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.

VICE: Ron Paul, Part III: The Enpaulening

Today, on Vice, we have to deal with Ron Paul, Part III: The Enpaulening. There was the first version, and it was ugly and real, not like what we expected. It was like First Blood.

Then the replies made it all a vengeful, direct attack on something that was right. Like Rambo: First Blood Part II. We had to kill — even the made-up crap. We had to look the bad thing in the eye and say, "Aaauughhh!!!" Now, the third part, like Rambo III, it's about Afghanistan. We need to get the bad guys out. We need to fight them. Only the bad guys are us and Ron Paul is... right?

He is. Click the man who has delivered over 4,000 babies to be delivered to the Vice article that reconsiders Ron Paul:


One thing that couldn't be addressed in the Vice piece, for space constraints, is that Paul is the only major politician on the radar of the 24-hour news who rejects any premise for invading or interfering with Iran, which pairs the most sensible attitude on the matter with the most easily maligned candidate. The United States either has troops, drones or sympathetic regimes surrounding Iran, and American foreign policy wonks daily advocate either an invasion or terroristic strikes on sites within its borders.

Increasingly, our justification for striking at Iran is its angry opposition to the fact that we surround Iran, threaten to bomb it and may already be doing so via clandestine strikes and assassinations. We practice a bullying foreign policy, and then we act surprised when that policy backfires. Our only solution is to double down on that bellicosity and violently eradicate the same antipathy that we've directly engendered.

Lastly, while you're there, feel free to keep clicking the MORE button and dig on those comments. There's probably a 5-1 ratio of negative to positive responses, which is sort of entertaining when it's not a stone bummer.

VICE: Ron Paul—Reactionary Racist Leprechaun

This week, the good people at Vice.com asked me to write about Ron Paul, because we both thought Newt was just too tiresome, and, "Please, God [we're] sick of Herman Cain. No more Herman Cain."

A lot of this Paul information isn't new. That's because Ron doesn't change. Time lumbers on, indifferently, into a bigger future, and he remains, hiding behind his 18th century battlements, picking lice off himself, rubbing coins fervidly and wearing a special kind of hat that says, "You can't force me to be a bowman if we fight France."

Unfortunately, Paul fans don't change much either. They see "no more War on Drugs" and "let's stop fighting in the Middle East," and everything else about the man goes unresearched or becomes a kind of meaningless hum. Which is why every now and again, you need to slap them. Hopefully this helps. Click the smilin' Ron Paul below to be taken to Vice:


By the way, the nice fella in the picture with him is Don Black, founder of Stormfront.org, America's #1 white supremacist site, which endorsed Ron Paul in 2008. (Even now you can find great information about him there, like, "All Republican candidates are Jew tools except for Ron Paul," which, perversely, is a fair reading of the GOP establishment's Israel policy.) The Paul campaign spent weeks pretending the endorsement and Stormfront's donation weren't an issue. That might have had something to do with not wanting to alienate supporters, like campaign coordinators who are Klansmen and neo-Nazis, or campaign volunteers like neo-Nazi Holocaust Museum shooter James van Brunn.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Fracking-Free for You and Me

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


The Lamb Lies Down on Wall Street: Selling America by the Pound
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Kelly and Gil Bates, good friends of the Duggars and similarly creepy quiverfull evangelical Christians, are expecting their 19th child. The Quiverfull movement believes that husbands and wives should have as many children as God wants them to, and as such, do not use birth control and have over a dozen kids. Apparently miscarriages aren't God's way of saying "no more," as Kelly Bates is undergoing hormonal therapy to repair her uterine wall. This is something that doesn't seem appropriate to joke about, even with the inconsistency in ideology and the idea of reducing the purpose of children to arrows made for casting in theological warfare, until you consider that the quiverfull movement is inherently misogynist and has liberal sprinklings of white supremacy.

• Republicans in Virginia are one State Senate seat away from having total control of the State's legislative process. They have twice as much cash on hand as Democrats, and Democrats need that money more: 12/16 Republican Senators face no opposition, while 16/20 Democratic Senators have a Republican opponent in the fall's elections. Their sales pitch is completely intangible and non-specific:

"The focus of our race is on jobs and the economy,” Mr. Black said. "The Democrats under the Obama administration have drawn us to where our economy is near collapse, and Republicans are going to have to bring it back."

