Debate Audience Protests CNN Attempts ToExclude Ron Paul

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, thenchairman 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 classaction 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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