An Old Article From The Medium (circa 2003)

A Celebration
By Right-Wing Larry

As you may have known, the Liberal Rutgers University has disbanded an infamous file-sharing network. Why is such a seemingly harmless file-sharing network being destroyed? The answer, you simplistic terrorist-sympathizing liberals, is that not only can these file-sharing programs allow local welfare cheats, bums and pacifists to share liberal, drug-fueled, blasphemous music over the internet such as the Beatles and Johnny Cash; it is also used by Al-Qaeda and their supporters such as the Democratic Party to channel sensitive information and terrorist plans amongst themselves. What is even worse is that these file-sharing programs are used to share pornography, which is an affront to our only true Christian God, promotes pagan values, and attacks our great Western Civilization.

What is so wrong with sharing files among friends? Well, for one thing you misguided liberal idiot, those artists and filmmakers worked hard to produce the trash that you idiots download. Hey liberal bitches, they worked hard, they deserved their tax rebate, why support bums and dirty terrorists by file sharing? Too bad those idiot Democrats do not care about the dangers of file sharing and are being Un-American by not supporting the Patriotic PATRIOT ACT. Besides, the Democratic Party does not listen to Asians or Whites; they only care about liberals, Blacks, Mexicans, Iraqis, bums, hippies, and terrorists. Nevertheless, enough about the stupid Democrats and let’s talk about a true patriot.

The Patriot I am referring about is not our Blessed Commander-in-Chief George Walker Bush, who will be reelected and capture Osama Bin Laden, but a great man as discussed by the Great Daily Targum who wished to preserve his right conservative views in our ignorant, liberal university. As a dedicated college Republican, my hero was first alarmed that such a file-sharing network existed and attempted to reason with the network hosts to stop this blatant violation of our PATRIOT ACT and the spread of pagan values to our fellow Christians. However, the ultra-liberal network hosts repeatedly rejected his pleas and he was even banned from participating in the network, so much for reason and a fair and balanced file-sharing network.

In response for being banned from the network and the failure of Rutgers to enforce the PATRIOT ACT on the university network, our hero did what was only right: he reported this terrorist file-sharing network to the proper authorities and ended their satanic orgy of file-sharing. His act of Patriotism not only destroyed this potentially devastating network if it fell on to terrorist hands, he also ended the mindless proliferation of Satanic music and Un-Christian pornography trading as well. The destruction of Optimus Prime was a great act of true American courage that we have not seen since we have liberated Iraq and I am sure that our Christian God, our only God (to all pagans, please convert or you will go to Hell) will bless his True American soul for this act. Moreover, I am sure “Geo” will truly get the appreciation and love he deserves from his fellow Christian Americans.

So that is the True Patriot, I wish to praise in this week’s opinions page. Before I go, I wish to say the following: Down with the limousine liberals like Kennedy and Kerry! To idiot Democrats, come to the true, divine side of America, the Republican Party; only tax cuts will fuel the economic growth needed to create jobs and the economy for our American Empire!

VOTE BUSH-CHENEY ’04! A VOTE FOR BUSH IS A VOTE FOR GOD!

Rutgers Busing: Needs SERIOUS Reform

Rutgers Busing: Needs SERIOUS Reform
By some website I visited

Rutgers University has what I believe to be one of the most poorly managed public transportation systems in all of Western civilization.

Rutgers New Brunswick is made up of four campuses: Livingston, Busch, Cook/Douglass, and College Ave. These campuses are spread out over several miles — it is not possible to walk between them, and bicycling is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons.

A large number of different bus lines are run:
A, between College Ave and Busch;
B, between Busch and Livingston;
EE, between College Ave and Cook/Douglass;
F, also between College Ave and Cook/Douglass;
G, between Busch and Cook/Douglass;
GG, between Livingston and Cook/Douglass;
H, between College Ave and Busch;
L, between College Ave and Livingston;
LX, between College Ave and Livingston

This setup creates a fully connected graph; all campuses have bus lines running to all others (with College Ave being doubly-connected).

If only it worked. In theory, each bus runs on an interval schedule; on any given line, at any given stop, a bus is to arrive every n minutes, where n is specified by the applicable schedule. In practice, this is implemented by putting m buses on the route and having them depart the garage n minutes apart – with little subsequent communication or coordination – where m is (supposedly) determined by dividing the line’s trip-time by the desired n.

