote:

“ Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence.”

There are principled reasons to dispute with some of Dr. Paul’s positions. Some believe him to propose to take America’s diplomatic and military disengagement to an extreme well beyond that of Jefferson who, after all, bought Louisiana — and projected American power “to the shores of Tripoli” — fighting the Barbary pirates.

Upon Jefferson’s 1801 inauguration as president, the Pasha of Tripoli (the sure enough predecessor of Muammar Qaddafi), demanded tribute from America. Jefferson refused and the Pasha declared war on America not through some declaration but, lore has it, by chopping down the flagpole in front of the American consulate.

Jefferson responded by sending in a small force to protect Americans and American interests but believed it unconstitutional to do more absent a declaration of war. Congress never voted to declare war but, much like our modern Congresses, authorized the use of force, “to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” And so it goes.

Still, Jefferson’s demilitarization of the United States very much anticipated that proposed by Ron Paul. And in matters economic it is hard to slip a photon between Paul and Jefferson. Dr. Paul calls the Fed unconstitutional; Jefferson called its predecessor, the Bank of the United States, unconstitutional:

Jefferson’s opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank:

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people. … To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.

The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution.

We are familiar, too, with Dr. Paul’s indictment of Federal Reserve notes, our paper money. Paul’s indictment of paper money is, if anything, more moderate in tone than that of Jefferson.

Jefferson to E. Carrington, in 1788:

Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

Jefferson to John Adams in 1814:

The errors of that day cannot be recalled. The evils they have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old money of the Revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the Republic, and burn on that all the bank charters, present and future, and their notes with them? For these are to ruin both Republic and individuals. This cannot be done. The mania is too strong. It has seized, by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special, and individual.

To Charles Yancey in 1816:

Not Quixotic enough to attempt to reason Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to the most practicable means of withdrawing us from the ruin into which we have run. Two hundred millions of paper in the hands of the people (and less cannot be from the employment of a banking capital known to exceed one hundred millions), is a fearful tax to fall at haphazard on their heads. The debt which purchased our Independence was but of eighty millions, of which twenty years of taxation had, in 1889, paid but the one-half. And what have we purchased with this tax of two hundred millions which we are to pay, by wholesale, but usury, swindling, and new forms of demoralization?

Perhaps it is, as Jefferson so eloquently suggested to Yancey, “Quixotic enough to attempt to reason Bedlam to rights….” And yet, this levels an indictment at the Bedlam that has beset our ruling class rather than at the noble one who “dreams the impossible dream… willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause,” that magnificent heir to Jefferson, Ron Paul.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/02/13/the-empire-of-liberty-thomas-jefferson-ron-paul-and-the-sacred-fire-of-freedom/?miaou

[kwame k]

We were talking about ways in which Obama is just as bad as those other bozos.

As for Libya, it's not like there wasn't a lot of other nations stepping up to do the heavy lifting, and we didn't need to get involved. As for Pakistan, I think we wouldn't even be in that part of the world chasing terrorists if we'd stuck to our own affairs to begin with instead of antagonizing a lot of other nations and peoples.

Uh, Doc....Obama didn't invade Afghanistan or Iraq.

He inherited it.

I'd much rather see the US get involved in areas where dictators are in the midst of a coup/rebellion by using limited air strikes and letting the people fight for their freedom.

I'm glad the French didn't feel the way you do or we'd still be a British Colony

[kwame k]

If I came below Santorum in any vote for anything apart from 'Biggest douchebag' I would retire immediately.

But that's Grandpa Paul's strategy....win by losing

[Dr. Love]

Uh, Doc....Obama didn't invade Afghanistan or Iraq.

He inherited it.

I'd much rather see the US get involved in areas where dictators are in the midst of a coup/rebellion by using limited air strikes and letting the people fight for their freedom.

I'm glad the French didn't feel the way you do or we'd still be a British Colony

I think you're going to have a long election season of apologizing for Obama...

[Dr. Love]

[kwame k]

I think you're going to have a long election season of apologizing for Obama...

Doubt it...I've held his feet to the fire on everything from the Health Care Reform bill to not closing Gitmo.

You know this, too

[kwame k]

Funny....Obama is winding down the wars but the three other guys want to invade Iran.

By your logic.....Obama would be invading Iran and not using sanctions

[Dr. Love]

Doubt it...I've held his feet to the fire on everything from the Health Care Reform bill to not closing Gitmo.

You know this, too

Don't forget he is going after medical marijuana dispensaries, too.

[Dr. Love]

Funny....Obama is winding down the wars but the three other guys want to invade Iran.

By your logic.....Obama would be invading Iran and not using sanctions

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we wind up there, democratic or republican president regardless...

[kwame k]

Don't forget he is going after medical marijuana dispensaries, too.

MOTHERFUCKER

Ron Paul 2012, baby!

I believe!

[kwame k]

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we wind up there, democratic or republican president regardless...

Yeah, only it'll be in response to defending Israel after they strike Iran