Thoughts of my favourite Republican politician Ron Paul

I must say that I like Ron Paul, probably because he's the only Republican who's not crazy?
He probably has next to zero chance of the Republican nomination for President in 2012, but based on his views current political and economic system below, he's certainly a Republican I can stomach;

"A grand absurdity; a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions, based on preposterous notions; and on ideas whose time should never have come; simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; insanity passed off as logic; grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; evil described as virtue; ignorance pawned off as wisdom; destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; violence, the tool of change; preventive wars used as the road to peace; tolerance delivered by government guns; reactionary views in the guise of progress; an empire replacing the Republic; slavery sold as liberty; excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity"
"A central bank that deliberately destroys the value of the currency in secrecy, without restraint, without nary a whimper. Yet, cheered on by the pseudo-capitalists of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and Detroit"
"We police our world empire with troops on 700 bases and in 130 countries around the world. A dangerous war now spreads throughout the Middle East and central Asia. Thousands of innocent people being killed, as we become known as the torturers of the 21st century."
"We assume that by keeping the already-known torture pictures from the public's eye, we will be remembered only as a generous and good people. If our enemies want to attack us only because we are free and rich, proof of torture would be irrelevant."

beautiful holiday paradise resorts are not so "beautiful"

I was planning on writing a piece soon of why I have an inherent prejudice against those wealthy 5 star resorts that abound in poor "island paradise" third world countries. However a friend of mine made some comments recently in another forum on this same topic, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I paraphrase their comments below;

"I had never until recently visited any islands in the Pacific nor the Indian ocean , and I don't denounce the natural beauty nor the wonderful people ... the locals .. who inhabit such tropical paradises. Their local customs and food being magnificent ! BUT .. Once I went to a couple, stayed in top notch resorts , took it upon myself to visit places on my own , leave the resort and talk to those that work there and treat them with humanity and respect, the govt gives away family plots to resort owners, who normally take the profits out of the countr, pay below minimum standards to workers, forcing long hours, and making workers pay for food that they may eat. It's horrid, exploitative and downright inhuman to see this happening as we bake our sweet butts in the sun. Resorts to me are tarted up prisons, dull, spiritless places, boring and I have stayed at the best ones. I will never ever stay in a resort or visit these places unless I stay in a pension with locals! The locals are exploited, and are treated badly by resort owners who don't want them near these places coz the fear that they'll cause trouble . These third world island dictatorial regimes pander to the capitalists as they get a cut for buying land or confiscating land from these little people who lose their livelihood and can't plant their food and need to go to supermarkets, perpetuating the cycle of poverty and exploitation . Resorts should b banned".

sports grounds and sponsor's logos

Since the 90s, in Australia there's been a terrible trend of major sporting stadiums losing their original identities and selling their naming rights to the highest bidder. This has always been anathema to me as I've always felt that a landmark building/stadium/location etc should only have ONE name that it is forever identified with.
This trend seemed to begin with the Princess Park aussie rules ground being renamed OPTUS OVAL, after the telco. I was upset at this sell out at the time, but tolerated it since it was only a minor ground in the league, and this sort of cheekiness was unlikely to expand at the higher level.
Well how wrong was I, this only ENCOURAGED the corporate sector to arm twist the last traditional hold outs that ran sport to see the light of the new (corporate, capitalist) world to sell off their naming rights. And how much easier it became to do this as the old school sports administrators were pushed aside in favour of professional marketeers who were taking over sports administration.
But perhaps it wouldn't peeve me off so much if these companies actually had a long term investment (ie. generational) in these stadiums that created some genuine ownership or affinity between stadium and product, instead we have the ridiculous situation of iconic grounds changing names every few years. Example; Stadium Australia in Sydney has also been known as Telstra Stadium and now ANZ Stadium...which naturally causes confusion with the ground in Brisbane which was also known as "ANZ Stadium". And Melbourne's Docklands Stadium is not much better, its previous names include Colonial Stadium, Telstra Dome and its current (for this week) Etihad Stadium.
There's so many grounds changing names so frequently that when I see a reference to a ground on the news, I usually have no idea of where they're talking about? A pretty sad indictment for someone who USED to be interested in sport!
Perhaps we need to fight back though, like they did in cricket? Naming rights lunacy reached its crescendo in the domestic Sheffield Shield cricket competition in 1999 when the 100+ year old competition was renamed (almost on a whim) the Pura Milk Cup. Not the "Pura Milk Shield" mind you, but CUP.....a deliberate attempt by the company to disassociate the public's mindset with the Shield, and link it to their product. But cricket fans continued to call it "the Shield", while news channels provocatively referred to it as the "domestic four day competition". Fortunately sanity prevailed and the tournament picked up a new sponsor in 2008, with it now being called the "Sheffield Shield, presented by Weet-Bix".
While that's one small victory against the tidal wave of corporate money currently controlling sport, I suspect people will only ever say "enough is enough" when the grandest stadium of all - the MCG - is renamed the HOLDEN UTE STADIUM...or some other god awful name.
My only reaction to that would be.........schadenfreude.