Result? Chaos! Several variables interact to make this system collapse by midday.

* Vehicular traffic is not uniform. Variations in road conditions mean that a route segment that one bus takes four minutes to cover might take another bus only two – thus making the arrival intervals irregular.
* Passenger demand is not uniform. Classes let out at specific times, and so a bus arriving at a stop at 11:06 might drive by, not even having to stop to pick up or discharge, while one arriving at 11:11 might not be able to accommodate all the people wanting to board. Again, this leads to irregular intervals arising.

These irregular intervals by their very nature grow worse. Suppose a steady stream of students is arriving at a bus stop, and buses are arriving at regular intervals. Then, each bus takes the same number of passengers and spends the same amount of time at the stop. Suppose now instead that the buses are not arriving at regularly. Then, they instead come in pairs — say, two buses five minutes apart, then a fifteen minute wait for the cycle to restart. What happens? The first bus in the pair takes fifteen minutes worth of accumulated passengers, whereas the second takes only five — and spends less time stopped. This again draws the pair closer together, until you get to the common sight of a completely empty bus following close behind one with students mashed into the stairwells like sardines.

What can be done? The UMass (University of Massachusetts Amherst) transit system is no less complex than Rutgers, spanning five campuses (UMass, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, and Mt Holyoke) with nearly a dozen different lines; yet buses run, for the most part, on schedule. The trick? UMass buses have a schedule, and they actually stick to it. Unlike Rutgers’ interval-based system, UMass bus drivers have a specific timetable detailing the exact times they are expected to depart their stops. These times are sufficiently generous to ensure that buses always arrive with time to leave as scheduled; buses wait at their stops if they have arrived early.

This method has several advantages.

* A real schedule exists and may be depended on. Students may wait in a nearby building, out of sight of their stop, with confidence that they can walk outside at 2:44 to see their 2:45 bus pulling in to pick them up. This is a rather nice feature in the winter.
* Buses may be scheduled according to demand. More bus departures can be scheduled around class transitions. The Rutgers system cannot provide a granularity of control this fine.
* Multilane (transfer) trips may be planned with confidence. If bus 1 from X is scheduled to depart Y a minute or so before bus 2 is scheduled to depart Y for Z, you can make definite plans to take buses 1 band 2 from X to Z, and not worry you might be stuck in the cold at Y, waiting.

The Rutgers Business School: Stay Away

The Rutgers Business School: Stay Away

By Pace Wong

Have you ever wanted to be a business major? Does being a finance, marketing, management, accounting or management and information systems major interest you? If you answered yes, you are making the biggest mistake of your life. The Rutgers Business School exists purely to screw over every one of us: it has shitty professors, and cutthroat students.

The Professors are Horrible

As you know, the Rutgers Business School is not yet on par with the rest of the business programs in other universities. Usually the professors we get are mostly research oriented or just academic hacks. From my own experience, the business professors are dishonest, arrogant, unprofessional, and even incompetent. Before the business school, we were extremely interested in stocks and personal finance; but now I don’t feel like we’re learning anything in the school.

First off, there is a professor who graded according his own principles regardless of how hard students worked in class. There were even instances where he gave underperforming students higher grades than those who actually deserved it. These underachievers did not get the grades because of their any extra credit assignments, they got their A’s and B-pluses they did not deserve because they sucked up to the professor and stole credit from others. We find it sad that professors reward bad behavior with good grades in a corporate culture that promotes “ethics” and “goodwill.”

Another instance would be in another class in the business school. In this class, there would get a shitload of homework, which consist of several pages of math problems, copying notes from old videos, and doing projects with little or no idea of the logic and purpose behind it. The sad thing is that this is actually one of the best business professors: he knows what he is talking about and you can actually understand him for the most part. What makes him suck is that the course load he gives you makes it feel like a 9-credit class and it sucks up time to focus on the other important courses in the school.

On top of that, there are also professors with serious emotional problems. One professor threw temper tantrums, left when no one answered his questions, and gave incomplete assignments. This guy does not follow the department curriculum, and teaches things his own way. He gives us a textbook that is just a piece of shit put together by him, even though several authors normally write textbooks. What was even worse was that his “textbook” was missing symbols needed for solving math problems and it had tons of mistakes. Also, this son of a bitch made my friends switch majors and even drop out of the business school altogether.

