PoliticalAction.com Blog

Saying it’s time for Republicans to do more than “take pot shots at ACORN,” freshman Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz will call on President Barack Obama on Monday to bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan.

Chaffetz’s push for a troop withdrawal — to be unveiled in a speech at the Hinckley Institute of Politics in Salt Lake City — runs counter to the position of House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and other leading Republicans in Congress. But it also reflects the divisions within the conference about the question of Afghanistan. Chaffetz told POLITICO the issue “has been probably the most difficult one as a freshman in the minority.”

“So much of this is easy, black and white, but Afghanistan is very different and very difficult,” he said.

Chaffetz said he thinks he will “suffer” for the decision and that it would be safer for him politically to stay the course he’s been on.

“I can take pot shots at [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now] all day long, and I’m good at it,” Chaffetz said. “But even though I am probably going against where the party is on this traditionally, I just think we need to stand up and support the notion that it is time to bring our soldiers home.”

Earlier this year, Chaffetz traveled to the region and said that, since then, he’s “become more engrossed in my conviction it is time to bring our troops home.”

“I am opposed to nation building, and I quite frankly don’t see or understand what victory looks like,” he said. “I believe, as most people do, that our military can do everything we want them to do. … But we’re asking them to fight a war that is not very well-defined. And we are asking them to do so with one hand tied behind their back.”

Chaffetz said the House GOP is divided over whether to “go big or go home” and acknowledged that the “go home” contingent is probably in the minority.

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.

We’re counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore

I love the comment about the Fed independence argument.

END THE FED!

Spitzer On Paul’s Audit Of The Fed Bill

By Phil Giraldi

In a press conference this afternoon President Obama told visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the US will “finish the job” in Afghanistan and wipe out every last known terrorist. “Finish the job” is an expression that politicians use a lot when they don’t really have anything substantive to say. It is generally believed that Obama will approve a 34,000 soldier increase for the Afghan conflict when he addresses the nation next week. US soldiers cost the taxpayer $1 million each per year in Afghanistan, which means that the new troop level will cost $170 billion per year. If the insurgents disrupt the Khyber Pass supply line, which they have been successfully doing, it will cost more, possibly much more. It might be cheaper to give the insurgents good jobs working for the Afghan post office or something similar to wean them from their criminal ways. How much more surging can we afford at this price, particularly as it doesn’t seem to be working?

I am all for finding and killing ACTUAL terrorists (as opposed to farmers or wedding party guests) who threaten the United States but I have to wonder who Obama has been listening to lately. There is no coherency to the policies that he appears to embrace, which are little more than mission creep seeking to reconstruct central Asia. There is little or no al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan while the presence in Pakistan appears to be fairly small and largely preoccupied with scurrying from one bolt hole to another. If the US successfully eliminates al-Qaeda it will just move somewhere else and continue doing what it is doing, which does not appear to be very much or very effective. Is it really worth 100,000 troops on the ground at enormous cost? Not to mention lots of dead American soldiers and Afghan civilians.

There is no US national interest in fighting the Taliban – which do not threaten the United States in any way, shape, or form – while shoring up fraudulently elected President Hamid Karzai and his merry band of cutthroat thieves. Is Obama also hinting to the Indians that he will next turn on the Muslims seeking to liberate Kashmir, who also do not threaten the US? Do we keep endlessly going after terrorist groups after that and where does it all end? If Obama seriously wants to “finish” it in Afghanistan he would gather all of its neighbors in a latter-day Congress of Vienna to work out a security formula that is acceptable to most of them and then pull out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to tell the troops by Christmas that they are coming home by? – Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance

In a videotape released around September of 2007, Osama bin Laden said, “If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.”

Michael F. Scheuer is the former Chief of the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center with the CIA. He had a 22 year career with the CIA and served in this position in the latter half of the nineties. In the wake of the WTC bombing he reenlisted his expertise with the bin Laden unit as a Special Advisor to the Chief. He held this position from September 2001 to November 2004. In 2004, Scheuer resigned his position with the CIA and released his New York Times bestselling book Imperial Hubris. It criticizes the western worlds tunnel visioned assumptions about the motivating factors for Islamic terrorism. According to Scheuer, “the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe-at the urging of U.S. leaders-that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do.”

