Do his supporters really understand what he stands for? Ignoring the recent reports of racist docs attributed to him, has he really given any detail about what he wants to do? I've heard him say that he wants to get rid of the Department of Education, but has he given any detail into how kids will get an education? Does he think it's federal interference or incompetence and apathy at the local level that leads to bad schools? Are his supporters willing to sacrifice 4 years of children's lives to test some theory about how easy it is if the government is out of the picture? Will this be a free market solution that libertarians love, ignoring the fact that the free market has driven tuition at private schools to alomost unaffordable levels?

Paul seems to have the buzzwords that get people excited, but is there a coherent plan behind the words?

"I've heard him say that he wants to get rid of the Department of Education, but has he given any detail into how kids will get an education?"

We didn't have a Dept of Education until 1979. How did kids get one before that?

Charleston prides itself on being able to offer you a period buzz, taking you back into history. (Just walk down Church Street at night, or take one of the alleys South of Broad.) So floating a goddam blimp over the Holy City is hardly the wat you're going to convince its citizens of your value, no matter how batshit crazy Libertarian you are.

Rats and cockroaches are everywhere too.

Ron Paul also wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve and go back to the gold standard. I can't think of any reputable economist who think this is a good idea. My neighbor up the street teaches economics at UC Berkeley, Every time I mention Ron Paul and his ideas about the gold standard and the Federal Reserve my neighbor rolls his eyes and suggests that Ron Paul would be well served by auditing his course.

Ron Paul and Lyndon LaRouche are both members in good standing of the tinfoil hat brigade. These 2 would be good for a cheap laugh if it was not for their insanely fanatical followers. Who ever lifted the rock, please replace it. Its' getting very loud out here in the real world.

Just an FYI, SC is home to palmetto trees, not palms, hence the nickname "The Palmetto State"

http://www.scstatehouse.net/studentpage/tree.htm

Don't be surprised if you hear someone describe the rather large cockroach that just scampered in front of you in Charleston as a, "palmetto bug."

Getting put on the tally sheet:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/71200.html?1199928145

UPDATE JAN 9 9am PST: TOWN OF SUTTON CONFIRMS RON PAUL TOTALS WERE 31, NOT ZERO.

I just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were "left off the tally sheet" and it was human error.

This is not an acceptable answer, especially because one of the most common forms of fraud in a hand count system is to alter or omit results on the reporting sheet. Hand count is lovely, transparent. They then fill out another reconciliation sheet, often in front of witnesses, and it looks fine. Then they provide a summary or media sheet with the incorrect results.

A Web site here: http://www.wheresthepaper.org has more on fraud techniques with hand counted paper ballots. You'll have to dig for it -- or Google, and the excellent research on this is Theresa Hommel from the state of New York.

* * * *

oops... "human error". good one.

Somebody sent me an email on Ron Paul about a year ago and I failed to understand the enthusiasm. He seemed to be little more than an old school isolationist with a lot of museum-piece notions.

I just finished reading the article on Mr. Paul's newsletters in the New Republic. Lordy, lordy, lordy. That man has some explaining to do.

Has anyone asked him about the newsletters in the debates? If not, will someone please lance this boil at the next one?

I'm encouraged by the other posts here...

He seems like a human being. Plus he would pull out of Iraq. That is the attraction.

But he has nothing to offer. Do you get his campaign mailings? He says he will give bigger, better tax cuts. That's about it. And he does not explain.

The only two Federal level politicians in America that want to end the most freedom destroying policy in the USA.

The drug war.

One third of black men will go to prison in their lifetime, in large measure thanks to the drug war.

It is an open and shut case that Al Gore "lost" the Y2K election thanks to the drug war. Liberals like to blame Nader but they should instead point the finger at themselves for allowing a monstrous portion of their very strongest constituency to be disenfranchised over a rank fantasy. Fantasy since there is absolutely no evidence that the drug war accomplishes anything positive and a veritable Everest of evidence that it is a negative force in society.

That the nineteenth amendment and the twenty first amendment are but thirteen years apart is only one part of the evidence against the drug war. There must have been some powerful reasons for public opinion to shift so dramatically in a mere thirteen years.

As for economists, we have hundreds of thousands of them and yet the price of gold is climbing steadily.

http://tinyurl.com/37moud

Interestingly enough, the price of gold started climbing in 2001.. Perhaps savvy investors understood the significance of Bush's win.

Ron Paul'S main contribution which will forever place him in the footnotes of any history book written about this perpetual, unwinnable war that the Bush administration and their Neocon "advisors" (read "controllers") have entangled us is he awakened our country that we were not attacked on 9-11 for anything other than our insane Mideast foreign policies.