Your Classmates are Soulless Pricks

Before the business school, classmates can be trusted and befriended. In the B-school, however, you will meet many people who you wished were tagged, rounded up, placed on a train, and left for good. Students in the business school mostly think about making “big money”, live their lives in the classroom, and are willing to sell their souls for short-term success.

There was something I remembered the first day of business school when I was getting to know my classmates. It was before class and we introduced ourselves; but he stopped talking to me once he found out my GPA was a 3.47. This fucker even went the extra mile by telling some of my friends in the b-school behind my back that we was “mad stupid” and “not a good guy”. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is this shit? What is even worse is that this prick leeches off other people’s work and takes credit for it. I know that cutthroat punks exist in general, and I am under the impression that they all go to the business school.

Not only are there cutthroat leeches, there are also brown nosers. Some of these people may have been doing it all their lives and feel there is nothing wrong with it. They think that ass-kissing will payoff and bring them great things. In the business school, they might suck up to the professor to get exempt from an exam or a job recommendation, or they may suck-up to fellow students to get votes to become a club officer and use them. In short, in the business school, your peers will lie, cheat, and steal in the name of good grades and contacts while repeatedly fucking you over in the process. It will become extremely difficult to have friends you can actually trust if you choose to go to the business school.

Conclusion

If you value your life and actually want to grow as a person, stay the hell away from the business school. However, if you are someone who loves to “cheat to win”, lives his or her life in stocks, have parents who are used car salesmen, or love to lord over others; business school is the place to be. The Business school is great with their adjuncts, graduate students and professors who can’t teach. It is also a great place to meet many assholes, just like back in a private high school! Therefore, if you have no soul and enjoy being a prick, the Rutgers Business School is the place to be.

UPDATE: THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT THE UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMME.

A Craigslist rant against the Wall St. Banksters

You reap what you sow: the greed of an archetypal Lehman douche
Date: 2008-09-16, 5:57PM EDT

Most of you deserve this, you really, truly do. You chose this road because it was easy and because you’re stupid. This was and is the best you’ll ever do. You know who I’m talking about. I’m pointing the finger at you, you and you. And especially you. To all the overtanned Jersey douchebags with steroid addictions, to the smug Ivy League grads with dads in high places, to the good looking brain dead women that eschew Anne Taylor Loft for sales rack Brooks Brothers, and to the upwardly mobile black girls with fake hair and inappropriate-for-work Joyce Leslie outfits. Actually, scratch that. The black girls can stay.

Fuck all of you. You brought this upon yourselves. Your Alpha male bullshit begat this greed, your vile existence is truly at the core of this collapse. For all the times you and your drunk cronies threw up on the street outside Pacha, for all the times you made a scene on the 3:51 LIRR train to Babylon, for all the times you stood on the Path train, or the 6, iPod in hand, desperately trying not to touch anyone. You had it coming.

Is there some kind of code that says you MUST wear a blue shirt? Or is that some kind of unspoken bro ethos? Like, if you’re the dude in the white button down in Bryant Park, is no one gonna blow you? Or is conforming just that much easier, is conformity just a part of your DNA? Is that really the true reason why you’re so universally loathsome to anyone that’s not a part of that vile world?

Before the Bubble O’ Bullshit burst, you would laugh at me. You were the douche bags that felt superior, the ones who turned up their nose at their working-class roots, the ones who scoffed at their peers who worked at the Local Union. You were the ones who laughed at those that worked at non-profits and LIKED IT. “Art History? What are you going to do with a major in Art History?” Yeah, your finance major got you real fucking far. Maybe after this ship sails you’ll realize that aside from your rape trial, college didn’t teach you much of anything. Sorry bro, but in the real world, you can’t walk down the street, lacrosse stick in hand, and just get respect.

I hope that with this smashup comes your own social foreclosure. I hope all those dudes from my high school — you know who I’m talking about — the ones that never got good grades, the ones that never knew how to act like decent human beings, the date rapists, the juicers, the guidos, the Quinnipiac or Iona grads that never should have graduated yet somehow landed cushy Wall Street jobs — receive the guerdon from the gods . I hope you’re evicted from your Upper East Side apartment, I hope your Denali gets repoed, I hope you can’t afford your bullshit Murray Hill lifestyle. I hope you truly get your comeuppance. Because it’s well fucking deserved and the Universe knows it. And what about me, you ask?