It's also the exact same strategy which gave the party a stunning victory in the 2010 Congressional elections, so hopefully Virginians are ready for more of the same great pro-citizen victories passed since the beginning of the year, only on a state level.

• It's an especially exciting time for Virginia's elections with not only the upcoming complete Republican takeover of the State Senate, but famed Republican George Allen running for the Senate on the bigger level, after a humiliating defeat in 2006. While some attribute Allen's 2006 loss to his use of a racial slur when calling on a reporter (one he would later claim to be a "made-up word" that just happened to correspond with the poor guy's race), it's highly doubtful that, as the Washington Post bizarrely claims, his baggage this time around will be his intensely close ties to the coal industry.

Wailing Walls: Bela Lugosi's Dead, Part III

Note: After the death of Osama Bin Laden, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East. He last joined us for Bela Lugosi's Dead, Part II: The Real Story Sucks: Bin Laden, the ISI and a Dawood Sandstorm.


Killing the Bastard Bin Laden, Stage IV of the American Fever Dream
by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
— Revelation 18:2

"An America that uses its military power less promiscuously, more intelligently and in a targeted and focused manner might once again gain the world’s respect and fear, if not affection."
— Fareed Zakaria, Time, May 20, 2011

The boozy cheering of the blood-mad spectator echoes across a lacuna in the brittle American soul. Never forget the slaughter of 9/11 and never forget that the brick and mortar of this nation was slapped atop a continent-wide Indian burial ground. The American Revolution was an assertion of human worth that has been studied and admired by everyone from Simon Bolivar to Ho Chi Minh. And since that clinching moment at Yorktown, America has paved the low road over any peoples in its way and assumed it would pay no price.

The world should embrace America the way cattle egrets dote on elephants, and America should elevate the world in the same way, a symbiotic beneficence between the gentle giant and the greater multitude of the flock. Instead, usually, we shirk, creep away from the trajectory of our best instincts and better potential, a fiend loping off into the weeds to kill something. We'd rather be a pack of hyenas than anything as noble as an elephant. Those cannibals will eat almost anything when hungry — bones, metal pots, their shit and their children. They should be hunted to extinction, yet they roam free and plentiful on the African continent; elephants and buffalo and other noble animals are always the endangered creatures.

Of course we would misname a strutting punk like Bin Laden "Geronimo"; when you hunt in the high grass, you don't care if you've bagged a gazelle or garbage. They're all something to be torn apart. There is no moral symmetry in which Osama and Geronimo can be compared; a reedy child-murdering sybarite like Bin Laden doesn't deserve to be so much as incinerated in the same sentence as an actual freedom-fighter like Geronimo. The only thing they share is a status as enemy of America, to be disposed of like every other villain. In the eerie silence of falling footsteps pursuing their quarry into a back bedroom, safety off to eject Osama's intellect onto a greasy daybed, the SEALs ran kill-confirmation through their heads, lest they be the lucky triggerman: "GERONIMO... ENEMY KIA."

Those three garbled little words constitute an express elevator to the bowels of the American soul, to the same killing rage that metastasized in the heart of every pioneer. We can hear the deafening roar of our forefathers in that hidden, potent store of true bloody-murder grit, adrenaline from beyond the grave, a hypernationalist virus that grips like tetanus and holds on harder: "FASTER. KILL, KILL, KILL. EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES."

Tuesdays with Marty: Monday NBA Edition

Note: Tuesdays with Marty is a recurring segment on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? highlighting the opinions of our publisher, Marty Peretz. Mr. Peretz wishes to make it absolutely clear that he is neither responsible nor liable for any content in this site, including but not limited to words, ideas, images, and things implied by said means of communication, in addition to other forms of communication not involving the above methods, whether established or theoretical in nature.

A Baller Without Title for a Title Without True Ballers
by MARTY PERETZ

Again after a major confrontation, the basketball punditry luxuriates in condemning that wandering leader of an uncelebrated franchise, LeBron James. It is no secret that the tide of public opinion has turned against the former boy prince and uncrowned king, but, as with all scurrility and moral cowardice, critics bury the direst of their malignancy amongst the obvious. No one can doubt a visionary ballplayer, but it is because his cause and gameplay are beyond doubt that the whistles blown against him must be dog whistles and the penalties against him all phantom.

