Ron Paul Supporters Heckle Cheney And Rumsfeld At CPAC

This is great -a Ron Paul supporter calls Cheney a war criminal at CPAC today:



Paul supporters really stuck it to both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick "Five Deferments" Cheney. TPM has some details:

Dick Cheney just popped up here at CPAC to introduce his old pal and Bush administration colleague Donald Rumsfeld. Fans of Ron Paul turned what should have been a friendly moment before an audience of fellow conservatives into a screaming match and protest action that resembled what a Cheney-Rumsfeld hug at the Netroots Nation convention might look like.

Rumsfeld is being given CPAC's "Defender Of The Constitution" award, a concept that apparently rankled Paul supporters in the crowd. Many of them got up and walked out en masse at the mention of Rumsfeld, though some stayed behind in the conference hall to heckle the architects of the invasion of Iraq.

One shout of "where's Bin Laden?" rang out as Cheney spoke of Rumsfeld.

That led to the pro-Cheney contingent (which it should be said greatly outnumbers the opposition) to shout the hecklers down with the familiar "USA, USA" chant.

It was all very odd, especially considering that when Cheney appeared as the "surprise guest" at last year's CPAC he was greeted with the kind of cheers generally reserved for a rock star.

But Team Paul -- whose numbers appear to have grown at CPAC in 2011 -- were not going to let that happen this time around.

"Uh, Defender of the Constitution?" Justin Bradfield of Maryland scoffed when I caught up with him after he walked out of Rumsfeld's speech. "Let's see: he expanded the Defense Department more than pretty much any other defense secretary and he enforced the Patriot Act."

"[Speaking] as a libertarian, that's not really the type of person who should be getting Defender of the Constitution," he added.

No - neither Rumsfeld or Cheney should get that kind of award.

President Federal Expansion Obama shouldn't either.

How's that war in Afghanistan going, guys?

Ben Bernanke Isn't Happy Tonight

Ruh-roh, Uncle Ben, better rev up the helicopter:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) sparked the movement to “audit the Fed.” Now he might get his way.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced Thursday that Paul will chair the subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve.

Paul’s monetary policy manifesto, "End the Fed," foreshadows the direction his oversight responsibilities might head in the next Congress.

House Financial Services Committee hearings are going to be fun!

Ron Paul Defends WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is under attack from all sides.

The Obama administration is considering criminal charges against Assange.

Inrterpol is seeking Assange on what seem to be trumped up sexual assault charges.

Many establishment Republicans and Democrats in Washington have called for Assange to be arrested.

Some have gone even further.

Sarah Palin said Assange - an Australian citizen - should be charged with a treason against the United States (NOTE TO SARAH: Only U.S. citizens can be charged with treason against the United States.)

National Review's Jonah Goldberg has called for the murder of Assange:

I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Julian Assange dead? . . . WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb. . . .

So again, I ask: Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

It's a serious question.

Townhall's John Hawkins wrote a piece entitled "5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange:

1) Julian Assange aided the Taliban and risked the lives of Afghans who helped American forces

2) Killing Julian Assange would send a message

3) You can't run a government without secrets

4) Releasing the information to the world is even worse than giving it to a single foreign government

5) We need to regain the confidence of our allies who've been burned by these leaks

Countering the hysteria and outright insanity emanating from Democrats and especially his fellow Republicans over the WikiLeaks document dumps, Ron Paul defended Assange:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media.

Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department is examining whether Assange can be charged with a crime for posting hundreds of thousands of leaked government intelligence documents and diplomatic cables.

Many Republicans have gone even further in their attacks on Assange, especially former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee, who said this week that the source who leaked to the WikiLeaks founder should be tried for treason and executed if found guilty.

But in a Thursday interview with Fox Business, Paul said the idea of prosecuting Assange crosses the line.

“In a free society we're supposed to know the truth,” Paul said. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.”