I’m laughing all the way to the nonexistent bank.

* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 843443153

The word bankster was once a depression-era term referring to a predatory element within the financial services industry, such as those offering “too good to be true” adjustable mortgage rates for home buyers, getting undeserved bonuses, creating complex financial instruments that hold no real value or commit large-scale fraud.

I post that craigslist entry because it’s just too funny and almost reminds me of my days at the Rutgers Business School undergraduate programme. Unlike other undergrad business programmes, the Rutgers Business School crams about 4 years worth of business schooling into 2 years to mirror the MBA programme.

The thing about the business school was that a good number of our finance majors were in fact cheaters. Some of them would store finance equations on their graphing calculators, some would find the means to purchase a teacher’s edition of their textbooks along with the exam guides, while a few would try to set their classmates up for for failure to weed out the competition.  Those who tried to speak out were silenced and professors who tried to investigate allegations of cheating go nowhere because these kids destroyed the evidence.

It’s funny that many of these finance majors would eventually land cushy jobs as investment bankers, analysts, managers or financial advisers simply by lying, charming and cheating their way to success.

Here’s something a former Rutgers Business School student wrote about his classmates:

There was something I remembered the first day of business school when I was getting to know my classmates. It was before class and we introduced ourselves; but he stopped talking to me once he found out my GPA was a 3.47. This fucker even went the extra mile by telling some of my friends in the b-school behind my back that we was “mad stupid” and “not a good guy”. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is this shit? What is even worse is that this prick leeches off other people’s work and takes credit for it. I know that cutthroat punks exist in general, and I am under the impression that they all go to the business school.

Not only are there cutthroat leeches, there are also ass-kissers. Some of these people may have been doing it all their lives and feel there is nothing wrong with it. They think that ass-kissing will payoff and bring them great things. In the business school, they might suck up to the professor to get exempt from an exam or a job recommendation, or they may suck-up to fellow students to get votes to become a club officer or to use them. In short, in the business school, your peers will lie, cheat, and steal in the name of good grades and contacts while repeatedly fucking you over in the process. It will become extremely difficult to have friends you can actually trust if you choose to go to the business school.

In some way I can relate to what the guy on craigslist was talking about.  Many of these RBS alumni did not really deserve the high-flying jobs they secured and many of them had bad habits that would naturally cause massive damage in Wall St. and the rest of the global economy.  What these banksters did was scam the vast majority of the population to overconsume and avoid saving while depending on low interest rates to fuel their debt-based spending.  In the end, these clowns were not only able to convince businesses to start giving out huge loans to dangerously unqualified individuals and then spread all the risk out to others so they would never suffer the consequences, they also managed to dupe everyone into believing the hype that all these “good times last forever”.

So kudos to some of my RBS alums for cheating and charming their way to the top with almost no substance or moral fiber.  Kudos to those whose undeserved success is crumbling around them as the world responds to their excesses.  And most of all, kudos for being brought down to reality, where people actually go about their lives producing something of value and save to create wealth with dignity and through their own merits.  All you business school cheats turned banksters have earned the right to be ruined by the financial crisis.

Earthquake Relief Party at Club Element

StageNightLife Presents

Earthquake Relief Party at Club Element

Party all night without the guilt

Join us at Club Element for a charity benefit to help provide aid to the thousands affected by the Sichuan, China earthquake.

guestlist pricing
*ladies free until 11pm
*everybody $15 until 12am
*discounts for Birthday Parties and Bottle Reservations with Vip line treatment and Complimentary Admissions

All door proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross

Element
255 E. Houston Street
(corner of Ave A and Essex Street)
New York, NY
10pm-4am

*21+ over
*Dress to impress
*Come as early as you can for guest list pricing

Come join and mingle with everyone else from the group. Send additional names to guestlist@stagenightlife.com

Good times in Meetup.com Groups/Random Bar chatting

This Saturday was a rather interesting night out with a good friend and later met good company as the night raged on.  It was actually a challenge going to a NYC Japanese-American meetup group since I had much unpleasantness during my college days and I had missed earlier gatherings due to last-minute scheduling conflicts.

