Rand Paul’s Trip Through Stupidville

  The idiot must have a hard time living in the world that most sane people live in. That would be the world of “ reality.” If ever there is an argument for insane asylums, the Republican Party and their supporters make the case for more of them, not less.  Rand Paul gives ample evidence here that he is a leading candidate for a position in a straight-jacket.

MinistryOfTruth on Sat May 26, 2012     

It's like BadLipReading, only he's actually saying this stuff on purpose . . .

Watch Senator Rand Paul try to end the FDA's ability label to accurately label food. That's right, food labels that are accurate are unconstitutional. The logic behind this is an insane rant that could come out of an Adam Sandler movie. Rand Paul is an awesome senator if you are a business or a businessman, if you are people, and I mean flesh and bone people, Senator Rand Paul is about as useful as trying to block sunburn with Capri Sun. Case in point . . .

Senator Rand Paul offered an Amendment to an FDA Bill yesterday that would end the FDA, that evil food and drug regulatory body that is restricting our constitutional freedoms, man. Your freedom to drink things and not know what is in them is at stake. Your freedom to sell products and put whatever you want on the packaging is slowly fading away.

Just watch and listen, with painstakingly made transcript below the fold, as Rand Paul explains how Amish farmers are oppressed at gunpoint for trying to sell unlabeled milk straight from the cow at "the market", then imagine America's Big Agricultural Corporations as the Biggest Amish Farm in America. Understanding and decoding Senator Paul requires an active imagination, so bear with me. Rand Paul is shocked, truly shocked about Amish milk suppliers having to withstand the overbearing presence of overbearing FDA officials with guns, as seen here in Chicago . . .

Oh, funny, that was a picture of police surrounding citizens using their First Amendment right to freely assemble. That doesn't bother Rand Paul at all. I've never heard Rand Paul make mention of the ongoing police brutality in America against citizens exercising their first Amendment rights to freely assemble, but Rand is about to go on a six minute rant about how oppressive it is that food suppliers have guns in their faces from the FDA, and Rand ties that to the evils of accurate label laws and scientific nutrition information! A whole pile of crazy, word salad style like you haven't gotten since Sarah Palin went on her last powdered moose horn bender, listen and beware, for this kind of stupid, once seen, can never be unseen.

 Sen. Paul:     "Mr. President, today I'm offering an Amendment to the FDA. I'm troubled by images of armed agents, armed FDA agents raiding Amish farms and preventing them from selling milk directly from the cow. I think we have bigger problems in our country without sending armed FDA agents onto peaceful farmers land and telling them they can't sell milk directly from the cow.
    "My Amendment has three parts, first, it attempts to stop the FDA's overzealous regulation of vitamins, food and supplements by codifying the First Amendment's prohibition on prior restraint. What do I mean by that? The First Amendment says you can't prevent speech, even commercial speech, in advance of this speech. You can't tell Cheerios that they can't say that there is a health benefit to their Cheerios . .  "

  Already this is so far off the rails, you feel like Rand lost control back when he said that "The First Amendment says you can't prevent speech, even commercial speech, in advance of this speech." He got lost after defending commercial speech, and then he quickly goes from Amish farmers stalked at gun point by FDA agents, a rampant bit of stop and frisk profiling that the Amish community suffers from on a daily basis, Rand Paul quickly shifts from suffering Amish farmers to Cheerios, doesn't he? So now Cheerios is being oppressed, because the FDA won't let them advertise their health benefits, as seen on this cheerios.com website, which lists under the "Why They're So Good" section . . . .

* 14 Vitamins & Minerals
    * Low Fat
    * Good source of calcium
    * Good source of fiber
    * Made with whole grain*
    * Helps reduce the risk of heart disease

    * Can help lower cholesterol*
    * 1g sugar
    * Excellent source of iron
    * Certified by the American Heart Association, Learn more at heartcheckmark.org

  Clearly, a fanatical power hungry armed and dangerous FDA is oppressing Cheerios, but do go on and tell me more Rand. . .

Sen. Paul:     "Under our current FDA laws, the FDA says that of you want to market Prune Juice you can't say that it cures Constipation.

  Again! That evil FDA! Prune Juice is under assault! To the googlemachine! Is Prune Juice's right to advertise their constipation stopping abilities being oppressed?

Under our current FDA laws, FDA says if you want to market prune juice, you can’t say that it cures constipation.

You can’t make a health claim about a food supplement or about a vitamin, you can do it about a pharmaceutical, but you’re not allowed to do it about a health supplement.

I think this should change. There have been several court cases that show this goes against not only the spirit but the letter of the law of the First Amendment. So this amendment would change that.

This amendment would stop the FDA from censoring claims about curative, mitigative effects of dietary supplements. It would also stop the FDA from prohibiting distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease. Despite four court orders condemning the practice as a violation of the First Amendment, the FDA continues to suppress consumers’ right to be informed and to make informed choices by denying them this particular information. It’s time for Congress to put an end to FDA censorship.