Last night, the Chicago Bulls served the Miami Heat a stunning 103-82 defeat, during which LeBron went a mere 5-for-15, scoring only 15 points total. Deng, of the Chicago security council, smothered his offense, committing no shortage of crimes against LeBron's legitimate right to post up or even own the court, all to the salacious satisfactions of those who believe it morally just that LeBron be denied his place in the sun.

Twitter Ephemera: Bin Laden's Dead—A Whole GWOT'a Love

The head of a virally propagating organization is dead, doubtless already replaced by a lieutenant trained to do just that. The organization itself has for years been superannuated and supplanted by more vigorous, less known and less hunted organizations. And for all the adulation about killing a voice and a grainy image nearly 10 years out from their last crime and 17 out from their first, it cannot undo the fact that their Mission Accomplished moment took only a day, in what seems like another lifetime.

The object of terror is to use an enemy's fear to leverage himself into positions into which you cannot put him by direct force. With two-score men, borrowed planes and some lessons down in Florida, a millionaire recluse clown with bizarre hairstyling convictions tantalized and lured a nation of 300 million people into breaking its back economically and militarily on a nation that hasn't been conquered — at anything other than its own pleasure — since the days of Alexander. The economic woes and military overextensions engendered by our lust for vengeance remain. So, too, do the main tools of recruitment for Islamic terrorists, according to a study by the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon: American troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as our uncritical support for the state of Israel.

Bin Laden is dead. Long live Bin Laden.

To anyone paying attention to the Middle East over the last decade, this conclusion was inescapable even in the full rush of excitement in the moments after bin Laden's death. And if that's the case, all ensuing parties are an absurdity — like high-fiving someone for acing a years-out-of-date Bar Exam practice test for a state he doesn't live in. At that point, all you can do is make a joke: the rush of emotions are weightless, suspended by nothing. You look up and wonder how the coyote can keep walking across an empty chasm, between two cliffs, separated by ten years, and you realize that it's only because he isn't even curious enough to look down.

But it's hard enough to express simpler ideas than this on Twitter, so the jokes below had to suffice. Clicking the timestamps will direct you to the original tweet and its place in the timeline.

Wailing Walls: Slouching from Benghazi, Part III

Note: As NATO forces intervene in Libya, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East. This piece is continued from Part II: The Magical Monied Muammar's Comeback Tour, or: 'The Most Disgusting Story Ever Told'.


The Libyan War Is Decadent and Depraved
by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

Seize an industrial laser — a diamond-bit drill, one of those explosively formed penetrators that wrought so much havoc on soft-skin Baghdad Humvees — because it is apparently going to be a Herculean effort to puncture the Große Lüge that is the Libyan War. Like Austin Powers in Goldmember, we've seen this movie before, and it's not any funnier.

Launching a "limited humanitarian intervention" in Libya with the goal of "securing freedom and perpetuating democracy" is the military equivalent of the third time Mike Myers drinks a coffee pot full of shit. The first time, you were mildly amenable to the gag, succumbed to the word of mouth and bought a ticket (Afghanistan). The second time, you were amped up; you were suckered into the theater, inexplicably expecting a revelation in the second stretching of a thin joke for ninety minutes (Iraq).

But a third time? You don't deserve a refund. You deserve strychnine in your popcorn.

The ogres of Georgetown fleece the country rubes yet again. The labels of "Democrat" and "Republican" are significations as distinct as the difference between Our Gang and The Little Rascals. If you really think the motives for the Libyan War are dramatically different from those of our Iraqi self-immolation, Barack Obama's peals of laughter are only inaudible due to the foot-deep soundproof padding they have blanketing the war room. In the darkened corridors of the West Wing at midnight, the haunting sound of courtier hi-fives and war drum bro-daps can still be faintly heard, echoing off the cranial sinus where this swaggering pig president's soul should nest.

Wailing Walls: Death On The Nile

Note: As Egypt struggles toward democracy, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East and slowly learning Arabic, focusing especially on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. In his free time, he enjoys saying very little about himself, because he's terrified of Kachist/Islamist extremist internet aficionados.


