Paul Supporters Attack Protester

[Bearinabox]

Maddow tried to destroy the Paul campaign the day after he won the Republican nomination

Asking candidates for office about their political views is "trying to destroy their campaigns" now? Damn.

[oladub]

Asking candidates for office about their political views is "trying to destroy their campaigns" now? Damn.

Fair enough but the main thing is that she failed. She has the right and duty to ask whatever she pleases and even suggest that Rand will ruin the world economy - as if Bush and Obama already haven't. The MSNBC crew is beginning to look silly and out of touch though. Twenty state houses turned red two days ago and Rachel is acting like she is mainstream. Maybe she even believes it.

[mjs]

The bills are written by attorneys who work for the various committees. A friend of mine was once one of these attorneys, for the House Homeland Security Committee.

As such, the bills are written in legalese. Your average Congressman would either not understand the language in the bill, or would require, as in the case of the health care legislation, hundreds upon hundreds of hours to dissect and analyze it. I'm certain we want to pay these folks $165,000 a year to propose and vote upon legislation, not conduct legal research that their staffers are already doing for them. Talk about government inefficiency....

The Tea Partiers have placed an outsized emphasis on "reading the bills". Let's see the Tea Partiers cast the first volley by reading the bills themselves.

I said they should read it, not write a thesis on it. Most bills can be read in five minutes to an hour. It says something about the health care bill and how realistic its claims of saving by making things simpler really are if it can't even be read in a day.

While some bills are written by committee staff, most are written by lobbying staff. Especially after seeing how a corner stone of one of the Enron scams was writing a major energy bill for California with the loopholes already built in, I'm not going to apologize for thinking my representatives should be responsible for trying to keep special interest employees honest.

Yes, we do pay them alot of money and a great many of them went to law school so I expect them to learn legalese if they want the job. And just like if I ran a company and had a multi-million dollar deal, I would expect my attorney to spend a great deal of time understanding the details of it. Here, I am a part owner of the United States government and health care reform is a multi-trillion dollar deal so its too bad if they miss their trip to the Bahamas.

BTW, the plant I work at was closed when this bill was proposed so I did read it since the talking heads and politicians couldn't come to an agreement on what it said. My knowledge of politics comes from reading the bills and votes as it takes less time than listening to all the BS opinions on them and then I can vote on what they did rather than what they claim they will do. The vast majority of bills simply are not that hard to read and understand. The "I didn't read it" garbage landmark legislation that I'm more aggravated about was the bank bailout welfare program.

[rb336]

Look at the backlashes to the "Health Care" bill. .

all based on the same outright lies the republicans spewed while it was going through congress,.

[Bearinabox]

Fair enough but the main thing is that she failed.

Depends what she was trying to accomplish. She didn't cause him to lose the election, but I doubt she expected to. He was running to replace a Republican senator in a red state in a Republican-leaning election year; it would have taken a miracle to turn that seat blue. She was trying to inform her viewing audience about who this guy was and what he stood for, and as someone who watched the interview, I found it very illuminating.

She has the right and duty to ask whatever she pleases and even suggest that Rand will ruin the world economy - as if Bush and Obama already haven't.

Are we talking about the same interview? In the one I remember, she was trying to get him to clarify his position on the Civil Rights Act, and he went through all kinds of spectacular contortions to avoid giving a straight answer to her straight question. Say what you will about Rachel Maddow, but I think she's pretty good about giving her interview guests a fair hearing. She didn't make Rand Paul look bad, Rand Paul's whacked-out views made him look bad.

The MSNBC crew is beginning to look silly and out of touch though. Twenty state houses turned red two days ago and Rachel is acting like she is mainstream. Maybe she even believes it.

Elections are cyclical. 2008 was a terrible year for Republicans, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity still found their audiences then. I don't think one election signifies a shift in the political mainstream one way or the other. Now, does she speak for the entire mainstream? Of course not. That's not her job. But I don't think she's significantly further left than your average progressive Democrat in Congress or on the street, and that's basically her audience.

[oladub]

Yup, same interview. She threw Rand off balance by asking him about a law that was passed when he was 2 years old. He made a not politically correct enough response and the national media jumped all over him. It's possible, though, that his less than 100% endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1962 earned him support in Kentucky as the coastal media went apoplectic.

There were other things going on in the campaign in Rand's favor though. The population came to understand that John Conway III was closer to Obama than Kentucky. It didn't help when news started leaking about Conway perhaps having a hand in giving his brother a heads up to avoid some drug charges. Attorney generals aren't supposed to do that.

I agree that Rachel Maddow is talented. Since she, Olberman, and Lawrence Odonnell, together on MSNBC, were announcing the end of the world based on Rand's election the other night, Odonnell has announce that he is a socialist and Olberman was revealed to have given $2,400 to John Conway III. No one said they had to be even handed. No one believes they were.

All's well that ends well though. I don't suppose that John Conway III would be threatening Wall Street bankers now had he been elected.

