Uncovered politics.com tells the unpleasant truth the Paul supporters refuse to see.

[Note: I hadn’t planned to vote for anyone, but I sure feel more sympathetic toward Johnson than to Paul.

Further note:

A vote for Johnson will probably help Romney, because it will be one less person voting for Obama.

Romney is Goldman Sachs’ candidate and seems to be salivating for war.  So if you want to vote, on paper, theoretically, Obama makes more sense.

That is the mess the Paul campaign left us with by going soft on Romney for most of the time.

Best course of action? Spend your time getting prepared and save your money for your family.

Turn off your TV,  hang up the phone on people calling for contributions, tear up letters asking for money and use them to line the bird cage.  Arrange your affairs so you’ll be fine in case of global war, should Romney win; and in case of high taxes, regulations, and collapsing businesses, should Obama win. In both cases, prepare for depreciation of the currency, rising prices, currency controls, and possibly emergency or martial law.

If you can, leave the US, but only for something better, which isn’t easy to find or cheap.

If you are middle-class and have no savings, forget that and stay put, preferably in a warm, relatively cheap state. Texas is good if you need a job; otherwise, any warm cheap state is better than freezing through the next four years.

If you’re not doing well, avoid people and get a dog. This makes for happiness easier than anything else. You need to be happy somehow or other to get through the next few years.]

“What’s the biggest difference between Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Gary Johnson? It’s not ideological, although there are some key and important distinctions on their positions.

The biggest difference is money.  How much they have and how they’ve spent it.

For Gary Johnson, his whole campaign has been a shoestring affair.  Having raised only several hundred thousand dollars in pursuit of the Presidency, he’s spending the limited funds he has on travel and critical campaign operations.  Calling the Johnson campaign “budget conscious” would be an accurate descriptor.  They know their resources are tight, the money they have raised has not come easily and they seem legitimately dedicated to stretching their campaign-dollar to the maximum.

The same cannot be said for Ron Paul’s latest bid for the Republican nomination or the myriad organizations he and his family members have spawned to fleece the “true believers” of their every last dime. People don’t just support Ron Paul, many are personally obsessed with the man. They give and give, and then give some more. In fact, it often seems like Ron Paul’s role model is less Barry Goldwater than something closer to L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction author and founder of the cult-like cash-cow known as Scientology.

[And it’s no surprise to me that behind the career of libertarian Harry Browne can be found Scientologists like Michael Baybak, who also had a history of stock manipulation. Scientology is notorious for unethical financial practices. Likewise,  I will not even attempt to compile the number of convictions/investigations that seem to attend the careers of prominent libertarians and their backers.]

It would be one thing if the Paul campaign spent their money as wisely as the Johnson campaign. There’s no telling how much could have been accomplished with the tens of millions of dollars that the Ron Paul machine has generated over the last half-decade. Unfortunately, we will never know what might have been.

Recently we learned that Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s bumbling campaign manager and grandson-in-law, had been paid a staggering $586,616 by the Paul campaign and associated organizations. That number has likely grown by, at least, tens of thousands of dollars since it was first reported. Gary Johnson could have financed his entire campaign thus far on Benton’s salary alone!

The problem goes beyond just Benton, who recently enraged Paul supporters when he put out a series of statements to the public that explained a shift in campaign strategy away from active campaigning in upcoming primaries. He explained this was a way to conserve campaign resources. The press interpreted this as Paul suspending his campaign and the announcement likely cost Paul a significant number of delegates in the Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas primaries. It also signaled a desire to preserve relations with the Romney campaign and the GOP establishment, likely with the hopes of protecting the future career of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

Some of the Paul diehards have suggested that Benton “acted alone” in making these campaign policy shifts and in setting his own salary, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is Ron Paul’s standard operating procedure: his family gets paid, every time.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has noted that Representative Paul was one of the worst offenders in the U.S. House for using campaign and PAC money to enrich family members. In CREW’s recent survey of 2008 and 2010 spending by Congressional candidates, they noted: “Rep. Paul’s campaign committee, Committee to Re-elect Ron Paul, paid salaries to his
daughter, his grandson, his daughter’s mother-in-law, his granddaughter, his grandson-in-law, and another relative. In addition, his campaign committee reimbursed the congressman and several other relatives and paid his brother’s accounting firm. Finally, Rep. Paul’s leadership political action committee (PAC), Liberty PAC, reimbursed the congressman, paid his brother’s accounting firm, and paid his daughter a salary.”

Considering the way that the Ron Paul political machine has generated so much of its millions of dollars from small donors over the last half-decade, many of whom could hardly afford to give to a political campaign, it is shocking that this is how much of the money was apparently being spent. Many of the footsoldiers of the liberty movement have dedicated so much of their lives to supporting this one man, it’s reached such an unhealthy degree that they can no longer see the greater cause they are supposedly fighting for.

There is now a Libertarian governor with a resume far more impressive than that of Congressman Paul, standing up and reaching his hand out to them. And yet they largely ignore this amazing opportunity, fixated on a sad old man who has mesmerized them into attempting to etch his likeness onto everything from chocolate bars to a pub in New York City to discussion of building a statue of the man himself.

Described by some as one of the “biggest purveyors of nepotism in U.S. history,” the failure of Ron Paul to even consider passing the torch to Gary Johnson shows that he is now entirely focused on building his family’s political dynasty, and perhaps even trying to find a spot for his son Rand on the Republican ticket with Mitt Romney. Ron Paul’s supporters aren’t just promoting the message of liberty, they are worshiping a man who deserves very little of their praise.

Contrast this gross abuse of donor trust with how the Johnson campaign operates. Gary Johnson’s adult son, Erik Johnson, has been working day and night on the governor’s campaign and is getting paid no salary to do so. The governor even got a little choked up when he acknowledged his son’s sacrifice in a touching moment during his acceptance speech at the Libertarian Convention last month.

Gary Johnson is an avid skier, adventurer, and bicyclist. He has reached the highest peaks on four of the seven continents, including Mt. Everest. He’s built a successful private sector business, and been elected the chief executive of a large state for two highly productive terms, during which he vetoed more bills than the governors of the other 49 states combined. His libertarian credentials are unmatched, and yet today Rand Paul endorsed Mitt Romney for President. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about the Paul clan’s priorities.”