Out, Out, Long Candle
by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

There was a joke in the mid-nineties among CIA functionaries about how to brief Bill Clinton on the prospect of regime change in Iraq. "Mr. President, we cannot definitively predict the identity of Saddam's successor, but we know his first name: General."

You'll remember, dear reader, that far from his pre-2008 Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner assertion that he had "opposed the Iraq [War] from the beginning," Clinton had in fact been an open, rather zealous proponent of icing Saddam Hussein's leprous mafia government once and for all. Bubba spent two terms as president dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Iraq, financing all sorts of creepy, terroristic exile groups and engineering a truly monstrous sanctions program which succeeded only in enriching Ba'athist cronies and killing a few hundred thousand kids. While most people have forgotten about the sanctions (with some exceptions), the joke became newly relevant this past week. As with all CIA information on Iraq, the Langley water cooler brigade were totally wrong with their "Saddam successor" joke. But replace "Saddam" in that punchline with the name of Hosni Mubarak, and by Allah, that joke is dead-on. It explains exactly what finally happened last week.

Mubarak was going to survive so long as the Army didn’t view his continued presence as constituting an immediate liability. And Mubarak’s unbelievable Mr. Magoo speech two Thursdays ago — an incoherent word salad of Arab nationalist boilerplate and paternalistic condescension — finally did the trick. The media was awash with leaked assurances that Mubarak was about to submit to the inevitable and bow out, a buzzing zeitgeist playing soundtrack to the odd new images of the day. The Supreme Council of the Egyptian military — which last met, I think, when Ariel Sharon’s tank column was surging towards Cairo during the 1973 War — suddenly convened a televised meeting, in which Mubarak and churlish dungeonmaster Umar Suleiman happened to be absent. Hassan al-Roueini, the general tasked with security in the Cairo Governate, had the most fun assignment: go to Tahrir Square and tell all the protestors, "All your demands will be met today."

Wailing Walls: Nile Style

Note: As Egypt struggles toward democracy, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East and slowly learning Arabic, focusing especially on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. In his free time, he enjoys saying very little about himself, because he's terrified of Kachist/Islamist extremist internet aficionados.


The Slow Death of A Fat Failed Pharoah

by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

The Mubaraks are finished, and have been for over a week. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt thought they would live on, even after death. Staring at Ramses II's mummy in the Egyptian Museum, it is difficult to see how. He certainly seems dead. Yet a fringe of blonde ringlets, rolling over his leathery forehead, is visibly preserved, a final concession to the vanity of an old man. His rotted teeth and crackling blisters are preserved in the jaw. Here was the father of Egypt, his brains pried from his nostrils in expectation of immortality. Since he got dragged out of his Luxor tomb, Ramses has been guarded by Tourist Policemen, like the mustachioed, swarthy sergeant at the front gate giving me two thumbs up. "Obama good!" he beamed.

I wonder what he thinks of Obama now; certainly he was pressed into action near Midan Tahrir, only a stone's throw away from his post. I wonder if he was one of the goons cracking heads in the square this week, all truncheon and tear gas. I wonder if he was one of the faceless looters who mysteriously materialized the moment the police presence evaporated. If so, the policeman's new duties weren't too dissimilar from his old assignment. Mubarak, the ancient authoritarian, thinks like a pharaoh, thinks the world is owed to him. You can almost smell the mothballs and dust when he opens his mouth to speak. He thinks he is going to live forever, even if it takes killing everyone in his country. Hosni Mubarak is a dye-job Dracula, his inky hair as contrived as that mummy's perm.

Wailing Walls: Flame Out

Note: As tensions again rise in the Middle East, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East and slowly learning Arabic, focusing especially on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. In his free time, he enjoys saying very little about himself, because he's terrified of Kachist/Islamist extremist internet aficionados.


Eight Hazy Fights and the Inferno of 2011

by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

The novice might be alarmed the first time they reach high ground in Israel, at David's Citadel or the Baha'i Gardens, and see black smoke in the distance. There's no stanching it though; it's a natural phenomenon, as dry, weedy ground catches fire under the Mediterranean sun. One of the most contested and targeted sites for Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, Mufti's Grove, is a scorched hillside, its olive trees charred cinder and the ground perpetually black, crunchy underfoot. It's as common as a racist cab driver or shwarma-induced diarrhea.