Get that? Rand wants to stop the FDA from prohibiting distribution of scientific articles? No, the FDA wants that "scientific" information to be scientific, meaning based on facts and stuff. You can't just make shit up and call it scientific because you put it on a box. No one is stopping Prune Juice from talking about the benefits of prune juice, but we have a problem with them saying it cures leprosy. What Rand is trying to do is upside down, he is saying the FDA stops food distributors from labeling their products, which no one is trying to stop, and he is arguing that we should let them label their products however they want with no oversight at all, in the name of free speech, and he is tying that to an imagined strawman of a military division of the FDA when in reality a militarized police state is actually trampling the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of American protesters, but Rand Paul doesn't give a crap about that. If Occupy Wall Street wants Rand Paul to stand up for our rights we are going to have to start selling Amish Milk in the streets.

Moving along to the last crescendo of crazy . . .

Second, my amendment would disarm the FDA.

Now, some of you might be surprised the FDA is armed. Well, you shouldn’t be.

We have nearly 40 federal agencies that are armed. I’m not against having police, I’m not against the army, the military, the FBI, but I think bureaucrats don’t need to be carrying weapons and I think what we ought to do, is if there is a need for an armed policeman to be there, the FBI who are trained to do this should do it. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to be arming bureaucrats to go on the farm to, with arms, to stop people from selling milk from a cow.

I think we have too many armed federal agencies, and that we need to put an end to this. Criminal law seems to be increasing, increasingly is using a tool of our government bureaucracy to punish and control honest businessmen for simply attempting to make a living. Historically the criminal law was intended to punish only the most horrible offenses that everyone agreed were inherently wrong or evil, offenses like rape, murder, theft, arson – but now we’ve basically federalized thousands of activities and called them crimes.

If bureaucrats need to involve the police, let’s have them use the FBI, but I see no reason to have the FDA carrying weapons. Today the criminal law is used to punish behavior such as even fishing without a permit, packaging a product incorrectly or shipping something with an improper label.

Simply said, the federal government’s gone too far.

The plain language of our Constitution specifies very few federal crimes. In fact, the Constitution originally only had four federal crimes and now we have thousands of federal crimes.

We’ve moved beyond the original intent of the Constitution. We don’t even know or have a complete list of all the federal crimes. It’s estimated there are over 4,000, but no one has an exact number.

  Nobody knows how many laws there are? LOL! Is this the level of discourse and reason? Like if we had less laws, automatically we are more free. God gave us 10, what more do we need, though if you go based on that I guess gay marriage is just fine, didn't see it in the 10 commandments, doesn't count. Same with the Constitution, the founding fathers gave us 10 amendments and that's all we need, especially the 2nd and 10th ones.

Finally, my amendment will require adequate mens rea protection. In other words, when you have a crime, you’re supposed to prove the intent. People have to have intended to harm someone, it can’t be an honest mistake where a businessman or woman have broken a regulation and didn’t intend to harm someone. If you want to convict someone of a crime and put them in jail, it should be a mens rea requirement.

This is something we have had for hundreds of years, it comes out of our common-law tradition.

This amendment would fix this problem by strengthening the mens rea component of each of the prohibited acts and the FDA acts by including the words "knowing” and “willful" before we address and accuse someone of a crime.

This I think would give protection to folks who are guilty of inadvertently guilty of breaking a regulation and would keep from overflowing our jails. We’ve got plenty of violent criminals without putting people in for honest breaches of regulations. If Congress is going to criminalize conduct at the federal level as it does with the FDA act, the least it can do have is have an adequate mens rea requirement. My amendment will attempt to do this.

It’s not that we won’t have rules at the federal level, but the rules ought to be reasonable. We ought to allow people to market vitamins. There’s no earthly reason why somebody who markets prune juice can’t advertise it helps with constipation.

We’ve gone too far, and we’ve abrogated the First Amendment and what we need to do is tell the FDA that the courts have ruled that the First Amendment does apply to commercial speech and the FDA has been overstepping their bounds.

The amendment Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced yesterday to demilitarize the FDA failed in the Senate today by a vote of 78-15.

Paul's amendment would have prohibited FDA employees (as well as all other Health and Human Services employees) from carrying weapons and making arrests without warrants.

http://reason.com/...

What kind of screwed up website called Reason.com takes this hyperbolic hot mess of a rant that sandwiches in armed FDA agents with reducing accurate labeling laws and treats it as if it is reasonable? Rand Paul has built a might tower of babel. EconomicPolicyJournal.com thought Sen. Paul's rant was so important they transcribed the whole thing and put it on their site. That alone should say plenty. Rand Paul is using his strawman of an armed and dangerous FDA to argue that accurate and scientifically product labeling is unconstitutional. Rand Paul just wants to gut the FDA. His insane rant about armed FDA agents is the Fox News of Senate speeches. Every one is dumber for having listened to it. If you are worried about armed agents intimidating people at gunpoint and overstepping on our constitutional guaranteed first amendment rights I would love to invite you to the next Occupy Wall Street event, Senator Paul, I'm sure you will be shocked at the constitutional over-reaches you would see if you could manage to pull your head out of your ass. I award you no points, Senator Rand Paul.

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