PizzaQ: What's Bush made of? /// e-mails about Ron Paul & big Chicago Tribune article

Well sure, click all you want.

I've airbrush-deleted the url of the creator of this image for the Vleeptron PizzaQ Honor System. After somebody wins the Pizza, I'll credit the creator.

This image is a mosaic composed of 1200 small photographic similar elements. What are the elements? 4 Slices with endives, garlic, shallots.

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Okay, back to Agence-Vleeptron Presse's continuing in-depth top-tier journalistic coverage of the interminable and cartoonesque USA Presidential Campaign 2008.

A few posts ago I replied to a mass-spam from a close relative, in which, as an aside, he described Republican candidate US Congressman Ron Paul as a right-wing nutcase. So this thread really began HERE.

Paul, and Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio (who just introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to impeach Vice-President Cheney), are the two most marginalized, asterisked, dismissed and written-off of the numerous candidates. Both major parties and their leading candidates wish Paul and Kucinich would just drop out and vanish already. But Kucinich and Paul are surprisingly tough-skinned and stubborn, and refuse to vanish at the convenience of conventional politicians. They have messages they wish to send to American voters, and as long as they can find a microphone and an audience and just enough money to get there, they're going to keep sending their messages.

I admire both of them for that. They're shaping the campaign, or their part in it, far more than the campaign is shaping them. The major candidates are wetting their fingers to gauge the wind, and consulting polls and focus groups hourly, and daily change their stands on various issues as a function of the volatile political weather.

Paul and Kucinich, on the other hand, have consistent, well-defined positions on the issues they consider critically important, and seem oblivious to the changing political weather, or to polls or focus groups.

Some back-and-forth e-mails, after which a most interesting Chicago Tribune article about Ron Paul and his surprising campaign.

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to nephew:
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Hmmmm well, you pulled my lawnmower cord with your mass spam e-mail, so this is all your fault.

Ron Paul really had been just the tiniest, most ill-defined blip on my radar screen when this business came up. What little I'd known of him either I liked, or else wildly amused me in a positive sort of way. But I'd written him off as a highly localized phenomenon, an obstetrician who rang doorbells so well among his neighbors in some obscure Texas district that they'd learned to love him and vote for him over and over again whether he ran as a Libertarian or a Republican. (Bernie [Sanders, US Senator from Vermont] hasn't always stayed True to his original SOCIALIST badge either; as time goes by and his ambitions rise, INDEPENDENT seems to be the more comfy term on his lapel.)

Anyway, my thoughts about your spam focused and ratcheted up the attention I pay to Ron Paul. I look particularly through his record and words for Red Flags, like Kill The Jews or an old KKK membership -- early in his Congressional career, John Anderson had incautiously signed on to a Christian Nation thing, and it dogged and soured his otherwise very positive and appealing third-party candidacy.

I still haven't found any smoking gun in Ron Paul's hand or mouth. Most of what could be portrayed (by a worried political adversary) as objectionable in his legislative record is a consistent and direct consequence of his disgust of and opposition to the cancerous growth of federal power and spending.

We've had several generations of being inculcated to ask: "Who wouldn't vote for subsidized milk for schoolkids?" But Ron Paul seems strange and bizarre because he considers the cumulative effect on America of fifty years and 50,000 "good" federal-centric programs which Congress renews and expands every year.

So the most objectionable aspects of Paul, I suspect, are a matter of focus/depth of field. We've become accustomed to seeing the free milk in the kindergarten, judging it Good, and not thinking beyond that.

Which is exactly how the American Dairy Association and 10,000 other industrial lobbyists want the American voter to think. The way things have been working for the past half-century,

* the kiddies get their milk (Hooray!)

and

* a lobbyist gets to buy a new luxury oceanfront summer home in Maine (insert the interjection you feel is appropriate here)

There's a good recent example. I don't like legalized gambling very much, and for various reasons that's a sentiment a lot of Americans share. A couple of years ago, Ralph Reed [former head of the Christian Coalition] marshalled thousands of God-fearing Christians to successfully oppose an Indian tribe's application for a new casino in Texas. (Hooray!)