“This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?” he added. “This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”

Paul followed up with a post to his Twitter account Friday morning: "Re: WikiLeaks — In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out at Salon, Defense Secretary Bob Gates has called the dangers of the Wikileaks "significantly overwrought" and the consequences for American foreign policy "fairly modest."

Significantly overwrought...fairly modest..."

Yet Gates' bosses in the administration plan on bringing charge against Assange and some conservatives are calling for the CIA to assassinate Assange.

So good for Ron Paul for going on FOX News and defending Assange and the right to free speech at a time when jumping on Sister Sarah's bandwagon is the most politically expedient thing one can do.

Ron Paul Worries Wall Street

Via Political Wire, here is Bloomberg Businessweek on the rise of Ron Paul, the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Comittee:

It may have taken 34 years, but Ron Paul has arrived, and he doesn't plan to squander the moment. His agenda includes landing the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee panel that oversees monetary policy—a job that will give him the power to push legislation reining in the central bank and to haul Fed governors up to Capitol Hill for hearings.

The prospect has Wall Street, Fed officials, and even Republican House leaders worried that Paul's agenda could roil the markets and make a mockery of the U.S. financial system. This is a man, after all, who entered politics because President Richard Nixon bucked the gold standard in 1971, and now wants to make gold and silver legal tender. He is pressing for an audit of the Fort Knox bullion depository and, earlier this year, grilled Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the central bank's alleged funding of Watergate and Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Bernanke called the charges "absolutely bizarre."

Although his book ploy was couched in humor, Gregg laid plain a new Washington reality: Moderate, probusiness lawmakers like him, who consistently protected the central bank's independence and ability to set monetary policy, are mostly gone. In their place are politicians who view the Fed with suspicion, or worse. Their unofficial leader is Paul, the 75-year-old Texan whose quixotic 2008 Presidential run on the twin themes of ending the federal income tax and abolishing the Fed vaulted him to prominence with the nascent Tea Party. Some of those admirers are among the 75-plus new Republicans about to join Congress. For the first time since he was elected to the House in 1976, Paul's followers are formidable.

...

Officials at several major banks have privately raised concerns with Republican leaders that, by allowing Paul to become a chairman, his radical views would gain legitimacy, according to three bank lobbyists. Others are watching with great interest. "Congressman Paul has his own very strong views on things, and you've got to respect that," says Steve Verdier, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents smaller lenders and has fought efforts to weaken the central bank. "I think there is a strong consensus in the country to maintain the independence of the Fed," he adds.

If he gets the subcommittee gavel, Paul says he plans a thorough review of Fed policy. Fear of inflation is what motivates him the most. Next to the doorway in his Washington office are six framed German bank notes dating from the 1920s hyperinflation era. The notes are sequentially dated "to show how quickly the zeroes were added onto the bills" as inflation skyrocketed, Paul says. The notes are arranged around a quote by one of Paul's favorite Austrian School economists, the late Hans F. Sennholz, who Paul once met and calls "a tremendous influence on me." Paul is a devotee of the Austrian School, which teaches that manipulating money supply and interest rates are responsible for history's boom-and-bust cycles. "The Fed creates all of the bubbles and they create the inevitable bursting of all of the bubbles," says Paul.

He believes his oversight role is long overdue. "There has been a politically cozy relationship between Congress and the Federal Reserve," he says. That includes past efforts to keep him from heading the subcommittee. "Republican leadership, with the Fed's influence, has been working to keep me away from this for a long time. That's not going to happen this time."

Don't be surprised if something happens and Ron Paul does NOT get the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee.

Because anything that scares Wall Street scares corporate Repubs and Dems both.

And when corporate Repubs and Dems want to take care of their corporate masters, they do it.

I'm hoping Ron Paul gets this chairmanship.

The Bernanke testimony visits and the audit of the Federal Reserve Paul wants to conduct will be priceless pieces of theater, but also important pushback against the pre-eminince of the banksters.

Repub: Obama Is Not A Socialist, He's A Corporatist

It drives me crazy when some moron like Sarah Palin or my idiot uncle in Florida who gets all his news from FNC and World News Daily says Obama is a socialist.

