My new article “Better (Not) Call Rand Paul” scrutinizes the presidential candidacy of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul alongside quotes from “Better Call Saul.” Don’t let the federal government boogeymen bully you into an unfair fight. Rand Paul will do the fighting for you. No fight is too big for him. When the federal government has you cornered, better call Rand Paul! He’ll get your case dismissed and give you the advocacy you deserve. Why? Because he’s Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky. He investigates, gesticulates, persuades, and, most importantly, wins! Win Win Win! Better call Rand Paul. Do you feel doomed? Have opponents of freedom wrongly intimidated you? Perhaps they told you that you’re in serious trouble and there’s nothing you can do about it. Rand Paul is here to tell you that they’re wrong. It’s never too late for justice.
“You know, we are once again at a point in our history where the fly-swatting hand of government is crushing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Taxes, OSHA requirements, the I.N.S. poking their big, fat nose into every mother-loving hire. It’s damned oppressive. It’s tragic. It’s un-American.”
Rand Paul’s pandering (or as I call it, “Randering”) to America’s few remaining civil libertarians with his rant on the Senate floor against the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone data earned him great accolades from the fan boys and bros this week. While Rand “hey look at me” Paul was distracting everyone with his self-aggrandizing performance, the Senate approved Obama’s fast track negotiating authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The Trade Promotion Authority fast-track legislation still (fortunately) requires clearance by Congress.
Liberals eager to “Stand with Rand” should recall that Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” was Rand Paul’s favorite book to bring on fraternity retreats. The Cliff’s Notes version is: “Progressives are Nazis.”
“You believe in the real America: freedom, self-sufficiency.”
Rand Paul proselytizes for an unfettered free market system, or as writer Conor Lynch calls it, “lemonade-stand capitalism” (http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/americas_libertarian_freakshow_inside_the_free_market_fetish_of_rand_paul_ted_cruz/). “Lemonade-stand capitalism” is the idea that in a free market society, the economy would operate as millions of small producers compete in perfect harmony (like children operating lemonade stands). The philosophy holds that people who work hard and compete fairly succeed while the lazy fail.
“When you realize how wrong you are about all this, I’ll take an edible arrangement as a ‘sorry.’ Heavy on the pineapple.”
Unfortunately, as Conor Lynch points out, the more “free” a market becomes, the more the competition gets rigged. The behemoths of the marketplace such as Amazon and Walmart drive small business competitors out of business.
“Well, like they say in Silicon Valley, ‘it’s not a bug it’s a feature!'”
Conor Lynch notes that “competition on a level playing field isn’t a feature in such a (free market) system, but a bug, and one that’s increasingly being pushed to the margins.” Rand Paul and his ideological brethren (e.g., Ted Cruz) believe that the fusion of government and business called “crony capitalism” would be solved by a market free of government intervention. However, as Lynch asserts, it is not the state who has corrupted the corporations but the corporations who have corrupted the state. For example, thanks to the Citizens United decision corporations and the wealthy heap piles of cash upon candidates for public office. This shadiness ultimately promulgates the neoliberal gospel of deregulation and privatization, creating a system where corporations have no accountability to the public.
“How could you not recognize the mind games, the scams, the con jobs these people play? You used to be one of them.”
Dr. Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics (LSE) discusses the notion of neoliberal ideology as a “non-interventionist” ideology at http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24697-are-economic-growth-and-social-justice-incompatible : “One of the reasons that our model of economic growth has become so destructive has to do with the shift to neoliberalism. People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons interventionist policies. But in reality, it’s just a different kind of interventionism. Think about it. In order to create a global free market order you have to invent a totalizing global bureaucracy: the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and so on, all backed up by the military power of the United States and other dominant countries. In other words, you need an enormous expression of state power in order to force countries around the world to liberalize their markets against their will.”
“We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail.” Famous non-interventionist George W. Bush delivered this message of freedom as the United States invaded Iraq. My point is, state-enforced free markets are about as free as state-enforced democracies are democratic.
“And then I’ll roundhouse-kick you right in your stupid heads. Then I’ll go Jean Claude Van Damme on you. You b-tthole.”
Rand Paul is a graduate of Duke University’s School of Medicine. Another famous pompous Duke alumni, Christian Laettner, stomped on the head of an opposing University of Kentucky player Aminu Timberlake during the 1992 NCAA East Regional Final. Laettner was allowed to continue to compete in the game (ahem, white privilege) and, of course, hit a buzzer better, “The Shot,” to win the game.
“I want to secede from the United States. Now, I got 1,100 acres of property here, self-sustaining with solar power and wells, a sovereign state immune to the business-killing regulations of the country in which it geographically lies. We are going to be America’s Vatican city.”
Bob Cesca writes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/if-you-stand-with-rand-yo_b_3588377.html) that nullification and states’ rights – not libertarianism – are the true centerpieces to Rand Paul’s politics. My music video “Joni (Ernst) likes to castrate piggies shows how Senator Ernst of Iowa (like Rand Paul) likes to “give more rights to states to nullify laws” :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCZTHntFCyc
America has caught “nullification fever” : http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/states-nullification-obama-94826.html
Rand Paul, along with the other 47 traitors, sought to nullify Obama’s diplomacy with Iran:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9eA2tBFwtk
Rand Paul is pals with Alex Jones, who promotes conspiracy theories such as President Obama’s federal invasion of Texas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpbiHNsGrU4
“Barack Obama Is Invading Texas” (Jade Helm 15 song) lyrics by James Rustad (Copyright 2015. All Rights Reserved):
Barack Obama’s invading Texas
The code-name for his invasion is Jade Helm Fifteen
Barack Obama’s invading Texas
The globalists are charging in from DC
Chuck Norris, Walker Texas Ranger wrote on World Net Daily
Another far-fetched paranoid right-wing conspiracy
Governor Greg Abbott sent in the Texas State Guard
Just in case that Marxist Muslim President goes too far
Barack Obama Martial law is coming and New World Order
The Mexicans are coming in because he didn’t shut the border
Minutemen Militias are getting armed now for the fight
Since God wrote the Constitution, they will battle to prove him right
And speaking of Greg Abbott, he’s just a really big crook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_B5mDOInEA
“I mean, really, that’s what this is about, right? Fairness. Fairness, right. I mean, not just what’s legal. If you want to talk about legal, slavery That used to be legal. Human slavery. So Yeah, this is right up there with that.”
As Thom Hartmann points out (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery), the real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country,” was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states (like Virginia). The uncomfortable slippery slope from nullification and state’s rights continues to the cozy relationship between the modern GOP and the KKK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWECZJmd2MM
“Now Chet, and this will give you an idea of exactly what kind of a douchebag this guy was, drove a white pearlescent BMW 7 series with white leather interior. So, I saw that thing, and I had had a few, like I said. And, uh I climbed up top, and I may have defecated, uh, through the sunroof. Not my finest hour I’ll grant you that. But that’s what a Chicago sunroof is. Now you know. It’s a real thing. I didn’t make it up. I’m not the first person to do it. There’s a name for it. Guy wanted some soft-serve I gave him some soft-serve. I did not know that his children were in the backseat.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDRX1XIG3E4
America better not call Rand Paul unless we want a “Chicago sunroof” dumped on our country.