As far as conventional warfare is concerned, we have won every battle of our war with “terror.” We have the training, equipment, and production capacity to fight a multi-front war against the toughest of enemies. We have a volunteer force of both fulltime and reserve service personnel. The idea that we are losing this war is very peculiar to many of us, especially those that are part of the establishment. But how can we use military might to defeat an idea? The truth is that we are not fighting a sovereign body in this conflict. Although there are plenty of sovereign nations in this world that are just as jilted by our world affairs as the extremist that attack us, there has been no formal declarations against us by any of them. We are not being attacked by Islam, any particular ethnicity, because of our acceptance of different belief structures, or because of our varied ethnicities. We are being attacked because of our federal government’s aggressive foreign policy.

All that has been asked of us by our enemy is to stop meddling in their affairs. It is as simple as that.

In October of 2001 in an interview with Tayseer Allouni, a Kabul correspondent of Al-Jazeera, Tayseer asked bin Laden about the killing of innocent civilians. He responded by saying,

“Killing innocent civilians like Americans and other educated people say, is something very weird to be said. I mean, who is the one that said that our children and our civilians are not innocents, and that their blood is permissible [mubaah] ? In the case we kill their civilians, the whole world yells at us from east to west, and America would start pushing its allies and puppets. Who is the one that said that our blood isn’t blood and their blood is blood? Who is the one that declared this? What about the people that have been killed in our lands for decades? More than 1,000,000 children died in Iraq and are still dying, so why don’t we hear people that cry or protest or anyone who reassures or anyone who gives condolences??!?”

In March of 1997 in an interview with Peter Arnett, a 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning Reporter, bin Laden was asked about what it would require to end his jihad against us.

ARNETT: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States’ presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US?

BIN LADIN: The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian Peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an end, this act, in turn, will come to an end. So, the driving-away jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian Peninsula, but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

There is nothing that can be said to justify the terrorist attacks being committed by these extremist groups. They are murdering innocent civilians all across the globe and will be brought to justice. However, despite the fact that they are wrong to commit such acts, that doesn’t change the fact that we have been committing atrocities against them for decades. We should not change our aggressive foreign policy out of fear; we should change our foreign policy because it is the right thing to do. When we fund the aggressions of one nation against another we are essentially acting as the aggressor. When we impose naval blockades on trade we are committing acts of war. We have bombed, starved, and politicized the people of the Middle East for too long. Our government may not want to admit it because of pride, but I will proudly say that it is time to see some real change from the establishment!

It is time to return to our roots and start respecting the constitution.

Texas Straight Talk – A weekly column
Rep. Ron Paul (R) – TX 14

I was pleased last week when we won a vote in the Financial Services Committee to include language from the Audit the Fed bill HR1207 in the upcoming financial regulatory reform bill. As it stands now, if HR 3996 passes, because of this action, the Federal Reserve’s entire balance sheet will be opened up to a GAO audit. We will at last have a chance to find out what happened to the trillions of dollars the Fed has been giving out.

Finally, the blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed that have existed since 1978 will be removed. All items on the Fed’s balance sheet will be auditable, including all credit facilities, all securities purchase programs, and all agreements with foreign central banks. To calm fears that we might be trying to substitute congressional action for Fed mischief in tinkering with monetary policy, we agreed to a 180 day lag time before details of the Fed’s market actions are released and included language to state explicitly that nothing in the amendment should be construed as interference in or dictation of monetary policy by Congress or the GAO. This left no reasonable objections standing and the amendment passed with a vote of 43 to 26.

This was a major triumph for transparency and accountability in government. With unprecedented turmoil in the financial markets, the people are demanding to know and understand the extent of the Federal Reserve’s involvement in the creation of out-of-control business cycles, who they are helping, and how. We need information. The excuses for not giving out this information are flimsy at best, and the passage of this amendment is a major step to finally getting at the truth.

Of course I could not have done this without the help and support of many other members who have been strong allies in this fight. Having over 300 cosponsors was obviously helpful.

However, as great as this victory is, we have to remember that this amendment is attached to a bill that would give sweeping new powers to the Federal Reserve. The Fed has taken its mandate to maintain stable prices and full employment and used its immense power to help elite friends at the great expense of everyone else. The answer is not to increase their powers and ability to interfere in the economy, but that is what the legislation will do. It is a disaster waiting to happen, and unfortunately it looks as if it will pass.