With my friend, who had some interest in JET, we decided to make the trip down to the Delancy Lounge in the Lower East Side for the meetup.  It was interesting when I visit since I was mistaken as a Japanese national on two occasions while I was there while mistaking a few others in the process.  The meetup was completely different from the club at college in that it was purely a get together for various Japanese nationals and people interested in Japan to network and make new friends.  Most of the people there were mostly young professionals or international students who are looking to practise their English among fellow Japanese nationals.

There really weren’t any Japanophiles as my friend and I initially feared.  Most of these non-Japanese in the gathering were individuals who had either worked in Japan for a number of years, genuine Japanese language students, or people who had studied Japan as part of their concentration in either history/political science/economics.   Although there were a handful of Japanophiles there, it was negligible and they were mostly level-headed individuals.  I was actually alarmed when some guests at the meetup joked about cosplaying for this event, but they made it very clear that they were just joking.

It was actually a good idea coming to the meetup as I was in the process of starting my new job in Manhattan and it was a way to start building a presence in the city by networking with new and interesting people.

Unfortunately, the meetup ended before 10PM and everyone who networked had dispersed into their own groups.  Our group wandered haphazardly around the neighbourhood until we found a Thai restaurant.  Much of the dinner conversation involved the Japanese economy, helping the Japanese members clarify some irregularities in the English language, and basically just getting to know one another.

One Japanese girl in our group kind of freaked out at the mention of Japanese politics.  I was actually alarmed that she might flip out over this but I made it a point that things are better because Fukuda was smart enough to mend ties with Korea and China and now is working on fixing the Japanese economy.  I also added that East Asia is economically interdependent whether people liked it or not; China needs Japanese capital while Japan needs China as a market and for cheap labour.  Then I had offered to just talk about nothing but anime and J-pop if it will make her comfortable like a stereotypical Japanophile; which was not what she had in mind.

Apparently, the same girl claimed that I resembled some well-known Japanese character actor who has been in a great deal of Japanese serial dramas and movies…I still have no idea who she is talking about…

I explained to the group that I am interested in Japan because of my college major and because Japan is the world’s second largest economy, which means that anything that happens there will and has had a significant impact on the world.  This still holds true despite the Bubble Economy meltdown in the 90s and because Japan still operates by the slightly-modified “Rich Nation, Strong Defence Force” motto.

Most of the conversation involved discussing the economy, life in America, and generally being helpful to the other Japanese members learning about NYC.  Overall, it did help exorcise much of the unpleasantness I experienced in my university Japanese club which I had mentioned to the meetup members.   They were mostly horrified at the college group’s general immaturity on discussing issues pertaining to Japan and their narrow set of interests in regards to the country and culture.  Afterwards, we all exchanged contact information and parted ways with the hope that we will see each other again in next month’s meetup or in any get-togethers from our newly-formed clique.

Afterwards, my friend and I stopped by the Peculier Bar in Greenwich Village for some drinks.  We met some nice Belgian women and spend hours talking about life, random stuff, and drinking stouts, pilsner and microbrews.  Apparently, things went so well we hung around until 4:00AM until it was time to go and I wound up crashing at my friend’s place for the night.   Good times indeed.

Ron Paul’s money bombs…

I think people should stop making money bombs for Ron Paul’s moribund presidential campaign and instead focus on getting money bombs for his congressional re-election campaign so he can continue his fight as a Congressman. The February 18th money bomb for his presidential campaign will pale significantly compared to his 51st Wedding Anniversary bomb, which barely raked in $1 million, and the MLK money bomb before that, which barely took in $2 million. Ever since the Tea Party money bomb that raised $6 million, everything that has happened since the primaries began have gradually chipped away at the Ron Paul Revolution.

I have no regrets donating to past money bombs or even voting for Paul during Super Tuesday, but people need a reality check at this time. Help Dr. Paul by helping his congressional campaign, the Republican party has already drank the kool-aid by choosing McCain. Let these idiots commit political suicide because Ron Paul pointed out the GOP deserves a loss for becoming disconnected with America for their own deluded party ideals. We should also note that the Democratic primary turnouts have been consistently higher when compared to the state-by-state turnout by the Republican party.

Change is coming and the best thing Ron Paul supporters should do is:

A) Donate to Ron Paul’s congressional campaign so he does not lose his District’s congressional nomination to a pro-Bush neocon. We have failed to generate enough voters in the Presidential primaries. Let’s prevent another mistake from happening on Paul’s own turf.

