The Wanna-Be Vice Dictators
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:12 PM

They both want more regulation, more totalitarian “oversight,” more national socialism. So far, the only debate is centered around a lie perpetuated by both sides: That the Republicans are for smaller government.

McCain Is a Socialist, Too!
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:15 PM

Palin argues that McCain is anything but laissez-faire. After all, he’s for campaign finance censorship and tobacco nanny statism.

She’s Getting Away With It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:19 PM

The key for McCain is to somehow run against the status quo, to run against his own party’s recent legacy. Palin says that we shouldn’t trust national health care, unless we have been happy with the way the feds have been handling things lately. Of course, she is right. Those who hate the Bush legacy — meaning, total statism — should logically oppose socialism too. But the McCain/Palin administration would be more of the same, more Bushism, more socialism. This severe ideological confusion helps both parties, and creates the illusion that there is a difference between the two.

Biden is getting away with it too, blaming the Republicans for shrinking the state. I can’t stand either one.

The Elephant in the Room
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:23 PM

They both support the fascist bailout. They both support a trillion-dollar foreign policy and a multi-trillion dollar corporate/entitlement state. They are debating over millions when the state they wish to run spends trillions. Even assuming the greatness of mass democracy, this is a grave injustice. They should be debating big, real issues. Not this trivia.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign continues to campaign on the fact that for a few days they nominally stopped campaiging.

The GOP’s Embrace of Autarky
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:30 PM

When, by the way, did the Republicans and almost all conservatives come to champion the frightening and economically ludicrous concept of “energy independence”? What they mean, of course, is autarky and socialism: All energy produced within America, and every single form of energy — solar, coal, oil, nuclear, wind, etc. — subsidized massively by the federal government. Even the Alaska drilling issue isn’t conceived of with anything approaching market reasoning. “We,” as in the federal government, should drill.

(Although the Republicans are more skeptical of the global warming zeitgist, they seem willing to champion big government programs such as carbon emissions limits to address climate change. Hey, environmentalists, with all the Republican leaders and corporate state adopting this line, you know it’s wrong.)

Biden Just Admitted It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:39 PM

Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan is the same as Bush’s. Biden does say, however, that the Dems will end the war, eventually. Palin doesn’t even make this much of a promise. On foreign policy, the Dems still seem slightly better than the Repubs.

On the other hand, “Pakistan already has nuclear weapons,” Biden points out, and so, I guess, we should be at war with them.

A Relief
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:54 PM

Well, at least both say Israel must be protected at all costs, that nothing is more important, and that Iran is the greatest threat ever. Indeed, they both accuse the other of being insufficiently determined to keep the Persians in line.

They also agreed on gay marriage, just as Bush and Kerry did: More equality under the law but no marriage for homosexuals. Same exact position. Different emphasis.

http://www.bloomberg.com/…

U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama each deserve credit for a breakthrough in talks on a $700 billion plan to revive the credit markets, their advisers said today.

Republican McCain worked with party members in the House to achieve plan changes such as government insurance of mortgage- backed securities and a phase-in of federal aid, Senator Lindsey Graham said on the “Fox News Sunday” television program.

“The fact is the House Republicans were not in the mix at all” until McCain arrived at the talks, said Graham, a South Carolina Republican. McCain “was decisive in regards to the House being involved.”

Senator John Kerry, an Obama adviser, disagreed. McCain said “he was going to interrupt his campaign to come down and save the negotiations,” according to the Massachusetts Democrat. “What he did was interrupt the negotiations to come down and save his campaign.”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said in a CNN interview today that McCain’s trip was “a political stunt” that “delayed and slowed down this process.”

Obama was supportive of negotiations in a “mild” and constructive” way by calling in over eight or nine days of talks, said Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat.

If they want to take credit I’m happy to give it to them. When the depression comes I just hope whichever clown is in office will take the blaim.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25605640/

Bowing to President Bush’s demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president’s warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.