At least with the Audit the Fed amendment attached to the bill, the Fed will not be able to do its destructive work in secret. The people will know exactly who the beneficiaries are of this immoral system of money management.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009

New American | Article by Thomas R. Eddlem

As recently as two years ago, Congressman Ron Paul introduced a bill to audit the Federal Reserve Bank that headed to oblivion. Year after year — beginning in 1983 — the bill never even won a committee hearing. Dr. Paul was ignored in Washington, and was a lonely voice for freedom back in his Texas congressional district. Times have changed. Ron Paul is on a political roll. The bill Dr. Paul introduced in the current Congress to audit the Federal Reserve Bank (H.R. 1207) has more than 300 cosponsors — including every House Republican and more than 100 Democrats — and the backing of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. Frank has promised a committee vote, and it has a better-than-average chance of House passage this year. Dr. Paul’s new book End the Fed sailed into the top twenty of Amazon.com’s sales figures more than a month before it was available. It debuted on both Amazon.com and New York Times bestseller lists, and sales remain strong even today. His old presidential campaign has rolled over into a “Campaign for Liberty” that has raised more than $4 million since its founding in February of this year.

More importantly, his presidential campaign evidently inspired dozens of candidates for congressional office across the nation who seek to reform Congress from a constitutionalist perspective. And several of them are both well funded and being taken seriously by the political establishment.

Rand Paul
Prime among these constitutionalist “Ron Paul” candidates is the Congressman’s third child, Dr. Rand Paul. While the elder Dr. Paul was an obstetrician by trade before being elected to Congress, Dr. Rand Paul is an eye surgeon (ophthalmologist). The 46-year-old Dr. Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the open U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky in August. Days before Dr. Paul’s announcement, incumbent Republican Jim Bunning had bowed out of a reelection contest after Kentucky’s establishment Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (who is also the Senate Minority Leader) had made fundraising in Washington difficult for Bunning. “Over the past year,” Bunning said, “some of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Senate have done everything in their power to dry up my fundraising. The simple fact is that I have not raised the funds necessary to run an effective campaign for the U.S. Senate.” Time magazine on July 29 explained that the “some leaders” Bunning was talking about was his fellow Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell: “He quietly signaled to Republican moneymen that they ought to wait Bunning out. Party leaders in Washington met with a potential primary opponent…. McConnell’s strategy ultimately worked.”

Dr. Rand Paul is the founder of the conservative Kentucky Taxpayers United and has also campaigned for his father, so he isn’t a stranger to politics. But he hasn’t seen McConnell open the monetary floodgates from Washington on his behalf either. Politico.com has noted that “the GOP establishment has lined up behind Secretary of State Trey Grayson.” Perhaps Grayson is favored by the Washington Republican establishment because Grayson’s campaign website is bereft of mention of bringing the federal government back within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. By way of contrast, Rand Paul has made the Constitution a centerpiece of his campaign. “The Federal Government must return to its constitutionally enumerated powers and restore our inalienable rights,” the younger Dr. Paul says on his campaign website, in an echo of his father’s principles. “America can prosper, preserve personal liberty, and repel national security threats without intruding into the personal lives of its citizens.”

The fact that the establishment isn’t behind him hasn’t hurt Rand Paul in the crucial fundraising part of the race; he raised more than $1.1 million by the end of the third quarter of this year. Grayson’s Washington fundraising, which included a $500 per plate fundraiser hosted by McConnell on September 23, has been matched by Dr. Paul’s vibrant Internet strategy dollar-for-dollar thus far. “We actually outraised both Democrats and our primary opponents this past quarter,” Dr. Paul told The New American.

Rand Paul is quick to say that his first problem was “name recognition,” though he told The New American “we are now probably very close to being on a par with our primary opponent now.” Of the two, Grayson has been far better known in Kentucky; he’s been the Secretary of State for five years. Therefore, even though Grayson’s polling numbers were stronger back in August, 40 percent to Dr. Paul’s 25 percent according to an August poll, Rand Paul is being given a good chance of prevailing by professional political observers. Dr. Paul has numbers to back up his statement that he’s pulled up to a par with Grayson. An October Rasmussen poll put Paul’s and Grayson’s “favorability” percentages within the poll’s margin of error, and a November WHAS11/Survey USA poll put Paul ahead at 35 to 32 percent.

