Rand Paul gets13 hours of fame as Dow Jones reaches record high

Last week (Tuesday) the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all time high — during President Obama’s second term! Holy mackerel! Remember the days leading up this last presidential election when the financial market gurus were assuring all of us that if Obama won a second term the stock market would crash  … and then it didn’t and in fact it’s back with such a bang, those very same financial market gurus are telling us everything is wonderful!

Seriously, they’re telling us everything is great. And if the Dow Jones tumbles a hundred points we’re back to crisis mode and wouldn’t you know it, it’s all Obama’s fault. It starts out with the Congress and the President not being able to come to any agreements on a budget, sequestration, etc. ad nauseum, and then invariably the president isn’t doing enough to the right this sinking ship, that isn’t really sinking.

• There is the diehard, “nothing can be going right if Obama is president” crowd. Tell them the Dow is at an all time high and the response: “It’s not that good. The volume is low.”

• But then why are all the TV prognosticators telling us it’s great?

Me, I can’t tell if the ship of state is even taking on any water. We still have the strongest economy in the world … well, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lists the U.S. second behind the European Union, but c’mon, does that really count? That’s cheating … sort of. Look on any other indicator and Germany is fourth or fifth and France is below that and Great Britain even lower.

It’s like the Ryder Cup in golf. Those individual countries know that can’t field a team of professional golfers that can beat an American team, so they combine all the European countries into one team.

Of course, if you know anything about golf and the genesis of the Ryder Cup than you know that’s a gross misrepresentation of it. But still, could England, or even Spain, field a team that could beat the Americans? I know you’re agreeing with me. It’s the same difference when looking at the world’s economies.

The U.S. didn’t follow Europe’s lead by instituting the severe austerity measures that put Europe into a double dip recession, one reason our economy is stronger than any of the individual countries of the EU.

Our economy has been the standard by which all others have been measured, at least since World War II. Not even China, the second most powerful economy in the world, comes close to overtaking the U.S. economy. And this is one reason the Republicans didn’t scream bloody murder when they and President George W. Bush ran up an 11 trillion dollar debt, with nearly 20 percent of it being owed to the People’s Republic of Apple and Wal-Mart.

If China did call in its markers the U.S. could lay its hands on three trillion bucks, but it would send our economy into a nosedive, thereby killing China’s most lucrative market for its slave-labored goods. So, despite all the bloody murder being screamed our way by the likes of Senator Rand Paul and his Tea Party supporters — and all the Republicans trying to suck up to the Tea Party — we are not about to fall apart financially.

In fact the government ought to invest about a trillion dollars into fixing our infrastructure. Even conservative economists agree doing so would be good for the economy and it would take care of some things, like roads, bridges, dams, rails lines and utility grids that are in dire need of repair. And how about a national high-speed rail system connecting every state in the lower 48; plus expanded light rail in every municipality with a population of a quarter million or more?

Public transportation — reliable, convenient public transit — would be such a boon to our economy, just starting to work on it would lower the unemployment rate a couple points. And high speed and light rail would employ hundreds of thousands around the country once it became operational.

• And let’s head this off at the pass: even the best public transit won’t be convenient for everyone, but that’s not a reason to not make it more convenient for those who already use it and the millions of potential riders.

Oh yes, the other reason the GOP didn’t scream bloody murder when they and President Bush ran up an 11 trillion dollar deficit: they were the ones doing the spending. Two unfunded wars, an unfunded prescription drug mandate, unfunded tax cuts and of course the continuing legacy of corporate welfare to industries that don’t need it.

The only reason, the only true reason, the GOP is screaming bloody murder now is because there is a Democrat in the White House and the Democrats control the U.S. Senate. Well, there is one other true reason: the Tea Party, misinformed as it is, demands something be done about the national debt—RIGHT EFFIN’ NOW!

So, to stay in the Teabaggers’ good graces the GOP “establishment,” a group of people that has no experience with fiscal conservatism, gives lip service to lowering the national debt. Which is why John Boehner is a Speaker of the House with no authority and Rand Paul, arguably one of the most ignorant and misinformed members of government, is a GOP/Tea Party hero.

As you may know from the news last week, the Junior Senator from the great state of Kentucky did a 13-hour filibuster, holding up the confirmation of the new Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan.

Paul’s beef with the confirmation consisted of two questions. Originally it had only been one question, but when the White House answered the first one he had to come up with a second question.

