cyberspace rant to a Ron Paul lover

my response to a cyber-dude who was claiming a conspiracy in the media and polling companies with regards to Ron Paul not being more popular, and ahead in polls. his argument is that on twitter he is BLOWIN' UP! - sj

"I appreciate and can relate to your passion, here, but a couple of quick things worth noting: 1) twitter is media. twitter is an awesome new medium and platform, doing things many other standard tv, print, and other entities cannot do. 2) Ron Paul uses that medium, and dozens of other mediums to get his message out. 3) retweets and mentions on twitter are incomparable to polling results. they have nothing to do with it. Most polls are conducted on the telephone. So the results you're seeing are coming from those calls. THEN, there are results you're seeing on twitter. Apples/Oranges. 4) There are PLENTY of unbiased polling entities in operation now, and there are many others that have some bias, for sure, but a) they are consistent, and b) it doesn't matter, because there are polling analyses that AVERAGE the wide spectrum of all of them! 5) Ron Paul would be more popular if some of his policies didn't suck ballz. His anti-gun control, anti-gay/lesbian marriage, being against a woman's right to choose, anti-civil rights stance, his anti universal healthcare, anti-public education, anti- EPA, are just some of his idiotic and anti-american views, thoughts and policies (not to mention, why he's a REPUBLICAN). Even his "states-rights" argument is utter bullshit, as most of those issues I mentioned shouldn't even be debated with that possibility in mind. 6) I have plenty I can argue is wrong with him, and I'll ALSO argue he is racist. If you've ACTUALLY read the Ron Paul Newsletters, you would be amazed at the litany of racist content and made up lies about african-americans (and other people) in them. And they were HIS newsletters. The fact that he plays the moron when pressed on this ("der... welp.. I never read 'em!") only makes him as much of an idiot as any other lying politician. 7) the many different media entities and mediums are HELPING Ron Paul's popularity; not hurting it. If not for them, he'd be just another crazy old loon from Texas, with a few good ideas, and dozens of terrible ones. Fuck Ron Paul"

"They're coming to take our guns away!"

truly great piece by Gary Kamiya, originally posted on Salon.com. sj

They're coming to take our guns away.
Cop killer Richard Poplawski is an extremist. But amid the deafening din of the right wing's anti-government rhetoric, how extreme is he?
By Gary Kamiya

Apr. 07, 2009

It would be convenient to pretend that Richard Poplawski, who killed three Pittsburgh policemen on Saturday with an AK-47, was just a right-wing nutcase. A devotee of the white supremacist Web site Stormfront, Poplawski believed that the United States was controlled by a secret Jewish cabal that had a master plan to abrogate freedom of speech and use the U.S. military to police Americans.

It would be easy for us to cordon Poplawski off, pretend that his ugly and paranoid worldview had nothing to do with the Obama hatred spouted by the American right. But the truth is that Poplawski's hateful views cannot be separated from the increasingly extreme ideology and rhetoric that characterize the contemporary American conservative movement. As his friend, Edward Perkovic, told the Associated Press, Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Such obsessions don't come out of a vacuum. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the GOP have been whipping up hatred and fear of Obama and "liberal Democrats" for years. Joined by the National Rifle Association, which has run false and irresponsible ads claiming that Obama is planning to take away Americans' guns, they have encouraged and helped to create a pathological right-wing subculture in which free-floating hatred of "the government" mixes with a maniacal fetish for guns. Poplawski is the diseased fruit of that ugly tree.

click here for rest of spot-on analysis