Game Over: Scans of Over 50 Ron Paul Newsletters

For a certain segment of the Ron Paul fanbase, no evidence of his disseminating hateful, paranoid material will ever be enough. Citing James Kirchick's piece in The New Republic wasn't sufficient, because Kirchick could have just been "making everything up." Then, when I and others posted copies of "The Ron Paul Political Report Special Issue on Race Terrorism," that too wasn't convincing.

"Proof that he said/endorsed racist things? Hardly. Doing it repeatedly in one document isn't enough to prove that he did it. Now, if there were many documents..."

Well, now there are many documents. Over fifty. Right here.

As I said in my rundown on the Paul platform over at Vice, reasonable fans of Dr. Paul now must accept that

there's no way Paul could have been ignorant of the content [of] 8-12 page newsletters published under his name for over ten years. Paul supporters face three losing propositions:

• He lacks the competency to control content published under his own name for over a decade, and is thus unfit to lead a country.
• He doesn't believe these things but considers them a useful political tool to motivate racist whites, which makes him fit to be a GOP candidate, but too obvious about it to win.
• He's actually a racist, which makes him unfit to be a human being.

Further, you can't dismiss this in the name of higher political or socioeconomic aspirations. Since Paul has no chance of winning — seriously, no chance at all — his only value is as a voice, a conduit for principles. And if your only hope is to change the discourse by amplifying ideas, you can do that via many voices and avenues. As I said in my Vice follow-up, acknowledging some of Paul's good ideas,

when you opt to support anti-imperialist and civil liberties ideals by supporting Paul the Candidate, you end up supporting everything else about him. That includes those newsletters and the unambiguous message to those who enjoy them: You can write these things and succeed; this works. The other good ideas to which he's signatory can't erase the fact that he put his name to those words printed above. The moral weight of those newsletters drags down even the most high-minded aspirations he has about civil liberties, and everything crashes down on all of us.

It's fine to have convictions about things he believes in. But when you voluntarily whitewash his record or choose to ignore it and champion him anyway, you are complicit in supporting the idea that racism and homophobia are morally inconsequential to the process of running for President of the United States. And, while many Paul supporters consider racism a social injury subordinate to extra-legal military conflict, there are just as many who disgustingly handwave at racism because it's an inconsequential burp on the way to more tax cuts, Free Markets, Free Money, Free Black Peop — stuff for me!

And still, for the faithful, this will not be enough.

Below, I've tried to give helpful general (bold) titles to each excerpt of the various Ron Paul newsletters available. These come courtesy of a zipfile of scans sent to me by reader Heresiarch, who, along with others, compiled it from various sources — although the lion's share, if not all, come from James Kirchick, who wrote the original, big Ron Paul story in The New Republic, in 2008. (You can see many of his highlights on the scans.) I have omitted the over 65 pages of scanned federal earmarks Ron Paul requested for his district, in a fit of States' Wants pique. I have also omitted the scans of Von Mises Institute brochures about a Secession Conference at which Paul spoke.

No attempt has been made to organize these via topic, since pages of each newsletter are apt to feature mini-articles on multiple topics, making organization futile. (My summaries don't indicate all that go on in the scans, so please click away.) Finally, below some of the scans, I've offered some comments in plain text. Those within quotation marks are direct quotes from the text appearing in the newsletter scans. Those without quotation marks are my own observations.

The Emmys Are for Idiots, Part IV: 'Modern Family' Is Trash

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) held its annual awards show last night. Last year, I looked at the Emmys' structural badness and historical oversights in Part I, then covered all the major nominees and nominations in Part II and Part III. Many of those shows were nominated again this year, so going into this year's slate in any detail will only run the risk of repeating myself too much.

Funnily enough, I do want to repeat myself and then add a few comments about Modern Family, but only after some stray thoughts about pleasant surprises and expected but still unfortunate disappointments this year.