If the younger Dr. Paul survives the Republican primary, he has a better-than-even chance of winning the GOP-leaning Kentucky general election. Democrats who face a Republican candidacy of Rand Paul would not only face a united conservative base but also significant crossover from some traditionally Democratic voting groups, especially those opposing unnecessary wars and assaults on civil liberties under the guise of the “war on terror.” Dr. Paul told The New American that he maintains a bipartisan appeal that criticizes both parties when they are at fault, “On the stump I promise that I will vote against any budget that is not balanced, either Republican or Democrat.” The crossover phenomenon may even impact the primaries, as many have changed from independents or Democratic registration to vote for him in the primary. “We re-register people a lot of the time, and there is a lot of crossover.”

Peter Schiff
Another well-funded Ron Paul presidential campaign supporter is Connecticut-based Peter Schiff, who had been an economic adviser to the Ron Paul presidential campaign. Schiff has become an Internet sensation on his own as president of Euro-Pacific Capital, largely because he accurately predicted the current economic recession with astonishing precision on a variety of financial television talk shows. He not only predicted the current recession in 2006 and 2007, he also explained why it would happen to pundits who often laughed at him for predicting the housing boom would go bust. In 2008, some of his friends put together a montage of his television clips called “Peter Schiff Was Right” and posted it on YouTube. The clips received several million views and dramatically increased demand for Schiff’s guest appearances on national television shows.

Schiff is an acolyte of the free-market “Austrian School” of economics, is for ending America’s military interventions abroad, and is emphatic about returning the federal government to the limits of the U.S. Constitution’s delegated powers.

Schiff announced in September that he would run for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut against longtime incumbent Christopher Dodd. Dodd would ordinarily be considered a safe incumbent. On paper, Dodd is an entrenched Democrat in a Democratic-leaning state, but the 28-year incumbent is considered highly vulnerable this time around. As chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, he was the Senator who could have — and should have — raised the alarm about the housing bubble. But instead, Dodd built a cozy relationship with sub-prime lender Countrywide. Although technically cleared of ethics violations in a recent investigation concluded August 7, the Senate inquiry criticized Dodd’s efforts as less than cautious. “The committee does believe that you should have exercised more vigilance in your dealings with Countrywide in order to avoid the appearance that you were receiving preferential treatment based on your status as a senator,” the Senate Ethics Committee concluded. Dodd also has personal health issues to deal with this time around. Last summer he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, so he may not be able to wage as vigorous a campaign as in the past.

As a result of Dodd’s recent missteps, Schiff will have to get in line to have a crack at him. The Republican Party smells blood, and a number of other Republicans have declared their candidacies as well. Among the better known are World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon and former Congressman Rob Simmons, who appears to be the early front-runner. Schiff’s greatest challenge may be winning the Republican primary. With his financial background and his accurate economic predictions, he’s the perfect constitutionalist foil for the leftist Dodd in a general election. But despite already having raised more than $1.1 million in Internet donations for his campaign, he barely registers in polling data. That’s perhaps expected, since he’s a political novice in the Republican Party and outside his coterie of YouTube followers he’s virtually unknown in Connecticut.

Schiff will definitely need that impressive $1.1 million he’s already raised, and more, in order to introduce himself to more Connecticut primary voters if he wants to win. He’ll also have to mobilize a local army of volunteers in Connecticut. If he can do that, Schiff could become the next Senator from Connecticut.

Adam Kokesh
Adam Kokesh is best known as an Iraq War veteran who returned opposed to the war and was a keynote speaker at Ron Paul’s “Rally for the Republic” that competed with the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2008. He volunteered for service in Iraq, where he witnessed the bureaucracy, waste, and corruption in the U.S. reconstruction of that country. According to his campaign website, he emerged from the military a strict noninterventionist in foreign policy and defender of Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war:

Inherent with the right to self-defense is the right to collective self-defense, and in the world that we live in, this is the most important function of the federal government. To ensure that this power is used responsibly, Congress, as the best representation of the people, was given the exclusive power to declare war…. The executive branch has set a dangerous precedent by taking powers that are supposed to be vested in the Congress. By not abiding by the Constitution and using the collective wisdom of the Congress to ensure judicious use of force, we find ourselves spending hundreds of billions more than is necessary for legitimate defense.

