It makes perfect sense. With Rand Paul in charge, government will be cut down in all areas, until all that's left of the "United States" of America will be a single man holding down the fort. Please, please elect Rand Paul the next United States of America.

Hilarious!!!
Love the Rand Paul shirts all through the crowd that they had to avoid with his camera like the plague, the 'when will this be over' look on most of their faces, the 'I'm going to ask you to break a rule' from the law and order candidate, the 'just text your information to my secret info-grab computer for my later use because I'm the transparency and privacy candidate', the insinuation that a president can erase legislation day one with the swipe of a pen (but Obama can't make any executive decisions including treaties without congress' pre-aproval or he's "over-reaching his authority and abusing executive powers"), the 'imagine' speech from someone with an insanely limited imagination, and the attempt at being president by this Canadian!

Show me the birth certificate!!! If being born in Kenya to a non-citizen father would have made a whit of legal difference for Obama, then actually being born in Canada as a naturalized Canadian to a Cuban father should disqualify him...explain how that's not true please. ;-)

For any red staters...keep in mind that this smarmy socialist Canadian (he just denounced his Canadian citizenship-and trying to tell people they must fully support another individual financially and with their bodies (forced continued pregnancies) is insanely super socialist) for'nur is trying to infiltrate our gubmn't...HE'S TAKIN ER JERBS!

Had to upvote for the hilarity of his 'announcement'...not as support for him.

That rip on Rand Paul was awesome -- thing of beauty!

Blah blah blah, and your point is what?

Nope, my shit is deadly stinky....but your think is incredibly shitty.

Once again, anyone not to the right of Rand Paul is a 'liberal' to you...and that's a dirty word to you too. It must be a terrifying notion that there are so many 'liberals' out there trying to destroy the nation, nearly everyone by that standard.

Why am I winning a Darwin Award now? Do you even know what they are?

So sad, dumb, and completely wrong your final statement is. You might be surprised to learn I never have voted for Obama....but I'm guessing you wish we were in GW's fourth term, or Cheney's second.
Oh Bob....

Gruber is a type of statist identified in a cartoon. Obama too, and pretty much most of the liberal elite. The people are too stupid to rule themselves so the elite must trick or force them into submission. For their own good, of course. Gruber doesn't even care to hide it. If Republicans really wanted to, they could repeal Obamacare. But do they really want to? They would have to wait until next election and get 60 Senators. And maybe elect Rand Paul.

Rand was certainly not a great writer (as is often the case with those who write novels in a language that isn't native to them). As such, there's no comparison between Rand's use of English and say, Dickens' (but you could probably say that about Dickens and almost anyone else, John Oliver included. And Harry Potter isn't much better than The Fountainhead! Or most popular fiction for that matter.)
I doubt most of Oliver's audience have read Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamzov, or The Sound and the Fury. I doubt Oliver's fans are any more "intellectual" or well-read than Rand's, quite honestly.

But Rand didn't even believe in small government. Just limited government. She was certainly no anarchist. John Galt was, perhaps, but not Rand. (The character is not the author.) Both Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand learned from Ludwig Von Mises, and they took what they learned in very different directions.

Yet, most of Oliver's audience probably haven't even read Rand and she's hardly that much of a contemporary topic worth talking about.. So why would Oliver (HBO) want to spend valuable broadcast time talking about her? She wouldn't be a "thing" if they chose to ignore it, and yet they aren't. Why? Might this bit be (the $beneficiary of those who are) uneasy with a potential Rand Paul presidential run, thus needing a straw man with which to link him with "libertarians" and Ayn Rand?

All this "OMG Rand!" going around, and yet her work continues to stick around long after she's gone.. And will likely remain so, given ^programs^ (and commenters) like this and their unwillingness to let it go.

I'd be wary of trusting Rand Paul as a so-coined-by-media, 'Libertarian'.His father has distanced himself from him, he used underhanded threat-tactics when questioned by an independent reporter for RT recently(Abby Martin), he's a bought and sold team-player being groomed for yet another puppet-regime primary.
He's seems a solid prick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg0RYAP2cs

As "The Captive Mind" posits that the primary means of ensuring compliance from "the people" is not propaganda, but physical coercion. The state does not 'reason' or 'debate' with non-compliance. 'Students' are forced to go to school and learn the 'official' version of history, for example (home schooling aside), and accept it (i.e., the hierarchical "binge-purge" model of education in which regurgitation of ossified narratives is valued more highly than any independent or creative thought).

