To Vote, or Not to Vote.

Growing increasingly disgusted with the seedy game of politics, both local and national, I feel drawn to follow the respected advice of others and just stop participating in such an illegitimate charade. Lew makes an excellent point about the sham of our democracy and how it's manipulated to further the state's agenda. But I've always voted because I feel it legitimizes the complaints I have, and it allows me to exert a microscopically small amount of power over the government-inflicted conditions impacting my life.

But in his bidding to drop out of the elections process to instill fear by eliminating government's mandate, Lew focuses exclusively on the presidential race. I wholeheartedly agree that "neither of the candidates for president wants to do anything about" the problems that are rapidly eroding our freedoms. And I agree that among the two major candidates it's a choice between socialism and fascism. I would argue however that voting for a third party, or a write-in candidate of your choosing, has the same effect on reducing the mandate afforded to the victor of that particular office.

The damages inflicted on liberty over the last hundred years have not transpired solely at the hands of the president; none of his actions would be successful without the full complicity of the criminal gang of legislators up on the hill. When Lew talks about the need to instill fear into the government, I can think of no better method than holding each legislator personally responsible for his complicity and firing his ass at the earliest opportunity.

Which brings me to the crux of my dilemma: the need to hold these criminals responsible for, among other things, their one single vote that officially enslaved every citizen of this nation in service to mammon far outweighs the urge to just ignore them all by not voting.

Not voting is essentially ignoring these parasites, passively condoning their insidious behavior while also "voluntarily" funding it with our taxes. Evil prevails when good people do nothing, and I have a difficult time convincing myself that doing nothing will diminish the evil that has already entrenched itself in our lives.

And I cannot just sit here while Congress contemplates sacrificing our firstborn to Wall Street. The senators and congressmen who voted for this bailout bill have to be punished, and I'm eager to pile it on with vote after vote for this year's incumbent challengers. It's as close to a public flogging as we'll get in this country.

I'm sorry but this kid's a liar

Following Saturday's MTV presidential forum, various audience members were interviewed for their reactions to the candidates which were reported in this article published at the mtv website.

Check out the remarks by one 20-year old NYU student and self-described avid GOPer David Laska, regarding Ron Paul:

Although Laska is siding with McCain, he said as an ardent GOP supporter, he was surprised that he wasn't aware of Paul's views until now. "I didn't know there was anyone in the race that thought the way he did, and I follow the race closely," Laska said. "But it may be too little, too late for him."

I have to ask just how closely he claims to be following the race, because if he has taken the time to watch just one of the numerous GOP debates, he would have learned of at least some of Ron Paul's conservative positions. Being an avid GOP supporter, he would have identified and researched all 11 candidates (or however many there were still in the race when he decided to start following the race "closely"). At the very least, an avid GOP supporter who follows the race closely would have noticed Paul's name among the other remaining candidates on the primary/caucus returns to date no matter in which media they were reported, and would have availed himself to at least an introduction of each of these candidates.

I know this quote will be used with great fanfare across the Paulosphere to further solidify proof of a media blackout against Paul (which I agree is occurring, to an astonishing degree). But for anyone to claim to be an ardent GOP supporter, and to be "following the race closely," he would have achieved enough exposure to Paul to have witnessed the fundamentals of his conservative policies.

Congressional Quarterly: No U-Turn Likely with Mainstream Candidates

This week's cover story in the Congressional Quarterly offers a very good analysis of the likelihood that Bush's executive power overreach will remain in place should any of the leading frontrunners from either party win the White House in 2008.

For the past seven years, George W. Bush has expanded presidential power in ways that no one could have predicted when he took office.

[...]

However, the records and statements of the eight major candidates — the three Democrats and five Republicans who have had double-digit support in the most recent national polls — show that the 2008 presidential election is not likely to start a huge shift in the balance of power away from the White House.

That doesn’t mean the top candidates would continue all of the Bush administration’s practices, and most aren’t likely to take the same kind of deliberately confrontational approach to Congress. Also, an upset victory could still go to one of the few candidates whose victory would represent a clear rejection of Bush’s overall policies. But there is enough evidence of a preference for strong executive power in the backgrounds of most of the field to suggest that, more likely than not, there will be no U-turn under the next president.

And that in an oversimplified nutshell is why Ron Paul has so much support, in spite of some of his more "radical" positions.

Fracturing the Democratic Base
It also helps shed some light on why many rank-and-file Democrats feel so threatened by Paul that they've started swiftboating him at some of the more respectable Democratic internet haunts.

Democratic bloggers across the board have spent the last 7 years attacking Bush's Imperial Presidency and "unitary executive" overreach as unlawful and unconstitutional. But now that Bush's time in office is up, the Democratic establishment candidates have presented no plans to bring the Executive Branch back in line as one of the three co-equal branches of government.