It took a while to uncover it, but it turned out Reed wasn't strictly doing Jesus' work in this anti-gambling mission. He was secretly in partnership with Jack Abramoff, who wanted the casino blocked because he was the lobbyist for the Indian tribe in Louisiana with the nearest competing casino. Reed and Abramoff were getting secretly rich by seemingly pushing a fine, noble and even holy agenda. (Insert appropriate injerjection here.)

Paul the obstetrician probably loves milk for kiddies, and Paul probably isn't personally wild about legalized gambling, but Paul the Libertarian is looking at a bigger picture, and asking: What's REALLY going on here? Who's being hustled and bamboozled? Who's getting richer and richer? This is an entire way of looking at government which you're just never going to hear a single word about from the campaigns of The Serious Candidates. (Fred Thompson, in fact, when not a TV actor, is a millionaire K-Street lobbyist, and one of his clients was Haiti's Aristide.)

I think we should be careful about dismissing Paul's radically different focus too hastily. If there are very bad consequences if Paulism were ever to infect the White House, I would much rather the American electorate spend a lot of time actively and publicly discussing and debating them. Right now Paul's odd ideas never even get discussed or heard; they tend to be pre-dismissed and pre-rejected, certainly by the campaigns of the "serious" candidates (which are hostile to any and all ideas and issues to begin with).

Anyway I bother you today with

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-1113ronpaulnov13,0,5136273.story?coll=chi-newsbreaking-hed

The significance isn't that it's about Paul. I think the great significance is that an ancient pillar of The Mainstream Commercial Media has had its robotic attention momentarily jarred from The Serious Presidential Candidates to devote a huge amount of front-page space to a whacko who, by all conventional media wisdom, should barely be noticed, should at the very best be a tiny asterisk on The Tribune's page 6. Anybody can find reams of stuff about Paul on The Libertarian Review -- but huge attention in The Chicago Tribune???

It is very possible something Very Large is happening. And the article discusses the rather startling strength of Paul's grassroots small-donor fundraising -- which is simply NOT how The Serious Candidates raise their massive campaign funds. (Good buzzword this year: bundling. Ron Paul doesn't bundle.)

As for me, I don't know whom I'd vote for if it was tomorrow. Because I'm a lifelong lefty, I'd probably check Kucinich. But maybe not.

Though it shocked and distressed me at first, I had great experiences voting for one Republican -- our late congressman Silvio Conte -- because he spoke far better to [notoriously ultra-liberal and progressive] Northampton and Amherst [Massachusetts] and served us far better than any of the loop vanity Dem schmucks and schmuckeusses who tried to unseat him. In his last term, Conte (a WWII [Navy] vet) voted NO to Bush I's Gulf War. So even the odd Republican has the capacity to woo me and sing songs I love to hear.

But if it was tomorrow, this ghastly war has rendered me a thoroughly single-issue voter. Stop The Fucking War Now.

Please continue to keep me apprised of any Serious Candidates who claim as bluntly and clearly as Paul and Kucinich that they'll also stop this war immediately. I'm not nearly as well-informed as I like to pretend I am; for the sake of my health and blood pressure, I tend to tune out an enormous amount of Campaign 2008.

Maybe Hillary is my savior, maybe Edwards, maybe Obama. If you know stuff, make me wise, I will be sincerely grateful.

B

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Nephew replies:
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I don't know about the Holy Trinity, but rumor has it that additional un-real Dems say they'd be serious about ending the war fast: Richardson is the most real of them, but also media-abused Gravel. I liked the write-up on Gravel in the recent Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/kim.

Here's their thing on Richardson:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/anderson .

Richardson's website says he promises to have all troops home by 2009. For a little while I thought I would really like Richardson, but then I saw a YouTube video of him giving a speech on health care and 1) he sucked at explaining what his plan actually was, and 2) his plan was lame.

I'm stuck being a 4-issue voter: end the war, deal seriously with global warming, universal healthcare--anything claiming to be that that's other than single-payer will be hard for me to swallow, and reversing the legalization of torture and all this war on terror crap. I'm not sure that any candidate, Paul included, can clean sweep my issues.