Propaganda serves as post-facto justification in order to give people some way to rationalize what goes on around them. This helps to allow the threat of violence to suffice as a means of maintaining control without the state having to resort to actual violence, in most cases.

In one of Stefan's other videos, he calls professional licensure a dog collar that you're forced wear. He calls modern folks 'free-range slaves'. The 'human farms,' as he calls states, are run by 'farmers' who have realized that free-range slaves are more productive than those kept in a more strict captivity. (And it undoubtedly is better for for everyone than the slavery-of-old.) He says that allowing a few slaves escape here and there creates a desired illusion of freedom. One could argue about the accuracy of Stefan's ideas, but I don't find that as useful as simply accepting it as Stefan's own aesthetic/philosophical position, or his worldview, and understanding it or interpreting it as you would for say, any other artist/philosopher. This brings to mind the understanding that the 1% consists mostly of "human farmers" (i.e., kleptocrats and cronies) and other escaped 'slaves'.

It seems that folks who tend to take issue with my comments here (@enoch, @ChaosEngine, @newtboy, @Taint, among others) have taken on the recent swell of anti-"libertarian" rhetoric as their own (particularly the more tabloid-like forms of it).

That's not as important to me as the question of why there seems to be so much media attention given to these ideas of late? I think it may have to do with setting the stage for opposing a possible 2016 presidential run by Rand Paul (who has already been 'branded' as a 'libertarian' by opponents of both parties).* Or it may have to do with how technology (particularly in the Bay Area, where I live, but certainly in other places as well) is increasingly making individuals less reliant on the state, more self-sufficient, and more able to access the information they need to recognize their status as a serf, and/or plan their means of escape from the 'farm'.

*I guess the media cares less about an "ideological war" against "libertarianism" than they do about crafting a practical strategy of electoral politics. Hence their insistence in conflating conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and even anarchists (which couldn't be more dissimilar at their core).

To put Edward Snowden and CHELSEA Manning on the same list as Ted Nugent, Ted Cruz, Jesse Ventura, Ayn Rand, Ron and Rand Paul, Alex Jones, and Wesley Clark is the biggest fucking joke I can imagine.

Those two are to be respected for their service to the American People and the Constitution. Those morons on that list don't belong in the same universe as Edward and Chelsea.

Downvoted before I even watched it because of your retarded list.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'buy, shotgun, flying robots, joe biden, vice president, jill, two blasts, rand paul' to 'joe biden, vice president, jill, two blasts, rand paul, songify the news 3, schmoyoho' - edited by calvados

@dag - What I like best about your comment is that you present constructive criticism, while the rest of the media, government and public are preparing the tar and feathers.

I'm frustrated by the way we focus on personality and ignore the systemic nature of these kinds of issues. Once we tar and feather Obama, the next president will find herself/himself in need of effective national security measures and will likely go along with whatever the NSA thinks is best. Hillary is Stalin! Rand Paul is Hitler! Rinse and repeat. This is part of the reason why nothing ever seems to get done.

As an aside, I've certainly been on the offensive side of these crusades with Bush, McCain, Hillary and Romney, so this newish perspective is something of an epiphany. Not to say I didn't voice legitimate gripes, but I took cheap shots aplenty.

In short, I'm probably feeling what the rest of the world has long known, that Americans are immature, aggressive and completely unproductive in the way we manage their civic affairs, and it's not going to stop till we wise up.

(So just give up)


Anyway.....

I don't think you can go more "right" than taking one's due process away from an American citizen. I'm a progressive Independent that hates the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party almost as much. I applaud Rand Paul for this stance. Bravo.

Your video, TYT - Drone Strikes - Is Rand Paul a Constitutional Hero?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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>> ^MrFisk:

But does a flood start before or after it rains?
Flood starts with the 1st rain drop.

>> ^Januari:

THIS is why nothing works in government... this kind of BS wasting of time.


this is actually government working

what isn't working is that after being elected, less than 30% of their actual time is spent doing what people voted them in for, the rest of the time is spent meeting with corporate/special interest groups and fundraising, basically making sure that in the future, re-election is assured

government is broken because of outside money, nothing else