Non-Contender Rand Paul Incorrectly Insults the Disabled

Rand Paul's excuse for Congressional Republicans setting up a man-made-crisis for Social Security Disability:

Paul made headlines for his paper-thin, generalized headlines Wednesday while speaking in New Hampshire. Essentially, he claimed a large number of people, approximately half on disability, are simply scamming the system. He stated when answering questions in Manchester from Republican legislators:

“Everybody in this room knows somebody who is gaming the system. What I tell people is if you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check. Either half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts. Join the club, you know?”

No. Don't join the club. I'm not sure what club Mr. Paul is talking about. In his reality, there is massive fraud in the Social Security program. In actual reality, there's not.  

Read More

Rand Paul is an Annoying Media Obsession

Rand Paul is not going to be President. He's not even going to be Republican Nominee. If he's not careful trying to skirt Kentucky law, he might even lose his Senate seat over his Presidential ambitions. While he and his father have generated headlines and campaign donations at an impressive rate, there's really no reason to believe he's going to have any more success than his father's two previous campaigns had.

For this reason, I'm kind of sick of Washington media types and cable news fawning over this do-nothing Senator from Kentucky and his quixotic campaign for President. He does not have a chance. The stories are annoying. I'll explain why.

Rand Paul does not lead a single poll a year out, which hardly disqualifies him, but certainly doesn't justify the media's coverage of him in the same way it's covering Romney, Bush, or even candidates with some past record of success, like Huckabee. More important than the polls at this point though is the money race, and the money race is no kinder to Rand. As Bush, Romney, and even Christie lock up the money types, Paul is going to be left well behind on Wall Street, which doesn't like risky, new-idea types like him. He's going to be smoked in oil-rich Texas, where Bush, Perry, and Cruz all should use their ties to dominate. Then there's California, where he may find some libertarian money, but he'll still lose the rich, business-man race there too. He's not going to do great with the pro-Israel Republicans while talking up isolation, and the defense contractors will want nothing to do with him. Paul will have to run entirely on grassroots money, like his father, who lost despite doing okay at this. Paul starts out both behind and probably lacking the resources the big-boys have.

So what about his message? Well, as I said above, he's not going to appeal to the war-hawks or Wall Street, two key groups in the GOP. Some of the positions that make him interesting to the press, on incarceration for instance, have no real constituency. While some think his new-age thinking will appeal to a younger generation and pull them out, I'll bet you a steak now that this won't happen. Young, future conservatives generally don't care until they start paying taxes. The Republican Primary will still be a lot of old, white people. Especially in the Iowa Caucus, and the South Carolina Primary. Can he try to appeal in New Hampshire? Sure, but Romney is strong. Can he try to appeal in Nevada? Sure, but good luck getting by Romney and Bush there too.

Let's say for a second that Paul somehow wins New Hampshire, or some other early contest, gets into the more nationalized stage of the primaries, and overcomes his problems with the party on a few social issues and national security. Let's even say that he somehow wins the nomination. Fair enough. This man said the Civil Rights Act should not apply to private businesses. So, the Democrat should do similarly well with African-Americans as President Obama, despite his best efforts on incarceration. He's voted to block immigration reforms in the Senate. So, the Democrat should do similarly well with Latinos as President Obama. Is he going to run as a full-fledged supporter of Marriage Equality to narrow the gap with LGBT Americans? Asian-Americans like immigration reform too, and he still voted to block it. Perhaps you believe he can cut into younger Americans right now because he's "hip," but he's out of step with their stated positions in poll after poll, and the one or two wedge issues he has will simply narrow the gap. I fail to see how he flips 64 electoral votes that Romney lost.

Ron Paul lost badly for President. Rand Paul is going to lose badly too. I get that he's an attractive guy who will give interviews, that he's unafraid to speak to groups and crowds who don't support him. That's nice. Exactly the policies and persona he seeks to put forward that interest the press and liberals are the reasons he won't even sniff the GOP nomination, and even so they are a fairy-tale that would be exposed in the Fall election as a fraud. In short, stop wasting our time talking about this lunatic, media types, and cover the actual race.

