Election 2008: The Miserly Pothead's Choice

One would think that the fact that strippers supporting Ron Paul would be a good thing, except you have to stop and think as to the reason why:

The adult entertainment industry is a multibillion dollar business (just look at your junk email folder), and the two things it needs most is a business climate for it to operate without restriction or regulation as well as (and this is the most important portion) the ability to hold onto those profits come hell or high water, because not that much separates the Heffners from the Murdochs when you get down to it.

The answer: Texas's Ron Paul.

Ron's big thing is a "free America," and he talks a very good game.

On NAFTA and other "Free Trade" agreements: "NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme."

Tinhatty, but he has a point, however in that same section of his website (entitled "American Independence and Sovereignty") he opines: "So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.
The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor’s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned.
The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws, yet we still face trade wars. Today, France is threatening to have U.S. goods taxed throughout Europe. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs."

I've got a problem with that. Y'see, Ronny thinks that independence means believing a la Tupac Shakur that "only God can judge me." (By the way, Reichen Lehmkuhl is now sporting that tattoo, so draw your own conclusions on that one.) Unfortunately, this belief tends to get you into even deeper trouble down the line, because if anything the US has acted and stated time and time again that troublemaking countries (Iraq, Grenada, Panama, North Korea, Cuba, and many more) get a beat down if they don't toe the line. A Paul presidency would likely lead to a dose of our own medicine and quite frankly, I don't want to live in that parallel universe.

Paul also doesn't buy his own rhetoric, since when he talks about war and foreign policy he says the following: "...we must not isolate ourselves. The generosity of the American people has been felt around the globe. Many have thanked God for it, in many languages. Let us have a strong America, conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations."

Oh really?

Ronny's big thing, however, is "privacy and personal liberty," or what I term the greedy pothead issue, greedy because any talk about liberty coming from a member of the GOP is based in one thing: laissez-faire economics, and pothead because they are only ones who seem to be blind to that aspect...plus there's a fair amount of pot-induced paranoia in seeing government conspiracies everywhere.

Now give Ronny some credit in that he said no against the Patriot Act (Ronny's Broken Clock exception), but his reasons why stem from some 1984-like fear, not the fact that it was unnecessary, but just because Ronny is afraid of big government.

I'm not.

I'm in favour of big government if it functions correctly. I'm not a fan of centralisation, but big government--one of which works with and for the people and not against them in some sort of hot-potato/pass-the-blame exercise--is fine with me. I pay my taxes and seeing positive results from them makes it worthwhile.

Paul (either consciously or subconsciously) wants us have a Jennifer Government-esque scenario, despite being anti-FTA, because that is where Libertarian-Republican style government leads towards. They all see taxes as these evil things, and the private sector as the saviour, but let's think about it: In the end, all they are saying is pay Peter.com instead of Paul.gov (pun intended) for the same services.