This will start some fireworks.

Here's an email I just got from the LP:

--------------------------------------

Dear Libertarian,

Throughout the year, as you could imagine, questions about Ron Paul have been non-stop. Both our members and the media swamp every line of communication available.

While reporters generally dance around the issues, looking for a salacious story about Congressman Paul, our members get right to the point:

"What are you doing to support Ron Paul?"
"Why haven't you endorsed Ron Paul?"
"Why are you avoiding Ron Paul?"
"Why isn't...?
"Why is...?
"Why don't...?"
"Why won't…?"
"...Support Ron Paul!"

Trust me, in our small Watergate office, the words "Ron Paul" echo throughout the hallways all day, every day, as we respond to the many questions posed by passionate Libertarians who call, e-mail, mail and visit our office.

If you think about it, this appears to put us in a tough position. We're the Libertarian Party, and Ron Paul is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. It's not our issue, right?

A party loyalist would not dare say something positive about a member of another party...right? Blind partisan loyalty is why Republicans and Democrats are so powerful...right?

No!

Partisanship is why they are corrupt. The Republican and Democratic parties exist to maintain their own power...that's about it.

We exist for liberty.

With integrity in our lives and in our organization, Libertarians have fought with long odds for more than three decades. We battle Republicans and Democrats who betray our principles of peace and freedom.

But now, we have a man of principle who is igniting a fire of liberty across the nation and, go figure, he has an "R" next to his name. So, what do we do? To some, this appears to be a black-or-white issue with only two options:

Do we stubbornly stand by and pretend Ron Paul does not exist?

Or . . .

Do we throw out 36 years of work, violate our own bylaws and principles, and convert to the Republican Party and join Dr. Paul?

Both of those are obviously horrible non-options.

What we can do is show respect for our Party's history, bylaws and members while making an effort to recognize the revolution that's taking place around the country.

Over this past weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, the members of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) did just that.

It would be inappropriate and a clear violation of our bylaws for the LNC to simply "nominate" Ron Paul for the Libertarian ticket as many of his supporters have requested. That's not a decision for the LNC to make--that's the duty of Libertarian delegates at our National Convention.

What the LNC can do is attempt to "recruit" a presidential candidate, and while in Charleston, the LNC unanimously passed a resolution that states the following:

WHEREAS, the Libertarian National Committee encourages competition in the race for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination and is appreciative of all candidates who make the commitment to run;

NOW THEREFORE, in the event that Republican primary voters select a candidate other than Congressman Paul in February of 2008, the Libertarian National Committee urges Congressman Ron Paul to seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party to be decided in Denver, Colorado during Memorial Day weekend of 2008.

I encourage you to read the full resolution by clicking here.

The LNC has made a respectful gesture and it's up to the good Congressman to accept or decline when he chooses to do so. And just so you know, so far, the response from Dr. Paul's campaign has been the standard: "We have no intention to seek the nomination of a third party."

Additionally, the LNC voted to allow me to pursue an effort that will allow Ron Paul supporters to contact voters in the upcoming New Hampshire Republican primary to tell them about Dr. Paul.

They will be able to do this through our resource, www.BallotBase.org, which is essentially a decentralized call center. From the comfort of your own home, you can use the system to call voters on behalf of a candidate. It's easy to use and can be incredibly effective.

In order to use Ballot Base, you have to register by providing us with your name, address, verified e-mail, etc. and then you can start calling within minutes.

Now, I need you to know that these are very controversial decisions and there are some people who are very upset.

A few are upset that we've invited Dr. Paul into our presidential race, while others are up-in-arms that we've used LNC resources to benefit a Republican. At first glance, they have an argument, so let me take a minute to FULLY DISCLOSE what this is about, how it works and what we're possibly giving up and gaining.