A friend and I found ourselves chatting over the nominees last night, before the awards started, and both of us thought Melissa McCarthy (an overweight woman) and Peter Dinklage (a dwarf) were a lock to win. Neither of us thought them undeserving, far from it. Dinklage has been hilarious in Elf, 30 Rock and Death at a Funeral, and he was a compelling and powerful lead in The Station Agent. Although I haven't seen enough of him in Game of Thrones, what little I have caught appears to be some of his best work. McCarthy's received fewer plaudits over the years, but she provided an irreplaceable comedic and emotional cog in Gilmore Girls for the entire series run, something for which she was wrongly overlooked.

What struck us as funny was that we, independent of each other, both looked past these two actors' undeniable strengths and just assumed that they'd win just as much for their gimmick social value. The actual probity of ATAS voters is so dubious that even what should be a mortal lock on a talent level, in Dinklage's case, seems likelier only if you attach an unnecessary political rider to the vote. You can easily imagine an avatar of the perfect ATAS voter — doesn't watch much beyond network fare, three-camera sitcoms, cop procedurals and primetime soaps — thinking that Dinklage was a lot worse than someone else, somehow, then voting for him because, "Voting for a dwarf makes a statement about the ATAS." Or, in McCarthy's case, "We need to reaffirm positive self-images in heavy women, so let's go with her."

Even More Things I Want to Do When I Grow Up

We here at Et tu, Mr. Destructo? have but one aim every year: to pioneer new strategies and set new benchmarks in being awesome, by employing new rad dynamics. At the beginning of each year, we establish standards for our comportment and limits on the human body's ability to always be totally crushing it, and each year we surpass them.

In 2009, we smoked myrrh with Lil John and righted the centuries of wrongs created by grave-robbing by grave-donating. (The secret: little paper coffins handed out to trick-or-treaters, who then asked for coins. Thanks, kids!) In 2010, we reenacted Fox in Socks with a rescued and diseased animal, took Brittany Murphy's death virginity and created MILF day.

Indeed, if a shortcoming can be found in our ambitions for ourselves and for Mr. Destructo as a journalistic organ, it is that we may be running out of potential goals due to the shortcomings of the physical universe. May that time never come. May we press on today. May you join us or die. Can you do any less?

Even More Things I Want to Do When I Grow Up:
I'm gonna tell everybody you drink Dr. Thunder.

I want to make all steampunk clothing accessories suddenly viable working machinery. I don't care how many people are scalded with burning oil and dropped to the ground by hundreds of pounds of metal.

I want to sneak into an elementary school and hide notes in every lunch bag that read, "Your father and I are getting divorced."

Profiles in Florida: Bill McCollum

I've always considered being a Republican for the last 30 years to be somewhat idiotproof. I just figured it'd have to be. Remaining electable never seemed especially difficult, so long as one avoided having sex with children or coloreds and refused to display the hobgoblin of the small-minded: a consistency to not appear foolish by reasoning out an issue first and finding a conclusion about it second.

Other than that, you could just fax lobbying groups your Direct Deposit info and take a nap. This is probably why I like Bill McCollum, because somehow he fucked up the formula for empty parroting, sweetheart lobbying and venial constant sleaze that everyone seems to tolerate from the GOP. Somehow, he managed to keep losing, in 2000, 2004 and finally in a primary this year. On top of that, he did it in Florida, where GOP corruption is pretty much considered:

a. a sport;
b. an essential lubricant for the governing process — almost exactly like the function of Mexico's PRI, only don't tell these people that, because Mexicans are the worst people ever (unless they smell like orange rinds);
c. such a non-story that probably half the lawmakers in Tallahassee greeted The Daily Beast's naming Florida as one of the nation's most corrupt states with a massive dose of white-man's overbite and a belt-high firing of the index-finger gun.

This was the easy stuff to inoculate against, the unsweatable small stuff. Florida and corruption is still like the Playboy Club before AIDS. Florida can suffer anything, apparently, but Bill McCollum.

Michelle Malkin, It's Time to Get Serious and Play Ball

Useful person and right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin has been getting angry lately about comments made about her balls. On a recent radio show, left-wing comic Aisha Tyler made a crack about kicking Malkin right in them. It was obviously a rhetorical flourish — Tyler had no way of knowing about Malkin's balls — but Malkin overreacted anyway:

Left-wing female comedians are proving that they can be as crude and stupid as their male counterparts. Who knew that striving for gender equality meant pursuing the dream that one day, someday, liberal women would be able to mock their conservative counterparts’ sexuality with the unfettered vulgarity of Andrew Dice Clay?

