Last night, Ron Paul participated in the Republican Presidential debate broadcast on the Univision channel. Questions were ones of particular interest to the Latino population.

For most of the night, Ron Paul got huge cheers and even apparently a standing ovation at the end. But one answer he gave received lots of boos:

We should talk to Chavez. We talked to Stalin, Kruschev, and Mao. We’ve talked to
the whole world. Actually I believe we’re at a time where we ought to
talk to Cuba, open travel with Cuba, trade with Cuba. We create the
Castros and the Chavezes of this world by interfering and
creating chaos in their countries, and they respond by throwing out
their leaders.

Yes, he was booed for saying we should actually talk to Chavez! The thing is, the crowd was overwhelmingly supportive of him when he said to get out of Iraq, no nation building, etc. Either there’s some blind hypocrisy going on or it was the Giuliani Brigade again.

Paul mentioned Kruschev. One of the worst crises our country was in was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We came that close to nuclear war. The issue was Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from the US border in Florida, which was a response to our missiles next to the Soviet border in Turkey. How did Kennedy resolve this issue?

Contrary to what we were told in school (or, at least, what I was told in school–I’m a Cold War Kid, so maybe it’s not so propagandized now), Kennedy found the solution by agreeing to take down our missiles in Turkey, as well as agreeing not to invade Cuba, in exchange for the Soviet missiles being removed. It was the result of a lot of talking between Kennedy and Kruschev. Kennedy lost appeal with the Generals, who thought they should invade immediately (which would almost certainly have prompted a nuclear response), but ultimately it was the right choice, and the only one that could have worked.

In fact, as a direct result of this, a special telephone line was set up between Moscow and DC so that the two leaders could talk easily when they needed to.

The whole idea of just invading, fighting people you don’t like or don’t agree with, is taking the easy way out. It’s a lot harder to swallow your pride, admit that maybe you’ve made at least one or two missteps, and work to correct them for the sake of peace and prosperity. It’s people who don’t have the strength to do that who resort to force and military might.

Yes, that means they’re cowards. Let me be clear: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and all the rest of them are cowards–doubly so because of the precious liberties they have infringed and want to continue infringing. Only Ron Paul, like Kennedy before him, has shown himself to have the true strength of character we need to make this country safe and secure, at peace, while still preserving the freedoms we cherish.

That’s why we need him in the White House. That’s why no one else will do.

We all know about the war crimes our current administration has been committing, most recently with “waterboarding,” which, despite their Orwellian description of it as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” is torture, and has been determined to be so by every war crimes tribunal who has examined the subject. The Japanese military and government were prosecuted for waterboarding at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Nothing has changed.

And as I’ve blogged about before, habeas corpus is so important that, without it, you have no other rights.

Now, Ron Paul has introduced HR 3835: The American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007, “To restore the Constitution’s checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.” This bill will restore the checks and balances dismantled by Congress and the Bush Administration, restore habeas corpus, reject torture, challenge the constitutionality of presidential signing statements, and many other reversals of violations of our basic liberties.

Now for the outrageous part: this bill has no cosponsors whatsoever. Not one. And there is no corresponding bill in the Senate.

You should be angry. You should be outraged. You should contact your representatives and demand that they cosponsor this bill. You can easily do so here.

Also, since most of the presidential candidates are members of Congress, if you support one of them, write to them and demand that they cosponsor this bill if they’re in the House, or introduce a similar bill if they’re a Senator.

Do this especially if they’re talking about impeachment. As I’ve also blogged about before, it’s kind of convenient that the Democrats have waited to do this now that impeaching Bush & Cheney will put a Democrat in the White House. But to be in favor of impeachment but not be for this bill? What’s the point in impeaching Bush and Cheney if the horrible acts infringing our liberty continue?

I’ve heard talk of a vote of “no confidence” for members of Congress who don’t support impeachment. Maybe the vote of “no confidence” should be for those who don’t support this bill.

These are our basic liberties. It’s the Constitution 101. It’s their oath of office.

If they don’t support it, maybe they should be thrown out along with the President.

Why is traffic so bad? The one-word answer is “government.” The three-word solution is “the free market.” Here is libertarian Drew Carey with ReasonTV explaining why:

USAElectionPolls.com has an article about how unfair and unequal the Republican debates have been, unfairly giving more time to the ones the media has been declaring the “frontrunners”:

The justification given for this is that the voters are to see those
candidates with a legitimate shot at winning the nomination, something
that is measured by polling data and fundraising numbers. So before we
get into the polling data and the fundraising numbers, let’s see how
much each of the candidates were allowed to speak.

Our methodology for this is actually quite fool-proof. We take a
transcript of the debate and parse each of the words spoken at the
debate and count who spoke how many words…

Each of those candidates fall in line with about where they stand in
the polls and in fundraisinig. Well, except for Ron Paul. He spoke the
least of all the candidates. Now, we are not going to go so far as to
say he should get as much time as Romney or Giuliani–although it
would be fair if all the candidates spoke the same amount of time.

But we will claim it irresponsible of CNBC to censor Ron Paul to the
point that he spoke the least of every candidate including Tancredo,
Hunter, and Brownback.

They then elucidate the completely objective measures they use to make that case (emphases mine):

Ron Paul raised $5 million dollars. This translates to REAL support
and REAL people that want to hear his message. Ron Paul’s fundraising
numbers were comparable to John McCain. Mike Huckabee was only able to
garner about $1 million dollars…Ron Paul is sitting at double
digits among moderates in New Hampshire and and at 8% in Michigan (the
state in which this debate took place). And the Republican party is
doing a disservice if they try to silence the moderate voice. Read our
article on "Ron Paul Surging in the Polls Among Moderates"…Ron Paul has won 15 straw polls (USAStrawPolls.com)
nationwide, more than Huckabee, Hunter, Tancredo, Brownback combined!
Heck we could even add John McCain to that list and Ron Paul would have
beaten them all…He has more monthly visitors to his campaign website than any of the
other candidates–including the top tier. The graph is going up, yet
more signs of a surge.

It would be even more impressive if they had considered the source of the money raised, the support garnered, and how the money was spent. For example, he didn’t have to buy his victory in the straw polls like Mitt Romney. All he had to do was show up.

They give an example of the blatant bias:

The biggest evidence of such blatant censorship of Ron Paul came when
Rudy Giuliani challenged Ron Paul by name saying “Where was he on
9/11?”…When a candidate is addressed by name it is only
common courtesy to give him time for a rebuttal. Nope, they did not
even give him the courtesy of standing amongst the candidates–always
at the edge and having the least amount of speaking time.

Yeah, because Giuliani’s probably remembering how badly he got schooled when Dr. Paul had the chance to speak in response to him. Paul’s assertions are backed up by the evidence and the experts agree with him. Giuliani can’t make that claim.

What’s the big problem with simply giving all of the candidates equal time, and allowing them to respond when addressed by name? Or is that too much equality and fairness for the big parties and corporations who want to keep gaming the system?

In 2004, Libertarian Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik raised a little over $1 million for the entire election cycle. Now, Ron Paul has raised the same amount in a week, all from grassroots supporters, with the same Libertarian message–but with a lot more national attention.

Now do you see why they work so hard to keep Libertarians off the ballot? Now do you see why they try to exclude us from the debates and marginalize us in the media? Dr. Paul has experienced this; several Republicans said he shouldn’t be in the debates, the mainstream press still calls him a marginal candidate (when by any objective measurement he’s the frontrunner of frontrunners), and Sean Hannity still claims his support comes from a few online “spammers.”

They don’t believe this. They never believed this. They know full well the truth, which should be obvious to anyone by now: Libertarians are a threat. We’re a threat to big government and corporations who have been sucking off the teat of the people for far too long now. But when people are exposed to the Libertarian message in a forum where the voice is given equal time, look what happens.

One million dollars in one week–all from regular voters, without one penny of big corporate or special interest money.

The Ron Paul Revolution is happening…regardless of whether or not it’ll be televised.

As I’ve blogged about before, traffic engineers are starting to doubt the effectiveness of traffic lights. First, the town of Drachten in the Netherlands experienced great success with removing their traffic lights; now, Bohmte, Germany is doing the same thing:

From September 12, all traffic controls will disappear from
the center of the western town of Bohmte to try to reduce
accidents and make life easier for pedestrians.

In an area used by 13,500 cars every day, drivers and
pedestrians will enjoy equal right of way, Klaus Goedejohann,
the town’s mayor, told Reuters.

"Traffic will no longer be dominant," he said.

This is following on the success in Drachten:

Monderman’s ideas have already been implemented in the town
of Drachten in the north of the Netherlands, where all stop
lights, traffic signs, pavements, and street markings have
gone.

"It’s been very successful there," Goedejohann said, adding
that accidents in Drachten had been reduced significantly.

But then, of course, there are those who want to cling to the old ways, fearful of change and progress:

"Just because it worked in the Netherlands doesn’t mean it
will work here," said Werner Koeppe, a road specialist at
Berlin’s Technical Traffic Institute.

Gee, how often have we heard that before? And I’ll bet you anything that’s what the politicians here in America will say the same thing when it comes time to try the initiative here.

One more expression to watch out for whenever you hear a politician utter it–it’s almost never true. Yes, there are cultural differences, but human behavior isn’t that different.