Debate Audience Protests CNN Attempts To
Exclude Ron Paul
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
January 20, 2012
Crowd boos and jeers, demands
Paul be allowed to answer
A remarkable scene unfolded
during last night’s CNN hosted
South Carolina debate when not
once but twice, the audience had
to intervene to ensure that Ron
Paul be included in questions, as
host John King attempted to skip
over the Congressman following
answers from the other three
candidates.
Even more remarkable was the fact that both times the questions were related to medical issues
and Ron Paul is the only qualified doctor among all the candidates.
Between the sideshow of Newt Gingrich’s infidelity and yet more mudslinging and circus like
back and forths between Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, Ron Paul did his best to speak on real
issues such as cutting foreign military spending, protecting the borders and the need to reform the
government-run health care system.
However, when it came to two key questions it was left to the audience to remind the CNN
anchors that Ron Paul was up on the stage and that voters wanted to hear him speak.
The first instance occurred when King
somewhat reluctantly threw Ron Paul the
question “would you repeal Obamacare?”
following answers from the rest of the field.
To wild ironic cheering and whooping from
the audience acknowledging that Ron Paul
had finally been included in the question, the
Congressman exclaimed “PHEW, I thought
maybe you were prejudiced against doctors
and the doctor that practiced medicine in
the military or something!”
Watch the footage:
Ron Paul Highlights of 1/19/2012 CNN
Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MWcp6vj61Y
The second instance of CNN completely
ignoring Paul occurred when King attempted to
switch subjects from the issue of abortion
without asking for Ron Paul’s thoughts.
“All right, let’s take another question,” King
said after hearing from the other three
candidates only. “Let’s take a question now
from social media…”
Only when the audience began to boo and jeer, asking for Ron Paul to be afforded the
opportunity to answer, did King allow the Congressman to speak.
“…before we move on, you want in on this issue?” King said to Paul, “They want you in on this
issue…” King added, addressing the audience.
“John, once again, it’s a medical subject. I’m a doctor,” Paul protested, drawing cheers from the
crowd before giving his thoughts.
Watch the footage:
CNN Forced To Ask Ron Paul After Crowd Boo's (Santorum False Attack) - rp hands
santorum his ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYdhuG5q23c
The blatant attempt by King and CNN to bypass Ron Paul, represents yet another example of the
mainstream media downplaying and sidelining the only real anti-establishment candidate. With
Rick Perry having dropped out earlier in the day, there were just four candidates left on stage, yet
Ron Paul was STILL afforded significantly less speaking time than his GOP rivals. However, Paul
still gave a strong performance, topping all the post debate analysis polling.
Following the debate, Congressman Paul sent an email to his supporters regarding his debate
showing.
“My debate performance tonight is already turning heads.” Paul wrote. “What the crowd saw
tonight was my opponents savaging each other over and over in a desperate attempt to defend
their Big Government records. Me? I wasn’t touched once. Because quite frankly, I can’t be. I’ve
spent 30 years fighting against establishment politicians – like my opponents – to finally put an
END to politics as usual.”
How Rick Santorum Ripped Off American
Veterans
Andy Kroll
1. Mother Jones
January 20, 2012
Like any good presidential candidate, Rick
Santorum heaps praise on America’s soldiers
and veterans. He’s pledged to “make veterans
a high priority” if elected president, adding,
“This is not a Republican issue, this is not a
Democratic issue, it is an American issue.”
But as a US senator, Santorum engineered a
controversial land deal that robbed the
military’s top veterans’ home of tens of
millions of dollars and worsened the
deteriorating conditions at the facility.
The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is
run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as “premier home for military retirees and veterans.”
The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the
Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of
the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean
War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.
But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial
problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the
paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn’t enough to keep the Home operating fully. In
the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency, trimming its staff by 24 percent
and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older
historic facilities slipping into
disrepair and decay. To grapple
with its worsening shortfall,
officials running the Home eyed
a valuable, 49-acre piece of land
worth $49 million as a potential
financial lifeline.
Under one scenario, by leasing
the parcel of land and letting it
be developed, the Home could
pocket $105 million in income
over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-
chairman of the Home’s board of directors, told
Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home
wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a
buyer. “Once land is sold,” he said, “it is lost forever
as an asset.”
Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of
the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the
Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999
National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how
the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The
amendment forced the Home to sell—and not
lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic
University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic
Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its
own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land’s value and $83 million less than what it
could’ve made under the lease plan. Santorum’s amendment sparked an outcry from veterans’
groups and fellow US senators, who barraged his office with complaints.
Laurence Branch, then the executive director of the Home’s board, says Santorum’s amendment
was “a travesty” and the Church’s lobbying for the land a case of “coveting thy neighborhood’s
goods.” To this day, Branch says he blames Santorum for the Home not receiving more money
for the 49-acre parcel of land. “I’m convinced Sen. Santorum is no friend of veterans,” Branch
says. (A spokesman for Catholic University did not respond to a request for comment.)
At the time, Santorum said the amendment was the product of “a consensus agreement” and “was
certainly not an attempt to shortchange the veterans.” (A spokesman for the Santorum campaign
did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Santorum’s advocacy for Catholic University isn’t at all
surprising. A practicing Catholic, Santorum embodies the
church’s anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage positions as
well as its support for charities and alleviating poverty.
While in Congress, he was a fierce advocate for the
Catholic Church. A former Santorum aide
1. told New York Times Magazine in 2005 that the senator
was “a Catholic missionary who happens to be in the
Senate.” That same year, Timemagazine named him one of
America’s ”25 Most Influential Evangelicals.”
Meanwhile, the $22 million from the land sale hardly
stanched the flow of red ink at Armed Forces Retirement
Home. Financial records, court documents, and
government reports from the 2000s show how the Home
cut back on the services it provided veterans as it grappled
with funding problems. The slashing of services got so bad
that in 2003 veterans living at the Home filed a class-
action suit against the Home and its director, Timothy
Cox, alleging shoddy health care and less access to that
care. As a result of cutbacks and declining quality in care,
the suit claimed, the suicide rate at the Home spiked from
59 in 2000 to 131 in 2003.
In 2007, an investigation by the Government
Accountability Office came to similarly troubling
conclusions. The watchdog’s head, David Walker,
reported that one Home resident had been admitted to
the hospital with maggots in a wound. Other vets were
admitted with bad pressure sores, suggesting they’d been
left unattended for dangerously long stretches of time by
the Home’s health care employees. In the aftermath of
the GAO’s investigation, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and
John McCain (R-Ariz.) demanded an independent
investigation into the quality of health care at the Home.
Yet today, despite some improvement in the Home’s financial health, its campus is pocked with
boarded-up, decrepit buildings. All but one of the Home’s gatehouses is shuttered, as are some of
the Home’s more elegant buildings, including the historic Grant building (named after the Civil
War general) and the red-brick hospital that now sits empty, bearing a sign warning off
trespassers. Some veterans
believe the Home’s constant
financial struggles have led
to a slow-motion decline of
the Home. As longtime
resident and Navy vet Robert
Devaney says, “I like to call
it demolition by neglect.”
Andy Kroll is a reporter at
Mother Jones. For more of
his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com.
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