We plan to use the Ballot Base to affect a Republican primary. To do so, we give up the following:

The use of a server that is not even moderately used during the political off-season.
An independent expenditure of $2,120 to purchase the New Hampshire voter files of registered Republicans.
Moderate use of staff time.
Now, here's what we possibly have to gain:

We make it possible to influence a Republican primary race in the favor of liberty...just as we have done in the past with other primary races.
We gain the ability to build a lasting relationship with a large group of pro-liberty activists.
Most importantly, through the Ballot Base registration process, we are able to reach out to many thousands of people who share many common values with the LP. Hopefully, one day down the road, as we continue to build our relationship, they will take the bold step of joining the Libertarian Party or supporting our efforts.
So, for a few thousand dollars, use of a server and some of our time, we are able to create a network of communication with what I hope will be thousands of hard-working and passionate lovers of liberty.

In the meantime, a soft-spoken Republican congressman named Ron Paul gets a leg up over the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

Sound good to you?

If so, keep reading, as I need you to do me a very big favor.

Today is December 11th. Thirty-six years ago, our Party was founded by a handful of people who wanted to stand up in defense of liberty. Yep--it's our 36th birthday!

The decisions made by the LNC this past weekend were bold, decisive and in my opinion, necessary. We can no longer stand by and do nothing when such an incredible opportunity exists for the Libertarian Party.

If you agree with these decisions, show your support by sending us a strong message in the form of a significant gift as we celebrate our 36th birthday. To donate, click here.

I appreciate your continued support and please know that together, we will always remain the Party of Principle.

For Liberty,

Shane Cory
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

P.S. If you are behind these efforts, please forward this message to friends and family and ask them to go to www.BallotBase.org to join the effort!
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My question to you, FD, is this:

If Ron jumps, will you FINALLY come on board?

In his attacks on Ron Paul. This time, he goes after him on Health Care and the Environment, particularly with regard to CO2 emissions.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2582

Much of it is similiar types of arguments he's been making all along: trying to point out apparent inaccuracies in his columns and use them to claim that he deliberately lies. Let's ignore for now the fact that Rosenberg fails to consider the argument that the federal government's involvement in health care, particulary its policies regarding health insurance that have caused harmful distortions (increasing bureaucracy, exascerbating principal-agent problems, tying insurance to employment, changing insurance from real insurance to third-party payment that has raised costs, etc.), and the fact that he displays absolutely no understanding of international monetary economics and its explanation for why China could have growth while reducing CO2 emissions (i.e., keeping the Yuan devalued to maintain an exchange rate advantage for exports. Maybe Rosenberg suggests we should do the same? After all, the foreign investors who have kept the US economy afloat for three decades would JUMP at the chance to invest in a country whose assets are devaluing relative to the rest of the world!).

Moving forward, he has been caught red-handed in implying that somehow China is a haven for CO2 reduction. However, a simple Google search of "China CO2 Emissions" reveals that the latest IEA figures show that China has in fact surpassed the US in CO2 emissions, and it's projected emissions going forward have substantially increased.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/110
http://www.mnp.nl/en/dossiers/Climatechange/moreinfo/Chinanowno1inCO2emissionsUSAinsecondposition.html

And for the dossier on China's environmental record, look no further than a citation-filled Wikipedia entry devoted to just that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China

So, Mr. Rosenberg... if you misrepresent reality in an article, does it technically qualify you as a liar?

You all know what to do.

We can all agree that Ron Paul does face an uphill climb to the GOP Nomination. However, his chances have improved exponentially throughout the year and improve with every passing day, and they've improved to the point where he does have a shot at winning it.

Firstly, the fundraising success of the campaign is obviously an indicator that he is building a vast amount of support at the grassroots level. He had a $5.1 million quarter in Q3, and he has already raised $9 million up to this point in Q4, which is already $1 million ahead of the goal set by the campaign by the end of November. Furthermore, the fundraising base has expanded hugely; around 23,000 people donated to the campaign last quarter, whereas 104,000+ people have donated up to this point in this quarter. (According to www.ronpaulgraphs.com) There are two more major online fundraising events that have been organized by grassroots supporters: a November 30 event (www.rudysreadinglist.com), which should bring the campaign to at least $10 million total raised by the end of the month, and the Tea Party 07 event on December 16 (teaparty07.com). The Tea Party 07 event has already beaten the number of commitments for the November 5 event and done so in a week's less time, and the Paul campaign will likely shatter the one-day fundraising record set by John Kerry at $5.7 million, and may beat it by several million. The $10 million goal will be extremely hard, but it's not implausible. There is also a great chance that the campaign will hold another end-of-the-quarter fundraising drive like they did at the end of Q3. Given this, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the campaign won't raise at least $15 million total for the quarter can raise $20 million total for the quarter, if not more. Furthermore, there's plenty of reason to believe that Ron Paul will be the top fundraiser among the Republican candidates for Q4, if not ALL candidates including Clinton and Obama.

