Firing Line With William F. Buckley: Ron Paul (1988)

Source:Firing Line With William F. Buckley talking to Libertarian Party presidential nominee Ron Paul, in 1988.

Source:The New Democrat

“Ron Paul and William F. Buckley discussing a Constitutional Republic and the necessary evils of government. In 1988, Ron Paul was running as a Libertarian Presidential Candidate…

From Yaluc SD

Where Ron Paul loses me is when he comes out in favor of abolishing the CIA, an organization without which we would never have won the Cold War, because of all the information it provided about the Soviet Union.

The CIA was critical to America in winning the Cold War because it could give us information about the Russians and their allies that we weren’t able to get before.

As far as the income tax goes, it is now in the United States Constitution, thanks to the constitutional amendment process, and government has the constitutional and legal right to tax people in the because of it.

The Washington Post: Andrew Cohut: Are Democrats Getting Too Liberal?

Source:The New Democrat

This is where political labels, that is, labels that only describe one's political ideology, get people into trouble when they don't understand what the labels mean and what that political ideology is about. I agree with Andrew Cohut of the Washington Post that yes, the Democratic Party has obviously become more liberal and that has been the case since the George McGovern reforms to the Democratic Party in 1972 that brought in more ethnic and racial minorities and more women as well as gays and Northerners. But has the DP become too liberal? What does Mr. Cohut mean by that?

Today the Democratic Party is very liberal on social issues, believing in a wide range of personal freedoms for individuals, and it uses the United States Constitution to make the case for ideas like marijuana legalization, equal rights for gays, privacy, free speech including hate speech, right to organize, and Freedom of Assembly.  Now even many Democrats who are in favor of the Second Amendment believe that constitutional common sense gun control should be part of that as well. And Liberal Democrats, especially younger people, do not like being told by government or anyone else how to live their own lives as well.

Today the Democratic Party is also very liberal on economic policy, because we want to see the private enterprise system work for everyone and not just people born to wealth. We are not calling for less economic freedom; we are actually calling for more economic freedom for every American, not leaving people at the bottom or bare middle to struggle without the ability to move up. Which is why we are always speaking in favor of ideas like new infrastructure investment and job training and education for low-skilled working adults, low-skilled non-workers, and laid-off workers who need to develop new skills to move to the middle class.

I just laid out for you the center of the Democratic Party.  We are called the center-left party because we are a liberal party not a social democratic party, even though we do have social democrats in the party who want to take America much further left economically and politically toward Europe, which does not favor our Constitution and would either change it or get rid it of altogether, scrap our federalist system, and move to a social democracy and perhaps even a unitary government. However, the social democrats do not run the Democratic Party today. The Liberals and Progressives, the center left, does. 

Conol Rad: How to Spot a Communist

Source:The New Democrat

The U.S. government, just a few decades ago, had an undemocratic habit of suppressing dissent by labeling any person or organization whom they perceived as disapproving official actions or policies, for whatever reason, as communist.  In the heyday of McCarthyism and cheerleading jingoism, this was an enthusiastic effort joined by both media and government, as exemplified by the video above.

Government propaganda, amplified by right wing media, about communism, tried to pick out individual people and give them the horrible label of communist, equivalent to being called a devil.  This guilt by association is very undemocratic and  typical of totalitarian republics.  So-called American conservatives often, unknowingly, advocate policies typical of totalitarian governments.

Firing Line With Willam F. Buckley: Ron Paul (1988)

Source:The New Democrat

What I respect most about Ron Paul, former U.S. Representative from Texas and presidential candidate for both the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party, is his honesty.  He's truly against big government from both an economic and a personal standpoint, like all classic libertarians or classic conservatives. In this video, he explains why he's running for president for the Libertarian Party in 1988, to grow the size of the Libertarian Party and not to actually win the election but to bring publicity and new members to the LP.

FOX Sports: 'The Sports Butterfly Effect: What if the Portland Trail Blazers Drafted Michael Jordan Instead of Sam Bowie'

Source:The New Democrat

If only this were true, and the Portland Blazers instead of the Chicago Bulls had drafted Michael Jordan in 1984; how different the NBA would've been!  The Blazers and Bulls played each other in the NBA Finals in 1992, by the way, which was a classic six-game series that the Blazers could have won with Clyde Drexler at the off-guard instead of Air Jordan and Kevin Duckworth at center and instead of Sam Bowie, the man they drafted in 1984.