Rand Paul, the second most unqualified person to be elected to public office has the hit of the week. He had both major political parties at odds with themselves. On one hand, some Democrats were skewering Paul for the idiotic waste of 13 hours, especially because he equated the drone program to Hitler several times, but on the other hand there were those Democrats who liked that Paul brought up the issue of the drone program, as flawed and offensive as he was at times.

• Sarah Palin is still the most unqualified, considering she was a vice presidential candidate, but Rand Paul is certainly giving her a run for the title.
• Paul’s staff even got the Twitter a-buzzin’ when they tweeted for everyone to “Stand With Rand!” I stayed in my chair.

It wasn’t just Democrats that criticized Paul. A few Republicans rebuked him as well.

During his 13 hours of rambling Paul inferred that the president could use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil. Not just enemy combatants, but people who didn’t like the president’s policies. Paul’s example being the government targeting Jane Fonda for assassination back in the day, if President Nixon would have had the same power and technology as President Obama. he illustrated his point by suggesting a drone could blow up a neighborhood coffee shop to kill someone the president didn’t like.

Most Republicans in Congress supported Paul, but there were a couple of very vocal critics. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked, “To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you? They had a drone program back then, all of a sudden this drone program has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here?”

John McCain, Republican of Arizona, had the same feelings about it. “To somehow say that someone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it, is somehow a member of an organization which makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false,” McCain said.

Just when I had McCain and Graham pegged as crackpots they go and get sensible.

On the other hand, Rand Paul brought up a legitimate issue: what is our national policy in regards to assassination robots? Thirteen hours after Senator Paul started his filibuster, Jay Carney stepped into the pressroom of the White House to answer Paul’s question. No, the president doesn’t have the authority to target and kill U.S. citizens here in the U.S.

In all the time I’ve been watching Jay Carney as the White House mouthpiece I’ve seen him roll his eyes at something twice. Reading the letter from Attorney General Eric Holder in response to Rand Paul was one of those times.  Jay Carney must have been thinking, “Really, who elected this guy?”

After the White House response and the 13-hour filibuster was over, Paul went on FoxNews to claim the president and his administration had been humiliated. Actually, I saw Jay Carney read the letter. He didn’t appear to be embarrassed or humiliated. Annoyed maybe, but not humiliated.

On Paul’s website for his 2016 presidential run — or maybe if that doesn’t work out he’ll run for re-election — Paul put out an appeal for money, using his Senate stunt to promote himself. Here is the appeal:

• Dear Patriot,
• My 13-hour filibuster yesterday is being called one of the longest in U.S. history.
• I had been trying for more than a week to get a straight answer on whether or not the Obama administration believed it had the authority to use drones to target and kill American citizens on American soil – without due process.
• And after receiving a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder claiming they DO have that authority, I could no longer sit silently at my desk in the U.S. Senate.
• So I stood for thirteen-straight hours to send a message to the Obama administration, I will do everything in my power to fight their attempts to ignore the Constitution!
• Millions of Americans chose to stand with me and put President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Congress in the spotlight…
• And the good news is, it worked!
• Just hours ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Holder declaring the President DOES NOT have the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.
• Patriot, this shows what we can do when stand together and fight.
• So won’t you help me continue the fight to protect our Constitutional liberties today?
• As you’ll see, I’ve crafted a special Defend the Constitution petition I’m hoping you’ll agree to sign today.(His bold of the text. There was a link with that sentence you can click to sign his petition)
• In addition, I’m asking you to contribute as generously as you can to the “Stand With Rand” Money Bomb going on right now.

And that my friends is the true purpose of Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster. He wants to be elected president in 2016 and he needs your help. And what better way to draw attention to himself than do to something no senator has had to do for decades: stand in the well of the U.S. Senate and hold a filibuster like they did in the good old days of Frank Capra.

• That appeal has since been removed from the site.

Like he and his colleagues have done nearly 300 times since Barack Obama became president, Paul just had to put a hold on John Brennan’s confirmation vote and that would have stopped Brennan from becoming our latest Director of Central Intelligence. But nobody really pays attention to those anonymous holds anymore, not the news organizations anyway. To get the media’s attention Paul had to do something noteworthy … so he held an old-timey filibuster, just like Jimmy Stewart in … I mention the director’s name above (Frank Capra) and still forget the name of the movie … Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

John Brennan went on to become the DCI and Rand Paul becamee the center of political debate for a week and that’s just enough time to get the Teabaggers across the country donating to Paul’s political cause.

At the end of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Mr. Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) gets the girl, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur). It remains to be seen how much Rand Paul will get for his filibuster.