This type of fundraising success automatically places him into legitimate contention for the nomination. If he does break the single-day record and/or come in the top-3 in the Republican field in Q4 fundraising, let alone win Q4 in fundraising, the press bonanza that will follow will be completely and utterly unprecedented. The focus will be squarely off of the Democratic field for the last two weeks of December right up through Iowa, and all the other Republicans can flat out forget about getting ink or TV time during this period. Furthermore, it allows him to flood the airwaves with ads right as caucus and primary voters are starting to pay attention and make up their minds. And judging by the rising "traditional" poll numbers in the early battleground states (more on this later), the ads are having a tremendous effect. Furthermore, it will allow him to put together a top-tier organization in EVERY early primary state up to Super Tuesday. This is something that none of the current "top-tier" candidates (as annointed by the media) besides Giuliani and Romney can do. Thompson's and McCain's fundraising has been lackluster the last two quarters, and both candidates' campaigns are staked exclusively at this point on one or two states (McCain MUST win New Hampshire; Thompson has to place top-3 in Iowa and MUST win South Carolina), which limit the resources they can devote to other states. Huckabee's sinking all he has into Iowa, with a little more for South Carolina, and while his fundraising is picking up, it's going to have to be a lot better than it's been, as I figure he'll have to be in the $6-8 million range for the quarter to have shot. Being able to build a top-tier organization and GOTV machine everywhere is going to make all the difference in the world, particularly in Ron's holy grail at this point: New Hampshire.

Secondly, the line on Ron's campaign the whole year has been "hugely popular on the internet, raising money online, but in the back of the pack in the polls." While there's plenty of reason to question the methodology of the polls and to suspect that they are hugely underestimating Ron's support at this point among Republican and other voters, that analysis ignores the fact that Ron's poll numbers had very slowly increased throughout the year. However, since the news of his $5 million quarter, his poll numbers have taken off much like Huckabee's did after his second place finish in the Ames Straw Poll. He's now 4th in pretty much every recent New Hampshire poll, ahead of Huckabee and Thompson, at 7-8%; from my personal experiences helping the campaign in New Hampshire, and judging by the dynamics of the state, I personally believe that these polls are still underestimating his support as of this moment by at least 10-15 points, maybe even 20. He is now statistically tied with McCain in Iowa at 4-6% (while McCain is in the 4-8% range, with 4-5% MoEs) and certainly within striking distance of Giuliani and Thompson for 3rd; he is in 4th in the latest Iowa "Power Rankings" by the Iowa Independent. He's also pulled up to 7-8% in the latest Nevada polls, and the latest Rasmussen South Carolina poll has him at 8% in a statistical tie with Huckabee and McCain (just 13 points back of the lead, shared by Romney and Thompson). And the national polls are reflecting increasing support for him among Republicans, as well. He is at 5% or 6% in nearly recent national poll, representing 2-4 point jumps over the last two months. He and Huckabee seem to be the only two candidates who are consisently moving up in the polls.

With that said, here's the path for Ron Paul to win the GOP nomination:

1. Raise $15 million or more. I think he'll probably get this with ease; I expect the final tally will be in the $15-18 million range. It could very well hit $20 million, though, when all is said and done.

2. Place top-3 in Iowa. This is completely doable. Firstly, the guys he will have to compete with for the 3rd place slot are struggling badly. Giuliani is running a scant campaign there and has dived badly in the polls there, and there's no reason to believe he'll recover and plenty of reason to believe the slide will continue. Thompson's campaign is sliding everywhere including in Iowa, although they've indicated they're going to step up the ads, but the enthusiasm for him isn't there and he doesn't appear to have much of an organization there. McCain has almost no prayer in Iowa and knows he has to win New Hampshire, or he's toast.

