Here we go again

I watch political and economic news with the hope of finding trends and preparing for them. I am also active on political issues and place bets (investments) on economic beliefs. I have been trying to make a buck and protect myself, in other words.

What I have noticed is a startling ignorance everywhere. This is unsurprising, given that the average person does not have the information nor the time to discover the information. I am, right now, avoiding work I ought to be doing to write this, for instance.

This ignorance is abetted by the constant barrage of information and disinformation in the various media. Some of this has been improved on the internet, if people are willing to correlate sources. However, the internet has also enabled anyone to post without doing adequate fact checking, as in this blog, where we strive to high-quality guesses. Of course, real news hacks seldom fact check anymore.

As a matter of fact, 'news' is often nothing more than whatever the AP, UPI, etc., are running. Other 'news' often is loaded with the reporter's bias, his editor's bias, and the blinders of the expected target audience. The reasons for this are myriad. Quite often, the reporter thinks he/she has a burden to improve the lot of mankind. Quite often, news media have financial pressures to respond to. Quite often the group the media is targeted to and responds to is insular. It is not necessarily clear that a given piece is a 'hit piece'.

I have made no secret about being a Ron Paul supporter. I have his yard signs. I am not quite aligned with him, I being anarcho-capitalist and he Republican paleo-conservative, but we're going the same direction right now. Nobody else except Dennis Kucinich appears to be even remotely close to where I stand, at least from the two major parties. If Ron Paul does not make it, I shall vote Libertarian as I have the last few elections, unless he runs third party or independent.

That being said, I obviously do not believe the years old newsletters are any big deal. Some of it is offensive, no doubt, but several people I've read have indicate that much of the stuff is out of context, much of the stuff is not that offensive, and all of it was not written by Ron Paul. Oh, well. I don't really care. At this point, a racist, offensive person who is capable of reigning in the federal excess is superior to a nuanced, careful politician who will only make things worse. With politicians, we have to pick and choose, looking for politicians that have what we need. That is why I support Ron Paul.

To me, however, it is interesting the amount of effort and ink being expended attacking Ron Paul's character, not on any real issues, but on some old newsletters. Then there is the insular nature of most Republican and Democrat communities, where someone says a half-truth and the megaphone of the discussion groups turns it into a lie. The most amazing untruths are being parroted as if so, such that Ron Paul is a socialist/leftist/statist that I just read at one of the emptier sites, an assertion that was left unchallenged due to the site restricting posting to members only.

I will close by simply saying that people need to determine what they wish to see in a government, then pursue that through their only means, voting. To do this, the voter must understand how a candidate actually stands on the issues. Otherwise, we, as a nation, risk being led by painted faces right down the garden path to servitude.