I say all this cuz I'd like to keep you in the lefty fold, but I hear everything you say about Paul and it sounds right good to me. I took an online survey that tells you which candidates are supposedly closest to you in your issue orientation, and Paul was ranked way, way higher than all the other Republicans on my response list.

http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html

Kucinich was my top match, according to the computer tabulator. I forget how others came out. Interestingly, though it's a military related website, Gravel is the top match of the over 1,000,000 people who've done the survey. McCain is in dead last, ha! ha!

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to Nephew:
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Well, as I said, I mainly wanted to point out that Paul (unlike Kucinich) has managed to capture some of the interest of the mainstream media.

(The Nation is not the mainstream media. It's sweet, thoughtful, important, prestigious, literate, has citations, etc. But it ain't the mainstream media.)

I think if Kucinich had spent the last two weeks campaigning in the nude, with a Viagra erection, no one in the mainstream media would have noticed.

But indeed, I would really love to be a bi-issue voter, and Kucinich is the only candidate who has the cojones (or nipples -- does that translate?) to stand up and say Out Loud: Single Payer Health Plan.

As I've mentioned, this translates into mainstream American political English as "Hello, I want America to have a health care plan just like Castro's Cuba, please make me your President."

I'll check out the Candidate Computer on vajoe.com , thanks, that looks pretty nifty.

Here's the Naughty Little Secret about the American Military -- not the official Department of Defense, but the ranks, the actual serving people: Contrary to what Fox would have you believe, the independent anonymous polls conducted free of DoD influence always show a huge Democratic and even anti-war presence.

It was like that during Vietnam, too, though for different historical reasons.

Service personnel need a job, a way to support families, and a way to get college money. The military offers all these things in a brutal, harsh, sinking civilian labor market for those who don't have college degrees. For a lot of America, it's the military, or it's Wendy's, or it's Unemployment. (Do they still have Unemployment? Substitute: Homelessness.)

More than that, most of them are not in the Combat Arms, most of them are not the Rambo movie guys. To keep one of those in the field, it takes five Technical, Educated, Skilled, Trained types doing support and administrative jobs far from combat.

Rambo votes for Bush maybe. (The combat arms are not noted for their intelligence.)

But he's out-voted 5 to 1 by the sane ones who program computers and schedule shiploads of food and supplies between continents, and by the medics who staff the hospitals. They're neither genocidal nor suicidal.

(The genocidal and suicidal ones leave the military and walk across the street and sign up with Blackwater.)

If it was tomorrow, I'd [X] Kucinich.

In Yiddish and a lot of other lingos, they say: If my grandmother had testicles, she'd be my grandfather. By November '08 we will be gifted with the usual choice: The better of two plagues.

My friends, who had a college daughter, begged me to vote for Gore (rather than Nader) for their Single Issue: No matter how lame a president Gore might be, his four or eight years of federal judge appointments would be far better for defending reproductive rights than four or eight years of Bush's appointments -- which my naive and hopeless Truth & Beauty Nader vote, they felt, would assist. Moreover, a president is a fleeting thing of 4 or 8 years, but a federal judge or Supreme Court justice endureth forever.

That became my mom's Single Issue too -- Defend Roe v. Wade at all costs, she remembered the half-century before Roe v. Wade with unbelievable anger and bitterness. To her, those were the years of America's Lethal Horror War Against Women.

Some kid on YouTube made a video in which he (acting the role of the hooded prisoner) demonstrates waterboarding. I guess keywording "waterboarding" ought to get it. Don't get me started on Torture as a 3rd voter issue. I feel as if I'm hallucinating on LSD, or have some brain fungus infection when I turn on the cable or read the front page, from NY Times to NY Daily News, and watch this spirited, vigorous, never-ending national debate about whether Americans should torture Muslims or not.

I used to enjoy some LSD hallucinations. Not this one. This is the Mother of All Bad Trips.

B

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The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois daily)
Friday 16 November 2007

THE CONTENDERS: RON PAUL

Paul: A seller of ideas

They call him Dr. No -- no big government, no big spending, no flouting the Constitution. And no interest in slick political image.

by Lisa Anderson, Tribune national correspondent
lbanderson@tribune.com

ANGLETON, Texas -- No more Department of Education. No more Federal Reserve Bank. No more Medicare or Medicaid. No more membership in the United Nations or NATO. No more federal drug laws. And, no more U.S. troops in Iraq -- or anywhere else on foreign soil.