[Bearinabox]

Yup, same interview. She threw Rand off balance by asking him about a law that was passed when he was 2 years old.

She didn't just pull that question out of her ass. He'd previously made similar remarks on multiple occasions, and had largely gotten away with dodging the follow-up questions. All Maddow did was to pin him down and try to force an answer out of him, so as to make it painfully obvious to everyone watching that he was incapable of reconciling the contradictions in his views.

He made a not politically correct enough response and the national media jumped all over him. It's possible, though, that his less than 100% endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1962 earned him support in Kentucky as the coastal media went apoplectic.

I'm sure lots of people long for the good old days of Jim Crow and separate-but-equal. If thinking those people are assholes gets me lumped in with the Evil Far-Left Coastal Elite, then so be it.

[oladub]

I'm sure lots of people long for the good old days of Jim Crow and separate-but-equal. If thinking those people are assholes gets me lumped in with the Evil Far-Left Coastal Elite, then so be it.

So post Jim Crow, to you, means that if Klansmen showed up in a black owned cafe, you would require the black owner to give those Klansmen full service? Maybe the "Evil Far-Left Coastal Elite" don't understand the nuances of what they support.

[Bearinabox]

So post Jim Crow, to you, means that if Klansmen showed up in a black owned cafe, you would require the black owner to give those Klansmen full service? Maybe the "Evil Far-Left Coastal Elite" don't understand the nuances of what they support.

What in the everloving fuck does that have to do with the Civil Rights Act? Being a Klansman is voluntary. They sign up. If you don't like the repercussions of being a Klansman, try not joining the fucking Klan.

[oladub]

What in the everloving fuck does that have to do with the Civil Rights Act? Being a Klansman is voluntary. They sign up. If you don't like the repercussions of being a Klansman, try not joining the fucking Klan.

I didn't mention anything about how anyone becomes a Klansman. You imagined that. However, black restaurant and other business owners would have to provide services to Klansmen under the Civil Rights Act of 1962; an unintended consequence of good intentions.

[firstandten]

However, black restaurant and other business owners would have to provide services to Klansmen under the Civil Rights Act of 1962; an unintended consequence of good intentions.

Yes, I don't see a problem with that. One can and should do business with people they don't necessary like. That is better than discriminating.

Paul can not square his " private business should do anything its wants even discriminate" stance with mainstream thinking on the issue. As much as he says he supports the civil rights act of 64 usually the first statements that come out of your mouth represents ones true feelings. William Buckley had a good quote in this New York times story which sums up my feelings of the issue

"Mr. Paul has tangled himself up in a similar contradiction. His championing of private businesses, ignoring the rights of just about everyone else, places him on the wrong side of history, just like the first opponents of the Civil Rights Act. One fierce opponent of civil rights legislation, William F. Buckley Jr., admitted as much. “I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow,” Mr. Buckley said in 2004. “I was wrong: federal intervention was necessary.”

[Bearinabox]

I didn't mention anything about how anyone becomes a Klansman. You imagined that. However, black restaurant and other business owners would have to provide services to Klansmen under the Civil Rights Act of 1962; an unintended consequence of good intentions.

Where does the Civil Rights Act actually say that? I was curious, so I googled a few variations of "The Civil Rights Act forces black restaurant owners to serve members of the Ku Klux Klan," and got a bunch of blogs talking about how great Rand Paul is for standing up to the evil liberal media, along with a bunch of pages attacking Robert Byrd. Then I went looking for the actual text of the Civil Rights Act, and found this, in what I believe to be the relevant title of the law:

[[a)All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

Is your argument that the Klan is one of those four things? Or is there something I missed elsewhere in the Act's wording?

[oladub]

firstandten, I think you make a good point although somewhere societies have
to draw a line between sacrificing individual liberties for the collective good vs. keeping a measure of individual liberties for the common good.

[Hypestyles]

how many african-americans voted for Paul? how many cities with african-american communities are in his district?

[oladub]

how many african-americans voted for Paul? how many cities with african-american communities are in his district?

13% of African-Americans voted for Paul.
Kentucky is his 'district".
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010/results/polls/#KYS01p1

Not related but-

"Speaking of Rand Paul, he was interviewed on “This Week,” by Christiane Amanpour, and it was fascinating to see him come out of the closet, so to speak, as what Lindsey Light-Loafers would describe as an “isolationist,” i.e. someone who wants to isolate us from bankruptcy and unnecessary foreign wars. Amanpour asks him if his fervor for budget-cutting extends to the military, and he says “yes” not once but twice."
"His remarks not only validate his anti-interventionist credentials, but they also show what a good politician he is becoming: in these war-weary days, you can’t say “bring the troops home” often enough.""Rand is young, he’s very presentable, and, although he does a good job of hiding it, he’s just as radical as his father. Why, he even had me fooled. " -Justin Raimando, Anti-War.com