Kokesh has echoed Rep. Paul’s position on the Federal Reserve Bank, called for a smaller government role in the management of healthcare, and pronounced a nuanced view about the immigration issue.

Kokesh has an uphill battle as a Republican in New Mexico’s heavily Democratic Third District against freshman Democrat Ben R. Luján. Luján hasn’t had much time to dig in as an incumbent, but his northern New Mexico district hasn’t been won by a Republican since 1996. Kokesh, in his favor, was able to tell The New American that he has raised over $100,000 in donations in the first few months of his candidacy. “What was shocking for me was that for the third quarter we actually beat Luján,” he told The New American. That goes a long way toward making up for the $100,000 Washington, D.C., fundraiser Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer hosted earlier this year for Luján. Neither candidate is even close to the $1 million or so they’ll have to raise to wage winning a House campaign, but Kokesh’s early fundraising numbers suggest that he won’t be at a financial disadvantage on this front.

Kokesh told The New American that the traditional political wisdom in New Mexico is that “if you want to play and you want to win, you’re going to run as a Democrat.” Yet, the state has elected conservative Republicans occasionally because “a lot of those people would be Republicans anywhere else.” Kokesh notes that the local Democratic Party still postures as pro-gun and as socially conservative, and he sees a “great potential for a crossover vote, just because of those Democratic voters that have been sucked into the machine.”

And Kokesh’s anti-war, noninterventionist foreign policy, and pro-civil liberties positions just may have the decisive bipartisan appeal he’ll need. “People [are] calling to say they are changing their party registration so they can vote in the primary” for him, he told The New American. But if people can see through to the principles of the Constitution, the liberal media is still seeing things in terms of the phony left-right spectrum. The local weekly news magazine Santa Fe Reporter published an article on congressional candidates called “The Early Birds” on July 29, labeling Kokesh a right-winger. “They gave me a 4.2 out of 5 for being true conservative,” Kokesh said, “then two or three months later, they wrote about how I had all of these liberal ideologies.” The Marine Corps veteran says, “To me … one of the biggest frustrations and also one of the most rewarding things about this race is taking on the left-right spectrum.”

Also in Kokesh’s favor is the expectation that most analysts believe 2010 will be a Republican year, just as 1994 and 1996 were. Count Kokesh as an underdog, but he may have a shot.

Other Candidates
These are only three of the better known among more than a dozen candidates nationwide who have been inspired by Ron Paul’s 2008 candidacy to run for the House or Senate. It has almost taken on the form of a slate in some quarters, as Internet fundraisers like ThisNovember5th.com are seeking to raise funds for more than a dozen candidates on the same day as Ron Paul’s 2007 “money bomb” when he raised a then-record $4 million in a single day. The idea of Internet “money bombs” has proliferated among the constitutionalist movement, often resulting in more frequent but smaller one-day fundraising numbers for candidates. This year’s money bomblets have netted from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand dollars on a single day for the better-known candidates. And while this article will be at press on November 5, tens of thousand dollars were pledged two weeks in advance of the day. But ThisNovember5th.com is only one of many independent efforts to raise funds for constitutionalist candidates and enable them to become independent of the Washington, D.C., fundraisers and not beholden to power-brokers in the same quarters.

Among the ThisNovember5th.com candidates is Marine Corps veteran David W. Hedrick, who is running against five-term liberal Democratic Congressman Brian Baird of Washington’s Third Congressional District. Before announcing his candidacy, Hedrick confronted Baird at an August 18 town hall, telling him: “I also heard you say that you were going to let us keep our health insurance. Well thank you! It’s not your right to decide whether I keep my current plan or not. That’s my decision.” But that’s not all. Directly confronting the claim made by some leading Democrats that attempts to “disrupt” town hall meetings display a fascist tendency, he also told Baird:

A little history lesson. The Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They took over finance. They took over the car industry. They took over the health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.