We'll never know, obviously, but had the Bulls drafted Sam Bowie instead of Michael, they would have been stuck with an injury-prone center who had a bad foot in college before he got to the NBA, which everyone including the Blazers knew about. That only got worse the more he tried to play in the NBA, because the man had a stress-fracture in his foot that never healed properly after he injured it the first time in 1981 or 1982, and this was from a movie made about big Sam's career. So his foot was simply never strong enough to play basketball, at least not basketball at the professional level.

But look at the positive aspect of this story, a team with both Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler on it. I mean, think about it, you have Mike at the off-guard and Clyde at the wing-forward because Clyde at 6'7", 220 pounds or so, was big enough to play up front. Both were great players, both were great scorers, both were very good defenders, both could handle the ball, both could shoot, both could drive, both could rebound, etc. If you had the Blazers, with Terry Porter at point guard, and then you had found a solid center, the Blazers would have been serious NBA Finals contenders for at least 10 years.

Without Mike and with Clyde Drexler, the Blazers were NBA Finals contenders for 3 years from 1990 to 1992, and then they fell back to the middle of the pack in the Western Conference in the mid-1990s. With Sam Bowie, the Bulls would not have even been a playoff team for probably another 5 years with such an big investment in their center, who was missing half of the season or more every year.  The Bulls and NBA would have been a lot different.

The American Conservative: Leon Hadar: The Right's Putin Problem

Source:The New Democrat

I'm not trying to sound overly partisan or harsh and when my dad reads this he might say, "Why not?". But when I think of Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, I think of Neoconservatives in America, especially when they praise the man for his clamp down on homosexuality in Russia.  He is not democratic or authoritarian. He's somewhere in between, a fascist politician who believe he knows what's best for his country and therefore shouldn't have to contend with any real opposition or dissent.

Sound familiar in America, especially when you look at the Neoconservative flank of the Tea Party that see themselves, a lot of them from the least populated parts of America, as the true American Patriots?  The believe that they know what is best for America and anyone who disagrees with them should just shut up or move to Canada or some socialist country. Well, again, that is Vladimir Putin who believes that it's his way or no way and you if you don't like it you may end up in jail labeled as a traitor to the Russian Republic.

Imagine what it would be like if we really had a Tea Party President of the United States.  This will never happen as free speech, privacy and personal freedom becomes more popular everyday. But how different would someone like a Michelle Bachmann or a Rick Santorum or Steve King, U.S. Representative from Iowa, be from Vlad Putin. They wouldn't be able to lock up the entire opposition in the country but they may try to. I would doubt we would see much difference in governing style  between a Tea Partier and Vlad Putin. 

Biography: Sophia Loren

Source:The New Democrat

Sophia Loren is perhaps the best looking Italian woman, American or native Italian, that Italy has ever produced, even though I'm more obviously more familiar with Italian-American women than native Italian women. I would put Sophia up against any other ethnic Italian woman who has ever lived and any other woman period who has ever lived as far as physical beauty and appearance go. A perfect example of that is her role in Grumpier Old Men from 1995 when she is 60 years old and still a goddess, turning on older and younger men at this point.

But as the corny saying goes, it doesn't stop there, because, like Raquel Welch, Marilyn Monroe, and other goddesses who've worked in the entertainment business, she was a very talented entertainer who could act and sing and make anyone laugh and go toe to toe with great comic actors like Cary Grant when it came to wit and wisecracks, as in the movie Houseboat. She is an actress with great comedic timing and stage presence in addition to her physical beauty and stage command.

Another thing I love about Sophia is how real she was, coming from nothing and raised by people other than her parents in Rome, Lazio, Italy in the 1930s at the height of the fascist Benito Mussolini regime. She made something great of herself with incredibly hard work, especially after we saw the Sophia that the rest of the world is so familiar with, this tall, curvy hot baby-face goddess with the great Italian voice.