B) Start dissuading conservatives, or independents from voting McCain this coming November. The GOP drank their kool-aid and it’s time they reaped the errors of their ways

C) Ensure that the lesser of two evils in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama wins the primary. Dr. Paul has noted they share similarities in social views despite having strong differences over views in economics and state regulation.

That being said, it’s time to transition the Revolution into a leaner and more focused machine to help Paul get reelected in the Texas 14th district. The time is ripe to spread awareness of the Ron Paul Congressional Money Bomb scheduled for April 1st.

Best ways to promote Ron Paul’s April Fools Congressional Money Bomb

Call 10 friends - We all have friends who are fellow Ron Paul supporters. Please call 10 of your friends and make sure they know about todays money bomb. Ask each of those ten friends to do the same.

Donate as much as you can EARLY! - Momentum is very important with a money bomb. By donating all of your money at once and earlier in the day you help create momentum that the press and blogosphere will pick up, creating even more donations throughout the day.

Post on Ron Paul related Blogs, News articles and Diggs - Visit Ron Paul blog posts, news articles and digg type sites (reddit as well:), respond to the posts with something relevant then close by mentioning that today (January 21, 2008) is the money bomb day and to donate at RonPaul2008.com now.

If we do these three things this day will be a tremendous success!!

Click here to go directly to Ron Paul’s Congressional donation page.

Click here to watch the donation counter.

We must act now to Defend the District!

Ron Paul at the MTV/MYSPACE dialogue

Ron Paul was one of the two Republicans who was smart enough to speak to the confused American youth with the other being Huckabee. While Huckabee was articulate and managed to present his own interpretations of Paul’s ideas, Ron Paul was better in presenting both the paleoconservative and liberatarian viewpoints.

With the exception of the scrambled audio in the first question about Darfur, Ron Paul did reasonably well discussing his talking points while tying much of the basic audience questions in the context of foreign policy, economics, and American complacency.

Cheers to Austin Petersen, Avery Knapp, Evan, and the rest of the New York City Ron Paul group for spending a chilly Saturday night cheering for Dr. Paul outside the MTV studio alongside the Hillary supporters. Also, kudos to MTV for actually giving Ron Paul at least 20 minutes to speak with little to no interruption unlike the shabby treatment he received from CNN, FOX NEWS and MSNBC.

Below are the highlights of his dialogue with undecided youth and Obama supporters.

After Paul, MTV gave better questions and more airtime to Barack Obama. It looks like much of the MTV producers and journalists are partial to Obama to the point of stuffing their audience with their supporters. I really liked how Scott of Fordham University tried to use Paul as a means to slam the GOP as a whole while not expecting the doctor to actually agree with him with a detailed explanation of the GOP’s epic failures in recent elections.

That being said, Ron Paul still needs supporters to either support him in his ongoing struggle in Congress here – http://www.ronpaulforcongress.com – or in his Presidential campaign here – https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate

And Now for Something Different

Ron Paul’s Martin Luther King Day Money Bomb: Epic Failure

Unlike the record-breaking money bombs on November 5th and the Boston Tea Party, the Martin Luther King Day money bomb is an epic failure. Barely raising $2 million in a 24-hour period, the Paul-endorsed MLK money bomb has failed in its goal in convincing America that Ron Paul’s supporters support Dr. King, and it is an indicator of the lack of funds from his remaining supporters.

Then there are the following factors:

1. Many White supremacists supporting Ron Paul have done all they can to dissuade other normal supporters from contributing on MLK day. These people make outlandish claims that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent, that he was a polygamist, and he was a self-hating black man. Then there are those who make claims that he is simply a pinko liberal who values state controlled integration and was under investigation by the FBI for subversion. Some even tried to have non-MLK day money bombs last week as alternatives to giving money on the 21st of January. Some White supremacist-sponsored money bomb include the Benjamin Franklin money bomb, and the Lee-Jackson Day money bomb of last week. Both of these money bombs and racist rumours may have dissuaded just enough people from contributing.