Meanwhile, R.J. Harris is opposing three-term incumbent Republican Tom Cole in Oklahoma’s Fourth Congressional District. A veteran commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch Internet show on Fox News’ website, Harris encapsulates his decision to run against a fellow Republican in a video advertisement: “How can we Republicans demand to replace the Democrat bailout voters without doing anything about our own? If we don’t clean our own house, we can expect the Democrats to do it for us.” Cole voted for the Bush bailout bill, the TARP legislation. Harris calls himself a “constitutional conservative Republican” and says, “I will never vote for bailouts, required servitude, taxation without representation or give your money to foreign governments. However, Tom Cole has voted for all of these things.”

Jake Towne of Pennsylvania’s 15th District will also try to make Republicans honest by running against liberal Republican incumbent Charlie Dent (The New American’s Freedom Index rating: 40 percent).

Minuteman founder Chris Simcox, though not a newcomer to politics as a result of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential bid, has announced a challenge against John McCain’s Senate seat in Arizona and has been put on the ThisNovember5th.com fundraising list.

Dr. Mike Vasovski in South Carolina’s Third District will run in a crowded Republican primary for an open congression-al seat.

Other House of Representatives candidates ThisNovemer5th.com will be raising funds for include John Dennis (California), Jaynee Germond (Oregon), David Ratowitz (Illinois), Bob Parker (Missouri), and both Collins Baily and Robert Broadus of Maryland.
* * *

Ron Paul and his dedicated followers were the tail of the GOP dog during the 2008 campaign, but a proliferation of “Paulite” constitutional candidates in 2010 may find the tail wagging the dog.

Schiff for Senate in Connecticut in 2010
schiffforsenate.com

America is a nation founded by free individuals; individuals like you who have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.

For the first time in human history, a nation was founded where the individual took precedence over the state. Brave American men and women have shed blood ever since to preserve this principle.

Yet, today, it is apparent that our government has forgotten this sacrosanct principle. From bailouts to mandates, every day Washington imposes increasing legislation designed to transfer more control of your life to bureaucrats. Why should one hundred senators in DC have so much power in dictating the lives of more than 100 million working Americans?

It is time to send a loud message to Washington; we are capable of making our own decisions, living our own lives, and bearing the responsibilities for our actions. Stand up to corruption, favoritism, cronyism, and corporatism. Remind your leaders that they are accountable to you, the voter.

I was attacked for my accurate predictions on the economic crisis and I remain steadfast in my beliefs; make no mistake, unless we change course the consequences for your freedoms and your pocketbooks will be immense.

The solutions to America’s problems exist not in two thousand page bills or trillion dollar bailouts, but rather within the heart of each individual hardworking American.

You are the answer. Your drive, your competition, your fearlessness, and your entrepreneurship are what built this country and made it great. It is that everlasting character of America which will rebuild it again.

Join me in this effort to reawaken the spirit of America and reverse the momentum of history at SchiffforSenate.com

Peter Schiff–Right for the Economy, Right for Connecticut, Right for America, Right Now.

Freedom Watch 11-19-09 with Judge Andrew Napolitano

Nancy Pelosi’s time is up. John Dennis is saying things I like to hear.

By VICTORIA MCGRANE – Politico.com

The House Financial Services Committee has approved Rep. Ron Paul’s measure to drastically expand the government’s power to audit the Federal Reserve.

The measure, based on a Paul proposal that has attracted more than 300 co-sponsors, passed, 43-26, as an amendment to a financial reform bill. Florida Democrat and fellow Fed critic Alan Grayson co-sponsored the amendment with Paul and played a leading role drumming up support for it among committee members. The adoption of this amendment is an extraordinary victory for Paul, whose libertarian, anti-Fed leanings have often been dismissed by the political establishment.

The amendment would give the Government Accountability Office much greater to audit the Federal Reserve, which has a long history of independence from congressional audits. Paul and Grayson beat out a competing measure offered by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), who after weeks of negotiations with the pair felt their measure would threaten the Fed’s monetary policy.

Grayson, however, told POLITICO in an interview that Watt’s amendment would add more restrictions on the GAO’s ability to audit the Fed, not less. “And there’s a crying need to expand it because the Federal Reserve has completely changed the way it’s done business since a year and a half ago.”

The House Financial Services Committee will vote on approving the underlying bill after Thanksgiving recess.