Ron's huge sum of cash will allow him to put up a top-tier campaign there. His Iowa Coordinator, Drew Ivers, is one of the best there is in Iowa, having taken long-shot canidates Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan to second place finishes there in 1988 and 1996, respectively, despite being severely underfunded. Ivers will presumably have a lot more cash to work with there. He's building a large organization, particularly on the grassroots level there. Furthermore, another big factor may come into play here: 2nd-choice votes. While Ron's not polling well in 2nd choice polls in Iowa (but I do expect these numbers to increase with his first-choice numbers), I would estimate there is a 95% chance that Tancredo will tell his supporters to vote for Ron if he doesn't hit the first-ballot cutoff (Ala Kucinich directing his people to vote for Edwards in 2004). (Just as I expect Tancredo to endorse Ron when he does drop out, which could be sooner than the Iowa Caucus.) In some precincts, this could add up to make a big difference, as Tancredo does have support in Iowa.

I think Ron can still win the nomination without finishing top-3 in Iowa as long as he BEATS EXPECTATIONS, which to me means probably double-digits and top-4. But the goal of the campaign should definitely be top-3.

3. Win New Hampshire. This is the money pot, and we all know it. NH is undoubtedly the most libertarian state in the country (where else will Democratic governors pledge not to institute state income, sales, or capital gains taxes?), and it is also the most anti-war state and anti-establishment state in the country; that's three checks for Paul. Furthermore, independents can vote in either primary; that's four checks for Paul. Zogby recently said he expects the independent vote in New Hampshire to be split by Paul and Obama; I think the balance is going to tip significantly in the former's favor. You can bet the campaign is going to spend the bulk of its money and time there and that this is the top priority. The staff there is very young and smaller in number than Rudy's or Mitt's, but also very talented and surprisingly experienced, and Ron's campaign there is the only one focusing heavily on ground operations. Furthermore, the campaign has a grassroots ARMY working for them that may easily number in the thousands. I can say in all honesty from having spent time with the campaign there that I believe Ron can definitely hit between 35-45% there, maybe even higher, and come away with a world-shocking win. Again, analogous to Iowa, he doesn't HAVE to win this big there, or even win at all, to get the nomination; but he darn well better, and he MUST at least exceed expectations and MUST place top-2.

4. Top-3 in Michigan. If he pulls all of the first three steps off, this should follow, for sure. Beating Romney here is going to be tough, due to his ties to his home state, but he will have the money to do it. Furthermore, it's a hugely pro-gun state, so I expect both Paul and Huckabee to make tremendous gains here. The fact that it is an open primary state also bodes very well for Dr. No. Winning Michigan is certainly doable.

5. Pick off a win on January 19. This is the day of Nevada and South Carolina. He's placed at 7-8% in both states in recent polls, which represent huge climbs. Personally, I think he's got a great shot at both, and each state has it's pluses for Ron. Nevada is maybe the 2nd most libertarian state in the country behind New Hampshire (this is, after all, the state of gambling, sin, legalized prostitution, and the state that's done battle with the federal government on marijuana a number of times), and this certainly is true of the Republican voters here. South Carolina, on the other hand, possesses a very strong contingent of small government, libertarian-leaning voters (this is the state that elected Mark Sanford governor), and the primary is open. Furthermore, there is a VERY good chance that Sanford will endorse his old friend Dr. No, as the two are both libertarian Republicans and voted together nearly all the time in the House; I think he will and is waiting for the right time, hence the lack of an endorsement from him up to this point.