There is a segment of the rank-and-file Democrats who continue to believe, based on those years of demanding it, that the Executive Branch should be scaled back on principled, constitutional grounds, without respect for whomever is president. But there is another segment of the Democratic base who have chosen to embrace this expansion of power because they fundamentally believe that all government is good, if only the right people are in office to manage it properly. And this segment of the base, whether truly indicative of the majority or not, in tandem with those Democrats who are salivating over the prospects of obtaining such overwhelming power, currently holds the louder megaphone and has started using it forcefully against anyone who tries to advocate a reduction in any government power.

These assaults on the constitutional principles of the Democratic base, on which rested the arguments against Bush's power grab for 7 long years, are driving these principled voters toward the only candidate who openly argues for reducing the power of the executive branch to within constitutional limits, and as a bonus comes with a documented history of voting against any expansions of its authority.

This shift of a portion of the Democratic base toward Paul's candidacy, being the result of the now-obvious blatantly gratuitous exploitation of heartfelt principles, is one of the main reasons the establishment Democratic bloggers are attacking Ron Paul so vehemently. In all actuality, these abusive displays strengthen the veracity of the phrase "there's not a whit of difference between the two parties."

Most courageous, principled man in the race

Who is the only presidential candidate who doesn't tailor his message to the sensitivities of his audience? (w/spanish-language video clip from the Univision debate 12-9-07)

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Paul wins nationwide Zogby blind poll

Candidate A (Ron Paul) wins.

A new nationwide Zogby telephone poll reveals that a sizeable majority of Americans are looking to vote for a candidate who protects liberty, wants to shrink government and immediately withdraw troops from Iraq - all traits common to Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Candidate A is identified as:

... a 10-term US Congressman from a large Southern state who is an advocate for a smaller government and individual liberty. This candidate believes in strictly following the Constitution and has never voted to raise taxes. He has never voted in favor of the war in Iraq or the Patriot Act, and wants to bring troops home as soon as possible. As a former doctor, this candidate has delivered more than 4,000 babies. One of this candidate's goals is to return America to the gold standard, and he believes that the current monetary policy needs to be drastically overhauled because of the dollar's decline.

Comparison of Campaign Contributions among top tier candidates

Redpillguy has charts comparing the source of bundled corporate contributions among the media-annointed front runners and Ron Paul. Take a look.

"Imagine Ron Paul" 30-second ad

From the grassroots.



Link.

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New Year's Day Moneybomb for Ron Paul

On New Year's Day, the Ron Paul grassroots will set the bar for 1st Quarter 2008 fundraising for all the candidates left standing after our Boston Tea Party Money Bomb - December 16, 2007.



Spread the word.

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Make It Happen

December 16, 2007


Spread it.

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eh, About those media "polls"

There's been a lot of discussion on why Ron Paul, with all of his obvious Internet popularity, is only polling in the single digits nationwide. Various theories have been presented, such as "pollsters don't call cell phones, and Ron Paul's followers don't use landlines," and "much of Ron Paul's support comes from first-time voters."

The mainstream uses the single-digit poll results to support their claim that "Ron Paul doesn't stand a chance," and use them as ammunition for excluding him from debates or coverage. But just how "scientific" are those polling methods?

...

..[these] polls use only "Republicans who voted in the last Presidential Primary." (link)

Well, how about that. How many republicans do you know who went and voted in the 2004 GOP presidential primaries, since the only candidate running for the GOP nomination was incumbent President Bush? Hmmmm? According to USAToday, Republican turnout in the 2004 primary was a whopping 6.6%! These scientific, professional media polls are based on a sampling of people taken from only 6.6% of the registered republicans from 2004!

As the original author says,

Think about that. The mainstream press is using this handful of people who voted for George W. Bush--when he was running unopposed!--as their "statistically significant" sample of concerned American voters. The political analysts are basing their election predictions, and their professional careers, on a random and biased telephone survey of a few hundred people who bothered to show up when their "fearless leader" wasn't being challenged by anyone.

Ron Paul Donations in Georgia, Q3 2007

Here is a graphic illustrating the areas of the state from which Georgia's Ron Paul campaign contributions originated for Third Quarter, 2007. To compare this with Georgia's Q2 donations, see my previous post.

Below is a breakdown of totals by county (based on zip codes per FEC filings). New zip codes since Q2 are located in the counties shown in orange font, bringing in $36,432.54 from these new areas, nearly as much as all of Georgia in the 2nd quarter ($36,843).

Barrow 1,250
Bartow 7,800
Bibb 4,727
Carroll 500
Chattahoochee 250
Cherokee 3,100
Clarke 1,400
Cobb 6,411.76
Colquitt 800
Coweta 1,300
Dekalb 7,320
Dougherty 1,000
Douglas 2,500
Fayette 1,000
Floyd 100
Forsyth 2,300
Fulton 11,780
Glynn 1,000
Gwinnet 3,626
Hall 200
Henry 2,540
Houston 490
Jackson 1,600
Lamar 100
Laurens 500
Lowndes 250
Monroe 100
Morgan 1,301.26
Muscogee 100
Peach 2,200
Pickens 200
Richmond 2,050
Spalding 500
Tift 300
Troup 1,147.52
White 500
Whitfield 500

Total from Georgia for Ron Paul, Q3 2007: $72,743.54. Good Job, Georgia!