2. A good number of Ron Paul supporters have simply called it quits. After the epic failure in New Hampshire many volunteers simply threw in the towel and proceeded with their backup plans (Obama). Those who remained were apprehensive over contributing any more funds that are still seemingly unused by the official Paul campaign while others are simply out of funds to contribute after investing much of their time and money into the Tea Party and success in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, many college kids and supporters feel that it is very easy to overrun a straw poll or spamming online polls, yet find it a struggle to simply get out of the house to spend at least 20 minutes waiting in line to physically give Ron Paul a real vote in the election. Sure, winning virtual or mock elections are great for internal headlines, but they are worthless if people don’t bother voting in the real elections that count. It’s like running a school election and getting chummy with all the supporters but always forgetting to teach them how to actually vote when the time counts.

3. Ron Paul’s racist newsletters. While it is true that Ron Paul never wrote those newsletters and he was extremely incompetent in overseeing what gets written in his name, the corporate media has picked up this issue to the point where it has alienated enough supporters. I am sure these newsletters were a sensation to the Ron Paul White Nationalist factions, but they managed to alienate the 95% of the mainstream supporters. There has been speculation that Lew Rockwell was the idiot behind those racists and homophobic writings, but no one is man enough to admit fault so that Ron Paul would be absolved of all these attacks by liberals, conservatives, and corporate whores. It is a shame that the writer of those Ron Paul newsletters is unwilling to come forward to help Ron when he needs it most.

4. Lack of funds. After the debacle in New Hampshire and Michigan many supporters are reluctant to give to the campaign. Instead they decided to spend much of their potential contributions funding local Ron Paul grassroots programmes and even that Ron Paul blimp. Therefore, these supporters are still contributing to the campaign in their own right at the official campaign’s expense. Plus, they feel there is some level of accountability over how that money is spent on local or regional campaigns rather than having uncertainty over what Ron Paul is actually doing with the money bomb funds. Ron Paul has even noted that much of his donors are the poor and college students who often give small donations.

5. All the above.

It’s unfortunate that this hyped money bomb has become an epic failure. I am a Ron Paul supporter but I also live in reality to understand the damage Ron Paul has taken in recent months and from his endless problems with racists, who are becoming a much greater liability to Ron Paul. Take for instance Randy Gray, the Ron Paul Michigan campaign coordinator:

A Michigan leader and member of the Knight’s Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan is involved in Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s Michigan campaign according to a recent article published at DailyKos.com. The Klan member–Randy Gray–was listed as campaign coordinator for the city of Midland.

Pictures from Ron Paul’s Michigan website show Gray with Paul:

Gray–who posts on the racist website Stormfront.org–recently described his campaign activities on behalf of Paul:

According the post, Gray has gone door-to-door, organized rallies, and attended meetings. Similarly, the post makes quite clear Gray’s connections to the Ku Klux Klan, with it listing the airtimes for the “This is the Klan” program that he airs on Midland public access television as well as a reference to Michigan-based “Pastor” James Wickstrom. Wickstrom is a Christian Identity (a white supremacist religion) preacher who has advocated the annihilation of the Jewish people.

Back in July, Media Mouse profiled Gray before he spoke at a rally in Kalamazoo organized by the prominent racist radio host Hal Turner. We documented Gray’s longtime involvement with the Klan and his history of racist and homophobic statements. As an example, it is worth noting that Gray has referred to people of color as “savages” and “animals:”

“… [S]o many of these savages, according to our statistics, they’re murdering our people, on a daily basis, and there’s nobody in our legal system that would dare say, “Bring back the rope! Bring back the electric chair!” Instead, they take our tax dollars and they feed these animals at the cost of our race!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you have been lied to about diversity and multiculturalism. The immigration crisis that’s being pushed upon us by the race traitors of Washington, D.C. — they don’t care about our people, they’re too concerned about the homosexual rights! They’re too worried about protecting the rights of the Highlander communist school in New Market, Tennessee, that pushes this immigration, this race problem in our nation today — comes right out of the communist school. It was closed down originally in 1960 by the state of Tennessee, but they are in New Market, Tennessee, and we were up there yesterday taking photo pictures.”

Randy Gray also happens to be a Ron Paul supporter who organised the Benjamin Franklin money bomb in response to the official MLK money bomb. Something to take note as this campaign heads into “Super Tuesday”. Feburary 5th, will be the day everyone will figure out, without a doubt, whether Ron Paul 2008 sinks or swims.