A Gold Standard Today Would be Idiotic

I have talked to some Ron Paul supporters and some left-wing Democrats lately who seem to think that a commodity based currency is preferable to our current state of free-floating exchange rates. The argument against the most popular plan, a Gold Standard (or a Silver Standard) is simple enough to be a bumper-sticker; America's wealth comes from the minds of Americans, not from the ground of America. That is not completely true, we certainly sell base commodities across the globe. Yet most of our wealth has been and will continue to be derived from further processing commodities at all levels and from the amorphous intellectual properties that spring from the minds of so many Americans.

The Gold Standard was a real bonus for America during the decade following the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, Ca. The more gold that was dug out of the ground the wealthier America was in comparison to other nations. This episode ended with the Panic of 1857 that was exacerbated by the sinking of the "Gold Ship", the SS Central America, a ship sinking that cost America 30,000 lbs. of gold worth of wealth. In all fairness concerning the 1857 Panic, the end of the Crimean War and the end of the concurrent speculative excesses set off the economic turmoil. The collapse in grain prices spread the pain throughout our then rural economy.

As a local aside the Crimean War and the American Civil War were very important factors in turning the Chicago Board of Trade from largely a local business organization to a local business organization that also featured grain trading (later to exclusively feature grain trading and then, over a century later, financial futures). The need for grain during those two wars combined with Chicago's location as the terminus of the growing railroads that reached out onto the plains and it's home on the edge of the Great Lakes turned the Chicago River in what is now downtown Chicago into the world's grocery store.

This post only touches on the problems of a commodity based currency but it does feature a central argument, that we no longer dig our wealth from the ground.

I Know a Ron Paul Fundraiser...

...and boy does he fit the mold. A mutual friend informed me that the guy had become a "substantial" fund raiser for America's Crazy Uncle, Ron Paul. This should not have taken me by surprise but I didn't realize that the guy in question was at all political. The news should not have taken me by surprise because although the man is a nice guy and I enjoy his company he can be a nutcase. Although I could write an entire post on his foolish actions I will only mention one eight day period, on one Friday afternoon he was arrested for public drunkenness after throwing-up on a Chicago Policewoman at the Taste of Chicago, the following Friday afternoon he was arrested for exposing himself on the EL after leaving the Taste of Chicago. Obviously beer was involved. As mentioned above I could go on and I could even include funny photos but I believe that the above eight days should suffice.

When our mutual friend was telling me that news on the trading floor a guy with a Ron Paul button overheard us and started going on about how Ron Paul was going to set us free or some such nonsense. However the kicker was when he announced with a flourish that when Ron Paul "gets elected" that they will "blow-up that building across the street!" Well the building across the street from the Chicago Board of Trade is the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (I don't think that he was referring to the Union League Club of Chicago) and he wants it blown up because Ron Paul and his supporters have been advocating junking the Federal Reserve System and going on some sort of gold standard. The Ron Paul supporter went on to say that "they have been ripping us off!" The gold standard is something that must make sense to economically unsophisticated people as those are the only ones who seem to advocate it. I have yet to meet a Ron Paul supporter whom I could respect but maybe there is one out there.

Ron Paul is the Worst of America

I have taken Ron Paul and his followers to task on this blog for being idiotic. My take on the Paul folks has been nothing compared to Andrew Walden's over at the American Thinker. In an interesting and well researched article Walden mauls Paul over his campaign's ties to American neo-nazis and other unsavory types. I have taken Ron Paul to task over the fact that he has been making common cause with those 9/11 truther idiots, those fools are part and parcel to the nazi clowns that Paul has been attracting. Walden takes Paul to task for not even attempting to rid his campaign of the stench of those bigots. Walden has a great exchange between the Lone Star Times and the Ron Paul National Communications Manager concerning a donation from a white supremest, at the time of writing the Paul idiots kept the dirty money.

This week was the first time that I have seen any outward support for Ron Paul here in Chicago, on Monday I saw a Jeep with a Ron Paul bumper sticker and also on Monday I saw some kid who is an exchange clerk who had a Ron Paul button on his jacket. Remember, Chicago is as "blue state" as any blue state city gets. I have been writing on this blog that Ron Paul is in the wrong party, little did I know that he could be in the Nazi Party.

Ron Paul - Still Crazy?

What kind of question is that? On this blog I have repeatedly stated that I do not hold Ron Paul or his supporters in very high esteem but Jay Tea over at Wizbang has a great post today (with the fantastic title Still Crazy After All These Years) on an interview with the Libertarian Presidential candidate that he conducted while in college during the 1988 campaign. You guessed it, the candidate was none other than Ron Paul himself. Like Jay Tea, I too agree with some of the Paul positions from back in the day and like Mr. Tea I do not believe that many of the ideas are implementable nor do I feel that Rep. Paul has the ability to carry them out. It is very noticeable that Mr. Paul has not changed his rhetoric during the past 19 years, his followers however did not have the 9/11 Truther nonsense to babble on about.