How completely not surprising that the Democrats would hand Bush and friends more dictatorial powers.

All the amendments were defeated. McCain didn’t bother to vote, Obama, Specter, Lieberman voted for it. Feingold, who had said “This president broke the law,” voted against it. As did Biden, Clinton, Schumer, Kerry and Dodd. Glad to see the NJ senators, Lautenberg and Menendez, voted Nay.

You can find the full list of how they all voted at GovTrack.us

They have legalized a major crime and transfered a huge amount of power, which they don’t have, to the executive branch. They don’t even fully know what they are giving immunities to. The information is highly classified. Just sad.

http://www.newsnet5.com/…

Rep. Dennis Kucinich is dropping out of the presidential race, his Lakewood congressional office confirmed Thursday.The Democrat represents Ohio’s 10th Congressional District. He is expected to officially announce his withdrawal from the race on Friday.Kucinich, 61, has received little support in his second long-shot run for the presidency. He registers in low single digits in polls and had raised little money. He got 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was shut out in the Iowa caucuses.He has recently been battling to be included in network Democratic debates and to have his name put on the ballot in some states.Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman, a Democrat, is challenging Kucinich’s congressional seat this year. Last week, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson announced that he is endorsing Cimperman in the race.Kucinich said he wants to continue to serve in Congress. He also said he won’t endorse another Democrat in the primary.He was making his second bid for his party’s nomination. He also sought the nod in 2004, ending that campaign just days before endorsing Democratic nominee John Kerry at the party’s convention. Kucinich has attracted a devoted following, including many Hollywood celebrities.

I don’t blame him given they won’t even let him into the debates nor on some ballots. I hope he doesn’t compromise his beliefs again and endorse one of the Democrats running. He said he’d like to have Paul as his running mate… maybe he will endorse him as the only other anti-war candidate.

I’d like to post a screenshot of what the flash based ticker showed at 12:00AM December 17th, 2007. Unfortunately RonPaul2008.com is completely flooded. It’s frozen at $17,980,156.71 for the 4th quarter; $6,059,281.41 for the 16th, 59,282 donations on the 16th and 24,915 were from first time donors. Hopefully the current state of the site is because of a sudden surge and not something malicious. I will update this post with the final numbers tomorrow morning. In the least we’ve beaten John Kerry’s one day record. :-D

Update 12:15AM: It’s become unfrozen in the past couple minutes now reading $17,937,274,28 total and $6,016,213.98 since Sunday 12AM. Odd. You can see in the graph above that there was some odd blip right at the end.

Update 7:30AM: I’ll create a separate post for the final results.

http://paulcash.slact.net/December-16th

As of 2007/12/17 12:00AM EST
Cash Collected	$5.922M1
Hourly Cashflow	$247.46K
Total Donors	57668
Donor Rate	2409/hr
Donation size	$103/person

1. This number does not include offline donations, of which there were $402,000

$3,992,786 was donated to the Ron Paul for President 2008 campaign on November 5th, 2007. At least that’s what the graphs at RonPaulGraphs.com says. It also says there was nearly 40 thousand donations. We didn’t beat John Kerry’s record from 2004 of $5.7m but we did smash Mitt Romney’s January 8th record of just over $3.1 million. From the Ron Paul website: “At 4:00 pm, the campaign’s $2.7 million broke the record for the largest online presidential primary fundraising effort in a single day, and by 6:30 pm, the campaign broke Mitt Romney’s $3.1 million record for single-day fundraising this year.” I’m going to go and say this was a success. Just less than 18,000 had pledged but more than twice donated. An average of almost exactly $100/donation. Even if there were people who donated multiple times I feel this money bomb has finally put to rest the claim that the Paul supporters are just a small group of college students living in their parent’s basements.

As of 7:45am November the 6th, 2007 the total raised for the 4th quarter is $7,233,934.20. It’s slowed down immensely as would be expected but that $8m market for the end of November doesn’t seem so far away now.