Sometimes The Gadfly simply has to let loose with a hearty guffaw at the asininity and nearly comical lack of self (not to mention wider societal) awareness that the right wing conservatives frequently display.
Case in point - "Libertardian" hero Ron Paul had this to say re: the Boston Marathon bombing:
“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” Paul, a Texas Republican, wrote today on the website of the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/ron-paul-boston-comments-90737.html#ixzz2RsdzewRw
Read it through slowly two or three times and then tell The Gadfly if you suddenly had a "what's wrong with this picture" feeling rumble through your brain.
If you are still pondering it - here - let The Gadfly give you a hand.
Mr. Paul, quite frankly, simply does not know what the fuck he is talking about - and here's why.
"The Boston Bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation . . ." Stop right there. It was a police investigation - period. From the moment of the explosion through the moment the Boston PD had a shootout with the suspects killing one of them, through the moment the Boston PD conducted house to house searches in the neighborhoods around the area of that shooting (not the entire city), and up to the final moment when the Boston PD captured the second suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev hiding out in a boat in that same residential area they were searching.
The Federal government's involvement came in to play the moment that everyone agreed that it was a terrorist attack and the Boston Mayor and the Massachusetts Governor performed their due diligence and enlisted their aid. And lest the right wingers forget - let us all recall exactly how it came to be that the response to terror attacks on U.S. soil came to be under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and the Department of Homeland Security:
In response to the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush announced the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to coordinate "homeland security" efforts. The office was headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who assumed the title of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. The official announcement stated:
| “ | The mission of the Office will be to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The Office will coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.[12] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security
So - there you have one Ron Paul misinformed piece of dreck cleanly dispensed with. Let us continue.
Mr. Paul goes on mumble:
"This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."
First off - The Gadfly believes Ron Paul and his goggle-eyed groupie fans ought to learn the definition of the word "unprecedented." The Bush Administration's response to their failure to protect America from the 9/11 attacks were unprecedented (you can your start reading here should you care to learn why --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._government_response_to_the_September_11_attacks).
Alternately - the Obama Administration, in the case of the Boston attack, simply followed Bush's Homeland Security edict to assert jurisdiction over terror attacks on U.S. soil - which is exactly what they did on the heels of the Boston Police Department's investigation and efforts to identify and capture the suspects. That is not really unprecedented at all.
The Gadfly, however, would like to take this silly, no nothing quote a step further though. For the sake of argument, let us agree that the Obama Administration's role was indeed "unprecedented." If Mr. Paul, whose acolytes view him as some kind of political and constitutional genius, had the ability to reflect and analyze the larger picture of what is going on in American society today that might cause local, state and Federal law enforcement agencies to react with investigative actions of the kind that "frighten" Mr. Paul, perhaps The Gadfly would not feel compelled to write a post like this one which calls Mr. Paul's comprehension of the subject matter at hand in to belligerent question.
The Gadfly is referring to the reality that America, thanks solely to the boneheaded Ron Pauls and the NRA and the right wing gun goons and the idiot Teabaggers and an amalgamation of other wrongheaded conservative clowns, is directly responsible for law enforcement authorities having to deal with a country that is fucking insanely awash in military combat weapons in the hands of god knows what kind of lunatics at disparate ends of the political and religious spectrum. These same unthinking dip-shits are also responsible for consistently working to defeat sensible congressional legislation that makes the job of securing the U.S. homeland from terror attacks and mass shootings an easier task for the dedicated and brave professionals whom we have put our collective faith in when it comes to protecting us from evil.
So to sum up - Ron Paul is an idiot. He always has been and the few policy views that he does have which The Gadfly agrees with, do not make up for the empirically arrived at conclusion that the man and his myriad conspiracy theories, and his ingrained inability to see the larger picture of what reality-based life in America truly is like in the year 2013 -- much less what it will be like years beyond.
----TFG
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