Barry Manilow - Barely Man Enough

When I started writing this blog if I had been told that someday I would write about Barry Manilow I would have laughed out loud, yet here I am writing about Barry Manilow. Any white guy who grew up in the '70s with sisters is well aware of the sappy stylings of Mr. Manilow and surely like myself, they also hope that they never hear the strains of "Mandy", ever again. My sisters do not watch the View (that I know of) but surely somebody's sisters are watching because Mr. Manilow has been on the View twice and he would have appeared again this morning except that Manilow refused to appear on stage with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the View's lone conservative. That is just utterly pathetic. Do you think that Mr. Manilow believes that conservatives also cut themselves off from others due to political beliefs? That would really make for a lonely life here in Chicago and frankly, the rest of America.

Michelle Malkin has a great post on the kerfuffle and she has linked to Mr. Manilow's recent political donations, max contributions to: Ewards, Obama, Clinton, Biden and get this, a max contribution to Ron Paul last summer. Bipartisan indeed!

Hat Tip: Dean Barnett at the Hugh Hewitt Townhall blog, check out the video Dean linked to in that post!

Update: Many Thanks to the wonderful Dr. Sanity for inclusion in her Carnival of Insanities again this week.

Ron Paul is an Idiot

Ron Paul (R-Tx) is on O'Reilly right now, what a moron. He just brought up the past American history in the Mid-East and he apparently wants to repeat the mistakes of the past. He is enamored of the "we supported Sadam" argument without realizing that he is suggesting that we leave Iran alone, thus essentially supporting that tyrannical dictatorship. Thanks Ron. Good idea, let's support dictators to make some people feel comfortable. The man is a loon who is the wrong party.

Ron Paul, Just as Ignorant as Kucinich

Yesterday afternoon the House of Representatives voted on a resolution calling on the UN to sanction Iran over their illegal nuclear weapons program that they are using to menace their neighbors. Only two idiots were dumb enough to vote against this resolution, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX), two dim bulbs who are running for President in their respective parties. I wonder what the wacky "Paul-Bats" think of this latest bit of intellect from their pathetic little hero. The resolution stated the following:

"Calling on the United Nations Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the United Nations Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel"

Whatever is wrong with Ron Paul and his followers could probably be helped by a good psychiatrist and the logical move on to the Democratic Party.

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs.

Paul-Bat Found in Chicago

The Chicago Sun Times has printed a Letter to the Editors (their crappy web site won't show the Letters section despite having a link to it on the home page) from a 22 year-old Ron Paul supporter from Wheaton, IL. named Ted Bodine. The "title" in the Letters section is "Censoring Ron Paul threatens democracy; How are young people today supposed to get excited about politics?" Mr. Bodine is miffed at Mr. Paul's lack of support from the press. Mr. Bodine watched the CNN coverage of the Republican debate in Manchester, NH and was shocked at the fact that Congressman Paul got such little face time and that he was not even discussed in the post-debate coverage. Mr. Bodine went on to write that he visited a CNN message board that was dominated by his fellow Paul-Bats who had also run up the Ron Paul score in an online poll. Mr. Bodine also wrote that the message board that had been overwhelmed by Paul-Bats was later taken down by CNN and he described such an action as "censorship".

First off, Mr. Bodine needs a better education, "censorship" generally involves the government not a private enterprise like CNN. I might add that I find it shocking to defend the likes of CNN but Mr. Bodine is simply wrong on this issue, CNN may not show the Ron Paul scrum but it's not as if those Paul-Bats do not have other public outlets for their craziness. Secondly, as any reader of Charles Johnson's fantastic blog Little Green Footballs knows, the Paul supporters have been overwhelming the thoroughly unscientific internet polls to give the impression that Mr. Paul has wide spread support. The actual (ahem) scientific polls consistently show Mr. Paul as the consummate also-ran with less than 1% support. The rigging of polls has included multiple hits from the same servers that only vote for Paul. It has gotten so bad that Johnson of Little Green Footballs has included Ron Paul as a choice in numerous polls including this one from last Monday that asked "Should the Bush administration lift sanctions against the terrorists of the Fatah party?" The choices are Yes, No, Undecided and Ron Paul. Mr. Paul is currently running second with 28% of the "vote".

The fact that the Sun Times printed this half-page of nonsense gives me the impression that the editors at the Sun Times are unaware of what and who surrounds the Paul candidacy or that they want undermine the actual Republican Party by making it falsely appear that this nut-case Ron Paul has wide support in the Party. Considering that the Sun Times is an average newspaper (with a great Sports section!) in this uber blue state city I would lean towards the later with a good strong dose of the former. The silly part of all of this is that Ron Paul is in the wrong party; the guy has made common cause with the 9/11 truther nuts who believe that Bush had something to with 9/11, a nutty idea that just happens to be a Democratic cause.

For More on the nutty Ron Paul and the crazy people who are supporting his candidacy see this list of Little Green Football entries on Mr. Paul.