Read More

Crazy Rand Goes Cannibal Over Benghazi

Rand Paul's stupidity knows no bounds:

Paul made the argument in a piece published by Breitbart on Monday in response to the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee releasing a report saying "no intelligence failure" prior to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. "This one sentence tells us how seriously we should take this report," Paul wrote.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have both expressed skepticism about the findings of the report. Graham said the report was "full of crap." 

Paul asked in the piece whether the report was "perhaps not telling the full story?"

Rand had a lot more:

From the beginning of this controversy, Obama officials have used smoke and mirrors at every opportunity to evade blame. They have ducked and weaved to avoid anything that could possibly cast the administration in a bad light.

“C.Y.A.” is a term many Americans are familiar with that was invented by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. This new Benghazi “intelligence” report is little more than a C.Y.A. attempt designed to protect incompetent politicians and government agents at the expense of justice for the victims of September 11, 2012.

They will continue to cover up. I will continue to seek the truth until those at the top of this two-year chain of deception are finally held accountable.

It's bad enough that this imbecile won't accept the Accountability Review Board's report, done by national security professionals. That's stupid, but I'll accept the partisan posturing that it's an administration report. That's not the case here. He's saying the Obama Administration is "covering your ass" by issuing a report.... from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives.... chaired by a Republican, with a Republican Speaker.

Give it up Rand. We all know you can't sell your crazy views any better than your dad did, and your quixotic hopes of using this as a silver bullet to the White House are dead.

Read More

Crazy Has It: Rand Paul Speaks

Rand Paul is a nut-job. He fans flames on non-issues (audit the Fed, Edward Snowden) and does nothing on real issues (DREAM Act, infrastructure). I'd say he's my last choice for President in either party. He is at it again, talking crazy about the President's executive orders and Japanese internment camps:

Paul made the comments on Friday, a day after Obama formally announced the executive actions, at the Kentucky Association of Counties conference in Lexington, Kentucky. 

"I care that too much power gets in one place. Why? Because there are instances in our history where we allow power to gravitate toward one person and that one person then makes decisions that really are egregious," Paul said. "Think of what happened in World War II where they made the decision. The president issued an executive order. He said to Japanese people 'we're going to put you in a camp. We're going to take away all your rights and liberties and we're going to intern you in a camp.'" 

"We shouldn't allow that much power to gravitate to one individual. We need to separate the power."

So now, a President prioritizing to keep five million families together is equal to putting Japanese-Americans in an internment camp. Right.

Paul's not done with crazy. Some of you probably think Rand Paul has a positive record on fighting for peace. He really doesn't, and now he's introducing a declaration of war against ISIS. He wants his cake, and to eat it too. He'll get no cake here.

Read More

Rand Paul is a Moron, Hillary Clinton Mid-Term Edition

Oh, Rand Paul. He obsesses about Hillary Clinton all the time, in some backward attempt to be relevant nationally. It doesn't work. He'll run for President, like his father did twice, but his father never won a nomination, let alone the White House. Rand won't either. A Presidential race will shine far too much light onto him, and he will wilt under his extreme positions and uncool demeanor being put into public.

With that said, Rand is attacking Hillary Clinton for campaigning for candidates who lost. To be fair, in an awful election cycle for Democrats, about half of the candidates Hillary campaigned for won. That's actually relatively strong, under the circumstances. Of course, even discussing this assumes that we should keep "won-lost records" for surrogates. That's patently ridiculous, of course. No one votes based on the surrogates. The appeal of surrogates is getting large numbers of party faithful into one place and getting them excited about the party and the candidates. That's it. Surrogates don't win or lose an election.

Rand Paul should just try to make sure he rigs the system so he can run for Senator after he loses for President.

Read More