But Israel has a bad habit of confusing the routine for the permanent. Last week, an uncontrollable brush fire engulfed Mount Carmel, overlooking Haifa, Israel's most beautiful city. An evacuating prison bus careened off the road, roasting dozens of guards to death in the fast-moving flames. The inferno killed forty-one people, including the Haifa police chief. On the second day of the inferno, a spokesman for the city’s Fire Department admitted: "We have completely lost control of the fire."

Despite ample warnings that the Israeli home front was ill-prepared for such a disaster — forest fires fed by Hezbollah missiles had wreaked havoc in 2006 — the disaster completely surprised the government. And it came just as the shamelessly far-right wing Revisionist Likudnik government had finally appeared to outflank Barack Obama. Bibi Netanyahu, once frightened by Obama's focus on illegal Israeli settlements, had, with the GOP takeover of the House and the stalling of peace talks, finally appeared to slough the U.S. off his back. As the Obama brood sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Bibi began Hanukkah picking apart roasted dove in a warm salon. And as the Carmel burned, he had to chew crow, appealing to the international community — even Turkey — for help.

Fortunately, with the fire extinguished, it appears Bibi has rediscovered his taste for vinegary "fuck yous" aimed at the chief executive of Israel's patron power. In exchange for a measly three-month settlement "freeze" (the previous one was barely observed through much of the West Bank, in spite of the importance placed upon it), Bibi's hawks clawed out a massive "incentive package" of military aid. In other words, in exchange for three months of knocking down a few hilltop settler trailer hovels (East Jerusalem settlement, incidentally, has been completely taken off the table by Obama as part of the freeze), Bibi would do America the favor of indulging in substance-less talks with a nearly lifeless partner. And all at the reasonable price of a few billion dollars in military aid from a nation with a deficit deeper than the Jordan Valley. Never mind that the package's twenty factory-fresh F-35 fighter jets, the most advanced warplanes in the world, have one glaring use to the Israeli Air Force, and it involves the nuclear program of a certain neighborhood theocracy. Terrifyingly destructive arms in exchange for the fleeting pretension of peace talks. And even that concession wasn't good enough for Netanyahu's government; they turned down Obama. Peace talks have officially failed.

Israel will be celebrating a much cooler holiday in the coming weeks, easily one of the most fun of all monotheistic religions: Hanukkah, the celebration of the Second Temple's rededication. As the story goes, having defeated the oppressive Syrians, the Second Temple's menorah burned miraculously for eight days, giving Jews just enough time to press fresh oil. It was one of the biggest squeakers in Jewish history, surpassed only by the defeat of Gore/Lieberman. But just as Haifa residents awoke last week to the unfamiliar and alarming odor of burning cedars, let us resolve to breathe in the bracing salve of failure. Each night, as a candle is lit, there is another wildfire waiting to break out, acrid fumes set to waft through the corridors of power.

Wailing Walls: An Introduction

Note: As tensions again rise in the Middle East, we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? turn for insight to General Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, former Israeli Minister of Tourism. Having faked his assassination in the Mt. Scopus Hyatt Hotel at the start of the Second Intifada, the General has been in deep cover, in Judea and Samaria, posing as an American goy pursuing graduate studies in the Middle East and slowly learning Arabic, focusing especially on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. In his free time, he enjoys saying very little about himself, because he's terrified of Kachist/Islamist extremist internet aficionados.


'Now the Aktion Begins' 

by GENERAL REHAVAM "GANDHI" ZE'EVI

"Let me tell you about what I saw every morning."

Arieh gingerly stirred his cappuccino with a silver sugar spoon. He was less like the sober, Glock-toting wheeler-dealer I’d seen on Arutz Sheva than a soggy springer spaniel. It was winter in Jerusalem; the Western Wall Plaza was slick with rain. Arieh looked snug in his olive wool sweater and chocolate-colored corduroy slacks, sipping from an impossibly fluffy mug of cappucino. Even his black felt kippah, pinned over his thinning hair, looked soft. One of my companions, a jocular Moroccan, had wagered me twenty shekels Arieh had at least eight kids; I was sticking at six.