South Carolina is also shaping up in the polls as of now to be a VERY tight race, with the top-6 candidates in the latest Rasmussen poll seperated by just 13 points and the leaders being tied at 21 points. This will be the place where Thompson will make his last desperate stand, and probably where Huckabee, for lack of funds, does, as well. (Maybe even Giuliani, too; the way I see this coming down, he won't take a primary before January 19, and if he doesn't take a top-3 spot in SC and/or win Nevada, he'll have zero momentum toward February 5 and will be toast.) The absence of a clear front-runner in South Carolina definitely benefits Paul, especially given that South Carolina has a reputation for being grounds for nasty campaigning, which will severely damage his rivals who all have baggage (which they will all point out about one-another to South Carolina voters). Damaged rivals is a good thing for Ron, obviously. Needless to say, he will HAVE to have won at least one primary by this point, but I think there's a good chance he'll have two of them in his belt. If he wins both of these primaries after accomplishing the previous steps (especially if he wins Michigan and/or, by some REAL positive turns of events, pulls off Iowa), I honestly don't see how he can be stopped.

6. Go West, Old Man. (And Northeast, too.) At this point in the race, post-January 19, I think we're looking at a Ron Paul versus Mitt Romney race for the nomination, simply because expect Romney to have won one or two of Iowa, Michigan, or South Carolina and because he will have money. Giuliani may be in if he wins Nevada and/or finishes top-3 in South Carolina. This will make Florida his absolute last stand, which if he loses, his coffin is nailed shut. Ron could go for the knockout punch in Florida, and he certainly would have to compete there, but I see it as institutionally neoconned (ha!) and the type of state that favors a Romney/Giuliani type of Republican. It's not essential to win Florida.

Paul, at this point, needs to focus his efforts on February 5 western states, which are more libertarian and where he'll find tons of delegates. Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma are all Ron Paul country with Ron Paul Republicans abound. Furthermore, the Northeast will be a prime area to target, as well, being that northeastern Republicans are less neocon and tend to be much more pro-civil liberties and anti-war. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine (which is a few days before, actually) are more states to add. If Giuliani is out of the race at this point (which I think there is a good chance he may be), then New York and New Jersey are well in play, for sure.

7. Beyond February 5, it's all a delegates game. If he can win the delegate count through March 4 (which is the day of the Texas, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Vermont primaries), then it's pretty safe to say that Ron Paul will be the 2008 Republican Party Nominee for President of the United States.

The odds are still long against him, I know. But they're increasing exponentially with every passing day, million raised, growth in poll numbers, and growth in grassroots support. This plan should take him where he needs to go from here to get it all.

I remember seeing on the House Scorecard that Melissa Bean scored VERY well (actually, in the corner of Conservative/Libertarian/Centrist, which is good). I've done some more research on her, and I see that she is in both the Blue Dog Democrat and New Democrat coalitions and is generally regarded as a centrist. On The Issues labels her a "Libertarian-leaning Liberal," although that site really does suck.

My question is: would you all (particularly FD) generally say that Ms. Bean is a libertarian?

Paul Krugman, once a respected trade theorist, has developed a well-known reputation for being an intellectually dishonest left-wing shill in recent years. His art of deception has been on full display throughout the year. First, there was the royal slandering of Milton Friedman and his monetary economics after his death (despite the fact that Krugman's expertise is in trade and has nothing to do with Friedman's field, although this hardly ever prevents him from dismissing the work of others with extreme arrogance and ignorance of relevant arguments, points, and evidence contrary to his claims), in response to which Nelson and Schwartz of the St. Louis Fed set the record straight.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2007/2007-048.pdf

Now, Krugman is smearing Ron Paul.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/the-unknown-ron-paul/

In this, Krugman discusses Ron Paul's opposition to Sarbanes-Oxley, and does so as if it was supposed to be a big shock to Ron's suppporters that he would be against it. But you have to skip down to the end to get to Krugman's biggest asshattery in the entry:

"Ron Paul, enemy of the Iraq war — and friend of corporate fraud?"

Firstly, this, like the rest of the blog entry, makes an assumption that liberals have been making about Ron Paul's support that, quite frankly, I am getting really Goddamned f***ing sick and tired of reading. This assumption is that the vast majority of Ron's support is coming from people who simply oppose the Iraq War and don't know anything else about his platform, as if no rational and clearly thinking person who researches libertarianism and Ron's platform could ever agree with much of it and decide to support him. This is an incredibly condescending assumption which only goes further in reflecting the repugnant condescension of liberal intellectuals toward all who approach the world from another viewpoint. Libertarianism claims scores of the most well-respected economists, philosophers, and intellectuals of a vast variety of fields in human history, and its ideas are some of the most important to the development of mankind. For liberals to dismiss and entire school of thought is both incredibly arrogant and hypocritical, since liberals claim themselves with pride to be the champions of tolerance and open-mindedness.