Recently, Kathy Griffin attacked GOP Sen. Scott Brown’s daughters as “prostitutes” on her Bravo “comedy” show.

Now, via Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer, supposed funnywomen Stephanie Miller and Aisha Tyler make genital jokes

She then goes on to quote the joke, ending her commentary with, "In a follow-up, an indignant Miller defends her friend’s gutter 'humor' and castigates unsophisticated conservatives who do not comprehend their nuance. I hope you are proud, feminists."

Now, I've no doubt that this is a stone bummer for feminism. It's been peremptorily killed by an offhand comedic trope from a relatively unknown commentator, just when Sarah Palin finally got the movement back on track again by having fat American women LARP as the Thundercats and wave guns while complaining about minorities. But there's a bigger issue here:

This is really gonna fuck up my avant garde film.

Let's Execute Fags; or, "Cliffy, Eat Da Poo Poo!"

You should watch a video. (Whether you can watch it at work depends on employer/volume issues.) It features Pastor Martin Ssempa, the chairman of a Ugandan group against homosexuality. It's important for two reasons, the second of which I'll get to in a moment. One, last year Uganda proposed new anti-homosexuality legislation that would extend the government's criminalization of homosexuality so that Ugandans abroad could be extradited back to Uganda to be punished. For repeat homosexual offenders — recidivists who engaged in homosexual sex with consenting adults multiple times and had cops notice — that punishment includes the death penalty.

Why does Uganda need this legislation? Let the Pastor explain for you:

Cliff Kincaid and Right Side News: When Gay Abortions Are Arizona's Down's Genocide

People send in links pretty often, and most of the time there's not much to do with them, short of repeating earlier pieces or pasting a picture I have of myself from the time I visited a church in Brazil and started weeping blood. Now and then, though, someone tweets or IMs something fascinating. Last week, a very funny Twitter poster and nice guy named Sskylark sent me a link to a website called Right Side News and their article, "George Will Sells Out [sic] to Cultural Corruption."

In the interest of citing sources, I will provide relevant links, but first let me implore you not to click either the link to the site or the article in question. (Most of the article is quoted below.) I know; you're tempted, drawn with a complex and unfamiliar yearning toward their content. They offer news from the Right Side, a pledge that unhouses your beliefs. You were wrong all this time and never even knew it. What side are you even on? The wrong side? The side that has more animal droppings in its food? The side that can't gamble well? You will not find these answers at these links. Instead, you could only destabilize the fragile world of simultaneous conservatism-and-correctness that their name has erected.

According to their media kit (do not click), 77% of their audience is aged 45-74. Feral youths hopping willy-nilly from this site will only tear their ad algorithms away from absorbent adult pants toward discounts on absorbing African beats. Worse, you might crash their servers. Accustomed as they are to 3,200-5,500 readers per day, referred readers from this site could dangerously increase their traffic by 50-100%, and conservatives are constitutionally unprepared for flooding. As for why a dead African dictator writing 10-15 times per month can compete popularly with dozens of contributors posting daily articles and op-eds, know too that popular approval and demand is the nostrum of the liberal, who needs his seething hordes to overwhelm the elite and narrow privilege of hard, sensible reality.

'Unfriendly Fire' and Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell

MAN: Forget about the badge! When do we get the freakin' guns?!
WIGGUM: Hey, I told you, you don't get your gun until you tell me your name.
MAN: I've had it up to here with your "rules"!
— The Simpsons, Chief Clancy Wiggum dealing with a new cadet who later filled an army position vacated by a soldier discharged for homosexual conduct.

Today when I read the news that congress plans, tentatively, to repeal Don't, Ask Don't Tell, I giddily did a skipping 1980s dance around my house to Sixpence None the Richer's 1990s hit, "Kiss Me." Not because I'm gay, mind you; this is just how I celebrate things.