The man before us didn’t betray any such vitality, lisping as he answered, "Six kids." His gentle, open-handed gestures toward the window were the airy movements of my sincere, gay high school guidance counselor. I could almost picture Arieh and me stretched out on the Mount of Olives, sharing a Dannon Activia yogurt and running through SAT prep.

"Every day, walking from French Hill to Mount Scopus" — at this, he gestured beyond the obstructive silver dome of Al Aqsa Mosque, unbelievably close to the plate glass windows of the bistro where we sat — "I looked down at the Temple Mount. And every day, I remembered what it said in Tanakh. Once the Third Temple is built, the fresh water beneath the temple — you know of the tunnels beneath? The fresh water will flow out of the Dome of the Rock, east," he gestured once again towards the Mount of Olives, "down, down, down through Judea and Samaria, down the slopes and into the Dead Sea, which will be made fresh again. The Jordan will flow with this water."

Tuesdays with Marty: 6/01/10

Note: Tuesdays with Marty is a recurring segment on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? highlighting the opinions of our publisher, Marty Peretz. Mr. Peretz wishes to make it absolutely clear that he is neither responsible nor liable for any content in this site, including but not limited to words, ideas, images, and things implied by said means of communication, in addition to other forms of communication not involving the above methods, whether established or theoretical in nature.


How Palestine Was 'Lost'
by MARTY PERETZ

Two powerful dramas ended in the last seven days. The first described an island of miracles to which only some could return, a place of refuge and possibility surrounded by a forbidding sea and malicious forces. Indeed, the Lost finale was a special event destined to be long remembered by fans of television—Vincent the dog lying down beside the hero, Jack Shephard (how appropriate), now at peace, as his spirit moves on to a new challenge.

GOP 2010: Mindless Terror, Now with Collectibles!!!

Yesterday, Politico published a piece of investigative journalism whose ramifications could be sharply negative for the Republican National Committee. Good for them! You knew they'd have it in them — eventually... reluctantly. You can almost picture beads of sweat erupting on the tech guy's face as he queued the update, each keystroke resounding in his ears like a hammer striking an anvil.

In the piece, Politico excerpted details from a leaked 72-page RNC document explaining how to better raise funds for 2010 GOP campaigns. Politico summarized the RNC strategy thus:

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism."

In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives...

[The] RNC has shifted toward a reliance on small donors, but the document reveals extensive, confidential details of the strategy for luring wealthy checkwriters, which range from luxury retreats in California wine country to tickets to a professional fight in Las Vegas...

One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.

Newsweek: Thanks for Making Me Feel Okay About Killing

It took just days, but there's already a video game where you can destroy the tentacular federal agency attempting to destroy your life. And here's the great thing: just like in reality, there's no way to lose! Sure, here it's impossible not to strike the building. But in real life, surely even a failure to hit the target is a can't-miss opportunity to point up the illegitimacy of... I dunno... government. Or whatever.

Even at this point, no one is really sure why Joe Stack flew a plane into an IRS building and murdered a man in the process. But, irrespective of whatever answers about his life might be forthcoming, they're bound to offer far less entertainment than the reactions his actions have inspired. I realize by now this news is about a week old — which, given the subject, is perfectly fitting — but Newsweek magazine treated THA STACK ATTACK as occasion to share an open discussion amongst all staffers about what constitutes terrorism. The results ran the gamut from stupid and hilarious to stupid and loathsome.

The Swiss Are Assholes

Poor Muammar Qaddafi. First, no one can spell his name the same way from year to year. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had to switch spellings during semesters in college once. Also, "Khadafy" looked way cooler, kind of like a split between Wrath of Khan and a blaxsploitation film. Second, he spent a good chunk of the 2000s being a poster boy for the efficacy of the Bush Doctrine after he renounced terrorism. But then he made one nutty UN speech, got a new president who didn't need him to prop up the notion that "the bombs-away system works!" and suddenly he's no longer that necessary.

Third, he can't even beat his servants in a Swiss hotel. What a bunch of bullshit. Look, you don't keep running a shithole like Libya for the money. If you want to run a country with shaky economic development, tribal conflict, violent crime and an arid climate just for the money, eventually you pull a Carlos Salinas de Gortari, rob the company store and set yourself up in a bigass house in Ireland, where there's water, beer and redheads who are reliably crazy in the right room of the house.