The Internal Revenue Service would be history in the first week that Ron Paul sits behind the desk in the Oval Office. And the dismantling of the above-mentioned entities and relationships -- plus a long list of others -- soon would commence.

Think that sounds eccentric, strange, even crazy? Many of the libertarian-minded, 10-term congressman's rivals for the GOP presidential nomination think so and have said so.

But, to a growing, Internet-based pool of supporters, the silver-haired obstetrician turned politician is the sanest man at the Republican debates and perhaps in all of Congress. Paul attracts an unusual political potpourri of people of all ages and viewpoints, including a sprinkling of conspiracy theorists and other extremists whose views Paul's campaign disavows. While most supporters ardently oppose the Iraq war, what they all share is a deep disenchantment and distrust of the federal government in its present form and a fervent belief in Paul's plans to change it.

On Nov. 5, they demonstrated their passion for Paul in spectacular fashion, raising $4.2 million, mostly online, in 24 hours, rocketing him close to his $12 million goal for the fourth quarter. In terms of 2008 GOP presidential candidates, Paul's take broke the previous one-day record of $3.1million set by Mitt Romney Jan. 8.

Hammering home a singular message of freedom, free markets, smaller federal government and greater personal responsibility, Paul, at 72, is nothing if not consistent. Personally, he seems very much the same in a one-on-one conversation as he does on the stump: earnest, serious and slightly stunned. Although pleasant, he, unlike most politicians, makes no effort to charm. He leaves an impression that he is out to sell ideas, not himself.

Politically, he also is relentlessly consistent: If it is not explicitly authorized in the U.S. Constitution, Paul opposes it, particularly if it involves spending. He has opposed so many things over his political career that he has been dubbed "Dr. No."

The money that would be saved from the elimination of many federal programs, not to mention the Iraq war, he contends, would more than provide a state-based safety net for those Americans who can't help themselves and for those depending on Social Security, which eventually he would phase out. States, not the federal government, should deal with issues such as abortion and the nature of marriage, he says. And, though he dreams of a day America returns to a gold standard, he would be happy just to see the country stop taking on huge foreign debt and running up deficits by printing money for which it has no solid backing.

Off and running

Money, specifically monetary policy, is a long-term Paul obsession, the foundation of many of his ideas and books and the catalyst of his political career. In his 20s, he became interested in the libertarian-flavored Austrian school of economics, which favors a commodity-backed currency and markets free of government interference. When President Richard Nixon effectively severed the U.S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971, Paul has said, he felt impelled to enter politics.

Emerging as an unlikely Republican rock star among young voters, Paul actually draws cheers on college campuses when he calls for abolishing the Federal Reserve System.

"It amazes me no end that they even have thought about it," he said in a recent interview.

Asked about his appeal to young people, he said, "They don't trust government. Government has been messing things up. And they respond favorably to not worrying about paying income tax and getting out of Social Security."

In terms of foreign policy, he said, "I make them feel good that you can be conservative and pro-truth and pro-American and pro-Constitution and not want to go to war for needless purposes. They've been made to feel ... that if you don't support all these invasions and all this fighting, somehow you're anti-American."

Paul has infuriated some, including his GOP rivals, by suggesting that U.S. foreign policy has fueled terrorism and contributed to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He often says, "They came over here because we went over there."

Meanwhile, he has proved not only more popular but more bankable than many -- including himself -- might have expected. Even before the Nov. 5 cascade of cash, Paul's campaign had more than $5 million on hand at the close of the third quarter,exceeding the coffers of such better-known White House hopefuls as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Republican former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

No fear

"I think one thing that appeals to the young people is that he'll speak his mind and he doesn't care who likes or doesn't like it," said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government who specializes in presidential politics at the University of Texas at Austin. "That old saw that he'd rather be right than be president fits."

Long unafraid to take rock-solid stands on issues that would turn other candidates' knees to jelly -- witness his opposition to gun control and censorship of pornography or anything else on the Internet, and his approval of decriminalizing marijuana and prostitution -- Paul has developed the unlikely political habit of saying exactly what he thinks. All the time. Whether he's on the floor of the House of Representatives or on the couch of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

Down-home but passionate

A slight, craggy-faced man whose crinkly eyes and ski-slope nose might suggest an older version of commentator Bill O'Reilly, Ron Paul cuts a figure more down-home than dashing. He projects a mild-mannered demeanor but turns fiery when he talks about the need for change in the federal government. And there is a steely certainty to his views that even his fans concede sound radical on first hearing.