There is not a socialist bone in Obama's body.

He's all about profit - not for you or me or working people in general, of course, but certainly for himself and his corporate buddies.

Leave it to Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) to speak truth to the idiots calling Obama a socialist:

Near the end of the third day of this year's Southern Republican Leadership Conference, it was time for Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to take the stage. Paul, fresh off his victory in the CPAC straw poll, gave a characteristically fired-up speech that took on the views of the Republican party establishment.

"The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist," Paul said. "I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he's not a socialist."

"He's a corporatist," Paul continued. "And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country."

Paul said examples of President Obama's "corporatism" were evident in the heath care reform bill he signed into law last month. He said the mandate in the bill put the power over health care in the hands of corporations rather than private citizens. But he said the bill wasn't the only place where corporatism is creeping into Washington.

"We see it in the financial institutions, we see it in the military-industrial complex," he said. "And now we see it in the medical-industrial complex."

One might add that we also see it in the education-industrial complex as well, as represented by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the New Teacher Project (funded by Bloomberg), the Kaplan Corporation (which runs the Washington Post and Newsweek and pushes all kinds of education deform that will profit other parts of the company) and other for-profit school companies and their subsidiaries in the media.

It's nice to hear Dr. Paul once again explain reality to the reality-challenged in the Republican Party.

The reality-challenged on the left need to hear the truth too.

Obama is no progressive, no friend of the middle class or the working man.

And he certainly is no socialist.

The only socialism Obama seems to believe in is the same kind Bush believed in - socializing the losses of Wall Street to the taxpayer.

But in every other way he is EXACTLY like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ronald Reagan - a wholly-owned subsidiary of the multi-national corporations that run this country and the world.

The real owners.

Plunge Protection Team

I'm a huge fan of CNBC's morning show.

Watch it nearly every morning.

What I have learned from watching that show in the last half year is that everything is fine and dandy with the stock market.

And if the market's up, well, then all is well with the state of the nation.

And since last March, the markets have been going up.

So all must be well with the economy and the nation , right?

Maybe.

Or maybe someone's funking with the numbers:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The massive stock-market rally in the past nine months is mostly due to secret government buying of stock-index futures, a respected stock-market analyst said Tuesday.

Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs Investment Research, is the latest and most credible person to charge that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury (in league with top Wall Street firms) is rigging the stock market on a daily basis.

In a special report released Tuesday, Biderman said the $6 trillion increase in U.S. stock-market capitalization since March can't be explained by the usual sources of funds flowing into the market -- such as mutual funds, direct retail investment, pension funds, hedge funds or foreign purchases.

The only logical explanation for the extent of the rally, he suggested, is secret buying by a government committee known colloquially as the Plunge Protection Team. It's like the dark matter that astrophysicists conjecture must be there, even if we can't detect it.

The PPT was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 after the 1987 stock crash to coordinate the government's response to market meltdowns. It consists of the Fed chairman, the Treasury secretary, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Biderman acknowledged that he had no direct evidence that the Fed and other agencies have intervened in the stock market. But he worried about what will happen to the market if the PPT has been buying and suddenly stops.

Now maybe the government is doing nothing wrong and maybe they're disclosing all the Treasurys, agency bonds and mortgage-backed securities they've been buying in the fixed income markets.

Or maybe they're printing money at night and buying stock futures in the morning and hiding it from view.

Hard to know since there is no transparency at the Federal Reserve (which is the way Fed chief Ben Bernanke and Bernanke's boss, President Obushma, want it.)

But until the Fed proves differently, I'd lean toward the government buying up a bunch of Treasurys, bonds and securities with freshly minted greenbacks.

Remember, the people who caused last year's near financial collapse are still the ones running the show at the Fed and the Treasury Department.

Lots of good reasons why they'd be operating the Plunge Protection Team overtime these days.

Of course they can put all this tin foil hat stuff to rest by submitting to an audit of the Federal reserve the way Ron Paul and lots of others in Congress want.