An important note to make about all of these grassroots donations: donations under $200 are not included in the FEC reports, and thus the numbers represented above do not capture the entire picture. Many of us only gave $25-100 in the third quarter, and our donations are not included in the totals above. Once our donations reach $200 each for this campaign cycle, the numbers will show up in the total reports.

Suddenly the media plays nice..

Ron Paul pushed on CNN by Charles Goyette


CAFFERTY FILE: SHOULD PEOPLE LISTEN TO RON PAUL?

$150,000 per day!

Yesterday morning, Sept. 24, Ron Paul's campaign launched a $500,000 end-of-quarter online fundraising push and put up this real-time updating widget on his website to let the world see the money flowing into his campaign. No one would believe that he would raise over $300,000 in TWO DAYS. At this rate, combined with an upcoming debate appearance on Thursday and a Friday payday included in this project, this particular effort could easily break the million dollar mark, in online contributions alone. And this is coming smack off the heels of last week's project to acquire 1,787 contributions during Constitution week.

Do your part and give all you can to help us blow the minds of the media pundits who continue to think he's irrelevant.

GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 9/15/07

I started to think these updates were pointless, since Paul trounces them all every single time, so I slacked off a little. But I got curious myself to see how things were going so here's another update in spite of myself.

Note: the growth charts have Fred Thompson's old Youtube profile numbers. His new profile as an official candidate is only a week old, and will be used in the next update to replace the original numbers in the growth charts below.

Cumulatives:





Averages:





Here are the progress graphs showing actual growth in various user activities for each GOP candidate since May 22.

Channel Views	Cumulative Ratings	Cumulative Comments
Cumulative Views	Subscribers	Ratings Averages
Comments Averages	Views Averages

Previous entries:
Aug 10, 2007: GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 08/10/07 - Dem Comparison
Aug 2, 2007: GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 07/29/07 - Launch Pad Edition
July 15, 2007: GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 07/15/07
July 1, 2007: GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 07/01/07
June 21, 2007: GOP Candidates YouTube Stats - 06/21/07
June 11, 2007: GOP Candidate YouTube Stats - 06/11/07
June 2, 2007: GOP Candidate YouTube Stats, Charts (Followup)
May 22, 2007: About those Youtube Stats...
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GOP candidates enjoy the surge

Here are some screenshots from Google Trends showing the volume of internet users who are searching for information about the leading GOP candidates. The first shows the trends across all of 2007 for candidates Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. (These images were captured Sept. 10, and it takes Google several days to feed new data into the system so these graphs are a few days behind the actual trends).

The upper graph shows the density of searches for each candidate, while the lower graph in the above image shows the density of news coverage corresponding to each candidate. Huckabee and Paul are the least discussed candidates in news coverage, but Paul enjoys fairly high levels of search interest across the internet. Notice that pre-ordained frontrunners Romney and Giuliani have the most news coverage, while their search trends float along the bottom of the charts. It begs the question: If Paul's campaign were covered more frequently in the media, would people be searching for more information about him? This graph clearly shows the level of demand he inspires on the internet.

This graphic below shows the search trends for just September alone. Two significant events occurred simultaneously resulting in the surge you see reflected on this graph: the FoxNews debate and Fred Thompson's candidacy announcement on Leno.

The drop-off you see for both Paul and Thompson can largely be attributed to lower internet traffic that's typical on weekends. It will be interesting to see how their demand levels off as we go into this next week. Stay tuned for that.
UPDATE: Here is the screenshot for both candidates a week later - notice how the earlier peak rapidly settles out for both:



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Ron Paul in FoxNews Debate 9-5-07

See why he won the latest Fox Textmessage poll with 35%.


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They are terrified of Ron Paul

For Dr. Herndon, a candidate to watch is Ron Paul.

"Ron Paul is striking a phenomenal emotional chord with voters -- when they have access to his message. The mainstream political and media machines are terrified. And global financial controllers are in an outright panic. Every effort is being made -- and will be made -- to marginalize him.

Link

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We Told You So

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This is how we win.

Print your own (PDFs), or order 10,000 of these handouts ($0.04 each) and distribute them all over town. Use them as newspaper inserts with your local paper, hand them out at churches, football games and upcoming fall festivals. Use the front page as a newspaper/newsletter advertisement.

This is what the Ron Paul Revolution is all about.

Update: flyer modified 8-27-07.

Download the original PDF file here
Mirror file here (my modifications as pictured at left):
edited_founders15.pdf

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FEC complaint filed against Fred Thompson

...apparently for violating the law by running for president as a non-candidate.

He has been presenting himself as a candidate for President, he has been raising large sums of money beyond what would be required to explore a possible candidacy, and he has signed a long term lease on a headquarters for his campaign. He has even spent advertising dollars, which are specifically prohibited by the law.

Read the full complaint.

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Ron Paul Endorsements

More mindblowing creativity from the grassroots.