Anyway, here’s an economist’s summary of the last debate:

The debate was truly awful. The financial crisis was caused by greed (McCain) and deregulation (Obama). We need energy independence. Our priority is to do everything at once (McCain). We will cut spending by spending more (Obama). We can create jobs.

Let me ignore the rest, and focus on jobs. We can create jobs by getting rid of computers and going back to carbon paper for communication and paper and pencil for arithmetic. We can create jobs by getting rid of electric motors and going back to human power to run factories. As long as wants are unlimited, you don’t need to create jobs.

If the candidates were out to correct economic ignorance instead of pandering to it, the debate would not resemble last night’s in any way. There was no winner. Only losers.

Congressman David Price of North Carolina’s 4th District has:

• Voted for a $700 billion taxpayer-financed bailout of Wall Street billionaires. That’s reason enough right there to vote Mr. David Price out of office, but I will continue.
• Voted for the PATRIOT Act, oy vey! And just when you thought he couldn’t get any worse…
• Voted to raid the Social Security trust fund to spend money this country doesn’t have on various projects, including other members’ (and his own) incessant pork barrel requests.
• Votes for war funding.
• Thrown civil liberties to the wind when he voted for FISA, the bill that gave immunity to telecom companies that spied on their innocent customers for the government, unconstitutionally.

One of Lawson’s county coordinators is Rev. Ray McKinnon, a hardcore Democrat who met Dr. Lawson while campaigning for Hillary. No, BJ Lawson is not your typical Republican. While Price usually wins the district by 65%, polls have him at less than 50% with 10% undecided. Meanwhile, while Price hid from his constituents during the bailout fiasco, Lawson was bringing serious money in from Americans angry at the bailout, to the tune of over $170,000 in ONE DAY, which simply must be a record for North Carolina.

Because I am “Libertarian Girl,” some people assume some things about me. I am not a member of the Libertarian Party, and I go across partisan rhetoric to support issues, not groups. I receive solicitations in the mail from both Republicans and Democrats due to the wide range of causes I support and organizations that I’m a member of; I’ve gotten signed photos of McCain and Palin and letters begging support from Hillary.

I’m not a Libertarian, a Republican, or a Democrat, but I’ve voted for all three at times. As an election judge in this district the last primary cycle, I noticed that many voting Democratic took care to maintain their independent status, not wanting to be listed as a Democrat. This is a stance I can respect, voting for the person and the issues, not the party. According to an interview on Live Free Radio earlier this week, Lawson said an Orange County Democrat was hesitant to give her support, but came back the next day at Festifall and said, “After reading about you and your stance on the issues, I’d vote for you even if you were a member of the Communist Party.” Who could say the same about David Price, the disappearing act who won’t answer a simple question of: Does he read bills before he votes on them?

I hope there are many Democrats in the Fourth District who vote for who will really represent them and their interests in Congress, and that would be a vote for BJ Lawson.

I voted for David Price the last time he was up for re-election, but this time I will be glad to vote for a true man of the people, for a man who is not red or blue but American… BJ Lawson.

Therefore, I officially endorse BJ Lawson for the Fourth District congressional race, if you have not already figured this out. And it’s not because his kids are so darn cute, it’s because of the Constitutional principles that he is running on.

I turned to those watching with me and said, “Could they get away with saying that about any of our other allies? Imagine Biden saying, ‘I’ve been England’s greatest supporter during my 30 years in the US Senate’ or ‘I wouldn’t have joined Barack Obama on this ticket if he didn’t share with me a passion for England.’”

Of course, no at-home swing voter mentioned this in the post-debate follow-ups, the mainstream media hasn’t touched it, and it seems to be perfectly acceptable in America today to love a foreign country, but only if it’s a certain foreign country. I’m glad to see that at least Glenn Greenwald, a very smart guy, was thinking the exact same thing I did during this exchange.

Could Sarah Palinget away with saying “I’m glad to see that we both love Spain” or “I’m so glad you love France, too” during an American debate like this? Just think about it for a minute, and you realize how absurd it is.

There is no doubt that Joe Biden is more articulate than Sarah Palin. However, almost nothing he says makes any actual sense.