Secondly Krugman and other liberals have spent basically the entire tenure of the Bush Administration whining and bitching about simple, misleading black-and-white pronouncements serving to demonize people such as "If you're against the war, then you're against the troops and for al-Qaeda." For him here to resort to making the EXACT SAME argument about those who oppose SOX in order to denigrate them and label them as "friends" of corporate fraud, is hypocritical to mind-boggling proportions.

Krugman often tries to use his status as an economist to present himself and his arguments as unimpeachable. The truth is that the man has become nothing more than a left-wing ideological storm trooper who is out to denigrate all who disagree with his line and to assassinate their characters and credibility. He should be taken no more seriously than your token liberal blogger.

I've been sensing for a few months that the two candidates in the Republican field emerging in the field to prominence and headed for a showdown are our very own libertarian, Ron Paul, and the not-so-libertarian populist, Mike Huckabee. The Huckster apparently has sensed this for a while, too. First, he goes on The Colbert Report and speaks of Ron Paul as a potential darkhorse "threat." Next, he challenges Ron on the Iraq War during the latest Fox News debate in New Hampshire, obscuring the reality in Paul's comments by musing on about "honor" and "broken pottery." (Nevermind, Mike, that when you break enough things in the store to where you can't afford to pay for them anymore, it's better for everyone that you just leave; or that the only people whose honor is at stake in this are the neocons who sent us into this war, and there honor went out the window a long time ago and there's no justification for spending hundreds of billions more and getting more soldiers killed to try to salvage it. But I digress.)

Now, it seems like the Huckster isn't taking the news well that Paul owned his ass in fundraising and basically torpedoed his campaign. Courtesy of an audio interview with CBS News:

Interviewer: "You're a slim man in a slim race, but there's a difference between being slim and being starved. I was curious if you could comment on the headline today that Ron Paul raised 5 times more than you did."

Huckster: "Well, he has a certain sort of appeal to the Libertarians. They have no other candidate. The Republicans are divided up between 9 or 10 candidates. Libertarians have one guy, and they're fanatically loyal to him, but the fact that everywhere he goes there are dozens of people who show up and who have driven and who have traveled all over the country just to be there. I admire the kind of fervor that his campaign has created. But it's not a "Republican" crowd. It's essentially either a Libertarian and, in some cases, just an anti-war crowd. So, he's attracted a certain level of support, but it doesn't necessarily translate into that he's an electable candidate for President, in fact I would say anything but."

I will leave aside the obvious first observation from reading this, which is that Huckster, like all the other GOP candidates sans Ron and most Republicans in general, simply don't understand that the electability of a GOP nominee next year will as a first step require that that nominee be anti-Iraq War and favor pulling out.

The first glaring idiocy in this statement reminisces of the New Hampshire debate on Fox News last month, in which Ron and the Huckster went at it head-to-head on Iraq. I seem to remember the Huckster making a statement that went a little something like this:

"Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor, and that is more important to the Republican Party."

He was, of course, answering the (correct) assertion from Ron that if the Republican Party nominates a pro-Iraq War candidate, then they will lose next year. So the Huckster says that electability shouldn't matter as long as we continue to support the Iraq War... but now, all of the sudden, electability is the most vital thing to consider and that another candidate should be excluded from consideration by the party on these grounds? This is hypocrisy and stupidity at its grandest.

Secondly, he goes on about Paul's "lack" of electability... and yet he says that Libertarians and anti-war people aren't a "Republican" crowd? So what you're saying, Mike, is that only neocons and theocrats are welcome in the Republican Party? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always gotten the sense that excluding people from the party didn't really do a whole lot for the electability of said party or its candidates.