Some have compared Paul's formidable performance on the Internet with that of former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, another maverick who also scored early success on the Internet, both in raising money and his profile. The majority of Paul's funds come from online donors, and his campaign Web site -- RonPaul2008.com -- is often a political traffic-topper in a crowded presidential field. For the week ending Oct. 27, traffic on Paul's site vied for the top slot with that of Sen. Hillary Clinton and handily trounced all other GOP candidate sites, according to Hitwise.com, which monitors Internet usage. "Ron Paul" was the most searched political term for the prior month.

Yet in most presidential race polls, Paul hovers in the low single digits -- often within the margin of error. In his best showing to date, 7.4 percent of likely New Hampshire primary voters supported him, according to a New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll released Oct. 25.

Although he ran as the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 1988, Paul says he has no plans to run as anything other than Republican in 2008. He also says he has no intention of running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by his fellow Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. And he has no plans to quit the presidential race.

"What people are afraid of is Paul will never leave" the race for the White House, said Robert Stein, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston and a longtime Paul watcher. "You have to know Ron Paul as I do. This guy just keeps on ticking."

Ron Paul consistently draws enthusiastic crowds, often topping 1,500 people, during campaign stops around the country, particularly at colleges and universities. But name recognition remains problematic.

"Is Ron Paul the actor, the one who used to be an actor?" one student was overheard asking as she strolled past signs for a Paul event on the University of Southern California campus earlier this fall.

No, that would be Fred Thompson.

Paul's name can draw blank stares even in his own district. At the Brazoria County Fair in Angleton on a hot and dusty October day, it seemed most people were far more familiar with such signature delicacies as fried Oreos, fried pickles and Brobdingnagian-size roasted turkey legs than they were with their own representative in Congress, who happens to be running for the White House.

"I know he was a doctor in Lake Jackson," said Bubba Kettler, 44, an electric company lineman.

Teresa Petersen, sitting amid crates of the velvety, mottled chocolate-and-white Standard Rex rabbits her sons brought to show at the fair, fondly recalled Ron Paul. Mother of a child with autism, Petersen went to see Paul in a district office to persuade him to oppose the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Improvement in Education Act. Many parent groups at the time contended that proposed changes in the act weakened educational opportunities for disabled children.

Amiable and approachable

"He was just a really nice man. He was very easy to talk to," recalled Petersen, 45, who is a full-time student at Brazosport College. "He was very aware of the issue," she said, adding "He did end up voting 'no' on that.

"Actually, I found out later that he votes 'no' on most things, so there went all the air out of my bubble," she added with a laugh.

Representing the 14th Congressional District, Paul covers a swath of the Texas Gulf Coast running south of Houston from about Galveston to Corpus Christi. A mix of rural, suburban and beach communities, the district has a large petrochemical industry presence, cattle ranching, rice farming and numbers many NASA workers among its roughly 650,000 residents.

Although Paul steadfastly opposes farm subsidies, greater support for NASA and funding for FEMA in a famously hurricane-prone district, he continues to be re-elected comfortably. "It's not that kind of relationship," said the University of Texas' Buchanan. "It's more on the order of 'This is a man we trust,' as opposed to 'What's in it for us?'"

Born August 20, 1935, in Pittsburgh, Ronald Ernest Paul was the third of five sons born to a dairy farmer in the nearby tiny suburb of Green Tree. He began working for his father at an early age and delivered milk during his years at Dormont High School. There he met Carol Wells, daughter of a well-to-do coffee broker. They have five children, 18 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year.

"The first time I ever saw him, he was running a track event," recalled Carol Paul, 71, in a recent phone conversation.

"I think what impressed me too was that everybody liked him. But he was a serious student and a serious athlete. He spent most of his time doing that. He wasn't one of the big dating crowd. He was student body president his senior year. He didn't run for it. They wanted him."