Biden doesn’t know basic economics, history and doesn’t give a donkey’s arse about the Constitution. Biden misrepresents himself and what he stands for habitually: this is a guy who was all for invading Iraq if the UN had gone for it (and cheered Bush on with early invasion plans) and now pretends he’s Bush’s worst enemy and implies he was against it all along. This is the Joe Biden who created the completely unconstitutional position of the drug czar, which has spurred the growth of an agency which takes billions from those middle-class people Biden says he loves so much. It’s also put many of them in jail. This is the guy who may want to keep the vice-president’s office in the executive branch, but doesn’t care about expanding federal power over everything in your life under the auspices of “interstate commerce.”

As I always say, if you’re articulate and can speak well, you can get elected to office in this country even if you’re mentally insane, a habitual liar, a serial exaggerator or even a murderer. Voters simply go by what feels good to them at the moment, and a good speaker will fool them every time. Someone with real intellect and substance but no speaking ability won’t get out of the gate. Biden is a plagiarist, but it doesn’t matter because he’s “cool, calm and collected” after 30 years of taxpayer-funded practice, and his staffers can filter the facts on Wikipedia.

I also object to those who have stated that Gwen Ifill was perfectly objective despite her forthcoming Obama book. One of her first questions concerned whether “greedy lenders” or “risky homebuyers” contributed more to the subprime mortgage mess. That is a Hillary Clinton stump line if I’ve ever heard one. The home buyers who were buying houses way out of their leagues were also quite greedy in wanting to live in McMansions they couldn’t afford, and the lenders who were “trying to let people live the American Dream” (as Obama and Biden would put it) were also just being “risky.” That wasn’t the only completely partisan question she asked that night, although she did criticize Joe Biden at one point, a decision I’m sure came into play after she received so much criticism in the run-up to the debate. Another question talked about “debt-strapped mortageholders” and “some people have said that mortgageholders paid the price”– in other words, people who (like the Wall Street billionaires) made bad decisions and are now suffering for it who want other people who didn’t make those bad decisions to give them money.

Palin was excellent in her answer to that question, using a light touch to tell people that they need to learn lessons and not be taken advantage of again and pay attention to their parents’ admonitions to not live beyond their means. She also said that government needed to be more efficient, something Obama is big on but Biden didn’t mention this time around. Tax raises mean that jobs will be cut and the private economy will suffer as the public sector becomes more bloated and inefficient.

Biden’s mantra for the night was “John said, ‘Deregulate, deregulate.’” That alone is quite enough to turn someone away from voting for his ticket, as if deregulation is the problem and as if deregulation is a bad thing. Obama says the same thing, but not to this extent.

Biden did get one hit in when he said that he agreed with Palin’s tax raises on oil companies and McCain wanted to get them tax breaks. I give him props for that, but she got back at him when she said that Biden had offered to run on McCain’s ticket. She made the point that raising taxes on oil companies was good and set Biden up to hit his home run. Palin missed a chance to deliver a knockout when she talked about what she’d done in Wasilla, Alaska to improve it and Biden talked about how Wilmington, Delaware was hurting right now. She could’ve pointed out that she’d improved her hometown but after 30 years in Congress, he hadn’t done much to help his.

I am starting to finally buy into this “liberal media bias” thing. Here are two egregious examples from a quick search of the news.

According to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Biden provided “oodles of details, numbers and records in his answers” which “might win over intellects,” which ignores the fact that many of his “oodles of numbers and records” were completely wrong. Why would intellects fall for that, and why would intellects be any less into Palin’s arguing that people, for instance, should be smart enough next time not to fall for predatory lenders, rather than flocking for Biden’s argument that these mortgage-holders were too dumb to figure it out for themselves and therefore need to be “saved” by taxpayers?

The Baltimore Sun television critic believes it “is hard to imagine any rational human being not thinking Joe Biden delivered one of the most solid and winning debate performances in recent presidential history… the question is whether facts, reason and logic can win out on TV over attitude and image, which is what Palin’s performance was all about.” Hmm, so Biden is all facts, reason and logic while Palin is all image? I’m beginning to believe that there is a mainstream media liberal bias. Rather than even giving Palin credit for being tolerant of same-sex couples, he says she doesn’t know the Republican position on gays and that evengelicals must have fallen “right out of their seats” when they heard. What the hell?

