I’m glad that Goff has the word “Voter” appending his single issue stance. It may counter that other single-issue-voter-crowd, the anti abortion folks. With the prospect of the problem of the end of oil looming, which could proportionally wipe out as large a segment of the world population as did the bubonic plague, wars and killing and abortion pale by comparison.
Not much rhetoric is going to the pro-choice issue these days. Hillary made her feelings on the subject known at the March for Choice in 2004. Those interested already know how she stands on that–better not to alert those for whom that single issue is the end of legal abortion.
Ah, Ron Paul–as if every election needs a Ralph Nader or a Kinky Friedman for cosmic relief.
Frances Morey
In my book, Brzezinski is firmly in the anti-Israel camp. Richard Clarke when interviewed on TV comes across fairly neutral. Ross whose boring book I tried reading is even-handed towards Israel and the PA, pro-Zionist only in the sense that he accepts Israel’s legitimacy as a government. Using Zionist to denominate a country named Israel is to adopt the terminology of the anti-Israel Arab bloc. It is a meaningless term in the year 2008. Post-Zionist is a term sometimes used to name the ideology of the majority of Israelis today who want the settlers out of the West Bank. I would hope to be able to vote for Barack Huseini Obama.
Brzezinski is a wise man now although as a Polish catholic he has got it in for the jooze, probably picked it up from his mother’s milk. He doesn’t let it show much.
Mike Eisenstadt
The majority of the Democratic candidates for president were too busy selling out to insist on Dennis Kucinich’s right to be heard in the debates. Shame on them all.
Obama is only the lesser of two weasels, the third weasel is almost gone since he talks too much about the poor and the soon to be poor.
Stan Goff for President.
Alan Pogue
Shun the weasels. Paul Spencer for President.
Richard Jehn
Monkeywrenching the System: Ron Paul’s Revolution
By STAN GOFF
For starters, I have become a single-issue voter. The two-front war in Iraq-Afghanistan continues to drag on; and I am thoroughly convinced that no viable Democratic nominee will stop these occupations.
The recent analysis by Allan Nairn shows that even the putative anti-war Edwards (who the press is smothering because of his anti-corporate declarations) has a backroom full of defense contractors. Clinton is a ruthless war-monger, period. Obama is employing on the sorriest, pro-Zionist, neoliberal trash on the market, i.e., Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, and Dennis Ross, on his core advisory staff.
No one listens to me much, but in some fantasy world where they might, I would suggest that others follow suit with me here. In open primary states, cross over to vote in the Republican primaries for Ron Paul. In closed primary states, switch fast to Republican (like in the next few days).
Vote in the Republican primary; and vote for Ron Paul. Turnout will be dismally low for Republicans this year, because they have been demoralized by the Bush loons’ performances. Independents will vote Paul. The other Republicans are engaged in a fratricidal melee.
I already know what I am going to hear from all over the program-intoxicated, “I won’t endorse this-n-that position” liberal-left. Ron Paul is backward on abortion, passively racist, anti-immigrant, and on and on. Sorry, but I said I’d vote a dead cat that was anti-war before I’d vote a resurrected Eugene Debs if he showed up and supported the war. I meant that from my heart.
Cynthia McKinney is running Green, though she hasn’t got the nomination yet. Remember Cynthia McKinney? When she broke with the DLC diktat, her own party fronted another Black woman (Denise Majette) to run against her in an open primary, and Republicans crossed over massively to vote in the Democratic primary to unseat her in a foregone Democratic Congressional district.
Two can play that game. If Cynthia McKinney runs in 2008 for President, I’ll write her in if I have to just to burn a vote for Clinton or Obama. But meanwhile, Ron Paul is on our primary ballot (North Carolina), because he is running as a Republican (we have draconian ballot access conditions here for thrid-parties, thanks to — of course — Democrats).
Ron Paul is running for President. Just what are the capabilities of a President, and what are his likely courses of action… in the unlikely event he wins?
Well, he is the Commander-in-Chief, so he can bring the troops home immediately, as well as order the military-industrial complex to radically scale back. In case anyone on the left has missed the implications of this, this would be a profoundly anti-imperial development that would take the US boot off the necks of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
He is a libertarian who dislikes corporate subsidies, so he would veto the mega-billion dollar subisidies for Big Agra, Big Pharma, nuclear power company insurance policies, Weapons-R-Us, the ADM/Cargill Great Ethanol Scam,et al. He could veto the federal highway spending that is promoting sprawl. He has also stated that he opposed so-called free trade agreements.
Hello?
Don’t argue with libertarians when they are right. Many of them say that the leviathan-capitalists that dominate the world’s economy could not get as big as they are in an unfettered and unsubsidized market. Newsflash: that is actually true.
Ron Paul is a Gold Bug. For the uninitiated, that means he believes dollar-value should be pegged to a gold-standard. The implications of a return to the gold standard by the Fed are grim… for Wall Street and the military, both of which depend on massive foreign loans convered by runaway printing presses. Putting a stop to this is a Good Thing. What is the net effect?
Ron Paul may have the most outrageous personal account of race you might imagine; but what is the most horrific social catastrophe in the United States for Black and Brown folk? You guessed it: the criminal (in)justice system. The malignant growth of the American Gulag has been fueled — more than by any other cause — by the ever-more-punative criminalization of drug use and drug addiction, and the ability fo the criminal justice system to apply this criminalization with special force against African America and Hispano-Latinas. Here’s the thing. Paul opposes the criminalization of drugs. What is the net effect?
When we are at the point in history where we cannot change the electoral system, then we need to think tactically about what we can do right now. What will a Paul victory in the primaries do? Not whether a vote for Paul in the Republican primaries endorses his decentralizing philosophy on reproductive choice. President Paul will not be writing legislation. The Executive Branch decides how strongly to enforce legislation… like domestic spying fer-instance.
President Paul would close Guantanamo, halt CIA kidnappings, and gut the enforcement capacity for the PATRIOT Act.
Nominee Paul would give 2008 voters a choice between a real anti-war candidate and a phony Democratic equivocator. The intensity of anti-war sentiment in the country already forced ex-war-hawk Edwards to adopt an out-in-nine-months position to left flank his Democratic opponents.
Don’t ask yourself “what are the ideas?” If your toilet backs up, you can come up with a thousand ideas while shit-water cascades onto the floor. The question is not about ideas; it is, “What will be the net effect?”
Wanna throw a monkey wrench into a fixed electoral system? Here’s a chance.
Stan Goff is the author of “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000), “Full Spectrum Disorder” (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and “Sex & War” which will be released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.
Goff can be reached at: stan@stangoff.com.