No, you run Libya for the perks: getting to use swords, firing guns in the air, buying really old missiles and whaling on dudes. I can't even comprehend how the Swiss don't get that last part. They spent 1300-1550 kicking the shit out of everyone in Europe for the money, mainly jabbing them with sticks. Then they got so bored they spent the next 450 years basically daring anyone to fuck with Popes just for another excuse to do something. The Swiss are assholes.

Tuesdays with Marty: 2/16/10

Note: Tuesdays with Marty is a recurring segment on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? highlighting the opinions of our publisher, Marty Peretz. Mr. Peretz wishes to make it absolutely clear that he is neither responsible nor liable for any content in this site, including but not limited to words, ideas, images, and things implied by said means of communication, in addition to other forms of communication not involving the above methods, whether established or theoretical in nature.


The Super Bowl and a Realistic, Focused Approach to Middle East Conflict
by MARTY PERETZ

A mere eleven days ago, fans of the National Football League were treated to yet another stellar Super Bowl in a decade abundant with them. From the four contests featuring the New England Patriots, all decided by less than a touchdown, to last year's last-minute heroics sending the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Arizona Cardinals and seasoned man of faith Kurt Warner, most of these games have been a testament to athletic struggle to last the ages.

The game two weekends ago differed slightly, however, as the combatants represented not only the best of their respective football conferences but also two different modalities of thought and action, and in this offered two lessons in leadership.

Tuesdays with Marty: 2/09/10

Note: Tuesdays with Marty is a recurring segment on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? highlighting the opinions of our publisher, Marty Peretz. Mr. Peretz wishes to make it absolutely clear that he is neither responsible nor liable for any content in this site, including but not limited to words, ideas, images, and things implied by said means of communication, in addition to other forms of communication not involving the above methods, whether established or theoretical in nature.


The New International Blindness: All Agog over Gaga Makes One Gag
by MARTY PERETZ

This year I watched the Grammys at the home of a good friend and midway through the night thanked him that he had provided me an excuse to give away TNR's annual invitation. It came as no surprise that music's ritual celebration of itself turned a self-congratulatory gaze inward and away from the international stage yet again. That it again celebrated a re-branding of the old should also come as no surprise. But this year that it did so with such sybaritic glee seemed appropriate, fiddling as the children burned CDs of their own creation, another district of the New Rome of Hollywood ablaze and consuming revenue. It was the only satisfaction of the evening.

Search Strings of the Day for 10/21/09

As I've said in the past, I could pretty much post one of these per week, but they'd get boring pretty quickly. People on the internet like sex; some of them are willing to do costume design and rehearsal for it, and this leads to strange enthusiasms aided by Google. Of course, I would in no way attempt to capitalize on this by giving all posted graphics ridiculously long filenames choked with double-entendre search terms. Oh, no. Never that.

Still, at least for me it's rare to get a concentrated burst of weird search terms, let alone wind up as the #1 hit for a Google search of "man got fucked to death by horse." For a reason I can't even begin to fathom, such a search takes you to a collection of messed-up parody videos of gaming fatass Gabe Newell.

On the "extremely explicable" front, it's nice to see that it took only a day to be the sixth result for "joe buck sucks alcs" and third for "horrible fox sports broadcast of the alcs," not to mention a shitload of searches for "cement mixers," all of which send people to this ALCS broadcast quasi-live-blog. It also took only a single day for that article to get a search for "Crayola Rapecat."

I'd also like to thank Major League Baseball announcers' inability to think about the words they use for sending God knows how many people here looking for "balls being fisted." Although that seems to be sending people to the site in general, rather than the relevant article.

A Brief Welcome to Our Blog from Publisher Marty Peretz

by MARTY PERETZ

My suspicions concerning the internet are old news at this point, "Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd," in the Yiddish — "the hat-wearing man is worn by his hat in equal measure." However, my experience has shown me that internet media is not going anywhere, for better or for worse, like Israel, yes, but also like Araby. Of course, in life, we take the good with the bad. One man’s Shia LaBeouf is another man’s Shia LaBeouf. And so, here I am, like Shia LaBeouf.