But after flashing a couple thumbs-up at my computer screen, I suddenly felt bad for Nathaniel Frank. He's the author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.Like all authors who seek to end an injustice, I imagine he's in the bind of seeing his purpose achieved and his book made obsolete. While this reflects a social good, it's a pity from a non-fiction standpoint, because Frank's book is a gem. It's well-researched, humane, funny, outrageous and eminently readable. It features the luxury of moral clarity walking hand in hand with science, overcoming enemies undermined with no great effort by their hypocrisy and boobery.

Unfortunately, the book may still be relevant for a few more months — or years.

It's important to understand a little history of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (hereafter, "DADT") to understand what's wrong with it and the arguments for it. There isn't space here for anything comprehensive, but suffice to say that DADT is the unpleasant compromise produced in 1993 by the conflicting aims of the Clinton administration, conservative groups and some parts of the U.S. military. Clinton intended to make good on promises to the gay community that supported him during the 1992 election. However, he declined to integrate the military by fiat as the Commander-in-Chief—as Truman had with blacks—and instead deferred to congress and a bipartisan approach.

While initial public opinion either supported integration or remained salutarily indifferent, the voices of the culture war ramped up their acrimony with the aim of manipulating public opinion against an inexperienced administration without a central narrative for the issue. Interestingly, while most branches of the military began drawing up plans to integrate, assuming the issue was a fait accompli, members of the Army Working Group began organizing in what's difficult to label as anything other than open insubordination. (This is acceptable, in Democratic administrations, because Democrats never win wars, apart from WWI and WWII.) They used the old canard that a civilian liberal could not possibly understand the military to issue dire and elaborately fantastical warnings about American military collapse. Meanwhile, conservatism's culture warriors exploited the he-said/she-said nature of daily journalism—and its inability to check claims and "facts" before going to print—to poison the discourse with demonizing non-science about homosexuals and military integrity.

Update: Robert Byrd Must Die

As I explained here yesterday, a C-SPAN caller asked Senator John Barrossa (R-WY) if insufficient or misdirected prayer had caused God to not only omit smiting the foul Democrat Robert Byrd but also to cause James Inhofe (R-OK) to be absent from the vote.

Since then, Talking Points Memo printed their suspicion that the call was a prank:

Back in April, a man with a very similar voice, and also from Georgia, called in and asked David Brooks if he, as a sophisticated New Yorker, would help to bring down the black man in the White House. Brooks was laughing in disbelief at what he was hearing.

I disagree with their reasons, even if their conclusion turns out to be correct, because it didn't seem that over-the-top. Now, cynically speaking, it's in my best interests for this to be real; I look silly to have written all that ire about the un-Christian and uncharitable sentiments of wishing Byrd dead if it turned out to be a gag. But, at the risk of seeming like I'm trying to walk back my comments to avoid embarrassment, there are three reasons why this should be a non-starter:

Glenn Beck Literally Plays with Dolls

At what point does it start being scary for everyone that a headline like that is immediately believable? It's true, but there are probably still a few scattered millions who would look at it and think, "Naaah, that's gotta be some kind of joke." With each passing week, the few remaining Glenn Beck headlines that would cause me to feel doubt about their veracity get stricken from the list. I think all I've got left are:

Beck Eats Live Frog on TV to Illustrate Lesson About Federal Reserve

Beck Dresses in Waitress Garb Like Sookie Stackhouse,

Reads Founding Fathers' Minds for 1 Hour

Beck's Tear Ducts Secrete Raw Cookie Dough;

'Strains of Job Taking Their Toll House,' Say Doctors

and

Beck Behaves Like Normal Goddamn Human Being for 15 Minutes

The last one — it's the last one that's never coming off my list.

Racist, Homophobic Piece of Shit 'Dishonored'

Ron Paul is the gift that doesn't stop giving, in ways you never expect.

If you'd asked me two years ago if Sascha Baron Cohen could have followed up Borat's riff on American racism with anything like success, I'd have said no. Then I spent about a year trying to deprogram Paultards and another year trying to deprogram pro-McCain/pro-Palin Republicans suffering some sort of post-Bush Stockholm Syndrome. Basically I learned that there will always be enough people out there willing to believe almost anything and willing to go on the record with it. Which means that Bruno, Cohen's charming heartland tour of American homophobia, is bound to be incredible.