The Huckster trying his best to surpass Benito Giuliani as chief in my dog house. This guy is, quite simply, an ass on so many levels.

It seems Ron Paul supporters like myself just won't take a cue when it comes to "goals" for showing our level of support: the campaign tells us they want us to give them $500,000 in 7 days over the internet, and we give them $1,000,000 in six.

For those of you who don't know, the campaign started an end-of-the-quarter internet fundraising drive on Monday with the goal of raising $500,000 by Sunday, which would be $500,000 in one week. They hit $500,000 on Thursday afternoon, and tonight, they hit $1,000,000. With one more day to go, they could go quite a bit higher than that still; $1.5 million is a stretch, but there's no reason why they can't hit $1.25 million.

To put this number in perspective, the Edwards campaign launched an end-of-the-quarter drive on September 20th with the goal of raising $1,000,000 from then until the end of the quarter (Sunday). As of 1:00 PM Saturday, they were at just over $920K. It took Ron just six days to get to $1,000,000, the target that Edwards had for 10 days. (And I don't even know if he's even reached that by now.) Furthermore, the Huckabee campaign (which is the other "rising star" in the GOP field) had the goal of getting 2500 donors in September; as of middle of this week, they had 1500.

The fundraising for this quarter will certainly be higher than the $2.4 million it was last quarter. I obviously don't know all of the numbers, but based on the reports from specific fundraisers, and assuming a modest increase in average per-day take on non-special event days (i.e., no big fundraising event or internet drive), my friend's calculations (which I helped him with) put the total at $3.6 million. However, we both believe that the take will be higher than that; most of the people I have talked to who have run the numbers and done more sophisticated calculations have the number at $4 million, with the possibility of perhaps as much as $5 million. (Which would put him up with McCain, a scenario which isn't that unbelievable.) The campaign has been saying that if they were to reach their $500,000 mark for the week, they would get "$10 million worth in free publicity." This leads me to believe that they will announce a pretty impressive figure that will shock a lot of people. With the monumental success of this final week drive, I have had this somewhat confirmed.

The progress of the campaign is real, and every day Ron is becoming more and more of a threat for the nomination of the GOP.

Given that we are all libertarians here, and the only libertarian candidate for President in the race in either of the two parties is Ron Paul, I would just like to take a quick straw poll from here:

How many of the site are crossing party lines and supporting Ron's campaign?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0707/Ron_Paul_brings_back_a_whacky_post_911_bill.html

Paul has offered legislation (H.R. 3216) to authorize Bush to issue “letters of marquee and reprisal” to those private citizens or entities that want “to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of Osama bin Laden, of any al Qaeda co-conspirator, and of any conspirator with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda who are responsible for the air piratical aggressions and depredations perpetrated upon the United States of America on September 11, 2001,” or future attacks.

The clearly anti-Paul biased tone of the author aside, this is yet another reason why

a) Ron Paul needs to be our next President, and

b) why the Founding Fathers of the USandA (specifically James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution) were the greatest and most prophetic geniuses that western civilization have ever seen (and will ever see).

The US in its formative years faced non-state enemies just as prominent and active as the ones we face today, namely pirates. They understood that the best way to combat decentralized, non-state enemies was to use decentralized, non-state forces to bring them to justice, which would avoid entangling the United States armed forces in long and expensive commitments, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq today. In the War on Terror today, it is very hard for the CIA (and anyone with a paper trail to the CIA) to infiltrate al-Qaeda (partly because our human intelligence capalities eroded over the past 3 decades, but also because al-Qaeda is super careful over who they give access to; read Holy War, Inc. by Peter Bergen to get a sense of this). The people who are going to best able to get access to him and senior leadership of al-Qaeda are private, civilian entities (ex-CIA/Army, private mercenaries, bounty hunters, natives of the area, etc.).

If the US had followed the advice of the founders and Ron Paul in the aftermath of 9/11, bin Laden would not still be at large, and we would have saved close to $1 trillion in accumulated deficits (and much more in national debt). We would still have the world on our side instead of against us, and we could have taken the steps to fix our foreign policy in the Arab World so that we didn't create more terrorists as we have done post-WWII.