Paul worked his way through Gettysburg College, initially planning to follow two of his brothers into the ministry. But an interest in biology led him instead to the Duke University School of Medicine. He and Carol married in his last semester at Gettysburg, and she worked to put him through medical school.

Paul was a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard from 1963 to 1968; he was not assigned to serve in Vietnam. In 40 years as an OB-GYN in the Lake Jackson area, he estimates, he has delivered more than 4,000 babies.It pains Carol Paul to hear her husband booed or criticized by rivals during debates, but she takes pride in his attitude. "He has no animosity to these people," she said. "He forgives. But I don't know if he can ever forgive about the war, the boys we've lost and the fact we went in for lies."

Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate unequivocally opposed to the Iraq war and was the only Republican representative who did not vote in support of it. He is also the rare congressman who refuses a Congressional pension, because he considers the use of taxpayer money in this fashion an abuse of power. For the same reason, he never accepted taxpayer-funded Medicare or Medicaid in his practice, nor did he allow his children to take federal loans for college.

Paul appears financially comfortable but not exceedingly wealthy, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Most of his holdings are in about two dozen gold and silver firms, many valued at less than $15,000 and none valued at more than $250,000.

A turnabout

Paul likes to tell people that when constituents came to visit him in his Washington office, it would invariably be parents with reluctant children in tow. These days, he says, it is more often young people introducing their skeptical parents to him.

There are more than 260 Students for Ron Paul chapters around the country, and one of them is at USC in Los Angeles. There Paul stood under a blazing sun on a hot September afternoon speaking to a rally that swiftly grew from a few hundred students to more than 1,500. Among them was history major Luke Murphy, 20. Murphy found out about Paul from his twin brother, who discovered him on the Internet.

"My little brother is going to a Ron Paul rally in San Francisco tomorrow, and he's bringing my mother," he said, noting that septuagenarian Paul may be too "radical" for the "older generation."

Lorraine Clearman, a 67-year-old school administrator, admitted she was cynical when she arrived earlier that same day to hear Paul speak at a $500-a-head fundraising breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena. She went at the behest of her daughter, Holly Clearman, 47, who works with school drop-outs in Los Angeles, and her 14-year-old grandson, Anthony Iatropoulos.

Anthony, a 9th grader, said his mother had introduced him to Paul's ideas. But, he added, "I don't just blindly follow my mother. I feel with sincerity that Ron Paul is hope for America." "Hope for America" is Paul's campaign slogan.

By late October, Lorraine Clearman was sold on Paul. "These positive young supporters give me optimism for the future of our country," she said in an e-mail. "This election may well be bought, and the next ones as well, but the movement may prevail in the end. My conscience will only let me vote for Ron Paul."

No matter how things turn out in 2008, Paul believes he will have made an impact, or at least a dent, in the political landscape. "They can't silence us," he said. "The message is out of the bag, so to speak. The message is out there. I have no idea what's going to happen to the campaign. I'm doing so much better than I ever dreamed."

As he recently said on The Tonight Show, "There's probably a risk I could win."

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WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ... RONALD ERNEST PAUL

BORN: Aug. 20, 1935; Pittsburgh

EDUCATION: Gettysburg College, graduated in 1957 (BA, major in biology); Duke University School of Medicine, graduated in 1961 with a medical degree.

POLITICAL CAREER: U.S. House of Representatives, 1976; 1978-84; 1997-present. Defeated in GOP primary for U.S. Senate in 1984. Ran as Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988.

OTHER JOBS: OB-GYN

FAMILY: Wife, Carol Wells (married Feb. 1, 1957); five children: Ronald, Lori, Randal, Robert and Joy

RELIGION: Baptist

MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: None

POLITICAL HERO: Sen. Robert A. Taft

FAVORITE FOODS: Tilapia, chocolate chip cookies

FAVORITE MODE OF EXERCISE: Tries to walk at least 3 miles in the morning and bicycle at least 10 miles in the afternoon.

FAVORITE BOOKS: "Human Action: A Treatise on Economics" by Ludwig von Mises and "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich A. Hayek

FAVORITE TV SHOW: Financial news

FAVORITE MOVIE: "Dr. Zhivago"

FAVORITE HYMN: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"

TELL US A JOKE: He doesn't joke.

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Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune