Sunday July 6, 2008, 3:20 am
How odd! "The poor guy raised tens of millions of dollars and couldn't afford the $300-$600 a month that COBRA medical insurance would have cost." The idea is good, but sadly, our country needs A LOT to get there. ~

Sunday July 6, 2008, 7:41 am
Thanks for this interesting and informative post, Mark.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 10:55 am
Very odd indeed. Well, i'll ask the question nobody seems to want to ask. Did "they " kill him? No, he died of pnuemonia uninsured, lol. Thx Mark!

Sunday July 6, 2008, 1:28 pm

Serge wrote: Did "they " kill him? No, he died of pnuemonia uninsured...

Those of us who believe that the reason we are the only industrialized nation in the world without a national health care plan, is because our fascist government doesn't want a healthy citizenry and couldn't care less if we live or die, believe that it was our government's health care policy that killed him, Serge, the same way it kills many other uninsured Americans every day.

You can kill somebody through violence, but you can also kill them through neglect, by refusing to provide them with food, shelter, health care, and other necessities of life. If he had been a dog or a cat, Care2 would be up in arms over the failure to take him to a vet when he was ill, that resulted in his needless death.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 8:29 pm
Agreed Mark ,however, that applys to your regular person. Paul has been a thorn in their side this election, so they might of hit his moneyman to slow him down and send a message..I guess we will never know for sure, its all just pure speculation at this point.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 9:11 pm

I never saw Ron Paul as a thorn in anyone's side, Serge.

I think of Congress, which has at best 25% approval from American voters, as a con game, and like any good con game it needs shills. Since Congress has control of trillions of dollars for defense and corporate contracts, it can afford the best shills in the business.

Back when Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich first announced, I explained it to people who weren't familiar with con games this way:

Imagine some pug-ugly thugs who make a living by hitting people over the head in a dark alley and taking their money. The only problem they have is that most people don't go into dark alleys and certainly wouldn't willingly follow thugs into dark allies. So the thugs hire a shill. The shill is a well-dressed, intelligent, charming person, who seems to be more trustworthy than God. People happily follow the shill into the dark alley, the thugs hit them over the head, take their money, and then give the shill his cut.

Since very few people approve of the Democrats or the Republicans, they each have a designated shill. The shill opposes everything their party stands for, supports everything that American voters want, and appears to be more trustworthy than God. But before the election, every single time, the shills have dropped out and thrown their support to their party's nominee. That's their job and they're darned good at it.

So yes, Serge, it is just speculation on my part, and I'm frequently wrong about lots of things, but I've seen this one play out so many times that I can predict it every four years without worrying. Sometimes I call it the old bait-and-switch. It is certainly more predictable than my cheap wristwatch.

Anyway, I never saw Ron Paul as a thorn in anyone's side. He attracted voters and the military-industrial complex and the big multinationals that rule this country want people to vote so that they can claim to have been democratically elected and that they have the consent of the people.

Since most of us are opposed to torture, war crimes, job outsourcing, pollution, and banking deregulation, unless the political parties had shills, they would find it very difficult to get people to vote. Only about half of eligible voters even bother.

Anyway, that's how I see things.

Sunday July 6, 2008, 11:28 pm
Bloody hell that's miserable. Well, the only thing I disagreed with Ron Paul about (other than his continued membership of the Republican Party which is no more or less distasteful to me than Kucinich's continued membership of the Dems) was universal health care.

Maybe this wretched irony will make him look and think again about the need to balance individual freedom with responsibility to and for one another through, for instance, universal health care. (Then we just need to get him to sign up for the No Vote movement and the New government take back of power and we're off to a good start.)

Monday July 7, 2008, 5:34 pm
Very well put, Mark, very well put indeed! That makes alot of sense, thx!