Ways in which Biden stretched the truth (and ways in which they both did):

McCain did not say he was “surprised” by subprime mortgages last December.
McCain did not say he wants the health care deregulated, only that insurance should be allowed to be bought over state lines.
McCain did not vote the same way Obama did on the tax-raising vote– he didn’t vote at all.
McCain does not only want to give Exxon Mobil a tax cut, but he wants to cut the general business tax rate for all corporations.
Obama has said that he would consider meeting with Iran’s president without precondition; Biden claimed Obama had not said this. It’s not a bad thing, anyway.
We didn’t kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and neither did France. Nobody has.

“We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.” — Congressman Ron Paul

Ron Paul has now said he is focused on continuing to further the message of liberty rather than continuing his presidential campaign (although he will continue to contest primaries and collect delegates). Everyone is wondering what’s next– could Ron Paul’s supporters start a (more libertarian, of course) MoveOn-style organization, as Dean’s supporters did after his defeat?

Howard Dean already has some similarities to Ron Paul, besides each using the Internet to his advantage. Perhaps most importantly and unfortunately, just like Ron Paul vs. John McCain today, Howard Dean would have been a better candidate for the Dems than John Kerry in 2004, and the Dems now know it. When will the Republicans realize their huge 2008 mistake?

Dr. Paul had a great run. He brought libertarian ideas to a mass audience, taught Republicans about the 9/11 Commission Report, cured a lot of people’s apathy, raised $4 million for the Republican record and then $6 million for the all-time record of money raised in one day, beat Giuliani in the un-libertarian state of Iowa (with my help!), showed Nevada what a great candidate looks like, and inspired me to start this site. It ended too soon, with a loss of the antiwar voters to, of all people, John McCain, perhaps due to what many called an incompetent staff.

The ideas are fabulous, though, and it’s only a question now of how they will live on, not whether they will.

On that note, what can a true lover of liberty do?

Some, in true free market fashion, are starting their own media company, called Break the Matrix. I fully support them in this effort, and it’s certainly worth trying. Some of us are still becoming delegates to their local county, district, state and even the national convention, to remind the Republican Party what it used to stand for. Some are trying to become members of Congress themselves.

Tags: Ron Paul, Ron Paul dropping out

It reads: “Click on The Office characters above to determine what kind of taxpayer you are and match you personality to the right software product.”

Apparently the options are:

• EZ Breezy Filer
• Fancy Filer
• Procrastinator
• Extender
• Typical Taxpayer

Amazon conveniently doesn’t provide the option of “Working to elect a president and members of Congress who will get rid of the income tax so that I no longer have to pay it.”

The filer, an immigration attorney named Eugene Flynn, explains:

“I agree with Ron Paul about 80% of the time. The problem is the other 20% is the most important to me, that is, immigration… Ron Paul offers no way to allow those illegally in the U.S. to get right with the law. Instead he wants to spend more and more money to create bigger bureaucracies to secure our borders to protect us from needed workers… We need a guest worker program NOW! One way to help get it is to defeat the (immigration) restrictionists such as Ron Paul.”

Hmm, that concern over a legal path to immigration wouldn’t have anything to do with Flynn being an immigration attorney who presumably advises said immigrants on these legal paths?

My thoughts:

• This is further proof to those who say that Ron Paul is a Republican, not a libertarian. This could help him in that vein as far as the GOP goes.
• Eugene Flynn may just be counting on Ron Paul getting the GOP nomination and not even running for Congress again, but for the whole enchilada– leaving the race wide open. Apparently, a Democrat hasn’t even bothered to file for the general election yet, Ron Paul’s seat is so safe.
• What does the Cato Institute have to say?

As for my position on the issue, it’s glaringly obvious that the only reason this is Flynn’s #1 issue is because he’s an immigration attorney. He doesn’t even live in RP’s district– he lives in Dallas. Sure, an eventual guest worker program would be nice when our economy is better, but for now, we do need a fence and we do need to get rid of subsidies and handouts for illegal immigrants, which encourage them to come here (one big component of this is birthright citizenship, which I believe should be abolished for those not legally here in the first place). Once we do that and see a return to sound money and free market economics, our economy will be booming and everyone will be begging to institute a guest worker program for all our new businesses, or perhaps we can just allow people to come freely and not subsidize them. But, it’s going to be difficult to get the Democrats to let go of their precious subsidies for what is becoming their most important voting base. So, it will be difficult and that’s what everyone needs to focus on right now.

Tags:Ron Paul 14th Congressional district, Ron Paul libertarian, Ron Paul Eugene Flynn, Libertarian candidate files Ron Paul congressional district